SNAFU: Future Warfare

Under Calliope’s Skin Alan Baxter

Andy Collins flicked his eyes to operate his virtual HUD. An adrenaline suppressant dumped into his bloodstream along with a tweak of endorphin as the Alliance Battlecruiser Belvedere fell out of jump with a bone-deep whine. He hated the inertia of re-entering real space.

“Take a moment to message your loved ones,” Capstan barked. “We drop in three minutes.”

The massive Lieutenant stomped from one end of the dropship to the other, enhanced musculature rippling under his form-fitting battlesuit. He paused at each team member to stare hard into their eyes, his virtual HUD relaying reams of data — pulse rate, blood pressure, serotonin levels, a hundred other markers. You couldn’t hide a thing from a party Lieutenant. When he reached Collins, Capstan stared a moment longer.

“You okay, buttercup?” he asked, almost a whisper. His eyes were mean and his mouth pressed into a flat line as he waited for a response.

Collins watched the golden flicker across Capstan’s eyeballs, wondered just what data he was reading. “Fine,” he said, pleased his voice was strong. “You know I hate interstellar.”

Capstan nodded once, paused to read another roll of information. His deep forehead relaxed under a mat of salt and pepper hair shaved close. “Just as well you’re such a good soldier. Makes up for your flaws.”

He stalked away before Collins could respond, but Collins allowed himself a smile. Capstan always acted the hardass, but he was a father to the whole squad. Though no one would ever say so to his face. He might love them all, but he’d kick seven shades out of anyone who suggested he had emotions.

“We green, Daisy?” Capstan called out.

“Across the board.” The dropship AI’s voice was a soft, velvety feminine.

Capstan turned at the head of the bay and scanned the two rows of marines facing each other, four along one side, three the other.

“We are eight of the best,” he said, smiling to reveal the chromed shine of replacement teeth. He could bite through steel with those and his jaw augments. “In fact, we are the best eight and that’s why we get sent out to these asshole shitheaps on the edge to do things no other fool would do. But this one is pretty routine, right?”

Laughter rippled around the bay and Capstan grinned wider.

“Fuck yeah, ain’t no such thing as routine if we’re involved. So here’s what we know, and it ain’t much.” He tapped at his wrist pad and a holographic cube sprang into life between the two rows of warriors. A small moon swelled into view, orbiting a massive gas giant. “This is Calliope,” Capstan said. “Fourth moon of the third planet in the Arteeria system. Distant scans revealed huge deposits of allerinium beneath the crust, and you don’t need me to tell you what lengths the Alliance will go to for interstellar jump fuel. So a remote unit was sent to build a habitat. Once the robots had finished, a scientific team of twenty specialists was sent in to survey. Results were good for about two months and then all communications ceased. This is the last transmission.”

He tapped his pad again and the three-dimensional map switched to a recorded video. A face leaned close to the camera, sweat running down the brow from soaked hair. The man’s mouth was stretched in a wide grimace and his teeth were stained.

“That blood in his mouth?” Aiko Hayashi asked, her eyes narrowed.

“Looks like it,” Tanveer Malik said. He glanced at Hayashi with a smile. “But is it his or someone else’s?”

She flicked him a sour look, shook her head. Collins smirked. Those two were about due their occasional hook-up. It was a good tension diffuser that otherwise saw them fighting.

The man continued to stare and grin at the camera.

“He gonna say anything?” Collins asked.

Capstan shut off the image. “Nope. He stands there like that, not moving, not even fucking blinking, for three hours and fourteen minutes.”

“The fuck?” Kirsten Watts said quietly.

“The transmission ends with a power drop,” the Lieutenant continued. “Remote connections confirm the power was only out for a few minutes. As far as anyone can tell, the whole operation is still green. Except now there’s no response to hails and no cameras anywhere inside the station are working.”

“So they’re sending us in,” Charlie Finlay said.

Capstan pointed one finger at the tall, burly marine. “That’s right.”

Finlay grinned, his teeth like Capstan’s, even brighter against sun-tanned skin. Wisps of blond hair poked from under the front edge of his helmet, an affectation that never failed to annoy Collins. “Cool,” Finlay said in a low growl.

Collins scanned his squad mates, all buzzing with the excitement of a job about to start. He buzzed along with them, always keen for action, though the image of that sweating, staring guy with blood on his teeth gave him pause. But what threat were scientists to this team?

Red lights flashed and a siren wailed. “Ten seconds,” Daisy said calmly.

“Here we go, my flowers!” Capstan shouted as he jogged to his rack and strapped in.

The dropship detached and fell for Calliope. The display up front showed the battlecruiser disappearing away from them, then space folded around it as it jumped away to sit far from the gravitational pull of the system and await the hail to pick them up again. Collins dumped a little pick-me-up into his blood as Daisy guided them in.

