There were no occupants. Muller and Willis went first and the rest piled in quickly. The interior was battered, and large enough to let both Decker and Manning set their burdens down again. Decker rolled his shoulders and felt the muscles creak their gratitude.
He kept looking down the length of the rough corridor, half expecting to see more of the bugs coming their way. He didn’t feel them, but he expected them just the same.
Manning seemed to feel the same.
“Damned things are like cockroaches,” he muttered. “They keep popping out of nowhere.”
Dave spoke up.
“Let ’em. I got three full clips and a serious need to shoot something.” The rifle he waved had a big barrel, and looked like it had been designed to hunt small spaceships.
“That’s what I like about you, Dave,” Manning said. “Your optimism.” The doors shut and the lift rose smoothly. The ride stayed smooth and then it jerked to a halt on the top level.
The doors opened into a hallway that was abandoned.
Muller checked anyway. Then he gave the all clear.
“Let’s get the hell out of here, gentlemen,” Manning said. “We need to find a defensible area and call the shuttle down.”
Willis looked up and smiled weakly. “I think the shuttle is already here.”
Manning frowned. “It is?”
“I could be wrong, but I believe that was the plan. It should be here already.”
Manning nodded his head but kept that skeptical frown.
“If you’re right, all the better.”
Decker squatted and looked over Adams’s still form. Then he very carefully lifted her and stood back up again.
“Let’s go.”
Willis cleared his throat. “I need to go to my office. I have files I need to retrieve.” He pointed down the hallway. “Take two lefts and you’ll be at the main doors. The landing pad is across from the barracks.”
Manning lifted Elway.
“Don’t be long. If it’s you or my people, it’s going to be my people. Understood?”
“Of course.” Willis was still a little shaky, but he headed off toward his offices.
And they were off again, Muller and Dave taking the front and the rear while Alan and Manning carried their burdens. After all they’d been through, the silence seemed deafening, but Decker felt it. The growing sensation that the damned things were coming for him again.
“They’re getting closer.”
“Where?” Muller looked back at him.
“I don’t know. I just know they’re getting closer. Damn I hate this.” His pulse was hammering, despite the odd calming sensation that emanated from Adams and Elway.
“Let’s just move,” Manning said. “We need to get to the damn shuttle, and now.” He was doing his best to look everywhere at once. The strain from carrying Elway was showing itself now, and adding to Decker’s discomfort. If Manning looked stressed, it was a bad sign in his book.
They made the two lefts with stops to check for the bugs. Nothing. Nothing at all, but instead of relaxing Decker, it made him stress even more. He knew they were coming, yet there was no sign of them.
“Where are all the people?” Muller mumbled—to himself, most likely, but Decker heard. He didn’t answer, but he was wondering the same thing. There were no signs of a disturbance. The violence from below hadn’t occurred here. There was no debris, and there were no bodies.
They reached a door, and there was the sound of falling water on the other side. They eased it open, and for the first time they saw the outside. It was dark out, and the rains were heavier than Decker had seen before.
The exterior lights were on, casting brilliant beams through the darkness and leaving the entire area in a dim twilight highlighted by the shining trails of illuminated raindrops. The air was clean, and smelled like a slice of heaven after the burning stench of the alien tunnels. The chill was enough to invigorate.
But it wouldn’t last, Decker knew. The bugs were coming. No time to enjoy even the little things, because they were somewhere close by, and he needed to spot them before the damned things got close enough to kill them.
“Where are they, Decker?” Dave said. The man was getting positively chatty.
He looked around and saw the landing platform where the shuttle waited for them.
Of course.
“They’re that way.”
Manning didn’t bother waiting. He started walking and expected the rest to keep pace. They did—even Decker, who had no desire to head toward the things that wanted to tear him to shreds.
The closer they got the more he felt his muscles tensing. They were out there. They had to be.
But damned if he could see them.
55
SAMPLES
The safe was exactly where he’d been told it would be, tucked into the floor at the base of a small desk that had delusions of being something better.
When Pritchett opened it, he found a small container with a biohazard symbol on the outside. He opened the seal and saw several small vials of gray and silver tissue samples. That was the stuff. He slid the package into his pants pocket, and took the time to grab a few papers that looked interesting. There was no money, nor any other valuables.
As he stood up the door opened.
The man standing in the doorway looked profoundly shocked by his presence.
That was fair. He felt the same way.
“What are you doing in my office?”
Pritchett looked the man up and down. He was stocky, and filthy dirty. He looked like he’d crawled his way across the entire complex on his belly. What he did not look like was a threat.
“Got orders from above to procure a few samples from your safe.” He saw no reason to lie to the man.
Mister Business looked him up and down and scowled.
“Well, you’ve done your duty, and can hand them over to me.” He actually held out a hand as if expecting Pritchett to surrender the package.
“Yeah. I don’t see that happening.” He took a step toward the man and placed a hand on his pistol’s holster, just in case there was any debate.
“Now you listen here. My name is Tom Willis and I’m in charge of this facility. You need to hand over what you took before things get nasty, mister.”
