“We're with you,” said Garner. He caught up to Jaden and fell into formation, the rest of them doing likewise.
“I just thought of something,” said Adam. “What if it's still alive?”
“It can't be,” Lanei said. “Nothing human could survive a fall like that.”
“But it's not human. And its ship could be better protected for a crash landing than ours are.”
“He's got a point,” An said.
“Look,” said Jaden. “If it's still alive–it won't be, but if it is–we capture it. Star Force knows its language now. We can interrogate it.”
“You can interrogate it,” An said. “After this, I'm going back to the Takarabune and taking a long nap.”
“I didn't mean we personally–”
“There it is!” Lanei said.
Garner saw it, too: a sleek black ruin deposited amongst dusty sand and rock, a flat expanse of land dotted here and there with vegetation. The Copperhead still smoked, a black plume that rose into the dawning sky. The Banshees landed close, and they all climbed out, leaving their flight helmets behind in their planes. For a moment, they all stood staring at the alien ship.
Fault took out his M9 and released the safety. The Beretta M9L71 was a laser pistol born of the old M9 models the military had made a habit of issuing. Garner had never thought he'd need to use his.
As a group, they crept towards the downed craft, pistols ready. When they were close enough to touch the vessel, Garner could discern where the canopy met the body, but the glass was so dingy with smoke that he could only make out a vague shadow in the pilot's seat. One yellow “eye” still burned, but intermittently, making it appear to wink.
He put a hand to the canopy, only to have it resist. He had to reholster his weapon and use both hands, raising the top with a grating squeal. He felt incredibly exposed.
Then the canopy lifted, and they saw what lay inside.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Enas, in an unpopulated area
Smoke poured out of the cockpit—a lot of it—setting Fault to coughing all over again. The six of them had to step back and take a breath, not an easy thing under the circumstances; the whole of the Copperhead still smoldered, an acrid, fuel-infused stink that tore at the throat and seared the lungs. And now added to that was the stench of a burning body—an inhuman one, but a body nonetheless.
“Oh, my god!” Lanei covered her nose, a futile gesture. “I've never smelled anything so foul in my life!”
“I had a buddy once who used to snack on raw garlic,” Adam said. “He'd eat a whole bulb at a time. He smelled about this bad.”
He got several disbelieving looks for that, and backtracked: “Okay, I lied. He didn't smell nearly as rotten as this. I might die.”
“Look,” Jaden said. “The smoke's dissipating. It must have mostly been what got trapped in the cockpit; it's not really that much.”
“Then you go over there.” Fault gave her a little push.
“You're part machine,” An said. “Why don't you go? You probably can't smell it anyway.”
“Oh, right, I forgot—they cut off my nose when they fitted me with mechanical arms!”
Jaden held her hands up for silence. “We all go. Agreed?”
They all nodded and approached the Copperhead again, this time breathing as little as possible as they neared. With one hand over her face, Lanei peered at the alien form sitting inside the Copperhead's cockpit. “Looks like its clothes all burned off,” she said.
Garner nodded. “It's pretty messed up. I can't tell what kind of face it had.”
Fault leaned closer. The skin of the thing had charred black, a greasy residue covered its peeling surface, and in places the flesh had split, allowing yellow fat deposits to leak out. Fault let his eyes wander the length of the carcass. “Can't even tell if it was male or female.”
“It's alien,” Garner said. “You might not be able to tell its sex the same way you can tell a human's.”
“Maybe they reproduce asexually,” An said.
“Or hermaphroditically,” Adam said, “like earthworms.”
“Like I said, if they got sex organs, you can't see 'em.”
“How do you know? Maybe they got burned off.”
“God!”
Lanei shook her head. “Can we please stop talking about how they have sex?”
“Looks like they're about our size,” An said. “Height-wise, anyway.”
“You can't tell that when it's sitting down.”
“You can make an educated guess. Their fighters are about as big as ours, and this cockpit's no smaller than a Banshee's.”
