This wasn’t the time to identify it. Hicks pushed up and over the lip of the faulty hatch door and reeled across the command center room like a drunkard, rocking from side to side when his bad leg wanted to buckle beneath him. Somewhere to his right was Rachel’s body, but he couldn’t think about that now, not if he wanted to live. His night vision module was damaged and the green view in front of him was sizzling in and out, in and out; he had to make it to the other hatch before it died on him completely and he couldn’t see anything.
Hicks felt the creature come up behind him just as he lunged through the hatch and slapped his hand against the toggle switch on the flipside of the wall. The door slid closed and he leaned against the metal, gasping—
—and something brutal and huge slammed into it from the other side.
The impact flung him away from the door and Hicks landed on his back with the wind knocked out of him. For a moment all he could do was lie there like a stunned, upside down turtle, listening as the interior hatch door was beaten by a monstrous force. Finally, he shook his head to clear it and scrambled backward, turning as he went until he was upright and staggering forward. Behind him the metal shrieked and started to buckle—it wasn’t that thick and it wasn’t going to hold.
“The code!” he shouted. “Max, I need the code for the exterior hatch!”
“It’s already open,” Gunny shot back. “Why—”
“I have to close it!” Hicks launched himself through the open door and ended up skidding to his knees on the dusty moon surface, right calf pulsing with pain. “Right now!” He twisted up and back, slamming his palm against the side of the ship, shaking as he waited. His night vision was still wonky and his head was ringing, but he could have sworn he heard metal being wrenched apart. “Max, I need it now!”
It took Gunny another three seconds, a tiny slice of time that felt like eternity, and then he read it off. Hicks punched it in and got a red light—he’d mistyped. “Say again!” he yelled as the sputtering field of green that was the entrance bay of the Paradox shimmered with movement. “Again!”
Maxwell repeated himself, slowing just enough for Hicks to punch in the code correctly this time. Hicks had the sensation of something coiled and black rolling toward him, then the heavy exterior hatch closed. There was a muffled boom as whatever was on the other side hit it, then hit it again. But this was the exterior door, designed to withstand human warfare and the vacuum of space.
It held.
* * *
Lethal non-human organic life form of indeterminate origin and physical description.
That was what GySgt Maxwell put on all the reports, in spaces with labels like CAUSE OF LOSS OF LIFE and REASON FOR FAILURE TO RECLAIM ASSIGNED RESOURCES and JUSTIFICATION FOR ABORTING MISSION. There was no collaborating their stories because he and Maxwell told the God’s honest truth about what happened, and the video feed files from Hicks and the eleven other dead crew members supported their statements. Once the battle began the vids were flush with screams and pulse rifle shots, but they were lousy with visual details—flashes of light, rolling shadows, the impression of something huge and fast and dark but that couldn’t be pinpointed. There had been an uneasy question and answer session when Hicks had been facing officers so far above his pay grade that any one of them could’ve pointed a finger and ended his career. But again, he had just told the truth.
“Cpl Hicks, why didn’t you tell a superior officer that your wife had been on the Paradox?”
“Because I wanted to try and find out what happened to her, sir.”
“And did you?”
“Yes, sir. She was killed by—”
Again, that eleven-word narrative.
“—a lethal non-human organic life form of indeterminate origin and physical description.”
In the end, the matter had gone all the way up the Chain of Command to their Lieutenant Colonel before being closed out. The status of his wife and the rest of the Paradox’s crew were changed to KILLED IN ACTION, and GySgt Maxwell deployed somewhere else. Hicks returned to his usual squad to find his NCO furious that Hicks had gotten the orders to be on the squad that reclaimed the Paradox to begin with. Since the NCO was an E-6 who was perpetually pissed off at the world, life was normal.
Finally Hicks had put an end to the mystery that had been his wife’s disappearance.
But he didn’t have closure. Far from it.
Sometimes at night, he would sit at his computer and re-watch the video messages that Rachel had sent him, her wedding ring rolling between his thumb and forefinger. Those were the nights Hicks would cycle from her first message to the last. That one he studied, his blue eyes narrowed and sharp, over and over, even as he replayed his own experience inside the ship that had become her coffin.