“Locked and docked,” Daisy said. “Pressures equalised. You’re good to go.”

“Keep the engines ticking,” Capstan said. “In case we need to facilitate a quick exit.”

“I’ll be ready,” the dropship replied.

The Lieutenant moved to the hatch. “Form up.”

The squad unbuckled and arranged themselves. Capstan took the lead, flanked by Hayashi and Finlay. Behind them were Alex Lau and Malik, followed by Henna Sterns and Collins. Watts, the medic, brought up the rear.

“All comms to closed group,” Capstan said. “Inter-squad hails only, and keep those to a minimum. Rebreathers on.”

Full face masks slipped from their helmets and joined seamlessly to their battlesuits. As soon as the toughened flexiglass was down, Collins felt the familiar tightening of his fatigues, every tiny gap closing, contained tight against even the hint of microbial attack. The flex-armour plates in the super-tough fabric swelled and shifted into place, a form-fitting carapace with micro-gyro strength and movement assistance. He felt safe in the body-hugging outfit, the familiar weight of his pack, ammo and weapons pressing down on him, the air in his helmet lightly scented with ocean salt as it passed through the suit’s filtration system.

“Move out!” Capstan barked.

The hatch irised open and they jogged into the docking corridor of the scientific station. Lights were on, everything appeared normal at first glance.

“Check the map,” Capstan said, and floor plans of the station appeared to each of them at a virtual distance of about thirty centimetres along with the rest of their HUD data. Each squad member was marked by name and a glowing icon. “I’m taking Hayashi and Finlay to the location of the last transmission, which is the engineering and mech bay. At the end is a vehicle bay for EVAC, so we’ll account for assets there too.” He highlighted the area off to one side of the sprawling habitat.

“Big fucking place for twenty scientists,” Lau said.

“They intended it to house a lot more once mining commenced,” Capstan said. “So it’s going to take a while to cover everything.” He zoomed out. “Malik, Lau, you two head north and start checking each of the sleeping quarters and lounges.” He blipped a collection of about two dozen rooms along the northern edge of the centre. “Report as you go. Then work your way back towards the Command and Control centre, where we’ll all regroup.” A central room blinked.

“Hai,” Lau said and peeled off, Malik jogging alongside.

“Sterns, Collins and Watts, you three need to go west and search the labs.” A collection of six large rooms flashed three times.

Without waiting for a reply, Capstan hustled away to the right, with Hayashi and Finlay on his heels. Collins turned to his companions. “Ladies, after you.” He gestured to his left.

Watts laughed. “Fuck you, soldier.”

“I’ll take point,” Sterns said. “You two can enjoy my ass as we go.”

Collins grinned. He most certainly would. And so would Watts for that matter. Though bonds throughout their squad were tighter than family, it was Henna who touched him most deeply, and he knew he was not alone. Sterns was a little bit mother and a little bit lover to most of them. And probably the most deadly when shit went down.

Watts nudged him with her rifle butt. “Wipe the grin off and focus, dickwad.”

Collins winked at her. “I’ll bring up the rear.”

“Sure you will.”

They moved forward, heavy assault rifles cradled ready, scanning as they went.

“It’s too quiet,” Sterns said.

“We know they’re here somewhere,” Collins said.

The corridor led to a large double door that hissed open as they approached. A lab lay beyond, all manner of survey equipment and data stations. Lights flashed, information rolled through holo-displays, everything looked normal. Except for the lack of surveyors. Collins approached one desk and leaned over to look at a coffee mug, still half full with black liquid. He blinked up his helmet scanner and it confirmed filter coffee, now long cold.

Watts gestured to a series of large tanks along one side. “What the fuck are they doing in a mining survey station?”

“What are they?” Collins asked. Pale blue liquid rippled in each one, shimmering under bright lights embedded in the top. Each could easily fit three large men.

“Uterotanks,” Watts said, eyebrows knitted. When the others gave her blank looks, she said, “Breeding tanks.”

“For what?”

The medic shrugged. “No idea. But I’ve never seen them that big before.”

“Well, doesn’t that just bode all kinds of good,” Sterns said. “Let’s spread out, search the room.”

They moved apart, helmet scanners processing reams of data as they let their eyes rove for anything that might be a clue.

“Here,” Watts said. She pointed with the barrel of her weapon.

A chair was pushed out from under a desk, the seat and the floor around it smeared with blood. Scarlet drops sprayed across the desk and holo emitters. Watts stood back, hands raised as though framing up a photograph. They waited while she used her scans, then she said, “Best guess is a heavy blow to the back of the head, then another across the face.” She mimed the actions, indicating the direction of blood spatter. “The victim fell here and was dragged a short way.” The smears ended only a metre or so from the desk.

