Speed of Darkness

by Tracy Hickman

  “Seems to me you wanted a fight when you landed on this rock,” Mellish added, his words rising in tone. The private did not care for Cutter in the least. “Now you’re looking for the back door?”

  “Cutter never took a back door in his life, sister! Give me a stand-up fight! Bring ’em on and I’ll eat their hearts for breakfast. But this,”—Cutter pointed angrily at Ardo—“this latrine cleaner tells me to sit still and die for a bunch of civvies I have never met, who will never know what I did for them and probably wouldn’t give a shit even if they did! That’s insane!”

  “So that’s why you’re here, Cutter?” Ardo’s frustration seeped into his voice. “You want someone to give you the credit? Throw you a parade or shed some tears? Is that what’s important here, that you’re remembered as the hero? Innocent people are gonna die out there, Cutter, and we’re the only ones who can help them, whether they know it or not!”

  “I’m here to find my brothers. They’re out there and I’ve got to find them!”

  Ardo was about to say something but stopped. Cutter’s brothers. He had not thought about it much before now, but if his own memories had been so blatantly tampered with and altered by the resoc tanks, what had they done to the huge islander? Were his brothers even on this rock? Did Cutter, for that matter, in reality even have any brothers? How could Ardo possibly ever explain that to the volatile Marine?

  Bernelli sighed. “Well, if we’re gonna die, I’d like to at least know it was for something more than my pension.”

  “Well, if I’m going to die,” Cutter seethed, “it won’t be because of this butt wipe . . . and it won’t be alone!”

  Cutter moved so fast that Ardo had no time to react. In two quick steps the huge man crossed the floor and wrapped his right hand around Ardo’s throat.

  Ardo tried to speak, but he was not able. The Firebat suit reinforced Cutter’s intense grip. Ardo struggled uselessly. In moments bright stars began to burst in his vision and the world began to blur. Everyone was shouting at once. Shadows moved around the periphery of his vision, but all he could see was the outraged face of the islander with murder in his eyes.

  A voice. “Drop him! Drop him, now, Cutter!”

  Suddenly, Cutter released him. Ardo tumbled like a cloth doll to the floor, gasping for breath. He looked up.

  Lieutenant Breanne was holding her gauss rifle against Cutter’s temple. “Cutter, you want to save your brothers? You ever think that they might be part of those civilians waiting for a way out of this? You ever think that the only way you’re gonna have a chance of saving any of your brothers is by making sure those Zerg don’t reach the city before the transports?”

  Cutter blinked furiously. His voice was low and quiet when he replied. “No, ma’am. I . . . I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Then stop trying to think,” Breanne screamed. Her voice was shrill and unnerving. “I’ll think for you. You’re not paid to think!”

  Breanne pulled the weapon back from Cutter’s head and motioned him back with its muzzle. “I’ve spent a lifetime fighting everyone else’s wars, for other people’s ideals and other people’s causes! Melnikov is right! Each of our lives could buy hundreds of others, maybe thousands. They’ll never know it, never appreciate it, but if I have to die, let me die for something worthwhile!”

  Breanne turned to the box and with quick, firm motions, released the latches. The metallic box was open.

  The lieutenant turned to the astonished faces in the room. “We have, by my rough estimate, approximately an hour and a half before the first Zerg arrive. I suggest that we make use of the time.”

  Ardo was on his fourth trip to the various bunkers. He was tired, but he knew that he would not have to be tired much longer. There was a peace waiting for him that was long and permanent. He found that he was rather looking forward to it. The teachings of his youth kept bubbling back to the surface of his memory: tales of faith and hope and peace in an afterlife. Strange, he thought, to consider such things here in the center of hell.

  Tinker had been using the SCVs to construct several new bunkers around the Command Center. This would be the defensive core inside the outer perimeter. They would start their defense on the outer ring, taking ranged shots on the approaches to the base. When the Zerg threatened to overrun the outer position, then the plan was to fall back to the inner ring of linked bunkers for the final defense. After that, they would hold on as long as they could . . . and hope that it was long enough.

