by C. G. Hatton
He couldn’t move fast enough, a stream of massive high velocity rounds cutting through the rain.
He reacted instinctively, no conscious effort behind it, conjuring a blast of energy that impacted the incoming projectiles with such force it sent him flying backwards.
He tumbled, every gasp of air punched from his lungs, sliding through the mud and looking up to see Martinez and the two grunts from Security all returning fire.
Every shot was detonating against some kind of energy shield surrounding it. It started to walk forward, drawing another weapon and firing.
One of the grunts took a direct hit to the chest that punched through his armour as if it wasn’t there.
NG scrambled to his feet and ran forward, grabbing the fallen rifle and kneeling, firing, the recoil from every shot resounding through his chest in an agonising rhythm.
It turned, shot the other grunt with a single bullet through the throat and swung back, aiming both weapons at him.
Martinez yelled.
He fired first, double tap, the air around it shimmering as the first shot hit the barrier and the second flying straight and true to hit between its eyes.
It took two steps towards them, staggered and fell.
The hollow punch of intense pressure that hit the centre of NG’s being as it died left him reeling.
He was vaguely aware of Martinez running to him, sliding in beside him and holding him up. She helped him to his feet, staring at the debris, wanting to go over and look closer, see their enemy, but she turned to him instead. “These are your aliens? Do we even know for sure they’re not human? Could this be Wintran?” not quite believing that she was saying it, but not trusting herself to believe these were really alien.
NG shook his head. It was alien, he’d felt it. He’d never encountered anything like it. It was as terrible as the Man had ever suggested. Worse, now that it was here on their doorstep.
It was hard not to feel overwhelmed. He felt a hand touch his elbow.
Martinez looked him in the eye, watching a stream of rain mingle with the blood trickling down his face. “They’re real,” she said.
He nodded. He’d accused the Man of lying but it was real.
‘He did lie to you,’ Sebastian whispered maliciously. ‘It’s you that doesn’t exist, remember. You are nothing but my jailor. Time to let me free, Nikolai. You don’t have a chance against these creatures. Do you know what the Man calls them? Bhenykhn Lyudaed…’
Bhenykhn. It sounded familiar but nothing he could remember the Man saying, nothing that had ever been in any of the greys.
Sebastian laughed, a hollow stirring deep inside. ‘Of course he didn’t tell you. You are simply his gofer, his little experiment. Let me tell you, Nikolai, they are the Bhenykhn Lyudaed, the Devourers. You are out of your depth. Let me free or we are going to die here.’
‘Sebastian,’ he thought back, ‘I’m not keeping you in. You want control? Take it. I’m not stopping you.’
That was one hell of a confession but he made it because he knew that somehow Sebastian had been locked away so deep in that confrontation with LC that he had no chance of getting free. He felt Sebastian snatch violently for possession and fail, genuinely nothing conscious on his part to resist.
The darkness inside felt more dense, more black, than it ever had before. ‘Then, you, my friend,’ Sebastian murmured, ‘are in real trouble.’
He let the barriers drop and there was nothing NG could do to throw them back up as real time kicked in with a jolt and the clamouring cacophony from the alien hive hit his mind like a sledgehammer.
Chapter 32
He could remember the feeling of that intense pressure, the intrusion into his mind. To know that Nikolai had had to face it, so soon, was disturbing.
“You know what he went through?” she said softly.
The Man stared into the flames. They didn’t, these others that were here with him. Nikolai was a freak of nature in this galaxy, he was one in his.
“This virus,” she said, “would it work on us? Is this our solution?”
He shook his head. “When would a solution ever be so simple?”
•
He felt himself folding, imploding, overwhelmed and overpowered by it. This time it was Sebastian playing chicken but suicide had never, ever been on NG’s agenda. He sucked it up and rolled with it. Took it. Stood up to it. Absorbed it. Battered and buffeted, he embraced its power, its energy. He existed within it. He could suddenly sense, clear and distinct, each alien individual of that hive mind, each desperate human soul, each living thing a bright pinprick of light in the dark.
He couldn’t breathe.
Slowly, he took control and shut each one out, painstakingly and painfully, until reality was a calm, quiet space in his head.
‘Okay, you’ve proved the point,’ he thought at Sebastian. ‘You want to take over again so I can move?’
There was a subtle shift as the pressure eased, a barrier back in place.
He opened his eyes.
He was on his knees again. Doubled over. Rain streaming down the back of his neck.
Martinez was crouched beside him, her other hand holding a gun by her side, scanning around, identifying potential hostiles and tracking them.
She felt the change in him and squeezed his shoulder.
He sat back on his heels and looked at her, both of them sitting there out in the open, caked with mud, drenched through as the rain beat down on them. “I might have really screwed up this time,” he said. “We’re not ready.”
She leaned in close. “We’re the Thieves’ Guild,” she said. “No one messes with us. No one. Fucking aliens included,” and added confidently, “No doubts, NG. You know what you’re doing. You always know what you’re doing. Trust me.”
Sebastian stirred maliciously. ‘Don’t trust anyone.’
