by Steve Perry
“They were all around us, and something happened outside, I guess; they swarmed out of here like mad bees, and I didn’t know if you were here—” Tom seemed to realize he was babbling and cut himself off.
“It’s okay, man. Let’s just get the hell out of here, okay?”
Leaning on each other heavily, they stumbled toward the emergency hatch. It was hard to see anything, but Scott could make out areas of the dock where the shadows were denser, more solid.
A raspy breath came from one of the darker corners of the room. Scott stopped and turned toward the noise. At first he couldn’t see what was the cause—and then he was unable to believe what he saw.
It was one of the creatures.
It was bigger than the others. Its huge, flattened skull was curved downward, its limbs drawn up in front of its dripping jaws. The thing was curled up, a horrible caricature of the human fetal position.
“I think it’s asleep,” Tom said softly. “It hasn’t moved since before all the other ones left.”
Scott couldn’t pull his gaze away from the dormant monster, the slow rise and fall of the thing’s furled body with each slow breath. It was the most frightening thing he had ever seen, like a giant spider-lizard with knives for teeth, deadly, insectile. Strings of sticky goo fell from its jaws, the dim light from the partly opened dock door reflected in the glistening slime.
“Let’s go before she wakes up,” Tom whispered urgently.
“She—?” Scott shook his head and looked at the pilot, but Tom was already pulling him toward the hatch.
“Yeah,” Scott whispered back. He wanted nothing more than to get the fuck out of there. Get help, get weapons; just see another human face. But as they hurried to their escape, Scott glanced over his shoulder to look at the thing once again. Where had they come from? What were they capable of? There was something strangely familiar about them…
He did a double take. His heart pounded. The angle of the creature’s head seemed to have changed slightly…
“Come on!” Tom pulled at his arm.
Scott nodded mutely and followed. There would be time to think about why later, not now, not fucking now…
Scott shuddered as they reached the emergency hatch. The thing was frighteningly similar to the picture in his head of the jabberwock, from that old poem.
He had the sudden, certain feeling that this was far from being over with.
* * *
Noguchi ran through the deserted streets of Prosperity Wells. There was distant thunder, harsh and unreal—
Thunder? She grabbed for the comset around her neck, feeling like an idiot for not having thought of it before; everything had happened so fast.
“Hiroki, this is Machiko! Do you read?”
A hiss of static, and then thunder assaulted her ears. She twisted the volume switch in a panic. Not thunder. Gunfire.
“Hiroki! Come in, please!”
“…achiko?” The reception was bad, but it was him. The sound of his voice was music.
“Listen, I’m approaching the south lock. We’re in real trouble, you’re not going to believe this!”
“At this point, I’d believe anything,” Hiroki said. His usual calm was gone, replaced by tension and worry. The sounds of weaponfire clattered loudly through the com, blocking out whatever he said next.
“Hiroki? Where are you?” Her thoughts buzzed and clamored loudly as she stopped in the street and listened. Nothing. “Hiroki? Are you there?” Her voice cracked in tension.
“…welding the inner doors of the west lock. We’ll hold them off as long as…” Static. “…wish we could see what the hell we’re…”
Noguchi slapped the receiver, hard. “I can’t hear you!”
His next words came through clearly. “Get everyone to The Lector,” he said. And the com fuzzed out.
“No!” she breathed. “Hiroki?”
He was gone. There had to be another way! The Lector wasn’t an option anymore, there was nowhere to go—
Noguchi ran toward the main well, where Riley and Mason had been only a few moments before. Riley would still have his weapon, they could—
Riley lay facedown in the dust, the late sun shining on the pool of red that had formed around him. The dry soil drank deeply; even as she watched, the blood drained into the earth, leaving a wet stain of crimson mud. A large hole had been punched through Riley’s back, the ragged edges raw and meaty. His rifle lay nearby.
