by B. V. Larson
“Yeah,” I said. “These are warriors. A scout and his crew. What is your name, sir?” I asked the short guy.
“Alders,” he said. “My name is Alders.”
“Scout Alders,” I repeated to Leeson. “He’s the toughest of their fighters. Think of them as native guides.”
Harris and Leeson looked at the colonists suspiciously.
Alders, for his part, had swelled up with pride during my introduction.
“Where is the Investigator?” Leeson asked. “If you are helping us, what has he been doing?”
Alders looked surprised. “Do you not know? We’d thought that with your instrumentation—well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you now: the Investigator is keeping this ship grounded.”
Leeson’s eyes widened. “How?”
“By manipulating fields. The ship uses twin dishes for propulsion when close to our planet. Surely you’ve seen them at either end.”
We nodded, listening closely.
“Those dishes generate the energy field surrounding the ship. They also propel it. We’ve interfered with those emanations, forcing them to stay on the ground. We’ve prepared for years for this day—we might have taken their ship by now if it hadn’t been for your arrival and interference!”
“I think you’re talking big, short guy,” Harris said.
Leeson promptly whacked him in the chest with his knuckles. It did my eyes good to see that.
A few things clicked for me as I thought over what Alders had said. I realized this ship should have been leaving.
“If I was this ship’s captain,” I said, “and enemy troops were wandering into my hold, I would take off.
“All right then,” Leeson said. “You’re doing your part. That’s great. How can you help us capture the ship?”
“Alders and his crew are going to get us past these watchdog nanites,” I said.
“Yes,” Alders agreed. “We can do that…I think.”
-30-
Alders and his crew had opened up vials of dust and were carefully sprinkling it ahead of them as they edged forward.
The nanite watchdogs had lain down in silver rivers all over the deck when we’d retreated, but now that new alien nanites of a darker shade were detected, a strange battle took place.
Twin swarms rose up in whirlwind cloud. There was no breeze, but they flew in a deadly embrace anyway. The colonist nanites seemed superior. I don’t think they’d been programmed to fight other nanites. They were designed to tear up flesh that didn’t match the configuration they’d been built to recognize, and that’s it.
We watched the battle from a safe distance. Steadily, the dark nanites of the colonists ate up the silver swarm the cephalopods had left as a trap for the unwary.
“Where did you guys get this technology?” I asked Alders. “It seems so advanced.”
“The Investigator and his students have bred these metal creatures,” he told me. “They did it in the same manner the cephalopods manipulated our flesh, bending it to their purposes. These tiny constructs are our greatest achievement. We’ve been working on them for years, preparing for the next visit.”
Leeson stepped up, fascinated. “I’m impressed,” he said. “You copied the tech, didn’t you? You stole the cephalopod design and made it your own. These nanites are similar, but they’re a breed apart.”
“Essentially, yes.”
“What powers them?” I asked.
“Sunlight, flesh, heat: Various things, depending on the breed. This particular type of creature feeds upon emissions from the ship.”
A tech happened by, and I realized it was Natasha. “These things are amazing. Can we have a sample?”
Alders eyed her critically. “I would like to trade.”
Natasha gave him a replacement tapper and a few power cells in trade for a tube of nanites.
“Are they dangerous?” she asked.
“Only if you are a rival nanite,” Alders said, smiling.
The battle in the hold was soon over. The nanite swarms died down, one having destroyed the other. I had to wonder what these things would look like under a microscope. I suspected they’d resemble insects made of metal.
We pressed ahead, knowing that the enemy wasn’t beaten yet. It didn’t feel good, walking into an alien ship full of unknown traps.
The squids were orderly; you could at least say that about them. There were literally thousands of tons of equipment in the hold. Foodstuffs, weapons, cages—this last surprised me, but I guess it shouldn’t have. We’d found thousands of man-cages. About two meters square, they were built with thick lusterless metal and outfitted with receptacles for both feeding and elimination.
Just looking at those cages gave me a sick feeling. How many of my fellow humans had spent their lives inside them? All of them were empty—where had the occupants gone?
Our expedition paused again when we ran into a blank bulkhead. We’d figured out by that time that we were in some kind of central hold. Probably, invasion forces gathered here before sallying out down the ramps.
We had no answers, so we took a right turn and followed the walls to a ramp. The ramp led upward into hanging darkness.
“Let me guess,” I said to Leeson who stood at my side. “Weaponeers first?”
He looked concerned, and glanced back toward the other officers. They had a little huddle and decided to send up a few grunts instead. The last weaponeers had been deemed too vital to the mission to waste them on this particular duty.
Four heavy troopers marched up the ramp ahead of me, looking like scared rabbits. I wondered if I’d looked so nervous when I was leading a team into what could be a deadly situation. I hoped not.
“Don’t piss yourselves all at once!” I called after them.
All I got for my trouble was a finger flicked up from a single gauntlet. I chuckled—but my amusement was cut short.
Just as they reached the top of the ramp, long tubular things reached out from both sides. Like elephant-trunks, twelve tentacles snaked out and snatched the troopers from our view. Three grappled each man and retracted. It happened so fast, so methodically, the team barely had time to react.
