by Dante King
Suddenly, I saw the shadow of the long-limbed beast again. It was only for an instant, but the way it moved made it clear I wasn’t imagining things. It was there, and it was stalking us.
The creature seemed to have been attracted by the Xeno. When the show was over, it vanished back into the fog. I glanced at my teammates, but none of them appeared to have spotted it. Beatrix, however, appeared nervous.
For the next few minutes, we crept down the quiet streets and found no other trouble. Although I never saw our long-limbed stalker, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were still being followed.
The next time Beatrix turned around to check on me, I tapped my collar and pointed to Nyna. She looked confused. She didn’t understand that the signal meant I wanted her to send Nyna back to me. I tried again by pointing at Nyna, wiggling two fingers of my left hand at the ground to simulate walking legs, then pointing back at myself.
Beatrix nodded and increased her stride to catch up to the woman. After a moment of whispering, she took Nyna’s place, and the younger woman waited for me. I put one finger against my lips to let her know I wanted her to be quiet. She made a face. Some so-called universal signals were definitely not that.
“Stay quiet,” I said. “I need you to get Spirit-Watcher out and put it on.”
She made an expression that was equal parts confusion, concern, and curiosity. When she donned the Void-tech, I continued.
“I think we’re still being followed,” I whispered. “I need you to look around to see if you can spot it. I’d like to take it out before we get too close to the elevator. And if it’s spying for others, killing it early will give us the advantage. Whatever defenses the enemy has will have to spread out because they won’t know what direction we’ll come from.”
Nyna nodded and turned to face the rest of the column as we carefully picked our way over and around recently destroyed buildings and small civilian hovercraft. She took her time looking around so that it wouldn’t be obvious but gasped when she looked directly behind us.
“There’s three of them,” she whispered. “They’ve got some kind of tech, I think. They stand out like torches in a cave to me. I don’t think they’re here to watch. They’re getting closer. It looks like they’re going to attack!” Her voice had become a bit panicked.
“Take it easy,” I said in the most soothing voice I could muster. “Where’s the closest one?”
She glanced quickly over her shoulder. “It’s climbing over the rubble we passed about a minute ago. It’s almost at the top, crouching low to the ground. Damn, it’s ugly.”
I didn’t hesitate. I raised my pistol, aimed about fifteen inches above the pile of rubble, and pulled the trigger. The creature exploded, sending a fountain of green gore into the air. It hit the walls of the nearby building and the tarmac and began to sizzle. As far as I knew, only Xeno blood was acidic.
“Contact!” I shouted. “Xeno! There’s two more of them!”
“Yes!” Skrew shouted as he raised his rifle and hunted for a target. “Is time to see where rifle can fits!”
“Get down!” Reaver told him.
Skrew squatted just as a green beam cut the night and split the wall behind where his head had been.
Skrew answered with several shots in the general direction of the enemy fire, but they hit nothing but air.
I heard a noise above us and twisted around to take aim. A furry alien was leaning out its window. It held a Xeno rifle but wasn’t pointing it down at us. Instead, it was searching the rooftops across the street.
“Come to me, Sitar!” the alien bellowed. “I will show you what your intestines look like! I will eat my porridge out of your skulls!”
“Skrew will too!” the vrak bellowed.
“Come out, you coward!” the furry alien continued. “You will—”
When I looked back toward the Xeno, the rest of the furry alien’s words were swallowed by its scream. I snapped my head and pistol toward it again, and looked into the darkness that was its face. Its rifle was still pointed across the street, but it was staring down at me.
“You will die,” it whispered. Then it laughed, a high-pitched maniacal sound that sent a shiver down my spine. “And I will make you my meat-puppet.”
I quickly took aim, then rolled out of the way as the creature fell from the window directly toward me. It hit with a wet crunch, its neck bent at an impossible angle as dark fluid poured from its mouth.
Nyna gasped. “Look at the back of his head,” she whispered.
In the time I’d looked away, one of the sneaky, skinny Xeno had managed to rip off the back of the alien’s head, take out its brain, and literally turn it into a puppet. They were fast and dangerous.
“I believe they are making us wait,” Beatrix said, still searching for targets. “I believe they are causing us to stay here so that they may bring others to us.”
She was probably right. By staying hidden, they were keeping us pinned.
“Nyna,” I whispered, “find me another target.”
Nyna looked around, raised her rifle across the street, and fired once into an open window. A Xeno materialized and became more and more visible until it hit the ground. The creatures were able to camouflage themselves and completely blend in with their surroundings. They were assisted by the fog, it was their home.
“Like that?” Nyna asked.
“Yup,” I said. “Exactly like that. Now, do it again.”
Nyna spun her head back and forth, turned, checked behind us, and slowly lowered her rifle. I stood as well and felt the hairs on the back of my neck begin to stand on end.
“I don’t see any more of them,” she said slowly. “I must’ve miscounted.”
“Let’s keep going,” I said. “The elevator should be close.”
Reaver looked unsure but nodded, shouldered her rifle, and started walking. Beatrix sent Skrew to the second position and Nyna to the third so that she could be close to me. She glanced over her shoulder at me from time to time, her pressed lips and tightly wound tentacles letting me know that she expected trouble soon. I expected the same.
