by Dante King
“Oh,” Nyna smiled, “good point. Here, take a look.”
She moved so that I could see what she’d been working on. It was an indentation in the exoskeleton of the car. I got close, backed away, then squinted my eyes as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.
“I know; it’s weird, right?” Nyna said.
“It looks like something important. Anything else?”
“Nope, this is it. And we’ve looked at this curvy, pretty thing from all sides, and I mean all sides. Doesn’t look like there’s anything else even remotely interesting—besides the fact that it’s a giant alien elevator car, you know? Hey… hold on.”
Nyna put up her hand to signal any further comments would have to wait and leaned in, then bent her knees to look at it from underneath.
“You know what this looks like?” she asked. “It looks like I should do this.”
As I watched, Nyna raised her hand and placed it on the spot we’d been inspecting. A second later, she turned to me, opened her mouth to say something, and gasped as her hand was thrown violently away from the car.
I rushed to her side and inspected her hand. She was wearing the Void-tech glove she’d found in Tortengar’s armory. I pulled it off and inspected the skin of her palm. Aside from the small dent in her skin, she looked unharmed.
A sliding noise drew my attention back to the spot she’d touched. I looked just in time to see a small, thin needle recede into the structure.
“Poison,” Nyna whispered.
“No,” I said, “I don’t think so. I think it’s a sampling device; otherwise, it would probably kill any Xeno who tried to get inside. Also, venom takes a long time for most other creatures to create. On a busy day, it might run out. Sampling makes more sense. I bet only Xeno can open it.”
Nyna inspected her hand and rubbed the spot the needle had struck. “Yeah, sounds right. Wanna drag a guard over here? Or just a hand? Probably all we need.”
I found a guard with a still-intact hand, avoided the blood pooling and sizzling in the dirt, and used Ebon to slice it from the body. When I returned, I held it up to the same spot and made sure my fingers were out of the way in case the needle was longer than I thought.
A second later, I heard and felt a small thump. But the door didn’t open.
“Maybe the guard has to be alive?” Nyna said tentatively.
I hoped not, and, deep down, I didn’t think the Xeno would operate that way. The guards we’d killed weren’t special in any way. They were the weakest I’d encountered so far. Like a colony of ants, they were the workers: they’d barely be able to save themselves unless they attacked in numbers. Their survivability was low, and they were probably inexpensive—biologically speaking—to produce.
“I bet it needs to be one of the skinny ones,” I said. “They’re some kind of elite Xeno. I’ll need to go back and find one of their bodies.
“Or,” Nyna said as she put her glove back on, “we can just do this.”
She reached out and touched my body armor. When she moved her hand away, I saw Xeno blood on her palm.
“This came from one of the skinny ones, right?”
“It did,” I confirmed.
I was still amazed that the blood wasn't burning a hole in her glove.
Nyna took a breath, braced herself, and placed her palm on the device. The needle hit her glove again, throwing her hand back a few inches with the powerful impact. She removed her glove again and showed me her hand. No puncture marks. A second later, a hidden door popped inward.
Nyna dove out of the way. The rest of the team took positions on either side of the door and waited for my signal. On three, we entered, but the room was empty.
The room was lighted by more of the glowing frogs. They moved through the long wall, which was translucent, more like an aquarium, and they cast light across the floor and ceiling. The center of the circular room was dominated by the climbing mechanism. It was distinctly organic and resembled three huge cat tongues protruding from a meaty, quivering mass on the floor. Between them, a thin, almost-transparent filament about as wide as my pinkie extended to the ceiling. It was the climbing system. It was how the Xeno would lift the heavy elevator base and lower it back to the planet’s surface.
“Damn,” Reaver said, looking around. “I was hoping they’d be here so we could blow this thing and bail. Then it’d take them a while to rebuild, and we could take them out every time they tried. It’d be all over for them. But now what?”
