by C. G. Hatton
The connection was rough as hell, the communication stream struggling to get through the headache.
“Angel, get out of here.”
“Will do, boss, as soon as we manage to dock with that ship that is disintegrating around you and haul your ass out of there.”
He ran down the narrow stairs, two or three at a time, dropping down through the decks as fast as he could. It felt like it was taking forever and he could feel the escalating pain pushing against his senses as they closed on the alien vessel.
“Okay, we’re in,” she yelled suddenly inside his head. “How are you doing there, NG? We are not going to be able to stay here for long. I…”
He bumped up against the bulkhead as the ship’s mass shifted, hurtling towards its inevitable end.
“Angel, get away. We’ll find a way out.”
“Yeah, I don’t know how,” she sent back. “All the escape pods have been jettisoned and you might not have noticed, but this cruiser and all its ships have been shot to hell. Looks to me like we’re your only option.”
He reached the bottom of one stairwell and raced through a dark linking corridor to the next. “I need to find Hilyer.”
“You don’t have time. Just get your ass down here.”
“I can’t leave him.”
“NG, I’ve sent an extraction team after him. You just get down here.”
He could hardly breathe. Nine more levels. He ran down the stairs, legs feeling like jelly. Eight levels. Seven. Six. He fell somewhere along the way and the rest passed in a blur.
Bone shuddering tremors were shaking the entire substructure.
After an eternity, he reached the last set of stairs. He jumped the last five steps and crashed through onto the docks level as another explosion ripped through the ship. He was thrown off his feet, rolled with it and staggered up into a run.
“NG, come on. Pick up the pace there, boss.”
He was moving blind through corridors filled with smoke and the intermittent flashing blue strobe of rapidly failing emergency lighting. He fired back, “Where are you?”
“Straight ahead. Just keep running.”
He was running. Coughing, struggling to stay upright and on the verge of passing out as the pressure in his head increased but he was running.
Arms grabbed him and he lashed out, automatic responses kicking in to fight back until Sebastian hissed, ‘These are your guys, you fool.’
They pulled him into an airlock, propelling him forward and into a smaller ship.
NG sank into a chair and fumbled for the harness.
Martinez yelled out a warning to hold on and dropped them from the berth, accelerating hard. He tried to hold onto something, anything, failed and blacked out.
They were on Ghost. NG recognised the ship as he started to come round. He squinted at the screens. The proximity alarms were screaming, the screens showing the entire volume of space filled with flitting shapes, fighters, missiles and debris. Ghost was struggling to keep up with the sudden overwhelming mass of incoming data.
“Jesus, they’re getting annihilated,” Martinez muttered. She was flying Ghost at her absolute limit, trying to wing her way through a blossoming field of debris.
NG braced his feet against the console, failing miserably to block out the increasing pain in his head. They were closing on the Tangiers as it fled. He couldn’t help but sense the panic emanating from the cloud of vessels surrounding it even at these distances, even through the shield that Sebastian was maintaining. It wasn’t often that the best of Earth special forces and Winter’s fleet came up against an adversary they couldn’t beat into submission.
He closed his eyes.
‘Don’t flake out on me again, Nikolai.’
The pain intensified.
“NG, the Duck just disengaged from the Tangiers. We can’t risk trying to hook up to her in all this. What do you want us to do?”
“Get away,” he managed to say, feeling sick, a tight knot in his chest and a pounding hammering at his mind.
Martinez responded instantly and they spiralled away as weapons flared, catching the edge of a blast as the hull of the Tangiers rocked with an explosion. They rolled with the spin and she accelerated up and round in a breathtaking manoeuvre.
Everything greyed out for a second.
‘Get out of here,’ Sebastian whispered.
Martinez was saying something.
He looked up.
She glanced back at him. “NG! What the hell else is going on here that you’re not telling me?”
He squinted at her through eyes that felt like they were on fire. “They’re telepaths.”
Martinez cursed. “We’re way down the food chain here, aren’t we?”
‘And then some…’
“We need to get back, get a warning out,” he muttered uneasily, watching the battle unfold.
One of the Expedience’s few remaining fighters cut across their path, too close for comfort, a smaller vessel that was firing some kind of energy weapon in pursuit.
Martinez spun them out of its way as the fighter took a hit and exploded in a flash of billowing fragments. She accelerated hard, multiple impacts pounding against Ghost’s hull.
‘No wonder the Man is so terrified of these creatures – they’re like locusts. Can you feel their hunger?’
He couldn’t feel anything except a nauseating pain that was dragging at the back of his mind.
Another collision sent them spinning out of control. Martinez compensated, calmly rolling Ghost with the motion and establishing a new escape vector as damage reports started to flash onto the screens.
Someone was trying to connect to the Senson.
He heard her reply, “Negative, our jump drives are down.”
Behind them, the Tangiers took another direct hit.
“I know, I know,” Martinez sent to whoever it was she was talking to. “One engine is gone and our shields are so low, we’re fucked if another...” She bit off the next word as a proximity alarm screamed and she had to throw Ghost into a wild spiral.
