Chapter Twelve
Orkhana
The Commander packed up the last of his personal documents, leaving everything else to be burned when they left. The orders had been passed down and implemented, causing him to implement the sabotage plans that had long been considered a final recourse, only to be used in the worst outcomes.
He supposed that this was that, then.
“Are we prepared to evacuate?” He asked, leaving his office.
“Yes Commander. Most of the civilian force have already moved down to the sub level.”
“Good. That just leaves us, then,” He said. “Ensure we leave nothing behind that will survive the fires.”
“As you command.”
Indeed. As I command, The Commander was far from a happy Sirhan at that point, but he was the man in nominal command of the operation, and until that changed, he would continue to do his duty.
The Saviors had tasked them with a job, one that he had done his best at but now found himself unavoidably failing to accomplish. The best he could do was clean up the mess he was leaving behind.
It was a poor second place, but it was all he had left.
His team was nearly packed up when everything shook around him and the walls blew in.
The Commander was thrown to the ground by the blast, minimal though it was. He recognized the technology, Alliance issue breaching system. He’d even used them in the past, albeit not officially.
“Take everything you can and withdraw!” He ordered at the top of his voice.
He reached for the detonators he carried, intent on ensuring that nothing else was left, even if his own bones were part of what burned.
*****
Sorilla was third through the breach, following after Kriss and another of the Lucian’s, her guns up and seeking targets through the warping twists in space that the breaching rounds had left that roiled smoke and dust nearly as badly as the concussion through atmosphere would have.
The Lucians immediately fell upon the closest of the Sirhan and rendered them roughly unconscious, but she wasn’t interested in the rank and file. What mattered to her were those that might actually know something. Though she wasn’t certain she would be able to properly delve any intelligence from them, Sorilla knew she had to try.
Her armor and implants were running pattern recognition software, supplementing her own ability to recognize faces which would be badly crippled by trying to spot the subtleties of alien physiology.
Sadly ‘they all look alike’ was a real phenomenon for humans. Her own formative pattern recognition had been focused primarily on Hispanic and Caucasian features, with a decent mix of other races to give her the ability to easily spot subtle feature elements in almost any race on Earth… but none of that helped when dealing with aliens.
It was a biological shortcut that could be overcome, and she was working on it of course, but for now she knew to lean on her computers.
They kicked back a recognized figure quickly, and she caught up a couple seconds later as she looked closer.
Slightly different uniform, seems to be showing dominant traits, issuing commands… that’s my man. Sirhan. Whatever.
Sorilla broke from the Lucian formation as her choice of target waved at the rest and reached for something on his uniform. She didn’t know what it was, but in the mess she was currently striding through, Sorilla had little intentions of leaving it to chance.
She sprinted across the room, ignoring the crossing fire from the slowly resisting group of aliens, charging right at the one she’d decided was in charge.
He saw her coming, however, and scrambled backwards in what she was fairly certain was a dead panic, fumbling more desperately at whatever it was he was trying to grab. Sorilla focused on the object as his grip closed around it and tried to recognize it but couldn’t.
She lunged across the final distance, tackling into him, and bringing both of them crashing to the ground. She felt rather than heard the slight warp in spacetime as the device in his hand triggered, but it wasn’t a weapon. Sorilla rolled off of her target, bettering his limb until the device was sent skittering away, and snapped a hand down over what seemed like it might pass for the species’ throat.
Hope I got that right, be embarrassing to be threatening to choke him out by grabbing something else.
“What was that!?” She snapped in the Alliance language, leaning into his space, and raising the volume through her armor.
He just grinned or maybe spat at her. Honestly, she wasn’t certain, and it didn’t really matter since the only thing she cared about was him answering her question, something he clearly wasn’t doing, so she thumped him back down into the floor before rising up to her feet and lifting him with her single-handedly.
“Let us go have a look for ourselves then, shall we?” She snarled, dragging the struggling alien along with her, the strength of her enhanced armor making a mockery of his attempts to break free.
The device was on the ground where it had clattered into the wall, and she slammed the alien into the wall before letting him slump down as she knelt to pick it up, flipping it over carefully while examining it.
Too small for a tactical charge. Has to be a signaling device, Sorilla decided.
“Stay put.” She planted a foot on the alien, driving him full to the ground, pivoting at the waist so she could signal Kriss. “Sentinal Kriss! Here!”
