Battlespace

by Ian Douglas

  “Do your best, Doc. It would be nice to have a prisoner.”

  “Yeah. How do we keep him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “These things are damned strong, sir,” Dunne put in. “I mean, just look at the musculature in that tail. If it decides to leave, there’s not a lot we could do about it.”

  Warhurst thought for a moment. “Use a length of tether material.” Though it was not much thicker than a length of fishing line, it was made of monofilament polyweave, long-chain molecules woven around one another with a breaking point in excess of one ton. “Secure the end around his arms and chest.”

  “Just stand back if he starts thrashing around,” Dunne warned. “I think one knocked Garroway clean off his feet with one swipe of its tail and dragged him off.”

  “Any sign of him?” Warhurst asked.

  “Uh…maybe, sir. Just this.”

  A window opened in Warhurst’s noumenal vision, showing a scene recorded by Kat Vinton’s helmet camera moments ago. He saw the tunnel ahead, partly lit by the lights of the Argus. The cavern wall beyond suddenly flickered three times, as though it were reflecting three rapid flashes of light. The recording’s audio element picked up the distant boom of three muffled explosions.

  “And that was?…”

  “We think it was a pig, Major. Three shots, close together, fired from beneath the surface. It was pretty far off, or very weak, or both. Sir, but we think he might have fired to let us know he was still alive.”

  “I see. What can we do about it?”

  “I sent Womicki, Vinton, and Weis out a ways,” Gansen said. “The water just keeps getting deeper as the floor drops. Unless we want to walk out there completely submerged, I don’t think there’s much we can do.”

  “Okay. I’m afraid I agree.” He looked at the creature quivering in the water at his feet. “If he’s alive, we might be able to communicate. Maybe these…people understand exchanging prisoners.”

  It was a hell of a long shot, given that they didn’t even know if they could talk with these…not people. Nommo.

  But it was all they had going for them at the moment. If Berossus was right, humans had communicated with the Nommo at least once before, thousands of years ago.

  And now the Marines would do it again, if they had to, in order to recover one of their own.

  CPL Kat Vinton

  The Tunnels, Sirius Stargate

  1455 hours, Shipboard time

  Kat stood waist deep in the black water, desperately scanning the night ahead of her, looking for some sign, any sign, of Gare. Those pig flashes had reflected off the tunnel ceiling in that direction a moment ago. Had it been a signal? A cry for help? Or was he fighting for his life somewhere out there in the depths?

  “Hey, Kat,” Weis called. “C’mon back.”

  “Yeah,” Womicki added. “You can’t do him any good out there!”

  Only then did she realize she’d moved a good ten meters out ahead of the other two.

  “Fuck!” she said with a heartfelt intensity.

  She and Gare were tight, had been since they’d become lovers on Ishtar an eternity or two ago. But there was more to it than that. He was a fellow Marine.

  “Vinton!” called Lieutenant Gansen. “Weis and Womicki, you too. Get back to the platoon perimeter. I don’t want to lose anyone else to grabs from underwater!”

  “We can’t just let them take him, sir!” Kat said.

  “Heads up, Marines!” Dunne yelled. “We have movement and IR traces, bearing three-five-one!”

  Kat turned, facing a bit west of the direction arbitrarily designated “north.” Something was happening out there, perhaps a hundred meters up the tunnel. The Argus had a better view and she shifted to the probe’s visual feed. At first she thought she was looking at a Marine and her heart gave a quick skip…but, no, the helmet was all wrong, too large and too long and it seemed to lack a visor entirely.

  Whatever was wading through the water was definitely wearing armor, however, and the black coating made it almost invisible against black metal bulkheads and ink-dark water. It was carrying a weapon too, with arms longer and more massive than a human’s. Its infrared signature was low, almost invisibly so; the only reason the Argus was picking it up at all was the fact that water and tunnel background were both quite chilly—only about 8° Celsius—and the armored figure was trailing a faint plume of thermal exhaust.

