by B. V. Larson
With that added impetus, I steered for the tunnel. I planned to go back the way I’d come in as fast as possible and call for help from the surface. Walking back to the fighter across the surface didn’t seem feasible now that enemy cyborgs had located me. If I had to, I figured I could launch myself into space. My suit’s repellers were more than powerful enough to reach escape velocity as Phobos didn’t have much gravity.
Unfortunately, my best laid plans are often no better than my more common off-the-cuff reactions. Before I could even reach the tunnel, more bug-like creatures appeared. Two at first, climbing over one another with their churning, spine-covered legs. Their eye-stalks roamed for a second, then fixated upon me. They seemed eager to make my acquaintance and moved faster when they caught sight of me.
They launched toward me like spiders. I don’t know if they screeched because I couldn’t hear them through my helmet—but I did. Of all the aliens I’d ever faced, these had to be the creepiest. They were part human, and yet they seemed more evil and unnatural than anything else I’d encountered.
I had time to raise my trusty laser carbine and release a sweeping blaze of energy. The first one was cut in half and sent spinning in two different directions. Its steaming legs and eye-stalks churned futilely.
The second one dodged my opening salvo, scuttling along the wall of the huge chamber. I aimed, but it got in close and sprang at me. My shot went wide. It was much lighter than I was in my power suit, but weight isn’t as important in low gravity. The force of its charge sent us both spinning, entwined.
I could hear those spines scratching and rasping on the surface of my scarred armor, trying to find a way in. I tried to put the projector against it, but couldn’t. It had crawled up onto my back and I couldn’t get the angle right. As anyone who’s worn heavy armor can tell you, it’s great to have in a firefight, but when an enemy is literally on top of you it can feel like a prison and can hamper your actions as much as it protects you.
My mouth ran with a steady stream of curses, labored breathing and grunts. I dropped the laser projector and reached for my belt knife—but it wasn’t there.
A new rasping began on my back. The skin over my vertebrae crawled as I realized the cyborg had my knife and was plunging it into my armor with terrific force. It stabbed and hacked, gouging the tempered steel.
The edge of a Star Force marine standard-issue combat knife is a modern wonder of engineering. Sharpened to a single molecular line at the edge, as perfectly straight as the carbon atoms in a diamond and just as hard, the blade can cut through almost anything. Right now, it was cutting into my power pack and would soon reach the interior of my suit.
There was a hiss of released gas. The interior of my suit rose in temperature, and I could smell the radioactive gases being released inside my very small personal space. I knew that smell; it was like ozone and made your mouth taste like you’d filled it with metal—because you had.
My struggles increased. I had to get this monster off my back. I reached back with both hands trying one angle then the next, but couldn’t get a hold on it. My armor was so bulky, it restricted my range of motion. I could no more grab the cyborg than I could scratch the middle of my back while wearing a tight sweatshirt.
I decided it was time to use the laser again, even if it did burn the back of my suit off. I couldn’t let this bastard fully breach the integrity of my armor. I reached for the projector, which dangled by a black nanites coil near my right hip.
Just then, the cyborg got big ideas and made a mistake. He slid one of his numerous appendages over my faceplate to get a better grip. I could visualize him back there, stabbing and gouging away with my knife, trying to dig his way into my suit. He needed leverage.
The—I’m not sure what to call it…claw, that probably was the best descriptor. The thing’s claw was black with spines like a crab freshly hauled up onto a fisherman’s deck. I could see it very clearly, as it nearly filled my vision. There was no hand at the terminus, just a few opposable hooks for grasping and manipulating objects.
I reached up and gripped that claw, pulling it away from my visor. I bared my teeth. I had him now. The trick would be to avoid ripping that arm off entirely. If I did that, I’d lose my hold on it.
I began pulling—gently. I dragged the scrabbling monster off my back and around to the front of my armor.
