“Karla, can you check with Captain Hakala on the Missouri? See if he’s getting anything from Mars.”
“Yes, Mr. Kelliher.”
Hakala was actually a man that Kelliher was considering to take over Mars City. Hayden was always too much under Betruger’s wing. He never knew what to believe—or not—whenever Hayden spoke. Hakala would be a completely different commander running the base.
Of course, if that meant the Armada came to the rescue, the UAC might have no say in the matter anyway.
He had even launched his request to the Pentagon, who technically still controlled both Hayden and Hakala, no matter how much they were in bed with the UAC. But the Pentagon wanted to keep Hakala exactly where he was. It might all be a moot point soon…
And again Kelliher wondered: Should he have simply sent the Armada directly to Mars, not merely standing by? Could what had just happened have been prevented in any way? If he had ordered Hayden to do just that, then the Armada would have landed—a thousand space marines strong, two large research and support ships, and the first true planetary battle cruiser.
And why did we need a battle cruiser in our star system? people may have wondered. But Kelliher and the close circle of generals that he briefed had been able—so far—to dodge that question.
“Sir, I just heard back from Captain Hakala’s comm chief. No signals whatsoever emanating from anywhere on the planet.”
“Christ…” Kelliher said.
“And, sir, they also said that includes the planetary sensors, which have absolutely nothing to do with the main Mars City CommLink or—for that matter—the old Comm Center, which is still technically viable.”
“Thanks, Karla. If you get any more info—direct to me. Okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
Kelliher sat there. There was nothing he could do now. Nothing but wait until the signal came back. If it came back.
He put his hand on his chin and rubbed. And for the first time in a very long time he began to wonder if what was happening was anything at all that he could deal with.
BALLARD RESEARCH STATION THE MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE
“What do you think?” Julie stood behind David as he looked at the samples “live.”
“God, I don’t know. But you say”—he turned to look at her—“that it happens this way each time?”
“Yes. I mean, we never got samples at such an early stage, so it’s like looking into the beginning of time. If we couldn’t hold them in stasis, in a few hours it would be all over. As it is—”
“You get to see every step?”
She took a breath and blew a few stray strands of hair off her forehead. “Almost every step, We still don’t know if there’s anything missing in the progression from inert matter to what becomes the bacteria that feeds off the toxic material. Something clicks, and suddenly what was simply a string of rather strange amino acids and proteinlike material is suddenly ‘alive.’ That is, if you call this alive.”
“Looks like it to me.”
For a second David permitted himself to just look at Julie. When they had been together, it had never been smooth. Arguments over procedures and science mixed in with their massive fears of commitment and change. In the end it proved a lethal cocktail to their relationship, which ended politely. Now, looking at her, working with her on something that both of them knew could be so incredibly important, all those differences didn’t seem to matter much. He wondered: Did she feel the same way?
The few moments’ reverie over, he looked away with his next question. “What about the next step?”
“That’s the tricky one. If this is going to have any relevance to life on surface Earth, we have to see what really happens when the bacteria begins establishing connections to potential organic material.”
“Right. Is that material already ticking toward true life, or does the bacteria somehow trigger it…?”
“Exactly.”
“And out of my field, I’m afraid. But I would like to see whenever you have something, no matter the time of day, or night…” A small grin. “Whatever, whenever.”
“Oh, you will. I have my team on sixteen-hour shifts. Some sleep, some quick intake of food, then they’re back at it. When I see something, I will show you. When do Kelliher’s people arrive?”
Kelliher’s people. Some of his key scientific team. Resources were being made available also, including two new submersibles on their way, a state-of-the-art data system that—up to now—was only for joint UAC-US projects. All that had changed. Suddenly, their work miles below the surface had become important. If you live long enough, anything can happen.
“Their transport chopper is due above our position just after noon. It will take them a while to organize how to ferry everything down. I expect you’ll be able to give your new charges their marching orders by 1800 hours.”
“Whoa! Marching orders?” Julie said. “I’m going to be running them?”
“Who else? Hopefully they’ll be quick learners.”
“Do you know their credentials? I get the feeling that I probably should be working under them.”
Another smile. “Maybe. Me too perhaps. But for now you’re in charge, I run interference and planning, and you just got a team of award-winning scientists to call your own.”
Then a smile back from Julie. “Guess I better produce results, hm?”
“That would be my suggestion.”
“Okay, then. Get out of here, and let me get back to work.”
David sat up. For a moment he wanted to give her a hug. It just seemed like such a natural impulse. “Good luck, Julie. And let me know…when there’s something to know.”
She nodded. Did she sense his impulse too? Or was he just lost in the ever-painful memories of what used to be—and what couldn’t be again?
He turned and walked out of the lab, back to the control room, monitoring the approach of Kelliher’s reinforcements racing to them…while Mars and its problems couldn’t have seemed farther away.
22
MARS CITY NEAR ALPHA LAB
KANE’S SMALL LIGHT COULDN’T CATCH WHATEVER was moving around him. But instinctively he threw himself close to a wall. He heard something land on the floor, then another sound. Things falling from above, all around him.
