Into the Looking Glass votsb-1

by John Ringo

  They set the bomb down a half meter from the gate, retrieved their weapons, set them down to either side of the bomb and then Weaver waved at the Abrams, whose driver put it immediately into reverse and stomped the gas.

  Chief Miller, in the meantime, seemed to be doing a routine from Saturday Night Fever, his feet moving back and forth and to either side while his hands flailed wildly in the air.

  “Excited, Chief?” Weaver said over the radio.

  “Damned disco dance, you were right,” Miller said, panting.

  “Steady down, just quit trying so hard and it will damp out,” Weaver replied. After a moment it did and the chief stooped and grabbed one of the handles on the bomb with both hands, hooking the release tab over his thumb. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” Weaver said, stooping and picking up the bomb.

  “One,” Miller said, starting the swing.

  “Two,” Weaver, replied.

  “Three!” they both said, letting go just short of the apex of the arc.

  Weaver turned and picked up his Bushmaster and then started into a clumsy run. The mecha-suits did tend to walk like Frankenstein, a problem of lack of mobility in the “ankle” of the suit and complete lack of feedback, but they could get up a fair turn of speed and he was going just about twenty kilometers per hour when a giant picked him up and tossed him in the direction he had been going anyway.

  He hit hard and a yellow light popped up, indicating that his left arm power system was down. That was really going to suck.

  He rolled onto his belly after a couple of kicks, centered his right arm under him and used it to lever himself to his feet. It would have been nearly impossible for a normal human but the Wyvern’s design made it surprisingly easy. Which was good because he could tell from the feel that the left arm was under muscle power only. His internal rad counters were higher, also, and he figured he’d popped environmental somewhere. That was really going to suck.

  The chief was up as well and running back to the gate so Weaver made the command decision that he’d ignore those minor little issues. He picked up his Bushmaster and clumsily trotted over to the gate, carrying the Bushmaster in his right hand.

  “You okay?” the chief said.

  “Couldn’t be better,” Weaver replied, hooking up his ammo feed slide. “You?”

  “Peachy,” the SEAL answered, manually cocking the 30mm. “Okay, let’s rock.”

  With that the two of them bent over — the mecha suits were fourteen feet tall and could barely fit together though the gate — and stepped, lurched really, through the looking glass.

  * * *

  “I think he’s losing it,” Crichton said, turning up the news broadcast.

  “Who?” Earp replied, looking up from the latest bulletin from FEMA.

  “The CBS anchor,” the sergeant replied.

  The anchor was beginning to show signs of the strain of trying to keep up with the news.

  “Another Titcher gate has opened in Staunton, Virginia,” he said, pronouncing it, correctly, as Stanton. “National Guard units have responded but the initial attempt by state police to stem the attack has failed with heavy casualties among the state police. In other news the State Department has announced that the Mreee have officially requested the loan of mobile nuclear weapons and that the Russians have agreed to sell the U.S. several SS-19 mobile missile launchers…” The reporter, who had won his spurs in Vietnam reporting all the news that was detrimental to the United States and who had been a quiet, but major, advocate of the antinuclear/antimilitary brigade for decades, was reporting the latest news with a rictus smile. “The Mreee have relayed a request from the Nitch, a race of intelligent spiderlike creatures…” He stopped and giggled. “I can’t say this. Yes, I know, I’m reading it on my TelePrompTer but this can’t be happening! This JUST CAN’T BE HAPPENING!”

  The screen changed to a female anchorwoman who was rubbing furiously at her nose with her index finger. She looked up in startlement and then recovered quickly.

  “We seem to be having some technical difficulties in New York,” she said with studied aplomb. “In other news…”

  “Score one for reality overload,” Crichton said as he turned the sound back down. “Failed his SAN roll.”

  “Just proud to be here,” Earp replied.

