"The universe is bigger than we thought. We'll always have enemies. But if it's that big, it's not crazy to think that someday we'll have friends in it, too."
"Yeah." He motioned to her. "What about you?"
"What about me what?"
"Back where you were hauling rocks around on moons so backwards the nearest proper toilet was a hundred thousand miles away, did you ever think the future of our species would depend on you?"
"If you'd told me that when I was driving carts, I would have run so far away that I couldn't tell you which direction the sun was anymore."
"But now?"
"Now I don't have a choice."
They talked a little longer, reminiscing pointlessly but harmlessly. Toman excused himself to take an incoming message. Rada closed her comm and opened the footage from the battle they'd fought the day before, examining the handling capabilities of the enemy ships. Such things were often too minor to matter much when the main concern was dealing with missiles that could turn on a dime, but she'd take any advantage she could get. Other than the interceptors, many of the Lurker fighters didn't seem to be able to make quick turns as well as the Tine or plenty of other human ships.
Her comm beeped the beep of a message you don't want to refuse. She opened it. Toman reappeared on screen, looking as flushed and bright-eyed as if he'd just gone for a run in the snow.
"Here," he said. "Listen."
The view switched from him to Kansas Carruth. Her impossibly young face stared down from the screen like a horse lord surveying the enemy villages laid out before her. This impression was heightened by the fact her impact chair had been replaced by an actual throne, complete with gilded skulls carved for its feet.
"Toman," she said. "I see you've finally learned how to fight. I've decided to come help you celebrate the successful recovery of your balls. We'll see you in a few hours."
20
Water flowed past the box. Beyond the ruined wall, the massively wide boat—the one MacAdams was almost certain had just been an entire factory—burbled forward. If it got away, the Lurkers would bring it somewhere even more remote than Tandana. It wouldn't be found again. Instead, it would overwhelm Earth with the army it would spawn.
Despite the incoming current, the ship was already making headway, its stern receding by the second.
MacAdams gritted his teeth and turned away. "Webber! You god damn idiot, where are you?"
The whole room was a mess of foamy water, flotsam, and boxed-up machines jutting from the flood like the ruins of an ancient city. MacAdams took a long breath and killed his thoughts, letting his eyes take over. Nothing. Grimy ribbons of scum swirling around themselves like diseased galaxies. Water sluicing past the packed-up machines. There was a body—but one of the enemy soldiers, not Webber.
There. Clinging to the floodward edge of a box barely above the surface. Thirty feet away, ten to the right. The current had started to slow but was still running fast toward the third factory. MacAdams jumped to the right as far as he could. The current sucked him under. He held his breath and kicked toward the surface, water roaring in his ears, but it was as if there was no surface, only water, water that would soon flood through his lungs just as it was flooding into the caverns.
The roar ended; he'd broken free. He was already almost past Webber. He swam hard, fighting the current, reaching out for the box as he slipped past. His fingers found a seam in the machinery. Felt like he was about to lose all nine of the fingers he had left, but he pulled himself in.
Webber was right next to him, arms thrown over the top of the box, water battering the back of his head. MacAdams steadied him and got up on top of the machinery. There, he found his footing and heaved Webber up. Webber's head lolled. No time to check if he was alive or try to revive him. MacAdams tied their belts together, extended his grappler, and fired at the ceiling.
The lead landed with a firm whack. MacAdams reeled himself up, dangling over the floods. Webber hung next to him. MacAdams fired a second line and swung forward, skimming over the water. Three shots later, and he was swooping through the knocked-down wall between the first and second factories.
The boat was disappearing through the far end of the room. There, a massive tunnel had opened in the wall, leading north. Toward the open ocean. MacAdams swore and monkey-swung across the ceiling. He landed on the stern of the ship just as it disappeared into the passage.
He ducked to avoid getting his head ripped off by the tunnel roof. The ceiling was much too low for the grapplers to work. There was no getting ahead of the ship, which they'd rigged with timed-detonation Smilex. That meant he and Webber, who was starting to stir, were riding on top of a giant bomb. Well, it was a hell of a way to go out.
