Ghost Ship (Gene Soldiers Book 4), page 3
“You’d be dead, too, bozo!” she responded, but there was humor in her tone. Gallows humor but humor, nonetheless.
“Dead, me? No way,” Tucker returned, just as they arrived at their location.
“Can it, you two—Mendiata?” Abrams grunted, kneeling beside the hatch. Mendiata crowed and immediately got to work at what she did best—which was figuring out how to blow things up.
“With pleasure, sir. Stand far back. Two small charges should be enough to do it,” the smaller Pillarman said. She immediately shuffled to her knees as she removed one of the equipment modules from her belt and started attaching small blocks to the inner seals of the hatch.
Carl and the others shuffled a few feet away, and then a few feet more. Carl knelt down to sight along the hull with his rifle in case of any oncoming threat.
To see that they weren’t so far from the silver line of the xeno weapon.
Holy stars! Carl thought. It was only a little way off, and he could see it clearly through the scope of his rifle. Thick, almost bone-like plates of silvery steel overlapping each other like scales on lizard skin. It completely covered the exterior of the Constance, settling like a blanket or some sort of organic thing over humps of weapons ports, modules, comms towers . . .
When Carl magnified the results even more, he could see that the surface was pocked and scratched like bone. Like it was a material that had been grown, even though it also shone like metal.
Wait a minute . . . And when he magnified even more, he could see that at odd points in the recesses between the nests of scales, there was something frilled that instantly made him think of gills or the compacted, packed legs of thousands of sea creatures.
He magnified closer—and wondered if he saw them move just slightly.
WHUMPF!
Carl flinched as a rough vibration shook through the vessel.
“Fire in the hole!” Mendiata called out victoriously behind him and then, “oh wait—am I supposed to say that before letting off the military-grade explosives?”
“Ha ha,” Carl heard Abrams say in a low, unamused, drawl. “On the double! Team One on me! Pillarmen ready!” their lieutenant said. He pushed himself—head and shoulders and rifle first—down into the skin of the Palacian ship with Mendiata and Tucker and Carl heading to do the same.
WarDog ready! Carl felt his heart thump.
5
CC Unit, The Firebird
Lieutenant Archer of the Palacian Close Combat Unit waited until she started to see the flare of explosions before she made her move.
“She’s countering the automatic defenses of the Constance,” the commanding officer murmured to her flight officer and fellow close combat soldier, a grim, silent, and steady woman who merely nodded brusquely.
Lieutenant Archer and the rest of the Palacian CCU, sent by Duke Greer himself, were in a tiny vessel that looked like a curve of a metal wing with two modules at either end of the wafer of metal. The Palacian Firebird was covered in an ochre-and-gray, scanner-resistant plate, and she ghosted forwards toward the battle scene ahead of her.
“I can bring targeting online,” the flight officer made a noise, “but as soon as I do . . .”
“Understood,” Archer said in a tight voice. She knew that even though the Firebird had a clear shot at the UTA attack ship up above them, as soon as they activated their targeting computers, the enemy would be pinged, and their subterfuge would be lost.
And she’s a lot bigger than we are, Archer thought with a snarl.
Unknown to Archer was the fact that she was looking at the Abelard, a full Pillarmen warship. The Palacian lieutenant did not know the names or capabilities of the vessel, but it was easily four times the size of their small assault vessel.
“Sir?” her flight officer suggested, the Palacian’s hand hovering over the weapons controls.
“Hold,” Archer said, watching as the Abelard swerved and swooped over the bow of the even larger Constance and then dispatched the final missiles fired at them.
Something detached from the bottom of the Abelard, a much smaller assault vehicle. The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed as she watched it tumbling after it decoupled from the belly of its parent ship—only to fire positional rockets at the last moment before it hit the side of the Constance. The vehicle then swept along her hull, slowing as she scraped and eventually docked with the much larger Palacian warship.
