And so the Phoenix Rises

The Bridge Burners: The Planetside Legacy
The Amerish Zerg, Part 3: And so the Phoenix Rises

The rain was at last clearing over Amerish, the unnatural storm had spent what little remained of it’s wrath and the first rays of morning sunshine brought Mekala to life. Staceh walked with Vastian along the Western Wall, looking out to the lagoon beyond; it sparkled like a jewel in the growing light.
“A place like this is worth dying for,” Staceh reflected, “ in better times it would be the sort of place a man could settle down and make an honest living for himself.”
“Something on your mind, boss?”
“I’m tired of fighting, Vast,” Staceh sighed, “for the Terran Republic, for the DSRC, for the Sovereignty. All I have done since I was old enough to carry my gear and a gun was fight, or train to fight. With the draft I was told ‘fight or be executed’, no purpose other than to awaken the next morning. Now I have a fight with a purpose, but in a great universal irony it is a fight that we can never win. Auraxis is keeping the balance of power from ever shifting. We could fight here for aeons and nothing will ever change.”
“I think I understand how you feel,” Vastian said quietly, stopping to gaze across the water and let out a long sigh, “my memories start in the Sanc med complex, so all I seem to have known in my life is war.
“I like to think that there may have been something better before,” he said with a narrow smile, “better times you know, something locked deep in my mind waiting to come back to the surface.”
“Halo 7.” Staceh mused, “That’s what Bluestar said wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Vastian squinted as the clouds parted and strong rays reflected from the sea, “you know it?”
“I’ve heard of it. Penal colony in the Sirius System, controlled by the DSRC at the behest of the Republic,” Staceh breathed deeply, “worst place in the known galaxy if the rumours are true, worse even than the Inferis Hold. Reserved only for the most despised in the Republic. I doubt that there was anything good in your recent past.”
Vast looked back over Mekala, the base now bustling with activity as the Vanu went about preparing for the next stage of their assault.
“Then I guess being stuck on Auraxis isn’t so bad after all.”
They continued to walk around the walls in silence; a mossie shot overhead, MrSubliminal heading out to patrol the lagoon.
“Vast, you said that there will be another Bending within the year.”
“Uh huh.”
“When that happens, all this will have been for nothing. The Republic will send a fleet, the New Conglomerate and the Vanu Sovereignty will be wiped from existence, and when the Fleet Commodore has learned everything he can from the TR here he’ll execute them too.”
“Almost certainly.” Vastian slumped down, his back to the wall, “Depressing isn’t it. This must be how people with cancer feel when they’re told that they’ve got at most a year to live.”
“The Ancients were able to leave Auraxis. Is there nothing in the computer about a warp off world?”
“No, but then they weren’t from Auraxis, this world is more like a construct than a natural planet. I mean that’s not to say that they didn’t experiment and refine designs here, there’s fragmented data, but… OH MY GOD!” Vastian’s eyes suddenly went wide and he was on his feet, obviously in a panic, “The Dromon. Staceh, I have to get to Ikanam immediately.”
Vastian ran off towards the central complex, Staceh hot on his heels, “Vast, what’s the Dromon?”
“Fragmented data on Ancient Tech,” Vastian called back, “and we definitely don’t want the NC to get it.”
*****
Staceh and Vastian jogged across the courtyard, ranks of magriders hummed in the morning sun, a flight of mosquitoes shot overhead and off across the lagoon. Bazon waved to his fellow officers as he led a squad of skyguards out on anti-air patrol. Mekala was a veritable beehive of activity this morning, the defensive forces were changing shifts and the offence was getting set for action. The Pandion Knights had refused to pull back to the island until it’s defence was ensured, and even now they still had about 30 mags in the lagoon harassing forces from Kyoi and Xelas. Druckwelle had the BFR matrix on overdrive as they pumped out a legion of Eclipse variant Battle Frames.
Ducking through the legs of an Eclipse as it ran through the courtyard Staceh shouted to Vastian, “What is so special about the Dromon?”
Vastian leapt to one side as a squad of fury quad bikes slid round the corner of the base, “Advanced AT that we have been able to gleam from the Core. We don’t know it’s full potential yet, but the data we have is astounding. Where’s HoaX?”
“Command and Control, the Sabres are getting ready to go out.”
Vastian and Staceh took the lobby steps 3 at a time, almost bowling over General Enrico in the process.
“Hey guys,” he called out, “where’s the fire?”
“Ikanam,” the two called back.
*****
HoaX, PaintedTarget and Mikey1 stood around the holo console that displayed a real time feed of the activity around Azeban, which like Verica, Sungrey and Tumas, was still waiting on the NC hack to go through. The Sabres were going to secure Azeban whilst the bulk of the forces hit Xelas, Kyoi and Verica. Risk were going to lead an assault on Sungrey, with the intention of hopefully upsetting the NC hack, but to act as a diversionary force regardless. Aside from securing Azeban four of the Sabres would also be responsible for hacking out lodestars to transport AMS mobile spawns to the base assaults.
They were just going over their delicate, and extremely intricate plan when their General and AL squad leader half burst, half fell through the door, “HoaX,” Vastian wheezed, “The Dromon.”
HoaX moved away from the console and ushered them to one side, “The charges should have destroyed the computer, and all the archives.”
