by Richard Fox
“They’ve got armor. And claws. Shit, they look mean,” Adams said, firing in an excruciatingly slow cadence to conserve her ammunition. “I’m bumping my mags.” She dropped her current magazine into a leg pouch and slammed a magazine she knew was full into her gun.
“Covering you, litter sister,” Garrison said, firing once, twice, and a third time.
“You’re so sweet,” Adams said.
“You love me.”
“I’m still going to throat punch you when we get out of this.”
“It’s a date.”
“It’s not a date. It’s me kicking your ass.”
Lo’thar got to the hatch to the coolant access and kicked ice off a control panel. Booker and Max crowded around him, using their bodies to shield the Dotari while he worked.
Hoffman and the rest of the team dropped to the next lower level. He saw a shadow move inside a pod and a banshee punched through the glass. It wrapped a massive hand around Hoffman’s forearms and looked at him with yellow, insane eyes. Hoffman tried to break free, but the creature’s grip was stronger than his armor.
“No hurt!” Opal shouted and his massive fist shot past Hoffman’s face and into the banshee’s temple. There was a crack of bone, and blood splattered against the broken cryo pod. Hoffman pulled free from the dead alien.
“I can’t open it,” Lo’thar said, his English deteriorating slightly under stress.
“Opal!” Hoffman pointed at the plate.
“Save team!” Opal jumped over the railing and landed hard next to Lo’thar. He grabbed the lip of the hatch, lifted it up with a grunt and accompanying snap of freezing cold metal, and raised the hatch up on its hinges.
Stench flushed out as the team retreated and formed a perimeter around their inevitable destination.
Banshees bounded down the levels, heedless of the casualties the Marines inflicted with their gauss rifles.
“Oh, God, that’s bad,” Booker said. “And I worked in a morgue one semester in college.”
“Coolant systems shouldn’t smell like this,” Lo’thar said.
“Flashbangs,” Hoffman said, slapping his visor shut as his team followed suit in rapid succession.
King and Booker pulled bangs from their tactical gear and tossed them into the air. “Bangs out,” King said.
“What are we doing?” Lo’thar shook his head in confusion just before Opal grabbed the Dotari pilot and threw him into the pipe opening.
Hoffman looked away from the flashbangs as they went off. The sharp concussion of their deflagration popped against his armor, the concussion drowning out the screams of the banshees for a moment. The aliens advance had stopped as they tried to recover from the assault of light and sound from the flashbangs.
The team had bought some time.
“Team move.” Hoffman waved toward the opening and Marines dropped into the hatch. He waited for Garrison before jumping into the darkness.
“Last man,” Garrison called.
Hoffman jumped into the dark hole and braced himself against the wall, feet spread for stability as he grabbed what he could. Frozen mold cracked against his touch.
Garrison, one hand on a handle on the bottom of the hatch, swung down and closed the heavy metal disc. He stood on Hoffman’s legs, using his lieutenant as support, then yanked a welding tool off his belt. Garrison ignited the star-hot flame and welded the hatch shut along the interior line.
Hoffman’s legs quivered under the strain. The pseudo-muscles were only so strong, serving to enhance his strength, not replace it.
“You done?” Hoffman asked as banshees screamed and pounded on the other side of the manhole cover.
“Good as it gets,” Garrison said.
Hoffman released his hold on the wall and the two Marines fell into the abyss.
****
Hoffman slid feet first into the tube until he struck a corner hard enough to rattle him inside his armor. The more he bumped against the walls of the sewer, the more he questioned his decision, even though the other alternative was a last stand against dozens of bloodthirsty banshees.
Thick muck sloshed over him and he found himself suddenly airborne, tumbling head over heels, until he landed in muddy water. He struggled to pull his head up, but whatever he landed in had the consistency of wet cement.
Turning on the lights mounted to his helmet, he saw brown chunks floating in front of his visor. He wouldn’t drown so long as his armor maintained its integrity, but being stuck in god-knew-what was not a good place to be if banshees caught up to him.
