Last Flight of the Ark (18 page)

He approached the hive and touched the outside. Heat traveled into his palm. Hotter than the air around him and rough, with ridges and dips on the outside. He knocked. Solid.

It shouldn’t prove too difficult to scale. Hopefully it would hold his weight. He knocked again and a dull thud echoed inside. “Okay. Here we go.” He glanced over his shoulder at Jessica, who nodded. Kaleb grabbed the rope and began to climb.

***

As he leaned over the hole, the smell of rotten meat wafted out. Turning his face away, he swallowed and cupped his hand over his mouth and nose. Whatever alien creature the hive contained began to cry softly—like a human baby. The sound trickled up his spine and for the thousandth time that day, the hair on his neck snapped to attention. He looked down at Jessica, who nodded, encouraging him to get moving.

He pulled the flashlight from his pocket and tried to block out the cries. Maybe he should throw the virus in first and then look? “This is stupid. Just turn the damned light on and look,” he said to himself.

“Sir?”

“Nothing,” he snorted. They were movies. Monsters like that didn’t exist. But then again, aliens hadn’t existed for him until a few days ago. He closed his eyes and clicked on the flashlight, aiming the beam into the hole. The pitch of the cries rose. He slowly counted back from three and opened his eyes.

“Shit.” Kaleb dropped the rope and jumped away from the hole, losing his balance. He flailed in the air, grabbing for a hold that didn’t exist before bouncing off the side with a dull
thump
. He hit the ground with less grace, knocking the breath from his lungs and any sense he’d retained loose.

The patch of grass did little to buffer the impact. He shifted. Pain shot through his ass and up his spine and he couldn’t have looked like a bigger moron. Kaleb couldn’t decide which hurt worse, his pride or his tailbone.

Jessica ran up to him. “You okay?”

His pride, definitely his pride. “It’s going to be a little harder than I anticipated.” Of all the things it could have been.

“The eggs are in there?”

“Kind of.”

“What’s the problem?”

“They’re not—they’re—you have to go up there and look for yourself. You’re not going to believe what’s in that nest.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Jesus.” Not what he’d anticipated. Nothing close to it.

“Huh?” she said.

“I don’t know if I can do it.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

Kaleb sucked in a deep breath. “They’re babies.”

She shifted her pack and looked up. “I figured whatever hatched from those eggs would be babies. What’s the issue? Just climb up there and dump the virus in. We already know they’re monsters.”

And that was the problem. He could kill monsters. He ran a hand through his hair.
But babies? Cute, big-eyed, pink and chubby—babies
. He could have handled something with fangs and multiple eyes. This—this was another matter. How was he supposed to kill babies? “They look human.”

“Human?” Jessica’s eyes widened. “As in infant—human?”

“Except for the goo.” The babies were cradled in a green sludge, rolling, flailing, crying. Some sucked their thumbs and one even had his fist crammed in his mouth. All had the parts and pieces that made them look…. They smelled wrong, but they looked and sounded…. “I can’t murder a nest full of babies. It’s just not in my genetic programming to do that.”

“And it’s in mine?”

“No, I didn’t mean that.”

“Somebody has to do it.” Jessica glanced at the top of the hive and began to pace. “Can’t you close your eyes or something?”

He stared.

“Okay, so what do you propose we do? These things are eating the corpses of the command crew. They’re not human babies.” She walked ten feet, spun around, and strode back to him. Jessica thrust her hand out. “Give me the virus.”

“No, I’ll handle this. I can do it. I just have to remember what they are. No matter how cute or innocent those things look, they’ll kill us if we give them a chance. They’re not human.” His responsibility. His risk. As commander of this mission it was his job, not hers, to see this through. It was the aliens or his crew. Since option two wasn’t an alternative, it was going to have to be the aliens. He started back up. He couldn’t let her be responsible for wiping out an entire alien race. That would be his burden to bear.

Once on the top, he crawled across the surface and leaned over to uncap the vial, trying not to think of the chubby infants under him. “They’re not human babies, they’re predators.”

“They’re human, suffering from a form of the same mutation you do,” a familiar voice called out.