“Hss!” Archer let out an angered hiss. She clutched onto the back of her flight officer’s chair. Just seeing the dogs that were the Alliance out here, daring to think that they had the right to do anything they wanted to one of her people’s vessels made her feel angry and sick. Who did they think they were? Why did the Alliance always think that they were better than everyone and anyone else!?
“Eyes on the mother ship,” Archer said, waiting for the Abelard to continue its arcing flight, and then turn. The ship suddenly sped off back towards UTA systems under a flare of rocketry and thruster engines.
Good, Archer thought, turning back to the smaller UTA assault vessel, now hanging parasitic on the Constance.
“Sir? Open fire?” the flight officer asked.
“No,” Archer said immediately. She glanced at the weird new xeno skin that the Constance wore like some strange lichen of bristling silvers. She had never seen anything like it, and were she made of weaker material, she would have been shocked by the sight.
What are the Alliance up to? Archer wondered, thinking that this strange substance, the reason for the crippled warship, must surely be some sort of Alliance plot.
Is this a new type of Alliance weapon? Something they are testing here? It had to be. That was why General Greer would have sent her and her team in first, to understand what this hell was.
Archer wasn’t some new trainee straight out of bootcamp. She might not know just what she was looking at, and the strange xenovirus before her might defy all explanation. It might present entirely new threats.
But I’m a soldier of the throne, Archer told herself.
And she knew precisely who the enemy was.
Archer gestured for them to begin their forward flight.
“We’re here to gather intel on what those Alliance frackers did to the Constance. We’re going to dock with our ship and teach them a lesson for daring to set one foot on her hull!”
6
The Constance, Kaolan Orbit
“Seal good?” Carl could hear the muttered words of Lieutenant Abrams ahead in the cramped service tunnel inside the Constance. Tucker gave a muffled reply that it was.
“Good to go,” Abrams grunted, twisting the mechanical release that popped out the hatchway at the end of their tunnel. With a hiss of air, he deposited first the lieutenant and then the others into the interior of the Palacian warship.
“Eyes up!” Abrams snarled. He rolled and bounced into a crouch, Carl doing the same behind him, and Mendiata and Tucker joining them.
The WarDog felt his heart hammer as he slid to a halt, leaning into his rifle as he searched.
To find that he was looking down a wide corridor, dark with a vague bluish murk from subdued lighting. It was quiet. No enemy.
“Clear!” Abrams hissed from behind him.
“Clear!” Carl barked before his eyes refocused a little, seeing something on the edge of the buttresses. Huh?
His mind registered it as cobwebs at first, until he abruptly dismissed it, realizing that you didn’t usually get cobwebs in space. Air filtration and radiation treatments helped to kill all the spiders and flies.
“What is that?” Carl murmured, as behind him Abrams and the others were slowly rising to their feet.
“I thought you said that this tunnel should lead to the main flight hold, Tuck?” Mendiata was teasing the technical specialist. “It looks like a corridor. It really doesn’t look like any hold. Where are all the attack vessels, for one thing?”
“I said it might. I’m not exactly an expert on the engineering practices of our archenemy!” Tucker quipped back. Meanwhile, Carl squinted at the glittering white threads that hung down one of the bulkheads and took a step closer.
“Sebastian! What is it!?” Abrams’ voice cut through the squabbling as Carl raised his rifle at the strange substance.
He could see that it was actually a mess of fine metal wires spilling from the edge of a panel in the ceiling and hanging down to drape along the metal buttress of the corridor and the overhead ceiling girders.
The threads sparkled like silver under the encounter lights of his combat suit. They twisted and turned slightly in the mild breeze.
Hold on, Carl thought as his finer senses picked up the large lieutenant arriving behind him.
“What you got?”
“There’s no breeze on a dead ship, right?” Carl said, and he suddenly realized what he was looking at.
“These filaments are alive,” he breathed, and, as if to prove his point, he watched one end of them drift up towards the inner wall panel and stick.
“Alive? What are you talking about, soldier?” Abrams demanded, but there was an edge of tension in his voice.
