Chapter 174 - Assault on Haui's Moon (3)

Ceres stared down the main prison shaft, where only two elevator lifts were operational. He tried to peer into the prison with his H.T. mode but could not see anything. “Either it’s out of range, or there’s a type of material that’s blocking me from seeing the emotions…”

He has yet to encounter anything that could prevent him from seeing through walls, but then again it was entirely possible. “Once I get down there I’ll be able to see what’s going on and what’s the layout.”

The main prison shaft was now a hive of activity, as the rebels began to set up depressurization suits to accommodate the prisoners. Thousands of them were lined up along the side, while a series of security blockades were constructed in the hangar bay and leading to the main prison shaft in the event the enforcers attack.

A day had passed since they won the battle and captured Fresia. The losses were minimal, with only fifty rebels dead and a hundred more injured. The captured prison guards were unceremoniously tossed into a makeshift holding room after being stripped of their weapons, with Tyson ensuring that there was no hacking point from within.

Commander Huron was now in the prison’s command centre, pouring over the logs with Tyson and Pris and a few other rebels. “Strange, the video logs are all missing.” Pris muttered as she double-checked the holo monitor. “Not even a backup.”

“Are you sure the prison is isolated from the net?” Commander Huron asked Tyson.

“Definitely. The only channel we have is that to the White Fang’s base and Sliver Ring. If we were to be compromised, it would mean that either base is compromised too.” Tyson answered.

“This means the video logs were erased much earlier, but why…?” Pris could not wrapped her head around. “The cameras in the prison seem to be running on it’s own closed loop.

“It’s entirely possible that there might be a secret network station that we’re unaware of. We might need to do another scan of the asteroid to catch any issues.” Tyson pointed out.

Commander Huron agreed, delegating three squads of rebels to use the transport buggies that the prison guards to check the surface. “Why would the cameras in the prison not be linked to the command center, but redirected elsewhere?” Commander Huron pondered.

Tyson did not know the answer. While he now had complete control over the network, he was a bit suspicious. It seemed like the job of the prison was really to dispense nutri-paste into the cells whenever, and monitor health vitals. For a maximum security prison, not being able to see internally would make them unaware of any prison breaks.

“Sir, the last patrol log within the prison is two months ago.” One of the other rebels reported.

“This is getting even worse than I thought. Without patrol logs and camera footage, we won’t know what the hell is going on in the prison. We will need to send a preliminary squad inside. If they flooded the prison with toxins, we would not even know right now.”

Tyson agreed, calling Squad C together apart from Amelia and Victoria who still remained in orbit. They gathered in a separate room, as Tyson and Pris briefed them on what they found.

“We previously established that there was a battalion of prison guards, but only saw a quarter of them. We know some left towards New Saint, but this means without camera logs or patrol logs or any information about whats in the prison except the layout, we don’t know if there are hostiles inside.”

Ceres nodded. It was not unreasonable to stay vigilant that there may be residual prison guards within the main prison itself.

“This means our squad is probably going to be sent down first to scout the area and ensure there’s no hostiles. We still need to ensure the killswitch is properly disabled, so we will need to target the power reactors marked on your maps.”

“Only ‘Dumpling’, Shai’li, Xander, Riker and Josef will be going down. Pris and I will stay up here to serve as communications and backup. We’ll run a comms fiber line down in case radio communication gets broken. First job is to set up a relay station, then scout the area and report back what you see.”

Squad C got to work, prepping their exosuits for entry. Their spaceborne thruster packs were no longer mounted, reducing the total weight. Pris and Ceres mounted chemical filters and replaced the armour plates.

“Don’t go too crazy this time, Shai’li,” Pris warned as Shai’li donned her exosuit, checking her subsystems. “Your new armour plates are more like a temporary stopgap measure for now. I don’t expect any heavy weaponry but please rely on your tower shield.”

“Got it, got it. Why aren’t you telling the rest this?”

“Because they are not prone to suicidal movements like rushing the enemy without support? You should learn from Josef.”

“Pah, no guts.” Shai’li shooed Pris away, stretching her limbs to test the motors. “Feels good as new. Let’s save some comrades!”

The elevator jerked slightly as the five-man team began their descent slowing, moving through the asteroid. About five minutes passed, and they didn’t seem to be anywhere near the bottom of said shaft. “Shit, how far down did they dig?” Riker tried to lean over the railing, peering down to the unending shaft.

“About seven and a half kilometres, it seems. It’s going to take a while.” Josef replied stoically, while he continued to pre-assemble the communication relay repeater. “We’ll stop at five kilometres to lay down the repeaters.”

Ten minutes later, Josef paused the elevator, reaching out to the wall of the shaft and drilling the repeater in. “Done, let’s keep moving.”

