“We plain and simple don’t have the time to try getting to the last power core room,” Dollarhyde said as they all took a minute to catch their breaths and reload their weapons. They’d come down with plenty of reloads to spare, but now, after the amount of ammunition they’d been forced to go through just to get out of the last room alive, it seemed entirely possible that they could run out of bullets long before they ran out of enemies. “We’re going to have to just see if what Axel’s already put down will be enough to blow the ship and everything on it.”
“I have the trigger all set up and ready,” Axel said as she indicated a small case clipped next to her PDM. “All it needs is to be armed. If anything happens to me, one of you will have to take if from my dead body.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Bayne grumbled.
“I certainly hope that’s true, but you all need to know just in case.”
“Duly noted,” Dollarhyde said. “Conway, give us a status update on…” She paused as she realized what she had just said. She had to take another deep breath before speaking again. “Someone check their PDM and give us a status update on the three that were infected by the Thirty-Sevens. I’d check my own, but it looks like the screen might have gotten splashed by some of that acid.”
“At least it’s still recording your vitals,” Chunda said as he pulled his own PDM out. “The PDMs are still registering Murakame and the others as being on the planet. There’s an extra heartbeat on the planet now, Singh, but her vitals are looking as poor as the others.”
“She must have been the pilot that got sent down with Dropship Beta, and now she’s been taken over as well,” Marsden said.
“Which means we only have as much time left as it takes for them to load up whatever they’re taking onto the two dropships,” Dollarhyde said. “Essentia, how close are we to one of the two exits?”
“Very close,” Essentia said. “If we were to run we could make it in less than five minutes.”
“But also if we run,” Llewellyn said, “we could go headlong into some other kind of trap. If we hit one more room like the last one, we’re all dead and the human race might very well be doomed.”
“We don’t want that,” Bayne said. “Doomed is bad.”
“We go as fast as we can and still keep our guard up,” Dollarhyde said. “Marsden and Bayne, you two take point. Llewellyn and Laughingmoon take the rear. Take nothing for granted. We have no guarantee that we’re still going to run into anything, but we know that all those creatures are still out there.”
They formed up and moved all of a meter forward before Dollarhyde said something else. “Wait! Everyone stop.”
“Uh, why?” Bayne asked.
Then it hit them all. There was a skunk smell in the air. And it was growing stronger, stronger—
“Cover!” Dollarhyde yelled.
If Hairy had come at them from ahead like it had last time, they probably all would have survived the initial attack. Instead the ones in the rear weren’t quite fast enough by a matter of half a second. As the majority of the marines threw themselves against the wall to get out of Hairy’s way, Llewellyn, Laughingmoon, and Trieloff were hit by the thing blurring past them. Llewellyn and Laughingmoon were gone in a bloody flash, pieces of them flying everywhere and showering the others. Trieloff had managed a half turn away before Hairy blew through the corridor. Instead of hitting her head on, Hairy buzzed against her back. The entire back of her uniform and all the skin along her spine were flayed off her, and the force of the hit sent her flying headfirst into the wall, where all of them distinctly heard a sickening crack as her neck snapped.
“God damn it!” Dollarhyde screamed after the thing as it vanished somewhere down the hall ahead. “I am getting seriously sick of you, you bastard. Next time I smell you, you’re going down!”
Marsden thought he heard something far ahead, so far they couldn’t quite see, but he almost thought it sounded like something skidding to the a halt. The stink, which had started to fade, suddenly came back to all their nostrils.
“I think it heard you, Dollarhyde,” Marsden said.
“Aim down the hall and just start shooting!” Dollarhyde said. “Do it now before it…”
They all started firing as the stench increased. At the last second, like a matador dodging a pull, Marsden dove to the side and hoped that everyone behind him had managed to do the same. From the shower of blood he felt at his back, though, he knew that wasn’t the case. He turned to see Chunda’s severed head smack against the wall and bounce to the floor, his eyes still wide with what looked like consciousness for nearly a second before they went dull with death. The rest of his body was gone. Dollarhyde had also been hit, but it looked like a glancing blow to her side. Marsden thought she would be okay up until the moment where she clutched her side and the blood started to flow from the wound in thick rivulets. She leaned against the wall and slid to the ground.
“Shit. It looks like that’s me done,” Dollarhyde said, her voice an uncharacteristic whisper.
Marsden stooped down next to her and tried to throw one of her arms over his should so he could support her. They’d left the makeshift stretcher some distance behind them, not that they would have had the time to secure her to it again anyway. Although the smell had faded, it wasn’t completely gone. Hairy was somewhere down the hallway still, and it was looking like the creature might come back at any moment.
“Come on, we can still get you out of here,” Marsden said. Dollarhyde, however, slapped away any of the marines’ attempts at a helping hand.
“I’d only slow you down, and none of you have any time for that,” Dollarhyde said.
“Dollarhyde, we’re not going to just leave you behind,” Hemingford said. “That’s not the way we work.”
“Yeah, and that particular code of ethics worked really well for us when we went looking for Arizona and the others, didn’t it?” Dollarhyde said. “Besides, no one’s going to want to see my ugly half-a-mug back on the core worlds anyway. I’ll scare little children.”
