Xenonauts: Crimson Dagger (7 page)

Testing his own radio, Mikhail experienced the same thing. Nothing but static.
Damn it.
With no communication, there was no way to alert the rest of the Americans that they had made it inside. There was no way to signal the frontal assault. The last thing the Americans saw was Nina leading Mikhail and his team toward the ship. She never even made it back to them. For all Mikhail knew, they thought the infiltration team was dead. That conclusion would only be strengthened with those reptiles lurking about the dig site.

“We talked about this possibility beforehand,” Hemingway said. “Communication going dark once we got inside. We agreed that we didn’t necessarily
need
to know that things were going well inside the ship—just the confirmation that we made it inside. But they don’t even have that.”

Nina would have been confirmation. But she never returned to the jeeps. They were truly alone. Looking at his sniper, Mikhail asked, “Can you manage in close combat?”

Propping up from the wall, Nina nodded.

“Here,” Mikhail said, removing the Makarov pistol he’d claimed from Sevastian and handing it to her. “Take this. Here is some ammunition.”

“Think your weapons survived their torture test?” Hemingway asked.

Mikhail nodded. “What few we have left, yes.”

Moments later, Reed returned through the doorway with the salvaged equipment from the fallen Green Beret and Iosif. Setting the salvage on the floor, he picked up a canteen and addressed Nina. “Miss.” Tossing it to her, he then looked at Mikhail. “For the lady to wash her head.”

Faintly, Mikhail smiled.
Perhaps a good man, after all.
Glancing back at Nina, he nodded in approval. His focus returned to the weapons on the floor. Iosif’s Makarov was there, along with his PPSh-41 ammunition. “Who’s good?” he asked, looking around.

“Good,” Sparks said from his position in the hall. Reed and Hemingway affirmed, too. All three Americans still had their submachine guns.

Nikolai would be fine. He already had Iosif’s PPsh-41, and he could take the extra ammunition. Giving the extra Makarov to Sevastian, that left Mikhail as the only weaponless soldier. Bending down, he picked up the M3.

“You know how to work that thing?” asked Hemingway.

Claiming the weapons’ extra ammunition, he tested the M3’s weight in his hands. “I learn quickly.” Looking back at Nina, he saw her massage her head under the flow of canteen water, her black hair reemerging from the muck. Slicking it back and wiping her face, she tossed the canteen back to Reed.

“Spasibo,” she said, a faint smile showing. “Thank you.”

Mikhail shifted to his other troops. Nikolai was still working on Sevastian’s arm. “How is he doing?”

“The wound is cauterized,” Nikolai answered. “There’s no bleeding or lodged projectile. Just damage. Morphine should be taking effect soon, so the pain should diminish.” He stepped aside to reveal the shirtless Sevastian’s shoulder. The moment Mikhail saw it, he grimaced. Everything from the right side of Sevastian’s chest to his bicep was a twisted, charred wreck. “For all practical purposes, his clavicle and rotator cuff are destroyed.”

Holding his pistol with his left hand, Sevastian spoke through quivering lips. “I won’t be as accurate, but I’ll do what I can.”

The impulse to immediately say
no
was strong. Having a soldier who was almost totally non-effective in combat was the last thing Mikhail needed. But Sevastian’s well-being was also at stake. What if the aliens found him here? He’d have no chance. More than they needed him, he needed
them
. “All right,” Mikhail said. “Put your uniform back on, try your best not to
look
injured. Do some damage.”

“Da, captain.” Wincing, he slid back into his outfit.

So this is it. This is the entry team.
A pistol-wielding sniper who wasn’t supposed to be there, a Spetsnaz GRU medic, an incapacitated executive officer, and three American Green Berets. Seven mud-covered survivors of an infiltration gone to hell. Readying his M3, Mikhail surveyed his team. Broken, but alive. At least that said something. “We move in three rows. Lukin, you move with me. Sparks and Andrianova, surround Tyannikov in the middle. Captain Hemingway and Reed will take the rear.” It was basic, but that was fine. “The reptiles are vulnerable in the head and neck. Shoot only when you can hit. We need to conserve ammo.” The group acknowledged. “Be aware: there is a second type of alien here. I saw one dead in the entry room. It was gray, and very thin, like a starving child. I do not know what it can do.

