“You know, somehow this all makes sense. A twentieth century vintage sports car. A Triumph TR7, built in England. A twentieth century sports car, built on a planet on the other side of the galaxy. And because of you, it seems to make some kind of crazy sense,” He laughed, shaking his head, “You were right about the water. I feel like I’m going to throw up any minute. Will I? Will it be worse than that? Will I die here?” he wasn’t laughing anymore, “Or is there some other mystery waiting for me? Some other practical joke hiding behind the rocks or behind some fucking curtain somewhere that you’re going to pull back, laughing, as I stand like a goddamned fool waiting for the audience to start laughing?” he was almost shouting, and he didn’t know why. He stopped and calmed himself, “Alright, Megyn. What happens now?” he asked, “Where do we go from here?”
“We don’t go anywhere.”
“Then what?” he asked, “What happens now.”
“I don’t really know,” Megyn was genuinely phased. She didn’t even look Jack Sloane directly in the eye when she spoke, “I don’t think I can tell you what happens next,” She danced across the rocks towards him, stopping with her sadly smiling face just a few inches from his, “But you do throw up - sorry.”
TWENTY SIX
2195AD - USS Neil Armstrong.
The awe inspiring warship’s weapons were beginning to blaze through Sylvean Harris’ innovative nuclear shield. People were dying, deep inside the bowels off the USS Neil Armstrong. Engineers were choking to death and burning alive as they struggled to contain the damage caused by the Enrilean weapon of war.
The ship’s medical centre was overflowing with wounded and dying. The recreation centre, swimming pool area and sports hall were being used as makeshift triage centres. The cinema room – hastily fashioned into a makeshift morgue – was now a ragged opening into space. The eighty seven dead crewmen stored there now trailed behind the USS Neil Armstrong, lost amongst the fire and debris.
The ship pushed slowly onwards towards the invisible wormhole that would lead the ship away from the Enrilean star system. Its large, railgun peppered structure continued protected the SS Glasgow from the relentless barrage of medium calibre weapons fire from the Devastation. The miniature sun created by Sylvean Harris’ chain of nuclear detonations continued to frustrate the heavier Enrilean weapons.
2195AD - EWS Devastation.
She’d always had quick reflexes, but Marcus was still surprised when Ameena’s assault rifle fired as he raised his own. She was slightly premature. Several of the bullets hammered into the wall to the left of her target. But the last three rounds walked into the Enrilean marine’s left shoulder and through his thin body armour into his right lung and heart. Connah fired a fraction of a second later, nailing the second man who’d appeared round the corner. The black suited alien didn’t seem to even break stride as Connah’s bullets lacerated his throat and face. But he ran full speed into the dull grey corridor, his skull coming apart where Connah’s last bullet had cracked it open.
There were other voices. Heavier footfalls. More men were coming. For a moment, Marcus considered turning back. But to where? There was nowhere else to go. But then he was looking into Vorderman’s eyes again. She was smiling, even if her lips were still.
“Are you ready?”
There were at least four men. They appeared as one, rushing round the corner and slipping in the blood and gore left by their fallen comrades. They barely had time to register the presence of Vorderman and Connah at the end of the corridor before their lives were shredded away from them by the hail of bullets fired from the deadly accurate, lethal compact assault rifles. As the bodies crumpled – their energized dashes suddenly transformed to slow motion dances of death – Connah counted five men. Five twitching corpses. Dark haired, olive skinned. Their dead, staring eyes no different to any man's he'd seen before.
A weapon discharged in the pile of bodies. Some kind of energy weapon that generated a pulse of heat. The invisible eruption of power ignited the uniform of one of the dead men. Flames appeared from the black, skin-tight material. As Connah got closer he could see that the weapon had burned the soldier's forearm to a smoking, disgusting smelling crispy mess.
“I have maybe ninety bullets left,” Ameena was right beside him, dangerously close, “Do we take the guns?”
There were more voices. Far away. Echoes. Faint echoes. The aft part of the Devastation was a remote and deserted part of the ship, Marcus realised. He couldn't possibly have known that Neil Armstrong's railgun attacks had disrupted the Devastation's shaky at best inter ship communications systems. He couldn't know that the command centre of the ship still didn't know what was happening at the furthest part of the ship. He couldn't know that they had a chance. A slim, wafer thin slice of luck. Just a tiny morsel of fate's sparkling fortune. A chance to save the Neil Armstrong.
