Jungle colony book 2, p.122
Jungle (Colony Book 2), page 122
They rounded the corner slowly, both the marines’ and the solis’ weapons up and at the ready. Sweets eyes snapped to their scout immediately, crouched above a trio of bodies that looked as though they had fallen back to back and gone down fighting.
“Keep watch,” Valdez said, slowing as they neared the trio. “I’ll grab their idents.” He crouched by the bodies, the soli sergeant stepping up beside him and then bending down on one knee as well.
“Pascal, Sarraf, and Kentlay,” Nido said, her voice dark, and a faint murmur rumbled over the comms. Different from the faint hissing that had been periodically rising from the ship’s intercoms, whatever that was. It was a murmur of recognition, mixed with shock and a little anger. “Damn.”
“These three weren’t eaten or clawed,” Valdez said, tapping one of the bodies. His finger came away crusty with drying blood, and he wiped it on one leg. “Bullet wounds. Armor-piercing ammunition.” His head turned as if following an invisible line, and he pointed at a series of reddish pock marks in the nearest wall.
“Friendly fire?” one of the solis suggested, but Sergeant Nido shook her head.
“Not like this,” she said, her voice dark. “This looks deliberate.”
“It was deliberate,” Valdez said. “It was fast and rapid, but …” They shifted, moving to another of the bodies. “The entry wounds are all facing the same direction relative to where they fell. Hold on …” He held out his fingers, resting them against one of the fallen solis’ helmets. “Pulling up the last few seconds of audio …”
The lieutenant was silent for a moment, body frozen with fingers extended.
There was a strange lump in the back of Sweets throat. Relax, he thought, trying to recall Quiin’s advice as he swallowed. He wiped the palm of one hand against his jeans for what felt like the hundredth time.
Someone’s shooting Solis now? With anti-armor guns? Why would—? He swallowed again, his mind almost vomiting forth a number of possibilities. Maybe someone’s a plant, here to keep an eye on everyone, or worse, silence them. Or maybe they were given conflicting orders from Varus before I knocked him offline, and think that the crew has mutinied.
“Damn it,” Valdez said, moving to the next body and placing his fingers against their helmet. Once more a few seconds passed, and he shook his head before moving to the third.
“Nothing good,” he said at last, rising and looking at the rest of the group. “Someone they trusted shot them. No identification was given, but they seemed to think they were about to be helped.” He looked down at the trio and shook his head. “They came around the corner, running from a pack of those creatures—”
“A pack?” one of the marines asked.
“That’s how they described it. ‘Pack’s still right behind us.’ They were setting up for a defensive hold when whoever they found …” He turned to look down at the three bodies.
“Did they say anything else?” Nido asked, placing a palm on the chest of each of the fallen Solis before rising. A mark of respect? Or something else? Sweets wasn’t sure. His eyes just kept coming back to the holes in their armor and the slick of blood beneath them as Nido kept talking. “The one who shot them, I mean.”
That could be you, some part of his mind suggested. You don’t even have armor. He pushed the thought away, taking a slow breath to cool his nerves. Just stay calm.
“No,” Valdez growled. “They didn’t say a word.” He turned toward their pointman—Sweets couldn’t remember their name—and gestured. “Move on, check the next hallway.” The marine nodded and moved away, their footsteps silent.
“The rest of you,” Valdez said, turning back to the group. “Grab their gear and ammo. No sense in letting it go to waste.”
The two teams descended on the bodies, quietly stripping them of gear and equipment and checking it over among themselves. The process passed in relative silence save for the faint clicks as each gun was examined and checked. To Sweets’ surprise, one of the solis moved over to him and held out a shotgun he’d picked up from one of the fallen.
“Here,” they said, bouncing the gun on their fingertips. “Can you use one of these? It’s a shotgun.”
“I’ve fired one before …” A long time ago, he added mentally. Very long time ago.
