by Smith, Glenn
“Oh my God,” Marissa echoed. “Is she alive?”
“I think she moved a second ago. Must have been her we heard moaning.”
“What are we...”
“Doc, this is Graves. I need you in the camp commander’s office ASAP. Main door, then down the hall, first room on the right.”
“Copy that, Sarge. Two minutes.”
A loud demonic hiss like that of a very large and very angry reptile suddenly filled the room. The startled Marines separated quickly, but before either of them could react further, a heavy stream of thick florescent bile-yellow fluid sprayed in from the darkness of the hallway as if fired from a high-powered garden hose and spattered over Marissa’s face and chest. She dropped her rifle and clutched her face in her hands, screaming at the top of her lungs as she collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain.
“Marissa!” Dylan shouted. He raised his rifle to the doorway and fired blindly into the darkness as he rushed toward her, but a long and immensely powerful whip suddenly lashed out and knocked him back as it ripped the rifle from his hands. Then, in that same fluid motion, it struck Marissa square across her chest as she tried to climb back to her feet and knocked her back against the far wall. She dropped back to the floor, unconscious or dead Dylan could not know.
A man-sized, vaguely humanoid creature—the beast had two arms, two legs, and a head, at least—emerged from the darkness, crouching low, baring sharp teeth and stiletto-like fangs as it moved to block Dylan’s only escape route. Its evil red eyes glowed like two small suns hanging side-by-side in space. It hissed as it breathed, its torso pulsated with each heavy breath, and its smooth, dark exoskeleton glistened like wet leather in the dim moonlight.
“Holy shit,” Dylan mumbled, staring wide-eyed at the creature as he slowly backed away.
A huge, thick membrane like a cobra’s cowl fanned out from the sides of its long triangular head and neck, stretching beyond the width of its massive shoulders as the creature grew to nearly three meters in height, lifting its feet from the floor and holding its legs tightly against the long, muscular tail on which it balanced.
“What the hell are you?” Dylan asked, though he didn’t expect to get an answer. One possibility immediately came to mind, however, and he wasn’t as quick to dismiss it as he might have been under less stressful circumstances. It was the serpent—the Prince of Darkness. It was the devil itself!
It slithered slowly toward him, hissing, taunting him as though it knew what effect its hideous appearance was having on him. A sign of intelligence, Dylan noted as he backed farther away, his eyes still wide with shock. He finally gathered his wits and drew his sidearm, only to have it whipped from his grasp by the creature’s lightning quick tail before he could aim and fire, just as his rifle had been.
He grabbed everything he could find within his reach—medical instruments, tools, chairs, equipment—and threw it at the creature’s head as hard as he could, but the agile monster moved too fast and ducked out of the way every time. Then, suddenly, it spat. Dylan threw his arms across his face barely in time to protect it from the venom, but in so doing he left himself wide open to attack.
The creature whirled completely around and grabbed him up in its long tail, which it swiftly coiled around his mid-section. It lifted him up off of the floor, and then slowly began squeezing the life out of him.
The air gushed from his lungs. He opened his mouth as wide as he could, but he couldn’t even begin to draw a breath. One by one his ribs began to crack like dry twigs under a hiker’s boots. Tiny sparks of light began dancing like fireflies in the darkness before his tearing eyes. He choked and coughed up what little air he had left. He felt warm blood trickling down his cheek. This was it. This was finally the end. His incredible luck had finally run out. He was going to die in agony and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.
Gunfire exploded in the tiny room and the bone-crushing pressure abruptly disappeared as the screeching creature dropped him. More gunfire erupted as he lay on the floor clutching his shattered ribs, gasping painfully for air, but it quickly ceased with a loud crash as suddenly as it had begun.
Dylan looked up just as the blurry creature reached down—its arms looked oddly frail, too long and skinny for its body size—and grabbed him by the front of his TAC-vest. It had dropped to its feet again and had clearly been weakened. Lifting him off the floor seemed to take more effort than it should have for a creature so powerful. Even one with such skinny arms.
It wasn’t the devil at all! It was flesh and blood, just like him, and it was wounded!
And that meant it could be killed!
He reached out with one arm, still cradling his ribs with the other, and pushed as hard as he could against the creature’s armored torso, but his feet kept slipping on the wet floor and he couldn’t get the traction he needed to put up more of a fight. He stared in horror as the creature’s jaw bones suddenly separated, opening into four fanged mandibles, thick saliva dripping from the sinew that stretched between them. A second row of long needle-sharp teeth protruded from its mouth as if hinged along the gum line. Its breath smelled of rotten meat and vomit. Dear God, it intended to eat him!
He grabbed its upper mandibles, one in each hand, and screamed in agony as he pushed against them, forcing them outward with all his might. He kicked repeatedly at the creature’s knees and groin, what it had of one, until it finally threw him down again. He hit the floor with a bone-jarring thud and tried to roll out of the creature’s reach, but it recovered too quickly and grabbed him again. This time, however, he was ready. He drew his combat knife from his belt sheath, and when the creature pulled him in, he lashed out and opened its gullet from one side of its head to the other.
