by P. R. Adams
And it was full of bodies. Parts of bodies. Lots of them.
Stiles couldn’t bear to look at the gore. “We can’t retrieve them.”
“Their ID, if we can find it.” Carruth killed his flashlight and advanced into the room. “I’m reading fifteen tags in here. Looks like the social space. Kitchen, recreation area—I think they were having a party or something.”
“Party?”
“Lots of fluid containers on the table, and I’m guessing this was a cake.”
A party? With dead comrades? Unless that happened after? “That sounds odd.”
“Yeah. And why kill everyone in here? People should’ve been at their stations. Or asleep.”
“There were bodies outside.”
“Yeah, and the one in the shower. But someone dragged it in here. Butchered it in here, I guess. I’m thinking the ones killed outside died first.”
He brushed aside the rime of ice covering a naked torso, then plucked something from the chest.
She turned away. “Could the Azoren have a weapon that would do this?”
“I don’t want to be around to find out.”
Ice cracked again, and whatever he was working on popped.
Lights winked on and off, then came on fully, revealing the gore in more detail. The hallway floor from the intersection to the big room, the base of the walls in the room—there was blood everywhere.
After a second, the buzz in their connection died.
She added Kohn in to the connection. “Petty Officer Kohn?”
“I got it!” The excitement in his voice was palpable.
“How long before you have the systems online and data extracted?”
He waved at her from the intersection. “Not long. Two, three minutes maybe.”
“See if there are any external cameras, like the ones along the ceiling.” She waited until he was out of sight in the communications room again, then tried to add Halliwell. The line showed a weak green that dropped to amber intermittently. “Staff Sergeant Halliwell?”
A burst of static bled into his voice. “—what you were looking for?”
“Say again.”
“I said, did you find what you were looking for?”
“We should soon. Five more minutes.”
“—at’s taking so—ong.”
What’s taking so long? We’re lucky to be this far along. “We’re retrieving ID tags and data. We just brought power up.”
“—em—key—eck—oo—ent.”
His signal was more amber than green. She moved to the intersection. “Repeat. Staff Sergeant Hall—”
“I said Corporal Lemke’s checking out what she thought might be movement.”
Movement? That was the last thing they needed. “Can you call her back?”
“She didn’t go far. I saw—” Halliwell’s signal took on a different hum. “One second.”
Stiles leaned toward the ladder, as if that might enhance the signal.
She nearly jumped at the sound of tapping. It had to be Carruth. She hurried back to him. “Were you trying to call me?”
He looked up from a handful of metal ID tags that glistened red as blood; thawing ice dripped from them. “No, ma’am.”
“I heard tapping.”
“I’ve been checking these tags out. You got a list of names?”
She pulled her command tablet out, brought up the names, and sent those to him. “Were there other tags we missed?”
“Four from the corpses outside, fifteen from in here. You said twenty-one people?”
“Twenty GSA, one SAID.”
“I’ll check the bunk rooms again.”
Stiles returned to the intersection, leaving enough room for Carruth to get past. “Staff Sergeant Halliwell?”
His line was just a hum. Then he was there. Loud. “Lieutenant, something got Corporal Lemke.”
“Got? What—?”
“Torn to pieces. Blood everywhere. I can’t find her head. And there’s another corpse.”
That was twenty. One unaccounted for. “Can you get the ID tag?”
“Already did. Lemke’s, too. What the—?”
“You and Corporal Grier fall back to the hatch. Now.”
The hum grew louder. Gunfire filled the channel. “Something’s moving out there. Fast. I saw it, but it’s gone—”
“Fall back to the hatch. I repeat, fall back to the hatch.”
“Falling back. Corporal Grier—”
The humming drowned him out.
Carruth came out of the generator room. “Nothing. We’re just missing two.”
Stiles nodded distractedly. “One. The thing…”
“Thing? Lieutenant?”
“That got them. It’s up there. It got Corporal Lemke.”
Carruth headed for the ladder. “I’ll—”
“Halliwell and Grier are falling back to the hatch. They—”
Tapping. Stiles heard tapping again. Not over the comms. Behind her. To her left. Down the hall with the bathroom.
Carruth cocked his head. “What?”
She tiptoed to the bathroom, audio input cranked as high as it could go. The hiss played hell with the headache she’d been fighting off since the explosion had rocked the Badger.
But the sound wasn’t coming from the bathroom. It wasn’t coming from the bunk rooms.
Stiles pulled her helmet and mask off and pressed an ear against the cold, hard plaster wall. It was like lying on top of ice. Worse. Her ear went numb, but not before she realized just how rough the outer surface of the wall was. The fast-cure material was easy to work with. You formed bricks using silicone frames, then used more plaster to seal it all up. An amateur could get a smooth surface.
Tap-tap-tap.
It was real, not her imagination.
She studied the wall again. It wasn’t just rough to the touch; the top of it looked unfinished, as if someone couldn’t fully reach it and just slapped plaster up there.
Like the work I did on the handholds at the end of the valley.
