Xenonauts: Crimson Dagger

by Stephen, Lee

  Indicating for Nina to take to his side, Mikhail raised his weapon and exited the room.

  As the four-person Soviet team made their way back to the elongated chamber, Mikhail found himself leading the group through the haze of smoke created by the grenade he had thrown. He hadn’t waited around long enough to see if it’d done any damage, though the lack of an alien presence in the chamber itself told him that if nothing else, it had staved off an advance. Whether the aliens had fallen back or taken cover nearby was yet to be determined.

  The Soviets were nearing the turn where Mikhail’s grenade had gone off, their weapons raised and ready to fire. Through the light smoke, the green-bloodied body of one giant reptile could be seen slumped against the wall.

  Raising his hand to signal a slowdown, Mikhail pushed himself against the wall as he and Nina neared the corner. M3 ready, he approached the turn. Spinning around it, he raised the submachine gun and scanned the hall, Nina making the turn with her pistol a split-second later.

  Thank God. Sprawled out in the hallway, several meters down, were the mangled bodies of the other three reptiles. His grenade had been true—none of the reptiles had escaped its blast.

  “Captain,” whispered Nina behind him. Mikhail looked back, where the sniper was crouching down by the first fallen reptile’s body. As soon as Mikhail focused on the alien, he knew why she was calling him.

  The fallen reptile was still breathing.

  Nikolai raised his PPsh-41 to fire a kill-shot. “Wait,” said Mikhail, motioning for the Spetsnaz to lower his weapon. The reptile was bleeding heavily, parts of its body reduced to mangled pulp. Even a side of its face was deformed, one eye clearly missing from a socket. “Save your ammunition for the ones that can fire back,” Mikhail said. This one was no longer a threat.

  The Spetsnaz nodded.

  Focusing down the corridor, Mikhail motioned for his comrades to follow him. There was a four-way intersection ahead. Mikhail quickly assigned each operative a direction to cover. No reptiles or gray aliens were anywhere to be seen.

  “Which way?” asked Nina.

  “This way,” Mikhail said, pointing to the forward section of the ship. He was completely confident that the bridge was in that direction. It was the strangest gut instinct he’d ever experienced—his only explanation was that it was related to the connection he’d experienced earlier. That didn’t make it any less unsettling. Mikhail made his move to track down the corridor, his comrades following. Nothing popped its head out, nothing challenged them. It was as if all the ship’s occupants had been dealt with.

  Suddenly, a new sound emerged—one unlike any they’d experienced in the ship before. A rhythmic, repetitive clanking. Something solid, with weight. A lot of weight.

  Up ahead of them, a new adversary rounded the corner. All four of the Soviets stopped. Like the reptiles they’d fought previously, this enemy carried a large energy rifle. But this was no reptile. It was massive; its body was covered from head to toe in metallic viridian armor, like some kind of mechanical guardian. Raising its rifle, it marched straight toward them.

  Both it and the Soviets opened fire.

  The Soviets’ bullets ricocheted off the walls and floor, and most alarmingly, off the guardian itself. Nina’s headshots bounced off the machine’s helmet as if she was slinging pebbles. As the guardian opened fire, Mikhail and company dove aside to avoid its blasts. “Fall back! Fall back!” Scrambling to their feet, the Soviets sprinted for the four-way intersection. But they wouldn’t all reach it. Sevastian, the wounded senior lieutenant, took an energy bolt square in the back. Spewing blood, he fell forward onto the hallway floor and lay still.

  Mikhail had seen Sevastian take the hit and swore in frustration, but there was nothing he could do. His XO was dead; slowing down to address the issue would leave Mikhail dead, too.

  “What the hell is that thing?” Nina screamed, taking position around one of the turns to fire at it again. Another headshot—another ricochet. This titan was impervious. Marching fearlessly down the center of the hall toward them, it methodically sprayed fire in their direction. It would be on them in a matter of seconds.

