Parker's Folly (42 page)

“Susan, stop!” Lt. Curtis commanded. The horrified reporter pulled up at the last moment. “Do not even think of touching the blue energy barrier.” It had just vaporized about a third of PFC Davis and he was wearing refractory armor. In a standard suit, Susan would disappear in a flash and a puff of smoke.

“Son of a bitch!” Gunny Rodriguez was kneeling next to Davis' severed upper body. The heat of the energy shield slicing the Marine in half had cauterized the exposed flesh and organs in Two Can's chest. Even so, small bubbles could be seen on the charred tissue where remaining body fluids boiled off into the surrounding vacuum. The Gunny placed her hand on top of Davis' helmet, like a priest bestowing a blessing, and softly repeated, “son of a bitch.”

“Step back, Susan. We will see if we can blast you out of there,” Gretchen ordered. She turned to the rest of the squad. “Chief, we need to get the sled away from the doorway. In fact, Yuki, Col. Kondratov and Wendover, get on board and head out. Gunny, you, Kwan and myself will try to breach the door once the cargo is safely out of here.”

“Got it. Kwan, give me a hand with Davis.” The Gunny took what remained of Davis by one arm while Kwan took the other and loaded the grisly remains onto the hover sled.

“What are you doing!” shrieked Wendover, almost jumping out of the skiff to avoid contact with Davis' body. In a low dangerous voice, the Gunny said, “He was a Marine. Marines don't leave anyone behind.”

“And we still have a crew member trapped,” Lt. Curtis interjected, before one of the remaining Marines shot Wendover on general principle. “Chief, head for the ship. We'll follow as soon as we can.”

“Aye aye, Lieutenant. Yous better hang on back there 'cause we're casting off.” With that, the hover sled sped silently away, headed for the spiral ramp back to the tunnel entrance.

“Try shooting around the edges of the doorway, see if we can disrupt the mechanism making the force shield,” Gretchen ordered. She and the Gunny both shot the door frame using flechettes with no visible effect. “Damn, no good.”

“Susan, find some cover. We are going to try HE rounds.” The Lieutenant and the two Marines stepped back from the door opening and let fly with a single HE round apiece. Bright flashes followed, but the only lasting results were scorch marks on the station wall. Gretchen went to full auto and sent the remaining six grenades in her weapon to the same spot at the far upper corner of the doorway, with much the same result.

“Damn. Now what, LT?” asked the Gunny. Before Gretchen could reply a bright bolt of red-orange flame splashed off the wall above their heads. “Where the hell did that come from?”

“Out there, Gunny,” Kwan answered, pointing to an approaching formation of four small flying objects. As he spoke two of the objects fired plasma bolts in their general direction. The Gunny took a knee and said to Kwan, “Aimed fire, short bursts. Take 'em out.”

As the Marines concentrated on picking off their flying assailants, Gretchen crouched down and spoke to Susan. “Susan, we are taking fire and and our weapons aren't making a dent in the wall.”

“How about one of the demolition charges? I could stick it on the roof at the edge of the door?” Susan asked hopefully. Gretchen could see the pleading in her eyes.

“I'm afraid they are all rigged to the same detonator frequency. If you tried to set one off the rest would go as well. Even if they were not linked, the blast would probably set the others off, if it didn't kill you outright.” Then, hating herself as she said it, “Susan, we can't get you out of there.”

“Follow Me,” Bear shouted, heading back toward the hedgerow they had launched their initial attack from. “We are going back to the ship on as straight a path as we can.” Following Bear, JT was running with the egg tucked in the crook of his left arm like an NFL running back following a blocker. He had been about to suggest bounding overwatch, but follow the bear worked too. “Come on, Marines! Follow the four legged bullet sponge,” he yelled.

The rest of the squad needed no more encouragement, they fell in behind the bounding Bear. As they neared the hedge row, one of the large haystacks split open and a large creature of a type they had not seen emerged. Larger than Bear, the thing had a flattened metal lozenge for a main body and six legs. Unlike the spiders, who's legs were attached to the top of their spherical bodies, this critter's legs sprouted from its smooth metallic sides. Also unlike the spiders, the legs basically consisted of two pieces: a thick pipe-like portion that angled up and out from the main body and then a flattened, curving lower portion that connected to the pipe at the top and arced to a point at the ground.

