by Tim Lebbon
It must have fired in retaliation. Several of the small aggressor’s craft bloomed into glaring clouds of gas before fading away.
The Susco-Foley was close enough to see clearly now, and as it slowed it released four other craft, bulging ships that rolled across the space between them.
The Marine ship was spinning, spewing atmosphere and leaving a glittering trail of wreckage behind it. If anyone was left alive on board, they must have aimed the ship into a suicide path, but even before it was ten miles from the attackers it blew apart, struck by one of the smaller drones.
The second Marine ship powered up and rocketed toward the Susco-Foley, releasing a jagged field of dancing light as its particle beam modulator kicked in. The beam crossed paths with the Fiennes ship.
Nothing happened.
The Marine ship banked below the enemy, and then exploded, smearing across half of their field of vision as its mini-nukes ignited.
“Four down,” Ellis said. Everyone else was hushed.
The remaining enemy drones streaked in. McBrain wished he could reach out and grasp them, hold them back, crush them to nothing, but he could only watch as the first of them slammed into the Gagarin’s medical ship and exploded.
There were already a dozen lifeboats dropping away as it struck, and the flaming ship expanded to swallow them all.
“Oh, no,” a woman said. A man was crying. Others were panicked, asking what they should do, what could they do?
“Nothing,” McBrain said. It broke his heart. They had always looked to him.
Another drone struck the green dome and turned it into a boiling mass of yellow and red. Two more ships were struck, the drones exploding, ships breaking up and expanding beneath rapidly blooming clouds of superheated gases and debris. Wreckage spun and collided, several wreckage fields quickly overlapping and causing a chain reaction of destruction between the main body of the Gagarin and the drophole.
The two Colonial Marine ships at the drophole swooped in and started firing. They concentrated their efforts on one of the four globular, rolling ships, and it came apart in a hail of mini-nukes, adding to the carnage.
The Susco-Foley moved closer—much closer now, swinging into a crude orbit around the battle and opening up with laser arrays and more drones. The two Marine ships swerved and switched direction, working together to cover each other’s attacks and retreats.
The command deck shuddered. Debris started smashing against the Gagarin’s main control ship. The impacts shivered through the craft, and several faces turned McBrain’s way, scared and seeking succor he could not offer.
This was it. They had all been in space for many years, but none as long as him. Danger was ever-present, and everyone had experienced the terror of dying out here, of being sucked out of a ship and into the cold, airless void. McBrain had officiated at over thirty deep space funerals, always wondering at the amazing journey the dead bodies were about to undertake. Perspective was sometimes difficult to maintain.
“I’m sorry,” he said, loudly enough for the crew to hear him.
One of the rolling ships smashed through clouds of debris and came close, hatches opening in its side and dozens of smaller, sleek missiles dropping toward the Gagarin. McBrain didn’t see them impact, nor did he feel them.
“Clintock?” he asked.
“Airlocks,” Clintock said. “All seven have been activated from outside.”
“We’re being boarded,” McBrain said.
“By who?” Ellis asked.
“Visuals,” McBrain said. “Show me the lobbies and corridors around those airlocks.”
The holo screen folded open again, and a three-dimensional image appeared before him. An empty corridor. Lights flickered. Activation lights glimmered above the double airlock door, and as they hissed and opened a burst of pressurized air billowed out, condensing on the metal walls.
Behind it, a shape emerged. Something dark and spider-like, vicious, nightmarish. It darted along the corridor, and many others followed.
“Xenomorphs,” McBrain whispered in disbelief. He’d heard stories about these beasts, but had hoped and prayed never to meet one himself.
His prayers had been ignored.
As the last of their Colonial Marine escorts exploded into atoms, and the first of the screams came over the comms from elsewhere in the ship, McBrain stared through a sea of fire, debris, and death at the drophole.
Wishing his way back home.
Mistress Maloney:
Drophole One is in our control.
