by Richard Fox
A few lights came on inside the access panel and the display came to life, glowing a dull gray.
“Huh, that’s weird,” Popov said. “Power’s connected, but the system doesn’t seem to want to initiate. Hold on…”
Carson and West exchanged looks as Popov bent underneath the terminal. She grunted, reaching into the computer’s innards. A second later, she rose up on her knees, holding up a flat metal box. One corner looked melted and a sticker on the top of the box looked like it had burned away.
“The core’s been melted,” Popov said.
“Let me guess,” Carson said. “That wouldn’t just happen?”
Popov shook her head. “Not like this it wouldn’t. This kind of damage had to have been intentional. See the burn marks here and here, like someone disabled the breakers and fried the system?”
“Why fry their computer core?” Carson wondered aloud. “I mean, even if there was some kind of civil war between factions, you’d think they’d want an operational spaceport. Why go to all that trouble?”
Popov moved to the next terminal. “This one’s the same.”
As Popov continued down the line of computers, Birch’s icon flashed on Carson’s HUD. “Chief, I’ve got movement about two hundred meters northeast of our position.”
Carson felt her pulse quicken as she accepted the Gremlin’s feed. The bird’s-eye view showed a human-looking figure moving through an alley, though she couldn’t make out any features through the rain.
“Can you get me a better angle?” Carson asked.
“Working on it,” Birch said.
“Bingo!” Popov said, the upper half of her body stuffed inside a terminal. “They have a backup data shunt in here—pretty standard, just a bitch to get to. It’s a fairly impressive T9 line, top-of-the-line fifteen years ago, but still pretty good.”
“In English, please,” Carson said, moving to the window.
Popov’s voice echoed inside the terminal. “Most systems have auxiliary backups. A lot of our military cores have three or four even. They’re remote storage locations that mirror the central hub, to prevent total data loss in the event of a critical failure. If I can just reach the coupling…”
“Chief, I’ve got several more contacts. Three hundred meters and closing. I’m redirecting…what the hell? I just lost connection to Gremlin Three.”
Carson strained to see through the rain but saw nothing but dark shapes of buildings through the storm. She caught a glimpse of one of the Gremlins as it zipped across the tarmac, heading off to her left. “Birch, what’s your status?”
“Stand by, I’m redirecting Two to check it out.”
Carson accessed the feed from the drone just as it passed over one of the colony’s large warehouses. A red box appeared in the drone’s window, tracking something on the next roof. The image zoomed in and Birch cursed as the drone automatically adjusted focus, revealing the broken chassis of a Gremlin drone, smashed on the ground. A second later, the image vanished, followed by another string of curses.
Carson’s chest tightened. “Birch?”
“Gremlin Two is off-line.”
“Nunez, Moretti, status?”
Nunez answered. “We’re secure, Chief.”
She turned to Popov. “Popov, can you connect to the secondary core or not?”
Popov grunted. “No, but if I can get this shunt free, it may be able to tell me where the core is.”
“You’ve got one minute.” Carson turned to West. “Signal the Mule. Relay to Spirit that we’ve made contact. Undetermined if hostile or not.”
West nodded. “Roger.”
“Gremlin Three is down,” Birch said.
“Shit,” Carson said, moving away from the window. “I’m coming to you,” she said to Birch. Then, “Popov, move. The less time we’re here, the better.”
West fell in behind Carson as she headed for the stairs. “You want the Mule inbound?”
“I want it here five minutes ago.”
A minute later, Carson reached ground level, breathing hard and fighting the growing pain in her leg. She and West made their way through the hall and the main office space, where the rest of her team had already set up an improvised fighting position. Nunez and Moretti were kneeling behind two desks they’d pushed together just inside the exit. Birch sat by himself, dabbing at the air to holo controls only he could see.
The exit door stood open, rain spilling in from outside. Thunder cracked through the air as Carson and her team sergeant both took a knee beside Nunez and Moretti.
