Veteran v-1

by Gavin G. Smith

  There was nothing at the cave entrance. I was hoping that the Walker hadn’t seen us. There was certainly nothing to suggest we’d been caught in an active scan. That didn’t, however, mean we hadn’t been picked up on a passive scan. The bioluminescence of Maw City and the other Them-growth nearby lit up the cave mouth but threw the area where I was lying into shadow. I wished we’d brought vacuum-capable crawler cams or mites with us so I could check out what was going on on the surface of the asteroid, but any transmissions from devices like that would’ve been picked up.

  Behind me, Gregor, Rannu and Mudge had stopped their advance towards the other entrance. Gregor and Rannu were providing security while Mudge looked at something. I split-screened my visual display and had the Mamluk zoom in on Mudge’s area. All through the rear part of the cavern alien growth coated the rock walls.

  ‘Shit,’ I muttered quietly. The soft jazz wasn’t doing quite such a good job of keeping me calm now. I watched as the growth began to move, crawl together and form the sort of lattice pattern I’d come to connect with Them sensor systems. That was it. We were compromised. It was all over bar the shooting now. I signalled to Balor that we were compromised and pointed to Mudge’s position. The hive-mind nature of Them meant that if a cell in here knew, then all of them in the Dog’s Teeth knew.

  I barely had time to register the silhouette of the Walker backlit by the bioluminescence of Maw City before it exploded, its flesh floating away in the vacuum. It had been hit by one of the massive 105-millimetre shells from Balor’s mass driver. Its legs were still stuck to the cave-mouth rock by their tiny molecular hooks.

  Then of course there were more of Them. My acquisition software promised me a target-rich environment as Berserks swarmed into the cave mouth. We activated the rest of our Mamluk systems, my internal visual display now receiving feed from all the other mechs bar Gregor’s organic one. I fired, shifted target, fired another burst and moved to the next target as 20-millimetre rounds from my railgun tore Them apart.

  Rounds from Balor’s 30-millimetre railgun flew over my head as he provided longer bursts, trying to deny the Berserks the cave entrance, but there were too many of Them. Every time a Walker stalked into view Balor would fire his mass driver and the alien mech would silently explode. Despite our firepower They were creeping towards us. Their returning fire was light but getting heavier as black light scarred the rocks near me and shards rained down on my armour.

  Glancing at the feeds from Rannu and Mudge, I could see that they and Gregor had taken to the air. The Mamluks were using the jet systems on their propulsion fins, all attempts at stealth pointless now. Rannu and Mudge laid down fire in long bursts from their railguns and Gregor did the same with his shard cannon as Berserks flooded the other cavern entrance. I watched blue contrails of energy as Gregor launched three missiles from his right shoulder launcher at the other cave mouth. They exploded in a line, blasting the Berserks and two Walkers back out into space. This gave the three of them enough time to get into position, using the columns of rock that ran from ceiling to roof as cover. They continued firing at the cave entrance, trying to deny the area to Them.

  There were more blue contrails in the vacuum, this time coming towards me. Laser fire filled my field of vision, momentarily illuminating the cave in a hellish red light as the Dog Soldier’s anti-missile defences went to work. The incoming missile exploded in mid-flight. I felt the blast push me further down the slope, scraping the Mamluk’s armour against the rock surface, but I kept on firing, and they kept on creeping closer. I was taking multiple hits now, but so far it was all small-arms stuff. I was in trouble if a Walker targeted me, and I knew if the Berserks could swarm me then they would tear the Mamluk apart with their claws because I’d seen it happen to bigger mechs than mine. Basically that was what They were going to do – overrun us through sheer force of numbers.

  ‘Jakob, pull back,’ Balor said. I didn’t question, just sent the signal to the hook pads to release me from the rock, kicked off slightly and fired the jets on the propulsion fin forward so I shot backwards. I flew just above the rock floor, firing as I retreated. I watched as two rockets from the Dog Soldier’s shoulder batteries flew overhead and exploded in a dense concentration of Them, buying us a few more seconds while more charged in. Maybe we would even live long enough to run out of ammunition, I thought optimistically. The good news was that due to the proximity of the other asteroid They probably couldn’t manoeuvre anything really big in here to have a go at us.

