"And where might that be?"
"We need to go up one deck and two bulkheads forward. There'll be marines guarding it. We'll have to be careful."
"Considering that we don't know what we're up against, Sergeant, careful is an understatement."
"As you say, sir." McGee turned and began walking. "This way."
Lieutenant Amelia Christopher had learned not to inspect the corpses too closely, but she still cautiously checked each one to make sure they really were dead. Sergeant Sigurd Black Eagle hadn’t been as cautious. He’d lost two fingers on his left hand while to a fine monofilament mesh that had shredded a crewman. The sergeant was in mild shock but trooping along with them toward Engineering. Black Eagle's squad had found the way forward blocked almost immediately. He rejoined her within minutes of setting out. Christopher decided it was for the best. She didn't dare leave anyone behind.
So far, she had seen no sign of the enemy forces.
"Sergeant, have any of your people made contact with the enemy?" she asked.
"No, El Tee, just the bodies of our people that they're leaving behind. You’d think somebody would have nailed one of the bastards by now."
"Maybe they have, but they're just dragging off the bodies," she suggested. She didn’t think it was likely, and from Black Eagle’s grunt, neither did he. Soldiers don’t take the time in the middle of a firefight to drag off every dead body. It was bad tactical doctrine. A soldier needed to worry about securing the area, then worry about clean-up – unless the enemy already considered the area secured.
Christopher didn't know of any military force that used monofilament guns as standard issue. As weapons of war, they were nearly useless, since even light armor would blunt the effects. She knew that some terrorist groups used monofilament guns to demoralize civilians, but why use them on a starship? Why risk running into armored troops that those guns wouldn't be able to hurt? Efficient or not, the enemy was killing a lot of crewmembers with their weapons. The monofilament sliced easily through standard-issue vacuum suits.
A warning call turned into a gurgling scream to her left. Christopher turned in time to see weighted monofilaments wrapping around the head and neck of one of her men. The private went down in a spray of blood as the wires sliced through his helmet and tore the flesh from his bones.
Christopher fired a burst up the corridor before ducking behind the bulkhead. Enemy fire pattered off the bulkhead across from her and made her wish she was in better armor. The lightly armored spacesuits her people wore were evidently not as much protection from the enemy's weapons as she had hoped.
Private Thomas was still writhing in the corridor. His helmet had slowed down effect of the wires, but that had just delayed the inevitable. Christopher could see parts of the man's brain.
She looked away as her sergeant moved in to take care of him.
Black Eagle shot Thomas in the head to put him out of his misery. Federation medicine could fix a lot of injuries, but anyone missing parts of his brain was better off dead. "Did you get a look at the bastards, sir?" the sergeant asked.
"I saw something, but don't ask me what it was," replied Christopher. "We’re going to take a few losses, but we've got to nail these bastards. Let's do this." She stepped out into the corridor and opened fire, confident that her team would back her up.
"What the hell happened to them?" McGee asked.
There were bodies along the corridor, and lots of blood.
"Don't touch them," Lyra said suddenly. She pointed to one of the bodies where fine wires were just barely visible. "Monofilament."
"Ouch," said McGee, backing away. "I'd lose a few fingers for sure if I was to touch that. What military uses those?"
"None that I know of," Tebrey said. "It's not the work of Thetas, either. How much further to the armory?"
"Just ahead and to the right, sir."
The marine guards outside the armory were dead, too. They had each been hit multiple times, and skin and muscle were stripped from the bone. They would have bled out almost instantly. The door to the armory stood open, and weapons were strewn across the deck. Another crewman was there, fallen where he’d been trying to arm himself. Tebrey stepped over the pooled blood, pulled vacuum suits out of a locker and handed one to Lyra. McGee had already stripped and was climbing into one.
I'm sorry I don't have a suit for you, Tebrey thought to Hunter. But I'll carry a recovery sphere. You should fit in that if you curl up.
I doubt I'd need it anyway, Hunter replied.
