The ringing in her ears ceased, and silence filled the ravine. She could hear her beating heart in the quiet.
Another minute passed before she started climbing. Her biceps and quads felt like they were going to tear.
Come on, Athena, you got this.
Halfway up, she rewarded herself with a drink from the straw, but it took a deep suck to get even a few drops. Her bottle was dry.
She pulled herself onto the rocky ledge she had first landed on. The top was almost within reach. She caught her breath on the ledge, letting her muscles relax and listening for hostiles above ground.
Hearing nothing, she finally pulled herself back out onto the seabed, squirming over the top and then pushing herself up on two knees.
Twilight had long since set in.
She set off for the GOA. But, just a few steps from the ravines, she heard a low rumble that made her heart skip a beat. She froze. A scan of the sky revealed no glowing spaceships. She took another step, then realized the sound was coming from the ground beneath her feet. It rose to an out-of-tune whistle.
Athena slowly turned to look out over the ravines. The slashes were all glowing blue; light pulsated like strobes across terrain pockmarked black from laser fire.
Corporal Marlin’s final words surfaced in her memories.
“The seabed is blue again, it’s blue; all of it, glowing blue…”
She did what she had become very good at—she turned and ran.
— 5 —
Bouma stared out the Rhino’s front windows at the skeletal remains of the ship graveyard, wishing that just one of these ships was intact. But no. Most of them were reduced to scaffolding and bulkheads. There would be no supplies for them to scavenge here, much less viable cryostat fluid to keep Sophie alive.
Their only hope was in the biosphere ship they’d tracked down. At least it was still mostly in one piece, its jagged edges belying the curving domes of the biomes toward its stern. A few portholes had been blown out, and there were long scrapes, some that might’ve penetrated the corridors running through the ship. Otherwise, there were no gaping wounds, giving them hope they’d find the supplies they were searching for.
Bouma read the huge block white letters scrawled across its side where they had stopped. “Radiant Dawn,” he said. “Not looking so radiant anymore. Sonya, lifeforms?”
“Maybe,” the AI replied.
“Maybe?” Ort rumbled. “We’re right outside this Radiant Dawn and the best you can give us is a maybe?”
“While it is true you are within visual range,” Sonya said, “the Rhino does not have the same sensor array as the Sunspot. My detection abilities are limited to the hardware provided by the Rhino as relayed to the Sunspot. Unfortunately, despite your proximity to the Radiant Dawn, the canyon and the Radiant Dawn’s radiation shielding is blocking me from any improvement in detecting potential lifeforms.”
Diego secured his helmet. “If we’re not staking out here for a few days, there’s only one way to see if there are lifeforms on that ship.”
Bouma took a second to look at his comrades. He’d come to know Ort and Diego personally over the past few months, and he knew their service record. But they hadn’t actually served in combat together, besides their brief skirmish on Earth to get aboard the Sunspot. It wasn’t anything like the long history he’d had fighting beside Sergeant Overton.
Had to go and sacrifice yourself, Sarge, Bouma thought. I could really use you right now.
But you didn’t go to war with the army you wanted—or in this case, squad. You went to war with the one you had.
Right now, Bouma had two guys who were already skeptical about the way Emanuel had been running the crew. They weren’t used to being under the command of scientists. Hell, it had taken Bouma some time to get used to it, but the eggheads had grown on him.
Ort and Diego had served under Captain Noble, so they had to be worth something. Bouma was sure they were good men. Still, that didn’t make working cohesively with them that much easier. They hadn’t really gotten used to watching each other’s backs, and they had none of the ties you forged in battle with your brothers-in-arms. None of the half-psychic intuition you developed when you knew someone’s instincts and reactions and they knew yours.
At least, not yet.
“Guess there’s always trial by fire,” Bouma muttered.
“What’s that?” Diego asked.
“Ready to get the hell out there,” Bouma said.
“Good,” Diego said. “Get in and get out. MO on this mission is stealth and speed.”
“Full copy,” Ort said. His frame took up the entire doorway of the Rhino. “Just say the word, LT.”
