F1 Licenseware/F1 Licenseware - Volume 1.iso/disks/085b.dms/085b.adf/Novella/BlackDawnNovella1

Text File | 1992-02-26 | 61KB | 1,144 lines

@Kevin Murphy                                       January-March 1995

@                      Black Dawn : Hell and Gone
@                      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@                                                                  [1]
                                                               Montage
@Security Surveillance Disk #3.01
@Geo-Sync-Orbit LAO5
@Timestamp: 23:45:04-23:53:16   20.11.2612
@Eyes only

The 3d visual overlay, as you can see in front of you, incorporates
short, long, and middle distances. Train yourself and you can see them
all at once, not that there's much to see at the moment. Weather's
been fairly hectic down on the planet in the weeks prior to the
recording, you can tell by that small sea that's formed eight score
kliks from the base (that's the gunmetal gray thing squatting in the
centre of your visual, the only manmade structure this side of its
sun, this time of the year). LAO5, the security sat - Low Arrach Orbit
number five - has meteorology as its cover, but its primary function
is surveillance. Usually there's not much to survey, but keep
watching...
  See that? That bluegreen flaring is the preliminary effects of
meltdown, seen better in close-up. It's localised around the sub-level
four arsenal. Somebody activated a nuke. Without clearance, too,
cheeky bleeder - you'll see him, too, in a moment. If you can flick
the display into slo-mo with that retinal switch you'll get a better
view.
  All stations in this system have weapons, of course, Arrach Base is
no different. There's as much chance of being attacked by little green
men out here as there is back on the mother planet, but you don't hear
any complaints about Earth's security set-up, do you? Besides, the
scientists on the planet were doing some quite important work. Yes,
that's right - were - you'll see why in a moment. It was biological
mostly, not of the warfare variety, more viral/genetics, and so on.
Improvement of humanity.
  Okay, here it comes.. now! WHOOM! Blink and you miss it. Watch the
shrapnel fly... There's about forty years and fifteen quadrillion up
in smoke there, not to mention a hundred-plus of Alias Corp's best
geneticists. Don't worry about that, though, the head researcher
managed to beam up their latest findings to LAO5 just before critical,
and we've got our teams in the Dawn system working on continuing their
developments as we speak.
  Now, watch that particular piece of debris. Closer... notice how its
trajectory differs from all the other fragments of the base? Escape
pod. From one of the supply ships in the base's hangar. The controls
were too screwed up to fly the main ship, so that plucky little beggar
launched himself into orbit in its escape pod. We picked him up two
days later...

                                  *

@"The Fitzgerald" Security Records
@Hyperpolygraph Disk #117, 16:12:54 16.12.2612
@Subject: Dade, John
@Officers present: MP Cpt. T. Saunders, Lieutenant K. Perry

"Okay, Corporal... what happened next..."
  #Take this damn gag off and I'll tell you.
  "Come on, son, you don't need your tongue to prove your insanity to
us, we're quite willing to accept your hyperpolygraph statement. And
more importantly, so will your court-martial... so why don't you just
loosen up and think us a confession?"
  #I'm not insane.
  "Sane people destroy entire research bases, then return with stories
of fighting dozens of green slobbering aliens with a piece of broken
pipe and a pistol?"
  #They were not aliens, I've told you. Are you even taking any of
#this in? It's taking a great deal of patience not to think about
#smashing your faces in.
  "According to our monitors you already have. Twice."
  #Okay, I'll tell you it again, to get it straight in your heads...
#They weren't aliens, they weren't animals, they were viral. They were
#disease...
  "And why didn't any of the hundred resident leading virus experts
bother to kill off these nasty germs, then?"
  #The scientists were the goddamn aliens, for Christsake!
  "You said there were no aliens."
  #You know what I mean...
  "No. We don't. Why don't you tell us again?"

                                  *

@Intersol News At Noon - 14.1.2613
@With Jase Mondo and Kary Hepple

"Hi, I'm Jase Mondo."
  "And I'm Kary Hepple. Today's big story from the Darkworld system:
Corporal Jack 'Nuker' Dade has, reportedly, been found hanging in his
cell on the military vessel Fitzgerald orbiting Kane, just hours
before the preliminary hearing of his court-martial for the killing of
over one hundred research staff at Arrach Base in the Dawn system last
November. He was to be tried for mass murder and gross criminal damage
after allegedly wiring a nuclear device to completely destroy the only
occupied area on the planet. Jase."
  "Officials representing the military are denying claims made by new-
new-age colonists on Kane that Dade's motive was, quote, 'To protect
the universe from Alien Armageddon', and that Arrach's geneticists
were in fact working on top secret mutant killers for the military.
They further denied claims that Dade's apparent suicide was a cover-up
while they conduct further brain-conditioning treatment on him. Kary."
  "Today government officials are in hot water over the latest sleaze
scandal, when Dawn system president Harry Drexel declined an offer of
sexual coupling from the Imbraglian Ambassador's wife. Drexel later
apologised to the Ambassador and his wife for his embarrassing naivety
of their customs, adding 'I'm a happily married man...'. Now the sport
with Jase."
  "Now there's an offer no one would refuse... Today, in the
football..."

                                  *

@"The Fitzgerald" Security Records
@Hyperpolygraph Disk #118, 08:32:00 15.1.2613
@Subject: Dade, John
@Officers present: Cpt. T. Saunders MP, Lieutenant K. Perry

"What is your name?"
  #Jack.
  "Wrong."
  DISCOMFORT
  "What is your name?"
  #Corporal John Dade - Jack.
  PAIN
  "Again. What is your name?"
  #Jack, my name's Jack! Jack! Jackjackjackjackjackjackjack.
  PAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAIN

                                  *

@Dawn Research Platform Security Records
@Military Phone Tap #15 - Residence Quarters Prof. A. Hamilton
@Caller voiceprint: Dr. H. Ujimata
@2.1.2613 - 23:54:55

"Andy? It's Harry."
  "What's happening? Have you got the results?"
  "Uhuh. Positive. It's infectious, man, we're going to have to shut
the place down."
  "Damn. Who else knows?"
  "Nobody, just you: the computer just spat up the goods, like, thirty
seconds ago. Andy, you listening to me, we have to shut this project
down, now. This is serious. The mutation in the patient has
accelerated fifty percent, it's speeding up every hour. He's no longer
recognisably human, just some huge green mass of...."
  "What about the spore leakage, did we clear it up in time?"
  "Negative. Now we've all got a chance of being infected."
  "We don't know that."
  "Jesus Christ, Andrew, you touched the damn stuff! Physical
contact!"
  "Look, I don't want to cause a panic, don't tell any of the others.
We have to engineer some kind of reverse viral strain to stop the
mutations, before we all end up like that poor lad in sickbay."
  "There's something else. My legs, the skin... I think I'm..."
  "Damn. Then we must work fast."
  "That's not enough - I need to know."
  "To know what?"
  "You know what - where these samples came from. Where the hell did
they come from, man?"
  "They came from Arrach, you know that, in the escape pod."
  "Before then, I mean before then. Where did they come from before
Arrach?"
  "Harold, that's classified."

