Dominant Species (10 page)

"And that ain't gonna happen." The voice on the ComLink was ragged but forceful.

Ridgeway turned to see Merlin slogging through the iridescent pool. The Marine hauled a rack of damaged cylinders and a tangle of braided steel hose. Fog swirled in his wake, clinging to the trailing strands of equipment.

Merlin wrestled with the snarl of loose lines. "Chem-rigs have suppression systems," the engineer explained wearily, "I figured a Hex-hauler to have a pretty good one." He held up the cylinders. "Two of the pressure tanks got scrapped, but one survived. Guess we caught a break."

With a heavy bang, Merlin set the mass of equipment on the rocks and began to untangle the silver-colored hoses, popping off the clamp-style brackets that had affixed the braided steel lines to the top of the truck. He paused once more, breathing heavily for a minute before he purged the lines and charged the power nozzle.

The decon rig had not been designed for manual use. Charged to several thousand psi, the high pressure jet would have broken the arm of anyone foolish enough to try. In powered armor, Merlin merely braced himself and threw the lever, directing the stream of white foam across Darcy's prone figure. He took care to focus on joints and seams where bits of the deadly fluid could lodge. He repeated the procedure on Stitch and Ridgeway before clanking off toward Taz and Monster.

Stitch had already turned back to Darcy, placing his grey armored palm into a recess along the sniper's ribs. Contacts met and a high-security code fired across the gap. With a burst of compressed gas, the entire torso of the suit gull-winged open and slid down along the sniper's sides, revealing the inert form of Lieutenant Darcy Lonigan.

Ridgeway peered over the medic's shoulder and grimaced. Darcy was beat all to hell. A dark, mottled bruise swept up her entire neck and jawline. Blood stained the left side of her olive drab T-shirt. Darcy's breathing was labored and the sniper's shallow breath fogged in the frigid air.

Scanning layers of injury, Stitch fired off a series of corrective measures. A wave of drugs pulsed into Darcy's bloodstream. Her heartbeat quickened, but barely.

Stitch gave Ridgeway a quick synopsis. "I can plug some of the leaks, but we're gonna need heat and shelter. She'll freeze if the suit stays open, but we don't have a lot of choice. If I'm gonna get some of this frag out, I'll need to peel the armor completely."

"In your dreamssss…" The voice was slurred and heavy, but the glint in her good eye was all Darcy.

Stitch let out an unexpected chuckle, muttering under his breath as he quickly resumed his ministrations. Ridgeway knelt at the sniper's side, his faceless helmet gazing down impassively.

"Gave us a bit of a scare there, Lieutenant."

"Yessir," she wheezed through bloodstained teeth, "...wasn't part of the plan. How's Monster?"

"Stubborn as shit."

Darcy snorted and closed her eyes, nodding slowly. "So what's new?" A long moment passed before she looked up once more, this time gazing directly at Ridgeway. "He saved my ass."

"Yeah, well, you can be his Morale Officer while he heals up."

Darcy coughed and speckles of bright blood stained on her lips. She flashed a wry smile in spite of the pain. "Aw shit Major, the guy saved my life and all, but that's askin' too much."

Behind his mask Ridgeway allowed himself a tired smile at her sarcastic wit, but the signs didn't look good. Darcy needed medical attention, and more than they could give her on a frozen island of rock. Ridgeway leaned down and spoke softly. "Rest up Marine, we're going to need to be mobile soon. You up for it?"

"Roger that," she replied, her tone suddenly stripped of humor. The eyes that gazed up were hard as sapphire glass.

Ridgeway nodded once, then stood, his armored fist thumping a gentle rap on the medic's shoulder as he turned away.

Taz and Merlin were on their feet, checking each other's gear. Monster knelt at the island's edge where he re-armed the Gatling.

As Ridgeway approached, he could fully appreciate the beating Monster had absorbed. Aside from the grapefruit-sized dent sprawled across his chest plate, a multitude of lesser dents and furrows criss-crossed the armor in a haphazard array.

