The Assault

16. THE PLATFORM



THEY CAME TO A DOOR THAT WAS DIFFERENT FROM THE others. Different from any door that Chisnall had ever seen. It was perhaps three meters wide, made of six interlocking fingers of steel fitted so snugly together that the join was little more than a hairline.

They stood on the tracks below a monorail platform similar to the one they had found at the entrance to the rock. They had tabbed over half a kilometer along the track to get to this second platform, taking turns carrying the warhead and helping Brogan and Fleming.

The dust storm was gone now. The silence this far inside the rock was absolute, and yet it thundered inside his ears.

To Chisnall, the cold sense of strangeness here was almost overwhelming. The metal fingers of the door seemed to be smiling at him, in an unearthly, lopsided steel grin. Here was danger. Here was evil. For the first time, he wanted to abort the mission. To turn around and escape from this place. Not to have to confront what lay inside.

What kind of abomination had the invaders of his planet hidden under a rock, behind these smirking doors? He thought of the creatures that leered down from the tops of the alien buildings and half wondered if they were breeding some giant, mythical chimera monsters to set loose on the human race.

There were monorail cars here. Six of them were parked in a line, just a few meters past the platform. Chisnall glanced back down the tunnel. Part of the roof had collapsed a few moments ago and the aliens had clearly decided to take a more cautious approach to digging through the rubble.

“Looks like you were right,” Price said, nodding at the cars.

Chisnall shook off his feeling of terror.

“It made sense,” Chisnall said. “There would have to be some way of getting people out quickly in an emergency.”

Price looked at the doors. “So all we have to do is stick our head in there and find out what they’re up to, then jump on one of those cars and get the hell out of this place.”

“Right after we blow them all to hell,” Wilton said.

“That’s pretty much the plan,” Chisnall said. “Now shut it. They’ll probably have security cameras and microphones on the platform.”

The lights in the tunnel had all gone out when they had blown up the entrance building, but here the platform was brightly lit. For safety, they had left Fleming and Brogan with the warhead, about twenty meters back down the tunnel, well out of sight in the darkness.

A security panel squawked as they approached the doors, and a female voice asked, “What is going on out there?”

Chisnall approached the panel. “I’m Chizna,” he said in Bzadian. “I’m with Bomb Disposal. We were attempting to disarm a missile at the entrance to the tunnel when it exploded.”

“You’re all okay?”

Chisnall couldn’t decide whether the voice sounded concerned or suspicious.

“We had enough warning to retreat inside the tunnel,” Chisnall said. “But I have two injured soldiers who urgently need medical treatment. And the tunnel is completely blocked. It could be days before they dig it out.”

There was a brief silence while the person inside contemplated that.

“My soldiers need urgent medical attention,” Chisnall said.

There was a loud hiss and the huge metal fingers of the door slid smoothly apart, sliding back into the rock walls.

No demons appeared. No forces of darkness or dark clouds of evil. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Inside was a plainly decorated entranceway. A bench ran around the walls. It looked like a waiting room in a doctor’s office. Perfectly normal. He began to feel a little foolish for his thoughts earlier. But his sense of strangeness did not leave him.

A face peered through the open doorway at the team. It was a woman, smaller than most aliens and possibly the oldest Bzadian Chisnall had ever seen. She wore a guard’s uniform that hung loosely over withered shoulders. She smelled old, as if the flesh were already decaying on her not-yet-dead bones.

She looked the team over a couple of times. Chisnall knew how they must appear, bloodied and dusty.

Perhaps she saw something, or perhaps it was just instinct, but something in her eyes showed alarm and she reached back inside. Another hiss and the doors slid smoothly shut, but not before Price hurled herself forward in a single fluid motion, diving and rolling through the closing gap milliseconds before the metal fingers interlocked behind her combat boots.

A second passed, then another, and then the doors slid open again.

Price was standing by the door, her rifle steady in her hands. The woman and another guard, younger and burlier, sat against the wall with their hands clasped on top of their heads.

“What are you doing?” the older guard protested, but Chisnall ignored her and stepped inside. Wilton and Monster followed him.

“Tie them,” he ordered, still in Bzadian.

On one side of the doors was a single button. He pressed it and the thick fingers of the door slid smoothly shut. He pressed it again, and they opened just as smoothly.

Oval-shaped passageways led off the curved walls of the room in three directions. One to the left, one to the right, and one straight ahead. Doors were also to their left and right. The one to the left was open.