He swung the light to cut a circle around his feet, and that’s when he saw his first one. It looked like a spider, only with a body the size of a dog, supported by spindly legs that had the angularity of metal struts. Hell, they might actually have been metal struts.
The light made the one in the glare pull back a bit, but only for a second. In moments it scurried right back toward Kane. And even as Kane blasted, he kept his light on that one. He knew there were others, but he hoped he could use that recoil response, especially if he stayed in the shadows and the spider-thing in the light.
His rounds flicked off a few legs. Kane got a better look at the body, seeing something on top of it that looked like another small creature riding it, rearing back and forth, a mouth open, in fact opening so wide it seemed larger than the head itself. He fired another blast right at whatever protruded on top, and the thing stopped.
Not missing a beat—but noticing how he kept sucking air in and out so fast—he raised the light to see the room alive with the things. He swung the small torch back and forth. The startled things skittered a bit, but not nearly with the reaction he noticed with the first one.
Then he saw all of them move straight to him. There was no way even his best shooting could stop them all. Kane took a marine’s last resort when all options were gone.
He retreated.
In this case, Kane began running along the wall as he shut the light off. Perhaps they were now using it to mark his position. Either way, with their eyes now used to the light, best to throw them back in the dark.
Kane rested his hand along the wall to guide himself back to where the Hydrocon containers began. But even as he ran in that direction, he knew that he’d soon reach a place wit
h some emergency light where they could actually see him backlit.
And then it would be a one-man Custer’s Last Stand. All those tiny legs leaping on him, grabbing and holding on. Then those too-wide mouths. Could be the spider-things had a lot of growing to do.
So Kane stopped, and without turning on his small light, he set down a steady spray of fire in the direction of the creatures. He performed two full sweeps, then clicked the light on again. Nothing. He turned the flashlight so the lamp faced into the corridor and then banged the butt end against the metal wall of the corridor. The damn light came on.
Some things never change, he thought.
And he turned in the direction of the spiders. But one had already leaped up high onto his thigh, the viselike grip of its legs excruciating as they closed with such amazing power for something so small. Now Kane had to point the gun straight down and hope he’d hit the thing and miss his leg…or his foot.
A total crapshoot, with no time for anything resembling careful aiming. He blasted away, hitting the creature’s midsection, and it exploded like a piñata, the body popping, spraying Kane, the spider legs flying off him—save one, which seemed in a permanently locked position.
With no time to deal with that, Kane fell to a crouch. Better to get closer to their height. As he did, a pair of the creatures stood only feet away. No eyes that Kane could see, just those legs, and a mouth that looked prehistoric in its design, a gaping jagged hole designed for cutting and tearing.
The crouch position helped. If they dodged one of the shots, they sailed onto the next barrage. He kept twisting with the gun to make sure that none of them were attempting an end run. But he guessed they didn’t have the requisite amount of brainpower to figure out that move.
And once again Kane noticed that he was talking to himself as he shot them. The dementia of a lone soldier fighting against the odds for his life.
“Come on, you little fucking bastards. Come on! Gonna blow every single goddamned one of you—”
His yelling incessant, the volume keeping up with the never-ending blasts of his gun. Until suddenly the trigger didn’t do anything. No more rounds erupted from the muzzle: the damn thing needing to be reloaded. But how the hell could he reload with them—with them—
He looked up, expecting to see half dozen ready to jump on him.
But the floor was a sea of gore—legs sticking up at strange angles like the spiky tails of horseshoe crabs. He could see a few still twitching, but beyond that, nothing else.
He stayed crouched, waiting for his breathing to return to normal. He slowly dug out a fresh cartridge for his gun and clicked it into place. If he had been short a few more rounds, it would have been all over.
And when his breathing was fully back to normal, when the madness of his own voice yelling and the gunfire started receding from his brain, he stood up.
The way ahead was straight on through the hellish remains. As he started again walking forward, he ignored the crunch and bumps of the once-living horrors below his feet.
Maria stood back-to-back with Andy Kim.
“Okay,” she said, not turning to him, “brace yourself. Here come some more of them.”
The strategy of the zombies—and that’s what they called them—seemed to consist of one thing. Come at a target from two different directions and attack with all the speed their mangled bodies could muster.
Some of them lumbered, but others, probably based on how the shock wave hit them, moved quite fast. Maybe even faster than they used to move. A few of the dead creatures at their feet had performed a dodging and weaving motion that momentarily made them a hard target.
“Hold on. Let’s wait until they’re a bit closer.”
But Maria was no lieutenant, she knew, and her suggestion could be heard and ignored. And it was in this case.
“Fuck that!” Kim started blasting at the pair moving toward him. Maria guessed a good number of his shots went wide, especially if they were trying to dodge the fire. And it took a good number of bullets to bring them down. The supply of ammo on Mars couldn’t be endless. And no telling if they were in this hell for the long haul.
