Marsden and Mingo knelt down next to the controls again. “Please tell me your translation program has something it can give us,” Marsden said.
“It’s still working. It’s not so easy as just find what symbol means what word in our language, after all. There’s also matters of context, syntactic structure, and other linguistic considerations.”
“Can you at least give me an estimate?” Marsden asked.
Mingo looked at his PDM and shrugged. “If it continues at this rate, we’ll maybe get the first portions of a translation in three to four minutes, but I have no way of telling you how complete that translation might be.”
Marsden swore and took a look at the controls. He had a knack for operating complicated equipment, but this was all so utterly alien that he wouldn’t even know where to begin. He supposed he could try just touching things at random to see if anything responded to him, but he was just as likely to do something stupid like activate a ship-wide self-destruct as he was to turn on security measures that would help them.
“Isn’t there anything you can do to speed the translation up?” Marsden asked.
“Maybe, but I can’t be as certain that the translation would be correct.”
“They’re almost here!” Mossier said. Marsden turned to look through the door and down the hall where the crab swarm was supposed to appear, but it was too dark down that way for him to see anything. A soft chittering noise slowly grew with each passing second. Along with the noise there was a god-awful smell, something between rancid fish and burnt oil.
“Do it,” Marsden said to Mingo. “We don’t have any choice but to take the chance.”
“Mossier, I’m marking the placement of my thermite cords on your scanner,” Axel said as she quickly fiddled with her PDM. “You need to tell me approximately when the middle of the swarm is over the top of them.”
“Got it,” Mossier said.
“Everyone, you’re going to need to turn your heads,” Axel said. “Don’t look directly down the hall when the thermite goes off, or it will temporarily blind you and you won’t be able to shoot for shit.”
The sound and smell grew louder. Marsden thought he could hear tiny screeches mixed in with the chittering noises. The sound was also echoing strangely, almost as if…
A sudden thought occurred to him, a simple question that none of them had thought to ask Delta team that could nonetheless possibly change the entire course of the battle that was about to hit them any second now. Marsden quickly pinged Arizona’s PDM again. “Arizona! When you found these things, you said some of them were attached to the wall before they came back to life and came at you?”
“Uh, yeah. Why?”
“Does that mean they could crawl on the walls as well as the floor?”
Arizona’s response was drowned out as the sound from the hall reached deafening levels. Marsden didn’t need to hear the answer though. He already knew, and while several of the other marines around him looked confused as to why this might be important, Axel understood immediately.
“I only have the thermite set up on the floor!” she called out.
At almost the same time, Mossier yelled, “Now! Do it now!”
Axel hit the switch on her remote detonator, but Marsden already knew what was going to happen. If the enemy had been coming at them exclusively over the floor, the thermite would have roasted many of them and made everything that came afterward that much easier. But anything that was on the walls or ceiling would be able to get through relatively unscathed. It also meant that, if they could come at the defending marines over the walls and ceilings, the choke points at the stairs were pretty much useless.
The marines were in absolutely the wrong formation to make an effective attack.
Everyone turned away at the blinding flash in the hall, and all Marsden could hope was that the crab things in the swarm had some kind of eyes that were sensitive to light, and that the flash would help debilitate them, or at least slow them down a little. They had no such luck, however, as the instant they all turned back to look at the door, the tiny chitinous monstrosities came through over the walls in a shiny black tidal wave.
“Fire! Fire!” Dollarhyde screamed. “Don’t let them get past the door!”
The air erupted with the sounds of gunfire and the smell of cordite. Bullets hit the area immediately around the door, exploding uncountable numbers of the crab creatures into a sticky, pale blue goo. For every five that were destroyed, one or two got through and rushed up the wall, spreading to the ceiling, the floor, and into every crack and crevice the creatures could find. Whatever hive mind controlled them, it seemed to be smart. It seemed to know that smaller groups and individual crab creatures would be able to slip through the defenses easier. All it needed to do was slowly advance these small numbers to the dais and then, once there, converge on the marines and have their feast.
“Damn it, Mingo, give me something to work with!” Marsden yelled. “Anything!”
“Maybe…” Mingo’s eyes frantically went over his readout, searching for anything at all that might be useful. “There!” He pointed one particularly deep depression near the center of the device. “That might be something to do with powering the ship up!”
Marsden wasted no time thrusting his fist into the depression. It did nothing.
“Too many of them are getting through!” Dollarhyde screamed. Marsden looked back to rest of the group to see that several of the crabs had made it as far as the stairs before getting splattered, but any attempt to concentrate on those resulted in even more scurrying over the walls on ceiling. The first crab to make enough headway over the ceiling dropped down onto the shoulder of one marine, and before anyone had time to try to get it off, the crab rushed to the marine’s neck and ripped open his jugular with its small but surprisingly sharp mandibles. The marine collapsed to the ground in a shower of blood, but before the crab had time to go for another target, Axel was on top of it with a knife in hand. She stabbed down, punching right through the creature’s carapace, pinning it to the already dead body of the marine. She yanked out the knife and seemed to decide that it wouldn’t be worth it to grab her rifle again, and instead concentrated on melee attacking any of the crabs that got through.
