Infernal Sky (16 page)

The next second I was proved 100 percent right. I hate it when that happens. I saw the flying skull before anyone else did, zooming in at four o'clock.

Thank God we had our radios on. We'd discussed, and rejected, the possibility of maintaining radio silence for security and only talking by putting our
helmets together. If we'd been that paranoid, the others wouldn't have heard me. In space they hear you scream only when your radio is on.

“Look out!”

Albert nailed the sucker before it could chow down on the material of his pressure suit. We hadn't had time to find out what currently passed for air here. The .30-caliber slugs did the job, and the skull skidded over to the nearest access-tube ladder. Down it went.

I wasn't the least bit surprised when a moment later Fly announced, “The test is positive. We can breathe the air.”

“Remove helmets,” Hidalgo ordered calmly. The suits were well designed for our purposes. The helmets hung in back, leaving our hands free so that we wouldn't be impeded while we added to the body count. Or head count, as the case might be.

“If everything's as we left it,” I blurted out after my first gulp of base air, “we can expect a lot of opposition before we reach the Gate.”

“Take it easy, Corporal Sanders,” said Captain Hidalgo.

“Yes, sir.” He was acting as if he knew his business.

“We'll handle them,” he said. “That's why we're armed with state-of-the-art boom sticks.” Another try at humor. This had started with his friendship with Lieutenant Riley. I didn't know how long it would last, but I kind of liked it.

Hidalgo gave the orders. We followed. Of course, the orders were based on our accurately locating the correct Gate.

We encountered no opposition for the next fifteen minutes. We did find a functioning lift that appeared
to have been repaired with pieces of a steam demon. I didn't like the idea of using it but Hidalgo made the decision. Halfway down the shaft I could see through a ragged hole in the wall that the ladder I would have gone down ended in a tangle of spaghetti.

The makings of a reception committee waited for us at the bottom. If the skull had contacted them before we wasted it, they might have caused us some trouble. By this time, I thought I'd seen it all. I was wrong again.

Occupying the center of the room was an almost intact spider-mind. All that was missing was the head. In the smashed dome on top, where normally resided the evil brain-face, two spinies were doing something. They almost seemed to be laughing, and I could understand why Fly called them imps.

They were eating. When one of the imps looked up from his meal, I could see gray and red splotches on his brown face. Bits of gore dripped off the white horns sticking out from his body. Then he lifted one of his claws, and I saw what was dripping from it.

I was grateful Captain Hidalgo had ordered us to remove our helmets. I couldn't help throwing up, a reaction that surprised me. Why should my stomach churn at the sight of imps devouring a spider-mind? I'd seen far worse things happen to human beings and not lost my cookies.

I guess I'd reached a new level of disgust, though I didn't think there was anywhere lower. The imp saw us at about the same moment we saw him. Instinctively he threw one of his patented fireballs, but he forgot he was still holding on to a dripping chunk of spider tissue. The gory piece of bug brains caught fire, and the imp was scorched by his own flame.

By now the other imp figured out what was happening. He was smarter than his brother and did something I would have thought impossible. The spider's gun turret rotated in our direction and started spitting out its venom: 30mm rounds.

We would have been in trouble if it had been an actual spider-mind. But we had one of Commander Taylor's presents. While I zigged, Fly zagged. Albert and Hidalgo did their part by staying alive. The show belonged to Fly.

I never thought I'd see a BFG 9000 again, the crown jewel of UAC's weapons division. Three blasts would take care of a fully operational spider-mind. One blast proved more than sufficient for the imps who had themselves a great tank but weren't properly trained to use it.

“Praise the Lord!” shouted Albert.

“And pass the ammunition,” said Fly, sweat beading on his forehead and a big grin growing underneath.

“Better than a chain saw,” was my on-the-spot report.

“Regroup,” said Hidalgo. “It'll be a shame to lose that fine weapon when we go through the Gate.”

Albert tried for optimism. “Maybe we could leave it on the other side for when we return?”

