Blood Contact

by David Sherman

  Suddenly, one of the skinks looked in his direction. Before Bass could pull his head back from the tunnel intersection, the others jerked their eyes toward him.

  What's going on? he asked himself. Can they see in the infrared? There was a barked shout, then a sharp whisp. Hearing it, Bass had a vision of the skinks drawing their swords.

  "Shields up, there's going to be fire," he said rapidly into the platoon circuit.

  Nineteen Marines and the corpsman, plus Baccacio and Minerva, were crowded into the tiny chamber. They had no room to move. If the skinks managed to fire an acid thrower into it, they'd have mass casualties. If the Marines fired, plasma would be bouncing everywhere, flashing the skinks and frying some Marines as well.

  There was no room for Bass to back up. Marines were crowded even at his feet, waiting for him to move on so they could leave the entry chamber. But he couldn't leave, and footsteps were coming toward him. He heard a few growled words—whoever was coming was calling to the dead guard.

  He had no time, he had no choice. If he waited for the skink to come closer, he was dead and so were his Marines. Bringing his blaster to bear, Bass braced his feet against the sides of the tunnel and pushed forward until his head and shoulders were in the connecting tunnel.

  A skink, bent slightly under the low roof of the tunnel and holding a sword, was scuttling toward him. Bass pressed the firing lever, and a wave of heat from the skink-flash washed over him. In the glare he glimpsed skinks pulling back, trying to get away from the fire.

  Footsteps raced at him from the other direction and a guttural voice cried, "Bungee! " Bass started to twist around, but knew the charging skink was too close and he was about to be sprayed by an acid gun or chopped by a sword.

  A body thudded into his side and he heard the sharp crackle of a hand-blaster next to his head, followed by a wave of heat washing over him from the right. When he twisted around, he saw Baccacio laying next to him in the tunnel intersection.

  "You told me to stick close to you," Baccacio said, then looked back down the right-side tunnel as Bass looked to the left.

  "Tunnel's clear," Baccacio said.

  "So's mine," Bass said. Where the skink had vaporized, the walls were singed and small flames licked at the matting. He switched back to the platoon circuit. "No one's in sight now. Squad leaders, each of you assign one man to stay with the doc. First squad, follow me, we're going down the left tunnel. Staff Sergeant Hyakowa, take second squad down the right tunnel. Everybody keep your shields up, when we fire, there'll be plasma bouncing all over the place, and we don't need any casualties from friendly fire."

  "What about the dead skink?" Hyakowa asked.

  "Leave it with Doc Horner. We'll get it out later. Now let's do it!"

  He scrambled the rest of the way out of the tunnel then ducked low and darted into the room with the low table. As he raced through the room he saw a small skink huddled against a side wall. He flamed the skink before he noticed it was one of the females. He came up against the far wall and flattened himself against it, taking in everything in the room. Baccacio flattened himself against the wall a couple of meters away.

  The room was bigger than the entry chamber, about five meters deep and a bit wider. Pillars shored up the ceiling. Woven mats covered the floor. The walls and ceiling had the same covering as the tunnels and were springy to the touch. Bass guessed the covering kept the walls from crumbling, and maybe provided structural support to the tunnels and chambers as well. The room's furnishings were spare. Low cushions surrounded the table. Four smaller, flimsy-looking tables with vegetation displays on them flanked dark tunnel mouths on the side walls. He briefly lowered his infra screen and saw first squad still in the tunnel.

  He looked at the tunnels leading from the room. Did he dare split the squad and go both ways? He raised a hand and let his sleeve slide down so his men could see his hand signal. Stay put, he signaled, then dropped his sleeve back into place. He padded to one exit and listened. He heard a slow, echoing drip, as if the exit opened into a great, empty cavern. Staying close to the wall, he padded to the other end of the room. There the sound was tight, as though the tunnel squeezed shut just where the light ended. Still, he heard intermittent whispers, rustles of cloth, a barely audible metallic clink. He bared his arm, signaled "This way," then stepped into the dark tunnel and slid the light amplifier screen into place.