“Then what?” Sterns asked.

Watts shrugged.

“Picked up and carried off?” Collins suggested, his stomach tight.

“Maybe,” Watts said. “But there’s no more blood. Someone doesn’t just stop bleeding when they’re carried.”

“Maybe they got wrapped up.”

“Again here,” Sterns said from across the room.

A similar pattern covered more equipment.

“When I was growing up,” Sterns said, “my father used to tell this story about the draugen. It was an old-fashioned monster story, you know, a kind of Norwegian ghost or bogeyman. Bullshit designed to scare us. He used to say, ‘Henna, if you don’t behave, the draugen will come to get you!’ I always thought that was an asshole way to make your kids do the right thing.”

Collins had seen Henna take out an enemy squad single-handed while he was close to bleeding out. Then she had carried him back in. But in that moment he felt strangely protective of her.

“That’s fucked up,” Watts agreed. “But what’s your point.”

Sterns turned to face them with a grin. “I’m thinking maybe the bogeyman lives on Calliope, not Norway.”

Collins was about to suggest they move on to the next lab when Sterns suddenly arched forward. A hole twenty centimetres across appeared in her chest, blood spraying forward as her ribs angled out like reaching bony fingers. She looked down in surprise, uttering a quiet, “Oh.” The desk behind her was clearly visible through the hole, then she collapsed.

“The fuck?” Watts screamed, rushing over.

“Scan the fucking room!” Collins shouted. Not Henna. No, no, no, not Henna!

He crouched, moved in a circle looking for the source of the attack, but the lab was unchanged. There had been no muzzle flash, no sound. He quickly rewound the footage recorded in his HUD and watched again, playing close attention to Sterns. Nothing anywhere around her, then she launched forward, her chest exploded. Oh. She dropped.

Watts crouched beside the fallen marine shaking her head. “Dead before she hit the ground. Fuck. Henna!” As she rose to face Collins, she staggered to one side, then screamed as her left arm fell, sheared off at the shoulder. She sat down hard, blood arcing from the gaping wound. She scrambled for a patch can and frantically sprayed fast-expanding foam across the injury.

Collins began cycling through light bands. He swept his gaze left and right, looking through infra-red, microwave, gamma, ultraviolet, around and around, his vision a kaleidoscope of changing images, looking for anything that might be a source of the attack. Then movement. Subtle, almost immediately ceased. Without giving himself away, moving only his eyes, he looked back into the corner of the lab. Under the arm of some strange mechanism like a giant dentist’s light, something stood stock still. Visible only in ultraviolet, it was a shape made of mirrors, quicksilver. No discernible features or details.

Collins raised his weapon and it came directly for him. Bigger than a man, it seemed to project itself forward on four pounding legs that thrust vertically up and down against the floor without a sound. Four more upper limbs stretched out, reaching for him, each ending in a long hand of three blade-like fingers. Its head was a flat wedge, arrowing forward.

Collins fired, his finger grinding against the trigger on full auto. The weapon barked deafening projectile death and gouts of fire, ripping into the creature. It staggered back, the wedge head splitting open as though it were screaming in agony, but still it made no sound. With less than five meters between them, Collins thumbed a mini-grenade from the barrel-mounted launcher and it exploded against the thing’s torso, threw it back into the corner where it lay still. Collins staggered under the shockwave, but kept his feet.

“Lieutenant, everyone, we have aliens here!” he yelled over a squad-wide waveband. “Use ultraviolet!”

There was no reply. No blips marked their positions on HUD. He realised he hadn’t seen their blips for a while. How long?

“Lieutenant?” Nothing. “Daisy?” Nothing. “Fuck.” Collins hurried over to Watts, turning slow circles as he went, scanning everywhere.

“Make sure it’s dead!” Watts said, waving him towards the creature he’d shot. Her face was pale and sweaty behind her visor, the slash of freckles across her nose standing out clearer than ever, but her shoulder was sealed up in med-foam. “I’m dumping painkillers like a junkie,” she said. “I’m okay for now.”

Collins nodded once. His eye fell on Sterns and he tore his gaze away, stifling a sob of grief and fury equally combined. Weapon trained on the inert thing in the corner, he approached cautiously. It seemed to flicker slightly, the mirrored body switching between invisibility and a dark, shining greenblack shell. “Cloaking device?” Collins whispered, as much to himself as to Watts. “And a sound suppressor?”

