Rune Seeker

“Not that I doubt you, Captain,” Ekert started. “Or your crew, your ship, or her instruments, but I have to ask…”

“This is definitely Polaris-3,” the Captain said. “We checked three times before I called you up here.”

“Did I get the wrong briefing notes?” he asked as his eyes scanned the churning storm spread across the entirety of the world. It wasn’t just Polaris-3 he would’ve been surprised to see such a storm on; something planet-wide like this wasn’t normal. And he’d visited hundreds of worlds, even the stormy ones. Never – never – before had he seen something on this scale.

“No, Sir,” the Captain said. “We all read the same thing. This is not what Polaris-3 is supposed to look like.”

“Might go a long way to explaining why we stopped hearing from it, though,” the ship’s First Officer said. Jitzer stood next to her Captain, with none of her usual snark or casualness, data pad in hand, and eyebrows lowered in concentration. “Readings are showing a lot of interference. Only about twelve percent of our scans are getting through that mess.”

“What are they finding?” Ekert asked.

“Nothing useful, at the moment,” Jitzer said with a frustrated sigh. “It’ll take some time for the systems to put a composite together based on multiple scans. The more we run, the better twelve percent looks. There are entire sections…” she pointed to one particularly large hurricane that had to be the size of an entire continent, “… that we can’t get any readings on at all. Whatever is happening down there, if it’s been like this for weeks – or months – I don’t know how anybody has survived.”

Ekert tapped into the ship’s readouts with his PIRSA, reviewing much of what First-Officer Jitzer had said. Thanks to the processing power of his armor – even without any real dedication to his intelligence or wisdom stats – it only took a few seconds for him to go over everything they’d gotten so far.

“As cold as it may sound to say,” Ekert said quietly, just for the Captain and First Officer’s ears. “We don’t get sent on rescue missions. We’re a clean-up, pacification, or extreme prejudice unit. Securing the safety of the citizens of Polaris-3 would’ve been a happy bonus that helps us all sleep better at night, but that’s not why we’re here. Those huggy-feely ships are three days behind us…”

“If they can even find the jump points,” Jitzer said under her breath. The unspoken rivalry between the elite dropships – like the Herald of War – and the more run-of-the-mill support vessels that didn’t carry specialized units wasn’t really that unspoken.

“Exactly,” Ekert said. “We’ll do what we can if we find any survivors, but our focus is on whatever caused all this. And putting it in the ground so it can’t do it again.”

“You planning on killing nature, Vanguard?” the Captain asked him.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he responded evenly.

Jitzer raised an eyebrow at the comment, but the Captain just nodded along like she agreed.

“Captain,” a new voice called out from one of the sensor stations in the pits near the entrance.

“Go,” the Captain said, with the three of them at the viewing window turning.

“I think I know where our missing spaceport went,” the voice said, and Ekert picked a young man out at one of the terminals. His hands were a blur as he adjusted scans, reports, and other instruments.

Like he’d done earlier, Ekert tapped directly into what the man was seeing, and he was already nodding as the crewmember continued speaking.

“I’m picking up a very minor debris trail leading from where I believe the spaceport used to be,” he said.

“Where’s it going?” Jitzer asked. “Playing hide-and-seek behind a moon on us?”

“Down to Polaris-3,” the man said, like even he didn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “Straight down.”

“Is the port capable of atmospheric operation?” the Captain asked.

“Not according to the specs I have of it, Sir,” the man said. “And, even if it was, this… flight path… isn’t one. It’s like it got yanked straight back down its own gravity elevator.”

“I’ve heard of some horrific gravity elevator accidents,” Ekert said, system running a news search at the same time for the last century of anything like that happening. Nothing. “Never anything on that scale though.”

“Gravity elevators can’t pull the spaceports they’re connected to back down to the planet,” the Captain said. “Not physically possible.”

“Well, something pulled it down,” Jitzer said. “Oiy, Bund, how much debris did you find? Did the port break up on entry?”

“Not nearly enough to account for the entire station,” the crewmember – Bund – said. “This was an industrial loading port, nearly two miles from end to end. If it broke up as it dropped to the surface, we should be picking up pieces of it all over the place.”

“And you’re sure what you’re seeing is the station? Not something else heading down to Polaris-3?”

“Positive. These are pieces of the spaceport. It definitely went down.”

“Which is exactly the same thing we’re going to do,” Ekert said. A thought sent a signal to his team to finish up their preparations.

“Phoenix won’t be able to handle this kind of weather,” the Captain said. “Anna won’t risk her baby in that.”

