by Kyle Noe
“What the hell for?”
She glanced back. “A mass suicide.”
QUINN TORE down through the inner chambers of the command ship as Cody struggled to keep pace with her.
“And how the hell do you propose to do it?” he asked. “How are you going to knock off two dozen Marines?”
She stopped and pinned him against the wall. “You’re the scientist. Figure something out.”
Sweat roped his forehead as he brushed past her. “I don’t have to listen to you.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m the one with the knowledge, so what I say is how it’s gonna be.”
Her eyes narrowed to dots. “Okay, so you know that line you’re not supposed to cross with me, Cody?”
His lip quivered. “Am I coming up on it?”
She pointed. “Look behind you. Way, way far behind you.”
His head trembled. “I won’t, Quinn. I won’t do it. I won’t risk their lives.”
“Don’t give me that shit. You had no problem risking the lives of Harlan and the others.”
“That was a very calculated risk. This is something completely different,” he said with a shake of his head.
Quinn leaned forward, desperation rising in her voice. “Bullshit! We already know it works! We’ve got a way around the implants!”
“On a small scale! One or two people at a time! If I put everyone down, who’s to say I can bring them all back?!”
Quinn peered into his eyes. The force of her despair over the entire situation frightened and overwhelmed her. There were no easy solutions, no clear paths. It was terrifyingly obvious that they’d have to risk everything and hope for the best.
“They’re going to send us back down to wipe out a settlement,” she said. “Women, children, non-combatants. I was given direct orders by General Aames. Search and destroy, emphasis on the destroy part. We’re moving out in a few hours.”
Cody blanched. “Jesus.”
“Which means we have to do something now. Not tomorrow, not the next day. Now!”
Cody wiped the sweat from his forehead, looking about nervously as he cracked the knuckles on his hands. “Okay, but if we do this, I’m in charge, okay? You have to do exactly as I say and follow all of my instructions, agreed?”
Her brows furrowed as she looked at him. “Why do men always say things like that?”
“Cause we’re men.”
“Well, then it all depends,” she answered.
“Why do women always say things like that?”
“Cause we’re women.” She stuck out a hand. “You’re in charge of the science, and I’m in charge of everything else. Can you handle that, big boy?”
“Do I have a choice?”
She shook her head. Cody thrust out his hand, and they shook. “So, what’s your plan?” she asked.
“It involves a long shower and a short death.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, Quinn found the other Marines down in the firing range. There were two Syndicate soldiers keeping watch, but they were at a sufficient distance that Quinn wasn’t worried about them.
Quinn watched Milo and Hayden staring over the shoulder of Renner who was practicing some trick shots, blasting away at the targets a hundred yards off. Renner fired off some shots behind his back as the other Marines cheered.
“S’matter, Quinn?” Hayden asked. “You look like you seen the proverbial ghost.”
“More than one,” she replied. She gestured to one of the other Marines. “Keep firing. I don’t want the Scuds to hear us.”
“You got some gossip?” Renner asked.
“We’re moving out at o-eight-hundred hours,” she responded flatly.
Milo arched an eyebrow. “Back to the world?”
“Back to destroy it. Aames is sending us down on a search and destroy mission. We’re supposed to liquidate a settlement called Shiloh.”
“I told the bastard we weren’t a black bag team,” Hayden said, punching fist into his palm.
“They don’t care,” Quinn replied. “I guess we all knew it would come to this. We’re hired guns now, we’re hitmen for the invaders. That’s all we are.”
“So, we’ll refuse,” Milo said. “We’ll go in and tell them that we can’t obey that order.”
“Sure, yeah, and then it’s a little trip to the loony lab,” Renner snickered. “Suckers’ll wipe our brains clean if we don’t do the deed.”
Milo turned back to Quinn. “What do you think?”
“I think we should leave.”
The other Marines laughed, thinking this was a joke.
“Right now,” Quinn said, some heat in her voice. “We pack our shit right now and get ready to get the hell out of here.”