Webber coughed up water, blinking owlishly at MacAdams. "You came back for me."
"Yeah."
"You said to keep going no matter what. That the mission was the only thing left."
"I defied my orders. I'll court martial myself later."
Webber swiveled his head back and forth, taking in the scene. "Did we do it?"
"We'll find out in another minute."
"What's even happening? How did they convert the whole factory into a boat?"
"Beats me. Could be they had it packed up just like this inside their carriers. That'd be the best way to get it up and running as soon as it touched down."
MacAdams stared down the tunnel, but he couldn't see any sign of the ocean ahead. The current was still running past them much too fast to try to swim past the boat. Swim back, try for the stairs? But it was too late. Ten seconds left. They'd be caught in the water, pulped by the shock waves. Even if they survived that, the caverns would collapse on top of them.
MacAdams lay flat on the blank deck of the boat and closed his eyes. He thought about his father, who had sacrificed his life to try to keep MacAdams out of the crews, and of Tera and Taz, who had both died while crewing, and then of Mina and the life they'd never had the chance to lead at Sky's Reach. It had all hurt, but it had all been worth it, too.
Blinding light flashed behind them. Other lights followed, bright enough to dazzle him through his closed eyelids even though he wasn't looking at them; then came the kick of pressure through his body and the heat baking over him and the roars so loud they hurt his ears even though he had his hands clamped tight to the sides of his head, and then the groan of the ceilings collapsing and the thunder of concrete and the chaos of it all falling apart.
"Uh," Webber said once it was possible to be heard again. "Weren't we supposed to blow up, too?"
MacAdams sat up, feeling nauseated and dizzy. He checked his device. "The bombs on the boat were supposed to go off ten seconds ago. Lurkers must have disarmed them." He laughed. "They just saved our lives. Stick another bomb on the hull. We'll jump off as soon as we're out to sea."
"Great plan. One problem: I lost my pack in the flood. All my Smilex is gone."
"Son of a bitch!" MacAdams slammed his fist on the hull so hard the metal rang. The vibrations seemed to activate something in his brain. "We can still do this. We wait for the comms to come back on, then we call in an air strike from Dark Solutions."
Surf beat the cliffs ahead. MacAdams lay on his stomach and peered forward. He could see moonlight glinting on the waves through the mouth of the tunnel. The boats' engines echoed in the tight space. The air was thick with the smell of burning, but it was already starting to mix with sea salt.
They passed out into the open air, the ship pushing through the rough windward waves. Silent explosions went off far to the north, highlighting the clouds. Dark Solutions' distraction force. Judging by how distant the bursts were, DS was losing. Badly.
The ship hissed, air venting from its sides. The deck shifted beneath them. Descending.
"This isn't just a boat," Webber said. "It's a submarine!"
"Comms are still down. We can't call in a strike. We have to find a way inside."
MacAdams switched his device to full brightnes
s, turning in a circle. It illuminated a circular hatch just ten feet ahead of them. They ran to it. An entry pad was placed right beside it. Webber got the soggy hand from his pocket and passed it over the pad. Nothing happened. He swiped it a second time, then a third.
"It's not working!"
MacAdams got out his laser. "Step back."
He aimed at the thick hinges and twisted the weapon. Red light speared into the hinge. The metal glowed, expanding and melting away from a small hole. He fired again. Globs of metal dribbled to the deck. After the third shot, he turned to the second hinge.
The hinges were only half melted when the ocean began to pour over the edges of the boat. MacAdams grabbed the hatch handle with his gloved hands and pulled. The metal gave way with a gummy feel. He spun and hurled the hatch away like a discus thrower.
Webber scrambled through it. MacAdams followed him into a nightmarishly tight space. The only door was already starting to close automatically in response to the failure of the hatch. Webber darted through it. MacAdams had to turn sideways, suit scraping the door on one side and the frame on the other. A spiral staircase led down. The steps were much too large for humans and MacAdams nearly fell twice.
