by Jamie Sawyer
“Hey, assholes!” Deacon yelled. “How about one of you answer the damned comm?”
Ray turned to face us, his back to the alien desert. He gave a weak grin.
“No problem, Chief. Just chewing the fat with Farrell.”
“Catching up on station news,” Farrell said in support.
“Anything to report?” Deacon barked. “At least tell me you’ve been on watch.”
“All fine out here,” Farrell said. “The gun-bot is guarding the crawler.”
Ray backed him up again: “Yeah, nothing to report whatsoever. Quiet as a tomb, in fact—”
Shree!
Ray’s head suddenly exploded in a mass of blood and bone and gore.
Then the world descended into confusion, shouting and fire.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IS THIS HOW IT ENDS, THIS TIME?
Instinct took over.
I was on the ground, on my belly in the dirt. Moving fast, taking cover. Savage pain exploded in my leg and ribcage, but I had to ignore it. There was a sand ridge ahead, just beyond the entrance to the ruined starship and the tent. In the seconds it took me to reach the ridge, I worked out that the attack was coming from the general direction of the sand-crawler.
“Blake, Kaminski!” I yelled. “Sound off!”
I frantically looked back in the direction of the ship. Kaminski had followed me, and Blake wasn’t far behind.
“Affirmative,” they both chorused.
“What’s happening?” someone shouted.
I twisted to see Kellerman and Deacon further down the slope, still in the shadow of the starship. Both men were ashen faced. Deacon clung to the ground and panic dominated his eyes. Stinger-spines volleyed overhead. Percussive roars sounded the discharge of Krell boomers. Fire impacted the hull of the alien ship, punching holes in the outer shell.
“Stay down and stay quiet!” I ordered. “We’re under attack.”
“Gun-grafts,” Kaminski added. “Must be a couple of hundred metres out from the wreck, give or take.”
“At least it isn’t the crew coming back for their ship,” Blake said. I knew that the comment wasn’t meant glibly. “We know the Krell.”
More shots came in overhead. I heard Peters moaning, complaining about the damage being caused to the Shard ship. We were using the open suit-to-suit comms network; I imagined our transmissions giving us away to the Krell like a bad smell, data-streams rising up from our position. The Krell couldn’t understand what we were saying, but they would detect the actual transmissions.
“Get over here and take cover,” I ordered Kellerman and the others in the group. “Keep the radio traffic down. They’re listening.”
With obvious trepidation, Kellerman, Deacon and the others slowly crawled away from the alien ship and settled against the sand ridge I was using as cover. Kellerman’s progress was especially slow, and his legs whirred angrily as he moved. The suit wasn’t made for this sort of mobility. Deacon cradled a rifle, with another long-arm strapped to his back. His beard was smeared with Ray’s blood.
“Ray’s dead!” Farrell said, shuffling along last in line. “He just died! He’s gone! Like that: completely snuffed out.”
Farrell’s voice was wracked with sobs and his words trailed off to a whimper. I motioned with a hand to stay low to the floor. Got to stay hidden.
From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Ray’s tortured body. He lay like some bizarre marionette, caught in the metal bones of the ruptured Shard hull. His suit was slashed with bloody holes, stained black by boomer-fire.
“Don’t look back the way we came,” I ordered. “Just focus on getting out of here alive. Stay behind this ridge. We need to find how many of them there are and work on a plan to get back to the crawler.”
Farrell snivelled in response, but froze where he was, still several metres from the ridge. More boomers sounded overhead. Flecks of bio-matter pitted the ground nearby. Kellerman signalled for Farrell to follow him.
“You said that you checked the radio mast, Farrell!” he hissed. “You’re an idiot! You led them right to us!”
“I did check it! I checked it. I – I’m sure I checked it, on last rotation of that crawler. I ran diagnostics on the mast unit last time it went out.”
“Not last time it went out – this time!” Kellerman spat the words. “Last rotation was two weeks ago. That crawler should have been checked today.”