The creature clumsily moved forward, its own legs interfering with each other—clearly it would move more effectively scuttling sideways like a crab. In fact, the overall effect was very crablike, including the two protruding stalks on the front of the thing's body that ended in what could be eyes. The whole crab motif was broken, however, when its underside opened and a very large plasma cannon oozed out.

“Crap!” Bear barked, slowing his forward travel by sitting down. Bear's armored ass threw sparks along the deck as he reached for his grenade launcher. The first burst rocked the crab thing back, exposing its underside. The second burst struck the area around the plasma cannon, blowing the crab into several sizable pieces.

While Bear was taking care of the crab, the human squad members were picking off the spiders swarming out from between the smaller haystacks of the hedgerow in front of them. Sanchez looked back toward the probe ship and yelled, “We got about twenty spiders and another one of those crab things coming behind us.”

“That ain't all, Joey,” Reagan added. “they're coming down from the overhead too.” JT looked up and saw that the Marine was right—a half dozen spiders were drifting down from the ceiling. “Move it, brother Bear. We gotta break through the hedgerow or we are going to be overrun.”

The Chief was pushing the hover sled as fast as he could down the spiral ramp, hugging the curving wall of the station's inner shaft. Like a bobsled at the limit of adhesion, the side of the sled occasionally glanced off the station wall. Sitting next to the Chief up front, Dr. Saito was holding on with both hands, his features obscured by his suit's armored helmet.

In the rear, behind the cargo of stolen antimatter and PFC Davis' truncated remains, Col. Kondratov and Tommy Wendover were similarly holding on for dear life. Tommy was on the left, the side facing the open shaft, his face ashen and his eyes tightly shut. The Colonel looked past him with mild disgust.

Kondratov's fighter pilot trained eyes picked up a formation of moving objects against the stationary background of the central shaft. Each of the objects produced a bright speck of light, which slowly grew larger. “
Oi blin!
We are being fired on!”

“What's that?” the Chief shouted. His question was answered by a plasma bolt that splashed red-orange fire across the wall just in front of the speeding sled. “Shit! Hold on, we're almost to the lower landing.”

More bolts were on their way. Ivan fixated on one in particular. Fighter pilots are a superstitious lot and among their tribal lore is the
golden bb
—a one in a million shot that takes out your plane, and you with it. Well there it was, a golden ball of light coming straight for him. Just before the bb arrived, Ivan grabbed Tommy and pulled him in front of his body as a shield.

The bolt struck Tommy's suit square in the backpack, its sun hot plasma burning through fabric and metal and then eating into flesh and bone. Tommy's eyes widened in pain, but the shock of the impact gave him no time to cry out. The fireball consumed most of the major organs in Tommy's body but did not burn through the front of his suit—Ivan was untouched.

Crystals of ice and freeze dried blood streamed from the young man's corpse. As his face began to distort in the vacuum, frost formed on the inside of his helmet, sparing Col. Kondratov a final view of the man he had just murdered. Easing Tommy's plasma eviscerated body down beside the alien antimatter eggs, Ivan glanced forward. Neither the Chief, who was busy flying the sled, nor Yuki, who was hunkered down and hanging on for dear life, had noticed Tommy's heroic but involuntary last act.

“Tommy's been hit,” Ivan called out. Then, finding Davis' rail gun lying next to his remains, picked the weapon up and shouted, “I'm returning fire!” Firing offhanded while still clinging to the sled's side rail, Ivan hit nothing, but the attacking aliens broke off and circled around for another pass. Before they returned the sled bounced onto the horizontal platform, skidded sideways and disappeared into the dark tunnel leading back to the ship.

Bright light flashed and flickered around Lt. Curtis' diminished party. The two Marines continued to calmly pick off their flying tormentors, but as quickly as the attacking creatures were destroyed new ones took their place. It was only a matter of time before one of the aliens scored a lucky shot. Gretchen knew this but was having a hard time leaving Susan.

