by S. A. Lusher
“We’ve got more behind us!” Eve called.
“Fuck! Deal with them!” he snapped, shifting aim and placing another trio of bullets through a second Mutant’s chest.
He heard Eve opening fire behind him.
They began shooting their way down the corridor as more Mutants stumbled in and came for them, shrieking, screaming and yammering like banshees on steroids. Greg emptied his rifle, ejected the spent magazine and slapped a fresh one in, then resumed a constant rate of fire. By the time they’d reached the end of the corridor and Volker’s office, he’d expended another two magazines. He was glad for that trip to the armory.
“We clear?” he asked, checking the offices around them.
“Clear,” Eve confirmed.
“Fucking finally,” he whispered, marching up to Volker’s office. He punched in the code the doctor had given him on the keypad next to the door and it chimed once, then turned from red to green. The door slid open. Greg moved in, smoothly clearing the room. The place had been ransacked. Probably not the best sign, but Volker seemed positive that no one had found his stash. He’d placed the infoclip inside of a wall panel behind a bookshelf he’d had imported. It was full of many old texts: actual, paperback texts.
The bookshelf was knocked over, the paperbacks scattered across the floor.
“These must be worth a fortune,” Greg muttered.
“Only if they’re legit and not copies,” Eve replied.
Greg felt his hopes rise as he saw that the panel in question was undisturbed. He opened it up, crouched down and felt around inside.
“Got it,” he said, securing the little piece of hardware and slipping it into a hardened pocket on his suit, then locking it down tight.
“Jennifer, we’ve completed our objective and are on our way back to the lobby. How are you doing?” Eve asked as they headed out of Volker’s office and began jogging back down the corridor they’d killed their way down.
“We’re almost to the mainframe room,” Jennifer replied. They could hear a lot of gunfire in the background. “There’s a lot of Altered here.”
“Need any backup?”
“Negative. Secure the lobby.”
“Affirmative.”
By the time they’d hit the lobby again, putting down a pair of Mutants that had shown up from somewhere nearby, Jennifer and Genevieve had found the mainframe room and were in the process of beginning the actual download. He and Eve locked down the way they had come and any other doors they could find, except for the way they had to go and the way Jennifer and Genevieve had gone. Eve spoke up after a moment of silence.
“I wonder what this will mean,” she said suddenly.
“What what will mean?” Greg replied.
“Blackmore, Jericho, Volker. We now have objective proof against the jerkoffs who have been hassling us for months now. When that falls away and we finally earn the trust of the government and the military...what will happen? Will they finally start treating this like a real operation? Give us even more resources? Ships? An actual base of operations? Personnel? I mean, imagine it, Greg. We’ve been basically running this thing like guerillas. I mean yeah, it’s high-tech and well-funded, but imagine what we could do with our own little fleet of ships, our own bases, our own research laboratories and containment facilities.”
“We could sure do a lot,” Greg replied. “Although that’s basically what Dark Ops was.”
“Yeah...but we won’t let that happen. Dark Ops happened because of a freak accident. We’re going to stay honest, and keep our superiors honest,” she said firmly.
“I hope you’re right,” he murmured.
A few moments later, Jennifer and Genevieve reappeared in the lobby, their suits of black-and-silver armor covered in coagulated blood, but otherwise they were undamaged. “We’ve got the notes and everything else we could find,” Jennifer reported.
“Excellent. Let’s go kill this Alpha creature,” Eve said.
They moved up to the door leading into the research labs themselves and opened it up. The room beyond, a high security checkpoint, had been hit brutally. Blood seemed to cover every surface, although there were no bodies, not even parts of bodies. The Altered must have been through and gathered up everything of use for their Hives, Greg reasoned. The deckplates were almost totally carpeted with spent shell casings and abandoned weapons. How many had there been? A solid wave of the creatures must have come through here. He felt a chill ripple through him as he led the way down the security passageway. The door behind was basically torn open, like someone had taken a giant can-opener to it.
