Starship Tomahawk (The Hive Invasion Book 2) (6 page)

"We take off in about fourteen hours," Carruthers said. "You'll have to stay here until then. Kuzyk will bring you coveralls and a cap. Wear them if you have to use the head." He jerked a thumb to the left. "It's that way."

Janice nodded, wide-eyed.

"Once you're off-planet you'll be …" He let his voice taper off. "Actually, 'safe' isn't the word. You'll be on a warship headed for Naxos. Maybe you'd be better off staying here and facing-"

"No," Janice interrupted, her face going pale. "No, you can't leave me here."

"All right." He frowned. "They backed down," he said. He was piecing together his thoughts as he spoke. "I'm a captain, and it's a military facility. Plus I'm one of the heroes of the
Alexander
. I fought the aliens. So they can't accuse me of treason." He snorted. "Well, they can accuse me. They did. But they can't make it stick."

Kuzyk and Janice watched him, silent.

"What's it like for everyone else?" he said. "With over half the Gate network down, most people can't even leave Earth."

"The EDF has chapters in the colonies," Janice said. "They're worst on Earth, though."

There was a moment of gloomy silence.

"I'm suddenly pretty glad we get to leave," Carruthers said. "I wonder what kind of world we'll come back to."

Lieutenant Derek Nicholson checked the magazine in his blast rifle, tugged at the bottom of his light body armor, took a deep breath, and nodded to the sailor at the ramp controls. The ramp dropped, and a wave of humid air swept in, scented by vegetation. It was a strange smell to Nicholson, who had lived his entire life in large cities, and he wanted to stop while he got used to it. Instead he made a "come along" gesture to his team and headed down the ramp at a trot.

The
Achilles
sat in a forest. Trees stretched away in every direction, and Nicholson felt his heart speed up until he thought it might hammer its way out of his chest. He couldn't see very far in any direction. Anything could be hiding in these trees, and his imagination wasted no time in conjuring up a buffet of dangers. He broke into a run, curving around the side of the ship, the others hurrying behind him.

He headed into the trees, then changed his mind and jogged back toward the ship. With the bulk of the corvette behind him and a thick wing stretched overhead he felt slightly safer. He dropped to one knee, lifted his rifle, and scanned the trees.

A blonde woman dropped to one knee beside him. She scanned the trees like he did, and spoke without taking her eyes from the forest. "What is it, Sir? Did you see something?"

Nicholson glanced around. There were four in the party. The other two, Hudson and Parrish, stood slightly behind him and Adria Gillett. "No," he said. "It's just this forest. It puts me on edge." He glanced at her, expecting to see the same stress on her face.

Instead, she stared at him, her face perplexed. She lowered her rifle. "Forest, Sir?"

He gestured at the trees that surrounded the ship on all sides. "This forest here." He felt himself flush. "Or is it more of a jungle?" He wasn't sure what the difference was.

Gillett spoke hesitantly, almost as if she thought he might be kidding. "It's an orchard, Sir."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

She stared at him for a long moment, blinked, then said, "It's an orchard. Not a forest. All these trees were planted here. They aren't growing wild."

"How can you tell?"

Again she stared at him before speaking. "There's a tree every, what, fifteen meters? They're all the same size. All the same kind. They're in perfectly straight lines. And there's nothing else growing here but grass. No underbrush." She pointed at the top of the nearest tree. "Plus, they're apple trees."

How do you know what kind of trees they are? A tree is a tree, isn't it? You can't know what kind it is.
He didn't ask the question out loud. He could feel a hot flush spreading up his neck and creeping toward his face. He examined the treetop. Sure enough, he could make out little yellow orbs among the leaves. "It could still be dangerous," he said.

Gillett didn't speak, just raised a pale eyebrow.

"What if there are animals?"

"Animals, Sir?" She sounded like a parent trying very hard to be patient with a small child.

He shrugged irritably. "You know. Dangerous animals." The idea that he was making a fool of himself was rapidly becoming a conviction. He didn't know what else to do, so he said, "Bears?"