“You got transport?” Hayden said.
“Cody’s working on that,” Quinn replied. “He’s got a way for us to boost one of the Syndicate ships, and we’ll use the bomb in the totem to cover our escape.”
Renner raised his hand. “How’d stealing a ship turn out for Harlan and his boys?”
Quinn grabbed Renner’s rifle and eyed all of the Marines around her. “Look. Here’s the deal. If you can’t handle killing some aliens and running into the fire, then you’re in the wrong business. We’re Marines. We take risks, and we kick asses.”
Hayden smiled. “I’m gonna put that on a goddamn T-shirt.”
“Who’s with me?” she asked.
Nods and murmurs followed.
“So, how you gonna get the party started?” Renner asked.
Quinn hesitated. And then she turned and blasted the two Syndicate soldiers, shooting them down where they stood. The other Marines gasped.
Quinn lowered her gun and nodded grimly. “It’s on.”
THE MARINES CONCEALED the bodies of the two dead Syndicate soldiers, then slipped outside. Quinn led Milo, Hayden, Renner, and twenty others down toward the showers where she’d already arranged to meet Cody. The plan was relatively straightforward, but that didn’t make it any less foolish or dangerous. Cody would bypass the alien implants, then download the final temporal totem message which would trigger the countdown in the bomb. That would give the Marines a full twelve minutes to steal a glider and get the hell out of Dodge.
Cody was waiting for them outside the showers, clutching an oversized bag filled with medical supplies.
“Anyone follow you?” Quinn asked.
Cody shook his head and ushered everyone inside. Quinn could feel the humidity and see the fog, the showers were already on full blast.
“Sweet. We’re all getting naked!” Renner shouted.
The doors were closed, and Cody made sure to stay back from the water. He stood on a rubber mat and removed a small electrical device the size of a baseball from his bag. He tapped a button on the device, and it powered to life.“Everyone into the showers,” Cody said.
Milo pointed at the electrical device. “What is that thing?”
“I call it Charon,” Cody replied. “Because it’s going to usher you into the underworld.”
“In plain English, dick,” Renner said.
“It’s an electrical box. I’m going to use it to electrocute you in the water.”
The Marines traded looks. Quinn could sense their understandable hesitation, their fear. Hayden did as well. He moved in front of his warriors. “The time has come to sacrifice ourselves. We knew this day would come and it ain’t any different than any other day. We’re Marines. We win together, we lose together, we die together. We’re a group.”
“We’re a family,” Quinn added.
“Everyone except Renner,” Milo said.
Hayden nodded. “Bastard’s like the redheaded step-son I never wanted.
Renner grinned crookedly. “You’d think that would offend me, but it don’t.”
The levity slipped from Hayden’s face. He glanced at Cody. “Okay, Doc, we are ready to go hot.”
Cody gulped, and Milo tapped a finger on his chest. “I’m going to tell you something before th
is goes down.”
Cody nodded. “Sure. Anything.”
“It’s very important that you don’t kill us.”
“Gotcha.”
“Because if you do, we’ll rise from the dead and destroy you,” Milo said with another tap on Cody’s chest.
“Understood.”
Milo sighed. “Okay, let’s do this.”
Quinn and Cody stepped back. They watched the Marines move out into the water, instantly soaking them. Cody held up the device, grimacing as if he couldn’t do it. Quinn grabbed the device from him and flung it into the shower.
The device landed, and the Marines instantly crashed to the ground. Quinn bit back a scream as their eyes rolled over white. She could see their bodies gripped in a powerful current, their muscles twitching, contracting, their faces twisted in agony. She looked away, and Cody held her hand.
“It’s the ventricular fibrillation that’s going to get them,” he said. “The electrical current passing through their hearts.”
He held up what looked like a remote controller and keyed it. The electronic device instantly went dormant. The Marines lay where they fell, all of them very dead. Cody dropped his bag on the ground and removed two metal devices that resembled barcode scanners. He handed one to Quinn who could see the device was filled with tiny syringes loaded with amber fluid.