The battle was quick and easily won. We lost one attack ship containing two hundred soldiers and their handlers, but the enemy lost far more. Six Colonial Marine ships put up some initial opposition, easily overcome. The main constituents of the Titan drophole builder were destroyed. I stand now on the main flight deck of the Titan ship Gagarin. The people here are dead, weak flesh rent and torn by our soldiers. The captain is in his seat, stomach opened, skull smashed, brain scattered. None of them appear to have put up a fight. This is going to be easy. Soon, once some superficial damage to my ship has been repaired, I will prepare our first drop into the Human Sphere. I am paving your way, Mistress Maloney. I know I am an android, but I feel so… happy.
Your General,
Rommel
3
VICTIMS
Gamma Quadrant, Various Outer Rim Locations
October 2692
They’re bombing us!
Private Dan Mann sprinted with his platoon, dashing from the facility toward the beach. The dunes were low, but the sand was loose, and even though his combat suit augmented his strength through successive compression and loosening, he was already tiring. They were told that the atmosphere of Priest’s World was perfectly breathable, much cleaner than Earth’s and richer in oxygen, but that didn’t feel the case right now.
“Incoming!” Sergeant Golden shouted. “Mark your targets!”
“Incoming?” Mann responded. “They’re fucking bombing us! What is this, the twentieth century?”
“Don’t be fooled,” Golden said. “Expect the unexpected.”
They hit the beach just as the first of the bombs impacted five hundred yards from shore.
Good, Mann thought. Not only are they using outdated weapons, they’re also shitty shots. He and the rest of his platoon from the 13th Spaceborne—the MudSerpents—spread along the beach and took up defensive positions. The ship banked sharply and accelerated up and away, the last of its bombs tumbling from their bay and spiraling down to splash into the white-tipped waves far out from shore.
Crouched down behind a low dune, Mann braced himself for the first of the detonations.
His com-rifle was light and loaded, all systems green and fully fired up. He had six plasma grenades on his belt, full charges for laser and nano-shot, and an old Glock 17 tucked into his right boot. He called that his “Last Chancer.” Most marines had a non-tech weapon, backup in case their suit’s CSU failed, com-rifle broke, or they ran out of ammo.
Mann felt good, and set against a combat soldier of the twentieth century, he was a nuke compared to a hand grenade.
He was fascinated with military history, and on Priest’s World he’d had plenty of times to study. The twenty-first century, still the most destructive of humankind’s existence, was his personal area of expertise. This carpet-bombing method was from way back then, over six hundred years ago.
“Where are the explosions?” Mourhanda asked. She crouched to his left, lithe and strong. Always ready for a fight, she glanced his way. “The fuck you looking at?”
Mann grinned and looked back out to sea, just as the second assault ship powered toward them from the horizon.
Priest’s World’s defense satellites had detected the big ship dropping out of warp just over an hour before. The maneuver had been dangerously close to the planet, and with no visiting craft expected for at least the next three months, the facility’s alarms rang long and loud. Especially when the ship had released two sm
aller craft that had instantly dropped into the atmosphere and headed for Langelli.
The community of Langelli Station served two purposes. First, it comprised a research facility for a colony of Company scientists undertaking a delicate and sensitive study of Priest’s World’s flora and fauna. This was also the nearest planet to drophole Gamma 34, and as such the staging post for the defensive Marine contingent and tech crews. The drophole had been established for more than three years, the Titan ship that built it even now on its ongoing journey beyond the Outer Rim to the site of the next intended hole, eleven light years distant.
Gamma 34 was a billion miles from Priest’s World, the drophole partially supported by a small orbiting station half a million miles distant. Being so close, Priest’s World was the most logical and cheapest place to house the bulk of those assigned to protect and maintain the amazing piece of technology.
An orbiting space platform, connected to Priest’s World’s equatorial region by a space elevator, was the launching point for journeys to and from Gamma 34. Once up to speed, a trip rarely took more than a standard day. A little over nineteen minutes ago, the station had been attacked and all communications lost.
