by M. R. Forbes
Flores was the first one to sit up, rising in the pod and taking a moment to look around. She drew back slightly when she saw Caleb, her face twisting when the saw who he was with.
“Alpha,” she said. “What’s going on?”
“It’s time to get up,” he replied. “Take it easy. I’ll explain when everyone else is ready.”
Flores looked the other direction. Washington and Sho’s pods were open, the Marines awake inside. Sho sat up at the sound of Caleb’s voice, wiping the gel out of her remaining eye so she could see him better.
“Sarge. I was right. No dreams. Nothing. How long has it been?”
“We’ll get to that,” Caleb said.
Washington sat up last. He still looked disoriented. Caleb remembered in training how they said the more muscle mass a Marine had, the longer it took for them to regain consciousness. Washington had enough muscle mass for four of him.
“How are you feeling, Wash?” Sho asked.
Washington shrugged before motioning like he was going to vomit.
“Stay over there then.”
Washington smiled and looked at Caleb. He offered a wave that Caleb returned. Like Flores, his face dropped when he saw Riley Valentine.
“I feel like I just closed my eyes,” Flores said. “It might have been nice if you at least got to have a dream or two maybe. I was hoping for some time with Antonio Banderas.”
“Who?” Sho said.
“He’s an actor. Was an actor. I’m pretty sure he’s dead by now. Sexy, sexy in his younger days.”
“To each their own, I guess,” Sho said. “I like people I can actually meet and talk to. We’re all awake now, Sarge. So…how long?”
“Get dressed first, and then we’ll debrief.”
“It can’t be good if you’re standing hip-to-hip with her.”
“Yen, you’re still a Guardian and a Marine.”
She caught herself, stiffening up. “Yes, Alpha.”
Caleb watched the trio pull themselves from their respective pods and begin to dress. He was as eager as they were to hear what Doctor Valentine had to say for herself. What had happened here, and what could they do to fix it? A little more time to settle in had taken away his earlier panic. He couldn’t do anything about anything that had already occurred. Now he just wanted to get to work.
They lined up in front of him when they finished, standing at attention.
“Guardians reporting for duty, Alpha,” Sho said.
“At ease,” he replied.
They relaxed their posture slightly, waiting impatiently for him to start explaining as if he had much more of a clue than they did.
“Well, Doctor Valentine,” he said, turning to Riley. “We’re all here. What are we looking at?”
Riley drew in a deep breath, preparing to speak. She didn’t even get the first word out before a deep crack echoed across the chamber,
“What the hell was that?” Sho said.
Caleb glanced at Riley, whose face had suddenly paled. The same crash came again, shaking the floor beneath their feet. Caleb turned around, facing the door to the armory.
Something was slamming into it. Something big and heavy.
“It heard us,” Riley said. “It knows we’re here.”
“It?” Flores said. “What it?”
The crash came again. Caleb turned back to the Guardians. “Armor up, Marines. Move!”
They snapped to, joining Caleb as he rushed out into the armory and over to the rack of combat armor. Each suit was custom sized, leaving Washington and Flores to get dressed in their original, battle-scarred SOS. Sho and Caleb were both more average in height and build, and they picked out unused suits and quickly pulled them on.
Whatever was on the other side of the door hit it four more times while they dressed, clearly not ready to give up on getting through the passage.
“I need a SOS,” Riley said, joining them.
“What happened to the Cerebus armor?” Caleb asked.
“Gone,” she replied simply.
“Take that one,” Sho suggested, pointing to Goth’s armor. The dead Marine didn’t need it anymore, and Goth and Riley were close to the same size.
Riley didn’t argue, grabbing the suit from the rack and unclasping the front of it. She turned around and stepped into it, getting the rubbery black material over her legs and arms and pulling it up over her back. She pulled the front together and closed the clasps, the artificial muscles activating as soon as the seals were closed.
Caleb grabbed helmets from a separate rack, intending to hand them out to his Guardians. He changed his approach when the door cracked again, the rending of metal creating a deafening scream in the room.
“What the hell is running around out there?” Sho asked.
Caleb ran over to the rifles. The P-50 plasma rifles were all accounted for, but they didn’t dare fire them in here. They were liable to ignite the ammunition in the room and blow themselves to pieces. He grabbed for the carbines instead, tossing one to each of the Guardians and then one to Riley.
The door shuddered again, collapsing inward with a resounding thud that shook the floor.
Caleb grabbed a carbine while Sho and Flores snapped magazines into their weapons. A fresh crash sounded from the opposite corner of the room, and then he heard heavy footsteps rushing along the perimeter.
“Wash,” he said, grabbing a magazine and tossing it to the private. He took one for himself, sliding it into the gun at the same time their attacker came around the corner.
“What. The. Hell?” Sho said.
The thing standing a dozen meters away from them was a trife, but it was no trife Caleb had ever seen before. It was bigger than the queen, with thicker muscles and heavier, stronger bones. Its head was smaller than the queen’s, but its mouth and teeth appeared to cover more of the overall area, and it opened wide in an ear-splitting scream.
“Fire at will!” Caleb shouted, raising his carbine and letting loose.
