by PN Burrows
‘They are, one of these should take down a rhino.’ The aggressors each had four or five gaping wounds to the chest. Flesh was hanging off them, yet they still continued on. ‘Aim for the head.’ Reb’s next bullet took the man down with a crimson burst of colour that looked surreal as it splattered across the huge silvery dice behind. Sam grazed the head of his target just before he managed to gain the safety of another cube.
Inaccurate rifle fire suddenly pockmarked the cubes around Sam and Reb. Two of the approaching squad had climbed upon the metal blocks to offer a steady stream of suppressive covering fire. The main squad were approaching fast. Sam ejected the empty magazine. The prognosis for the next five minutes was not good. Pistols against rifles. They already had the advantage, never mind the superior numbers and the fact that Sam had hit the assailant at least five times and he was still fighting. He was down to thirty rounds in two magazines, ‘Make them count,’ he said to no one in particular.
The barrels continued to trundle on above them, the sound of the conveyor muffled by the clack of metal hitting metal as bullets flew through the air. The last barrel was in sight, at the rate of progress it would be processed in less than a minute.
‘Bob, I need you to stop the conveyor and divert the portal. We need to get out of here.’ He looked up as the rumble ceased. ‘Put the station on alert and tell them we are coming in hot. Get ready to reset the portal as soon as we pass through.’
The main force gathered just outside the pistols’ effective range, the controlled shots from Reb that were striking them were more of an annoyance rather than a terminal kiss of lead. They didn’t seem worried about waiting an extra few minutes to allow their quarry to deplete the limited cache of ammunition.
‘Who are they?’ Sam asked in a brief lull as they regrouped for the next onslaught.
‘Never seen them before, bipedal, humanoid and ugly. Although unlike you, they seem to be pretty immune to your primitive weapons,’ indicating his pistol, ‘even with our modifications. They must have an incredible muscle density and bone structure. Clearly our shots are not getting past the rib cage. Bob is arranging for the portal to relocate to the station. Strip off now and when I say, run up the gantry and jump through slowly. The surface reacts badly to velocity. Oh, and try to hit the event horizon parallel. Sam, it’s going to hurt. You’ve got pins in your leg.’
Sam looked at the portal. It looked even blacker now that the heated metal was no longer pouring down its front. He looked at the cubes, suddenly realising that these were formed from the leftover metal from the process. Then he looked down at his right leg. ‘Shit!’ He stripped off as quickly as he could. For some reason being naked in the midst of a firefight made him feel extra vulnerable. He fired of a few shots to make himself feel better and managed to take out the previously wounded scouts with a satisfying head shot.
He was grateful that the metal cubes were made from a soft steel. The bullets mushroomed into them rather than spraying him with shrapnel or ricocheting about wildly.
‘What do you mean you can’t divert, you can’t be blocked out.’ As the heated discussion progressed, the black portal visibly shimmered with a variety of dark hues. Reb managed to catch the third scout in the head. His body crumpled to the ground, blood and cranial matter flowing onto the concrete floor.
‘The others are massing for a charge, get ready. Bob, how are we doing with the portal? What? No, it’s still black, I don’t know.’ Reb used his leg to quickly flick the plastic case that Sam had dropped behind the cube, just in time to avoid the next heavy salvo. ‘They’re coming.’
Sam braved the volley of bullets. He knew his luck couldn’t last much longer. He was already more exposed than he wanted to be, firing right-handed around a left-hand corner and now he was nude. He managed three head shots with the careful and calm precision that a trained soldier got from knowing that you were certainly going to die and there was nothing you could do but seek pre-revenge.
‘Sorry, Doc,’ Reb said as he took out three of the four glass containers and threw them towards the charging brutes. They crashed onto the tunnel floor ahead of them. Reb had already wrapped a cloth around the fourth canister whilst Sam was preoccupied firing and now lit it with a hand lighter and threw.
The combustible vapour that now permeated the tunnel ignited with a whump long before the projectile crashed onto the floor, sending its liquid fire in all directions. The fire burnt fiercely with tall flames, but with little to consume it within the tunnel it would only last a short while.
