Ghost Soldiers (26 page)

"It's not possible, not using a conventional ship."

Spartan and Khan both spoke at the same time.

"Gun!"

The Sergeant dropped to one knee and Khan reached out to help him. Fluid dripped from the left flank, but it thankfully it was lubricant from the motor system, not from the man himself.

"Major, we regrouped at the canteen as ordered and have barricaded it securely. I sent out teams to find you, but all were ambushed and forced to move back. We assumed you were gone. It was our intention to hunker down until relieved."

Spartan spoke over the channel, but doing his best to keep his voice calm and assured. He wanted to ensure his people remained motivated and effective.

"How long have we been gone?"

The audio crackled and distorted the first few words.

"... least twenty hours."

Spartan gasped at that. He assumed they might have been knocked out for minutes, perhaps an hour. Not almost a full day. It was barely credible to him.

"Sir. In the last three hours we've been hit by sporadic attacks. They were nothing major at first, but they have not stopped. I suspect the surviving war machines are looking for signs of weakness, a way in so that they can breach our defences. In the last fifteen minutes they have increased in their intensity. I suspect they monitored our communications and know help is coming."

"Understood," said Spartan.

He deactivated their audio for a moment so that only Khan could hear him.

"They want us dead before help arrives. This will be an overwhelming assault."

Khan said nothing for the moment, so Spartan reactivated the audio.

 
"We found the creature, a massive artificial war machine that has taken control of this vessel. It is powerful and resourceful, capable of bending machines and technology to its will. We fought it, and it vanished in a massive denotation."

"Detonated, Sir? Is it definitely dead?"

Spartan looked over to Khan, who had had bent down to look at the shattered parts of the enemy war machine. Little remained, with much knocked into the vast chasm like pit. Chunks were embedded in the walls, and yet that which remained was enough to build something the size of a Maverick armoured marine. Spartan moved closer and pushed a piece of broken metal to the left.

"It was a marvel of engineering, a true fusion of hardware and software. On'Sarax would have been intrigued."

Khan cleared his throat.

"Yeah, it was a bloody miracle, Spartan."

He then pointed to large scratch marks on the floor.

"Something dragged itself away from here."

Then came that horrific high-pitched whistle, the sound they had last heard when confronting the machine. The sound told them one thing.

"It lives," said Sergeant Tyler.

Spartan was already heading back the way they had come from. His massive armoured suit made loud thuds as its boots crashed into the floor.

"We're coming in. Get ready, their final assault is imminent."

"Understood, Sir. We're defending four compartments connected to the primary passageway leading into the derelict, as well as the canteen and the bridged passageway you used. What is coming?"

Spartan growled back, "I don't know. Dig in and use everything you have to keep that passageway clear. Do not, I repeat, do not let anything come through. You're all that is protecting our ability to leave the ship. If they get past you, they will move around us and capture the landing bay. Do you understand?"

The radio crackled gently.

"Yes, Major, understood."

"Good. Do not let them in. Seal the breach at the bow and blast apart anything not human. We're coming to the canteen blast door. Be ready for us."

"Yes, Major."

He threw a quick glance at Khan.

"This is it, old friend. We need to get back."

"What about that thing?"

Both of them looked at the wreckage littering the ground. It was then that Spartan noticed the pulsing energy on the floor. It was subtle but had altered shape slightly around the broken machine parts. One of the limbs was vibrating ever so gently. Spartan swung his leg and kicked the wreckage over the edge of the massive pit.

"Fair enough," said Khan.

Spartan was off at a slow jogging pace, and his armour emitted all manner of sounds as he moved. Usually, the Maverick armour was the epitome of advanced engineering and quality, but with the damage they'd sustained down here it was incredible any of the equipment even worked now.

"Let's go."

They rushed back through the derelict, throwing caution to the wind and trading safety for time. The ground was littered with the shattered remains of soldiers, some recent, and others decades old. Behind him ran Khan, his powerful limbs propelling him forward just as fast as Spartan, whose own body had been amplified by the Maverick armour.

"Target, left passageway," said Sergeant Tyler.

They were moving so fast that all three were in the passage as a machine moved in to block them. This one was wheeled and looked suspiciously like the fusion of the upper body of a Grunt, along with the lower half of a SAAR robot. It cradled an L48 rifle in its arms, likely one of the support weapon taken from a fallen marine. It must have expected to ambush them, as it moved slowly, cautiously, and took careful aim at the centre of Khan.

"Mine!" Spartan yelled.

He pushed off the ground and leapt ahead, crashing shoulder first into the machine. Both slid along the floor and jammed up against the wall. Spartan pulled back, activated his arm hammers, and then punched away, one after the other. He began to shout as he struck, and with each impact the adrenalin surged through his body. The boost of adrenalin provided extra power and mobility to his aching body, and the intensity of the strikes increased. Khan moved up, crashed his fist into the machine, and then dragged Spartan off it.

"Enough, we have to move."

His voice was stern, and Spartan struck the machine one more time before looking away.

"These machines, they're really starting to..."

"I know," agreed Khan.

