He got his feet under him, was aware of Sam poised at the opening nanowall, waiting for him.
“Sam — get back inside!”
The imp turned to glare at Sam — Duke backed away from it and fired again, so it’d come at him and not her — it came slashing the air, a few steps from ripping him into chunks.
“Come on!” Sam yelled, ready to close the nanowall. “Come on!”
Duke turned, lunged for the doorway, the imp close behind him. Duke shouting as he passed through, “Now — do it now!”
He leapt — and the imp came after him. Duke kept going —
Sam hit the nanowall’s manual controls and the gray wall solidified around the imp, head and torso caught partway through. It shrieked, and Duke could hear its bones cracking.
Its tongue shot out of its mouth — unspooling, stabbing out to its full length — just shy of Duke’s neck.
The tongue reeled back into its mouth and it shuddered — and fell limp, jaws clacking and spewing black blood…
Reaper and Sarge tracked their wounded quarry down corridor after corridor — all the way back to the D4 tunnel, through it and up into the atrium, then to the air lock that led into the corridors outside Carmack’s lab.
The creature was big, but they’d practically shot it to pieces — hadn’t they? How did the damn thing keep going?
“Nothing could have survived that!” Reaper insisted — trying to convince himself more than Sarge, as they rushed out of the atrium.
They were following a trail of blood that led from the atrium, across the floor, and right through the air lock.
Reaper shook his head in wonder. The thing knew how to open an air lock? What exactly did that imply?
They passed through the air lock, not bothering with a reseal. That horse was out of the barn. The things could get into the atrium another way. The air lock was set to seal automatically if there was a break in the facility’s walls or windows interfacing the planet’s surface.
Reaper and Sarge now stood in the corridors a short distance from Carmack’s lab.
“It’s back in the lab,” Sarge muttered.
Do these things have an agenda? Reaper wondered. Are they after something in the lab? Are they intelligent enough to use the equipment? They managed to get the airlock open…what else can they use?
Or do they move about randomly, driven by the afflatus of rage or fear or hunger? That seems more likely.
Reaper and Sarge moved on, searching through light and shadow, getting closer and closer to the lab.
“Clear,” Reaper said, as they reached the end of the corridor. Redundant to say it, since it was obviously clear, but they stuck with procedure. That was the RRTS way.
“Clear,” Sarge confirmed. “Damn it’s fast.”
Running footsteps drummed a short way behind them. Something was coming at them from down the corridor — Reaper turned, finger tightening on the trigger, and came a hairbreadth from blowing the Kid’s head off his shoulders.
The Kid, Portman, and Destroyer were rushing up to them, weapons at ready, panting. “Did you get it?” the Kid asked, looking around, his mouth hanging open, eyes more dilated than ever.
Reaper shrugged. Useless to brief the Kid. The young soldier’s brain was frying on drugs, he’d lose anything you tried to tell him.
Sarge called Pinky on the comm. “Pinky, anything comes through that door, use an ST grenade.”
Pinky replied with a nervous affirmative. Sounding like he wanted to say a lot more and was afraid to come out with it.
Portman shook his head, gaping at Sarge. “He uses an ST in there, he’ll blow the Ark!”
Sarge acted like he hadn’t heard. “Reaper, Kid — pairs, cover formation, sweep the corridors.”
Reaper nodded and led the Kid to the next cross hallway. It was dark down there. He switched on his gunlight and plunged into the corridor leading away from the squadron. Knowing what he was leaving behind.
He was going away from back-up. Away from the Ark — the only means of getting off the planet. Away from his sister.
Away from hope.
Outside Carmack’s lab, Sarge was still giving orders. “Destroyer, you and Portman maintain a perimeter here.”
“He blows the Ark,” Portman pointed out again, “how the hell we supposed to get the fuck home?”
Sarge didn’t answer him directly. But he made himself clear: “Destroyer, that prick” — meaning Portman — “gives you any trouble, shoot him in the knee, we’ll leave him here to starve.”
“Roger that,” Destroyer said, calmly. Both of them ignoring the look of shock on Portman’s face. “Where you going?”
“Armory,” Sarge said. “I think we’re going to need something with a little extra kick.”
Sarge jogged down the corridor, rifle ready, finger poised near the trigger — not quite on it. He passed blood blotches on the walls, wires leaking sparks, swaying ends of hoses like mechanical boas, finally skidded to a stop near the darkened dead end he’d been looking for. Panting, he pointed his gunlight into the gloom. Was he lost? He searched the floor…the damn thing was here somewhere…
There it was. The woman’s severed, rotting arm, oozing yellow stuff onto the floor tiles.
This was a weird assignment all right: he was feeling good that he’d found a woman’s severed rotting arm on the floor. Hot damn.
But he needed it to get through the door.
He picked it up, wincing a little as some of the skin sloughed off under his fingers. He set off again, wishing he’d brought along some gloves as he carried the severed limb — holding it awkwardly, to keep it from falling apart in his hands — off down the corridor. Not liking the feeling or the smell of the thing in his hands. But there was no getting away from stench on Olduvai — it seemed like this job was all about being up to your neck in decay. It was always that way — the closer you got to the UAC’s secrets, the more rot you found. He’d long ago stopped caring. He’d learned to isolate all feelings of empathy; compassion. They got in the way of the job.
Probably it was that time on the island. Beautiful, gemlike little place, just far enough north of the equator it didn’t get too hot. No big problem with insects, no sea wasps concealed in the coral. White sand beaches, emerald trees, women the color of honey. Should’ve been paradise.
But the local people hadn’t liked the UAC transmitter base on the island. The base gathered energy from solar receptors and transmitted it in microwave beams into orbit, where it was soaked up to power the UAC’s orbital labs and missile platforms. Only, the thing leaked microwaves, so that people around the transmitter — even passing too close — had a tendency to get brain tumors; children were born with birth defects.
Sarge, shipped to the island to help keep order, had seen all those children with missing jaws; with shriveled limbs.
Some of the local men had formed a militia, surrounded the transmitter base, demanded it be shut down. To keep peace, UAC had temporarily complied — just until the arrival of UAC’s Special Implementation Squadron, led by Lieutenant Brevary and Sarge.
Don’t call it a death squad. Sarge didn’t like that term. Just because they were sent out to locate the leaders of the militia and march them off for execution, sent to shoot anyone who tried to escape into the rain forest, sent to set rebel villages on fire…did that make them a death squad? No. They were trained professionals. They got the mission done, that was all. In short order, the native militia was disbanded — most of it, actually, was buried — and the UAC transmitter was back online. Peace again. And UAC provided free pain meds and euthanasia to the sick inhabitants of that lovely little island. Most of them eventually took the euthanasia. On a routine return to the island, they found hardly anyone still living there. But walking past the mass grave on the south side, Sarge had smelled all those bodies, the militia he’d helped execute, all at once, shallowly buried under the pretty white sand. Animals had dug some of the corpses out. Gulls were getting at them, snipping off pieces of rotting flesh, tossing their heads back to gulp it down.