“I don’t understand,” Mingo said. “That should have worked. The translation program said there was an eighty-nine percent chance that hole had something to do with powering up the ship.”
Marsden suddenly remembered how they had opened the front door of the ship. “Look for a second console that looks exactly like this one. This race must do everything in pairs!”
As Mingo frantically looked at all the consoles, Marsden looked back again to see that a number of the crabs had formed on continued stream going to the opposite wall while a number of others had spread out in a wide pattern on the wall closer to Dollarhyde. The largest number of marines concentrated on the larger stream, but Marsden thought he saw the tactic the creatures were taking. They might have been small and looked insignificant, but it was evidence that their hive mind was smart enough to recognize who was in charge on the marines’ side of the fight.
“Axel!” Marsden yelled. “Protect Dollarhyde! They’re going to make a go at her!”
Axel looked in that direction and nodded. She sprinted over to Dollarhyde’s side just in time to knock several out of the air as they leaped for Charlie team’s current commanding officer. Dollarhyde dropped her own rifle in order to pull a knife and defend herself, and another marine nearby did the same.
“Got it!” Mingo said. Marsden looked at him to see the man shove his own fist into a console that looked nearly identical to Marsden’s. The lights in the room suddenly turned on, and the entire ship around them hummed with power. The jelly-like surface of the wall near them flickered, revealing itself now as a view or command screen as various alien symbols flashed across it in incomprehensible patterns.
“That’s all well and good,” Llewellyn said from where she stood, still firing at t
he concentrated stream of crabs on the far wall. They seemed to be making a dent in the numbers, but the creatures continued to stream from the door. “But it’s not going to help us if it doesn’t power some kind of defensive measures in here.”
“How about it, Mingo?” Marsden asked. “Please tell me your translation program has something to give us.”
“Um, that!” Mingo said, hurriedly pointing to the console at the center of all the others. “It’s an incomplete translation, but the symbols on it say something about weapons.”
“Good enough for me,” Marsden said. He ran to the console and saw that it didn’t seem to have a corresponding console anywhere else. In fact, while the others had contained divots and holes all over them, this one was not only smaller than the others but only had one indentation on each side. It was also a drastically different pearlescent purple color. If he had to guess, he’d saw this was the alien equivalent of a large red button that no one should ever press.
“Are you sure about this?” Marsden asked in Mingo’s direction.
“No!” Mingo responded.
“Marsden, just do it!” Dollarhyde screamed. Seconds later, that scream turned from one of frustration to one of agony, followed by the loud cussing of Axel and several other marines. Marsden didn’t turn to see what had happened. He just clenched both of his hands into fists and shoved them into the depressions on either side.
Nothing happened.
“Mingo, damn it!” Marsden yelled.
“I told you I wasn’t sure!” Mingo said. “Wait, I’m getting something else in the translations… that one! Marsden, go to the console two to your right and put your fist in the upper left corner. I’ll get the other one. It says something in the vicinity of locking down the area.”
Marsden would have asked Mingo if he was sure this time, except he would have bet that the answer would be the same. Instead Marsden ran over and did exactly as he said. Mingo did the same with the other console.
This time something noticeable did in fact happen. The whole room buzzed like it was gathering some kind of energy. The two doors in and out of the room suddenly flashed with a bright blue covering, and all the crabs that had been half in the room and half out were sliced apart. Those crabs that still hadn’t made it into the room tried to stop and turn, but their large numbers and momentum sent them skidding in the doorway and popping apart like popcorn. It was a force field, Marsden realized. No species was supposed to have that kind of technology, yet whoever these aliens were, they’d developed it. Marsden wasn’t going to complain, and neither was he going to take a moment to celebrate as all the crabs outside the room screeched in their death throes. They still had all the creatures inside the room to deal with.
Marsden and Mingo turned away from the consoles. Marsden noticed that the force fields stayed on, and they would likely have to find a way to turn them off before they had any hope of getting out of this place, but that was a problem for later. Marsden grabbed one of his side-arms from its holster and started to pick off individual crab monsters that were still heading in Dollarhyde’s direction, although Dollarhyde already looked like she was in bad shape. A couple of the creatures must have gotten to her face, because the entire left side of her head looked like little more than a bloody smear. She was probably blind in that eye, and she was obviously weakened, but she still managed to slash and attack a number of the creatures that came at her. Several others must have decided that Axel was now the primary threat, given that she was currently surrounded by their dead and twitching chitinous bodies, but other than a few minor-looking cuts and scrapes on her hands, she looked perfectly fine.
Marsden shot several of the crabs off the wall, then stopped when he realized the room had once again gone completely silent except for the heavy panting of exhausted marines. He lowered his weapon and surveyed the area. The walls, floor, and ceiling were covered in sharp pieces of crab bodies and dripping spatters of sticky blue blood. A number of the marines were injured, but there didn’t seem to be any dead other than the unfortunate man who’d had his throat ripped open. Dollarhyde was in bad shape, and Marsden doubted she would live for long, but otherwise it looked like it was all over.
