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  There was no reason for this kind of doubt. The Hiveworld had been raided before. True, there had been casualties. However, there had been survivors. She’d studied their reports. Wilks. Billie whatshername. Nasty stuff, but compelling.

  Kozlowski had no illusions.

  You deal card hands from the bug decks, you came up holding some casualties. Now, though, here on her first big extra-Earth mission, she’d watched the troops get up today, stretch and go through their metaphorical thawing, and when she saw the vulnerability in their eyes, that moment of terror, that oh-shit-here-we-are expression, she felt what they felt.

  Even with that asshole Grant.

  Ever since what had happened with Peter Michaels, maybe she was just getting soft…

  Of course there was a reason she’d pulled the holostunt with Grant. He’d been making noises before sleepytime that he wanted to jump down with them for the mission, to see it firsthand. She was just trying to discourage him, that was all.

  Maybe, just maybe the meeting would rattle him. When she thought deeply enough about all the implications, it sure as hell rattled her.

  She closed her eyes, did some inner self-composure exercises. What came up wasn’t calm and a deep peace, though. What came up was Daniel Grant. She didn’t feel good about him being here. Not good at all. For complex reasons she didn’t care to deal with just right now.

  Even though she’d promised herself she wasn’t going to do it, she went to her bag and pulled out a medicine bottle full of the reason Daniel Grant bothered her.

  She cut a tablet of Fire in half. She’d tried to give it up, no go. Maybe after this fracas was over.

  She washed the half-tablet down with a glass of water.

  Then she finished getting ready for the briefing.

  11

  The bug wavered, capered, lunged.

  Drool cascaded down its mouth into the shadows.

  Its exoskeleton seemed to glow with evil, spikes sticking out of its back erecting.

  The thing looked like a dinosaur attempting to shapeshift into the Devil.

  “Yum yum,” squawked a reptilian voice. “Fee fie fo fum. I smell the blood of a bunch of bums!”

  Uneasy laughter rippled among the assemblage.

  “Any of you sweethearts want a date with my ovipositors?” it snarled. “Looks like we’d have a wonderful party. You all look like absolutely splendid hosts.”

  Groans.

  Colonel Kozlowski twirled the dial of the holo-projector, and the bug program faded. She let her voice assume its normal timbre as she looked out at the group of amused, anxious marines.

  “Okay, listen up, people. I promise you right now, this is going to be no party. But we didn’t come all these light-years to party, did we? We came to help make this galaxy safe for peaceful, sentient life. As long as these things infest any of our planets or ships or space colonies anywhere in an uncontrolled and above all misunderstood fashion, the future of humanity is threatened.”

  The briefing room felt like the interior of a metal egg, subtly lit in the curved corners. All of the soldiers assigned for planetfall sat in rows of comfortable, slanted chairs, as though in some military theater. They sat at a kind of alert attention. Professionals. Damned good people all of them, and Kozlowski should know. She had helped to select every single one of them.

  In the front of the room, alongside her podium, was a table where the big shots in the mission sat, ready to support her in her explanations. Grant. A few of his scientists. Some crew members.

  “These killers, these reprehensible aliens, have just got their claws and their blood and their teeth and their incredible powers of survival as weapons…” She paused for impact. “Our ignorance is their primary weapon, and I hope to diffuse a little more of that with you today.”

  The soldiers all looked entranced. Hanging on her words. These people had been briefed on xenos before, but now they greedily lapped up the information she was presenting. She was familiar with the phenomenon. When you were a soldier, you could act as macho and as confident as you wanted to—but if you didn’t listen and absorb every ounce of information handed to you, you could find yourself dead. Smart soldiers learned to listen. These grunts were smart and capable. Quirky, maybe, but she’d gone through the choices with the command herself, and not one of these people didn’t belong here.

  Too bad about people like the captain, Grant, and his castle of Frankenstein scientists. But then, if she had control over everything, pfft! The aliens would be instant slag, and Peter Michaels would be back.