The doomed creature dropped him into the expanding pool of its cold, thick blood. It tried to cry out as it collapsed, but the only sounds it managed to make were the flapping of its loose gullet tissue and the gurgling of its gushing blood. Finally it just lay there twitching, silently waiting to die. Dylan could only stare through tear-filled eyes at the fallen creature as he struggled to breathe against excruciating pain.
He was dying.
A small explosion outside shook the floor and rattled the window. Gunfire followed, then another small explosion and more gunfire. Much more. Dylan recognized the distinct sound of his team’s pulse rifles. The squad had been compromised. Battle had been joined.
He was dying.
“Lieutenant?” he strained to say.
“We’re on our way, Sergeant. Hold on.”
Someone moaned.
“Who’s there?” Dylan shouted, “Marissa!” and it hurt like hell! He tried valiantly to ignore the pain as he crawled to her side and struggled to turn her over. When he finally did roll her onto her back, that same stench of rancid vomit hit him so hard that he almost vomited himself, but somehow he managed to hold everything down.
Her face was badly discolored and her eyes were nearly swollen shut. The front of her TAC-vest had dissolved completely away, and what little remained of her battle-dress tunic was torn wide open. A deep cut ran high across her burned and bloodied chest, but it didn’t appear to be bleeding anymore.
“I’m still with you,” she weakly proclaimed through gritted teeth. “How bad is it?”
“I don’t think it’s too serious,” Dylan lied.
“Sure burned like hell.”
“Past tense? How does it feel now?”
“Like salt and lemon juice in an open cut. Stings a lot, but it doesn’t burn like it did at first. Let’s not even discuss the smell.”
Despite everything, Dylan grinned. “At least it missed your sense of humor.”
“Did I get the bastard?”
“You got it all right. Practically cut it in half. You saved my life.”
But he was dying anyway.
“You’re welcome,” she told hm. “So what the hell is it?”
“That’s a damn good question...for another time. All that matters right
now is that the bastard’s dead and we’ve recovered our second objective. We’ve got to get her out of here.” He looked around. “Where the hell is Doc?” The sounds of battle grew louder and more intense. “Sounds like it’s getting bad out there. How are your eyes? Can you see anything?”
“I can see enough to find my way the hell out of here, that’s for sure!” she exclaimed as he helped her, as much as he could help her, to sit up. He leaned her back in the corner against the wall.
But he was...no. He wasn’t going to die. Not here. Not like this.
“Hold on a second.” Barely able to keep from crying out as he stood up, Dylan staggered once, but managed stay on his feet. He searched the room and retrieved their rifles and his pistol. Forcing himself not to give in to the crippling pain that his movements caused, he slung her rifle over his head and shoulder while he held his own in hand. Then he returned to her side.
“Okay, Marissa. Let’s free that poor girl and get the hell out of this Godforsaken place.”
Grimacing against the agony in his back and chest, he helped her to her feet—he wasn’t real sure that it shouldn’t have been the other way around, but so be it—and guided her over to the royal consort’s side.
“Aren’t you going to have Doc look her over before we move her?” she asked him as he started unfastening the leg strap closest to him.
“We can’t wait for him anymore. We need to get her out of here now.”
“But moving her might...”
“It might, but she’s on the verge of that now. Get her hands.”
He freed her leg and gently straightened it and laid it down, eliciting a weak moan that sounded like a response to pain. “I’m sorry,” he told her through gritted teeth, even though she probably didn’t understand English. Then he got to work on her other leg.
“Your arms are burned,” Marissa observed as she started on the straps around the consort’s wrists.
“The bastard spat at me.”
“Yeah, it does that. What about these needles in her arm, and all these sensors?” she asked once she’d freed the young woman’s wrists.
“Pull them out, carefully. Then see if you can find something to wrap around her arm.”
Marissa complied, then wrapped the girl’s arm with a strip of material she tore off her own damaged tunic. Hell, it was ruined anyway. “Hey, look. She’s awake,” she then observed.
Dylan looked and saw that her irises had reappeared, and that she appeared to be trying to focus on her rescuers. He laid her right leg down gently, then moved closer to her head, where he guessed she might be able to see him better, and grasped her arm and slid his other hand under her shoulder. “Help me sit her up.”
“I think standing her up would be a lot better, Sarge,” Marissa advised. “Provided her legs will hold her, that is. Sitting her up will put pressure on her genitals and I think she’s got enough problems there already.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Dylan agreed, clenching his teeth as his ribs mercilessly reminded him not to try to lift too quickly. He relaxed. “Okay, let’s do that.”
Marissa slipped her hands under the girl’s armpits and sat her part way up to get a better hold. She whimpered, but offered no resistance. Dylan raised her knees just enough to wrap his arms around them. “On three,” he said, knowing that lifting her was really going to hurt. “One, two, THREE.” They lifted.
Dylan clamped his jaw down tight but couldn’t hold the scream in, and then collapsed to his knees when he started to crouch down to set the girl’s feet on the floor. Thank God she was small and slender. He grunted his way back to his feet and handed Marissa’s rifle back to her, then pulled off his TAC-vest and shirt, replaced his vest as quickly as he could, and held his shirt out to the girl. She accepted it eagerly with a nod of thanks, pulled it on, and buttoned it to the collar.
