Chapter 29

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Chapter 29: All Hell

We surveyed the surface of the planet, though calling it a "surface" wasn't very accurate. Nearly the entire thing was covered in a viscous, green fluid. Some crystalline structures stretched out of the depths and connected to each other with elevated spokes, but other than that, the planet was covered in the nutrient bath the Koraxians depended on to survive. This made it very difficult to look for SAM emplacements, assuming they were submerged and could fire through the stuff. But there didn't seem to be any: nothing shot at us. We didn't see anyone, anywhere. Maybe they were too small and we were too far away, but the spire-city looked deserted. At the center of it was an enormous, towering spindle of blue crystal. Considering it stretched several clicks into the sky, we figured it was a safe bet for being either Korath's palace or some other important government center.

It took several more minutes of cruising around to find a flat spot to land. A circular pad not too far out from the central spire looked like a good candidate, and indeed was probably meant to be used as a landing pad. Luckily for us, the thing was unoccupied and, as far as we could tell, unguarded.

Our five-strong squadron set down on the pad and we disembarked out fighters. We kept our flight suits on, helmets and all, since the atmosphere was definitely toxic. We each reached under our ships and detached our weapons--an automatic rifle and a handgun for each. We also stayed in touch with the bomber squadron--calling them in on a moment's notice seemed a strong possibility.

Weapons ready, ships secured, we walked along the narrow path leading away from the landing pad, and scanned the city of spires for a way to get inside the central core. At the periphery of my vision, I saw little green blobs slithering out of sight. No doubt they got few visitors, much less ones as alien as us. Arcturus took point, Theo bringing up the rear, with the rest of us formed in a tight triangle, visually covering our approach. We didn't want any surprises. None appeared to be forthcoming, either. Even with my audio receptors turned all the way up, I heard nothing except the distant lapping of the nutrient fluid against the spires, and the breathing of my teammates. Jeremiah's heart was racing. Everyone else was calm. "Let's not get too comfortable," I warned through the audio link between us.

We came closer to the central spire and realized just how big it was. The base before us--that is, the part of it we could see, as much of it seemed to stretch out below the walkway--was vast, several hundred meters in diameter. From the sky, near the tip, it looked so much smaller. "This has to be what we're looking for," Arcturus said.

I agreed, and we began to circle the outside, looking for an entrance. Several minutes of careful steps brought us to a short archway. A Koraxian would have no trouble squeezing through it, but we'd have to duck--practically crawl--through it. We needed someone small to squeeze through there first and protect the rest of us. As it happened, Jeremiah was the shortest and the narrowest.

"You ready for this?" I asked.

"It's a little late to back out now," he sighed. He handed his rifle over to his father and crouched in front of the hole, slowly working his way in. Twenty seconds never seemed so long, as we waited for him to call back to us that he was in and doing fine. "I'm good," he said through the narrow corridor.

Arc knelt down and slid Jeremiah's rifle to him, then went through next. Arc had to get on his hands and knees to make it through. Lana was able to crouch more or less like Jeremiah. Theo went on his belly--he didn't have much choice, really.

And then it was my turn. I tossed my rifle through to the rest of them, and crawled through the opening. My shoulders kept bumping the walls, and let me tell you, that crystal stuff is hard as hell. No give on it whatsoever. Like banging your bones against a meter of solid glass. I was sore and cramping by the time I got through, but at least it was over. I picked up my weapon and surveyed the interior. Three more corridors laid out before us, slightly taller than the one we'd just traversed, but not big enough to be comfortable.

"Which one should we take?" Lana asked.

"I'm sure they all lead to certain death," I joked. "The middle one is probably our best bet, though, to get to the center of the complex."

"You really want to go barging in through the front door?" Arc asked, uneased. "That doesn't seem very safe."

"I think we left safetby behind some time ago, Arc. All we need to do is find this asshole and call in the bombers. Even if we get ambushed, we should be able to do that much before biting the big one."

"True. I'm not too fond of dying, though."