“But we don’t know if they did, we were all dead before the timer reached zero,” Vastian was talking quickly, “if the NC found the computer any advanced hacker could have defused those bombs.”
“Would one of you guys mind telling me what is so important about this data?”
HoaX leaned in conspiratorially to Staceh, “We haven’t even scratched the surface of the Core caverns. Beneath the module building in Supai we found a shaft, the linkway led to a single teleport pad which required a very specific lattice crystal to function. We’ve had that crystal in storage at Sanctuary since the first day we uncovered the Ancient Technology, an unassuming green shard which we eventually incorporated as the Sovereignty emblem.”
Staceh looked at the ‘Arms of Evolution’ logo that adorned the upper arm of Vastian’s jacket, symbols always seemed to lose a little bit of their magic once you knew their origins.
“We took the keyshard to the pad,” HoaX continued quietly, “and were warped to an enormous cavern, almost like a giant geode, with a massive AT latticework intertwining the crystals. We called Vastian’s AT team down to figure out the facility’s purpose.”
“And…?”
HoaX glanced at Vast, who glanced around before answering, “It’s a construction matrix. Actually it’s more like THE construction matrix.”
“And the Dromon?”
“The Dromon,” Vastian paused, eventually speaking softer than he ever thought possible, “please don’t repeat this in shock, boss. The Dromon is an Ancient Starship.”
Staceh blinked and seemed to pale ever so slightly.
“It’ll never fly,” Vastian continued quickly, “like I said, the data is fragmented. We have weapons, shielding, medical facilities, navigation and a hypercore, but nothing on realspace drives, gravity systems or even life support.”
“Plus there are numerous references to ‘claw’ and ‘hellfire’ weapon systems, with detailed schematics lacking only the specs of the power supply. And boss, from what I’ve deduced from the data,” HoaX actually looked afraid as he spoke, “these weapons have capability far in advance of anything we’ve ever even conceived in the Apothricon.”
The General took a moment to digest that thought, weapons more powerful than anything that the best of the Sovereignty scientists had yet to theorise, a frightening prospect given the Way Committee’s desire to get this War won.
“What are they? Bombs?”
“No, no,” HoaX blurted, then quieter, “nothing so crude. They’re directed energy weapons, of a destructive force beyond anything we’ve seen yet. But that’s not what is so frightening about them.”
“What is?”
Vastian activated his darklight ocular implants to make certain that there were absolutely no enemy cloakers or cloaked bugs in the vicinity. At last he seemed satisfied and spoke, “The weapons can be miniaturised to a certain point and lose little or none of their destructive power. You could make them small enough to fit on a starfighter, or…”
“Or a BFR,” Staceh said with a sudden realisation, “HoaX, what do you reckon their potential is based on the current schematics?”
HoaX did a couple of quick calculations in his head, “Hellfire is one quick, heavy punch and would have about the equivalent force of an orbital strike with a 90 second recharge time. Claw is much more refined and has a variable scale going right the way up to about 15.7Terrawattsx10^37, with a recharge of about 30 minutes at maximum power.”
“Essentially ‘Claw’ is a world killer.” Vastian said to make sure that the point was perfectly clear, “a world killing weapon that could be mounted to a BFR. Thankfully we don’t have a suitable power source, but it’s still not something that we want the NC looking into.”
“Dekov, recall MrSubliminal,” Staceh ordered as he strode to the holocon, “Painted, I want you to give Vast a crash course in Sabre protocols.”
“Will do,” Painted patted Vastian’s shoulder, “where are we sending the lad?”
“Ikanam.”
A silence fell about the room. Ikanam, their former home now had a New Conglomerate population second only to Verica, and it was a prize the NC would be in no hurry to give up.
*****
Vastian stood uncomfortably in the courtyard, he didn’t like skin-tight clothing, not that he had anything to be embarrassed about, like most of the Vanu he had a good build and was in peak fitness. He just felt that he was sharing more with the world than was entirely necessary, and it didn’t half pinch around the crotch.
“Heya pal,” a voice called from behind Vast, he turned to see Ehlana striding over in fatigue trousers and a purple vest, “I hear that you’re for Ikanam.”
Vastian tried, he really did, not to look at the sweat glistening on her cleavage, “Yeah, homesick.”
“I’d try to give you some words of encouragement, but frankly I think you’ll be popping out of those spawn tubes within 5 about minutes after touching down.”
“That sounds to me like a challenge,” Vastian grinned wryly, “name your wager.”
“Oh,” Ehlana batted her eyelashes at Vastian, who suddenly became very aware of his skin-tight trousers. He tried to subtly shuffle behind a waist high barricade as Ehlana continued, “Ok. If I win, the next time we go to battle you turn up in a dress.”
“Fine. And if I win so do you.”
They shook hands and laughed a while, waving to MrSubliminal as he came over to join them, as ever he was miserable in the infiltration suit.
“I really must thank you, Vast, that I was recalled so that I could slip one of these bloody suits on,” he stuck out his tongue and smiled.
“My pleasure kiddo. How are we with the Phantasm?”
“It’s inbound now.”
They were waiting on a Lodestar transporting a Phantasm-B from Sanctuary. The aircraft plans had never been released into the lattice network for fear of the other empires gaining access to it. The Lodestar was forced to take a wide course out to sea in order to avoid detection and the pilot, young AdamLC, was chosen from the Amerish continental ranks to avoid the risk of comms breach.
