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“Nothing, Sarge.” Osmin Sberna shook his head inside his suit, a reflexive gesture unseen by his section leader as he looked up from his sensor.
“Go in,” Lambrix replied.
Corporal Martin Davros and Lance Corporal Guillermo Coronadas, who were walking point, stepped around the red boulders, and slipped into the abandoned gallery, every movement cautious and considered.
They made intensive scans on the far side before leaving the bright lights of the active gallery behind and slipping into darkness while Sberna set the rest of his squad in motion. Lambrix would keep the other half of the section in the gallery standing guard.
The tip they’d received said the cache was less than thirty meters from the junction, under a small slide in a side pocket. And sure enough, the Marines on point found it. They signaled Sberna, then moved past to secure the squad’s flank.
He and Carlo Torres, battlefield sensors in hand, approached the haphazard pile of small and medium-sized rocks and subjected it to intense scrutiny while the remaining two Marines, Corporal Horace Yu and Lance Corporal Piotr Olenga, stood a few paces away, watching their surroundings.
“Looks like a plastic package about fifty centimeters below the slide’s surface, Sarge,” Torres eventually said over the dedicated squad frequency.
“Concur. Now to check if the bait comes with a hook.” Sberna chuckled. “Did I ever tell you about the time I was on a military assistance gig with the Hispaniola National Guard? Now, this was long after the uprising—”
“Didn’t Colonel Decker fight in that one when he was a buck sergeant, back before the dawn of time?”
“Yep. Anyway, the hardcore terrs were still around in my day, and they’d amuse themselves by leaving attractive prizes lying around, readers — booze, food, and gear, hooked to primitive booby traps our sensors didn’t always detect. More than one Guard dumbass lost a bit of himself because he either wasn’t paying attention or trusted his gear too much. Sometimes, his buddies also paid the price.”
“I can pick up nothing other than rock around the package, Sarge.” Torres, eyes on his sensor’s display, sounded somewhat dubious.
“What is it, Carlo? I know that tone.”
“For a nanosecond, I could have sworn I spotted a blip, but it’s probably either a sensor ghost or my imagination. It wouldn’t be the first ghost we picked up. Something about the planet’s crust around here does funny things to sensors.”
“Likely a result of it being so rich in certain ores, but what do I know. Okay. You and I keep scanning, Carlo, while Horace and Piotr remove the rubble stone by stone to make sure there are no surprises.” Sberna turned toward Yu and Olenga and pointed at the rockslide.
“Roger that, Sarge.” Yu led his winger over, and both dropped to one knee.
They carefully cleared out the area, each gesture deliberate as Sberna and Torres kept a close watch for anything unusual. Eventually, a rectangular red plastic toolbox emerged, one no different from those stored in every mining mole and module throughout Tyrell’s rabbit warren. Fifty centimeters long by thirty-five wide and forty high, it bore signs of hard use along with the station’s logo.
“It’s definitely full of something, Sarge,” Torres said. “But I can’t figure out what.”
“As long as it’s not connected to something else.” Sberna gestured at Yu and Olenga. “Step aside, gentlemen. I’ll make the last few moves. Sergeant’s privilege.”
They obeyed without a word, knowing Sberna not only had more experience and expertise but wouldn’t hide behind one of his Marines when things turned risky.
He knelt by the tool case and scanned it once more with his sensor at extremely close range. It sat flat on the gallery floor with the top and four sides exposed, leaving the underside as a possible hiding place for a trigger that could spring a lethal trap.
But something nagged at his subconscious, and he remained motionless for so long that Torres asked, “What’s up, Sarge?”
Sberna raised a hand. “Something’s not right. Call it a gut feeling.”
“Roger that.” Torres took an involuntary step back because he knew from experience that Osmin Sberna’s intuition had saved lives many times before.
The latter switched his radio to the section frequency. “One-Four-Alpha, this is Alpha-Two. I’m evacuating the gallery so we can send in the droid.”
“You think it’s a trap,” Staff Sergeant Lambrix replied.