The rounds of four Marines poured into the creature, bullets punching into flesh and sending pieces of the demon flying away from it. The trife screamed and backed away, vanishing around the corner. Caleb could hear its feet moving from them and then down one of the adjacent aisles.
He turned to Riley. “You didn’t shoot.”
“You’re wasting your ammunition, Alpha,” she replied. “Don’t you think we tried to shoot it?”
“What do you mean? It’s wounded.”
“Not exactly.”
Caleb didn’t have a chance to ask her what she meant. The trife appeared in the center aisle of the room, rushing toward them a second time, its shoulders shoving the heavy shelves of equipment aside.
Was it his imagination, or had all of the creature’s wounds already healed?
He raised his carbine and started shooting again, along with the rest of the Guardians. Their rounds peppered the creature, but this time it didn’t slow. It rose high over Caleb, right in front of him, intelligent eyes looking down as it swept its claws across his path.
He reached up, catching the limb with his artificial hand, the strength of the synthetic muscles enough to stop the blow. He twisted, yanking the trife toward him and firing point blank into its chest.
The bullets went through the demon and out the other side. It screamed again and collapsed.
Caleb let go of the arm, breathing hard. He glanced over at Riley. “Not that hard.”
“We can’t stay here,” she said. “It’ll heal.”
“What?”
“We have to go, Sergeant. Now!”
“Guardians, grab as much gear as you can. P-50s and MK-12s, and all the ammo you can carry. Make it fast.”
The Marines responded to the order, grabbing the rifles and the ammunition from the nearby shelves. Caleb stood over the fallen trife. He put the carbine against its head and pulled the trigger, spreading its brain across the metal floor.
“What about now?” he asked.
“That’ll
slow it down a bit more,” Riley replied.
“Are you kidding? What is this thing?”
“I told you, it’s a long story.”
“Tell me it’s the only one on the ship.” Riley bit her lip. Caleb drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”
“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” Riley said. “We had… complications, after you went into hibernation.”
“Why didn’t you wake us up earlier?”
“It was too late. I barely made it to the pod alive. When things went sideways, they did it at light speed.”
“That thing got through the armory blast door. How do we know it didn’t get into Metro?”
“It shouldn’t have, but I can’t tell you for sure that it didn’t. My last contact with Governor Lyle ended with them reinforcing all of the hatches and welding them closed. The city was on total lockdown.”
“That was over two hundred years ago, Doctor.”
“Don’t you think I’m aware of that? Do you think any of this is easy for me?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re going to find out anyway,” she said. “What happened here was my fault. I caused it.”
Caleb’s jaw clenched along with his gut. “What?” he hissed.
She didn’t have time to answer.
Another harsh scream sounded nearby.
Chapter 4
“How many of them are there?” Sho asked. She had snapped a P-50 to the back of her armor and had an MK-12 in her hands. A long knife sat against her leg, right below a standard-issue pistol.
“There were eight of them when I went into hibernation,” Riley said. “The good news is they can’t reproduce.”
“What’s the bad news?” Flores asked.
Caleb noticed the trife at his feet begin twitching. He fired another round into its chest, just in case. “That’s the bad news.”
“We were hoping time would kill them off,” Riley said. “It hasn’t.”
“Bullets can’t kill them, and you thought time would?” Sho said.
“It was the only option we had left. Can we talk about this later?”
Caleb was still reeling from her statement of guilt. How had she caused this? She was a geneticist. Had she created a new kind of trife?
Why in hell would she do that?
“Guardians, pair up and take the flanks,” Caleb said. “Valentine, go with Washington.”
Riley didn’t argue, following the big Marine along the left side of the back wall, while Flores and Sho took the right. Caleb dropped the carbine, replacing it with an MK-12 and snapping a P-50 to his back. He grabbed an extra cell for the plasma and a pair of magazines for the rifle, dropping them into the hardened carry packs on the armor.
A second huge trife appeared in the armory doorway, partially obscured by the shelves between it and Caleb. He wanted it to keep its attention on him, so he fired a round into its shoulder.
It hissed and shifted, tracking the source of the noise and pain. Caleb shot it again, just to make sure it knew who had done it.
The monster screamed and rushed him, bashing the shelving aside in its charge. Caleb didn’t need to tell the other Guardians to hit it from the sides. Rounds began punching into both its arms, spitting back flesh and blood. It didn’t matter. Nothing was going to slow it down.
Caleb watched it approaching. He only had a few seconds to spare. He crouched low, ready to move in either direction.
“Come on, you ugly bastard,” he hissed.
The trife screamed and rose up, prepared to drive both sets of claws down on Caleb’s smaller form. Caleb dove forward, sneaking through its legs, rolling on his shoulder and turning to its back. He opened fire, digging a dozen slugs around its spine as it rotated its torso and backhanded him.
The blow knocked him backward, sending him sprawling. The trife screamed again, the sound painful in Caleb’s ears. He rolled over, pushing himself to his feet. The Guardians moved in around him, washing the creature in rifle fire.
“Back up!” Caleb shouted. “Out of the armory!”
