Dominant Species (4 page)

For the hundredth time Jenner wished he had taken the longer route through Cathedral. Named for its gothic size, the massive cavern was nearly half a kilometer long with a ceiling that reached up several hundred meters.

Jenner didn't know shit about caves and cared less. But as big holes in the ground went, he had to admit that Cathedral was impressive. A maze of stairs and suspended catwalks transformed the space overhead into a hive of activity. Every scrap of level ground was jammed with mining equipment and machine tools. Brilliant panels lined the jagged ceiling, creating a timeless and unchanging light.

Rather than weave through the twisting gauntlet of men and machinery, Jenner had opted for the side tunnels that were supposed to cut straight through to the loading bay at the Cathedral's south end. The guy on the elevator had even drawn him a map. "Keep the reactor to your right," he had said with dismissive confidence, "you can't miss it."

Yeah. Right.

Thus far the so-called map had proved as useful as a graffiti-covered wall. Jenner paused in a dimly lit section of the tunnel and slowly turned to look back the way he had come. Back toward the world, toward light and air.

Ahead, the coffin-shaped passage sloped even deeper into the abyss. Jenner hesitated, his right foot tapping against the wet stone floor. Something in the back of his mind began to whine.

Overhead the glowing panel flickered anemically and without warning, darkness lurched in from all sides, straining to engulf him. With a sharp hum the light surged bright again, shadows drawing back between the pipes in reluctant defeat.

Jenner's heart skipped a wild beat as he looked up at the stuttering panel and hissed. "Don't even think about it."

As if in disdain, the fluorescent panel abruptly gave way and the opposing walls of darkness slammed together. The impact sucked a gasp from Jenner's lungs. He fought to catch his breath, expecting his eyes to adjust, but as he blinked he could find no difference between open and closed.

Jenner inched forward, sliding his feet across the rough slab floor. The feral part of his mind began to claw at the bars of its cage, its pathetic whimpers growing more desperate. Relentless panic rising, his slow shuffle came to a gradual halt. He reached out to steady himself, wordlessly praying for the light to return.

Quivering fingers touched the wall and slid through a layer of something cold and slimy. He snatched back and wiped his hand feverishly on the front of his coat.

"It's just the dark," he stammered, fitfully wringing his hands, "just the dark, just--"

A harsh, static buzz crackled somewhere overhead and Jenner's heart leaped with desperate hope. "Yeah, that's it. C'mon baby, come back on, just give it a second."

But the darkness survived for seconds, maybe for minutes. In total black, Jenner had lost all sense of time. Even the sounds of the tunnel had changed. Distant groans and metallic creaks whispered in the darkness.

Was that the reactor, or something else? The thought burned through his mind. What if the tremor was stone shifting somewhere overhead, the dull scrape of millions of tons of rock inching toward the floor like a huge hydraulic press. Crushing. Unstoppable.

In spite of his heavy jacket, a cold sweat broke out across Jenner's body. In a frenzy of motion he furrowed through the cargo pockets of his BDUs, fingers desperately sifting through identifiable shapes. Allen wrench. Pocket knife. Pack of gum.

"Where's the fuckin' flashlight?"

With a lurch, he shrugged the backpack off his shoulder and fumbled with a snap-lock that closed the main compartment. It popped unexpectedly and the pack slipped in his grasp. Items spilled from the bag in a blind cascade of metallic clangs and shallow splashes. The sounds scattered and echoed in all directions.

"Oh, son of a BITCH!"

Jenner dropped to one knee, now frantically pawing at the darkness. His fingers bumped into the pages of a field manual, then the familiar bristles of a hairbrush. Canteen, smooth and oval. Shapeless rumpled clothing. Couple of MREs in their crackly foil packaging.

Something small and damp flopped against the back of Jenner's hand and scuttled toward his wrist. The shriek exploded from his throat even before his conscious mind understood the prickly feel of tiny legs against his bare skin. Panic exploded.

