Chapter Four: Lessons of Ypres
The additional troops Howard had sent our way were far less affected by the massive, slain monster then my squad had been. I wondered if Howard had briefed them about it on their way over, or if they were so jaded by various lab spawned horrors running amuck that nothing shocked them anymore. Or perhaps they were just too inexperienced to grasp just how dangerous it was. In any case, they seemed confident in their own abilities (however misplaced that confidence was likely to be), and while not up merc levels of skill, they were at least on the ahead of the curve as far as security guards went….for all that was worth. Once Karaai had given them the short version of her discoveries about the Juicers, I started reassigning the new troops. Having a single formation twice the size of a standard squad fumbling around in the corridors ahead would bring the op to screeching halt, not mention filling half of the group's field of fire with friendly bodies.
Eventually, I got that situation sorted out, and we started moving into the R&D lab. The lab was laid out like oval, with dozens of smaller labs branching off the main corridor, and a single larger room at the end, using for transferring materials into and out of the complex's main storage area. As we entered the lab, our group split, with eight of us heading in each direction. My group, Alpha squad, took the left route. After some consideration, I'd split the merc team between the two groups of guards, hoping to get a functional mix between experience and numbers. After a bit of thought, I'd put Karaai in command of Beta squad, with Adrian as backup. These Juicers seemed to be far more in line with her experiences than his, given their behavior.
"Remember, we're trying to stay hidden, at least for the moment." I said. "We still don't have enough firepower to risk a head on confrontation." My squad nodded back in acknowledgement, though there was an undercurrent of worry buried beneath the gesture. As we moved deeper into the complex, I hoped that I hadn't just sent us all to our deaths.
Initially, it was quiet. I would've said it was too quiet, but I was pretty sure nothing good would come from voicing that observation. After a half hour of no contact, I started getting nervous. "Where is everybody?" I asked.
"Maybe they're deployed deeper in the complex. We've taken out enough of their patrols that they might have decided to dig in and wait for us to come to them." Said Leeroy. I mulled the idea over as we advanced. Real soldiers would know to maintain patrols, especially if they knew there were enemies in the area. But since we weren't facing real, trained soldiers, it was difficult to predict what they might do. They could have planted sensors to monitor our progress, but neither of our squads had spotted any, and I doubt Karaai would miss something like that. But there was another reason I had my doubts about Leeroy's theory.
"Could be, but we've passed at least three places that would be ideal for an ambushing squad to dig in, but no one's been there. If they were going to wait in a prepared position, we should have seen them by now." It was possible that they'd decided to dig in at a stronger position up ahead, but I doubted that the even rogue security guards would be foolish enough to only dig in at one place, and given the lab's layout, there wasn't any reason why one part of it would've made a better strong point than another.
A few minutes later, I heard the enraged roars of a juicer echo through the lab, overlapped with gunfire. "Karaai, we're hearing gunfire. Are you ok?" I radioed.
"We're fine here. Can you tell where the sound is coming from?" I tried to locate the source of the sounds, but as I listened, the intensity only increased, and it seemed to coming from everywhere at once. I was instantly reminded of the numerous city battles I'd fought in during the uprisings, when hundreds of simultaneous firefights between Marine and rebel squads had created a deafening, overlapping cacophony. I ordered both squads to halt and take cover until we figured out what was going on.
"Vance, we're hearing it too. Sounds like there are bunch of firefights going on." Said Adrian.
"But who's fighting? We're the only Dynastar troops in here." Asked one of the security troopers.
"We'll find out soon enough. Until then, everyone stay calm. Whatever's in here, we can handle it." I had my doubts about how truthful that statement was, but sitting here in silence would only make everyone more nervous. A few confident statements would help keep everyone's morale up.
As we waited, the sounds of the various firefights slowly faded away, and after a minute or two, all we heard was infrequent, single shots echoing through the complex. After a minute, those sounds also faded away into nothingness.
"Should we start moving again?" Asked Adrian.
