Thirty

They traversed in near silence, Kon kept the barrel of the laser rifle pointed down the hallway, while Diur led from the front. Battle raged outside but as they worked their way further into the base, the sounds grew more muted. Every moment the stress ratcheded another level as sweat poured down Kon's face.

"Anything?" Kon whispered without turning his head. Diur didn't say anything, but her elbow hit his ribs and he shut up. They turned again and Kon heard a shout and then Diur's presence against his back was gone. Her aura flared brightly and lit the hall and he heard the sound of steel cutting then there was silence. He risked turning his head to see another dead goblin laying against the wall. There was a blood trail behind it against the wall that lead to a door.

"It came from the fighting. I think this door would take us outside," Diur said. The door was a roughly created slab of wood with poorly wrought hinges that hardly sat in its frame.

"Communication gear. Then the shuttle," Kon said and Diur nodded. They stepped over the dead goblin and left him laying there. The mercenary hadn't had any equipment on him. Just a stub of an arm.

"How big is this place?" Diur said as they turned another corner to find an empty hall. Kon shrugged but didn't say anything. He agreed with her that this roughshod fort seemed to be a lot bigger than it should be. That or the halls twisted back and forth on themselves.

"Door. Get ready. I'll breach and go left, you go right." Diur said as they came up to a locked door. This one was better built, squarely cut and sat flush with the wall. Kon leaned up against the door on the right side and waited as Diur cocked her leg back and swelled with power.

Her small foot hit the center of the door and it exploded in a spray of splinters that blasted inward. She darted in right behind the blast, sword drawn, and Kon was right behind her. He swept his rifle to the right and saw a goblin getting to its feet, surprise writ across its ugly, pale face.

He had been eating when they had breached the door. An open ration bar was at the desk, the black helmet off to the side. Its face was flat and its eyes an ugly yellow, fangs juttted from its mouth and only wisps of hair floated off its bony skull. The mercenary reached back and behind himself for a rifle propped against the wall. Kon squeezed the trigger.

Laser rifles didn't make a sound. They didn't buck when fired. They just spat death in silence.

A needle thin lance of red energy emerged from the rifle and struck the goblin in the face. Skin blackened and cracked as the liquid in the affected area boiled away. There was a pop as its skull split from the heat and then it crashed to the ground. Kon stared at the corpse for a split second before looking around the rest of the room.

Two goblins had been caught in the blast of the door and were slowly getting up. Both of them had their armor on and hadn't been injured, just stunned. Kon shot them, squeezing the trigger over and over. Their armor deflected the first few bolts as they rose up, the energy simply sliding off of them. Then whatever reflective qualities it had failed and he burned through the two of them.

Diur had fought and killed a trio of goblins on her side of the room and was looking at the back of the room with a blank expression. Kon turned to look and his own hopes fell as he took in the carnage.

When the door had exploded inward it had showered the area in a blast of wood and splinter. Most of that had been absorbed by the luckless pair of goblins who had been walking toward it. But several long splinters had embedded themselves in the protective cases of the equipment sitting on the table. Diur looked at him with a pale face and nodded toward it. Kon cursed and ran around the side of the table and looked it over.

He knew what long range comm gear looked like. Or at least what his colony had used and the basic models taught during the academy. The gear on the table looked like what they used. And it was filled with metallic wood splinters.

A bunch of rectangular steel boxes had housed the equipment to protect the delicate circuitry. It had been peeled apart like cheesecloth under the doors explosion. Kon hit every button he could but the monitors remained dead.

"I don't know what to do now," Kon admitted as Diur stood next to him.

"You don't know how to use this?"

"Why would I know? I'm not a communications specialist. I know what it looks like and how to turn it on. That's about it. You don't?"

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"My time is spent studying the blade and contemplating upon the truths of the galaxy. Not learning…" she waved her hand at the shredded equipment. Kon wanted to faceplant through the table. Later training would detail how to do field repairs on important equipment like this. He just hadn't had those classes yet.

"We can carry it to see if Alice knows how to use it?" Kon said after a minute. They both paused and looked at the mass of equipment that dominated a long table. There were seven boxes and they each had to weigh a hundred pounds. Not all of it was likely useful for their plans, but which part was and which wasn't?

"No. I can't carry all that and fight," Diur finally said with a shake of her head. She glanced toward the door and sighed.

