“Zombies,” Howard gasped. “They’re moving like zombies.”
“Shut the fuck up,” the NCO growled.
“They’re at room temperature, Sergeant Weiner. No weapons. No shields. See that one leading the way? It’s missing one of its upper arms. It’s the Lampreys we just killed. They’ve come back from the dead.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I’m counting twenty-five so far. Make that thirty. And another bunch coming from the north. Make that sixty.”
“I’m letting higher figure this out,” Sergeant Wiener said.
“Make that seventy-five.”
* * *
“Somebody’s got a fucked up sense of humor,” First Sergeant Goldberg commented.
Fromm ignored the words and concentrated on the problem at hand while his Marines discarded their half-eaten meals and grabbed their weapons – which for most of them consisted of spears, machetes and entrenching tools. He had two hundred rounds of 4mm left in the entire company, and a dozen 15mm munitions, all high-explosive fragmentary. He raised the squad sergeants, the only troops holding loaded guns.
“Aim for their brain cases,” he said, prompting a chuckle from Lieutenant Hansen, which he also ignored. His imp highlighted the target area for everyone. The shambling dead aliens were behaving like zombies, so he might as well treat them like the traditional monsters.
“Single shots only. Fire.”
A steady crackle of gunfire followed, followed by the sharp crack-woosh of plasma-tipped rounds unleashing foot-long jets of superheated death.
Even without their imps and helmet sensors, the NCOs would have been able to hit their targets at those ranges. With them, it was child’s play. A dozen alien chests exploded in as many seconds, followed by another dozen.
Except none of the Lampreys were ‘killed.’ All the shots had hit the spot where their brain was located, roughly where a human collarbone would be. Some of the targets fell, but Fromm could see they were struggling back to their feet despite the burning holes in their upper chests. In some cases, direct hits had torn their feeding maws clear off their shoulders, but that didn’t stop them either. Zombies they might be, but they didn’t die when you shot their heads off.
“Switch to grenades,” he ordered. “Fire at will.”
Six puffs of light and smoke burst over the limping figures now filling the valley below the Marine camp. Once again, there was nothing wrong with the gunners’ aim: each 15mm round exploded at the ideal ten-meter height, lashing the area with lethal ceramic fragments traveling fast enough to degrade force fields or tear through body armor. He zoomed in in time to see a Lamprey lose both of his left arms, ripped off at the torso junction – and only miss a step before moving on.
“Jesus Mary and Joseph,” Lieutenant Berry of Second Platoon said on the command channel.
Fromm could think of a couple ways the Tah-Leen were reanimating the alien corpses without requiring a more-or-less intact brain. Nanotechnology could build miniature engines inside the bodies, which would make dead muscle tissue expand and contract through electrical stimulation. A more thorough nano-tech job could build mechanical grafts onto their skeletons, turning them into carrion-covered robots. Either way, destroying their brains wouldn’t do any good; the ‘zombies’ were being controlled remotely like so many drones. There was probably a grinning Tah-Leen at the controls of each of the walking dead.
“Aim for limb junctures,” he ordered, very likely too late. They’d gone easily through half of their remaining ammunition if not more, and inflicted minimal casualties on the enemy.
“All right, Marines,” he added on the general channel. “We’re going to have to chop them to bits. We already killed them once. Let’s make it stick this time! Who’s with me?”
“Oorah!” they shouted as he raised the captured Lamprey sword over his head; a couple of NCOs had reworked its hilt and balance to make it more suitable for human hands. He intended to put it to good use.
“Are we ready to kick some zombie ass?” he yelled at them.
“OORAH!”
The last few shots dropped a dozen zombies, legless or armless or both, but the rest kept coming. When they’d reached the base of the hill, the Marines charged down to meet them.
“OORAH!”
* * *
Well, here goes nothing, Heather thought.
She’d done all she could in the Common Conduit, the public Tah-Leen’s network. Penetrating the Scholar’s personal node had been another matter altogether. Using all her regular tricks, she’d managed to break into some low-security sections, where she’s stumbled into the largest collection of galactic porn – most of it of the snuff variety – she’d ever had the displeasure of encountering. The sheer size of it was staggering, and the few bits she’d sampled had been enough to give her nightmares for years to come. Other than proving that the Snowflakes were unique only in sheer depravity, she’d found nothing useful there. None of that mattered, of course, since she already knew the Scholar’s secrets.
That left the restricted-access network, the Master Conduit that controlled the essential systems of the Habitat for Unique Diversity. Even trying to contact the Master Conduit without the proper keys would immediately notify the system administrator while a pack of virtual hounds tracked down and identified the would-be intruder. That left only the tachyon-wave system.
So far, she’d used the gadget to communicate with Lisbeth and June without being detected by the Tah-Leen. The t-waves operated on a completely different level from regular comm systems; the enemy might as well try to detect graviton waves using a pre-Contact radio set. Supposedly. Time to find out just how good the Snowflakes’ network security was.
She started small. Nothing too complex, just a simple ping from a public access hub.
Ping.
Nothing happened. The Master Conduit hadn’t noticed the connection.