The thing’s chitinous exoskeleton was revealed in the flickers to be split in several places by his bullets, a wider rent in the centre of its torso where the mini-grenade had exploded. Thick, black fluid leaked everywhere, presumably its equivalent of blood. The bladed fingers were extensions of its carapace, one or two of them spastically extending and retracting, a smaller many-tentacled hand-like appendage quivered under the shifting knives. It twitched and shivered, seeming to swell and collapse, its form fluid. It had no face to recognise, but a wide mouth in its wedge of a head and a thin, glistening line around the upper ridge that might have been some kind of visual organ.

It reached up weakly, blades flicking forward. Collins skipped back. Those things had gone right through Watts’ armour and her shoulder. Right through Henna’s body. He stepped back in, pressed the muzzle of his rifle to the band of maybe-eye, and fired a burst into its head. It danced and writhed under his attack and fell still. The flickering ceased and it lay there, a dark, ugly, armoured thing.

“Fuck you,” he said and went back to Watts. He helped her up and she leaned on him heavily. “We can’t leave Henna.”

“We’ll come back for her,” Watts said. “The drugs are kicking in but I’ll need your help for a minute. We gotta regroup.”

“Stay on ultraviolet and be extra eyes for me.”

She threw her arm over his shoulder and brandished her weapon. “I can still fire one-handed.”

Collins glanced at the rifle so close to his head, nodded. “Just keep the muzzle up.”

“Took my fucking arm,” she said, voice low with incredulity. “Took Henna!”

“They’ll build you a new arm once we get out. And everything here will die in Henna’s name!”

He looked over at Sterns laying in a widening pool of blood as he led Watts away. “We’ll avenge her,” he said through gritted teeth, pushing away the emotion of the loss. He loved Sterns. They all did. She was the best of them.

“Three o’clock!” Watts yelled. She grunted as she swung her rifle up one-handed and triggered short, controlled bursts.

Collins winced against the volume of her rounds, kept his left arm around her waist to keep them moving, and matched her method with his right, as three mirror-bright shapes raced into the room from the lab next door. He pumped mini-grenades, drove them back. One broke right and tried to get behind them so he swung Watts and they danced a pirouetting retreat, raking fire and grenades as they went, ears ringing with the ordnance in the confined space. Smoke and light filled the room, equipment shards rained down. Lights blew out and sparks fell like bright orange snow.

They stumbled into the corridor and Collins spotted an emergency lock down beside the door and kicked it. His heel smashed through the glass covering and drove into the large button. Red lights flashed around the doorframe and a thick blast shield dropped as the double doors whooshed shut. Metallic thuds rang out as several masses hit the other side. The same three, unstopped by their bullets and grenades, or a new wave he couldn’t know. And he didn’t have time to care.

“Let’s hope that holds them for now.”

“There are other ways around,” Watts said breathlessly.

“Let’s just get to the C and C.”

They ran for the Command and Control Centre, Collins calling for Capstan and Daisy the whole way, but comms remained dead. As the C and C drew within about fifty metres on their HUD map Capstan’s voice boomed out. “…asses in here now, we’re locking down in thirty seconds.”

“We’re ten seconds away,” Collins yelled.

Something smashed and clattered behind them, then a symphonic rain of shattered glass. Watts tipped her weapon upside down on her right shoulder, let loose random short bursts, strafing left and right. Collins glanced back to see two glimmering masses, wider and lower than before, galloping up behind them, less than ten metres away.

The command centre came up on their left and he threw Watts forward. “Run!”

Spinning in place, he plucked a concussion shield from his belt and slammed it into the ground only a couple of metres from his feet, way too close for safety. As it pulsed into life, filling the corridor, he was lifted and thrown back, vision crossing like he’d been punched in the jaw. The creatures bounced back the other way.

Collins crashed hard against the C and C doorframe and fell inside. Capstan was at a control desk and punched a console. Heavy blast doors slammed closed and Collins lay face down on the hard floor, gasping. He looked up to see Capstan spare one narrow-eyed second for Watts’ foamed shoulder stump, then return his attention to the console.

Hayashi stood beside the Lieutenant, Finlay nowhere to be seen. Of the four doorways leading into the C and C, only one remained open.

“Hey Aiko,” Collins said, knowing better than to talk to Capstan at this point. “Finlay?”

She sniffed, shook her head almost imperceptibly. “He’s in about six pieces back there. He just fucking split apart right in front of us. Henna?”

“Same thing.”

“Fuck me, man.” Hayashi looked back towards Watts. “Looks like you got too close as well.”

“Looks like I got lucky,” Watts said. “Finlay and Sterns! Shit. We’ve all been through too much together to lose two in a day. This ain’t fair.”

“When is it ever fair?” Capstan said. “And brace yourselves, because we’re still two more down. Get over here and cover this door.”

The four of them stood in a line in front of the only opening, weapons levelled. A corridor led away for about thirty metres before ending in another closed double door. Several rooms to either side were also shut. Watts insisted she was fine but Collins scanned her vitals, saw that she was surviving on drugs and grim determination. She badly needed to go under and set reknitters to work.