“It doesn’t need checking that often,” Farrell said. His voice was weak: he was having trouble convincing himself of the force of his argument, let alone Kellerman.
“You promised me that you had checked it!”
“Well I didn’t!” he wailed back.
“Leave it!” I ordered. “This isn’t the time for accusations.”
More shots hissed overhead. The boomer-fire left red and green trails of colour as it ignited the atmosphere. Kellerman riled beside me; he simply could not leave the issue.
“Christo-damn it!” he ranted, through clenched teeth. He was talking to Farrell. “You deserve to die out here. I lost my legs on Ultris due to the incompetence of people like you!”
No time for your shit now, Kellerman, I thought. But there it was: he knew that he’d been on Epsilon Ultris. Why the contrived memory loss earlier in the day? It didn’t make sense, but this wasn’t the time to deal with that either. I glanced sideways at Kellerman’s prone, old body; his face flushed with barely contained rage, lips wet with spittle. He caught my eye, and looked away. He knows that he has said too much already.
“How many shooters we got, ’Ski?” I asked.
“Six shooters, tops,” Kaminski said.
“Maybe more primary xeno-forms,” Blake whispered.
I knew exactly what the Krell would do: pin us down here, outside the starship, where we had nowhere to run. They’d suppress us until they could call in reinforcements, and circle round our position. Outflank us, then take our small group apart.
“I’m not staying here!” Farrell suddenly declared.
He clambered up the sand ridge before I had a chance to react. His boots dug into the ground clumsily and he fumbled once, twice, as he attempted to climb the bank. I reached up to grab his boot.
“Get back here, Farrell!” I bellowed. “Never mind what caused this. Just get back here and stay down.”
Farrell half turned to face me but continued to pull himself up the bank.
“What, and stay out here in this heat? We’ll all boil to death faster than you can kill those things. I’m making a run for the crawler.”
With an unexpected burst of strength, he twisted his ankle free from my grip. I tried to grab him again, but he was already up the side of the crest. He hauled himself over the edge and grunted with exertion. Then his legs disappeared as he reached the top.
“Get back here!” I yelled, trying to follow him up.
I only saw the region over the bank for a split second.
Farrell was up on his feet, and took a step out of cover. He was panting hard, hauling his old environment suit. The extra weight made him slow and vulnerable. He turned to face the crawler – so distant, still so far from where we were trapped – and took another step, head lowered in determination.
“Get the fuck down!” I shouted.
Stinger fire came from the area behind the crawler – an elevated position that overlooked the entire crater. There were at least six – Kaminski had been right. Three or four shots tore into Farrell.
I’d studied Krell weapons in detail. Seen all manner of bio-weaponry; from flamers grown on limbs to living ammunition designed to hollow a man out from the inside. The stinger was the most common Krell weapon – a simple biological projectile thrower, loaded with hollow flechette rounds. Those stinger-spines carried an explosive charge, but were also poison-filled. Designed to disable, to debilitate.
The first stinger pierced his abdomen; the others were aimed at his legs. He collapsed, managing a stifled cry. His suit burst open and spilled preciou
s blood. He spun sideways, away from the ridge, and tumbled to a stop several metres from our position: cleanly pinned to the floor by stinger-spines.
The other shooters aimed for us. Boomer-fire whistled past me, and I ducked back. Kaminski and Blake did the same, hugging the ridge.
But Farrell wasn’t dead. He screamed, clearly enough that I could understand he was in excruciating pain. He literally wailed. The sound was barely human, but it was just possible to make out words.
“Christo – please no! I – have – had a son! Please – not like this. S-someone, please – s-s-s-someone help me. F-fuck! So – hurt – so bad.”
I didn’t know Farrell, but as a fellow member of the human race, it was impossible not to be affected by his pleading. He might well have doomed the whole expedition, but it didn’t mean that he deserved to die like this. No one deserved to die like this.
“We – didn’t mean to …” He choked. “Sh-shouldn’t have – please, help m-m-me!”