“All right,” Dillon said through clenched teeth. “Let’s go.” They took the girl gently by the arms and led her out of the room.
“I’m cut, burned, and half blind,” Marissa commented as they hobbled up the hallway toward the main door, “You’re in pain and barely able to walk, and this poor girl is...well, whatever is wrong with her. Aren’t we a sight to behold?”
“Fire in the hole!” someone warned, just as they stepped outside.
“Ortiz is out of it,” Dylan advised the others over the comm-link. “She’ll be taking...”
A huge explosion suddenly rocked the main hall and the shockwave knocked Dylan and Marissa and the girl backward to the ground. Seconds later the entire building crumbled into a pile of rubble. The armory went up in a thunderous eruption of flames as well, but its specially designed structure directed the blast and subsequent detonations of ammunition and explosives upward, into the night sky.
As a shower of smoldering debris rained down on the compound, terrorists and Sulaini Regular Army troops alike poured out of both ends of the barracks, only to be mowed down by Matrewski, Greenburg, and LeClerc at one end and Shin at the other before they ever had a chance to join the fight.
Dylan jumped up, his pain quenched by the mad rush of adrenaline that surged through his bloodstream, but as he and Marissa helped the girl back to her feet, dozens of huge, muscular, heavily body-armored Veshtonn blood-warriors began to appear all around them, seemingly out of nowhere. The compound screamed with pulse-rifle and automatic weapons fire. Seconds later a pair of Solfleet assault shuttles soared into view and hovered just meters off the ground, their onboard and pod-mounted weapons firing in all directions while friendly troops dropped to the ground firing from both sides.
Dylan caught a glimpse of Shin as she collapsed motionless to the dirt. Then something burned his thigh. He glanced down at it, and just as he realized that he’d been shot, his right shoulder exploded in a burst of searing agony so intense that he couldn’t even scream as he stumbled backward to the ground, dragging the girl down on top of him.
“Sergeant Graves is down!” Marissa hollered as she bent down to pull the girl off of him. But she lost her balance and fell as well. She struggled to her hands and knees, only to fall face down into the dirt again. The world was spinning. She couldn’t find her balance.
The battle raged on.
Dylan’s pain faded to numbness. Good. The wound wasn’t that bad. He rolled onto his stomach, retrieved his rifle, and staggered to his feet, determined to stay in the fight. But as he plodded forward, unable even to raise his rifle, his head suddenly snapped back and his knees buckled. He collapsed, his legs bent up underneath him, his buttocks on his heels and his shoulders and the back of his head on the ground. Somehow, through sheer force of will, he managed to sit up again, and he felt his own warm blood flowing into his left eye and down over his cheek and neck. Everything slowed down and the world around him began to spin out of control.
Idiot! Standing up and walking toward the enemy like that!
Why hadn’t the enemy soldiers come charging out of the barracks a lot sooner?
Funny, the thoughts that crossed a person’s mind as they died. Wasn’t his entire life supposed to flash before him or something?
The world faded until all was darkness.
Chapter 32
The Next Morning
Monday, 30 August 2190
Admiral Hansen woke with a gasp, drenched in a cold sweat, and panted heavily as he struggled to catch his breath, propped up on his elbows and clutching the bottom sheet in his white-knuckled fists before he even realized where he was. What the hell... Of course. The damn nightmares again. He’d thought he was getting used to them, but apparently not.
He drew several slow, deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, to calm himself down. Then he lay back again. His sheets and pillowcase were cold and damp with his perspiration, but that was nothing new. He’d grown used to it again, weeks ago. What was new was...was what was old. For the first time since Dylan Graves had shown up in his nightmares, he’d been absent. The nightmares had reverted to
their original form as if the sergeant had never appeared in them at all. But why? What could it mean? If he really had been dreaming the events of a parallel timeline these last several weeks—having no other explanation for the phenomenon, he’d come to believe that to be the case—then why had those events suddenly stopped intruding on his mind now?
Günter? Could all of this have something to do with Liz’s brother? Had he finally done something after all this time? Had he altered their reality in some unforeseen way all those weeks ago and caused his nightmares to change? If so, then what had happened to change them back? And perhaps more importantly, why? Why had they changed back? If Günter had done something to cause this, what had happened to undo whatever he did? Was history set in stone after all? Was the flow of time, in the end, unalterable?
Questions. So many questions.
Questions better left for morning, he decided. He was too sleepy at the moment to think straight. He closed his eyes, yawned, and settled in to go back to sleep.
His alarm suddenly pierced the peaceful silence. He sighed. Monday morning already. Hadn’t he just laid his head back down a few seconds ago?
Those one day weekends—working weekends, to be more accurate—were getting old in a big hurry. But with the state of affairs in the galaxy being what it was, his self-imposed six and a half day work weeks were more necessary than ever. Still, it would be nice to enjoy two days off in a row once in a while. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had two days off. He couldn’t remember the last time he and Heather had spent just a Saturday or a Sunday together, let alone an entire weekend.