Cody stared at his watch, then pointed to the device. “You got to stick each one of them in the neck within the next two minutes.”
“What?”
“Did I forget to mention we have two minutes to accomplish this?”
She glared at him. “What?! No!”
“Okay, a minute and fifty-five seconds now!”
Quinn grabbed up the device and headed out, moving between the Marines. It took her several seconds to get the hang of the device, but soon, she was sticking the Marines in the neck like she was on an assembly line.
“Minute ten seconds!” Cody shouted.
Quinn slipped on the wet floor and fell, the device skittering away. She fumbled for it and crawled through the water.
Cody looked over. “Forty-eight seconds!”
She still had eight Marines to go, including Milo. She darted between then, doing her best to carefully depress the syringes. Two down, then four. Milo was just up ahead of her, lying on his side, the flesh near his arms blackened from the electrocution. Already some of the Marines were rousing back to life, shaking their limbs, groaning as they came to.
“Eighteen seconds!”
Quinn felt her heart thumping. She measured her steps as Cody shouted, “Ten, nine, eight, seven!”
Quinn knelt before Milo and pressed the device’s syringe, into his neck. She felt her stomach tighten as nothing happened. Milo just lay there, blood pooling at the edges of his lips. Frantic, she began shaking him. Cody was saying something to her, but she couldn’t hear him. It hadn’t worked! The drug didn’t revive Milo! Tears stung her face and then Milo’s eyes flapped open.
“Boo,” he said, and Quinn nearly fainted.
She felt back and wiped away her tears. “You are such an asshole,” she said, laughing as she cried.
“Is it a defense if I know I’m an asshole?”
She flipped Milo a middle finger, then reached down and hugged him, picking him up.
“Do you hurt at all?” she asked.
“Only when I breathe and think, otherwise I’m good.”
They turned to see the other Marines standing, shaking off the after-effects of the electrocution. Cody was beaming. “I can’t believe it actually worked!”
“We still don’t know yet,” Quinn said. “We’ve got to test it out.”
“What have you got in mind, Sergeant?” Hayden asked.
Quinn exited the showers, the other Marines behind her. They moved down an inner corridor and spotted a Syndicate soldier loitering up ahead. Renner motioned. “Allow me.”
He advanced beyond the others as Milo whispered to Quinn. “If only Renner’s brains were as big as his balls.”
Renner approached the alien warrior, waved, and then pointed down. “Your shoe lace is untied.”
The alien didn’t even have shoes on, but looked down. Renner threw a vicious elbow that knocked the soldier back. The alien hit the ground, and Renner snatched his rifle away. The Syndicate soldier removed a long, black blade from a hip sheathe.
Guttural words echoed from the soldier’s helmet. Renner could barely make out the words. “Are you going to enjoy getting your ass kicked today?”
Renner grinned. “Hard to say.”
“And why is that?” the Syndicate soldier asked.
“Cause it ain’t ever happened before.”
BOOM!
Renner shot the alien soldier in the chest, blasting it back against a faraway wall. Then he turned and nodded. “Okay, it works.”
THE MARINES SEPARATED from Cody who ran back to the lab to decipher the last message on the temporal totem and trigger the bomb. The Marines were to wait exactly fifteen minutes before making their move to steal a glider. This would allow Cody enough time to download the message, trigger the bomb, and, God willing, make a mad dash to join the putative rebellion. Quinn was exultant and terrified all at once. There was no middle ground to what they were doing. All of them would either succeed or die terrible deaths.
“We need weapons,” Hayden said. “Lots of weapons.”
They galloped down toward an armory where five Syndicate soldiers were working, stacking gear and moving munitions around.
Hayden sized up the alien soldiers, sucking in a few mouthfuls of air. One of the Soldiers turned to Hayden.
“What do you want?” the alien growled.
“Just came to deliver a message.”
“From who?”