Bouma watched Diego gaze out over the morbid tableau. He hadn’t had to follow another soldier’s orders since Sergeant Overton. This was going to be interesting.
“Move.” Diego gestured out the door of the Rhino.
The trio filtered through the wreckage of the other ships toward the Radiant Dawn. Wind carrying clouds of dust rushed over them, howling and biting at their armor. The dust clung to Bouma’s visor, and he was forced to wipe it clean a couple times before they even made it to the Dawn. Once they reached the forward hatch of the ship, they pressed their bodies against the hull.
“Sonya, can you get us in?” Diego asked.
“I should be able to if you can get me a hard connection.”
“Easy,” Diego said. He unlatched a panel near the hatch and stuck a network probe from his suit into the security port. A moment later, the hatch spiraled open.
There was no whoosh of air outward like Bouma had expected.
“With all those broken windows and scars in the hull, it’s no wonder they lost atmosphere,” Ort said.
“No fail-safe mechanism is going to help that much damage,” Diego agreed. He motioned them through the hatch.
Inside, the wind howled through the corridors. Dirt had piled into the corners where the bulkheads met the deck. Long wires hung from broken ceiling panels like overgrown jungle vines, and gouges in the metal told the story of a battle fought within the corridors.
“The Organics definitely got in here,” Bouma said. He roved his rifle over the intersecting corridors as they progressed down the corridor, leaving a trail of footprints behind them. “Bastards probably took every last human.”
“Let’s hope they aren’t still here,” Diego said. “Come on, let’s get to the cargo hold.”
They plunged deeper into the ship, the dark interior swallowing them. Red emergency lights flickered intermittently. Even in the depths of the ship, Mars’s wind churned down the corridors, scratching grit against their suits. It threatened to drown their communications.
“How much longer?” Ort asked.
Sonya’s voice sounded over their comm systems. “Two decks down and approximately three hundred meters down another corridor toward the rear. The Sunspot’s deck plan is nearly a clone of this one, so it should make navigation easier for you.”
They resumed prowling down the corridors, the wind and the blinking emergency lights their only companions. Even down here the wind, penetrating the damaged portholes and hull, carried a brutal force. The scrape of grit against bulkhead and armor had become almost like white noise to Bouma, and it threatened to blend into the background noise of the air whooshing through his respiration system.
Then he heard it. A scrape, followed by a scratch that sounded like metal against metal. He knew the sound, and paused in mid-stride.
“Did you hear that?” he whispered. He probed the hall with his helmet-mounted lights. The lights seemed so weak, so horribly inadequate in the inky darkness surrounding them.
“The wind?” Ort asked, staring through his visor with an arched eyebrow.
“No, no, something else,” Bouma said. A shiver snaked down his spine. He held his breath, determined to listen for it again. The noise harkened memories of the Organics infiltrating the Biosphere in Cheyenne Mountain. That incursion had nearly
been a bloodbath. He prayed he was wrong.
“Must’ve missed it,” Diego said. “You sure you heard something?”
“I… I’m not so sure now,” Bouma said. Maybe it was his nerves getting the better of him. Especially if he was alone in hearing the suspect sound.
They pushed forward down the ladders toward the bowels of the ship. Soon they’d be at the cargo hold. The goosebumps prickling Bouma’s skin never went away, though. He strained to listen for more scraping.
Nothing.
Just the wind and grit, and the labored breaths of the other two filtering in over the comms.
Something moved in Bouma’s gut. He didn’t like it. As much as he tried to convince himself that maybe he was just hearing things, he couldn’t do it. The other two had spent most of the Organic invasion in a submarine, the GOA, deep in the ocean. They hadn’t faced the sheer number of Organics he had. They hadn’t lived through Organics invading their stronghold in Cheyenne Mountain.
He knew an Organic claw scraping across a deck when he heard one.
Nah, this time he wasn’t wrong.
