WHOOM.
XII
Ahead of the others and sprinting flat-out through the last of the tall grass, Oram and Daniels stumbled to a halt as the night lit up in front of them. As they gaped at the ball of flame rising from the devastated lander, he caught a glimpse of a white shape bounding off on all fours away from the blaze and into the darkness.
Karine, he thought wildly.
He resumed running toward the lakeshore with Daniels close on his heels. The conflagration that now engulfed the lander felt even hotter in the chill and damp that followed sunset. Somewhere within the inferno were his wife and Faris, somewhere trapped, burning…
As he drew close the intense heat threatened to blister his exposed skin. He didn’t care. He had to go in, had to find Karine, had to get her out.
He went down, tackled from behind by Daniels. Scrambling to get on top of him, she struggled to hold him down as he fought to rise.
“Karine… Karine!” He began sobbing uncontrollably.
“Chris!” Daniels was all but jumping on him in her fight to keep him pinned. “Stay back, stay here!” He kept trying to crawl out from under her, his eyes fastened on the flaming landing craft.
She threw up her arms to shield her face as a secondary explosion scattered pieces of the ship in all directions. Those that landed in the lake hissed in counterpoint to the crackling of the flames. The exterior of the lander could not burn, but it could be scarred. The fact that the majority of the blaze was contained within the fireproof shell only made the flammable materials within burn that much hotter.
Blackened and consumed in flame, a figure emerged from the interior. Tottering down the landing ramp, it staggered a couple of times before collapsing at its base. Letting out a strangled moan, Oram fought to rise. Somehow Daniels kept control of him, pressing his head down so that he wouldn’t, couldn’t see.
A series of additional explosions caused the remains of the lander to implode as a blast of heat swept over Daniels and Oram. The ship was built to withstand a flaming re-entry, not to contain exploding military ordnance. With its internal superstructure bent and crumpled, there was nothing to prevent it from collapsing in on itself.
Weeping, Oram gave up trying to throw Daniels off his back. He dug his gloved hands into the dirt, clutching the soil as if he could somehow strangle the planet itself. In front of them, the blaze began to die as the last of the flammable materials within the lander burned themselves out.
As a result, they had no trouble hearing the scream that sounded behind them.
Daniels scrambled to her feet, turning to peer into the gathering dusk back the way they had come. Less than a hundred meters behind her and the captain, beams wove crazy patterns in the night as Hallet’s comrades clustered around him. The sergeant was on the ground, convulsing and contorting wildly, his body arcing and twisting as if trying to throw off some unseen demon.
Lopé was beside him, trying to hold his partner steady, but Hallet’s spasms were too violent even for the senior sergeant to control.
“Tom!”
As strong as Sergeant Lopé was, he was unable to keep the other man pinned down. With a spasmodic arch of his back, Hallet threw his partner off, then continued jerking and bouncing on the ground. When Rosenthal and then Ankor tried to get close and help, Hallet’s wildly flailing limbs kept them at a distance.
Seeing what was happening, Daniels was torn between running to offer assistance and staying with the distraught Oram. Now off the captain’s back, she stood and watched him as he rose to his knees. When, tears streaking down his face, he stayed in that position, no longer trying to run toward the ruins of the craft, she turned and rushed to rejoin the others.
Emotionally as well as physically exhausted, she could only hope that Oram would see the futility of trying to get anywhere near the still-flaming wreckage.
When she reached the others, Hallet was on his back, his spine bending into a curve no human vertebrae ought to have been able to realize without breaking. He was choking, gasping weakly for air. Moving in and ignoring the other man’s thrashing arms, Lopé tried once again to get control of his partner. To Daniels it looked as if every nerve in Hallet’s body had been short-circuited.
His head went back, then forward as he heaved out a gout of blood in such volume that not even Lopé could withstand it. Yet again he was forced to let go and fall back. Hallet’s eyes bulged and Rosenthal let out a scream as the sergeant’s neck expanded hugely. His mouth opened wide, wider, until the mandible and maxilla split apart from one another. The extreme distention would have been normal in a feeding snake. In a human, it was a grotesque distortion worthy of Bosch.
Vomiting forth from deep within Hallet’s body, the placenta-like sac landed on the ground with a wet smack. Glistening with lubricating ooze, it burst as it struck the surface. From within emerged something small, whitish, bipedal, and highly mobile. An elongated eyeless skull quickly surveyed its surroundings. Letting out a high-pitched shriek, it displayed incredible speed and mobility as it dashed past them and into the darkness of the nearby undergrowth.
By the time any of them had sense enough to raise a weapon, it was gone.
Daniels stood staring at the patch of forest where it had disappeared. When she had convinced herself it wasn’t coming back, she took stock of her colleagues. All stood motionless, in various degrees of shock.
Worst off was Lopé. The tough, gruff security chief was staring at the shattered body of his life partner. As a soldier he had seen his share of violent death, but that had come at times and in ways for which some precedent existed. Hallet’s demise had been as vile as it had been unexpected. Looking away from the emotionally overwhelmed sergeant, Daniels once again let her gaze roam the nearby woods and undergrowth.
Oram had hoped this world might prove a better candidate for settlement than the more distant Origae-6, and in its cold, antiseptic way, she had to admit that the planet itself was truly beautiful.
A spider web was also beautiful.
Positioned in geosynchronous orbit, the Covenant drifted peacefully, clear of the chaos that had broken out on the world below. Stretching between it and those who were now trapped on the surface, the ionospheric storm raged on unabated.
On the bridge, Tennessee and those around him did everything they could to re-establish contact with the expedition team, short of falling to their knees and imploring unseen gods. Every channel was sampled, every frequency explored. Signals were boosted to the edge of comprehensibility. Nothing worked, but they kept trying. There was nothing else to do but keep trying.
On the other hand, hovering above the central navigation console, holo projections of the storm were plentiful and crisp. Sick of looking at it, Tennessee had come to regard it as a persistent enemy, an inorganic affront not only to the mission but to him personally. He also knew that such thoughts were entirely irrational, but he wasn’t feeling especially rational at the moment. Perhaps that’s why he finally voiced what he’d been thinking.
“We’re going down after them.”
Looking up from her station, Upworth gaped at him.
“I’m sorry, Tennessee. What did you just say?”
Peering over at her, he repeated himself, making sure he spoke clearly. He did not try to keep emotion out of his voice. Oram would have presented the proposal differently, but Oram wasn’t here, and Tennessee was acting captain.