"Sure. The power requirements were such that there wasn't any spare, beyond propulsion and life support."
"Same problem. We still need to generate shields, and Sci-Fi cloaks never allowed that. You cloaked or you shielded, you couldn’t do both."
"Usually." There'd been that one time. "So how can you?"
"The Crystal."
"The one we dug up in Ireland?"
"Yes. That development team finally came through on how to get it interfaced with the ship, without actually blowing it up in the process."
"The Crystal?"
"The ship."
"It's that powerful?"
"More. We're only really using a fraction of it now."
"So we're cloaked."
"Duh!"
"But it’s the chameleon style cloaking we've always used?"
"Yes. Sensors record what's on the other side, and the suit emulates it. Needs a medium level AI clone to handle the constantly changing nature of it. Bigger ship, might not be possible. I'll run tests once we get back to the fleet."
"So basic sensors will detect we are a ship, but eyes won't be able to see us? Is that enough?"
"Apparently their sensors are really basic, and even the ship suit is fooling them. Or maybe they don’t have sensors at all, and can see a lot further than we can. So as long as they can't see us, we're safe."
"Needs testing."
"Confirmed. But like as not, we'll find out as soon as we try to leave the planet."
"What does it do to our speed?"
"How fast do you want to go?"
My eyebrows rose, and she smiled.
"In theory," she went on, "I can get Gunbus almost up to Lightning speed. In practice, I'm not sure that’s a good idea. The engines weren't built for it."
"Shielding?"
"Still working on it. The main problem is not blowing out the emitters. For now, I don’t dare channel crystal power to them. Redoubt is currently building custom emitters."
"Just for Gunbus?"
"Yes. Why?"
"We could use better shielding on Relentless. It would give us the ability to stick around longer, and rearguard the withdrawal."
"For the moment, the Crystal is installed here. But if Gunbus was in Relentless' hanger, I could install connections to channel the power to Relentless. But she'd need new emitters as well."
"Do it."
"Doing it."
"What's our status here?"
"Hovering two hundred meters above the main square. I'm collecting vid from every drone we planted down there."
"Do they know we're here?"
"They know you vanished in front of them. As far as I can tell, they can't detect us, and there's no evidence they can see us."
"What are they doing?"
"Eating."
"What?"
"Everything. The giant suits are gone already. The outlying houses are down to the foundations."
"Have they found the residents hiding place yet?"
"No. But it won't be long. Ships are landing all over the planet now. These aliens are worse than locusts. Put five mill on any planet, and I give it only weeks before they consume everything. By the time it's an ice ball, there isn’t much left to freeze."
"Do we have five mill on the way?"
"Hard to say, but I think we have two mill already in the system, and there seems to be no end to the ones crossing in from Famine."
I hesitated before asking the next obvious question.
"Any sign of breeding?"
"None. But we have no idea how they reproduce."
"Makes sense they do. Makes no sense they don’t. Why eat if not to breed? Keep watching for it."
"You thinking 'Aliens' scenario?"
The square screen 'Alien' series had used live hosts to incubate the alien's young. First two had been good, next two not so much. The remakes were better, but the original heroine had been the best in the role. I shuddered anyway. These aliens were bad enough without them bursting out of people's chests as well.
"Thanks for that image. Not what I needed right now. No, I think they'll simply eat and eat and eat, until something biological kicks in, and they reproduce somehow. The people here will just be another food source. Certainly not enough of them here to be useful for any kind of breeding or incubating process."
"Can I come in?" interrupted Aline.
"Are you the sacrificial lamb?" I asked her.
"No, I'm the fatted calf."
"Come in then. Prime beef will be welcome for the next meal."
She walked in slowly, trying to read my mood. She hugged me, but I was only going through the motions. Add emotionally drained to the physical and mental.
"Are you alright Jon?"
"Duh!"
"No, you’re not. I can see that. What can I do?"
I won't say what popped right in there. Not the time or the place. And I wasn’t up for it anyway.
"Everything is cool and hoopy," I told her. "Just be normal."
"Just be normal?"
"Not much point in being anything else."
"Shit," I heard from outside the door. It sounded like Amanda. "He's worse than we thought."
"Jane, I'm going for a lie down. Get me up if anything interesting happens."
I was halfway out of my seat before I noticed she hadn't answered. We made eye contact.
"They just found the resident's bunker."
Forty Six
I sat back down again.
"Do we have vid?"
A number of screens popped up. One of them showed a cave entrance, which had bare rock outside, so didn’t show people traffic. There was nothing there to suggest anything more than a wild animal lived inside. The one further in showed the entrance passage, and several aliens walking along inwards. Another one was further back with the aliens already past it, and showed the actual entrance to the bunker, with the aliens almost there. This appeared to be made of ship's hull material, including a full airlock. It made me wonder if it had indeed been on a ship, and had been removed and installed here not long after colonization.
Movement sounds came from behind me, but I didn’t bother looking to see who it was. The twins took their usual seats at the front, and Aline was now in the helm seat. Thirteen materialized next to me.
