One Dark Future

by Michael Anderle

  Soldiers cried out as the monsters rushed at them, barreling into some and knocking them to the ground. Their mandibles sliced into the pressure suits, accomplishing with ease what would normally take a high-powered rifle round.

  Erik’s current opponent rolled onto its side, kicking with its legs. He shoved his rifle into the mouth and pulled the trigger. Orange fluid splattered from inside, and the creature collapsed to the floor.

  Jia leapt over a dead enemy and shot at one of the creatures overwhelming one of the soldiers. Her bullets narrowly missed the mouth and bounced off the armored hide right above. She strode forward, taking careful, deliberate shots until one pierced the mouth. The monster fell off the soldier it’d been attacking, and she finished it off with a follow-up shot.

  Another soldier was less fortunate. A trio of creatures converged on him and ripped into his suit, their mandibles sinking deep into his leg, chest, and neck. He gave a strangled scream and thrashed.

  Captain Osei let out a bellow of rage and barreled toward the man, emptying a magazine in a stream of bullets that managed to land rounds in two of the monsters’ mouths. Erik finished off the third attacker, but the massive damage to the soldier’s suit, along with the blood everywhere, wasn’t promising.

  The wounded soldier continued to thrash, paling, his veins darkening. Captain Osei dropped to his knees and yanked out a med patch, the battle still raging around him.

  Erik pulled out an AP magazine and slapped it into his rifle. His next burst barely made a dent in a creature’s shell, and he growled in frustration.

  A creature jumped for the wounded soldier, but Erik’s and Jia’s combined bursts hit it square in the mouth, knocking it out of the air and leaving it twitching and dying.

  The captain slapped on two med patches before yanking a tiny silver canister out and moving it close to the holes in the pressure suit. Fine silver mist sprayed out and covered the holes. The wounded soldier stopped screaming and moved. His veins turned solid black, and his eyes rheumy.

  Erik murmured a quick command to bring up the life signs for the soldier, Corporal Galn, on his smart lenses. The soldier’s heart had stopped. Erik ignored his frustration, instead concentrating on keeping the monsters from overwhelming the captain.

  Jia spun toward another wounded and overwhelmed soldier and rushed toward his attackers, firing several bursts to draw the enemy’s attention. The monsters split their forces, leaving them easy prey for the soldiers on one side and Jia on the other.

  Bursts and shots grew less frequent as the bodies of the monsters began to pile up. Soldiers exchanged magazines while their comrades continued to fire.

  Whatever intelligence the previous mutants had shown wasn’t obvious in the latest batch of enemies. That was only a small relief, given the team’s casualties.

  Captain Osei stood and shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do for Galn now,” he grimly offered, his jaw set tightly. “I think those things injected something into him. Some kind of poison.”

  “Is he going to become like those other guys?” asked Corporal Milton.

  “We don’t know that,” Jia replied.

  Erik stared at the man. “We need to continue our strategic withdrawal, and we need to make sure this ship goes down.”

  Captain Osei surveyed the rest of his soldiers. Some had suffered suit damage, but the suits had fixed the holes, or the soldiers had applied their own sealants.

  “Blackwell’s right,” he commented. “We don’t want to be on this ship when the L-48 goes off.”

  “Let’s make a straight run for the boarding tube,” Erik suggested. “We can’t afford to be in too many more fights like this. It’ll bleed off too much time, especially since the AP rounds are useless.”

  Captain Osei stared down at his dead soldier, offering Erik an almost imperceptible nod. “Just promise me, Blackwell, that no matter what happens, this ship gets destroyed. I know you’re not military, and I also know you work with ID, but you’re not their bitch. I don’t know what orders they’ve given you about this ship.”

  “This ship is going to hell one way or another.” Erik nodded, finding it hard not to remember his dead soldiers on Molino. The conspiracy had sent its people to this Hunter ship. Somehow they knew about it and were prepared to sacrifice countless lives for it.

