Vuxten was snarling inside his armor as he held tight to the mounted minigun, raking the heavy ammunition up the side, the neck, and into the head of the dragon that had dropped out of the clouds on an attack run against the dropship. It had missed only because the pilots had yanked it down and left then slammed it back up. The heavy shells, each as long as Vuxten's forearms, hit with an explosion of glowing blue blood, the rounds penetrating all the way through on the neck and causing the skull to explode on the head.
The dragon's wings went up and it tumbled out of sight into the lightning heavy clouds.
"Two-o-clock, up high!" came the rasping voice of the dropship's VI. It didn't have the warm happy feel of the other VI's that Vuxten had encountered with the humans, nor did it have the dry mechanical feel of the Lanaktallan Overseer VI's. This one brought to Vuxten's mind fleshless Terran skulls wrapped in barbed wire.
Setting his boots Vuxten pulled the damaged weapon around, getting the glowing sight into play, ignoring the twinge of pain from one knee. He didn't bother to worry about whether or not there was anything there, he just pressed the buttons on top of the control sticks and held on while the 20mm minigun roared, all eight barrels spinning.
Down by his knee 471 was jumping up and down, slowly pushing the warped strut back into place. In one hand he held his micro-welder, the plasma spark still sputtering.
Things started exploding in the clouds, lighting up flashes of red and green, and Vuxten kept firing. He knew there would be nothing friendly in these clouds, up this high.
At this altitude?
In this weather?
Entirely located next to this dropship?
May I see them?
Went through his head even though he didn't understand any of the words.
The two larger Telkan armors, blocky, heavy, entirely of black warsteel with only a few markings on the hull, had planted their massive feet and were firing with their autocannons out the open hatches.
"EVEN IN DEATH I STILL DEFEND!" roared out one in his native Telkan. The voice was deep, slightly mechanical, but undeniably Telkan.
"TELKAN IS SCARRED BUT NOT FALLEN!" the other bellowed out, firing missiles into the clouds. The voice, like its brother, was tantalizingly familiar but part of Vuxten didn't want to know who they had been. He had learned before that once a soldier was critically damaged enough that he was sealed inside one of those machine they never came out.
How much will you give, kid? How far are you willing to go? Trucker's voice in Vuxten's memories. Two of whom have fallen echoed in his mind.
"Hard landing coming up. We'll pogo down and you jump. We'll take off and circle up high. You've got forty-eight hours, brother," one of the pilots said.
"Thank you, brother," Vuxten answered. The formality had seemed so strange, so offputting, at first. He had been used to the rank structure of the Terran Armed Forces and the Telkan Marines.
In a strange way this seemed more intimate.
Vuxten knew he might be on what humans called a karmakazeerun and that he might not come back, that his fate, his deeds, would decide if he lived or died and even in death he could accomplish the mission.
It was an alien thought but for some reason Vuxten could understand it. He didn't understand that his language and the language of the Lanaktallan didn't have those words, those concepts, and so he was ill equipped to comprehend the thought of what he was walking into. But Vuxten was able to grasp it through the Terran words he had picked up.
His wife, Brentili'ik, ahd encountered the same thing. That her education, her language, had omitted certain concepts that she had to understand as she went from comforting a handful of orphaned podlings and broodcarriers to overseeing the medical refugee center to overseeing a refugee colony, to overseeing the rebuilding of Telkan-1 and Telkan-2. She had found herself, so often, trying to grapple with a concept that she didn't even have words for, that she had actually learned Terran rather than let her implant translate for her.
Trucker could have told him that just because the concept doesn't exist in a beings language didn't mean that the concept did not exist in the universe or reality.
Vuxten had learned the terms and commands for an insertion.
471 climbed back up on his back, nestling down in what looked like a hump on Vuxten's back, in between the two deployable launchers. The hump closed over him and holo displays lit up.
"471, run us an encryption," Vuxten said. When 471 beeped it back he shot it to the troopers and the dropship then opened the comlink channel. "Brothers, there is the encryption and the channels we'll be using. This is going to be a close action mission. We'll offload to either side. I'll mark you as Team Sigma and Team Gamma. Team Sigma off the port side, Team Gamma off the starboard. All weapons unlocked, deployed, and linked in. Kneeling firing positions until the bird is off."