While Price and Wilton secured the two guards, Chisnall glanced through the open doorway. In a small room, little more than a cupboard, two chairs faced a bank of security screens. A tall tube of a steaming liquid sat on a table, next to a half-eaten food roll. It was clearly the guards’ station.

There were four screens altogether. Two showed views of the platform outside the door, from different angles. The others were blank. Chisnall guessed they had previously shown views of the main entrance building, but the cameras had been destroyed in the blast.

Monster opened a door on the right of the atrium. Chisnall walked over to investigate. It was dark inside, but Monster found a switch and the room flooded with light, revealing a storeroom.

“Put the guards in here,” Chisnall said. “Then watch the entrances while we get Brogan and Fleming.”

He turned back to the doors and to his surprise found the warhead sitting on the platform and Brogan helping Fleming to climb up. The spark in her eyes was back.

“Holly!” He tried to keep the relief in his voice from being too obvious. “How are you feeling? You’re okay?”

“Got one helluva headache,” she said, “but everything seems to be functioning.”

“Great,” Chisnall said. He extended a hand to Fleming to help him up. “How’s the leg?”

“Like a rabid dog is chewing on the bone,” Fleming said, “but it’s good to have some feeling back in it. I can walk.”

“We were just coming back for you,” Chisnall said. “How long will it take you to arm this thing?”

He took one side of the warhead, Fleming took the other, and they moved it off the platform into the entranceway.

“No time at all,” Fleming said. “Just punch in a time and hit the button.”

“Okay. Let’s recon this place. See if we can find an answer for HQ about what’s going on in here. Then we press the big bang button and get clear.”

“I don’t think so.”

It was Brogan who had spoken, behind him on the platform. Chisnall turned. She looked focused, determined.

So did the sidearm that she pointed directly at Chisnall’s face.

“What the hell, Brogan?” Wilton asked, his coil-gun leaping over his shoulder into his hands.

“Put it away,” Brogan said. “Unless you want to see what the skipper’s brains look like.”

“Put the gun away, Wilton,” Chisnall said. “There’s no need.”

“What are you doing?” Price asked.

“Her job,” Chisnall said. “She’s been working for the Bzadians all along. She sabotaged my half-pipe and the laser comm unit. And she killed Hunter.”

Wilton swore at her. Brogan’s pistol didn’t waver. Her face was expressionless.

“You knew?” she asked.

“Of course,” Chisnall said.

“And you did nothing?”

“That’s not entirely true,” Chisnall said. “I did take out your sidearm’s battery and replace it with a dead one.”

Brogan instinctively turned the gun sideways to check the battery meter. It only took a second, but it was long enough. Chisnall punched her hand sideways and dived forward, knocking her backward and down. She tried to bring the gun back to bear, but he had his full weight on top of her. Then a sharp boot from Price kicked the gun out of her hands.

Both Price and Wilton had their coil-guns aimed at her head now.

Chisnall twisted her onto her stomach. He found a cord in a utility pocket and bound her hands securely, then let her sit back up.

“How did you know it was me?” she asked, breathing heavily.

“I didn’t, until just now,” he said. “In fact, I thought it was probably Price.”

“Bite me,” Price said.

Chisnall sat back on his haunches and looked at her.

“Why, Holly?” he asked.

“I don’t have to say anything,” she said.

“Why would a human help aliens?”

“For reasons you’ll never understand,” she spat.

“This is our planet. You’re siding with the enemy.”

“You are the enemy,” she said.

“Chisnall, we need to get moving,” Fleming said.

Chisnall looked at her for a moment longer, then shook his head.

“Bring her,” he said. “Price, you’re in charge of her. Watch her carefully.”

He unclipped Brogan’s coil-gun from her back holster and handed it to Fleming.

Chisnall and Monster retrieved the warhead from the platform; then Chisnall shut the doors again. Sealing them in and the enemy out.

“Which way?” Wilton asked.

“No idea. You pick.”

Wilton picked the first passageway to the right. It led to a heavy metal door. Chisnall nodded at him to try the handle. It wasn’t locked.

Guns at the ready, they pushed open the door and eased their way into the room. Large generators hummed and the walls were lined with fuel cells. That explained the bright lights in the facility, while the rest of the tunnel was blacked out.

“Good place for a warhead,” Monster said.

“Agreed,” Chisnall said. “Those fuel cells will go up like the Fourth of July.”

Monster and Wilton each took one side of the warhead, moving it into the generator room. After a little looking around, they hid it in a gap between one of the generators and a wall, moving an empty fuel cell in front of it for further concealment.

They moved back to the entrance.

