Bone Rider (3 page)

Jas and Rik went back into the bowels of the ship. The small hangar section was almost undamaged. Unfortunately, it had been empty when System Six’s sabotage programming had kicked in. They had to use a lever to force open the doors to the weapons center and Jas would’ve dislocated his shoulder if not for System Five’s hasty intervention, but it was worth it. Two of the four members of the weapons crew had made it through the crash more or less in one piece. They were wounded and only half-conscious, but breathing. It took some time to get them outside, but finally the small band of survivors settled on the scorched ground next to the broken body of the Widowmaker and took stock.

It didn’t look too good. They were sitting at the bottom of a huge, circular crater, a dazzling white sun burning down on them mercilessly from an azure-blue sky and rendering everybody but the armor hosts blind. Gravity seemed about the same as what they were used to, a little less maybe, but the heat and the brightness were debilitating. The armor systems could and would adapt, the crew not. They’d brought a few guns from the weapons center, but the armory was lost to them, as was most of the emergency and medical equipment. They were so far beyond the edges of civilized space that nobody would’ve found them even if they had managed to send off a distress signal. Command might be able to trace the ship’s homing beacon eventually, but that could take years. They’d have to scavenge the ship for supplies later, when they’d taken care of their wounded and secured a perimeter.

All of them were uncomfortably aware that they had no idea what was lurking beyond the edges of the impact crater. Siv, the concussed weapons technician, did his best to provide first aid in the meager shadow of the ship while the four bruised but otherwise unhurt armor hosts formed a protective half circle around the more vulnerable members of their party.

System Six tried to ignore his host’s jumbled, jittery mental recitation of military crash protocol as he gathered as much data about the alien world as possible while not fully bonded. The first thing he noticed was that it smelled interesting. Richer than what he was used to, wilder. Younger. He found that he liked it, felt more at ease here than he had on the training grounds or the ship. The place tasted like fire and grit. It felt solid and rough. It sounded like dirt shifting, cloth sliding over stone… right… over…

… there.

For once, Rik caught on quickly, tipped off by System Six’s alarm. He jumped and lifted his gun, prompting the others to follow suit instinctively.
Aliens
, Rik thought hysterically.
Aliens, there’s fucking
aliens
out there!

The sudden movements must’ve spooked the same aliens, because the next thing they heard was a sharp noise, and then Jas gasped as his armor system flooded his right side to parry a high-velocity projectile that would’ve taken out half his chest.

“Fuckers are shooting at us,” Jas yelped.

“Then shoot the fuck back,” the commander rasped from the ground, his grip around the tourniquet white-knuckled.

Things went downhill from there.

C
APTAIN
B
RENNAN
had thought he’d seen it all, especially now that he’d laid eyes on a bunch of honest-to-God outta-space aliens. His brain had flashed back on a hundred different movie scenes to give him a frame of reference, but there was a difference between being wowed by special effects and watching silver pour out of every pore of the four sentry aliens’ skin to wrap them head to toe in armor. He was so distracted by the glint of sunlight on the seamless coat of what looked like metal he barely noticed them return fire until the dirt exploded at the crater edge to his right.

“Fuck,” he cursed, twitching back. “Cease fire,” he barked at his men, still hoping to salvage this first contact situation about to go FUBAR
{3}
. “Jameson!”

Private Jameson immediately got on the radio, trying to relay Brennan’s order in case the two flanking units hadn’t caught the command, but even from his position Brennan could hear the static from the speaker. Communications were down. Must’ve been some kind of interference from the wreck, or maybe the aliens were jamming them. Hard to see
how
, given the condition of the ship, but they were aliens. Who knew what they could do?

“Radio’s down, sir,” Jameson reported, voice tight. His skin was sickly pale and sweaty, his eyes round as saucers. He was trying hard to keep it together, but Brennan could see the superstitious fear in his eyes. This was somewhat out of the range of their experience. Anybody’s experience.

