Jungle colony book 2, p.107
Jungle (Colony Book 2), page 107
Four-seven, four-six … Four-five! The handle let out a faint click as his wrapped his hand around it. Locked.
“Allow me,” Anna said, her closed fist coming down hard on the cheap metal and snapping it off entirely. She ripped the door open, and Jake’s visor tinted as bright sunlight poured over him.
As well as over three armored figures lying in the middle of the room.
From the look of it, the place had once been an office, but the desk had been flipped over on its side, one of the three figures leaning up against it in death. The other two were nearby—one lying on the ground as if they’d lain down to sleep, the other curled in a ball. A dark stain in the carpet spoke at what their fate had been, as did the advanced decay of their corpse. Jake’s eyes, however, slid back to the central figure, the one sitting with their back against the overturned desk and a shotgun still held loosely in one decaying hand pointed at the door. Unlike the figures in the basement, the corpse’s armor had pips along the chest and shoulders.
The commander, Jake thought as Anna swept the room, the barrel of her gun gliding across everything before settling on the far window. “Close the door, keep an eye on it,” she said as she moved inward. Behind him, Jake heard Botha comply with Anna’s order, and he stepped forward, both to give her more room and to take a closer look at the bodies in front of him.
Why here? he wondered as he crouched by the leader. Were they separated? Could they not get to one another? He ran his mind over the image of the outside of the door as he’d seen it a few moments earlier, but couldn’t recall seeing any signs of something—or things—attempting to force their way in … But then they wouldn’t need to, he thought as he looked over the figure’s security suit. They could just wait. But then … did these three just decide to die via starvation rather than going down in a blaze of glory? Why hole up?
“Jake?” Anna’s voice pulled him from his examination of the room, and he looked up to see her standing by the window, gazing out it at something on the ground. “You might want to look at this.”
He rose and stepped around the desk, craning his neck downward as he neared the grass. “Oh,” he said as the courtyard below came into view. “That’s … not good.”
The cocoon trees were hatching, their sides splitting open and disgorging dozens of slimy, wet hoppers that almost immediately began to rush across the pavement, moving in their odd little running hops. Other cocoons almost appeared to be stretching apart from within, and as he watched the side of one cracked, a large forelimb with long claws puncturing the side. Still more seemed to be disgorging something new—thin creatures with long, spindly legs and long, narrow bodies, or what looked like a dark-green fluid that Jake realized after a second was what had to be thousands of insects.
This is like nothing I’ve ever seen before, he thought as he watched the new arrivals rush for the doors. All save the long, spindly-legged creatures, which seemed to be … almost setting up a perimeter of some kind? They don’t look that deadly. But this is … coordination almost like ants. But none of these things even look the same.
“Botha,” he said, glancing back at the zoologist. Her eyes snapped to him, almost vacant. Please don’t be going into shock. We definitely don’t have time for that right now. “Come look at this,” he said, waving a hand at the glass.
Botha seemed to digest what he was saying for a moment before nodding and moving over to the window, a bit of life coming back to her face. Life that was quickly replaced with first confusion, then curiosity as she stepped up to the glass.
“This is … unreal,” she said after a moment. “It’s like … pack behavior on a large scale, but between creatures that don’t even resemble the same species. Like … some sort of highly advanced ant?”
“No idea,” Anna said as Jake stepped away. “But there’s a lot of them.”
“This is … an ecosystem unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” Botha said as Jake knelt near the lead body once more. There was something about the way he was positioned that seemed … not “off,” but odd.
And we still don’t know why they were here, Jake thought as Botha continued to speak; something about three species on one alien planet that were interdependent, but still nothing as complicated and yet straightforward as what was going on outside. Why weren’t they in the basement? Or was there something about this room? He ran his eyes over the walls, looking for anything that was out of the ordinary, but the place looked like a simple, sparsely adorned office.