It works.
She was able to do a passive scan of the system’s menu without attracting any attention. It was like reading the information on a screen as opposed to trying to access it via a communication link. The computer had no idea it was happening. Any actual commands would use g-waves and be detected, so she would have to pick the time to act very carefully. On the other hand, she had the Seeker’s access codes, which could open a surprising number of doors. Including the ones leading out of the giant prison the Marines were in. All she had to do was find them.
Her implants processed the information before her and transformed it into a visual simulacrum, a web of lines and colors, bright spots for nodes, flashing spikes for firewalls and protected areas. Navigating the maze without doing anything to alert the network wouldn’t be easy, and she needed help.
“They’ll kill us if they find out,” June Gillespie protested after Heather dragged her into another virtual tea room for a private discussion.
“They are going to kill us anyway. Nobody the Snowflakes have abducted has ever made it out alive. Now we know what’s been happening to all those missing starships. The Tah-Leen are like a bad horror movie’s cannibal clan.”
“I know,” June said. “But I’ve only run cyber-ops in training. I’ll screw things up.”
“I’ll do most of the actual grunt work. I need you to analyze the information and help me navigate. You are the only one with a secure system the Tah-Leen can’t read whenever they feel like it. Just have your normal imp run something harmless, a romance interactive or whatever floats your boat. That will cover your tracks while you do data crunching for me.”
“How about the Marine pilot? She can help you.”
“Lisbeth is busy.” And might be dead at any moment, she didn’t add. The last time Heather had checked on the major she’d been in a trance state that she hadn’t dared to disturb, and her life signs had been on a distressingly low ebb. Snooping around the Warp Marauders’ database was even more dangerous than playing around the Tah-Leen’s Conduit.
“I’ll do what I
can,” June finally said.
“Good. We have to spring the Marines this before the Snowflakes kill them all.”
* * *
Russell screamed a string of mostly incoherent obscenities as he charged down the hill.
He used to love zombie movies. His favorite flick had been Alien Dead, a particularly tasteless flick where First Contact didn’t burn four billion people into slag but instead turned them into ravening shambling corpses. Alien Dead II through XXI had never managed to capture the trashy fun of the original, but he’d watched them all anyway. He’d grown up playing the interactive versions of all those productions, and he still indulged in the occasional nostalgic zombie run when he was bored and no card games beckoned.
Not anymore. Not after this.
The line of screaming leathernecks washed over the undead Lampreys. The charge stalled when the zombies bunched up. Russell was in the second rank; he heard the clatter of metal on metal or metal on flesh as he reached the line. A couple of Marines in front of him had spitted a Lamprey on their spears. The zombie alien kept coming even though half its guts were pouring out of a massive torso wound, and it was forcing them back.
“Fuck this shit,” Russell said. He’d left the spear behind and brought his e-tool instead, expecting just this sort of Charlie-Foxtrot. Stabbing the dead wasn’t going to work.
He raised the entrenching tool in both hands and brought it down with all his strength.
You had to hack them to pieces.
The crunch of hard steel on flesh was now familiar to him, but this time no blood spurted out, which he didn’t mind; he’d spent an hour cleaning Lamprey juice off his armor earlier today. His blow hit one of the zombie’s big arms near its shoulder. Bone cracked but didn’t quite break. Mindful of the two guys holding the critter back with their spears, he hacked it again, and again, until the arm finally fell off. One limb down. Five to go.
The zombie Lamprey didn’t have its helmet on. Its sucker mouth snapped at Russell. Armor or not, he didn’t want those serrated teeth anywhere near him.
“Hold him!” he yelled at the two other guys while he chopped at the feeding tube. Make that six limbs to go.
“He’s climbing up the spear, man!” one of them warned him.
The dead alien was pushing the shaft deeper into its guts while its remaining three arms reached for Russell. He tried to pull back but was still off-balance; the tango’s remaining three-fingered hand closed on his left wrist with unnatural strength and squeezed it, right on the flexible joint. The nanotube fibers bent under the relentless pressure.
“Motherfucker!” Russel screamed at the sudden burst of agony. He shortened his grip on the e-tool and kept hacking with his free hand. One chop, two chops, screaming all the while as the bones in the trapped wrist grated against each other. A third desperate hit finally loped off the alien’s arm. Russell stumbled back and ended up on his ass, the zombie claw still around his wrist, although it wasn’t exerting as much pressure as before. Still hurt like a mother, though.
He reached for his spare Ka-Bar and used it to pry open the alien’s fingers; he had to chop off the last one before it let go. By the time he was done, the battle had pushed on past him and the zombie that almost killed him had gotten drawn and quartered; the pieces were still twitching but couldn’t do shit. Good.
No time for malingering, though. From the shouts and screams just a few feet away, things weren’t going so well anymore. He got a better look as he struggled into a sitting position.
The Marines’ initial rush had rolled over the zombies, who had been scattered and strung out in clumps almost all the way to their line of departure. But Russell saw that the fighting was turning into a giant brawl, and the zombies outnumbered the Marines. Not by a lot, since there’d been a lot fewer Lampreys to begin with, but when you added all the losses the Americans had taken, the undead aliens had the edge. Status carats were beginning to turn yellow on the roster window. He had to join in.
