First Contact

Chapter 867: Those Left Behind

The reward for a job well done is more work - Unknown

Undrat brought his armor up to live when the door to the grav-striker opened with a rumble.

Down below the city was lit up in red lights and the harsh lights of sodium bulb systems. There were other strikers and, of all things, anti-grav assisted rotor-system aircraft moving slowly around the city, shining down lights.

Three months of Search & Rescue and then termination and extermination had made the sight normal to Undrat.

The facts and reality that only two years Galactic, twelve years for him, he had been a warehouse worker was largely forgotten.

The black mantid strike team leader down by his legs, coming up only to just slightly above Undrat's armored waist, slapped his palm induction link on Undrat's leg.

"All right, Sergeant. My boys will go in first. We run into anything we can't handle, I know you'll be waiting," the black mantid, Captain Runs with Sharp Objects, said, his voice full of confidence.

"As I have, sir," Undrat said.

"I'll leave a vid-link to you," the mantid said.

Undrat nodded. While he missed the full color computer enhanced video of days gone by, with its high fidelty and smoothly crisp quality, the new version, red and black, were understandable. Rumor control had been stating for a month that the Confed R&D boys and girls were working on a way to make the system full color photo-realism.

Undrat would prefer it stayed red. He had a cyberarm, a cybernetic lung, kidney, and nerve grafts through his entire left side from where a shade had climbed out of someone's cybereye and attacked him.

The black mantids dropped one at a time from the grav-striker, their hard-light Icarus systems spreading out gauzy wings of energy to slow them at the last minute as they landed in standard post. Left knees down, right knees up, head bowed for the armor systems to full synch up, weapon held barrel to the sky in the right hand, left fist pressed to the ground to let the Icarus system bleed off the kinetic energy and inertia.

Twenty-five mantids. Four squads of five enlisted-beings, one NCO, then a platoon sergeant.

Back before Shade Night, the squads had been thirty-three. Four squads of seven, with NCO's.

But numbers were low and Undrat knew the Confederate Armed Services, and by extension, he himself, would just have to make do.

Undrat watched as two moved up to the building's ventilation shaft and ran detectors in front of the air output system.

Switching channels, Undrat listened in on the sweep and clear team's radio chatter, locked out from adding to the conversation.

"High pollen count. Type-Three's. Some pheromone signatures, looks like more Type-Threes," one of the mantids said.

Undrat looked down at the M318 in the gunnery harness he was carrying. He altered the targeting system for pheromone ID & Lock according to the telemetry being sent back by the black mantids.

It was all UHF, analogue systems, instead of the digital.

But the Shades hid in the dark spaces between the ones and zeroes.

A quick order to his men had the other four Tunkna'rn Marines adjust their own weaponry, shields, and filtration systems. Undrat felt the jab of an anti-fungal injection as well as a pheromone/spore counter-agent.

The black mantid disappeared into the building. Undrat saw one slap a repeater on the door frame.

"Stairway has fungal growths," the black mantid Captain said. "MI was right, this building crawls."

"Be careful, Six," came the order from the Treana'ad Lieutenant Colonel overseeing the mission.

An unnecessary order, but Undrat had learned that just hearing a superior officer's voice on the line, knowing that they were watching over you, could have a calming effect during high stress situations.

"Hallway on top living area floor had light fungal and moss growth on the walls. No phosphorescence yet."

"Moving to first habitation entryway."

Undrat watched as the Captain moved up and two of his men flanked the door. The Captain banged on the door.

"Yes?" the voice sounded right.

Undrat's armor rated it as a Puntimat at a 62% certainty.

"Maintenance," the Captain said.

"My mate does not allow me to open the door," the voice sounded different.

Hikken - 58% certainty.

The Captain made a motion and the squad backed up.

"We've got mimics," the Captain said.

A quick check told Undrat that the hab-block could hold up to a quarter million families. Before Shade Night the building had a 1.4 million being population, even with the raging war.

"Pull back to the strikers," the Colonel ordered.

"Sir?" the Captain asked.

"If they have mimics, they've got pods, if they have pods, they've got pools, if they have pools, you are about thirty seconds from a full frontal assault," the Colonel said. "The building is hyperalloy and class-six ferrocrete."

