But there was no alternative. Every second, the danger grew worse, and Chadbourne’s entire column was about to be wiped out.
Kane turned to the soldiers behind him. They already figured what was coming. Experienced from countless skirmishes around the world, Kane knew they could read his mind.
The armored vehicles beside them kept blasting away.
He gave the command—one AAV to head left, right into the mouth of the open square, giving some cover to the squad, while the other AAV and its ground troops followed Kane to intersect Chadbourne’s column before it was too late.
A few nods. A barely heard “Roger, Lieutenant” from the armored vehicle drivers. Then: “Okay, let’s go!”
And there was no looking back for anyone.
Kane had no idea how the left wing was doing. Hopefully they’d soon be joined by the second rooftop party, spilling out onto the square. With luck they could take out the tanks with some heavy explosives and force any ground soldiers and snipers well back.
And if they got that far, Kane could order the surrounded force to punch out of their hole…then get the hell out of here.
Kane kept leading his men forward, ducking a hail of gunfire, dodging RPGs that seemed—amazingly—to just miss his soldiers. He turned and spotted Cammie, as kickass a soldier as he’d ever seen, taking the lead. She had a taste for this—losing all fear, maybe never even having any to begin with. Her gun turning white-hot in her hands, blasting at the enemy.
Amazing shooting. She paused only to lob a grenade or two. Then he saw a red dot bloom on her forehead and she fell forward, her finger still tight around the trigger.
Lot of good people are going to fall here.He heard the stinging whine of a bullet zipping past his head.Too close. Almost had my name on it.
The enemy across the courtyard had spotted their move and probably guessed that they were heading to spoil the ambush. But Kane had gotten his troops in good position to force them back and give Chadbourne cover.
Without warning, Chadbourne’s solders and vehicles came rushing forward, racing to what they saw was the main action ahead, to where trapped marines waited to be rescued.
Kane looked back and pointed ahead, signaling that everyone had to move now—and fast.
But he could see it was too late.
A flurry of rocket grenades hit the first of Chadbourne’s AAVs, then the second, creating massive blasts that even from a distance nearly blew Kane off his feet.
Chadbourne and his men stood exposed. They started scrambling for cover, but the nearest refuge was across the plaza, back where Kane had come from…
And now the perfectly positioned enemy line appeared and started mowing down Chadbourne’s troops. Some were riddled by machine gun fire, others vaporized into craters on the street thanks to the powerful RPGs.
No,Kane thought.Don’t let this happen. Don’t let—
He was close enough to see Chadbourne now, see his teeth set, eyes ahead, looking for some way out of this goddamn trap. But even with Kane and his solders trying to provide cover, taking shots, drawing fire, there was no way out.
Something hit Chadbourne—a rocket grenade? Some hyper-charged pulse rifle? Or something else?
Chadbourne had just turned back, maybe to see how many soldiers he had left. Maybe he caught a quick look at Kane trying to help. But then—Chadbourne literally exploded, his body a reddish cloud erupting on the ancient cobblestoned street.
Immediately Kane realized two things: he had failed to protect his own marines, and now he had to get his troops behind him into position to somehow try to get those trapped marines out, all without proper backup.
Because that’s what this was all about, wasn’t it? A rescue mission—get them out?
He was no longer certain about anything.
Kane ordered his troops to move left—and see if anything could be salvaged out of what he now knew was an absolute clusterfuck about to get even worse.
Jackson and the marines from the right, just down from their own rooftop nightmare, fell into line behind Kane’s group. A quick glance told him some good people had fallen.
No time to dwell on any of that. He heard voices and the sounds of fire from just ahead. They had almost reached the building with the trapped marines. Showtime.
“Private Richards? You hear me in there? Time to link up. Get your men moving now!”
“Yes, Lieutenant. But there’s still a lot of fire—”
“Movenow, Private.”
A heavy explosion—the Terekstan regulars peppering the area with RPGs.
“Y-yes, Lieutenant. Moving out now.”
“Good. We’ll do our best—”
Another explosion, bigger this time.
“—to keep this hole opened.”
Though Kane’s soldiers had arranged themselves in a phalanx formation, using the walls and still-smoking tanks as cover, the situation was anything but good. All too easy to have the trap close on them as well.
There was no need to give any orders; his people picked their targets of opportunity, kept pumping out rounds, in full battle mode—fighting for their lives as well as their fellow marines standing beside them.
Come on, come on,Kane thought.
Every second let the enemy move a little closer, try to plug that hole, tighten the goddamn trap so now it encircledboth groups of marines.
But then, somehow, through the smoky haze of a thousand rounds and dozens of rocket explosions, the trapped marines streamed out.
And with them in sight, it was time to get the hell out of here.
What would the textbooks call it? A fighting retreat. A maneuver as old as war itself, from the Greeks all the way down to the failed wars of the last century, and ultimately to this mess. The idea of simply shooting as much as you could while getting your ass out in one piece as fast as you could.