Sparse? he wondered as Botha continued to speak. Or never used? His eyes turned to the chair. Textured plastic … unworn. No tchotchkes on the floor, nor signs of personal use. So why not? His eyes moved to the display emitter built into the top of the desk. Could it have been what this room was for? Short of a sign, or at the very least power, there wasn’t a way to tell.
Something about the corpse still called, and he brought his eyes back to it once more. No signs of injury, but they died with their gun on the door, he thought. He reached out and lifted the shotgun in one hand. Loaded, so they still had ammo. Wait … He paused as he let the gun down. Why only one hand? They aren’t showing any injuries … so why are they propping themselves up with their left arm?
He turned his attention to the hand resting on the ground. It’s clenched, he thought as he stared at it. You don’t clench your hand into a fist if you’re leaning on it. Gently, slowly, he reached out and pulled the limb up. The hand stayed locked, finger’s tightly clenched by the dry remains inside the suit, but he caught sight of a faint glimmer of white.
Bingo! The corpse’s fingers came apart with a faint cracking sound, one barely audible over the scratches coming from the hall, and a tiny data drive fell from the figure’s palm into Jake’s.
“I got it!” he said, standing. Anna and Botha both turned as he held out the drive. “This was in the leader’s hand,” he said. “Whatever it was, they were protecting it.”
“Rip it,” Anna said, tossing the ripper to him. “Fast. I don’t like the way those things are setting up outside.” She turned back to look out the glass. “It almost looks like they’re—Down!” She threw herself to the side, catching Botha in her arms and shoving them both to the floor as multiple somethings punched through the window with sharp cracks, embedding themselves in the ceiling. Jake dove to the floor.
“What—?” Botha began, trying to push herself up, only for Anna to lever the woman back down with her elbow.
“Stay down!” she ordered, and Botha went still. Another fusillade punched through the glass, cracks spreading out from the points of impact and spiderwebbing the thick glass. Jake rolled onto his back as dust rained down from the ceiling, eyeing the long, thin lines the—well, whatever they were—had carved into the metal tiles.
“They’re spikes,” he said as he caught sight of one of the newcomers buried in a metal tile. “Like the ones we found downstairs. Are they—?” He rolled his head to look at Anna. “Are they shooting them at us?”
“I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it,” Anna said as another spray of the spikes ripped through the glass. The impact was too much for one corner of one pane, and it broke free, falling out of sight. “But yes.” A chorus of loud, hissing cracks filled the air, not quite unlike gunshots, but at the same time, sounding almost … wet, and more of the spikes ripped into the ceiling of the room.
Then another sound echoed through the room, this one from outside the door, and Jake felt his already cold blood grow icier. Screeches, howls—alien noises that made his innards turn to liquid, followed by the worst sound of them all: a sharp, metal screech followed by a heavy metal bang as the door to the other stairwell came off of its hinges.
“We need to go!” he shouted, pushing himself up and shoving the data drive into the ripper as quickly as he could for safekeeping. “Now!” He clipped the ripper to his waist as he rose, his other hand finding the grip of the Rezzer and pulling it up from the floor. He stayed low, well below the line of sight from the ground as he headed for the door, glancing back to make sure that Anna and Botha were both okay. The former was aiding the latter, guiding her forward in a panicky—but effective—crawl even as more shots from below chewed through the glass.
How are they propelling those? Jake wondered as he reached the door and stood. Then he gave his mind a mental shake.
No point in asking how, he thought as he lifted his foot, readying it for a kick. Won’t matter how they’re doing it if they punch a hole right through you. And they’d seen the wounds on the one body, as well as the blood trail several floors below. There was no doubt that whatever was being hurled at them, it was capable of penetrating at least a security suit.
Go! His foot hit the door with a loud bang, propelling it open and into the hallway, where it stopped short of hitting the wall with a loud thud. Jake was moving before it had even begun to swing back, stepping out into the hall and poking the barrel of his Rezzer around the side of the door. The light from his suit illuminated a hopper lying on the floor, the impact from the door having knocked it back, and he squeezed the trigger. A storm of tiny flechettes perforated the creature’s body, reducing most of it to a misty ichor.
