Terms of Enlistment

Chapter 22

“Attention, all Versailles personnel. This is the XO. Remain at your location, and do not attempt to reach any colony settlements. We have hostile invaders on this planet, and you are ordered to lay low and avoid contact until our rescue ship arrives. I repeat, do not attempt to contact or reach any colony settlements, and do not engage unless attacked.”

We’re cruising at high altitude, far above the weather, and the XO is broadcasting the same message every few minutes. We have received a few replies from our people stranded below, but the XO has denied all requests for pickups, much to my relief. I don’t want to leave our people stranded, of course, but they’d be no better off in the hold of the drop ship than they are near their escape pods on the ground, and I don’t want to go back into the mess below and discover more bad news. In any case, our remaining fuel is barely enough to get us safely back to the terraforming station where we left the rest of our crew.

“Talk about a one-sided ass-kicking,” Halley says to me while the XO keeps himself busy with the ship’s radio suite back in the crew chief’s seat. “Our ship’s gone, our colony’s wiped out, and now they’re just setting up shop down there.”

“I don’t think they even tried to kick our asses,” I say, and shudder at the fresh memory of hundreds of colonists lying dead in the streets of the main settlement, with no apparent injuries, or damage to the buildings. “That place back there wasn’t wiped out. Just fumigated. Like you’d smoke out a bunch of ants in your kitchen cabinet, you know? Toss in a pest stick, come back to mop up the dead stuff later.”

“That’s a cheery thought,” she says. “Like we don’t even rate real weapons.”

To our left, the local sun, Capella A, is just about to touch the horizon. The sun looks bigger and more washed out than our sun back on Earth, but the display is still spectacular, like a hydrogen bomb going off in the distance. The sky on the horizon is a brilliant palette of orange, red, and dark purple. I watch my first extrasolar sunset for a while, and it occurs to me that I can’t remember ever having sat down just to watch a sunset back on Earth.

“Well,” Halley says. “I do hope the Navy’s going to send something bigger than an old frigate to check on us, or there’ll be a bunch more crash pods raining down soon.”

The night on Capella Ac is black as pitch. There’s no local moon overhead to serve as a planetary night light. As soon as the last sliver of the local sun sinks below the horizon, the world outside disappears. I can’t even make out the ragged line of the horizon ahead of us anymore, and the lack of external visual references makes me disoriented.

“Put your visor down, and tap the switch on the brow ridge,” Halley tells me when I voice my discomfort. “You got infrared and low light magnification built into that brain bucket there.”

As we slowly cross the mountain range, the engines of our ship laboring to keep a few thousand feet between us and the highest peaks, Halley tries to contact the terraforming station that still lies a few hundred miles to our north.

“Terraformer Willoughby Four-Seven, this is Stinger Six-Two. Do you read, over?”

I expect another long period of silence in my headset, but the reply from the station comes almost instantly.

“Stinger Six-Two, I read you. Glad to see you back.”

“Four-Seven, we are two-niner-zero miles south of you, inbound to land. What’s the weather like down there?”

“Lousy,” the reply comes. “Heavy rain, visibility less than a quarter mile, winds at three-zero knots from bearing one-eighty. You sure you want to try landing your bird in this mess?”

“We have nowhere else to go,” Halley replies. I have thirty minutes of fuel left. It’s either that, or putting down in the sticks. Just turn on all the lights for me down there. I’ll find the complex with ground radar, and do the last bit by sight.”

“Copy that, Six-Two. We’ll keep the lights on for you. Good luck, and be careful.”

Halley looks at me, and chuckles.

“’Be careful’? We’re in an unarmed ship, low on gas, on a planet crawling with giant things that aren’t friendly, and about to make a landing in the soup with no AILS, and he tells me to ‘be careful’.”

“I’m having second thoughts about this Navy career,” I tell Halley. “We make it off this rock, I’ll put in for office duty, or laundry folding. Something low-stress on a quiet space station somewhere.”

“Fat chance, son,” the XO says from behind our seats. I’m so tired that I didn’t hear him coming through the cockpit door.

“Hate to break it to you, but we just bumped into the first alien species ever encountered by humanity. We make it off this rock, you’ll be one of the most popular guys in the entire fleet. Once the Intel guys are done with us, that is.”

