by John Shirley
Maybe that wasn’t the only reason he was hesitating out here. Sure, Sam was a fine-looking woman; her smarts and poise were attractive, too, maybe even more than her looks. But still…
He wondered why he felt so drawn to her.
Oh come on, man, you’ve been a long time without a woman. You’d be drawn to a hundred-year-old grandmother buying incontinence diapers, about now.
It wasn’t that, though. Since he’d lost Janet—since she’d blown him off for a guy she could count on being there at night, a guy with a square job who would probably die in bed and not in some jungle clearing half a world away—he’d made up his mind it was going to be all work and party, all the time. Just the job, and the party afterward. No attachments. From here on, he’d told himself, it’d be whores or women who might as well have been whores. The kind of airheads who went on viddy shows gassing about trying to get a rich bachelor to marry them. Slick sluts.
My star guide said I was going to meet someone hot tonight but I thought he’d be, like, someone into stock-breaking—is that what you call it, when you, like, buy and sell stocks?—and not a Marine but, whatever, because I’ve always been into muscles? Even when I was a little girl I liked to look at those Mr. Bodybig shows, and, I’m all, whoa, a Marine, oh wow do you have, like, a Humvee we could ride around in and maybe cruise my homegirls, because, I’m, like, all into a guy who’s got a big ride, with, like, big wheels, and…
Verbatim from his last date.
And here he was drawn to a scientist. A woman with a clinical glint in her eyes; a woman who was eagerly looking forward to using a bone saw, for God’s sake.
But there was something about her—behind that shell of complete independence, skepticism, there was a smart woman who needed someone to make the world mean something again.
Oh, get over yourself, he thought. She’ll never go for you. She…
Something was growling, on the other side of that table, in the shadowy farther reaches of the infirmary.
Sam turned to Duke—she hadn’t noticed the sound, but something about the way he’d just froze there at the door, listening, had drawn her attention.
“What?” she asked.
A beast not much higher than his knee was stepping into view. He stared. Was that a dog? A large, snarling, drooling, red-eyed dog—coming around the corner of that cabinet?
It was. One of the escaped lab animals, probably. It lowered its head, muzzle wrinkling, baring teeth as it prepared to lunge toward him—its eyes crazed with fear—and Duke raised his automag, ready to shoot it down.
Sam, seeing the dog, opened her mouth to speak, probably to tell him not to shoot it, which was going to be a problem because this animal was ready to kill—though he didn’t blame it, considering what it’d probably been through—
But she never had a chance to say it. Because just then he realized that the dog wasn’t growling at him at all, but at something behind him. The dog backed away…
Duke spun, but it was too late, the creature in the corridor behind him slashed out, its talons ripping into his arm. Duke floundered away from it, fell onto his back.
“Duke—!” Sam called, running for the nanowall.
The imp loomed over him—a lean thing with clusters of eyes, its skin looking raw; drooling, almost sneering down at him now, a sound like a rattlesnake’s warning issuing from deep inside it.
He fired—the gun was set on semiauto, and he squeezed off three rounds, stitching the thing across the middle, making it stagger back screaming.
He got his feet under him, was aware of Sam poised at the opening nanowall, waiting for him.
“Sam—get back inside!”
The imp turned to glare at Sam—Duke backed away from it and fired again, so it’d come at him and not her—it came slashing the air, a few steps from ripping him into chunks.
“Come on!” Sam yelled, ready to close the nanowall. “Come on!”
Duke turned, lunged for the doorway, the imp close behind him. Duke shouting as he passed through, “Now—do it now!”
He leapt—and the imp came after him. Duke kept going—
Sam hit the nanowall’s manual controls and the gray wall solidified around the imp, head and torso caught partway through. It shrieked, and Duke could hear its bones cracking.
Its tongue shot out of its mouth—unspooling, stabbing out to its full length—just shy of Duke’s neck.