Undrat knew what that meant.

He was already stepping out when the icon blinked for his team to dismount.

"Roger, sir, withdrawing," the Captain said. He didn't sound happy.

Undrat landed smoothly. Knee and fist down, Madame Three-Eighteen up, head down. He raised his head and looked around.

The other four members of his squad landed around him.

Undrat turned on the LEDs on his gloves, turning and facing one of the strikers. He gave the hand signals for "All Down Secure" and turned his attention to the roof.

Already his armor had been loaded up with a schematic of the building.

Two-hundred stories. Shaped like an H.

His armor highlighted the two mid-level relaxation areas. Indoor parks at floor one-hundred-twelve, at the joints of the H and the middle of the long central bar.

Another grav striker was approaching, cargo in a net underneath. Two of Undrat's men were using their gauntlet mounted LED flashers to guide them in.

The door opened and Undrat glanced at it. One of his men had that access covered was already moving his M318 to the side.

The black mantid team moved up. The Captain put his palm on Undrat's hip and the induction link was made.

"We dropped a sniffer down the stairwell," the black mantid said. "Pollen and pheromone levels increase. You've got glowie floaters at level one-thirty and below. Masking pollen and pheromones at level one-twenty and below."

Undrat simply signified that he had heard.

"My men will come with your team," the Captain said.

Undrat merely signaled assent.

The Captain didn't take offense. The Tukna'rn weren't like the Terrans, who talked all the time. The Tukna'rn acted like they were going be charged by the vowel.

His men had drilled and performed this action before.

"Housing blocks within the projected radii are moving to Def-Con War status," the Colonel said.

"Roger," Undrat acknowledged.

In the buildings surrounding the giant hab-complex, heavy battlesteel shutters lowered down, startling the occupants that remained. Lights went from harsh white sodium to deep red and neon signs that had replaced the LCD screens lit up with "WARNING" shining brightly.

"Packages secure, Sergeant," the assistant squad leader, one Sergeant Tremak said.

Undrat held up his hand, sending the tac-pack to the mantid Captain. When he got a blink back that it was loaded, he opened his fist.

"Move out," Undrat ordered. "Frangible rounds only. Maximum rate of fire at one-eighty rounds per minute, minimum penetration, glazier core only."

The other Tukna'rn blinked back they were ready.

Crossing the roof to the other side, Undrat led the way for the Tukna'rn, three of the black mantid strike team moving ahead of him. The door took a moment to open, the track gummed up by nearly invisible moss. The stairwell was dark as the group moved down. The power-assist armor of the mantid strike team hissing and whirring quietly, the heavier armor of the Tukna'rn troopers thudding and growling. At each floor the mantid EW NCO activated the controls to put the doorway in security mode, a grate sliding across. At the one-hundred-sixty-third floor the sterifield began to crackle and hiss, enough contaminates that it was visible.

The EW trooper turned it off. After that, it was merely mechanical sealing.

From one hallway came a whisper out of the darkness.

"Can I come with you?" a voice asked. Undrat's armor registered it as a 32.84% positive match for a Telkan podling.

The team paused while the black mantid EW troopers jimmied the doorway controls and the grate slid across the opening.

The team moved on.

The luminescent pollen and spores began to show, twinkling silently. They drifted upward in the hallway and a faint current of air moved from below to the colder levels above. One of the mantid troopers stuck out a sensor wand, his sensitive antenna protected by his armor, and ran a scan.

"High humidity, roughly 1.2 kilometers per hour, heading from down below. High pollen and spore count. Lots of bacteria," the mantid sent across the link, his voice hushed.

There was no need for it, nobody could hear the troopers outside of their helmets, but old habits died hard.

"Doublecheck filters," Undrat ordered. He could admit he missed his eVI assistant, but there was a long waiting list for any new ones being baked up. Many of them had been killed when Shade Night had happened and the shades got loose in the VR and eVR systems, including the holographic memory systems that the eVI's used.

Undrat still wasn't sure how a Shade manifested inside holographic memory systems, even though he'd had it explained multiple times.

He just knew that they could.

Everyone, including the mantid team, blinked back.

That was something that Undrat appreciated.

Runs with Sharp Objects was an experienced operator with over thirty years of military operation experience and the rank of Captain in the Special Forces system.

