They were back in their War Eagles, practicing maneuvers in real space for no good reason other than to keep pilots and hangar crews busy. All real-space maneuvers did was show how inadequate their little crates were for anything other than teleporting into position, shooting up a target, and warping away before they could be swatted away like so many flies. Or even better, ghosting and tearing the enemy a new one with no chance to be shot. The Foos were a problem, but a few guys were coming up with ideas on what to do about it.
“Bingo, you’re falling out of formation,” Papa told him, and Gus realized he’d started daydreaming again. That’d been happening a little too often lately.
“Roger that, Papa. My bad.”
He put more power into the fighter’s thrusters, getting a tiny bit of extra acceleration, and caught up with the rest of his flight as they maneuvered for a simulated attack run. They were going to make a notional – i.e. fake – warp jump and then dry-fire their guns at a virtual target while they were targeted by low-power lasers to simulate enemy ack-ack. Boring as hell, and nothing like the real thing. Without doing a warp jump, it could be nothing like the real thing. You changed when you warped in and out of reality, and the more you did it, the more you changed. In a real emergence, the minds of everyone in the squadron would have been linked, allowing them to fire and hit as one. Not like this, where their connection was far weaker. Their salvo was scattered all over; five of them missed the target clear, and the rest all hit within fifty meters.
Even so, it was better than what the fighters’ designers had ever expected. Nobody had dreamed that doing multiple jumps in a short period would do something to people’s minds, beyond the usual insanity everybody risked when going from one star to another. Even in real space, everyone in Fourth Squadron could talk instantly, mind to mind, faster than the any implant comm systems and without any delays even over light hours.
They’d been upping their Melange doses, which helped a lot. Almost everyone was getting twice their previous dosages, except for a few holdouts like Grinner. It’d taken some doing, but warp pilots were a resourceful bunch, especially when a trick one of them came up with could be instantly passed along to everyone else. A thriving black market of the stuff was now rampant through Seventh Fleet. It helped that they were manufacturing the stuff on assorted supply and medical vessels. All it took was a few discreet bribes or some blackmail, and production runs got ramped up – not much, considering they were now giving the stuff out even to ordinary spacers – and the extra doses got delivered to the waiting pilots. People were getting as much Spice as they wanted. Word was the Fleet Admiral himself was mainlining the stuff on the side. It was a party and everyone was invited.
With a few annoying exceptions.
Gus was getting good enough to pick up on Grinner’s mood even in real space. She was doing her job, helping coordinate the simulated attack runs, but she was worried and upset. Once the practice run was over and they were flying back to the Enterprise, he decided to have a word with her.
“What gives, Grinner?”
“Nothing you want to hear.”
“Look, we’re all doing the job, right? We might be getting a handle on the Foos, too.”
Her mental glare was almost painful. “I’ve heard what that insane bastard from the Macon is peddling. He’s lost it, Bingo, and if you follow him, you’re all next. If you haven’t lost it already, that is. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s not too late.”
“Beak’s okay,” Gus said, wishing he felt as sure as he sounded.
Lieutenant Federico ‘Beak’ Dhukai had been a Warp Navigator for decades, long before fighters came around. The guy had a reputation as a weirdo, even among other navigators; word was that bad rep had kept him a Lieutenant Junior Grade for a good ten years. Shortly after making the switch to space aviation, Beak’s out-there ideas only got weirder.
Among other things, Dhukai claimed he’d contacted a Foo during the Battle of Capricorn, just as it was about to munch on him. He said he’d struck a bargain with the Warpling, and now he was safe even while ghosting. That was a pretty tall tale, even for spacer stories (the ones that usually started with ‘This is no shit’). But people were listening. He might be lying or crazy or both, but he’d ghosted the entire time during the raid on Hoon, and nothing had bothered him. Maybe there was a method to his madness.