"Let's give it a minute or two to calm down first. Whoever was fighting will still be jumpy for a while; we should wait until they're not as alert." Replied Leeroy.
"They'll probably be on high alert no matter what we do. They already know we've been pushing deeper and deeper into the complex, and if we hesitate, it will only give them more time to reorganize. Let's push on and hit them while they're off balance." Suggested Karaai.
"Karaai has a point. They might be on alert right now, but there's a good chance that they're vulnerable too. This might be the chance we've been looking for. Move up, but stay hidden for now. I want to find out what's going on until before we make a move." I ordered.
We didn't have to wait long to find the first clues. As my squad advanced, our point women called for a halt and waved me forward. As I reached her position, she pointed toward the corridor ahead, and I spotted the bodies sprawled on the deckplates ahead of us. I ordered most of the squad to stay put while Leeroy and I moved ahead to investigate.
"We've found some bodies. Moving in to investigate." I radioed.
"Same here. Looks like a batch of renegade guards." Said Karaai from her end of the complex.
Ours were the same, with the addition of two bullet-riddle Juicers added to the heap. I noticed that most of the fallen guards had been killed in hand to hand combat, and judging by the crushed helmets and body armor, their killers had been extremely strong. Coupled with the gunned down Juicers (and the bloody, juicer-size boot prints leading away from the scene), it left only one conclusion.
"Why would the juicers massacre their own allies?" Asked Karaai, having come to same conclusion I had.
None of us could come up with a plausible theory, but as we discovered more and more downed patrols, it became more and more clear that that was exactly what had happened. The rogue guards had clearly tried to make a fight of it, but strength, surprise, and sheer toughness had been on the juicer's side. We found a few spots where the renegades had managed to survive the initial attack, only to be overrun by another wave of juicers, but for the most part the attack had been brutally one-sided.
"They must have established mixed patrols, that's the only way the juicers could have hit them so quickly." Said Adrian as his squad passed another skirmish. "Poor saps never had a chance."
I was about to respond that perhaps they'd gotten what they deserved when I spotted another group of bodies. These ones, however, were different. Unlike the other slain guards, these men had been killed by gunfire, rather than hands of their "allies". As I crouched to examine the bodies future, something else caught my eye. "Leeroy, check out these bullet holes." I said, pointing to one of the dead men's perforated chest plate. "Have you ever seen anything like this?"
"No, I haven't. This is gonna sound crazy, but these holes almost look like kinetic impacts." He said.
"You're right, that does sound crazy." And at the time, it did. Modern body armor, even the cheap grade 2 and 3 set the guards had been wearing, was almost impossible to breach with pure kinetic energy. It wasn't completely immune, and the impact could still break bones and cause tissue damage, but purely KE weapons had a very hard time getting through modern body armor. The only way to penetrate modern armor was to burn or melt your way through, so every modern military-grade weapon used some mechanism (superheating the bullets, lasers, and even plasma), to apply heat to its projectiles in order to defeat armor. "But I think you might be right.
"I've seen what railguns do their targets, and these definitely aren't railgun wounds. But the holes aren't big enough for it be anything else." I said, trying to find a solution to this new mystery. "We don't have time for this right now. Whatever happened to these guys can wait." I said, grabbing one of the damaged chest plates for later analysis. "Let's keep moving."
We'd secured almost two thirds of the lab when we ran into our first juicer. Fortunately for us, he'd already been badly wounded during the earlier battle, and went down without much of a fight. However, the gunfire started drawing in more and more juicers, and though they only came at us one or two at a time, they were still able to inflict causalities. Nothing fatal, but two of the guards were permanently out of action, and a third was nursing a severe concussion and fractured ribcage. Our combined firepower simply wasn't enough to drop them before they got into melee range, a point that I was again reminded of as I pumped a third arc cannon shell into an oncoming juicer. It tore a massive hole through his chest, but he kept coming, even though I'd ripped his torso apart so badly I could see the wall behind him by looking through the holes in his body. Leeroy finally dropped him with a bullet through the skull, or rather another bullet through the skull, as the brute had shrugged off two rounds as it charged. I turned my cannon on the juicer's partner, already expiring beneath the fusillade being pouring into it by the Dynastar guards. After helping them finish it off, I pulled up a map of the complex, looking for somewhere we could hole up. Checking out the nearby rooms, I saw something that could help us out.
