by Ken Bebelle
Mack squeezed the trigger. The plasma blast dissipated harmlessly off the Ringhead’s armored torso. He fired again and his shot went wide by a meter. The rifle was getting heavier and the alien was now only 100 feet away.
Behind him, he heard the drones lift off, props straining with the increased weight of their payloads. See you soon, guys. The backwash of the props almost put him off his feet.
He swayed, legs shaking, and faced down the alien. The rifle weighed a ton so he shot from the hip, rapid fire, carpeting the Ringhead with plasma bolts. Still it advanced, unfazed. Mack unclipped his Vape, popped it and hurled it toward the Ringhead. The alien flicked its arm out negligently and swatted it out of the air. On the far side of the pool the fireball blasted the landscape and washed a wave of water out of the pool. The shock wave staggered Mack to his knees.
Now fifty feet away, the Hunter raised his weapon and fired. A burst of blue energy streaked towards him. Mack stumbled back and the ball of energy impacted his left knee. Cold like he had never felt before stabbed through his leg and spiked into his chest, dropping him to the ground. He was vaguely aware that he was screaming in agony. As he fell back, he felt a sickening, wet pop in his left knee. He looked down to see blinding white bone protruding obscenely from the end of his thigh, his left foot encased in a chunk of misting blue ice. The cold in his chest continued to press him into the ground as the Ringhead reached him and stood above him, planting a foot on his chest.
The Ringhead was ‘talking’ again. The alien looked back to the north and the smoking remains of the hillside, and then back to Mack, still talking incomprehensibly. As it kept talking, it raised its weapon, sighting Mack in the face. Beyond the alien he could see two faint shapes of his drones fading into the distance.
Not a bad way to go, right?
Mack closed his eyes.
And heard a wet smacking sound.
Mack opened his eyes. The morning sun was over the rise now, and rippling light off the pool water blinded him. Shading his eyes, he saw the Ringhead still standing over him, weapon raised. The alien listed and toppled, landing heavily next to him. One arm draped over Mack’s chest, trapping him in a grotesque embrace. The gaping wound in its neck, where its head should have been attached, pulsed and slowly oozed green alien blood onto the pool deck.
A high, laughing voice cried out in the distance. “Yes! Did you see that?! Fuck yeah!”
Mack tried to get up, but he was pinned by the ice and the alien. The voice had come from the north end of town, and he could now hear running footsteps.
The smallest Dub commando he had ever seen came into his view. Her black hair was cut pixie short, and she held in her arms a rifle easily half her short stature. The mirror polished gun matched her gleaming metallic right arm as she held the rifle aloft like a child jumping with a new toy on Christmas Day.
“Railgun, bitches!”
Nine
Meet Ripper
Mack
Mack awoke to the smell of disinfectants and hospital sheets. He slowly pried his eyes open and lay still, scanning the room. Somehow he’d made it to a med bay.
“I can tell you’re awake.”
The voice came from the foot of the bed where the petite woman with the prosthetic arm lounged in a chair, feet propped up on the footboard of his bed. She was languidly polishing the enormous rifle he had seen before, and gently kissing the barrel. He had seen her on base before, parading around with her arm on display. She had quite the reputation as a loose cannon, but with extensive field experience.
“You’re in a weird spot, Tim.” She continued to caress the gun, not even looking at him. “On the one hand, you have totally burned your bridge with Phillips, who you embarrassed in front of some top brass. On the other hand, you single-handedly took out five Ringheads on your own, and managed to extract the bodies of your squadmates. I think five is a record, but I’ll need to check.”
She looked him in the eye, and winked. “My own record is three, so at the very least you’ve given me something to shoot for.”
Mack chuckled, and immediately regretted it. Groaning, he lifted his sheet and took stock. His chest was a mass of bruises. His arms were moving ok, and his hands were just really scraped up. His legs -- “What the hell?!”
“It’s shocking, to wake up and have drastic changes thrust upon you with no warning.” She was looking at her right arm now, flexing the hand back and forth. The playful sparkle in her eyes had dimmed. “They say the new neural implants make them feel like it’s your own, but they’re wrong. It never quite feels like your own.” She looked him in the eye again. “I wake up in the middle of the night, and I can still feel it. I swear I can feel the sheets on my arm. But it’s just my fucked up nerves having a joke at my expense.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, the gleam in her eye had returned. She stood and hefted the rifle.
“This is the brand new heavy infantry railgun. Capable of greasing even the biggest Ringhead with one shot. You may have seen some of my work. This was built in the Dubs Experimental Projects division, which also happened to build my arm.” She rested the butt of the rifle on the ground and raised her right hand. “This is Ripper. This arm has allowed me to stay in the fight after I was booted from the US Army. Even without this work of art though, I have recorded over twenty confirmed Ringhead kills.”
“The humanist movement saw to it that I was kicked out of the military, right when I needed to get back in the fight and exact revenge for what I had lost. So I joined the Union Wolves Experimental Projects,” she clenched the metallic hand into a fist, “and got this beauty.”