"Brother Vuxten, Elven Galahad-herim Warriors will be meeting you there, they are enroute to the drop point. High Queen Loo-Thee-In sends her blessings and regards unto us and is filled with hope as to our quest, brother," the pilot intoned. "This is indeed a day of honor and glory to us all."
"Thank you, brother," Vuxten said. A countdown appeared in the upper right of his visor and he switched back to his team speak channel.
"Stand at ready!" he called out, raising his voice into a shout as if his men would have problems hearing him over the roar of the dropship's engines.
The teams separated into two, just like he'd assigned them.
Plasma bursts started erupting in the clouds.
"Taking ground fire, brothers," the pilot informed Vuxten. He could feel the pulsing hate of the jungle below him, feel it reach out toward him to stab his mind with needles, and pushed it away with a snarl.
"Gear check!" Vuxten called out. 471 cleared his equipment, although the little green mantid was slightly worried about some of the strange modifications. Vuxten checked them himself and was satisfied with what he had.
Thorns and worse started clanking off the armor.
"Sound off for gear check!" Vuxten called out. One by one the icons flashed that everyone was ready.
"THE BEAUTY OF SCARRED TELKAN SUSTAINS ME!" one of the massive ones roared.
The dropship started shuddering as the ground fire picked up intensity.
"READY!" Vuxten saw the counter start to rapidly drop. The oppressive feeling was getting thicker, reminding him of the Precursor scream echoing through the empty and ruined streets of the city that had been his home.
"After takeoff we'll drop munitions to make it look like you're heading back down the mountains," the VI snarled.
"THE BROODMOMMY'S WILL SING OF OUR VALOR!" the other one roared.
The dropship was shuddering as Vuxten moved to the middle of the port side. There was a clank below the ship and Vuxten saw dark shapes drop away.
"Diasy-cutters away," the VI said, its voice a grinding thing.
Below them, as they dropped out of the clouds, red explosions bloomed in the fog around the ground. Vuxten could see the white of the glaciers, the stark cold beauty of the massive walls of ice capping the high mountains. There were red streaks on the ice now, where blood red rain and snow and ash had landed on the peaks.
"STEADY!" Vuxten called out. The ground fire had almost ceased after the daisy-cutters had gone off.
--ride or die-- flicked across every Telkan's visor as the mantid engineers clenched.
The dropship hit the ground with a shriek, dumping the kinetic energy into a massive flare around the ship that blew dirt and burnt vegetation into the air.
"GO GO GO!" Vuxten bellowed even as he stepped out the dropship that was bouncing back up into the air. His stomach caught for a second during the drop. It was only fifteen feet, a negligible amount in powered armor, but it felt like forever as he got in the correct pose.
Fist down. Knee down, ignore the pain. Weapon up. Helmet looking forward. Raise up, weapon ready, in the kneeling firing position, everything going live in his armor and weapons. The cold tingling fire between his hand and arm, his smartlink going full active. The sudden bloom of tingling around the neural link cyberjack at the base of his skull. The hot feeling of his cybereye.
All set against the pounding hatred of the wounded jungle around him.
The heavy submachinegun in his hand was live, not only was there a reticle on his retina but in his brain it was all linked up, with his armor's visor providing a large targeting circle to let him match up his weapon's fire correctly.
"We shall return for you, brothers," the dropship said, lifting off, its engines howling, heat washing over the Telkan Marines as it clawed its way up into the sky, the sides closing as it vanished into the heavy fog and mist. Explosions started blooming down the mountain side, leading away from Vuxten and his team.
After a moment there was only silence. The faint crackle of burning vegetation broken by the pop of rupturing seed pods or thicker vines/branches. The hiss of the blood red rain falling from the sky. The faint noises power armor made and the hissing and grinding of the two large mechanized troops.
Warbound, they should be called warbound, went through Vuxten's mind. Bound within a grave built to fight a war for all eternity or until something manages to kill them.
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"We're going to be meeting some Elven troops, so keep an eye out for friendlies," Vuxten said. He queried his datalink, which reported no contact with the network, but loaded into his suit's database was an image of an elf warrior.
