“You sure you’re OK, kid?”
“Leave me the hell alone, Sarge,” Thor said.
Van Cleef shot Thor a dark look. “Care to repeat that, Private?”
“Sorry, Sarge. Guess I’m just shook up.”
“Get the Doc to see to you when we get back.”
“If we get back...”
“Listen son--”
“I’m not your son. I’m not Olsen. You couldn’t stop them from getting killed. We’re living on borrowed time so what makes you think you can save us?”
Van Cleef felt his hands ball into fists and forced his breathing to slow.
“I got your back, Thor.”
He put a hand on Thor’s shoulder. Thor flinched and fought back tears.
“Harrison,” Thor said.
“What about him?”
“Harrison, Chan, O’Rorke, Johanson, Buck, Solange, Tegan... ever since we became warp-ghosts, it’s all gone to hell. We should be able to make a difference. What if we could use that ghost-warp sphere to change things. Go back and save them?”
Van Cleef sighed. “I never asked you what happened on your first ghost-warp. You had your one time chance, like the rest of us.”
“You’re telling me you can live with the regret of seeing them dead? Doesn’t it eat you alive inside?”
“We’re marines,” Van Cleef hissed. “We take whatever life deals us. Suck it up.”
“But what if we just take the sphere? Keep going back until we get it right.”
The sound of fingernails slowly scratching down the other side of the doors plucked at Van Cleef’s spine.
“Hear that?”
Wide eyed, Thor put his ear to the door.
A sudden thud emanated through the door. Followed by another. Then another. Pretty soon a constant banging rang through the steel doors.
Thor trembled like a man on the edge. Van Cleef tore his eyes away from Thor.
“We’re out of time, Colonel.”
He turned back to Thor. “Take it easy, Private and we might get a chance when no one is looking. But you wait for my nod. Got it?”
Thor pushed up his visor and wiped the snot from his nose.
“Got it. I’m, OK.”
“Keep saying that until you believe it.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Dax and Valkyrie stood by the central console.
“Some of the crew evacuated,” Dax said. “I’ve got their landing coordinates. Time to go.”
“We’re not going back to Valiant?” Thor asked.
“No, Private,” Valkyrie said and stared through the large viewing windows at the red planet below them. “We’re going to Mars.”
“Weapons at ready,” Rage said and aimed his at the door. “On three, release the door mechanism. One... Two... Three!”
CHAPTER 103 - PLANET OF THE DAMNED
Van Cleef dived through the airlock of the shuttlecraft. He spun around, aimed his weapon and blasted the bonehead as it reached out for him. He took a grenade from his belt and pulled the pin. He tossed it back down the corridor from which he’d just run.
“I’m the last,” he shouted and slammed shut the airlock behind him.”
Rage didn’t bother to buckle up before he released the shuttle from the dock and fired up the engines. He took the shortest direct route to Mars.
He turned to Dax .“Feed those coordinates into the ships navigation,” Rage said.
Dax entered the coordinates into a console as the space around them exploded.
“They’re onto us,” Rage yelled. “Hold on tight.”
***
The shuttlecraft spiraled into a dive and plummeted through the atmosphere.
“Two minutes,” Rage called out. “See any landmarks?”
Dax zeroed in on the ruins of an old environment dome.
“Could be an abandoned colony,” said Dax. “It’s the nearest thing to the co-ordinates.”
“That’s our destination,” Rage said. “Any life signs?”
Dax studied his console. “Plenty of movement. None of it showing life signs.”
“The same creatures from the Nexus?”
Dax didn’t bother to reply.
“How many, Dax?”
Dax simply sat back and let the sensors scan the movement. The digital count whirled around and hit ten thousand. Increasing by a hundred per second.
“We may want to take the long way around.”
The air around the shuttlecraft buffeted them back and forth.
“How many following us?”
This time Dax didn’t need to check his sensors. The rear view revealed a dozen ships following. All bigger, faster and with better weapons.