Sergeant Tyler arrived a short distance behind Khan. He panted, and Spartan suspected he might have suffered broken ribs, or even worse, a lung injury.

"I have more reading behind us. They must have thought we'd been killed, or at least incapacitated."

"Yeah, well, we're not," said Khan.

Spartan cast aside the smashed chunks of machine and returned his fists to their normal articulated shape. He then pointed off into the darkness.

"In that case, let's take this up a notch, both of you. It's time to get the hell out of this place."

Ignoring pain or discomfort, all three broke out into something bordering a sprint. Each time something moved in the shadows, Spartan would want to take cover and clear the way ahead carefully. There was no time, though, and instead of stopping they opened fire as they ran. At one point they moved into as hall where a trio of walking machines were waiting on a balcony, ten metres up and directly ahead. Spartan and Sergeant Tyler blasted them with their shoulder-mounted HEC-1 cannons, and Khan unleashed a long burst from his Gatling gun. They never checked to see if the targets were damaged or destroyed, and simply surged on ahead.

Spartan's stomach was tight from the tension as he expected to run into an ambush or booby traps. He might have slowed down, but the shouts for help on the command network encouraged him to move faster. Unlike the majority of the marines, the Maverick armour he wore would allow him to absorb the brunt of a major attack, even to level of vehicle-mounted heavy weaponry. In a bizarre twist of fate, the armour he'd developed was almost purpose built for this new task of navigating a treacherous vessel such as this.

They finally reached the chasm that marked the barrier between the long-abandoned Trusskan cruiser and the rest of the derelict. As Spartan led them across, he thought back to his last two encounters with the machine. The first time he'd been convinced he was winning, and the second time ended in a blast. Now all he could hope was that if it came to another fight, he would be able to muster the numbers and firepower to deal with it. The creature, or entity as some still called it was unknown to him. Its ability to create a weapon was unlike anything he'd seen before. To operate independently, and to modify and construct on its own, was advanced to a level unimaginable in the Alliance. What truly astounded him was the technology here on the derelict was ancient, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years old.

What would the Trusska be like if they were still alive today? Their civilisation would be generations ahead of us. They might be like Gods to people like us.

That thought sent a shiver down his spine. He'd had quite enough of so-called master races for now. He skidded along the floor and narrowly avoided crashing into the wreckage of a machine.

"Major. The machines have breached the blast doors. We're falling back to the barricades."

Spartan swore off channel and looked back to make sure the other two were with him. The route through the bow of the cruiser was a weak point and less easily defended than the canteen. More important, it had multiple small passages and shafts that led right back to the landing bay. He stopped and then activated the command channel.

"Lieutenant Kipling, how many Mavericks do you have?"

There was a pause of three seconds, a time delay that left him more than a little concerned.

"Major. Four, but one has a non-functioning primary weapon."

"Not a problem. Send them to Lieutenant Anne Lee, and hurry, 3rd Platoon needs help fast. We cannot let them breach 3rd Platoon's barricades."

"Yes, Sir."

Khan activated the blades on his arms and lowered his stance a fraction, all the better to defend himself. Spartan looked to his friend and felt that deep down pang of guilt he always did when sending somebody off on what could be their last mission.

"Khan, it's time to find that thing and end this. Understood?"

Khan clamped shut his visor and roared.

"Not a problem, Spartan."

He scraped the blades on his left arm against the wall. The metal left white imprints on the pulsing surface, like ripples in water.

"It's payback time."

* * *

Spartan arrived at the blast door to the canteen area to find it had been transformed. Last time he had seen the place, it had been a vast open space, with only a handful of bodies scattered about. Now there were chunks of metal and at least six bizarre mechanical contraptions, each smashed by heavy weaponry. The blast door was shut, and he could see parts of it had been welded quite recently, presumably to repair combat damage. It was the route they had entered through, and now it was blocked shut with nothing but the bodies of three machines, similar to those they had found elsewhere inside the ship. Spartan reached forward and banged his metal fist on the frame.

"Open up."

"Who is it?" yelled back Lieutenant Armstrong.

"Spartan."

The sounds on the other side faded, and then came the grinding of metal and hammering sounds. The door slid open to reveal a veritable bastion inside. Lieutenant Armstrong looked stunned to see them.

"I heard your voice, but even then I thought it was a trick. We thought you'd been killed. You went dark over twenty hours ago."

Sergeant Tyler stepped passed Spartan and stopped in front of his platoon's officer.

"Lieutenant, how is my platoon?"

The man wiped sweat from his face and managed to open up a barely healed cut across his cheek.

"Multiple injuries, three of them serious. They hit the blast door while we were making modifications. I lost a SAAR robot and several weapons getting everybody back, but we held. Six machines breached, three were destroyed right here, the rest blasted with thermite as they escaped."

He pointed to the broken pieces of machinery that lay strewn on the ground. As before, the light pulsing of energy seemed to coalesce around one of the machines, but not the others. Spartan lifted his left arm and blasted the remains with his arm-mounted coilguns, sending fragments of metal in all directions.