By the time we’re over the terraforming station again, I’m definitely ready for a new career in the custodial services, far away from drop ships and emergency crash pods. As we descend through the weather, it feels like the ship is getting shoved around at random in all directions, but Halley is icy calm on the controls, so I once again shut up and try to meld with my seat. Even with the infrared feed from my helmet, I don’t see the lights of the station’s buildings until we’re just a few hundred feet above the landing pad. Then we’re on the ground, before I have a chance to become concerned with our rate of descent. As soon as the drop ship settles on its skids on the gravel of the landing pad, Halley cuts the throttle and exhales sharply.

“Remind me to log this flight when we get back,” she says. “I’ll put it under ‘Shit Weather Flying’. Thirty-knot winds, my ass.”

The dash from the landing pad to the nearest building is less than a hundred yards, but by the time we’ve made it into the building, we’re soaked to our bones.

“I’m wiped out,” Halley says to me as we shake the rainwater out of our hair inside the admin building, leaving puddles on the rubberized floor. “I love flying and all, but holding that stick for ten hours straight is a bit of a bear.”

“How long has it been since you’ve slept?” the XO asks her. Halley shrugs.

“No idea, sir. I was just getting off watch when the ship got hit. Twenty-four hours, maybe?”

“You go find some dry clothes somewhere,” the XO orders. “I’m sure the Marines have some spare fatigues stashed away somewhere. Find yourself some chow and a cot, and crash for a while. That goes for you, too, Mister Grayson,” he adds.

The terraforming station has living quarters for the techs and the garrisoned Marine squad, but we don’t want to claim someone else’s bed, so Halley and I set up a pair of folding cots in one of the many storage rooms. I’ve been on a steady dose of adrenaline and fear since the Versailles got hit, and I haven’t much felt like sleeping until now, but the relative safety of the warm storage room suddenly makes me feel my fatigue. We lean our rifles against the nearby wall, and exchange our soaked Navy clothes for dry Marine ICUs before lying down on the creaky cots.

“I’m scared shitless,” Halley says as we listen to the low humming of the environmental system. The cots are short, and far less comfortable than our bunks back on the ship. The blankets are scratchy and smell like they’ve been in a dusty storage locker for the last five years.

“Gee, I can’t imagine why,” I reply. “Lush planet, friendly locals…”

“Do you ever stop being a smartass, Andrew?”

“No, I don’t. You see, it’s my defense mechanism, to cover up the fact that I’m scared shitless, too.”

“I see,” she smiles. “Glad I’m not the only one. Aren’t we just the biggest shit magnets?”

“You have no idea,” I say.

Sometime later, someone runs past the door of the storage room, and I jerk awake. It feels like I’ve been dozing only for a few minutes, but when I check the time, I find that we’ve been asleep for over six hours.

There’s a rumbling in the air that’s so low I can feel it more than I can hear it. The floor under our cots vibrates almost imperceptibly. Then the tremor is gone, only to return a few seconds later, this time just a little more noticeable than before. It sounds like a very faint earthquake, or artillery shells exploding at a great distance. Something about the low and steady vibrations makes me feel a great swell of unease.

Next to me, Halley stirs on her cot, and I reach over to shake her awake.

“Get up, and get your boots on. Come on.”

The low-frequency vibrations beneath our feet return every few seconds, each time just a little stronger. Each tremor is accompanied by a low rumbling in the air, slow and regular, like the beating of a giant heart.

“What the hell is that?” Halley asks, her voice still thick with sleep.

“I think we’re in deep shit,” I reply.

Overhead, the base alarm starts bleating.

We put on our boots, grab our rifles, and dash over to the mess hall, where the rest of our little crew is already busy charging weapons and fastening harness straps.

“Everyone grab a commo kit,” the XO says as we come into the room.

“What’s the story, sir?” I ask.

“The Marines up on the roof say we have incoming. They can’t see what it is yet, but it’s coming through the soup from the north. I’m going to go ahead and guess it’s pretty fucking big.”

Underneath our feet, the floor of the station shakes again slightly, as if to emphasize his statement.

“Marines,” Corporal Harrison shouts. “Grab some launchers, and let’s get up on that roof.”

