by Steve Perry
It was over in five seconds, and the twelve attacking aliens lay burned or shattered, smoke rising where the blood touched the hive. Not that something that acidic could really be called blood.
“Don’t step in the liquid,” Bueller ordered.
“Stuff’s not eating into the floor much,” Blake said.
“Makes sense that it wouldn’t,” Chin said. “Wouldn’t do to have holes burned in the building every time some drone cut its finger.”
“We’re still five hundred meters away from our quarry,” Bueller said. “Let’s move.”
* * *
The APC bounced, the ride bone-jarring despite the seat restraints. The atmosphere was cloudy, and visibility was nil. Wilks hoped the computer controls knew what they were doing. The hull temperature was hot enough to melt silver and climbing. The belly, nose, and underwing tiles on the APC were designed to take a lot more friction than they were getting, but if the lander slewed too much one way or the other, the heat could be a problem. If the skin burned through, it could cause fatal damage to the occupants in a matter of a couple of seconds. At least it would be fast.
“A-a-ar-are w-w-we g-g-gonna m-make it?”
Wilks looked at Billie. His own voice chattered with the vibrations when he answered. “M-m-maybe.”
* * *
Another wave of monsters clattered toward the squad, hissing as they moved. Bueller’s carbine rumbled, a giant tearing heavy canvas, and the armor-piercing rounds punched through the bodies where they hit straight on, ricocheted off when they struck at an angle, making sparks like flint on steel.
Chin was right behind Bueller and his plasma rifle flared, the pulses making the walls glow with a sickly verdant gleam.
One of the things tumbled, legs seared off at the knees. It skidded into Bueller, knocked him to the side against the wall.
Bueller slammed into the surface, his head protected by the helmet but his shoulder hit hard. The force of the impact twisted him so as he fell away he saw what happened to Chin as if watching it on a holoviewer in slow motion.
—The legless alien spun, scrabbled with its taloned hands, and slid in at Chin under his line of fire. Chin tried to lower his aim, but too late. The alien opened massive jaws and bit, latching on to Chin’s thigh—
—Chin screamed. He slammed the butt of the plasma rifle uselessly at the thing’s armored skull—
—Blake yelled, “Don’t move!” and slid over a step to shoot the alien that had Chin in its teeth—
—The alien’s legs were gone, but it still had its tail. It speared Chin’s belly, jammed the pointed tail through him so it emerged between two ribs on his back. The ribs broke through the skin, showing splintered bones—
—Blake fired, hit the alien behind the hinge of its jaws. The thing convulsed and the teeth sheared through Chin’s leg completely. For a second he stood there on one leg, the monster’s tail helping him stay up. Then he fell—
—Smith moved in to tug at Chin, the thing’s tail still through him, and another alien flew past Bueller, blocking for an instant his view. He managed to raise his weapon, even though it had all happened so fast he was still falling after his impact with the wall—
—Bueller fired. One of the slugs spanged off the alien, knocked its head sideways so it looked straight at Bueller. The other two rounds missed the alien. One of them found Chin and blew the top of his head off—
—Smith was close to the alien. As it twisted back to find him, Smith fired. He was too close. The focuser on the end of the plasma rifle nearly touched the thing. The beam pierced the alien’s armor, but it also partially splashed. The plasma sprayed and hit Smith in the face. It cooked the flesh, boiled his eyes into steam. He fell back as the alien collapsed on him, its acid blood spewing onto Smith, eating through his armor and body, stinking smoke rising in a hot blast—
—Bueller hit the floor. He heard the hums of more plasma beams, saw the reflected green on the walls, came to his feet…
The second wave was over, maybe twenty more of the things lay dead, but both Smith and Chin also gone.
That left only three of them to save the crew.
Bueller looked at Blake and Mbutu. They nodded at him. Without speaking, they started deeper into the hive.
