Existential

by Ryan W. Aslesen

  Max leveled his gaze at Gable, his eyes afire and cut him off. “Don’t you fucking bring up missions you weren’t even on. You don’t know shit about it.” Gable’s comments stung Max’s pride to the core. He hadn’t known that any team members knew of his failed Crimea mission.

  “I know you lost over half your team before you wisely decided to bug out. Well, I ain’t ready to add my name to the Max Ahlgren memorial. I’m getting the fuck outta here, and I bet I’m not the only one. Who’s with me?” He ran his gaze over the team members. “What do you say, Diaz? You know we’re hell bound if we stay. You’ve known all along we were facing something we can’t beat.”

  “That’s enough, Gable,” LT ordered. “We finish what we start. Nobody’s going anywhere.”

  “No. Let him go.” Max let his rage simmer. “And anybody who wants can join him.”

  The team exchanged glances with each other.

  “Do any of you really think that thing couldn’t have killed these three anytime it wanted to? That it didn’t know they were here? You think it’s a coincidence that it didn’t bust through that wall until we arrived? It watched us sweep the camp, took stock of us, then baited us with the survivors. Once we were all here it struck, and we’re a man short because of it.”

  Red’s brow furrowed. “We don’t know that for sure.”

  Diaz snorted. He stared at the floor with wide and empty eyes. “Max is right, the stragglers will be picked off like those poor bastards we found in that clearing. We gotta stick together, or we don’t have a chance in hell.”

  “Agreed,” Irish said.

  Red nodded. “I don’t like our chances of just walking out of here. I’ve seen how that ends up. Besides, I’d like to tour a spaceship and use a flamethrower before I die.” He patted the flamethrower affectionately.

  Sugar shook his head, then looked up at Gable. “You and me, we’re like brothers. But I can’t stick with you on this one. Only way out of this place is down through that hole.”

  Gable eyed each member of the team, knowing full well he’d been overruled. “Well, fuck it then.” He half smiled. “Just let the record show I thought this was a shitty idea.”

  “Noted,” LT replied indifferently.

  “All right, we’re settled then.” Max motioned to the three survivors. “You’ll have to come with us; you won’t be safe hiding up here.”

  Kumar cut the positive vibes short. “We won’t be safe anywhere.”

  The others appeared resigned to cast their lots with Max’s team.

  Max curled his right hand into a fist as he thought aloud. “We’re gonna hit the armory before we go in, grab some more ammo and get the three of you some protection.” He looked at Harlow. “You actually know how to use that pistol?”

  “She does. I show her how,” Ms. Quinones boasted. “My brother taught me to shoot guns. He was a Sandinista.”

  Red huffed. “Oh, that’s great. We can consider her fully trained. No, really, arming these people is not a good idea.”

  “Maybe not but it’s a necessity,” Max stated. “We can’t kill this alien and guarantee their safety at the same time. And we need all the firepower we can get.”

  Kumar unfurled a smug glare. “I don’t believe in violence.”

  “That thing out there doesn’t give a shit about your beliefs, Doc. I suggest you take the pistol we give you. Don’t worry, we’ll show you how to use it so you don’t blow your foot off.”

  Diaz groused, “I’m more concerned with this guy blowing my head off.”

  Max grinned at him. “Then you can instruct the good doctor in its use, seeing as how you two are already well acquainted.”

  “Hiking out is sounding cada vez mejor,” Diaz muttered.

  Max ignored his indecipherable lapse into Spanish. “Let’s even the score with that thing, gentlemen. Get your shit together. We leave for the armory in five.”

  The men turned to adjusting their gear and checking their weapons. Some hydrated and grabbed a hurried bite of chow. Those who hadn’t already done so reloaded their weapons with full magazines of ammo.

  LT approached Max and said quietly. “Got a moment?”

  Max nodded. They left the pantry to confer privately in the kitchen. “What’s up?”

  “You know I’ve got your back in this, but I think you should reconsider arming those civilians. As nervous as we are, you know they’ve got to be shitting eggrolls right about now. Give them weapons and you’re asking for an accidental discharge and all that goes with it.”

