For a moment, nobody spoke as they all waited and watched for further attack. The screens showed nothing but a peaceful wilderness, encased in plexi against the darkness of space; Lara pulled multiple angles, but nothing alien moved across the monitors.
“Gentlemen, we have found paradise,” said Jess softly.
“—and it is contaminated,” finished Teape.
Pulaski laughed.
Lara let herself relax a bit; bugs sometimes paused in their onslaught for whatever reason, but they didn’t hide or run from battle. The tropidome was clear.
The team stood and watched the waterfall for another few seconds, and Lara wished she could be there. It was beautiful, like an oasis for her eyes after months of nothing but cold and metal.
“Hey, Pop! How ’bout this for a retirement home?” Pulaski sounded happy, turning his face up to the false sun, eyes closed.
Teape mumbled something that Lara only caught part of. “—kid yourself. We ain’t gonna be—” The rest was lost, too soft for her to hear.
Jess shook his head and spoke gently. “Hold on, Teape. We’re gonna make it.”
Jess’s response confirmed what she’d thought; Teape shouldn’t be in there, and she wished that she could tell him that his fears were unfounded. She said nothing. Teape was in bad shape, but there wasn’t anything anyone could do for him until the operation was over.
“Looks like secure. Pop, Lara, you got anything? Over.” Jess sounded calm, if concerned about Teape; a moment of rest in a deep-space jungle.
Pop answered. “Confirm. Nothing on cameras, kiddies. Scratch it off, back up, and keep moving, over.”
“Copy that.”
They started back toward the blasted entry and back toward the infestation, deep inside the murdered terminal. Lara took a last wistful look at the tropical beauty and called up the next operational camera at Junction 4.
The dark corridor that panned across her screen was encased in alien secretions, transformed into a hellish and unnatural place; even as she scanned, she saw a long, lithe body unfurl from one recessed wall.
Lara checked frequencies again and prayed that the lines would hold up, just a little bit longer. If the relays cut out, the ground team would be on their own—and if that happened, the boys weren’t going to make it out alive.
17
Ellis had listened to the team as they fought in the biodome, exhaling heavily with relief as it was called secure. So far it didn’t sound too bad; maybe everyone had been nervous about this operation for no reason. He slung the pulse rifle over his shoulder and paced back and forth next to Max, going over his checklist one more time.
—lock the door, watch for puddles, talk to Lara, keep the gun—
A soft beep from Max made him jump, and he laughed nervously; the diagnostics had run, that was all. He moved back to check the remote on the exowarrior’s mobile bed, wondering when they’d call him up. It was strange being here, almost like a dream. It was hard to imagine that this was his life, his job—alone on a DS station, holding a rifle and waiting to lead Max to an infestation…
For a moment, he didn’t believe what he was seeing on the tiny screen. He pushed his glasses up on his nose, his heart suddenly beating too fast and his fists clenched helplessly.
ECG abnormal, fluctuations in neurotransmissions. Blood sugar too high, circulation poor, temperature up—
—okay, okay, don’t panic. Increase oocy, point five atropine, dose of Hevlon…
He tapped in numbers and directions, woefully aware that he wasn’t a doctor; all he could do was plug in the answers that a program gave him. Ellis was more than qualified to work on any part of the suit, but Max didn’t need a joint repair or a hydraulics adjust right now; there was a man inside the armor, and he should be getting medical help. More than just a robotics tech could give him.
He cleared his throat. “Uh, Lara? This is Ellis, over?”
“What is it, Ellis? Over.” Lara sounded harried and busy.
“Pull up Max’s current diagnostic, over.”
Lara told the team to wait where they were, apparently just outside the tropidome. There was a long pause from ops, and Ellis could hear Jess and the others talking quietly. They sounded tense, too; different than they had on Traon.
“That biodome, man! My ol’ lady ain’t gonna believe I got to see one, they don’t got nothin’ like that back home.” Pulaski, obviously.
