Somebody said, “Damn!” as water splashed up their legs. Johnson said, “Stow it, Marine,” as Keyes cleared the ramp. Freed from its burden, the dropship fired its jets, powered its way up out of the glutinous air, and started to climb.
Keyes consulted a small hand comp. “The structure we’re looking for is supposed to be over there.”
Johnson eyed the pointing finger and nodded. “Okay, you slackers, you heard the Captain. Bisenti, take point.”
Private Wallace A. Jenkins was toward the rear, which was almost as bad as point, but not quite. The ebony water topped his boots, seeped down through his socks, and found his feet. It wasn’t all that cold – for which the Marine was thankful. Like the rest of the team, he knew that the ostensible purpose of the mission was to locate and recover a cache of Covenant weapons. Still an important thing to do, even in the wake of Lieutenant McKay’s efforts to raid the Pillar of Autumn, and the fact that Alpha Base had been strengthened as a result.
It was a crap detail, however – especially slogging through this dark, mist-clogged swamp.
Something loomed ahead. Bisenti hoped it was what the Old Man had dragged their sorry butts into this swamp for. He hissed the word back to the topkick. “I see a building, Sarge.”
There was the sound of water splashing as Johnson came forward. “Stay close, Jenkins. Mendoza, move it up! Wait here for the Captain and his squad. And get your asses inside.”
Jenkins saw Keyes materialize out of the mist. “Sir!”
Johnson saw Keyes, nodded, and said, “Okay, let’s move!”
Keyes followed the Marines inside. The entire situation was different from what he had expected. Unlike the Covenant, who killed nearly all of the humans they got their hands on, the Marines continued to take prisoners. One such individual, a rather disillusioned Elite named ’Qualomee, had been interrogated for hours. He swore that he’d been part of a group of Covenant soldiers who had delivered a shipment of arms to the forces guarding this very structure.
But there was no sign of a Covenant security team, or the weapons ’Qualomee claimed to have delivered, which meant that he had probably been lying. Something the Captain planned to discuss with the alien upon his return to Alpha Base. In the meantime, Keyes planned to push deeper into the complex and see what he could find. The second squad, under Corporal Lovik, was left to cover their line of retreat, while the rest of the team continued to press ahead.
Ten minutes had passed when a Marine said, “Whoa! Look at that. Something scrambled his insides.”
Johnson looked down at a dead Elite. Other Covenant bodies lay sprawled around the area as well. Alien blood slicked the walls and floor. Keyes approached from behind. “What do we have, Sergeant?”
“Looks like a Covenant patrol,” the noncom answered. “Badass Special Ops types – the ones in the black armor. All KIA.”
Keyes eyed the body and looked up at Bisenti. “Real pretty. Friend of yours?”
The Marine shook his head. “No, we just met.”
It took another five minutes to reach a large metal door. It was locked and no amount of fooling around with the keypad seemed likely to open it. “Right,” Keyes said, as he examined the obstacle. “Let’s get this door open.”
“I’ll try, sir,” the Tech Specialist, Kappus, replied, “but it looks like those Covenant worked pretty hard to lock it down.”
“Just do it, son.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kappus pulled the spoofer out of his pack, attached the box to the door, and pressed a series of keys. Outside of the gentle beeping noises that the black box made as it tapped into the door’s electronics and ran through thousands of combinations per second, there was nothing but silence.
The Marines shifted nervously, unwilling to relax. Sweat dripped down Kappus’ forehead.
They held position for another few minutes, until Kappus nodded with satisfaction and opened the door. The Marines drifted inside. The electronics expert raised a hand. “Sarge! Listen!”
All of the Marines listened. They heard a soft, liquid, sort of slithery sound. It seemed to come from every direction at once.
Jenkins felt jumpy but it was Mendoza who actually put it into words. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this...”
“You’ve always got a bad feeling,” the Sergeant put in, and was about to chew Mendoza out when a message came in over the team freq. It sounded like the second squad was in some sort of trouble, but Corporal Lovik wasn’t very coherent, so it was difficult to be sure.
In fact, it almost sounded like screaming.
Keyes responded. “Corporal? Do you copy? Over.”
There was no reply.
Johnson turned to Mendoza. “Get your ass back up to second squad’s position and find out what the hell is going on.”
“But Sarge–”
“I don’t have time for your lip, soldier! I gave you an order.”
“What is that?” Jenkins asked nervously, his eyes darting from one shadow to the next.
“Where’s that coming from, Mendoza?” Sergeant Johnson demanded, the second squad momentarily forgotten.
“There!” Mendoza proclaimed, pointing to a clutch of shadows as the Marines heard the muffled sound of metal striking metal.
There was a cry of pain as something landed on Private Riley’s back, drove a needle-like penetrator through his skin, and aimed it down toward his spine. He dropped his weapon, tried to grab the thing that rode his shoulders, and thrashed back and forth.
“Hold still! Hold still!” Kappus yelled, grabbing onto one of the bulbous creatures and trying to pull it off his friend.
Avery Johnson had been in the Corps for most of his adult life, and had logged more time humping across the surface of alien planets than any of the other men in the room combined. Along the way, he’d seen a lot of strange stuff – but nothing like what skittered across the metal floor and attached itself to one of his men.
He saw a dozen white blobs, each maybe half a meter in diameter, and equipped with a cluster of writhing tentacles. They skittered and bobbed in a loose formation, then sprang in his direction. The tentacles propelled them several meters in a single leap. He fired a short, almost panicked burst. “Let ’em have it!”
Keyes, pistol in hand, fired at one of the creatures. It popped like a balloon, with surprising force. The tiny explosion caused three more to burst into feathery shards, but it seemed as if dozens more took their place.
Keyes realized that Private Kappus had been correct. The Covenant had locked the door for a reason, and this was it. But maybe, just maybe, they could pull back and close the blobs inside again. “Sergeant, we’re surrounded.”
But Johnson’s attention was elsewhere. “God damn it, Jenkins, fire your weapon!”
Jenkins, his face tight with fear, clutched his assault rifle with white-knuckled hands. It seemed like the little things were boiling from thin air. “There’s too many!”
The Sarge started to bellow a reply, but it was as if a floodgate had opened somewhere, as a new wave of the obscene, pod-like creatures rolled out of the darkness to overwhelm the humans. Marines fired in every direction. Many lost their balance as two, three, or even four of the aliens managed to get a grip on them and pull them down.
Jenkins began to back away as fear overwhelmed him.
Keyes threw up his hands with the intention of protecting his face and accidentally caught one of the monsters. He squeezed and felt the creature explode. The little bastards were fragile – but there were so damned many of them. Another attacker latched onto his shoulder. The Captain screamed as a razor-sharp tentacle plunged through both his uniform and his skin, wriggled under the surface of his skin, and tapped his spinal cord. There was an explosion of pain so intense that he blacked out, only to be brought back to consciousness by chemicals the thing had injected into his bloodstream.