Gus had met him once, sort of. When Seventh Fleet jumped back to Capricorn, all the pilots had held a big get together via the biggest shared illusion their collective minds had created so far. They’d gotten drunk, traded jokes and had a good time. Beak had spread his story around, and he and Gus had talked for a bit. The guy was tall and skinny, with bright black eyes and a big honker of a nose that explained his handle. He sounded sincere. And very intense, like Star Baptist preacher intense. Enough to worry Gus a bit, but what Beak was peddling would be so damn good if it was true. If they didn’t have to worry about the Foos, nothing could stop them.
“Nothing is free, Bingo. Not in this universe or any other,” Grinner said. “Even if what Dhukai is selling is true, it won’t come cheap. The price is going to be more than you’ll want to pay, except by the time the bill comes due you won’t be able to change your mind.”
A rumor had gone around claiming Grinner had spent some of her civvie time reading fortunes in the boonies of some planet or another. She sure was beginning to sound like that.
“If it makes a difference, why not give it a try? We can’t really fight the Foos, Grinner. If we could kill ‘em, it’d be different, but best we can do is scare them away until they come back for another try. Might as well try to make a deal with them.”
“A lot of people think warp space is a gateway to Hell. What if they are right? What does that make the Warplings? Do you want to make a deal with that?”
“Jesus, Grinner,” Gus said. He crossed himself. “If that’s true, we shouldn’t be doing any of this. Are you going to quit?”
“No,” she said, as if confessing some terrible sin.
“Me neither. So we better hope we aren’t dealing with the Devil. Because we need to make a deal with them, if we can.”
“I think we could fight them off instead.”
She had. Gus recoiled from the memories of the incident at Lahiri. It had been too much for him, and too close for both of them. Maybe you could fight them off after all, but it would be like a guy with a knife going up against a bear or some heavy-world ET: the odds would suck ass.
“Overdosing on WTS isn’t helping at all, either” she went on. “Too many people are opening doors to warp space in their minds. It was bad enough with navigators and fighter pilots doing it, but now every spacer in the fleet is getting exposed. Open enough pathways, and something is going to find its way through them.”
“Like the Exeter?”
Nobody knew what happened to the fleet carrier. According to the official report, a hit had caused a warp shield malfunction that had swallowed the ship. The sensor readings of the incident had been classified. All the fighter pilots had felt something happen – for Gus it’d been like hearing a distant thunderstorm – but other than that all they had was guesses and more spacer stories.
“Like the Exeter,” Grinner agreed. “Or worse.”
“It’s going to be okay,” he told her.
“Is it? Are you still wearing your crucifix?”
“Sure am,” he lied. Truth was, he’d forgotten to wear it at Hoon, and left it in his quarters ever since.
Their fighters arrived to the Enterprise and they began the now-familiar docking evolution. Their conversation ended there. Gus felt angry and scared at the same time. He’d been trying to help, but Grinner had made him feel worse about everything, and that wasn’t right.
He shrugged. Things were changing, and everybody, even her, was going to have to change with them.
Twelve
Redoubt-Five, 167 AFC
It got damn quiet at night.
Russell had been to
enough jungles to know that it normally would be anything but quiet after the local sun went down. The only reason you could hear a pin drop here was that they’d burned down everything as far as the eye could see. Any nocturnal critters slumbering away during the day had gotten blown up or crisped. It was quiet as the grave because that’s what they’d made it. The fight with those big-ass ETs the next day had only rearranged the rubble.
Mess with the best, die like the rest. A dozen Devil Dogs in the company had that tattooed somewhere on their skin. Not as popular as the Eagle, Globe and Anchor, Semper Fi and the common mottos, but pretty up there. Next time Russell had more money than he needed for booze or cooze, he might get it done somewhere on his back. Although it’d be all kinds of stupid, getting a new Marine tag just before he left the Corps.