  I hunkered down behind a rock ledge on one knee and continued firing. The vacuum around the cave entrance was full of floating Berserk body parts and streams of black liquid. They were literally coming apart through the sheer force of the rounds we were hitting Them with, and the mass driver was taking care of any armour They managed to get into the cave mouth. Even so, They were slowly creeping towards us. I realised we were missing a gun. I checked the split screens. I could not believe it. Pagan was just hunkered down behind the column.

  ‘Pagan! What the fuck are you doing!’ I screamed over our tac net.

  There was no reply. We continued firing. At the other end of the cavern Rannu, Mudge and Gregor’s position was only slightly better.

  ‘Pagan, get in this fight!’ I screamed again. The mass of Berserks seemed closer now. Another Walker exploded but there was another behind it. The rock wall exploded near the second Walker as a round from Balor’s mass driver gouged a huge rent out of it, spraying the advancing aliens with fragments of rock. The rock ledge I was hiding behind exploded, and something like a sledgehammer hit me in the chest. I felt armour buckle and blood fill my mouth but the Mamluk’s structural integrity held.

  The Berserks were running towards me on the cavern floor, along the walls and the cavern roof. I was taking so much small-arms fire the problem was not so much the damage it was doing but being able to see. and make sense of sensor information through the constant hail of shard and beam.

  ‘Cover!’ I shouted to Balor as I let off a very long burst with the Retributor, the jet on my propulsion fin sending me flying backwards towards Balor’s position. He fired a salvo of rockets at the cavern mouth to give us some breathing space.

  The missiles exploded ahead of me with sufficient force to shake the asteroid. The warheads superheated their hydrogen payload to plasma state, creating fire that would burn in space. It flowed like liquid. It incinerated the Berserks in the cavern mouth and left the Walker burning. Balor finished it off with another 105-millimetre shell from his mass driver, sending it tumbling out into the void, still burning. In a strange way, with the lack of sound and the exaggerated movement of zero G, this was all somewhat beautiful and balletic, especially the fire in space. The zero G and silence somehow gave it a sense of unreality. Then again maybe that was just the drugs.

  Just as soon as we’d incinerated the last wave more were surging into the cavern. Pagan still hadn’t joined us.

  ‘Pagan!’ I shouted. Nothing. ‘Pagan!’ I shouted again.

  ‘Not now,’ Pagan answered. I couldn’t believe it. What was so fucking important? I was firing almost non-stop now. There were so many of Them I barely had to move the weapon.

  ‘Balor! If Pagan does not join us in the next three seconds, shoot him. Do it with the mass driver,’ I ordered.

  ‘Huh?’ Balor said intelligently.

  ‘Just wait,’ Pagan said.

  ‘For what!’ I shouted, but he didn’t answer. Then I was taking hits from behind. My initial thoughts were that Rannu, Mudge and Gregor had gone down, but the split screen on my internal visual display told otherwise. The alien growth that we’d found in the cavern was transforming, growing into nozzle-like, black-light weapons. I could also see what looked like Berserks growing out of it, pulling themselves out onto the cavern floor. Ahead of us the limbs and body parts we’d previously blown apart were being drawn together by strands of the black liquid, forming into crawling masses that crept slowly towards us. I checked my ammo count
er – my ammunition drum had less than a quarter left in it. This was it then, this was how we go down.

  Balor shouted an ordnance-firing warning over the tac net. The rocket battery on his left shoulder swivelled round and fired four missiles into the cavern behind us. They blossomed into silent flame that rolled and flowed across the entire cavern, incinerating the newly grown black-light weapons and Berserks.

  I was pulling back on foot. Taking more and more small-arms fire as I let out short stuttering bursts from the Retributor, trying to conserve ammo.

  ‘It’s a set-up! He’s set us up!’ Pagan shouted over the tac net. I noticed that he’d excluded Gregor from the net. A cold feeling ran up my spine. Pagan came from around his column of rock and let loose with a long burst from his still fully loaded Retributor. Berserks just in front of me were torn apart seeming to explode in the zero G.

