Authors: Ari Bach
On one hand there was no reason it shouldn't be. The organic warhead would simply appear to be part of the Ares tanks to anyone who didn't know what the tanks were designed to look like. On the other hand, a simple alpha scan would reveal there was an atomic bomb strapped to the things. There was far too much built up around the tanks to see from a distance and too many people working there to send a Tikari, so Yak suits were the order of the day.
The four descended from the plateau and lurked just outside of the guard perimeter. The first couplet of guards was rotating in to place. They matched Varg and Violet in stature so they headed out first.
Vibeke and Veikko monitored with microwaves ready in case their teammates' stuns were ineffective and the guards had to be killed. Vibeke moved in closer for a better shot and hid behind a large rock. There she saw two corpses.
Violet and Varg moved closer, microwaves at the ready, sticking to the blind spots afforded by the guards' breathing apparatuses.
Vibeke examined the bodies. Both had Yakuza tattoos. Both had public link labels as guards 37 and 38. Vibeke looked at the guards Violet and Varg were about to stun. Publicly labeled as guards 37 and 38. She linked immediately to her team.
“Those aren't guards, someone beat us to it!”
The message hit Violet the same instant she fired a stunning beam at the first. It had no effect. The guard's replacement turned around, and Violet saw its face. It looked like four black hands opening up to reveal a single bloodshot eye. Violet stumbled back. She set her microwave to kill and fired again. It burned off the front of the suit's chest, but the creature was undisturbed. From the hole came two tentacles with spiked suckers, reaching for her face.
Varg's sword chopped them off. The thing let loose a howl that sent a shiver through Violet's chest.
The Unspeakable Darkness. Bodies modified to the point of inhumanity and beyond.
Varg swung again to behead the monster but only shattered its helmet. The second guard impostor broke out of its suit and grabbed him with the taloned claw it had in place of a head. Its true face became visible as its suit tore off, four eyes in its chest with a gruesome toothed set of three flaps for a mouth. Two legs unfolded from each leg of its suit, two arms from each arm. The thing had made a spider of itself.
Varg ran it through with no effect. There was no telling where an Unspeakable kept its vital organs. It pushed him off, throwing him past Violet. She fired again at the center of the thing that threw Varg. Her beam hit its “face,” and she could see its eyes burn. She was certain she'd blinded it. She turned to the other Unspeakable. It had torn out of its suit to reveal that it was two bodies, one on top with the bloodshot eye and one below with no eyes, just a mass of limbs. A question shot through her head of what kind of human beings would modify themselves into such abominations. She fired again at the top Unspeakable at full strength.
Vibeke's microwave hit it too, and then Veikko's. The crossed beams resulted in a protonic reversal, and the Unspeakable exploded. They realized what happened and fired again at the lower beast, vaporizing most of its torso.
The spidery creature grabbed Violet with the claw it had in place of a head. She ejected her Tikari and sliced at its “neck.” The segments were armored, and she couldn't get her knife between them.
Veikko and Vibeke fired again at its back. Its skin boiled and puckered, but it remained. Varg's sword emerged from the face on its chest, run through again but to no avail. It began squeezing Violet's head. The crushing force was immense, seconds from knocking her out or crushing her skull completely.
Veikko ejected his Tikari and rammed it down the creature's throat, then let go. He set it to berserker mode and let it wreak havoc inside the thing. Slowly it let go of Violet and collapsed to the ground. Veikko recalled his Tikari and wiped it off on the guard suit's sleeve.
A massive blast hit one of the Yakuza barracks. The shockwave knocked V team off their feet. Violet looked up for the source of the blast. She saw a contrail leading to the destroyed building. It came from a flying bundle of worms.
The UD ship was massive and grotesque. At first glance it looked like worms tied together with more worms, but from within the mass came spines like an urchin's. It had a shield, a shell of some sort on its front, rendering it completely unaerodynamic and asymmetrical. It was slick black but painfully visible in the Yakuza's bright work lamps. Violet almost wished it weren't. Something about its appearance got under her skin the same way as the Unspeakables themselves. Their ship hurt to look at, to think about. It fired again.