They reached the bottom and emerged into a cargo hold with immensely high ceilings. The boat was massive, but it was smaller than the factory floor had been. The packed-up machinery had been hastily jumbled together, creating irregular, maze-like walls. Pieces of partially assembled jets confused things even worse.
The air smelled funny. MacAdams couldn't compare it to any one thing, but he knew exactly what it was: the same odor he'd encountered in the hidden base beyond the Black Curtain.
"Lurkers," he murmured. "Let's move. We have to find where we planted the charges."
He had half a mind to grapple over the machinery, but they'd be spotted immediately by anyone or anything inside the hold. They had come in near the stern, which had been the factory's rear wall. If the explosives were still where they'd left them, the closer of the two Smilex charges would be forward and to their left, no more than a hundred feet as the crow flies.
He started forward, laser and pistol in hand, passing through a gap in the twelve-foot-high machinery. The ship thrummed as it continued to descend. It was no longer pitching on the waves; it had sunk beneath them. Light gleamed from scattered sources on the ceiling and the room lay halfway in shadow.
"Hello."
The voice purred from MacAdams' right. He spun, aiming both weapons at a blank wall of orange machinery.
"Are you the ones who killed Yosef?" The voice seemed another ninety degrees to MacAdams' right, but there was nothing there, either. Its tone sounded male, but there was no question that it was a Lurker. "You must be. You have his hand. A ghoulish thing to do. No wonder your people have lasted so long when it doesn't trouble you to carry around the severed limbs of your enemies."
"They know we're here," MacAdams whispered. "But they don't know where we are."
Webber nodded, eyes lifted to the top of the walls. "Let's find our bomb before they find us."
MacAdams crossed a small room and headed down what turned out to be a blind alley. As he backtracked, the voice started up again.
"You have bedeviled us before, haven't you?" The Lurker sounded amused. "When we capture you, instead of killing you, I will petition my superiors to keep you so that we might hunt you. And when you get too old to be hunted, or we are simply bored of you, we will have you reproduce for us, and then we will hunt your children as we did you."
MacAdams spotted a charging station set at the rear of a little box canyon. He crossed to it in silence, dropping to a crouch to get a better look at the station's base. No sign of the Smilex. He swore silently. Had they removed it? Or did he have the wrong station? He stood, orienting himself to the lights, and moved down a hallway toward a bank of small rooms.
"The funniest part of all is that you must imagine yourself to be heroes," the Lurker said, the voice coming from so close in front of MacAdams that he ducked behind a gray hunk of jet. "Even if we had lost everything at the island, it would only slow us down. It wouldn't stop us. And I believe you would find what comes in its place to be far worse.
"You see, Enspach's human appearance was just the beginning—and a very crude start at that. Soon, we won't just be wearing your skin. We'll be wearing your bodies. Your DNA. The match will be so perfect that no scan or test will be able to detect us. You could even marry one of us and bear children with us and never know that you have reproduced with an alien being.
"Does this sound implausible to you? Are you so certain that you could always identify those who are not you, those who seek to subvert you?" The Lurker laughed, velvety smug. "Do you think this is the first time we have done this? On our first world, there was not one, but seven intelligent species that arose together. We were not among them. Our scholars believe we weren't even sentient until we had infiltrated, subverted, and conquered the second of the seven species. But the gift of intelligent thought did not stop us. One by one we became them, until we were all that was left."
The interior of the ship was warm and damp and sweat trickled down the back of MacAdams' shaved head. He took another corner and rocked to a stop. In the middle of a room defined by three walls of boxed machinery, a black pole rose from the cement. He had no idea what it was for, but he'd seen it near the center of the factory. They'd gone too far.
He backed out of the room and continued down a makeshift corridor, taking the next right back toward the ship's aft. Ahead, the way opened to a large clear space. He stuck tight to the wall, his suit blending to match the dim orange color. In the center of the clearing, the power station stood alone.