Jenner flailed his arm, slamming it against the unseen wall. His head struck something hard, a glancing blow that bit sharply into his scalp. The taste of copper swirled faintly in his mouth.

With the mechanical crunk of a distant breaker, the tunnel lights snapped back to life. The glare lanced through Jenner's dilated pupils and burned fuzzy stars across his vision.

Like a carp out of water, his mouth moved but no sound came out. Caught in the sudden light, a four-inch cockroach scuttled off Jenner's arm and vanished into the shadows.

Tremors shook Jenner's body and the acrid taste of vomit bubbled up in his throat.

He was not cut out for this underground shit at all.

CHAPTER 3

Crimson eyes burned above a row of stainless steel teeth. The snarling rodent was clad from nose to tail in riveted plate armor. Reared on its haunches in a defiant posture, the creature brandished a fistful of stiletto-blade claws. The words "RAT Squad" stood out in bold red letters. Around the perimeter of the circular crest, a black ring bore the legend: Rapid Assault Team.

Ridgeway took a great deal of pride in the unit patch. RATs had been developed to conduct precision strikes in confined environments, places where tanks and jets couldn't go. Operating under a vapor-tight shroud of secrecy, RAT squads quickly established themselves in roles ranging from hostage rescue to counter-terrorism, demonstrating a unique ability to surgically excise a variety of armed malignancies in areas where traditional assault was not an option.

Looking up, Ridgeway's attention swung to the cable-covered uprights where a suit of deep grey armor stood at rigid attention. The figure, menacing even in repose, looked like a medieval knight on steroids.

The curved plates fit together like reptilian scales, with a precision that could neither be cast nor machined. These plates had been assembled one carefully-placed molecule at a time.

Carbonite was the trade name for the material, a term that proved easier on Ridgeway's tongue than the mile-long scientific handle. Unlike the metals historically used in field armor, carbonite wasn't really a solid. At some microscopic level the stuff was a dense matrix of hollow carbon nanotubes, each just a few molecules wide. Tougher than hell, Ridgeway was told to think of carbonite as the bastard child of steel and diamond.

A broad shadow slid across the charging station, the silhouette unmistakable. Ridgeway's gaze remained fixed on the armor, his voice flat. "So what do you think?"

Monster never bothered with bullshit. "It's gonna be a real bitch."

Ridgeway nodded quietly. No sugar coating there.

In this case though, he conceded, ‘a real bitch' might be a charitable characterization. For a brief instant Ridgeway flashed back across the countless times that he and Monster stood poised to enter the Hyperball Cube. The old sense of anticipation tingled in Ridgeway's spine and he could feel the acceleration of his senses, a process that would build to an electric blur by the opening gun.

Appropriate choice of phrase, he noted with a dark sense of irony. Still, Ridgeway could not dismiss the assurance that came with a friendship that spanned nearly a century.

Monster had gone on to play pro ball after college, while Ridgeway followed his family tradition into life as a Marine. For nearly six years Ridgeway had followed Monster's stellar career, at times with considerable envy.

He remembered the day that celebrated career had come to a screeching halt. The hyperball world stood on end when league testing confirmed that Monster had used genetic augmentation, expensive and illegal manipulation of his genetic code, to further increase his already considerable size and muscle mass. Looking for an edge in a sport where the extreme was never enough, Monster had crossed the line and got caught.

Ridgeway saw his friend plummet from superstar to pariah; banned from the sport and bombarded with lawsuits from his team and former sponsors. Monster's life spiraled into a cloud of depression, synthehol and violence that nearly swallowed him.

With only the rank of Lieutenant at the time, Ridgeway had pushed his limits petitioning the Corps to arrange an opening for Monster, and had assumed personal responsibility for the outcome. It was only with Grissom's backing that the powers-that-be agreed, with the strict understanding that any blowback would fall entirely into Ridgeway's lap. The career-ending implications were obvious.

