Eradication, page 26
The Glisson rifles had a built-in safe mode for shipboard or close quarters operation. They would limit, or even negate, fire if the likelihood of hitting a civilian or vital piece of machinery was high. Punching a railgun round through a high-pressure hydrogen line would do more damage than the creature. So, the pulse rifle would not allow you to select that option or would slow the velocity down to relatively safe levels. This deck was likely the heart of the damn ship, all the mechanical pipes, tubes, and ductwork ran along nearly every surface except the floor. Checking fire here was asking a lot, especially if your life was at risk.
“That’s why you called the A-team, Sarge,” Halo offered with a fist-bump. “Wish we had Sumo,” he subvocalized into his whisper mic minutes later as they were clearing one of the dozens of storage rooms in this section.
Gi didn’t disagree and also wondered if the boy’s puppy might be helpful but quickly discarded the idea. Apparently, Lux and Xero had been working in close proximity to the creature for many days. They had found where it had been nesting. The boy’s dog would have noticed the thing then if she’d been able. He knew firsthand the Furies had a smell, but that could simply be pheromones they emitted during an attack or something else entirely.
“Report all contact, watch your firing lanes,” Gi said again, more for the benefit of his security crew than his fellow RDT team members. They knew instinctually what to do.
“Any chance we can get the illumination dialed up?” Halo asked. “I didn’t bring my NODS.”
“Ship is in power safe mode. Xero said we can’t bring it up unless we get the other reactors to full power,” Gi answered as they moved down the dimly lit corridor. Both men’s helmet’s built-in night vision was sufficient, but the military special night optical devices could see through the darkest of rooms.
“These things are bigger than I am by nearly two feet. How can it hide so well?”
Gi wondered the same thing; he knew he’d placed multiple rounds on target, yet the thing shook it off and fled. Now it was injured, and a wounded enemy was a particularly dangerous one. He reached and slowly unlatched the next hatch, then stepped back while Halo moved in to clear. Gi stepped into the empty space backing his partner by sweeping right to cover the opposite wall.
This went on for an hour and a half, painstakingly clearing every room one by one. The mostly empty rooms weren’t bad, but when they got to those used for storage and then bunkrooms, every obstacle had to be checked and cleared. Ninety minutes is a long time to hold an edge, reflexes take over. Your mental sharpness begins to slip; even for the most disciplined of soldiers, it can become taxing. Still, Gi felt confident they had covered every possible location when they reached the end compartment on E deck.
The larger compartments on the end of each deck were typically workspaces. Areas meant to be used by groups of people, so depending on the function, they might fill the space with workbenches, computer workstations, machine shops, or in this case, spare parts storage. Gi lifted his visor and sniffed, the greasy smell of Cosmoline-coated metal hung in the air but nothing else. Rack after rack of maintenance parts were crammed floor to ceiling. This room was going to be tough. He signaled for Bishop to move forward. He didn’t want the thing slipping out the hatch behind them.
Suddenly, a large jolt shook the room, parts rattled, and something fell in the far corner. Both men’s rifles swept up and out looking for targets.
“Dropship is back,” Halo whispered. “I’ve felt it a few times, and the landing bay is just a few decks above us.”
Gi nodded assuming Hauk and the Space Marine had returned and returned. They would be too tired to offer anything to this hunt though. His focus returned to the grid search of the open space. Not for the first time, he wished he’d brought his swords.
“Hey, guys, we have movement.”
Bishop’s voice caused them both to stop. “Outside, now,” Gi ordered. He and Halo moved back to rejoin the others in the corridor.
“What do you have, Priest?” Gi could see the three-man team closing to within about sixty yards. They were looking up, every rifle centering on the same spot.
“It’s up there, above the conduit rack,” he said, motioning with the barrel of the Rattler. His cheek was pressed firmly into the stock and finger already squeezing back in the trigger.
“How in the fuck could it fit up there, can’t be more than a few inches of clearance,” one Marine on the security detail asked.