Garner's finger traced the side of the creature's throat. “Look how long its neck is.”
“Y'know, it doesn't smell half bad once you get used to it,” Fault said. “It's like overdone meat.”
“Gross!” Lanei pinched her nose more tightly. “Now I have to go vegetarian!”
“I wonder . . . ,” Garner said quietly, and they all glanced his way. “I wonder if they'd eat us.”
Everyone fell silent at that sobering thought. Then Fault reached inside the cockpit. “Should we take it out?”
“No,” Jaden said. “We'll radio for help, and the Takarabune will send a team of specialists down.”
“Not that they'll be able to figure anything out about it,” Garner said. “The thing's toast.”
Fault turned his attention to the scorched console. An entire array of unfamiliar controls met his gaze, but some things were recognizable to any pilot: a digital display screen, cracked and blank of information; a joy stick; a yoke; various gauges the purpose of which he could imagine based on his own experience, although the aliens might not install a temperature gauge in the same place that humans did, and anyway, the letters and numbers were all unintelligible.
“Think we could figure this thing out?”
“Sure,” Garner said, “if we had enough time. Probably won't be up to us, though.”
“They'll put linguists on the writing,” Lanei said. “They already figured out what the aliens are saying. It should be easy enough for them to figure out a few symbols on a fighter console.”
Fault twisted a large knob, curious, but nothing happened. He jabbed one oversized button, then another. “Hey, how come all these controls are so big?”
An grimaced, thinking. “I don't know. Maybe their hands are big.”
Fault checked, but the appendages had been crisped nearly to nubs. “Can't tell.” He poked another button. The plastic gave at the pressure of his metal finger, and the button lit up. “Hey, this thing's still got some juice!”
They all crowded in closer. “Adam, your elbow's poking into me,” Lanei said.
“That's not my elbow.”
“God, you're such a perv!”
“No, I mean it's not me; it's Garner.”
“Sorry,” Garner said, and shifted.
“Fault, hit something else,” Jaden said. “Let's see if we can figure out what it does.”
He adjusted another dial, and the digital screen winked on for a moment, but he couldn't get it to stay on no matter how far he rotated the knob or what other buttons he pushed. Frustrated and impatient, he began flipping and pressing with both hands until the console lit up like a Christmas tree. A dying Christmas tree, anyway; the lights were sporadic and often weak, and they didn't offer much information.
Then Fault heard something: a series of somewhat high-pitched sounds, garbled and indistinct, coming from the Copperhead's console. He listened for a minute, trying to make it out, then turned to the others. “What the hell is that?”
“Sounds like an animal,” Garner said. “A bird, maybe, or a reptile.”
“It sounds . . . blurry.”
“That's probably because it's been damaged,” Adam said.
“It doesn't make any sense.” Jaden made a puzzled face. “Why would they have animal sounds playing in their fighters?” She shook her head. “Maybe it's music, or—”
/> “It's their language,” An said, as if he'd just recognized it. “I heard some of it before, when—well, never mind.”
Garner eyed him closely. “What did you do?”
A sheepish expression crossed over An's face. “I sort of arranged to have a copy of the alien language . . . uh, liberated from the brass so I could have a listen. I just wanted to hear it, y'know?”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I didn't get a chance. The copy arrived just before we got put on alert for the attack on Enas. I barely had a minute to hear any of it before lights out.”
Fault nodded. If he'd thought of it, he'd have done the same thing. “Wonder what they're sayin'?”
“I know one thing,” Jaden said. “The brass needs to hear this. We've gotta radio the Takarabune so they can get a team down here. An, you and Lanei go back to the Banshees and tell Colonel Lange we've got a downed enemy fighter holding an alien transmission and a corpse. Then get back here and guard this Copperhead. The rest of us will search for human survivors.”
An and Lanei left, and the others sought higher ground for a better vantage point. They found a rise nearby and climbed it cautiously, weapons drawn in case they should spot the enemy instead of any human survivors. Once they'd reached the top of the rise, they laid themselves prone on the rocky ground, and Adam removed a pair of binoculars from a pocket and began scanning the area while Garner, Jaden, and Fault kept an eye out for trouble.