The morning’s festivities hadn’t helped change his mind. Just about every deployment since the Days of Infamy had put him in harm’s way. This planet was turning out to be just as bad. Waking up in sick bay hadn’t been any fun: he’d gotten most of his ribs caved in and a full set of broken arms and legs. His bones still itched after the hasty repair job the med-techs had done on him. He might be officially fit for duty, but he wasn’t enjoying any of it.
Word was, more critters were trying to come their way. Just more animals and bugs, not those flying fuckers that had inflicted most of the casualties so far, but the beasties were bad enough. From the looks of it, anything that could run on two or four legs, crawl on its belly or beat wings to get underway was trying to make it there and chomp on some Marine ass. The shuttles, tanks and LAVs had been laying down a steady fire on any concentrations approaching the valley. From the lack of gunfire out in the distance, they critters had given up for the night, although scans showed the plant life was moving forward, reclaiming the burned-out ground at something like three meters per hour. In a couple months, nobody would be able to tell the Marines had been there, breaking stuff and killing things.
They’d be long gone by then, or they’d just burn down the jungle again. Shouldn’t be a problem, but he still felt antsy. They had sensors all around their perimeter, set to detect anything bigger than a single-cell organism. Nobody could sneak in on them, and everybody swore up and down there were no more warp-assault capable enemies around. He should feel bored and annoyed by the pointless duty. Instead, he was tense and nervous.
“Charlie-One-One, this is Charlie-One-Twenty, have unknown visual contact.”
That was PFC Dennis “Leo’ Lee from First Platoon, a newbie they’d gotten at Xanadu; his watch post was twenty meters north of Russell’s fireteam. They linked to Lee’s visual feed as soon as he called out.
There was nothing there.
“Say again, Charlie-One-Twenty.”
“It’s coming right at me, Sergeant!”
“Charlie-One-Twenty, highlight the contact.” By the tone of voice, Sergeant Russo of First Platoon was in no mood for this shit.
Lee did: a red aiming carat appeared in mid-air, bracketing nothing but air. Russell went through every scanner wavelength on his system, but as far all his sensors could tell, Leo was aiming at nothing..
“Fuck!” Leo shouted. A moment later, he lit up the night with a burst from his Iwo gun.
“Check fire! Leo, check fire right the fuck now!”
Leo’s screams stepped on the platoon sergeant’s orders. The Marine jumped out of his hole and charged down the hill, firing short, controlled bursts. He might have gone bugfuck crazy, but he was fighting by the numbers, even if there was nothing to fight.
“All Charlie-One, Charlie-Three elements, hold your positions,” Sergeant Russo ordered. “Leo is suffering from warp hallucinations.”
“Shit,” Russell grumbled.
At least the newb had opened fire downhill rather than on his own people. Buying it on a blue-on-blue incident would suck royally. They’d been warned about the miniature warps, although nobody had seen anything until now. The platoon sergeant would take care of Leo; he must be activating the private’s medical implants to deliver a dose of sleepy-bye drugs into his system. In a few seconds, Leo would…
The scream was familiar enough: Russell had heard the same kind of cry, mostly from people on their way out. A moment later, PFC Lee went flying up through the air as if he’d stepped on a heavy-duty mine. His torso went one way; his lower half went another, legs flailing as if trying to run.
“The fuck?”
The SAW gunner on the OP cut loose, hosing the area where Leo had bought it with three-round bursts. The plasma rounds illuminated the area, not that they changed what everyone saw: there were a few loose boulders, two carbonized tree trunks, and a whole lot of dirt. Nothing else. No sign of whatever had ripped Leo in two and tossed both halves into the air.
“Check fire!”
They did. There was nothing to shoot at, but Leo was still dead. He’d seen something, and it’d killed him.
“Sergeant said it was a warp ghost,” Russell muttered.
“Warp ghosts don’t do that.”
“They can still kill you, Grampa.”
“Yeah. Heart failure. Aneurysms. They don’t tear you a new asshole.”
A couple of Navy corpsmen reached Lee, not that there was anything they could do for him. His status had gone black just before he was cut in two. Russell kept scanning the area through the sights of his Widowmaker, but there was nothing down there.
