Dust & Iron (Adventures of the Starship Satori Book 9) Read online

  The capacitors on the rifle read a full charge. She fired again, this time aiming for the thing’s thrashing head. The shot impacted dead center. The insect gave a convulsive twitch of its entire body and then went still.

  “Playing possum on me?” she asked aloud.

  There was one way to find out for sure. Charline reached over with her other hand and closed it on the bug’s head. Then she squeezed. The carapace resisted for only a moment before cracking under the pressure. She let go of the creature after that. It wasn’t coming back from so serious an injury.

  “Only one left, Andy,” she called into the radio. “But I don’t see it anywhere.”

  “It hasn’t surfaced yet. If it does, I’ll put a few rounds into it and finish this. But it’s still down there with you.”

  “This is a big pool. It might have decided swimming away is the best option,” Charline said. There she went again, playing with hope as a strategy, but it couldn’t be helped. The nightmare of fighting these things in close quarters combat was finally fading and her adrenaline along with it.

  She needed to get out of this pool. Out of the armor. What had felt like a protective shell that kept her safe from harm felt for a moment like a coffin again. She had to get out of there.

  The suit couldn’t swim. But could it use the powerful claws to climb?

  She turned toward a wall and drove her hand into it, testing to see if she could make a handhold. The stuff resisted her at first, but then crumbled away as she intensified the pressure.

  That was her ticket out. She reached up as high as she could with the other hand and dug a new hole, then lifted her suit up. One handhold at a time was the ticket. She punched two more holes into the wall, claws of the robot hands digging in to cling to the rock. Halfway to the surface, by her best guess.

  Something slammed into her back. The impact threw Charline painfully forward against her controls. Around her, the entire world felt like it was spinning. Water and light streaked by her vision on the screen. The world wasn’t spinning – she was! The blow had knocked her loose from the rock and now she was sinking again, swirling downward into inky darkness, unable to slow her descent or even know how she would land.

  THIRTEEN

  The impact with the pool’s bottom was hard enough to rattle Charline’s teeth together. The harness only barely kept her from cracking her head against the display panel in front of her, which was spitting out a series of warnings. She’d taken some damage in the fall. How bad was it?

  The screen was showing only concrete. She must have landed face-first. That left her back exposed, and the insect would be coming down after her. She’d been exposed and vulnerable, trying to crawl up the side. It had taken advantage of that. She shook her head.

  “That was stupid. Stupid!” She couldn’t afford to be careless or to let fear overcome her again. The controls still seemed to be responding. She pushed up with the suit’s arms, and her body lifted away from the stone floor. But before she could get back to her feet, another impact came in from behind, smashing her back into the ground.

  “Shit!”

  She flipped the controls hard, and the suit rolled. It was just in time. The insect came hurtling past her and smacked into the stone where she’d been laying a moment before. It shook its head like the blow had dazed it but came quickly after her again.

  “No, you don’t,” Charline said. She depressed the firing button for her shoulder rifle. The insect veered off sharply and the shot missed – but at least it was swimming away from her.

  Using her hands and legs, she brought the suit back to a standing position. One of her lights was out, but the other was working. It stabbed out into the black water as she swung it back and forth, trying vainly to spot her attacker before it came after her again.

  That was when Charline realized her right foot was cold. She glanced down, but she couldn’t see the limb. Too much machinery and harness in the way. The suit conformed tightly around her lower body. There wasn’t much wiggle room. But she managed to twitch her foot just a bit from side to side. She heard a sloshing sound.

  There was water flowing into her suit. Some seal had burst under the repeated strains. If water was leaking in that meant air was headed out.

  Her suit would try to compensate as best it could. The air tanks would maintain positive pressure as long as possible. But this deep in the water, she wasn’t sure how long the suit could maintain that pace. Water would continue trickling in. Eventually, the entire suit would fill up with water, and she’d drown – assuming she hadn’t run out of air long before then.

  The gauge tracking how much air was left in the tank was dropping at an alarming rate. The pressure required to keep water from pouring in through the leak must be expending her air more rapidly than normal.

  “Shit!” she shouted a second time.

  Charline backed the suit against the wall. She was breathing fast, almost hyperventilating, and she knew it. But there nothing she could do to control her rising panic. This was it. She had managed any number of narrow escapes and near misses on missions in the past. But eventually, your number came up. Just like it had for John. At least he went down saving the planet. Her end would be ignominious, her memorial a pile of slowly rusting metal at the bottom of an alien pool of water.

  The creature rushed in at her, from the left this time. The impact smashed into her suit’s center torso, almost knocking her over again. She barely managed to stay upright. Charline tried to take a swing at the insect like she would swat a fly, but it swam away too rapidly. She was too slow. Her adversary struck like lightning, leaving her no time to respond to its attacks.

  “Hey, are you doing all right down there?” Andy asked over the radio.

