Speed of Darkness

by Tracy Hickman

  “Got ’em, Wabowski. ETA your position one minute.”

  Ardo’s second clip emptied. Sweat streaming down his face despite the climate control of the battle armor, he ejected the clip once more and pressed the third clip home even as he squeezed the trigger. The broken, mutilated bodies of the lurkers were falling on top of each other. The pile itself was drawing closer to him by the minute, scratching the ground, desperate for Ardo’s blood.

  Still they came over the eaves of the roof. Ardo could only imagine what Wabowski was fighting out of sight behind his own back.

  Ardo’s gauss rifle was warm in his hands. The suit filtered that sensation so that it would not do him any actual harm, but he knew that it meant the rifle was getting dangerously close to seizing up.

  “We got contact.” It was Mellish, behind them in the square. “Fire zone here in the square. We could use some help back here!”

  One of the Zerg claws reached out from the pile, snapping blindly at Ardo’s leg. He took an instinctive step back, then sent a quick burst downward that severed the limb entirely.

  When he looked up, the rooftop lurkers were already in midair, leaping toward him.

  They never reached the ground. A burst of flame and gauss slugs from Ardo’s left obliterated them.

  “Make way, kid,” Cutter said, his huge Firebat suit running past Ardo at full speed. There appeared to be a civilian draped over the huge man’s shoulder as he plunged forward. He held the figure in place with one hand and wielded the massive plasma hose with the other. He shouted through the com channel as he ran. “Keep moving!”

  Littlefield and Xiang rushed past as well, holding a metallic case by its handles between them. Bernelli continued to fire his own rifle, sometimes at real targets and sometimes at imaginary ones.

  “Stay and hold ’em, Melnikov!” Littlefield shouted as he passed. The case appeared to be heavy, slowing Xiang and him down. “We’re almost there! Wabowski! Buy us time! That’s an order!”

  Ardo turned to look east down the road. Zerg poured down the street, their talons a wall of death and hatred. Ardo knew that they had come for him. Wildly, he thought that they knew, somehow, that he had escaped them twice before. They wanted him, his flesh, his blood.

  Ardo turned and ran. Wabowski continued to rake the walls with the plasma stream, unaware that Ardo had left him.

  The lurkers on the opposite wall leaped.

  Ardo turned at the scream. The Zerg lurkers had ripped the nozzle from Wabowski’s hands and were savagely raking the armor, prying at it carefully. They apparently knew better than to tear haphazardly into a Firebat suit. They would take it apart in moments, dragging the screaming Wabowski out and then . . .

  Three Hydralisks grasped Melani at once, dragging her back from the edge of the crowd.

  “Please, Ardo,” she wept. “Don’t leave me alone!”

  Ardo raised his weapon and fired a stream of armor-piercing rounds into the tanks of Wabowski’s Firebat suit.

  Firebat suits are dangerous even under the best of conditions. The containment fields shattered, Wabowski erupted into a mammoth conflagration, a roiling ball that engulfed the buildings around it, swallowing the Zerg, who were too intent on their prey. The flames rolled between the buildings, an expanding inferno raging down the channel directly toward Ardo.

  CHAPTER 9

  FALL BACK

  “MELNIKOV!” Ardo turned at the sound of his name crackling in his helmet.

  “Move it, Marine! Damn it, Melnikov! Answer me!”

  The fireball roiled behind him, eating the air between the buildings. He sensed its hunger and its power at his back. He began to run toward the barricade at the end of the crooked street, already brilliantly lit by the approaching flames.

  Ardo’s feet were like lead. His arms and legs moved in agonizing slowness. Time was working against him. He tried to cry out for help, but the words seemed malformed and incoherent in his own ears.

  The brightness suddenly enveloped him. Chaos erupted in his helmet. Half a dozen different alarms rang out, but he had no time to pay attention to any of them. He was swimming through the brilliant flame and heat. The suit servos strained against the explosive force, struggling to keep Ardo’s various limbs and appendages where they belonged. He tumbled through the fire, the heat overcoming the internal cooling. Ardo could feel the webflex netting of the undersuit searing his flesh. All sense of up or down, in or out, was lost as panic welled up within him.