Our Versailles Marines are now wearing partial battle armor-helmets, chest plates, and leg armor, undoubtedly borrowed from the local garrison supplies. They each take a MARS launcher off the tables where the drop ship’s armory is spread out, and then file out of the door at a run. We’re left in the mess hall with a few Navy console jockeys, and a small group of worried-looking civilian techs.

“Anyone knows how to use a rifle, you best grab one now,” the XO tells the civilians.

I have the rifle from the drop ship, but I still walk up to the tables with the remnants of the drop ship armory, to see what the Marines have left for us. All the MARS launchers and rocket cartridges are gone, but there are plenty of rifle grenades left. I slip a spare harness over my clean Marine ICUs, and start filling the loops and pouches with rifle magazines and forty-millimeter grenades. Next to me, Halley is doing the same. The civvie techs are just milling about anxiously, eyeing the two of us, and studying the rifles left on the table like some vaguely interesting, but scary artifacts.

“Where do you want us, sir?” Halley asks the Commander when we have finished gearing up.

“Hell, I don’t know,” he says. “Find a good spot to use those rifles, I suppose. The jarheads are all up on the roof of the main building. Someone needs to stay here and work the comms.”

“We have a shelter,” the civilian administrator says. “It’s in the main unit, down in the basement level. It’s got its own air supply and comms gear.”

“Outstanding,” the Commander says. “You civilians go and hole up there. Lieutenant Benning, go with them and make sure someone answers the phone if the Navy shows up and starts calling. The rest of you, let’s go topside and add a few more rifles to the squad. Let’s go, people, before our guests get here.”

The rain has slacked off in the hours since we landed the drop ship. The roof of the atmospheric processing station is a flat, rubber-coated surface the size of a city block. The wet rubber squishes under our boots as we rush from the access door to the edge of the roof, where the Marines have spread out in fighting positions. Even the short side of the building is at least a hundred yards wide, and the three fire teams spread out along the edge of the roof have an awful lot of empty space between them. The fire team on the right corner is setting up a crew-served automatic weapon, a large-bore machine gun that’s mounted on a tripod, and fed from large translucent ammunition canisters.

“Friendlies to the rear,” the XO shouts as we come up behind the Marines in the middle of the roof. “We brought you a few more trigger pullers, Sergeant.”

“Can’t hurt, sir,” Sergeant Becker says. “The more, the merrier.”

“Where do you want us, son? I’ll let you run your own show here, ‘cause I’m worthless as a ground pounder. You just tell me where to stand, and when to shoot.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replies. “If you wouldn’t mind, just split up your people and pad my three teams.”

“No problem,” the XO says. “Ensign Halley and Mister Grayson, you go over to Corporal Harrison. Lieutenant Davis and Lieutenant Grazio, you go over to Corporal Schaefer, and do whatever he tells you to do. I’ll stay here with the sergeant and do the same.”

By the time Halley and I reach the corner of the roof where Corporal Harrison’s fire team has set up shop, the impact tremors coming our way are strong enough to rattle the prefabricated wall sections of the admin building fifty feet below us. Something very large is coming through the rainy haze in front of the terraforming station. I notice Halley looking over to the landing pad, where the drop ship sits on the gravel like a huge insect at rest. On the whole, I’d rather be twenty thousand feet above the ground right now, and I can tell by Halley’s expression that she feels the same way.

“Here it comes,” one of the Marines from another fire team shouts. “One o’clock, four hundred.”

We look over to the spot he indicates, and see the outline of a massive shape in the haze a few hundred yards ahead. It’s still mostly obscured by mist and fog, but the general shape and size of it is terrifyingly large, like a fleet destroyer coming at us through the rain squalls. Then our visitor steps out of the obscuring mists with slow, giant steps that feel like small earthquakes under our feet.

“Holy shit,” Corporal Harrison says. All over our thin battle line, I hear Marines shouting in surprise.