Chisnall found a square of card and began to sketch a quick map of the complex.

“Your turn to pick,” Wilton said, looking at the remaining passageways.

Chisnall was about to choose the passageway to the left, at random, when the decision was made for them. A Bzadian walked out of the front passageway. He was holding a steaming drink tube.

He took in the scene—the human and the coil-gun in Price’s hands that was rising up toward him—and reacted instantly, flinging the drink tube at Price’s face. He spun on his heels as she twisted away from the burning liquid. The Bzadian raced back down the short passageway and out of sight. A moment later, an alarm started blaring and a red light in the ceiling started flashing.

“Damn,” Price said.

“Doesn’t change a thing,” Chisnall said. “Let’s get on with what we came here to do.”

He took a breath and then turned to Fleming. “Get yourself into that security office and keep an eye on the monitors. If the Pukes manage to dig through that rubble, I want to know about it.”

Fleming nodded and limped off to the left.

“Okay, we’re Oscar Mike,” Chisnall said. “Stay frosty. Let’s recon this place as quickly as we can, set the timer on the warhead, then make like a bunch of birds.”

“And flock off,” Wilton finished the old joke.

Chisnall took his sidearm in a two-handed police-style grip. He scanned the middle passageway before crouching and stepping into it.

It was no more than six meters long, if that. At the end, it turned sharply right and led into a long room.

“Check your corners,” Chisnall said, although it seemed an odd thing to say in a room where there were no corners. The aliens’ fondness for rounded architecture extended underground, and the room they were in had only sweeping curves.

The room was actually more of a long hall. They could see the end, but it seemed far away in the distance. It was dimly lit, with globes in groupings of three on the ceiling. About halfway down, a red alarm light was flashing—it washed the room intermittently with a bloodlike glow. On the left side were doorways, one after another, evenly spaced. Small shrubs in circular tubs added a little green to this stark dungeon.

Every shrub was a hiding place. Every doorway down the long hall was a potential sniper’s nest.

“What the hell is this place?” Wilton asked.

Nobody else spoke.

The alarm siren echoed off the long walls, bouncing back to them in a solid wall of sound.

“Where are all the Pukes?” Price asked.

“Wilton, Monster.” Chisnall nodded at the first door.

Price pressed Brogan against a wall, her gun at the back of her neck.

“If I even think you’re going to call out, I’ll make sure you can’t. Permanently,” Price said.

Chisnall crouched down, weapons aimed forward down the long hall. Wilton and Monster took the doorway assault-style. They flattened themselves against each side of the door before smashing it open with a boot heel and diving inside—one left, one right, one high, one low—guns ready.

“Clear,” Wilton said, and Monster echoed the word. The room was empty.

They disappeared inside for a moment, then reappeared.

“It’s a dorm,” Wilton said. “Bzadian style. Eight sleeping tablets. Empty.”

“Lived in?” Chisnall asked.

Wilton nodded. “Clothes, personal effects. Lights are on but nobody’s home.”

The next doorway was the same, and the next. Wherever the inhabitants of this place were, it was not in their living quarters.

Halfway along the hall, light from a side passage fell in a pool on the floor. After a quick sweep of the remaining dormitories, they made their way back to the lighted passage.

As they neared it, the red flash and strident siren stopped abruptly.

“It was giving me a headache,” Fleming’s voice said on the comm.

“Good effort,” Chisnall said.

The passage was ten meters long with a door at the end. Closed, but there was no lock.

Chisnall pulled down on the handle as quietly as he could and used the snout of his sidearm to push the door open.

Silence. No shots. No shouting.

He eased it open a fraction more, then looked back at his team. “Okay. Who wants to be a hero?” he asked.

Nobody answered.

“It’s you,” Chisnall said, looking at Wilton.

Wilton grinned and took a step backward. The others cleared a path. He broke into a run, and just as he reached the door, Chisnall flicked it open. Wilton rolled through the doorway in a crouch—the smallest possible target. He scanned the room while the others leaned out from the doorway to offer fire support.

Two large machines took most of the space. From one came the sound of rushing water and from the other the sound of flowing air. This would be the plant room that kept air and water circulating throughout the underground installation.

Still no contact with the enemy.

Chisnall examined his rough map of the underground complex. “Let’s start again from the beginning,” he said.

They returned to the passageway and walked through the accommodation block back to the entrance.

“Anything on the monitors?” Chisnall asked.

“All clear,” Fleming said.

Chisnall checked his map, marking in the doors and passageways that led out from the atrium.

