Para Bellum

by Christopher Nuttall

  They found us somehow, she reminded herself, as she ran. They had to have some way of tracking us.

  Her mind worked away at the problem, trying to think of a solution. Orbital observation was one possibility, even though they’d been careful to carry out the kidnapping when the orbiting stations and starships weren’t in a good position to watch the town. There might be a stealthed recon platform high overhead, although Alice couldn’t imagine why the virus would bother. Alien-3 was not an occupied world in any conventional sense. The virus had made resistance not only futile, but impossible. There were no natives to liberate, not now. She tried to imagine the scale of the crime the virus had committed, but she couldn’t wrap her head around it. Even the kidnapping program carried out by Nazi Germany, in which children they’d considered to be racially superior had been taken to Germany and raised as Germans - with every last trace of their past lives erased - didn’t come close. The virus might not be evil, in any human sense, but it had done something so monstrous that the worst villains of human history were just ... mundane.

  She scowled, forcing her mind to consider something practical. How had they been tracked? Scent? Had one of the aliens released something - a spoor, perhaps - that had allowed their fellows to realise that something had gone wrong? Or maybe the virus had done it. The sensors insisted that there were no free-floating viral particles in the air, but it was possible the sensors were wrong. The particles could have been released while the kidnapped aliens were being taken back to the cave. Or ... some form of ESP? She hated to consider the possibility, but it had to be borne in mind. The virus might have more surprises up its sleeves.

  And if it could read minds, it would know we’re intelligent beings, she thought, although she was fairly sure the virus already knew. It just didn’t care. There’s no point in being too paranoid.

  She slowed long enough to listen for pursuit, then checked her blood again. The reader - once again - insisted that nothing had changed. Alice hesitated, wondering if she dared take it for granted. Clearly, there had been a massive failure somewhere. She would sooner believe that she’d screwed up, even if it cost her whatever was left of her career, than believe the virus had more surprises in store for them. If she had been infected - again - did she dare go back to the shuttle? Should she kill herself, now, just to make sure she couldn’t betray her comrades? Or ... she turned the problem over and over, trying to think of a solution. She thought she was free of infection, but what if she was wrong? Who’d want to believe that they were infected?

  I have to report back, she told herself, firmly. If nothing else, they need to hear what I have to say.

  Gritting her teeth, she took her compass from her belt and checked her position. The military was fond of making jokes about officers who tried to navigate - the most dangerous person on the battlefield was a green lieutenant with a map - but she’d grown up hiking in the countryside. Her grandfather had taught her to use a map or navigate by the stars before she’d had her tenth birthday. It wouldn’t be hard to find her way back to the stealth shuttle, assuming it hadn’t taken off. Sergeant Radcliffe might well assume that Alice was dead. Even if he didn’t, he’d still have the remainder of the team - and the civvies - to consider. It would be dangerously unwise to hang around for very long.

  Alice sighed, then started to walk. The sun seemed to grow hotter as she marched onwards, glancing from side to side to make sure she wasn’t being followed. There was no way to be sure, nor was there any way to know what the aliens had learnt from whatever they’d recovered from the cave. She’d been on exercises where they’d camped in the open, without any fear of attack, only to be told - afterwards - just how much their half-cleared campsite had told the enemy about them. A couple of recruits had wondered if it had been a trick of some kind - it wasn’t as if the exercise coordinators didn’t know there were fifteen recruits within the training area - but Alice had believed the officers. There was nothing to gain by cheating. Besides, they’d gone through the campsite in cynical detail. The recruit who’d tossed away the packet of Benson and Hedges had been told, rather sarcastically, that he’d just informed the enemy that they were facing British troops. A packet of smokes wouldn’t mean anything to the virus, but who knew what else might have been recovered?

  Let’s hope they didn’t forget a datapad or a computer in their haste, Alice thought, sweat trickling down her back. The marines had been trained to grab or destroy anything important if they had to break and run, but the civvies hadn’t had that sort of training. If the virus captured a computer intact, who knows what it might find?