Kane saw the trapped soldiers, some firing as they ran to join up, others just full-on running, hungry, possibly even starving, and God knew what their water situation was….
Kane’s armored vehicles—the only two still operational—had pivoted and started zipping a line of fire around the buildings, creating just enough mayhem so that the new arrivals could join up with Kane’s force.
One jarhead with a sooty face, eyes bugging out of his head, teeth looking ghoulish in his blackened visage, came up to Kane. “That’s it, sir—everybody’s out.”
This had to be the private whom Kane had been talking to all along. “Good work, Richards.” Their force had now doubled in size, but who knew how much fight was left in them?
The marines continued to be hammered by the never-ending fire, some falling onto the cobblestoned street. His surviving medics tried to get to them—if a jarhead was still breathing, there was no way they’d be left behind.
“Okay, let’s double-time—”
Zip…
A bullet cut into Kane’s shoulder, like someone had taken a knife to the soft skin behind the shoulder blade. The bullet had found a small spot where his armored jacket gave him no protection. Dammit!
“Move!” he yelled through the pain.
And the two groups, now intermingled, started hustling out of the plaza, back to the street, the AAVs now behind them, moving as fast as they could. Because they all knew that if the Terekstan troops closed the opening at the other end of the long street, it was game over.
Kane ignored the blood now seeping under his armored jacket and coating his skin; he could feel the material of his fatigues rubbing against the open wound, making it worse. But he had to keep moving—after all, this was his show. Hiscall .
He was the one who had ignored orders. Now, as a result, dozens of marines lay dead, a pair of high-tech AAVs were trashed, and they still weren’t out of this hellhole of a city.
He kept looking up to make sure that the other end of the street remained clear, that they still had a shot to get across the river. The Terekstan troops could follow, but he’d have a good position from whic
h to push back at them. At least that was the plan.
As the AAVs brought up the rear, Kane saw that the gunners were laying down as much covering fire behind the group as possible.
All of a sudden, it looked like this plan might in fact be working. The cost had been high, but for the thirty marines rescued, it was worth it.
He looked back at the rear, the smoking, burning inner city falling behind. Dammit—it wasworking!
Dark figures quickly filled the street at the other end. Some crouched—setting up rocket launchers, no doubt—while others began filing down the street, hugging the dark building walls—closing off their only exit and sealing it tight.
So it had come to this: there was absolutely nothing more to be done, nothing but to keep going, driving forward. Kane imagined that every marine felt his stomach tighten. Every marine mentally calculated how much ammo they had, how many grenades, how many able bodies remained to fire back and give them some chance of getting out.
Even Kane had to admit the odds didn’t look very good at all.
9
MARS CITY—INSIDE DELTA LAB
KELLIHER LOOKED AROUND THE LARGE CONFERENCEroom. Everyone in attendance was now hidden from everyone outside. He glared at Hayden, who—he imagined—knew what was coming.
“I know about the experiments…” Kelliher said quietly.
Hayden looked at Campbell and Swann as if wondering if they were as confused as he was.Or as confused as he was pretending to be…
“What do you mean, Ian? The work that’s been going on, everything Betruger has been—”
Kelliher put up a hand. “No. Not that little show we saw today. Everything looking so good, proceeding according to plan. When the truth is…well…something else, right?”
Several emotions played across Hayden’s face, and Kelliher wondered if the general would try to deny the truth or give in and accept that Kelliher already knew what was really going on in the lab.
“Mr. Kelliher,” Swann added, “perhaps you want to mention to General Hayden about our liabilities, our exposure—”
“In good time,” Kelliher said. “There are more important things to discuss now.”
Hayden cleared his throat. “You obviously know something that we need to talk about.”
“Exactly. The smaller chambers that Betruger has been using…his tests withanimate objects—live specimens…they have not gone well, have they?”
Hayden hesitated, as if considering a lie. Then: “There have been—what does he call them?—anomalies. All to be expected, he has explained.”
“Expected? And yet you and he saw fit to keep those results from me. In fact, you have done everything possible to make sure that no one outside of Delta knew about any of those experiments.”
Hayden nodded. “Yes. That’s true.”
“And why is that?”
“They were too disturbing, too alarming, Betruger said. I myself haven’t seen much. But Dr. Betruger felt that the impact back on Earth, back at the UAC offices, could hurt the project.”
“And so the security lid was tightened?”
“It was the only way he could—”
Kelliher turned away and spoke to Campbell.
“Show him, Jack.”
The room’s lighting fell to a pale blue glow and the wall behind Kelliher turned into a screen. Campbell had his PDA out and sent the first 3-D image to the room’s display system.
It was a little gray mouse. Except the rear of its body tapered off into what looked like a chunk of segmented worm, or a snake, hairless, thick—
“Nice, huh? Next.”
The mouse vanished, to be replaced with what looked like a cat. This vid moved in a loop, showing the cat moving, twisting.
“I’ve kept the sound off. It’s a little much for my stomach.”