Ridgeway never regretted the decision and watched his friend absorb the culture of the Corps with all of the fierce intensity that had marked his play as a defensive lineman. For the last fifteen Waking Years, Monster had become a walking, talking embodiment of the super-Marine ideal.

Ridgeway tipped his head toward the cases set in a wide arc around the room. Open lids revealed an assortment of weapons and explosives. The RATs moved purposefully among them.

"We ready?"

Monster replied with a wicked grin. "We were born ready."

A faint smile creased Ridgeway's face as he saw the look in Monster's eyes. Hunger for the fight. Prep was well and good but at the end of the day, fighting was what brought them to the dance. It was time to cue up the band.

"All right partner," he emphasized with a thump of his fist against Monster's chest, "rally the troops. Full briefing in five."

"Roger that." Monster turned crisply and strode toward the team. Bodies accelerated at his approach.

Some men leave change in their wake, Ridgeway thought wryly, Monster projects change in front of him.

Five minutes later, the entire squad was seated around a featureless black cube roughly a meter square. A volumetric hologram floated in the air, rugged terrain modeled in exacting detail. Color-coded symbols marked a variety of waypoints and objectives. The image rotated slowly on its vertical axis.

"It's a quick strike op." In his usual fashion, Ridgeway jumped right to the meat of the briefing. "Confined space environment, highly restrictive ingress and a strict timetable."

He tapped the remote and curtains of data flowed around the hologram. "You are looking at Vostok, a huge mining colony on the Outer Rim planet Balratha. It represents a key economic resource for whoever holds it. Fleet wants it intact, so traditional tactics like orbital bombardment are out."

"What's the non-traditional approach?" Stitch asked the obvious question in his usual wary tone.

"Sudden overload. Brass wants to airdrop two thousand Marines directly into the complex. With luck, the fight will be over before the Rimmers have a chance to react."

Merlin half-raised a hand. "Firehawk drop?"

As Ridgeway nodded in reply, the crease between his brows deepened. "Yeah, that's still the fastest route from space to surface. But we all know the catch; they're vulnerable as hell when they transition from ballistic freefall to aerodynamic flight. The Rimmers have outfitted Vostok with a solid air defense grid. If it's online, it'll burn a shitload of Marines out of the sky."

"And guess who gets to kill the grid." Darcy rolled her palms up like a game show hostess presenting the Marines behind Door Number Three.

A shadow played across Merlin's eyes as he nodded slowly. "Gonna be tight."

"More than you know," Ridgeway said, not at all surprised that the engineer connected dots that hadn't yet been shown. "Throw the switch too early and the Rimmers might get backup power online. Too late and--" The image of flaming debris and dead Marines raining down from the sky flashed through Ridgeway's mind. "Too late is not an option."

Darcy leaned forward and braced her elbows on her knees. "So where's the light switch?"

Ridgeway had no way to sugar coat the answer. "The target is a reactor in an old section of the mining operation, roughly two kilometers below the surface."

The room exploded with an outpour of questions and Ridgeway paused, allowing the team to vent it's understandable surprise. Confined space missions were one thing, he had told himself several times already, but deep-core tunnel ops were quite another.

Using the hologram as a battle map, Ridgeway covered the insertion, the mission objectives, and how they expected to get out. With each phase the display zoomed and rotated. Textured surfaces dissolved into clean, color-coded wireframes to provide subterranean views. At the end of the presentation, Ridgeway sat back in his chair and folded his arms. His steely eyes looked around the table. "Any comments?"

"Even if we do get past the bloody door, and crikey that's a cocked-up plan, it'll be a real open slather."

Five Marines turned to look at Caslin's replacement, Lance Corporal Nigel "Taz" Kelly.

His odd, amber-colored eyes snapped quickly from point to point on the hologram. Their unusual hue, coupled with his sharp features, gave the young Australian a distinctly feral appearance. The spikey brown stubble that sprawled across his scalp only added to the effect. While unremarkable in terms of height and weight, he projected an aura of wiry toughness.