That alarm continued shrieking.
Clayton kept his eyes on the shadowy ceiling, tracking back and forth with his coil gun.
“He’s still unconscious,” the ambassador said.
Clayton almost didn’t hear what he said. He was too focused on watching their backs. He could have sworn he’d just seen something moving around up there.
“Get him up!” Clayton snapped.
“What about his air supply?” Taylor replied.
“He’ll have to last until we get back to the shuttle. Cut those straps and let’s move out!”
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
Another wraith-like shimmer disturbed the hazy darkness above. A flash of dim red light followed. Eyes? Clayton’s heart hammered hard in his chest, his breathing fast and ragged. His gaze snapped down for a split-second, just in time to see Delta slinging Dr. Grouse over his back like a sack of potatoes.
“Move out,” Clayton said, already stepping through the door. His eyes flicked between the ceiling and the jagged hole that they’d blown in the subterranean entrance to this place. Clayton was beginning to suspect there was a ground level access somewhere up there in the darkened hollows of the ceiling.
Just before they reached the exit, Clayton heard a loud whooshing and his eyes snapped up to see a gleaming black shape plummeting down. Translucent wings spread wide just before it landed quietly in front of them. It stood only waist-high, but its wingspan was at least twelve feet.
Guns snapped up with a clattering sound.
“Hold your fire!” Ambassador Morgan said, stepping forward with his hands raised. He really hadn’t learned about that.
The ambassador and alien stood facing off with each other for a silent, breathless moment.
Clayton studied the creature as it folded its wings away against its back. Two short legs with vicious talons were planted on the ground, and two slender arms were curled up against the creature’s chest. Sharp red eyes glared at them out of a bony head with streamlined features and hairless, translucent skin that revealed a fish scale pattern of black veins running through it. Four short tentacles rose from the back of its head that rotated independently in a new direction each time one of them spoke. Ears of some kind. The creature wore a black mask with a grille over what was probably its mouth and nose, and a matte black suit with a vague fish scale pattern covered its torso. The suit was cut away at the feet, arms, and wings.
“We left the Visualizer with Reed and the shuttle,” Taylor whispered over the comms.
Clayton risked glancing back down to the cubicles. Dr. Grouse had a pack with a Visualizer in it when he’d gone missing. Where was it now?
“Greetings in the name of the United Nations of Earth,” Ambassador Morgan tried, as if this thing would understand him.
The creature chattered something back in a sing-song voice. Silence followed.
Clayton glanced at his air supply. Fourteen minutes and twelve seconds. “We need to get out of here.” He stepped up next to the Ambassador and then turned and pointed emphatically at Dr. Grouse, who was draped over Delta’s back and shoulders.
The winged creature chattered something else and ghostly-white membranes nictated over those eyes, turning them a rheumy color.
Clayton took another step toward it, again pointing to Dr. Grouse. “We need to get him out of here. He’ll die if we don’t get him oxygen soon.” Clayton hoped the creature would at least understand his tone if not his words.
Another sing-song reply. Clayton took another step, and it stepped away from him.
Was it afraid of him?
“Captain, look out!” Commander Taylor cried. Hands seized his shoulders and pulled him roughly aside.
A bright green flash of light dazzled Clayton eyes, and a puff of red mist exploded from Commander Taylor’s back.
Clayton’s heart froze and his coil gun snapped up. The creature’s wings flared out and whooshed as it leapt off the floor.
Both Clayton and Delta tracked it and opened fire as Taylor sank to her knees.
The coil guns erupted with bright white muzzle flashes as hypervelocity rounds leapt out and punched hard into the alien soaring over their heads.
The creature cried out and black blood gushed over them as it careened back down to the deck. It landed with a thud and lay still. Clayton stared at it for a breathless second, and then Taylor flopped onto her face.
“Keera!” he cried, her last name no longer good enough to convey the depth of his concern.
Chapter 12
Clayton landed on his knees beside Taylor and rolled her over. Her helmet was splashed with blood from the inside. Her chest was a blackened scorch mark where the alien had shot her.
