She fiddled around and hit some latches on the side, popping loose the giant helmet. The pulpy mess of bony, red Jell-O was the most alien thing she’d ever seen.
“Not so badass now without your high-tech toys, are you? Motherfucker!”
Kat kicked the torso as hard as she could, but then reeled in pain. Like hitting concrete. She tactically reloaded and tried to scan the now-silent corridors, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the alien’s body armor. Scores of flattened projectiles pooled around the body, yet there wasn’t a mark on the creature’s one-piece suit. With childish curiosity, she poked its chest with a gloved finger.
The diving suit armor was soft as cotton, yet it stiffened the harder she pushed. Kat picked an elbow joint and punched hard. She just hurt her wrist. Her strike only managed to indent the strange fiber a millimeter.
“Well, now I feel so underdressed. Mind if I borrow this?” She flipped the body over and searched for a way to get the outfit off. A flap of the exotic material ran from the left hip to the neck. She pulled it aside and marveled at the low-tech zipper underneath.
“I guess some inventions are just universal.”
Kat peeled the alien’s onesie off and chucked away her own body armor and boots. The alien getup was a terrible fit on her frame. Far too tight in the chest, yet hung everywhere else. That wasn’t what distracted her though. No, that headless, half-naked body was freakishly human. Right down to the hairy chest and…
With a grimace, she lifted up the nylon band around the groin and gaped at the noodle underneath.
“It” was definitely a “he.” Circumcised, even.
Kat struggled to stay on her feet and stop hyperventilating. “What the fuck, over?”
Heavy gunfire echoed from a few halls over and snapped her back to reality. Kat snatched up her squad radio from the helmet at her feet. Some operator she didn’t recognize hollered in a thick Russian accent.
“We have secure important room. Reactors, maybe. Corridor three, six hundred meters east of entrance.” That damn buzz saw fire ripped through the radio waves. In the background, she caught a howled, “Za Rodinu!” just before an explosion cut the circuit.
Kat clipped the radio to her borrowed suit and pried the oversized weapon from the dead man’s hand. The rail gun was bigger than the version she’d liberated from the ISIS camp guards, but felt even lighter. The targeting computer’s hieroglyphics made no sense, but the Heads Up Display and aiming reticle were straightforward enough. Kat paused to wipe most of the blood and brain matter out of the headgear before squishing it onto her skull. She forced aside shivers from the wetness dripping down her neck and took off running east.
Barely a hundred yards down the corridor, Kat collided with two more “aliens” coming out of an unseen crosshatch. Some language vaguely similar to Arabic poured out of her earpiece. Kat had no idea how to control the built-in radio. She slapped her helmet and shrugged. Were mechanical failures an issue for these high-tech wizards?
Both crewmembers lowered their weapons. One pointed down the hall where she came from, then at her chest. He cocked his head quizzically. Kat just nodded and pointed to the east. The helpful alien reached into his belt and pulled out a small black earpiece. He tapped it against his helmet and then reached for Kat’s headgear.
Damn. In this giant ship, it was just her luck to run into a maintenance tech. Kat tried waving him off. Reflexively, she flashed a thumbs-up sign.
With her left hand.
The aliens sprang back, gibbering amongst themselves. One screamed and raised his weapon.
Way too slow. Despite her mistake, Kat’s right hand had never wavered from her weapon. She simply tilted the muzzle a few degrees higher and flicked her finger over the pad serving as a trigger.
Kat flipped them the middle finger as the gun whirred. “Sorry about the confusion. Fuck you!”
The ultra-high velocity slugs sliced through their body armor, ripped out the backside, and then continued straight through the metal walls of the hall. Not a single one ricocheted.
She stared down at the screen. The rounds counter blinked red with “only” 49 shells left. Kat took a knee and tried to extract the one component that appeared to be detachable.
The floor under her feet shook and normal gunfire filled the hall. In a moment though, the exotic whirring of the enemy’s weapons drowned out the regular rifle fire. Not a good sign. Kat just dropped her weapon and grabbed both guns from the dead guys. Tucking one under each arm like some type of cheesy action hero, she charged down the hall to join the party.
