The Rask Rebellion

"You good?" Brenner asked, Petrova nodding.

"Bastard took me by surprise is all," she said, holstering her XMH and retrieving her weapon from the floor. She checked the magazine, then called to Hoff, the three of them making their way deeper into the crawler.

The next room they encountered was filled with a giant metal cylinder, almost like the turret of an APC as seen from within the troop bay. It took them a moment to figure out that this was the base of one of the Naval railguns that were mounted on the deck above. It had a bulky auto-loader that had been stripped straight from whatever spacecraft the weapon had originally belonged to, racks of massive tungsten slugs stacked up against one of the walls. There was no gunner's seat, no controls, only a bundle of optical cables as thick as a human thigh that snaked along the floor and vanished into a makeshift socket in the hull. It must be controlled remotely. Whoever had Frankensteined this thing together had patched all of the electronics into the crawler's systems.

They proceeded aft, linking up with the team that had split off from their own along the way.

"Not much on the starboard side of the crawler," Wachowski said, walking along beside Brenner. "Found some more storerooms, an armory, all empty."

"The engine room is supposed to be at the end of this corridor," Brenner said, glancing at the map on his HUD. "We need to secure it, or some sneaky asshole might overload the core and scuttle the crawler. If they're anything like us, then they'd have standing orders to prevent their vessel from falling into enemy hands."

They soon reached the hatch, but it was too thick for Brenner's scanner to see through, probably packed with radiation shielding. They'd have to do things the old-fashioned way.

"Remember, hold your fire if you don't have a clean shot," he warned. "All it takes is for one slug to penetrate the shielding on the reactor, and the whole thing will go critical."

"Let me go first, LT," Stevens suggested, brandishing his CR-58. "Caseless won't stand any chance of punching through."

"Do it," he replied, ceding his place in the stack. He gave him a tap on the shoulder, signaling that they were ready to go, Stevens swinging the hatch open. There was a flash of light, the loud pop of his rifle echoing through the corridor. When Brenner followed him inside, he found a body slumped against the reactor's control panel, its blood seeping down to the grates below.

"Dude's wearing overalls instead of leather," Hoff said, poking the body with the barrel of his XMR. "Must have been an engineer."

"I don't know enough about nuclear reactors to guess what he was doing at those controls," Brenner muttered, "but it probably wasn't anything good."

He eyed the reactor warily, the massive cylinder taking up the entire far wall, surrounded by a mess of machinery and wiring. It looked like a giant oil drum, the core encased within a thick shroud to prevent any radiation from leaking. It wasn't all that powerful by Navy standards. Hell, the Courser had six reactors that were each far more powerful than this one, but something about being so close to the thing sent a shiver down his spine.

"Come on," he said, waving his team back through the door. "This deck has been cleared out, let's move up to the prefabs."

They doubled back, Brenner putting a finger to the side of his helmet as he contacted Meadows, the leader of the second team.

"What's the sitrep?" he asked, hearing heavy breathing on the other end.

"Lieutenant," Meadows began, sounding out of breath. "We've cleared the prefabs, but the bridge crew have locked themselves in the conning tower. There's only one way in, and they've got it locked down."

"Wait for us, we're on our way," he replied. "There's no hurry, we can jam any outgoing radio signals, they won't be able to get a distress call through."

"Fuckers are probably wondering what the hell happened to their comms," Hoff chuckled.

They located a ladder that led up to the prefabs, the rungs set too far apart to be convenient for a human, the team emerging to another scene of carnage. There were slain aliens lying around in heaps on piles of pillows, the exquisite, purple fabric now soaked with their dark blood. There were upturned drinks staining the carpet, broken glasses, the contents of silver platters scattered all over the floor during the panic. It looked to Brenner like some kind of mobile bordello, the metal walls covered up with flowing curtains, the clothing of its occupants sparse and titillating. All of the furniture had been carved from dark wood, and there were decorative tapestries hanging on the walls here and there, depicting stilted scenes of battle with odd perspectives.

"Is this some kind of recreation center?" Hoff muttered, walking up to one of the low tables. He kicked a dead Rask out of his way, the lifeless alien slumping to the carpet, then he reached out to lift a vial of pink liquid. His visor popped open, and he brought it to his nose, giving it a tentative sniff.

"Don't drink anything, idiot," Petrova said. "You don't know what that is."

