Hodgson tumbled back from his position as witheringly accurate plasma fire peppered the wall where only a split second before he had been crouching. Searing plasma splashed his fatigues with puffs of smoke from burning fibers as he staggered backwards and away from the grotesque creature.
‘Take him down!’
The Marines fired even as he gave the order, the blasts from their rifles shattering the advancing form but vanishing instantly as more cells emerged from the following mass to take their place. Multiple plasma blasts hammered the soldier’s form in bright flares of energy, and Hodgson saw the soldier sway this way and that beneath the blows, but like some nightmarish ghoul the blasts that shattered his face vanished as the countless little machines simply rearranged themselves once more and kept advancing.
‘Fall back to the bulkhead!’ Hodgson yelled.
One of the creature’s plasma shots hit a Marine in the lower leg and he screamed as his boot was severed clean off, the wound smoldering and the stench of cauterized flesh filling the corridor to compete with the smoke and the gunfire. Hodgson launched himself across the corridor and grabbed the stricken Marine’s hand, dragged him backwards as he raised his rifle and fired at the soldier whom had once been their brother but was now some horrific chimera of man and machine, the horrendous fanged creature following behind and filling the corridor. The blasts hit the quasi–soldier in his chest but he kept moving, faster now, as though he were learning to walk and then to run again. Colors appeared, vague copies of the Marine’s uniform and insignia, the chamelon–like transformation almost complete.
Then the figure broke free of the gelatinous mass and began to run.
‘It’s coming for us!’ a Marine screamed as he broke from his position.
Behind the advancing clone soldier rose a different beast, something else again as the mass morphed into a new form, this time ranks of muscular, quadrupedal animals with thick manes of black hair across hunched shoulders, hackles raised, long snouts probing the air and wild, yellow eyes filled with rage and hunger. Hodgson could see their rib cages poking through pale pink skin beneath fine hairs, a single razor sharp beak clicking as though threatening the Marines.
The rest of the mass swarmed up the walls and clung to the ceiling as it advanced, behind it now a solid wall of material preventing any of the Marines from leaping past it and escaping to the rear. Hodgson looked over his shoulder and saw the main bulkhead behind them, the blast hatch still open.
‘Charlie company, retreat, covering fire!’
The rearmost Marines fired over the heads of those closest to the front as they backed up and began filtering out of the corridor through the bulkhead and to relative safety. Hodgson fired again, striking his former comrade directly in the face in a dreadful blast of burning material, the soldier’s once handsome features twisted into a grotesque form by the damage. To Hodgson’s horror the soldier’s ruined face creased into a smile as it slowly began to rebuild itself, and with one hand it waved something forward.
Hodgson saw the bulky, vicious looking beasts suddenly leap forward past the ghoulish soldier and sprint toward the Marines even as the soldier fired again. Hodgson leaped aside as the blast hit the wall alongside him and he stumbled, the Marine with the smashed leg crying out as he stumbled too and slumped to the deck, exhausted and traumatized by his injury.
Two more Marines rushed in and grabbed the wounded soldier’s arms, yanking him free of Hodgson as the corporal scrambled to his feet and turned for the hatch.
The blast hit him square in the back and he sprawled face down, the hairs at the nape of his neck burning as his skin bubbled from the intense plasma heat. Hodgson screamed, more in panic than in pain, and rolled over as he realized that his body armor had absorbed most of the blast. Even as he did so he saw one of the cruel looking beaked beasts fly clean over his head and crash down between him and the bulkhead, cutting him off from the remaining Marines now firing hopelessly in support of Hodgson but unable to reach him.
‘Close the hatch!’ Hodgson yelled. ‘Do it, now!’
