by Richard Fox
King, Gor’al, Garrison, and Max moved forward, two on each side of the bridge providing cross cover for each other. Hoffman, Steuben, and Opal’s section covered the long angles, aiming into shadows over iron sights, waiting for a glimpse of the Beast. Duke and Booker remained in their sniper perch on overwatch.
King and his team reached the far end of the bridge and signaled Hoffman.
“Let’s go. Look sharp.”
Sweat ran down Hoffman’s back. His team was in prime physical condition, but they were used to their power armor taking the slack off what they carried and keeping their body temperature regulated. They were more than ready for the dressed-down requirements of this mission, but it didn’t make the event fun. It was disturbingly solitary beneath his helmet. He’d never realized how much radio chatter his team indulged in until it was taken away.
“Steuben and Opal, move up,” Hoffman said before going to King and kneeling beside him. “We’ll move into the next section of the city and search for it. Go slow. I don’t want to rush to failure. Gathering intelligence is nearly as important as taking the thing down. Hopefully, these cameras are taking decent pictures.”
“Understood.” King signaled his squad and led the way. Before long, both squads were clearing street to street, moving silently under the stars of Eridu. No one lit candles or lamps in this part of the city and the flares fell less frequently.
“We’re coming up. I don’t want to be too dispersed here,” Hoffman said as his team crept along the wall of a partially collapsed building to join King and the others.
“Looks like a ship went down here,” Max said. “How many did the locals lose before they learned not to fly over the city?”
“A lot in this neighborhood. It must be in the flight path to the airport,” Hoffman said.
“Wait,” Steuben said. “I hear it.”
Hoffman’s blood ran cold.
The Karigole shifted foot to foot, flaring his nostrils as he turned his face upward and toward the wall. He whispered, which made him sound particularly ominous. “It’s on the other side of this wall…but I can’t smell it.”
Max pulled a frag grenade from his tactical vest.
Hoffman put a hand on his to stop him, shaking his head minutely. The wall wasn’t thick and the blast would punch right through it and the Marines. Max went pale as the same realization hit him and he carefully locked the grenade back onto his vest.
Hoffman looked around. Steuben was gone.
The sound of gentle clinks and a rustle of something big against the other side of wall sent a chill down Hoffman’s spine, a chill he refused to acknowledge as fear.
Hoffman tapped King on the shoulder then jerked a thumb over his shoulder to where Steuben should have been. King did a double take, then shrugged.
Shuffling back from the wall, Hoffman leveled his weapon at it and slapped fingers against the muzzle twice to get the rest of the team’s attention. They passed a bump down the line until the signal reached the Dotari.
Gor’al turned slightly, bumping his helmet camera against the wall. His camera sprang into action, taking a burst of photographs.
Hoffman clenched at the noise, wincing internally as he counted each second with a heartbeat that pounded like a bass drum.
A second passed, then another.
The Beast punched through the wall, claws of three arms slashing toward Gor’al.
Hoffman retreated a step and opened fire through concrete and plaster. Fragments exploded around each bullet strike. Some went through. Others ricocheted.
The Beast’s claws wrapped around Gor’al’s helmet. Ripping his own claw through the chin strap, Gor’al ducked away, firing blind at the Beast.
“Do you think I can miss from this distance? I’ll kill you and your bovine leavings!”
“Gor’al, no!” Hoffman shifted position to get a better firing angle. Booker and the others couldn’t get a shot without hitting the Dotari Marine.
The thing on the other side of the wall roared. A second later, the wall exploded outward. Gor’al flew backward, arms and legs akimbo as he struck the pavement in the middle of the street. King was tumbled sideways and Garrison and Max were lost in an avalanche of shattered wall fragments and dust.
Hoffman dropped and rolled to one side, coming clumsily to his feet. The balance of his ballistic gear was different from his Strike Marine armor. His awareness of the encumbrance was a fleeting thought, background noise in his mind. His eyes focused on his target, shuffling the sensory overload as his finger squeezed the trigger. The weapon barked, recoiling with surprising force.