Seriously? He looked the man up and down. “Okay, get this. Your facility is screwed. I’m following orders. I’m also the pilot who’s getting you out of here, unless you continue to give me shit. Give me enough trouble and I’ll just leave your ass here.”
Yeah, that got his attention just fine. The man went white.
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Watch me,” he replied. “Time to go. I’m just waiting on Manning and his team, and then we’re out of here.”
“Are there other shuttles coming, for more people?” The officious bravado was fading fast, and the man was looking less like a boss and more like a wage slave. Pritchett liked the change.
“Don’t know. Don’t care. It’s time to go.”
“But—”
“Listen, you can stay if you want. I don’t care. I’m leaving.”
The man looked at his desk, looked over his paperwork and office supplies like they were proof that he should be in charge. Pritchett just walked past him. Let the little bastard stay if he wanted to.
The sonovabitch sucker punched him. Hauled off and drove a fist into the side of Pritchett’s head with all he could muster. It was a good punch, but it wasn’t great. Pritchett staggered to the side and caught himself as he bounced into the doorjamb.
While the man was grabbing at something from his desk, Pritchett brought his leg around and kicked him in the thigh hard enough to make him scream. Whatever he’d been grabbing at fell from his hand.
Then Pritchett brought his open palm around and nailed his attacker in the jaw, hard enough to snap his head back.
Willis let out a grunt and tried for him again. Pritchett didn’t waste time. There would have been
some satisfaction in breaking the bastard’s neck, but he was on a deadline. So he just drew the pistol and aimed it at Willis’s face.
“No!” And just like that the fight went out of him.
“That’s done. Move your ass before I shoot you.” He pushed Willis ahead of him and let the man stumble. If he fell all over himself that was just fine.
Willis made four drunken steps into the hallway when he was hit by something big and black. It was fast, too, and it slashed a chunk out of the man’s guts in one hard stroke of its fingers. The man fell back, a high keening scream leaking from his lips. He hit the wall, his eyes never once leaving the thing as it came for him a second time.
Pritchett opened fire.
Nothing happened. The safety was still engaged.
He cursed himself as he flipped the switch. The thing changed course and jumped at him, letting loose a few choice noises of its own.
This time when he pulled the trigger the pistol worked just fine. The thing staggered backward as he fired four times, blowing multiple holes into the torso and guts of the beast. It fell backward, kicked, thrashed, and died.
Its guts splashed over Willis, who let out a piercing shriek. His hands shook as his body smoked and burned—he didn’t seem to know where to put them or what to do to make the pain go away. It must have been overwhelming. His skin blistered along his face and neck, bubbled over his arms and hands, and he shrieked again, looking toward Pritchett with eyes that seemed to blame him.
Pritchett just gaped, speechless.
Willis screamed again as a hole burned through his lips and half of his nose.
Pritchett reacted by instinct. One shot through Willis’s skull—and then he moved for the door.
The ship wasn’t that far away, really. He could make it in a couple of minutes, but suddenly it seemed like a lot further than that. The idea that he might run into any more of those things added miles in his mind. He kept his weapon drawn, and scanned his surroundings as he walked.
56
PLAIN SIGHT
Decker was happy to discover that Willis had it right. The drop ship was waiting on the landing pad, and the sight of it was like a boost of adrenaline straight to the heart. Suddenly Adams didn’t weigh as much, and Decker felt as if he could sprint the short distance.
The mercenaries seemed to feel the same way. They moved faster and they were more alert.
“Where are they?” Manning said, and Decker’s euphoria fell into check.
“Right there.” He pointed toward the ship, and his voice rose. “They’re right in front of us, and getting closer. But I can’t see them!”
“You could maybe stop shouting, and telling them where we are, guys,” Dave said. “You think maybe that’s a good idea?”
Muller nodded and stayed quiet, but kept alert, his pulse rifle at the ready. When he glanced toward the sands, he muttered under his breath.
“No way.”
Decker looked. He wished he’d managed not to. There were two of them at first, rising out of the sand. He had no idea where they’d come from until the next one rose.
The damned silicon.
Originally he’d thought they were just deposits, lumps of hardened sand, maybe caused by lightning strikes when the worst of the storms were still ripping the planet apart on a daily basis. Then he’d guessed that they might be debris from the tunnels the aliens were making. But as the sand erupted he realized the truth.
The bugs were craftier than he’d imagined. The silicon lumps he’d found were just the evidence of the trapdoors. Several of them popped up at the same time and the aliens crawled quickly from the tunnels they’d built.
Fully a dozen of the things came out at the same time, skittering across the sand, moving on all fours to better spread their weight and avoid sinking in the soft surface.
And the damn things saw him. He felt their anger rise as they did so, and they came faster. Behind them more were rising from their hidden tunnels, and charging toward him, the mercenaries, and their only hope of getting away from the planet.
Muller raised his pistol, aimed, and fired, and one of the bugs exploded. The others kept coming. They were focused on Decker to the exclusion of everything else. They wanted the Destroyer dead.