“Malik, Lau, respond!” Capstan said. The only answer was static hiss. “Seems like all comms are suppressed beyond about fifty metres. I can’t tell how. Internal interference.”

“They have to be coming, right?” Collins said.

Capstan gestured with his weapon. “Speculating is for fucking stock brokers. Watch and respond.”

“Did you see them?” Collins asked.

Hayashi nodded. “Powerful cloaks, light and sound. Only UV works.”

“You think the cloaks are tech or biological.”

“Who knows.”

“What do you think they are?”

She turned cold eyes to him for a moment. “Death.”

Collins swallowed. He’d seen fear in Aiko’s eyes and that made his stomach icy. He’d never seen her afraid of anything, didn’t think she could be afraid. He dialled a cocktail into his bloodstream to calm his nerves, sharpen his senses, boost his muscles. Limits and safe doses be damned, he needed every advantage he could get.

“…incoming, Lieutenant! Fucking loads of them!” Lau’s voice burst into their comms. “Can you fucking hear me?”

“Roger, Lau, we hear you. Please repeat.”

“I said there are invisible bastards coming after us, can only see ‘em on UV. We’ll need some heavy cover fire!”

“Keep coming,” Capstan said calmly. “I’ve tagged the door on your map. You both run straight for it and do not veer left or right. We’ll fire around you. Collins, Hayashi, either side of the corridor, halfway up.”

“Right.”

Collins ran, Hayashi right beside him, and they dropped into alcoves for cover. Bursts of gunfire and explosions echoed along with Lau’s voice screaming obscenities and promises of death and dismemberment, muffled by the double doors ahead. Lau and Malik’s blips pinged onto the HUDs, closing rapidly.

“Here we go,” Capstan said, and triggered the far doors to open.

Sound burst into full volume, Lau pumping bullets and mini-grenades blindly back over his shoulder as he ran, dragging the inert form of Malik with one hand. Blood smeared the floor where Malik passed.

Collins and Hayashi began setting blasts of cover fire. They both pulled larger explosives from their webbing and lobbed bombs over Lau’s head. The corridor behind exploded into fire and smoke and resonating metallic screeches, and then Lau was through. Capstan slammed the far doors shut.

As booming reverberated from the other side, Collins and Hayashi dragged Lau and Malik into the C and C and Capstan sealed those doors too.

“Locking down!” he yelled.

A siren bleated, red lights flashed and blast shields slammed over the last portal. The siren stopped and everything sank into a submarine silence, even the compressors fell quiet as air recyc shut off. After a second or two, a new hum arose as the C and C went into defence mode, recycling its own air, providing all life support from inside the room, sealing itself off completely from the rest of the habitat.

Watts hurried over to Malik’s prone form and crouched, wincing in pain, close to unconsciousness. She sat immediately back on her heels, deflated. Collins knew the others were seeing what he saw in his HUD. Malik’s life signs were flat.

Lau put both hands on his head and turned in a slow circle. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He stopped suddenly, looked around. “Henna? Charlie?”

Watts shook her head.

“Fuuuuck!”

Watts tipped Malik half over to reveal his back open from right shoulder to left buttock. Stark white knobs of spine and a glistening half-orb of kidney showed through the blood and sliced flesh. With a grunt, almost a sob, she let him fall back.

Capstan crouched beside her. “How bad is it?”

She glanced at the mass of hardened foam covering her left shoulder. “Took it clean off. Got it covered pretty quick and I‘m up to the eyeballs with antibiotics and painkillers.”

“Okay. I want you to lie over there, put yourself under to reknit. We’re gonna need to fight our way back to Daisy and I need you fit if not whole.”

“If I go under, I’m out for half an hour.”

“I know how it fucking works, soldier. We’re safe in here. Go!” He turned to gaze at each of the survivors. “This room is in full bio-chem lock down and shielded. Let’s take stock.”

They let their masks up and removed helmets, stretched stiff necks. Capstan turned back to Watts. “Go!”

She ran her remaining hand through her short red hair and nodded, moved to lay down under a desk unit. Collins went with her, made sure she was comfortable.

“I’ll monitor,” he said.

She smiled. “Hold the fort. I’ll be back in thirty.”

“No problem. We got this.” He put a hand against her cheek, his dark skin a shadow against her paler than ever alabaster. “Fix up.”

He watched his HUD as she dialled in anaesthetic and her breathing settled to become deep and even. Nano reknitters in her blood, triggered awake by the anaesthetic release, immediately swarmed to any areas of hurt, rebuilding the flesh, sealing off wounds. Similar microscopics in her fatigues would already be doing the same to reseal her in where the sleeve had been sliced away.