Moving, shooting, searching for a clear angle on the target took all his attention. Opal and the others were in the fight now, ripping off rounds while he reloaded.
Mortar flares swung down from the sky, more and more of them as the fight continued. Somewhere, an alert guard was trying to help. The inconsistent light reflected from the dust thrown into the air by the conflict. Muzzle flashes of the low-tech assault rifles turned the scene into a disco ball in hell.
“Where the hell is Steuben?” King yelled.
Hoffman didn’t answer. Instead, he lunged forward and grabbed Gor’al by the back of his armor and pulled him out of the maelstrom.
The Beast lashed out from the cloud of dust and ripped claws across Hoffman’s chest. A talon hooked in the flack vest, sending Hoffman flying to one side and into the remnants of the wall, helmet-first.
Opal roared and dropped his rifle. The doughboy swung his war hammer off his shoulder blindly into the dust. There was a clang of the hammer hitting home and Opal stumbled back, the weapon shaking loose from his grip and bouncing in the rubble, vibrating wildly.
Something crossed Hoffman’s vision and a fire erupted in the smoke. The Beast reared up on its hind legs, its fire-coated arms spread wide like a demon emerging from hell. The thing twisted around and loped away, trailing flame.
Holding a bottle with a lit wick in one hand, Steuben put the other on Hoffman’s chest. The lieutenant looked down at the three deep gouges that had penetrated his vest, exposing his flesh. Thin lines of blood glittered in the light from the Karigole’s firebomb.
“You’re barely even bleeding,” Steuben said.
“It hurts, if that matters.” Hoffman winced and found his rifle in the rubble.
The Beast tore down a road to an open rent in the city’s outer fence. The crack of Duke’s sniper rifle carried through the air, but if the shots connected, they didn’t have any obvious effect on the creature as it vanished into the jungle.
Steuben snuffed out the wick, a lit bit of cloth, with his bare hand.
“Where the hell were you?” Hoffman asked.
“Don’t you know how to fight from the shadows?” Steuben asked. He touched his artificial eye and turned it back on. “I watched it follow your heat traces across the ground after our first fight with it. I realized it must see in the infrared spectrum—from its second set of eyes, perhaps. There wasn’t an opportunity to make a firebomb before now.”
Hoffman stared at him, dumbstruck.
“We had to get close enough, and I needed something to improvise into an explosive device. As soon as we heard it on the other side of the wall, I went back to one of the shops we passed. I have been making a mental note of where there are lamps and other incendiary devices all night.”
“Why didn’t you say something earlier? We’re part of a team, remember?”
“It was a dynamic situation. I saw an opportunity and took it. If I had said something, the Beast would have attacked sooner.”
“I could have made you a real bomb,” Garrison said. “It’s what I do. You want one that just burns, I can do that. You want one that knocks down a wall, I’m your guy. Didn’t they have breachers and explosives experts when you fought with Strike Marines?”
Steuben glared at Garrison. “Perhaps you can finally prove useful.”
“Most people want to stay on the bomb guy’s good side,” Garriso
n said as he let his rifle hang loose at his waist. “Did we…win? We managed to drive it off.”
“It’ll be back.” Max knelt in the rubble and picked up a shard of obsidian. “Look, this must be part of it’s—ow!” He dropped the shard and shook his hand. The shard went red-hot and disintegrated.
“Explains why the locals have never found a trace of it,” King said. “That remind you of anything, Lieutenant?”
“Xaros drones disintegrate when destroyed.” Hoffman worked his boot in the dust where the fragment had vanished. “But not like that. No heat.”
“Please tell me we didn’t find the other last Xaros drone in the galaxy,” Garrison said.
“We what?” Steuben asked.
“That’s not what we’re dealing with,” Hoffman said. “I saw the drone on the Kidran’s Gift up close and personal. This isn’t the same thing. There’s nothing…primal…about the Xaros.”
“At least we’ve got that going for us,” Max said.