  Anyway, she had some interesting information here.

  Her theatrics at the beginning had probably not been necessary, but she liked to put a little pizzazz into the proceedings.

  She began with the parameters of the mission.

  “Quite simply, people, as much as I’d like to say all this is perfect and noble in our mission, it’s not. We’re going to a planet which is the origin of the xenos in this sector of the galaxy. We’ll be using a specially fitted lander. People, we’ve got the latest in technology at our disposal. Basically, we’re going in to do a robbery. Now, ultimately I have no doubt this will be in humanity’s best interest so take whatever nobility you can from your participation here. However, what we’re up to here is the biggest heist of queen mother jelly in history.”

  Jastrow waved an excited hand. “Why?”

  “Officially, I can’t tell you. You’re just supposed to do what you’re ordered to do. Unofficially, though, I don’t give a shit.” She grinned. “Xeno-Zip.”

  An excited buzz sounded in the meeting room.

  “That’s why Daniel Grant is here,” someone whispered.

  “Heck, I use that stuff,” another said. “It’s great.”

  “That’s right, people,” said Kozlowski. “We’re on a glorified drug run. Take my word for it, though. I’m personally assured that it will make someone a great deal of money—”

  Laughter.

  “And maybe even help the human cause as well. In any case, be assured. We’re taking the Alien-Earth War to the source, and we’ll most certainly kill lots of xenos in the process. Call it hard-core vengeance if you like. Call it just another job. In any event, we’re here together so I can provide you with some information and equipment designed to preserve your sorry lives.”

  Quickly she rattled off some of the basics about the xenos, their behavior, their attack patterns, individually and in groups. She summarized what was known about the Hiveworld, and what the main hive itself looked like, from the information provided by the previous expedition. It was all like a mantra, and she ticked off the info, point by point.

  “Now then. As for the interior of the hive…” She thumbed the projector to a prepared setting, kicking in the holotank in the corner.

  Like some magician she conjured up a vision from the depths of Hades.

  Here was the familiar bowellike tomb, ropey with intestoid projections and ridged with tubing, bumps, and alien growths, organic in the very worst and most frightening sense. All hellishly lit in orange and yellow. In the central portion of this chilly sight squatted a huge bulblike protuberance, like a half-planted flower bulb. However, instead of bright and colorful plumage, from its pustulelike side it sprouted tubings that connected to other, slightly smaller bulbs.

  And from its top, like Mephistopheles happily squatted atop a pile of his own excrement, rose a gently swaying royal giantess.

  An alien queen mother.

  “All right.” She snapped on a cursor-blip pointer and guided it over to the central sack. “What we have here is a quite realistic computer animation suggesting what we might find in the alien central chamber, once we locate it.

  “This is where we’ll find that royal jelly that Mr. Daniel Grant has sent us after,” she said.

  Grant, seated at the table in a position similar enough to the chairman-of-the-board’s attitude to make him comfortable, leaned back, hands behind the back of his neck. “That’s right
. And if you can trap a queen mother, that would be okay by me.”

  “Trap?” said Private Jastrow, a little dubiously.

  “It’s been done before,” assured Private Ellis.

  “Sounds awfully dangerous!” piped Private Mahone, looking quite doubtful about the whole enterprise.

  “Private—this whole trip is dangerous. You knew that when you volunteered. Anything involving these things is dangerous…” Kozlowski stepped up the magnification threefold, focusing in upon the queen. “Alice in Wonderland time, people. Listen up. We’re going in the hive, and pulling this stuff out. Along the way, we will not be delicate. In any event, be assured… we’ve by no means come here to preserve the species. Kill all the creatures you want,” she said brightly.

  Easy laughter.

  “So then, let’s cook up a little preliminary strategy on how you pry open a bug hive, shall we?”

  With the aid of more prepared graphics, she delineated the technology, science, and tactics that would allow a group of marines to storm a nest of the nastiest monsters in the universe.

  “So… basically—guns, guts, and lots of luck!” she said. She paused for a moment as her people tried to assimilate her words.

