by Bobby Adair
“We’re logged on to the network,” Jablonsky tells me.
I’m glad it still functions.
“That wall to your left,” says Phil. “That’s the one you want.”
“How so?” asks Brice. The plan was to bust in and then rush down the hallway to attack the defending Trogs before they could recover from the impact of the collision and the tornado of decompressing gases.
“We’re a lot farther inside than we planned to be,” Phil rushes through the words. “There’s a dorm on the other side of that wall. On the other side of the dorm is the rec room. Blow two walls, and you’ve found the Grays without having to go through the hall and the bulk of the defending Trogs.”
Assuming the decompression hasn’t blown them all into space.
“You’re a godsend,” Brice tells him.
Aw, the kids are playing nice. I’m all teary-eyed. Not.
Brice is at the wall in two seconds placing a C4 charge, and I’m rushing everyone back into the ship, explaining as we go.
Once inside, I comm Phil, “Can you sense the Grays? Are they still in the rec room?”
“Yes.” He’s certain. “They’re confused. Dazed is a better word. Being so close to a grav lens collision has left them stunned.”
“The ghost Trogs?” I ask. I know there are six in there with the Grays.
“Everyone is down. The only Trogs on this level who are moving are the ones in the hall being blown out into space.”
Brice jumps in through the open assault door, glancing hurriedly at me. “Ready?”
“Everybody brace.” I give Brice a nod.
I hear the explosion and feel the blast through the ship. The wind changes as the dorm decompresses.
“Wait a few seconds,” I tell my squad as they rush for the opening.
Brice is in the assault door, nodding his head with each silent beat he counts. Outside the ship, every manner of furniture, whole and shattered, is furiously blowing past.
As soon as it settles to the floor, Brice is out again.
“Go!” I shout at my team.
We’re all out in a flash.
I point to the wall Brice just blasted a hole in. “Here, line up here. Backs to the wall. Remember your assignment.”
Brice is already through the hole, running to the next wall, and placing a charge. That’s the wall between the dorm and the main rec room.
Silva, Lenox, Mostyn and me throw our backs against the already-breached wall and grav tight.
“As soon as the decompression wave settles,” I tell them. “Rush in. Kill the Trogs. Capture the Grays.”
“Placing the charge,” Brice tells us, panting from the sprint. “You can feel the grav all the way in here.” He’s talking about the rec room gravity. According to Tarlow, it’s the only room in the station with full-time, simulated earth g.
We wait.
Seconds pass. They feel like minutes.
Brice pops out through the breach and takes his spot against the wall beside me. “Ready?”
It’s a warning, not a question. He pushes the big red dot.
The explosion rocks us again.
Pieces of rock come through the breach first, followed by pool furniture and truckloads of water from the pool, turning into mist as it converts from liquid to gas in near-zero pressure. All of it washes past us, spreading into our room, flowing over the Rusty Turd, and blasting out through the fractured walls behind.
A ghost Trog sails past us, unconscious, and smashes against the bow of our ship. Lenox fires a dozen rounds into him before his body is carried by the wind into the next room.
The howl settles down.
Decompression complete.
I jump through the breach, Brice on my heels, racing across the chaotic dorm, toward the hole in the far wall. Silva and Lenox start the search of the jumbled dorm. Mostyn stands in the breach, defensive grav set at the max, making sure no Gray escapes past her. Everybody following the plan.
Chapter 49
“Ghost down,” calls Silva. She’s the first to score a kill, not counting the Trog who flew out with the decompressing air and pool water.
“Gray!” shouts Lenox. “Two! I have them.”
The rec room is impossibly huge with an empty swimming pool taking up nearly half the floor space and sport courts taking up the rest. The light glowing down from above looks like sunlight. The gravity feels like home. It seems impossible, given that it’s been burrowed from the heart of an asteroid a billion miles from earth.
I’m scanning the pool area doing the quick, simple math—four Grays and four ghost Trogs unaccounted for.