One of the spines bloated and disgorged a missile that armed and flew for another structure, demolishing it in a colossal red blast.
All hell broke loose as the Yakuza shuttles unleashed projectile fire at the Unspeakable ship. The construction site was now an inferno, burning dim in the oxygen-poor air. Only the rocket under construction seemed untouched. Both sides were avoiding harming their prize.
“Mission's still on. Confirm the nuke. Sabotage the rocket,” Veikko shouted. And they ran.
Violet found herself dodging shrapnel and corpses alike. Running as fast as she could for the rocket, her suit's breathing apparatus spraying mist up toward her eyes. Another blast from the UD knocked them all back, but they scrambled to their feet and kept running.
Yaks stampeded around them, running from the Unspeakable ship, for cover, in any direction they thought would save them. Except for one guard. Violet knew from its stance it was another Unspeakable in disguise. She drew her microwave again and fired. The others took her cue and fired, disintegrating its suit. That left a horrible sight, a burning monster, this one with an elongated double-lobed head that split in the front to reveal long, spiny teeth.
The Unspeakable figures were like a symphony of horror, every limb tweaked to make skin crawl. The burning monster's arms looked broken, jointed in the wrong places, and pierced with gold rings. Violet fired again with no effect.
Varg ran straight for it and cut it in half with his sword, but not before it had launched a dozen spines into the side of his face. He didn't stop running as he yanked them out, ignoring the barbs and letting them tear his skin.
He ran to the left of the team as they headed for the rocket, and he got detoured on a ramp. Violet stopped under the end of the incline and linked to Varg that they were right beneath him. He jumped off the incline onto a soft canopy, then adeptly let himself fall onto a soft mound of packaging, and then, less gracefully, facedown into a hard pile of nails.
He didn't even bother to remove the ones that stuck. He and Violet just started running, and they fell out one by one. Closer to the rocket, Yaks were standing their ground against UD troops, some even charging against them with drawn swords. A fierce battle raged around them as they ran. Flaming Unspeakables unperturbed by microwaves, mutilated Yakuza fighting to the last breath. Total mayhem.
They arrived at the rocket, surrounded by Yakuza. The Yaks ignored Valknut completely. Violet jumped up onto the rocket's superstructure, a square around the tanks with thrusters at each corner. She made her way inward toward the tanks and caught the first glimpse of the nuclear warhead. It looked simple and downright pretty compared to the monsters that were attacking, something like a cephalopod disguised as a structure across the top of the tanks. It opened its eye as Varg approached, recognizing its trigger.
Violet linked out for anyone who didn't see it that the nuke was intact. Half the mission complete. Now it was time to sabotage the rocket.
Vibeke was already looking over the thrusters and comparing their designs to records in her partitioned memory. Trying to find a weakness. She was interrupted when a shake rattled the superstructure.
At first they all thought it had been hit by a UD missile, but when they looked for the flames, they found them directly below. And sustained. Coming from the thrusters. They hadn't been hitâthe Yakuza were launching prematurely with a half-finished ship to get the tanks away from the attack. The rocket began to lift.
“Stay or go?” asked Violet.
“We get off and nuke it as soon as it's in space!” shouted Veikko.
“The Geki would kill us all,” replied Varg.
“We stay and sabotage, crash it before it breaks gravity. Let 'em clean up a kilometer of mud to get the Ares,” voted Vibeke. “Might make it financially unfeasible, and they'll give up.”
“I'm with Vibs,” called Violet.
“Same,” called Varg.
Veikko cursed and grabbed a pipe leading to the thrusters. “Then we take it down slow, disable one thruster at a time.”
Vibeke called back, “Thick red pipe on each is O
2
. They're far enough not to ignite if we cut 'em.”
Varg immediately took his Tikari and brought it down on the nearest pipe. It cracked and pressurized gas spat into the air. The thruster seemed to be working fine, though. He swung again, and the pipe was severed completely. The thruster began to fizzle.
They were already thirty meters up and still rising. The thing seemed fine on three thrusters. They began scaling the remaining scaffold to reach the next. With two down, it would have no way to remain stable. It would crash slowly. They'd just need to jump when it drew low to the surface. Inertial negation fields and low Martian gravity would keep them safe.
