“GG let Bro take the shot next time.”

  “Yes Scar

  The Magus was trying not to give orders. This left Oscar, or Scar for short, as defacto leader.

  Ambrose, Bro, had downed the aircraft properly. By hitting the tail. The engine, as Gabriel had foolishly thought, was a bad target. Gabriel should have known this perhaps he misunderstood the targeting reticle or the device was poorly calibrated.

  The ZRM personal had provided disposable lasers and batteries for the Knights. The knights had happily shed their manpads.

  Oscar felt a gentle pleasure in the personal nature of failures. Even if the failures were completely alienated from the individual the individual still felt attatched to them.

  Now Ralph and Cotten; RF and CoCo, scanned for signs of life in the wreckage.

  Hopefully the pilot had died, there was, thankfully no copilot. One of the good parts of digitization.

  The pilot had done his job really, accepted liability in the event of a failure of the craft. In this instance however the failure was bureaucratic. The cargo was a hostile alien infiltrating human governmental structures.

  The hopefully someone felt guilty enough to fudge his life insurance numbers to the maximum. The world was rarely so just.

  Oscar waddled, briefly cursing the exfil rockets up a few concrete steps that were not meant for exoskeletons to peer over a modern fortification at the edge of the airport.

  As if to confirm himself he scanned for the lizard. The mech, he saw nothing.

  “You think it lived in the tail?” Ralph asked.

  “The thing has played dead before.”

  Then remembering that the ZRM personnel couldn’t hear him, Oscar repeated more audibly using the suit modulated voice.

  “That alien has played dead before. Can we get a gunship?”

  “Absolutely” a chipper ZRM officer responded.

  Then in silence Oscar asked the magus.

  “Why are they complicit? Will they not drag us over the coals for attacking them?”

  “Absolutely Scar, and we shall have no honor, we shall be crucified in syndicate courts to save these humans from themselves. Valor 101.”

  Oscar always found this “meekness” to be offensive. He signed up to escape pathetic humanity not to endure it forever.

  ___________________________________________________________________________________

  The magus marched over to the little desk where a few NCO’s stood around nervously.

  “I want to make a call” the old man said authoritatively.

  He deftly removed an armored glove, he held it gingerly in his other armored fist. Normal armor didn’t do that.

  His old man hand grabbed a phone and began to punch in little numbers on the archaic but living fossil of a keypad.

  The NCO’s only now confirmed that he could use the phone. Not that anyone paid much attention, they were more worried about the armored knights that carried real guns, instead of the odd supply looking or electronic warfare looking backpack.

  The eldest of the knights, the magus, had shed his manpad missiles for that odd backpack.

  “Jason” the magus said. His voice likely was unidentifiable from behind his voice modulator. Presumably there was no way that “Jason” likely a reference to old mythology was going to be able to verify the orders he was getting were valid. This invited the question, did knights have unique voices programmed into their armor?

  “Tunnels 24 B and A, I need you and squire each with the incendiary, I pray for your sins.” The magus finished.

  “What!?” the gruff and slightly broken voice was on speaker.

  “I pray for your sins, may we shake hands in this hell or the next. Confirm my order.”

  “Tunnels 24 B and A incendiaries, squire and I, Jason.” Odd that the knight would repeat his name.

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  “Confirmed and Godspeed!”

  “Godspeed!”

  The magus hung up and with a delicacy that betrayed his age, He didn’t take his meaty hand off the machine. He dialed a second number.

  The NCO’s looked at each other and let the old man keep up his raging phone terrorism.

  “Sir! You are on speaker!” The magus was more respectful and formal.

  “Well what is it Joseph? Can someone confirm this is Joseph?”

  “Yes this is either the magus or a really old Knight.” one of the NCO’s answered

  “Who is this?” the authority asked. The NCO boldly gave their name and identification.

  “Joseph what do you want?”

  “Can I have a map of the tunnels?”

  The authority sighed audibly. “It’s the end times and I guess we can’t say no to a fellow human.”

  “How do I receive this info?”

  “What’s your armor ID?”

  “Church model, I don’t got one.”

  “GET THAT MAN A LAPTOP!”

  Nearby ZRM personnel scrambled to obey. The armored knights and a few ZRM armored marines blinked silently at each other. As they peered over the military fences from the top of a rounded bunker containing an aircraft.

  “The Church of Ludd thanks you!” The magus sounded businesslike.

  The gauntlet of his left hand gingerly but quickly floated over his hand before sealing itself back down into the armored forearm. One of the younger employees of the local state hung up for the elders.

  If any had watched, somehow none had, they would have worried that an odd twitch would have cleaved off the Magus’s dominant hand.

  And his age was gone, hidden beneath the armor.

  A blinking message direct to Oscar from the Magus.

  “Follow me please, you need to know.”

  The magus followed one of the youths down to one of the small horde of little vehicles that had swarmed this key point, the snow coated frozen earthworks chipped and shed away as the heavy armor shuffled awkwardly down the side of the bunker. Oscar followed trying to step on minimally disturbed ice.

