Author's Note: In which a unit struggles to adapt to the new method of doing things, a yautja muses on the nature of technology, and a little more of the plan comes to light.
I'm sorry I took so long with this one! I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year, in addition to the extra workload (I'm training a new rep for our company), so long-term fanfic pieces have sort of fallen behind. I'm winding up to the big climax, though, so I hope you guys stick with me just a bit longer.
A big thanks, as always, to all the wonderful people who've read and reviewed so far. (JJ Rust, how in God's name do you manage it?) And thanks of course to the Twitter gang—you guys know who you are—who got the ball rolling and provided me with a dozen synonyms for "slime."
Rating: T.
Disclaimer: G.I. Joe is the property of Hasbro, Inc. The Aliens and Predator franchises are property of 20th Century Fox Entertainment. I derive no profit from the use of these characters and concepts, and have received no compensation. Please accept this work in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from these intellectual properties.
Chapter Eleven: Dead Men Tell No Tales
First things first. Even as Black Box accepted the trophy from Jaye, Scarlett turned away and unhooked her radio from her belt. "Private Velasquez," she said calmly. "Private Velasquez, do you copy? What's your status?"
Nothing. Only a snow of static answered her. She paused for a moment, telling herself it was just the structure interfering with their communications, and tried again. "Private Velasquez. Private Hartman. Private Carlisle. This is Scarlett. Do you copy?"
Static. The three conscious peacekeepers exchanged glances.
"Chuckles," she said evenly. Stokes, Hayesworth, and Yutani followed her with their eyes as she turned to the undercover agent. "I want you on the radio at every halt. Keep trying until we raise those men. Soldiers? Take five, and check your gear. We're moving soon."
Lifeline immediately got to his feet. "Scarlett, we've got wounded here. Faraday's going to be unconscious for a long time, Snake-Eyes shouldn't even be walking, and Storm Shadow still hasn't been examined after that fit of his-"
"Nobody's getting let behind," Scarlett said firmly, cutting off the medic's protests. "Lifeline, I trust your judgment. But there's no chance of getting a medevac down here, the way back is blocked, and I'm certainly not leaving wounded under minimal guard with those bugs out there. Everybody stands a better chance if we stay together. Beach?"
The burly sergeant major was already unslinging his pack. "Y'need cord, Scarlett?"
"As much as you've got. We can't afford to have someone incapacitated by a travois or a litter." Scarlett eyed Yutani. The big peacekeeper had carried Storm Shadow with barely an effort, and Faraday definitely had less muscle than the ninja. "Yutani? Can you take Faraday?"
"As long as he keeps quiet," Yutani said calmly. "Alien monsters are one thing, but I'm not having that chatterbox gnawing my ear off at the same time."
Scarlett smiled a little and made a mental note: Yutani was adapting well to the Joes' ways of doing things, and it was definitely a good sign. G.I. Joe team members had become used to extreme situations over the years, and if her people were rattled, she couldn't imagine what the pacekeepers were going through. As Beach and Lifeline began to rig up a sling for Yutani and Faraday, she surveyed the group, checking them off in her mind and paying close attention to their mannerisms.
In her experience, there were a number of ways people could deal with the stress of a highly dangerous and confusing mission. Humor was probably one of the least damaging ones, and the one a lot of the Joes used; blowing off steam in semi-violent pranks and discovering new ways to covertly terrorize their superiors and support divisions caused a hell of a lot of paperwork, but it also showed evidence of good coping skills. If you could laugh, you were less likely to scream. Yutani hadn't cracked wise much, but he showed the outward signs of a steady disposition and a quiet, razor-sharp set of wits. Despite the battle and the loss of more than half the peacekeepers, he remained fixed on his objective. Only the set of his jaw and the tension in his shoulders gave him away: Yutani hadn't gotten frightened, he'd gotten angry.
The same, she thought ruefully, had gone for Faraday. But he wore his emotions on his sleeve, and like his broad sense of humor, his anger had quickly gotten out of control. Chasing that alien down the corridor had run him right into Backstab's grip, and Snake-Eyes had wound up in a bizarre monster honor duel. When—not if, when—they got through with this, she was going to have words with Faraday. And Faraday's commanding officer. And possibly his commanding officer.