  Suddenly he fell from the sky. The ground rushed up at him, slamming his head violently against the interior of his helmet. Dazed, he felt as though he were still moving, although the rough granules of dirt and rock half burying his faceplate belied the thought. He lay still for a moment, aware of a thin stream of blood winding its way down across the clear plexithene of the faceplate and slowly starting to pool.

  He jerked himself upright, the movement smearing his blood across both the inside of his helmet and his face. Littlefield was crabbing backward next to him, dragging the ungainly metal case. Xiang had been helping him with it just moments before. Ardo vaguely wondered what had happened to him. The sergeant’s gauss rifle was chattering in his hands, spitting out a stream of death. Other members of the squad were backing away from the barricade as well.

  “Keep moving! Keep moving!” Littlefield yelled, though they all could have heard him perfectly well through the com-system.

  Ardo staggered unsteadily to his feet. Next to him, the sergeant turned suddenly on his heel, his weapon instinctively training on the movement so close to his side. Fear and desperation registered for a moment on the old veteran’s features. Ardo half expected to be cut down where he so unsteadily stood, but the sergeant’s trigger finger held back long enough for him to register who was suddenly in his sights.

  “Goddamn, Melnikov! You’re a hard man to kill!” Littlefield said, with a hint of hysterical laughter in his voice. Littlefield turned back to face the barricade. “Fall back! Listen to me! Fall back now!”

  The inferno from Wabowski’s explosion continued to rage enthusiastically down the length of the street beyond the barricade, preventing most of the Zerg groundlings from reaching them. Here and there, however, pockets of them somehow managed to swarm through the flames. Cutter, his huge Firebat armor towering over the remaining members of the detail, was still pumping short bursts of plasma against the Zerg as they tried repeatedly to swarm over the barricade. Ardo gaped. Cutter was firing his plasma weapon with a single hand while still holding on with his other hand to the rag-doll survivor slung over his shoulder.

  “It’s working,” Ardo whispered, more to himself than to the sergeant standing next to him. “We’re holding them off.”

  “Like hell we are,” Littlefield snapped. “They’re cunning, these slime-bugs. They’ll keep us occupied here with a few of their kin just long enough to circle around and take us from behind. Make yourself useful, Melnikov, and grab the other side of this case!” The sergeant turned his attention once more to the hulking Firebat. “Cutter, get that civilian out of here! Sejak! Ekart! Lay down cover fire and pull back to oh-thirty-seven mark one-fifty-three. We got our little prize, now let’s get the hell out of here!”

  Cutter growled through the com-system, but he obeyed, falling back with the rest of the line. The shining carapaces of the Zerglings leaped deftly over the barricades with a grace and speed Ardo had not thought possible. Each in turn was met by concentrated fire from the retreating Marines.

  “How we doin’, boss?” Littlefield called out.

  “Clock’s running out.” It was the lieutenant, still in the Operations tower that somehow in Ardo’s mind was suddenly miles away. “I can’t see them on tactical, but you know they’ve got to be coming for us. I’m abandoning the Ops center now. Double-time to oh-thirty-seven mark one-fifty-three. We’ll dust off there. You copy that, Peaches?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The voice had a strange edge to it. If Peaches was answering on the command channel, the
n things had not gone well for the Vulture cycle crews.

  “Vixen, you got the coordinates?”

  “You just get your pretty ass over there, and the Vixen will do the rest. Pick up and delivery! ETA five minutes to dust off.”

  “Let’s go, people!” Littlefield rumbled. “We don’t have a lot of time!”

  Cutter growled through the com-system and then turned. One glance and Ardo could see the look on the man’s face. His words were for Littlefield, but his cold, black eyes were trained squarely on Ardo as he spoke. “Beg to report one Firebat lost, sir! Wabowski, sir!”

  Ardo quickly snatched at the handle on the metal box. His armor was power enhanced, but the feedback systems let him know that it was heavy.

  “Let’s move,” Littlefield snapped.

  In tandem, the two of them began running back across the square. Littlefield pointed off to the left of the Operations tower. Ardo sensed the rest of the squad falling back with them, collapsing the perimeter as they dashed toward the extraction point.

