Dead Worlds (Necrospace Book 2)

by Sean Michael Argo

  He knew there had to be children somewhere in the settlement, silently thankful that he had encountered none and been forced to make the decision between following orders or disobeying. The burning buildings above were beginning to collapse. Soon all that would be left of the settlement would be the metal scaffolding and support beams. In a way the fire was returning the chamber to its original specifications, removing the makeshift Reeker settlement as if it was a parasite that needed to be burned away from the flesh to which it clung.

  The roar of the flames had drowned out most of the fighting, though Samuel and his troopers were close enough to the firefight raging ahead of them that they could hear the telltale signatures of Reaper combat rifles.

  At a signal from Samuel the troopers followed him through the smoke and netting until they came upon the Basin gate. It was far less impressive in size than Samuel had expected, though what it lacked in size it made up for in sheer macabre decoration. The gates were festooned with netting that was littered with the bones of dozens of human beings and other creatures; it resembled a great shrine of sorts.

  It was the largest sewage hatch Samuel had ever seen, and having been deployed in downspire for months now, that was saying something. It sported a sturdy metal frame and a huge crank wheel that opened or closed it. In front of the gate was a series of concrete flood breakers jutting up from a shallow spillway, indicating that the tunnel itself was actually a drainage pipe that was used to relieve water pressure in case the Basin ever flooded. There was a small platform just above the gate that had been reinforced with pieces of sheet metal, wood, and wire fencing to create a machine gun nest of sorts. The broken bodies of several Reekers lay beneath the platform, with one even hanging off of the barbed edges of the platform itself.

  Boss Ulanti and the remnants of her squad stood behind the modest protection of the platform. They were exchanging salvos with a small, but stubborn group of Reekers who seemed oblivious to the fact that their settlement was burning down and the battle was all but lost.

  The Reekers were using the flood breakers as cover, and Samuel knew that if this standoff went on much longer it was likely that the Reapers would be overrun. Even as he watched, a Reeker broke from cover and rushed the platform. Before he was gunned down he managed to hurl a homemade explosive that detonated in mid-air and showered the Reapers with a cloud of shrapnel.

  The marine standing closest to the blast was pulped by the force of the explosion, pierced by dozens of nails, ball bearings, and scraps of metal that had been packed into the explosive.

  Once more Samuel felt a tinge of guilt and regret that he hadn't learned the man's name, even though he had been with Tango Platoon ever since the Baen 6 Reaper corps had received reinforcements following the battle on Tetra Prime.

  Samuel and his troopers joined the fight and began shooting at the Reekers, though with limited success, as the flood breakers were semi-circular and prevented Samuel from flanking the clansmen.

  Samuel bracketed one shooter's position and managed to flush him from cover so that Boss Ulanti could drill him with several short bursts of fire, but a concentrated counter-volley from the Reekers slew two of Samuel's cor-sec troopers and pushed Samuel back into cover. The marine's combat rifle had taken several hits, and Samuel was forced to draw his sidearm.

  Suddenly Vol's booming voice could be heard below, shouting an indecipherable ganger war cry and Samuel risked a glance at the spillway.

  The Rotted Kings ganger had managed to sneak up behind the Reeker position while the clansmen were focused on fighting Grotto forces on two fronts. The ganger wielded his heavy pistol like a short sword, using the bayonet blade to pierce and cleave even as he fired it point blank into the enemy.

  Samuel watched with awe as he witnessed what ganger fighting really looked like. He had been underwater and engaged with the tentacled creature the last time Vol had been on the frontlines.

  The ganger was an expert scout. During the weeks in which the Grotto forces had been fighting the guerilla war against the Haggard Sons, he was typically just another shooter during the small skirmishes. This, however, was pitched battle, and just like Patrick had said, Vol was something to behold. He fought in a martial style that looked as if it had evolved specifically for downspire close quarters combat.

