“Mine’s alive, just stunned,” Hammersmith told her. “Do we take him too?”
Alice hesitated, then nodded. If the alien was infected, and she hadn’t seen anything to convince her that the alien town wasn’t infected, killing him would be a mercy. But it would be far too revealing. They’d have to make some hard decisions about what to do with the captives, yet they could wait. The first priority was finding out if they were truly infected.
“Let’s move,” she said, as Hammersmith lifted the alien bodily and slung him over his shoulders. “It’s time to go.”
She concealed the dead alien in the trees, then followed Hammersmith and Tartar back to the camp. The first captive woke up halfway to the camp and started to struggle, but the duct tape resisted all attempts to remove it. Alice allowed herself a moment of relief. They had stronger restraints, but they were designed for humans. She had no idea if they could be modified to hold an alien without causing serious harm.
They have eight legs, she reminded herself, as they stumbled into the camp. We’d have to modify the shackles just to hold them properly.
“Success,” she said. “We caught two of the bastards.”
Travers shot her a sharp look, then bent down to examine the first alien. “Infected,” he said, after he pressed a medical reader into the alien’s mouth. “There’s enough viral DNA in the mouth alone to guarantee infection with a kiss.”
“And to think all I ever worried about was cold sores,” Hammersmith muttered. “Are these creatures vampires as well?”
“It looks that way,” Sergeant Radcliffe said. “But would you really want to kiss an alien?”
Travers managed to look both intent on his work and incredibly disapproving. Alice hid her amusement behind her hand. There were no laws against human-alien sexual relationships, even in the most restrictive countries, but she found it hard to believe that anyone would want to try. And even if someone was perverse enough to want to try, there was the question of compatibility. The Tadpoles didn’t have sex, the Foxes were hermaphrodites ... the Cows and Vesy were more like humans, as far as sex was concerned, but Alice found it hard to imagine how a human could have sex with either of them. It would quite likely prove painful to all concerned.
“The blood is also crammed with viral matter,” Travers said, after a moment. He didn’t look up from his work. “I think we have to assume that everyone in the town has been infected.”
“It would seem that way,” Alice said, deciding not to point out that the marines had assumed that the town had been infected right from the start. The virus would have spread even if there hadn’t been any deliberate attempts to infect the entire population. “What else can you tell me about these guys?”
Travers sighed. “Nothing of any real use. I’ve taken skin scrapings, blood samples and I’ve got the portable reader trying to break down the DNA, but it will be a good while before we learn anything useful from it. The virus seems to have seeped into just about everything, even the alien’s sweat. There’s a small cloud of viral matter surrounding the alien, if my sensors are to be believed. Not enough to infect, I think, but enough to be noticeable.”
“How useful,” Tartar commented.
“As you were,” Sergeant Radcliffe said, sharply.
Travers, lost in his element, didn’t notice the exchange. “Internally ... well, we won’t know anything for sure until we dissect one of them, but my readers suggest they have two hearts and something I think is a combination of lung and stomach. There’s also an object in the lower body that I think is an egg - either that or the alien is heavily constipated - yet he doesn’t seem to have anything akin to a penis or a vagina. My best guess is that they’re either hermaphrodites or one gender lays the eggs and the other fertilises them.”
“Or there are three sexes and this one is charged with brooding the eggs after they’re fertilised and laid,” Hammersmith said. “I recall a story with a three-gendered race ...”
“It’s possible,” Travers said, absently. “But I can’t see how the egg was inserted into the body. I ...”
Alice tensed as an alarm sounded. “That’s the sensors we left to watch the town!”
She cursed under her breath. The sensors had been concealed within the woods. They wouldn’t have gone active unless they picked up alien activity, let alone risked a transmission that might be detected by orbiting sensors. She activated her helmet, downloading the burst transmission ... and swore. Hundreds of aliens - almost the entire population of the town - were coming their way, flowing through the woods as if they were made of water. They were running quickly enough to overrun the campsite within minutes.
“Shit,” Sergeant Radcliffe said. “Travers, grab your shit. Tartar, you and your squad get him and his samples back to the shuttle. Go as fast as you can - don’t stop for anything. Send an alert signal via laser to the ship as soon as you’re clear. Alice, Glen, you’re with me.”
And we have to slow the bastards down, Alice thought, as Tartar grabbed the readers and hurried Travers out of the cave. We need to give the others time to break contact.
She scooped up her rifle, silently glad they’d spent so long scoping out the area around the cave. The aliens would have to come at them from the front, unless the marines had completely misread their ability to clamber up rocks and trees. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but it would have to do. And yet ... the hell of it was that the infected aliens might start screaming for help from orbit. A single KEW would be enough to finish off the landing party before they could get out of the blast zone.
