Miranda's War

by Eric S. Brown

  “Man, a blind idiot could see how you look at her.” Robbie laughed. “Don’t try to deny it. She’s got your number, Joe.”

  “Let’s try this one next,” Joe said, pointing at a building that looked to be the town saloon.

  “Fine by me,” Robbie said. “Maybe I can find a drink.”

  Joe took point as they entered the saloon. It was a two-story building, and stairs led up to its second floor from the vast, open space of the bar. There were tables spread out all over the first-floor room, and an old time AI piano sat on the right side playing an annoying song.

  Robbie cringed. “The folks here had some really bad taste in music.”

  Quite a few of the room’s tables were smashed and overturned. There wasn’t a pile of bodies like inside the town’s meeting hall, but there were a few scattered around. Splashes of bright red blood stained the counter of the bar and the floor around it.

  “Somebody put up a fight here, too,” Joe said, kneeling over to pick up a spent rifle cartridge. There were several more near the one he’d picked up.

  “Are we going to assume they didn’t kill any of those things here, or that those things came back to collect their dead and wounded themselves?” Robbie asked.

  “Does it matter?” Joe shrugged.

  “Suppose it doesn’t,” Robbie answered, moving around behind the bar.

  “What are you doing?” Joe frowned, afraid that he already knew.

  “I said I was going to find a drink in here, and I meant it,” Robbie said, laughing, as he propped his rifle against the inside of the bar and started going through the bottles on the shelf behind it.

  “You’re crazy.” Joe shook his head. “Miranda will kill you for being so reckless.”

  “She ain’t here, and even if she was, I doubt Miranda would care,” Robbie shot back at him, finally choosing a bottle and popping its top. Robbie took a long guzzle from it before slamming the bottle on the counter top. “You want some?”

  “I’m good,” Joe said with a disgusted expression. “I’m headed up to check out the rooms upstairs. You coming or not?” Joe asked when Robbie made no move to follow him.

  Robbie took another swig from the bottle and shivered at the burn of the powerful alcohol burning down his throat. “Sure, I’m coming, man. Someone has to cover your backside, sniper boy.”

  Joe led the two of them up the stairs to the saloon’s second floor. It looked to be a series of rooms that could be rented out to its patrons. There were hundreds of saloons just like this one, bad music notwithstanding, all across the fringe worlds.

  Joe was haunted by a memory from his youth. Like everyone else who was part of Strider’s crew, with the exception of the old man, he had grown up in a fringe world colony like Brickson. The old man was supposedly from Earth, but if anyone knew the details about his time there, it was only Miranda, and she wasn’t talking.

  Joe remembered being dragged by his father to a saloon not too different from this one when he turned sixteen. His father had wanted to “make a man out of him,” whatever that meant. Joe had been glad he’d never found out. His mother had come barging into the establishment carrying a double-barreled shotgun, and she had some heated words with his father before the three of them headed home.

  Brook’s voice came over their ear comms again. “Joe, Robbie, those weird readings I was picking up earlier…whatever’s causing them must be on the move, because they’re coming your way, and fast, too.”

  “Roger that,” Joe said, turning to look over the railing of the second floor as Robbie continued on, kicking in one door after the next behind him.

  “Ain’t nothing up here but a few unlucky bastards who got slaughtered while they were having fun,” Robbie told him. “Any sign of that trouble your old lady says is coming our way?”

  “She’s not my old lady!” Joe snapped. “And no, there’s nothing down there on the first floor that I can see, either.”

  “Time to call this one, then, and move onto the next one,” Robbie said, shoving past as he hightailed it for the stairs. Joe started after Robbie, who was bounding down the stairs two at a time.

  Just as Robbie reached the first floor, the saloon’s lights flickered and went out.

  “What the hell?” Robbie shouted.

  Joe pulled the infrared goggles from the top of his helmet down over his eyes. “Go infrared!”

  Both men were professional enough to know that the lights going out most likely wasn’t random chance. Joe stopped where he was on the middle of the stairs, his eyes scanning the downstairs room again, searching for trouble.