MacAdams got down, motioning for Webber to do the same. It was too dark to see much more than the outline of things, but his vision locked on the brick of Smilex that was still stuck to the base of the station. The aliens had disarmed it, but its adhesive was too strong to pry loose without the proper solvent—and they'd probably feared, correctly, that trying to force it would set it off prematurely.
Shadows hung from the silent machinery. A vibration deep enough to resonate in his chest covered any small sounds. And the power station stood alone, like a monument to gods that the people had forgotten the meaning of but still feared.
His gaze moved past it, drawn to a machine on the left side of its room. Thick tubes hung from its face like beastly intestines. It wasn't moving, but the Lurker that hid within the plastic pipes was as clear to the eyes as a spider on the bathroom wall.
MacAdams motioned to Webber to stay put and cover the wide room. Slowly, MacAdams backed up along the passage until he came to the intersection, moving laterally to the room behind the cover of a wall, circling around to come up on the Lurker from behind.
"That's how your people will end," the Lurker said, its voice emanating from no particular direction. "Even if this attempt were to stall, and our efforts thwarted, we now have your DNA. We have already transmitted its code back to our people. Within a handful of years, they will unlock it, and begin to make a new breed of infiltrators."
MacAdams and Webber had come at the room with the power station from the north side. MacAdams was now on its eastern approach. There was no entrance to the room from this side, but that wouldn't be a problem.
He stopped to make sure he had the right machine, the one where the Lurker was nestling in wait on the other side. Grapplers would be too loud, but the box's side was cluttered with knobs and shelves and would be an easy climb.
"When our new breed returns to your worlds, you won't even know it," the Lurker went on, part wistful and part gleeful. "For we will look precisely like you. Physically, we will be you. In every way but our minds."
MacAdams put away his pistol, keeping the laser in hand. He took a long look down the hallway and moved to the eastern wall.
"Slowly, we will integrate among you," the Lurker said. "Station by station and city by city, we will disappear you and repl
ace you, like a parasite devouring you from the inside. Until the day that we are more than you. That is when we will reveal ourselves to those of you that are left. For there would be no pleasure in waiting until you are all gone. Then we would not be treated to the bone-deep horror you will feel on coming to understand what we have done to you—and what you have allowed to happen to yourselves."
MacAdams raised his right foot to the wall, locating a toehold. He reached up and grabbed a strut. The metal was off-puttingly warm, still cooling down from the work it had been doing on the assembly line.
A voice laughed behind him. He turned his head, expecting it to be another speaker-generated effect, then did a double take at the S-shaped pair of tubes standing across the corridor from him.
"I lied," the alien said as it shot him. "We won't be taking you alive."
The laser gored into the front of MacAdams' suit. The material was insulated enough to keep you warm on Triton or cool on Venus and its radiators thrummed like they were fixing to explode yet he could still smell himself cooking.
The pain hadn't hit yet. He jumped from the wall and fired his laser back at the Lurker, but the thing contorted its body like an electrified snake, the beam crackling into the machinery behind it. MacAdams thrust out his left hand and shot his grappler at an orange block down the hall. The cord yanked him away just as the alien's next shot snapped through the air where he'd been.
"Set it off!" His voice boomed over the hum of the ship. "Set it off now!"
He snapped to a stop in front of the wall, releasing the grappler and vaulting over a thigh-high bundle of industrial saws. A laser zipped over his head. He turned to fire around the side of the tight-packed saws and the pain in his chest erupted like a bonfire, the unique hurt of a burn that gets worse every second and feels like it will never stop getting worse.
Sweat popped up across his body; his head went light, white dots filling his sight. He tried to fire the laser at the Lurker but his fingers couldn't seem to find the right spot. Through vision so drained of color it was nearly black and white, he watched as the alien launched itself at the wall, sticking to it and undulating along it like the entire ship had just tilted ninety degrees.
Stardust Page 27