  Immediately he could see that the tunnel continued for ten meters or more. Two other tunnels branched from each side before the main tunnel opened into another room. There was no one in that room. The branching tunnels would be tricky; they faced each other across the main one. He stopped just short of the first pair and looked back. Baccacio was right behind him and signaled that he'd check one while Bass checked the other. Bass shook him off. Baccacio was visible, since he wasn't wearing chameleons. "Schultz up," he said into the squad circuit, then looked at a blank place on the wall so he could spot Schultz's movement in his peripheral vision. Using touches, he told Schultz to check one side while he checked the other. He felt Schultz's tap acknowledging the instructions.

  The two Marines lowered themselves to the matted floor and peered around the corners. The two "tunnels" were just entryways only a meter long, shorter than they were high or wide, which opened into empty rooms. Bass lifted into a crouch and bolted into his room, spinning around as he entered it so he could command the whole space quickly. Low platforms lined the room; probably beds, he thought. A chest-high shelf that ran around the walls above the platforms held what looked like personal objects. It was an unoccupied barracks room. Without disturbing anything, he returned to the tunnel. Schultz had found the same in his chamber. The two eased along the tunnel and checked the next two side tunnels the same way, with the same discoveries. The room at the end of the tunnel had a higher ceiling than the others they'd seen, nearly two meters. Its furnishings were larger versions of the platforms in the smaller barracks rooms.

  Bass was deciding what to do next when Schultz hit him hard enough to send him flying back into the tunnel. A stream of acid splatted against the wall near where he'd been standing. Almost simultaneously, Schultz fired his blaster and the other tunnel flashed with the brilliance of a skink vaporizing.

  Schultz raced across the chamber, dove onto the oversize platform next to the tunnel and angled his blaster to fire into it. He sprayed several bolts into the tunnel and was rewarded by an answering flash as another skink flared into oblivion. The rest of the squad ran in behind him and took up positions that would allow them to fire at the tunnel without hitting each other.

  Second fire team formed the squad's rear point. Corporal Pasquin stationed Godenov in one of the barracks room entrances and himself opposite it to watch the rear. He put Dean just inside the main tunnel to link between them and the rest of the squad.

  Godenov's position let him see a moving shadow in the room with the table. "Heads up, someone's coming," he said into the fire team circuit. He took aim down the tunnel; so did Pasquin. Dean ducked into the larger barracks room and took cover behind a corner before edging far enough out to look back where they'd come from. More shadows shifted in Godenov's vision.

  "Are you sure?" Pasquin asked over the fire team net; he couldn't see anything from where he was.

  "Moving shadows," Godenov answered.

  "Izzy sees shadows behind us," Pasquin reported on the squad circuit.

  "Keep everybody in place," Bass ordered Sergeant Ratliff, then ran to the other corner of the main entrance, opposite Dean.

  "Who sees anything?" he asked.

  "I saw a shadow move," Dean said. "Can't swear it's a skink, but the lights in that room were steady when we were there."

  Bass grunted. Dean was right about the steady light. It was very possible someone had come out of the other exit from that room. Or someone might be coming from the tunnel Hyakowa had taken second squad down. He decided to check with them.

  "Lander Five, this is Six," he said into the command
circuit. He wasn't surprised when only static answered him; the radios couldn't transmit very far underground. He had no way of knowing how second squad was doing, or of calling them for assistance.

  He thought a shadow humped briefly along the floor and asked Godenov, "Did you see that?"

  "Yeah. Someone's getting closer."

  "Recon," Pasquin murmured as he slipped out of his niche. "Silent, invisible, deadly." It was the motto of Force Recon. Pasquin crawled along the tunnel to the next barracks room.

  Bass wanted to call him back, but he didn't; they needed to know what was making the shadows move.

  "I see three skinks," Pasquin reported. "Two of them are carrying acid guns. They look like they're getting ready to make a rush."