When the eyestalks appeared, they swiveled and squirmed, looking at me. I saw the intellect inside those eyes. They were human eyes. The organs were locked inside some kind of protective clear polymer—but with recognizably human flesh inside. I shivered in my armor as we regarded one another for a perhaps a second.
“What have you done, Crow?” I asked no one. “This thing is worse than a Macro.”
Having been dragged off my back, the creature went with the flow. It still had my knife, and the tip of my own weapon came flashing in toward my faceplate.
I winced and grunted, flinching away. The faceplate starred, but held. The next blow, I knew, would plunge that knife through and into my face.
There was no easy way to deal with this thing. It was all arms and spines and I could tell the concept of surrender had never been taught in cyborg school. Taking the easiest approach I could think of, I threw my arms around its body and crushed it against my breastplate.
A bear hug. That’s what we’d called it back in school. A crushing, squeezing motion that drove the life out of the victim in a powerful grip. I squeezed with all my strength, which was augmented by the arms of my power suit.
The thing buckled and spasmed. I kept squeezing, feeling it go flat against my armor. It didn’t crush down all at once, nor did it go steadily like a deflating air mattress. Instead, my arms came closer to my chest in a series of jerks, as if I were folding it down. I think I was encountering resistance from its metal bones, each of which gave way after a moment of unstoppable pressure.
It stopped flailing, but I kept squeezing. Still, it shivered and scratched at me feebly. I kept on going, roaring now. What is it about a hard fight that makes a man roar with the glory of the kill? I’ll never know, but I was lost in the passion of the moment.
Finally, it went limp and I let it sag away from me. It fell with exaggerated slowness toward the bottom of the chamber. I watched it go, wondering if it was capable of human emotions, or if it’s mind was as insectile as its body.
Giving one last shiver, I retrieved my knife and holstered my projector. I headed for the tunnel. I fervently hoped there wouldn’t be another dozen of these creatures to defeat before I reached the hull of the great ship.
While I struggled through the tunnels, my nanites madly worked to patch holes in my body and my suit. The venom had never penetrated, but the knife blade had. I was slightly nauseated by released radiation and was breathing air heavily laced with radon gas—but I was still alive.
* * *
It took me about an hour, but I managed to reach the outer hull of the ship. By that time, my nanites had repaired the suit enough to allow me to breathe and walk—but the suit wasn’t going to be flying again soon. I had to bump along using my fingers and toes rather than grav plates to propel myself carefully. My faceplate was badly cracked, but I could still see was the dusty surface of Phobos through it. The ship’s hull was a strangely welcome sight. The clean, clear star light was a relief after having spent a harrowing time in the guts of this monstrous ship.
I had another scare when I tried to contact fleet. The radio didn’t seem to work at first. But then I figured out it had to do with emergency suit power cuts. I adjusted the settings and was able to use my com-link properly.
“This is Colonel Kyle Riggs,” I said, broadcasting on an open channel. “Can anyone from Fleet read this?”
“Colonel Riggs?” came a response about a minute later. “This channel is dangerous, please switch over to encrypted—”
“I can’t,” I said. “My suit’s half wrecked. No brainbox left. I can only use manual controls. The nanite r
epair systems are still up, but they’ve got no brains guiding them.”
“Sir, I can’t authorize this conversation according to Star Force protocol.”
I mumbled curses. “Jasmine? Is that you? You don’t believe I’m Riggs, is that it? Well, then I’ll go onto the general channel and tell everyone what we watched in my office the other night. Let me see, what was the title of that exciting vid? Um…”
“That will not be necessary, Colonel,” she said primly. “I know who you are.”
“Good. Now, come down here and rescue me.”
“Your own orders specify that only you have permission from Tolerance to land on Phobos.”
“True, but Tolerance is dead. Somebody let the air out of that windbag. As far as I can tell, the big weapon is disabled, anyway. Always was. He just wanted me to come down so I could die with him. He almost got his wish, too, that bastard.”
“You’re injured, Colonel?”
