Starship Oblivion: Sanctuary Outpost by Mark Wayne McGinnis

Starship Oblivion: Sanctuary Outpost by Mark Wayne McGinnis

Author:Mark Wayne McGinnis [McGinnis, Mark Wayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avenstar Productions
Published: 2021-09-30T22:00:00+00:00


Chapter 24

Gorvian Helix Collider Outpost

Captain Galvin Quintos

As I watched the MediBots move about the passageway, I wondered how such a spindly, unsteady design had ever been approved for production. They might be fine for surgery procedures, making delicate scalpel incisions, but the simple act of walking seemed to overtax the awkward robots.

Viv must have read my expression. “I know, in HealthBay we sometimes call them GeekBots behind their backs.”

Grip was the last of the injured marines being readied for quansporting. He was griping about leaving, saying he was fine to stay, but he was clearly in need of some serious medical attention.

Before Viv could turn away, I said, “This is going to get worse…a lot worse. Talk to LaSalle. He has SWM bots that can assist you with this sort of thing.”

She nodded, offered up a half smile, and quansported away.

While Hardy helped Max with his replacement combat suit, I did the same for Wanda. Her body had indeed taken a vicious beating, but there was no persuading her to return to the Oblivion. It was now the four of us—Max, Wanda, Hardy, and myself. We were now the on-call reinforcement team.

Hardy said, “I believe the Grish are using jamming tech to hide their own bio-signatures from your suit’s sensors.”

“Cap…we never found the Symbio team we were sent in to assist with,” Max said.

I looked back to Hardy with raised brows. “Any ideas on that?”

The ChronoBot, in an all-too-human pose, stood with hands on hips while looking about the passageway. “Once deactivated, the Symbios are near impossible to detect. What you would call a cold-blooded organism, whereby infrared scans come up negative. Then again…sometimes I can lock onto residual neurological activity, if there is any.”

“And?” Wanda said.

Instead of answering her, Hardy bent down, took hold of one of the four-foot-by-six-foot decking panels with both hands, yanked it up in the air, and tossed the thing aside as if it weighed nothing. We all looked down into the sublevel space. And there, stacked like cords of firewood, were several Symbio-Poth bodies.

I tried unsuccessfully to lift a decking panel myself. With Wanda’s help we were able to lift it up and topple it out of the way. More lifeless Symbios. “They must be laid out all along this stretch of the passageway,” I said.

Hardy and the rest of us moved faster now—removing deck panels one after another. By the time we were done, thirty panels had been removed. Talking to Ensign Plorinne, he wanted them quansported onto the Oblivion’s Symbio deck, where he’d ensure they’d be properly cared for and reanimated if possible.

I said, “From now on, any Symbio who wants to join back in the fight gets fitted with a combat suit first.”

“Copy that, sir.”

By now, all of the teams had been warned of one, the Grish jamming tech, and two, the possibility of overhead Grish assaults. At this point, fighting was breaking out all over the outpost. Currently, five Pylor teams were exchanging weapons fire with the enemy and not making much leeway against the piglets.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.