by A. S. Deller
Hu held up his hand again, and the party stopped their advance. “That’s it,” he said, looking to Rhodes. “This is open ground, but according to the topographical we took from orbit it looks like there’s a drop-off on the other side. I suggest we take the long way around and come up over that hill.”
Rhodes nodded, “Sounds like a plan, Hu.”
A few minutes later, the group had jogged around to the northern side of the small complex and hunkered down behind some boulders at the bottom the hill. It stretched roughly 80 feet up at a mild 30-degree incline, with a scatter of more large rocks along the way, some of which had apparently been shoved into the hillside by the glacial force that once scoured the valley.
“What do you have in the Catalogue about that architecture?” Rhodes said to Nunez.
Paging through at her holographic tablet, she replied, “It’s standard superterran gravity design used by Malign when building for Valgon use. Concrete made of local materials, reinforced with carbon nanotubes.”
Rhodes grumbled, “It looks like one of those walls is broken. That would take a powerful explosion coming from inside the structure. Anything inside would have been atomized.”
“Depends on what their safe room was made out of. That beacon’s still going. And Jecky’s got some life signs,” said Ming.
“Right. Let’s move in,” said Rhodes.
Hu motioned, and the party split into two groups. The CPO moved left up the hill with Ming, Jecky and Ayler, while Rhodes moved right with Rax, Martell and Nunez. It was slow going up the hill as they tried to generate as little noise as possible. Everyone’s senses were fine-tuned from military training. That, coupled with the denser atmosphere of the planet, created an almost surreal perception of LM-32f’s environment. Carly Ming, especially, felt overwhelmed. She had one of the fleet’s highest-ever sensory ratings, a 37.6 on the 40-point Genett Scale. She had a combination of nearly the best possible hearing, eyesight, smell and touch for human beings. Very few other people topped her. Althorians, in general, performed better on the Genett tests, but that was due to their senses being innately integrated with their psionic ability.
Ming was the first to hear the soft shuffling sounds emanating from just over the top of the hill. She held up a hand and everyone stopped. Motioning to the right, Carly crossed over and the others followed. They cautiously peered around a broken-down corner of the base, toward where the front opening would be. The entire façade of the building was exploded outward, chunks of concrete and twisted metal plates and wires spread over a hundred feet and covered in soot. Much of the mossy groundcover and rows of stout, fronded plants had been carbonized by the heat. Some of the moss had begun to regrow nearest the base, though, and it was there where the starfish were gathered.
They weren’t exactly starfish, but that was the type of Earth animals they most closely resembled to Rhodes. Eight of them writhed lazily over thin mats of new-grown moss, various shades of burgundy. Each had six arms and were about sixteen inches in diameter, with a wrinkly skin punctuated by rows of short, rose thorn-like spines. A few of them were only an inch apart. As the landing party rounded the hilltop and eased into view, the starfish edged closer together and came into contact with one another for about a second. With a series of slight static ticks they moved apart very quickly, like inchworms in high gear.
“They saw us, without having eyes,” Dr. Martell whispered over his comms.
Rhodes made a slicing motion with his hand, signaling the team to maintain radio silence. He waved his arm forward, and the group progressed warily around to the blown-out side of the construct. They split again into their two smaller squads.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The two teams finally closed in on both sides of the ruined façade. Greg Hu and Rhodes exchanged a glance, and motioned. The teams moved as one, weapons raised, spreading in 180 degree arc around what used to be the front of the building. Bright beams shone from their weapons into the shadows within, swallowed by more destruction, crumpled metal walls and tubes. Nothing else moved or made a sound.
“All clear,” came Hu’s voice over everyone’s links.
Rhodes lowered his tesper and the others followed suit. “This isn’t over yet. Jecky, what’s the scanner say now that we’re this close?””
Arno looked at his PSD. “I see the little pointy creatures as clear as day. Still getting some more I’m not sure of. One or maybe a muddled couple of faint life readings inside the structure. Small. Either blocked by interference or some more o the starfish things.”
“Nothing else? It sounded like there may have been more in your initial reading,” said Ayler.
