Scourge

SCOURGE

Copyright 2018 Colin Hazel

Published by Colin Hazel

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PROLOGUE

The entrance to the Arachnoid nest was distinguished by the peculiar funnel shape of its ventilation hole. The mouth of the cavern would be buried beneath the protruding mound which rose like a tumour from the scorching surface of Caracas.

Vytrek suited up and descended from the bay doors beneath the ship, through the sand clouds, treading across the red hot surface rocks until he reached the stack which towered over him like the looming trunk of an aged tree. He placed a small shaped charge at the base, then retreated behind a scalding boulder as the explosion tore an ovoid hole in the thick compacted dirt. He crawled through the jagged gap, his suit thermics rapidly dropping in the cool of the cave interior before levelling out. His ocular bionics illuminated the darkness and relayed his movements to the command ship. He reattached the winch cable and slowly lowered himself down into the bowels of the hive. Away from the chaos of the swirling sand clouds above, inside the cave it was oppressively silent; a quiet unsettling in its totality, where the acoustics magnified his every move. He nervously winced at the friction of the cable as it slid through its carabiner; the piercing hiss of tendrils of sand sprinkled downward, disrupted by his ungainly boots.

He'd already searched three nests that day, all abandoned, but somewhere in this quadrant was the active lair containing the queen and her drones who’d been attacking the nearby Consortium mining outposts that had sanctioned his mission. His main objective was to kill the queen after which the rest of the hive would lose cohesion, deteriorate and die. He was halfway to the cavern’s substratum where the burrows of the sleeping creatures lay when the glossy black pigment pits and twitching pedipalps of a sentry drone, alerted by his explosive entry, appeared from a concealed trapdoor burrow above him. Before he could chastise himself for missing it, the creature spat a corrosive globule from its mouth. The liquid coated the cable above which fizzed and smoked as, one by one, its alloy strands unravelled. Vytrek levelled his barrel but before he could fire a grappling bolt, his cable snapped and he plummeted downward, his finger instinctively snapped at the trigger and a bolt shot into a small ledge above, breaking his fall just feet from the cave's sodden ground. The sentry scuttled down his grappling line towards him, its razor fangs unsheathed, he primed his weapon and fired a second bolt directly into its head, pinning it to the cave wall amidst a squelch of oozing pus.

The cavern's microclimate was very different from the searing surface; the Arachnoids had created an oppressively dark, dank habitat for themselves. The precious Avarium deposits embedded in the cave walls twinkled seductively across his readout; they'd proved a fatal distraction to many a cave breacher, snatched and cocooned while prizing the crystals free instead of confronting the threat at hand. The absence of tech within the hive did not mean that the Arachnoids should be underestimated; several complacent operatives had fallen into that trap. These were hardy, highly evolved social creatures rumoured to possess telepathic communication. Only aggressive when provoked, they had probably lived in utopian bliss for many metacycles until the Consortium mining operations began destroying their habitat, decimating whole colonies. The mining facilities had come under attack soon after operations commenced, many infiltrated by coordinated teams of drones, burrowing up from below, snatching miners in their sleep, it was then that the Arachnoids discovered that these intrusive new arrivals provided much more nutrition than their usual diet of rock lizards, especially when fed alive to their larval young, and so their numbers exploded, the attacks increased and the TECC-OPs were brought in. The rest of the Arachnoids were probably watching him right now, assessing him, deciding on the best plan of attack to ensure a swift and decisive victory. He glanced to his left and saw the mummified arm of a humanoid form dangling from a recess, no doubt sucked dry by Arachnoid young descending upon the terrified, cocooned unfortunate. His ocular bionics carried out a sweep, detecting the illusive monarchical pheromone within the vaulted cave before him. He carefully affixed his charge above the mouth of the grotto, the explosion would seal the Queen in and the resultant arachnicide gas would slowly poison the survivors to prevent them burrowing out or forming a new nest elsewhere. He fired another bolt to the ledge above and pulled himself clear of the slimy folds of the cave floor.