“I know,” Ekert said. “We’ll take a DRILL, do what we came here for, then wait out the weather until you can send a ride down for us.”

“If this has been going on for months…” Jitzer said.

“Then we’ll wait months,” Ekert said without missing a beat. “Or find our own way back up.” With the simple facts stated, he turned to the Captain and snapped a salute. “Permission to disembark?”

“Granted,” the Captain said. “And, Vanguard, be careful on this one. My gut is telling me there is some bad news down there. And if it’s bad enough to pull a spaceport two miles long out of secure orbit, I’m not going to stick too close to it. We’ll be moving out to long orbit to continue observation.”

“Understood, Captain. No reason to risk your ship or her crew.”

“Thank you, Vanguard. Good luck down there, and go punch Mother Nature in the nose. See you when you get back.”

“You will,” he said simply, snapping another salute, then turning and leaving the bridge. As soon as the door closed again behind him, he opened his comms to his unit. “Head to the DRILL. We’re going down.”

“The hell?” Salvo asked. “The DRILL? I just ate.”

“Should’ve known better than that,” Cool said. “That’s on you.”

“It’ll be on us,” Jackal said. “He pukes every damn time we take a DRILL. What’s the scoop, Sarge?”

“Planet’s under a massive storm,” Ekert said, moving towards the DRILL launch-bay. His unit – despite the lip – would already be moving as well. “Too much turbulence to risk Anna or her Phoenix.”

“Pair of dainty girls, those two,” Ward said.

“Their judgement is sound, in this case,” Ekert said.

“Any word from the spaceport?” Cool asked. “Communications? Is War going to dock and inspect while we take care of the surface?”

“Spaceport is MIA,” Ekert said. “Evidence suggests it may’ve crashed on Polaris-3, or been pulled down along the path of its gravity elevator.”

“You didn’t say it was a literal shitstorm covering the planet, Sarge,” Jackal said at the same time another door opened in front of Ekert, and he stepped into the launch-bay. Across the way, his unit filed through a similar entrance.

“Might as well be,” Ekert said, looking from his team to the DRILL. Shaped like a stocky bullet with six, coffin-like chambers around its circumference, it wasn’t made to be comfortable. Or spacious. Or even pleasant to look at, despite the graffiti – a tradition – on its side.

What it was designed for was speed and entry into hostile environments.

“You know, DRILL isn’t how you spell Rapid Deployment Inertial Launcher and Lander,” Salvo said.

“You say the same thing every time we get on one of these,” Jackal replied.

“And we come back every time,” Salvo replied. “It’s good luck.”

“We come back,” Ward said. “Because when the Herald of War arrives on scene, people, monsters, planets – whatever – know they’re in for a hell of a fight. And when the Heralds of Peace finish, there ain’t anything else left that can fight.”

“We come back,” Cool added, “because we’re six of the most badass B-Rankers this side of the Solar Tide, and because we’ve got the Veil giving us orders.”

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“I’ll agree with the first part of that,” Ekert said. “And I’ll do some of the second.”

With the words, the body language of the five across from him stiffened into attention, professionalism instantly replacing the casual behavior.

“You know the routine, but I’m going to say it anyway,” Ekert said. “Limited storage on the DRILL for our drop. If it’s not part of your PIRSA, you’re probably not taking it. The ride and the landing are going to be rough, especially with the storm. I want full biometrics shared across the unit interface system. No hiding injuries.

“Looking at you here, Ward,” Ekert said, and the tank nodded. “As soon we hit, Cool and Salvo, secure our landing site. Dawk, you know your job.”

“Yessir,” the veteran said.

“The DRILL will aim for a landing about a mile out from Grenity, and we’ll hoof it from there. In all honesty, with the weather, we could land anywhere from a dozen miles out, to smack dab in the mayor’s house. Be prepared for anything.”

“We expecting hostiles, Sir?” Jackal asked.

“I always expect hostiles,” Ekert said. “And to be clear, just because there’s a massive, cataclysmic storm obscuring War’s sensors, none of this rules out a dungeon bust. We could be dropping into a D- through B-Rank flood.”

“Can we expect support drops from War?” Cool asked.

Ekert turned his eyes to the person-sized, bullet-shaped pods along the edges of the launch-bay. Designed to fast and accurate supply drops, they were often a godsend on missions where stealth wasn’t necessary.

“Expect, sure,” Ekert said. “Rely on, no. Nothing new there. Once we’ve secured our landing zone and seen to any drop-related injuries, we’ll head into the city and see what the state of it is. Hard reminder here folks, we’re not going down to save anybody. Our mission is to find the source of whatever started all this trouble, and put an end to it. Questions?”