Jecky shook his head, “Nothing. I think the beasties here are somewhat confusing with their electrical qualities.”
Rhodes noticed Martell staring back at the alien animals splaying themselves across the gravelly ground. “Doc, let’s make sure to bring a couple of those back with us. You know you want to.”
“I know you know,” Martell grinned.
A crackling noise filled the air around them. At first, Nunez thought the starfish were doing something. But the sound grew louder and closer, and it became an earthen sound, almost like digging. “Feel that?” She alerted the others.
Ming said, “Something’s under us!”
“Spread out, back ten meters, now!” Ordered Rhodes.
Suddenly, in the middle of the group, a large mat of groundcover split in several directions and popped up into the air several feet. As it fell back down, Rax saw a glint of overcast light across an oil-stain dark armor plate. Rhodes saw the hysteria in Rax’s eyes before he saw the culprit. No one ever told him that seeing a massive, fearsome Kenek actually panic would be as scary as it was.
“Malign!” Rax yelled.
As the onyx-black metallic form rose, six triple-jointed arms unfolded and sliced away the wide mat of moss and dirt that had been hiding it. It tore out of the ground beneath it with four spike-tipped legs.
Ayler was dead before he knew what was happening, the Malign’s lasers targeting all of his major organs and firing in a synchronized burst to ensure success. He dropped abruptly to his knees, eight tiny, steaming, sizzling holes burned all the way through his SES, and one right through his helmet. As he toppled over onto a bed of moss, the rest of the landing party heard two things: David Ayler’s final gasp for air through their radios, and a small keening noise that quickly faded away via their comm implants. No one—-not even the scientists who invented the comm units--knew exactly where the “death rattle” of a comm implant came from.
Reacting instinctively, Greg Hu jumped to his right, dragging Carly Ming and Jecky with him. Jecky’s PSD dropped out of his grip as he went. They landed in a clump behind the remains of a blasted-out concrete wall. Rax reached out with a long arm and grabbed the PSD, and then he, Rhodes, Dr. Martell, and Nunez sprinted back down the hill and scattered for cover.
“It was waiting for us!” Hollared Jecky.
“There is another one! I am reading a power signature under us,” said Rax, over the screech of another laser burst torching through a mound of frond-bushes and etching five-inch deep gashes in the wall shielding Greg, Ming and Jecky.
Two powerfully-built, jet-black robotic arms punched through the side of the hill, launching rocks, dirt and moss clumps yards in every direction. Rhodes pointed back uphill, and his group ran for the opposite side of the ruins from Hu’s group.
“Nunez, before it’s all the way out—-“ Rhodes began.
“Already on it, XO!” Nunez, one step ahead of Rhodes, had a small demolitions charge, made from C4 and meant for opening doors and hatches, in her hands. She sent it a personalized code from her comms to activate it, and tossed it nonchalantly over a shoulder as she sprinted uphill.
The Malign’s massive metal arms crunched out of the dense turf, along with a third, smaller arm and a softball-shaped obsidian “head” (little more than a heavily-armored sensory organ) atop a broad, V-shaped torso. T
he beastly Malign stopped completely, in an almost comical mechanical manner, as the little demo charge flopped onto the gravel in front of it. Just as its miniscule head-orb oriented toward the charge, it exploded. The Malign was lifted out of the hillside by the shockwave, along with a ton of terrain.
Atop the hill, Rhodes’ group settled in along one of the blasted wall sections. He peered cautiously across the gaping chasm that was once the façade and made eye contact with Greg Hu, kneeling with Jecky and Ming. Rhodes could still see the abject horror on their faces following Ayler’s sudden demise.
The Commander knew there was only one right course of action. If they didn’t take advantage of their position now, they wouldn’t get another chance. He commed Hu, “We need to get this one in a crossfire, now, before the other one moves up! Get your people ready. On my mark!”
Hu nodded, not that Rhodes could see it. He pulled Jecky and Ming up by their elbows and said, “We’re going to jump this one, crossfire. Stay behind me, single file, watch your line of fire and stay low.”
Rhodes voice went out to everyone, “Now!”