“What the fuck, Russet?”
“Dunno.”
“Major Zhang is coming through. Hold positions, and fire only on my command.”
“Copy that.”
Maybe their warp witch could handle it.
* * *
The look Captain Fromm had given her after waking her up had spoken volumes.
“Hey, I promised him there were no more Kranxan Battlers around, and I was right,” she said to herself – and the voices in her head – as she headed to the spot where one luckless Marine had gotten dismembered. “This is a Warpling. I’m guessing it’s the Warpling that killed all the Kranxans back in the day.”
“You are correct,” Atu told her. “The entity is still trapped in the Tower, but it can reach our minds and through them our bodies.”
“Which means he can kill us all before the night is over. Maybe we should pull up stakes and get the fuck out of Dodge.”
“That is the most likely plan to ensure your survival. For the short term, at least.”
“Yeah, until the ETs win the war and kill us all. Or I go completely crazy, now that I have a monster bouncing around my skull.”
“You will die slow, harlot,” a harsh voice whispered in her head. “First, I’m going to make an incision on the back of your head, just long enough to get a good hold on your skin. And then I’m going to peel it off cleanly, all of it. And then…”
Speak of the devil. Two invisible friends were not better than one, not when the second one was a Marauder of Kranx. It wasn’t the whole Battler’s mind, just most of his memories and a hefty chunk of his damned soul, which was bad enough. It was sort of like sharing a room with a serial killer with a bad case of rabies, except less fun. His name – he was very proud of his masculinity – wasn’t easy to translate: the closest she’d managed was ‘Blade That Cuts, Stabs, Slashes…’ with about sixteen variations on terms for using sharp implements on others, along with a string of obscenities designed to be offensive or revolting to every species in the galaxy. She called him Vlad (as in ‘the Impaler’) for short. The murderous ET had died while their minds had been connected, and now he was stuck in her head. Every once in a while, he would break into her train of thought and regale her with threats and descriptions of torture.
“Atu, can you shut him up?”
“I’m trying, Christopher Robin. He’s stubborn and single-minded, like a shark, not to mention a fairly unintelligent specimen even compared to other Battlers, none of whom were selected for their wit.”
“You will die screaming, Pathfinder,” Vlad interjecte
d, apparently feeling left out. “I’ll start with your upper eye, take my time with it…”
“Oh, bother. If you only understood the suffering you inflict upon others, you could yet achieve Balance. Here, allow me to show you, my dear Eeyore...”
Vlad began to scream in agony when Atu forced him to feel the things he’d done to his victims. His cries sounded like a dozen cats sharpening their nails on a chalk board. Lisbeth did her best to tune out the two aliens’ argument as she approached the spot where PFC Lee had been killed. An infantry squad was covering her, for all the good they would do.
Other than some extra smoldering holes where Marine Iwos had uselessly chewed up the area, the burned-out patch of ground looked much like the rest. She had no explanation why or how the Warpling had lured Lee to his death. She concentrated on her warp senses, and finally got something.
It was like a footprint, a place where the Warpling had briefly intersected with the physical world. Lisbeth picked up the entity’s scent, or energy signature; it was different from the Keeper’s, much like a rat and a whale are different despite both being mammals. And the Keeper was the rat, even though it was powerful enough to keep thousands of Marauders locked inside the Black Tower while its big brother hunted them down. The other one was a whale by comparison.
Her personal Marauder stopped screaming in pain. He was terrified.
“We must flee, Meal-on-Legs. The Flayer of Souls was here.”
“That’s what you call it?”
“One of its many titles. It is still trapped, but it sought information. It took one of your servants, read his mind, and discarded him. Count him lucky; he merely ceased to exist in the corporeal realm and most of his essence of moved on. The Flayer was in a merciful mood. Now that it knows who you are, it will be waiting for you in the Tower.”
In Dread Silence (Warp Marine Corps Book 4) Page 23