Species War: Battlefield Mars Book 3

by David Robbins

  One of the troopers snapped to attention. “Sir!” he said. “You’re with the general, yes?”

  “We are part of his special unit,” KLL-12 said. “And we need out.”

  “Right away, sir. You take priority over anyone else.” The soldier turned to the control panel. “You’re so big, it will be cramped. I don’t think all three of you will fit.”

  “KLL-13 and KLL-15, you go first,” KLL-12 ordered. He waited while they entered and the airlock cycled.

  The humans had grown quiet, cowed by his presence.

  As the inner door started to hiss open again, KLL-12 bent over the trooper at the panel. “You have done me a favor, soldier,” he said quietly, “and I will do you one.”

  “Sir?”

  “General Augusto is dead. The colony is about to fall. I recommend that you and your friends vacate your post and get to a drop ship.”

  The trooper blanched and swallowed. “Dear God,” he whispered.

  Staying bent, KLL-12 eased into the airlock. He didn’t know why he had just done that. Facing the outer door, he endured the wait necessitated by the change in pressure.

  KLL-13 and KLL-15 were crouched down, their mouths and gills working in conjunction to enable their lungs to endure the Martian atmosphere, their hands raised to their faces to ward off the dust.

  “It’s a nightmare out here,” KLL-13 said and coughed.

  “It’s a nightmare everywhere,” KLL-12 said. He motioned for them to stand. “Let’s hustle before the Martians do what they should have done before they launched their assault.”

  “What’s that?” KLL-13 said.

  “Destroy the drop ships so we can’t escape.”

  46

  Private Everett and Private Keller swung their ICW’s toward the sound coming out of the dust. Everett was sure it must be a Martian until a bloody hand---or, rather, a hand in an EVA suit covered with blood---groped the trench rim and waved in the air as if in appeal.

  “It’s one of ours!” Keller exclaimed. Lowering her weapon, she chugged up the slope.

  Everett went with her to cover her.

  “Careful!” Sergeant Kline yelled.

  “You heard him!” Captain Ferris hollered, sounding as if she were in terrible agony. “We can’t afford to lose anyone.”

  “I hear that, ma’am,” Everett said.

  It was a young trooper.

  Kneeling, Keller gripped his hand, saying, “It’s all right. We’ve got you.”

  His suit was a mess. Fortunately, the seals had held. And his left leg was bent at an angle no leg was ever meant to.

  “Thank God,” he gasped.

  Everett had his sensors at max and his eyes glued to his helmet’s holo display. Not that the sensors would do much good with all the dust.

  “I’m hurt,” the young trooper wheezed. “Bad.”

  “We can see that,” Private Keller said. “I don’t suppose you can stand?”

  “Sorry,” the trooper said, weakly shaking his head. “Name’s Griffin. Maser detail. We were overrun.”

  At the bottom of the trench, Sergeant Kline said, “What’s the holdup? We have to beat feet.”

  “Your story will have to wait,” Keller told Griffin. Sliding her free arm under his, she said, “Lean on me and I’ll get you to the drop ships.”

  “Why not to the dome?” he asked.

  “Bradbury is being evacuated. The order is being broadcast on all frequencies,” Keller enlightened him. “Now quiet. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

  “Private Everett, take point,” Sergeant Kline barked.

  Sliding down, Everett nodded and dashed past the noncom and the captain. Only then did it occur to him that he was the only one with their hands free and able to quickly engage the enemy should they be attacked.

  “Don’t get too far ahead,” Captain Ferris said.

  As if Everett would. The dust was so thick, the sky so dark, anything beyond two meters was lost to view. Every nerve tingling, he cautiously advanced.

  The lull in the battle puzzled him. He would have thought the Martians would keep coming until every last Earther lay dead. Or was the dust inhibiting their senses, too? He knew so little about them. For that matter, as was now abundantly clear, Earth’s leaders didn’t know much, either, or Bradbury wouldn’t be on the verge of falling.

