Speed of Darkness Read online

  “We’ll make a high pass over the main street again. Maybe we missed it.”

  The four Vulture hover-cycles screamed overhead just as the central administration building came into view. It was not difficult to find. Three stories high, it towered over all the other occupied buildings in the settlement. A gaping, ragged hole had been torn in one side of the building, its external metal wall peeled back; whether by an explosion or some unthinkably powerful hands, Ardo did not care to speculate.

  He was so astonished at the sight that he nearly ran directly into Sergeant Littlefield, who had stopped abruptly short of the admin building. The older man looked into the eyes of the panting Ardo, who now stood confused before him, and then keyed his transmitter to Squad Member Select. His words were for Ardo alone.

  “Son, you’re in a lot of trouble, but don’t sweat it. Just take it like a Marine and I think things are going to be okay. Understand?”

  Ardo nodded even though he knew it was a lie. He was having trouble understanding much of anything at the moment. “Sir, yes, sir!”

  Littlefield smiled. “Well, there isn’t much they can do to you out here that the job won’t do for them. Be polite, don’t talk back to Breanne, and I think you may just live to rejoin my squad. She’s waiting for you up in Operations.”

  Littlefield gave Ardo’s battle armor a quick glance, then smiled. “I wish we had time to hose you off first, son! You’re gonna smell just awful for the lieutenant.”

  * * *

  You would have thought they would have at least removed the dead, Ardo thought, as he stepped into the Operations Room.

  Operations was at the top of the three-story central building in the complex. Its windows, now vacant of all but the smallest shards of glass, looked out over the settlement. The building had probably been the last stand of the colonists, and when the fight was over there was nobody left to bury the dead.

  That had been several days ago. The Confederacy Marines had given the Zerg a pretty good pasting when they reached Scenic. Intel called it an “extermination” and believed that only a minimal force of Zerg remained in Oasis. Still, no one in command had thought it necessary to come back to the pumping settlement and honor the valiant fallen. After all, they were dead.

  The Operations Room itself had seen considerable damage. Several Marines from Second Squad were working to shore up the gaping holes in the outer wall. The sporadic light from their hand welders played a ghastly blue-white pall across the grizzly scene. In the center of the room, the lieutenant leaned over the map table, her back toward them. Her battle armor helmet was off, sitting to one side as she tried to concentrate on the readout in front of her.

  Ardo could still hear her on the tactical channel.

  “Third Squad continue north toward the tower and then fall back toward Operations.”

  “I’ve got movement over here! Something’s coming!”

  “Shut up, man! We’ve all got movement . . . everywhere! They’re coming out of the floor, man!”

  “Keep moving! Keep moving!”

  Sergeant Littlefield unlatched his helmet and quickly tucked it into the crook of his left arm. “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am? Reporting as ordered.”

  The lieutenant straightened and began to turn.

  Ardo barely had the presence of mind to quickly remove his own helmet and salute.

  The smell in the room was more familiar than what he had experienced in the spore tunnel, and therefore all the more nauseating.

  Her voice was coated in frost. “Private . . . Melnikov, isn’t it? How good of you to obey an order at last.” Her eyes flicked over toward the sergeant. “Mr. Littlefield, do you think this fresh-out-of-the-can Marine is worth my trouble?”

  “Ma’am . . . by your grace, ma’am!” Ardo glanced sideways at the sergeant. There seemed to be a smile playing at the edge of his mouth.

  “I doubt it,” Breanne snapped. “Step forward, Private!”

  Ardo panicked. He was saluting and could not move until the salute had been returned, yet he had just been ordered to move. Something in his brain seized up, and he seemed unable to do much of anything except sweat and continue to hold his salute.

  Breanne seemed suddenly to understand this. She swore under her breath and offered a perfunctory salute.

  Relieved, Ardo dropped the salute, and shuddered slightly as he stepped over a headless torso and arm. He could not tell if it had been a man or a woman. He did not want to know. He kept his eyes fixed on the lieutenant.

  “Mister Melnikov! Did I or did I not order this team to hold weapons fire for this operation?”

