Solfleet: The Call of Duty (46 page)

There it was
again...the moan...weak...little more than a whimper...barely audible, but
definitely a woman’s voice. And it was coming from the other side of the door
he’d just found. Could it be the prince’s consort?

He pressed his
hand against the door and gradually increased the pressure, but it didn’t give.
He felt around for a latch or a panel in the wall but didn’t find anything. Perhaps
there was something on the other side. He crossed in front of the door and
positioned himself on the other side, then felt around again as Marissa crossed
the hall and moved forward to the spot he’d just vacated. This time he found a
single round button in the wall, right next to his ear.

He glanced
at Marissa. She nodded. He pressed the button and the door made the devil’s own
noise as it slid sluggishly aside, disappearing into the wall. He waited for a
moment, then peeked cautiously into the room. It wasn’t as dark in there as it
was in the hallway, thanks to the moonlight that shone in through the single
small window in the opposite wall, but he still had a difficult time discerning
detail in certain areas, particularly in the back. But as far as he could tell,
no one waited for them inside.

Using hand
signals, Dylan asked Marissa if she could see his signals well enough to make
out his message. She nodded, so he signed his plan to her. She nodded again
when he finished.

They entered
swiftly, one behind the other, and immediately separated and switched on their
rifle-mounted beam-lights, moving constantly as they scanned the entire room.
Something moved under Dylan’s light as it passed low across the back wall. He panned
back quickly, his finger tightening ever so slightly on the trigger. “Oh my
God,” was all he could manage to say when he realized what he was seeing.

Marissa
pronounced her half of the room clear and hurried to his side. She added her
light to his and almost choked on her sudden, sharp gasp.

A smallish,
slender, dark haired young woman—not much more than a girl, really—lay
stretched out on what looked like some kind of surgical bed next to a series of
ominous looking machines, her eyes rolled back in her head so that only the
whites were visible. She’d been stripped naked, had obviously been beaten and
probably tortured as well. Her badly skinned hands were strapped to a metal bar
above her head and her legs, thighs badly bruised, were spread wide and
strapped to the sides of the bed frame just below her knees. A pair of narrow flexible
tubes ran from a panel on the front of one of the machines, feeding some kind
of fluids into her arms, and a series of what looked like small sensors were
fastened to the sides of her head, beneath her breasts, and over her heart,
their thin leads running back to another of the machines—apparently some kind
of medical monitor. Her belly looked swollen, as though she were at least a few
months pregnant, and she was bleeding fairly heavily, or had been at some
point, from her vagina, which looked like it had been torn.

“Oh my God,”
Marissa echoed. “Is she alive?”

“I think she
moved a second ago. Must have been her we heard moaning.”

“What are we...”

“Doc, this
is Graves. I need you in the camp commander’s office ASAP. Main door, then down
the hall, first room on the right.”

“
Copy
that, Sarge. Two minutes.
”

A loud
demonic hiss like that of a very large and very angry reptile suddenly filled
the room. The startled Marines separated quickly, but before either of them
could react further, a heavy stream of thick florescent bile-yellow fluid
sprayed in from the darkness of the hallway as if fired from a high-powered
garden hose and spattered over Marissa’s face and chest. She dropped her rifle
and clutched her face in her hands, screaming at the top of her lungs as she
collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain.

“Marissa!”
Dylan shouted. He raised his rifle to the doorway and fired blindly into the
darkness as he rushed toward her, but a long and immensely powerful whip
suddenly lashed out and knocked him back as it ripped the rifle from his hands.
Then, in that same fluid motion, it struck Marissa square across her chest as
she tried to climb back to her feet and knocked her back against the far wall.
She dropped back to the floor, unconscious or dead Dylan could not know.

A man-sized,
vaguely humanoid creature—the beast had two arms, two legs, and a head, at
least—emerged from the darkness, crouching low, baring sharp teeth and stiletto-like
fangs as it moved to block Dylan’s only escape route. Its evil red eyes glowed
like two small suns hanging side-by-side in space. It hissed as it breathed,
its torso pulsated with each heavy breath, and its smooth, dark exoskeleton
glistened like wet leather in the dim moonlight.

