The Orion Plague (10 page)

The thing turned her way with glowing eyes,
then twitched as automatic weapons opened up on it from the right.
Jill lifted her grenade launcher and aimed, but the apparition
bolted to her left down a corridor. She rushed forward, weapon
ready, to shine a flashlight on the fallen figure.

It was a black-clad commando. She had no idea
which one, since they didn’t wear nametags and she couldn’t see
their faces, but it didn’t really matter much to her. The only
thing this one needed a name for was his funeral. It leaked fluids,
a carcass in a silken bag.

The commando team leader swore next to her,
which identified him for Jill.

“You still good on taking point, nano-boy?”
she asked.

“We’re good,” he grated back. “We’re going to
get this bastard.”

“Might want to send up for something heavier
than those PW-15s, then,” she said, gesturing with her grenade
launcher. “Like this.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then
nodded. “Good thinking. Can your team hold here for a few
minutes?”

“Yeah. We’ll save a couple for you. Go. Hurry
up.”

The four remaining nanocommandos bolted for
the stairs, leaping upward like preying mantises, leaving the four
Edens with the bag of bones. “Grusky, Lockerbie, set claymores to
cover those two corridors. Have two more primed and ready to go,
back out of blast radius. Butler, toss a flare down each one, I
want to be able to see.”

They broke open their backpacks while Repeth
tried to cover both openings with one weapon. The flares went
first, then the two claymore mines – blocks of explosives faced
with seven hundred steel BBs, the lethal kind – were placed three
meters down the way.

Forty seconds later there came a scraping
from the corridor the thing had fled down. Repeth put one eye
around the corner and saw those glowing red orbs. “Get ready,” she
whispered. “Soon as I pull my head back, clack that thing.”

She watched it edge forward to pick up the
flare, then toss the burning light back up the corridor toward
them. “Crap, it’s smart. I can’t see it anymore. Throw another
flare down there.”

She heard Butler digging in his pack when she
saw the eyes halfway to her and moving fast. “Clack!” she yelled,
throwing herself backward from the corner. A wave of pneumatic
shock washed over her, would have deafened her in the enclosed
space except for the noise-cancelling squadcomm inserts. As it was
she still felt like a giant hand had slapped her across the
floor.

She rolled to her knees to see the Shadow
cartwheel among them.
Too fast, it’s too fast!
It must have
gotten beyond the front face of the Claymore, avoided the
sleetstorm of steel balls, and been shoved forward into their
midst. Jill watched in horror as it stood and kicked Butler as he
lay on the ground. The sound of his breath being driven from his
body came over the link as she raised her grenade launcher.

The muffled bark of the weapon transmitted
itself through the kick in her shoulder as it punched the man-thing
backward. Lockerbie and Grusky opened up on it from their prone
positions, hammering it with Needleshock on full auto.

It lay there for a moment, blue lightnings
playing over its body with the electrical discharges of the
charged-capacitor flechettes.
That wasn’t so hard
. Then,
without warning, it leaped upward to cling to the low ceiling,
insect-like, before scuttling across it toward her. Her weapon
boomed once more but she missed, it moved so fast, and then it was
on her with a hissing roar.

A face loomed before her, a demon visage of
shredded flesh and glowing red eyes –
they must have added those
for effect
, she thought in one of those frozen flashes of
irrelevance that combat often brought – before it slammed her over
backward with monstrous strength.

She could see it jerk and twitch, stitched by
bullets from her teammates, even as it backhanded her across the
room. In a confused grey haze she saw it turn on its tormenters and
lunge for them. Groping for a weapon, she found her PW10 on its
retractable sling and brought it up to fire.

Click
. She struggled with the weapon,
running at speed through malfunction procedures drilled into her
nervous system by years of practice, but she knew she would be too
late. The golem had Grusky in its hands and with a twist, it pulled
her assistant’s head off and flung it from him.

Screaming in rage and lining up on the
thing’s body, she poured another magazine into it on full
automatic,
but it’s not enough, I can’t kill it with these
weapons
when an avalanche of darkness swept past her.