He picked up one of the dead soldiers' weapons with care. The voices were getting closer and louder. They were confused. They were angry. But the fear in the pitch and tone of the shouting and barking was quite obvious. Connah found the pistol grip of the Enrilean blaster Mark eighty nine. The weapon was much lighter than his Heckler and Koch, but the grip felt similar. There was a shiny metal trigger where his HK's black composite metal / plastic trigger was positioned. He raised the 87 with his left hand and aimed it towards the opposite wall. He angled the blaster carefully, just in case the energy would somehow reflect back off the wall towards Vorderman or himself. Then he pressed the trigger slowly and quite deliberately. For some reason, he had his eyes locked to hers as he did all this.
The 87 didn't have any kind of recoil. The weapon merely trebled, slightly, as the capacitors positioned above the pistol grip threw their stored energy down the four accelerator tubes mounted in the barrel section. The energy blast was almost invisible, but not quite. Connah could see the air shimmering as the light passed through the superheated corridor suddenly created in the two metres between himself and the wall. The wall itself suddenly glowed red hot in a small circle, the coating blackening around the four inch circle of intense heat and catching fire. The red glow disappeared almost immediately, but the flames took two seconds to disappear. Connah hadn't stopped looking at Vorderman and she hadn't blinked even the once.
“Yes, I think we should take these with us Lieutenant,” he said.
The voices were getting louder. Connah's eyes were dark. He might have been smiling, somewhere deep inside. She couldn't be sure. But it seemed that he was. Some part of him was enjoying this – even if almost every part of her just wanted it to be over.
He handed her the 87 and took another for himself. The Enrileans were coming closer, but they were disorganised and confused. He balanced the 87 in his left hand and the HK in his right, thumbing the HK's mode selector to semi-automatic. He knew that, one handed, the bullet gun's barrel would rise during fully automatic fire. He didn't want that. He wanted to do as much damage as he could.
They started to move towards the door. Without warning, a small, black object appeared. Tossed from an unseen foe hiding behind the door, the oversized hockey puck rolled towards the two terrans. Just as Connah realised what it had to be, the bomb exploded.
The flash grenade blinded Vorderman and blew out Connah's left eardrum. He screamed a soundless, sudden squeal and raised his left arm to shield his ruined ear. The Enrileans stormed around the corner, guns blazing before them like flickering blowtorches. He fired both weapons instinctively, invisible blasts of hot energy instantly scorching and burning and killing some of the Enrileans and hot, explosive tipped composite bullets tearing into the men a fraction of a second later. The six Enrileans fared better than their comrades. Only two of them were immediately killed by Connah's gunfire. The others continued to fire their energy weapons as they rushed through the narrow opening.
Connah's second burst killed another of the charging aliens, but one of the Enrileans scored a hit on the energy weapon in his left hand. His left hand opened involunt
arily and dropped the energy rifle as it flamed out with a loud sparkle of blue green energy. The Heckler and Koch continued to fire in his right hand, striking another of the soldiers in his right arm and chest. The man fell to the right, tripping one of his comrades as the energy weapon in his hands blasted into the ground. Connah felt a bullet tear into and through his thigh, missing bone and barely grazing the muscle there. The burning sensation barely registered as Connah concentrated on targeting the last Enrilean. He was close enough that Marcus could see the rage in his narrowed, dark brown eyes and the yellowed teeth bared in an open mouthed snarl. Ameena was screaming for some reason. Then Connah fired again – just as a bullet from nowhere punctured his cheek and passed through the back of his neck, taking the tops off the bicuspid teeth and tearing the molars out of the right side of his mouth. The pain was exquisite, like a single pinpoint of ice cold agony in the corner of his mouth. The bullet has missed his spine by about four millimetres, cutting a ragged edge to the top part of his trapezius muscle. But Marcus Connah had killed yet again and his bullets had all but severed the head of the last Enrilean soldier. His body tumbled over the wreckage of his comrades. Connah expected the man's head to detach completely, but it somehow managed to stay attached to his body by a few flimsy strands of muscle and sinew. The pile of bodies twitched and squirted as Connah turned to Vorderman.
