by Greig Beck
“Just going to take you up for a test. An inoculation. You okay with that?” Sam asked.
“No need for that.” Mia’s expression was blank. “But you can’t tell them.”
“Tell who what?” Maddock started to move into a flanking position.
“The Russians, of course. The craft must be allowed to land. Can’t have you try and stop it.”
Sam’s brows came together as he stared at the small woman. In the reddish glow he thought he could make out a line down the center of her face that he was sure wasn’t there before.
He needed clearer vision, so he reached up to engage his visor, for light amplification. In that split second of the visor closing, Mia’s face split down the middle along the line that had formed, and the two halves opened like a flower. Her eyes, the human ones, peeled away on the outside of the petals, along with her nose and teeth. But inside the strange bloom there were more eyes, sharp dagger-like teeth, and in the center, whipping black tendrils.
The glistening ropes shot out, one toward Sam and another toward Maddock.
Sam only had time to yell, “Engage suit!” before the cords smacked into his face and body. His suit held, as did the visor.
Maddock, who hadn’t had time to engage his visor, took the glistening cord in the center of his face. The black thing hardened and pierced his flesh between the eyes. His body jerked and danced like a speared fish, and then hung limp on the dark tendril.
“Noooo.” Sam pulled his weapon and fired, but the thing that had been Mia moved faster than he could shoot.
Another cord shot out, but flew past Sam, and struck the door. It flattened and hit with a juddering impact that dented the lightweight steel.
It struck again, and the end of the tendril formed something like a claw that worked in at the door’s edges and began to peel the steel inward. Though the doors were not fortified in any way, Sam knew the amount of force required to do that was phenomenal, and therefore the small body of Mia held something inside it of incredible size and power.
Sam fired again and again and was sure he hit the creature but the thing that had once worn the face of a young, dark-haired woman was now something resembling a pulpy bloom of open flesh with whipping cords where Mia’s head and face had been. She – it – headed at frightening speed for the door, taking Maddock’s body with it like a dog on a leash.
Sam dived, but Mia and Maddock went through the hole in the open door. Sam got to his feet and charged the frame. Hitting the manual open button caused a whirring noise, but no action as the bent steel refused to move back into its wall slot.
“Fuck!” Sam yelled and punched the steel, denting it further, as he watched his friend’s body on its dark, glistening leash thump against the ground, disappearing down the darkened hallway before vanishing.
He rested his head against the door for a moment, then straightened. “Boss, come in.”
There was no reply.
“Man down,” he said softly and closed his eyes. His comm. unit was still out.
Sam turned to sink down to sit with his back to the door. He held his head in his large hands. There was rage and frustration in his belly, but also a feeling of helplessness that he had been forced to witness a HAWC being killed without being able to take down the killer.
He knew then that the creature had probably been in Mia all along and she had taken Angus, and undoubtedly Vin as well. But the other thing he had learned was how determined it was to have the Russian ship land. It wanted to spread the infection – spread itself – to all of Earth.
CHAPTER 57
Alex, Casey, and Marion pushed back into the crowded control room. The tiny dots of red emergency lighting only delivered a faint illumination, and Alex could see that the people had drawn themselves into protective clumps. He was reminded of the stories about boats going down in shark-infested waters, where the people in lifejackets clumped together hoping that it would give them some protection against the circling predators.
It rarely worked.
Briggs came forward and nodded at the emergency lighting. “That’s the generator room. The power’s been knocked out. Emergency power will give us just a few more hours of light and then …” He shrugged.
There was a sound like a long sigh, then silence.
Briggs’ expression was one of defeat in the blood-red darkness. “And there goes the aircon and the oxygen.”
“We need to get to the maintenance room,” Casey said.
“Sam and Maddock are repairing the comms and guarding it. Now we need to guard the core facilities, plus all the people in here? We’re being forced to spread ourselves too thin,” Alex said.
“Just what it wants,” Klara added.
“I got a feeling it’s given up on keeping us as livestock and is now just gonna freeze us all and wait until someone arrives from home,” Casey said.
“With a red carpet all the way back to Earth.” Alex turned to Briggs. “How long do we have?”
“Until the stored air runs out?” The base commander seemed to think on it. “Best case now with reduced personnel is around thirty hours. With exertion and fear causing extra oxygen uptake, and extra CO2 exhalations with no scrubbers … twenty-two to twenty-four hours.”
“Then no choice – I’ve got to check out the maintenance rooms,” Alex said.
“On it,” Casey said.
Alex shook his head. “You and Klara guard the people. Last thing we need is for them to panic and start running all over the base.”
“You know it’s drawing us out for a reason? And you know it’s set traps before, right, Boss?” Casey said.
“I know. But given this thing has no problem surviving outside in zero atmosphere it obviously doesn’t need air. We do.” He sighed. “And twenty-two hours is not enough time; we don’t even have an evac plan formulated.”
“One thing we can do to buy us some more time is get everyone into their personal EMU suit. Each contains two hours oxygen. Not much, but something,” Briggs said.
“Good idea, but not yet. I don’t want people out in the corridors, especially now we’ve gone dark.” He looked back at the groups of people in their small herds. “Keep them calm, keep them safe.”
