SNAFU: Future Warfare

by Geoff Brown

  “Make sure it’s dead!” Watts said, waving him towards the creature he’d shot. Her face was pale and sweaty behind her visor, the slash of freckles across her nose standing out clearer than ever, but her shoulder was sealed up in med-foam. “I’m dumping painkillers like a junkie,” she said. “I’m okay for now.”

  Collins nodded once. His eye fell on Sterns and he tore his gaze away, stifling a sob of grief and fury equally combined. Weapon trained on the inert thing in the corner, he approached cautiously. It seemed to flicker slightly, the mirrored body switching between invisibility and a dark, shining greenblack shell. “Cloaking device?” Collins whispered, as much to himself as to Watts. “And a sound suppressor?”

  The thing’s chitinous exoskeleton was revealed in the flickers to be split in several places by his bullets, a wider rent in the centre of its torso where the mini-grenade had exploded. Thick, black fluid leaked everywhere, presumably its equivalent of blood. The bladed fingers were extensions of its carapace, one or two of them spastically extending and retracting, a smaller many-tentacled hand-like appendage quivered under the shifting knives. It twitched and shivered, seeming to swell and collapse, its form fluid. It had no face to recognise, but a wide mouth in its wedge of a head and a thin, glistening line around the upper ridge that might have been some kind of visual organ.

  It reached up weakly, blades flicking forward. Collins skipped back. Those things had gone right through Watts’ armour and her shoulder. Right through Henna’s body. He stepped back in, pressed the muzzle of his rifle to the band of maybe-eye, and fired a burst into its head. It danced and writhed under his attack and fell still. The flickering ceased and it lay there, a dark, ugly, armoured thing.

  “Fuck you,” he said and went back to Watts. He helped her up and she leaned on him heavily. “We can’t leave Henna.”

  “We’ll come back for her,” Watts said. “The drugs are kicking in but I’ll need your help for a minute. We gotta regroup.”

  “Stay on ultraviolet and be extra eyes for me.”

  She threw her arm over his shoulder and brandished her weapon. “I can still fire one-handed.”

  Collins glanced at the rifle so close to his head, nodded. “Just keep the muzzle up.”

  “Took my fucking arm,” she said, voice low with incredulity. “Took Henna!”

  “They’ll build you a new arm once we get out. And everything here will die in Henna’s name!”

  He looked over at Sterns laying in a widening pool of blood as he led Watts away. “We’ll avenge her,” he said through gritted teeth, pushing away the emotion of the loss. He loved Sterns. They all did. She was the best of them.

  “Three o’clock!” Watts yelled. She grunted as she swung her rifle up one-handed and triggered short, controlled bursts.

  Collins winced against the volume of her rounds, kept his left arm around her waist to keep them moving, and matched her method with his right, as three mirror-bright shapes raced into the room from the lab next door. He pumped mini-grenades, drove them back. One broke right and tried to get behind them so he swung Watts and they danced a pirouetting retreat, raking fire and grenades as they went, ears ringing with the ordnance in the confined space. Smoke and light filled the room, equipment shards rained down. Lights blew out and sparks fell like bright orange snow.

  They stumbled into the corridor and Collins spotted an emergency lock down beside the door and kicked it. His heel smashed through the glass covering and drove into the large button. Red lights flashed around the doorframe and a thick blast shield dropped as the double doors whooshed shut. Metallic thuds rang out as several masses hit the other side. The same three, unstopped by their bullets and grenades, or a new wave he couldn’t know. And he didn’t have time to care.

  “Let’s hope that holds them for now.”

  “There are other ways around,” Watts said breathlessly.

  “Let’s just get to the C and C.”

  They ran for the Command and Control Centre, Collins calling for Capstan and Daisy the whole way, but comms remained dead. As the C and C drew within about fifty metres on their HUD map Capstan’s voice boomed out. “…asses in here now, we’re locking down in thirty seconds.”

  “We’re ten seconds away,” Collins yelled.

  Something smashed and clattered behind them, then a symphonic rain of shattered glass. Watts tipped her weapon upside down on her right shoulder, let loose random short bursts, strafing left and right. Collins glanced back to see two glimmering masses, wider and lower than before, galloping up behind them, less than ten metres away.

