by Isaac Hooke
“Maybe we should use the plasma cutter?” Lui sent.
Snakeoil reached for his cutter, glancing at Chief Bourbonjack for confirmation.
The Chief stared at the bulkhead. “No. The aliens could have eyes on us at this very moment. We have to act like possessed human hosts would, and that means no cutting our way through bulkheads. Keep a lookout for any entrances.”
Some time later we found a small passage leading through the bulkhead and we took it. Our path proved unimpeded. There were no doors or hatches of any kind to bar our way, as in all previous corridors on the ship.
In moments the passage opened into a wide chamber. Contained within was a glass tank roughly thirty meters wide by four meters tall. Inside, thousands of naked Sino-Koreans rested lethargically, scattered across the glass floor, which was covered in feces. Their bodies appeared dangerously malnourished: bony arms and legs, swollen bellies. Because of the tight confines, most of them lay fairly close together—some were even piled atop one another. An area had been left clear in the center of the room, where a spiderish black robot linked by a cord to the ceiling operated on a human. The robot was installing a cybernetic graft similar to the one I had seen embedded within Lana’s skull and spine.
Some of the naked, slat-ribbed SKs close to the tank wall drunkenly watched our approach. They didn’t seem to recognize us as human, or if they did, they were too weak to do anything about it, because most of them remained prostrate. Perhaps they assumed we were alien hosts.
However, one gaunt woman, her body smeared in fecal matter, clambered upright and limped toward the glass. She might have been beautiful once. Not anymore. Her eye sockets and cheeks had hollowed and her breasts had deflated. I had the distinct impression of fragility; I worried that if she fell over, all the bones in her thin body would break like porcelain.
“Chief . . .” I said.
The SK woman bumped into the translucent wall and began mouthing words. She clasped her hands together in obvious supplication. Begging for help.
“We have to do something,” Lui said.
“What would you suggest?” the Chief said.
Lui pointed out metallic protrusions on the glass several meters away. “That looks like a double airlock. We could go inside, crack open our suits, and share some of our MRE canisters.”
“And then what?” the Chief said. “Go back? After teasing them into thinking we were going to rescue them? They’ll mob us. We’ll have to fight our way out.”
The woman stared at us, eyes pleading for release.
“They won’t mob us,” Lui said. “Look at how weak they are.”
The Chief grimaced. “When you’ve got a meal in your belly, or the chance at one, you’d be surprised at the strength you can work up. If we go in there, I guarantee you, we’re fighting to get out again.”
“We have to at least try!” Lui insisted.
“Remember what I said about alien surveillance?” the Chief said. “We’re being watched at this very moment. You’d have me blow the mission for this? Risk the fate of humanity?”
Beside Lui, Hijak remained uncharacteristically silent. Though he was half Chinese, Hijak never really liked that part of his heritage. He was treated fairly badly while growing up in the UC because of it. Still, he seemed affected. Beyond his faceplate, I could see the pain written across his features.
“I could shoot the glass,” Hijak said quietly. “The rest of you would crowd around me, hiding me from any watching alien eyes. I’d fire, break open the tank, vent the atmosphere, and end the suffering and alien experimentation, granting these people merciful release.”
“You’re assuming you can even penetrate the glass,” the Chief sent. “But even so, I’m afraid we wouldn’t be able to hide the fact we were the ones who did it. People dropping like flies? Can’t hide that. Sorry, as much as I hate to do this, I have to order us back. There’s too much at stake. The entire human race rides on our actions. We can’t help these people. Let’s go.”
We all turned to leave.
Except Hijak.
The Chief noticed. “Hijak. We’re going.”
“Wait.” Hijak stumbled toward the tank.
He reached the glass and extended his glove, resting it flat-palmed against the surface.
Within, the terribly thin SK woman lifted her hand toward the glass, touching it to the same spot on her side.
Even from here I could see the dejection in the woman’s eyes as understanding dawned on her. She knew we weren’t going to do a thing to help her.
I noticed something else in her gaze as a wan smile formed on her lips.
Forgiveness.
Hijak turned away.
I was glad when we left the tank far behind. I knew that woman, with her grim smiling face and hollow eyes, would stay with me for the rest of my days, haunting me late at night when I couldn’t sleep. As she would haunt Hijak, I’m sure. I rationalized what we had done by telling myself, “If Shaw could sacrifice herself for humanity, so could those SKs.” It was a cruel excuse but it helped.
Early into the next hour, the gaseous form of a purple Phant floated into view up ahead. I happened to be at point once again, and the sight caught me off guard because so far we had only encountered the blue ones.
Instinctively I froze.
“Rage?” the Chief texted.
“Another Phant,” I wrote back. “Purple, this time.”
I started forward again. I had to trust in the EM emitters. We had come this far. We couldn’t turn back now.
I forced myself to take one step after another. A purple Phant. The same class as Alejandro’s killer.
I stared into the glowing mass as it approached. Those swirling gases calmed me somehow; the bolts of electricity along the extremities seemed beautiful. My pace slowed. I felt drawn toward the vapor.
“Rage . . .” The Chief’s text filled my aReal.