“We know it sees on the infrared spectrum and that fire is a useful tool.” Hoffman tapped the camera on the side of his helmet. “Anyone get footage?”
Garrison took his helmet off and flipped a switch on the camera.
“It’s on now,” he muttered.
Gor’al picked up his half-crushed helmet from the rubble and picked through long threads of exposed film.
“Perhaps we can salvage something from this?” the Dotari asked and then chattered in his native tongue as he walked in a circle, fidgeting with the wrecked camera.
“We need Booker to check out Gor,” Hoffman said, waving a hand toward the sniper perch.
“Thing work?” Opal thrust his helmet into Hoffman’s chest, which sent sharp pain through his scratches. The camera on the doughboy’s helmet ticked, out of film.
“Let’s get it back to the lab and see what develops,” Hoffman said, dabbing his fingertips at the cuts on his chest.
“You got lucky, sir,” King said.
“Don’t I know it. Stay tactical. The Beast might come back for round two.”
****
Every muscle in Hoffman’s body ached. His team moved like they’d been in a tough fight, their aches and pains evident. They slept whenever and wherever they could, and Garrison, Booker, and King were out cold near the door to the lab. Heads propped up on helmets and feet crossed, they held their weapons across their bodies as they snored. Opal stood over them, eyes half closed.
Hoffman sat in a chair as Masako dabbed the cuts in his chest with a swab.
“That’s what I should be doing,” Max said absently as he watched Lilith Yarrow remove the film from the developer canister. “I had an uncle who used to do antique photography. Soaked the stuff in fluid and then hung it up to dry. Never really understood it. I was just a kid.”
“He was probably soaking it in distilled water to swell the gelatin layer,” Lilith said. “This method is a series of baths. Very straightforward. I get in a kind of meditative state by the end of it.”
“I could see that. Very cool tech. So retro.”
“The most important thing is the non-ionic rinse,” she said.
Masako put the bloody swab into a box and a screen lit up. “Not the way I would have retrieved a gene sample,” she said. “I admire your dedication. Feeling well? Fever? Double vision? Sensation of an alien presence gestating in your thoracic cavity?”
“What was that last part?” Hoffman asked.
Masako held a palm over Hoffman’s chest and a light glowed out from a sensor glove. “Nothing. You’re good.” She glanced down at the box and frowned. “No presence of any alien DNA in the wound at all…you sure the Beast did this?”
“There any other giant black creatures attacking the city?” the lieutenant asked.
“You’re done with him,” Booker said, tapping Masako on the shoulder. “He’s mine to patch up.”
“Bit disappointing…” Masako’s braced arm gave Hoffman a gentle pat on the shoulder. “Not you. That there’s nothing to examine, other than the claw marks, I mean. Someone’s calling me.” She hurried away and Booker took her place in front of the bare-chested Hoffman.
“You won’t even have a scar after I fix you up,” Booker said.
Hoffman massaged his face to wake up, doing his best to ignore the medic as she ran a flesh knitter over his cuts.
Max came over, flapping pictures. “Got something,” he said. “We all saw it up close and personal. Now everyone else can too.”
He passed Hoffman a photo, but Steuben snatched it out of his hand, held the picture up to the light, and then muttered something in Karigole that Hoffman took as a curse. Max handed the lieutenant another picture.
It was a snap of the Beast’s triangular head against a flare descending through the sky. Small ridges ran down the angles, while a single bale-red eye stared without any evident emotion.
“It is like nothing I’ve seen,” Steuben said. “No match for any predator on this planet. For as many times as we hit it, no one found a single blood trail.”
“If it can’t bleed,” Garrison said with a yawn and a stretch, “can we kill it?”
“Xaros don’t bleed.” Steuben tapped a knuckle of his mechanical hand against his prosthetic eye. “And I’ve seen them die.”
“I feel better,” Garrison said.
“That’s sarcasm.” Gor’al held up a finger. “Sarcasm detected, yes?”
Booker and Duke patted the Dotari Marine on his shoulders and he rustled his quills, pleased with the close proximity and praise.
