Alien Game (The Thousand Worlds)

by Rod Walker

  “We’re going to fire into the gate, sir?” I said.

  “That’s right,” said Mendez. “We got lucky. Best way to deal with these gates is to be sitting in front of them when they open with a lot of fire. We shoot into the gate and wipe out the advance party. Then we’re going to go through, kill the Overseers guarding the transductor crystal, and get out of there.” He paused, then nodded at me. “Nice work, boys. You Listeners actually come in handy sometimes.”

  “Thank you, sir!” said Bull with unfeigned enthusiasm.

  “How long until the gate opens?” said Howard.

  “Less than a minute, sir,” I said. “Any second now.”

  “Mortars, fire at my command,” said Howard. “Missile launchers as well.” A few of the soldiers had shoulder-fired missile launchers, and they had taken cover on the roofs of our APCs, ready to add their firepower to those of the mortar operators. I stared at the display, watching as the rippling curtain of mist grew brighter and brighter.

  I felt the gate open before I saw it.

  The pressure in my forehead intensified, and the mist blazed with white light that dimmed into gray as the gate opened. As it did, I felt the presence of more Darksiders on the other side of the gate even as I saw their eerie world on the other side, a hellish place with red skies and a landscape of huge, twisted mushrooms that glowed with purplish light.

  There were a lot of Darksiders on the other side of the gate, a whole troop of scout drones, several Overseers, and a half-dozen assault drones. The assault drones were about the size of oxen, and looked like heavily armored beetles with tentacles and long, sharp pincers. Assault drones were strong, well-built, and they could get up to speeds of forty miles an hour on a flat stretch of terrain.

  But they couldn’t outrun a mortar blast.

  “Fire!” said Howard.

  Six mortar rounds and four shoulder-fired rockets streaked towards the gate. The Darksiders started to come out in a black wave, only to be met by a lethal quantity of explosives.

  The blasts were impressive. The gate disappeared behind a massive spray of dirt and fire, as bits and pieces of Darksider chitin went flying high into the air.

  “Gunners!” said Mendez. “Get the stragglers!”

  The machine guns opened up, the gunners concentrating their fire on any Darksider that had escaped the initial barrage. The guns mowed down the surviving scout drones, and then joined fire to rip apart an assault drone that staggered free from the dust. An Overseer staggered forward, missing a leg and seemingly stunned by the violent ambush, and it aimed a plasma weapon in our direction, but the machine guns killed it before it could even get off a shot. A cheer went up over the radio as it collapsed, dead, onto the ground.

  Then the firing stopped. I wondered for a moment if the gunners had run out of ammunition, but then I realized nothing else was emerging from the gate.

  If this was a scout gate, then we had killed the entire scouting party waiting on the other side.

  “Listeners?” said Howard. “What’s out there?”

  I concentrated hard on the gate, trying to focus on it. It was a peculiar sensation. I could sense the pressure of the gate, and I realized that I could also sense things on the other side of the gate. I could feel the presence of additional Darksiders on the far side of the gate, but they were at least a couple of miles off.

  For a moment, the way was clear, and I could sense the sharp presence of the transductor on the other side of the gate.

  “I think we got them all, sir,” said Bull, and I concurred. “We’ve got a few minutes before more show up on the other side.”

  “Good,” said Howard. “Mendez, take one of the M200s and one of the Listeners and get that transductor crystal.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Mendez. Since I was already in his APC, I supposed that meant I was going with him. “Driver, take us through.”

  The driver gunned the engine, and the M200 rolled towards the gate.

  “Kane,” said Mendez. “You ever been on the other side of one of these things?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “This is my first time.”

  “Well, isn’t this just your lucky day.” Mendez smiled wryly. “Welcome to Hell.”

  The M200 rumbled towards the gate, and a second later it was through.

  We had entered the world of the Dark. Or their planet, or plane, or dimension, or level of reality, or whatever the scientists wanted to call it this week. Even when seen from the other side of the gates, it looked horrifying.