There weren’t. The Heralds of Peace knew their work.

“Mount up,” Cool said, walking over to a nearby console to ready the DRILL. A few button presses – along with the familiar clunking of industrial-strength mechanisms – lowered the large pod into place. No sooner had it stopped, than the six stepped into their small, coffin-like slots. Another pair of clunks sealed the outer doors – thick protium that could withstand a destroyer-class shelling – and moved the coffins deeper into the drill.

There, the six stood nearly face-to-face with each other, a narrow pillar – kind of like a central set of nozzles at a communal or prison shower – between them. In case of emergency, impact-dampening foam would fill the space, hopefully protecting the passengers from the worst.

“I really shouldn’t have had that third burrito,” Salvo said a second before one final clunk lowered the DRILL into its launch position.

“Launch prepared,” a voice came over their joint comms. “Coordinates set. Sorry, Vanguard, with the weather, I can’t guarantee your landing spot. If things go well, you should head due north to reach Grenity.”

“And if things don’t go well?” Jackal asked.

“Topography records show a mountain range that runs along the east side of the city. Find the mountains, keep them on your right, and follow,” the voice said.

“Odds of us landing on the other side of the mountain range?” Ward asked.

Silence.

“Prepare for launch,” the voice came back.

“Bastard,” Ward hissed.

Then there was no more time – or inclination – for words.

The DRILL launched from the belly of the Herald of War like a shell from a cannon, inertia pulling at the unit for a split second until the weightlessness of space embraced them. Before they even had a second to enjoy that though, they reached the atmosphere. If hitting the gravity-jump point was like riding a wild bull, deploying in a DRILL was like doing the same thing in the middle of an earthquake.

Add in the storm, and it was like both the quake and the bull were simultaneously drunk and in a mosh pit.

The impact-absorbing foam deployed almost immediately, Ekert’s PIRSA lighting up with minor bumps and bangs before the white foam enveloped him. Even that wasn’t enough, the drop-pod shaking and rattling as it shot through the atmosphere toward the very rocky surface.

A massive WHAM sent a powerful vibration through the whole craft, like they’d impacted the ground, though Ekert’s PIRSA told them they were still more than a mile above the surface. He barely had a chance to wonder what the hell they’d just hit before they reached the ground.

This second WHAM made the first feel like a love-tap, the sudden stop of it straining his body even through his PIRSA and the foam. Yellow stress lines flashed across the readout of his skeleton and muscles, though none of them turned red to indicate a break or tear. Nothing more than a bit of soreness, and his armor was already releasing a nanite swarm to fix him up.

Good thing, too, as the tubes the unit were in jerked straight up. Foam dissolved as they passed through a mist designed to break it down, and suddenly rain coming down in sheets washed over him from one side. The magnetic locks on the soles of his boots kept him from launching into the air as the deployment vault came to a sudden stop, depositing him on the surface of the where the DRILL had dug into the ground.

Out came his RHC in one hand, sword in the other, while his sensors ran through the gamut of options to figure out where the hell they were and what was around him.

“Status?” he asked into his comms.

“Clear here,” Salvo replied, rotary miniguns out on his shoulders. This weather would not be conducive to ordinance.

“All clear,” Cool echoed.

“Jackal has a severe muscle tear,” Dawk said a second later. “Working on it now. Need thirty seconds.”

“You’ve got it,” Ekert said.

“Foam hardened on me at a bad time,” Jackal cursed.

“It happens. As soon as you’re able, we’re moving,” he continued. “If my scans are right, we landed only slightly off-target. Actually closer to the city than planned, too.”

“Any idea what we hit before we landed?” Ward asked.

“None,” Ekert said. “Whatever it was, I bet it had a worse time than we did.”

Even with his scanners running at full tilt, he couldn’t ‘see’ much beyond thirty feet out from the group, and that was fuzzy at best. And it wasn’t just the torrential rain and wind, either. Lightning flashed near constant above them, ionizing the air and playing absolute havoc with many of the scanners the PIRSAs had. Thunder shook the ground beneath their feet and sent powerful vibrations through their chests.

And the darkness? Well, it might as well have been midnight with how absolute it was.

On the plus side, judging by how difficult it was for them to see, it would make it equally impossible for anything else to spot them.

“According to my map,” Cool said over the comms, the man down on one knee with his rifle up. “Grenity should be a straight shot in that direction. Not much between us and it. We can be there in less than a minute when Jackal is ready.”