A minute later, she bumped into a dozen aliens crowded around a particularly large hatch. They took turns firing short bursts inside, but didn’t seem to be in a rush. Kat tried to match their casualness as she strolled up. The aliens ignored how she respectfully stepped around the bodies of four British SAS troopers they gleefully stomped over.
Kat hesitated, gauging her odds. If she missed just one… no, she had to slip past these bastards and pick a battle somewhere else.
Captain Dore’s voice whooped from the doorway, changing her plan. “Yeah, that’s right! See what happens when you charge in here!”
Six more of the blue onesie-clad aliens retreated out of the room and into the hall. They dragged the lifeless bodies of two of their comrades with them. Red streaks oozed from the weak link in their armor where the helmet met the neck flap. An alien warrior stuck an injector into the back of the wounded fighters’ heads, right against the spine. They spasmed for a moment, but then like magic, wobbled back to their feet.
Dore shouted again from deep inside the hatch. “We’ve set our detonators on your reactors. You can die trying to stop us or send your ship’s leader in to negotiate. We’ll give you five minutes before we blow this place to hell!”
All the humanoid creatures chuckled over Kat’s borrowed earpiece. Someone shoved past her. The carton on his back knocked her aside. One of the enemy warriors, sporting black stripes wrapped around both biceps, draped an arm over the new guy. They jabbered about something briefly, before Black Stripes slapped the newcomer’s shoulder and spun around. He shooed all the other warriors farther down the hall.
Instead of stepping back, Kat dropped her weapons. She lunged forward as the man with the backpack spun into the doorway. A cable ran from his pack to a long tube in his hands. She wrapped both arms around the warrior as the backpack whined to life. Gritting through the intense heat radiating from the device, she flipped him around and forced his aim down the hall.
Straight towards his comrades.
The shooter tried to wrestle her off, but she wasn’t interested in wrestling. While he slammed her against the wall and jabbed an elbow between her ribs, Kat flipped the switch on his helmet with her left hand. With her right, she drove her Applegate-Fairbairn blade into his exposed throat. Then slashed across. Kat didn’t have a moment to savor his spurting carotid arteries or gurgling windpipe.
She was too busy trying to get his falling weapon to work. This one had a simple button for a trigger, but nothing happened as she held it down. She flipped every button and switch on the damn thing, hoping to get the weapon in play before the others shot her.
Which actually should have happened by now.
“What the…” Kat stared at the twenty blue-suited bodies sprawled around the deck. Not a mark on any of them. She sat the tube down as gently as if handling a pregnant cobra. On the weapon’s side, there was a yellow warning symbol. Similar to international radiation danger markers…
“I’m warning you bastards, this is your last chance to run! Two minutes until det!”
Kat forgot about the strange radiation-spewing flamethrower and turned back to the doorframe. “One friendly coming in!” She ripped off her helmet and stepped inside with a shit-eating grin on her face.
Cra-crack!
The controlled pair slammed her liquid-armored chest with all the force of a snowball. “Knock that shit off already! You in here, Dore?”
“I should’ve guessed you’d make it, Kat! Where’s the rest of your team?” Dore wrapped her up in his arms, all discipline forgotten.
Kat just shook her head. A Spetsnaz soldier ran past them and dashed into the hall. He came back a second later with his arms full of alien rifles. The Russian winked at Kat and kissed both her cheeks, but then did the same to the game-changing weapons. More soldiers from a dozen nations ran up to gush over the goodies.
Kat stepped away from the emotional men and pointed at the two massive vats humming along in the corner. Each of them must have been a good ten meters in diameter. Kat counted up all the satchel charges magnetically fixed to the sides. She flicked an eyebrow at her captain.
“You weren’t bluffing? You’re really going to blow this place apart?” Captain Dore frowned at the Russian major next to him. The Spetsnaz commander just stared ahead, unblinking, while toying with the detonator in his hand.