I stumbled slightly and the trance broke. I quickly averted my eyes and walked steadily onward, trying to ignore the pounding of my heart as the entity grew near.
The Phant moved faster than the blue ones we’d encountered previously and it headed straight toward me. Would I have to slide out of the way of this one?
At the last moment it veered aside, giving the others and me a meter to spare as it passed.
When the gaseous entity moved beyond Lui, our drag man, it recentered in the passage and began to hover from view.
Before it completely vanished, Bender, one of our four porters this time, accidentally dropped his end of the payload.
The warhead tilted to the side, its edge crashing into the floor with a resounding thud.
The purple Phant halted.
It began drifting backward, moving slower, cautiously toward us.
Nicely done, Bender, I thought.
Bender quickly hoisted his end of the payload back up. No one else made any movements nor said a word.
The Phant floated toward our drag man. Lui remained stock-still. The gaseous entity swiveled to the side as it passed, giving him the usual one-meter berth. The thing proceeded forward in that way, passing Bender and halting beside the nuclear warhead.
The Phant hovered in place for several moments, electricity sparking along its edges. It seemed to be analyzing the payload contents in some way.
The alien entity abruptly retreated down the corridor at high speed. It passed Lui and when it reached the edge of our ambient light, the Phant halted. It remained there, ten meters away, motionless, waiting.
“What now?” Manic wrote.
The Chief wrote back: “Move.”
We marched forward.
I glanced over my shoulder: the purple Phant shadowed our advance, maintaining its ten-meter distance behind Lui.
The Chief sent another text message a few seconds later: “Halt.”
The Phant halted with us.
“I’ll be damned,” the Chief sent verbally.
All of our eyes were on the Phant, watching to see how it would react to the Chief’s spoken words.
It did nothing. The entity remained in place, its vapors drifting back and forth over the same spot, bolts of electricity sparking from its core. I guess the interdimensional being couldn’t hear us through our suits after all.
“What does it want?” Hijak sent over the comm.
“It knows we’re up to something,” Bender said.
“Then why doesn’t it just disintegrate us?”
“Maybe it’s not quite sure about us,” Lui sent. “And wants to see where we’re going with the device. Or maybe it’s figured out what we’re actually carrying.”
“Impossible,” Snakeoil transmitted. “The wave-canceling tech would prevent that.”
“Either way it’s here and we’re stuck with it,” Lui returned.
“Could be waiting for its friends to arrive,” I transmitted. “These things communicate telepathically, and according to Lana Wu, the telepathic signals take twenty Stanminutes to propagate no matter the distance.”
“Guess we’ll know soon enough whether or not this thing summoned the cavalry, then,” the Chief sent. “Continue moving people.”
We resumed our advance. The Phant remained ten meters behind Lui at all times.
Eighteen minutes later the cavalry arrived.
Jumpsuited aliens crowded the corridor, coming at us from both the front and the back. Bat-like screeches and pops issued from those aliens that navigated by sonar, while bright light shone from the shoulder-mounted bars of those relying on eyes. I activated my noise-canceling device to filter out the shrieks, and I darkened my helmet glass to reduce the light from the bars. During all of this the purple Phant retreated, vanishing from view.
Because of the large size of the alien jumpsuits, only two enemies could fit abreast in the corridor at once. Each opponent carried one of those swordlike weapons in its appendages—I say appendages, because some of the jumpsuits came equipped with arms, others long tubes that were more like tentacles than anything else. The aliens held the swordlike weapons like rifles, using the two handles situated on the fore and aft of each “blade” as grips.
“Uh, I don’t think those are swords,” Bender transmitted.
“Drop and fire at will,” the Chief sent. “Snakeoil, with me! We’re arming the payload.”
I flattened myself to the deck as my brothers either dropped or crouched around me.
Half of us aimed at the rear of the passageway, the other half targeted the fore. With my sniper scope I chose my targets in the cramped lamp-lit corridor and fired.
Unfortunately, though our bullets, rockets, and grenades flung the foremost aliens backward, none of our weapons actually pierced their jumpsuits. They always got up again, entirely unharmed. We couldn’t make a dent in the “glass” domes that capped the suits, either.
The Chief and Snakeoil stayed near the device. The two-man rule of nuclear armament required that both the commanding officer (CO) and executive officer (XO) agreed to the armament order. The Chief was our CO in this case, and while the rest of us were technically the same rank under the Chief, Snakeoil—as our official breacher—was the nearest to an XO; he’d been supplied with the second pair of physical keys, along with the second half of the armament code.
“The payload is armed!” the Chief announced, crouching low. That was step one of the detonation process. Step two involved inputing an actual countdown. Presumably the Chief had not done that yet.
None of the aliens had fired on us so far. They seemed to be aiming those rifle-swords of theirs very carefully.
I started concentrating my fire on their weapons and I found that by striking the blades near the tips, I could readily mess up their aim. In one case I sent a weapon spiraling out of an enemy’s hands entirely.
“Target their weapons!” I said into the comm. “Try to disarm those in the forefront!”
The next tall alien in my sights had its weapon aimed right at me. Before I could fire, my sniper rifle disintegrated, collapsing into a plume of gray dust.
