Well, at least none of the hatches I’ve passed.
Something was written across the hatch, but he’d need to turn his head to read it. He didn’t want to make any unnecessary moves. He visualized dashing for the hatch: four paces, open the hatch, jump through, slam it shut….
No way, cowboy. The creature will be on you before you even take two steps.
Or maybe not.
He had an idea. Slowly, he holstered his pistol and then, ever so slowly, began to crouch down.
#
Bora picked up speed as he heard the gunfire.
Weapon fire came from the far end of the arena. Cairns found them. Wait, why aren’t the Marines returning fire?
The Special Forces team wouldn’t relinquish the templates without one hell of a fight. So what attacked Cairns?
Bora’s faltering steps carried him around the next corner. His answer waited around the T-intersection.
The creature completely blocked the corridor.
Eyes widening in surprise, Bora felt his legs involuntarily prepare to run. He raised his hand to halt the line of gunmen.
‘Back up, back up, back up,’ he whispered. ‘Quietly.’
The rearmost man took one careful step, and the creature shifted….
‘Stop,’ he hissed.
The creatures shouldn’t be here already. This isn’t good. Where the hell is Gould’s distraction?
Bora remembered the creatures taking out his team in the cinema. In these confined passageways, his men stood no chance. He looked past the creature towards a different kind of movement in the corridor beyond.
There’s someone else in this corridor. Wait, who the hell is that? Bora barely spotted the man obscured behind the creature. He was crouching over something.
It’s him. The big bastard who almost got me killed in the cinema.
This was also the man who had driven the scorpion truck on the habitation level. He must have known Bora’s team was there, but he also knew that neither side could act decisively without provoking the creature. He understood the creature represented the bigger threat.
More creatures approached. Bora could feel them moving through the corridors all around him. He didn’t have time to stand here in a futile stalemate. But what was the Marine doing?
He’s trying to provoke me into shooting. No, that’s not it. Bora didn’t have a clean shot at the man anyway.
The Marine seemed distracted with something near his feet.
He’s taking his boots off.
The Marine very carefully settled the boots to one side.
Bora studied the man’s body language as he straightened from depositing the boots.
He’s going to try to reach the hatch. Losing his boots might buy him the few fractions of a second that he needed to get through the hatchway. It could be the difference between life and death. The idea of such a big man trying to sneak anywhere seemed ludicrous, but Bora had learned the hard way not to underestimate this particular specimen.
He felt himself holding his breath as the man made his first move.
The Marine took one step, shifted his weight over his second foot, and then glanced at the creature. He was, quite literally, one step ahead of Bora’s team. His eyes flicked to Bora and then back to the hatch.
Did he just smirk at me? Oh, that’s it. You are dead! Screw the templates. You’re not leaving us out here with this thing.
A hatch stood in the corridor on Bora’s right hand side. It joined the same area the Marine was trying to reach. Both hatches were the same distance from the creature. Unlike the Marine’s hatch, this one looked slightly ajar. That served in Bora’s favor.
He matched the Marine’s movement, but with his boots still on. He heard a sharp intake of breath from the gunman behind him. Bora looked up and met the Marine’s stare. I can beat you with my boots on.
The Marine stepped again, now halfway to his hatch.
Bora copied, feeling his legs shake at the incredible tension flowing through his body. He felt like a rodent dancing on a loaded mousetrap.
As if sensing the race, the creature exploded into action.
No one waited to see which direction the creature moved. For the first second, the creature was just a blur of scrabbling tentacles and horrid angles.
Both men lurched towards their hatches. Bora’s hatch was partially ajar. He rammed his way past the steel door, feeling the second gunman crowding through right behind him. As the third gunman jumped through, Bora felt sure the creature had pursued the Marine. Two things happened that changed his mind.
First, he heard the Marine slam his hatch shut.
Then he noted the facial expression of the last gunman leaping through their hatch. The creature snatched the man midair. Two tentacles encircled the man’s thighs and dragged him back into the corridor. The man slapped both palms down on the bottom of the hatchway.
‘Shoot it!’ the man yelled, white-knuckling the bottom of the hatchway. ‘Help me!’
‘Don’t shoot!’ Bora ordered.
‘Please, help…’ begged the man.
Bora braced his foot on the edge of the hatch and kicked with all the strength. The slamming hatch severed eight of the man’s fingers. Amputated digits dropped to the floor. Bora spun the mechanism shut.
The hatch hardly muffled the mauling outside.
Bora scanned the small room. Rows of plants crowded benches along both walls. The air felt humid. The lights were over-bright. Three more hatches exited the room. Bora remembered the writing on the entry hatch.
Hydroponics.
Great, more plants.
The Marine’s hatch must serve the next room north. The Marine would already be moving.
‘That way, go,’ ordered Bora, waving his rifle north.
The closest gunman dashed to the hatch, yanked it open, and found his shoulder and chest engulfed in the mouth of the creature coming in the other direction.
The impact knocked the man backwards, tearing his body from the creature’s mouth. Blood fanned out from his neck, spray painting the floor as he scrambled on all fours away from the hatch. The creature leapt straight onto his back. The weight proved too much. His arms buckled. He collapsed down on the floor, completely obscured under the creature’s bulk.
