Hybrid (Tales of the Acheron Book 2)

by Rick Partlow

  With that, she turned on her heel and left the room, followed closely by Weaver and Kamara. The two guards stayed at their posts, near motionless behind faceless visors, while the corpsman kept adjusting settings on monitors and medication dosages and trying to sneak curious glances at them. Ash was pretty sure the man was just trying to look busy so he could stay and find out more about who they were and whether they were going to get all of the crew back home.

  “Why didn’t you kill me?” Singh asked him.

  The question caught Ash off-guard. He’d been about to leave the room, one hand on Fontenot’s shoulder to make sure she didn’t stay to taunt the bounty hunter. He turned back towards the recovery bed, hesitant to meet Singh’s dark gaze.

  “I was definitely in favor of the idea, for what it’s worth,” Fontenot commented with a casual shrug. She didn’t wait, just headed out the door after Busick and the others. Singh ignored her, still staring at Ash.

  “I’m not a murderer,” Ash said. “I’ve killed people when I had to, when there was no other choice, but you were helpless and unconscious, and it would have been wrong.”

  He turned, suddenly ready to get out of the room and away from the bounty hunter.

  “I would have.” Singh’s words followed him out of the room. They didn’t seem threatening, he thought. More…regretful? “I would have killed you.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Corporal John Ross tried to keep his concentration focused on his surroundings, on the position of his fire team and the readout from his helmet’s sensors, but it was hard not to think about home. Home was Valencia City, an overly grand name for what was basically a couple of tourist resorts and the surrounding support businesses built around the New Cumberland Lake on Hermes, humanity’s oldest star colony. He hadn’t seen his family in over seven years now, and he knew they all thought he was dead.

  The minute he got back to the Commonwealth, he was going to cash in all the back pay he was due and fly home to Hermes and never leave Valencia again. It was warm in Valencia. You could just sit outside on the sand of the lake shore in nothing but shorts and bask in the sun. He didn’t care if ever saw snow again.

  It should be a lot of back pay, he mused. They probably promoted me while I was dead. I wonder if Heather is still single...

  “Bear,” Private Kingsford called, using his nickname. He frowned. The Gunny didn’t like them getting informal, but it had been six years. What the hell did the guy expect? The war was over, they knew it now and they’d suspected it already, and most of them would have been civilians if they’d had a choice.

  “Yeah, what is it, Emil?” he replied, getting a fix in his helmet’s HUD on where Emil Kingsford was in their wide, spread-out V formation.

  Katya Dumont was on point, just ten meters ahead of him, Wole Achebe was out on his left and Kingsford was on the far-right edge of the V. Right now, the only one he could see was Katya; they were out in the badlands to the west of the base, where the moss-covered yellow mounds of mineral deposits from long-dormant thermal springs dotted the landscape and screwed badly with their line of sight. It was already dusk outside; the days didn’t last long this time of year with the planet’s rotation combined with that big gas giant getting in the way.

  “I have eyes on the shuttle,” Emil told him, sounding as excited as Bear about the prospect of getting off this ice ball. “It’s two hundred meters off to our two o’clock.”

  “Katya,” Ross said to the Marine on point, “adjust our route fifteen degrees to the south-east. Emil, Wole, fall in on the new formation.”

  They didn’t respond; they didn’t have to. He could see them changing course in his HUD, their Identification Friend or Foe transponders showing up as green triangles over the map of the badlands. There was an open plain out a couple hundred meters away, he could see it on the map; it made sense the shuttle had landed there.

  He followed Katya’s lead around a large, rainbow-hued mound of calcite and minerals and persistent fungal matts and then he could see it. It was dull gray and delta winged, bulbous and squat in utilitarian ugliness, and resting on five landing treads sunk a few centimeters into the brittle, cracked soil. He paused, raising a fist in the air and sinking to a knee. The motion sent a signal to the HUDs of the other members of his team and they followed his example, coming to a security halt.

