“What, raw?”
“Yeah. Cooking might improve the taste, but if it’s bad for us, it won’t make any difference.”
Tristan stepped forward. “What odds are they giving him?”
“Right now it’s at four to one, against.”
“Put me down for a couple of grams in favor. Might as well give the guy some support.”
“Brave man,” the sergeant said as he made a mark on the ground where a table was already scratched into the tough surface of the landing zone.
The commander turned on him, furious. “I can’t believe you’re betting on the man’s life. He volunteers to help us out and you make a game of it.”
Tristan chuckled but didn’t answer her question directly. Instead, he turned to the sergeant. “How’d the guinea pig bet?” he asked.
“Against. And said we had to keep his money for him forever if he croaked.”
Melina spluttered, and Ian pulled her away. “Each branch has its own way of coping with danger. You know that, Commander.”
“Yeah, I guess I do. But I get cranky when I’m hungry.”
“Not to mention preachy.”
“Careful, Ian.”
They turned to watch the man who was looking dubiously at the stick he’d been handed. One end had been split open and broken into two rough halves.
“What the fuck is that?” a marine shouted, pointing into the sky.
They all looked up to see a fireball hurtling towards them at colossal speed. The well-trained marines hit the deck seemingly in unison, rolling towards cover—the dropships in this case—and pointing their weapons into the sky.
Melina looked around, uncertain of what to do. Ian pulled her to the floor. “For a pilot,” he shouted, “you have terrible reflexes.”
The sound hit them. It was like being caught inside of a thundercloud. A deafening bass roar seemed to take over the world. Then, as the smoking object shot mere meters overhead, they heard a high-pitched keening just as loud. Melina was certain the scream would deafen her. She pressed her head into Ian’s chest.
With a crash that shook the earth, the thing hit the ground almost in the exact center of the huge open expanse.
Melina pulled her head up to see it bounce once and then hit the ground again a few hundred meters further on. It finally came to a stop right beside the alien hangar.
“Holy shit,” one of the marines said. “It looks like a ship.”
She was right, Melina realized, squinting into the distance. “That’s not just any ship. That’s the Banshee!”
The marines ran off in the direction of the crashed spy ship. Melina rolled her eyes. She was probably the most qualified person on the planet to coordinate a search and rescue operation on anything that flew. She could have told them that the ship was likely intact; the roar they’d heard was the pilot firing the brake thrusters for all he was worth, and that the crew was probably encased in foam crash insulation.
But, like marines everywhere, they’d charged off to do things themselves.
She sighed and turned to Ian. “Let’s take the flyer. We’ll be there before them.”
***
When they arrived, the first thing she realized was that the pilot hadn’t survived. The cockpit area had been crushed in one of the impacts; she could see his broken body through one of the cracks in the hull.
The rest of the ship looked to be intact and, like all large ships, it had some truly heavy-duty crash-survival tech for the crew. Each bunk was equipped with emergency crash foam. Any survivors would be desperately trying to dig their way out of the pink stuff.
Her training had included a simulated crash and, no matter how often they’d told her that the foam was permeable to air, and that she would be able to breathe normally, it hadn’t taken. Melina had clawed the foam to pieces, hyperventilating and certain that she would suffocate, until the very moment that she realized that her instructor, chuckling, was marking her down for panicking. It made no difference in her ranking, because the rest of her class, to the last man and woman, had reacted in exactly the same way.
“Give me a hand,” she told Ian. Melina jumped from the flyer and stumbled, cursing herself for forgetting about the superearth’s greater gravity again. The nearest hatch was slightly ajar, burst open by the impact, so she pulled it all the way out.
The ship’s interior was illuminated by dim emergency lights which seemed almost pitch dark after the bright sunlight. Melina stopped for a second, trying to remember where the crew areas were in this type of ship before shrugging and heading aft.
Her intuition was rewarded: the very first door they found had pink foam pouring out from the gaps. She slid the door open and began to dig her way into the thick mass. She could hear someone struggling inside.
“Just give me a minute. I’ll have you out in no time,” she said.
The struggles became less frantic. “Can you hear me?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Loud and clear. You’ll be fine,” Melina replied.
“Oh, thank God.”
Three minutes later, a young woman in an ensign’s uniform was hugging her and sobbing. “I thought we were going to die.”
“You had a good pilot.”
“Is he…?”
Melina shook her head. “How many other people were on board?”
“There were eight of us on board. Five crew, the marine lieutenant and her pilot, who were going to try to land in the dropship. Oh, and the admiral’s daughter.”
“Tina?” Ian said. “I thought she’d want to stay with her father.”
“I guess the old man didn’t want her there when he died.”
“The fleet?”
“Mostly gone. The Minstrel managed to get away, and I’m not quite certain what happened to the Lapland. But that’s it.”
