by Richard Fox
“Sir, you hit?” a soldier asked as more ran toward the ship behind him.
“I’m fine, just let me up!”
There was a flash of light and the soldier’s head popped like a balloon when a white bolt struck him in the ear. The corpse kept its grip on Tarthon and the lieutenant stared at the smoking mess of bone and crisp flesh on top of the dead Tyr’s neck.
More bolts cut past him and one struck the water a few feet from where he was. A wall of steam slapped him away from the dead soldier and Tarthon went spinning through the air. His right leg hit a trunk and he went rolling through reeds and mud. He heard screams as the world stopped spinning.
A turret had risen up from the back of the ship and was spitting death into his assault force. The single barrel jerked from left to right, pausing just long enough to fire a single bolt that blew limbs off Tyr soldiers or turned them into torches when the impacts ignited their clothes and flesh.
Dead soldiers lay everywhere, lit up by passing flares that washed out all the color from the battlefield into a harsh white light. Blooded dropped their weapons and ran away.
“No, no! Forward!” Tarthon tried to get up, but his right leg was broken. A bit of jagged bone burst through his pants leg.
“Forward!” He got up onto his left leg and hopped toward the crash. “For the—”
A bolt from the turret hit him clean in the chest and he went down into the stream in several pieces.
****
Clay fired a burst from his machine gun at the turret, but the bullets bounced off the armored top of the weapon.
“Come on!” Clay fired again, but the laser turret was focused on massacring the infantry assault along the stream bed. “Come on! I’m the real threat!”
The turret wagged from side to side and fired one last bolt at a fleeing soldier, hitting him behind the knee, severing the leg. The turret snapped up at Clay and both fired.
Clay dove to one side as a searing bolt ignited grass where he’d been a split second earlier and continued into the sky. Clay planted his feet and stood straight up, his machine gun tight against his shoulder, the ammo line dangling in the air.
The turret exploded, sending hunks of metal into the stream and careening up the hillside. Clay ducked as a piece went whizzing by.
“I damaged the coolant manifold!” Clay shouted to Sazon. “Next shot triggered an overload!”
Sazon had her hands over her ears, but she gave Clay a quick nod and a thumbs-up. She slapped her hand back over her ear and nuzzled against Nemsi when more machine-gun fire opened up farther down the hillside.
Fastal took a flare gun off his belt and pointed it at the crash site. He fired, and a small comet head of light and trailing sparks arced through the air and landed on top of the craft.
“What was that?” Clay asked.
“Making a new door.” Fastal tossed the flare gun aside and drew his pistol.
Shoulder-fired rockets streaked out from the other infantry position and exploded against the side of the crash. More punched into the rising cloud of smoke, bursting with sharp cracks and flashes of light.
Two rockets streaked through the smoke and the explosion was muted as the warhead went off inside the ship.
Fastal blew three times on his whistle and a roar went up from the position that had fired the rockets. Blooded ran down the hillside.
“Keep up,” Fastal said to Clay and went sliding down.
“No, no! Wait!” Clay raised the barrel on his machine gun and chased after Fastal. He got to the bottom of the hill without embarrassing himself and found Fastal at the side of the ship, a huddle of officers and line sergeants with him.
“Get in there. Clear one room at a time,” Fastal said to a scared-looking lieutenant. “Don’t focus on where you are or how…wrong it looks. Kill everything that moves. Go!”
Clay went to follow, but Fastal grabbed him by the arm. “No. You wait until there’s a problem only you can solve,” the general said.
“Time’s an issue,” Clay said. “We need to be in and out before—”
Rifle and machine-gun fire broke out inside the ship.
“First door left…first door left!” a soldier called out.
“That would be…shit!” Clay yanked a grenade belt off a soldier and ducked into the blasted-out doorway in the hull.
The outer layers of the hull were a silica composite run through with tiny graviton sensors, making it look like the ship was encased in cracked ice. Clay ducked inside to the dark lacquered deck and slightly curved hallways clad in alabaster. Smoke clung to the ceiling, whirling into air vents as the ship’s systems worked to keep the environment as pristine as possible.
