[Aliens 01] - Earth Hive Read online

  Earth Hive

  Aliens - 01

  Steve Perry

  1

  Even inside her bulky E-suit, Billie could feel the cold night bite at her. Sure, the land crawler blocked most of the icy wind, and they had pulled one of the crawler’s portable heaters and turned it up full, pretending it was a campfire, but it was still cold. It was the best they could do—there wasn’t any wood on the planet Ferro, and if there had been they sure as shit wouldn’t be burning it. Wood was worth more per gram than platinum on this world. How the guys in the vids could chop it up and waste it was unreal.

  The frozen wind howled like some kind of unhappy beast as it blew past the squat form of the crawler; the song changed to a whistle where it flowed over the tractor’s sharp treads. The sounds were eerie. Every now and then through a patchy break in the roiling and thick clouds, the stars gleamed briefly, hard pinpricks against a dead-black curtain, glittering like diamonds caught in a laser beam. Even without the clouds it would have been dim; Ferro had no moons.

  Well, right, so it wasn’t comfortable out here, but at least the three of them weren’t stuck inside the colony with the do-nothing dweebs, bored half stupid.

  “Okay,” Mag said, “what else we s’posed to do here? We ate the RTE rations and sang that fool song about logs and holes in the bottom of the sea. This is terminal droll, Carly.”

  At twelve, Mag was a year younger than Billie and Carly, and she always had a smart crack about everything.

  Billie shivered inside her E-suit. “Yeah, juice brain, what else was on that old disc about camping?”

  “If you two dweebs will shut up, I’ll tell you.”

  Mag slapped herself over the heart. “Oh, killer clever,” Mag said. “Got me.”

  “They used to tell stories,” Carly said, pretending to ignore her. “Like ghosts and monsters and shit.”

  “Fine,” Mag said. “So, tell us one.”

  Carly went off on a ramble about vampires and ghosts and Billie knew she’d pulled it from an old entcom file. Even so, it was one thing to see the vid in your cube, all warm and well lit, another thing to hear the story out here a klick away from the Main Building in the dark and cold and all. Spooky.

  Windblown hail spattered briefly, like a handful of gravel tossed at them, but stopped just as Carly hit the climax of her story.

  “—and every year, one of the survivors of that horrible night goes crazy—and now it’s my turn!”

  Mag and Billie both jumped as Carly lunged at them. Then all three began to giggle. “Okay, Mag, you’re up.”

  “Yeah, okay. There was this old witch, see…?” Halfway through Mag’s tale some ice pellets fell and bounced around. One must have gotten into the heater’s circuits. The unit flashed brightly, blew its fuse, and died. As the glow faded, the only light they had left was from the stars and the crawler’s LEDs. The night moved in on them, and the cold and the dark both thickened. All of a sudden, the Main Building seemed a lot farther than a klick away. More hail showered on them. Billie shivered, and it wasn’t just from the cold.

  “Aw, shit. Look at that. My dad is gonna be pissed we shorted out the aux heater. I’m getting into the crawler,” Mag said. “Come on, finish your story.” “Forget it. My ears are about to freeze off.”

  “Well, we have to at least let Billie tell one.” Carly nodded at Billie. “Your turn.”

  “I think Mag is right, let’s get in the crawler.”

  “Come on, Billie, don’t do a guppy-up on us.” Billie took a deep breath and blew out a cloud of cold fog. She remembered her dreams. They wanted something scary? Fine. “Okay. I got one for you.

  “There are these… things. Nobody knows what planet they come from, but they showed up one day on Rim. They’re the color of black glass, they’re three meters long and have fangs as big as your fingers. They have acid for blood—you cut one and if it bleeds on you, it burns right through to the bone. Only you can’t really cut them, “cause they have skin as hard as a deep spacer’s hull. All they do is eat and reproduce, they’re like giant bugs, and they can bite through tool alloy, their teeth are diamond hard.

  “Oh, wow,” Carly said.