  The command centre came up on their left and he threw Watts forward. “Run!”

  Spinning in place, he plucked a concussion shield from his belt and slammed it into the ground only a couple of metres from his feet, way too close for safety. As it pulsed into life, filling the corridor, he was lifted and thrown back, vision crossing like he’d been punched in the jaw. The creatures bounced back the other way.

  Collins crashed hard against the C and C doorframe and fell inside. Capstan was at a control desk and punched a console. Heavy blast doors slammed closed and Collins lay face down on the hard floor, gasping. He looked up to see Capstan spare one narrow-eyed second for Watts’ foamed shoulder stump, then return his attention to the console.

  Hayashi stood beside the Lieutenant, Finlay nowhere to be seen. Of the four doorways leading into the C and C, only one remained open.

  “Hey Aiko,” Collins said, knowing better than to talk to Capstan at this point. “Finlay?”

  She sniffed, shook her head almost imperceptibly. “He’s in about six pieces back there. He just fucking split apart right in front of us. Henna?”

  “Same thing.”

  “Fuck me, man.” Hayashi looked back towards Watts. “Looks like you got too close as well.”

  “Looks like I got lucky,” Watts said. “Finlay and Sterns! Shit. We’ve all been through too much together to lose two in a day. This ain’t fair.”

  “When is it ever fair?” Capstan said. “And brace yourselves, because we’re still two more down. Get over here and cover this door.”

  The four of them stood in a line in front of the only opening, weapons levelled. A corridor led away for about thirty metres before ending in another closed double door. Several rooms to either side were also shut. Watts insisted she was fine but Collins scanned her vitals, saw that she was surviving on drugs and grim determination. She badly needed to go under and set reknitters to work.

  “Malik, Lau, respond!” Capstan said. The only answer was static hiss. “Seems like all comms are suppressed beyond about fifty metres. I can’t tell how. Internal interference.”

  “They have to be coming, right?” Collins said.

  Capstan gestured with his weapon. “Speculating is for fucking stock brokers. Watch and respond.”

  “Did you see them?” Collins asked.

  Hayashi nodded. “Powerful cloaks, light and sound. Only UV works.”

  “You think the cloaks are tech or biological.”

  “Who knows.”

  “What do you think they are?”

  She turned cold eyes to him for a moment. “Death.”

  Collins swallowed. He’d seen fear in Aiko’s eyes and that made his stomach icy. He’d never seen her afraid of anything, didn’t think she could be afraid. He dialled a cocktail into his bloodstream to calm his nerves, sharpen his senses, boost his muscles. Limits and safe doses be damned, he needed every advantage he could get.

  “…incoming, Lieutenant! Fucking loads of them!” Lau’s voice burst into their comms. “Can you fucking hear me?”

  “Roger, Lau, we hear you. Please repeat.”

  “I said there are invisible bastards coming after us, can only see ‘em on UV. We’ll need some heavy cover fire!”

  “Keep coming,” Capstan said calmly. “I’ve tagged the door on your map. You both run straight for it and do not veer left or right. We’ll fire around you. Collins, Hayashi, either s
ide of the corridor, halfway up.”

  “Right.”

  Collins ran, Hayashi right beside him, and they dropped into alcoves for cover. Bursts of gunfire and explosions echoed along with Lau’s voice screaming obscenities and promises of death and dismemberment, muffled by the double doors ahead. Lau and Malik’s blips pinged onto the HUDs, closing rapidly.

  “Here we go,” Capstan said, and triggered the far doors to open.

  Sound burst into full volume, Lau pumping bullets and mini-grenades blindly back over his shoulder as he ran, dragging the inert form of Malik with one hand. Blood smeared the floor where Malik passed.

  Collins and Hayashi began setting blasts of cover fire. They both pulled larger explosives from their webbing and lobbed bombs over Lau’s head. The corridor behind exploded into fire and smoke and resonating metallic screeches, and then Lau was through. Capstan slammed the far doors shut.

  As booming reverberated from the other side, Collins and Hayashi dragged Lau and Malik into the C and C and Capstan sealed those doors too.