Stiles knocked on the wall, and after a second, louder tapping replied.
She spun around. “Sergeant Carruth, what name is missing?”
The sergeant had been watching the ladder. He turned to her. “What?”
“The missing ID tag. Who is it?”
He stared at a wall, probably using it as a good background to view the data projected onto his rebreather mask. “Patel. Srisha Patel. No rank listed.”
Agent Patel’s sister! “You said there were tools? Construction—”
“In the generator room.”
Stiles ran past him. “A sledgehammer? A crowbar?”
“Yeah.” He followed her.
She handed him the sledgehammer and took the crowbar, then tossed it aside and took a mallet and chisel. The sergeant seemed to realize what she had in mind and raced ahead of her.
He set his weapon down, then struck the wall. “Someone’s in here?”
“I think so.” She went after a section away from his blows, hammering the chisel gently until she had some confidence with it.
Halliwell was in her ear. “Lieutenant, whatever’s up here, I hit it. I know I hit it. It didn’t slow down, not that I can see. I think it ran away.”
Stiles didn’t stop hammering. The wall was crumbling away in chunks. Each blow was a sharp, piercing spike into her brain. She cranked down the audio intake. “Are you at the hatch?”
“Yes.”
“Come down the ladder. Both of you.”
There was a big enough gap in the wall that Stiles could see something—someone moving on the other side. It was like a huge bundle of blankets. More hammering, more chunks falling away, and the blankets backed up. The red light from the flare reflected off a rebreather mask.
Stiles tossed the chisel aside and struck the wall wherever it looked weakest after each of Carruth’s blows.
A large section buckled, and after another blow, there was a big enough gap for the other person to
climb out, but they didn’t.
Stiles ran her flashlight across the room: another bathroom, with shower and sink and toilet. There were several rebreather masks and tanks on the floor. Buckets of the plaster, and a plaster-coated trowel. Food packets littered the near corner, and farther in, what looked like a pile of electronic gear.
The form was now huddled in the shower. It was wrapped in layers of blankets—
The messy bunk room! There hadn’t been blankets!
Stiles pulled her facemask off again. The cold was a slap against her flesh. “Srisha?”
The form’s head came up. It nodded.
“Hurry. We need to go. Your brother sent us to get you.”
The words sounded so selfish and pathetic when spoken without context, but seeing the form crawl from the shower and stumble to the opening, Stiles understood at least a little of the value of what they were doing. Still, there was a painful pettiness coming into Azoren space, probably provoking a war, leaving who knew how many dead on both sides, all for a senior SAID agent’s sister. No one would ever come for the other dead. They were just ID tags.
Only retrieving the data could possibly make up for the losses suffered.
Carruth helped the other person—a big-eyed young woman with dusky skin and black hair was all Stiles could see through the facemask—down the hall to the intersection. It had to be Srisha. The sergeant had his mask pressed against hers, and his channel was still open: Did she have enough oxygen? Did she need thermals? Could she run?
He was surprisingly gentle and caring for a trained killer.
Stiles maneuvered past them and rushed into the comm center, where Kohn was madly typing away, face hovering over a keypad that rested on the fold-down table anchored to the wall to the right of the door.
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Status?”
“Um. Another minute? They must have launched the wipe program before shutting power off, because most of the storage is blanked out. Unless it’s automated.”
“It is.”
“So—” He held up a small storage device. “—I’ve been pulling these up to find the ones that have data on them. Not a good design to wipe the online storage but leave these untouched.”
“There’s supposed to be an explosives system.”
“Explosives?”
“For cleanup. It wipes out forensic evidence.”
“In here?”
“Somewhere. Usually close to the equipment, just to be sure.”
“Oh.” He sounded wounded.
She squeezed past him, to the long rack of gear that was almost flush with the left wall. Almost. But she could squeeze through. There was a small space—maybe a meter wide—on the other side of the rack. On the same wall the fold-out table was anchored to, a panel hung open, revealing a small, deep closet. Satchel charges were pressed against the closet walls, but something had torn what she assumed was the detonator from them. Cables ran from some sort of relay device, out the doorway and into the hallway.
That was how Patel knew the compound had been compromised. The detonation would have triggered a transponder to give the all-clear signal.
Whatever had attacked knew enough about their technology to disable things in just the right order.
Could it have been the Azoren after all?
When she came back around, Kohn kicked a backpack out from under the equipment. “I thought we could carry the devices in here.”
She opened it and began stuffing in the devices he’d already identified. “Sergeant Carruth, you know something about demolitions?”
“A bit.”
“I’ll need your help in here.”
“Let me pass Agent Patel off to Halliwell.”
It sounded odd hearing Srisha called by the same name as her brother.
Kohn handed more devices to Stiles. “Almost done.”
She stuffed them into the backpack. The devices were sturdy, but she searched around for something to pad them from banging into each other.
Carruth squeezed into the room. “You need something to go boom?”
Stiles led him to the gap between the rack and wall.