  “I’m well aware of that. But after seeing that thing kill Thatcher and what it can do, we are going to need every gun we can get. Besides, rescuing any survivors is also a condition of our mission, and we can’t ensure their survival and battle that thing at the same time. I don’t see where we have much of a choice.”

  “Okay,” LT said with reluctance. “I’ll do my best to make sure they know what they’re doing. Especially Kumar. Diaz and I will give them a crash course on how to use the G36 assault rifles we saw in the armory and the pistols.”

  Max nodded. “We need to get Red some fuel for that flamethrower too. If any man can master that weapon in a hurry, it’s him.”

  “There’s some heavy equipment up by the dig. He can siphon off some fuel before we go in.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  LT released a heavy breath. “This is our ugliest one yet, Max. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Max nodded slowly, thinking of his past debacles. “So do I.”

  “Your shots are high.” LT repeated, “Try again.”

  Dr. Kumar raised the Glock and took aim at the far wall of the cafeteria. He grabbed his right wrist with his left hand to support the pistol, a typical beginner’s mistake.

  “No, no, no,” Diaz chided. “Your left hand goes under the butt for support, remember?”

  The doctor adjusted his grip, put the laser dot on the roof, and fired.

  He can hit the broad side of a barn, at least. Max was satisfied. The best that could be hoped for when arming a pacifist professor.

  Max had led the team through the dark and the rain to the dig site after plundering the armory for all the ammo they could carry, along with rifles and pistols for the survivors. He had concluded that stealth was pointless with the alien creature out there watching them. All the night and noise discipline he’d practiced over his career wasn’t going to hide them on this bleak expanse of glacial ice. Oddly enough, Max felt almost completely safe being so exposed. Like every apex predator, the alien relied on surprise and ambush to take its prey; odds were it wasn’t going to attack a large party of heavily armed and wary men out in the open.

  Their initial recon from atop the ridge had revealed the most glaring marks of destruction around the dig. They found a small booth by the hole, once a guard shack, with all its windows shattered, along with three more corpses on the ice to make a total of four. Two of the dead were Greytech security men; the others were laborers clad in Greytech jumpsuits. All the bodies were mangled as expected, the creature’s usual MO. A search of the intact trailer revealed a fifth corpse in a lab coat but no missing hard drives or survivors.

  Max and Gable kept watch on the surrounding area while Sugar stood before the hole with his machine gun pointed into the blackness. Red had poured a bottle of soap into the fuel tank of the flamethrower. Now he and Irish were topping off the tank with several gallons of diesel fuel. No siphoning required; they simply loosened the fuel cap on the overturned bulldozer and allowed gravity to fill the tank.

  Dr. Kumar plinked rounds into the trailer roof. The sounds of the striking bullets told Max whether they had penetrated the aluminum or ricocheted off. The ratio of penetration was about seven bullets in ten, and the main reason Max carried a .45 instead of a 9mm. His Glock 21 held fewer rounds; nevertheless, they all would have penetrated that roof.

  When the fueling was complete, Red called to Max, “Request permission to finish off this trailer.” />
  “Granted,” Max said. “I want to see this.”

  Red chuckled and took a position about ten yards away from the partially burned trailer. Kumar stopped firing his pistol. The steady ticking of frozen rain pellets falling on the building roof tops became the only sound.

  To activate the system, Red punched numbers into the miniature computer by the weapon’s trigger. Older flamethrowers needed to remain lit, the eternal flame on the muzzle acting as a pilot light for ignition. The Mk 42 fired via electronic ignition.

  A cone of dull orange flames swirling with oily black smoke spurted from the flamethrower. The ice reflected the glare of the fire and lit the area to twilight brilliance. Red’s first burst hit low and arced to the ice just short of the trailer, kicking up a cloud of steam. His second attempt hit dead on, and he kept the trigger down as he sprayed fire along the full length of the trailer. After making one pass, he swept back in the other direction. Team members and survivors shouted their enthusiastic encouragement. Ms. Quinones even went so far as to smile.

