Species War: Battlefield Mars Book 3 Page 6

  There was a quick knock and in rushed one of her assistants, a young woman who hailed from Greece by the name of Cosimia. Normally, she was the picture of calm, but at the moment, she was tremendously agitated.

  “Dr. Dkany,” Cosimia declare. “You must come quickly.”

  Figuring there must have been an accident in the lab, Katla rose and came around her desk. Only then did she notice several red splotches on the front of Cosimia’s smock.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing.

  “Blood,” the younger woman said.

  “You’ve hurt yourself?” Katla said, looking for signs of a wound.

  “No. I was taking residue down to the incinerator. I found…” Cosimia stopped.

  “You found what?”

  “Please come see,” Cosimia said, grabbing hold of Katla’s arm. “I hope I am mistaken. Please let me be mistaken. Please, please, please.”

  Katla let herself be pulled out into the hall and over to the elevator. Extricating her arm, she smiled and said, “You need to compose yourself.”

  “But it might be like you told us,” Cosimia said, and there was no mistaking the fear in her eyes. “At New Meridian and then at Wellsville.”

  “What are you…?” Katla said, and now it was her turn to stop as the other’s meaning hit home.

  The elevator door opened and Cosimia entered. “Please. We must hurry. If I am right, you will know, and we can alert the troopers.”

  Again, Katla let herself be pulled. Horrific images of the terrors she endured at the other colonies flooded through her. She was barely aware of the elevator stopping and the door pinging open.

  “Dr. Dkany? Are you all right?”

  Taking a deep breath, Katla nodded and followed Cosimia down the corridor. At the far end, the door to the facility’s incinerator was wide open.

  “Wait,” Cosimia said, halting. “I closed that.”

  “Maybe someone else is burning something,” Katla suggested.

  “No. You don’t understand. They wouldn’t. Come.” The younger woman hurried on.

  A feeling of dread welled up, a feeling so potent, so strong, Katla had to will her feet to move. She was right behind Cosimia when they reached the doorway.

  Cosimia moved aside.

  A gigantic barrel with a keypad for access filled most of the room. Above the barrel were the large pipes that funneled the smoke into a complicated filtration system designed to remove pollutants. Other pipes were part of a sprinkler system to be used in the event the furnace should somehow overheat.

  Katla was more interested in the red smear that ran from just under the keypad to a hatch on top of a water pipe.

  That hatch was open.

  “God, no,” Katla breathed.

  “Am I right?” Cosimia said.

  The answer came in the literal form of a reddish-pink creature that suddenly scrabbled up out of the hatch.

  20

  Captain Archard Rahn had miscalculated, badly. Martians were still coming out of the hole in the tunnel on the other side of the slug, which lay in large chunks and pieces in a spreading pool of its bizarre purple blood. The side tunnel was quickly filling with the things. It wouldn’t be long before the creatures spilled into the main one.

  Backpedaling, Archard keyed his commlink. “Retreat!” he barked.

  “Sir?” Lieutenant Burroughs said. She and the others were waiting, single-file, their ICW’s pressed to their shoulders.

  “If I’m not making myself clear,” Archard said, and raised his voice several notches, “Run like hell!”

  United Nations Interplanetary Command troopers were some of the best-trained on Earth. They were much like the U.S. Marines of olden days, who earned a reputation the hard way for being some of the toughest mother’s sons and daughters on the planet.

  Ingrained into them was that when an officer gave an order, a trooper snapped to. Consequently, all five ops troopers turned and sprinted as if their lives depended on it.

  “If you don’t mind, sir,” Lieutenant Burroughs asked as they fled, “what are we running from?”

  “What else, Lieutenant?” Archard said, glancing over his shoulder. “Our mission is FUBAR’ed if we don’t get of sight, and I mean now.”

  Troopers on Mars were required to exercise daily, and to stick to a high intake regimen of multivitamins and minerals. No exceptions. If they didn’t, they lost their muscle tone, and their reflexes suffered. That wasn’t all. Osteoporosis, adverse effects on the circulatory system, as well as chronic constipation and the formation of kidney stones, were endemic if the regimen wasn’t followed.