Nanomeds were already dulling the pain. His suit had immobilized the broken wrist by hardening the nanotube fabric around it into a solid mass that would do for a cast for the moment. That still didn’t get him back to a hundred percent or even seventy percent, but it would do. Russell got back to his feet, leaning on the e-tool, then hefting it one-handed as he rejoined the fight.
Two zombies had dogpiled Gonzo. One was biting him; the other was trying to get its hands around his around his neck. If it did, it was all over for his buddy.
Russel swung the e-tool at the second zombie’s arm. It sank into the dead flesh with a sound like hitting wood. Gonzo grabbed the damaged limb and tore it off with a twisting motion. That weakened its hold enough; he kicked the critter off of him. The second zombie only had its tiny arms left; they were grabbing Gonzo’s belt while it gnawed on his chest with its sucker-mouth, almost like a baby trying to get some tit. Fucking disgusting. Russell steadied the e-bool with both hands, ignoring the agony flaring up in his damaged wrist, and drove the sharpened spade into the alien’s neck. The e-tool got stuck; he leaned on the handle, putting all his weight into it to pry the wound open. The dead flesh tore with a wet sound and the feeding tube rolled away, severed from its body, mouth still puckering open and closed. Russell kicked it away.
Another Marine showed up and between the three of them they took apart the two zombies. By the time they were done, Russell was feeling a bit shaky. Two fights in one day took a lot out of you. He’d already past the safe limit for chemical boosts, which sucked because he could really use another shot. That shit would shave years off his life, but he could always get rejuv treatments later to get them back. He would have to do without. They had to keep going until every alien zombie was dead. Dead again. Whatever.
His armor’s power indicator was flashing amber. His suit’s twin batteries were both below twenty percent. Turned out hand to hand drained power even worse than a forced march.
“Come on,” he told the other two between breaths; he was panting like a winded dog. “Let’s kill them all.”
They followed him.
* * *
“That’s the last of them,” First Sergeant Goldberg said. He sounded a little punch-drunk.
Fromm could sympathize. He could no longer raise his right arm above his shoulder. The unfamiliar motions involved in hacking flesh over and over had strained his muscles beyond what nanomeds could undo right away. His breath came in labored gasps, and all he wanted to do was lie down and close his eyes.
No time for that. It took a command override before his implants delivered another shot of stims into his bloodstream. The overdose got his heartbeat racing, and put a thin red haze between his eyes and the world, but the desperate urge to sleep faded away, and that was all that mattered. More nano-meds would get his arms back in working order, just like they would for every Marine who wasn’t crippled or dead.
Three more men – no, one of them had been among the three females in the company – were dead. Six more were injured too badly to walk or fight; everybody else was hurt to some degree, not to mention exhausted. He authorized additional doses of stimulants for everyone, because they weren’t done for the night.
Heather’s message had arrived in the middle of the fight. He’d been too busy chopping off the limbs of an alien Lieutenant Hansen was holding at spear point to answer, and had only managed to read the terse note a couple of minutes later, as the battle wound down and the last handful of zombies were rendered harmless through mutilation.
Get ready to move. Anybody who can fight. Two hours or less.
It wasn’t much, but he could work with that.
“We’re running out of suit power,” Gunnery Sergeant Freito announced. “A couple of guys are high and dry; they’re using the power packs from the casualties now, and I’m having people trade off packs until everyone is at least at twenty percent, but that’s the best we can do. Had to drain all the area force field packs, too, except for the one you told us to save up. We went t
hrough a twenty-hour sustained ops equivalent in the last two fights.”
“I think we all feel like we just did a full day’s work, Gunny. Maybe two.”
“You can say that again, sir.”
Even Goldberg and Freito, two of the toughest Marines Fromm had known, were worn out. They’d taken off their helmets, like most everyone else after the fighting was over; the two non-coms looked like they’d aged a couple decades since this dog and pony show from hell had started.
Fromm sipped some water from his suit’s feeding tube. His drinking reserves were down to three quarters, despite the nanites working hard at recycling his bodily fluids; the system wasn’t a hundred percent efficient and couldn’t keep up with the demands of the last forty-eight hours. They were out of ammo and scraping the bottom of the barrel on everything else.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll return to camp. I want everyone to be ready to move at a moment’s notice, except for the walking wounded, who will remain behind to watch over the other casualties. We’ve got more work to do.”
His officers and NCOs looked surprised but carried out his orders. They might not know why he’d issued them, but they trusted him. Just as he trusted Heather.
Be ready.
“We will be,” he whispered.
Thirteen
They once had been humanoids, almost elfin in appearance, except for a third eye where a human forehead would be. But they had self-evolved into two separate species: the planet-bound, who retained their original features, and the spacers, who had grown in size to accommodate the larger and more complex brains they desired for themselves. That subspecies of giants became the Pathfinders, the best pilots of the galaxy.
Advance to Contact (Warp Marine Corps Book 3) Page 23