Violet reached a catwalk that, though rumbling violently, provided a path to the next thruster. Gravity was increasing with acceleration, and atmosphere was almost gone. Mars was falling away fast beneath them.
Vibeke and the others made it to the catwalk after her. Violet looked back after them. As soon as Vibs was atop the metal grate, she drew her Tikari. Violet didn't understand until she turned around.
Mishka crouched on the catwalk, microwave in hand.
Mishka drew and shot Violet with a killing beam. It hit her in the center of her chest armor, which absorbed most of it. The remaining sparks burned horribly, as if she'd swallowed acid. She fell to the inner scaffold and clutched her chest, then struggled to pull an internal coolant from her Thaco pocket. She barely caught sight of a melted coolant pack in her hand before her vision began to fade.
Valhalla was half an astronomical unit away. They were in space already, and even if they could get back to Mars, she was doomed without a coolant pack. As her vision flickered, Varg arrived with his own and forced it into the Tikari slot on her chest. Nelson ducked out of its way, butting into her xiphoid process. The coolant field activated, and the relief was phenomenal. A soothing feeling like nothing she'd felt before. Varg hit her with an adrenaline syrette, and her vision returned.
“Stay down, you can't move yet,” he said. She could hear Vibeke and Mishka fighting on the catwalk. She tried to prop herself up to see but couldn't move without pain ripping through her chest. She was forced to lie down as Vibeke fought her nemesis to the death.
Vibeke drew her microwave and fired a wide beam at Mishka. She countered with her own. They knew it was a stalemate and ran for each other, beams conflicting and sparking.
Vibeke kicked Mishka's microwave from her hand, off the rocket and into the Martian sky, then readied her microwave to fire the final beam. Mishka grabbed her leg and threw her off the catwalk. Her microwave fell from the rocket alongside her. Veikko tractored her back in place before she fell away, then switched back to kill, ready to take any shot at Mishka that came clear.
Vibeke and Mishka fought in a barrage of slugs and kicks that betrayed their precarious, shaking spot. Gravity was growing less and less now, acceleration altering to freefall. Vibs got a kick in that nearly sent Mishka into the void, but she caught a pipe and scaled back down.
A fistfight was hopeless in zero-g. Both would be thrown into space. Mishka clawed her way to the other side of the rocket and locked herself to the scaffolding with a diamond filament tether. She checked her oxygen, 90 percent. She had almost two days left. If they docked with a larger craft, she'd be fine. If they headed for Earth, she'd scale the rocket and drag Vibeke into the void with her.
V team regrouped. Vibeke was on top of her rage and didn't
waste a second finding Mishka. The thrusters were off. Gravity was over, she and Violet tied into the catwalk, Veikko and Varg to the scaffolding. They all checked their O
2
constructors and vacuum shielding. All working at maximum capacity. They could last almost a month at regular metabolism. Over a year if they took internal cryo-tabs.
But the mission had failed. They were on their way to Earth with the Ares water.
Veikko linked, “Don't worry, I won't nuke us in space.”
“As if I'd let you.” Varg tightened the trigger around his neck.
“What are we gonna do?”
“We can't risk sabotage between planets. If the Ares falls into the sun, it ends the solar system. We need to get off when we get to Earth and nuke it there.”
“That
will
cause a war, without question.”
“We cannot allow the Ares to exist on Earth. It's not an option.”
“I disagree.”
“Well, we have a month in space to argue about it, Varg.”
Enyo appeared overhead, first as a bright dot, then as an asteroid, technically Mars's smallest moon. They could tell on
approach it was only a bit larger than the rocket. It had a hatch
carved into its side.
The docking procedure was simple and smooth, and the five apparent corpses latched to the rocket were ignored. As the rocket docked, they got a better look at Enyo. It was fitted with one massive thruster on one side and a tiny cockpit on the other. A cheap interplanetary craft, but it would do the job.
As the rocket passed through into the hollow rock, Mishka detached and pushed out against the rocket, hurtling into space.