Free Alien Landscapes 2 by Kevin J. Anderson Page B

through the darkness, observing Enemy strongholds and reporting back to HQ. But the squad had gone farther into Enemy territory than any known advance, and they might have new information. That was the most important thing. They weren’t doing it for the glory or for a possible promotion, or for any sort of reward. Barto and Arviq would take the risk because it was their duty.
    “My head, my thoughts . . . are empty,” Arviq said, tapping his helmet.
    Barto adjusted his earphones, but still received no transmission and no commands. An uneasy silence echoed in his head. The speakers growled no more repetitive commands to attack and kill.
    “How can you stand it?” Arviq looked at him.
    Barto took a deep breath. “No choice. Tolerate it.”
    Crouched low, they trudged toward the automated gun emplacements, but the motion sensors did not reactivate. The weapons had gone through their program and wiped out the threat. Somehow, the two comrades had slipped through the cracks. They could move forward.
    Barto and Arviq found a metal hatchplate in the half-hidden superstructure of the enormous laser-lances. Barto sat down and pressed his helmet against the hatch, carefully listening for any vibration, fully tense. Any moment now he expected the destructive fire to rain out again.
    He tugged on the hatch, looking for access controls. “We can infiltrate,” he said. “It’s an underground bunker. Maybe weapons storage. We can bring supplies or power packs back to HQ.”
    Together they wiped off dust and blasted dirt from the plate, used tools at their armor belts to crack open the seals, and finally they lifted the heavy hatch.
    Still no voices came to their heads, no instructions. The two soldiers were on their own. Barto didn’t like it one bit.
    They dropped down into the opening, where a steel ladder led into a maw of shadows. They descended, gripping rung after rung with gauntleted hands. If this was Enemy HQ, Barto thought, it was a much larger complex than anything he and his squad had ever lived in.
    Finally the ladder ended in an underground tunnel with the hatch cover high above them. Barto paused for a moment to scan the surroundings, then they walked forward into dim silence. The tunnels seemed empty, barely used, abandoned for a long time. Barto realized the Enemy soldiers could not have emerged from this place. No one had walked down these access tunnels in a long, long time.
    As point man, Arviq led the way. He strode forward, hands on his weapons, ready for anything. A soldier had to be flexible and determined. The small tunnel lights gave little illumination, but their helmet visors augmented the ambient photons.
    Cameras in their helmets recorded everything as reconnaissance files to be downloaded back in HQ. They continued for what seemed like miles, trudging deeper and deeper into the Earth. This place was an important facility, possibly a central complex . . . but Barto couldn’t begin to understand it.
    From up ahead came a faint throbbing from generators and heavy machinery. Finally, they saw brighter light, thick windows, rectangular plates that shone through to another world, a subterranean complex that seemed like a mythical land. Inside huge grottoes, pale ethereal people moved about wearing bright colors. Plants of a shockingly lush green, garish hues that Barto had never seen before drew the two of them forward like magnets.
    “What is this?” Arviq asked. “Some kind of trick?”
    “Paradise.”
    As the soldiers approached, unable to believe what they were seeing, they crossed an unseen threshold, a booby-trap. They heard a brief hum, a crackle of power-surge. Barto reacted just in time to feel a sinking despair—but not fast enough to get out of the way.
    A pressing white light engulfed both of them, swallowing them up. In an instant, Barto’s visor turned black, then so did his eyes.
    #
    When he awoke, the assault on his senses nearly knocked him back into protective unconsciousness.