Fata Morgana

by Steven R. Boyett

  Farley’s fist shook as he lowered the cleanly severed hunk of sidearm. He set the pistol fragment in front of the bug and showed his empty hands. It looked like a gesture of surrender. It was.

  The poised tendril retracted and the bug stepped closer. The tendril came up and swept steadily down Farley’s body as if the thing were cleaning a windshield. The bug went still a moment, then stepped back and snatched up the pieces of gun and turned away. It returned to its place in the halted line, and the line resumed its downslope crawl. The bugs on the Messerschmitt returned to their methodical salvage.

  The two bugs in front of Wennda and Yone turned toward one another and tapped their supple forelegs against each other like lodge brothers trading a secret handshake. Then they turned back to Wennda and Yone and swarmed them.

  Yone yelled and tried to scuttle away. Wennda flinched, and the back of her head hit the sloping rock wall. Farley pushed himself to his knees and forced himself to stay upright as each bug swept a tendril the length of the trapped humans’ bodies the way Farley’s bug had done with him.

  Wennda’s bug slid both forelimbs around her nerve rifle and gently tugged on the chunky weapon as if taking a live hand grenade from a baby. The gunstrap across her back went taut and the bug stopped. It lifted the gun and tilted it experimentally. Then it dropped the gun and picked up Wennda and tucked her tight against its underside.

  Farley jumped to his feet.

  The bug joined the line, Wennda slung tight beneath it. She pounded and yelled and tried to grab the thin legs. The bug marched downhill unperturbed.

  Farley went after them. His ankle screamed bloody murder and a fresh wave of nausea washed over him. He ignored it all and ran, passing bugs carrying airplane parts. The crevice quickly darkened as he descended. Something brushed the top of his head. He could no longer stand upright. It didn’t matter. He was going to get to Wennda. Behind him Yone was yelling something but he couldn’t make it out.

  The work line slowed. Farley made out Wennda not ten feet ahead. She was no longer yelling or beating on the bug. The crack was now so narrow that Farley had to turn sideways to sidle between the bugs and the wall of the crevice. The bugs paid him no attention. Up ahead the clustered bugs were silhouetted by a crooked wedge of brighter light. They were crowded up against some constriction.

  Farley dove between the legs of the bug behind Wennda and crawled forward like a sapper. He called out to Wennda and then he was sliding under her. Her back was to him and the tendrils bound her to the underside of the bug like cables. Farley grabbed hold of one and pulled. Nothing doing. He held on and let it drag him along.

  “I’m here!” he said to Wennda’s back. “I’m right behind you! Can you hear me?”

  Her muffled voice said, “Can’t. Breathe.”

  Farley glanced up. The wedge of light was three or four bugs away now. It looked to be an opening out into a larger space.

  Farley dragged along the rough crevice bottom as he slid his free hand along the gunstrap across Wennda’s back, following the strap to the metal clip that joined it to the stock of the gun wedged against Wennda’s hip.

  The bug dragged them through the opening and into some larger and brighter space.

  Farley worked the clip free of the catch and the strap dangled free. He let go of the bug and hit the ground and grabbed the strap. The bug kept going and the strap grew taut and the gun began to slide out and then caught on something. Farley got to his feet and worked the strap from side to side as if playing some nightmare fish.

  Then the gun came free and he fell backward. He lay there a moment, surprised. The oncoming bugs veered around him. Farley got up and ran to the bug that held Wennda and he aimed her rifle at it. The bug stepped out of the line and turned to face him. Beneath it Wennda’s mouth worked silently.

  Farley held his ground. The bug dropped Wennda and nearly pulled Farley off his feet as it snatched the weapon away from him. It turned back around and hurried off, holding the rifle high like a trophy.

  Wennda curled up on her side and gasped for air. Farley knelt beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you hurt?” he asked. “Can you talk?”

  She pointed to her stomach and Farley understood she’d had the breath knocked from her. He sat her up and held onto her and looked back at the line of bugs emerging from the narrow crevice in time to see Yone crawl out. Yone picked himself up and saw Farley and Wennda. Farley gave him a thumbs-up. Yone returned it and gave a pained smile. He looked like something beaten with a rake.

