Dominant Species (8 page)

A deep metallic thunk preceded the ascending whine of hydraulics as the door rose. Blood drooled freely from its lower edge as it withdrew into the ceiling. On the other side, Monster stood framed in a swirl of smoke.

Ridgeway stepped through the door, oblivious to the steaming slick of human mulch. "We good with the charges?"

Monster's gravel voice was firm. "Roger that, six in the green."

Ridgeway glanced at the mission clock. Just two minutes and twenty-eight seconds before the powerful Detonex charges would turn the nuclear reactor inside out. The explosion to follow would reduce most of Cathedral to a subterranean slagheap, a party his Marines would just as soon miss.

Ridgeway stabbed a finger in the air, pointing down the hall that led back to the loading bay. "Marines! We are out of here!"

Like a pack of armored wolves the Marines fell into formation and swept down the corridor. They ran flat-out, their charge marked by only token bursts of weapon fire.

According to the TAC, they had thus far escaped serious injury. A dropship rigged with decon and medics would be poised at the top, more than enough to deal with the lingering hex and the smattering of wounds. All Ridgeway had to do was get his team out of this damned hole.

He prodded the TAC for a status on the Cathedral. The response was sorely lacking. While the facility map was clear and vivid, the TAC disclosed no data on enemy troops.

"It's the shielding for the reactor," Monster barked, anticipating Ridgeway's move and matching it. "We're still inside the containment vessel; it's playing hell with scanners and comm."

As if in confirmation, Ridgeway caught the broken fragments of a garbled ComLink. Darcy's voice crackled in his head, her tone thick with urgency. "Tango char…ull platoon… …epeat, Condit-- Re…"

"Say again!" Ridgeway barked as he rounded a huge block of transformers that hummed with voltage. At a dead run, the Marines hurtled from the hallway into the wide expanse of Cathedral-- and into a meat-grinder.

The TAC went berserk as the first cluster of heavy shells chewed into the wall above Ridgeway's head. A hail of small-arms fire erupted, filling the air with the neon streak of infantry lasers.

The Marines fanned out in headlong dives for cover. Ridgeway rolled hard, his armored mass slamming into a stack of blue industrial drums. Several of the cylinders bounced away like oversized bowling pins. A trail of cannon fire chewed at his heels, blasting the containers apart into clouds of chemical mist.

"Delta three! Delta three!" Ridgeway shouted over the slap of bullets on steel. His right arm reached for the Covalent Assault Rifle holstered in the backpack section of his armor.

All right, Ridgeway snarled, No more Mr. Nice Guy. The CAR gave off a sharp whine as protocol Delta Three went into effect.

On cue, Monster's huge right arm curled over the cab of a forklift and the Gatling blazed a vicious arc of suppressing fire. Incoming fire stuttered abruptly as Rimmers frantically scrambled for cover.

In the momentary lapse, Taz and Merlin bolted forward on the edges of the skirmish. As they ran, the charging forms suddenly became indistinct against the background of machines and electronics. Cloaked in active light-bending camouflage, the two ghostly forms blurred through the maze of smoke and tracer-streaks.

Stitch opened up on Ridgeway's right, adding the distinct, full-auto bass of exothermic fire to the din. The medic had disengaged the MP17's silencer, wringing out every bit of velocity the subgun could produce. A tongue of flame licked out from the muzzle.

The TAC devoured acoustic and visual signatures, plotting points of origin. Ridgeway quickly saw that the large gun was an Oerlikon 30mil on a mobile platform.

"Big bastard," he grunted, knowing that easily four centimeters of armor plate surrounded the gunner. The Oerlikon was a heavy-hitter designed to anchor a defensive line in the midst of a shitstorm. And doing a damn good job at the moment.

The Rimmers had bunched up around the Oerlikon, using the heavy gun for fire support and cover. Judging from the sand-colored BDUs and light ballistic armor, Ridgeway took the Alliance troops for regular army, probably a detachment from an upper level that had the brights to double-time it down here when the first sirens went off. Gung-ho types.

The TAC counted some fifteen guys to the left of the cannon, another ten to the right. At least six of them carried squad automatics, accounting for a lot of the Rimmer fire.

