A NEW BEGINNING
Chapter Eleven
"Siberius: A Frozen Stakeout"
04:13 - Planet Siberius, Megacorp Munitions Factory, Bogon Galaxy
The Manhunters drop ship arrived early next morning on planet Siberius, at a remote Megacorp munitions center which was inconveniently located at the center of a mountainous region besieged by strong gusts of wind, and bitter cold snowfall that adhered to everything with a frosty touch. Their ship's afterburners hummed deeply and left a trail of black that hung in the air for long seconds as if the atmospheric pressure seized it as its own. The pilot Vukar rubbed the fogged canopy window on his right clean and found an inconspicuous landing zone; a precipice, about half a mile from the large factory, to serve as the insertion point. He flipped a switch on his pilot's communicator helmet and warned the others sitting in the back of the ship about a possible landing.
"Evaryone, prepare far landing," he said into the microphone of his headset, then tapped it off and eased back on the ship's control stick. He reduced the thrusters, directing the control stick into a tight turn.
The manhunters at the back of the ship, save for the robotic gunner, reached out to hold onto the rubber grips above their heads, expecting for the typical, harsh landing they had come to expect from the Barlowian's piloting skills. As predicted, the drop ship touched ground, roughish, the sound of its wheels pressing down on the thick snow could be heard, and then the engines powered down--fading into a quiescent thrum. The bounty hunters removed their seat belts, reaching for their weapons and running a secondary check of their equipment, while waiting for the pilot to emerge from the cockpit.
Sandz was the first to say a word regarding the mission, turning and reaching for a small box with his hands in the same compartment as before. He brought over the case to show the others, opening and revealing what was inside it.
"Listen, you two, here are your communicators," he began. "Attach the tiny microphone just outside your outer ear, and then press this button just once to activate it."--he directed the box toward Dark and Jak, opened it, and handed each of them an ear piece--"We'll test these out once Vukar comes."
Vukar suddenly came through the drapes of the cockpit area, he too, taking one of the ear pieces and fitting it into his ear as the others had already done. He remained standing, leaning against a wall of the ship, waiting for some explanation from the person in charge of the team's communication.
"All right, does everyone have a mic?" he said, looking around.
"Rarr," came from Jak, motioning his head to Dark.
She acknowledged with a nod, tapping against the side of her helmet where the striped, pointed ear of choice hid the microphone inside. "I'm set."
"Vukar too."
Sandz watched as all three pressed the button on their mics. "All right, then! Here's how things are going to work. I'll monitor all radio chatter from this point on from the drop ship. Like the captain said, only report when you need to, because you don't want to draw an enemy to your position with verbal responses. Understand? Now that everyone has tapped once, this means you've switched to a channel for listening only. If you want to send a message and listen at the same time, tap it again, or twice to return to the first mode."
"Sounds easy enough, so let's try them out," said Dark, standing up and moving toward the side door. She turned and pulled the door's lever, opening it and welcoming the others to a terrible breeze.
"Whoa! That's cold," Vukar growled.
Snow began to gather quickly on the floor of the ship. Not wanting to keep the door open for too long, Dark stepped out into the snow, looking over the surrounding area. Jak and Vukar followed her out. While Jak walked up to the side of his fellow, female hunter, Vukar slammed the drop ship door closed, snarling as the wind and snow bit him on the face constantly.
Dark reached up and clicked on the side button of her mic once more, hearing a slight beep to confirm her channel selection. Then she stepped four long feet away from the others. "Dark Angel, testing," she said normally.
Sandz's head rose from within the cockpit of the ship. "I hear you loud and hear," he replied. "Jak, Vukar. Radio in and see if your mics are working properly."
Both tribesmen pressed the button on their mics in unison, still looking around and glaring at the snowy caps that surrounded them for thousands of miles from their location.
"Jak hare--testing."
"Vukar speaking..."
"Good, good! Your mics work just fine. Okay, now get moving. The factory isn't too far away from here."
The three hunters regrouped, making their way toward the edge of the cliff. They surveyed the area, looking for an easier pathway that would take them directly to the factory that lied below.
Dark saw a series of large cables stretching across massive communication towers that were used for radio transmission and general power. The towers dotted all the way down to the factory, but the distance was still quite a long way. It was the onle way--she figured--that they could get down there quick enough, undetected, assuming they used something to ground themselves from the electricity. The only other alternative was the long passageway that naturally and dangerously wound down the mountain wall of the cliff. She turned to the others for their opinions.
