Dustin’s jaw trembled, and his hands began to shake as his body flooded with adrenaline.
“One of the slavers is heading right at you. Do not move a muscle. I’m going to try and take it out,” Waren said.
“Hit it in the neck,” Dustin whispered. “Get it away from us first.”
“I know how to kill them, Dusty. There’s no time to lure it away. I think it saw you. Sit still and be quiet.”
Don’t fucking miss.
The holographic text on Dustin’s faceplate notified him that Waren’s rifle fired.
Then, a shrill bellow shook him, even inside the armor. A direct his. He held still as the ground pounded and his head bounced off the earth. Waren fired once more at the creature he couldn’t see, then a third time.
Something struck the side of his head with the force of a pry bar, rolling him over onto his back. His field of vision was blacked out by the massive brown and red body of the slaver Waren had killed, as its twitching body collapsed against him.
“Dustin get out from under that thing. Both of you. Move, now!” Waren barked.
Ping-Pong scrambled to his feet and came to Dustin’s aid, tossing his rifle over his shoulder to free up both hands. Dustin clasped Steve’s hand and tugged hard as he kicked against the mammoth weight of the dying monster.
Its head turned, and it spewedthe blue evil, which splashed off of Dustin’s chest and neck. The substance clung to the black armor with a viscous tenacity, running down in streams as he and Steve fought to escape. The monster reached out with its pincer and slashed at them , missing Dustin’s throat by the width of a finger. It swung backwards just as wildly, nearly cleaving off his head.
Fuck you. Dustin let go of Steve’s hand and punched the beast in the side of the head with all the power he could muster. He pulled a knife and plunged it into the side of the creature’s head, and watched as the blackness in the thing’s eyes faded to a darker, emptier place. The erratic, dying twitches of the monster stopped, and the thing went still.
“Move. Move fast. The little ones are coming to investigate,” Waren said.
Dustin and Steve scrambled across the devastated battlefield and headed toward the firing position they had dug the day Stahl fell. They dove into the dirt and went still as death. A moment later, a swarm of skitterers trampled by close enough to grasp.
Dustin carefully opened his eyes.
He faced the exact spot Lionel Hauptman died. Lionel’s legs and hips lay at the edge of the shallow grave, covered in a dusting of dirt and spent shell casings. His crushed legs were still in their black armor. His rotten flesh poked out above the beltline, showing the effects from nearly two weeks of rotting in the sun and rain.
Dustin relived the horror of his friend being eaten alive and then being turned into a monster.
“Vindicator One, stop moving. You’re twitching like a whore in church,” Ping-Pong said.
“Right, sorry. I just . . . What’s left of Lionel is still here. I didn’t expect to see him like this. I saw it all . . . like . . . ”
“Dustin. It’s cool,” Steve said. “Just be still. We’ll grab what’s good off his armor and be out of this ditch in a minute. Say a prayer or something.”
“You only pray over the dead, right? We don’t know if Lionel is dead,” Dustin said, looking at the bent, torn remnant of Lionel’s spinal cord projecting out of his abandoned lower half.
“Yeah I remember. He climbed over my chest, trailing his guts behind him if you recall. Dead or alive if anyone needs a fucking prayer it’s him.”
“Amen,” Waren said from afar. “It’s safe. The little ones are eating the big one, and there’s nothing between you and the command tent or the barracks. Move quick and try not to look like food.”
“Roger. Steve, grab what you can. Then we look for communications gear and food. We’re Oscar Mike in sixty seconds.”
“Roger that,” Steve said.
Dustin got up and moved toward Lionel’s remains. The men got to work.
Neither of them risked succumbing to the urge to watch the piranhas swarm over the larger body of their dead master.
Though they wanted to.
Chapter Forty-One
The ruins of Stahl, planet of Selva
13 October 163 GA
When a boxer is taught to fight one of the first lessons is to “stick and move.”
