The command centre came up on their left and he threw Watts forward. “Run!”
Spinning in place, he plucked a concussion shield from his belt and slammed it into the ground only a couple of metres from his feet, way too close for safety. As it pulsed into life, filling the corridor, he was lifted and thrown back, vision crossing like he’d been punched in the jaw. The creatures bounced back the other way.
Collins crashed hard against the C and C doorframe and fell inside. Capstan was at a control desk and punched a console. Heavy blast doors slammed closed and Collins lay face down on the hard floor, gasping. He looked up to see Capstan spare one narrow-eyed second for Watts’ foamed shoulder stump, then return his attention to the console.
Hayashi stood beside the Lieutenant, Finlay nowhere to be seen. Of the four doorways leading into the C and C, only one remained open.
“Hey Aiko,” Collins said, knowing better than to talk to Capstan at this point. “Finlay?”
She sniffed, shook her head almost imperceptibly. “He’s in about six pieces back there. He just fucking split apart right in front of us. Henna?”
“Same thing.”
“Fuck me, man.” Hayashi looked back towards Watts. “Looks like you got too close as well.”
“Looks like I got lucky,” Watts said. “Finlay and Sterns! Shit. We’ve all been through too much together to lose two in a day. This ain’t fair.”
“When is it ever fair?” Capstan said. “And brace yourselves, because we’re still two more down. Get over here and cover this door.”
The four of them stood in a line in front of the only opening, weapons levelled. A corridor led away for about thirty metres before ending in another closed double door. Several rooms to either side were also shut. Watts insisted she was fine but Collins scanned her vitals, saw that she was surviving on drugs and grim determination. She badly needed to go under and set reknitters to work.
“Malik, Lau, respond!” Capstan said. The only answer was static hiss. “Seems like all comms are suppressed beyond about fifty metres. I can’t tell how. Internal interference.”
“They have to be coming, right?” Collins said.
Capstan gestured with his weapon. “Speculating is for fucking stock brokers. Watch and respond.”
“Did you see them?” Collins asked.
Hayashi nodded. “Powerful cloaks, light and sound. Only UV works.”
“You think the cloaks are tech or biological.”
“Who knows.”
“What do you think they are?”
She turned cold eyes to him for a moment. “Death.”
Collins swallowed. He’d seen fear in Aiko’s eyes and that made his stomach icy. He’d never seen her afraid of anything, didn’t think she could be afraid. He dialled a cocktail into his bloodstream to calm his nerves, sharpen his senses, boost his muscles. Limits and safe doses be damned, he needed every advantage he could get.
“…incoming, Lieutenant! Fucking loads of them!” Lau’s voice burst into their comms. “Can you fucking hear me?”
“Roger, Lau, we hear you. Please repeat.”
“I said there are invisible bastards coming after us, can only see ‘em on UV. We’ll need some heavy cover fire!”
“Keep coming,” Capstan said calmly. “I’ve tagged the door on your map. You both run straight for it and do not veer left or right. We’ll fire around you. Collins, Hayashi, either side of the corridor, halfway up.”
“Right.”
Collins ran, Hayashi right beside him, and they dropped into alcoves for cover. Bursts of gunfire and explosions echoed along with Lau’s voice screaming obscenities and promises of death and dismemberment, muffled by the double doors ahead. Lau and Malik’s blips pinged onto the HUDs, closing rapidly.
“Here we go,” Capstan said, and triggered the far doors to open.
Sound burst into full volume, Lau pumping bullets and mini-grenades blindly back over his shoulder as he ran, dragging the inert form of Malik with one hand. Blood smeared the floor where Malik passed.
Collins and Hayashi began setting blasts of cover fire. They both pulled larger explosives from their webbing and lobbed bombs over Lau’s head. The corridor behind exploded into fire and smoke and resonating metallic screeches, and then Lau was through. Capstan slammed the far doors shut.
As booming reverberated from the other side, Collins and Hayashi dragged Lau and Malik into the C and C and Capstan sealed those doors too.
“Locking down!” he yelled.
A siren bleated, red lights flashed and blast shields slammed over the last portal. The siren stopped and everything sank into a submarine silence, even the compressors fell quiet as air recyc shut off. After a second or two, a new hum arose as the C and C went into defence mode, recycling its own air, providing all life support from inside the room, sealing itself off completely from the rest of the habitat.
Watts hurried over to Malik’s prone form and crouched, wincing in pain, close to unconsciousness. She sat immediately back on her heels, deflated. Collins knew the others were seeing what he saw in his HUD. Malik’s life signs were flat.
Lau put both hands on his head and turned in a slow circle. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He stopped suddenly, looked around. “Henna? Charlie?”
Watts shook her head.
“Fuuuuck!”
Watts tipped Malik half over to reveal his back open from right shoulder to left buttock. Stark white knobs of spine and a glistening half-orb of kidney showed through the blood and sliced flesh. With a grunt, almost a sob, she let him fall back.
Capstan crouched beside her. “How bad is it?”
She glanced at the mass of hardened foam covering her left shoulder. “Took it clean off. Got it covered pretty quick and I‘m up to the eyeballs with antibiotics and painkillers.”
“Okay. I want you to lie over there, put yourself under to reknit. We’re gonna need to fight our way back to Daisy and I need you fit if not whole.”
“If I go under, I’m out for half an hour.”
“I know how it fucking works, soldier. We’re safe in here. Go!” He turned to gaze at each of the survivors. “This room is in full bio-chem lock down and shielded. Let’s take stock.”
They let their masks up and removed helmets, stretched stiff necks. Capstan turned back to Watts. “Go!”
She ran her remaining hand through her short red hair and nodded, moved to lay down under a desk unit. Collins went with her, made sure she was comfortable.
“I’ll monitor,” he said.
She smiled. “Hold the fort. I’ll be back in thirty.”
“No problem. We got this.” He put a hand against her cheek, his dark skin a shadow against her paler than ever alabaster. “Fix up.”
He watched his HUD as she dialled in anaesthetic and her breathing settled to become deep and even. Nano reknitters in her blood, triggered awake by the anaesthetic release, immediately swarmed to any areas of hurt, rebuilding the flesh, sealing off wounds. Similar microscopics in her fatigues would already be doing the same to reseal her in where the sleeve had been sliced away.
Collins stroked a hand over her sweat-soaked hair once, then stood. “She’s under,” he said.
Lau was crouched over Malik, his forehead pressed to the dead man’s brow. “I’m sorry, my brother,” he whispered. As he rose, his eyes were wet, but murder lived in them.
Capstan flicked the map to front and centre of their HUDs. “Here’s our way back to the dropship. Once Watts comes around, we go. Then we call in the cruiser, and flatten this shithole from orbit. Whatever those things are, they die here. We don’t.”