The nauseating disorientating spin took his breath away.
She swore. “NG, we can’t win this.”
‘She’s right. They have a hive mind. You want to hear?’
‘No.’
‘It’s fascinating.’
It was excruciating.
‘I have to tell you, Nikolai, I do admire the way you have brought us to this. You have precipitated a most dire confrontation with your impetuous need for the truth.’ Sebastian laughed. ‘After centuries of the most intricate and patient preparation, you have managed to rush headlong into the very conflict for which you were being nurtured so meticulously.’
‘They’re here. We were stupid to sit back and assume we were safe.’
‘What difference does it make? They are superior. Face it. Humanity is doomed.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘You want to feel it again?’
Sebastian let his tenuous hold on it slip and it hit him full force. He squeezed his eyes shut, felt Ghost shift around him and felt the darkness of deep space close in, a spider’s web of energy pulsing in all directions as hundreds of minds linked in common hatred, hunger and pure desire to conquer and consume.
It was overpowering.
‘Deal with it,’ Sebastian hissed brutally.
It snapped off, leaving him shaking and gasping for air. They were moving fast. On a heading towards Erica, NG realised, watching the data on the monitors.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, the pressure pushing against his mind building to unbearable. Martinez was talking to him again, or to someone. He couldn’t make out what she was saying. He wanted to curl up and die.
‘Not an option, Nikolai,’ Sebastian said viciously.
Behind them they could see the Expedience crunching into the alien ship. The shockwave hit, a flare of energy that sent Ghost’s systems into a frenzy for what seemed like forever. It felt like someone had punched
him in the chest.
He couldn’t breathe.
The Tangiers had veered off, and was closing fast, heading for Erica surrounded by a ragged accompaniment of vessels that were still trying in vain to fend off attacks by the smaller alien ships that were nipping at their heels. Gallagher’s freighter was out there somewhere.
The aliens, whatever the hell they were, were following. Damaged but not defeated. No anger in that incessant buzzing roar, simply a desire to acquire, feed… consume.
‘They’re looking for new feeding grounds.’ Sebastian was almost revelling in the moment. ‘Can you feel it?’
It was impossible not to feel that simple, raw motivation.
Erica was a dark mass directly ahead.
“We’re screwed,” Martinez muttered. She was trying desperately to veer away from a fighter that was dodging an incoming missile.
It skimmed Ghost’s hull, exploded and sent them into a tumbling spiral towards the surface.
Chapter 31
He stoked the fire, adding more logs and prodding the embers.
“It chills me to hear of them being so close,” she said.
That was a sentiment he shared.
“Do the others know?” she asked.
“You are the first.”
She put a hand over her mouth, stared at him then composed herself. “They are here. I thought we had more time.”
“We all thought we had more time. We do not.”
•
Crash landing on a planet was never a great experience. NG lay still, something warm trickling past his ear. He’d crashed a couple of times before, never in the middle of an alien invasion.
‘And never with other ships crashing down around us,’ Sebastian commented dryly as a not-too-distant explosion sent a trembling vibration through the ship. A clatter of debris rained down on them.
NG tried to open his eyes. It felt like he was in a thick fog. He could hear Martinez calling his name, shouting to someone else. He could vaguely sense her close by but it was taking all his concentration to just stay conscious.
There was a dull ache nagging at the edge of his awareness. Another impact close by and the roar of a ship passing overhead. A pounding rain was beating on the hull. They must have been breached because he was cold, a damp chill creeping into his bones. He could hear shouting outside, muffled noises that were pretty much drowned out by a buzzing drone that was pulling at his mind.
He half opened one eye, struggled to focus on the crazy angle of the main console and managed to fumble a grip on the harness. It released with a click and he tumbled, cursing, falling out of the seat and hitting his head on the bulkhead.
It all greyed out again and he came round to see Martinez peering down at him.
“You gotta stop doing this to me, NG,” she muttered, half clambering, half sliding in beside him, pulling a dressing out of a medikit that she bundled into his lap and pressing it against his forehead. “You’re really not hearing any of this, are you?” She was thinking there was something wrong with their Sensons, he could hear that. “You injured anywhere else?”
She reached behind her and dragged forward an armoured vest, beginning to shrug him into it as if she was dressing a child.
“Broken ribs,” he admitted as she grabbed him right where it hurt.
She said something but he missed it, fading out for a second as she pulled the straps tight.
She mumbled a, “Sorry,” and waited until he’d caught his breath. “Was that the crash or them?” She was looking at the bruises, thinking she’d kill everyone who’d hurt him.
“Fiorrentino was on board. He recognised Hil.”
She added Fiorrentino to her shitlist and geared up to move. “Come on. We need to get out of here, they’re bombing the crap out of every ship on the ground.”
Cold air hit his face, a downpouring of chemical-tainted rain drenching him through in seconds as they emerged into the open. The rain dripped down his nose, an acidic tang to its taste as it washed over his lips.
