“Damn straight we can kill them,” I said, which was not entirely true, but it was not entirely untrue, either. We could break them, and they would stay broken for a couple of days. They would evaporate, then the particles would re-form, and they would spawn again. The key to beating the bastards was finding their mining site and setting off our nuke. God, I hoped Herrington found the mines.
“You have your orders,” I said. “Call me if you find survivors.”
I hopped out of my jeep and entered the building, stepping over a shattered glass panel. Shards of glass sank and shuffled under my boots. Inside, the lobby was as silent and still as death itself.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Herrington, you found anything yet?” I called from just inside the lobby of the skyscraper. I looked around as I waited for his response, studying the security desk and the large glass panel that listed the offices on each floor. The desk looked forlorn and abandoned intact. The safety glass over the directory was still in its frame and thick with dust.
I walked down the hall that led to two rows of five elevators. All of the doors to the elevators stood open; they looked like closets.
“I think we found it,” Herrington finally replied from his transport. “Do you want me to go down for a closer look?”
“Not a chance, Sergeant,” I said. At that moment, it seemed like the mission might go according to plan. Herrington had already found the mines, and there was no sign of the aliens, all we needed to do was to deliver our nuke and look for survivors. “Leave a beacon over the entrance and get back here as quickly as possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
I contacted Hollingsworth back at the airstrip and told him to queue up the transport with the nuke. I hoped to have Herrington swap birds and send him back with most of my men.
For now, I turned my attention to finding survivors.
Besides me, seven other Marines entered this building. We would search the building in two fire teams. Fire teams consisted of a rifleman, an automatic rifleman, a team leader, and a grenadier. I played leader in absentia for one of those teams, sending my men to explore the lobby.
“Captain Harris,” my rifleman radioed in. He was on point.
“What is it?” I asked in a testy voice. Officers need to act officious, or their subordinates become insubordinate.
“I see a large mess at the back of the lobby. Should we search it?”
“This whole place is a mess.”
The man laughed. “A mess hall, sir …a cafeteria.”
“See any survivors?” I asked.
“No, but it looks like somebody is still using the facilities. I’m knee deep in empty cans and boxes.”
“Get this—somebody is using the oven for a fireplace,” my grenadier added.
“But you haven’t spotted anybody with a pulse?” I asked.
“No, sir.”
I told the team to “stay alert” and signed off.
Past the open doors of the elevators, I found a stairwell. Someone had removed the door from its hinges and left it leaning against the wall. I searched the stairwell using my heat-vision lenses to make sure no one was waiting for me around the corner. The area was clear.
Inside the stairwell, flights of stairs formed a helix leading to the top of the building. I did not think I would need to climb to the top. The building was over a hundred stories tall; without the elevators and air-conditioning, any survivors living in this tower would confine themselves to the lower floors.
The light from the ion curtain filled the lobby, but it trailed off as I started up the stairs. My visor switched to night-for-day lenses in the darkness. I climbed a couple of flights, scanned the area for heat signatures, and kept my M27 ready.
When I reached the second-floor landing, I found an open doorway leading to a mezzanine. Looted shops with smashed windows lined the halls past the doorway. A flood of trash, papers, and broken furniture covered the black marble floor.
After wasting a few minutes sifting my way through the wreckage, I headed back to the stairs and climbed three more flights to the next floor. The door to this floor was closed.
“Has anyone found anything?” I asked on a company-wide frequency. Everyone but Thomer replied with a negative. He had something to report.
“We found Fort Sebastian,” he said.
Switching frequencies to a direct line with Thomer, I asked, “How does it look?”
“We’re outside the fort right now, sir,” Thomer said. “It’s pretty banged up.”
“How banged up?” I asked.
“Remember the shielded bunker the Army used on New Copenhagen? They set one up just like it over here.”
Shielded bunkers were supposedly sturdy enough to survive a nuclear blast. Soldiers stationed in the bunker would be cooked and irradiated by the time the blast dissipated, but the bunker would survive. Unfortunately, shielding and bunkers meant nothing to the Avatari—the bolts from their guns bored through their walls.
“How did it hold up?” I asked.
“It looks like the Avatari used it for target practice,” Thomer said.
“Any signs of life?” I asked.
“It’s full of bones,” Thomer said. “I found a rat’s nest.”
“How about MREs, clean blankets, screaming children, or shit that hasn’t dried to powder?”
“Nothing,” Thomer said.
“Find any guns or grenades?”
“Someone cleaned the place out.”
“It would seem so,” I agreed.
“Want me to search the rest of the bunker?” Thomer asked.
“Don’t waste your time,” I said. “You might as well move on to the fort. Keep an eye out for working generators. They needed juice to talk to the fleet. If you find the generators, you’ll probably find the survivors.”
“Aye, sir,” Thomer said before he signed off.
Thomer’s search was not going to be easy. In the grand tradition of all things Army, the layout of Fort Sebastian defied reason. According to our maps, the base was as big as a farming town.
Trusting Thomer to follow orders, I returned to my own search.
I opened the door to the next floor slowly. Using the external speaker on my helmet, I called out: “This is Captain Wayson Harris of the Unified Authority Marines. I repeat, I am a Unified Authority Marine. Is there anyone in this building?”
The announcement was greeted with silence. The door swung open, revealing another gloomy hallway.
I stepped out of the stairwell and into that hall. The equipment in my visor picked up sounds easily missed by the human ear. Someone far to my right was trying to ease away from me. The person must have thought he could hide by clinging to the shadows. Using night-for-day vision, I saw it was only a kid. He had to be in his teens. He crawled along the wall until he reached a door, then he looked back toward me and turned the knob. Light leaked into the hall as he opened the door. The boy slithered through the opening and closed the door behind him.
“I found a survivor,” I said over the open frequency.
“Where are you, sir?” Hollingsworth asked.
“Was he friendly?” asked Herrington.
I answered Herrington first. “He wasn’t armed.”
“That’s good news,” said Hollingsworth.
“Where are you, sir?” It was the automatic rifleman from the fire team I had abandoned.
“Third floor.”
“We’re on our way, sir.”
I was not foolish enough to follow that kid into a blind situation without backup. As I waited, I tried identifying myself again. “This is Captain Wayson Harris of the Unified Authority Marines,” I repeated, with my voice so amplified that anyone on that floor of the building could hear me.
Scanning the wall using the heat-vision lens in my visor, I located several people hidden beyond the wall. Judging by the way they crouched along the floor, they seemed to be frightened of me.
I toyed with the idea of yelling, “Come out with your hands up,” or possibly, “I know you’re in there.” They might have mistaken me for an alien. Hell, by the standards of whatever society had formed on this planet since the invasion, these guys could be criminals on the lam.