I put my eye up to its scope and put the crosshairs on the target. The image was very strange, almost like something from infrared or night vision. The picture in the scope went out. I thought I had accidentally turned it off somehow. I took my eye away and looked in the direction of the target. There was now a large metal barrier in front of it. How strange. I put my eye back to the scope and to my surprise, found the target again. So that's the special trick of this gun: the scope can see through solid objects. That should come in handy. I squeezed the trigger and heard the electric howl. I felt a heat flash from the energy blast which briefly warmed my face and chest. With the naked eye, I examined the metal barrier. Orange molten metal was leaking down a hole the size of a golf ball.
I handed the weapon 142 so it could practice and turned my attention to the weapons rack. There was something about the size of submachine gun in the shape of a seashell. I took it and went to an open lane. There was a selector switch, or so it looked, on the right side of it near the trigger. I took aim and fired, but nothing happened, so I clicked the switch down a notch and tried again. Success! A satisfying pew! for each trigger pull. So that mode was semiautomatic fire. I clicked the switch down another notch. I took aim and held the trigger down as it sprayed neon blue electric death. It had a tremendous rate of fire and no recoil. However, I saw that it could not penetrate solid metal the way the x-ray rifle could. When it ran out of ammo, a pillar came out of floor and released some more of the mercury-like substance. The gun automatically sucked it in with a ringing sound. Given its capacity and rate of fire, I decided that this would be my primary weapon.
Also on the rack were pistols similar to the submachine gun and a device about the length of a forearm with various attachments. I strapped it to my right forearm and played with the controls. There was a plasma cutter with a range of a few meters, a magnetic harpoon, and a large retractable blade. It was the blade that most intrigued me. Whatever enemy I ended up against, it was more than likely they breathed some kind of gas and wore spacesuits. Thus, if I wanted to conserve ammo, I could sneak up on them and use the blade to cut their breathing hoses. And of course, blades are much quieter than guns, and I expected to being fighting in atmospheric environments with sound at some point.
Where were the shoulder-fired weapons and grenades? I didn't see any displayed, but presumed they had them. Near the weapons rack, there was a touchscreen. I scrolled through it and saw pictures of both the weapons on the rack plus some I'd never seen before. I suspected we weren't going to trusted with more powerful and expensive weapons until we'd proven our worth. A bit disappointing, but understandable. A siren blared briefly, and the usual instruction lights beckoned us back to our cabin. It must have been lunchtime. The dispenser gave me a big, crunchy green stick of something and a foil beverage pouch. Despite the alien appearance, the taste was excellent and left me with an odd sense of satisfaction and inner peace. It seemed likely both of us were going to get pumped full of whatever drugs our masters thought would help keep us obedient and alive.
I must admit the sounds 142 made while it ate were disturbing, so I did my best to politely excuse myself. I went into the room adjoining the cabin and closed the hatch behind me. It appeared to be a bathroom of sorts, but there were many appliances I didn't recognize. I found a kind of scented towel dispenser. I stripped and used a few to bathe. I felt so much cleaner afterward. There was a receptacle with only one conceivable purpose based on its shape and location, so I used it to answer the call of nature. As this did not result in any alarms or lights, I figured I had done the right thing. I went through another hatch and found a mini gym with an exercise bike and elastic bands attached to the floor and walls. It all made sense. With no gravity, we'd both need a lot of strength training to maintain our muscles and bones. There were places to strap my feet to the ground near the elastic bands, and so I was able to do exercises like squats and deadlifts. With enough creativity and practice, I was sure I'd find other exercises.
It occurred to me that I ought to spend more time building rapport with 142. After all, we would depend on each other in battle, and we had barely introduced ourselves. I returned to the cabin to see it kneeling in what I presumed was prayer. I was never very religious myself, though I had studied the holy books of various faiths simply out of curiosity. When it had finished its ritual, I pointed at my wrist screen to signal I wanted to talk. We had much work to do to build up a common language. First, I figured we should agree upon some basic tactical commands like "go left/right", "come here", "stay put", "advance", "retreat", and so on. It was a painstaking process, but in the end, we were better off for it.
I wondered where we were at the moment. I hadn't even explored the ship fully. 142 motioned me to follow and led me into a room with various screens. On the largest screen, I saw a symbol for what I presumed was our ship. There was a dotted line extending back to earth, but I had to zoom out to see the whole path. I zoomed out some more and saw a few of the other planets the ship had landed on. Now I wanted to know where we were headed, so scrolled in the direction of travel. It appeared we were a long way off from whatever planet or moon we were headed to next. That was a relief. More time to prepare.