A scout party on the planet’s night side had reported seeing a brief flare of destruction just above their southern horizon, and no contact could be made with the space elevator’s support teams.
“Heads up!” Sergeant Golden shouted. A gruff bastard, he’d been Mann’s sarge for over eight years. He’d passed over selection for the Excursionists, saying that he preferred to keep his feet on rock as much as possible. As such, this posting suited him well. His brother had become an Excursionist a dozen years before, and six months earlier his unit had been one of the first to face combat in the recent Yautja incursion. He’d been injured but survived, and the sarge had displayed an unaccustomed sensitivity when telling the platoon about his brother’s exploits.
With the brothers more than fifty light years apart, it must have felt like infinity.
The second ship disgorged its cargo, the falling objects also splashing into the sea hundreds of yards from shore. They looked streamlined and sleek, but not quite uniform.
“What the hell…?” Mann said.
The bombs dropped by the attacking ships resurfaced. They bobbed in the swell, a few of them riding breaking waves. Mann squinted, then instructed his suit to give an enlarged view.
As he took in a breath to swear, the sarge started issuing orders.
“Mark your targets! Xavier, message HQ and tell them what we’re seeing here. Those weren’t bombs. Repeat, those were not bombs!”
“They’re changing,” Mourhanda said. “I swear some of them are swimming toward us. It’s like they’re alive.”
“They are alive,” Mann said. “Xenomorphs.”
Mourhanda looked at him, shock in her expression. They were friends, close companions, and they had fought together side by side several times, watching each other’s backs. But they had never been forced to fight anything like this.
As if at a signal, the fallen objects started surging toward the beach. Sleek shapes became spiked, sharp silhouettes, slashing at the water, churning through it, turning the swells into white, violent waves.
Mann’s suit projected a firing grid across his field of vision, connecting with the rest of his platoon’s suits to establish the most efficient firing solution. His own targets flowed red in the grid, and he hefted his rifle and locked on.
“Open up!” the sarge bellowed, and Mann squeezed the trigger.
A barrage of laser fire slashed out from the beach across the waves, impacting the Xenomorphs surging across the water’s surface and tearing many of them to pieces. Three of the four creatures in Mann’s target grid went down, splashing hard and then seemingly bursting apart in the aggravated surf. The fourth moved more rapidly, zigging and zagging, and he let it have a burst of nano-shot. The explosions starred the air around it and blew it to smithereens.
Many of the creatures were already dead, their toxic insides bubbling across the sea’s surface for five hundred yards in both directions along the shore. Steam rose, water boiled and spat, and only a few shapes still moved forward.
Three of them reached the beach and ran at the platoon. Two went down quickly. The third smashed into the side of a sand dune to avoid laser shot, then quickly burst from the other side, lashing out and catching a marine across the chest with its tail. The man went down, and the Xenomorph was on him, pressing him into the sand and smashing into his chest with its extruding teeth.
It hissed a triumphant roar, then it and its victim’s corpse were engulfed in a plasma flare. Mann’s suit darkened his visor to protect him from the harsh light. He hadn’t seen who the victim was, but he must have ignited his belt of plasma grenades during his final moments.
They’d lost a colleague but countered the attack, shooting down the Xenomorphs and emerging triumphant after just a five-minute battle. He’d heard such horror stories about these things, and they were certainly nightmarish to look at, but an overgrown lizard-thing was no match for the concentrated firepower of a MudSerpent’s com-rifle.
“Sarge, those ships are coming around again!” Mourhanda shouted.
This time they arrowed toward Langelli Station from inland. Heavy pulse-blasts thumped up from the base, the streaking yellow shot ricocheting from the ships and arcing off across the sea.
“They’re shielded!” someone shouted. More pulses powered upward, but the ships drew closer without deviation, rolling like giant thrown balls. The first craft dropped a line of dark shapes that straddled the facility, the sounds of impact clearly audible from several hundred yards away.