The room beyond was just as bad.
It had obviously been a research bay of some kind, in its previous life. Now it was a tomb, robbed of corpses. All manner of lab equipment lay shredded and sparking across the bay. A lot of the lights were flickering or dead. They cast a broken light across the wrecked, bloody remains of the room. There were no Altered around.
Greg found that more than a little suspicious.
“There’s the door,” he said, spying the huge silver slab built into the far right wall. It reminded him of a vault of some kind and it towered over him, twelve feet of solid titanium, as he approached it. The others watched his back as he punched in the code Volker had given him. The pad, which was red, suddenly sparked as he finished keying in the sequence. It then flickered and died. Greg stared at it for a long moment.
Finally, he activated his radio. “Volker, the keypad crapped out. How else can I get this door open?” he asked.
“Uh...you can’t, I’m afraid. I suppose with enough time and tools and help you could after a few days, a week maybe, but unfortunately it’s very solidly built. You aren’t getting in there though with that method,” Volker replied.
“Okay, so how can we get in?” he asked, reigning in his temper.
“There’s only one other entrance, and it’s going to be difficult to get to. You need to head to the end of the room you’re in, pass through the north door and come into the next research bay. Along the right-hand side of that room, you will find another large airlock-style door. This will take you to the specimen holding chamber. Through there, you will be able to access a maintenance tunnel that connects to two rooms. Unfortunately, I imagine that there will be a great deal of resistance in between these two points,” Volker explained.
“Fine. Call you back when we’re done,” Greg replied.
He updated the others on the situation, then led them across the bay. Once he hit the far door, he opened it up and peered inside, gun at ready. There were no immediately obvious threats around. Reluctantly, Greg moved into the next ruined area with his teammates. They began making their way to the door that led the way to the holding chamber. He strained his ears against the silence, listening intently for any clue, any hint of hostiles around.
There was nothing, but he couldn’t escape the pervasive feeling of being watched, the rising tension and foreboding.
They reached the door.
Greg hesitated slightly, then reached out and opened it. The door opened up, revealing a short tunnel that had once been a highly sterilized white room, but was now covered in blood. The corresponding door on the other end had been savagely shredded as well. As he began to step into the short tunnel beyond, a resounding shriek went up. Other voices began to join the first, dozens of them, a hellish chorus of horror.
And then the Altered made their appearance.
Greg caught a glimpse of a sudden army of Mutants, Harvesters and Guardians rushing forward at him, led by an Ire, from within the containment labs.
“Back! Back!” he called, opening fire on the Ire as he fell back.
Unfortunately, at that same time, he heard the other three open fire behind him, and could only assume that more of the bastards had ambushed them from the back. He kept firing on the Ire, but it suddenly rushed him, crashing down the short length of corridor and smashing right into him. Greg screamed as it backhanded him and sent him flying into his te
ammates. They all went flying, hitting the floor with pained thuds and quickly scrambling to their feet. They were drowning in a sea of monsters. Greg quickly put down a quartet of Mutants that were way too close to comfort as he got to his feet, then focused the remainder of his fire on the Ire, emptying the magazine. He slapped a fresh one in and kept it up.
“Eve! Use your fucking nail gun!” he yelled. “Kill this big thing!”
The Ire was bearing down on him again and it just would not go down, even as he emptied a second magazine into it. Right as the huge beast raised its arm and prepared for the killing blow, a huge rivet flew through the air, nailed it in the chest, picked it up and sent if flying across the room. It bowled over several Mutants in the process. Chaos boiled around him. Greg smashed the face of a Mutant that was right in front of him with a solid, armor-fisted punch, then turned and forced his elbow into another, sending it stumbling back, simply trying to clear some space. There were a good thirty hostiles surrounding them.