23
A hard jolt shook the APC and it dropped in free-fall for a second. Billie felt a moment of nausea. She’d never done particularly well in zero gravity; her stomach always twisted in what felt like a continuous drop from a great height. Then the little ship’s wings caught the atmosphere again, weight returned, and she swallowed as her belly recovered its composure.
“That’s the worst of it,” Wilks said. “We’re on a long glide path to the place now. Might hit a few clouds on the way, get a little chop, but that’s pretty much it.”
Billie nodded, not speaking. Would it be too late? Would Mitch still be alive? As much as anybody, Billie knew the dangers of the enemies her lover faced. Whatever their motivation, they were killing machines, and if they cared about their own deaths, it never showed. Survival of the species was the thing; individuals didn’t seem to matter much. Not like people. Not like people at all.
“How long?”
“Thirty minutes, give or take. We have to glide in so we’ll have enough juice to achieve escape velocity and make it back to the ship.”
Billie nodded again. There was not much to say about that.
* * *
There was a side passage to Bueller’s left and he put thirty rounds down it as he drew level with it, hosing the carbine back and forth at waist level. He really couldn’t afford the ammo, he had only one more magazine, but the side corridor was dark and he didn’t want any nasty surprises.
He got one anyhow.
The automatic fire should have chopped any of the aliens standing between the knees and hips; probably it did. But one of them must have been hanging on the ceiling or stretched out on the floor. As soon as the burst of fire ended, the thing jumped out.
Bueller wasn’t taking anything for granted, so he still had his weapon held ready, but the thing leapt as he fired again, flew like a missile at him.
Bueller’s reactions were fast. It wouldn’t matter how many rounds hit the damned thing, inertia would keep it coming. Bueller didn’t have time to think. He dropped, slammed flat onto the slimy, hot floor, and the alien missed him by centimeters.
Mbutu yelled as the thing barreled into her. Blake fired, but the monster and Mbutu were entwined, and as good as Blake was, she couldn’t stop the acid flow her shot caused. The spewing wound drenched Mbutu’s face. She instinctively opened her mouth to scream. The thing was dying but it pumped enough of the corrosive blood onto Mbutu so she would join it shortly. Maybe she might have survived were she in a full-ride military medicator, but she’d never make it that far. Her cheeks and nose were a smoking ruin, her throat and lungs already being eaten away.
She would drown in her own fluids.
Bueller scrambled up. Mbutu made a strangled noise halfway between a moan and a plea. He knew what she wanted. He couldn’t ask Blake to do it. Bueller pointed his carbine, tapped the trigger once.
The bullet in her brain ended Mbutu’s suffering.
Blake nodded. “Thanks,” she said.
Bueller had trouble drawing enough air to breathe. He shuddered.
Two of them left.
* * *
“There it is,” Wilks said.
The front view screens gave a better picture than the ports, but Billie stared through the clear shields, preferring the reality. The mound sprawled upon the ground like a malignant tumor, dull gray in the light of the local sun. It was a desolate landscape, cleared around the hive of everything but dust and rock.
“I’m going to put down on that little ridge,” Wilks said. “We can use the ship’s guns better on the high ground and we’ll be able to see them coming. And anything that might be chasing them.”
She looked at him.
“Still too much
interference,” he said. “Something in the walls is blocking the com’s signal.”
“I could go—” Billie began.
“No. You can’t.”
* * *
“Man, oh, man,” Blake said, “I’m definitely crossing this place off my vacation list. It stinks in here.”
The winding corridor had provided them with more attackers, but it was wide enough that the red eyes let them see in time. Bueller and Blake took the aliens out as soon as they spotted them, and it had almost gotten to the point of target shooting for Bueller. He’d switched to semi-auto to conserve ammo. He had about eighty rounds left, but also had Mbutu’s plasma rifle slung over his shoulder. Things could be worse.
A large archway loomed.
“Signal is coming from in there,” Blake said. “Less than fifty meters.”