"Ok, let's get moving. There's a research lab up ahead, we're going to take up position inside." I ordered, waved the squad ahead. Even slowed down by the wounded, we managed to get out of the corridor before the next group of juicers could catch up to us. I wasn't sure how'd I missed the place the first time I checked the map, but I was glad I'd finally noticed it. Dozens of weapons were scattered around the room, in various stages of assembly and modification, along with enough ammo to supply a small army.
"Well, this is a nice surprise. Though I thought Karaai and I took out the armory?" Said Leeroy as he looked around the room.
"You did. This the weapons research lab." I said. "Start looking for anything that could help us take out the juicers. I'm going to check in with Karaai, see how her squad is doing."
As it turned out, Karaai had also been forced to run for cover, as juicer patrols stirred up by my squad swarmed through the complex. "We're secure for now, but I don't think that can last forever. We're going to try and get a better hidey-hole soon, though. I don't like the idea of having a firefight in here." She said.
"Why? Where are you?" I asked.
"The environmental hazard protection lab." She replied.
"That doesn't sound too bad."
"That's because you're not up to date on the latest corporate euphemisms. 'environmental hazard' is Dynastar's code word for NBC warfare agents."
"Oh." In hindsight, it did make sense. The UC had been expanding its chemical and bio-weapons arsenals ever since the Vular burst onto the galactic scene, as the bugs hadn't bothered to sign the Geneva conventions, and the brass was always looking for ways to minimize friendly causalities. Not that it always works out that way, I thought, grimacing as I remembered the poisonous, corrosive clouds that had gutted my company during the fighting in Praetoria City.
I pushed the memories of soldiers fleeing from the clouds as their skin started dissolving and their lungs melted away, and joined Leeroy's search of the weapon's lab. He'd already swapped his rifle out for a lightweight anti-material rifle Dynastar was working on, and several other soldiers had also obtained extra weaponry. I spotted a new arc cannon, and after verifying that it wasn't prone to exploding in the user's face or anything, exchanged it for my current cannon. I also found and distributed a bunch of rifle-mounted grenade launchers. The new weapons were impressive, but there wasn't anything big enough to give us the edge we needed. As I slipped a handful of rounds for the grenade launcher into my combat vest, I had a sudden idea for how to clear out the rest of the lab complex.
"Karaai, you said this part of the lab complex had its own air supply, right?" I asked.
"Yes, it's standard practice to isolate the experimental section's air supply from the rest of the complex. Keeps contaminants out and leaks in. Why?" She said.
"I'll tell you in a second. Do the Dynastar guards have NBC protection on their armor?"
"Yes…..Vance, you're not thinking of using chemical weapons to clear out the lab, are you? That's….the ethics of it…..do you even know what this stuff will do to those people?" she said, making no effort to hide the horror in her voice.
"I was at Praetoria City." I responded.
"You were at Praetoria, and you still want to do this to them?"
"Unless you want to lose half our people trying to fight through the juicers, then yes. It's us or them, and we remembered to bring gas masks."
"Vance, the law and customs of war…." She protested.
"This isn't war, this is pest control. You saw the reports on what juice did the test subjects. Whoever the juicers may have been, those people died a long time ago. They just don't know it yet." I could hear a hard edge creeping into my voice. "Grab a few drums, and meet us at the air filtration control room. That's an order."
For a moment, I thought she would balk, but I think she knew I was right, and all I got back was a quiet acknowledgement. I wasn't exactly dancing with glee over this either, but it wasn't like I had a lot of options. Our contract was very clear as to what we were supposed to do. Secure the lab, neutralize the hostiles, and minimize friendly causalities. If that meant gassing a bunch of over-muscled freaks who would gladly rip us in half if they got the chance, then so be it.
