Vivid Stars Online

There was still time before the elevator finished its round trip, and I used it to organize the frigate visit. Thankfully, it turned out to be fairly simple for such a short trip. While Captain Hendricks couldn't spare another team for the long term, he could manage one for a few days.

They wouldn’t be quite as well trained as the two elite teams I already had here, but they would be a set of fresh, uninjured soldiers to guard the landing site if the worst happened. That was enough to put the last of my worries to rest.

Even if the enemy was intercepting my communications right now, which was far more likely without my powers, the frigate would be leaving in less than twenty-four hours. Then, it would be away for two days at most, some of which it would be in the air.

That left only a tiny window for them to organize another theft attempt, get it in place, and launch it before the frigate was gone again. I just couldn’t see how that would be possible, not with the defenses I would have in place.

Content that both I and the Captain had done everything we could to prepare, I turned my attention to the fresh soldiers who were in the process of taking over from Linnea. She wasn’t exactly happy to leave me behind, but I needed her to get some rest so she could take the next shift.

Getting all these corpses out of here wouldn’t be the work of just a few hours, and I wanted someone I really trusted to be in command the entire time. If the beasts mustered another attack, someone had to be ready to get everyone out of here on time.

And while I was sure the leaders of both squads were competent enough, I hadn’t seen them in action long enough to know if I could trust them with sole command of anything more dangerous than keeping watch on the surface.

Hopefully, that question would be answered by the end of this mission. If I wanted them to be able to act as an elite strike force against larger beasts, or even as a boarding team in space combat, then I had to be able to trust them.

With the elevator slowly rising back to the surface, I began organizing the six fresh soldiers who’d come down to help. The two heavy weapons operators would be on overwatch, ready to blow away anything that came down the hallway.

Since the hallway was now filled with cover, their area-effect weapons would have the greatest chance of hitting anything. In addition, I’d already seen how such a blast could stall even a swarm for a time, and the rest of us would need that to switch from hauling to combat.

I also left the shield generator with them after ensuring they both knew how to activate it. That would give us a fall-back point if another overwhelming attack arrived. With just over half a squad down here, I had no illusions that we could take another attack of the previous magnitude.

With them ready, I turned to the grim work of corpse dragging with the other four soldiers. As members of the close-quarters team, they had the most strength and endurance out of any of the people I’d brought with us.

And they were going to need every bit of that to get through the task ahead. Dragging bodies around was bad on the best day; right now, it was a truly horrible task. The smell alone was already enough to make me figure out how to shift my armor to the internal air tank.

Despite all the difficulties, however, we did have a couple of things going for us. While the spiders seemed huge during combat and were certainly very large for any arachnid, the actual mass of their central bodies was only about the size of a large dog.

Many of them had even curled into little balls as they died, leaving us without even the legs to worry about. They were still heavy lumps of stinking flesh, but they were far easier to drag about than a human corpse would have been.

We worked in teams of two, with each team carrying a single corpse. With an odd number of people, the fifth person worked to prepare the corpses for transit. A lot of the time, this just involved rolling them off the nearest mountain, but occasionally, it involved lopping off an errant limb or two that would otherwise cause issues.

It was the easiest job by far, and we rotated it regularly to give at least one person a rest. The first elevator load took nearly two hours to fill, leaving even me doubting my plans as we waited for it to come back down.

We at least got a bit of a rest while they unloaded at the top and sent it back down. When it opened to reveal a floating sled large enough to fit half a dozen corpses at once, we nearly cried in relief.

It was like a much larger version of the stretchers my medics had used to take the injured back to the surface. Given that most of the planet’s advanced technology was reverse-engineered Arkathian tech, I wasn’t surprised; I was just very grateful.

The next load was so much easier: We just had to hoist bodies onto the sled, push it back to the lift, and flip the corpses off. Less than an hour later, another load went up, soon followed by a second and a third.

From there, it became almost simple when the sled came back down with a robotic arm bolted to the back of it. While this dropped its carrying capacity to five corpses, it more than half-automated the entire process.

I just had to use the controls to load the bodies, something I thankfully still had my language database to help me through, then have the soldiers push it back to the elevator to unload.

After a six-hour shift, with a few breaks while we waited for the elevator, I took everyone back up to rest as the next shift went down. With the previous work Elana had done in automating translation with my database, I was able to walk Linnea through operating the sled as she took the next shift down.

I’ll really have to do something nice for Elana after this, I decided as washed off the layers of gunk before getting my wounds re-bandaged. I know she still wants to work on better robots; maybe I can push more funding her way for that.

If the farming season went as well as we hoped, then I’d finally have enough funding for all sorts of things. It only seemed fair to make sure she got a solid chunk of it.

The grisly work continued for two more shifts before we saw any sign of another enemy. It had sped up even further when Elana got a second sled working after a good eight hours rest, so we’d made it halfway down the corridor already.

I’d expected us to be pulling more corpses out until the very last second before the frigate left, so we were far ahead of schedule. Given what we found, that was a very good thing.

I was back on the sled controls after my own rest, feeling amazing despite all the fighting the day before. Having all my Toughness back was a more significant change than I’d really considered.

But that did nothing for my limited Perception stat. It was one of the soldiers next to me that raised a hand to stop us. He’d used the preprepared sign for quiet, so we all halted and strained our hearing.

To me, the corridor was still quiet, but when a second and then a third squad member signed that they'd heard something, I knew to take it seriously. Thankfully, we had the technology to keep communicating in silence, and rapid text communication ensued.

