Diane Duane: X-COM: UFO Defense

Ari thought hard while the firefight out in the square began to attenuate, the firing more outward than inward now. He was acutely aware of someone looking over his shoulder, as it were, listening to his comms or his teams’, with what kind of thoughts he could only suspect—and he suspected he would find out.

WHAM! The blast went right past his ear, and Ari threw himself not to one side, because that would be what they were expecting, but forward, tucking and rolling fast and hard, straight over the cobbles into the piazza. Behind him, against the wall where he had been standing, something went smack, a small wet noise. That was followed by a sound he had come to recognize from too many street fights: plaster and the underlying brick crumbling as a jet of venom from a Celatid hit it, splattered, ate the outer surface, and started to work on the inner ones. That was followed by an odd little squeak as the creature got its second load ready.

Ari was already up on his knees, sighting on the nasty little sack of poison: he blasted it, and then hit the great ugly Muton that was loping along behind it, which went down and lay struggling. Don’t die, he thought, eyeing the huge, bulging-muscled humanoid as it lay there. We can always use a few more live ones. All the same, he had no desire to have it get up behind him, after he’d moved on, and surprise him later. Carefully, he put a blast through each of its elbows and knees, which tended to ruin most anyone’s mobility, human or alien. Then he crouched and scuttled back to the corner where he had been hiding, careful to avoid the slimy venom from the Celatid, which was still running sizzling down the wall, digesting the old, crumbling stucco.

“Report,” he said quietly, watching the muzzle flashes disappear down the side streets.

“They’re scattering, Boss,” Elsabet said. “This batch is heading northwest. “

“They’ll hit the city wall—it’s only a block behind the mausoleum. You should be able to trap some there. If you can’t, though, push them around the far side and back into the square.”

“Right.”

“Got a whole lot of splat-bags over here, Boss,” said another voice. It was Roddy McGrath, another captain. “And some Reapers. They’re pushing pretty hard to get through this parking lot.”

The Reapers were a particularly nasty threat, especially as far as any civilians who might be in the area were concerned: fierce hungry furry bipedal things, ravenous as wolves, that would come loping along at you and rip your head off and eat it before you knew you were an appetizer. “Don’t let ‘em out,” Ari said, “whatever you do. If you can get them to cooperate, drive ‘em back up the road toward the piazza.”

“Cooperate!” Roddy’s irony showed more forcefully than usual. “Might be fun to try….”

Suddenly, a burst of plasma fire exploded from the direction of Roddy’s team, down the Via Salara a block to the east of the piazza—Roddy’s way of encouraging “cooperation.” Ari grinned. “Mihaul?”

“We linked up with Mary, Boss,” Mihaul said, cheerful. “Not much left of the batch she was chasing. A jew Sectoids are sniping from one of the apartment buildings. All the Mutons are down. A few of them are still breathing.”

“Get those snipers. Then you and Mary pitch in and help Roddy. He’s got his hands full. Your losses?”

“Dagmar’s down. Rio’s making pickup on her.”

“Dead?”

“Don’t know.”

“Have Rio get her home and then meet you. Go!”

Ari held his spot, watching his people work. This was the hardest part, sometimes—keeping out of their way, letting them get their job done. Behind him was the sound of more plasma fire. His own team was closing in behind him, tidying up and securing the area where their own ship had landed, in the small square at the end of the Via 4 Novembre. “Paula,” he said, “got a clean perimeter back there?”

“No problems, Boss. A lot of Mutons over this way. One damn near pulled Clive’s arm off, but he’s still alive. Brian’s taking him back to the ship.”

“Other losses?”

“Nobody. Doris’s link’s down.”

Ari raised his eyebrows. It was less trouble than he had been expecting, and comms in particular had been working well on this run. “Fine. Close in behind me. We’re going to have some cleanup to do in the square in a little while.”

“Right.”

He leaned against the wall, watching the square. The muzzle flashes were getting closer again, coming from the side streets. Off to the left and southward, a startling bang! rattled back and forth between the walls of the old five-story stucco buildings and, as if knocked off by the sound, a big piece of the facing of one of them—including a couple of windows—blew outward and fell down into the street.

Then it got quiet. “There’s your snipers, Boss.”

“Good boy, Mihaul. Get your butts up by Roddy now.”

“Team’s there now. I did that last bit.”

“Alone? You brainless—” Ari stopped, since that was exactly what he was at the moment—alone. “Never mind. You sure you got them all?”

“Looking at the bits and pieces right now. I’ll have to count them up and take an average, but—”

“Oh, just get moving.” Again he thought of that silent presence who might or might not be listening to his comms. It would probably have something to say about his being there all by himself, without even one team member for backup—if indeed it had been watching at all. It was a little like being six and worrying about Santa Claus. He knows when you’ve been sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows when you’ve been bad or good…. You think he’s watching anyway, but there’s no way to tell for sure, and the uncertainty cramps your style something fierce.

The sound of footsteps approaching brought him around. It was Paula and her team: Paula in the lead, in armor since she had been hogging “point” as usual, with Matt behind her and, some ways back, big blond Doris bringing up the rear. Across the piazza, a chain of explosions went off—probably Mihaul’s team laying down some grenades for cover while they joined Roddy’s. Then heavy plasmas stitched the air again.

“Report,” Ari said.

Paula glanced over her shoulder, the way they had come. “Twenty Mutons dead.”

“Twenty!”

“We were busy,” she said mildly. “I told you about Clive. He died on his way to the ship.”

“Shit,” Ari said softly. “All right. We’ve got some business to clean up yet. I want you to get your—”

He paused. Behind the rest of Paula’s team, Doris was coming toward them, more and more quickly. Head down, looking staggery, looking decidedly bad. Looking somehow lumpy. Bulkier than she should. Running now, running at them.

Then Doris was on him. Ari saw—just before the mutated arm slammed into his helmet—her slack face, warping out of shape now, and her empty eyes. Just barely gone Zombie, he thought—the second-to-last straightforward thought he had before the fire became everything in the world. God, the boss is going to be pissed.

A thousand and three miles away, a woman sat in a small windowless office. It had a desk, two plain chairs— the one behind her desk and the one in front of it, neither any more comfortable than the other—and a door with a dartboard fixed to the back of it. The dartboard showed signs of frequent and savage use, both for normal competition—the “double” ring was thoroughly pitted— and for other purposes. Right now the center of the dartboard featured, a thoroughly targeted picture of a man with a big, round, florid face and a mustache that seemed big and tough enough to jump off his face on its own and go off to seek its fortune. The picture had no eyes left: only beige cork showed where they should have been, and a dart was presently sticking, cigar-like, out of one corner of the formerly smiling and now ragged mouth.