Something grabbed the carry handle on his back and he grasped for his rifle mag-locked to his back. He came out of the muck with a wet pop and saw a hulking silhouette through the grime covering his visor. A massive hand slapped against his helmet and wiped the muck away.
Opal looked at him, then grinned. Teeth like ivory grindstones shone out from the doughboy’s mottled, filthy skin.
Hoffman tried to activate his IR transmitter and got an error buzzer. He tapped Opal on the wrist twice and the doughboy dropped him. Hoffman sank to his ankles in the muck and took a deep breath before he popped his helmet off. The air smelled of rot and earth.
“Sir hurt?” Opal asked.
“Bruises,” Hoffman said. “Where’s the rest of the team?”
Opal grabbed him under one arm and dragged him onto a muddy island behind the doughboy, where the rest of the team formed a perimeter beneath the opening for a massive pipe. He glanced at raised walkways on either side of the blessedly horizontal passage. Most of the recessed maintenance lights were broken or flickering.
“Sir safe,” Opal said, dropping him on the sandbar that wasn’t a sandbar.
Hoffman did a head count as he spat and coughed. “Where’s Duke?”
The veteran Strike Marine crawled out of the water, sniper rifle held over his head. He removed his helmet, sat cross-legged, and started cleaning his rifle.
Hoffman watched the man with a mixture of respect and annoyance. Other members of the team wiped off gear and commented on the smell.
“Lieutenant.” Booker stood up and waved. “Good news, we ended up in the soil re-processors system. This isn’t the sludge room.”
“How do you know?” Hoffman looked around for a written sign.
“The smell,” Booker said, nodding quickly. “And my bio-contamination sensors aren’t going berserk.”
“It’s just mud,” Garrison said. “Thank God for small favors. Can’t imagine telling the grandkids about the time I was covered in alien dooky.”
Hoffman ran his tongue around his teeth, gathered everything he could from the lining of his mouth, and spat it out. “Guess it could be worse.” He cleaned gunk out of the IR antenna on his helmet.
Booker laughed. “Right there with ya, boss.”
King knelt by Lo’thar, who was curled into a ball on the dubiously gritty beach. “What the hell were those things?”
Lo’thar pulled his knees to his chest, hands pressing the sides of his head as he chattered in Dotari.
King grabbed him. “Lo’thar!”
“They can’t be!” Lo’thar wailed. “The Xaros are gone, their drones destroyed. How can there be noorla here?”
Max moved closer. “You mean banshees? The Dotari the Xaros changed into their foot soldiers, the ones that attacked the colony on Takeni?”
Booker’s eyes went wide. “The Xaros are here?”
Hoffman took a deep breath, held it, then let it out and stepped across the squishy island. “It makes sense. The Xaros found a Dotari fleet in deep space and sent it to attack Takeni. They must have found this one too.”
King shook his head. “How can Xaros drones be here? I thought they self-destructed after the war.”
“They were reprogrammed to fly into the nearest star…and that order came out of the Crucible gates at the speed of light.”
Max snorted unhappily. “We’re fifty light-years from the nearest jump gate. Guess this fleet hasn’t got the messa
ge yet.”
“We’re on an ark ship full of banshees and Xaros?” Garrison said. “What the hell are we going to do?”
Everyone stared at the breacher as his voice climbed half an octave.
“Stow it, Marine,” King said.
“Yes, sir. Right away, Gunney.” Garrison snapped the words like a curse and started raking his fingers through the muck in the lowest part of the pipe, picking up random bolts and bits of scrap that had been slowly migrating through the sewer for years.
Booker ignored the exchange. “There can’t be that many banshees aboard. This ship must hold a half million Dotari. It doesn’t make sense to change all the sleepers into banshees right now. They’re centuries away from another planet and those banshees got to eat, right? This is a cold sleep ship, not meant to move with crews and passengers. All the banshees active now will get old and die before they get to the next star.”
“So why’d we run into any banshees?” King asked. “If the Xaros control this ship and the others…Lo’thar, tell us something.”