  Before Bass could tell him to stay low and not fire unless he was discovered, Pasquin said, "Oh, shit," and flamed one of the skinks. It flared up. The three of them were so close together it ignited the other two. Their combined heat was great enough to explode the acid canister of the one he shot. Globules and droplets of greenish fluid sprayed all around the room and into the tunnel.

  "I think they knew I was here," Pasquin reported, his voice shaky. "One of them pointed its weapon at me."

  "Anybody else in there?"

  Pasquin gave a nervous laugh. "I don't think so. That acid sprayed around too much when the tank went off. Anyone else in there had to be hit by it." As he spoke he was drawing his knife to dig out a globule of acid that was eating its way to the bone of his left arm. He glanced quickly into the tabled room. His nose was assailed by a sharp odor, and the floor was coated with a film of green. He didn't think he'd be able to safely cross the room to get back to the entry chamber for Doc Horner to see to his injury.

  "Unless they've got some way of protecting themselves, nobody's following us from that direction until the acid neutralizes." Smoke was beginning to waft from the walls near the vaporized skinks.

  Bass, unaware that he had a casualty, rolled over to look the other way. The only threat he saw was his own Marines. "Hammer?"

  "Let's go get 'em," Schultz snarled. He'd heard Pasquin's report. If they didn't have to worry about their rear, they could move faster. He assumed the skinks had a bolt hole and were headed for it, so the Marines had to move fast.

  "Move it out," Bass said. He hurried into position behind Schultz, in front of third fire team.

  Second fire team continued to bring up the rear. Pasquin was the last man in the column. He was walking backward, watching the rear—he didn't want anyone to see him working on his wound, didn't want anyone to know he'd been hit. He grimaced when he looked at the wound, where flesh was bubbling and fizzing into a viscous liquid. It drained when he tipped his arm to let it run and there was almost no blood; the acid effectively cauterized the walls of the wound. The pain was decreasing; he figured the acid was destroying nerve endings. He wondered if cutting away the flesh at the sides of the wound would get rid of the acid more effectively than simply digging out the green fluid.

  The tunnel beyond the room with the high ceiling had no openings off it. It quickly turned left, then right again after a few meters, then right again, then sloped sharply down. From the top it looked like it leveled off when it reached a depth below the floor of the tunnel they were in. Bass wondered why it wasn't filled with water; it had to be far below the water table. He touched the side of the tunnel. The woven covering resisted the pressure of his fingers. He guessed it had an impermeable layer under it to keep out water. He wondered if that tunnel began as a natural formation like the rest of the complex or if the skinks had dug it, then he discarded the thought as immaterial.

  The tunnel leveled out for several meters and began to rise. Second squad was coming down the other slope.

  "You're positive you didn't overlook a passageway they could have gone down?" Bass asked Hyakowa after getting his report. They had their screens up so they could see each other's faces.

  "Damn right I'm positive. Are you sure you didn't miss any?" There was a touch of heat in Hyakowa's voice. "Besides, they were in front of us the whole time."

  "Only the one going in the opposite direction." Bass knew Hyakowa wouldn't miss anything. He hunkered back on his heels, wondering where the skinks could have gone. He had climbed the other slope and held a squad leaders' meeting to bring all four leaders up to date on everything. Both squads had followed skinks, both squads had been shot at, and both had killed skinks. No casualties—Bass still didn't know about Pasquin. The complex was roughly circular, with a continuous tunnel cutting through some rooms, and other rooms branching off it. The only place they hadn't checked was the tunnel off the tabled room, and that was in the opposite direction from where the skinks had gone. So where were the skinks they'd both followed?

  "Teleportation?" Bladon asked.

  "What?"

  "They seem to have something superior to a Beam drive. They seem to be able to detect us even in our chameleons.

  They've got guns that fire an acid our med-sci team says can't exist. They've got both lungs and gills. Why not teleportation?"

  Bass looked at Ratliff. "When this is over I want you and Sergeant Kelly to straighten him out. Teleportation smacks too much of the occult." Still, he wondered if Bladon could be right. Teleportation, no matter how wild the idea was, sounded like the only explanation.