He wasn't sure when she'd stopped screaming. But her fierce, wild eyed expression with snarling teeth and her bloody, red raw cheek made her seem that she somehow continued to cry out in rage. She was staring, unblinking, at the hatchway some eight metres away. The Enrilean type 87 was in her left hand, aimed unwavering at the hole in the metal wall. The entire left sleeve of her uniform was gone, burned away by a near miss from the attacking aliens. Her shoulder was burned and blackened. The skin smoked, but her arm did not waver and the horrendous Enrilean weapon stayed aimed at the blackness.
“We killed them all,” he tried to say. The words didn't sound right coming out of his ruined mouth. He tried to explore the damage with his tongue, but he realised that there wasn't much left of that either, “Shit,” he mumbled, spitting out another tooth and another mouthful of blood.
She turned her head. Her left eye, he realised, was completely red now. He didn't know what that meant. Was she haemorrhaging at the back of the eyeball? Was she dying?
Of course she's dying. We're both fucking dead already! Now get on with this thing!
“Can you fight?” she asked, hardly even looking at him.
He inhaled slowly, watching her lips tremble. She was in incredible pain, he realised. The radiation from the fuel storage room was destroying her red blood cells. In less than a day she would be dead – whether they made it back to the Armstrong or not. He'd also received enough radiation to end his life in less than a week. But he was bleeding to death now from the back of his neck. In twenty minutes he'd lose consciousness and then, within minutes, he'd die.
He nodded back, no longer trusting his mouth to make sounds that were of any use. Vorderman didn’t nod back. She didn’t make a movement of any kind. Her eyes continued to burn. The skin on her shoulder continued to smoulder. She seemed oblivious to it, but of course he knew that she had to be in agony. He wondered how long it would go on for. He was surprised they’d lasted this long.
At this moment, the Connah’s damaged type 87 exploded. There was a sudden, high pitched whine. Then a loud, throbbing buzz made the metal walls vibrate for a half second. Connah began to turn as the capacitors gave up their hold on the stored energy and, with a bright flash of light, filled the corridor with fire, lightning and debris. Marcus felt tiny parts of the weapon hitting his back, sending a cold wave across his body as the white hot fragments burned into his flesh.
They moved towards the open door, sidestepping the mess of bodies in front of the larger metal hatch. There were no new voices. No sounds at all besides a sucking noise from one of the bodies. He glanced down to see a pair of confused, blue eyes staring at him in terror. The soldier’s mouth was moving. Opening to speak or perhaps plead for mercy. Vorderman fired her HK point blank into the face.
There were no other survivors.
Connah and Vorderman reached the open doorway. He didn’t hesitate and peered into the darkness, again using the carbine’s multipurpose scope. It took him two seconds to take in the scene. The pain in his jaw was starting to reach an Devastation. He didn’t know if he could take it without screaming. It was building, like a murderous toothache, from the front of his jaw to the back of his neck. He very much doubted that he could move his mouth very much at all now even if he wanted to speak. He looked at Vorderman. It took too long for him to turn his head. She stared back at him, nodding only. Then they went through the heavier, solid metal door.
The darkness was almost complete, but red emergency lighting gave enough detail to the scene. It was a decontamination centre, Connah realised. There was a large, silver pole in the centre of the room with six shower heads jutting outwards. The left right wall was mirrored. Beneath the large mirror there were three disposal chutes marked with an unmistakable flame symbol. On the right of each chute were large green and red buttons. On the other wall there were devices Connah couldn’t recognise. There were grey handled brushes scattered around the stained, white floor. The room did not like it had seen use for a long time. There were no traces of water on the floor and every surface seemed to have a thin layer of dust.
Connah touched the glass lightly, wiping a clean streak in the dust. He could see his own reflection in the mirror. The light concealed most of the damage to his face, but he could still see the blood soaking the collar of his uniform. There were ribbons of skin and flesh flapping beneath his right ear. He turned his head a little to get a better look. Something made him stop in his tracks. It was Ameena's face, right behind him. And she was opening her mouth to warn him. He somehow knew what she was going to say. He looked at the mirrored glass, trying to see through it. But he didn't need to.
