by Steve Perry
“Did you see the monitors we passed?” Billie asked.
“Yeah. They’ve still got spysats in place, military view only. That major who stopped and questioned us? He told me they could keep tabs on the war. He seemed like an all right guy. Almost apologetic. We’ll probably be hearing from him again.”
“I don’t have much experience with the military mind, Wilks. What is going on here?”
“Hell if I know. The general looks like a lot of RMs—that’s regular marines—I’ve known. Eats, breathes, and shits the Corps. Probably runs the base so tight it hums. Probably doesn’t matter to him that Earth is down the tubes, he’s got his orders and that’s what he lives by. Or else he’s got delusions of godhood—lot of generals get that way—thinks he can do anything. Hard to say which it is.”
“What do you think he’s going to do with us?”
Wilks shook his head. “Dunno. He’s obviously running some kind of experiment with the aliens. My bet’s it’s—or was, when still it mattered—very hush hush. Top-secret stuff. We’re sand in this guy’s well-lubed machine.”
“You take me to the nicest places, Wilks.”
He laughed. “Can’t say it’s been dull, can you?”
Billie managed a smile. “Nope. That’s a word that never crossed my mind. So, what now?”
“Ball is in their court. We wait and see what they do with it. Get some sleep.” With that, Wilks unfolded one of the cots and climbed onto it. Bueller did the same, pulling himself up easily and sprawling onto the thin material. After a moment, Billie pulled a third cot loose and lay on it.
Wilks had been in the military long enough so he could sleep pretty much whenever he wanted. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. He’d deal with it when it got here. Within a few moments, he dropped off.
7
The three marines were in one of the third-level inodoros, crowded into the space designed for a single toilet and sink. The walls had eyes all over Third Base but they figured the crapper ought to be safe enough. The room was made yet tighter by the backpack one of the men had propped on the white plastic HWDS-C—human waste disposal system, chemical, in military parlance.
“How much did you get?” one of the marines asked. That was Renus, Wolfgang R., Private First Class.
“Three days, if we stretch it,” the marine balancing the knapsack said. He was Peterson, Sean J., Corporal.
“Shit,” the third marine said. “It’s four days to the civilian terraforming colony, five if we stick to the canyons.” Magruder, Jason S., also PFC.
“So we’ll be hungry when we get there,” Peterson said. “Listen, I was pushing to get this many meals. Spears has everything on this fucking base inventoried, down to the paper clips. Besides, the crawler will have E-rations, carbocons.”
“Great, if you like greasy sawdust,” Magruder said.
“Hey, you can fuckin” stay here if you’d rather.”
Magruder shook his head. “Like hell.”
Renus said, “You think the civilians will take us in and keep quiet about it?”
Peterson shrugged. “They’ve dealt with Spears. They know he’s over the edge. They’d be worried about him thinking they had a hand in helping us, if they did or not. My guess is, they’ll hide us and tell him they never heard of us.”
“Still risky,” Magruder said.
“Like I said, you can stay here. Sooner or later you’ll stumble over some reg you never heard of and you know what that means.”
Magruder nodded. “Yeah. Baby food.”
“How long you figure we got?” That from Renus.
“Couple—three hours, maybe,” Peterson said. “Spears and Powell will play mad doctor with the stowaways. Our general likes to watch the implants, I think it gives him a hard-on when those things shove their eggs down somebody’s throat. If we can get to the Thousand Canyons and the heat faults, they won’t be able to see us on IR. The crawler’s cammo should cover us from visual.”
The three men looked at one another.
“At least it’s a chance,” Peterson said.
They filed out of the inodoro into the hallway.
* * *
At the South Lock, Patin, Robert T., PFC, was on security. He leaned against the wall, his carbine propped at an angle next to him. He looked up, saw somebody approaching. He smiled, but didn’t bother to assume any kind of guard-ready position. Sloppy work, but he doubtless had the same attitude about lock-duty as most marines: You couldn’t get in from outside unless you had the admit codes and if you did, you were okay; you could get out, but—who would want to? The planetoid wasn’t what you’d call a pleasure dome, now was it?
