Pinwheel Remastered

I was startled by the sound of running, turning to see a squad of a dozen Marines in black combat armor jogging past the column, their rifles at the ready. They ran past us, headed upspin. The subtle curvature of the torus let me see above the recruits in the line ahead of me, and something slowly came into view from beneath the roof ahead of us.

It was one of the objects that the hive ship had launched, its surface covered in uneven, rough flesh that almost looked like off-green modeling clay. It was layered with bony armor, which was overlaid with sturdy metal plates, concentrated toward the front of the thing like an arrowhead. It was about the size of a semi-trailer, maybe slightly smaller. It had cratered into the deck of the torus, digging a jagged hole in the white metal, embedding itself deep into the underlying machinery. It looked like a giant bottle rocket made of meat and carapace, the red warning lighting illuminating it from below.

Above it was the entry hole, a tear in the painted ceiling through which expanding foam had poured in the projectile's wake. It hung from the breach like stalactites in a cave, leaving large pools where it had dripped to the deck, and it had poured over the Bug missile like melting wax before setting. The foam systems were standard on spacecraft and stations, rapidly expanding and hardening both to seal hull breaches, and to choke out fires. It was a good thing, too, or all of the atmosphere on the station would have been vented into space.

The object was surrounded by several squads of Marines, taking cover behind planters and the raised barriers, their rifles trained on it.

"Hold!" Vasiliev ordered, and the column came to a stop. I leaned over, looking past the recruits in front of me as he ran over to one of the Marines. They talked for a moment, then Vasiliev came back, waving his arms at us. "Get back, get back. This one hasn't popped yet!"

The recruits took cover behind kiosks and barriers, the Staff Sergeants doing their best to corral them into adjacent structures and out of the line of fire. Raz and I hid behind a planter, watching as the strange structure began to move.

Sections of the carapace ejected from the main body, bouncing as they hit the deck, ringing the metal like a gong. From within the gaping wounds that they left behind them came a swarm of creatures, flooding out from the shadowy interior of the craft. Their pearlescent shells gleaming in the red hues of the emergency lights, their compound eyes glowing green in the gloom as they dropped to the floor, scrambling over one another almost mindlessly. They climbed up the uneven surface of their vessel to perch atop it like gargoyles, their sharp mandibles flexing.

I recognized them from my studies, Betelgeusian Drones, the front-line troops of the Bug armies. They stood at around five feet tall on a pair of segmented, digitigrade legs, the three claw-like toes on their feet clicking against the deck as they moved. Their bodies were protected by a shining, iridescent exoskeleton that came in a myriad of colors, like the protective shell of a beetle or a crab. It was stiff and smooth, resembling plastic or some kind of resin, pink flesh visible between the articulated joints. Some of that shell was also synthetic armor, the same color and texture as the alien's natural defenses. It was impossible to tell where one ended, and the other began. They had four arms, the upper pair slightly larger than the lower, knives and plasma pistols clutched in their three-fingered hands. Sprouting from their foreheads were ornate horns that came in a variety of shapes. Some resembled those of a stag beetle, others those of deer or elk, and some even looked like tree branches. No two Drones were alike in the color of their shells or the shapes of their horns, their glowing, bulging eyes peering at us.

In the space of a heartbeat, battle commenced. The Marines unloaded at the invaders, their XMRs sending tungsten slugs tearing into the swarming insects. The chatter of automatic fire was deafening, and I pressed my hands against my ears, the glow of magnetic coils joining the warning lights as they heated up. The colorful carapaces of the Bugs shattered into fragments, fluid that had the consistency and color of syrup spewing from their ugly wounds, their limbs twitching as they fell to the deck. It seemed as though the Marines had cut down dozens of them, but there were always more, climbing over the ruined bodies of their comrades as they charged forward.

Those that had clambered up on top of their breaching craft fired down with handheld plasma pistols, made from some kind of sculpted resin. Bolts of crackling, green energy rained down on the Marines, splashing against their cover to leave black burn marks on the metal. A few of the Marines took hits, screaming from within their helmets as the superheated gasses melted through their ceramic armor. The Drones that were coming in from the front popped handheld energy shields, forming a phalanx as they advanced, a device on their wrists projecting an oval-shaped barrier of wavering plasma. They fired around the barriers with their pistols, keeping up the pressure as the tungsten slugs melted on contact with their shields, transforming into showers of molten metal that seemed as harmless as sparks to the insects.