  “Katya, Wole, I want you to circle around to the left, make a wide arc around that thing and get the lay of the land. Scan for any thermal hot spots, let me know if you see any other movement out there. Once you get within fifty meters of its portside wing, set up an overwatch position and Emil and I will move in and board her.”

  “Roger that, Bear,” Katya replied brusquely. He was glad they were friends again. They’d had a fling two years ago and it had been touchy for a while after it ended.

  Hell, it’s been six years. Almost everyone has been involved with everyone else by now.

  He thought about going prone, but the mineral deposit mounds springing up every few meters between them and the plain where the shuttle had touched down would have made it impossible to keep it under visual observation while the other two moved, so he stayed on one knee and watched Katya and Emil head off to the left at a quick jog. They covered the distance in less than a minute, sacrificing stealth for speed, and disappeared from his line of sight as they went around a calcite deposit large enough to be called a small hill. Katya took her time scoping out the aerospacecraft, and he was getting antsy enough to jiggle her elbow when she finally called in.

  “I’m not seeing any activity,” she reported. “Cold on thermal, engines are shut down and haven’t been powered up for at least a couple hours. Belly ramp is closed…”

  “I can see the utility airlock from this angle,” Wole interjected. “It’s open. Inner and outer hatches, both; but I can’t see inside from here. No interior lights visible.”

  “Okay, stay there, we’re coming up.” Ross used the butt of his rifle to push himself to his feet. “Emil, get on my six, we’re circling around right. Keep your eyes right, Katya and Wole will watch our backs.”

  Ross followed his own advice, keeping his Gauss rifle and his attention focused off to the right. It seemed counterintuitive when they were here to clear the shuttle, but he was worried that whoever had been crewing the thing might have headed off that way to set up an ambush for anyone who came looking for the bird. The dim, reddening light of the setting primary threw everything into sharp relief, and Ross began to imagine cartel soldiers in every shadow, but his helmet optics were better at spotting threats than he was, and they were showing nothing.

  He and Emil took longer to get into position than Katya and Wole had; they circled all the way around the shuttle, and Ross let Emil keep a lookout into the badland wilderness while he scanned the exterior of the bird. It hadn’t taken any damage that he could see: no burns, no ablated shielding, just a few patches from hard use, which made sense if this was a cartel spacecraft. He did notice some ragged edges around the utility airlock, right where a universal docking adapter might be, like she’d been attached to something and pulled away without bothering to retract the umbilical.

  Ross hugged the shuttle’s hull and sidled up to the open airlock, trying to get a look inside from two meters below. It was no use; all he could see was the overhead. He crouched down and waved Emil over to him.

  “Give me a boost,” he told the Marine, slinging his Gauss rifle to free up his hands. “I’ll take a quick look; if it’s all clear, I’ll open the belly ramp for you.”

  “You sure about this, Bear?” He couldn’t see Emil’s face through the visor, but the man’s voice sounded pretty dubious. “They could be waiting in there for you.”

  “They could be,” Ross admitted. “But I’m not getting any noise or heat sources from in there. I’m thinking they took off. Either way, though, someone’s gotta go in. Since I’m in charge, I say it’s me. Now, give me a boost.”

  Emil didn’t argue with him, probab
ly because he realized it was useless. One of the good things about working with the same people for so many years is that they got to know you. He moved underneath the open airlock and got down on a knee, cupping his hands at hip level to accept Ross’ boot. Six years ago, the Corporal mused, he could have made the jump without help, but this long living and working in half a gravity had weakened him to the point where he couldn’t take the chance. He stepped onto Emil’s hands and was boosted upward as the man stood abruptly.

  He grabbed the edge of the airlock and yanked himself up over the side in one, smooth motion, rolling onto his shoulder and coming up to a kneeling position as he pulled his rifle around to the front and scanned for threats. What he saw there, in the dim shadows of the shuttle’s interior, was blood and lots of it. Blood spattered the walls in abstract, almost artistic patterns, and pooled on the floor, gathering at a low point near the spacesuit locker.

