Part II - Exit Plans
Anderson Station
One of those strange things of writing, at least to me: I had to name some of my characters, a process I am usually quite terrible at. Fantasy or science fiction - it’s always the same struggle for me. How does one pick names? How do parents even do it, when they have a newling to welcome to the family? The mind boggles. When I focused on it, the solution evaded me. When I sat down to doodle some notes tonight, the names came as naturally as a sunrise in the morning. The Muses work in strange ways…
Part 1 here .
Chapter II - Exit Plans
The hydroponics lab had been depressurised the moment they secured it, and now the Ranger team waited at scattered points throughout the cluttered space for someone to open the hallway airlock. The door sensors showed the lab as still being 100% atmosphere - thanks to Dixon’s hardline override - and the security cam links showed them the blue-clad APU troops stacking up outside, getting ready to breach.
“Reyn, how are we looking on that exit point?” Jack Burrows was crouched behind one of the magnetron scanners, his helmet faceplate almost indistinguishable from the bulging dials and viewports on the flank of the machine. “We’re running out of time.”
Behind him, on the outside wall of the lab, two figures struggled with an oxy-torch and magnetic pliers, working to open an escape route. Soil and debris from the outer radiation shielding hampered their work, and trickled into the lab interior with every fresh cut. Anderson Station relied on about a metre worth of stacked regolith to protect it from solar radiation, and that same regolith was now fighting against them as it poured and smoked into the lab.
“Couple of minutes now, we have it halfway. The damn torch keeps cutting out.” Reyn, torch in hand, gestured for the other figure to grab the next plate, and began making a new cut once the magnetic grips bit. Pope, being the biggest of them all, was muttering and swearing softly over the comm net as the pliers kept slipping and shifting from the exterior panels. “Obvious statement coming up: this is not going as planned.”
Burrows shifted, realigned his carbine on the airlock door, and grinned. Ian, the tall Euro kid, was waiting next to the airlock behind a precariously-balanced cabinet filled with glass tanks, and was pale-faced in anticipation. Dixon, on the other side of the airlock frame, had a lightweight attack munition in each hand and a hardline lanyard running from his waist to the airlock console. If he stepped back far enough to rip the lanyard from the airlock terminal, the airlock would pop open despite all the sensor lights - on this side at least - screaming about the near-vacuum that they all stood in.
Big surprise for whoever was on the other side.
“Obvious reply coming up: these things never do. That’s why I brought you idiots along.” Burrows winked across the lab at Ian, who seemed shocked - still - at how casually the Rangers engaged with each other. “Dixon, how is it looking outside?”
“Still more of the blue-suits arriving. They’ve been setting charges, but it looks like they are waiting for something, or someone.” Dixon’s voice was crisply modulated and entirely artificial, coming from the implant in his neck. A lab accident years ago had cost him most of his throat, and all of his vocal cords. “Speak of the devil - I think I see him. Officer type, more armour than the rest. He’s talking to their demo teams now.”
“When you’re ready, then. Give us a three-count.” Burrows could not see the video feed that Dixon was slaved into, and saw the specialist’s thumb pop up from behind one of the munitions.
“On my mark. Three… two… one… mark.” Dixon stepped back on the last word, and the lanyard snapped taut before unplugging from the airlock terminal.
Burrows ducked his head down as the decompression wave blasted into the lab. The machinery table in front of him shook and danced, and the Ranger had to brace himself with elbows and knees to prevent the block of equipment from flying over him. From an Earth-standard atmosphere to the one-one-thousandth of Martian norm took less than a second, and Burrows heard brief shrieks from the far side of the lock before the atmosphere was once again too thin to carry sound. Scraps of debris - papers, plastic wrappers, pieces of lab equipment ripped up and displaced by the blast - swirled and fluttered around them as the shockwave dissipated, and when Burrows raised his head from behind the machine he was rewarded with the sight of a hallway tunnel strewn with prone, struggling APU troops.
When you were preparing to breach an enemy compartment, the last thing you expected was for the enemy to breach back.
Dixon, munitions in hand, waited a moment longer for the rush of air to settle before darting forward and tossing both of the munitions down the hall. Burrows sprayed a burst of carbine fire down the hall at the same time, aiming to keep the disarrayed soldiers down for a moment longer, and when the munitions struck the hallway floor and bounced for the first time, he too ducked down behind the lab machinery again.
This time around the explosion was felt more than heard. Something small and fast-moving - several somethings, in fact - rattled against the other side of the machinery cabinet, before ricocheting off something else and pattering to the floor beside the near-prone Ranger. Burrows watched with detached amazement as the glowing frag shard, still in its neat diamond shape, spun over and over while scorching black streaks into the plastic flooring underfoot.