Delta crowded in with a gasp and a muttered curse. “No life signs, sir.”
Morgan crouched into view as Clayton unsnapped the seals of Taylor’s helmet with shaking hands. “Is she...”
Clayton removed the helmet to reveal what they all already knew. Blank, staring eyes greeted them. Clayton stood up, casting about with his weapon for targets. His whole body shivered with adrenaline and rage.
“We need to go, sir,” Delta said as he crouched down to pick up Dr. Grouse’s unconscious form. “There could be more of them up there. Or on their way down.”
“I agree,” the ambassador put in.
Clayton warred with himself briefly about what to do with the body. He wanted to take her back with them, but he needed his hands free for his rifle. “Morgan! Pick her up.”
“Me? H-how?”
“Over your shoulders. Hurry up.”
The ambassador bent down low and slung Commander Taylor’s body over his shoulders. He straightened with a grunt of effort and shaking legs.
“Good.” Clayton grabbed his weapon in both hands and turned toward the exit. “Everyone on me.”
They pounded back up the winding trail, headlamps bobbing and flashing over the root-invaded walls. Before they’d even made it halfway up, Morgan collapsed and cried, “Wait! I can’t. I need a break...”
Clayton turned to glare at him. No one else could afford to carry Taylor, and stopping every half a klick for Morgan to recover was just going to get them all killed. “We’ll have to leave her,” he gritted out. “Keep moving!”
A few minutes later, they burst out into the gloomy forest, and Clayton got on the comms to Doctor Stevens as they ran.
“Sir?” he answered.
“Are the HEROs there yet?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve ordered them to fan out and protect the landing site.”
“I need you to send four of them to my location with fresh O2.”
“Copy that. Four, not five? You were unable to recover Dr. Grouse?”
Clayton’s breath caught in his throat. “We did, but Commander Taylor didn’t make it.”
Silence was loud on the other end of the comms. “Understood, sir,” Stevens said in a low voice. “HEROs on their way.”
“Good. Cross out,” Clayton said.
Trees flashed past in a blur, glimmering rainbow bugs danced through the air. They jumped over fallen branches and logs, not daring to slow down.
Ten minutes passed and Clayton’s remaining air became four zeros, flashing red at the bottom of his HUD.
“I’m out!” Delta cried, his breathing quick and shallow. “Have to get this bucket off!”
“One minute left,” the ambassador added.
Clayton stopped and turned to see Delta stumble and stagger before laying Dr. Grouse out on the forest floor and pulling off his helmet. He sucked in deep, desperate breaths of the alien air.
Clayton’s head swam, dark spots crowding in, a warning that he was just seconds away from being forced to do the same. He was just about to contact Stevens and ask where their air was when a wave of four green dots came racing in on Clayton’s HUD map. Cracking branches and thundering feet heralded their approach seconds before Clayton saw his headlamp flashing off their gleaming metal bodies.
Just
in time. The HEROs arrived and handed over the spare O2 packs. They shouldered off their gear bags and then hit the releases for their air packs and let the HEROs replace them. Delta put his helmet back on and went back to breathing sterile air. One of the HEROs bent to one knee and fitted an emergency mask attached to the fourth pack over Dr. Grouse’s mouth and nose. His breath began fogging the mask.
A familiar human voice crackled out of that HERO unit as it shook its metal head. “How long has he been breathing this air?” Clayton blinked in recognition of the voice. It was Doctor Stevens. He was the nearest to the planet and the most qualified so it made sense he would take control of one of the units.
Clayton thought back. “Almost twenty minutes.”
Stevens’ unit nodded while the other three HEROs took up guard positions. “He’ll recover, but we need to get him to sickbay on the Forerunner.”
Clayton nodded. “Let’s move!” He left his empty pack on the forest floor and waited for Doctor Stevens to pick up Dr. Grouse. Delta aborted a half-hearted attempt to pick the man up himself, and then they were off again, flashing past the trees on their way out.