Teape’s soft answer was listless, almost indifferent. “Maybe they’ll mention it in your blue…”
The “blue” was the nickname for the Company letter sent home, informing family of a volunteer’s demise. Jess jumped on it, his voice kind but firm.
“That’s enough, Teape. We stick together, we can make this.”
Teape laughed miserably. “Tell it to that guy; he probably didn’t think he’d end up like this, either.”
There must be a dead person up ahead; terrific. Ellis had known it would be ugly but hadn’t allowed himself to really think about it. He hadn’t been on the Nemesis long enough to know if 949 was really such a bad situation, but with each minute that passed, he felt worse about being here. Lara and Pop both sounded unhappy, Teape kept saying they weren’t going to make it out, and now Max—
Lara interrupted his thoughts. “Ellis, are the meds working? Over.”
He checked the stats. “Yeah, he’s beginning to stabilize…”
From the tone of his voice, she must have picked up that he wasn’t satisfied with the results. “But…?”
“I’m concerned about his blood-sugar level. There’s evidence of pancreatic deterioration; the Hevlon helped, but if it rises again, I’ll have to administer insulin. Uh, over.”
Lara sighed. “All right, okay. Stay on it, and stay calm. Go ahead and take him up to the junction; soon as he fires, we’ll pull you out of there, over.”
Ellis nodded, then remembered that she probably wasn’t watching him. “Right. And thanks, Lara—”
Pop cut in, sounding brisk and efficient. “Ground team, Max is on the way, proceed to next area and seal; you got several hostiles near the entry, so go in strong, over.”
Ellis decided once again that Pop was an asshole but didn’t dwell on it; there was no time. He took a deep breath and manuevered Max to the bay’s internal door, the tabled warrior silent and still in his massive transport. The inner lock slid open and he moved in, leaving the cold and quiet bay behind.
The outer door opened and he was overwhelmed suddenly by the stink of death. He forced himself to think about the team, the three men ahead that waited for Max—but it was still a long moment before he could move, sealing the door behind them and starting down the dark and empty hall.
* * *
Lara tapped the cutout on her headset and turned to Pop, hoping that he would listen to reason. He responded best to directness, at least in his position as commander, so she put it to him bluntly.
“We have to abort.”
He looked away from the screen and met her gaze, and for a moment, she remembered why she had slept with him in the first place. Confusion swept across his handsomely lined features, turning them into a human face—uncertain and real and human, the face of a man with doubts and fears all his own.
“Abort…?”
“I got a radio-wave pulse from somewhere in the station that could conceivably override our communications. I think it might be a short in one of the damaged computers; it’s unstable, and I don’t like it. Teape’s overdue for a psyche, he’s in no condition to be on this operation, you know it—neither is Ellis, for that matter. This isn’t a standard run where we can afford any mistakes. And now Max—Max is sick, Pop. I think he’s dying.”
Pop just stared at her, but she could see that he was hearing her, truly hearing her words. She pressed on, making her case and trying to impress on him the urgency of what she said.
“We’re keeping him going with drugs, but I don’t know how much longer he’ll last. Every vital function shows sig
ns of deterioration; he should be in a hospital, not a Berserker suit—”
She could see his face close as she spoke, actually see him decide that he didn’t want to be hearing this. His mask of composure was locking back into place, his lips pressing tight, his gaze hardening. He looked back at the screens where Jess and the others were engaged in battle, blowing away the handful of screaming drones that had met them at the door. The corridor was splattered with acid, the team moving in a smooth but brutal choreography of war. Pop spoke as they slowed and stopped, clear for the moment, weapons smoking.
“Look, we’ll put in for a replacement unit when we hit base. The wires will hold, all right? Teape’s okay, he’s performing—and all Ellis has to do is push buttons—”
Lara felt disbelief and a rising anger at his rationalizations, totally unrelated to her personal disdain for him. “Jesus, this mission is suicidal enough as it is! If Max doesn’t fire, you’re condemning them all to death!”