  She let them twist in the wind for a moment as a parade of aliens wilted before the onslaught of cartoon marines. The blasts from the heavy millimeter carbines tore through the heads and carapaces, splashing splinters of alien exoskeleton hither and thither along with gobs of alien blood that fell upon the marines and the scene like cancerous amoebas.

  Kozlowski froze the animation.

  “What’s wrong with this picture?”

  Jastrow raised a tentative hand. “Wishful thinking?”

  “Yes. Fantasy, perhaps. Only showing the aliens eating marines wouldn’t exactly be the best way to raise your morale, would it?”

  “Not particularly, no,” mumbled Ellis.

  “Wait a minute,” said Henrikson. “All that alien blood on the troops. It doesn’t seem to faze them. That stuff makes toxic waste look like cotton candy.”

  Kozlowski snapped her fingers. “My man! Exactly!”

  “What about the acid blood?” said Edie Mahone. “Can you tell us something about that?”

  “Some good news for you all there. We do have something special for you. Something that’s going to buck your morale right up.” She smiled. “But first, let me remind you it’s still very important that at close distance you try and avoid the torso. The splatter potential is quite bad. It’s best to go for the knees.” The cursor in the air flew to one of the strong and knobby alien lower joints. “As many of you have already discovered, a shot to the knee will not only hamper the alien’s mobility… but such a wound also minimizes bleeding and spatter potential. A discreet coup de grace to the head at that point is made possible. But then, of course, if you haven’t actually been in battle with the things, you’ve at least had simulation chamber experience… save perhaps for Mr. Grant.”

  “I’m hardly going to exactly participate in the mayhem, now am I, Colonel?” said Grant.

  “As you’ve never handled a gun before, I hope not…” said Kozlowski dismissively. “Now then… I’ve kept you all waiting long enough…” She pulled out a com unit. “Thank you, Doctor, for waiting in the wings. You may come out now, and by all means bring your assistant with you.”

  She turned to the audience, most of whom were on the edge of their seats with suspense.

  Kozlowski turned quite serious.

  …Michaels, his head molten and sizzling, skin sliding from naked skull…

  She suppressed the memory.

  “I know the blood issue is of great concern to all of you, so I’m happy to present an innovation that should all but do away with your fears.”

  Yeah. Right.

  Pep talk. Maybe that’s what she’d given too much of to poor Peter. Maybe if he’d been properly scared shitless and quaking in his sweatsocks, he wouldn’t have had to act like the Big Man and gone to that trap.

  She swallowed down a dry throat, resumed.

  “For more on that, I turn you over to Dr. Zato.”

  Dr. Zato, one of Grant’s squids.

  The man waltzed into the room like a stand-up comedian just called on to do his act. He was a toady little guy, who blinked as though the light was too much. Receding hairline. High IQ dandruff.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a high, munchkin voice, “I give you your next best friend—”

  The assistant walked into the room slowly, clearly a little weighted down by what he wore, but not uncomfortably so.

  Armor.

  “Here it is, folks. The Z-110 Acid-Neutralizing Combat Wardrobe.”

  The assistant wore a streamlined, snazzy-looking jumble of plates, silver and blue in hue. A combination of insect and tortoiseshell. On the back was a compact storage unit. A narrow-visored helmet fitted snugly over his head. An antenna angled out of the back.

  Kozlowski had seen it before, but the sight of it still impressed her.

  And if it could do what Doc Z. claimed—well, all the better!

  “Efforts to produce an armor resistant to the intense acidity of the alien blood have proved impractical.”

  Ellis waved his hand, got called upon. “Yeah. I always wondered about that. We’ve got the chemical composition of the alien’s exoskeleton down cold. That isn’t eaten up by alien blood, clearly. And it’s light enough. How come its elements aren’t used for armor?”

  “Well, that would be all very good, Private, if you’d care to be encased in a toxic suit.”

  “You can’t make an alloy… or have that stuff as the uppermost layer?” insisted Ellis.