Retreating from the bloody spectacle, Bora found his back pressed up against the hatch leading south. Four hundred kilograms of angry creature separated him from his two surviving gunmen.
‘Go,’ yelled Bora. ‘Find him!’
He didn’t know if his orders were heard over the screams. He turned, spun the hatch and jumped through. On the other side stretched a long workshop. Bora’s split-second glance registered work benches covered in hand-tools. Coils of irrigation tubing hung from the ceiling. The place reeked of chemical fertilizers. His special sense told him a lot more. Slamming shut the hatch, he registered the creature’s presence.
Behind him.
Bora spun and brought his rifle on target. The creature reared up to crush him against the hatch.
Dropping to one knee, he unloaded into the hostile at point blank range. The special ammunition offered his only chance at survival. His entire body shook under the recoil from the rifle. Bullets strafed up the creature’s body, pushing the creature back, eroding chucks of flesh that spattered a grisly pattern over the walls. The creature tumbled backwards as every one of Bora’s bullets exploded on impact. He kept his finger on the trigger, churning biologically explosive rounds into the aberration until the creature collapsed in a pool of white mess. When the P190 ran dry, the creature resembled a lumpy green milkshake.
‘Stay down!’ he yelled at where the creature throbbed on the floor.
The hatch at his back suddenly thumped with inhuman violence.
The other one’s coming through. Bora saw the heavy hinges securing the hatchway begin tearing from the wall.
It’ll breach this hatch in less than a minute.
He checked his body armor for more ammunition. None. S
ighing, he dropped the now useless assault rifle.
Left or right? At either end of the workshop were more hatches.
He remembered the direction the Marine was moving. The hydroponics zone was complicated, but not large. If the Marine hadn’t yet left the area, then he was somewhere to Bora’s east. If Bora chose the left hatch, he would be heading towards the diving arena. If he chose the right hatch, he would be following the Marine. Professionally, he knew he should forget the Marine and head towards the diving arena. That was Cairns’s plan.
Bora already knew what he needed to do. He had a personal score to settle. The compulsion to find the big Marine felt too powerful an urge to ignore. This operation had become personal long ago. Cairns was on his own.
Crossing to the right hatch, Bora found the next room full of much larger plants, big leafy specimens with foliage tumbling from the walls and obscuring a room no larger than the workshop. There was no sign of creatures. No sign yet, anyway.
Crossing the room, he noticed a footprint. A wet footprint, just drying, from someone in bare feet. The footprint looked very fresh. Maybe only seconds old. The footprints continued towards the northern hatch. Bora crossed quietly to the hatch and peered through.
It’s him.
Bora stared at the broad back of the big Marine. The man padded away from the hatchway, cautiously checking the corridor ahead.
Bora smiled and drew his hunting knife.
Now I’ve got you.
#
Forest walked another vigilant lap around the pool.
He stopped at the scuba trolley near the hyperbaric chamber. The six-foot high trolley was loaded with scuba tanks. It provided about the only strategic cover in the pool room.
From here, with his back against the west bulkhead, Forest scanned the entire diving arena. Across the pool, Vanessa typed at a computer behind the plexiglass splash barrier. To Forest’s left and right, in the north and south walls, stood the two hatches he needed to monitor.
This sucks. This is a bad location to defend.
His eyes flicked to Vanessa working furiously over a computer console. She started in her seat at the sound of more gunfire. It sounded closer to the diving arena this time. King and Coleman were buying her time to work.
Work fast, brainiac. We need to blow this popsicle stand very soon. King and the Captain must be really in the thick of it now. Forest knew the terrorists would probably be separating in the mayhem. Some of them would get around King and Coleman and be heading towards the diving arena. They could already be creeping down the corridors outside.
Any second now they will be coming in here.
Forest pressed an intercom button on the wall.
‘Vanessa, keep working no matter what happens out here. Even if you see me in trouble, you need to stay focused. I don’t think we have much longer.’
She glanced up. Her fingers never stopped moving over the keyboard as she met Forest’s gaze. She seemed to be in a world of her own. She half nodded. Her expression was unreadable as she looked back down to the screen.
Forest turned from the intercom and swept his gaze around the pool room again. He tried to absorb any detail that might become critical. The diving arena itself was only thirty meters across. The pool occupied most of the room. One look into the pool had been enough for Forest. Its bottomless depths were disconcerting, to say the least. Damn spooky, more like it. You couldn’t pay me to get in there. Rectangular like a public bath, the pool had no sides and no bottom. Perfectly clear water faded into the depths of the aquifer. A hydraulic platform hugged the pool’s south edge. Diver entry, guessed Forest. Probably for taking down heavy equipment too. The reinforced-grill platform could move about ten fully-equipped divers at once. The simple ‘up and down’ controls were column-mounted into the platform’s corner. Forest had checked them out earlier.
Like an underwater elevator.