Reb looked across to Sam with a grin, only to see him leaning heavily onto the cube. Sam’s face was ashen and blood was seeping down his torso from wounds on both sides of his right shoulder. An arrow-like projectile had skewered him to the cube. Thankfully it had not passed through Sam completely as the vicious looking finned tail would have caused horrendous tissue trauma. Most alarmingly, the projectile must have come from the portal.
‘Bob, what’s the hell’s happening?’ He moved towards Sam to assess the situation as the portal shimmered to settle, showing a steel gantry leading down to a room full of hostile-looking soldiers. Thankfully they wore Mineran uniforms. ‘Sam, I’m going to pull you free of the cube, we need to leave the arrow in to staunch the flow.’
‘Yeah, sorry,’ Sam replied groggily. ‘Yeah, ok.’ He looked down at the arrow. ‘It’s too high to have pierced the lung. But stupidly I nearly blacked out as I hit my head on the block.’ He broke out into a traumatic, shock-induced laugh. ‘I’ve been shot with a bloody arrow in a gun fight, if this is how you treat your friends I’d hate to see you on a date.’
‘Someone knows our history, this is a ceramic version of an ancestral arrow. If those fins feel any pressure from penetration the whole back end will suddenly resemble an angry porcupine. It gets real messy.’ Sam blanched as Reb pulled the arrow and him with equal force. Sam groaned as he did so. ‘We need to go now. The portal is open. Go in forwards and try not to fall backwards onto the arrow.’ He pulled a small hood from inside of his coat, a quick practiced action of fingering a tiny hoop in the back of his collar, stretching and releasing onto his forehead. It shrank to cling to the shape of his head.
Reb pushed Sam ahead as he fired off the rest of his magazine, dumped the gun and followed, covering Sam with his own body as he did so. As they ran up the gantry bullets whipped all around. He lost count of how many hit him, his reactive body armour preventing penetration and spreading the force of the blow over a larger area. It was like being repeatedly punched, each one taking its toll on his body. He took two large blows to the head, dazing him instantly, his legs and body working independently of his consciousness to get him out of danger.
Reb was at the Dia Kuklos shortly after Sam. As he proceeded to step through, the area ahead of him suddenly splattered with blood and white hot metal as Sam’s body was ripped apart from the inside. Reb managed to twist in time to miss the white hot liquid metal from Sam’s leg pins. What worried him the most was the small piece of metal streaming down the portal surface at head height. He could see blood! Lots of blood.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sam could feel the air move around him as bullets whisked past. He knew Reb was covering his retreat and that he must be taking hits. Pumped up on adrenalin, he raced up the gantry towards the Dia Kuklos. Part of his mind found it funny that he was racing nude towards an alien Dia Kuklos to another world full of aliens and he was making his debut with his manhood swinging about and a 16-inch arrow in his shoulder. ‘You don’t see this in the movies,’ he groaned to himself as the jostling shaft sent a cascading wave of pain from his shoulder down throughout his body.
He was at the top and facing the angled surface of the Dia Kuklos. He certainly couldn’t jump through feet first, as the metal pins would burn up his body. It would have been better to come at it from the other side where the angle would work in his favour, but there was no time for that. He l
eant forward and tried to hit the surface of the Dia Kuklos in a falling walk, turning his head at the last second to look back to see Reb. Reb’s face was grim but had a look of determination. Suddenly Reb’s head violently jerked forward as if he was performing a violent Glasgow Kiss and Sam realised he had just taken a shot to the back of his head. Not having seen Reb apply the hood he thought him surely dead. At that instant Sam’s face exploded!
He had simply overlooked a forgotten amalgamation of mercury, silver, tin and copper, which instantly heated up to a liquid state. The sudden increase in size shattered the bottom molar that it had previously protected. The superheated liquid destroyed and cauterised flesh at the same time. Here was where Sam’s luck ran out as the molten metal had to pass through from right to left. If only he had looked the other way! Heat seared and burnt his mouth and throat and the super-heated air made its way into his lungs, badly searing the interior surface and making it impossible for him to breathe. The molten metal burnt its way through Sam’s tongue and lower jaw until it finally escaped through the left check. A fraction of a second later, seven micro pins burnt through his fibula, tibia and calf muscle.