“Guys,” Bouma said. Diego and Ort both stopped. Their helmet-mounted lights landed on him. “I think—”
The screech of breaking metal suddenly exploded overhead. Long skinny legs tore through the broken ceiling panels. Bouma whipped his rifle up at them. Claws raked over the deck, and one of them caught Diego and threw him off his feet. He sprawled on the deck, and lost the RVAMP.
Before Bouma could jump to retrieve it, the grotesque spider pushed the rest of itself through the rent in the ceiling. Its armored carapace gleamed black, and its globular eyes reflected the malicious red of the emergency lights. A faint blue glow shimmered around its arachnid form too, signaling the presence of its shield.
It had been months since Bouma had seen one of these bastards up close, and the alien was just as frightening now as it had always been. It was a living, breathing weapon that would stop at nothing to dismantle its prey into a million red chunks of flesh and bone.
A huge claw reared back, pointed directly at Diego’s chest. Diego crab-crawled away, still on his back, struggling desperately to escape his impending doom.
Bouma’s finger tightened around his trigger, but Ort was in his way, and Diego too close in the cramped corridor. There was no clear shot. Not at this distance. His eyes locked on the RVAMP. The spider stood between the device and them.
There was no retrieving that either.
The claw shot forward. Its aim was true. Bouma imagined it tearing through Diego’s armor plates and brittle bones, puncturing the soldier’s heart.
“Hell no!” a rumbling voice boomed.
Ort threw himself at the descending claw, his huge body hitting the side of the spider’s leg. It wasn’t enough to cripple the leg, but the claw punched into the deck, missing Diego’s chest by millimeters.
Now Bouma had an open shot. He let loose a fusillade of pulse fire. Rounds slammed against the spider’s shield, splashing over it like snowballs flung against concrete. It wasn’t enough to do any damage, but it did distract the beast.
The spider’s mandibles spread, and it let out an ear-splitting shriek.
Bouma’s fingers itched to grab an EMP grenade. “Get the hell out of the way!”
Ort grabbed Diego’s suit collar and dragged him back toward Bouma’s position while Bouma unleashed rounds at the spider. Just a second or two more, and the other two soldiers would be far enough away. The beast clogged up the corridor. It tried to push through using its spindly legs, which tapped and scraped against the deck and the bulkhead. Finally, laboriously, it pulled itself forward, crawling, squeezing through the narrow space. Mandibles and joints clicked. Gooey saliva dripped from its fangs.
Bouma snagged an EMP grenade and let it fly. Close-quarters was never a good place to let loose a grenade, EMP or otherwise. A frag grenade at this distance would pierce their suits with a thousand fléchette shards of shrapnel. An EMP blast, if it caught them too close, would fry their armored suits. It would freeze the humans inside them in place, making them vulnerable.
But there was no other choice.
The EMP grenade went off, and another shriek followed. The shield surrounding the spider shimmered before disappearing.
“Now!” Bouma yelled.
Shots punctured the monster’s legs and bulbous thorax. Blue blood spilled from the fresh holes. The spider pulled itself down the corridor toward them, undeterred by its fatal injuries.
Legs gushing blood scrambled for purchase against the bulkheads, its claws leaving fresh silver gouges in the dust-covered metal. Bouma continued to shoot at the monster, riddling it with rounds.
Flesh and chunks of carapace flew from each impact across the alien’s body. The beast’s maw opened and closed as if it was already chewing on human flesh, but Bouma didn’t let that frighten him. He stood his ground and continued pounding the alien with pulse fire. Its movements became jerkier until it finally crashed to the deck with a crack.
Blue fluid oozed out of the cracks in its armor. Bouma flicked off some of the gunk that had landed on his suit. He cautiously strode over the spider’s legs and climbed over its body. Even through his armor, he imagined he could feel the heat escaping from the fresh corpse. Sliding down the other side, he scooped up the dropped RVAMP.
Only then did he pause to gulp down air and catch his breath. Ort and Diego came over the spider next.
“It’s been a while since we faced those bastards,” Diego said. He used the back of his gloved hand to wipe the spider’s blood from his visor.