“What do you got?” Carson asked.
Moretti shook his head. “Nothing.”
She turned to Birch. “Any luck with the Gremlins?”
“Negative. All three drones are off-line. I have two in reserve I can—”
“No, hold off until—”
“Look!” Nunez said, pointing into the storm.
It took a minute for Carson to see it—a tall figure, standing at the edge of the tarmac, just barely visible in the rain.
“What’s he doing?” Nunez asked. “Why’s he just standing in the rain like that?”
Warning bells screamed in the back of Carson’s mind, where memories from the Belisarius were flashing. Something was very wrong here.
They waited in silence for several minutes, all eyes fixed on the lone figure standing stock-still in the rain. Blood pounded in Carson’s ears and she had to force herself to fight off the rising panic twisting her stomach. They couldn’t just sit here waiting; she had to do something.
Finally, Nunez looked over his shoulder at her and said, “Maybe he doesn’t know we’re in here. Should we make the first move?”
The first move, Carson repeated in her head. The thought shook her to the core. The last time she’d made a command decision in the field, it had gone wrong. Terribly wrong.
“Chief?” West’s voice pulled her back.
Carson took a deep breath and stood. “Watch my back.”
She walked to the door, hesitated, then stepped outside.
Rain pounded against her suit, streaking off her visor. She swallowed the lump in her throat, raised a hand, and activated her suit’s speakers. “I’m Warrant Officer Katherine Carson, Pathfinder Corps. I’m part of a second expedition to the planet. Can you hear me? Where are the colonists?”
The figure’s head tilted slightly, but it remained still. For a second, Carson wondered if he’d heard her, then another figure appeared through rain, and another. They all seemed to be roughly the same size, all broad-shouldered and at least a foot taller than the average man. As the new arrivals came up behind the first, they all started moving forward, toward the tower.
“Halt!” Carson hefted her carbine. “Do not come any closer until you—”
A flash of lightning illuminated the figures and Carson finally got a good look at their features. Their faces were thin, almost skeletal. Small beady eyes glowed from dark sockets above a flattened indentation where a human nose would have been. Two rows of pointed teeth met in a thin line below the nose. Wide pauldrons were mounted on their shoulders, and thick arms with pale-white skin nearly broke through the stretched fabric of their simple overalls. They bent forward and broke into a jog.
“Permission to fire!” Nunez shouted.
Carson brought her carbine up. “Halt! Stop where you are!”
They kept coming.
“Holy shit, what are they?” Nunez said.
“Should we fire a warning shot?” Moretti asked.
Carson hesitated. Whatever they were, they weren’t human. First-contact protocols were designed to keep a chance meeting with intelligent species from degrading into hostilities that neither side wanted. Shooting an alien because it made you nervous was not part of the plan.
But she still had a duty to protect her team, and it didn’t take much deduction to connect the bestial aliens closing on her to the absent colonists.
Carson shook her head. “Stop where you are or we will shoot!”
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“Shannon!” The name came from the lead creature and was echoed by the other two, their voices low and foreboding.
“They ain’t stopping,” Nunez said.
“We are part of a human expe—”
The lead figure lunged forward, charging at Carson without warning. Lightning flashed again, revealing a lifeless face resembling a stretched-out human skull, teeth clenched together. It launched itself into the air, long, claw-like fingers spread.
Carson cried out and jumped to one side. Dropping to a knee, she fired as the monster sailed over, just out of reach. A burst of gauss rounds snapped from her carbine and a high-pitched scream tore through the rain as her rounds hit home, slamming into the attacker, spinning it in midair. It bounced off the soft, rain-soaked grass, water spraying, and slid to a stop a few feet from the door.
Carson scrambled back, eyeing the monster. Metal glinted as lightning flashed, and blood mixed with the puddling water around it. Sparks shot out from its back, just below the neck as the body twitched. Carson jumped back, bringing her carbine up.
