Distortion Offensive (15 page)

Kane raised his Sin Eater before him as he trotted back down the tight corridor to meet with Grant.

Brigid Baptiste gave Clem a reassuring look as she pulled a TP-9 from the holster she wore slung low to her hip. “Stay behind us, Clem,” she said. “You'll be safe.”

Clem nodded agreement, keeping his distance as he followed Brigid's slender form retreating down the corridor.

“What did you see?” Kane demanded as he pulled up beside Grant. As he spoke, another of the dull blue lights winked out behind them, casting the corridor into ever-deepening gloom.

“Only saw it for a second but it looked like some kind of spider,” Grant explained. “Lot of legs and it moved real fast.”

“How big?” Kane asked.

“About—” Grant began, then he saw another movement as something leaped from the craggy surface of the wall. “Shit!”

Whatever it was, it had jumped the gap between the wall and Kane, and the ex-Mag spun as he felt it land upon his back. “What the—?”

Without stopping to think, Grant swung the Copperhead around, jabbing with its butt at the skittering creature that was scrambling over Kane's shoulder. The
creature dropped to the floor. Grant and Kane watched, disgusted, as the hand-size creature disappeared into a nook in the uneven coral surface of the floor, its long, spindly legs disappearing from sight.

“What was it?” Brigid asked as she caught up to her partners.

“I don't know,” Kane admitted. “We're thinking spider maybe.”

Brigid looked from Kane to Grant, conscious of the weight of the TP-9 in her own hand and how ridiculous the three of them had to look at that moment. The TP-9 was a compact semiautomatic, a bulky handgun with the grip set just off center beneath the barrel and a covered targeting scope across the top, all finished in molded matte black. To point it at a spider was very much like using the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut. Feeling foolish, Brigid eased her grip on the bulky pistol, relaxing from her ready stance.

Clem joined the three Cerberus warriors an instant later. “Where did it go?” he asked.

“Little bugaboo found a hole or crevice or something,” Kane told him, toeing the ground with his boot, “just about there.”

Clem crouched down on his haunches, his dark eyes furiously scanning the lumpy ground.

“You want to be careful there, Clem,” Grant warned.

Clem looked up, and there was such a look of open fascination on his face that he seemed like a child on Christmas morning. “This could be a new form of life,” he said enthusiastically. “It's our duty to catalog and—”

Grant shook his head. “You must be mistaking us with someone else, Bryant. We go in, we get the job
done and then we get the fuck out of here. Right now I'm really looking forward to getting to point C in that list—you read me?”

Clem sighed, resigning himself to the facts at hand. “The mission comes first,” he agreed, pushing himself back to a standing position. “But it does rather go against my ethos.”

“Well,” Kane growled, “it wasn't your ethos that got crawled on now, was it?”

Clem was about to respond when the spiderlike creature reappeared from a gap in the floor, and Grant shoved him to one side as he swung the Copperhead assault weapon to bear.

“Grant, no!” Clem shouted, but his instruction—or perhaps it had been a warning—came too late.

Grant unleashed a blast from the Copperhead, and a smattering of lethal 4.85 mm bullets peppered the ground about their feet, their explosion bright in the semidarkness of the corridor. The weird creature was instantaneously reduced to a messy pulp as one of Grant's bullets drilled through its hard carapace. It lay there in a pool of its own fluids, a milky-colored ooze leaking from the remains of its body as its legs twitched. Although it had been mashed up by Grant's bullet, enough of it remained that the Cerberus warriors could define its basic anatomy. It was roughly seven inches across, both length and width, in an almost perfectly circular form. The body itself was a dangling two-inch oval amid the spray of long, needle-thin legs, and milky ooze seeped from a ruined area at its back left edge as the legs finally stilled. There were eight legs in all, a neutral color like the body, the color of frosted glass. It made no noise, just continued to bubble in place as its white lifeblood seeped away into the uneven floor of
the corridor, washing away in thin runnels as the liquid sought the path of least resistance.

“You were right,” Brigid said to no one in particular. “It does look like a spider. Could be a crab of some sort. What do you think, Clem?” she asked, turning to the oceanographer.

