by Steve Perry
“But I don’t dirty my hands on nothings like you.”
As he raised the gun to kill her, Billie saw a blur behind him. She couldn’t stop her gasp.
The pirate tried to turn, but she locked both her hands around the wrist of the hand he held her with. It slowed him enough so that Wilks hit him with one shoulder just above his hip. Billie felt her shirt tear as the pirate was knocked away.
She fell to the floor and scrabbled on all fours.
Toward the carbine where it had fallen. Five meters. Four. Three—
The pirate roared and Billie twisted enough to see him. He had lost his pistol, but he was up and diving for it.
Two meters to the carbine. One—
“I’ll kill both of you!”
Wilks was sprawled on his side, pushing himself along with only his left foot. Toward the pirate.
Billie reached the carbine. Grabbed it. Boiled onto her back. Wouldn’t be time to get to her feet—
The pirate’s gun went off, but she was rolling and she felt the slug hit the deck where she had just been. No time to aim. She pushed the gun out as if it were her fist punching and pulled the trigger. The fire selector must have been jiggled when the gun had fallen. It went off once. Billie, expecting full auto, couldn’t figure it out. She held the trigger back, waiting for more fire. Nothing. She’d have to let it go and pull it again, she realized. Oh, fuck!
But one was enough.
The caseless 10mm round caught the pirate just below the shoulder of his gun arm. Blew a hole through him. Billie saw him tumble, the gun falling from his nerveless fingers. The entry wound was the size of her fingertip, but when he fell she saw the exit wound, high on his back, was as big as her fist.
The pistol slid two meters away from the fallen man’s fingertips. He raised his head, saw the pistol, crawled for it. Stretched his good hand out for it.
Billie came up, carbine held ready, and jumped for the pistol. Kicked it across the room. Pointed the carbine at the downed man.
He rolled over onto his back. Blood poured from his wound, spreading under his head in a coppery-smelling pool.
“Stupid fucking bitch,” he said. He reached for something at his waist.
“Don’t move!”
“Fuck you.” He slid his left hand into a vertical slit on his coverall over his right hip. She saw him smile as he gripped it.
“Billie!” Wilks yelled.
“Stop!” she screamed.
He started to pull his hand out—
She squeezed the trigger.
The explosion was loud in the enclosed room, it lapped against the hard walls and splashed back at her. The smell of burnt propellant filled her nostrils. Her ears rang.
The round hit him square in the mouth. Chopped out some front teeth and blew the back of his head all over the deck and wall behind him. Whatever he had intended to do wasn’t ever going to happen.
She bent, tugged his hand out. He death-gripped a grenade. The safety cap had already been snapped up and his thumb was on the detonate button. Carefully, Billie pried the grenade loose from the dead man’s hand and closed the safety cap. He would have blown them all up, ruined the control room, sent the ship spiraling down to burn in the atmosphere.
“Billie, cut me lose.”
She looked at Wilks, blinked as if she’d never seen him before. “What?”
“He’s set some kind of timer going. Hurry!”
Numbly, Billie obeyed. She found the fallen knife, used it to cut the strand binding Wilks. The knife was very sharp.
Free, Wilks ran to the com board. Looked at the screen. A bullet had shattered the projector. He couldn’t see how much time was left. He started tapping controls on the console, swore, then moved to another screen.
“What is it?”
He shook his head. “I think it’s a bomb set on the APC. 1st Squad got loose. He was afraid they’d get to the APC and come back.”
“What about Mitch?”
“I don’t know.”
“Call him! Find out!”
“Billie—”
“Goddammit, Wilks!”
“Let me see if I can stop this timer. They’ll need a way off the planet. Go guard the door! There are still a couple of the androids running around loose!”
She stared at him.
“Go, do it! If they get us, we all die!”
Billie moved. She pushed the selector to full auto, looked out into the corridor, didn’t see anybody. She stood at the doorway, watching.
“Wilks?”
