Ben-Ari shrugged off her backpack, knelt, and opened it. They all gathered around. Inside, the blanket they had wrapped around the fleshy blob was writhing. Ben-Ari scooped up the bundle and unwrapped the blanket.
The lieutenant screamed and dropped the creature.
The room spun.
Marco couldn't breathe.
A dream. It has to be a dream. Oh God, please let this be a dream.
The fleshy creature lay on the floor, mouth smacking, eyes blinking. It had no arms, no legs, but it had a face. Marco's face.
"Why is it you?" Addy whispered, pale, fingers trembling. "Oh God, Marco, why is it you?"
He couldn't breathe. He gasped for air. "Don't hurt it," he whispered. "Don't . . ."
But Addy, grimacing, knelt and lifted the blob with his face. She ran and tossed it into the vault of molten metal.
The creature screamed. It screamed so loudly the sound echoed through the chamber, louder than any man could cry. They covered their ears as the scream rose higher and higher, ripping through the air, a siren, until finally it faded and the thing with Marco's face melted in the metal.
They all needed to sit down after that. The soldiers found a little chamber with chairs and a table behind a glass wall. They sat, breathing deeply, shuddering, unable to speak for long moments.
"What was that thing?" Addy finally said, then glared at Lailani. "And don't say a demon."
Marco thought for a moment, still unnerved. He couldn't stop seeing his face on the creature. "When we found it, it was featureless, just a blob wrapped in skin, like a football," he said. "I'm the first one who touched it. I picked it up. I think . . . it took my DNA from me. Just a little bit of sweat, some shed skin cells, might have been enough. Maybe that's how the people with six arms were created. A lump of flesh grabbing human DNA, growing them into creatures."
"Scum can do this?" Addy whispered.
"Remember the old stories we heard as kids?" he said. "How scum could clone humans, could plant the clones into human society? We used to be so scared that our teachers were clones, agents of the aliens."
"I'm still not convinced Mr. Hommen wasn't a clone," Addy said.
"There are different types of scum," Marco said. "We saw that in the nursery. We saw scum nurses without claws. Maybe this place has scum scientists."
"What, in lab coats, with bushy white mustaches and messy hair, sticking their tongues out? That kind of thing?" Addy groaned. "They're insects, Poet. Just big centipedes."
"First of all, centipedes aren't insects," Marco said. "They're arthropods. Secondly, these centipedes figured out space travel. They're not as dumb as they look. The scolopendra titania possess intelligence on par with humans."
"In that case, they must be pretty fucking stupid," Addy said, and Marco couldn't argue with that.
"All right, soldiers, search every last inch of this place," Ben-Ari said. "We're looking for an azoth heart, same as the one back on the Miyari. Split into pairs and don't leave the room."
Marco paired up with Addy, and they moved through the chamber, walking around great metal vents, furnaces, drills, cauldrons, and massive machines whose purpose they could not guess. The sticky scum lamps dripped above. A few soldiers ripped open the casings of the machines, but inside they found dusty gears, no glowing blue azoth heart. Finally the soldiers regrouped and followed the tracks into another tunnel.
As they walked through the darkness, guns raised, they heard laughter ahead.
The laughter of a baby.
The soldiers glanced at one another.
"You know," Elvis said, "normally a baby's laughter is a beautiful sound, but when you're walking through a dingy tunnel kilometers below the surface of an alien moon overrun by demons, it really is the last thing you want to hear."
"Might be a surviving colonist?" Marco said.
They kept advancing, guns raised.
They entered a large, round chamber with white tiled walls. Sticky scum lanterns coated the ceiling, casting their light on . . .
Marco's head spun. He struggled not to fall. Elvis actually fainted, and Beast retched in the corner. Lailani fell to her knees, crossed herself, and began to pray.
"A little harder to kill these babies, isn't it?" Marco said softly.
Metal carts filled the chamber, pressed close together, like one of those old nurseries from the twentieth century. Inside each cart lay a baby with a human head and a wiggling centipede body.
"The scum did this!" Addy said, shaking, gun clattering in her hands. "They made these babies. Some kind of genetic experiments. You were right, Poet. They are scientists. Mad, evil scientists. And I'm going to kill them all. Kill them!"
