Alice grinned. “Oh, they were little more than composite shells,” she said, remembering the landing pod she’d seen during training. “They could get down to a planetary surface, true, but they couldn’t get up again. There was no way they could get off the ground, let alone climb out of a gravity well. Anyone who was sent down had to wait for pickup. And sometimes their ...”
She reminded herself, sharply, that Travers was not trained for combat operations. “They were only used in combat once,” she said, instead of what she’d intended to say. “And they were quite successful.”
Travers sucked in a breath. “They were like colonial dumpsters?”
Alice nodded. Some bright spark - she thought he was British, although she wasn’t sure - had hit on the idea of using immense landing pods to land everything a colony would need in one or two craft. The giant dumpsters could be unloaded, then converted into living quarters that would suffice until the colonists built homes for themselves. She’d always considered the concept crude, but she had to admit it was a simple solution to a complex problem. Besides, it was cheap. It would be a long time before even Britannia or Washington built orbital towers of their own. Until then, the colonists were dependent on shuttles to get supplies down to the surface.
“It’s the same basic idea,” she said. “And it worked, more or less.”
She gave him a considering look. “Try and get some sleep,” she told him. “It will make the time pass quicker.”
Travers looked as if sleep was the last thing on his mind, but closed his eyes anyway. Alice watched him for a long moment, grimly aware that he wasn’t actually sleeping, then brought up her suit’s eReader. There wasn’t much else to do on the shuttle, save for sleeping and waiting and she didn’t feel like sleep either. She skimmed four chapters of her latest book before finally giving up and closing her eyes. Moments later - it felt like moments, even though her timer insisted that she’d been asleep for six hours - she jerked awake. The shuttle was approaching the atmosphere.
And Travers is snoring like a pro, she thought, as she glanced at him. Hopefully, he’ll stay asleep until we hit the ground.
She checked his suit’s telltales, just to make sure he was fine, then reached out and pushed his visor into place. It had always struck her as a pointless precaution - anything that killed the shuttle while it was in flight would kill everyone onboard before they even knew they were under attack - but it might make the difference between life and death. The shuttle’s hull was strong, compared to its predecessors, yet there was a slight chance it would spring a leak during the landing. She checked, out of habit, the distance between herself and the egress. If the shit really did hit the fan, she’d have to grab a sleeping Travers and run.
I’d have to grab him anyway, she reminded herself. He isn’t checked out on emergency escape procedures either.
She felt a flicker of sympathy, combined with irritation. She’d leant to dread emergency escape drills too, even though she knew the drills were reasonably safe. Landing in the pool was embarrassing, and the taunts from her fellows were merciless, but it beat jumping into interplanetary space and hoping for the best. The odds of survival were poor. Jumping out in a planetary atmosphere wasn’t much better. They’d be easy to track as they plummeted towards the ground.
“I need a piss,” Corporal Hammersmith called.
“Go in the suit, you stupid bastard,” Sergeant Radcliffe snapped. “And if you’ve disconnected yourself because you wanted a wank, I’ll tear your ...”
Alice hid her amusement with an effort. The combat suits were supposed to be more uncomfortable for the men than the women, something that had always struck her as curious. She was the only female marine on active service and, as far as she knew, there weren’t many other women who were required to wear combat suits. Logically, the suits should have been designed for men, with women as an afterthought. Perhaps someone had been looking to the future, she thought. The toilet system - something else that, for some unaccountable reason, was left out of the recruitment brochures - was technically unisex.
Her lips quirked at the thought. The designer had probably wanted to make everyone uncomfortable ...
The shuttle shuddered, slightly, as it hit the upper edge of the planetary atmosphere. A faint sound echoed through the hull, a sound that made a shiver run down her spine. The hull was fine, Alice told herself firmly. There was no reason to panic. And yet, she felt helpless. There was nothing she could do to save her life. They were in the hands of the pilots - and the engineers who’d built the shuttle. She gritted her teeth as the craft shook again. Years ago, she’d been told, engineers had been forced to fly the shuttles they’d designed. She doubted it was true - engineers were hardly expendable - but she wanted to believe it. She wanted to know that the designers had every reason to make sure their craft were safe.
You’re a marine, she thought. The shuttle shook again, as if it had been slapped by an angry god. Safe isn’t in the job description.
Travers started awake. “What ... what ...?”
“We hit the planet’s atmosphere,” Alice said. She linked into the sensors, long enough to confirm that the shuttle had entered safely and was heading towards the ground. It felt as if they were dropping alarmingly fast, but she knew better. A rapid transit through the atmosphere might leave a heat trail for the aliens to follow. “We’ll be down soon.”
The shuttle shook again, violently. Travers snapped up his visor and looked around, desperately. Alice opened her mouth to order him to put the visor back down, then changed her mind as Travers threw up. She looked away, granting him what little privacy she could as he emptied his stomach. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen worse. What was a little vomit compared to blood and gore.