'Objective Alpha complete, commence extraction,' he mouthed into his throat mic and as he did so the cave shuddered as the command ship blasted away the surface mound and fired a fresh cable down to pull him clear. As the line tightened he clipped on and radioed for ascent. The shockwave of the blast was enough to agitate the Arachnoid swarm into action and they began pouring from their burrows below. Suddenly his ledge gave way, crumbling into the darkness and just as it did so the torque of the ship’s cable tightened and he began to lift clear. The head of the cable had overshot its mark, piercing the cave floor below and now the Arachnoid drones, no doubt spurred on by their furious queen, began to jump onto the line and scuttle after the figure retreating above. As Vytrek dangled there, helpless, all he could do was prime his weapon and incinerate his closing assailants with a downward blast from the flame unit; the cremated spindly corpses tumbling into the blackness from which they came. The light above grew brighter, wider, but as he neared the surface the hostile features of a scowling sentry appeared from another ambush hole, he watched powerless as it reclined on its hind legs then spat forth a huge orb of corrosive fibres which affixed to the face shield of his helmet, obscuring his view. He instinctively discharged another jet of flame towards the hole and his assailant quickly recoiled.

'Double time!' he exclaimed to the ship’s operator above, and the winch pulleys reeled him up through the sand clouds and into the hold, the cargo doors closed behind him and the ship rose clear, discharging the line engulfed in pursuing creatures which fell to the ground and perished on the scorching surface. Safely aboard, the decontamination sprays hosed him down and he entered the sterile airlock where he frantically unclipped his damaged helmet before the face shield melted onto him.

They had six more sites left to survey but at least the next one was Dimitri’s.

CHAPTER ONE

‘Ok listen up gentlemen, we’ve got an unscheduled arrival diverted our way, docking is imminent, I’m going to need everyman at his post on high alert.....’ the Warden explained to the guards hastily assembled before him on the bridge.

‘How many are we talking sir, we’re at capacity?’ the Captain of the guards asked anxiously.

‘Unknown at this time but we don’t have a choice on this one Cap, coded transmission came through directly from the Central Command, marked top priority,’ the Warden confirmed.

‘Where have they come from?’ the Captain pressed.

‘All I know is it’s an emergency transfer from a brig in the Esquiline Gap, you may have heard rebels recently re-took the occupied zones, front’s been pushed back a few thousand milinomes, our forces are withdrawing, garrisons have been overrun, it’s open season on the retreating convoys, secure transporter came under attack so they’ve re-routed them to the nearest high security detention barge to secure their prisoners and complete repairs......’ the Warden explained.

‘A brig in the occupied zones? Those are military prisoners, this is a civilian facility, what the hell are they sending them here for?’ the Captain insisted.

‘My hands are tied Cap, in time of war military command supersedes the DOJ, they can commandeer any facility they chose, so that’s the reality of the situation and we need to accept it, what I will say gentleman is look alive because this transport is an unknown quantity, it might contain all manner of badness; trained killers, POW’s, war criminals, deserters, mutineers, even captive life forms, but they’ll remain under military law and if we stay calm and professional and follow the SOPs, to the letter, we won’t put a foot wrong and we’ll show these flyboys why this is the best facility in the system!’

The transporter slowly came into view; the vast elongated nacelle of the central command module, flanked by pairs of smaller, detachable cargo cylinders resembled a bundle of barrels around a canon. Battle damage was clearly visible on the underside of its hull, suggesting it had been subjected to a surprise attack. Unusually, as it approached the detention barge it separated, with three of its four cargo tubes remotely docking at separate ports from the command module; the entire vessel occupying four of the prison’s six available stardocs.

A small group of the vessel’s military command crew appeared at the intercom to verify their identity then passed through the docking arm attached to the command module where they were further screened. The Warden checked the readouts then nodded in satisfaction to the Captain who activated the airlock and allowed the soldiers to enter the sterile reception centre.

‘Welcome to Detention Barge Nine One Alpha, I’m Warden Jennings, this is Captain Hansen.....’ the Warden began in clipped formal tones.

‘Commander Brittan, tenth provost battalion,’ came the formal reply.

‘I’ll need your manifest and transfer papers.....’ the Warden requested.

‘There aren’t any.....’ the Commander replied bluntly.

‘No paperwork? I’m going to need a record for our audit trail,’ the Warden insisted.

‘This is an emergency stopover of a non-designated flight. Military command doesn’t want any record of our presence at a civilian facility.....’

‘And what facility have you come from?’ the Warden enquired.

‘Its designation is classified,’ the Commander returned impassively.

‘It’s a black site and this is a ghost flight,’ the Captain interjected.

The Commander didn’t respond, confirming his suspicions.

‘We didn’t anticipate you requiring four docking ports.....’ the Warden continued tentatively.

‘Standard procedure, enables fast and secure simultaneous disembarkation