Clem's eyes were fixed on a point just behind Brigid, a little way over her head. “Whatever it is, I think we're about to get better acquainted, Miss Baptiste,” he said in a quiet, awestruck voice.

Brigid turned, as did Kane and Grant, automatically bringing their blasters to bear on the place Clem indicated. Up there, skittering along the walls and high arch of the roof, more of the glass-colored creatures were moving, their numbers lost to the darkness of the corridor. In the halfhearted blue light from the walls, it looked like a hundred needle-thin fingers reaching out from the walls at Grant, pointing at him in accusation.

“Clem,” Kane asked, not bothering to look behind him, “best guess here—are these things likely to be deadly?”

Although Clem had never seen the creatures until today, his expertise was sufficient to extrapolate a reasonable risk assessment in a couple of seconds. “The ocean is full of numerous things that can be poisonous—and often fatal—to human beings. I'd suggest we don't touch their blood until we know what's in it.”

As a hundred spiderlike creatures skittered across the walls, moving in a radial pattern toward the Cerberus heroes, Kane became aware of more movements at his sides, behind and all around him. He glanced briefly to the side and saw more of the spiny creatures emerging from crevices in the coral wall, their spindly
legs reaching out as they clambered into view, even as another of the dull blue wall lights winked out. As Kane turned back to the mass of creatures at his rear, yet another of the ocean blue lights blinked out, plunging another chunk of the corridor into darkness in the direction of the docking bay.

“Let's keep going,” Kane decided, his gun twitching this way and that as he spotted more of the ugly arachnids moving about the walls and skittering along the floor. “Baptiste, you're on point.”

Brigid grabbed Clem by the elbow and hurried him down the corridor in the direction they had been going before Grant had stopped.

Three steps later and another of the ineffective blue lights fizzled out, leaving an increasing length of the corridor ahead of them in darkness, as was the whole of the tunnel length behind them. Clem slowed his pace, but Brigid urged him on.

“Come on, Clem, let's keep moving,” Brigid insisted.

Clem looked at her, and Brigid saw his eyes flash in the eerie nonlight of the narrow corridor. “I don't relish walking into a situation blind,” he said, though it was a practical concern rather than through any suggestion of fear on his part.

Even as Clem said it, bright beams of light appeared from behind him—first one, then two, as Grant and Kane flipped on their xenon-beam flashlights. Suddenly the whole of the narrow corridor was bathed in brilliance, the xenon beams the equivalent of five thousand candles of power.

It wasn't an improvement.

The bumpy, misshapen walls appeared to be alive with movement, the glistening, spiderlike creatures
skittering across their surfaces as they reared away from the bright lights. On the floor, too, dozens of multi-legged creatures scurried for cover, clambering over the uneven floor as they vied for space. As Brigid watched, more of the creatures emerged, their pencil-thin legs wrapping around the ridges in the floor as they reared up, peering at the intruders.

“Kane…” Brigid began uncertainly.

“I see them, Baptiste,” Kane said from behind her. “Let's hope that if we just ignore them—”

Kane didn't get the chance to finish his sentence. One of the spiderlike monstrosities disengaged from the wall before him and flew at his face, propelled through the air by a powerful leap, its spindly legs waving before it like a snapping claw.

Kane ducked, but as he did so things took a further turn for the worse. The leaping creature seemed to throw something at Kane, either spit or secreted through some other orifice, and a thin spurt of yellow-white liquid dashed through the air, whizzing just over his head.

To one side, Grant followed the little creature with the nose of his blaster as it dropped to the floor just behind Kane, its leap propelling it past its target. Without hesitation, he blasted off another round from the Copperhead close-assault weapon, reducing the fast-moving creature to a messy pool of goo and quivering legs.

Having avoided the thing's attack, Kane's eyes widened as he watched the pool of spit it had tossed at him. The venom, or whatever it was, was fizzing, bubbles appearing across its surface as it spewed a misty white trail of smoke, like caustic soda where it had pooled on the uneven floor. “We may be in trouble,” he muttered
as he raised his Sin Eater and scanned the walls ahead under the unforgiving light of his xenon beam.

The Cerberus warriors were absolutely surrounded by the monstrous creatures whose needlelike legs clicked as they raced across the hard surface of the coral structure.