  “I gotta ask,” the sergeant muttered. “Look, Earp’s not a really common name…”

  “My great-great-grandfather was a cousin,” Earp replied. “A wanted felon up around Dodge City. They had a gentleman’s agreement; Wyatt didn’t come up where Ryan was and Ryan didn’t go near Tombstone.”

  “Thought it might be something like that…”

  * * *

  And in other news, Weaver tripped, almost immediately, on a dead dog on the other side of the gate.

  The Titcher side of the gate was littered with dead and dying aliens, many of them torn limb from limb by the big explosion. As he lurched forward Weaver caught a glimpse of one of the rhino-tanks over on its side, one leg blown off and green lightning rippling over its surface.

  There had been thousands of aliens in the gate room and most of them had suffered some effect from the expansion bomb. But many of them had simply been stunned or thrown off their feet and they were getting up and charging the humans who had been imprudent enough to invade their space.

  Weaver felt glad he’d fallen as a line of needles passed through the space he would have occupied standing up. The armor of the suit probably would have stopped them but better to be out of the way. He toggled his top-side camera, brought the Bushmaster up to his shoulder one-handed, propped it up as best he could with his left hand and opened fire.

  “I can’t see!” Miller shouted. He was prone as well, with his chain gun up, but it was firing sporadically, many of the rounds flying over the heads of the aliens.

  “Toggle your top camera!” Weaver yelled. “Setting Three! Setting Three!” He aimed at a rhino-tank that was just heaving itself to its feet and was pleased to see the 25mm rounds splash goo out of its side. The tank shuddered, did a couple of side steps and then lay down again, its legs twitching. Fortunately it didn’t explode.

  Other than that he wasn’t getting very many impressions. The lighting in the room was badly damaged, probably from the explosion, but it was strong enough that it was interfering with the automated low-light circuitry of the cameras. They kept switching from normal to low-light setting. There was also a smell, harshly chemical with a slight undertone like rotten fish. He knew he’d smelled it somewhere before but he couldn’t quite place it. On the other hand, he knew for sure that his quarantine integrity had been breached to hell and gone.

  There were lots of thorn-throwers, lots of dogs and he was hammering out rounds, single shot, carefully aimed using the laser sight on the Bushmaster. Standard Bushmasters had neither laser sights nor a selectable switch but the armorer, who had a Ph.D. in engineering, was a foresighted man and had made some adjustments. Weaver noticed that the SEAL had started to get his fire under control and assumed he had switched cameras.

  “What, exactly, are we doing here?” Miller asked as he took out another of the rhino-tanks. There were so many of the Titcher in the room the tanks couldn’t seem to decide whether to fire or not. Or, maybe, they didn’t want to damage the room. Good.

  “Getting a look at what is on the other side before we nuke it,” Weaver replied.

  “Good, we’ve done that,” the SEAL said. “Time to do the Mogadishu Mile.”

  “What?”

  “Run away, run away!”

  “Oh, okay,” Weaver replied. He hooked his hand under him and pushed up to his knees then up to standing. Then he froze.

  “What the fuck… ?” he heard Miller mutter.

  The thing was probably just the right size to fit through the gate. It was, essentially, a mobile, green cone that looked like nothing so much as a mound of manure. Tentacles that might have been purple extended from its base and it was glowing, faintly. It also was w
addling towards them serenely through the chaos of the gate room.

  “I don’t know what the fuck that is,” Weaver said, taking a step back and lifting his Bushmaster as well as he could with the functional right arm. “But I think we should shoot it.”

  “Damned straight,” the SEAL said, flicking his selector switch from semi to full auto and letting out a stream of depleted uranium penetrator rounds.

  What the SEAL had failed to consider was that he had previously been firing from the prone, where the mass of the suit was in contact with the ground. Also, he had been firing single shots, each of which shoved the heavy suit back a few inches. If things hadn’t been so chaotic he might have considered the recoil of those shots. But he did not. So when he pulled the trigger, intending to send out a controlled burst of three rounds, the recoil staggered him backwards through the gate as his hand automatically clenched, a monkey reaction from falling, on the trigger.