Marco approached one of the carts. The baby inside looked at him and laughed. Its centipede body writhed, claws reaching out. Another few babies began to cry.
"This is a dream," Elvis whispered, walking among the carts. "It has to be a dream. This can't be real. This can't be real." He pinched himself. "Wake up. Wake up. Wake up."
But this was real, Marco knew. These creatures, babies, aliens, hybrids, twisted, evil, sad, corrupted—they were truly here. Unholy and innocent. Marco didn't know if this was Hell, like Lailani believed, or some alien laboratory, or perhaps even the work of the human colonists. Whatever had created this was evil. And whatever lay in these carts was not.
More of the babies were crying now.
"We have to kill them," Addy said. "God, we have to kill them. This is cruel. This is inhuman." She raised her gun. It trembled in her hands. "We have to kill them." She looked at Lieutenant Ben-Ari as if seeking permission.
Ben-Ari stared at the creatures, her face pale. "I . . ." She inhaled deeply. "We . . ."
"We can't hurt them," Marco said. "They have human heads. They might have human minds."
"And the bodies of scum!" Addy said. "What kind of life is this?"
"Cruel, pained life," Marco said. "Perverse, twisted life. But who are we to take it from them?"
"So what will we do?" Addy said. "Leave them here? Just leave them to grow into monsters in the service of the scum? We can't take them with us." She turned toward Ben-Ari. "Ma'am, permission to open fire. It would be a mercy."
The lieutenant approached one of the cribs. She reached inside and stroked a baby's cheek. The centipede body flailed, claws bending, and the baby gurgled.
"We can't kill them," Ben-Ari said softly. "We have to help them. We'll push the carts. We'll take them with us. If we can get them off this moon, maybe back home, they can find some sort of life. Maybe they can even provide some answers about what happened here."
"We cannot bring this evil back to Earth," Lailani said. "This moon is unholy. This moon is hell. We must not bring any part of it back home."
"Home is already infected," said Ben-Ari. "To combat evil, we must remain good. To combat destruction, we must heal. We defeat evil not only with guns, bombs, and fire, but also with compassion and mercy and righteousness."
That is why I followed you into space, Einav Ben-Ari, Marco thought, looking at his officer. That is why I follow you still.
"I can't believe this," Elvis said, shaking his head. "For once, I'm going to have to agree with Maple."
"Lieutenant Ben-Ari is right," said Beast. "We help babies."
Sergeant Singh nodded. "We help them. We will be righteous."
They all began to argue, some demanding to kill the creatures, others to simply leave the babies, while some soldiers wanted to carry them along. Marco stood, silent, wanting to help these babies, not sure he could.
A voice rose from a chamber beyond, weak, barely audible.
"Marco?"
The others didn't seem to hear. Marco turned toward the voice.
"Marco . . ."
He walked away from the others, heading toward a doorway at the back. A shadowy chamber loomed beyond, and he heard low breathing. Behind him, the other soldiers fell silent, then followed him, leaving the deformed babies in their carts.
&nb
sp; "Poet, where are you going?" Addy said.
Marco didn't answer. His pulse quickened. He swallowed, his throat dry, and stepped through the doorway into the second room.
He stood still for a long moment, staring with damp eyes.
Dozens of metal tables filled the room, and upon them, strapped down with dripping strands of fleshy tendrils, lay more creations.
This time the soldiers didn't speak, didn't move, only stared.
One creature was a bloated man, pale, bald, his legs fused into a long, twitching centipede body. Two women were stitched together, forming an infected conjoined twin, eyes blinking, mouths moving wordlessly, their seams dripping rot. A small, quivering creature had the clattering head of a centipede, mandibles moving, but the broken body of a child. A man moaned, wept, whispered, his torso elongated, sprouting a dozen arms. Other creatures seemed to be failed experiments; they were swollen, covered in sores, twisted into unrecognizable forms, all bent limbs thrusting out from folds of flesh, jaws locked in grimaces, drooling. Children hung from one wall on meat hooks, skinned, still alive, turned into centipedes below the ribs. A ball of swollen flesh the size of a walrus lay on a stone table, pulsing, featureless.