The tongue reeled back into its mouth and it shuddered—and fell limp, jaws clacking and spewing black blood…
Reaper and Sarge tracked their wounded quarry down corridor after corridor—all the way back to the D4 tunnel, through it and up into the atrium, then to the air lock that led into the corridors outside Carmack’s lab.
The creature was big, but they’d practically shot it to pieces—hadn’t they? How did the damn thing keep going?
“Nothing could have survived that!” Reaper insisted—trying to convince himself more than Sarge, as they rushed out of the atrium.
They were following a trail of blood that led from the atrium, across the floor, and right through the air lock.
Reaper shook his head in wonder. The thing knew how to open an air lock? What exactly did that imply?
They passed through the air lock, not bothering with a reseal. That horse was out of the barn. The things could get into the atrium another way. The air lock was set to seal automatically if there was a break in the facility’s walls or windows interfacing the planet’s surface.
Reaper and Sarge now stood in the corridors a short distance from Carmack’s lab.
“It’s back in the lab,” Sarge muttered.
Do these things have an agenda? Reaper wondered. Are they after something in the lab? Are they intelligent enough to use the equipment? They managed to get the airlock open…what else can they use?
Or do they move about randomly, driven by the afflatus of rage or fear or hunger? That seems more likely.
Reaper and Sarge moved on, searching through light and shadow, getting closer and closer to the lab.
“Clear,” Reaper said, as they reached the end of the corridor. Redundant to say it, since it was obviously clear, but they stuck with procedure. That was the RRTS way.
“Clear,” Sarge confirmed. “Damn it’s fast.”
Running footsteps drummed a short way behind them. Something was coming at them from down the corridor—Reaper turned, finger tightening on the trigger, and came a hairbreadth from blowing the Kid’s head off his shoulders.
The Kid, Portman, and Destroyer were rushing up to them, weapons at ready, panting. “Did you get it?” the Kid asked, looking around, his mouth hanging open, eyes more dilated than ever.
Reaper shrugged. Useless to brief the Kid. The young soldier’s brain was frying on drugs, he’d lose anything you tried to tell him.
Sarge called Pinky on the comm. “Pinky, anything comes through that door, use an ST grenade.”
Pinky replied with a nervous affirmative. Sounding like he wanted to say a lot more and was afraid to come out with it.
Portman shook his head, gaping at Sarge. “He uses an ST in there, he’ll blow the Ark!”
Sarge acted like he hadn’t heard. “Reaper, Kid—pairs, cover formation, sweep the corridors.”
Reaper nodded and led the Kid to the next cross hallway. It was dark down there. He switched on his gunlight and plunged into the corridor leading away from the squadron. Knowing what he was leaving behind.
He was going away from back-up. Away from the Ark—the only means of getting off the planet. Away from his sister.
Away from hope.
Outside Carmack’s lab, Sarge was still giving orders. “Destroyer, you and Portman maintain a perimeter here.”
“He blows the Ark,” Portman pointed out again, “how the hell we supposed to get the fuck home?”
Sarge didn’t answer him directly. But he made himself clear: “Destroyer, that prick”—meaning Portman—“gives you any trouble, shoot him in the knee, we�
��ll leave him here to starve.”
“Roger that,” Destroyer said, calmly. Both of them ignoring the look of shock on Portman’s face. “Where you going?”
“Armory,” Sarge said. “I think we’re going to need something with a little extra kick.”
Sarge jogged down the corridor, rifle ready, finger poised near the trigger—not quite on it. He passed blood blotches on the walls, wires leaking sparks, swaying ends of hoses like mechanical boas, finally skidded to a stop near the darkened dead end he’d been looking for. Panting, he pointed his gunlight into the gloom. Was he lost? He searched the floor…the damn thing was here somewhere…
There it was. The woman’s severed, rotting arm, oozing yellow stuff onto the floor tiles.
This was a weird assignment all right: he was feeling good that he’d found a woman’s severed rotting arm on the floor. Hot damn.
But he needed it to get through the door.
