by Greig Beck
* * *
In moments, the HAWCs had attached their drop lines and lashed their respective civilians to themselves. Morag was strapped to the front of Alex and tried to adjust the tight cords, but failed.
“Hard to breathe.” She winced and looked up and over her shoulder at him. “I hope this isn’t where I get accidently dropped off.”
“Don’t give me any ideas.” Alex’s mouth might have just lifted a little at the corner. “All you need to do is follow my instructions.” He looked over her head to his team. “Visors down and hook in.”
Morag watched as Alex touched his neck and like magic, a dark scale-like hood telescoped from somewhere on his neck up and over his head and was then followed by a shield moving down over his face. He suddenly looked artificial, assembled almost, like a robot.
“Um, do I need my facemask to breathe?”
“Just your goggles; save your oxygen for when we’re in the crater. We just need vision for the drop and landing – you’ll see why.” He reached up, and with a solid clank, hooked his drop-line to an overhead winch and turned to look over his HAWCs. She felt his chest swell.
“HAWCs, we are go.”
Sam Reid bellowed in response. “Muscle up!”
Alex turned back to the rear of the bucking chopper. “I can’t hear you!”
“HUA!” roared the group, and formed into lines.
Jesus Christ, what have I got myself into? Morag wondered.
Alex punched a large button on the wall, and the rear and side doors whined open. Morag immediately threw her hand up as a hurricane of wind and snow particles were flung in at them like stinging white shrapnel – this is what Alex had meant by protecting their vision on the way down. Without eye cover, they’d be blinded.
She turned again to look up at Alex’s face. She could just make it out behind the visor and saw that the granite-hard jawline looked to carry a small smile. Where she was shitting herself, she bet he was looking forward to it. She saw him speak softly behind his visor, possibly to the pilot one last time. He held up a hand and slowly lowered the fingers one by one.
Morag’s heart smashed in her chest as he went from three down to one, and then he was running for the ramp, taking her with him. His HAWCs followed. She screamed as Alex leaped into space.
Morag shut off her scream and snapped her mouth shut as the cold stung her teeth and hard bits of ice and snow hurt her mouth. She was blinded and deafened by the screaming wind – and this was supposed to be the sheltered side of the mountain. The combined weight of each HAWC and passenger was probably between 400 and 450 pounds but still the wind tossed them around like corks.
She felt Alex twisting and trying to maintain his position as they dropped rapidly toward what she expected was the rock ledge. But they surely had no hope of seeing it among the flying snow. Every now and then the helicopter would jerk them, like a fly fisherman trying to sink the hook in a trout, and they’d swing wildly one way then the next.
She didn’t know how far they’d dropped or how long they’d been dropping, as her fear made every atom of her being become tunnel-focused on their landing. In another second, the huge face of the cliff loomed right in front of them and she saw the ledge, but horrifyingly, they were nowhere near where they needed to be and were fast coming to the end of their rope.
Alex locked off their drop line to stop their descent, and she wondered whether he was in communication with the pilot, trying to get him to swing them closer. She could dimly make out other bodies hanging like fruit from slender threads waiting for the right time to cut loose.
Then it came, the chopper yawed toward the cliff face as the wind slowed by a few dozen miles per hour. They swung at the ledge and Alex got ready to release them – fifty feet, forty, thirty, twenty. Momentum was with them when suddenly the chopper started to pull back. But it was too late now; they were committed.
‘Fly free, girl,’ she heard her mom whisper. It gave her strength.
Alex punched the release on his tether and let gravity and momentum do the rest. They flew the last twenty feet toward the rock ledge, but way too fast. She knew at this speed, she’d be obliterated against the stone. Unlike the soldiers, she wasn’t built like a tank or wearing an armored suit.
Fuck, she screamed in her own head, bracing herself, as Alex’s left arm tightened around her. Morag raised an arm, knowing it would be the first thing smashed, and also knowing that a broken arm, ten thousand feet up a freezing mountain could probably be a death sentence.