                                  *

@"The Fitzgerald" Security Records
@Hyperpolygraph Disk #118, 15:01:34 18.1.2613
@Subject: Dade, John
@Officers present: Cpt. T. Saunders MP, Lieutenant K. Perry

#I had a dream last night.
  "We know."
  #I was back on Arrach.
  "Why don't you tell us about it?"
  #It wasn't so much a dream, more a memory.
  "Go ahead."
  #Patrol duty, outside Professor Hansen's quarters. It was a
#scheduled post, nothing unusual, though some of the guys had lately
#been noticing how weird things had been getting. Some time after
#midnight I noticed the locklight above Hansen's door flick to green,
#but I took no notice, I just guessed he was off for a midnight stroll
#or something, the highbrows often did that. Ten minutes later I made
#my next pass and he still hadn't left, so I knocked him up to see if
#everything was ok. He didn't answer, so I entered.
  "And?"
  #He was lying - no, sprawled - over his workbench in the living
#area. Everything waistdown was... reptilian, but scaleless,
#semitranslucent tentacles. Where it joined his trunk it looked like
#organic welding, a ring of blistered skin and muscle, like radiation
#burn.
  One side of his head had been blown out by the oldstyle revolver he
had in his left hand. The other hand was touching the remote door
mechanism on the desk. The tentacles were still twitching, like he'd
swallowed the bullet seconds ago, but they didn't stop for hours.
  "Decentralised nervous system, doesn't need a brain to function."
  #That was how it started. Everyone else went the same way... or
#worse.

                                  *

@Wideband SOS Distress Call
@Source - Storm Military Base
@Destination - /
@20.1.2613 - 00:39:40

---zzzzzzeeks food, after that we eat each other, I guess.
  Most of the Storm facility staff have completely transformed now,
and those who haven't are entering the Change as I speak. It usually
takes several days to become one of them completely, although you can
become infected after as little as ten minutes exposure. I urge any
rescue attempts to abort. Nuke us from space. Life as one of the
creatures is no life at all, but I haven't the guts to push the button
myself, I can't make the choice for them. However, this is my own
choice, I got it from one of the dispensing machines, with one full
clip. Hopefully one bullet is all I will need, when my Change
begins...
  The security droids are still switched to shoot-to-kill, there seems
little point in turning them off now, even though we've discovered
that some of the creatures are smart enough to avoid them. I've
activated the plastiglass storm shutters, every automatic door, and
holographic walls all over the complex in an attempt to corner off the
mutants and aid the cyborgs in hunting them down. I supposed any other
infected bases will have done the same. I also sent a couple of
automated mine-layers out an hour ago, I don't know if they completed
their task before the creatures got to them, but it bought me enough
time to get to this terminal and cast this message...
  By now every complex in the system should be in a similar situation,
what with the infectious nature of the disease, and the vast amount of
interplanetary shipping activity in the area. Hell, the bug's so hardy
it could probably transfer itself through vacuum without breaking a
sweat.
  Is anybody out thezzzzzzz---

                                  *

@"The Fitzgerald" Security Records
@Hyperpolygraph Disk #118, 12:19:25 20.1.2613
@Subject: Dade, John
@Officers present: MP Cpt. T. Saunders,
@                  Lieutenant K. Perry,
@                  Dr. H. Dixon (neurology),
@                  Ms. J. Weir (surgeon general).

"What is your name?"
  #I... I don't know. I don't...
  "Why did you join the marines?"
  #To serve.
  "And who do you serve?"
  #My planet and the citizens of the Interstellar Community.
  "State your capacities and duties as a marine."
  #I will do absolutely anything my commanding officer requires of me
#without hesitation or question, including the taking of another life
#and/or the sacrifice of my own.
  "And who is your commanding officer?"
  #You are.
  "Very good. You may now remove the gag. Good job, men."

@                                                                  [2]
                                                                  Dawn

The light, or utter lack of it, did not make him uncomfortable.
  Un-com-for-tab-le. He ran the words experimentally over his tongue,
silently. The word didn't mean much to him for some reason. He'd half-
forgotten what it meant.
  The thin red beam of the retinal scanner danced across his eyes once
more, as it had done once every minute for the past three days,
reading his thoughts like a barcode. He was supposed to be resting,
but now the scan would show some evidence of contemplative thought.
The data would be chewed up by some microprocessor somewhere and
suggest that his next Thought Period be more invigorating. That's the
way it worked, there was no room to allow him any kind of free
thinking time. Chances could not be taken.
  "Uncomfortable," he said, involuntarily. His voice was cracked and
uncertain, like a nervous swordswallower.
  Count three.
  Suddenly the all-encompassing darkness was replaced by a grey-tiled
cell reverberating with beams of intense light thrown from an array of
black plastic spotlights. He felt several scanners play across his
face and forehead.
  A bodiless voice said sternly, "The subject will remain quiet."
  Count ten.
  The lights flicked out again and the subject was left staring at an
incandescent afterimage of a black metallic observation device.
  With time, it faded.

