♦ ♦ ♦
“It’s dark inside,” said Jane from where she stood to one side of the hole blown in the archdoor that faced the T-junction of their hallway with side hallways.
She stood to one side, her flamethrower arm aimed at the dark hole that was a little over a meter wide. Clearly she was ready to advance and make a forced entry.
Richard moved to the opposite side of the hole. Jack and Atsugi stayed in flanking positions in the hallway they’d come down. Decision time. Should they leave and look for an open room? Or chance an entry?
“Send in your drone.”
“Sending,” she replied.
His middle vidscreen came alive with the drone image as it rose up before the silvery white wall, then entered the black hole, its single yellow spotlight spearing ahead. Briefly he saw a distant wall that had red, green and brown streaks crossing it in lively motion.
“Whap!”
The image died as a yellow electric bolt shot out from the darkness and killed the drone.
“Fuck,” Jane muttered.
He grabbed a concussion grenade from the waist of his hard shell, held it out and looked to Jane. “Gunny, toss in a headbanger with me.”
She grabbed a conk grenade from her suit waist and held it out to the edge of the hole. “Ready.”
Richard squeezed to activate the headbanger, then tossed it inside. Jane did the same.
“Kablam! Kablam!”
Bright yellow light flared from inside the dark room, then disappeared. Before he could move Jane jumped through the wall hole. “Ooh Rah!”
He jumped after her, aiming for the opposite angle.
His left shoulder hit the hard floor of the dark room and as he started to roll he stopped the motion with a stuck out leg. With a whir he aimed both arms outward toward the darkness.
“Jerry, activate spotlights.”
Bright yellow beams speared out from his shoulder spots. They were joined by Jane’s two beams.
“Marines! Stay outside,” he yelled.
As the two of them shifted position to scan the room with their spotlights, nothing moved. Nothing alive seemed to be inside. But the beams illuminated four rectangular water tanks lined up in the middle of the room, with posts topped by panels in front of them. The tanks were transparent, either plexi or glass. The panels faced away from him and Jane. He ran his spot to the left as Jane did the same to the right. The lights revealed a cluster of square blocks just to his left, while a similar cluster lay just beyond Jane. The blocks were square metal that were a meter wide and a meter high. The top of each block was a swirl of rainbow lights. No lights or glows came from the sides of the blocks. His and Jane’s spots converged back on the four tanks and the silvery metal floor on which the tanks stood. Cables came up from the floor and ran to the four posts with panels. The wall behind the tanks, which lay ten meters away from their entry hole, pulsed with complex patterns of black, brown, orange and yellow streaks that were spotted by red balls. The entire wall seemed alive with the colors, the patterns of which never repeated, as best he could tell. He focused on the scorched body of the drone, which lay on the floor in front of the left most water tank.
“Where the fuck did that power bolt come from? This is sure as shit not a collection of aquarium tanks!”
“Sir,” called Jane from his right as she moved to shelter behind one of the square blocks. “My infrared says there are four heat-emitting shapes in this room. Two are next to the tanks, one is inside a tank and the fourth is over in that corner. See?”
His visor’s HUD display went live with the infrared image shared by Jane. Belatedly he tongued active his own infrared suit sensor, along with sensors for UV, far infrared, radio, radar, sonar and other ranging modalities. He saw what she saw. The heat sources were long, oval-shaped and not moving.
“Light them up.”
He shifted his shoulders and focused his two spots on the floor area where two of the heat shapes were located. Nothing showed in the yellow beams. Just silvery floor, clear water tanks, sloshing water in one tank and empty air.
Jane’s two spots illuminated the tank closest to her and the corner where a heat shape showed on his HUD. “Nothing showing.”
But there had to be something there. Infrared heat spots that were distinctly brighter than the low heat glows emitted from the room walls and floor had to be real.
His suit vibrated to the touch of a sonar beam. He moved to cover behind a square block, hunkering down as best he could. But he was too large to be fully covered by the block. Same for Jane.
“Sonar just hit me,” she said.
“Backtrack! Jerry, illuminate sonar signal source.”
