With that thought in mind, I reached down and took the radio from his belt and crushed it in my armored fingers.
"Don't try to call for help, either. We're going to take what we need and get out of here. No need for any of you guys to get hurt. Okay, Private?"
He nodded again, watching the pieces of his radio sprinkle to the ground.
"Are you one of the aliens?" he asked.
I laughed. "No, but my buddy is. Stay down; we've got work to do."
Regar had taken care of his half of the security response team. It had been another four guys coming from the opposite direction. They had somehow missed me on the cameras, or had just thought to take out the most obvious target—the massive warrior in bright red armor. Their attack had been pretty good, except for the fact that they couldn't hurt him at all. They were laid out around him, and he looked up as I approached. Nearby, the ramp sloped up showing me the open sky of the desert. I couldn't see Redemption, but that wasn't surprising. Marty would be hovering right overhead, stealth engaged.
"Let's get this stuff and get out of here, Jake."
I could only agree. The Redemption wasn't large, but we were pretty sure that we could take everything in that pile, if only just barely. There was a small cargo hold, and more room in the cockpit itself. The problem, of course, was getting there. For this, we had made a new toy.
I ran up the ramp, looking around. The area was still clear, the ruckus at the fence occupying most of the base's soldiers. Marty opened the hatch on the bottom of Redemption and disrupted the chameleon effect, making its dark silhouette visible. I saw him inside the ship, holding up a metal box the size of a laser printer. Underhanded, he tossed it to me. It clunked into my arms, lighter than it looked.
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Floating Cargo Sled, designed by Jake Monde
When you've got to steal a bunch of really heavy stuff, you might use this sled.
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Making sure it had enough room, I stepped back and triggered the deploy command. Rods telescoped out on all four corners of the box, extending a few feet in each direction. They then curved up smoothly to make a lip. Between each of the rods was closely spaced wire netting, thin and grey. I had hoped for some kind of force field way to do this, but couldn't find anything in the Union Common Knowledge Set, or in the components list, that would let me do it. I was almost certain that I could, but was unable to find what I needed before time ran out. In any case, low-tech was fine. The box had a small power source, and a grav plate. It would automatically neutralize the weight of anything we loaded into it, up to a point. We could load up the big rectangular net with everything we could find, and then push it along up the ramp and into the Redemption.
"Those Ospreys are still coming, Jake. Brick's doing his best to keep you guys invisible, but if some of those soldiers look over here, they'll see us. Or at least see that the doors are open," Marty said.
"Yeah, working as fast as I can. Let's go, Regar."
The two of us ran back down the ramp, me in front and him behind. Our sled wasn't motorized, it was literally just a floating cart. We had to maneuver it, and luckily we had made it not too big. It fit down the aisles, if only just barely. We rushed to the back of the warehouse, stopping in front of the pile.
"That's Artifact material alright. Once we get it back to the outpost I might be able to determine what civilization it came from, if a Seeker has ever seen it before. Advanced material like that has a fairly identifiable signature. Anyway, let's load it up," Regar said.
The crates went on first, and then we spent a few minutes grabbing larger pieces of metal and two odd shapes from the pile. One was a featureless cylinder, more like a capsule with one end rounded. The other was a thick rod with three spherical bulges, one on each end and one in the center.
"These might be something good. They don't look like any weapons I've ever seen, but you never know," Regar said.
Then the sled was loaded. It was fuller than I had thought it was going to be—stacks of metal precariously balanced.
"Marty, we're coming back. How's the distraction going?"
"The guards have arrested most of them. Even without guns, they're still soldiers. My peeps are no match for these guys."
That meant that our distraction didn't have much longer to go. I wanted to get this stuff in the Redemption and get out of there before they noticed us. Sure, they'd hardly be likely to miss the unconscious soldiers, the stolen materials, and the giant hole in their hanger doors, but I didn't want them to notice it while we were actually there.
Regar and I raced down the aisles, pushing the heavily laden cart as fast as we could. We had to stop once when one of our unstable piles collapsed and several pieces fell off onto the concrete floor with a series of loud bangs and clangs. We jammed the metal bits back in, and continued. Even with the cart essentially hovering, we still had to move the mass of the materials. If it weren't for the fact that we were both extremely strong, I don't think that
