Tsengal lifted it up to sight in the enemy before firing. The corridor flashed so bright it almost blinded many of them, and massive pulses rushed down at the enemy positions. The first hit smashed into a Mech that disappeared in a huge flash that blasted three others out to the sidewalls.
“Jesus Christ!” yelled Warren.
He fired again and every few seconds. The cannon stopped the enemy advance in its tracks, but after twenty shots the barrel was red hot, and Tsengal threw it aside. That was clearly all they would get from it. The barrage of the weapon had brutalised the enemy advance, but still they came. From just twenty metres behind them, Chandra heard engines firing up. She turned to see one of the drop ships was preparing to take off.
“What the hell?”
She stared closer and zoomed in with the targeter on her helmet to see Suarez sat in the pilot’s seat.
“No!”
Before her cry had ended, the docking doors began to crank open. She rushed towards the small ship, waving her arms and screaming.
“Stop! You’ll kill us all!”
The Lieutenant turned and looked at her. He could not hear what she was saying, but they both knew he understood. He looked down on her with disgust and felt no shame for what he was about to do. She stopped and stared in astonishment. In that moment, she felt half of the life in her body drain. She stood beside an alien who was giving everything to fight for them, and now she was looking at one of her own that was going to throw it all away.
Chandra lifted her rifle to shoot the traitorous dog, but she could not do it, and it was too late anyway. She turned to see that the docking doors were already half open. The ship’s engines fired up, and it roared towards the doors. She lowered her rifle and watched in despair.
As the ship reached the doors, it burst into flames. A pulse from an enemy ship tore through the craft and burst out the body into the docking bay area, smashing it into the ground.
“Incoming!” she screamed desperately.
Before the wreck had even hit the floor, an enemy ship burst through the opening. She opened fire and was quickly joined by a hundred others. Fire ripped into the ship that was a whisker larger than the ship Suarez had tried to escape in. The frenzy of fire smashed into the nose of the small vessel, ripping it to pieces.
The enemy ship had got halfway between the dock doors and Chandra’s position when one of the engines burst into flames, and it spun out of control. Veering off course, it plummeted into the firewall of the docking bay, but it did not stop. The burning wreck smashed through the relatively thin wall and kept going. Chandra turned to Tsengal and Warren in surprise. None of them had any idea there were further rooms where it had vanished.
She rushed to the fallen wall at a sprinting pace and stopped to see that it was not a wall but in fact, a hidden entrance to a broad ramp fifty metres wide. The wreckage of the craft partially blocked the descent, and a survivor prized one of the doors off. She stood in astonishment.
The hatch burst off the ship, and a creature staggered out. Before it had gotten two steps clear, she riddled it with ten shots from her rifle. Warren arrived at her side with his rifle at the ready.
“Get everyone inside,” she whispered.
“We have no idea where it leads.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
She pointed to the open docking bay doors that were now forced open by the wreckage of Suarez’s ship.
“Any minute the whole God damn Krycenaean army is coming through there. If we stay here, we’re done for. Get them inside!”
He rushed back to his troops and sent runners to the other two Battalions. They’d made it halfway across the docking floor when a dozen enemy ships burst through the entrance with their guns blazing. Few stopped their dash for the ramp, and in the rush, hundreds were killed by the relentless enemy assault.
Chandra stopped inside the vast doorway and watched the retreat with her rifle at the ready to cover the remaining troops. Mechs poured over the defensive wall they had previously fought over. She took careful aim and killed one that toppled out over the wall.
The strafing runs of the enemy craft as they approached were devastating to the fleeing troops in the open. She watched wide-eyed as many more were killed instantly. Their armour was unable to stand up to the heavy weapons. Klimenko was the last man through into the ramp, having covered his troops as best he could.
“This is the end for us, isn’t it, Colonel?”
“If it is, then we’re going down fighting!”
“Is there any other way?”
They turned and rushed down the ramp after the last of the survivors. They could count their numbers in the hundreds. A bitter count after the thousands they had begun the defence with. They descended thirty metres before taking a full turn and continuing another thirty, and then the same again.
“Where the hell does this go?” she asked herself.
They eventually reached flat ground where the hall opened out into a vast room. Two hundred of the troops had taken up positions around crates, tables and wheeled vehicles. She stopped and stared out at the vast chasm. A chill ran down her spine as she recognised everything around her, thousands upon thousands of incubation chambers, just as they had seen during the first war. All were full of humans, as they had first seen them in Paris.
“My God!”
Most of the troops had been oblivious to the chambers as they had never seen them before, nor cared with the enemy hot on their heels.
“What the hell is this?” asked Warren.
“Your guess is as good as mine, but I can tell you I have seen it before. The last time we found these chambers with bodies still inside, it cost us a city. Ramstein. The enemy bombed it into oblivion to hide whatever secrets lay within.”
She turned to Tsengal.
“Have you ever seen these before?”
“No, we have been asked several times, but never.”
The alien strolled up to the chambers and peered into them with curiosity and disbelief.
“They’ll be on us soon, Colonel. What are your orders?” Warren asked.
She looked around one last time and snapped out of her daydream.
“Keep moving! Whatever this place is, they clearly have worked hard to protect it. The further we get inside, the better protected we are from their fire. Who knows? We may even find a way out!”
“You heard the lady. Keep moving!” Warren shouted.
They beat a hasty retreat along the seemingly endless line of incubation chambers. Tsengal seemed to study everyone they passed. After five minutes at jogging speed, they came to a circular chamber that appeared to be the heart and core of the facility. Substantial dividers ran around the area. They could already tell they would make perfect defensive lines along the firing line they had just run.
“Take up positions here!” Chandra ordered.
She guessed their number at little more than three hundred now, and all huddling in tight behind the only cover they could get. They were only thankful the enemy would refrain from the use of heavier weapons, due to the value of everything around them. Chandra paced around the inner desks and consoles of their new position with Tsengal just as curiously striding beside her.
“We’ve never answered any questions about these things. Never have any survived long enough for our experts to analyse them. All they have ever had are first hand accounts by soldiers, and what good is that to a scientist?”
She could see that Tsengal was carefully studying much of the text and tapped several keys on a console.
“You understand what all this is?”
“No, not yet, but I understand the language.”
She stood silently and patiently awaiting more information. Many of the troops were reloading magazines. Others watched the two of them intently. Tsengal didn’t speak. Finally, she could not take it any longer.
“Are they clones, or prisoners or what?”