"Nice of you to join us," I said to him sarcastically.
"My invitation must have been lost in the mail," he quipped.
No-one laughed. No-one even smiled.
"Angel is fine," he went on. "She and Nut are with Max on Redoubt now."
I waved him a thanks, but said nothing.
The first alien to reach the airlock walked straight up to it, continued ninety degrees around straight up the door, and squatted against the middle. Three legs braced it against the floor.
Nothing happened for about two minutes, with the exception of more aliens streaming in. Suddenly the alien on the door wasn’t there, having popped inside. The others swarmed in after it, with new ones starting to eat the hole out in all directions.
A new vid popped up, showing the view on the other side of the airlock. In the foreground, were people holding guns, waiting for something to happen. It was full light in there, which was hard on the eyes since we'd been using night vision enhancement for so long. Even the lighting on Gunbus was subdued.
"Can't you help them?" Alison asked Thirteen.
"How?"
"I don’t know. You’re a nebulae, do something nebulae-ish?"
"They chose this," I said. "Freewill. We could have forcibly removed them like their ancestors were, but we honoured their choice this time. Every choice has consequences. This is theirs."
"It isn’t right," said Alana.
"No, but they made a choice with all the data we could give them. We either allowed them to make a choice we didn’t agree with, or we negated that choice by removing them against it."
"So we just watch them die?" asked Abagail.
"Ultimately, that is why we're here,"
I said. "We needed to try to fight them, to prove to those up spine they couldn’t be fought, or to give them a basis for doing better than we did. Now we need to document these people's deaths, so everyone can see the consequence of not running for their lives up spine."
"It sux," said Thirteen, "but this is just the beginning."
"Do we have to watch it?" asked someone from team two, standing at the back.
"Hell no," I said. "Officers can use one of the suites. Everyone else can kip out in a rack. Lock yourselves in and pretend nothing is happening."
"I'm not sure I want to be alone," said someone else.
"Rack with a friend then, or go play a game downstairs. No-one has to watch this, and no-one has to be alone if they don’t want to. But if you stay here, you see it all."
There was movement as people left. The alpha team stayed.
A hole appeared in the airlock, and the first alien jumped through. It had gone back to its slick black appearance. None of the shots aimed at it seemed to bother it at all, and it quickly covered the distance to the nearest person, who tried to fight with it. The fight lasted seconds, and the poor man ended up underneath. More came through the hole rapidly, and the screams of those being eaten were duly recorded for posterity.
By midday, ship time, seven in the evening local time, the number of humans still on the planet was zero. It took less than an hour for the aliens to eat their way through the entire bunker's population, and then begin on the furniture. We watched it all, room by room, person by person.
"Boss?"
"Yes BA?"
"I'm not going out like that."
"None of us are BA."
"I mean, if one of them pins me down, and there is no hope of getting it off me, I expect one of you to put me down. Nuke the room if you have to, but you kill me before it does. You hear me?"
"Goes for all of us," said Agatha.
"Bloody oath!" said the twins together.
"Jane?"
"Time to go?"
"Did Amy get all of that?"
"Received in full, and she is currently locked away in the editing suite."
"Jane. Get us the fuck out of here."
Forty Seven
None of us could eat food. We were revolted to the level where the mere thought of food was sickening.
Once we were in space and well away from the planet, I left the Bridge and went to my suite. Aline followed me in. She looked as haunted as I felt. She tried to hug me but I started shivering uncontrollably. So I threw myself on the bed, shifted to a belt, and used a PC override to give me oblivion.
When I woke, mercifully without having had any kind of dreams, I found I was back in my suite on Relentless, and it was eight in the evening. Angel was curled up by my neck as usual. I turned over on my side and started stroking her, getting a loud purr in return.
Aline wasn't there. But the bed looked like more than her had been sleeping with me. I stood in the shower for a good long time, trying to wash the stench of inaction off my skin, but it doesn’t wash off.
There hadn't been anything I could do for those people, except witness their deaths. Gunbus hadn't anything harder hitting than an FF or torpedo, and the bunker wouldn’t have been damaged anyway. If it'd had a straight entrance, which it didn’t, we could have fired in the door, but most of the bunker would still have been unaffected. Not being able to do anything, didn’t make watching them go any easier.
I stood there in the water, and did the releases for all the aliens I’d killed. And followed it with requests for forgiveness from all those who'd died because the spiritual part of me had won, and I'd let them stay here as they wanted. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do it again. Maybe the mistake was asking in the first place.
Reluctantly, I dried off, pulled briefs and socks from the dispenser, shifted into 'slinky red', and went along to the Mess. The team were there, but no-one said anything as I entered.
I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be hungry again. No-one else seemed to be eating either. Jeeves put a ginger ale down next to me, and I sipped at it without really tasting it.
"What's next boss?" asked BA.
I looked at them, blankly.
"I do more releases," I said, not being too sure why I said it, but knowing it to be true.