Throw an accurate punch to score and then get out of the reach of your opponent. Don’t attempt the knock-out punch, just pick away and build an overwhelming number of winning moments that lead–in the end–to victory.
First Expeditionary Marines were trained to be masters of the stick-and-move. To be more mobile than their enemies, more accurate, and more elusive. By the time an enemy figured out where the fire came from, the elite force would be long gone, leaving nothing but ghosts roaming the destruction they’d left in their wake. Of course the FEM had never seen proper combat since Ghara’s moons had been settled, but they trained and trained, and they were ready. More ready than any other warriors in the colonies.
Dustin and Steve called on every bit of their training as they ducked, dipped, crawled and scrambled from cover to cover. Less “stick and move,” perhaps, and more “move and hide and pray.”
“They can’t see us in the dark,” Steve said. “Balashov was right. We owe that motherfucker a beer.”
“Vodka. He’s still pretending he’s Russian. He’ll want vodka,” Dustin said as he investigated an expanse of space between the science habitat and the command tent that had served as the nerve center for the base.
“Anything inside the tent?” Steve asked.
“Waren, you got anything from your vantage point?” Dustin asked.
“Negative,” Waren replied. “There’s a sleeping rock bug about ten meters beyond, and a few clusters of the smaller bugs moving. I think you’re okay. Can’t speak to what’s inside the command center. Scope can’t penetrate, even with thermals.”
“OK. We go in. Grenade at the ready, and if there’s a nest in there, we pull pins and get the fuck out.”
Ping-Pong readied a fragmentation grenade and nodded.
“Cool. Let’s move.”
The two marines ran, keeping their heads down, then stopped at a crouch beside the opening of the tent. When Dustin was sure nothing saw them, he moved in, holding his rifle out at ground level, and streaming the video feed from his scope to his faceplate.
Steve covered him from the entrance as he panned his rifle left to right, scanning over the carts of equipment, dead bodies, powered-down control panels and screens. Against the far wall, Dustin could see a nest filled with the half-mutated bodies of numerous marines. The miasma of normal and horror spilled together like blood and milk and the vision made Dustin’s insides churn.
“Piles of bodies in the corner. Can’t tell if they’re dead. Switching to thermal on the rifle,” he said.
A twitch command of the eye later, the inside view of the tent swung into the thermal spectrum, creating light where there was none.
The pile of bodies glowed with an amber halo surrounding a core of oranges and reds. The pile of festering organic matter lived, but slumbered. He broadcast the image to Steve and Waren.
“How many inside that pig pile?” Ping-Pong asked.
“No way to tell,” Dustin said. “I can see . . . ten legs, but they’re not all human, and there’s no guarantee they belong to only five people. Shit I think I see seven left feet. Helluva dance party.”
“Call it off?” Waren asked.
“Nah,” Dustin said. “I can see the laser communication units on the table nearest to us. I’ll go in, grab two units, and we get out. Ping-Pong, if you cover me from the entrance with that grenade at the ready, I think we’re okay.”
“If it goes south, we just hoof it to the tree?”
“I’ll toss a laser unit at the science habitat as we go, but yeah, it’ll be a footrace. Waren, you think you can cover us if that happens?” Dustin ask
ed.
“I won’t be able to kill much, but I’ll give you a fighting chance. At least until you get to the tree line. Once you’re under the canopy I won’t have line of sight to be effective. You’ll be on your own.”
“Right. Steve you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be, Vindicator,” Ping-Pong said, using Dustin’s new call sign.
Dustin adjusted his viewfinder to a lower light setting. The mask amplified and illuminated the interior of the tent in black and white.
“Minimal voice comms once I go inside. On three.”
Dustin crept around the flap of the tent, and into the colorless, shadowy den of the half-dead.
“I see them. Grabbing two units,” he said using as little air as he could. His screen flashed two tiny green dots flashed beside Waren’s and Steve’s names in the corner of his view. They had heard, and acknowledged. He slowly lowered his rifle and slid it to his hip, freeing up his hands.
