Star Force: Paladin (SF94) (Star Force Origin Series) Page 8

  More and more of the bioweapon signals went out as they worked, and more tunnels came crushing down to the point where the current location of the superwarrior was lost. More and more were taken down and the remaining bioweapons in the area were clustered between the Ionvan and the caved-in tunnels as the masters finished their packing and set the detonators that would destroy their own equipment and keep it from being discovered. Better to give the interlopers no confirmation of their existence and leave whatever deduction they’d made to rumors and imagination, thus an incineration weapon was being used that would destroy any bodies caught in it completely.

  Suddenly an alarm sounded and a few seconds later another Ionvan came flying back into the now nearly empty command center through the air and landed on a clean table. The leader heard his back snap as he hit the edge. A few pistol shots sounded outside, but they quickly disappeared.

  Grabbing the primary data cell, the leader turned and ran for the opposite exit but never made it all the way there. An invisible force plucked him off his feet and held him midair, spinning him around so he could see the golden superwarrior standing before him with cracked armor and streaks of what looked to be blood, though they were a sickly red unlike anything he’d seen before.

  Another Ionvan came in behind the superwarrior and tried to quietly shoot it in the back, but a raised fist sent out some type of shockwave that knocked it across the room where it hit something hard and slumped to the ground out of vision. No shots came, so the leader didn’t think it was still alive, or perhaps not awake, but it didn’t matter. If this superwarrior could survive the cave-ins then what would a pistol shot do?

  And what was it doing now? Just holding him in the air with its terrifying powers? It didn’t say anything at all. Didn’t do anything at all. It just stood there looking up at him as he remember the trigger in his pocket. The strain of constriction was around his chest, not his arms, so he darted his flipper-like hand inside and grabbed for it…but the trigger device flew out of his grasp and into the air between the two of them and the superwarrior raised a hand and single finger, then waved it back and forth.

  “You die with us,” another Ionvan’s voice said from out of view, then the leader heard the blissful sound of the planned countdown as he was suddenly dropped. He hit a table feet first and rolled off it, slamming his head into the ground and knocking him dizzy for a moment. The other Ionvan lay nearby, his legs inoperable, but he’d managed to climb up onto a console and trigger the self-destruct that only had seconds left on the aborted countdown.

  “Good,” he told him as the last few numbers ticked off, then everything disappeared in a painful flash.

  The heat was what woke Myra, for it was burning into her arm enough to clear her dazed head. She woke pinned inside her armor with a flurry of warnings flashing on her HUD that quickly told her that there was magma seeping in through the rocks.

  A spike of fear flashed through her as she realized her armor was melting on her right elbow, which was the lowest portion of her body, but she couldn’t move it away. Flashing her Pefbar and getting an even bigger headache for it, she saw the rocks pinning her in place as well as the gaps between them. Using her telekinesis she managed to move one aside enough to free her left leg, then hooked her foot around a crack and pulled…but it was no good.

  She felt the heat start to actually sear her skin, meaning there couldn’t be much left to her armor, and did the only thing she could do. She put up a Rensiek barrier and tried to block the heat, knowing it was but a stopgap…

  “Shit,” she said, mentally causing the armor on her other arm to disengage and peel apart. The heat in the air was unbearable, but she flashed up Rensiek shields across her body as her clothing caught on fire. She only had a few seconds left and nothing else to do, so she channeled as much of the heat that she was catching on her shields to her bare hand…then pushed it into the rock on top of her chest.

  Her fingers soaked into it, melting through but at a slow rate. As more of the heat hit her she kept it flowing across her body, burning the inside of her armor but there was no other way. She tried to leverage the rocks off her as the main one melted, but her telekinesis wasn’t strong enough. Summoning one last effort before her heat shields failed and she was cooked, she released a Jumat blast out from the chest of her body and pushed against both her armor and the rock above.

  Myra didn’t know what happened, because her Pefbar was gone and her head was swirling, but suddenly she was able to slide an inch as she continued to melt away the rock with her hand. It fell even lower, pinching her armor, but she had enough leverage to push her body out the other side, prying her armor off telekinetically where it wouldn’t release. Myra had to break the neck of her helmet apart to get her head out, but she was able to slide her entire body out of her armor and up between two rocks.

  The air was so hot she couldn’t breathe, but putting all her energy into her Rensiek she pressed now bare feet against the scolding rocks and climbed up through the gaps as bright light flared where her armor had magma soaked up through and consuming it.

  Forcing her Pefbar back again she found crack after crack and continued to move up, having to rely mostly on her Hamne for oxygen until she got far enough up through the rubble to be able to filter the heat out of the air, choking in the searing breaths and burning her lungs, but it was better than suffocating.

  Her clothes were burnt tatters now, but most of her skin remained intact, protected by the Rensiek that she didn’t know how much longer would last, so she kept climbing and avoiding dead ends by scouting ahead with her Pefbar and being so grateful that there was a way up.