The suit AI did as ordered. On his HUD display that showed the four heat sources, a red line speared out from Richard to a water tank that had sloshing water in it. A similar line linked Jane with the heat shape in the corner.
He didn’t like invisible heat shapes that could track him with sonar. Thinking hard, he reached back to the top of his backpack, felt around and pulled loose a half dome. Bringing it forward, he tapped on its control pad, then tossed it up to the ceiling.
“Thump,” sounded softly as the Illuminator dome hit the ceiling and stayed there as its suction pad gripped the ceiling.
Bright white light shone down, illuminating the entire room. The light shifted slightly as the device put out polarized light beams. That did the trick.
“Fuck!” yelled Jane, aiming her shotgun arm at the long, low shape that huddled in the far corner.
“No firing yet!”
He pulled his taser, lifted it, aimed it at one of the two oval mounds on the floor, and fired.
Thin silvery threads shot forth, ending in the middle of the nearest oval mound. Yellow sparks showed as the knockout charge entered the flesh of whatever it was that was invisible yet put off living body heat glow.
Jane did the same, shooting threads at the shape in the corner.
Too much happened then.
The shape below the tank that he had shot became visible. Something that looked like a fat-bodied seal with front and rear flipper feet became visible. It had an oval head fronted with two black eyes and a wide mouth of dagger-like white teeth. Eight eye mounds ran along its spine, which ended in a thick swim tail. Above the creature’s mouth were ten fleshy tendrils that waved and jerked, then fell flat as the charge knocked the creature unconscious. The same creature shape became visible in the corner.
Two yellow electric bolts shot out toward him and Jane, coming from the floor and from the tank with sloshing water.
“Damn!” he said as the yellow bolt struck the block in front of him, then spread out like electrical water until it touched his left arm. His fingers clenched as the charge reached his skin, despite the armor of the suit.
“Firing!” yelled Jane as her right arm shot a long spurt of yellow napalm from her flamethrower, hitting the shape on the floor. A loud hooting sounded, then died.
Richard almost did the same to the creature inside the tank. Instead, he thumb-released the threads that linked him with his floor target, then aimed the taser at the tank and squeezed the trigger. Silvery threads shot out, then stopped as they struck the humpback of the creature that nearly filled the tank, its right front flipper foot gripping the tank edge. The two front eyes squeezed tight, the tooth-filled mouth opened wide and a long, low hooting came forth.
Stranger still was the skin of the creature.
Dense patterns of colors brighter than a rainbow ran across its skin, while on a lower skin level there glowed metallic green, blue, silver and gold colors. Then the colors vanished and the floating seal creature turned the color of water, or nearly invisible. Looking down he saw the first creature he had knocked out was now silvery looking. Jane’s corner target was also silver. All three were unmoving, but they were nearly invisible, thanks to skin that assumed the color of whatever they were in contact with.
“Damn that’s weird!” called Jack from beh
ind Richard as the Marine looked through the blast hole.
“Agreed,” called Jane as she stood up, waving her taser in a half circle in case more creatures appeared.
Richard stood up, aiming his own taser forward with his right hand while his left arm lifted and aimed his shotgun tube ahead. The presence of four invisible creatures in this room made it vital to not assume they were the only ones in the room. Although the polarized white light that shone down from the Illuminator had not bounced off any other shapes.
“Jack! Atsugi! Get ready to grab some aliens. They’re big, slippery, and like a cross between a seal and a great white shark.”
“Grab them?” called Jack, sounding doubtful.
“Yup. Jane and I will lift them up and push ‘em through the wall hole. You and Atsugi grab it and put it on the hallway floor. There are three live ones in here. Jane smoked the fourth one. You two got enough vacbags?”
“Affirmative,” called Atsugi over his helmet comlink. “Uh, do we put water in with them?”
Richard covered Jane as she holstered her taser, walked to the corner and grabbed the front end of the knocked-out alien. With a low whir her suit’s exoskeleton muscles lifted up the creature. She walked toward the blast hole, pulling the creature along. As she passed Richard he noticed four slit-lines behind the creature’s giant mouth. They looked like gills. But two of the creatures had made hooting sounds, so they took in air. Somehow.