  Red released the trigger and observed the trailer, now nicely alight and crackling merrily away. “Not bad, but I bet we can do better.” He entered numbers on the keypad, faced the target, and fired. This time the jet of flames burned a more brilliant orange, and a wave of blustery heat buffeted Max in the face as Red finished burning the trailer. He had the fuel to the propellant mixture just right or close enough at any rate.

  “All right, knock off the hijinks, people,” Max ordered. “Save your fuel for the beast.”

  Red boasted, “Fucker’s toast when I see him.”

  Diaz looked around nervously. “That’s likely to be sooner rather than later.”

  “You keeping the machine gun?” Irish asked.

  Red grinned. “Fuck yeah. I can hump them both, and I don’t go anywhere without my baby.”

  “Form it up, single file into that tunnel,” Max instructed. “Red, you’re on point. I’m right behind you. Then Gable, LT, Irish, you three civilians. Diaz and Sugar guard the rear. And stay sharp back there. Good chance that thing follows us in.”

  “Last mistake he’ll ever make,” Sugar assured.

  “Light and noise discipline back in effect, that includes you three.” Max pointed to the survivors, all of whom had been equipped with night-vision goggles from the armory. “Anyone who speaks better have a damn good reason. We might be able to ambush the creature inside if we keep quiet.”

  The ice tunnel yawned before Max and Red, a Stygian portal to hell roughly twelve feet in diameter. They donned their NVGs and peered inside. Rubber flooring had been laid down for traction. A length of conduit-wrapped cable ran along the floor to provide electricity for the lights; unfortunately, the generator that powered them was dead.

  “After me, Chief.” Red still grinned like a kid at a carnival.

  Max could have kicked himself. If I’d known a flamethrower would make him this happy I’d have built one for him years ago.

  The temperature dropped about fifteen degrees Fahrenheit upon entering the tunnel which sloped gradually downward at roughly a five-degree grade. Red stalked forward, his pace a bit fast for the conditions. “Slow it down,” Max whispered. Comm had grown so garbled that the radios became useless. The team now relied mostly on hand signals and muttered words. Red nodded acknowledgment though he did not slacken his pace appreciably.

  Max considered repeating the order, yet it behooved them to transit the tunnel as quickly as possible, lest the beast confront them in the passage. A blast from the flamethrower in here could melt the tunnel roof and cause a cave-in. Max had overcome his natural fear of death years before, but he didn’t particularly want to be buried alive in ice.

  Several hundred feet into the tunnel, the ice walls gave way to aluminum shoring, a sign that the tunnel had transitioned from ice into soil. The view ahead brightened through Max’s NVGs as they approached a gentle curve. The air grew warmer as they pressed on. Red finally slowed his pace, creeping along with remarkable stealth for a man of his size. The view lightened from green to yellow as they rounded the curve. Max and Red lifted their NVGs. From the apex of the curve, they saw a dimly lit room ahead.

  Max heard the whisper in his head again, unintelligible, as if another voice had tuned into his mind. Whether it was taunting him or inviting him, he couldn’t tell. He looked around at the team but no one else seemed to react.

  Red halted though there were no signs of life visible from this distance. Max wondered if he had heard the same voice, but then understood his hesitation. We’re about to board a starship. The concept still seemed inconceivable. He’d never doubted the possibility of extraterrestrial life—in an endless universe, there were bound to be other inhabited planets—but he’d never believed that aliens had visited the Earth. Part of him still didn’t believe. Perhaps the starship buried in the ice was merely a ruse concocted to disguise the operations of an underground Greytech lab facility. Impossible to say, but the answer lay a mere fifty feet in front of them.

  Red finished gawking and moved on, step by cautious step. He located the first bit of carnage a few feet before the room, a tactical boot lying in a pool of blood, the severed foot still inside. They found no signs of the foot’s owner, though a trail of blood droplets led on into the room.

  Either this alien really gets around or there are more of them. Max thought of what Dr. Kumar had said regarding the quantity of “substance” onboard. Probably a lot more of them. He noted the carbon smudges around the portal and the smell of spent high explosives as he followed Red into the ship.