  The source of the blood was lying slumped against the far bulkhead, just this side of the cockpit. He was a young man, maybe in his mid-twenties if you took into account that he was from the Pirate Worlds and wouldn’t have access to anti-aging treatments. He had a shock of blond hair and blue eyes that had been vacant and lifeless for hours now. His chest had been ripped apart, the ribs splintered and broken and yanked out through the skin.

  Ross felt bile rising in the back of his throat and fought to keep it down, the fierce desire not to puke inside his helmet overriding the sheer shock and terror of the sight that confronted him…and worse, the memories that it freed from years of successful suppression. They floated in his vision like ghosts, blotting out the darkness of the shuttle with the obscenely bright lights of the Metaurus and the vivid red of oceans of blood orbiting the mutilated corpses of the crew. He felt it again, that inescapable, unrelenting, claustrophobic panic of being trapped on that ship with the creature, unkillable, implacable, unstoppable.

  He didn’t remember making the decision, just suddenly found himself tumbling to the ground beneath the airlock, hyperventilating, feeling as if he couldn’t get a full breath. Desperate, he yanked the quick-release toggles of his helmet forward and twisted it off. The air was bitterly cold and as thin as a mountaintop back on Earth, and it slapped him in the face, finally breaking him free of the bonds of mindless terror that had taken hold inside the shuttle.

  “Bear!” Emil was shouting at him over his own helmet’s external speakers, leaning over to grab his shoulder. Ross scrambled backwards, eyes wide, staring at Emil but barely seeing him. “Bear, what the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “It’s back,” he gibbered. “It’s here, Emil. It’s down here with us…”

  “What are you talking about?” Emil demanded.

  Ross pounded a fist on the ground, trying to get himself back under control. He sucked in a couple of deep breaths, then grabbed his helmet and settled it back into its yoke, watching the HUD flicker back to life. Katya was transmitting at him, trying to find out what was wrong, but he ignored her.

  “Gunny, do you read?” he called over the net they’d established before he’d left on patrol. “Gunny, this is Ross, do you read me?”

  “I’m here, Corporal,” Kamara answered. “Have you reached the shuttle?”

  “The bird’s intact, only one occupant, I think it’s the pilot, and he’s dead. Been dead for hours, maybe ever since he landed.” He heard his words and realized he was talking fast, almost manic. He tried to calm himself down, concentrating on his breathing. “Gunny, he was ripped to pieces. He’s all over the inside of the shuttle. It’s back, it’s here. It came down with him.”

  Kamara didn’t respond immediately, and Ross wondered if the man believed him. Cursing, he tapped the wrist controls for his helmet ‘link and uploaded the video feed from his helmet camera to the line, sending it to Kamara.

  “Shit.” The word was an exhale, involuntary. Ross knew the Gunny had seen the same thing he had, had come to the same conclusion. “Ross, get your team out of there, get back to base immediately. Do you copy that? Get out now.”

  Ross couldn’t remember ever hearing the Gunny sound scared, but he sure as hell did now.

  Good, he thought. That means he understands the situation.

  ***

  Ash saw Commander Busick’s hand shaking as she tried to bring the glass of water to her mouth. Finally, she gave up, setting it back on the conference room table and clenching her hands into fists to stop the shaking.

  “It would have been better if you hadn’t found us,” she said, her tone fatalistic, her eyes flat and hopeless. “It would have just stayed up there, asleep or hibernating or whatever.”

  “We’d have starved in another year.” Kamara pointed out. “Less.”

  He wasn’t sitting; he seemed too keyed up to sit, his eyes travelling back to the display screen fixed to the wall, where the IFF transponders from the Marine patrol were slowly moving across the map back towards the base.

  “If it’s here,” Weaver asserted, “it’s going to find this place. You know how intelligent it is.” The Chief of Boat was calm, businesslike, treating the whole situation like it was just another day at work. His coffee cup steamed patiently in front of him, but he ignored it.

  “Hold on a second,” Fontenot interrupted, raising a hand to pause the conversation. She’d changed out of her vacuum suit as well, but all they’d been able to find in her size was a sweat suit from one of the science crew, with the logo of a university on Hermes emblazoned across the chest. “Tell me something. This…hybrid, you called it? This thing was supposed to be a weapon to use against the Tahni, right?”