  “Split up!” Mikhail yelled, pointing for his comrades to each choose a direction. That thing couldn’t follow all of them. Whichever person it chose to pursue, it could be assaulted from behind by the two others. Mikhail dashed for the corridor that continued deeper, Nina opting for the one that led to the ship’s backside. Nikolai sunk back to the direction they’d come from. “Don’t surrender your rear!” The last thing any of them needed was to be attacked from behind by something else.

  The towering guardian emerged into the hallway—once again, Mikhail and his team opened fire. Pivoting its head toward Mikhail, the mechanical behemoth turned in his direction without slowing its advance. It was heading straight for him.

  Panic struck. Scrambling backward, Mikhail flung himself from one side of the hall to the other to avoid the relentless blasts of energy the guardian was hurling at him. There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. A searing pain struck his left shoulder; Mikhail screamed as one of the energy bolts pegged him. Falling back-first onto the metal, he rolled against the wall just in time to narrowly avoid a fatal shot. But it was delaying the inevitable. He could hear the weapons fire of his comrades, the ricochets of their bullets off the metallic titan. He could smell the char of own skin.

  Lunging to the nearest wall, Mikhail slammed against a nearby closed door with all of his body weight, slapping the control panel desperately. Something beeped. The door slid upward. As blue energy soared past his head, Mikhail fell forward into the unfamiliar room. Stumbling over objects on the floor, he found himself flailing forward into a small, dimly-lit chamber. Things were scattered everywhere, apparently strewn from shelves during the crash. As he hurried to right himself, he surveyed the mess. Containers, devices, pieces of what seemed to be cloth or fabric. Nothing of use. He whipped his head around. The rhythmic, clunking footsteps of the guardian approached. It would round the corner at any second.

  He scanned the room frantically. Something—there had to be something! He threw the containers aside. There was nothing in any of them. The fabric seemed to be mesh-like, like the alien equivalent of gauze. Useless to him. Scrambling to his feet, he scampered across the room, losing his balance and falling toward the corner just as he heard the guardian slow to round the turn. It was upon him.

  He reached for his M3; it was gone, lost in his desperate retreat. He had nothing.

  Then he saw it.

  It was piled up in the next corner nearest him, its red sheen unmistakable against the drab-colored objects scattered around it. A weapon. An extraterrestrial rifle, like the ones that’d been unleashed on him and his crew. He had no clue how to operate it, but it was all he had left. Pushing up with his left hand, adrenaline staving off whatever pain should have been there, he propelled himself toward the corner, his hands curling around the butt of the weapon. Though alien, its form was at least vaguely familiar—and he’d seen more than enough of it in the hands of the enemy. Picking it up, he immediately felt the weapon’s weight. It was as cumbersome as it looked. Mikhail’s awkwardness was only intensified by the fact that his left arm didn’t quite seem to be functioning properly. Slinging the rifle around as best he could and falling back against the corner, he grunted and propped the weapon against his right shoulder. The guardian pivoted to face him.

  Mikhail had no clue where the trigger was or how it worked. He only knew there was a place to put one hand, and a place to put the other—the closest thing he could find to a stock and a trigger guard. He set his hands in place. The guardian raised its rifle. Mikhail’s fired first.

  The Soviet captain had no idea how he’d activated the weapon. He only knew that his hands had done enough panicked fiddling to find the right mechanism. There was a blast of blue energy. A wave of heat washed over his face.

  Then there was a scream. It was metallic—piercing. The stress of an overl
oading machine. A strain of technology. As Mikhail’s eyes adjusted to the blue flash, they registered the guardian slumped against the wall. Its weapon lay abandoned on the floor. Sparks cascaded from its chest. Trembling, the guardian clambered to its feet.

  Forcing himself upright, Mikhail aimed the alien rifle once more. His fingers and hands explored; he rediscovered the firing mechanism. There was another flash of blue, and the guardian slammed back against the wall. He fired again, and again, overkill he was glad to exercise. When the blue haze vanished, the guardian was a smoldering wreck.

  Shoving to his feet, Mikhail lifted the alien weapon again, its weight making it nigh-impossible to aim properly. Just the same, it was all he had. At least if he ran across another guardian, he had a weapon that could bring it down. Lumbering toward the chamber door, he reentered the hall.

  “Kirov!” Nina said, rushing to his side. “Are you all right?”