  Then his expression changed and his hand lowered. He was looking past Farley. Bloodied and beaten and suddenly awed and afraid. Some unwilling heretic dragged to the temple of a vengeful god.

  Farley turned to shield Wennda, assuming the bugs were coming back for them. But the bugs weren’t coming back. They were marching in an orderly line that led across the level floor of a great and dimlit space, marching toward the vast and lethal bulk of the Typhon a hundred yards away.

  twenty-eight

  Jerry Broben studied the faintly luminous Redoubt wall a thousand yards away, spread like a green glass dam across the canyon. He made out what might have been street lights, constellated geometries he supposed were buildings, and a gliding cluster of lights at ground level that was probably some kind of vehicle. City in a box.

  In the center of the wall at ground level was a huge, recessed rectangle that he hoped was an equipment door. It certainly was big enough to admit a B-17.

  Full night had fallen and the demolition team could not be more than a few minutes behind them, but Broben had left no rear guard to slow them down. The plan now was to let them catch up.

  He turned away from the wall and dropped back down behind the rock where Martin knelt studying Sten’s unfolded cellophone. Wennda’s tricked-up binoculars were plugged into it, and on the filmy screen was an image of the Redoubt wall.

  “Okay, smart guy, run through this for me one more time,” said Broben.

  “All right,” said Sten. He fiddled with the binoculars and the image rotated.

  Broben glanced at the crew. All of them so far past tired that they’d become some kind of meat machines that would numbly do their jobs till they broke down. All jokes and even grousing had stopped after they’d lost Farley and Wennda and Yone. These last few miles they’d started snapping at each other like whipped dogs. An overwhelming resignation colored every gesture. A sense of going through the motions. They watched the dark canyon behind them or looked at the lighted screen and they waited for a plan from their new commanding officer.

  Broben had never wanted a job less in his life.

  *

  Yone had led the mortar fire straight to where Farley and Wennda had taken cover behind the cigar-shaped rock. The round had hit and they were gone. Farley, Wennda, Yone. Just gone.

  The fissure entrance was a hundred yards away and there would be a firefight if they waited any longer. And there was nothing to wait for now. Just a deep gash in the ground. Even the rock was gone.

  Broben gave the order and they ran for the fissure. Targeting lights had speared out but no more mortar rounds were launched. They had entered the darker fissure and stayed close to the left-hand side and they had kept on running.

  The next five miles had been a cat-and-mouse game of sprinting in the dark and then taking cover and trading potshots. The pursuing demolition team had them on targeting but the bomber crew had them on range. Broben knew the game would change when they reached the Redoubt at the end of the fissure canyon, because there’d be nowhere else to run—and the Redoubt would start shooting at them, too. They had to gain some distance and buy some time. That meant keeping up the pace, ignoring their exhaustion and pain, and not stopping to catch their breath or exchange fire. Whenever there was good cover Broben posted a rear guard and left him to lay down suppressing fire while the rest kept going. The rear guard would shoot to pin down their pursuers, then high-tail it back until he reached the relief guard Broben ha
d stationed. The relief would hunker down to stall the demo team while the one who’d caught up to him kept going and did his best to catch up to the group.

  The tactic slowly gained them ground and time. It also strung the crew out along the fissure floor, wore them out even faster, and burned precious ammo.

  Then they’d jogged around a fissure corner and there was the slab of the Redoubt wall glowing faintly in the distance. The ragged line of exhausted crew had put on a last fresh burst of speed. A thousand yards from the wall they’d taken cover while the rear-guard stragglers caught up.

  And now here they were, hunkered down before the vast patchwork slab of the Redoubt and waiting on their new CO to put his stamp on some kind of plan.

  *

  “Okay, smart guy, run through this for me one more time,” Broben told Sten.