Minutes later, they had their answer. While the conduit rack was hanging below the decking by less than a foot, at key points, there were connecting tubes to the deck above. The Furie had a better understanding of the ship’s mechanicals than the soldiers.
“What’s above us?” Gi asked, looking quickly for the ship’s layout on his HUD.
“Laundry, showers, cargo holds, and gymnasium.”
“Shit! Regroup on D-deck, now—move!” the Korean yelled, already running toward the stairs. He would clear that floor as well but just had to make one stop first.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-EIGHT
The light was fading as I approached the small hill. Voss was silhouetted next to the now idle Decimator. The woman was a few dozen yards away atop the small rise. The eeriness of the scene wasn’t lost on me. In fact, I wondered if I was the intruder and she the ruler of these lands. Even from here, I could sense the girl’s presence, her control—possibly it was due to the line of creatures surrounding her. Creatures that I knew would tear us to shreds if given the chance.
“What are you doing?”
Voss flicked her eyes toward me dismissively. Do you know how hard it is to help someone who clearly doesn’t want you there? Fine, then, I went over and sat at the base of the Warbot. “Go on, do your thing,” I mumbled.
Damiana gave me the middle finger. That was fair. I was being an asshole again. Ada was busy, and I’d forcibly ordered Sumo to stay back in the bunker. He’d been through enough fights this week, and I didn’t want to push his luck… or mine, any further, if I’m being honest.
Voss was speaking to the girl, woman… in tones so low even my suit auditory inputs couldn’t enhance. Occasionally, a word would slip through, but as Voss moved closer, I realized it was how you might talk to a wild animal. More the way you spoke than what you said. She had her hands slightly raised, although I knew damn well she wasn’t helpless in that position. She took tiny careful steps, and even her body language whispered non-threatening.
With my visor lowered and the light exposure controls dialed up, I could see the girl’s features. She had high cheekbones and an angular face beneath straight black hair. Handsome would be how I described her. Beautiful, but not in a traditional sense of the word. Her dress looked homemade or maybe just well-worn. It was unadorned and simple like the woman herself. I kept going back and forth trying to guess her age; was she a girl or maybe a young woman? Ultimately, I couldn’t decide. She could have been a sixteen-year-old with a very hard life or in her late twenties, maybe even older.
“She is most likely Native American, Prowler,” Ada said, surprising me out of my mental trivia.
“Hmmm, any of their reservations in this part of the country?” I subvocalized.
“No, four remaining tribes, but they are not centralized, no reservations or tribal villages. Even more just over the border in Canada.”
I didn’t think there was much more we could learn about the girl, so I had Ada dedicate most of her processing to cataloging the creatures, deciphering Carlson’s last message and trying to get us access to more of the Warbot’s control systems.
The girl turned suddenly and faced Voss as if noticing her for the first time. She took two quick steps toward her, then froze. Although unarmed, this WitchWalker was a clear threat, and I had a bad feeling about all of this.
Apparently, Voss did, too, as she backtracked over to me. “I think she is in a semi-catatonic state. Either that or an extremely deep mediation. Whatever it is, I am not getting through to her, and as far as I can tell, neither is the Wraith.”
Oh yes, our little flying see-through manta-ray. I’d almost forgotten about him starting this little hilltop party.
“We could shoot her,” I offered helpfully. “And there she goes with the finger again.”
“She needs help.” Damiana offered.
I looked at the line of creatures, stretching out into the darkness, snarling, shrieking, fang-filled mutants. “She needs help?” I eased myself up slowly. “What are you, some kind of doctor now?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Wait…what?” My voice stammered to catch up. How many layers did this woman have?
“How else would they have let me work at Iron River?”
“I thought you were an assistant or something.”
“I was, a medical assistant. One with a PhD. Now, can we get back to this girl?”
She saw them, the woman, and the soldier. She saw them… and she didn’t see them. They were not what had drawn her to this location. She sensed their fear but didn’t hear the woman’s words; it was gibberish in her mind. There was danger here, and salvation.
