by James Evans
The last door opened before he could reach it. An alien stuck its head out and looked aft.
Mistake, thought Ten with a wicked grin. I’m behind you.
He fired two rounds into the back of the alien’s skull, and it crumpled to the ground. Dirty overalls and a data slate marked it as an engineer and something about the form seemed feminine. Ten gritted his teeth. He preferred not to kill women, but this was an invasion force and, male or female, they had come looking for him.
Still, he wasn’t likely to tell anyone at a family get-together about this not-so-glorious moment. Someone always wanted to know why he didn’t simply knock out the bad guys and arrest them as if he were some kind of intergalactic policeman. Perhaps he should use some kind of multi-purpose sonic device to incapacitate them before delivering a stern lecture about modern ethical standards.
He headed aft, following the short corridor between two food storage rooms. He took a guess at the next space and was proved right, a mess hall. Nothing large, nothing fancy. You kept things simple if you didn’t want crockery flying around when the ship manoeuvred near a planet. Or, of course, when your dropship went through re-entry.
His musings were abruptly interrupted by the two aliens in coveralls who were waiting for him. They looked up as he entered, bearing expressions that went quickly from puzzled, to surprised, to terrified as they realised he wasn’t the colleague who’d just gone to its room, he wasn’t their species, and he was aiming a weapon at them. The gun spat six times, and he had loaded a new magazine before they finished slumping to the table they’d been eating at.
Where there’s a mess, there’s a galley, and, sure enough, there was a hatch in the opposite wall. Ten checked it, but there was no sign of a cook. He passed through the only door out of the mess and checked the galley. Empty. On a ship this size, the crew probably just heated their own meals and the troops weren’t on it long enough to care.
There were toilet facilities next door and then another goods lift with a ladder next to it. Ten liked ladders; they were silent, they never failed, and they were easy to use in zero-g. Ten sent an update to the rest of his team then took the lift, since the crew wouldn’t be surprised when it moved.
Most of the ship was empty, just the engine compartment left to clear. The team had killed two more of the engineering crew and managed to do it silently.
Ten reached the lower deck as the rest of the team came around the corner. They flowed through the two doors, half a team to each, without stopping to greet him. Ten following along behind.
The first room was somewhat unexpected. Large and almost the width of the ship, there were exits to the boarding ramps on either side. More surprising were the pods that lined the fore and aft walls. None of them had expected that.
They also hadn’t really expected four power-armoured enemy troopers. The first Marine through each door was riddled with bullets the moment they reached the centre of the room. The rest dived for cover.
Bringing up the rear on the starboard side, Ten saw the hitherto successful mission collapse into pandemonium. The first Marine from his group was pummelled to the ground by shots that struck between his shoulder blades, punched through his chest and ruined the decking below. He was dead before he knew what hit him.
Ten knew, though. The room was almost double height and above the doors was a balcony. The enemy were up there, and they had battle rifles. While his team dived for cover and desperately searched for the source of the shots, Ten dashed to his left and up the steep metal staircase to the balcony, yanking two grenades from his webbing as he went.
Halfway up the stairs, he lobbed the grenades onto the balcony then crouched and waited, eyes closed. The grenades detonated with a deafening crack and what would have been a blinding flash if he hadn’t been prepared for it.
He dashed up the remaining steps, spinning as he did and twitching the trigger of his pistol. His ears were ringing, and his shots were wild, but he emptied the magazine, steadying his aim as he moved. Press the enemy hard, when they least expect it. Soldiers don’t expect to meet an enemy who simply charges them head on, bringing the fight right to them.
So that’s what Ten did.
The first alien, shocked by the flashbangs and the shots ringing from its armour, hunched back as if it were seriously threatened. Maybe it was hurt. More likely it was only disoriented, stunned by the grenades and surprised by the pistol rounds striking its armour.
Ten dropped his pistol, drew both knives and thumbed the mechanisms. They purred to life and he slashed them at the alien’s chest, left then right. The blades skittered across the armour, screeching and jumping as the alien tried to stumble clear of its attacker. Closer now, inside the alien’s reach, Ten struck again. A blade bit home, driving through a weak point in the armpit, and the monster roared in pain. Ten twisted the handle, hands suddenly wet with blood.
The other knife slammed into the alien’s hip joint, an instinctive strike that would have been fatal to a human. Ten pushed hard, both knives twisting as he drove the alien back. It fell, screaming behind its mask, and Ten let it go, the blades still in place. He caught the alien’s rifle as it fell and spun it round, shouldering it smoothly as he dropped to one knee. The aliens were recovering, the effects of the grenades already fading, but they were slow, far too slow.
Ten’s grin was manic as the rifle bucked against his shoulder. He gritted his teeth, muscles straining to keep the muzzle climb under control. He forced the gun down, fighting for control, envious of the aliens in their servo-assisted powered-armour. And then the second alien’s faceplate collapsed and the head disappeared, blown away by the relentless attack.