  She gritted her teeth in frustration. They would probably never know. Military databases, particularly ones that might fall into enemy hands, were carefully sanitised, but civilian databases were rarely given the same degree of attention. Anything from a starchart to a dictionary file might give the virus an insight into humanity, particularly if it had been one of the programs designed for first contact. Alice hoped - prayed - that the cave had been completely stripped, but she had no way to be sure. They’d have to check what had been yanked out of the cave before they took off.

  The sun was starting to set by the time she reached the outer line of perimeter sensors. She paused long enough to catch her breath - she hadn’t done a forced march since she’d been assigned to Invincible, even before she’d been infected - and then pressed her fingers against the scanner. It would give the crew a nasty fright, but she knew better than to walk up to the shuttle without alerting the defenders to her presence. They had to be jumpy. They’d probably shoot her on sight.

  It felt like hours before she sensed, more than saw, two men in the treeline. “Keep your hands where we can see them,” a voice barked. “And don’t make any sudden moves.”

  Alice smiled wryly as Corporal Roger Tindal stepped into view. The marine looked professional, but Alice could tell he was nervous. He was careful not to step into the watching sniper's line of fire. Alice had every faith in the team sniper’s ability to shoot a cigar out of her mouth without harming her in the slightest, but she understood Tindal’s concern. If she’d been infected, if she was nothing more than a Trojan Horse, Tindal was unlikely to survive the next few minutes. She’d have a clear shot at him before the sniper could put her down.

  Particularly if he has to do more than just put a bullet through my brain, she thought, holding herself as still as she could. Some of the boffins had speculated that the virus would be able to keep a body moving, even if the brain was destroyed. Alice suspected that someone had watched too many zombie movies for their own good, but she appreciated the warning. It was better to prepare for the worst and hope for the best than allow themselves to believe that the worst wouldn’t happen. The sniper will have orders to make sure this body can never move again.

  “Hold out your bare hand,” Tindal said, pulling a reader from his belt. “Now, please.”

  Alice did as she was told, hoping the sniper wouldn’t see it as the start of something violent. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had been shot by accident ... she kept her face impassive as her blood was sampled again, cursing herself a second later for not realising that showing pain might actually have worked in her favour for once. The virus didn’t seem to notice, let alone care, if its host body was hurting. Tindal relaxed, visibly, as the results came back. Alice was relieved too. She hadn’t had time to sample her blood for hours.

  “Clear,” Tindal said. “Welcome back, ah ...”

  “Thanks,” Alice said, dryly. No one seemed to know quite how to address her. “Did the rest of the team make it back?”

  “Everyone is back - and clear,” Tindal assured her. He signalled the sniper, then led her up the rocky path to the shuttle. “We’ve been preparing defences here.”

  Alice nodded. She didn’t have to be an experienced officer to spot the trenches - or the half-concealed landmines and weapons positions. Sergeant Radcliffe was clearly expecting trouble, lots of it. A couple of civvies - she sp
otted Travers amongst them - were helping to dig another trench, although Alice wasn’t sure they were really helping. There was more to preparing a trench - or even a foxhole - than simply digging holes in the ground. But then, the only alternative was leaving them in the shuttle to brood. Better to have them doing something that might be useful, she supposed. It would keep them from driving themselves insane with worry.

  Travers waved to her, cheerfully. “You made it!”

  “Barely,” Alice said. She decided not to point out that Travers, for all his efforts, had barely managed to dig a hole. It needed to be deeper if it turned out the enemy had modern weapons after all. A single mortar shell would collapse it, along with anyone unfortunate enough to be using it as a hiding place. “Where’s the sergeant?”

  “Here,” Sergeant Radcliffe said, emerging from the shuttle. “What happened?”