“We could never risk that,” answered the captain. “This place is crawling with vermin. We don't want them to get their claws on this weapon.”

None of us said aloud the obvious:
If we return.

The plan we'd made with the
Bova
was “no news is bad news.” By now they knew we weren't alone on this rock. We'd continue observing radio silence between ourselves and the ship.

Fly summed up the situation. He's always good at doing that. “We've seen this place when it was crawling, Captain. Right now it's almost deserted. I don't have any idea why or how long it will last, though. It could be swarming again by this time tomorrow.”

“Commander Taylor and Lieutenant Riley know the risks,” he said, which struck me as a little odd. Seemed to me that the primary subject on the table right now was the fire team.

“Then we're enjoying good fortune,” said Albert—a bit pompously, I thought. A problem I've always had when I fall for someone is that I become hypercritical. I think Fly has this problem as well.

Hidalgo gave us the word, and we moved on. I was astonished that I hadn't fired my plasma rifle yet. But it's wrong to wish for such things. I'm just superstitious enough to believe that you get exactly what you wish for.

My opportunity to test my weapon came with the appearance of a new monster. I hate new monsters. This one I mistook for a pumpkin. There were plenty of similarities: big round floating head, one eye, a gasbag with satanic halitosis.,

The differences, partly obscured by a sudden change in the light, were most annoying. We might have become a little lazy. We had the best weapons, and the opposition was thin. Seeing a round thing come floating around the corner seemed almost too easy. One lousy pumpkin. Who was going to lay dibs on it? Who would have the pleasure of hosing it?

Hidalgo's reflexes might have been a little off, as well. He hadn't experienced Phobos when the shit storm came down nonstop. Even so, he got off a shot with his Sig-Cow. Some of the shots connected.

He'd succeeded in getting the thing's attention. It returned fire. I expected the usual: lightning balls. But this one had a surprise in its gullet. We were treated to a stream of flying skulls pouring out of its mouth, each one as nasty as the one Albert had shot out of the sky a short time before.

But now the sky was full of them.

T
he colors started shifting. That was a new trick. The corridor went from normal light to blue and then red, distracting us just enough so we wouldn't notice that this pumpkin was something other than a pumpkin. As its single eye focused on me, my only thought was that here we had a larger than usual pumpkin. As it vomited out the first flying skull, I still didn't understand what was happening. I had the dumb idea that it had eaten one of the smaller heads and couldn't keep it down. (Down what?)

As a second and third skull came zooming out of the ugly mouth, I started to read the picture. The first skull reached me before I could bring up the BFG. I heard Arlene shout, “Fly,” just as I did the next best thing to shooting the little bugger: I kept it from
taking a bite out of my shoulder by swinging around so that it collided with my helmet. There was a metal-on-metal sound as it dented the helmet and bounced off, making itself a perfect target for Hidalgo, who popped it.

Around about now we lost count of the skulls that filled the narrow corridor. It looked as if we'd knocked over a basket of candy skulls from Mexico's Day of the Dead celebrations . . . but there was nothing sweet about our tormentors.

Hidalgo froze for a few seconds. That was all. A brief moment of battlefield shock. If we lived, I could count on Arlene chewing my ear about it. And I could hear myself answering that we hadn't scored all that high in the reflexes department on this one. If we lived.

“I'll try for the pumpkin!” I shouted. The BFG 9000 would do the job—if I could just get a clear shot. The problem wasn't finding an opening through the skulls—the blast would pulverize them—the problem was to make sure that Albert was outside the field of fire.

Meanwhile, the others didn't need to be told to eliminate the flying skulls. No problem. There was only a zillion of 'em. Hidalgo proved himself worthy of command yet again. He didn't say a word. He was too busy blasting away with his Sig-Cow, taking down his quota.

Arlene provided Albert and Hidalgo with a helpful safety tip: “Don't let them bite you!” She shouted this over the sound of her plasma rifle. She almost took down the main problem with her first blast, which went through three skulls. But this particular pumpkin was smart. The damned thing floated back around
the comer where we'd first sighted its ugly mug. Then it kept spewing out skulls from its more protected position—a clever move, I had to admit.

