Moving quickly, she grabbed at the sheath holding the knife, ripped back the seal, and pulled the blade. Gripping it tightly, she was just turning back toward the creature as its tail whipped forward over its head to impale her.
* * *
Staring open-mouthed through the port, her hands on either side of the window, Faris whirled and ran. Ran without thinking, without looking back. Her mind was drowning in screams, both her own and Karine’s.
Stumbling wildly, she slammed into a bulkhead, staggered and fell. For a moment the screams went away. Dizzy and bleeding, she picked herself up. There was nowhere to run. There was only the lander. And that—thing. Some kind of faintly humanoid being that possessed not a trace of humanity.
The comm. Omni-pickup. She shouted at the top of her lungs.
“This is Lander One! We have an emergency! Please come in. Captain Oram, I need you! I need everyone! Now!”
* * *
Exhausted but driven to break into a run, both by the proximity of the ship’s lights and Faris’ frantic cry for help, the team willed themselves to accelerate toward the lakeshore. By this time Walter and Lopé were alternately carrying and dragging the unconscious Hallet.
Puffing hard as he ran, Oram yelled into his pickup.
“Faris, what’s going on? What kind of emergency? Christ, answer me, Faris!”
Her reply was uneven. If she was moving rapidly through the ship, her voice would have to be transferred from one pickup to the next. The electronic response was fast, but it wasn’t instantaneous, and would have to adjust clarity and volume for the fact that the speaker was not standing still.
“Something got on board. Some kind of… animal or parasite. Hostile. Vaguely humanoid, but morphed— neomorphic. Came out of Ledward… he’s dead. Oh god, oh god! Please hurry… I’m afraid it’s…”
Communication failed.
Oram cursed the loss of contact.
“What? Say again? Faris, repeat. Come in Lander One!” There was no response. “Fuck!”
Paced by Daniels, he started to sprint. As the pair broke out ahead of the others, Lopé and Walter were held back by the need to carry Hallet. In the absence of orders to do otherwise, Cole, Rosenthal, and Ankor stayed with the sergeant. Overcome by his partner’s breakdown, Lopé didn’t think to order the other members of the security detail to go with the captain and Daniels.
* * *
Inside the lander, at least a portion of Faris’ dread gave way to determination. Running to the weapons lockers, she wrenched open an orange door and fumbled inside for a weapon—any weapon. Settling on a military-grade shotgun with half a dozen heavy shells secured to its side, she whirled and raced back toward the medbay, loading the weapon as she ran.
Around her, Oram’s frantic words, broken and distorted, echoed through the corridors. Having no time to reply, she ignored them now.
Gripping the weapon tightly, she slowed as she neared the medbay. Pausing there, she took a moment to catch her breath, to try and collect herself, before pressing her back against the wall and edging sideways until she could once again turn to peer through the port.
The creature that had erupted out of Ledward—the neomorph—was on top of Karine. She was screaming and her heels, bloodied, were slamming spasmodically against the deck. The creature was also shrieking—wordlessly, horribly, machine-like in its incomprehensibility.
Readying herself, Faris deliberately hyperventilated a couple of times, then punched the door control. The barrier slid aside and she stepped into the medbay.
The white neomorph was standing on Karine’s chest, shredding her face and torso. It might have been eating, though in that brief soul-sucking moment Faris couldn’t tell for certain what it was doing. Responding to the sound of the door opening, it spun and looked up from its horrid, gory perch.
Taking a step forward as she tried to aim the weapon, Faris slipped in the spreading pool of blood and liquid and guts. She fired while going down, but the shot went predictably wild and slammed into the ceiling. Leaping off the mangled body of the scientist the neomorph attacked—only to find itself equally without traction as it slipped and scrabbled to get a purchase on the bloody, slick floor.
The precious few seconds allowed Faris just enough time to scramble back through the door and slam the “close” button. Having gone in with the intent of helping Karine, she had discovered that her friend was beyond help. Now she had to try and save herself.
