Project Diamond (Jacob Lansing Series Book 1)

by J. W. Bouchard

  Only the cockroaches on Earth weren’t seven feet tall. And they didn’t have serrated blades for arms. These alien cockroaches were at least as intelligent as we were judging the technology we had seen so far. Capable of interstellar travel (I assumed they weren’t indigenous to 55 Cancri e), of building heavy machinery, and they possessed the ability to strategize. They had laid a trap for us and we had walked right into it. They had weapons, including the self-tightening nets that currently had us pinned down.

  Hayes’s garbled voice had faded to distant static, cutting in and out through our helmet coms. I didn’t know whether our suitcams were still functional or not.

  My helmet was trapped in place, the netting snug against the helmet’s faceplate. But I could move my head enough to get a view of Davidson twenty feet away. He was on the ground, curled up into a tight ball, the net encasing him like a mesh cocoon. He lay perfectly still. Like the rest of us, he had figured out that the more he struggled, the more the netting constricted.

  Two of the insectoid creatures peeled off from the rest and approached Davidson. One of them swung its arm out and it scissored open, slicing open the restraint netting as it came down, releasing the xenoarchaeologist. Davidson managed to get to his feet, his arms up in the air to show his captors that he was unarmed. He staggered over to us.

  “We come in peace,” he said. “We mean you no harm.”

  If I hadn’t been scared shitless, I would have rolled my eyes. Given our present position, I didn’t think the creatures considered us a threat. They had overpowered us in two seconds flat. The fact that the alien mantises towered over him and were equipped with blades that could slice through rock with ease made it more likely that if anyone intended to do harm, it was them. Davidson spoke slowly and softly. I wondered if he had been trained to do that. “We are unarmed.”

  “Shut your pie hole,” Perkins said.

  Being old school military, Perkins had no doubt been trained that you don’t fraternize with the enemy. If captured, you didn’t speak. You kept your mouth shut and let them do their worst, but at no point did you give up information. That, and Hayes had ordered us to avoid contact.

  But it was a little late for that.

  The two insectoids that had parted from the rest of the group to free Davidson came in behind him now, flanking him on either side.

  Slowly and deliberately, Davidson shrugged off his pack and opened it. He dug inside of it for what seemed like forever before bringing out the dictionary that I had seen him carrying earlier. He held it out in front of him, offering it to the aliens. Did he think that old book with its worn and wrinkled pages was the key to our salvation? The solution to all our problems?

  One of the mantises moved forward and snatched the dictionary with its clawed hand. It flipped through the book with a proficiency I wouldn’t have assumed possible given the characteristics of their appendages. The insectoid turned and handed the book to one of the others who was carrying a small cylindrical object. It opened the dictionary to the first page and held the object close to the page. Blue light filtered out of the end of the cylinder closest to the page. The blue light shone on the page as a vertical line. It swept back and forth quickly and the creature flipped to the next page and began the process again.

  It went on like that for a long time, scanning each page. When it was finished, the creature let the dictionary fall to the ground. It brought out a small oval device with straps dangling from either end, and plugged a corrugated cord protruding from the device into the other end of the scanner. When it was finished, it unplugged the cord and handed the oval device to the tallest of the insectoids.

  I thought I knew what was going on, and my assumption was verified when the tallest insectoid placed the device over his mouth and strapped it in place.

  A million bucks says it’ll start speaking English, I thought.

  And it did.

  The mandibles moved and clicked together, producing that strange chittering noise, but once the sound passed through the device and went through whatever electronic translation process the device had been created for, English came out the other end.

  “What you do here?” the machine translated.

  Davidson smiled. Now that they could communicate, he seemed to have gained a bit of his confidence back. He turned his head and said, “They want to know what we’re doing here.”

  “I can understand English well enough when I hear it,” Perkins said through gritted teeth. “Don’t tell them anything.”

  “I don’t see any alternative.” Davidson turned so that he was facing the insectoid creature and said, “We have come a great distance. From a planet called Earth. We are explorers. Scientists. We have also come to mine the resources of this planet. They are very valuable where we come from.”

  The device seemed to work both ways. Davidon’s words were translated into a series of unintelligible clicks and clacks.

  “You’re making yourself less valuable by the second,” Perkins said.

  I wondered if there was something he knew that I didn’t. Or was he just following Hayes’s orders? I thought Davidson was making the right move, establishing communication with the aliens. We had our orders, but we were also at the mercy of these alien beings. As long as they had the upper hand, being cooperative seemed like a no-brainer.

  After there was no response, Davidson continued. “It appears that you are mining this world as well. But the planet is big enough for both of our races. There is more than enough for everyone. We can share.”

  The translator worked speedily.

  A few seconds ticked by.

  The alien mantises chattered amongst themselves.

  Clack-click-click. Click-clack-click.

  The device translated.

  “No share…”

  Davidson appeared crestfallen. He was about to speak…

  The device finished its translation.

