by Craig Allen
“We’ll hole up here.” Sonja tweaked one of her holocontrols, and the high-pitched whine went through the comm system again. “Foxtrot Six to Banshee Five One.”
“I read you, Foxtrot Six. This is Lieutenant Hayes, call sign Sleepy. Banshee Five One is inbound, ETA two minutes.”
“Copy that, Sleepy,” Sonja said. “Standing by.”
“Hope the reeds can’t climb up the rock,” Cody said.
She shook her head. “I hope not.”
“Thought we left this shit behind two months ago.” Bodin scanned the horizon. “Hey. Everything’s gone.”
“What?” Sonja put her hand to her helmet. “Go active on your sensors. Lidar, sonic, everything.”
Cody did so, scanning with every sensor system the suit had. The natural ores and minerals were so pervasive that getting solid readings was difficult, but clearly, nothing was on the ground around them.
That made no sense. The toads might have been able to gain some distance, but the blobs were slower. The behemoths were about as fast as Earth elephants, and the dish trees were far slower. No way could every creature that had been there before have vanished so quickly, but all Cody detected were the red reeds, waving back and forth on a wind that wasn’t there as the tips of their stalks brushed along the edges of the rock as though searching for them. Cody didn’t want to imagine what the reeds would do when they found them. With luck, the magnetic boots would cause enough sensory overload to keep them away.
The reeds weren’t the only problem, though. Above, dozens upon dozens of bat creatures circled the rock, gathering in greater numbers and lining up in a sort of spiral in the sky. More bats appeared from the north to join the massive formation. Cody had seen such formations before, two months earlier when they had destroyed the crashed battle cruiser, the Kali. The bat creatures, once gathered, would dive upon the rock. They would be lucky to survive even with the use of coil rifles.
The ground rocked again, and it was all Cody could do to keep from falling over. The ground had collapsed right next to the outcropping, and the reeds fluttered and undulated in the newly created crater, spiraling down the hole like teeth in a giant maw that stretched down dozens of meters.
The high-pitched whine sounded through the comm system again, and Sonja spoke. “Foxtrot Six to Banshee Five One, what’s your ETA?”
No sooner had she spoken than the bat creatures broke their nearly completed formation and spun away from the rocks. They flapped their wings furiously, gaining altitude quickly in the thick air. High above the ground, their bodies opened like giant parachutes and caught the prevailing winds, which carried them into the sky until they disappeared above the clouds.
The gravimetrics on Cody’s suit lit up. From the yellow clouds descended a hopper, its engines howling. The red reeds on the ground vanished, disappearing for hundreds of meters in every direction as the hopper dropped toward the rock. The crater, however, remained, descending into darkness—or hell.
The hopper dropped to within centimeters of the rock, and its rear door opened.
A voice chimed in over Cody’s suit comm. “Welcome aboard.” Lieutenant Hayes sounded as though he was inviting them to a dinner party.
“Move, Eggman.” Bodin nudged Cody toward the rear door.
Cody hesitated to make sure Sonja was following before he climbed aboard. She chased after him, and Bodin brought up the rear.
Sonja shouted into her comm, “We’re in. Bounce!”
“Reading one more,” Hayes said. “I only saw the three of you on my sensors. Where’d the other one come from?”
“What other one?” Cody asked. “No one else—”
He took a step back, his hand reaching for his pistol as a hand grasped the lip of the rear hatch. Whoever it was crawled inside the hopper.
Sonja lifted her G-1. “Hands up!”
The G-1’s safety shone red, which meant one squeeze on the trigger would easily shred an unarmored person. Cody left his pistol in its holster but still gripped it.
The woman didn’t even look up, letting her long hair cover her face. She had no environmental suit. Only a tattered and dirty battle dress uniform covered her. Half of the woman’s right arm was exposed. No boots covered her dirty feet.
Bodin had his rifle trained on the woman. “What do we do, Gunny?”
“We can’t leave her,” Cody said. “It’s amazing she survived at all.”