“No. They seem to breath both air and water,” Richard said, thinking fast. “Three of them were out of their water tanks. Just stuff them in the vacbags, haul ‘em through the store room door, then put ‘em on the floor below our hull entry hole. We’ll take them with us when we leave this blasted place!”
“Understood. We’re grabbing the first bastard,” Atsugi said.
Richard holstered his taser, then headed over to the walking seal on the floor. Bending down he grabbed its head just past the gills that lay on either side of its big head, lifted, then turned toward the wall hole. Jane stood beside the water tank with the last living critter.
“Chief, do we haul out the one I torched?”
He pushed the front end of his creature through the wall hole, then held its slippery body as Jack and Atsugi pulled it into the hallway. Turning toward her, he headed for the tank she stood by.
“Yes. Let our MEs on the Lepanto dissect the bastard. That gives us three captives and one deado for analysis. Maybe this will be enough for the captain.”
“Righto.”
Together they grabbed the four meter long creature, Jane holding the front end and he the back end. They lifted, then walked it over to the wall hole. As they pushed it through, four metal gauntlets grabbed the carcass and pulled on it. The creature disappeared. Orange light flowed in from the hallway, competing with the white polarized light put out by his Illuminator. Time to check in.
“Captain Renselaer, what are your wishes?”
CHAPTER TEN
Jacob pondered the Marine’s question. The team from Tarawa II had found no aliens in the wing fragment they were searching. Yet. It was a search that was going very slowly in view of the electric bolts shot out by some of the creatures that had resisted Richard and Jane. Nobody wanted to become a deadweight from knocked out suit electronics. Or worse, if a bolt hit the visor of a helmet. Putting aside his wonderment over whether these walking seal aliens possessed hand weapons like the taser and .45, he thought fast. This was likely to be the only chance to explore an invader spaceship, leastwise what was left of it.
“Chief, use your laser to cut loose two of those panels from their poles,” Jacob said. “Then exit that place. Roam the hallways. See if you can find any engineering spaces. Also, look for the graser room. The tip of your wing frag has an emission node that was the source of one of that ship’s two gamma ray lasers. If you can salvage the body of that weapon, do so. If it’s locked onto the floor or wall, do some radar and video scans of it. Maybe our Weapons people can get an idea of how it works, depending on what you find.”
The image on the front wallscreen changed to a flare of green light as O’Connor used his belly laser to cut loose a panel from its pole. Next to him Diego was doing the same. The two turned, headed for the blast hole, then jumped through the hole. The image went shaky crazy before stabilizing as the Marine stood up. The man stood at the T-junction of the hallways.
“Will do, captain. We’ll start roaming after we get these four aliens into the store room.” The image became filled with the wet-looking skin of an alien as O’Connor bent down and picked up one creature. He stood up as if the thing weighed nothing.
Jacob shifted his attention to the right side wallscreen image. It came from the shoulder vidcam of Sergeant Didier Chamonix of the Chapultepec. In it he saw the face of Auggie Naranjo behind his clear visor. The team leader’s thin black mustache moved as he spoke.
“Captain, we put down one alien who shot an electric bolt at us. Sergeant Chamonix torched it. Didn’t seem worth taking a chance on a dead hard shell.”
Beyond the white armored skin of Naranjo’s hard shell he saw the backpack of Corporal Lolita Chang. Floating in midair, she was aiming her arms down the silvery hallway in which Naranjo and Chamonix also floated.
“Any bodies beyond the one you torched?” Jacob said.
“None,” Naranjo said, his brown Hispanic face looking tense. “No gravity here as you can see. But the lights and heat are working. This frag may have more live ones. Orders?”
“Put the torched creature in a vacbag,” Jacob said, thinking over alternatives. “Forget about finding more live aliens. O’Connor’s team has three. That’s enough for us to study and see how they communicate with each other.”
Naranjo nodded inside his helmet. “So we kill anything we see that ain’t human and grab whatever tech that looks good?”