“I can’t detect anything, and the box’s contents seem inert, but my gut is telling me otherwise. No idea why, but it’s best if none of us are nearby when we try moving the package.”
“Acknowledged. Prepping the droid.”
It wouldn’t take long. Corporal Leroy Taggart, Lambrix’s winger, was carrying the lightweight machine in a special backpack and simply had to power it up and make sure it spoke politely with the remote control station.
Sberna picked up his sensor and stood while switching his radio back to the squad frequency.
He pointed toward the main gallery. “We’re leaving.”
Five hands shot up, acknowledging the order, and, as per standard operating procedures, they extracted in reverse order, with Davros and Coronadas taking the rear guard position. As soon as they rejoined the rest of one-four-alpha, the droid, floating a hand-span above the gallery floor, maneuvered around the red-painted rocks and vanished into the darkness.
Corporal Taggart, leaning against the main gallery’s far wall, eyes on the control station, watched the view from the droid’s own night vision device as it slowly approached its target while a pair of Marines from Lambrix’s half of the section stood guard on either side of him.
“Anything specific make you extract?” The latter asked Sberna.
“Nope. But if there’s funny business, better the droid than yours truly.”
“Roger that, old buddy.”
Both sergeants walked over to where Taggart stood and patched their helmet visors into the control station’s video feed, so they could see the same thing as the droid and its pilot.
“Seems pretty ordinary,” Lambrix commented when the old toolbox appeared.
“You can pack a lot of stuff that goes boom into it, though.”
“But you didn’t pick up anything that looked like a detonator.”
“Negative, although they’re not that hard to hide if you know what you’re doing. From what the sensor picked up, there are several packages of various sizes jammed together, some with metallic elements.”
Taggart reached out and tapped Sberna’s arm. “What should I make Ozzie do?”
“Ozzie?” Sberna guffawed. “You gave the droid a name?”
“Sure. Seemed like the right thing to do if we’re sending him in as your replacement, Sarge.”
“Smart ass.” Sberna grinned at Taggart.
“Better that than being a dumb ass, right? So, what about Ozzie’s next move?”
“Tell him — it — to pick up the box using the handles at each end, making sure the thing stays horizontal.”
“Wilco.”
“Then bring it out.” Sberna turned to Lambrix. “Assuming Taggart’s little buddy fetches the box without causing nasty surprises, what next? Having Ozzie crack it open down here doesn’t strike me as a great idea. I’d much rather we do that out on the surface, preferably a few hundred meters from Tyrell, but that means taking it up in the lift, through a few modules, and out via the hangar.”
“Which in turn means we need a boom box.”
“This place should have a few, in case a demolition charge hangs fire, and they need to get rid of it safely.”
“Let me call—”
Before Lambrix could finish his sentence, a brilliant, albeit noiseless flash lit up the abandoned gallery. Almost at once, they felt a wave of vibrations course through the soles of their armored boots as the energy released by the explosion propagated through the rock. Simultaneously, a geyser of small and medium-sized stones erupted from the tunnel entrance, pelting them with enough force to knock over the Marines in the strike zone, Taggart, Sberna, and Lambrix included.
**
It didn’t take the tactical AI long to discover a discrepancy between the scans and the official specs, indicating where the mystery lift’s upper terminal might hide.
Sergeant Testo swiveled his chair around to face Delgado and Hak, sitting at the command post table.
“Found it.” A pair of three-dimensional holograms appeared above the table. “The blue projection is as per the official plot; the green is based on your scans.”
A small section of the green projection turned red.
“And that is likely a hidden door. If the mystery lift runs straight, that’s pretty much where it would end up.”
Delgado gave his operations sergeant a pleased grin. “Nicely done. Can you set up discreet surveillance on that hidden door so we find out who uses it?”
“No problems. I’ll do it right away.”
Before Delgado could reply, a deafening alarm siren rang through every module.
“What the...” Delgado half rose from his seat, taken by surprise.
Testo swung back toward his workstation.
“Accident in the mine — looks like a cave-in — Shaft Two, Level Five. They’re scrambling a rescue team now.”
Delgado and Hak looked at each other with bleak expressions.
“Crap.”