We grabbed as much extra gear as we could from the weapons lab, and then started making our way to the filtration control room. Our route was surprising free of juicers, but the handful we encountered were more than tough enough. Unlike the first few groups, these ones hadn't been involved in the slaughter of the traitorous guards, and their lack of injuries made them much more lethal. One of the wounded guards was killed when a charging juicer knocked him to the ground and stomped down on his already damaged armor, and another trooper was killed when a juicer jumped out of an alcove and snapped his neck. One other guard suffered a severe head injury, and had lapsed into a coma by the time we got to the filtration room. Each causality only reinforced my certainty that our current course of action was the right one.
As we got closer to the control room, the all too familiar sounds of battle reached our ears. A quick radio call confirmed that Karaai's squad was unengaged, leaving a surviving squad of renegade troopers as the most likely suspect. Initially I planned on holding back and letting the juicers and guards wipe each other out, but after a moment's consideration I changed my mind. Instead, I ordered my squad to move in, double time. We ran through the halls, stealth abandoned for the moment. Some of the loyalists might have been conflicted about my order to leave their traitorous colleagues alone and concentrate on the juicers, but they were wise enough to keep such doubts to themselves. If we hadn't been so pressed for time, I would've explained my reasoning, but as it was I'd barely gotten the outlines of our battle plan explained before we arrived at the battlefield.
We rounded a corner, and found ourselves staring into a whirling, chaotic mass of bodies. There were about a half dozen guards still fighting, surrounded by more than twice that number of juicers. Many of the juicers had already been wounded, but I still wasn't looking forward to facing them at near even odds, given how badly they'd hurt us when we had them outnumbered. I prayed that my hastily improvised strategy would work, because if it failed, our chances of surviving the next few minutes were almost non-existent. "Fire!" I yelled, and my handful of troopers unleased a furious barrage into the unsuspecting juicers. Two went down in the first few seconds, and were joined by another an instant later when we triggered our grenade launchers. I shouted a quick command as we reloaded, and sent our next magazine into the juicers that were closest to the battered troopers we planned on rescuing, buying them a little bit of breathing room as several of their attackers collapsed.
Our attack hadn't gone unnoticed, and as our guns fell silent several of the juicers turned away from their initial target and towards us. Our surprise assault had hurt them badly, cutting back their numbers by a third, but they probably still had the manpower to take us down. The mob of juicers split in two, one half redoubling its attack on the renegades, the other charging toward us, howling with bloodlust. "Fall back!" I yelled, turning away from the enraged mob and moving as fast as I could. My squad followed suit, sheer terror giving them a burst in speed as we tried to outrun the monsters. Unfortunately, the monsters had longer legs and were motivated by rage, which I've observed many times to be a far stronger motivator than fear. I glanced back at our pursuers, and saw they were rapidly gaining on us. We had only a few seconds before they would start to overtake us. Luckily, we only needed a few seconds.
We bolted into one of labs shooting of from the side of the corridor, and the juicers followed, momentarily delayed as they tried to force their greater numbers and larger bodies through the doorway. Before they could get through the chokepoint, I snatched a small detonator out my vest and flipped the safety cover up off the button. The rest of the squad hugged the edges of the room and braced themselves. I hit the button.
The brand of storage and packing crates Dynastar used in their labs were famously resilient, a fact that I'd found myself cursing as my squad was forced to fight our way through innumerable barricades built out of them. As the carefully shaped charge went off, I found myself now being thankful for their sturdiness. The mass of plastic explosive had been attached to the wall opposite the door, with a nearby crate placed in front of it. The blast hurled the crate toward the door and into the crowd of juicers. It slammed into the mob with so much force I could hear bones breaking from across the room and over the echoing noise from the initial blast. The crate kept going, pushing the juicers out into the corridor and against the opposing wall, where the crate's progress finally halted with wet, squishy crunch.
The squad slowly filed out of the lab and stared at the carnage. The crate had forced the entire mob up against the wall and then kept going, punching through the overdeveloped bodies in front of it as if they hadn't even been there. Leeroy stared at the resulting goop and gulped. "Vance, that was…" He stopped, trying to find words.
