But for now—even without ammo—he’d keep this one. Even with no bullets, it turned out to be a mighty handy thing to have.
He started back to the elevators and the comparative sanity of the upper level of Mars City.
14
PALO ALTO THE LAST MINUTES
“YOU’RE STILL WATCHING THIS, GENERAL?”
“Yes, Ian. I’ve seen these, and I—”
Kelliher held up a hand. “Just wait.”
The vid now showed three marines squared off against what looked to be easily double that number of what used to be human. Single shots didn’t do anything, though the lighting was good enough that Kelliher could see—yet again—how the shots ripped holes into the attackers’ bodies, and something spilled out. Didn’t look exactly like blood. There was a reddish tint to some of it, but it was almost violet, blackish.
Kelliher froze the image. “So, General—you see how little damage the bullets do?”
“Unless those things are carefully targeted, yes, Ian. We know that now.”
“But here’s my big question, General Hayden. How could whatever happened change their body chemistry so quickly that they no longer even bleed? So that now something else comes out of these things, as you call them.”
“We won’t know, Ian. Not until we get into Delta.”
“And when will you do that?”
“We’re still waiting on Dr. Betruger.”
Kelliher watched Hayden’s sick-looking face. The man is way over his head, Kelliher thought. A massive enterprise like Mars City, maybe the single most important endeavor in the history of mankind, and it was all falling apart.
Kelliher started the vid again. And now a zombie reached one of the shooting marines and leaped on him, biting down on his neck. There, at least, was real blood. But the other marines finally caught on to the fact that headshots might be more effective and started blasting away.
Zombie marines began reaching up to the newly opened holes in their heads, then a moment’s confused realization before they stumbled forward and fell to the around.
When just two surviving marines stood there, the corridor filled with gun smoke. Then in the quiet Kelliher heard something that he had missed the first time. One of the men was crying.
He stopped the vid.
“Okay. Some of your men have been turned into those things. We get that—even if we don’t know how. Then, there’s this.”
A different creature now filled the screen. Tall, with raptorlike feet, hands raised in a permanent attack position, and an angular snakelike head and sharp, pointed ears that twitched as it stood there.
“Guess we don’t have any vids of one of these being killed.”
“We have dispatched some,” Hayden said quietly.
“It’s obviously not an infected marine. Did they come from Delta, General? Or…maybe not?”
“We need more information about them.”
“Right.” Kelliher took a breath. What a cluster-fuck.
“Some men are calling them demons. Some of the more superstitious ones. Others are calling them imps. Something—I guess—about the ears.”
“Doesn’t look too much like any goddamn imp, General. But you know what? I sure like that name a whole hell of a lot better than ‘demon.’”
Hayden said nothing.
“And this? We’ve only received one image down here.”
The screen caught a doglike animal cornered, taking multiple shots, but still with a grisly chunk of something gripped tight in its incredible maw.
“Am I correct, General, that this thing’s hindquarters appear to be…mechanical?”
Another throat clearing from Hayden. If Kelliher had any other candidate for command of Mars City, he’d put him in charge immediately.
“They appear to be, Ian. Looks like stuff that may have been part of the structure of Delta. In the blast, perhaps, something maybe—”
Kelliher cut him off. “Don’t worry, Hayden. I don’t really expect you to explain how that thing came about. And you are calling them—”
“Pinkies.”
Kelliher laughed. Pinkies, due no doubt to the rose color of their front section. And he also recognized that the names—so far—were all designed to minimize the opponent. Classic military double-think. Ridicule and minimize the enemy. Good luck with that plan, Kelliher thought. “Okay. And that’s it so far?”
“Yes.”
“And the status of Delta now?”
“Betruger says all is quiet there. He sealed it after the first explosions. He started doing a catastrophe analysis. He says they are assessing damage, and—”
Kelliher interrupted. “It’s all buttoned up?”
“Yes.”
“And when are you opening it again?”
“As I mentioned, Ian, we are waiting for Betruger. I have Sergeant Kelly and a large force positioned at the main entrance. To secure the whole area once it’s open.”
“General, the time for that is now. You have to get in there. We have no vid, no data coming out of Delta. Anything could be happening.”
“Dr. Betruger didn’t think—”
“Find him. I want to speak with Betruger immediately. Convey that order to Kelly. Now.”
“Yes.”
The signal skipped a bit, and Hayden’s affirmative seemed to elongate into a distorted version of the word, sounding almost ghostly. Kelliher was done, but now Hayden had a question.
“Ian, the Armada…do you think they could—”
“The Armada is of course standing by, General. But you know as well as I do that if we ask for their assistance, Mars City would no longer be under UAC control. So we will wait to do that until after you have assessed the situation in Delta—and I have spoken to Betruger.”
Hayden nodded.
“Good luck, General.” You’re sure as hell going to need it.
He killed the signal to Mars.
Kelliher called in Karla, his assistant. A stunning brunette, she also happened to be one of the brightest people on his team. That said, he had made a point of not trying to become involved with her—that much intelligence, even in someone so incredibly beautiful, was not to be wasted.