Above them, Fault could make out the brilliant flashes of light that was the continuing battle between the Takarabune and the alien warship, and he wondered if any of them would have a home to return to even if they did find any survivors.
“Over there.” Adam pointed east. “See the smoke behind those trees? You have to adjust for the sun.”
Garner checked. “Could be survivors.”
“Or it could be another grounded enemy craft,” Jaden said. “We'll have to go down for a closer look. We can make it in less than an hour.”
They clambered down the rise and silently hiked the few miles from there to where the column of smoke originated, each of them vigilant for signs of the enemy lurking nearby. Fault walked point, his gaze darting from one potential hiding place to the next, all his senses alert and on overdrive. He was at once disappointed and relieved when aliens failed to pop out of nowhere and begin shooting at them.
God, he was screwed up.
The sand turned to loam beneath their boots as they neared the copse of trees that obscured the lower half of the column of smoke. Here something like grass grew, and then the trees and the understory overtook the landscape. Fault sank into a crouch, signalled the others to do the same. Bushes, saplings, and vines continued to shroud much of the craft, but Fault could still tell what lay beyond the trees.
It was a shuttle from the Abraham Lincoln.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Enas
Garner knelt at Fault's seven and peered over the mech's broad shoulder at the downed shuttle. From here he could see the scarred metal top of the transport, but little else besides more trees and tangled undergrowth. The air reeked of charred metal and fuel; the vehicle had a leak. Smoke rose from the vessel's aft end.
“We need to get closer,” Garner said quietly. Jaden nodded assent, and Fault led them deeper in, stopping behind more trees. A family of vines trailed down from the branches above, offering shelter where the trees did not.
Now Garner could see the whole wreck, or at least those parts the underbrush didn't hide. The shuttle had broken trees and other greenery in its descent, which had consequently slowed its fall. Burned spots marred its surface and exposed inner workings. Leaves, vines, and undergrowth covered it in places, helping to conceal it. The glass of the cockpit, smeared with dirt and sand, revealed two figures, one slumped over the controls, one lying back in the co-pilot's seat. Both had bloody wounds: the back of the pilot's head was matted with gore, and the co-pilot had bashed his forehead on the glass. Whether or not they still breathed Garner could not tell.
He started forward to find out, but Jaden pulled him down, a finger to her lips. She pointed to her ear: Listen.
He did. For a minute, he heard nothing; then came the whisper of someone moving through the brush to their left, coming closer. Garner signed that he was going to check out the sound, and Jaden gave him the go-ahead, then motioned for Adam to go with him.
The Academy had prepared them for various situations in various terrains; they knew how to stay quiet. They stayed low, moving through the brush like animals, as if they had been born in the woods. When they had gone a few yards, Garner, on point, signalled for a halt. They crouched behind a large, mossy fragment of stone and looked cautiously through the draping vines and trees.
At first Garner could only hear them. Their footsteps, heavier than the Star Force soldiers', moved clumsily through the grass and brush, breaking twigs and stomping over leaves and rocks. Then a group of twenty beings came into view.
They were bipeds, standing around human height, with the tallest of them close to six and a half feet. They had long, sinewy necks–the tall one had a neck Garner judged to be an entire foot long–and large, roundish heads with big, round eyes. Their nostrils were small, and they had no discernable noses. Their mouths, beaks really, reminded Garner of a turtle, and every now and then a small, pointed, dark blue tongue darted out to lick the air. Their hands each had three digits, large fingers that tapered at the ends, and which were covered in close-fitting gloves. Their legs and bodies were short for their size, their arms long. Garner thought if they put them down rather than carrying weapons, their hands would hang all the way down to their knees. They had no outer ears, but did have holes in the sides of their heads, where Garner thought ears might normally go; and they had no hair. Their skin was as dry as parchment and wrinkled. He saw some colors: greys, browns, sand-coloured, and a couple of shades of green. The eyes, which had large, round pupils, were blue, amber, red, or gold.