“Good,” the soli said, tossing the weapon to him. He almost dropped it, catching the weapon awkwardly between his free hand and his Slugger. “Holster that Slugger and save your shots. It’s fully loaded now.”
“Thanks,” Sweets said, eyeing the armored vest they’d given him and looking for a place to hang the Slugger.
“Here,” the soli said, taking it from him and holding it to his side. There was a faint click as the gun snapped to the side of the vest. “Just twist it to the side when you want to undock it. And make sure to turn off the safety on the shotgun before you try firing it.”
“Thanks.” The soli had already turned away, the rest of the group apparently ready to move, and Sweets hurried to the center, his shotgun held low. Once more they began to move, heading down the hall and leaving the trio of bodies behind.
Everything about this is such a mess, he thought as they slowed and then rounded another corner. Varus refusing direct orders, the hacks being falsified, these creatures, the roots … and now deliberate friendly fire? What’s going on?
Maybe it’s all just separate but connected, he thought as they moved down another hall, passing into a section of the ship that almost looked familiar, though he wasn’t certain. Especially since if he had passed through it before, there hadn’t been a dead crewman lying against the wall with their throat torn out. He pulled his eyes away, turning his thoughts back inward.
Maybe there’s a saboteur aboard? He dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it had come. Why bother? We’re in the middle of nowhere, and there haven’t been any demands made. Ugh … He took another slow breath. I wish Jake was here. He’s really good at spotting the details and sticking them together. An undercover UNSEC agent trying to silence everyone? Why bother?
“Contact.” The group froze as the voice cut across their channel. “Quiet.” The word must have meant something else to the group, because they raised their weapons.
“Dee,” Valdez said, and it took Sweets a moment to realize that he’d said the letter rather than a name.
“A whole group of those little creatures,” the point said. Sweets could see him at the end of the next hall, leaning up against the wall with something in his hand pointed around the corner. “I count … six—make that seven—and rising. They’re coming out of one air vent, crossing the hall, and going into another.”
“Don’t engage,” Valdez said, holding up a hand. “Let them pass.”
“Sir?” Nido asked. “They could be heading for another group somewhere.”
“They probably are,” Valdez responded. “But so are we. Our job is to get to engineering, and then to the core. We can’t pick fights with every group of these things we come across. For all we know, that’ll just invite them down on us.”
“Understood.” Nido nodded.
“Okay, they’re starting to thin out.” The point glanced back at them and shook their head. “I counted seventeen. Where the hell are these things coming from?”
“We can figure that out after we’ve got Varus back. Are we clear to move?” A distant rattle of gunfire punctured the lieutenant’s words, echoing from some distant part of the ship, and the group seemed to tense slightly before relaxing.
Someone else, Sweets thought as they began moving again. Either running across these things or getting ambushed by them. How many of them can there be? Their path twisted again, this time into a small, narrow hallway that barely let them stand two abreast, and Sweets noted the way the group’s guns kept jumping to each set of air vents that they passed—especially when two of them no longer had covers, the metal lying bent and twisted a few feet away.
One of the solis’ feet struck the corner of one of the crumpled vent covers, and it skittered down the hall, bouncing off of the wall and sending metallic echoes bouncing around them. The team froze, their weapons snapping up and pointing in all directions. For a moment, no one moved, waiting for the ship around them to react.
Nothing happened, and slowly, they lowered their weapons, several of them glancing at the offending soli. “Sorry,” they muttered as one of their compatriots slapped them on the shoulder.
“Try not to let it happen again,” Nido said, her voice dripping displeasure.
“Yeah,” a new voice cut in, and the group’s weapons snapped up once more. “Someone might hear.”
“Identify,” Valdez said.
“Val? That you?” came the response, and Sweets blinked.
I know that voice, he thought. Quiin!
“PCF-Specialist Adraxis Quiin,” came the reply. “Sending my IFF-tag now. Val?”
“Received and returned,” Valdez said. “Where the hell are you?”