At least a dozen black-armored knights lined
up, raised their guns as one and fired at the Shadow. Jill’s bones
rattled with the explosions of heavy weapons and the thing came
apart under the pummeling. Grenade launchers filled with flechette,
auto-shotguns, squad automatic weapons and even a .50 caliber M2
heavy machinegun lifted from its pintle atop an Abrams tore it to
bits.

Ignoring Grusky, who was clearly beyond help,
Jill staggered over to Butler, trusting the cavalry to deal with
security. She rolled him over and saw his chest had been caved in
and he was not breathing. With her combat knife she cut his body
armor free and tried to figure out what to do.

A black-clad figure with a Red Cross patch
shoved her roughly aside, then stripped off its mask to show a
hawkish Semitic face. “Let me handle this, ma’am,” he said as he
pulled off his gloves to reveal long slim fingers. Deftly he
reached inside Butler’s crushed and bloody chest and pulled the
ribcage forward into something resembling a normal position.

Jill knew that, assuming there was any life
left in his body, it would be frantically healing itself. The
commando medic had to rearrange the bones before they knit in a
position that would keep his heart from beating. She could see the
logic in it immediately.

Now that the bone structure was not pressing
on the internal organs, Butler’s breathing was visible, his
diaphragm working. “He’s an Eden, right?”

Jill nodded.

“He’ll make it then. Good luck.” With that
the man was gone, racing after his comrades.

“Get a nutrient IV started,” Jill ordered
Lockerbie, then staggered to her feet to look for her grenade
launcher. Now that she had time to think, the whole front of her
body felt bruised. Once she had retrieved the weapon she walked
over to look at what was left of the Shadow Man.

Gleaming metal bones, unbroken still, poked
out of the wreckage. Its plastic joints and sockets weren’t quite
as tough, and had shattered and popped under the commandos’ weapons
fire. The skull was a steel horror movie prop and the flesh…the
flesh was just meat, bloody meat. Wires and implanted machines ran
throughout the mass.

Jill thought about what one of these things
could do if it carried a weapon – a 7.62 Gatling minigun for
example. She shuddered to think. If a nanocommando was worth
several ordinary troops, this thing could match several of
them
.

Then she remembered her conversation with
Colonel Muzik. What had she said? “
Then I guess we get ourselves
some upgrades.
” It had been flippant bravado, but the more she
thought about it, the more it made sense. At some point the Tiny
Fortress project would come up with combat nano compatible with the
Eden virus, and when it did, she would be pushing to the front of
the line. But now…maybe…it wouldn’t be like a nano shot. Building
cyborgs must take days, weeks, even if all the techniques were
perfected. She filed the thought away.

Jill shook herself out of her musings to
check on Butler. He seemed to be resting comfortably. She was torn
between staying and going forward. Finally, she compromised. “Let’s
get him up the stairs. It’s less risky to move him than to take a
chance one of those things shows up again.”

Carefully the two of them carried Butler up
the steps and handed him off to the medics up above. Then they went
down and carried Grusky’s body up to lay it on the Beast’s hood.
He’ll still be there when we get back
. Lockerbie stared at
the corpse for a long moment before deliberately turning away.
“What now, Top?” she asked.

“Now? We load for bear. Open the back. Pull
out the boxes.”

Lockerbie pulled open the rear door of the
Beast, where their extra gear was stored. They unloaded a dozen
cases, and Jill opened most of them up to survey what they had. She
dumped out the rounds she had in her grenade launcher and
methodically started loading different ones. “Armorshock,” she said
as she did it. “The Needleshock charges weren’t enough, and there’s
no point in pumping Eden Plague into a cyborg. This should generate
enough charge to burn out its electrical systems. If that doesn’t
do it, the HE should take chunks out of it. Get a launcher and load
up. And put a pumped beam on it.” The super-bright flashlights were
just the thing for tunnel work, when stealth was not an issue.

Lockerbie complied, and they filled their
vests with more of the anti-armor rounds.

“All right. Now let’s see how they like
Armorshock. Just keep firing until it’s dead. Blow their heads off
if they’re down. You saw how that one got back up. They’re tough,
but we can kill them if we work as a team.”

