by Korza, Jay
The two attackers looked at the round objects and then at each other and just went back to stalking their prey. The explosions knocked the one nearest Daria and Davies back a meter but did no other damage. The flash from the explosion allowed Daria’s movement to the door to be concealed from the alien’s vision.
As the huge figure entered the room, Davies called out, “Hey, I’m back here. I surrender.” The giant moved forward.
Daria rolled from her hiding place, holding her fighting knife in her right hand and a medicspray in her left. She had loaded every ounce of sedative she had, hoping that it would bring down the giant. She wanted answers and knew that the base commander would, too.
She sunk her knife into the alien’s knee and then pulled it out, cutting the tendon holding the leg together. The right leg buckled as he turned to face Daria and brought his weapon around, hitting her with the muzzle across the face. The force threw her against a computer terminal and opened a wound in her cheek.
Davies was immediately on the creature’s back, trying to choke him into submission. With one of his arms, he threw the huge marine off his back as though he were a rag doll and Davies went flying into the corridor.
It did, however, give Daria enough time to bring her knife’s diamond-edged blade through his other knee and lop off the left leg, which made him fall face first onto the deck. She pressed the spray against his shoulder and prayed.
Daria quickly jumped on the creature’s back and held her knife at the back of his neck. If he tried to get up, she’d sever his spine and keep him down for good. Fuck information at this point, she thought.
Scan saw Davies’ limp body in the hall and dove out to pull it into cover. An energy bolt lanced out and struck Scan’s hand and made it vanish before his eyes. Surprisingly, there was no pain and Scan couldn’t tell whether it was because of adrenaline from the heat of battle or the type of weapon itself. He really couldn’t give a damn at this point; he just wanted Davies out of the hallway. His enormous swimmer’s strength made the two hundred and sixty pound body easy to pull into the cover he had just left.
Fang saw his moment of opportunity as the cover fire turned in the opposite direction. He burst down the corridor with lightning-fast speed and drove his sword into the attacker’s back. The enormous back muscles contracted and trapped the blade within the creature’s body. When the giant turned, he pulled the sword, still stuck in his back, from Fang’s hands. Facing Fang directly, he could see the tip of his sword protruding from the alien’s midsection. Blue blood was dripping to the floor.
The alien looked down at the blade and back at Fang. Weaponless and too far away now to engage in hand-to-hand combat, Fang spread his feet wide and opened his arms, pushing out his chest and howling a challenge to his opponent. Any Shirka who had even an ounce of honor in him would’ve dropped his weapon and faced Fang head-on with only their hands and warrior skills for weapons.
This alien apparently had no such honor and began to raise his weapon. Outraged, Fang ran towards what he knew to be impending doom. As the weapon was almost centered on its target, the sword tip emerged another foot from the attacker’s chest and the giant was pushed violently forward. Taking a quick side step out of the way, Fang let the assailant pass by him and grabbed for the handle of his sword.
Grasping tightly, he twisted the blade and ripped enough muscle to allow the weapon to be disengaged from the body it was embedded in. He pulled it out and a stream of blood followed the blade out of the alien’s back.
The alien continued running towards the entrance. Fang noticed that the faint humming from the personal shields were no longer present. “His shield is down. It must have been damaged in the attack.”
Wilks was standing next to Fang in the corridor. He had seen the sword enter the alien and when he turned to fire on Fang, Wilks emerged from cover into the corridor. Running, he jumped and placed a sidekick into the handle of the sword, pushing it to the hilt into the attacker’s back.
He now knelt and raised his assault rifle. “Open fire!” All remaining marines took positions in the corridor and opened fire on the fleeing alien. In less than a second, a couple hundred explosive rounds entered the already bleeding body and tore it apart.
The pieces fell thirty meters from the entrance to the corridor. Not much but blue stains remained to give any indication that something living once stood there.
“Sound off. Are we all clear?” Wilks ordered. Everyone sounded off except Snyder, who just let out a small gasp. Wilks walked to the upper half of his buddy’s body. He wasn’t going to make it; that was obvious. Even if he had the surgical suite that the poor bastard from yesterday got, there was just no coming back from this one.
Snyder looked into Wilks’ eyes, reached up with his remaining arm and grabbed Wilks’ shirt. He tried to speak but couldn’t get any air from his lungs to get the words out.
Wilks looked into his eyes and whispered, “I know.” The rest of his crew had gathered around and Emily tried to see what was happening.
Wilks pulled his sidearm out of its holster and placed his left hand over Snyder’s eyes. Placing the barrel to the top of Snyder’s head, Wilks pulled the trigger, ending his friend’s suffering and at the same time starting his own that would last for years to come. Wilks knew he’d see that in more dreams than he cared to think about. Too many dreams, he thought.
Emily couldn’t hold back the tears and slumped against the wall. Daria came running from behind and lashed out with a fist to Wilks’ face. Scan and Fang held her back. “What the fuck! You murderer! I could’ve helped him.”