I felt the sand against my gloves: hot, unforgiving.
“Should we help him?” Kellerman asked.
I wanted to. I really wanted to – even if only to put a round in his head, to stop his pain. That would be a mercy. But the crater was covered by Krell snipers, and to get into range would expose the rest of the expedition to the same fate.
I shook my head. “He’s finished.”
We waited for a few minutes. The Krell sounded one or two warning shots, to keep us down. After what had happened to Farrell none of Kellerman’s men tried to move from the position.
Farrell’s screaming went on and began to sound wet. The pleading became more desperate. He was shouting a name, I think, but I couldn’t hear him properly any more. I set my jaw, tried to filter out the noise.
“They didn’t want to kill him,” Deacon said, to no one in particular. “They wanted to hurt him.”
I nodded.
I didn’t know what biological atrocity was loaded into the stinger ammunition. I never knew: it always seemed to be something different. Sometimes the stingers burnt – corrosives, acid in the blood. Other times they carried slowing agents, complex venomous compounds. Always painful, rarely fast acting. I’d felt that same sensation in my own body, too many times. My simulated body, I reminded myself. Farrell eventually gasped for breath. The stinger poison was spreading all over his body now. Organs, skin, heart. I forced my eyes shut, felt a cold sweat forming on my brow. His screams were horrifying.
“Farrell was right about one thing,” I said. “We need to get back to the crawler. It will get hot out here. Then when dusk falls, it’ll be cold – real cold. When those suns set, the temperature is going to plummet.”
“If we’re exposed for more than a couple of hours after sunset, hypothermia is inevitable,” Kellerman said.
“Then how long until sunset?” I asked.
“Six hours,” Deacon said. “Give or take.”
“That’ll be plenty of time. Give me the rifles.”
Deacon unquestioningly shuffled across to where I lay and offered me the rifle from his back. I took the gun and turned it over in my gloved hands. The environment suit I wore was not for combat – the gloves were old and heavily padded – and neither was the gun modified for use in a suit. I was going to be clumsy and slow. And even slower in your own body, a voice persisted in my head. I checked the digital display – one hundred rounds. This gun will jam in a pinch – I would’ve underfilled the clip, I thought. It was an older civilian security model, a carbine made for defence forces. I briefly inspected the weapon mechanism and satisfied myself that the rifle worked. Heavy-duty tape was wrapped around the stock, and the trigger unit was worn.
“You carrying ammo?”
Deacon paused. “There’s a whole box of clips back at the crawler.”
That isn’t going to do us any good out here.
“And the other rifle?”
Deacon passed the second rifle to me. I checked that one as well. It was an ancient Alliance ground-infantry pattern, much older than the first, but in better condition. An antiquated sniper rifle; with a scope and a range-finder device attached to the stock. Longer barrelled than the first rifle, likely better range. Both were solid-shot projectile weapons – inferior to energy weapons like our plasma rifles – but they would have to do.
I looked to Blake and Kaminski. They were both good, fast shots, but this was not a firefight we were trained to undertake. Blake had the marksman award: he’d be the better sniper. I waved him nearer to me and passed him the rifle with the scope.
“I can do this, Cap,” he volunteered. “This is a good old rifle. Ruversco 950. A real family heirloom.”
He took the gun and ran his hands along the barrel, then looked down the scope back towards the alien ship. I felt a moment of indecision – had Blake actually ever fired a weapon in anger, inside his own body? I swallowed. He had never been to war for real.
“Nice for such an old gun,” he said. “Reasonable scope, decent range.”
“Make every shot count, Kid. I know that I can trust you.” No point in voicing my doubts; I needed Blake to know that I believed in him. I turned to Deacon: “Any grenades, other weapons?”
He shook his head mutely.
“We didn’t think we would need any,” Kellerman said.
“We’ll talk about that later. Blake, suppress the shooters. Flush them out. I’ll cover the ridge, then we’ll take them out one at a time. They are beyond the crawler, elevated above the crater rim.”