Damn
. Kaleb lifted the edge of the vial, stopping the virus from pouring into the hive. Vegetation rustled below and he glanced down to see the alien commander and her security guards step from the forest. They pointed weapons at Jessica.

“Don’t come any closer.” Kaleb raised the vial, holding it over the nest. He didn’t waver, taking a chance she’d think she had more to lose. She didn’t. Jessica and Melissa were his world. The bitch encroacher could lose millions and it would never compare to what he’d lose. He’d found love, enough to sustain him through anything, through what he faced now or in the future—even human-eating aliens. “Stay back or I’ll dump this vial.”

Her gaze traveled over him, stopping on his hand. “Don’t kill my children. They’re innocent. We are the last of our people,” she said. “This is our world—our home. They
are
human. We once lived on Earth and experimented with mutating genes, trying to create superhumans. We succeeded, but the mutation wouldn’t stop and the resulting creature was aggressive, spreading the transformation everywhere. You are that same creature, half man, half wolf. You are what we once were. We tried to develop several cures, only making it worse. It made us allergic to canines and unable to tolerate our home. We had to leave our planet or die. We found this world, colonized it, made it our home, our world.”

Kaleb snorted. “Your world? It’s been abandoned for at least a century or two, from the look of it. No wildlife—nothing to indicate anyone has even been here recently.”

“No.” She cocked her head and studied him. “Arrogant. You assume you’re the only life outside your little planet.” She pointed to a spot on the horizon. “A city rests over there, full of artifacts from my people, other worlds we once visited. Those artifacts are thousands of years old.”

“I’ve seen it and it’s also in ruin. Nobody’s occupied it for hundreds of years.”

“No, we’ve always been here. You invaded us, awakened the planet, and pulled us out of our stasis. You brought your technology to a world you thought dead. We were merely hibernating. A famine came, wiping out our food supply. Since we lacked what we needed to feed our people, we chose to sleep through the famine. You didn’t give us a choice. We had to do what we did.”

Kaleb held the vial in a death grip. He could end this all now. One move. Was it his place to make a decision to exterminate an entire species? Could he do it? She stepped closer to Jessica and his hackles rose.
Without question
. “Excuse me for not feeling sorry for you. You eat us.”

“No different than you eating the flesh of the animals you share your world with. We’ve eaten human for thousands of years, but in the last few hundred we’ve been unable to tolerate the canines that plague your world. We were starving.”

“Pity.”

“Then we learned most of your animals were suitable for consumption and tested them. We only want the animals your ship carries, to restock our planet. Since we were unable to get food from your world because of our allergies, we quickly depleted the natural resources here. In the end, we ate insects to survive. When those were gone, we went to sleep.”

“I’m supposed to believe you?”

“We let you bring the animals here, but when we discovered you brought the canine death with you, we couldn’t allow them to the surface. We could’ve lived on the animals you provided. Instead, you brought the one thing that could destroy us, so we killed your command crew in self-defense. We had to stop it.”

“You fed them to your monster babies. You didn’t have to do that.”

The alien commander shrugged. “My children will grow into that which I feasted on before I conceived and what they consume when newly hatched. Once we fix our shape, we don’t need to consume human flesh any more to stay that way. We can and will survive on the animals and will leave your world in peace.

“And eating our people is a show of peace?”

“We thought if we appeared like you, you might be more accepting of us when you discovered our cities down here. Your command crew was already dead so we utilized the bodies to fix our children’s shapes, that we might refresh our populations and appear in a more acceptable form. We were hopeful a human form would be easier for you to relate to and trust. We never meant for you to find the nurseries or the bodies. That was unfortunate. We hoped we could form a treaty, that you would let us keep the animals and trade technology for food. We don’t have to eat your kind. We can survive on the animals, as you do.”

“You thought eating our command crew would make accepting your cannibalism easy? Think again.” She’d said they developed into what they ate. That made them—doppelgangers? If they took the forms of their victims, who had her mother eaten to create her and the crew who had hijacked the
Genesis II
?

And if she’d told the truth about eating humans for thousands of years, he doubted they’d be willing to give it up and take on another form. He certainly wouldn’t want to be a cow or elephant when he could have a human form, opposable thumbs and all the capabilities that came with being human. Plus, they’d intentionally tricked Earth into sending the ships full of colonists. Yeah, they wanted the animals
and
the humans.