“That depends. Where are you?”
“Access causeway forty-three,” Valdez replied. “Heading to starboard. You?”
“Not far. Maintenance causeway just fore of your position. Is the main hall clear?”
Valdez nodded at their point, who jogged forward once more, coming to a stop by the half-open hatch at the end of the narrow hall. “All clear,” they reported a moment later.
“Good,” Quiin said. “I’m getting cramped in here.”
The team moved out of the causeway and into the main hall, which, Sweets noted, ended in a dead end some distance to the right. Which means … that must come up against engineering! We’re almost there! His eyes slid to the opening just to the right of the dead end. Which means that hallway there leads to it, if it’s anything like the decks above.
“Thanks,” Quiin said, and Sweets turned to see him accepting a hand from one of the other marines as he crawled out of a small maintenance hatch. His armor, Sweets noted, was trailing orange strands, just like the ones that had been torn out of the cafeteria ceiling. “Candy? The hell are you doing here?”
“He’s going to help us bring Varus back online,” Valdez said as Quiin brushed the orange strands off of his armor. “What happened to the rest of your squad?”
“Gone,” Quiin said, his voice going hard. “All of them.”
“All of—” Nido caught herself. “What happened?”
“Silverbacks,” Quiin said. “That’s what happened. Two of them were guarding the entryway, like statues. We figured they were friendly, stepped around the corner to say hello … And they opened fire. Autocannons.” One hand came up to tap a crack running across one shoulder of his armor. “That was … pretty much that. Saffa and Tun didn’t even get a chance to fire back. Rendon and Jillian did, but those suits just shrugged it off. We were kitted up for those little freaks, not armor. They tagged Iz while we were making a run for it. I dove into one of the maintenance hatches since they couldn’t follow and …” He shrugged. “I had to leave my gun behind, but I figured I’d have a better chance with a knife against those things than I would with a gun against that armor.”
Exoskeletons, Sweets realized as the team began shooting glances at one another. He’s talking about exoskeletons. Powered armor.
And not on our side.
“—hail them?” Valdez was saying as Sweets snapped his focus back. “Did they reply?”
“No …” Quiin said, shaking his head, the white stripe across the front of his helmet snapping back and forth. “In fact, they didn’t say a word. Not even when we shot back or shouted. There was something else to it too. They didn’t … move right.”
“What do you mean?”
“They moved like gorillas,” Quiin said, and it took Sweets a second to place it as the slang term for an unassisted exoskeleton. “Not silverbacks.”
“What?”
Quiin held up his hands. “Just saying what I saw.”
“No, no, I heard you,” Valdez said. “Were they our suits?”
“Right from our barracks.”
“You can’t use those without a skinsuit, correct?”
“Nope.” Quiin shook his head. “Which makes how they were moving all the stranger. They looked … wrong. Not like unfamiliar. Just …” He shook his head. “If I were crazy—and you always remind me I am—I’d say they almost looked inhuman. Like robots, not people in a suit.”
“Robots.” The skepticism in Valdez’s voice was clear.
“I know,” Quiin said, shaking his head. “But that’s what they looked like. Either way, they’re between us and the main entrance to engineering. There’s probably more on the other decks—probably accounts for some of the signs of heavy weapons fire we’ve been hearing, and why we can’t reach the armory.”
“There are fifty of those suits on-board,” Nido said. “If they’re all under some kind of … remote control—”
“No,” Valdez said, cutting her off. “They can’t be remote controlled. Safe feature. They need a pilot.”
“But could you bypass that—”
“Not without a full set of contacts,” Valdez said. “Maybe if you built a robot with human nerve endings and stuck that inside the suit, but at that point you could just build a suit.”
“Well, whatever the reason, they’re moving around,” Quiin said, motioning for one of the nearby marines to pass him a spare weapon. “And I’d bet they’re back guarding the entryway to engineering. Someone or something wants to keep us out.”