“We will move forward through the vessel toward its center. We do not need communication to alert the American forces that we are here. If we can create enough chaos, it might attract the attention of the aliens outside. If the Americans see that, they can move forward with the frontal assault.” That was still why they were there. That was still what they were going to do.

Giving the order to move out, Mikhail and his team abandoned the safety of whatever the room was they’d been sitting in. Submachine guns ready, they tracked into the halls and began their trek inward into the belly of the beast.

It was time to go on the attack.

4

1524 hours

MIKHAIL STRAINED EVERY sense as he led his team through the flickering corridors. His muddied palms gripped his borrowed M3 with fierce determination. He felt a strong inclination to pull the weapon’s trigger, as if the act itself would place a target in view. That was how close-quarters combat always felt.

Lighting was intermittent throughout the corridor, pulsing on and off as if whatever power source was feeding it was struggling to survive. The lights themselves ran like veins along the top corners of the halls—a design Mikhail had never seen anywhere on Earth. The flickering, combined with the slant of the ship, formed an atmosphere as unsettling as it was unnatural.

The corridor ended into a solid metal door that was sealed shut. Though there’d been several doors along the route, no sounds had emanated from any of them. For all practical purposes, it seemed that they were leaving a dead section of the ship.

The soldiers split along both sides of the hallway as they neared the door, their weapons drawn and ready as each step took them closer to whatever lay on the other side. Mikhail scanned for some kind of door mechanism. There was a depressed panel to the door’s right. That had to be something. As he approached it, he signaled for the others to hold behind him. They instinctively knelt to firing positions, weapons aimed at the door.

The panel appeared to have some sort of screen, but everything was dark. Several buttons were visible, each with a strange symbol, but pressing them did nothing.
Come on, Mikhail, figure this out!
He’d had the same problem trying to close the first room they’d entered. Was it a power issue, or his own cluelessness? He had a suspicion it was a combination of both. He hit the buttons again. Nothing. Shaking his head and cursing, he looked around the panel for anything he was missing. It was all there in front of him—and it was totally dead. Angrily, he banged his fist against the panel. At some point, something needed to go right.

Suddenly, the overhead lights went full-blast; the hallways were completely illuminated. A vibration came to the entire area—Mikhail leapt back and raised his M3.

“What did you do?” asked Nikolai.

“Nothing, I did nothing!” There was no way a fist to the wall had done this—this was something else. The spacecraft was getting its power back.

Something crackled along the veins of ceiling lights. A rasping alien voice emerged, seemingly from the lights themselves, and repeated the same phrase over and over again, like some kind of warning. Ahead, the door panel lit up. A mechanical whir emerged from the door’s housing; it was opening. The whole of the strike team readied their weapons as Mikhail fell back into formation. The door slid into the wall.

Hostiles appeared.

Two reptiles and one gray alien were gathered along a series of wall panels on the other side of the door. By the time they saw Mikhail and his team, weapons were already being fired. A barrage of .45 APC rounds was slung toward the extraterrestrials, who were in no position to counter. Head and neck shots struck true even as the human soldiers stalked forward. Mikhail and his team crossed the door’s threshold as the aliens toppled backward.

Past the fallen aliens, the hallway opened into a spacious, elongated chamber that looked roughly twenty meters long. Metallic doors sealed the room at both ends, with the rearmost door following the ship’s downward slant. “Clear,” Hemingway said, taking position to cover it. Reed knelt alongside him, submachine gun poised and ready.

Before Mikhail could make any sort of declaration, the door at the opposite end of the chamber opened. Two more reptiles. Bursts from Mikhail and Nikolai felled them, but the quick kills ended there. Past the fresh corpses, a third reptile dove for the cover of a right-hand turn further up the hallway. Using the corner as cover, the alien fired a flurry of blue energy bolts the humans’ way. Though none of the bolts struck, it was enough to force Mikhail’s team to duck out of the elongated chamber and back into the hall they’d entered from.

We cannot lose ground—not here!
If the aliens were allowed to force Mikhail’s team backward, this was going to be a quick mission. Sliding to the corner of the chamber, Mikhail leaned around and fired a suppressing shot at the reptile. Glancing behind, Mikhail looked at the door on the lower side of the chamber. It was still closed. “Hemingway, Reed, open that door! The rest of you, suppress!” The concept of suppression went against his own declaration of
shoot only when you can hit
, but in this instance, they had no choice. They had to move forward or they’d be flushed backward.