  Though the entry looked sloppy on the outside, Greytech’s engineers had bored cleanly through the ship’s hull, which was about five feet thick. Must have taken them weeks. Max saw no burn marks as he walked through the hull, so he assumed they’d bored through with lasers or, more likely, high-pressure water jets.

  Max’s first glimpse into an alien spacecraft proved anticlimactic. For something so alien, it appeared remarkably suited for humans. He found himself standing in a long room lined with alcoves, a wall locker of terrestrial manufacture at the back of each one. Yellow HAZMAT suits hung in the open lockers, so Max assumed Greytech uniforms hung in the secured lockers. The room appeared mundane, yet there were still plenty of signs they were in an extraterrestrial environment. Dim light, ambient yet permeating, emanated from portions of the translucent gray ceiling. Max tapped one of the dark-gray walls with his knuckles and was surprised to find it not constructed of metal but rather a lightweight material like hard plastic resin. There were no bolts or rivets in the walls or floor, and the few seams visible in the material ran perfectly straight. The room didn’t appear constructed of the resin material but machined from a solid block of it.

  The creature had left its mark here as well. Two portals accessed the room; both sporting ruined doors as thick as those on a bank vault, each made of resin. The door at the room’s far end hung askew in its track after taking a pounding from the other side. The door that had guarded the entranceway lay bent and discarded on the floor. The trail of blood drops that began at the severed foot ran the length of the room, through that doorway, and on into the ship.

  Max dropped back to confer quietly with the survivors. “I take it this is some sort of decon room?”

  Kumar pointed to the far door. “That’s actually the decon room, as you call it, where personnel were sterilized before entering the ship.”

  “Before entering? You’d think it would be the other way around.”

  “At first it was, but the initial sweep of the ship revealed no known bacteria or viruses onboard. The environment is remarkably clean from what I’ve heard, so the cleansing room was used to keep the ship free from contamination by terrestrial bacteria and viruses.”

  “I’d say its cleansing days are over.”

  “Good,” Red commented. “Those HAZMAT suits are like mobile saunas, and it’s already plenty warm in here.”

  “Yes, it is.” Max made an
executive decision: “Lose the cold-weather gear; it’ll only dehydrate us and slow us down.”

  The team didn’t need to be told twice. They quickly stripped off their excess gear, then folded and stacked the garments by the door in case they had to retreat hastily from the ship.

  “That’s better,” Red said as he resumed point.

  “Still too fuckin’ hot,” Gable lamented.

  “Shut up, all of you.” Max asked Kumar, “Where do we find this Dr. Rogers?”

  Kumar shrugged. “Search me. Never been down here before, remember?”

  “Marvelous. Any idea how big this ship is?”

  Harlow replied, “I’ve heard its huge, even bigger than the largest cruise ship. Very little of it has been explored.”

  “Guess we’d better get looking.”

  “Where do we start?” LT asked. “She could be anywhere.”

  “But I doubt she’d be just anywhere. She’s a scientist, so she’s probably in a lab. I’m pretty sure Greytech posted signs and maps to keep their people from getting lost. For now, let’s follow the trail of cords and hoses and see where they lead.”

  LT nodded his concession. “Good point.”

  “Let’s move out, same order as before.”

  Red led the way through the cleansing room and into the hallway beyond, a passage as narrow and dark as any in the bowels of a naval ship, with translucent light sources of an unknown origin dimmed low and spaced some fifteen feet apart. Max didn’t consider himself claustrophobic, but it was impossible not to feel cramped with the walls so close and the light so sparse.

  Red stopped about twenty feet in and pointed ahead into the shadows at a minigun on a tripod, pointed down the hall leading into the ship. He pulled out his LED flashlight and put the beam on it. “Automatic,” he whispered. “There’ll be a laser trip down the hall somewhere. I haven’t seen anything like this since I was stationed at Groom Lake.”

  Max produced his own flashlight and examined the gun. It was fully loaded, and no shell casings lay on the floor. Yet the hallway smelled faintly of gunpowder. All the situations Max envisioned involved the team retreating back into this hallway to the exit, and someone was bound to trigger the weapon during the chaos.