“Just what is this Dromon thing?” Dekov and Painted could no longer contain their curiosity and had sought Vastian out.
“Staceh won’t say, and HoaX just told us that we were better not knowing.”
Vastian sighed, “I can’t say guys, I shouldn’t even have said to Staceh. It’s nothing personal, we have direct orders from the Regent, no one outside our research team is to know under penalty of flogging and suspended respawn. More than that I could lose my Doctorship within the Apothricon, be stripped of my titles, have my name stricken from the Technonomicron, and be cast from the Way Committee. Please, guys, don’t ask me.”
“But it is that important that you are going to go deep into the enemy’s maw, with insufficient training?” Painted asked, knowing well that he had just given Vastian a crash course for a mission only the highest level Sabres would attempt.
“Yes. It is that important.”
“Then good luck to you man,” Painted shook Vastian’s hand, “remember to keep your movements to a minimum, and watch out for pain fields or you’ll set off the module alarm.”
“Thanks, Painted.”
A deep rumble filled the air and a huge square shadow moved up the walls of Mekala blocking out the sun momentarily. The lodestar rotated slowly in the air, Adam waved from the cockpit as it drifted to the ground.
Bugbear of the Pandion Knights pulled up in a skyguard, “Vast, Subs. Just wanted to wish you guys luck.”
“Thanks,” the pair smiled.
“Best go get ready for the onslaught.” Ehlana gave the boys a peck on the cheek, “Relax, you’ll be fine. Though Vast, feel free to die. I have a feeling you’ll look good in a dress.”
She jumped in the gunnery seat of the skyguard and squealed, “Ok babe, let’s kick some ass.”
Bugbear gave them a thumbs up and roared off, God only knows what would happen if he kept her waiting.
The rear of the lodestar dropped silently to the ground revealing the Phantasm nestled within, its sleek sweeping lines in stark contrast to the blocky cargo ship which had borne it from Sanctuary.
“Good luck guys,” Dekov said as Subs led Vastian to the Phantasm’s cockpit.
“Vast!” Painted called after them, “Try not to die.”
Vastian gave him a thumbs-up.
“You’d look horrible in a dress!”
*****
Off the coast of Xelas the first of the Sovereignty magriders engaged the New Conglomerate vanguards, the Sons of Temujin leading the initial assault. In Kyoi to the south the NC were caught unawares as the Bridge Burners Outriders swept up the coastline with heavy air support, reavers decimating the NC armour divisions. Verica was still recovering from the heavy orbital strike from the previous day and were quite unprepared for the legion of magriders that swept into the courtyard led by the Pandion Knights. The Conglomerate Continental Commander mobilised his forces to deal with the 3 pronged assault, only to find that Sungrey was now effectively under siege as well, and at that moment he truly realised the gravity of the situation. In attacking Amerish they had roused a beast of near mythical proportions. Their initial assault had only been against one outfit, now the bulk of the Vanu forces had occupied a base in record time and were sweeping into all the outlying facilities.
*****
The Phantasm wove through the canyons and valleys south of Verica, it quiet engines running at full burn as time was completely of the essence. It was easy to get lost within this vast mountain range, one wrong turn and you could run straight into the end of a box canyon before the idea of throttling-back ever occurred to you. Subs had flown it plenty of times before, and had got lost every time, but he wasn’t going to tell Vastian that. Every time you were in a valley that you think you recognise you round a corner and realise that you are lost.
“Our forces are moving hard and fast, I don’t think the NC have any idea what’s coming their way,” Subs said through gritted teeth as he banked hard around a sudden outcropping, “Long range radar shows air cav moving out from Ikanam, we should have clear skies all the way.”
“That’s great,” Vastian said, feeling his breakfast rise in his stomach, “you do actually know where you’re going in here, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Subs said as the Phantasm burst from the valley just to the north of Cetan, the base lying more or less abandoned, though a couple of sunderers did pass beneath them.
“Probably a convoy of BFR pilots,” Vastian mused, “shame that we couldn’t call in an orbital strike or they’d know that we’re in the area.”
“Best send a tell to Staceh anyway, let him know to expect company.”
The Phantasm dipped low and banked towards a final approach to Ikanam, the base shrouded in a fine mist rising from the coast. As the craft approached the base MrSubliminal became quickly aware that the fog was much thicker than he'd first assumed.
“Subs…?”
“Don’t worry, this baby’s got it covered,” and with a flick of a switch the screen of the cockpit became a multicoloured CGI display, “artificial terrain mapping enabled.”
“Jesus,” Vastian was gob-smacked as the false colour image of Ikanam was revealed before them.
The base, their home, was in ruins. The NC had crudely filled in the trenches dug by the Bridge Burners only a week earlier. A week. It felt like so much longer since they’d tried to beat back an entire NC legion, since they’d died one by one on the walls of their home. The barricades lay on end along the walls of the courtyard, thrown aside and abandoned as broken toys. The wrecks of the thunderers still lay around the collapsed back door; a testament to Damius’ wicked effectiveness.
“Uh, Subs, I’m having a thought.”
“Don’t strain yourself,” Subs giggled.
