Stolen Earth, page 10
“We don’t know what we’re going to find out there,” Lynch continued. “Hayer, did you get anything from the sensors?”
“No,” she shrugged. “Which is to say, nothing unusual. The atmosphere reads as breathable. No obvious pathogens—ones we can recognize, anyway – but I recommend we stick to suit air. There could be nano-viruses and who-knows-what other nasty bugs floating in the air. Lots of signs of life, but…” Her eyes darted to the airlock and back to them and a slight shudder coursed through her. “I assume there’s animals out there.”
“Maybe more than animals,” Federov grunted. “Better to keep our eyes open, eh?”
“What about mechanicals?” Bishop asked.
Hayer shook her head. “Nothing the sensors picked up. But we’re in the middle of a giant ruin. There’s lots of metal and concrete and who knows what else out there. Plus, we don’t know what kind of technology they even have down here. There’s no way of knowing.” Laurel heard the barest edge of panic in the professor’s voice.
“Okay,” Lynch said, voice calm and even. “In that case, let’s seal up and move out.” He glanced at Laurel’s loadout, noting the massive optic on her weapon. “Federov and I will take point. Bishop, you and Hayer in the middle. Morales, you’re the rear guard.”
Laurel nodded. It made sense to keep the weapons most suited for close-quarters combat up front and to keep the two people least suited for combat in the middle of the stack. That left her at the rear, but that was okay. It wasn’t her favorite job, but tail-end Charlie was still a vital role. She reached up to the neck of her suit and hit the button that sent the hood crawling over her head. The face shield locked into place and she felt the faint flutter of claustrophobia as the smell of bottled air washed over her. The others had done the same and were now filing into the airlock.
“Once we’re out, there will be no more communication with the Arcus,” Lynch said, his voice coming in crisp over the suit comm. “The computer will keep everything on standby in case of emergency, but we’ll be operating with minimal electronic emissions. That means we won’t have access to ship’s sensors, and all communications will have to go over suit comm. Everyone clear?”
“Clear,” Laurel said as the others nodded or voiced their understanding.
“Final sensor check,” Lynch said, looking at Hayer. “Any company?”
The professor took a moment to tap at a wall-mounted screen. “No,” she said. “As far as I can tell, we’re alone.”
There was a momentary pause, as if Lynch were taking a steadying breath, though no sound came over the comm. “All right. Let’s do this.”
* * *
Laurel was on Old Earth.
She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. In the ship suit, she didn’t feel anything unusual: that was the point of the suit, after all. But the sunlight. She had spent her life under lights that science said perfectly simulated the wavelengths of the sun as filtered by Old Earth’s atmosphere. Sometimes, Laurel realized, science was full of shit. The light that she saw was like nothing she’d ever experienced, and it spoke to her on a level that could only be called primal. She wanted nothing more than to tear off the ship suit and let the rays of it caress her bare skin.
“Look at it.” Bishop’s near-whisper came in clear over the comms. “God above. I get it now.” She saw that he had his head craned back, looking up at… at the heavens. “God above,” he muttered again.
“There’s so much… so much space,” Hayer laughed. She turned a complete circle, arms outspread and fingers reaching as if trying to touch imaginary bulkheads that weren’t there. As she did, a wave of agoraphobia swept over Laurel. Hayer was right—there was space. The word meant something different here, somehow. It wasn’t like being Outside on a ship or colony. She couldn’t explain it, but as her eyes swept over the mix of lush greenery and ruined dwellings and the endless dome of blue sky, she felt her heart thudding in her chest. She drew a breath and drew even more deeply upon her training, forcing her mind to survey, catalogue, and identify. They could very well be in danger. Now was not the time to freak out.
“Federov?” Lynch asked. “You good?”
The mercenary was standing statue-like, staring at the ruins before them.
“Is strange. I did not know what to expect.” Federov shrugged, or maybe shuddered; it was difficult to tell but the motion set his gear to rattling.
“Whatever our expectations,” Lynch said, voice calm and controlled, “we need to move out. Every minute here increases our risk.”