  Their peak fitness, and Mars’ lesser gravity, enabled Archard and the others to run faster and farther than they ever could back on terra firma. Which proved fortuitous, because when Archard looked back a second time, the thing he feared had come to pass.

  Martians had emerged into the main tunnel and were giving chase.

  “Run faster!” Archard bawled.

  There was a trick to running on Mars. Instead of pumping one’s legs in a burst of short steps, running was best accomplished in carefully controlled leaps and bounds. With practice, troopers could seemingly skim the ground, their feet barely touching.

  Archard skimmed for all he was worth. His motion sensors told him the Martians weren’t gaining, which was strange. The creatures were ungodly quick and could outrun a human with ease. It suggested they were holding back for some reason. A reason he was sure he wouldn’t like.

  “How far do we go, sir?” Sergeant Kline asked from the front of the line.

  “All the way out if we have to,” Archard replied. Switching his helmet mic to external and then from multidirectional to unidirectional, Archard clearly picked up the scrabbling of the Martians. From the sounds, a great many were in pursuit.

  “Sir,” Lieutenant Burroughs broke in. “Shouldn’t you and I try to delay them?”

  “Indeed we should,” Archard agreed. “When I say to.” He waited until they negotiated a series of bends and were flying down a straight stretch. At the midway point he called out, “Here!” and stopped.

  They turned and stood shoulder-to-shoulder. The others kept going.

  “Frags,” Archard said.

  “You got it,” Burroughs responded.

  Archard’s holo display gave him the exact distance to the last bend. “Range, thirty-five meters.”

  “Setting detonation at thirty-five.”

  Their spider-like limbs flying, Martians clattered into view. The rat-tat-tat of their bony legs on the rock walls and ceiling was like the beating of so many hammers. They were so packed together, they jostled one another in their eagerness to reach their quarry.

  “Now!” Archard said, and let fly. He barely heard the thrump of the launcher but he definitely felt the kick of the stock.

  Lieutenant Burroughs fired her own grenade.

  “Down!” Archard cried, and flung himself flat. The kill radius was fifteen meters but he wasn’t taking any chances. Shrapnel had been known to ricochet.

  Burroughs threw herself down next to him, her forearms cushioning her face.

  Almost too late, Archard remembered to mute the volume on his helmet. As it was, the twin blasts were so loud, pain lanced his ears.

  The explosions shredded the leading Martians and reduced many behind them to shattered husks.

  Archard was on his feet before the sounds died. Burroughs was already up, and together they spun and continued their race for life. Archard knew the creatures wouldn’t give up. His team would have to make a stand, and the best place for that was outside.

  A bright oval of marked the end of the tunnel. The others---Sergeant Kline, and Privates Everett, Keller and Stratton, had stopped and were looking back.

  “Defensive formation!” Archard commanded. “Cover us as we come out.”

  He took another glance back. The Martians were further behind but coming relentlessly on.

  Archard was starting to breathe heavily
when he burst into the pale sunlight. The others had formed into a half-circle facing the tunnel. He and Burroughs were quick to join them. “Frag grenades,” he called out. He was thinking that maybe they could bring the tunnel down on top of the Martians. It would put an end to their mission but they could always try again later.

  “Sir!” Private Everett suddenly hollered. “Behind us.”

  Archard looked. His RAM was twenty meters away, and near it, the Thunderbolt. Beyond was a low rise, and flowing over it a living tide of Martians.

  21

  Not again! Dr. Katla Dkany’s mind screamed as another of the crab-like Martians scrambled out of the hatch. She had lived through the fall of two colonies, had seen ghastly atrocities that teetered her mind on the brink of sanity, including people having their arms and legs and heads ripped off, and now, despite the precautions taken by the third colony’s leaders, it was about to happen all over again.

  Whirling, Katla pushed Cosimia. “Run!” she screamed.

  The Greek chemist needed no urging. On wings of fear she flew from the incinerator room, Katla close behind.