Sam fell into a pair of outstretched arms. He couldn’t breathe as the nerves in his lungs screamed that they were on fire. It felt like most of his face was missing and in the haze of pain he was sure he saw part of his tongue fall to the floor. For some reason, the last thought that ran through his mind was ‘mind the porcupine.’ Then blackness enveloped him and the pain went away.
The Station Doctor was waiting for Reb and the human to appear through the still dark Dia Kuklos. He was accompanied by twenty heavily armed, albeit, frustrated Minerans in full battle armour and non-metallic carbines. He was as surprised as they were that Bob had instructed them not to dash through the Dia Kuklos once it was redirected. They were to attend to Reb and Sam as they appeared and defend the station with extreme prejudice. As soon as the alert went out, they had mustered here and watched the enthralling developments in the tunnels via the almost live feed on the surveillance screen. Once a Dia Kuklos connection was made it would catch up.
The new foe was intriguing. He had studied and dissected examples of most of the life forms who had joined the ISPAW and he didn’t recognise these. The others watching the screen wouldn’t have noticed, of course. The evolution of these bipeds had traded high pain thresholds, alongside the enhanced skeletal and muscular features which offered greater protection to physical impact. However, it was at the cost of flexibility, manoeuvrability and from the looks of it, intellect. He didn’t think this was a natural process as the brutes were badly kitted out for their physical size. An invading army would come prepared, whereas these had oversized hands that struggled to handle the weapons and the trigger guards were missing to accommodate the fat fingers. The doc could only assume their evolution had recently been expatiated in a lab on earth, ergo these were modified Homo sapiens. ‘I do hope you can save one of these, Sergeant, they are a physical anomaly,’ he said to the burly squad leader who stood with a pensive look. No one likes to be ordered to leave a friend in the line of fire.
‘I can’t promise that, Doc,’ he drawled. ‘Bob thinks they will rush through the Dia Kuklos, so as soon as Reb gets through he’ll switch it back to open in space. Captain Sophus is currently engaging a small force at the tunnel entrance.’ Thankfully he had put the men on alert after the first incursion and had manned SUVs on patrol. ‘I hope he keeps one alive for questioning.’ He tilted his hand to show the tablet screen showing a feed taken from the tunnel entrance. The patrolling Minerans from the enclave were not restricted to using local weapons, and with their superior firepower they were overwhelming the rear guard. At the forefront was a ferocious and proficient naked female, who had arrived shortly after the battle began on an all-terrain motorbike. Her whole body seemed to be pockmarked with bruises.
‘I’m not that familiar with your tactical procedure and operations, Sergeant, but is that a normal tactic?’
‘No, that’s Apate, Doc. I have no idea and nor will I be foolish enough to enquire.’ He raised an eyebrow at the doctor. ‘Although it does seem to bewilder the enemy, maybe that’s her tactic.’ They continued to watch as she methodically decimated the enemy by taking calm and precise aim amidst the volley of fire aimed towards her. The other Minerans supplied huge volumes of covering fire, and moved up alongside their heroic angel of death towards the entrance. She could be seen barking a warning to her comrades, who quickly dove into cover. She fired a bunker buster round into the entrance and the vehicles evaporated into a deadly cloud of shrapnel. She never slowed her advance into the now dust and smoke enshrouded passage. Using the heat sensing sight, she continued to lay down a deadly barrage of fire.
The doctor and the sergeant watched with fascination as she approached the remaining foe. ‘I believe she has an ulterior motive. Apparently she actually likes him.’ The doctor was looking at him but he could not read any expression on his face. ‘He’d have my sympathy, but at this moment I feel sorry for those two brutes. A woman vexed is a heinous beast at the best of times – and she has an MPAR carbine.’ He winced. ‘Ooh, that’s got to hurt.’
