The pursuit team must have been alerted to your whereabouts. Dee, they have turned to this direction and will be here in less than four minutes.
Then we need to get on with this! Dee grunted as she rolled up to her feet and kicked her jumpboots against the tree, accelerating her and tossing her more than thirty meters to the next nearest tree. You know what Daddy and DeathRay would say!
Damn right. Get in there and kill those motherfuckers, Marine!
Upon each bound into a tree or behind a termite mound, alien tracer fire tracked her path. Dirt and splinters of wood skittered in tiny blast waves, pinging against her armor. Dee really wished her damned shields were functioning. She felt vulnerable now without them, but she couldn’t let that feeling slow her down. She continued to lay down the HVAR fire sometimes hitting the alien, she thought, but the targeting X would only flicker from yellow to red briefly because the damned thing was so fast. It was hard to tell if she was hitting it or not.
Jesus, they’re fast, she thought as she fired on semi-auto as the targeting X flickered between yellow and red.
Just keep firing, Marine!
Ooh-fuckin’-rah!
Once she dropped to a knee just behind a tree and thought she had the thing dead to rights as she pumped out several tens of rounds. The rounds tracked across and into where the alien had been only milliseconds earlier. Then the firing stopped and there was a red and green blur that appeared in front of her and tossed her hard against the ground. Dee used the momentum of the toss to roll over into a back handspring and used the strength of the suit’s arms to toss her all the way up to her feet while kicking the advancing alien where the thing’s chin should be.
But the damned alien was fast and had moved out of the way, and the blur appeared behind her. Dee spun as soon as her jumpboots hit the ground and kicked the thrusters. The momentum of the jumpboots added to her spin made the force of the elbow she was now swinging smash into the alien’s jaw with a crack that sounded like a grenade bursting behind her. The alien’s personal armor shield flickered as Dee continued to slam her left elbow into the side of its jaw three more times, each blow creating a thunderous cracking sound as the super alloy of the suit clashed with the alien’s barrier shield.
Then an amorphous tendril snaked out from the creature’s torso and wrapped around her midsection and upward around the throat of her suit, and started squeezing her so hard that the suit diagnostics icon popped up in her mindview, showing dangerous pressure points marked in yellow dots that were in danger of turning red. Her left hand was constricted against her chest just short of her rifle and her right was pinned to her side. It was déjà vu all over again. At least this time she wasn’t being eaten alive.
Dee had been in this situation all too recently and didn’t like it. She struggled with her left hand to pull at the tendril and wiggled her right downward toward her M-blaster. Quickly, she did several backwards headbutts until she felt a change in the impact. After a few more blows it no longer felt as though she was headbutting an impenetrable barrier, but instead, her helmet squished against skin and bone as it pounded into the alien’s face. With all the strength in her amazing core and the suit’s artificial musculature, she crunched her abs downward until she could wrap her left leg around the outside of the alien’s left leg and pounded her right jumpboot against its right knee. The alien squealed and Dee could feel its knee give way. She tucked her chin and fell with all her weight in a forward roll, throwing the creature off balance over her right shoulder, and to the ground.
But the damned thing wouldn’t let go of her and the tendril wrapped up on her even tighter. They were now on the ground, with the Chiata on the bottom lying on its back struggling to maintain its death-gripping bear hug around Dee. She did her best to roll from side to side and squirm with elbows and the heels of her boots, but the damned thing had her wrapped up fairly tightly.
Dee finally managed to land a solid kick with her boots somewhere akin to mid-thigh on the Chiata and it loosened its grip just enough so that she could lean backwards and headbutt the shit out of it. Between the kick and the headbutt the alien was stunned just enough to give her some advantage, and she managed to rock her body left and right gaining enough momentum to roll over and pulling the Chiata over onto her back. Using sheer will, strength, and all the power in her suit she pushed up onto her hands and knees. Finding the grip of her blaster finally, she squeezed the trigger, hitting the alien’s leg. The Chiata let out a howl that was more eerie than anything she’d ever heard before, so she fired her blaster again and this time the tendril went a little slack, giving her enough movement with her left hand to grab her HVAR and fire it. The rounds burst the tendril into pieces that loosened and unwrapped, and Dee was free. She turned quickly to fire at the alien but the damned thing zipped by her in a blur and grabbed her left arm, knocking the rifle to the ground and pressing the attack.