  Navigator or even Hunter artifacts, he thought. I think I know what they didn’t want us to see on Molino. Those bastards.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  “Now the Lady’s just screwing with us,” Erik muttered.

  The team was only three rooms away from the entrance now, but none of the other rooms they’d encountered had included huge monsters ripping themselves out of the walls. They were a diverse group of flitter-sized masses of legs and claws, barbs and mandibles, and bony plates.

  Erik was having trouble processing what he was seeing. The creatures weren’t merely larger versions of the earlier ambushers, but a seemingly random combination of limbs and parts. There was no way they were all derived from the same species.

  One new threat scuttled about on four barbed legs. Another twitched forward on five razor-pointed tentacles. A third monstrosity was roughly bipedal, with three barbed-tipped arms swinging. The last looked like some sort of armored starfish demon who had crawled up from hell to take damned souls back with him.

  Erik was beginning to think the yaoguai and Ascended Brotherhood he’d fought in the past were mundane compared to the creatures before him.

  The soldiers’ rifles came alive, with everyone playing to experience and targeting the mouths, at least in the cases where they could see them, but the latest foes were living tanks. The bullets passed into them, but the massive creatures only spat out orange blood and screeched in response.

  The starfish’s exterior absorbed the bullets with no apparent damage, but it writhed up, briefly exposing a mouth ringed with teeth. Jia and other soldiers tried to down it, but it wasn’t any more effective than their earlier barrage. It whipped out with an arm and almost crushed a man.

  During a brief discussion in a hallway, Jia mentioned wondering before why none of the doors had closed. The security system or insane Hunter running the defenses might not think it was useful.

  Besides, the proper application of explosives could get a team through any barrier.

  Erik was half-convinced the system wanted them to have hope, just to crush it. Sadism wasn’t limited to the human race. He flung his rifle over his shoulder and reached for the laser rifle latched to his carryaid.

  “Back up!” Captain Osei bellowed. “Frag grenades! Throw at will.”

  Like a practiced synchronized swimming team, the soldiers pulled and primed the grenades in complete unison. They pitched them at a high arc, aiming for the rear of the monsters.

  The grenades exploded in a shower of flame and shrapnel. Smoldering chunks of armor or flesh lay on the ground, covered with orange blood, exposing small target opportunities. The monsters screeched and lumbered toward the soldiers, who spread out to avoid the enemy.

  The three-armed monster backhanded a soldier and sent him flying into a wall with a crunch. The poor sergeant grunted and fell to the ground, groaning.

  Erik brought up his laser rifle and aimed for the head. “Eat this, you freak.”

  The invisible beam carved a hole through the monster’s head and into the wall behind him. Stumbling, the monster fell on its side before a second shot tunneled through its neck.

  A tentacle from another monster stabbed a soldier through the head. The monster tossed his body to the side.

  The soldiers concentrated fire at the wounds opened by the grenade volley. They blasted more chunks out of the behemoths, but it didn’t slow them.

  “Plasmas to the rear target!” Captain Osei shouted while ducking a tentacle. He backpedaled and emptied a magazine into the horror attacking him to not much effect. “You’re not surviving this, you bastard.”

  The other soldiers kept their cool, despite their
losses and sprinting around the room to duck behind the mounds and columns to avoid the monsters.

  Grabbing their plasma grenades, the soldiers hurled them toward a four-legged monster farther back. White-blue explosions lit up the room, scorching and blasting away the wall and the back of the creature.

  Captain Osei spun out of the way of the tentacle monster’s next attack. It batted his rifle out of his hands, but the weapon dragged along the ground, still connected by a line to his belt. He snatched up his rifle and sprinted out of the reach of the creature.

  The monster’s wounded comrade thrashed, but squads circled it and unloaded their magazines into the exposed innards. Dozens of bullets ripped through the inside and found their mark, some vital organ or nerve cluster deep inside. With a final screech, it dropped to the ground.

  “Cover me, Erik,” Jia shouted. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Is it a good one?” he yelled back.

  “No, but I’m doing it anyway.”

  “Of course you are.” He sighed.

