by Paul Bishop
“Ah,” the older Chinese said. “You have awakened. Excellent.”
Lassiter swallowed and said, “Where am I?”
The younger man grasped the nylon and lifted him off the table. His older compatriot said something that sounded like a command. Milton stepped over and caught hold of the younger Chinese and hauled him back.
“Not so fast, mate,” the Aussie said. “Your father wants to do some experimentation on him first. Then you can beat the poor bastard all to hell if you want.” He shoved the Asian—who was dressed in the same tight-fitting, black Kevlar jumpsuit he’d worn during the attack—aside. The man wore no mask with long tresses this time but the iridescent spots glowed brightly along his back.
The two Asians conversed and the younger one glared at Milton, who stood there smiling.
“You Aussie’s do like to fight,” Lassiter said.
The large man glanced at him and one eyebrow elevated slightly.
“We do, don’t we?”
“Help me out of these confines and we can go a couple of rounds,” he said.
“And deprive the other Hybrid of the pleasure of beating you to death?” Milton laughed. “That’s hardly a prudent move on my part.”
“The other Hybrid—were they twin brothers?”
The man smirked. “Clones. But I’ve been told there are more on the way.”
“You set this whole thing up, didn’t you?”
His nod was dismissive. “Guilty as charged.”
“Why? You killed your own men. Your fellow legionaries. Didn’t the Legion teach you anything about honor?”
“Honor is for dead men and fools. This is the only thing that matters.” The big Aussie held his thumb and index finger up and rubbed them together. “The Legion taught me that lesson. When the opportunity for this little caper dropped conveniently into my lap, I saw the way to an early and lucrative retirement.”
“You chose the wrong name when you reinvented yourself,” he said. “You should have picked Judas.”
Milton laughed. “A true scholar to the end, eh, mate? I’ll miss our little conversations.” His big fingers dipped inside his shirt and withdrew the medallion. “I’m afraid it’s time for me to beat a hasty and ignominious retreat. I’ll have them lift me out of here and relate the cock-and-bull story I’ve concocted. When I get back to the main base, I’ll simply disappear,” he explained. “I had the foresight to make sure Stratton advanced my three million to my Swiss bank account. I’ll catch a plane and be on the Riviera spending my money before they notice I’m gone.”
“I hope you rot in hell, you son of a bitch.”
His smile faded only slightly. He inhaled, grabbed the nylon netting with his big hands, and slid Lassiter along the table length and flung him against the far wall. His body impacted solidly and he fell to land on his back. He rolled over and felt a pair of legs next to him. It was Dr Cruz and she stared at him with an unexpected intensity.
“Leave him alone,” she said to Milton. “You coward.”
The big Aussie laughed. “You’d best get rid of your insolent mouth, bitch. The not-so-good doctor has plans for you and little missy. I believe you can expect to spend most of your time on your backs with your legs spread.”
She spat at him. He strode over and slapped her face, and she grunted in pain and a stream of blood dribbled from her lips.
Lassiter struggled to take a breath, but his lungs felt like they’d imploded. Little by little, he managed to drag in scant gasps of air.
Milton fingered the medallion again and started toward the door.
“You’ll never make it back to the LZ,” Lassiter said. “The Biodome will have you.”
The traitor paused and went to the table. “You have a point, mate. I’ll have Professor Chang give me one of his little puffers of pheromone. The calming one. They’ve worked on perfecting both types these past few months.”
Synthetic pheromones, he thought. It was how the faux Hybrids were able to move with impunity inside the jungle—and also how the attack on the base camp was orchestrated.
The Aussie turned, withdrew a big Glock from a holster on his belt, and set off in the direction in which the two Chinese had gone. Lassiter began to wiggle his body in an attempt to move closer to the doctor’s legs.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Use your feet to step on this netting,” he said. “It’s designed to peel apart. I have a gun on me.”