He exhaled. “That’s gonna be fun.” When he reached the closet, he turned back to her. “Really?”
“Can you fix it?”
He disappeared in the small room. “Shit! Were they planning to level this entire part of the planet?”
“Ideally.”
“Yeah, well—” He came back to the narrow opening and handed one of the satchels through. “Not with that one.”
“What’s the matter with it?”
“Whoever tore this up, they left that one as a little surprise gift. The wiring’s hot.” He pointed to a device inside the pouch. “That button right there? It’s all activated. Hook it back up to the rest, and it all goes up immediately. Right now. No remote detonation, just a nanosecond of regret and lots of bits and pieces of what used to be.”
“What do you want me to do with this?”
“I dunno. Throw it at the slaughter thing running around up there.”
She turned the bag around, suddenly anxious. “Throwing detonates it?”
“Press that button I showed you, you get a few seconds, then—”
Halliwell backed up to the doorway. “Lieutenant! We’ve got a visitor!”
Stiles pushed past Kohn, barely noticing that he was tugging the backpack with the storage devices from her hand. She was about to ask where the thing was, but then she saw it…
A sliver of darkness at the top of the ladder, with the vaguest shape of a head turning toward them, toward her, then the comm center.
And where eyes should be, a row of diamond glitters flashed.
Like a hunter when it has its prey.
24
High-pitched and fast-cycling—the distinct whine of the Azoren guns was a constant sound that Benson could make out, louder and clearer by the minute. Her Marines were doing what they could, taking shots when targets became available, which wasn’t often. On the south wall, the Azoren were still sticking to cover, and on the north wall…
The soldiers in the stealth suits were making their way down into the crater, and it was confusing the turret weapon. Once the soldiers were farther away from the sensors, targeting them became almost impossible.
Benson made her way north, to the spots where Fero’s Marines had taken cover among the debris and ruin of crashed ships.
Six main positions were spread out in a crude semicircle. Cargo crates, mangled gear, metal panels, the framework of seats—anything that could provide cover had been set out for the Marines to hide behind or under. Between each of those improvised positions, there was a four- or five- meter gap, enough to protect against a grenade or other light explosive taking out two groups. Fortunately, there had only been two grenades launched into the crater, and those had failed to reach the Marines.
But there were so few of those Marines now.
With each casualty, a technician or sailor was sent as a replacement. As big as the gap was between Gadreau’s Marines and Fero’s, the drop in capabilities among the non-combatants was worse.
Yet those men and women could fire weapons, too.
Or they could provide enough distraction to draw weapons fire from the Marines.
The operation objective wasn’t to wipe out the Azoren but to buy time. How much time? Benson wished she knew. She wasn’t going to contact Stiles, not yet. Her mission was probably tough enough without distraction. When the GSA officer was ready, she could call back.
Then what?
They would have to figure it out when the time came.
Bullets sparked across the rightmost position on the north side—a mound of fire-blackened skeletal seat frames and warped panels taken from her own shuttle. A second later, someone called for the doctor over the open channel. One of the Marines was a red signal on the tactical system overlay, and a technician—Lucas, a young mother of three—alternated between a deep ruby and black.
Another of the support team—a cook from the Marie Belle named Darnold—followed. Benson remembered thinking his dusky cheeks were as smooth as the Azoren’s. He tumbled to the ground a few meters shy of the opening the doctor had disappeared into, and Benson thought the cook might have been hit by gunfire, but he got back up and threw himself at the opening.
They needed to turn things around, or there would be no place for Stiles’s team to fall back to.
With the Azoren on the south wall not really descending any deeper into the crater, Gadreau’s Marines were doing better. Yet he was showing no interest in helping Fero’s people out.
The captain simply wasn’t a team player. If the north side of the crater fell, his people were just as dead as everyone else.
Benson connected to him over a closed channel. “Captain Gadreau, we’re losing the northern defenses.”
He snorted. “I warned you about Fero and her people.”
“They’re our people.”
“My people are holding the line, Commander.”
If Fero’s people failed, they all failed, but she wasn’t going to argue with him over the comms. Instead, she disconnected and hopped back toward the gun turret, which had gone silent. Parkinson was inside, swapping out another empty drum.
He was holding up well, proving that he could handle the stress—not just to her but to himself.
Benson leaned in. “Chief, need any help?”
He jerked his head toward the dead Marines. “We’ve got it.”
She smiled. He really was making progress. “Stay with it.”
With the Azoren now lower on the walls, the shuttles provided cover even with her slow pace. She came around the last of the shuttles and took in the view. There were flashes along the north wall as the Azoren took their shots, and every now and then a round sparked off a shuttle or one of the improvised positions, but the two battles couldn’t have been more different.
Gadreau was in the center defensive position, about twenty meters away. She hunched low and made what speed she could toward him.
Now there were bullets. They cracked all around her. She gave the enemy a target, something more than Marines dug in and hidden. It must have been frustrating, firing at an enemy that didn’t really offer a meaningful profile.