Beyond the Shroud of the Universe Page 7

  Chapter Eleven

  Lashkar Abad, Iran, October 6, 2021

  The nondescript man looked over the crest of the hill at the warehouse three miles away. It was well lit, and he could see activity throughout the compound. Trucks continued to come and go, all day and night, as they had for the last week. Everything was normal.

  He looked up and saw a flashing light high above as an aircraft flew over. Pushing himself back from the crest, he stood up and struggled into his suit. He hated wearing it, but it was necessary. He only had 43 seconds to get it on and sealed, but he had grown up on the Lebanese border. He could suit up twice in that time. He smiled to himself as he closed the last seal.

  Aircab 207, Enroute from Baku to Abu Dhabi, October 6, 2021

  “Coming left five degrees,” the pilot of the Gulfstream G550 aircraft said.

  “Think they will notice?” the copilot asked.

  “Unlikely,” the pilot replied. “They are lazy bastards.”

  “Aircab 207, this is Shiraz Approach Control,” a voice crackled over the radio, “We show you deviating left of course. Come back right 10 degrees to resume track and avoid restricted airspace.”

  “Aircab 207, roger, coming right 10 degrees,” the pilot replied without touching the controls.

  “This place must be important to them,” the copilot noted.

  “It must be,” the pilot agreed. “Too bad they won’t have it much longer.” He switched to the plane’s intercom. “We are within range. Deploy the weapon.”

  “Roger, deploying the weapon.”

  The pilot felt the plane shudder slightly as a door opened in the back of the aircraft. After 30 seconds, the shuddering ceased.

  “The weapon is deployed.”

  “Understood.” The pilot brought the plane back to the right. He looked back to the area of Lashkar Abad. “Leh lehizdayen,” he said in Hebrew. “Fuck you.”

  The copilot nodded. “I think they’ll get the message.”

  Starboard Cabin, LCAC 85, Approaching Lashkar Abad, Anti-Earth, Unknown Date

  “Oh fuck,” the craftmaster said, a note of awe in his voice. “Hey, Klemarczyk, what’s our target again?”

  The navigator didn’t look up from her chart. “It’s a warehouse. Just follow the wadi to the southeast, and we’ll run right into it. It sits just past a small village.”

  “We’ll run right into it?” the craftmaster asked.

  “Yeah,” the navigator said without looking up. “It should be right in front of us. You can’t miss it.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Holy shit…”

  Port Cabin, LCAC 85, Approaching Lashkar Abad, Anti-Earth, Unknown Date

  Master Chief heard the engines come back up to full power and felt the craft jump forward as the craftmaster accelerated to attack speed.

  “Five minutes,” Petty Officer Johnson said from his normal position up in the observation bubble. The platoon’s medic, Corporal Shaun ‘Lucky’ Evertson, had patched him up and given him some drugs, and the loadmaster had resumed his duties.

  “Five minutes, everyone, stay sharp!” Master Chief commed. “Gunners ready?” With the loadmaster injured and the deck mechanic lost overboard, the platoon was manning the LCAC’s two M60 machine guns.

  “Mount One is ready,” Sergeant Milan ‘Gunner’ Vranjesevic said.

  “Two is manned and ready,” Sergeant Dan ‘Giseman’ Geisenhof added. “I can see the facility. It’s lit up like a Christmas tree. At a guess, I’m probably going to need a bigger gun…I may need more ammo, too, but definitely a bigger gun.”

  Master Chief looked up to the loadmaster. “Can you see the target?” he asked. “What’s it look like?”

  “It’s big,” Petty Officer Johnson said. He slid out of the seat so Master Chief could climb up to look out the bubble. “Here, take a look.”

  Master Chief looked at Night. “Want to go first?” he asked.

  “Go ahead,” Night said as he went to the door. “I’m going outside.”

  Master Chief climbed into the loadmaster’s seat and his eyes widened in surprise. “Fuck…” he said involuntarily under his breath. He had been told the facility was about the same size as the one on Earth, but it wasn’t. It was much, much bigger.