However, before Josef could re-activate the elevator, Ceres grabbed his hand. “Go slower this time. I have a device to scan the layout, should be able to survive the fall.”

Josef nodded, having heard of how Ceres cleared the observation post with Tyson. While he did not know how Ceres designed the device, he wasn’t about to say no to extra information.

Ceres acted as though he was preparing a series of devices, but they were actually leftover electromagnetic pulse devices that he did not use. He chucked them down the shaft, before pretending that he was accessing the devices via his Swift Storm exosuit’s heads-up display.

Instead, he used his H.T. mode to look down, beginning to see an entire congregation of blobs. From this distance, it was hard to tell apart the individual humans, but he could see that many of the humans were broken up into seven different groups. It did not match the prison layout. There were a few disjointed groups that seemed to wander around aimlessly in the middle, not part of any of the larger groups.

After he overlayed the prison layout with what he was seeing, the locations of the prisoners did not make sense. “Just to confirm, the prisoners are meant to be in individual pressurized cells right?”

“Yes, what’s wrong? Did you find something from your devices?” Xander asked.

Ceres asked Josef to stop the elevator, before marking out where he saw the humans and trying to match the layout. He projected the map onto the centre of the elevator, allowing the five-man team to see the distribution of prisoners based on what he saw.

“That doesn’t make any sense, are you sure your devices are working properly?” Riker commented. “There’s no way the pressurized cells are congregated in such a weird scenario.”

“This distribution seems familiar.” Shai’li observed the map intently. “It seems that the prisoners have broken free of their pressurized cells, and have formed ‘kingdoms’ of their own.”

“Kingdoms? Like a gang, you mean?” Xander asked.

“Yes. Based on the lack of patrol logs and camera supervision, it seems that the prison has cut costs on holding them in the pressurized cells, instead simply releasing them into the recreational and open areas and letting them handle themselves. That’s one way to reduce the manpower required.” Shai’li pointed out.

“Then why are there some people wandering around? There’s quite a few of them, maybe a thousand or more.”

“Probably rejects who didn’t make the cut into any of the gangs. If we assume that thirty percent of the prisoners are former rioters and rebels, they would have form a large gang.”

“Doesn’t seem that way, there’s seven groups and none of them number more than a hundred thousand. ‘Dumpling’, can your device count exactly how many humans are down there?”

Ceres shook his head. “Most of them are in close proximity to each other, which makes it hard for my device to differentiate them.” It was like asking him to count the number of dots he could see, except they numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

The elevator descended slowly, with Ceres continuously tracking the prisoners’ movement. “Doesn’t look like any of them are prison guards, unless they’ve formed their own gang and are defending against the released prisoners.”

Xander groaned. “So effectively we’ll be walking into a hostile ‘town’ filled with potentially murderous gangs.” Everyone on the five-man team knew that the prison was filled with criminals of all sorts, but with the rebellion in such a dire situation, they had no choice but to ferry them down to the surface to buy time.

Ceres was still resolved to ensure no psychopathic or crazy prisoners made it onto the cargo haulers if he could help it. Though he was prepared to kill them if needed, he did not intend to portray himself as a selfish arbiter. He already had a secret plan to make it work.

As the elevator soon reached the bottom of the shaft, the movements of the prisoners became even more and more confusing. “I don’t understand. Those prisoners are simply wandering around, roaming even.” Josef couldn’t help voicing his opinion as he watched the updated map by Ceres. “I don’t think the devices are very accurate.”

Ceres couldn’t rebut. He too could clearly see the prisoners wandering about, though the ‘kingdoms’ were too crowded for him to get a good grasp on how many prisoners there are.

“If the prisoners are all out of the pressurized cells, then is the power reactor still a primary objective?” Xander asked.

They decided to ask Tyson instead, who was racking his brains with Pris and Commander Huron on how to approach the problem. “Indeed, the power reactors don’t seem to be an issue any longer. What’s more important is how we approach the ‘kingdoms’. We don’t know if they have makeshift weapons or what down there, but there’s no way the five of you can fight all of them off. Send the elevator back up and form a beach head first, we’ll send down ten more squads and ascertain the situation from there.”

The five-man team followed the order, with Josef planting the last of the relay repeater stations. As they stepped off the elevator, they were faced with a single airlock of five meters high. “Damn, how did they get three hundred prisoners in here? This entrance is cramped to hell… ‘Dumpling’, anyone behind that airlock?”

“No, we’re clear.”

“Alright, here we go. Tyson, open the airlock.”

[Got it, opening now.]

The airlock hissed open, with the five-men team entering the airlock that had not been used for two months. It was a complete mess, with energy rifles, battery packs and medical syringes all over the place. “What the hell happened here?” Riker exclaimed.

“Guns ready, be prepared for anything.” Josef warned, with the five-men team now on high alert as they scanned the airlock. The door closed behind them, the chamber hissing as the pressure equalized.