Lo’thar looked up and worked his jaw from side to side. “We recovered nothing from the Golden Fleet ships the Xaros used to attack Takeni. At the beginning of that fight, before the Breitenfeld arrived, the ships were dead silent when we detected them at the edge of the system. There were drones in the ships, but the noorla landed in escape pods. We captured one noorla alive, but it died when its link to the Xaros was severed. The ones we fought on Takeni had more armor, more augmentation. The ones we just escaped from were…less changed.”
“The Xaros must have activated the banshees when we came aboard,” Hoffman said.
“The ones that came through the doors looked ready for a fight,” King said. “Better equipped.”
“We don’t know how long it takes the Xaros to fully change the Dotari,” Hoffman said. “But the longer we sit here, the more time they have to get ready for the next round. If there are Xaros drones…we don’t have a single quadrium shell to hit them with.”
“Been a long time since I trained to fight a drone,” King said. “Duke?”
“I was on Luna when the Xaros smashed it.” The sniper snapped his rifle back together and looked down the sights.
“Opal and I fought them in Utah,” Hoffman said. “Opal? Xaros.”
Opal smashed a fist into his palm.
“High-power gauss shots on drones,” King said to the team. “Only way to crack their shells. Don’t stop shooting until they disintegrate.”
Hoffman’s mouth went dry as he remembered battles against the drones. Days of constant battle, his doughboys disintegrated by the Xaros’ weapons. The skies dark as the enemy descended from orbit…
He banished the thoughts and checked his team. Looking around, he put on the mask of command.
“The mission…the mission is to contact the crew and get the fleet back to Dotari. We’re aborting as of now. We need to get word to Captain Bradford and Admiral Valdar on the Breitenfeld.”
Lo’thar fought to get to his feet. “No! We can’t leave without a viable blood sample. The phage! My daughter needs—”
“We can get a sample off one of these creatures if we run across them. Maybe,” Hoffman said.
Lo’thar rushed forward and grabbed Hoffman by his breastplate. “We can’t give up, not when we’re so close. She’ll die if I don’t do something. Hale wouldn’t run away from—”
Hoffman grabbed the Dotari by the neck and gripped it so hard the color on Lo’thar’s face changed.
“I am not Hale.” The lieutenant let Lo’thar go. “This isn’t the same as Takeni. If the Breitenfeld doesn’t know about this threat, the Xaros could capture the ship. Capture the Grinder. The Xaros can change humans too. Hale fought coopted humans on Pluto during the war. What would happen if the Xaros got Valdar’s ship?”
Lo’thar rubbed his neck. “The Xaros drones can replicate themselves if they have the matter to do it with. If the drone gets the Grinder…it could jump to a world with a Crucible. Vanish in the network.”
“It would be the Ember War all over again,” King said. “Countless drones unleashed on the galaxy.”
“But the self-destruct order…” Adams said.
“One-time event,” Hoffman said. “Spread from the Crucible gates at the speed of light. The drone jumps behind the line and it’s like it never happened. The laws of physics aren’t on our side.”
“Valdar would never let that happen,” Duke said. “He’d blow the Breitenfeld up before the Xaros could take over.”
“Which is why the ship needs to know about the Xaros and the banshees right now,” Hoffman said. “We’re aborting this mission.”
“There’s still a way,” Lo’thar said. “There has to be.”
Hoffman shook his head. “There are half a million Dotari on this ship that could have been turned into screaming monsters dead set on killing us all. I have six Strike Marines. We’re tough, we’re trained, but we didn’t bring enough of us to retake this ship. Even if we link up with Bradford…” He looked up and down the long tunnel around their muddy island and contemplated his next move.
“Weapons check,” Gunney King ordered.
Opal hefted his big gun, pulled the magazine free, and watched mud plop out. “Dotari poop bad.” He wiped the magazine clean, then dropped it into a leg pouch. With quick, efficient movements, he reloaded from a backpack.
The rest of the team sounded off.
“Good to go, LT,” King said, switching his glance from Hoffman to the sniper. “Except for our prima donna here.”
Duke blew something from one of his tungsten-clad bullets.
“You’re not going to need that in these hallways,” King said.