“The rest are in the rec room,” Phil assures over the comm.
“Alive?” I ask.
“The Grays are,” he answers.
Brice finds a ghost Trog on its hands and knees near a wall in a jumble of deck chairs. A long burst from his railgun kills it.
Three Trogs left. “Can you tell where the others are?” I ask Phil, as I run to the edge of the pool and see two Grays and a ghost Trog lying in the bottom near the drain. The Grays are moving like they’re sick. The Trog is sitting up and raising his head to look at me. I jump into the pool, grabbing my disruptor off my back as I fly. I can’t risk killing the Grays with deflected railgun slugs.
The Trog tenses at the last second as his senses clarify enough for him to understand what’s happening. Too late, though. My disruptor splits his helmet. Into the comm, I announce, “Two Grays in the bottom of the pool.” I kill my auto grav and go airborne, shooting up near the thirty-foot ceiling.
Railgun rounds spray across the width of the rec room, coming from the hole we just blew in the wall, all the way to the far corner. It’s Silva shooting.
She’s peppering an ebony Trog who’s raising his railgun as Silva’s rounds deflect in every direction. Brice fires diagonally across the room, and I add my gun to the onslaught. The Trog falls as the rounds penetrate and then shred him in a puff of red and gore.
I’m scanning.
“Another Gray,” calls Brice, pulling one by the foot out from beneath a large upturned shelf.
“The last one is heading for the door!” shouts Phil.
God, I envy his grav sense.
I turn toward the main door and spot the Gray, immediately pouring on the g to accelerate after him and catch him before he pogos his way through.
A blur materializes from my right.
“Trog!” shouts Silva, and the air lights up with red railgun rounds.
I dive for the floor, just to change my course, and the Trog zips past above me.
Silva’s rounds follow it.
“I got it,” Brice shouts. “You get that Gray.”
I trust them and max grav to close the gap, grabbing the Gray by his neck as his hand grasps the doorknob.
Spinning around with a one-handed grip on my railgun I bring it to bear on the last Trog, but see him hitting the far wall and falling limply toward the floor.
“That’s it for the Trogs,” I tell them, dropping my gun to dangle on its harness. I spin and go to work placing a C4 charge on the door, look at the Gray in my hand and smile. “You’re going to tell those fuckers in the hall aren’t you?” I laugh, knowing I don’t have to booby trap them. They know they can’t come through without dying. It’s better than a booby trap.
I laugh. It probably doesn’t matter, at least not for a little bit. Any Trogs who were out there have to be flailing in the void right now.
“Grab ‘em up,” says Brice. “Let’s go.”
We have all six Grays.
Now for the hard part. Or easy part. I can only guess which. As far as I know, nothing like this has ever been tried before.
Chapter 50
We’ve consolidated our position.
The Grays are all sitting at the bottom of the empty pool. I’m standing in front of them with Phil at my side. Brice and Silva are behind them, guns unnecessari
ly ready.
Jill is perched on the edge of the pool with Lenox and Mostyn beside her. Jill’s platoon is securing sublevel seven. They didn’t have to fight for it, all of the Trogs in the hall, the lobby, or in front of the rec room were blown out into space when the station decompressed.
The asteroid is still crawling with Trogs, and they’ll be coming to rescue their masters.
Blair is clucking away on the comm, although I’ve tuned her out, instead instructing Jablonsky to listen in and warn me if the Trogs attack that level.
“Phil,” I ask, looking at the six Grays. “Which one is in charge?”
Phil points to the second one from the end, the one I caught trying to escape through the door.
“Can you communicate with it?”
Phil nods.
“Are you communicating with it now?”
Phil nods again.
“Tell it we want the Trogs to surrender.”
“I did,” Phil tells me. “It’s arguing with me.”
“How so?”
Phil turns to me. “You know. Hairy monkey this, ignorant beast that. Insulting things. It doesn’t recognize us as worthy of having a conversation with.”