“Exactly.”
“Moving out, sir.”
Jacob switched his attention to the left side of the wallscreen. On it were vidcam images from the other three Dart teams. He fixed on the one that came from the vidcam of Harrison, of the Tarawa II. The man was following after the walking figures of three Marines.
“Sergeant Harrison, what’s your status?”
The vidcam image slowed its forward movement. “Team, disperse,” the man said. The image shifted as the man moved to stand next to the side of the hallway they were in.
“No aliens sighted yet. There are a lot of closed archdoors along this hallway. Saw what happened with Diego’s team. Do we look for live ones?”
“No. Head toward the spot where that wing has its graser mount, if your suit’s inertial tracker can take you there. Do sensor analysis of the graser. Dismount it if you can and bring it back with you.”
“Understood. What do we do if we find a live during our search for the graser?”
“Tase it if you get the drop on it. Otherwise torch it,” Jacob said. “Tech is the priority now.”
“Yes sir. Moving out. We’ll let you know when we find this graser thing.”
Jacob looked left to the image from the Chao Lee team.
“Sergeant Boxley, what’s your status?”
Her vidcam image showed a hallway. The arched ceiling of the hallway was damaged, with metal plating hanging down. The orange light strips were flickering.
“Nothing living. Three bodies seen,” the woman responded, both of her arms aimed forward in case a live alien showed up. “No gravity. Colder than a witch’s ass. Getting ready to enter a room here.”
“Be careful. Watch out for electric bolts like those that hit Diego’s team.” Jacob thought fast. “You see any live aliens in the room, grab one. Then head back to your Dart. We’ve got enough bodies and live captives. Diego and Harrison are looking for tech.”
“Will do as you order, sir,” she said. “This chunk is pretty chewed up on the outside. Inside is partly energized, but failing. It’ll be dead pretty soon.”
“Good.” Jacob turned to the wallscreen image fr
om the Fallujah team. “Corporal Mendoza, what’s your status?”
The wallscreen image showed a white-suited Marine floating down a silvery hallway. The image came from Mendoza’s suit. Which meant the third Marine had to be behind him, covering the rear. The orange light in the image was flickering, with some lengths of the hallway dark or dusky.
“Sir, one live alien,” the team leader said. “When we rounded a curve in this hallway we saw it scooting along the floor ahead of us, its flippers lifting it so it paddle-walked. George fired his taser and hit its tail. Before the hit, its body was a mix of colors flashing all over its skin. It was also hooting now and then. Its skin has gone silver now.”
That made four live ones and at least two deados for the MEs. “Vacbag your live one and head back to the Fallujah. Forget about any more searching. We’ve got what we need. No point in taking a chance of being hit by one of those electric bolts.”
“Ten-four sir,” Mendoza said. “Did anyone see how the bolts happened? Did they use a handgun or something?”
“No handgun, from what I saw of O’Connor’s video,” Jacob said. “Might be something their body can shoot off, like an electric eel. Get that live one bagged and get the hell out of that frag!”
“Yes sir!”
♦ ♦ ♦
Daisy felt vibrations through her magboots as Marines came in through the midbody airlock. Her piloting vidscreen showed both the external view from the midbody airlock and the view from the interior cargo area of the LCA. Atsugi was still inside the alien store room, pushing an alien body into the null gee of the pressure tube, then giving it a soft tap that sent the vacbagged alien floating toward the midbody airlock. Inside the cargo area were Jane and Jack. They were hauling one vacbagged alien toward the front of the cargo hold. That meant Richard had to be inside the airlock, grabbing a bagged alien and then cycling the inner lock door open to deliver the cargo to his two Marines. A final vacbag sailed out of the store room’s blast hole and along the pressure tube. It held something that was blackened. Which had to be the dead critter. The white armored hard shell of Atsugi followed, floating up the tube. That had to mean all three live ones were inside the Berlin, with the dead carcass last to arrive. She looked over at the situational holo that hovered above her piloting panel.
StarFight 3: Battlecry Page 13