“You want to do right by your squadmates? You want to get back on the line and fight the Ringheads? We can replace your leg and have you up and running in a month, and then back on the front line in another month. Do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it, and we’ll get along fine. Plus,” she grinned and hefted the rifle again, “we get all the best toys.”
She extended her right hand. “What do you say, Tim?”
Mack looked down at the unnaturally flat sheet where his left leg should be. He closed his eyes and found that yes, he could almost feel the cool sheets brushing his toes. Concentrating harder, he could also feel them in the room with him - Cam, Jonesy, O’Neill, Cho, Nell, Garcia, and Burke. Pain stabbed his throat, temporarily robbing him of breath. He had a choice, but it was really no choice at all. He opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t force anything past the lump lodged in his throat.
Instead he reached for her. Mack gripped her right hand with his. Her hand was cool and firm. The motors in her fingers whirred quietly as she gripped his hand.
He tried again. His words came out low, but firm now. “Mack. Call me Mack.”
Ten
Imprisoned
Cam awoke to piteous, primal screams of agony and suffering. Only when her throat tore from the force of them did she realize she was the one screaming.
Her world was dark, cold, and filled with pain.
The darkness was so complete she could not tell if her eyes were closed or if she had been blinded. Cam tried to blink her eyes and failed. She gasped but couldn’t get more air. Trying to breathe was like trying to lift a truck off her chest. She thrashed, but her arms and legs were immobilized. She pulled against her restraints and felt resistance all around her, like she was suspended in rubber.
The cold that surrounded her was a bitter, spiteful, living thing. A massive beast of entropy eating her life, leaving only a brittle frozen husk behind.
And none of this compared to the pain. Cold fire danced along her every nerve, bringing intimate pain to every inch of her body. She was at once flayed alive and ground into dust. The pain suffused her, scouring her mind and spirit, rushing her headlong to her death.
Yet the descent into Hell did not end. Long after her voice gave out, her pain remained. Her mind finally did what her body refused to do and shut down, wrapping her
in the warm embrace of oblivion.
Cam woke again, this time to sharp, blue lights prickling her eyes. She squinted, trying to turn away from the glare, and again found herself unable to move. Her eyes adjusted to the light, and a dead weight fell to the bottom of her stomach as she took in her surroundings.
Where am I?
She was trapped, embedded in a cold gel substance, buried up to her neck standing up. She could look down a little, and see the barest outline of her body, blurred by the pale yellow goo she was encased in. The intense burning sensation was gone, replaced by dull, throbbing cold. She could just make out several tubes snaking through the gel, ending in her arms and legs.
The room was small and cramped, but with a high ceiling. The air was acrid, frigid enough to sting as she breathed. A dull throb of engines or machines rumbled from beneath.
Her despair mounted as she scanned the walls for anything to help her escape. Dark blue biomechanical tubes wound their way around the perimeter, in and out of the walls, and up into the darkness of the ceiling. Several tubes snaked from the walls and connected into the gel confining her. Blue lights pulsed down the tubes that led to her. Her breath grew shallow, panting rapidly into the chill air. She had seen this before in photos of their Needle briefing. Keenan had described this exactly after his first mission in Greenland.
Oh, shit.
Her vision tunneled as she jerked her head left to right, heartbeat now pounding in her ears. Clammy sweat broke out across her brow and neck, freezing into pinpricks of ice. Cam struggled to thrash her arms and legs, but the gel held her firm.
The lights along the walls began to pulse with greater intensity. The brightness quickly had Cam squinting her eyes against the glare. Through her narrowed lids she saw the wall in front of her open, sliding upwards. A cloud of white vapor billowed out of the room as a Ringhead stepped inside.
A thin, keening wail came from her throat as she watched the Ringhead approach her. A yawning, black pit of madness opened inside her mind, threatening to suck her down into the void.
The alien stopped directly in front of her, its head level with hers. She jerked her head back futilely, trying to avoid the dead flat gaze of the black pits in the alien’s face. The alien peered at her for a moment, then stepped back to the wall. It grasped one of the numerous tubes running around the room. The tube lit up from within at the alien’s touch, and came away from the wall in its hand. The alien turned back to Cam with the tube, and brought the tube into contact with her gel prison.
Cam’s emotions smoothed over, the rough edges of her panic flattened out as waves of warmth and peace spread through her. Her heart slowed, and her eyes drooped closed.
She felt the alien’s bony hand grip her jaw, lifting her chin up, exposing her neck to the cold drafts coming from the hallway outside. Her head lolled bonelessly in the alien’s grasp. Both hands clutched her head, long fingers wrapping obscenely around the back of her head and neck. The alien brought its thumbs to bear on her eyes.
Muffled under the drugs, her mind gibbered and shook as the alien’s thumbs rested on her eyes.
Not like this. I am not going to die like this.
She tried to scream, but only managed a low moan. The alien caressed her eyelids with unexpected gentleness, and lifted her lids open.