“Sorry,” Travers stammered, hacking and coughing. “I ...”
“Don’t worry about it,” Alice told him, firmly. The shuttle lurched as it entered the lower atmosphere. She motioned for him to snap his visor back into place. “There isn’t a person here who hasn’t thrown up once or twice.”
But they did it in the landing simulators, she added, silently. The marine recruits wouldn’t have survived the first week of training if they got seasick, let alone airsick. Their training included all sorts of tricks to catch recruits who might not be able to keep their stomachs under control, although there were limits. The acceleration simulator eventually made everyone throw up. They didn’t do it on deployment.
She muttered reassuring nonsense to him as the shuttle dropped lower and lower, all the while keeping her eye on the live feed from the sensors. It was local twilight, hopefully making it harder for the natives to spot anything unusual within their skies. Alice had been told that daylight made it easier to spot the landing craft, stealthed or not, while night carried the risk of accidentally being illuminated, but she wasn’t sure she bought the logic. The shuttle wasn’t lit up like an alien mothership from a low-budget movie.
And besides, for all we know, the natives have eyes that can see in the dark, she thought, morbidly. Her training had included a long section on how aliens had their strengths and weaknesses. The Tadpoles had been terrible at fighting on the ground - their infantry tactics had sucked shit through a straw, according to her instructors - but they’d been lethal in space and no one wanted to fight a Tadpole underwater. They might even have powers we don’t understand.
The ground came up at terrifying speed. She braced herself, a second before the shuttle crashed down to earth. Travers let out a whimper, seconds after the craft had hit the ground and stopped. Alice motioned for him to stay where he was as the hatches slammed open, allowing the marines to jump up and race out of the shuttle. Air flowed into the craft, her sensors rapidly assessing that it was safe to breathe. Alice allowed herself a moment of relief. She’d expected viral matter floating in the air. That would have forced them to stay in their suits more or less permanently.
But we keep the bloody masks on anyway, she thought. There’s no way to be sur
e, yet.
“Clear,” Sergeant Radcliffe called. “You may disembark now.”
I’m a bloody passenger, Alice thought, as she undid her straps and stood. And I’m a babysitter too.
She stepped through the hatch, Travers dogging her heels like an overgrown puppy. It was darkening rapidly outside, the skyline so completely dark that she found herself feeling a little disoriented before she remembered that the natives didn’t have anything resembling electric lighting. Britain hadn’t been so dark for centuries, even when the planet had been bombarded and power outages - the first in two hundred years - had plagued the entire country. She looked from side to side, silently assessing the landing site. There was no hint that they’d landed anywhere near a native settlement.
Town, she thought, as she walked around the shuttle. They’re native to this world.
“There’s grass here,” Travers said. He’d already removed his mask. “Grass and trees and ...”
“Grass-analogues,” Alice said, curtly. Her sensors insisted the air was safe to breathe, but she was still reluctant to open her suit. “Don’t assume it’s anything like its earthly counterpart.”
She sighed, then removed her helmet. The night air was warm, scented with something that - oddly - reminded her of growing up on the farm. She looked around, reminding herself that she couldn’t take anything for granted. Evolution seemed determined to fill all the niches it could, even on worlds that hadn’t developed intelligent life. Earthly plants might not do well, if they were introduced to Alien-3. A life-bearing world wasn’t always welcoming to food crops from another world.
“So,” Travers said. He sounded happier, now they were on the ground. Alice didn’t have the heart to tell him they’d probably been safer on the shuttle. “When are we going to meet the aliens?”
“We’re going to watch the aliens,” Alice said. The briefing had made it clear that there was a good chance the alien natives were infected. She shuddered to think of what might have happened to them, over the years. The entire planet might be a deadly trap. “But first, we have to set up camp.”
Sergeant Radcliffe banished the specialists back to the shuttle, just in case one of them had the bright idea to ramble off into the countryside, then directed the marines in erecting camouflage netting over the shuttle and setting up basic defences. Alice was relieved to be doing something with the marines, even if it wasn’t as exciting as boarding an enemy starship. The remote sensors, linked to the shuttle through concealed wires, should hopefully provide warning if the aliens started to move towards them. Alice hoped they’d be enough, although she had her doubts. There was no way they could defend the shuttle against a serious assault - or a KEW, dropped from orbit.
But they’ll want to take us alive, so we can be infected, she told herself. She tried not to think about the suicide device concealed in one of her teeth. She’d have to make damn sure she used it before she was infected again or there would be no second escape. She and her platoon would be infected and turned into mindless slaves. And then we can satisfy their curiosity about how we got here.
