Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [18]
Consul Char-Kane meanwhile was manipulating the secondary air lock leading to the sleeping quarters while Harris pulled up the schematics for MS3 on his HUD. The door to the tiny vault slid open, and Harris hastened inside after her. A moment later they were closed in the air lock, pressure quickly building around them.
“There is a full atmosphere of pressure inside the living space. Air quality is good,” the woman reported, reading the LED display on the interior door. She pushed several miniature buttons on the keypad. “I am attempting communications within, but there is no response. I can detect no sign of life inside.”
“Can you get it open?” Harris was barely finished asking the question when the interior door slipped silently to the side. Char-Kane strode forward, and again Harris hurried to keep up. When she placed a hand to the neck latch of her helmet as if to remove it, he touched her wrist. She glared at him, but he shook his head.
“We keep our suits on—standard operating procedure for unknown environments,” he declared. With a shrug, she turned and started to look around.
Chief Harris checked out the dining hall and kitchen, finding dishes and rehydrated food on the tables. He was startled to hear a gasp from Char-Kane and quickly found her at the door of one of the barracks rooms.
There were six bunks in the room, and three of them held bodies—gruesomely hacked bodies. Each had been slashed viciously through the torso, separated into two parts.
“This is very, very bad,” she said. She looked at Harris, her red eyes cold, almost accusing.
“Hell of a way to die,” he admitted, clenching his jaw against the rise of bile. The bodies were messy, and the one face he saw—an older female’s—was contorted by horror.
“That is not the bad part,” the consul said dismissively.
“Well, excuse me, but if that’s not the bad news, what the hell is?” Harris snapped.
She flinched away from him as if his anger were a physical presence. Drawing a ragged breath, she struggled for composure. “This is a ritual killing. It means that we Shamani are not the only interstellar empire to find your solar system.”
“You know who did this, and it wasn’t Terran or Shamani?”
Shastana fu Char-Kane shook her head. “The Assarn are here, on Mars,” she stated. “And if they have come to this planet, they most certainly know about your Earth, as well.”
“That’s all she said, LT,” Harris said, completing his abbreviated comlink report on what they had found in the bunker. “That, and she seems to think these Assarn are some kind of super-badasses.”
“Roger that, Chief,” Lieutenant Jackson said. “Maintain your position.”
“Aye, sir,” Harris said as he cut out of the net.
Turning to Shastana fu Char-Kane, the young SEALS gave her a confident and, he hoped, reassuring smile. “The lieutenant will deal with whatever is out there,” Harris said. “If he can, he’ll take a prisoner. That’ll let you talk to one of these Assarn you’re so worried about.”
She didn’t seem to notice his attitude. “That is something that will not happen,” Char-Kane said coldly. She had regained her composure after seeing what was left of the bodies in the bunks. Now her red gaze focused disdainfully on the SEALS in front of her.
“Your arrogance is only matched by your ignorance of what you are facing,” she continued. “The Assarn are a predatory species; they live for the hunt. To them, you are merely prey, to be hunted and killed. The Assarn do not surrender to prey.”
“With Mr. Sanders and the lieutenant out there, your Assarn may find that we’re not easy prey,” Harris said firmly as he thought about his Teammates assaulting the other dome. “And if they have to call in Master Chief Ruiz, there won’t be anything left but a smoking hole in the ground.”
Just outside, Jackson moved up to where he could see Ensign Sanders and Falco crouching low behind a stack of tarp-covered containers. Bending low, he ran the last dozen meters to the position in a fast scuttle.
“Sitrep, mister,” the lieutenant called out as he asked for a situation report.