I’ll leave you behind, she remembered the HAWC leader saying.
She gritted her teeth as they hurtled toward the rock wall and ledge. Alex raised his free arm in front of her, and suddenly a three-foot disc of air swirled before them. They struck hard and Alex rolled them both, the shield taking most of the hard impact instead of their bodies. They continued to roll, and then Alex used the momentum to spring back to his feet and run hard at the cliff wall to move out of the way of the other soldiers who were coming in fast.
Every single one of them made it, using their shields, hitting hard, rolling and coming back upright. Morag still wore a grimace of fear and her heart was hammering. She exhaled in disbelief. She didn’t even feel like she was the same species as these super humans.
Alex disengaged his shield, unhooked Morag and then retracted his hood. “All right?”
She grinned up at him, still shaking. “That was intense.”
“This party has only just started.” He turned away to look to his team, probably counting them off. He then walked back a few steps to edge of the ledge and craned his neck to look up at the peak still a few hundred feet above them. To Morag it looked a sheer face of dark granite, but after a few seconds, Alex nodded.
“No problem.” He called his HAWCs in. “Erikson, Dunsen, Knight, you’re up. Let’s go, people.”
Morag noticed that the three HAWCs had somehow retained their drop lines, and like gymnasts, each ran at the wall, leaped, and clung on. Like spider monkeys, the three Special Forces soldiers started to climb and fast.
“Whoa.” Morag shook her head in awe. When she said she’d climbed before, she didn’t mean anything like this.
The HAWCs stuck carabiners in crevices, and hammered in pitons where they had to, and then threaded their rope through them as they went. In no time they were a hundred feet up, and Alex turned and shouted over the wind.
“Next up! Let’s go! Let’s go!” He turned to stare up into the swirling snow.
Morag followed his gaze, but could see nothing. But she suspected he was looking for their chopper which was waiting somewhere up in that mad blizzard. She didn’t envy the pilot for a second.
It was her turn next and she started up. The cold had already caused a thin layer of ice to form on the rope, making the soft elastic fibers slippery, and she had to concentrate every inch to stop from sliding back down.
Behind her on the rope, Alex was last in line and coming quickly, scaling easily, as if he was just climbing a ladder to change a light bulb. The wind still buffeted them, but at least in close to the cliff face it was less ferocious. She glanced up. Above her, she guessed, the lead climbers must be near or at the summit by now, and she turned back to the wall, focusing on the rope, on each grip-release-grip over and over again, edging upwards a few feet each time.
Morag didn’t want to look behind or down. Even though she had climbed peaks before and didn’t regard herself as having a problem with heights, if she saw even for a second the dizzying void below her, she might lock up. She simply could not let that happen while Alex Hunter was right behind her – she didn’t want his help. She was no damsel in distress – never was, never would be. She gripped, hard, cursed under her breath, and yanked herself up another few feet.
Minutes later, a hand grabbed the back of her jacket and roughly dragged her up and over the rim. She skidded forward on her belly, and then rolled over to suck in air. Her fingers were curled into painful claws and she blinked several
times to make the flaring stars of exhaustion go away.
Steve Knight crouched beside her. “Okay?”
Morag sat up, still dizzy. “Yeah, yeah.”
The young HAWC slapped her shoulder. “You did well.”
He headed back to his group, where they stood on the peak’s edge, helping the last few climbers, while some stared down over the other side. She watched as Alex Hunter came up and over the rim, his face mask still up, and not even breathing hard. She looked around and saw that the only ones sitting or lying flat were the NASA team and Calvin Renner.
She struggled to her feet, and wobbled for a moment. All the HAWCs stood ready, and a few had strange-looking weapons drawn – odd, why? She joined them at the edge and stared down into the massive formation created by three mountains that had collided together in some distant primordial past to create a massive crater basin many miles across.
Beside her Sam Reid stood rock still and as she watched four lenses lumped the visor over his face. It gave the appearance of some sort of giant alien being staring down on the puny Earthlings below it.