  “If they catch you, you’re lucky if they kill you,” Billie continued. “Because if they don’t kill you right off, it’s worse than death. They put a baby monster inside of you, they ram it down your throat, and it grows in your body, grows until its teeth get sharp enough, and then it chews its way out, through meat and bone, it digs a hole in your guts—”

  “Creesto, yuk!” Carly said.

  Mag slapped herself over the chest.

  Billie paused, waiting for the wisecrack.

  But Mag said, “I—I don’t… feel too good…”

  “Come on, Mag,” Carly said. “This is moronville—”

  “N-n-no, I—my stomach—ow!”

  Billie swallowed, her throat dry. “Mag?”

  “Ahh, it hurts!”

  Mag slapped at her chest, as if she were trying to smash a rock beetle with her hand.

  Suddenly the E-suit bulged over Mag’s solar plexus, like a fist trying to punch through a sheet of rubber. The suit stretched impossibly.

  “Aaahhh!” Mag’s scream washed over Billie.

  “Mag! No!” Billie stood, backed away.

  Carly reached for Mag. “What is it?”

  Mag’s suit stretched again. Tore open. Blood fountained outward, bits of flesh sprayed, and a snakelike thing the size of Billie’s arm flashed needle-pointed teeth in the dim starlight as it emerged from the dying girl.

  Carly yelled, her voice breaking. She tried to back away, but the monster shot from Mag to Carly like a rocket. It fastened those terrible fangs on to her throat. It bit. Her blood looked black under the starlight as it spewed into the night. Her scream turned into a gurgle.

  “No!” Billie screamed. “No! It was a dream! It wasn’t real! It wasn’t! No—!”

  Billie struggled up from sleep screaming.

  The medic leaned over her. She was on a pressor bed, and the fields held her firmly to the cushion like a giant hand. She struggled, but the harder she tried, the stronger the field became.

  “No!”

  “Easy, Billie, easy! It’s only a dream! You’re fine, everything is okay!”

  Billie’s breath came in gasps. Her heart pounded, she could feel her pulse in her temples as she stared up at Dr. Jerrin. The indirect light gleamed on the sterile white walls and ceiling of the medical center room. Only a dream. Just like the others.

  “I’ll get you a soporific patch,” Jerrin began.

  She shook her head, the pressor field would allow that much. “No. No, I’m okay now.”

  “You sure?”

  He had a kindly face; he was old enough to be Billie’s grandfather. He had treated her for years, ever since she’d come to Earth. For the dreams. They weren’t all the same, usually she dreamed about Rim, the world on which she’d been born. It had been thirteen years since the nuclear accident that had destroyed the colony on Rim, almost a decade since she left Ferro. And still the nightmares came, carrying her on wild and uncontrollable gallops through her nights. The drugs didn’t help. Counseling, hypnosis, biofeedback, brainwave synthesization, nothing helped.

  Nothing could stop the dreams.

  He let her up and she moved to the sink to wash her face. The mirror frowned back at her. Her reflection was medium height, slim and tight from all the compulsive time she spent in the exercise chair. Her hair, usually cut short, had grown almost to her shoulders, the pale brown of it straight and nearly ash-colored. Pale blue eyes over a straight nose, a mouth just a hair too big. Not an ugly face, but nothing to cross the room to get a bet
ter look at. Not ugly, but cursed, sure enough. Some god somewhere must have her in his sights. Billie wished she knew why.

  “Buddha, they’re all around us!” Quinn yelled.

  Wilks felt the sweat rolling down his spine under the spidersilk armor. The light was too dim, the helmet lamp didn’t do shit, it was hard to see what was happening around them. The infrared wasn’t working worth a crap, either. “Shut the fuck up, Quinn! Maintain your field of fire, we’re gonna be fine!”

  “Oh, fuck, Corp, they got the sarge!” That from Jasper, one of the other remaining marines. There had been twelve of them in the squad. Now there were four. “What are we gonna do?”

  Wilks had the little girl in one arm, his carbine in the other hand. The little girl was crying. “Easy, honey,” he said. “We’re gonna be fine. We’re going back to the ship, everything is gonna be okay.”

  Ellis, bringing up the rear, swore in Swahili. “Oh, man, oh, man, what the hell are these things?” he said.

