This moon sucked. The Haivu had chosen a miserable rock to build their weapon on. It was devoid of life and any sort of natural beauty. There were simply hills of rocky stone as far as we could see. The moon was relatively far away from the star in this system, which meant that this planet was cold, too. The low temperature seeped through my suit and chilled my body. I’d turned off the internal heating as a way to conserve energy.
At least we weren’t walking without knowing where to go. Noah claimed to have seen a structure out of the escape pod window while we were free falling, and we were heading in its general direction. But after a few hours of walking, the only things we saw were rocks. Not a single Haivu structure or soldier in sight. I didn’t know what was worse. The overwhelming boredom, or the threat of Haivu ambushing us at any time. For all I knew, they already knew where we landed and were tracking us. It was unlikely, though. Thousands of pieces of debris entered the atmosphere with us, making it hard to distinguish which was an escape pod and which wasn’t. I sure as hell didn’t see any other escape pods launch from the Haivu warship, either.
We also hadn’t received any messages from the Spear of Kain. I assumed they were still engaged in battle. We may have taken down one Haivu warship, but the other two were probably still engaged with our forces. Hopefully they’d wrap up their battle soon, and pick us up as soon as possible. I wasn’t looking forward to the time we actually stumbled across the Haivu down here.
“Noah, are you sure the Haivu structures were this way?” I asked.
Noah looked back towards me. He was walking ahead of me, of course. Noah didn’t seem nearly as tired as me.
“Yeah, I’m sure. It was pretty big and hard to miss. If I remember correctly, and I do, it was to the west relative to the escape pod.” Noah said confidently.
“Alright, if you say so…” I drawled, dragging my feet.
I was feeling pretty tired. I’d fought in several gunfights, got thrown by an explosion, streaked down onto an alien planet in an escape pod too small for me, and now I was hiking several kilometers of an alien desert.
Noah seemed perfectly fine, though. I didn’t know if it was because of his physical or mental strength. Probably both. Knowing him, he was probably enjoying this. Noah probably wanted to explore an alien planet or something, after all.
I watched as Noah hopped over a small rock. He was definitely enjoying this. I didn’t mind, though. Anyone would be excited after setting foot on a planetary body other than their home planet. It was amusing to see his childlike curiosity and wonder. I sometimes forgot that Noah was from a primitive planet, despite his intelligence.
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A few more hours of walking later, the worst possible thing happened. We actually came upon the Haivu. Noah and I laid prone on the lip of a massive crater. Nestled inside the crater was a gigantic Haivu structure with several smaller structures strewn about, and several docking bays. The way all of the buildings were strewn about, it definitely didn’t seem like a permanent encampment. The buildings were connected by dirt paths, after all. Or stone paths. There were no manufactured walkways.
Noah turned his head to face me. “Alright, so what’s the plan?”
“The plan?” I asked. “What plan? We’re going to retreat, and tell the Spear of Kain what we found when we establish contact.”
“But what if the Haivu fires it while we wait?” Noah argued. “The Haivu know we’re here to take it out. They might be making preparations to fire it at any time! It doesn’t seem like they’re still building it.”
I took a closer look at the gigantic structure. Noah was right. There wasn't anything to indicate construction was going on. The outside of the thing was definitely finished. Whatever the thing was.
“Look, there’s no telling when they could fire that thing!” Noah pressed further. “You know the Haivu don’t care about civilians' lives at all. They wipe out anyone who hasn't managed to evacuate during their invasions. The main GU fleet is really close to their homeworld. If that weapon is capable of it, they might even be able to target the GU capital planets!”
“So what?” I threw all four of my hands up. “You want us to sneak in there and sabotage it?”
Noah shrugged. “It’s the best we could do.”
“I think you need to be a bit more cowardly, Noah.” I said. “The last time we tried to sneak into an unfamiliar enemy compound, it didn’t go well. We’re stuck out here with no backup, no understanding of the enemy base, and up against a much larger force.”
Noah shook his head. “I just don’t want another Maralu to happen. I don’t want more countless innocents to die. If you don’t want to go, then don’t come. I’ll go alone.”
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“Come on Noah, don’t force my hand like that.” I whined. “We could play it much safer. The Spear of Kain could contact us at any time. The last time we saw them, they were at an advantage.”
“Look, Saka. I wouldn’t suggest it if I thought it was suicide. I’m confident in our abilities. The Haivu won’t even expect two rogue GU soldiers to infiltrate their compound from the ground. If we could just get into that structure, we could change the course of the war. We could be free to leave the military!”
I sighed. “Alright, Noah. I know you’re not going to change your mind. Just don’t do anything reckless, alright? We can’t fight an entire Haivu encampment. I don’t know how many of them there are, but a single one could spell trouble. If just one sees us, the entire fucking compound sees us.”
“Thanks, Saka.” Noah said, raising his fist for a fist bump. I hesitantly bumped my fist against mine. I might’ve just allowed Noah to get himself killed.
Before, I might’ve agreed to this plan with gusto. It sounded like a thrill. Sneaking into an enemy military’s encampment and sabotaging their super weapon? It sounded like something straight out of a movie. Before the Haivu war, I would’ve easily agreed. Back then, I was confident enough to attempt it, and bold enough to think it would succeed.
However, I’d seen too many brave and confident soldiers be killed in a blink of an eye. Caustic pods did not care if a soldier was confident or cowardly. They dissolved you almost instantly regardless. It was a wakeup call. I’d been cruising relatively easily in my mercenary work because I was mostly up against people who weren’t very well trained or organized. However, the Haivu were not either of those. They had training on par with the GU, and their ability to organize far surpassed the small time poachers I eliminated.