  “I got movement!” Robbie screamed as something huge moved in a blur from the saloon’s doorway to the serving counter, disappearing behind it.

  “That wasn’t one of those bugs,” Joe told Robbie over their shared comlink. “We got something new here. Watch yourself, buddy.”

  “You’re the damned sniper of this outfit. Take the thing out from up there, already,” Robbie shouted.

  “Can’t see it,” Joe muttered, raising the rifle to his shoulder and targeting the counter area through its scope. “It’s melded into the shadows.”

  “What the frag man?” Robbie whined. “Stop talking like that. This ain’t no vampire novel.”

  Robbie felt the air around him growing cooler. He knew the frigidity of the night outside couldn’t have already crept into the saloon that quickly, even with the power failure. The door had closed behind whatever it was that came inside, likely running on some sort of backup power to keep the place sealed tight.

  “This fragging sucks,” Robbie muttered, keeping his attention focused on the counter and the deeper darkness behind it.

  “Just don’t do anything stupid, Robbie,” Joe pleaded.

  “Me?” Robbie grinned despite the situation. “Never.”

  Robbie held the trigger of his rifle tight, hosing the counter area with a continuous blast of fully automatic fire. Bottles burst, shattering on the shelf. Bullets punched holes in the counter itself, tearing through its wood. Others dug into the wall behind the counter. Robbie kept firing, sweeping his rifle from one end of the counter to the other, until his rifle finally clicked empty in his hands.

  “Joe!” Brook’s voice rang out over his ear comm. “What’s going on in there?”

  He knew she was monitoring them with Strider’s sensors because of the weird energy readings in their area.

  “Tell Miranda and Flynn to get their butts over here!” Joe answered her. “We’ve been engaged by an unknown contact!”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 11

  Miranda stood in Brickson’s comm center. There had been no further contact with the bug creatures, and she was glad of it. There were scattered bodies throughout the building. Flynn was busy checking the comm logs for any sign of the man they were looking for.

  “You find anything?” Miranda asked as Flynn looked up from his work.

  “Yeah.” Flynn nodded. “He’s in this building. Apparently our Mr. Lindsey was one of the techs here.”

  “If the senator had passed on that bit of information, it would have saved us all a lot of trouble,” Miranda snarled. She had her sword drawn and ready. Her battle helmet was still engaged, and she was keeping a close eye on the tactical display it projected in the corner of her field of vision. “Now we just need to find him.”

  “According to the logs, he should be in the system control room, one floor down,” Flynn told her.

  The comm building wasn’t a two-story structure; its other floors were underground. That made sense. Any colony that could afford such a thing usually did. Being underground was a much better defense against orbital attacks than the best armor one could put on a building.

  “Well,” Miranda said, “let’s go get him, then.”

  “I’ve downloaded the layout of this place.” Flynn grinned. “Follow me.”

  The two of them moved out of the primary comm room and entered the corridor outside it. Miranda ignored th
e blood splattered on the walls. All the colonists of Brickson were dead, and there wasn’t a dang thing she could do about it. Saving them hadn’t been their job, anyway. The poor souls who lived in Brickson had been long dead when they arrived, or at least it looked that way for most of them. There were some more recently dead corpses in the town, but they were few and far between.

  Flynn led her to a stairwell, which led down to the building’s next level. The power was still on, but the lights in the stairwell were flickering, as if something had damaged the power supply to this area.

  They reached the next level and found the doorway leading into it unlocked. Flynn carefully opened it and stepped through. Miranda stayed on his heels. The barrel of Flynn’s rifle swept up and down the corridor they entered as he looked around for any sign of the bug creatures. There was a dead woman at the end of the corridor sprawled out on the floor. Her back had been ripped open, and Miranda could see the white of the woman’s exposed spine.