“Any toxins detected?”

“Nope, nothing on my side, looks like normal air to me. Seems like the pressure is normal too.”

“Something is terribly wrong then, it’s nothing like what the mission briefed.”

The other end of the airlock opened, only to reveal a dead prison guard who collapsed through the door, his body flopping onto the floor. Ceres couldn’t smell the decomposing flesh through his helmet’s filter, but it was clear the body had been dead for a while.

None of the five-man team shot in fear or panic, calmly examining the prison guards body while three of them aimed their rifles outwards, providing cover just in case.

Josef knelt down to check the prison guard’s body. “His neck has been chomped to bits, and his hands have been eaten. Do they have some kind of exotic wildlife in here or something?”

“Fuck, you think the prisoners are cannibalizing each other?” Shai’li was slightly taken aback.

“Possible but would not make sense as nutri-paste is still being dispensed daily. Tyson, you seeing this?”

[Yes, there’s a chance the nutri-paste dispenser might be malfunctioning, and the data reported here is inaccurate. Looking at your camera feed, it seems that the entrance is fairly safe. Check the rooms and make sure they are clear before the other rebel squads arrive.]

The airlock led to a platform with a slope leading down into a wide spacious corridor, which was where the prison guards section was supposed to be. There was an administrative office, an armoury and recreational rooms from back when the prison guards were still active in the prison.

At the very end was another airlock, which after it was the main prison. The five-man team shifted the dead body to the side, turning on their infrared vision as they checked every corner. The airlock used to have defensive turrets, but they were broken and dismantled apart.

Ceres moved with his rifle ready, entering the armoury. The armoury was completely empty, with no exosuits, ammo or energy rifles. “Tyson, any data corresponding to the missing weapons here?”

[I can’t find any information about an inventory transfer.]

That was bad news. “So the prisoners might have taken all the weapons off the dead prison guards.” Josef assumed as he did not find any other dead bodies of prison guards.

This meant that they would now have to handle prisoners who most likely were armed to the teeth with the exosuits and ammunition that the prison guards had.

There was not much else to find in the rest of the rooms. All the data had been wiped clean, while only mementoes of loved ones remained in moving holographic frames on lockers and office desks.

“We’re moving in to check the prison now. Nothing showing up on infrared, so we’re good.” At such a close range, the five-man team did not have to rely on Ceres to see through walls any longer.

The second airlock led to a large prison-style room flanked by rows upon rows of individual prison rooms meant to be the pressurized cells, though all of them had broken doors and fragments of glass, completely empty. A dense fog permeated the area, making it hard to see further than five meters ahead.

Ceres noted a few dead prisoners scattered around as well, their heads caved in and limbs broken by makeshift weapons. It seemed like a prison fight or riot had occurred right here. Some of the bodies had multiple bullet holes in them, as though they were shredded.

“Why aren’t the ‘kingdoms’ trying to break out of the prison? If it was me, I would have camped the airlock as much as possible.” Xander couldn’t wrap his head around how the prisoners were distributed.

“Perhaps it is a tacit agreement that no one monopolizes the exit.” Shai’li answered. “So no one ‘gang’ can up the other.”

Ceres paced down the centre of the room. The layout of the entire prison was continuous, a never-ending path of cells upon cells. However, as he reached the end of the first room, he suddenly raised his energy rifle, shooting into the fog at a distance down the room just as a sharp metal knife was flung towards his face, narrowly missing him.

A muffled scream echoed out from beyond the fog, causing the five-man team to tense up. Josef was surprised that his own infrared vision did not manage to make out a human there. “How many?” Josef asked hastily as the five-man team regrouped on the ground floor, aiming at all directions while slowly retreating back to the airlock.

“About two hundred of them, hiding just out of range.” Ceres replied while keeping his arms steady.

“What the fuck? If they have the prison guards’ weapons, there’s no way we’ll outgun them. Do they think we’re the new prison guards or something?”

“HEY! We’re not prison guards, we’re here to rescue you.” Shai’li yelled out loud, trying her luck.

Instead, what greeted her in response was a loud cacophony of screaming and screeching, along with a rumbling sound of numerous footsteps from in front and above. It sounded like a horde of zombies was about to rush them. “Shit, back to the airlock!” Josef ordered, with only Ceres firing into the fog, covering their retreat.

The five-man team rushed back into the airlock, sealing the door as Ceres retreated in. Instead of seeing the prisoners rush the airlock and shoot it, nothing appeared. There was no more screeching sounds or footsteps, only silence. “Holy shit, what was that?” Riker exclaimed.

Ceres’s face was grim. He had seen such a reaction before in Rockhold, and he clenched his fist even tighter. “They’ve been infected with a worm plague. The same one that happened in Rockhold. They’re using the prisoners as a testing ground!”