  “They ignored me,” Alice said. It crossed her mind that the aliens might have deliberately let her go, in the hopes she would lead them back to the shuttle, but it didn’t seem likely. They could simply have followed the remainder of the team. “They just let me go.”

  Sergeant Radcliffe’s eyes narrowed. No one, absolutely no one, would consider a Royal Marine sergeant stupid. Alice rather suspected that Sergeant Radcliffe had orders to keep a sharp eye on her, as well as his other duties. If the aliens had let her go, they’d let her go for a reason. She nodded towards the open hatch, signalling that she needed to talk to him in private. He eyed her for a long moment, then nodded curtly. If she’d been infected, if she’d been influenced somehow, he might be putting himself in terrible danger. But he didn’t lack courage as well as brains.

  Although Jeanette would disagree, Alice thought, remembering all the horrible things her sister had said when Alice had announced her intention of joining the Royal Marines. She’d been worried - Alice had known that, intellectually - but it hadn’t been easy to believe when her sister had been openly urging her to join a branch of the military that wasn’t so hostile to women. She thought that anyone who volunteered to go down to a Third World shithole and get shot at was intellectually challenged.

  “So,” Sergeant Radcliffe said, once they were alone. He kept his distance from her, one hand ready to drop to his holster. “What happened? Really?”

  “I think they smelled me,” Alice said. Neither she nor any other human had been able to smell the infection on her, but someone who had been infected by the virus might have a more sensitive sense of smell. The virus needed a way of identifying its own kind in alien bodies. “And then they thought I was infected and just let me go.”

  “Interesting,” Sergeant Radcliffe mused. “Are you sure?”

  “No,” Alice said, honestly. There was no point in trying to bullshit the sergeant. “I don’t know.”

  “No,” Sergeant Radcliffe said. “Go get some rest. The ship’s hitting the orbitals, but I don’t know when we’ll be able to take off. Right now, we’re in eyeshot.”

  “And if we try to take off, we’ll be a sitting duck,” Alice said. One of the orbiting stations was too close for comfort. It would be hours before they were free to risk heading back to orbit. “Shit.”

  “Yeah,” Sergeant Radcliffe said. “And if they followed us back here, we’ll be in even deeper shit.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “This could be our last night,” Travers muttered.

  Alice fought down the urge to either laugh or tell him to shut the fuck up. If it was a come-on, it was a bloody stupid one. Did he think they’d make love in the cabin, where everyone else could see and hear them, or did he think they’d slip into the undergrowth and probably get attacked and killed by the infected aliens? And if it wasn’t a come-on ... she snorted, loudly. Travers needed to sleep just as much as she did. And he didn’t have to worry about an infection gnawing its way towards his brain.

  No, he does have to worry, she thought, feeling an odd flicker of sympathy. He just doesn’t know what it’s like to be infected.

  “I wanted to do so much,” Travers said. She wasn’t sure if she was talking to her or to himself. “And I could die here.”

  “You could also die on the ship,” Alice pointed out. “The ship isn’t invincible” - she smiled at her humourless play on words - “and if she cops a missile or two in the wrong place, she’ll be blown to atoms.”

  She cursed under her breath. The last report from orbit had stated that the carrier was moving into position to attack the orbiting stations, but since then ... nothing. One of the wretched stations was still in prime position to detect and take out the shuttle, if it boosted for orbit; another was in a worse position, yet the virus might still get lucky before the shuttle was halfway into space. Alice’s imagination, always vivid, showed a plasma pulse hitting the shuttle amidships and blowing them all to atoms. She didn’t need to know the exact details to know it would be instantly fatal.

  “Sleep,” she said. “If you don’t, you’ll regret it in the morning.”

  She closed her eyes, drawing on her training. Normally, she could get to sleep within seconds - she’d learnt to take her rest when she could, because one never knew when one would be ordered to muster - but now ... she was too unsettled to sleep, despite her long march from the cave to the shuttle. Her body craved rest, yet her mind was too active to allow her to sleep. Was she right? Had the aliens ignored her because she smelled like them? Or had she been infected once again, without her knowledge? Last time, she’d felt terrible as the virus slowly worked its way towards her brain; this time, she felt healthy ... just tired. If she went to sleep, she wondered, would she wake up as herself? Or would something alien look out from her eyes?