“The engines on the Phantasm are running cold, for engines…”
“Yeah-“ The Phantasm jarred as the first thermal rocket exploded against her hull. “Shit! In this fog the air is still much colder.”
A second rocket slammed into the craft blackening her canopy, Subs banked hard away from the base and slammed on the afterburners. “To hell with being silent! We can’t take another blast like that.”
As if on cue the craft bounced as a rocket slammed into her tail, an engine sailed off into the sky and exploded as the cloaking drive failed.
“Vast, bail, I’ve got to set the self-destruct.”
Before Vastian could object Subs slammed his fist into the passenger eject button and with a whoosh was sent through the cockpit canopy and was sailing through the air. He had a good view of the damaged Phantasm as it accelerated away on one engine, and then it exploded. The blast wave sent Vastian reeling, he didn’t see if Subs had made it out in time.
*****
Bazon led a platoon of battle-hardened Bridge Burners through the lobby in Verica, he’d been doubtful that they’d even get this far since he was backed by the Pandion Knights rather than the Bridge Burners. It wasn’t that he would ever doubt their ability, far from it, but he was used to having armour support from the TBB Outriders who were currently spearheading the Kyoi assault. The PKs had, as any mobile outfit, developed their own strategies which had left Bazon guessing as to what exactly was coming next, though he knew that this had been Staceh’s intention all along. If the Conglomerate had recognised PK attack patterns their counter assault would be thrown into disarray when they found TBB forces leading the assault.
It had worked well so far, and now Bazon led Dunky, FreeN00b, TheDuddd and Damius at the head of their platoon. They'd secured the lobby before the NC could even send a MAX.
“This is slightly disappointing,” Damius sighed as he torched the face of a Conglomerate CR5 with a burst of lasher plasma.
Bazon took out the last two NC REXOs with a couple of well placed shots from his pulsar, “What do you mean? We’re doing well.”
Damius glanced out the upper level exit, “I know, I know. Its just, I haven’t even had a chance to get into a good fight.”
“Tell you what,” Bazon quipped, “you go upstairs and secure the control console, we’ll wait here.”
“Really? Thanks,” Damius smiled wide, ran out the door and up the stairs to the uppermost level.
“Hang on,” Bazon should after him, “I was being sarcastic!”
Bazon looked back at his platoon. Dunky, new to the outfit, mouthed ‘What the fuck?!’
From above there was a sudden commotion.
“What the-“ Lasher blasts.
“Holy sh-“ More lasher blasts.
“Get him get him!”
“Aaaaaarrrgggh!”
“SHIT!”
“What the hell is that?!”
“Nonononononononononono!”
“Mommy!”
“Bwahahahahahaha.” More lasher blasts.
“Noes!”
“PH33R MEH!”
There was a moment of silence before a klaxon blared through the base declaring a hack.
“Sonofabitch!” Dunky exclaimed, “What the hell was that?”
“That, was Damius,” Bazon replied, leading the platoon up to defend the control console.
*****
Painted quietly led a group of pilots led by AdamLC along Azeban’s inner wall towards the airship terminal. He’d already scouted the way and cleared out the few NC defenders, now it was only a matter of getting the pilots to their lodestars.
“Painted,” HoaX’s voice broke quietly over the Sabres’ secure channel, “I’m at the CC, all’s quiet here. I’ve placed my boomers and am ready to hack, let me know when you’re in position.”
“Roger that.”
When the NC hack became a VS hack Painted would have all the distraction he’d need to hack out the transports, and so far their plan was going like clockwork. He allowed himself a moment to wonder how Vastian and MrSubliminal were doing, after all Subs was a pilot and Vast was an Amethyst Lancer, neither tasks requiring anything resembling stealth. He was pretty sure that this was also Vast’s first time in an infiltration suit. Well, with any luck Ikanam should be fairly empty, after all NC emplacements all over Amerish were under assault. He was sure they were fine.
*****
Vastian lay on his back in a shrub, his head hurt and he felt sick to his stomach from the fall. Debris from the Phantasm lay scattered around him, judging from the blast pieces had probably rained down as far away as Heyoka. He hadn’t seen Subs eject, he could only assume that he’d perished in the blast, Vastian was on his own.
Great! They hadn’t even managed to get as far as their target and already the mission had suffered a casualty. Vast thought about those last moments, he’d been about to protest about bailing when Subs had punched him out in lieu of protecting himself, and it had cost him his life. There was still such a thing as heroic sacrifice in this endless war, at the cost of his own life and inevitable respawn Subs had ensured that Vastian would be able to carry on the mission.
“Are you going to lie there all day or are we going to Ikanam?”
“Subs?!” Vastian sat up in shock.
“You were expecting maybe a cyberdemon?”
“Ok wiseass,” Vastian laughed with relief, “lets get on the bounce.”
“Here’s your crowbar,” Subs said as they engaged their cloaks and trotted off towards Ikanam.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
*****
Deuldiebob led the Outriders in a wide circle around Kyoi like eagles circling for the kill, he preferred that idea to the image of vultures circling a carcass. After all, why should they be portrayed as the vultures, Amerish was their home, this was their base.
Right now a force of Beta Blockers was pushing their way through to the control console, the Outriders were making sure that no reinforcements arrived for the NC.