Those were the nights that Cpl Dwayne Hicks, his expression outwardly calm, would look from the screen to Rachel’s wedding ring in his hand.
Those were the nights that he would fold his fist around it, squeezing so hard that the edges cut into his flesh and his palm bled onto the gold metal.
It was still out there. Someday, somehow, he would get the chance to find and kill the creature that had murdered his wife.
BLOWBACK
BY CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN
Dietrich had never puked on a dropship before, and she hoped today wouldn’t change that. She held onto the safety bar across her chest and tried to take even breaths, but the fact they were in freefall through the thick friction atmosphere of an alien moon didn’t help. The dropship shuddered so hard it felt like it might break apart, so hard her bones seemed to crash together.
She glanced over at Private Malinka, saw the girl’s ashen pallor, and figured it might be a race to see who could vomit first. At least Jette Malinka would have an excuse. The girl was nineteen years old and this was her first drop outside of a simulator. Dietrich’s only excuse would be too much whiskey the night before.
Way too much whiskey.
She kept her jaw tight, breathed through her nose and tried to look straight ahead without focusing on the person sitting straight across from her—Corporal Tim Stenbeck. Dietrich didn’t want to look at Stenbeck because then she’d remember the taste of whiskey on his lips and the guilt that had burned through her when she had woken up this morning in his bunk. She and Stenbeck had been involved for a while. You couldn’t call it dating. They’d eaten and drunk and slept together for a few months, but that had ended nearly seven weeks ago.
With the exception of last night. It had been a blip on the radar, a foolish mistake, and she still felt the burn on her face from his stubble. It was a strangely pleasant sensation, which only made her feel worse. She had been the one to end it, bored with him and worried that he had started thinking long term, thinking he might be in love.
It hadn’t been fair to him, what had happened last night. She was afraid it might give him ideas.
But then, he had been the one to bring the bottle of whiskey to her door. All she’d done was let him in.
Dietrich breathed through her nose. Rode the dropship down, waiting for the moment when gravity would reassert, when Khan would take over the controls from the pilot seat, and then would try to land this crate on a rocky plateau in an inhospitable atmosphere on a planet that had already killed most of two research teams.
The Colonial Marines weren’t here for research. They were here to make sure the third team of scientists Weyland-Yutani planned to send might have time to build themselves a compound before the local fauna—whatever the hell these aliens might be—could turn them into chum.
Mind wandering, Dietrich scanned the faces of her squad. Spunkmeyer, Hicks, Hudson, Vasquez, Frost, Malinka, Wierzbowski, Crowe, Zeller, Sergeant Apone, and their mission C.O., Lieutenant Emma Paulson. All good Marines, and that included the one face she had refused to see. Stenbeck.
Now she let herself see his face, unsurprised to find him watching her. Stenbeck gave her a nod as if to assure her all was well, that he was a big boy a
nd knew where things stood between them. She still felt a little guilty, but maybe she didn’t need to. After all, they’d both had a hell of a night.
Dietrich gave him a nod. The dropship jerked upward as Khan took the controls. Bile surged up the back of her throat but she fought it back down, counted to ten, and then exhaled. The dropship kept moving through the atmospheric soup, but now she could hear the rasp of the dusty air scraping the hull as they flew, and she knew it was almost over.
“Goddamn, what a ride!” Hudson yelled. “Let’s do it again!”
Many of them laughed. Hicks patted Malinka on the knee, but the girl’s ashen pallor had improved already.
“Hell with that,” Vasquez said. “I’m already bored with this op. Can we just go out and kill whatever we’re supposed to kill, get this bug hunt over with?”
“Belay that shit, Vasquez,” Sergeant Apone growled. “We’re gonna set a good example for our greenie today. Private Malinka needs to see how this unit operates so she can learn how you’ve all survived together this long. Which means you and Hudson and Wierzbowski and Stenbeck are on notice right now, before we even hit the surface. We do this quick and by the book. Is that clear?”