So we keep listening for transmissions, she thought. The virus might be able to turn itself into a communications and computer system, but she doubted there was enough viral matter in the air to let it send messages to the western installation. Any signal would have to be carried by radio - or hand. And we take cover if anyone starts sending a signal that looks like targeting instructions.
She followed Sergeant Radcliffe out of the cave, hastily checking her rifle and ammunition pouches. She had no doubt the three of them could slow the aliens down, at least long enough to let the others escape ... as long as their ammunition held out. It wasn’t as if they could resupply in a hurry. The machine shops that churned out new bullets were on Invincible, lurking somewhere in the icy depths of space. They might as well be a thousand light-years away. She gritted her teeth, recalling stories of desperate last stands during the Age of Unrest. Western troops had always had better weapons and equipment, from pinpoint laser strikes to orbiting weapons platforms, but they’d never had numbers. A unit that ran out of ammunition might well be overrun and put to death.
And while the terrorists might subject me to a fate worse than death, she thought as she tested the suicide device, the infected aliens will subject me to a fate worse than a fate worse than death.
The thought made her smile as she took up her pre-planned position, peering down the valley towards the alien town. She could smell the aliens now, she could hear their passage ... but she couldn’t hear the aliens themselves. She’d expected a howling mob, screaming their outrage at the intrusion and calling on their god to help them as they charged the human position, but - instead - the aliens moved in eerie silence. She leaned forward as they came into view, scrambling up the rocky valley like angry spiders. It was impossible to read any expression on their faces. The virus had even robbed them of their anger.
Sergeant Radcliffe glanced at her. “How did they find us?”
Alice hesitated. “I don’t know,” she admitted. She didn’t blame the sergeant for wanting to know. Sergeant Radcliffe knew better than to place blame in the middle of a firefight. And yet ... the marines had been careful, when they’d hurried back to the cave, but it was clear they’d missed something. “We didn’t see any way they could call for help.”
Her mind raced, considering the possibilities. The aliens might have excreted some viral matter when they were stunned, warning the other infected that there were enemies in the
vicinity. Or they might have sounded the alert at a frequency humans couldn’t hear. Or they might have implanted transponders, even though they seemed to exist at a very basic technological level. Or ... some form of ESP? It didn’t seem likely - every experiment with ESP under controlled conditions had failed or produced results that couldn’t be duplicated - but she knew better than to rule out any possibility. They’d done everything right. And yet, they’d clearly failed to keep the aliens from tracking them down.
Maybe they can track their scent, she thought. They might have better noses than a dog.
“Get ready,” Sergeant Radcliffe ordered. “I’ll detonate the mines in ten seconds. Fire on my command.”
Alice nodded, switching her rifle to rapid fire. Normally, they would at least have tried to communicate with the aliens, to convince them that the human intruders weren’t a threat ... although she rather suspected that humans wouldn’t have bought that argument after two aliens were kidnapped and a third killed. Now, it was pointless. The virus couldn’t be reasoned with, nor could it be intimidated into surrender. It wasn’t even clear that humans could surrender. The virus would simply infect anyone stupid enough to give it the chance,.
“Mines detonating ... now,” Sergeant Radcliffe said.
The ground heaved as the mines exploded, showering the aliens with shrapnel. Alice winced as dozens of aliens were caught in the blast and ripped apart, their bodies disintegrating before they hit the ground. Land mines had been regarded as inhumane weapons for the last three centuries, although the treaties banning their use had been amended, and then discarded completely, as civilisation fought for its survival against enemies who had no qualms about using every weapon in their arsenal to kill as many civilians as possible. The aliens, with no experience of mines, should have hesitated just long enough for the marines to break contact and slip into the forest. A human force, no matter how fanatical, would have stopped in horror at the carnage. But the infected aliens just kept coming.
Alice shuddered as the full implications struck her. We’re going to have to kill them all just to break contact.
“Fire,” Sergeant Radcliffe ordered.
She pulled the trigger, trying not to think about what would happen when the magnetically-propelled bullet hit its target. The alien skull wouldn’t offer any resistance at all. The bullet would go through one alien and probably hit several more before it finally ran out of velocity and fell to the ground. She moved from target to target, firing at a rate she hadn’t used since basic training. Marines were generally discouraged from using ‘spray and pray’ tactics, particularly when their logistics chain was weak or non-existent. Now ... she saw the aliens take the bullets, lose more of their people ... and just keep coming anyway. How many aliens had been in that town? Their best estimates had suggested the surrounding fields could support five hundred at most. She was starting to suspect that they’d been very wrong.
Unless more aliens are coming from the other villages, she thought. Her rifle bleeped an alert. She was running out of ammunition. They might have alerted the entire region.
“We need to pull out,” Sergeant Radcliffe said. The valley was bathed in eerie blue blood, but the aliens were still coming. They were trampling over their own bodies in a desperate bid to get to the intruders. “Now, I think.”
