Species War: Battlefield Mars Book 3 Page 11

Archard reached the door and gripped the frame for support. He made it out, the floor tilting more with every step. When he reached the elevator, the emergency lights were flashing. Rather than risk being trapped inside on the way up, he moved to the stairwell and shouldered the door open.

  “Hold that for us, if you please,” KLL-1 said.

  Archard did, and the pair of BioMarines holding onto General Augusto filed past, the general continuing to rage.

  More BioMarines and troopers went through. Back in the interrogation room, someone shouted something. Screams and autofire erupted.

  Archard was about to go back in to help when a soldier ran out into the hall, yelling, “Go! Go! Martians are pouring in! They’ve rescued their leader!”

  His pulse racing, Archard fled up the stairs. If the same thing was happening all over Bradbury, this was a disaster in the making. The Martians were employing a whole new tactic, to devastating effect. Keying his private channel, he called, “Katla? Katla? Are you there? Can you hear me?

  There was no reply.

  Archard shuddered to think what she must be going through up above. He prayed she stayed alive long enough for him to find her.

  Provided he stayed alive, himself.

  37

  At first, Dr. Katla Dkany thought it was an earthquake. Mars experienced fewer than Earth, in large part because Mars had fewer tectonic plates. As the ground under them shook and shimmied, she flung out both arms to keep her balance and heard a great rending rasp, as if two slabs of stone were being rubbed together.

  Glancing up, Katla beheld an astounding sight. The building across the street was sinking. The entire bottom floor was already below ground level, and from inside came screams and wails.

  “What’s happening?” Trisna Sahir cried, clutching Behulah.

  Katla saw a building down the block begin to sink. A plume of dust signaled a third was about to do the same.

  “Katla?” Piotr said.

  From all quarters rose more horrendous rending and rasping sounds, as well as the crash of shattering glass.

  “What is happening?” Trisna again cried. “What is this madness?”

  “It must be the Martians,” Katla said.

  As if to prove her right, out of a broken window in a building across the street scuttled a reddish-pink crab, its grippers waving.

  A man wasn’t three meters from it, frozen in stunned disbelief. He screamed as the creature launched itself at his chest.

  “Not again!” Trisna cried.

  Firming her grip on Piotr, Katla headed down the street. “Run! Or we’ll be next!”

  The man’s shrieks were hideous. He was on his back, and not one but two Martians were on top of him. One held him down while the other used its grippers to clamp hold of either side of his head. With a brutal wrench, the Martian tore it from his body.

  Behulah commenced bawling.

  Katla ran as fast as her bulky EVA suit permitted. Thinking of it reminded her of another danger. Suddenly stopping, she shouted, “Our helmets! Put them on!”

  Trisna nodded. She understood the consequences should Dome One be breached.

  They assisted Piotr and Behulah in putting theirs on as bedlam reigned around them. Then on they ran, Katla more intent than ever on reaching the secondary airlock. A drop ship was their only hope. Unless they could get off-planet, it would be Wellsville and New Meridian all over again.

  Her earphones crackled, and she thought she heard her name. “Archard?” she said, boosting the gain. “Is that you?”

  All she heard was the sizzle of static.

  Katla kept going.

  More and more buildings were being swallowed by the Martian earth. Some had tilted. Some were buckling. Smaller residential modules were gobbled whole. The din of breakage and ruin was catastrophic, punctuated by screeches and sobs and curses. Terrified colonists rushed helter-skelter. Troopers were trying to help as best as they were able.

  Katla shut everything from her mind except reaching the airlock. She rounded a corner and collided with a woman coming the other way. If not for Trisna catching hold of her, she would have been bowled over.

  Three blocks away stood the airlock. It might as well be on one of the Martian moons. The street was jammed with people. A tall building, partially sunk, was in danger of falling across it. And there were Martians, many of them, coming out of windows and doors and through the very walls. Firefights broke out, the troopers rallying to resist the invaders.

  Crouching with her arms protectively over Behulah, Trisna shouted, “We need to find cover! Somewhere safe!”

