Red company invasion, p.18
Red Company: Invasion, page 18
“Starn!” he roared. “What the hell did you do, you idiot?”
Chapter 22: The Ice Mine
I was confused and shocked by the blast, as was everyone else. At first, I thought maybe a missile had found her and blown her up, but now I was thinking that wasn’t the case. I ran to the spot, but both the women were clearly dead.
At a loss, I answered Lt. Quinn, who was still buzzing at me over my comms. I tried to explain the situation to him, but he ordered me back to my squad, saying something about helping the refugees.
“It looks like the miners have broken free from whatever was holding them inside that installation. They’re coming up the ridge. Provide assistance and do what you can for their wounded. I’ll order the carryalls brought up closer to our lines to take away miners that need evacuation.”
Frowning, I ran back to the ridgeline, which my men were still peeping over. They asked me what had happened to the two women—but I really didn’t have any answers for them.
A new and unexpected development was unfolding right before our eyes all around the ice mine. A man in a red-dusted spacesuit had exited the facility and was now coming up the slopes toward us. He seemed to be empty-handed, and he didn’t look dangerous. He actually looked kind of pathetic.
Everybody felt concern for the refugee—except for me. I’d witnessed the strange behavior of Jenna Smith and the final grisly result.
“This one looks like he’s hurt or something,” Pvt. Heger said. He got out a medical kit and approached the miner who was coming toward us.
We hailed him and demanded identification—but he said nothing. Perhaps his comms weren’t functional.
As the miner grew closer, something extremely unexpected happened. The miner didn’t blow himself up. No, this was different. This was—strange.
He extended a hand, and it appeared he was throwing something. This object resembled a gray-white starfish.
The projectile flashed through the air, and it spun as it flew. There was a sinuous, thicker ball in the middle of the ropey starfish with three arms sticking out of it. Each of these three arms terminated in another round, hard gray lump of… something.
Whatever it was, it didn’t look terribly dangerous. Everyone lifted their rifles in response, but no one fired.
Heger attempted to dodge the throw, and he didn’t shoot the miner. He did curse a little, and I couldn’t blame him for that.
But then, somehow, that spinning three-armed rope veered in flight and landed on his right thigh.
“What the fuck is this?” Heger exclaimed.
“Heger!” I ordered, “get back up to the line. Get away from that guy.”
Heger turned around and began walking away, but he was already limping. “It’s getting tight, Sergeant. It’s really stuck on me.”
He was referring to the strange ropey band around his thigh. I could see it had indeed constricted around his leg and was squeezing more and more tightly. One of his gloved hands fumbled at it, trying to rip it free, but he failed.
When Heger limped to our lines, we hauled him up onto the top of the ridge. Then, I got a good look at the thing.
It wasn’t a rope at all. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say it was like a gooey piece of artificial plastic—something like that. It reminded me of pulled taffy, maybe.
Three whitish gray arms ending in hard knobs… They all centered around a pulsing central mass—so weird.
The whole thing was squeezing. As I watched, Heger began to shout in agony. “It burns! It burns! Get it the fuck off me!”
I saw some smokey vapors arising from the band which was now wrapped so tightly around his leg you could see the indentation. It was crushing through his space suit. Could it actually be burning its way in? How was that possible? Was it hot?
“Cut it off him,” I ordered.
Ledbetter produced a knife, walked close, and began sawing on the strange, unnatural-seeming object that had Heger.
“You’re cutting the suit open,” Welks complained.
“Sergeant said to get it off!”
Heger, for his part, was lying on his side and howling by this time. My men struggled with the squeezing, burning band.
“Do it,” Heger sobbed, “Just do it, just do it.”
There was a gush of blood, a ripping of the suit, a hiss of released gas. They had indeed cut through his spacesuit, as tough and thick as it was. This was not normally what I would have expected, but I could see now that the strange fleshy band had exuded some kind of acid. I could only guess that’s what it was.
The acid had burned through Heger’s suit and was now burning its way through his leg. I imagined that in time it would cut his leg off completely—but I suspected that Heger was going to be dead long before that.
He was losing blood, but more importantly, he was losing his oxygen supply.
Mars was in a state where you could survive for maybe a minute or two when exposed on the surface. He had oxygen monitors in his survival suit. Automated systems attempted to counterbalance for the loss of air and heat. I could hear every fan and motor turned on and blow, trying to keep the pressure up inside his suit. This was, of course, impossible as Mars’s atmosphere was so thin.
Heger gargled and passed out at our feet. Ledbetter was sawing at the fleshy band and cursing, but he’d only managed to get blood everywhere.
That’s when I heard shouts from other men down the lines. There were more miners now, laboring as they climbed the slope toward us.
“If they throw anything at you,” I ordered, “shoot it down.”
More miners were now reaching our lines. So far, not one had spoken a word to us.
I saw one extend an arm. I saw another fleshy, ropey, starfish object fly. What was this weapon? Some kind of a high-tech bola? Or was it perhaps a living thing? I’d never seen anything like it.
The man who had been targeted, ducked. To his great fortune, the bola wrapped itself around a ridge of rock that had been near his helmet. One of the three pods, however, the bulbous, hard, round ends of the bola, still struck his faceplate and gave it a spider-shaped crack.