I felt movement behind me and tucked into a roll. Beatrix fired over me and shot the skinny Xeno three times before it hit the ground.
The rest of the team took a knee, and all except Reaver turned their rifles in my general direction. I waved them off and gave the signal to keep walking. They hesitated for a moment before obeying. I couldn't blame them for being nervous, but I knew that was the last of them following us. She hadn’t miscounted; the last one had just hidden very well right before its attack. Now, there were only a billion or so to go. Well—it was a start.
“Look!” Reaver whispered as she pointed to my body armor. I’d been close enough that some of the sneaky Xeno’s blood had gotten on me. My first instinct was to remove my armor, but I noticed in time that the fluid wasn’t damaging it. Damn, I thought, Void-tech is impervious to their acid. That could be useful later.
Our determination got us very close to the arena, where I expected another fight. I had little doubt the enemy would protect their space elevator. It had been too expensive to create and appeared to be their only means of getting reinforcements to the surface.
It could be our toughest fight yet.
Chapter Sixteen
Several minutes and turns later, Reaver held her hand out for us to stop and get out of sight. Then, she turned back toward us and touched her collar. I snuck forward to see what had stopped us.
We’d reached the arena. Part of it had been destroyed and the rubble pushed to both sides to create a corridor to the arena floor wide enough for ten of us to walk through abreast. The Xeno had probably done it to ensure troops and material could be deployed faster.
I noticed the pens Reaver, Beatrix, and I had been kept in the last time we were here. I remembered how Beatrix had tried to kill us, only to join us after we defeated her and the Execution Squad.
“It’s too bad we don’t have anything suppressed,
” Reaver whispered. “I’d love to go up into the stands, find a nice spot to hide, and pick them off one at a time.
“Sounds like fun,” I admitted. “But depending on what we find in there, I’m pretty sure we’re going to have to do it the hard way. And it’s still not going to be safe to use comms yet. I expect the elevator to be guarded.”
“Agreed.”
“Main entrance?” Reaver asked. “Shoot our way in?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t see any guards outside, but I doubt it’s been left unprotected. What did you learn in training regarding situations like this?”
Reaver turned back to the arena and studied it for a few seconds before she looked back to me. “Where you are strong, appear weak. Where you are weak, appear strong.”
“Sun Tzu,” I said. “Nice, Terran philosophy. So the only reason they’d leave the entrance to their compound open is if it was invisibly heavily guarded, if they’re anything as smart here as when they’re attacking anywhere else in the universe. Remember what that alien said. There’s a resistance. They’ve already fought the Xeno, and whatever the outcome was, they suffered losses as well as causing them. That’s got to make whichever one of them is in charge nervous. Find us another way in, one they won’t expect.”
Reaver nodded and waited for me to return to my position in the formation before standing. Everyone else followed her lead as she snaked her way through broken buildings and over piles of rubble until she stopped and took a knee. The rest of the team did the same and searched for threats before Reaver stood back up, turned to her left, and walked straight for the outer wall of the arena, the rifle at her shoulder moving back and forth as she searched for a target.
We got to the wall a few seconds later with no problem.
“Nyna,” I whispered. “Put Spirit-Watcher on and tell me what you see.”
She nodded, put the device over her eyes, and turned toward the wall.
“Not a lot,” she whispered. “Looks like the Xeno cut power to the whole place. Looks like there’s some busted equipment on the other side of the wall. I’m not seeing any movement, but I’m not sure I always can with these things.”
“That’s fine. Anything that looks like it could possibly be a trap?”
“Nothing like that.”
“Good.”
I took a knee to lower my profile in case there were unseen enemies, found the edge of one of the large stones, and dragged it away from its companions as quietly as I could. As soon as it was free, Reaver leaned toward the hole and peered in.
“Looks clear,” she whispered.
Over the next minute, I pulled several more stones from the wall one at a time. I moved slowly. I didn’t know where the Xeno guards were, but entering through a wall was far less risky than walking into a near-certain trap. Rather than walking in through an open door, by creating our own door we’d catch them completely off guard.
The hole was more vertical than horizontal, but each of us would be able to get through without too much trouble. I decided to go first.
With my pistol in my hand, I inched my way through the opening and found myself in a dark room. The tiny bit of starlight that entered the room through the opening I’d just come through revealed shelves full of glass bottles. It was a storeroom, and my only immediate concern was that someone would bump into a shelf and send all that glass crashing to the stone floor.
Beatrix was the next through and found a spot near the center of the room. When Skrew had followed her in, she grabbed him by his arm and held him close.
“Skrew is much of flattery,” he whispered, “but Beatrix is gross.”
“Do not fool yourself, vrak,” she whispered back. “I would rather be killed and eaten by a Xeno than lay with you.”
“Oh, good,” Skrew whispered with a relieved sigh. “Skrew almost did barf in own mouth.”
I winced and waited for the woman to break his neck, slap him, something. When I looked back, I found Beatrix suppressing an amused grin.