Undrat had twelve years of experience and was a Sergeant First Class.

The black mantid officer was deferring to Undrat, who had the last few months as experience of sweeping through the buildings.

Undrat had seen what happened with a confused chain of command and officers struggling for superiority and dominance.

He had been a warehouse worker beneath the Lanaktallan Overseers.

"Go to internal air," Undrat ordered as the walls began to be smeared with thick fungus instead of the moss that seemed to be able to pit and crumble ferrocrete.

The blinks came back.

Undrat stopped at the stairwell entrance for the park. He checked his map again.

The park, a wide avenue full of stores to the central recreation area, then the avenue again to the far park.

"Two in," Runs ordered.

Two of the black mantids slipped through the door, blending in with the shadows. Two windows opened up just past Undrat's peripheral vision. Shades of red and black showed the short maintenance hallway, then a heavy door. It took a crowbar to open it after the other mantid squirted superlube on the hinges.

The door swung open silently and the flare compensation activated as the area beyond was revealed.

Plants filled the area. Ropes of moss and fungi hung from the ceiling. The paths were barely present. Fronds and leaves filled the gap of the path. Small movement of either pollen or lazy insects moved around.

Nobody said anything as the two black mantid troops moved carefully down the path.

It took nearly a full three minutes for them to reach the middle of the park.

Where a decorative artificial pond should have been was a pool of dark green liquid that glowed softly. It bubbled slowly, fat bubbles with thick skins that popped and left behind impressions in the fluid.

"Shit, brood-pool," someone said.

"Silence," Undrat ordered.

There was an assortment of organs twisted together, pulsating with unnatural life, on one side. Feeding tentacles, more like ribbed plastic tubes, were reaching out from various points in the mass and into the pool. A thick organ descended into the pool, and as Undrat watch it rippled.

"Lamashtu pod," Runs stated. "Drop masking smoke on our signal."

"Move out. Single line. Safeties on, external protective systems and battlescreens off," Undrat reminded everyone.

Just blinks back.

Undrat was third in line, behind a black mantid tech with a scanner and Runs with Sharp Objects. Twice insects landed on his armor, drawn by the warmth, preening or cleaning for a moment before taking off. Pollen started to dust his armor and he checked his joints protective seal readouts.

"Drop maskers," the Captain ordered.

Both black mantid set canisters by the grotesque mass of tissue, pulled the rings, catching the trigger levers, and backed up.

The canisters began to hiss, spreading out a synthetic pheromone version of "everyone is asleep and everything is OK" in an invisible cloud.

The pulsing and the movement of hidden glowing organs slowed down in the mass of tissue.

Undrat's team moved up, one of the troopers kneeling down so another could remove the package from the back of the armor. Once that other one took the weight and took physical control of the package, the kneeling one cut power to the electromagnets built into the 'hot plate' on the back. The other trooper smoothly took the weight, moved over, and set the package down.

One trooper moved up and sprayed the contents of the container with a mist that would conceal it from the pheromone and spore systems.

Undrat checked the readout. Instead of the fancy old LED readout it now had a square red 8 with lines inside the two boxes of the eight.

Undrat carefully typed in the code on the mechanical keypad.

"L I V E" it blinked.

Undrat made sure it was set for both time and for incoming detonation signal.

Once it was ready, he double-checked the radio repeater built into the protective carrying case, ran a quick activation check, then closed the case. One of the black mantids checked the connection and the spool on his back.

"Move out," he ordered.

One of the black mantids used a staplegun to secure the wire to the ground as they moved. Another one sprayed it with pheromone neutral fixer to adhere it and cover it.

The path to the avenue was winding, the group twice having to backtrack when large Lamashtu pods appeared in the way.

The avenue wasn't much better. The storefronts were all shattered, bulging out with fungal and mossy growths. The air humidity was at high enough levels that even the warm power armor of the Tukna'rn infantry was covered with a thin sheen of spore and pollen laden water. Bacteria were trying to assault the joint seals of the armor, the power leads to the Madame Three-Eighteen, even trying to latch onto the warsteel body of the grand old dame.

Twice Undrat ordered everyone's weapon sprayed with anti-bacterial and anti-fungal spray, then a quick spray of corrosive cleaner.