Wilks stood and wiped the blood from his mouth. In an even and unaggressive tone, he offered, “Bullshit and you know it. We,” he said, looking to his team, “have a pact with one another. If it comes down to this,” he pointed to Snyder, “we do what needs to be done. No suffering among friends. None.” Turning to Fang, he said, “Take Jockey and Cannon and make sure that we won’t have any more surprises. I don’t think there’s any more of those aliens, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking right now, but check anyway.”
Turning to Daria, he spoke quietly. “Please take care of my wounded men.” Still looking into Daria’s eyes, he added, “Lieutenant, please come with me and we’ll see about the one Doc tranqued.”
Wilks and Emily entered the room with the sleeping giant. The sticky blood seemed to act as an instant coagulant and the severed leg wasn’t bleeding anymore, as were none of the other wounds Daria had inflicted.
Emily turned to Wilks. “I know you did the right thing back there. Daria’s a corpsman and it’s her job to save marines’ lives. I’d have hit you, too, in her place.” She looked away. “But I’d also have wanted you to do it for me.”
Great, Wilks thought, another person he’d have to face in a dream some night. Just what he needed.
“Poor Scan”, Emily said aloud. “Too bad we don’t have his hand to put back on.”
“Ah, don’t worry about him. He’ll be OK”, Wilks said. Emily turned to him with a confused look in her eyes. “Don’t you know? Trizites are Echinoderms. They can grow limbs back under most circumstances. He’s lost a whole leg before. A hand won’t be nothin’ to him.”
Emily was embarrassed. “As a xenobiologist, I guess you’d expect me to remember something like that. Hell, right now I’m surprised I even remember my name.”
“Lieutenant,” Wilks placed his hand on Emily’s shoulder, “you did great for your first engagement. I’d go through a door with you any day.” He looked back down at the body that lay before them. “Now, what do you make of this guy?”
Bloom entered the room before she had a chance to answer. “Sarge, I still can’t get command on line. I figure they’re either gone or we’re just cut off.”
Emily had forgotten about protocol and informing command of their situation. She was sure Wilks hadn’t. He just assumed—knew—that Bloom would be making contact because it was his job and he needn’t be told by Wilks to do it.
“Keep trying. Send a flare up the hole if you have to. Give me an update every five minutes”, Wilks said, kneeling by the giant and taking the weapon from the alien’s still hand. “Let’s get to work.”
Chapter 18
Vengeance’s Pride – Consequences
The captain listened to the report his operations officer gave him. He already knew the details of the mission as they had been played out before him on the vid screen, in the captain’s room, as they occurred. But nonetheless, he had to listen to the official report that would be sent back to Supreme Command. The report would describe how he had purposely and willfully gone against the direct orders of the Supreme Command.
The operations officer finished reading the last sentences of the report. They were death sentences for the captain. “And so I hereby relieve the captain of all further duties and command until ordered otherwise by Supreme Command. He will be placed in a torture tube until such time his death can be carried out by a duly appointed executioner in accordance with article…” The captain stopped listening; he knew the rest.
“I’m sorry, sir. It was an honor serving with you. And between you and I, I fully agr—”
The captain cut him off. “Don’t condemn yourself as well. I appreciate your thoughts. Now, carry out your duty.” He paused and handed the young officer his rank insignia. “Captain.”
Both officers stood at attention and then the former captain led the way that he knew all too well, to the torture tubes. At their present position in the galaxy, he knew it would be weeks, if not months, before an executioner would arrive to finish the task. Hopefully the new captain would “accidentally” have a surge of power directed at his tube during a training drill, which would end it quickly for him. Months. His body almost shivered at the thought.
Chapter 19
Dig Site One – Taking Stock
Twenty minutes after the attack had ended, the squad was formed up on Wilks and Emily while individual debriefings of the incident took place. After everyone had given their account of the attack, Wilks asked for a situation report.
“We found a shield generator at the far end of the hole”, Fang started. “It seems to have put a barrier between us and the surface. There is an impenetrable roof at one hundred meters up. The generator is protected by its own shield that we can’t penetrate even with our EMPs.”
Cannon took over. “I don’t think that I’d be able to get through it even if I had my heavy weapons down here. Even if our people are still up top, we can’t get to them and they can’t get to us.”
“Those shields are also blocking communications”, Bloom offered. “There’s no way to let them know what happened here or to even warn them of what might be coming their way. I don’t know how those guys slipped in here without being detected like that.”
“I think we should assume,” Emily said gravely, “that they didn’t slip in. We should assume that our forces topside were destroyed prior to or during our attack.” All eyes focused on her. “We can’t go up, so our only choice is to go down. Something very important is inside this base and we need to know what.”
“Casualty report”, Wilks said, not even looking in Daria’s direction.
“One casualty and three minor injuries. Fang’s jaw is broken. I’ve applied a molecular splint and it should be healed in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Scan’s right hand is gone but his natural dermal regeneration has already begun. He’d know better than I would how long it’ll take before he can use it again.”
Scan jumped in, “I should have a hand in a week or two. And please, no ‘give me a hand’ jokes from anyone, all right? I got real tired of those leg jokes after the Kaland mission.” That got a much-needed laugh from the squad.