"So what do you guys think? Which way should we take to get down there?" she said, placing a gloved hand on her hip. As the wind speed picked up, the sound of snow and ice pelting her armored suit and helmet could be heard. She laid her ears back, preventing the icy wind from flattening them to her displeasure.
Jak studied the obstacle in front of them. "I have an idea..." he said, "let's use the cables to slid down. With our glarves, we could technically avoid touching the dangerous wires."
Vukar looked down at his feet and then at the huge tower that overlooked their landing zone. He discovered that the particular boots he wore, he could probably grind down the steel railing that went alongside the massive towers. He turned to Jak and Dark, sharing his idea with them.
"Vukar has grind boots. He can use that rail thar to get down to the factory on his own." He stepped toward the edge of the cliff, looking how far down the drop was and then at the railing only a few feet away below it. A well calculated jump was all he needed to successfully land on top of it.
All of a sudden, Dark remembered about her Grapple Shot that was a part of his suit, a forearm attachment that could probably latch onto the large, steel tower bars. With a press of a button underneath her forearm, where a small panel housed a miniature keyboard on top of her forearm, the grapple shot popped out and pushed out some of its hooks.
"All right, here's what we'll do. We can't screw this up on the first try, because I don't believe any of us has a jet pack. So here's the plan: Vukar, you grind down using your boots. Jak, you have your gloves, use your wrists to guard you against the electricity, assuming the towers are still operational after all of this time. As for me, well, I'll swing my way down using my grapple shot."
"That sounds like a feasible plan. Get to it, already," urged Sandz, having listened to them the entire time. From the front of the drop ship, he gave them a thumbs up.
Without saying a word, Vukar ran back a few feet, paused to align his jump, and then dashed off, jumping high above the rail when he reached the edge. The others had to admit it was an eccentric thing to do, but thankfully the tribesman landed without losing his balance. He successfully landed on a railing and slid down it with incredible speed, igniting a trail of sparks beneath his boots. He was already ahead of the game. In mere seconds, the tribesman appeared to be nothing more than a dot, something swift on the railing as it neared its end.
Jak turned to Angela. "My turn," he grinned. "See yar on the factory grounds. Remember, I'll have yar back in the front watchtower. Vukar--in the back."
Without saying any more words, the Jobian stole several feet back, just as Vukar had done, and took a moment to gather enough courage to go through with his plan. He ran the mental image of how he would get a hold of the cable in front of him. Reaching it wouldn't be too much of a problem, and all he had to do was latch on; the task would be just like jumping out of a plane. And once he mustered enough courage, he sprinted as fast as his legs could carry him, making sure not to trip in the snow as he made his approach toward the edge of the cliff.
At the edge, he bent his knees and leapt in the air, and then the sight of him disappeared from Dark's point of view. Worried that he might have fallen, she quickly ran toward the edge, stopped and looked down at the tower in front of her.
She couldn't believe it, but he had actually made it. His body swung dangerously as he gripped the cable with his gloved hands and switched over to position his wrists to crisscross each other; and, with a fluid body maneuver, he used the momentum to his advantage, and slowly but gradually picked up speed. In time, he made his way down the cable, griping another, different connecting cable, as the time called for it, for each line had a certain length before another tower would impede his path.
It was Dark's turn to show a little courage and skill. Behind her mask, she scrunched her face, and began to whisper a short prayer, praying that she would not be clumsy this one time to prevent--no, cheat--death once more.
Looking out at the tower below her and at the subsequent ones that descended toward and beyond the snow-covered factory, she searched for something to attach her hook to. She found that the top, metal sheet of the first tower to be a sufficient hook point, so she aimed steady and fired. There was no turning back no, for the hooks would reel in the second it attached itself into something.
The small hooks exploded forth like gunfire, extending a strong, titanium cord. When it jerked, it was a sign that she had successfully hooked onto something below, and seeing that it was the top of the first of many towers, she realized it was a tad bit too late to wait for the hook mechanism to be guided by voluntary movement. It had begun to automatically pull her in, closer to the edge than she wanted to be. Before she went over the cliff's edge, she jumped off in wild fright, screaming on the way down.
When her body swung forward and traveled up into the air, she released her hook and quickly aimed for another tower bar just in case gravity tried to pull her back down to the bottomless, foggy abyss that she dared herself not to look at. With another successful cling to a metal object of another, neighboring tower, she swung forward again, repeating this swinging manner as she had done before, and quickly conquered her fear of falling.