But it had taken too long. The two aliens on the other side of the bay turned towards him and all he could do was move. He grabbed the collar of the alien who was busy dying from knife wounds and dragged it upright. Crouched behind the power armour as bullets began to slam into the back of the suit, Ten snatched something from the alien’s belt with a feral grin.
A second later, the alien grenade exploded, and he was punched backwards, the power armour collapsing on top of him. He ripped the shattered HUD from his eyes, rolled the alien off him and grabbed the rifle. Lying on his back, he fired bursts into the heads of the remaining aliens as they tried to regain their feet.
The rifle clicked, magazine exhausted, and suddenly the only sound was a sort of wordless scream. Ten drew breath and realised it was him screaming. The aliens were gone, their shattered bodies sprawled across the walkways, and he was alone in a room full of corpses.
For a moment he lay there, breathing heavily, the rifle’s smoking barrel resting on his boots. Then he kicked himself to his feet and grabbed a knife. Powered armour didn’t always need a living host and Ten didn’t fancy being killed by some keyboard jockey with a fetish for remote murder. The blade made short work of the suits’ controls, sparks flying as he jammed it home.
Then he slumped down on the nearest armour corpse as the adrenaline drained away. What he really wanted now was a good cuppa. Small chance of that here. He found a bottle of water on the floor, but it wasn’t really the same.
10
Warden’s eyes narrowed as he surveyed the carnage, a sure sign that he wanted to swear. Five Marines dead, three wounded so severely that they’d be little use for days or even weeks, several others carrying minor injuries. They had captured the solar farm and the ship, it was true, but the cost had been high.
His HUD flashed a clear signal. The overwatch team hadn’t seen any more movement and were heading over in the rovers. He acknowledged it with a glance, confirming their update was read and understood.
Warden turned his attention to the damage that Marine X had caused with grenades and heavy gunfire. No hull ruptures, it seemed, but one end of the balcony had been destroyed, and twisted metal blocked the port door. Other than that, the damage appeared to be cosmetic and there was no reason to think the ship wasn’t spaceworthy. He sent Patel to the other side to
see if the blocked door still worked.
Then he turned to the elephant in the room, namely the pods that had surprised the boarding party. He walked over to one and peered through the glass cover. Inside, a winged alien floated in a thick, translucent gel. There were sixteen pods in total, all occupied. Two held enormous hulking brutes like the one they had killed in the base.
He turned to Milton. “They’re clones. The bloody aliens are using our own bloody cloning tech against us. They must have captured military files on the Ark ship; these are definitely mil-tech clones.”
“Yes, sir. Not the same as ours, though. Look at all the scales and the strange eyes. Our geneticists don’t do things like that; they keep even the mil-tech clones as close to human as possible. Wings notwithstanding, of course,” said Milton.
Warden closes his eyes for a moment, taking deep breaths and contemplating their next steps. Then he snapped back, alert and confident.
“Right, I want the casualties off the ship, and the rovers stowed somewhere safe. If we make it back, we’ll land here and drive back to Ashton. Make sure the drivers have weapons, plenty of munitions and that they stay out of sight until we return. Get the techs working on the ship. If they can’t get it flying, everything else we do here is a waste of time.”
“Roger that,” Milton replied.
“Marine X, get your arse down here,” he bellowed. “Sergeant Milton, take a team through the ship again and make sure every single compartment is double checked. I don’t want to be surprised by these things,” he said, pointing at a pod that contained an alien clone that appeared to be the pilot or officer class.
“Then a weapons check. Reload magazines, search the ship for anything we can add to our armoury,” he said, turning to Ten who had dropped down from the balcony.
“Prep for low-pressure boarding. Take half a squad and ransack the stores. Find any breathing apparatus or environment suits and bring them here,” he turned again as Ten peeled off, “someone get this ramp down, and the rest of you, bring the arsenal aboard.” He paused to look at his team then he clapped his hands. “Hop to it, people.”
He paced around the room, looking at the controls and checking the systems. It was pretty familiar stuff but it seemed strange, outdated even.
Tech from an ancient Ark, he thought, centuries old.
He flipped up a cover and pressed the button it concealed. Warning beeps sounded, and lights appeared on the floors of the loading bays. Launch chairs rose from the floor space on both sides of the cloning bay. There were enough for more troops than would be deployed in one round of cloning. It made it easy to retrieve any planetside troops, even if more than one round of clones had been decanted during a mission.
Warden looked around as everyone got on with their assigned tasks. He assumed the dropship would navigate itself to the alien vessel and land in an enclosed bay. Low-pressure boardings were dangerous but he hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.
Even if they didn’t need to breach the outer hull of the ship, there was still a question over the alien’s air. Just because they could breathe the air on New Bristol didn’t mean the Marines would be able to breathe on the ship. Any difference in the gas mixture could cause problems, so he wanted to be sure that everyone had a reliable air supply for their breathing masks.
And he needed an option of last resort. That the aliens had clones altered everything. Every soldier they’d killed on New Bristol would be backed up, probably to the vessel in orbit. How long till they were decanted into new bodies and dropped back to the surface? Even if they didn’t have cloning bays as part of the vessel, they might have more dropships. How many, he wondered, and how fast would they move?