The command came out of his lips before he had the chance to really think about what he was doing. Or maybe he didn’t want to think about it at all. The Marines leaped back through the bulkhead and it slammed down behind them and cut the snarling beast off before it could follow them through. The deafening roar of plasma fire ceased abruptly as the door crashed down, Hodgson’s ears ringing from the infernal noise, but he could hear the hissing of hot metal cooling down, could smell the burning electrical cables, could see the lights in the ceiling flickering in and out as the power supply was disrupted by the battle raging outside the ship.
The animal turned and looked Hodgson in the eye, then began prowling back toward him.
Hodgson dragged himself back against the wall of the corridor as he saw the awful cloned soldier approaching him from the other side, heard the creeping mass of material advancing like a billion tiny insects as he grabbed his plasma rifle and held it ready. He aimed at one of the hulking beasts in the hopes that it would back off, but it did not stop its advance, edging toward him and growling as it bared its beak to reveal another, smaller one in the lower jaw. Somehow, Hodgson knew that they were designed to rip prey apart, tearing off chunks of flesh like a bird of prey to be swallowed whole. This animal, whatever it had once been, did not kill its prey before eating it.
Hodgson looked up at the soldier as he moved to stand within a meter of him, looking down with eyes that were somehow devoid of true life. The voice, when he heard it, was almost identical to the former soldier’s but deeper, more menacing.
‘You will live again,’ it said with a knowing smile.
Hodgson shook his head, covering his surprise that the being, whatever it was, could speak at all let alone in English.
‘You’re already dead.’
Again, that cold smile. ‘You don’t have a choice.’
Hodgson stared back at the horrible being and at the mass that was almost upon him, the other hounds advancing ahead of it and almost within reach.
‘There’s always a choice,’ he snarled back. Hodgson flipped the rifle in his grasp and pressed the barrel up under his jaw as he rested his finger on the trigger. ‘I won’t give you the satisfaction.’
Hodgson kept the grim smile on his face as he pressed down on the trigger, and then for a brief instant he was surprised to see a look of horror on the soldier’s face and the form raised a hand as though to stop him. In a tiny moment of time he heard the snarling animals whine as though in pity or distress, and then he heard a blast from the direction of the bulkhead.
The soldier’s face was smashed clean off as the plasma bolt ripped across the top of the beast’s back and knocked the soldier off his feet, the plasma rifle spinning from its grasp. The soldier crashed down on the deck, and Hodgson waited for him to get up again, for the massive damage to be repaired, but instead the soldier wailed in what sounded like pain, his face stretched and distorted, his body locked as though in rigor mortis, his mouth agape as he cried out.
Hodgson whirled and saw the blast hatch opening as the Marines came tumbling back through, their weapons held before them as they fired en masse and two of them hauled what looked like a fuel canister behind them.
Before Hodgson could speak Doctor Schmidt shimmered into view alongside his Marines as the beast before Hodgson whirled to confront them and with a deafening, horrendous howl it launched itself at the Marines.
‘Fire, now!’ Schmidt yelled at the soldiers.
The beast bounded toward them as Hodgson saw the soldiers turn the canister toward it and fire a plasma rifle. Hodgson saw that the rifle’s magazine had been jury–rigged to the canister, and to his amazement a stream of charged fluid blasted from the barrel like glowing neon water.
The stream hit the beast and almost immediately the animal faltered as its legs crackled beneath it to what sounded like breaking bones. Hodgson watched in fascination as the animal shattered into thousands
of pieces as though it had been turned to stone, the pieces scattering across the deck like pebbles as Schmidt pointed down the corridor.
‘All of it, now!’
The Marines opened fire with the hose–like weapon at the other creatures confronting them, and Hodgson scrambled away as he saw the glowing stream plow into them and turn them to stone where they stood, faces locked in a rictus of rage and perhaps pain and distress, the hounds snarling and turning their heads away from the blasts before collapsing like toppled statues.
Hodgson tumbled clear as the advancing mass was splattered with the glowing fluid and it crackled to a halt. He saw some sections at the rear break away but Schmidt, immune to any danger from the creature, directed the Marine’s fire with admirable accuracy and the soldiers hosed down the fleeing segments before they could escape to the breach far behind them.