They moved further into the wreckage as they spoke, and soon came to a much larger crew chamber brim-full of foam. Cries for help came from within.
A bit of digging had four more people safe: the remaining crewmembers and Tina. They all looked remarkably healthy for having just survived a huge shunt. The most serious injury was one crewmember’s bruised arm.
Melina left them to climb out of the ship and went into the cabin. The pilot’s mangled body was in bad shape, but his face was still reasonably intact. Intact enough, at least, that Melina was able to close his eyes.
She bent her head in a brief gesture of respect. “I know the rest of them will never know just how good you must have been to bring this thing down the way you did. It takes another pilot to recognize an artist. But I just wanted to tell you that they’re all in good shape. You traded your life for the lives of five others. I’ll remember that, and if I ever get back, I’ll tell others about it.”
There was nothing more she could do, so she joined the others outside the ship. The marines had finally arrived, and everyone was watching a dropship spiraling lazily over their heads before it came to a landing twenty meters away. A single suited figure emerged.
“Hi, Tristan,” the new arrival said.
“Cora? Er, I mean, Lieutenant Sirius Almir, ma’am!” He saluted sharply, or at least as sharply as he could with his mangled suit arm. “I thought you’d left the system with the Minstrel.”
“Nah. Some of us are too dumb to know when to stop volunteering for suicide missions, so I decided to come back for you. I don’t like the idea of leaving anyone behind and you’re the only one I had left to come back for.”
The marine sergeant stepped forward, introduced himself, and gave the lieutenant a salute that was a million times better than Tristan’s. The man looked truly relieved to have an officer there to do the thinking for him. He concluded with a heartfelt: “What are your orders, ma’am?”
“Well, the original plan was to use the dropship to pull you guys out and evacuate you on the Banshee. But, as you can see, that didn’t work out.” She stared at the wreck and turned to Melina. “The pilot?”
“He didn’t make it
.”
The marine’s eyes fell. “Remind me to raise a glass to him when I can.”
“You can count on it, Lieutenant.”
Cora turned back to the sergeant. “That reminds me. The reactor on that thing was about to burst or something. I’m thinking the crash probably didn’t do it any good, so it might be a good idea to get a few hundred meters away. And besides, as I was coming down, I saw something that we should probably investigate.”
“Wait,” Melina said, holding up an arm. “We’ll do the investigation, and we’ll also get out of the danger zone. But first, I want all the suited marines, including you, Lieutenant, to get inside this ship and take out every single box of food you can find in the hold. I also want you to remove the recycler. Whatever you do, don’t break it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the marines shouted in unison.
The woman who’d just arrived looked a bit bemused but followed orders.
***
“That can’t be good,” Tristan said, staring down into the dark hole which Cora had spotted from the dropship as she descended.
“You have a talent for understatement, don’t you, soldier?” Melina replied sourly. “I wish we hadn’t found this. I wish it so much.”
The bouncing mass of the Banshee had done much more than simply make the ground shake on its first impact against the stone-like surface. It had torn a jagged hole in it fully thirty meters long and nearly ten meters wide.
Inside the hole, perhaps three stories below where the marines were standing, was a group of humanoid figures that looked uncannily like headless versions of shock marine exoskeletons, only they were bigger, bulkier, and painted sinister black.
“What are they doing down there?” Cora asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine, Lieutenant. We haven’t gone in there to have a look,” the sergeant replied.
“What kind of marines leave an enemy installation unscouted?”
The sergeant stiffened. “Exhausted ones who don’t have orders to attack the place and who aren’t even really sure who the enemy is, ma’am. Or even if there’s an enemy in this system at all.”
Cora’s tone softened. “Fair enough, I guess. But I can tell you that there’s at least one enemy here. They’re black and they fly around and, as far as I’ve been able to tell, they attack anything within range, completely unprovoked. Sounds like those guys are definitely an enemy. And they came from this planet… probably from this facility. I think we should have a look.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What is it, Sergeant? Speak up.”
The man deflated. “I was just wondering if we could get something to eat first. We’ve been going for days without food.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. Break out the grub.”
Hungry as he was, Tristan walked over to Cora. “Thanks for coming for me. Too bad we’re both stuck here now.”
She stared straight into his eyes. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be. Even though the Minstrel managed to make it out safely, I wouldn’t have traded this for a place on that ship.”
“You’re totally insane.”
“I’m a marine who signed up for a mission with one of the lowest survival probabilities ever approved by a committee. I’m supposed to be crazy.” Cora looked to where the other marines were tearing into the boxes of food. “But I think you’d better get something to eat. We can talk about this later… without our suits.”
He hesitated, feeling uncomfortable in her presence. Like most marines, he’d run after every girl in sight during R&R, but those were civilian girls. He’d never even dreamed about going after one of the female officers. Officers were educated; they knew about literature and art and always made him feel stupid. Even male officers. Having a woman who looked like Cora did coming onto him in no uncertain terms gave him pause.
