by T S Weaver
She didn’t meet his gaze, unwilling to show him the truth, or see it reflected in his eyes.
“Well, shit, girl. You’re acting like you’re the one in charge.” Gunny laughed and pressed one hand against his ribs. He swore, pain stripping color from his features. The hand pressed against his ribs trembled. “Alright, makes sense. You heard the Sergeant, I’m in the middle with Stone.” His gaze moved to the civilian. “No arguments from you. If I’m going to let her treat me as if I can’t fight, then you can do the sane thing and accept when you’re beaten.”
The civilian’s jaw clenched, his words clipped. “Understood.”
Cora bit back a laugh. Exchange male for female and the word would have been fine, with all the dangers and challenges the single word statement could offer. “On your feet. Lackey, you’re with me, everyone else, cross two at a time, but not until you’re given the signal. Eyes open, we’re not alone out here, and the party guests aren’t friendly.” She gestured to the corporal and made her way into the opening of the building, where she’d waited and watched for the aliens. Watching for danger allowed the rest of the group to fall into position. Time was running out. With damaged suits, oxygen on the low end, and the cold seeping in, they either made it to the supply dump or died along the way. There was no third option.
She signaled Lackey, inclining her head in the direction of the next building across the pedestrian way. She lifted her hand and counted down from five before she moved, knowing he would wait for five before following her. She kept low to the ground as she hurried, sidearm in place as she scrambled for cover and turned to watch as the corporal followed her. In twos, the group joined them, and when the last two began their escape from the building, she edged her way around the rubble, searching for the next set of cover they’d use.
Time had no meaning, and her world narrowed down to finding the safest place to move, the next area where she and her people could rest, repeated until Stone edged closer to her. “There it is.”
“The dump?”
“Three floors down, but we should be able to make it. Most of the building appears to be intact. Might have to clear debris, but it’s in better condition than expected.”
The deeper they’d moved into the colony, the less damage there appeared to be. But still no bodies. It didn’t make sense. There had to be a reason behind the lack of casualties. Information they’d need to pass it onto the Unified Terran Government.
“You’re with me, Stone. Lackey, take Stone’s place with Gunny.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
She didn’t need to watch to know Lackey obeyed. Following orders became second nature after a time in the Marines. No doubt it was the same, or close, with the other branches of service. “Stay close, Stone. You follow me after a count of five. Same way you saw me cross with Lackey. Got it?”
“Understood.” A single harsh, clipped word.
Still holding a grudge at being put with Gunny? She neither knew nor had the time to find out. If he had an issue with her, they’d deal with it when they were less likely to be spotted by the invaders. Luck had been on their side for the majority of the trip. They’d seen signs of the aliens in the distance, but none had glanced their way. She counted down, then darted across the clearing, one hand pressed against the front door, still intact, and pushed it open enough to allow easy entrance for those who’d follow. Dust fell from the ceiling, debris scattered across the floor, but for the most part, the building was in one piece. She listened, visually scanning the room before she turned her attention back to the door in time to see Stone barreling through the door.
“I’ll take the door, you find the entrance into the dump.”
“Whatever you say.” Stone didn’t look at her but continued through the structure.
If he shot her or slipped free, there was nothing she could do about it. Her attention had to be on those making their way into the building before the enemy spotted them. It didn’t stop the itch between her shoulder blades. The man wasn’t to be trusted, not with a weapon at her back. She pushed back the thought and continued to provide cover for the remaining members of the group.
Gunny needed help, she didn’t like it, but it was how things had worked out. And she wasn’t about to let him down.
Zac groaned as he rolled onto his back and stared up into the darkness.
Odd, should have been lights. Faint, distant, but lights. Maybe from the consoles or datapads. Emergency lights.
Nothing.
He lifted one hand in front of his face. He knew he’d moved the hand, knew where he’d tried to place it, but he couldn’t see it.