  Where the warehouse building on Earth was only two stories, this one was at least three stories high, and probably closer to four. It was hard to tell, though, because part of it was obscured by an enormous wall. It wasn’t a chain link fence like on Earth, but a no-kidding wall that any medieval castle would have been proud to call its own. The wall was at least 15 feet high and looked thick…far too thick for the LCAC to knock down. The only opportunity would be the gate, but the gate doors were closed and looked like they were made of metal and at least as solid as the rest of the walls.

  Fuck.

  “Grenadiers and cyborgs to the bow, now!” he commed. He looked down at the loadmaster. “Tell your craftmaster to aim for the gate. We’re going to take it down.” He switched back to the comm system. “Aim for the gate and try to take out the hinges. 25 nanogram setting!”

  “Hey, Master Chief,” the loadmaster said, “he wants to know what you think you can do against that wall.”

  “Tell him—” Master Chief started and then reached for the headset. “Give me the damn headset, and I’ll tell him myself.”

  He took the headset and put it on. “Craftmaster, this is the platoon’s master chief. I have my grenadiers and cyborgs going to the bow. They are going to blow down the gates. Don’t stop; they’ll get them down.”

  “Grenadiers? Are those the guys with the trident things?”

  “Yeah, those aren’t tridents, they are antimatter projectors. They are going to be firing rounds with about five times as much explosive power as a hand grenade. If that doesn’t work, we’ll up the ante.”

  “Unless they have a pretty good range, they’re only going to get a couple of shots.”

  “You just drive the damn bus and leave the gate to us. We’ll take care of it.”

  Master Chief handed the headset back. “I’m going outside,” he said. He switched to his comm. “The craftmaster is worried you won’t get the doors down. Use the 50 nanogram setting.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Bow, LCAC 85, Approaching Lashkar Abad, Anti-Earth, Unknown Date

  The wall approached with alarming rapidity. “Fire!” Master Chief commed over the noise of the engines and the rush of the wind.

  There were six fire teams in the platoon, and each team leader was equipped with an alien trident that launched a round of antimatter within a magnetic containment field. The magnetic field dissipated upon impact, and the antimatter reacted explosively with whatever it hit. The six rounds impacted the gate’s doors and the ground in front of it, and the blasts threw several of the Efreet from the walls. Three of the four cyborgs had rocket launchers, and they added to the maelstrom.

  As the smoke cleared, Master Chief could see the right gate was only hanging by one hinge, although the left gate was still in one piece. “Fire!” he ordered again, and another round of projectiles raced in front of the speeding LCAC to collide with the gates. The right door was blown completely off its hinges, and the left one sagged, two of its three hinges destroyed.

  Both machine guns opened fire as the defenders began firing at the craft. Unsure what the craft was, the defenders had held their fire while they waited for orders; as the Terrans made their intentions known, the defenders returned fire. They had never trained to hit something moving as quickly as the speeding LCAC, though, and their first volley went high and long. They didn’t get a second volley as the LCAC crashed through the remains of the gate, yawing slightly as its left front impacted the left door, still hanging from the wall.

  Transfer Facility, Lashkar Abad, Anti-Earth, Unknown Date

  “Let’s go,” Nightsong said, bursting through the door. The ground shook and multiple explosions could be heard from outside.

  “What’s g
oing on?” Calvin asked.

  “I imagine your friends are here to try to recover you, despite the warning they were given.” He motioned toward the door with his laser pistol.

  “And what if I’d rather stay here and wait for them to rescue me?”

  “Then I would have to shoot you,” Nightsong said, as the sound of jet engines and tearing metal could be heard. “That’s not what I want to do, especially now that my plans are starting to come together, but shoot you I shall. Then I’ll use my nanobots to sew your hands behind your back to make you easier to transport. It won’t be fun.” He smiled. “Well, it won’t be fun for you, anyway.” Nightsong motioned toward the door again. “We don’t have any time to waste. Move!”

  LCAC 85, Transfer Facility, Lashkar Abad, Anti-Earth, Unknown Date

  Master Chief surveyed the buildings while his troops did everything possible to knock them down and kill everyone in the compound. The troops had formed a perimeter around the LCAC and were firing at everything that moved. Some of the buildings were already a lot worse for wear.