Only moments ago, the Bugs had been surrounded and defenseless, but now it was the Marines who were being forced to fall back. They covered each other with volleys of railgun fire, sticking to the planters and barriers, one of them narrowly avoiding a plasma bolt that slagged the plastic of the kiosk that he was taking cover behind. The pristine trees and bushes burst into flames where the bolts drew too close, smoke billowing into the air.

Some of the Marines had swapped out their receivers, and now plasma bolts were traveling in the other direction too. It was a blinding display, overpowering the red glow in the environment, the magnetically-contained projectiles that streaked across the torus illuminating everything around them like airborne glow sticks.

Where enough plasma fire was concentrated, the shields overloaded and collapsed, their wielders falling to their knees as the burning gas melted their very exoskeletons. They looked like plastic toys in a microwave, their shells running like molten metal, their four arms flailing in silent agony as they were cooked alive. They never made a sound, perhaps they couldn't speak at all, and somehow that made the sight even more horrifying.

The breaks in the shield wall allowed more railgun slugs to pass through, ripping apart the Bugs and throwing them to the ground as they transferred their kinetic energy, hitting the aliens like sledgehammers. But for every one that was felled, another crawled out of the boarding craft to take its place. They must have been packed into those things like sardines in a can. They were fanning out now, overwhelming the defenders with their sheer numbers. I watched as one of them unsheathed a pair of ornate daggers from shaped recesses in its armored thighs with its lower pair of arms, the blades patterned like Damascus steel, then it charged a nearby Marine.

He didn't see the creature until it was in range, and it pounced on him, peppering him with vicious stabs. It grabbed his chest piece with its upper arms, surprisingly strong for its diminutive stature, grappling with him as it used the lower pair to plunge the knives into the breaks in his plate armor. Like an escaped prisoner shanking a guard, it just kept stabbing until the soldier ceased his struggling, collapsing to the deck in a pool of spreading blood. More of the Bugs were launching themselves into hand to hand combat now, using their knives and pistols in conjunction to deadly effect, some of the defenders who were sporting longer rifles abandoning them in favor of their sidearms.

There must have been more Marines than this on the station, but the hive ship had launched a cloud of these boarding craft, dozens of them could have breached all over the torus.

"We gotta move!" I shouted over the gunfire, taking Raz by the arm. "We'll get overrun if we stay here!" I ducked as a plasma bolt shot over our heads, the heat of it singing my hair.

"Where are we supposed to go?" she shouted back, and I looked around. It was chaos, Marines and recruits were scattered in all directions, I couldn't see any of the Staff Sergeants. There were a couple of human recruits nearby, and I waved to them, gesturing for them to approach. They ducked and ran, sliding behind the cover of our planter.

"What are our orders?" I asked, and one of them shrugged while the other glanced nervously at Raz as he covered his ears to block out the noise.

"Dunno!" he yelled over the clamor of battle, "where are the Staff Sergeants?"

"No clue," I replied. "We can't stay here, we have to get to cover."

"Maybe the Marines will save us?" the second recruit wondered, but I felt like they had more to worry about right now. Raz's ears suddenly swiveled, and her head followed shortly after. She was looking at something behind and to the right of us. I followed her gaze and saw someone waving to us from an alleyway between the facades of two buildings.

"It's Vasiliev!" she shouted, "follow me!"

She bolted from cover, bundling me up under one of her arms and grabbing one of the recruits in the other. She hooked the second with her tail, dragging him behind her as she shot across the walkway on her long legs. The next thing I knew, I was being hurled into the alley, Raz skidding to halt as Vasiliev helped one of the recruits to his feet.

The Staff Sergeant had taken cover here with a handful of other trainees, three humans, and two towering Krell. I was surprised to see that the remaining Borealans were huddled deeper inside, too. Even after the chaos of battle had erupted, they had managed to stay together as a pack. There had been six of them, including Raz, but two of them had been hospitalized after the fight in the mess. Now there were just three, looking decidedly lost without their leader. The alley between the two buildings was just wide enough for a Krell to pass through, exposed cabling and pipes extending from the walls here and there, some kind of maintenance tunnel perhaps.

