VII

The plane gave a little lurch as it began to descend. Landers watched as the trees below him turned to paved concrete, covered with people scurrying about. The scene below was almost chaotic; men jumped out of trucks, others carried boxs, some carried weapons, others carried other men, and still others were trying to order the whole lot, their voices drowned out by all the noise.
As the plane touched down, an officer walked up the ramp. His face was hard and his hair was slightly grayed, but he was built like an ox. This man extruded an aura of intimidation, and everyone except Landers cringed as he began to bellow.

"You maggots gunna look at my pretty face all day? Command puts
Euro forces thirty minutes away, and unless you want to greet them yourself, I highly suggest that you get off this damn plane and move yourselves into that base. You will be directed to your designated area from there, and If you so much as think of dawdling between here and there you wont need a Hybrid to gun you down, now move it," with that the man walked to the next plane in order to clarify the situation to the next batch of men.

"Wilks, Starks. Follow me," Landers said as he stepped off the plane. The entrance to the base was colossal, as it stood over a hundred feet tall and twice that in width. Landers, and what remained of his squad, made their way towards the entrance. As they passed through the massive blast doors, A man standing on an upturned crate waved a colored guiding baton at them, motioning them to stand with some other men on a lift. Once they had managed to squeez onto the elevator, it began to slowly descend further into the mountain. The elevator shaft was dimly lit and the rock walls were slick with moisture. The scene of slowly moving rock walling persisted for almost half and hour, and all the men became uncomfortable with the seemingly never ending trip. Abruptly, the rock walls disappeared and metal scaffolding replaced them. The lift descended into a colossal cavern. All the men gawked as they looked around and the cavern expanded in either dicection for several miles. Some one in the crowd gave a whelp. One man near the center of the lift was pointing down through the floor grating. The rest's eyes followed, and below them the cavern just kept fell into the abyss. There was no distinguishable bottom. The cavern was filled with a single structure, which dominated nearly all the space in the cavern. The elevator,now moving laterally, approached it, and looking up Landers was able to see that the structure before him tapered to a point far above them.
Shaking his head, Wilks whispered to Landers, "look below us to the right. Its got USS Graveyard printed on the side of it. This thing is too big to be a ship, I mean, look at the size of it."

"Who the hell builds a ship under a mountain anyway," Starks said as he waved his arm at the structure in front of them, "It has to be a weapon of some kind, like the ones in the paper."

"What about the USS part, its used for ships not rifles." Wilks retorted.

"Quite, we're almost there," Landers said as the lift drew close the side of the structure. There was a large opening in the side of structure identified as the USS Graveyard, and presently the lift with its bewildered passengers passed into it. The lift finally came to rest infront of some sort door, and with a hiss the door opened. Behind the door another man with a baton waved them through.

"Move quickly," the man shouted, "its the second room on the left, please be seated and ready yourselves for launch."