by Peter Telep
After another check of his anchors and weapon, he spoke softly into his comlink. "Three to Silver Bullet One. I'm in position."
"Acknowledged," Shane said. "Tanker team. Report." Cooper anticipated hearing Nathan's voice over the link, but all he heard was wind roaring up the mountainside.
Shane called to Nathan again. And again.
twenty-four
The three massive enemy tankers had landed in a row parallel to the aqueduct, and the tarmac beneath them was illuminated by the ships' belly lights. In that frosty glow, a lone silicate guard stood at the bottom of each tanker's gangway.
Nathan lowered his NV binoculars and moved back behind the five-foot-high crag shielding him. He turned to Kyoko, who was peering around the edge of a smaller rock beside his. "Three tankers. Three guards. Not bad."
She slid around the rock to face him. "Unless you count the guards on the bridgeway. And maybe the Chig techies or pilots inside the tankers."
"I hate math. Always will." He consulted his watch phone. "Better let Shane know we're gonna move." He thumbed on his link. "Silver Bullet One, copy?"
Shane's voice came through garbled and full of static. "Affirmative. We've been trying to—" Distortion stole the rest of her words.
"Say again? Your signal's weak. Maybe they're jamming us or we're getting interference from the duct," Nathan suggested. "We're moving in two mikes."
"Roger," Shane said.
"Tell Coop to hold off. If it gets hairy, then tell him to open up. We wanna see if we can take out the guards down here ourselves."
"I didn't catch all of that."
"Tell Coop to open up on our mark."
"I hear you, Nathan," Cooper responded.
"Affirmative. The ball's in play. Silver Bullet One out."
A snowflake struck Nathan squarely on the nose. He wiped away the moisture, looked up into the forever twilight, and saw that a sheet of dark gray veiled the stars. "Don't tell me."
Kyoko was already taking an atmospheric reading. "Doesn't appear to be a big storm. Might even provide us with extra cover."
It was fortunate for Nathan that at least one of them was an optimist. He moved back to the crag to peer once more through his binoculars. And what he saw immediately gained his attention.
One of the silicate guards, the woman guarding the tanker nearest them, had left her post. She was marching up to the silicate guarding the next tanker. As she neared the other A.I., she drew a knife from her waist sheath and quickly and efficiently drove it into the male android's heart, or rather, its main power source. With a faint burst of silicate communications tones, the android dropped to the deck, jerked spasmodically a few times, then froze.
"What the hell?" Nathan heard himself ask.
"What's going on?" Kyoko said.
The female silicate crossed from the second gangway to the third one, and strangely, the android guard there did not react to the knife in her hand. He simply stood, motionless, as the woman ceased his existence. Then she turned the knife on herself.
"Suddenly, I like math," Nathan said.
"And I got a feeling that our friendly neighborhood silicate has something to do with this," Kyoko said.
"Whatever. Come on. We're a mike off schedule."
Holding his rifle at the ready, Nathan charged from behind the crag and jogged from the uneven ground along the base of the east mountain to the straightaway of the tarmac. He gauged his speed so as not to lose Kyoko.
But then she charged past him, saying, "You're out of shape, West."
He ran after her, but she arrived at the first gangway well before him. With rifles stowed and pistols drawn, they moved over the spongy surface and past the open hatch. Beyond the hatch lay a tunnel of sorts, and its yellow-tinged, jelly-slick walls consisted of a complex network of brown "veins" that pulsed with light from within. Anyone unfamiliar with the bioelectric design of the aliens' ships would have been taken aback. But even with his experience, Nathan still felt as if he was entering the diseased throat of some enormous mammal.
"It's warm in here even though that hatch is open," Kyoko commented in a whisper.
"Yeah, and it smells good, too," he added sarcastically. In fact, it smelled rather putrid, an odor reminiscent of that given off by the Chigs but, thankfully, not as strong.
"Let's see how accurate Mister 404's schematics are. The crew compartment is supposed to be this way," Kyoko said, still keeping her voice down. She pointed to a connecting tunnel on the right.
