Dominant Species (38 page)

The Aussie's voice fell to a somber note. "Gunny didn't make it."

Darcy stopped in her tracks. "No--"

Taz nodded a grim affirmation as the breath flowed from his body. "Yeah. He saved my ass. Guess he needed some of them little crawlies of yours in his blood."

"Like hell." The gravel voice was far too deep to have come from Darcy's throat. Taz flicked a reflexive glance at Ridgeway before his head snapped to Papa-Six. The figure that lay crumpled against the hull looked like an old piece of wreckage dredged up from the sea floor. A single word exploded from Taz' throat, "Gunny!"

Monster raised a gauntlet from the lake and offered the weakest of waves before the hand dropped once more with a splash. Taz and Darcy hauled Ridgeway quickly across the gap in a flurry of questions.

For the next several minutes Monster was forced to recount his fall and survival. "I just hung on," he repeated, "and let that sonofabitch take the impact." He emphasized the point with a knuckle-down jab of his fist. "It took me a while to pull my shit together and crawl out here."

"Bloody hell, Gunny. I looked for you, I swear. I got nothing on--"

"The TAC?" Monster interjected as he reached out and thumped the dome of Taz' helmet with an armored finger. "The same TAC I'd been off since getting my ass chewed back in the Hive?"

Taz felt a tightening in his chest. "Oh shit."

"Stow it, you had a mission and you stuck with it." Monster added with far softer a tone than Taz expected, "about damn time, too."

"Well boys," Darcy cut in, "you both can enjoy a nice hug or whatever, but somebody's gotta get the boss to Sickbay. And if you think I'm hauling your oversized butt up the Tower," she nudged Monster with her knee as a tired smile broke out across her face "you're forgetting-- I'm just a girl."

"Shit," Monster chuffed as he waved Darcy away like shooing a pet. "You take your skinny butt upstairs, girl, I have a real Marine to lean on."

Taz found himself chuckling at the playful banter before the compliment registered. He snapped a glance at Monster then turned back to Darcy. "I can handle this LT, you go on with the Majah."

He caught the momentary flash of the sniper's eyes as they tracked back and forth between the two men. Her smile softened and she said with a nod "I can see that. Then I leave this mess of a sergeant in your capable hands." She turned away, steering Ridgeway towards the hole in the hull before she added over her shoulder, "Oh hey, Taz?"

"Yeah?"

"Be sure to grab that claymore I stuck by the door. I'd hate to see one of our rescue boys get spread across the lake."

"Rojah that," Taz replied crisply. "I'm on it." He stood quietly as Darcy and Ridgeway disappeared through Papa-Six, then turned to the recumbent sergeant. "You know you gotta go too."

Monster struggled to his feet, sloshing unsteadily as he rose. "Don't need any damn bugs," he muttered.

Taz ignored the comment as he knelt to look for the errant claymore. His hand slid quietly along the surface of the hull until it met the small flat brick. Data blurred across the TAC until three words appeared, INERT, IFF ACTIVE and DETONATE. He decremented the status from the second to the first, disabling the mine's sensors before he pulled it free.

"No choice now Gunny, it's a team thing." Taz turned, flipping the mine in one hand. "Darcy didn't get a choice, and Merlin didn't either. I made the call for the rest of us; they go so we all go."

"You made the call?" Monster barked incredulously. "I leave you alone for five minutes and now you're running things?"

"You were dead, mate," Taz slapped the mine against Monster's belly, "and corpses don't get a vote."

Monster clamped his left hand on the mine as Taz shifted beneath the sergeant's massive right arm. "So that was your plan, no forethought, everybody dive into the unknown together?"

"Just learning from the examples set by my commanding officers Gunny." Taz said with a shrug.

Monster began to reply, then paused.

Taz seized the chance to change the subject. "Well, look at it this way Gunny, Stitch'll hit you with some kinda cocktail that'll put you on the dark side of the moon for the whole ride. You won't have to go through the bloody awful shit the Rimmer went through."