A dead soldier lay against the wall, his face crushed, limbs twitching.
“Coming through,” Clay said as he moved up to Tyr huddled against the bulkheads, some with their weapons on one door, the rest focused down the passageway.
“Sire, this—this monster killed Borno and then…” The lieutenant pointed at a doorway. “We…we shot it, but it…”
“I need to borrow this.” Clay unsheathed a bayonet off a nearby soldier and handed him the machine gun, which the Tyr struggled to hold while his back was against the curved wall. Clay tossed the grenade belt up and grabbed one with his hand gripped over the spoon. He pulled the pin with his teeth and spat it out.
Soldiers began to panic—Clay had a live grenade in his hand. Letting go of the spoon would kill them all in seconds.
Clay tossed the grenade belt up onto his shoulder, then slammed the bayonet’s tip against the edge of a small panel beneath the controls and popped it out. The panel spun in the air and bounced off the top of a soldier’s helmet. Clay reached one finger in and hooked an emergency release.
“Move,” he said to two soldiers directly across from the door, and they scrambled aside.
He pried open the release and the door snapped up.
A flood of laser bolts smashed into the bulkhead across from the door. Clay swung the grenade belt into the room and yanked his hand out of the release. The door slammed down and Clay handed the knife back to the Blooded he’d taken it from.
There was a whoomph as the grenades went off. The deck lurched beneath their feet and Clay opened the door again.
“Keep moving,” he said to a shocked lieutenant as he took his machine gun back. “That trick will work for every door.”
Clay stepped into a small compartment, the walls scratched from the grenade blasts. A small circle of fires showed where they’d gone off. An acceleration seat had been shredded and was oozing gel, and the holo control panel had collapsed into fragments on the seat.
A Myrmidon lay on his side against the bulkhead, the remnants of holo projection crystals sprinkled around him. He clutched a bloody stump against his chest; his flexible armor suffered thousands of cuts.
The man breathed hard, a wet rasp with each exhalation. His face mask was of a snarling bear. One eyepiece was broken, the face beneath exposed.
“You,” the Myrmidon said. “That’s you, ain’t it, Clay? How else would you know how to get in here…”?
Clay brought his machine gun up to his shoulder and aimed it at the gap in the face shield.
“Boss wants you dead something fierce, traitor. He was going to bring your scalp back and give it to the director personally.” He coughed and blood dribbled from the cuts in his armor. “It was one thing when you turned tail. That didn’t cost the company any money. Now you’re messing with the bottom line. You’d better…you’d better hope we don’t find your family. Corporate’s got a way of getting even.”
Clay moved closer and pressed the muzzle into the broken eye socket.
“I’m dead…I’m dead already…what did I die for, huh? Credits. Stomping indigs for fun and profit…look at me, Clay. I’m a nobody dying on a shit-ball planet so Corp can bring in the Golden Light and make a buck off my blood. Maybe…maybe you’re right.”
Clay swallowed hard.
�
�My drip’s offline…I feel too much, Clay. Do me a favor? No hard feelings.”
Clay fired a single bullet and the Myrmidon jerked back. Blood welled up through the eyepiece and ran through the lines of the bear mask.
“You,” Clay said to a trio of soldiers looking around the doorway, “all of you, drag the body clear of the ship. He looks heavy too.”
“What did—what was he saying?” a sergeant asked.
Clay shifted his hold on his machine gun. This was neither the time nor the place to explain himself.
“Damned if I know. Now get moving before I tell Fastal he’s got shirkers working for him.”
****
Fastal moved through a loose throng of soldiers as he hurried down a curved hallway toward a group of them huddled around a set of double doors. They were arguing in low voices.
“What’s the holdup?” Fastal asked.
“We can’t jimmy this one open,” a line sergeant said. He pointed to a control panel with no emergency access panel, but it did have an abundance of knife marks scratched onto the edges.
