MissionSRX: Deep Unknown

by Matthew D. White

  Cursing himself, Scott reached for the object but didn’t see the lone Cygnan warrior clear the wall to his right. He detected the movement and instinctively wheeled up with the empty weapon. The alien closed the distance too quick and kicked it aside, pinning his right arm to the ground with its foot.

  For a moment time seemed to stop, as did every sound and shred of sensation. He saw the creature swing its weapon up to fire right in front of Scott’s face. He blocked the armament with his off hand, holding it at bay while its owner leaned on the trigger. With a deafening roar it sent dozens of rounds punching into the ground millimeters away from Scott’s head as the alien wrenched it around, desperately trying for a hit.

  He couldn’t think. The only sensation he could retain was that he had to keep the muzzle away from his body. The device ran dry and the alien ripped it out of his hand. The change in the Cygnan’s position released pressure on Scott’s right arm so he pulled it free. He lost his concentration on the fight for a millisecond and never saw the alien swing the weapon back at him like a bat.

  It came down hard, striking the side of Scott’s face with a sickening crunch, sending him sprawling to the ground on his stomach, leaving his last full magazine now beneath him. He rolled back and palmed the metal box. Despite the searing pain from his head he saw the next strike coming and dodged the alien’s follow-up swing towards his face. His brain recognized a metal blade gripped in the Cygnan’s hands as related to the box Othello had recovered back on Earth.

  He caught the instrument again with his left hand and returned with the magazine like a haymaker, clocking the alien straight across the face shield and sending spider cracks spreading across its visor. It stumbled back, momentarily stunned but only ripped the malfunctioning helmet away.

  The creature stood across from Scott in defiance of the injury, while bits of glass sunk into its perforated face. It growled and lunged again before Scott could reach for a backup weapon and again knocked him from his feet. Diving down, the alien drove the metal shiv against the engineer’s face. He held the creature’s arm at bay with all his strength while reaching for anything that could be used for defense. Its face was twisted in a face of pure rage and hate as it pressed down against him.

  Scott swiped his hand across the ground once more and landed on the Lyran railgun. That’s right, he remembered it was still strapped to his back. With the alien’s attention taken, he pulled the rifle up and jammed it against his opponent’s chest. His arm failing versus the blade jammed above his eye, he prayed the weapon was charged and pulled the trigger.

  He felt the recoil of the blast and the alien instantly went limp as the hardened projectile punched through its body, tore half the armor and flesh from its back and continued on through the cavern ceiling far above. The pressure on the knife ceased and Scott pushed the body off of him, hacking and trying to catch his breath. Looking up, he saw O’Hare finally look his way while reloading.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah!” Scott muttered as he retrieved his empty rifle and reloaded it before sliding back into place at the line, “Just effing fantastic.” He looked a second time at the corner the alien had emerged around and decided to follow the same route. “Hold here. I’m moving right.” He reported and crawled to the corner of the next building.

  With a deep breath he snapped around the edge and scanned the next road over. Several more Cygnans were running up the hill but too far out of range for him to effectively engage. Feeling a buzz in his chest, he checked the transmitter’s monitor.

  A small light flickered on the display and showed a compressed signal transmitted over the optical line. He pulled back behind to take a closer look at the scope.

  “We got it! They just tried to blow the base!” he radioed up to Grant while the gunfire continued. “They must be coming to the end of their forces.” Scott switched weapons and leaned around the corner with the alien railgun. Newly invigorated, he dropped the crosshair on top of a row of Cygnans that were lined up and drove two quick shots through them, each flanking shot striking multiple targets along the way.

  “They must know something we don’t.” Grant replied, “We spread out to three buildings but those things keep coming up the hill.”

  “I just took out a row of them. Maybe they’ve deployed all they’ve got?”

  “Could be. Don’t do anything stupid. If they realize their switch is broken, there’s no telling what they’ll try to pull.” A series of shots from Grant’s antique rifle echoed through Scott’s radio’s speaker before the channel closed.

  ***

  On the other side of the human line of battle, Grant was wedged in a doorway, covering the two roads converging on the intersection outside. While a small stone wall separated the building from the wider vehicle path, it was not nearly tall or thick enough to provide cover from anything more powerful than random small arms fire.

  “Anything showing up on your little scope? I’m on the far end.”

  “Oh! Right…” Scott’s voice trailed off. “We’ve got maybe a dozen out there still moving. One’s coming up behind your building to the left of your door.”

  “How close?”

  “Maybe two meters.”

  Grant drew his pistol and without hesitation drove a line of six magnum shots through the stone slab. He heard an animalistic screech from around the door, leaned out and put another pair into the wounded alien that attempted to flank him. “Thanks.” He retreated inside once again to reload and replace the sidearm. “Anything else I should know about?”

  “Negative. The rest are across the street facing you and your company. If you can fall back to the building behind you, I think you could flank to the left without being seen.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Grant dropped back from the doorway, firing several more shots to keep the Cygnans’ heads down. There was no rear entrance to the structure but across from him was another door. He snaked around the rows of stone workstations that resembled isolation tables, milled from the same bedrock as everything else and checked the far doorway.