She ran to the fallen form and crouched next to it. She pressed numb fingers to Riley’s throat and gagged on the thick, metallic scent of fresh blood. No pulse.
“Shit,” she whispered. She looked around, eyes wide. The warriors, like the one that had saved her life—
She reached for Riley’s rifle quickly, stood. And heard a sound right behind her, nothing so much like a sharp intake of breath. It wasn’t Riley, that was certain. She turned in slow motion—
—and saw nothing. She let out a sigh of relief. There was a lot to be worried about, but no immediate threat, at least.
That was when the earth rose up, the dust wavering in the dimming light, to knock her to the ground.
18
Tichinde led the willing yautja into battle as the light grew shallow on the arid world. The kwei oomans had barricaded themselves behind a heavy door, their stingers on the outside but controlled from within. Their weapons were hot and deadly, their fire had already taken two of the warriors before Tichinde had decided to pull back and organize a stronger attack. Tricky devils, to hide behind the door and kill from a distance.
There were now only six other students left. They crouched behind one of the ooman structures and looked to him for command. Any doubt Tichinde had felt after watching two of his yautja fall evaporated as he saw the eager Hunters before him; Mahnde and Da-ec’te had been slow and foolish, but these warriors would go on to the victory Hunt.
“Skl’da’-si, you will be hilt’ah and stand behind.” Skl’da’-si had the best eyes; they would need sharp vision to watch for any ooman who might be waiting to ambush.
The yautja tilted his head and stepped away from the rest.
“It is time for the Hunt of nain-de,” the new Leader growled. He raised his voice steadily as he spoke the truth aloud to the others. “Time to kill until the pyode amedha trophies sit on our spears, until their thwei flows in our honor and the fight is done. A thousand stories will be sung in our names, for we will conquer!”
Tichinde flared his mandibles in pleasure at the low hisses that came from his warriors. They were ready.
It was Etah’-dte who began the chant of the Midnight Kiss. One by one, the yautja raised their spears and voices to the sky, the screams true and harsh in the dry dead air of the ooman world. Tichinde howled loud and long with his warrior brood; the Soft Meat would die in scores this night, and he would lead the slaughter.
The Hunt was all.
* * *
Noguchi scrabbled backward on her elbows from her bizarre attacker.
There’s nothing there—!
Even as the thought popped into her head, the magnified dust rippled and changed. One of the warriors suddenly towered over her, its thick arms high over its head. The spear it held was pointed at her.
Earlier, in the ship, she had forgotten in her panic that she’d had a rifle strapped on her back. She remembered now.
She swung the heavy rifle up.
Too slow. Time expanded, flowed like thick oil. It took a millennium to thrust the weapon against her shoulder and aim—
Darkness sprang and covered the dragon.
From the main well structure behind the creature, the metallic black bugs shrieked and swarmed and fell on him, their talons fast and sharp.
Noguchi had not seen them there, hadn’t heard them come. It didn’t matter. She jumped to her feet and stumbled backward, watched as the warrior hit the ground and screamed horribly. The nightmare insects cried and tore at their prey. A pale green fluid, the dragon’s blood, sprayed th
e dark animals. They threw back their obscenely long heads and screamed.
Fuck this!
Noguchi turned and ran.
* * *
Roth stood behind Cathie at the ops panel near the south lock when Ackland shouted from his position near the heavily fortified entry.
“Get ready! Something’s coming!”
Roth gave Cathie’s shoulders a light, reassuring squeeze before she picked up her carbine and joined the other armed men and women at the door, Creep at her heels.
Her heart thudded dully in her chest as she ran the dozen meters or so. Hiroki’s broadcasts had been coming in from the ops console for the last twenty minutes or so. His team was doing their best to ward off the attackers, but they had wasted a lot of their ammo on thin air; the going belief was that the alien creatures had some kind of invisibility cloak. The camera angle was such that only a few of the team could be seen—not what they were fighting.
