Dominant Species

by Michael E. Marks

  Stitch hurled the grenade into the creature's path, reaching forward from the end of the throw to clamp down on Merlin's knee-plate. His fingers curled over the forward edge and he yanked back fiercely. A full second passed before the door sensors registered the movement and began to close.

  "Two," he muttered.

  The grenade hit Jaws on the shoulder and bounced off to the left.

  "Three."

  The doors slid shut, closing off the image of the beast that thundered in like a freight train. Stitch wrapped both arms around Merlin's chest.

  Four.

  CHAPTER 37

  Fog closed over the dark cube, masking the bubbles that rose to the pool's surface. Luminous coolant ran off his armor in sheets as Ridgeway pulled himself up over the skid's rail.

  "Think it'll work Majah?"

  The barge climbed as Ridgeway rolled onto the deck. "It'll have to."

  In reality, Ridgeway knew that the decision was as much a lack of options as anything else. Submerging the cube in the lake would not conceal it for long, but Ridgeway knew that extended timeframes had ceased to matter. For the Marines, it had come down to now-or-nothing.

  Light poured from the hull breach high above Papa-Six. As the skid closed in on the gaping hole, Ridgeway reeled off directions. "We still can't raise Stitch or Merlin. They should be somewhere along the straightest line from the Sphere to the Lobby. Taz, you find ‘em and bring ‘em here, double-time."

  "Rojah that."

  Ridgeway continued without a break. "Monster, you're at the base of the Tower. Anything moves inside and you let me know." The skid swerved, its demands for constant attention grew more petulant with every moment. Ridgeway cursed under his breath as he countered the imbalance.

  "Once I drop you off," he continued, "I'll arm this bitch, send it up on autopilot and blow it as soon as it reaches the roof. I'll hold the perimeter until you make it back with the troops."

  "But Majah, you can't stand off those bastards by yourself."

  Ridgeway leaned forward at the wheel. "This isn't up for a vote. You have your job so do it." The barge scraped against the side of the hull with a nails-on-chalkboard screech. Taz took two steps back and rocked his weight on the balls of his feet, preparing for the running leap.

  Ridgeway's hand closed on the Aussie's shoulder, his voice calm in the midst of crisis. "Get my team out of there Taz. I'm counting on you."

  Taz paused for an instant. "I will Majah. Count on it." Then he took two running strides and launched himself from the skid. Taz cleared the twisted folds of ship skin and tumbled roughly across the grated floor beyond.

  Monster stepped up to the launch point and extended a scarred gauntlet.

  Ridgeway took his hand in a firm grasp. "We're not done here." he said quietly, "Not by a long shot."

  "Hell I know that," Monster said with a dismissive air that belied his exhaustion. "I'll just stick with the pups to make sure they get along."

  "You do that."

  A cold chill flooded Ridgeway's heart as Monster turned to jump. The mangled armor, the Gatling all but empty. Survival rested on the man within the shell.

  He watched as Monster leaped, falling far short of the Aussie's mark. He belly-flopped on a curved flap of hull skin and grabbed frantically for purchase. With just his right hand, Monster dragged himself over the crest and down to the deck beyond.

  Ridgeway felt a moment of awe. Monster moved not like a collection of fractured bones and torn flesh, but like a man with a mission. The two figures set off across the catwalks to the distant Tower.

  A rough shudder from the engine reminded Ridgeway that he could not afford to monitor their progress. With his own mission to accomplish, he pushed the prow of the skid into a right-hand slide and spiraled down to the lake.

  He brought the vehicle to a hover less than a meter above the surface and punched the final codes to arm the Detonex charge. Tripping the autopilot to ACTIVE, he scooped up his rifle, knowing that only two grenades remained in the spent weapon. With a silent prayer on his lips he watched the flatbed rise to its rendezvous with incineration. The hope of every surviving Marine rose with it.

  Tentacles of black smoke trailed the vehicle as it ascended, pouring through the panels that Taz had punched out of her underbelly. A violent cough echoed down from the engine within.

