Knowing the power packs would be dead soon, Beckman focused on the hull breach ahead. It was an immense cave, dark as night two meters above ground level. This close to the ship, there were no longer any tree trunks to worry about, only powdered ash which he kicked up as he ran. When he got to the hull, Bandaka’s slender arm reached into his stealth field. It was a strange apparition of an arm with no body, groping blindly for him from a ghostly world.
“Help me up,” Bandaka said, easily locating Beckman by his scent and labored breathing.
Beckman placed the hunter’s hand on his shoulder, then cupped his own hands beneath the hunter’s leathery foot and launched him up into the hull breach. A moment later, the tip of Bandaka’s spear appeared in front of Beckman’s face. He grabbed the wooden weapon and walked up the side of the hull to the opening. Once inside, he checked his watch again. Two minutes left!
“Three are close,” Bandaka’s voice whispered from an empty space to Beckman’s right.
“How can you tell?”
“I see their tracks.”
Beckman heard approaching footsteps, but in the shadowy stealth world, he saw no sign of the other team members. He turned to examine the hull breach, finding a gradually sloping tunnel had been blasted through the triple layered hull, far into the ship’s interior. The breach cut through many decks, a few lit by flickering lights or electrical short circuits, most immersed in darkness. As he tried to make out the details, he realized the strength of the light reaching his eyes was slowly increasing.
My power pack’s failing!
He heard a grunt and quick footsteps as Markus clambered up to them at the end of Bandaka’s spear.
“Only just made it,” Markus declared. “I can see color!”
Beckman looked back out over the blasted landscape to the escarpment, discovering hints of red and orange among the ash streaked cliffs, a sure sign his stealth field was powering down. On the approaches to the ship, the ground blurred in several places where stealth fields were losing their ability to bend light, while another distortion appeared below the breach.
“What a hike!” Nuke declared as Bandaka pulled him up, “Especially with this thing on my back!” He took a few exhausted steps into the tunnel, then slipped out of his pack and flopped onto the deck, breathing hard. A moment later, Bandaka hauled Xeno up into the ship.
“Get up the ramp,” Beckman ordered.
Markus and Xeno clambered up the tunnel’s slick metal slope while Nuke lifted his pack and carried it in one hand after them. Satisfied they were safely inside, Beckman watched anxiously for Tucker and Virus. He spotted a single smear of twisted light racing toward the ship, but could find no sign of a second. Slowly the approaching blur betrayed a hint of dappled green that grew in size.
Tucker and Virus together? he wondered as he realized the blur was wider than a single man.
Bandaka’s translucent form began to appear beside him, then twenty meters from the ship, a ghostly silhouette of Virus with his arm across Tucker’s shoulders started to take shape. Virus’ stealth field was scarcely functioning at all, its power pack had failed prematurely. Now Tucker’s was close to collapse.
Beckman cursed himself for letting Virus come. Hurry, God damn it!
Incredibly, Tucker and Virus stopped. Beckman bit off an urge to yell at them, to order them to run faster, but they turned as one to face the perimeter. Virus balanced his M16 on his hip, angled up forty-five degrees. He fired his M203 grenade launcher at the fireflies buzzing the perimeter. A moment later, a phosphorus grenade exploded in a cloud of white hot embers that the fireflies found irresistible.
Tucker slung Virus over his shoulder and jogged toward the hull breach. His footfalls were heavy, carrying the weight of two men and their gear. Behind them, fireflies swarmed toward the phosphorus cloud, drawn by its heat, while in the sky far to the south, a black speck approached at high transonic velocity. Tucker reached the ground below the hull breach as his stealth field failed, then he hurled Virus up to Beckman like he was tossing a sandbag. Beckman caught Virus and pulled him back as Tucker grabbed Bandaka’s spear and hauled himself into the entrance.
“Go, go go!” Beckman yelled, dragging Virus’ up the tunnel slope.
In the sky outside, the black speck grew into a wedge-shaped striker. It fired at the burning phosphorus, turning the area into a boiling lava pool, then swooped toward the movement it detected near the hull breach.
