Then Ligacheva came up out of the reeking mist again, her AK-47 at her shoulder, and fired.
The aliens, Schaefer knew, could shrug off most small-caliber bullets; their hides were incredibly tough. Depleted uranium coated in Teflon, however, was something new to them; Ligacheva’s shots punched through the monsters as if they were merely human, and glowing yellow-green blood sprayed from a dozen sudden wounds.
The previously unharmed creature went down at once; the fog swirled up in clouds. The other alien, presumably already heavily dosed with whatever these things used as the equivalent of endorphins, snapped its jagged double wrist blades into place and tottered several steps toward Ligacheva before collapsing into the mist.
”They aren’t dead!” Schaefer shouted. He had seen before how tough these things were.
”I know that,” Ligacheva said, irritated. She stepped forward, pointed the AK-47 at one alien’s head, and squeezed the trigger.
Yellow gore sprayed.
She turned her attention to the other alien; it managed to roll over and raise one clawed hand as she approached, but that only meant that it took her last eight rounds directly in the face.
The echoes of the gunfire were oddly muffled in the foggy atmosphere and died away quickly.
Ligacheva stood over the three creatures-the two she had just taken down and the one she had slain earlier. She stared down at them through the mist, getting as good a look as she could at their ruined faces.
”Now they’re dead,” she said, satisfied.
”Probably,” Schaefer agreed. “Let’s not hang around to be sure, though. If there are any more of these joyboys aboard this madhouse, they could be here any minute.”
”I can reload while you make your bomb…”
”I think we’d be smarter doing that outside,” Schaefer said. “They could be here now-remember their little invisibility trick.”
Something hissed somewhere. Ligacheva hesitated another half second, then turned and sprinted back up the corridor they had entered by.
Schaefer was right behind her.
A moment later they emerged into open air, Earth’s air. Even the cool, flavorless Siberian air, utterly devoid of any scent of life, was far better than the stuff they had been breathing aboard the alien ship, and once they had scrambled from the hot hull up onto the familiar boulder they both paused for a few seconds to savor it.
Schaefer glanced at Ligacheva. She wasn’t beautiful, but right then he was glad to be looking at her. “Pretty good shooting in there, comrade,” he said.
”Credit your American technology,” Ligacheva said. “And of course, my damned good aim.” She ejected the spent magazine from her AK-47. “And give me another clip of that technology, would you?”
Schaefer smiled and opened the pack. He handed her another clip, then started pulling out blocks of C-4 and plugging in wires.
”If we wire this all into a single charge and put it back down inside there, it ought to tear their ship up just fine,” he remarked as he worked.
”And we can scavenge the wreckage, and our governments can fight over it,” Ligacheva said.
Schaefer shrugged as he wired a detonator into the series of charges. “I don’t give a shit about that,” he said. “I just want to make it plain to these bastards once and for all that Earth isn’t a safe place to play.”
Ligacheva didn’t answer; she watched thoughtfully as Schaefer finished assembling his bomb and stuffed it back into his pack.
”Perhaps we should think about this a little further,” she said at last as he strapped an electronic timer into place on top.
He looked up at her.
”I want them to pay for their crimes, too,” Ligacheva said. “But I do not want American missiles to make sure my country does not use this starship to restore us to our former place as a world power.”
”Washington hasn’t got the guts to nuke anyone,” Schaefer said. “We’ll just steal it from you, and then everybody’ll have it.”
”And would that be a good thing?”
Schaefer started to answer, then froze. He was crouched on the boulder, the pack-turned-satchel-charge in one hand, facing the opening into the ship’s interior.
Ligacheva whirled.
One of the alien monsters stood in the opening, looking out at them. It was visible and unmasked, it hadn’t come out to fight, Ligacheva realized, but only to see what the hell was going on.
That didn’t mean it wouldn’t kill them both, given half a chance. It must know that they had killed its companions; she was suddenly horribly aware of the AK-47 she still held in her hands, the very gun that had blown the other monsters’ heads apart.
If she shifted her grip to firing position and swung the weapon around, she might be able to shoot the alien-or it might take her own head off first. She had seen how fast those things could move, how fast they could kill.
She didn’t try. She kept the gun pointed away. She looked at Schaefer to see whether he, too, was still frozen.
He wasn’t. He was still working on his bomb.
”That’s right,” Schaefer called to the creature. “Come out and play! This C-4 will turn you into hamburger faster than UPN canceled Legend!”
Ligacheva turned to stare at Schaefer’s fingers as he punched codes into his electronic detonator.
”But if you set it off now to kill that thing, the explosion will take us down with it!” she exclaimed.
Schaefer didn’t look at her; he was staring at the alien, his attention focused entirely on his foe. “I’m tired of your games,” he said. “I’m tired of all this crap! This time we’re going to finish it
…”
Ligacheva realized that he meant it, that he was ready and willing to die-he wanted only to give his death meaning, the meaning he seemed unable to find in life, by taking his foe with him.
She wanted to stop him, but he was too far away for her to reach the detonator in time, and even if she had been able to think of the words to shout, she knew he wouldn’t have listened to her.
Then a shot rang out, and a bullet smacked off the starship’s hull inches away from Schaefer’s feet. Ligacheva, Schaefer, and the alien all turned simultaneously, looking for the source.
Five men in tan snowsuits stood on the rim of the ravine, looking down at them. A sixth man knelt, holding a smoking rifle.
”Drop it, cop, or the next one’s right between your eyes! And drop your gun, too, Russkie!” the kneeling man called in English.
Chapter 31
Schaefer stared at the man with the rifle. “Wilcox,” he said. He lowered the pack gently to the boulder; it slid down onto the ship’s hull.
”I’m sorry about this, son,” General Philips shouted. “It’s over! “
Ligacheva dropped her AK-47 and stared up at the men on the canyon rim. The Americans had tracked them from the pumping station, but they had not come to help against the monsters; instead they were preventing Schaefer from ending the alien threat.
It wasn’t that they cared about Schaefer’s life or Ligacheva’s – the words of that man Wilcox had made that plain. It was… what? They wanted the alien alive? They wanted the ship?
Perhaps they simply didn’t want the Rodina, the Motherland, to have the ship. They preferred that the alien fly away safely, to return and slaughter at whim.
Ligacheva began to understand just how Schaefer, the pampered American, had become as bitter as any Russian survivor of wars and revolutions and endless dark winters.
And what of the alien? Did it want to just fly away in its jury-rigged ship? She glanced at it.
It stood watching the men on the rim, watching and waiting, its hideously inhuman face unreadable. She wondered what it was thinking.