  It was a direct question. Ardo could not help but give an answer. “Ma’am! Yes, ma’am!”

  “Did I not make it clear that this was a recon and extraction mission?”

  “Ma’am! Glass-clear, ma’am!”

  Breanne’s face was getting uncomfortably close to Ardo’s own. Her words were chilling. “Then why, soldier, did you disobey my order?”

  Ardo swallowed. “Fell down a shaft, ma’am! Encountered a Zerg . . .” He stammered slightly, the memory of it flooding over him all at once. He dropped his eyes, suddenly ashamed. “I . . . I killed it!”

  “Look at me when I’m talking to you, soldier!”

  Ardo’s eyes locked on her sharp nose.

  “You think that’s what we’re here for, to kill Zerg?”

  “Ma’am! Yes, ma’am! Send them all to hell, ma’am!”

  Breanne rolled her eyes at this and stepped away, seething. “Littlefield, can you believe this? This is the new Marine! Neural resocialization! Cookie-cutter soldiers! Press them out of the resoc tanks like so many gingerbread men, wind ’em up and send ’em off to die!”

  Littlefield chuckled darkly. “Well, ma’am, it’s a lot quicker than the old way, that’s for sure. That’s progress.”

  “God save us from progress!” Breanne sighed, then turned her steel eyes back on Ardo. “Mr. Melnikov, let me try to educate you the old-fashioned way. Private, we are not here to kill Zerg.”

  Ardo felt confused. “Ma’am?”

  “We are here to stop Zerg. That’s a different thing altogether. Those caseless steel-tipped infantry rounds you so dutifully loaded into your assault rifle this morning are not designed to kill. They are designed to maim.”

  “Ma’am, I . . . I don’t understand.”

  “Kill a man on the field of battle and you can leave him there. The buzzards will take care of him.” Breanne gestured around the Operations Room. “Look around you, Private. There was nothing we could do for the dead. You honor them when you can, but in the middle of battle there’s nothing you can do for them. They are no longer of any concern, understand?”

  “Well . . . yes, ma’am, but . . .”

  “But nothing! If you maim an enemy on the field it takes four of his friends to haul him back from the battle and even more of his friends to patch him up and care for him. Kill an enemy and you decrease the force against you by one. Maim an enemy and you decrease the force against you by ten. Is any of this sinking in through that thick, resocialized brain of yours?”

  Ardo thought for a moment. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then perhaps in the future you will be more careful in the field to follow my orders to the letter?”

  “Ma’am, yes, ma’am . . . but . . .”

  Breanne’s eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to say something, Private?”

  Ardo swallowed. “Begging your pardon, ma’am . . . but is the lieutenant suggesting that it would have been better for me to have died at the bottom of that well?”

  Breanne took a breath to answer, then held it in check. A wicked smile rippled across her lips. “Well, well, well! A Marine who thinks! How refreshing. There’s hope for you yet, Melnikov. I—”

  “Hey, Lieutentant! I think we found something!”

  “Marz, here. They’ve got something on one of the scanners.”

  “Hey, I think I found it!”

  Breanne spun
back toward the map table. “Where? Where is it?”

  “It’s just a prefab house . . . I think it’s in a basement.”

  “Lordy! The ground is breaking all around me!”

  “Movement! Movement!”

  “Where?”

  “Everywhere!”

  “Cutter!” Breanne snapped. “Get the device! Marz! They’re at . . . damn it! . . . map grid thirty-six mark four-seventeen. Get them out of there!”

  “They’ll be vulnerable if I do, Lieutenant! Get them back to Operations and I’ll pick up the lot of ya.”

  “Captain Marz, get that crate over there and pick up my team!”

  “There’s no place to set down, Lieutenant, and if I use the extraction fields they’ll be held in stasis on the ground for a few seconds. That’s more than enough time for the Zerg to kill them where they stand.”

  “That’s just great!”

  Breanne motioned for Littlefield to join her. The sergeant quickly stepped up to the map table. He began pointing to various locations as Breanne spoke.

  “Second Squad, get that device. First Squad, I need high cover for Second Squad at thirty-six mark four-seventeen!”