Hayesworth and Stokes were interesting, and possibly worrying, cases. Stokes, the medic, seemed to be taking refuge from the craziness in procedure: he was double-checking everything, every last bandage and every suture, with a maniacal thoroughness that was clearly beginning to irritate Lifeline. His attempts at redoing Snake-Eyes' bandages had been met with a Silent Death Glare of level-eleven strength, and since then he had settled down a little, but he kept going through his kit and checking everyone over in case they had spontaneously developed sucking chest wounds in the last five minutes.
Hayesworth, on the other hand, was riding the adrenaline train. He had shown good control during the alien firefight, pulling together with the Joes and helping to pick off the ceiling-crawling monsters, but it seemed to have given him more confidence than might be handled safely. It reminded Scarlett of young trainees in Vietnam; dumped into the meat grinder of a bloody offensive, staring down their first kills, they would gleefully stick the Ace of Spades in their helmet webbing and write death threats all over their gear. Some had just liked killing, but others used it as a way of whistling past the graveyard. If they told themselves they were gods of death, then it might as well be true, right? Scarlett resolved to keep an eye on that one.
The rest of her team was in pretty good condition, all things considered. Tunnel Rat was clearly spooked by the bugs, even after all this time, but he was notoriously good in tight situations (no pun intended) and even if he was afraid, he wasn't going to let it control him. She could count on verbal outbursts, but a steady hand. Beach Head's general dislike for Cobra had only increased after hearing the recording the hunters had played, and he seemed to be taking the existence of each black bug as a personal insult. Unlike 'Rat, though, he didn't make a production of his feelings: after helping secure Faraday on Yutani's back, he took over carrying most of the other sergeant major's gear without complaint and now stood still and alert, forever scanning the three corridors for movement.
Chuckles and Lifeline seemed to have had the same reaction: nothing to see here, folks, move along. If Chuckles was feeling anything extreme, it would be hard for Scarlett to tell—the man was a consummate actor and had a poker face like no other. Normally, that would have gone double for Lady Jaye, but the few women of G.I. Joe shared a close bond and Scarlett didn't have to look very hard to know Jaye was frightened. Not that that was surprising; Scarlett was clamping down tight on her own residual fear, refusing to let it control her, but humans are hardwired to be afraid of the unknown and it was still there. But in addition to being afraid, Jaye was an experienced soldier with superb self-control, and the fear wouldn't rule her. As for Lifeline, the only outward sign of his own worry was a very slight quaver in his voice and a sudden tendency towards making statements that were guaranteed to get a loud reaction from Beach Head. He was clinging to normalcy, even if he had to piss off a sergeant major to do it. Good for him.
The ninjas were standing a little apart from the group. Storm Shadow was speaking to Snake-Eyes in a low voice, using what sounded like an obscure rural dialect of Japanese—a clan argot, perhaps. Snake-Eyes was replying not with the usual shorthand signs, but with fingerspelling, and he was parsing out replies in the same tongue. From their gestures, though, it was clear that they were talking about weapons.
And then there were the hunters. Scarlett turned her stare to them extremely reluctantly; who knew where they stood with those things, or how they might react to being looked over? But they were part of the equation now and, in a way, indirectly responsible for the whole mess. They wouldn't do any good to her as an unknown factor. So she forced herself to consider them detachedly—not as any number of confusing and distracting nouns (hunter, monster, alien) but as soldiers and resources.
Black Box and Buckingham had drawn back several paces, and seemed to be discussing something in their strange hissing language. Black Box's movements were jerky and tense, making Scarlett certain that he was definitely not happy with the situation, but Buckingham seemed calm. He stood with his head bowed slightly, receiving orders (or possibly a serious reaming-out) from the commander with perfect equanimity. Fang Face, by contrast, was putting on a major display of being intimidating: puffed-out chest, all weapons on display, stance a little too wide to be comfortable. The irony was that he had looked more intimidating before; now, trying too hard, he made Scarlett think of one of the high-school boys who had been trying to show that they weren't scared of the skinny, brassy-haired black-belt girl. That drew a small smile from her, and a corresponding snarl from Fang Face.