  What Kat was most aware, however, was the fact that the armored figure was walking. It appeared to be hunched forward a bit, rather than walking upright, and its legs were hidden by the water, but it was definitely taking steps as it moved.

  All of this was glimpsed in a second or two. In the next instant, a bolt of searing white-hot plasma skimmed in across the water, striking the surface a scant few meters in front of the Marine perimeter in a savage flash of steam and spray.

  Another bolt came in from arbitrary east, out of the tunnel wall itself, it seemed. Instantly, the Marines returned fire, opening up with pigs and laser rifles in a steady barrage sweeping across the water.

  “Come and get some, you bastards!” Lobowski shouted as the exposed surfaces of his chamelearmor flickered light and dark, trying to keep up with the strobing flash of his PG-90. Another plasma bolt exploded against the overhead directly above the Marine perimeter and Baxter screamed and collapsed like a string-cut puppet into the water. Lobowski pivoted to the right, sending a stream of white fire into the darkness from which the shots had come.

  “Man down!” Dunne yelled. “Corpsman!”

  “On it, Gunny!” Lee shouted.

  Kat amplified the contrast in her HUD, using the zoom function to try to zero in on the enemy, but the target picture was confused. The enemy appeared to have dropped underwater, but occasionally one would surface long enough to shoot at the Marine perimeter. The trick was to catch one in the act and take him down before he could fire. She saw water swirl eighty meters out and positioned her aiming cursor over the spot. A second later, the smooth, armored shape of one of those oversized helmets emerged, followed by the thing’s shoulders and a two-meter-long pipe that had to be a weapon of some kind. She triggered her 2120 and the target vanished in a splash of water and steam.

  She’d hit it, but she couldn’t tell if she’d hurt the thing at all.

  In fact, it was hard to make sense out of most of what she could see. Light from Lobowski’s plasma gun flared and flashed, each shot marked by a burst of static over the radio channels. The cool, wet air in the tunnel was starting to thicken now, as steam and spray filled it with a thin, roiling fog. The Marines’ laser bolts were becoming visible now in the close environs of the tunnel, ruby-red pulses briefly illuminating the mist. The aerosol wasn’t thick enough yet to degrade the effectiveness of the team’s laser weapons yet, but it wouldn’t be long.

  Enemy plasma weapons fire was coming in from three directions now: north, east and west, folding the Marine perimeter back into a horseshoe shape. Lobowski and the two first section plasma gunners stood at the center, with the two officers beside them, standing upright to get a clear field of fire above the heads of the other Marines in all three directions. The others crouched low, with only their helmets and shoulders above water.

  The feed from the Argus probe suddenly died in a burst of static. “Damn! They killed the AR-7!” someone said. No matter. Kat continued to fire, letting her armor’s computer identify and highlight the enemy’s thermal tails. It was becoming harder to spot them, though, as the air began to heat up in the fight.

  They were trying to rush the Marine perimeter. She could see half a dozen of them, now, wading through the water, only their helmets visible. She opened her thumper’s range and began dropping RPGs into the middle of the enemy line.

  “Thumper” was Marine slang for their Remington M-12 rocket-propelled grenade launchers mounted in an under-barrel configuration on their LR-2120s. It fired, among other things, 20mm RPG high-explosive rounds that, though not as powerful
as M-780 grenades, still packed a hefty punch. Blasts ripped through the enemy line, and several of the helmets vanished.

  But they were still coming. Damn, where were they coming from?

  “Second Platoon!” Gansen called. “Get your asses up here!”

  “Second Platoon, move up in support of Alpha One,” Warhurst amended. “Third Platoon, take up security for the tunnel to the south.”

  Something large moved in the water to the northeast, only fifty meters away. Kat had only a glimpse of a broad, muscular tail. “Watch out!” she warned. “They’re underwater, too!”

  “Weis! Vinton! Donegal! Velasquez!” Dunne yelled. “Use your thumpers! Lay down a blind pattern, thirty to fifty meters!”

  Kat interfaced with her weapon through her noumenal display, thought-clicking to set her RPG magazine so that the rounds would detonate one second after impact and no closer than thirty meters from her position. M-12 RPGs could be set to be self-guiding, but with no visible targets, the best they could do would be to lay down a barrage of explosions across a wide area.