The suit crinkled, giving him another piece of information. He’d pulled his suit on before the dome had shattered. Activated it when the first warning of a dome crack had rung out. Was it intact? He listened, but there was nothing. No alert rang out. Not even the low buzz which would tell him the suit had been stressed but hadn’t torn.
Their suits were military grade.
Their?
Laura. Haden. They’d been with him. He sat up and stared into the darkness.
A distant light, faint, a small red slow blink.
How long had he been out? Minutes? Hours? Days?
Not days, his suit didn’t have enough power or air to keep him alive for days. Panic, fear, he knew they surged through his body, and there was nothing he could do about it. He wasn’t trained for this shit. No one was. Aliens. No pirates could cause this amount of damage to the dome, or the colony as a whole. The energy readings. Shapes which jumped from the outer edge of their sensor readings to right on top of them faster than anything human-built could do it.
Sure, the idea of traveling at unknown speeds, folding space, stable wormholes, and a dozen other theories, remained a part of the talk whenever you got a group of pilots together. But his job was here, operating a console, not dreaming of planets unknown and first contact with peaceful alien worlds. The reality was different, and it sucked.
I didn’t sign up for this.
Except he had, even if he hadn’t realized it at the time.
Zac stood but didn’t move. Without a source of real illumination, he couldn’t be certain the floor remained steady beneath him. Had to be a way of seeing what was going on. He patted down his suit. A torch. Handheld. He had something, didn’t he?
Head.
He reached up and tapped his face mask. Lights flickered into life, and he blinked to give his eyes time to adjust. Shapes. Fallen walls. He looked up and wished he hadn’t. No ceiling. How bad was the damage to the dome? The colony as a whole?
He tapped his comm into life.
Static. A soft buzz barely audible. The majority of the systems had to be down or jammed. He frowned. Yes, jammed, Laura had tried to contact Earth, but the signal had bounced back on them. Blocked.
They were on their own unless the UTG realized there was a problem. And they would, in time.
Time they didn’t have.
Zac turned, slowly, allowing the lights on his mask to sweep around the room. He hadn’t been on his own when the attack had come, and he’d been the nearest one to the door. Laura and Haden wouldn’t have moved far from where he’d last seen them. He tried to place the memory of the room with the now destroyed remains. The walls were mostly in the same place, which gave him a frame of reference.
Laura. She’d pulled a sidearm on him, but she’d been the closest.
Uncertain, and careful not to rush, he moved further into the room. Work stations, a crushed line of them, stood in front of him. His station would have been to the right. Laura’s to the left, but she’d approached him when he’d made a move to leave. He edged closer to where he’d last seen the woman, head half bowed as he watched the floor.
A boot stuck out from beneath a pile of rubble. Small, not a man’s foot. Not Haden’s.
Alive? Dead? He shuddered, knowing there was only one way to be sure.
Zac lifted the rubble, broken plastiboard and plaster, away from
the foot, revealing the leg an inch at a time. He tossed the pieces aside, it didn’t matter if he threw things. Not as if there was anyone else in the way. If the enemy was close to the comm center; they’d either kill him, ignore him, or take him, prisoner. Odds were in his favor he’d survive their arrival if they chose to investigate the noise. If they heard him. Without a true atmosphere, sound wouldn’t carry as clearly. If they were aliens, they might not hear anything, but rely on other senses.
First contact.
He laughed, tears hazing his vision as he continued to remove the remains of the ceiling from Laura’s body until he found her leg. No suit.
He frowned. Hadn’t she activated her suit when the alert had rung out? He tried to remember, to put the shards of the events together, but his mind refused to cooperate. Without a suit, she’d die if the crushing debris hadn’t killed her. No air. No protection.
Zac pushed her pant leg up enough to touch her leg, feeling along it to locate an area to check her pulse. With fingers pressed against her leg, he waited.
Nothing.