  “Locking down!” he yelled.

  A siren bleated, red lights flashed and blast shields slammed over the last portal. The siren stopped and everything sank into a submarine silence, even the compressors fell quiet as air recyc shut off. After a second or two, a new hum arose as the C and C went into defence mode, recycling its own air, providing all life support from inside the room, sealing itself off completely from the rest of the habitat.

  Watts hurried over to Malik’s prone form and crouched, wincing in pain, close to unconsciousness. She sat immediately back on her heels, deflated. Collins knew the others were seeing what he saw in his HUD. Malik’s life signs were flat.

  Lau put both hands on his head and turned in a slow circle. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He stopped suddenly, looked around. “Henna? Charlie?”

  Watts shook her head.

  “Fuuuuck!”

  Watts tipped Malik half over to reveal his back open from right shoulder to left buttock. Stark white knobs of spine and a glistening half-orb of kidney showed through the blood and sliced flesh. With a grunt, almost a sob, she let him fall back.

  Capstan crouched beside her. “How bad is it?”

  She glanced at the mass of hardened foam covering her left shoulder. “Took it clean off. Got it covered pretty quick and I‘m up to the eyeballs with antibiotics and painkillers.”

  “Okay. I want you to lie over there, put yourself under to reknit. We’re gonna need to fight our way back to Daisy and I need you fit if not whole.”

  “If I go under, I’m out for half an hour.”

  “I know how it fucking works, soldier. We’re safe in here. Go!” He turned to gaze at each of the survivors. “This room is in full bio-chem lock down and shielded. Let’s take stock.”

  They let their masks up and removed helmets, stretched stiff necks. Capstan turned back to Watts. “Go!”

  She ran her remaining hand through her short red hair and nodded, moved to lay down under a desk unit. Collins went with her, made sure she was comfortable.

  “I’ll monitor,” he said.

  She smiled. “Hold the fort. I’ll be back in thirty.”

  “No problem. We got this.” He put a hand against her cheek, his dark skin a shadow against her paler than ever alabaster. “Fix up.”

  He watched his HUD as she dialled in anaesthetic and her breathing settled to become deep and even. Nano reknitters in her blood, triggered awake by the anaesthetic release, immediately swarmed to any areas of hurt, rebuilding the flesh, sealing off wounds. Similar microscopics in her fatigues would already be doing the same to reseal her in where the sleeve had been sliced away.

  Collins stroked a hand over her sweat-soaked hair once, then stood. “She’s under,” he said.

  Lau was crouched over Malik, his forehead pressed to the dead man’s brow. “I’m sorry, my brother,” he whispered. As he rose, his eyes were wet, but murder lived in them.

  Capstan flicked the map to front and centre of their HUDs. “Here’s our way back to the dropship. Once Watts comes around, we go. Then we call in the cruiser, and flatten this shithole from orbit. Whatever those things are, they die here. We don’t.”

  “Were there really loads of them?” Hayashi asked Lau.

  He shrugged, mouth twisted in contrition. “Felt like it, but I don’t know. I took out two, saw at least three more.”

  “You?” Capstan asked Collins.

  “Took out one, and there were three after that. Hard to tell. Maybe two more. I think they were breeding the fuckers here.”

  “What?”

  “The labs. It’s not a mining operation.”

  Capstan nodded, lips pursed. “So what? Not our concern now. There’s at least six to eight of the fuckers out there. Or maybe hundreds. And five of us. Doesn’t matter. One door, three corridors, and we’re back on the dropship and away, but we have to assume it’s going to be a hell of fight to get there. You got thirty minutes. Check your gear and ammo.”

  Collins glanced at Watts, checked her vitals. They were already improving. Nano-reknit listed twenty six minutes to go. He reloaded his assault rifle and hers, double-checked his remaining grenades and other armaments. They were still well-equipped for a fight. To while away the time, he keyed up one of the consoles and started scanning through base logs.

  “Incoming,” Hayashi said quietly.

  Their HUDs showed five lifesigns moving towards the C and C.

  “Those things never showed up on our sensors before,” Collins said. “Why now?”

  “They’re not life as our gear knows it,” Hayashi said. “These must be something else.”