The clearing came, no longer lit with daylight but cloaked in the crowding shadows of night. A sliver of a golden moon beamed down, gilding the shadows around the hull of their shuttle, as well as one other, smaller craft with a mirror-smooth black hull. That was the HAT they’d sent down—the HERO Assault Transport.
The comms crackled with a new voice before they were even halfway from the tree line to the shuttle.
“Captain, Forerunner actual here—” Lieutenant Devon’s voice hitched as she spoke. He’d left her with the conn when he came down with the landing party.
“Forerunner, we’re on our way back to you. Get sickbay ready.” he said.
“Copy. Better make it quick, sir. We have multiple contacts inbound, hot. Range four hundred and sixty million klicks.”
Contacts. That word echoed raggedly through Clayton’s head as he ran for the airlock of the shuttle.
“What do you mean, Contacts?” Delta replied, asking before anyone else could.
“Sensors classify them as metallic, low density. They’ve been accelerating toward us ever since we first spotted them.”
“ETA?” Clayton asked as his boots touched the bottom of the shuttle’s landing ramp. The airlock hissed open to reveal Dr. Reed and Doctor Stevens both standing inside, waving them in. Reed was wearing her helmet again.
A garbled reply came back from Devon as they piled in with the HEROs. Doctor Stevens took Dr. Grouse’s air mask off and checked his vitals, his hands hesitating over the bundle of tubes protruding from his chest.
“What happened to him?” Stevens asked.
Clayton just shook his head, his attention on the conversation with Devon. Stevens went over to an emergency supply locker inside the airlock and withdrew a helmet to replace the one they’d left behind in that alien lab. Stevens slipped it over Dr. Grouse’s head.
“Say again, Forerunner, you’re breaking up,” Clayton said as Delta shut the outer doors and initiated decon.
Red lights flashed and a robotic female voice droned out: “Decontamination commencing...”
“Contacts are twenty-two hours out. Repeat, ETA less than one Earth day.”
Clayton blinked in shock. One day to cover four hundred and sixty million kilometers. “How fast are they going? And why am I only hearing about this now, Lieutenant?”
“Current velocity is just over ten kilometers per second. Acceleration is one hundred and five meters per second squared, and you’re only hearing about this now because sensors didn’t pick anything up until now. Captain, we’re talking about unknown spacecraft on an intercept course.”
Clayton mulled over those details in silence as decon sprays misted his faceplate and ran in glistening rivulets off his suit.
The timing was too much of a coincidence. Those ships had shown up within half an hour of them killing that bird-creature and rescuing Dr. Grouse. Now they’d appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and were accelerating toward the Forerunner at over ten Gs. No living creature that they knew of could survive that kind of acceleration for long.
“Captain, do you read me? I need to know your orders! Should we launch fighters?”
The decontamination sequence ended, and a green light snapped on above the inner doors and they slid open to reveal the interior cabin space and cockpit of the shuttle. “I read you, Forerunner. No launches yet. Set an outbound course—one G of acceleration, and wait for us to get there.”
“Copy. Outbound, where? Earth?”
“No, not Earth. Just get us away from this planet. We’ll set more precise coordinates after I arrive.”
“Understood, sir.”
“Cross out.”
* * *
Lori lay against the outer airlock door between Delta and Dr. Grouse, the outer hull thrumming and roaring around them, the vibrations rattling through Lori’s bones. All three of them were pinned in place by the shuttle’s acceleration as it burned hard for orbit.
They’d all been exposed to the air on Trappist-1E, so they were sharing a rudimentary quarantine away from the others inside the airlock. They were all also wearing their suits—just in case they needed to be isolated from each other, too. Dr. Grouse’s suit wasn’t pressurized, though—thanks to the alien catheter stuck in his chest. His helmet was just window dressing—a way to keep the decon sprays out of his lungs while the airlock had been cycling to let the others in.
Doc Stevens had left that bundle of tubes in Dr. Grouse’s chest despite everyone’s objections, but he claimed that he needed access to proper scanning equipment and a surgical room to be able to remove it without jeopardizing Dr. Grouse’s life. Lori didn’t like it, but she knew he was right. They’d reach the Forerunner soon enough. At that point they’d all have to go through rigorous tests to make sure they hadn’t been infected by alien microorganisms.