“Come on, there has to be a pulse.” He shifted his hold, searching for a better place to check. Three times he tried to find a pulse, three times the veins beneath his touch remained still and silent. Zac swallowed and released his grip on the woman’s leg. Gone. Dead. He couldn’t do anything for Laura. No more than he could for anyone else unless there was a flicker of life in the body, then he might have a chance, a hope of bringing them back to life.
Laura was dead.
He should be upset with her loss, but after the way she’d waved a sidearm at him, he wasn’t going to grieve.
Haden.
Was the other man still alive? Laura hadn’t pulled her suit on, but Haden might have had the time to activate his before the roof caved in.
He glanced up again, taking note of the extent of the damage. Bad. Nothing he’d be able to repair. The deterioration in the rest of the colony might be as bad, or less, depending on how the aliens had approached the attack. Survivors. Yeah, once he’d found out if Haden were still alive, he’d search for other survivors. With the tunnels beneath the colony, the bolt holes, supply dumps, and emergency shelters, there had to be other survivors.
Unless the aliens were now on the ground and hunting them down.
He paled, a shiver worked through his body, stomach rolled, the bitter taste of bile in the back of his throat. He didn’t want to throw up. The idea of being sick with a mask in place didn’t appeal to him. His nose wrinkled. If he vomited in the suit, he’d be stuck with the smell, and worse.
It didn’t take long to find Haden. Like Laura, he hadn’t activated his suit in time.
Zac stepped back from the destruction, reality sinking in as he turned toward the door or the large gap where the door had been.
Until he found survivors, he was alone.
Completely alone.
Something he hadn’t been in as long as he could remember.
Stone didn’t say a word as he made it into the building, one glance at Lawbook was enough to send him deeper into the structure to find the door. It took only a moment for him to get his bearings. Dust, debris, pieces of art knocked from the walls, the things he would have stopped to take note of if the colony wasn’t currently playing host to aliens. His mind raced until he forced his thoughts to calm, settle into order long enough to allow him to dig out the information he needed. He counted the doors inside, each one leading to a new room, a corridor, storage. The last one opened up onto a supply room.
Footsteps rang out. New people headed his way. It had to be the other members of the group. Men, as the only woman in the group, was the stubborn Sergeant he’d been stuck with, the one he knew didn’t trust him. It didn’t matter, he didn’t trust her either. She’d turn him in the first chance she had. No matter, they’d part ways soon enough, and he’d be able to get on with his life, slip free from Pluto without drawing attention to himself. He glanced at the woman. She wasn’t aware of his movements, for now. In theory, he could vanish through the trapdoor and hideout. Except she’d come and deal with him, pin him against the wall, or throw him out into the street where the aliens would find him. This wasn’t a woman who would allow him to get away with dumping her and the rest of the team, and if he tried, he’d pay for it in more ways than he wanted to imagine.
All in all, it wasn’t his idea of a good plan.
If he could earn her trust, it would be easier to break away from them when the time came. She had the manpower on her side, weapons, and she’d have more once they were down in the supply dump. A small point in her favor, but she already held all the cards no matter what he might like to believe.
He yanked up the trapdoor. “Clear back here.”
She nodded, casting a quick glance his way. “Lackey, get Gunny down into the supply room, make sure he gets in ahead of the rest of us. He needs the rest. Walker, need you here, rest of you follow them down. Make sure there’s enough room for the rest of us.
“There will be.” What did she think? He didn’t know the size of the room or what had been stored in the secure chamber. Damn the woman, she pushed with the simplest of statements. He swung himself down onto the top of the ladder, his feet finding the first rung as he climbed down the ladder. The others wouldn’t be able to enter, not unless he went ahead of them. Without the right code, the door wouldn’t open. At least there would be extra weapons, along with better suits. His legs would appreciate the warmth. If his thighs didn’t warm up soon, he’d face injury he’d need treatment to recover from, and he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the rest of the group.
Why did he need to?