While checking the controls, Forest had classified the platform as a ‘no-go’ zone. Even while standing on the platform, the pool seemed to want to pull him down. Over the pool dangled the gantry that Vanessa had called the ‘claw’, and off to the right of the platform was an electric, single-seater forklift with a yellow protective cage.
Forest’s attention never strayed far from the north and south hatches. The terrorists had to come through one of those hatches to breach the arena. The remaining hatch, right behind Forest’s position, led only to the hyperbaric chamber and the stand-by medical bay. Forest had checked, and there was only one way in and out of there.
When the terrorists entered the arena, the first thing they’d see would be Vanessa working in the control room. Hopefully that will be the last thing they ever see, if I’m fast enough.
He snapped to attention as he heard the tink, tink, tink of his low-tech alarm system.
He had balanced an expended bullet shell on the top of both hatch wheels. If the handles moved even slightly, the shells fell to the floor. Forest saw the shell bouncing away from the north hatch.
Either someone was coming through the hatch, or the shell had dropped by accident.
No. The hatch handle is turning slowly – someone is trying to enter unnoticed. It’s game time.
Forest knew he had two options when the hatch opened. He could retreat behind the cover of the scuba tank trolley, or he could sneak along the wall behind the opening hatch to launch a surprise attack.
Up until this point, he had no idea which option he would choose.
Before he knew it, he darted lightly towards the north wall. He hit the wall with his shoulder, hoping the hatch would hide his presence for a second.
He lifted his weapon and sighted just beyond the edge of the opening hatch.
The terrorist stepped through alertly, his gaze pausing on the still-working Vanessa, and then training around the pool room.
The last thing he saw, when his head finally turned far enough around, was Forest standing two meters away, weapon raised and squeezing the trigger.
Forest squeezed off an aimed shot that penetrated the gunman clean through the temple. The terrorist’s head erupted sideways. Before the body had even hit the floor, a second gunman swung his rifle around the hatch and fired blindly into the room.
If Forest had been even six inches further to his right, he would have collected three bullets in the chest.
But he wasn’t, and he didn’t. The terrorist had made a stupid mistake that Forest spotted in an instant. He lowered the angle of his weapon and fired under the edge of the hatch where he could see the terrorist’s exposed boot.
Bullets punched through the man’s ankle, pitching the terrorist forward completely into the pool room. As he fell into sight, Forest sprayed him with another burst of gunfire. The man was dead before he hit the floor.
Tink, tink, tink.
Forest spun as he heard his second warning shell hitting the floor across the room.
The other hatch! Someone’s coming through the other hatch!
Forest now occupied the worst position in the room. Moving to the north wall let him to surprise the first two gunmen, but it left him exposed to the south. He stood right out in the open.
He sprinted back towards the scuba trolley. Gunfire burst through the second hatchway, flashing in his peripheral vision as he dove for cover. Hitting the floor on his hands and knees, he scuttled up against the wall behind the trolley.
The trolley stood six foot tall. Rows of standing scuba tanks offered about the only real cover in the room.
What about Vanessa!
Forest ducked his head from cover. All he saw was another flash of weapon fire from the hatch. Bullets stuttered tang, tang, tang across the scuba tanks and the wall overhead. He couldn’t see what Vanessa was doing, but he had the impression the scientist wasn’t at the workstation any longer. And now there came something new.
What’s that sound? It’s the air tanks. The bullets have punctured the air tanks.
Forest heard two of the air tanks hissing out th
eir contents. There came another burst of gunfire, and three more tanks joined the high-pitched chorus.
He’s puncturing the tanks on purpose.
A moment later, Forest understood why.
A creature surged through the north hatch and stopped in the pool of blood from the dead terrorists.
Forest watched the creature like a hunter who had just stumbled into a clearing full of angry elephants…with his weapon left back in the truck.
What’s it doing? Oh…no. Please, no….
As he watched, the creature charged straight for the scuba trolley, straight towards where he was taking cover. It hit the trolley dead center. The impact was stunning. The trolley rammed straight into his side.
Jarred backwards, Forest lost his footing and fell. On the floor, catching himself on one elbow, he tried to shake off the effects of the stunning blow clouding his senses….
Just in time to see the heavily-loaded scuba trolley tipping right on top of him.
#
Vanessa dropped from her seat as the skirmish unfolded in the pool room.
Holy crappola!
She had been so engrossed in her work, so close to a breakthrough, that even Forest’s warning hadn’t prepared her for what was coming.
Keeping low, she scrambled to the edge of her workstation and prepared to sneak a peek around the corner. The workstation stopped at the plexiglass door.
Is this plexiglass bulletproof? It had never occurred to her that it needed to be. No one’s shooting at me yet. Take a look.
She reached the end of the workstation and ducked her head around the corner. Two dead terrorists lay near the north hatch. Forest was sprinting from their bodies, then diving behind the scuba trolley as bullets tore up the wall behind him.
Vanessa pulled back into concealment. Forest had surprised two gunmen, and then been surprised himself by more gunmen from the south.
That was close. They almost had him before he reached cover.
She looked back along the workstation to her computer. The computer screen suddenly started flashing a new message:
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