Kelliher was sure that nobody wanted sound, not when they saw the cat’s head opening and shutting like a clamshell rimmed with teeth. The only clue that the mouth of teeth belonged to something feline was the whiskers that sprouted around the gaping mouth.
“There is a second part to this vid where it begins gnawing at its own body. We’ll pass that one up, I think.”
In the pale blue light he saw Hayden turn away.
“You’ve seen these before, right?”
Hayden nodded. “Some. I—”
“One more. Just so we know exactly what we are talking about—”
A new image flashed on the screen.
“God,” Swann muttered.
Kelliher looked at the screen. Would Swann start gagging? That wasn’t entirely out of the question.
Private James Walker, on break from his security detail inside Delta, sat alone in the cafeteria. On his tray were soy patties shaped to resemble sliced beef, covered in a thick dark gravy, with imitation potatoes and corn to the side.
He held the fork in his hand, ready to scoop up some of the food. But his hand remained poised, as if taking that first stabbing plunge were a momentous decision.
He didn’t always eat alone. He used to sit with the others.
But when he realized that he had nothing to say, when he saw the others looking at him, wondering why he was so quiet, why he was acting so strange, he started sitting by himself.
It was better like this.
Better for thinking. Better for planning.
Sleep had grown ever more elusive. Most nights he spent hours tossing and turning. And then, of course, when he did fall asleep, the nightmares came, the parade of things that he had only glimpsed in the lab.
Only, in the nightmares, it didn’t end there.
No, the creatures from the lab were only the beginning of the parade, as other things marched out of the chambers and slithered, chewed—things that no longer had any resemblance to the animals that had been used for the experiment.
And, in the nightmare, they would see him.
The ones with eyes, that is. Look at him, trying to corner him, until he knew—absolutely knew—that they would feed on him.
Most evenings, that’s how the nightmare went.
But then—
—onother nights, something different happened. Something filled the lab—a reddish light, an energy, touching everyone inside it. And Walker could see the other guards and the scientists, all changing, and their mouths opened and shut in some dull mimicry of the nightmare creatures.
They were hungry.
Then the realization…
I am hungry—and I will never be satiated.
And Walker would wake up screaming, begging for help, shouting the words, babbling, “No, God, no…please no…”
Until the room came back into focus. The darkened bunks, now filled with other marines telling him to shut the hell up, we’re trying to sleep here.
And one would think that they would be mad at him. But he wasn’t alone. Others did exactly the same thing. Though commanders would shift them around to different quarters, there were always a few more.
Most of them probably had the exact same thought:I have to get out of here. Before I go completely insane.
Unless…
Unless…
I already am.
Walker’s eyes looked left and right, checking whether anyone was looking at at him, studying him as he sat there, thinking, planning…
But no.
No one seemed to be watching.
He let his fork plunge down into the gravy volcano of the potatoes, already cold.
“Hey, Axelle—over here.”
Dr. Axelle Graulich had been carefully working on a small section of the wall, slowly brushing away the red stone, trying to uncover as much of the detail below as possible.
Delicate and tedious work. But the reward would be huge—a full section of this wall and the carvings underneath would be exposed. And then—perhaps deciphered.
The very idea made her heart beat fast. To read and understand something from perhaps aeons ago, from the dawn of Martian history, when other intelligent organi
sms were here.
Except, there were a few curious things…
For example, how come they hadn’t found any traces of those organisms? No fossils, no organic material—at least, not in the areas they had dug into so far.
Graulich knew that they had only scratched the surface. With most of Mars permanently frozen just a foot below the ground, not much excavation had been done at all. But this cave was an incredible opportunity. She was thankful for UAC’s support of this work. Of course, they probably imagined there would be something for them to exploit.
No matter. That’s what Mars City, this whole base, was about, wasn’t it?
Except for the rumors she heard.
She turned to the voice—Tom Stein, a young but talented paleobiologist with a lot of geology training as well. He was a bit overeager but knowledgeable. He had been working with an advance team, probing the depths of the cave. Graulich got up and walked into the dark of the cave.
“What’s up, Tom?”
A few assistants had used pneumatic picks and hammers to clear away a pile of rubble. “Look at this.This is interesting.” He pointed toward where there had once been a smooth pile of giant red stone.
“You’re making good progress—that’s great.”
“No. That’s not it.” She was close enough to hear Tom’s voice echoing from inside his helmet.
“See—we thought this was some kind of rock fall. Like”—he pointed his light to the cave ceiling above them—“from there. But that’s impossible. I mean, the geology guys said there are no signs of a major collapse.”
Graulich let her lamp point at the cave ceiling. And it was true—there were no signs of anything having plummeted to the ground, no massive gouges, no indentations, no holes.
“So, this didn’t fall from up there?”
“Right.” Under his faceplate Stein smiled. “So how’d it get here? What happened?”
“I assume your geology team is working on that…”
Stein shook his head. “No way. I mean, they’re doing analysis of the rock all right. But I think we have the answer already. Guys, hold up a minute.” His assistants stopped their work.
Doom 3™: Worlds on Fire Page 5