Hill knew exactly how he felt.
Tomlin went over to the keypad on the door and tapped in his access code. Nothing happened. He tried three more times, his scowl growing more profound.
“It’s no good,” he said. “I tried overriding with my command status, but nothing.”
Hill pushed past him and tried himself. He didn’t doubt Tomlin, but sometimes you just had to see if you could do better.
ACCESS DENIED
Once, twice, and then a third time.
“Nothing.” He knew the look on his face had to be close enough to Tomlin’s to be scary.
Tomlin looked at the door. “Vacuum seal. No hinges. Stainless steel. We’re screwed.”
That was when the door opened.
They looked at each other, momentarily frozen with shock, and then headed for the opening, half expecting trouble for their efforts. Instead they found Jermaine Hyde and Kyle Pulver looking at them. Across the hallway the door to their room was already open.
“Turns out Hyde knows a lot about opening closed doors,” Pulver said. Hyde remained silent. Hill nodded and looked to Tomlin.
“Let’s go,” the squad leader said. “Got some hunting to do.”
“We limiting ourselves this time?”
When Hyde spoke it was almost unsettling. He seldom talked once they were engaged in business, and even when they were relaxing there was little he had to say.
Tomlin shook his head.
“We lost four. Not doing that again. We need to catch this thing before it gets away.”
“Extreme prejudice time.” Hyde actually smiled, an expression so rare that Hill felt a bit nervous. “Sweet.”
Not far away a group of soldiers tore down the hallway, unconsciously moving in formation as they headed for what Hill assumed was the last place the predator had been seen. They headed in the opposite direction, moving into the Reapers quarters to grab their weapons and their armor.
It didn’t take them long.
* * *
Approaching the hangar door that led to the outside, they saw the medics trying to put Pappy Elliott back together. The Reapers could have saved them the time. He was too pale. His eyes were staring at nothing.
They exchanged looks that said all there was to say, really. They didn’t have time to mourn his death. They’d get revenge for the man.
First, however, they needed to commandeer a vehicle.
* * *
The chaos was nearly complete when Church picked up his phone and called Traeger. The connection was quick and Traeger answered on the second ring.
“What’s up?”
“Someone left the birdcage open, and the bird has flown away.”
“Better get our people on it.”
“Already happening. No idea where it’s gone, but we’ll try to find it as quick as we can.”
“Make it happen. I want it back before I get there, you hear?”
“You got it.”
“Church?”
“Yeah?”
“Where’s Pappy on all this?”
Church allowed himself a short, tight smile. “Sorry, I forgot to tell you. Looks like Pappy tried to stop the bird and got shit on.”
“He alive?”
“There’s a new opening for someone in charge of the Company’s interests here.”
There was a pause.
“What a pity,” Traeger said. “What a mighty damn shame.”
“Gotta go—there’s a thing to catch up with.”
“Make it happen.” Traeger killed the connection.
Church stared at the wall for a moment and then sighed. It was going to be a long night. The agents under his command were already on the hunt for the alien. All he had to do was wait.
* * *
Pappy’s corpse was being lifted onto a gurney when Tomlin and the Reapers moved for the open door. There were several people in the way, some of them dressed for action and others standing around and trying to look like they were in charge.
The only people Tomlin answered to were Woodhurst and Pappy.
Pappy was dead and the general was out of town. When someone started speaking to him he ignored the voice and went out the open door into the rain. He didn’t have to look back. He expected his men to follow and they did not disappoint him.
There was no clear sign of where the alien had gone, but he didn’t need one. There was only one direction it would head in, unless the damned thing was addled. It would head for its ship, for supplies, and possibly even for home.
Going any other direction made no sense.
“I’m thinking south. You?” he asked Hill.
Hill nodded and that was enough. The four of them ran toward the closest available vehicle. They were in the garage. Finding one was easy.
Rank had its privileges. No one tried to stop them.
“Where exactly are we going?” Hyde settled in and started sorting through his equipment, even as Hill drove.
“South is all we have for now.”
“Why south?”
“Everywhere it’s left its mark is south of here, so it probably landed somewhere down there.” Tomlin turned to address the two men in the back of the vehicle. Pulver was sliding into his flak vest, and Hyde continued to sort his weapons. Most of his equipment was hand-held and silent, which was exactly what the man preferred.
“What’s the plan?” Pulver looked directly at him. “I just want to make sure we’re all on the same side here.”
Hill answered for him. “Motherfucker just killed four of us. We caught it once and it killed four of us. We’re not going to get a second chance to take it alive, or even if we do, it’s going to be a coincidence. We hunt it down the old-fashioned way, and we kill it. Thing’s gonna leave a trail. They want proof? They’ll still have it. They just won’t get to talk to it.”
Hill shook his head. “Goddammit, that fucker killed Pappy,” he added. “He was a good man, damn it. He did not deserve to die that way.”
Pulver leaned back in his seat and nodded his head, not saying a word.