Damn. Her hands tightened around the butt of her pistol as she swept the terrain with a different eye. She’d nearly forgotten that they were a long way from safety. The place they’d landed in was not unlike one of the cities you could find under the domes of Luna or Mars, except for the sheer scale of things. This city was in shambles, with none of the buildings in her line of sight intact, though whether from the ravages of war or time she couldn’t say for sure. And yet, it was not the blasted wasteland that Laurel had always envisioned when she thought about Old Earth. Everywhere she looked, she saw a thousand shades of brown and yellow and green. She’d seen hydroponics bays, but this was different. It made her want to open her helmet’s visor and draw in a deep breath, to see if the air produced by such lush greenery tasted different. She didn’t. This greenery existed in its natural habitat, unlike the humans who had just landed. The Old Earth had been the natural habitat of humanity at some point in their past, but no longer, and she had no idea what the atmosphere might do to her. The plants seemed to know that humans were no longer the masters of Old Earth as well. Everywhere she looked, long tendrils of green and brown spread over the concrete and steel, slowly, inexorably reclaiming the monuments of man beneath the implacable advance of nature. It was beautiful and terrifying.
“All right, people.” Lynch’s voice came over the comm. “We set down in the approximate middle of the search zone as intended. No contacts yet, and that’s a good thing. I’m sending coordinates to your suits now. We’ve got about a kilometer to the first target. We’re going to keep tight and keep our eyes open. There are a lot of distractions, but remember what we’re here for. We hit the buildings; we find the artifacts; we get out. No matter how amazing all of this is, our primary job is to get home safe.”
“Aw, come on, Captain. A few more minutes can’t hurt, right?” Bishop asked. He was still staring at the sky in wonder. “You’ve been here, done that, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing for the rest of us.”
“Sorry, Bishop,” the captain replied, voice firm. “I’m afraid we’re in a situation where a few more minutes could hurt. We don’t know what’s out there, people. We need to get moving.”
Laurel nodded at that. With no immediate threat in their vicinity, she holstered her pistol and readied her rifle. The optic would give her better eyes if she needed to scan for distant hazards. They set out, forming a rough line with two or three meters between each person. Lynch had point with Federov behind. Then Bishop, Hayer, and Laurel herself bringing up the rear. The captain moved at a good clip, something faster than a walk but not quite a jog. It was a pace that could cover a surprising distance without being too tiring.
Laurel tried to keep her mind focused on identifying and cataloguing threats, but it was almost impossible not to be distracted. This city had been vast. Vast on a scale that humanity hadn’t even come close to recreating. The largest dome of Luna held close to a million people… and Laurel felt confident that all of them could have fit easily within the expanse of the ruined buildings she could make out. And she knew there were more beyond that. And even more beyond that. The Sol Commonwealth numbered in the hundreds of millions of people—but they were spread over a staggering amount of physical space from Neptune to Venus. It took tens of thousands of stations, domes, colonies, habitats, and spaceships to contain them. And Old Earth had once held more than that, all confined to the surface of a single ball of dirt.
She had no idea what had happened to them all. The histories were only clear up to the point that SolComm had first set up the Interdiction Zone. Ecological disaster made resources more and more scarce, which led directly to global conflict. The deployment of targeted bio-weapons that resulted in plague, followed by the breakdown of old civilizations and the rise of new hegemonies that, in their turn, released more powerful and destructive weapons, culminating in the Six, the unfettered AIs given control of the defense of the militaristic alliances.
And then, nothing. The people of Old Earth had still been numerous when the IZ went into effect. Or so the histories claimed. But this city, which once held millions, seemed empty. The buildings and streets showed the scars of war, but there were few vehicles in them. Certainly not enough to be evocative of the gridlocked traffic patterns from the old vids. It was as if the city had been emptied out and only then destroyed.
“Contact!”
RAJANI
The word crackled over Rajani’s comm in Federov’s accented voice. The others reacted at once, each diving for cover. The street was crowded with debris and detritus that had tumbled from the crumbling buildings. The encroaching green had enveloped much of it, creating a canvas of leafy hillocks in the midst of cracked asphalt and concrete. Mimicking the others, she took two quick steps and threw herself down beside one.