“So it won’t tell its Trogs to surrender.”
Phil shakes his head. “It’s confident in the next hour or so, we’ll all be dead. It keeps telling me to leave it alone so it can rest and I can prepare to die with dignity.”
“Uh, huh.” I need to make a decision, and as is not uncommon, I have too many variables and too many choices.
I step over to the Grays and tap the leader on the head with my knuckles. It glares at me and shakes its head to knock my hand away. “This one?” I ask. “This one is the leader?”
“Yes,” Phil answers.
I nod as I think through what I want to do. Maybe it’ll work. Maybe not. What do I have to lose by trying? My humanity? I don’t think so. Grays aren’t humans. Like Trogs, they’re monsters. It should be easy to do what I have in mind.
I reach down, snap the Gray up by his neck, and throw him. He flies three meters and hits the wall of the pool.
Phil grunts like he’s been punched.
Others gasp.
Nobody expected that.
The Gray is on the floor of the pool, rolling over and picking himself up. I pounce on him, kicking him in the head and sending his spindly body spinning again. I have to jump over to where he lands and catch him. He’s moving all jerky and quick, quick for a Gray. He’s afraid. I can feel the emotion flowing out of him as palpable as Gray stink back in my house.
Phil is babbling something, but he doesn’t understand what I need to do. He’s too humane in his heart, that’s why I didn’t consult him before I started.
I grab one of the Gray’s spindly arms, lift him and carry him until I’m standing a pace in front of the other five. I throw him to the ground and smash my boot onto his leg, and increase the downward grav in my suit while I twist and grind. The leg starts to come apart beneath my foot. I feel the pulpy tissue separate and ooze.
Phil’s crying out. He’s horrified. I turn down his comm so I won’t have to listen at full volume.
When I lift my foot, the Gray twig is flattened, mush.
It’s terrified. I can feel it, though at the same time, can’t comprehend it.
“It’s asking you to stop,” Phil shouts, his voice cracking with distress.
I know, or hope he’s not empathizing too much with the little beast, and I know the Gray is forcing Phil to share its suffering. It’s like a broadcast, and I’m only getting part of the signal.
Stomping on the Gray’s undamaged leg, I ask, “Is it begging?”
“What?” Phil’s mortified.
I grind and the thing’s agony creeps through me almost like I’m feeling it myself, so I fight it with my rage. I won’t allow this grotesque little monster to rule my thoughts, and with that, I make my final choice. I stomp its skull.
My head pounds with sudden migraine force.
I stomp again, and it feels like I’m bashing my skull.
I stomp and kick, feeling all of it, going dizzy with pain, until the Gray’s head splits open. I smash it one more time to open it up, and I stagger back from the intensity of searing agony, tearing my brain.
Gasping, I catch my balance, and go back for more.
The Gray’s body is twitching, the orange symbiont is squirming, trying to burrow deeper inside the tick’s split skull. I see its skin bubbling and peeling. It can’t take the harsh vacuum like its Gray host can.
Dropping to a knee, I reach into the open skull, grab the orange mass and pull it out.
Pain fries my every nerve as I rip the last shred of its connection to the Gray body and throw it down on the pool floor. With nothing but blinding torment and aching rage, I go to work again with my boot, grinding the symbiont into goop.
The Gray’s body goes still.
My agony disappears like it was never there.
I can breathe again.
Suddenly, I’m aware of everything around me, the universe isn’t just me and orange torment. Five Grays are still lying on the floor, waving their arms like they’re sick. Silva is down on her back. Phil is on his hands and knees bawling. Lenox, Mostyn, and Jill are off their feet.
They all felt it, at least some of it.
Only Brice is still standing, and I can see from the look on his face he’s experienced his share of what that Gray just did to us. He stood hard through it, ready to back me up.
“Phil.” I walk over to him and help him to his feet.
All of the others are moving, trying to regain their wits. I know they’re alive, I know the suffering was imaginary. They have to be okay.