  His helmet crackled. “Private Everett, can you hear me?” Captain Ferris said.

  “Affirmative, sir,” Everett replied.

  “Sitrep.”

  “Dust, dust, and more dust,” Everett said. “If it wasn’t for my compass, I wouldn’t be sure I’m going the right way.”

  “You should come to the next maser emplacement soon. Stay frosty.”

  “As icing,” Everett said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, sir.” Everett rounded a bend and stopped cold. Before him rose the emplacement, a vague shape in the settling dust. He moved closer. The maser and its housing had been reduced to rubble. Venturing amid the debris, he spied bodies. All of them had had their arms and legs torn off and placed next to their torso. And every single one, the head was missing.

  Everett had forgotten about the Martian fondness for trophies. Never in a million years would he have imagined an alien species would resort to primitive headhunting.

  He would be damned if they’d get his.

  “Everett? Talk to me,” Captain Ferris said.

  “I’m there, ma’am. A lot of dead but no sign of the Martians.”

  “Stay put. We’ll join you in a bit.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Stepping over a torso with a gaping hole where the abdomen should be, Everett leaned on a section of broken maser and peered ahead. Call it wishful thinking,

  but the dust appeared to be thinning a little.

  Everett switched to the colony’s primary broadcast frequency and heard the evacuation order being repeated in an endless loop. He tried the U.N.I.C.’s military band and picked up scattered chatter too garbled to understand. He wondered if the Martians were jamming them somehow.

  “Private Everett? Where are you?”

  Everett turned.

  Sergeant Kline and Captain Ferris were surveying the carnage. Behind them, Private Keller was doing her best to keep Private Griffin on his feet and had slung her ICW so she could use both arms to support him.

  Everett couldn’t help thinking that if a swarm struck, they were sitting ducks.

  “Still no sign of the creatures?” Captain Ferris asked.

  “Strangely enough, no,” Everett said.

  Ferris frowned and shook her helmet. “I don’t get it. Where did they go? They had us dead to rights.”

  “Ever hear of a gift horse?” Sergeant Kline said.

  “I’m not complaining,” Captain Ferris said, and groaned. “The shape I’m in, I’ll take every miracle that comes our way.”

  Private Keller broke in with, “Shouldn’t we keep going, ma’am? Private Griffin, here, isn’t light.”

  “Everett,” Captain Ferris said. “Head out. But stay with us this time.”

  Nodding, Everett swung around the housing and ascended a short grade. He could see about three meters. The dust obscured a short plain. Beyond that lay

  the airfield.

  Captain Ferris coughed and said, “All we have to do is cross that open area and we’ll be at the drop ships.”

  “Is that all?” Private Keller said.

  “Chin up,” Captain Ferris said. “It’s not too much to expect another miracle, is it?”

  No one answered her.

  47

  General Constantine Augusto was in a state of shock. As he was swiftly borne through dark tunnels by alien creatures straight from a lunatic’s nightmare, he struggled to retain a grip on his own sanity.

  To be captured by the enemy, to have his meticulously laid plans be thrown into chaos, to fail so spectacularly, was almost more than he could bear. An urge to scream came over him and he opened his mouth to g
ive vent to the horror---and closed it again.

  No. He refused to show such blatant weakness. He was a soldier. He was U.N.I.C. He was a supreme commander, no less. His whole life had been devoted to the art of control. To controlling others, and controlling himself. If he couldn’t exercise control now, during the most dire crisis of his life, he put the lie to all that had gone before.

  Closing his eyes, General Augusto willed himself to stay calm, to not let the devastating series of events cripple his ability to reason. So long as he stayed sharp, there was always a chance he could extricate himself from this impossible predicament. Perhaps he could reason with the Martians. How that was even possible when he couldn’t communicate with them was a problem to be solved when the opportunity arose. In the meantime, he must stay calm.