  The commander found it clear and snuck back to the right, to the rear of the building and sprinted back one row up the hill. Keeping a low profile he cleared around the next structure and wrapped around two more to the rear before coming back around to the aliens’ rear.

  Outside their fields of vision, Grant used one of the low walls to give him a boost and jump to the edge of a small service building. He caught the edge with his fingertips, felt the stone crack under his weight and pulled himself up before it gave way, the few top layers of rock crumbling in his hands. Going prone, he crawled to the edge.

  From the perch, he could see all the way from the corner where Scott and O’Hare had successfully pinned down the alien advance all the way across to the pair of stone structures the remains of his team was still occupying. “I’ve got a shot at their whole formation. Engaging.” He radioed and started from the left, putting a burst of rounds through every Cygnan he could see. He reached nearly to the right edge before his rifle ran dry.

  He ducked as the aliens returned fire and went for the next magazine when a heavier charge exploded in the floor below, rattling his head and ringing his ears to the point of deafness. He refocused and saw the clip had slipped from his hands and had fallen off the platform.

  “I’m out. Move in!” he yelled and sprinted to the back of the roof once again.

  “There’s one right behind you!” Scott warned as he bounded from the edge.

  Time slowed to a crawl in the instant Grant was airborne. The world fell away, although he could feel the shots from the remaining Cygnans snap by around him, all he could comprehend was the street below and the lone alien warrior upon it. It looked up as he fell, not expecting the attack to come from such a height and its arm flinched on its weapon but didn’t have the chance to raise.

  As he left the roof, Grant clamped his arm down across his empty rifle and with a smooth grace, drew the remaining Aquill
ian hatchet from his belt into his hand. He didn’t have time for a full swing, but as his feet landed upon the alien’s chest, he drove the pointed cap downwards through the creature’s visor like the tip of a spear.

  The visor shattered, providing no resistance, as did the face behind. He rode the body to the ground, ending in a low crouch before pulling the blood-splattered artifact of folded steel free.

  ***

  “That’s all of them!” Scott announced as the commander stood and heard a few sporadic exchanges before silence took hold, followed by a cacophony of screams, shouts and cheers.

  He wished he hadn’t heard the words. As his mind processed the perceived safety, his heart rate slowed, even though he still heaved to catch his breath in the stifling suit. Even though the suit was a sauna, he felt a chill and a churning sense of exhaustion. Keep it together, he told himself. We’re not out of this yet.

  “Rally up!” he shouted to the group. “Mr. Ryan, what do you need from here?”

  “Whatever we can carry out. We need to make it quick before they figure out a way to detonate the bombs.”

  “You heard him,” Grant ordered, “three man fire teams, breach every door you can. Anything you can recover goes on the elevator. Watch for survivors; you’ve got five minutes.”

  The commander took his own advice and approached the small stone shack he had just jumped from. Kicking in the door he gave one shot to the lone, smaller alien cowering inside. A slave species? He wondered before clearing the rest and checking for anything of value.

  Every structure seemed to use the same furniture: locally harvested stone milled flat into tables that must have weighed multiple tons each. Lighting was provided by glowing semicircular orbs on the ceiling, bathing the entire space with even, white light that took on a brownish-yellow tint from reflections off the rock walls.

  More gunfire erupted outside followed by O’Hare’s voice.

  “We got the bastards with the laser cannon.”

  “Bring it.” Scott ordered bluntly from across the base, “I think I found their data store.”

  Grant listened to the exchange but kept searching his building. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but it wasn’t here. The commander exited and continued onto the next one down the hill.

  The soldier breached the door and scanned another interior. This one was fitted with a stone isolation table, the largest he’d seen, in the center of the room with what looked to be the corpse of a human soldier resting face down on top of it. Hundreds of silver wires were torturously stitched into his back while the entire body rested in a pool of dark, draining blood.

  From the shadows on the far wall of the facility, one of the smaller bipedal aliens stepped into the light. The commander sighted his rifle at the creature but something stopped his finger. The alien didn’t appear hostile and its hands were empty as it stepped towards the table.

  It had four glassy eyes in a cluster at the center of its face with cuts that resembled chevrons every few millimeters reaching to its throat giving the appearance of non-evolved gills. Grant continued to watch as it held its hand above the surface of the table while a glowing surface appeared beneath.

  The soldier’s corpse shook as if suddenly introduced to a sharp surge of electrical energy. It dropped and became still before receiving another jolt down its body. This time the current tightened every muscle in the man’s exposed back, hyperextending and lifting his blood-soaked face from the board while his arms and legs remained limp. His eyes flashed open, faced the commander and his mouth and nose sputtered out blood as if to speak.

  “How did you get here? You shouldn’t have found this place.” The corpse blubbered as if the alien was speaking through it.

  “Maybe we’re more inventive than you think.” Grant strafed to the left, putting both the alien and the soldier in his line of fire.