“Froggy will take care of them,” Mann said, referring to Lieutenant Frogwhich and the other three platoons of Spaceborne housed at the base. Sure enough, the sounds of ordnance discharges and explosions soon drifted across the breeze. Laser glare and plasma flashes lit the dusky sky above the station.
The ship then curved smartly around and dropped another line, and another, each stick of projectiles comprising at least fifty dark shapes.
The second ship closed on them.
Mann raised his rifle and aimed. He selected nano-shot. The craft was too high for rifle fire to have much effect, but when its bay doors opened and a cloud of Xenomorphs tumbled down, he opened up, taking out several of them as they fell.
There were many more than before. They landed in explosions of sand and dirt, quickly forming into lines of twenty creatures or more that closed on the platoon like extending fingers. Take out the first one and the second moved into its place… and so on, and on.
Rifles barked and spat. Xenomorphs went down and burst apart. The air was hazed with the stench of their acidic insides. Sand melted into slicks of fluid glass. Grasses dried by the sun and the sea breeze burst into flames.
The marines began to take casualties. Two went down when a Xenomorph burst through a dune in front of them, its tail lashing out, hands grappling, head slamming down, teeth grinding. Another marine shot a beast with a fan of laser fire, then went in close to finish the job. There was no time to draw breath and shout a warning before the fallen attacker burst apart, showering the marine with a haze of acid. Her suit’s protective elements malfunctioned and it melted away, skin and flesh bubbling, her scream cutting through the air.
A laser blast saved her from a wretched end.
“Who the fuck is that?” Mourhanda shouted, and Mann followed her gaze.
Standing in the hovering ship’s open bay door, looking down on the chaos unleashed below, was a man. A human, perhaps, but then maybe not. Humanoid for sure. He raised a hand and moved it left to right.
As he did, the Xenomorphs attacked en masse.
“Fall back!” Sergeant Golden ordered, just as one of the creatures leapt for him, slashing his combat suit across the stomach and spilling his guts in the sand. He fought it off, shooting, punching, and as he retreated the monster stood on his guts and pushe
d.
“Sarge!” someone screamed.
Fire seared up from Langelli toward the enemy ships, but it was ineffectual. As the two vessels drifted around the base in a slow circle, heavy cannons emerged from their hulls, pouring fire down.
Mann realized the sickening truth.
“There’s nowhere to fall back to!” he said, stunned. Behind them, Langelli Station began to burn.
From triumph to disaster, the course of the battle changed in a matter of moments. He and Mourhanda stood back-to-back, rifles blasting and sizzling, lobbing grenades and ducking as the plasma blasts rolled over them. To Mann’s left was the sea. It was awash with drifting slicks of bubbling acid from the first wave of attackers they had destroyed. Deadly, toxic, each wave sizzled onto the sand and melted it into sticky molten glass, and he realized that the initial assault had been nothing more than a preparatory run. The acid waters cut off their escape route.
A wave crawled up the beach and he stepped aside, narrowly avoiding the water that washed over his boots. The receding waters deposited something on the smooth, dark sand close to his left boot.
It looked like a portion of a dead creature’s hide.
Some letters were stamped on it, and they made little sense. When Mann finally understood what they spelled, they made no sense at all.
Montgomery.
To his right the beach was darkened by the spilled blood of his colleagues.
Past the beach, beyond the dunes, a cloud of smoke boiled on pillars of fire as Langelli Station blazed.
One of the enemy ships rolled in to drop another line of Xenomorphs.
“Too many of them!” Mourhanda shouted, panic in her voice.
“We’ve still got ammo,” Mann said. “Let’s make it count.”
For a while, they did.
* * *
She could not believe her eyes. Maria Grizz was used to flights of fantasy, because she had spent her life looking for the most amazing, outlandish, and bizarre stories from all manner of spacefarers. She had interviewed Colonial Marines and indies, space tug pilots and asteroid miners, settlers on distant worlds and those who had never traveled further than a near-Earth orbit. She had conducted a series of features on the Arcturus settlers, before they renounced humanity entirely.