Another affront to Williams’s scientific demeanor, handled with frustrated calm this time as he focused instead on the approaching target. Though the forward science station had better equipment, he had chosen to watch the final approach from the bridge. Recorders were running, the data would be properly analyzed over weeks or months, possibly even years. This was a time to savor, the pinnacle of achievement dreamed of by any space-exploration specialist.
The proof of extraterrestrial life.
The asteroid might have qualified as a small moon had it been in orbit around any major planet. A great, dull brown-black rock drifting through space, a large portion of one side was covered with metal-faced buildings. Square and rectangular shapes seemed to be the basic building blocks, but arches were also common, with a heavy reliance on triangular supports. The metal had been treated to soft tints of blues and greens and pale yellows. Initial sampling via laser spectrometry indicated alloys unknown to mankind and the presence of a honeycomb structure in the walls. It took some searching to discover any heavy damage to the compound from an ages-old meteor strike. A tight video still of the broken wall showed a triangular honeycombing like small geodesic domes built into the wall.
Williams thought he should say something. Anything. Everyone seemed to expect it. Certainly the moment demanded it, but he could do nothing but stare in fascination.
He cupped his chin in his right hand, stroking his pointed sideburns. Finally, he said, “Now we know.”
It was no great statement—no “one giant leap for mankind”—but it satisfied his scientific mind. No need for conjecture or speculation. The answer stared them boldly in the face. Mankind was not alone in the existence of sentient life.
Brygan Nystolov cleared his throat, the bearlike rumble demanding attention now that Williams had finally broken the silence. “Have you noticed,” he asked, “there is no evidence of a dome, and all buildings are open to space?”
No, Williams hadn’t noticed. Looking now, he saw it was true. Triangular windows and arched doorways seemed to beckon. “They must have generated an atmosphere.” Though even the Union could not have done so under the minimal gravity the asteroid possessed. “Or didn’t need one.” The Maelstrom had certainly taught him never to take anything for granted, and it was a mind-set Williams hoped to hold on to in his studies. He filed away the questions at the top of the list, to be answered soonest.
“No evidence of a power source down there,” Drake said, coming out of his own reverie. “No machinery even, at least out in the open. The abundance of metal in the construction could be blocking anything deeper into the asteroid.” The dark-skinned man swung around to face Williams. “I’d like your science staff to verify that as much as possible, before I allow the Icarus in any closer or men on the surface.”
When Williams started, shocked that he would not have to argue for the time to explore, the Marine grinned tightly. “I am not even going to argue that point. Go down there and set foot on it, Major. Make sure that it is real. But we will hold to our timetable—General Hayes was most adamant about that. This is an opening survey, not a full exploration party.”
If ever there was a time when military protocol should be suspended! But Williams knew he could push Drake only so far before safety of the vessel and crew overrode everything else. Two men had already been lost. He didn’t want to risk more lives either. “I’ll want two-man search teams, we’ll cover more ground that way. Icarus will be set down for easier access rather than waste time shuttling everyone down.”
Drake frowned at that last, then nodded reluctantly. His brown eyes flickered toward Nystolov. “Anything else?”
“Brygan comes with me. I’ll be responsible, but I want him down there.”
The captain nodded to the Neo-Soviet rather than Williams. “Good choice. I’ll trust Comrade Nystolov to watch out for you then.”
The major bit back a reply that he could very well take care of himself, that this kind of work had consumed his earlier military career. But he had what he wanted from Drake, so arguing would accomplish nothing. Besides, clearly the military man was voicing his respect for the Neo-Soviet scout’s abilities.
And that could not hurt anyone’s agenda.
* * *
Brygan Vassilyevich Nystolov had hoped that once again walking the unknown might bring a joy back that he hadn’t felt in some time. It was the purpose he had chosen for himself on Mars, setting his skills and natural talents against the red planet. The asteroid looked and felt nothing like Mars, but it offered its own challenges, protected its own secrets, and Brygan intended to set himself against them.
The gliding step he had perfected on Mars worked here, too, carrying him over large expanses with little effort. Inside buildings, he literally flew down corridors and dropped through shafts that might once have housed elevators or lifts. Major Williams could not have matched him if Brygan had intended to run off alone, though with admirable effort he did manage to keep up with Brygan’s average pace.
“Magnificent,” Williams said as they exited a corridor for another of what he had named a grand hall. Long and wide, with a vaulted ceiling, the corridor spilled into the room after a sharp dogleg. Three exits were set at the far end, beneath a balcony overhang. “Simplistic design, but almost regal in its execution.”
Execution was just what Brygan had considered as well, though with a different meaning. This was a murderous trap, set by a military mind. Though not a true military man himself, he was comfortable enough with the concepts to recognize them. He looked back toward the corridor as the pair of them drifted forward. A sharp turn to prevent easy massing, and then a long run or glide across an empty expanse. Put a demisquad of four Vanguard infantry armed with Kalashnikovs up in that balcony, and they could easily slaughter or hold back ten times their own number. Maybe more.