  “All right.” Sten enlarged the image on the cellophone. “There are motion detectors at these points, and cameras here.” Red circles appeared where his finger tapped along the Redoubt wall. “This shows the estimated scope of each sensor.” Pale wedges spread from the red circles like shining headlight beams. Sten tapped again and several lighted wedges darkened. “These sensors have failed. Maybe they don’t know how to fix them, maybe they can’t.” He shrugged. “But there’s a gap—here.” He indicated an unlit trapezoid to the left of the large equipment door. “It’s very narrow toward the outside limit of the sensors’ range, wider as you get closer to the wall.”

  “The team your CO sent out five days ago had the same info?” Broben asked.

  “Probably.”

  “‘Probably’ didn’t get them in.”

  Sten shrugged again. “I can give you the data. I can’t tell you what they did with it.”

  Broben frowned at the image. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m not trying to bust your chops. So you don’t know how they tried to get in?”

  Sten and Arshall traded a look. “No idea,” said Arshall. “We weren’t involved.”

  “There’s this way that Indians would steal horses from forts,” Martin ventured.

  Broben looked at him as if he’d heard wrong.

  The small belly gunner knelt beside Sten and indicated the Redoubt image on the com panel. “They’d wait till a party of riders was due back at the fort, and they’d get a couple of braves up by the wall. When the riders got in sight of the fort, the Indians would attack them from cover. The fort would send soldiers out to help the riders, and the two braves at the wall would sneak in before the gate closed. Everybody in the fort would be watching the fight outside, and the braves would round up the horses and then they’d just open the gate again and drive them out. The war party would break off their attack and go after the horses.”

  Martin looked up. They were all staring at him. “It just seemed kind of similar,” he said after nobody said anything.

  Broben looked down at the image on the com panel. “Can you make that bigger and show me where there’s cover on this side,” he asked Sten.

  “Sure.” Sten enlarged the image. Broben studied it while the crew glanced among themselves.

  Broben asked Sten and Arshall questions about the smartsuit camouflage, about the narrow gap in the Redoubt’s sensors.

  “You’re not thinking of doing this cockeyed stunt,” Plavitz said, incredulous.

  Broben gave him a withering look. “Unless your relatives were better at breaking into forts, yeah, we’re gonna do this,” he said.

  “It wasn’t really my relatives,” said Martin.

  “You said it’s an old Indian trick.”

  “I don’t know how old it is. I saw it on Hopalong Cassidy. Double feature. It worked pretty good.”

  Broben stared. “You are the worst Indian I ever saw,” he said.

  *

  Broben crouched behind the lava berm and watched Garrett, Everett, and Shorty creep toward the massive wall in single file like cartoon characters tiptoeing past a bomb.

  Much harder to see was who they were following. Sten and Arshall had activated their body armor’s camouflage, and the stealth smartsuits were visually sampling their surroundings and minimizing the two men’s heat signature. All five men walked perfectly straight, kept their arms close to their bodies, didn’t look back. Sten had said his visor would show him the path, but to Broben it looked like three men and two ghosts creeping along an invisible but very narrow hallway.

  The plan was for Arshall and Sten to lead Garrett, Everett, and Shorty to the wall. The crewmen would lie low while Sten came back for Broben, Plavitz, Francis, and Martin. Meanwhile, Arshall would head straight toward the blind spot out in the open in front of the main door and wait for the demolition team to arrive. When they did, he’d fire on them while the rest of the men stayed low. Broben was betting the fireworks would cause the Redoubt to send a troop transport after the demo team. When the door opened for the transport, Sten would make like the Invisible Man and slip in. From there he’d either find an access door or reopen the main one and admit the rest of the men.

  Stage a fight to get the soldiers out of the fort, sneak in as they’re leaving, round up the horses, and ride out while everyone’s watching the shootout. That was the plan, anyway. But Broben knew that the first thing that gets thrown out when a plan commences is the plan.

  He glanced at Plavitz and the navigator shook his head: No sign of the demolition team. Broben wished they had another pair of binoculars. The super-duper ones were with Arshall.

  A few nail-biting minutes later the men reached the wall and went prone beside it. Broben had to take it on faith that Arshall was crawling toward the huge equipment door while Sten was headed back to escort the second group; all he could see were three of his crewmen lying prone at the base of an alien fortress.