“Kat, I’m outranked on this decision. I suppose there’s no rush now, so we’ll compromise by leaving the timers on and a small guard behind. We don’t know if the blast will go nuclear, but it should be big enough to make sure this thing never flies again. Our Russian comrade is right. Even if none of us make it out of here, disabling this damn ship would justify the sacrifice.”
One of the Australian commandos came through the door and dragged the radiation-spewing flamethrower inside their redoubt. He pried open a seal and peeked inside the pack. “What is this blimey thing? Some type of death ray? I bet we could make a hell of a bomb out of—”
“Stop touching that!”
Kat and Dore whipped their weapons up… and then down as a floor grate slid to the side.
A bald, unarmed man in an orange jumpsuit climbed out. “Shoot me if you have to, but get your hairy, caveman knuckles away from that pulsar! If you disrupt the containment field and expose the core to oxygen, then we’re all dead!”
The stranger’s English was perfectly accent-free. As if learned from a computer. He reached over and shut the backpack’s lid. Ignoring the Australian’s G36 rifle muzzle inches from his head, the newcomer waved his hand at the explosive-covered vats.
“Oh, and will someone please take those primitive bombs down? Before you make a mess. This day’s been bad enough without having to drown in shit.”
Kat leapt forward and shoved her rifle between his ribs.
“Put your hands up, smartass, or you won’t live to see us destroy your ship. You bastards picked the wrong damn planet to land on.”
The guy raised the skin over his eyes, he had no eyebrows, but complied anyway. “Oh, Allah H. Christ! First, those vats are part of the ship’s sewage system, genius. The one on the left is for liquids and the right for solids. Crack open the maintenance hatch underneath if you don’t believe me. Just let me get some high-heeled boots first. Second, fuck you if you think I’m with those damn psychopaths! I’m an engineer, not an extremist.”
Dore handed Kat a pair of plastic zip-ties already looped together. Before Baldy could react, she jumped forward and slammed him to the deck. With her knee on his spine, she cuffed his hands behind his back and patted him down.
“Is that right? So you think your hands are clean? I don’t care even if you are telling the truth. The only thing you are is a detainee. If you help us find the reactors, maybe we’ll let you live. Lie to us and—”
The crewmember rolled his eyes and rocked back on his knees, chucking Kat casually aside. Kat rolled with the fall and tried to hide her surprise at his unbelievable strength. “Yeah, yeah. I’ve been a ‘detainee’ for three years now. I know the drill.”
Without the slightest visible effort, he swung his arms out and snapped the zip-cuffs off. “Look, we don’t need to bother with these ancient toys…” He stood up straight and stuck out his palms, but made the mistake of moving too fast.
Captain Dore flipped the safety off his rifle and shot the snickering prisoner through his right shin. He howled and collapsed, exclaiming wildly in some exotic language.
Kat shoved her weapon against the crewmember’s head with one hand, while snagging a first aid kit with the other. “You’re lucky my captain’s the level-headed type. He thinks we need you. Personally, I don’t give a shit. Next time you get cute, I’m putting one right between your eyes!”
Kat cut up the leg of his jumpsuit, but the bald man swatted away the tourniquet she pulled out. She threw up her hands. “Damn it, quit acting macho. Can’t you see he hit an artery?”
The man ignored her and ripped out a tiny purple injector from his belt. With only the slightest grimace, he stabbed it straight into the spurting wound and switched back to English. His shrill voice grew calm and flat in seconds.
“Do you have any idea how much that stings? There’s no need to be assholes about this. I said I’d cooperate. This ship can never take off again, so my captors don’t need me for long. I’ll take my chances with you people, since you most definitely do need me. At least if you’re serious about destroying this ship and escaping to tell the tale.”
Kat gaped as both the exit and entry wounds scabbed over right before her eyes. What should have taken days to heal was recovering in seconds. A dozen soldiers crowded around in stunned silence while the stranger gritted his teeth and pounded his fist on the deck plate.