“I have to go to them,” I said, nodding upward. “But in case I fail, I can’t allow the Xeno to keep their precious space elevator. I have to make absolutely sure it’s destroyed.”
My team stood silent, except for Skrew, who was amusing himself by poking the tongue-things with the muzzle of his rifle.
“What do you mean?” Beatrix asked.
Reaver took a few steps forward to stand beside me. “It means that whoever goes might not be coming back. I’m a Martian Storm Marine. I’m going.”
Without a word, Beatrix joined her. She was truly alone on this planet. I’d given her my friendship, my companionship, and my purpose. I was the closest thing to family she had, so she didn’t have to say anything at all.
“Skrew doesn’t want alone, so Skrew will go,” the vrak said. “And Skrew wants to fits the pew in the Xeno butt.”
Everyone laughed, except Nyna, who stood alone, looking between the rest of us and the elevator car.
“I don’t know how useful I’ll be up there,” she said in a small voice. “What will you do once you find your people?”
“I plan on finding my people in the ship up there. Then, I’ll find the controller bug. I’ll kill it, steal their ship, and find a way to land it on the planet. If it’s not at all like the last Xeno ship I flew, that’s where having you along would be helpful. You can figure this kind of technical stuff out faster than anyone.”
“And I’m also a great pilot,” she said with a smile. “Let’s not forget that.”
“Is that a yes?” Reaver asked. “We might not make it back, but we might be able to use your help. It’s up to you. Are you coming?”
“Let’s go kick some Xeno ass,” she said.
Then, she returned to the entrance, placed her gloved palm against the indentation, and flinched when it was punched away by the needle. The door swung closed with a leathery crackling noise. We were sealed in.
“Now, we need to figure out two more things,” I said. “First, we need to discover how this thing works. I’m sure it’s the mechanism we’ll need to take us up to the ship. Second, we need to figure out how we’re going to cut the anchor. No matter what, we can’t leave this thing tied to the planet.”
“There’s another indentation on the floor over there,” Nyna said, pointing to a spot on the floor.
The rest of us took a step away. Nobody wanted to get an organic alien needle in the foot.
Beatrix reached out and touched the taut, spidery filament that extended from the gap between the tongues to beyond the ceiling.
“Can we not cut this with our weapons?” she said. “With Ebon?”
I shook my head. “It’ll be too tough for that. Plus, we want to get to the station before we do anything. Otherwise, the car will become a bolo, and we’ll whip into the side of the ship. It’ll kill us, and anyone aboard, including the people we’re trying to save.”
“Could we cut it when we get there?” Reaver asked.
“I thought about that, too,” I said. “But if we do that, we’ll have to cut it where we can see it. I don’t know if the car itself provides some kind of airtight seal. If we managed to cut the filament, it would be above these tongues. With nothing to hold on to, the car could drift away, exposing us to the vacuum of space.”
“Ah,” Reaver said. “That’s a silly way to go for a Marine.”
“We could cut it right here at the ground,” Nyna said. “After we get to the station.”
“What?” Skrew asked.
&n
bsp; “I could use a Fex to overcharge something small. The explosion would be terrible. It would be plenty to burst open the floor and probably everything within ten yards will be kaput, maybe a little further. That would do the trick, right?”
“It would,” I said slowly, “but what would you use for the charge?”
She pointed to my ear. “Your communicators.”
It would work, but it would mean giving up some valuable tech. I wracked my brain for any other options as I absently watched Skrew poke the tongues with the butt of his rifle. Each time he did, they made squishing noises and lapped lazily in his general direction.
“I don’t see any other way,” Reaver said as she removed her communicator from behind her ear.
“Nor do I,” I said.
We placed our communicators in Nyna’s outstretched hand.
“This will only take a couple of minutes,” she said. “Maybe three.”
I watched as Nyna sat down on the floor, crossed her legs, and started taking one of the communicators apart. Skrew giggled when he discovered that if he ran the butt of his rifle from the base to the tip of one of the tongues, it would curl toward the rifle like it had been tickled.