“And Davies has a minor concussion with a dislocated right shoulder. I’m gonna need some help getting that back in”, Daria concluded.
Wilks offered himself, explaining that he had helped with one of these before. “All right guys, hold his legs and body down. We need him still for this. Right, Doc?”
“Yeah”, Daria said, turning to Davies. “Remember when we did this on Mike? Lay still and let us do the pulling.” Davies nodded and made an effort to smile.
Daria gripped Davies’ right wrist and placed her right foot up against his rib cage and laid her left leg across his chest, holding his arm between her legs. Fang wrapped his enormous arms around Davies’ chest to help pull him opposite of Daria. Wilks grabbed the upper thighs and hips while Scan held onto Davies’ legs.
“On my mark, I’m going to pull and reset the socket”, Daria said. “Fang, you pull in the opposite direction while everyone else keeps him still. OK, three, two, MARK!” Fang was quick to pull on Daria’s early cue. Davies hadn’t a chance to tense up yet so the shoulder went back into the joint easily, accompanied with a loud pop and scream from Davies.
“It’s in.” Daria checked his wrist for a pulse to make sure that they hadn’t accidentally damaged anything after reducing the dislocation. “Sorry to have to fool you like that. But without any pain meds to give you, I couldn’t have you tighten up on me at the last second. Fang here would’ve ripped you apart.”
“No problem, Doc.” Davies couldn’t manage a smile this time. “Just don’t fix that concussion yet. I think that it’s the only thing stopping some of the pain right now.”
“He should be fully operational in a day or two”, Daria said as she applied a medicspray with steroidal and cellular healing agents into Davies’ shoulder.
“Form up on me”, Emily called to everyone. “There’s something you should know.” This got everyone’s attention. “The information you are about to get is top, and I mean top, secret. I was briefed before we entered the hole and was given strict instruction that all of you were on a need-to-know basis only. Well, I think you need to know.”
“Damn right”, Scan said, holding up his stump. Wilks eyed him down into silence.
Emily gave them a complete history of the dig site that was found more than five years ago and what had happened since then. “We were sent to this planet to find,” she gestured to the corridor that they stood in, “this. Although the top brass didn’t know what they were looking for, it seems that our team has found it.” Actually, she thought, the other team was unlucky enough to find it first.
“I knew as much as the rest of you did up until my briefing this morning. They never thought that we would encounter resistance down here. Those aliens,” she pointed to the only one left, “must have come from a nearby ship. They weren’t on sensors but I’m willing to bet that they can easily defeat our sensors.”
“So what’s our place in the whole scheme of things?” Davies managed to get out.
“We are looking for technology that will help us fight whoever those things are. This outpost was destroyed almost a thousand years ago and if we can find who did it or how they did it, we just might be able to save the Coalition.”
“A thousand years is a long time, Lieutenant,” Wilks interjected. “Don’t you think that they might have advanced in that time? Their own past technology might not even be strong enough to defeat them now.”
“Their thousand-year-old technology is still two thousand years ahead of us. Anything we find will surely be of some benefit.” I hope I’m right, she thought silently. “And consider our most recent encounter. Something down here is worth their effort to protect it. We just need to find it, and fast.”
Wilks stood. “Considering what the lieutenant has just told us, I have some information that might be pertinent as well.” His crew looked at him; they knew exactly what he was talking about. “Before this mission began, my team performed a recon on some of our outer region colonies. They had been destroyed by these aliens. At the time, we only knew that we were investigating some colonies on the outer rim that had been attacked. We weren’t informed of everything the lieutenant just told us.”
Daria realized that she must have met Wilks on the night he finished the mission he
was now debriefing them on. He continued, “The colonies were mostly just gone. No blown up structures, hardly any bodies, nothing. Just gone. No other way to really describe it. Some buildings around the outer edges of the colony were still standing but no one was home.
“The few bodies we did find looked like Snyder’s. Had to have been the same aliens with these energy weapons. If anyone from my team remembers something, anything that you feel might be pertinent, let the lieutenant know. It could be the difference between living and dying for us. I’ll take the heat for you revealing top-secret information if it comes to that.”
Everyone nodded but no one could think of anything that might help. Wilks had summed it up. Nothing.
“Scan and Fang”, Emily took a commanding posture, “those energy weapons are too big for any of us humans. Do you think that you two can handle them?”
Fang looked like the weapon almost fit him as he held it, but not quite. Still, he was definitely strong enough to carry it without a problem. “We tried using one on the shield generator already but even it couldn’t defeat it. I can use it, though, if any of those guys come back.” He nodded with disgust towards the pile of scraps that once belonged to his enemy who had no honor.
“I’m strong enough but it’s just too big for me to use effectively”, Scan said, looking like a child with an adult’s rifle in his arms.
“All right, Fang, take the one you’ve got and we’ll deposit the rest in the last room on the right. Doc, let’s try to wake our friend here. Bloom, you’re with us.”