“Look, I’ve already uploaded the core data to the main server, which you and your team have full clearance to. I have my theories, of course, but maybe you, your team—with the help of Dr. Krasanov—could start taking a look.”
David spotted Watanabe smile. Maybe Julie’s reputation had preceded her.
“Yes. Thank you for all your preliminary work, Dr. Chao.”
Touché, thought David.
“My team will begin examining the data immediately. I’ve already spoken to Dr. Krasanov. Perhaps you would be interested in joining the team? I am sure once we begin examining the nanogenetics of the symbiotic process, we will have our hands full.”
For a second David thought Julie would tell Dr. Watanabe what he could do with his offer of collaboration. But instead she took a breath and smiled.
“I’d be honored.”
“Great,” David said. “Then I will leave you to it. I have another sub arriving within the hour—not sure where I’m going to put everyone.”
David started to walk away, but Julie ran up to him and grabbed his elbow.
“Proud of me?” she asked quietly.
“Hmmm?”
“Wasn’t I polite with Dr. W.?”
“Very.” Then David smiled. “Thanks for that.”
“This is too important, isn’t it, David? For ego. For any of that.”
“Absolutely. I better—”
But she had one more thing to say. “Do you think any of this will make a difference?”
What a question, David thought. They had seen the vids, the creatures, the terror, the mayhem taking place a world away. Could whatever they do down here have any impact, any meaning? He doubted it.
Instead of saying that, he said, “I hope so. And I’m going to run this place like everything we do counts and the clock is ticking.”
Julie gave his arm another gentle squeeze. “Good.”
And she turned and walked away as David hurried to the sub bay, and the next batch of the UAC’s finest scientists.
UAC HEADQUARTERS
Ian Kelliher would have liked nothing more than a few fingers of scotch. He would have liked to feel that hit, and let some of the roiling emotions and fears that held him tight, like a hand squeezing, all fade away.
He knew that was out of the question. There will be time for that after this ends. If this ends, he thought.
He had all three screens in his office up and on, all showing images from the UAC subterranean lab.
“Karla, don’t let anything interrupt me, unless you hear directly from Hayden or Campbell on Mars. I assume we’re still getting nothing from there?”
“Yes, sir. Still quiet. Mr. Kelliher, no interruption even for a message from Captain Hakala, sir? He’s due to check in with you in the next half hour.”
“No. No one else. I will let you know when you can let any contacts through.”
“Yes, sir.”
Then Kelliher shut off the voice link to his assistant. Now she would be cut off until he wanted to speak to her again. At the same time, Kelliher hit a button on his desk, and he could hear through an earpiece the sounds from the lab deep below the headquarters building. His chief there, Dr. Adoni, raced between the two portals, mirror images of the portals found on Mars.
“Silvio, how do things progress?”
The scientist stopped in his tracks and put a finger up to his earpiece.
“Fine, sir. I think we are ready. I have my team recording everything; we even injected some micro-monitors into the subject’s bloodstream to measure blood flow, cellular response, and—”
“Very good, Doctor. Can you begin?”
Kelliher could see that the man wasn’t too pleased. Kelliher knew that Adoni had long viewed the live experiments on Mars as great risks, even with animal subjects. Now they had led to an outbreak on Mars that no one understood at all. And yet they were about to do the same thing here.
Kelliher knew it was risky. But he had no choice. All of Mars, all the investments, the plans, the hopes for a different future for humanity, could vanish. Replaced with—what?—a siege from somewhere unknown.
No choice, Kelliher told himself. He must do whatever he could to find out what happened, to stop it. The risk was immense. But so was the danger of doing nothing.
He took a breath.
“Then, Silvio, if all is ready. Let’s do this….”
32
MARS CITY
JACK CAMPBELL HAD PRACTICED WITH THE BFG-9000 only one time, at the Colorado base that was home to the Mars transports. The gun could be tricky to get into firing position, he knew. The weight, and the momentum of all that weight, meant one had to move slowly.
And due to its massive firepower, the safety system involved a three-step process to ready the gun for actual firing. The auto ammo loader had to be engaged, and then the basic trigger release thrown. But then finally the targeting display, which could—if the shooter wanted—lock on a target’s unique heat signature, had to be manually engaged.
Then there was the matter of balance. The thing was heavy from end to end, and only if one had a lot of muscle strength could it be held in position while firing. Not a gun for underachievers, Campbell had thought as he used it to blow up target buildings and vehicles on the aboveground range in Colorado. No point in issuing a lot of the oversized guns, since how many people could operate them?
He could, though. And whatever lay ahead was about to find that out as well.
Campbell walked past the marines in Reception, all simply standing around. They looked like they were waiting for doom to arrive.
“Look lively,” he barked to the room. “Who the hell’s in charge here?”
A private came forward.
Did any officers survive the shock waves? Campbell wondered.
“I’m McCullough. A guy named Kane told me to keep things…under control.”
Kane. So that bastard was still alive. Not surprising. A lot of grunts and private contractors like Campbell admired what Kane did to save his troops. Of course, he got shafted for that. In the corps, an order is an order.
