[Aliens 02] - Nightmare Asylum

by Steve Perry - (ebook by Undead)

  That wasn’t happening here. The rush of adrenaline through her, her rapid heartbeat and too quick breathing, those were the same. Her bowels twisted, her mouth was dry. And it was a good thing Wilks made her put that urinary plug in. It was as if fear had her in its grip and was squeezing her tightly. The closer they got to the ship, the more Billie wanted to turn and run away. Her conscious mind knew they had to do this, but some deep part of her, way beyond the Billie who was usually in control, that part wanted her to find a deep hole and crawl into it. Leave, it said. Flee! Hurry, before it’s too late!

  On the one hand she was more fatalistic about survival; on the other hand she was just as scared of dying. Not the dying itself so much as the way of it. Going to sleep at a hundred ten or twenty, surrounded by your family who loved you, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, that was not so bad. Being eaten by a mindless alien monster or running out of air in space were not such pleasant ways to end one’s short life.

  But there was nothing to be done for it. It was take the risk now and maybe die or for certain die later.

  Wait until later! her inner voice screamed. It’s always better to wait until later!

  Spears stood near the new road built by the Royal Engineers at Laswari, the dark earth packed and rutted by the passage of horse-drawn cannon. Sir Arthur turned to him and said, “Well, old man, what do you think? Can we stop the bloody buggers?”

  Spears nodded. Sir Arthur wasn’t yet the Duke of Wellington—how Spears knew he would be wasn’t quite clear—but in the matter of the fight against the Sindhia and Bhonsle families of the Marantha, he knew the Indians would lose.

  “We’ll stop them.”

  “Then let’s have at them, shall we?”

  Sir Arthur waved at his officers, who had been watching him carefully for the signal.

  The cannons opened up, the muskets began to speak.

  God, Spears loved the smell of black powder in the morning.

  The wails of the dying Indians began to float over the battle scene. The screams of one poor soul in particular rose louder, a rapid series of yells, as though the man were screeching, pausing for breath, then repeating the same monotonic noise with machinelike regularity. Aaahh! Aaahh! Aaahh…

  Spears awoke to the sound of the proximity alarm’s intermittent and nerve-jangling wail. In his drugged sleep fog, the sound made no sense to him. He reached out and slapped the shut-off control. Closed his eyes. He had incorporated the sound into his dream…

  Spears struggled against the grip of the chemical urging him back to slumber. The proximity alarm.

  There was nothing threatening through the glass in front of him. Despite all the high-tech gear, that was the first place Spears looked, through the window. Then he began operating the sensor board.

  Nothing showed on the radar or the Doppler screens when he brought them up. But it didn’t take long to get the log showing what the problem was. Two man-sized objects had come to rest aft on the Jackson. A quick extrapolation determined that they had come from the MacArthur.

  As if there were anywhere else they could have come from.

  Well, well. His ship rats had decided to pay him a call. Obviously they were braver than he had figured. Odd, he hadn’t thought any of his troops would have been so—

  Spears grinned. Of course. He knew who they were. That damned sergeant! And since Powell was dead, it had to be the woman with him. Amazing. If in fact this was them again, they had more lives than a cat.

  Spears was glad they were here. This way he could eliminate them without any risk to his cargo.

  Quickly he stood, grabbed the belt with his sidearm, and started aft. He didn’t know how long he’d slept after the proximity alarm had started blaring, but it was long enough for them to arrive on the ship’s hull. Since the locks weren’t coded to keep people out—who would expect visitors in deep space?—then they’d get onboard. He had to kill them before they did any damage—

  He slowed his pace. Hold on a moment. He had to figure they’d be armed, that they knew who was in command of this vessel. If he went barreling in, he might well be shot. That wouldn’t do. He stopped. No, cowboy heroics were not the way to go here. They were pests, he would treat them as such.