First door on the left, the security office.

First door on the right, the storeroom.

First passageway on the right led to the generator room where they had hidden the warhead.

The middle door was the passage to the dormitories.

That left the second passage on the left.

“On me,” he said, and led the way into it. Price came last, pushing Brogan along in front of her.

It opened into an office area. A circular room. The desks were workstations, four chairs at each, with a low partition allowing the users some privacy while they worked. Admin staff, Chisnall guessed. The desks were made of a light, aluminum-like metal that the Bzadians used extensively.

The computers and filing cabinets might yield interesting data, he thought, but there was little time to stop and investigate. Several of the desks were covered with pieces of paper. Tables of numbers and charts.

“Still warm,” Price said. Chisnall looked over to see her pressing the back of her hand to a drinking tube on one of the desks.

The aliens had cleared out in a hurry.

“We’ll come back here after the preliminary recon,” he said. “See what we can get out of those computers.”

So far they had found little of interest. Yet the aliens had gone to a lot of trouble to hide this place away from satellite eyes, deep inside Uluru. They had done that for a reason.

They passed through the administration offices, weapons ready. The Pukes had to be somewhere. But where?

They took the passageway directly in front of them, emerging into a mess hall. Some of the tables still had food and drinking tubes on them. A music keyboard was near one wall, a Bzadian-style electronic piano with a circle of wedge-shaped buttons emanating from a central hub. Some wilted decorations were stuck to the walls around it. There had been a celebration of some kind in here, but now it was deserted.

“Where the hell is everybody?” Wilton asked.

“Maybe they’ve got a panic room,” Price said.

That would make sense, Chisnall thought. A safe room where the Pukes would have headed as soon as they heard the alarm. That would explain why every room they found was deserted.

They passed a kitchen, also deserted, although some large pots still steamed. A passageway at the end of the hall took them to restrooms with circular Bzadian-style toilets and wash cubicles. That was a dead end, except for a short passage back to the dormitories, so they backtracked to the administration center.

They had finally come to the last door. Every other room and passageway had been searched. Whatever secret Uluru had to reveal, it was behind this door.

Would it be worth it? Chisnall wondered. All the danger. All the risk.

Would it be worth Hunter?

He looked at his team. They were poised and ready.

He looked at Brogan.

He took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

It led to a large room with benches running around the outside walls and computer workstations in the center. A closed door blocked the way forward.

The strangeness was upon him once again.

“Stay frosty,” he murmured.

The team took up assault positions around the door.

The door opened inward, so Chisnall eased it open while the others trained their weapons on the gap.

They were greeted by silence and darkness.

From the air in the room, Chisnall felt it was large, but he could not see the end, nor the ceiling, not even the sides—except where a small beam of light from the open doorway illuminated the walls.

“Get out of the doorway,” he said. Silhouetted by the light from the lab, his team would make perfect targets for anyone inside.

The Angels split to either side, out of the firing line.

“Wilton, on me,” Chisnall said. “Everyone else, hang back, give us cover.”

He moved forward and shone his flashlight around the walls. It reflected back at him off glass surfaces, making it impossible to see what lay on the other side.

Wilton moved behind him, searching the darkness.

There was no light switch that he could see.

“See if the lights are controlled from the lab,” he called back through the doorway.

A moment later Monster said, “Got it.”

There was a click and a series of fluorescent lights flickered above them, creating a harsh strobelike effect for a moment. Then the lights came on fully, bursting into brilliant incandescent life. They revealed another long chamber with rounded corners, narrower than some of the other rooms, little more than a wide passageway. On either side, glass walls covered a series of cubicles that ran the length of the wall.

And in those cubicles was the truth about Uluru.

“Holy shit,” Chisnall said. His voice sounded far-off and distant.

Wilton said nothing as Chisnall lowered his weapon.

“You’d better get in here, guys,” he said.

He walked to the nearest cubicle and put his hand on the glass wall. It was actually a door, he realized, rubberized around the edges, with a long metal strip hinge that ran from top to bottom on the right-hand side. Gleaming white walls and harsh lighting gave the cubicle the appearance of a hospital room or a morgue. Inside the cubicle was a bed: a hard, narrow, rubberized mattress on a dull metal frame.

On the bed was a human.

A woman.

Naked.

With tubes running in and out of her body.

The woman appeared to be conscious but didn’t look at Chisnall as he approached the glass. Her eyes were unfocused, dull. The world outside the cubicle did not seem to exist for her.

Her hair was cropped so short that it might as well have been shaved.

And she was pregnant.