In front of them, Carl pointed with the muzzle of his gun to where the next nearest silver wire had attached itself to the first, now forming the most basic two-strand web . . .
“That’s xenovirus, isn’t it?” Carl whispered. “Remember the roots on Philas B?”
He saw Abrams blink behind his semitranslucent face mask, showing that yes, he did remember the thick metal, scaled roots that had snaked and interwoven everywhere in the wild forests, growing and overgrowing each other as they got thicker and thicker.
Until eventually, the giant fungus-like structures burst from the ground. Structures that emitted vast amounts of power and spewed green particles into the atmosphere, changing it . . .
And turning into vast planetary weapons, as well.
“Noted.” Abrams gave a quick, disgusted snarl, making a move as if to swipe it away—but then pausing before his gauntlet could touch the stuff. “Tucker?” he said instead. “Samples.”
With even less enthusiasm, Specialist Tucker stepped forward to detach one of the modular compartments attached to the side of his suit, activating it. The device hissed open, revealing a sterile compartment inside. Using small metal pincers, Tucker grabbed the end of one of the filaments and pulled.
Why are we taking samples? Carl thought. Obviously, he knew that it was because of their orders to investigate what had happened here. But why bring any tiny part of the xenomutation back with them? Did they not realize how dangerous it was?
“We should burn it all,” Carl muttered. Tucker pulled on the substance, finding that the thin metal wire was a whole lot stronger than he had at first thought. It pulled taut and then resisted.
Bzz!
Carl flinched, feeling something like the hairs on the back of his head start to rise.
“Almost got it.” Tucker held onto the thread of xeno material with one pincer, instead taking out a pair of small cutting pliers to reach up and clamp above it, snipping it cleanly.
“Got it!” the technical specialist said exultantly.
Bzz!
Carl suddenly remembered where else he had felt that heightened sense of alert before. It was on Philas, wasn’t it? It had happened between the Fomorians and the Exalted . . .
Warning! Unknown signals approaching!
Just as there was a flare of light from behind them and the rising snarl of Mendiata’s voice.
“Contact!”
7
“Contact! Straight ahead!” Mendiata was roaring as figures lurched, ran, and sprang out of the dark of the corridor towards them.
There were three of them, and Carl at once saw Palacian ochre-and-blue armor—but there was something wrong about them as well. Their armor looked crumpled, torn apart, hanging from them . . .
And their bodies were twisted by xenovirus.
One had the metal scales covering half of his face and down one arm, fusing with the armor that he wore there. This Palacian soldier gnashed his teeth and roared silently as he lunged.
Another had one arm that was entirely given over to the xenomutation, encased in metal scales and reconfigured, turning it into a large three-point claw. The third was just as disfigured as the others with the scale mutation rising from their shoulders to their head, making something that looked like a human crab.
“Get some!” Mendiata snarled, rising from one knee as she fired a burst at the three charging figures.
Carl saw sparks as her bullets hit xeno scale and rebounded.
The Exalted WarDog’s heart pounded. He felt his senses come alive with every surge of blood through his body. It felt for a moment like time itself was slowing down. He saw Mendiata’s bullets slam into the first two of the xenomutants, but it didn’t do anything to stop their charge.
Carl raised his rifle in agonizing slowness. Behind him, Abrams and Tucker were still turning to realize that the enemy was already there, already a threat, already amongst them.
He was too close. The Palacian mutant with the three-part claw was there, throwing their claw towards his head.
Block. Push. Make an opening. Carl’s body and mind reacted in perfect unison, his training as a soldier and a Pillarman and the battle chemicals in his blood joining together to create a killing machine that was somehow the exact opposite of the mutated Palacian soldiers that were coming for him.
Carl thrust outwards with his rifle to catch the metal claw under where its “thumb” was.
Thock!
The strike was much stronger than Carl had been expecting, and there was a crack from his gun as chips of metal and plastic sheared off. But the WarDog kept on moving, spinning on one heel, turning to slam the butt of the rifle down on the mutant’s head.