The sound they’d heard was a mixture of skittering movement and quiet dragging noises. Only the fact that it wasn’t growing louder stopped me from calling a retreat. It didn’t seem like another attack, and it wasn’t particularly hard to guess what it was.

The sergeant in charge of the close-combat troops wanted to sneak ahead to check, and after more discussion, I reluctantly agreed. It was a risk, but had just been thinking I needed to start trusting my people.

He assured me it was something they’d been trained in, so I pulled everyone back in preparation. With all of us armed, ready, and waiting with the shield generator, he would have a solid position to sprint back to.

Despite our nervous preparations, the actual operation was anti-climatic. He simply slipped away for a couple of minutes before returning to confirm what we’d already expected. The spiders had come to reclaim their fallen kin.

From the recordings he’d been able to take, we could see an even larger variant of the beasts we’d seen so far at work. Despite their size, the near-dozen spiders seemed less threatening than the ones we’d fought so far.

They had longer and thicker legs, but the ends lacked the spiked tips we were used to. They were also slow, almost ponderous, as they lifted corpses and dragged them back into the tunnels.

It looked like some kind of worker caste, which I was entirely sure was not how real spiders worked. The entire situation reminded me much more of how an ant colony would operate, with different types of insects bred for certain jobs.

What’s the bet that there is some kind of massive spider queen behind all this, then? I wondered with a groan of annoyance. It would explain pretty much everything we’d seen so far and would likely be a nightmare to get rid of.

Still, that was a problem for another day. I considered leading an attack to clear out the enemy workers but eventually decided against it. It would still be at least another day before most of the wounded would be in fighting condition.

Without them, we were spread thin, guarding both the tunnel down here and the surface. If the enemy was willing to turn this into a peaceful race over resources, I was willing to engage on the same level.

To interrupt might risk another attack, and we still didn’t know what level of reserves they might still have. If there was really a single beast in charge of the swarm, then this was more like fighting an enemy commander than a mindless horde.

A smart enemy would keep enough troops in reserve to punish us if we overextended. Better to leave things be until we were already ready to fight again. Besides that, I was confident we could get the better of a simple race.

With two hover sleds, we were able to load at record speed, continuing through the corpse piles as fast as we could. Pile by pile, the corridor was cleared until we could clearly see the worker spiders coming in the other direction.

That was a tense moment until we realized the spiders were entirely ignoring us. Given that we worked until they were only a couple of feet away before pulling back. By my estimate, we’d gotten more than eighty percent of the bodies, so I was willing to leave rather than fight over scraps.

For an operation that hadn’t gotten a single soldier injured, I was confident we’d dealt a massive blow to the enemy. The very fact that they had actually started gathering the bodies confirmed my earlier suspicions.

They were important to the spiders somehow, and it seemed extremely likely that it was to breed, clone, or otherwise grow more troops. Strange as the idea was, it fit with the numbers we’d seen so far.

By pulling so many of them out, I might have reduced the number of fresh troops they could produce by eighty percent, all while acquiring a massive reserve of valuable materials.

With the main work done, I organized for at least half a squad to guard the bottom of the elevator at all times. While I wasn’t planning on a trip deeper into the tunnels until the frigate had left, I wanted to ensure that no ambushes were set up to catch us on the way down.

The worst thing that could happen would be a swarm at point-blank range when we opened the doors.

After that, I was able to retreat to my quarters and rest for a few hours before the ship arrived. First, however, I was finally free to check my notifications. As I’d hoped, I got a full level and most of a second despite having so many people involved in the fight.

With my powers still out of commission for the foreseeable future, I invested my three free points between Agility and Perception. A single extra point of Perception brought me to an even twenty, and two points in Agility would help me move faster in a sword fight.

Despite my new gun, I’d just seen that I’d still have to fight up close at times, and more speed would be helpful there.

Jared Hope

Class: Psion

Level: 15

XP: 9532/12000

Statistics:

Brawn: 15

Toughness: 52

Agility: 17

Perception: 20

Mind: 34

Will: 56

Free points: 0

Skills:

Archeology level 2

Translation level 2

Rifles level 6

-Aim Assist

-Perfect Maintenance

Psi Sense Level 5

- Extra Information upgrade (4)

Swords Level 2

Technokinesis Level 6

Enhance Cognition Level 3

Fell Shield level 6

-Fell Vengeance upgrade (4)

Scouting level 4

Ethereal Roots level 4

General upgrade points: 5/20

Class upgrade points: 1/20

Traits:

General:

Database of Alien Languages

Strength of Corruption

Psionic Abilities:

Skin Hardening (Novice)

Ethereal Roots (Journeyman)

Enhance Cognition (Acolyte)

Fell Shield (Corrupted Journeyman)

Great Psionic Abilities

Technokinesis (Master)

Status:

Psionic Suppression

Tainted Eyes (suppressed)

Lightly Injured

Empty Energy Well (Refilling Suppressed)

A glance over my full sheet showed I also recieved a level in Swords, but not one in Rifles. That made sense, given that Rifles was already my equal highest skill, and I’d spent half the fight in close combat.

It was a shame I didn’t get any indication of how far through the level I was, but I had to be fairly close to level seven in it.

I also had five more general upgrade points, but I wasn’t about to spend those. In two more levels, I’d have enough to buy another eight-point class skill upgrade, allowing me to make swords a class skill as well.

With my level up complete, I settled in to rest, confident that someone would wake me when the frigate arrived.