He blinked away raindrops, eyes stinging. It was dark, bright sparks and flares of light flashing on the horizon, occasional rumbles as the sky lit up with explosions.
Another massive roar thundered overhead.
The alien hive mind was a constant humming presence in the background. Sebastian was adapting, managing to hold barriers in place but he could still hear them closing in. It was weird after all this time to think that they were real, that the Man was right and the ever-threatened nightmare he’d lived with for his entire life was here, right now.
He looked around.
Ghost was a crumpled mess, the rear of the ship ripped away and the front half crushed. They’d been lucky to make it out alive.
He could just about make out the dark shapes of other ships, escape pods and smoking debris that littered the sparse moorland. There was pain and panic all around. He could hear faint voices, shouting, someone trying to coordinate a search for survivors.
Only two of the Security guys that Martinez had brought with her had survived the crash and were hauling themselves out of the wreckage as Martinez took hold of his arm.
“We need to get into cover,” she said. “I reckon the refinery is our only chance.”
The main colony wasn’t far off, the tall shadows of the refinery’s towers lit by blazing fires and the flash of explosions. Small ships were flying low, attacking anything that was moving.
She gave him a nudge. “C’mon, we have to go.”
His whole life with the guild had been geared to this moment, first contact with a hostile alien race, and he was down to running for his life across a smouldering wasteland in the pouring rain.
Erica’s main mining and refinery complex was a looming mass of buildings, towers and pipework in the distance ahead of them.
They ducked into cover whenever they could find it when the flitting fighters came too close for comfort and Martinez pulled him to his feet every time he lost concentration and stumbled.
After what seemed like forever, she dragged him into a ditch and signalled him to keep down, yelling something about needing a minute to the two guys with them. They took up defensive positions as NG clutched a hand around his ribs and sank into the mud, cold water sloshing up to his knees.
It was hard to keep his eyes open but she grabbed his shoulder.
“NG, come on, stay with me.”
“I’m…” he started to say, muttering something and losing track, vision narrowing to a dark tunnel, cold grey descending like fog.
‘Stay awake, Nikolai…’
Easier said than done.
‘Nikolai!’
He jerked awake from a nightmare that had pulled him under with terrifying speed, half expecting to sense Devon’s perfume, but sliding in cloying, dank mud instead.
Martinez had her hand on his wrist, fingers pressing against the pulse point, his heart beating a pounding rhythm in time with her own. She leaned in close, whispered, “Take what you need.”
He did, with as much restraint as he could manage, just enough so he could push back the pounding oppression and breathe again.
She used her other hand to pop a shot of Epizin into his neck and waited until he looked up. “You good?”
He nodded.
She nodded back and pulled him up, splashing out of the ditch and scrambling up through the wet undergrowth.
They staggered towards the refinery, keeping low. Clouds were swirling overhead.
He was soaked through, sore, breathing difficult and he was hard pushed to fend off the headache that was becoming debilitating. Nothing he did to ease it made a dent, and he could feel that Sebastian was tense, straining to keep up the protective barriers, a growing resentment burning intently.
Everything came down to just putting one foot in front of the other and trying to suck in enough oxygen to keep going, that blur of lights in the distance a tantalising lure.
An ominous chill that began to creep over the skin at the ba
ck of his neck made him stop and look up.
A distant rumbling of thunder turned into a massive roar of engines, a huge shape, flashing pinpricks of light emerging from the darkness, escape pods, drop ships and debris falling in its wake.
The Tangiers.
It hit two of the facility’s towers, ploughing through them as if they were made of matchsticks.
Martinez was standing, transfixed, staring at the massive hulking warship as it headed straight for them.
‘Move, you fool.’
“Oh shit,” she muttered, breaking the spell.
NG yelled, “Move,” and they ran, instinctively ducking as it flew impossibly close, the shockwave as it passed knocking them off their feet.
NG rolled as he landed, pure adrenaline fuelling his reactions, sensing another smaller ship falling towards them. He scrambled towards Martinez, dragging her clear as it hit with a deafening crash.
The tiny craft exploded on impact, the blast throwing them back and sending a billowing mushroom cloud of thick, black smoke into the air.
NG got to his knees, feeling the heat against his face dissipate with the streaming rain, his heart pounding and the constant pain in his chest breaking through anything he could do to nullify it.
Martinez was still down.
‘She’s alive,’ Sebastian whispered, the words filtering through the ringing in his ears. ‘So is the alien.’
He watched with a distant fascination as a figure emerged from the smoke. It wasn’t that dissimilar to humans from a distance, but big, taller, powerful build, two legs, two arms, wearing what looked like glistening armour. It was in pain. He could feel it.
NG felt Martinez next to him, getting up, bringing up her gun, felt the anticipation of conflict in the adrenaline that was rushing through her body. She tensed.
There was a moment’s standoff.
It was huge. A ragged cloak hung from its shoulders, whipping in the wind. It was injured, standing stooped, chest heaving. It looked at them, its gaze piercing as it scanned across all four of them, coming back to rest on NG.
Sebastian hissed.
It raised its weapon and fired.