“Holy shit,”
Dylan mumbled, staring wide-eyed at the creature as he slowly backed away.

A huge,
thick membrane like a cobra’s cowl fanned out from the sides of its long
triangular head and neck, stretching beyond the width of its massive shoulders
as the creature grew to nearly three meters in height, lifting its feet from
the floor and holding its legs tightly against the long, muscular tail on which
it balanced.

“What the
hell are you?” Dylan asked, though he didn’t expect to get an answer. One
possibility immediately came to mind, however, and he wasn’t as quick to
dismiss it as he might have been under less stressful circumstances. It was the
serpent—the Prince of Darkness. It was the devil itself!

It slithered
slowly toward him, hissing, taunting him as though it knew what effect its
hideous appearance was having on him. A sign of intelligence, Dylan noted as he
backed farther away, his eyes still wide with shock. He finally gathered his
wits and drew his sidearm, only to have it whipped from his grasp by the
creature’s lightning quick tail before he could aim and fire, just as his rifle
had been.

He grabbed
everything he could find within his reach—medical instruments, tools, chairs,
equipment—and threw it at the creature’s head as hard as he could, but the
agile monster moved too fast and ducked out of the way every time. Then,
suddenly, it spat. Dylan threw his arms across his face barely in time to
protect it from the venom, but in so doing he left himself wide open to attack.

The creature
whirled completely around and grabbed him up in its long tail, which it swiftly
coiled around his mid-section. It lifted him up off of the floor, and then
slowly began squeezing the life out of him.

The air
gushed from his lungs. He opened his mouth as wide as he could, but he couldn’t
even begin to draw a breath. One by one his ribs began to crack like dry twigs
under a hiker’s boots. Tiny sparks of light began dancing like fireflies in the
darkness before his tearing eyes. He choked and coughed up what little air he
had left. He felt warm blood trickling down his cheek. This was it. This was
finally the end. His incredible luck had finally run out. He was going to die
in agony and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

Gunfire
exploded in the tiny room and the bone-crushing pressure abruptly disappeared
as the screeching creature dropped him. More gunfire erupted as he lay on the
floor clutching his shattered ribs, gasping painfully for air, but it quickly
ceased with a loud crash as suddenly as it had begun.

Dylan looked
up just as the blurry creature reached down—its arms looked oddly frail, too
long and skinny for its body size—and grabbed him by the front of his TAC-vest.
It had dropped to its feet again and had clearly been weakened. Lifting him off
the floor seemed to take more effort than it should have for a creature so
powerful. Even one with such skinny arms.

It wasn’t
the devil at all! It was flesh and blood, just like him, and it was wounded!

And that
meant it could be killed!

He reached
out with one arm, still cradling his ribs with the other, and pushed as hard as
he could against the creature’s armored torso, but his feet kept slipping on
the wet floor and he couldn’t get the traction he needed to put up more of a
fight. He stared in horror as the creature’s jaw bones suddenly separated,
opening into four fanged mandibles, thick saliva dripping from the sinew that
stretched between them. A second row of long needle-sharp teeth protruded from
its mouth as if hinged along the gum line. Its breath smelled of rotten meat
and vomit. Dear God, it intended to eat him!

He grabbed its
upper mandibles, one in each hand, and screamed in agony as he pushed against
them, forcing them outward with all his might. He kicked repeatedly at the
creature’s knees and groin, what it had of one, until it finally threw him down
again. He hit the floor with a bone-jarring thud and tried to roll out of the
creature’s reach, but it recovered too quickly and grabbed him again. This time,
however, he was ready. He drew his combat knife from his belt sheath, and when
the creature pulled him in, he lashed out and opened its gullet from one side
of its head to the other.

The doomed
creature dropped him into the expanding pool of its cold, thick blood. It tried
to cry out as it collapsed, but the only sounds it managed to make were the
flapping of its loose gullet tissue and the gurgling of its gushing blood.
Finally it just lay there twitching, silently waiting to die. Dylan could only
stare through tear-filled eyes at the fallen creature as he struggled to breathe
against excruciating pain.