Her eyebrows rose a tiny bit higher. "I'm sure there are no bears on Ariadne, Lieutenant."

Nicholson lowered his rifle. After a moment he stood. "I grew up in Toronto," he muttered. "We have a few parks." He started walking. "No forests. And no orchards."

Feet rustled on grass as the others followed. No one spoke, but he could imagine their amused glances. His face, already warm, grew downright hot, and he walked faster, not wanting them to see his scarlet cheeks.
I sure hope somebody starts shooting at us soon. I need the distraction.

The trees, he discovered, were laid out in a perfect grid. He could see now that they were in straight lines, like the intersections on a sheet of graph paper. His embarrassment increased.
Never mind that. The Hive is on this planet. Focus. Lives are at stake.

The near wall of the crater loomed behind him. His assignment was to make his way across the crater floor, keeping out of sight, and gather intelligence. Above all he was to look for human survivors. They would be the best source of information.

The ground became rough, and the perfect grid of trees gave way to a jumble of rock with apple trees sprouting here and there wherever there was a pocket of soil. The ground rose, the trees ended, and Nicholson found himself climbing through a tangle of shrubs. He used both feet and one hand for as long as he could, then reluctantly slung the rifle across his back and used both hands to climb.

The ridge was no more than ten meters high, and the crest too choked with vegetation to offer much of a view. He unslung the rifle and kept watch as the others clambered up to join him. Then he slung the rifle again and clambered down the other side.

Some kind of crop grew on the far side of the ridge. Even Nicholson could see that the knee-high plants formed straight lines with dark furrows on either side. He had no idea what the crop was. The orchard was on flat ground, but this part of the crater was filled with low, rolling hills.

Gillett stepped up beside him, unslinging her rifle. "Is that a building?" She pointed.

Nicholson squinted into the distance. He could make out a dark shape poking above the corner of a hill a couple of hundred meters away. He took a binoc from his backpack and lifted it to his eyes. He zoomed in, watching the image jump and wobble despite electronic correction. He could see a flat rectangle, covered in green siding.

"It's a building, all right. I can't tell what kind. We'll check it out."

She nodded, and they waited while Hudson and Parrish clambered down the slope. Then Nicholson led them off in a curve that would put the bulk of a hill between them and the distant building. They paused in a sheltered hollow.

"Hudson," Nicholson said softly. "You go around the hill that way." He gestured to the right. "Parrish, you go the other way." He pointed left. "Gillett, you and I are going over the top. Stop and hold your position when you can see something."

They nodded. The other men moved out, and Nicholson started up the hill, Gillette a few steps behind him and off to one side.

She dropped to a crouch as they neared the crest, and Nicholson copied her. By the time they reached the top they were wriggling on their stomachs, leaving a trail of mangled plants behind them. Nicholson rose up on his elbows so he could see over the crop.

A cluster of buildings nestled at the base of the hill. There was a small house, a long Quonset hut, and a couple of rectangular structures that seemed to be made from logs. One log building had a door that hung ajar. As Nicholson watched, a puff of wind caught the door. It banged against the wall, and the sound reached him a moment later.

Aside from the door, nothing moved.

"Looks abandoned," Gillett murmured.

Nicholson said, "Hudson. Parrish. What do you see?"

"Just an empty farmyard," Hudson said.

Parrish said, "I can hear something banging, but I can't see where it's coming from. There's a covered pad on the side of the house. It looks like they parked a vehicle there. The vehicle's gone, though." After a moment he added, "I can see an open window. They must've left in a hurry, if they're gone."

"Let's take a look," Nicholson said. "Stay sharp." He rose to his hands and knees, crawling forward until he was below the crest of the hill. When he was low enough not to be skylined he stood and trotted down the hill, Gillette beside him. He could see Parrish and Hudson coming in from either side.

They spread out as they reached the yard. Nicholson headed for the log building with the swinging door. He poked the barrel of his rifle through the doorway, then quickly stepped through and moved to one side.