                                  *

"The subject will stand."
  He stood.
  The lights flicked on, and remained so for two hundred fifty-five
seconds. He counted each one in and breathed it out in regular,
shallow, breaths. Then the door opened. Before then he hadn't realised
there was one, part of the wall had seemingly just merged with the
rest, leaving an opening leading into a long narrow corridor. His
commander was standing outside in uniform, carrying a briefcase, with
a clipboard wedged firmly under one arm.
  "What is your name?"
  The subject gave him a perplexed look and did not answer.
  "You will be addressed as Dade or Corporal Dade."
  "Yessir."
  "An operative is required. Under the somewhat exceptional
circumstances you have been deemed to be the most appropriate choice
for the mission. You will accept."
  This was not a question, although there was a slight note of
trepidation in Perry's voice, as though it may have been. Dade had
noticed his habit, some days earlier, of slightly inclining his left
eyebrow when such an inflection entered his voice, and the bushy grey
arc was creasing even now.
  "Naturally, sir," Dade responded after a moment.
  His lieutenant flicked a switch on the case and it unfolded itself
into a low, backless chair. He sank into it awkwardly, pulling the
clipboard from under his arm and pressing a few buttons on it.
  "We have lost contact with the last planet in the Dawn system," he
said simply. "As you will no doubt have heard during your television
privileges, the research station around Dawn stopped transmitting some
time ago, and other bases have followed suit. The last transmission
received from any planet in the system was from the religious enclave
on D14a, the moon known as 'Monastery'. SOS reads, and I quote various
passages of the message: 'Armageddon has arrived... Our Lord Satan's
one begotten son is born... running amok with the very fabric of their
flesh... all we can do in this time of judgement is pray for our very
mortal souls...'. There's more, but I won't bore you with unnecessary
detail."
  The clipboard purred as it accessed another file. Perry resumed eye
contact, seemingly anticipating some kind of emotional response from
his counterpart. Dade remained silent, his unvarying gaze burning
holes in the lieutenants's retinas.
  "They really did do a good job on you, my son," he muttered under
his breath as he touched a few pads on the 'board.
  Dade contemplated this comment, then dismissed the thought.
  "Owing to your... shall we say 'experience' in this area," Perry
continued, "Command suggested we select you for this assignment, a
proposal which was taken into account by my commanding officer when he
made his decision. Personally, I opposed the choice, but apparently my
opinions are irrelevant in this situation. I may not trust you, but...
anyway, you are to leave immediately upon your preparation. The
Fitzgerald is already on its way to the Dawn system, we should be out
of hyperspace in eighteen hours. I believe D5 is our first stop, a
small outpost around the middle of the system. Storm, I believe the
settlers call it. Any questions?"
  "Nosir."
  "I had a feeling you would say that. Someone will be along to escort
you to a fuller briefing shortly before we reach the planet, I suggest
you maximise the time between now and then with rest."
  The chair refolded into portable form and Perry took it with him as
he turned from the cell. He gave Dade one last, uneasy glance over a
decorated shoulder before sealing the door and making off down the
corridor.

                                  *

The escort delivered him to a room on one of the top decks, taking him
through the bridge, a tightly-packed cave of sweating tortured faces,
attempting to perform the hundreds of calculations necessary to take a
military-class starship directly out of hyperdrive into a slingshot
with the local star and into a comfortable orbit of Storm. The
briefing room itself was a little less crowded, but no less
intimidating. Perry sat at a wide desk, flanked by two other high-
ranking military officials Dade didn't recall encountering before. A
medtech in a long white coat approached him bearing a long syringe.
Nobody offered him a seat. There were no seats.
  "Corporal Dade," Perry cleared his throat with the address, "I'm
going to be straight with you here. You're expendable, you're
experienced and..."
  He waited for the medtech to impale Dade's arm and inject the
contents of the syringe, then continued.
  "...and now you're explosive, also, so we have no reason to be
polite with you. Reports from the Dawn bases suggest that the virus
which caused the human colonists to mutate into hostile predatory
lifeforms is highly contagious, and for this reason we will be giving
you a designated 'safe' time period for each of the bases you are to
clean. If you take longer than this specified period then the
microexplosives technician Ward has just injected into you will be
detonated. Oh, and if you try to effect any kind of transport from the
planet before your mission is completed, as you very adequately
demonstrated during your brief stay on Arrach, we will take similar
measures."
  The lieutenant was now used to not expecting violent outbursts from
Dade when delivering such statements, so he continued.
  "Before you are transported to Storm you are to clear the bases on
its two moons - Terran and Media. Immediately prior to your
teleportation to the moons' surfaces you will be equipped with the
fortyfive you seemed to so enjoy using during your encounters in the
Arrach incident. The facilities you are to be penetrating are most
expensive, and after your previous complete lack of regard for
government property it is agreed that the AJC45 is suitable for
shortrange wetwork without danger of unnecessary structural damage...
should you decide to revert to your old ways."
  He slid a thin white plastic box across the desk. "Should you become
wounded you may find this useful to a certain extent. It contains
injections of painkilling endorphins and aids to rapid healing."
  "Is everything absolutely clear to you?" he asked finally, almost
like he was performing a dryrun on a program. "You are to enter each
infected base in this system and shoot anything that moves?"
  Dade eyed each officer in turn passively, then smiled a robotic
smile.
  "Missions never came this simple in training, sir," he said.
  "Goodbye, Corporal Dade..." came the reply, "I'd love to chat all
day, however..."
  A cleanshaven sergeant turned Dade by the arm and directed him into
the corridor.

                                  *

"Kyler."
  "Huh?" Dade turned to the escort detail, snapped out of a momentary
trance, as he was marched down the corridor. The sergeant was forcing
a plastic card into Dade's palm.
  "The name's Kyler," he was still talking through gritted teeth
through the corner of his mouth, "Sergeant James Kyler, comtech five."
His eyes were aiming straight ahead of him as they walked. "You don't
know me, but I heard all about you. Me and a lot of the guys reckon
what they done to you sucks, man, bigtime. I've just given you a
credcard, compatible with the supply machines in the base down there.
It should be some help."
  Dade, aware something contrary to procedure was underway, but unsure
as what to do about it, slid the card into his regulation camouflage
trousers. Kyler continued.
  "There's only a hundred or so credits on it, but it's all we could
scrape together. Scrounge whatever you can down there and you may be
able to trade for some kind of decent armourment. And from what I've
heard: you'll need it."
  "Thank you," seemed appropriate, and a sniff of comradeship drafted
across Dade's emotional sensorium.
  "No problemo, buddy, just... don't mention any names, comprendhe?
This is highly irregular."
  "Comprendhe," Dade's unpracticed voice managed.
  The sergeant halted abruptly at the transporterroom's sliding metal
door and Dade stopped at heel obediently before they entered.
  "Remember," Kyler said finally, "You're not alone."

@                                                                  [3]
                                                            Blind Moon