  “Cameras across the base are still out,” Capstan said. “Sabotaged beyond repair. We’d need new circuit boards and bio-processors. Same with all the vehicles and base shuttles.”

  The lifesigns reached the western blast doors and there were three quick, sharp bangs. Pause. Three more.

  “They fucking knocking now?” Lau asked.

  “We assumed the scientists were all dead,” Collins said. “But are they?”

  Hayashi moved to the door. “What’s the code for the view pane?” she asked.

  Collins keyed up internal security and a moment later said, “Eight seven one hash D.”

  Hayashi tapped the code into a small pad on the door and a thirty centimetre square panel slid aside revealing a thick glass pane with a speaker grill below it. A small crowd of people outside slumped with relief.

  “Please, let us in!” the front one said. His eyes were dark and haunted, his face blood-stained.

  “How do we know you’re safe?” Hayashi asked.

  The scientists kept looking frantically behind themselves. “Please!” the front man repeated. “Some of our people went mad, homicidal, but we managed to hide. We’re starving! We heard gunfire, knew rescue had finally arrived. Quickly, those monsters could be here even now. We can’t see them!”

  “And the ones who went mad?”

  The scientist shrugged. “No idea!”

  Hayashi turned to Capstan who returned her gaze with hard eyes. He ran his tongue along his top lip.

  He lifted his chin to Hayashi. “Weapons up,” he said quietly. Keeping his rifle level in one hand, he keyed the override with the other.

  The door hissed open and five people fell inside, faces almost melting with relief. The door whooshed shut quickly behind them and Hayashi closed the view pane. The lead man strode towards Capstan with both hands out as though he were coming in for a hug. Two more men followed close behind and two women hung back.

  “You’re in charge?” the first asked. “Thank you! Thank you so much.”

  Capstan backed up, took a two-handed grip on his weapon. “Stay back!”

  The front scientist shot forward, preternaturally fast, and fell on Capstan like a rabid dog. The Lieutenant squeezed a quick burst of fire, but the scientist wrapped him up like an octopus even as exit wounds exploded from his back. The following two
joined the first, inhumanly quick and strong, slamming the Lieutenant to the ground. Capstan’s weapon barked from inside the scrum and chunks of flesh and bone few out of the attackers, along with sprays of blood, but they continued their assault. Growling and hissing, snapping their teeth, hands rending in a blur.

  Collins stepped forward and took line of sight to shoot without hitting Capstan and squeezed off three quick headshots. As each skull exploded, that body fell still.

  Collins dragged the corpses off the Lieutenant, but the man stayed down, blood-stained and twitching. His throat was a ragged mess, blood pulsing out across the floor. One eye was gone, his left cheek torn away from lips to ear, bite marks all over his face, head and shoulders, right through bone, exposing muscle and brains.

  He’d given as good as he’d got with his enhanced teeth. The attackers lay around him with chunks missing. Silica filaments striated their exposed bones, glistened in their wet, red tissue. It glittered in their spilled blood.

  Collins pulled a med-foam can from his webbing and stood numb, staring. Where the hell did he even start? There was more injury than flesh across Capstan’s head, neck and shoulders. The Lieutenant gargled on his own blood, his remaining eye swivelled hectically in the socket. Collins sighed as Capstan’s signs all flickered to a flat line.

  The C and C was strangely quiet. He turned to see Hayashi and Lau, each with a weapon levelled at the two remaining scientists.

  “Look in UV,” Hayashi said.

  The scientists stood as if frozen, not even blinking. Glass-like webbing criss-crossed their bodies like veins.

  “Remember that last transmission?” Lau whispered.

  “Poor bastards were already just puppets of those fuckers out there,” Hayashi said. “We should have looked with UV before we let them in. Stupid.”

  Collins moved a little closer, weapon ready. Their eyes were as still as their bodies. “Fuck ‘em,” he said.

  Hayashi and Lau fired simultaneously and the women slumped to the ground as their heads disintegrated.

  “And then there were four,” Hayashi said quietly.

  Collins checked the medic’s signs and was glad to see improvement rather than degradation. “Nineteen minutes until Watts is done.”