Aliens Vs. Humans (Aliens Series Book 4) (37 page)

They both landed inside a dark room, their feet slamming to the metal floor as they came within the internal grav field of the Arbitor ship. Jack winked his right eye to activate the helmet’s infrared function. Ahead of them glowed the red tunnel of a hallway that was already cooling rapidly as vacuum sucked out the heat that normally adhered to interior ship walls. Holding his sword under his left elbow, he reached into the carrybag and pulled out his teflon-coated Smith and Wesson six-shooter. Its .45 caliber bullets would surely hurt even dino hide.

“Follow me,” Maureen called over the suit comlink. “The other teams are ahead and to the left of us. This seems to be an equatorial artery. Watch out for suited dinos!”

“Following,” Jack muttered as he ran after the nimble woman with more combat experience than anybody in the super fleet. Though Hideyoshi might outrank her by a year or two. He noted that room hatches had closed upon the loss of air pressure. Looking up, his infrared imager said the tunnel was ten meters high by seven meters wide. Big enough for a seven meter tall
Tyrannosaurus rex
Arbitor. He recalled Denise’s lessons on Earth’s T-rex’s. Those two-legged carnivores had measured 12 meters in length from tail to head, were seven meters high when standing upright and weighed nearly seven metric tons. Or 15,000 pounds. The Arbitor closely matched the look and size of Earth’s tyrannosaurids, though no one had ever known the color of the creature’s scales. Or its eyes. He turned left when Maureen turned. She held a GPS device that reflected millimeter-wavelength radar mapping of the hallway as it related to the outer hull shape of the Arbitor’s ship. He gave thanks for the encrypted suit comlinks worn by him, Maureen, the Mars Marines and the fighting groups from the other ships. Those comlinks were able to act as primitive direction guidance devices.

“Stop!” she yelled.

Jack stopped. Before them lay a mound of cooling flesh. It was a dead Arbitor dino caught without a vacsuit when the hallway lost its air. “My infrared says that thing is not moving.”

She snorted loudly. “Sensors help. They do not make decisions. Put a .45 bullet into that mass. If it doesn’t move, then it’s really dead.”

Jack lifted his revolver, aimed it at the barely glowing mass, pulled the trigger and held it firm as the expanding gases of the bullet pushed against his hand. It didn’t move. Then he noticed something about Maureen.

“Hey, you’re carrying a 90 megawatt laser rifle. You put a shot into it!” Jack said, feeling irritated at wasting a bullet. Though he did have six reloaders velcroed to the fabric of his suit’s waist belt.

“If you insist.”

Brilliant green light flared in front of him as a beam from the woman’s laser bored into the midbody of the creature.

Jack blinked his eyes, realizing why Maureen had not fired her laser earlier. In the dark hallway, the brilliant light temporarily blinded him. Not her, who no doubt had kept her eyes closed when she fired. “Can we move past it?”

“Sure. Follow me. Uh, you can see me, right?”

He bit his lip. The woman was a red blob without definition. But he could follow. “Lead on. You are infrared visible. Will be nice to get to a lighted section of this ship.”

“Hmmph,” she muttered as she ran ahead nimbly, dodging to the left to avoid contact with the dino’s body. There were two meters of clearance between the left wall and what the infrared said was the creature’s clawed feet.

Up ahead they slowed as they came to an area lit by the brilliant yellow of arc vapor lamps. “The teams are ahead,” Maureen said.

He had figured that out. While the natural light of the Arbitor ship’s Command Deck was golden yellow, he recognized the arc lamp light of the Marines. They were lights often carried by Belter miners to illuminate the interiors of deeply cratered asteroids.

Ahead of them stood twenty-seven humans dressed in vacsuits of various colors and stripes. The fifteen Mars Marines from the
Bismarck
wore distinctive red, blue and white-striped vacsuits. They were gathered around the tallest marine. Who had to be Lieutenant Andy Mabry. Opposite them in a half-circle were Minna, Ignacio, Akemi, Aashman, Kasun, Hideyoshi, Marlena Lopez, Gareth, Angelique Vincent, Ras Mengesha of the
Yamamoto
, Amitar Gupta of the
MacArthur
and Colin Forsyth of the
Zhukov
. Each destroyer captain had brought along five Marines from each ship. Who now moved to join Mabry. That made for 30 Marines. He and Maureen pushed their group total to 44. It would have been 45 if Júlia’s ship had not been cut in half.