The Chiata tossed her sideways and Dee could feel her back slam into one of the termite mounds. It felt to her like she’d been pounded against a concrete structure—it was a lot harder than she’d expected. Before she could get up two more tendrils snaked out from the alien and penetrated her suit armor in the left leg on the outer thigh and on the right shoulder. The centimeter-diameter tendrils pierced all the way through her like harpoons and out the back side, forming barbs, and then yanked her forward.
“Oh, Jesus! Fuck!” Dee shouted in pain. “Goddamn you, motherfucker!”
She raised the blaster as best she could with the right hand, but a third tendril grabbed her hand, knocking the weapon free. Dee stomped her jumpboots against the ground, throwing her upward in an arc over the Chiata. She quickly extended the knife blade from her left wrist and cut through the tendrils as she somersaulted over and came down on her hands and knees behind it.
Immunoboost, stims, and pain meds initiated, Bree said. Don’t stop Marine! Press the advantage!
“Die, you motherfucker!” Dee jumped up from her kneeling position with a right-leg back kick into the alien’s back. The creature was flung forward by the motion of the kick, all the while red and green gunk squirted from the tendrils Dee had cut loose.
The Chiata fell face first against the termite mound, immediately looked as if it were frightened, and started scrambling backwards as best it could. But it was too late. The red and green blood of the creature had covered the mound and had awoken whatever was inside it. Dee wasn’t sure what was happening at first, but then she could see what looked like beetles or ants the size of two-hundred-millimeter AA rounds pouring out from the mound and over the Chiata. It looked to Dee like the Chiata couldn’t move. She’d seen the aliens run so fast that they were blurs, but as soon as the first of the beetle things jumped on the alien, it was paralyzed. Her first thoughts were that the beetles were injecting the Chiata with some sort of neurotoxin. Within seconds the mound poured thousands of the beetles over the alien, and it was devoured to nothing. There was nothing left of the alien except the technology bits and some skeletal structure.
Dee backed up just to make certain that the beetles didn’t get a whiff of her and like what they smelled. But as far as she could tell they weren’t interested. She focused her visor on the skeleton and noted that there were weapon implants grafted to the alien’s bones. The shield system appeared to be connected via conduits that were woven throughout the alien’s skeleton. The bugs didn’t stop, though. They continued to crawl over the alien’s skeleton, picking at the bones and chipping them apart. Dee was pretty sure that in a few moments there would be no biological evidence that the Chiata was ever there.
There were three of them, Dee, and we have more on the way, Bree reminded her.
Right. Keep moving. Too bad I can’t take an armload of those beetle things with me.
They might decide that you are tasty, too. I wouldn’t gamble on it.
Right.
The pain medication and stimulants had knocked the pain down to a level such that Dee just felt an uncomf
ortable nagging ache in her thigh and shoulder. The organogel layer of her suit had filled the wounds and was keeping her from bleeding, and the immunoboost was initiating the healing process. All that didn’t mean that she wasn’t weaker than normal, though. Dee had to depend on her suit to help her walk and to make certain movements with her right arm. Anything overhead was all suit and none of her strength. Those muscles were shot for the time being. Her thigh was pretty messed up as well, and squatting strength on the left side would be all suit; therefore, her reaction time would be slower than normal. She’d seen worse. She was alive. She had to keep moving forward.