  “Hey, Gurn,” Master Chief commed. “I think that’s enough for that building. Dial your trident back a little. We don’t need to level everything out here, especially since the skipper may be in one of them.”

  “You got it, Master Chief,” Staff Sergeant Ryan ‘The Big Gurn’ Gurney replied. “Is this all they’ve got? Flechette guns and flamethrowers?”

  “No, we know they also have big combat robots that are armed with powerful lasers, so be on the lookout for them.”

  Master Chief surveyed the compound. Unless some of the robots showed up, the battle was in hand. All the Efreeti flechette guns were the little handheld ones; they had a few of the big crew-served guns on the wall, but the Efreet couldn’t swivel the mounts to point into the interior of the compound. Even if they could, the Terrans weapons would still have completely outclassed them. The flamethrowers the Efreet had were extremely nasty, but only from a fairly close range. As long as the Terrans kept the Efreet back, they weren’t going to be much of a danger…unless they brought up some of the bigger stuff.

  He went back to identifying the buildings. The giant warehouse housed the transport device, or so they’d been told; anything else that might reside in its cavernous depths would remain unknown until they went into it. There were several buildings that looked like they could be barracks, several that looked like administration of some sort, maybe, and at least another six or seven that could have been anything.

  Searching all the buildings for the transportation rods would take forever…especially if the troops continued to destroy them.

  “So, sir,” Master Chief said, “how are we going to do this?”

  “I’m still working on that,” Night said. He frowned. “It’s going to take a long damn time to search all the buildings, even if we’re able to narrow it down some. There’s no telling how much backup they have available, but I’m sure they’ve called it in. We’re going to need to evac pretty quickly.”

  He thought for a few seconds, then came to a decision. “Have First Squad take the devices into the warehouse and let’s get that party started. Send a fire team from Second Squad through the facility and see if we can find any indication of where the transport rods or the skipper might be. The rest of Second Squad can guard the LCAC.”

  Transfer Facility, Lashkar Abad, Anti-Earth, Unknown Date

  Calvin tried to cover a smile as he looked over the tops of the nearby buildings. Smoke rose from several places, and the only sounds of combat he could hear were his soldiers’ weapons.

  Nightsong saw the smile. “Taking this facility is not a great accomplishment,” he noted with a shrug. “The troops here are poorly armed and armored compared with your forces. The Efreet might have been ready if they had another year to prepare.” He pulled back on the stick, and the silver ship rose quickly from the courtyard.

  “Still…” he added after a couple of seconds, “there are probably a few surprises they haven’t found yet.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Transfer Facility, Lashkar Abad, Anti-Earth, Unknown Date

  Master Chief watched as the silver ship climbed rapidly into the sky and disappeared. “I’m getting really fucking tired of watching that ship fly away,” he said. “I can’t wait to find out who’s inside it…and then kick the living shit out of him or her.”

  He turned back to the LCAC. “All right, let’s get a move on. They ain’t paying us by the hour.” He stepped back to allow the two cyborgs to sidestep down the front ramp of the craft holding a large box between them. “That goes to the big warehouse.”

  “You got it, Master Chief,” the cyborg on the right, Sergeant Jacob ‘Chaos’ Braig, said.

  “What is this thing, anyway?” the cyborg on the left, Sergeant Pierce ‘Big Sky’ Tomas, asked.

  “There are two silver thermite bombs inside,” Lieutenant Bradford said. He walked behind the cyborgs, staring at the box like it was a long-lost love.

  “Sounds nasty,” Big Sky said. “I’ve always been a fan of thermite, white phosphorous…things like that. ‘Cept if the enemy’s shooting them at you, in which case it ain’t quite so cool.”

  “Oh, these bombs are cool, all right, although the thermite really isn’t anything more than a dispersal mechanism for the silver,” Lieutenant Bradford replied. He smiled. “It’s way cooler than any of those other things.”

  “Why’s that?” Chaos asked.