  “In here,” Flynn said, leading Miranda to another doorway. The two of them entered the systems control room together. The door was wide enough for them to go in side by side. A fierce battle had raged in the room. Its walls were peppered with bullet holes from stray and missed shots. Several dead bug creatures filled the room, along with the body of a single man. Miranda smiled as she saw the corpse had only one eye. This was their guy. All they had to do now was collect some proof they had found him, and they could get the Hades off the planet. The sooner the better, too. Her gut told her the longer they stayed, the more likely it was that the bug creatures would get it together and come at them in force. They were much better armed and trained than Brickson’s residents had been, but she knew the bug creatures had the numbers. God only knew how many of the things there were on the planet. They were clearly indigenous to it, and somehow the colonists had made the mistake of waking them up with their mining.

  Flynn moved to Mr. Lindsey’s corpse and collected a DNA sample from it. Then, almost as an afterthought, he cut off one of the man’s fingers, too, and rammed it into one of the pockets of his vest.

  “Okay,” Miranda said. “We’ve got what we needed. It’s time to get the Hades out of here.”

  “No argument from me.” Flynn smiled as he rose to his feet.

  Flynn took a last look back at Lindsey’s corpse before they left the room. “That guy had to be one tough mother to take out this many of the bugs. I’m sorry we didn’t make it here in time to save him.”

  “He was dead before we were even hired, Flynn,” Miranda reminded him.

  They moved at a fast pace, hurrying for the stairwell leading up to the comm building’s ground level. As they opened its doorway and started inside, the sound of frantic skittering filled the corridor.

  “Frag me,” Flynn said, staring in horror at the wave of bug creatures suddenly pouring toward them.

  “Run!” Miranda ordered him. “I’ll hold them at the bottom of the stairwell.”

  “You can’t…” Flynn started.

  “I said run!” Miranda snapped. “That’s an order!”

  Flynn dashed up the stairs as Miranda moved to block the entrance to the stairwell, standing just inside it. Her sword hummed in her hands as she held it in a two-handed grip. She knew the doorway would keep the bug creatures from coming at her all at once, and force them into one-on-one combat with her.

  The first creature reached the doorway and sprang through it, screeching. Its pincer hand swung at her. Miranda relieved it of its pincer hand, then slashed open the thing’s face in a spray of gray blood. She activated the battle music inside her helmet. “Come a Little Bit Closer,” by an old Earth Band called Jay and the Americans, roared to life in her ears as she grinned a feral grin and settled in for a good fight.

  The next bug creature met its end as Miranda took off its head before it was even through the door. The one behind it died squealing as she thrust the blade of her sword into its chest, and then jerked it free. The thing’s body flopped to the floor on top of the headless creature’s. Miranda worked herself into a rhythm with the music inside her helmet and the flow of the bug creatures. One after another they entered the doorway and died at the bottom of the stairwell. She lost count of how many she killed as sweat slicked her skin, and her body continued to move in a fluid dance of death.

  The pile of bug corpses kept growing, but the things kept coming. As she fought, Miranda had to backpedal every so often to allow the bugs room to enter the stairwell, so she could keep sending them to hell one by one. Her muscles began to burn and ache, but she kept up her dance. Flynn had to be out of the building and long gone by now, but she was having trouble disengaging.

  She continued to lose ground, and reached a point where more than one bug creature could enter the stairwell at a time. Miranda was losing her advantage more and more with each step she took back. She knew she had to make a run for it somehow. That meant letting the bugs in, though, and Miranda didn’t want them at her back, chasing her up the stairs as she ran.

  Finally Miranda popped open a compartment on her armor’s right leg, and a grenade dropped into her hand. She activated it and lobbed it through the doorway as the blade of her sword opened up the chest of a bug creature. The wounded bug staggered backward on its six legs as the grenade detonated in the corridor outside the stairwell. She saw the white flash of its explosion in her peripheral vision, and she whirled about and sprinted up the stairs.

  Miranda was halfway up before the sound of skittering rang out behind her. She looked over her shoulder to see the bug creatures coming after her. Some of them were on the stairs, racing up them, but many more were climbing the walls of the stairwell like fast-moving spiders. Miranda didn’t dare stop to engage them again. The advantage was theirs now, and if she did, she would find herself overrun and dead within seconds, armor or no.