He frowned and jumped the last four steps, wincing as he hit the ground and turned his attention to the locked door. Sixty seconds is all it took to unlock the secured door and step into the airlock.
“Wait up,” said Lackey. “Need to get Gunny in there with you. Airlock, right?”
“Yes.” He swore under his breath. “All right, he can come in with me, should be enough room.” Better if he’d entered on his own, but if he needed to keep the others out of the secure room it was already too late. His mind raced, options to rid himself of the marines. All he had to do was hide out until the coast was clear. They couldn’t make him leave. Perhaps it was as simple as refusing to move out with them.
“Gunny, you holding up?”
“I’ll be fine, you worry about the rest of them.” The man half walked, half stumbled into the airlock and rested one hand against the wall. “Time for you to show us what you’ve got hidden.” The color drained from beneath his olive touched skin, leaving it gray, but the man didn’t ask for help or display any other sign of the weakness caused by the injury.
More than weakness if the glazed look in the other man’s eyes was anything to go by. Did Lawbook know how badly the Gunny had been injured? If she did, she hadn’t said a damn word to him or her marines. Did she cling to the hope there would be enough in the way of supplies to be able to save the older man? A dozen questions bubbled into life, and he crammed them down into a box, to be dealt with when there was time.
Stone didn’t talk to the Gunny as he punched in the security code and closed the airlock. A soft thump and hiss confirmed the door was secure. The floor trembled beneath their feet, a barely felt vibration before the door out of the chamber opened behind them.
“Nice setup,” said Gunny, his voice weak. All the strength the man had shown before, now gone, leaving only a husk of a soldier in its wake.
“Not my design, but I won’t argue.” Stone stepped out first, the fleeting idea of shoving the injured man back into the airlock and slamming the doors shut, flashed through his mind. Even injured he doubted the Gunny had lost any of his edges. An experienced marine wouldn’t allow himself to be taken off guard, not in an enclosed space. Torn between wanting to be rid of the Gunny and knowing it was a fool’s game, he let Gunny step out and hit the right sequence of keys to shut the airlock and allow the ne
xt two entry into the storage room.
He watched the man as he stumbled, steps wooden before he sat down, back against a wall.
“Full airlock set up, awesome.” Walker grinned as he appeared a few minutes later. “True bolt hole. Could have done with something like this out at the bar.”
“It’s meant to make it harder for people to get in as well as keep the air in here from escaping.” The bolt hole Jones had built was along the same lines. Not that Walker needed to know the details. Or how much Stone knew about the various hideaways scattered beneath the colony.
“The code.”
“What?”
“You’ll need to share the code with those in the airlock.”
“I can let them out from my side.” The code was one of the few weapons he had.
“Now, Stone.” Gunny didn’t move to touch his sidearm. He didn’t need to, his appearance said it all. On death’s door, the man might be, but until the final breath left his body, Gunny remained dangerous.
“Fine. You can relay it to them.” He ran off the series of numbers and stepped away from the airlock. His last, potential, leverage yanked out from beneath him. Gunny’s voice continued behind him as the other man shared the code with the remainder of the group. He didn’t glance back at the door, or Gunny, as he moved further into the supply room.
Boxes sat on shelves, others on the floor. Tanks of oxygen lay on their sides in racks. Food supplies. A few weapons in immediate line of sight, but nowhere near enough to be effective against the aliens. Still, the Marines would be content. Water, medical supplies, parts for machines, ships, and others. And with the way the room had been set up, they wouldn’t run out of oxygen quickly. At the back, if his memory served him, was a small washroom and shower set up. Making it easier for a handful of people to hide out.
And for one person the supplies would be enough for a year.
He didn’t have to leave. Not if he didn’t want to. Perhaps hiding out would be safer than making for his ship? Not a decision he would make until he knew more about what was going on with the aliens. If all went according to plan, the creatures would grab what they wanted, and leave. Never to be seen again. If they took a few captives with them, who cared as long as he remained free to continue his work.