fell and I fired the rest of our missiles. The FAV’s point defence took care of the gunship’s missiles. Above us the gunship’s own point-defence laser managed to take out all but two of ours. We splashed into the shallow lake that covered the bottom of the cavern. It was like hitting rock. Then we hit the rock under the water.
I didn’t see it, but just before the gunship exploded above us, raining burning wreckage down to hiss in the acidic lake, two large humanoid-shaped objects must have bailed out of the open passenger compartment.
I came to in the cab of the submerged FAV. Now it was the world’s shittest submarine. The cab was full of crashfoam. I couldn’t move or see. My IVD was red with warning signs. My body felt like one big bruise. Had she done all this on purpose?
There was quite a lot of water leaking into the supposedly hermetically sealed vehicle. It was warring with the crashfoam and the crashfoam was losing. I felt my skin start to burn as well.
I texted Morag but got an automated reply telling me that she was sorry she couldn’t answer on account of being unconscious. I burned myself in pooling acid as I reached for the manual release for the chemical catalyst that would dissipate the crashfoam.
As the crashfoam dispersed I got more burned as water squirted in on me. Eventually I could see Morag again. She was unconscious, parts of her skin bubbling as acidic water leaked into the FAV.
I opened a pouch on my webbing, removed a stim patch and stuck it to Morag’s neck. I saw a message from the FAV’s systems asking me if I wanted to use the periscope. This was for parking in a hull-down position (squaddie talk for parking behind cover). I replied in the affirmative and tentatively raised the periscope to just break the surface. This was still being kicked around by our impact and the fiery death of the gunship but I managed to pick out the two exo-armour suits circling the cavern high above us.
They looked familiar but I knew I’d never seen the model before. Although the water was slopping over the periscope, it still provided me with enough resolution to watch in horror as thick black tendrils unfolded from the backs of the two suits. They were, at least in part, derived from Themtech. Then I realised why they seemed familiar. They looked a bit like Berserks, if Berserks were larger, symmetrical, made mostly of human materials, attached to exo-armour flight systems and carried Retributor railguns.
Morag signalled her return to consciousness by mumbling a long string of nonsense.
‘It’s not a submarine,’ I said, largely for something to say.
‘What?’ she asked groggily. Coming more fully to, she assessed our situation. ‘Oh,’ she said.
‘What were you thinking?’ I asked.
‘Shut up, it worked. What now?’
‘Well, those things up there don’t have the right tools for the job, though if they’ve got grenades they could make our lives miserable. But we’ll drown or melt in here if we don’t get out soon.’
I didn’t say that if they launched their missiles at us the force of the explosions would be magnified in the water. Their missiles’ engines wouldn’t work in the water but our point-defence lasers would pretty much be expensive and very bright flashlights. Also we now had no offensive ability, as without a pressurised barrel or a hydrodynamic round all the railgun was good for was pushing around water. All they had to do was wait us out.
We shifted around, trying to avoid the worst of the leaks, lifting our feet out of the footwell. The air stank of rotten eggs from the sulphur in the water. The good thing was, the FAV’s anti-corrosion protection was holding. The vehicle wasn’t going to melt around us, and had it been any less well sealed we already would have drowned. The bad news was, if we tried to leave the vehicle we’d be sitting ducks. Assuming we weren’t just dissolved by the acidic water (we wouldn’t be, but we would be badly burned).
Morag left unsaid that this all meant they’d got and broken Rannu. If they had all the information they needed then he was probably dead by now, unless they’d sent him to the Belt. In which case he was also probably dead by now. Rannu had been a good operator and was on top of his game, yet they’d still got him like all the others. We hadn’t stood a chance.
There were missile contrails in the cavern above us, then warheads blossoming to fire and force as black light, Themtech and point-defence weapons from the flying exo-armour took them out. We could hear the railgun fire through the water. The other two FAVs were on ledges far above the lake and had caught the two exo-armour suits in a crossfire.
‘See if the grapples work. We’ll see if the winch can get us shallow enough for the turret to fire,’ I said.
Morag fired both the front-facing grapples. One of them bounced off; the other connected and started to eat its way in. Already the acid in the shallow lake would be corroding the cable. Morag triggered the winch and we started to roll forward. We were moving slowly towards a smooth rock shore at one end of the cavern. This would only work while the two exo-armour pilots were too distracted to notice the cable.
Cat fired the remaining missiles from her turret-mounted battery. Sheer numbers overwhelmed one of the exo-armour suits’ point-defence systems and the impacting missiles destroyed it. The wreckage joined us in the lake.
The other exo-armour suit flew through the barrage of missiles from Pagan and Mudge’s FAV, firing its Retributor and its own missiles. Red laser light connected the FAV to the incoming missiles, detonating them. The suit appeared through the flame and smoke like a horrible angel, landed next to the FAV and tore off its railgun. I was appalled to see it start to tear open the armour, assisted by its tendrils.
We rolled forward painfully slowly to bring us to a firing depth, the winch straining to pull us through the water as it and the cable corroded. I watched as Merle exited the other FAV and sprinted to the edge of the ledge, bringing up his plasma rifle. White fire lit up the darkness as he fired almost the length of the cavern into the back of the exo-armour tearing open the FAV. The plasma fire started to burn the armour, eating into it. The turret on the FAV turned to face the Themtech suit.
‘Don’t do it,’ I said.
Pagan triggered the missile at point-blank range. He must have hacked the proximity fuse. It exploded. The FAV was airborne, tumbling over as it hit the side of the cavern before falling back onto the ledge. The exo-armour was blown off the ledge and splashed into the water close by the rock shore we were heading towards.
The barrel of our railgun broke the surface of the water. A smoking, blackened, still burning exo-armour stood up unsteadily. I hit it with round after round from the railgun as the winch pulled us forward. It staggered back under the relentless impact but would not go down. White light flashed again and again as Merle shot round after round over our heads into it. Finally it hit the wall of the cavern, its head now ablaze with white plasma fire. It slid down the wall and into the water. I put another two bursts into it anyway. The ammo on the railgun was looking low.
The protesting winch dragged us out of the water. Smoke poured off the FAV, the photoreceptive paint long gone. I hit the door release and slid it back. Morag did the same. I ditched my gear and started free-climbing up the rock. Morag ran into the cave system.
Morag reached the rock ledge, which supported Mudge and Pagan’s FAV, just before I did. She hacked the door mechanism and managed to feed a snake through the crashfoam, then took control of the FAV and fired one of the front and one of the rear winches. She stepped back. I watched feeling helpless as the winches dragged the vehicle up and over onto its wheels.
Morag reached in and pulled the manual release for the crashfoam dissolver. I ran forward and we pulled an unconscious and badly battered Pagan out of the FAV. Nothing looked broken but I didn’t like the look of the swelling on his face and skull. Mudge was battered but conscious and grinning. He was obviously very, very high.
‘I love these cars,’ he managed. I just shook my head.
The FAV’s armour was pitted, scored, burned, buckled in a couple of places and a blackened mess, but it seemed intact.
Opposite me, aided by patches of burning wreckage and guttering plasma fire, I could see a much larger cavern almost directly opposite this ledge. It would provide easy ingress for the final gunship if it knew where we were, and we’d been making a lot of noise.
‘Is the FAV running?’ I asked Morag quietly.
‘They’re hurt.’
‘We need to leave.’
Morag concentrated for a moment.
‘I think it’ll run. Not well, but it’ll run.’