Tucker charged up into the tunnel, with Bandaka close behind him. Beckman was halfway up the slope when his stealth field gave out. It was like turning on a light. In a glance, he saw the swath of destruction inside the ship clearly, the ragged decks, the twisted debris and the pools of recently molten metal. He was stunned to see the extent of the destruction, a calamity beyond anything he could have imagined. Light exploded around them and a wave of heat rolled up the tunnel as the striker bombarded the entrance. The blast wave knocked them off their feet, then they were up and racing for the interior of the hull.
“Incoming!” Beckman yelled as he emerged from the tunnel and threw his back against the bulkhead. He found himself in the remains of a shadowy compartment lit only by a single flickering light near an open passageway to the right. Filling the chamber were rows of metal latticeworks reaching from floor to ceiling. Explosive decompression had almost sucked the room clean, except for a handful of dark shapes hanging in the lattice near the flickering light. Hidden amongst the shadows, the faces of his team peered out expectantly, weapons ready.
Beckman stole a look back down the tunnel as the striker swooped into the entrance and came to a sudden stop to assess the situation. Its sensors immediately detected Beckman’s face watching it, then it nosed up, angling its wingtip cannons at him. Beckman jumped back as two brilliant orange streaks flashed past and followed the tunnel up through four more levels before striking a bulkhead. The heat from the blasts startled him with their intensity, warning him that even a near miss would be fatal.
Tucker circled around to a position opposite the tunnel exit, then hurled a grenade into it. The grenade clanged hollowly on naked metal as it bounced down the slope towards the mouth of the tunnel. The striker immediately scanned it, but failed to match it to any of the millions of weapon profiles it had on record. It guessed correctly that it was an explosive device, although it assumed it to be hundreds of times more powerful than it was.
To evade the shockwave, the striker accelerated up through the tunnel, leaving the grenade to explode harmlessly near the entrance. It shot out of the hull breach into the storage compartment at high speed, then darted left, away from the only light source in sight. It relied on design schematics to plot a course through the storage lattices, but the schematics hadn’t been updated for damage. The striker careened off a collapsed bulkhead and crashed into a partially melted lattice, cracking its sensor strip and wrapping lattice strands over its leading edge, obscuring its vision. It tried to stabilize itself, and recharge its shield as Beckman, Tucker and Xeno opened up with specials from three sides. The striker’s weakened shield collapsed, then super heated particles smashed through its lightly armored skin, triggering several internal explosions. The striker lurched sideways, crashed through an intact lattice and fell tail first onto the deck. They continued firing for several seconds, carving it into pieces, remembering what had happened to Cougar.
“Cease fire!” Beckman yelled.
He stood as the others emerged from their hiding places. Only Virus remained on the deck propped against one of the lattice frames, his face white and dripping with sweat. Beckman approached him, noting his sickly complexion. “You don’t look so good.”
“I just need a minute,” Virus said weakly between sips from his canteen.
Beckman turned his attention to the compartment they were in. There were at least twenty rows of rectangular, wire frame lattices, standing side by side vaguely reminding him of a locker room.
“Major,” Nuke called from the far end of the
compartment. He stood beside dark blue metallic suits over a meter and a half tall, hanging within the lattice. They were bipedal, disproportionately wide at the chest and hips, with oversized elongated helmets. The sides facing the hull breach were scalded black, while their distant position in the lattice had saved them from being sucked into space when the compartment had decompressed.
When Beckman approached, Nuke indicated a partially open suit. It was cracked apart like a clamshell, with a vertical split from head to foot revealing a padded interior able to mold to its occupant’s form. The inside of the helmet lacked anything resembling controls or view screens, just several small silver surfaces at the top and rear enabling the suit to communicate directly with the wearer’s cerebral implants.
Markus tapped the metal, noting how it gave off a dull sound. “Sounds like armor.”
Beckman studied the mounts at each shoulder and the attachment brackets on the forearms. “Could be for tools, or weapons.”