"All right," she said. Heads turned, and her troops focused on her. The faces looking back at her were dirtied and bruised, but determined and some a little fearful, but all were waiting intently on her words. She had a sudden urge to say "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears," but controlled it. (Damn Jaye, getting her back into Shakespeare.) "Listen up, everybody. We've got a pretty simple problem here.
"If the intelligence we've gotten from our new friends is accurate, then we're looking at a crisis situation." No sense in sugarcoating it. "We know now that the bugs we've been fighting are actually aliens—sorry? 'Rat? Chuckles? Can you zip your lips and let me get through this briefing sometime today? Thank you. Aliens. Get used to the word, because we're going to be using it a lot." She crossed her arms, secretly grateful for the pair of incredulous Joes' interruption: anything to keep the collective thoughts from turning to the disaster that their last fight with the monsters had been. "There's a lot of them, more than anticipated. Possibly one for every AWOL Dreadnok and Viper. And it seems that we have Cobra Commander to thank for the bugs' sudden population spike."
Scarlett turned to the remaining peacekeepers, letting herself soften just a little. They were wide-eyed and tense, but they'd pulled together so far, and under circumstances that they most definitely had not signed up for. "Men, you've shown yourselves to be damn good soldiers. I know I can trust you to carry on like you have before." She raised her arm in a brief salute, mirrored only seconds later by Hayesworth, Stokes, and Yutani. As she'd hoped, her straightforward attitude was having a calming effect on the most nervous of the two.
"From here on out, nobody goes looking for trouble. Take a lesson from Faraday: going off half-cocked or getting worked up will only bring more grief for all of us. We're going to find our way to Bug Central and the source of this trouble—that Queen our hunter friends showed us. Chances are that's where Cobra Commander is. And we're going to clean the place out as we go.
"Keep the column tight. MOUT every corner, and that includes the ceiling, too. Remember—short, controlled bursts. They're deadly at short range, and so is their blood, so don't give them that opportunity." Scarlett's jaw tightened as she glanced at the ninjas. "That goes for you two also. Whenever possible, do not get close. But-" And there had to be a but, with those two "-I'm trusting you to use your own best judgment. Don't die."
There was a shifting of huge feet in the darkness, and another hissing, bubbling laugh from Black Box. Scarlett didn't turn, but her voice grew a couple of degrees colder. "As for our brand-new allies . . . I rather get the impression that they do their own thing. Be cautious." Another laugh. Scarlett was really beginning to dislike that creature.
"Finish the gear check, everyone. Snake, Storm, I want you watching the perimeter."
A couple of the soldiers sagged visibly as they relaxed, and low whispers began to echo throughout the chamber. Scarlett unslung her pack and began to quickly look over her own equipment, keeping half an ear on the troops' conversations even while she worked. People seemed a little calmer now. The hunters were still standing apart, but she had the uncomfortable feeling that Buckingham was looking at her.
There was a scrape of a boot, and a shadow fell across her. A big shadow. "Hi, Beach," she said without looking up. "Everything okay?"
"Yer spendin' too much time with the spooks," the big sergeant major observed. He crouched down next to her, his back to the main body of the group; to a casual eye, it looked as if he was looking at her gear. Scarlett still didn't glance up: she could hear the tension in his voice without looking at his face.
"Scarlett—ain't mah job to nitpick yer plans," Beach began in a low voice. "But Ah gotta ask. That recordin'. Cobra Commander said 'eggs.' And Ah dunno 'bout the rest of these knuckleheads, but Ah can't help wonderin' if we're missin' something."
"I know we are." Scarlett's own voice was quiet and level. "We're missing a step. Or . . ." Now she glanced up at him. The sergeant major's brow was creased under his balaclava. "Or missing a part."
"The eggs go inta the person. That I get." Beach Head's tone carried a hint of disgust. "And they come out little versions of those bugs. An' if that queen-thing lays them eggs, then we got ourselves one disturbin' cycle of life. But ya see that thing Faraday pulled outta the mess back there, before the ceilin' started movin'? The crab skeleton thing? Sure as hell didn't look like one of the bugs."