"I don't suppose you have any open-air powered armor on board?" asked Tebrey.
"No such luck, sir," McGee said. He checked a bulkhead display. "I'm reading twenty suits of battle armor in the lockup. No one came for them."
"Could you wear one of those armored suits?" asked Lyra. She had turned away to undress and try to get into the unfamiliar spacesuit.
"No, most armored suits have to be tailored to the individual," Tebrey answered. "I was hoping for a field armor exoskeleton. It'll fit just about anybody. Goes on over a space suit."
Tebrey checked and loaded a pair of antimatter pistols, then buckled their holsters on over his suit. He next took down a plasma rifle and added extra clips into his pockets.
"Would you like a gun?" he asked Lyra.
"No, thank you. I'll leave that up to you two. Did I do this right?" she asked, indicating the seal on the suit.
"You're good," Tebrey said after a moment. He slung three extra laser rifle rifles over his other shoulder. "Grab extra rifles, Sergeant. We'll arm any crewmembers we come across who are still alive."
Lieutenant Christopher examined the corpse of the enemy. Half of it was missing, courtesy of the explosive 10mm rounds that had killed it. Christopher used her combat knife to move tentacles out of the way and look at the cluster of bulbous metallic devices underneath. She avoided looking too closely at the multitudes of far-too-human looking eyes, or the bright red blood.
"What is it, Lieutenant?" said Sergeant Black Eagle.
"I don't know, Sergeant. I've seen something like it before, on Cedeforthy, but not alive."
"Are those grenades?" he said.
"No," Christopher answered. "I don't think so, anyway. I think it's some kind of gravitic harness."
Black Eagle nodded. "That makes sense. It was floating when we took it down."
"Any sign of the others?" she asked. "We had to have hit more than just this one."
Her team had reached the engineering section. Most of the ship’s crew were dead. Christopher's team had fought a battle against enemies just barely glimpsed as they darted around corners. Six of Christopher's marines were dead, and five others were badly wounded.
The sergeant shook his head. "This is the only one we've been able to bag, sir."
"Keep at it, Sergeant, but don't expose any of the men unnecessarily. We've got this section under our control. I wish coms were working; I'd like to know what was going on up on the bridge."
"I could take a team up there," Black Eagle suggested.
"No, we've got to hold here. As long as we control Engineering, we control the ship. I'm not about to let these squid take the ship from us. We'll blow the engines before that."
"Yes, sir!" Black Eagle agreed. "I'll get the corporal onto rigging up a circuit."
"Good thinking, Sergeant."
"Do you think we should weld some of the hatches shut?"
"No," said Christopher. "We'd just be trapping ourselves. Whatever these things are, they didn't use the hatches to get aboard the ship. I don't think welding them shut would stop them."
"You're right. I hadn't thought of that. At least we know we can kill the bastards, sir."
Christopher looked down at the oozing, bloody corpse. "We need to hurt them a lot more, Sergeant."
Black Eagle nodded. They were in for a long fight.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
"We've lost all communication with the rest of the ship, Captain. There are multiple internal jamming so
urces."
Captain Hutchinson nodded grimly. It shouldn't have been possible to jam their encrypted communications channels, but then, a lot of impossible things seemed to be happening aboard the Descubierta. "Do I have any control over my ship?"
"Not much, sir," Graham replied. "I'm sorry. We've got external sensors, but that's about it."
"What's the Thrush doing?"
"Nothing, that I can detect," said Mitchell. "It hasn't done anything since it arrived."
"Damn it! I need options, people." Hutchinson balled his fists in frustration. "Graham, I want you to arm yourself and take two ratings and try to get to Engineering. We're going to need to –" He was suddenly cut off by the sound of gunfire outside the aft bridge hatch.
Then there was screaming, and it made the hair on the captain's neck raise in fear.
Lyra stopped abruptly.