  The ganger held his pistol in one hand and a knife with spiked knuckles in the other, a living whirlwind of carnage as he carved his way through the Reekers. His wheel gun only carried eight big bore rounds, which he fired only when he wasn't able to engage the enemy at close range. To their credit, the Reekers did not back down. They drew their own knives and axes as they leapt into melee combat against the frenzied ganger.

  Samuel was beginning to understand why they were called the Rotted Kings, as the single ganger wiped out all nine remaining Reekers in a matter of moments. Once the last Reeker fell Vol swiftly decapitated his enemy and held the head up by the matted air, blood streaking down his arm.

  "Who runs downspire?" roared Vol, leaping on top of one of the flood breakers. He spread his arms wide in exaltation and challenge before hurling the head against the Basin gate so hard that it splattered across the metal frame. "One for the Stalker in the Dark! The Kings are coming!"

  The Reaper engineers were able to lower a gurney to hoist Spencer back up the entry point they'd drilled, and soon the marine was being transported upspire for advanced medical treatment. It was clear that he would be in recovery for a long time, though alive was alive as far as Boss Marsters and the rest of Tango Platoon were concerned.

  The settlement took nearly twelve hours to burn completely to the waterline. The Reapers worked tirelessly through the smoke and flames to prepare themselves for the last push through Basin Gate. Samuel was feeling much better after four hours of sleep, a fresh brace of magazines, and a new combat rifle, though none of that could help him shake the growing sense of dread and foreboding he felt every time his eyes strayed to the gate.

  Boss Marsters had ordered the bone shrines pulled down and thrown into the water to avoid overly disturbing the new batch of cor-sec troopers who had come to replace the dozens who had died in the fight for Reekertown, though everyone had the memory of what it looked like burned into their minds.

  As the new force mustered in front of the gate, Samuel stood before it and took a deep breath, doing his best to ignore the stench of the waterline. Vol walked up next to him and followed the marine's gaze. Then the ganger looked at Samuel and held his forearm out, waiting for the marine to return the gesture by knocking his own forearm against the ganger's, which Samuel did, a warrior's greeting in downspire culture that Samuel and Harold had learned after a night out drinking with Vol and his Rotted Kings brothers.

  "We be legends now, chummer," said Vol with evident satisfaction. He nodded at Samuel, then turned back to the gate while Boss Marsters and Ben struggled with the rusty crank wheel. The keening sound of the metal grinding on metal filled the chamber.

  BASIN DEEP

  Vol called them Stalkers.

  When the first of them stepped into a pool of light cast by one of the work lamps, Samuel understood why.

  The creature before him was humanoid, and perhaps, at some early point in its evolutionary journey, it had been a human being. Elongated limbs made it adept at climbing, a skill it displayed by scuttling across the pipelines overhead like some four-legged spider, dropping down to face the Reapers and cor-sec troopers head on.

  The thing’s flesh was a pale white and even though its eyes were mostly hidden beneath large, handcrafted goggles, the marine could tell that the pupils were huge, which would be perfect for life in the quarter-light of deepspire. Leather breeches and patchwork armor made of what looked to be hides, scrap metal, and wire twine covered its emaciated body.

  Samuel couldn’t tell which was more intimidating, the overwhelming stench of the stalker or the bizarre looking gun clenched in its bony fists.

  Despite all that they had been through, the Reapers
and cor-sec troopers both were nevertheless stunned by its appearance. That pause gave the creature the opportunity it needed to raise the strange gun and fire. A ball of bright orange slime exploded from the muzzle of the weapon and streaked towards the Grotto soldiers, leaving wispy trails of orange gas in its wake.

  Samuel snapped out of his shock enough to hit the deck and roll to his right, a move that kept him out of the projectile’s path, but dumped him into one of the sluice pits surrounding the drainage pylon. The marine shouted as he plunged into the foul, knee-deep liquid, scrambling to rise into a firing position. He locked onto his target just as it fired a second round at the Grotto soldiers. The marine began drilling it with disciplined shot groupings. The first three rounds knocked the creature back against the far wall with smoking holes in its chest, the next three shredded its abdomen, and then the final three caught it in the head and neck as the creature bent over in pain before collapsing in a heap.