That was good enough for me. “Shoot them! If they don’t talk or surrender—gun them down!”
Scrambling back, my squaddies seemed to be waiting for this command. They opened fire on the guy who’d missed with his bola.
That’s when we got yet another surprise. The miner was unarmed, and he wasn’t moving terribly quickly, but despite being struck by dozens of laser bolts, he didn’t immediately go down.
The bolts had obviously hit him and torn through his body. He staggered back, but then leaned forward and rushed with greater urgency toward our lines. He was now no more than a dozen feet away.
Gritting my teeth, I raised my own gun and put it on full automatic. I aimed for the helmet, and I unloaded.
This approach worked. After a dozen smoking holes were blasted through his faceplate, the man toppled backwards. The corpse slid down the slope—but it didn’t lie still.
To my amazement, he got up again. His face—or the ruined, smoking hole that had once been a face—was completely gone. Still, he struggled to rise and approach us.
He dragged himself closer. His limbs moved blindly, flailing and scratching at the dirt and rocks. More such miners—or creatures, because I no longer thought of them as men—were still climbing toward our line all along the ridge.
I reported in to Lt. Quinn. I told him he was going to have to gun them all down. This suggestion was met with a scoffing sound from Sergeant Cox, but then they began shouting with shock, just as we had.
Apparently, they’d gotten their first taste of the bolas and the indestructibility of these miners.
I let my boys have a free hand. They no longer had to wait until a miner showed malicious intent. We shot them down at range, and they didn’t stand a chance.
Once we really began shooting at them, they changed tactics. They rushed us—all at once. Fortunately, our upgraded weapons were able to handle the enemy onslaught.
We put them down one at a time with focused fire by destroying their heads. That seemed to be the key. At least it was disabling to them, because they needed senses to guide their bodies.
They groped blindly and staggered about, sucking up more laser bolts than it would have taken to kill a crowd of normal men. At last, the final abomination sagged down into the red sands. There, it flailed about horribly until it expired.
Two more men out of Cox’s squad had been taken out by the bolas. Somehow, Lt. Quinn and Sergeant Cox were angry with me over this development.
“This is some kind of a freak thing, isn’t it Starn? Like that freak arm of yours. What do you know about it?”
“I’ve never seen anything like this, sir,” I said. “I don’t think these men simply mutated.”
“Then what the fuck is it, Starn? What the hell is going on out here?”
“The aliens,” I said. “It has to be the aliens. These guys called us for help. Maybe that was a trap. Maybe the distress call was just like the one that led us out to the wreckage of Agamemnon.”
“Are you suggesting we pull out, Starn?” Lt. Quinn demanded.
“I’m not suggesting anything, sir. You’re in command.”
Lt. Quinn cursed a little. I could tell he didn’t know what to do next any more than I did. That was okay in my book, because it was his job to make a choice and mine to follow through. After all, he was our commanding officer.
“All right,” he said finally, after we hauled our wounded back to the carryalls and our dead were wrapped up in body bags, “the rush of miners has ceased. We’ve killed about two dozen of them. Maybe the rest are reconsidering their attacks.”
That seemed unlikely to me, but I kept quiet. Some of the miners were still feebly scratching in the dirt with their fingers. None of them were able to stand or assault us in any way—but I was sure they would have if they’d been able to follow through.
“All right,” Quinn said again. “Our orders are to investigate this installation. We’ve received a distress call. Obviously, as Starn says, this is some kind of a trap—but we don’t know if there aren’t real live miners holed up inside that facility.”
“Screw that!” Sergeant Cox said. “These things aren’t even human. Mars hasn’t paid me enough for us to go in there and get all our limbs chopped off by flying bands of artificial muscle.”
Cox was out of line, but I thought he might be right. At this point, normal everyday survivors seemed unlikely.
“Fine,” Lt. Quinn spat out, “I’ll report in, and we’ll see what Commander Kaine says.”
There were some muttered curses all up and down the line. My men wanted to retreat.
“Screw these miners,” Ledbetter said. “Leave them out here to rot.”
Fortunately, Lt. Quinn didn’t hear that. He wasn’t liable to listen to any such advice, anyway, good or bad. He wasn’t that kind of guy. He followed orders until he accomplished his mission or losses were so great that it was impossible to do so.
Commander Kaine reviewed the situation and seemed just as angry with Lt. Quinn as Quinn had been with me. After going over what we’d witnessed, he was impressed by the enemy’s toughness, if not their weaponry.
“The substance does look and behave like artificial muscle,” he said, after showing it to Dr. Sharaf.
She exclaimed with excitement. “I’ve seen such substances before, gels that contract chemically in response to stimuli. So unusual. Artificial muscles with their own self-guidance systems… Some level of intelligence must have been built into the design.”
“Doctor?” Kaine interrupted. “How dangerous are these projectiles?”
“Not very, perhaps the enemy had to work with whatever they had at hand. I’m most fascinated with the acid used to burn through suits—and the strength to crush their way right through the meat of limbs and the bone itself.”