He was
dying.

A small
explosion outside shook the floor and rattled the window. Gunfire followed,
then another small explosion and more gunfire. Much more. Dylan recognized the
distinct sound of his team’s pulse rifles. The squad had been compromised.
Battle had been joined.

He was
dying.

“Lieutenant?”
he strained to say.

“
We’re on
our way, Sergeant. Hold on.
”

Someone
moaned.

“Who’s
there?” Dylan shouted, “Marissa!” and it hurt like hell! He tried valiantly to
ignore the pain as he crawled to her side and struggled to turn her over. When
he finally did roll her onto her back, that same stench of rancid vomit hit him
so hard that he almost vomited himself, but somehow he managed to hold
everything down.

Her face was
badly discolored and her eyes were nearly swollen shut. The front of her
TAC-vest had dissolved completely away, and what little remained of her
battle-dress tunic was torn wide open. A deep cut ran high across her burned
and bloodied chest, but it didn’t appear to be bleeding anymore.

“I’m still
with you,” she weakly proclaimed through gritted teeth. “How bad is it?”

“I don’t
think it’s too serious,” Dylan lied.

“Sure burned
like hell.”

“Past tense?
How does it feel now?”

“Like salt
and lemon juice in an open cut. Stings a lot, but it doesn’t burn like it did
at first. Let’s not even discuss the smell.”

Despite
everything, Dylan grinned. “At least it missed your sense of humor.”

“Did I get
the bastard?”

“You got it
all right. Practically cut it in half. You saved my life.”

But he was
dying anyway.

“You’re
welcome,” she told hm. “So what the hell is it?”

“That’s a
damn good question...for another time. All that matters right now is that the
bastard’s dead and we’ve recovered our second objective. We’ve got to get her
out of here.” He looked around. “Where the hell is Doc?” The sounds of battle
grew louder and more intense. “Sounds like it’s getting bad out there. How are
your eyes? Can you see anything?”

“I can see
enough to find my way the hell out of here, that’s for sure!” she exclaimed as
he helped her, as much as he
could
help her, to sit up. He leaned her
back in the corner against the wall.

But he
was...no. He wasn’t going to die. Not here. Not like this.

“Hold on a
second.” Barely able to keep from crying out as he stood up, Dylan staggered
once, but managed stay on his feet. He searched the room and retrieved their
rifles and his pistol. Forcing himself not to give in to the crippling pain
that his movements caused, he slung her rifle over his head and shoulder while he
held his own in hand. Then he returned to her side.

“Okay,
Marissa. Let’s free that poor girl and get the hell out of this Godforsaken place.”

Grimacing
against the agony in his back and chest, he helped her to her feet—he wasn’t
real sure that it shouldn’t have been the other way around, but so be it—and
guided her over to the royal consort’s side.

“Aren’t you
going to have Doc look her over before we move her?” she asked him as he
started unfastening the leg strap closest to him.

“We can’t
wait for him anymore. We need to get her out of here now.”

“But moving
her might...”

“It might,
but she’s on the verge of that now. Get her hands.”

He freed her
leg and gently straightened it and laid it down, eliciting a weak moan that
sounded like a response to pain. “I’m sorry,” he told her through gritted teeth,
even though she probably didn’t understand English. Then he got to work on her
other leg.

“Your arms
are burned,” Marissa observed as she started on the straps around the consort’s
wrists.

“The bastard
spat at me.”

“Yeah, it
does that. What about these needles in her arm, and all these sensors?” she
asked once she’d freed the young woman’s wrists.

“Pull them out,
carefully. Then see if you can find something to wrap around her arm.”

Marissa complied,
then wrapped the girl’s arm with a strip of material she tore off her own
damaged tunic. Hell, it was ruined anyway. “Hey, look. She’s awake,” she then
observed.

Dylan looked
and saw that her irises had reappeared, and that she appeared to be trying to
focus on her rescuers. He laid her right leg down gently, then moved closer to
her head, where he guessed she might be able to see him better, and grasped her
arm and slid his other hand under her shoulder. “Help me sit her up.”