“The use is we’ve just kicked their asses, my friend. With a little more effort, we can finish them for good. Dan Weathers is at the cave restarting the air scrubbers, we can turn this around.”
The man smiled. When he replied his voice dripped with apathy. “You’re dreaming, all of you. It’s all very well while those portable scrubbers allow you to breathe. Once they’re exhausted, you’ll be like the rest of us.”
He looked closely at the indicator on Saul’s scrubber. “Yeah, I thought you wouldn’t have much left. According to that, you have less than twelve hours, and then you’ll be like the rest of us.”
They understood at once that they’d forgotten to do the most basic check of their portable sets. They checked their meters, and found they were all down to twelve hours. Saul was even less, little more than ten hours. But the big toolpusher shook his head.
“It makes no difference. We’re going to turn this around, I promise you that soon we’ll rid this planet of the Taurons and have our air supply working again.”
“Saul!”
He looked around. Kacy had entered the storeroom. “That’s not quite true,” she continued.
“What do you mean? We know about those four outside, are you saying there’re others that we haven’t taken care of?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly. What I am saying is that according to our records, they have a ship due to land here within twelve hours. They’re always on time, like clockwork. Unless something has changed, which I doubt, they’ll be landing a shipload of replacements and reinforcements in twelve hours time.”
The technician sneered. “See, what did I tell you? There’s no point, none at all. You may as well give it up and prepare to die. Take the easy way out.”
“What would happen if their ship landed and there were no Taurons on the planet? Just a hostile force of humans, all of them armed to the teeth. Just waiting to rip them to shreds?”
They all looked at Rahm. As usual, Saul was the first to digest and understand what he meant.
“They’d quite likely go home and find somewhere else to mine their trevanium. Or they’d negotiate with us.”
“So that’s what we’ll do. We re-arm, go out and beat up those monsters outside, and then we’ll prepare a welcoming party for them.”
“In twelve hours?” Kacy gasped.
“In eight hours, we need the rest of the time to get back to Elysium to meet them. Gabi, if you’ve got any good ideas, we could sure use them. Especially a way to deal with that giant monster.”
She smiled. “We could use one of their tactics, a suicide bomber, get close enough to him and then explode the whole package. Other than that I’ve no idea, he’s enormous. Everything seems to bounce off him.”
Something clicked in Rahm’s mind. “Gabi, prepare the package, just like you said. With one difference. I want some means of attaching it to his body.”
She understood immediately. “No, no way. You’re not getting close enough to attach a charge to him. He’ll tear you to pieces.”
“Just do it, Gabi. I’m not aiming to let him get near me. I’ve got an idea that just might work.”
She looked at him with an expression that was charged with doubt, but she turned away without another word and started to look for the equipment she needed. The rest of the crew took down recharged laser rifles and started checking them over. Brad came in to find spare power packs for his laser cannon.
“Where’s Nathan?” Rahm asked.
Brad shrugged. “No idea. He disappeared, I last saw him talking to Tobin Ryles.”
“Nathan and Ryles? That’s weird. I thought he couldn’t stand Tobin Ryles.”
He turned to Kacy. “That reminds me, did you have any luck with those logs?”
She drew him out of earshot of the crew. “There were a couple of interesting movements. Ryles was moving around the base in a rather odd way.”
“Ryles, yeah, that figures.”
“But there’s more. So was Nathan.”
He nodded. “Keep on it, Kacy. Maybe it was both of them.”
“No, my instinct tells me it was just one person. I’ll let you know what I find.”+
Rahm put it to the back of his mind, in their situation it seemed crazy that the murder of the manager of Mars Base was a secondary issue, but that’s the way it was. They loaded the weapons and equipment into the buggy. Gabi appeared with a simple but devastating bomb.
“It works like this.” She pointed to a piece of tape on the side of the package. “If you pull this, it will instantly activate the adhesive. The flat part of the bomb will stick to the first thing it touches. Be careful, it also activates the timer mechanism.”
“How long do I have once it’s pulled?”
“One minute. I couldn’t make it any longer. The idea is that it’s enough time for you to get clear, but not enough time for the creature to remove it. Even if it’s stuck to its stomach, it’ll still be almost impossible to take off.”
“You know that his monster is immensely strong?”
She nodded. “Yes, I do. But so is the glue. It’s the best I can do.”
He took the flat package off her. It looked so innocent, like a thin bundle of documents wrapped in a tough, flexible polymer case.
“We’re ready, it’s time to go out there and slay this dragon.”
“Is that what you see yourself as? A dragon slayer?”
“No, not that. I’m just the guy who’s sick to the back teeth with what that ugly brute has been dishing out for so long. He’s like the schoolyard bully, you know what I mean. He delights in causing other kids pain and misery. I know his job is to protect his planet’s interests, but he’s gone way beyond that remit. He made it personal, Gabi.”
“He’s still awfully big.”
“And so is your bomb.”
When they returned to the garage, the crew was ready. Rahm sought out Josh DeVries.
“I need your crew, Josh. We’re going out to finish off those monsters, so we could do with some help.”
“You want us to go out through airlock? Ryles will have kittens if we open it, it’ll cost a pile more of his air.”
“I know. I want you and your crew armed and ready, a half hour after we leave I want you to leave and protect the base from the outside.”
“We’ve got the base defenses, they don’t need us,” he objected. “If they try another suicide run, we can’t stop them anyway.”
“I want them to see you there. Thirty minutes, no more, no less. If Ryles gives trouble, you know how to deal with him.”
Josh raised his eyes to the roof. “My God, whatever you’re planning, I hope it works.”