"How do you know? You haven't tried it yet." I stepped past him and went straight for the center passage, crouching and working my way through it. I gave a quick glance around and didn't see anything threatening on the other side, and invited the rest of them over. Soon after, the four of them had joined me, and we scanned our new location for points of interest. The room was vast, wide open, with sunlight peeking in through many holes in the spire's structure. A large ramp lay up ahead, angled at a steep incline. Where it led, we had no idea, but we suspected it would be interesting.

We got started up the hill, which required slow, measured steps--it was slippery, steep, hard to get a grip on. No handholds or notches in the floor to help us get a grip. I think I might have preferred a dozen more squat corridors than suffering through particular leg of our journey. About halfway up I managed to lose my footing, slipped all the way down to the base, and inadvertently took the rest of them with me. We laid there in a tangled heap of arms and legs at the bottom of the ramp. "Sorry," I murmured.

They sighed, we all got up, and went at it again. "There has got to be an easier way to do this," Arc groaned.

"Yeah, but I left my rope and grapnel at home. Let's just try again."

So we did. Up, up, up. My muscles and joints ached like crazy by the time I got to the halfway mark again. My ankles sure weren't happy about it, although my artificial one didn't hurt, it just started to respond sluggishly. Even being almost half-robot didn't confer much of an advantage with this particular task. Half my body still had to ache and struggle up the hill. I ignored the indicators that told me how far I'd climbed--like I really needed to know I'd gone up a couple hundred meters already. It'd just make me feel even more fatigued. I leaned forward to keep my center of gravity ahead of me, so my chances of tumbling backwards were reduced.

We walked. And we walked. Then, we walked some more. Maybe "walking" is too generous a word. "Trudged" or "tiptoed in agony" might be more appropriate. The point is, it took a while, it hurt, and by the time we reached the summit, I'd just about quit caring about Korath and his whole stupid empire. That is, until I looked up, flat on my stomach, and saw the biggest heap of pulsating jelly this side of an exploding jam factory. The translucent, green mass shifted slightly, as if it noticed me. Arcturus and the others joined me shortly after, all of them laying on their bellies, trying to recover.

"What the hell is that?" Arcturus wondered.

"I don't know, but it's alive. It's either Korath himself, or he's got one hell of a bodyguard."

"I have no idea how big Koraxians get, but he is thousands and thousands of years old. But something that big shouldn't be able to move quickly, either."

"So you hope."

Slowly, I got to my feet, picked up my gun, and stepped cautiously toward the mass. I didn't think communication was going to happen, so I leveled my rifle at the enormous blob and called to the bombers. "Gold squadron, you got a bead on our location? If so, bomb the hell out of it in about five minutes."

I turned to the others. "I don't really want to get any closer. I've called in the bombers. If this isn't Korath, it's important enough to have its own big-ass spire in the center of everything, so I think it should be a sufficient blow to morale. Let's just get out of here."

"Sounds good to m--" Arcturus began. I didn't even see what cut him off so quickly, before it got me, too.

In an instant, I was trapped in a slimy, green tendril, extending from the body of the hulking mass behind us. It picked us up--all of us--and dragged us closer. I felt electric current coursing through my body, and a voice inside my head.

What is it? Why is it here?

Look, we were just leaving. Let us go and we won't harm you.

It lies. It lies and it must die.

Now just wait a minute--

Well, it didn't wait. Instead, it flung me quite hard against one of the walls. I hit next to one of the windows, and the structure around it cracked and collapsed. I held on as tightly as I could, my fingers and wrists getting all cut up by the sharp bits of crystal, my flight suit punctured. "Strike! Strike now!" I called to the bombers. My body was not enjoying this experience. And now, worse yet, my suit was losing pressure. My oxygen supply wouldn't be a problem as long as my cybernetics held out--but the same couldn't be said for the others.