“It’s nothing like the suits at Groom,” Xeno said, remembering the silky metallic suits studied at the materials analysis labs. She stepped around it, gauging its size. “And it’s bigger. They’re not Zetas.”
Nuke moved slowly along the lattice work, looking the suits over casually, eventually reaching the last one in the line. Whereas the first two were cracked open forty-five degrees, the last was only a few centimeters from being sealed. He put his hand on the side of the suit and pulled. A burned body toppled out, hitting him in the chest before falling to the deck.
Nuke jumped back startled, then wiped burnt alien flesh from his clothes. “Oh, that’s disgusting!”
The body was humanoid, three quarters the height of a man, fifty percent wider with an overly large head.
“Ugly son of a bitch,” Tucker said coldly.
“Unlucky more than ugly,” Markus said as he glanced inside the suit. “It almost got it shut.”
“Xeno,” Beckman said, “do you recognize it?”
“It’s definitely a new species,” she replied. “How much time do I have?”
“Two minutes.”
Xeno pushed a video camera into Nuke’s hand, then knelt beside the body, pulling on white plastic gloves. When Nuke had started recording, she said, “Specimen One. Apparently died from decompression and exposure to heat.” The side of the alien that had been closest to the suit entrance was charred, while the rest of its body was swollen and blotched. “Skin discoloration appears to be due to tissue damage from decompression.” She took out a tape and measured the dimensions of the head. “Skull length, forty six centimeters. I’d need to perform a craniotomy to assess brain to body mass.” She gave Beckman a hopeful look.
“We don’t have the time.”
She nodded, disappointed, then turned the elongated chin to the side curiously. “Long chin, evolved to balance skull weight. That’s an advanced evolutionary marker.” Xeno produced a slender probe and pencil thin flashlight from her kit, then pushed back the alien’s thin lips, revealing sharp angular teeth.
Tucker looked impressed. “Nasty little chompers.”
“Teeth for tearing flesh, indicating it’s a carnivore.” She ran the probe around the mouth, checking its teeth. “No sign of cavities or cracks.”
“Hey!” Nuke declared, “They’ve got a dental plan in outer space!”
Xeno lifted the probe to the tennis-ball-sized eyes located towards the side of its head. “Eye placement indicates a wider field of vision than humans, possibly . . . two hundred and seventy degrees in the horizontal, more in the vertical.” She slid a thin translucent layer back beneath the outer eyelid, aiming the spotlight into the eye. “Translucent layer to protect the eye is an amphibian characteristic, to protect the eyes underwater.” The pupil was a dark vertical slit, surrounded by a deep blue iris flecked with green. “Multiple lenses in the eye, one segment is floating, may work like a short zoom lens.” She shone the light on the flat nose with two slender nostrils. “Nostrils may seal shut in water.” She traced imaginary lines from each eye, running forward, trying to imagine what the amphibian could see. “Note, specimen has limited stereoscopic vision for depth perception, significantly less range than for humans.”
“Is that important?” Beckman asked.
“Our eyesight originally evolved from apes, who needed good spatial ability to move through the trees. That eyesight allowed our ancestors to become hunters. We’re the predators we are, partly because of our eyesight. We hunt down and pursue like a lion. This creature wouldn’t do that.”
“Cool,” Nuke said. “It’s not a predator! So they’re not dangerous.”
“She said it was a carnivore, Lieutenant,” Tucker snapped.
“Oh,” Nuke said deflated.
“The specimen has good spatial perception, but narrow stereoscopic vision, suggesting it does not hunt in the open. It may be an ambush predator.”
“Ambush predator?” Nuke repeated uncertainly. “What’s that?”
“A sneak attacker!” Tucker declared.
Xeno nodded agreement. “Ambush predators wait in hiding, then surprise their prey with a fast lethal strike.”
Beckman furrowed his brow. “So they spent millions of years evolving how to approach their prey without being detected, and strike without warning.”
“They’ve obviously come a long way since then,” she said.