Kriss quickly passed off what he was doing to another Sentinel and made his way over, “What is it, Colonel?”
“He triggered something,” She said, tossing the device over.
Kriss caught it, examining the small item closely. “That is not good. This is a low power special transmitter. It can send a signal anywhere on the planet with ease, but I strongly doubt the signal had to go that far. I will take him.”
Sorilla nodded, reaching down, and pulling the Sirhan off the ground and handing him over to the Lucian. Kriss easily handled the other alien, making short work of a brief attempt at a struggle before dragging him back to where Sienele was waiting.
“Be wary,” He said over his shoulder. “And be ready to move. If this was a sabotage device, we may not get any warning before whatever he triggered becomes… an issue.”
“Understood,” Sorilla said, already turning to examine the rest of the area as Kriss left with the prisoner.
She checked the computer systems first, easily finding that they’d been rigged with what she expected were explosive or thermal charges based on the hyperspectral analysis from her corneal cybernetics. Chemical accelerants were fairly universal, all things considered. Not being an EOD specialist, she flagged down the closest Sentinel, pointed them out, and moved on.
Whatever he triggered doesn’t seem to be these, which I’m guessing is a bad sign.
If the transmitter hadn’t set off the obvious explosives, she was fairly certain she didn’t really want to know what it had set off.
Too bad I don’t get a say in the matter.
Knowing that they were almost certainly going to get an evacuation order very quickly, Sorilla jacked back into the facility map and examined her surroundings through the mixed reality experience of the four-dimensional scan feeding through her implants. It was, as always, a significant rush to be able to experience the facility as though it were part of her own body, an extension of her senses in a way, made all the more intense by the extension of that sensation through the progress of time.
One thing she immediately noticed was a disconnect that hadn’t been there when she experienced the map before.
Sorilla turned to a dead-end hall and walked down it, staring at the old dust covered wall for a moment before she reached out and brushed her hand against it. The armor shod gloves of her armor came back clean as she rubbed her fingertips together.
The dust is fake.
Sorilla slipped back through the construction of the facility, surprised to find that the wall had been there from the start, built intentionally to hide a corridor that slanted down and vanished below the facility.
Bingo. Now, where’s the control for this thing?
She dropped the map emulation, focusing on what was in front of her, and traced along the wall, looking for any sort of switch or scanner that might open the way through. Nothing obvious popped up, but a slight brush against her senses… like a breath of air across the back of her neck… caused Sorilla to stop.
She’d felt this before, on Child of God.
Sorilla reached out, feeling through the accelerometers for that feeling again as she passed her hands through the space along the wall.
Almost… where… There. Got you.
It was a spacetime twist, the sort of control system she’d found on the downed ship on Child. Sorilla felt it out briefly, then dipped her hands in and began searching out the control interface. She winced briefly as her fingers warped, looking like impossible twisted caricatures of themselves before she found the interface and felt the full impact of it blossom to life before her.
The Ross, and possible the Gav if she were right, used interface systems that were completely invisible to any other species that didn’t have their peculiar spacetime sensory organs. That was her guess, at least, and a theory she’d been working on since the mission to Child of God.
This was the first real secondary confirmation she had of it, however.
The interface was a beacon to her now that it had been activated, however, and that was proof enough that they were doing something with spacetime. Her ability to sense and manipulate it was another point in favor of it being some type of interface.
Sorilla slid her hands along the event horizon of the small space warp, feeling out the sections that were open to manipulation. It was a simple design, much more so than the one of the downed ship, but without being able to see it, she was still largely making guesses.
There… I think…
Sorilla bit the bullet and took her chances, triggering the controls she’d found. Everything around her shifted suddenly. Light doppler shifted and sound became attenuated beyond any hope of understanding as she felt her feet suddenly slide against the floor as she was dragged across it and into the wall.
*****
Sienele examined the device for a moment, recognizing it immediately as he looked sharply at Kriss.
“Are you certain he activated this?”
Kriss merely grunted, “The Colonel seemed certain.”
“Damn.”
Sienele wasn’t one to trust many people, especially not non alliance races that they had only recently been at war with, but he didn’t see any reasons for her to be lying about that.