There’s no doubt about the alien origin of the creature that’s now coming across the rocky plateau toward us. My mind tries to come up with a comparable example of terrestrial biology, and draws a blank. It somehow looks reptilian, avian, and mammalian all at the same time. I see a huge, eyeless head that slowly swings from side to side, and what seems like acres of rain-slick skin the color of eggshells. Its front limbs are much longer than its hind limbs, and joined at the center in a way that seems structurally impossible. It walks hunched over on its forelimbs, like a giant fruit bat walking on its wings. Even with its stooped posture, it’s probably fifty or sixty feet tall, and it looks like it could unfold itself to twice that height if it stood up straight on its hind legs. Its overall appearance is familiar and unsettlingly strange at the same time.

“Autocannon,” Sergeant Becker shouts. “Hose it down!”

On the opposite corner of the roof, the autocannon crew opens fire. The squad automatic weapon sounds like a giant jackhammer. It pours out three hundred rounds per minute in a slow, authoritative staccato. I watch as the rounds from the autocannon swarm out to meet the towering form coming out of the mist, and then bounce off in brilliant little explosions, sending sparks in every direction.

The alien creature lets out a piercing scream that is ear-splitting even at this distance. It sound like nothing I’ve ever heard before-a high-pitched, trilling wail that sends shivers down my spine and makes me want to find a hole to crawl into. A quarter mile away, the creature staggers and sways to one side. Then it regains its footing and continues on its path. Its sheer size makes it look like it’s moving in ponderous slow motion, but it’s covering the distance between the mist line and the terraforming station at alarming speed.

“You have got to be shitting me,” Corporal Harrison says next to us.

“Rocket launchers,” Sergeant Becker shouts from the central position. “Ready, aim, and fire on my mark.”

The autocannon is still hammering out its streams of tracers in long, steady bursts. The alien is walking right into the incoming barrage, tracers bouncing off its hide as if the creature is wearing ceramic composite armor. The Marine gunners are raking its torso, trying to probe for a weak spot, but there doesn’t seem to be one. The autocannon’s standard round is a dual-purpose shell, an armor-piercing penetrator with a piggybacked high explosive fragmentation warhead, and those rounds pack enough of a punch to take out an armored vehicle at a thousand yards. Against the tough hide of this creature, the shells burst in a shower of sparks, like oversized fireworks. The creature is clearly annoyed, screeching its earth-shaking wail, but it’s still coming at us.

Along the edge of the roof, Marines shoulder the stubby tubes of their MARS launchers, and draw a bead on the approaching creature. I only have the rifle and its low-pressure grenade launcher, which will barely reach out this far, but I open the launcher’s breech and feed it a fragmentation grenade anyway.

“In three, two, one. Fire!”

Half a dozen rocket launchers boom at the same instant, and half a dozen missiles leap out of their launcher tubes. They streak toward the alien creature, their exhaust nozzles glowing like a swarm of very large and angry fireflies. One of the missiles lands short, hitting the ground in front of the creature and throwing up a geyser of dirt and rocks. Another one streaks past the alien, missing its left side by a few feet. Then the other three warheads explode against its torso in huge fireballs that light up the night in the distance.

The simultaneous impact of three MARS rockets manages what the fire from the autocannon failed to accomplish. The alien creature is knocked off its feet. It tumbles to the muddy ground, screeching its nerve-racking scream. The Marines start shouting and cheering in triumph.

The autocannon ceases its relentless fire. I look through the optical sight of my rifle and switch to maximum magnification. The creature is flailing on the ground just three hundred yards away. There’s smoke rising from its hide where the MARS rockets slammed into it. The limbs of the alien throw up mud and dirt as it thrashes around. Then it manages to steady itself, and slowly rises back to its feet. It takes a step as if to make sure its legs are still working, and then continues its march toward the terraformer, albeit a little less steady than before.

“Fuck me,” Halley says in astonishment. I can only shake my head in agreement. The creature just absorbed enough explosives to tear a drop ship into fine shrapnel, and now it’s back on its feet, looking only a little worse for the wear.

“Launchers, reload!” Sergeant Becker shouts into the common circuit. “Load the armor-piercing shit. On the double!”

The MARS gunners load new cartridges into their launchers, shoulder the rocket tubes once more, and aim their weapons. I would grab one of those launchers myself, but our reinforced squad only has six of them, with three rockets each, and they’re all in the hands of Marines right now. All I have is my rifle, whose grenade launcher shoots wet firecrackers in comparison, but I bring up my rifle anyway, and put the ladder of the launcher’s aiming reticle over the creature that’s now again approaching with thundering steps.