Of course, if any enlisted girl who looked the way she did, she wouldn’t have had to ask twice. Or even once, most likely. He would have been quick to catch any sign of interest and acted accordingly.
“That was an order, soldier,” Cora said. But she said it with a smile.
Tristan joined the feeding frenzy and was soon thanking the lieutenant for making him eat. He hadn’t realized just how much hunger had been affecting him. He’d been feeling weak and dizzy, and only as he returned to normality could he tell just how weak and dizzy. It was amazing how much better he felt after just a couple of bites.
A few minutes later, Tristan began to lower himself into an underground installation for the third time since he’d woken to find that getting out of a stasis tube had suddenly become a major operation.
Happily, this time there were no roof-mounted cannons to avoid, nor were there any elevator shafts to negotiate. He looked around for the tank robots that had massacred so many marines in the place that held the shield generator, but there were none to be seen.
Better still, the ebony army beneath him was completely immobile. Nothing seemed to indicate that the suits, or automated walkers, or whatever they might be, were active. Dust had accumulated around them, giving the impression that they hadn’t moved in centuries.
He floated down on his braking jets—Cora had sent him down first—and landed in a space between two rows of the things. The suits towered above his exoskeleton; he calculated that they must have been four meters tall and broad to match. Various orifices in the exterior indicated weapon ports and probably attitude jets.
He approached the nearest one cautiously. His sensors weren’t picking up any emissions from it, but he preferred to play it safe: his exoskeleton wouldn’t last long if he had to tangle with one of them. They were just too big.
Except for the lack of a head, the machines were disturbingly humanoid in shape. Each had two thick legs, two bulging arms, and a rounded torso tying everything together. The hand-appendages at the end of the arms even had five fingers, with an opposable thumb.
A shiver ran down Tristan’s back. Was this the reason that an image of a human had been displayed in the obelisk chamber? Had humans been involved in some kind of fight with the other races and been confined to this planet? If they had, where were they now? There was no sign of human life—of any animal life for that matter—anywhere. Were they ensconced in underground bunkers? Had they been destroyed by the vampires?
Or maybe they’d never been here in the first place.
His eyes fell onto the back of the nearest walker. Up where the neck should have been the body shell was marked by a series of depressions and latches that clearly meant to hold something securely in place.
Tristan had the impression that he’d seen the shape before, but couldn’t quite place what it might be.
Then, like an optical illusion you’d been staring at for a few minutes, it came into focus. The latches would be the perfect size and shape to hold the bottom half of one of the black flying wings that had been terrorizing them. This was how the enemy dealt with ground attack situations—they simply melded their flying wings onto these gigantic warrior bodies. He couldn’t think of many infantry weapons that would be able to withstand something like this.
He was willing to bet his bottom dollar that the wings would be back for them. He had to tell the team.
As he toggled the Tacnet to make the call, Ian’s voice came over the line. “Guys, the commander wanted me to tell you that we’ve just received a transmission.”
“What? Who else is still in the system?” Cora asked.
“Apparently, it’s from the Lapland.”
“Them? They’re virtually unarmed. They should have been the first ship to make a run for it! Where are they calling from?”
“They say they’re in orbit.”
“Here?”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“Give me a second. I’m going up there.”
Chapter 18
Irene couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Am blind. Sensors not working. Are you Oneness? Aid requested. Backup to principal required.
/>
The words on the screen were clear, understandable Standard. She’d been prepared to wait for hours while the various cryptography programs ran endless permutation analyses and translator programs worked to first turn the electronic signals into some kind of language via pattern repetition, and then translate that back into a semblance of something she could understand.
She’d left the machines running and turned back to give some instructions to tech number two, and when she looked back to see if the program was still running correctly, had found that message. Irene estimated that she’d taken her eyes off the thing for thirty seconds at most.
“Oh, my God,” tech two said. “Is that thing talking to us?”
“Unless you connected something wrong and we’re getting a signal from some other piece of equipment, yes.”
“No way I connected it wrong. The vampire brain is the only thing plugged in. Look for yourself.”
Irene did. She did so methodically and slowly, not wanting to let her enthusiasm get the best of her. It wouldn’t do to look foolish in front of a man whose name she couldn’t even remember. But, as every connection checked out, her excitement grew.
Even before she finished her verification, Irene was thinking up strategies to talk to the alien computer. She decided that figuring out how it was so easy to translate the words could wait.
Shooing the tech out with instructions not to talk to anyone under pain of severe administrative harm, she sat at the interface and spoke to the voice pickup. “Hello,” she said.
The response was immediate. Greetings.
She stopped everything to check the settings again on her auxiliary monitor. Might it be possible that the program was simply translating what they were inputting? She would feel like an idiot if that were the case.
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