"You have no fucking idea what I went through." The synthetic voice trembled, wet and twangy.

Taz and Monster turned at the sound, their eyes agape at the silhouette that loomed in the fog.

One of them, Taz realized with a start, and yet much less so. The thing was far more humanoid in shape than the others, bipedal at least, though its legs seemed nothing like those of a man. Gears spun in the twin pillars that carried the fleshy torso above the surface of the lake. Torn strips of rubbery orange fabric were grafted in uneven patches across its skin, making room for the additional mass of motors and electronics contained with the body. Although the head now sprouted an ugly cluster of optic sensors along the left side of his skull, most of the human face still remained. Taz's gut twisted as he recognized the features.

Jenner.

"Bloody hell, it's the fucking Rimmer!" Taz spat the words in a combination of shock and anger.

"Hell ish right" the strange voice wheezed. Even with all of the physical changes, the cleft lip persisted. "Hell again and again."

The mechanized human raised one arm, its hand replaced with a wicked set of metal claws. Jenner watched the finger-blades snap back and forth with pneumatic speed. "Thought I wash one of them," he slurred, "sho much in me after the shecond time I could hear them, shee them in my mind."

He looked up. "They could shee me too." The right half of Jenner's split lip curled and his voice quavered. "That came for me. Took me... home." At the last word his voice broke into sobs.

Suddenly Jenner's face curled into a knot as the eyes fixed on Taz. The distorted hybrid clanked forward as the bladed hand pointed. "You did thish to me."

"I'm not the one who stole all the bloody food, you stupid git. You hauled your stupid ass up on that table all on your bloody own."

"Fuck you!" Jenner scowled. Both arms flew up as he charged.

With a sudden nonchalance that bordered on disregard, Taz turned to Monster and grabbed the curved object from his right hand. "D'ya mind?"

Taz spun back towards Jenner, putting the full might of his armor into the pitch. The dark blur rifled across the space at a murderous speed and slammed into Jenner's torso.

Jenner rocked from the impact and stumbled several paces back before he regained his balance. The misshapen head shook several times as if to clear his thoughts, ignoring the object imbedded in his ribcage. Jenner swallowed hard and slowly exhaled a cloud of fog. "You shtill don't get it do you?" The man-machine sneered, "You don't have your damn guns, you can't hurt me bad enough to kill me."

"Wrong again, shithead. Have a look."

Jenner's gloat faded as his eyes swung down to the curved brick in his chest. Fiery pinpoints already glittered around the dark shape, casting an ember-hued light that highlighted the words embossed in the casing.

FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY.

"oh shi--"

Before the thing that had been David Jenner could utter its final curse, Taz watched his TAC register the change from INACTIVE to DETONATE.

A moment later the two Marines stood quietly as the last bits of Jenner splashed down across the surface of the lake.

"All right," Monster admitted grudgingly, "that was a good plan."

"Yeah, thanks."

They turned back towards Papa-Six and Monster draped himself across Taz' shoulder as they edged their way into the glowing pool.

"We probably should have just shot him at the start." Monster muttered as he went below the surface.

"Hey, I tried to tell ya, but did anybody listen…"

The voices were lost as they slipped through Papa-Six.

EPILOG

Dan Ridgeway stood quietly as he watched the final entry of the Ascension logbook. The odd perspective and organic camera motion reminded him of a telepresence.

"Gunderson is dead." The narrator uttered the words with a note of detachment, as if Gunderson's fate was somehow less than tragic. "We tried everything, but the burns were too severe. There was just nothing alive left to build on."

An arm reached forward from beneath the camera and grasped a marker. The hand scrawled a thick, black line across a grim face on the faded group photo, the second figure to be obscured in such a manner. Only ten members remained. Mechanical fingers snapped open with a soft clatter as the narrator tossed the picture on the table.

"Seven hundred and eighty years," The voice muttered, thin and weak. "So long, so damn long."