The TAC package at the base of Monster's skull had been blown to bits. Ridgeway could only imagine the pounding the skull inside had taken.

Ridgeway stood at Monster's side while both men scanned the distance. "How we doing, Gunny?"

"Merlin, Taz and Stitch are operational," Monster replied mechanically, adding with a dry note, "you look like shit, but you're moving." Then his deep voice grew somber, "You already know about the Lieutenant."

The Major nodded in silent agreement. Ridgeway couldn't see the big man's eyes, but he knew they were full of concern. Although Darcy was quick to point out Monster's heroics, both men knew full well the role the sniper played in the entire team surviving Cathedral. Courage cut both ways.

"So what have we got?"

Monster paused a moment before answering, his head making a slow sweep of the dark horizon where lake light faded into blackness. When he spoke, his reply was insightful and succinct. "We've got some weird shit here, Major."

Of all the technical answers he might have gotten from a hundred other Sergeants, Monster to cut to the chase.

The big Gunny elaborated. "The good news is it looks like we're alone down here. No life signs, nothing hostile we can see. I'm getting some real hinky readings bearing two-six-niner relative, but whatever it is, it's beyond passive scanner range. We'll get a better look if we go active."

Monster's torso rocked back, his faceplate angling up as he continued, "My best guess is that's where we broke through." A dented gauntlet pointed straight up.

Ridgeway looked up at the cavern ceiling, zooming his view and boosting light amplification. His rangefinder told him that the ceiling towered some seventy meters overhead, a jagged carpet of dark stalactites. An even darker hole, some ten meters wide, gaped in the forest of hanging spikes.

Monster looked down and shrugged toward the glowing pool. "Without the lake, we'da been paste on the rocks. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but that's weirdness number one: it damn sure ain't water. Too thick, too blue, and water doesn't glow in the dark. I've got Merlin running a check, but I'm laying heavy odds it's synthetic. If so, somebody had to put it here."

Ridgeway nodded, making a mental note. Another lower-priority item to be resolved later. "Go on."

"Weirdness number two, the atmosphere. Way too clean. Oxy-Nitro mix is solid, most of the right trace gases, it's damn near Earth-normal and that just doesn't happen, especially not underground. That suggests a terraformer down here."

Ridgeway's fingers drummed lightly against his thigh as he mulled the point for the second time. "Yeah, Stitch came to the same conclusion. But Intel said the reactor was at the deepest level."

Monster snorted abruptly. "Oh yeah, it'd be a real shocker if Intel missed something now wouldn't it?"

Ridgeway grunted, having a ground-pounder's typically low regard for intelligence officers. Safe in air-conditioned offices, analysts sipped coffee and peered through second-hand reports, often forwarding best-guess conclusions as gospel fact. The guys on the front line ate the mistakes.

Monster continued. "We took one hell of a drop. The Hex must have ate it's way into some kind of big crack, a natural shaft, something. Best estimate is that we pinballed through close to five hundred meters of rock before dumping out through the ceiling. Add another seventy of freefall, that puts us roughly twenty-five hundred meters below the surface."

The Gunnery Sergeant paused as if considering the weight of his own statement. Ridgeway mulled the conclusion carefully. Two and a half kilometers underground. Hell of a long way to dig.

Outwardly undaunted, Monster continued to present data in a steady stream. "It's way below freezing right here, about eight degrees Fahrenheit. We'd have to dig down to tap a lingering magma plane, and we sure as shit don't wanna get any deeper. That leads us to weirdness number three: You can't have fog without heat. If the cavern is stone-cold, what's heating up the lake?"

Ridgeway cast a suspicious eye on the thick haze that lay across the rocks. What indeed?

The report left Ridgeway with more questions than answers, so he focused on the practical aspects of their survival. "What's our op status?"

"We've got enough power in the cells to repair maybe eighteen percent of the total armor damage, but that would leave us dry on juice. I've got an ammo redistribution in the works to give everybody close to a thirty-four percent load-out. Our shit's hanging out a little, but we've got fight left."

