Lara looked at the team members and sighed. “I’m sure it’s nothing important, so don’t worry. And other than that—” She frowned, searching for anything she’d left out.
Ellis. God, she’d been so wrapped up in her anger she’d almost forgotten him. She addressed Jess more than the others, knowing that he’d pick up on her intention.
“—other than that, keep an eye out for Ellis, would you?”
Jess nodded slowly, his dark eyes sharp and comprehending. Lara had just asked him to take care of the neophyte technician, and Jess had agreed; Ellis wouldn’t be left to figure out everything by himself.
“That’s it, then. Let’s get moving, people,” said Pop, and Lara felt a wave of disgust crash over her; she’d let him inside of her, this bluff and false shell of a man who respected her even less than he respected his “boys.”
The team started out of briefing, and although she usually stayed behind to confer with the commander, Lara followed them. She was going to have to spend at least an hour or two alone with Pop when the shuttle departed for the station, but she’d avoid it as long as possible.
As the team split up to go to their tasks, Lara thought about telling Jess the situation but decided against it. He’d have enough on his mind without hearing about Pop’s instability; she’d tell him when they returned.
If they returned. Lara hurried to ops, hoping that the growing knot in her belly was from simple lack of sleep but knowing better.
* * *
Teape was afraid, but not of death. The Voice had been at him for too long to be scared of the Big Sleep—at least there wouldn’t be any dreams, and that wasn’t so bad. It was the dying that worried him, the fear that it would be a face-hugger that took him out; endless days of pain and terror, webbed into hell, only the sounds of the insane to keep him company…
He sat in the open doorway of the drop-ship, watching Ellis and Jess load up the Max. The soft echoes of metal against metal in the cold dock were somehow soothing, calling up faint memories of his childhood—dozing on his mother’s bed when she’d have a party, the distant sounds of laughter and conversation lulling him safely into deeper sleep.
A heavy hand fell across his back and then Pulaski was sitting beside him, chewing something that smelled like sweetened coconut.
“How ya doin’, Teepee?” Pulaski swallowed, his voice sticky and garbled through his sugarcoated throat. Strangely enough, he wasn’t smiling, his broad face unusually somber.
“Okay, Candyman. It’s not such a bad day to die, I guess.”
He expected the giant to argue with him, but Pulaski didn’t say anything. He started rummaging through his belt and came up with two wrapped bars, offering one to Teape.
“Here,” he said, “’s your favorite. Almond.”
Teape took the gift, oddly touched that his big, dumb friend had remembered. “Thanks.”
They both unwrapped the brightly colored wrappers and ate silently as Jess and Ellis finished with Max. Jess was talking to the nervous-looking tech now, his voice low and soothing in contrast to Ellis’s anxious stammer. The almond bar tasted sweet and fine, and Teape was again reminded of his youth, long days of summer when he and his friends would pool their money to splurge on junk food. They’d hike to the small store a klick from his mother’s house, arriving home sunburned and sticky with chocolate…
He thought about the Voice that had haunted him for so long, gone since Pop had given them the news. Not silent, gone; he wasn’t insane, or at least he didn’t think so—which could only mean that this was it, the day when Wesley Teape ceased to exist. The Voice had fled like a rat deserting a sinking ship, and for that, Teape was grateful.
“You’re a smart guy, Teepee. Like really smart, right?”
Teape shrugged. “Maybe not. I signed up for this job.”
Pulaski continued as if he hadn’t heard. “So whatdaya think happens after you die?”
Teape looked over at Pulaski, surprised, but the big man was watching Jess and Ellis intently; and although his tone was light, Teape could see that the answer mattered to him. He chose his words carefully.
“I don’t really know, Candyman. I think it’s probably different for different people. For me, I think it’s gonna be a long, long sleep. Peaceful.”
Pulaski finally looked at him, frowning, and Teape saw something like desperation in his eyes. “What about for a guy like me?”
Teape smiled. “You ever hear of Vikings?”
Pulaski shook his head.
