The text device had been given to her eleven months earlier, by the pilot, the one Trace had put outside soon after for trying to hack into some private files; he’d told her that if she wanted a way out, she could use it. The decision hadn’t been hard to make, not after drop days had become a regular entertainment for Trace. And in the few times they’d texted, Ray had promised her things. Trace would be killed for losing the shipment, and then she could go home, and Ray would take care of her. She had no illusions about what he would expect long-term, but that wasn’t a concern. She’d be on Earth. And he wouldn’t be Trace.
But he never said anything about two ships. He was supposed to be on the ground, already. Had something gone wrong? What if he was trying to contact her, even now? Perhaps she should go see. Standoff wasn’t locked down; Mac Simpson was sitting at the central board, ready to enter commands at a word from Trace, but he was busy in Ops, figuring out they’d been pulsed. It would be strange of her to leave, though . . . wouldn’t it? She didn’t care what they thought of her, but didn’t want to act suspiciously; she still had to live with these hard, angry people, until the next drop ship up after Msomi got word. The drop ship that Ray had assured her would mean Trace’s extermination, that would then carry her home, away from this life.
Except they expect me to be strange, she thought, and realized she was thinking differently. She felt confused, unhappy. She was due to patch, overdue; her last had been before the blue-eyed man in her studio, before she’d fucked him senseless. She’d only gotten up to accompany Trace to the departure, had planned to go back to their rooms to rest, to patch in, to clean herself up. She’d been further distracted by the confusion at the lock, remembering that the blue-eyed man had a brother. They did have the same eyes, but Pete was younger, softer; she thought perhaps she’d seduced the wrong one. Not that it really mattered; that had been last night. Both were likely dead by now, and that was a terrible thought, wasn’t it?
Patch. Patch now.
She stood and moved over to where Mac Simpson sat, listening to his battery-pack walkie-talkie for his master’s voice.
“I have to go,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Simpson stared at her, his wide face blank. He had a red tear tattooed next to one heavy lidded eye. “Sorry. Trace said anyone not working needs to stay here, until they figure out what happened.”
“It’s personal business, Mac,” she said softly. “One minute.”
He stared at her a moment, then shook his head. “He told me to keep you here. You’re off patching when the corridors lock down, it’s my ass.”
“I need to go,” she insisted, but Mac’s expression didn’t change.
“You wait, with everyone else,” he said. “Ask around, someone’ll hook you up.” He attempted a smile, one that sat poorly on his bland features. She’d fucked him on the day he’d dropped in, when Trace had chosen him for her—a year ago? Year and a half?
Frustrated, already edgy, Didi turned and walked back to the corner bench. Someone laughed. She didn’t look at anyone, aware that they were probably watching her, pleased that she’d been subjugated. Happy to see her suffer.
Mac’s walkie crackled alive. “Looks like no one’s coming,” Trog’s rough voice conveyed, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Got a line into the satellite, says nothing is moving, but we’re still blind. Trace’ll give the green light as soon as they finish checking the wires.”
A cheer went up, the haggard men and women talking with animation now, standing, shouting, thrilled that their dirty little lives weren’t going to be interrupted any further.
God, how she hated them all. She could feel the rising dissonance inside, the need for calm, for peace, and she curled herself back in her seat to wait.
* * *
Anne Simmons had a small, deep cut on her face from her headset’s eye-piece, but that was the worst injury for any of them. Daniel Aaronson had already treated the wound by the time Kaye and the others reached the bridge. They were both handed weapons and ammo, and promptly started to suit up.
“Can you get anything?” Puente asked, nodding toward the dead console. Susan Borkez had popped a wall panel by the main monitor screen, was using a pen light to inspect the circuits.
“Don’t bother. We’re torched,” Aaronson said.
“Can it be fixed?” Kaye asked.
“Faster just to hook up the secondaries,” Aaronson said. “But it’ll take time to switch over.”
Time they didn’t have. The compound was surely sending its own resolution team out now, to torch the unexpected visitors. The informants had lied, or been misled themselves about the compound’s tech defenses.
“How close did we get to the A site?” Kaye asked.
“Close,” Simmons said. “I’d say half a klick.”
