Sea of Sorrows

by James A. Moore

  He managed to shock the first one, and it didn’t slow down in the slightest. Then the other one was on him, and he was screaming.

  37

  RED SAND

  When he didn’t hear back from Rand, Brett Bentley tried reaching him by comm three separate times, even as he armed himself. He started to call for backup, then remembered that damned near everyone on the site was down at the Hut, trying to get to the people in the mine.

  This better not be a false alarm, he thought grimly. Like as not the dumb ass has gotten drunk again and then passed out on the sand.

  Rand seemed like a nice enough guy, but he’d started drinking more and more since he’d been reassigned. Bentley decided that if he spotted the damned fool out in the sand, sleeping it off, that he’d let him stay out there.

  Maybe a good rain shower will sober him up.

  He grabbed a hand-held flashlight, and as an added measure lit up the perimeter security lights. Within less than twenty yards he saw fresh footprints, and he followed them about a hundred yards further. He stopped at a dark wet spot on the black sand—at first he couldn’t make out what the source of the moisture was.

  Maybe he stopped to take a piss, he thought. Then he flashed his light over the area, and saw the red tint that painted some of the black grains. Unless the man was pissing blood, something nasty had happened there.

  Looking around, he found the signs of a struggle, then tracks that looked as if something—likely Rand—had been dragged away. Weirdly enough, there weren’t any other boot prints—or anything resembling them.

  Bentley pulled his pistol. His nerves were singing. Fourteen years he’d worked with the company. In all that time he’d never had to actually draw his weapon. He’d been trained, and he was a capable marksman. What he was not was combat seasoned.

  He preferred it stay that way.

  Just the same, he had a job to do. He called on the comm, and didn’t recognize the voice of the person who responded.

  “Talk to me,” the voice said.

  “I’ve got a situation out here,” Bentley replied. “There’s a guy missing—one of the contract employees—and there’s blood on the sand. There’s sign of an assault. Can you send someone to back me up?”

  “Negative,” the voice said. “We’ve got all hands on deck here, and that’s still not enough. You’ll have to check it out on your own.”

  “Roger that,” Bentley said, adding silently, Thanks for nothing, asshole.

  He started following the signs of struggle. The sand was dry and soft and held remarkably little detail. He could see a clear ridge where Rand had been dragged along, and there were indistinct marks on either side. So it had to have been two attackers. He followed the trail for about twenty yards.

  “Damn it.” The trail just sort of faded away. His light played across the soft sand. There was nothing after that. No indication that Rand had broken free, or that his attackers had gone anywhere.

  Bentley turned and started back the way he’d come. Without clear cause, he couldn’t go further from his post without violating procedure. Before he’d walked ten paces, however, he heard something behind him.

  He turned and shone his light into the darkness.

  So he had a good, clear look at the teeth of the monster.

  38

  WRECKED

  Manning stood right next to Decker as they looked down the shaft at the smoldering ruins of the lift, and several tons of mangled equipment. The merc summed up his feelings by spitting a wad of phlegm down into the wreckage.

  Decker looked at the shaft walls and shook his head. The entire thing had been carved from the surrounding stone, and the walls were damned hard. Despite that, he saw long cracks in the stone.

  “Holy crap.” Adams was looking up. “We’re on level five.” She pointed with the business end of her rifle, toward the markings at the upper edge of where the tunnel met the shaft. “Now all we have to do is find the backup elevators, and maybe we can get out of here.”

  Cho’s voice came through on the comm, and Manning walked away, talking into his headset. The tech had killed the man responsible for the wreckage. It was a scientist from the excavation—he’d been convinced that they had to sacrifice themselves, to stop the creatures from getting loose.

  The man had a point, Decker thought, but he kept it to himself. But I’m not sure anything can stop them. Our own chance of surviving, on the other hand… No. Screw that noise. He had every intention of getting home with his prizes intact. He had a life to get back to, and no intention of surrendering it to Weyland-Yutani, or to whatever weird monsters they might find.

  The lights flickered again, and if the power failed them, they were in serious trouble. Then he had a thought.

  He looked to Adams, who was scanning the way they’d come, and frowning.

  “Hey, Adams?” he said. “Do you guys have anything that’ll let you see better in the dark? I mean, as standard issue.”

  She shook her head. “No such thing as standard issue. We buy our own supplies. So, yeah, some of us have night goggles. They’re no good in cramped quarters, like the tunnels—especially with all of us crammed in there together. And they’d’ve made targeting a bitch. But out in the open, they might just be of some use.” She grinned. “I’ve got ’em in my pack.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. The goggles work, but they aren’t as good as the naked eye unless you’re dealing with full darkness. Too much loss of peripheral vision.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” He’d used them on more than one assignment. There were sleeker, less intrusive models on the market, but they cost an arm and a leg. More than a grunt—or a paper pusher like him—could afford.

  He didn’t bother to ask if she had a spare set.

  Something started to make his scalp feel tight, and the background noise ratcheted up a notch… then another. He pulled inward, and reached out with his senses.

