Con-Red: Recourse Page 8

  Duntan took a deep breath and ran his hands over his eyes and for the first time in a long time a genuine smile appeared on his lips, “goodbye dad…goodbye mom, I’ll never forget you. I miss you and love you.”

  With those last words a surprising calmness and relief flowed through him before the lights all around him switched off and he was thrust into utter darkness once more. Duntan’s first assumption was that he was no longer among the living, but the weight pressing down against him just below his waist assured him that he was still very much alive. For a moment he didn’t know where he was or what had happened to him, but the memories of the explosive shockwave came back to him quickly.

  He moved his hands slowly at first, making them into fists as he assessed his situation. His body was stiff and ached almost throughout as he tried to move a little. Duntan’s mind tried to pull him towards the sweet embrace of sleep almost as soon as he started to try and open his eyes, but he willed himself to focus. There was no time to rest. His Federation was at war and he needed to do everything within his power to help in that effort.

  His continued determination was rewarded with the appearance of two slits of light as his eyes began to open. It also became apparent to him that almost instantly the pain throughout his body had subsided into nothingness and the urge to rest dissolved with it. Duntan was puzzled, but quickly realized that his combat suit had probably sensed his discomfort and had administered the proper medication to keep him fully functional. He was actually relieved that someone was looking out for him, even if it was a system designed with the directive of helping to keep him in top fighting form.

  This same system was also designed to constantly monitor all of the suit’s sensors and inform the wearer of any dangers within the surrounding environment, as it now did with a rapid vibration on Duntan’s right shoulder. The veteran soldier’s muscle memory reflexes took over without second thought and his right hand shot out to point him wrist-mounted DRF emitter into the distant direction of the simulated vibration, the speed of which assisted by the exoskeleton suit’s muscle-like fiber network, even before his eyes had time to snap open. It took a few seconds for his eyes to focus properly, but he was thankful for the wait as he registered the green “friendly” IFF icon within his visor display. Inside Duntan knew that the armor suit would never have let him discharge any of his weapons at a friendly soldier, though it was still encouraging to him that he was in full control of his body and reactions once again.

  “Sir, are you alright?” Duntan heard through his TacLink as he turned his head towards the direction of the approaching figure and saw another soldier running towards him.

  As the figure presented itself, the colonel’s visor identified him as Captain Weslow Fuentes of the Federation Army Air and Space Command and brought up the pilot’s profile in the HUD. The confirmation allowed Duntan a momentary respite from his sudden awakening. He pulled his arm back towards him, allowing the two focusing prongs to retract back into their wrist mount as he deactivated the directional repulsion field emitter.

  It took several seconds, but the captain’s question finally registered inside Duntan’s mind. Frankly he should have never survived a crash of such magnitude, but against all odds he had. Thinking about the statistical probability of the event was not highly productive at the moment, however, as there were more pressing matters to deal with, so Duntan pushed the thought away. His combat armor was not so deterred, though, and read his thoughts on the subject. A diagnostic window opened in his visor and started to sift through the data gathered during the crash. It took only seconds for the system to find the most likely explanation to his indirect query. The data showed that the transport craft broke apart in midair and ejected all of its occupants. Just before Duntan had impacted the ground at terminal velocity the suit had registered his loss of consciousness and used its own logic processor to activate a repulsor field around Duntan, greatly diminishing the speed at which he hit the ground. Usually the field is activated only during a controlled descent in high altitude covert drops, but had worked sufficiently well in this instance.

  A diagram of the entire suit appeared on the screen beside the diagnostic window and let Duntan know about its current condition. Besides a few minor external systems there was surprisingly little damage to the suit’s usability. Some of the armored nanofiber weave had sustained some damaged along the limbs, but was actually in the process of completely repairing itself. As he looked over the data, Duntan realized that he hadn’t even inquired about his own health condition. It only took another thought to bring up the internal vitals monitor, which did a thorough body scan and assessment of the soldier wearing the suit. The scans appeared on his HUD and indicated that he had suffered a minor concussion and multiple bruises throughout his body. Other than that his condition was coded green, meaning full operational status.

  With relief Duntan finally tilted his head and reached out to grab the large piece of transport fuselage that covered his lower half with both hands. The suit’s fiber structure contracted like muscle and allowed him to use only a small amount of effort to lift the piece and heave it away from himself. With the weight lifted off of him, Duntan sat up and finally took a good look around. There was debris strewn in all directions, sticking out of the soft ground at weird angles, where it had impacted at high speeds. Off in the distance the sun had already risen, but was partially obscured by large plumes of smoke and dust from multiple missile detonations.

  “Yeah, I’m just fine Captain,” Colonel Slaige finally answered with a sign as he pushed himself to his feet and stood up from the small crater his fall had created, “give me a sitrep.”

  “Still working that out, sir,” Weslow acknowledged as he came to a stop beside the colonel, “we were hit by the concussive wave from those detonations, but Daisy and I were able to get the Buzzard stabilized. At least before it got hit. Not sure by what, though, sir. All I know is that she came apart quickly after the hit. The system auto-ejected both of us right after that.”