  Meanwhile, Mellish had taken a couple of the others out in an APC with every mine they could salvage from the compound. Ardo had grinned when Mellish had come to him with the idea. Now the private was out happily sowing mines in a specific pattern around the compound as though he were a farmer working the back forty. Ardo hoped Mellish would enjoy a bumper crop from the seeds he was sowing.

  Ardo busied himself in the factory manufacturing new ammunition for the rifles. Breanne had even taken Ardo’s point about the Zerg never stopping for their wounded. It was a fairly easy calibration. Rather than the standard infantry rounds, he reprogrammed the replicator to produce hollow-point spread rounds. Unlike their standard issue, these rounds would flatten and expand on impact with the target. These were not designed to wound, but to kill and inflict as much damage as possible. Ardo was looking forward to seeing if they worked.

  Tinker was still working on the south perimeter bunker as Ardo approached. Tinker had not said more than ten words to anyone since his brother’s Dropship went down. Ardo was more than a little concerned about the man, but there was no time to deal with his problems at the moment—perhaps no time to deal with them ever. Ardo walked up to the low domed building and entered the open access hatch.

  Bunkers were standard equipment for SCV manufacture, and it could truly be said that once you had seen one bunker, you had seen them all. Their thick metal shell held sufficient quarters for four, with weapons ports on all sides. They were not the most comfortable of quarters, but they had the benefit of being as safe a place as you could find on any Confederacy base. Once assembled, they were incredibly difficult to take apart. Just how difficult he was sure they were about to learn.

  He stepped into the central compartment, loaded down with his ammo cases, and was surprised to see Merdith staring out of one of the weapons ports.

  “Oh, excuse me,” Merdith said. “I’ll get out of your way.”

  “No, it’s all right.” Ardo set the boxes down and began stowing them under each of the weapons ports. “You’re no trouble. If you’re here for the view, you’re looking in the wrong direction.”

  “Yeah. I never was one for being a tourist.” Merdith laughed tiredly. Then she turned back to the port. “Which way do you think they’ll come first?”

  “I don’t know,” Ardo said, moving to stand next to her and gazing out across the red plain. “The last units we saw were passing to the west. My guess it that they will be the first to arrive. I’d look for unwanted company coming from there first.”

  Merdith nodded. A short silence passed between them.

  “Hey, soldier-boy?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “If I don’t get a chance to tell you . . . I think what you’ve done here is . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Ardo glanced at her. “Is what?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I was going to say ‘good’ or ‘right’ but the words didn’t seem quite big enough.” She rested her folded arms on the sill of the weapons port, laying her head down on them as she spoke. “Maybe even . . . epic.”

  Ardo laughed. “Epic?”

  Merdith laughed, too. “Okay. Maybe not epic, either. Whatever it is, I’d like to tell you thanks.”

  “I wouldn’t thank me, ma’am. I just got us all killed.”

  “But how many more are going to live because of what we do here? I’d never really thought of it before.” Merdith looked at him. “They may not say thank you. They may never know what happened here or even who we were, but I’
ll say thanks for them.”

  Ardo nodded, then thought for a moment. “You know . . . I’m not even sure of who I am anymore. I’ve been programmed and reprogrammed so many times that I’ve forgotten who I was and why I was and where I was even going. Yet there was always me here somewhere—that part of my soul that they could never program over or take away. I used to fear that, but now it’s all I have to hang on to. You helped me find my soul, ma’am, and for that, I want to say thanks to you.”

  Ardo reached down picked up a new gauss rifle, and tossed it over to Merdith. He said, “You know how to use it, don’t you?”

  Merdith caught the rifle, then primed it expertly with a single motion. “You trust me with this?”

  “Hey, if you kill one of us, it just means there’s one less person to watch your back!” Ardo smiled.

  Merdith smiled back. “I’ll have to be careful about that, won’t I?”

  “I wish you had met Melani. I doubt you’d have had much in common, but she—”

  “Mellish reporting. I’ve got a visual from the west. We’ve got company.”

  Ardo grimaced. “They’re early.”