“Fleet Captain Jack,” Mabry said over the comlink. “We have set up a portable airlock against that interior wall. It will allow us entry into the powered and aired portions of the ship.”

Which was exactly according to plan. He gave a nod to Hideyoshi who had come with his Weaponry Chief, then grabbed Maureen as she made a move for the gray plastic wall of the airlock. “Lieutenant Mabry, will you and your team lead the way? Though before you cut the wall open and enter, I suggest you load that recoilless cannon tube on the back of your Marine. In case someone is on the opposite side.”

Mabry looked to Jack. The man originally hailed from Texas, a conservative state that had helped lead the rebellion against the North American Cooperative that had subsumed America, Canada and Mexico. His blond hair was worn in a crew cut while the man’s ruddy features showed the redness of running fast to this station. Holding his own 90 megawatt laser rifle in port arms, Mabry nodded toward the young Marine carrying the tube. “Already loaded. My Marines will toss in tear gas and sneeze grenades after we blow a hole in the wall. Clear to proceed?”

“Clear to proceed,” Jack said, wishing he did not feel so out of place with the young men and women who made up the Marine fighting group.

To his right stood Akemi, who now lifted her
katana
blade with its point aimed at the portable airlock. She and everyone else watched as five of the Marines followed Mabry through the hatch, closed it, and waited for the thump vibration they would feel through their boots when the C4 charge cut through the inner hull wall.

Jack felt the floor vibrate below his feet.

“Access gained,” Mabry said over the group comlink. “We are moving into a large room with a hallway entry. Come through in groups of five.”

He lifted Old Roy in his right hand and his revolver in his left hand. Maureen already had her laser rifle aimed at the gray hatch of the airlock. As did everyone else on this side. The amount of laser rifles, old-style revolvers, laser handguns and a few M4 automatic rifles that spit out 50 caliber tungsten tipped bullets were amazing. As were the belts of grenades, the half-dozen disks of contact mines, four Bangalore torpedo explosives, six M34A2 claymores and even an anti-tank rocket launcher tube carried by Lopez. When you face a creature seven meters tall and weighing more than several horses combined, you need something bigger than a sword or revolver to bring it down. The airlock hatch opened. A marine gestured.

“About time!” Maureen yelled as she slipped his grip and ran forward with her laser aimed at the Marine. Who quickly moved out of her way.

Jack beat Hideyoshi to the entry hatch. The older man followed him. Turning around he counted Akemi, Ignacio wearing his black
boina
beret inside his helmet, Hideyoshi, Maureen and yellow-tressed Minna. The Marine gave him a look that said seven was too many. Jack gestured. “Bring on the air so we can get to the other side.”

The Marine tapped controls next to the exit hatch that was contact glued to the inner wall so it acted as a pressure door. In seconds the plastic wall stiffened. “Follow me,” the Marine said as he opened the hatch and stepped through.

The six of them followed the Marine into a giant room illuminated with golden yellow light. It was rectangular and an open archway gave way to an empty hallway the ran from right to left. Two of Mabry’s Marines were already at the archway, lasers pointed down each approach. The Marine with the recoilless cannon tube, which had been Jack’s idea of a Giant Killer weapon, had it loaded onto her right shoulder and aimed at the archway. Which was ten meters high and seven wide. When he saw the Marines removing their vacsuits and piling them up against a side wall, he moved over to the wall and took off his suit and helmet. Putting the comlink tab on his left shoulder, he noticed Maureen had already changed over to her green leotard with Kevlar vest. The woman’s sword and javelin were stored on her back in criss-cross scabbards. Revolvers hung from each hip and long throwing knives were belted to her thighs. On her right shoulder was the tiny half-dome of a suit videye.

“Is the vid signal getting through to the
Uhuru
?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” the woman said as she moved up to the open archway. “Elaine and Denise confirm clear imagery. Which they are sharing with the rest of the fleet by way of a Come-Back signal. No other ships have been damaged, Júlia’s people are rescued and there has not been any effort by the Arbitor ship to activate its grav-pull or Alcubierre drives.”