"Kill . . . us . . .," whispered a man strapped to the table with sticky membranes, his torso sprouting four centipedes instead of arms and legs. "Kill . . . us . . ."
Addy came to stand at Marco's side. A tear streamed down her cheek. She looked at him, silent, eyes huge and haunted.
"Mar . . . co . . ."
The voice came from the back of the room. Marco walked between the tables, following the voice, and he saw her there.
He froze, his eyes dampening.
Kemi.
Kemi lay on a metal table, wet membranes strapping her down. She was still human, but segments of centipedes hung above her from hooks, twitching like lurid mobiles. The scum had stripped her naked, had drawn marks across her stomach, chest, joints, and neck like plastic surgeons preparing for surgery. Tubes ran into her veins, attached to sacks of skin that hung from rods like IV bags. Another tube ran from a fleshy blob into Kemi's mouth, thrusting down her throat.
A live centipede rose from behind the table, legs stretching out, hissing. Instead of claws, its legs sprouted surgical tools: scalpels, saws, hammers, needles, not prosthetics but actual organs, evolved or designed for its grisly task.
The creature screeched. Marco shot a single bullet into the alien's head. It fell, raising smoke, dying.
"Mar . . . co . . .," Kemi whispered, then gagged around the tube.
"I'm here, Kemi." He touched her hair. "I'm here. You're safe now."
"More scum coming in!" Addy shouted and fired a bullet. A scum screeched. The creatures on the tables screamed.
"There's about a million of 'em!" cried Elvis and opened fire at a doorway. Sergeant Stumpy barked and ran around the room.
As the other soldiers fired, Marco drew his knife. He sliced the sticky, thick membranes that pinned Kemi to the table. It felt like slicing through umbilical cords. He pulled the tube out from her mouth, and she coughed, gagged, and spat out pale yellow liquid. Together they pulled the tubes out from her veins. Marco had a blanket in his pack, which he wrapped around her.
Scum came scuttling into the room through a tunnel at the back. Marco raised his gun and sprayed out bullets. He handed Kemi her pistol, which he had found in the tunnel. Kemi loaded the gun and fired a blazing inferno of ionizing death, burning down a scum. A soldier screamed, three scum leaping onto him. Another soldier fell. Bullets rang out, cutting down the creatures.
"Fire in the hole!" Addy shouted. She ran toward the tunnel the scum were emerging from and lobbed a grenade.
The soldiers knelt. Explosions rocked the mines.
"Fire in the hole!" Beast and Elvis shouted, hurling two more grenades. Chunks of scum flew. Claws whirred through the air. The tunnel collapsed, burying more aliens beneath it.
The battle died down. They all stood panting.
Marco looked around him. Shrapnel, sizzling flesh, and dead scum littered the lab. One tunnel had collapsed, but two more doorways still stood open, one leading back toward the nursery with the babies, the other leading deeper into the mines. Two soldiers lay dead among the twitching scum.
Only a handful of soldiers now remained alive. Ben-Ari, panting, holding her plasma gun. Sergeant Singh, eyes dark, beard sprayed with blood. Elvis and Beast, standing back to back, one a slender young man with long sideburns, the other a massive brute with a bald head. Lailani, small but fierce. Addy, face glistening with sweat, blond hair sticking to her cheeks. Marco. Kemi. With them, Osiris the android. From two hundred soldiers who had landed on Corpus, an entire company, they were all who remained.
And you, Stumpy, Marco thought, looking at the ragged Boston Terrier.
"Let's get the hell out of here," Addy said. She turned toward the tunnel that ran deeper underground. "We go deeper."
Marco turned toward Kemi. She stood beside him, pistol in hand, wrapped in his blanket. Her eyes dampened.
"Are you all right?" Marco said to her.
"No," Kemi whispered and embraced him, clinging to him desperately, and she wept.
Marco held her for a long time, stroking her hair.
"I've got you now, Kemi." He rocked her gently. "It's over. It's over."
She blinked tears out of her eyes, looking at him. "Marco . . . when they had me on the tubes, I . . . I was connected to the others. The other patients here. No, not patients. Experiments. I could feel their feelings. I could think their thoughts. I could hurt with their pain. I raged with their anger. Their hatred for humanity. Their evil. They feel so much pain, Marco. They are so angry. They are so hateful. We have to help them. We have to let them sleep."