“East of here, which puts the installation roughly southeast of our position,” Aaronson said.
Kaye nodded, thinking over the topography maps he’d been studying. There were a lot of cave systems in the area, many interconnected. A whole series of above-ground tunnels extended out from the compound, west from their main building. He didn’t especially want to go spelunking through an alien nest—he could still see the satellite footage in his mind’s eye, of the creatures streaming out of the caves—but there wasn’t an alternative. If they moved fast enough, they could still manage some element of surprise.
“Plan stays essentially the same,” Kaye said. “Get to the compound, run the op. This just means we have to stick around an extra day once the operation is resolved . . . And it means more exposure time now. Once we make it inside a system, you all know what to do. Until then, we circle up and stay tight, backs in. Ng, Marek, Graham, you’re on the incinerators. Lay down a flat sweep until we’re in formation, then close and triad. Borkez, Kodaira, I want launched flares south and southeast and flashsticks every thirty meters. We’re not going to have an opportunity to run a long range SSR, so I’ll call a destination as soon as I see one.”
Puente gave a nod. “Move out,” he said.
They passed quickly through the slanted dark, heading back toward the wide wall lock in AcelDecel, running a com check on the way, checking the IR lenses—image enhancement rather than thermal, the XTs didn’t seem to radiate heat, not with any predictability—the oxy feed. They stopped in front of the AD lock, the three firemen unbelting the incinerators from the wall. They strapped on and stood ready.
Puente hit the manual override, opening the inner door. The temperature dropped twenty degrees as they moved inside, slipping on their masks. The XTs pounded on the outer lock, dull metallic ringing sounds competing with their trumpeting cries.
“Go red,” Kaye said, and heard a number of safeties clicking off, masks being snapped down. He automatically printed his own weapon, an Uzi loaded with safety slugs, the lock snapping open. He held it high, finger resting on the guard, and slipped his mask down. Puente stood at the lock, hand on the emergency control.
“Positions,” Kaye said. He didn’t have to speak loudly. The masks were noise dampened, the pick-up easy. Ng and Marek flanked Graham; all three men stepped in front, dropped into a crouch. Borkez moved in behind them, a flare launcher raised. She tapped the scope.
“Ready,” she said.
“In three,” Kaye said, and Puente nodded. “Two.”
“One.”
“Go.”
Puente hit the control and the door shot up, pushed on jets of compressed air. Kaye had a fleeting impression of sliding, jittering black on green, snatching, dripping teeth, outstretched claws, and then all three incinerators were sheeting flame into the XTs, driving them back.
The men crouch-stepped forward. Flames spread over the creatures in front of them, outlining their sinewy bodies and bullet heads in brilliant auras. The screaming mass edged further back.
“Puente, Simmons, flank out!” Kaye called. “Borkez, go!”
The team sidled out further, the aliens darting forward at every slight openin
g in the wall of fire. They were met with short bursts of copper-polymer-jacketed safety slugs. Borkez fired the launcher, turned, fired again. The southeast flare disappeared, a brilliant tracer following it into the dark. To the south, a spray of light washed up and over a rising wall, perhaps a hundred meters away.
Kaye felt hope. They’d crashed near the compound’s main system. They could be inside in three, four minutes.
“Open out, south!” Kaye said. “Spread on my word!”
The XTs were everywhere, slashing, howling, reaching for the small group as they edged further away from the ship, into a vast, icy darkness tinted green, seething with dark movement, the mask lenses digitizing and cutting out the white-hot fire that erupted from the incinerators.
As soon as they cleared the lock, Kaye called for the firemen to triad. They did it neatly and efficiently; Ng and Marek widened out as Graham held his fire, dropped back three paces, and turned to take over a rear position. The team formed a rough circle now, the three firemen marking the points of a triangle within it.
“Marek, point. Go,” Kaye said, watching his small section of arc, steadily firing at the giant animals as they rushed forward, tipping their heads blindly as they screamed, stumbled, died. He felt their blood spray across his body, hissing against the synthetic neutralizing agents painted on the deflect suit. The circle rotated slightly and Marek began to shuffle south, over the rocky ground. There was a fine slick of algae on everything, keeper of the negligible atmosphere.