"Which means," Scarlett said, testing the slide on her sidearm, "that there's something we haven't seen yet. If we're lucky, it'll be something small."
"We ain't been lucky this whole gawddamn trip." Beach Head's brown eyes were quizzical. "So why ain't you told everyone there's somethin' more out there?"
Scarlett shook her head. "It's a catch-twenty-two, Beach. I trust the Joes, but the peacekeepers are still something of an unknown quantity. If I say 'oh, by the way, there still might be an alien we haven't seen yet, keep an eye out for it,' it could make them more alert. Or it could make them paranoid and trigger-happy. I'm betting that if something crablike jumps out at them, they're still going to shoot it. If they're expecting it, the anticipation will just make them less reliable."
That drew a nod from Beach Head. "Ya may be the damned worst thing that ever happened ta frat regs in this unit," he said, a grin creasing the fabric of the balaclava, "but ya got yer head in the right place, Scarlett."
There was a snort from the other side of the chamber, and both Beach and Scarlett looked up. Storm Shadow gave them an innocent look.
"Sometimes," Beach said, "Ah really hate that man's ears."
The Oomans were preparing for battle in their own way. All three of the remaining yautja had some command of the various Ooman languages, including the strange, slithery tongue that these ones spoke, and it entertained the leader and the eldest to watch and listen. They themselves were already prepared: a yautja is never unready for the hunt, and they had as yet no injuries to treat. The leader was highly amused by the Oomans' behavior and show of bravado, but his pride was clearly smarting, and he mocked them to the eldest and the youngest. The youngest laughed along, but the eldest kept his thoughts to himself: he followed the leader as the best and first of the Blooded, but he was not of the same clan and had no business soothing his wounded ego.
He had to admit, he was fascinated. In days past, when he had hunted the Oomans, they had been . . . disappointing, mostly. Some few specimens, the ones whose bones he now wore as trophies, had been greatly ingenious and even dealt him injury. But though their planet and people had long been useful as a means to breed the kainde amedha, being regarded with fear and trembling was hardly a satisfying way to hunt. When technology had been magic to them, they were more likely to fall at his feet than go for his throat. Some, like the disgraced Honored, had found satisfaction in that kind of slaughter, but the eldest had wanted more of a challenge.
Now, though? He watched, thoughtfully, as the female issued orders. In only a hundred years of this world's years, they had surged forward, creating warriors like the setg'-in pyode amedha. Their technology was not yet close to that of the yautja, but they didn't fear it. Oomans were becoming . . . interesting.
Of the two corridors, the southward one—with its low ceiling and uncomfortable closeness—led back in the direction that they had first planned to go. But the eastward tunnel was the one that the attack had come from, and after weighing the odds, Scarlett pointed east. First, though, she deputized the ninjas to finally fire the signal flare up the airshaft. Chuckles tried the radios again, but it was pointless: for whatever the reason, they couldn't raise either the three displaced peacekeepers or the base on the surface. Scarlett hoped that Private Velasquez and company had the good sense to listen to her, but she was beginning to get that sinking feeling that told her not to hope too hard.
They moved out. The order was much the same, with the peacekeepers in among the Joes and the medics carefully distributed, but this time Sgt. Major Yutani wouldn't have as easy of a time defending himself. Despite his unconscious burden, though, he was still heavily armed, and had festooned himself with grenades. Ordinarily, Scarlett wouldn't have allowed a new member of her command to hang a grenade from his belt by the ring, but she was beginning to get a good sense of Yutani now. If he was crazy, he was their kind of crazy.
The hunters paid no attention to Scarlett's organized line and pressed onwards at the head of the column, often vanishing into the shadows far ahead of them. Despite their strange ornaments and intimidating stature, they seemed to make almost no noise, and seeing them fade noiselessly in and out of sight made the hair on the back of Scarlett's neck stand on end. She couldn't see Snake-Eyes' expression, but she knew the ninjas were scrutinizing the hunters' technique closely. They were assessing the competition—or possibly the enemy. Once-drawn lines had become blurred in an uncomfortably short period of time.