  “That was the plan,” Busick confirmed. “That’s what we were told.”

  It was just the five of them in the makeshift conference room, another of the base’s repurposed storage areas that Busick and her crew had commandeered. There were only twenty-one of them in all, Ash had found out. Out of a crew of two hundred on the Metaurus, less than two dozen had made it onto the shuttle and down to the surface. Kamara, two squads of his Marines, Busick, Chief Weaver, the corpsman they’d met earlier and two docking bay technicians they’d grabbed up during the evacuation.

  “So, it had to be in some kind of cage or something,” Fontenot surmised. She was pacing slowly back and forth in front of the conference table. “How did it get out?”

  “It was supposed to be in hibernation,” Busick said, eyes a bit unfocussed, voice haunted with the memory. “They sent it to us in some kind of freezing chamber that was supposed to keep it asleep.”

  “It was like a coffin,” Weaver told them, making the shape with waves of his hands. “Like a big, damned coffin, all metal with a liquid nitrogen tank attached to it. We were supposed to put it in the hold and make sure it was attached to the power feed in case its batteries failed.” He grimaced. “It never made it to the hold. I don’t know what happened. Could have been a battery problem, could have been a nitrogen leak maybe.”

  “It could have been,” Kamara interrupted in a tone filled with cold fury, “that one of those damned Frankensteins fucked up.”

  “We’re never gonna’ know,” Weaver pointed out. “Either way, the thing broke loose between the docking bay and the hold. Captain Schofield contacted the base here, and Dr. Nagle told him that the thing was going to try to take control of the ship’s navigation, and that he couldn’t let it, or the creature would head straight for Earth.”

  “What?” Ash blurted, straightening in his seat. “This hybrid can fly a damned Fleet cruiser? And why would it head for Earth?”

  “I’m telling you what Nagle said.” Weaver shrugged. “He was pretty adamant about it; whatever else we did, we couldn’t let the hybrid get control of the ship.”

  “We tried everything we had time for,” Busick murmured, and Ash could see the memories washing over her like a tide, carrying her further away from the conference room. “We tried sealing off sections, tried setting up ambushes, but we couldn’t track it on the security systems. It just wouldn’t
show up. Everything we did was too slow. But we could tell from the reports that it was heading for the bridge. Captain Schofield sent me and the Chief with Gunny Kamara and his Marines to take one of the shuttles and sabotage the other.”

  Her jaws clamped down for a moment and Ash sensed she was fighting back the emotions rising with the memories.

  “He had everyone left from Security make a last stand with him on the bridge, and he had the Engineering crew disable the Teller-Fox unit. I know the hybrid went to Engineering after it killed…after the bridge. We were gone by then, heading for the surface.”

  “Commander,” Ash said slowly and carefully, finally finding a time to voice a question he’d had since he’d arrived, “you’ve been here six years. There can’t be that many of the researchers and none of them are fighters. Why haven’t you taken control of this base?”

  Kamara glanced at him sharply, and then just as sharply at Busick, and Ash had the sense that the Gunny had suggested they do just that on multiple occasions.

  “Aside from the fact that I would have been court-martialed if we were ever rescued,” she pointed out tiredly, like she’d had this argument before, “it was suggested to me not so subtly by Dr. Sanchez that there were certain safeguards in place in an installation like this, with the sort of incredibly sensitive, incredibly secret work they were doing. Safeguards that would bring the whole base down on top of us if she didn’t actively prevent it on a regular basis.”

  “Come on,” Fontenot scoffed. “These eggheads can’t all be willing to kill themselves just to stay in charge here.”

  “All of them?” Busick repeated. “No. But Sanchez is a fucking maniac. I could believe she’d do it. I do believe she’d do it.”

  “Are you going to tell them it’s here?” Ash wanted to know. “They might have some way of taking it out.”

  “I already did,” she said, running her hands over her face. “Nagle said he’d be up in a few minutes.”