One man in the group managed to get his force-blade out and use it effectively. A single tentacle was lopped off and fell, writhing and flopping. It rolled down the ramp toward us.
I didn’t wait for orders. I rushed forward with my weapon at my shoulder, priming up. I’d already cranked my tube’s aperture wide open, prepping it for short-range fire.
Leeson was calling after me, saying something. There were shouts and tramping feet—I didn’t get what he’d said, but I didn’t much care, either. I knew I was one of the few who could do anything serious to these damned squids.
The first one I saw loomed directly ahead about ten meters away. He was at the top of the ramp. I halted to sight on him, a grim smile darkening my face.
I squeezed the trigger—but to my shock, I squeezed it on nothing. The weapon had been snatched from my grasp. What happened next made me a little sick.
Another squid had been hiding out of sight on the right side of the ramp, sitting in ambush on the next deck of the ship. They had an amazing reach and could do things with any of their eight arms we mere humans couldn’t manage with both of ours.
Once I’d been disarmed, a total of three squids launched themselves down the ramp. They knocked me down on the way past, almost throwing me off the ramp. But I hung on and stood back up. The charging squids ran into our line of men, and a wild melee began.
The alien who’d taken my weapon now dipped down into plain sight hanging over my head like a spider on a wall. He had my tube.
I reached for it, but he held it out of range. Depressing the firing stud with the squirming tip of his ropy appendage, he fried my comrades.
A cone of burning plasma enveloped half a dozen troopers. The beam was too diffuse to burn through our armor, but we all had weak points. One was our visors, which cracked wide. A fraction of a second
later, the human faces behind the protective barrier smoked, then bubbled.
Screaming, one man reeled and threw himself off the ramp. He fell at least twenty meters to the deck below. Two others did the same, while the rest dropped and rolled down the ramp, crashing into those who ran to give aid. Sporadic fire erupted from the lower deck, splattering energy onto the squid above me.
The squid wasn’t looking too good at this point. He’d taken a dozen hits. He must have known that his move would expose him to our weapons, but maybe he’d thought it would be worth it.
He also didn’t seem to understand our weapons very well. He kept the firing stud on my cannon depressed hosing down the line of approaching legionnaires with a continuous stream of energy. After about two full seconds, it overheated, and the gas chamber ruptured. It sort of popped, sounding like a big light bulb, and stopped operating.
By that time, I’d gotten my force-blades out and was stabbing the monster repeatedly. I thrust and cut. It took long seconds of chopping at it before the thing finally slid down and rolled away down the ramp as dead as a fish in a barrel.
The rest of the unit behind me got their act together then. Harris was the first man to reach me. I honestly misread his eagerness. Silly me, I thought he might be happy I’d taken one out.
Instead, he bashed me one and pointed at his blackened shoulder.
“See this, McGill? You stupid cowboy son-of-a-bitch! That squid murdered half a squad. And he did it with your weapon, McGill!”
“Yeah,” I said, “I didn’t see that coming.”
“Open your visor, Specialist,” Harris said.
I could see more than a little crazy was going on in his eyes.
“Uh, why Vet?”
He pulled out his sidearm. “Specialist McGill, that was a direct order. Are you disobeying a direct order?”
I flipped up my visor, and he punched me. I managed to turn my head a bit, so he didn’t break my nose, but my cheekbone felt like it had been smashed with a hammer.
“Happy?” I asked, but it came out sounding funny. I realized then that my teeth had been driven into my upper lip. His gauntlet had caught more than just my cheek.
I lowered my head and reached up with my fingers to tug at my lips which were now stuck on my teeth. Harris lowered himself into a crouch so he could look me in the eye.
“No, I’m not happy yet,” he told me. “I’ll tell you when I’ll be happy, hero. The next time I see you die on this little bug-hunt.”
I wanted to hit him. I really did, but I sort of understood his rage. I’d advanced without orders. The squid had gotten my weapon and taken out a number of my own men. We’d won the fight, but quite possibly we could have done it with fewer losses.
Leeson loomed over me.
“Specialist? Are you still functional?”
“Ready and able, sir,” I said as clearly as I could.
I got to my feet, trying not to sway. I thought that Harris had messed me up worse than the squid itself but kept quiet. I knew that if I wasn’t able to fight while on a critical mission like this, I might well be giving my superiors just cause to recycle me. They wouldn’t want to simply leave me behind while they advanced. If they did that, I might be captured and thus not be a candidate for revival. Not being able to revive a heavily-trained specialist would inconvenience the legion.
Leeson looked me over critically, then eyed Harris. He knew what had happened. It was obvious.
“Up the ramp,” he said. “A weaponeer without a weapon is just a slow-moving heavy trooper. You’re on point, McGill.”
Unsurprised, I marched up the ramp to the top. I didn’t want to die—but I cared less than usual right now if I did.
There were no squids at the top of the ramp. The deck was different, however. It was full of heavy equipment and machines that were alien to me. We marched past generators the size of houses and other, bigger machines that I couldn’t begin to identify. Maybe they were engines, or maybe they ran the life support systems. I thought they powered the big cannon on the top of the ship. Whatever they were, we didn’t damage them. It was just possible this ship could be useful to us if we could take it from the present owners.