The door began to slide shut—only to have the creature insert a portion of itself into the opening. Screaming, cursing, she jabbed the obstructing white limb as hard as she could with the butt end of the weapon. Every time she knocked it back it returned, fighting with crazed energy to get through the gap, to get at her. Each time, the door tried to close, found itself jammed, started to reopen, then reclose.
With reserves of strength she didn’t know she had, she finally succeeded in shoving the weapon hard enough against the protruding limb to force it far enough back into the room to enable the door to shut and lock. But in the process, the weapon ended up in the room with the monster.
Turning, she ran back up the corridor. Behind her, motivated by an incomprehensible inhuman energy, the frenzied neomorph slashed and battered at the door, leaping and kicking. A crack appeared in the port.
Racing away from the booming, pounding noise behind her, Faris staggered into the lander’s cargo bay and wrenched another shotgun from the still open locker. There was no shelter in the empty bay save for a webbed divider. Feeble though it was she took cover behind it, trying to steady her shaking hands and the weapon they held. Automatically she loaded it, and then flicked off the safety.
Moments later the neomorph appeared, already grown larger than it had been just moments ago. It took only a moment for it to see her hiding behind the webbing. Without sound or hesitation it leaped toward her, its movements a cross between those of a spider and a baboon. She screamed and fired, point-blank.
Missed.
Emitting a metallic screech, the creature threw itself sideways, away from her and toward the open hatch. Still screaming and cursing, Faris tried to track it with her weapon. Repeated bursts tore up the webbing and the interior of the bay as they struck just behind the fleeing, dodging creature, sending shards of metal flying, blowing out lights, conduits, intersecting the open weapons locker…
WHOOM.
XII
Ahead of the others and sprinting flat-out through the last of the tall grass, Oram and Daniels stumbled to a halt as the night lit up in front of them. As they gaped at the ball of flame rising from the devastated lander, he caught a glimpse of a white shape bounding off on all fours away from the blaze and into the darkness.
Karine, he thought wildly.
He resumed running toward the lakeshore with Daniels close on his heels. The conflagration that now engulfed the lander felt even hotter in the chill and damp that followed sunset. Somewhere within the inferno were his wife and Faris, somewhere trapped, burning…
As he drew close the intense heat threatened to blister his exposed skin. He didn’t care. He had to go in, had to find Karine, had to get her out.
He went down, tackled from behind by Daniels. Scrambling to get on top of him, she struggled to hold him down as he fought to rise.
“Karine… Karine!” He began sobbing uncontrollably.
“Chris!” Daniels was all but jumping on him in her fight to keep him pinned. “Stay back, stay here!” He kept trying to crawl out from under her, his eyes fastened on the flaming landing craft.
She threw up her arms to shield her face as a secondary explosion scattered pieces of the ship in all directions. Those that landed in the lake hissed in counterpoint to the crackling of the flames. The exterior of the lander could not burn, but it could be scarred. The fact that the majority of the blaze was contained within the fireproof shell only made the flammable materials within burn that much hotter.
Blackened and consumed in flame, a figure emerge
d from the interior. Tottering down the landing ramp, it staggered a couple of times before collapsing at its base. Letting out a strangled moan, Oram fought to rise. Somehow Daniels kept control of him, pressing his head down so that he wouldn’t, couldn’t see.
A series of additional explosions caused the remains of the lander to implode as a blast of heat swept over Daniels and Oram. The ship was built to withstand a flaming re-entry, not to contain exploding military ordnance. With its internal superstructure bent and crumpled, there was nothing to prevent it from collapsing in on itself.
Weeping, Oram gave up trying to throw Daniels off his back. He dug his gloved hands into the dirt, clutching the soil as if he could somehow strangle the planet itself. In front of them, the blaze began to die as the last of the flammable materials within the lander burned themselves out.
As a result, they had no trouble hearing the scream that sounded behind them.
