Dominant Species (22 page)

Something tore with a horrendous shriek and a thirty-foot section of ductwork tore free. Amid the corkscrew of unraveling metal framework, a large, dark shape plummeted toward the walkway.

Monster spun low and drove a shoulder into Merlin's midsection, lofting the smaller Marine in a brutal fireman's carry. The falling mass slammed into the catwalk with a fury, smashing through the grated floor and plowing down into the lake in an eruption of glowing coolant. The two Marines vanished from sight as the floor collapsed beneath them.

Ridgeway dimly heard his own voice shout Monster's name as he vaulted over the rail and dropped some thirty feet to the next landing. Polymer muscles sucked up the shock as he slammed down on the floor. Three long strides and a second drop landed him on the bisected walkway. He charged forward, running for the four grey fingers dug into the ledge of twisted steel.

Sliding like a base runner, Ridgeway's gauntlet slapped down on the outstretched hand. "Gotcha!"

Metal groaned in reply, a shudder that rattled through Ridgeway's chest as the floor dropped several inches. "Hang on," he snarled through clenched teeth as his left groped wildly for a hold.

"What the hell'd you think I was gonna do, clap?"

Ridgeway peered over the uneven rim of folded steel and traced down the massive armored limb to a facemask only a few feet from his own. Draped over Monster's shoulder, Merlin hung head down, his boots waving. Ridgeway only grunted as he hauled at the double load.

Monster's left hand groped up and clutched a piece of the catwalk's frame. In a clumsy tangle of arms and legs, the ball of armor inched its way up the hanging metal flap and collapsed in a heap onto the first few feet of level walkway. Just an arm's length away, the damaged section of catwalk tore away and crashed down atop the dark mass at the lake's surface.

Merlin rose unsteadily to his feet as Ridgeway leaned over a broken rail and looked down. Wreckage lay smashed across the lowermost stretch of catwalk, which itself was crushed down just below the lake's surface. In the midst of the knot of girders and grated steel sat the dark metallic shape, tendrils splayed out in a lifeless snarl. Ridgeway studied it for several seconds before he rolled to his elbows with a tired sigh.

"You wanna tell me why you lit up a turbine?"

Monster's facemask drew back in a brief jerk. The big man rolled to one knee and peered over the edge. As he turned back toward Ridgeway, oversized shoulder plates rose in a slow shrug. "Shit if I know."

"We were headed back to Sickbay," Merlin chimed in, rapping the side of his helmet with the palm of his hand as if to clear water from his ears, "at least we were until the LT started pounding the crap out of the plumbing. At that point it was all we could do to just stay out of the way."

Ridgeway looked up towards the ceiling, unable to spot the sniper amid the acres of metal and shadow. What the hell was she doing? He tried to raise her on the comm but found nothing but hiss in reply.

"Probably the static Major." Merlin jerked a thumb at the random threads of lightning that rippled across the aft bulkhead wall. "All that voltage is playing hell with comm."

Ridgeway stood silently, his eyes fixed on the mass of smoking metal below. The ball of wreckage slowly sank beneath the lake surface, dragging the lowermost walkway along. Air escaped the machine with a breathy rush as it sank from sight. In a moment Ridgeway could see only bubbles.

"All right, let's get back to sickbay."

Before he could finish, something yanked Ridgeway off his feet. Not explosive, he knew instinctively, but powerful. Merlin dropped to the floor in a heap while Monster staggered drunkenly. Ridgeway's hands lashed out and he caught himself on the rail. As quickly as it hit, the effect passed.

"What the hell was that?" Monster demanded of no one in particular.

Ignoring the question, Ridgeway gripped the rail as a deepening vibration rattled up through his gauntlets. His sense of balance already grasped the change as his attention jumped madly from one anomaly to the next. The huge magnetic claw swung like a pendulum as shattered ice flaked from suddenly moving links. Scrap metal and debris clattered from a hundred ledges around the Lobby, falling not at an angle to the walls, but parallel with them.

Oh shit.

"Move!" Ridgeway's command exploded as he grabbed at Merlin's collar. The entire surface of the pool was already beginning to roll into a gargantuan swell. "Go, go!"