The doctor, who was far older than any of the Minerans here, had a passion for all things historic. He, like everyone else there, had been listening into Reb’s audio feed as the station technicians overlaid the signal with the video feed. Seeing a replica of the ancient Spica Sagitta in action intrigued him. Or, as it was more commonly and incorrectly called, “The Arrow of a Thousand Needles”. Shame it didn’t activate as the results would have been spectacular to watch.
Clearly someone was using it to taunt the Minerans. This attack was showing they knew about Mineran history, the Dia Kuklos and how to hijack and divert them. He couldn’t fathom if it was the same adversary that sent Urser, as there was not enough information to go on. He did like a good puzzle and things had been too quiet for the last hundred years or so. There should be interesting times ahead and this puny human, for some reason, was in the middle of it all.
As he watched the feed of Reb pulling Sam free from the cube, the Dia Kuklos shimmered. The Doctor realised the enemy’s hubris and gesturing may well have saved Sam’s life.
Thinking ahead, he could play out the bolt’s effectiveness on some of the cadavers, knowing that he’d be asked to examine and perform the post-mortems. If this human didn’t survive, he could inadvertently nudge the arrow a little and watch it spring spectacularly to life.
Via the screen, he could see Sam and Reb running up the gantry. Their heads were coming into view through the Dia Kuklos itself. The fire had given them a few scant seconds of relief, the brutish forward stampede had stalled and one went down from Reb’s parting shots as he ran for the platform. Bullets impacted with the Dia Kuklos’ surface tension, instantly melting and slowly dribbling downwards causing further obstacles for Reb and Sam to avoid. He walked closer to the Dia Kuklos to catch Sam as he passed though. A gurney and nurse were waiting close by.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The large cadaver lay on a cold metal table. The doctor had thoughtfully cleaned the area up prior to his guests arriving, including hosing down the blood sluice, covering any organs he had removed and, more importantly, masking the smell of the recent autopsy.
Three figures walked into the white, cold, examination room; they were dwarfed by the overly tall door – one of the concessions the station designers had given the doctor whilst it was being updated a few years ago. All major doors were 3.2 metres tall to allow him unhindered access.
The doctor was sitting on a comfortable office chair next to the table to accommodate the diminutive forms of the Minerans. ‘Thank you for popping in on short notice, I know you have a lot of investigating to do regarding the recent events. I thought you would like to hear my preliminary findings.’
‘What have you got for us, Doc?’ Captain Sophus said. He had taken on the role of
Acting Commander on the station for the duration of the conflict, as Major Hypatia was unfortunately away on the home world. The second in command, Lieutenant Kallistrate, was not present. A shame really, as her long hair and her distinct scent made her easy to identify. They all looked so similar. The uniform made it easier as it had their ID numbers emblazoned on the breast. Thank the great divinity that they smelt so much. He would never be able to tell them apart otherwise. Not that he would ever tell them that.
‘As you can see, gentlemen,’ he said, holding his hand up towards the body. ‘This is the finest example of evolutive and genetic engineering I’ve ever seen. I have found this truly stimulating to say the least.’ Realising he was coming across with too much zeal, he countered with, ‘Much more interesting than repairing training wounds on your men, Captain.’
‘Tell us what have you found, Doc, we are very busy at the moment and have no time to lose. Kallistrate will not be joining us as I have instructed her to carry on investigating how someone hijacked, albeit temporarily, the Dia Kuklos. As you are aware this station was built around the only known divertible Dia Kuklos.’
The doctor nodded in appreciation of the explanation. ‘These soldiers are definitely of human origin and there is no evidence in the blood and bone analysis to indicate that they have ever been off-world. You wouldn’t know it by the look of this poor fellow but he is only six months old.’ He looked at the trio for a reaction. Not finding one, he carried on. ‘There are none of the usual clone indicators present and upon closer inspection none of the bodies, whilst very similar, conform with each other. They also have a belly button. My guess would be that he started life as a human baby and ended up as a prototype of a genetic engineer soldier.’