Her dark eyes flashed, and she lifted her right foot to comply while he rolled to try to work in tandem with her. He heard an occasional peeling sound but nothing substantial.
“Let me try,” Kathy said. Her voice sounded weak and desperate.
She began to throw her weight from right to left and back. The chair wobbled and after several more movements, it toppled her onto her side. He rolled next to her. Dr Cruz managed to place her foot on a substantial portion of the nylon ribbons. The nurse’s finger snagged a thread or two and pulled. They worked in unison like three string-entangled marionettes in a bizarre puppet show.
The voices were audible again and definitely moved closer.
“Hurry.” He grunted as he tried to add the necessary pressure to assist their efforts.
More of the restricting nylon peeled apart and he was able to free his right hand. He thrust it through the netting, grasped the fibers, and yanked it apart with a fierce effort. The seams opened and he freed his other arm.
The voices and sounds of footsteps became angry yelling that culminated in two gunshots.
At last, Lassiter was able to pull the confines away from his legs and slipped out of the netting. He scurried across the floor on all fours, concealed himself behind one of the laboratory tables, and peered hastily around the solid base.
Milton ran into the room, the side of his face bloodied by four long scratches. Blood seeped through the ripped fabric of his shirt. His face was covered with sweat. He glanced at the two women and his eyes widened when he saw the discarded netting. His big head swiveled, and he began to bring the gun to a combat-ready position, but Lassiter had already acquired his target. He lined the two white dotted sights on the base of the big man’s face and squeezed off a double-tap.
Both rounds struck home. One penetrated the upper orbital bone of the Australian’s right eye socket and the other caught the side of his left nostril.
The Glock slipped from the man’s slack fingers and fell with a clatter. The immense form shuffled forward like a drunken polar bear, flailed in an attempt to catch hold of the tabletops, and in the process, knocked over several sets of vials and bottles. A wave of intoxicating and noxious fumes wafted up from the crushed glass.
Lassiter rose on unsteady legs and moved toward the fallen man. He retrieved the Glock and stuck it in his belt. He lifted Kathy’s chair upright and searched for something to cut the women loose. A scalpel located in one of the drawers served to sever the zip-locks. Both women were able to rise on unsteady legs.
“Come on,” he said, withdrew his own medallion, and pressed the button four times. He made sure to hold the last one until he heard the beep. “We have to get out of here.”
“Where can we go?” Dr Cruz asked.
“The roof,” he said. “We’re probably in one of the old biodomes.”
Kathy coughed. “I don’t think I can make it. The smell.”
He shoved the Beretta back into his pocket and picked her up. There were sounds of more voices now and footsteps rushed toward them.
Quickly, he moved toward the hallway and saw an EXIT sign at the end of the hallway.
“There,” he said and inclined his head toward the sign.
They rushed down the hall. Someone yelled in Chinese and he turned to see several men in white lab coats rushing toward them, accompanied by several soldiers. One of the men leveled a rifle and yelled another command in Chinese.
“Keep going,” Lassiter yelled. They were almost at the door.
Behind them, a horrific bl
ast shook the hallway and almost hurled them off their feet. He glanced over his shoulder at the flames that surged through the doorway of the lab. The fire engulfed the soldiers and the scientists, some of whom did a dance of fiery destruction.
Dr Cruz pushed the exit door and it opened onto a stairway.
“Which way?” she asked.
“Up,” he said.
Their only chance was to get on top of the dome and stay there until the choppers came.
If they came.
They rushed up the stairs and a trail of heavy smoke followed them. Still holding Kathy, he managed to shoulder through another door and they burst onto an expanse of solid whiteness. From this height, they could see the field of magenta and purple and green. It looked like a mad artist’s canvas and in a way, it was.
Lassiter set the nurse on the roof and Dr Cruz immediately began tending to her. He drew the Glock and he held it steady and aimed at the door. Thankfully, there was no pursuit. Inside, screams were followed by crashes and voracious sucking sounds. The pheromones were doing their work. The scientists had unleashed the monster and it had turned on them.