“Well, that’s where we—and our package here—” Valdez nodded in Sweets’ direction. “Need to go.”
“Well, unless you’ve got heavy weapons, you’re not getting past that armor,” Quiin said. “Of course, if you’re willing to take a bit longer to get to Varus …”
“You know another way in?” Nido asked.
“Of course he does. He’s Quiin,” Valdez said, as if his answer explained everything. “The real question is how.”
“Assuming you don’t mind putting yourself behind a bunch of suits of powered armor clearly not on our side?” Quiin asked. “The bio lab.”
“Bio lab?” Valdez echoed, and Quiin nodded.
“Yup. Where we dropped off that sample a few weeks ago? I was digging through ship schematics afterward because I noticed something about that place. Its back wall is flush up against engineering so that they can share emergency lines. The wall’s reinforced, like everything else around engineering, but … There’s an access airlock. A small one, but it’s there.”
“Why the hell does engineering have a direct line to a biology lab?” one of the solis asked.
“Because technically it’s also a small emergency medical station for engineering,” Quiin said. “My guess is ‘budgeting shortfalls and concessions,’ maybe some penny-pinching on top of that. Point is, there’s an entryway.”
“Why didn’t your team head there first?” Nido asked.
“Because first, it’s not the most direct route,” Quiin replied, a sardonic tone in his voice. “And second, because we weren’t aware that we were going to run into exoskeletons hostile to our side. That said … there’s a drawback.”
“The armory,” Valdez said, and Quiin nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “The armory. That lab is still a level down, but the entrance is almost equal with the armory entrance above it, and they’re both right by stairs. And if two of those exoskeletons can be against us …” He paused. “I don’t suppose we’ve heard back from the armory?”
“No,” Valdez replied. “No one has.”
“Shit.” Quiin went silent for a moment. “Right. If we head to the port side and backtrack, we can work our way around. Are we cleared to use emergency accessways between decks?” He looked around at the group. “Well?”
“What emergency—”
“None of you ever examined the schematics, did you?” Quiin asked, shaking his head. “You’re all way too dependent on Varus. The between-deck access ladders. They’re all over the ship.” He pointed. “There’s one right there.” Sweets turned in the direction the marine had pointed and spotted several narrow, horizontal notches cut into a wall between two protruding supports.
“Is that what those are?” one of the solis asked, their voice mirroring Sweets’ thoughts. “I thought those were like … decorative, or something.”
“No. You can open the floor below them and the ceiling to climb to the next deck. We can use those to skip the stairs.”
“It’ll spread us out,” Nido said, but Valdez waved his hand, cutting her off.
“Agreed, but if we didn’t know about them, hopefully whoever’s seizing control of the ship won’t either,” he said. “And if we can get Varus back online.” He looked around at the group. “We do it. Quiin—on point and lead the way. You’re the best at it.”
“And I know it,” Quiin said, flicking the lieutenant a halfhearted salute and turning. “Follow me.”
How can he be so calm? Sweets thought as the group funneled back into the accessway they’d just come out of, this time following Quiin’s lead. He just lost his entire squad. I’ve heard him talk about them before. They were friends. It’d be like me hearing that Jake or Anna are dead.
A shiver rolled down his spine. Don’t think about that. They’re local, dealing with wildlife and babysitting a bunch of scientists. They can handle that.
And strange surges. And the fact that they didn’t even know what system they were really in.
He shook his head, ignoring a glance from one of the nearby soldiers. None of this adds up. Faked superweapon attacks … now some sort of mutiny? Jake and Anna being lied to? Where’s the connecting thread here?
“You all right?” one of the solis asked as they left the accessway, following Quiin’s lead back the way they’d come.
“Yeah,” Sweets said. “I’m fine. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on here and not making any sense of it.”
“You’re telling me,” the soli replied, her voice tense. “How in the hell did someone shut down Varus and steal our systems?”
