Chapter 410

The Mission

Hours later, Arlene and Ann, tired, eased to the edge of a high rock bluff overlooking the massive power station in the distance.

“Well, they sure don’t bother to conserve energy, at least with their lights,” Arlene sarcastically remarked as they stared at the brilliantly lit station. Worried that they might be discovered, both young women had employed their sensors over the edge to gather information before proceeding with their mission.

“Just how are we supposed to get from here to there?” Ann grumbled. “It’s not as if we can use our suits’ propulsion systems. We would look like beacons on their screens and give them perfect targets to shoot at. But did they really have to use that many lights? The place couldn’t have any more if they tried.”

Arlene grinned but didn’t answer, instead, she touched her partner’s arm. “There, on the right. They have patrols, too – in addition to the guard towers. Hmmm, those fenced-in huts on the left must be the village where the planet’s natives are kept. Do you suppose that area will really be in the clear when the bomb goes off?”

Ann shrugged her shoulders, which went unnoticed by Arlene as they lay on the ground side-by-side. Realizing what happened, Ann responded verbally. “Who knows? But according to the bomb data, they should be right at the edge of its effects, if I’m reading the distances correctly on my scanner. And ... like we discussed, they were supposed to have been warned about the time. But what worries me just as much is what the Throme might do if the native residents suddenly begin to flee. Will they begin wholesale slaughter, or just let the planet’s people run into the jungle? Our info claims that the natives aren’t used for anything much here at the power station other than hostages to keep us from using heavy weapons from orbit.”

Arlene let out a sigh. “I’m like you. I worry about them, too, but what are we going to do? If we don’t set off the bomb, these power stations will continue to produce energy for the enemy’s manufacturing plants to produce arms and materials for the war. Destroying the planet’s three most important power stations will make a marked difference, at least according to our intelligence briefing.”

“Bottom line,” Ann said with a sigh, “is we carry out our orders, and hope for the best.”

“And...” Arlene inserted with her own sigh, “if Research’s other little invention doesn’t work as well as they claim, we’re going to be dead and won’t have to worry about any of this.”

“There you go again, mentioning things I don’t want to hear,” Ann grumbled.

Arlene turned to look at her partner. “Back to the effective blast radius of this thing,” she said as she hooked a thumb toward the packs on their backs. “The more I think about the implosion bomb, the more I worry about what it is going to do. Didn’t the blurb say the Throme had sunk the bore shafts down to the planet’s magma, and... those shafts are supposed to be really huge ones, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what I remember, too.”

“Well, granted I know little about what is going on deep in any planet, let alone this one, but it still stands to reason that the implosion could very well have an effect on those shafts. And... that mini-black hole created by the bomb, temporary though it may be, could very well influence the magma at the bottom of those shafts. What if the implosion brings up a sea of magma, and once started, how long will it continue to pour out of the depths?”

Despite herself, Arlene shivered as she continued, “My own imagination is scaring the shit out of me on this one. I’m beginning to feel about this the way you probably do about the spiders. I don’t want to know, but now that we’ve talked about it, I can’t stop thinking about it. They did say the effect of the implosion would be highly concentrated vertically. Of course, at the time, they were trying to assure us that we would not be caught in the horizontal blast as we escaped. But if that thing sucks up a sea of magma, or ruptures the planet’s crust...”

“Tell me again why we volunteered for this,” Ann grumped as she tried to focus her thoughts on something other than giant columns of magma spewing into the stratosphere.

“Well ... primarily because we’re gullible, and they did promise two weeks of shore leave if we succeeded,” Arlene pointed out.

“In other words, if we live through it and manage to get off this planet in one piece to meet up with our ride back,” Ann added.

“Yeah, there is that little point,” Arlene agreed.

“So, we both agree that anything with half a brain would be running just as fast as it can away from here?”

“Yep,” Arlene said as they wormed their way back from the cliff’s edge. The two sat on the rough ground as she pointed to her scanner’s screen. “There seems to be a large erosion crevice leading down to the valley a hundred meters or so to our right. Chances are it will give us some cover as we work our way down. But remember what they told us about the camouflage: we’ll remain basically invisible if you don’t make any sudden moves. One positive for our side is that the valley floor is rough and broken with rocks and gulleys all over, and the jungle is trying to retake the burn-off the Throme apparently used to clear the area some time in the past.”

After a moment of contemplation, she went on. “Once we’re on the valley floor, I’ll work my way around to the left. If you can put your first piece of the bomb here, and the second piece here, and I manage to set my parts up here and here,” she said, marking her scanner’s image, which automatically marked Ann’s, “the bomb should be good to go. The detonation time is already programmed in and we should have time to get in position, set the bomb, make sure its camouflage is working properly and get clear. But we don’t have a lot of time to waste.” Then with a glance at her partner’s tired face, “I know you have to be just as tired as I am, but with the delays we’ve already had, we don’t have time to rest. Think you can make it?”

“Piece of cake,” both said in unison as they high-fived, neither believing it for a second.

Arlene came to her feet. “Then, let’s see if we can get down that crevice, gully or whatever, without breaking our necks or alerting the Throme. From here on in we keep our camouflage active, which means we don’t make any sudden moves that would override its effects.”

A few minutes later, they stood looking down the washed-out crevice filled with boulders that ran down the steep slope to the valley below. “Well, at least it isn’t straight down,” Ann commented as she leaned over to brace against a large rock protruding from the cut, slowly working her way past it to a slightly less steep area that lasted for a few feet.