“I don’t have enough time! There’s got to be a failsafe, a break-off command but I don’t know the code. I’m trying to bust the APC controls open to shut the power down, maybe the destruct is run off of its systems. It’s all I can do.”
“How long?”
He shrugged. “Could be a minute, could be an hour. I can’t tell. The system won’t access it from here.”
Billie turned back to watch the corridor. If Mitch was alive, she’d go down and find him. If not, then it didn’t much matter.
“Damn!” Wilks said. “Damn, damn, damn!”
22
Fortunately for the squad they’d been issued IR viewers. The pirates had known the marines would be going into a dark hive, so they let them keep their red eyes.
So they could move in the dark.
The air pods might be buzzing around up there somewhere, but for now, the marines were better equipped and effectively invisible.
They approached the APC in the moonless night, guided by the landing craft’s heat leaks. Ramirez had the point; he was several hundred meters ahead of the rest of them. Bueller had told Ramirez to pull up short, scout the area, and then report back. It was likely that there were guards on the lander and Bueller had to figure a way to take them out without damaging the craft.
Bueller was looking away from the lander when all of a moment the night turned to blinding day.
“Shit!” he said. He flipped the IR flat screen up and turned, using his own vision.
The fireball from the APC was still spreading, dimmed somewhat and growing darker as it expanded outward and upward. They were far enough away so that the shock wave was fairly mild; it was like a hot wind, a sudden breeze off a desert at midday. Bueller dropped flat, but realized even as he did so that his reflexes were too slow. If it had been dangerous they’d already be past tense.
After a second pieces of wreckage began to patter down, some of it hit nearby, a solid chunk! as a heavy object dug into the rocky soil. A bit of flaming debris arced past, still climbing, and other burning shards fell like a holiday fireworks display, a hot rain that pocked the dirt and went dark or bounced and stayed lit even after coming to rest.
“Oh, man!” Chin said.
Bueller spoke into the com. “Ramirez? Respond.”
The opchan was quiet.
“Adios, Ramirez,” Mbutu said.
Bueller stared at the smoking ruin ahead of them. Ramirez must have gotten caught in the explosion. Damn!
He was sorry to lose Ramirez, but another cold fact lay in his belly like a bar of dry ice: with the APC destroyed, they were all fucked. End of mission. End of squad.
Damn.
* * *
Billie said to Wilks, “Can you contact the marines?”
The com board was alive with incoming calls, but all of them from the pirate androids, who were stranded on-planet when the APC blew. Wilks waved his hand over the cutoff control and the board fell silent. He touched another control.
“Fox Platoon, this is Sergeant Wilks. Anybody copy?”
For what seemed a long time to Billie there was no response. Oh, gods, Mitch!
“This is Bueller, 1st Squad.”
“Mitch!”
Wilks waved her to silence. “Bueller, what’s your situation?”
“I’ve got Blake, Smith, Chin, and Mbutu. We lost Ramirez when the APC went nova. How are things there?”
“Billie got the drop on the head bad guy. He�
�s no longer with us. There are probably some of his troops still loose on the ship but we’re armed and in the control center. I think we can clean them out okay.”
“Interesting that his androids aren’t First-Lawed,” Bueller said.
“Yeah, ain’t it, though. Listen up. I’ll light the other APC and come down after your squad. This mission is going to be an abort, Bueller. The bad guys already have one of the bugs back home. Once the government hears that, they’ll grab it. We don’t need a specimen anymore.”
“Copy that, Sergeant Wilks. We’ll find a safe place for the APC to land—”
Suddenly a voice cut in over that of Bueller’s, bleeding across a wide spectrum of the radio band.
“Help, somebody help! This is Walters, Second Officer. The androids put us down next to one of those fucking anthills and the things are coming out right toward us! Help us!”
Wilks said, “Dammit!” He fiddled with the com controls. “Walters, this is Wilks! Where are you? Give me a transponder beacon!”
“Jesus and Buddha! They’re all over us! No! Leave me alone! Aaahh!”