“Phil.” I put an arm around him and hug him tight, probably the first time we’ve had contact that intimate and sincere since his brother died all those years ago. No, twice now in as many hours. Our relationship is changing. “Phil, I’m sorry about that. It had to be done.” I rap the side of his helmet with my knuckles. “Phil, do you hear me?”
He nods. His blubbering is subsiding. “That was the most horrible thing I’ve ever felt.”
“Yeah.” I’m already making a new rule for dealing with Grays—don’t make them suffer. Kill them quickly, or they’ll fuck you.
With the memory of all that hurt suddenly refreshed, I’m suddenly inspired to find some retribution.
I leap away from Phil, draw my disruptor off my back and as the blade comes alive in blue, I swing it through the heads of two Grays. Their skulls come apart, sending orange symbiont goo in a spray across the pool.
The pain is sharp and quick, like a jab from a needle poking a thousand times, all at once, all over your skin.
It goes as quickly as it comes.
I draw a deep breath. “Phil, talk to those other Grays. Ask them if they’re ready to surrender.”
“I—”
“Phil,” I remind him. “Lots of lives depend on this. Ask them.”
Phil sniffles up as many tears as he can, and concentrates on the Grays.
“Can they understand you?” I ask.
He nods.
“Are you telling them?”
He nods again.
I walk over among them and start looking for the next one I’ll have to convince. “Which one is in charge now.”
“No!” Phil shouts, “You can’t.”
“I can!” God, I hope I can. “Which one?”
Others on the comm agree with Phil. The assault is on all of us.
“Wait,” he pleads. “Wait.”
I reach down and pick one up by the neck.
“Stop, stop,” Phil tells me. “Stop. They can’t choose that fast.”
I hold the Gray out at shoulder level where I can look into his eyes and he can see my face. I give them some time to vote telepathically or whatever they do.
Phil closes his eyes and stands for a moment, motion
less except for his breathing.
I look around at the others. Silva is on her feet, hate in her eyes. She has her weapon up, ready to kill the Grays now that she knows what they can do. Jill is looking down on us with a face I can’t read. Lenox is holding Mostyn in her arms.
I turn back to Phil. “Well?”
“They surrender.”
“And the Trogs?”
“They can’t surrender,” says Phil. “They’re property. They do what they’re told.”
“And what’s that?”
“Whatever you want.”
Victory!
“Tell them all to go to the surface. They need to pile their weapons on the ground in front of the warehouse where they held the prisoners, then they all have to hike down to the bottom of the mine pit and sit in rows. If they do it fast enough, I won’t kill any more of these Grays. Be sure everybody understands that last part.”
Chapter 51
“Congratulations.” Blair sounds like she has a cocklebur stuck in her throat.
Tarlow is bubbling with gratitude. “You saved us.”
“It wasn’t me.” I look around at Phil, Brice, Silva, Jill, Lenox, and Mostyn. Penny and Jablonsky are close by, and so is the rest of Jill’s platoon. “We did it together.” We truly did. I start spinning up a pontification on leadership and teamwork to share, and I’m trying to come up with a clever opening line.
“The Trogs are doing what you told them,” bubbles Tarlow. “The ones on the surface have already laid down their arms and are running toward the mine. All of them are doing exactly what you told them.”
Blair finds her voice. “We own this base again. We’ve fulfilled our mission and we all did this together.”
“Yes, ma’am.” It’s the best response for the moment. “Yes, we did.” And there is plenty of truth in that, too.
“Before you get all full of yourself,” Blair sounds satisfied, like maybe she’s turned the tide of the game I keep hoping we’ve matured past playing, “you need to know that when the dust thinned, we were able to send a distress call.”
Tarlow interrupts without apology, seeming eager to please me. “The connection between the control room and the radio dish array was damaged in the original attack a few months ago. It took me awhile, circumstances and all. I finished fixing it right before your ships arrived.”
