Hunted: Chapter 5

Violence & Railguns

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'You won't make it out of here. Not a chance,' Olindinar mumbled, his top lip purple and ready to burst, his nose a red mess, with a tooth caught on his shirt.

'I wouldn't worry about us, Olin. Not worth your time. Answer the questions and this all stops.' Padoan wiped the blood off his knuckles, a dull throb worked its way up his arm. The man's jaw was like chromium. 'Where's the control centre, the firing room, operational command, whatever you call it. Where is it?'

Olindinar rested his bloodied chin on his shirt sodden with drool and blood. He opened and closed his mouth noisily, tonguing his back teeth and roof of his mouth. He spat a thick lump of blood and mucus on Padoan's boot.

'Permission to terminate, Captain?' Shogun asked, his lasrifle hummed in gradually higher pitch until it was primed.

Padoan shook his head. 'Do you know what VPIC's mission was?'

'I'm done with your questions,' Olindinar stared at the wall, his expression blank.

Trent sidled up to Padoan and whispered, 'Captain, we don't know where we are or where we're going. Central Control could be on the other side of Duln for all we know.'

Padoan nodded as he pinched his lower lip, 'Who is the commanding officer here, what does he look like?'

'If I answer will you kill me or leave me alone?'

Padoan caught Shogun's photo-receptor and gave a curt nod.

Olin understood. 'Sergeant Jusken is on this floor but if you find him you're dead, if he finds you, you're dead.' Olindinar sighed and ran his tongue across his top lip, 'He has one of those thin moustaches, looks ridiculous.'

A short hiss was followed by the stench of burnt hair and seared skin. Olindinar sagged in the chair, smoke rising from the back of his head. 'Ahh, that was very satisfying, Captain. I don't understand why we waited so long.'

'I'm inclined to agree,' Raun stole a glance out the door. 'We have stayed here too long and have learnt too little.'

'We know a name and a vague location. We know they are not Qing mercenaries, as first thought. We know our target is not in this compound,' Padoan handed the lasrifles off the table to each of the others and slung one over his own shoulder. The energy cells he pocketed. 'All we need to do is find this Sergeant Jusken, he'll know.'

'You hope,' Raun said.

'Organics approaching,' Shogun chimed. The droid stalked towards the door, his rusted finger resting on the trigger of the lasrifle.

'Flip this table,' Raun grabbed one end while Trent grabbed the other. Padoan joined them behind it while Shogun moved into the corner, lasrifle trained at the door. Footsteps thundered up to the door. Gruff voices barked orders in a lyrical language but the door never opened. The air began to smell of sulphur and a faint high pitched squeal grew in intensity from the hallway. 'Take cover!' Raun shouted as a massive beam of light pierced the door, blowing it off its hinges. Smoke and debris clouded the air as laser blasts crowded through the door. The railgun whined, charging up for a second shot.

Padoan lay under a thin blanket of dust, his ears ringing. A semi-circle had been cut out from the top of the table, the metal red hot from the railgun charge. A marlak pounded the inside of his head as he sat up. He checked over his lasrifle and balanced the muzzle on the table, aiming at the door. Fog thick with grit and dust obscured the room entirely but Padoan fired anyway, the laser bolts illuminating the fog with refracted flares blinding him even more.

'This is Sergeant Jusken, commander of this base, we have you surrounded and pinned down, cease fire and drop your weapons,' his voice was gruff, thick with years of smoke and dust.

Padoan considered the offer and answered with a barrage from his lasrifle. Raun knelt up, blood dribbling from his scalp, and held a grenade. He pulled the pin, let it cook until the beeps were on top of each other, and threw it at through the same vector as Padoan's laser bolts. There was a metallic thud, a screech, some yelps, and a huge electrical explosion. Arcs of blue lightning raged through the fog, grasping at anything they could before fading away. Padoan cowered behind the table, hands covering his ears.

Shogun was the first to the door, 'Next time you use one of those, warn me,' his words almost a hiss. The droid approached the door, rifle first, and swept the hallway with an arc. 'Unconscious, dead, or incapacitated. A good droid-like throw,' he said.

Padoan clambered up from his rubble strewn spot and dusted himself off, it didn't help. Hair matted with grit and his skin caked in a layer of fine dust it felt as if his cheeks were paralysed. He shuffled to the door in a haze, 'Get their weapons. Especially that railgun, good addition to our armoury.'

'It's not exactly subtle,' Trent said.

'Yeah but good for emergencies,' Raun rebutted.

'What emergency needs a railgun?'

'I don't want to find out when I don't have one.'