#Where am I?
  His left leg gave and he fell into an upright foetal position,
clutching his forehead Thinkerstyle. Agony traced the course of his
spinal cord, exploded across his brain, and he collapsed.
  "Quit with the dramatics, will you?" Perry crackled through Dade's
headset. "You should get used to the teleporter's effects after a few
beams, but at the moment you are working to a deadline, so if you
wouldn't mind..."
  Dade forced himself standing, pulled the fortyfive from where he had
stuffed it down the butt of his trousers and took the safety off. He
would have asked for a holster for the weapon, but it hardly seemed
necessary in the circumstances.
  He took in his surroundings, a roughly rectangular office tiled in
checks of purple and white, decorated with liberal splashes of blood
and bodily fluids. Anything not bolted down had been lifted, removed,
presumably for barricades of some kind if humans were the
perpetrators, or food if the base's new occupants had similar
nutritional requirements to the beasts he'd encountered on Arrach. The
reinforced walling, used to support the base against the weight of the
rock into which it was carved, was buckled and torn in places, pocked
with bullet-holes and shrapnel damage. Untouched in one alcove of the
room a well-used and grimy dispenser was built into the wall, the kind
connected with the storerooms in a deeper sublevel, Dade guessed, he
walked directly over to the machine and punched a few buttons.
  It was working at least. A few dim LCD digits requested his card,
and now seemed as good a time as any to test Kyler's gift. He swiped
the credcard through the slot swiftly, and keyed in for the munitions
menu. Damn. The card was only authorised for level one security
clearance, meaning anything beyond the capabilities of the AJC45 was
also beyond his reach. He resignedly punched up an ammo request, and
after a few mechanical whirrings a hatch opened and a dumb waiter
served up a fortyfive ammo clip and a proximity fusion bomb, which
Dade stuffed into his belt.
  Aware he was wasting valuable time shopping, he made to leave by the
room's solitary exit. Turning, it was only then he noticed the remains
of the transporter booth in the corner. Once, he guessed, there had
been plastiglass containment shielding surrounding the beam's field,
now all that remained were the projection funnels mounted in the
ceiling and beneath the floor. A large, heavy switch protruded from
the wall nearby, but Dade resisted the temptation to see if the
machine was still operational, these things could take your top layer
of skin off even when they were functional. Faulty, all kinds of
damage could be caused, and that was not within mission parameters.
  He walked quickly over to the exit, speaking into his headset as he
did so.
  "What is this place anyway?"
  "Media was chosen as a communications relay due to its central
position in the system," another voice offered helpfully. Dade
understood this to be Irvin, some kind of technical/tactical advisor,
rank:unknown. "This base is little more than the operations control
centre for maintenance, administration and so on. A fulltime workforce
of twenty who teleport shiftwise to and from the colony on Storm."
  "So we're looking at twenty definite targets here?" Dade slammed the
heel of his hand into the door-open mechanism. The motors whined and
the door slid into the ceiling, jamming half a foot from completely
open.
  "Negative, data indicates from one to twelve lifeforms in the base,
but the readings are very erratic. A lot of waves bounce through
Media's relay, our scanners are having difficulty filtering them out."
  "Are you quite finished asking questions?" Perry enquired
impatiently.
  Dade stepped into a short, forking corridor and was immediately
assaulted by the sickening odour of rotting meat. At the edge of
visible distance the corridor ended in another door, jammed in a half-
open position by a fractured metal office chair. Movement could barely
be detected beyond.
  "I think I may have found our first target," Dade murmured as he
swung the pistol around the corner of the corridor, to cover any
possible hidden attacker. This branch was also empty, concluding in a
large sealed firedoor.
  "Approaching..." he stopped at the door, held his breath and
listened. There was a low, irregular scuffling sound from the other
side, punctuated by the occasional plop of fluid. It was a sound with
which is was uncomfortably familiar. Some subconscious part of his
brain bawked at a memory he had no access to. He frowned and touched
OPEN.
  Before the door had completed its cycle Dade was assaulted by a
mouldgreen mass of tentacled abomination, cartwheeling limbless
through the opening, a small, pointed mouth of razorsharp canines
snapping in his direction. Dade rocked backwards under the attack,
finger rigidly applying the trigger in semiauto until he had released
a halfdozen shots between the creatures unyielding ebony eyes.
  The creature reeled back, gargling its last breath through spilt
blood in an earsplitting wail of agony and confusion. It seemed to
commence decomposition before the last tentacle had ceased thrashing.
Dade's crude bullet-wounds, expanding diametrically, dissolving flesh
in their wake, revealed gelatinous internals, free from mutation,
swimming in blood the colour of volcanic rock. Human.
  Dade doubled up and retched, the bitter taste of digestive fluid
coated the back of his tongue and he spat the frothy bile onto the
floor.
  Shaking, he recovered from the assault. He stepped tentatively over
the slowly dissolving corpse and into its lair. The creature had
nested in a large open hall, formerly some manner of maintenance area,
now a bare empty hall, networked with patterns of spilt oil and liquid
coolant. This, however, was peripheral: a handful of indescribable
mutants were jerking spasmodically in his direction, oval eyes locking
onto his jugular like guidedmissiles. Dade backed into the corridor,
the damn things were so big that this way they'd have to take him one
at a time or climb over each other. The delay gave him time to aim,
and he rapidly put three shots in each, watching them fall
epileptically and liquify almost immediately. As he passed their
decomposing cadavers he took care not to breath the acrid smoke the
putrefaction released, aware that he was surrounded by contagious
microbes.
  The thought that the creature's legacy may yet live on in his own
DNA had crossed his mind several times, and he knew that he could be
the next mutant on the receiving end of a fortyfive slug if everything
didn't go according to plan. Such concerns were irrelevant, he told
himself, the mission was more important.
  The rest of the chamber was vacant but for the ghosts of dead
colonists, their presence uttering a shrill nonsound through his head,
turning his spinal fluid into liquid nitrogen. Dade shivered, and
waved the gun through a cool arc before him. For a moment he fancied
he could hear a slow groaning emanating from somewhere behind him in
the complex, but his concentration was broken by Perry's transmission.
  "Three lights just winked out on our screen," he said. "Your
handiwork I presume?"
  "Yessir."
  "Well, you must have made a helluva noise," Irvin butted in,
"there's a handful more blobs moving roughly towards your position."
  "Which direction?" Dade spun around, the muscles up his forearm
tensing as the adrenaline pumped violently around his stomach.
  "West."
  "That doesn't help."
  "Hey, what am I supposed to do? I don't know which way you're
facing, why don't you... hell, lost the readings again, damned
interference..."
  The line cut out, dead. Dade pulled the obstructive receiver from
his ear, and focused on detecting sounds of any kind. Satisfied that
the room was empty, he made back into the corridor, taking each corner
like there was a horde of bloodthirsty mutants waiting to pounce on
the other side. He took the turning to the firedoor he had passed just
minutes earlier, the one that was... open?
  He warily approached, the fortyfive trigger a hair from connection,
adrenal trembling throwing his aim off millimetres in either
direction. His stomach grumbled with the kind of occasional acidic
turbulence you can hear before you feel it. This time it was unusually
loud and moments later he still hadn't felt it.
  Dade entered a clumsy 180 a microsecond after the creature leapt,
shock combined with force collapsing him deckwards, firing blind into
the ceiling. The creature's moist underlayers enveloped Dade's legs
and he fought the urge to scream and alert its kindred. The miniature
LED ammo counter on the hilt of the weapon was reading low, but there
was enough.
  He forced himself into a sitting position and levelled the gun in
the beast's direction, its insane grin looked up to meet death in the
face, vampiric teeth dangling loose entrails of flesh.
  #Dade's flesh...
  He screamed in agony as the pain of the leg-wound created a lava
tsunami of burning sensation across his brain, then pointed the
fortyfive and emptied the clip into the creature's face.
  Dade found himself suddenly pressed into an alcove, slamming his
spare clip into the gun, aware that his headset was making sounds
where it was dangling around his neck. He absently plucked it up with
his spare hand and stuffed the plug into his ear.
  "...now goddamnit, right there, beside you! Another one! It's
right...!"
  The rest was drowned out in the uptempo bassbeat of gunfire from
Dade's weapon, as a dozen shots left the barrel at Machspeeds.