This was the third such stretch they had found, which could mean they were approaching something of importance. Or something that used to be of importance, anyway. So far they’d found not a single clue about the former inhabitants. No tool or item of clothing. No writing—not even graffiti. No evidence of hard technology at all, though the excavation and metal fabrication must have required it. Williams was perplexed by the pristine condition, though no less fascinated for the discovery. He worked off the architecture alone, trying to divine anything at all about the aliens’ physiology or culture. Brygan watched for evidence as to why they had abandoned the asteroid base.
“What you truly hope to find here, Major?” Brygan asked after they leapt up to check the balcony, which was empty. “Is not enough, the buildings above?” He looked over. Both men had raised the reflective shielding on their helmet bowls. Williams’s brown eyes were still glowing with his enthusiasm.
“More than enough,” the other man said, his voice hushed through the transmission. “But we have a few hours left on Drake’s timetable, and I want to penetrate as deeply as we can. You know, if this asteroid has been honeycombed, we could be looking at thousands of kilometers of chambers. We’ll do little more than scratch the surface this time.”
To come back later in force and set up a permanent facility to search out every square centimeter, Brygan did not doubt. He knew it wouldn’t matter if he took the same information back to his nation. The Union held a strong edge in space exploration. Always had. They weren’t worried over the competition now, and to Brygan’s surprise, neither was he. Since joining the Icarus’s staff, he had not thought much in terms of Neo-Soviet and Union. Holding back some information had been a result of personal interest rather than national loyalty—treasonous but true. Randall Williams so far had not delved too deeply into the military mind-set, and Brygan couldn’t afford for him to. Not if he wanted to remain part of the expedition.
Part of the team.
Brygan stumbled his next gliding step as that thought surfaced—that at some point he had welcomed being part of a group for perhaps the first time in his life. The Union praised individual achie
vement, yes, but they also worked together, relying on each other’s strengths to balance their own weaknesses. As a nation the Union could still be as overbearing and self-righteous as the empire, but at this level, where Brygan preferred to live, the system worked. And he was adopting it, mostly thanks to the efforts of Randall Williams to make him feel accepted. His deception twinged at the back of his mind, reminding him that Williams accepted the persona Brygan lived, not the scout himself.
“And you, Brygan,” Williams asked as the scout recovered his balance, the humor in his voice apparent at the faltered step. “What were you hoping to find?”
“Mars,” Nystolov said simply, and refused to elaborate.
But Mars was dead to him now. Died, actually, the day he had stood witness to the struggle between the Mental and General Vladimir Leonov, watching Leonov’s oppressive nature overbear the frail Mental. Even if they found a way back, would Brygan return to Mars? Could he? Chances were good that the Neo-Soviet empire would not even let him return here if he did give them the location of this asteroid. He was a rogue personality, never to be fully trusted with anything approaching delicate work.
Not in the empire.
* * *
“Vozle gorashix ogney!”
The old oath, by the burning light, slipped out before Brygan could help himself. He had sailed into a corner, kicked off a wall for the usual short dogleg into a hall, and launched himself into the ready arms of a massive alien creature.
Hunched down on lean but well-muscled legs, it still stood as tall as any man and at least three times as broad across the shoulders. A grimace of large fangs smiled at him. One hand rested on the floor, palm up to show a hand that could enfold Brygan’s head—helmet and all—and was well armed with large claws. The other hand dug its claws into the side of the corridor, through the metal facing and into rock behind. Brygan counted himself a dead man. No way around it. By instinct he tucked himself into a tight ball and prayed that he might survive the first attack and so then escape.
He bounced into the alien as if he’d struck a wall, then rebounded back the way he’d come, holding his breath and ready for the stab of pain from teeth or claw. He hit the back wall again, and then spun down to the floor before vaulting back into the air.
Brygan opened his eyes, twisting about in the light gravity. The monster remained where it had been, a reddish-blue wall of heavy muscle and threatening teeth that nearly blocked the corridor from wall to wall. Brygan caught himself against the ceiling and rebounded carefully back toward the floor. He turned on his magnetic soles, which grabbed the alien alloy as well as they might have man-made steel. He stood there, gazing at death.
The creature would have risen easily to three and a half meters, almost four, if it had stood on its thin legs. By strange comparison, the arms were better than four times as massive and looked long enough to drag the ground even if standing at such a height. Brygan moved in closer to the frozen creature, aware now that the blue tinge to it was a coating of iced flesh. The asteroid’s thin atmosphere was one step from what might be called vacuum; this thing was dead.
It still frightened him. It had the look of pure predator, with fangs longer than the full spread of a man’s hand and razor-sharp claws to match. A row of razored spines ran from the large horn cresting its skull back down its spine and the stub of a tail it owned. Tiny, wide-set black eyes suggested the creature could not rely too heavily on sight, though Brygan would not have bet his life on it. This was a hunter.
An alien.
“Brygan! Are you all right?”
The insistence of the voice finally broke through the spell, and he realized that Williams had been calling to him for several seconds. Since his involuntary outburst. Randall Williams was trapped several hundred meters back along the corridor by a cave-in. His bulky Union space suit had not been able to squeeze by the small entrance Brygan had made.