The two small teams hustled along their crumbling walls, weapons up. Martell stayed behind, crouched down, trembling next to a pile of rocks coated in carbonized moss.
Rhodes was the first to see it: The six-armed robot with four legs, the one that killed Ayler, was right where he hoped it would be, but the other one had already crested the hill and was starting to stand on its two legs. It was having some trouble, and was still a little wobbly. Nunez’s bomb must have shaken it up.
“Target the one up front! Now!” Rhodes ordered.
For a split second, Rhodes thought he’d led his people to their deaths. The Malign was already ratcheting its arms, lining its lasers up.
Rax fired his railgun with a loud boom just as the others fired their Tespers. The multi-armed Malign, hit by six weapon shots at once over a 180-degree arc, exploded outward in a spray of thousands of sparking, torn bits. The second, lumbering biped Malign with three arms started moving faster toward the blown-out side of the building.
It wanted to get to cover. Either that, or it wanted something inside.
“Don’t let it in!” Cried Rhodes.
Rax was closest, and he took a long step toward it while he aimed his iddik once more. A glance down showed him that his railgun still had 5 seconds to charge. The Malign would be gone by then. Rax dropped the big gun to the ground and dashed at the Malign, pushing his SES to the limit.
“What the hell’s he doing?” Hu shouted.
The huge Kenek tackled the sleek, black robot, the two of them slamming into a concrete pillar. The Malign’s two larger arms bent at the elbows, and crunched back at an angle to smash into Rax’s kidneys. He howled. Knowing he couldn’t hold it much longer, Rax twisted his upper body and flung the Malign out from the shadows of the building. As he dropped to a knee he yelled, “Shoot it!”
As the Malign crunched to the rocky, scorched ground, six tesper beams drilled through it. Pieces of the onyx-armored robot spun and clattered over a fifty square meters.
“Whooooo!” Nunex cheered. Even as she did, she felt cheated. Ayler was dead. Not in a pool of blood. No, his wounds were as cauterized as they were instantly fatal. He was simply lying on a pile of dirt and rock, killed on an alien world by the most inhuman of Earth’s enemies.
“Stop gawking, Nunez,” Rax huffed as he stood back up. “Malign do not die. Commander, I suggest we finish the recon as soon as possible.”
Rhodes looked closely at the shredded bits of the Malign. Their edges seemed to be alive, digging into the ground like thousands of miniscule arms and blades. The smallest parts sunk quickly out of sight. “Damn these things. What I wouldn’t give to toss them into our plasma jet.”
“We don’t have that luxury. They’ll be back, in some form or other, in less than a few hours. So let us make haste. I will be back soon. Going to carry Lieutenant Ayler back to the shuttle,” Rax said, already shifting his bulk back to where Ayler was.
“Okay. Everyone, all set? Where’s Doc?” Rhodes looked over a shoulder and saw Martell on his hands and knees, crawling toward one of the starfish, an open specimen canister in one hand.
“I want to collect one or two. They’re quite interesting,” said Martell, almost dreamily.
“Two is fine. Rest of you, let’s move.”
Greg and Carly stared down at the last tiny piece of the biped Malign as it dug itself down into the churned soil and moss. Jecky was ahead of them, right behind Rhodes and Nunez.
“Don’t cavort around out here too long, Doc,” Carly Ming warned.
Martell slowly placed the lid on the specimen jar and activated its bio-seal. The purplish-red, air-breathing starfish writhed up the side of the jar, obviously attempting escape. The doctor giggled to himself, “Look, he’s a smart one,” when a loud crash sounded from within the ruined Malign lab. Martell nearly dropped the specimen.
Rax turned the corner just then, and met Rhodes’ alarmed eyes. He slowly set Ayler’s limp, ragdoll body down behind a portion of broken wall.
“Rax. Hu, Nunez, with me,” Rhodes said in a harsh whisper. They all immediately had their tespers up and ready. Rhodes pointed to the others and motioned for them to stay put. Jecky, Ming and the doctor took a few steps back as Rax hefted up his iddik railgun and rushed his bulk past them into the lab.