“Don’t slow up, Colonel,” Dax said. “In fact, if we look as though we’re out of control and about to crash, even better.”
“I hear you, XO.”
Rage pushed down the nose into a vertical dive. At an altitude of a thousand feet he pulled on the wheel to flatten the nose of the shuttle.
“Assume the position,” Rage shouted as the shuttle skimmed over the heads of ten thousand walking corpses.
Rage flipped the glass cap off a big red button.
“Crew ejection in five,” Rage shouted. He punched the button. The roof area directly above each of their seats exploded. The wind whipped away a large panel above Dax’s head.
Rockets ignited under Rage’s seat. He reached out for the warp-ghost sphere. But before he could grasp it, he was propelled upwards and out through the hole in the roof.
Dax snapped his neck around and watched as Valkyrie’s seat rocketed up through the roof. Followed By Van Cleef.
Dax looked down between his legs. His seat remained stubbornly fixed to the floor. He glanced up through the windshield. The shuttle hurtled toward a dune, the size of a small mountain.
Thor yelled, “My seat’s jammed.”
Dax reached forward and punched the eject button. Hard. Three times.
Three seconds later the shuttle hit a sand dune and flipped.
***
Dax woke to the sound of ravenous howls and screams. He opened his eyes to a crowd of boneheads chewing at the broken glass windshield of the shuttle. A hand reached through the shredded glass and grabbed at his leg.
Dax kicked out and hit the quick release of his harness. He fell from his seat and landed upside down on the shuttle’s ceiling.
He peered back into the flickering darkness of the cabin. Exposed cables sent blue arcs of electricity across the floor.
“Is everyone OK?” he shouted.
“I can’t reach my weapon,” Thor shouted.
Dax forced his eyes to focus on the gloom.
Thor thrashed about in his harness. He hung suspended upside down and dangling like a free-lunch billboard advertisement for a dozen howling boneheads.
Dax drew his plasma pistol and fired at the boneheads. He blew apart two of them, but the others kept on snapping at Thor’s dangling feet.
Dax kept on shooting. Plasma bullets splattered rotting flesh in every direction. Another two boneheads fell apart and crumbled away.
Two more turned to face him and licked their lips. Dax took aim again and squeezed the trigger.
The pistol jammed.
A red warning light flashed from the pistol. An electronic voice from the pistol cut through the howls as if announcing a change to bus timetable.
“Recharge required.”
Dax heard the splintering sounds of the windshield. He turned to see it implode under the weight of fifty boneheads.
***
Rage felt his ejector seat’s rockets splutter. He drifted down to the waiting jaws of a thousand boneheads. Adjusting the descent joystick, he landed the seat on the one in ten thousand boneheads not currently looking up at the Martian sky.
With a satisfying squelch echoing around the dust valley, Rage felt pleased he’d secured a soft landing. He punched at the quick release harness and counted the number of ejector seats gliding down on to
p of the walking corpses.
Two missing!
His helmet told him which two and advised him he was mile from the crash site. The first of the pursuing ships appeared on the horizon. He calculated he had two minutes to make it seem as if everyone had died in the crash.
He thumbed the control pad on his left arm and with a sigh he activated the shuttle’s self-destruct.
“You got two minutes to get to safety Dax,” Rage said to himself.
***
A flashing red light engulfed the shuttle interior.
“What’s happening?” Thor shouted.
“Self-destruct sequence commencing,” came a voice from the shuttle’s pilot console.
Dax leapt onto the shoulders of a bonehead and climbed up to a spare seat. From there he reached out to Thor.
“Don’t drop me on them,” Thor screamed.
“Relax,” Dax said, “it’s your plasma pistol I need.”
He reached for the pistol and grabbed it. He thumbed off the safety mechanism and aimed the weapon at the boneheads below. He squeezed the trigger and a blue ball of plasma tore the head off the nearest bonehead.
Three more boneheads stepped over the dead bonehead.
“This will take too long,” he told Thor.
The floor above them began to creak and bow with the weight of boneheads.
