I slowly released my grip on my rifle and let the sling take its weight. I pulled out my harmonic blade and swung it in an arc at the nearest alien.
The blade bit into the center of a Cray’s head, then slid through, shearing neck and chest, exiting somewhere near the creature’s hip. As its torso fell, its cavity emptied. I leaped back, awaiting a reprisal, but nothing happened.
I saw movement and backed away as a pair of Cray moved towards their downed brother. These were the wingless variety.
The one on the left touched the dead Cray with its lower set of claws.
“What’s going on over there?” Olivares asked.
“I killed one and the others found it.” Even though they seemed unable to detect us, they somehow knew their brother was down. Was it the smell? Or could it be some form of communication we couldn’t track?
“What’d you do that for?”
“To see what would happen.”
I heard him cursing, but didn’t have time to worry about it. The Cray were coming for me.
“They’re all moving forward.”
Damn. Killing one had alerted them all. I fell back for a moment, until I realised they were filling in the space where their fallen comrade had been. Still, there was enough room to pass between them. I did that, slipping carefully between their outstretched arms.
“Go between them. Don’t fight. I repeat, don’t fight them.”
I moved towards where I thought Olivares would appear. It took longer than I expected, but suddenly he was in my green nimbus of light. I grabbed him and pulled him farther along.
“They can’t see in the dark,” I said. “They can’t hear. For all I know, they can’t smell, either.”
“How can you know?”
“They don’t react. Look at them.” The Cray stood in a picket, unmoving, waiting, but for what? Then it came to me. “Light. They need light. It’s the same phototactic response Mr. Pink told us about. But it’s more than a response. It’s their universe.”
“But how did they get here?” Olivares mused.
“My guess is they were guided here by another Cray or another species using light. These damn things are probably stuck here.”
I watched as he turned towards the Cray. “So as long as we operate in blackout, we can beat them.” He turned back to me. “Could it be that easy?”
“It could, and it is. Come on, let’s go. They’re not going to be hurting anything. As far as I’m concerned they can stand guard there forever.”
Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.
Sun Tzu
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
A
RMED WITH THIS
new information, we were still hyper-attuned to the possibility we’d encounter more Cray. Every rock and shadow gave us pause.
We were also terribly aware of the time inescapably counting down. We had less than two hours to make it to the rendezvous. When I asked Olivares how far away we were, he held up his hand and put his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “This far on the map,” he said. No matter the distance, our path was like walking through a maniac kitten’s ball of yarn, twisting and turning to the point I was sure we’d double back and see ourselves.
Twice we encountered lone Cray and twice we took them down with our harmonic blades. They didn’t seem to have any communications gear like the others. So when we found them, we were quick, silent, deadly.
That is until we saw the light. It grew bright very quickly, followed by the scuffle of dirt, the clack of claws, the scrape of rock—all coming from the direction we were heading. With no other choice, we backtracked and looked for somewhere to hide. We found a narrow passage that rose sharply from the tunnel, and I knelt and helped Olivares climb up before securing myself above the floor.
No sooner were we in place than the first Cray came into view. It carried a light, which blazed the darkness before it.
I felt my heart pound in my throat, and tightened my grip on the blade. If any of them looked up, I’d be forced to dive in among them. Thankfully they passed beneath, unaware of our presence.
I made a move to lower myself back down when Olivares grabbed my arm.
“Not yet,” he said. “Wait for them.”
“Who?”
“You’ll see.”
Ten minutes later the return crew filed past beneath us, carrying the three Cray we’d taken down.
“Some sort of patrol,” Olivares said. “Or maybe a guard duty shift change.”
We’d decided to follow them, keeping as close as we could without being detected. They moved fast, causing us to jog to keep up. Without the ability to see, I had to wonder how they were doing it. Was it muscle memory? Or was it something more akin to a bee returning to its hive? I made a mental note to bring that up with Mr. Pink when I returned from mission.