So Maria held off until the trio of zombies coming toward her were only about ten meters away. One of them, she saw, seemed to have objects stuck to his body, things that moved when he moved. Was that a nail gun sticking out the side of one? Could the thing use it? And another had a heavy-duty industrial stapler embedded in its shoulder.
Nice folks to have over for dinner. Except in this case, she and Kim were the intended entrees.
“Okay,” she whispered, more to herself than Kim, and she began firing at the three creatures now not too far away from her. Which is when she learned that the objects now part of their twisted bodies could still work. First the stapler started heaving on one of the thing’s shoulder, spewing out thick staples onto the ground in front of the thing.
Not much of a weapon there.
But the other, with the nail gun, that was a different story. The gun started to shake and, like a feeble antenna, made an attempt to point. And it began firing out a stream of metal rivets. Most caromed off the metal wall, but when the creature bobbed and weaved, one or two actually came in her direction.
Bobbed and weaved, she thought. Not much different from being in the ring, when she had to watch the moves, the surprises an opponent had for her. Though they never brought mechanical tools into the ring.
She peppered both of them equally with gunshots, tattooing their chests with so many holes that the three of them should have fallen facedown a long time ago. But each of them had one more step in them before they fell.
Without turning, she spoke to Andy. “Corridor’s getting a bit full.’
For a moment neither of them said anything. Then Andy: “How long you think we have to stay here? Hold down this fort, so to speak?”
“Not too sure. I’m hoping that the backup systems will kick in, we’ll get a contact, find out what’s happening elsewhere.” She took a deep breath. “But until then, I think we have to wait a little longer. Make sure all the zombies trying to get past here have had their shot—and we’ve had ours.”
“Time, Moraetes? Ten minutes?”
Maria hesitated. If they started moving, and if there were still waves of the things to come, then that would be a big mistake. But for now she said, “Sure. Ten minutes. Then we’ll do a small recce. Deal?”
“Yeah.”
And then they both went silent again while those minutes so slowly ticked away.
Kane now felt himself looking not only left and right with every step but up as well. No more surprises, he thought. Not like the last one.
Even when he stopped to check his PDA—as he did now—he would tap the screen with his thumb while quickly jerking his head up for another thorough scan, 360 degrees around, and up to the ceiling.
On the PDA he saw that just ahead should be a staircase. It looked narrow, but it did lead to one of the main corridors heading to the sector around Alpha.
Again he asked himself why he didn’t just return to Reception. Make a last redoubt there. But he dismissed the idea just as quickly. A last goddamn redoubt? You’re already half-dead once you start thinking like that—you’ve half surrendered. And there’s a good chance any enemy will know that.
So just “returning there,” waiting, praying, wasn’t an option.
And then there was Maria—the boxer who, much like himself, acted, then sorted things out later. Or, as in both their cases, didn’t sort out. They had a lot in common.
But, after another moment’s thought, he knew it was something else.
How long had it been before anything really human had been in his life? Someone to help build a wall around the orders, the commands, the military, the chain of duty and events that had become his life?
Too goddamned long.
And once he admitted that, just that thought seemed to open a door he had closed tightly. If Maria was alive, he knew he’d find her. A
nd for now, that’s all he needed to know.
Maria gave Andy Kim a nudge with her elbow. “Hear that?”
“Yeah. What the hell—”
“Shh—listen.”
It had been quiet. Just the sound of them breathing deep, waiting, occasionally shifting their guns to the other shoulder. Both tired, thirsty, nearly half-mad with all the shooting. And the stench of the bodies just seemed to grow.
Andy broke the silence. “Damned if I know. Something deep. Then those smaller sounds, like—like—”
“Cats.”
“What?”
“Like cats—I dunno—mewling, but like someone recorded the sound, raised it up a few octaves.”
“More like screams.”
“Exactly.”
Again silence.
“Think whatever it is is coming this way?’
“Doubt we’ll have long to wait.”
The metal stairway door cantilevered to the side; one bottom corner actually dug into the floor. Grabbing and pulling on it told Kane that sheer strength wasn’t going to do a thing here.
He turned and looked at the area around the door. A sign announced: ONLY AUTHORIZED LAB PERSONNEL ARE PERMITTED IN THIS AREA. PLEASE SHOW YOUR IDENTIFICATION TO THE SECURITY GUARD.
The guard? That must be the ripped-up pieces of bone and flesh lying by the wall.
But Kane also noticed that a table—perhaps the security guard’s—had been turned over and one metal leg snapped off where it had been bolted to the tabletop.
He grabbed it and gave it a heft, checking its strength as best he could. It seemed to hold up. Kane turned back to the door, wedged the metal piece in the open door top, and then began pulling on the other end of the leg.
At first it did nothing. But then he heard a small groan. Maybe the hinges freeing up? And the sound was enough for him to redouble his efforts, planting one foot—with his knee screaming in protest at the angle—and using his entire body weight.
Doom 3™: Maelstrom Page 10