  Damn it, she thought. I may never feel safe again ...

  “Muster,” Hammersmith shouted. “Muster now!”

  Alice jerked out of her haze, rolling over and snatching up her rifle as she stood. The sergeant was already heading to the hatch, looking reassuringly competent as he snapped his helmet into place. Travers was looking around blearily, blinking rapidly under the shuttle’s dim lighting. Alice supposed she should be pleased Travers hadn’t slept with a weapon close to hand. He was too dazed to be trusted with anything more dangerous than a piece of plastic cutlery.

  She grabbed her own helmet and pulled it on, then hurried out the hatch herself. The moon was slowly rising, bathing the entire scene in a pearly white radiance. She glanced from side to side, giving her helmet a chance to accustom itself to the semi-darkness. Her eyesight was good, thanks to genetic modification, but it was better to rely on night-vision gear. The moonlight, perversely, made it harder for her to see what might be lurking under the treeline.

  “We got an alert from one of the sensors,” Hammersmith was saying, quietly. “There’s a massive alien column heading towards us.”

  Alice shuddered. Sergeant Radcliffe showed no visible reaction.

  “How big?” His voice was very calm, as if he were ordering dinner. “Do we have a rough estimate?”

  “Several thousand, at least,” Hammersmith said. “The sensors could be having trouble with the alien biology ...”

  “Or they could have pissed on one of the sensors,” Alice said. She’d watched as one of her instructors demonstrated how easy it was to fool the basic sensors. The alarm had started screaming before he’d zipped up his pants, the computers insisting that thousands of insurgents were bearing down on them. “Just because they don’t use technology doesn’t mean they won’t recognise a sensor when they see it. They’re not real primitives.”

  “Perhaps,” Sergeant Radcliffe said. “But we have to assume the worst.”

  He started to issue orders, telling the marines to take up their positions in the trenches and then instructing the pilots to prepare for an immediate takeoff. Alice took her place, trying not to think about just how many aliens were about to die. Stopping a mass human wave assault wasn’t easy, even when the enemies were utterly inhuman aliens. If they just kept coming, the defenders were eventua
lly going to run out of bullets and get overwhelmed. And then they’d be infected or butchered ...

  And that doesn’t even include the station hanging over our heads, she thought, looking up at the night sky. Was one of the twinkling spots of light the alien station? It was definitely large enough to be seen with the naked eye. If they get sick of slaughter, they can simply drop a KEW on our heads and kill us.

  She wondered, as she rested her rifle in the firing position, if she should be grateful that she wasn’t in command. Sergeant Radcliffe was not in a good place. If he kept the recon team on the ground, they would eventually be overwhelmed and killed; if he risked a takeoff, the virus might just cut its losses and blow the shuttle out of the sky. The only thing keeping them alive was the virus’s determination to turn them into hosts and who knew how long that would last? It might decide to cut its losses after a few thousand host-bodies were slaughtered in a desperate and futile attempt to take the humans alive.

  An alert popped up in front of her as the helmet’s sensors registered the sound of aliens entering the treeline and making their way towards the shuttle. They were still moving in eerie silence, save for a handful of hoots and hollers that seemed designed to help them coordinate their movements, rather than psyching themselves up for a charge into the teeth of enemy guns. Alice told herself, firmly, that these aliens would be better off dead than mindless host-bodies. It wasn’t like some of the engagements she’d seen in the Security Zone, where a handful of clerics had pushed their followers to their deaths while they’d waited at the rear ... God, she’d enjoyed watching those bastards die. Alice wasn’t particularly religious, but she had no doubt the fuckers were burning in hell. They’d poisoned minds, then sent them out to die.