The news from Lieutenant Devon and the Forerunner was shocking, but it made perfect sense after Delta had explained to Lori where and how they’d found Dr. Grouse. He’d been the subject of God knows what kinds of tests and experiments, and all of that in such a short span of time. He’d only been missing for a little over an hour. Lori hoped that meant they’d rescued Dr. Grouse in time—but in time for what?
None of them knew what those aliens had been doing to him, and this alien species was clearly both advanced and intelligent, whereas the ten-legged Trappans appeared to be intelligent, but not advanced. It was staggering to think that they’d made contact with two different intelligent species in a matter of hours, and Lori couldn’t help but think that the second species they’d met had something to do with the visions she’d seen from the first species. That orbital bombardment had to have been conducted by a highly advanced species.
Maybe the same one that they’d encountered in that underground lab. Birdmen, Delta had called them. As good a name as any. What Lori wouldn’t have given to have met them first, to have had the chance to establish communications with a Visualizer. Of course, Dr. Grouse had already had that chance, and look where it had gotten him. Something told her that any communications between him and his captor had been wholly one-sided.
The deafening roar of the shuttle’s thrusters quieted and the acceleration eased. They must have reached orbit. The forces pinning them down felt only slightly stronger than regular Earth gravity. Lori let out a shuddering breath, feeling a sharp pain from creaking ribs.
Someone shoved Lori hard in her shoulder. It was Delta. He was pointing to Dr. Grouse. “Look! He’s coming to!”
Lori rolled her head to look. Delta was right. Dr. Grouse’s hand was twitching. Then his arm. Then his whole body began jumping and skipping against the airlock doors like a fish flopping on the ground. “He’s having a seizure!” Lori cried.
She pushed off the airlock, and straddled him, struggling to pull off his helmet. He was foaming at the mouth behind his faceplate. The directi
on of thrust made the airlock doors seem like the deck to her. She turned and glanced back up at the inner doors. From this new perspective the inner doors were like the ceiling. Unreachable except by climbing the ladder rungs in the actual deck and ceiling of the shuttle. Lori yanked off the helmet. Dr. Grouse was thrashing around under her, his blue eyes so wide they were practically leaping out of his head.
Lori heard Delta on the comms. “Doc, we need you in the airlock now!”
“I’m on my way. Hang on!”
Lori struggled to hold Dr. Grouse’s head still, to stop him from bashing his skull repeatedly on the outer doors. His eyes began rolling, his jaws alternately clamping and gaping as he foamed at the mouth. She could feel his breathing getting faster and shallower.
“He can’t breathe!” Lori cried.
And then he stopped thrashing and his chest heaved out one final sigh.
“No!” Lori screamed.
Reaching up blindly she unsnapped the seals of her helmet and threw it off.
“Doctor Reed what are you doing!” Delta said. “He’s contaminated!”
“We’re all contaminated!” she replied as she began administering chest compressions. She paused, hesitating only briefly before pinching his nose shut and giving Dr. Grouse the kiss of life. The inner airlock doors slid open, and Doctor Steven’s voice trickled in. “Almost there. Good job Lori. Keep his blood pumping and air in those lungs.”
She just nodded, sweat-matted brown hair falling in front of her eyes.
What felt like only seconds later, hands were pulling her away, and Doctor Stevens jammed a big needle into Dr. Grouse’s chest beside the trunk of severed tubes still protruding from him.
Dr. Grouse’s body jumped. He sucked in a ragged breath and sat up with a scream. He began pawing wide-eyed at the tubes sticking out of his chest.
“Dr. Grouse! No!” Stevens cried, trying to pull his hands away. “Lori, help me!”
She grabbed one arm and pulled it away while Stevens held the other. Dr. Grouse’s chest was heaving hard, his eyes wide and terrified, his lips blue and skin waxy and ashen. He looked like death, but he was alive.
First Encounter Page 7