Diving to the center of the chamber from the hall, Nikolai raised his PPSh-41 and released a volley toward the hostile, forcing it back around the corner. Sparks joined alongside the Spetsnaz. The two of them, combined with Mikhail’s fire from around his own cover, were enough to momentarily hold the alien at bay.

“Let me get to where you are,” Nina said to Mikhail, still covered behind him. Her pistol raised, she eyed him sternly. “Trust me.”

She’s still a sniper.
“Take position,” he said quickly, spinning away from the corner as she took his spot. Mikhail’s focus shifted to Hemingway and Reed. “How is it coming with that door?” he shouted.

No sooner had Mikhail asked the question, Hemingway and Reed leapt back from the door as it slid up into the ceiling. “It’s open and we’re clear!” the American captain said.

Mikhail spun back to the firefight. Nikolai, Nina, Sevastian, and Sparks were suppressing what were now four distinct sources of alien weapons fire coming from around the corner far ahead. Moments later, four became three, as one of Nina’s pistol rounds plugged an alien dead center in its throat the instant it showed its head.

Unclipping a grenade from his belt, Mikhail ripped out the pin in his teeth. “Now pay attention to
this
,” he murmured, hurling the grenade down the hallway. As it bounced toward the corner, the three remaining aliens held their fire. “Everyone, come!” Mikhail shouted, motioning for them to follow through the lower-side door. “Same position—Nikolai, up front!” They reassumed formation just as the aliens opened fire again. But the extraterrestrials’ offensive was short-lived, as Mikhail’s grenade erupted in the hallway. The walls trembled amid the sound of reptilian screeching. Mikhail didn’t bother looking back. Whether the three around the corner were wounded, dead, or dying, the humans were now officially a force to be reckoned with. That was all that mattered.

The seven-man team was now hustling down a new hallway—the downward angle at which they traveled adding to their momentum. The hallway seemed identical to the one the aliens had been covering in the opposite direction. There was a sharp, ninety-degree turn to the left that Mikhail could only assume led further into the ship’s center.

One of the hallway doors they were passing opened—the entire group flinched and aimed their weapons. Standing in the open door frame was a single gray alien. It gazed at the group with its opaque, bulbous black eyes.

Sparks, the nearest soldier to the creature, grabbed it by its uniform and shoved it straight into the room. Mikhail followed the Green Beret inside. “Lukin, Reed, watch the hall!” The two men complied as Mikhail, Hemingway, Sparks, and Nina surrounded their gray captive. Sevastian propped himself against the wall.

Though frail in build, the gray alien was almost more horrible than the reptiles. It was almost—
almost
—humanlike. That borderline similarity was downright disturbing. Even amid the instinctive nature of combat, the insanity of what they were facing had never escaped Mikhail fully. These were beings they’d never seen before—that humans had never seen before. They were freakish. In many ways, they seemed wrong. But there they were. There was an impulse in Mikhail to strike at the gray alien. To beat it repeatedly, incessantly. He recognized it mostly as fear. And so it was restrained.

“What do you want here?” asked Mikhail sharply in Russian, as if the alien would understand the question. The inquiry was more emotional than rational. These beings were on their planet. The desire to know
why
was overwhelming, even if it led to the asking of unanswerable questions. His language returned to English. “Why have you come to us?”

Nikolai watched from the doorway. “Why don’t you try French? Maybe he understands that.”

“Zatknis,” spat Nina.

“He understands me,” Mikhail said, glaring at the alien face-to-face. “You understand me, don’t you, demon?”

Stepping back, Hemingway said, “We should kill it.”

Mikhail didn’t want to kill it. Not yet. “Did you think we would roll over and die for you? Did you think we wouldn’t fight back?” These were things he needed to say. Things he needed to release. He was pulled away from his daughter for this creature. He could die and leave Kseniya with only a memory of her father because of it. “We will destroy you all.” Now he was ready. “Kill it,” he said to Hemingway, standing and taking a step away. Hemingway aimed his pistol.