“Hey, Renus. You come to keep me company?”
Renus drew near. “Take some more of your money playing cards, you mean? Nah, I wish. Decker sent me to relieve you. Circulating pumps on Four are showing red in the backup chamber. Guess who is the only qualified pump-tech on duty?”
“Fuck,” Patin said. “Red means automatic suit-up. Why didn’t somebody call when the cocksucker went yellow?”
“Don’t ask me, Bobby. I don’t run things around here.”
Patin pushed away from the wall, stepped across the hallway toward the computer terminal inset into a panel at chest level. “I’ll punch it into the security com and it’ll be all yours, pal. Can’t be too careful these days.”
The guard couldn’t see Renus pull what looked like a sock full of something heavy from under his shirt. “Sorry, Bobby,” Renus said.
“Huh—?”
Renus slammed the sock down on Patin’s head. It made a sound like a thick rope slapping a plastic barrel full of liquid soap. Tiny slivers of gray flew from the sock on impact. Lead shavings, sparkling like glitter under the overhead lights, drifted onto the unconscious man’s downed form.
“Let’s go!” Renus yelled.
Peterson and Magruder came running up. Each of them had a carbine. Renus grabbed Patin’s weapon. They had the codes for the inner lock door and cycled it open quickly.
The outer door’s codes were something else. While Peterson took a stab at the computer override, Magruder pulled climate suits from the racks. He and Renus shrugged their way into the suits.
“Not gonna happen,” Peterson said. “Security seals are dogged down tight. We’ll have to burn the sucker. I’m trashing the alarms.”
Magruder, his helmet in place, the suit tabbed shut, nodded and moved to the door. He pulled the plasma cutter he’d stolen from Supply and thumbed the cutter up to full. “Watch your eyes,” he said.
The brilliant plasma jet spewed, turning the inside of the lock into noon on a desert. Peterson kept his eyes covered until he got his climate suit on and the polarized faceplate snapped down.
It didn’t take long. The security bars were designed to keep people outside from getting in, and the plasma jet ate through them almost as fast as Magruder could move the welder. Durasteel went bright orange, then flowed molten and fell in fat drops.
“That’s it, that’s the last one!”
“Go, go, go!”
The lock door started to open, then ground to a stop with a shriek still audible in the escaping air, stuck where a flange of partially melted metal caught the frame. But it was wide enough for the men to get through. They clambered from the station into the cold darkness, and ran toward the motor pool. The gravity generators extended the field outside the domes for a hundred meters around, so they didn’t bound into space.
The trio of deserters piled into the first crawler they reached. After a moment the multiwheeled machine lurched into the darkness and was gone.
* * *
Spears leaned back in his chair, watching the video on his holoproj. “Replay, security cam 77, 0630 hours.”
The air above his desk lit with the images of the three marines in the loo. “Increase volume one-eighth. Continuous tracking.”
He watched it again, listened to the three marines plotting their desertion. When they left the
toilet stall, another hidden cam just outside the inodoro picked them up without missing a beat.
The scene at the security station played itself. The downed guard didn’t get any sympathy from Spears. If he’d been doing his job, he would have stopped the deserters. Well. There was a place for men like the guard. Down in the hatchery.
Spears watched with interest the burn-out through the lock door. They moved well as a team, the trio. Too bad they chose treason instead of duty.
“General?”
Spears glanced up from the projector to the door. “Come.”
The door opened and Powell stood there. Spears waved one hand and shut the projection over his desk off. “Yes?”
“The squirt has arrived from bibliocom. In the system.”
“Query number?”
Powell gave it to him.
Spears tapped it manually into his terminal. “What’s the marine’s name?”
“Wilks.”
He tapped that in.