A lance of ionized air streaked in from the distance as the hypersonic bullet punched a fist-sized hole through the Oerlikon's gunner compartment. The cannon fell silent as a thunderclap rolled in from somewhere high in the Cathedral catwalks. A familiar female voice echoed in Ridgeway's ear. "Hammer time."

Ridgeway suppressed a grin as he rolled to his feet. The Covalent Assault Rifle roared, blue-white plasma flaring from its muzzle. The Rimmer line was pounded with a stream of charged covalent rounds that flared with cyan light on impact. The very fabric of matter destabilized by the disruption of covalent bonds, soldiers literally unraveled at the seams.

The CAR's underslung launcher barked sharply, lobbing Thermalite grenades over the massed opponents. Four airburst detonations thudded down the enemy line, white-hot flashes invoking a new wave of screams.

To either side, a pair of phantoms coalesced as Taz and Merlin raked the enemy flank with flamethrowers. Tongues of searing heat licked through the troops, withering skin to a blackened crust. Burning figures flailed on the ground, wrapped in shrouds of dull, flickering orange.

A game Rimmer with Lieutenant bars on his collar tried to rally the survivors. Shouting commands over the roar of battle, the young officer struggled to shore up the center of the line. Driven by his commands, one squad automatic came back online before the Lieutenant's tan ballistic helmet launched in a burst of crimson mist.

People with rank insignia shouldn't wave their arms in combat, Ridgeway sneered as he saw the cloudburst of red. Dumb bastard might just as well have worn a bright yellow T-shirt that read SNIPER BAIT.

Any lingering shred of Rimmer discipline came apart like the Lieutenant's skull. With fire closing in from either side, the middle of the Alliance line bunched together. But in drawing away from the flames, they also backed away from cover.

Stepping out from behind the forklift, Monster brought the Gatling to bear and an incandescent stream of bullets carved through the exposed throng. Chunks of flesh, bone and kevlar sprayed wildly.

The battle ended as abruptly as it began. Surround, divide and destroy; thirty-four seconds to chew an enemy platoon to shreds. From each corner, Marines swept the kill zone. Nothing survived.

Ridgeway snapped a glance at the chrono. Detonation in one minute forty-six; no chance of making it to the surface. Their only hope was to get as far up the elevator shaft as possible. Ridgeway barked, "Marines, double time! Darcy, torch anything between us and the elevator!"

As the RATs bolted for the exit, a sudden chain of thunderclaps echoed ahead. The Marines abandoned everything in the name of speed. Nearing the gutted maglev, Ridgeway checked the time.

One minute.

The elevator shaft extended straight up the far wall and out through the ceiling. The way home. At nearly 40kph Ridgeway's hurtling form reached the--

crater?

The damned hex, Ridgeway realized. Trapped in the sunken floor of the loading bay, the insatiable acid had attacked the concrete with unexpected effectiveness. The fuming surface of the corrosive lake still boiled, but now some ten meters below floor level.

Reflex kicked in as Ridgeway hit the edge of the jagged pit. Synthetic muscles launched him over the gaping hole.

The far wall came up fast. A subconscious neural command flashed, survival reflexes firing madly. Bayonet-sized blades recessed along the outer edge of both forearms hinged at the wrist, pivoting ninety degrees to the axis of Ridgeway's arm. They locked into place just as he slammed into the wall. Even through the armor, the impact rattled his teeth.

Sucking for air, Ridgeway hung from the spikes buried in the wall. He looked down to see the steaming hole that yawned beneath him, its sides porous and crumbling from the caustic excavation. The truck lay crumpled at the bottom, only the front sections of the tank and cab still recognizable above the bubbling surface.

Dozens of red brackets filled the TAC, converging on the Marine's position. At the edge of the pit, Monster unleashed a wide arc of suppressive fire. Stitch spun back to back with the gunny, firing the MP17 in rapid, accurate bursts.

Merlin and Taz sprinted by and leaped over the smoking hole in a mimic of Ridgeway's lead. Better prepared to hit the wall, they immediately began a hand-over-hand ascent. Powerful arms drove their own blades deep into the rough concrete.

