The Dark Side: Alex Hunter 9

by Greig Beck

  There was movement inside the room. “Get down!” Sam yelled to Mia, and went into the room, fast.

  He came up with his gun at his shoulder and looked around at the state of the room. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

  Sam flicked from thermal to amplification as he scanned the room, and then even movement detection, but his suit sensors picked up nothing moving now, and nothing living. But there was a low-lying mist everywhere, and his suit registered humidity off the charts.

  What the hell’s going on in here? he wondered, and then turned to the open doorway. “Okay, come –”

  There was silence from behind him. He turned.

  Mia was gone.

  CHAPTER 29

  “Sam!” Mia came running toward him as he got to the elevator and stopped in front of him to lay her hands on his armored chest.

  “You’re okay?” he asked and held her shoulders. “What happened? Where’d you go? You’ve been gone for over an hour.”

  “Something was coming up behind me after you went inside the room. I thought it was Olga. I tried to call out, but you had vanished. I hid, and didn’t know when to come out.” Her words came fast and she held onto him as she spoke. “Then when I did, you were gone. Sorry, I’m not very brave.”

  “You’re okay, that’s the main thing,” he replied. “Did you see?”

  “The room?” She nodded. “I think I did. What was all that stuff?”

  “I wish I knew. The machinery is still operational, that’s the upside. The downside is I don’t know what the hell is going on in there. The humidity is extraordinarily high and creating vapor. Plus, there’s some sort of sticky, extruded matter everywhere. Looks like something melted in there.”

  “But that person standing outside –”

  “No sign of him or her. The suit was empty.”

  “Oh God, just like outside. Did you secure the room?”

  “No. If I do, I don’t know if I’ll be locking the entity out, or locking it in. I did a scan but found nothing. But that might just mean whatever it was doesn’t show up on our spectrums.” He shrugged.

  Mia held her head. “This is a nightmare.”

  “You said it. Let’s go back and report in. See where everyone else is at.” Sam hit the button for the elevator and when the doors slid open, he waited for Mia to enter first and turned to give the empty corridor one last look. “And this time, stay close.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Vin exhaled and leaned back in the pilot’s chair, feeling the boredom. He’d run another maintenance check on the interior comms. Then run a power check, reviewed the ammunition stores, and finally sat back down, and waited for one of the field team to call him on the radio. Or for it to be time again for him to call in to Earth HQ.

  He hummed a tune, his feet up on the edge of the console, and stared out at the plain of bleakness beyond the window. To begin with it had been interesting, all the pockmarks, crater rims, melted-looking areas from ancient meteor strikes where the surface had been liquified from the heat of asteroid impact. But the thing about the moon was nothing really ever changed. Beyond the window it could have been a damn photograph, it was so still – no breeze, no movement, no nothing.

  “Life in the fast lane.” He laughed, and put his hands behind his head and meshed the fingers. He sighed long and slow, and after a while he began to daydream about what he’d do first when he got back home.

  He smiled as, in his mind, he saw himself kayaking in Florida Springs, with the water so clear it seemed inches deep when it could be a half-dozen feet. And it was warm, bath warm; you could sit in those springs, a cold beer in one hand, and just drift off. Other times, he had paddled up one of the tributaries, and then laid back and just let the languid current move him softly and slowly along the tree-covered waterways.

  He sighed. Heaven, he thought, and shifted a little as a trickle of perspiration ran under his arm to be collected by the absorbent material in his suit.

  Movement outside snapped Vin back to full attention. “Huh?” He sprang forward. “What have we here?”

  There was a lone figure on the lunar surface jogging toward their ship. Vin stood up and leaned over the console. He saw that the suit the person wore had an American flag patch on one sleeve and the Kennedy Base insignia on the other.

  “That’s weird.”

  The figure caught sight of Vin and waved. Vin returned the wave. He still couldn’t see who it was as the gold reflection visor was down, or even if it was man or woman in the bulky suit.

  The figure stopped and pointed and motioned with its hand. The meaning was clear: drop the hatch.

  Vin hesitated; there were no orders about this. No one expected that they’d receive visitors.

  “Shit,” he whispered. He wasn’t sure what to do. He tried to think. What would Alex do? Find out who they were first, of course.

  Vin held up a hand and pointed to his ear. He sent an open signal to the person but was met with nothing but a wall of static.

  After a moment, the person shook their head, and pointed to the side of their helmet and motioned broken with their hands.

  Maybe there was a problem at the base. Vin immediately tried Alex, or any of the HAWCs, but once again got nothing but white noise.

  The figure made a twirling motion with their hand – hurry up.

  Maybe that’s why. Maybe they needed him, fast, and they’d sent over one of the Kennedy people to get him. If the team needed him, then it was urgent. He decided he had no choice.

  “Fuck it.”

  He pulled his helmet on, expunged the air, and then punched the open button.

  He looked up and saw the figure had vanished from out front and was making its way to the hatch below.

  Vin only had a few weapons on his suit but was confident he could handle any threat. A HAWC could easily account for several Special Forces soldiers from any nation at any time, so if it was just one of the base scientists or even one of their security personnel, then the risk to him was extremely manageable.