Ridgeway shoved Merlin ahead, breaking into a dash that was no longer impeded by a sloping floor. The glowing lake, flat to where gravity had been just a second before, now leaned impossibly up the far wall. Tons of coolant surged to find its own level in a world that had just shifted in alignment.

Picking up speed like a luminescent avalanche, the mountain of glowing fluid toppled toward the running Marines.

CHAPTER 24

In the midst of cornering, Taz felt the world swing out from beneath him. He fought to maintain his balance for two wild, stumbling strides before he slammed into the left-side wall. The CAR clattered to the floor and Taz threw himself into a forward dive, hoping desperately to capture the rifle before it slid down the long, downhill hallway. He pancaked the deck hard, stunned to find neither himself or the weapon in motion.

Flat, he realized abruptly, no slope.

Taz scooped the carbine and rolled to his feet, immediately resuming the single-minded track that led to his fellow Marines. The TAC put them one level up, just beyond the closed double-doors at the end of the hall. He snapped the CAR to his shoulder as he ran and squeezed the secondary trigger.

The larger barrel gave a throaty bark followed by the dull crump of the grenade's detonation. The left of two doors bowed outward, jumping the track that ran the length of the doorframe. "Close enough," Taz snarled as he closed the gap at a dead run. Shoulder down, he slammed into the door and ripped it from the wall.

Lobby, he recognized as he skidded to a halt. The great room echoed with an incomprehensibly booming rumble. On the catwalk above, three silhouettes ran straight at him, dark against the towering wall of liquid light that thundered at their heels. Taz gaped as the muzzle of his CAR drooped slowly to the floor.

Bloody hell.

Merlin led the sprinting trio, running flat out. Monster and Ridgeway ran side by side in his wake. The radiant tsunami angled across the room, smashing the catwalk behind them to pieces. Outpacing them.

"Merlin!" Taz screamed, waving his arms, "down here!"

The engineer's only response was a sudden shift in direction. He broke right and hurdled the rail, launching himself across the void. Taz lunged out of the way as Merlin's armored form slammed down feet-first and tumbled into a forward roll. Monster and Ridgeway followed suit, the force of their tandem landing nearly tearing the balcony from its moorings. As he blew through the doorway, Monster's shoulder clipped the remaining door and sent the metal panel clanging across the hall.

Taz scrambled after them as deafening thunder blotted out the sound of his own feet on the hallway floor.

No way, he thought, no bloody way.

The wall behind him exploded beneath a titan's hammer-blow, every tear hemorrhaged jet-streams of brilliant blue. A frothing piledriver of coolant and mangled steel caught Taz from behind and swept him along like a cork in the rapids.

Taz tried to curl into a ball, wrapping his arms across the top of his head. Something huge rode up on top of him, a crushing weight that scraped him brutally across the floor. The freight train of debris surged forward with a terrible force, plowing through a second wall before it curled back against a third. Churning froth battered Taz with light and force before it finally subsided. With a deep, sucking backwash the radiant tide withdrew, leaving a tide-strewn tangle of wreckage and Marines.

A groan echoed from beneath a bent steel truss as Taz grabbed the end with both hands and shoved. The truss shifted, relieving the painful weight that pinned his left leg to the ground. "Oh bollocks," Taz grumbled as he pulled himself out from beneath the slab of steel. "Majah, gunny, you all right?"

A lone gauntlet rose slowly from behind a crumpled metal locker, forefinger unsteadily touching the thumb in a rough OK. Beyond Merlin a pair of oversized legs stuck out from beneath a pile of sodden garbage. Taz grabbed a lidless metal drum and tossed it aside as he reached for Monster's hand. The sergeant sat up groggily, shaking off strands of wet insulation. "Shit," the big man mumbled, "this is getting old."

Far to the right, Ridgeway rose to his feet, shedding garbage as he leaned back against the wall. Taz nodded in his direction, the senior Marine responding in kind.