The heightened clamor of death seemed endless until he caught the syncopated whup-whup of rotor blades. To the north, three black dots took shape against the azure sky. The three saviors headed their way looked as beautiful as Perseus riding Pegasus must have looked to Andromeda if the ancient legend were to be believed.
“Is it them?” Dr Cruz asked.
“Yes.”
Her face relaxed with an expression of ecstasy and relief.
“Thank God,” she said.
The pilot waved and he waved back. The helicopter banked sideways and hovered directly above them. One of the crewmen appeared at the side door and began lowering a basket.
“You go first,” Lassiter said to Cruz. “With her.”
The doctor smiled and nodded.
The hook-up line moved closer.
“But what about the rest of them?” She gestured toward the door.
He shook his head. Far below, he could already see the stampeding herds of incoming creatures and the seeking, predatory vines all converging on the lower portion of the ruptured dome.
“The Biodome has a way of taking care of its own,” he said. “And all those who intrude upon it.”
A bellicose roar drifted from below, accompanied by another round of screams.
“Those monsters,” she said. “It’s so terrible.”
He caught the hook from the helicopter and extended it toward her.
“Yeah,” he said. “But the worst monsters are always human.”
Blood Flurry
A Story From The Biodome by
Tyler Dann
1
Lieutenant Colonel Alderman Slade hadn’t seen a Condition One emergency at Endurance Base since the previous summer, specifically December 20 on the ice shelf when the sun was bright for more than twenty hours and the ʼnids and blisters came out for a picnic of blood. Now, five months later and with the sirens blaring in the raven-black of winter—when the claustrophobia of living in cramped steel-paneled quarters was at its peak—Slade looked for someone or something to blame for the shakeup.
Commander Jenny Morocco’s arrival a few months before was a convenient scapegoat.
Leave it to a beautiful government scientist to bring the jazz to Antarctica during the round-the-clock night. Slade hadn’t paid much attention to the CO vacancy left by Kramer, the last fat nobody to inhabit the chair. For Rime Ice Squadron, a new civilian-in-charge didn’t mean anything more than a couple of extra practice flights. When Jen stepped off the last big cargo plane of the season, he recognized her as top brass all wrapped in fake fur and quilted nylon—looking more like a spy than anyone Slade had seen this side of the Biodome.
She had greeted him with good cheer, and he admitted to himself she was lovely.
In all honesty, he couldn’t deny it. Her dark Mediterranean features electrified him. Long, dark-chocolate hair, sparkling eyes flecked with polished gold, an exquisitely carved nose and wide, thin lips all carried him to warmer climes and different times before his assignment to the bottom of the world.
“Call me Jen,” she told him. “What should I call you?”
He told her his name, and she said he reminded her of a brother in Pittsburgh. Slade was six-foot-two, two hundred and five pounds, wore his rusty-iron colored hair cropped short, and could shave every hour and still have a shadow.
When he took the comment as a compliment and told her so, she caught him off-guard. “You shouldn’t,” she said. “You don’t know my brother.”
That teased a smile out of them both.
Slade didn’t see the commander smiling now that Lin Wu had triggered a Condition One and pushed the Go button on Rime Ice.
“What’s happening, Slade?” Jen asked over his blinking wrist monitor, her early morning voice still thick with sleep. It was the middle of downtime when eighty percent of the base was in eight-hour hibernation. The alert caught everyone on post with their pants down.
Condition One meant malicious flyers in the air.
“Fleet of ʼnids coming in low over the heat plateaus at Mount Erebus,” he said. “ETA puts them at Endurance Base in less than ten. We’re gonna have a bloody mess here if we don’t meet them in the air.”
“I didn’t think the bugs came out past ten-below,” Jen said and obviously still didn’t understand the danger.
