The Cagliostro Chronicles II: Conflagration (15 page)

The small shuttle landed two miles from the Agalum base, its
camouflage system hiding it perfectly. Mark, Red and three of his best security men exited the shuttle with light blast rifles hanging off of their shoulders and pointed straight ahead, aimed from the hip.

The men looked around silently as the door on the side of the shuttle slid silently shut. Mark tapped a few buttons on the virtual control pad he had
hovering over his right sleeve, and the shuttle faded from sight. He tapped another button, causing the virtual control pad to fold up and disappear seemingly into his sleeve.

Mark nodded to Red and the
security team and began walking silently through the forest, following a holographic map that had sprung out of his right sleeve in place of the control panel.

The five men walked for a half hour and emerged adjacent to the Agalum base.
They all knelt as Mark pointed to various spots around the cliff face. This was the entrance to the Agalum base. It remained hidden to them by some sort of stealth technology. But every so often a small ship would approach and enter the runway built into the side of the mountain volcano. When a craft neared the right location, the entrance would spring into view and then fade from sight the instant the ship passed through the maw-like opening.

Mark silently scanned the hidden entrance with devices built into his suit. The Heads
Up Display that appeared above his right sleeve now showed the height and width of the mountain cut away, as well as what depth stretching back within the facility that could be read
.
Figures could be made out within the cave entrance moving around.
‘Maintenance men’
, Mark thought.

I
ndistinct sounds came from the east, behind them, now and getting closer. Voices talking. The language was unfamiliar. Mark muted his suit’s vocal system and went strictly to visual. He made slashing hand motions and everyone else followed his lead. Red nodded silently and waved two of his men to follow him, leaving Mark with one man.

Red and his team disappeared into the thick underbrush walking
north, using the compass and 3D HUD on his sleeve to guide them silently.

High over the forest a floating sphere probe was feeding information to both Mark and Red simultaneously
. Before the shuttle had landed Mark had released the probe and programmed it accordingly. Its mission was to feed data and telemetry to not only the surveillance team, but also to the
Cagliostro
.

***

“Dan, I’ve got a clear feed coming back from the probe. It looks like that landing bay they built into the side of that volcano goes on quite a distance,” Lori Westin announced.

“Good
, Lori, glad ta hear it.” Then after a moment, he continued, “Umm, not about the size of the base, but that ya got a clear view I mean.”

Lori smiled.
“I know what you meant, Dan.” She dipped her head and winked with a smile.

Dan returned her smile, but nervously. Then he quickly turned away from her and stared intently at his console’s
holo-display. He was getting the same feed from the probe Lori was and his eyes widened at what he saw.

“Holy…Are they gettin
’ this too?”

Lori nodded.
“Yes Sir, they are.”

“Okay, good.
I’m not gonna notify them then at what I’m seein’ here. I’m just gonna hope we ain’t the only ones what seen this.”

“Shouldn’t we try to tell them on a discreet channel?”

“No matter how discreet the Agies may pick up on it. Maintain signal silence, blondie. We’ll trust in Mark an’ the boys bein’ half as savvy as I think they are.”

***

Mark pointed to his right and the guard with him nodded, silently sliding into the dense foliage. Mark moved left, crouched down and held the powerful weapon before him, aiming through its sight at where his sensor told him the Agalum would emerge.

His sleeve warmed slowly
, drawing his attention to its display once more. He saw Red in the display gesturing a warning in the direction Mark was facing. Red held up six fingers. Mark tapped his sleeve and Red nodded in reply.

‘Here they come.’
Thought Mark.

Almost immediately a purple skinned Agalum walked right toward him out of the brush. Without any hesitation he fired six quick blasts, missing only once.
Five bodies dropped to the ground, unmoving. “Graaaaggghh,” snarled the remaining Agalum. He whipped his weapon out of its holster, but Mark fired first. His second blast caught the enemy warrior in the face, dropping him to the ground.

Red and the other three men thundered up as sirens began to wail all about them in the woods.

“So much for silence,” the big security man commented.

“Can’t be hel
ped now,” Mark began. “We have to make it back to the shuttle as fast as possible.”

The five men ran with Mark leading the way, his HUD display showing the exact location of the shuttle.

They bounded over a hill and ran smack into another patrol, which immediately opened fire on them.

“Run!” shouted one of the security men, the instant before an Agalum blaster bolt cut him in two.

“Martin!” grunted Red.

They ran backward, trying to avoid enemy fire as they did.

Each of the remaining four men took turns firing at the group that was slowly gaining ground on them.

“Any second now that group behind us is going to get us, then we’re really going to be in trouble
!”

“I know Red.
I’m working on it,” Mark growled.

The two remaining security men fired before them while
Red and Mark took aim at newcomers behind them and returned fire. Several times blaster bolts scored hits on their miraculous uniforms, and each time they shunted the blast, saving the men from instant death.

Now they were all kneeling down in the thick foliage, firing all around themselves at unseen foes who fired back
repeatedly. The air burned
with blaster fire.

“What now
, Boss?” Red asked.

“Duck
,” was Mark’s only reply.