“Give me a sitrep,” he said, wiping a hand across his face and sending raindrops flying. He looked around, trying to calm his erratic breathing. Craft were still flying low, swooping over crashed escape pods, smoke billowing up to merge in dark puddles with the covering of low cloud. “Keep it simple. Do we know where anyone else is?”
She pulled a second gun from a holster at her waist and checked the magazine. “The Sensons are playing up. I’ve had no contact from LC or anyone on the Duck since we crashed. I haven’t heard from Hil and I can’t contact any of the extraction teams so I don’t know if they found him and got him out or not. The plan was to stay with you. I gave everyone the coordinates from Gallagher before we followed so they know where we are. There’s a chance they’ve gone back to the Alsatia so help might be on its way. But, as far as it goes right now, we’re alone.” She handed him the gun.
He took it almost absently and tucked it into the small of his back, something pulling at his awareness.
He looked up.
He couldn’t see through the cloud cover but he could feel that the alien ship was hurtling down through the atmosphere, damaged but managing a controlled descent, launching more ground attack ships in readiness.
“We need to move,” he muttered. He could sense human survivors, armoured soldiers, heavy infantry and assault troops from the Tangiers and the Expedience, mixed with ships’ crew and technical personnel, all gearing up and making their way to the mining facility in the hope that the facility would offer some protection.
He looked at the distant lights glowing on the horizon. They just needed to get there.
Rows of wounded were stretched out in the mud-strewn tunnel entrance to the processing facility, bodies covered with plastic sheets or anything that came to hand, the worst of the casualties getting impromptu field medicine from anyone who could wield a first aid kit.
‘Welcome to hell…’
NG walked through without stopping, brutally shutting out the bombardment of pain that hit his mind. He still had one of the recovered assault rifles slung across his back and one of the alien’s weapons in his hand. Martinez had t
he other.
It had been a long time since he’d been on the ground in the middle of an active conflict and the weight of that rifle was an uneasy reminder that he’d disliked that assignment as much as he hated being cold. The Man had insisted, given him no choice, saying he couldn’t lead until he understood every aspect of what he was leading. It had made him understand that he didn’t like being a grunt at the behest of someone else’s agenda.
Rain was beating on the high ceiling overhead, a cold metallic chill to the air. A regular pounding thrum of machinery emanated from the depths of the plant. Klaxons were wailing. A distant explosion shook its structure, a scattering of dust and debris falling down on them.
They were both wet, cold and hurting. And they were surrounded by chaos.
Someone yelled for help and for a briefest instant, NG felt Martinez hesitate, thinking they could help these people, that – he – could help these people who were dying.
He shook his head, catching her eye and sharing the desperation. His heart was pounding. He couldn’t lose himself in this. They had to get away.
‘What have I been saying?’
“Stay close,” he said quietly. “We need to find a way out of here. We have to get word back. The Man has things in place.”
‘You hope.’
The tunnel opened up into a massive storage area. Wintran and Earth uniforms mixed in an uneasy truce of stunned confusion, the chilly damp, blood and sweat mingling with age-old animosities to create a heady atmosphere of tension.
There was a Wintran officer in the centre of it, trying to make headway in organising a rabble that was hurting, injuries adding fuel to innate enmities and elevating raw emotions to breaking point. All amongst a constant influx of wounded and a steady escalation of alert stations screaming warnings of damage.
“This is not good,” Martinez murmured at his side. She was concerned for his safety. There were too many weapons, too many unknowns in the area and too many angles for her to cover for her own peace of mind. The five hundred million seemed like a long time ago, another lifetime away to him, but it was still preying on her mind and as far as she was concerned, every person in this temporary refuge was a hostile.
NG scanned around.
He could see into every mind, skim the surface of every person’s fears and suspicions. There were no assassins that he could tell. There were a few civilians in the mix, wearing UM colours and branding. When the hell had that happened? This place was supposed to be Aries.
He watched, struggling and failing to keep a worsening headache at bay, a really bad feeling descending over the tumbling coincidences that kept flying in from left field.
But the UM engineers he could sense weren’t thinking of anything other than trying to find out what the hell was going on and struggling to initiate emergency procedures to mitigate the damage to their facility. They were a hair’s breadth from outright panic, seasoned pioneers who were used to coping with anything the Between had to throw at them, and it was chaos.
Contagious.
They edged off to the side. He sank down to sit on the floor, back leaning against the wall, drawing energy from the bodies around him and not caring that Martinez was looking at him as if she thought he was going to flake out again.
“I just need a minute,” he muttered.
She crouched next to him. “Comms are down,” she said quietly. “It’s not just us. No wonder I can’t get through to anyone.”
He looked around.
From the feel of it, no one had any working comms, all the Sensons inactive, and that in itself was freaking everyone out and adding in an intense sense of isolation.
Another explosion boomed overhead, vibrations rumbling through the entire structure of the building.
The lights flickered.
Martinez cursed. “What the hell is that?”