Marsden felt the adrenaline that had been pumping through him leave his body, and he dropped to his knees, no longer able to even support himself. Many of the other Recon Marines did the same, confident now that they were safe.
For the moment, at least.
August 2, 2147 (Earth Calendar)
1849 Greenwich Mean Time
Location: Alien Spacecraft Command Room, Bullfinch-2
Marine Heart Beats Detected on Planet: 39
“Commin Della tim. Gibbus uh zirrep.”
Marsden gently took Dollarhyde’s PDM from her. “Dollarhyde, I think you’re going to have to let the next in command take over for a moment.”
Dollarhyde looked up at him. Even with only one eye now, she still looked no-nonsense and formidable. Actually, she looked like even more of a hard-ass than before. Apparently that was the side effect of having half your face eaten off by alien predators.
“Yuh guddah prublum, Merszen? Um ztil uluv, zo um ztil injurge.”
Laughingmoon, who had been assisting Conway in tending to Dollarhyde’s injuries, looked thoroughly confused. “Does anyone understand what she’s trying to say?
“She said that as long as she’s still alive, she’s still in charge,” Marsden said. “Dollarhyde, if your own team can’t understand you while we’re standing right next to you, then it’s highly doubtful that anyone on Delta team will be able to communicate with you either.”
“Medic’s orders,” Conway said as she pulled a canister of medicated foam from her med kit. “You need to stop and rest. Mingo’s going to have to take charge, at least for the moment.”
Dollarhyde sighed, an action that caused an ugly bubble of pus and blood to form at the side of her mouth. “Grut. Suh yuh guz uhr gunna zitend bebbeh me. Lerd elp duh furz puhzon huh truz to muk meh jiggen zoop er zum hit luk dad.”
Laughingmoon looked at Marsden. “What about that one? Did you understand that?”
Marsden shook his head. “Not a single word.”
While Conway squirted out a hefty dollop of the medicated foam and spread it over the ruined portion of Dollarhyde’s face in order to prevent infection, as well as hopefully stop any poisons that might have been transmitted through the crabs’ bites, Mingo took over their attempts to hail Delta team. “Delta team, do you read? Talk to us.”
At first the only reply they got back was static. After a few more seconds, though, they heard something that might have been words.
“What the hell’s wrong with these things now?” Llewellyn asked. “They were working fine again just before we were attacked.”
“We also didn’t have the ships power back on at that point,” Axel pointed out. “By turning everything back on, we probably increased whatever interference we originally ran into when we entered the ship.”
After several more minutes of trying, they finally were able to adjust the transmission enough that they could understand most of what Delta team was trying to say. All they were getting at the moment was audio, though. The video feed was still too messed up for them to see anything. “Charlie team, can… us now?” Arizona’s voice said.
“Somewhat,” Mingo said. “How’s your team holding up?”
“We haven’t seen any action… last time you talked. The life signs we’re picking up… guys don’t say the same thing, though.”
“We lost Tungsten in the fight. Multiple other injuries, including Dollarhyde, who’s in pretty bad shape, but you know how she is. She’s still got a wicked tongue, even when half that tongue is missing right along with a huge part of her face.”
“Yeesh. That does… like Dollarhyde, though. The lights are… now, so I’m assuming you’ve figured out how… on.”
“Sort of,” Mingo said. “Our translation program is still running on it. Until it figures out
more of the symbols we’re seeing in here, it looks like we’re trapped. We managed to turn on some kind of energy field that killed most of the crab swarm, but it looks like it will probably do the same thing to us if we can’t figure out how to turn it off.”
“How certain are… the crab swarm is completely gone?” Arizona asked. “Because if they’re taken… we can come to you and wait… out how to get out of there.”
“As far as wean see, the crab swarm is totally wiped out,” Mingo said. “But if you come for us, proceed with caution. We have no idea if individual crab creatures might still be lurking out there.”
“Roger that,” Arizona said. “Send us… map data you have, and we’ll… our way in your direction.”
“Sending now,” Mingo said. “Good luck.”
Arizona signed off right as there was a minor scuffle between Conway and Dollarhyde. “Yuh trutta inneck muh wuff dat an uhl shuffit up yur uth,” Dollarhyde said as she tried to push away a hypodermic needle Conway had in her hand.
“Other than the fact that I think that’s probably anatomically impossible, you don’t have any choice,” Conway said. “Right now your system is in shock. You’re not feeling the full level of pain you should from your injuries. Once that hits you, it’s going to be excruciating. Also, I’m afraid you might have a heart attack, given your current vitals. If you want any chance at all of not dying on this worthless rock of a planet, you’ll let me do my job.” Before Dollarhyde could try warding her off again, Conway rudely shoved the needle into Dollarhyde’s arm.
“Uhw! Budge,” Dollarhyde said before her remaining eye rolled back in her head and she was out cold. When Dollarhyde’s body relaxed, Conway finally sat back and allowed herself a deep breath.
“I tell you, commanding officers are always the worst patients,” Conway mumbled.
“So what’s next?” Marsden asked. Although his question was directly mostly at Mingo, he made sure that anyone in the room could hear in case they had any ideas.
Recon Marines Page 4