“It’ll work. And if it doesn’t, there’s nothing to worry about, is there?”
“I hear you. Thirty minutes after you leave, we go out.”
“No more or less.”
He noticed Nathan returning, and they walked over to the buggy. Tobin Ryles was there too.
“We’ve heard nothing from the cave, Rahm. Could the aliens have discovered it?”
“No. We destroyed them, I told you. Until the relief ship arrives, the only Taurons left on Mars are those four out there.”
“So what’s up with them?”
“Maybe they just don’t want to waste their time talking to you.” Rahm had had enough of trying to shepherd the inadequate manager through the task of keeping the base running during the emergency. He didn’t smile, but neither did Ryles respond to the comment.
“Can you find out?”
Now he smiled. “Tobin, there are four angry aliens out there, desperate to finish off this base. Do you think they’re going to just let us leave here and drive to the cave? They want to slaughter us, they want to see our entrails scattered over the surface of the planet.”
Ryles nodded and walked away. Like the others, he was suffering badly from poor air quality, but he’d also appeared to be in the throes of a mental breakdown. Well, he never was much use anyway, so maybe they’d be better off without him, Rahm shrugged mentally. He put the man out of his mind and climbed onto the buggy.
“What’s the package?” Nathan asked.
“It’s the bomb. I plan to use it to kill that huge alien.”
He explained how it worked.
“Let me help,” Nathan offered. “I want to do more to rid the planet of those bastards, I don’t feel I’ve done enough.”
Rahm noticed that Gabi was watching them carefully, as if there was more going on than he realized. He’d have to ask her about that later. He shrugged and handed it to him.
“Knock yourself out. But don’t pull the loose strip, for it’ll activate the glue and the bomb.”
“It’s ok, I’m on it.”
Rahm ordered them to load up the buggy with drilling equipment. The crew almost rebelled at that.
“You’re crazy, you want to mine trevanium when we’ve got those monsters camped outside the base and only a few hours air left?”
“Trust me, it’s important we have this gear with us, and important that they see we have it.”
“So it’s another ruse, we’re setting a trap for them?”
Rahm nodded. “Something like that. We just have to hope that they haven’t done the same.”
They entered the inner airlock and waited until the outer door opened. Then they drove out, like medieval knights riding onto the battlefield.
Granat watched and waited with his tiny force. He snorted, three men for such an important task. He was more worried than he’d care to admit over the failure of communications with Elysium Base.
“Dagan, have you tried to make contact again?”
“Yes, Commander. Still nothing.”
“And you’re sure the equipment is working properly?”
“Certain.”
He grunted. “They must have a problem at their end. The relief ship is due to arrive soon, it may create difficulties.”
“It could, yes. Their standing instructions are not to land unless they receive a coded clearance. We can perhaps send the clearance from our vehicle. Our communications equipment can handle it.”
“See to it, Dagan. The last thing we want is to be stranded here without resupply.”
He left his man and climbed outside the transport to stand on the surface, but Dagan followed him. The human’s base seemed to taunt him, standing there with just the small amount of damage caused by the suicide bombing. It was true that their drilling and mining operations had stopped, but he wasn’t sure quite how much damage had been done. Was it enough to force them to abandon the planet altogether? He doubted it. He needed to inflict one more defeat on them, he was sure it would be enough. And he wanted that human, the one he’d seen staring at him from a distance. He assumed he was their military commander. He always seemed to be directing those battles that had done so much damage to the Taurons. Yes, he would finish that arrogant dog together with his men and then they wouldn’t object to letting him have the rest of the troops he needed to finish them off. How could he persuade them to come out to do battle? That was a puzzle. Until to his astonishment, he saw the buggy emerge from the outer airlock and start towards them. Perfect!
As soon as they emerged, they saw the monsters waiting a short distance from the base.
“How’re we going to handle this?” Saul asked. “I’d advise against a frontal attack.”
He was grinning, but the others looked alarmed, as if he’d been considering it.
“I’m hoping to fool them with the drilling equipment. If they think we’re going out on a normal drilling operation, they may fall for it again. But I’ve got another idea too, a kind of plan B. Let’s see what happens.”
They drove out onto the plain, giving the Taurons a wide berth.
“I don’t get it, this is screwed. They’d be crazy to go for this.”
Rahm nodded at Saul. “Exactly, they would be crazy. So they won’t believe it. That puts us in their rear so that we can attack them without warning.”
They continued until the Tauron transport was out of sight. Saul had dropped off, armed only with a laser rifle at the top of a small crater than gave him a goods view. They stopped and waited for him two miles further out; when he arrived he was smiling.
“They were having some kind of an argument down there. The big guy got the better of it, but I’ve no idea what it was all about.”
“Any guesses?” Rahm asked him.
“Well, yeah. I reckon the small monsters wanted to go after us and finish us off, but the big guy wants to stay staking out Mars Base. I guess he’s convinced it’s a trick, and he thinks we’re coming back.”
“He’s right. Just not in the way he thinks.”
They circled in a wide loop around the base to come back at a point three miles behind the Tauron transporter. It hadn’t moved. The four aliens were still standing, motionless, watching the base. Rahm grinned.
“Here we go.”
Josh stopped at close to the main building, directly between the aliens and the base. It was like waving a red rag at a bull. After a brief conversation the Taurons piled into their transport and drove towards Josh’s vehicle. They stopped fifty yards away and climbed out.
“Go,” Rahm shouted. “Full speed, get down there and we’ll take them now. Brad, as soon as we’re in range, attempt to knock out their transporter.”