  “Hey, does she mean us, man?”

  “You heard the lady, it’s just over— Sweet shit! Where did they come from?”

  “It’s a whole goddamn wall of ’em!”

  “More like a carpet! Where the hell did they come from?”

  “Third Squad!” Breanne continued. “Cover fire from thirty-four mark four-sixteen to thirty-six mark four-sixteen. Hold a corridor open and then fall back.”

  “Say again?”

  “I said, hold a corridor and then fall back with Second Squad to the operations center. We’ll extract from here.”

  The lieutenant turned to Ardo.

  “Well, you started this, Melnikov, now you can help clean it up. Join Third Squad and see if you can get your old Second Squad back here in as few pieces as possible.”

  The lieutenant turned back to the map.

  “I think it is safe to say that they know we are here now.”

  CHAPTER 8

  SEEING THE

  ELEPHANT

  ARDO DASHED DOWN THE STAIRWELL, STEPPING quickly over the bodies along the way, then burst into what once was the lobby. Wabowski, the second Firebat in the platoon, was already charging up his plasma flamethrower. Mellish and Esson were both fingering their gauss rifles nervously. Sejak seemed even more agitated than the others. “Where’s Jensen?” Ardo asked.

  “Went to find M’butu,” Sejak said, licking his lips. “He said he’d only be . . . oh, hell, he’s overdue.”

  “I say we go find him,” Wabowski rumbled.

  “And I say we follow orders,” Littlefield snapped, coming down the stairs and joining them. “The lieutenant knows what she’s doing. You’ve got the word and you know the drill. Move it, people! On me!”

  Littlefield readied his own assault rifle and moved out through the broken doors of the lobby. The broken squad glanced around at each other for a moment and then moved quickly to follow the sergeant.

  The wind was blowing a steady, hot breeze from the northeast, kicking dust up over the creep that had spread across the main square. Ardo shuddered as they moved across it. They could all hear Cutter and the rest of First and Second squads on the command channel, disembodied voices struggling to survive somewhere beyond the wall of buildings surrounding the outpost’s central square.

  “Keep moving! Keep moving!”

  “Bowers? Bowers! Where the hell . . .”

  “Bowers is down!”

  “Fu! Peaches! Get your asses over here, now!”

  “Damn! Sarge! I’m hit! I’m hit! The cycle’s dropping down! Help me! Oh, God . . . they’re gonna be all over me! Don’t let them . . .”

  Littlefield’s voice echoed in their helmets, his proximity automatically overriding the other voices, fading them below his own. “Sejak! Mellish! You two take flanking positions on the square and hold it. Wabowski, you and the rest of the squad come with me on point. I don’t want anything comin’ up behind me, Marines!”

  Ardo followed without a word, though he was shaking inside his battle armor. The private glanced to either side nervously as he moved forward purely out of training. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the instinct to run in the other direction as quickly as his battle armor would take him, but the training kept that howling animal somehow at bay.

  “Alley! Get the hell out of my way! I’ll burn ’em!”

  “They’re a frickin’ wall, Cutter!”

  “Keep moving! Hang onto that box, Ekart, or I swear to God I’ll make you go back for it, Zerg or no! Keep moving!”

  Wabowski was on Ardo’s left, laden down with two fully charged plasma tanks mounted into the back of his Firebat flamethrower battle armor. Esson flanked Wabowski on the far side. Though Ardo could not see him directly, his helmet display noted M’butu directly behind them. They were in the classic support position for Firebats, something Ardo gave no more thought to than the others following Littlefield across the square. One might as well concentrate on thinking about how to breathe. Everything and everyone was performing by the book.

  Then why, Ardo thought, am I still shaking?

  “Hell! They’re everywhere! Where are they comin’ from?”

  “Keep movin’, grunt!”

  They reached a barricade on the far side of the square that extended across the eastern road between two buildings. It had obviously been thrown together from whatever was at hand. Two heavy loaders and a mobile trencher formed the bulk of the barricade, but anything within reach appeared to have been pressed into service. Desks, beds, rocks, pieces of broken wall, even a pair of children’s cycles had been tossed desperately onto the pile. From the look of the mangled dead who remained, their efforts may have bought them an extra minute and a half.