  CHAPTER 21

  SEIGE

  “STAND BY, PEOPLE!” IT WAS BREANNE’S VOICE over the tactical net. “Outer perimeter first, then fall back on my command to the inner perimeter. Flash status!” Ardo keyed his tac-com transmit key twice. “Melnikov, Outer Five, southwest.”

  “Mellish, Outer Four, northwest! They’re comin’ hard and—”

  “Cut the chatter, Mellish! Flash status!”

  “Xiang. I’m here. Outer Three, northeast.

  “Bernelli at Outer Two. I’m . . . uh . . . I’m southeast.

  “Cutter, Outer One, south, Lieutenant.”

  “Status complete! Hold fire until they breach the outer mines. Report the breach, then open fire, understood?”

  Ardo smiled. Even in the middle of a hopeless cause, Breanne was going to do this by the numbers. If there was a way to die by the numbers, he knew that she would do it, too.

  “What is it?” Merdith asked, seeing the look on Ardo’s face.

  He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing as he peered out the firing slits in the bunker.

  “By the gods! What is that?” Merdith breathed in disbelief.

  The horizon to the southwest was blurred, its crisp line smudged. It might have been a sandstorm rolling toward them, but Ardo knew it was something far more deadly.

  Ardo opened the tac-com channel. “Lieutenant; Melnikov. I’ve got a line of Zerg approaching rapidly from the west . . . about three clicks out. I can’t make out the ends of the line.”

  “Mellish here. I think I have the end of the line of advance here on about a two-ninety radial. Hell, I didn’t think there were that many Zerg in the whole—”

  “This is Cutter. I can’t seem to make out the end of the line on my end.”

  “Ardo! What’s going on?”

  The Marine looked over at Merdith. “What? Oh, damn! You don’t have a tactical com set. That’s them coming now—a line of Zerg that just about covers the horizon and God only knows how deep they are behind that line. That little box of yours apparently works a lot better than I thought.”

  “So.” Merdith swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly dry. Her fingers gripped her rifle so hard they were white. “What happens now?”

  “We wait for them.”

  “Wait?” Merdith blinked. “Wait for what?”

  “Wait until they hit the mine perimeters.” Ardo shook his shoulders and rolled his head. He was tense, and that was a bad way to go into battle. “Mellish and Bernelli sowed two perimeters of minefield around the base. There’s one at a thousand meters and a second at five hundred meters. They’re a combination of hopper and shape-charge mines with heuristic sensor links—”

  “Whoa, slower! They’ve got heuristic what?”

  “Sensor links. The mines talk to each other on a dedicated, low-power network and learn from each other what to look for in an enemy passing over them. The more they detonate, the smarter they get about killing whatever crosses them. Then they can modify their own blast patterns to maim more effectively. We’ve had to change their programming a little . . .”

  “Because you don’t want them just to maim,” Merdith finished for him. She turned to gaze out the gun port of the bunker. The hazy line was getting much closer. “You want them to kill as many and as quickly as possible.”

  “That’s right,” Ardo replied, then leaned even closer to the gun port. “Incredible! Just listen to that.”

  The low rumble was felt before it could be heard—a pounding of the ground that nervously shook everything resting on top of it. In moments it grew to audibility—thousands of Zerg rushing heedlessly toward them in an enraged fury. The ear-piercing screech of their voices punctuated the roar, chilling Ardo to his bones.

  “By the gods! What have we done?” Bernelli yelled across the com channel.

  “Hold your fire!” Breanne’s voice crackled over the channel in response. “I’ve got to know where they hit the perimeter first!”

  A single dull thud shook the bunker. Dust from the upper ammunition racks sifted loose toward the floor. Ardo saw Merdith’s eyes go wide. Then a quick succession of thuds rolled through the open ports.

  “Bernelli here! Perimeter contact at radial two-twenty!”

  The mine explosions rattled in quick succession now, one nearly on top of the other. They were sounding closer to Ardo.

  “They’re shifting!” Bernelli shouted. “They’re coming left, Melnikov!”

  Ardo quickly picked up his field glasses. He pushed Merdith back and pressed the glasses through the rightmost gun port.