  Seen from the inside, it looked a whole lot worse.

  We were in a jungle of giant black mushrooms, their greasy surfaces covered with veins that glowed with purple-black light, vines hanging from the underside of their caps like twisting serpents. The sky overhead was red, the color of blood, and filled with billowing thunderheads, black lightning leaping from cloud to cloud. In the distance, I saw a row of mountains, their slopes covered with glittering structures fashioned out of something that looked like obsidian.

  Yet the sight was nothing compared to the ominous presence of the Dark inside my head.

  I could feel them all around me, a tidal wave of sensations breaking against my skull. This whole planet was ruled by them, and even those giant mushroom things were somehow part of the hive mind. I could hear the whispers of the hive mind communicating with itself, but here, right in the heart of its power, I could practically make out what it was saying. I got the impression of a vast, insect-like thing planning a dozen different wars at once, and I could tell that the alien mind knew we were here.

  I wobbled a little in my seat and grabbed at the wall to keep from falling over.

  “You okay, corporal?” said Mendez.

  “Yeah,” I muttered. I forced myself to focus. “I mean, yes, sergeant. Bit of shock is all.”

  “The transductor is right ahead, sir,” said one of the soldiers watching the monitors.

  I looked at the display. Dead ahead rose a black, glistening thing that looked kind of like a corpse flower, if corpse flowers could grow to the size of minivans. Above its center floated a black crystal about the size of a volleyball, its facets flashing and flickering with harsh gray light. For reasons that the scientists had so far been unable to discern, transductor crystals had either thirty-six, forty-eight, or ninety-six facets, yet their size and complexity seemed to have nothing to do with the size of the gate they opened.

  “Kane,” said Mendez as the APC rolled to a stop by the glistening flower-thing. “How long do we have?”

  “About four minutes, tops,” I said.

  “Let’s move, people,” said Mendez, lifting his rifle.

  The door opened, and four soldiers got out. I followed them, my own gun in hand, and Mendez and two more soldiers came next. I jogged to the flower and slung my weapon over my shoulder, freeing my hands to carry the transductor crystal.

  Then I reached up and plucked the crystal out of the air.

  Anyone could touch one of the crystals. That said, occasionally touching the crystal caused a sudden link to the Dark’s hive mind. The Listeners were used to that, and it didn’t bother us much. But the shock could kill an unprepared soldier, so the job of carrying the transductor crystal fell to me.

  It was heavier than it looked, about the weight of a bowling ball or so. A jolt went through me as I gripped the thing, and even through my gloves, it felt icy cold and hot at the same time. That was probably my brain trying to interpret the sensations it was picking up. The hive mind seemed to snap into focus around me, and I could almost understand the communications between the Darksiders around me. Their emotions were alien and strange, but undeniably malevolent. The hive mind hated humans, hated life, hated anything that was not a part of itself, and it desired to devour all other living things and leave itself alone and supreme in the universe. I could hear the whispers as the Darksiders rushed towards the site of the scout gate, preparing to kill us before we could steal the transductor crystal.

  And the cryst
al itself…

  I could hear it in my head. I think it was trying to talk to me. Unlike the Dark, it wasn’t alive. I think it was a kind of machine, although a machine with a degree of sentience. I think it wanted me to use it, to do something with it, but I didn’t know what. I frowned at the crystal, trying to understand what it was telling me.

  “Corporal!”

  I blinked and saw Mendez staring at me while the soldiers scanned the giant mushrooms for any foes.

  “You still with us, corporal?” said Mendez.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. The whispers in my head were getting louder. “Sir, we should probably get out of here. Reinforcements are coming.”

  “Move out!” shouted Mendez, and the soldiers jogged back to the relative safety of the M200. “You know what to do?”