Arlene, with her feet braced, had been feeding out the micro-line that attached their suits together in case one of them had a mishap. Ann’s feet slipped a little, causing a trickle of gravel to race on ahead of her on the steep incline. “Shit,” she whispered over their short-range communicator. Then to Arlene, “Watch for that crap. There are pockets of gravel all over where water left them as it cut this channel out of the cliff.”

A little farther down the crevice and Ann called up to Arlene. “Okay, come on down to me. I’m at a stable location and can keep you from falling on down the crevice past me should you slip, but be careful, those pockets of gravel are treacherous.”

It wasn’t the best method, but it would limit how far either fell if one should slip.

It took an hour to get to the valley floor, and both young women were exhausted when they finally made it. After finding a suitable place shrouded by large boulders, they sat (collapsed) to rest for a few minutes. Ann took a long pull from her water straw as she looked up the cliff face, “No way can we go back that way in a hurry.”

“Yeah,” Arlene agreed as she rose up a little to check their surroundings once again. “Let’s meet over there,” she said, pointing to a rise on the right side of the compound. “It’s ninety degrees to our escape route back toward the ship and will allow us to bypass the cliff. In addition, should we be pursued, they shouldn’t expect us to go in that direction, since they searched for us in the ocean.”

“The downside is the extra miles we’ll have to travel to get back to the ship,” Ann returned. “But ... I certainly agree. We would be dead trying to climb that gully under fire.”

Arlene reached over to touch her partner. “You hungry?”

“Not really,” Ann returned. “I ate an energy bar on the way down the crevice.”

“Eat another one, two if you can force them down. No telling when we’ll have time again. When that bomb goes, it’s likely that all hell will break loose.”

Ann fought back a nervous giggle. “I hope that doesn’t turn out to be a literal statement. It makes me just a wee bit nervous to think I’m carrying around the makings of a black hole on my back, let alone to think about setting it off.”

“Yeah,” Arlene agreed with a tired sigh. “We both know we’re essentially those guinea pigs we talked about earlier. I suspect Research will make some more of these things... if we manage to take out the station and live through it. Same for the other teams.”

Ann let out a sick chuckle. “You might leave out the last part about us living through it. A couple of fighter jock’s lives weighed against taking out one of these stations? Well, you know the answer to that.”

“Fuck that,” Arlene snarled. “I want to go out in a dogfight, if I have to go. Not running through a jungle trying to escape magma, or getting eaten by a spider, or...” Laughing, she shut up for a moment before saying, “Actually, I would like to collect those two weeks shore leave and live to a ripe old age.”

“Second that,” Ann replied as they both came to their feet.

Shortly after beginning their approach to the station, they discovered a ravine running more or less in the direction they needed to go, at least primarily. This was a jungle, so there was water in the bottom of it and it, like the crevice down the side of the cliff, was rocky and rough, but it at least got them out of the direct line of sight of the guard towers for the present.

Later, Arlene had to veer off to the left. As they stood, they looked at each other for a couple of seconds, but neither spoke, nor did they need to, before they went their separate ways. From now until they met again, hopefully just before the bomb went off, their secure, short range communicators would not work because of the distance separation. Using their standard communicators might well alert the enemy and was an absolute last resort.

Ann watched her partner climb out of the ditch, then disappear, even to the skin suit’s sensors by the time Arlene was twenty feet away. She let out a sigh as she carefully picked her own way toward the power station. They were close enough now that the depth of the ditch no longer hid her from the guard towers. Although the camouflage basically rendered the wearer invisible if he or she refrained from sudden moves, there were other telltale indications that something was there: grass moving oddly, bushes being pushed aside, rocks that suddenly rolled, seemingly on their own as a person’s foot slipped, smaller animal life and even birds that suddenly ran or took flight. She had to consider all of that under the constraints of time that was running out.

The ravine turned to the right and Ann was forced to come out of the ditch to be faced with ever-decreasing cover. Although she wanted to stare at the guard towers and their massive weapons that her mind screamed at her were tracking her even now, she was forced to watch her footing, instead. It wouldn’t do to have tracks mysteriously appearing, and that meant that she had to avoid muddy areas as well as staying away from sections of knee-high grass that would also show her passing now that she was so close.

She knew that Arlene had given her the easier job, and due to the much shorter distance Ann needed to travel, she was at the station well before Arlene. On their scanners, they had reviewed the image of the station and determined where they would place their bomb parts. The station spanned a little over a half kilometer, which included a perimeter fence snuggled close to the various parts of the giant structure. According to the instructions they had received, the four parts of the bomb needed to be fairly evenly distributed in a rough circle around the station. Ann had half the parts and Arlene the other.

Ann knelt in plain sight near the fence. There were sensors on the fence itself, but it was technology that her equipment easily bypassed. Making sure the bomb’s camouflage was working, she attached the first part to the fence, then, not able to help herself, looked up at the closest guard tower that seemed to be practically hanging over her head. The tented transparency where the guards were prevented her from seeing inside, but her imagination furnished an image of Throme troops staring down at her even as they turned the massive guns toward her. Overcoming her imagination, she stood to begin her trek to her second location.

Arlene, since she had to walk much farther, was just finishing the first part of her bomb attachment to the fence when Ann finished with her last. In red, detonation time counted down on the top left of Arlene’s faceplate. Instinct screamed for her to hurry, but logic dictated that she stay within the constraints of the camouflage, otherwise those guns on the guard towers would reduce her to atoms.