He scratched his head and sighed as he walked into the cockpit. If his tech specialists couldn’t get this thing in the air, they would need a new plan, fast.
Richardson looked up as he entered the cockpit. “Good news, sir. The ship’s systems are intact. The aliens have things arranged just like we do in our own ships. Good job they stole our technology, I suppose. It looks like they haven’t really changed everything. I reckon if we pulled the panels off, some of the circuits would be exactly as they were when they were designed.”
“Great. Can you pilot it without knowing their language?”
“Don’t need to, sir. Just need to identify the auto-pilot. The dropship will get us back to their ship on its own. I think we can work out the necessary basics in maybe ten more minutes? Just don’t ask us to get into a dogfight, not that I imagine this crate has any weaponry to speak of. If they haven’t changed basic cockpit layout, they probably won’t have changed that either.”
“Is there any way to tell how many dropships they have on their ship?” asked Warden hopefully.
“Not really, sir. If we spoke their language we could probably bring up an inventory, but that’s about it,” Richardson said apologetically.
“It’ll be at least three,” murmured Barlow. He cautiously pressed a button, then quickly pressed it again when the lighting panel above his head went out.
Warden and Richardson looked at him. He didn’t seem to notice their stares. Warden coughed. “Would you care to explain, Corporal?”
Barlow looked up. “Hmm? Oh well, it’s elementary really. This ship is the Something in Alien Three. So there must be at least two more dropships aboard the vessel unless they have really odd naming schemes.”
“How do you know it’s three?” asked Warden.
“It’s written on the side of the ship. Also, on this panel here,” Barlow said, pointing to a plaque with a series of symbols on the overhead bank of panels in front of the pilot's chairs.
“Yes, okay,” said Warden slowly, as he contemplated the squiggles and dots which could have been an ancient Earth language for all the good it did him, “but how do you know that says that this is ship number three?”
“This bit,” said Barlow pointing, “is the same as the bit on the third pod from the left on the fore and aft side of the clone bay. So my conclusion is it’s their glyph for ‘three’. Look, it’s here on this button too,” he said pointing to a button on the console, “so these buttons are probably two and four.”
Warden looked as directed. Barlow had a gift for noticing these things and Warden couldn’t fault his logic.
“I see. So at the very least they have two more dropships, which means at least thirty-two clones available to them, plus whatever crew or active troops are left on the mothership. If they have four dropships for a nice even number, they have forty-eight clones, ready to be deployed,” said Warden. He slumped a little in his chair, thinking.
“How long would it take to decant an alien clone?”
Both techs shrugged. “No idea, sir. Probably about the same as ours, although they don’t have to inject brain patterns via wormhole here. Corporal Wilson might know more.”
“Right,” said Warden, standing up decisively, “get this thing ready to fly as quickly as possible. If there’s even a slim chance we can dock with the ship in orbit and complete the assault before they decant more clones, we need to take it. Every minute we waste here could make our task up there much more difficult.”
“Yes, sir. One working dropship, coming right up.”
11
Warden gritted his teeth as the acceleration of the dropship pushed him into the seat. The flight had started easily, like an ordinary aeroplane, but the ship had climbed quickly before standing on its tail to point straight up. And then the main engines had fired, rocketing the vessel towards escape velocity.
It took only twenty seconds or so to leave behind the atmosphere of the planet and reach the edge of space, but the g-force was extraordinary and, to Warden, it felt like it went on for hours.
Then it was over and, just like that, they were free of the planet’s grip and on their way to orbit. The transition from the daylight of the atmosphere to the night-time environment of planetary orbit was stark and sudden, like turning off a light.
Warden
had clipped his HUD to his belt for the launch. Richardson’s jury-rigged countdown played through the ship’s speakers so the Marines would know when main acceleration was coming and when they’d get the relief of it ending. Ten minutes was a good rule of thumb for this type of flight.
It was a desperate mission. Even at full strength, the risks would have been high. With A Troop depleted, no Command team and large parts of Section 3 currently dead, the attack was truly a forlorn hope. What they really needed was time. And B Troop, thought Warden, denied action by the destruction of the second cloning bay, to say nothing of C Troop, who were safely at home enjoying the luck of the draw.
Warden grinned grimly. C Troop would be doing more than the normal amount of cleanup and physical training at the moment. They’d ‘won’ the deployment lottery and been left back at base, but they would be working just as hard as A Troop, albeit with less risk of a gruesome death under an alien sky.
The pre-launch briefing had been short and the questions few. Now they flew in silence, HUDs off, weapons locked down, everyone focusing on what was to come.
Why were HUDs off for launch? Warden couldn’t remember, but maybe it was something to do with safety. Black eyes, maybe? He shook his head; it didn’t matter, the standing order was to launch with HUDs stowed.
In free fall, though, HUDs were safe, and Warden slipped his back on. The command panel he would have had on an RMSC dropship was absent, so he patched through to the pilot’s view.
There was a moment of disorientation as he tried to work out what he was seeing. Then the grey, almost featureless, slab of the ship in front of them slid open to expose a docking bay.