  “Manning?” His voice was low, and he kept it steady. When the merc didn’t respond, he tried again, louder. “Manning!”

  “What?”

  “They’re coming!”

  Manning crossed the distance in an instant.

  “Where are they?” His face took on harder angles. Decker took a minute, and then responded.

  “They’re coming from several directions,” he said. “And they’re not going to take long to get here.”

  “Then let’s get our asses in gear, find the damned backup lifts, and get the hell out of here,” Adams said, her voice shaking almost imperceptibly.

  Manning nodded.

  “Let’s go. Keep your weapons ready, and check your armor. We’ll follow the most traveled pathways.” He took point again, carrying his rifle at the ready. This time Decker was in the middle of the group, with three in front of him and four to the rear.

  Walking became increasingly difficult for Decker. Everything became harder to accomplish. As they approached the hole Manning had burned in the side of the tunnel, the sense of the creatures was so intense that it dragged on him physically.

  Shit, he thought with sudden clarity. All he could get out was, “They’re here!”

  The first ones came through the hole, while other shapes charged from ahead of them, and some came from behind—most likely from the elevator shaft itself. He couldn’t hope to count them. He didn’t want to. All he could do was take aim and hope he didn’t blow his own leg off when he fired.

  The freelancers were in motion before he was. They were trained for combat. He was trained for filing reports. That thought had him half giggling even as he tried to find a target. But the mercenaries were in the way.

  Four of the dark forms came in fast, barely even making a sound except for the skitter of their nails on the hard-packed soil and rocks. Adams opened fire while they were still a dozen yards away, and let out a grunt each time she pulled the trigger. Four little sounds from her, four loud booms from her weapon, and two of the creatures exploded.

>   The other two were better at ducking.

  One of them leaped through the air, bounced off the wall and plowed into a dark-haired man who was already firing at another shape coming his way. The mercenary just had long enough to realize how screwed he was, before the shape rode him to the ground, clawing and biting the entire time. No one could help him. If they shot the damned thing, the blood would just burn the poor bastard.

  He clubbed the thing in the face with his pistol, and tried to push it aside, but it didn’t move. The creature’s mouth opened and drooled out a slick of moisture even as the secondary mouth drove into the poor bastard’s face and ripped at his cheek.

  Decker looked away as another of the things leaped at Adams. She tried to track it, but failed. Before she could compensate for its speed, the alien was past the range of her weapon.

  Decker didn’t think. He just aimed, pulled the trigger, and got blindly lucky. The plasma from his rifle missed Adams and hit the fast moving demon in the upper back, burning through two protrusions that rose like frozen wings from its shoulders. The creature shrieked and bucked, trying to escape the pain.

  Then it turned. Even through its agony Decker could feel it focusing on him, noticing him for what he was, for who he was, and the feeling of hatred was magnified a dozen times over.

  Injured, possibly dying, the damned thing still came for him, clawing at the ground as it changed direction. There wasn’t time to fire again, but he tried anyway, and launched a ball of liquid fire into the wall.

  The thing had him dead to rights.

  Manning caught it across the skull with the butt of his rifle, and drove the screaming nightmare into the ground. The blow was solid, but not enough. The thing was back up in an instant, and once again trying for Decker. He danced backward and ran into another person, but didn’t dare look to see who was behind him.

  The creature continued lashing out, scrambling to get to him with no concern for anything else. Feeling the creature’s thoughts, the primal hatred, the desire to kill him, would have been bad enough, but the mind behind those emotions was so completely foreign that the raw emotions seemed even worse. He felt its single-minded rage, and his own fear rising as a counterpoint.

  Manning kicked the thing in the side, and staggered it. Before it could recover a second time he fired, the barrel of his weapon flaring with each pull of the trigger. Four rounds pounded into the creature, and blew it backward with each impact.

  It fell, and didn’t get back up.

  There wasn’t time to celebrate as the next pack of the things appeared. The six mercenaries were ready, though, and had enough room to allow them to work in unison. Two opened fire with the explosive rounds that shattered the air and their enemies alike. The backsplash of the acid blood hit armor and flesh, but the splatter was minimized by distance.

  Even as the first of the aliens went down, the ones behind them split up and attacked. They were fast and savage, quickly closing the distance and making ranged weapons ineffective. Manning directed his people and they listened, but all the commands in the world didn’t change how brutal the attack was. The freelancers were pushed back, and Decker was pushed with them.

  The things pushed their advantage without pause.

  Adams and Manning and a few of the others quickly took to using their weapons as bludgeons. Manning slammed into one of the things and shoved it backward, grunting with the effort, and as it fell back another merc nailed it with a quick burst from a .44. She let out a yelp as the blood from the thing burned flesh, but instantly recovered and kept fighting.

  One of the black-shelled demons jumped over Manning’s head while he was pushing back against another. It cleared the distance effortlessly and came down on top of another mercenary, who was knocked flat and likely would have died on the spot, but the thing seemed far more intent on getting to Decker. As quickly as it landed, it jumped again and came for him.

  Decker wrestled himself free of the crush of bodies and cursed, swinging his plasma rifle in a tight arc that just managed to save him from getting clawed to shreds.

