Junebug was about to ask Neil just how in the hell she was supposed to get a vehicle in here when the nearest one she knew of was ten clicks back the way they had come but the pilot was already gone and the words would likely have been inaudible in any case. The alien ruin shook as if a child had picked it up and rattled it and the strange silver metal dented in alarmingly in several places. Goddess even if she could get to the jeep they couldn’t fly it over the treetops they would need an air car or… the disparate pieces of a plan began to slide together in her mind and she grinned as she reached down and slung the unconcious Drake over her shoulder with a grunt of effort. Sayeeda was extremely fit but there was a limit to the mechanical advantage her slender frame could provide.
“Booster… damnit ...uh facillity, are there any exits to the surface closer than the one we entered by?”
“Yes Consort,” the system responded and to Sayeeda’s amazement a pale pastel line appeared on the floor. It took her a moment to realise that it was a thermal signature, the ancient AI had guessed or detected she was using thermal and was using it to guide her. Damn.
“Neil,” she said, queuing the comlink in her mastoid to transmit to her pilot.
“I’m going to secure transport, you’ll have to exfiltrate the way we came in, I’m going too…” the facility rocked in another titanic convolution and Sayeeda managed to stay upright despite the weight of Drake across her shoulders, the man’s bulk pressing her armor painful down across her shoulders. The radio played the low background hiss of an empty carrier wave. The seismic activity or the distance had severed the link. Or Neil was dead of course, but there was no way to determine that and no profit in worrying about it. She would have to hope he got her earlier transmission or that he had sense enough to backtrack the way they had come in. Worse come to worst he might think to ask the alien AI, no doubt it picked up her transmission.
The pale stripe lead her into an antechamber and down a series of what her mind rendered as maintenance corridors. The ground continued to heave around her, filling the narrow corridor with dust and grit. Drake moaned on top of her and she wondered if she should have taken the time to apply a tourniquet to the gunshot wounds in his thigh. It hadn’t appeared to be bleeding that badly when when had picked him up. The broke into open daylight with a suddenness that Sayeeda hadn't been expecting. The strange alien architecture gave way to the outside through a smooth oval portal and she found herself looking down a broad valley of intense green. Far below she could see hordes of birds and larger creatures breaking from the folliage. The whole ridgeline was rippling as though it were alive and dirt and leaf litter poured down it in a torrent.
“Goddess,” Sayeeda whispered as she looked down at the mass of falling trees and tumbling earth. The pair of them seemed to be on a rocky ridge several hundred meters above the jungle canopy, the door must have been deliberately concealed here by its ancient builders. Reaching down to her equipment belt she pulled her radio, a palm sized military model she had taken from the Highlander, and thumbed it to its emergency frequency.
“Prio, Prio, Prio, this Captain Sayeeda Cyckali to any Terran Units. I have the scientist you are seeking and require immediate extraction, say again immediate extraction, over!” There was a long pause. The radio only had a range of a hundred clicks or so without a booster, and there was only one Terran unit within that sort of range.
“Say again Cyckali?” came a voice, sexless and attenuated by the radio transmission.
“I have Drake Ferenhall in custody, he is wounded and we are stranded requiring immediate extraction.” Another long pause stretched out for perhaps thirty seconds. Doubtlessly the Terran radio operator was conferring with his superiors.
“Hold your position Cyckali, we have a dropship inbound on your signal, any resistance will be met with overwhelming force,” the radio crackled, in the background she could here the attenuated roar of vectoring thrust.
It was less than five minutes later when the dropship howled into view. Sayeeda spent the time futilely trying to raise Neil on the commlink and absently pulling a pair of twist ties around Drake’s leg in an improvised tourniquet, he seemed to be coming around so she looped a second pair of ties around the young mans wrists securing them behind his back. That accomplished she tucked her needle stunner into the back of her prisoners trousers. The dropship, the same one that had delivered the commandos, unless she very much missed her guess came in low. The pilot was careful to keep the vessels two vectors engines, large bulbous pods, close to the ground as he skimmed across the surface of the valley. The pilot was good, good enough to deliberately keep the vulnerable thruster nozzles of the massive gimbaled motors pointed down. There was a pair of linked plasma cannons in a blister on the nose that gave the vessel a blocky insectoid aspect. Two large doors on the body of the thing were open and a gunner crouched behind a door mounted tri barreled plasma gun. To Sayeeda’s considerable relief the gunner and a pilot, sheltered behind armored transparent aluminum cockpit panels were the only crewmen aboard. If this was the dropship that had bought the commandos, they hadn’t made it back to their ride before it had been ordered to lift.
“Toss your weapons down and prepare to board, try anything and we will riddle you both,” her radio crackled. If the gunner was speaking she couldn’t tell through his opaque face shield. The dropship rose up, level with the rise, leaving only a few feet of empty air between the Terrans and Sayeeda’s position. The roar of the engines was deafening and she was glad that the filters in her helmet lowered it to tolerable levels. The dust storm would have been a problem if the steep curve of the ridge didn’t billow the spoil out at an angle below them, suction behind them sucked dust up into the air in a coiling snake.
“These are expensive,” Sayeeda began to object, but the Terran gunner merely waggled his barrels. Sighing she ostentatiously cast aside her submachine gun and hit the magnetic clasp that dropped her plasma rifle, clattering to the rock. The Terran locked his own weapon and drew a pistol and then stood up reaching across to help receive Drake as Sayeeda pitched him across, she hopped across the gap and landed on the quivering deck of the dropship. Counterintuitively she felt immediately better, the dynamic stasis of the ships deck was similar enough to a skimmer to make her feel at home. The Terran gunner shoved Drake into a crash couch and swung his pistol onto her. Sayeeda snatched the needle stunner she had put down the back of Drake’s trousers and fired three rounds into the chest of the gunner. The weapon made a quiet chunk as compressed air fired the razor sharp crystal iron carbide spikes into the Terran. Alternating currents in the crystal sparked to life and the gunner convulsed violently. The pilot must have been ready for something of the sort because he immediately yanked the control yoke sideways, throwing the drop ship into a steep climb that tumbled the convulsing gunner out the far door. Drake slid as well but snagged up on something she couldn’t see. Sayeeda leapt forward into the cockpit and rammed the stubby barrel of her stunner into the side of the pilots neck and yanked at the control yoke with the other. The dropship balloned upwards, nearly stalling but the pilot cried out and steadied them. She risked at glance over her shoulder and was relieved to see that Drake was crumpled in a ball in the rear or the crew compartment.
“You need me, you can’t fly this thing,” the pilot declared.
“You can’t fly in general, so either you do as I say or I do a little on the job training with you as a passenger.” The pilot sagged slightly.
“Alright, let's go rescue my pilot.”
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