"Smashingly successful?" I quipped, before gesturing back toward the embattled squad we'd charged in to save. "Come on, we're not done yet." I said, leading the squad back in. We arrived just in time to see the last juicer go down, as the battered guards let out a ragged cheer. That cheer slowly faded as we returned, and a wary edge replaced their exhilaration. Without the chaos of battle, I was able to do a full headcount, spying eight of the renegades, though only five were still on their feet. I also noticed they had different armor than most of the rogues, who were still wearing the blue-trimmed grey suits as their loyal colleagues (the same color scheme as the Dynastar logo). These guys wore much heavier sets in the opposite color scheme, dark navy blue with grey highlights, and in place of the ID badges worn by most guards they had a Jet black Omega symbol painted on their armor. As one of the guards walked toward us, I noticed that each trooper had a different number painted at the center of the symbol. The guy heading towards us had the number one painted on his armor, making him the probable leader.
The guards stopped a few feet away from us and removed his helmet, revealing a heavily scarred face, with piercing blue eyes, close cropped black hair, and the strange, sepia skin tone of someone who's natural skin tone had been slowly erased by spending year after year surrounded by artificial lighting. I elected to keep my helmet on, feeling that the odds of offending someone were lower than odds of someone taking a potshot at me.
"I'm Hector Mendoza, Omega Squad commander." He said. "And you must be one of Dynastar attack dogs."
"I'm Dynastar's lead attack dog, and also the only reason you're still breathing. Name's Vance." I said.
"I appreciate the assistance. I hadn't expected you to help us, given that my former employer is paying you to bring them my head."
I chuckled. "My contract is to secure the lab, nothing more. I wouldn't lose much sleep over taking you out, but unless you have a decent price on your head, I'd prefer to save the ammo." Nodding toward one of the fallen juicers. "I have the feeling I'm going to need every spare round."
"You're still planning on securing this place?" He asked. "You saved my life, so I'm going to return the favor. Get out of here while you still can. There are dozens of these abominations still roaming the halls, and even more in the black projects lab. If you stay here, you will die." He said, turning to leave.
I put a hand on my pistol, ready to draw and fire the instant things went south. "Hold it." I said. Hector stopped, glancing at the gun. "Your guess was mostly right, expect for two small parts. One, I'm not going to die down here, and two, I'm not going to secure this place, we are going to secure this place." I said.
Hector stared at me. "Excuse me? You want me to join you on this mad assault? Why would I ever do that?" He asked, making no effort to hide the incredulity in his voice.
"A couple reasons, foremost among them being the fact that you'll live." I replied.
"After going in there? Not likely. And how would you even force me along? You don't have enough men to win this firefight, not without having your own squad crippled. And then you'd still have to deal with the rest of the lab."
"Oh, no. I won't try to stop you from leaving. I doubt the Dynastar troops scouring the rest of the complex will be so kind, however. But even if you get past them, Dynastar will still be after them. They'll be spending billions rebuilding this place, I don't think they'd mind using a few million of that to hunt down the last few people who could comprise its security. If you run today, you'll have every bounty from here to New Denmark after you, for the rest of your drastically shortened life. And your subordinate's lives."
Hector grimaced. He knew I was right, and that Dynastar could and had done exactly what I'd said they would. "And if I work with you, then what?"
"Then you and your troopers walk. Dynastar forgets you were involved with this incident, no charges are filed, and you move on with your lives."
"And how will you make that stick?" He asked, at least partly convinced. Some people spend years developing a silver tongue and learning to make even the smallest reward look like a nice juicy carrot. I, on the other hand, have always subscribed to the Theodore Roosevelt school of persuasive reasoning.
"For one thing, I've got a binder full of Dynastar's dirty secrets. If they double-cross you, I'll start leaking them until they take the price off your head." I replied. And I wasn't bluffing. I'd obtained quite a bit of sensitive information on many of the organizations that had hired me, as insurance so they wouldn't decide to try the old 'you know too much, so now we must kill you' gambit. "Besides," I continued, "you don't really have another option."
