Shadow Play

by P. R. Adams

  She dropped at the back of the position and dragged herself to cover. “Captain!”

  Gadreau turned. There was enough of a glow from other lights inside the position that she could see the wild look in his eyes. “I’ve got this under control, Commander.”

  “You do. And that’s why I want you to send a team to help hold the north.”

  “That’s Fero’s position.”

  “It’s the north wall. It’s where the greater threat is.”

  “Fero can handle it. Right?”

  “I wouldn’t be here if that were the case.”

  He turned his eyes to the small opening he’d been firing out of. “I don’t have the Marines to spare.”

  “Find them, Captain. Or I will.”

  The captain spun around and leaned into her until his helmet was touching hers. “Look around you! I’ve only got a handful left!”

  “Three Marines, Captain. Pick them.”

  An angry sneer twisted Gadreau’s face. “I’ll send them across.”

  “Thank you.”

  Benson pushed back from cover and got to her feet again. She was getting the hang of hustling on the glassy surface now, but it meant keeping her legs wider apart than was comfortable with her injuries. Still, she didn’t fall, and she was able to move quickly enough that the Azoren couldn’t get a clean shot on her.

  When she came around the front of the shuttle that separated her from the gun turret, she paused. Something had caught her eye, and she was learning to trust her instincts when that happened.

  She squinted and ran her head left to right the way she’d seen Gadreau search for movement.

  There was another form, barely perceptible, moving along the edge of the defensive position holding the turret gun. She realized now what had caught her eye: something suspended in the air, something not fully hidden by the suit.

  It looked like an explosives pack.

  They want that gun taken out.

  She could try to drop to a knee and sight in on where it appeared the Azoren soldier might be, or she could get closer and make the shot count.

  Benson pulled her pistol and rushed forward, hoping she wasn’t as loud as she felt.

  The thing suspended in the air moved along the wall, closer to the opening.

  There wasn’t going to be a clean shot, and if she waited, it would be too late.

  She didn’t worry anymore about making noise or about slipping. Little stutter steps became actual strides. Her knee shot fiery bolts up her leg and into her gut.

  The Azoren soldier was nearing the entry, maybe a meter out.

  He could throw it. The gun would be destroyed.

  She waved her arm, hoping to draw its attention.

  The suspended thing stopped moving, then moved again, as if hauled back.

  He’s activating it and readying for a toss!

  The commander fired. Sparks flared on the wall of containers.

  The device—now clearly an explosives pack—arced to the entry and bounced off it and onto the ground.

  Benson fired again, and this time the hazy form shifted. Had she hit it?

  No, it was raising its assault rifle and falling back!

  She fired until the firing pin no longer hammered against a bullet.

  The Azoren soldier returned fire, but he seemed to be staggering backwards. His shots were wide.

  He was trying to get away from the imminent explosion.

  Benson slammed into the entry, nearly knocking a container free. A dim light glowed from inside the explosives pack.

  She yanked it up by the handle and threw it is far up and away as she could, then dropped.

  Just as the device detonated.

  The concussive force pushed her against the stone and knocked the wind from her lungs. The containers closest to the explosion fell inward, burying the dead Marines.

  Worse, the gun had gone silent.

  Major Fero was in Benson’s ear. “They’re off the wall, Commander! Coming—”

  The connection died.

  The major’s signal went a deep red, then black.

  Benson pushed up, head throbbing. Sour acid burned the back of her throat and stung her sinuses.

  She took a second to see if the Azoren bomber was still in sight and caught steam rising a few meters out from the little improvised bunker that had protected the gun.

  That was something.

  “Commander?” Parkinson had a drum up to his chest. Sweat fogged his mask.

  “A demolitions charge. You okay?”

  “I guess?”

  “Perimeter’s overrun. This gun needs better targeting. Can you get that probe running again, Chief?”

  He tugged the spent drum free and swapped in a fresh one, caught his breath, then reached behind him and pulled his backpack around to his chest. The VR helmet and computing brick settled onto his lap. “I can try. I sure could use something to…keep me going.”

  “I’ll call the doctor, but you need to hurry. Or we’re all dead.”

  Stiles’s breath was hot and loud. Her heart pounded in her chest, beating so loud that she was sure the Marines around her could hear it, even if they didn’t turn their attention from the jet-black form. Grier was immediately below the thing that was dangling from the top of the ladder, maybe a half meter away in the narrow hallway, yet Stiles was sure it must be looking directly at her. How bright she would be if it could see fear…

  Halliwell trained his gun on the thing and waved Grier back. “Toni, back up here slowly. Lieutenant, it knows it’s got us trapped down here.”

  Black as an abyss, with a glistening reminiscent of silicone, the thing twisted and dropped like a sinuous snake, but thin limbs shot out. Slender hands caught the ladder sides. Supple legs braced in the same way, braking its descent effortlessly about halfway down the ladder. Its wedge-shaped head bobbed up and down slowly.

  Stiles backed up and bumped into something—Srisha. The young woman was frozen in place, eyes locked on the—

  What was it? Not Azoren. Not human.

  Something one of the forerunners had created? Something that had come seeking them out?