I picked myself up and brushed off my uniform, looking to Vasiliev, who was peeking out from the alley. He leaned out and loosed a couple of rounds from his handgun, it looked like one of the caseless pistols that had been standard issue for a good while, then ducked back inside.

"What do we do, Sarge?" one of the recruits asked. His voice was wavering, he sounded scared out of his wits, and I couldn't blame him. I felt like my heart was trying to escape my chest cavity via my throat.

"Sir? What are our orders?" I repeated.

Vasiliev loosed off another shot, then darted back into the alley, glancing between the ragtag collection of trainees for a moment.

"Well we can't stay here," he replied, walking past us as he made his way further down the alley. "We were ordered to escort the trainees to the armory, where we could hole up and wait out the fighting, but our route is blocked. Who knows how many of those pods have landed on the torus, there could be Bugs all over the station. Priority one is getting you guys to safety."

"Should we go back to the barracks?" someone asked, but Vasiliev shook his head.

"The safest place to be right now is the armory, but we can't travel along the torus. It's a fucking war zone out there." He pointed toward what looked like an access door at the end of the alley. "We'll take the service tunnels that run through the bowels of the station."

"Service tunnels, sir?" I asked. "Can the Borealans and the Krell even fit down there?"

"Yeah, they'll fit. Might be a little tight for the Krell, but the tunnels are tall and wide enough to get some of the larger replacement parts to where they're needed. It's a maze in there, so whatever you do, stay in sight of each other. If you get separated, for God's sake don't wander, just stay where you are and wait for someone to come find you."

"What about everyone else?" another recruit asked.

"This lot were the only ones that I could see," Vasiliev said, gesturing over his shoulder to Raz and me as he typed at a keypad on the door. "You'll have to trust the other Staff Sergeants and the Marines to get whoever is still left out there to safety. We can't do them any good armed with this pea shooter," he grumbled as he stowed his pistol in a holster on his belt. There was a click, and the door swung open on its hinges, revealing more red lighting beyond.

We followed him through, Raz and the other aliens ducking under the low doorway. It opened up a little on the other side, spacious by human standards, but it still reminded me of the interior of some of the more cramped spaceships that I had traveled on. Loose wires hung from the ceiling, and the walls were lined with water pipes and bundles of fiber-optic cables, access ports for various systems spaced out at intervals. Vasiliev hadn't been joking, our Krell companions were large enough that their broad shoulders brushed the sides of the passageway, their scaly heads scraping the ceiling. There was none of the luxury seen on the torus here, it was spartan and functional. There must be miles of tunnels just like this running all throughout the station, how else could the engineers maintain the systems that operated far behind the sculpted facades?

"Alright, I'll take point," Vasiliev said. "Keep moving, and keep an ear out for anything unusual. The Bugs are like cockroaches, they'll find their way into every little nook and crevice..."

***

We followed the Staff Sergeant for what felt like miles, the pounding of our boots and the dragging tails of the Krell the only sounds that echoed through the claustrophobic service tunnels.

The battle had rattled me, it had been so chaotic, so terrifying. It was nothing like I had imagined, nothing like firing on the range. The moment that the bolts of plasma had started flying, my first instinct had been to cover my head and cower. On some level, I was angry with myself, I felt like I had somehow failed to live up to my aspirations as a Marine. On the other hand, I hadn't been armed. There was no way that I could have joined the exchange, even if I'd had the guts for it. I worried about my friends, the other recruits, everyone had been separated so quickly...

"So those are the Betelgeusians," Raz muttered as she walked beside me, her black claws clicking against the metal grates that made up the walkway. "I had seen pictures of them before, during our studies, but I wasn't prepared for the smell."

"The smell?" I asked.

"You didn't smell it?" she continued, and I shook my head.

"Nope, all that I could smell was the ozone from the plasma weapons."

"Human noses really are useless," she muttered. "I felt like I was going to suffocate, those insects reek."