“Very well,” He said, “Bring him. We’re going to evacuate the facility just to be certain. I do not want all trace of this investigation wiped out. We are withdrawing.”
Kriss grumbled, but nodded, “Very well. Sentinels! To my location!”
The other Lucians quickly formed up and Sienele addressed them sternly.
“We are leaving the facility now,” He ordered. “The prisoner here has triggered what may well be a destructive device, and until we are certain I do not intend to take chances. If there are any prisoners that appear to be of value, take them. We are leaving.”
The Lucians were clearing up when Sienele noticed something or rather, someone, was missing.
“Sentinel Kriss,” He called.
“What is it, Envoy?” Kriss asked, looking over.
“Where is the Colonel?”
*****
A wave of vertigo assaulted Sorilla as she felt her legs drop out from under her. She hit the ground on her knees, clawing at her helmet as she held the urge to vomit back as long as possible. Gas hissed as the pressure equalized once her armor detected a breathable atmosphere and allowed her to break the seal.
She dropped the helmet to clatter on the floor, leaning to one side so that she would hopefully miss spattering it with her vomit, and only then did Sorilla allow herself to stop holding back the pressure that had built. Liquid splattered on the ground as she heaved, the stench assaulting her as she pushed her helmet further out of the way and moved as slowly as possible from the mess while taking deep breaths.
Vertigo hasn’t hit that bad in a long time. What the fuck just happened?
Sorilla gritted her teeth, very slowly moving her head to look around her, trying very hard to avoid making the nausea any worse.
She was in the hallway but…
Is it just me, or… did the wall flip on me?
Sorilla groaned, picking up her helmet and climbing uneasily to her feet as she looked around. She didn’t quite dare to plug in the Ross map through her accelerometers, but she was willing to bring up the overhead view and route it through the cybernetics in her corneas.
Oh crap. I’m on the other side. What the hell…
She didn’t remember a hole opening in the wall or anything of that nature. In fact, what she’d felt there was almost… it was almost like going through a Jump Point.
That’s insane.
Sorilla didn’t know what the hell to think, but she was pretty certain that FTL jumping someone less than ten feet was one of the single stupidest concepts she’d ever heard of, even if it was through a solid wall. There were better goddamn ways to hide the entrance to your super secret evil villain base.
She moaned slightly, swishing saliva around her mouth before spitting it out and taking a drink from her armor’s water cache and doing the same thing again. With the taste mostly gone, Sorilla sighed and fit the helmet back into place, letting the magnetic clasps seal her back in.
Now I suppose I have a choice… I could look for a way back through this wall… Sorilla thought, turning to eye the wall. The interface was likely the same, so she was pretty certain she could figure it out with little issue. On the other hand….
She turned back, looking down the corridor that led deeper down, below the Alliance facility. She could already sense the gravity warp that was down that way. It felt… familiar.
Sorilla started walking.
*****
“What do you mean she’s just gone!?” Sienele asked, incensed.
The human asymmetrical warfare specialist did not get to just vanish. He didn’t particularly care if she lived or died at this point, but if she was dead, he wanted her damned body to present to his superiors as proof they didn’t have another enemy running around stirring up trouble on their hands.
The Sentinels were just as frustrated as he, for once, though Sienele wasn’t entirely certain why that was since they were hardly concerned with the same issues he was.
“Find her!” Kriss snapped. “Or find where she went!”
Sienele glared, standing by the side of the Lucian, until he winced.
“We can’t remain here. Not until we know what that transmitter was for,” He ground out. “They rigged everything here to burn, but it didn’t set any of those charges off. What else is there?”
“I hardly care,” Kriss growled. “The Colonel was with us, whether you like it or not. She could not have simply vanished without giving some warning…”
“Then she likely saw an opportunity to go off on her own,” Sienele hissed. “I know you respect the woman. I won’t even deny agreeing with you there, but she is an enemy soldier.”
“She’s not a fool, Envoy,” Kriss snarled. “She is the one who handed me the transmitter and informed me that it had been used. She knows the risks.”
“We’re withdrawing,” Sienele ordered abruptly. “We will lock this world down and return once the area has been secured. She will be found, one way or the other.”
The Lucian looked frustrated, but there was nothing he could really say against it. He now had his orders, and that was the end of the discussion.
Kriss nodded curtly and waved the other Lucians back.
“It is time, we are going.”
*****