She also knew what was in the vial. If she knew what was in the vial, she knew her people on the ship were dead. The bitch was bluffing. Way too obvious.

“We would have left your home world and people alone. We are nearly extinct. Your animals will save us.”

Definitely bluffing
. “There’s a problem with your little plan. We’ll die if we don’t land.”

“We’ll die if you do. I can’t allow you to release that virus on my world. I’ll give you fuel and supplies to return home. You don’t need to do this. You can take your ships and people. We can live together in peace.”

“No, we can’t, and do you know why?”

“I’m sure you plan to explain.”

She took another step toward Jessica and Kaleb raised the vial, stopping her advance. She never intended to help them or give them supplies to get home. The big tip-off—she’d failed to mention the bomb. Yeah, like he wanted to ride back to Earth on that ship. Nice stinger, honey. “You ever heard of Aesop’s Fables?”

She shook her head and sneezed.

“You have no intention of living together in peace. You can’t change your nature, and we’d be fools to think you could. You’re a scorpion.” He dumped half the virus in the nest and yelled into the com, praying Melissa heard him. “Broken Arrow!” He flung the rest of the vial at the queen and her bodyguards.

Jessica seized the opportunity to spin into a roundhouse kick. She knocked one of the guards to the ground and had the other’s weapon in her hands and pointed at the last man before Kaleb could blink. “Good here, sir.”

The queen freaked. He doubted her reaction to the virus would be that instant, but there it was: she shrieked and clawed at her skin where it had splattered.

Jessica fired a bolt into one guard and turned to pop a hole in the other. The queen was on her before she could pull the trigger. The laser fired into the air as the pair struggled for control.

“Back off, bitch.” Jessica tried to elbow the woman, but she was strong and held her off.

“You’ll pay for killing my children. I’ll kill everyone on that ship. I don’t need your crew. You have more of your people coming. I made sure of that.” She turned her head toward one of her security guards. “Kill them all,” she screeched. Twisting, she caught Jessica in the jaw with her elbow, dropping her to the ground and going with her. They tumbled across the ground, rolling through leaves and debris.

“Jessie!” Kaleb leaped from the top of the hive, landing in a crouch next to them. He felt a surge of adrenaline and the familiar burn wash over his body. Fangs elongated and a rumble moved through his chest. The soldier Jessica failed to hit raised a laser and pointed at Jessica, trying to get a bead. Kaleb dove, catching him behind the knees and knocking the weapon from his hand. It hit the ground about ten feet in front of them. The man got a leg free, kicked him in the chest, and rolled to his belly, crawling for the laser.

Kaleb captured the bodyguard’s ankle and yanked him back. Another kick, but this time he caught the alien’s leg. He backed up and rose to his feet, dragging him across the clearing. Adrenaline raced through his blood, feeding the mutation. He swung the man by his legs, smashing him into a tree and dropping him in a pile at the base. He crouched down and grabbed the alien’s head, snapping his neck. He glanced up to see Jessica and the alien commander.

The alien queen’s eyes had begun to swell, and raw spots covered her face where the virus had hit her. Despite the fact she wasn’t looking so hot, she had won the match and now straddled Jessica. She’d wrenched the weapon free and hit her in the head with the butt. Jessica cried out and her body went limp. He could hear her breath and heart. Not dead, but not exactly in control of her fate, either. Kaleb froze. The advantage belonged to the alien and she knew it.

She smiled and shoved the barrel against Jessica’s forehead. “Don’t come any closer. I’ve already killed one of your crew members and I’ll do it again.” She reached into her pocket and tossed Captain James’s identification card at him. It hit Kaleb in the chest and landed at his feet. His stomach rolled when he realized, this time, she wasn’t bluffing. “You infected him with some kind of canine mutation so I blew his head off. You wouldn’t even recognize him now.” Her chest rose and fell. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. She reached up and wiped it away with the back of her hand, keeping the weapon pressed tight. “You might have killed me, but this isn’t over.” The virus appeared to be affecting her already. Her lungs wheezed with every breath. “You didn’t get us all. We’re still out there and this attack won’t go without retribution.” She gasped.