“Chief, look out!”
A deep, almost mechanical snarl ripped through the air as the other two monsters charged. Carson aimed and fired twice. The monster on the right lurched, knocked off-balance by the impact, then fell face-first. The third screamed again, closing the distance with inhuman speed. Behind it, six more had appeared through the rain.
Damn, they’re fast, she thought.
Carson got her weapon around just as the monster reached her. It slammed a massive hand on the barrel and swiped the carbine right out of her grip. Carson yelped as the monster pushed her back, a giant claw raking across her visor. Her back hit the wall, knocking the air almost completely from her lungs as she struggled to free her pistol from its holster on her thigh.
“Shannon!” The alien tossed her weapon aside.
The monster opened its mouth to scream again and its head erupted in a splash of blood and gore that splattered across Carson’s helmet. She felt hands grab her, pulling her back into the lobby of the tower.
“Dazzler!” West shouted.
Even through her armor, Carson felt the massive whoomph from the flashbang, her helmet’s automatic sound-dampening hardware saving her ears. She wiped away the dark liquid covering her visor and saw several of the monsters on their knees, hands over their eyes and ears, writhing in pain. One near the front had taken the worst of the bang. It lay on its side three feet from the door, blood seeping from its eyes and ears.
After several seconds, the remaining monsters struggled to their feet and moved away, disappearing through the storm. Their high-pitched screams echoed in the distance for several minutes before the storm drowned them out.
“You all right, Chief?” Birch asked.
The status indicator on her HUD showed ninety-nine percent integrity; the only real damage was the scratches down the front of her visor. “Fine.”
She finished drawing her pistol and walked toward the open door, scanning the tarmac. “Everybody OK?”
Her team all responded affirmatively as she cautiously stepped back into the rain. Keeping her pistol trained on the closest monster, she approached, wanting a better look at what they were up against. She frowned as she got her first real look at the thing, stopping a foot from its head.
It was dressed in tattered work overalls that would have been found in any city back on Earth. Mud partially covered its bald head, and its skin was a dull gray. Now she could see that its claws were actually some kind of biomechanical exo-glove, covering the tips and tops of the fingers and hand. A flexible metal plate extended back over the wrist to a separate plate that wrapped around the forearm.
Birch stepped up and kicked one of its booted feet. “Well, whatever it is, at least we know we can kill them.”
“Damn, they’re ugly,” Nunez said. “Whatever they are.”
Carson knelt down next to the head and shoulders, getting a closer look at the gray, bony protrusions on the skull. “Could it be human?”
Nunez laughed nervously. “There’s no way that’s human, Chief. Look at it. Unless it, like, mutated or something, right? I saw a movie once where they used an alien virus to transform their victims into zombies that vomited all over the place, infecting more and mo—”
“Enough,” Carson said, waving her hand. “Moretti, check it out. Any sign of bio-contamination?”
Another howl pierced the storm around them, distant and ominous. The Pathfinders all turned, trying to decide where the terrible sound had originated but the storm made it nearly impossible.
“OK, change of plans,” Carson said. “Popov, did you get the shunt?”
When the Pathfinder didn’t answer, Carson turned and found Popov standing there, visor still up from earlier, mouth agape, eyes fixed on the dead monster. Carson tapped the side of her helmet.
“Popov, come back to me.”
She seemed to shake herself back, her eyes meeting Carson’s. “Huh? Yeah, I’m-I’m OK.”
“The shunt?”
She tapped the pouch on her chest. “Right here. Give me a few minutes with it and I can tell you where the auxiliary computer cores are. Standard colony protocol is to have them far removed from major settlements. Keep them away from any kind of environmental danger that might threaten the city. Hurricanes and such.”
“What were those things saying?” Birch asked. “Sounded like a name. Shannon.”
“That’s what I heard,” Nunez said, “which officially makes this the weirdest drop I’ve ever done.”