  C'mon sweetheart, just a little further. Ridgeway willed the skid to rise as he glanced back at Papa-Six. In a few minutes the dark silhouettes of his Marines should begin to emerge from the sunken doorway. As if in response to his own thoughts, a blip on the TAC marked the first sign of movement.

  Ridgeway gripped his rifle and looked up as the warning tone's scream overlapped the pulsing red bracket in a single neural flash.

  The movement centered directly above him.

  It looked like a hand falling from high on the hull, a hand the size of a tractor. The spider's outstretched limbs were spread like jointed sections of telephone pole as it slammed down on Ridgeway like an iron bomb.

  The world exploded in a numbing crash of light and sound as Ridgeway was driven below the surface of the lake. Sapphire haze sloshed violently across his vision as the shockwave drove Ridgeway's tumbling form away from its epicenter.

  A second wave pushed the Marine across sharp rock before he could regain his footing. Massive mechanical legs churned the luminous coolant into froth. The creature was enraged, frantic, thrashing desperately through the fog. Ridgeway twisted away and dove back into the shallow liquid, desperate to buy separation.

  When he surfaced, Ridgeway could see that the Spider had been injured in the fall. The stolen CAR clattered on the creature's shoulder, its barrel bent askew. Ridgeway's own rifle was lost, now somewhere on the bottom of the lake. The dense liquid concealed the weapon as well as it did the cube.

  Only one priority burned in Ridgeway's mind. Blow the skid.

  He spun his focus to the TAC and found nothing. Only a tiny treble buzz marked the system's demise. No TAC, no transmit. Ridgeway's fury and frustration boiled so fiercely that even the pain in his body was forgotten.

  The Marine lunged to one side beneath a mammoth limb that swept overhead. The Spider drew itself upright, rising above the shimmering surface.

  With three slogging strides Ridgeway launched himself into another shallow dive. His armored hands grabbed one jutting rock after another on the lake's floor until he slammed into a mass of metal.

  On pure reflex, Ridgeway threw a powerful fist that crumpled steel on impact. He blinked rapidly in surprise before he realized that he had just punched a truck. At least the remains of a truck, lying battered and broken in a shallow lake.

  Corroded metal crumbling in his grasp, Ridgeway clambered up the dead vehicle and over the driver's side of the cab. The door was gone and Ridgeway could see debris scattered throughout the gutted interior.

  The lake erupted behind him with volcanic fury. Ridgeway tried to jump past the door but the pitted frame collapsed beneath his weight. He tumbled into the cab, bounced hard across the center console and tore away a line of half-eaten flatscreens on the dash.

  The truck heaved violently amid a crushing bang and the din of ripping steel as the spider threw itself into the attack. Ridgeway thrashed in the cramped space before a second lurch threw him down into the footwell as the rear of the truck pitched up dramatically.

  Items tumbled into the cab through an open panel between the two seats. Rations in foil packages, wrenches and screwdrivers. Amid a bundle of oily rags and a small hydraulic jack, Ridgeway caught the flash of a black rubber grip that slid across the opening. A pistol grip.

  The cab fell flat with a tooth-jarring slam as the sound of tearing metal was replaced by another violent thrashing in the lake. Something other than Ridgeway had grabbed the Spider's attention.

  He was not about to question the diversion. Ridgeway hurled himself between the seats and fished wildly for what he prayed was a gun. Slithering madly, he forced his body further into
the dark cabin until his gaze fell on the Thermalite.

  Merlin's warning resurfaced as he shuffled through the crap strewn in the darkness. Under a tangled wad of coveralls, his hand closed almost naturally on a textured rubber grip.

  Shotgun, Ridgeway recognized with a measure of surprise, an old-fashioned pump. He pressed the release and half-pulled the slide. The red plastic case of a large-gauge shell sat nestled in the chamber. The word SABOT was stamped along the waist of the shell. Ridgeway looked at the tube. Seven rounds max, he thought, that's if the tube is full. He had no time to pump the rounds free and check.

  Outside the cab, the wild flailing continued unabated. Cautiously, Ridgeway stuck his head up through the missing driver's door.

  The Spider writhed in the lake, slapping its forelimbs madly in the coolant. One limb was disintegrating before Ridgeway's eyes, the metal foaming with grotesque effervescence.