The Guardians did as he said, keeping the pressure on the trife as they retreated. They had delivered enough damage to slow it down, leaving it bleeding profusely from countless wounds. It stumbled to its knees, reaching up and covering its head with its claws to protect it.
Caleb retreated with the Guardians, nearly tripping over the destroyed hatch to the room as he did. He hopped onto it, backing up until he was out in the corridor, the others standing nearby, ready to continue their assault on the trife.
“Run!” Caleb said, shifting his finger to the MK-12’s secondary trigger.
“Alpha, you’ll blow the entire armory,” Riley said.
“Headshots don’t kill these things. Do you have a better idea?”
Caleb didn’t want to blow the armory. He had no idea how large a detonation he would create, or what kind of damage he would do. The Marine module was on Deck Twenty-nine, right above the hangar. The Marine module was designed to be isolated from critical systems, the hangar was nearly sixty feet high, and the hull was thick. The ship should be able to absorb the blow.
He hoped.
Riley responded by breaking toward the CIC, along with the rest of the Guardians.
Caleb counted to three, giving them a head start, holding off as long as he dared. The trife was already healing, rising on repaired legs to resume the chase. There was no more time.
“Regenerate from this,” he said, squeezing the trigger.
The small silver explosive thunked out of the larger barrel, arcing into the trife’s chest and bouncing onto the floor.
Caleb didn’t see what happened next. He pivoted to the right, sprinting away from the armory as fast as his augmented legs could carry him. The other Guardians were up ahead, already through the door and out into the command center. They had to get further, at least through the module’s blast door and into the ship’s passageway.
He glanced over his shoulder when he heard the trife’s scream. The demon slammed into the wall across from the armory, scrambling to change direction and catch up to him.
He heard the crack, and then the trife was bathed in fire and shrapnel, the detonation from the explosive tearing it apart. It bounced off the wall and flopped to the floor, even as the fire redirected, spreading down the corridor in Caleb’s direction.
He raced through the door to the CIC, vaulting the command station as the first of the secondary explosions rocked the armory, causing the entire area to shudder in response. The backwash caught up to him as he neared the exit, the force of the explosion lifting him and throwing him through. He managed to turn his body, taking the brunt of the impact with the opposite wall on his artificial shoulder, hitting it hard enough to dent the metal.
Sho was waiting near the door, and she slapped the control panel the moment he was through, the blast door sliding closed behind him and choking off the rest of the explosion.
Caleb fell to his knees, breathing hard. Deck Twenty-nine was shaking, the ordnance in the armory still going off. The rest of their equipment was destroyed. The Module was destroyed. The stasis chambers and pods were destroyed.
At least the two mutant xenotrife had been destroyed with it.
“Alpha,” Riley said. “We can’t stay here. This chaos is going to bring more.”
“More?” Sho said.
“I’m fairly confident those two are dead. There are six others.”
“We just lost our armory. How the hell are we going to kill them? Flip them the bird?”
“Enough, Private!” Caleb snapped, getting to his feet. “We need somewhere to hole up and figure all of this out. Doctor, what do you suggest?”
She hesitated a moment before pointing down the corridor, toward the central lifts. “Follow me.”
Chapter 5
“This is apropos, considering this entire trip has gone to shit,” Sho said, hopping onto the counter in one of the crew heads on Deck Nine. The b
athroom was spotless despite the passage of time, the lack of people to use it and the efficiency of the ship’s filtration systems keeping it free of dust and debris.
“I wish I could get into laughing right now,” Flores replied, leaning against the counter beside her. “Alpha, I’m about this close to having a nervous breakdown.” She spread her thumb and forefinger less than an inch apart.
Washington pointed at Doctor Valentine and then shrugged, turning his hands over, palms up.
“I think we all want the same thing,” Caleb said. “Hopefully we can get through a debriefing without any more interruptions. Before Doctor Valentine takes over, let me answer the question I know is at the front of your minds. How long have we been sleeping?” He paused for a second, giving them a chance to prepare. “Two hundred thirty-six years.”
Washington tried to whistle. It came out as a burst of air.
“Damn, that’s a long time,” Sho said.
“It felt like ten seconds,” Flores said. “I’m not sure I’m happy to be awake. Did any of you ever see that movie Aliens? This is like that, but worse.”
“At least those aliens stayed dead,” Sho said. “I never thought I’d be living the real thing.”
They fell silent, looking at Caleb expectantly. They were good Marines, ready to accept the facts and eager to do their duty.
“Doctor Valentine, I’d love it if you could give us some idea what led to this,” Caleb said.
Riley nodded. “Please, call me Riley. Although, you’ll probably have a worse name for me once I’m finished with this story.”
“Which might also be apropos to our location,” Sho said.
Riley breathed deep and blew out. Her expression was contrite. It was a big change from how she had approached things before they had entered hibernation.
“I know you already guessed some of the truth behind my team and me. Command called us the Reapers. We were Space Force Special Operations, a group of elite former Marines culled from the rest of the armed services. Like I told Caleb, I was originally a member of MARSOC, first as a Marine Raider, and then in operations. I already had my doctorate by then. After school I became a Marine, and then an officer.”