  All around him Samuel could hear the throaty cough of the strange slime guns, the familiar staccato chatter of Grotto small arms fire, and the sounds of dying soldiers. The marine hoisted himself back onto the deck to join Bianca in laying down suppressing fire while Holland did his best to help the wounded. Samuel fired several rounds at another of the scuttling Stalkers as it tried to advance over the edges of the sluice pits, though in the quarter-light he wasn’t sure if he’d managed to score a kill.

  “Dammit, this stuff is corrosive!” cursed Holland as he examined a dead cor-sec trooper whose body was already being eaten away, then rushed to the next trooper only to find her dead as well. “Okay, people, whatever it is, if it gets on you it’ll eat a hole straight through, so take care how you position your body if you get splashed!”

  Samuel could see by the corroded rents in the decking and the bodies of three cor-sec troopers that whatever these Stalkers were shooting was absolutely fatal if they even managed a partial hit.

  The cough of the guns was unmistakable and from the sound of it, there were a dozen or more shooters out there in the quarter-light. The marine spent his last few rounds pushing another Stalker back into the darkness in a cloud of blood before he dared survey the unfolding battle at large.

  The vast drainage pylon chamber was awash in the dull caustic glow of the slime guns as the projectiles streaked through the fetid air, some to strike flesh and armor while others splattered against walls and plating. The muzzle flares of the Reapers and cor-sec troopers added their sharp illumination to the tableau before him, and Samuel could not help but briefly be in awe of it. It reminded him of the Founding ceremony, when he first shipped out as a Reaper.

  Typically Grotto culture was not one of mirth or celebration, though society did take a fierce, even if dour, pride in the launching of a new venture. The fireworks of his departure had looked much like this as they exploded over the smog-choked skyline of the city while his transport ship had risen into high orbit to rendezvous with the tug itself.

  “Squad Ulanti sending! We need back up on Pylon 4!” screeched the static-filled voice of Boss Ulanti.

  “Welding team took eighty percent casualties. Without another welder I need six minutes to get this beam cut. Get me welders or shooters ASAFP!”

  Six minutes, thought Samuel to himself as he and the rest of the Grotto soldiers retreated to the next set of barricades, this fight was going to be over long before that if the stalkers continued to press them this hard. The slime guns were chewing through the portable flak boards at a rate of a plate for every two impacts, and after the hard march through downspire, Tango Platoon didn’t have very many left as it was.

  Command kept reinforcing their company with fresh cor-sec recruits from the surface, each batch more ill-equipped and poorly trained than the one before it.

  Virginia had begun to openly suspect that Grotto was intentionally hurling bodies into the downspire meat grinder as a way of avoiding the cost of caring for the tremendous refugee population. As for marine reinforcements, all of the two dozen Reaper platoons aboard the Baen 6 tug were deployed in quadrants all across downspire.

  It was likely, thought Samuel, as he continued to fire, that each Reaper element was facing its own sort of bloody subterranean ordeal. These last months had been hard on everyone. However, as dangerous as the rest of the Reaper missions no doubt were, nothing was a harder target than the Basin. Naturally Tango Platoon was right in the thick of it.

  Everyone knew that Pylon 4 was going to be the beast, as it was the primary support for the downspire quadrant above, which supported the massive Forge Prime complex upspire. Boss Ulanti had started the demolition prep with ten welders from the Reaper support crew, who worked the salvage operations with the actual soldiers once the combat danger was neutralized. None of the support crew had the kind of training the Reapers did, but they were numerous and a lot of hands could get a lot done, as Samuel had learned during the scrapping of the space hulk.

  “Squad Marsters sending. Launching counter-assault on suspected point of entry for Stalker forces,” came the crisp no-nonsense voice of Boss Wynn Marsters, “Sek volunteered and is en route alone from Pylon 2, needs Squad Aiken shooters if available. No additional resources at this time.”