  Augusto couldn’t tell much about his surroundings other than that the tunnel walls were composed of hard rock. The constant scritching and scratching the creatures made gnawed at his nerves. He surmised, based on the slope of the tunnel floor, that he was being taken far underground.

  Now and again, Augusto glimpsed junctions and branches and open areas. He also caught sight of other creatures, some many times larger than the crabs carrying him.

  The descent seemed to take hours, although it could have been much less.

  Suddenly, the tunnel widened and brightened until it was comparable to Martian twilight. The light source was a phosphorescent fungus, or so he imagined the growth to be, high on the walls and ceiling.

  The creatures came to a stop.

  Twisting his neck, General Augusto looked down and gasped. They were poised on the brink of a vast drop-off. For a few harrowing seconds, he thought the things were going to throw him down it, but no, they scrabbled to a stone bridge linked to what could only be called an avenue bracketed by giant columns.

  Martians of all kind were all over. Each and every one stopped what they were doing to raise their eye stalks and stare as he was carried past.

  General Augusto’s skin crawled at the proximity of so many otherworldly abominations. “I hate these things,” he said out loud.

  The multifaceted eyes belonging to the creature holding his right arm materialized centimeters from his face and fixed on his.

  “What, you ugly bastard?” General Augusto said and laughed. It felt good to insult the thing, to show he wasn’t completely helpless.

  Its eye stalks swung away.

  Structures reared. The avenue had brought them to a large plateau crowded with buildings. Their destination appeared to be the tallest.

  General Augusto girded himself for the worst. He figured there must be a purpose to his capture. Why else had they taken him alive when they could easily have ripped his head off as they did with everyone else? He wondered if they indulged in torture. Or maybe---and the thought jarred him---they took some humans alive to eat them. For all he knew, they liked to chow down on raw human flesh.

  Entry to the tall structure was through a wide doorway in the shape of a triangle. Once inside, General Augusto beheld a huge lobby bustling with activity. Recesses in the walls contained what he took to be sculptures, but they were unlike any a human mind could conceive, consisting of configurations based on an aesthetic sense beyond mortal ken.

  Instead of stairs, the Martians relied on ramps. Augusto stopped counting at twenty. He guessed that he was being whisked to the very pinnacle, and he wasn’t mistaken. His captors finally entered a broad chamber where various kinds of Martians were arrayed in orderly rows facing a wide basalt dais, empty at the moment.

  The eye stalks of every Martians turned toward him as he was carried to the base of the dais and unceremoniously dumped onto his back. The four creatures that had brought him stepped to either side and faced him, their grippers spread menacingly. The threat was clear.

  Rolling over, General Augusto slowly sat up. He ached all over from being carried for so long. Amazingly, his uniform was intact. Neither his jacket sleeves nor his pant legs were torn where the creatures had seized him. Their grippers looked to be awkward and clumsy, yet the creatures were capable of great delicacy.

  Augusto heard a scuttling sound behind him and started to turn. He froze when he saw that one of the huge blue warriors, the kind that resembled lobsters, had come up and was studying him.

  “Are you my counterpart?” Augusto said to show he wasn’t intimidated. “Are you a general, like me?”

  The blue creature lowered its eyes so they were level with his.

  “You don’t scare me,” General Augusto said. “None of you do.”

  The blue warrior and every other Martian abruptly turned toward the dais. Or, rather, toward an opening past it, through which a yellow Martian was entering. Two others of the same kind followed it.

  “Let me guess,” General Augusto blustered. “You’re the big brains.”

  The trio ascended a ramp to the dais and spread out with the first one in the middle. Taller than the others, its mushroom-shaped carapace bigger, it came

  to the edge and stared at Augusto.

  “Get on with it, bastard.”

  Nothing happened. The Martians stayed motionless except for the ceaseless waving of their eye stalks.

  General Augusto coughed. His mouth was dry and his palms were sweating. He would give anything to have an ICW and a dozen grenades so he could fight his way out.

  How long went by, he couldn’t say. He glanced at the blue warrior and then at their evident leader. “Are you just going to stand there? Do something, damn you.”