Tomlin looked at the man and asked, “You okay with that?”
“Hell yeah,” Pulver replied. “I want that bastard dead.” He reached into his sack and started counting his small arsenal of grenades. “I’m great with it.”
Above them the rains continued and the winds howled and the lighting thrashed the skies. It was going to be a long night. Tomlin felt it in his bones.
Pappy was dead.
That hit him as hard as losing Burke, King, Orologas, and Strand. The commander had been a mentor and a friend. Catching that creature had been his mission— his life’s work. His death added fuel to their reasons for wanting the goddamned alien dead.
It was going to happen.
20
The skies over DC were calm, and the wind blew gently across the nation’s capital. It was a good night.
Woodhurst was sitting in his room with the window open enjoying the cool breeze. He looked around and smiled. This was going exactly the way he’d wanted. Three conversations since they’d received the images from Elliott, and suddenly they had the attention of all the right people. He could practically hear the wallets opening.
It wasn’t about money—except that it was. Much as he hated that, he understood it, and now he was on the side of the coin he preferred. Most likely there would be limitations, but he doubted there would be any more cuts.
Having proof of an alien meant that suddenly he was no longer a pariah. Having an actual alien made all the difference in the world. There had been talks about the need to tighten the belts, to make sure that everyone did all they could to keep spending down.
Stargazer was well equipped, but the continuing cuts had taken a toll on acquiring new equipment and getting the replacement parts they needed. It was difficult for a strike team to work without the right tools, and it was impossible for security to be a consideration when the men doing the examinations had to send out for tests on the captured
creature.
It hadn’t gotten so bad that they couldn’t perform the fundamental procedures, but one of the shots Pappy sent clearly showed a wound bleeding a luminescent green, instead of a dark red. That required outside facilities, but how the hell was someone to get a sample examined properly if the techs at the remote lab were freaking out over the glow-in-the-dark goo in the vial?
And they had to consider the possibilities of contamination. Elliott had fought hard for the decontamination room, and he’d won that fight, but the cost had been prohibitive. That had all been theoretical, making it that much harder to justify the funds. Given that they now had an alien in their possession, Woodhurst had to seriously consider the possibility that even a sneeze from the damned thing could lead to a global pandemic.
Several of his people had faced off with the alien without any protection whatsoever, and it worried the hell out of him.
There were images of the nightmare with and without the war mask it sported. Woodhurst remembered the discussions he’d had with Elliott over the years and was stunned by how much the man had remembered. It had been half a lifetime and he’d recalled the size of the thing, the savagery of its form, and where it wore armor, and what sort of weapons it carried. There had been times when he’d doubted Pappy’s recollections.
He owed the man an apology and a good meal.
Traeger had gone to bed already, preparing for the next day. He probably should have followed the younger man’s example, but his mind was too active to even consider sleep. There was brandy in his room, but he tried to avoid falling into that trap. He had seen the mark it had left on Elliott. Poor bastard.
Despite that, the man had cause for celebration. Pappy had been vindicated. After years of attempts and failures, the old man would finally be able to look at the rest of the people in the Company and tell them to go suck eggs. He had succeeded despite the claims that what he’d seen had been a lie. He’d managed what no one before him had accomplished—he’d found living proof of the aliens who came here and waged their covert war on the human race.
They had a living specimen, and it was guaranteed to make the cash flow in order to keep Stargazer afloat. He suspected that within the next day or so he’d be talking to the president of the United States about plans for the future.
While he was considering the possibilities, his phone rang—not the cell phone in his pocket, but the one on his nightstand. There were only a handful of people who even knew where he was, which meant he was instantly alert.
“Woodhurst.”
“Hello, General. This is Andrea Laurel.” The voice was calm and collected. “I thought we should have a conversation.”
Woodhurst forced the smile from his voice. Senator Andrea Laurel was one of the heavy hitters in DC. He’d known her for many years, and her party was in control, but she was the rarity in the current hierarchy in that she appeared to be immune to bribery. When she voted for anything, it was because her constituents wanted it. If the woman was taking any money on the side, the paper trail was hidden too well to find it.
“Senator,” he said, “it’s good to hear from you. How can I help you?”
“Well, General, I think it’s the other way around,” she answered. “I’m not calling so you can help me. I’m calling to give you a warning.”
“A warning?” He didn’t like the sound of that. Warnings were for when everything wasn’t going in your favor, and so far the day had been extremely favorable.
“William Traeger.”
“Traeger?” Woodhurst frowned. “What about him?”
“Will had a follow-up with me earlier today, General,” she said. “When we talked yesterday, most of the discussion covered how much the entire Stargazer Project was in danger of buckling, without a little support. Excuse me, that’s backwards isn’t it. Project Stargazer.”
“Not to worry, Senator. As long as the project still operates you can call it whatever you want.” He hoped that sounded like a joke, but wasn’t sure. Not many people made Woodhurst nervous, but Senator Laurel could make or ruin the project with just a few well-placed words.