“I’ll cover you,” Alice said. She unhooked the grenades from her belt. “Go.”
Sergeant Radcliffe hesitated, just for a second. Alice knew what he was thinking. On one hand, he was leaving her in terrible danger; on the other, he was the landing party’s commander. A dispute over whoever was in charge, if he was killed or captured, would come at the worst possible time. Alice couldn’t assume command, technically ...
“Hurry,” he ordered. “Glen. Come with me.”
Hammersmith looked reluctant, but did as he was told. Alice wondered, as she threw the first grenade into the alien mass, just why he didn’t want to leave her behind. Maybe she’d made a better impression than she’d thought. Or maybe he just didn’t want to leave a woman behind. Alice knew, all too well, that her odds of survival were not good. She threw the second grenade, then aimed the third at the rocks. Hopefully, she could delay the aliens long enough to break contact herself. Getting back to the shuttle would be tricky, but she was sure she could make it.
She sensed something move behind her, a second too late. Something slammed into her back with terrifying force, sending her crashing to the ground. She rolled over, one hand scrabbling for her combat knife ...
... And saw an alien looming over her, ready to strike.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The sound of the alarm brought Stephen out of an uncomfortable sleep. He sat upright, one hand automatically reaching for his jacket even as the second hand reached for the terminal beside his sofa. His Ready Room was nowhere near as comfortable as his cabin, but he’d grown used to sleeping there. It was a few steps closer to the bridge.
“Report,” he snapped, as he swung his legs over the side and stood. “What’s happening?”
“We just picked up a flash-transmission from the recon team,” Commander Newcomb said, calmly. “They successfully captured a pair of aliens - both infected - but they were rumbled shortly afterwards. We must assume that it is only a matter of time until the orbital installations and starships get involved.”
Stephen gritted his teeth. They’d run a dozen simulations, looking for ways to punch their way into the low orbitals, but all the simulations agreed that it would be a very close-run thing indeed. Invincible and her flotilla might be able to take the five cruisers, particularly if they managed to mount a starfighter strike before the cruisers realised they were under attack, yet they had no way to know just how many weapons the virus had crammed into the orbiting stations. They might be completely defenceless. Or, more likely, they were packing enough firepower to give the assault carrier a very hard time.
And they’ll notice an incoming mass driver strike, he thought, as he pulled on his jacket and shoes. There’s no guarantee of scoring a hit even if we didn’t have to worry about accidentally hitting the planet.
“Bring the flotilla to battlestations,” he ordered, as he hurried for the hatch. “And inform the crews that we will shortly engage the enemy.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Stephen kept his face impassive as he stepped onto the bridge. The recon team was expendable, technically, but he was damned if he was abandoning them. Someone back home would point out that even trying to save them would reveal Invincible’s presence, yet ... Stephen snorted at the absurdity. A REMF might not see it, but anyone with the slightest hint of common sense would ask where the recon team had come from in the first place. It wasn’t as if they could transit the tramlines in environmental suits. No, the virus would know that a starship had brought the humans from Falkirk to Alien-3. It would start hunting for the intruder immediately.
He took the command chair and examined the display. The alien starships hadn’t brought up their drives - yet - but that didn’t make them any less dangerous. They clearly had their weapons and sensors on standby, ready to power up at a moment’s notice. It was only a matter of time until they went to full alert. They’d have been told about the recon team’s presence before Stephen had been warned that the infected natives had engaged the human intruders. The only good news, as far as Stephen could tell, was that the aliens didn’t have any idea where Invincible was lurking. They’d find it impossible to track down the carrier until she entered sensor range.
“Prepare our starfighters for a long-range strike,” he ordered, curtly. Ideally, he’d prefer to engage the enemy starships and orbiting stations separately. There was nothing to be gained by allowing the enemy to fall back on their own defences. “And order the mass drivers to stand ready.”
He sucked in his breath. Mass drivers had been a terrible shock to the Tadpoles, when they’d encountered Ark Royal for the first time. They’d simply never come up with the concept of mass drive
rs for themselves, while humanity had effectively banned them until the dictates of survival had forced all such constraints to be abandoned. It hadn’t taken long for the Tadpoles to devise countermeasures - mass driver projectiles could be taken out by railguns, if they were spotted in time - and Stephen was grimly certain that the virus had countermeasures of its own. But a handful of projectiles would give the virus something else to think about while Stephen was engaging its cruisers. Who knew? Perhaps he’d present the virus with so many problems that it couldn’t handle them all.
Don’t count on it, he warned himself dryly. The different clusters of viral matter may as well be individuals, as far as we are concerned.
“All departments are standing by,” Commander Newcomb said. “Squadrons One to Five are ready to launch; Squadron Six is standing by, ready to form CSP as soon as the remaining squadrons have launched.”
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