Spears reached his office, opened the old-style hinged door, stepped inside.
Major Powell, his first officer, stood next to the gunny running the computer terminal, peering down at the holoprojection that floated above the desk. Spears could read the words, even reversed and backward, if he wanted, but his first reaction was surprise and a little anger.
“Powell, I thought I told you to get to docking and clean up that snafu.”
“Sir. It’s as clean as it is going to get, sir.”
“In my sanctum,” Spears ordered.
The major nodded, said, “Continue, gunny,” and preceded Spears into the inner office.
His office was spare, a chair, desk, comp terminal, couple of plaques on the sheet plastic walls. Spears circled the desk so that it was between him and Powell, but did not sit in the chair. “Well?”
“The… specimen containers were… destroyed, sir. Apparently the lowest survivable setting on the sleep chambers was insufficient to keep the specimens themselves dormant. The, ah, containers were dead, usual exit mode, to judge from the blood spray patterns, and mostly consumed. The adult-stage specimens apparently killed one of their own and utilized its blood to burn free of the area in which they were contained.”
“Very resourceful,” Spears said. He took his cigar from between his lips and looked at the cold ash on the end. He put the cigar down into the ashtray on his desk. “Continue.”
“There were no signs of the other three—we assume all three survived—specimens. Acid burns in various places indicated a battle between the stowaways and the aliens. I have done a preliminary debriefing of the CM sergeant and from this report determined that one was killed by weapons fire onboard and the other two were ejected into space.”
“Damn.”
“Apparently the female stowaway went EVA and battled the remaining pair, who survived for some minutes in hard vacuum without apparent ill effect.”
“The female did? Why not the marine?”
“He suffered an injury during the fight.”
“Hmm. Well, the space stuff, we already knew they can do that. The in-head compression chamber and the—what’s it called?”
“Pseudohypothalmic regulator,” Powell answered.
“Right. Heats up the acid and keeps “em from freezing.”
“The corpses of the two killed on-ship were ejected.”
“Too bad. We might have gotten something from the DNA.” Spears looked at his dead cigar, thought about relighting it. “Two humans and half an android against four aliens in a close environment. I wouldn’t have thought they could survive. Their tactics might be interesting.”
“Apparently the stowaways have some prior experience with the aliens.”
“Oh?”
“We don’t have anything on the woman—the bounce from Earth is shut down—but the military bibliocom is bringing up records on the marine and android. The android, by the way, is Issue.”
“One of ours?”
“Affirmative.”
“Interesting. Are any of them infected?”
“Not according to the scan, no.”
“Too bad. Let me see the squirt from bibliocom when it arrives.”
“Gunny will have it in about eighteen minutes, sir.”
“That’s all, Powell.”
“Sir.”
Once Powell was gone, Spears sat. He leaned back, put his orthoplast boots up on the desk. Picked up the cigar and relit it. Took a deep drag and blew the smoke out in a blue-gray cloud. The ventilators whirred and sucked the smoke from the air. Maybe there was something to be gained here after all. It was a truly bad battle if nothing was gained; even the illest of winds sometimes blew a breeze or two of good. He’d see what the library had to say about this marine and android. And if they didn’t have anything to offer, well, the techs could always use a couple more bodies in the hatching rooms…
“You okay?” Wilks asked Billie.
“Yeah, fine.”
“You shouldn’t have stomped on that guy’s foot. He was just obeying orders.”
“Yeah? So was the guy who nuked Canberra during the ’82 Food Riots.”
“How about you, Bueller?”
“No new damage,” he said.
Wilks looked around. The room was bigger than some cells he’d been in. Five meters by five, fold-out bunks now flush against the wall, reinforced sheetplast, a double-thick door with a simple snap lock. A chemical toilet rested in one corner, bare white, no seat, a roll of wipes perched on a sink with a single water tap next to it. Nice place. A guy handy with a sliver of spring steel or stacked carb could pop the lock easy enough. Thing was, on a world where everybody lived inside a pressure dome, where were you gonna go even if you did get out? They might steal another ship, but without some knowledge of navigation, not to mention knowing which human settlements were still untainted by alien infection, they wouldn’t have a clue about where to go.
“Did you see the monitors we passed?” Billie asked.
“Yeah. They’ve still got spysats in place, military view only. That major who stopped and questioned us? He told me they could keep tabs on the war. He seemed like an all right guy. Almost apologetic. We’ll probably be hearing from him again.”
“I don’t have much experience with the military mind, Wilks. What is going on here?”
“Hell if I know. The general looks like a lot of RMs—that’s regular marines—I’ve known. Eats, breathes, and shits the Corps. Probably runs the base so tight it hums. Probably doesn’t matter to him that Earth is down the tubes, he’s got his orders and that’s what he lives by. Or else he’s got delusions of godhood—lot of generals get that way—thinks he can do anything. Hard to say which it is.”
“What do you think he’s going to do with us?”