  Ardo ran, but he could not clear his mind. “Sergeant . . . sir, about Wabowski, I . . .”

  “That was one hell of a move, kid,” Littlefield cut in, the box bouncing erratically between them as they ran. “Wabowski was already a dead man. You did him a favor . . . and we are wasting what little time you bought for us.”

  “Yeah . . . thanks.” Cutter was running just behind them. The helmet obstructed Ardo’s view of the huge islander, but he knew from the big man’s tone that he was anything but appreciative.

  “You just keep hold of that civilian, Cutter, and leave the thinking to me. As for you, Melnikov . . . if you’re still alive by the end of the day”—Littlefield huffed between quick breaths—“well then, by God, son, you may be a veteran yet!”

  Cutter’s voice was all venom just two steps behind him. “A veteran, eh, Melnikov? Oh, then by all means, you go first. I’ve seen what you can do with a rifle, and I think it’s better if I follow you.”

  “ETA two minutes. Vixen turning downwind now. Jeez! Look at ’em down there! You really stirred up the hive, didn’t you, Breanne!”

  They ran down the line of buildings, checking their flanks as they went. There was definitely something out there, but nothing Ardo could really see. Dark movement flashed in the gaps between structures. Don’t stop to look, he told himself, the rhythm of his running steps in counterpoint. Don’t stop or they’ll take you down.

  “Hold fire! Hold fire at oh-thirty-five!” It was Breanne’s voice. Ardo glanced toward the navigation radial. Sure enough, the lieutenant was running toward them, her own rifle held at the ready. There were three soldiers running with her, two less than he had seen her with only fifteen minutes before.

  “Don’t stop! Keep moving!” The lieutenant did not break stride as she urged them forward. “Is that the prize, Littlefield?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Littlefield picked up his pace a little to keep up with Breanne. Ardo, still clinging to the other side of the metal case, was forced to do the same.

  “Nice work, Sergeant!” Lieutenant Breanne was looking toward the rapidly approaching opening at the end of the street. “So, who is the meat that Cutter is hauling out of here?”

  “Don’t know, ma’am. Some civvy he found still breathing when they came across the box.”

  “Well, Cutter, looks like you’ve rescued yourself a real live princess.” A smile played into Breanne’s voice. “Hang onto her, Private. I’ll want to talk with her once we get out of this.”

  Ardo could hear the filtered chatter of gauss rifle fire over his intercom. Someone nearby was firing short bursts.

  “Contact, Lieutenant!” It was Mellish. “On the right!”

  “I see ’em, too!” Bernelli was running picket for the retreat on the left. “Damn! Look at ’em move!”

  Breanne looked up as she ran. “Vixen! What’s your status?”

  “Turning base now. Keep your skirt on, Lieutenant, I’ll be there in . . . oh, hell! Stand by.”

  The squad burst from the shelter of the surrounding buildings. The supply-landing pad for Oasis stretched out all around them. Several battered hangars and warehouses stood to either side. After the claustrophobic trails between the buildings, the area felt exposed and vulnerable. Beyond the landing pad toward the south was an open expanse of hydrofarms and the long road they had followed earlier in the day to reach Oasis. Ardo could see the vertical cliff wall of the Basin in the distant south. Molly’s Nipple was hazy in the distance, and he could make out the Stonewall Peaks. Right between them, he knew, lay Scenic and their fortified base.

  It seemed a million miles away.

  Private William Peaches and Private Amy Windom were landing their Vulture cycles in the center of the open area. When the day began, the Vultures had numbered five. Now they were down to two.

  “Littlefield! Melnikov!” The lieutenant moved toward the parked Vultures at the center of the landing pad. “Keep that box near me! Cutter! Bring that civvy, too. Everyone else, I need an extraction perimeter around me now!”

  Ardo could see the windsock next to the landing field. He kept glancing to the south and the distant ridges where a clean bunk, a shower, and, perhaps, relative safety might be found. He had killed twice in one day. He longed for unconsciousness. If Captain Marz was following a standard approach, he should be coming from that direction.

  Breanne was looking in the same direction, searching the sky for any sign of movement.