“Keep trying,” Brennan snapped, then glared at the other members of his squad, who were clutching their weapons and looking twitchy. They’d probably watched the same movies he had; it was hard to blame them for being upset. However, upset soldiers tended to be trigger-happy soldiers. “This is a fucking first contact situation, people,” Brennan reminded them. “We don’t engage unless we need to defend ourselves. Is that clear?”

The
yes, sirs
he got in reply weren’t quite as firm as he was used to, but rookies or not, they were soldiers. They’d obey.

Brennan got up so he’d be visible from the bottom of the depression, arms spread to show his peaceful intentions.

“United States Army,” he shouted down into the crater. “Put down your weapons and—”

This time, he could feel something whistle past his ear so closely every hair on his body stood on end. There was no bang to accompany the shot—the alien weapons were almost completely silent—but something exploded in the air above his head in a burst of vicious green. Brennan hit the dirt, swearing a blue streak. Whichever of his men had fired the first shot had effectively destroyed his credibility with the aliens. Also, the creatures likely hadn’t understood a word of what he’d said.

The shot from below was answered immediately by a staccato burst of automatic fire, which pretty much nixed any hope for peaceful negotiations, not that Brennan gave a damn by that point. As Brennan watched, one of the sentry aliens dragged the wounded back toward the questionable cover of the wreck, staggering like a drunk when bullets pinged off its silver-covered back. Given the distance between the aliens and the troops, Brennan was impressed that so many of his men’s shots hit their targets. However, distance wasn’t a problem for long. The three unoccupied armored aliens tossed their weapons to their comrades and took off running, each of them headed straight for one of the squads occupying the high ground. Taking the fight to the enemy. They were fast, faster than Brennan would’ve thought, moving with the deadly grace of something otherworldly. No hesitation at all when they reached the steep slope leading up to the ridge; they just kept running, falling forward onto all fours to get more traction on the partly glazed surface.

“Fall back,” Brennan ordered tersely, not liking where this was going. He wanted all of his men positioned on firm ground, nowhere near the edge of the crater. “Prepare to engage.”

“Permission to shoot the fucker in the face when it comes over the rim?” Sergeant Harris asked, tense as he watched the alien headed for the Bravo unit briefly lose its footing. The creature punched a fist through the rock wall to catch itself and continued to haul itself up with barely a hitch. They weren’t big, but damn it, Brennan didn’t look forward to confronting one of these things up close.

“Affirmative,” Brennan said, frustrated and angry, mostly with himself and his men. They’d missed their one chance to de-escalate.

Time seemed to slow when the alien’s metal-sheathed head popped over the edge of the crater and the creature heaved itself into view. The adrenaline kick gave Brennan the opportunity to take in details of the armor: angled faceplates with mirrored visors, a tapered breastplate that protected the vulnerable front, flexible layers of metal everywhere else that shifted smoothly with every movement of the alien soldier as it heaved itself over the rim. Up close, it looked even smaller. Maybe three foot eleven, though sturdy and broad-shouldered. Humanoid, except for those weird legs. No weapon in sight, which was easily the scariest thing about it. It made it seem too damn sure it wouldn’t need one to deal with them.

Sergeant Harris fired a controlled salvo before the creature had completely cleared the rim, which was when they learned that not only did the armor repel bullets at close range as effortlessly as at long range, it also anchored its carrier to the ground so the force of the impact wouldn’t push it back over.

“Fuck,” Harris muttered.

The alien growled something that was probably the alien equivalent of “my turn,” and waded in.

B
ULLETS
didn’t faze it.

Grenades merely slowed it down.

Brennan watched one of his men empty a clip at the visor at point-blank range. It was a good idea, since the visor was the only perceptible weakness in the helmet, but, as it turned out, the material covering the head was as sturdy as the rest of the armor and getting within striking distance was fatal. The armor sprouted serrated claws in the blink of an eye, long enough to eviscerate the soldier with one swipe right through his bulletproof vest. He fell with a howl and was silenced almost instantly by a spike driven through his temple as he went down.

Brennan fired several rounds at the creature’s knee joints, then barely escaped being skewered by a double-edged blade himself, pure instinct making him flinch back before the weapon could make contact. The fucking armor wasn’t even dented.