“Skreakh!” The once-human let out a terrible screech as they were knocked back, but, with one swipe of their claw, they caught Carl a glancing blow as they fell back.
Alert!
Carl didn’t need the warning tone from his suit as he saw stars and was thrown against the wall. The glancing blow by the mutant was enough to knock a full-grown Exalted super soldier to his side!
“Dear stars!” Carl groaned, shaking his head as a surge of rage flooded through him, thanks to his strange chemistry.
Carl pushed himself back to his feet—seeing that the other three Pillarmen were still engaging with just two of the mutants. One of them—the crab-like one—had managed to barrel their way into the heart of their position, knocking Tucker and Mendiata aside. The mutant was now squaring off before the equally-as-large Abrams.
The mutant with the silver side to their head had taken advantage of the downed Mendiata and had leapt over her, giant fists raised . . .
No! Carl had jumped forward without thinking, seizing the mutant’s raised fist and twisting his body violently to one side.
He didn’t think that he would be able to do it. For a moment, he felt how solid and strong the mutant had become and wondered if he was going to be able to move them at all.
But with a surge of strength, the mutant was spinning off of their feet and over Carl’s own back. He flung them towards the mutant with the claw hand.
Both mutants crashed into each other in a tangle of metal and limbs as Carl snarled, turning towards them.
For Mendiata and Tucker to open fire.
“Back, Sebastian, back!” Tucker was shouting at him.
Why!? I can get them! I’ve got this! Carl took a step forward, his rage asking him to leap onto the two mutants, to stop those that had dared to harm him . . .
And harm his friends.
“Sebastian! Abrams!” Tucker was shouting. He lunged forward to grab at Carl’s shoulder and spin him around, pushing him backwards to where the crab-like mutant was still attacking Abrams and had successfully managed to pin their lieutenant against the far wall.
Damn! Carl’s anger was tempered by a surge of shame at the same time at having neglected his lieutenant. He immediately threw himself at the larger mutant, grabbing it by the metal shoulders and heaving the thing backwards.
“Unf!” The thing was strong. Very strong. Carl had barely managed to pull it back a few feet before the mutant turned with a guttural snarl and whipped a backhand at Carl’s head.
The WarDog released his grasp just in time, ducking under the heavy swing as the crab mutant directed its ferocity against him instead of the lieutenant.
Slam. Another punch to the side of the WarDog’s head and then another on the other side as the mutant attacked in animal ferocity.
Slam. Carl saw stars as his head rebounded against the inside of the visor helmet, and then he tasted blood.
But he didn’t feel a thing. The pain was just a distant shape of clouds on the horizon for the WarDog, numbed by his euphoria and replaced with implacable rage.
Is that all you got?
Carl ducked the next swing and sidestepped as the crab mutant launched itself forwards in a barreling run. The WarDog’s heightened senses saw it coming from a mile off, and it was an easy thing to dodge as the mutant charged past him.
Gotcha! Carl flung out one metal boot, catching the crab mutant by the ankle as it dove forward with all of its strength. Suddenly, his enemy was tripping and flying forwards, leaving the air momentarily before it slammed itself against the opposing bulkhead with a tremendous crash and crackle of bones.
There was an audible snap when the mutant made its connection with the wall of the Palacian war cruiser before it slid to the floor in a heap.
“It’s dead. They’re all dead, Carl,” Abrams was saying to him. Yet it took Carl several moments of deep lungfuls of breath in order to remember where he was and that there were no enemies left around him.
“Stand down, everyone,” Abrams was saying as the WarDog groggily came to. He saw that the lieutenant’s suit was now a cracked mess of fractured armor plating where the crab mutant had battered him, and Mendiata wasn’t looking too much better.
“They got infected. That thing fired at the ship spreads the xenomutation,” Specialist Tucker was saying through gasps and coughs as each of the Pillarmen took steps away from the scene to survey the damage done.