Greg barely managed to get a third magazine in and opened fire. All around him came the dismal sounds of combat, the shrieking of the Altered as they advanced with relentless, alien determination and the thunder of automatic gunfire. Bullets punched through hardened flesh, thick red blood flew on the air and splattered the environment, bodies crashed to the floor, only to be trampled blindly by their brethren in their ceaseless charge. Greg rattled through the entire magazine in his rifle, didn’t have time to reload again and pulled out his pistol.
He aimed, fired.
Aimed, fired.
Over and over again, until that too was depleted. Around him, he could hear the others doing the same, punching round after round into the seemingly endless onslaught of Altered horrors. Still they came and he was forced to drop his pistol and pull out his combat knife. He drove the blade into the chest of another Mutant, pierced the fragile body of the Slug inside, and killed both the Slug and the host body in an instant. Ripping the blade out in a spray of dark gore, he spun and repeated the process, slicing into another Mutant’s chest.
He repeated the process three more times before the blade became stuck and he was forced to abandon it. Reduced to just his armored fists, he grabbed a Mutant’s head and twisted sharply, snapping its neck with a sharp crack and then kicking it away from him. Making a fist, he punched a solid hole into the chest of a Guardian that had been running towards him. It was like punching a brick wall, but his boosted strength managed to pierce the thing’s hardened ribcage and get at the Slug residing within, ending its life.
Abruptly, the tide of enemies ceased.
Greg looked around, eyes still wide and wild, trembling with adrenaline, ready to make the next split second decision, to make the next kill, but there was nothing left to murder. The final Altered had fallen, and all became still and silent.
“Well. Fuck,” Eve said.
“Everyone okay?” Jennifer asked.
“I’ll make it,” Greg replied. His back was seriously hurting now. He was going to spend a couple of days just doing nothing when this was over and actually letting his back heal.
“I’m fine,” Eve said.
“I’ll be okay,” Genevieve said.
“Then let’s get this over with,” Greg muttered, heading on. He kicked his way through a sea of bodies and a river of blood, making sure to grab his pistol first. He reloaded both weapons, then suddenly wondered what the fuck had happened to his shotgun. After a moment of thinking, he realized he must have lost it during the encounter with the Ires in the snow. Fucking hell, he was getting really sloppy just lately.
Good way to get killed.
Sighing, he plunged through the alcove and came out into the holding area. Apparently, the Alpha had depleted its current reserve of bad guys. Nothing lurked in the shadows. The four of them tracked down the maintenance tunnel, crawled through it and at last came up into an observation deck that overlooked a vast room.
“Holy fuck,” Greg whispered, staring down through the glass at the Alpha itself.
The thing had to be twenty feet tall, a genuine behemoth, a true monster. It appeared to be sleeping, or, more likely, placed into some kind of coma. It was chained, bolted and strapped down to the floor and hooked into about a dozen different huge pieces of machinery. So this was how they had been at least trying to maintain control over the Altered. He wondered if it had worked. Well, didn’t matter now.
Volker walked them through the procedure of killing the thing. After all the murder, the close calls, the gunshots and screaming and the blood, fighting through corridors and rooms for ages, Greg thought he would be grateful for such an easy battle, for a massive enemy that was killed with, essentially, the push of a button.
But he wasn’t.
He just felt...robbed. Cheated, somehow.
“So is that it?” Eve asked. “Is it dead?”
“It’s dead,” Volker replied. “I’ve been monitoring its vitals remotely. It’s flat-lined. You can come back now. We can leave.”
“Good. Let’s the fuck out of here,” Greg said.
* * * * *
From there, it was a fairly easy process to leave Polaris Station behind.
Greg was glad to be done with the planet. He hated being cold. It was miserable. They returned to Volker, only encountering a few crazed Altered in the snow that were put down easily enough, and when they got back, they found Eric in much better condition. It seemed that both he and Drake were now up to snuff, or enough so that they could get back into the action. The seven of them grabbed whatever gear they could carry from around the Military Section, (mainly just more guns and ammo, and Greg managed to replace his lost shotgun), and then loaded up into the shuttle that Volker had been holding onto.