Before they’d made it two meters, Simmons went down, feet wiped out from under her by a slashing tail. She let herself drop backward, continued to fire as Ng edged to cover her with a fan of fire. The monsters shrieked in fury, falling back, pressing forward, lurching back again as the concentrated jets of flame blasted into them. Simmons regained her feet, ejected an extended mag with practiced ease before sliding a new one in place, and picked up her position again. The team’s momentum had barely faltered.
Kaye caught a flash of movement, too high.
He looked up, weapon moving with his gaze and fired, but the creature was already leaping down from the top of the ship’s port thruster. It crashed into Graham and Aaronson, taking both men down, Graham’s incinerator hitting the ground and automatically shutting off.
“Close up!” Kaye called, still firing at the creature. Chips of skull flew, and still its limbs thrashed. Its heavy, snaking tail lashed into Kodaira’s chest, knocking him backward, slamming him into Puente. Marek turned to cover them. Puente regained his feet quickly, but Kodaira didn’t move.
Shit!
Aaronson had pulled himself out from under the fallen alien, was helping Graham up while Borkez and Kaye fired into the screeching mob. Kaye could see more of the creatures climbing up the port thruster, a rising scatter of long green-gray smudges, their teeth strangely bright through the lenses so that they looked like a climbing chain of grinning skulls.
“Marek, go!” Kaye said. “Point guard, Puente at nine! Watch the port thruster!”
Kaye promptly stepped up into Marek’s three o’clock, shifting his arc to advance the group south, quickly. Marek shuffled faster. Graham had his incinerator back online, was aiming fire at the creatures trying to come in from above, blasting their trajectories.
They moved, Graham stepping backward over Kodaira’s body. The instant they were out of the incinerator’s range, the XTs came for him. Aaronson took out the first alien to scoop up their fallen teammate, a neat head shot. He missed the second, and Kodaira was gone.
Marek continued to advance steadily and they moved at a moderate walk surrounded by a constantly moving wall of leaping, crouching monsters. There could have been a hundred or thrice that, coming from all angles, pressing closer, relentlessly sacrificing themselves against the fire and firepower, anything to get closer. Even hunched over, the animals towered over the small team; every bug on the planet could be there, for all Kaye knew.
He fired reflexively, the team’s lineup clear in his mind as he called for staggered reloads, directing the order. They were almost at the system. He could see a high section of rock rising above the XTs with each hard-won step.
Almost there . . . He caught a screeching bug in the mouth, splinters of teeth and acid blood flying.
Marek blasted a trio of the grinning, capering things, and there it was, the black rock of the raised system’s outer tunnel.
“Aaronson, cap it!” Kaye called. He fired at two of the advancing creatures in succession, holding them long enough for Marek to roast them.
Daniel Aaronson slung his weapon and stepped forward, unhooking the wide slap-pack from his back harness. He raised it chest-high, pulled the stick-tab, and slapped it to the sloping wall. A green light went on, indicating that the short range SSR had monopulsed, seen an open area beyond the rock. He quickly spun the charge adjust and edged back.
“In the hole!”
The pack ignited and blew, the multiple angled charges punching through a half meter of rock. Aaronson immediately moved back and pulled the dead pack’s “cap” off the wall, revealing a head-sized hole. More than big enough for the handful of radio frags he tossed in.
“East on the wall, backs in, double time,” Kaye called. The formation flattened out, stumble-ran along. The horde pressed in, leapt, and clawed—
“Reload!” Simmons called.
Ng affirmed, spread his sheet of fire to cover the pilot’s arc of defense while she snapped a new mag in place, all of them moving as quickly as they could along the wall, firing, firing, the animals screaming. They were pushing closer, climbing over the bodies of their fallen brethren to get access to the pinned team.
Kaye was at the end of the line except for Graham, laying down fire, covering their rear. Kaye risked a glance back, decided they’d gone far enough.
“Blow it!” he called, and Aaronson tapped the transmitter on the front of his harness.
“In the hole,” he said again, and there was a ground-shaking rumble, the side of the tunnel behind them blowing out in a shower of smoking, slimy rock. A half-dozen XTs flew, shrieking, pushing the mob back from the new entrance. Kaye felt pieces of rock patter against his suit.
