“Uh…” I said, giving myself a scratch. “I’m not really sure about those details, as I was knocked out for a goodly part of the time.”
“I see. Well, it doesn’t matter. We found the Wur laboratory island, scanned it, and discovered heavy equipment operating in the tunnels underneath.”
Winslade stepped back into the conversation. “What kind of heavy equipment?”
“Power generators, mostly. They have to be powering something, and I’m sending a full cohort down there to find out what it is. McGill, Graves is loading your unit along with the others onto a lifter right now. Would you like to accompany him?”
I smiled. “I damn-well insist on it, sir. I don’t want Leeson running my unit into the ground without me.”
“Very well. Move out, soldier.”
I turned on my heel and marched out of the place. By the time I was in the open passages, I was trotting, and when I got down to Red Deck where the lifters were launched from, I heard engines rumbling. I stepped it up, moving at a dead run.
As it turned out, I barely made it aboard in time. The big ramp was pulled in and the doors shut, almost taking my heels off.
I didn’t have time to find my unit before the ship began slewing and accelerating at an angle. I found myself hanging onto the metal rings they put on the back of every seat just to keep from dashing my brains out on the roof of the ship.
“Is that McGill?” a familiar voice spoke up. “By damn, it is him. Sit down and stop showing off, Centurion.”
It was the British accent of one Centurion Manfred. Traveling hand over hand along the seats, I stomped on a lot of toes and crushed a few fingers before I reached him.
Manfred glanced to his left. “Veteran Buxton? Do you mind moving on down the line a bit?”
Buxton looked startled, but then he nodded because he didn’t have any other choice. He left the seat next to Manfred and worked his way laboriously to another empty seat about ten meters down.
“He’s a lucky man,” I said, “to find a seat at all on a full lifter.”
“No luck involved. The AA guns took out a few of my men on that cursed island yesterday. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
“Nope. Not a damned thing.”
He nodded skeptically. “That’s what I thought. Well, McGill, glad to have you aboard. I daresay the rest of your unit will be happy as well.”
“No one more than Adjunct Leeson. He doesn’t like having to play centurion.”
“Right. A smart man. Do you know where we’re headed?”
I told him about the island with the Wur lab on it, and how it seemed rather small for a full invasion force.
He shrugged. “The brass wants to make sure this time. They didn’t like coming up empty on the last raid.”
We rode the lifter down into the atmosphere after that, and there was little time for chit-chat. Within ten minutes the big doors fell open and daylight streamed in.
Instead of charging out the gate with Manfred, I waited for my own people to stream by. When they did, I stood up suddenly and tapped Leeson on the shoulder.
“Huh? What—oh, it’s you, sir!”
After he got over his initial shock, he was all smiles. “The ball is all yours, Centurion.”
“Okay, listen up, unit. The word from Graves is that we’re to exit the lifter last, but we’ve been given a very special task once our boots are firmly on the rocks.”
A general groan went up from the boys, but I chose to ignore their poor morale.
“We’re going to penetrate that lab complex, the one that’s hidden underground. Some of you might remember that the floor is a trick, there’s a chamber underneath. Our sensors show that the chamber is a lot bigger now, with signs of fresh excavation.”
Shaking their heads in resignation, only one woman had the balls to question our fates. “Sir?” Natasha said. “I remember this place… how did we ever end up back here?”
I threw my hands up. “I don’t know. We never did investigate it thoroughly.”
“Hey Natasha,” Carlos said to her. “Maybe we’ll find your skeleton down there in that slime pit. I’m not sure if the Wur are really into cleaning up their messes, you know?”
“Shut up, Ortiz,” Moller ordered, coming to Natasha’s defense.
Natasha herself looked upset. This was, after all, a spot where she’d been left for dead a long time back during the Home World campaign. She couldn’t have good memories of the place.
At last, all the other units were off the lifter. It turned out we didn’t have a full cohort’s strength. Some of the units had been left behind, as they’d suffered too many casualties. As a result, Graves deployed five units before ours stepped out under the light green sky near the dark green sea, blinking and looking around.
The other units had deployed along the beach area. One was surrounding the lab facility. They had a hundred gun barrels aimed at the relatively dinky structure. It was as if they thought a thousand monsters were going to charge out at them.
“I remember this place well,” Harris complained. “Too well. We lost some good people here when we started doing all those bullshit teleport missions.”
“Take heart, Adjunct,” I told him. “We’re here for real now. No twisting a dial and popping away this time.”
I sent in Barton and her lights, letting them scout. She poked her way into the door, which hung in a dark doorway like a loose tooth.
A dozen soldiers moved inside. I could see their suit-lights flashing everywhere at once. They were looking for