Tall, slender, skin ranging between bone white to space black to forest green to desert gold, huge eyes, long hair. They'd be wearing ornate and flowing armor and wielding weapons of silver and crystal that would shine with an inner light.
Vuxten sent the image to the others. That done, he set down a drone launcher. Eight automated drones that would launch one at a time to try to reestablish contact with base or the satellite system or any passing ship in orbit.
"Do you know where we're going, sir?" One of the Telkan asked. Element-3 of Team Gamma, Private Peklat.
Vuxten opened his mouth to say when he saw it.
Bellona.
She was standing, no, floating slightly in the fog and mist, wearing only a flowing white cloth so sheer he could almost see her skin beneath. Her black hair was fanned out around her, her chin lifted, her fiery eyes burning in the darkness. She beckoned to him, fading into the fog.
"This way, brothers. Follow me," Vuxten said, standing up and moving toward where Bellona had vanished into the fog.
As little as a month ago he would have questioned why he was seeing a dead Terran female in the fog and mist. Would have gone to see the psych-teks. Would have asked his wife and broodcarriers to hold him tightly because he feared for his mind.
But now?
Beauty and wrath.
"Heads on a swivel, men," Gamma Leader, Corporal Fretik said softly over the channel to his team. Vuxten was patched in to all of them. It no longer felt invasive to Vuxten like it had at first.
"Finger on the trigger," Sigma Leader, Corporal Wikwin whispered over his squad's channel.
"Verify targets before fire," Vuxten said over the officer channel. "Don't engage unless we have to. The longer we can go before all this comes apart on us, the better."
"Roger that, sir," the two team leaders answered.
The Telkans, even the Warbound, moved carefully through the jungle. Staying away from paths but not going through too easy areas but not too difficult. A skill learned in the time they'd spent working in the jungle. Every hundred meters one of them dropped a repeater, which would stay silent and in EM control mode until it received a signal.
Bellona was always in front of them. Just within sight in the fog and mist. Always beckoning, always showing the right direction. Looking over her shoulder now and then as if to make sure the Telkans were following her.
The jungle was quiet, the slamming explosions having fooled the jungle into thinking the threat was heading away. Many of the leaves were limp, the vines looking yellowish and brittle, the moss crinkling beneath their feet. Twice they jumped over large tubes of nutrient that only the top foot or so of the pipe was exposed.
Bellona suddenly stopped, putting one finger to her purple lips.
"Hold here. Firing ring," Vuxten ordered. He knelt down in the middle of the circle of his troops as they all kneeled down, facing outward, weapons up against their shoulders but pointed down slightly.
Long minutes passed, broken only by the hissing of the two massive Warbound, who stood to either side of Vuxten and the cracking and creaking of thick ice nearby. The rain fell with a hiss and the ash made a whispering sound as it coated everything, mixed with the rain, to create a sticky blackish red coating on things.
"Telkan," came a soft voice from the mist. "Platoon coming in."
"Send one forward. Advance and be recognized," CPL Wikwin said, keeping his voice low.
From out of the mist came a tall creature. Taller than even a Terran, long limbs, graceful movements, clad in silver armor chased with gold, a spear of glittering chrome and crystal in one hand and a shield of insect carapace with leather painted in an ornate design. They wore jewelry that glittered with purpose and function and were almost haunting in appearance.
"I am Hal-deer, servant of the Elven Queen Gal-And-Del . We of the Galahad-herim Warriors are with you, at the behest of our great High Queen Loo-Thee-In, on this quest," the creature, it could only be an elf, said softly. "For Scarred Telkan and beauty we assist thee."
Vuxten stood up, nodding. "We welcome your strength and cunning with this quest. Bring forth the rest of your warriors so we may continue." Again, the formulaic, ritualistic phrasing came almost naturally.
The elf nodded slowly, making a motion. Over a dozen of the elven warriors moved out of the mist, all of them armed with a shield and sword, all of them clad in silver armor decorated with gold.
"Alternate order. Warbound in the rear," Vuxten said, moving forward again. The elves and Telkan fell in behind him, staying five paces apart in a long stringing line as they all moved forward. The giant Warbound hissed and clanked as they moved forward, but the sound was lost in the hiss of the rain and the cracking of ice.