The air blossomed again with the infocrawl. Images fluttered into life to join the words and figures. A practiced speedreader, Spears scanned the material.
“Well, well. We sure this marine is the same one in isomed?”
“Got a positive ID from his magnetic femur implant. It’s him.”
“This sergeant has had more hands-on experience with wild-strain aliens than just about anybody except that civilian, whatshername.”
“Ripley, sir.”
“Right. Nobody knows where she is but we got Wilks right here. How’s that for luck? Fate smiles on us, Powell.”
“Sir. And if you’ll scan the android’s file, you’ll see another coincidence, sir.”
“Give me the gist.”
“He was one of a Specials Unit, bred to travel to the aliens’ homeworld. Under the command of Colonel Stephens, prior to Terran infestation.”
“Stephens, I remember him from MILCOM HQ. A desk jockey, couldn’t find his dick with both hands.”
“The primary mission, retrieval of a specimen, was apparently a failure, sir. Records of the trip are incomplete; by the time the survivors reached Earth, the infestation was in the advanced stages.”
“And the woman?”
“No records on her. She’s not military, and we can’t pull up any history.” Powell shrugged. “You know how civilians are about record keeping in the best of times, sir.”
Spears nodded absently. “Well, our sergeant and the vat-boy have got actual combat experience against the wild strain. Much too valuable to turn into incubators, at least until after we find out what we can from them.”
“That’s what I thought, sir.”
“Let’s go have a little talk with them.”
“Sir.”
* * *
Billie felt a coldness grip her legs, bands of rough steel encircling her ankles, pulling her knees apart. She blinked, glanced down, saw she was naked.
Something wet and slimy dripped onto her bare belly. A clear, ropy jelly. She looked up, but couldn’t see the source, there was a kind of fog hovering over her, only centimeters from her face, a featureless gray.
I need you, came a deep voice. No, not a voice, the words were unspoken, they were in her mind. They were the thoughts of a lover, but not a human lover.
The fog swirled away, and teeth glittered under a coat of clear slime, white needles set in a massive black jaw, on a long, impossibly long head that flared into wide, flat, branched antlers.
Billie gasped, fear filling her, every cell in her body straining to contain it.
Lean back.
Unable to resist the command, Billie arched her neck, saw just behind her a massive, fleshy egg, easily the size of a garbage can. Flaps at the top of the egg opened, spidery webbing stretching and breaking. It was like the blossoming of some obscene flower, petals spreading wide in a photographic time-lapse hurry.
Crablike legs reached over the folded flaps, long, fleshless finger bones with sharp tips, questing, exploring. Looking for something.
Looking for Billie.
She opened her mouth to scream, and a glob of the slime from the monster above her fell onto her chin, oozed into her mouth, over her cheeks, into her eyes. Billie tried to swallow, but it was too much.
I need you. The monster’s thoughts tried to soothe. Do not he afraid. It will be good.
“No!”
* * *
Billie came up on the cot, yelling the word.
“Easy, easy,” Wilks said. He was next to her, holding her shoulders. And on the floor, balanced on one hand, the other hand on her leg, Mitch.
Billie blew her breath out in a big sigh. Shook her head. There was no need to say it. Wilks knew. He dreamed, too.
She looked at Mitch. Did androids dream?
“Up and at ’em, people,” came a voice from the entrance to the cell.
A pair of armed marines stood there.
“General wants to see you,” one of them said.
“Tell him our calendar is full,” Wilks said.
The marines grinned. The same one said, “Not me, Sarge. You tell him. Move out.” He waved the carbine.
Wilks looked at Billie and Mitch, shrugged. “Well. Since you insist.”
With Billie pushing Mitch on his cart, the three of them left the cell.
8
The table was, nearly as Wilks could tell, black glass. Expensive for an officers’ mess on some back-rocket planetoid. Course, it could have been made from local mineral and not brought in on-ship; even so, it was not something you expected to see. The chairs were some kind of basic fold-out issue, but they’d been padded and spiffed up by somebody with skill and time.