  "Nah," Bladon said. "Forget about teleportation. None of us saw anything that could be a transponder station."

  Bass glared at Bladon, wondering if he could get away with slugging him.

  A shout from the bottom of the tunnel snapped him back. "What is it?" he called back, already on his feet and heading down.

  Goudanis was at the bottom of the tunnel looking at a spot low on the wall. Bass looked at it and didn't see anything to catch his attention; it was simply the same weaving that covered the rest of the interior of the complex.

  "Listen," Goudanis said, and smacked the palm of his hand against the wall near the top. Then he hit the wall near the floor. The top of the wall sounded solid, the bottom gave a dull thump—it sounded hollow.

  "How...?"

  Goudanis shrugged. "When I was a kid, I was fascinated by medieval history. I remembered reading stories with castles that had secret passageways—with doors so cleverly hidden you couldn't see them even when you knew where they were. We should have caught the skinks in a pincer, but they weren't here. They had to go somewhere. Why not a hidden passage?"

  Bass looked at him with admiration. "I knew promoting you was a good idea." He squatted down and used his magnifier screen to look at the wall. After a moment he noticed a faint break in the weave. He traced it around. It made a near-perfect circle that began more than half a meter above the floor and overlapped the floor. Even though he probed, he couldn't find a latch or hinge.

  "It's just big enough to let one of the big skinks through," he said.

  Bass called Hyakowa and the squad leaders down to see what Goudanis had discovered. He marked the circle with a stylus so it was clearly visible, then told them, "Everybody on the upper level. I want one man from each squad in a position to see this. On my signal they're to flame it, then back off. We don't know what's on the other side, so it's important for them to get out of the way as soon as they fire. Got it?"

  They all nodded.

  "Do it."

  A couple of minutes later everyone was on the upper level. Schultz was halfway down on one side, Kerr on the other. Both were far enough upslope that they couldn't see each other. It was Kerr's responsibility to tell Schultz when to fire. "Ready, Hammer?" Kerr asked.

  "Always," Schultz growled.

  "On three. One, two, three!" They fired simultaneously and leaped up the tunnel, out of the way of whatever might happen next.

  At first there were just a few crackles as the weaving around the hidden doorway burned.

  "Take a look," Bass ordered.

  Schultz went headfirst, down far enough to see the hidden doorway. "It's gone," he reported. He sta
yed in place, blaster to his shoulder, ready to flame anything that emerged. "I see smoke."

  They heard a snapping and crackling and tensed, ready for action.

  "It's burning," Schultz said after they listened to the sounds for a moment.

  "What?" Bass asked.

  "Where we blasted it. The matting's burning." He paused. "So's the dirt behind it."

  Bass dropped to his belly and slid down to see for himself. Small flames flickered around the edges of the burnt matting. Tendrils of smoke drifted up from the flames and began easing up the ceiling of the tunnel.

  Bass swore. The smoke would rise and drive the Marines out of the underground complex, but would leave the skinks untouched, wherever they were. Then something about the burning dirt caught his eye and he used his magnifier and light amplifier. He'd been right about the walls of the lower tunnel being permeated with a waterproofer. Water was beginning to seep through the walls where they were scorched by the plasma bolts. He saw something else as well—a dense smoke was dribbling from around the charred area where tiny flames flickered, smoke dense enough to sink rather than rise. The waterproofer was volatile and could burn.

  "You see what I see inside?"

  Schultz grunted.

  "Come on." Bass slithered down to the opening. Schultz passed him on the way down and already had his blaster aimed into the hidden passageway when Bass reached it. This tunnel led down at an acute angle and seemed to widen at the bottom. Is there a room down there? Bass wondered. Is that where they are? The heavy smoke was spreading and thinning along the widened area. He heard a muffled cough.

  "Let's scorch the walls," he whispered. "Don't hit them directly, I don't want to go far enough into the walls to start the water coming through, just get the waterproofer burning."

  "Good," Schultz said. He readied his blaster to give the wall a grazing shot and waited for Bass's command.