He let her take point. Or at least he wanted to think of it that way. In actuality, she took point, and there wasn't any stopping her. But he kept close behind.
The tunnel was about twenty feet long, and as they neared its end, Nathan saw that it did, indeed, open up into what he recognized from the schematics as a veiy large compartment. A phosphorescent honeycomb pattern swept across the ceiling.
Kyoko rushed to one of the walls and placed her entire arm into a small control orifice. The compartment's lights came on, and the place literally hummed with life. "All right. She's awake, and she's still being loaded. All we have to do now is reverse the flow."
Eyeing the place, Nathan shrugged. "I don't see the button that does that."
"I told you that control wouldn't be in here, wise guy," Kyoko said, then she slid her arm out of the wall. She hurried past him to exit, and he followed.
As they turned the corner of another tunnel that Nathan guessed would take them to a control wall that operated the holding tank, they nearly walked straight into a lightly armored, unarmed Chig pilot.
With a gasp, Kyoko raised her pistol, but the alien slapped it out of her grip with one powerful claw while latching onto her neck with the other.
But Nathan was right there and able to jab his pistol into the alien's chest. He found a seam between thin battle plates and fired, breaching the thing's suit.
The alien released its grip on Kyoko and stumbled back, gas hissing from its wound. And then, with an eerie shriek, the Chig thudded to the floor. Nathan grimaced as green spooge seethed from its chest.
Kyoko groaned slightly, and he looked to her. She was still flush and nursing her neck. "Let me see," he asked.
"It's not anything worse than I've received on some bad dates," she said, stepping over the Chig.
Another tunnel later and they were at the holding tank's control wall, a baffling, glowing array of multiple varicose veins and orifices that, like the others, resembled something out of a graphic documentary video meant for iron-stomached medics.
"I'm glad you know what you're doing," he told her, staring at the biological panel.
"Not really," she confessed, then jabbed an arm into one of the holes. "But it must be simple. Chig technology is, in fact, based on simplicity. If you had a holding tank like this, what kind of controls would you want on it?"
"I don't know. Open, close. Reverse flow, like we said. Maybe a flow control."
"And those are exactly what's here. I also suspect that there's a quick purge command, since these tankers are operating during wartime conditions."
"I'll get to work on the wall, then," Nathan said.
During their planning, he and Kyoko had realized that the holding tanks had been designed for liquids and would not be equipped with a convenient hatch through with the prisoners could enter. It was now Nathan's job to cut them such a hatch; however, since the holding tank was fairly full, he would have to begin near the top of the bulkhead. He withdrew the L-bar from his belt, held the small instrument up as high as he could, thumbed it on, and began his laser incision. Dark splotches rippled out from the cut and spread across the wall, making him feel like he was killing part of the ship. He fervently hoped that the tanker wasn't equipped with anything like the human body's antibodies that would attack him. Visions of such an encounter caused his hand to shake, but he kept working. Once he had cut a test hole about a foot square, he let that piece fall toward him and smack onto the floor. The lower half of the square glistened wi
th liquid. Nathan bent over and took a whiff. No odor. Utilizing a control hole in the wall as foot hold, he boosted himself up to stare into the hole he had cut.
The holding tank was so vast that he couldn't see its opposite end, and the fluctuating shadows only had a little to do with that. Circular and composed of the same organic material as the rest of the ship, the hold appeared to be about three quarters of the way full. The liquid was clear, and steam rose lazily from its surface. Nathan focused on the line where liquid met wall, and after a few seconds he saw that line drop a quarter meter or so. "Whatever you're doing, it's working," he told Kyoko.
"Good," she said, then moved away from the wall and toward the square Nathan had cut. Hunkering down, she withdrew the small Terrain Test Kit from her waist. She touched a small glass slide to the square, then set the slide into a compartment of the TTK. She powered up the unit's processor and waited for the results.
"The stuffs supposed to be highly volatile," Nathan said. "Doesn't give off any odor, though."