  It was a rhetorical question. Nobody fucking knew.

  The heat pounded at Wilks, the air was cloying, it smelled like something dead left too long in the sunshine. Where the things had gotten to the walls of the place the flat everlast plastic had been overlaid with a thick and convoluted blackish-gray substance. It looked like some mad sculptor had covered the walls with loops of intestine. The twisted coils were as hard as plastecrete, but they put out warmth, some kind of organic decay, maybe. It was like an oven in here, but wetter.

  Behind him, Quinn’s caseless carbine came alive again, the sound of the shots battering Wilks’s ears with muted echoes.

  “Quinn!”

  “There’s a shitload of “em behind us, Corp!”

  “Shoot for targets,” Wilks ordered. “Triplets only! We don’t have enough ammo to waste on full auto suppressive fire!”

  Ahead the corridor branched, but the pressure doors had come down and sealed both exits. A flashing light and Klaxon blinked and hooted, and a computer-chip voice kept repeating a warning that the reactor was approaching meltdown.

  They were going to have to cut their way out, fast, or get slaughtered by those things. Or else fried into radioactive ash. Great fucking choice.

  “Jasper, hold the kid.”

  “No!” the little girl yelled.

  “I gotta open the door,” Wilks said. “Jasper will take care of you.”

  The black marine moved in, grabbed the girl. She clutched at him like a baby monkey does its mother.

  Wilks turned to the door. Pulled his plasma cutter from his belt, triggered it. The white-hot jet of plasma flashed out in a line as long as his forearm. He shoved the cutter against the fail-safe lock, waved it back and forth. The lock was made of tripolystacked carbon, but it wasn’t designed to withstand the heat of a star. The carbon annealed, bubbled, and ran like water under the plasma jet.

  The door slid up.

  One of the monsters stood there. It lunged at Wilks, a long, toothed rod shooting from its open mouth like a spear at his face. Saliva dripped from its jaws in jellylike strings.

  “Fuck!” Wilks dodged to his right and swung the plasma cutter up reflexively. The line caught the thing’s neck, a neck that looked much too thin to support the impossibly large head. How could something like this even stand up? It didn’t make any sense—

  The alien creatures were tough, but the plasma was hot enough to melt industrial diamond. The head fell off, bounced on the floor. It kept on trying to bite Wilks, jaws oozing slime as it snapped at him. Didn’t even know it was dead.

  “Move it, people! And watch it, the damned thing is still dangerous!”

  Jasper screamed.

  “Jasper!”

  One of the things had him, and it crunched his head like a cat biting a mouse. The little girl—!

  “Wilks! Help! Help!”

  Another one of the monsters had the girl, it was moving away with her. Wilks twisted, pointed his weapon at it. Realized that if he shot it, the blood would be an acid shower that would kill the child. He’d seen that blood eat through armor that would stop a 10mm caseless cold. He dropped his aim lower, pointed the carbine at its legs. It couldn’t run if it didn’t have any feet—

  The corridor was full of the things, Quinn opened up, his carbine on full auto, blasting. Armor-piercing and explosive rounds tore through the monsters, spanged from the walls, the stink of propellant filled the air—

  Ellis opened up with his flamer, and a stream of fire painted the corridor, splashing from the aliens and running in molten gobs down the intestined wall—

  “Help!” the little girl cried. “Oh, please, help!”

  Oh, God!

  “No!”

  Wilks came awake, sweat drenching his hair and face, running into his eyes. His issue coverall was wet. Oh, man.

  He sat up. He was still in the cell, on the thin bunk, the dark plastic walls securely in place.

  The door slid open. A guard robot was there, two and a half meters tall on its tractor treads, gleaming under the jail corridor’s lights. The robot’s electronic voice said, “Corporal Wilks! Front and center!”

  Wilks rubbed at his eyes. Even a military brig with all its security couldn’t keep the dreams out.

  Nothing could stop the dreams.

  “Wilks!”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “You are to report to MILCOM HQ, OTD.”

  “Fuck you, tinhead. I got two more days to serve on the S&D.”

  “You wish, pal,” the bot said. “Your high-rank friends say otherwise. Up-levels wants you, OTD.”