* * *
Alex paused at the power-generation room door to listen. There was silence, total: no hum of machinery, or even tick of electronics.
He looked over his shoulder. The corridor behind him was dark as Hades with just a few dotted red lights providing a hellish ambience. He remembered Sam’s report of the last time he came down: everything was operational in the room, but there was unusually thick humidity and some sort of sticky extruded matter everywhere.
Looks like a damn beehive, the big guy had said.
Alex pressed the door open button, but nothing happened. He expected that, so he shouldered his weapon, and placed a hand flat against the door then closed his eyes. He pushed out with his senses, but after a moment still couldn’t detect anything beyond the barrier.
He felt along the edge of the door, pulling out his shortest kabar blade and jammed it into the corner, levering it. There was a grating sound, the metallic coating grazed and finally the end of the super tough blade snapped away and fell to the ground, looking like a discarded shark’s tooth.
Alex jammed his fingers and nails into the gap, took a breath and began to drag the door open. It came slowly as the locking mechanism had remained engaged.
He paused to look over his shoulder again. There was nothing there, but he had the prickling sensation on his neck that told him he was being watched. He looked around, suddenly remembering how the creature had seemed to morph into different forms, and wondered whether it could be hiding just behind the panels in the wall or ceiling. It gave him the creeps.
Alex stepped inside the room, his eyes shining silver and immediately adjusting to the near total darkness. The first thing he registered was the humidity against his cheeks, as well as the unusual temperature. With the generators shut down,
and it being lunar night time, the temp outside was dropping to about 200 below. The infrastructure would slowly but surely leak heat. This room was defying that trend.
Alex knew if he didn’t get the machines up and running in a few hours it would be deadly, unless everyone took to their EMU suits. And that was nothing but a short-term solution.
There was also an unusual smell – the canned air of the base was mostly odorless, dry, sometimes with a hint of machine oil, and flavored by the crush of humanity. But in here it reminded him of the time he had worked in South America on the Green Hell Mission, and they had trekked through the dank jungles. Now and then they encountered stagnant pools of water that smelt of rotting plant life, corruption, and … fungal growth. This odor within the room took him right back to that bready sweatness.
A fungal ripeness.
He rounded a console and placed a hand gently on its surface, then snapped it away as he felt the stickiness. Looking down, he saw what Sam had previously described as being like a glistening resin coating the console top, and when he turned about, he saw that it covered most things in the room.
The machines were dark, but so far, he couldn’t detect any physical damage. He tilted his head, listening, and trying to detect any movement, sound, or life emanations – out in the corridor he had sensed eyes on him or at least someone monitoring him.
There was a glint of something reflecting one of the red lights in the ceiling. Alex narrowed his eyes and concentrated. And suddenly felt lifeforce emanations all around him.
He needed to check on Sam’s status with the communication systems and just hoped the big guy was good to go.
Alex backed up, and his foot struck something. Looking down, he saw the HAWC armored suit, empty, and the chest patch: Maddock.
He stared. The thing wasn’t opened, simply looked like his friend had exited the armor without actually taking it off. He knew how that worked and remembered the liquid draining effect he had seen.
Alex crouched and picked up the helmet. He stared into its emptiness, a hand on each side of the silver vacant shell.
“Sorry, Roy.”
As he stared, he felt the storm of anger bloom in his belly, and then run throughout his body. As he stared into the helmet with its silent, empty scream, his hands came together. Impossibly, with a scream of armored steel, the helmet began to compress.
Alex gritted his teeth and pressed harder, not wanting to stop, letting out the burst of fury as pure power. The super tough metal crushed completely and he raised his head to scream his fury and then flung the flattened helmet away.
Alex Hunter dropped his head and breathed hard. He closed his eyes, tight.
Kill ’em all. Kill ’em all. Kill ’em all.
The dry voice in his head seethed with pure hate and anger. After another second, Alex nodded.
“Yes.”
Alex opened his eyes. It took several more minutes for his system to slow and he finally engaged suit-to-suit comms: “Sam, come in.”
There was significant white noise, and he boosted the frequency. “Sam, come back.”
“Boss? I’ve been trying to reach you. Bad shit going down.”
“Maddock. I know. What happened?” Alex crouched over the empty HAWC suit.
“Mia. It was Mia. She attacked us. Took out Roy.” Sam’s voice was almost a growl. “Goddamn, Roy’s gone.”
Alex didn’t want to ask how the woman got into the comms room as he had more pressing things on his mind. “How’s the communication equipment? Are we good to go?”
“I think so. We were just about to conduct a test. Mia tried to destroy the equipment, again – we stopped her. She took off, but took Roy with her. I lost him.”
Alex rose to his feet. “I’ve located Roy.”
“Is he …?”
“Gone,” Alex replied softly.
Sam moaned. “Fuck this place.”
“Forget about it. We are now in war mode. Grieve later.” Alex scanned the room.
“There’s something else. There’s a reason Mia doesn’t want us to get a message out – she confirmed the Russian ship is infected with whatever she is. She doesn’t want us to send a message telling them,” Sam said, his voice speeding up. “We’ve got to stop it.”