The releases would never end, not until this whole nightmare ended. Maybe not until I ended. I'd used up all the luck one person could be given. The end couldn’t be too far away now.
"Why aren’t you mad with us Jon?" asked Aleesha.
"You should be ranting at us," said Amanda.
"We left you flapping in the breeze," said BA. "Say something!"
"Rinse and repeat."
"What?" asked Aline.
"Rinse and repeat."
"What does that even mean?" demanded Alison.
"Do it again. Start over, prepare for the same, do it again. Fix your damage, rearm, sleep, eat, try to be merry. Fight again. Start over. Rinse and repeat."
"Until we get it right?" asked Alana.
"Until we run out of spine. Or we end. Whichever comes first."
"He needs a doctor," said Amanda.
"No I don’t."
"Yes you do," came from the doorway.
Carter came in.
"Are you coming to the medical bay quietly, or do I need to get you there violently?"
"Huh?"
I went quietly. The doc droid focused its sensors on me, and soon she was frowning at the results.
"Your hormones and electrolyte levels are flat-lining or all over the place. What did you do to yourself to sleep?"
"Standard sleep override."
"Did you dream?"
"No, that was the whole point."
"Then it wasn’t a standard override. Are you suicidal?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"A concerned one. Are you?"
"No."
"You sure?"
"Yes. I've got too much to do."
"It will have to wait."
She stuck me with something.
"Ouch!"
"Go back to bed, and don’t get up again until breakfast."
"Yes doc."
"Now I'm sure there's something wrong with you. Go."
I went.
I dreamed of naked beach bunnies on sand, while giant combat suits rusted in the water. The water was black.
"GOOD MORNING MOROCCO!"
I bolted out of bed, earning a squawk of outrage from Angel, and fell off the bed onto my left side. I sighed. My PC told me it was six the following morning. Aline poked her head over the side of the bed. Amanda and Aleesha followed. They were naked and grinning. Déjà vu. Again.
The girls didn’t give me the chance to just lie there, and rather than a nice joint shower, they bullied me through the morning training session, and then we had a nice joint shower.
Carter made me eat breakfast. While she didn’t stand behind my chair the whole time, she did give me the eye from down the table. After I finished eating, she put me through the medical exam again, and this time satisfied, gave me leave to continue the day, while she went back to Redoubt.
I took refuge in my Ready Room. Not that it was in anyway an escape. Jane made me look at my emails. I was getting a mite sick of being told what to do, but I needed to anyway.
Most of the Admirals and Generals from up-spine had sent me one. They understood I was on some downtime, making me wonder who'd squealed on me, but as Bigglesworth put it, "I think a proper briefing on the Last Hope situation would be good, when you have the time." Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, give.
I really didn’t feel up to doing it. In fact, for the first time in a long time, I felt inadequate to the task.
Jeeves brought me in a tall glass of something which looked raspberry coloured. He went away without a word, leaving the glass on the desk in front of me. I tasted it, and it was sort of raspberry flavored as well. I slurped at it, and within a few minutes, noticed the glass was empty.
<
br /> Suddenly I felt invigorated.
"What was that Jeeves just gave me?" I asked thin air.
"I'm not allowed to tell you," said Jane.
"Can I buy a vowel?"
"No, but I can give you a hint. Think 'gives you wings'."
"Ah."
I had a vague memory of it, but no connection was made. Instead of pushing Jane, I put my medical monitor into primary mode. It reported an above average level of Caffeine. I should have guessed. Since I hated coffee, there were not a lot of decent alternatives, and I'd rarely ever needed any of them.
"Jane?"
"Jon?"
"What have we got in the way of visual briefing material?"
"What do you want?"
"Alien from all angles. Ship ditto. The whole ground action."
"Up to and including you vanishing into thin air?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
"Yes what?"
"Yes I have all that."
"Fine. Display as talked about or requested."
"Confirmed."
I opened a vid.
"As you should be aware by now, the planet Last Hope has been overrun by the aliens. Their method goes like this. When they identify a habitable planet, they use their ships to form a giant disk, positioned between the sun and the planet in such a way as the sun is completely eclipsed. Last Hope went from bright sunlight to complete darkness within half an hour. Render the planet dark and cold, so the indigenous species do not perform up to their best, their technology has trouble working at all, and send in millions to eat everything."
"We now know why prophecy called them 'The Darkness'. It's what they do. And to a certain extent, it's what they are as well. Here are images of the aliens from all angles. In some of them you can see their real shape, being a hybrid Cockroach-Spider. In others, they appear to be shimmering darkness. In both forms, they are fast and lethal. They do not carry weapons. They are a weapon. Their chosen method of killing is to sit on you, and eat you alive. Unprotected, nothing seems to last more than a few seconds. The latest version of our suit belt saved a medical scientist, who was under an alien for less than two minutes. The suit was within seconds of shredding when we retrieved her. The residents of Last Hope lasted less than an hour, in total, from the moment their underground bunker entrance was discovered, until the last one was dead."
Hunter Legacy 12: Hero in Darkness Page 21