"What is it?" Tebrey whispered. Hunter was scouting ahead. They'd had two encounters with the tentacled enemy, and so far events had gone in their favor, but Tebrey wasn't taking any chances.
"The enemy just upped the stakes. I'm sensing one of the dark ones aboard now; it just apported in from another ship."
"Well." Tebrey sighed and hit the forehead of his helmet gently against the bulkhead. "That's not good."
"You've got a hell of a gift for understatement," McGee said. "Sir."
"Can you tell anything about it?" Tebrey asked Lyra. He was ignoring McGee.
"It's ahead of us, and fairly powerful, but that's all I know."
"At least it isn't behind us," said Tebrey. He checked the load on his rifle. "Shall we do a little hunting?"
Three more squads of marines had reached Engineering, and Lieutenant Christopher was beginning to feel confident. The increase in her fighting strength had allowed her to set up patrols. They swept the deck from the shuttle bay back to fuel storage, killing seven more of the strange aliens without losing any more of their own people.
Christopher was disturbed by the empty brig cells. She'd led a team up there with the intention of releasing Sergeant McGee and Lt. Commander Tebrey to help in the fight. The doors to the cells had still been locked. The only cell that was occupied contained the frightened shuttle pilot. She'd sent him down to the shuttle bay to start prepping the assault shuttles. One way or the other, those shuttles would be needed, either to help evacuate the ship or to launch an attack against the Thrush.
"Lieutenant?"
"Yes, Sergeant?"
"We've had no luck getting though the barricades forward of amidships. They must have welded the doors shut. We just don't have the right tools to cut our way through."
"Suggestions, Sergeant?"
"Let me take a team outside, along the hull. The enemy might not have sealed the airlocks if they thought us contained."
Christopher looked pointedly at his wounded hand. "You're not exactly vacuum-worthy, Sergeant."
"I thought maybe a sticky patch would hold long enough."
"No, I have a better idea. You hold here, and I'll lead the team outside."
"Sir?"
"Don't give me that look, Sergeant. Get me a team together and meet me at the portside amidships hatch in five minutes."
"Yes, sir."
Christopher steeled her nerves and made her way to the hatch where her people were waiting. She didn't say anything to them; she didn't have to.
"Be careful, sir," Black Eagle said quietly.
"I'll contact you as soon I can."
He nodded and cycled the airlock.
Christopher and her team stepped outside.
Reflected light from Valhalla bathed the ship in a dull grey glow.
The matte-black hull-metal absorbed most of the light. Lieutenant Christopher and her team worked their way slowly across the hull toward the midline gun channel. It was difficult with such poor lighting, but they hadn't dared to activate the service lights or use the lights on their suits.
The Thrush was invisible behind the bulk of the Descubierta, and Christopher liked it that way. She had no desire to be vaporized by a defense laser while crawling like an insect over the hull of the ship. Her team was operating under communications silence. It was unlikely that any com chatter would have been picked up with the enemy jamming it, but Christopher didn't want to take the risk.
Seen from orbit, Valhalla was a barren and ugly world. The thin methane atmosphere was unable to hide the sprawling domes of the cities. The domes reminded her of some infectious disease. The planet was a cold world that had little going for it except its rich mineral deposits. There were civilian shipyards and orbital smelters down there somewhere, but Christopher couldn't see them from the Descubierta.
I should have just taken a shuttle along the hull, Christopher thought tiredly. She had vetoed that option as being too risky, too, when Black Eagle had suggested it. The Thrush would have seen them leaving the shuttle bay and destroyed them.
Christopher reached the midline gun channel and lowered herself into it until she felt the artificial gravity take hold. The gun-channels were the only parts of the exterior hull that had gravity. The sensors and defensive weapons in the channels often needed minor maintenance, and it was far easier – and safer for the work crews – to maintain one-third gravity rather than to leave it a null-gravity zone.
She nodded to her corporal, who went ahead to the aft gunnery hatch and tried to open it. Christopher wasn't surprised when the corporal turned back after a moment, shaking her head. Christopher pointed forward. They had little choice but to keep going. Sooner or later, they'd find a hatch they could get through.