Sonja stared at the woman for a full two seconds. “Close the hatch, Sergeant.” Then she activated her suit comm. “Lieutenant, we’re in. Bounce.”
“Roger that. Bouncing.”
Bodin hit the hatch mechanism. Through the closing door, the outcropping of rock fell away as the hopper launched itself into the sky. The only thing keeping everyone from falling out the rear door was the artificial gravity in the hopper’s bay. Cody could still see the reeds fluttering like mad in the distance, then the door hissed shut.
As Cody started to take off his helmet, Bodin said, “Hold on. She’s been out in the open down there. If she caught a bug, we’ll get it, too.”
Cody removed his hand from the release mechanism. Bodin was right. Either exposing oneself to an alien atmosphere could wreak havoc on the environment, or the environment would wreak havoc on the individual. In the case of Kali, it was always the latter. One of the survivors of the battle cruiser Kali had been exposed to the outside air for some time. He hadn’t died peacefully.
Cody held up his hands. “My name is Dr. Cody Brenner. This is Gunnery Sergeant Sonja Monroe and Sergeant Lance Bodin.”
At the sound of Sonja and Bodin’s rank, she flinched and stepped back, as if to get away. Her head was still bowed, and her hair still covered her face.
Bodin lowered his coil rifle. Then, he barked out a single command. “Ten-hut!”
The woman stood straight and snapped her head back, sending her long hair behind herself.
Cody nearly dropped his pistol. “My God.”
Sonja’s and Bodin’s jaws dropped. Carefully, Cody stepped toward the woman. Last he had seen her was two months prior, on the planet surface. She had been snatched up by one of the bat-creatures, and while it ate her alive, she detonated a grenade. The resulting fusion detonation had killed both her and the creature.
She wasn’t dead, though. In fact, she looked completely healthy—no open wounds or infections… not even a scar. Private Ann Salyard had a pallid face and a trembling chin but was otherwise the picture of health.
“At ease, Private,” Sonja said.
Instead of relaxing, she hunched up her shoulders, curling her arms inward as if to protect herself.
Cody reached out for her, causing her to flinch. “Easy, Ann.”
She didn’t react to the sound of her name but stared at Cody as if she couldn’t decide if he was a friend or if he would wring her neck.
“It’s okay.” Cody finally managed to place his hands on her shoulders. “Ann, it’s me. Cody. Remember?”
She opened her mouth and grunted. If she remembered him—remembered what she, Cody, Sonja, and Bodin had been through together on Kali over two months before, from when the Spinoza crashed to when they were rescued—she gave no sign of it.
Sonja leaned toward Cody. “What’s wrong with her?”
Cody shrugged. “Trauma, maybe?”
“What’s wrong with her is she’s alive,” Bodin said. “You saw how she bought it, Egg.”
Cody smiled at Ann, but her lips curled into a snarl.
“Ann, do you remember?” he asked. “What happened on Kali?”
At the sound of the word “Kali,” she locked eyes with Cody. She pulled away from him and hunched over, crawling toward a corner of the hopper’s bay.
“What’d you do, Eggman?” Bodin asked.
Before Cody could answer, Ann moaned, then the moan turned to a shriek as she covered her head. When she ran out of breath, she started hyperventilating. “Ka-li.” She shivered. “Ka-liii!”
Chapter Three
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Cody needed ten minutes to coax Ann into a seat, which he had unfolded from the wall. Bodin stowed all their weapons in the hopper’s lockers while Cody tried to get her to talk, to see if she remembered, but he didn’t dare say the word “Kali” again. Throughout the flight, she remained tight-lipped as she trembled gently.
Cody didn’t bother to pull up the external view, but he was certain they would be docking soon. In the cockpit, Lieutenant Hayes looked at Ann for the sixth time. He didn’t seem thrilled to have a crazy woman on board, even if she was a survivor.
Unlike the people who had vanished on the planet. They were good people, both the marines and the civilian scientists, the latter having arrived only recently. Cody had known barely anything about them. Then, like that, they were gone. He hoped they had taken shelter somewhere and the Washington’s sensors would find them, but as much as Cody hated to admit it, it was more likely they’d never return.