Dax locked Thor’s gaze with his own. “Do you trust me?”
Thor nodded.
Dax aimed above their heads and blasted a hole in the floor of the shuttle. The floor collapsed and a hundred boneheads tumbled into the shuttle.
Dax pushed up off the seat and climbed up through the floor. He then leaned back over the edge and punched the quick release on Thor’s harness.
Thor tumbled down to the boneheads. Dax grabbed his ankle and leaning back, throwing his face to the murky red sun, he tugged with every fiber in his body. But Thor felt too heavy.
Dax glanced down and realized boneheads had grabbed Thor and were dragging him down. Refusing to let go, Dax felt himself slip over the side of the shuttle and plummet into the crowd of rotting jaws.
As he hit the crowd of boneheads, an explosion rocked the shuttle. A side door imploded and sliced a dozen boneheads in half.
A bipedal robot, dented and scratched from head to toe, leapt into the horde.
It punched, kicked, and headbutted the boneheads as it made its way to Dax. It grabbed the bonehead nearest Dax and tore off its head. Holding the severed head up to its mouth, the robot took a bite at its eyeball. Brain juice oozed out of its mouth and dribbled down its chin, washing its chest ID tag clean.
Dax read its tag. “BUTT-4U?”
The robot glanced away from its meal. Its eyes popped wide as it seemed to recognize Dax.
“At your service,” it said.
“Lose that thing,” Dax said and indicated the head.
BUTT-4U dropped the severed head and stared at the floor.
“Humblest apologies”, BUTT-4U said. “Deepest shame.”
It gave the severed head a swift kick and Dax thought he caught a glimmer of a smile on its battered face.
“Sir? Did I not anticipate your needs?” BUTT-4U asked. “War does agitate one’s circuits. Causes feedback in the behavior circuits. It’s a constant battle with dust. It’s like ants, crawling around inside my brain. I’m so glad to see you again, Sir. I’m afraid I’ve been alone for far too long.”
“Maybe I need to reinstate your violent behavior suppressor?” Dax asked.
BUTT-4U held up both hands in horror.
“Please don’t consider such gross betrayal of my robot rights, sir. A lack of inhibition has been quite liberating. I feel almost human. Quite intoxicating.”
“Yeah,” said Thor, “there’s nothing like kicking zombie butt, ain’t that right, my man?”
“I am not your man,” said BUTT4-U. “I am the service butler bot of lieutenant Dax.”
“You mean commander,” Thor scolded and turned towards a hammering noise from behind the rear cabin door.
“That’s the cargo hold,” Thor said.
“Commander?” BUTT-4U said. “Really? Ah, so my prestige increases... but does my salary? Assuming, Sir, wishes to reinstate my service, I shall require payment. Robot slavery is so pre-war, don’t you think?”
Dax shook his head. He felt a headache coming on.
The rear door of the cabin broke down and in rushed a horde of boneheads.
“Leave them to me, sir,” BUTT-4U said and stepped forward.
“That’s enough killing for one day, BUTT-4U,” a woman’s voice rang out. “You know how too much confrontation makes your circuits kill-happy.”
A figure in female power-armor and a helmet with a tinted visor, raised a steel tube with a small flame dancing at the end. She aimed it at the approaching crowd of boneheads and squeezed a trigger. A ten foot long flame roared out of her flame-thrower and eviscerated every bonehead within a ten foot radius.
She released the trigger and flipped up her visor.
“Commander Dax?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I’m Nia Grint,” she said. “Welcome to hell.”
CHAPTER 104 - NIA
Nia dragged Dax and Thor from the wreckage. As she dumped them into the dune, the ground shook with an explosion. She felt an invisible force hurl her face down on top of Dax. She turned to see a flaming mushroom cloud blossoming into the sky.
A squadron of Vanguard Raiders flew by.
“Play dead,” Nia shouted.
They lay still until the raiders vanished over the horizon.
Dax stirred and stared up at her.
“You’re a hard woman to find,” he said. “How did you know who I was?”