  The creature hammered home another blow before she could respond. Charline wasn’t sure how much more of this abuse her suit could take before it came apart at the seams. She took one step back, and then another, and found herself backed into the corner once more. At least there, it couldn’t sneak up on her. She could see it coming.

  “Only one left, but I’m in a bad way. My suit is leaking water. Not sure how much air I have left. I’m sorry, Andy,” Charlene said.

  There was a pause, like he was considering how to reply. She understood. Last goodbyes sucked, and she wasn’t any better at them than anyone else. She didn’t know what to say, either. But what he said when he finally spoke surprised her.

  “You’re the smartest person I know. If it was anyone else down there but you, I figure they were toast,” Andy said. “But you’re also the finest marksman I know. If anyone can get out of this mess, you can, Charline. But you’ve got to fight!”

  “I can’t even see it coming! It’s too fast. I don’t have time to react.”

  “Then don’t react. Make it respond to you. You have to become the hunter now.”

  He was right. She’d been thinking of herself as prey, and that had made the insects the predator, she the quarry. If she was going to have even the smallest prayer of surviving this mess, she needed to reverse those roles. It was time to go hunting.

  She was on the clock. Charline didn’t know if the alien insect was aware of that or not. They had shown uncanny intellect in the past, so it wouldn’t have surprised her. The thing might know that all it needed to do was wear her down. Wait her out, keep her pinned in place, and eventually she would die. Then it would be free to slaughter the rest of her team on the surface.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Charline said aloud.

  She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Using the same rigorous discipline that had won her medals at the shooting range, she slowed her heartbeat and brought her mind into focus. Charline knew she needed to be present in the now, not worrying about the future or wishing she had done something different in the past. All of her attention was required. It took every ounce of will she had to bring her roiling emotions back under rein. She took stock of her situation, checking the air gauge only once. Then Charline steppe
d away from the protective wall, out of the corner, and went looking for the thing that was trying to kill her.

  FOURTEEN

  The water was utterly dark. Charline felt like it was pressing in on her from all sides. She couldn’t feel her leg up to her knee anymore, which meant the water was continuing to trickle in despite her armor’s best attempts to keep it out. There wasn’t much time left. She had to find the alien centipede from hell quickly.

  She split her view-screen into four quadrants, one giving her the feed from a camera in each direction. If the thing came at her she would only have the barest fraction of a second to react before it hit her, but it was better than not seeing it at all. She walked out into the darkness, pivoting from left to right as she walked. One good shot from her shoulder cannon could finish this fight and save all of them. All she had to do was make one truly awesome shot under the worst conditions she could have imagined.

  It was nowhere to be seen. The thing had come at her over and over when she’d been near the wall and off-balance. It was still out there. She was sure of that. Andy would have radioed her if the creature had surfaced. His people were watching for it. Which meant it was out there somewhere, stalking her even as she hunted for it.

  She swung her left arm at a shifting shadow that she thought was another attack. The arm moved through empty water, but the movement made Charline remember the gun mounted there. The bullets would lose much of their penetrating power traveling through water, so she hadn’t bothered using the gun. The rounds wouldn’t be able to punch through the insect’s carapace underwater.

  But it might not know that.

  Charline checked the weapon. It still looked operational, and she had most of a full can of ammunition. While she hated wasting ammo on anything that wasn’t a viable target, if there was ever a time to be less thrifty, this was it. She aimed the gun arm out into the dark and then fired. The bullets streaked out into the water, visible only by the bubbles they burned as they passed. She pivoted in place, slowly turning around in a full circle, firing off bursts in every direction.

  How smart was the insect? It was no simple bug. That much was certain. They had enough intellect to grasp ambush and seemed to understand which weapons could hurt them and which could not – or at least they learned very rapidly from experience. Was it smart enough to know she was shooting blind? Or would it feel the rounds stream past it, even plink off its shell, and think she knew where it was?

  There was a rush of movement from behind her. Charline whirled, twisting her torso in an effort to get the shoulder rifle around in time. The insect impacted her before she could get a good aim.

  The burning question seemed to be answered: they were smart, but they could be fooled. Her bullets couldn’t hurt the insect, but they’d stirred it from its hiding place anyway. Now she had to deal with half a ton of angry centipede trying to bite through her midsection.

  The armor groaned. Charline checked her panel – the insect wasn’t hitting her quickly and running away this time. It had coiled itself around her. Now it was slowly working its claws and mandibles into the armored plates protecting her. If she wasn’t watching it happen, she’d never have believed an insect was capable of ripping into welded steel. But this one was.

  It was going to take the armor apart one chunk at a time. The water. Charline felt her heart pound. The freezing cold liquid outside would pour into the shell around her, and it would be a race to see which killed her first, the bug or the water.

  But she wasn’t defenseless. She wasn’t just prey. Andy told her to be the hunter, and she had more than just one rifle in her arsenal. Before they’d equipped the suit with weapons, she’d killed one of these things with just the mechanical hands on the ends of her robot arms.