"I wonder if the Marines will be able to repel them?" I added, "they looked like they were having a tough time."

"Your soldiers outmatched them at range," Raz said. "I once mocked you for lacking claws and teeth, but I've never seen that kind of firepower brought to bear before. Now I know where you get it from, monkey. The Bugs had the advantage up close, however. It's too cramped in this station, the humans can't keep them at a comfortable distance. They were faster, more efficient, eager to wet their daggers..."

"What would you have done differently?" I asked, glancing up at her.

"A bayonet charge, perhaps. Beat the Bugs at their own game, tear them apart in the melee."

"Did you see how strong and fast those things were?" I scoffed. "There's no way that sticking a bayonet on the end of an XMR would have solved that problem."

"A Borealan could do it."

"Well, there aren't going to be any Borealans in the Coalition," I replied bitterly. "The program already got canned."

Raz glanced back over her shoulder at the three other Borealans. It was hard to gauge what she was thinking. One of the other human recruits jogged a little to catch up to us, sidling up beside me.

"Stan, right?" he asked, and I nodded. "I'm Harry. I've been bunking with my scaly buddy back there," he said, gesturing back toward one of the Krell. "You taught him to play blackjack, and now he keeps cheating."

"Oh yeah," I replied, waving at the Krell. It was the one that had come to my aid against Raz in the recreation center. The reptiles all looked so alike, it was hard to tell them apart. He rumbled a greeting that made one of the more nervous recruits jump.

"What do you think's gonna happen when we reach the armory?" Harry asked. "Are we just gonna hole up and wait this out, like the Sarge says, or are we gonna gear up and get some payback? That armory is chock full of XMRs and ammo."

"I don't know what we can do, we're not Marines yet," I replied.

"Bullshit, I've seen what you can do at the range. Besides, we have the aliens with us."

"I guess it depends on what Vasiliev says, we have to follow his orders."

"Wait!" Raz hissed, loud enough for everyone to hear. Vasiliev stopped, turning to look back at her.

"What is it, recruit?"

"Do none of you smell that?" she asked, but nobody responded. "It reeks of Bug, they've found their way down here." She turned and hissed to her fellow Borealans, who raised their pink noses to the air, sniffing loudly.

"I smell it too," one of them confirmed, and the other two nodded their heads. Raz spat at them again, seeming exasperated. "It's coming from ahead of us."

The Staff Sergeant raised his weapon, waving us back.

"Keep behind me, we don't want Bugs getting into knife range in a cramped space like this."

The corridor was tight, three humans could just about stand shoulder to shoulder, while the Krell plugged it almost completely. I remembered how that Marine had been dragged to the ground on the torus, butchered by the flashing daggers of a Drone, a lead weight dropping into my stomach.

We continued on, more cautiously now, Vasiliev keeping his handgun at the ready. He checked the forks in the passageway, taking cover behind the corners and then swinging out with his pistol aimed into the gloom. I couldn't understand how he was able to find his way around down here, I felt like there was as much chance of us meeting a Minotaur as a Bug.

"They're close," Raz muttered, her eyes reflecting the red light as they darted about. "It's almost like they've painted their stink on the walls..."

Vasiliev leaned against the bulkhead near a T-junction in the corridor, peeking out, and this time there was a flash of green light. I could feel the heat on my face as a bolt of plasma hurtled past not two feet away from us, flying off down the adjacent corridor. The Sergeant wasted no time, returning fire from cover, the crack of his gun echoing in the service tunnels.

"Contact!" he yelled, "stay back!"

There was a hint of desperation in his voice now. He was trying so hard to protect us, to carry out his orders, but what could he do armed only with a service pistol against an army of aliens? He took a hit to the shoulder, the impact knocking him to the ground. I watched as the fabric of his uniform melted away, burning into the flesh beneath it like boiling water through snow. He bellowed, clutching at it and burning his hand in the process, the smell of charred meat rising to my nose.

I was running before I was even conscious of making the decision. I raced down the hallway, toward Vasiliev, rather than away. I lunged for him, getting a grip on his intact sleeve and dragging him out of the line of fire. Where was the gun? I couldn't see it, we were all going to be slaughtered if I didn't grab it!