  Ardo shook violently, suddenly dreadfully afraid that his teeth would chatter over the com frequency. He concentrated on what the lieutenant had said. “There’s nothing you can do for them. They are no longer of any concern, understand?” Still, Ardo looked away, feeling vaguely ashamed.

  Littlefield took no notice of Ardo’s discomfort. He scanned the eastern road that wound between the buildings. Calling it a road was generous; it was more of a tortured passage that ran crookedly between modular buildings. “There they are,” the sergeant said, pointing eastward.

  Ardo peered between the buildings. Something was moving beyond the fine veil of blowing red dust, but he could not be sure just what. The wind was picking up with the evening, the blowing dust obscuring his vision even more. The chatter from the com channel was getting louder and more distinct. Cutter was making progress, but would it be enough?

  “M’butu! Esson!” Littlefield’s words were level and matter-of-fact. Just another day at the office, he seemed to be saying. “You anchor both sides of this barricade. Set up a crossfire down this passage. Melnikov!”

  Ardo looked to the sergeant at the sound of his name.

  “You and Wabowski come with me. Let’s bring ’em in.”

  With that, Littlefield leveled his gauss rifle and clambered over the barricade.

  Ardo could not move.

  Littlefield was already getting hard to see, the blowing dust fading the sergeant’s battle armor in and out.

  Ardo’s mind seemed to seize up. He could not move forward. He could not move back.

  Suddenly, something slammed against the middle of his back, knocking him forward.

  “Come on, Melnikov,” Wabowski sniffed. “Move your ass! This is a rescue mission, remember?”

  Wabowski’s booted foot dislodged Ardo’s stupor. They both scrambled over the barricade quickly, Ardo covering both the barely discernible Littlefield and Wabowski behind him.

  “Left!” Wabowski yelled suddenly.

  Ardo spun, crouching.

  Several Zerg were clawing their way with incredible speed along the wall of a modular build
ing. They seemed to defy gravity through raw strength. The moment Ardo recognized them, the first of them leaped from the wall, directly toward the Marine.

  Ardo had no time to think. He squeezed the trigger of the gauss assault rifle. The hail of slugs smashed into the monster midair. The raw strength of the creature might have impelled it forward, but the accelerated projectiles arrested the Zerg’s momentum and pinned it against the wall. The remaining creatures crouched down against the wall, preparing to spring on their own.

  A sudden column of plasma flame engulfed the wall, swallowing the Zerg in its fury. Ardo turned around and saw Wabowski, a huge grin on his face, hosing the wall down with the plasma stream.

  He also saw the Zerg lurkers cresting the top of the building behind the smiling Firebat warrior.

  “On your back!” Ardo yelled, his voice sounding high-pitched in his own ears. His rifle chattered in his hands, laying down a pattern across the rooftop. Several of the lurkers dropped heavily to the ground, their claws working in the dust, struggling to bring them closer to their prey.

  We are the prey, Ardo suddenly realized. He could see the smile on Wabowski’s face had suddenly waxed grim. The bursts of superheated plasma were flashing toward several targets at Ardo’s own back.

  “Keep ’em off me, brother,” Wabowski drawled. “I’m a little busy here.”

  The slick, dark forms suddenly seemed to be everywhere on the modules lining the street. Ardo remembered as a child once kicking an anthill on his father’s farm, and the ants appeared as if by magic to be all around him at once.

  I kicked this anthill, Ardo thought.

  The rifle suddenly stopped chattering. Instinctively, Ardo ejected the clip, banged a new clip against his helmet, and slammed it home into the rifle. The clip had barely reached the breach when Ardo pulled the trigger again, splaying the advancing and ever increasing hordes of Zerg lurkers dropping down like rain from the southern rooftops.

  “Damn! How far do we have to go?”

  “We’ll never make it, Cutter!”

  “Shut up! Keep moving!”

  “We are under heavy attack!” Wabowski’s words were factual, but there was a definite edge to them. “Littlefield, if you’re going to do something, now would be the time!”