“Where is it, Federov?” Lynch asked.
“Flash of movement. My three o’clock. Looked metallic,” the big man replied. He had taken cover behind the remains of one of the few vehicles that dotted the street, posting up by a wheel well with his rifle braced on the hood.
She felt a shiver of fear course through her. “It could have been anything. Maybe just a reflection, right?” Her eyes darted around trying to find whatever it was that Federov had keyed onto.
“That’s not a reflection,” Lynch noted. “Twenty meters. The ruin that kinda looks like a big sharp tooth. Halfway up.”
Rajani’s gaze followed Lynch’s direction, picking out the remains of a building that, at one point, had been dozens of stories tall. Now, it jutted up from a pile of its own remains, a roughly conical shape that did look a bit like the incisor of some ancient predator. And halfway up, something crawled along it. Something many-legged, metallic, and the size of a large dog. Was it a robot? Or a drone of some sort?
She couldn’t see many details, but a moment later, a close- up popped into her visor, making her start. She realized a half a heartbeat later that she was viewing the feed from Morales’ rifle optic.
“Definitely mechanical,” she muttered, some of her fear subsiding as curiosity pushed it to one side. “I wonder if it’s autonomous or piloted?”
“I’m more worried about whether or not it’s going to try to kill us,” Bishop said.
“Another one!” Federov snapped. “Ten o’clock.”
“Shit,” Lynch’s voice cut in. “We’ve got more inbound.”
Rajani pushed herself forward until she could see more comfortably over the edge of the vine-shrouded hillock against which she lay. She saw them, then. They were crawling from around the edges of buildings or moving up from the wreckage that crowded the streets. Mechanical, spider-like things that would have been indistinguishable from one another were it not for the signs of age. Several showed patinas of rust and at least two in her vision were missing some of their myriad limbs. It didn’t seem to be slowing them, however. There were at least a dozen in her line of view, and more seemed to be crawling from the wreckage with each heartbeat.
“What do we do?” Rajani asked, fighting to keep the panic out of her voice. Her heart thudded in her ears and her breathing was starting to come in ragged gasps.
“Hold steady,” Lynch said. “We don’t know if they’re hostile.”
As if on cue, the lead creatures seemed to home in on their position. As one they surged forward, the only sound their metallic limbs clicking and clacking off the detritus over which they climbed.
“Engage!” Lynch shouted, setting action to his words and shouldering his bullpup. The staccato sound of gunfire filled the city, the ear-shattering reports automatically dampened by her ship suit.
Rajani realized that she hadn’t even drawn her weapon. With shaking hands, she pulled the unfamiliar pistol from the holster, fumbling for a moment with the retention lever. She brought the sights up to her eyeline. Her ship suit interfaced with the firearm, placing a reticule in her vision, but it seemed to be bouncing all over the place. Beside her, Federov had shouldered his rifle and was firing single aimed shots, barrel transitioning rapidly from target to target. She heard the throaty roar of Bishop’s shotgun from somewhere off to her left and the softer report of pistol fire. Not her own. Morales, dropped into a firing stance with her rifle—and its long-range optic—hanging from its sling was firing her sidearm.
The first wave surged directly toward the crew of the Arcus, darting into the barrage of jacketed lead. As Rajani began to shoot, she could see that many of the things were already down. But there were more coming, and now they were zig-zagging in quick, jerky motions. A part of her mind catalogued that fact: the second wave seemed to have learned from the failure of the first. The targets were small and swift to begin with, and as they actively evaded the crew’s fire, the misses started to outnumber the hits. Her breath was coming short and fast now.
“Fall back,” Lynch shouted over the comm. “Keep up your weight of fire, but we have to make space.”
The others moved even as the captain spoke, abandoning their cover and forming a rough line in the middle of what Rajani supposed had been a street. She scrambled to keep up, reminding herself to both keep her weapon pointed in the general direction of the enemy and to keep firing.