“You know,” Tomskiii said from the gunnery compartment, “it would be nice even to see one vanguard.”
“Dammit, Tom, what have I said about tempting fate?” Bob grinned as a group of vanguards appeared on the radar, “Outriders, stop your grinnin’ and drop you linen. We’ve got NC on the scope.”
*****
Vastian crept slowly around the outer wall of Ikanam, carefully making his way around the broken hulls of the vanguard tanks he’d helped kill.
“Where’d all the glass come from?” Subs pointed to the fractured shards strewn beneath the walls.
“Lasher plasma on dirt.” Vastian pictured what it must have been like for the vanguard drivers running along under the walls from their broken tanks, trying to get to the gateway only for a dozen lashers to hang over the walls and open fire. Many of the NC probably had agonising deaths from the energy lash given off from the primary pulse, but Vastian had no regrets. The New Conglomerate had brought this upon themselves.
“We can climb here,” Subs said, climbing onto a stack of battered vanguard hulls. They climbed nimbly, the battered stack of blasted machina was fairly stable and soon they were once again standing on the walls they had so furiously defended.
From their position they could see the true extent of the damage to Ikanam. The courtyard was a mess of potholes and hastily filled pits, with piles of rubble and scrap along every wall, the building was pocket marked with gauss rounds and scorched from lasher fire. The doors to the generator room hadn’t been replaced and they could see the gen itself was still a broken wreck. A small portable power supply hummed in the room providing enough power to run the lights and the computers.
Vastian had started along the wall when he kicked an object that made a metallic ‘klink’ as it bounced a few feet along the wall. Picking up the artefact he had a sudden flashback, gauss rounds whistling through the air as in slow motion Staceh’s eyes suddenly went wide and glazed over, as he fell to his knees and collapsed forward. The NC soldier stood behind him with a broken knife hilt in his hand, the same knife hilt that Vastian now held.
“Whats that?” Subs asked, having doubled back after realising that Vast hadn’t been walking with him.
“Nothing,” Vastian said after a long pause, he placed the hilt in his inventory, “just a little souvenir to help Staceh put getting stabbed in the back behind him. Let’s press on.”
Slipping into the main facility they could hear a commotion in the lobby, the NC command were quite engrossed in the unfolding battle, it definitely was not going the way they had originally planned for it to.
“What the hell did you expect?” Vastian heard a familiar voice speak, it was the man who’d called himself Bluestar. “They may not have the numbers, but their technology more than makes up for their shortcomings.”
“What is your point, Dumas? Do you even have one?”
“My point is that you should have tried to become allies with the VS first when we still had the chance. It would have been much easier to fight this war with only one front.”
“Don’t start that enemy of my enemy bullshit, Dumas, the Vanu would never join forces with us, not after the debacle on Cyssor.”
“Yes, another foolish mistake to forever darken the history of the New Conglomerate, and instead of trying to make amends for our past crimes against the VS we go out of our way to antagonise them. We aren’t exactly do a great job of painting ourselves as the good guys here.”
“Sacrifices must be made. The road to freedom is paved with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
“And which are the VS? They don’t follow our cause, and last time I checked they never oppressed us. Do you forget that it is the Terran Republic who is our enemy? The Vanu Sovereignty suffered every bit as much as we did when the wormhole collapsed, the TR turned on them too.”
Vastian and Subs slipped on past and went down the steps to the lowers levels, they had more important things to do than listen to the philosophical debate on the ethics of the Auraxian War.
The lower corridors were thankfully empty, though the spent ammo cartridges of a week prior still lay scattered about the floor. The NC didn’t seem to be in any sort of hurry to tidy up, but then they probably knew that their time here was limited.
“You think that the pain fields are still active in the spawns?”
“I doubt it,” Vastian said as he moved down the corridor in the opposite direction from the CC, “it doesn’t matter, there aren’t any pain fields where we’re going.”
Going down another flight of steps the cloakers entered the Bridge Burners laboratory complex, a sprawling underground network that extended well beyond the boundaries of Ikanam’s surface walls. Vastian led MrSubliminal down a maze of corridors towards his AT labs, they passed numerous glass doored rooms with names like Psionics; Neuro Integration; Gravitics; EWO; NG Energy. Eventually they reached a lab marked ‘Ancient Technology Origins Project’, Vastian’s reverse engineering lab. Through the glass doors they saw that the lab was empty, though from the look of things the NC could be back at any moment.
They entered the room in which Vastian spent most of his life. The lab was a typical clean-room environment, sterile whites, static pads, UV baths and overly large air exchangers. Vastian slapped the airlock button and walked straight in.
“Hey, hey,” Subs called in shock, “are you not going to switch into cleans?”
Vast pointed at a cup of coffee steaming next to a jam doughnut perched on his electron microscope, “Containment has already been compromised.”
Uncloaking, Vastian moved past a huge bank of servers towards a cabinet resembling a giant document safe- the AT Crystal Archives. Entering a six digit code the hermetically sealed unit opened with a hiss and a white mist drifted out around Vastian’s feet. Inside were shelves of data crystals arranged according to the intended function of their contents, one by one Vast dropped the crystals into his inventory slots.
“Oh shit!” Subs cursed from the doorway, “Vast, someone’s coming.”