  Spears turned around and went back to the operations board. Unlike the MacArthur, he did have control of everything on this vessel. Air, power, even gravity. The rats had walked into a trap, only they didn’t know it yet. Time to roll the recorders again. The military historians of the future would love this.

  28

  “Now what?” Billie said. “Can we get out of these suits?” She had her faceplate open, as did Wilks, so they could talk, but it would only be the work of a second to slap it shut and seal it.

  “No. Because Spears hasn’t come blasting through the door doesn’t mean he doesn’t know we’re here. You can shuck the extra gear but keep your weapon ready.”

  Wilks was already checking his own carbine. The dry lube used in the mechanical part of the weapon was supposed to be more or less impervious to high or low temperatures but he cycled the action and ejected a couple of live rounds to be sure. It wouldn’t do to have the damned thing frozen solid by the cold vac if Spears did show up waving a gun of his own.

  “Okay, mine works,” Billie said.

  “Good.”

  “What now?”

  “Now we wait a little while and see what he does. If he knows we’re here, he’ll do something.”

  “Or maybe he’ll rig another concussion grenade like he did back on the base and wait for us to walk through and trigger it,” she said.

  “That’s possible. That’s another reason for us to stay here and wait. Nothing happens for the next hour or so, we’ll work our way forward. Carefully.”

  Billie nodded. “You’re in charge.”

  Wilks nodded back at her. Yeah. He wished he felt as good about it as he tried to sound.

  Spears finished his preparations. He had to assume that the sergeant—what was his name? Watts? Jenks? something—was a good enough soldier to do a basic recon before embarking on anything precipitous. If he were him, he’d assume he’d been spotted on arrival and suspect that his enemy was prepared for him. Which was true. In the sergeant’s boots, Spears would dig in, find a defensible position, and wait for his opportunity to take the opposition out. A single well-placed shot would do it. The sergeant must be hoping Spears would make a foolish misstep and give him the chance.

  Sorry, marine, not this time.

  Too bad he was no longer interested in leading human troops. This sergeant would make a good officer, he was brave, smart, willing to take chances. In another lifetime, Spears would have bumped him up in rank and been glad to have him in his service. And he was certain, even though he had not seen him, that one of the two hiding down in the aft cargo area was… Wilks, that was his name. Wilks.

  Spears offered the unseen enemy a sketchy salute. Better luck next incarnation, son.

  He moved to the attack.

  Billie hunched down across from Wilks, trying to hide behind a modular cargo container, empty, it seemed, and to get comfortable in the spacesuit. She didn’t think she managed to do either very well. The suit hadn’t been designed for such contortions and the joints didn’t bend easily.

  They were in a place where they could watch the hatch leading into the bay from the rest of the ship. The only other ways in or out were through external hatches, and while he didn’t think Spears would try that, Wilks had fixed those portals so they couldn’t be opened from either side anymore. Nobody was going to sneak up behind them, he’d said. And nobody was going to be leaving that way, either. Not without a lot of work first.

  Waiting for something to happen was driving Billie closer to the edge every minute. She hated this.

  Suddenly it got dark. And when she jerked around to look for Wilks, Billie floated up into the air. Shit—!

  “Billie, close your faceplate! Now!”

  Wilks reached up and slapped his
own plate shut, then reached for his oxy feed. He heard the door to the corridor slide open on its track, and he tried to bring his carbine to bear that way. It was hard to do in zero gee. Spears had cut the lights and gravity, probably the air, too, and Wilks guessed he would either shove a gun through the door—bet your ass he was braced when the faux grav shut down—and hose the room, or maybe toss a grenade inside. It wouldn’t be anything big, nothing that might hole the ship.

  Concussion bomb, maybe a little fragger.

  The suits wouldn’t even slow down the shards of a fragger, much less a 10mm caseless. Damn, damn, damn!