Carefully, Sonja opened up a seat next to Ann and sat. “Hey, Salyard, how you doing?”
Ann blinked at Sonja.
“You been down there this whole time?” Sonja chuckled. “That’s impressive, Private. I have to hand it to you.”
Ann didn’t answer.
Bodin appeared from the cockpit. “We’ll be docking with the Washington in two mikes.”
His voice made Ann shudder.
“Understood, sir.” Sonja ran her hand over her mouth. “How’d she survive?”
Cody chewed his lip. “There were two survivors from the crash of the UEAF Kali ten years ago. They lasted a long time, but they had access to the food and air purifiers on board the ship’s wreckage. Marie was killed by the bat creatures. The other, Matthew, lasted a few weeks on his own and died of… well, either a disease or malnutrition. No one knew for certain, considering what happened to his body.”
“Fucking gross is what it was.” Bodin shivered. “And awful.”
Cody couldn’t disagree, but the fliers revered Petty Officer Matthew Carlson, who had rescued a bunch of their kind after they had been enslaved by the toads. To the fliers, consuming him after his death was meant to honor him, to make him a part of their bodies forever. They couldn’t have understood the terror it must have caused him, knowing his corpse would be consumed, and Cody had never told the fliers what such an act meant to humans.
How he died was nothing compared to how Colonel Deveau died, though. The spider-beetles had guided the survivors of the Spinoza—including himself, Sonja, Bodin, and even Ann—to safety. They had no understanding of the price they’d pay for such guidance. When spider-beetles’ eggs hatched inside Deveau, the babies poured from his mouth and… Cody wished he could forget it.
“Thirty seconds,” Lieutenant Hayes said over the intercom. “Strap down.”
Cody carefully buckled Ann in. He was afraid she’d panic at being confined, but she didn’t react at all, even as the straps automatically conformed to her body’s shape and held her firmly against the back of the seat. He sat on the other side of her and strapped in. With luck, Admiral Rodriguez would allow them to return to search for the other hopper, but the admiral had likely already sent out a dozen or more hoppers to do just that.
“Goddamn strange is what this is.” Bodin sat across from Ann. “Did that bat thing drop her after she placed the grenade on him? Is that what we saw blow up? And if that’s it, how’d she survive the fall? Gravity’s higher here.”
Cody couldn’t imagine how she survived, unless she had been left on the ground when the bat escaped. That couldn’t be it, though. Cody was certain the bat creature had flown away with Ann in its maw and the two of them died together. It had happened right in front of him, after all.
Yet she was sitting next to him.
The hopper shuddered as it docked with the Washington. Cody interfaced with the hopper and pulled up the external view on his HUD, not that there was much to see. The hopper was in the tunnel, a flexible tube that hugged the hopper as it was pulled inside the main body of the ship without exposing the interior of the ship to vacuum. The engines wound down as the tunnel did the work of pulling the hopper toward the ship’s interior. In less than ten seconds, the hopper emerged in the hangar bay and was deposited on the closest landing pad by the docking crane.
Sonja hit the release harness on her safety belts then opened the rear hatch. She pressed an indicator on her half-can power suit, which promptly unfolded, then she put the suit in the hopper’s storage locker.
Cody undid Ann’s seat straps. “We’re safe, Ann.”
Ann brushed past him as she crept toward the edge of the hopper’s ramp and stared wide-eyed at the expanse of the Washington’s hangar bay. Hoppers lined the wall on platforms similar to theirs. A few hoppers sat on the deck of the bay ten meters below and were in various states of repair, including one that was missing an engine. Dozens of men and women were there making repairs to both hoppers and other components that Cody didn’t recognize.
As Ann started down the ramp at a brisk pace, Cody chased after her. “Watch your step.”
Bodin called out, “Keep an eye on her, Doc.”
Bodin and Sonja both had pulled coil pistols out of a locker and wore them at their sides, each keeping a hand on the weapon. Once, Cody might have questioned the wisdom of that, but he’d learned since that his ignorance of military procedures could be a liability. They were probably following a protocol of which he was unaware.