“Fall back!” he screamed, thinking of the vehicles and the weapons stashed there. “To the jeeps! Get the Spitfire!”

They’d spent the past few days testing the newest generation of high-explosive antitank missiles—HEATs—and in particular the AT-742 Spitfire. The Spitfire had aced every test of the exercise, surpassed every expectation. Smaller, more dependable than and twice as effective as its predecessors, it was without doubt the baddest bad boy in their arsenal. Right now, it was their only hope of survival. If this failed, if those alien juggernauts were missile-proof as well as bulletproof, they’d have to fall back to base camp and call in reinforcements.

It was a nightmarish run down the rocky slope, over cracked rocks and loose earth, jumping and dodging uprooted bushes and other debris while the alien darted after them with light-footed agility and deadly intent. Brennan slipped and slid down a couple of yards on his ass in a cloud of dust. He didn’t let go of his weapon, didn’t let it slow him down, merely threw his weight forward, got back on his feet, and kept going.

Sergeant Baker and Private Boone were the first to reach the jeeps. Brennan saw them snap open the flap and dive into the weapons stash just as he noticed a flash of silver from the corner of his eye. Seemed like the alien had already realized the potential threat of whatever new weapon its enemies were about to bring into play and was trying to head them off at the pass. It rushed past Brennan without so much as a glance in his direction, intent on the two men getting the grenade launcher ready to fire. Ignoring Brennan was a mistake, and Brennan didn’t hesitate to use his advantage. He knew tackling the creature was suicide, but there was more than one way to skin a cat and Brennan was highly motivated.

It was a beautiful slide; Brennan’s old baseball coach would’ve been proud. The angle was perfect. The thick-soled, army-issue boots hit the alien’s ankle and knee so hard and fast the armor didn’t have time to grow spikes long enough to stab through the firm rubber, and their combined momentum pushed the alien sideways and off its feet. The little fucker bounced off the ground like a cat—it hissed like one, too—then tripped over a net of roots and went down again. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

A bellowed “Cap’n!” was all the warning Brennan got and needed. He scrambled up and away from the alien. The sound of a grenade launcher being fired made him hit the dirt, cover his head, and hope the extraterrestrial fucker wouldn’t be able to dodge the missile. The boom wasn’t particularly loud, but the heat that rolled over him with the shockwave was intense. Brennan pressed himself against the ground, wishing fervently he’d gotten farther away and praying his BDUs
{4}
wouldn’t catch on fire. He rolled as soon as he dared, sitting up and scooting back as his gaze skittered over the incline, searching for the alien with his weapon at the ready. His best-case scenario had consisted of the creature being torn apart and his worst-case scenario of the creature being merely a little stunned and fully operational. What he got was a burning, smoldering heap of clumped matter, seemingly in one piece but definitely not about to get up again.

Brennan’s mind got stuck on the image for a second or two; then the trained professional in him kicked his system back online and he spun around and barked orders at his men. The gunfire coming from the direction of the other units had all but ceased, and Brennan didn’t have to be there to know the body count had to be rising steadily. By this point, he didn’t care anymore that it had been his men who had inadvertently started this fight; he wanted the aliens dead before they slaughtered the rest of his people.

Baker and Boone grabbed the multishot grenade launchers from the back of the vehicle and the squad was about to split up and come to the aid of the other two units when Harris shouted a heads-up. The remains of the Bravo squad were pelting toward them, four men dripping with sweat and blood, a flash of silver right on their heels.

“Get down!” Brennan roared.

His scream yielded immediate results. His men dropped on the spot, leaving the pursuing alien an easy target. It saw the missile coming, but wasn’t quite fast enough to avoid a direct hit. This time, Brennan saw it all. The brief stop, the start of a dodge, then a sudden expansion of the armor just before the Spitfire hit its target and enveloped the creature in a fireball. The explosion looked weirdly muted, half-absorbed by whatever material the alien was wrapped up in, but the result was the same: a crispy fried critter surrounded by a ring of blackened earth.