For a long time, everything was silent. They moved as methodically as they could, trying at first to keep some sense of direction, but the tunnels seemed endless. Between hundreds of years' worth of damage and the strange shift that the architecture had gone through not long before, all their prior observations of the temple were now completely useless. Chuckles kept a rough record of the turns they had made and the courses they followed, jotting it all down in a notebook he kept in the pocket of his BDUs, but where they were relative to the base they had no way of knowing. They navigated by simple tracking: follow the slime, and you'll find the bugs.
Soon, the elaborate displays and carved reliefs began to vanish under more thick, gleaming black resin. The staircase they were following took a downward plunge, circling around a wide round shaft that was strung wall-to-wall with crystalline strands of the stuff. Niches lined the staircase, but the statues placed in them were practically cocooned in slime, and no features could be discerned.
"Watch your footing," Scarlett whispered. "Take it slow and watch your six. Storm, hear anything?"
The white-clad ninja nodded. "We're getting close," he reported in a low voice, just loud enough for the soldiers to hear. "There's scraping and hissing—at least five of them. They're not moving quickly, though, so they may not know we're here."
"I can live with that," Scarlett murmured.
Moving slowly, two by two, they descended the staircase. The steps were broad and shallow, but there was no guardrail, and the slime made the rock slick and treacherous. With few options, the soldiers hugged the wall, clinging to the convoluted ridges made by the hardened resin and making a definite effort not to look downwards into the pit. Stokes especially seemed not too fond of heights; he quickly abandoned all pretense of calm and flattened himself against the wall with leechlike insistence, his fingers white-knuckled where they clung to every possible nook and cranny.
Halfway down, though, something made him lose his grip. With an unearthly screech, the medic stumbled away from the wall, slipping on the clear slick slime and reeling forward towards the edge of the stairs. Before Scarlett had even begun to turn, though, his shriek was cut off by a strangled squawk as Lady Jaye caught him by the pack.
"Oh Jesus . . ." Stokes muttered, whimpering a little. "Jesus . . . oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Jesus Jesus . . ."
Tunnel Rat and Chuckles grabbed for him as well, bracing Lady Jaye and helping to reel the shuddering medic back in. "Calm down, buddy," Tunnel Rat said conversationally as he helped Stokes back towards the wall. "You're not dead yet. Ease off. Ease off. Here, hang onto this, okay?" He steered Stokes in the direction of the nearest cocooned statue—the one he had been clinging to before losing his nerve. "You're gonna be okay."
When he saw the statue, though, Stokes flinched again. "I'm not—I'm not-" he began. "It's-"
"Gawddamn it," Beach Head muttered. "At least our useless medic ain't a whiner about it. Just grab the gawddamn statue." A silent nod from Yutani.
"I'm not whining!" Stokes snapped angrily. His face was white in the light of the lanterns. "And it's not a statue!" He raised his own lantern, the beam trembling, and focused it on the cocooned mass in the niche.
"Son of a-"
"What the fuck?"
" . . . that's a new one on me."
The light glinted off the hardened resin, refracting through the cloudy shell and bouncing off the strange gluey strings that now formed an intricate crystalline web. The figure stood like a statue, upright as if it had been standing at attention, almost completely encased in the gleaming mass. Only a few dirtied, crusted pieces of protruding fabric hinted at a very familiar uniform: dull blue, for the cannon-fodder Vipers, with one edge of a worn patch that Cobra had issued to the survivors of the Battle of Springfield. It hadn't done this man much good.
That was bad, but three things made it worse.
A gaping hole in the chest, the edge of a broken rib glinting in the light of Stokes' lantern.
A corpse of a bizarre, crablike monster suctioned to the dead man's face, its whip-long tail wrapped firmly around his neck.
A set of shackles, industrial and professional, binding the dead man in place.
Static crackled from the shadows further down the steps, and the hissing recording of Cobra Commander's voice echoed out of the pit. ". . . send Major Bludd to check on those Vipers; the eggs must be incubating by now." And the laugh, so gleeful. "I love science experiments."