The alien’s face was only inches away. Forced to take in the alien, she could now see the Ringhead before her was slightly different from those she had met in combat. The crown on its head was smaller, with fewer points. A pattern of cyan leopard spots ran the length of its arms and across the chest. The elbows lacked the sinister spikes she had seen used on several occasions, piercing through their body armor.
Her moans died in her throat. The alien stood still, continuing to stare into her eyes. Cam felt her mind being drawn towards the alien, pulling her out of her body. With a wrenching twist, her vision shifted and she was looking down a pair of alien arms that ended at her head. A crushing wave of nausea rolled over her as she saw her head cradled in the alien’s hands and also felt her head through those same hands.
The nausea deepened into vertigo as the alien dropped its head, panning its vision down her body. Her mind wanted her to vomit but it no longer controlled her body.
Through the alien’s eyes she now saw her entire body encased in her prison. The gel shimmered and became clear, giving her a horrifying view of her situation.
Through the gel she saw her chest laid open from neck to waist. Her titanium nanofiber ribcage glinted in the alien light. Her heart and lungs pulsed rhythmically, ignorant of her climbing panic. The conduits that pierced the gel terminated in all her limbs. The throbbing cold beat in time with the alien lights.
Her mind hauled back for a gut-wrenching scream, struggling to break through her agonizing impotence. In her mind she strained and pulled, trying to extricate herself from her confinement. The alien grunted and dropped its head a moment as Cam fought to unpeel her consciousness from the alien’s. The Ringhead opened its eyes and Cam saw her hands twitching ever so slightly in the gel.
From the alien’s mind she felt a wave of emotion--satisfaction?
The alien rose to its full height and Cam again wobbled from vertigo. Her stomach dropped as her mind came unmoored from the alien’s, plummeting back into her body. Her vision snapped back to her own eyes. The room pitched and spun as she dry heaved, spitting up blood and acid. The Ringhead reached up and pulled down a biomechanical armature from the ceiling. The armature ended in a huge needle, pulsing with dull blue light. Cam’s breath quickened into short gasps. She strained to pull away as the needle came down and pierced her neck. Cam’s vision faded to darkness as her mind blinked out again.
She was blue.
Cam stared in horror at the state of her body. She had awoken again, and found herself secured to what appeared to a featureless slab bed. Above her hung a terrifying array of implements and machines on extendible servo arms. Dark blades and needles glistened, poised hungrily above her. Lifting her head she surveyed the ravages of the alien’s work to her body.
A precise scar marched up the center of her torso and between her breasts. Her skin looked like it had been welded together somehow. The tubes were gone, leaving round scars on her arms and legs.
And her skin was blue. All that she could see, was blue. The same pale blue as the alien lights.
Cam tried to lift her hands, but her arms were strapped down at the wrist. She dropped her head back and began to weep quietly, with short hitching gasps. Tears pooled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks and neck, an uncomfortably hot sensation against her skin.
Cam had evaded capture countless times. She’d expected to die in battle--a soldier’s death. Her tears stopped, burned away by the anger at being robbed of the sweet oblivion of death.
What did they do?!
Cam slowed her breathing, counting silently the way she would before rifle practice. The Ringheads had experimented on her and she doubted they were going to stop. She stared at the dark blades overhead, tantalizingly out of reach. I need those.
Her breathing shallowed out as her anxiety started to rise. Cam felt her throat tighten as fear threatened again. Soldiers were trained to give up nothing, to not let the enemy exploit them--to try to get home with their honor and dignity intact. Home. Home meant holiday meals with her folks, eating mom’s red sauce and drinking cold Mexican beer with her dad and brothers. Home meant time with Keenan, stealing hot kisses away from prying Dub eyes.
How could she go home now?
I can’t.
Thoughts of Keenan made her chest ache. She hadn’t seen him much and they’d been left with vid calls and holo visits. The Dubs were stretched thin as it was, most of their teams engaged in the northeast and in northern Europe. Keenan had been stationed in Finland for two years now, supporting NATO troops. She missed with him an intensity that hurt, and one she’d learned to cope with. “Cammie, don’t forget me.” She’d never let anyone else call her that. But Keen
an had always gotten away with so much, his easy charm and genuine affection soothing all affronts.
On his last leave, over a year ago, she’d flown to New York to spend it with him. That time had been very different, the playfulness of their prior romps burned away by urgency and knowledge that time was running out. Keenan had been assigned as head of security for an IWC science team, the Hail Mary project.
While Cam had started to resign herself to a never-ending offensive with these aliens, Keenan had started to become optimistic in his last few videos calls with her. “Cammie, these scientists, they have something. It could end the war.”
Cam had shaken her head. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“I’m serious, baby.”
“Really?”
Keenan had nodded. “The Russians had this thing at their poison lab in Yasenevo.”
“I’m not sure even the Sino-Sovs could take these things down.”
Keenan gestured expansively. “The docs think the Yasenevo Star can shut it all down.”
Cam wanted to believe. But deep down, Cam suspected these hateful creatures would just come back and build another base on another icy moon. They were losing this war of attrition and humans would continue to die.
But she had let Keenan talk. He was the big idea person, not her.