“You already scare little children,” Marsden said. To his surprise, Dollarhyde smiled at that, or at least as much of a smile as she could still manage with only half her mouth.
“Damned straight I do. Now enough with the witty banter. Bayne, give me your chain gun.”
“But… but… that’s mine,” Bayne said. Marsden didn’t think his face would ever be capable of such an expression, but Bayne actually pouted.
“We can get you another one if we live,” Marsden said. “Do as she says.”
Bayne shrugged off his pack that fed the chain gun, then placed the enormous weapon with surprising tenderness in Dollarhyde’s hands. “Take good care of it,” Bayne said, then thought about it and added, “for all the ten seconds where you’re still going to exist.”
The angle of the gun was awkward from her position on the floor, but she managed to hold it upright despite her waning strength and aim it down the corridor. “Now get the hell out of here, you idiots,” Dollarhyde said. “You’ve got an entire human race to save from brain-eating parasites.”
“They don’t actually eat brains,” Axel said. “As Essentia explained, what they do is—”
“Axel, now is really not the time for you to get technical,” Marsden said. “Alright, everyone, you heard her! Move!”
As much as Marsden knew they should still be careful, he was pretty sure they no longer had that luxury. He ran down the hall, away from Dollarhyde, and didn’t look back at either the marines that followed him or his current commanding officer as she sat in the middle of the hall and waiting for her last stand.
“Okay, Hairy! Come and get me!” Dollarhyde yelled back down the corridor. “Let’s see if you’re faster than this!”
Even as they ran, they all smelled the pungent stink as Hairy started back toward them. At almost the same time, the heavy metallic roar of the chain gun started. Just underneath it, Marsden could hear Dollarhyde’s manic battle cries i
n her last moments.
The chain gun stopped just as the stink let up. Their PDMs all buzzed with the news that another marine heartbeat had vanished.
No one looked back. They just kept running.
August 2, 2147 (Earth Calendar)
2044 Greenwich Mean Time
Location: Corridor to the Main Entryway, Sten-Plus Spacecraft, Bullfinch-2
Marine Heartbeats Detected on Planet: 9
They knew they were approaching the main entryway for two reasons. One, the corridor had grown wider and was obviously intended to have more traffic. Two, they now started to find the dead bodies of a variety of fantastic, monstrous creatures
“What happened here?” Heming ford asked as they stepped past the carcass of something that resembled an eight-meter-long boa constrictor with twenty legs.
Axel paused only long enough to examine the marks on the carcass. “I’d say those are battle wounds.”
“Battle wounds against what?” Bayne asked.
“All of the creatures that were released were specifically gathered by the Sten-Plus because they would be particularly harmful to humans,” Marsden said. “But that doesn’t exactly mean that they were going to play nice with each other. If all of these creatures were released at once, it stands to reason that some of them didn’t wait to find us before their combat or self-preservation habits kicked in.”
Not too much farther down the path, they found another one of the many-legged snake creatures, this time surrounded the corpses of a small pack of creatures that would have appeared similar to mice if fully half their bodies didn’t consist of teeth. Given the bulges in the snake-thing, Marsden had to guess that it managed to eat some of the little creatures before they got their revenge on it. The joke appeared to be on them in the end, though, as every one of the teeth-mice looked like it had died soon after taking a bite out of the larger predator.
“It must have been poisonous,” Axel said as she looked at the dead creatures.
“Yeah, see that greasy coat all over the snake-thing?” Essentia asked. “Hold on.” She stopped to root around in her supplies.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but we don’t have time,” Hemingford said.
“There’s always time for science,” Essentia muttered as she found a small stoppered vial that had been used to carry emergency water rations earlier. Axel grunted her approval with the sentiment as Essentia pulled out the stopper. “Pretty much all the biological samples we could have gotten from the trip are going to be destroyed. I’m sure the Science Corp would be very appreciative if we at least manage to bring back something.” She collected a small amount of the greasy substance in the vial, being careful not to get any on her skin just in case it proved fatal just through contact, and then stopped it back up and put it in a safe place in her supplies.
The closer they got to the entrance, the greater the carnage they found. Many of the creatures they found were relatively smaller, being roughly human-sized, but they did find a number of dead alien bodies of significantly greater size. Marsden pushed them past most of it, reminding them all that they didn’t know how much time they might still have, but even he had to stop and pause at the enormous hoofed and feathered creature lying directly in front of the main entrance. The thing’s head was a massive tangle of horns and it had an extremely long, whip-like tale covered in what looked like needles. It was roughly half the size of a dropship, and if the thing had been healthy and hearty, it probably would have completely killed all the remaining Recon Marines currently under his command. As it was, it still breathed, its huge flanks pulsing irregularly as it tried to suck in air, and there were an uncountable number of bullet-holes in its side, right along with the kind of scorch-marks that could have only been caused by incendiary grenades. Axel, of course, took the most note of this latter detail.