The central recreation area was even bigger. Cycle paths, walking paths, playgrounds, excercise trails, and multiple false ponds.

Undrat ordered the central package set down and went through the stages again. He checked the radio transmission trail and got back a green light and a temperature reading from the roof.

It was getting colder.

Good.

Cold was the best weapon against the spread of the Dwellerspawn taint.

The black mantid hooked a T-junction to the wire, using his tools quickly, then connected the package to the main line in addition to starting a second line. He gave a thumbs up and the team moved out, the clack of the staplegun every ten meters feeling loud despite the rustling of the mutated vegetation.

The avenue was thick with drapes of moss.

Undrat had heard the Confed xenobiologists angrily refer to the 'fungi' as some kind of multi-cellular organism designed to break down modern materials, that fungi were another category.

Everyone still just called it fungi and made sure their filters were good.

The moss was some kind of single-celled organism with explosive growth rates and corrosive properties, more akin to a slime than a moss.

Everyone just classified it as moss and moved on, making sure they had the new Cutting Blade Mark III on their hips.

The xenobiologists pointed out that the moss, the fungi, the bacterial shelves and stacks, the slimes, the oozes, and even the insects were all part of one large 'symbiotic system' that came close to being able to being a unique organism. They pointed at certain mollusks and other ocean creatures that did not grow shells of their own but rather used what they could find, pointing out that the modern buildings were more like that, forming a shell of an organism.

Everyone just called them 'hives' and lit the flame throwers.

The xenobiologists just went out and got drunk.

Undrat knew that the black mantids's nerves had to be stretched. Nearly an hour had gone by and it looked as if the massive organism they were inside of had not noticed them.

Undrat could feel the clock running in some part of his brain that years of combat had somehow awoken. He lacked the words, the concepts to explain it beyond "combat clock", but when he had notified the mental health technicians and the mental hygiene physicians, they were not alarmed and had told Undrat that what he was experiencing was common to the more martial species.

The sand was running out and the gears were slowing.

"Double-time," he ordered. "Safe to live."

Icons blinked.

Captain Runs with Sharp Objects had worked with Undrat several times over the years and he merely passed the order up to his men. The icons blinked back and Runs blinked his own icon to Undrat.

If the big tough Tukna'rn said combat was coming, well, Runs knew he could take that shit to the bank and cash that fucking check.

They reached the park and repeated the steps. Two forward, prep the way. Put down the masking grenades. Set down the package. Arm the package. Close the casing. The wiring specialist ran two T-junctions, hooking the system in with redundancy.

Undrat was in the middle of closing the casing when he felt the sand run out and jam the gears.

"HEADS UP!" he snapped, his hands moving to the heavy autocannon and pulling it around. The mantids went to active optical jamming.

Just as a rude unfinished creature lunged out of the pool. Its mouth was huge, full of teeth built by having small microscopic creatures layer battlesteel and warsteel like they were making coral. The eyes were red and bloodshot, bulging from half-finished sockets. The entire thing was wet, glowing bluish skin, hide like wet leather.

Its jaws missed one of the matnid by inches, slamming closed with an exhalation that was mostly slime from the pool being pumped out of the book lungs.

"Exfil!" Undrat ordered. "Active defensive fire only."

The mantid didn't shoot at the creature, instead dodged the attack. One of the Tukna'rn stepped forward and shoved the creature, their boots flaring blue as the graviton assist kicked in.

The creature screeched as it was pushed into the pool before its fungal pod nodules on its back could clear the glowing green slime.

Undrat was in the middle as everyone rushed toward the maintenance exit on the far side.

Mantid reflexes were fast, as fast as power armor assisted Tukna'rn reflexes. Bladearms covered with armor with vibroblade edging, were used to slash at a creature's face, or plunged into eyes to blind the creature.

The goal was to push them back, not kill them.

The Tukna'rn kept up the pace as the mantid dropped back to cover the running Tukna'rn infantry.

When the door came into sight, Undrat let Madame Three-Eighteen pull into storage position and broke into a full run.

His shoulder hit the heavy calcium/ferrocrete structure, designed to look like twisted bones, over the door, crashing through it, the door crumpling and bouncing off the far wall to fall into the opening in the middle of the stairwell and vanish.

