Sorry for the delay. Forgot I was posting these.
And before your blood pressure spikes, Andy, I intentionally misppell Claymore. Think of em as Space Claymores. But I threw a u in it just for you. Enjoy.
Chapter Three
The final coffin gently lowered into the six-foot deep hole to the mournful accompaniment of a bagpipe. About half of the surviving colonists gathered about the graveside, heads bowed as the service robot operated the coffin’s winch. This was the last burial for the day. God willing, it would be the last for a long, long time. The headstone was already in place, settled in by another ‘bot. The name Alicia Silvers shown in the ruddy afternoon sun.
The drone of an operating transporter beam drowned out the shrill wail of the bagpipe. 87 morose figures turned to look, seeing six shimmering swirls of light form into solid beings. At the group’s center was a blue shirted officer, a young redheaded woman with thick, curled locks. More colonists gathered to the sound of the beams. Hope finally began to shine in their eyes.
Commander Ellyson stepped forth from her team. They were all clad in hazardous environment suits, Starfleet’s multi-purpose armor. She’d chosen to remain in uniform, and had also decided on the more manly, unisex version. She wanted to project a lack of fear and professionalism.
“You’re finally here!” One of the younger men in the funeral procession exclaimed. “Are there gonna be any more?”
Ellyson nodded to him. Already, the transporter aboard ship was at work, beaming down the first load of support equipment she’d ordered. Her men began at once to deploy and unpack the gear once transport had finished. Another load began to beam in right after that.
Both the ship’s assault shuttles soared past overhead. The colonists watched them circle round, eyeing the terrain. When they began to drop into landing formation, the civilians were beginning to smile and clap one another on the shoulder.
“How many men did you bring, Commander Ellyson?”
Susan turned about to level eyes on the biologist they’d met over the comm earlier. Mister Kanly looked a little more rested than he had on the viewer. He’d washed off the blood. “Six in my command team. Two strike teams of seven aboard the shuttles. I’ll have additional support when I assess the situation. My men will need a clear place to emplace the modular sensor unit we’ve brought, and I want your help in choosing emplacements for the portable auto-cannon.”
Kanly blinked.
“Auto-cannon?”
Susan smiled.
“You want your colony defended, don’t you? We’ve brought our own on-site generators. What I want is a defendable building with a good clearing around it, large enough to gather most if not all of your people together.”
“I was hoping you’d be beaming us up to your ship till—“
“If it comes to that, we will, Mister Kanly. But I don’t think it’ll be necessary. For now the Captain only wants children, mothers and the elderly beamed aboard ship.”
Kanly nodded soberly. They were walking into the center of the town. A good knot of people had gathered around them as they spoke. Kanly pointed out a large building in the City Square. It had a heavy stone fascia.
“How about City Hall?”
“Not enough clear space around it. I need clear fields of fire in all directions. And I’d like to cut down on damage to the surrounding buildings.”
Kanly smiled at that. He halted and thought it over.
“We have the warehouse. Normally it’s full of farm machinery. We can move it out for a night or two.”
“Show me.”
Lieutenant Ford made the final adjustments on his armor’s chest piece and stepped out the back hatch of Assault Shuttle 2. The colony’s town was a pleasant looking collection of rustic buildings. Were it not for the lack of a highway, it might have passed for any small southern township in North America. He’d grown up in a town much like what this one could have been like.
And he’d hated every bit of it.
The lieutenant (junior grade) paid an eye to the overall size of the place. There were lots of hidey-holes for the beasts to tuck themselves into. It would be all but impossible to wipe them out easily. But then, they’d planned for that. Ford turned to his team for the first time.
“Emplace the peripheral guns there,” he began to point out the corners of nearby buildings. “There…and there. Put the sensor head up on top of the church.”
One of the junior hands blinked.
“How do I get up there, sir?”
“Beam up there if ya gotta, Shane. But get it up there ‘fore nightfall. When you’re done, get with the XO and see if her team needs any help finishing their setup.”
“Aye, sir!”
Ford watched his strike team disperse, hands filled with black equipment packs and plastic cases. He stepped back into the shuttle for his tricorder, intent on a scan or two.
“What’s the plan, Sergeant?”
Ford’s head shot up from where he bent over the pilot console.
“Huh?”
A blonde headed lady of probably 40 stood at the head of his boarding ramp. Her white blouse was rumpled, but clean. It seemed all the colonists wanted to put their best forward in the sight of visitors. Their pride was admirable considering what they’d gone through till now.
The lady had tiny black rimmed glasses pushed high on her nose. She’d even put on some lipstick. Ford tried not to be overly amused at what women thought important at times like these.
“I was just asking what your people’s plan was…Sergeant?”
Ford smirked at her, striving to keep his eyes kind.