Duke’s eyes focused with unusual intensity as he used “the tone” to correct the team NCO. “She’s dirty. And I need a dip.” Moments later, he folded the sniper rifle in half and slammed it onto his back. Without wasted motion, he pulled his carbine and thumbed the power on.
King made the rounds, quickly checking each team member. He patted Booker on the shoulder. One by one, he refocused them on the revised mission.
Hoffman went to Lo’thar, put a hand on his shoulder, and spoke quietly. “I need you to take this one step at a time.”
Lo’thar nodded. “The wastewater systems connect to most everything. If the ship has the same base structure as the ship I grew up on, then there’s a maintenance tunnel farther along the tunnel.” He pointed downstream.
Garrison’s head perked up. “Hey, Dotty, there any kind of weird fertilizer in this sludge?”
Max moved between the breacher and the Dotari pilot. “Shut up, Garrison.”
“I got some of it in my mouth,” Garrison squeaked.
Booker slapped him on the back of the head.
Hoffman and Lo’thar led the team up a ladder onto the nearest walkway.
Chapter 9
Hoffman and King kept the team on the move, approaching every intersection as though it might be a life-and-death battle.
“Adams, Garrison. Watch that next intersection. My infrared optic is showing a slight elevation in temperature,” King said.
“On it,” Adams said as she moved and aimed her gauss rifle at the same time. Garrison, searching through his sights, adjusted the length of his stride to move in perfect unison with Adams.
“Looks good. We’re pushing through,” Adams said.
Seconds later, King and Booker followed as Max ushered Lo’thar behind them.
“Opal, let’s go,” Hoffman said.
Duke brought up the rear without comment.
They repeated the procedure over and over.
“This ship feels like it’s the size of downtown Phoenix,” Adams said.
“Stay sharp,” Hoffman said to the team. “Head on a swivel. We don’t need any more surprises.” He made eye contact with King, who replied with a nod.
Lo’thar muttered and looked at his feet as he traversed the metal walkway. The Dotari pilot seemed deta
ched after the recent events. Hoffman didn’t know what it was like to have a sick daughter, but assumed it would influence his judgment. He moved to the pilot’s side.
“You OK, Lo’thar?”
The Dotari looked up, eyes unfocused. “What if I fail?”
Hoffman struggled for words. “Lots of ships in the fleet. Others may be different than this one. Admiral Valdar’s not the type to give up quick or easy.”
Lo’thar nodded with grim determination. “This way.”
Hoffman and Lo’thar arrived at a door. Garrison and Adams each gave the Dotari a dirty look as they hustled to set up security around the door.
“There is a hydroponic farm through here,” Lo’thar said as the rest of the team caught up.
“I’m not trying to rain on your parade, buddy, but this is an odd place for a hydroponic facility,” Garrison said.
Lo’thar wiped frost away from a panel on the doorframe to reveal Dotari script. “It says Hydroponics Bay 99.”
“We’re burning daylight,” King said. “If I don’t see a little sense of urgency, I’m going to light a real fire under your asses.”
“On it, Gunney,” Garrison said as he pulled his multitool from his kit. One end was a two-pronged pry tool like an industrial-strength chisel. At the other end was a sledgehammer on one side and a spike on the other. Garrison hit the spiked end against the door frame and cursed as his strike proved too weak to puncture the metal. Garrison hefted the tool back like a club and swung it with all the might his suit could muster as Lo’thar protested.
Ignoring the lock and the door handle, he aimed at the hinges one after another. The door fell partially inward, hanging from the locking mechanism, which wasn’t designed to hold the entire weight of the door. He stepped back and launched a front kick that sent it spinning into the room.
King and Booker went in first, followed by Hoffman, Max, and Lo’thar. The rest of the team fed off their movements and filled the gaps until they were all inside.
Mist swirled around them as warm air met cold air from the sewer tunnel. The clouds dispersed quickly in the large room. Hoffman thought the tangle of trees and vines before him had once been orderly and well-maintained. Unlike the rest of the ship, this area was well-lit with high-powered grow lamps. Irrigation tubes sprinkled water onto trees and plants.