His view fell to crumpled papers scattered across a desk. Stained drawings lay everywhere, diagrams covered with scientific notation.

"Consolidation is now complete. Colonists and crew were extracted from cryogenic stasis. His voice broke, the hoarse noise barely understandable. "They didn't recognize us anymore. Some died--" he sobbed once "from fright."

The camera bobbed slowly to the sound of a mournful sigh, and the voice resumed. "Unable to sustain the bodies intact, we have preserved samples of each genetic. What is left," he stumbled as though trying to avoid the phrase, "will sustain us as we carry on our vigil. We've been so hungry for so long that even this has lost its abhorrence. We have our duty, we must go on.

The view shifted momentarily, odd scraping sounds audible in the background. The camera looked down at the floor for several moments and trembled. A thick, wet sniff preceded another deep sigh before the monologue resumed.

"Where candidates had viable EEGs, we downloaded cerebral engrams in hopes of salvaging memories, personalities, the things that make us--" he stalled, unable for a long moment to choke out the word, "human."

The camera perspective rose oddly, then rotated in a lurching fashion to a rectangular framework of dark metal on the floor. The complex cube shimmered with a pale emerald light.

"It's come down to this."

The camera view leaned forward over the cube and fixed on one of thousands of glass cylinders. "A handful of cells," he muttered, "a few strands of DNA. The tiniest spark of life frozen away against the ravages of time. But hope burns in a spark, hope that one day someone will find us. We will stand our guard until then."

A blurred shape moved across the bottom of the rack. The image shifted further out of focus for a moment before resolving into clarity. The face that stared up from the polished metal plate was barely recognizable as human. The few remaining patches of hair were little more than stubble on islands of jawline. A lone eye peered down from the cadaverous face.

"They told us we might live forever," he mumbled absently. A mechanical hand rose and gently touched the mottled expanse of pale skin, wrinkled and spotted by the centuries.

"Oh God," he sobbed, "please not forever."

The image broke into static and Dan Ridgeway removed the headset, gently placing it on the polished granite table. Although seven months had passed since the RAT Squad had been hauled from the depth of the Balrathan cave, he had carefully avoided the final entry until now.

Ridgeway looked at the five Marines who stood at the far end of the table. Clad not in armor but razor-creased dress blues, the RATs stood quietly, sharing the poignant mix of emotions that the event represented. Ridgeway picked up his hat and walked to the wide balcony that overlooked the courtyard. The first glimmer of sunrise broke over the far mountains, bringing a magical stillness to the lush valley.

The Eridani Governor stood at the podium below, addressing the crowd in reverent tones. Stretched out in rows before the stage, nearly six thousand people sat in matching shirts, their very existence a marvel of genetic resurrection. They were surrounded by a crowd easily four times the size. Banners fluttered in the growing sunlight.

"They did it." Monster said softly as he stared at the ranks.

Ridgeway only nodded, knowing full well that Monster wasn't speaking about the assembled host in their star-spangled shirts. He spoke of the faces portrayed on huge banners across the front of the stage, black bands on the corner of each frame. The Twelve, the guardians who saw them through.

No mention was made of the depths of suffering they endured in centuries of service. They were remembered instead as smiling faces filled with hope and promise, as pillars of duty and strength. They were remembered as heroes, and their story would be the stuff of legends.

The six Marines snapped to a formal salute as a lone bugler played taps while twelve U.S. Flags were raised behind the stage. Just as the truth behind the Twelve had been contained, so had any hint of the Marine's involvement. The RAT Squad remained as it had begun, a carefully guarded secret.

As the national anthem filled the dawn air, Ridgeway quietly savored that secrecy, having no desire to become the focus of the media frenzy that followed the Ascension's discovery and the return of her long lost crew.

Ridgeway lowered his right hand as the anthem's last notes faded away, flexing the once shattered appendage with painless ease. Balratha had changed him in so many ways.