“I hear your voice in my sleep, Sarge,” Vasquez said, glancing around at the rest of the unit. Only Hicks didn’t smile. Always focused on the fight to come, that guy.
“What’s that?” Apone barked.
“I said, ‘Yes, sir, Sergeant, sir!’”
“Damn right you did,” Apone said.
Vasquez and Dietrich exchanged a knowing look. Half the time, Vasquez only said the things she did in order to get a rise out of Sergeant Apone. The man wasn’t much older than Dietrich herself, but he had a grizzled air about him—partly due to the bushy black mustache he always seemed to be smoothing down—that made him seem like everybody’s disapproving father. Dietrich knew from late-night conversation that Vasquez didn’t have a high opinion of fathers and couldn’t resist pushing Apone’s buttons.
It was odd to hear Apone lumping Stenbeck and Hudson into the same list of troublemakers. They had been friends once—best of—but that had been before Stenbeck and Dietrich had hooked up. After that, there’d been a chill between them, sometimes turning into open aggression. Dietrich had never understood it, but she had to admit to herself that it was part of the reason she had broken things off with Stenbeck. Her own friendship with Hudson had broken down because of the way the two guys had been at each other’s throats, and she hated having that tension in the unit.
Since she’d stopped sleeping with Stenbeck, things had mostly gotten back to normal, though some of the uneasy tension remained between the two men. She wondered if Hudson had heard them together last night, wondered what the hell his problem was to begin with.
“Think you could fill us in now, Lieutenant?” Hicks asked, turning toward Paulson. “I know this op is need-to-know, but we’re practically on the ground.”
Lieutenant Paulson frowned, the expression tugging at the thin white scar that cut across her mouth. She ran the palm of her right hand over her shaved scalp and then glanced up toward the pilot’s seat.
“How long till touchdown, Corporal Khan?” she asked.
Khan glanced at an instrument panel, hands on the stick. “Touchdown in three minutes or less.”
The lieutenant nodded slowly, contemplating, and then turned to look at Hicks. Dietrich read irritation on Apone’s face, and wondered how much the Sarge had been told about their mission. Wondered if that irritation came from what he knew, or what he didn’t know.
“We’re about to land on Clytemnestra, a moon orbiting Thestias, in the Pollux system,” Lieutenant Paulson said, ice blue eyes sharp and bright in the otherwise gray cabin of the dropship. “The rest of what I’m about to say is classified. You’re not to repeat it to anyone. If you do, you’ll be charged with—”
“Corporate espionage,” Dietrich said. “We know. Maybe Malinka doesn’t know—”
“I know,” the young private replied, the tight, short curls on her head trembling as she turned to look at Dietrich. “Sometimes we’re military. Sometimes we’re a private task force. That’s what happens when the armed forces have a corporate sponsor, but I know what I signed up for, Cynthia.”
Dietrich flinched. Held up a hand to forestall the girl’s hostility. “Back off, kid. I’m just looking out for you.”
Malinka nodded. “Thanks for that,” she said, brushing Dietrich off.
“Put a leash on it, both of you,” Apone ordered. “Private Malinka, I’m glad you know what your role is and very happy you don’t feel like you need babysitting, ’cause you’re not gonna get any from this group.”
“I can hold up my end,” Malinka said curtly.
“See you do,” Apone replied.
Stenbeck laughed and elbowed Spunkmeyer. “Looks like Vasquez isn’t the only rabid dog on this squad now.”
“That’s enough,” Lieutenant Paulson said.
Vasquez murdered Stenbeck with a glance. “This bitch’ll bite your damn balls off.”
“In one bite, you can bet your ass,” Hudson said appreciatively. “Asshole.”
“Enough!” Apone shouted. “You all want to know what you might be dying for today, or not?”
That quieted them down.