“Karla, I wonder if you could so something. Keep it between us, if you would.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The Ballard lab. I want to speak with them, but I don’t want anyone else to know it. So nothing on any communication logs, and tell them that they need to have everything completely secure at their end.”
“Yes, Mr. Kelliher. And who would you like on the call?”
“Just two people—David Rodriguez and Julie Chao.”
“Full video link?”
“Absolutely.” Some things one had to see to believe, Kelliher knew. And what he was going to show them definitely fell into that category. “Let me know as soon as they are in place.”
15
THE ROBERT BALLARD DEEP OCEAN LAB THE LAST MINUTES
DAVID NOTICED THAT KELLIHER LOOKED TO the side while the last vid played. Then, slowly, Kelliher filled the whole screen. And he said only one word: “Well?”
David took a breath. As project leader of the undersea lab, if there was to be an official reaction to what they had both witnessed, it would have to come from him. He had noticed during the presentation of the horror show from Mars how Julie’s breathing increased. The images—sharp and clear though coming from Mars—were nothing less than overwhelming. “What’s the situation now, sir?”
Kelliher smiled. “Secure. So everyone tells me. But I don’t believe that. Not after seeing”—he waved his hand at the air as if he could make the creatures that had recently filled the screen disappear—“all that. If Mars City is secure, than so is hell.”
Julie leaned forward. “Mr. Kelliher, I see that along with the vids, you have sent us a lot of data.”
“Yes.”
“The reason?”
Kelliher straightened up in his chair. “I imagine you can guess?”
<
br /> Julie kept talking—her area of expertise was perhaps the one most relevant here. “Okay, I’m thinking you would like our opinion on the biological makeup, what caused the malformations, the altered behavior?”
David added: “Perhaps guesses as to what biological changes on the nano-level could have transformed people. Is that about it, Mr. Kelliher?”
Kelliher looked away again. And David knew there were secrets that the UAC head was holding close. That whatever was to happen down here, with the data, with the images, they still might not have everything. It might be something for them to question.
“Yes, exactly that. Your ideas, theories, could be important. But there’s something else.”
David and Julie waited.
Kelliher looked right into the lens. “Your work—it’s going well down there?”
Julie jumped right in. “Yes. David sent a report. But in fact today we had an amazing opportunity. A new vent, just opening, and capturing the, well, birth of a new world as it started to happen.”
“Good. David? You too—also excited?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“I want—in light of things—to make sure you have the support from me you need. How does that sound?”
Julie nodded. “To be blunt, sir, we almost expected that you were contacting us to give us a shutdown notice.”
David watched Kelliher hesitate, and he knew that perhaps—until the events on Mars—that might indeed have been the case. He thought, We have a new lease on life because of events on Mars, events that not one of the UAC’s scientists can explain. Suddenly, what we are doing here is important.
“I’ll be honest too.” Kelliher leaned close, as if their completely secure conversation might be overheard. “I’m very concerned. There’s too much I don’t know. All I know is what I’ve seen happen up there, this explosion of death, destruction…” He licked his lips. “It very much—”
The UAC head sighed, and for the first time since David started working for him, Kelliher looked anything but the all-powerful head of the UAC.
“—scares me.”
“We understand, sir.”
A rueful smile at the corners of Kelliher’s mouth. Again, David felt sure they were not being told everything. “Do you? I’m afraid I don’t. Though, trust me, I have every resource of the UAC devoted to examining every single goddamned aspect of what happened up there. But will it be enough? Is there time? Are we smart enough to answer any of those questions?”
“We’ll do what we can down here. You can be sure of that,” David said. He could feel how empty his words sounded as soon as he uttered them.
“I know. That’s why I want you to begin exploring some answers now. What you are doing…may take time. And we may never need what you learn. It may just end up being research. Or—well, let’s just say I have always played my hunches.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you to use everything you’ve been finding down there about the alternative ecosystem, the adaptations to extreme heat, the vent creatures’ ability to create food from poison, the entire biosystem. And by ‘use it,’ I don’t mean simply understand it. Explain it, then master it. Because I think we—as a species—may need it.”
For a moment David didn’t have a clue what Kelliher might be referring to. Need it as a species? What could that mean?
But Julie, always a step ahead of him, it seemed, did get it.
“Mr. Kelliher, are you suggesting, no…ordering…that we begin immediate work into how the alternate biosystems of the vent life could be studied to see how it might be used to create—”
Kelliher finished her sentence. “Human modifications, yes.”
The cloud parted in David’s mind, and for a second he felt a chill ripple on his arms. Gooseflesh.
He recovered enough to ask a follow-up question. “Human modifications? Genetic adaptations for human use that would allow people to—” He shook his head, letting the images come. “To resist extremes of cold and heat perhaps. To resist toxins. To be able to even—I don’t know—draw sustenance from raw, even deadly chemicals.”
Kelliher’s answer was as simple as it was chilling. “Yes.”
“You are talking about military use of our work down here, is that it?” Julie said.