They spoke to one another in high-pitched voices, a garbled sound. They didn't seem to have teeth, or at least none Garner could see, and didn't move their mouths the way humans did: they had no lips. They wore body suits that cut off at the ankle, and flat-soled sandals. Each of them had a different kind of sandal on: the tall one, who had sand-coloured skin and amber eyes, wore a red suit and had lots of straps on its shoes. Most of the others had more simple designs, and most of those wore white, the rest a greyish blue. The tall one, who took the lead, also had on a dark red skull cap with a broad, flat wing in the front. Instead of pockets, they wore utility belts, and these differed between individuals as much as the sandals did, and came in colors that often didn't match the rest of the suit.
“They look like snapping turtles,” Adam said, keeping his voice a bare whisper. One of the aliens looked around as he said it, and they all ducked down behind the stone. Shit. Adam mouthed the word this time, not daring to give voice in case the Snappers could hear them.
When they thought it was safe enough, they raised their heads. The Turtles had made their way to the human shuttle and were inspecting it, their weapons at the ready. Garner raised his laser pistol.
Adam grabbed his arm, shaking his head no. Too many. He pointed to the aliens, then to their own small group of two.
Frustrated, Garner watched as one of the Snappers forced open the shuttle's hatch and stepped inside. Others went in after it, all of them on the alert. When they emerged once more, they had with them survivors of the crash, dirty, battered, some of them broken, but all of them alive.
And all of them chained. They moved painfully, groggily, in the direction the Turtles wanted them to go. The Snappers shoved at them, prodded them with their weapons, even kicked them. Garner gritted his teeth, barely able to restrain himself from opening fire on the bastards. Beside him, he could see his friend's anger in the way Adam looked away from the scene, his mouth a thin line.
Then he saw a familiar face amongst the prisoners, one with a pix
y nose and sage green eyes, and the sight of her froze him solid. She had a gash on one high cheekbone, and a cut on her lower lip. Her left arm hung at an odd angle, and she held it to her body with her other hand, a hand as sooty as her face. Adam, seeing her, gripped Garner's shoulder to keep him from standing up and opening fire.
“Don't do it.” It was Jaden, who had, along with Fault, joined them. He hadn't heard them arrive and could barely hear her speak, the blood was rushing so loudly in his head. Adam put a finger to his lips to silence her whisper, pointed to the aliens, then to his ear. Jaden indicated understanding and leaned in to murmur in Garner's ear. “There are too many innocents. You could hit one of our own.”
He was trembling with the effort not to take action. He looked to Ilana again. The Turtles had moved the prisoners a few yards already, not caring that they had injured amongst them. The tall Snapper shoved a dark-haired woman who walked in front of Ilana, causing the woman to stumble to her knees. Ilana knelt beside her, tried to help her get up. The tall alien snatched up a lock of Ilana's hair and yanked her to her feet, making her cry out. The Turtle gave her already bloody cheek the back of its fist; it made a cracking sound, and Ilana went down.
Garner couldn't take any more. He fired twice in rapid succession, hitting the Snapper's spine, leaving a black, smoldering mark in its shiny red suit. The creature gave a strangled yelp and fell forward.
“Let's do this!” Fault began shooting; but no sooner had he pulled the trigger when the rest of the aliens–all nineteen of them–returned fire, flooding the area with bolts of red death.
“Shit!” Jaden ducked; so did they all, hiding behind the rock and hoping the lasers wouldn't blow a hole in their only form of protection. She glared at Garner. “You happy now?”
“You could've hit someone!” Lanei punched him on the arm.
“Now what?” asked Adam. A laser zoomed past his head, singeing his light brown hair. “Fuck!”
“Now nothing!” Jaden said. “We're stuck here, thanks to Trigger Happy.” She gave him another ferocious scowl.
Colonies Of Earth: Unity War Book 1 Page 7