  Halliwell pushed Grier behind him, nearly sending her into Stiles. “Lieutenant?”

  Stiles felt around. Where was her carbine? In the hall. She’d set it down to break through the wall. “Shoot it?”

  “I did. It didn’t seem to notice.”

  “Was it this close?”

  “Toni?”

  Grier brought her carbine up. “Ready.”

  The thing considered them with its diamond eyes. There was a definite sense of malice and…mischievousness about it, even with the serpent-like nature of its body language. It seemed to be toying with them.

  Like a cat playing with a mouse. That was the terminology Stiles had heard used before. Animals from Earth, predator and prey, one so far above the other that it took a wicked delight in terrifying and injuring before murdering the poor animal it might not even eat.

  Halliwell exhaled. “On three. One, two—”

  The thing’s legs released from the ladder, flipping over so that if it had a spine, it should have snapped. The legs dropped to the floor, then the hands released their grip on the ladder.

  Nothing remotely human could have done what it did. Bones would have dislocated. Ligaments and tendons would have torn.

  And it had all happened so fast that Stiles barely registered the big change…

  Its human-like hands had hooked into claws. Huge claws. Wicked claws.

  “—three!”

  Halliwell fired. Short bursts: one, two, a third.

  Grier joined him, getting a tight burst in before the thing leapt back up onto the ladder and another before it disappeared back through the hatch.

  The staff sergeant sprinted to the bottom of the ladder and fired a burst through the opening. “Shit.”

  Grier was at his side, weapon raised. “No blood.”

  “I know.”

  “Point bla
nk. No fucking way I missed. No blood.”

  Halliwell kept his eyes on the hatch opening but dropped into a squat. He ran a hand over the floor, then glanced down quickly. “Dry. No blood. No pieces of armor or flesh. No machinery.” He ran a hand along the plaster wall. “No holes. We hit it.”

  “What the fuck is that? What can do that, huh?”

  Stiles’s stomach knotted. “Something from the forerunners.”

  That caught Halliwell’s attention. “Not the Azoren, right?”

  “No. These ruins, they predate the Azoren.”

  Srisha muttered something.

  Stiles pressed her facemask against the other woman’s. “What?”

  The SAID agent said, “It can’t be stopped. We shot it. Like you. Shot it point blank.”

  “We need something heavier.” Stiles held up the explosives pack. “A demolition charge?”

  Halliwell pulled Grier back from the hatch. “You saw how fast it was.”

  “So we make it sticky. Catch it in cables. Maybe fire. Electricity. Something.”

  “We need to get out of here, Lieutenant, and it knows it.”

  Stiles edged to the open doorway. “Petty Officer Kohn? How much longer?”

  He held up the backpack he’d taken from her. “Done.”

  “Good.” She waved him out. “Sergeant Carruth?”

  The Marine poked his head around the corner. “This is a mess. I don’t know if I can get it re-wired.”

  “Then we abandon it.” Stiles hefted the explosives. “We make a run for the Badger. If it comes after us, we toss this at it.”

  Grier snorted. “Up there? It’ll just jump away. The ruins, there’s cover.”

  Halliwell nodded. “We go up there, we’re dead.”

  Stiles bowed her head. “Staying down here isn’t an option. We have to blow this place.”

  Kohn looked past her, down the long hallway. “Is there another way out?”

  “No. Just—” Rooms with sealed-up walls. She turned to Patel. “Srisha, those walled-off storage rooms, what was beyond the walls before you built them?”

  The young agent shrugged. “A big, open space.”

  “Empty? Full of things?”

  “Debris. Lots of debris. But there was a set of stairs. We didn’t want to take a chance someone could sneak in that way.”

  Halliwell grunted. “I don’t recall an opening up there.”

  Grier shook her head. “Nothing.”

  Stiles had to rely on the Marines. Scouting wasn’t something she’d been trained to do. If they said there was no opening, that meant they would need to make one. And the explosive pack seemed ideal for that.

  She craned her neck around the door to the comms room. “Sergeant Carruth, we’re going to look for a way out. I’m leaving a couple people here to watch the hatch. If you get the explosives rigged, call me immediately.”

  “Will do, Lieutenant.” The frustrated tone in the sergeant’s voice didn’t give her much hope.

  Stiles led Halliwell and Kohn to where she and Carruth had knocked down the wall, noticing for the first time the way the blood trail ran up to the torn-down wall. When they’d gathered the tools, she picked up her weapon and took them to the storage room on the left side of the long hallway.

  She rapped her knuckles on the plaster wall. “If we’re wrong, and there’s an opening to the outside, then we’re giving this thing a second way in.”

  Halliwell shrugged. “We’re not wrong.”

  “Fine.” She showed them the detonator Carruth had showed her. “But if we do, this is what we need to give the thing if it tries to come in. Press the button, and you’ve got a few seconds.”

  “And if this open area leads to stairs that don’t go anywhere, you want to use that to blow a hole and make a run for it?”

  Kohn’s back bowed, as if he took offense to Halliwell challenging her.

  Stiles fought back a smile. It was a cute gesture. “Do you have any better ideas, Staff Sergeant?”