  The Martians went on imitating statues.

  Just when Augusto thought he couldn’t stand it anymore, there was a commotion, and into the chamber hurried a dozen or so of the small reddish-pink caste, the crabs. To his astonishment, they had brought several items with them; a computer with a large screen, a touch pad, a Wi-Fi unit to connect them, and a military grade battery pack for power.

  “What the hell?” General Augusto blurted.

  The Martians knew just what they were doing. They placed the computer on the dais, facing him. They hooked up the Wi-Fi and the power pack, and then one of them---the top of its carapace bearing the mark of a long scar---used the tip of a leg to press the power button on the battery pack. The screen flared to electronic life. The same creature then turned toward Augusto and squatted with the touchpad on the ground in front of it.

  “What in God’s name is this?” Augusto said to the yellow leader. He refused to accept the evidence of his own eyes; that the Martians had figured out how to use Earth tech.

  The yellow leader and the red creature were looking at one another. Augusto had a sense that they were in contact, somehow, a sense confirmed when the yellow Martian gestured and the red crab dipped its eye stalks to the touch pad and lightly tapped the pad with the tip of a front leg.

  On the computer screen, Hello, General Augusto appeared.

  Shocked to his marrow, General Augusto gaped.

  The Martian tapped some more. “Cat got your tongue?”

  Nearly numb with disbelief, General Augusto exclaimed, “This can’t be happening. I must be going crazy.”

  “On the contrary, General,” the Martian typed. “Please compose yourself. We have a lot to discuss of supreme importance to the human race.”

  “What do you know of my kind?” General Augusto said sarcastically.

  “More than you might imagine, General,” the creature typed. “You see, I was human once.”

  48

  Dr. Katla Dkany had the awful feeling that she and Trisna and the children had been walking in circles for who-knew-how-long.

  The dust was to blame.

  Once out of the airlock, Katla had made straight for the airfield. Or so she thought. On a clear day, they would have reached it in less than ten minutes. Twice that long passed, and no airfield. Hampered by the dust, they were wandering helter-skelter.

  Normally, EVA suits incorporated GPS and compass functions, but the suits they took from the emergency she
lter were older models, unable to link with the colony’s satellite to establish their exact location. And their compass readings were all over the place.

  Katla had lost all sense of direction. Coming to a stop, she bowed her head and closed her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” Trisna asked.

  “A little tired, is all.”

  “We should be there soon, shouldn’t we?”

  “Soon,” Katla said, inwardly praying, please let it be so. Bending, she placed a hand on Piotr’s shoulder. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m scared,” the boy said.

  “Me too,” Behulah echoed from her perch on her mother’s chest.

  “Hang in there,” Katla reassured them. “It won’t be long.” Unfolding, she set off as if she knew exactly where she was going, when in fact they might be well past the airfield and in the middle of nowhere. That they hadn’t blundered onto the Martians was an inevitability waiting to happen.

  “I think I saw something,” Trisna said worriedly.

  Stopping, Katla gazed about them into the pea soup. “Where?”

  Trisna pointed. “There. Low to the ground.”

  Please no, Katla thought. She squatted, raising her ICW as she did. Inadvertently, she saved her life.

  Out of the dust rushed a red Martian, right into her weapon’s muzzle. Moving incredibly fast, it was almost on her when she squeezed the trigger in startled reflex and blew its frontal ridge to bits. It sprawled at her feet even as the dust disgorged another scuttling toward Trisna and the children.

  Behulah screamed.

  Katla spun to fire but someone beat her to it. High-velocity rounds stitched the creature from end to end, collapsing it in midleap. A third creature appeared, and hesitated, waving its grippers as if unsure who to attack first. Another burst cut it down.

  Turning, Katla almost shouted for joy. Troopers were appearing out of the gloom. Her elation was cut short by the realization that two of them were hurt and being supported by others. It was the fifth man who had saved them. There was something familiar about the features behind the faceplate.