  He could see them clearly now: a solid wall of Zerg writhing and squealing nearly a thousand meters away. Every kind of hideous nightmare of their kind seemed to be present, charging in his direction, and then, as though heeding some unheard dance music, they all began shifting to the right.

  The thudding explosions followed them. A wall of dirt, flame, and torn flesh surged into the air like a continuous curtain of death. Each Zerg in its turn charged forward, probing for the weak spot in the perimeter, searching for the opening that humans always left in the field through which they could pass and attack. Ardo smiled. He was looking into the mind of his enemy and knew something it did not know: that there was no opening through which they could pass because they knew they would never be leaving.

  “Melnikov here!” Ardo shouted into the com channel over the thunderous barrage. “They’re throwing their lead elements against the perimeter. Moving eastward around the outer minefield. Cutter? You got ’em?”

  “Yeah, I see. Sweet Sister Sin! Look at ’em! They’re moving to surround the base! I’ve never seen so many ugly bastards in my life! Come to me, you sweet meat! I’m digging a pit just for you! I’ll roast you for dinner, you ugly—Heads up! Incoming!”

  The curtain of destruction continued to explode before him, cutting off all sight of the Zerg beyond it. Ardo frantically searched with his field glasses for some sign of a breakthrough.

  “The towers have a lock! Weapons release!”

  He heard it before he saw it. The rockets leaped from the defensive towers. Merdith’s scream was obliterated by the wail of the high-speed thrusters clawing their way toward the Zerg. Ardo followed their trails to their targets: Mutalisks in droves were soaring over the mine perimeter, their numbers nearly blanking out the bright sky beyond. The rockets slammed into them, their bright blossoms burning into the creatures with deadly accuracy. The beasts began falling like a grotesque rain on the perimeter area. A few of them triggered mines of their own when they slammed into the ground, but Ardo noted with grim satisfaction that the mines were already recognizing these new targets as being dead when they landed and were saving themselves for better and more threatening targets.

  Suddenly, an almost deafening silence descended. The smoke and dirt around the perimeter began to settle, its curtain
falling slowly back to earth.

  Merdith and Ardo glanced at each other. The quiet after the initial barrage was unnerving.

  “It stopped them.” Merdith smiled, almost giddy at the thought. “Ardo! It’s incredible! You stopped them!”

  Ardo lifted his glasses once more and tried to peer beyond the settling dust, smoke, and debris. He could see them moving, shifting positions.

  “Oh, damn,” Ardo’s voice shuddered as he spoke. “They’ve figured it out.”

  Merdith looked desperately out of the gun port, trying to see what Ardo was seeing. “Figured it out?”

  Ardo keyed open his com. “Melnikov here! They’re spacing out! Get ready for it!” Then he turned to Merdith. “Arm your weapon! This is it! The Zerg are spacing themselves out so that the mines will only take out one of them at a time. Then they’ll charge the minefield all the way around.”

  Merdith’s jaw dropped. “You mean . . . That’s suicide!”

  “No,” Ardo said, quickly priming his own gauss rifle and laying its muzzle through the gun port. “That’s just the Zerg. They don’t value individual lives. That’s why they don’t bother with the wounded. They’re cold and they’re cunning, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get to us and that box. They’ll throw thousands of their warriors at us and won’t think a second thought. They know that they won’t run out of Zerg before we run out of mines.”

  “They’re bringing up the Zerglings!” It was Cutter’s voice. “Guess they’re wanting to keep the big boys for after they’ve cleared the minefield.”

  “Setting the mines to discriminate. We’ll let the smaller ones through both perimeters for now and concentrate the mines on the larger targets.”

  “Roger, Lieutenant. Here, kitty, kitty, kitty . . .”

  Even with his unaided eyes, Ardo could see the changes in the Zergs a thousand meters out. The larval Zerglings were the smallest creatures known among the Zerg, the closest thing the monsters had to children. Ardo thought bleakly that it was another clear difference between their races, but then wondered if it was such a difference after all. Humans seemed equally willing to throw their own youth away on war, and Ardo knew that he was ample evidence of that.