Dee picked up her HVAR and her blaster and sluggishly bounced to the edge of the entryway, stopping with her back against the outside wall with both weapons up and at the ready. She took three deep breaths and pumped herself up and then turned the corner moving fast. Her HVAR was in her left hand and her M-blaster in her right, the way she preferred to attack, with the two-gun mojo. Her sensors laid out a cone of visible area before her as she turned her head from left to right. The glyphs on the walls were more twisted and tangled and Dee was sure she passed several markings representing the beetles along the way. The first thing that came to her mind was that the scale of the ruin’s interior was bigger than she’d expected. The hallways and entryways were all more than large enough to load mecha through. If she had to guess, she would have said that the ruins were hangars or forward operating bases for some ancient military. She dropped down one level and reached a corridor with only one way to turn. She turned left, and there she stood face to face with the third Chiata.
Startled, Dee dropped back, firing both weapons. The hypervelocity rounds pinged against the alien’s body armor and pierced through it to the other side, hitting the stone wall behind it. The alien’s barrier shield wasn’t functioning. The rifle round slapped into the stone and didn’t have the effect that Dee was expecting. Rather than slinging stone chips and debris about, there was no damage to the wall, and a ripple of blue and white light flashed starting from the impact point and travelling all the way across the walls of the corridor. It happened too fast for her to stop herself from firing her blaster as well. The M-blaster bolt hit the Chiata square in the face, exploding the creature’s head and throwing red and green viscous fluids across the wall behind it. Dee paused and checked the room for other threats. There were several other Chiata forms standing against the walls, but they were not moving. Even after she had beheaded the alien in front of her its body was still motionlessly stuck to the wall.
Dee jumped backwards and dropped to her knee with her HVAR at the ready to go full auto, but the creatures didn’t attack or move. They were all motionlessly stuck.
“What the hell is going on here?” Dee stood cautiously, never lowering her rifle and waving her blaster about with her right hand, searching for possible targets. A few times she had to lower it to let her shoulder rest or to let the suit lock out the joint for the same purpose. The wound was healing but it would still be a while before she was back to normal.
She closed the distance to the nearest alien and examined it closer, but very cautiously. There was no trace of infrared left in it. It had been dead for many hours if not days. Examination of the other bodies revealed multiple aliens, each having died at successive four-hour intervals of each other. They appeared to be stuck to the wall with some sort of force field. Dee guessed it was whatever field had flickered like a barrier shield when her rifle round hit the wall.
Okay, Bree, I need some answers, Dee thought to her AIC. What the hell, the aliens know I’m here, so use full-up active sensors, pings, particles, radar, everything. Try the QMTs, but I doubt you’ll get anything from them.
Understood. And note that the search team is two minutes out.
Then hurry it up. We need answers quickly.
I got nothing from scanning sensors. We are completely jammed here. Other than the optical sensors and your Mark I eyeballs, there is nothing to see. That in itself is interesting. It is certainly technology beyond a simple primitive race of people.
Interesting, but it ain’t answers. I need to have a better look. Dee thought quickly, not exactly sure what to do next. The Chiata search team was coming hot on her heels. She needed to shit or get off the pot. They’re coming anyway, so light this fucking place up and let’s have a better look.
Done, Bree replied.
The floodlights from the suit illuminated the cavernous room. There were several alien bodies pinned to the wall and rotting. Whatever was in here, the Chiata had been sacrificing themselves for a long time to figure it out. Dee figured that if she’d opened her visor, the air would have smelled putrefied and been toxic. So, she kept her visor closed.
In the corner there were several dead Chiata strapped to mobile gurneys with partial dismemberments. And next to those bodies were what looked like containers with the remains of several of the beetles in them. Dee looked closer and noticed that there was a pattern in the aliens’ death. Most of the bodies were pinned to the wall near a singular beetle marking on the biggest glyph, on the center of a larger spiral with a star-system picture that looked a lot like the star system they were in. There were a few bodies pinned to the wall at other locations but the majority were nearest that marking. Right in the center of the planet in the glyphs, which Dee could only surmise represented the planet she was on, was an indentation or hole that looked just like the little beetles.
Looks like a keyhole, she thought.
