Tommy moved toward Jerico. “Here, gimme that,” he said. He grabbed the scraper. Jerico let it go. What he thought, Tommy didn’t know, but the fear he had felt, the shame of being afraid, his rage, all combined into something he’d never felt before. He felt a great strength now, a power, at having defeated his enemy.
“I’m bleeding!”
“Not for long,” Tommy said.
He raised the scraper again and moved in.
Tommy Spears was nine years old the night he killed his first enemy—
* * * * *
“Holy shit!” one of Spears’s marines yelled.
The general snapped out of his memory fugue and looked past the fallen soldier. Amazing. The entire memory had flashed past, maybe five seconds in realtime, all jammed and compressed like a squeezed data file on a modem squirt.
One of the alien drones stood there, readying itself to attack.
Spears stepped forward so an overhead light shone directly down on his face. Saw the alien see him.
“You know who I am,” he said. He pulled a control from his belt. “And the queen knows what this is.” He waved the transmitter. The floor of the egg room was wired with explosives and this control would set them off. Spears had made sure the queen knew that. Of course, by now, she would have her drones hauling the eggs out, hoping to find a safer place for them, but she wouldn’t have had time to move them all yet, and besides that, she couldn’t know if Spears had wired the whole fucking station so he could blow it all into orbit.
What the drones saw, the queen knew.
The drone hissed, then turned and ran the opposite way.
“Holy shit,” the trooper said again. “It was scared of you!”
“Damn straight,” Spears said. “With good reason. Let’s go.”
The platoon never hesitated.
“Powell?”
“This way” the major said.
Wilks turned to look at her. “I’m fine,” Billie said, though she was out of breath. “But Mitch—”
“—tastes bad,” Wilks said. “If he stands still, they’ll walk right past him.”
“Spears won’t,” Powell said.
“Thank you, Major.” To Billie, he said, “Look, he knows where we’re going, he’ll do what he can to make sure we make it and then he’ll be along.”
“I can’t leave him here,” Billie said.
“Fine. We’ll wait for him. I promise.”
Billie nodded. It would have to do. She didn’t have a lot of choice. She would have to trust Wilks.
Somebody screamed behind them, a sound that trailed off into a liquid gurgle.
“The clock is running, folks.”
It seemed to Billie that she had been running most of her life. This was not the time nor the place to stop and take stock. “Go,” she said. “I’m right behind you.”
They went.
19
Wilks was not afraid to die. He ran toward what he considered the safest place on this tiny planet, but if he didn’t make it, well, too bad. He’d been living on borrowed time since his first meeting with the aliens, so long ago. What had it been? Twelve, fourteen standard years? Billie had been ten, he’d have to ask her how old she was now. He should have died with his squad then, but he hadn’t, and he’d spent a great deal of drink and chem trying to forget it. Fate hadn’t wanted that, the powers-that-be in the universe, not to mention the Colonial Marines, had thrown it all back into his face. Somewhere along the way he had come up with a new purpose: to wipe the aliens out, down to the last drone, the last egg. Getting himself killed here would prevent him from accomplishing his mission, and that bothered him more than dying. Once in his life there had been personal fear, but those days were long gone.
A few years back during one of his two-week chem binges, Wilks had been picked up in an alley by civilians. He was naked and his ID implants had been fuzzed by the people who’d robbed and then tried to kill him, to keep the authorities from identifying the body. Not knowing he was military, the civilians had stuck him into a medicenter and given him the standard life-support treatment, which included sessions with psychiatric types. It had been a teaching hospital and there were plenty of young medics eager to work with such an obviously depressed patient; surely that unrevised scar on his face bespoke worlds of mental impairment?
It didn’t take long for them to peg him as a career marine and diagnose his problem. But while waiting for the medical MPs to come and fetch him, they hustled to get as many budding head-benders as they could exposed to him. Chances like this didn’t come along very often.
In one of these sessions, with an attractive young woman he would have tried to bed under other circumstances, he first heard about the Doc Holliday Syndrome.
Holliday, it seemed, had been some kind of medical man in the Terran frontier times, a dentist or some such. He developed a fatal and, at the time, incurable illness.
“So,” the young doctor said, “he packed up, moved to a drier climate, which was supposed to offer some symptomatic comfort for his remaining days, and became a professional gambler and outlaw. He engaged in a number of gunfights, and although he wasn’t a particularly adept shooter, always managed to prevail over his opponents. There is an instance, for example, where M. Holliday fired upon a man inside a public drinking establishment using a period weapon called a six-shooter. He was within seven meters of his opponent, emptied his weapon, and missed entirely. Given that the six-shooter was supposedly accurate to a range of fifty meters in the hand of an expert, this was considered poor marksmanship. He later switched to a weapon called a shotgun, which, 1 am informed, is dangerous over a somewhat wider area.”
“How interesting,” Wilks told the young shrink. Maybe he would try to fuck her, if for no other reason than to shut her up.
Before he could speak, however, she continued, obviously in love with the sound of her own voice. “From what our medico-historical researchers can determine, the primary reason Holliday won his duels was because he did not care if he did.”