“You won’t see them coming,” Tucker said.
“A species evolved to deliver preemptive attacks would allow no warning,” Beckman said. “It’s their nature. The first time you’d know you’re under attack is when your cities are burning.”
“That would also make them highly secretive and deceptive,” Markus said thoughtfully. “A need for good situational awareness could mean they are masters of espionage. You’d never know they were watching you.”
“That’s highly speculative,” Xeno said cautiously.
“It’s evolution,” Beckman said, for the first time wishing Dr McInness was there to provide his perspective.
She leaned over the skull examining it carefully. “The specimen has no visible ears, suggesting it may be deficient in hearing.” She touched the pronounced, dome-shaped bulge on the forehead. “The specimen has a large frontal lobe, with a firm cartilage covering.” It reminded her of something, but she couldn’t quite remember what. She moved to the amphibian’s smooth hairless arm. “Muscles are firm, but not overly hard, indicating fitness but not excessive muscle strength.”
“Damn, a dental plan and a gym membership!” Nuke exclaimed. “They are advanced!”
“Are you getting this?” Xeno demanded of Nuke with a trace of irritation. “The skin is quite tough,” she continued, pressing the probe against it. “No hair. Body shape is uniformly streamlined, but fingers are not webbed.”
“Your assessment?” Beckman asked, anxious to move on.
“It’s highly advanced with some interesting adaptations. The brain development alone could be way ahead of us. Possibly millions of years, even with those teeth. We’re physically stronger, but no contest who’s got the IQ points.”
“How does it compare to a Zeta?” Markus asked.
Xeno stared thoughtfully at the alien’s elongated head. “Brain to body mass ratio might be comparable, unless that skull extension has brain mass.”
“Finished?” Beckman asked.
She nodded, then her eyes widened with realization. “Of course! Dolphins! That’s why it has no ears! It doesn’t need them!” She pointed to the alien’s bulging forehead. “Major, that dome could be biological sonar. It wouldn’t need much stereoscopic vision, if it can hunt with sonar!”
“Which means?” Beckman asked.
“It’s a super predator!”
“That makes me feel so much better,” Beckman said, casting a wary look at the diminutive, partially charred corpse. He had no doubts, if they were hostile, there’d be no chance of resisting. “All done?”
“Yes sir,” she said, retrieving the camera f
rom Nuke and slipping it into her pack.
“Step back.”
Beckman rolled the corpse sideways with his boot and fired a series of carefully aimed shots in a line through the creature’s skull. Fragments of bone and a dark viscous liquid splashed onto the deck from the wounds and pooled beneath its head, then he drove his knife into the bullet holes and levered the skull apart. There was a wrenching sound as the rear of its head cracked open.
Beckman wiped his knife clean on the creature’s chest then turned to Xeno. “Well?”
She swallowed, then shone her flashlight into its elongated skull. “There appears to be brain tissue all the way back.”
“Right,” Beckman’s jaw hardened. “Meet the new top of the food chain, people.”
“We are so screwed,” Nuke said.
Tucker gave Nuke a fierce look. “Anything living can be killed!”
Virus joined them, feeling his strength returning. Deep within his tortured mind, he remembered what the amphibians called themselves, but it was unpronounceable. Another word appeared in his mind, a word used by too many languages to count.
“They’re called . . . Intruders.” Virus winced as he fought to clarify his thoughts. “It’s not what they call themselves. It’s what others call them. Other civilizations.”
“Why?” Beckman asked.
Virus stared at the charred corpse, the mere sight of which triggered deeply implanted attitudes. He felt disturbed to see the amphibian was dead. Even mistreating its corpse seemed wrong. It was an instinctive, automatic response forced into his mind as part of his obedience training. Even though he’d been unable to absorb the technical information forced into his brain, he remembered them with a hint of devotion. “They go . . . where they’re not wanted.”
Beckman watched the mutilated corpse leak blood onto the deck with growing trepidation. “I never did like uninvited guests,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The Mothership Page 29