It looks like the Chiata thought it was, too.
We need to open this lock. Dee looked about the room hoping to figure out what the Chiata were doing wrong. Why didn’t it work for them?
Perhaps because they are Chiata, Bree said.
What? Chiata? Dee hesitated and then realized that Bree was onto the answer. Bree, that is it exactly! The reason the beetles ate the Chiata and not me. They are some sort of defense system or maybe worse, a doomsday weapon. It doesn’t matter. I know what to do.
Dee turned and backtracked down the corridor and up the stairwell, back into the passageway, coming face to face with six Chiata ground troops standing at the edge of the landing zone. The six aliens and Dee froze for a microsecond and then they all reacted at the same time and in exactly the same way. Instantly, their weapons rose and they started firing towards each other’s general directions respectively. Dee dove to the wall and behind a column for cover. Bolts of plasma energy bounced off the walls, causing barrier shields along the walls to flicker and ripple with energy. The blue and white flashes of light mixed with muzzle flashes and blaster rounds created a multicolor strobe effect in the cavern that made the motion look choppy and disjointed to Dee.
Filter out some of this light flickering! I can’t see shit, she told her AIC.
Roger that, Dee. The two on the right are trying to work around and flank you.
I see it. Keep the radars up for full resolution on red force tracker!
Yes, ma’am!
Dee popped the grenade launcher tube controls. The tube deployed from her shoulder, and then two balls boomed out across the room with a thwoomp thwoomp sound from the compressed air in the electromagnetic rail-cannon launcher, and then they exploded at where the Chiata should have been standing. But the damned things were too fast and she missed them. The red and green blurs regrouped at the other side of the entranceway of the ruin, giving them a good line of fire directly at her. Dee had to bear-crawl forward to adjust her cover position, but it was no good. Alien plasma bolts resounded into the wall behind her and just over her head, creating more and more ripples from the barrier shield.
She was pinned down. The only thing she could do was sit still until the aliens finally got the drop on her, or do what Marines do when they are pinned down by overwhelming numbers of enemy forces. They attack!
Chapter 25
February 19, 2407 AD
Northern Region
Alien Planet, Target Star System
700 Light-years from th
e Sol System
Monday, 9:01 P.M. Ship Standard Time
“There are six Chiata against one injured Marine.” Dee spat blood from her mouth into the organogel layer of her helmet. Her initial attack hadn’t gone as well as she’d planned. The Chiata tendril piercing her abdomen had worked itself out her back before she could manage to slice it free and yank it out. The organogel filled the wound and she was running on pure adrenaline and hyperstimulants.
I’ve administered more pain meds and immunoboost, Bree said. The diagnostics of her suit were going nuts also. Stay focused and keep fighting!
“You sorry alien motherfuckers are outnumbered!” She screamed through the pain and fear and drove herself to pure rage and survival mode. As she swept the knife blade extended from her left arm across the tendrils from the nearest alien, she reached with her right hand and caught it as it detached and extracted. She clenched it as tightly as she could in her fist and yanked the alien towards her while at the same time kicking her jumpboots against the ground, throwing and pulling herself at the Chiata. With all the weight and force of her suit she forced the knife blade just beneath what should have been a chin. The alien’s shields had already failed and this time she drove home the knife all the way through and out the back of the creature’s neck. Dee spun away from it slicing the knife outward and severing the head almost free, leaving it dangling from bloody tissues and alien vasculature from the torso as the Chiata fell to the ground.
With her spinning motion, she rolled across the ground, managed to get her left hand onto her rifle, and fired several rounds as the targeting X blinked red to her left and slightly behind her. She kicked her jumpboots at maximum against the stone underneath the kudzu vines and threw herself twenty meters into the air, twisting like an Olympic gymnast doing a floor routine, dodging plasma rounds from the other Chiata attackers.
They seem to attack in twos with the backup playing sniper, Bree noticed.
Kill Before Dying (Tau Ceti Agenda Book 5) Page 24