  Eventually she came to a large chamber, being where the rock from above had come down on the control center. It was now a hollow with thin air, but it was far less hot and a single beacon of hope held out near the top…the sign of a small tunnel as the room suddenly caught a bit of light in the otherwise pitch black environment.

  The magma was still rising and a bit of it was showing through cracks deep below her.

  With her body shaking from the effort and the adrenaline coursing through her, she leapt from one rough rock to another, landing on bare feet that cut on the jagged edges but not caring so long as she could keep up her heat shields. When she eventually got underneath the tunnel entrance she gathered herself and jumped…coming up a couple feet short and falling back down.

  Her foot hit something very sharp and it sliced into her small toe, but she caught her fall and looked around. There was nothing higher to climb on and she’d jumped as hard as she could…but there were loose rocks, so she telekinetically grabbed the biggest one she could and hauled it over, then another and another as the golden light rose along with the heat, meaning the magma wasn’t far behind.

  When she picked up another rock and found she didn’t have the strength to move it, Myra decided it was now or never. Perching on top of her pile and on a tiny flat spot she’d arranged, she knelt down on her cut up feet in a crouch then surged her Yetu, letting her Rensiek drop just a little in the process in order to juggle all the psionics. Her feet burnt before they left the rock, but that didn’t matter. She shot straight up like a Jedi jump and came even head level with the top of the tunnel.

  Myra shot her arms inside and clawed for leverage, burning her hands and forearms yet still falling backward. A last second Lachka wall put beneath her legs and centered off her head tossed her lower half higher in the air while forcing her torso down, burning her now exposed nipples on the stone but giving her enough weight on the rocky tunnel to keep her legs from dragging her back out.

  Myra surged her heat shields again as she crawled forward a few meters, then stood up into a hunched position touching only with her feet. Ignoring the screaming pain she stood there for a moment, focusing most of her Rensiek on her feet while the rest of her was not touching anything other than the hot air. She couldn’t stand up all the way in the tunnel for it wasn’t that big, but the direct heat lines comin
g from below were now blocked and each step that she took forward saw less and less.

  With multiple spots on her body billowing with the pain, she focused solely on moving forward until the air cooled enough to actually make her feel chilled, at which point she stopped and sat down on her butt…one of the few places on her body that wasn’t burned. The rock beneath was rough and warm but otherwise not damaging. Looking at her right arm and the skin and muscle missing from her elbow her mind started to unnumb a bit and the pain began to consume her.

  She knew her passive Uzti healing rate would keep her alive if she could just hang on, but the damage was so bad that she tried to use her Haemra and do some minor repairs by forcing tissue to regrow faster than normal. Myra did that on her arm and all the other burned spots on her body, including her left breast that no longer had much of a nipple left.

  She didn’t try to regenerate any of it save for the skin, covering up the seeping wounds and conserving her remaining blood as she cried…and cried long and hard throughout the process.

  Myra was a basket case and for good reason, but so long as she was even with it a little bit she’d pull herself out of the downward spiral and push on…though for now all she could do was focus on one thing at a time while the rest of her screamed in frantic, painful protest at nearly being burnt alive.

  9

  July 20, 3534

  Tekin System (Rim Region)

  Plataro

  A group of Paladin Constructors were digging into and removing rock from one of the collapsed tunnels while hastati and skirmishers were clearing the open ones when a single word entered their minds.

  Help.

  The exoskeleton-wearing builders/demolishers hesitated briefly, but most didn’t recognize the word for what it was with all the surrounding noise. The rock wasn’t just laying here easy to pick up…they were having to essentially carve out a new tunnel through it and that meant a lot of grinding and repurposing of the bits and pieces into supports to build a proper tunnel that wouldn’t collapse again, though they were pretty sure the reavers had collapsed this one intentionally.

  One of the constructors, a variant of the generic ‘worker’ class, stopped his arm-mounted cutting tool and tried to listen, but the other sounds were too loud to make anything out.

  Help.

  The word repeated again, but it wasn’t coming from outside his helmet. It was coming from inside his head.

  “Stop,” he told the others, some of which had already shut down their machines. The rest followed suit at his command, looking at him through clear faceplates at the center of the exoskeletons that surrounded their working armor. “Be silent and listen.”

  The noise in the tunnel fell off, with those workers up the line complying as news spread. It didn’t take more than a few seconds before the word repeated a second time and they all heard it.

  “It’s telepathic,” someone else said. “It must be the Archon.”

  “But where is she?”

  “Their range isn’t unlimited. She must be close.”

  Help.

  “What do we do?” another asked. There were no Humans nearby to get orders from, and none of the Paladin were telepathic. “She’s not showing up on the battlemap.”

  “If she’s using telepathy maybe her comms are damaged or she’s too deep to get a signal through, but she has to be close.”

  Up.

  The word changed, and with it came a pulsating beacon. Not on their suit’s HUDS, but in their minds, and they all craned their necks up in the same general direction.

  “Priority redirect,” the most senior constructor on site ordered. “We tunnel up and fast. No braces. Clear removal.”