  Jia ran toward the starfish, keeping out of range while taking potshots. Her bullets weren’t doing much, so she moved closer. Hoping to end the risk to his partner, Erik fired his laser rifle toward its center, burning a hole, but the starfish barely reacted.

  The starfish reared again, exposing its mouth. With a flick of her wrist, Jia yanked, primed, and tossed a plasma grenade into the monster’s mouth. The explosion blasted its charred limbs off and left nothing but a half-vaporized husk in the center. The arms twitched for seconds before going inert.

  Ignoring Osei and the other soldiers, the tentacled monster spun and pounced at Jia. Erik fired another shot and seared off a tentacle, draining the last of his energy cell.

  With a massive thud, the creature landed and sliced at Jia with a tentacle. She tried to go for her rifle, but it cut into her glove. She stumbled backward, gritting her teeth, the holes in the blood-stained suit already beginning to close as she fell to the ground. The monster stabbed again.

  Erik yanked the energy cell out of his laser rifle and tossed it to the ground. He pulled another one from the carryaid and twisted it on as rapidly as he could.

  The soldiers continued pelting the creature, but although it jerked when a bullet struck an orange-stained wound from their initial attack, it didn’t go down. Tentacle after tentacle stabbed at Jia’s chest and head as if the monster considered her a greater threat than anyone else in that room.

  That wasn’t a bad calculation, and the current foes were displaying better tactics than the four-legged ceiling creatures from before.

  The kind of opponent who would run at a monster to all but shove a grenade in its mouth wasn’t to be taken lightly, but neither was the opponent who was holding a heavy laser rifle.

  The monster seemed to recognize its error, or perhaps satisfied with the multiple wounds it had inflicted, it squirmed quickly toward Erik. He narrowed his eyes and aimed high in the central body stalk of the grotesque organic weapon now charging him.

  A ladder of holes appeared as he emptied his new cell. Erik’s shot had removed most of the central portion of the creature’s body. The monster collapsed to the ground in front of him, becoming stone-still.

  “Jia!” Erik called, his heart pounding.

  He cursed himself. It wasn’t that he regretted Jia coming on a dangerous mission. There was no one he would rather have guarding his back, but there was something he wished she knew about how he felt. It would have to wait, but not much longer.

  Erik was tired of hiding from himself.

  “It sliced and stabbed me and it hurts, but I don’t think I was poisoned,” Jia called, wincing. “My suit integrity is okay, and I’ve applied a med patch.”

  Captain Osei pointed at two soldiers and then the downed, groaning sergeant. “You two pick him up.” He turned toward the dead soldier and shook his head. “Damn it, Cardiz.”

  “Is he going to turn into one of those things?” asked Corporal Milton. This time at least, he seemed to be asking a question as opposed to freaking out, but his questions were getting on Jia’s nerves.

  “Stow that shit, Milton. I’m not leaving anyone else behind, and if he turns into something else, I’ll take him out myself.”

  The corporal nodded and stepped back.

  Jia patted down her suit to manually verify the seals and gingerly stood.

  Erik inclined his head toward the exit. “We’re almost there.”

  Captain Osei pulled Cardiz’s body off the ground. “If we’re almost there, we can at least honor some of our dead.”

  Erik slid the laser rifle back on his carryaid and walked over to the captain. He held out his arms. “I’ve got a hardware arm. It’ll be easier for me.”

  “Thanks.” Captain Osei gave a shallow nod and handed over the body. “Now let’s move, soldiers! These men didn’t give their lives so we can all get blown up.”

  He led the way as everyone charged toward the boarding tunnel. The seconds blurred together with no more attacks until they arrived at the initial chamber.

  Lieutenant Zhang and what was left of Gamma Squad were spread out near the now dented door, red and orange blood covering their suits and the discoloration typical of seals obvious all over. Small flat drones hovered near the exits. Piles of dead mutants and monsters lay on the ground among the bodies of three soldiers. The charred remains of a starfish clogged a nearby exit.