  ‘What’re you talking- Shit! What’re you talking about, Pagan?’ Mudge demanded over the net.

  ‘The code for disarming the pods, it’s nothing. There’s no code, it’s meaningless junk!’ Pagan shouted, still providing covering fire for my retreat.

  ‘It was encrypted. Did you trip something that destroyed it?’ I demanded.

  ‘We don’t have time for this. No, I didn’t! Trust me. I know what I’m doing!’

  ‘What does this mean?’ Mudge asked. The only other time I’d heard such desperation in his voice was when he’d run out of drugs and booze.

  ‘There are no pods!’ Pagan shouted, now firing desperately as Berserks and impromptu masses of re-formed alien flesh moved closer to us.

  ‘Buy us some time, Balor,’ I said. Two more rockets flew overhead and we were bathed in an orange light as liquid flame cleared the cave entrance. I stopped firing to conserve ammo and let Pagan clear up the stragglers.

  ‘It means there are no pods! Gregor lied to us!’ Pagan shouted,

  ‘Why?’ I asked, though I already knew the answer.

  ‘He is Crom!’ Pagan answered.

  ‘He can’t be Crom,’ I shouted back. ‘He put us on to the Cabal. He told us about Blackworm, Crom and Demiurge. He helped us and tried very fucking hard to kill Rolleston. If it hadn’t been for him we’d all be dead.’ But even as I was saying it I was piecing it together. I remembered Rolleston on the assault shuttle doing something with his skull fucker. Why had he even bothered with the knife when he was capable of wreaking havoc with his bare hands? Nostalgia? He must have been putting Crom into some sort of delivery system in the hilt. When he’d stabbed Gregor in the head he’d infected Gregor with Crom. That’s why the wound had taken so much longer than the others to heal, because Gregor had been trying to fight off the infection. Trying not to become Crom.

  It had been right in front of me, but I hadn’t seen it because I had wanted my friend back and I had wanted to trust my friend. Well, I could trust my friend. This wasn’t Gregor. This was all on Rolleston.

  ‘I think Pagan may be right,’ I said. Even then I didn’t want to believe it. Even then what I said still sounded like another betrayal in my ears.

  ‘Why bring us?’ Balor growled over the tac net.

  ‘In case he needed our help to get close enough to one of the main population centres,’ I said. ‘Because he knew we’d attract a lot of attention when we were finally compromised. Bait to bring more of Them in to be infected.’ I started firing as the cave mouth started filling up again, angry, frustrated, betrayed.

  ‘What the fuck!’ I’d never heard Rannu sound surprised and certainly never heard him swear before. I checked the feed from Rannu and Mudge’s Mamluks and froze momentarily. Gregor’s organic battle form had stepped forward towards the advancing Them forces. His tentacles had shot out in front of him, piercing the Berserks, crawling masses and even a Walker’s chitinous exoskeleton. From each of Them pierced by one of the tentacles, similar tentacles shot out into other nearby aliens and so on until all the aliens at that end of the cavern were linked by pulsing tendrils originating with Gregor.

  ‘Rannu! Mudge! On me now! Balor, sanitise that area!’ I shouted.

  Rannu and Mudge triggered their propulsion fins, shooting backwards towards our position at dangerous speeds. The cavern was full of rocket contrails as Balor emptied both his shoulder batteries. My railgun ran dry. I ejected the power lead and let the now useless weapon drift away in zero G. Rannu touched down and Mudge sort of skidded in on his arse. The back of the cavern was now filled with plasma fire.

  ‘Through there now!’ I pointed at the plasma flames back where Rannu and Mudge had just come from. They never would’ve survived the blast but our Mamluks might survive the flames. Another feed flicked on in my internal visual display but I didn’t have time to pay attention to it.

  ‘The suits will never-’ Pagan started.

  ‘Now!’ I screamed. The five of us took off. The jets on our propulsion fins at near full burn, pointing in the direction our navigation systems remembered the cave mouth to be. Time seemed to slow down as we entered the lake of fire. It was beautiful. I barely noticed the heat or the smell of my own flesh cooking. I ignored the warning symbols coming through the interface from the Mamluk. It was like flying into a sun. This I decided would not be a bad way to die.

