Peter Hamilton - Fallen Fragon

Lawrence's HUD was flashing red communication icons at him; the local net relays had crashed. He paid little attention. Another alien was crawling out of the machinery.

"Up there," Meaney croaked.

A third alien was walking along the ceiling above them, its limb pincers gripping the pipes with little effort as it picked its way along.

There were eight limbs, Lawrence saw at last. Definitely nonterrestrial, then. He watched the creatures with a mixture of elation and astonishment. The bracelets were hightechnology artifacts. They were sentient! He was making first contact with sentient aliens.

This moment was everything he'd ever wanted from life. He let out a soft, nervous laugh; incredulous that this should be happening here and now. His hand was trembling. He hurriedly engaged the pistol's safety, then asked the skeleton AS to find the rules governing first contact. They ought to be in the memory somewhere.

"Corp, what do we do?" Colin asked, his voice high and excited. He was shuffling back toward the tank, keeping his weapon trained on the first alien.

"Just stay—"

The alien in front of him extended a limb. A maser wand of very human design was gripped in the pincer. Lawrence stared at it numbly.

"That's..."

The alien fired. Lawrence's HUD instantly displayed a schematic of his armor suit Red icons clustered round like enraged wasps, indicating the energy impact pattern. Superconductor shunts were racing toward burnout as they tried to dissipate the beam.

"Move!"

Lawrence dived to one side, trying to break the maser's lock. The effort sent him flying close to the roof, limbs waving in panic. An automatic weapon opened fire below him, projectiles hammering into concrete and metal. The lights went out. Lawrence hit the floor and bounced almost a meter. His HUD reported that the maser was no longer on him. He waved his scatter pistol about ineffectually.

The space around him was illuminated by the muzzle flashes from two guns. Their topaz strobing revealed huge plumes of thick vapor screeching out of the processing equipment. More aliens were scuttling out of mechanical crevices. He saw two of them lugging a mini-Gatling between them.

"Ho fuck!" He rolled fast, abandoning the pistol and reaching for his carbine.

"How many?" Kibbo yelled.

"Where?"

"What happened to the lights?"

Lawrence's motion detector was rendered useless from the billows of vapor. Infrared struggled to acquire targets through the cloying haze. The i-i simply expanded the swirls in the fog, shading them a sparkly green. Another warning icon flashed, accompanying an audio tone, alerting him to the rapidly increasing toxicity level of the chamber's atmosphere.

A carbine opened fire, sending explosive rounds thudding into the dark. Detonations were swamped by the cloying gas, their flashes turning into a whiteout haze. Visibility was down to fifty centimeters and closing fast "Hold your fire."

Lawrence aimed the carbine in the direction he'd seen the aliens with the mini-Gatling and shot off twenty rounds. "They've got heavy artillery, Corp," he shouted as the weapon juddered in his arms. Explosions pulsed around the bunker. Someone else was shooting as well, small-arms fire. A round slammed into Lawrence's armor below his right pectoral. He was flung into the air, spinning. Red and amber icons traced elaborate circles around him like a protective swarm of holographic birds. Pain thumped straight through the hard outer shell and muscle skeleton to punish his ribs.

The radio channel was a caterwaul of yelling and bawled orders. Nothing made sense. Lawrence landed on his back, the impact pushing the last gasp of air out of his lungs. He dropped the carbine. Something moved under his legs, writhing about urgently, pushing his knees apart. Shock mobilized him instantly, allowing him to overcome his pained daze. He twisted quickly, bending down to grab at whatever was lifting itself up between his legs.

Excruciating pain bit into his leg, just above the knee. Icons reported both his armor and muscle skeleton had been sliced open. His hands rumbled into contact with a broad object, his brain telling him it was the same size as an alien's body. Through the swirling vapor he could just make out the ruddy infrared blur. It was an alien, and one of its limbs was holding a power-blade. Lawrence lunged for the knife, jerking it free from the pincers. He saw the alien's limb snap from the force of his grab, took a breath and punched the body with his free hand, delivering the full power of the muscle skeleton behind the blow. His armored fist ripped straight through the creature's hide, squishing into internal organs.

He almost vomited, pulling his hand free again, bringing with it dripping webs of membrane and gore. Another bullet struck him, sending him sprawling.

"Ceiling," Ntoko bellowed. "Shoot the ceiling out. Explosive shells. Do it now."

Explosions pummeled the concrete above Lawrence. The blastwaves made his battered armor creak from intense pressure stress. He fumbled his hand across the floor, searching for his own carbine. A maser beam washed over him again, prompting a flurry of scarlet symbols, and he jerked himself clear. Small-arms fire was raking the air above him. Some kind of gelatinous sludge was creeping across the concrete floor, slopping against his armor shell.

He found both the alien body and his carbine and rolled onto his back. Half a magazine of explosive shells smashed into the ceiling. Heavy lumps of concrete fell out of the fog in what seemed like slow motion, splashing into the sludge.

"What are we doing?" Meaney asked. "Why aren't we killing them?"

Lawrence slapped another magazine into his carbine. He'd been about to ask the same question.

"Breaching the bunker," Ntoko said. "I'm going to blow this gas and those alien mothers clean into space."

Lawrence opened fire again. Above the explosions he could hear a shrill whistling sound gather strength. Abruptly, the chemical fog was thinning, and the whistle increased to a tormented howl. A slice of sunlight prized its way down through the vapor, quickly expanding. Lawrence's i-i hurried to compensate, throwing up filters. He shifted his aim, letting the carbine shells chew the edge of the widening fissure in the ceiling. A huge, jagged section of concrete blew upward, pummeled by the bunker's venting atmosphere. The last of the gas surged upward, tugging Lawrence off the floor. Then he was tumbling down in absolute silence. Blazing sunlight shone into the bunker, revealing confusion and mayhem. The dense conglomeration of machinery had been torn to ruin, pipes ripped open, stolid processor units shredded. Sprays of fluid and gas were still pumping out, their ragged plumes curving upward before dispersing. Several alien corpses were hanging limply from metal fangs. They'd all been hit by weapons fire, pulping the tawny flesh.

"Come in, Ops, we have an emergency situation," Ntoko said. "Request backup immediately. Receiving hostile fire."

Lawrence's AS confirmed that they'd reestablished communications now that the roof had been split open. He clambered painfully to his feet as Ops began to interrogate Ntoko. Blood was leaking out of his knee where the power-blade had cut through, most of it, he was confident, coming from the skeleton muscle. Lines of pain flared along his torso with every move he made. He could see cracked dints in the armor; scorch marks had blistered the outer layer. "Oh hell," he groaned.

"We beat them." Kibbo's voice had a hysterical edge. "We beat the fuckers."

"What were they?" Colin asked. "Where the hell did they come from?"

"Holy shit, lads," Meaney said. "We've just fought our first interstellar war."

"And won the bastard! We kicked some ass, huh?"

"We did, man. They ain't gonna mess with this platoon again, that's for sure."