Collins stroked a hand over her sweat-soaked hair once, then stood. “She’s under,” he said.

Lau was crouched over Malik, his forehead pressed to the dead man’s brow. “I’m sorry, my brother,” he whispered. As he rose, his eyes were wet, but murder lived in them.

Capstan flicked the map to front and centre of their HUDs. “Here’s our way back to the dropship. Once Watts comes around, we go. Then we call in the cruiser, and flatten this shithole from orbit. Whatever those things are, they die here. We don’t.”

“Were there really loads of them?” Hayashi asked Lau.

He shrugged, mouth twisted in contrition. “Felt like it, but I don’t know. I took out two, saw at least three more.”

“You?” Capstan asked Collins.

“Took out one, and there were three after that. Hard to tell. Maybe two more. I think they were breeding the fuckers here.”

“What?”

“The labs. It’s not a mining operation.”

Capstan nodded, lips pursed. “So what? Not our concern now. There’s at least six to eight of the fuckers out there. Or maybe hundreds. And five of us. Doesn’t matter. One door, three corridors, and we’re back on the dropship and away, but we have to assume it’s going to be a hell of fight to get there. You got thirty minutes. Check your gear and ammo.”

Collins glanced at Watts, checked her vitals. They were already improving. Nano-reknit listed twenty six minutes to go. He reloaded his assault rifle and hers, double-checked his remaining grenades and other armaments. They were still well-equipped for a fight. To while away the time, he keyed up one of the consoles and started scanning through base logs.

“Incoming,” Hayashi said quietly.

Their HUDs showed five lifesigns moving towards the C and C.

“Those things never showed up on our sensors before,” Collins said. “Why now?”

“They’re not life as our gear knows it,” Hayashi said. “These must be something else.”

“Cameras across the base are still out,” Capstan said. “Sabotaged beyond repair. We’d need new circuit boards and bio-processors. Same with all the vehicles and base shuttles.”

The lifesigns reached the western blast doors and there were three quick, sharp bangs. Pause. Three more.

“They fucking knocking now?” Lau asked.

“We assumed the scientists were all dead,” Collins said. “But are they?”

Hayashi moved to the door. “What’s the code for the view pane?” she asked.

Collins keyed up internal security and a moment later said, “Eight seven one hash D.”

Hayashi tapped the code into a small pad on the door and a thirty centimetre square panel slid aside revealing a thick glass pane with a speaker grill below it. A small crowd of people outside slumped with relief.

“Please, let us in!” the front one said. His eyes were dark and haunted, his face blood-stained.

“How do we know you’re safe?” Hayashi asked.

The scientists kept looking frantically behind themselves. “Please!” the front man repeated. “Some of our people went mad, homicidal, but we managed to hide. We’re starving! We heard gunfire, knew rescue had finally arrived. Quickly, those monsters could be here even now. We can’t see them!”

“And the ones who went mad?”

The scientist shrugged. “No idea!”

Hayashi turned to Capstan who returned her gaze with hard eyes. He ran his tongue along his top lip.

He lifted his chin to Hayashi. “Weapons up,” he said quietly. Keeping his rifle level in one hand, he keyed the override with the other.

The door hissed open and five people fell inside, faces almost melting with relief. The door whooshed shut quickly behind them and Hayashi closed the view pane. The lead man strode towards Capstan with both hands out as though he were coming in for a hug. Two more men followed close behind and two women hung back.

“You’re in charge?” the first asked. “Thank you! Thank you so much.”

Capstan backed up, took a two-handed grip on his weapon. “Stay back!”

The front scientist shot forward, preternaturally fast, and fell on Capstan like a rabid dog. The Lieutenant squeezed a quick burst of fire, but the scientist wrapped him up like an octopus even as exit wounds exploded from his back. The following two joined the first, inhumanly quick and strong, slamming the Lieutenant to the ground. Capstan’s weapon barked from inside the scrum and chunks of flesh and bone few out of the attackers, along with sprays of blood, but they continued their assault. Growling and hissing, snapping their teeth, hands rending in a blur.

Collins stepped forward and took line of sight to shoot without hitting Capstan and squeezed off three quick headshots. As each skull exploded, that body fell still.

Collins dragged the corpses off the Lieutenant, but the man stayed down, blood-stained and twitching. His throat was a ragged mess, blood pulsing out across the floor. One eye was gone, his left cheek torn away from lips to ear, bite marks all over his face, head and shoulders, right through bone, exposing muscle and brains.

He’d given as good as he’d got with his enhanced teeth. The attackers lay around him with chunks missing. Silica filaments striated their exposed bones, glistened in their wet, red tissue. It glittered in their spilled blood.