“The hatching room,” Bueller said.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s do it.”
The heat intensified as they neared the archway, the air thickened even more with stench and high humidity. It felt like the inside of a steambath full of rotting corpses.
Bueller darted through the opening, Blake backing in behind him, her rifle pointed to the rear.
“There they are,” he said.
Four people, three men and a woman, webbed to the walls in that gauzy, spidery goo the things used. The garbage-can-sized eggs sat impassively on the floor. There was no sign of the queen, no other drones around. It was quiet enough so Bueller could hear his own breathing.
The two of them moved quickly. “This one is dead,” Blake said, her fingers on the carotid of one of the women.
“This one, too,” Bueller said.
One of them was alive, though. The marines tore away the sticky webbing. The eggs next to the man were still closed, he hadn’t been implanted yet.
He came to as they were dragging him free of the web. He screamed.
“Easy, easy!” Blake said. “It’s okay, we got you!”
Fear had stolen his words. The man tried to speak, stammered, gave up.
“Can you walk?”
He nodded, still mute.
“Then let’s make tracks, fast, understand?”
He nodded again.
The three of them started for the chamber’s exit. When they reached it, Bueller stopped.
Blake raised an eyebrow at him. “What?”
“I’ll just leave them a couple of grenades for a going away present,” he said. He hip-pointed his carbine and launched three rounds, fast, so the first explosion was still expanding as the second and third rounds flew. The sound was deafening, despite the spike muters the marines wore.
“Go, go!”
They ran.
* * *
Wilks touched a control on the sensor board. “Got seismic activity in there. Looks like somebody fired some explosive armament. M-40s, probably.”
“They’re still alive,” Billie said.
“Maybe.”
“We have to do something!”
“We are doing something. We’re waiting. Won’t help anybody if we don’t have a way off this damned rock. In five hours the whole planet is going to get hammered flat as the oceans on Jupiter. We don’t want to be here then.”
* * *
“To your left!” Bueller yelled.
Blake, cool as liquid oxygen, turned and painted the corridor green with her plasma. The withering beams cooked the onrushing alien drones like crabs under their shells. Fluid boiled from their joints in deadly steam, but far enough away so there was no danger to the marines or the crewman.
“Eat hot plasma death, alien scum,” Blake said.
Bueller stared at her.
“I always wanted to say that,” she said. She smiled.
He shook his head. But he shared her feeling; against all the odds, they were nearing the exit to this nightmare. Less than a hundred meters away the harsh daylight of the planet spilled into the mound, giving them a light at the end of a very dangerous tunnel.
“Almost there,” Bueller said. “Can you make it?”
The crewman finally found his voice. “I’ll make it. Just keep those bastards off us.”
The last thirty meters were the worst. It was clear, no drones in front of them, but the run for the way out filled Bueller with hope—they might really make it after all—and it was too soon for that kind of optimism.
Still, they reached the mouth of the tunnel.
“Hel-lo, sunshine!” Blake said as they stepped out of the mound. Bueller had the tail, he kept his weapon and his gaze behind them, but the pressure of the light on his bare skin felt as good as anything ever had.
Blake said, “Sonofabitch, our ride is here! There’s the APC!”
Bueller spared a glance. Yes. There it was, on a slight ridge five hundred meters away.
Blake laughed. “Let’s go home, folks!”
Bueller managed a chuckle. There was something wonderful about the air, bad as it was. And aside from Billie, he’d never seen anything quite as beautiful as that combat-camoed drop ship perched almost within spitting distance. “I hear that,” he said. “Move out, I’ll cover our asses.”
Blake led the crewman down the incline from the mound along the dusty trail.
* * *
“There they are,” Wilks said, his voice quiet and edgy.
Billie jerked around. Too far away to tell by direct visual who they were. Three of them. Two moving down the slope to the mound’s entrance, one standing guard behind them.
Billie reached for the view enhancer, tapped the magnification up, looked at the screen.