“I don’t like being without the comms,” Reaver said. “It makes me feel exposed, like a babe in the woods.”
“Yeah,” I said, “we’ll have to stick together. It’ll slow us down, but we’ll be close enough to see each other and communicate on this operation.”
“All done,” Nyna said.
I was amazed at how fast she did these kinds of things, she had to be some kind of genius.
“Now, we need to get it to the base,” she said. “Maybe we could lift it a bit, and someone could crawl underneath?”
“I have a better plan that won’t get anyone squashed,” I said as I held my hand out for the modified device.
It looked like the Fex had been absorbed by the communicator, creating a bulge at one end.
“How is it detonated?” I asked.
“With this,” Nyna said, holding up the other communicator. “Tap it three times within two seconds, and boom. And make sure you’re far away, like all the way at the other end.”
“You’re sure about the range?” I asked.
“I’m sure it’ll be able to receive a transmission up to 1000 miles away. Think we’ll be further away than that?”
“No,” I said. “Maybe 400 or so.”
Then, I turned to the tongues. Skrew saw me coming and stepped away.
“Actually,” I said to the vrak, “I need you here. Do that thing again. Make one of them curl out.”
“Is fun, yes?” he said as he demonstrated with his rifle.
As the tongue curled away, I leaned over it and searched for a spot to drop the bomb. I could see the elevator’s anchor, a smooth, dome-shaped carapace, but there wasn’t enough room to get the bomb all the way to the bottom.
“Reaver,” I said, “I need you and Skrew to do it at the same time. Curl all the tongues so that I can get the bomb down there.”
Skrew demonstrated how to do it once more. That time, there was plenty of room, and the bomb landed where I wanted it before the tongues returned to their resting position.
Nyna slapped her gloved palm to the indentation on the floor, and the tongues started to slap the filament with slow sucking sounds. Each movement pulled on the filament and lifted the elevator’s base several feet from the ground. Then, it sped up. If it kept doing this, we’d be up there fighting in less than an hour. The acceleration collapsed Nyna and Skrew to the floor. They both groaned. Nyna tried to stand, but a second later decided standing wasn’t all that important.
“Skrew’s eyes is getting the squish!” the vrak complained. “Make stop!”
“I can’t,” I said. “It shouldn’t last long, though. Hang in there.” I turned to the others. “I want to thank you all for doing this. Especially those of you I haven’t known as long. You’ve put your faith and trust in me and my mission. You’ve joined me in the quest to free Druma and the rest of the galaxy from the clutches of the Xeno. Together, we’ll end their slavery. We’ll stop the suffering they’ve caused. We’ll help the communities and people they’ve affected to recover. And we’ll kill every single one of the bastards.”
“I’m just in it. . . for the sex,” Nyna grunted.
We laughed, except for Skrew, who gagged and tried unsuccessfully to cover his ears.
“Just… kidding…” Nyna groaned under the acceleration. “But yeah, the sex… is great.”
“Good job, sport,” Reaver said as she slapped me on the butt.
Soon, the tongues seemed to have found a happy rhythm and settled into it. Skrew and Nyna were able to stand.
But the further we were from the surface of the planet, and the closer we got to the other end, the less we were affected by gravity. I could see the others also felt it. I silently hoped the Xeno ship we found ourselves on was equipped with gravity generators like the last one I’d been on.
I could fight in zero gravity, though. So could Reaver. But I wasn’t sure about the rest.
Sooner than I’d expected, we transitioned from weightlessness to a kind of artificial gravity, but in the opposite direction. The tongues were slowing down, and the deceleration was pressing us against what used to be the ceiling.
“We’re almost there,” Reaver said. She sounded eerily calm.
When the tongue slowed to a crawl, I removed the communicator from my ear and held it out so everyone could see. A few seconds later, we stopped with a soft thump. Thankfully, instead of letting us floating away, gravity here felt normal. This would help those of us who weren’t Marines.