Decker set Adams down as gently as he could under the circumstances, and took aim with his pistol. Manning dropped Elway without ceremony, letting the man land roughly as he opened fire.
Not-so-silent Dave lifted the wide barrel of his weapon and fired. The noise was loud, a low roar of detonation, and out on the Sea of Sorrows there was a brilliant corresponding flash as several feet of sand and moving alien erupted in a wave of flames.
Dave let out a whooping battle cry and did it again, shifting his target a bit and blowing the shit out of another three yards of everything within range.
Still they came. The aliens moved faster now that they were in the open, and not dodging obstacles. Decker aimed, fired, missed. Aimed, fired and missed. He emptied the clip on the reaper, never certain if he’d hit anything at all.
Manning obliterated one of the things that got too close, and the monster rolled across the ground, leaving a trail of acid blood behind. Decker stared at the thing, suddenly unable to move.
It was dead, but the twitching parts still seemed to reach for him.
Another man came up from behind them and Decker spun, aimed and fired. Had there been any ammunition left in the reaper he’d have killed the stranger, but fate was kinder than that.
It was Pritchett, the pilot. The man slapped the weapon from his hands, pushed him aside and opened fire on the aliens.
Decker grabbed at the plasma rifle slung over his shoulder, but all he managed was to drop the weapon.
Dave fired a total of ten of his explosive rounds, and then switched clips with hands that were almost blindingly fast. The empty clip hit the ground and bounced, and by the time it had finished its short trip the mercenary was once again blowing holes in the desert and the aliens. He was careful to avoid getting too close to the shuttle.
Muller ran out of ammunition on his rifle, let it fall and immediately reached for the plasma rifle Decker had dropped. He grabbed it, his face pulled down in an expression of burning anger.
As Decker had done before, he set the weapon to automatic and unloaded the entire clip of plasma rounds into the approaching horde. Like Dave, he was careful about where he fired, giving the ship a wide berth. The night immediately became day, and the light revealed the monsters as they caught fire and burned, screeching and dying in the sudden conflagration.
Manning kept firing, picking off the shapes that made it through the sudden firestorm and got too close to the shuttle.
As the freelancers decimated the creatures, the panic that tried to eat through Decker’s mind calmed, fading with each death. The heat from the plasma fires was almost enough to warm the chill that coursed through him.
Then Manning was reaching for Elway.
As Decker reached for Adams, Pritchett drove a fist into his stomach hard enough to drop him. While he was trying to get back up, the stranger aimed a pistol at his face.
“You lost your fucking mind?” he shouted. “You tried to shoot me!”
Manning reached over and put his hand on the pistol, slowly directing it away from Decker’s face.
“Heat of the moment,” he said. “Get over it. We need to leave.”
“He fucking tried to kill me!”
“I said let it go, Pritchett! Now let. It. Go.”
The pilot took a few extra heartbeats to stare blue murder at Decker, and then holstered his weapon.
“Where the fuck is Willis?” Manning barely even bothered to look around. “We need to leave. Now.”
“He didn’t make it.” Pritchett didn’t offer anything else.
Manning nodded and started walking.
The rest followed.
“What the fuck are those things?” Pritchett looked carefully around and avoided stepping on the bur
nt remains of the aliens. Then he slid back the protective case on his wrist and tapped a couple of keys on a remote. The lights on the drop ship started up instantly, and the door at the rear opened and descended, offering them access.
“Those are what we came here to find,” Manning spat. “Aren’t they great?”
Pritchett climbed aboard, and the rest quickly followed. The door began to close with a mechanical whine. Exhaustion tinted Decker’s every move. He carried Adams into the seating area and very carefully strapped her into a seat. The thing covering her face shifted just a bit. The legs moved, the tail slid a few millimeters. It took everything left in him not to scream.
That cold feeling still came from the thing. A calm that seemed to promise that everything would be just fine. The sensation slithered into his mind from both of the spider-things, and he shivered. A lie. It had to be a lie. Nothing would ever be all right again. Not in a universe that had vomited these things into existence.
As if to prove him right, another of the bugs came through the door as it was rising back into place, pushing into the area with unsettling speed. Pritchett let out a tiny noise as the monster’s claws opened his stomach and sliced through his thigh. The blood flow was immediate and heavy.
By the time he knew he was injured, the pilot was dead.
Dave grabbed the handrail above the aisle and twisted his entire body around. Both of his feet landed in the thing’s charging body and sent it backward. While it was recovering, Muller looked around for a weapon, any weapon that might let him fight the thing.
It ignored him and went for Decker, silent and fast.
Muller grabbed a pistol and slammed it across the top of the alien’s skull. It faltered, but did not fall. There was no room for firing a weapon inside the drop ship—not without risking hitting the wrong target.
Manning scrambled for the front of the ship.
Decker grabbed for anything that he could use against the creature and let out a bellow. Hard claws caught his calf and tore through the fabric of his pants, through the leather of his boot, and into the flesh beneath. He kicked the thing in its featureless face where the hint of a skull lay beneath the smooth back surface, above the gnashing teeth, once, twice, a third time, but it did not care. It just kept coming for him.
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