“Almost forgot how much of a pain in the ass they were.” Ort jammed a fresh magazine into his rifle.
“Thanks guys, I owe you one,” Diego said, taking point again.
Bouma merely nodded.
They prowled the rest of the way to the cargo hold. All the while, Bouma listened and watched for other signs of the Organics’ presence.
Diego and Ort seemed equally transfixed by every creak from the ventilation ducts and each blast of wind pouring past them. But there was no more telltale evidence of another spider stalking them in the corridors.
“Maybe we got lucky,” Diego said. “Just a lone spider left behind.”
“Maybe,” Bouma said. Luck had never really been on their side. Tenacity and pure force of will, maybe, but not luck. “These things are like roaches. Where there’s one…” He let the words trail off.
“Hrrmph,” Ort grunted.
A remaining emergency light glowed above another hatch. The corridor opened up around it, and Bouma found himself looking at a sign marked Cargo Hold.
“We’re here,” Diego said. “Bouma, grab a stash of that cryostat fluid, Ort, you grab some food and water, and then let’s get the hell out of here.”
God, it would feel good to be back in the crippled Sunspot now, Bouma thought. Back with Holly and the kids. He hadn’t realized how much that ship had become a second home until he’d left it.
Bouma shouldered his rifle and stared down the sights, ready to fire on anything that moved in the narrow corridor around the corner. Maneuvering toward the edge of the open hatch, he got a clear view into the vast cargo hold.
As his aim roved over the crates of supplies, his stomach felt like it had plummeted straight into Mars’s core. All across the cavernous space glowed a sight that had become far too familiar on Earth. They were everywhere. Striking, blue orbs, packed between boxes and vehicles, suspended from the rafters, all with skinny, desiccated bodies floating within them. They had found the crew of the Radiant Dawn.
And the crew was not alone. The hulking forms of spiders clambered all over the hold. Dozens upon dozens of them.
***
Captain Noble’s gums felt like alligator skin, and his tongue was like the leather sole of a shoe. And that wasn’t even the worst part. With his finger, he traced a line across his swollen lips. They were still sealed shut. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get them to open.<
br />
He sat on the cold floor of the orb, arms wrapped around his legs.
Ribbit and Roots both watched him from their orbs. Although they weren’t able to verbally communicate, he could tell both of the aliens were curious about what the multi-dimensional aliens had done to him. Roots once again hung from the top of his orb like a light fixture, his three compound eyes locked onto Noble. Ribbit croaked, then turned away. It waddled on its webbed feet and stick legs to the corner of its orb and then curled up, apparently no longer interested in Noble.
The captain wasn’t the only one acting differently. The frog-like alien seemed lethargic, and the gooey slime that normally coated its green flesh was gone, leaving red cracks in its hide.
Noble watched Ribbit for a few more minutes while picking at his lips. His fingernails were already whittled down and bleeding from trying to claw his way out of the orb, but he did have part of a thumbnail left. He used the edge to saw at the flesh, back and forth, until he tasted the metallic hint of blood inside his mouth. He used his tongue to spread it around his dry gums, joining the little saliva he was still producing.
Ribbit let out another croak, a long melancholy noise that made Noble look up. They couldn’t talk to one another, and the creature was annoying, but he still felt a connection with Ribbit, and with Roots. Almost as if they were friends.
Watching Kirt die had been torment, and seeing Ribbit sick could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
He couldn’t take much more of this.
Anger helped fuel sawing his lips with his thumbnail.
Come on. Come on…
Groaning, he finally managed to force them apart. He took in a long gasp of the muggy air, filling his lungs.
Blood trickled down his lips and filled the inside of his mouth. He spat a gob of crimson saliva out on the orb wall, the liquid sizzling as it hit the force field. The faint smell of smoke filled his space.
Ribbit had stopped croaking.
He checked on the alien above him. It was asleep. The creature’s torso slowly moved up and down. Red goo slid down its hide.
Orbs IV_Exodus_A Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction Survival Thriller Page 7