“We’re out! Exit’s clear.” Reyn’s call came moments later, and Burrows rose to his knees again to spray more fire down the hallway. Broken, smoking shapes flopped and jerked there now, suits torn asunder by the fragmentation clouds the two attack munitions had released, and fire-suppressing foam had started to leak from the ceiling and several of the wall conduits in fat green blobs. At the back of the hallway, where it ran into a T-junction, more blue-clad shapes moved, and when Burrows shifted his fire in that direction, an answering stream of slugs came spattering back into the lab.
“Okay people, our time’s up. Dixon, get out. Ian, drop the shelf.” Burrows ducked to avoid a burst of fire that slammed into the other side of the machinery cabinet, then got on all four and scurried sideways to a different position as the cabinet shook and began to deform. Glass, metal shards and fragments of porcelain and zircon beakers crunched beneath him as he moved, and he got into position just as Ian’s laden shelf crashed down across the airlock door. It would not hold the APU for long - but the chemicals that spilled and splashed from the shattered containers in it provided exactly the cover they needed: they caught fire. Smoke billowed from the shattered mess within seconds, and the heat haze that emanated from the sudden pyre was strong enough to be seen with the naked eye even in the thin Martian atmosphere. To the APU tracking sensors on the other side, the lab was suddenly a solid white wall of heat. Ian, carbine in hand, charged past Burrows and leapt over one of the work benches to get to the exit that Reyn and Pope had cut, and the kid disappeared through the dust-choked panel moments after Dixon squirmed through.
Burrows gave one last burst through the dancing flames, then scurried back to the exit vent and hauled himself through. Reyn and Pope had cut the exterior lab panelling on three sides, creating a door-like flap which they held open as he pulled himself through, and once he was fully outside they let the flap swing back into place. It was a printed plastic derivative, reinforced with iron mesh for additional magnetic shielding, and was churned out in the industrial plants of one of the western Liberty zones. It was the perfect construction material here on Mars - if you used it according to specification.
Burrows and the Rangers were doing decidedly non-specification things to the hab walls at this point in time.
“Let’s go, people, the clock’s ticking. Reyn, take point.” Burrows shook himself off as he rose to his feet, and the suited shapes around him wasted no time in rushing down the outside of the habitat. Habit made him check his suit integrity by touch - knees, crotch, armpits, elbows - even as he turned and began to scan the view around them.
From the outside, Anderson Station resembled a series of low hills connected by mole tunnels - a natural result of burying the entire station under rock and sand. Geodesic domes, framed in steel and clad in the same plastic derivative they had just cut through, formed the living and working spaces of the station, while the rock piled on top acted to keep most of the radiation at bay. Except for clusters of antennae and sensor masts sticking out of the domes, it could have looked almost natural. If they had grass that could grow here, it might even have looked quite pastoral, like those film villages on Terra where the short people with the hairy feet lived. The Martian plains stretched off in all directions around them, and only a distant sandstorm marred the northern horizon.
Their location halfway up one of the domes was not natural though. Nor was the fleet of APU rovers that was scattered along several points of the station perimeter. Reyn and Pope had set off first and were already halfway down the outside of the dome, boots slipping and kicking up dust as they half-ran, half-slid towards the distant ground. Dixon was hot on their heels. Ian, God bless his soul, was still waiting for Burrows to finish. The way he gripped his carbine and kept it aimed at the exit vent behind them made Burrows smile. The kid was sharp, but green - very, very green. This raid would be a good part of his training, if he survived.
“Ian, do you want to be here when the APU gets into that lab?” Burrows let his carbine swing from its neck sling while he patted through his pouches and found another attack munition. “Or do you want to be far, far away?”
Ian took the hint and bolted down the side of the habitat without a word. Burrows primed his munition with deft fingers, then clipped it onto the outside of the warped vent panel. The green lights on top were already flickering faster and faster - and when they turned red, anything that moved within five metres of the munition would set it off.
With the trap set, Burrows gave a last look at their surroundings, noting the disposition of the enemy rovers, and then began his own slide-run down the side of the habitat. Rock scrabbled and shifted underfoot, dust rising with each footfall, and the angle of descent became steeper and steeper until eventually he had to step off and jump. Martian gravity, at around two-fifths of Terran norm, carried him in a slow glide down to the nearest dune top, and he had just landed - roll the ankles, bend the knees, take it easy - when the munition behind him exploded.
There will be more of this world, sometime in the future, but when and how - that remains to be seen. If you liked it and want to see more of my work, remember the SLS routine! (subscribe / like / share)
This is fast-paced and intense and I loved it! I always enjoy a good raid scene,but this one is particularly awesome!