Billie sat to his left, Bueller to his right, the three of them occupying one end of the table. Another dozen people could sit along the sides, but those chairs were empty. Spears sat at the other end, alone. A platter of what looked to be roast meat sat in front of him, aromatic vapors wafting from it. A long knife and double-tine fork were stuck in the meat.
“It’s not real beef, of course,” Spears said. He pulled the knife and fork from the roast and ran the edge of the blade back and forth against the fork tines, as if sharpening the knife. “Protein hard-jell and soy, but our mess sergeant has a deft touch with seasonings. It’s not bad.”
With his hat off, Spears was as bald as an egg. Nothing but eyebrows and lashes, from what Wilks could see.
Spears stabbed the roast with the fork and began to slice the ersatz beef.
An orderly, dressed in kitchen whites, came from the doorway behind Spears. By the time the general had the first slab of roast carved free, the orderly arrived and shoved a plate under it. The timing was perfect. Half a second later and the “meat” would have flopped onto the black glass. Spears never looked to see if the plate was there.
The general repeated the carving. A second orderly scooted from the doorway and arrived in time to push another plate under the falling slice of roast.
The third slice, yet another orderly.
It was offhand, but every bit as impressive as a precision drill team tossing carbines back and forth at speed. Spears knew it, too.
When the plates had been delivered to Wilks, Billie, and Bueller, along with glasses of red liquid—wine?—and eating implements, the general carved himself a slice.
The fourth orderly was a bit slow. He thrust the plate out, caught half the roast. For a second, it looked as if the fake meat would flip from the plate and smack onto the table, but the orderly juggled his cargo and managed to slide the slab back into place. It left a smear of gravy on the white plastic, but stayed put.
Spears’s jaw muscles tightened once, then his face relaxed into a somewhat forced smile. He nodded at the orderlies. “At ease, troopers.”
The four orderlies filed out via the door by which they’d entered.
Wilks would not want to be the last one, the one who had nearly bobbled the general’s own meal. He had very nearly made the general look bad. On a military ba
se, that was as dangerous a crime as a soldier could commit.
The general raised his glass. “To the Corps,” he said.
What the hell, Wilks thought. He lifted his own glass. Noticed that Billie and Bueller did the same, albeit without much enthusiasm.
The wine wasn’t bad. Wilks had surely drunk a lot worse.
“Eat,” the general said.
The cook was inspired, Wilks had to admit. The counterfeit beef was as good as any he’d ever had. Right texture, right flavour—if Spears hadn’t told him, he wouldn’t have known the difference. Not that he got a lot of real meat on the money he made anyhow. Rabbit now and then, fish, even chicken on special occasions, that was about it. Last time he’d had what was supposed to be certified beef had been at his old top kick’s mustering-out party couple years back, bio-time. Given all the suspended animation travel since then, it was a lot longer in realtime.
Whatever was going on inside Billie’s head, Wilks could see she was enjoying her meal, too. As for Bueller, who knew? His model of android could eat, even cut in half as he was now; whether he enjoyed the food in the same way a basic-stock man did or not was something else.
“Food okay?” the general asked around a mouthful of it.
Wilks nodded. “Very good.”
Billie and Bueller also nodded and mumbled something. This was strange territory and wherever this conversation was going, they’d decided to play along. For his part, Wilks was pretty sure this guy’s wingnuts were dogged down too tight. It didn’t make sense to set him off until they had some idea of what he was all about.
“You’ll have to excuse my somewhat abrupt manner when we met,” Spears said. “There’s a war on, one can’t be too cautious.” He smiled.
Jesus, Wilks thought, it looks as if his face might crack from the strain. This cocker wanted something from them, that was plain enough. What?
“It has been brought to my attention that you have had considerable experience with wild-strain aliens, Sergeant Wilks.”
Wilks chewed on the beef. Swallowed it. “Yessir.”