  “What high-rank friends?” Wilks asked.

  One of the other prisoners in the multi-unit cell, a fat man from Benares, said, “What friends, period?”

  Wilks stared at the line bot. Now, why would the glitter want to see him on the double? Anytime rank started rumbling, it usually meant trouble for the grunts. He felt his gut churn, and it wasn’t just the dregs of the chem-binge he’d gone on, either. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good.

  “Let’s go, marine,” the bot said. “I am to escort you to MILCOM HQ soonest.”

  “Lemme shower and clean up first.”

  “Negative, mister. They said, “Soonest.”

  The burn scar that mostly covered the left half of his face began to itch suddenly. Oh, shit. Not just bad, but real bad.

  Now what did they think he’d done?

  2

  There was a lot of trash orbiting Earth.

  In the hundred years since the first satellites had lifted, careless astronauts or construction crews had lost bolts, tools, and other chunks of hardware. The small stuff, some of it whipping around at fifteen klicks a second relative, could punch a nasty hole in anything less dense than full-sheath armor, and that included people inside a ship coming or going. Even a chip of paint could dig a crater when it hit. While this was a danger to ships, most of the little stuff burned up on reentry; what didn’t was collected by special robot rigs everybody called dust mops.

  For a time there was a real risk that the big stuff would get to the ground—part of a construction ship flamed down and killed a hundred thousand people on the Big Island once, and also made Kona coffee exceedingly rare. Because of that and similar incidents, somebody finally realized there was a problem with all the orbiting junk. Laws were passed, and now anything bigger than a man got tagged and swept. And rather than create a new agency, the work was passed on to an organization that already existed.

  This was why the Coast Guard cutter Dutton hung in high orbit over North Africa, starlight glistening on its armored boron-carbon hull, its crew of two yawning as they moved in to tag a derelict ship. Garbage Control’s flight computer said this heap was about to start its fall, and before that happened, the thing had to be probed, checked for anybody who might be camping on it, then blasted into pieces small enough for the dust mops to collect. SOP.

  “Probe ready to launch,” Ensign Lyle said.

  Next to him, the cutter’s
captain, Commander Barton, nodded. “Stand by and. .. launch probe.”

  Lyle touched the control. “Probe away. Telemetry is green. Visuals on, sensors on, one-second burn.”

  The tiny robot ship rocketed toward the battered freight hauler, feeding electronic information to the cutter behind it.

  “Maybe this one is full of platinum ingots,” Lyle said.

  “Yeah, right. And maybe it’s raining on the moon.”

  “What’s the matter, Bar? You don’t want to be rich?”

  “Sure. And I want to spend ten years in the CG pen fighting off the yard monsters, too. Unless you figured out a way to shut down the blue box?”

  Lyle laughed. The blue box recorded everything that went on in the cutter, plus all the probe input. Even if the ship was full of platinum, there was no way to hide it from Command. And military officers didn’t get salvage rights. “Well, not exactly,” Lyle said. “But if we had a few million credits, we could hire somebody who might.”

  “Yeah, your mother,” Barton said.

  Lyle glanced at the computer flat screen. It was cheap hardware; the Navy had full holographies but the Guard still had to make do with the bottom-of-the-line Sumatran Guild electronics. The probe’s retros flamed as it reached the hulk. “Here we are. Is that good flying, or what?”

  Barton grunted. “Look at the hatch. It’s bulged outward.”

  “Explosion, you think?” Lyle said.

  “Dunno. Let’s open this can up.”

  Lyle tapped at his keyboard. The probe extruded a universal hatch key and inserted it into the lock.

  “No luck. Lock’s shot,” Lyle said.

  “I’m not blind, I can see that. Pop it.”

  “Hope the inner hatch is closed.”

  “Come on, this piece of crap has been up here for at least sixty years. Anybody on it would be dead of old age. There ain’t no air in there and if by some miracle somebody is home, they’re in a suspension tank. And aside from that, this thing has about thirty minutes before it hits enough atmosphere to boil lead. Pop it.”

  Lyle shrugged. Touched controls.