                                  *

"Quite fascinating," Irvin says.
  "Agreed," nods Perry. "Retains all the ad hoc flexibility of the
fine soldier he is, but with a zombielike devotion to his mission
parameters. Versatility, ability to adapt to every possible novel
situation, they can't even do that with computers yet. If only
legislation would allow us to do this to all of our marines."
  "Hmm..." Irvin murmurs. "The introduction of selective filters for
neural linkages was quite ingenious, as well, those artificial
membranes are magic things. Magic. He's watched news reports detailing
his own suicide and still doesn't get it. Sad."
  "Ingenious," corrects Perry.

                                  *

The red fabric came away in Dade's hand, pieces of cauterized flesh
tumbling loose from the ribcage, landing with moist sounds around his
boots. The bloodless corpse was half-jammed in a vent in a forgotten
corner of a maintenance hall.
  "It's long dead," he spoke into the mic. "You must be reading
something else."
  "It? You said 'it'."
  "Well, it's human, but..." the words lingered into nothing.
  "But what? Corporal Dade, report your findings." Perry instructed.
  "The skull has two distinct anomalies, sir. Temple region, smooth,
curved, pointed... horns, sir."
  There was a pause filled with audio snow.
  "An early mutation, you're saying? Perhaps cannibalised for food?"
Perry eventually ventured.
  "Almost certainly, sir. Except..."
  "Except?"
  "Nothing I've encountered so far has been horned, sir, this must be
something else, something different. I think I should get out of
here."
  He turned from the scene, snagging his foot on the strap of a canvas
rucksack, discarded on the gloomy, indistinct floor. The contents
spilled out.
  "We're still reading one lifeform beside yourself, Dade. You're not
going anywhere." Perry informed him. "You know the mission objective."
  Dade squatted, never looking down, and sifted blindly through the
objects before him. "Yes sir," he replied, locating a thin plastic
credcard and sliding it into his pocket. His hand fell upon a
styrofoam carton cheeseburger and an oily rag, which he tossed away in
disgust.
  "Our sensors are screwed," Irvin said, frustrated. "You're going to
have to conduct a manual search."
  Dade raised his chronometer into the light.
  "I've only got three safe minutes left."
  There was no reply.
  His teeth whistled a silent curse as his feet carried him through a
flickering cone of light in the centre of the chamber, polychrome
whorls of iridescence forming on pools to create throw-the-eye
distractions on the floor. His hyperacute senses had begun to absorb
the most trivial of superficial detail. Distantly, he could hear the
automatic whining of a supply machine's selfservice routine,
mechanical components churring and gagging in the basement. Closer, a
piece of loose-hanging support beam, disturbed, ticked between two
walls as it swung. Each tick coincided with the change of digit on
Dade's chronometer, although he was not looking.
  Back in the base's sole connection corridor, scene of earlier
carnage, the pendulous knocking began to gradually grow louder.
Something stirred in Dade's mind...
  He snapped himself from the taunt of a misplaced memory he could
attach no significance to.
  "There!" Irvin.
  Dade's eyes reacted into a rapid comb of the corridor ahead.
  "What is it?" he urged.
  "Something flared on the IR and motion tracker simultaneously. Damn
near your position," Perry elaborated. "Can't you see or hear it? You
must surely be able to hear it moving?"
  Yeah, thought Dade, recalling abstract bursts of combat from Arrach,
but some of them can FLOAT.
  He took a handful of cautious steps forward, reached a junction. The
noise was louder now, placing Dade's predator/prey between the source
and himself. It was either immediately around the corner, or directly
ahead in the impenetrable darkness. They were the only two options,
unless...
  #Some of them can float..!
  The fortyfive became a startingpistol, pointed heavenward. His eyes
followed as a livid purple grinning cloak, like a cross-section of
some varicose-veined face, descended from a crater in the low ceiling,
intent on a fatally smothering kiss.
  Dade's trigger-finger was working before his brain told it to,
pumping slugs against gravity, cleanly penetrating the mutant's
flaccid outer-skin and turning the neat tile of the ceiling into
crazypaving.
  The pair collapsed into an unmatched wrestling bout, the creature's
limbless body moving against Dade's spreadeagled thrashing by
willpower alone. The AJC45 clattered to the floor, feet away as the
entire upper half of the free-floating head angled impossible
backwards, yawning like a snake swallowing an egg, diamondsharp teeth
exposed for attack.
  Dade, horrified for his life, was treated to a close-range internal
of the beast's bizarre biology, the mouth apparently serving as the
entire digestive system from chewing through to excretion. The things
could gain sustenance from seemingly any matter.
  Dade's hand found the fusion bomb and wrenched it desperately from
his belt, his finger fumbling for the switch.
  "Bon apetit," he muttered, tossing the device into the cavernous
snarl before rolling awkwardly into an exposed stormdrain. The
hovering creature peered in after him, then belched uranium fire and
imploded on itself. Dade was showered with organic shrapnel.
  Moments passed, Dade's gasps fighting shock.
  There was a fizz of radiostatic.
  "Err... You still with us?" It was Irvin, in typically casual
fashion.
  "I'm covered," Dade answered finally, pulling himself from the
drain, "in monster-shit, but otherwise okay. Time to leave."
  No reply.
  Dade tapped the mic, trying to ignore the acid smell of the mutant's
liquid remains.
  "Do you confirm," Perry broke in, "that you have made physical
contact?"
  Dade's eyes narrowed.
  "Yes, I've made physical contact," he answered. "Now let's get me
out of here before it gets catching."
  There was a pause while, in orbit, Perry cleared his throat and
stared at his shoes.
  "Corporal Dade," he recited, "you have made physical contact with
virulent mutant bodily fluids, and are therefore, under the parameters
of the mission, treated as infected and therefore hostile."
  Dade's vein began to pulse heavily in his neck, he checked his
chronometer.
  "What? I still have a minute safe time left." he realised, resigned,
what the mission spec called for in a situation like this.
  "Unfortunately, Corporal," Irvin answered apologetically, "the
allotted safe period refers to proximity only. Breathing contaminated
microbes can be tolerated for quite a length of time. Touching,
however..."
  Dade was wondering whereabouts in his body the microexplosives had
circulated too, hoping it wasn't anywhere painful.
  Irvin continued: "Your top layer of skin will already have started
to absorb the virus as we speak, there's nothing you or we can do to
remove it in time, I'm afraid. Beaming you back here would risk us
all. I'm sorry, Jack..."
  The radio cut out abruptly. The left side of Dade's face twitched.
  Something Irvin had said.
  Dade turned on his heel and doubled back, sprinting, into the office
where he had materialised initially, his heart pumping his feet
against the tile, propelling him headlong through the door.
  "Any last words..?" Perry muttered over the commlink. Dade ignored
him. Something had kicked survival mode into tripletime. Without
bothering to regain his balance, he stumbled into the transporter's
field and slapped the lever as hard as he could.