"I suppose you're right." He said, sighing. "Omega squad is at your command."
Once Omega squad had patched up their wounded comrades, our combined force made a hasty advance toward the control room. Omega had lost two people in the skirmish, and was now down to six troopers, one of them badly wounded. I learned from Omega's medic that the squad had lost half its strength since the juicers double crossed them, in addition to three other squad mates who'd died fighting loyalist troops, during the initial revolt. The fact that Omega was still fighting as a cohesive unit after losses like that was an impressive feat. I made a mental note to keep an eye on Hector, since it seemed to me that his leadership was the only reason Omega squad's morale hadn't collapsed entirely. If he died, the rest of his squad might break completely, and if that happened the remaining Dynastar troopers might follow suit.
Karaai's squad had gotten to the control room first, and once I'd stopped the Dynastar loyalists in her squad from firing on Omega squad, I ordered Leeroy to keep any eye on the two groups while I checked in with Karaai and Adrian. Karaai was busily connecting the lab's ventilation system to a large drum that was covered in enough warning symbols to leave no doubt as to what contained. She seemed to be much more enthusiastic than I'd expected given her reaction when I'd given the initial order, and I was puzzled by her change of heart. Or at least I was, until I glanced over at the group of loyalist guards who'd been in her squad and noticed that several of them were missing.
"How'd you manage to get them to come along?" Asked Adrian, nodding his head in the direction of Omega squad.
"It's easy to come by a winning hand when you have all the cards." I replied, and after getting a slightly mystified look in response I reiterated the basic points of my conversation with Hector. Karaai had finished rigging the ventilation system by the time I was done talking, and after double checking that all the vents in the control room were sealed shut (our armor had NBC protection, but it's always best to have a secondly line of defense when dealing with these kinds of weapons), I stood in front of the control console with my hand poised over the controls.
"Ok, everyone check your seals. This is nasty stuff, and if you're exposed to it, it won't be pretty." I ordered. I checked my own suit, and once everyone else had confirmed their own suits were locked down, I mentally ran through the control sequence that would release the gas. After the second such rehearsal, I realized I was stalling.
"I can run that if you're having trouble." Said Adrian, clearing picking up on my hesitation.
"No. I ordered this, I should carry it out." I said. Voicing the thought let me push through the last of my resistance, and I quickly activated the ventilation system. As I yanked the final lever, the fans started up, pulling the gas out of the drum and into the vents, and then into the lab itself. While I'd been doing that, Karaai had routed the imagery from the lab's security cameras onto a nearby computer panel, and once the gas started pumping through the air, we crowded around the monitor to watch what happened.
All through the lab, juicers started coughing. Those coughs soon turned to screams, and then those screams faded away again as the juicer's lungs were chemically burned and started to fill with fluids. The few juicers who'd realized what was happening and had tried to find a gas mask found their efforts stymied by their own bodies, as the nerve agent sabotaged their nervous system, burned out their nerves so they could no longer control their limbs. Soon the building was full of fallen, suffocating juicers, twitching on the floor as their nervous system misfired. Moments later they fell still, as their spinal column was eaten away. Their hearts and what was left of their lungs stopped as the signals from their brains were cut off. I don't know if the organ failure killed them before the nerve agent breached the blood/brain barrier and began to eat away at their brain cells, but in either case the juicers were dead only a few moments after we released the gas.
At the time, I wasn't quite so aware of what the juicers were going through, of course. It was only once I'd gotten copies of the autopsy reports and a detailed analysis of the nerve gas Karaai had used that I truly understood what had happened to the juicers. Anyway, I let the gas circulate for ten minutes after the last juicer stopped twitching, just to be sure. Once I was positive they were all dead, we disconnected the drum and started the clean-up. According to the computer, it would take the system about an hour to purge the nerve agents. At the time, I thought letting everyone have some time to relax and calm down would be for the best. How wrong I was.