“The beacon, Walters, trigger the beacon!”
Billie stared at Wilks.
“There it is!” he said. “He managed to kick it on.”
Billie shook her head. “The things will take them into the hive. They’ll web them up in the egg room.”
Wilks nodded. “Yeah. Even with the beacon, we can’t get to them before they get implanted. They’re dead men.” He blew out a short sigh. “I’m gonna nuke the planet from breakaway orbit,” he said. “At least it’ll be quick. We’ve got enough hardware. While Stephens was bitching about the plasma rifles, I was moving bomb components past him disguised as spare parts. I can put a ring of fire down there that’ll trigger a thousand volcanoes. Between them and the nukes, they’ll scour the place like a sandblaster. Sterilize the whole fucking planet.”
“Sergeant Wilks,” came Mitch’s voice. “We heard the distress signal. It’s only a dozen klicks from here. We’re on the way.”
“Negative on that, mister. The mission is an abort, repeat, it is an abort. You find a spot for the APC and wait for it to collect you. That’s an order.”
“Sergeant, you know we can’t leave those men in there.”
Wilks’s jaw muscles danced as he ground his teeth together.
“We’ll call for the APC when we get them out,” Mitch said.
Billie didn’t understand what was going on. “Mitch! This is Billie! You can’t save the crew; they are as good as dead! Wait for the APC!”
“I—I can’t explain it, Billie, but we can’t just let them die.”
“Dammit, Mitch! What is this, some kind of marine honor thing? They’re gone! They might be breathing for a while longer but they’re dead if they get implanted! We couldn’t do anything for them even if you could get them out! It isn’t worth the risk!”
“I’m sorry, Billie. I love you.”
“Mitch!”
“Save your breath,” Wilks said. “You can’t stop them.”
“Why?”
But Wilks had nothing to say.
* * *
“Anything from the other squads?” Chin asked.
“No,” Bueller answered. “I expect if any of them made it and still have coms working we’ll see them at the hive.”
Smith shook his head. “Damn, I don’t like this.”
“Tell me about it,” Bueller said.
They moved off through the night.
* * *
There were four of Massey’s First-Law-less androids on the ship. Wilks and Billie found and killed them all.
“I don’t understand,” Billie said. “I didn’t think androids could hurt people.”
“Close,” he said. “They modified Asimov’s First Law of Robotics for androids. They can’t kill a human or even stand by and allow a human to be killed without trying to help. Otherwise there couldn’t be android surgeons; they wouldn’t be able to hurt somebody a little to save them from a bigger hurt or death. Apparently nobody told this group. Massey’s backing must be very high up in the scheme of things to have pulled that one off.”
Wilks programmed the remaining military lander, as well as the one from Massey’s ship. The company ship would hang in standby orbit in case it was needed; he could pilot it by remote from the planet. Massey had dropped the little pods with their crews in what was called snowball wrap—it burned off going down—but the pods couldn’t reach escape velocity to make it back out of the gravity well.
“I’m going down with you,” Billie said.
“Not a good idea. I’d rather have you on the ship.”
“I don’t much care what you want. I’m going.”
Wilks looked at her, shook his head. He’d tried to warn her, tried to keep her from getting involved with Bueller. It hadn’t worked. Now she was having to pay the price. The cost was steep. He hurt for her, but maybe it was the best way. Bueller and the others were probably history, no better off than those of their crew the monsters had dragged into their mound for baby food. None of the other squads had answered his calls. The mission was a fuckup from the first. Damn. “All right. You can go.” What else could he say?
* * *
The squad had a stroke of good luck. Just before dawn they happened on one of the air pods. The little vehicle must have run low on fuel and put down next to a stream to try to recharge the converters. It would take a long time for the stream’s water to power up the flywheel batteries—the thing wasn’t much bigger than a ditch and the current was slow-moving—but it was not as if the passengers had a lot of choice. Running dry of power at a hundred meters in the air would guarantee a landing nobody would walk away from.