"Could be a human blood seltzer for all you know," Stevens chuckled, sauntering over to examine one of the piles. "Looks like they were having a party when we showed up. A kinky one..."

"I think this is their equivalent of crew quarters," Brenner mused, examining the fine drapes as he walked along. It was such a strange sensation, feeling shag carpet beneath his skids after wandering across hot sand. "They live in packs, and they seem to sleep in groups. Maybe they prefer these...pillow nests to bunks or hammocks."

"The place sure is fancy," Stevens added, crouching to pick up a morsel of what looked like roast beef between his prosthetic fingers. "The mess hall that we shot up must have been for the lower-ranked crew members, my guess is that these here socialites are the officers. These guys get fresh meat and plenty of tail, while the guys below deck get MREs and cold showers."

"Hey, Petrova," Hoff began. "How about you and me give the whole throw pillows and lingerie thing a try when we get back to the Courser?"

"I don't know," she replied, "do the words shattered testicles mean anything to you?"

He laughed, stepping over another dead alien as the team made their way through to the next room, finding it just as lavishly furnished as the first. Meadows and his team were milling about around another ladder that led to a hatch in the ceiling, a couple of his men keeping their rifles aimed at it.

"What have you got?" Brenner asked, Meadows gesturing to ceiling. He was wearing a bulky backpack that had four thick antennae protruding from it. It was the signal jammer that was preventing the Rask from contacting their friends.

"Maybe half a dozen of 'em, the fuckers have locked the hatch. Guess they think this is gonna be their last stand or something of the like. We can't just blast our way through, we need their computers relatively intact if we're gonna pull any data from them."

"That means explosives are out," Brenner muttered, letting the barrel of his XMR point at the carpet as he walked around the ladder. "Alright, people. Suggestions?"

"We could grapple up the side of the conning tower and shoot them through the windows," one of them said.

"What if we melted a hole through the hatch with plasma?" Stevens volunteered.

"And then throw some teargas grenades through," Petrova added. "That should give those pussycats something to think about."

"I like the sound of that," Brenner said, nodding to Hoff. He always carried the plasma attachment for his XMR, never passing up the chance to torch some poor saps with superheated gas. Hoff knelt and began to rummage through his bulky chest rig, swapping out the magazine of tungsten slugs that was loaded into his rifle for a canister of gas. It was about the size of a soda can, one end molded to fit into the weapon's magazine well. The electromagnets in the barrel could be used to accelerate a bolt of magnetically-contained plasma just as easily as they could a solid projectile.

He powered up the weapon, everyone standing clear as he aimed it at the hatch. Brenner couldn't see his face through his helmet, but he knew from experience that Hoff would be grinning from ear to ear.

There was a bright flash, their visors automatically tinting to protect their eyes, as unnecessary as that now was for Brenner. The plasma bolt melted straight through the hatch, leaving a fist-sized hole that was ringed by molten metal, flaming droplets falling to the carpet below. He fired twice more for good measure, then Petrova darted in, priming a pair of teargas grenades and tossing them through the breach.

They waited a few moments, then the sounds of hacking and coughing bled through from the room above, yowls of pain echoing. Just like with the concussion grenades, the finely tuned senses of the aliens were proving to be more of a hindrance than a benefit.

"Follow me in," Brenner said, gripping his rifle in one hand as he began to mount the ladder. "Watch yourselves, we encountered some that had helmets."

He lifted the hatch with his shoulder, its locking mechanism long since melted, emerging with his weapon at the ready. This must be what passed for the conning tower, another modular prefab building that had been attached to the top of the structure. There were banks of computers lining the walls, switches and touch panels, no doubt the control system for the vehicle. The stools that had once seated the pilots and operators were now empty, the bridge crew writhing on the deck, clawing at their faces as they retched and howled. The air was thick with the irritating gas, so much so that Brenner had to switch view modes to be able to see through it, the grenades still spewing a steady stream of the stuff.

He spotted movement, something darting from around the back of a large, leather seat that occupied the center of the room. It was an especially large female, her leather jacket more ornate than those worn by the others, a purple sash that was decorated with buttons and medals slung across her shoulder. Might she be their captain? She was wearing a full-face helmet, the same as those used by Shock Troopers. Too late, he saw that she was aiming a gigantic, crudely-machined revolver at him. He was halfway out of the hatch when she fired, what felt like a sledgehammer hitting him in the chest, knocking him from the ladder. He dinged the back of his helmet on the rim as he fell, the high gravity carrying him to the carpet below, the impact knocking the air out of his lungs.