  I nodded. The minute I went through the gate with the crystal, the gate would collapse. Usually there was about two or three seconds of delay, but the collapse would be swift and sudden, and anything caught halfway between the two worlds would be sliced in half. In its early days, Black Division had lost a few soldiers and even some Listeners before they had figured it out. That meant I needed to hang on the back of the APC, drop off before it passed through the gate, and then jump through on foot.

  Mendez and I ran back to the APC. The sergeant disappeared inside, and I gripped the ladder on the side of the vehicle, watching for approaching Darksiders. The engine rumbled back to life and the vehicle rolled back towards the gate, picking up speed. I gripped the ladder with one hand, holding the transductor crystal tight against my chest with the other. I felt the wrath and the hatred of the approaching Dark, the whispers of fury growing louder and louder inside of my skull. The hive mind hated us, hated us with an intensity beyond human comprehension, and it was enraged at this intrusion into its world.

  That thought pleased me. The Dark had killed billions on Earth. Maybe one day we would have the chance to properly invade their world and repay them in kind.

  The gate appeared ahead, and the M200 slowed down.

  “All right, Kane,” said Mendez over my headset. “Drop down off the back and follow us. Don’t dawdle.”

  “I couldn’t agree more, Sergeant,” I assured him, and dropped off the side of the M200. I jogged behind the back of the vehicle, and after a moment it disappeared through the gate. Through the hazy ripples and gray light, I saw it rolling onto the deserts of eastern Washington, rejoining the other APCs of our patrol.

  With the engine noise gone, I heard the sound, the familiar tearing, metallic whine of an open gate, the same sound I had first heard in Chicago on the night of Invasion Day when all this had begun.

  I braced myself for the passage through the gate, my right arm extended behind me, the crystal grasped in my right hand. That way I would have most of my body through the gate before it collapsed.

  I glanced back one more time, and I saw a horde of Darksiders moving rapidly through the forest of twisted mushrooms, hundreds of scouts and hundreds of assault drones led by Overseers. I even saw a half-dozen siege drones, huge things the size of city buses that looked like giant centipedes, but much faster than any bus. I felt their alien rage and hate, and something that might have even been fear as they responded to the alien incursion.

  Then I hopped backward through the gate.

  I left the alien realm behind and landed back in the deserts of eastern Washington. The gate shimmered and shuddered behind me, then snapped out of existence. It was simply gone. There was no trace that a gate had been there at all, save for a line it had left in the sand.

  Captain Howard walked towards me, and I nodded.

  “You’ve got the crystal?” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, holding it up.

  Howard nodded. “Bravo Zulu, Kane. We’ll take that bad boy directly back to Castle Base.”

  I let out a long breath, wiping the sweat from my forehead with my free hand.

  “That was a cakewalk, sir,” Mendez said unexpectedly.

  I looked at the devastation surrounding us, the blasted chunks of Darkside chitin, the expended brass shells, and blinked in surprise, half-expecting Howard to rebuke the sergeant.

  “Just a walk in the park, Sergeant.”

  That was my first official combat mission.

  Chapter 7: Spokane

  Combat missions occupied my life for the next thirteen months.

  General Culver had a major campaign in mind. All the gates east of the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada mountains had been cleared by the combined forces of Black Division and the Global Defense Committee, save for the one in Spokane. Intelligence reported that the GDC still had its hands full with the big Darkside strongholds in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, which meant that the Committee didn’t have the manpower to make any trouble for Black Division.

  That, in turn, meant the General wanted to take out the Spokane gate before turning his attention to the remaining Darkside gates on the Pacific coast.

  And before the GDC was free to start looking north again.

  Of the various organizations and warlords that had taken control of the pieces of the US after in Invasion Day, Black Division was the most powerful, but the Committee was definitely second. No one else came close, and the United States east of the Mississippi was divided up into various warring fiefdoms that the Dark was overwhelming one by one. Either Black Division or the GDC would have to take charge of the national situation sooner or later, so everyone knew we were going to have to confront the Committee eventually.