He stared at the screens, wouldn’t meet her gaze. “You’re exaggerating, Max will make it—”
“—and I’m telling you we can’t trust him!”
Pop looked up finally and they locked stares, Lara’s angry and confused in the face of his deliberate blindness. His faded blue eyes spoke to her of exhaustion and something else, a flicker of shadows—
—he’s hiding something, she realized, wondering how she could have missed it before and already knowing why. Grigson told him something about this run that he didn’t tell us, and I was too pissed off to see it.
Lara lowered her voice and spoke deliberately, slowly— as slowly as she dared with the team moving through the darkness of the long corridor, with Max dying, with a mission in operation that shouldn’t be.
“What’s so important about this terminal, Eric? Why haven’t they sent backup? What is it they don’t want anyone to know about?”
For just a second, she thought he would tell her— but the second passed, and he was looking down at the screens, locked back into the tightly controlled demeanor of Nemesis commander “Pop” Izzard.
“I can’t tell you that, Lieutenant, not now. And we have an operation in progress, in case you forgot; if you’ll stick to your job, maybe we can get them through this alive, comprende?”
Lara didn’t trust herself to answer. She was astounded and angry, all the more so because she had no other choice than to comply—and because in spite of the insanity of continuing the mission, he was only following orders. She couldn’t blame him personally, as much as she wanted to.
Pop growled into the ’com, hard and fast. “Ground leader, we show a number of hostiles moving your way—”
Lara’s eyes widened as she watched the screen, piped from the security camera farther along the dim corridor. The team had turned the first corner in the winding hall and made it partway down. Dozens of hissing, screaming drones poured seemingly out of nowhere. They lunged into view in cluttering bounds, long legs and tails pushing them forward, talons gouging plasticrete walls.
Jess responded, his voice punctuated by blasts of weapon fire as the three men stretched across the corridor and opened up. “Tell me something I don’t—”
A burst of static and the screens flickered, a field of distorted snow for a split second before the picture reorganized. Lara checked the stats and saw it, knew what it was in a rush of horrible awareness—
She spoke quickly, suddenly knowing in her gut that she didn’t have much time. “Jess, Ellis, hang on! There’s a short in the main transmitter, it’s blocking out signals! I’m on it but we may lose contact until I can—”
She was talking into dead air. The monitors, the audio, all of it cut out at once, only static on the screens.
The Nemesis had lost them.
* * *
The long corridor was tinted red and teeming with alien life, the giant bugs tearing toward them lightning fast. Jess and Teape flanked Pulaski, all of them firing at once—but only just stemming the tide that rushed at them in a wave of darkness and fury.
There was a crackle of static in Jess’s headset, then Lara was saying something, loud, hurried. “…hang on! There’s… transmitter, it’s blocking…”
She was gone, the words wiped away in another burst of electrical noise.
Jess shouted to be heard over the drones. Something had gone wrong, something about their transmitters. “Lara, Pop! We’re losing you!”
There were a dozen down now, torn to dusky pieces as the men fired and kept firing. Shrieking drones leapt over their fallen siblings, a relentless charge into the team’s curtain of explosive fire.
The Candyman yelled, the words rising clear and strong over the screeching attack. “Line’s dead, can’t hear you on the ’set!”
Shit—
A bug scrabbled toward him, clawing through the growing pile of dead or dying drones, limbs and bodies melting through the deck in oozing acid-splash. Jess fired, the rifle pushed to full auto, and the monster howled, head suddenly torn from its repulsive, stretching form.
Even as it collapsed, Jess could see others behind it, closing the distance and oblivious to pain, to reason, to their own deaths. As long as their queen lived, they would continue to sacrifice their lives, obedient in their primal purpose—stop the intruders at any cost.