He picked it up, wincing a little as some of the skin sloughed off under his fingers. He set off again, wishing he’d brought along some gloves as he carried the severed limb—holding it awkwardly, to keep it from falling apart in his hands—off down the corridor. Not liking the feeling or the smell of the thing in his hands. But there was no getting away from stench on Olduvai—it seemed like this job was all about being up to your neck in decay. It was always that way—the closer you got to the UAC’s secrets, the more rot you found. He’d long ago stopped caring. He’d learned to isolate all feelings of empathy; compassion. They got in the way of the job.
Probably it was that time on the island. Beautiful, gemlike little place, just far enough north of the equator it didn’t get too hot. No big problem with insects, no sea wasps concealed in the coral. White sand beaches, emerald trees, women the color of honey. Should’ve been paradise.
But the local people hadn’t liked the UAC transmitter base on the island. The base gathered energy from solar receptors and transmitted it in microwave beams into orbit, where it was soaked up to power the UAC’s orbital labs and missile platforms. Only, the thing leaked microwaves, so that people around the transmitter—even passing too close—had a tendency to get brain tumors; children were born with birth defects.
Sarge, shipped to the island to help keep order, had seen all those children with missing jaws; with shriveled limbs.
Some of the local men had formed a militia, surrounded the transmitter base, demanded it be shut down. To keep peace, UAC had temporarily complied—just until the arrival of UAC’s Special Implementation Squadron, led by Lieutenant Brevary and Sarge.
Don’t call it a death squad. Sarge didn’t like that term. Just because they were sent out to locate the leaders of the militia and march them off for execution, sent to shoot anyone who tried to escape into the rain forest, sent to set rebel villages on fire…did that make them a death squad? No. They were trained professionals. They got the mission done, that was all. In short order, the native militia was disbanded—most of it, actually, was buried—and the UAC transmitter was back online. Peace again. And UAC provided free pain meds and euthanasia to the sick inhabitants of that lovely little island. Most of them eventually took the euthanasia. On a routine return to the island, they found hardly anyone still living there. But walking past the mass grave on the south side, Sarge had smelled all those bodies, the militia he’d helped execute, all at once, shallowly buried under the pretty white sand. Animals had dug some of the corpses out. Gulls were getting at them, snipping off pieces of rotting flesh, tossing their heads back to gulp it down.
That’s what a UAC project was like. Pristine on the outside. Even glamorous. Just don’t get too close. Or you’d find out where the bodies were buried…
Maybe even end up carrying a woman’s severed arm down a corridor on Olduvai.
He went through another series of hallways…thinking that this woman’d had no idea a part of her was going to end up being carried by a soldier as just another field tool.
Was this the turn? Yeah. He was starting to get to know this hellhole. There was the sign:
SPECIAL WEAPONS LABORATORY
He went to the door panel, opened the hand print pressure pad.
“Please provide DNA verification.” A friendly woman’s voice, robotic but sounding like a real person anyway. One more in a stacked deck of ironies.
Sarge slapped the hand of the mangled limb against the pressure pad.
No response. Maybe the tissue was too decayed to provide an accurate DNA reading.
But then the invisible nonlady chirped her welcome: “DNA verification confirmed.”
The security door to the weapons lab slid open, and Sarge dropped the decaying limb, wiped his hand on his pants, and went in to find some of that seriously scary balls-out ordnance. He smiled and his fingers twitched; he could almost feel that kill power in his hands already.
He went into the innermost chamber.
Some religions had their holy of holies. This was Sarge’s.
The gun was hanging in a luminous high-intensity electromagnetic cushion, floating in midair—rotating there, as part of the display. A bioforce gun. He’d heard a rumor about the new weapons being developed out here, based on technology discovered on Olduvai—some gabby lab tech returning from this hell planet had shot off his mouth about them. And if the size of that gun was any indication, it was more than enough bioforce to kill an elephant.
That thing could kill a small herd of them.
The question was—would it kill Sarge, too?