  But that confrontation would not come until we dealt with Spokane and the GDC dealt with Los Angeles and Las Vegas. General Culver had worked out an informal truce with the members of the Committee that they would hold to a tacit non-aggression pact until the three major western strongholds had been defeated. I didn’t know how long the truce would hold, but so far both sides had kept their word, probably because if the GDC diverted any forces from its sieges of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, they would get steamrolled by the Dark.

  And the Division would risk the same thing if we turned our attention away from Spokane.

  I don’t know why Spokane, of all places, became such a major Darkside stronghold. Maybe a really big gate just happened to open there, or maybe the hive mind chose it for reasons of incomprehensible alien logic. Whatever its reasons, the Dark had dug in there in a big way. Their organic technology extended to the creation of buildings as well, and it had grown itself a fortified base there, complete with plasma weapons that served as both anti-aircraft and field artillery. In my first year with Black Division, three major assault forces erupted from the Spokane gate and drove hard for Castle Base; they were only defeated by the general’s superior tactics and full support from the Division’s limited air force.

  One way or another, Black Division simply had to take Spokane and shut down the gate there. Every operation focused on Spokane, and the General gradually constructed a ring of steel around the ruined city, keeping the Dark from breaking out, and destroying any assault forces that tried to break free.

  It was inevitable, but our casualties began to mount up over time.

  Of the Listeners who had been in my training squad, Nguyen Tran Tong, was the first to get killed. We were on the same mission, helping to coordinate a raid on the western edges of Spokane near the line of the old I-90 freeway. Tran was on the northern side of the freeway, helping to coordinate artillery strikes on a fortified enemy position. Either the Dark realized he was there, or they got lucky, because a volley of plasma bolts hit his APC and took him out instantly.

  Major Randolph would have chewed Tran’s CO a new one for getting a Listener killed, but the he got off easy by managing to die in the same explosion.

  Later Major Randolph and the other senior Listeners held a short ceremony for Tran at our forward operating base. I was there, and so were Bull and Jack, who had made sergeant, and Rigger. I was a little alarmed to see how few Listeners there were. The process that made us was unreliable at b
est. Black Division had captured a few zombies and kept them in secure containment in case someone wanted to volunteer to become a Listener. Of course, with a fifty percent failure rate ending in death, it wasn’t surprising that so few people volunteered.

  Because the Division didn’t have enough Listeners, I went on a mission almost every day. Sometimes it was a patrol in force, like my first mission with Captain Howard and Sergeant Mendez. Sometimes it was an attack, where I was usually involved in spotting for the artillery. A few times, I even rode in a helicopter and helped call in strikes from above. That didn’t happen too often, though, because the Dark was good at taking down aircraft. They could use their flying drones as kamikazes, and one scout drone through the engine of an F-16 turned an eighteen million dollar warplane into an expanding pile of scrap. Their anti-aircraft capabilities left Black Division critically short of both aircraft and flight-capable drones.

  But the campaign continued, and every week our forward operating bases pushed a little close to Spokane. Within ten months, our artillery was able to target the Dark’s fortifications outside the city. As we took down their strong points, one by one, we moved our forces into the smoking rubble of Spokane’s suburbs, setting our own forward bases there. Sometimes the fighting was brutal, block to block and street to street and shop to shop, but the Division’s iron ring gradually closed around the gate.

  At last, just thirteen months after my first combat mission, General Culver decided it was time for Operation Mousepad.

  Yes, that was its codename. Operation Mousepad.

  The U.S. military had been prone to giving its operations big scary names in the years leading up to Invasion Day, names like Operation Rolling Thunderbolt of God’s Hammer and Operation Giant Fist of Vengeance, and General Culver thought they were ridiculous. Rumor had it that he picked code names by looking around his office and settling upon the first piece of equipment he saw, which might explain why some of the offenses that led up to Operation Mousepad had been named Operation Stapler and Operation Printer.