Jess shouted again into the static of his mike. “Ellis, do you receive? Lara!”
Nothing, and the drones advanced, barely slowed by the awesome hail of armor-piercing rounds. Part of the deck had melted through and several of the maimed bodies dropped out of sight, disappearing through the growing, smoking hole.
Jess fired again and made the only decision he could. He shouted to Teape and Pulaski, praying they’d hear him over the intensifying attack.
“Fall back! Too many, fall back! Sound off!”
He retreated half a step, the jumping pulse rifle hot in his hands. Pulaski shouted something and he saw Teape inch backward—they had heard him, gotta retreat gotta get out—
The seemingly endless river of teeth and claws came on, Jess ejecting an empty and slamming a fresh clip into the rifle as they backed up, step by step. The distance between the oncoming wave and the three men was closing, the drones gaining ground with each second.
The door to the secured area was impossibly far away, quarter klick at least—but they had to get back, fast. There were three offshoots, too, smaller interconnected halls that they might be able to make, maybe find a place they could seal up—
The nightmares raced onward as the scent of burning bodies filled the air.
18
The dead man grinned his idiot grin, and Ellis realized that he’d been staring, absently feeding his eyes on the horror that lay at his feet. He looked away, feeling sick and useless as he tried communications again.
“Ground team, do you hear me? Lara, do you receive, over? If you can hear me, uh, I’m at four—please respond, over?”
Ellis stood at the junction door outside the tropidome, hearing what sounded like distant gunfire through the sealed door. He couldn’t tell how close through the thick metal, didn’t know if he should open it and see or go back to the shuttle or stay where he was. Something had happened, the relays weren’t picking up and he didn’t know what to do—
“Lara, Jess, Pop! This is Ellis, do you copy?”
Nothing, only a fuzzy white noise that jumped and spit in his headset like a storm.
Ellis checked Max’s screen, desperate to do something, anything useful. His glasses slid down his sweaty nose, blurring the reads before he pushed them back into place. Max seemed to have stabilized, at least for the moment; Ellis thought about easing the sedative back but decided against it, afraid to upset the delicate balance he’d established.
The Max sat cold and silent, dominating the wide corridor from his steel bed. Ten-plus metric tons of technological wisdom wrapped around a human being, a living, breathing man—fed through an IV, the minimal waste products reduced and siphoned into storage, his brain sur
gically interfaced to the machine. As good as dead until a series of buttons were pushed, forcing him into a killing frenzy…
Ellis looked back at the dead man, the thick smell of putrid, decaying muscle and flesh suddenly dizzying in the heated air. The man’s eyes had fallen inward, only dark and noxious pools of fluid where his gaze should be. From the tip of the nose down, only stained bone and teeth, scraps of skin hanging like dried and leathery leaves over the viscous mass of his body.
Was he afraid when the aliens came? Does Max feel fear when the adrenaline hits him, imposing murder into his heart?
Ellis was scared, but suddenly thoughtful as well. He felt something strange inside, like pieces falling into place; a connection…
A dead man. A dying man inside a suit.
Ellis blinked, and just like that, it all became clear.
A rush of self-loathing suddenly filled him, an emotion so deep and powerful that he actually staggered against Max, sick to his soul. The rationalizations that he had made so many times were ripped away by the strange and horrible clarity that overtook him.
He had pushed those buttons. He was the one who had thrilled at the power of the machine back on Traon—
—and I’m the one who accused Lara of forgetting about the man inside. A man like the dead man in front of me; a man like myself—
The realization was total, the self-awareness devastating. He had spent years learning how to manipulate technology, too afraid of humanity to poke his head out from his proverbial shell—a terror firmly established by an overbearing father and an inability to know his own feelings. And now he was alone, cut off, abandoned by the very wires and circuits he’d devoted his life to serving; all that really mattered was that there were three men on the other side of the door and a man in a suit beside him, four human beings who could die because precious technology had become more important than their lives.
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