"We need emergency extract! Heading for the roof now!" Runs said over the radio.

It took nearly a second and a half for the reply of "Roger" to come back along the radio relays.

Undrat kept the lead, pulling out the Mark III Cutting Bar. A creature lunged forward, out of the doorway, and he cut it in half. Another was on the landing but a quick set of 'bayonet drills' sent it falling in three pieces down the gap.

Multiple creatures screeched in rage from below.

"You'll have to do a faith boarding. We have tentacles coming out the windows. Building is not responding to Def-Con War signals," came crackling over the comlink.

Slapping his cutting bar onto the magnetic lock, he deployed Madame Three-Eighteen, moving to FOOF cored rounds. Undrat activated the timers just in case they had forgotten they were active.

Being in the lead, behind two black mantids, Undrat paused at each door opening, firing down the hallway until the team was by, then taking his place at the rear. The lead Tukna'rn emulated what Undrat had just done, hurrying to catch up.

Where the rounds hit white fire erupted, often accompanied by creatures bursting into flame. More than a few hallways were completely lined with pulsating tissue that the FOOF gleefully lit on fire and started devouring.

"Tentacle activity rising. That hive is upset," the radio crackled. Striker-Three's icon flashed as the words came across.

Someone dropped an implo-grenade down the stairs.

The wire was still feeding out of the spool, the spool whirring as they headed up the stairs. It had gone to the creation engine to feed it, and the heat of the creation engine had left it covered with spoors and pollen, increasing its heat and slush even as bacteria worked at getting inside the nanite pool the filled the interior of the creation engine.

"Ten stories!" the black mantid yelled as he quickly speared a flying insect almost his size three times, the last with the vibroblades unpowered so he could fling it into the central gap of the stairwell.

The team thundered up the stairs.

Undrat took his place at the rear of the line, turning to fire behind him.

At the stairs.

The ferrocrete exploded, burning as it fell. Undrat shot at the supports, the beams, bolts, slabs of ferrocrete, burning through nearly a hundred rounds.

He turned and ran after the team, seeing that already another had taken his place.

"South side of roof! Run for it!" Striker-Two said as the team burst out onto the roof. "Leap of Faith boarding, boys!"

Tentacles had pushed their way through the roof, waving wildly. Two were burning, the base on fire that shown with the white, almost transparent hellfire of FOOF having itself a good old time.

Three of the strikers were lit up, hovering ten meters from the roof. Two others were off to the side, their doorguns deployed and the gunners shooting down.

"Grab the sneaks!" Undrat yelled, letting Madame Three-Eighteen pull back then grabbing two mantids under his arms. He put on speed, running for the edge of the roof.

It was over a long way down.

His armor computed it for him. Angle, velocity, push-off.

His armor assist kept him from kicking off too hard as he sailed through the night air.

He could see where dozens of tentacles had pushed through the roof. Many of the ones two-thirds up the way were on fire. The strikers were ripping them apart, sending tons of fungus and meat to the ground, where they impacted hard enough to send up shards of asphalt.

He his almost perfectly. his armor whining as he hit the grav-boots to stick the landing. The sterifield over the door of the striker crackled as he went through it, covering his armor with small tendrils of electricity for a split second.

When he dropped the two mantids, one fixed the angle of his beret and turned around.

"Gravity, look at that," one said.

Not bothering to look at whatever was so impressive, Undrat turned and instead held his hand out, grabbing one of his men's shoulder pauldrons as they landed on the striker.

Within 90 seconds, everyone was aboard.

The strikers banked hard and pulled back.

"Radii adjecent buildings Def-Con War status confirmed," came the Colonel's voice. "Stand by for detonation."

"Standing by," the pilot of 9-14-9 responded.

"Detonation in five... four... three... two... one... detonation," the Colonel said.

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC

The building seemed to swell slightly. Then white light shone from the cracks. The tentacles exploded outward as white light filled the windows. The roof blew off, the explosion climbing into the air.

Undrat's rad monitor ticked up and dropped.

For a moment, the ferrocrete burned with a harsh white light, then the building crumbled into itself.

The words came over the radio, filling Undrat with the satisfaction of a job well done.

His Overseer would be proud.

"Detonation confirmed. Target destroyed."