In the chaos of their retreat, Rajani had somehow ended up on the right flank of their ragged line, and she was neither sure how she had gotten there nor what to do about it. She stumbled as she took another backward step and almost fell. Morales’ steadying hand kept her from falling. “Stay on your feet!” she growled over the comm. “And keep shooting!” Morales’ own gun barked shot after shot and with each one, Rajani thought she could hear the ping of impact on one of their attackers.
Beyond her, Federov and the captain held the center of the line, their rifles hammering the enemy with quick, precise shots. On the left flank, Bishop’s shotgun roared, its deep throaty bass distinctly different from the sounds of the other weapons. She couldn’t spare much attention, but she could see that Bishop, mechanic or not, seemed to be working the firearm with almost the same ease and familiarity as their more soldierly companions. That hardly seemed fair.
She pulled the trigger a final time and her slide locked back. She fumbled for the mag release, letting the empty one fall to the ground. She patted around her belt for another magazine. She had been carrying six spares, but two of the holders were already empty. She didn’t remember reloading once, much less twice. As she tried to fumble another magazine into the well, she realized that the volume of fire was slackening. The magazine seated into place and she depressed the lever to drop the slide and chamber a fresh round as she scanned the area around her. Only moments ago, a sea of many-legged attackers had flowed toward them as inevitably as a ship pulled toward a gravity well. Now, she saw just a few still active, and those were fast falling to the rifle fire of the captain and Federov.
It was pure luck that saved her life. She turned her head to the right, not out of any real sense of tactical acumen, but by simple chance. At the edge of her peripheral vision she caught a flash of movement. It took half a second to register and then she was staring full on into the face of horror.
Rajani screamed.
The sound tore from her throat as an involuntary reflex even as she forced herself to bring her pistol up before her. At first glance, she couldn’t tell if it was man, machine, or some ungodly hybrid of the two. It was a dull, matte gray like raw iron but without the luster and stood nearly eight feet tall on two legs that looked far too spindly to support the weight of its body. Its torso spread out from the narrow junction of its hip in a shape that was reminiscent of a human but somehow just… wrong. The arms, thicker than the legs, looked long enough to reach the ground. Those arms didn’t end in hands. Instead they tapered to points that looked sharp enough to pierce steel. The head—if head it was—was undersized, and looked for all the world like a ration can set on its side, the top pointing right at Rajani. She could just make out a half-dozen points of multicolored light—cameras or sensors or something blinking within the depths of the can. The whole effect gave the thing an appearance that was part simian, part skeletal, and all nightmare.
Rajani took in the monstrosity in a single instant. She didn’t bother trying to communicate with the others—there was no time and besides, they had to have heard her scream. And she didn’t even entertain the idea of trying to talk to the… whatever the hell it was. It was charging her almost as if the little mechanical spider-things had driven the crew of the Arcus right into its metal arms.
She pulled the trigger, forgetting in her adrenaline and fear that she was supposed to gently squeeze, and ran backwards, trying to open space between her and her loping attacker. The pistol barked, firing rounds in rapid succession, and even over the rest of the din, she could hear the tinny strikes against the thing’s body. For a moment, the creature staggered, jolted by the repeated impacts.
But only for a moment.
In that moment, Rajani’s world seemed to speed up and slow down all at the same time.
She was aware—barely—of her arms moving of their own accord, riding the recoil and bringing the pistol back into action, trying desperately to bring the sights back in line with her attacker. The rhythm of fire from the rest of the crew changed as they reacted to her scream. She heard the staccato beat of their fire and felt the thrum of the bullets’ passage as they turned their firearms to the new threat, rocking the skeletal creature as their rounds pinged off its body. Rajani kept jerking the trigger, until she realized that the slide was locked back and the trigger hadn’t reset. She was out of ammunition. She fumbled for another magazine, but it was too late; the creature was upon her, needle-tipped arms cocked back like pistons ready to be driven forward. She had never been a religious woman, but in those final broken seconds, she said a silent prayer, eyes closing to shut out the sight of her own death.