Brenner lay there in a daze, just trying to suck in a breath, the sound of a gunfight reaching him. Two of the SWAR operators were kneeling over him, and he was vaguely aware of something rapping at his chest piece. Once he could breathe again, he sat up, resisting the urge to raise his visor.

"LT!" someone yelled, Brenner realizing that it was Petrova. "LT, are you hurt?"

"N-no," he stammered, touching his rubber fingertips against his chest piece. The ceramic armor had stopped the primitive projectile dead, a bullet the width of his goddamned thumb. It had hit him like a truck, but it hadn't come close to making it through his armor.

"Clear!" Meadows announced, more of the team climbing their way up the ladder. "I gotta give it to 'em," he continued, "they didn't make that easy."

Petrova helped Brenner to his feet, and he mounted the ladder, climbing into the conning tower. The crew were all dead now, lying still in pools of blood, some of the consoles behind them ripped open by slugs. Hoff must have hit their captain because everything between her neck and waist looked like pulled pork, wisps of smoke rising from her charred flesh. Brenner was all too familiar with the smell of burning meat, and he was grateful for his helmet's rebreather.

"That's the last of 'em," Meadows said, surveying the room. "Looks like we took 'em by surprise, they weren't expectin' visitors so soon."

"It was the same below deck," Brenner replied. "Pretty sure everything on the crawler besides us is dead, we can start recovery efforts now."

"Already on it, sir," Meadows added as he gestured to one of the consoles. There was another team member crouched in front of it, the access panel hanging open, bundles of electrical wires and optical cables spilling out onto the deck. Brenner couldn't see the man's face, but he knew that it was Song, their IT specialist. There was a monitor built into his forearm, his prosthetic fingers tapping frantically at the touch screen as he hooked some of the cables directly into the sockets on his limb.

"I'm gonna dump the contents of their drives, see what I can find," he said. If his name didn't give away his country of origin, then his Korean accent certainly did. "With any luck, we'll get our hands on some encryption codes for their comms, maybe the last-known locations of the other crawlers."

"How long?" Brenner asked.

"Impossible to tell," he replied with a shrug. "If they're smarter than they look, then they may have encrypted their more sensitive files. That'll take time to crack with what we have on hand."

"Keep me updated," Brenner said, turning back to his team. They were all together again, and while he hadn't anticipated any casualties, it was a relief to see that everyone was in one piece. Well, as much as a SWAR operative could ever be in one piece. "Alright, we've accomplished the first stage of our mission, but it's not over yet. We're expecting a convoy of Rask vehicles to show up soon, and they're going to want their big, expensive toy back. It's our job to see that they don't get it. This thing's crew just showed you how not to fortify your position, so I expect you to make the crawler airtight. I don't want so much as a grain of sand slipping through without our knowledge. Get those guns online if you can, we might as well use them. We're holding out here until reinforcements arrive, there's no other way off this rock."

CHAPTER 16: GILDED CAGE

"Still no contact from the Landslide?" Korbaz asked, leaning over the holographic table as she examined the crawler's last known location.

"No, Admiral," the Crewmaster replied. He seemed on-edge, his tail whipping back and forth behind him as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. She had to admit that recent events had shaken her own confidence, too, something that she had previously considered to be unwavering.

"Vitza," she continued, the engineer straightening when he heard his name called. "You contacted the Landslide's engineer prior to them falling out of contact, correct?"

"Yes, Admiral," he replied.

"What was their problem? Was it anything that might prevent them from sending out a signal?"

"N-no," he mumbled, shaking his head as his eyes darted towards the carpet. "The Landslide was reporting issues with their drive train. That wouldn't have impacted their electronics or their communications systems in any way, at least that I can think of."

"Can we assume that the aliens are somehow responsible?" the Crewmaster asked. "Though I cannot imagine how. We know where their convoys are, our forces should have reached the crawler long before they could have."

"We'll know soon enough when the convoy that we dispatched from the Hurricane arrives," Korbaz added. "Now, I fear that they may be marching into a slaughter."