Roth took a position toward the front of the group and trained her weapon on the reinforced plexi door, arms steady. The tension around her was heavy; they didn’t know enough about the aliens, what they were after or what they could do. Maybe they wouldn’t be so easy to kill—
Reuben Hein, one of the geotechs, was on watch. His face was pressed closely to the loophole in the wall. He held up one of his dark hands for silence as the seconds ticked by.
Roth felt a trickle of sweat run down the nape of her neck; she closed one eye, finger rested lightly on the trigger.
“It’s okay, don’t shoot!” Hein called. “It’s Noguchi!”
Roth hadn’t realized how nervous she had been until his words flooded her with cool relief. She and the others lowered their weapons and stepped back from the door.
Noguchi had obviously been in a fight; her clothes were rumpled and dusty, her normally sleek hair was plastered to her head in strings, her face flushed. She walked in quickly and surveyed the situation.
“Did you see them? What the hell are they? How many were there?” Ackland half blocked her entrance, his red face betraying the fear he was hiding.
“Too many,” said Noguchi. She turned to the assembled group of ranchers and company people and spoke clearly, her voice one of authority. “Fall back to the inner doors and get someone with a welding torch over here. Seal all of the doors—upper level, too—except the east lock. And no one goes in or out without my authorization.”
She looked at Hein. “Are we organized enough to get this done without tripping over each other?”
He nodded. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“Are the children here?”
Loren Gaunt spoke up. “Yeah, they’re eating back in the conference room with Davidson and Jonson.”
Noguchi exhaled slightly, and some of the tension left her shoulders. She picked out Spanner in the crowd and walked over to him, her revolver extended butt first. “Please load this for me. And get me some extra rounds for it. More of the armor-piercing hunting rounds like it had before.”
He took the weapon carefully. “How much extra ammo you think you’ll need?”
“Ten speedloaders. And seal those doors ASAP.”
She walked back toward the ops panel, not noticing the effect her words had on the group. Ten speedloaders? A low murmur rippled through the room.
Roth followed Noguchi to the back to tell Cathie what was going on.
The Japanese woman stopped near the board and spoke calmly to one of the staffers.
“Downey, do you have that sat-link hooked up yet?”
“Little Cygni’s still interfering—but it’ll be below the horizon in the next hour.”
Noguchi nodded at that and turned to Weaver. “What do you have on the cameras? Can you get me a fix on Hiroki and his team?”
Cathie stepped up behind Roth and grabbed her hand, both of them watching the conversation. Weaver looked up at Noguchi slowly and said nothing; her brimming eyes said enough.
Noguchi threw her comset on the panel and took the one that Weaver held out. She stood behind Weaver’s chair and looked at the scant visual.
“Hiroki! This is Machiko, do you read?” Her voice held an edge of panic.
From their position, both Cathie and Roth could see what little there was to see on the small screen. A med kit lay open on the floor, its contents scattered. There was a white cable in one corner of the visual—which Roth realized, with dawning horror, was a human arm. The body of the fallen person was offscreen. Cathie’s grip tightened in hers. Muted sounds of gunfire rattled through the com.
“Hiroki, this is Machiko! Do you—”
“Ma… iko?” The reception was terrible, but Roth felt her spirits lift slightly; he wasn’t dead… bzzt. “—you in the tower? Friedman, get down!”
More static.
Noguchi grasped the com tightly, as if doing so would help somehow. She spoke in a rush; it was maybe the first time Roth had seen her with her cool exterior completely blown. The nitrogen queen was terrified.
“Listen, Horiki! Tell your team to stand by, we’re going to open the doors and pull you in, do you read me? Tell your team to stand by!”
Hiroki had backed up so that part of his profile was visible in the screen. He held a rifle aimed offscreen and pulled the trigger uselessly.
“No time,” he spoke in a half shout. Onscreen, Hiroki held the rifle up by its barrel, like a club. Static. “…team left, anyway! Just… and Friedman.” Static. “I don’t think we’ve hit any… them! Ammo’s gone, us, too, I…”
He said something else, but his words were drowned out by the sound of breaking plexi. Hiroki held his empty rifle higher.