“Rocket the doors open?” a lieutenant asked.
“The backblast will kill whoever shoots it and we may not have time to evacuate this…ship to plant charges.” Fastal rapped the muzzle of his revolver against the panel. He stepped back and his heel splashed into a puddle of water that ran toward the door. A brief wave of vertigo hit him.
“Anyone else feel that?” the line sergeant asked.
The double doors creaked, then a large crack opened in the floor and spread through each door like a dead tree branch.
A small hatch opened on the ceiling in front of the door and a ball mounted on a telescopic arm snapped down. A metal lens flipped open and Fastal stared into a red dot.
“Kill it!” A soldier swung his rifle like a club and the stock broke the ball off. The soldier kept beating at the device as it rolled across the floor like it was vermin that had found its way into a kitchen.
“Get yourself under control, soldier! Put your…what’s that?” Fastal felt a tug against his entire body. He tried to move, but it felt like he was encased in wet concrete. He flew backwards and hit the cracked doors, feeling like an enormous hand was pressing against him as the doors creaked.
They gave way and he fell—at least it felt like falling—across the ship’s control room. He bounced off the floor and hit water that had pooled against the front of the bridge. Fastal stood up in the aching cold water that came up just above his knees.
A dead human was strapped into a control seat that had broken off its moorings on the deck. Long blonde hair floated in the water and pale blue eyes stared into the abyss. Beside this figure, a bearded face was submerged a few inches below the surface of the water.
Fastal sloshed back, then looked down. His feet were against windows, where the nose of the ship had dug into the soil of his world just outside. To his right was the deck, to his left the ceiling. He looked up at the broken double door where his men were shouting to him.
Gravity had gone all wrong.
“Get Clay!” Fastal shouted. He looked around and found a second pilot’s chair, the restraints open, the buckles dangling overhead.
Fastal walked carefully toward the side of the bridge, parts of his body suddenly feeling lighter and heavier as he went. He reached a hatch with a glass panel over it and gripped a handlebar on top. The hatch was large enough for him to crawl through with a few extra inches. He leaned forward to look into the glass.
Darkness moved within, and a black-skinned human woman looked up at him.
Fastal locked eyes with her, and she snarled and thrust a gun against the glass. Fastal slammed himself back as laser bolts blasted the glass apart and struck the floor. The hatch popped open and slammed into the bulkhead next to Fastal.
The human thrust the gun out and Fastal grabbed her by the wrist. Even though he was a good deal taller and his body had been conditioned by years as a soldier and a farmer, the human nearly overpowered him as he fought to control the direction of the laser pistol.
“Alien scum!” the human shouted, and she bit into Fastal’s shoulder as she pulled herself out of the life pod.
Fastal snarled in pain then jammed his finger into the trigger guard and wiggled it back and forth, shooting out bolt after bolt until the weapon ceased firing and the barrel went red with heat. It started beeping and the human flung it away.
The general pulled away and backhanded the human as he turned to face her.
She took the hit like it was nothing and chopped a strike down where his neck met his shoulder. He blocked with a forearm and the blow knocked feeling out of his hand. She laughed, her eyes wide, her gritted teeth exposed in a snarl.
Fastal, just then aware that his pistol was not in his possession, punched her in the nose and she barely reacted. Grabbing him by front of his uniform, she swept him off his feet.
Water crashed around him, and the pilot kept him pressed to the forward control panel where the malfunctioning gravity field had formed a pool of stream water.
Fastal struggled against the two hands holding him underwater, but he had no leverage and the smaller human was proving to be far too strong, even though she wasn’t in Myrmidon armor.
The pressure against his back went away and he felt like he was floating. Water slammed him against the deck and he was torn away from the pilot’s grip. He gasped air as a wave of water swept him across the deck and he thudded against a side bulkhead, soaked through.
The pilot stopped herself against a squat holo table and crouched behind it, keeping its bulk between her and the soldiers in the doorway.