The strategy of our masters was a mystery, which I presume was intentional. I remember once reading an article about the unusually strong cohesion of German units in both world wars. Unlike other countries, the Germans tried to keep men from the same regions and towns together. It was common for a platoon to all be from the same village. Even though the Germans were outnumbered in both wars, they fought in good order until the day of surrender. It was very rare for a unit to collapse into a rout. Perhaps there was a similar logic at work with me and my companion. By sending out a closely bonded pair who depended on each other for their lives, the odds of success in battle were higher. Long odds make for bold hearts. When Cortes arrived in South America, he ordered his men to burn the ships, so they would have no way to retreat if they lost the battle. Their only choices were conquer or die.
Some time later, we were directed to another part of the ship. It was crammed with various equipment, and the most prominent were the suits of power armor. The process of donning them was done automatically. All we had to do was lie down on a table and hold still as various robotic arms attached each piece. I was surprised at how quickly it finished. I sat up on the table and moved to stand on the floor. My main concern was the amount of dexterity I'd have with the metal gauntlets on my hands. After a few experiments picking up and manipulating some small objects in the room, I was satisfied I'd be able to move freely in combat. An image was displayed in my helmet. One symbol indicated the direction of 142 and the other was some kind of countdown timer, which I presume indicated how long I could stay in the suit until the air or power ran out. Fortunately, from what I knew of the alien number system, a full-charged suit could stay operational for hundreds of hours at a time.
After our introduction to power armor, we were directed to a small theater, which I guessed was a briefing room of sorts. The hologram projector showed us a our destination which we were still a few weeks from. It was in a binary star system with just one gas giant planet. Orbiting the planet was a single moon that was similar to earth's. The moon was the location of some kind of enemy facility. We were shown pictures of a large tower and satellite dish. My guess is the base was a communication relay station. While it was not heavily guarded, it had numerous automatic defenses that we would either need to bypass or destroy in order to disable the comm link. The projector indicated a device inside which might have been a reactor or power plant. If we could sneak in and disable that, we'd accomplish our mission with minimal risk.
Then we were shown pictures of the enemy at last. They appeared to be robots of various sizes and shapes. The larger ones were heavily armed and all of them had weapons of some sort. It was at this moment I wondered just how badly outnumbered we were in general, and this is why our masters only sent out pairs. Perhaps at some point, 142 and I would fight as part of a larger unit. In any case, it was critical that we develop a good understanding of each other as our survival depended on it. We retired to the cabin, and were both eager to strike up a conversation. There was a computer in the cabin that could be used for drawing pictures, and so we took turns making various movement diagrams over a map of the objective. The enemy base was on the dark side of moon, so we'd certainly get dropped off on the light side to maintain the element of surprise. Whatever landing method we used was sure to attract attention if it was seen in the dark.
Given the distance we had travelled, our speed had been inconsistent. There had been several intervals where we had moved relatively slowly, and those were interspersed with jumps whereby we had crossed vast distances. I found what I suspected was the engine room, but aside from identifying what I guessed was a nuclear reactor, I had no idea how the ship travelled. When I was in school, I remember being taught about the theoretical possibility of wormholes which would allow faster than light travel. No proof had ever been found of them though, at least by human scientists. It was an odd sensation to be constantly filled with fear and wonder.
I found a new mode on my communicator which allowed me to send and receive messages from my partner. We spent a few hours practicing with that as well as shooting while suited up. Our confidence was pretty decent now, and it seemed somehow our masters perceived it. When I checked the star map again, it indicated that we would be reaching our destination in a few hours of our subjective time. For me, this was proof that we had indeed been traveling faster than light somehow, otherwise the time dilation effects would have made it impossible to synchronize any sort of plan.
We returned to the hologram theater for our final briefing. It instructed us that the ship would land close to the boundary between the light and dark side, and that we'd need to advance on foot over a few dozen kilometers of rough terrain that included craters and mountains. It would be a challenge to cross such rough ground in the dark, and yet we'd need to be very careful about using any kind of artificial light source. The good news is that we wouldn't be alone during the assault. Once we were close enough, another ship would land and another force of half a dozen battle droids would launch a diversionary attack. To great relief, we were also going to be given cloaking devices to help us infiltrate the base more easily. The downside was the cloaking device could only be used for a few minutes total.
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