  Too late, Katla thought to close the incinerator door. Not that it would stop the Martians for long.

  Breathless, they reached the elevator. The indicator panel revealed it was on an upper floor, and climbing.

  “We can’t wait,” Katla said, and dashed to the stairwell. The door resisted. For a few harrowing moments, she feared it was locked or jammed. She put her shoulder to it and strained, and almost yipped for joy when it opened. “Follow me!”

  Their feet pattered noisily as they climbed.

  Katla kept glancing down, expecting at any second that the Martians would appear. Strangely, they didn’t. She and Cosimia gained the next floor safely, and kept going.

  “Dr. Dkany?” Cosimia said.

  “We need to warn everyone,” Katla puffed. The main office on the ground floor was their best bet. She would use the intercom and alert every lab and office in the Science Center. A mass evacuation was called for.

  When they reached the landing, Katla jerked the door wide and flew toward the office, shoving people who were in her way. “Run!” she cried. “Vacate the building! The Martians are here!”

  Amazingly, few heeded her. Most looked perplexed, as if they thought she couldn’t be serious.

  “Tell them!” Katla shouted at Cosimia. She rounded a column, avoided an artificial fern, and collided with a broad figure with a bulbous nose who was just coming out of the office. The impact knocked her back a couple of steps and she almost lost her balance.

  “Dr. Dkany? What in the world?”

  Katla realized she had barreled into the head of the Science Center. “Dr. Huffington!” she gasped. “The Martians!”

  “What about them?” Huffington said. In his late forties, he sported greying sideburns and a Van Dyke. He was wearing a suit and had a briefcase in his left hand.

  “They’re here!” Rushing to him and placing her hands on his chest, she said, “You have to warn everyone!”

  “They’re where?” Huffington said.

  “Here!” Katla pointed at the floor. “In this very building. Down in the incinerator room.”

  “What’s that? Are you joking?”

  Incredulous that he would think she was making it up, Katla gripped his shirt and shook him. “Aren’t you listening? The Martians are in Bradbury! We have to tell everyone. We have to inform the U.N.I.C.”

  “Hold on,” Huffington said. He glanced at passers-by who had stopped to listen, gripped her by the wrist, and ushered her into the office.

  Katla didn’t resist. “Get on the horn. Alert everyone before it’s too late.”

  “Hold on,” Huffington said again. “Start at the beginning. You say there are Martians in the incinerator room? What would they be doing there?”

  Angry now, Katla wrenched her hand loose. “Don’t you get it? They’ve found a way into the colony. Underground, just like at New Meridian and Wellsville.”

  “But the governor has taken steps,” Huffington said with aggravating calm. “Installed motion sensors and cameras that constantly monitored. There’s been no sign of anything unusual.”

  Katla could have slugged him. “Damn it. Are you calling me a liar?”

  “No,” Huffington said, although his tone suggested he still didn’t entirely believe her. “Look. General Augusto has landed and his troops are entering the domes. I’ll put a call through and ask him to send soldiers to investigate. How does that sound?”

  “It’s a start,” Katla said. But her gut told her it was nowhere near enough.

  22

  KLL-12 felt his membranes vibrate as he banked to gain a panoramic view of a cavern so immense, its sides were lost in the distance. Immense, too, was the Martian metropolis that nearly filled it, an underground city that could be summed up by saying it was “otherworldly.” To put it mildly.

  The Martian buildings---a better word might be structures---consisted of a jumbled array of spires and spheres, obelisks and triangles, pentagons and octagons, as well as other designs that could only be called abstract. The structures covered every square meter of available space, every shelf and outcropping and mesa and cliff top. All of which were linked by walkways and spans and ramps and avenues, some arching high, others curling low, and crisscrossing over and under each other in no perceivable pattern. The structures and the thoroughfares alike were composed of basalt.

  KLL-12 had been briefed on what to expect prior to leaving Earth, thanks to Captain Archard Rahn’s intel, but the spectacle still dazzled him.