Daniels scrambled to her feet, turning to peer into the gathering dusk back the way they had come. Less than a hundred meters behind her and the captain, beams wove crazy patterns in the night as Hallet’s comrades clustered around him. The sergeant was on the ground, convulsing and contorting wildly, his body arcing and twisting as if trying to throw off some unseen demon.
Lopé was beside him, trying to hold his partner steady, but Hallet’s spasms were too violent even for the senior sergeant to control.
“Tom!”
As strong as Sergeant Lopé was, he was unable to keep the other man pinned down. With a spasmodic arch of his back, Hallet threw his partner off, then continued jerking and bouncing on the ground. When Rosenthal and then Ankor tried to get close and help, Hallet’s wildly flailing limbs kept them at a distance.
Seeing what was happening, Daniels was torn between running to offer assistance and staying with the distraught Oram. Now off the captain’s back, she stood and watched him as he rose to his knees. When, tears streaking down his face, he stayed in that position, no longer trying to run toward the ruins of the craft, she turned and rushed to rejoin the others.
Emotionally as well as physically exhausted, she could only hope that Oram would see the futility of trying to get anywhere near the still-flaming wreckage.
When she reached the others, Hallet was on his back, his spine bending into a curve no human vertebrae ought to have been able to realize without breaking. He was choking, gasping weakly for air. Moving in and ignoring the other man’s thrashing arms, Lopé tried once again to get control of his partner. To Daniels it looked as if every nerve in Hallet’s body had been short-circuited.
His head went back, then forward as he heaved out a gout of blood in such volume that not even Lopé could withstand it. Yet again he was forced to let go and fall back. Hallet’s eyes bulged and Rosenthal let out a scream as the sergeant’s neck expanded hugely. His mouth opened wide, wider, until the mandible and maxilla split apart from one another. The extreme distention would have been normal in a feeding snake. In a human, it was a grotesque distortion worthy of Bosch.
Vomiting forth from deep within Hallet’s body, the placenta-like sac landed on the ground with a wet smack. Glistening with lubricating ooze, it burst as it struck the surface. From within emerged something small, whitish, bipedal, and highly mobile. An elongated eyeless skull quickly surveyed its surroundings. Letting out a high-pitched shriek, it displayed incredible speed and mobility as it dashed past them and into the darkness of the nearby undergrowth.
By the time any of them had sense enough to raise a weapon, it was gone.
Daniels stood staring at the patch of forest where it had disappeared. When she had convinced herself it wasn’t coming back, she took stock of her colleagues. All stood motionless, in various degrees of shock.
Worst off was Lopé. The tough, gruff security chief was staring at the shattered body of his life partner. As a soldier he had seen his share of violent death, but that had come at times and in ways for which some precedent existed. Hallet’s demise had been as vile as it had been unexpected. Looking away from the emotionally overwhelmed sergeant, Daniels once again let her gaze roam the nearby woods and undergrowth.
Oram had hoped this world might prove a better candidate for settlement than the more distant Origae-6, and in its cold, antiseptic way, she had to admit that the planet itself was truly beautiful.
A spider web was also beautiful.
* * *
Positioned in geosynchronous orbit, the Covenant drifted peacefully, clear of the chaos that had broken out on the world below. Stretching between it and those who were now trapped on the surface, the ionospheric storm raged on unabated.
On the bridge, Tennessee and those around him did everything they could to re-establish contact with the expedition team, short of falling to their knees and imploring unseen gods. Every channel was sampled, every frequency explored. Signals were boosted to the edge of comprehensibility. Nothing worked, but they kept trying. There was nothing else to do but keep trying.
On the other hand, hovering above the central navigation console, holo projections of the storm were plentiful and crisp. Sick of looking at it, Tennessee had come to regard it as a persistent enemy, an inorganic affront not only to the mission but to him personally. He also knew that such thoughts were entirely irrational, but he wasn’t feeling especially rational at the moment. Perhaps that’s why he finally voiced what he’d been thinking.
“We’re going down after them.”
Looking up from her station, Upworth gaped at him.
“I’m sorry, Tennessee. What did you just say?”