  “Here they come.” Plavitz nodded at the canyon floor. “Maybe half a mile down on this side. You can see two of them because their ballet suits aren’t working. I think there’s three more. You can see them for a second when they come out of the shadows. Those outfits take a blink to go from dark to light.”

  “Let’s hope Arshall sees ’em too,” said Broben.

  “He’s at the dead spot already,” Francis reported. Sickly pale in the wall’s dim light, the normally coltish tail gunner nodded confidently at the Redoubt. He had lost his eyepatch somewhere on the way here. “I see him moving.”

  Broben frowned. “That doctor fix that eye or trade it up?” he asked.

  Francis just shrugged.

  “Maybe we should get moving,” Plavitz said. “They’re gonna be on top of us in about two minutes.”

  “Wait till Sten gets here,” Broben said.

  “I’m here now,” Sten said right beside Broben.

  Broben jumped. “Holy Jesus effin—don’t do that.”

  “Sorry.” Sten deactivated his smartsuit and beckoned. “Let’s go.”

  Broben, Francis, Martin, and Plavitz fell in line behind Sten and made their way toward the Redoubt wall. Broben knew he was walking between the lion’s teeth right now, but he couldn’t see it. He could not have felt more exposed if he were playing patty-cake with Santa Claus on a nudist colony parade float. Knowing that the demolition team was catching up behind them gave him an awful itch between the shoulder blades, and he dared not look back.

  They were halfway to the wall when a familiar rising whine sounded from the canyon floor somewhere near the Redoubt’s massive equipment door. Arshall had fired on the demo team, much sooner than they’d planned. He probably hadn’t had much choice.

  Bright red threads immediately appeared from the Redoubt wall. They swept the canyon, then angled in to converge near where Arshall had aimed. Broben imagined the demo team members desperately running for cover. He almost felt sorry for the bastards.

  The watery ghost of Sten moved forward again. Broben quickly followed.

  A bass-drum rumble filled the air and the Redoubt’s huge main door slid partway open. A matte-black troop transport rolled out and sped toward the convergin
g targeting lasers betraying the demo team’s position.

  Broben froze. How the hell could that heap have got sent out so fast?

  “Go,” he told Sten through clenched teeth. “The door’s gonna shut. Go!”

  Sten hesitated, then sprinted for the open equipment door. Targeting lasers swung toward him, lit him with red spots, lost him again.

  The troop transport slowed.

  “They’re gonna see us,” Plavitz hissed from the back of the line.

  The main door began to rumble shut. The transport began to turn.

  “They’ve got us,” said Plavitz.

  Broben was right about to give the order to run for it when a voice shouted from out on the canyon floor. At first he thought it came from the transport. Some warning to disarm. Then he saw the lone man standing a hundred yards behind the turning vehicle. Waving his arms at it and shouting. It was Arshall.

  “Did his suit go dead?” Francis wondered.

  Arshall jumped up and down and shouted again. Broben felt a sudden leaden certainty. “He turned it off,” he said. “He’s drawing their fire.”

  A trio of ruby-colored threads converged on Arshall. He ran weaving toward the troop transport. A patch of ground kicked up just behind him and he stumbled, rolled, and came up running.

  The transport halted. It pivoted to face Arshall. Arshall yelled and waved it on.

  “Go,” said Broben.

  No one moved. They watched the dead-black van speed toward the lone man luring it away from them. The silent play of coherent light from the Redoubt wall. The sudden small explosion from Arshall’s side.

  “God damn it, run!” Broben yelled.

  They ran. Broben tried to keep straight on the path described to him by Sten. Maybe it didn’t matter now, but it was all he knew to do.

  The massive door shut tight with a dull boom. There was no way to know if Sten had made it in.

  Broben glanced back at the transport. Arshall was nowhere in sight. The transport bucked over some obstruction and resumed its path toward the demolition team, and Broben saw Arshall drag behind it for a few seconds, then fall boneless to the ground.