Wilks shook his head. “Dunno. He’s obviously running some kind of experiment with the aliens. My bet’s it’s—or was, when still it mattered—very hush hush. Top-secret stuff. We’re sand in this guy’s well-lubed machine.”
“You take me to the nicest places, Wilks.”
He laughed. “Can’t say it’s been dull, can you?”
Billie managed a smile. “Nope. That’s a word that never crossed my mind. So, what now?”
“Ball is in their court. We wait and see what they do with it. Get some sleep.” With that, Wilks unfolded one of the cots and climbed onto it. Bueller did the same, pulling himself up easily and sprawling onto the thin material. After a moment, Billie pulled a third cot loose and lay on it.
Wilks had been in the military long enough so he could sleep pretty much whenever he wanted. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. He’d deal with it when it got here. Within a few moments, he dropped off.
7
The three marines were in one of the third-level inodoros, crowded into the space designed for a single toilet and sink. The walls had eyes all over Third Base but they figured the crapper ought to be safe enough. The room was made yet tighter by the backpack one of the men had propped on the white plastic HWDS-C—human waste disposal system, chemical, in military parlance.
“How much did you get?” one of the marines asked. That was Renus, Wolfgang R., Private First Class.
“Three days, if we stretch it,” the marine balancing the knapsack said. He was Peterson, Sean J., Corporal.
“Shit,” the third marine said. “It’s four days to the civilian terraforming colony, five if we stick to the canyons.” Magruder, Jason S., also PFC.
“So we’ll be hungry when we get there,” Peterson said. “Listen, I was pushing to get this many meals. Spears has everything on this fucking base inventoried, down to the paper clips. Besides, the crawler will have E-rations, carbocons.”
“Great, if you like greasy sawdust,” Magruder said.
“Hey, you can fuckin” stay here if you’d rather.”
Magruder shook his head. “Like hell.”
Renus said, “You think the civilians will take us in and keep quiet
about it?”
Peterson shrugged. “They’ve dealt with Spears. They know he’s over the edge. They’d be worried about him thinking they had a hand in helping us, if they did or not. My guess is, they’ll hide us and tell him they never heard of us.”
“Still risky,” Magruder said.
“Like I said, you can stay here. Sooner or later you’ll stumble over some reg you never heard of and you know what that means.”
Magruder nodded. “Yeah. Baby food.”
“How long you figure we got?” That from Renus.
“Couple-three hours, maybe,” Peterson said. “Spears and Powell will play mad doctor with the stowaways. Our general likes to watch the implants, I think it gives him a hard-on when those things shove their eggs down somebody’s throat. If we can get to the Thousand Canyons and the heat faults, they won’t be able to see us on IR. The crawler’s cammo should cover us from visual.”
The three men looked at one another.
“At least it’s a chance,” Peterson said.
They filed out of the inodoro into the hallway.
At the South Lock, Patin, Robert T, PFC, was on security. He leaned against the wall, his carbine propped at an angle next to him. He looked up, saw somebody approaching. He smiled, but didn’t bother to assume any kind of guard-ready position. Sloppy work, but he doubtless had the same attitude about lock-duty as most marines: You couldn’t get in from outside unless you had the admit codes and if you did, you were okay; you could get out, but—who would want to? The planetoid wasn’t what you’d call a pleasure dome, now was it?
“Hey, Renus. You come to keep me company?”
Renus drew near. “Take some more of your money playing cards, you mean? Nah, I wish. Decker sent me to relieve you. Circulating pumps on Four are showing red in the backup chamber. Guess who is the only qualified pump-tech on duty?”
“Fuck,” Patin said. “Red means automatic suit-up. Why didn’t somebody call when the cocksucker went yellow?”
“Don’t ask me, Bobby. I don’t run things around here.”
Patin pushed away from the wall, stepped across the hallway toward the computer terminal inset into a panel at chest level. “I’ll punch it into the security com and it’ll be all yours, pal. Can’t be too careful these days.”
The guard couldn’t see Renus pull what looked like a sock full of something heavy from under his shirt. “Sorry, Bobby,” Renus said.
“Huh—?”
Renus slammed the sock down on Patin’s head. It made a sound like a thick rope slapping a plastic barrel full of liquid soap. Tiny slivers of gray flew from the sock on impact. Lead shavings, sparkling like glitter under the overhead lights, drifted onto the unconscious man’s downed form.
“Let’s go!” Renus yelled.
Peterson and Magruder came running up. Each of them had a carbine. Renus grabbed Patin’s weapon. They had the codes for the inner lock door and cycled it open quickly.
The outer door’s codes were something else. While Peterson took a stab at the computer override, Magruder pulled climate suits from the racks. He and Renus shrugged their way into the suits.
“Not gonna happen,” Peterson said. “Security seals are dogged down tight. We’ll have to burn the sucker. I’m trashing the alarms.”
Magruder, his helmet in place, the suit tabbed shut, nodded and moved to the door. He pulled the plasma cutter he’d stolen from Supply and thumbed the cutter up to full. “Watch your eyes,” he said.