Carson turned to West. “Where’s our ride?”
“Greer?” West said over the tactical channel.
“Inbound,” the pilot said. “The storm’s picked up a bit. I’m having some trouble with my nav system. Do me a solid and pop an IR beacon, would you?”
West pulled a small, fist-sized cylinder from a pouch, twisted the top, and threw it into the rain. “Beacon out.”
“I got it. Time on station, sixty seconds.”
Moretti finished running his gauntlet over the corpse and sat back. “I’m not detecting any pathogens and it doesn’t appear to be infected with any virus or bacteria. Which is strange in and of itself.” He glanced up at Carson. “I need a sample to do a more thorough scan back in medical to be one hundred percent.”
She nodded approval and the medic pushed the knuckles of his gauntlet against the body’s chest. Probes snapped out and dug into its flesh. Carson looked away, trying and failing to ignore the snap of bones and sputter of drills as Moretti worked.
“Contact,” Nunez said, backing toward the control tower’s entrance. “Lots more contact.”
A chorus of guttural howls pierced the storm around them as several shapes appeared in the rain. First ten, then twenty.
“Greer?” Carson asked over the IR as more monsters continued to appear.
“They don’t seem happy with us,” Nunez said.
The Mule shot out from above the tower, blasting the team with hot jet wash from its engines.
“What the hell are those things?” Greer asked.
Popov took a knee beside Moretti, who was still cutting, and leveled her carbine at the still-growing number of dark figures. “Sure would be nice to have a Strike Marine rifle right now. Grenade launchers, shot rounds, high-powered bolts.”
“We can still hurt them before they close in.” Moretti knocked viscera from his gauntlet and retracted the probes.
“If we can get away without killing anymore,” Carson said, “it might help when we finally make contact with whatever’s in charge of these…things.”
“Could be a species that likes it when you beat them up,” Nunez said. “Right, Moretti? Like when we bumped into those Kroar on New Bastion?”
“This is not the same thing,” the medic said, “at all.”
The Mule flared overhead and swept into the wide avenue running past the tower. Engines blasted the wet ground, vaporizing the pooling water and falling rain, creati
ng clouds of mist. It dropped through the air, between the team and the line of dark figures, turning so the open rear cargo ramp faced Carson and her team.
“Whoa!” Greer shouted through the IR. “What the hell are—Damn it, under fire. Getting hits against my forward windows.”
Carson raised her carbine and looked through the optics. The aliens in the front ranks stood still, hands opening and closing. Flickers of motion from the back ranks caught her attention.
“I don’t see any weapons,” Carson said.
“Rocks? They’re slinging rocks at me,” Greer said. “Move your asses before those uglies get serious.”
“Shannon!” erupted from the aliens and echoed over the sound of the Mule’s engines. Their front line charged.
“Go!” Carson yelled as she opened fire on the advancing threat. More aliens came swarming around a nearby building, chanting the name.
“Contact right,” West yelled, adding his fire to Carson’s.
Popov slowed, her carbine trembling in her hands.
“Come on!” Birch yelled, pulling Popov forward, practically dragging her toward the Mule.
Carson dropped three of the monsters on the run. “Greer, prep for dust-off now!”
Moretti and Nunez reached the ramp just as the Mule lifted into the air. Popov slipped in a puddle and landed hard, her helmet bouncing off the wet ground. Hooking a hand under the armor plate on her back, Birch picked her up and carried her forward. He hauled her towards the Mule, then tossed her into the open cargo bay like she was a sack of potatoes.
Carson stopped next to the Mule and fired off another burst. The eyes of the attackers gleamed in the light, all appearing fixated on her. The Mule rose another yard and jerked back. She slapped a fresh magazine into her weapon and fired into the legs of the oncomers, sending them sprawling and tripping over each other.
A shadow zipped across the air and struck her helmet just above the forehead. Her visor cracked into spider webs and her HUD broke into static.