  The big man hefted the sledgehammer. “I don’t think there are any good ideas, ma’am. So I guess we’ll do what we can.”

  “Good.”

  When Halliwell struck the wall, she patted Kohn’s back. She wanted him to believe they had a chance, that they could make it back to the Badger and seal up inside it until help came.

  But in her gut, Stiles felt the same sense of dread she’d heard in the staff sergeant’s voice.

  There were no good ideas right then. Everything pointed to defeat.

  And they were all going to die.

  25

  Whirring caught Benson’s attention. She gave Parkinson a reassuring pat and stepped out of the improvised shelter to watch the turret weapon. It was caught in a loop—grinding sharply all the way to the west wall, then to the eastern edge of the north wall, then to the center point. The sensors were picking up movement in the pitch black, but it wasn’t enough for the weapon system to get lock-on. On the display at the base of the weapon control panel, instead of individual soldiers here and there to contend with, there were multiple blips, some present for an instant, then gone, others just weak glows.

  Something had triggered the Azoren. They were flooding in from the north and some were moving along the south wall as well.

  It was too much. Her people couldn’t hold.

  She ducked her head into the shelter. “Chief, any luck?”

  Parkinson could only manage a grunt. The drugs he’d received earlier were wearing off, and the blood loss was taking its toll. “Launched.”

  Launched. That didn’t tell her how long before the probe would be overheard or whether it was going to interface with the weapons system. If the chief passed out, would she be able to take over?

  That didn’t seem very likely. She needed him operational.

  She stepped away from the shelter. “Commander Dietrich? You out there?”

  “I’m coming!”

  His signal lurched closer from the east, where he’d apparently been huddled inside the cargo container that had held the Badger. A burst of gunfire from somewhere to the north of that area seemed to drive the doctor back.

  She checked her carbine. “Dietrich, you okay?”

  “There’s a shooter out there! He nearly got me.”

  “To the north?”

  “I think so. I saw a flash, then bullets struck the wall.”

  “Not much cover in that direction.” She stepped away from the improvised bunker and swung her head left to right, like Gadreau had. It seemed to help picking out oddities and movement. “East of our defensive positions?”

  “What?”

  “The improvised shelters our Marines are hiding—”

  “Yes, yes! I suppose so. You don’t plan to use me as—”

  She brought the weapon up and sighted on what she thought might be a blur in the black of perpetual night. The form was low, like someone squatting on one knee. “We have one chance to survive, Doctor, and that’s getting the probe overhead. If Chief Parkinson passes out, we’ll lose that chance.”

  “I’m a physician! Bringing me along on this mission was—”

  “Give the shooter just a hint. Just a shoulder. Or sprint.”

  “I will not!”

  “Lives are at stake, or doesn’t that matter to you?”

  Dietrich hissed. “You’re a damned manipulator, Benson!”

  Despite the complaint, he did as she’d suggested and charged. His steps were uncertain on the icy rock, which sent him forward, arms flailing for balance.

  That probably saved his life.

  Benson caught the muzzle flash, heard the soft pop of a suppressor, then adjusted her sighting and fired.

  The next muzzle flash was higher. She’d hit. The blurry form shifted.

  She fired again. Missed.

  It returned fire, and the bullets cracked off the shuttle behind her.

  There was time to drop prone or to fire again. She fired.

  This time, the blurry form dropp
ed.

  Dietrich was staggering toward her. “Dammit! I’m hit!”

  She caught him when he staggered up to her. “I don’t see any blood.”

  “I think I know what it feels like to be hit, thank you.” He gasped. “Never in my entire career have I ever been wounded before, now you’ve managed to get me killed and…”

  He pushed off from her and stumbled into the improvised shelter.

  Benson swapped in a fresh magazine and watched over the doctor’s shoulder. “He’s been complaining of lightheadedness and—”

  “I told you he’d suffered considerable blood loss. Medicine has its limits.”

  “Then find new medicine. Make new limits.”

  The doctor had his backpack off and was digging around inside. “You do realize that science doesn’t conveniently conform to one’s needs, don’t you?”

  “Whatever does, use that.”

  Dietrich groaned. “You should never have dragged us into this.”

  “You might want to check the record, Doctor. I was given as much choice as you in this mess.”

  “You’re a captain, aren’t you? Learn to say no.”

  She hobbled away from the shelter, listening to the chatter of gunfire. Had Gadreau ever sent the Marines she’d ordered him to send? No. Not according to the tactical display overlaid on her facemask.

  She connected to him. “Captain Gadreau, things are falling apart on the north wall.”

  “We have trouble down here as well.”

  “I directed you to send three—”

  “I don’t have three Marines to spare! They’ve got us pinned down!”

  Gunfire from all around had intensified. It was more the distinctive Azoren weapons than Kedraalian.

  They really were outnumbered now, and Gadreau might be right—moving people around might not matter.

  When Benson checked on the turret weapon control console, the forms along the north wall were moving closer. Many were at or near the bottom of the crater. There were nearly two hundred rounds in the ammunition drum, but they would never fire if target lock-on wasn’t possible.

  A manual override button glowed at the bottom of the display.

  Was that the solution—use the gun manually?