  “I doubt that. We’ve been preparing for your emergence for millennia. You’d have been destroyed long ago had it not been for your friends. It makes no difference, they are only delaying the inevitable.” The blubbering of the soldier was deep and barely intelligible.

  “The Lyrans? You think they saved us from you?”

  “Merely postponed your annihilation.”

  “You are not the same as we’ve seen.”

  “Most perceptive. Subject shows signs of basic learning. We are the servants of a great and terrible master. Together we shall unite the universe in cleansing fire.” The man’s soulless eyes tracked Grant across the room.

  “Why do you serve such a master?”

  “We each possess things the other cannot. Our existence hinges on our collective resolve.”

  “You were conquered? Became enslaved?”

  “In a matter of speaking. Those who did not were eliminated. I should ask you the same question. Did you not come here as a slave?”

  “I came here to kill you, all of your friends, your masters, your slaves, everything you’ve worked on. Everyone.”

  “This world is too big for one of your limited minds to comprehend. You might as well not try. If you run now, you might even survive a few years longer.”

  The conversation was quickly going from the unexpected to the completely deranged. It wasn’t just that he was having a conversation with a bizarre little alien, but the fact that it was speaking through a dead soldier acting as a meat puppet didn’t help anything. What was completely jarring was the continuous flow of blood from his mouth, yet the young man’s expression never changed and didn’t react as a living body would to the leaking bile.

  “You’re being awfully open with me about all of this.”

  “Why shouldn’t I? You should know there is no way you will be leaving here alive.”

  Grant didn’t want to tip his hand about Scott’s activities so he kept the creature talking. “What is this place?”

  “It is an altar to our universe, a temple to knowledge. Here our greatest devise your destruction.”

  “Our destruction?”

  “Of course. You are a blight upon the firmament, a stain upon existence. Whether you stop us here or not, it doesn’t matter. Our numbers dwarf your civilization and where I falter, others will stand.” The creature shifted its weight, showing no change in expression. “If you kill me, you will fail. The Lyrans are such simpletons to think you’d be able to face us. I can barely believe they convinced you to come, but then again you’re not much brighter than they are.”

  Grant flexed his hand on the rifle.

  “You can end me if you want but it will be only a blip in the static of the universe.”

  “Then I’d better make it count.” Grant stated without emotion, dropped the rifle and put a shot through the alien’s left leg and sending it spinning to the floor. The creature convulsed about as the commander approached and dropped a foot on its chest to hold it still. “No one said it needed to be quick.”

  He pulled an empty magazine for his rifle from a pocket in his armor and gave the metal container a shake. With a brief rattle, a small black and silver slug dropped out into his opposite palm.

  The alien recognized the object, screeched from its cluster of gills, and struggled harder. “Do they have a saying on your planet,” Grant asked, coming down in a crouch, “Something like ‘don’t deal out what you can’t take’?” he swung down and jabbed the tiny barb into his victim’s leg and watched as the area around the wound turned a dark brownish-blue, that spread out at about a centimeter per second as the payload worked its way around the creature’s body, rupturing every cell and letting the remnants leak away.

  The alien continued to force air across the slivers on its face, making a fluttering screech like he would have expected from a primate in a trap. As the substance spread along up its abdomen the same dark fluid began to leak from the alien’s eyes and gills as well. Grant stepped back, letting it flail in agony and kicked it hard in the side, sending it flying into the rock wall, spraying more of the strange blood from every ruptured seam of its
skin.

  He watched for several seconds longer without remorse as the venomous substance overtook the creature’s body. While it was clear its mind still resisted, shaking as if to crawl away from the pain, the lower extremities and most of the body had already disintegrated into a chunky vat of biological gelatin.

  30

  The next building was larger, with another trio of the tiny aliens cowering in the corner. Running short on time, Grant gave each one a shot to their extremities to disable them and kept looking for anything of value.

  He stopped at the entrance to the second floor, up a long ramp from the center of the open factory area below. Surrounding him was a ring of black cubes about a half meter to a side, their surfaces covered with thick, deep symbols. He instantly recognized them from Extortion and the Aquillian bunkers around Sol Charlie.

  “I think I’ve got something over here. More of the cubes.”

  “The same ones we had on the rig?” Scott’s voice sounded more excited than normal.

  “Almost. These are smaller.” Grant looked them over. “I’m taking a couple of ‘em.”

  Each weighed about ten kilos so he stacked three up and made for the ramp. At the first downward step, he felt a sharp rumble in the ground. “The hell was that?” He asked the team, getting outside as quickly as he could. One he hit the street, he knew something was amiss. Scott sprinted by him, racing up the hill carrying a squared off object Grant couldn’t identify.

  “They just dropped the shields. The mantle’s gonna rise.” He yelled as he ran by, “We’ve got to leave now!”

  “That’s it, pack it in!” the commander shouted, following the engineer’s lead. “Get what you can and get to the lift.” He ran back with the stack of cubes and dropped them on the circular platform as the rest of the soldiers filtered back with their own loads of equipment.

  “Roll Call! Anyone left?” He called to the team before him, down over fifty percent since they had entered hours earlier.