That brought a frown to Wilks’s face. “What does that mean?” He was immediately sorry he had asked.
“M. Holliday was going to die soon, or so he thought. Actually he lived well beyond his predicted termination, the diagnosis having been somewhat erroneous. But because he thought his days were numbered and that this number was very small, he believed he had nothing to lose. Whenever he faced somebody in a duel—they called them shootdowns or showdowns or some such testosteronic euphemistic nonsense—he had no fear of dying. He was, in his own mind, already dead. Further, he regularly imbibed large amounts of alcoholic beverages and was thus further anesthetized. While this doubtless impaired his physical responses vis-à-vis his reaction time and weapons” prowess, these things in fact gave him a psychological edge. Most of the people he faced in such duels did not wish to die and thus their fear often caused them to hesitate” or behave in a panicky manner. Against an opponent who sincerely did not care if he lived or died but whose only goal was to shoot them and be damned, such fears can be fatal. And apparently these encounters were fatal more often than not against M. Holliday, D.D.S.”
Wilks shook his head. He wondered if she talked like that when she came. “Wonderful. You want to take off your clothes and screw a war hero before they come to get me?”
The young woman smiled, unfazed by his crude invitation. “I think not, Corporal Wilks. It would hardly be professional Running down a corridor with alien monsters searching for him, Wilks grinned, the scar on his face doubtless making the expression hideous to see. I know just how you felt, Doc. When you live on borrowed time and don’t give a dog’s dick if you die, it makes things nice and simple.
Billie saw a man holding a carbine squatting behind a bulkhead extrusion, trying to hide. When he saw her spot him, he started to point his weapon at them.
“Wilks!” she yelled. She brought her own carbine around to cover the trooper.
“Don’t do it, marine!” Powell cal
led out.
But the trooper was rising, still swinging his piece toward them. “The general is back! You’re all dead meat!”
Billie and Wilks fired at about the same time. The trooper did a twisting jig as he fell, his chest blown open, his blood splattering the wall.
Billie felt sick. Killing people never got any easier. But she kept moving. Self-preservation ruled.
Somebody had killed the lights and life support in the corridor but Spears was prepared for that. His troops were suited, in full combat gear. “Go to spookeyes, marines,” he ordered. He clicked his own faceplate filters into Amplite mode, saw the corridor light up a ghostly green. Another control flicked on his lamps and the glow that would look a dim and almost invisible violet to unaided eyes splashed the walls with brilliant green, almost as bright as the normal overheads. “Stay sharp, troops! Overlapping fields of fire!”
Somebody stumbled into view twenty meters ahead. Spears saw the man waving his arms, heard him call out: “General! Is that you? Don’t shoot, I’m on your side!” He couldn’t see much, Spears could tell that, he wore station coveralls, didn’t have a weapon or vision augmenters.
“Fire,” Spears commanded.
The two marines running point opened up. The sounds were muted but audible. The man ahead fell as if his legs had disappeared. Many inside the station would be his allies but Spears couldn’t take time now to worry about loyalties. One enemy with a grenade could cause a lot of damage. Better to clear the halls first and sort things out later.
Abruptly the gravity shut off. There was no warning, merely a sudden cessation. The running marines bounded high into the air, slammed into the walls or ceiling, or tumbled along the floor, out of control. Switching from nearly a full gee to a tenth or less between steps was not something a man could realistically train for.
“Switch on your boots!” Spears yelled.
There were magnetic strips under the floors, put there for just such a failure, and the combat boots would allow walking, albeit a much slower pace than in normal gravity.
When the confusion settled down, along with the troopers, only one man had been injured too badly to continue. The platoon medic said he’d broken his neck and would need full rehab.
“Can he move?”
“No, sir. He’s paralyzed.”
“Leave him, then. Somebody will come for him later.”
Some thing, actually, Spears figured. The man was useless as a soldier now, save as fodder for the new troops. Might as well let them have him.
“Sir!” the wounded man cried out. “Please. Don’t leave me here for those things!”
“They also serve who lie and wait,” Spears said. “It’s war, son. You fucked up, you pay for it. Let’s move, troops.”
They shuffled along, boots clumping on the deck. The cries of the injured man stopped when Spears had his unit switch radio freaks to opchan three.
Powell listened to the com he carried, shook his head. He and Billie and Wilks were in the approach corridor leading to the starship hangars. They still had lights and power, though much of the station had apparently been shut down. Panicky reports came over the com, voices blending into a continuous and frightened walla:
“life support shut down in D-2—!”
“It got Maury, it just took him—!”
“Air doors are down, air doors down—!”
“—are under fire, somebody is shooting here—!”
“Monsters, monsters—ahh, get away—!”
The sound of explosions, gunfire, metal on metal, and other sounds of death and confusion came, too.
For a moment Wilks felt himself grow heavier, as if somebody had suddenly put a weight on his back. Then the feeling vanished.
“Wilks?”
“Somebody is fiddling with the gravity,” he said. “Bueller, trying to slow Spears down, or throw the aliens off stride, probably.”