  Captain Osei hurried over to Zhang. “Damn it.”

  The lieutenant nodded, his mien dark. “We’ve been trying to contact you, but our transmissions weren’t making it. Emma says everything’s still clear on the other end.”

  Erik was glad they had contact again.

  “Yes, but the interference has increased considerably,” Emma offered. “There was little I could do with all my repeaters and drones destroyed in the other rooms. I considered opening fire to distract the enemies I presumed were attacking you when I lost connection, but I didn’t want to risk damaging a part of the ship in which you were present.”

  “It’s fine.” Erik looked over his shoulder. “Open the door, and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  The door slid open. Soldiers hurried over to collect the fallen bodies of their comrades.

  Emma sighed, the sound weary and long. “The latent interference is now preventing me from effective sensor usage, but they haven’t done anything to control sound, and they are rather loud. There are a large number of enemies approaching this location.”

  “We don’t have time to hold these bastards off.” Erik nodded toward the dent. “The timers are counting down, but I’m not sure if the door will hold.”

  Lieutenant Zhang stepped forward. “We just need to hold them until you evacuate to the Argo, right?”

  “It’s suicide,” Jia stated.

  “If those things flood the tunnels, we’re all dead anyway.” Lieutenant Zhang gave her a lopsided smile. “I volunteer, but I’m not ordering anyone else.”

  The rest of the Gamma Squad survivors moved closer to him. Captain Osei and Corporal Milton did as well.

  “The rest of you sorry bastards get to the Argo,” the captain barked.

  Erik frowned. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I do,” the captain replied. “But you’re wasting time trying to talk me out of it. If we get lucky and we thin the herd, we’ll pull back, but you get my people to safety, Blackwell, and then you blow the living shit out of this horror show.” He shook his head, his jaw clenched tightly. “There were people trying to get this shit on purpose, Blackwell. Not freak aliens, but human beings, and the UTC needs you to help track those bastards down before they get lucky the next time and figure out how to safely get their hands on this.” He rounded on a nearby soldier. “I told you idiots to go through the tunnel,” he shouted. “Now move! We’ve got enough volunteers for this piss detail today.”

  The remaining soldiers reluctantly jogged into the tunnel, taking their fallen.

  Erik sa
luted Captain Osei. “We’ll wait as long as we can.”

  The other man gave him a toothy grin and saluted back. “Don’t wait for too long. We don’t have much time left on those explosives.”

  After a nod to Jia, Erik ran toward the tunnel. Jia cast one lingering gaze around the room before following. Monsters screeched in the distance.

  They were out of time in more ways than one.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Jia’s heart thundered as they continued the evacuation through the long boarding tube and onto the captured ship and then back over to the Argo.

  After shedding her carryaid, she continued toward the cockpit, Erik close behind. The soldiers spread out to tend to their wounded and lay their dead down for later respect.

  “Captain Osei’s squad has made contact with the enemy,” Emma reported, her voice subdued. “There is a mix of small and larger enemies. They are holding their own, thanks to judicious explosive usage.”

  “Prepare to retract the tunnel and seal the ship on my order,” Erik ordered as he stepped into the cockpit. He pulled off his helmet and connected it to a hook in the wall. “Send a warning to everybody to get ready. I don’t want someone dying because they knocked their heads when we accelerate.”

  Jia dropped into a seat and removed her helmet. She strapped into her seat. “Preparing for hard burn.” Her gaze dipped to the sensors. “The jumpship is close.”

  “Blackwell,” came Cutter’s voice over the comm. “Holochick filled us in. We wait, let your explosives go boom, and then we blow away whatever’s left, right? If there is anything left.”

  “Yeah. That’s the plan.” Erik settled into his seat with a frown. “We’re just trying to give Osei some time.”

  “Do you want me to unload everything we’ve got?” Cutter asked.

  “Everything,” Erik ground out. “I don’t want anything left when we’re done, but the L-48 should do most of the work for us. I’m hoping it’ll at least make sure that damned ship doesn’t power up any more than it already has.”