“I am fine, Major. A . . .”—he stammered a moment—“a portion of ceiling collapsed.” A lead weight sank into his stomach with the lie. It was a poor trade for the comradeship he had been shown, and Randall Williams deserved better. But Brygan would not—could not—discuss such a find without first considering its import.
He had already withheld too many indications of alien intelligence, especially when it hinted at a military threat. Was he about to hand over such a hostile-looking creature? If they began to see aliens as a serious threat, what of the enemies the Union had fought for so many decades? They might look closer at Brygan’s own nationality, fueling new doubts in Williams and raising again Drake’s original suspicions. They might decide it in everyone’s best interests to dissolve the team and confine Brygan to his quarters.
The very thought startled the Neo-Soviet scout.
“Come back, Brygan.” The concern in the major’s voice bled through the transmission. “We can search a different passage, da, Tovarish?”
Brygan shook, confused and upset as much for the other man’s concern as the fact that Williams named him a close comrade. He tried to put off the latter to the scientist not knowing Russian well enough to realize the subtle differences in address. A difficulty when he remembered how both Williams and Drake seemed to follow the proper forms just fine.
“A moment, Major Williams.” Then he looked past the obstructing creature—a sentry—and into the hall behind. He would need more than a moment, and had to tell Williams something before the scientist tried to claw his way past the obstruction and damaged his suit. “I may have a sample for you.” He squeezed by the frozen sentry.
He only had to choose. The grand hall was filled with the monsters. Fourteen, he counted. Not a lot considering the size of the passage, but each one did an awful lot of filling. They were arranged in a semicircle around the largest of the pack, the bull-leader. An incredible creature better than four and a half meters if Brygan could judge from its crouched position, with three-fourths of its body weight concentrated in the upper half. The main horn jutting out between the eyes was broken at the tip, leaving it a serrated hook. It crouched amidst a pile of crushed and splintered bones.
“I found a few bones,” he said, expanding the lie and feeling the worse for it. Damn his earlier precautions that now exacted such a price! “I’ll gather them.” A few of them. He picked three of the less damaged and slipped them into a zippered thigh pocket.
He also decided to take a tissue sample. Maybe he could explain away his reluctance to tell Williams over the radio what he had found. Give the scientist a good sample to study and keep him occupied without ever having to see these ferocious creatures. Standing in that chamber of horrors, it seemed like a good idea.
Removing the military knife from a sheath along his leg, Brygan approached the bull, but then shied away from that fierce visage to a smaller creature off to one side. Perhaps he would come clean with the major. Bare the entire charade in hopes that such a discovery, shared, would be enough to overshadow a deception that had merely been designed for his own protection. Never to harm. At least he should keep it as an option. It was something to consider carefully in the time remaining before their return to Luna.
He hacked down hard against one of the alien’s arms, hoping to splinter off a large piece from the frozen flesh. Some of it did chip away as he’d expected, but not much. Then the blade bit deep, and a wisp of steam froze to a tiny crystalline mist and drifted up from the wound. Brygan yanked the knife free, and watched with dawning horror as the creature bled freely for a second until the wound iced over and staunched the flow.
It was still alive!
Blood flow meant a circulation system that had not shut down. It meant a warmth that still burned within the core of the creature, fighting off the encroaching cold. A hibernation of sorts, protecting the creatures for as long as possible. Could it draw its breath slowly from the thin atmosphere of the asteroid? Did it require breath? Brygan backed away, glancing frantically from one frozen statue to another as if they might come alive. The one he’d w
ounded obliged, shifting in its position. Muscles flexed, whether voluntarily or not, cracking the frozen flesh that encased its body.
That was enough for the scout. He turned and fled, all thoughts of redemption lost in his rush.
He had met the enemy, and he was terrified. And rightfully so.
23
* * *
W ith Luna’s fence line smashed and an uncertain number of Neo-Soviet troops massing in Union territory, a large push against Union forces on the moon had been expected for some time. The Union had already lost three atmospheric processors and two bases before any strong reaction could be mustered. Two of their strongest commanders had been lost in battle, undercutting General Hayes’s ability to respond. No one doubted that the empire would make one more bold grab. It became a matter of when, and where, not whether.
The diversionary assault against Tycho came while Corporal Phillipe Savoign was running a patrol with PFC Kevin Davidson, the two of them gliding over the lunar plains in a stripped-down Pegasus light-assault antigrav sled. They had volunteered for extra reconnaissance duty, with the understanding that Savoign would be recalled by Brevet-Major Olsen when it came time to task Freedom for operation support on Earth. The battle station had been moved into position, finally, not twelve hours before and reestablished contact with Colonel Sainz and the Seventy-first Assault Group in Siberia. Phillipe did not know much more than that as Sainz requested secure transmission to Earth and, when that was unavailable, prevailed upon the field-promoted major to carry his report straight to Hayes. Whatever had been in that report, and it did include video stills, had shaken Olsen to his core. Hayes had slapped a tight security clearance on the project and kept operators on a need to know basis. It would filter down sooner or later, especially to men like Savoign, who were currently critical to such things as weapons tasking for the battle stations. Savoign was one of those fortunate few who really loved his work.
Into the Maelstrom Page 20