Sergeant Radcliffe reminded them, time and time again, not to use their transmitters unless it was urgent. The boffins might claim that the low-power microbursts were undetectable, but no one cared to test that theory in the field. A single transmission might go unnoticed if there were a number of high-power transmitters in the area, yet there were no radio stations on Alien-3. Even the alien installation several hundred miles to the south didn’t seem to be pumping out more than a handful of signals. Alice had no idea why the virus hadn’t bothered to modernise the planet, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered, as long as they were on the ground, was staying alive and completing the mission.
“We’ll head towards the alien settlement tomorrow morning,” Sergeant Radcliffe said, once the shuttle was concealed. They made one last sweep around it, just to be sure the shuttle was well-hidden, then slipped under the netting. “Until then, we’ll get some rest.”
He detailed a trio of marines to stand watch, with orders to wake the rest of the platoon if anything happened, then directed the remainder to go to sleep. Alice had half-hoped to sleep under the night sky, but she was ordered into the shuttle with two-thirds of the platoon. She wasn’t quite a marine any longer, she told herself, even though she wasn’t a helpless civvy either. Travers was snoring again, she noted, as she lay down beside him. Two of the other specialists were wide awake. They’d regret it in the morning.
Because we’ll be hiking cross-country and praying we don’t get spotted, Alice thought, remembering some of her first training exercises. They’d been shown, the hard way, just how easy it was to be spotted and tracked from orbit. The training platoon had read about high-altitude drones - and orbiting stealth satellites - but they hadn’t really comprehended what it meant. And if the aliens see anything out of place, they might send a team to investigate.
She pushed the thought aside as she closed her eyes and concentrated. They were on an alien world, something that fascinated and terrified her in equal measure, but she needed her beauty sleep. The following day was going to be very busy, even for the people who stayed with the shuttle. She mentally checked a list of things she needed to do, then drew on her training and forced herself to relax.
But, no matter what she did, it felt like hours before she managed to get to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-One
The following day dawned bright and clear, reminding Alice - once again - of happy days on the family farm. She couldn’t help feeling wistful as she relieved herself and checked her gear, although the ration bar was a far cry from the meals her grandmother had made when she was a child. The older woman had insisted on growing as much as possible for herself, something that had probably kept her grandchildren healthy during the war and the rationing that had followed afterwards. Alice felt an odd pang as she walked around the concealed shuttle, then met up with the remainder of her party. Travers looked oddly pleased to be finally heading away from the shuttle.
“Remember, avoid all contact with the natives,” Sergeant Radcliffe said, curtly. “And, if contact is unavoidable, don’t let them have a chance to follow us back to the shuttle.”
Alice kept her thoughts to herself as the party set out, heading west. Sergeant Radcliffe was right - he’d stated regulations that had been set in stone ever since humanity had realised that it wasn’t alone in the universe - but she had her doubts. The aliens presumably knew their planet far better than the human intruders. There was a good chance that they could follow the party back to the shuttle, if they realised the party was there. And then ... Alice didn’t know what would happen then, but she doubted it would be good. Even uninfected, the natives might object to the intrusion. And an engagement would certainly draw attention from orbit.
She kept a wary eye on Travers and the others, but - somewhat to her surprise - Travers was holding up fairly well. The xenospecialist was so keen to see the aliens, if only from a safe distance, that he was practically lunging forward, even though the marines knew to pace themselves during a long march. There was nothing to be gained by running as though the hounds of hell were after them. Alice smiled to herself, then kept walking. It felt good to finally stretch her legs after being cooped up in the ship. She just wished she felt better about not wearing her suit.
But it would be far more noticeable if the virus was looking down from orbit, Alice thought, as they pressed on. In theory, none of the alien stations or ships were in position to see them; in practice, there was no way to be entirely sure. We have to be very careful.
She had to smile as some of the civvies - she had to remind herself that they weren’t really civvies, even though they weren’t marines - started to grumble about how large the planet was and how far they had to walk. It made a certain kind of sense, she supposed; Alien-3, or Earth, was tiny on an interstellar scale, but still unimaginably huge compared to a mere human. The spacefarers simply didn’t grasp that the thirty miles ma
rch across Dartmoor - a requirement that all prospective marines had to meet if they wanted to qualify for active service - might have looked like no distance at all from orbit, but was a very long way indeed for anyone who had to actually walk from one end of the moor to the other. Sergeant Radcliffe glared at any marine who looked as if he would make a smart remark, then offered encouraging advice to the civvies. Alice was impressed at how well he handled them. She doubted she would have been so polite.
They’re not marines, she thought, wryly. They’re probably not used to what passes for encouragement during a route march.
They stopped for a brief lunch, hidden under the trees, then resumed the march. Alice kept a wary eye on the local vegetation - she’d seen videos of plants that attacked anything that came near - but saw nothing to worry her. The biochemists claimed that the vegetation was actually safe to eat, if it was fed into a food processor; Alice - and the remainder of the party - was in no hurry to test the theory. If the biochemist was wrong, the results would be disastrous. Their genetic enhancements might not be able to handle a poisonous alien plant.
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