The shuttle sprang into view fro
m behind them, rising up over a ridge and firing blazing death down remotely upon the Agalum.

“Hit them hard, now
!” Mark roared.

Everyone found targets
and with the shuttle’s help they obliterated them all.

Thirty seconds later they were aboard the shuttle and streaking across the treetops in the small camouflaged ship.

“That was close,” Red admitted.

“Closer than I wanted it to be
, Red.”

Mark hesitated a moment while looking over the information the probe had fed back to them.

“What the hell…” he muttered.

“What is it?”
Jacoby, one of the security men asked.

“Red, look at this.
This is a deep black light/infrared  scan the probe did. Everything appears in negative. Watch what I see here when I zoom in.”

Mark brought the image into a much sharper, much more magnified view.

“What the hell is that?” Red rumbled. “What are they doing to those natives?”

“It looks like they’re placing some kind of
device into their necks with a hypodermic of some kind and turning the natives into drones controlled from this base. They could build an army this way and are doing just that.”

“It looks like they’re not just usi
ng this base as a supply depot. This is going to be a launching point for an all-out invasion.”

The shuttle door was still sliding open as Mark turned sideways and slid
through it.

“What’s the rush?” Red shouted after him.

“I want to get a better look at that base,” Mark replied over his shoulder.

“How are you going to do that?” Red hurried after him
into the maglovator before the doors shut.

“What’d we leave out there
, Red?”

“Huh?
Nothing that I know of.”

“Think, man.
The probe. A fully camouflaged probe. Next time that cloaked entryway of theirs opens I’m flying that probe in to get better pictures of the inside of that thing.”

The two men
exited onto the command deck and both found their stations. The secondary crewmen at each station stood and moved aside. In Mark’s case it was Dan who sat at his station. The big Jovian moved over to his own pilot/engineer console where another man quickly stood and moved toward the back of the command deck and the left side maglovator doors.

Mark sank into his command chair and punched a few buttons on the left side arm of his chair
. He pulled the desktop over his lap from the right and instantly a virtual display sprang to life before him.

“Here we go
,” he muttered quietly.

The
feed from the probe took up the view screen in the front of the command deck.

The image of a blank rock wall on the side of a volcano filled
the screen.

“Nothing happening yet
,” Red announced.

“What’re we looking for?” Eddie inquired.

“Something going in or out of there,” Mark quietly replied. His concentration was fully focused on the images playing out before him and nothing else.

Long minutes passed. After several more had gone by, the maglovator door slid open again and Ariel exited
from it and into the command deck.

Everyone turned to look at her. Everyone except Mark, who had not realized she was standing there.

Eddie, Red, and Danny’s eyes followed her as she walked up behind Mark and wrapped her arms around his neck, letting her fingers play across his chest from behind.

“Hey
, good looking. What’s going on here?”

Mark turned, obviously surprised
at seeing her there. But his look of shock instantly changed to a smile. He stood up, pulled her toward him and kissed her passionately, not caring who was watching.

Miss
Wallflower stood up discreetly from the communications console and slipped away, entering a maglovator on the right side of the command deck. Before the doors slid shut she gleefully caught Ariel’s eyes, then smiled and waved.

Ariel giggl
ed as she broke Mark’s embrace. She walked over to her console and sat down behind it, sliding the desk portion in before her.

Mark continued to smile while he sat back down, either oblivious to all the eyes on the command deck staring at him, or simply not caring
.

His eyes strayed from Ariel back to the view screen at the front of the command deck and his demeanor changed in less than a heartbeat.

“Dammit!” he blurted out while recalling the virtual interface before him.

On the view screen an Agalum cargo shuttle was entering the
landing bay built into the side of the volcano. The image broadcast from the probe began to move, falling in behind the cargo ship and entering the base.

“Anyone want to bring me up to speed
?” Ariel asked with a smirk.

“Short story
,” Dan began, “is that’s an Agalum base built inta the side o’ that fake volcano-”

“It was probably a working volcano at one time
,” added Mark, “meaning the Agalum somehow terraformed it, either venting it out somewhere else or shutting it down all together.”

“Right,” Dan continued. “T
hat’s a cloaked probe we got followin’ that cargo shuttle in. It’s gonna tell us what’s really goin’ on in there.”

“Actually
, Ari, it’s just going to confirm what I already suspect and get us a better look inside,” Mark concluded.

The
unseen probe moved further inside the rock hewn hangar bay. It silently flew over the heads of Agalum purple skinned men as they injected something into the necks of struggling red skinned natives. Once they were injected with the mysterious item within the hypodermic they all went stiff, as if they were now mechanical men. They moved only when commanded to by those called the ‘salad heads’ by the crew of the
Cagliostro
.

At the front of the cavern stood a yellow skinned Agalum, who spun on his heel quickly and entered a long cavern, the probe following invisibly at a safe distance.

“That’s one of those leader caste Agalums,” Eddie announced.

Mark nodded his head.
“It is. As we’ve seen over and over, they are the captains of the ships and leaders of larger bases. The salad headed purples run smaller bases and espionage. The bald headed purples are the grunts or foot soldiers. But you all know that anyway.”