“Get down!” he shouted.
He started to turn, crouching down and throwing his body against his computer information officer at the same time. He'd barely started to move when the mirror shattered. Automatic weapons were firing. The sound was deafening, but it was a good sign. It meant that he was still alive. Fragments of the mirror were flying all around him. Sudden, bright lights were shining through the now empty hole in the wall. But this time there were no voices. No shouts or cries of anger, fear or confusion. This was an organised attack.
The spray of bullets continued. Connah had his back to the wall and the bullets were flying over his head. Vorderman was on her hands and knees. Blood was trickling down her cheek. He stared just for a moment, then realised that there was a door on the far side of the room. And it was slowly opening. Ameena was falling forward. Her arms seemed unable to take her weight. The door was almost fully open. The gunfire continued to rain over his head, keeping him pinned down with his back against the wall. Ameena’s left cheek was flattened out on the floor, the palm of her left hand pushing hard against it. Her right arm stretched towards Connah, as if she was moving in slow motion. She was pushing the Enrilean energy weapon towards him. He grabbed it by the barrel, which was almost too hot to touch. Ameena was still staring at him, her right eye saying so many things all at the same time. Fear, regret, pain and sorrow. And something almost – and insanely – like joy. Not much remained of her right ear. The bullet that was killing her had entered beneath her chin and had left a four inch hole in the back of her head. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but only a thin stream of bright red blood poured out.
The decontamination room door jerked open. A stun grenade was tossed through. Connah opened fire instinctively, cutting the little black puck in half within a third of a second of it appearing. Two Enrilean soldiers followed, but Connah was ready and his deadly accurate fire tore both men apart.
A third, unseen, soldier remained inside the doorway. Connah saw the barrel of an
energy weapon aim in his direction. He rolled to the left as the weapon discharged. The energy splashed harmlessly against the wall. Above him, the automatic weapons had stopped firing. Now, there were voices. He fired the HK empty towards the open doorway, killing the Enrilean crouched in the darkness there.
“Abomination!”
Connah whirled round. The barrel of an automatic weapon was aiming straight at his face, inches away from his nose. He moved fast, instinct taking over again. The weapon fired, but the bullets whizzed past his right ear. Then he was shoulder charging the six foot, blonde haired and blue green eyed alien. The Enrilean’s weapon continued to fire as Connah’s rage crushed three of the man’s ribs. Two more aliens were climbing over the smashed glass. Connah kept pushing green eyes backwards, not seeing the men behind him who now raised their weapons to fire.
Marcus slammed Green eyes’ pale skinned face into one of the waste disposal chutes. The Enrilean kept hold of his weapon, his finger still squeezing the trigger madly even though the weapon had emptied its magazine of bullets. Connah’s shoulder crushed the alien’s collarbone as his fist hammered down against the alien’s windpipe. Green eyes was already dead as Connah slammed the knife edge of his left hand under the man’s chin. The trembling open mouth slammed shut, slicing off the tip of the alien’s tongue. A strangled, gurgling came from the Enrilean’s throat as he collapsed to the floor.
Sudden blotches of red appeared on the dead man’s cheeks. Connah felt the energy weapon in his left hand struck by something. Behind him, automatic weapons were firing. The bullets ripped into his left shoulder and back, tearing through the protective mesh of his uniform. The splashes of blood were caused by the exit wounds. Three large, smouldering holes had appeared in Marcus’ chest. And now he felt the pain. A sudden explosion of agony that made his eyes almost burst out of his head. Too much pain to even scream or cry or gasp or do anything but writhe in agony. But the Enrilean energy weapon was still in his left hand, somehow. It sparkled, burning. Ready to explode. In his eternal agony of blinding, unbearable pain - Marcus prayed that it would. He closed his eyes tightly shut, wishing for the gun to detonate. The alien energy weapon, flaming now, burned through his uniform and his skin. More bullets tore into him, shattering the right side of his pelvis and blowing one of his kidneys out through his stomach along with darks blobs of liver and pinkish white shreds that had once belonged to the lower part of his right lung. Another bullet had struck the back of his head, tearing the right occipital lobe out of his brain as neatly as it might have been scooped out by a surgeon.
Beyond the Starport Adventure (Bullet Book 1) Page 49