  The Marine looked back along the truck where he fixed on the barrel-sized drum that hung from the mangled frame. The cylinder, now crumpled and split, drizzled a stream of Hex. The word OVERFLOW could still be seen stenciled across its upper surface, just below the word WARNING.

  "That's what you get for ignoring warning labels motherfucker." Ridgeway muttered the words with a malicious snarl as he raised the shotgun. The cluster of camera-like eyes seemed his best target. If he didn't kill it, he could at least try to blind it. Ridgeway drew careful aim at one of the bobbing red orbs and fired.

  A tongue of muzzle flame licked from the barrel and the glass sphere exploded from the Spider's skull in a cloud of glittering fragments. Ridgeway fired three more rounds in rapid succession, punching one fist-sized hole after another through the creature's whiplashed cranium.

  The Spider pitched forward and collapsed into the lake. Ridgeway tracked its fall with the shotgun, wary of a feint. Without waiting for motion, he hammered two more rounds down the creature's centerline, starting at what he took for the base of its skull.

  Ridgeway paused, breathing heavily. A ragged sound echoed from high above.

  The skid wobbled badly as the auto-pilot fought to maintain its programmed location, but the slow death of the engine took a toll. The computer was not designed to compensate for such wild surges in power and the skid slammed into the stone ceiling with a screech. Bits of the bow ramp broke off and fell to the lake.

  Ridgeway slapped the side of his helmet as he struggled to re-boot the TAC, but the system doggedly refused. He looked desperately for a way to trigger the Detonex before the skid lost power. He considered the shotgun in his hands and weighed the odds of throwing one round through the missing floor plate to hit the charge inside.

  One in a million shot, Ridgeway thought, something even Darcy would have been loathe to try. If he hit the engine instead, the skid would fall out of the air and slam into the lake. The shock would likely set off the charge, unleashing the fury of a gravitic core breach in Ridgeway's face instead of against the ceiling.

  Bad idea, Ridgeway told himself, but he had no other.

  Bracing as firmly as he could atop the crumbled truck, Ridgeway raised the shotgun's muzzle. He pushed his vision as hard as the optics would allow and peered into the choking smoke, hoping to find a flat disk inside a bucking, veering hole.

  One in a million my ass, he chided his own audacity, more like one in a billion.

  He could see nothing but the black smoke that poured from the hole in thick, tuberculin coughs. A stalactite clipped the damaged bow and put the skid into a slow spin. Ridgeway strained to track the oscillating target.

  Dammit, Ridgeway snarled. One shot, just give me one shot.

  Ridgeway exhaled slowly as he drew the slack from the trigger. Riveted on the target, he never saw the monstrous tattered arm until it smashed into his legs.

  CHAPTER 38

  The thunderclap of the skid's detonation was overdue and Taz glanced back as he dashed across the catwalks. He was just shy of the Tower when the sounds of gunfire rang from outside the ship.

  "Majah's in trouble," Taz snapped over his shoulder, "We gotta help him."

  Monster answered the statement with a shove that propelled Taz even faster.

  "I'm goin, I'm goin," Taz bitched. A second volley of gunfire sounded, heavy booms that came from no weapon in the Marine's inventory. The pace was quick but measured. Whatever was shooting was taking aim, and nothing was shooting back.

  Taz started to turn back when a second shove sent him sprawling. Cursing madly, he rolled up to one knee. "Shit Gunny, we--"

  The shape above him looked like a flattened egg on a mass of whipping tentacles. By far the smallest of the creatures, it moved with a striking agility. The oval body angled down, a dozen shimmering orbs spread across the front of its hull. Amid the eyes, a cluster of small appendages flicked in Gorgonesque fashion, one pair sparking with voltage as they touched. A flat metal bar extended like a tongue turned on-edge, the curved edge a blur of spinning chain.

  Taz drove his boot-heels into the creature's underbelly, but it held fast, anchored by the grasp of a dozen prehensile limbs. It forced itself down, driving the howling chainsaw blade closer and closer to the Aussie's facemask. Taz watched the blade dip inexorably closer until a dark shape plowed into the creature's side. Monster's crushing tackle drove the thing to the deck with a loud crash.