  When the timer shut off the power and air and faux grav on the Jackson, Spears was in position. Even if they were braced for an assault the cessation of weight ought to throw them for a moment. Long enough to lob a concussion grenade into the hold. Once they were out, it would be the work of a moment to finish them.

  The door slid open. Spears, braced and holding himself down, tossed the grenade through, then pulled himself out of the doorway and flat against the wall. Some of the blast would enfilade back through the opening, of course, but he wouldn’t be in its path. Without gravity to slow it, the grenade would sail a long ways before it hit a wall and bounced back, it was possible it could come straight back out the door, he supposed, but that wasn’t going to happen, because the grenade’s fuse was a short timer and in about a second…

  The gravity came back on. Spears was prepared for it. The thumps inside the hold told him his enemy had not been. He grinned—

  * * * * *

  The emergency lighting had been suppressed, of course, but the tiny red and green power diodes mounted next to the door’s control panel were battery-powered. They didn’t put out much light, but there was enough of a glow for Wilks to see something moving fast in the doorway.

  He was still half a meter above the floor and twisting and to shoot the carbine would produce enough recoil to move him like a small rocket would; still, he had to do something.

  Wilks shoved the carbine toward the door. He squeezed the grip and thus lit the laser sight. The tiny red dot danced crazily across the doorway. When it disappeared, he figured he was as lined up as he was going to get. He fired.

  The recoil spun him through the air, like a wobbly planet on its axis—

  Billie saw the muzzle flash from Wilks’s gun, a spearhead shape of red and orange. The light from the blast showed her where he was, but he vanished in the dark immediately after the flash died. Her helmet muted the sound somewhat. She heard the bullet spang against something past the door. She thought, It was so dark—

  A brilliant light splashed her, strobing the hold, then something heavy thumped against her, knocking her backward. She flew like a bird with an injured wing, tumbling.

  The gravity came back and she fell to the deck, slid a little, stopped—

  Jesus—!

  * * * * *

  Spears knew carbine fire when he heard it, and the bullet punched through the wall behind him and to his left as he shifted his regained weight to a careful stance. The shot and the grenade’s blast came almost together. He’d wait a second and see what happened—

  Wilks hit the deck hard, landed on one shoulder. He rolled to a prone firing position, thrust the carbine out, and found the laser’s dot against the far wall next to the door. On the chance that Spears might be flattened against the wall there, Wilks opened up and drew a dotted line from the wall across the doorway to the opposite flanking wall. He fired on semi-auto, for control. He hoped Billie had enough sense to stay down, wherever she was—

  A round burst through the wall between Spears’s body and his arm. A few centimeters either way and it would have hit him. Damn! The grenade had missed them!

  The bullets chewed fist-sized holes, moving away from Spears, spraying insulation and bits of wall plastic as they mushroomed and tumbled.

  Time to regroup, he thought. His initial attack had been thwarted. He knew when to cut his losses.

  Spears slapped the door control. The door slid shut. He moved away quickly, toward the blast door a few meters up the corridor. Once on the other side of that, he stopped. He lowered the door. This hatch had been designed as a pressure safety device. It was airtight, constructed of duralloy, and capable of stopping something as puny as assault rifle fire.

  From his belt, Spears pulled a spot welder. He lit the arc and braze-feed, and ran a bead along the base of the door. To be sure, he added a half meter on each side. Then he opened the control box and slagged the electronics. Finally, he lifted the manual safety hatch and welded the crank handle to the steel safety cage. This door wasn’t going to be opened from the other side unless somebody had a cutting torch and he didn’t think Wilks was that prepared. But just in case, he set two fragmentation grenades on stik blobs to the wall at eye level and ran a trip wire. If by some miracle they managed to raise the door, a careless step would get them. And he rigged the trip so it was three meters away from the doorway itself. They’d maybe look for a wire on the way through, but probably not so far away.

  Not, he thought, that they would ever get through in the first place.