The brilliant plasma jet spewed, turning the inside of the lock into noon on a desert. Peterson kept his eyes covered until he got his climate suit on and the polarized faceplate snapped down.
It didn’t take long. The security bars were designed to keep people outside from getting in, and the plasma jet ate through them almost as fast as Magruder could move the welder. Durasteel went bright orange, then flowed molten and fell in fat drops.
“That’s it, that’s the last one!”
“Go, go, go!”
The lock door started to open, then ground to a stop with a shriek still audible in the escaping air, stuck where a flange of partially melted metal caught the frame. But it was wide enough for the men to get through. They clambered from the station into the cold darkness, and ran toward the motor pool. The gravity generators extended the field outside the domes for a hundred meters around, so they didn’t bound into space.
The trio of deserters piled into the first crawler they reached. After a moment the multiwheeled machine lurched into the darkness and was gone.
Spears leaned back in his chair, watching the video on his holoproj. “Replay, security cam 77, 0630 hours.”
The air above his desk lit with the images of the three marines in the loo. “Increase volume one-eighth. Continuous tracking.”
He watched it again, listened to the three marines plotting their desertion. When they left the toilet stall, another hidden cam just outside the inodoro picked them up without missing a beat.
The scene at the security station played itself. The downed guard didn’t get any sympathy from Spears. If he’d been doing his job, he would have stopped the deserters. Well. There was a place for men like the guard. Down in the hatchery.
Spears watched with interest the burn-out through the lock door. They moved well as a team, the trio. Too bad they chose treason instead of duty.
“General?”
Spears glanced up from the projector to the door. “Come.”
The door opened and Powell stood there. Spears waved one hand and shut the projection over his desk off. “Yes?”
“The squirt has arrived from bibliocom. In the system.”
“Query number?”
Powell gave it to him.
Spears tapped it manually into his terminal. “What’s the marine’s name?”
“Wilks.”
He tapped that in.
The air blossomed again with the infocrawl. Images fluttered into life to join the words and figures. A practiced speedreader, Spears scanned the material.
“Well, well. We sure this marine is the same one in isomed?”
“Got a positive ID from his magnetic femur implant. It’s, him.”
“This sergeant has had more hands-on experience with wild-strain aliens than just about anybody except that civilian, whatshername.”
“Ripley, sir.”
“Right. Nobody knows where she is but we got Wilks right here. How’s that for luck? Fate smiles on us, Powell.”
“Sir. And if you’ll scan the android’s file, you’ll see another coincidence, sir.”
“Give me the gist.”
“He was one of a Specials Unit, bred to travel to the aliens” homeworld. Under the command of Colonel Stephens, prior to Terran infestation.”
“Stephens, I remember him from MILCOM HQ. A desk jockey, couldn’t find his dick with both hands.”
“The primary mission, retrieval of a specimen, was apparently a failure, sir. Records of the trip are incomplete; by the time the survivors reached Earth, the infestation was in the advanced stages.”
“And the woman?”
“No records on her. She’s not military, and we can’t pull up any history.” Powell shrugged. “You know how civilians are about record keeping in the best of times, sir.”
Spears nodded absently. “Well, our sergeant and the vat-boy have got actual combat experience against the wild strain. Much too valuable to turn into incubators, at least until after we find out what we can from them.”
“That’s what I thought, sir.”
“Let’s go have a little talk with them.”
“Sir.”
Billie felt a coldness grip her legs, bands of rough steel encircling her ankles, pulling her knees apart. She blinked, glanced down, saw she was naked.
Something wet and slimy dripped onto her bare belly. A clear, ropy jelly. She looked up, but couldn’t see the source, there was a kind of fog hovering over her, only centimeters from her face, a featureless gray.
I need you, came a deep voice. No, not a voice, the words were unspoken, they were in her mind. They were the thoughts of a lover, but not a human lover.
The fog swirled away, and teeth glittered under a coat of clear slime, white needles set in a massive black jaw, on a long, impossibly long head that flared into wide, flat, branched antlers.
Billie gasped, fear filling her, every cell in her body straining to contain it.
Lean back. Unable to resist the command, Billie arched her neck, saw just behind her a massive, fleshy egg, easily the size of a garbage can. Flaps at the top of the egg opened, spidery webbing stretching and breaking. It was like the blossoming of some obscene flower, petals spreading wide in a photographic time-lapse hurry.
Crablike legs reached over the folded flaps, long, fleshless finger bones with sharp tips, questing, exploring. Looking for something.
Looking for Billie.
She opened her mouth to scream, and a glob of the slime from the monster above her fell onto her chin, oozed into her mouth, over her cheeks, into her eyes. Billie tried to swallow, but it was too much.
I need you. The monster’s thoughts tried to soothe. Do not he afraid. It will be good.
“No!”
Billie came up on the cot, yelling the word.
“Easy, easy,” Wilks said. He was next to her, holding her shoulders. And on the floor, balanced on one hand, the other hand on her leg, Mitch.
[Aliens 02] - Nightmare Asylum Page 5