Garrison leaned closer to take in the pictures. “Man, that thing is horrifying.”
“I think we found our official team photographer,” Booker said. “Good job, Opal. At least you remembered to turn your equipment on. Gor’al’s film got ruined by direct exposure after his camera was smashed.”
Opal opened one eye, then went back to rest mode.
“He’s got my vote, if he can keep his smash-it-until-it-doesn’t-move programming in check. One unstoppable killing machine smashes through a wall and Gor pisses himself,” Duke said. “I wish I had video of that.”
Hoffman rubbed his temples. “Our rifles didn’t even tickle the damn thing. I can’t see that the fire did much except confuse it. We need our gauss rifles and anti-tank grenades.”
Lilith shook her head. “That’s not an option. The moment you activate those weapons, it will be all over you. The power signature generated by a gauss weapon has the most acute effect on the Beast of anything we’ve seen. We lost three teams before we figured that out.”
Colonel Fallon and Yarrow arrived. They spoke quietly with Lilith for a moment as she showed them the developed photos.
“Permission to speak freely, Colonel?” Duke asked.
“Granted.”
“The Beast zeros in and wrecks any artificial power source it detects. We get it. But in my expert opinion, we need to put it in a box and hit it with something that will actually damage it. We’re wasting our time with these peashooters. Don’t get me wrong—I want to keep mine when we’re done, but even my sniper rifle is useless for this mission.”
King paced forward, glaring at the pictures as he spoke. “We can carry gauss weapons without the batteries plugged in. Bring them online when it’s time to shoot. There’s a forty-five-second charge time…during which we’ll be vulnerable. Sucks, but it’s our only option. Am I wrong, Steuben?”
“We know what attracts the creature. We know what to use as bait.”
“Is he going to say me? I think he means me,” Garrison said. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Don’t you want to make something go boom?” Duke asked the breacher.
“What kind of question is that?”
“I brought you all to Eridu for solutions,” Fallon said. “Let’s hear it.”
“We tracked it to the edge of the city after lighting it on fire,” Hoffman said.
Steuben stepped forward. “We must track it down in the jungle. Its
lair is the underground lab with the Qa’Resh artifacts, yes? The jungle will prove a better hunting ground. Fewer risks to civilians in the city and we will have more room to chase it down. Everything needs to eat and rest. The daylight hours are our best chance to lay a trap.”
“Sleep is overrated,” Max muttered.
“If it’s sleeping in the lab,” Hoffman said, “why don’t we call in a kinetic strike from the Scipio? End this the easy way.”
“And destroy the artifacts?” Fallon shook his head. “We don’t know for sure the lab is the Beast’s bed-down location. Union High Command was explicit that the artifacts are mission critical.”
“But our lives aren’t?” Gor’al asked.
“Mission first, people always.” Fallon’s face darkened. “I don’t like it either. How can anything be that valuable—ancient civilization or not?”
“I witnessed a Qa’Resh planetary defense laser used against the Xaros,” Steuben said. “It wiped out millions of drones as easily as you could flip a light switch. The ancients’ technology can and will upset the balance of power in the galaxy.”
“No wonder the Ibarras want it all so badly,” Hoffman said, glancing down at three thin pink strips of skin across his chest.
“But orbital artillery is an option,” Fallon said. “Spot the Beast away from the lab and signal the target location to the Scipio. Kinetic strikes don’t require guidance systems. Let gravity do all the work. Swamps absorb a lot of the kinetic force from an artillery bombardment. We’ll make a big mess, but not necessarily damage the lab. So you’ll have to put eyes on it and make a determination of which is the best course.”
Hoffman nodded. “Agreed. I doubt we’ll find it asleep in its lair. That’s where the real plan will kick in.”
Steuben growled a word Hoffman didn’t know. “The advantage of the swamp is we can hide our heat signatures. The city is an artificial environment, easy to see things on the infrared spectrum.”
“Especially if you’re a face-eating alien construct designed to fight off Xaros drones,” Garrison said.