  As the radio buzzed with chatter, Squad Aiken and the cor-sec troopers dug in behind the corroded remnants of their flak boards. Ben Takeda took point and opened up with his heavy machine gun while the rest took firing positions around the pylon, literally placing their bodies between the busy welding crew and the threatening darkness. Samuel knew it would buy them some time, and hopefully whatever that time was, would be enough for the welder crews to cut all four of the pylons. Once they were cut the sheer pressure of the tonnage being applied to them by the spire levels above would hold them in place, but they would be permanently severed.

  After the cuts were complete the Reapers would affix several bombs, each contained in an armored case to prevent tampering from any possible enemies or curious scavengers. Once they were safely back in upspire the demolition crews would detonate and all of the levels would enter a controlled collapse as Forge Prime, now gutted of all valuables beyond mere scrap metal, plummeted into deepspire.

  “Boss!” said Samuel as he crouched down next to Aiken as the squad leader re-loaded his combat rifle, “I’ll lead a few of the cor-sec troopers to Pylon 4 if you can spare us.”

  “Hyst, I need everybody here if we’re going to hold the ground long enough to get the pylon cut and have enough bodies and bullets to push our way out of this chamber,” snapped Boss Aiken as he racked the slide on his rifle and pointed to his dwindling pouch of magazines.

  “Boss, if we don’t get all the pylons cut then demolition won’t be able to get a clean blast, the collateral damage might end up squeezing the margins too hard,” observed Patrick as he fired the last round of his magazine and worked quickly to swap it out for one of his few remaining fresh ones, “Besides, we don’t have enough ammo to execute a proper retreat as it is.”

  “I’m not accustomed to grunts giving bosses tactical advice,” growled Aiken as he returned to his position and fired several rounds at the enemy as if to emphasize his displeasure, “But your logic is sound. We’re down to twenty percent ammunition reserves from the look of everyone, and if we find that we’ve been followed and some enemy has set up a hard point back the way we came then we would have to launch an assault just to retreat.”

  “Kade, get me three cor-sec troopers from the firing line, preferably ones who look like they won’t piss themselves when Prybar does something reckless and heroic,” ordered Boss Aiken as he looked at Samuel and gave him a begrudging nod of respect. “See that you don’t die needlessly, that’s bad for business.”

  “Roger that, Boss,” Samuel replied as three cor-sec troopers mustered at the base of the pylon, each carrying well-used combat shotguns and a sling of shells over their shoulders that had far more empty slots than full ones.

  “You three on me, we’re heading across the pits to bai
l out Pylon 4.”

  Samuel and his makeshift squad turned and set off into the quarter-light. He had no clue how he was supposed to find Jada Sek in the middle of all this chaos, but he figured that as long as they kept heading for Pylon 4 they were bound to cross paths.

  After a few minutes of leaping in and out of the sluice pits, Samuel could have sworn he heard the sounds of things splashing out there in the murky quarter-light that hadn’t been there moments before. His instincts screamed at him that this was a threat, and he turned to see that the cor-sec troopers clearly felt the same, as they all had their guns up and ears cocked. The sounds stopped and Samuel reluctantly signaled for them to move onwards, on the double.

  When the makeshift squad seemed to be about halfway to the pylon, one of the sluice pits off to their right exploded with activity as something in the pit began thrashing and splashing. Another pit to the left erupted with similar disruption and from it emerged a long white creature that to Samuel’s mind looked to be the exact match for a Baen bone worm; only this one was nearly twelve feet in length.

  The creature’s head tapered to an armored point with no less than three gaping mouths on the underside of the armored head. The three cor-sec troopers screamed and began unloading their shotguns at the creature, their steel shot ripping chucks out of the bone worm’s body and sending it writhing and wailing as it spurted blood and viscera in all directions.

  Samuel looked away from the carnage only to see a second one slide out of the pit on the right and make a dive at one of the cor-sec troopers. The marine shouted a warning and raised his rifle just as the creatures pointed head slammed into the man’s back so hard that the armored point punched out of the other side of the trooper’s ribcage. The point, apparently its mouth, peeled back in barbed sections, which it used to haul the trooper’s body off the ground and drag it back to the waters of the pit.