She smiled. "That doesn't mean anything."
"Hey, you makin' fun of me?"
Her smile broadened. "Guess you hated high school chemistry class, too."
"With a passion."
"Actually, the fact that the stuffs odorless is probably in our favor. No apparent fumes to worry about. Then again, odorless fumes could still kill." The processor beeped, and she eyed the TTK suspiciously. She keyed in a sequence of numbers, then stared dumbly at the screen. "Let me do it again."
Nathan let out a sigh as she took another sample from the square and repeated the process. When she was finished, she once again regarded the TTK with a frown. "What?" he asked her.
She moved to the square, and before Nathan could stop her, she pressed her index finger into the liquid.
He snorted in disbelief. "Are you crazy?"
Apparently she was, for then she brought the finger to her lips and tasted the stuff. "This alien liquid contains a high concentration of minerals and the trace of a substance the TTK can't identify." Then her tone waxed strangely cynical. "But this very dangerous stuff is just H20."
"You're kidding me."
She shook her head. "Chigs must've tapped into a huge natural spring. Intelligence obviously mistook the stuff for something much more volatile."
"But the Chigs don't like water. This can't be a food source. Water kills them. During our HIST we captured a Chig. Damphousse gave it some water. And the thing died."
"Maybe it wasn't the water at all. Maybe that Chig committed suicide. Maybe they're not so different from us," Kyoko challenged.
"We had it tied up. It couldn't move."
"Maybe it didn't need to move to kill itself."
"You're saying they didn't want us to know that they rely on water?"
"I'm saying that maybe you got the mistaken impression that water kills them. In any event, this is great for us. We purge the tanks and the prisoners can occupy the hold with no health risks, save for the depleting 02." Still not completely buying Kyoko's explanation, Nathan shrugged and said, "I guess I'll finish cutting the hatch."
"Before you do, I have something for you," she said. Then she stood, moved to him, and before he knew what was happening, she had her arms wrapped around his neck. She kissed him. Long. And hard.
Filled with a strange mixture of shock and bliss, Nathan pulled gently away from her. "What was that for?"
"In case I don't make it. I didn't want to die not knowing what that felt like. And because Penny told me I should."
"Then let's make sure you don't forget." He tilted his head slightly and went in for a kiss of his own.
Sergeant Major Bougus had been right. It had been a million years since Nathan had last kissed a woman. Now all that time was compressed into a point as dense as a black hole. There was only the fleeting moment.
She pulled away from him. "Come on. Finish up. We have another tanker to prep."
With his cheeks warm and his lips still wet from hers, Nathan returned to his work.
twenty-five
Shane and the rest of her team kept hidden behind the last pile of talus before the airfield. Directly ahead of them was the hatch set into the tarmac, and beyond it were row upon row of Chig escort fighters. She looked back to the snow-covered Wang, Damphousse, and 404. "Ready?"
They nodded in turn.
She resumed her gaze ahead and spoke into her comlink. "How's it coming, West?"
"We're in the second tanker," he answered. "No problems on this end. We're good to go. And Shane. You won't believe what the Chigs are exporting."
"Hondas?" Wang asked.
"Not quite, Paul," Nathan said jovially.
"At this point there's very little that'll surprise me," Shane said, hearing the exhaustion in her voice.
"It's water."
She regarded Wang and Damphousse, who both appeared to be having as hard a time of believing that as she was. "What do they want with water?"
"I dunno. We'll talk about it back at Tun's. You're buying."
"We'll see. Hey, Hawkes? Ready?"
"Roger."
"All right, then. Do it." And though she couldn't actually hear the crack of his rifle, Shane imagined that she did. And after she ticked off four shots to herself, she ordered her team to move out.
Mister 404 sprang off first, since it was his job to set the low-level charge on what they presumed was a locked hatch, Shane had told the silicate to make sure the hatch was, indeed, locked before wasting the time to blow it. Common sense was an amazingly powerful tool in combat.