Portman and Destroyer were standing guard outside Carmack’s lab. Portman was wondering just what the hell they were guarding. Sometimes Sarge gave them arbitrary assignments just to keep them busy. Maybe that was for morale. But Portman’s own morale was in the dumpster, right about now.
“This is bullshit,” he told Destroyer. “I enlisted to serve my country, not to protect some corporation’s goddamn science project.”
Destroyer ignored him. As per orders.
Portman fidgeted, thinking that if they didn’t get some backup out here, they were all going to die. He’d heard chatter on the comm about what had become of Mac. His head gone, swish, just like that. One second he’s there, thinking about pussy no doubt, next moment he’s a bowling ball. And Mac had been the closest thing Portman had had to a real buddy in this group. Hell he knew these bastards didn’t like him. He tried to prove himself, tried plenty, but that only seemed to make it worse.
Mac had invited him along to chase tail on furlough, one time. They’d ended up alone in a saki bar, only Mac’s .45 keeping the bartender from closing, but it was okay, they were drunk enough they didn’t care—Mac teaching him drinking songs from the homeland. Mac was okay. Now the only guy who’d been anything like friendly was smoked—and his team was pretending it didn’t matter.
Not me, Portman thought. I’m not gonna be the next one to die—and be forgotten in the time it takes to take a short piss. Uh-uh.
Portman made up his mind. But he needed some way to get off by himself…
“I gotta take a dump,” he announced.
Destroyer looked at him. His eyes like chips of flint. “Now?”
“Unless you want me shitting in my pants right here.”
Destroyer snorted and nodded toward the lab door. They’d seen a bathroom off Carmack’s main lab room.
Portman stepped into the lab, pointing his gunlight into the dark corners. Nasty things in here…
But nothing was moving now. Could be, though, that something was waiting in that bathroom.
Come on, he told himself. This is your shot. You won’t get another…Sarge’ll be watching you too close…
He took a deep breath and hurried across the room to the bathroom door. Licked his lips—then stepped through, swinging his gun this way and that, half-expecting an attack. Nothing. Seemed empty.
He kicked open a stall, gun ready—nothing to shoot in there but the toilet.
He went in, closed the booth door, sat down. He put his
gun on the tiled floor.
“Portman,” came Pinky’s voice, crackling out almost immediately on the comm. “I got floor and wall on your vid…”
“Gimme thirty goddamn seconds,” Portman snarled back, “I’m taking a shit!” Though he wasn’t.
Pinky started to say something else, but Portman twiddled the frequency knobs on his comm and chestcam, cutting him off. He pulled out the little input, keyed in a code. Then spoke quietly into the comm:
“This is Subcorporal Dean Portman with RRTS 6 Special Ops on Olduvai, 0310 hours. We have encountered hostile activity, require immediate RRTS reinforcements…”
Ten
DESTROYER WAS GETTING tired of waiting for Portman. But he didn’t feel like going in there and inhaling the gaseous residue of Portman’s meals, either. Portman was a fuckup—but he had a point. This mission had the feel of being a one-way ticket.
Not that Destroyer was going to tell him that.
He hoped the Kid would get out of it all right. Portman was screwing the youngster over by giving him dope—another thing the asshole had to answer for.
Destroyer had come to feel a kind of responsibility for the Kid—he’d taken on the young soldier’s secondary field training himself. The Kid wasn’t particularly good, but he was eager to please. Making Destroyer think of himself at age seventeen…
He was an up-and-coming gangster in the East Side ghetto, sure of himself, feeling immortal, invulnerable—which was of course when he got shot by the cops while robbing a liquor store.
Superficial wound, but it had put him out of the fight, then a grinning white cop had busted his head with a nightstick.
He’d awakened in a hospital, to find himself staring up at a RRTS Field Recruitment Agent standing with arms crossed, at the foot of his bed. This Privatized Marine was all spit and polish, standing there, looking flatly down at the boy known on the street, then, as Steppin’ Razor. The agent was a man blacker than Destroyer, about forty-five. His broad shoulders straining at the material of his dress blues.