“Good.” Jack finished pulling his Kevlar vest over his jumpsuit, slipped his feet into soft shoes with a sucker-grip sole like they wore at home in the Belt, then belted his Smith and Wesson about his waist. Clips of speedloader bullets were velcroed to his left hip. After tying his pack to his waist so it rode like a fanny pack, he strapped thin steel throwing knives to each shin. Then he picked up Old Roy and lifted it up and over his head so it slid point-first into a cross-back scabbard built into his vest. Shouldering a laser rifle handed him by one of the Marines, he pulled a revolver. Turning, he scanned his allies. Everyone was dressed similarly, with long sword, stave, scythe-sword, revolver, laser handgun or other weapon at the ready. Each of his Belter fleet allies also had laser rifles slung over a shoulder. A 90 megawatt laser might not kill an Arbitor outright, but it sure would cut deep into its scaly hide. He caught the attention of Mabry.

“Lieutenant, let’s move out.”

The man gave him a quick nod, then looked to Hideyoshi. Who had come up dressed in
samurai
-style armor plates, a
shinsakuto
sword in one hand as he shouldered his own laser rifle. “Lieutenant, there is one leader to this expedition. That is Fleet Captain Jack Munroe. Obey his orders!”

“Yes sir!” the tall Marine moved toward the open archway. “Team A, cover left flank. Team B, right flank. Team C, you are with me.”

Jack followed as the Marines split into ten-person groups that went right down the hallway. With Maureen scouting ahead of them. After Jack came Gareth, Amitar, Ras, Colin, Angelique, Marlena and his five Belter captains. They had sharp steel pointed in every direction and lasers powered on. Maureen and the Marines began running. He gave thanks for his time in one gee onboard his ship and ran after them. In seconds they hit another intersection. Maureen turned left into the hallway, knowing as Jack did that it led toward the center of the surviving pyramid half of the Arbitor ship. Open archways lay on both sides of the hallway. In them glittered metal boxes, diamond-like balls, green growing things and even a mud pond in one of them. He guessed the dinos liked a mud bath for the same reason elephants liked it. Maureen took aim for a wide ramp leading up to a higher deck. The Marines and everyone followed her.

“Die!” screamed a giant dino that came out of a side archway just as Maureen led them toward a new rampway. It lifted giant clawed legs and ran toward them.

Jack felt the metal floor vibrate with the thudding of seven tons of mass hitting the floor with elephant-sized feet. Ahead, Maureen went down to one knee, aimed her laser rifle at the monster that was now just twenty meters from her, and fired. “Fuck you!” she said loudly.

A sizzling green beam leaped out and hit the dino in its bulging belly.

The dino bellowed in pain. Its wild rush slowed as red blood gushed from a hole big as Jack’s head. White loops of intestines bulged out from internal pressure. But the long tooth-filled head of the dino lowered as it ran, aiming to chomp on his crewmate.

He stopped, aimed his laser and sent a second green beam at the open mouth of the giant.

At the same time Marlena pulled up, lifted her anti-tank rocket tube, got a pat on the back from her Marine loader, then tapped the Fire button on the side of the tube.

Yellow flame spat from a sleek missile that shot past Maureen even as the woman put a second green beam into the right knee of the giant dinosaur.

“
Kabooom!
” went the missile as its warhead detonated just after entry into the chest of the dino.

“Aiiieeee!” screamed the dino as it fell to the floor.

Jack pulled to a half beside his crewmate. “Maureen! That was crazy!”

She stood up and watched the death throes of the dino. Its chest had been blown open so wide a small aircar could fit inside its wide ribcage. Blood gushed from between the white shark teeth of its mouth, a wound Jack counted as his own effort. Red eyes fixed on him and Maureen and Mabry and the fighting group of Marines. Black eyelashes blinked, then the red and yellow-scaled head rolled flat against the floor as the creature’s eyes stopped moving. The cut and burned body also stopped twitching.

“Everyone!” called Mabry. “Any other dino we see gets five laser shots to the belly, chest and one knee. We can’t let these giant bastards get among us.”