The inside was shadowy and smelled of dust. A couple of windows high on one wall let in shafts of sunlight. He could see motes of dust glittering and dancing in the light. The building was small, maybe half a dozen paces from wall to wall, and filled with crude wooden bins. Bushel baskets filled one bin. The baskets looked as if they might have been woven from palm leaves. The baskets were empty, and so were the other bins.

He stepped outside. Gillett came out of the other log building and shrugged.

"There's some farm equipment in the Quonset." It was Hudson, speaking over his implants. "No sign of life, though."

Parrish said, "The house is clear too."

They met at the front door of the house. "Stay out here and keep watch," Nicholson said to Hudson. Then he entered the house, Gillette on his heels.

He found himself in a kitchen, small by the standard of houses on Earth, downright palatial to a man who served on corvettes. There was a wood-burning stove, and a counter with a couple of electric burners. A large pot sat on one burner, the top spattered with tomato sauce.

There was a table, crudely made from wooden planks. The plates were plastic, and they were heaped with moldy food.

Gillett sniffed. "I can't smell it," she said, gesturing at the table. "This house has been abandoned for quite a while."

A floorboard creaked, and Nicholson's fingers tensed on his rifle. It was just Parrish, though, appearing in the kitchen doorway. "Looks like a husband and wife and two kids lived here," he said. "Gone now, though."

"I'm going outside," said Gillett. "This place gives me the creeps."

Nicholson looked around the kitchen. If the house held any more clues, he couldn't see them. He followed Gillett into the yard.

A dirt road led from the yard, through more rolling farmland, and off toward the middle of the crater. Trees lined both sides of the road. It made for easy walking and decent cover, and they set off down the middle of the road.

Fifteen minutes of walking brought them to another farmyard. They stood at the end of a long driveway looking at a house and a single large outbuilding. A trailer sat in front of the house, stacked with half a dozen crates. A couple more crates sat on the ground beside it. Quite a bit of wind-blown debris, mostly dried leaves by the look of it, had accumulated on the upwind side of the crates. The yard was long abandoned.

"They started to pack up their stuff," Hudson said. "Then they changed their minds. Left it here and ran."

"Looks that way," said Nicholson.

"You want us to check out the house?"

"No. Let's keep going."

He paused, though. The driveway was the first break they'd seen in the double line of trees. The house was on a low hill, and he could see for several kilometers in every direction. He didn't like it at first. The crater walls, not too far apart this close to the side of the crater, made a comforting visual barrier. They made it seem more like a proper city, where you could never see too far.

When he looked the other way, he felt goosebumps rise on his arms. More hills rose, not far off, hiding the ground from view. But he could see the crater walls curving away and fading in the distance with majestic grandeur.
What was it like to live here,
he thought.
To see this view every day?

A plastic tricycle lay on its side near the front of the house, by a little wagon, meticulously hand crafted from wood.
What would it be like to grow up in a place like this, to walk out your front door and run around in real grass, to see kilometer after kilometer of trees and plants and growing things?

Gillett said, "Lieutenant?"

"This must have been a nice place to live," he said. "Before the Hive."

She nodded. "I don't suppose humans will ever live here again."

"No. Probably not."
Not unless the war goes far better than we have any right to expect.
"Come on." He turned away from the yard. "Let's go find the people who lived here."

Man, I just love that guitar solo at the end. Gives me goosebumps every time. You're listening to Sharon Crowfoot on Radio Free Naxos, the voice of free men and women across the entire star system. You might be hiding at the base of the crater wall listening to a Rover radio with the last bit of juice left in the battery. You might be back in your house, jumping at every noise, wondering when the aliens are going to come through the door, or through your wall. It might be weeks since you've seen anyone except the people you're hiding out with, if you're lucky enough to be part of a group. But I'm here to remind you that you're not alone. We are the free people of Naxos. We are scattered, but we are united, and we will prevail.