  He couldn’t micromanage the gravity on a ship this size, but he could keep them cold and in the dark, without air. Even if they had their own air supply, they couldn’t last more than a day or two.

  Ah, well. Better shut down the recorders. This hadn’t come off quite as neatly as he had hoped. No problem. A win was a win. It might not be pretty, but they were bottled up back there and that was the end of it. He gave them credit for trying, but close wasn’t good enough for a cigar.

  Spears laughed softly at his own joke and went forward.

  * * * * *

  Wilks and Billie had the suit lamps lit, so they could see each other okay. It was dark and it seemed to Wilks already getting cold and stuffy.

  “Might as well breathe his air for as long as we can,” he said. “When whatever is already in here is gone, that’ll be it. We’re back to the tanks. Shit.”

  “Wilks? Are we screwed?”

  “Yeah. He’s dropped the pressure door down the hall. Fucked the controls up. He must have known we were coming all along. We’re lucky the concussion bomb didn’t get us, but yeah, we’re screwed. We ain’t going anywhere now.”

  “Can’t we get outside the ship?”

  “Maybe. I could probably manage to unseal the hatch we came in if I tried hard enough, but the minute we step outside he’ll shake us off like fleas from a steel dog. We’d never find another way in in time.”

  “Can we blow the ship up?”

  He looked at her. He understood the thought. If they were gonna die anyhow, might as well take the bastard with them.

  “I don’t think so. This is a military-grade vessel. I could set off what grenades we have but it wouldn’t do much more than ruin the aft section, if that. These ships are built in segments, airtight compartments. We could take out some inner walls, but segments are armored like the hull. The drives are amidships and out of reach. Even if we did cripple it we’d die as a result, and he could probably just transfer to the MacArthur at this point.”

  “So that’s it?”

  “Well, we might get to the oxy stores buried in the walls here and bypass his control. We might get enough air to last a couple more days.”

  “But not to get to Earth.”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “Damn.”

  “Sorry, kid. We tried. We lost. That’s the way it goes sometimes.”

  “Nothing we can do?”

  “Not unless we can convince Spears to turn over the keys to the escape pod.”

  “Maybe if we said ‘please’?”

  Wilks thought about that for a second. “Hmm. I got a better idea. Maybe if we said ‘or else’.”

  “Hello, General Spears,” said the voice from the com. It was on the suit radio opchan, right where he thought it would be. Spears leaned back in his form-chair and nodded at the com. “I was expecting you
to call, son. Nice try but you lose.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Billie and I, we were hoping you could see your way through to cutting us loose.”

  “What would be the point, marine? It’s a long walk home. You’d never make it.”

  “We could if we had one of the two escape pods.”

  Spears grinned. “That you might. But I’d have to give you one and I don’t really see that as a possibility. Nothing for me to gain.”

  “We’ll trade you for it.”

  “Son, you don’t have anything to trade.”

  “How about nine linked M-40 grenades, all set to go off at once?”

  “So you blow out the ass of the vessel and kill yourselves, it won’t even dent the armor amidships. Nice try, but you ought to know better.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean I had the grenades here, General.”

  Spears leaned forward. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, Billie and I, we figured you were pretty good when we flew up here. Given our experiences so far, we had to bet there was a good chance you’d take us out.”

  “Good bet.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re a general and I’m a sergeant. But we figured, what the hell, if we died, we could have the last laugh.”

  “Keep talking.” He had a feeling he knew where this was going and it sent a chill through him.

  “So before we left, I rigged a little explosive in the MacArthur. Kind of a going away gift, you know? With a timer. We gave ourselves plenty of time to get here and beat you, plenty of time. Got an hour or so left.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “I can see how you might think so. But we aren’t. And can you take the chance? If we did wire the ship, your tame monsters get an E-ticket ride to nowhere in about fifty-eight minutes. Your command, General, adios forever.”

  Spears stared at the com. Wilks was bluffing, he was pretty sure. But if he wasn’t …