The remaining biomass reared up into the horrific bulbous–headed creature again and let out a bizarre, high pitched screech as it lashed out for Hodgson, the closest enemy to it. Hodgson scrambled away as the huge entity lunged for him, its enormous teeth flashing in the dull light and its black tentacles probing for him.
The stream of glowing fluid crashed into it as Hodgson hurled his hands over his head and curled his legs up under his belly. He felt the huge being lunge close to him, heard the crackling sound of its form solidifying as more and more of the fluid drenched it, and then it slowly fell silent and still. Globules of thick fluid dripped from it as though it had been carved in stone and ice, and as Hodgson opened one eye he saw that the color was slowly draining from the animal, leaving it pale white as though made from snow.
Doctor Schmidt moved closer to it, and his voice carried in the otherwise silent corridor.
‘Gentlemen, I believe you’re looking at what was once a plant of some kind.’
Hodgson stared at the doctor for a moment, and then he got to his feet and brushed himself down, ignoring the pain in his neck from where he had been burned by the plasma.
‘Get that canister down the corridor and hose every inch of it down,’ he ordered. ‘Then get scanners down here and scour every inch of this corridor of whatever the hell that thing was. Do we have any other breaches?’
Schmidt nodded.
‘Three in total but they’re all under control, corporal. I need your men to gather what remains of this entity and quarantine it before preparing to send it back to where it came from.’
‘You want us to do what?!’ Hodgson uttered. ‘That thing needs destroying, right now!’
‘It needs calming,’ Schmidt replied without rancor. ‘Trust me, corporal, quarantine it and fire it back toward the enemy vessel, right now!’
***
XXXVII
CSS Titan
‘Fire all starboard batteries, get that thing away from us!’
Admiral Marshall’s bellowed order resounded across Titan’s bridge like a tortured horn with the din of battle a symphony behind it as Titan shuddered beneath another salvo of energy blasted from the alien vessel’s huge hull.
Marshall stumbled on the command platform as he staggered across to the Tactical Officer’s position and saw her slumped in her chair, blood trickling from a deep gash on her forehead and her eyes closed. Marshall lifted her gently from the seat as sparks and debris tumbled down around them, lay her body on the deck as two medics hurried over to care for her, and then leaped into the chair and began flicking switches.
‘Are all the fighters in?’ he asked the CAG.
‘They are, but our landing bays are down due to fires on aft decks three through seven!’ the CAG responded. ‘We’re sitting ducks here!’
Marshall whirled to Olsen, the XO grabbing the command rail.
‘Starboard batteries are down, plasma lines cut off! We can’t return fire!’
Marshall stared in desperation at the tactical display and saw that Titan was locked in its tumultuous battle with the alien vessel while surrounded by the CSS fleet, none of which were able to engage without compromising Titan and their own security against being boarded by the alien invaders.
‘Prepare to signal the order for the fleet to open fire!’ Marshall shouted. ‘The risk of letting this thing survive is greater than any attempt to destroy it!’
‘They may not receive the signal through all of the plasma fire, everything’s on lockdown, remember?!’ the XO yelled as a large ceiling panel crashed down behind him.
‘Better to send it than not at all!’
‘We can survive this!’ Olsen pleaded one last time. ‘We’re not done yet!’
Marshall glared at the XO, not with anger but with the conviction of absolute certainty.
‘It’s not about whether we can win or even survive, it’s about what happens afterward! We’ve been boarded! We can’t make dock afterward and we can’t guarantee that this thing won’t still be here aboard Titan even if we win the battle! We have to act with the rest of humanity in mind, not just ourselves!’
Olsen gripped the command rail, his knuckles white and his face stricken with a volatile fusion of anger and despair, and then he whirled to the communications officer and relayed the order as Marshall turned to the helmsman.
‘Prepare to lower shields and shut down the safety coils on the fusion core.’