She had us repeat the bodycam vids for her. In a few cases where men had perished under these strange weapons, she noted they had indeed had their limbs completely severed from their bodies.
“I’ve seen enough,” Kaine finally announced. “You are to continue with the mission. Exercise all due caution.”
“Does that mean shoot first and ask questions later?” Quinn asked.
Kaine wrinkled up his nose in disgust. “You’re in the field. That’s your choice. Kaine out.”
I thought to myself that we must be getting paid very well indeed to finish out this contract at this point. But I also knew there was another thing driving us forward.
Red Company wasn’t a normal military organization in the sense that we worked for hire rather than for a higher purpose. But today, things felt different. Today, we’re in the field defending Mars Colony at large. Our lives were on the line in the long run, just like everyone else’s.
Even if Captain Hansen decided to pull up stakes and have Borag run to hide in deep space, this enemy was overpowering. If we had no port here at Mars City to return to in the future, what difference would our contracts make? What difference would our survival make? At some point, all humans knew in their guts that they had to make a stand. Red Company was on the spot, and it was up to us.
Under Commander Kaine’s orders, we marched down the crumbling slopes toward the mining facility.
The place was now quiet and dark. We gave the bodies of the fallen miners a wide berth. We wanted nothing to do with them.
Once we reached the valley floor, we approached the mining facility with caution. We walked through the blowing dust that was stirring more with every passing minute. The winds were up, now. A seasonal storm was most likely going to blow in soon. Mars was famous for raging sandstorms.
On top of it all, that’s just what we needed.
Quinn took his men to the north door, while I swung around to the south. I didn’t have the heart to order any of my men to go in ahead and scout the place. So, I led by example.
I threw open the outer door of the airlock and then forced the inner door to open as well. This left both yawning wide at the same time. A vast gust of air blasted out into the desert.
Blowing an airlock was breaking a dozen protocols, but I’ll be damned if I was going to be the only man to face whatever was inside alone.
Behind me, my men breathed hard. They did not speak. They were ready with their rifles, their eyes big, round, and scared.
So far, we’d met up with our nightmares. Could something worse be inside?
The interior of the mining facility was pitch-black.
I stepped inside.
Chapter 23: The Alien
Once we were inside the facility, we began searching long passageways. We found numerous vats and pressurized chambers full of heavy machinery. Most of the place was quiet, but some of the gas tanks and the charging vessels were full of hot liquids. These slowly churning tanks were kept from icing over by burners underneath.
“Without a maintenance staff,” Welks complained, “this place is a powder keg, Sergeant…”
“I know it. Put out your flamethrower and keep moving.”
Essentially, the installation used heat to melt the ice. Once you had liquid water, you could convert it into steam to generate electricity. That in turn powered electrolysis to separate the hydrogen and oxygen from the water.
The trouble was both of these useful elements were inherently unstable and dangerous. People and machines had to monitor the process constantly to make sure there wasn’t an explosion that would destroy the entire facility.
This water mining operation was the first one I had ever seen that seemed to be uninhabited. I checked back and forth with the crew of Borag over the comms, asking exactly how many miners we should be encountering. They said the installation should have a complement of miners numbering around fifty.
By my quick count, I figured we’d only faced half of them so far out in the desert. Where were the rest?
I could only think that they were lurking, maybe with a bola in each hand, ready to jump me. They could come out of a thousand dark corners, applying that strange piece of artificial muscle. I had no desire to experience the squeezing and burning of my limbs. What a nightmare way to go out that would be.
With my carbine held up high, the butt of it pushed up against my faceplate, I aimed my weapon this way and that, shining every light my suit had to stab through the grimy, steamy darkness and reveal any possible threats.
The machines hummed softly in the dim light, relentlessly processing ice in the absence of human oversight. The air was cold, and the walls were lined with frost.
Conveyor belts moved slowly, carrying chunks of ice to their destinations. The sound of crunching ice echoed through the vast, empty space. Pipes hissed and groaned around me, circulating frigid water throughout the facility. Automated arms swung methodically, cutting and sorting ice blocks with a precision that was almost hypnotic.
Deep shadows hid the facility’s corners and crevices, giving the impression of hidden secrets. The lights flickered sporadically, casting moving shadows that played tricks on my eyes, making me feel uneasy.
There were no other footsteps but those of my squad, echoing in the silence. Sensors and cameras, still active, scanned us as we passed. Control panels blinked with indicators and warning lights, but there was no one there to read them.
When I was about to declare the place empty and abandoned, I met up with a surprise. A hand shot out from underneath one of the big steaming hot tanks. The hand was gloved with a dirty miner’s glove. It snatched at my boot.
My rifle automatically dipped and aimed at that dirty glove. My finger applied pressure on the trigger, almost without thinking.
But for some reason, the behavior of that hand caused me to pause. I was more than prepared to blast it clean off, to blow it down to a stump—but I held my fire.
Why? Because the hand was making a gesture. It was curling, waving fingers in a come-here gesture.
I crouched, and more men came up behind me. They exclaimed, aimed their weapons, and it was all I could do to keep Ledbetter from blasting a hundred bolts into the deck.