  He waited and soon a helmet appeared in the hatch as the person ascended. In the next instant, they were inside. With him.

  Vin closed the hatch and refilled the lander’s interior with air. He retracted his helmet, feeling the new cool air on his face.

  “You can breathe easy now.” He waited.

  The figure just stood there, facing him, gold visor still engaged.

  “Are you okay?”

  At only five-ten, Vin wasn’t tall for a HAWC, but he was solid, and fit, and knew how to kill an adversary in a hundred different ways even when unarmed. He was bigger and more formidable than the person in front of him, but for some reason, he was becoming unnerved. He felt the small hairs rise on the back of his neck and took a step back to balance lightly on the balls of his feet.

  “Identify yourself,” he demanded.

  The figure tapped his chest.

  Vin started to breath faster, adrenaline kicking in. “What do you want?” He began to take another step back, but the outstretched hand immediately stuck onto one of the armored plates on the front of his suit.

  “Hey, hands off, buster.” Vin used a two-hand thrust-push into the chest of the figure. But, impossibly, they didn’t budge. And strangely, he didn’t feel ribs, only something soft and doughy.

  “Let go, now.” He brought one of his arms down like a club on top of the arm holding onto him. The arm bent as if there was no bone inside it.

  “What the fuck?”

  The figure lifted its free arm to grip his. Vin swept his other arm upward, knocking the golden faceplate up into its recession slot and exposing the face.

  What face?

  Behind the glass of the visor there was a storm of something that was thick, and bread-like, with the pallid yeasty-white of old toadstools.

  “Shit.” He reached for his gun, pulled it, but knew that one of their mission rules was no discharging a weapon in or near the craft. He didn’t care; he fired twice into the person�
��s torso.

  They didn’t even flinch.

  Vin brought the gun up and fired point blank into the visor.

  The effect was immediate: it exploded, not inward, but outwards – at him.

  Black, glistening tendrils flew at him, enfolding his face and upper body. He screamed as the dead-fish coldness enveloped him and began to pour into his open face shielding. He turned his head to the console, trying to get to it to warn his team. But the figure, and the tendrils, had other ideas, and found his mouth, nose, ears, and even eye sockets.

  Vin’s last thought as everything turned a stinking black was the word they had learned in the initial briefing from the lunar outpost: Lifeform.

  * * *

  Minutes later the figure left the ship, jogging back toward the Kennedy Base.

  Except for the hum of machinery, the empty lander settled back into silence. Then, a slim figure unfolded from a maintenance box in the hold and moved to the front cabin. The beautiful face turned slowly, scanning the empty suit of Vincent “Vin” Douglas and finding nothing of his remains.

  It dropped from the hatch to the lunar surface to follow the intruder.

  CHAPTER 31

  Alex’s head snapped to the side and he came rod straight. He felt the anguished pulse crash into his consciousness as if it was a scream in his ears.

  “What’s up, Boss?” Casey asked.

  Alex walked away a few paces and touched his ear stud. “Vin, come back.”

  He waited a second or two.

  “Lieutenant Vincent Douglas, soldier, report in.”

  There was nothing but static.

  “What is it? What’s happened to Vin?” Casey said.

  “No-ooo!” Alex spun, feeling a boiling fury in his belly.

  Casey took a step back. “Boss?”

  “Vin, the lander, something’s wrong.” Alex looked from Marion to Casey. “Continue with the analysis. I need to go.” He turned to Briggs. “Let me out.”

  “By yourself?” Briggs shook his head. “No way, the risk is –”

  “Do it.” Alex spoke through his teeth, and his eyes seemed to glow silver for a moment.

  The stocky base commander gulped.

  “Do it,” Casey urged. “Now.”

  Alex stepped in closer to him. “Now.”

  Briggs turned, entered the code and hit the button on the door.

  * * *

  Alex ran across the moon’s surface. He pushed the suit to its limits, kicking up dust behind him. He had felt Vin’s cry in his head and knew before he even arrived that he wasn’t going to find it was just a tech problem.

  As he approached the lander, he saw that the external hatch was open and guessed the ship was depressurized. He had tried several more times to contact his soldier but up close, saw no one behind the window.

  Alex didn’t pause and went up and through the hatch in a blink. He went to his knee.

  “No, no, no.”

  Vin’s empty suit lay on the floor of the ship, holes punched through the ballistic armor and biological plating. The penetration had started from the inside. The silver suit was coated in a glistening, viscous, black material just like Alex had seen at the base.

  Alex tried to determine what had happened. Somehow the creature had got in and attacked Vin. Vin was a new HAWC but an adept soldier. He could defend himself and should not have been taken by surprise. Unless the thing had presented itself as a non-threat.

  Alex turned slowly. Nothing else seemed removed or damaged. His scan stopped at the doorway to the pilot’s seat and console.

  “Ah, shit.”

  He stood and crossed to the front of the ship. The entire communication system was trashed. In fact, not just trashed, but turned to tiny fragments. That’s why he’d got white noise. Whatever this thing was, it wanted to isolate them the same as it had at their base. No more messages back home.