"Crikey," Taz stammered, sloshing through shin-deep fluid, "what the bloody hell was that on about?" He grabbed the edge of the metal locker and heaved back, tossing it aside as he clutched Merlin's hand. "What'd you do bright boy, leave the bloody tap runnin?"

Merlin rose to his feet and shook his head slowly. "Not me hoss," he muttered breathlessly, "something else, someone else had to--"

"Don't be balmy you stupid shite, d'ya think we've never felt an AG kick on before?"

Merlin drew himself up and leaned forward until his facemask bumped Taz. "I know the AG came on dumbass, what I said was that I didn't fix it."

"Oh and I suppose the bloody gravity faery came along and nogged it with her little wand then, eh?" Taz felt the rush as adrenaline and frustration boiled together, "C'mon, who the bloody else on this tub knows how to fix a sodding gravity coil? You almost got us killed you stupid git!"

Merlin shoved Taz and snarled something that garbled with a deeper voice that barked off to the right. Neither one registered as the Aussie's composure snapped like an over-stretched rubber band. He stepped forward and threw a left hook at Merlin's skull.

The blow never landed. His left arm flailed wildly as he slammed to the deck, blind-sided by a tremendous impact. Taz rolled to his feet and looked up as a deep voice coalesced into a clear roar.

"I said STAND DOWN!" Monster loomed over him like a storm.

Taz felt his right leg tighten, felt the push as his weight shifted forward. His right arm drew back to his hip, fingers closing.

"Don't even think about it." Monster's husky whisper had lost all emotion.

His perception became crystal clear, the taut muscles of his arm and fist, the massive form of Monster standing unflinchingly. An unfamiliar sensation wriggled in the back of the Aussie's mind, one that straddled the hazy line between fear and common sense. Taz felt the muscles of his back twitch, tension and anger draining into the puddles across the floor. "I...I just--" he groped for words until his head dropped with a slow shake. "Ah fuck all."

Silence hung in the air, broken only by the random raindrop noise of coolant that dripped from the ceiling. The three men stood breathing heavily until Ridgeway's weary voice cut in from across the room.

"If you three are done playing, come look at this."

Taz saw Monster's head snap to Ridgeway, then back. The sergeant grunted brusquely before he turned away and sloshed across the room. Taz fell in alongside Merlin as they followed suit, trudging quietly. At the broken wall he moved to Monster's right and drew up alongside a silent Ridgeway. Following their focus, Taz gazed into the room beyond.

Fancy, Taz realized with a start, not your run-of-the-muck pipes and cables here.

Shadows wavered as the ankle-deep coolant threw uneven puddles of moving light. In contrast with the grim industrial design that comprised the rest of the ship, the room before them struck Taz as oddly decorative.

And useless, he amended, mentally separating the wash of debris from the otherwise spartan interior.

The walls were made from interlaced panels of marble and a bronze-colored metal. Eight in all defined the small octagonal room, each panel curving up to the peaked, dome ceiling where a lone light fixture glowed. The conical beam fell straight down atop a fluted stone column that stood a meter high in the center of the floor. Something was affixed to the beveled top, a plate of the same bronze-like metal.

"What?" Taz queried, "Some kinda chapel?"

Ridgeway high-stepped over a pile of junk and moved along the left side of the column, wiping at the plaque with one hand. Taz felt a wave of ice pass through his belly as he heard his commander's voice, flat and hollow.

"Holy shit."

Monster moved forward and peered over the top of the column while Merlin and Taz swung around to either side. Taz could see the plaque fully now, some two feet wide, octagonal like the room. Across the top, large embossed letters spelled out the word ASCENSION. Beneath the title, smaller print listed senior officers and some flowery quote about new horizons.

Ridgeway shook his head slowly, hands braced on either hip. Merlin leaned in and muttered "You gotta be fuckin' kidding me."

Taz waited for a moment, expecting some great shock of awareness to fall upon him. He scanned the plaque again but drew only a blank. "Uh, not trying to be a total nog here," Taz interjected, "but what's the big bloody deal?"

Merlin looked up abruptly, "You're kidding, right?"

Taz folded his arms across his chest. "No, why should I?"