Something wasn’t right. There were two crystals missing. They had to be in the lab somewhere, they were coded specifically to his equipment.
“Vast!”
“There’s two crystals missing,” Vast cursed as he tossed equipment and papers aside as he frantically searched the lab, “we have to find them.”
A Conglomerate scientist entered the room and his jaw dropped to see a Vanu infiltrator tossing the lab. He was about to say something when a blade drew across his throat. Subs held the body as it convulsed on the floor, “Vast, we have to go now!”
Vastian started towards the door, out of the corner of his eye he spotted something wrong with a nearby equipment rack. One of the field encoders was missing, dear God, they could have taken the crystals anywhere.
They ran back down the corridor, rushing towards the exit before someone found the corpse they’d stuffed in the archive cabinet. Passing HoaX’s Melded Technology lab Vastian saw an exploded diagram of a flail hovering in the air, that was one of his crystals, of course they would work in HoaX’s terminals too. Ducking in he yanked the crystal and started back towards the doorway. To his left a box of crystals lay on a bench waiting to be checked, could his missing data be there? Reading the codes he saw that they were all old archives, pre-pulsar tech, all except for one, code XR71z-437 was new, and curiously it was also a different sequence from their standard coding system. Vast punched the code into his wrist terminal:

Project Code: XR71z-437
Technology Data: Concordia/Victoria
Melded Technologies Division
<>
ACCESS RESTRICTED TO MT AND ATOP CHIEFS
Enter access code >|

Vastian paled, he didn’t need to enter his code for he already knew what this crystal contained, and he just didn’t believe it. HoaX had actually managed to do it, a wild pipe dream of an idea that they had tossed about between labs for the last 5 months as little more than an exercise in abstract problem solving. He placed this crystal in his inventory as well, it alone made the trip worthwhile.
He rejoined Subs in the corridor just in time for the alarms to start blaring throughout the base, red warning lights strobed an intruder alert. They’d been spotted.
“Ah, shit,” Subs hummed over the sirens, “time to make a quick exit.”
“There’s still one more crystal,” Vastian called as he moved to the next lab, “we have to find it.”
“There they are!” A squad of NC agiles had entered from the stairwell, opening fire with their gauss rifles.
High velocity rounds whistled past Subs as he dived into the lab after Vastian, the corridor became a hailstorm of ricocheting slugs.
“Quick, Subs,” Vastian called as he pulled the vent panel from the air exchanger, “crawl to the left and climb down to the lower level.”
MrSubliminal dived into the duct and sliding on the shiny aluminium he pulled himself to a vertical shaft, in which ‘Sub Level 2’ was marked. The lowest level contained the maintenance facilities, including the vast NTU furnace that acted as the core of the construction matrix. He heard Vastian sliding quickly through the duct behind him, cursing as he banged his head in the narrow confines.
“Gogogo!” Vast called as the vent erupted in a hail of gauss rounds.
Subs dropped to the lower level with a bang, followed quickly by Vast landing in a heap beside him.
“I can’t believe they missed.” Vastian panted, “Head that way, then left, after 100 yards you’ll see a vent to your right; kick it off.”
They started down the duct, from somewhere in the vents above they could hear the NC in pursuit. It wouldn’t take them long to figure out which way the intruders had went. The noise of NC standard issue boots reverberated throughout the ducting; they could have been in front or behind at this point. Vast spun about with Beamer in hand, but there was no one back there. It didn’t help that the tunnels were so dark inside, the effect was quite claustrophobic, like crawling through some never-ending coffin.
“Here,” Subs had reached the vent and with a swift kick sent it clattering to the ground in the room beyond, “where are we?”
He climbed out onto a narrow catwalk suspended over what looked to be a thick grey jelly, his feet clipped the vent cover, which went sailing into the air and landed end up in the goop below. It fell flat and seemed to soak into the sludge, then it began to sparkle blue about it’s edges and disintegrate.
“We’re directly beneath the vehicle terminal,” Vastian said as he joined MrSubliminal on the catwalk, “that’s the Nano Soup. I wouldn’t recommend going for a swim.”
“Where do we go from here?”
Vastian pulled out his REK and began working on a small maintenance console, “I’m going to dial up a wraith. When you see the nanites sparkle you’ll know that it’s been constructed. When that happens get ready to jump, the platform will rise quickly from the soup.”
Subs gazed at the sludge, “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. But don’t worry, the platform is perforated and it repels nanites, it’ll be clean when it comes through,” the terminal started beeping, “and I’m in, so get ready.”
A blue glow washed across the surface of the grey slop, and a platform shot out of the liquid. Subs leapt and landed next to the Wraith stealthable quad bike, he could glance back only for a second as the platform took him beyond Vastian’s view.
Vast dialled in another wraith and moved to the edge of the platform. Two strong hands suddenly grabbed his neck and pulled him back hard against the wall as the wraith shot by.
“Got you now, you fucker!”
With a sudden burst of strength Vastian spun and punched the NC soldier hard in the face then grabbed his shoulders and dragged him from the vent. The pair grappled on the floor, the NC landing several sharp blows to Vastian’s chest, before the lieutenant grabbed the railing and swung his foot vertically up into his attacker’s chin.
“You think that you can win this?” The NC sneered as he drew his knife.