“On three, two, one, fire!”

Again, half a dozen launchers send their payloads downrange with a muffled bang. This salvo is a little more precise than the last one. Only one of the rockets goes wide, and then rest connect with the bulk of the alien’s torso. One of the missiles clips the shield-like protrusion at the back of its head, and I can see chunks tearing off as the high-speed penetrator of the armor-piercing rocket tears into it. The other three rockets slam into the center of its torso, with far less pyrotechnic drama than before.

This time, the creature falls forward with a wail, carried by its own momentum. I only realize how close the alien has come to our position when I see its head digging a furrow into the ground a mere fifty yards at most from the landing pad where our drop ship crouches like a resting insect. The roof under our feet shakes with the force of the creature’s impact. The alien wails again, and starts flailing, this time less vigorous than before. Something about it reminds me of a bird twitching on the ground with a broken wing—panicked, frenzied, mindless desperation.

“Fire at will!” the Sergeant shouts, and the space in front of the administration building turns into the Seventh Circle of Hell as a dozen Marines start firing their weapons at the same time.

To our right, the autocannon opens up again. All along the edge of the roof, flechette rifles start chattering their hoarse reports. I aim at the downed creature, and start firing grenades. Next to me, Halley follows suit. Our little reinforced squad is firing every weapon on the roof at the downed alien, and the noise is deafening. I go through the few grenades in my harness one by one, firing them as fast as I can stuff them into the breech of the launcher, and then adding the contents of my rifle magazine when I’m out of grenades. At this range, the huge form is impossible to miss. I fire one magazine after another, two hundred and fifty rounds at a time in three-second bursts, pumping out needle-tipped tungsten darts as fast as the technology will let me.

Then there’s no movement from the figure below, and all we’re doing is shooting at dead matter. Still, I keep my finger on the trigger and my aiming reticule on the target until the bolt of my rifle locks back on an empty magazine.

“Cease fire, cease fire,” someone calls over the common channel, and the gunfire gradually ebbs. For a few moments, there are no sounds other than the rain falling on the rooftop all around us. Down below, the alien creature lies motionless, sprawled out in the mud just a few dozen yards in front of the admin building. I eject the magazine from my rifle and search for a new one in the pouches on my harness, only to find that I’ve burned through my entire supply of rifle ammunition and grenades.

A whooping cheer rises from the ranks of the Marine squad.

“Nailed the motherfucker,” Corporal Harrison shouts, and I hear similar exclamations from all sides. Halley merely exchanges a wary glance with me as the Marines celebrate our victory by slapping each other on the armor and pumping their fists into the air. I look down at the alien creature, lying still in the dirt. Its skin is still smoking in a few spots where the grenades and cannon shells have spent their explosive payloads against the alien’s incredibly tough hide. We brought it down, but we had to throw just about every piece of ordnance in the armory at it, and the thing made it to within a hundred yards of our rooftop position.

Next to me, Halley squints down at the creature, and gives me another weary look.

“That was too damn close,” she says, echoing my thoughts.

Underneath our feet, the roof of the terraforming station vibrates faintly, and there’s a familiar rumbling in the air that’s making my stomach clench once again. I look up, and by the expression on Halley’s face, I can tell that she felt it as well. All around us, the laughter and cheering ebbs as the Marines notice the new tremors as well. This time, the vibrations are strangely dissonant and out of phase, not steady and rhythmic like before.

“Oh, shit,” Halley says.

“Reload those weapons,” Sergeant Becker shouts from his position fifty yards to our right. “Get those launchers back up, right the hell now.”

There are small ammunition stashes at each fighting position. I open a box of rifle magazines, and find it half empty, twenty out of forty magazines already used up. I take out a magazine, slap it into my rifle, and stuff two more into the pouches on my harness. One of the Marines puts down a MARS launcher next to me, and grabs a rocket cartridge from a very small stack of them.

“That’s all we have left?” I ask.

“We had three per launcher,” he says. “I used up two just now, and the rest ain’t even armor-piercing.”

I hear shouts of alarm, and turn around to see not one, but four more of the huge alien creatures ambling out of the fog a few hundred yards away.

“Oh, shit,” Halley says again.