Collins pulled a med-foam can from his webbing and stood numb, staring. Where the hell did he even start? There was more injury than flesh across Capstan’s head, neck and shoulders. The Lieutenant gargled on his own blood, his remaining eye swivelled hectically in the socket. Collins sighed as Capstan’s signs all flickered to a flat line.

The C and C was strangely quiet. He turned to see Hayashi and Lau, each with a weapon levelled at the two remaining scientists.

“Look in UV,” Hayashi said.

The scientists stood as if frozen, not even blinking. Glass-like webbing criss-crossed their bodies like veins.

“Remember that last transmission?” Lau whispered.

“Poor bastards were already just puppets of those fuckers out there,” Hayashi said. “We should have looked with UV before we let them in. Stupid.”

Collins moved a little closer, weapon ready. Their eyes were as still as their bodies. “Fuck ‘em,” he said.

Hayashi and Lau fired simultaneously and the women slumped to the ground as their heads disintegrated.

“And then there were four,” Hayashi said quietly.

Collins checked the medic’s signs and was glad to see improvement rather than degradation. “Nineteen minutes until Watts is done.”

Lau sat and triggered a holo-display, began working through comms diagnostics, trying to raise Daisy. “We need her hardware!” he said to no one in particular.

Collins returned to the console he’d been studying and continued to read. Eventually he found some encrypted logs and set about cracking them. It didn’t take long with the military software on board his neural boost. “Motherfuckers.”

“What?” Lau asked.

“This breeding program has been active for over nine years,” Collins said, anger starting a hot flood in his gut. “According to this, surveys discovered previously unknown silicon-based lifeforms on this moon, most likely introduced hundreds of years ago.”

“How long? By who?”

“It doesn’t say. They live in warren-like structures in the first few metres of crust. Small, eight-limbed creatures that can reshape themselves and remould their exoskeleton. They naturally generate a tight energy field that interrupts light and sound waves, renders them silent and almost invisible.

“They were about the size of domestic cats, baseline intelligence roughly equivalent to a smart dog, no respiratory system to speak of, virtually no body heat, able to exist in vacuum and any temperature. They reshape their shells to carve through pretty much anything, including rock to make their homes, and consume silicate deposits in the crust to survive.”

Lau shook his head, stared at the floor. “Fuck me. But those things are bigger than cats!”

Collins read on silently for a few moments, flicked between reports. “The fucking idiots started genetically manipulating them. They codenamed it Project: Future Warfare, began enhancing size and strength. They wanted to breed these things into trained warriors, invisible fucking killing machines under Alliance control.”

“Shitheads!” Lau hissed.

“According to the most recent reports, they didn’t understand the brain biology properly and the creatures’ intelligence was exponentially enhanced along with size. They first began escaping confinement, then quickly developed a method to infect the humans and came back to gain control of the scientists. The last entry is from a Doctor Alice Orszulok. She planned to go and sabotage all the vehicles so the things couldn’t escape and then blow the place after transmitting this full report.”

“She was successful in the vehicle sabotage,” Lau said.

“They must have caught her before she did any more.”

“But her message got through,” Hayashi said.

They turned to her.

“What?” Collins asked.

“It’s why we’re here.”

“Why didn’t they warn us?” Collins asked. “Send more of us. We’ve got sentry cannons on the fucking dropship we could have deployed from the outset.”

“Future warfare, remember.” Hayashi shook her head, sighed.

“What?” Collins asked again.

“They wanted to watch us, see how their new soldiers perform. We’re fucking fodder. But I don’t think they realised the bastards had compromised all comms, base-wide and what we’re carrying. We can’t send a signal fifty metres, let alone back up to the Belvedere.”

Silence fell over the room like a cold fog.

Lau punched a console. “Motherfuckers.”

“When have we ever been anything but dispensable?” Hayashi said.

Collins caught a blip on another console and moved to check. It took him a moment to figure out what he was seeing. Then, “Hatches are opening and closing along the maintenance conduits. Several different locations, all leading towards the docking bay.”

“Those things would never fit,” Lau said. “People can barely squeeze along those fucking tubes.”

Hayashi laughed derisively. “Reshape themselves and remould their exoskeleton.”

“They’re heading for the dropship!” Collins shouted. “We think we’re hiding in here safe to regroup and they don’t give a fuck. They’re escaping.”

“What do we do?” Lau asked.

“We have to stop them,” Collins said.

Hayashi leaned back in her chair. “Why?”

“What?” Collins was starting to feel like an idiot, repeating the same word.

“They threw us to the fucking wolves. Or silicon shapechangers or whatever. So why do we care?”

“Two reasons,” Collins said, anger rising again. “One, we’re soldiers and we defend. Two, if they take our dropship, how the hell do we get home? You think Alliance will rescue us now we know this bullshit?”