The salt-tinged air mixed with the green smells from the thicket of spruce trees. Change, that was what was in the air. That was the only thing constant in nature…change. She wanted to see the ocean; it had been too long. She longed to put her feet in its icy depths, to feel the oxygenated surf as it caressed her body.
To her followers, she merely suggested that they stay, then she stepped one foot forward, then another. The pull of the water was drawing her closer. She sensed no fear from these two, and the fluttering thing was a curious sort. Not one of the new creatures she’d seen before. It kept trying to sense her, that was obvious. It fed off the feelings of others, and like a mirror, could redirect and reform those emotions back. From her thoughts, it received no input and offered back no reflection.
The woman was in front of her now saying something, holding out a hand. She was trying to be friendly, but she was unimportant and would likely be dead soon. There was an emptiness inside the woman who was talking, a place that used to have feelings for others. A place this woman’s pleadings might have found purchase, a rooting spot for a kindred relationship to grow. Now, there was nothing there. It was a desert, an icy plain on which nothing could grow.
Her bare feet felt the soft grass of the lawn. It was deep, lush, and strangely artificial. Like the structure, it wasn’t natural and should not be allowed to stay. The vines would begin removing it soon. That was not something for her to worry about. In her head she heard the rushing of crashing waves and understood that not all of them were from the ocean. A part of her was being dashed upon the rocks as well.
The woman pulled at her arm. How long had it been since any other creature had touched her? She couldn’t recall, nor did she have any actual sense of time. The ocean was close now. She could see swells of white far below as the surf rolled toward the cliff face. She moved closer, then all at once, she was flying. No, not flying… something was lifting her up. She suggested to her friends to come help, they should all come help her.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-NINE
The girl weighed nearly nothing. Of course, I was in a highly engineered battlefield exosuit designed for rugged conditions, but still, yeah. She hadn’t been eating regularly… or at all.
“Go—go—go,” Voss yelled as she pressed against me to get into the house.
“I have reengaged the Decimators’ defense capabilities,” Ada said as the sound of automatic weapons sounded behind us.
“Doctor, huh? And all I got was a damp rag for my injuries?”
“Not now, Kovach,” Voss growled.
“Why not now? What’s wrong with now? I mean, I thought our relationship, you know, had matured beyond being totally dishonest with each other.”
“Relationship?” Her eyebrow arched dangerously high on that beautiful forehead.
She was busy checking the girl for injuries. The girl… um, WitchWalker was, well, she was doing nothing. She was just watching us maybe with a bit more focus than before but still seemed to look right through us.
When Voss yelled for me to grab her, it looked as though she might leap off the cliff into the ocean. We wouldn’t get any answers that way.
“Decimator is not putting up an adequate defense, Prowler.”
I could just barely hear the steady rhythm of the chain guns outside. Sumo lowered his head to the floor, not wanting any part of what was happening out there.
“Give me video.” I’d leave ‘Doctor’ Voss to deal with the girl.
The video was surreal, Furies and Mantis Chimps swarmed over the Warbot pulling off pieces of shielding, wiring, and anything else they could get claws into. Thunder vines were already thickly encasing the lower portion. Other creatures I hadn’t yet come up with names for were busy trying to clog the gun turrets and ammo storage with their bodies or maybe the bodies of their young. I couldn’t actually tell.
“Ada, why are they attacking it now but seemed to fight alongside it the day we arrived?”
“It may have just seemed that way because we were the common enemy to both,” she replied. “This area’s status as a green zone in the midst of the wastelands suggests they had some type of countermeasures for the creatures, though.”
“Find it, check all the subsystems. Check for active processes that were running upon our arrival.” I knew she was doing that already, but it gave me something to say.
“I’ve found something,” she said several minutes later. “Not what you asked for, but you are going to like it.”
“Send it,” I said, watching the battle unfold via the video feed. Then suddenly, I was in battle. I was controlling the Warbot remotely.