“Lieutenant, ma’am. Sergeant’s a rank in the Assault Command.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Lieutenant!” She blushed a bit. It looked good on her. Went down past her neckline. “I’m not familiar with Starfleet…officers.”
Ford stepped down out of the ship, unsnapping his scanner. His huge grin became an infectious thing.
“Me neither! Where’s the highest point I can reach without standing on top of that church?”
Surprised at the opportunity to be useful, the lady glanced about at the buildings she doubtless knew by heart. “You can get all the way to the top of the granary, Lieutenant. It’s almost as tall as the church steeple.”
“Ford, ma’am. Name’s Ford.”
“Elan Darvy, Mister Ford.” She smiled, offering her hand.
“You sent the first signal.”
“Yes, I did. I couldn’t get into the comm center in the mayor’s office. I had to relay through my hand comm. Daniel tried to make it, but they… took him down.”
Ford lost his smirk. He found his hand wrapping about the much shorter woman’s shoulder as they walked across the township.
“Don’t you worry none, Miss Elan. We’re gonna kick them critter’s asses right back where they came from.”
“My god, Lieutenant… We had thought they were multiplying.” Miss Darvy shook her head. Her eyes seemed so care-worn. “Last night…there had to have been a hundred of them. They just kept pouring out of the woods. We fought them. We just can’t handle them alone.”
The hollow edge in Elan Darvy’s voice tugged at the helmsman’s innards. Made him sad and angry at the same time. He was beginning to wish the creatures were here already, that his shipmates were done with setup, ready to fight.
“Well, you wanted to know the plan, right?”
She perked up.
“Yes.”
“We’re deploying robotic, static defenses. Rotary phaser auto-cannon. Nastiest field guns we carry. We’re settin’ ‘em up all over town with sensor support and fire control from our ship in orbit. Then we beam out the non-essentials, and the rest of ya hole up where ever Commander Ellyson decides to set her headquarters. We wait for ‘em to come, and we start slaughtering them.”
Miss Darvy blinked at Ford’s choice of language. She’d expected something a bit more humane, perhaps. Something more altruistic that ultimately would be impossible to carry out. They walked in silence for a bit.
The silo came into view as they rounded the city hall building. It was good and tall. Ford thought a moment about relocating the sensor unit he’d ordered to the top of the church, but thought against it. The church would give the better coverage within the valley’s terrain. The silo was too close to the eastern bluff that helped to form the valley.
“Do you think you can really get them all with that plan?” Miss Darvy asked suddenly, breaking Ford’s train of thought.
“No. That’s why we brought these.”
Ford opened up the pouch attached to his web belt. Within was a holstered air pistol and three magazines full of darts.
“Tranquilizers?”
“Tags. We’re gonna let some of ‘em get back to their den. Then we track ‘em there and take out their hive or whatever the hell they got.”
They reached the side of the silver silo. Ford looked the thing over. The door was shut and pad locked. The helmsman glanced back to his attractive companion.
“Is there a ladder?”
“Around the back is a lift they use. Hope you’re not scared of heights.”
Ford grinned.
“Ma’am, I fly a ship through space.”
They chuckled a bit as she led him around to the back of the granary. The so-called lift was little more than a narrow diamond plate platform with a slim handhold and a simple control panel. It probably had a hover pad on the bottom to propel it up, guided by a rusty rail welded to the side of the silo. Ford looked up the rail, gulped.
“Did I mention I’m scared of heights?”
Lieutenant “Mike” Fujiwara stood at attention as he handed over his scan results to the XO. Commander Ellyson looked the pad over, flipped through the pages of electronic data and field notes.
“I’d say we’re set, then.” She commented.
“Yes, ma’am. Ford’s team is already prepping their shuttle for standby. I’ve deployed his team to the east flank of this building, among the parked earthmovers. My team is on the southwest. When the Deathclaws come, we’ll make short work of them.”
“Deathclaws?”
“It’s what some of the colonists have taken to calling them.”
“Good a name as any.”
“Indeed. Any further orders from on-high?”
“Just a request from our surgeon. And I quote: ‘If ya can, get me a live one.’”
“I’ll take that under consideration.”
“Precisely what I told him. Stun energy doesn’t seem to affect them. And I don’t intend to try and coax one into a cage.”
“I’m actually hoping there isn’t much left of them after the first perimeter line.”
“Amen.”
The two officers shared a short chuckle and turned to gaze out the warehouse’s south facing windows. The sun’s last rays were still caressing the landscape, glinting off the armored shoulders of her men outside. The mass of civilians pressed in behind them amid the few farming rigs that remained inside spoke to one another in hushed voices. They were tense. Worried. Ready. Fujiwara felt much the same.
The security chief unstrapped the helmet from his belt and slid it on. The HUD came up in dim blue lines, showing him the ranges to everything his helmet’s laser range-finder pointed at and the condition of his hazard suit. He hefted his rifle.