But Noah was dead set on doing this. And as his partner, I had to support him a hundred percent, even though I didn’t like his sudden gung-ho attitude. We were doing this, and we were going to get back home, alive.
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Noah and I crouched in the shadow created by the lip of the crater. We’d waited a bit longer for the distant sun to move across the sky, so that the slope of the crater on one side was obscured by darkness. We slowly descended the shadowed slope, making our way to the bottom of the crater. We had a pretty long way to go. The slope of the crater wasn’t very steep, meaning we had more distance to travel. On top of that, the Haivu superweapon was right in the middle of the Haivu encampment.
Even when we were already executing our plan, my mind betrayed me with fleeting thoughts of doubt. No matter how I looked at it, it just seemed impossible. But I didn’t voice these complaints. We pressed on.
From what I could see, the Haivu were starting to get busy. They were bustling about, loading ships, and running to and from buildings. I didn’t really know what to make of it. They could be panicking because they were losing the fight in the sky, or they could be getting the superweapon ready for an early shot. The fact that they were loading transport and cargo ships was worrying, though. A few large docking bays were empty, however. That must’ve been for the warships.
Anyways, a lot of the activity being at the docking bays meant that avoiding it was crucial. Therefore, Noah and I decided to enter the encampment from the exact opposite direction. The structures around this area were mostly cylindrical in shape. They were shaped like their warships, organic and curvy. Maybe it was meant to simulate their hives when they were primitive? I had no clue.
Noah and I couldn’t discern what the buildings were for, but Noah’s best guess was housing. I couldn’t think of anything else, so I agreed.
The houses were empty. Noah and I expected to have to skirt around a few Haivu, but there were none in sight. I wasn’t going to check the houses, but I assumed they weren’t in there either. The silence and emptiness was actually eerie. Either the Haivu were up to something, or they were evacuating. But why would they abandon their superweapon? They had to be up to something.
Noah and I managed to sneak our way past the housing area without any problems. But I had a suspicion this wasn’t going to be the case. I knew that there was definitely going to be Haivu at the gigantic cone shaped superweapon in front of us. Stealth would probably go out of the window very soon.
Surprisingly, there wasn’t much of anything between the housing area and the superweapon. This encampment was obviously temporary, so there wasn’t much in terms of infrastructure. There were barracks off in the distance, the docking bays, the housing area, and squat buildings randomly dotted the area. Otherwise, the whole thing was full of barren rock. Barren rocks that Noah and I used to our advantage, avoiding Haivu as much as possible. We didn’t come across a lot of them, but we did have to avoid some Haivu that were rushing about. Interestingly, some of them weren’t wearing soldier’s suits. Were they Haivu civilians? I’d never seen any before. And why would civilians be on a military outpost like this? Since they were building some sort of superweapon, I assumed those unarmed Haivu were engineers, physicists, and technicians of some sort.
A few minutes later, Noah and I actually arrived at the superweapon structure. We hugged the smooth, curved wall, to try to diminish our profiles as much as possible. We had to find an entrance to get inside. Unless, the whole thing was a weapon, and it was launched from elsewhere. I shook my head. We just didn’t have enough information to do something like this.
“Noah.” I whispered. “Do we try to get in?”
“We might as well try.” Noah whispered back. “I don’t like how the Haivu seems to be evacuating.”
“Me neither.”
Eventually, after circling the cone shaped building, we came across what seemed to be the entrance. As Noah and I watched, a Haivu scientist rushed out of the structure and towards the docking bays. That was incredibly suspicious. Why would a scientist be leaving their post?
As much as I wanted to rush in and find out, I couldn’t. The entrance had two Haivu soldiers standing guard. Even if Noah and I managed to kill them without them using their telepathy, the noise of our guns would still gather someone’s attention. On top of that, we had no idea what the inside looked like. For all I knew, we could walk in through that door and burst into a gigantic room filled with confused Haivu scientists. I scratched my head. We were kind of stuck.
Suddenly, Noah raised his hand to the side of his head. He listened for a few seconds, then he replied.
“Hello Spear of Kain, I read you. Saka and I are currently located at the Haivu superweapon. Right next to it. We can get inside if we have a distraction.”
Noah went silent for a little, clearly listening to whoever was talking to him on the other side. I silently wished that my comms device wasn’t broken so I could listen in. I wanted to know how the battle went, how close the Spear of Kain was, if they got any more information. But all I could do right now was wait for Noah to finish their conversation.
“Alright, I’m transmitting our coordinates. We’re going to attack now, please make sure they don’t swarm us. Thank you.”
Noah turned to face me. “Okay, now that I talked to the Spear of Kaine, the Haivu are going to track our signal back here very soon. Let’s go and attack the superweapon, now.”
“Right now? We’re not waiting for the Spear of Kaine?” I almost shrieked, barely remembering we were currently not trying to get caught.
“We have to move before the Haivu finds us, it’s only a matter of time. The Spear of Kaine is almost here. They’re going to attack soon after us, and it’s going to cause chaos. We’re going to use that opportunity to find out whatever’s inside, and maybe even secure it.” Noah said, rushing over his words.
Noah checked if his bullpup rifle was ready while he was talking.
My shoulders slumped. “I got your back, Noah. Let’s do this.” I said, reluctantly.
It was do or die.