Susan appeared to be going into shock, her face pale and withdrawn. Gretchen was kneeling just outside of the shimmering blue curtain of energy that held Susan trapped within the antimatter storage room. “Look, when we get to the bottom of the landing I'll ask the Captain to send reinforcements, maybe a cutting laser or something.” Gretchen knew it was a lie as she said it. Once out, there was no way they were coming back inside the station core.

A plasma bolt struck the deck to Gretchen's right, sending a wave of sparks and flame swirling around the Lieutenant's armored figure. The Gunny turned away from the flying menace and sent a long burst along the platform, the green balls of tracer light contrasting festively with the red-orange glow of the plasma bolts. “Shit! Lieutenant, we got spiders on the ramp. We gotta move.”

Susan looked up at Gretchen and her eyes focused. “OK” she said, holding up one of the manual detonators. “Tell me how this works.”

“What do you mean?”

“How long is the timer set for?”

“There's about 35 minutes left.”

“The aliens are coming and you have to go. What if they break in and remove all the explosives before they go off?  I'm not getting out, and I sure as hell don't want my death to mean nothing. Tell me how to set the explosives off manually, in case they try to come in after me.”

“Susan...” Gretchen began.

“Gretchen, we don't have time! Tell me how to work the fucking detonator!”

“OK, it's simple.” The manual detonator was shaped like a single hand grip from a jump rope or a hand exerciser. There was a long, rectangular button down the front of the grip and a single round button sticking up from the top. “Squeeze the grip, holding the long button down. This activates the explosive charges. It will take a few seconds for them all to become ready, when they are you will see a small red light on each of them. Then, use your thumb to press the top button.”

“That's it?”

“That's it.”

“OK, get out of here, save yourselves. I don't want your lives on my conscience. And Gretchen...”

“Yes?” She said, standing up and checking her weapon.

“Tell Billy Ray that...” Another near miss sent sparks and gobs of molten metal in all directions. Gretchen ducked reflexively and then shouted, “tell him what?”

“Forget it, just go!” With that Susan turned and ran back into the interior of the egg room, disappearing behind the freestanding racks of large eggs. Gretchen stared after her friend for a few moments, tears welling in her eyes.
Oh Susan, who would have thought you were so brave?

Gretchen shook the tears from her eyes and turned to the Marines. “OK, we need to get out of here, at the double.”

Bear and party had just cleared their third hedgerow when they stopped to try contacting the ship and check their bearings. The aliens continued to swarm toward them from all directions, mostly spiders but also the larger and harder to kill crabs. If this kept up much longer they would start running short on ammo, grenades in particular.

“By my count, we have one more row to cross and we should be in the docking bay where the ship is,” JT said. He was beginning to wonder why he had hung on to the damn egg. “Reagan, rig up a sling for this egg thing, so I can carry it on my back. I've got a feeling I'm going to need both arms free before this is over.”

“No problem, JT.” Reagan pulled out one of the large sample bags they each carried and slipped the egg inside. Then he moved behind JT and began attaching the bag's straps to tie down points on his backpack. “Just don't get hit, this thing could take out most of the landing dock.”

“Parker's Folly, this is Bear. Come in.”

“Go ahead, Lt. Bear. We were getting worried.”

“Be worried. We got about 100 spiders and some even nastier things chasing us. They're probably pissed off because JT stole the fuel cell from one of their probe ships.”

“Say again, you have a probe ship fuel cell? You found another probe?”

“That's affirmative. Of course, they might be pissed because we blew the shit out of the ship when JT nabbed the fuel container.”

A pause. “Where are you? How fast can you get back here?”

“We are about to break through the hedgerow off the ship's port side, about halfway between the ship and the central column. Be aware, when we do all sorts of hell is going to break loose.”

“Roger that. We are just now receiving a report from Lt. Curtis' party. They are headed this way and are under heavy attack. Wait one, Bear.”

“Now what?” Feldman asked.

“Bear, Parker's Folly.”

“Go Parker's Folly.”

“Move into position between the ship and the central column and be ready to provide cover fire for Lt. Curtis' returning party. The Chief's sled is about to come out of the tunnel with wounded and more fuel cells, over.”