“Ready?” Asked the XO.
“As I can be.”
Mike turned and headed outside. His team hunkered behind the bulk of their shuttle and behind a milling machine. A glance showed him Ford and his men, doing much the same amid the farming rigs. More of his security grunts would be positioned behind the warehouse and at other points in town, ready to fight.
Mike’s heart lurched with a concussion he felt quicker than he heard. He looked west, saw a cloud of gray smoke roiling about in the dimness of the tree line. The first perimeter. The Deathclaws had found the Claymours.
A deep howl reverberated from within the forest, and all the foliage about the colony town came alive with motion. Mike hunkered to a half-crouch, rifle ready, as Claymour after Claymour detonated. The howls became screeches of pain and anger. His men moved about nervously, anticipating. Specialist Anderson was scanning with his tricorder.
Mike hunched down beside him.
“What do you have?” He had to shout.
“I ain’t got sh*t, LT! Sum’bitches ain’t showin’ up!”
Fujiwara cursed, tapped his HUD control twice. The darkening landscape devolved into a panorama of muted reds and blues. The woods were a cool pink, save for the sudden heat flares of exploding mines.
Now he could see them. Their shapes weren’t definite, not like a human would have been. More fuzzy and faint, like a Vulcan. Low body temperatures…
“Switch to infrared!” Mike shouted into his tac-comm. “They’re in range!”
Both teams opened up as one, firing into the woodlands in short, concentrated bursts. Mike fired at two of the beasts he could make out, watched them leap and hop away. He couldn’t tell if he’d hit. He switched his comm to the command frequency.
“XO, scanner’s can’t pick the creatures up from here! They’re already here, in force!”
“I’m switching the auto-cannon to visual attack,” She responded. “Standby!”
“They show up on IR, but not out beyond 80 meters!”
“Roger that!”
Mike stood up, moved to the end of his team’s line of cover. HE could just make out the hazy silhouettes of a multitude of waiting Deathclaws, just hovering outside the perimeter line. What were they waiting for?
The auto-cannon opened up just then. They roared and chattered, sounding more like ancient machineguns than energy cannon. The surrounding landscape lit in a fiery crimson of phaser energy that made rifle fire look puny. Trees snapped off mid-trunk at the contact of multiple hits. Fires began to erupt as the underbrush caught fire. The beasts were obscured in the heat of the flames.
Mike killed his IR vision.
What he saw them were three dozen leering, saber toothed maws, lit in the licking tongues of flames that danced before him. The beady eyes burned in the firelight, malevolence amplified by the devilish hue. They were tensed to leap, even as the auto-cannon were taking them down.
“Kill your IR!” Mike shouted into his comm. He lifted his rifle and opened fire.
One shot wasn’t enough to bring them down, even from a phaser rifle. He pumped three into his first target. It never paused in its lunge toward the flaming line of foliage. One jump took it clean over the flames and the remaining Claymour trip-lines.
It was but the first of many.
“Still no alien life signs in the scan area, sir.”
Captain Sharp leaned down over the sensor tech’s seat and tapped a series of controls. His men below were able to see the things on infrared. The Cleo’s IR showed nothing. He grimaced, his own equivalent to a vehement curse, and switched on the ship’s exterior cameras.
“Zoom in on the colony. I want to see what’s going on down there.”
“Aye, sir.”
Sharp buried his anxiety. He had teams on standby in the transporter room should things turn dire down on the surface. One look at the overhead camera angle quelled his fears. His men, despite the creatures’ tenacity and resistance even to phaser rifle fire, were holding their own. The creatures were dropping. Damn they were fast. He caught sight of one as it leapt over an earth-moving vehicle in a single bound. His men and their closest auto-cannon caught the thing in mid-flight. The auto-phaser tore the thing to ribbons as it descended on his men. Till the animal came apart in visceral gore, it never stopped aiming for its targets below.
The beasts faired far worse the closer they got to the Starfleet strike teams. Once within the confines of the town proper, they were fully within the firing arcs of several auto-cannon at once. The combined crossfire cut them down in droves.
Sharp backed away from the science station, letting his technician continue without the weight of his commanding officer bearing down on him. Jon let his mind drift off in thought. His Sense told him that there was more to this situation down there on the planet. The pre-colonization survey had been thorough. Nothing like this animal had been found, either as an existing animal or in the fossil record. Sure, things got missed. But for a yearlong survey to miss something this big? Creatures like this would cause a devastation among the local animal populations that would be recorded for eons.
“Technician, begin an in-depth orbital scan. I want you to map and detail every piece of space debris within sensor range.”
“Sir?” It was a hefty order.
“Get the entire science staff on it.”
“Yes, sir!”
If these things didn’t originate on the planet below, then they had to have come from above…
Topic: Cleopatra #2 (Read 14297 times)