"Should we pull them back?" the Crewmaster suggested, Korbaz exhaling a sigh of exasperation as her eyes scanned the three-dimensional map.

"We must learn what has happened to the Landslide," she said, "it is too large an asset to simply abandon. If we lose a second crawler..."

"This situation is getting out of hand," the Crewmaster grumbled. "Our strategy was to keep the interlopers on the defensive, to slow their advance, yet we find ourselves reacting to surprise after surprise."

Korbaz glanced up at him, baring her sharp teeth in anger.

"Do you have a more successful strategy that you would like to put forward, Crewmaster?"

He picked up the disdain in her voice, his ears flattening against his head defensively.

"I would never question your authority, my Admiral."

"But?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him suspiciously.

"Nothing, Admiral," he mumbled as he bowed his head. "I will carry out whatever orders you give to the letter."

"Good," she replied.

"Have you had any luck with the prisoner?" he added, pivoting the conversation. "The reinforcements will be arriving tomorrow, and your orders were to dispatch them to launch a second offensive against the convoy as soon as they were fueled and loaded. But without knowing more about the enemy tanks, and with the Landslide unable to provide fire support, I fear that we may have to postpone the attack."

Korbaz drummed her claws on the edge of the table impatiently, her mind racing. It was all falling apart. The tighter her grip, the more grains of sand seemed to spill through her fingers. She had to regain control, and fast, or the Matriarch would hold her solely responsible for this fiasco. Assuming that the aliens didn't appear out of the ether to put a slug between her eyes first...

"I need a little more time," she said, wheeling around and marching towards the exit. "Have the prisoner brought to my quarters, I will present him with an offer that he cannot turn down."

***

Cooper was well into his third rendition of Amazing Grace, keeping the beat by kicking the bars of his cell with his prosthetic foot. The unfortunate guard who had been posted outside had the patience of a saint, at least as far as Rask went, his ears flattened against his head as he kept watch just beyond the door. His furry tail was waving back and forth, a gesture that Cooper now recognized as one of irritation.

"Hey!" he finally shouted, giving his bars another loud kick. The clang of metal made the alien jump, the creature turning to peer at him with eyes that could only be described as overflowing with loathing. "I'm hungry, cunt."

"You will be fed when it is time to be fed," the Rask sneered, resuming his silent vigil.

"I want steak, medium rare," Cooper said as he leaned on the bars. "Some roast potatoes, heaps of sauce, red and brown. A pint of lager wouldn't hurt, either."

"You will get the leavings from the kitchen, and you will be grateful for it," his guard muttered. "It is more than you deserve..."

"I said I was hungry!" Cooper repeated, lurching back as the alien slammed his massive hands against the door. It rocked in its frame, dust raining down from the ceiling.

"Sit down and be quiet," he hissed, his feline pupils dilated into black saucers. "If the Admiral had not forbidden it upon pain of death, I would open this door and pluck that irritating tongue from your head with my own claws."

He flexed them, their sharp points scraping against the iron bars, as though imagining what he wanted to do with them. They were interrupted as a pair of soldiers came around the corner, the aliens barking orders at the guard, who snapped back into his place beside the door like a rubber band. They approached the cell, two Rask clad in the usual blend of leather and armor, one of them unlocking the door with a clunk.

"It's about time," Cooper said, offering his arm to the nearest alien. "Tell the Admiral she's free to put the moves on me as long as I get some more of that pale meat, you know, the one that tastes like turkey."

"Silence," his captor said as he was guided out of his cell. "The Admiral has other plans for you today."

They hauled him up into the prefabs, but rather than stopping at the dining hall, they continued on through the adjoining buildings. At the far end was one final door, the panel sliding aside to reveal what looked like an upscale apartment. It was decorated with the usual silken drapes in shades of purple, cascading down the walls, meeting in the center of the ceiling to give the impression that the occupants were standing inside a giant silk tent. There was an ornate chandelier that cast a dim glow, swaying gently with the motion of the crawler. This place was so big that he sometimes forgot that they were always moving. The carpet was thick and fluffy, like animal hide, soft and pleasant beneath his prosthetic foot. The furniture was all carved from dark wood, the low tables strewn with empty vials and the remnants of feasts. Off to the right was a shower cubicle that looked out of place amidst the alien fineries, likely a feature that they had kept from the original prefab.