“An ancient culture on Earth, long time ago. They were like you, big warriors, loved to fight. They believed that when a man died, he got to go to this huge battle in the afterlife—he’d get to fight and kill his opponents all day long, real bloody. And at night, everyone got up, totally healed, and went to a big hall where they’d have a big feast and get drunk, and tell stories about kicking ass. Next day, same thing. Every day, forever.”
Pulaski was grinning, and Teape could see that he’d said the right thing. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“That’s—that’s fuckin’ right on,” Pulaski blurted, and then stuffed the last bite of candy in his mouth, chewing enthusiastically, nodding.
Teape would have laughed if he hadn’t been so tired, and he was suddenly aware that some of his fear was gone. They were all going to die, ripped to shreds by a nightmare breed on a stinking-dead terminal in deep space—
—but at least we have somewhere to go when it’s over…
Teape finished his own candy, smiling, deciding that maybe he was crazy after all.
Jess and Ellis walked over, the team leader looking between the two grinning men uncertainly. “You boys ready to get this over with?”
Pulaski stood up and slapped the young tech on the arm, hard enough to make Ellis stumble. “Gonna do it to it!”
Teape got up also, his good humor fading a little as he realized it was time. Jess studied his face, and Teape could see concern and regard in his dark features.
“You with us, Teape?”
“Nowhere else to be,” he replied, sorry that Jess was going to die, too; he hoped that their leader would be ready when the darkness welcomed them all.
Jess smiled and they all climbed aboard, waiting for Pop to send them into the heat.
16
Ellis held a pulse rifle in one hand and Max’s control box in the other, watching as the team readied themselves for battle in the cool red shadows of the midsize docking bay. The body armor he wore was too big for him, and the gun felt foreign in his grip, heavy and awkward. He had only ever gone shooting once, back in college, and that had been with a .22 target rifle. He and his roommate had spent an afternoon plinking away at empty cans in a rock quarry, and he’d discovered that he was a terrible shot. Not so reassuring at the moment; he tried to convince himself that he wouldn’t have to use it.
They had docked near the station’s biodome, a tropical; according to Jess, it was as close as they could get to the main bay, the one where the nest probably was. There were three corridors, a flight of stairs, and several large equipment rooms between their bay and the one where Max would be fired; the team would have to clear and secure each area before he and Max could follow.
Ellis swallowed hard, wishing again that he’d gone to the bathroom before they had left Nemesis. His contract specifically stipulated a noncombat role, and technically, he wouldn’t be involved in any of the fighting—
—so what am I doing with an M41, wearing a splash suit?
Precautionary measures and Company standards, Jess had assured him. Ellis watched Teape switch on the main tracker, a handheld box that was bigger and more accurate than the standard armor models. Jess had helped Pulaski fit himself into a smart-gun rig and was now crouched in front of him, making an adjustment to the mechanical arm; Pulaski was grinning in Ellis’s direction.
“Hey, Ellis! Why don’tcha leave Max here and come with us, get a little firsthand experience?”
El
lis smiled. “Because I’m a chicken?”
Pulaski laughed loudly, creating echoes in the still chamber. Jess stood and walked over to where he and Max waited, his boots clanking softly across the metal floor.
“We’re gonna clear the first section, up to—Lara, what’s it called?”
Lara’s smooth voice spilled through Ellis’s headset. “Junction four, according to the plans. Over.”
Jess nodded. “Right. When I call you, bring Max on out and move up to the next sealed area. And make sure you lock up before you leave, okay?”
Ellis nodded. Jess had already gone over this with him back on Nemesis, but he was glad to hear it again; he didn’t want to forget anything and was afraid that he might in a fit of nervousness.
“Listen for direction changes from Lara, watch out for splash puddles”—Jess chewed at his lower lip, frowning— “and you ain’t even gonna need that rifle, but don’t go leaving it nowhere, all right?”
Ellis gripped the M41 tightly and shook his head. “Got it.”
Jess smiled gently at him, and Ellis wondered again how he could have killed two people; there was no trace of violence in his cool gaze, no hint of his terrible past except perhaps a soft sadness in the lines around his eyes. Ellis realized suddenly that he would trust this man with his life—which, in effect, he was about to do.