“These were very inexpertly aimed,” Axel said as the beast took its last shuddering breath. Whatever had happened to it, it must have been recent if it hadn’t even had the chance to die yet. “Murakame would have had a number of incendiary grenades on her, but she would have known better how to target something like this with them.”
“Maybe this thing was too fast for her to get her attacks off correctly,” Essentia said.
“That could be,” Marsden said. “Or maybe these parasites aren’t as good at using their host’s skills as we thought they were.”
“That might make sense,” Axel said. “She obviously wasn’t very good at faking being normal during her first broadcast to us.”
“She seemed to be better at it the second time,” Hemingford said. “So maybe the more they use their host, the easier for it is for them to use their host’s abilities.”
“If we’re lucky, that will apply to their ability to fly a dropship, too,” Marsden said. “But hopefully we won’t need to rely on that.”
The main entryway was still open, and local night had started to fall on the area, bathing the inside of the open door with an eerie pink and purple light. This light made it hard enough for them to see that they almost missed that there was the dead body of a Recon Marine lying just beyond the hulking, horned beast. It was one of the marines who’d disappeared along with Murakame, and he would have been flat on his back if his back had still been flat. Instead his body lolled to the side to made room for the enormous pink protrusion coming from his back.
Essentia’s description of the Thirty-Sevens earlier had been enough to give Marsden a vivid mental image of what they looked like, but that didn’t even compare to the instinctual revulsion that the parasite brought to Marsden once he actually saw it. Just as they’d surmised, the parasite was low enough on the marine’s back anyone looking at him head on wouldn’t have seen it. From the side, however, the brain-like monstrosity bulged out like an impossible, twisted tumor. Various tentacle-like appendages went from the parasite to the places where it anchored into the marine’s body. The parasite had more or less shredded the back of the marine’s uniform and armor to get at the soft flesh underneath, and where the tentacles met the skin there were large, unsightly lesions and bruises.
The parasite also had a huge gash down the center that looked like it had come from a strike by the horned-beast’s tale.
“So they can be killed,” Marsden said. “That’s very good to know.”
“If he’s dead, then why am I still reading his life signs on my PDM?” Essentia asked. Marsden checked his own PDM and saw that she was right. The parasite was clearly dead, but the marine still have a very faint heartbeat and some brainwave activity.
“Are you sure that everything you said earlier about the host not being able to live without the parasite is correct?” Marsden asked Essentia.
“No, I’m not, but the Sten-Plus certainly seemed to think that would be the case.”
“Maybe we can still save him if we get that thing off his back,” Bayne said. Marsden figured it was worth a try, so he took out one of his knives and gingerly tried to slide it between the flesh of the parasite and the ravaged skin of the marine’s back.
“No, stop,” Essentia said as she stared at her PDM. “Now try it again.” Marsden did as she said, and once again ceased when she told him to. “Every time you try to separate it from him, his heartbeat gets worse. There’s probably something in the parasite’s physiology that automatically tries to kill the host if it’s removed.”
“So what do we do instead?” Hemingford asked.
Marsden stooped down next to the marine’s head and forced one of his eyes open. While everything else about the marine made him look like an empty shell, Marsden could have sworn that he still saw some fire in the man’s eyes.
“I think he’s still conscious,” Marsden said. “He knows that we’re here.” He looked over to Axel and made a slight motion with his head, hoping that she would understand what he was trying to tell her without words. She wasn’t usually the kind who was that kind at interpreting non-verbal signals, but she was the one he most want
ed doing this. Thankfully she seemed to get it, and she nodded almost imperceptibly before going around the fallen marine and stooping behind him, where the marine wouldn’t be able to see. Judging from the knowing flash Marsden thought he saw in the marine’s eye, though, this man knew exactly what was about to happen and preferred it to the voiceless, unending torment he was currently going through.
Axel pulled out a sidearm, checked to make sure it was loaded, and then aimed it at the back of the marine’s head.
Marsden looked at the marine’s nametag. Lapinsky. Marsden barely knew the man, but when he looked over at Essentia he realized that she did. And judging from the shininess in at the edge of her eyes, he guessed that she knew him well.
“Goodbye, Lapinsky,” Essentia said quietly. Essentia, rather than Marsden, was the one to look at Axel and nodded her head.
Axel ended the man’s suffering.
August 2, 2147 (Earth Calendar)
2049 Greenwich Mean Time
Location: Main Entryway of the Sten-Plus Spacecraft, Bullfinch-2
Marine Heartbeats Detected on Planet: 8
Other than Lapinsky, there were no signs of the Thirty-Sevens near the main entryway, nor were there any signs that traps or ambushes had been left for them when they tried to get out of the ship. Nonetheless, Marsden made sure that the last four Recon Marines under his command moved with the utmost caution as they walked out the main entryway. As soon as their boots touched the rocky, unforgiving surface of the planet, Marsden had to fight an overwhelming urge to drop to his knees and kiss the surface of Bullfinch-2 as a thank you for no longer being the Sten-Plus ship. At any other time, he might have done it anyway just to be an over-acting smartass, but for the moment he was in command and he had to set a precedent for the others.
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