There was no time to admire his handiwork, and he brought the barrel of the Rezzer up just in time to catch a second hopper as it leaped, abnormally long jaws wide. The gun let out a sharp crack, and the hopper’s body was torn in two horizontally, the back of its body spraying out in a cloud of orange goo.
The two halves slammed into his suit, and to his horror the lower half began scratching at him, clawing away at him, only to fall away when it couldn’t get any purchase. He punted it away with his foot for good measure, watching as it sailed down the hall … past more hoppers, each rushing forward with their strange, leaping gait. Worse, he could see something larger behind them at the end of the hall, just out of the range of the lights on his suit. He raised his shotgun, honed in on the nearest hopper, and—
“Jake! Back! Now!”
He threw himself back as the words erupted in his ears, Anna stepping past him with her arm up. A wave of heat flowed over him as her thrower spewed hot death down the hall, engulfing the entire space in a blazing inferno that consumed everything in its path.
“Go!” Anna said, spinning and motioning for him to move down the hall in the opposite direction. “Now! Before they blow!” Jake could see Botha ahead of them, already running, and he threw his head down, aiming for the end of the hall and pumping his legs. From behind them there came a sparking hiss, and then something slammed into his back, lifting him off of the ground and throwing him forward.
He hit the carpet and rolled, coming up in a decent crouch that turned into a running start, only to stop as he saw Botha lying on the ground in a daze.
“Go,” Anna called. “I’ve got her.” He nodded and ran past the prone zoologist, rounding the corner of the hall with his gun at the ready, just in time for a hopper that had likely been leaping for Botha to snap its jaws shut around the end of his gun.
With a muted crack, the creature blew apart, showering the walls in gore. Beyond it, several more of the creatures were already crawling at him. He fired once more, the spray of flechettes tearing through two hoppers in one go, and then again, his final shot taking out a third.
That’s five shots, Jake thought as he moved down the hallway, holding the shotgun with one hand while the other tugged open one of the ammo pouches on his side. With a click the side of the gun opened, and he began feeding shells in as quickly as he could, pausing to snap a quick shot at a hopper that rounded the corner and killing it while taking a decent chunk out of the door behind it.
Not to mention the walls, he thought as he neared the corner, snapping the feed closed once more. Nothing like a little wanton destruction to get the blood moving. Another hopper jumped around the corner, and his shot tagged it in the air, clipping its back half and sending it spinning. A second shot finished it off for good, turning the front half of its body into a gooey slurry.
More shots were ringing out from behind him now, the familiar triple-crack of Anna’s rifle echoing alongside snarls and screeches from the pursuing hoppers. I hope the stairway is still clear, Jake thought as he rounded the corner, Rezzer up, and put another shell into a trio of hoppers coming down the hall. Seven, he counted, though he didn’t technically need to with the readout in the corner of his hud keeping track. It was simply force of habit.
And equipment can fail, he thought, sparing a quick glance down at the ripper on his hip to make sure it was still there as he continued down the hallway. The doorway to the set of stairs they’d used was only a few dozen feet away now.
Something large and heavy moved around the edge of the hall, its long-clawed paws digging into the carpet with each step. It looked almost like a heavyset, hunched over, hairless wolf—except this wolf had been crossed with some sort of jungle cat and then given a whole suite of augments, resulting in its bulky appearance and tight, rough-looking skin. Multiple eyes locked on him as the creature’s head turned, its too-wide jaw opening wide and its back legs lowering for a leap. He tapped the Rezzer’s trigger three times, flechettes peppering the beast’s head and skin and punching hundreds of tiny holes through its body. One shot punctured several of its eyes, and the creature threw its head to the side, momentarily blinded but still readying itself for a leap.