“We ain’t gonna call you up till it’s all clean, Ellis. Try to relax, okay?”
“Thanks,” he said gratefully, but he knew he wouldn’t relax until this was over with.
Pulaski and Teape were waiting at the internal door, and Jess joined them, unslinging his rifle easily.
“Opening internal door, over,” said Teape.
“Cleared to first lock, but the scan outside the tropidome is blocked; proceed with caution, over,” said Lara.
“Good luck,” called Ellis, and Jess raised a hand in his direction. Pulaski mimed blowing away an enemy with the M56, crouching low and gritting his teeth as he arced the weapon tightly. Teape only stared at Max for a moment, his expression unreadable; his fitted mask was loose around his neck, framing his pallid and tired face.
The door slid open and the three volunteers moved out, sealing it behind them. For a moment, the only sound was his own breathing, and he wished suddenly that he had gone with them, as unprepared as he was; maybe it would be better than just waiting here, his only company a deaf-mute prisoner in a metal shell.
Ellis clutched his rifle and tried to pretend he was ready for this.
* * *
The Candyman checked the tracker on the smart gun and shook his head; there was no movement in the first corridor past the lock. Jess opened the door and Pulaski stepped forward, seeking dark life in the shadows of the hall that bordered the tropidome. It was hot and humid and smelled like a rotting jungle.
Pulaski led, edging down the wide and empty hall and watching the tracker; he swept the M56, feeling tight. He wasn’t sure why exactly, but the excitement for the heat was different this time around. The desire to kick ass was still high, but tinged with—disappointment, maybe. Anger. They were being used to take out a nest that should be a nuke and it wasn’t fair, no matter how much fun it might be. Being used pissed him off.
The wide, empty corridor angled sharply to the right twenty meters ahead, and he could see that it was brighter farther along, light spilling from somewhere. The biodome had its own power, it had to be one of the sunlamps…
He rounded the corner and stopped short; the light wasn’t coming from a window, as he’d expected. All of the plexi observation panels were tightly shuttered and sealed—but about six meters down there was a large, jagged hole in the wall of the corridor that opened up into the tropical dome. A dead man was huddled next to the hole, a pile of rotting flesh stuffed into a tech coverall; his face from the nose down was stripped to the bone, exposing a wide and terrible grin. He sat amidst the pieces of the destroyed corridor wall that littered the hallway, torn out by inhuman hands. The sun-warmed smell of the man’s body was the source of the odor, pungent and overly sweet.
Pulaski felt his blood heat up as he trained the weapon barrel on the open hole and waited for Jess and Teape. The opening was too big to block, a couple of meters across— which meant they wouldn’t be able to call this section secure until the dome was cleared.
Jungle fightin’, gonna be bugs in the bushes… Right on…
“Aw, shit,” mumbled Jess behind him. “Pop, Lara, we got a problem here; you got visual inside the tropidome, over?”
“Uh—that’s an affirmative.” Lara “Four-directional, over.”
Jess called in their coordinates while Teape moved up to stand by Pulaski, hooking the tracker to his armor.
“Little trip to paradise, eh, Teepee? You could use some sun, right?”
Teape shook his gaunt and pale face, training his rifle on the bright opening but staring at the dead man’s hideous smile. “Doesn’t matter. Guess it’d be better to buy it here than in hell, anyway,” he said softly.
Candyman wasn’t sure what to say; he’d never been too good with words, especially not the kind that were supposed to make people feel better. Sheila always said that it was ’cause he was too good at kicking ass, which was true—but Teepee was hurting, a faraway look in his eyes that didn’t sit well with Pulaski; it wasn’t like Teape was a pussy or anything, either…
“We’re just buyin’ time, man,” he said finally, and hoped that Teape would keep it together long enough to make it back to Nemesis.
Jess joined them. “Candyman, you’re on point; Teape, sweep left Lara says there’s a waterfall and a bridge straight in. They’ll get four-point coverage there, so we wanna get there on wings, dig?”