Something moved in the pile of mutated flesh. Dustin froze. Deep behind the pile of sleeping evil he watched as a human arm that terminated in a thumb, two fingers and the beginning of a single massive pincer moved from left to right until it came to rest on the back of another monster. He heard the faint sound of breathing, then the cluster of alien life settled back into stillness. A pool of fluids spread out, like an oil slick on the ground.
Dustin felt a bead of sweat run down his temple, then his cheek. He held his breath, counted to thirty, then turned back and slipped his hands into the handles atop the cases they needed.
With one exacting step after another, Dustin moved sideways, silently, his attention focused on the morbid knot of muscles, fat, shell and fang that breathed in the corner.
Then, something bumped his foot where nothing should have been.
The foot wore the same armor he did, but in a much larger size, dwarfing his foot and leg. Dustin’s eyes slid upwards, following the obsidian black armor up the shin, then the thigh and past the stomach and breastplate until they came to a rest on the brown eyes of Theo Wendell.
In the rush to secure the line, the lieutenant had gone to war during the siege with no helmet, and he’d paid a terrible price. The juggernaut lieutenant’s face had changed. His brow had grown out and hardened, matched by thick ridges of bone and shell protruding from his cheeks and along his jaw line, jutting out thick whiskers that looked like medieval spikes. Multiple rows of red and brown shell jabbed through the thin flesh on the top of his head, creating an alien and horrible crown.
Of it all, his bloody eyes were the worst. They still had a glimmer of recognition in them, and they were locked onto Dustin’s face, though he knew Theo couldn’t see his eyes behind the black glass.
“Vindicator One?” Waren asked. “I am seeing two forms inside that tent and I know one is you. Who is the other? Please advise.”
“It’s Theo.”
“I have a head shot. Please advise,” Waren said.
“Wait,” Dustin said. “Steve, stay dead still.”
“I ain’t going anywhere,” he whispered back.
Dustin held his breath as best he could.
If Theo sees me alive, or acting alive, he’ll pounce, and I’m fucked. He’s too close to get away from, and far too large to fight on my own.
The weight of the two laser systems in his hands grew as the standoff continued. Dustin’s muscles began to itch and burn with each passing second. Ten seconds grew into thirty. Thirty grew into a minute. Then the mutated lieutenant reached one of his trunk-like arms to touch Dustin’s shoulder.
The gesture seemed friendly and human.
Theo retracted his hand and cocked his head sideways. He looked at Dustin’s faceplate, then the nametag on his right breast, then back to his face. Theo’s fading eyes closed and opened again, and the lumbering half-man turned into the tent and shuffled into its depths.
“Dustin are you okay?” Steve asked.
“Yeah. He touched my shoulder on the field of stars. He kind of looked sad. Give me a second, and we’ll get the fuck out.”
It took thirty eternal seconds for what was once Theo to find a warm place in the pile of his new family. Once Dustin felt sure Theo couldn’t see him (or didn’t care) the marine backed away, carrying his treasure.
Theo did, in fact, watch, and what was left of him on the inside waited for the marine to leave before he cried. Theo sobbed until he succumbed to exhaustion.
Chapter Forty-Two
Science habitat, town of Stahl, planet of Selva
14 October 163 GA
Inside the science hab, as the dawn approached, Micah Balashov was clearly not happy.
“Margaret, this blasted contraption will be the end of me.”
“Well if you keep standing behind it and fussing over the controls the thing is bound not to work properly. It’s a laser. An old, fragile, and incredibly complex piece of precision technology that you have no idea how to operate. You’re like a monkey poking at an ant-filled log with a twig. Take a step back, and allow it to run its startup routine, or let Phillip operate the device.”
Micah turned and scowled at her.
“I won’t have the attitude, Doctor,” she chastised with a sly grin. “Trust in the manufacturer and those that have maintained it for centuries. So relax.”
“Relax? You’re kidding. After those marines hurled the case on the roof and ran off, how can I relax? Idiots throwing around such important and sensitive gear like that. They could’ve broken it or, worse yet, attracted the creatures to us.”