Vastian recognised the voice immediately and drew his own blade in turn, “I don’t rate your chances.”
The NC swung slicing laterally for Vastian’s chest, Vast grabbed the arm and spun himself into the NC driving his elbow hard into the soft nanoweave around the solar plexus. The agile coughed and stabbed upwards at Vastian’s head, who responded with a quick roundhouse kick which knocked the NC over the railing.
Vast moved to the edge and looked over. He saw that the NC was hanging for dear life to the grid of the catwalk, with fear plain to see in his eyes as he hung mere inches from the deadly nano soup that would break down everything that it touched to its component atoms.
“Jesus Christ! Don’t let me die like this!”
Vastian peeled back the hood of his infiltrator suit. The look on the Conglomerate soldier’s face changed to one of sudden recognition, and one of pure terror. Vast tramped hard on the man’s hands, watching as the sergeant who had taken such pleasure in plunging a knife into his guts a week ago now fell in slow motion to an excruciating death. The surface of the soup barely rippled as he landed with a soft splat, the man screamed as he slowly began to sink into the slop, the grey goo started to make it’s way up over his armour, slipping under his helmet and dragging him under.
Vastian watched until he was sure that there was nothing left, the he rehacked the terminal and dialled up another wraith.
*****
The NC threw everything they could at Verica, securing the capital would ensure them a firm foothold to move against the Vanu forces. In the grassy plains between Verica and Sungrey the battle was met with fury on both sides.
*****
Deuldiebob swung his mag alongside Bugbear’s as the two armoured divisions charged up the field, the mag engines roaring at full thrust as they bore down upon the NC armour.
“Ok, Vanu,” Staceh spoke over the continental chat, “this is our moment of justice. Now we will drive the NC from our home.”
The sky blazed with the pulses of mag rounds tearing through the air, Mosquito figthers shot overhead, and skimming low to the surface they rocketed over the NC vanguards to let rip against the rank and file troops. A squadron of enemy mossies went in pursuit only to find themselves coming up against Bazon and his squad of skyguards, their flak cannons peppering the sky with explosive shrapnel. Aven in the gunnery position let rip against the Conglomerate air forces as Baz bounced over a hump in the road.
“WooooooHOOOOOOOO! Defenders of the sky, baby,” Aven cheered as the mossies fell blasted and useless from the air.
The skyguard shot off a small cliff, sending them through the air over a line of magriders.
Deano leading a mag formation watched as a squad of skyguards jumped his forces as they charged towards a line of Peregrines, the BFRs moving to an attack stance. The ground exploded around the magriders as the mechs fired everything they had at the tanks, failing to notice the two galaxies passing overhead. Sultan and the Amethyst Lancer Gold Squad bailed over the first two BFRs as Mashed led Orange squad against the other two.
A lodestar passed over the Vanu front bailing an AMS driven by PaintedTarget, who was nearly sideswiped by a speeding Thresher hover-scout driven by Mikey1 with Grizzly1 in the gunnery seat.
“That’s it,” Staceh’s voice came through loud and clear over the comm channels, and from the background noise he was obviously somewhere in the front, “push them back to the hell from which they came.”
*****
MrSubliminal and Vastian jumped their cloaked quad bikes over another small hill as they charged north past Cetan, the base still appeared to be deserted.
“Shit Vast, do you hear the comms chatter?”
“Yeah, sounds to me like we’re missing the best part of the day.”
The quads skidded sideways around a pile of rocks before Vastian suddenly cursed “Oh shi-“
A blast blew him from his wraith, which went tumbling into MrSubliminal’s and knocking him from his bike, the pair half slid, half fell down a steep incline and came to a sudden halt in a bush at the bottom.
“What the hell?!” Subs groaned, not exactly lying in the most comfortable of positions.
“Mines,” Vastian replied, not exactly comfortable either given that Subs’ foot was pressed into his groin.
“Why on the stars would they lay a minefield out here?”
There was the sound of a dull thud, the ground shook slightly.
Vast looked over at a puddle as another thud shook the ground, ripples spread across the puddle’s surface.
“You feel that?” Subs said softly, “That’s an impact tremor is what that is.”
Vastian’s eyes went wide, “Engage your cloak, NOW!”
The pair had just engaged their cloak when an enormous foot tramped down in the puddle, mud squirting up around its toes; a deep growl filled the air. Subs traced his eyes up the length of the powerful leg to the large body it supported, it turned slowly towards the pair, then away again.
‘It can’t see us’ Subs was thinking to himself, ‘if we don’t move it can’t see us’
There was another deep growl as the BFR’s power core throttled up and it walked on.
Vastian exhaled, “God, that was close.”
Subs had slowly slid towards the tracks the battle frame had left in the mud, “Hey Vast, look at this. The BFR has been walking in it’s own tracks. It’s patrolling.”
Vastian crouched beside Subs and examined the footprints, by God he was right, no doubt about it, the BFR was walking in it’s own tracks, “Patrolling what?”
Two trees on the other side of the path seemed to shimmer, only momentarily but it was enough to be noticed.
The Vanu crept forward and slowly, ever so slowly, they passed beyond the trees.
“Holy shit!” the pair stood flabbergasted as the valley gave up it’s secret.