Her eyes wide, Ann continued to gape at the bay, displaying a childlike grin. Cody had to guide her to the lift leading down to the deck. Ann had been straight out of boot camp when the Spinoza crashed on Kali. She might not have seen the launch bay of a warship before, but she had to have at least been familiar with the inner workings of such a ship.
Some of the crew continued to work on whatever they were doing, but most stopped to stare. Word got around quickly, even on a warship like the Washington, especially when an entire hopper and her crew up and vanished.
Sonja activated the lift, and when it arrived, they all boarded. As the lift descended, an alarm rang, and all personnel headed to opposite ends of the bay. The Washington’s filtration system could handle any toxins that might filter through the ventilation ducts, but being in close proximity to someone exposed to the raw environment of Kali wasn’t the best of ideas.
Cody had read the reports himself. After two months of study, nobody was entirely sure yet how the microorganisms on Kali behaved. Sometimes, they even managed to bypass the filters on the suits themselves, as if they understood how to do so. They had to constantly alter the programming of the filters, both on suits and in the air ducts, to trick the microbes into getting caught and disposed of.
Cody would’ve marveled at the tenacity of the infections if they didn’t terrify him. Everything on Kali was intelligent, even the diseases.
On the main deck stood several personnel in envirosuits. When the lift stopped, two of them stepped forward. Ann clung to Cody and hissed at them like a cat.
“Easy,” Cody said. “They want to make sure you’re okay. You were down there awhile.”
Ann stepped behind Cody when a woman approached. Cody couldn’t tell her rank because of her envirosuit.
“Hey, it’s okay.” The woman smiled at Ann. “I’m a doctor. Understand? I want to help.”
Ann remained unmoving. Then, she shoved Cody hard enough to knock him down. The woman let out a shout as Ann shoved her aside and darted for a nearby passageway leading out of the docking bay.
One midshipman raised a coil pistol and fired at her, but she had already disappeared down the side tunnel. Alarms sounded, and Cody vaguely heard the ship’s intercom call out, “General Quarters.”
Sonja helped Cody up. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Cody said. “Why are they shooting at her?”
“She’s an intruder, Egg,” Bodin said.
“She’s a marine.” He reached for his helmet and twisted it. The seal hissed as he pulled the helmet off. “We have to
help her.”
Sonja shouted after Cody as he ran toward the nearby petty officer who had fired on Ann. He was giving instructions to other crew members. The name on his uniform was Donner.
Donner held up a hand toward Cody. “Sir, we have this under control.”
“She’s a marine,” Cody said. “You didn’t need to fire on her.”
“I did if I wanted to plant a tracking device.” Donner held up the small coil pistol. “The device is subdermal, so she can’t pull it out.”
Cody was impressed. Ann couldn’t leave the Washington, but it had many places to hide—unless she was sending out a homing beacon, of course. He wondered how often security personnel had to track unwanted visitors since Donner had a tracking device on him at all times.
“Let me help.” Cody pointed through the hatch where Ann had run. “I might be able to talk to her.”
“Not going to happen, Doc.”
“Chief,” Cody said, “I knew her when we were stranded on this planet two months ago.”
Sonja approached behind me. “It’s true, Chief. That’s Private Ann Salyard, thought to be KIA.”
“She’s pretty healthy for a dead woman.” Chief Petty Officer Donner grumbled something Cody couldn’t hear. “All right, you can come with us. Just do what I say. And if I think for one minute she’s a threat to the security of this ship”—he patted another coil pistol at his side—“then I’ll use the real thing.”
~~~
Cody took another deep breath, relieved to be out of the envirosuit. He hated the thing. For weeks, he’d worn one while stranded on Kali. And, frankly, they brought back too many memories of that time.
Chief Donner led the way. With him were Sonja and Bodin, along with three other marines Cody didn’t know, which wasn’t a surprise. Over a thousand sailors and marines were on the Washington. It was almost like a small city, which meant a lot of ground to cover.