  He paused and looked around slowly, studying the area around them. The place looked like a warzone with the earth scorched black underneath them and toppled trees all over them, knocked down by the raining metallic debris. Duntan’s eyes finally settled on the mountain range to their east. He ran his eyes up towards the summit from which they had escaped only a short while ago and noted the complete change in scenery. No longer was the pinnacle covered in beautiful white snow, instead that entire part of the mountain was an irregularly shaped, black and gray, half-molten mass of rock.

  “We tried to raise command on comms, but nothing went through.” The pilot continued. “I think they got the Cave, Chief. I sent Daisy to check it out though, maybe she’ll run into some friendly units that made it through all that shelling.”

  Duntan gave a small nod, knowing that sending a pilot alone through a warzone probably wasn’t the best of ideas, but also seeing that their options were limited for the moment. If the TACCOM they all referred to as the Cave had indeed been destroyed, Duntan would have to try and locate the second most senior surviving officer and receive new orders. Until other military units were located, however, he had a team of soldiers to locate and command.

  “Any word on other survivors?”

  “Negative,” Weslow said with a lowered head, “I counted two dead on my way over, Tiler and Houku, from the engineering team. There should be another debris field to the southwest of here. Saw it on my way down.”

  Weslow pointed with one hand as the other reached inside his flight uniform’s pocket. Slowly and almost painfully he extracted it back out and pushed it towards Duntan. In his hand was a pair of small metallic hexagons. Duntan studied his hand for a second before tentatively reaching out to take the identification tags from the captain’s palm. He rolled the tags with his fingers, wishing he wasn’t holding them, but finally touched one of the edges to watch parts of the surface recede into the material to reveal the name, rank, and etched picture hidden the
re. With a promise to avenge their and everyone else’s lives lost in this attack Duntan made a fist around the two ID tags and stuffed them into one of the armor’s compartments.

  “Let’s try to locate the rest, shall we,” Duntan quickly said as he turned his head in the direction where Weslow had pointed.

  He knew there was a faster way to determine the fate of his team and has he stood there part of his shoulder armor detached before accelerating straight up. The micro-UAV ascended to one hundred meters and hovered in place as it scanned the area for any transmissions and signs of live. It took almost no time at all before icons started to appear on Duntan’s display as the UAV detected SOU Echo’s transponders and even communications exchanges between some of the team members. He saw that they were scattered mostly in small groups throughout a one kilometer semicircular area. Two of those transponders, however, were not moving and under direct inquiry to their individual computer systems Duntan saw that their vitals had faded during the crash. The loss of life was starting to finally hit home for the Colonel as each one of those soldiers had been his family and his responsibility

  Duntan initiated his comm to give orders to the remaining members of his unit when an incoming encrypted transmission stopped him, “to any available unit this is Sergeant Logwari with a Priority Red request, repeat Priority Red. Kalka HQ has been overrun. We are exfiltrating with the General and require assistance.”

  Those words brought new life and a tinge of rage to Duntan. Weslow had suggested that the Kalka subterranean HQ had been destroyed, but there was always some hope in the back of Duntan’s mind that he was wrong. Now as he stood there with his hands in fists, the reality of the situation revealed itself. There was also only one thing Colonel Slaige could do.

  “Sergeant, this is Colonel Slaige, Priority request received. Proceed to the destination I send you. Keep off the TacNet and follow my updates,” with renewed determination Duntan brought up the map of the area surrounding the now overrun base and started to formulate a plan.

  215km SW of Kalka Mountain Complex

  Frontiera

  Master Sergeant Felix Logwari felt the shuttle vibrate underneath him even through the insulated armor that covered his entire body. He wasn’t a designated pilot, but he knew enough and with the help of the shuttle’s flight assistance software Felix was able to get the ship under control in the turbulence of the canyon. Cursing under his breath, he corrected the shuttle’s flight path once again as the winds threatened to push it into the tall rocky walls on either side. He hoped above all that Colonel Slaige knew what he was doing and wished they had been able to find a real pilot before evacuating, but there had been no time for that and Felix instinctually made the call to leave as quickly as possible.

  The sergeant and his security comrade Specialist Nolan Velarsk had a duty to perform, that of protecting General Stelle to best of their abilities, and they were not going to stop until that mission was accomplished. From the moment the Kalka Command and Control Center was attacked Felix had a plan in place to get the General to safety and the plan had worked flawlessly, except for the lack of a pilot part and the total loss of communications. In the confusion of the explosion within the Command Center, Felix and Nolan had whisked General Stelle’s unconscious body to safety through a series of hidden exits. These were passageways unknown to anyone else working at the facility and whose sole purpose was to facilitate a quick escape route should an emergency arise.