Using her red eye, Blake spiked the two androids from two hundred meters out, one shot each.
“So, do I get a medal or something?”
“Sure, Blake. When we get back to Earth, I’ll put you in for the Marksmanship Badge.”
“Aw, I already got that one, Bueller. I was hoping for a Platinum Star, at least.”
“What the hell, that, too,” Bueller said.
They grinned at each other, but the expressions were tight, whistling-past-the-graveyard humor. Their chances of getting out of this alive were as slim as those of a spitball in a supernova.
But they were better off now. The pod held two more plasma rifles and chargers, a 10mm carbine, and two softslug pistols. Everybody was armed, a plasma weapon for everybody except Bueller, who took the carbine and a belt of grenades.
“How’s the pod’s charge?” Bueller asked.
“Almost dead,” Smith answered. “It’ll take sixteen hours at the stream’s flow rate to give it enough to lift. Even then, two passengers would be reaching.”
Bueller shrugged. “Let it keep charging. Maybe it’ll be useful when we get back.”
“ ‘When’?” Smith said. “My, ain’t you the optimist.”
“Let’s move out.”
Dawn lit the eastern skies with the first reddish glimmers of day.
“ ‘Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning,’ ” Smith said.
“We’re marines,” Bueller said. “Let the Navy worry about that shit.”
They marched toward the alien mound.
* * *
As the APC fell from the Benedict’s belly into space, Billie held her breath. Outside the ship’s faux gravity field, she and Wilks were suddenly weightless, and that cold, pit-of-the-stomach flutter made her want to throw up. She swallowed the bile that threatened to spew and took deep breaths through her nose. Mitch was down there and still alive. If they could get to the hive before he went inside, she could maybe stop him. If they were too late for that, then she would grab a gun and go in after him.
“How long?” she asked.
“If we’re lucky, maybe an hour.”
“And if we aren’t lucky?”
“We’ve got to skip through the atmosphere at a bad angle to make the rendezvous,”
he said. “If we do it wrong we could fry inside this can.”
“What happens to the planet if we die?”
“If I don’t put in a call to the ship in six hours, the computer drops the atomics and heads for home. Anybody left down there had better get their affairs in order real quick.”
Billie looked at Wilks.
“You know what those things can do where there’s only a few of them,” he said. “I’m not taking any chances on leaving a whole planet full of them lying around for some other poor sucker to stumble on.”
She nodded. He was right. If they died, it was best to take the entire world with them. It was the only way to be sure.
* * *
“There’s the entrance,” Mbutu said. “What’s the drill?”
“I’ll take the point,” Bueller said. “Move in after me in a two-and-two, Mbutu, you and Chin in front, Blake, you and Smith covering our asses. We have the signal from the transponder, we go straight to it, recover the crew, come straight out.”
“Easy as falling down a grav-shaft,” Smith said.
“You got a warped sense of humor,” Blake said. “Somebody must have jiggled the tech’s arm when he was installing your brain matrix.”
“Fuck you,” Smith said.
“If we get back to the ship, I’m all yours, lover.”
“That’s great, Blake,” Mbutu said, “give him a reason to die quicker.”
“Let’s move in, marines. People need our help in there.”
They were two hundred meters into the mound when the first wave of aliens came at them. A dozen of the things, moving impossibly fast, fangs bared, claws extended.
“Aim low!” Bueller ordered. “Take out their legs!”
He snapped off three three-round bursts, waving the carbine in a short arc to his left, leaving the center and right of the corridor clear.
Green beams flashed past him and burned limbs from bodies. Several of the things fell and skidded on the ridged floor and others tangled with them.
Bueller pulled the softslug pistol from his belt. The exterior armor would stop the handgun’s rounds, but when the things opened their mouths to extend those toothed rods, he fired his sidearm into the openings. The softslugs tore through the tissue inside the heads very nicely, and the projectiles stayed inside the harder skulls, doing enough damage to be fatal. Rattled around like a mad bumblebee in a jar.