  “Keep up with me!” Katla was certain that to stop was a death warrant. On an impulse, she darted into an alley and ran along it to the next street. Her hope was that there would be fewer people but it wasn’t to be.

  The buildings in their vicinity were still standing although a few were shaking. Katla skirted recessed steps that led down into a shadowed doorway from which a pair of legs in uniform jutted. Under the legs, a pool of blood had formed.

  Katla abruptly stopped. Halfway down the steps lay an ICW. Archard had shown her how to use them. Letting go of Piotr, she darted down, snatched it up, and checked the magazine. It was full. The trooper had been slain before he could get off a shot. She set the weapon to three-round bursts instead of full auto, and went back up to the others.

  A man ran past, shrieking at the top of his lungs. “Run! Run! The monsters are everywhere!”

  A woman missing an arm and pumping blood staggered toward them from the other side of the street but collapsed.

  “What are we waiting for?” Trisna said.

  “Take Piotr,” Katla said. She needed both hands free to shoot.

  Out of an office building stumbled a man with a Martian on his back, its grippers tearing at his flesh like cleavers.

  Katla shot it, aiming at the top of its carapace as Archard had instructed her. The creature fell and thrashed and was still. Its victim went another couple of strides and sprawled flat.

  They reached the end of the street. Only one block separated them from the airlock, and there were less people.

  Katla glanced out the dome toward the hanger and the airstrip, and her resolve faltered. Almost the entire sky was filled with a great roiling cloud of dust that rose hundreds of meters into the air---and was about to engulf the drop ships.

  38

  Like an immense living thing composed of swirling nanoparticles, the dust cloud swept toward Bradbury’s three golden domes. Warnings were flashed all along the perimeter. Be ready for anything.

  Captain Ferris had gone to the maser emplacement at the east end of the trench, taking Sergeant Kline with her.

  Leaving Everett and Private Keller to contemplate the rapidly approaching dust storm.

  Everett wanted no part of it. In his opinion, the general had made a dire blunder. They were more vulnerable outside the domes, at the mercy of not only the Martians but basic atmospherics. A single puncture of their EVA suits was all it would take. A hole sufficiently large that the suit’s self-repair system was unable to seal, and decompression would do them in.

  “What do you think, Kentucky?” Private Keller asked, using her external helmet mic rather than her commlink.

  “Biggest FUBAR ever,” Everett said.

  “What can we do?”

  “We can’t desert our posts,” Everett said.

  “If only.”

  They looked at one another and Everett said, “We stick as long as we can. Then we try for an airlock.”

  “Agreed,” Keller said. “Wish we were inside now.” She looked at the dome behind them and stiffened. “What the hell? What’s going on in there?”

  Everett wasn’t sure. The buildings were shaking. Incredibly, some appeared to be shrinking. He blinked, seeking to make sense of it.

  “They’re sinking!” Keller cried.

  “Dear Lord,” Everett breathed.

  Entire structures were slowly sliding into the ground, like so many
plants being pulled under by gophers.

  “I’m seeing it and I don’t believe it,” Keller said.

  Everett believed it. The Martians were devious as could be. Instead of burrowing up out of the ground to attack the colonists in the streets and in their homes, as they had done at the other colonies, their huge borers were digging away the entire foundation, bedrock and all, to bring the humans down to them. “I’ll be switched.”

  “You’ll be what?”

  “Nothing,” Everett said and faced the dust cloud. From one improbable to another. The cloud’s leading edge wasn’t more than a hundred meters out and had stopped. It was so high, it blotted out most of the sunlight. Their trench, and the gun emplacements, were plunged in shadow.

  “Can this get any worse?” Keller said.

  At the base of the cloud, in the depths of the dust, vague figures moved.

  “Those Martians devils,” Everett said. “They learned their lesson at New Meridian and Wellsville. Instead of going head-to-head, they’re being sneaky.”

  A buzzing sound drew their attention to a U.N.I.C. drone flying along the trench toward them. A surveillance model, it was used to spy on enemy positions.

  “A drone can’t see much in all that dust,” Private Keller said.