Powell was on the edge of full-blown panic himself, Wilks could see that. His face was pale, sweaty, and he clutched at the com as if it were some kind of lifeline. “The base is overrun,” he said. “We’re fucked. I should have known better than to try Spears. He’s a killer. He’s a madman. We’re all doomed.”
“listen,” Wilks said, as if talking to a buzzhead recruit or a small child. “listen, we can get away. We’ll take one of the starships.”
Powell shook his head. “Can’t. It takes too long to program a launch. They’ll get us. They’ll get us.”
“We’ll run an old program,” Wilks said. “Take one of the ships back to where it came from.”
“Not a good idea. They came from Earth. All of them.”
“We’ll fix the goddamned program along the way! Move, Powell!”
Powell stared at him. Nodded. “Okay. You’re in charge now, okay?”
Poor sucker. He should have gone into another line of work. Powell should be drinking high tea at some university, talking with other professors about modern art or ancient history. Only thing was, without killers like Spears and, yeah, like me, there weren’t ever gonna be such places again. Maybe not anyhow.
Ahead of them, a pair of aliens stepped out of the shadows and hissed.
Wilks felt himself grinning. Fuck you, he thought. Don’t you know me? You’re messing with Doc Holliday, you stupid bastards.
He slid over next to Billie, who saw the aliens. They stood shoulder to shoulder and raised their carbines.
It got noisy in the corridor.
“Let’s go, Powell. Stay with us.”
The trio moved toward the hangar entrance.
20
The hangar was still patent, at least no aliens had managed to get in. After the two in the hallway, Powell’s command override had admitted the trio through the lock without any other problems.
The vast space of the hangar Was quiet, it seemed empty. If there had been work crews inside when the alert sounded, they were not around now.
“Which ship is the easiest to access?” Wilks asked. “Which one most likely to be fueled and spaceworthy?”
“Over there,” Powell said. He pointed.
There might be other vessels elsewhere, but this particular hangar held four star hoppers, including the robot ship in which Wilks, Billie, and Bueller had arrived. Wilks was glad that the one Powell had indicated was not The American; he would prefer something with a little more human comfort designed into it. Then again, any port in a storm was a pretty good philosophy, and between Spears and the aliens, this place wasn’t just a storm, it was a hurricane.
“All aboard,” Wilks said. He waved his carbine at the ship.
The base was a wreck. Spears and his unit moved through the chaos, shooting whatever got in their way. Mostly, the targets were people; they did chop down a couple of the drones who were too slow on the uptake. What the hell, he thought, he was improving the gene pool. Attacking him was a nonsurvival characteristic, for certain.
There were few things to be salvaged here. He was going to have to cut his losses. True, he was going to win the battle and the war, pitiful and short as it was, but it would mean the base itself was a loss. Well. A good commander knew when to dig in or when to dump his tanks and leave the party. Third Base had served its purpose. He would have liked a little more time, but then, that was nearly always the case with commanders, wasn’t it? You tried for perfect but you accepted what you had to and moved on. When the battle was joined, you had to deal with what was, not what you wished it was. In a perfect galaxy, you’d always have the troops and materiel you needed to wage the best battle plan. In this galaxy, it seldom happened.
The unit had lost a couple more troopers, one to gunfire, another to a booby trap, but it was moving well. The vault where Spears had his best drones stored, the cream of the crop so far, would be impervious to anything short of a nuke and only he had the key that would open the vault. Those being safe, the only other thing of value on this rock was the way off it. And he had that covered, too. It would be a poor general indeed who didn�
��t keep his line of retreat open. Spears was not a poor general. He led his troops toward the starship hangars.
Billie was beyond fear by now, her adrenaline surge no more than a trickle, just enough to keep her alert. It was odd to think that you could get used to something like this, but it seemed to be happening. Or maybe she was finally losing her mind. She was too tired to care which it was.
Next to her, Wilks said, “Well?”
He was talking to Powell, who frowned at the control unit he held. Powell tapped in a series of numbers on the small device, then looked at the ship the three of them stood in front of.
“The hatch isn’t opening,” Powell said.
“I can see that. Why not?”
Powell shook his head. “I don’t know. This is the Command Override, it’s supposed to open every lock in the base, right down to the beer coolers in the kitchen. It’s the one Spears carries when he’s here, it stays with whoever is the CO in the station. It has worked so far. It should work here.”
“Are you sure you entered the correct code?” Billie said.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
Wilks sighed. “Spears. He’s fucked us again. We should have guessed it. As paranoid as he is, he wouldn’t trust anybody with the ships if he wasn’t around. We’ll have to run a bypass.”
“That’ll take time,” Powell said. “The access panel is armored.”
“I don’t see we have much of a choice,” Wilks said.
Spears and his troops reached the outer hangar via the emergency escape tunnel he’d had built. The two transports in the huge room stood silent. He had half his platoon fan out and take up guard positions, but there was no need. They were alone. He almost felt sorry for the enemy. So outclassed. Powell never really had a chance.
[Aliens 02] - Nightmare Asylum Page 14