  “Silver isn’t stable in this universe, so when the bomb goes off, the silver will start energetically decaying, making it much worse than burning magnesium or Willie Pete. Think about how hard it is to put out those two substances once they are burning. Carbon dioxide extinguishers don’t faze them because they make their own oxygen. Water doesn’t do anything, either, except maybe remove a little of the heat and spread them around some. Meanwhile, this is a nuclear reaction, and the hose teams will be dying from the radiation it’s putting off.”

  “That’s coooooool,” the two cyborgs chorused.

  “Even better, the thermite/silver mixture is going to spread and burn through anything it touches. Then it’s going to spread and burn through the next level. If we can get it to the top of the building, nothing is going to stop it from burning all the way down to the lowest basement. There’s enough mass here to take care of this building several times over.”

  “These little bombs are going to destroy the whole building?” Chaos asked.

  Lieutenant Bradford nodded. “These bombs are going to create a substance that’s unlike anything this universe has ever seen before. It’s like…I don’t know, it’s like perpetual lava. It will burn through anything it touches. It’s kind of like the corium you would get if a nuclear reactor melted down, but that reaction only uses the heat from nuclear decay; this will have its own source of new thermal energy.”

  “What’s corium?” Big Sky asked.

  “Liquefied nuclear fuel. Nasty stuff.”

  “All you knuckleheads need to know,” Master Chief said, stepping in between the troopers and the lieutenant, “is that it’s a big box of shut the hell up and focus on what you’re supposed to be doing. Like the lieutenant said, the stuff inside that box reacts badly with this universe, so don’t drop it and definitely don’t open it before it’s time. It’s amazing the damn thing didn’t go off when we parachuted in here.”

  As the cyborgs continued their march toward the plant, Master Chief realized with a start the Efreet had stopped attacking, and it made him decidedly uncomfortable. An enemy that stopped attacking blindly was an enemy who was planning something…and he really wasn’t in a mood to find out what.

  He advanced with First Squad to the warehouse, with the cyborgs bringing up the rear. The building was immense, and he wondered how the Efreet had built it. They must have had help, he decided, probably from the Iranians. Bastards.

  The building was almost 200 feet wide on the end he approached and over 500 feet in length. The side of th
e building had a large, central door that would have accommodated a dump truck, as well as people-sized doors on either side. “Fire Teams One and Two on the left door and Fire Team Three on the right,” he ordered. “Cyborgs in front. Take no chances, but be careful with your explosives. I don’t want anyone fragging us because they forgot to dial their tridents back from the initial assault. Everyone got that?” He looked around and could see heads nodding through the visors of the troopers facing him.

  “All right, we go on three. One... Two…”

  Cockpit, Shuttle 02, TSS Spark, Unknown Date

  “Here’s where it gets fun,” Jamming said as he watched the tractor holding the shuttle’s broken stealth module drive away. “Don’t know why the damn thing picked now to die.”

  “Nah,” Canuck said. “This run shouldn’t be a problem, even without the stealth. We race down, pick up the troops and get back up here before the destroyer can attack us. Nothing could be easier.”

  “Unless the destroyer’s moved.”

  “Yeah, unless it’s moved.” The lineman signaled the tractor and all personnel were clear, “Here we go.” He lifted the shuttle from the Spark’s deck and flew into space. As he cleared the stealth field of the Spark, he turned toward the planet and accelerated to full power.

  “Shit,” Jamming said. “It’s moved.”

  Fleet Command Headquarters, Lake Pedam, Nigeria, October 6, 2021

  “Excuse me, sir,” Admiral Wright’s aide said, after a quick knock on the door. Admiral Wright could see the aide was out of breath.

  “Yes?” Admiral Wright asked.

  “You asked to be made aware of…immediately…any geopolitical events…that were out of the ordinary,” the lieutenant replied, gasping for air; “we just got word that a…nuclear bomb exploded…about 15 miles southwest of Shiraz, Iran. The information…still pretty sketchy, but it looks like…it looks like it was a big one, sir…Somewhere on the order of 400 kilotons.”