Into the Black

(Ithxan Tower Government Center, Thraki, Eye of Despair)

Lieutenant Chace Morris grumbled as he looked at the team stepping off the lander from the Odysseus. Not his team, the team that he worked and trained with. Oh, the rest of the ad hoc squad was all from Third Company, Black Star Marines, sure. But they weren’t his team.

Instead, they were an ad hoc grouping of Nomads from across the company. The Top Brass decided that this gig was potentially too dangerous for anyone that wasn’t a Nomad. Not that he really disagreed with the reasoning.

The only intel they had from the planet was that there was something causing a quiet spot in Hellspace, and the entire planet literally had some kind of plague or affliction wipe out everyone. But they had to go down to the planet if they were ever going to find something that could get them out of this trap, and back to real space. So, only sending the guys that didn’t actually die when they died made sense.

Thankfully, it turned out that anyone who didn’t go messing around with Psy powers was more or less OK for short bursts, like a day or so. Past that, well, you were getting something called ‘soul sheer’, which was just a fancy way to say something in the local environment went and gave you friction burns on your soul bad enough that it eventually killed you. Only thing was that the psychic shields in their armor, designed to protect them against jedi mind fuckery like what the Top Brass was known for, worked a treat to keep them from getting road rash on their souls.

Of course, by the time anyone figured that out, they were already well into the gravity well of the planet, and making their approaches on targets. So, not really anything they could do about it, not right now. At least they all had the same training, so it wasn’t like trying to make a squad out of Americans, Brits, and French, with some Israelis thrown in as well.

That kind of idea worked great in Hollywood movies, but, on the battlefield? Give him the choice, and he’d take a team of less individually skilled individuals who he’s trained with for years over a group of superstars who had never played together. Hell, even in the Olympics, the only reason things like that worked was because they gave the dream teams time to practice and drill together, unlike the sudden way this strike team was put together.

But none of that helped him right now. He was just a Lieutenant, and, considering that his squad consisted of four sergeants, second grade, six sergeants, first grade, and a measly two enlisted, he wasn’t dealing with a standard squad. They always say ‘trust your sergeants’, but having a squad that was damn near overflowing with sergeants wasn’t an issue he’d ever come across in training, in this world or the real world.

“Ell-Tee, landing site secure. No threats sited.”

Morris nodded to the sergeant. “All right. Round up everyone, and have the pilots button up. They and the crew of the Penelope can guard the field and run close air support or an extraction, if we need it. We’ve got to get into the government center, and see what we can find.”

The sergeant nodded, and set about the tasks, which he accepted as a tacit admission that he hadn’t given an order that was too stupid to be believed. Either that, or the sergeant was setting him up for a ‘teachable moment’ by just following orders. But he didn’t think that was the case. Most sergeants wouldn’t do that kind of thing out in the field, where mistakes cost lives and could fail a mission.

As they started sweeping into the government center, he said, “All right. Looks like security is offline, at least in public areas. We have a lot of ground to cover, and a short time to do it in, because Top Brass wants us back on the transport in two hours. So, we split up. Macdonald, take your team up to the executive offices, see what you can find. Johnston, your team gets the main security office, just to make sure no surprises activate for the rest of us. Coffey, your team’s on me. We’re going to the main data center, see what intel we can grab while we’re here. Back at the bird in one hour, fifty minutes.”

Maybe, if he knew the squad better, or had better intel, he could have made a better plan of attack. But they were improvising at the moment, just trying to find a way to break the stalemate that Fleet was in, without everyone fighting a hopeless battle. Which is why Top Brass called for Marines, not Army and certainly not Navy. Navy was a great taxi service, and Army could take and hold ground, but when you needed a mission accomplished and didn’t know how to do that? You sent in the Marines.

Macdonald’s team took the elevators, along with his team, since power was still on, and the building looked to be in good repair. Sure, he was headed up to the twentieth floor, and Macdonald was going up to fifty, neither of which were impossible climbs, especially for Marines in power armor, but that climb would still take time. It was a risk, yes, but they were on the clock, and any defenses looked to be offline, so it seemed a better idea than climbing all those stairs.

Johnston’s team still reached their objective first, since the designers of the building weren’t idiots, and put the main security office on the second floor. That gave them quick access to the lobby, which was where most problems would be, day to day, without giving them the same kind of exposure as they’d have on the ground floor, where someone would find it easier to ‘get lost’ and ‘accidentally’ find themselves in the security room.

“Lieutenant, we have the security office secured. Be advised, hallways are clear, but we found bodies in the office. No visible cause of death. Advanced decomposition.”

Morris blinked. Huh, they hadn’t seen any bodies. For something that killed off an entire planet, there should have been some bodies left behind. Even if there were early attempts to perform burials, at a certain point order breaks down too much for that.