At the front of the group, Clem took a step back, even as three more of the multilimbed creatures spewed streams of venom at him and Brigid. The venom streams rushed past him, creating smoldering trails on the ridged floor.

Brigid took aim with the TP-9, blasting off three shots in swift succession, destroying the attacking creatures where they clung to the walls. It was hopeless, she knew—the odds were simply too great. Like some mythological beast, kill one and a dozen more rushed to take its place. “Kane, we need a better solution,” she announced, “and we need it quick.”

Then Brigid shoved Clem to one side as one of the wall-crawlers leaped, its sharp legs poised ahead like blades. The creature sailed past where Clem had stood a second before, landing on the ground with a clack-clack of its legs and scurrying down the corridor toward where Grant waited with Kane.

“Stay awake, Clem,” Brigid admonished, “we're in a danger zone here.”

More of the creatures were dropping from the ceiling and walls, a whole cloud of them leaping through the air toward Grant and Kane.

Grant's Copperhead assault gun boomed in the narrow corridor, its loud blast muffled by the ridges of the tight walls. Several of the tiny monsters were caught in the blast, fizzling into fiery nothingness as Grant's bullets drilled through their fragile forms. Then
they were upon him, six tiny bodies clambering over his chest and up his right arm, their needle-sharp legs pressing against his Kevlar coat and shadow suit.

Moving swiftly, Grant swept the creatures off his arm, and two of them went flying through the air while a third dug its spiny legs into his brushing hand. Grant yelped in pain as the needlelike legs prodded at his skin, before swatting the thing against the nearest wall. It moved fast, trying to get away from its promised fate, but Grant's lightning-quick reactions trapped enough of the creature against the wall to flatten its bulk.

Two more of the strange arachnids were racing across his chest, and one loomed over his breastbone, raising its carapace on those awful, sticklike legs before spitting a gob of milky venom at the exposed skin of his face. Grant closed his eyes, turning his head as the acidic spew sprayed past him, smelling something like gasoline. He heard the fizzing of the liquid spray as it whooshed past his ear. And then something slapped against Grant's chest. He opened his eyes to see Kane flinging the remaining creatures from him, using the muzzle of his Sin Eater. Kane flipped them into the air with a swift movement, blasting a flaring shot into one of them as it whizzed through the air while the other bumped against and clung onto the wall, scuttling up the ridges before disappearing into one of the shadowy crevices there.

More of the spindly-legged creatures were scampering across the floor and walls, their sharp talons skittering against the hard coral with a sound like raindrops on a tin plate. At the head of the group, Brigid was rapidly selecting her targets and drilling them with 9 mm bullets from her TP-9, missing about one in three thanks to the creatures' rapid movements. Suddenly, one of the
monstrous things was on her foot, clambering to gain purchase on her leg, and Brigid kicked out, flipping the thing away in a graceless whirl of clacking limbs.

More of the creatures were dropping from above, and Clem danced on the spot as sprays of acid venom rained down all around him. Kane watched as one of the ugly, spindly creatures turned and spit a gob of venom at Clem's back. The gob fell just short, and Kane rattled off another blast from his Sin Eater, turning the little monster into a pool of dangling goo.

Another of the creatures pounced off the floor at Brigid, using its multiple limbs like a spring to charge forward, embedding itself in her leg. She roared with surprise as much as pain before turning her pistol on it and blasting a bullet through its colorless body. Even as its body exploded, another of the spiderlike creatures dropped from the ceiling, landing in Brigid's long hair and entangling itself there in a moment.

Brigid was struck by a weird sense of déjà vu, as she felt the thing scampering across her scalp. She sensed that she had been here before, done this very thing before. It was strange, and all the more so since Brigid Baptiste had an eidetic memory and the vague sense of déjà vu was, to say the least, very unusual in her because her powers of recollection were so potent.

She pushed the thought aside, blindly reaching into her hair and placing her fingers around one of the creature's limbs. In a second, she had tossed the thing to the floor, and she stamped on it as it struggled to right itself, crushing its body beneath the ball of her foot. Goop oozed out around her boot as the creature was turned to sludgy pulp. Brigid ignored it, turning back down the corridor and shouting for Kane.