Blake nodded. “I can do this, Cap.”
He gave me a brittle smile: he was scared shitless. I just nodded. He was a good kid.
I slipped my elbows onto the edge of the sand bank and used a piece of rock as further cover. I propped the rifle in place, just over the lip of the bank. Scanning the crater edges, I took in as much detail as I could. Blake found a post and did the same. Kaminski took up a position between us, acting as spotter.
“We see it, we kill it,” I whispered.
“Fuck yeah,” Kaminski said.
“The xenos are going to move fast,” I continued. “And don’t expect them to stop if you hit one.” The rifles weren’t anti-Krell tech – I hadn’t checked the ammo type, but I doubted that it was armour-piercing. I’d have preferred proper AP rounds, explosive-tipped; with the suns creating heat hazing. Even some tracer ammunition. “They might rush us. If they do that, take out as many of them as you can.”
“Affirmative,” Blake said.
“And when I say they’ll move fast, I really mean it. Inside the sims, we’re evenly matched. Out here, they have the edge.”
Nothing stirred across the endless desert. I flagged available cover. Rock formations provided low and hard concealment for the xenos; there was plenty of shadow for any raiding party to move—
“Left flank, three hundred metres!” Kaminski shouted.
I swivelled left, carbine muzzle aimed into the desert. Just a flash of carapace – camouflaged against the alien sand – moving fast between one rocky outcropping and another. It was a primary xeno-form, long-legged and spindly, tail swinging for balance. It built up speed as it covered the distance between the two areas of cover. Became a blur, legs moving so fast.
“Contact!”
The carbine bucked as I fired a volley. At range, the weapon was highly inaccurate. Every shot went wide but the loud report of the weapon caused the alien confusion. The sound bounced off the surrounding structures – a harsh bark – and the creature responded by turning to face us. The eyes were emotionless, scanning for our position. It wore a wetware bio-suit with organic piping covering its back and mouth. Before I could take in any more detail the xeno was moving again.
Blake fired. His rifle muzzle flashed. The shot caught the xeno in the leg. The creature spun backwards. Blake fired again. This time the shot hit home: a single round impacted the alien’s head. Punching right through the xeno’s armour, exploding its skull. There was a brief blossom of black blood, then the
body collapsed out of view.
Threat neutralised.
“Target down,” Blake muttered. He licked his lips noisily. “One all.”
“Two one, actually. But good job, Kid.”
Damn better than I had expected.
Success was short lived. Another xeno broke cover.
“Gun-graft making the same run,” Kaminski said.
Head down, the xeno carried a grafted black stinger-rifle. I fired a volley, and it flinched back into cover. Self-preservation – an unusual reaction from a primary-form. Maybe they knew that they were as endangered out here as us, and were reluctant to senselessly throw away their number. The xeno’s head panned right, looking directly at us.
Blake fired again. The shot clipped a nearby rock. The creature leapt back into cover.
“Down!” I yelled.
Reflexively, Blake and Kaminski obeyed. A concerted barrage of boomer-fire rained overhead. The sand bank absorbed the brunt of the assault. The ground trembled softly with each impact.
A fish head shrieked in the distance. The undulating sound carried in the thin atmosphere and made me cringe. They would be coming for us soon.
Time passed.
Same manoeuvre several times over.
No casualties on either side. My read-out showed twenty-six rounds.
Blake looked tired but he didn’t complain. I forced the group to switch off the communicators, tried to remain as low-profile as possible.
“You remember Proxima IV?” I whispered to Blake.
“How could I forget? It was my first mission with the team, my first simulant operation.”
“This is just the same. Only colder.”
Blake laughed but remained poised, covering the desert from his vantage point. Proxima IV was a jungle world – blisteringly hot both day and night. The memory was burning bright, through the miasma of other sim ops.
“Gavantis Prime,” he whispered back to me.
“Yabaris Main,” Kaminski said, his voice also low.
“Quebec Station,” I added.
“Kavaris Star,” said Blake.