“I used to think spiders didn’t fly,” he said.
Condition One meant there was nothing to do but embrace the suck.
The rude slogan from his past seemed appropriate.
It seemed like everything at Endurance Base found its origin in a different time, including the Condition alerts that dated back to the mid-twentieth century—weather classifications for wind, snow, and sub-zero temperatures used at the old McMurdo Station. Three was normal. Two was extreme. One was frozen torrential hell.
Meteorology was more finely categorized than that now, the climate recorded with minute detail on the Farrer scale, but the old three-tiered system worked perfectly for bug attacks.
Normal to frozen torrential hell summed up an arachnid attack quite nicely, especially one in the middle of the night.
With the Condition One sirens clanging, Slade’s pulse raced into three digits. He did his best to keep the conversation going with Jen while he sprinted through a yellow iron corridor that looked more like the interior of an old nuclear submarine than a walkway on one of the planet’s most cutting-edge military defense posts. Red lights rotated at every intersection and feet pounded the ground.
“Wind speed isn’t bad,” she said. “Zero precip. At least we have good weather going for us.”
Slade thundered into the roundabout at Port B a little ahead of Joachim and long-haired Simpson, passed the black-bearded Tylor en route to the chambers and, when he reached his locker, slammed his hand against the sensor panel. A dozen biobots licked and sniffed his hand electronically to make sure he was who he was supposed to be.
The panel turned to green.
He leapt inside and locked himself into the purple honeycombed glow of his cylindrical glass and aluminum alloy chamber. Each of the squadron’s twelve dressing rooms took less floor space than an ancient street corner telephone booth, but they were officially listed as chambers in the Endurance handbook.
Like chambers of a gun, he thought and immediately conjured the memory of his dad’s antique revolver. He kept the Stoeger twelve-gauge pump shotgun in a hidey-hole beside his bed and in doing so, bucked at least three base regulations and violated the latest draft of the Antarctic Treaty System.
Still, he hadn’t gone so far as to bring the gun along on a mission.
Yet.
As he slipped into his black cotton undergear, the fine thermomesh tech woven into the material scratched his legs as it always did. He hoped he didn’t regret the decision to leave the Stoeger behind. Like his dad and grandpa before h
im, he was a sheepdog watching over the flock. That included his squadron pilots, ground troops, Commander Morocco, thirteen hundred egghead scientists, and the biological AI as well.
“Rime Ice Squadron is green to go,” said Lin Wu. “Good morning, Colonel.”
Slade was overly fond of the AI’s femininity.
“Morning, Lin Wu,” he said. “Keep me posted on the swarm.”
“Arachnid swarm is on a direct course for Endurance Base,” she said.
“Slade, it’s Jen. I have sonic screens active at all gates and static generators armed.” This time, the commander sounded more sure of herself.
She must have had her morning coffee.
“Three minutes to rise,” she advised.
“Roger that.”
“I want to go up,” she said—the last thing he wanted to hear.
During the sunless days since Commander Morocco arrived, Slade had reviewed her files in painstaking detail. She grew up in Athens. Like him, she was an Army brat, familiar if not always comfortable with the martial life and used to the chain of command. She’d served two stretches in Africa, location undisclosed. He could easily guess exactly where in Africa a bio-science major might be stationed these days. She was qualified on Spinner Three and had passed all the basic fight maneuver tests but—as far as he could tell—had never been in a real dogfight. As a direct civilian appointment from the chairman of the Morrison sub-committee on Biodome entomology, she was also—technically—his superior.
He couldn’t stop her from going along on the mission but her presence would be detrimental to the rest of the squad.
Both figuratively and literally, Rime Ice flew under the radar.
While it was no secret that since Biodome tech made its presence known south of the Antarctic Circle, the old bans on military habitation had faded like morning marine mist. Despite this, Slade’s joint international force wasn’t popular, and the twelve spinner pilots did their best to stay out of the limelight.