Wang and Damphousse fell in quickly behind 404, their rucksacks rattling loudly as they charged across the slippery tarmac.
Not sure why, Shane became transfixed as she stared at Wang and Damphousse, and along with the real image came the imagined pictures of Nathan in the tanker and Hawkes up on the mountain. She had driven them extremely hard over the past few months because they needed the training. They needed to discover more of their potential. They needed to become the absolutely best Marines that had ever served in the Corps. She had once judged her actions as noble, justified by her responsibility as an officer.
But she knew, had always known, that everything she had done had been a lie. And at the moment, the prelude to what might be all of their deaths, she was almost ready to admit that to herself.
"Captain Vansen?" Mister 404 called in her link.
A chill shot down her spine, and she charged off. As she emerged from the faint shadow cast by the duct overhead, she turned back, and, through the falling snow, aimed her rifle up at the bridgeway. But all appeared quiet near the railing. The strings of lights mounted there glowed innocently. She turned around and hustled to the hatch.
"It's locked," Wang reported.
"Charge set," Mister 404 said, then he removed his hand from the small, square case of the explosive and stood. "Five seconds."
They jogged a few yards in retreat, then turned their backs on the hatch. Shane had used LLEs countless times before and didn't bother to cover her ears, knowing the bang was as tolerable as small-arms' fire. The charge went off, and immediately she whirled around and rushed back.
And immediately both conventional and laser-weapons' fire erupted from the west side of the aqueduct. Shane saw how the falling snow prevented many of the guards from getting a bead on them. Wild shots struck the tankers parked to the right, and sparks jigged on the ships' hulls. Still, enough of the fire pinged off the tarmac in front and behind them to make her suddenly pissed off.
"Hawkes!" Shane said.
"I know! I know! I'm gonna get smart," he announced.
And then Shane heard the descending hums of a pair of smart grenades. She resisted the urge to look to the duct, and kept her gaze on the hatch. With Wang's and 404's help, she slid the mangled cover aside. Below was a tube supporting an access ladder that descended into the darkness.
Shane looked to Damphousse. "Calling card."
The lieutenant nodded and quick
ly withdrew one of the tube-shaped stun sticks from her hip pocket. "Stand clear!" she said. "Stick away." She dropped the explosive tube into the hole. After a brilliant yellow flash and muffled boom, the acrid vapors of the charge rose into the frigid air.
"Bug eyes," Shane advised as she clicked on her helmet's light.
"I'll go in first," Mister 404 said, raising his voice above the continuing din of ricocheting rifle and laser fire.
"Here," Damphousse said, turning over her pistol to the silicate. And, anticipating Shane's protest, she added, "Let him have it."
Shane sighed loudly. "Go!"
In he went, followed by Wang, Damphousse, and then herself. She double-timed down the ladder for about thirty feet, at which point she spotted the floor.
Hopping down from the ladder, she found herself in the middle of a square, east-west passageway that was constructed of a nonorganic material that resembled black concrete. The wall of the passageway glittered when her light struck it.
"This way," Mister 404 said, gesturing east with his pistol but swinging the weapon wide and past Wang.
Sneering at the silicate, Wang said, "Watch where you wave that."
"Sorry." Then 404 frowned at the pistol in his hand and returned it to Damphousse. "This tunnel is clear anyway."
"How do you know that?" Shane asked. "We haven't even scanned."
"An educated guess, Captain. The enemy should be rushing to the bridgeway since the commotion lies there."
Shane didn't buy that, but she nodded anyway. She looked over her shoulder at Wang, about to order him to engage the Motion Tracker, but he already had the unit in his free hand. "Steady reports," she told him, then she shuffled off, ahead of everyone.
She led them down the dark passageway for what 404 reported was two hundred yards. Then the tunnel simply dead-ended, but set into the wall before them was a huge pair of rectangular hatches that stood twice as tall as Shane. As she approached the hatches, she heard a faint buzzing sound. And suddenly the hatches slid apart and she was blinded by bright light.