What came to my attention as we mounted the next ramp upward was a serious stink. I’m not talking about an easy-going stench like one might find at the local landfill, sewer farm or dairy. I’m talking about the sharp, finger-up-the-nostril stench that only a concentrated amount of human waste can produce.
I closed my visor, of course, but it was a little too late for that. We had come to the living space of the beings we called littermates.
The evidence was unmistakable. Groups of coffin-like boxes had been arranged into sets of nine. These coffins thronged the deck. We counted them, and they came pretty close to the number we’d slain.
“Looks like we got them all,” I said. “Maybe the ship is empty.”
“Don’t bet on it, McGill,” Harris told me. “Ain’t no way you’re living through this to the end.”
Despite his prediction, I was beginning to feel upbeat. There was only one more ramp and one more deck to go.
Before we reached the last ramp, we found the captives. They were locked up in rows upon rows of stacked man-cages. The people inside were dark-eyed, haunted. None of them spoke. The one man who was still game was Stott. I found him and released him. He scuttled off into the shadows without even saying thank you.
We found Hudson on the last row, on the bottom of the final stack. He’d been abused horribly. There were burns all over his naked body. His eyes were gone—and I mean gone. They’d been burned away. All that was left was fresh scar-tissue and dripping fluids.
“Hudson?” I asked when I found him.
“Is that you, McGill?”
I rattled at the cage, but it held firm.
“We’ve got to get him out, sir,” I told Leeson.
“Yeah…we will. First, can you answer a few questions, Hudson?”
“I’ll try, sir.”
“You’re in bad shape. Why are the colonists looking so much healthier than you?”
“They aren’t as dumb as I am, sir. They kept quiet and did as they were told. I tried to provoke these squids—they call them ‘masters’. Can you believe that?”
“Yeah…” Leeson said, his face screwing up in disgust as he looked Hudson over.
Harris and Leeson exchanged glances that Hudson couldn’t see. They both shook their heads.
I knew what that meant. Hudson was too injured to recover in any reasonable fashion. He had to be recycled to heal up. Basically, he needed a whole new body. It would be a mercy, really.
Leeson drew his sidearm and crouched in front of the cage. I worked on breaking the lock, but it wasn’t easy to do.
“Talk to me, Hudson,” the adjunct said. “Why are you so messed up? Was this done in reprisal for our fighting outside?”
“No, I don’t think so. After they captured me and brought me to these cages, I asked the other prisoners how I could escape. They said you could only escape through death. So I tried to piss them off enough to get them to kill me. Other colonists managed it. But the squids really didn’t want to kill me. They burned me, but they kept me alive. I think they wanted to take me home and really go to work on me to find out what makes our kind different.”
I looked around at the dull-eyed prisoners. I thought I understood why they were so quiet, so resigned. They’d given up. The fighters among them were already dead.
“Anything else you can tell us about the enemy?” Leeson asked.
“Not much. I think the squid stronghold is one floor up. By that, I mean their quarters and the bridge. They usually came from up there when they wanted to prod me.”
“Right, thanks for the input. You’ve done well, soldier.”
“Sir? Could I ask one thing?”
“What’s that?”
“Could you have McGill do the honors? I saw him do the rest of our team when I still had eyes. I wanted him
to get to me, but he didn’t make it. I was the last man alive on that ramp, and now I truly wish that I’d been lucky enough to die with the rest of them.”
Leeson looked at the gun in his hand. Hudson knew it was there even if he couldn’t see it.
Leeson looked up at me, squinting. I must have looked pretty long in the face because what he did next surprised me.
“All right,” Leeson said. “McGill, do it.” Then he raised his pistol and shot Hudson in the head.
I knew it was an act of kindness. First off, Hudson had been seeking a way out of his current life for days. He’d been tortured and now had finally managed to die. We all knew he’d get a new body this way. Maybe he’d even get lucky and some of the memories of his final days in this cage would be lost, as he’d been isolated from the group and our recording systems.
Secondly, Leeson had done the job as a favor to me. He’d taken on a grim burden that I clearly didn’t want weighing on me.
I thought better of Adjunct Leeson after that.
-31-
The squids made their last stand on the ship’s bridge. We could tell that the Investigator’s efforts hadn’t been in vain, as they did their damnedest to get the ship flying right up until the end.
“We’ve got to take them now,” I told Leeson, who’d called a halt just out of range of the enemy. “What if they fix this ship?”
“They won’t. Alders said that Investigator guy took care of it.”
Strangely enough, Leeson was in command now. Out of three full units of a hundred troops each, we’d lost all three of the centurions. Graves had died first, and the second centurion hadn’t made it into the ship. The last one had died on the ramp when the squids first ambushed us. That had left Leeson in charge, as he was the most senior adjunct left. That wasn’t good, because he wasn’t the most decisive man in the legion.
“Sir? Can we trust this situation to continue unchanged? If this ship manages to launch while we’re waiting around with our fingers—”