  Back home, he thought. That’s what Mia said Olga warned them about: that it wanted to get back to Earth. But it wasn’t able to as the ship was disabled without the launch key. He felt the launch key in his pocket.

  Alex straightened and looked around slowly. It hadn’t trashed the entire ship and he bet he knew why – because it probably still hoped to use it.

  What are we really dealing with here? he wondered.

  He returned to his fallen soldier’s suit and placed a hand on the deflated chest. He sighed.

  “Sorry, Vin, we didn’t know that everyone is a suspect.”

  He quickly removed the empty suit and stored it. Then he exited the ship and sealed the hatch. He scanned the moon surface and, even with his enhanced vision, saw nothing.

  Alex craned his head to look up into the darkness of space. Over the horizon was the Earth, and right now, it seemed farther away than ever. He lowered his chin and headed back to the base.

  CHAPTER 32

  Igor Stanislov stared into the dark mine, his impatience boiling over. He turned to Doctor Anastasia Asimova. “How long have they been down there?”

  “An hour now,” the science officer replied. “The mine is only 120 feet deep and does not have too many side passages. They tunneled down and then horizontally along an impact crustal seam. But …”

  “But it’s been too long.” He made a guttural sound in his throat. “Curse this radiation for disrupting our signals.”

  Anastasia shrugged and her eyes slid to him. “Maybe Boris and Chekov found something in the laboratories. We should give them more time.”

  Stanislov didn’t get it. Why were there labs in a mine? Stupid scientists, he thought.

  Anyway, he had a different idea. “Or maybe they were ambushed.” Stanislov pointed to the dust outside the mine mouth. There were too many prints to count, so many that the dust had been compacted. But on the outer edge, the prints were a little clearer, and all the same boot type except for being different sizes. However, there was one set of prints that stood out.

  “You see this? That is not a Russian boot.” Stanislov turned. “I think it is an American lunar boot.”

  “From the crawler? The Americans went into our mine?” She shook her head. “No, no, this is not permitted. This project has the highest security classification.”

  “For a mining project?” Stanislov looked down at her.

  “Yes.”

  “So, now you want to go in?” he asked.

  “No, I still think we should wait.” Anastasia stared into the inky blank hole in the crater wall.

  Stanislov snorted. “For what? Don’t be scared. We go in. Our job is to investigate the mine, and that is what we will do. But we must be ready for anything.”

  “This is not a good idea. We were told to watch the lander as well. Now we will all be down in the mine.” She grimaced. “I think the commander will be furious.”

  Stanislov could tell she was being evasive. But he couldn’t understand why she had a slight tremble in her voice.

  “I take full responsibility,” he replied, curtly. “We need to investigate the mine and find out what happened to our soldiers. If any Americans are loitering there or when we come back, we shoot first and ask questions later, yes?” He grinned.

  “If you say.” She continued to stare into the hole.

  He nudged her. “Ready?”

  “Yes and no.” She drew her pistol as he did.

  The Spetsnaz soldier headed in, the scientist staying close behind him.

  CHAPTER 33

  “Interesting.” Marion read through Doctor Pandewahanna’s notes on the small screen.

  “What is?” Casey asked, casually standing with her back to the wall close to the door. Her gun was cradled in her arms, and though she looked at ease, nothing was coming through the door unannounced while she was on guard.

  Tom Briggs also turned to the biologist.

  Marion’s brows knitted. “Doctor Pandewahanna found some fascinating biological fragments among the material retrieved from inside the Russian woman’s helmet. As well as being remnants of extran
eous human proteins, digestive enzymes, and degraded plasma, there were spore fragments, like those from a fungus.”

  “Could it be from some sort of contamination?” Briggs asked.

  Marion shrugged. “Sure, maybe, but unlikely, as it was a variety of spore Doctor Pandewahanna couldn’t identify in the mycological database. But I think she did make an educated guess. She wrote a single word – ‘mutation’.”

  “Well, that sounds fucked up,” Casey sneered.

  “What does that mean? Did she explain it?” Briggs asked.

  “No, and maybe she didn’t get the chance.”

  “So, we got a giant mutated moon mushroom loose on the base?” Casey asked.

  Marion smiled. “I don’t exactly know yet.” She turned back to the screen. “Let me do some more investigation and try and figure this out.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Yuri Borgan sat next to Doctor Irina Ivanov in the back of the American crawler. Up front, and driving, was Grisha, and beside him was the hulking form of Taras, with the nearly as large Aleksi hanging onto the equipment rack at the rear.

  The ground crew had originally recommended against taking the pair of big men due to their weight and size. But Borgan knew that if there was any trouble, then their physical strength and brutal combat skills would have been invaluable.

  The U.S. Kennedy Base was a mile to the east, but the max speed of the crawler meant it would still take them twelve minutes before they broached the final crater rim and then dropped down into the sea the Americans had chosen for the base infrastructure. Borgan knew that the American base was much larger than their own former base, with eighty-two personnel of varying nationalities, and also contained five security personnel. This last aspect didn’t worry him, as the Americans had no weapons, and even though the guards were ex-military, none had specialized skills.