novelxo Fractured Earth: Chapter 37
Sunlight disappeared behind Dan as he and a team of fifty power-armored soldiers walked up the ramp into the Orakh landing ship. At the mouth of the vessel, Dan paused for a second and glanced backward at where William organized the rest of their forces in a rough semicircle around the spacecraft. The man moved efficiently, spacing the vehicles and armored troops out amongst the more conventional infantry.
Dan sent a trickle of mana into his sword, wreathing it in purple flames as he turned back to the Orakh ship and followed the soldiers in. He had to trust that William would keep the aliens off of his back while he fought his way inside.
At first, he’d wanted to take the entire army in and overwhelm whatever was inside through sheer weight of numbers. William had talked him out of it. Fifty soldiers could fight about as efficiently as a thousand inside the winding tunnels of the spacecraft. The rest of the army could be put to better use ensuring that Dan had a clean path of retreat once he did what needed to be done.
He pushed his way to the front of the formation, edging past the suits of steel and magic. As strong as they were, Dan had more confidence in his spellshields. Even their reinforced armor would dent and deform under repeated sword or axe blows. All his shields needed was a bit of time for his mana to recover.
“Burksman!” He spoke over his shoulder, addressing the lieutenant responsible for executing his orders. Maybe Dan should have been offended that William had assigned him an officer to translate his commands so the rest of the soldiers could understand them, but honestly, it was a good idea. After years of fighting, he knew where to strike and how hard. He didn’t know the first thing about organizing a unit beyond himself and a couple of close friends to effectuate those instincts.
“Yes, sir?” the man responded, his powered armor only different from those of the men surrounding him due to the silver stripe across the shoulder pauldron.
“I’m going to take the lead,” Dan continued as he walked. “Put a couple of your best soldiers behind me. Let them know they should feel free to use their flamethrowers if it seems important. I’m not entirely fireproof, but I burn hard. As long as I can keep moving, they shouldn’t be able to do much more than give me a burn.”
“If this place is anything like the one in New Orleans…” Dan nodded his head toward the winding stone and iron halls. “It’s going to be a maze inside. Make sure you have someone guarding each of the side tunnels, as well as our rear. Even with the entire army, we’d have a hard time stopping the Orakh from finding some way to sneak up on us in their own ship. All we can do is stay vigilant and hope that we catch sight of them before they spring any surprises on us.”
“I’ll give the orders right now, sir,” Burksman replied crisply. “What about Tatiana? Will she be able to help us map the ship? With her help, we could put together a 3D map of where we’re going and hopefully head off any more ambushes.”
Dan stopped and turned back to the metal-suited man with a smile. He tapped the camera and microphone on his shoulder. “You know, Burksman, that’s a damn good idea. It’s also exactly why I wanted someone trained coming with me on this excursion. I might be good at killing things and shooting lightning from my bare hands, but I am a rank amateur when it comes to planning. Remind me to give you a promotion when we get out of this.
“Tatiana,” Dan continued, not missing a beat. “You heard the lieutenant; do you think you’ll be able to use your cameras to construct a 3D map of the landing craft? Having something like that as part of a heads-up display would be a huge help.”
“Dan?” Tatiana only managed to say his name before her voice disappeared into a screech of static. “Interference. Losing packets. Steadily worse.” The squeal and hiss of static followed every word.
Frowning, Dan turned off his microphone before looking back to Burksman. The officer managed to somehow look sheepish through almost a ton of armor and weapons.
“Well,” Dan finished lamely, “it was a good idea. Not your fault that somehow the Orakh lander is blocking Tatiana’s signal.
“Actually,” Dan frowned, not giving the soldier a chance to respond. “How in the hell are they blocking her signal? She’s using satellites to beam her commands over here, and the nanites of everyone out front as a relay. We’re barely five hundred feet into the ship, and already we’re starting to lose contact. That doesn’t seem like an accident to me.”
“Maybe they have an intelligence Orakh?” Burkman offered. “Someone that can feed them ideas to try and blunt our technological and information-gathering advantage. If I was dealing with an opponent that knew more about the battlefield than me, cutting off that flow of information would be my first goal.”
Dan pumped some more mana into the sword, increasing the area the purple flames lit. “That’s the thing. I’m sure they’re trying, but the Orakh shouldn’t know the first thing about radio or bluetooth. They literally shouldn’t even be able to conceive of how we communicate, let alone find a way to eliminate it.”
“But what does that mean?” Burkman asked “Are you saying that–”
His words were cut off as the walls on either side of the tunnel they were walking down collapsed, revealing waiting chambers full of Orakh.
With a snarl, Dan lunged past Burkman, stabbing his sword to the hilt in the chest of the closest alien. With his free hand, he launched a flame jet at close range into their massed ranks. The spell wasn’t hot enough to kill the damp, amphibious aliens, but it seared their eyes and dried their skin to the point of cracking, making them easy targets for the rest of the unit.
The roar of fifty-caliber fire in an enclosed space hammered against Dan’s ears. Flames erupted from the suits of armor, cooking the Orakh that survived his attack. Several of the soldiers drew broadswords that looked tiny in their oversized mits before stepping into the front line to hack down the injured and disoriented aliens.
Dan did what damage he could, his small stature compared to the Orakh and the powered armor working against him. Usually, he’d use his mobility and temporal runes to dodge blows by a hair’s breadth before slipping past the clumsier aliens’ guards and using his sword.