Vuxten noted that the elves did not question if he knew where he was going, just followed as he followed Bellona's whispered urgings.
The jungle gave way to rock and gravel, only several thick nutrient pipes breaking ground here and there, with ice thick on rocks and the granite cliffs to either side. Slowly the group moved through the darkness, snow, and ash. The gravel and rocks crunched beneath the power armor troop's boots, made grinding noises beneath the massive feet of the Warbound. The elves moved silently.
Out of the fog loomed buildings and wrecked Precursor machines, covered in ice and frost.
"Precursor wreckage, remember your spacing," Vuxten said softly.
He led them in a twisting meandering route, careful to never come to close to either the Precursor wreckage, the destroyed Terran war material, or the dead moss that had failed to break down the detritus of the war.
They began passing Overseer buildings, seeing wrecked vehicles of the Precursors, and twice passed piled skeleton of Lanaktallan Overseers.
Still Bellona slowly, stately, moved through the wreckage, leading Vuxten further and further.
There was the banging here and there of metal hitting metal. One massive Precursor wreck the sound of a piston hammering slowly made Vuxten warn everyone to watch that vehicle. A wrecked Terran warmech still had power arcing between damaged components.
Finally a cave entrance emerged from the fog. Thick nutrient pipes came down from the glacier, from under the ground around the cave entrance, leaving one the dead monorail tracks leading into what could have only been a mine ages ago. Vuxten, using hand motions, ordered his people and the elves to get up on the monorail.
The team had to backtrack for a few hundred meters to find a spot for the Warbound to get up to the five meter wide rail
The jungle's hatred pulsed at Vuxten's mind, but he pushed it away with a snarl, taking hold and embracing the pain from his knee to push his anger even further.
He led them into the cave, using passive nightvision rather than risking lights, reasoning that anything living underground would be sensitive to lights. The Telkan squad still put out the repeaters every hundred meters or if there was a bend in the cave tunnel that would block line of sight between the repeaters.
So far, there wasn't anything to report.
It began to get noticeably warmer in the caves and tunnels as he followed Bellona's burning purple eyes and pale deathly beauty. Moss began to cover the floors and walls and ceilings, vines began twisting among the support struts, on the struts of the dead platform highway of the monorail that the Telkans and elves were following, up the walls, and covering machinery.
The monorail terminated at an elevator shaft and one look told Vuxten that it was dead, no power.
"We're going to have to climb," Vuxten said. He thought for a second. "When we're at the bottom we'll signal and the Warbound can jump. Use your..."
471 was flashing an icon at him.
"Everyone hold one," Vuxten said.
--hard light platform-- 471 flashed. He flashed a drawing of four Telkan Marines climbing down the shaft, using two hardlight projectors each to form a platform that a single Warbound stood upon.
"Engineer it up, 471, and pass it out. Can you nano-forge it?" Vuxten asked.
--warbound forges-- 471 said.
"Pass it to the warbound engineers then," Vuxten said.
--roger roger--
The entire group knelt down, staring into the darkness. The engineers of the group, one per trooper but two per Warbound, gathered in a tight cluster, the icons flashing so quickly it was impossible to translate and the collaborated on the designs. Twice the ground shuddered but the shock absorbers on the monorail worked well enough that the group stayed stable. It only took a few minutes for the massive (by Telkan standards) Warbound to use their nano-forges to print out a set of hard-light projectors for each of the Telkan Marines. The greenies went about attaching them. It took 471 a minute longer till he just attached that at either side of the 'hump' that 471 could be completely armored inside of.
"We will go first and last. We are more adept at climbing," one of the elves, Tran-Due-Ill, said while the engineers were still designing the templates for the hard light projectors.
"Go ahead. We'll be right down," Vuxten said. "We need to see what we're getting into."
The elf nodded and trotted over to the elevator shaft, which at one point had been big enough to fit mono-rail train cars in but now was just a straight shaft. The elves all started climbing down warped and twisted struts and supports, quickly vanishing, while five of their number knelt down near the edge of the shaft.
"Lots of wreckage, but enough room for them to get down so far," Tran-Due-Ill said after a few minutes. "Lots of heat coming up from below, passed more than a few nutrient pipes."