  “You die!”

  It happened fast. So fast.

  The insectoid creature drew its arm up and swept downward with the business end. I was glad Davidson’s back was to me. He fell to his knees. His head toppled forward, hitting the ground with a dull thud a moment before the rest of his body followed.

  Perkins yelled, “Motherfucker!” He writhed against the netting that held him in place, but it didn’t do any good.

  I wanted to puke. I wanted to close my eyes, but they were glued to Davidson’s body that lay sprawled in the dirt. His head rested on its side several feet from the rest of his body.

  The insectoid creature that had killed Davidson tore the translator from its mouth and handed it back to one of the others. Another creature appeared out of the darkness, dragging Harper behind it. Harper was encased in a net, his eyes wide with horror as he caught sight of Davidson’s still form.

  Perkins was silent again. His eyes were cold steel as he glared at the alien mantises.

  Click-click-clack-click-clack.

  Without the translator, their language became indecipherable again. Two of the alien cockroaches moved toward me, another approached Perkins.

  I thought that was the end. I thought I was two seconds away from joining Davidson, of being dead in the dirt, decomposing in the excruciating heat of an alien planet forty light years from home.

  And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

  One of the alien cockroaches peeled the netting away from Perkins. He dropped to the ground, but was up in a flash. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His eyes said it all. Perkins wanted blood. He wanted revenge. I wanted to advise him otherwise. To tell him it was a losing battle. We were hopelessly outnumbered and we were unarmed.

  You don’t stand a chance, I wanted to say.

  But Perkins, despite the hatred that burned in his eyes, seemed to know all of that already. He stood and waited.

  “I’ll
kill you,” he said. His voice was calm as always. “I’ll kill you all.”

  And I believed him.

  CHAPTER 14

  We were dragged harshly over the dirt. Perkins and Harper were on their backs a few feet away, being dragged the same way I was. I prayed that my suit might get snagged on one of the jagged rocks and get ripped open, that it would expose me to the planet’s harsh environment and I would die within seconds. It might be an excruciating death, but it beat being decapitated. I tried not to blink. Whenever I closed my eyes all I could see was a negative of Davidson laying dead in the dirt. I didn’t want to go out that way.

  Our coms were working again. At least locally. Nothing from Hayes, so I couldn’t be sure if they were reading us back on the ship.

  Perkins said, “Whatever happens, you don’t make it easy. You fight. You make life hell on them until your last breath. You might be scared, but you need to forget about that. That’s one emotion you don’t have time for. I want you to remember Davidson. Remember you hate them for it, and hold onto that hate. It’s the only thing that’s going to keep you alive. Got me?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Harper?”

  “I heard you.”

  I tilted my head up in time to see the mantises stop at a large hole burrowed into the ground. They descended into it, and then we were being dragged down it. I could feel myself suspended upside down, an alien claw the only thing preventing me from plummeting into the darkness.

  We descended forever. Down, down, down.

  The light from our suits bobbed along the roughly hewn walls that surrounded us. I wasn’t claustrophobic, but the narrow shaft tested my limits.

  I tried to keep in mind what Perkins had said. Cast out the fear and hold on tightly to the hatred. The hate was there all right, but it was hard to keep it at the forefront of my mind when we were being dragged down an unlit tunnel by hostile aliens that had no qualm with snuffing us out.

  “What if they’re going to eat us?” Harper asked. His voice trembled. It sounded like he was a moment away from losing his shit.

  “Then you make sure they choke on your bones,” Perkins said.

  The shaft angled suddenly. The back of my head bounced painfully on the ground. The walls surrounding us glittered when our lights hit them. Raw diamond, I thought. Miles and miles of diamond, worth more than my mind could calculate. And none of that mattered now. I didn’t give a shit about any of it; about the mission, about the diamonds, about how much time had passed back on Earth. All I could think of was saving my own skin.

  Perkins wanted us to hold onto hate. Good for him. He could hold onto it as tightly as he wanted. So tight that it got him killed. If it came down to it, I would fight. I would make them choke on my bones and gag on my flesh. But above all else, I wanted to survive. Play it cool. Look for an opportunity when it presented itself. The ghost of Burnell’s voice was inside my head, remembering something else he had beaten into my brain: There’s always a way out. Remember that. Always. What gets most people killed is not seeing that when the moment comes.

  The tunnel opened up into a vast cavernous room. The room hummed with activity. Mining machinery dug at the walls, collected in large metal containers until it was carted off by trucks armored in bone.

  We were dragged through yet another tunnel into an adjoining room where we were deposited into a shallow pit. I landed on my back. Harper and Perkins followed. A grated iron lid crashed into place above us, sealing us in. I could hear the rapid click-clack-click-click of the alien language. And then it faded out and we were alone.