Nyna and Reaver quickly crawled after Skrew, and Reaver immediately turned around, kneeled, and pointed her rifle at the hole I’d made. She’d have to guard it until we left the room to make sure nobody snuck up to it and started shooting. It was best to keep our guard up; security would get ever tighter the closer we got to the elevator.
I pressed my ear to the door and closed my eyes. I could hear movement outside, but it seemed far away, so I put my hand on the knob and turned to my team.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Ready,” they each whispered in turn.
“Nice and slow,” I cautioned. “We’ll get as close as we can to the elevator car before we start shooting. It’s going to be chaos, so I don’t want Skrew or Nyna trying to be heroes. Then we take cover, and you can shoot at anything that isn’t us. Got it?”
They confirmed, so I slowly opened the door. The interior of the arena was clear of fog, the elevator car was visible. And it was huge. It was 300 feet wide and shaped like a donut crossed with an avocado. Its round exterior walls were illuminated by the glow of tall light poles scattered around the arena’s dirt and gravel floor. Instead of there being light bulbs, though, little creatures resembling frogs splashed in glass-like globes at the top of the poles.
Standing among them were Xeno guards, the praying mantis-like kind I knew. If they used the same ammunition, it would be the baseball-sized infertile egg pods called ootheca, which would be filled almost to bursting with acid concentrated from their own blood. The weapons were effective at all ranges, but when the Xeno got close, they preferred to stab, slash, and rip their opponents apart with their pointed legs and steel-hard exoskeletons.
There were only about ten of them, though, so I was sure there were many more hiding among the stands, ready to snipe anyone who might have snuck in. I wondered if the rest of them were already deployed, or if they lay among the dead in the dark streets of the city.
I motioned for everyone to come out quietly and slowly. Our position wasn’t lit by the glowing frog light poles. Once everyone was out, I signaled them to designate their targets. I wasn’t sure if everyone understood, but there were enough of us to drop any survivors if anyone didn’t.
On the count of three, five weapons fired, and five Xeno fell. A half-second later, another four fell. A half-second after that, the last one was shot five times. Skrew laughed maniacally.
“Reaver,” I said, “you’re with me. The rest of you get to the elevator car and secure it. We’ll take care of whatever guards we find at the main entrance.”
Reaver and I stealthily made my way to the gate. There was little chance the guards hadn’t heard us, so hurrying was too dangerous. My only hope was that their controller would think the noise was a distraction, or its own controller would order it to remain on post.
When we passed the holding pens, now defunct and partially collapsed, we stopped to look and listen. The Marine had taught us that, when entering known hostile territory in darkness, it was important to stop and take in the sights and sounds. It was an opportunity for the Marine to become acquainted with what normal meant for the area. It was a time to study the noises, the animals, and the wind. If a new sound was heard or the animals suddenly became quiet, it was time to worry.
The night in the arena was almost completely quiet. The wind hardly moved. There were no sounds of boots crunching stone or pointy Xeno feet tapping as harbingers moved. There were no radios transmitting static, nor periodic radio checks between sentries.
I was just preparing to move, shifting my weight, when I noticed the outline of a Xeno warrior’s arm. I signaled Reaver to look. She lifted her Void-tech rifle and peered through the scope, held up one finger, and hooked her thumb to her right. One guard was at least partly concealed around a corner to the right. If we kept going, we’d risk being seen. We’d come as far as we could without taking the guard out.
Reaver made a gesture that indicated she wanted to shoot the guard. I wanted to let her, but I didn�
�t know where the others were. I shook my head and pointed to my sword. She nodded and slowly lay down on her stomach in the dirt, without letting go of her target.
I drew Ebon and took one careful step when a tiny pebble bounced off the back of my head. When I turned, Reaver corrected her first assessment. There were two guards, not one. The second guard didn’t make a difference to me. It would take one more stroke of my sword to decapitate the second one. Not even a half-second.
I moved across the open ground as quietly as I could and spotted the first guard we’d seen. It was a regular Xeno worker, he wouldn’t put up much of a fight. When I reached the corner, I took a slow, quiet breath and stepped around—and straight into the biggest, baddest worker Xeno I’d ever clapped eyes on. His eyes screamed murder and his body seemed more than ready to obey.
I swung my sword, more out of instinct than anything else, and severed the Xeno’s bulging, pulsing head from its body. It fell before it knew what had happened. Immediately, the first harbinger dropped its weapon, as did four others I hadn’t spotted yet.
“Take them out,” I transmitted to Reaver. “I just killed their controller. They’re all yours.”
Five clinical shots later, the coast was clear.
We had a quick look around but soon decided the coast was clear and joined the others at the elevator car. Nyna was harassing a panel with one of her tools. The others were providing guard. I joined the priestess-cum-mechanic while Reaver took a knee and watched for targets.
“What do you have?” I asked Nyna.
“Not sure,” she said. “There’s something like circuitry here, but I just can’t work out what I’m looking at. Beatrix already tried bashing her way in with her hammer. We tried shooting our way in, too. But unless you’ve got another ship to ram it with, I think this thing is holding on to its virginity.”
“That’s probably not a bad thing. If we need to take this elevator up to the other end, it needs to be perfectly sealed, or we’ll die in the vacuum of space.”