Someone, Friedman, shouted offscreen “…they come!”
“Stay safe, Machi…” Static.
Roth watched as huge, dark shapes, the alien warriors, swarmed onto the screen. Hiroki brought the rifle down, hard—to no effect. The attacker he had tried to fend off knocked him to the floor easily, as if he were a child. Mercifully, he fell out of the camera’s range. But the pool of red that flowed sluggishly into view must have come from Hiroki.
Noguchi made a strangled sound deep in her throat and looked away. And then Cathie was crying, and Roth turned to comfort her as best she could.
* * *
The mighty yautja burst through the shoddy ooman defenses with no further losses. There were only two of the Soft Meat still upright, and they fell in the span of a breath. Tichinde himself took out the smaller of the two. The ooman tried to stop him with a dead burner, like a staff—there was no contest.
The new Leader relished the decapitation of the small creature; it had put up a fight, however meager. Its skull would look fine on Tichinde’s trophy wall, once it was polished clean of the sickly pale flesh.
Tichinde howled, the head of the ooman dripping thwei from his spear. Perhaps the Soft Meat were not as deadly as the yautja had been told. If this was the best they could do, he and his warriors would have many trophies to take home.
19
Scott figured that the ranchers and staff were probably holed up in the main operations building; there was no one in sight as they stumbled through the empty streets toward the structure. Twilight had fallen over the town with no respite from the heat.
Scott felt a sense of déjà vu as they walked. Deserted town, lights low, unknown dangers—he looked over his shoulder several times to see if The Lector was still there. He was aware that there was no reason it wouldn’t be, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in deadly danger and that there was no escape from it.
They were near the first set of holding pens when they heard the shriek.
From behind them somewhere, a long, shrill squeal that seemed to echo in the still air rose in pitch and then dwindled into nothing.
Not human, whatever it was. Those things in the ship?
Scott glanced at Tom. He had gone a deathly white, his eyes huge in his face.
“What the fuck—?”
Before Tom could finish, the horrib
le cry came again. Closer.
Gaining.
Scott grabbed Tom’s arm and they ran for the nearest holding pen. His gut had twisted at the alien scream; this whole thing was some kind of bad dream, one he didn’t want to be in anymore.
I’d like to wake up now, please.
The entry to the pen stood open. They scrambled in just as another long howl came—louder, closer still—and slammed the heavy door shut.
Inside, the dark, stuffy room stank of perspiration and rhynth shit. At least they seemed to be alone.
“What are we gonna do?” Tom managed, his voice nearly a gasp.
Scott shook his head, tried to catch his own breath.
The only light in the large room came through a row of small, dirty windows set high on one wall. Other than the door they both leaned against, the only other way in was through the loading hatch—which was closed and locked.
“We’re going to stay here,” Scott said finally.
“But the other people must be—”
“Fuck the other people. The other people have guns, you heard the shooting. We don’t. Do you want to go back out without a weapon?”
Another scream from outside. Tom’s silence was answer enough. They would wait. If somebody wanted in, they could knock and ask politely and if the voice wasn’t human, they sure as shit weren’t gonna get an open door.
* * *
Noguchi sat on her bed and stared at the floor, one shaky hand on her forehead. She didn’t feel much of anything; at first there had been a huge sadness, but it had been replaced with a kind of dull acceptance.
Hiroki was dead. He and the others had sacrificed themselves for the rest of the colony, and she had failed to use the time he had bought for them; she had failed at everything.
Part of her mind kept shouting at her: Organize! Get this under control! Get yourself together!
It was the same voice that had pushed her through most of her life, the driver of the strong Machiko who allowed her to hold her head up. It clamored in her thoughts now, directed her to get up, get up now! and get going—but she let it run itself in circles.
Where was there to go?