  She aimed at the spot where she’d just seen something break the water and triggered the M-12. A quick thump-thump-thump nudged her shoulder hard as she loosed a three-round burst. Three explosions geysered in the water, one-two-three, and she felt the concussion against the armor encasing her legs.

  “Let’s get some mike-seven-eighties out there!” Dunne ordered. “Womicki! Tomlinson!”

  “Yeah, we’ll depth-charge ’em, Gunny!” Womicki yelled back. M-780 grenades sailed out into the tunnel, splashed in the water and, instants later, detonated. The concussion staggered Kat, but she leaned into it and kept firing, alternating now between short bursts from her M-12, and laser fire at anything moving out there she could see.

  Corporal Jeff Monroe, from First Platoon’s first section, stood up suddenly to take aim at a fast-moving target and then the top of his helmet exploded in a blaze of white light and fragments. He went down, his head vaporized from the eyes up by a plasma bolt. It was impossible to tell if the Marines were hitting anything out there or not, but they continued to lay down a thunderous rapid-fire barrage of bolts from the three PG-90s, augmented by a deadly, interlacing web of laser fire and thumper blasts.

  And, suddenly, there was no incoming fire—and no targets.

  “Cease fire!” Gansen ordered. “Cease fire!”

  For a long moment, the Marines stood in place, watching the water and the drifting mist illuminated by their lights.

  The entire firefight had lasted twenty-three seconds, according to Kat’s implant clock.

  “What the fuck!” Weis exclaimed. “Those things had legs!”

  “Two different kinds,” Dunne said. “Swimmers, like the one we captured. And something else.”

  “Okay, so you were saying they’re amphibians, like frogs, right?” Cavaco said. “So we got tadpoles and grown-up big frogs. Wiggles and walkers.”

  “You think maybe the adults are upset ’cause we captured one of their kids?” Alysson Weis asked.

  “If the kids are fucking noncombatants,” Lobowski growled, “they should stay the hell out of the firefight!”

  Kat looked at the captured alien, which was still lying half-submerged and unconscious at the center of the Marine perimeter. The creature was so…alien.

  “They may not have the same notions about warfare we do,” she pointed out.

  “If they have parental feelings,” Dunne said, “we can use that. Make them talk.”

  “Maybe,” Warhurst said. “But right now we don’t know what they’re feeling. And maybe it’s something that it’s just not possible for humans to understand.”

  CPL John Garroway

  Sirius Stargate,

  Lower Tunnels

  1455 hours, Shipboard time

  A series of overlapping platforms, like broad flat steps, had led Garroway higher and higher until, abruptly, his helmet broke through the surface of the water.

  He emerged cautiously. This was not the broad tunnel he’d been in when the Nommo had grabbed him. This area was small, almost cramped, with a ceiling low enough to touch. The air pressure here, at 1.17 atmospheres, was half again higher than it had been in the upper tunnel. This, then, must be an air pocket at least five meters below the level where the Marines had entered the Wheel.

  “Alpha Company!” he called over the company channel. “Alpha Company, this is Gare! Do you copy?”

  No answer. Not that he’d expected one with all of that steel and water between him and his comrades. He eyed the black overhead with a deepening frustration. Not only was that barrier blocking his attempts to radio the other Marines, but it also meant he was lost, even if he knew exactly in which direction they were. Part of his journey here had been a free-fall descent through the water, and if there were steps that would allow him to walk back that way, he didn’t know how to find them. He was trapped in a three-dimensional maze and he had no way of knowing how to get back up to the upper tunnel level.

  What logic told him, however, was that if the air pressure in this cave or pocket was higher than the pressure at the break-in point, then he would have to go back underwater to find a way up there…if there was one.

  Something moved in the shadows, ten meters away.