  “Incompatible. What we have here in the aliens is a different kind of chemistry. Part carbon-based, part silicon-based—and maybe something else.”

  “But we’re starting to learn to use their DNA.”

  “Fooling around with genes and chromosomes doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve got everything solved, Private. These things are still mysteries wrapped in enigmas. Believe me, your suggestions have been tried.” He shook his head patronizingly. “Just doesn’t work.”

  “So there was some kind of armor that wasn’t affected by the alien blood?” said Mahone.

  “That’s right. But it was too heavy. Now if we were working in low-gee environments, maybe. Such is not the case on the Hiveworld. These suits were already in the works when this mission was established. We tailored the batch we brought along just for this occasion—with all your specific measurements in mind.”

  “No chance to return these, huh?” said Jastrow.

  “That won’t be necessary, I assure you. What we’ve got here is a new process, but we’ve been testing it for years, and we’ve got it down exactly.”

  He went over to the suit and poked the side of the arm.

  The surface gave.

  “What we have here is a light, effective armor, covered with a permeable membrane controlled by a mechanism in the back of the suit. It’s kind of like having the whole suit engulfed by a friendly jellyfish that will grow back immediately if hit. Its function is quite useful.

  “Before, the suits that worked were too heavy. Therefore what we have here is a self-contained osmotic demi-atmospheric suit that does not resist, but extirpates.

  He poked the suit again.

  “The moment alien blood touches this wardrobe, the threat is eliminated altogether.”

  He took a vial marked ACID from his pants pocket, twirled it open, and poured drops onto the shoulder of the suit.

  The top layer frizzled, bubbling.

  Kozlowski had to make herself watch.

  The bubbling was only for a moment, though.

  Fluid welled, swallowing the acid.

  The membrane closed up the hole within moments, and it was as though the acid had never been.

  “Yeah, but how tough is that stuff?”

  “It’s a form of plastic, and it can be cut… but it’s even better tha
n skin… it naturally re-forms into its previous mode within seconds, and chemically rebonds itself. A healing process, if you will.”

  “What about inside. I mean, we haven’t exactly been trained in those sort of suits,” said another man.

  “That’s one of the beauties of the things. In all details, the interior, the articulation, and the booster servos of the suits are identical to what you all have been trained to use. The other aspects are self-regulating. Maintenance will be needed, of course, but only after an encounter with the enemy. I should emphasize that this armor isn’t perfect. It will wear out, though it should stand up during battle. Nonetheless try and avoid any alien blood you can. Don’t go wading in it.” He nodded to his assistant. “Go ahead. Let them have a close look.”

  The man strode around the room.

  The soldiers poked and prodded the model.

  “Goddamn. I’m going to feel like rubber-boy!” said Ellis.

  “This is going to give a whole new twist of the saying ‘Bouncing back!’ ” suggested Jastrow.

  “Okay,” said Kozlowski, after giving them a couple of minutes to handle the merchandise. “You’ll all have the opportunity to get used to these suits in special exercises we have planned every day for the remainder of the journey. But for now, listen up! ‘Cause this is how we’re going to use these things.”

  And she told them.

  12

  One drink down.

  Two more to go.

  “Another glass of bubbly, my dear?” said Daniel Grant, pulling the bottle out of the thermo-adjuster and tilting it even as he asked the question.

  “It is awfully delicious—but…” said Edie Mahone, holding out her hand.

  Glug glug glug.

  The quite large glass filled with bright, dazzlingly effervescent fluid.

  “Of course you will. You’re off duty, you need to relax, and we’ve got three whole days before your mission,” said Daniel Grant. “Our mission!”

  He refilled his own glass with the double-strength champagne. Damned good thing he was feeling generous with his team on the Razzia. He’d fitted them out with his own concept of hardship supplies. Hell, if they had to go to the other side of nowhere to suck some bug juice from some godforsaken planet, at least they should do so in style. Now, he was reaping the rewards of his own munificence.