“Reverse it!”
The team smoothly reversed direction, heading back for their only hope of salvation—and as if sensing it, the bugs pushed harder, dancing closer, and Kaye thanked whatever gods might be that the bugs weren’t smart enough to organize. His weapon was hot in his hand, his skin vibrating from the endless firing.
“Reload!” Puente called from the other end of the line, and Marek moved to cover him. As the team leader ejected his mag, one of the creatures made a suicidal run at the fireman, taking a blast of flame full in the chest. It grabbed Marek with giant clawed fingers, its body enveloped in fire. Trumpeting loudly, it leaned forward and opened its mouth, its inner jaws shooting out to rip at Marek’s mask.
Marek screamed. Puente was scrambling to finish his reload but the second the incinerator was deflected, more bugs were moving in.
“Close up!” Kaye called, but Simmons had stepped out, was trying to cover Puente.
“Shaw!” she screamed, unloading her weapon at the bugs that already had him, were already pulling him out of the line. She was too late, and the pilot’s step away from the wall was her undoing.
The aliens snatched her away. Kaye fired after her, looking to the end of the line. Marek’s mask was off, his face a picture of terror and pain as the dying alien hugged him to its burning chest and fell back, disappearing into the clutching, screaming horde. Shaw Puente was already gone, but they could all hear his cries, and those of Anne Simmons, as they were dragged off into the dark.
“Into the tunnel,” Kaye shouted. “Graham, cover! Borkez, stand by to close!”
The remainder of the team sidled-ran back to the low, gaping hole in the tunnel wall, moving fast. Graham laid down a hot fan of burning chemicals, Kaye standing by him, firing into the mob as the others scrambled into the ragged rock
opening behind them.
Kaye fired, crouched back into the hole, covering Graham as best he could while the fireman backed in, Aaronson guiding his steps. Graham continued to fire through the hole, flame licking around the edges of the shattered rock, sizzling the algae into stinking smoke.
Kaye cast a quick look around. There were three, four dead XTs on the floor, in pieces. Taken out by the grenades, presumably. The tunnel snaked east-west. Ng was facing west, his incinerator blasting into the seething shadows. East looked clear. Borkez was covering it but she stood ready with the launcher, looking back and forth between the open tunnel and the open entrance, waiting for word.
“Aaronson, close west! Borkez, come get the door!”
Aaronson moved quickly to Ng’s side, a tex-bang already in hand. Borkez stepped closer to the entrance hole, aiming the launcher. Kaye fell back, moved to face the east tunnel. The blast of the incinerators combined with the echoing screech of the clamoring creatures, became a dull roar.
Aaronson called the west tunnel first, fingering the detonator on his harness. Ng leaped back, incinerator still going. An instant later, the crash of a Symtex grenade shook the tunnel. Rock and dust rained down, blocking the tunnel to the west. A beat afterwards Graham leapt back from the entrance as Borkez closed the front door, crushing at least two of the XTs in the rock fall. One ended up half in the tunnel, its sleek black head thrashing from side to side, its sinewy body pinned by massive chunks of tunnel. Borkez pulled her piece and sent two rounds into its long brain-pan.
The darkness ahead of Kaye stayed empty. Kaye could hear his heart pound, the filters on his suit and mask buzzing with the heavy settle of dust, but the sudden muffling of the shrill alien cries, the abrupt cease of weapon fire was like going deaf. He couldn’t hear Puente or Simmons on the com anymore, either. He hoped they’d lost their masks quickly.
“Anyone injured?” he asked.
There was a mumbled chorus of negatives.
“Inventory,” Kaye said. “And do it fast. You know the drill. Borkez, run the scan.”
The remaining members of Neo-Pharm’s resolution team fell to it, clicking through mag packs, checking the incinerator levels, looking over their suits for wear and tear. Susan Borkez ran the SSR, searched for tunnel depths, and, hopefully, the burn steel that would mean the compound. From here they’d flush the tunnels in front of them and hope to Christ they didn’t have to go outside again to make it to the installation.
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 15