“All right,” Paulson said. “Back to Clytemnestra. The company’s exploration drones found an element on this moon that will revolutionize interstellar travel. They’ve been working for decades on better engines, better fuel. Eleven years ago, they theorized that a combination of two elements—let’s forget the chemistry and just call them salt and pepper—”
“You don’t think we could understand the chemistry?” Frost asked, wounded.
Sergeant Apone smoothed his mustache. “Shut it, Frost. She knows you can’t.”
Paulson held up a hand to silence the laughter that followed, and forged onward. “The problem is that every time the researchers tried to combine salt and pepper, they blew up their lab. What they needed was some third element that would stabilize that mixture. From the reports I’ve read, they tried over two thousand combinations before they gave up a few years ago.
“But eleven months ago, Weyland-Yutani drones found a gas in the atmosphere of this moon that they are certain will render those combustible elements inert. If they’re right, they think they’ll have a fuel that will allow spacecraft to be reengineered, to travel many times faster than they ever have. Before, the amalgam of those elements would have just exploded, killing everyone on board. But now, if they can draw it from the atmosphere of Clytemnestra… well, you can imagine.”
Hicks cleared his throat. “Thanks, Lieutenant. I think we’ve got the rest.”
“The usual,” Hudson agreed. “Put our asses in the shredder.”
“Don’t be such a pussy, Hudson,” Vasquez said. “You gotta think long term, hermano. They put two science teams down on this damn plateau and bugs killed ’em all. So they call the exterminators—that’s us. Killing bugs is just good exercise, man.”
“And what do we get out of it?” Wierzbowski muttered.
Sergeant Apone glared at him. “For starters, you don’t get court-martialed.”
Dietrich breathed. Her nausea had all but vanished.
“I’ll tell you what you get, Wierzbowski,” she said. “Less time drifting around deep space, waiting for some action.”
Even Hicks smiled at that.
“What do we know about these bugs?” Malinka asked. The Colonial Marines tended to call any non-humanoid alien species bugs, but she’d have liked a little more to go on before encountering this batch for the first time.
“Not a hell of a lot,” Apone grumbled. “What I can tell you is that you’re gonna need exo-suits in this atmosphere.”
“Shit,” Hudson whined. “I hate those damn things. It’s like trying to fight covered in wet wool.”
“They’ll slow you down a little,” Lieutenant Paulson admitted. She glanced meaningfully
around at the gathered Marines. “But they’ll also be the only thing keeping you alive.”
“Nah, Lieutenant,” Vasquez said, smiling grimly. “It’s my guns that’ll keep me alive.”
Half a dozen Colonial Marines cheered, and this time, the officers didn’t try to quiet them down. Dietrich saw Apone shoot Paulson a worried look, and for a moment, her stomach felt a little queasy again. She didn’t like that look. Not in the least.
“Honey!” Khan called from the pilot’s seat. “We’re home!”
The dropship touched down hard, skidded a few feet in Clytemnestra’s high winds, and then came to a halt. Dietrich had bitten her lip and the copper tang of her own blood flooded her mouth.
Great, she thought. Not even out of the ship and already wounded.
It should’ve been funny, but she couldn’t find the humor in it.
* * *
“I’ve got movement,” Zeller said, holding the motion tracker out in front of him as if it were some kind of shield.
Dietrich swept the barrel of her pulse rifle from side to side, but the dust and grit of Clytemnestra’s atmosphere scoured the goggles of her exo-suit, making it hard to see. She’d been caught outside in a blizzard once and the effect had been similar. A gust blasted her from behind and she staggered, cursing this damned moon, where the air couldn’t seem to make up its mind. The wind shifted direction by the second. That might have had something to do with their position on a mountain plateau. Ridges of stone climbed thirty feet higher to the north and west, so it felt almost as if they were inside a broken bowl.
“I see nothing,” Wierzbowski snapped, sweeping with his own motion sensor. “Not a blip on this thing.”
The unit spread in a circle, all turned outward, the whole group moving together. Dietrich scuttled sideways to keep her back to the unit, wind tugging at her pulse rifle.
“I’ve got multiples now!” Zeller barked. “Northwest, coming our way.”