Morag turned back to the mist-filled basin. The more she stared, the more the hair on the back of her neck rose. “Well, that’s not creepy at all,” she whispered. Like the boiling sea of another world. Suddenly she wished that Alex Hunter had tied her up and left her behind.
CHAPTER 16
Alex stared down into the thick mist. It was impossible to see anything through it, and it hung in a layer over the crater floor that extended for miles. Whatever had come out of the Orlando had massively spread.
He exhaled slowly; he had a bad feeling about this one. With any luck, they’d be gone within another eight to twelve hours. Without luck, they had breathable air for two days – one day, if it was high activity. He set a timer on his wrist that would begin counting down when he engaged his oxygen.
Alex then quickly sent off a message to Hammerson: Reached peak, zero casualties, commencing search, over. The message screen on his forearm screen rotated for a few seconds, before giving him back a single word – failed.
Shit, must be the effects of the atmosphere blister already. He’d expected it, and they’d planned for it. He’d have to send up communication bullets as they went. This meant he could get brief messages out, but nothing could get in – one-way comms only – as good as it got.
They were above the strange mist layer, and with his visor still up, he couldn’t smell any unusual odors, but he could feel the warmth against his face. He’d give the team another few minutes to acclimatize before dropping down. The temperature differential would be too extreme for the civilians, so better to ease them into it.
As Alex watched something seemed to lump in the center of the sea of cloud like a whale coming to the surface but not quite breaching. The huge dark shape traveled for several hundred feet before sinking from sight.
“I hope that was a trick of the light.” Sam had appeared beside him.
“You and me both,” Alex said, continuing to watch. “Hammerson said they detected movement, so …”
“Can’t see a goddamn thing.” Sam retracted his quad lenses, held up an arm using his wrist scanner, and moved it over the crater. He read some data and whistled. “The actual floor of the crater is still another 500 feet down, and given the mist only starts about half way, we still got some climbing to do.”
“At least it’s all downhill.” Alex grinned up at his friend.
Sam nodded. “Yep, there is that.” He lowered his arm. “What the hell is keeping it from blowing away?”
“Good question … and next one is, where is it all coming from?” He checked his wrist communicator again. “Comms are down. So its electromagnetic influence is reaching us even up here. I can’t smell anything, but we’ll need to permanently hood up as soon as we start to descend.”
Sam grunted. “Can you see anything?”
Alex knew what he was asking, and turned back to the smog. His vision was far superior to anyone else’s, and could even see changes in thermal radiation. He stared, concentrating, and saw that further out over the mist, there was the occasional swirl and eddy, as if whatever he thought he saw before was still swimming just beneath its surface.
“There’s certainly movement down there. But I can’t tell what it is, or whether it’s a single signature or multiple objects moving together.”
“Our Russian friends … or maybe survivors?” Sam raised his eyebrows.
Alex continued to stare. “Don’t think so.”
Sam sighed. “Why do I get the feeling that this was never going to be a simple rescue and recovery mission?”
Alex snorted. “If that’s all it was, they wouldn’t have needed us. So let’s find the Orlando, and get the hell out of here.” He turned. “Knight.”
The young HAWC joined them. “Boss?”
Alex nodded toward the crater. “Give me a direction on the Orlando.”
Steve Knight held up a tracker, the screen showing a 3D representation of the crater basin, cutting it up into a grid, and then identifying a quadrant where the main shuttle fragments rested. He pointed with a flat hand.
“North, northeast, 4,569.3 feet. Terrain is … wait a minute.” He frowned as he looked at the formations. “Hard to get an accurate geographic reading; there’s plenty of weird formations down there, maybe rock, but …” His frown deepened.
“What is it?” Alex watched him.
“System must be screwy. Formations that were there a few seconds ago are now gone.” He turned slightly, angling the scanner. “No, not gone … just somewhere else.”
“Could it be that the magnetic disturbance is giving us some distortion?” Sam’s brows rose slightly.