  The look in her eyes was enough to indicate to Mikhail that whatever damage had been done to his shoulder, it was severe. Seeing for himself only confirmed it. His shoulder was wide open. Charred flesh reeked beneath his uniform; burnt muscle was exposed in open air. He was almost as bad off as Sevastian had been. As soon as he saw it, the pain set in. Mikhail slammed his head back against the wall. It was as if glowing hot coals were being twisted into his skin. In several places, his flesh had grafted itself into his uniform. It burned with every move that he made.

  “All right,” Nina said, flushed, wide-eyed, and without anything to say afterward. She looked desperately back to Nikolai, who was facing them in the hallway, knelt down with his weapon ready. Her eyes shot back to Mikhail.

  The pain was insufferable, but the mission demanded it be tolerated. Through gritted teeth, Mikhail reached for his M3.

  Nina stopped him. “No! You cannot fight like this.”

  “We cannot stop now. We have no choice.” Locating his M3 on the floor, he kicked it toward Nina and motioned for her Makarov. “Take my weapon and give me your pistol.” He continued talking without hesitating—without giving her a chance to cut in. “The metal creatures, they are robots. I do not know if they have any weakness to our weapons. I will keep this alien gun in case we cross another one.”

  She tightened her grip on his collar. “Stop.” Glaring through sweat-soaked strands of hair, she spoke to him firmly. “We must get to you safety—the Americans can finish this.”

  “We will proceed to the bridge of this spaceship. We will find a way to deactivate it, then we will hunker down and wait for the Americans to begin their offensive.” It was as much wishful thinking as a legitimate plan—he had no clue if an offensive would ever actually occur. At some point, the Americans would get impatient. They had to.

  “Lukin and I will continue to the bridge ourselves,” Nina said. “I will pull rank if I must.” Tugging him to his feet, she looked back at Nikolai. “Get ready to—” Her remaining words were stifled by a gasp, then a cry of “Lukin!”

  By the time Mikhail craned his neck to see, it was too late. In one second, Nikolai was watching them from the center of the intersection. In the next, he was being attacked from the one direction that was supposed to have been clear—right behind him. A reptile launched itself at him, its massive hand grabbing the Spetsnaz and slamming him head-first into the metal wall before the Russian could react. Talons found flesh, and Nikolai’s neck was torn open in a single, effortless slash. He fell lifelessly to the floor.

  Releasing Mikhail, Nina raised her pistol and opened fire. The reptile was struck in the chest and neck several times before a bullet found its forehead. It collapsed to its knees then bent forward. A final blast knocked it on its back. Both it and Nikolai lay still, red and green blood mixing in a growing puddle around them.

  Mikhail’s mouth hung disbelievingly. Where had the reptile come from? They’d dispatched every alien that direction, and any they hadn’t would have had to go through the Americans. Were the Americans defeated? Had the Soviets somehow missed one of these creatures? As Nina sprinted to the intersection, Mikhail pushed to his feet to follow.

  The scene at Nikolai’s body was gruesome. The Spetsnaz’s throat had been ripped completely out—his vertebrae were in plain sight. Blood was spilling everywhere. Nina dropped to her knees, covering each of the intersections in turn. Mikhail slid down next to her, any pain he’d been feeling replaced by the sudden rush of urgency. Quickly and without discussion, the two remaining Soviets swapped weapons. M3 in both hands, Nina’s eyes darted across the corridors. “Where did it come from?” she asked frantically.

  “I don’t know!” He glanced briefly at the alien. It hadn’t even fired at Nikolai. It had come straight up from behind him, as if it’d been right there all along. As if it’d just risen from thin air. How had it gotten the jump on a Spetsnaz GRU?

  Something suddenly caught Mikhail’s eye. Something about the reptile—something chillingly familiar. Leaning closer, he focused on the alien’s face. Right into its eyes.

  Into its eye.

  One of the reptile’s eye sockets was completely empty. Healed over, but vacant. As a knot formed in the pit of Mikhail’s stomach, he looked down the corridor toward the corner they’d turned long ago—the one he himself had cleared with a grenade. He looked for the alien he’d told them not to waste a bullet on. It was gone. “Oh my God,” he whispered.