Hayashi scowled.

Lau nodded. “He’s right.”

“Why are they in the conduits?” Collins asked.

Hayashi stood. “Because the only way to the docking bay is through here and we’ve sealed them out. They’re bypassing. Let’s go.” She tapped at the console Capstan had been using and the southern door hissed open.

“What about Watts?”

“She’s dead weight right now. We’ll stop those fuckers first, then come back for her.”

Collins downloaded the command codes to his neural implant. “Let’s go.”

The three of them resealed their suits and helmets and ran from the C and C, Collins remotely dropping the blast door behind them. Hang tight, Watts, he thought, then focussed all his attention on the imminent fight. Three corridors, two hundred metres, was all that stood between them and the dropship. He called out to the AI over comms. “Daisy, you hearing me?”

No response.

They ran on. Collins hailed Daisy again, still no response. They turned into the last corridor, maybe forty metres and one corner between them and the docking seal. “Daisy, you there?” Collins said.

“I’m here. I’m reading something in the conduits.”

“Prepare to defend yourself,” Collins said. “Deploy the sentry cann…”

The ground between them and the dock exploded upwards. UV clearly showed three glassy serpent-like creatures, three metres long, erupt up from the maintenance lines, tiny legs scrabbling at the broken floor. The squad skidded to a halt and backed up, firing controlled bursts, deafening in the confined space. As they pumped mini grenades, the creatures twisted and writhed like sentient smoke to evade the attacks. Bullets and explosions that did hit their targets had less effect than before.

“Their shells are flexible, must be thicker now!” Hayashi yelled. “They’re adapting to our abilities.”

“Marines, hit the deck,” Daisy said over comms.

The three of them didn’t pause, fell to their bellies. Three sentry cannons rolled around the corner and barked fifty-calibre destruction into the corridor. The sweeping fire ripped through the aliens and howled by just over the marine’s heads, tearing the walls to shreds. The creatures fell in several pieces to the ground and silence sank over them.

Lau whooped and rose to his knees. “Way to go, Daisy!”

“I’m compromised,” Daisy said in her calm, soft voice. “Get back to the C and C and lock down.”

Lau frowned. “What?”

The sentry cannons roared again and Lau burst into a spray of blood and body parts.

“They’ve accessed my overrides from outside,” Daisy said. “They’re on the moon surface and gaining entry to me. I have no…” She fell silent.

“This was all a fucking distraction,” Hayashi yelled. “Move!” She used elbows and knees to furiously snake her way back up the corridor.

Collins matched her as the sentry cannons swivelled towards them. He lobbed a concussion grenade behind as they went, the explosion knocking the cannons back. Their deadly stream of ordnance tore open the corridor ceiling and sparks flew as the lights went out. The cannons quickly reasserted their equilibrium and rolled on rubber tracks in pursuit.

Hayashi and Collins made the corner as more fifty cal fire ripped up the walls and floor behind them, and they bolted for the C and C. They fell inside, Collins triggered the blast doors which rang with cannon fire as they slammed down.

Laying on their backs, gasping, Collins and Hayashi listened as the dropship powered up and launched.

Hayashi sighed. “Then there were three.”

“With no hope of escape,” Collins said.

He got up and checked Watts. Eleven minutes to go. He moved to the console and tried to key up a view, any view, to see what might be happening. None of the internal cameras were working, but an external array, watching the skies, was still operational. He tracked the dropship as it made orbit.

Space folded and the battlecruiser dropped out of jump, only a few hundred clicks from Daisy. Collins and Hayashi watched in silence. The dropship veered, heading straight for it.

“They recalled the Belvedere,” Collins said. “You think they can gain control of a ship that size?”

Hayashi snorted. “Why not? They owned us since before we fucking landed.”

“Reckon Alliance has any idea what’s coming on board?” He sent repeated hails to the battlecruiser, knowing there would be no response. “I wonder how many of those bastards are on Daisy?” he said.

Hayashi shrugged. “Could be dozens. How many are still here? How big an army did those idiot scientists breed?”

Collins zoomed in on Daisy as she entered the Belvedere’s docking bay. There were several moments of silence that seemed to drag into hours, then fire belched and billowed out into space as several hull panels around the bay split and buckled.

“Fuck,” Collins whispered.

Nothing happened for several more minutes, Collins and Hayashi watched in silence.

Watts groaned and sat up, shifted her wounded shoulder. “We ready? Where’s Capstan? And Lau?”

Shuttles began launching from the Belvedere, headed for the surface a couple of hundred clicks from the science station. Weapons ports opened along one flank of the battlecruiser and a wave of missiles launched, arcing down towards the habitat.

“Motherfuckers,” Collins said.