“You have control, not telepresence, but simple remote data-link connection.”
“Hot damn!” I began blasting the Furies away with speed and accuracy. I swung violently to one side and tossed off two dozen of the furry little monkey bastards. Jesus Christ, this is fun! I needed to move, but the damn vines were holding me tight. I swam through virtual menus until I found what I needed. A large vibrasonic sword attachment. The killing blade extended out of the mechanical hand, and I began slicing through the vines like an old-school weed-whacker.
“Contact, right and rear,” Ada said, getting into the melee. I ducked, pivoted, and slashed backward with the blade decapitating one Furie and lopping off the entire torso of another. This was like the best video game ever. Screw Halo, this needed to be a multiplayer game if the world ever recovered.
I began to get the feel of the machine, what its limits were and its strengths. One advantage that was obvious was an enormous energy and ammo count. Way more than I’d imagined. I don’t know if they were all designed this way, or if this one was special, but shit…they created it for extended deployments in hostile territory.
The monsters were attacking in waves, and I felt sure many had gotten by me and were already heading toward Carlson’s mansion. Something huge slithered over the top of the hill, and I hit the spotlights. It looked like a cross between a hippo and a garden slug. I know, that was a hard one for me to wrap my head around, too. Then it opened its mouth, which curled back to reveal interlocking fangs. I selected blasters and sent two max power pulses of energy into it, and all that happened was a dissipation wave rolled across the thing’s greasy-looking surface. The slimy fucker started charging me. Yeah, speed was much closer to the hippo than the slug.
I stepped backward a half step, then leapt.
And yes… Decimators can do that, although I doubt it is in the user manual. I came down with one leg square on the thing’s head and the other, well, I’m not sure. I saw one of the grisly Culls that had been partially crushed under that side. The SlugBeast virtually exploded on contact, and everything that was caught in the blast zone began smoking, including the Warbot.
“Acid blood.” That is so cool and, you know… really bad.
“Stop!”
I guessed it was the girl’s voice, but I couldn’t be sure without disengaging, which I had no intention of doing. I was back in melee mode doing a marvelous job of mowing down the stragglers.
“Call them off, and he will stop.” That was Dami’s voice, that much I got.
“Is that a kill counter?” I was watching one set of numbers in the red threat matrix screen climbing fast.
“Yes, it appears to give full value to major threats and the lesser ones are added as a fraction of the whole,” Ada answered.
I blasted a Devil Squirrel and inadvertently got a Furie that had been hiding in the brush, just as a tree full of the Mantis Chimps descended onto my back… the Decimator’s back. You know what I mean. I saw an auto defense option, and I triggered it. Maybe this mechanical warrior was finally figuring out how to fight these things.
“Engaging raid mesh,” a hidden speaker said.
Raid mesh? Couldn’t say that meant anything to me, but I’d battled these things before. I knew they could fucking fight. If I hadn’t set them all on fire and tried to block them in a collapsing tunnel, I know they would have killed me.
Through the remote sensors in my battle suit, I felt something extending from the Decimator’s sides. Glancing at the video feeds, it looked almost like solar panels extending on a newly launched satellite.
“No.” It was the girl’s voice again.
“Fuck, yeah!” was my overly enthusiastic reply as soon as I saw what the Decimator had planned. From almost every inch of the extended panels hung lethal looking bomblets about the size of an old-school hand grenade. The Warbot started spinning on its center axis and the bombs began jetting off into the now thinning crowd of attackers. The faster it spun, the farther the weapon reached.
The detonations were tremendous. I don’t know what the explosive was, but way more powerful than a grenade. This shit was clearing the landscape; old growth spruce trees were launched hundreds of feet skyward. It had turned the estate property into a killing field, bodies or pieces of bodies began piling up, and I pulled the Decimator back toward the house as the raid mesh began winding down. The firing wings retracted back into the body, and on my own HUD I unbelievably saw that they were reloading. Jesus, I wanted these things on our side.