  Nina was still pivoting in the other three directions. “What?” she asked breathily. “What is it?”

  This was the reptile they’d left behind. The one Mikhail had thought was out of the fight. The wounds, the gashes, all were completely resealed. He could see the scar marks on its body, but the wounds themselves were closed. Raising his pistol quickly, Mikhail fired a series of bullets straight into the alien’s forehead. The reptile’s head rocked back and forth until its skull cracked open. Brain fluid hit his face then spilled onto the floor.

  Nina, having jumped at the first of Mikhail’s shots, spun to face him. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Taking a defensive posture, Mikhail grabbed Nikolai’s PPsh-41 and slid it Nina’s way to take. “It regenerated! Like lizards regrowing their tails! This was the one we left behind.” The one he’d told them to save bullets on. How many others had they left alive, even unknowingly? This one had been in terrible shape, yet there it was, the slayer of their Spetsnaz. How many other reptiles’ deaths had they left to assumption?

  For a moment, Nina’s gaze was fixated on the alien’s corpse, as if Mikhail’s claim was too unreal to believe. Then she quickly grabbed the PPsh-41. She slung it over her shoulder. “All right,” she said hurriedly, desperately. She knew the kind of trouble they were in. “What is the plan now?”

  What was the plan? Besides this one reptile whose brains were on the floor and the others dispatched by the grenade, they didn’t know if any of the ones they’d killed earlier were truly dead. The ones by the dig site were most certainly all alive.

  “We could be in the middle of them all!” said Nina, her voice shaking harder. “Where are the Americans?” She scanned in the four hallway directions.

  It didn’t matter where the Americans were now. Getting to them was no sure thing, nor was there any guarantee that the Americans were even still alive. What if they’d been attacked from behind, too? Aliens rising from the dead would catch anyone off-guard, Green Beret or not.

  Focus on what you need to do. Reach the bridge.

  The bridge. Whether it was heavily defended or not, it was the one place where whatever plan they had could be put into action. If they were even going in the right direction to find the bridge. If there even was a bridge at all. “We keep going forward,” Mikhail said. “We find the bridge, we shut down their communication.”

  “What if you are wrong?” she asked. Wiping her hairline back, her eyes stayed on the corridor. “What if they have no communication plan? What if this is all something that just came to your head?” Her pretense of subordination was gone—there was no one to main
tain the act for. It was just the two of them.

  As for him being wrong, he couldn’t accept that. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe it was a possibility. He just refused to be directionless. “I cannot believe that vision meant nothing.”

  “Do you realize we are going to die if we go any further?”

  It was that question, of all that’d been posed since the mission began, that finally hit him. It wasn’t even a question; it was a declaration. They were going to die if they went further. There was no doubt in Nina’s mind.

  Memories resurfaced in Mikhail’s own head—real memories. His memories. Kseniya resurfaced.

  His day had started with her. When he woke up, she was the first person to greet him. To smile at him. What if he did die here? He may never see her smile again. Kseniya’s voice repeated in his mind, words and phrases she’d spoken to him that very morning.

  “I want to be a soldier. So I can fight the Americans! I want to be like you!”

  There was so much innocence in Kseniya, even in the way she spoke of such things as war. Such a lack of realization as to what war was. What war was about. What was it about?

  It was about freedom.

  In that moment, there was a shift inside him. It was subtle, happening deep in Mikhail’s heart, but it was there. He’d never asked for this mission. He’d never hoped for anything like it. But here he was. Here he was, facing what was increasingly looking like certain death, in the best possible position of any human being on the planet…to save everyone. To save her.

  If that vision was more than just a “vision.” If the aliens truly were trying to fix their communication. If this ship was in fact about to turn into a beacon. If this was the catalyst for an invasion. If all or any of those things were true.

  Then Kseniya would be in the middle of it.

  The bridge. Everything hinged on the bridge. Right then, Mikhail knew how to answer Nina’s question—the one she’d intended to be rhetorical. The inquiry as to whether or not he realized they were going to die if they went further.