Alex looked back to the dark machinery. “That’s the plan. I’m going to try and bring energy generation back online. As soon as you’ve got power, send that damn message. Not sure how much longer we’ll have.”
“I’m ready when you are.”
“We’re going to kill ’em all. Stand by.” Alex signed off.
“Wait – one more thing,” Sam said. “Keep your visor closed. Maddock didn’t. And it got in.”
“Got it.” Alex engaged his visor and the clear ballistic shielding slid up and over his face.
CHAPTER 58
Russian lander on Earth approach – 6200 miles in upper atmosphere
Russian lander P23–09 had already entered the exosphere, the thin upper atmospheric layer surrounding the Earth. It was still traveling at around 17,000 miles per hour, and the craft automatically engaged thrusters to slow it down.
Soon it would enter the thermosphere, a layer ranging from 700 to 800 miles, then the mesosphere, a twenty mile–thick layer, before finally entering the stratosphere. In the last few layers, the air becomes extremely dense, and both turbulence and friction kick in.
Lander P23–09 was still traveling so fast that it compressed the air ahead of it – that compression of the air layers near the leading edges of the craft caused the temperature of the air to rise to as high as 3000 degrees. Without the craft’s ceramic tile insulation, it would burn up in seconds.
Also, in these layers, radio waves were whited out, resulting in a total communication blackout.
On the ground in their observatory posts, the Russian technicians and Major Alexi Bilov could do nothing but watch and wait.
Bilov’s eyes stung from forgetting to blink as he stared at the multiple screens, and he felt nervous to the point of throwing up. He now knew all about the experiments the Lenin Base was conducting, and also knew that a laboratory containment breach was one plausible scenario that could have led to the base’s destruction.
He sucked in a deep breath and held it for a moment, feeling his heart thump in his chest.
And now the landing craft had gone dark. And stayed dark.
He let the breath out slowly. Every firewall scenario they’d ever created would recommend the same thing: the craft must not land.
CHAPTER 59
Alex moved closer to the main generator. He walked along the unit looking for damage, and all he found was a few of the levers in the off position. He knew he’d have to prime it again and wait for the initiator charge level to rise. But if that was all he needed to do, then they were lucky.
Why hadn’t the creature destroyed the machines? Perhaps because shutting down the power was just to slow them down, keep them off balance. And maybe keeping them alive was a failsafe. A plan B in the event something happened to the Russian ship.
It knows us now, Alex thought. It knows that Earth will send rescue ships if we’re still alive, but won’t if we’re dead.
He gripped the priming lever and began to push it up. Immediately the initiator started to prepare the batteries to take the charge and lights began to climb on a power index. In another minute there should have been enough of a base charge to hit the button that would start the machinery and give the base back its power.
It’s too easy.
A sticky, liquid sound tore Alex’s eyes from the dials to the floor in time to see a large mound of the resin pop and bubble. It formed a lump that continued to rise.
“Here we go,” he whispered.
The mound rose, and rose, and in the next few seconds took form, female, and then blinked open eyes. It was Mia. From ten feet away she shot out a hand that reached across the room to encircle his wrist.
Alex grunted from the pain – its strength was phenomena
l. He realized this thing was the compressed mass of their forty missing people, plus the Russian base personnel.
Mia worked to drag his hand away. In the split seconds he stared at it, he saw it change from a human hand to something monstrous.
“Alex Hunter.”
Alex slowly faced the thing.
Mia’s face began to bloom as fleshy bulbs on stalks rose from the smooth skin. They swelled and popped, filling the room with fungal spores.
He could feel her grip becoming sharp as some sort of thorns or spikes tried to put holes in his armored suit. He could hear their dagger points raking against the silver steel. It was dragging his hand away and he reached out with his senses – normally he could detect whether someone was frightened, angry, evasive, or dozens of other emotions or sensations. But within the Mia creature before him, there was nothing but a cold and calculating emptiness.
“You’re too late,” Alex said. “The Russian ship will never land.”
Mia continued to swell and grow, bigger and bigger until her head touched the ceiling. She filled the room with misshapen lumped muscle, covered in the waving stalks with their swelling polyps. Her face was small yet still human-like in the middle of the form. But the eyes were just black orbs.
The pressure on Alex’s wrist intensified, and as the arm began to tug at him, he grabbed the edge of the console desk to hang on. Though he had enormous strength, the thing’s true mass after absorbing so many crew members was colossal, and far outmatched his own. Sooner or later, he’d be pulled toward it. Or instead of him being dragged into it, it would come at him.
As if to answer that question, more of the spiked limbs struck him and hung on before crawling over his body, feeling, probing, touching, and almost caressing him as they searched for a way inside his armoured suit.
“Not today.” Alex discharged an external shockwave over his suit’s shell then continued to generate the pulse for many seconds. The 2000-volt charge was delivered along the Mia-thing’s limbs back to its central mass. But the length of the shock also meant it traveled back through the suit to Alex. He roared his pain but kept the charge emanating until Mia shrieked an unearthly, alien sound and folded in on herself. She released him, and Alex leaped to his feet, sprinted back to the console and restarted the generators.