Ridgeway nodded solemnly as his gaze snapped from one banged-up Marine to the next. With at least one critical injury on his hands, they had no time to sit idle. He keyed his ComLink to a team-wide channel.

"All right, here it is without the candy coating. We're two and a half klicks underground with no obvious exit. We need juice and shelter. There's no plan in the book for this one, so we've got to improvise."

The RATs turned to face him in silence, impassive faceplates fixed and unmoving.

Ridgeway pointed toward the roof of the cavern. "That's where we came in, but we're in no shape to even see if the door is still open. Odds are the reactor slagged it behind us."

"So what's the plan, Majah?"

"Conditions down here indicate two things, a terraformer and a heat source. Taken together, it smells like somebody else has been down here. If so, then there's got to be a way back up."

The Marines edged closer as Ridgeway took a knee like a quarterback in the huddle. "Here's the drill. We're sitting in low-signature mode. We don't see anything, and thus far it looks like nothing has seen us. I want everybody locked and hot, we're gonna bring up the lights and get a better look around."

Ridgeway looked across the group at the sniper. She sat up, armor secured once more. The heavy rifle rested on her lap.

"How're you doing, Darcy?"

"Five by five, Major." The pain in her voice belied the reply, but Ridgeway couldn't do much to help. He needed everybody on-line and functional.

"All right Marines, let's make it happen." Ridgeway handed the final prep to Monster and shifted focus to his own last-minute readiness. He cycled through an onboard checklist of weapons and armor, measuring his ability to wage sudden battle.

Something rapped against his bicep, a six-pack of twenty-mil grenades in Taz's outstretched hand. Ridgeway accepted them with a nod and slammed the magazine into the CAR's stock. A two-line display on the rifle incremented to reflect the increased load-out; four HEs, three frags, two Thermalite. The select-fire mechanism would launch the appropriate round on command.

Just above the grenade counter, a second line glowed a steady seventy-four percent. The rifle's covalent accelerator was online, with a fair bit of firepower left. The CARs fired the same charged round as the Gatling, albeit at a much slower rate. Even so, the destructive power of covalent ammo made it a murderous weapon.

Ridgeway gripped the rifle firmly. If anything is out there waiting to jump, he thought grimly, it better be ready to have its ass unraveled in a hurry.

A glance at the TAC confirmed that the other Marines had reached a similar level of readiness. Ridgeway spun two upright fingers and the Marines formed up on his position. Shoulder to shoulder, they created a tight circle on the small island of rock, each Marine facing outward.

Pumped with enough drugs to numb a rhino, Darcy shouldered the Hammer. Monster squared himself on the suspect heading two-six-niner and held the Gatling level. Merlin, Stitch, and Taz completed the circle, their weapons up and ready.

"On my mark." Ridgeway's voice was low and deadly.

"Three."

Armor hummed softly as Taz settled lower in his stance, the muzzle of his CAR canted skyward.

"Two."

Quiet ascending whine as Stitch's exotherm ramped into magnum mode.

"One."

Taz's grenade launcher barked with a dull crump that echoed in the empty darkness. High overhead a pinpoint sun blazed to life as the flare burned away the shroud of darkness.

Monster's deep voice cut through the silence, "Oh my God."

CHAPTER 8

The searchlights on Ridgeway's armor could bathe a hundred meters of midnight in a blazing glare. Together, the six Marines could throw enough candlepower to light up a stadium. But this was beyond forty lights, beyond sixty. Their beams angled up and played along the immense curving hull like tiny fingers tickling the belly of a whale.

The sweeping bow towered easily three hundred meters above them, its metal skin a patchwork of greens and greys. The hulk lay slightly on one side, nose-high and listing to starboard. Towering stalactites reached down from the ceiling and nailed the dead leviathan to the floor. A mangled stump, remnants of a severed wing, extended toward the cavern roof as though reaching for a distant sky.

In the crawling splashes of light, Ridgeway could make out sections of crumpled framework through gaping holes in the skin. It took a hell of a lot to bend girders that thick, Ridgeway noted soberly. Whatever hit this thing had ripped parts off of it like they were made of wet clay.