Even above the din of battle everybody on the bridge heard the captain’s words, and once again it seemed as though time had slowed down aboard the huge ship. Everybody knew that the vessel’s enormous fusion core was surrounded by a series of coils that maintained a stasis, a gravitational pressure around the cores that contained the enormous energy within. By shutting down the coils, the energy within Titan’s immense engines would be released in all directions at once, as though several small stars had suddenly gone supernova all at once.
Nobody on Titan’s bridge deck had got through the academy without learning of the tragedy that had befallen CSS Victory at the Battle of Beta Coriolis, when a convoy of Ayleean frigates had surprised the vessel, one of three, when she had emerged from super–luminal cruise on a routine scouting patrol. Hopelessly outnumbered, Victory’s captain and crew had none the less engaged the enemy along with their sister ships in order to draw them away from a real prize – a flotilla of armory and fuel vessels travelling to support the main fleet near Ayleea.
In the brief but violent engagement, Victory’s hull had been breached astern and three of the Ayleean vessels had been able to pour broadsides deep into the ship. The third of those terrible salvos had breached Victory’s fusion core. The ensuing blast had been so devastating that the battle had come to a complete halt for almost fifteen minutes, allowing the other two CSS warships to escape certain destruction. It was said that not a single component remained of Victory save a rapidly expanding cloud of superheated gases.
Olsen turned to the admiral.
‘We’re ready!’
Another blast hammered Titan’s hull, the entire vessel shaking beneath the impacts as Marshall took one last look at the displays and assured himself that there was no other option, that they had done all that they could.
‘Helm, shut down the fusion coils! Comms, send the signal!’
The communications officer and the helm moved instantly to comply, and Marshall experienced a brief moment of pride that they appeared to give no thought to the fact that they were effectively signing their own death warrants, content to put the lives of others before their own in the service of…
‘Belay that order!’
Marshall heard Doctor Schmidt’s voice a moment before the Holosap shimmered into life before him, shouting at the top of his digital lungs.
‘Belay the orders!’
Marshall stormed across to the doctor. ‘This isn’t the time, Schmidt. Get off my bridge!’
‘We can defeat them!’ Schmidt said. ‘They’re in retreat below decks!’
‘How?!’ Olsen demanded, almost leaping off the command platform to the doctor’s side.
‘I’ve altered a plasma cann
on to encase them in a fluid that binds proteins,’ Schmidt said quickly. ‘The Marines are regaining control, but we must release the samples we have back to the alien vessel.’
‘I’m not letting that thing off this ship alive!’ Marshall bellowed. ‘It’s out for our destruction and it…’
‘It’s a machine!’ Schmidt yelled. ‘It doesn’t understand us!’
The bridge seemed to become silent as Olsen stared at the doctor. ‘It’s a what?’
‘It’s a machine, a partly biological machine!’ Schmidt wailed. ‘It’s reacting to us, not attacking us! We must release what samples we have of it and send them across to the alien ship! I believe that if we do, it will flee!’
‘You believe?’ Olsen echoed. ‘You want us to put our guard down based on what you believe?!’
‘You’re losing the fight!’ Schmidt cried back in despair. ‘The Marines have already quarantined the biological matter. Let them send it back and if I’m wrong then you can fight to your deaths but until we’ve exhausted every last single means of survival then I beg you to give this one last try!’
Marshall stared at the doctor for a long moment and then he nodded to the CAG.
‘Do as he says! I’ll charge what plasma cannons we have to fire if they don’t…’
‘The plasma cannons are useless,’ Schmidt wailed. ‘The entity most likely feeds off the energy that bleeds through the ship it’s commandeered. You’re just making it stronger.’
Schmidt moved across to the communications officer’s console and watched as she connected the Marines of Corporal Hodgson’s platoon to the bridge.
‘Can you hear me, Hodgson?’ he asked.
Titan (Old Ironsides Book 2) Page 27