                                  *

The last five seconds of a Media security camera's record run like
this:
  A marine rushes into an empty office desperately, diving into a
darkened corner purposefully, his arm flailing at a half-hidden lever.
  Oneonethousand...
  The corner isn't darkened any more, but detail still cannot be made
out as the source of the light is itself the focus: a gentle blue aura
forming a full-body halo around the collapsed marine.
  Twoonethousand...
  The halo contracts on the body, swallowing him into itself, leaving
a brief after-impression of solid electricblue.
  Threeonethousand...
  Limblike tendrils of electricity, like miniature forklightning reach
out and rip tiles from the nearest wall, larger tears of blue stretch
out more slowly from the centre of the transported figure as the
marine shape morphs into a rapidly expanding sphere.
  Fouronethousand...
  In slowmo, the uncontained blue dwarf extends diametrically,
dissolving wall and floor, eating into the rock. The core pulses once
a blood scarlet. Intense white light fills the screen.
  Fiveonethousand...
  Snow crash.

                                  *

Microwaves crashed over Media Relay, dripping through every gap and
bouncing under near air-tight seal, soundlessly whispering their
orders.
  #Detonate...detonate...detonate...
  When they could find nobody to listen they sighed and began the
infinite process of bouncing themselves into oblivion.

@                                                                  [4]
                                                               Mistral

The smell of baking sewage filled the air, like a July sidewalk turd.
It took Dade moments to become upright, seconds more to realise where
he was. The nausea he had felt the first time had passed already, and
the muscles in his legs were less shaken.
  His eyesockets, and every portion of exposed skin, was covered in a
thin, crispy layer of black dust. His skin. Or rather, one layer of
it: as anticipated, the malfunctioning transporter had quick-burned
his epidermis clean off, leaving him with the healthiest complexion in
the solar system. His clothes were blackened and charred at the
stitching.
  He freed his eyes to the luxury of sight, then began to brush his
shed protective sheath off in thick, dusty clouds. The skin beneath
felt tender and smooth.
  The transporter's off-centre orientation unit had landed him in
solid rock, a precise sphere scooped out of some kind of purplish
volcanic rock, its circumference gratefully dissected by an opening
into slightly steaming, but breathable, air. Another foot in one
direction and he would have been sealed into the planet's very crust.
As he stood, he looked out into the base of an two metre-deep trench,
the floor of which was ankle deep in a rusty claylike mud, runny
through the continual assault by thick and fast blades of rain.
  Storm, he presumed, as every gnarled cloud strobed suddenly with a
microsecond silver outline. Moments later, disgruntled thunder
applauded the lightshow. Dade checked the ammo reading of his weapon
and stepped tentatively out onto the planet.

                                  *

A thin vertical fan of blue light stroked the surface of the walls and
floor, emanating from a humming metal scanner. Sergeant Kyler turned
to his commanding officer.
  "Nothing, sir," he reported, "Signs of a struggle, minor traces of
human blood, but nothing to suggest a fatality."
  Lieutenant Perry frowned.
  "Keep searching," he ordered, "There's no way the detonators could
have failed."
  Irvin was pondering at a hole in the ceiling with a telescopic
scoop.
  "It's feasible," he murmured, "that the signal could have been
disrupted by some background radiation provided by Media's equipment.
Extremely unlikely, however, and that still leaves the question of
where Corporal Dade has disappeared to."
  Perry glanced uneasily about the corridor, as if he expected his
quarry to leap out on cue. The scans had read no lifeforms, but scans
had been known to be wrong. Besides, the temporal proximity of Media's
mutated engineering staff disturbed him slightly. He, along with six
other marines about the complex, was strapped into an environment
suit, but he felt he could still taste the foul lingering odour of the
mutants' decomposition.
  "If he disappeared..." he muttered to himself, "he must have
appeared... somewhere... Damn! The transporter!"
  At that moment a suited grunt, appeared hastily from a room to the
south.
  "Sir, Lieutenant Perry, sir," Private Wiccan said breathlessly. "You
better take a look at this." He motioned them to the mouth of the
door.
  The room had been charred into a cave, all remnants of any previous
human occupation had dissolved and evaporated long since. Some kind of
molecular displacement field, Irvin presumed as he swung his head-
mounted flashlight around the hollow, must have been unleashed onto
the room. Judging from the base schematics he had studied back on the
Fitzgerald, it was probably the transporter link between here and the
planet. It had performed one last beam before digesting itself into
some subatomic ether.
  "Storm." Irvin decided, biting the inside of his lip. "If he's
alive, he's on Storm."

                                  *

The rain was painful against his worn skin. Thor had traded in his
hammer for a minigun, and was shooting heavy shafts of contaminated
rainwater into the slushy channels of mud and against Dade's slow-
moving figure. The trenches had been laid to afford some kind of
protection for the colonists' surface activities - the wind usually
redirected the downpour in a flat sheet, turnwise around the planet.
Today it was the poles which were swapping airpressure, so the rain,
like a mistral, was being funnelled straight into Dade's face.
  He had staggered into large clearing, which once had been covered by
corrugated plastiglass sheeting, now shattered and scattered about the
whole area, which resembled little more than a pigwallow.
  Spent pulse rifle shells littered the ground. Dade absently bent to
examine one. 10 mil, M39A, he figured, before they went caseless. Old,
but powerful. Still didn't seem like it was enough.
  He regarded his own weapon cynically: pitiful. God alone knew why he
had accepted the gun as if they were doing him a favour in letting him
have it. He never would have...
  He wondered where Perry and Irvin were, he missed their presence in
his ears. The commlink receiver had been burnt out by the transporter,
he supposed. He had to ask them...
  Why was he still here, anyway? Hadn't they tried to...
  He had to get off of this place. The whole planet was probably
crawling with squids. There had to be some way...
  But that was contrary to this mission objective. All hostile
lifeforms must be eliminated. - Yeah, sure! With this relic as a
defence!? But damage to property could not be allowed, he knew that.
  It hadn't stopped him vaporising half of Media.
  Why..?
  "..Jack.."
  He spun around drunkly. Irvin was not there.
  They were going to kill him. He had accepted it. Now he didn't.
Something had happened. He had awoken. What had they done to him?
  "I've got to get out of here," he said to himself, lurching off
towards the continuation of the channel he had followed into the
clearing.

