Its shields were down to eleven percent and he was already over a thousand kilometres away. He watched the counter:
SHIELDS: 11%DISTANCE: 1300km
SHIELDS: 9%DISTANCE: 4200km
SHIELDS: 6%DISTANCE: 7300km
SHIELDS: 1%DISTANCE: 9800km
Then he detonated the pair of fusion reactors on the fighter. He could see the flash even though he was looking in the opposite direction, over ten thousand kilometres away and just about to enter the atmosphere. “You should have killed me when you had the chance Hampon!” Jake cried out in the near null space of the protective pod.
It had a hard, protective layer, rudimentary emergency gravity compensators and an antigravity booster for when it was time to touch down. He had made his target the foot of the mountain in Damshir. As he began to burn into the atmosphere his visor blocked the bright light. Wouldn't it just be the worst if it all ended here? If I became just another shooting star, matter burned up in the sky? He caught himself thinking. “Think positive, think positive, think positive,” he repeated to himself hurriedly as a last minute mantra.
He couldn't help but laugh to himself as he cleared the upper atmosphere and began free falling through the clear dark sky. Then his visor flashed and brought up a transmission. Where Hampon's face had once been was a black striped and brown furred nafalli. “My name is Alaka Murlen, I am one of the freedom fighters in Damshir. To my knowledge the mountain in which I am recording this message contains the last free intelligent beings on the planet. A virus has infected most of our machines and we are under siege. On behalf of the last remaining inhabitants and defenders of this world, I beg the Carthan government to send help. I expect from the military we have seen landing on this island that there must be an enemy fleet in orbit. Come prepared, come well armed and bring as many allies as you can before we and this entire solar system are lost to an enemy we have come to know as the West Keepers.”
The transmission ended. “Well, here's to the power of positive thinking,” he chuckled to himself as he watched the altimeter along the bottom of his heads up display countdown. At ten thousand feet he felt the pod adjust his course.
The dark cityscape rushed up faster and faster, and at two thousand meters the automated system, a very small computer built into the pod, announced; “primary deceleration system failure, prepare for contingency.”
The pod split down the center and Jake was released into the open air. He felt naked, helpless, and was near panic as he looked between his legs to see buildings and streets rushing up towards him. The sound of the air whistling by was louder than anything and he tried not to stare at the altimeter display on his visor as a thought occurred to him; I don't think I heard the emergency systems hook the emergency parachute onto my vacsuit. “ Oh fu-”
He was interrupted and jarred from head to toe violently as a parachute launched from his back and was caught by the air. The ground was still approaching faster than anyone would have liked, but he was slowing. The mountain with its step like face came into view. There were places there that were utterly destroyed by heavy shelling. The building faces set into the side looked hollow, dead as the looked down the side. The ones from the middle and top still had lights on, most of them were mostly intact. Light in front of the facades was distorted, as though by a protective shield.
He was still slowing, and finally there was no more time to slow down as he struck a transit tube suspended between two buildings, cartwheeled awkwardly through the air and hit the street hip first. The streets were filled with pocked and bullet ridden machines and corpses laying out in the open.
The thin material of the parachute covered him and after a minute he rolled over, found his way out from under the material and ran for the nearest broken, abandoned building as the rain started to fall.
Communications
Compared to the tall transmission towers and broad dishes pointed up at the sky that hung overhead like massive upside down umbrellas, the entrance to the underground communications management bunker was a tiny feature. There was a small landing area for personal craft in front, but other than that they were in the middle of the sugar cane field, the tall green stalks stretched out as far as the eye could see.
In the light of day the dishes were just transparent enough to permit light to pass through, and the nearest shadow was Damshir Spaceport, several kilometres away. “I'm amazed that growing sugar like this is much more economical than using a mass production materializer,” Ayan remarked as they settled in at the edge of the landing field. There were two personnel carriers made for carrying several people apiece. The driver's side door to one had been ripped off, the single occupant long dead.
There were a few other personal carriers, and only one armoured law enforcement transport. “Naturally grown sugar is a delicacy, most of the residents here can't afford it,” Jason replied as they all quietly observed the clearing for signs of movement.
“That police craft could be useful,” Minh pointed out. “Looks like it's got a couple guns too.”
“Pretty obvious. It might get us somewhere fast, but if anything on the ground wants to shoot it down it could be more trouble than it's worth,” Oz replied.
“Let's make it part of our escape plan, just in case.”
“Okay, if we find the andies that are responsible for it and can take them out, then we'll consider it. From what Alaka says they're linked to all their gear somehow and the signal jamming doesn't effect them.”
“I wonder how they managed that?” Jason asked himself more than anyone in particular. “Everything but a few encrypted military bands are jammed.”
“They've got a lot of toys here that we've never seen before. Speaking of which, I don't see any guards out front,” Ayan said. “Let's split into pairs and circle.”
“Good idea,” Oz said as he and Jason stepped onto the edge of the gravel landing area and they started walking the edge to the right.
Ayan and Minh started in the other direction. “Alone at last,” Minh teased as they made their way around slowly, watching carefully for any stationary guardians. It was eerie, robotic combatants could remain perfectly motionless, had infinite patience and hold ready infinitely. It was like looking for deadly shadows. “Did you mange to pry any info about what they're protecting in that mountain vault of theirs?” he continued.
“Nope, and I tried. It looked like Roman wanted to tell me at one point too, but he kept it to himself. I did catch one thing though; he's not from here. I heard some of his men talking and he arrived just a couple weeks before the virus. They said he was part of internal police security. I don't think he's just a Sergeant.”
“I could see that, he seems more military than anything. I'm surprised he and Alaka let us take this objective on so quickly, it's like Roman wanted us out of the mountain.”
“Alaka didn't seem so glad to see us go. I think he was happy to have our help holding the tunnels. Not that he needed our help with strategy on that front, but then, he was hunting rim weasels for a living before all this started,” Ayan chuckled lightly. “Who'd have thought that would be the perfect training for tunnel fighting?”
“Explains why he knows his way around so well. Rim weasels get everywhere, I've even heard that they can squeeze through a hole only a centimetre wide.”
“We found a couple on a bounder when I was serving on my first deep space tour.”
“One of those old short range shuttles? That had to make for a fun cleanup.”
“Yeah, I spent a week with the rest of the juniors cleaning out that thing, I barely saw outside it. The weasels ate half the wiring insulation in the whole craft, I swear.”
“Sometimes I miss those old ships with all the wiring tucked away behind panels, the fuzzy and carpeted surfaces everywhere. It's more like being in a living room.”
“They're a pain in the ass to get anything fixed in though. Strange that Rim weasels won't go near the carpet but they'll chew on anything else. Makes you wonder if there's something dodgy about whatever the pads are made of.”
“Never thought of it like that, huh.” Minh said pensively.
They quieted down and focused as they came around the rear of the bunker, their sensor suites outlined