Ridgeway pulled himself onto a narrow ledge. A deep gurgle belched up from the acid pool as a massive bubble broke across the steaming surface. The Hex dipped noticeably, drawing back from the edge like a caustic tide. As it did, the rearmost section of the truck settled with a low groan.

A garish warning tone snared Ridgeway's attention. Flaring madly, a bright red bracket appeared on the left edge of his vision where the ugly nose of an RPG peered up from within a doorway. The conical head of the rocket-propelled grenade leered malevolently as Ridgeway perched on the wall like a fly. With almost a kilo of high explosive and a sleeve of titanium flechettes, the OG-9 would make one hell of a swatter.

Ridgeway flattened against the wall. The grenadier was tucked in tight, using the doorframe and wall for cover. Only the outer edge of his shoulder was visible, pathetically little to target.

The ionized wake of a railgun bullet punched through the metal doorframe like rice paper, blasting through the grenadier and into the concrete floor. Unfired, the launcher bounced once and clattered into the crater.

Forty nine seconds. We aren't gonna make it.

A 40mm grenade slammed viciously off Monster's chest, caroming only an arm's-length before it detonated. The concussion knocked the big man sprawling. His icon flashed furiously on the TAC.

From the walkways above, Darcy's rifle thundered in rapid succession. A string of white-hot concussions burned a swath through Rimmers that tried to close on Monster's position. The sonic boom was sharper now, explosive, telling Ridgeway that the sniper had spun the railgun's velocity to max. Uranium projectiles left the barrel so fast that air friction melted them into bolts of superheated plasma.

The gurgle of Hex suddenly amplified, a sucking roar that sounded like a jet intake. The churning surface bowed inward and twisted into an accelerating spiral. With an abrupt flush, thousands of liters of hydrogen hexafluoride drained from sight, dragging the dead truck in its wake.

Ridgeway blinked twice. The smoldering crater had become a tunnel shaft that ran deeper than the eye could see.

Another cavern? The idea flashed through Ridgeway's mind as an image more than as words. How far? No way to know. Big hole, big enough for a truck. But to where?

Ridgeway's damage control screamed as machinegun fire chewed the wall around him. Sound flattened as the hammering noise slipped out of sync with reality. He caught a distant CRUMP and saw a huge black-orange fireball roll across thirty meters of Cathedral floor.

Thirty seconds. No time left. Ridgeway made the call.

"Down the hole. Move!"

Without question Merlin and Taz pushed back from the wall, tearing their climbing blades out of the concrete. The Marines plummeted feet-first into the crater, glanced roughly off the uneven slope and tumbled out of sight.

Ridgeway looked up to see the sniper holding ground on the catwalk. Ferocity tainted his voice as he screamed, "Darcy - get out of there!"

Ripping off two final shots, Darcy ducked for cover and snapped the rifle into two sections, slamming them into their backpack compartments. In a sudden burst she vaulted the railing and dropped to a lower catwalk. "Inboun--"

Through the ComLink, Ridgeway could hear the erratic percussion of metal on metal that played sharply over the wet gush of air driven from human lungs. A sudden hail of sparks appeared across the sniper's form as she was knocked off her feet.

Ridgeway tracked left; a fire team of at least eight Rimmers massed at the near end of her catwalk, pouring fire on Darcy's position. The sniper rolled frantically, scrabbling for cover as Ridgeway's CAR fired a five-round burst into the lead Rimmer. One squad automatic dropped out of the fight, but seven remaining weapons chattered ceaselessly.

Staggering to his feet, Monster took the wholesale approach. The beefy Marine swung the Gatling straight up, vectoring in on the Rimmer team some fifteen meters overhead. The multi-barreled gun howled.

The first two hundred rounds tore the Rimmer stack to hell. But the Gatling continued, attacking the catwalk itself. Eroding metal burned with the electric fire of covalence gone awry and the hanging sidewalk parted with a metallic shriek. With the growing crash of chain-reaction failure, the length of catwalk succumbed to gravity amidst the whip-like crack of snapping guy wires. The end of the walk pitched down to form a long ramp with Darcy at the top.

Her flailing body skated down the sudden slope. A trail of sparks framed her descent as armor scraped along grated metal. With tremendous speed she plowed into twisted wreckage at the bottom.