Shogun paced between the prone and writhing bodies with a metallic tang echoing after each step. 'Which one of you meatbags is Jusken?' Three men groaned, their trouser legs melted to their skin and steam rising from the fused material. Two were dead. A third lay on his back, unmoving, his skin heavily burned and his eyes darting back and force. He was short, had a square head with a flattop haircut that looked like it had been done by a toddler and a pencil thin moustache, mostly singed off, on his top lip.

'I think he's this one,' Padoan kicked the short man in the ribs, he didn't flinch.

Shogun prowled over in three heavy strides, 'Sergeant, we have questions and as my captain was unsuccessful in receiving answers from your inferior it is my turn.' He planted a metallic foot on Jusken's stomach. 'Ion cannons, where are they? Where are they controlled from?'

Jusken grimaced, his cheeks reddened, and he tried to spit but the phlegm caught on his lip and landed on his chin. Shogun pressed down on the Sergeant's stomach. Jusken didn't respond.

'Shogun,' Trent said.

'What?' the droid snapped.

'He's paralysed, can't feel a thing. Must have had an implant in his spine or something. The grenade will have fried it.'

Shogun raised his foot, 'Poor meatbag, he knew where the superiority lay but he failed to capitalise.'

'Quit your yammering you rust bucket,' Jusken growled, his lips barely moving. The skin around his neck and jaw sagged with zigzag burns were the lightning had grabbed him.

Shogun scowled, if a droid could scowl, and stared intently at Jusken. He held his lasrifle in one hand, lowered it and blasted the Sergeant between the eyes. 'I recommend searching his corpse.'

'Are you going to kill the others in wild acts of violence?' Padoan chided.

'No, they can suffer,' Shogun padded over to the crates lining the walls and stood watch.

The worst of the grit had settled so all that hung in the air were the thin particles of plaster and dust. Padoan could feel them settling in his lungs and when he coughed they shifted but didn't leave. He began searching Jusken's pockets and found a datapad, a wad of folded paper with maps, instructions, and what looked like inventories on them. There was a silver lighter too with an engraving of a dragon on one side, he flicked the top and the flame was a perfect blue cone. It clicked shut and he dropped it in his pocket.

'Hey!' Sasha's voice crackled through Shogun. 'Turn around you steel lump.'

'Charming,' Shogun obliged her.

'Open that crate, the one with the Kamakura logo,' Sasha said. 'The five leaves and three flowers! Hurry up.'

'How's the Firethorn?' Padoan asked.

'She'll fly again but we really need a spaceport to repair the cracks in her bones and bulkheads. Seriously,' Sasha never said “seriously” unless it was serious, though her saying it meant everything else she said was taken jovially, not that everything else she said was jovial.

'You mean replace,' Trent moaned as he lugged the railgun off its stand and over his shoulder. 'I bet Shogun could carry this in one hand.'

'Affirmative but impractical,' the droid cawed.

'The Kamakura crate,' Sasha reminded. 'That's who made you, Shogun, or at least parts of you. I looked them up in the database, not much info but I found out they only manufacture droids. Bespoke droids. Very clear on that.'

'Of course I'm bespoke, I know it in my core. They'll be no parts for me in that crate.'

'Just open it up, companies use modular designs all the time even for bespoke creations.'

Shogun snapped the two locks with bolts as thick as fingers and flipped open the case. 'Droid parts,' he said.

'Bring the whole crate back with you,' Sasha's voice hissed from Shogun.

Padoan hesitated, 'We haven't found the control room yet.'

'Captain, we need time to analyse those maps and figure out where the base is, better to do that back at the ship then here,' Trent said. He folded up the tripod for the railgun and slung it over his shoulder. 'Besides, I don't want to lug this around the jungle while searching for a heavily armed group of mercs.'

Padoan searched the men's faces. 'Right,' Padoan shut the lid on the case of droid parts. 'We're heading back to the ship.'

The return trek to the ship was uneventful and that meant one of two things, either the other underground bunkers were far away enough that VPIC couldn't send an expedition out or there was no communication between the bunkers. Padoan hoped for the second and given the poor quality of Shogun's “incredible” uplink he thought it more likely.

Three marlak corpses lay by the front of the Firethorn. The two legged stout reptiles with oddly wide mouths stared dead eyed at him, cable rubber fresh in their teeth. Hopefully what they'd chewed on wasn't vital. The ship had seen better days, the hull was more carbon scoring and dented panels than not and gaps had started to open up between the glass and durasteel of the cockpit. Sasha was right, it was time for a major overhaul and that meant most, if not all, of the pay from the current mission, the previous one, and probably a little bit of debt. Buying a new ship might be cheaper and easier but Padoan could never turn his back on the Firethorn. She was home and saviour and he would die with her if it came to it. Though he didn't want to prove his conviction any time soon.