  Apparently, whoever was using it thought differently. Rising to half the height of the cloud, the drone flew directly into it. For a few second, its silhouette was visible, then it was gone.

  “If you ask me,” Keller said, “a waste of a good drone.”

  No sooner were the words out of her mouth then the drone reappeared. Sputtering and spitting sparks, it wobbled erratically while spiraling lower and lower until finally it crashed a stone’s throw away.

  Captain Ferris ran up, talking into her commlink. “No, sir. I just saw it with my own eyes. I don’t know what took it out but it wasn’t able to penetrate very far. Yes, sir. Understood. We will await your command.” She climbed next to them and hunkered. “That was the colonel. We can expect to engage any moment now.”

  “Engage what, sir?” Private Keller said, indicating the cloud. “We can’t see to shoot.”

  “We’re pouring everything we have into it,” Captain Ferris said. “If that’s not enough…”

  Private Everett flicked a hand at the dome. “How bad is it in there?”

  “Let the troopers inside deal with inside,” Captain Ferris said. “You worry about out here.” She tilted her head as if listening to a communication, then straightened and

  barked on her detachment’s frequency, “All personnel! Open fire! I repeat! All guns, all troopers, lay into them!”

  Private Everett propped his elbow on the rim, pointed his ICW at the cloud, and cut loose. All along the line, troopers were doing the same. The masers and lasers and ion cannon opened up, unleashing a barrage that would reduce terrestrial foes to atoms. Beams of light crisscrossed the cloud like a light show, only these were deadly. Shells burst and explosions thundered.

  “Are we killing anything?” Private Keller yelled.

  They had to be, Everett thought. Nothing could withstand such an onslaught. But was it enough to drive their attackers back?

  No.

  Martians spilled out of the dust in a torrent. Red Martians, blue Martians, the black flyers, and others. In a wave of carapaces and grippers and eye stalks, they swept toward the Earthers like the tide toward a beach.

  The Martians had timed their attack perfectly. For even as they rushed toward the trenches and the gun emplacements, the dust cloud descended to cover everyone and everything.

  Everett found himself fighting in a pea-soup. Or, rather, a dust-soup, that limited his vision and the effectiveness of his sensors. Exactly as the Martians intended. He let fly with a frag grenade and then an incendiary.

  The masers were thrumming, the lasers flashing, the ion cannons adding their thunder.

  The Martians died in droves but his motion sensors told Everett they were still coming.

  As if that wasn’t enough, the ground under them suddenly began to buckle.

  39

  The BioMarines led the escape to the surface. KLL-12 and KLL-13, with four others, were ordered to take point by KLL-1 and were ahead of the rest, climbing the stairs in long bounds.

  The chatter on KLL-12’s commlink told him that General Augusto and his top aides were being protected by KLL-1 and ten more BioMarines, while the remaining seven hybrids were bringing up the rear with Captain Archard Rahn and some humans.

  “Having fun yet?” KLL-13 said with her invariable laugh.

  KLL-12 failed to appreciate her humor. “The colony is under assault but you find it humorous?”

  “Life is humorous,” she said. “You take it all way too seriously.”

  The building gave yet another violent shake, nearly throwing them off balance. The walls, KLL-12 noticed, were tilting at an ever-steeper angle. Thankfully, with their enhanced abilities, they could cling with their toes to any surface short of oil-coated glass.

  KLL-12’s commlink crackled anew.

  “Point team,” KLL-1 said. “Don’t get too far ahead. The general and his staff can’t go very fast.”

  KLL-12 reached the next landing and read the digital display. He keyed his mic. “KLL-1. We’re at Level Five. How far back at you?”

  “We’ve just passed eight,” KLL-1 replied.

  Over by the rail, KLL-17 said to KLL-12, “We should wait for them to catch up.”

  “I agree,” KLL-13 said.

  From above and around them came crackling noises and intermittent rumbling. A thin crack appeared in a wall.

  “I hope this place doesn’t collapse on us,” KLL-15 remarked.

  “If you got to go, you got to go,” KLL-13 said.

  “What?” KLL-15 said.