The one in the entrance was Mitch.
Alive!
“Only three of them left,” Wilks said. “Two marines and one crewman.”
Billie didn’t care. One of them was Mitch, he was okay, that was all that mattered.
“1st squad, this is Wilks. You copy?”
A woman’s voice came back. “Glad you could drop by, Sarge. But I think the party’s over. What say we pack it in and junk this place?”
“Yeah,” Wilks said. “Hurry up, Blake, the meter is running.”
“On our way.”
* * *
Mitch heard the com and grinned. He stared into the darkness of the mound’s gaping mouth. He started backing away, weapon still trained on the entrance. “Hey, Billie,” he said into his com. “Hope you kept it warm for me.”
“Come and get it,” Billie said.
He half turned to look at the APC, the smile bright and happy.
A mistake.
The alien must have been waiting in the darkness for some break in Bueller’s attention. It came clattering out, claws scraping and digging into the rocky surface as it cleared the entrance, arms extended, teeth revealed in a moray eel’s needle grin.
Bueller twisted, swung the carbine around. Slipped on a loose piece of rock. Shifted, off balance, to his left. The carbine’s barrel dropped, just a hair, as he fired.
Fired, and missed.
He tried to correct his aim, the thing was almost on top of him and he only needed to pointshoot, but he was too slow. It crossed its hands, grabbed him, digging one steel-hard claw into his ribs, the other on the opposite side, just under his hip. Talons bit deep. The carbine flew from Bueller’s grip. He tried to draw the slug pistol.
“Mitch!” Billie screamed from his com.
The alien flexed muscles hidden under its exo-skeleton, cords filled with power a score of times stronger than a man could manage. Bueller felt the pain burn through his waist, a shattering bolt that short-circuited all his systems, filling him, like a sudden plunge into molten aluminum. He managed a scream, then felt the unendurable shock as—
As the thing tore him in half at the waist.
Billie saw the parts of Bueller fall. Saw his hips and legs fly one way, his upper body another. Tumbling, and the white circulating fluid—not red blood, white, white!—spraying like a milky fountain into the air under the alien sun.
&n
bsp; 24
Wilks watched the alien rip Bueller apart.
He yelled into the com. “Blake, get down!” He slapped the fire controls for the robot guns trained on the mouth of the alien hive. He saw the edges of the entrance light with tiny flashes as the 20mm expended uranium slugs chattered against the walls inside. Having a specific target, the robot gun hosed it in bursts of twenty, S-shaped patterns from top to bottom, stopping a meter or so short of the ground.
The gunfire chopped the alien into pieces, blowing the shattered parts back against the hive like a swat from a giant steel broom. The fire computer locked in the shape of the alien and shut the gun down, waiting for more targets that looked like him.
Billie screamed. She was looking at the viewer and it was dialed up so she couldn’t miss what Bueller was. The ancillary nodes of his digestive system hung from his torso; white polymer circulating fluid oozed over everything. Where a human would be soaked with blood and painted bright crimson, Bueller was drenched in milky froth. Tubules, shunts, circulatory lines, all splayed from the ruined android body.
Billie screamed again, a wordless cry. Wilks knew then she’d never suspected.
“Billie!”
She kept yelling.
He didn’t have time for this. Over her din, he yelled into the com. “Blake! Move it! Stay low, you’re clear to one meter only!”
The computer triggered the robot gun again. Wilks only saw the aliens for a second before the things were punched back into the mound.
Blake moved, but the wrong way. She crawled back to where Bueller lay, staying under the gun’s field of fire.
“Blake, goddammit!”
Billie screamed again.
Wilks slid the control chair over a meter, reached out, slapped Billie’s face. Her scream stopped as if cut off by a laser harvester.
“He’s alive,” Blake said over the com. She hoisted the terribly wounded android onto her back and crawled back to where the crewman lay.
“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God,” Billie said.