“Defence grid,” he said, reading the anxiety from the UM guys who were desperately trying to reroute power and drain down non-essential systems. It was the only thing keeping them all alive right now, a rough and ready defence grid of laser weapons the mining facility used to protect itself against an annual meteor storm, that was now keeping the alien air assault at bay. And from what the engineers were thinking, the power drain was something stupid and its reserves were finite. So they were on a clock. “It’s not going to last much longer.”
A voice suddenly yelled from the far side of the room, “Who the fuck are we fighting here?”
NG looked up. The Wintran guy was giving orders, frustrated but competent and handling the situation fairly well until that someone dared voice the fear that everyone was holding in.
Earthside, they were thinking it had to be Wintran. Winterside, they were thinking what the hell corporation had anything like that, could it be Earth? It was a disorientating swirl of paranoia and anger.
“They cut through us like fucking butter,” someone else shouted. “Who the hell has anything like that?”
NG pushed himself to his feet, unease prickling. This was going to boil over. Martinez was sensing it too and reaching for another gun.
It was getting hard to concentrate and it took him a moment to realise that someone was trying to reach him and a moment longer to recognise who it was.
‘LC?’ he thought vaguely.
‘NG, we’re getting shot to shit. What the…’
The tenuous link cut off. Abruptly.
‘Seems like your pet just used up his ninth life,’ Sebastian hissed maliciously.
NG reached out. He could sense LC and Hal Duncan plus some unfamiliars about two miles out. Further than he’d ever been able to reach with any certainty before.
Sebastian stirred sullenly.
‘LC?’ NG sent again.
‘We’re… crap. NG, what the hell is going on?’
The Wintran officer was holding up his hand. One of his men yelled for quiet. The constant drumming of rain on the roof was loud, interspersed with a distant rumble of explosions and the occasional boom as the defence grid took down another fighter that got too close.
‘LC, if you can hear me,’ NG sent, ‘get the hell off the Duck. We need that freighter intact.’
‘It’s not intact. We’ve been hit.’
‘How bad? It might be our only chance.’
‘Wait a minute.’
There was a pause then, ‘Elliott reckons he can get off the ground if we can get parts for repairs. Shit…’
NG took a deep breath. ‘LC, listen to me. Get off the Duck. They can sense lifeforms and will attack if there are people on board. Do you understand? Get everyone off the Duck and get to the mining facility.’
There was no reply.
“The Duck just landed,” he said to Martinez. “We need to go.”
The Wintran officer was raising his voice now, the kind of authoritative tone that soldiers couldn’t help but snap to with full attention. “We need to secure the area and figure out what we’re dealing with. I need medics. You,” he pointed to someone, “come with me…”
NG watched as one of the Earth marines, wearing battle-scarred front line combat armour marked with sergeant’s stripes, pushed forward. “We don’t take orders from a damned stinking Wintran.” His voice was quiet but his words devastating.
There were shoves, yells.
No real violence yet.
Martinez was thinking she’d seen worse in Acquisitions when the grunts kicked off but you still never knew when the bullets might start flying. She took a half step protectively in front of him.
NG muttered, “C’mon,” and backed off. He turned to leave, sensing the threat a second too late, and walked into a hand pushed hard against his chest.
Martinez moved fast, incapacitating the guy and stopping just short of breaking his arm, shoving him back and sticking her gun in his face.
He was wearing a Wintran uniform, one of the bridge crew off the Expedience.
This was the last thing they needed.
The guy caught his balance
and squared up to them, not giving a shit about the gun, glaring past her at NG. “You bastard.” He was trembling, looking at him, thinking that this was the bastard that had destroyed their ship.
Someone grabbed NG from behind.
He managed to shove an elbow backwards and broke free, Martinez spinning and fending off another, yelling at them to back off and pulling him away.
The yells were louder then, Wintran voices shouting that this was one of the guys they’d caught on their ship, someone on the Earth side shouting, “Shit, he must be ours.”
In seconds, the whole area was divided, weapons drawn, emotions bristling on both sides. Christ, they could just kill themselves right here and be done with it, do the aliens’ work for them.
NG stood in the centre of it.
‘How poetic. The Man’s vision in its purest manifestation.’
The Wintran officer pushed his way through to them, sidearm in his hand, the other outstretched as he tried to calm the situation. He glanced around at his people, eyes flicking to the Earth troops confronting them and his glare resting finally on NG. “Who the hell are you?” he said.
‘Now that is one hell of a question. Who are you, ‘NG’?’
Someone piped up from the far side of the room. “This is one of the bastards that sabotaged us.”
The officer took a step closer. He was a major, Medical Corps by the patch on his sleeve, and he was thinking they were screwed here. He had casualties he should be tending and instead he was standing in the middle of a freaking schoolyard fight with a guy who by all accounts was the very one who had started it all.
“Who are you?” he said again, looking them up and down, noting the lack of uniform or insignia.
NG shook his head slowly.
The marine sergeant was forcing his way through the crowd, nothing in his mind but an instinct to protect his own. He stepped between NG and the major, and said again, “We do not take orders from a stinking – bastard – Wintran.”
It was about to get nasty and their real enemy was outside.
“We have to work together,” the major said carefully, delaying tactics so no one would start shooting.