  With that order the standing Paladin started to move in a frenzy and word was spread to the others via comm. The constructors that had been hauling material out and back up the open tunnel started moving quickly with many more of them coming from another branch some 300 meters back. Everyone in the project started to come here, passing by one another in the small tunnel in organized fashion with a row coming in and a row coming out.

  Both sported bins for carrying the rock shards that the drillers were now cutting off fast and not caring how much more dropped as they did. Two in the front had extra heavy exoskeletons that could survive cave-ins and they started cutting into the ceiling as fast as possible, dropping chunks of rock down in as controlled a manner as they could that the others then cut up and pulled away for the excavation train to carry to a transit station further back where a mechanical line would take the debris the rest of the way to the surface.

  Help.

  The word kept repeating along with the telepathic impulse every so often, but the voice in their heads didn’t say anything else. That was odd, as was the fact that the call was for ‘help’ and not an order being given. It’d been more than two days since the Archon had snuck her way ahead of the combat lines to infiltrate the reaver base and they’d lost contact with her. When the tunnels had been collapsed it was speculated that she might be stuck on the other side or maybe buried alive.

  Given how powerful Archons are you never knew what they could or couldn’t survive, but regardless she had gone out of comm and tracking range and they hadn’t heard back from her so they’d continued with their standing orders. They were to clear the tunnels and secure any and all reaver territory. That meant digging through the collapsed tunnels while fighting around the blocks into adjacent areas. The constructors had been summoned from the surface to take care of the former with hastati waiting nearby in case they broke through into areas with live reavers.

  The constructors themselves could fight, as all Paladin had the memories for, but they weren’t armed in the typical fashion with their digging exoskeletons on. They weren’t exactly vulnerable to the claws of the reavers unless they had time to gradually scrape through once they piled on top of you, hence there needed to be armed hastati nearby to push back that pile if and when they made contact.

  But the troops could do nothing to help the diggers, so they stayed back in the nearest chamber wide enough to hold them so to not block tunnel access for the workers who, bit by bit, dug upwards clearing far more than a tunnel width as more chunks of rock fell down. Rather than try to brace them with new construction they just broke them down into smaller bits and removed them up the ant-like line, excavating a large chamber that had a ramp for a floor.

  It looked like a small mountainside by the time they broke through into an airspace at the top, which they quickly recognized as the remains of a detonation tunnel the reavers must have carved over the main ones in order to drop the rock down and seal them.

  The constructors sent word back for the hastati, but they didn’t wait for the troops and crawled up into the long wide cave, seeing huge chunks of rock poking up at jagged angles and a very dirty and armorless Human lying on an angled slab and barely moving. She had no clothing at all on, but there were visible scabs on various parts of her body and her hair was missing in several places, though there was no mistaking the image of that pale Human skin no matter how much dust was covering it.

  The Paladin scurried over to her on all fours, careful not to dislodge more rocks as they came up to her, not sure what her condition was, especially when she didn’t speak and her face didn’t look quite right.

  Water.

  “Dehydration,” one of them said, cracking open his exoskeleton and walking out of it before taking his helmet off and feeling a wash of hot air on his face. “I don’t have much left, give her yours too.”

  The other Paladin began taking off their helmets while the first constructor pulled out a short tube from the neck of his armor as he carefully crawled up next to her.

  The Archon’s hand came up in a cupped position and he triggered the water release with a pinch of the mouth nub he normally bit to bring up the liquid from a small pouch in his armor that they used to extend their working hours without having to cycle back for supply or relief, and all the Paladin knew bet
ter than to gorge themselves on it, else they’d have to break off their work duties to empty their bladders.

  That meant between all of the Paladin there they had a decent amount of water left, but when the first of them squeezed a bit of water into her hand she didn’t put it in her mouth. Rather she just held there like a statue, her eyes glazed over and barely moving, until one of them noticed that the water in her hand was disappearing.

  “Is that evaporating?”

  “I don’t think so. I think she’s absorbing it.”

  Water, she repeated when it was gone.

  “Give her as much as she’ll take. I think this Archon is damaged. Get the closest medic here immediately.”

  The little tube only stretched a foot and a half at max out from the neck of their armor, but it was enough to get another few drops into her hand that likewise soaked in far faster than they should have, but the Paladin kept supplying her with water until his ran out, then another took his place and kept filling her up as the first of the hastati arrived.

  “Your orders, Archon?” one of them asked as the others crawled further down the rough cave in order to establish a perimeter once seeing that she was without armor and vulnerable.

  Water, was the only word she’d speak, and not physically. It was always telepathic.

  “She is near death from dehydration,” one of the hastati said, looking at her closely. “Her tongue is probably swollen and blocking her throat. I don’t know how she’s taking the water through her hand, but keep giving it to her until a medic arrives. Do not try and move her.”

  “She’s been burnt in multiple places.”

  “Not from here. It’s hot, but these rocks aren’t scorching. Any chance that’s acid damage?”

  “I can smell burnt flesh,” the constructor with his helmet off and slowly feeding her water said.

  “Magma burns,” another guessed. “Archons can survive intense heat. I think her armor and clothes didn’t.”