Alex looked at Sam whose face said he didn’t believe it for a second. Alex nodded and looked back out over the murky air. “Okay, that’s enough sightseeing. Let’s find us some holiday snaps and maybe a few dead astronauts.”
The group shed a lot of their clothing. The HAWCs now stood at the cliff edge, gazing out over the crater basin in their armored suits, hoods up and looking like a group of heavily muscled black-clad robots. The NASA crew donned a modern version of lightweight HAZMAT suits and breathing equipment, and Morag and Calvin wore the borrowed same. Piles of cold weather clothing lay at their feet. It wouldn’t be needed down lower where the temperatures reached fifty degrees and well above that in humidity.
Alex watched the group begin to scale down and then paused to briefly look up at the clouds above. He could just make out the thrum of a helicopter he knew was up there somewhere. He didn’t like the odds of being able to grab the sample from the sky, but if Vincenzo said he could do it, then Alex had to believe him.
He turned to his team. “Franks, Dundee, take us down.”
“Yo.” Casey leaped over the side, followed by the Aussie, and then the rest of the group.
Scaling down, even with his insulated suit, Alex felt the warmth embrace him. The air was thick, and he knew it wasn’t just the humidity, but the mix of strange gases being given off by something the Orlando might have brought down with it. He paused to look at his gloved hand – it glistened, like it was coated in oil. And the mist seemed to be small particles rather than a gas.
Alex let go of the rope and dropped the last dozen feet, and on landing his feet squelched. He looked down, seeing the green-gray sludge.
Nice. “Knight, give me an LF check.”
The young HAWC pointed his forearm reader at their surroundings and turned slowly. “Holy shit. Life forms off the chart.” He shook his head. “Hard to get any sort of clear reading. I’m overloading the sensor.”
Alex grunted. “Probably the free-floating bacteria – basically this fog is a living thing.” He looked down at the muck he stood in. “As well as this stuff.” He frowned, listening. “Anyone else hear that?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Like some sort of whine, like when you got a goddamn mosquito in your room. Where’s it coming from?”
Alex shook his head, turning slowly. It seemed to be coming from all around them. Everywhere.
“This mist … it’s not a gas,” Anne Peterson said, waving a hand slowly in front of her face. “This is suspended particular matter. Bacterial clumps, maybe algae, or maybe something else entirely.” She waved her hand in front of her face again making the mist swirl. “It has weight, so the lighter form is suspended, and after a while it sinks, clumps, and becomes this slime matter.”
“Could this have been here before?” Alex moved some of it with the toe of his boot. It lumped up, and stayed that way. “Under the snow and ice, I mean?”
“Maybe, or maybe it came from the shuttle and has been growing. We’ve all seen the bloom spread after the crash.” Anne also pushed at it with her toe. “It’s like a lichen, but …” she lifted her foot and some stuck. “But a bit more like a slime mold.” She turned about. “And it’s everywhere – could be the basis for a food chain, anyway. I’ll take a sample. At least we can get this back to the lab.”
She took out a canister from her pack and crouched. Anne went to scoop the jar across the organic matter.
Russell Burrows lunged. “Wait.” He held up a hand. “Careful, Anne, don’t get any on you.” She froze and he straightened. “Sorry, we don’t know exactly what happened to our astronauts, but we do know that it occurred after they took the space debris onboard. And if this stuff has anything to do with the space debris …”
She grimaced. “Right, right, sorry, could be some sort of contaminant.”
“And we’re fucking standing right in it.” Dundee bristled.
“Shut it, soldier,” Sam shot back.
“Don’t worry, I believe it’s too large to get in through our sealed suits.” Anne took out a small spatula and used it to scoop some into her jar. She screwed the lid closed, held it up and shook it. The sample settled for a moment, before sliding up one side of the canister. She peered at the sample and shook it again. “Strange. Doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before. Don’t know if it’s plant, eukaryote, or animal. Almost like mucus.”