The creature seemed to be trying to extract information from them. They screamed in unison. I could only imagine it was trying to shock the answers out of them. But they wouldn't spill. Jeremiah was the next one to get tossed. He got thrown back down the ramp. I decided to slide down after him. In the meantime, I linked up remotely with my fighter, engaging its engines and preparing to have it fly over. Once the bombers blasted enough holes in this place, I could have my fighter come in and grab us. Well, that was the plan, anyway.

Theo came down the hill next. I'm not sure it was able to communicate with him at all. And then it was Lana. Yeah, they were all beaten up pretty good, stunned, muscles convulsing here and there from the electric shocks.

I tried to help them all back to their senses. "Come on! The bombers are on their way! We need to get out of here. I've got my fighter coming, but we should try to get outside. We don't want to be in here when the bombs fall. I don't know whether this thing will come down in one volley or ten."

"Arcturus!" Lana called up the slope.

I grabbed her arm. "Come on! We have to go!"

She snatched it away from me. "Not without my husband!"

So, like an idiot, I waited with them. But it didn't send Arc tumbling down the hill to join us. Instead, it came down, with Arcturus in tow. It came down so quickly we didn't even have time to scramble into the tunnels. It snatched us up again.

I groaned as it shocked the hell out of me, again. My cyber-eye went out almost immediately that time, and I felt half my body go dead. System overload. Dammit!

It has come to kill us. It smells of the Focus.

The what? Let me go, you slimeball!

It resists. It knows the Focus and it resists. It must tell me what it knows.

I'm not telling you a goddamn thing! You're about to be blasted straight to hell!

Right on cue, the spire began to shudder. The top of it blew right off almost immediately, its many shards crashing down around us. I ducked my head into the slimy protuberance for protection. The shards sliced through my suit, and no doubt through the suits of the others. Their helmets remained intact, which protected their oxygen supply, but we didn't want to find out what the Koraxian atmosphere did to human or Darrex flesh.

Evidently, it got frustrated trying to make us talk. As the spire continued to come down around us, it coiled up its tendrils, drawing us close to its body, then threw us all with great force out of the doomed palace. The gravity of this planet--slightly lower than Earth's--bought me some time, but as it was, I'd been tossed several clicks into the air, my cybernetics were shorted out, and I had to hope they came back online in time to get my fighter to catch me. I mentally activated the emergency reboot sequence. It kept throwing up red lights, instant failures. I kept at it, five, six, seven times. Finally, it kicked back. Green lights, with a couple yellows, and a red or two, but I was back up and running. I watched the sharp city of spires getting ever closer as I fell, and directed the fighter into my path. It opened the cockpit and swooped right under me, and I landed ass-first into the seat. Without missing a beat, I scanned for the others, picking up Theo and Jeremiah before they touched down. They were surprised, to say the least. Practically sat on top of me inside a very, very cramped cockpit, the hatch of which we couldn't even close. Arc and Lana, assuming we could find them, would have to hang onto the wings.

I found Lana clutching to the outside of a spire, slipping down, little by little. I pulled my ship up alongside and called to her. "Get on the wing and hold on!"

My bloody wrists and hands were burning terribly, the blood practically boiling in the acidic Koraxian air. It was easier for me to control the fighter through the remote interface than to use my hands, I found. It just required much more precise control of my thoughts, as I projected a signal into the fighter's flight computer.

And there was still Arc to worry about. "Did you see where he went down?" I asked them.

"He was flying towards the landing pad," Lana said.

So, off we went. The landing pad, remember, was surrounded by liquid. And he wasn't on the pad itself. I looked over the surface for a floating body, and didn't see anything. Either he'd sunk like a rock or we were looking in the wrong place.

Then came something else we didn't expect: the loudest shriek I'd ever heard in my life, loud enough to make the landing pad tremble, and something I could only describe as a massive, green wave of destruction came barreling toward us. The creature, be it Korath or something else, had basically exploded itself, a solid wall of rolling devastation. I tried to quickly land, but it hit all to abruptly. We went down, smashing into the landing pad, next to the other ships. I was dazed for several moments, my vision and thoughts clouded, and then I realized I was upside-down in a wrecked bird. I was alone--Jeremiah and Theo had been knocked out of it at some point. I scurried out from beneath the wreckage and looked around--the city had been virtually destroyed. The four other fighters were tossed about, flipped over, damaged. The back end of mine happened to be on top of Jeremiah.