  Perkins was on his feet almost instantaneously. He tried climbing up the steep wall. “Help me up,” he said. I got down to one knee and cupped my hands together. Perkins placed his booted foot in my hands and I lifted as hard as I could. Harper came in next to me, grabbed Perkins’s leg and heaved upward.

  “Almost there.”

  I grunted under the man’s weight, but continued to push.

  “Got it.”

  Perkins had his hands around the iron bars of the grate. He tried pushing it upward, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Let me down.”

  We eased Perkins down until his feet touched the ground. He gazed up at the iron bars. “It’s too heavy to lift by myself. Maybe if two of us…”

  “You know what they remind me of?” Harper said. “This movie Mimic. They were…”

  Harper went silent. Although he wasn’t known for being especially self-aware, I think he could tell we didn’t want to hear it. I had pegged him as a guy that would melt down under pressure. Put him in a highly stressful situation and I had expected him to fall apart.

  But he kept it together. His voice was shaky when he spoke, but he was trying his damnedest to remain calm. “Who gives a shit, right? It was just a movie.”

  Perkins slumped down into a sitting position, his back against one of the pit’s rigid walls. “Perkins to Jin. Do you copy? This is Perkins, Mayweather, do you copy?”

  He tried them over and over again. No response. He shook his head.

  “Maybe they were captured, too.”

  “Or they’re dead,” Harper said.

  “We’re too far down,” Perkins said.

  “I thought our coms were rated for depth? To keep communication with the mining crew.”

  “They are, but we’re probably too deep for them to pick us up topside.”

  “They heard what happened,” I said. “Hayes caught some of it before the coms broke up. They’ll send someone.”

  Perkins said, “I hope they don’t.”

  “What do you mean, you hope they don’t?”

  “Think about it. They come down, they’ll end up the same as us. Or like that poor bastard Davidson. Why couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut?”

  “So basically we’re fucked,” Harper said.

  “Stay frosty.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Harper said.

  “Harper,” I said, “how long do we have? In our suits.”

  I wanted to keep him focused. In the Academy, Burnell had told us that a man’s worst enemy in a situation was hopelessness. That without hope, a person would just give up. It was easy to feel sorry for yourself, but it didn’t accomplish anything besides wasting time and sealing your fate.

  “Seventy-two hours,” Harper said. “That’s on normal settings. If we shift our oh-two down that would probably buy us another day. Two tops. If we’re careful with our water, that would probably last about as long. Battery power is about the same.”

  “Four or five days then?”

  “That’s pushing it, but yeah, give or take.”

  “That’s a start,” Perkins said. “At least we’ve got some time.”

  “Time for what? Even if we could get out of this shithole, we’d never get past those things.”

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Perkins said.

  CHAPTER 15

  My mouth was dry. I put my lips around my water tube and siphoned a sip out, keeping in mind what Harper had said about conserving our supplies if we wanted to maximize the time our suits could keep us alive.

  I stood up and we boosted Perkins up to the grate again.

  “How many times are you going to try this?” Harper grunted. “The thing isn’t going to get any lighter.”

  The repeat garnered the same result: no joy. The grate wouldn’t budge. It was too heavy for a single man to lift. It also provided us with more information regarding the insects: they possessed superior strength. It had only taken one of them to lift the grate.

  We sat lined up against the wall, conserving our energy. We had lowered our O2 settings and any strenuous activity left us gasping for more air. We had also turned off our helmet displays to lower battery consumption. Every so often I switched it on to see how much time had passed.

  Six h
ours and we had gotten nowhere.

  “Why didn’t they kill us?” Harper asked. “The way they did Davidson.”

  I didn’t want to think about Davidson. I wanted to erase the sight of his headless corpse, but it was seared deep into my memory. It could have been any one of us. He hadn’t been hostile. He had been trying to make peace. His only mistake had been in being naïve. Davidson had been a scientist. If experience had taught me anything it was that our mindsets were completely different. A scientist wasn’t trained to think in terms of danger. In the end, that difference had contributed to his death.

  I concentrated on taking shallow breaths. It was hard. The more I focused on trying to use less air, the more my body seemed to want it. The more I felt like I was suffocating slowly.

  Perkins said, “He didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. If he had, he might still be alive.”

  “Or it might not matter what he did,” I said. “Death doesn’t always have any rhyme or reason to it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Perkins tried the coms again, calling out to Jin and Mayweather, and then to Hayes.

  Nothing.

  It was almost funny how quickly fear turned to boredom. After six hours of no contact, I started to feel like we had been stuck in the pit forever, as if I had been born there and had never seen the light of day. To some degree, I felt my guard begin to slip. The insectoids (roaches, was the word Perkins had started to use for them, never mind that it might not have been scientifically accurate) had dropped us here and hadn’t come back. Would they allow us to just waste away? Given their intelligence, they had to know our suits couldn’t sustain us in the harsh environment forever. Maybe they were waiting it out. I wasn’t sure which was worse: a swift death or gradually watching your life drain away.