  Everywhere, there were Martians. Thousands upon thousands, of various forms and hues, going about their routines as humans in any city on Earth would so. Most were the small reddish variety, the crabs. Mixed among them, conspicuous by their size, were the huge blue warriors. Also conspicuous were far fewer green and brown.

  Even with his genetically enhanced eyesight, KLL-12 saw no sign of a yellow one.

  KLL-13 veered over to fly alongside him. “I don’t see any leaders. How will we find a yellow critter in all of that?”

  “Critter?” KLL-12 said.

  “A human colloquialism. I like it. It fits.”

  “If you say so.” KLL-12 couldn’t care less. “We’ll have to keep looking until we spot one.”

  “We don’t have forever,” KLL-13 said. “We’re bound to be noticed sooner or later.”

  Sooner, it turned out. A red crab on an archway raised its eye stalks in their direction, and within moments, every Martians within sight stopped in their tracks and did the same.

  “They know we’re here,” KLL-13 needlessly said.

  “Then let’s get to it.”

  KLL-12 swooped toward an edifice taller and more imposing than the rest on the theory that Martian leaders, like their Earth counterparts, enjoyed the trappings that came with power and prestige.

  KLL-13 was scanning the space above them. “The flyers haven’t caught up yet.”

  “Let’s try to be gone by the time they do.”

  Gliding over the edifice, KLL-12 circled.

  “What’s your plan?” KLL-13 said. “Barge on in and grab the first yellow crustoid we come across?”

  “Unless you have a better plan.”

  “I was kidding.”

  Below them, a giant blue warrior, the caste that resembled lobsters, used its powerful grippers to tear a piece of basalt from the causeway. Rearing onto its hind legs, it threw the basalt with incredible force but the piece fell short.

  “We have a decision to make,” KLL-12 said.

  “We do?”

  “Stay or leave.”

  “What are you talking about? We haven’t completed our mission.”

  Fully aware that every second counted, KLL-12 banked and said, “Maybe we weren’t intended to.”

  “You’re making no sense.”

  “Look at all of them,” KLL-12 said, with a nod at the alien metropolis. “We can’t defeat that
many. Our makers know that. Which means in their eyes we’re expendable.”

  “All soldiers are,” KLL-13 said. “You’re quibbling. This is a snatch and grab. In and out. If we’re killed, so be it.” She gestured at the edifice. “Now quit wasting time.”

  “I don’t trust our makers,” KLL-12 said.

  “You’ve made that tediously apparent,” KLL-13 said. “But it’s irrelevant. We can’t break our conditioning. We have to follow orders whether we like them or not. So enough of this.” With that, she tucked her membranes and dived.

  As much as he would rather leave, KLL-12 did likewise. She was right. He had no choice. He had been given an order and he must obey. He must capture a yellow Martian or perish trying.

  The tall structure bristled with Martians. More were rushing to the rooftop and terraces from within. Many waved their grippers as if in defiance, or maybe they were eager to close and do battle.

  On the highest terrace were a half a dozen red crabs. KLL-13---boldly, brazenly, and typical of her---landed in their midst. They swarmed her, and for a few heartbeats, KLL-12 thought she would be overwhelmed. But no. With sweeps of her powerful arms, she cast half aside. One lunged at her face and she seized it by its forelimbs and tore the limbs off. Using them like clubs, she struck a second and a third, caving their carapaces.

  By then, KLL-12 was at her side. He smashed a creature that that leaped at KLL-13’s back, drove his foot into another. Then, lifting a heavy slab of basalt that evidently served as the Martian equivalent of a bench, he reduced the last two to pulp.

  Nearby, a dark entryway beckoned.

  “Come on, big boy!” KLL-13 squealed and gained the entry in two bounds.

  “Wait for me,” KLL-12 said. By rights, he should be in front, since he was senior, but she hurtled on in. Annoyed, he hastened to catch up, only to come on a junction with three branching tunnels. He chose the one that slanted down and raced at full speed.

  His subcutaneous commlink blared.

  “I’ve found a yellow critter! I’m in a large chamber! Hurry! There are a lot of Martians!”