Unfortunately, the battle in the dark hallways of the ship more closely resembled a rugby scrum. Soldiers slammed their metal shoulders against aliens, servo motors pushing the oversized amphibians back long enough for swords and flamethrowers to do the dirty work of ending the Orakhs’ lives.
Here and there, a soldier took an axe blow, stumbling down to a knee from the aliens’ heavy attacks. That was where Dan’s mobility would show its worth, allowing him to pepper the attacker with Forcebolts long enough for him to slip into place and fight off the encroaching Orakh.
Even with his strength runes at maximum output, each blow from the Orakh forced Dan back a step or two. His feet unwillingly skidded on the rough stone floor of the void ship. He might be superior to the Orakh warriors in every other way, but in the close confines of the landing craft’s tunnels, their superior brute strength was able to show its value.
Finally, the last Orakh fell to the ground twitching. Methodically, the rest of their troops used the broadswords to collect their fallen foes’ heads, conscious and cautious of the Orakh’s regenerative capabilities.
“Sir,” Burkman’s voice startled Dan. He turned back from the grisly work to look at the man. His armor was covered in soot, a handful of deep dents marring the armor around his forearms and shoulders.
“Yes?” Dan replied.
“We have two people with minor injuries, despite their armor,” Burkman pointed at two nearby suits, each one sporting a deep slash from an unlucky axe blow that bit all the way through their powered suits. “Another five soldiers have some minor loss of function due to armor damage. Myself and another nine have suffered cosmetic damage.”
“Is the unit still able to proceed?” Dan asked, his eyes flicking to the two suits with holes in them. Slowly, one of them nodded, while the other gave him a thumbs up.
“Yes sir,” Burkman agreed. “It’ll take a minute to confirm all of the kills, but then we should be ready to move out once more.”
“Do you have any way to deal with false walls like the one that just surprised us?” Dan motioned to the rubble on the floor that had been concealing the Orakh unit.
“I would say that we could switch to infrared,” Burkman replied reluctantly, “but I had it on when we got surprised. I couldn’t see anything in the walls. Whatever they’re using, it blocks heat.”
“Fuck,” Dan replied. “Nothing for it, then. Make sure we have soldiers with melee weapons on the outer edges of the column. Apparently, the Orakh are capable of jumping us at any moment.”
Burkman nodded hesitantly before switching to the unit’s radio frequency and issuing orders. Just shy of a minute later, they were underway once more, albeit at a more measured pace as the soldiers trained their eyes on the walls, looking for any sign of another ambush.
A tense five minutes later, they came to a crossroads, and Dan frowned. On the wall, scrawled in the stone with poor handwriting were the words, “Thrush, this way” followed by an arrow. He looked to Burkman.
“This is a trap right?” He asked the man’s armored form. “They literally know my name. This has to be a trap.”
“Sure looks like a trap to me, sir,” Burkman answered, his voice shaky. “I don’t know what the alternative is? We can wander around here for a couple of hours while William gets pounded outside, or we can take their invitation. If they’re holed up and ready for us, I doubt they’re going anywhere. We’ll have to go to them at some point, anyway.”
“Agreed,” Dan replied. “Not happy about it, but agreed.”
They led the rest of the uneasy company in the direction indicated by the arrow. After walking in silence for almost five minutes, they came to a spiral staircase. Once again, scrawled in the stone were the words “Thrush, this way” and an arrow pointing downward.
Setting his teeth, Dan descended into the bowels of the ship. One floor after another, they marched past landings, until eventually they reached the bottom level. A final note read simply, “Thrush, here” with an arrow pointing directly ahead.
Dan exhaled, centering himself as he pumped mana into his shield. Nodding to Burkman, they walked down the hallway, approaching the large metal doors at its end.
He pushed the door. Either it was magical, or the engineer that designed it was a master of counterweights. The light pressure swung the door inward. For just a second, Dan saw a throne room. Hundreds of feet long and lined with Orakh warriors, weapons, and skulls, grisly trophies from a hundred campaigns covered the walls. At the far end, a massive Orakh, at least twenty feet tall, sat on a throne, a glaive made of metal as dark as obsidian resting across his lap.
Before Dan could say something or address the creature, a jet of flame, white-hot and and moving faster than sound itself washed over Dan and Burkman. Even with his thermal rune and spellshield, Dan’s breath was stolen from his throat as the fire consumed the very oxygen around him. His hair singed and began to burn.
Then the flame was gone. The ground under him bubbled, the molten rock and steel heavy as it tried to burn through his shoes. Quickly, Dan jumped forward, breathing a sigh of relief as he felt solid rock beneath his feet once more.
His immediate safety assured, Dan looked back in horror. Where Burkman once stood, there was nothing more than a misshapen lump of steel and bone. The former lieutenant looked like a half-burned candle, deformed and bent in on himself.
“It’s a good thing that you survived, Thrush,” a familiar voice cackled.
He looked up, stomach sinking, to see Merella Amberell floating above the battlefield, her cloak billowing around her.
“I’ve melted your blasted metal from my body.” She spat the words out at him, her eyes blazing. “This time, you won’t be able to just kill me with a word. Garnash here,” she nodded at the giant Orakh watching impassively from his throne, “has promised me a fair fight with you in exchange for some information.
“I would hate for you to die as quickly as your friend.” Merella sneered down at Burkman’s twisted and melted form. “You and I have a lot of catching up to do.”