“Which she is, now,” Dawk said. “Nanites took care of the tear.”

“Then we’re moving,” Ekert said. “Cool, five-hundred feet ahead. Jackal, keep an eye on our backs. Rest on me.”

Orders given, the unit bolted in the direction Cool had said the city was. At the speeds a PIRSA could move – even Salvo – they knifed through the rain, devouring the distance. Thankfully, along with the physical speed the armor bestowed them, it equally gave them processing power, taking in and adjusting the sensory input from the suite mapping out the ground immediately around them. Cracks and holes in the terrain that would threaten anybody not in a PIRSA at these speeds were easily avoided, even if they couldn’t see more than thirty feet.

Despite the visibility – or lack thereof – the group reached a fifteen-foot wall in less than a minute, then vaulted over it to find themselves at the edge of the city.

Ekert’s boots splashed to the pavement under an inch of water, sensors peeled for any alarms or shouts of surprise at the Heralds’ entrance. Nothing. Not a good sign. The wall meant there were things the people wanted to keep out of their city, and guards usually accompanied something like that. Sure, the rain was bad, but there had to be failsafes in places to catch somebody – or something – sneaking in. No response suggested no guards.

Ahead of them, intermittent streetlights flickered in the heavy rain, like they were a dying heart struggling to continue beating despite knowing their end was right around the corner. And, those flashes of light were the only movement in the street. No vehicles. No people.

“Smashed windows, here,” Cool said, peering through the shattered glass of what looked like a storefront. Some kind of bakery, it seemed. “Place is leaking like a sieve. Wasn’t made for this kind of weather.”

“Survivors?” Ekert asked.

“None my armor can find,” Cool said.

“Okay, we’re heading toward the center of the…” Ekert started, only for one of his proximity detectors to flash – two-hundred feet up and to his right. With the empowered speed only a PIRSA could offer, Ekert’s RHC snapped up in the direction of the brief contact, his finger on the trigger… but it was already gone. “Did…?” he started.

“Affirmative,” Jackal said. “There was definitely something there. Armor only caught it for a fraction of a second.”

“Something flying,” Salvo said.

“Could’ve been a glitch,” Dawk said. “Caused by all the electricity in the air.”

“We’re assuming it wasn’t a glitch,” Ekert said. “Sensors are picking up more damage to the buildings ahead of us.” The longer they stayed in one place, the better their scanners got at punching through the interference. Within an hour, it’d be like the storm wasn’t even there. His eyes went back to the sky above them, though. An hour was a long time to run around practically blind. “Safeties off, permission to fire granted. Anything in the air isn’t our friend.”

“And here I was hoping…” Salvo started, only for their proximity to detectors to light up again.

Almost as fast as Ekert’s PIRSA could process it, signals changed to alarms, something coming over the edge of a two-story building opposite the bakery. Down to street level, Ekert almost didn’t believe his sensors – his eyes telling him there was nothing there – until suddenly Dawk got ripped off her feet, into, then through the back wall of the bakery.

“Jackal,” Ekert ordered, and the woman was already gone, dashing through the hole after the medichanic. “Ward. Back her up. Cool and Salvo with me.”

Back-to-back-to-back the two soldiers formed a triangle with Ekert, watching all sides, while the Vanguard both monitored the video feeds coming from Dawk and Jackal, and reviewed footage of whatever had attacked them.

Despite the nothing in front of Dawk’s camera, something clearly had her, smashing her through a second, then a third building, before dragging her along the ground. Flashes on her PIRSA’s shields lit up across her body, like invisible chains had wrapped around her, and stress warnings issued from her joints.

On Jackal’s camera, the other woman looked to be having some kind of seizure, her body struggling and pulling as if it had a mind of its own. Dawk’s left arm jerked up into the air, hand bending backward to the limit of the PIRSA, while even her warnings blinked about the elbow’s integrity.

Armor hijacking? No, doesn’t show the same signs.

Not having an answer – and having even less time to find one – Ekert overclocked his processors. Like a drug that slowed time around him, he threw his attention first at the footage of what had triggered his proximity sensors the second time. Reviewing it once, twice, he didn’t see anything that… wait, what was that? On the third run through of the footage, slowed down to almost frame by frame, what he’d pegged as wind whipping through the rain looked to be far too straight to be that at all.

Quick adjustments to the resolution, half-a-dozen filter and camera options, and he finally got a look at what he was dealing with. Eight-feet long, cylindrical, and about a foot-and-a-half thick. Was that… a squid?

A flying, invisible… squid?

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