  “Vixen,” she called out. “Update!”

  The Confederacy Marines formed a circle on the landing pad, training their weapons outward. The sands of the Basin were blowing across the flat expanse, obscuring the once carefully laid-out markings. Ardo could hear the swish of the sand blowing against the hard carapace of his own battle armor.

  Nothing else.

  “Vixen.” Breanne’s voice was steady. “We are on station. What is your ETA?”

  The com channel crackled with muffled background static, the gain automatically heightening as the equipment strained to hear a response.

  “Lieutenant! We’ve got movement!”

  “Where, Bernelli?”

  “Just past the hangars, ma’am! They’re flanking us on the east just beyond—”

  “West, too, Lieutenant! Gods! Look at how fast they are!”

  “Vixen! Damn it! Report!” Breanne turned back to the south. “Littlefield! Do you see him? He said he was a minute inbound. We should have seen him by now.”

  “He should have been here by now, Lieutenant,” Littlefield replied. “There’s something wrong here, ma’am.”

  Breanne looked south again. “Vixen! Come in, Vixen! What’s your status?”

  “He’s not there,” Littlefield’s voice was heavy as he pointed to the south. “But I do see something, ma’am.”

  Dark figures began moving across the southern end of the landing pad.

  “Zerg,” Breanne breathed. “They’re cutting us off.”

  Littlefield shook his head. “Lieutenant, I think—”

  “They don’t pay you to think, Sergeant!” Breanne snapped. “Peaches and Windom! Mount up! Everybody, I want new loads prepped and locked right now! When I give the order, the Vulture cycles open up with everything you have and fly straight across the Zerg line to the south. Plow me a road through those bugs. The rest of us, lead with everything you’ve got, charge through the hole and don’t stop. Go right through and don’t stop for anything, you understand?”

  “Then what, Lieutenant?” Esson’s voice was a little shaky.

  “Then run, boy. Run for the base, and don’t look back.”

  CHAPTER 10

  THE GAUNTLET

  “THEY’RE CLOSING THE GAP, MA’AM!” BERNELLI whispered hoarsely. It was as though louder noise would somehow shatter a fragile moment and bring the slowly approaching Zerg crashing down on them. Breanne’s voice was cold and level. “Hold your fire, damn it!”

  “They’re cutting us off, Lieutenant!”


  “Shut up, Mellish,” Breanne snapped. “Peaches! Can’t you get that thing started?”

  What remained of the detail was ever so slowly pulling in tighter and tighter around where Ardo stood. The purplish wall of Zerg, their faces locked in a hideous metallic grin, clawed at the air, anxious in anticipation of their prey. Ardo thought suddenly of the cat his mother had barely tolerated to wander about the farm. One afternoon, Ardo had watched in fascinated horror as that otherwise sweet creature had cornered a mouse in the barnyard and played with the trapped prey as though it were a toy. Eventually, that cat had clamped his jaws down on the hapless critter’s skull and ended the chase in a bloody, dirty meal. Yet before that happened, Ardo seemed to recall a similar smile on the face of that cat.

  And now here he was . . . the mouse.

  The Vultures suddenly whined back to life. Ardo could see the sweat breaking out on Peaches as he nervously primed the forward ordnance.

  Breanne’s voice rose slightly in pitch. Perhaps she was looking at the same teeth as Ardo was considering. “I don’t have all day, Priv—”

  “I’ve got it, Lieutenant!” Peaches chattered back. “We’re good to go!”

  “Very well.” Breanne turned slowly, her voice rising over the whine of the Vulture cycles. “Everyone locked and loaded? Peaches and Windom: make me a hole! now!”

  The Vultures screamed and lurched forward as their riders opened their accelerators clear to the stops. Bolts thundered from their forward projectors and exploded against the Zerg line even as they approached it.

  The Zerg screamed, too, their own terrible voices rising in indignation that their prize would have the effrontery to challenge them.

  “Now, Marines!” Breanne screamed.

  The encroaching outer circle of Zerg suddenly lurched inward, collapsing toward their prey. Their claws whipped through the air, intent on shredding armor, draining blood, and stripping flesh from bones.