  The first round, however, hit the thing squarely on the front of the cone. The second was near the top, just to the left of a small, brightly glowing patch. Where the third was didn’t really matter because by that time the thing had exploded.

  Weaver had also been knocked back by the recoil of his weapon but he was actually in the process of gate transference when the explosion, categorized from later inference as right at sixty megatons, occurred.

  * * *

  Collective 15379 was nonresponsive. How interesting.

  “Collective 12465, report on physical conditions near Collective 15379,” Collective 47 emitted.

  “Mushroom cloud and radiation emissions categorized as sixty megaton quarkium release,” 12465 reported. “Outer collective processes 12465, 3456, 19783 damaged. All functions 15379 terminated.”

  15379 had reported attacks by fission/fusion weapons and had registered intent to respond with a quarkium unit. Collective 47 had automatically given assent. Once a bridgehead had been secured with sufficient standoff to prevent destabilization of the wormhole the quarkium unit would be detonated and then colonization could recommence with the local area seared of hostile forces.

  Something had somehow predetonated the quarkium unit.

  Collective 47 could not be said to feel anger or sadness at the demise of the subcollective called 15379. Collectives were, essentially, immortal and 15379 might have, in time, created as many subcollectives as Collective 47, thereby increasing the Race and ensuring its security. Not to mention that the subcollective was a major supplier of vanadium and a few other trace metals as well as a huge source of biological material via two slave races.

  But the loss of Collective 15379 could be borne. It would decrease the status of Collective 47 to a degree and reduce its balance of essential trade. But those, too, could be borne. What was questionable was whether the Race could afford another species to damage it so severely. The Race had encountered many species in its expansion from gate to gate and some of them, the Alborge for example, were significant threats to the survival of the Race itself. If the Alborge ever exerted themselves they could erase the Collective in a span of time that had no meaning. But would be very, very short. The sophonts of world 47-15379-ZB might, in time, become such a race. That could not be borne.

  “All subcollectives,” Collective 47 emitted. “Reestablish contact with gates to world 47-15379-ZB. Initiate twenty-five percent increase in all combat unit systems, ground, air, space and liquid, emphasis on systems level four through seven. Order all slave races to initiate assault plans; deception plan is terminated.”

  Collective 47 was going to war.

  * * *

  Susan McBain was puzzled.

  The portal in Mississippi that had so startled the survey team by its vacuum opened onto a planet. It wasn’t quite a vacuum, simply very thin atmosphere. About what you’d expect on Mars. The planet looked a bit like Mars, as well, except for the lambent purple sun that was setting in the east. It was dry and desolate, the ground scarred for miles and miles, somewhat like the outskirts of Newark.

  None of that had Susan puzzled.

  What was bothering her was the biology of the planet, such as it was.

  She had received samples from the initial survey team and decided that they just couldn’t be right. The survey team was an environmental company that normally responded to hazardous waste spills. It had gone to the far side, collected samples of soil and air, and returned. Then a large metal plate had been put over the gate to prevent more loss of atmosphere.

  Despite the fact that the survey team was supposed to avoid contaminating the samples, they had to have done so. Otherwise the biology of the far world made no sense.

  Oh, it was alien, to be sure. She had tentatively identified a type of archeobacteria in the soil and it was unlike anything from earth. But what was bothering her was dichotomies. The soil was almost entirely depleted of any form of nutrient; there was no phosphate, nitrate or any trace material useable by plants in it. It was almost, but not quite, pure silica and iron with some traces of elemental carbon.

  However, “almost” wasn’t “pure.” Besides the archeobacteria, there were traces of proteins all over it. More proteins than you’d get, say, in clean sand in the desert. And the proteins were not the same as those found in the archeobacteria. Not even vaguely the same. They used completely different amino acids for one thing. Amino acids different from Earth’s and different from the Mreee. In fact, the only place she’d seen amino acids like those were from Titcher remains. Which was why she suspected contamination. The same company had done some clean-up work with the Titcher and the only thing she could think was that they had contaminated the samples.