Peering over at her, he repeated himself, making sure he spoke clearly. He did not try to keep emotion out of his voice. Oram would have presented the proposal differently, but Oram wasn’t here, and Tennessee was acting captain.
“Down. We’re going down. To pick them up.”
Upworth indicated the nearest holo of the upper atmospheric tempest. “I don’t see any lessening of storm intensity.” She quickly checked a readout. “Same wind speeds, same probabilities of turbulence. Severe turbulence,” she added for emphasis. “If anything, the weather system has increased in extent. It’s now covering a good part of this portion of the northern hemisphere.”
“Then we fly through it.”
She was openly aghast. “We can’t! The Covenant isn’t a landing craft. You know that it’s not supposed to enter atmosphere, except for final unloading prior to official decommissioning. She wasn’t designed for handling heavy turbulence.”
“But she’s capable of it.”
Upworth didn’t hesitate. “Technically, and from an engineering standpoint, yes. She has to be, if the world chosen for colonization proves unsuitable and another has to be found. A deep atmospheric drop and subsequent orbital re-entry has never been done with an actual colony ship. Only in simulations.”
“But it works in the official simulations.”
She had to concede the point. “Yes. In the simulations.” She indicated the holo once again. “I don’t recall any simulations that involved a drop into weather like this. We can’t do this. Tennessee, you’re a pilot. Forget simulations and design specs for a minute. You know what the tolerances are.”
He was silent for a moment.
“Fuck the tolerances.”
That was enough for Upworth. Tennessee was the acting captain, but she knew him much better as a colleague, and that was how she replied to him.
“Fuck your personal concerns!” she spat back. “I’m just as worried about the team as you are, Tee, but it’s a goddamn hurricane down there! Have you looked at the sustained wind speeds in the upper atmosphere lately? Not to mention the frequency of potentially damaging electrical discharges.” She stabbed a finger at the holo of the storm. “We try to descend through that weather and, fucking simulations aside, I’m telling you we would break up. That would do a fat lot of good for the team, plus everyone on board, wouldn’t it?” She paused for breath. “There’s nothing we can do. We have to wait
it out.”
He turned away. She was right. He knew she was right. A part of him hated her for being right, but the dread he was feeling—for the members of the expedition—was outweighed by his knowledge of the ship’s tolerances. A crash landing would be worse than no landing. Even if they could put the Covenant down safely, there was a very good chance she would never be able to lift off.
It was just that waiting, when he knew that his wife and friends might be in danger, was… so hard. It was one reason, he told himself, why he had never wanted to be a captain.
He turned toward a pickup.
“Mother, how long until the storm clears enough to reestablish communication with the surface?”
The ship replied immediately. “Given prevailing atmospheric conditions and based on preliminary predictions for continued development or cessation over the next half-day cycle, secure surface communications might be possible in anywhere from twelve to forty-eight hours.”
He was silent. Even twelve hours was… too long. Forty-eight hours was an eternity. For Mother, the prediction was unusually non-specific. He could hardly blame the AI, though. Weather prediction always had been and still was an imprecise science—let alone on a newly discovered world.
Seeing his distress, Upworth offered the only words she could. “I’m sorry, Tee. You know it’s the right decision. It’s the only decision. A Covenant descent, even in perfect conditions, would be tricky. In that storm…” Her words trailed away.
Moving to the port, he gazed down at the new planet and its raging atmosphere. There was no one to blame for the weather. From Earth, they couldn’t predict the climate conditions on Origae-6, either. Only read the atmosphere and guess that the seasons might be amenable. For that matter, conditions here might prove ideal, too, save for the occasional berserking in the ionosphere.
“She was scared,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. Only Upworth was close enough to hear him. “I’ve never heard my wife scared.”
* * *
Oram sat hunched in front of the still blazing lander, his eyes glazed, utterly shell-shocked. Had anyone brought up the subject, he would never have imagined that the ruined vessel contained so much flammable material. Worst of all—worse even than the losses the team had suffered—was the inescapable realization that at its heart, he was at fault.