“Understood, Sergeant. Keep us advised of any movement or changes.” He switched channels to squad-wide. “Team 2 has found bodies on site. Use suit sensors, and keep a background scan going for decomp. We haven’t seen any more bodies yet, and I’d like to know why.”

“Thinking zombies, Ell-Tee?”

“Not ruling it out, but not likely, Macdonald. Only zombies we’ve seen so far are based on Hellspace craziness that idiots thought to weaponize. We’re in a bubble that is actively rejecting Hellspace, so, while I’m not saying no, I’m not expecting there to be a horde after us, with a conveniently placed machine gun that has infinite ammo we can use to cut them down, or anything like that. And who ever heard of three teams being in the same zombies map, anyways?”

That got a round of laughs, as he hoped. Still, the point was made, and everyone would be looking for bodies, now. Stepping off the elevator on the twentieth floor, his team did a quick scan, but there were no bodies (dead or reanimated) to be seen. They quickly made their way to the computer room, where they were stopped by the first bit of working security they’d come to, a keycard access lock to get into the data center.

“Johnston, can you override the locks for the server room?”

“One second, sir. Bringing it up now. Server room on 20. Unlocking.”

The light on the door lock shifted, showing it was now unlocked, so the lone Private in the team opened the door. Morris’s sensors were immediately alerting him to the presence of decomposition. More bodies.

Moving in, they found three bodies, all ihm females. All of them very much dead. Given the positions they were in, their deaths were not pleasant ones. The Burning, no doubt. He hadn’t experienced it himself, but word from the Twilight Raven said that it apparently put the Top Brass through the wringer when it hit.

Not his problem. “Cortez, get into those systems. Top Brass wants everything they have. Everything you can get, rip it off the servers, and send it up to the fleet. We’ll worry about sorting things later. Oh, and if you come across account numbers, empty them into the main Black Star account. The General promised all teams a bonus, depending on how much we grab.”

“On it, sir.”

While Cortez went to work, Morris kept track of where the rest of his teams were. Johnston’s team was still checking security cameras, looking for anything out of the ordinary, while Macdonald started working on the executive suite. So far, everything was going according to plan. What plan they had.

“Lieutenant, we have an update, and a situation.”

That was the thing he really didn’t want to hear, but he had been expecting. Figured that it would be Johnston to bring him that news. “Report.”

“Well, first, I think we have a line on why there aren’t bodies everywhere. Cleaning drone just activated, and moved into one of the mid-level offices we unlocked while dropping all the security systems. There was a body behind the locked door, and the drone is currently ‘cleaning’ it. Looks to be taking the body to the trash chute.”

“Well, that’s one worry gone. What about the situation?”

“We have something on the basement cameras. Looks like something pushed up from underneath the foundation. There’s this black pyramid object with green lines on it, almost like circuitry. Don’t know what it is supposed to be, but it doesn’t belong to any alien race I know of. Can’t tell any more from this distance, anyways.”

“Well, that sounds like the first real lead we’ve had on the source of the bubble. Is the security system completely offline?”

“Affirmative.”

“All right. Take your team down there, deploy sensors, and get whatever readings you can. Don’t get too close, if you can help it. And keep an eye on your battery levels for your psychic shielding. I don’t care what the mission clock says, you drop below 25%, you pull back, got it. You get yourselves killed doing something stupid, and Top Brass will kick your ass from here all the way back to Star’s Reach.”

“Got it, sir. Withdraw at 25% battery life, max effective distance on scanners, don’t get ourselves killed. Wilco.”

Morris took a breath, as he settled his thoughts. This could be the first real lead they had on the bubble. If it wasn’t, then it was one hell of a coincidence that this black pyramid thing burst up from under the foundation of the building, just as Hellspace enveloped the world. He needed to call this in, let Higher make the call.

(Main Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, orbiting Thraki, Eye of Despair)

Slave-Commodore Ara Virstina shook her head as she saw the readings coming back from their latest scans of the surface. Once the team at the government center reported in with their findings of a black pyramid, she had the fleet start doing more detailed scans, looking for the specific radiation that the pyramid gave off. Where there was one anomaly, there might be more, right?

It turned out that this was only too true. Sources of that specific band of radiation were found all across the planet, about eight thousand of them in all. When deep scans were conducted, it was found that the pyramids were not pyramids at all, but rather obelisks, and pyramid shape was only the very top of the entire object. That radiation matched the readings they got at the edge of the ‘bubble’ stabilizing space around the planet.

Each of the obelisks that could be seen from orbit had pushed themselves up, out of the ground at some point. Probably right as the Eye encompassed the planet. The problem was, why make them into obelisks, if they were all buried like that?

Or perhaps they weren’t meant to stay mostly buried? Perhaps this was some ancient tech, and it was broken, or damaged somehow? Was it even working at full power? This could change a great many things.

Looking over to her comm officer, she said, “Contact the Twilight Raven, and copy the findings to the Master. I think we may have found the answer to why this planet was not completely swallowed by Hellspace.”