From below, some several yards from the factory's entrance, Jak and Vukar grimaced at the thought of Dark having fallen to her doom, but when they looked back they saw an image of a figure swinging toward them quickly, ridiculously side to side. They tapped their ear pieces twice, and then one of them covered his mouth with a clawed hand as if to whisper to the other some remark about women in Dark's situation.
"If that's what she sounds like while swingin', imagine what she must be like in bed."
Vukar exploded with laughter. "Mhm."
"Come, Vukar, let's get into position before she gets hare."
The tribesmen split off into separate directions, with one heading toward the front side of the factory while the other ran to the back of it, taking the long and hard path along the side of the factory's westward wall.
By the time Dark completed her final swing, she deactivated her grapple hook and landed near where they had been standing moments before, creating a form of herself in the snow in a crouched position. Slowly, she rose with adrenaline coursing through her body. The way down, from tower to tower, left her badly shaken, but she tried hard to ignore the fact that she was scared out of her mind. And she dared not to look back to see how far she had come from the insertion point.
Her voice cracked. "S-sandz, we've all made it down to the f-factory."
"Affirmative. Get into position and wait for further instruction."
She looked at the front of the factory complex, noticing a figure scaling the far right watchtower near the entrance, with only his clawed hands. On his back his long rifle dangled with every motion of his progressive body. The figure was undoubtedly Jak, whose job was to overlook the courtyard beyond its gates. It wouldn't be too long before he reached the top and report his findings.
Dark ran off toward the side of the factory, following the same path Vukar had traveled. At the end of it, she saw him cut a corner at the end of the path, and believed that he, too, would soon climb his tower at the back of the factory. She seemed to be the only one getting behind, so she looked for a way to infiltrate the compound.
The walls of the compound stretched at least forty feet into the air. There was no way she was going to climb like her friends; she lacked the physical strength and will power to accomplish such a feat. Instead, she had a better idea. She directed her grapple shot high into the air, past the utmost ledge of the far western wall, and fired. The gadget exploded quieter than before because of the wind, and sure enough the hooks latched onto the back of the multilayered fringe. Pulling on the cord with her arm to ensure its securement, she pressed her boots against the wall and allowed the gadget to pull her up quickly. Within seconds, she reached the top of the wall and perched on top of it, surveying the quiet courtyard while her Grapple Shot retracted into her forearm.
The scene of the courtyard, that stretch a long ways from the main gates to the middle factory, seemed undisturbed. There weren't any robot guards belonging to Megacorp to be found anywhere. Shipment containers of various sizes and shapes were stacked in a variety of ways, covered greatly by the unforgiving weather. Some of them were left open while others remained closed. They provided excellent cover for the thievish type. She would be sure to use the shadows they provided to conceal herself until the time was right to surprise the thief.
The ground around the boxes seemed safe, but just as the satellite images from briefing showed, there were little plates that appeared to be dots before littering the area. Mines. It was true the place had been rigged with all sorts of nasty traps for unexpected guests.
Lost in her thoughts of what area among the hundreds of containers that would make a suitable position, Jak spoke to her. She remained kneeled, looking up at the tower where she had last seen him ascending with great determination.
"I'm in position," he said. "Just in case yar've fargotten where I am, have a look at this." An infrared beam streamed down over the courtyard and quickly found its way to her, placing a bright dot on her left thigh. She traced the beam back to its origin, noticing how the beam shook a little. The beam disappeared, and then he spoke again. "The courtyard is clear--for now. Vukar should be checking in soon."
Another voice, "Vukar is already in his tower," he growled softly. "Bombs...not ready."
Dark shook in silent laughter.
"Dark, yar should take shelter in that large container in the middle of the yard. It looks like a promising vantage point," suggested Jak, switching on the infrared beam of his tactical sniper rifle, shining it onto the aforementioned spot.
She gave a nod and stood. "I see it, and will do."
With a strong leap, she launched herself into the air and landed on the first container below her. She quickly leapt from one container to the next until she reached the middle of the courtyard, stopping in front of the container she wanted and looking inside it before going in to hide. Both panels of the container had been removed, so she could look in two different directions and, if necessary, hide in the shroud of darkness from where the sky light couldn't reach the container's interior.
Sandz transmitted from the drop ship. "Good to see that everyone is in position. And now we wait."
"How do we know that he'll really come here? And on this particular day?" Dark asked, feeling not too fond of the idea of a long stakeout without any intermediate.
Sandz's final words were, "But that is what comes with the job of a bounty hunter, Dark. It's the beauty of the work--never knowing when or what will happen until it happens."