"We should move. Someone must have heard that and we need to get to the shuttle. That should have some type of communications device."

"Asset denial," Kon blurted suddenly as he looked down on the gear. His rifle came up and he squeezed out a half dozen shot into the dead gear. Screens exploded as circuitry caught fire and Diur yelped and jumped away.

"WHAT?" Diur yelled with wide eyes.

"We can't have the survivors coordinating with whoever else is out there. We kill their gear and run," Kon said as he popped out the nearly depleted energy cartridge and loaded another one in. An indicator light had appeared near the butt of the rifle after the last shot, flashing a warning light. Touching the light had caused a formerly unseen panel to open and Kon had replaced the spent cartridge in a second.

"Fine. Let's move. Back to the door leading outside. Watch my back," Diur ordered as she walked out the door, peeking left and right before backtracking. Kon kept right behind her and aimed the rifle down the unexplored hallway.

They had gone no more than ten steps before Diur cursed under her breath and slowed. It took Kon a second before he realized what the problem was. Even deep inside of the fort they had heard the fighting, the sounds of battle plenty loud enough.

They didn't hear anything now.

"Carefully now," Diur said and the tension increased again. The brief fight had helped reduce a bit of that tension, an outlet for him. Now it was back and growing again as they crept down the hall and toward where they'd left the dead goblin. It still lay there, slumped against the wall and the door was still closed. Diur grabbed the handle and pulled it open slowly and they both peered outside.

It was a large and open courtyard with a twisted, mangled, shuttle sitting there. With the door open they could hear the sounds of fighting, but they were distant, away from the fort and in the forest. Something screamed indignantly and there was a flash of light off in the horizon.

"What happened here?" Kon asked as they left the cover of the doorway and walked out into the ruined courtyard. The far wall was nothing but debris and black armored goblins lay stretched out in half eaten piles. A single Lupine warrior was impaled on the top of the shuttle, slack in death. It looked like one of the guards who had been with the Packmaster.

"There you are," Alice said as she appeared from behind the wreckage of the shuttle. The one armed woman held her bloody axe in one hand and had a wide smile on her face. She looked up at the speared Lupine that decorated the top of the shuttle.

"He wasn't much of a challenge, but it should rile up that old Packmaster. Strong but old bastard. Foundations all cracked and he's bleeding energy like crazy," Alice said as she shook her head.

"Alice, what happened?" Kon snarled as the anger at being captured and used for bait boiled up and out of him. Alice cocked her head and shrugged.

"I went and found the D-Grade and let it chase me back here. It went through the wall and hit the shuttle. The goblins shot it a bunch of times but their rifles are ass. Cheap pieces of shit. Need something with some heft to hurt a D-Grade. A good railgun or plasma weaponry, not factory standard laser rifles."

"We got captured! You left us as bait!" Kon yelled as he stepped up toward her. Her eyes widened as she took him in and she cocked her head to look over at Diur.

"You don't know how to cloak? I thought you could. They shouldn't have been able to see you," Alice said. Diur's expression fell and she shook her head slowly.

"No, Senior. I said Grandfather was going to teach me how to cloak. Not that I knew how to cloak." Alice licked her lips and looked like she was going to argue for a moment before she sighed and shook her head.

"I'm tired." She spoke so softly that Kon struggled to hear her and he was certain he wasn't supposed to.

"It's my fault. I should have confirmed before we split off. You're alive and that's all that matters right now. Did you find the communication gear?" She spoke louder now and the momentary pang of exhaustion disappeared. Kon wanted to rage at her, that she was tired and that's why they had been captured.

"It was only a few minutes," the more rational part of his brain whispered. He shut that part of himself up as he let his anger continue to build.

"It was destroyed taking the room," Diur said quickly. Both of the women looked at Kon who seethed but was biting his tongue.

"We don't have long before they come back this way. Both of our objectives failed, but this should keep them from moving around too much." Alice looked disappointed, the happiness of her fight wiped away.

"There were more than this to destroy my clan's holdings."

"I have no doubt they've set up a bunch of smaller forts in the area to search across. Or after your clan bloodied them they concentrated here, maybe. I don't know. We have to go now before the Packmaster and the rest of his warriors return. They bloodied and injured the beast, but they took a beating. We have time to pull away now," Alice said as she urged them back and out of the ruined walls of the fort.

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