  Instead of carving into him, the creature’s claws ripped the weapon from his hands. He didn’t have time to think—he charged the creature and knocked it back toward the man it had flattened in its jump.

  The mercenary was better prepared the second time, and brought up the double prongs of his shocker, electrocuting the thing with a jolt that should have killed it. He pushed the prongs into the thing’s chest and fired voltage through it a second time, and then a third, until it was still. Its glossy black hide was cracked and bleeding.

  Decker grabbed back his weapon and tried to catch his breath.

  They were everywhere.

  “Fall back!” Manning bellowed, and his people did so. Adams pushed Decker along for the ride.

  Suddenly a wave of force lifted him and threw him backward. His ears were pounded and a flash blinded him. Manning had dropped a grenade into the middle of the enemy.

  He struggled to recover, and looked around. Several of the freelancers were clambering to their feet, shaking off the concussive force and continuing their strategic withdrawal. Manning tossed a small metal ball in a gentle underhand arc, toward still more of the things coming from the direction of the lift. He was a bit further back this time, managed to clear a few more yards before the detonation.

  He kept his feet, and so did most of the other fighters, and then they were running—all of them. They moved hard and fast retreating from the scattered black shapes that littered the ground.

  He couldn’t see how many there were. He didn’t dare take the time to find out. The survivors would recover, and they would be joined by more.

  So they ran. Oh, they ran.

  And the nightmares followed.

  * * *

  Panic was winning, and Decker had to stop it.

  He forced himself to gulp in air and to actually look where he was going, because otherwise he would surely die. The things coming from behind made soft, low hisses and high, shrill shrieks, and the hard noises of their bodies in motion offered a sharp counterpoint. He tried glancing back, but all he could see was the mercenaries, several of whom were firing their weapons as they ran.

  Adams had told him the rifle in his hands could be switched to automatic. He flipped the weapon over and looked for the control. But before he could do anything with it the terrain changed. The seemingly endless corridor started curving, and he had to pay attention to what was going on ahead of him.

  Then they hit a fork.

  “Which way, Decker?” He didn’t recognize the voice.

  Two choices: left or right.

  The left fork looked more frequently used and he pointed in that direction, going mostly on instinct. The group went in that direction and he prayed he was right.

  While he was praying he came to a stop and adjusted the settings on his plasma rifle. The mercenaries kept running. Heart hammering too hard for him to hear even the sound of his own breath, Decker aimed back the way they’d gone and waited.

  The last of the freelancers, Llewellyn, charged past him—were there fewer than he remembered? It surely did seem that way.

  The first of the things came skittering around the curve.

  Their hatred was very nearly a living thing, another presence moving among the tide of chitinous bodies. They were charging faster than before, and he lowered the barrel of his rifle toward the center of their seething mass. Then he pulled the trigger.

  And was blinded.

  She had warned him. The air around him seemed to catch fire. One tiny burst of the stuff was enough to melt the flesh of the aliens. By the time he let go of the trigger, he’d unleashed close to a hundred times as much. The heat sent his hair rippling and the glare took away all but the briefest hints of the dark shapes ahead of him. They screamed, not only with their hideous voices, but also with their minds. The hatred washing over him disappeared in a conflagration of plasma and fear.

  The walls where they had
been were glowing. The stone was running in places and the darker lines—likely the trimonite—shone with a white heat.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Manning bellowed, startlingly close. He clamped a hand on Decker’s shoulder and began dragging him backward.

  Decker couldn’t answer—he just allowed himself to be pulled away. His mind was overwhelmed by the brilliant, explosive light, and by the utter silence from the horde of things that had been trying to kill him.

  Manning yanked the weapon from his hands, spun him around, and pushed him forward.

  “Move!”

  Decker obeyed, trying to breathe in air that felt too thin and far too hot. He stumbled forward and followed the people ahead of him. Behind him there was only Manning. The aliens were gone.

  Just gone.

  Up ahead the group slowed as they reached the mesh doors of the secondary lift. Adams looked back at him with wide eyes, and he felt more than he comprehended her shock.

  He was feeling a bit shocked himself.

  Behind them the heat was, if anything, actually getting worse.

  “Ferguson!” Manning’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Are the doors working?”

  A lean, bloodied man nodded his head.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Then get them open, and get us the hell out of here.”

  The metal bile of the aliens was replaced by the fear and disbelief of the mercenaries. They were in shock, and he didn’t know if the bugs were the cause, or his own stupidity. Probably both. They entered the lift, and Ferguson closed the doors as the glow of the burning walls behind them lit up the corridor.

  “Go!” Manning’s voice snapped the order, and a moment later the entire platform they stood on lurched and began ascending.

  Manning said nothing, but he stared bloody murder in Decker’s direction.

  “I stopped them, didn’t I?” Decker offered. He hadn’t planned on talking but there it was.

  “You just dropped a miniature sun’s worth of heat down a hallway made of stone and dirt! If we’re fucking lucky, the entire thing won’t collapse, you dumb bastard!”