“What the—”
Still lying prone on the gangway, I immediately yanked a pistol from my belt. I trained the 9-mil at the same alien, wondering why it hadn’t loosed a second shot at me. Then I realized it had shifted its aim.
Beside me, Bender’s rifle disintegrated, too. Like me, he remained very much alive.
The enemy soldiers were eliminating our weapons . . .
“Chief, they’re trying to capture us alive.” I fired my pistol, striking the enemy’s weapon and throwing off its aim.
“Told you those weren’t swords!” Bender freed his own pistol and began firing.
“Snakeoil,” Chief Bourbonjack transmitted, “turn off the wave-canceling tech. I want the enemy aware that we have a fully armed thermonuclear warhead aboard their starship.”
I didn’t look at Snakeoil or the Chief. I was too busy firing my pistol at the enemy, trying to disrupt the aim of as many of them as I could.
A few moments later I heard Snakeoil’s voice over the comm. “Wave-canceling tech offline!”
That didn’t deter the enemy whatsoever. So far we kept them at bay on both sides and avoided losing more of our weapons, but the passageway had become so crowded that those of us with higher-impact rifles could no longer force the aliens backward with each strike. Even rockets and grenades didn’t have much effect, other than to create shockwaves that pinned us to the deck and spiked the temperature.
The alien press slowly advanced on both flanks. With our gunfire, we kept knocking the swordlike weapons of those in the forefronts away, but that wouldn’t matter when the enemy was close enough to throttle us.
Motion drew my eye to the warhead. The Chief had reopened the command console: security protocol permitted only physical entry of any detonation or disarmament operations.
And judging from the grim expression on his face, the Chief wasn’t about to disarm it.
No, he was going to trigger the nuke.
CHAPTER SIX
Tahoe
The alien crabs filled the dark hole ahead of us, covering every square meter of space, advancing unchecked toward the Centurion scout.
“Pull Bicentennial Man back, TJ,” Facehopper sent. “Looks like our emitters aren’t going to deter the enemy this time.”
I had been viewing the scene from the POV of the combat robot, and I switched back to my own viewpoint at that moment. I couldn’t see the horde anymore in the darkness, not from where I stood. Around me, the ATLAS 5s of my brothers were arrayed in an arrowhead formation.
About twenty meters ahead the Centurion emerged from the murk, followed by the first of the crabs—its claws snapped angrily at the air. More crabs came, cords trailing away into the darkness toward the currently unseen host slug.
“Looks like we royally pissed them off,” Fret transmitted.
“Killing a baby alien would do that,” Mauler sent.
I gazed at the organic mess on the cave floor, the corpse of the alien Bomb had accidentally incinerated. On the ceiling ten meters above hung the punctured ovule that had given birth to the creature. Similar white eggs jutted down all around it, blanketing the rock overhead.
“Launch incendiaries toward the ceiling!” Facehopper said over the comm. “Warning shots only! Have the flames fall short of their precious eggs. Let’s see if we can convince the horde to back down.”
I released a measured spurt of flame upward, as did my brothers; none of the jellied gasoline actually touched the eggs, though one or two of the objects blackened slightly from the heat. Some of the flaming liquid arced over our position and landed on the rock floor between us and the crabs, where it continued to burn.
Instead of deterring the horde, the warning shots only seemed to spur the crabs on. They came faster now, limbs clattering even louder. Some shrieked in outrage. I realized they were of the larger variety, roughly the same size as our ATLAS mechs.
“Uh,” Fret sent, “they’re a little big.”
“We can take them,” I responded.
“You know how huge the host slug is going to be, right?”
He had a point.
Facehopper turned his incendiary toward the ceiling once more. “Torch as many of the eggs as you can, then turn the flames on the crabs.”
We did so. The fire spread easily from egg to egg and in moments the ceiling was a burning conflagration. Charred larvae burst free, falling in thrashing masses that died before hitting the ground. Their steaming bodies carpeted the cave floor around us.
The crabs chittered in outrage and surged forward.
Next, we unleashed our incendiaries at the horde. Thanks to the oxygen in the cave, the front ranks burned. Badly. The alien entities flailed about blindingly. All that fire increased the ambient light levels.
A second row of crabs bashed through the first, some of them catching fire, too, as the jellied gasoline spread.
We unleashed more flames and the next rank of crabs reeled, but those burning creatures were getting a little close for comfort. It wouldn’t be hard for the crabs to rub the jellied gasoline onto our mechs, either accidentally or intentionally. And if that happened, our cockpits would become ovens.
“Switch to Gatlings, mates!” Facehopper sent.
We did so, and threads of Gatling fire began to sever the cords that connected the crabs to the still-unseen host slug. The fiery alien units dropped the instant their corresponding umbilicals detached.
More crabs crawled over the dying ranks. Their lower limbs caught fire thanks to the jellied gasoline still burning on their brethren.
We continued firing, cutting the cords with relative ease. But we were running through our ammo at an incredible rate.
“Controlled bursts, mates!” Facehopper sent. “We don’t have infinite bullets here.”