They made the ride up through the atmosphere in relative silence.
“You sure this is going to work?” Greg asked. He and Volker were standing in the cockpit behind Drake, who was piloting them up and out of there.
“Yes,” Volker replied.
“I just had a nasty thought,” Drake said suddenly.
“What?” Greg asked.
“I wonder if Allan and Callie are okay.”
“Shit...I didn’t even think to ask Hawkins, and he probably hasn’t even thought to check on them,” Greg muttered.
“Well, they’re pretty tough. They can look after themselves,” Drake said after a moment.
Greg just grunted. He honestly hadn’t thought too much about either of them since they left. Like Eve, they hurt to think about, for different reasons. Allan was one of his best friends, Callie was also one of his best friends, and maybe something a little more than that. Unlike Eve, they no longer lived onboard the ship, and had unfortunately been easier to stop thinking about. A pang of guilt hit Greg at that thought.
He made himself focus on the mission.
The last wisps of the atmosphere fell away and before long they began closing in on the ship. Volker had given it a name...what was it? After a moment, it came back to him: Perseus. What a wonderful name.
“Okay, I’m launching the kill-code,” Volker murmured, turning and activating a console next to Drake. He silently typed at it for several seconds, then paused, then straightened up with a smile on his face. “It’s launched.”
“How will we know it worked?” Drake asked.
“Just watch,” Volker replied.
The three of them looked ahead, through the windows of the shuttle at the growing vessel. They were now within several hundred meters of it. Abruptly, every single light on the ship flickered and died. Very few of them came back to life a few seconds later.
“They’re now running on emergency power,” Volker murmured. “Every containment cell, every door, just opened. There’s going to be chaos on that vessel. It should make our job a lot easier. Well...for the most part,” he murmured.
“Yeah, it’ll be a fucking cakewalk,” Greg growled. He at least didn’t have to worry about babysitting Volker. Well, at least not as much as he would have.
The man had found a suit of power armor and had reluctantly put it on. Greg still didn’t trust him, and there was no way he was going to let the man go off on his own.
“Dock there,” Volker said, indicating a hangar bay door that was open. Greg stared, realizing that the man had been right.
Every door had opened, including airlock and hangar doors. Several dead bodies and a lot of cargo was floating free of the ship.
Drake moved their shuttle inwards.
Greg prepared himself for the final fight.
CHAPTER 13
–Perseus–
They slid in through the gaping maw that was the primary airlock of the central hangar for the Perseus. A red-hued gloom awaited them beyond the glass of the cockpit windows. Nothing moved. All was still in the vast bay. Fine by Greg. It could be dark and still so long as it stayed that way. He could put up with that, so long as there weren’t things in the darkness. He continued studying the hangar as Drake settled the shuttle down and killed the engines. He flipped on the exterior lights, cutting brilliant white shafts in the gloom.
“Looks like our LZ is clear,” he murmured.
“Our first objective must be to secure a map,” Volker said.
“You don’t have one?” Greg asked as they left the cockpit.
The doctor shook his head. “No. I didn’t get to spend much time up here. They wanted me on Tempest first, then Polaris. But it should be easy.”
“Nothing’s ever easy,” Greg muttered.
They all prepared themselves for what lay beyond, sealing up their suits and making sure they were topped off with oxygen. Once they were ready, Greg and Genevieve went through the airlock first, cycling through and moving out into the area beyond. They marched down the stairs, rifles at ready, sweeping the muzzles across the area.
“We’re still clear out here,” Greg said. “Come on through.”
The others quickly cycled through and once they were all out of the shuttle, they made their way across the hangar, checking the shadows for signs of life, for threats. The place was eerily quiet. Of course, sound wouldn’t travel through a vacuum anyway. Anything could be in there with them. Which among the creatures could survive in the dead of open space? Hopefully, none of them. They finished crossing the bay and found a terminal.