A chorus of shots from Anna’s rifle scythed through its remaining eyes and blew the back of its head out—though the exit wound and resulting spray of ichor was a lot smaller than it should have been.
“Up the stairs!” Anna ordered before he could let out a word of thanks, and he complied, kicking the door open and shoving his Rezzer into the space before following. More shots echoed from behind as Botha followed him through, and a moment later Anna ducked in, slamming her shoulder against the metal and shoving it closed.
“Well?” she asked, her visor darting toward them as she ejected a spent magazine from her rifle. “Up! Move!” Something slammed into the stairwell door, almost knocking her away, and Jake could feel her scowl as she looked at him. “Go!”
“Right!” He turned and ran, the impact of his boots against the steps echoing down the stairwell alongside Botha’s. Down below, there was a sharp, metal snap as Anna reloaded her rifle, and then a barrage of rapid shots echoed up after them.
Jake rounded the landing as the shots continued to echo, his own fingers scrambling to feed shells into his Rezzer. One of them slipped from his fingers, bouncing down the steps, and Botha moved to catch it.
“Leave it!” he said as it skipped past her. “It’s not worth it.” Botha complied, the shell skipping down the steps to the landing to hit the wall behind them as they continued upward.
“Damn it!” Anna said as she caught up with them, moving with far more grace and ease than seemed real. She matched their pace up the steps, ejecting another spent magazine and swapping it for a fresh one. “Those big ones just don’t die!” From somewhere below them something slammed into the stairs, the vibrations from the impact traveling up Jake’s legs. “I shoot and I shoot, but it’s like they don’t even feel pain!” Anna spun as they reached the next landing, dropping to one knee and putting a trio of shots down at something behind them before following through with her turn and rising up to run alongside them once more.
“Eyes on the steps,” she said to Botha. “Can you reload your gun?”
“I haven’t fired it.”
“Fair enough. Jake, ripper status?”
“Haven’t lost it,” he said as they moved up the next set of steps. His legs were starting to burn despite the low gravity.
“Have you started it?”
“No.”
“Start it,” Anna said. “Copy the data to our suits if possible, but at least get a copy on the ripper, then separate the two.” From below them, there was a faint screech of some kind, followed by a chorus of heavy, rapid vibrations as something began moving up after them.
“Get it done!” Anna ordered before turning once more, setting her rifle on the steps. “I’ll buy us some time!”
“How high up do we need to go?” Jake asked as he reached down and began tapping at the ripper’s controls. It wasn’t easy with the device upside-down and bouncing against his leg.
“As high as we can!” came Anna’s reply. Beneath their feet, the stairwell was shaking harder with every distantly closing clang. Whatever was coming up behind them was gaining. “We need as much distance between us and those slingers on the ground as possible.”
“Sling—?” Jake began before catching himself. The ones hurling those spikes at you, he thought as they reached the seventh-floor landing and moved on. From below there was a bright surge of light, followed by yet another wave of heat, and Anna’s laugh echoed over the comm channel.
“That’s right,” she called as the heavy footsteps ceased. “You don’t like fire, do you?” Then her feet rang against the steps, and by the time he and Botha reached the next landing, she was already beside them.
“That’ll hold them for a bit,” she said, as they continued upward toward the eighth floor. “But not for long.”
“We don’t know how many are in the other stairwell, either,” Jake said. “If that thing was catching up.”
“Mierda,” Anna said. “They could already be ahead of us. Fine.” They rounded the next landing.
“Then we go as high as we can before these things wise up.” From beneath them there was a loud bang, and Anna turned, her headlamps casting shadows as she peered over the railing.
“Damn!” she said, stopping. A moment later another burst of heat rolled up as she let a burst of flame out right down the open middle of the stairwell. “This is getting old!”
As if in response to her shout, a roar echoed up the stairwell, a warbling cry that, according to Jake’s hud, would have deafened him had the suit not been there.