  She reached in toward herself. The bug might think it was smart, trying to constrict her and claw its way into her shell. But that made it easy for her to find it, too. Her hands closed on the bug’s carapace. She felt it shudder as her clawed hands closed and began to squeeze. The movement shook her entire body. It felt her steel fingers close around it like a pair of vices. The insect redoubled its efforts to break through to her as she started to squeeze.

  Steel and motor groaned as they tried to overcome the most remarkable biologic protection Charline had ever seen. The insect scrabbled furiously at her armor. There was a screeching noise as one of the claws penetrated the armor and raked across the suit’s inner layer. The claw scratched a shallow cut into the suit just above her head. Water spattered her face as the claw withdrew, and she screamed.

  The cold shock made Charline relax her grip on the controls. The robot hands released their hold. The insect took the chance to run for it. It uncoiled itself from around her in a sinuous motion. Almost too fast for her eye to follow, it swam upward and away. She’d hurt the thing badly. It was trailing some sort of bodily fluid in the water behind it.

  “Not badly enough, though. You’ve still got some fight in you,” Charline said, more to take her mind off the trickle of water dribbling onto her hair and face. The pool was incredibly cold. The icy touch of each drop made her want to gasp for her next breath.

  Instead, she calmed her breathing. She turned the suit, facing it straight toward the fleeing bug. There wasn’t going to be time for a second shot. Charline gave herself as long as she could to aim the Naga rifle. Her finger pulled ever so slightly at the firing button, stroking it like she would have a rifle trigger.

  Naga capacitors snapped and snarled underwater as they discharged the energy pellet. It spat upward and away, sizzling through the water. The shot slammed home just behind the insect’s head, shattering the carapace and all but exploding through the exit site. The alien bug gave one massive convulsion and then was still. It floated toward the surface. Charline watched it rise, waiting to make sure it was dead.

  “Oh, why take chances?” she said. She took careful aim a second time and fired off another round. This one took the insect in the head and shattered it.

  Charline’s nightmare was over. Her hands were trembling as she toggled on the radio microphone. Whether it was from cold, shock, or both, she couldn’t tell.

  “Andy? I got it,” she said. “Going to need a little help getting out of here, though.”

  “We can see your lights from the surface. There’s a shallow area about ten meters to your right. You should be able to wade out there,” he replied. “We’re standing by to help.”

  She set off in the direction he’d told her. It seemed to take forever to break the surface. When she finally did, Charline couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down her face.

  FIFTEEN

  Charline heard water stream off the armor as she stepped clear of the pool. Dry land at last. She wanted nothing more than to pop the lid on the suit and get back to being herself for a while, but she couldn’t afford the luxury. There was no way to tell if the creatures she’d killed were the last ones left in these caves. If there were more, she was their best line of defense.

  “You’ve mucked up that suit pretty well, haven’t you?” Halcomb said.

  She looked down. He was in front of her, glaring up, hands on hips. But the smile he wore belied the words coming from his mouth.

  “I did nothing of the sort,” Charline retorted. “Now, those alien insects might have banged it up a little, mind you…”

  Halcomb barked a laugh. “Yes, but you mucked them right back.” He pointed at the water and she followed the gesture.

  The insects floated after they were killed, and the surface of the pool was decorated with the corpses of her slain enemies. Charline shivered. It had almost been her death down there instead.

  But she hadn’t died. She’d managed to go on, just like she had on every other misadventure since her first voyage into space. If space was a deadly place, well, she would just continue to face those troubles head-on. It was the only way. Sticking her head in the sand back on Earth wasn’t any better. Life there was just as jeopardized. At least out here,
maybe she could make a difference.

  “We need to finish sweeping the cave. Make sure there are no more of them. I’ll lead the patrol. Andy, you and the others follow close behind,” Charline said.

  “Will do. What about the gear?” Andy said.

  “Leave it for now. I won’t split the team in a potentially hostile environment,” Charline said. “Everyone armed? Good. Eyes out, keep your heads in the game.”

  That last was as much for herself as anyone else. Charline felt wiped out. Between being knocked out by the cave-in, multiple battles, and the near-death experience in the pool, she knew she was pushing herself. For a moment, she considered stepping out of the armor and letting someone else run it for a while. Give someone else the hot seat. But she looked at the people following her. They were as worn down as she was. Two of them were walking wounded, staggering along only with assistance.

  “How are you doing up there?” Andy asked. Charline checked the radio. He was sending to her on a private channel.

  “I could use a coffee,” she replied, trying to keep how exhausted she was from her voice.

  “We all could. Let’s clear this place and then set up a camp for some rest,” Andy said.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  The ground was uneven enough that one of the armor’s feet caught briefly on a stone. It ordinarily wouldn’t have been enough to set the suit off balance, but coupled with Charline’s exhaustion it was just enough. She stumbled and caught herself by reflexively reaching out with one arm toward the wall. The hand’s impact shattered the rock as it skid across the rough surface.

  “Damn. Stupid rock!” Charline said. “Never where it’s supposed to be.”