The minutes ticked by slowly as the engineers and then the nano-forges worked. Vuxten took the time to set down another repeater, this one larger, and had each trooper come by and place their glove's induction pad against the repeater's to download their footage so far.
If the repeater didn't hear from them in seventy-two hours or when it was ordered to, it would start the commo chain and broadcast out everything that First Telkan and the Elves had seen.
"Almost down. Some shells of the evil ones, the wreckage of a servant of the Mad Arch-Angel TerraSol. We will bless it and continue," Tran-Due-Ill said softly.
Vuxten just nodded, glad he had looked up the word "religion" and read up on it months ago.
Everyone was gathered up before Tran-Due-Ill reported in.
"Shaft opens up into a grand cavern. The enemy is everywhere along with the blasphemous life. No threats, but it is a long way down," Tran-Due-Ill said.
"Roger. We'll be down in a few. Do not engage unless engaged," Vuxten said.
"As you wish," the elf answered.
"I'll take point then Gamma first, then Sigma, little brothers, keep the hard light platform steady," Vuxten said. "You're going to heat up, this is going to require a lot of juice."
Roger icons flashed as Vuxten moved to the shaft and looked down. Even with light amplification and passive nightvision it just vanished into darkness. For a second he had a slight twinge of vertigo but he pushed it away.
Bellona sat on a twisted strut, almost invisible, her sheer white wrap fluttering and twisting in the breeze coming up from the depths of the shaft.
Vuxten jumped down, landing on a spur, then kept moving. Every hundred meters he dropped a signal repeater that sat in passive mode. His creation engine was running a little hot so he passed the duty off to the two squad leaders, just concentrating on getting down.
At the bottom he set up another one of the heavy repeaters. The elves also moved over and laid their palms on the induction data link, chanting softly to themselves.
Bellona led Vuxten further in, through twisted caves, to another shaft, and then more twisting caves, to another.
At the bottom of that one Vuxten ordered his men to rest. The elves chose struts of durasteel to lay on and eat food from the packs they carried. At the bottom of the shaft were several destroyed monorail cars and a supervisor's platform. He moved through it, tearing open panels, and with the help of his two team leaders, began grabbing handfuls of conductive wire, superconductor wiring, chunks of durastall and duralloy, glass chunks, and plastic/plasteel chunks, and handing the destroyed pieces to the greenies of the team.
The greenies opened the port to the creation engines and fed the destroyed components into the misty compartment, watching as the grinders and nanites tore it apart to store for the nanoforges.
Three hours of rest and Vuxten got everyone to their feet, ordering the squad leaders to tell their men to tab a piece of stimgum. The elves nodded and chewed on dark purple leaves, staining their teeth.
Vuxten's knee was stiff as they moved into the darkness of the caves. According to his inertial mapping system they were eighteen miles into the connected mountains and eight thousand feet down from the initial cave, still three thousand feet above sea level.
The air was hot, rich with oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and monoxide, hydrogen, and H2O molecules. Water dripped from the ceiling onto the mossy floor. Plants lined the tunnels, making them feel more like corridors through the jungle than beneath ground.
Bellona's outfit had changed from the diaphanous white cloth to her armor, her flamer in her hand dripping liquid fire, as they moved through the tunnels. When Vuxten had realized what he was seeing he snapped at the squad leaders to get ready.
As they crossed a cavern, water dripping from the ceiling, skirting smaller pools, they found themselves passing an underground lake covered in lilypads and algea, the water or the algae steaming in the darkness. Vuxten was heading for the cavern exit that Bellona had left through, leading his men toward the glow in the darkness that was faint but to Vuxten's sight, after over a day in the darkness of the tunnels, was bright as moonlight.
A fern, pale and ghostly, brushed an elf's cheek as he misjudged his duck, following the Telkan Marine who had ignored the ghostly frond when it had brushed his armor.
Armor was warsteel.
Warm, but still metal.
The elf's cheek was flesh.
And flesh had a biosignature.
Vuxten felt the disdain and hatred surge to life around him, pouring from every plant, every frond, every leaf, every bit of moss and fungus.
From the cavern where the moonlight glowed.
From the lake to his left.
It all came apart.