  ‘I’m sorry…’ I wasn’t even sure I’d heard the comms message through the heavy interference, it was so faint, but I could’ve sworn it was Gregor’s voice, and then I was in the cold of space again.

  Below us the small tethered asteroid in which we had sheltered was crawling with Them. It looked like someone had stamped on an ants’ nest: every square inch of it was covered with the aliens. The space surrounding the asteroid was full of Them vessels and Their flight-capable organic mechs. According to the diagnostic readings I was getting, the Mamluk was in a bad way. My comms were barely functioning; the Mamluk still had integrity but much of the armour was slag. The joints on my right arm and leg had melted solid and I couldn’t move them. Other than lenses, the majority of my sensors were down as well. I was just lucky the heat shielding on the propulsion fin had held and the jet fuel hadn’t gone up. I put the internal repair systems to work on the comms system. I don’t know why – I was probably about to be erased from existence by black light.

  Balor, Mudge, Rannu and Pagan had made it out. All of their mechs looked partially melted where the armour had run and then solidified again. We were lucky they hadn’t just shattered from the sudden temperature change. Mudge and Rannu’s Retributors had melted beyond use. Pagan’s looked usable from where I was, but that meant nothing. Below us the cave mouth was still burning.

  ‘What the fuck!’ Mudge’s voice came over faint and through heavy interference.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Pagan said.

  From the cave mouth a huge, thick, burning tentacle flicked out of the flames. Then another. What had once been Gregor pulled itself out of the cave mouth. He looked similar to before but bigger. I could see all over him the individual forms of Berserks and other Them-forms melding with his flesh. They were being sucked in, forming thicker chitinous plates or other stranger features like screaming mouths – these must have been a reaction to the burning pain from what had once been Gregor’s subconscious. The fact that he was still burning made him look all the more demonic. On the surface of the asteroid They surged towards this monstrosity.

  ‘No!’ I shouted uselessly. The mass of writhing tentacles on its back shot out, piercing Berserks, and again the chain reaction of biological connection spread through them. Tendrils even shot into the void, piercing Walkers and small spacecraft.

  Pagan fired his Retributor at Crom’s demonic form, a long wild burst. I triggered both the missiles on my back. Warning symbols appeared on my internal visual display – both the launch tubes were too heavily damaged.

  ‘Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!’ I triggered the explosive bolts on the tubes and jetted away from them before the warheads exploded. I saw Rannu doing something similar. Mudge managed to get one away but had to eject the other. We
were only taking light fire; most of Them in the area were either connected to Crom or concerned with dealing with him.

  I heard Balor screaming over the tac net, but reception was intermittent at best. Mudge’s missile exploded against Crom but it barely seemed to stagger him. Balor dived towards Crom, firing round after round from the mass driver. These did affect him, driving him back, dragging his network of attached Them with him. The mass driver ran dry and Balor switched to the 30-millimetre railgun, firing it on full automatic as he got closer and closer to Crom.

  Balor’s Dog Soldier mech impacted into Crom’s central mass, bouncing both of them off the asteroid. Crom didn’t go far as he was tethered by all the Them he was attached to. The Dog Soldier still had a grip on him. Balor re-established contact with the asteroid with one boot. With the other he slammed Crom back down against the asteroid and brought the railgun round to bear at point-blank range.

  ‘… to the Spear, we need immediate fire support on this grid reference, over! Gibby, we need you. Gregor is Crom. We need the area completely sanitised, do you copy?’ My comms system had suddenly come back to life. It was Pagan’s desperate voice I could hear over the tac net.

  A whipping tentacle cut Balor’s railgun in two before he could fire. Crom stood up, easily pulling the Dog Soldier off the asteroid and lifting it into space before slamming it back down against the rock. Both of them were being hit by high-powered, black-light beams and heavy-calibre shard rounds. Missiles were flying towards them but the burning Crom’s black-light, anti-missile defence system was still active, and he was growing more and more of the gristly nozzles with every moment.

  Pagan, Rannu, Mudge and I were effectively useless. We could do nothing but sit around and take fire until something got through. The only reason we weren’t dead was that They were far more concerned with Crom.