“Yeah, slightly. Mostly my suit is torn up. There are cyborgs here, I don’t know how many. I took a few out, but they could come after me in numbers at any time. I need back up. Send Kwon and Gaines. Kwon is bored, and Gaines deserves it.”
There was a pause. “They will be inbound to your position shortly. Now, I recommend taking a defensive posture and avoiding all further open transmissions. The enemy is probably monitoring you now and triangulating your position.”
I rolled my eyes. Sometimes Jasmine could be like a mother hen, giving you advice that was overly detailed and unnecessary.
But I had to admit, as I rolled over on my back and sat up very slowly to look around, she had a point. The enemy could be listening and on my trail even now. I pulled my projector onto my lap and laid my knife nearby. I planned to take a shot and then grab the knife. I didn’t want the next one that attacked me to have any fun slashing me with it.
I turned the suit down to minimum to save power. I couldn’t even afford to stand up straight as I was afraid I’d fly off into space if I did.
I sat on my can for the next half hour under the glittering stars. No human trapped on Earth has ever really seen the stars. Our atmosphere is like a foggy lens between the natural beauty of the universe and our seeking eyes. In space they are perfect, like jewels shimmering with icy light.
There were few sounds I could hear other than the hiss of my circulation system and my own breathing. It would have been a peaceful and soul-searching time if I hadn’t been straining and craning my neck every few seconds to look for charging cyborgs.
-20-
The next few hours were a blur of activity. The first assault ship came down bearing Gaines and Kwon, as I had requested. Gaines brought along a platoon of his best marines. They secured the LZ like the pros they were, using their suits’ shoulder repellers to keep them down on the surface.
I stood up warily and limped closer to them in short hops.
“Your suit looks banged up, sir,” Kwon observed.
“You got it in one, First Sergeant.”
I turned my attention to Gaines. “You need to know what we’re facing here on Phobos.”
I wired him the suit recordings of my up close and personal interactions with the cyborgs. Playing them on his faceplate made the experience very realistic. He watched the vid, making occasional exclamations.
“Oh shit,” he said, wincing and staggering backward.
I chuckled. “You must have reached the part where they jumped me.”
“Yes sir…that is one unpleasant hitch-hiker. I’m going to have to pass this on to the men—with your permission.”
“Granted. They’ll keep a sharp eye out if they know what might attack them.”
He dialed up a platoon-net address and transmitted the vid. He then ordered his men to watch it in squads. We enjoyed their visceral reactions.
“Can I watch too, sir?” Kwon asked. “I want to see this.”
I gave him the vid while Gaines and I walked aboard the assault ship. I needed a new suit, and the jump-ships always packed a few spares.
Kwon shouted something behind us in Korean. Gaines and I smiled. I figured if we stood around long enough we would learn a few new bad words in Kwon’s native tongue.
Inside the pressurized cabin of the assault ship, I donned a fresh suit. The suits could seal and repair leaks by themselves, but there were a lot of specialized parts that couldn’t be fixed without a machine shop.
“Sir?” Gaines asked, “about how many of those cyborgs are on Phobos?”
“Approximately? I have approximately no frigging idea. I don’t think I clocked them all, though. I’ve only been here a few hours and I’ve already encountered three living specimens. There have to be more, it’s a big ship. The way I figure it, Phobos barreled right through a section of space that was seeded by Crow with these cyborgs. They activated and attacked, as per their programming.”
“Hmm,” Gaines said, nodding. “We did get several of them aboard our larger ships, but this ship was first and it is so much larger…I would have to say a thousand times larger. That would indicate a thousand or so enemy.”
I nodded, struggling with the helmet. Helmets were always the hardest part to get right in a battle suit. Believe it or not, people do have differently shaped heads. Unlike my own suit, which had been tailored to my dimensions, this unit was generic. It was able to conform to my shape to some degree, but it would never be as good a fit as a personalized unit.