Shogun set the Kamakura crate down on the workshop bench. 'As ordered, shoddy mechanic.'

Z3 buzzed, 'Brrztt kaaa.'

'Rude,' Shogun said.

'Cut it out you two,' Sasha stepped between the combat droid and the floating ball assistant. She cracked open the crate and rummaged inside setting the parts on the bench.

Padoan had no idea what was what. There were moving parts, chips, modules, photo-receptors, speakers, what looked like hip joints and shoulder joints, a metal finger, and more. 'I'll leave you to it. Trent, Raun, and I are going to study the maps,' he waved the stack of folded paper maps found in Jusken's coat pocket. 'Is Mae alright?'

'She's sleeping.'

'We'll be as loud as possible then.'

'Won't wake her, you never do.'

Trent was hunched over the largest of the maps, a mess of green foliage and topography lines underneath an ordered faint blue grid. 'We're here,' he planted a finger in a clearing beneath a massive cliff and drew a crude representation the Firethorn in red pen. 'Jusken's bunker was this one,' he circled a cluster of concentric topography. Trent pulled over one of the smaller, higher fidelity maps. 'If this is this grid square then I think this is a bunker and that round-ish gap in the jungle is an ion cannon.' The unending rainforest was patchy in the sector, evidence of either logging or major construction.

'How many ion cannons?'

'Hard to say but the documents we got from Cassius suggest multiple all networked together.'

'Why would they be networked?' Raun asked from his moody corner of the mess where he stood with his arms folded. The man had been off since returning to the ship but had yet to say or act on it.

'As planetary defence it was to enable activation from the surface without needing to have a team stationed on the moon or send a team up.'

'But that means they can be hacked,' Raun said.

'I doubt it. The information we have says that only one terminal on Bethsemmani had access. Location classified, naturally. But the fact the VPIC have been sent here, and us after them, I guess something happened to the planet-side terminal.'

'It's wireless. It can be hacked,' Raun declared. 'There's a reason we don't use those systems on starships or weapons arrays. The risk is far too high.'

Trent shrugged, 'See it as a blessing, we only have to go to one control bunker rather than several.' He returned to his maps, circling the location of the first ion cannon on the largest of them. 'There's a second ion cannon here, and a third here,' he circled two more locations within ten miles of the Firethorn. 'Any one of them should give us access to all of them.'

'Which is the nearest?' Padoan scanned the map, he knew which one but there was a lot of wavy lines close together and what looked to be dense vegetation.

'Well this one but it's buried in the cliff face, very difficult ascent.'

'Not to mention defensible,' Raun growled from the corner. 'Trent, pick one and let's get this over with.'

'What did you breathe in down in that bunker?' Padoan prodded the former soldier. Bad moods ruined good missions.

'Something one of the mercs said.'

'Spit it out.'

Raun launched himself off the wall and slunk towards the table, his voice dropped to a gravelled whisper, 'Remember the first guy the droid shot? He said, “Aren't you...” and hesitated shooting. The droid didn't respond but that merc recognised that steel psycho, I know it.'

Metallic footsteps echoed down the corridor and Shogun strolled in with less holes in his chassis and slightly brighter orange photo-receptors. 'Notice any changes?'

'New eyes,' Padoan said.

'Eyes? I don't have eyes, those pathetic mucus covered orbs that detect a slither of electromagnetic radiation. I have photo-receptors and thanks to your engineer's, somewhat, deft work, new ones with greater visible range, optical zoom, and added targeting capabilities. But the real upgrades are in here,' he rapped his fist on his torso. 'New servos for increased reaction times, improved power efficiency, and a new memory module with an array of new violent protocols.'

'Marvellous,' Raun mocked.

'It really is. I feel jubilant and like there's been a change in my self-understanding. I can't quite explain it. When am I going to have the opportunity to experiment with my new hardware and software?'

'Soon. Trent is locating a bunker for us to break into,' Padoan said.

Shrieks and pinging boomed through the ship while men shouted to one another in that lyrical language the Varis Peak Interstellar Consortium mercs had used back in the bunker. Padoan ran to the cockpit and peered out the window. A dozen mercs in black military gear had set up tactical cover in a semi-circle around the Firethorn's access ramp. 'Raun! Trent! Get your lasrifles, we're under attack. Shogun, time to experiment!' A barrage of laser fire crashed into the glass. 'Wake Mae! I need shields, NOW!' he peered over the pilot's seat to see a railgun tripod planted into the ground and a large case with HEAVY ORDNANCE written on the side being opened up.

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