  As Taz rolled to his feet the Gatling gave a short bark that ended as quickly as it began. Monster fired from one knee, the handful of rounds left in the chambers carving a short but horrific swath across the creature's face. It flinched away, then spun back with a fury.

  Monster roared, left arm pressed tight against his chest as he swung the Gatling like a massive club. The blow drove the oval body to the floor where the spinning blade threw a fountain of sparks. In a blur of ferocity the heavy gun swung down brutally again and again, sledgehammer blows that spalled metal plates from the creature's shell. When Monster paused, chest heaving, a crumpled ruin lay at his feet.

  "Crikey Gunny, I think you killed it."

  Monster's only reply was a looping overhead blow that crashed down with so much force that the Gatling tore away from his arm. The creature's torso cracked open and a thick, dark sludge gushed from the wound.

  "Bloody hell." Taz could only whisper the words, awestruck at the display of feral violence. The fucking thing never got in a shot.

  As he watched Monster back away, a second image flickered through his mind, the image of an angry young Marine who not so long ago stood on the verge of calling Monster out.

  Buggar me, his lip curled ruefully, what the hell was I thinking?

  A deep, heaving growl in his chest, Monster staggered to the tower door and jabbed at the dark control switch. The door refused to budge, an ill-timed decision given Monster's state of mind. The sergeant hauled back and threw his right forearm into the door so hard that the metal rang. On the third blow it folded. He sagged against the now-open doorframe and motioned for Taz to pass.

  As Taz reached the portal, a hand clamped down on his shoulder. He turned to the bloodstained figure.

  "Major's doin his job." Monster swallowed loudly, then huffed a deep breath. "Now I've done mine." The big sergeant leaned forward and hooked a thumb toward the turbolift just inside the door. "You find ‘em, bring ‘em home, that's your duty."

  Taz tried to swallow the dryness in his throat. He only nodded and stepped through the door. The turbolift opened with a hiss and as he boarded, Taz realized what he wanted to say. He looked back at the battered figure that filled the doorway, and the dark cluster of snake-like arms that rose behind him.

  Taz screamed.

  The big Marine ducked as a metal arm smashed the doorframe just above his helmet. With a snarl Monster slammed his shoulder into the center of the flailing limbs. His legs pistoned madly as he drove the creature backward into the rail with such force that the metal snapped. Locked together, they tumbled from sight.

  "Noooooo!" Taz ran forward as the sounds of breaking stee
l echoed up from below. He reached the ledge to see the ragged gaps smashed through several catwalks below. Bits of metal rained down into the pool, tiny splashes speckling the huge ring of disturbance that spread across its radiant surface. He stared down at the lake until the ripple dispersed and the broken fog closed together once more.

  A scream erupted from his lungs as he turned and slammed his fist into the wall. A second blow followed, four-knuckle dents aggregating on the smooth surface. At half a dozen he stopped and slumped against the lumpy, bowl-shaped depression. Curses of vengeance gave way to tortured mutterings.

  Duty, he told himself, Monster's last words. Gotta find the team. Monster, Darcy, Ridgeway; he wondered for a moment if anyone was alive to find.

  CHAPTER 39

  The wide blood slick extended from the turbolift all the way to the Sickbay door, stretched out like a flat crimson serpent. Streaks of dark red gleamed against the industrial greys of the hallway.

  The sanguine trail hooked sharply at the door where the wide pool gave mute testament to time spent trying to get the door to open. Few motion-sensors were attuned for bodies that dragged themselves across the floor.

  Once past the door the blood slick curved to the right, avoiding the damaged floor. Merlin lay in a gloss red puddle, free from the remnants of his broken armor that now lay scattered about him. The last of his blood seeped from the wounds that covered his body. He breathed, weak and shallow, due largely to the stimulants Stitch had dumped in his system.

  The medic dragged himself along the far wall, activating the system that he hoped would save Merlin's life. Dozens of monitors flickered with activity as he leaned back and fumbled to load the infuser with a brain-numbing mix of narcotics and Versed. If the first failed to keep him in oblivion, the second would insure that the ghastly images would be forgotten.