“The next question is,” I said, my voice becoming muffled as the overly-wide helmet clicked into place, “how many of those cyborgs survived Phobos’ defensive systems? Tolerance must have gotten a few of them when they landed, but not enough to protect himself.”
“We’ll do a sweep of the northern polar region and get a body count,” Gaines said. “But I’m more interested in another detail now.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you think we can fly this thing, Colonel?”
I stared at him. “That’s an interesting idea. I’d honestly not considered it until now.”
“You were probably too busy staying alive and being probed by Mr. Tolerance.”
“Yeah…but you’re right. We need Phobos. This ship was the basis of our attack plan for the Imperials. If we could get control of the drive system somehow, and get the main weapon working…” I trailed off, thinking hard. “I mean, how complicated can it be? Only one weapon with two modes. A drive system based on repellers, tech we know how to use, but on a drastically larger scale.”
I clanked over to the cockpit where a female pilot nodded to me.
“Call up fleet dispatch,” I said to her. “Tell Captain Sarin to send a full transport of marines down here. I want more personnel.”
“Isn’t that risky, sir?”
I looked at her in surprise. “Hell yeah, it is. In case you haven’t noticed, pilot, this isn’t a desk you’re flying. Get them down here.”
I walked away and tromped back out of the ship onto the surface. Gaines followed.
“I think Lieutenant Lund was just following orders, sir. Fleet is very jumpy about sending down a large portion of our forces without being certain it isn’t a trap of some kind.”
“By ‘Fleet’ I bet you mean Miklos.”
“Probably,” Gaines admitted. “She also wants to know if we’ve finished our recon mission here yet.”
“Meaning she wants us to get off this rock? Let me tell you something, Major, this mission was a trap. A trap laid for me.”
I explained briefly how Tolerance had spent his final moments enjoying what he’d hoped was my death.
“As far as I can tell,” I said, “he was bluffing to get me down here alone. He didn’t have any operating weapons left that I could detect. The cyborgs had knocked them out and let his atmosphere leak away. Any invading force would do the same.”
“That was his key weakness,” Gaines said thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s why the Blues don’t go out into space often.”
“What do you mean?”
>
“The Blues are essentially collections of gel, mist and gas, sir. Space has zero pressure. Any kind of leak in his ship’s pressurization system would be fatal one of his kind.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking about it. “It wouldn’t be about suffocation. A leak, even a small one, would pull his guts out. I guess old Tolerance was brave for one of his kind—even if he was a son of bitch.”
After a bit more butt-kicking on the com system with Fleet, I got my full transport load of marines. Having several hundred boots on the ground made me feel better—or was that hooves?
“You weren’t kidding when you said you drew heavily on the Centaurs for this mission, Gaines.”
I looked around at the marines, hands on my hips. At least three quarters of them had four legs rather than two.
“No choice, Colonel. Too many human losses.”
Something new came down out of the transport then. At first, I thought it was a tank or some other kind of heavy machinery. Then I saw the cameras on sinuous arms.
“Marvin managed to get aboard the first transport?” I asked.
“Couldn’t stop him, sir,” Gaines said. “Captain Sarin said you might want him to look over the ship’s technology.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s move out. I’m taking company A with me. The rest of you set up camp here and cover the LZ, Gaines commanding. Send the transport back up to Fleet before Miklos loses a kidney from stress.”
That earned me a few chuckles. The Commodore’s overprotective attitude toward his ships was well known.
“Saddle up, people! It’s a long trip.”
Marvin took his position at the end of my company of flying marines. I muttered to myself about him as we glided over the surface. The robot usually managed to make people think it was their idea when he got himself assigned to a mission, and apparently he’d pulled that trick on Jasmine. Right now, as far as I was concerned, this was a combat mission. Science officers were supposed to wait until the region was secure before dropping into an unknown and hostile situation. But I had to admit, if we were going to figure out how to fly Phobos, I needed him.