                                  *

Kyler had never seen heat-haze in a downpour. Two shimmering threedee
human outlines were being moulded out of the very storm in front of
him. In reality, the speeding shafts of water were vanishing into
nonbeing as they entered the transporter-field, but the effect was as
if they were mistified on contact, creating an eerie translucent
steam.
  The shapes were Privates Neale and Sadiq, beaming down from the
Fitzgerald. Both good, healthy, young marines, about three years xp
between them, but they knew their stuff. Eager and unranked enough to
trust, if a tad bloodthirsty.
  As the formless jellies gradually began to adopt human
characteristics, Conrad, Kyler's beaming partner, coughed. Conrad he
didn't trust much, enough to let him in on the plan perhaps, but he
still didn't put much faith in men who wore crucifixes around their
necks.
  "Scanning no lifeforms, Top," the corporal said. "Just like they
said."
  Kyler nodded. Biomechanical life only, meant using motion-trackers
instead of IR. Reinforced exoskeletons also meant regular AP rounds
were scratched in favour of scattershot dumdum shells and
electronpulse disrupters.
  As Sadiq shrugged off his neon overcoat of light and became aware of
his surroundings, he stood erect and immediately pumped a 20mil
cartridge into his shotgun's chamber for dramatic effect, his hand
barely circling half the grip. Normally the bulky gun would be worn
with a strap, but it gave Sadiq a kick to wield it unaided. He grinned
a yellow grin and slapped his throat, regurgitating a salivary bolus
of nicotine gum he'd smuggled through the transporter's sensors. He
chewed grimly.
  "Where to?" he said to Kyler, as Neale completed formation at his
side, breathing heavily through his cybernetic muffler. It was a
pointless question, the trench lead in only one direction.
  The sergeant began to wonder whether these two were suitable for
this type of duty. After all, there was no orders to take Dade out,
this was a strict "shrinkwrap delivery" mission only.
  "This way," Kyler instructed, waving them on with his disrupter.

                                  *

There.
  Thirty-six seconds exactly since the droid had made its last pass.
So it was on some kind of sentry routine, Dade concluded, probably run
through some kind of standard low-level Boolean processor, housed deep
within that reinforced titanium skull. Easy to trick, hard to kill,
but Dade still had the advantage of surprise, standing just out of
sensor range at the far conclusion of the trench. The droid was
patrolling a passage at the opposite end, where it hit a T.
  #Ten...eleven...twelve...
  Dade would never normally have tried something as improbably tough
as this before, taking on a Level 3 Cybernetic Sentry Unit with a
fortyfive handgun, but he'd picked up another weapon with a full clip
from a corpse half-buried in mud in the last clearing, and it
persuaded the odds in his favour. The safety had been jammed on, which
was probably why the corpse was a corpse and not sipping cocktails in
the next star system, but Dade had worked it free with Kyler's empty
credcard.
  #Twentyfour...twentyfive...twentysix...
  Taking a shallow lungful of air, he levelled both guns at head
height and began slowly pacing forwards.
  #Thirty...thirtyone..
  He stopped.
  #Thirtytwo...thirtythree..
  A droplet of water rolled from the tip of his nose, down the gully
between nostril and lip, and into his mouth.
  #Thirtyfour...thirtyfive...
  A sliver of armour-plated humanoid appeared in view.
  Dade's fingers tensed and released. Tensed and released. Tense and
release. Tenserelease. Semiauto was on but he pulled for each shot
anyway, played the weapons, forced music out of them. Made them sing
duet after duet of mismatched notes into the shoulder portions of the
robotic assailant.
  Weight of lead had thrown the droid back against the trench wall,
pieces of its exoskeleton chipping and flaking explosively as it took
successive pairs of rounds at close range. It barely had time to take
a bewildered step in Dade's direction before a slug found a joint and
penetrated its organic nerve-centre.
  It folded like a faulty deckchair, but six more involuntary shots
ricocheted off its prone frame before Dade stopped firing.
  Even then he counted ten before cautiously nearing. Wirey trees of
electricity were crackling from a cleft in the jawbone, feeling out
over the android's face, leaving a thin sooty residue on the metal. It
started to succumb to the mud. Dade checked its weaponry array.
Nothing salvagable, its forearms were augmented with ninemil
automatics, neuroelectrically triggered and therefore of no use.
  The organic brains of security bots were officially grown in vats,
but every so often the popular press would print claims that they were
in fact donated from MIA marines. The idea always chilled Corporal
Dade, but now more than before, him having just plugged one
repeatedly. Memories of media coverage of this type of thing played
through his head, and it awoke the reality of his own situation. They
had done something to him. What it was he did not know, but it didn't
seem to have any effect on him now.
  He shook his head to clear extraneous meanderings, and checked both
ways along the trench. Distantly, playing horizon to a setting sun, an
angular artificial structure was barely visible, peering over the
surface rock. Storm Military Base, Dade concluded, and headed off in
that direction.