“Okay, McCullough. But these other guys, they look like they’re ready to collapse from boredom. Get them to check perimeters. Goddamn it—you don’t want something creeping up on you, right?”
McCullough grinned. “You got that right. Hey, are you military?”
Campbell shook his head. “Back in the day. Once. Now just a private contractor for the UAC.”
He noticed McCullough eyeing the gun.
“Got any more of”—he pointed at the BFG—“those?”
Now Campbell grinned. “I wish. Just got this—”
And then the earpiece in both men’s ears belched out static, followed by voices. They stood there and listened, their eyes on each other. The radio was up again. And now they could at last hear the horror, loud and clear.
Kane’s earpiece came to life, and he saw Maria turn at the same moment. Except—instead of one voice—it seemed as if a dozen different radio streams were competing for the same bandwidth.
“Hold on,” Kane said. “We should listen.”
They stood there, close to Delta now, and listened….
“They’re gone, shit—all wiped out. Is anyone there, God, is anyone the hell hearing this…?”
It jumped to another voice.
“…stopped here. Both ends, but we’re bottled up, man. Reinforcements urgently…”
Another skip, another voice. Female this time, calm and cool.
“…any unit getting this—you must reset your frequencies. Repeat, reset…”
Then gone. And then another, once close.
“…Kelly, he’s leading them! Christ, he’s actually helping them. You gotta come here, you gotta…”
“Should we—”
Kane held up a hand. This jumble of voices was giving him a picture of what surrounded them. It said that there were some space marines alive, still in place, still—technically—functional. But it a
lso told him that more marines had joined the others—whatever hellish army now roamed Mars City.
Maria nodded. Another voice. Quiet, plaintive in its repetition…
“…is Elliot Swann, personal representative of UAC head Ian Kelliher. I am by the comm station. If I don’t hear from anyone, I will alert the Armada that an immediate evac is needed. Repeat, this is…”
The signal faded. And then there was nothing.
“Radio dead?” Kane asked.
But Maria walked over to him and touched his earpiece. He heard a pinging noise.
“There. I just reset your radio. I guess when they came back online the system hadn’t put them back in their various channels. So, now we have communication—that is, if there’s anyone left to communicate with.” She looked at him.
“Is there anyone we should talk to?”
Maria shook her head. “I think once we use our radios, then we’re walking targets.”
“Agreed. If we need to, we know they work. Let’s keep going.”
Swann…
Campbell stopped. If there was one thing Campbell knew, it was that calling for a rescue by the Armada was the completely wrong thing. If the big ships came, they might be able to take out a lot of the creatures.
But would those troops be affected, if this was an infection? Could there be any guarantees that it was safe?
No, Campbell thought. This is our problem until it’s solved.
He touched his earpiece. It squeaked, and then he cycled to the last radio signature.
“Swann, it’s Campbell.”
“Jack! Jeezus, Jack—what’s happening?”
“Look, things are getting…under control.”
“What? Do you hear what everyone is saying? It’s insanity here, Jack. I’m going to send the signal to the Armada. Hayden would want that.”
“No, Swann. I just came from Hayden. His link to the Comm Center is still down, but he doesn’t want anyone coming here. Not now, not yet.”
Swann was a good counselor, Campbell guessed. But this took him way over his head. He could imagine Swann curled up at the far end of the complex, itching to bring down fresh squads of marines and be rescued. Those marines by now would have seen images of what they were to face, each one thinking: I didn’t sign on for this.
“Look, Elliot, I—”
Then: movement at the far end. Two…three figures. Could be marines, Campbell thought, but not from the way they walked. One stepped into a pool of light, and Campbell could see that it used to be a marine. Even had a helmet on. Tattered uniform, a hook for an arm or maybe just a piece of bone that somehow kept growing. It also held a chain gun and was starting to aim.
“Hold on, Swann.”
As good a time as any to test the BFG. The targeting display could cover all three of them, or it could be narrowed to hit each one with pinpoint accuracy. Since it fired a few rounds every second, Campbell opted for the latter.
The first blast blew the head off the first marine zombie. The other two started hurrying toward Campbell as best they could, each armed, one with a machine gun, another with what looked like a shotgun.
“Bye,” Campbell said, and he filled their bodies with so many blasts that it sent them flying backward onto the ground, chewed into pieces.
“Quite a weapon…” Campbell said.
“What?” Swann said, still panicked. “What the hell just happened?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry. I know where you are. I’ll get there and we can decide what to do together. You got that, Swann?…Swann, do you goddamn hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t do a thing. We’ll see what’s happening and act together. Just like Kelliher would want us to do. Got it?”
“Yes.”
Campbell took a breath. He hoped that he had put a new fear into Swann’s head—a fear that he would get his ass kicked if he did anything at the comm station.
“Great. And meanwhile, don’t use your personal radio again until I contact you. Starting…now.”
No answer. Which was good.
Campbell looked at his PDA. He was close to the Comm Center. He guessed there might be a bigger need for this gun at Delta, but for now getting Swann on board with the program outweighed that.