  So she had leaned on her connection to the Anomaly study and gotten a plane from the Army to carry her up to the site. An airlock had been installed vice the former plate and she had first gotten into an environment suit then had herself decontaminated. Then she went through to the other side.

  The Army had wanted to send a security team through with her, but she had cited the possibility of contamination. Actually, she just was tired of dealing with soldiers.

  The far side had been as described but Susan had noted something that had passed right by the survey team. Yes, it looked like an abandoned primordial planet from one perspective. But Susan had grown up in the phosphate mining zone of Florida where the highest hill in the region was mine tailings. And if you let your mind wander you could imagine you were in the middle of a giant strip mine. Maybe one that was as big as the world.

  She put that aside and walked well away from the gate until she got to the edge of a hill that she was pretty sure the survey team hadn’t tested. She got down on her knees and started collecting samples. Technically she should throw a ring and make sure that it was random sampling but at the moment she was only trying to satisfy her own curiosity.

  As she was tipping a sample into a canister it fell over and she noticed that the ground was shaking. She considered the possibility of earthquake but the shaking was rhythmic and rapid, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, more like artillery fire or something. She looked up and around and that was when she saw it.

  There were mountains to the east, how far away was hard to tell in the thin atmosphere, and without anything for a comparison she had assumed they were far away, maybe twenty or thirty miles, and quite large. But they must have been closer and smaller because walking around the edge of the nearest was a giant green daddy longlegs. It was half the height of the mountain, at least. Her mind buckled as it tried, and failed, to put the beast into anything like normal reference. Then she noticed that, following it and running among its six legs, were smaller creatures. Even at the distance she could recognize the rhinoceros and centipede tanks of the Titcher. There were other things, as well, like smaller spiders, about twice the height of the rhino-tanks. But the thing about all of them were that they were tiny, like grains of sand, next to the giant daddy longlegs. The thing was as big as a mountain, maybe as much as thousand meters high.

  And it was heade
d this way.

  * * *

  “What happened?” Miller said as his eyes opened. He was in a hospital again. This was getting annoying. And he had another blinding headache. He pushed that aside, willing himself to ignore it; pain was weakness leaving the body.

  “You’re in Shands Hospital,” a female voice answered. “There was an explosion at the gate.”

  “Not again,” he muttered. “Look, call my wife and tell her I’m alive this time; she was furious the last time I disappeared.”

  “I’ll make sure she knows,” the nurse said, giggling.

  “How’s Dr. Weaver?” Miller said, sitting up. He felt incredibly weak, like he had the flu or something. He put that aside as well. There were things to do.

  “I don’t know,” the nurse replied. She was a mousey female with short brown hair. “There was no Dr. Weaver admitted with you.” She put her hand out as he started to get out of bed. “You’re really not in any condition to go anywhere, Mr. Miller.”

  “The hell you say,” the SEAL replied, sliding his legs out of the sheets and sitting up. There was an IV in his arm and he noticed that this time it was a yellowish liquid that he recognized as plasma or platelets. “Where’d I get hit?”

  “You didn’t,” the nurse replied. “But you did sustain some severe radiation damage. It appears that a nuclear weapon was detonated on the other side of the gate. It apparently sent out a lot of radiation.”

  “Oh, hell.”

  “The gates in Eustis, Tennessee and Staunton are all closed, with a big burst of radiation at each. And there’s an admiral that’s been calling for you every couple of hours.”

  “Shit, shit, shit, shit…”

  * * *

  Bill tried to open his eyes and realized that he didn’t have any eyes to open. There was no sensation of heat, of cold, of having a body at all. There was no sound, no light, no sensory input at all. The universe was formless and void.