They followed Sarge into the corridor. Sarge signaled them to double-time it, and they began to run.
Pinky stared in fascination at the rock-saw blade pushing its whirring snout into the wormhole chamber, roaring and squealing as it cut through the door. Sparks rooster-tailed into the room, metal grit accumulated on the floor under the diamond-tipped chain saw as it cut out a good-sized, jagged-edged circle. It was obviously cutting an entry into the room — a doorway, big enough for something large to climb through.
“Pinky?” came Sarge’s voice, over the comm almost lost in the screech of the chain saw gnawing at the metal. “Do you have a visual?”
“Oh, I got a visual all right,” Pinky said, in chilling understatement.
He had a pistol already on the computer table beside him. Doubted it would be of much use.
Staring at the growing, smoking breach in the door, Pinky reached down to the bag of ST grenades Mac had given him, having to strain to reach it from the cyberchair. Picturing himself popping from the chair like a cork from a bottle if he went too far…just caught the edge of the bag with two fingers, worked it up to a better grip, pulled the sack of grenades onto his synthetic lap.
He pulled one out, and got it ready in his right hand, held the pistol in his left…
Heard Sarge shouting in the comm as he and Reaper and Duke ran down the corridors to the atrium:
“Don’t let it get into the Ark!”
Amen to that, Pinky thought. But it’s just about too late for that, too…probably too late for all of us…
The saw finished its circular cut. The metal from the hole vibrated like a dull gong, then fell into the chamber, clattering. The rough edges of the hole smoked.
Pinky waited, staring at the hole, sweat making the grip of the gun slippery in his hands.
Then the thing showed itself.
Pinky screamed — and fired.
“Use the grenade!” Sarge shouted into the comm as he and Reaper and Duke ran into the atrium. The Kid came running from the dig tunnel as Sarge again urged Pinky, “Use the goddamn grenade!”
Ahead was the door into the Ark chamber. There was a hole cut in the enormous metal door — from the look of it, Reaper figured they’d used a diamond-frosted chain saw. The chain saws were used by archaeological engineers to saw through the metal walls of some of the ancient Olduvaian structures, and to free things trapped in stone, Reaper remembered. He’d noticed them in the mudroom. Hadn’t thought for a moment they’d ever be applied here.
If those things had gotten to the Ark — to the wormhole that leapt through space, to Earth — then they’d gotten to the UAC compound at Papoose Lake.
And there was a whole planetful of people to infect, to transform, waiting there. Most of them without a clue that they were about to be invaded by a kind of vicious genetic aberration, a thinking infection from a distant world.
Only — the horror didn’t come from an alien world, not entirely. It had been created by a fusion of human science and the lore of the long-dead savants of Olduvai.
Pistol fire cracked from beyond the hole cut in the metal door. Then two flashes of color-challenged light…the weird light, all colors and none, that they remembered from the Ark.
Sarge got there first, fairly diving through the hole. The other three followed — and found the wormhole chamber deserted.
No Pinky, no chain saw, no crazed scientists, no imps, no Hell Knight. Just a grenade, twirling slowly on the floor, where it’d been dropped — unused.
They stared…Duke was the one who said it for all of them. “Jesus. It’s home. It got through.”
Sarge took a deep breath. His voice was almost a monotone. “We gotta stop it before it gets out of the home-side compound.” He looked at Duke and Reaper and the Kid, one after the other. “Are we ready?”
But Reaper was thinking about his sister. “Sam?” he called into the headset comm. “Sam — do you read me? Over.” Nothing. Just static in his ears. He felt a wave of desperation. A sinking feeling of defeat. First this planet had gotten his parents…now maybe his sister. “Sam? Do you read me? Over!”
Sarge was reloading his gun. Acting like he didn’t hear Reaper, like it was not his concern.
Reaper licked his lips, watching Sarge as he waited for a reply on the comm. Was he going to have to choose between protecting his world — and his sister? “She’s not answering…Sam? Do you read me? Sam!”
Sarge started for the Ark. “Lock and load.”
Reaper knew what that meant. It was Sarge’s succinct way of saying that Sam was a lost cause. They had a bigger mission to think about, responsibilities that went way beyond the personal.
Reaper knew he should go along with that decision. But he wasn’t sure he was capable of it. Maybe she was dead — but maybe not. He just couldn’t leave her behind, no matter what the stakes. It just wasn’t in him to do that.
That’s when the lights around the wormhole went dim. Flickered. Came back on…
And then switched off. They were left in near-complete darkness.
“What the fuck is that?” Duke demanded. As if anyone there had the answer.
A soothing female voice issued from the PA system:
“System reboot…”
And the lights came back on.
“Quarantine is breached,” Sarge declared. “This mission is no longer containment. Double in, gather up all the weapons and ammo you can find.”
“Sam!” Reaper yelled into the comm. “Do you read me? Over!”
Only static replied.
The soothing digital lady intoned, “…Time required to begin renewed operation. Five minutes…”
Reaper looked at Sarge, waiting.
Sarge said, “You got three.”
Reaper thought about arguing, but there would be none with Sarge. He had three minutes to find Sam and get her back to the Ark.
He ran to the door, climbed through, and sprinted across the empty atrium — half-expecting, in this wide open, shadowy space, that something was going to rush him, rip at him with claws of razor-sharp hardened bone, pierce his throat with a lancing barbed tongue.
But he made it to the air lock, sprinted through it, found himself in the corridor leading to Carmack’s lab.
Seemed to take a lot longer to get there than he remembered — and he was running full tilt, his weapon heavy in his hands, breath burning in his lungs, heart pounding in his ears. Long time since he ran track as a kid.
He remembered when he was a boy, before they’d gone to Mars, he and Samantha had been back home, without their parents, staying with an older cousin. He’d won a ribbon in track. He’d hoped his dad would hear of it, say something. Transmit his pride to his son. Nothing. He’d been pretty bummed out — hadn’t heard from Mom or Dad in a while. Hadn’t said anything about it to anyone, but his sister had watched him, and saw how he felt.
Then he’d gotten an interworld e-mail from Dad. “Heard about your triumph in track. Doesn’t surprise me when you do well at anything — always been proud of you. Congratulations. Love, Dad…”
He felt better. It was several years before he realized that his sister — clever with computers — had faked it up, managed to send it to him as if from Dad.
Christ. Sam…
And the worst thing was what had happened to their relationship when their parents had died. He had retreated into himself, going morose and silent. He hadn’t been much comfort to her. She’d buried herself in science — as if to reclaim her parents that way — and he’d run from science into the military. First the Army, then the Privatized Marines…