Pulaski grinned, the thrill of a bloody clearance overriding everything else. When he was a kid, his uncle Tommy had taken him hunting once in Alaska; illegal as all hell, but the Pulaskis weren’t such a law-abiding bunch. Stalking through the icy woods with a scoped rifle, a quest in the wild outdoors—that had been a kick in the ass, all right. But it wasn’t gonna be nothing to a jungle hunt with prey that could fight back.
They moved in formation to the opening and paused for a moment, adjusting to the brightness and avoiding the corpse’s rotting, eyeless gaze. Pulaski arced the smart gun, amazed at how green it was; as far as he could see were giant trees strung with dripping vines, ferns taller than him, a dozen other plants he didn’t know. From where they stood, he could hear rushing water, light and musical. The stink was richly organic but threaded with a darker smell, a musky animal odor.
The Candyman breathed it all in and stepped forward, the first sounds of movement ticking across his motion sensor.
“Let’s get it on!” he bellowed, and strode into battle, ready to blaze a trail of death or two.
* * *
Lara watched the monitors as the team stepped into view, caught on the west security cam. Pulaski was tracking something, movement to the front—
Lara saw it, a flash of bright orange that flurried out of a vine-draped oak. She opened her mouth to say something, but the piercing squawk of the tropical bird told him for her; Pulaski grinned and sought another target.
“Surprised he didn’t kill it anyway,” said Pop, amused. The operations deck was cold, but Lara felt a hot and seething fury rise up inside of her at the sound of his voice. She concentrated on the screen, determined not to let him make her job harder.
She saw a dark and sliding shadow to the right. “Jess! Incoming, thirty meters—”
She heard his tracker pick it up as he aimed. The drone picked up speed, ripped through the green and fertile growth like a feral cat. It trumpeted its approach and was met by a series of fiery bursts; smoke and shredded leaves flew as the screech was cut short. The alien crumpled into the thick flora.
Pulaski had another target. Lara only saw flashes of its black body in the canopied tunnel that the team was moving into. She switched monitors, picking them up from an overhead relay at another angle.
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“C’mon, sweet baby! Come to the Candyman!” A war cry, matched in ferocity by the insane scream of the attacker.
The drone leapt into view, a springing ebony vision of limbs and teeth—torn to bits as Pulaski let loose, the M56 spraying the creature with explosive metal. Acid splashed, blowing steaming holes in the leaves all around.
Lara searched the monitors but saw only the green of the trees ruffling in the light artificial wind.
“Movin’ to the bridge,” said Jess, and the team edged forward, their trackers beeping intermittently as small jungle creatures scurried away from them. Lara saw several lizards and birds fleeing into the underbrush, frightened by the approaching team.
There were no dark secretions that she could see, no visible anomaly in the environment of the tropidome; the drones seemed to prefer the dark, perhaps only entering the artificial jungle to seek victims. Lara couldn’t see any other movement, no blackness against the green…
The camera’s eye blinked suddenly, as if the station power had flickered; it was so brief that for a moment, Lara thought she had imagined it. She checked the reads, frowning. The same kind of pulse that she’d spotted earlier, an erratic radio signal from somewhere inside the station.
A short? Interference on the same frequency…?
If it was strong enough to block the interned relay they’d set up, they might have a much bigger problem than she’d originally thought. Some power source inside the station had emitted an overriding signal—
There was no time to track it down. As the team moved toward the decorative waterfall, Lara saw another drone; it scurried out onto the plasticrete bridge, an arch that spanned a tiny lake in the center of the dome.
Pop took it. “Ground team, you got one on the bridge! Far side of the rock pool, over!”
Pulaski marched forward and found the hissing creature with the M56. The powerful weapon swung from his hip and targeted, and the huge man squeezed the trigger in full auto.
Chips of simulated rock danced up and fell into the blue water as the bullets found their purpose. The drone had already started a leap in their direction; the fire of the smart gun cracked into its long skull and blew it into hissing chunks. The monster plunged lifelessly into the pool, water steaming up in its wake.
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