More lives would be lost. This peach of day isn’t over yet, Campbell thought.
He started down the hallway, ready to march over the dead marines turned into a bloody mess.
2145
INTO HELL
33
HAYDEN STARTED LOOKING AT THE IMAGES coming on from all the marine units, many of them wiped out by now.
One of the creatures—what looked like a head mounted on legs, with a jaw that snapped at the legs of panicked soldiers—made his stomach tighten, ready to vomit.
Some of the images came with names supplied by the grunts fighting the…
These, for example, ticks. Ticks from hell, thought Hayden.
Then another image, something with two heads, vaguely human-looking even though it crawled on the ground, scurrying. Some grunt called it a maggot as he recorded its image. Belly up, its inside exploded by a grenade.
Hayden looked out the window. His assistant still sat at her desk. A half-dozen well-armed marines stood guard outside. And though it was a craven thought for a military man of Hayden’s experience, he felt good knowing that he had a wall of that much firepower between him…and what was now roaming free through all of Mars City.
He had heard the exchange between Campbell and Swann too. And though he was tempted to tell Swann to ask the Aramda to land, he knew that could be the one thing that would transform this disaster into—what?—perhaps something that could end humanity.
I have to stay cool, Hayden told himself. Too much at stake here. Can’t panic. Must not panic.
He moved to the next video. Seeing something that looked like a wall of flesh, and…tusks? Or what the hell were they? He saw the things hanging from the bulbous creature’s head quickly wrap around the necks of two soldiers at once, instantly squeezing them to death.
It took six men to bring it down. What if there were an army of such things?
Stay calm, Hayden told himself. Calm, cool, he told himself, over and over.
“You knew about this?”
Kellyn MacDonald tried to not let his fear show, with Betruger towering over him.
The head scientist of Mars City laughed. “Of course. What do you think, MacDonald, that I couldn’t see what was happening, where our experiments led?” He leaned down. “And how important they were? No, I’m afraid I knew exactly what we were doing.”
“And the others?”
“Your…compatriots? A few I took into my confidence, but most had to be kept just like you. Shocked, concerned, confused—while the process went forward. Unfortunately, those others had to be sacrificed but they were good”—a smile filled Betruger’s face—“coconspirators…for a while.”
“What the hell have you done?”
Betruger tilted his head and arched his eyebrows. “How astute. What the…hell indeed, Dr. MacDonald. But I’m guessing that is a rhetorical question from you? You have”—Betruger gestured at the bloody slaughterhouse that was Delta—“seen all this happen. You’ve seen them, right. You’re a smart man. You can guess what the ‘hell’ happened.”
MacDonald shook his head. “You’re completely insane.”
“Really? Seems like I’m the one who will survive all this. And this, Mars, is only the beginning. And I will be there to see it all, to participate.…”
At that moment Betruger raised his left hand as if reaching for something bright and wonderful amid the smoky ruins of the lab. And MacDonald saw it was no longer a hand. Fingers still protruded out of what now resembled the large pincers of a crab. Betruger himself looked at it.
“Oh—interesting, hm? Trying it on. There will be other rewards too. Many other rewards…”
Betruger was actually relishing being turned into a monster. That was even mo
re horrible than the transformation itself.
“You have the same planned for me.”
It was a statement. But surprisingly Betruger shook his head. “Oh, no. I knew, of course, that you were here all the time. I could sense it. But it felt good to have you, one of my closest colleagues, observe all this. Now you have served that purpose. And—”
He clicked two ends of the claw together.
“—that purpose has come to an end. There is only one more purpose you can serve now. With all the dwindling numbers…not many like you left alive here, and so—”
Betruger reached down with his claw and grabbed MacDonald’s left leg between the ankle and knee. Then, the pain excruciating, overwhelming, the claws closed. Over his own screams, MacDonald heard a snap.
“There, now for the other one.”
The pain from the broken bone, the lower mangled leg, completely masked the same thing occurring to his right leg. He howled, his voice shrieking.
“Yes, scream away, Dr. MacDonald. Because, you see, soon from over there will come some new ones. Hungry. And you will be here, alive, waiting. Their first meal.”
MacDonald flailed, shaking his head as if that would somehow stop the flow of words.
“And for now, I must of course join the others. Mars City is only our beginning. But our end—”
He started walking away…and kept talking without turning back.
“—our end will truly be something wondrous, amazing, eternal. Eternal, Dr. MacDonald….”
“Hold on there, Counselor…”
Campbell entered the control room for the Comm Center. Everything looked perfectly normal, save for Elliot Swann sitting at a console.
Elliot Swann turned to Campbell.
“I—I have the Armada in contact, Jack. I could send a message right away.”
Campbell took a step. He was tempted to simply blast the console and end all debate about summoning the Armada for a rescue. But even though he suspected that there was a backup system that could get online, he wanted to do this without rendering Mars City incommunicado.
“They’re waiting, Jack. They could be here in hours. Get us the hell off here.”
Doom 3™: Maelstrom Page 15