One thing they didn’t do was smoke and joke like the soldiers I was familiar with—no camaraderie at all, at least none that I could discern. It didn’t matter where you were from; it was human response to break up the monotony with stories, either real or invented. It had killed American soldiers, back in the day.
But not the Cray. And it was unnerving, especially since I realized that they might just be talking shit about how easy it had been to kill us, but using some form of unspoken communication.
We’d been traveling exactly thirty-seven minutes when they stopped. Then as one, they turned. The pair who’d been carrying the dead Cray dropped their load and advanced on us. They almost caught us unawares. I was slightly out of breath and had been wiping sweat from my brow when they approached.
I only just had time to bring down my blade, splitting the head of one of the creatures.
“Back up!” I screamed at Olivares.
But he was already ahead of me. “Come on.”
As the rest advanced, I turned and ran back several meters. I felt claws score my Kevlar, slicing through the material. I tripped as the armor plate on my back slipped free of the rent in the fabric. While the Kevlar seemed capable of withstanding the strikes, the cloth holding it in place was no match for alien claws. I fell to one knee, then felt myself jerked into the opening of a passage.
Olivares stepped over me, taking a strike against his Kevlar armguard as he grabbed the blade he’d dropped against the wall to rescue me. The strike sliced the Kevlar pad halfway through. He managed to snatch up the blade and slice through one of the Cray’s four hands.
The alien jerked back, then attacked with the other three claws.
I remained on the floor, Olivares standing over me. I managed to turn so I was facing up, and bore witness to the aliens’ savagery from a new perspective. I now knew how Thompson had felt that first time.
Olivares managed to slice through the torso of another Cray, and as it fell, I pulled myself through his legs and climbed to a standing position. I pulled my MP5 around and fired over his head, slamming thirty 9mm rounds into the alien horde. I didn’t pause to see the result, but ejected my mag, grabbed a fresh one, slammed it in and rode the bolt forward. I fired several more bursts into the aliens and saw them fall back.
We now had room to maneuver. I counted seven Cray still standing. Each of them bore evidence of my MP5, green blood pouring, seeping, gushing and weeping from multiple wounds. They crouched, wary in my enhanced night vision, unwilling or unable to attack. I raised my weapon to fire again and my vision winked out.
Blinded, I wondered if we hadn’t just been hit with an EMP. I loathed the idea of being stuck blindly beneath the earth. What would we do if we were turned around? We’d miss our deadline. We’d end up wandering around down below until we died of thirst or were killed by Cray, our bones hidden forever.
Then somewhere on the far edge of my hearing came the rattle of a snare drum. It seemed so real I had to remind myself it was all in my mind. Still, it served as the soundtrack for my determination to survive.
I felt with my left hand and pressed Olivares against the wall. “Stay back. NVDs out.” I stepped into his place and fired from the hip in controlled bursts, sweeping carefully across the room. Three. Three. Three. Three. Reload. Drop. Grab. Slap. Bolt. Three. Three. Three. All the while, I heard the drums, as if Thompson himself was there to inspire me.
“Cease fire, grunt.” Now it was my turn to feel a hand on my arm. “You got them.”
“All of them?” I kept my weapon level and brought my left hand up to smack the side of my NVD. Nothing.
“All of them. A couple are squirming, but I’ll take care of them. Take a moment and replace your batteries.” Then he let go of me and pushed past.
I knelt, keeping the weapon out of the dirt as I loaded a fresh magazine. Then I opened my pack, grabbed fresh batteries, and replaced the dead ones in my AN/PVS-7s. I was immediately rewarded with a return to the black-and-green universe. Thank God.
I appraised the small battlefield. Olivares must still have life in his batteries. I watched as he easily dispatched the last of the Cray. When he was done, I handed him fresh batteries, which he used to quickly replace the ones in his NVD. After a quick inventory, we decided to get rid of one of the packs. His arm had been hurt before, but now it was completely disabled. With one arm, he wasn’t as capable as I was, so he decided that he’d carry the other, leaving me to move point.