                                  *

The trench was divided by a three inch thick plastiglass partition. If
one side had not had been decorated with a webwork patina of hairline
fractures, which bent the light awkwardly, and the constant reflection
of raindrops, then Kyler doubted his team would have noticed its
presence, it was as transparent as vacuum.
  "Shoot it out?" Conrad suggested.
  "Allow me, sir," Sadiq spat a gob of saliva into the brown puddles
at his feet and chambered a round.
  Even at this close distance the shot spread sufficiently broadly to
shatter the entire screen. It flew apart like a blown dandelion and
fell into a thousand snowflakes on the ground.
  There was the nearby noise of limbs dragging through mud.
  "Movement," Neale's digitized speech-synthesizer said suddenly, as
the handgrip of his motion tracker began to vibrate a silent alert.
The chrome face-mask's airfilter exhaled a mist of hot breath, Kyler
remembered he'd had the artificial voicebox fitted after being shot in
the neck. "Close, three definite signals, possible others."
  "Range?" Kyler asked, as he charged his disrupter and pivoted around
to cover the rear of the party.
  "Three metres," Neale declared, "moving away from us."
  "Must be in a parallel trench," Kyler decided, "trying to
doubleback."
  He flipped his HUDscanner down from his helmet and over his eyes. A
red pixelized blueprint in the corner of his vision confirmed that
another trench ran in the same direction as their own, with two metres
of rock separating them before they joined at a fork about ten metres
ahead. He turned back to face the imminent attack.
  "Six metres," Neale said, letting the tracker hang from his belt as
he arranged his disrupter. "For sentries, they're moving faster than
regular levels threes, they must be switched to hunt-to-kill.
Attackers rather than defenders."
  "Okay, you know the drill, marines," Kyler whispered unnecessarily,
"disrupters for long range only, we don't want any jump."
  Meaning - keep the metal dickheads at arm's length or fry alongside
them.
  "Nine..." Neale concluded. Nobody waited for the ten. Three cyborgs
hit the fork and were illuminated by ball lightning from three 'pulse
disrupters.
  Conrad's shot was evaded by its target and earthed harmlessly into
the rock behind it. Another two discharges were absorbed by the first
in the group, and it was immediately enveloped in a veinlike network
of pearlblue electricity. As its circuits started to fry, its
spasmodic attack motion toward them faltered and it began to stumble.
At three metres Sadiq one-handed both barrels into its face, his
forearm snapping back awkwardly with the recoil. The cyborg dropped
and hit the floor writhing like an epileptic desklamp, but Sadiq
barely seemed to notice as he jacked another cartridge into the
chamber.
  Scanning their fellow down must have triggered something which
shuffled the priority queue in the remaining sentries' brains, as they
both began to raise and initiate their arm-mounted automatics in
response.
  The recharge blinker on Neale's disrupter flashed to green, and he
loosed off another ball of knotted electrical wool in the direction of
the nearest attacker.
  The cyborg took it in the chest, and strained the effort to aim its
weapon as the disrupter field sought to penetrate its protective
exterior. As it fell there was an audible thunder of gunfire, mocking
the tempest in the heavens above, and a three inch hole was crudely
drilled through Neale's sternum.
  The death-wail as he dropped was inaudible under the mechanical
clacks and plosive booms of Sadiq's shotgun onslaught. Peppering shot
stunted the droid's motion, kept it at bay long enough for the
disrupter to reach its higher circuits. And then there was one, and it
was almost on them, its arm stiffly widening its angle to the ground.
At ninety degrees it let rip a hail of light AP bullets, Kyler and
Sadiq diving aside from the shower, blindly throwing scattershot in
its general direction, Conrad flattening himself into the mud.
  The unnatural creation took three blasts simultaneously and finally
lost its carefully choreographed balance. Sadiq slid his bayonet from
its sheaf in his boot, and threw himself onto the downed sentry,
severing as many external lines as possible in his frenzy. One slash
must have hit a main databus, as the cyborg was out of order in
seconds.
  Sadiq seemed to have relished the 'physical' combat. As he stood up
he deliberately took a nick at the upper-side of his wrist with the
oil-stained bayonet and licked the blood from the blade - a throwback
of his Gurkha ancestry.
  Conrad was leaning over Neale's lifeless body, muttering last rites,
Kyler was looking grimly respectful beside him.
  "Let's hope Dade doesn't give us more trouble than the natives,"
Sadiq grinned morbidly, sheaving his blade.

                                  *

The base was uncomfortably familiar to Corporal Dade. The floor was
plated with the same sickly tiles, the walls constructed out of the
same boring prefabs. Same lingering odour of death. Decor and
architecture was never Dade's forte, and now it was even less his
concern. His concern was the fullstop he'd just walked himself into.
  This was it, the last corridor left unexplored and it ran itself out
into nothing. Dead end. He must have taken a wrong turn, there had to
be a hangar somewhere, a craft perhaps, some way to get off of this
rock. He decided to backtrack and take another corridor again.
  Meanwhile, his leg was giving him hell. Where the squid had sank its
teeth into him there was a scarlet blister of flesh where the loose
flaps of skin around the edges had been cauterized to the wound in the
transporter. It was slowing him down.
  He sank into a corner then slid his medical kit from its pouch and
clicked it plastically open. Inside there was a syringe of yellowish
fluid, a roll of treated bandages and a handful of endorphin patches.
He peeled the backing off a patch and slapped it onto his leg, then
wrapped the bandages around it. The needle was labelled with some
incomprehensibly polysyllabic medical term, suffixed with a
handwritten label "INJECT ME".
  He poked the needle into a vein and, like Alice, obeyed.
  Immediate relief flooded through his system, and Dade felt
momentarily light-headed. He closed his eyes as the pain numbed.
  When he opened them there was another marine standing over him,
pointing a disrupter on low charge at Dade's forehead. He had a red
filter over the upper-half of his face and his features were
indistinguishable.
  Dade went for his gun.
  "Uh-uh..." the marine warned, then raised his voice. "Sergeant, I
think I got him."
  Keeping his gun trained on Dade, he glanced over his shoulder at the
wall, where the tile was shimmering.
  Ghostlike, Sergeant Kyler formed out of purple checks, appearing
from the wall like some mimetic polyalloy, then adopted his usual
appearance. He was unbuckling a strange looking projectile weapon from
his belt. It had the fuel bulb of a flamethrower and the wide barrel
of a firehose. He pointed it at Dade, then turned to the first marine.
  "Okay, Conrad, you go keep watch with Sadiq and tell Perry we got
him, I'm okay here."
  Reluctantly Conrad muttered a subordinate "Sir" and disappeared
through the holographic illusion of a wall. Dade had by now realised
why he'd been walking in circles for hours, the whole place must have
been sealed off randomly with holograms.
  "I'm going to keep this brief, Corporal," Kyler said, pulling back
his weapon's equivalent of a safety catch. "We've orders to deliver
you back to the Fitzgerald. Alive, so don't try anything stupid, but I
am instructed to use this bagger here, and it isn't pleasant."
  Dade relaxed his tense posture resignedly.
  "What did they do to me?" he ventured.
  "Some kind of brainwash treatment, I don't know. Part hypnotic, part
surgical. They tried to set you to some kinda autopilot robot marine
attitude, and it nearly worked, but something must've snapped you out
of it."
  "Like what?"
  "I'm no expert, but it was probably some kind of sound or smell that
triggered a memory."
  "Jack - they were going to kill me and Irvin called me Jack."
  "Your real name, yes, that figures," Kyler nodded, making a mental
note. The echo of shotguns started nearby, but both men ignored it.
  "So what's the deal with you, anyway? Why are you telling me all
this?" Dade asked.
  "I can't explain. There's no time. Just remember, you're not alone."
  He squeezed the trigger of the 'bagger' and it vomited a thick
stream of runny plastic mucus in a hot jet over Dade's body. He opened
his mouth to scream but it was sealed over by a hardening film of
thermoplastic, blocking off the airways. The rubbery substance,
coating Dade's entire surface area, began to constrict and he felt
himself losing consciousness.
  His last recollection was of Kyler standing over him, punching a
hole through the plastic crust on his mouth with his thumb.