"Kemi." He held her hands. "Maybe we can help them. Free them like we freed you. Like—"
She pulled away from him and raised her plasma pistol. Tears in her eyes, she fired, burning one of the creatures on the tables.
"Kemi!" he said.
She looked at him, tears on her cheeks, and fired again. She shouted. She wept. She kept blasting out plasma, screaming hoarsely, burning the creatures on the tables, shaking. The room blazed. Kemi raced through the fire, sobbing and howling, into the chamber with the babies. She blasted out fury from her gun, and the babies caught fire, screaming, twisting, burning, dying.
When they were all burning, Kemi fell to her knees, dropped her gun, and sobbed.
"Marco, get her out of here!" Addy said. "The whole place is on fire!"
The surviving soldiers were racing toward the tunnel that was still open. Marco knelt by Kemi and helped her rise.
"I had to," she whispered. "I had to. I had to. You'll never understand. You didn't feel them. You weren't one with them. They are so cruel. I had to. I had to."
He nodded, his arms wrapped around her. "Come with me now."
Kemi limped, leaning against him, and they walked between the blazing hybrids and into the tunnel. They left the burning laboratory behind, heading into the darkness, and Lailani's words kept echoing in Marco's mind.
We're in Hell . . . Hell . . . Hell . . .
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They found a small chamber full of bunks, buried deep in the mine, where two scum were copulating.
"Busted, fuckers," Addy said and sprayed the aliens with bullets.
They dragged out the corpses, then closed the door and sat on the bunks. Nine soldiers. Nine souls trapped kilometers underground, surrounded by thousands of scum.
"Ammo count," said Sergeant Singh, and they all inspected their magazines and grenades. They didn't have much left. Addy had fired her last bullet in this very room, and she had to take one of Elvis's magazines. Lailani had been smart enough to take magazines from the soldiers they had lost on the way. She now pulled them out from her pack and distributed them. Of graver concern were the plasma guns, which Lieutenant Ben-Ari and Kemi carried. Both were down to just a few last shots.
; "Our flashlights won't last much longer either," Marco said. "These flashlights are designed to offer continuous light for three days. It's been about three days."
"If the power comes back on, we can charge both the flashlights and plasma guns," said Ben-Ari. "Or if we can find a generator down here that still works. But we might have to do without." She rose from the cot she sat on. "We should go. We should keep exploring."
"Ma'am," said Marco, "if I may make a suggestion: We need to rest. To eat. To sleep. Especially Kemi, and some of us are wounded."
Ben-Ari looked at the door. "I don't like the idea of staying underground even a moment longer. But maybe you're right. The mines might still be deep." She nodded. "Let's take six hours. That's it. We guard in pairs again—with the door closed."
Throughout the night, the scum squealed and shrieked and scuttled outside. Shadows danced beneath the door and claws scraped the stone. Several times the centipedes pounded against the door, finally moving onward. Stumpy spent all night by the door, growling at it, guarding the team. Marco remembered the propaganda reels from basic training. The scum needed to touch an object with their antennae to smell it. They were safe here behind the closed door, but outside the terror lurked. Every few moments, a human scream interspersed the clatter of the centipedes. There were still colonists here, perhaps subjected to more experiments, perhaps tortured, dying.
They let Kemi skip guarding. She was still trembling, still shell-shocked. Addy spent most of the night at Kemi's side, holding her close, stroking her hair, and whispering comforts into her ears. During Addy's guard shift, Marco sat with Kemi, holding her hand while she flitted in and out of sleep.
This is my fault, Marco thought, watching Kemi sleep. You came here to be with me. And now you're hurt. Now maybe you're hurt too badly to ever heal.
He thought of their youth together, of days joyous despite the war. Perhaps what Elvis had said was right. Perhaps there could be no more joy after this. They could never be youths again. Marco and his friends here were only eighteen, barely more than children. But Marco felt old. He felt haggard, as if he had lived for decades here in the darkness. He felt that he could never be young again.
Earth Lost (Earthrise Book 2) Page 16