We had forty minutes left.
Olivares checked the map in the helmet again. We were on the right track. In fact, we were already well beneath the plain. It was just a matter of time.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
W
E SAW THE
light before we saw any aliens. It was so bright that it washed out the NVDs; we pulled them down and let them hang around our necks. One moment there was a mere glow and the next we were in almost full daylight, even far underground. We were forced to stop and backtrack.
We knelt and made our plan. We had less than twenty minutes until the attack and we still had to recon the interior and try and get the information out. Our chances of mission success were extremely low. Our objective was a crapshoot at this point, and we were playing with dice loaded with snake-eyes on five sides.
Still, we had to Charlie Mike.
Olivares decided to try to contact friendly forces. We were close enough that we believed a radio message might get through. But without the suit, to ground the radio and create the ELF antenna, we couldn’t reach anyone. We took a moment, unraveling an antenna wire and rolling it out a hundred feet behind us. We’d leave it here when we were done. As far as I was concerned, it was good riddance. That much less weight in the pack.
Olivares removed his ballistic mask. Standing with the helmet on his head without the suit, he looked sort of comical, but when we’d practiced it in the cantonment area, it had worked, albeit poorly. I was reminded of the sound we’d gotten when we’d created crystal radios in school, pulling in crackling broadcasts of a baseball game, the voice like something from the past, rather than out of Wrigley Park in Chicago.
I couldn’t hear Olivares, but I watched his eyes as he spoke into the helmet’s internal mic. He tried several times. Once it looked as if he might have gotten contact, then he just shook his head. Finally, after trying for several moments, he removed the helmet.
“Nothing but static.” He frowned as he put the Faraday netting back on. “We must not be as close as we thought we were.”
“Or there’s interference,” I said. I had another thought I didn’t share.
What if there was no one left to answer?
We’d been incommunicado for more than thirty hours now. There was no telling what could have happened in the interim.
As I mulled over the possibilities, I once again became aware of the sound of a drum from far away. Each time I’d heard them before, we’d been in the presence of Cray. I suddenly felt a surge of worry. I grabbed Olivares and shoved him against the wall.
Just in time.
A winged Cray surged around the corner.
Still kneeling, I swung with my blade and separated its feet from its legs.
It fell hard, smashing the front of its head into the ground. Its wings began to beat, lifting it into the air, but Olivares grabbed it, using his weight to pull it back down. It reared up and thrust two claws into Olivares’s chest, but they were deflected by his armor.
Olivares grabbed the alien and pulled himself into its embrace.
The Cray tried to push itself upwards so it could gain purchase, but Olivares wasn’t letting go. He had his hands locked together behind the creature’s back. Good thing. Knowing how badly his right arm was hurt, if he was to break the lock, he’d be as good as dead.
I was about to come to his aid when another Cray surged around the corner. This one wasn’t messing around and took flight, rising to the ceiling. One claw reached down and raked against my ballistic mask and the other tore it free, gouging the side of my face in the process.
I ducked and jibed, blood flowing down my neck. The alien came towards me again, forcing me to roll. I brought up my blade, but it knocked it out of my hand.
I rolled again, this time receiving a slash to my unprotected back. I wanted to roll away and keep on rolling. I wished I had my EXO. But it was just me and Olivares down here, with nothing but a little old fashioned Kevlar to protect us.
I glanced towards him and saw his eyes pleading with me. My gaze shot to his hands. He was losing his grip.
I felt blindly for my MP5, but it kept slipping out of my grip as I pushed myself backwards, using the heels of my boots to propel me along as I strived to keep out of the damned creature’s reach. I finally got my hands around the gun and brought it up. I started firing before I was ready and raked the ceiling before I found the alien above me.
I kept firing until the magazine was empty, then rolled hard to my right.