  She reached the doorway leading to the comm building’s ground level, and saw Flynn had left it open for her. Miranda darted through it, slamming it after she passed through. In less than a heartbeat’s span of time, she heard the bug creatures collide with the other side of the metal door. It dented outward as they hammered against it. She didn’t stick around to watch them tear through it. Miranda’s legs pumped beneath her as she ran like hell for the exit.

  Flynn was waiting for her when she burst onto the street outside the building. Strider was there, too, hovering in the air facing the building, with its main guns to cover her. Miranda muttered a prayer of thanks for having the crew she did and threw herself into the snow on her stomach as the bug creatures erupted from the building and Strider’s forward cannons opened up on them. Dozens upon dozens of the bug creatures died, their high-pitched wails ringing out in the night as the ship’s guns cut them to pieces. It seemed like an eternity before Strider’s cannons and the wailing of the bug creatures finally fell silent. Only then did Miranda get to her feet. Flynn rushed over to her.

  “You okay, Boss?” Flynn asked.

  Miranda clasped his shoulder with her left hand, still holding her sword tightly in her right. “I’ll live. That was some quick thinking, calling in Brook. Thank you.”

  The battle-hardened hunter blushed and looked away from her. “It was the only thing I could think to do,” Flynn admitted.

  “Hey, Boss,” Brook’s voice called out to her over the comm of her armor’s helmet. “I hate to tell you this, but we got other problems. Joe and Robbie have been engaged by an unknown hostile. They need backup, and fast. I’m sending you their location now.”

  “Got it!” Miranda said. “Come on, Flynn.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Flynn shouted and ran along behind her as Miranda hauled butt toward the saloon.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 12

  Robbie had reloaded and was staring at the saloon’s serving counter through his infrared googles as Joe dashed down the stairs to join him on the main floor. His all-out barrage on the counter area hadn’t driven anything out of hiding. It had only wasted ammo a
nd torn the place apart even more. Shards of glass from shattered bottles and splinters of wood from the ravaged walls covered the floor there. Robbie was sorely ticked.

  “What the frag, man?” Robbie roared. “Come on!”

  There were no heat signatures that Joe’s goggles could pick up in the counter area, but he suspected whatever had killed the power and entered the saloon was still over there somewhere. Joe switched his googles from infrared to light amplification mode and backed his way to the saloon’s door, hitting the control panel on the wall that opened it. Dim light from outside the saloon came pouring into it. The light didn’t extend far enough to affect the darkness behind the serving counter. To Joe’s eyes, though, the darkness there seemed deeper than the rest of the saloon. It seemed almost alive somehow, and moving. A chill of dread made the sniper shudder.

  “Forget it, Robbie,” Joe said, “let’s get out of here. If whatever is over there comes after us, we’ll deal with it.”

  “No,” Robbie said without looking at him. His eyes were still fixed on the darkness.

  Joe didn’t know what to make of Robbie’s answer. There was no reason for them to stay and risk engaging the unknown enemy further. All they had to do was go out the door, and then at least if whatever it was did come after them, they would be able to see it.

  “Stop screwing around, man!” Joe barked. “We need to go! Now!”

  “You go,” Robbie told him. “This thing has got my blood up, and it’s going to pay for that.”

  Joe thought he heard a trace of fear in Robbie’s voice as he answered. Was that what was happening? This thing had shaken Robbie up so badly that he had to know it was dead before he could move on? Joe didn’t really care. He just wanted them out of the saloon as fast as possible.

  Without warning, whatever lurked behind the counter screamed. It was an ungodly wail that was impossibly loud. The glass of the saloon’s front window exploded, as did every other piece of intact glass in the place. Joe’s goggles cracked before his eyes, and the scope on his rifle actually blew apart from the intensity of the wailing. He saw Robbie clutching his ears. Robbie had released his hold on his rifle, and it swung at his side on its shoulder strap. The wailing grew even louder, and Joe’s vision began to blur. The next thing Joe knew, everything went dark, and his body toppled to the floor of the saloon.