  The two armored men stopped in front of a light armored vehicle, an officer had produced a laptop and clambered to rest it on the roof so that the audience could see. The magus removed his helmet and thanked the officer; to be polite of course. The officer, in a laborious and exhausted trance, clicked around, trying to bring up maps.

  Soon they were up, no motion was being detected in the wreckage. A helicopter blasted overhead. The Magus was bald so if any were watching him the down-wash was hidden. A human hand stabilized the laptop.

  “How many levels of tunnels are there?”

  “How are you going to save this data?”

  “Don’t worry, my good warrior Scar is saving them, go ahead and explain a bit about these tunnels.”

  Cotton stood at the top of the bunker, a manned relay of the information as crude images resembling the world below were passed by laser from one knight to the next. The resolution of the images slowly solidified within the HUD’s as error from the atmosphere and Oscars lensing was eroded by the dim software in each suit.

  A little radio blasted volume over this busy corner of the airfield. Another audio source was on the top of the bunker. Heard by armored men with guns wishing despite the bad omens, for a simple target to shoot.

  “Negative motion. Out.” There was no filter for the auditory cataclysm that is a helicopter, it cut through the radio. Likely nobody had ever seen fit to remove the noisy signal that the speaker on the other side of the transmission was in an unstable entropy generator.

  Another officer, previously completely unseen but now heard on RF frequencies.

  “Copy, We suspect the enemy may have occupied the tail of the flight, can you get a good visual on the insides? Out”

  “Affirmative, Stand By.”

  Oscar and the knights began to move. They trusted ZRM firepower to stop the lizard if it began to rush back to civilized land.

  The Magus smiled at the officer, I suppose I need to put my helmet back on, I suspect my good knights have realized the craft may have crashed near old construction. We will be in contact with your armored.

  The knights had not known, but their actions wouldn’t have changed with the new information, they had already assumed it to be true.

  “Negative enemy”

  “Observe the main wreckage, Out.”

  “Stand By.”

  The Magus pursed his lips, the ZRM was stressed, he shouldn’t expect a human interaction here. Joseph put his helmet back on.

  “Our jump isn’t near the gunship.”

  Oscar was informing his fellow knights.

  The knights had identified an old bunker near the wreckage. It was not impossible that the critter had moved under the cover of burning fuel and hot wreckage. Though how a machine could survive the violent deceleration was beyond human understandings of engineering.

  The gunship took it’s passes, the knights jumped, much to offend proper airmen.

  Jumping by rocket about a kilometer or two on landing the rockets blasted and cooked the land beneath them. The rockets didn’t detach until the knight was stable on the ground. Permafrost cracked under a layer of melting ice and snow. But did not yield, and there was little mud. The knights began to wade through the crunchy frozen waste and the rockets fell away as a pair wooden blocks split by an axe.

  “There is a ravine right there.” Oscar pointed his gun. “In that ravine there should be a staircase into a bunker. It’s fifty years old.”

  “Any others?”

  “Any others?”

  “Any others?”

  The knights all responded, passing the question. The knights all checked, minus Oscar.

  “No I can only see this one documented.”

  Cotton jogged ahead, Gabriel followed.

  Technically the death of a knight would be worth the cost. It would confirm the alien exists, it would confirm the alien was hostile.

  Rafael and the Magus were next, Ambrose and Oscar stayed back, with their longer ranged weapons as if the alien would burst and slaughter all four of the other knights.

  “It looks like something scraped this thing up, I’m not sure we can fit.” Cotton looked into the depths of the abandoned tunnel.

  “Does this tunnel connect to the rest of them?” Rafael asked.

  “Officially no.” Oscar responded

  “Let old age go first Coco.” And Joseph gently prodded cotton out of the way.

  His large backpack, “The incendiary” detached. It was in Joseph’s right hand.

  “Hey, Jojo” Gabriel spoke, “We are almost certain it is in there.”

  “Before it realizes then, follow me in.”

  The magus stuffed his arm and head into the tunnel. “You won’t fit.” Cotton spoke.

  The armor on the Magus clicked, and the armor of the chest, shoulders, back, slid off the armor. A heavy ding. “It’s gonna hear that.” Someone blinked.

  Magus slipped deeper into the tunnel, his headlamp flicked on. The other knights flicked off their armor moments lost as they struggled for the odd controls they normally never used. Cotton kept the chest armor, he could still fit. The other knights also kept the chest armor. A pile of metal filled the ravine.

  There was no explosion or glow of heat from inside the bunker. Either it was a genuine maze, or magus was not meeting any contact.

  “Oscar stay outside here, if we all die someone needs to keep a record of our transmissions.” Surely Oscars long gun was unwieldy in tunnels. Disposable lasers would do their work, The little beastie would cook like any other life. At most two hits would exhaust any known coolant.

  “We are clearing a bunker, We see signs of recent use.” Hopefully the ZRM was still listening.