“Yes, but not to wage wars against other countries—though God knows we will continue to have plenty of them. But what if what happened up there isn’t over? Can we really stop them? And are the images, the creatures we’ve seen—is that all of them? Could this be the last battle, one that will determine whether the species known as human continues? So yes, ‘military use,’ if you wish to call it that.”
Julie looked at David. They both prided themselves on how their underwater kingdom had stayed magically free of the violence and politics of the surface world. Now—no more.
“Right, Mr. Kelliher. I can start redirecting the lab work. The new samples we have, they’re already developing. They’ll be—”
“Great, David. I’ve already arranged for teams from around the world to join you down there. I took the liberty of picking some”—a small laugh—“actually most of the UAC’s best and brightest to get down there immediately. Things may get a bit tight.”
David rubbed his chin. “Tight”? That was an understatement. “Yes, sir. We’ll start making preparations.”
“I will want to be kept posted on any developments, positive or negative.”
“Of course.”
“But, Julie, David…I don’t want to micromanage your work. There’s really only one thing I want to say.”
David saw that Kelliher looked shaken. Did he feel guilty about what had happened on Mars? Was that part of this?
“I can only tell you—instinct again, I guess—that we don’t have a lot of time. I have money, resources, the world’s finest scientists. But time—who knows how long there may be.”
“We’ll start immediately.”
Kelliher nodded. Then, almost a whisper: “Good luck.”
Then the signal vanished.
16
NOW THE RED PLANET MARS
THE THREE MARINES STOOD IN AN L-SHAPED section of sector B of the Alpha Lab complex. Or, as they all had grown to call it, one mighty damn good hiding place. Uri Stavit lit a forbidden cigarette using the burning end of one of his friends’ cigarettes, inhaling deeply before turning to one side and hacking into the air.
Of course, smoking anywhere in Mars City was verboten, but with the body cleanup still going on, it was unlikely that anyone would take a big sniff and think, What the hell is that? More than enough weird smells all over this place.
One of the other grunts, a guy named Graver, looked at his chronometer. “I say we go for a new record. How long we can hang right here, on this spot, before someone comes looking for us.”
The other marine, a guy everyone called “TM,” just grinned and sucked on his own smoke.
Uri didn’t know them that well, only stealing a smoke from time to time. But he knew that, considering the circumstances, whoever stood next to you was suddenly your new best friend. Their life could be in your hands and, more important, vice versa.
“What do you think, Uri? We just hang here?” Graver wore a big smile. “A little hide-and-seek from the brass?” He slapped his head in mock horror. “Oh, we don’t have any brass running our part of this circus, do we? And who made Moraetes queen? Does she even outrank us?”
“I think,” Uri said, “she has a few stripes. She’d been here awhile. But then she had that incident.”
The other two nodded. Everyone knew about Moraetes. It was the stuff of legend: a private saves some VIP’s ass, not even just any VIP, but Kelliher, the head of the UAC—and she gets on Hayden’s shitlist, maybe forever.
Of course, Kelliher did catch a bullet. But he was still alive, he was fucking breathing. All due to her. Uri didn’t say it, but if came to taking orders from Moraetes, he had no doubt where he stood.
As for the other two c
lowns? They could make all the jokes they wanted to, but he guessed that they too would do exactly what Moraetes asked.
TM looked at the last centimeter or so of his home-rolled butt. “You know, next time, I suggest we spice up the tobacco a bit.”
Graver nodded and smiled. “Amen, brother. I know a dude who can get us some—”
Uri nodded in agreement, though he doubted he’d want to be hiding in these dark corridors, getting high. That experience he could do without—it could all wait until he was back in Tel Aviv, on the beach, a perfect sunny day, maybe with some beautiful girl with him, worlds away from this insanity. Yeah, that would be the place to get stoned.
He took another drag of the cigarette, already feeling the bitter taste on his tongue. Sucking in the smoke, then one final puff. He ended with a big cough—it wasn’t like he smoked every day.
Graver opened his mouth, turning to TM. Another burst of bullshit about to be launched, Uri guessed. But amazingly, he couldn’t hear a thing. After the gulp of smoke, the cough, the desire for air, Uri felt the urgent rush to reward the lungs with what they really needed. But there was nothing.
Graver’s mouth was open, but then he seemed to realize that something was wrong somewhere. TM’s face—in those tiny seconds of clarity—registered what?
They should have been prepared, Uri thought. After everything they had seen today. But maybe humans are wired to assume that, yeah, it’s okay now. Everything’s cool. Problem solved, monsters gone, all the dying done for today. Maybe that’s how we get through things. That little trick, the delusion.
Then suddenly, like someone yanking on a leash to snap some stupid dog back into place, that terrible, horrible tug of reality. The pain overwhelming. Quick calculations—and Uri stepped back from where the two corridors intersected. Something had sucked the air out of the corridor, and now it rushed back, a tsunami of air, blowing Graver’s hair, making TM’s face ripple.
Uri could hear their yells, the screams, the few barked words of confusion, trying to marshal each other’s brain to understand and—Christ—do something.
Doom 3™: Maelstrom Page 7