As the group entered the dark interior, their Tespers’ lights automatically flashed on, illumninating a charred mess of twisted metal and wiring. A random flickering light blinked to them from the southern side of the structure. As they closed in, Rhodes saw the light shone from behind a thick metal door inlaid with an equally thick viewing window. “The safe room. Beacon must be inside,” he whispered.
The XO tried looking into the viewing portal through cloudy, smudged glass. All he could make out were more flickers of light, and he couldn’t rub away any of the opaque staining. “Rax?”
As Rax stepped up and grabbed the edge of the door, ready to pry it open, Carly Ming put a hand on one of his arms to stall him. “Wait,” she said.
Ming ran her gloved hand over a line of alien language that had been etched into the door:
“It’s Valgon,” she said, breathlessly.
“And?” Greg Hu prompted.
“It’s their word for ‘biohazard’.”
“Damn it,” Rhodes muttered.
Doc Martell, warily picking his way over stacks of debris while he clutched two sample cannisters to his chest, stuttered, “Our suits are rated for the most hostile biological and radiological conditions. We’re safe.”
“We didn’t get this far to not open it. Stand ready. Rax, put your back into it, big guy,” Rhodes said.
The seven foot tall saurian grinded his needle teeth as he pushed against the hatch. It easily weighed a ton, probably more in LM-32f’s gravity. Rax grunted, and the door protested with a resonating clunk. His SES’s pneumatics whined as he strained harder.
Finally, a loud crack sounded, followed by a steady squeal as the hatch ground open, inch by inch.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Smoke and dust whipped about in the air, driven by a relentless breeze from outside. The team’s lights groped through the darkness and clutter of the biohazard vault.
Rhodes played his light through the room: There were tables, stacked with what looked like books. And...toys? Some multicolored balls of various sizes, many tchotchkes that were unrecognizable. Several humanoid models stood on a shelf bolted to a wall, female and male figures made of smooth, black resinous material and posed like dancers. There was a single bed against one wall, and another opposite.
The light glinted from something under the bed. Rhodes took an instinctive step back, knocking into Rax, when he realized it was an eye. It blinked and was gone, accompanied by a shuffling sound.
“That wasn’t a Valgon,” said Rhodes, almost to himself. Then, “Stay behind me.”
Gray Rhodes took a cautious, slow
step forward, followed by another. He let his tesper hang by a side, held his right hand up in a defensive posture and tentatively reached down and held the bedframe with his left.
In as soft and calm a voice as he could muster, he said, “Whoever you are, we are not here to hurt you. Friends. Friends.”
Then he lifted the bed.
“My God,” Alisa Nunez uttered.
Rhodes blinked his eyes several times to be sure it wasn’t just a trick of the flickering lights and shadows. No, he was seeing what he thought he saw. The two girls looked identical, minus differing bruises and scratches. They were both pitifully thin, and pale, somewhere between 10-12 years of age, with long unwashed chestnut hair hanging to the smalls of their backs. Both had intriguing cornflower-blue eyes, flecked with whorls of malachite coloring. They wore matching dark blue jumpsuits, worn and dirty. The overall effect was that they appeared like terribly young factory workers, haggard from a long shift at work.
“Are you...sisters?” He asked tentatively as he pulled a blanket from a nearby bed and folded it over their shoulders. The girl on his left warily lifted a hand and touched the visor of his helmet, and Rhodes realized what they all must look like. “Jecky, what’s the atmosphere in here?”
Arno looked to his PSD, and raised his eyebrows when he saw the readings. “It’s breathable in here. No dangerous particulates. It’s pressurized, keeping the outside air from flooding in this compartment.”
Rhodes reached up and removed his helmet with a click and a hiss of air, then nodded to Ming, Hu and the others.
Dr. Martell said, “Uh, the biohazard message, sir? We don’t know--”
“Just take your helmets off and take a look at these kids, Martell,” Rhodes ordered.
Everyone removed their helmets except Rax, who stayed in the doorway. “Leaving my helmet on, Commander. I think I’d probably be scarier without it.”
“Right,” agreed Rhodes as he turned his attention back to the twins. Dr. Martell placed his universal medical scanner (UMS) against the arm of one girl, and then the other, and unfolded his tablet and began running the samples.