Darkness coalesced into form in the corridor ahead of Tebrey, and he found himself suddenly facing a nightmare made flesh. It was big, much bigger than the ones he had faced before. It filled the corridor. Insect blended smoothly with reptile on that oozing hide, and the head was a mass of tentacles surrounding a toothed worm’s gullet.
Tebrey had been ready for the wave of induced fear and opened fire with his plasma rifle as the thing began to form. It vanished before the shots hit, and Tebrey spun around as he felt it behind him. It had apported in close to Lyra, and Tebrey cried out a warning.
Lyra felt it coming, though, and Tebrey was startled to see her form shimmering with a rolling green fire. The fire flowed from her hands onto the dark thing.
Its psychic scream tore at Tebrey's mind, staggering him.
Dark flames battered at Lyra and washed across the corridor. The lighting panels flickered and dimmed, and lightnings crackled. Several circuits overloaded and exploded. McGee was huddled on the ground, covering his head. It wasn't cowardice; the sergeant just couldn't fight the thing, and he knew it. He was keeping out of the way so that Tebrey could deal with it. Tebrey could sense Hunter racing back down the corridor from where he'd been scouting.
Lyra staggered as the dark energies ate at her defenses.
Tebrey suspected that the Thetas in this place were more powerful than she was accustomed to. He could feel her calling out to her normal network of support – and getting no response. The Mo'Ceri were unhappy with the division within the Circle, and they were making that unhappiness known, forcefully. Tebrey placed two careful plasma shots into the back of the thing, and then it was gone again.
"Where?" he shouted.
Tebrey was turning around when the rifle was torn from his grasp, and he was lifted into the air. Agony flowed into his body from the clawed hands of the thing in front of him as the dark fire ate through the thin spacesuit. The pain quickly overwhelmed his neural shunts, and Tebrey began to scream.
Lyra found herself in a difficult position. She couldn't attack the thing that was killing Tebrey without killing him herself.
The Theta had planned its attack well, but it had left out a very important factor - one that would cost it its life. In order to attack Tebrey physically, it had to manifest completely.
Six hundred sixty kilograms of bioengineered fury hit the Theta like a battering ram. Hunter had gotten a goo
d running start and was moving at close to thirty kilometers an hour when he smashed into it. Kinetic energy alone would have killed any lesser creature; the Theta was stunned and broken.
The impact flung Tebrey out of the Theta's grasp, and he slid down the corridor almost to Lyra's feet.
Hunter shredded the Theta with his ten-centimeter beryllium-steel talons. Those claws were capable of tearing apart powered armor. The Theta was reduced to steaming gobbets of flesh before Tebrey had time to get to his feet. Hunter had unleashed all of his fury into the thing. It hadn't even had time to scream again before it died.
"I'm glad he's on our side," Lyra said with awe.
"Tell me about it, sister," Tebrey said as he forced himself to his feet. His burns were bad, but not as severe as they’d been in the past. The Theta hadn’t penetrated his body with its claws, only seared the outside of it. He wasn’t sure why, but he wasn’t complaining.
Lieutenant Christopher went through the small airlock first. It was more of a maintenance access tube than an airlock, but it let her team into the ship. She'd thought at first that the lock wouldn't take her security override code, but it finally did, although it hesitated long enough to make her worry. Power fluctuated throughout the ship. Whatever weapon the enemy was using seemed to soak up energy.
She consulted the ship schematic – again – in her mind-comp, although she knew the layout of the Descubierta from memory. A hatch admitted them into the forward crew compartments.
The deck was slick with blood. Bodies lay piled three deep in some places, and Christopher's hands tightened on her rifle. She knew that later, when she had time, the images would come back to haunt her, but for now she had a job to do. She couldn't let the faces of dead friends slow her down. She had to get to the bridge.
The Fallen Page 36