A massive encampment opened out before them. Using a ring of AMSes to share cloaking fields and with lodestars to keep them operational the hill surrounding this valley had been converted by the New Conglomerate into a massive mobile command post, a completely invisible battle centre. A dozen BFRs stood ranked behind maybe twenty vanguards, beyond them were parked two sunderer heavy troop transports.
“You want to bet that those are the same two sunderers that we saw earlier,” Vast said, dread welling up in the pit of his stomach.
Half a dozen reaver heavy fighters sat behind two dozen thunderers, whose engines were idling in the afternoon sun.
The Vanu crept quietly towards the command tent in the centre, being careful to keep behind a row of enforcers, the missile carrying humvees the New Conglomerate used for scouting missions. Inside the tent they could hear the NC commander briefing his troops, they were preparing to move on Verica whilst the VS forces were tied up with the main NC contingent.
Peering through a small side entrance they saw a portable holocon displaying the NC field objectives, a swift and brutal assault on Verica. Glancing further around the room Vastian’s eyes focused on another hologram, it displayed a series of filenames illegible at this distance, but he already new what they said. He recognised the design, and the small purple device that projected the image.
“That’s my field encoder,” he whispered to Subs, “there’s our missing crystal.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
Vast thought about that for a second, “I’m going to crawl round the room and sneak the encoder out. You contact Staceh or Dekov, fill them in and get them to blow this place to kingdom come. Tell them that it would be real nice if they didn’t OS me too though.”
“That’ll spoil Staceh’s fun,” Subs whispered as he shuffled back to a secure location.
Vastian got down on his hands and knees and crept slowly along the inner wall of the tent. In this darkened room he doubted that anyone would see his light-shadow, but he didn’t want to risk attracting the attention of someone with darklight implants.
“We know that Verica was secured by the Bridge Burners,” the NC commander spoke, “so expect to encounter lots of CE within the sphere of influence, BFR pilots be on the lookout for dropships, our source tells us that they have two, possibly three anti-battle frame squads. Now to give you all an extra incentive I’ll donate a bottle of Old Oshur’s Finest Whiskey to whoever puts a bullet in the cranium of General Bishop.”
The NC cheered at the offer. Vastian was disgusted with the display yet something about the commander’s words had stuck with him, their ‘source’...?
He let it slide for the time being as there were more important things at hand, quite near at hand in fact. He had almost reached the encoder when he felt the hair on his arms starting to tingle within his infiltration suit, a hum filled the air as sparks of static danced in the air outside.
The NC scrambled to the door.
“OS! OS!”
“How did they find us?”
There was panic as the troopers tore their way through the cloth opening of the tent and scrambled into the open plain.
“Get your vehicles on the move, NOW!”
Through the flapping canvas Vastian saw the pulse of plasma slam down hard on an AMS and lodestar. The cloaking field shimmered and flickered in the sky as the shroud over the complex failed, one by one the gridwork collapsed and the encampment was revealed to all.
There was a tramping of heavy machinery outside, some of the BFR pilots must have managed to get their battle frames online and were making a break for it.
Vastian grabbed the encoder in the confusion and ran to the open doorway, only to be thrown from his feet by a wave of hot air as another orbital strike hammered down on the vanguards. Dazed, a loud humming seemed to fill his head, a grumble that just wouldn’t stop. Realisation struck and he turned to see a lance of magriders sweep down into the valley, the Pandion Knights forcing their way. Overhead a flight of galaxies emptied the Sons of Temujin and the Bridge Burners onto the battlefield. A few of the Peregrines managed to flee under the heavy fire, but most were destroyed before they even powered up. Mashed and orange squad took up a perimeter around the command tent whilst Shrikeh and Damius led a charge into it’s core. A few lasher shots and it was all over.
A magrider cruised to a halt behind Vastian with MrSubliminal perched happily on the PPA cannon. The cabin seal popped with a hiss, it was thrown open and Staceh pulled himself out. He threw off his helmet as he climbed down from the mag and strode over to Vastian, Subs hoped down and joined them.
“I’m glad that you guys made it,” Staceh grinned as he shook their hands, “were you able to recover your data?”
Vastian peeled back his hood, his dark hair was tousled and slick with sweat, “Got it, boss. It’s all here, plus one for HoaX.”
“But why did they only take that one crystal?” Subs asked.
Staceh grimaced, the one question that he had hoped since this morning that no one would ask, and he nearly had a heart attack when Vastian activated the encoder.
“This crystal contains lots of theoretical data that we’d shared with the Melded Technologies labs. Most of it is built from fragmented Core data, we’d hoped HoaX’s boys could put some of the pieces together.”
The General relaxed when he was certain that there was no way the holographic images rotating before him even remotely resembled a starship, but that was truly the case why then had they bothered to take this crystal?
“Hey, Vast,” Damius called from the tent, he was holding an NC datapad, “check this out.”
The three strode over to Damius, who looked less than happy with what he was holding, “That big BFR, the first one to run… I think they’ve modified it.”
Vastian looked at the pad and passed it to Staceh.
“They haven’t… they couldn’t, could they?”
Vast didn’t answer Staceh at once, he was thinking back to Ikanam, back to the Melded Technology lab and the hologram, the exploded schematics of the flail shimmering in the air.
“They have, boss.”
“Then I guess the Amethyst Lancers better saddle up, you guys have another job to do.”