“From motherfucking Earth!” Hayden shouted, throwing a hellacious punch that knocked the alien back over a crate of ammunition.
The other Marines grabbed up weapons and swooped down on the Syndicate soldiers. In seconds, the fighting was hand-to-hand. Quinn lowered her shoulder and plowed into an alien soldier who slammed hard to the ground. She grabbed the soldier’s long black blade and plunged it into the invader’s back.
One alien down, Quinn swiveled to see Milo facing off against another soldier. Milo had a pistol in his hands and whipped the alien across the face as Renner pulled back the firing bolt on a rifle and screamed, “GET LOW!”
Everyone dropped to the ground as Renner fired out his gun, mowing down the Syndicate soldiers. Quinn rolled over and checked her watch. “ELEVEN MINUTES!” she shouted.
The Marines hoisted weapons and ammunition, and in a flash, they were moving through the inner corridors on the command ship. Quinn was out in front, alien rifle in her hands. She couldn’t believe they’d made it this far and even briefly had visions of reaching the landing bay unmolested—and that’s when it happened.
The sirens began wailing.
Lights overhead flashed, alarms shrieked, and doorways began closing. It was as if the entire ship were sealing itself up.
“NINE MINUTES!” Quinn screamed.
Quinn looked up and saw that the pathway ahead was heavy with Syndicate soldiers. They were heavily armed and rushing toward the Marines, ready for a fight.
BACK IN THE LAB, Cody was finished downloading the message from the temporal totem. He’d secured the coded communication in a device that looked like a flash-drive, and triggered the timer on the bomb. He stole a final look at the timer on the bomb that was already counting down, eight minutes, seven minutes and fifty-nine seconds… He pocketed a pistol he kept in a cabinet just for situations like this and said goodbye to the lab.
KABOOM!
Quinn darted forward with amazing agility, managing to slide under the explosive backwash from a Syndicate explosive. The aliens were using pulse weapons that could easily kill without destroying the command ship. The Marines had no such qualms, they were happy to destroy as much as they could.
“COME AND GET SO
ME!” Renner shouted, lobbing grenades from a launcher.
Quinn covered her head as the explosives whistled past her, detonating in the middle of the corridor and knocking back the aliens.
Grabbing her rifle, Quinn signaled for the others to charge. She sprayed her weapon, hobbling several of the aliens and cutting down several more.
She pushed past the stricken aliens, feeling return fire clip past her head and thump between her legs. Running with wild abandon, she hip-fired her gun, blasting down two Syndicate soldiers and avoiding an energy round that ricocheted off the wall next to her as she hit the ground. Hayden dropped next to her.
“Talk to me, Quinn,” he said.
“I’m right here.”
He handed her an extra magazine of ammunition. “How you feeling?”
“My mouth’s dry, my hands feel like they’re in ice, and I think I just pissed my pants.”
“But otherwise?” he asked.
“Smooth as churned butter, baby. Let’s roll.”
Hoisting Quinn to her feet, the pair turned and continued to fire at the silhouettes of the Syndicate soldiers. Soon, the corridor was full of billowing smoke and the screams of the dead and dying. She slapped a new magazine of ammunition into her rifle and shot down four aliens only to see a familiar face.
It was General Aames!
He was standing eighty feet from her, gesturing, apparently directing the counterattack.
Quinn couldn’t believe her eyes.
“YOU BASTARD!” she shouted.
The General held her look, and then Quinn raised her rifle and fired, but a Syndicate soldier staggered into her line of fire. The alien took the blast meant for General Aames who vanished into a side passage.
Quinn plunged ahead, spotting the loading bay just up ahead. She glanced back to see most of the Marines following, several wounded, but none seriously. In addition, some of the other prisoners and aliens Quinn had seen earlier appeared to be rioting. They were charging the Syndicate guards and grabbing anything they could use as weapons. It looked like a revolt inside a prison. Quinn wanted to help the others, but there were several dozen Syndicate soldiers in between the two groups. There was nothing the Marines could do.