Of course, the solution was obvious. I realized that I didn't really need a clear shot for the BFG if I could just see the target area. I blew away the entire wall and destroyed the ugly. Then, just for good measure, I pulled the trigger again. As the debris settled, I realized that I'd dropped half the skulls with those two shots, and the others were bumping into each other in the dust-filled air. This finally settled a question for me: the bastards didn't have radar.

The little voice in the back of my head insisted we were in too close quarters for using a weapon like the BFG. I couldn't hear anything else because of the ringing in my head, so I argued with the voice, reminding it that once upon a time I'd done a much crazier thing—I'd used a rocket launcher in an enclosed area.

The voice didn't have a good answer to that, and by then I could hear Arlene cursing a blue streak. She was bent over Hidalgo, her medikit open. Albert stood over the two of them, blasting the remaining skulls out of the corridor. I felt a little dizzy but managed to stumble over to rejoin the human population of hell.

At least one of the skulls had reached the captain and ripped up his throat something fierce. Hidalgo's torn space suit had a whole new meaning now: walking body bag. Arlene was doing what she could, but there was damned little hope for the captain. It looked as if we'd be finishing the mission sans officer. The way Arlene was feverishly working on Hidalgo it was hard to believe she'd ever talked about spacing
his ass out an airlock. There's no substitute for being in combat together.

The last skull was either down or had flown the coop, but Albert remained on guard. I was grateful that the colors had stopped shifting, and I wondered if the light show had been part of this superpumpkin's powers. Whatever the facts might be, I'd become distinctly prejudiced against round things that floated through the air. They seemed to live in a permanent condition of zero-g. That was enough reason to hate them right there.

As we milled around helplessly, watching Arlene try to close the wound in Hidalgo's throat, I noticed Albert tense up. He raised his Sig-Cow to fire at something that was drifting in the air behind us. Naturally, I assumed it was another skull.

The last thing I expected to see this side of paradise was a blue sphere drifting toward us. A gorgeous, beautiful, welcome blue sphere. One of those miracles that had saved both my life and Arlene's. A blue sphere that Albert was seconds away from blowing to kingdom come.

“No!” I shouted, pushing his arm at the same time. Good thing I acted as I spoke. It was too late to stop him from pulling the trigger, but I spoiled his aim.

I couldn't remember if Arlene or I had told Albert about the blue spheres. It was pretty likely we had. But in the middle of a fight you don't expect the new guy to hesitate on the off chance it's not an enemy coming to say hello. It was only dumb luck I was saved the first time I encountered one.

Luck. Back to luck. How in the name of all the saints did this baby show up at the precise moment Hidalgo needed it? Arlene and I had just run across ours. This one was making a house call.

“It's a good one,” I told Albert. “Like an angel. The blue spheres can heal us.”

He lowered his weapon, and I gestured for Arlene to step back. Not one to waste a precious second, Albert reloaded. I moved out of the way, too. The blue sphere descended on Hidalgo, who wasn't the least bit worried; he'd blacked out from loss of blood.

The sphere burst the moment it touched him, making a popping sound like a cork coming out of a bottle. The color became darker as it spread, changing from sky-blue to a rich purple. Hidalgo was surrounded by a violet haze that became a glistening liquid on his body and then seeped through his pores. The ugly hole in his throat closed like two lips pressed together, and his face flushed as new blood pumped through his body.

A few minutes later he opened his blue eyes and regarded us with surprise. “What happened?” he asked.

Arlene did her best to tell him.

He gratefully sipped water from the canteen she passed to him. “Incredible,” he admitted, speaking more slowly than normal. He sat up against the wall.

Albert continued on his watch.

“We need to move,” I said, once again possibly usurping his prerogatives. I remembered how sleepy I'd been after receiving the treatment.

“Let's get a move on,” he said, struggling to his feet. “How far do we have to go?”

“Only a few klicks,” said Arlene.