I tapped the communicator three times rapidly. I felt the elevator car shudder and shift slightly to one side. The spiderweb-like cable had been severed. We were no longer connected to the planet.
I thought of Enra and the others I hoped to see again. I’d find a way to take control of the enemy’s ship and add it to my arsenal before returning to the planet.
“That’s it,” I said. “We’ve detached from the planet’s surface. We’re floating out into space. Now, it’s time to split some skulls. Everyone ready?”
Everyone nodded, except for Skrew, who looked like he was practicing how he was going to fit his rifle inside a Xeno. This said more than any enthusiastic confirmation ever could have.
“Open the door,” I told Nyna.
Chapter Seventeen
I positioned myself in front of the hatch to the Xeno ship, about eight feet back from it, while the rest of the team stacked up behind Nyna.
Once everyone else had exited, I joined them, and Nyna closed the hatch behind us. The last thing we wanted was to give the enemy a place to hide. However, once I saw the configuration of the space we found ourselves in, I wasn’t sure if it made a difference.
An alien ship, whose design I could not identify, was parked on the floor of a vast room and was held in place by thousands of long buttresses made of the same shiny material the bugs grew as exoskeletons. So we were in some kind of hangar.
The ship was teeming with small, unidentifiable shapes that moved like a swarm of ants on a caterpillar. Little bits, no larger than my hand, were being removed and hauled away to some unknown destination. They were Xeno, but not like any kind I’d seen before.
The rest of the room was a cluttered mess compared to the organization and precision of the Xeno disassembly team. Organic storage containers that resembled shiny whiskey barrels littered the floor, walls, and ceiling. Where two or more were stacked on top of each other, they were supported by several buttresses.
Among them were scattered military containers. One of them I recognized as Martian.
“Son of a bitch,” Reaver whispered. “They’ve got some of our cargo.”
“Looks like stuff we can use, too,” I whispered back. “I’m going for the closest one. Cover me.”
Reaver and Beatrix continued scanning for targets as I slowly crept toward
a dark green box with “MSM” painted on the side. Martian Storm Marines. It felt light, but I hadn’t lifted one of them since my encounter with the Lakunae, so I chalked it up to my new strength. I brought it back, and a few seconds later I had it open. There was a box inside the barrel.
“There’s only one left,” I said, turning to Reaver.
She frowned.
The box had contained 36 plasma grenades. They were powerful short-range weapons. If one detonated, it would vaporize everything within fifteen feet. Anything within another five feet would be singed, but there was practically no damage to anything beyond that.They were useful for penetrating bunkers or taking out equipment in a hurry when finesse was not required.
“Here,” I said as I strapped the grenade to Beatrix’s belt. “Be careful using it here, though. If you create a hull breach, you’ll do a lot more damage than I’m sure you ever intended.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Hopefully I won’t need to use it.”
Out of nowhere, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I wasn’t one who got afraid like this when I was in a tricky situation, but on this planet I’d learned to truly rely on my instinct. Some danger was imminent. I looked behind me.
One of the little things I’d seen crawling around on the alien ship a moment before stood on the wall behind us and held up its two spider-like legs. The skeletal creature was about ten inches wide from foot to foot, slate gray, and didn’t appear to have any armor at all. Its head was without eyes, and it held its thin abdomen over its head like it intended to sting me. I was curious until it squirted a gooey substance at me.
I dodged the attack as Reaver shot it. It deflated like a balloon and fell from the wall. There was little blood, and what blood there was didn’t appear to be acidic.
“Gross,” Skrew whispered.
“Contact!” I yelled.
Four Xeno guards emerged from behind some larger storage containers and stacks, firing their rifles. Green beams struck the walls behind us as we rolled and scrambled for cover. Immediately, I sat up on one knee and readied my gun.