“Fucking domino-faced sons of bitches,” she said. Fastal wasn’t an expert on human expressions, but he recognized the rage in her voice, even if he didn’t understand her words. She screamed like an attacking predator and lurched at him.
Rifles opened up and a hail of bullets struck the pilot. One burst through her thigh as more smacked into the side of her vac suit. The material stopped most of the hits from penetrating, but each impact hit her like a heavy punch. Her charge faltered, then a bullet blew out the back of her skull.
She landed face-first in front of Fastal, then slid forward on the wet deck.
“Sir, are you OK?” a lieutenant asked from the doorway. “You fell…sideways. Then the water—”
“Yes, I’m aware!” Fastal moved his right shoulder, pain from the pilot’s bite growing less and less as adrenaline took hold. He took a tentative step toward the doorway, the inconsistent tug of gravity casting doubt on his movements.
There was a snap in the air and then everything felt normal again.
Fastal’s pistol fell off the ceiling right in front of his feet.
“Clear the next room.” He pointed to a dark, open doorway, then picked up his pistol, shook water from the barrel, and cycled the chamber.
“Wow!” Sazon entered the bridge with a handheld camera to one eye, the inner film cartridge ticking. “This appears to be a bridge of some kind. Consistent rune forms across doorways, but nothing on any actual control surface. Could the visitors see in wavelengths we can’t and I’m missing something? Like color blindness common in certain Islander groupings? Note to query subject four on—”
“Sazon.” Fastal put a hand over the lens and she lowered it, clearly annoyed with him. “The ship isn’t secure.”
“Oh pishposh, the Blooded haven’t found any but the one in the outer room and—”
Fastal put a hand on the top of her head, then angled it down so she could see the dead pilot.
“Is this one still warm?” Sazon could barely handle the camera, she was so excited. “She is! I need blood samples and—oh, look at the ketafik on this one! What an amazing spectrum they must have. But why? Solar radiation response? Sexual maturity signaling? You!” She snapped her fingers at a soldier in the doorway. “Give me your first-aid kit. I need to collect moist hemoglobin!”
The soldier shook his head and shrank b
ehind the door.
“Sir,” said a soldier, motioning for Fastal from the dark doorway. “We found…something.”
Fastal pointed a knife hand at a wide-eyed sergeant in the doorway, then chopped at Sazon, who was tugging at a stud earring on the dead pilot.
He went through the other doorway and into a narrower passageway, one side bent and broken from the crash.
“I don’t…I don’t know what it is,” the soldier said.
A mangled suit of armor was gripped by broken hull plating and splintered trees, like the ship and Tyr’s earth were trying to pull it back into the depth of an underworld. It stood nearly half again as high as Fastal, the shoulders hunched over, the faceplate askew.
“This isn’t like the others we’ve seen.” Fastal’s mouth went dry. “It’s like a…walking tank.”
“A Marauder,” Clay said from behind him. He stepped up to the suit and pushed a button on the side of the faceplate. It snapped open and a dead man’s head slumped forward. Fastal lifted the face up, taking in the crude tattoos on the cheeks and over the eye sockets. “Beating these will be a challenge,” Clay added.
“How…” the soldier with them began shaking, “how does he know? What is that thing inside there?”
“We don’t have much more time,” Clay said. “We’re going to have to pry Sazon away as it is.”
“Go,” Fastal said, putting a hand on the soldier’s back. “Take out everything that isn’t bolted down. Everyone must be clear of this site in the next ten dreths, understood?”
“Sir,” said the soldier and then turned and left.
“Sometimes the enemy will load one of them on board as a fail-safe,” Clay said. “The Marauders are let loose to clear out an area. We’re lucky he died in the crash.”
“Now you mention this?” Fastal asked.
“They don’t use Marauders for delicate work. They’re terror weapons. Zike must have been desperate for manpower if he brought these along with him…”
“And what does that mean?” Fastal asked.
“I’m not sure. Wait, do you hear that?” Clay raised his chin slightly, then his eyes went wide. “Get everyone out now. Run. Run!”