Laurel chuckled softly. “Yes, well, the problem, General, is that young Traeger came to see me again today, and he brought along a few very convincing photos.”
Ah, so that’s it, he thought. “Yes, we just made the acquisition this morning.”
“Which is wonderful, I’m sure, and it works to your benefit, believe me.” She paused, likely for effect. “No, the point I want to make is that he’s apparently got a few notions about the chain of command for your project.”
“How do you mean, Senator?” His ears rang with a high, tinny noise. Traeger was trying to unseat him. He didn’t need to hear the details to know it, but he’d listen just the same.
“William Traeger is a company man, and you already know that. He is also ambitious on levels that would make me worry if he was actually running for a seat in Congress. He’d make me very nervous, actually.”
Woodhurst nodded, but said nothing. The senator was working her way toward a point and would get there at her own pace.
“General, putting it in direct terms, Traeger is trying not only to buy the backing for Stargazer, he’s trying to remove you and a few other people from the equation. He danced around the amount, but he essentially offered me compensation in the form of promises to give subcontracts to companies in which I own a decent share, and promises to offer them the first crack at advanced technologies.” She paused again for a moment. “Make no mistake here, General, he was offering incentives not only to keep Stargazer funded, but to move him into a position in charge of the operation The two were unquestionably tied together.”
It wasn’t quite a pain in his chest—more like a sudden lump that made swallowing more difficult. Woodhurst considered it a warning sign, just the same.
“I appreciate you letting me know, Senator.”
“We go back a long ways, General. I don’t see any reason for you to be punished because some young Turk wants to climb a few levels higher than he should.”
“Just the same, you certainly didn’t have to go through the trouble, and I appreciate it.”
“Well, if you want to you can just put a check in the ‘owed one’ column and call it done.” Then she added wryly, “Or you can just return the favor if ever it comes up.”
“That I will, Senator.” Woodhurst nodded and tried to ease back the pressure he felt on his hand as it tried to crush the life from the phone. “I look forward to seeing you at the meeting tomorrow.”
“I’ll see you then, General.”
Woodhurst set the phone back in its cradle and sighed. The day had been going so well…
21
At least the downpour had stopped, and the sky had cleared. While the rain had helped to hide him, it also had hampered his progress in a critical way.
It wasn’t as easy to hide himself without his cloaking device. Still, he had advantages over the local life forms. For one, his body had a certain level of natural camouflage. The patterns had benefitted the Yautja for thousands of years, when it came to hiding in a wide range of foliage. The coloration was paler than a lot of the local flora, but close enough that if he stood still in the greenery, he was harder to spot.
Not that he would take that chance. Rather than risking running along the paved trails leading back to his ship, he looked at the stars and let them guide him as he moved through the trees and the heavy, swampy areas. He startled more than a few birds, but few of the humans seemed to notice even when he was moving past them in close proximity.
There were a few exceptions, of course. Two individuals walking a four-legged creature on a long leash turned and listened when the animal started barking. Either they let the creature go deliberately or one of them was careless. In any event the animal charged toward him, barking and making threatening gestures. The size of the creature was close to half that of the dominant species, large enough to make it a valid threat, and when it came fo
r him it bared very serious teeth.
The throwing disc punched through the beast’s skull before he considered whether or not it was worthy of a kill. Hearing the beast’s masters coming closer, he quickly pulled himself up into the branches of a tree.
The two owners called for “King” several times without getting a response. When one of them spotted the animal’s cooling corpse, he had no choice but to silence them both. As they reached “King,” he dropped down and landed on one of them, shattering the bones in the soft thing’s back and neck. The disc in his hand sliced across the other’s throat and silenced it before it could make a sound.
There would be no trophies. This was not hunting. This was survival. He had consumed the meat of the local creatures before, and though he found it unpleasant, there was a need to keep going and that meant sustenance. He skinned the thigh of one of the creatures and had a hasty meal before preparing to depart. He dragged all three corpses through the trees and dropped them into the waters of the closest marsh, and then he was on his way again.
When the stars faded away and the local sun rose, he used its position to keep his path true. He moved at a rapid pace, though he was near exhaustion.
The sun rose higher into the sky as he slipped into the waters of a slow-moving river that was heavily populated with fish and the occasional reptilian hunter. He had already proven himself against one of the great lizards and now, instead, he remained wary of them.
The lack of his visor was maddening. The lack of his control gauntlet was worse. He could have called the ship to him. As he did so, he could have activated the plasma caster and eliminated all threats. Instead he was forced to rely on the old ways, which his father would have said were the best ways. It was draining, but it was also exhilarating.
* * *
The sun set and clouds covered the sky in a dark, threatening blanket. It would storm soon. He knew that much.
The elements always presented a level of danger. He could not hunt lightning, or slay a flooding river—it did not care about a plasma bolt, and when his ship was so far away, there was always a possibility that he could drown. That was part of the thrill of hunting in a new place. There were always challenges to consider.
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