  He looked back behind him into the small cabin for a second and studied the situation. The General’s body was still motionless on the floor with Nolan leaning over it to secure the InstaCast around his left leg from the knee down. They had already injected the quickheal compound into the man’s system moments ago like they had been trained to. These two medical applications should stabilize the General’s broken tibia and help it heal in record time. The quickheal had also kept his internal blast injuries contained by stopping all of the internal bleeding and relieving an increase in cerebral pressure due to a brain hemorrhage. With the compound in his system Felix was hopeful that General Stelle would hold out until they reached the closest field hospital.

  “How’s he doing?” Felix called out as he watched his partner work.

  “I got him stabilized, but he’s still unconscious. I’m not a doctor, though, so I don’t know when or if he’ll come out of it. The MedI estimates a good outcome.”

  The sounding of a warning alarm prevented Felix from replying to the comment and caused him to turn back towards the front quickly. Stretching out in front of him was the river floor of the canyon and two vertical rock walls on both sides. Interposed between these canyon walls, however, were directional markers that were actually part of the shuttle’s heads up display. As he gazed further out into the distance he could see part of that directional tunnel start to blink and knew they were receiving another course update from Colonel Slaige.

  This was the fifth course correction in the past half hour and Felix hoped would be the last. They had managed to avoid the enemy air patrols all this time by staying within the confines and radar clutter of the canyon, but that luck couldn’t last once they did as this new update instructed them to do. Their good luck ran out early, however, as a proximity alarm blared out suddenly and the right stone wall exploded in front of them. There was no time to avoid the deadly cloud of rock debris and Felix watched the shuttle’s shield glow blue in front of them as they flew into the cloud at high speed. At such velocity the normally harmless rocks battered the ship like small missiles, causing the craft to shudder and tilt from the weight of some of the impacts.

  It didn’t take long for another alarm to blare out, this one accompanied by a shield failure notification on the forward viewport. The shuttle wasn’t designed for hostile environments so wasn’t a surprise to Felix that the shields couldn’t hold out against such a pounding. Even so the weak shields had held just long enough for the craft to emerge out the other side of the debris cloud in one piece. Felix applied more speed and knew now that they had to get out of the canyon. There was no room to maneuver inside its confined space, making the shuttle an easy target.

  He pitched the craft up so that he could crest the top of the canyon wall just as another explosion overtook them, this one much more powerful and no longer a near miss. The holographic control panel in front of him went dark almost instantly as the entire shuttlecraft lost power. The blast also lunched the ship forward and caused it to pitch nose up, threating it to send it spinning backwards end over end, but fortune smiled on them all once more. Cockpit controls lit up again as the power returned just as suddenly. With the computers now functional again the FAS took over the pilot duties for a moment and automatically terminated the ship’s tumble just before they hit the tree line at the top of the canyon.

  Felix felt the force of renewed accelerated push him back into the seat as the engines powered back up again. He knew instantly that something was wrong, however, when a harsh vibration over took the vessel. This was further confirmed when various sections of the photohaptic control panel overlay started to flash red. He slammed his hand down on the holographic projection to stop the alarms from going off once more, but watched as an image of the entire ship appeared on the viewport in front of him. The image quickly rotated and sections of it turned from green to yellow and red in order to indicate the severity of damage inflicted upon it. Various control surfaces of the ship appeared to be damaged or completely destroyed causing the craft to rely more heavily on its repulsor units and thrust vectoring. With only one remaining engine, though, maneuvering the shuttle would be much more difficult.

  As Felix looked out ahead and watched the bluish green Fronta tree canopy rush under them he heard a soft groan through his comm. “You alright back there, sorry about the bumpy ride.”

  “Yeah, just fine sir,” Nolan called back sarcastically as he picked himself off the floor. “The General might have a few more bruises when he wakes up though.”

  �
��You better strap him in, we aren’t out of this yet, and it’s probably gonna get worse.”

  The Sergeant issued the order just as he patched into the shuttle’s rear cameras and visualized their pursuers first hand on his helmet’s visor. He let out a long winded series of curses as he watched three enemy ships turn towards them. Two of the crafts seemed to be small fighter sized ships and followed at a low altitude. Felix could swear that both looked somewhat familiar to him for reasons he didn’t have time to think of at the moment. The third ship, however, was completely different. It was an almost a teardrop shape cut in half with the top curving back into a sharp point and a rather flattened belly. That ship was also many times larger than the other pair and hung back at a higher altitude, almost observing the unfolding melee.

  Frustration built up inside Felix as the banked the shuttle side to side, weaving in order to try and avoid any further attacks. All he wished for was a chance to fight back, being a warrior of heart and training, but the shuttlecraft he was now piloting was completely unarmed. In such a situation Felix was left with only one choice, that being to keep his charge alive at all costs. He hoped that reaching his designated end waypoint would fulfill that responsibility.

  With that thought in mind he looked at the counter at the edge of the HUD and watched it quickly count down the kilometers remaining to the location that Colonel Slaige had sent him. It was during this glance that he also witnessed the outside air distort and shimmer directly in front of the shuttle before a line of fire and smoke cut through forest below him. As he weaved the ship in the opposite direction another line of trees disappeared in a new firestorm, this time closer than before and from the other direction, leaving behind only blackened tree remains.