Lockerbie nodded grimly, glancing at the
still body of their fallen comrade, and hefted her launcher. “Okay,
boss, let’s go find your fiancé.”

***

“Are we there yet, mom?” Lockerbie whispered
as they rounded another corner and shone their lights down more
empty corridors. “We’ve been down here almost an hour and haven’t
seen a damn thing. There must be hundreds of rooms.”

“What’s that?” Jill pulled her squadcomm
earbud out of her ears and listened. “Down there. Sounds like
voices.” She turned and led the way down a long corridor, shoving
the plugs back in.

A light showed ahead, and now they could all
hear male voices that increased in volume as they rounded two more
corners. Repeth’s team broke out into a well-lit room, some kind of
laboratory.

Two broken Shadows leaked all over the floor,
nearly dismembered by the impact of heavy weapons. Three black-clad
figures lay there as well, neatly placed, and two more reclined on
hospital gurneys. The seven remaining nanocommandos covered a line
of people in lab coats standing against the wall.

Only one thing interested Jill, though, as
she handed off her grenade launcher to Lockerbie and marched over
to face the enormous man that stood among them.

“Professor Stone. I’ve been looking for
you.”

The huge blonde, looking exactly like what he
was, a former professional-entertainment wrestler, smiled and put
his hands on his hips. “Well, well, well. You again.” He laughed.
“You found me. Whoopee.”

“Yeah. Now I need some answers.” She
unclipped her PW10 from its retractable sling and handed it back to
Lockerbie.

He stared at her face. “If I didn’t know
better, I’d think this was personal, but I don’t even know your
name. And my boys never got a chance to use you, such a sweet piece
that you are. What’s your beef?”

“You can call me Reaper. My beef,” Jill
replied, taking her PW5 pistol out of its holster and handing it
back to Lockerbie, “is that you sold my fiancé Richard Johnstone to
these lunatics here, and apparently you ran off to join them too.
So I bet you know where he is.”

“Even if I know where he is – maybe I do and
maybe I don’t – I’m not going to give it up for free. Tell the
ninja turtles here to give me safe passage out of here and I’ll
tell you all I know. Hell, I’ll even help you find him.” Stone
cracked his knuckles together, clearly enjoying the repartee.
Perhaps he was reliving his glory days of staged television
bravado.

“How about this,” Jill replied, sliding her
gleaming combat knife out of the sheath in her right boot. “I
promise to leave that pretty face of yours alone if you tell me
everything I want to know, first.”

Professor Stone laughed again, loud and long.
“That’s an empty threat. You’re an Eden, you can’t torture me.”

“I can.” The Echo Team leader stepped up,
pulling his mask off his head. He was a rock-jawed recruiting
poster come to life, standard issue for Special Operations. “I’m no
Eden.”

“No, but you’re an officer in the Yoo-nited
States Army –”

“– Navy –”

“– Navy, even better, and you’re all about
lawful orders and the Geneva Conventions – at least, with this many
witnesses. Besides, the Eden virus will heal me. So what do you
have to coerce me?”

“How about this, then.” Jill twirled the
knife in her fingers. “You and me. You lose, you tell me all you
know. You win, SEAL Team poster boy here lets you go.”

“I can’t authorize that, Master Sergeant,”
objected the commando leader.

“Authorize this,” she said, drawing out the
paper sealed in plastic. She slapped it against his chest until he
got a grip on it, finally taking off his gloves to unfold it and
read.

“Holy cow.”

“Indeed. That authority enough for you,
nano-boy?”

“Yeah. But I’d appreciate you secure that
crap. We both just lost good men and I’m not in the mood.”

“Fair enough. What’s your name?”

“Brian Heppner. Lieutenant, USN.”

“Well, Brian, you have your instructions. If
he beats me, escort him to the perimeter and give him an hour head
start. If not, and he reneges on his word, I saw a room back there
where you two can have some privacy,
capisce
?” She locked
eyes with Stone. “And here’s a tip – if a beating or some carving
doesn’t convince him, inject him with some of your nano-filled
blood. He’ll go berserk and probably die in agony. Now if you think
those orders are unlawful, you can take it up with the President.”
She rolled her shoulders. “Give him a knife.”