  Garroway pivoted, bringing the muzzle of his PG-90 into line with the half-glimpsed shadow. He could see nothing on optical wavelengths, and only a fuzzy smear of light green against dark on infrared. His finger tightened on the firing switch…but at the last instant he checked himself. Whatever was out there was not threatening. Watching, yes, but not an immediate threat. Hell, with their antimatter beam weapons, they could have fried him the instant he broke the surface.

  The question was: Why hadn’t they?

  “Who’s there?” he said, using his armor’s external speakers. He knew they wouldn’t understand English, but might they hear his voice and know he wanted to talk?

  Shadows separated from shadows in a dark alcove up ahead. It took him a moment to sort through the confused visual impressions. Even with his armor lights illuminating the thing, it was hard to tell what he was looking at.

  First of all, it was black, as black as Marine Mark VIII vac armor was in space, drinking any light that hit it. It was also somewhat humanoid—two legs, two long arms, and an upright stance.

  Well, mostly upright. The torso jutted forward, counterbalanced by what appeared to be a short tail. The head was very large and neckless, emerging from the body seamlessly. Garroway spent several frustrating moments trying to identify facial features on the smooth, curved surface of what must be the thing’s head before he realized that what he was looking at was another technologically advanced being wearing a suit of armor of some sort. The thing was walking straight toward him, holding what very obviously was a heavy weapon of some kind.

  And that weapon was aimed directly at Garroway’s head.

  19

  2 APRIL 2170

  CPL John Garroway

  Sirius Stargate,

  Lower Tunnels

  1458 hours, Shipboard time

  The armored form continued to advance until it was five meters away from Garroway. Garroway kept his PG-90 trained on it as it continued to aim at him, but something about its purposeful advance made him hold his fire. If it had wanted to kill him, it could have done so from the relative safety of the shadows. Why was it emerging into the glare of Garroway’s suit lights?

  Then it stopped, elevating its torso into a full upright posture, using the short, thick tail as the third leg of a tripod. The two stared at one another for a long moment. White vapor, like fog, spilled from vents in the side torso of the being’s armor. Then, slowly, with great deliberation, it raised the muzzle of the weapon it was carrying until it was aimed at the overhead.

  “Gaba dadru,” the thing said in a voice like the crinkle of metal foil, but in a deep bass register. “Im’haru da setak ni ingal.”

  “Sorry, buddy,” Garroway replied. “I d
on’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  The alien’s weapon had something like a pistol grip at the back end and a horizontal carrying handle halfway up the muzzle. Very cautiously, the being turned sideways and lowered the weapon once more, taking care not to point it at Garroway as it laid the device on the black metal deck. Turning to face him once more, it raised both arms, unfolding them, opening the armored hands to display six fingers on each.

  Okay…it was showing him it held no weapons. That was encouraging.

  The two looked at one another for a long moment. At least, Garroway assumed it was looking at him, studying him as he was studying it. With nothing like eyes, cameras, or helmet visor as a reference, he could only guess where its attention might be directed.

  Slowly, making no sudden movements, Garroway pivoted his PG-90 on its torso mount so that the muzzle was pointing harmlessly at the overhead and locked it in place. Unfastening it from its universal mount was a complex process, one that might easily be misunderstood. With the weapon aimed up, he spread his own arms, opening his hands. “See?” he said. “Nothing up my sleeves.”

  “Inki nagal. Nam iritru.”

  “Right. Whatever you say, friend.”

  One thing was clear. The being standing in front of him was not one of the eel-like, fish-eyed creatures he’d encountered in the water. It was smaller, had to be smaller, no longer than three meters, counting the tail. The arms were longer and more pronounced. It might have been an illusion created by the armor, but this thing had shoulders.

  Was this a representative of the Nommo? Or were the eels, the aquatic creatures, the Nommo?

  According to Dr. Franz, the Nommo who’d visited Earth all those thousands of years ago had been amphibious, which had led to speculation among the Marines that they might have a two-part life cycle, like frogs. The long-tailed eels might be the juveniles then. It didn’t make a lot of sense that the children should be larger than the parents, but maybe they absorbed the tail, the way tadpoles absorbed their tails on the way to becoming frogs.