“You saw them run around. This place is teeming with those insects and those young men were brave enough not only to retrieve the systems, but to deliver one to us. It isn’t about ceremony, Micah. It’s about results.”
Micah harrumphed in judgment. “Idiots. American idiots.” His accent had flared back with a vengeance.
“No worse than a Russian ingrate I would say. Such an old, old idea to cling to. Nationalities. Point me to a border the colonies have. Oh that’s right, we don’t have any. We left them back on Earth almost a thousand years ago.” She chuckled. “You’re such a bore when you pretend to be this way.”
“Yes, well. We are the way our parents raised us, eh?”
“To a point. Then we need to understand we are our own people, able to think on our own. Think about changing, Micah. You’re a good man spoiled by a desire to cling to old beliefs.”
“Maybe it’s all just an act?” Micah said, his tone shifting away from frustration to one of guarded amusement. His accent seemed to fade as well.
“I for one, don’t like that act, and would ask the actor to step off stage and join the audience.”
“Fair.”
The laser system, mounted on its tripod, beeped. The survivors in the science lab watched with wide eyes as it lifted and swiveled and cycled through a startup program. It came to rest, aimed out the window at the marines’ position on the mushroom.Seconds passed, and all stood still, waiting. Nothing happened.
Balashov approached it, and the screenflared to life As he adjusted his glasses and leaned close, a flashing green button appeared in the center of the control. Margaret saw white letters in the center of the button but couldn’t read the words.
“What does it say?”
“Incoming transmission,” Micah said.
“Well, accept it, Micah. Now is not the time to be shy or play hard to get,” Margaret scolded.
Micah tapped the green button. A moment of harsh crackling, followed by a lingering background static.
“This is Vindicator One to science habitat, can you hear me?” a strong young man’s voice asked.
“Yes, yes. Da, this is Micah Balashov,” Micah said too loud. The sound of his voice in the container filled with hiding humans set them into a vigilante level of panic. Several of the scientists took steps toward him to physically quiet him but he waved them off.
Phillip Eckstein stepped forward beside Micah. “Vindicator One is this Weatherman One. We read you
five by five. It’s good to hear you.”
“Copy that, Weatherman One. Hot letters spelling out words is one thing but hearing familiar voices is entirely another,” Vindicator One said.
“Who is this? Who is Vindicator One?” Micah asked. He hadn’t heard that call sign bandied about before.
“It’s Sergeant Cline.”
“Shit,” Phillip said. “Weren’t you Vigilant Two? Under Lionel?”
“Roger. He didn’t make it past the trench defense. If he’s still alive, what’s left of him isn’t the same.”
“Yes. I think we understand,” Micah said as the bright mood of the dark habitat dimmed.
“We are three here. How many do you have in there? You said eleven–is it still eleven?”
“Da,” Micah answered. “We haven’t gotten so hungry our numbers have dropped.” Everyone tittered a nervous laugh. Cannibal jokes were always a hit with the trapped and hungry.
“Good. Are you in any kind of contact with anyone else?” Dustin said through the device on the counter.
“Nothing. We see the creatures move. The formerly human ones we recognize, but . . . ”
“Yeah. The half-humans are tough to look at.”
“That’s a good name for them. We’d been calling them mutants. Your name is decidedly more… gentle,” Micah said.
“How are you on food? We’re getting pretty light up here.”
“We have a week, perhaps two left if we ration. Water is in good supply, we built a small condenser to collect and purify our waste water,” Margaret said.
“That’s good. Good work.”
“We’re a fairly bright bunch, Sergeant,” Margaret replied.
“That you are,” Dustin said. “Ghara’s finest. With our last foray going so well, we’ll hit the mess hall soon and scavenge for food. We’re running short and I don’t know what we can eat that grows here. We’re okay on water if it rains every few days.”
“You guys have cast-iron balls to try coming here again. Is there any way we can assist?” Phillip said.
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