  “Ignore her,” KLL-12 said. “She’s insane.”

  “Hold on a second,” KLL-13 said, bending her head toward the wall with the crack. “Do you hear that?”

  KLL-12 did. A muted grinding, growing louder. It reminded him of the sound a drill made, only lower in pitch.

  “Be ready for anything,” KLL-14 said.

  “That’s my middle name,” KLL-13 said.

  The grinding rose to a piercing crescendo. The next moment, the center of the wall dissolved into shards and pieces. A cloud of dust spewed out, followed by the serrated carapace of a giant Martian borer. The whirling crown that comprised its drill thrust at the landing like the tip of a spear.

  Springing back, KLL-12 prepared to leap over the rail. But he didn’t have to. The borer came to a stop an arm’s-length away. Its eyes rose on long stalks out of hidden recesses and swiveled about as if it were trying to get its bearings. Suddenly, it saw them, and just-like-that, its eye stalks retracted and it slid back into the hole it had made.

  “Get ready,” KLL-12 warned. “You know what’s coming next.”

  “Martians,” KLL-13 said.

  The creatures poured out of the hole. Eye stalks waving, their grippers spread, they were on the BioMarines in a twinkling.

  “We’re under attack!” KLL-12 reported on his commlink and sprang to meet them. He bashed. He smashed. He tore. He rent. Constantly in motion, turning this way and that, he battled furiously. He lost track of how many creatures he killed, and how many wounds they inflicted. He was aware that his healing ability was being taxed to its utmost but he couldn’t worry about that right now. He must fight, fight, fight.

  KLL-12 was also aware that his fellow hybrids were battling just as furiously but he dared not risk a glance to see how they were faring.

  A cry told him one of the others had gone down. A shout in his commlink from KLL-13 told him who.

  “KLL-14! They got her!”

  “Don’t give up!” KLL-12 roared. He expected KLL-1 to send others to help them but his hope was dashed when his commlink blared yet again.

  “KLL-1 is down! KLL-1 is down! This is KLL-3! We are under attack too! We need…”

  Her trans
mission ended.

  Faintly, KLL-12 heard another report, from lower down.

  “…KLL-24…under heavy…repeat…request

  assistance…request…”

  His transmission faded away.

  “They’re hitting all of us at once!” KLL-13 hollered. “What do we do?”

  To KLL-12, it was obvious. They must think of their own lives before all else. But he couldn’t break his programming. He was compelled to follow orders, and their orders were to get General Augusto to the surface. Evading a lunging Martian, he keyed his mic again. “General Augusto? Are you there? Respond, please!”

  His earphones filled with static.

  “General Augusto! Confirm that you are still alive!” KLL-12 requested.

  More crackling ensued.

  “KLL-1? KLL-3? Anyone at all?” KLL-12 said.

  Amid a flurry of motion, a headless body tumbled through the air and landed almost at KLL-12’s feet.

  “KLL-16!” KLL-13 cried. “They tore his head off!”

  Ducking and dodging grippers that lanced at his neck and chest, KLL-12 came to a decision. Out in the open, he and the other BioMarines stood half a chance.

  But down here, in the cramped confines of the stairs, with more Martians streaming in every second, it was hopeless. The outcome was inevitable.

  “BioMarines!” KLL-12 shouted. “On me! General Augusto has been slain! Make for the surface or we are as good as dead!”

  No one disputed him. Not even KLL-13, who was caked with Martian blood and who, for once, had lost her mischievous grin.

  Exerting himself to his utmost, KLL-12 sought to break free of the press of crustoids and gain the next landing. He saw that only four of them were left; himself, KLL-13, KLL-15, and KLL-17. The latter had sustained a severe wound that caused him to limp.

  A red Martian leaped at KLL-12, its grippers snapping. Sidestepping, KLL-12 seized it by two of its legs and swung the creature in an arc, using it to batter other Martians aside. He split a carapace, sheared off eye stalks, smashed a scuttling menace. Then, to his relief, he was momentarily in the clear.

  KLL-13 and KLL-15 had emulated him and came up shoulder-to-shoulder.