I knelt next to him, surprised to find him still conscious. He looked up at me. "I can't move," he whispered.

"I know." Looking at the wreckage, there was no way he'd make it. His abdomen was crushed beneath it. The internal bleeding and organ damage by themselves would do him in. I didn't even want to make eye contact. "You did a good job, you know."

"I didn't... didn't really do anything."

True enough, but you don't say that. "Does it hurt?"

"No... not really. Should it?"

"Probably best if it doesn't. I'm gonna gather the others up, okay? We'll get you out of here in a jiffy."

I didn't really walk away because of that. I couldn't just sit there and watch. I had to do something. I roused Lana and Theo, who were semi-conscious nearby. Still no sign of Arc.

I tried to stand in front of Lana so she couldn't see Jeremiah. "Where's my son?" she demanded. "He was with you, where is he?"

I sighed and stepped out of the way. She saw him and instantly collapsed beside him, bawling. I had to look away. "Theo, we need to get out of here. Can you get a couple of those birds back up?"

He shrugged and we went to work. He helped me right three of the fighters, and we checked them out. Other than being pretty banged up and having their weapons screwed up, it looked like they'd fly again.

We got their engines warmed up, but Lana wasn't paying attention. She just hovered there, next to Jeremiah, stroking his hair, sobbing. I didn't hear anything coming from him, so I figured he'd already passed. I came up behind her. "Look, I know this is a bad time, but we really need to go. I'm sure they're going to send something after us any minute now."

"Just leave me here," she said, almost at a whisper.

"We've already lost two, we don't need to make it three. Come on, we can look for your husband once we get back to the ship."

And then Byron crackled over the radio into my helmet. "Are you guys about done down there? We're under attack!"

"Byron? What's going on up there?"

"Like I said, under attack! They're pushing us into the atmosphere!"

"Oh, lovely. Try to come down over our location! We'll fly up to meet you."

"And then what?!"

"And then I don't know what! Just keep the ship together until I get there!" I turned my attention back to Lana. "Look, the shit's really hitting the fan, we need to go, now."

She sighed and let me take her by the arm. I put her in one of the fighters, closed the cockpit, and went for my own. The three of us took off, heading for the dark dot in the upper atmosphere, which was rapidly growing in size.

"We're probably going to have to crash into the bay," I said over the radio. "Just brace yourselves and cut the thrust as you go in."

I aimed my ship for the port bay, the doors of which were wide open, waiting for us. I cut my thrust to nil, letting the destroyer come to me, and wound up inside in quite a hurry--my fighter smacked the rear wall and nearly spilled me out of it. Theo and Lana didn't fare much better. They looked rather dazed as they fell out of their cockpits. The destroyer shook all around us, and the combination of the planet's gravity interacting with the ship's gravity meant it was very difficult to move around. I had to clutch anything I could find on the wall to make my way through the ship. But time was of the essence, and I couldn't let the searing unpleasantness in my hands get to me. I managed to get out of the fighter bay and into the main corridor, using rungs on the ceiling to drag myself toward the command deck. I gritted my teeth as I swung myself out of the hallway and on top of the console nearest the entrance. "Byron!" I shouted.

She was hunched over the flight control panel. She turned and looked at me. "What should I do?!"

Through the windows, I could see the planet approaching fast. I didn't have to see a status report to know the ship was going to break apart at any moment, much less when it hit the damn liquid.

Sometimes I hated being right--the ship spun violently counterclockwise as one of the protruding bays tore off. "Activate the vector drive!" I ordered.

"But there are no vectors here!" she countered.

"Who cares? We're dead anyway! Just do it!"

She moved her fingers over the panel, biting her lip, uncertain what she was doing. I decided some strong encouragement was needed as she worked the panel. "Come on, Byron! Just hit the buttons! Just get us the h