“Damn, that always burns!”
In less than a minute, he stood up and wiggled his hairless leg. “All right. I’m no soldier, but I don’t think it’s safe to stay here too long.”
“How the hell did you do that?”
“Oh, right. The nanobots. Just basic first aid…” He eyed Kat suspiciously and ran his eye slowly over her face. She could have sworn his irises changed colors. “Well, you should know all about it. Want a booster shot? My Artificial Intelligence says your recommended nanite level is down to 10%. That’s barely enough to fight off cancer.”
Kat snatched his tool belt and toys away. “How does this work, exactly? Is there enough for everyone?”
He got a faraway look in his eye and frowned. “Look, I’d love to lecture you people about all the miracles we have three hundred years in the future, but don’t you think we should get moving? You’re surrounded, you know. The Artificial Intelligence estimates we have three to four minutes before the next assault. This one will be much bigger than the last.”
Captain Dore squinted at their prisoner. Kat only grunted. “Okay, tell me this, future man. Why do you speak such excellent, colloquial American English? I call bullshit. You’re working with the aliens, aren’t you? Just like the ISIS terrorists they’re using as foot soldiers, except you’re clearly an American traitor.”
“ISIS? No, they just call themselves ‘The Caliphate.’ Look, it’s been a three-year trip. Unfortunately, listening to their propaganda daily was mandatory. The same with learning the predominant ancient languages.”
He shook his head at the blank faces around him. He tugged at the loose folds on Kat’s suit. “You should damn well know they’re human. Didn’t you look at the body as you stole his armor? The Islamic State and all the other Jihadis are the ancestors of these guys. The Caliphate isn’t recruiting anyone. They’re just welcoming home their forefathers.”
Buzz saw fire cut him off. Kat took a knee and raised her weapon, but there was no need. With so many captured weapons at their disposal, the outgoing fire from each doorway drowned out the incoming. In moments, the enemy’s fire collapsed altogether.
Dore seized their prisoner by the collar and shoved him towards the nearest hatch. “Enough stalling. Lead the way to the bridge or you die here.”
He stared off into space again and closed his eyes. Dore prodded his old-fashioned rifle muzzle into the guy’s neck. “Why do you keep doing that? If you’re using some sort of communication device, we’ll see if those nanobots can regrow a missing sk
ull.”
“Will you stop distracting me? Do you want to get out of here or… ah ha! Finally.” He twitched one eye and rolled the other. “You, I mean we, will never make it to the command deck if they can track us. I just convinced the ship’s Artificial Intelligence to run a comprehensive diagnostics routine on the internal surveillance sensors. That should buy us at least five minutes until the system reboots. Until then, the Caliphate’s blind.”
“Is that right? And just how did you do that?”
He tapped a small mole on the back of his neck. “Through my neural implant, of course. Should I tap on a keyboard like some type of Neanderthal?”
Dore dropped his weapon. “Whatever. Where the hell is the command center?”
He pointed at the deck above. “Two levels up and one hundred meters that way. It’s a huge room. Can’t miss it, but—”
Dore waved him off. “Let’s move people. Give me three wedges with five-meter spacing. I want the Spetsnaz team on point. Since you’ve killed the most enemy fighters so far, ya’ll earned the privilege.”
“Wait!” Everyone ignored their odd detainee as they stacked on the nearest wall. With a sigh, he blinked at the wall and strutted over. Kat jumped back as a ten-foot section of the smooth surface flickered to life.
Their strange guide swatted several soldiers out of the way with a gentle swipe of his freakishly strong backhand. He never touched the 4-D map screen the wall now displayed, but somehow rotated the view by tilting his head.
“Look, we’re here.” The screen centered on a cluster of red dots. “And there’s the ‘bridge,’ as you call it. I think even you people can figure out what all these blue spots represent. If that’s not a trap, then I don’t know what is.”
Dore nodded with newfound respect. “What about the ship’s power plant?”
The Caliphate Invasion Page 28