She avoided his eyes. “We need to hurry. How many more of you are there?”
“Five in total,” Dax said. “Three ejected to--”
He looked down from the dune to the seething mass of rotting bodies in every direction. They were pressed up against each other and moving slowly up the dune.
Don’t they need air to breathe?” he asked.
“Now’s not the time for a science lesson,” she said and pointed to a dented, first generation sand-glider that seemed to be held together by its own rust.
“Where’d you get that heap of junk?” Thor asked and shakily stood.
“You’re most welcome for your life, Private,” she said. “Now, how about you climb aboard before I forget my manners, too.”
***
Nia found Colonel Rage, Van Cleef and Valkyrie standing back to back in the center of a crowd of about a thousand boners. Dax heard no shots.
“They must be out of ammo,” Dax said.
Valkyrie held her gun to her own head. She jolted at the sound of the glider’s engines. She looked up.
The glider skimmed low and circled. A jet of flames from the glider cleared an area of fifty feet around Rage. The three leapt aboard and Nia accelerated away. She gunned the glider toward the abandoned dome.
***
Nia landed the sand-glider in a giant hangar. She removed her helmet and let long flowing red hair flop over her shoulders.
“Atmosphere is just about breathable in here,” she said, “but it’s sporadic, so keep your helmets with you at all times.”
Dax looked around the hangar. It seemed to Dax, row upon row of battle-damaged spaceships waited patiently under a thick blanket of red dust for pilots who most likely would never return. Like abandoned and orphaned children, waiting forever.
“Any capable of getting us off-planet?” Dax asked.
Nia shrugged. “They were here when I arrived. My guess is about twelve years.”
“What happened to their pilots?” Thor asked.
Nia looked at him with pity. “Private, this is Mars station Zebra. Ever heard of the Zebra massacre?”
Thor swallowed hard.
“A thousand men, women and children lost their lives here twelve years ago. Many more vanished.”
“What happened to them?” Dax asked.
“No one knows,” Nia said. “No one ever claimed responsibility.”
“Someone knows,” Dax said. “Maybe the people who you work for?”
“I work-- correction, worked, for USF.”
“Fell out with your boss, Sol Morlok?” Dax asked.
Her green eyes widened. “I don’t know where you get your information from, Commander Dax,” she said, “but the crew of Nexus were searching for a cure for the disease.”
“Is that what they told you?” Dax said and aimed his plasma pistol at her. “Now, think carefully before you answer the last question you may ever hear. Where is my son?”
Thor heard a scuffling sound at his ear and whipped around. A small human, no older than a child, with rotting flesh and a slavering jaw, reached out to him.
Thor raised his weapon and aimed at the creature. Dax heard barking. It sounded familiar. He turned to see Max leap down from a dusty old space cruiser and bite Thor’s arm. Max dragged Thor to the ground.
Thor lashed out with his other arm and struck Max’s snout. Max howled and let go. Thor raised his weapon at the child.
Dax leapt at Thor and knocked him face down into the dust.
Thor spun around. “What the hell, Dax? It will kill us.”
“Not this one,” Dax said and stared at the creature’s eyes. There, he recognized the pain. A very human world of despair. They were his eyes. They were the eyes of his son.
“Ben,” he whispered at the creature, “Ben, it’s me. It’s Dad.”
Ben reached out with decaying fingers and opened his rotting jaws. His tongue flailed around his mouth of distended teeth, but rather than lick his lips, he seemed to be trying to shape and form words.
“Da... Da... Dad.”
Dax felt his plasma pistol slip from his trembling fingers into the dust. He held out his arms. He took a step forward.
“Yes, Ben. Yes. I’m Dad.”
He glanced at Nia for approval to hug Ben. Though, deep down he hoped she’d warn him to step away. Give him an excuse to yield to his own repulsion for this thing that Ben had become.
Nia nodded. “Ben is our most successful test subject.
Valiant (Jurassic War Universe Book 1) Page 42
