missing Gehenna Base personnel.
The chamber was some hundred feet in diameter, the walls pockmarked in rows both vertical and horizontal, and a thin layer of vapor covered the floor, beading wetly on the hard suits' armor. There was light of a kind, a harsh unforgiving blue-white glare that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Long flat slabs of some unfamiliar metal were scattered across the floor, held just above the vapor, and on those slabs, held firmly by some unseen force, were the remains of the Base personnel. Some were only parts: organs and limbs and faces. A dozen complete torsos had been messily vivisected, and from the few with heads attached and the expression on their faces, Silence had no doubt at all that these men and women had been alive and aware when the vivisection began. Anywhere else he might have felt sick, for all his experience, but right then he was too full of rage and fury to feel anything else.
'They'll die for this,' said Frost in a calm, cold voice. 'Every living thing on this ship shall pay in blood and suffering.'
The marines stirred restlessly, looking this way and that for something to aim their weapons at. Silence knew how they felt, but kept an icy firm control on his anger. 'You can kill the aliens only after the specialists have squeezed every drop of information out of them, Investigator. Until then, I want captives, not corpses. Marines, remember your orders. Minimum force only, unless in life-threatening situations. Use your own judgment, but you'd better be prepared to back it up later. There will be a time for vengeance, but we must have the information this ship holds. We might have to face more of its kind in the future.'
'Don't lecture me,' said Frost. 'I know my duty.'
'Sorry, Investigator. Just speaking for the record. There's nothing more we can do here. Mark this chamber's location on your suits' maps, and we'll move on. We can send people in to retrieve the bodies later. Right now we have to find the control section. I want this ship immobilized and helpless before it can finish its repairs. I also want a good look at the crew, and more and more it seems the only place we can be sure of finding them is at the control center. They wouldn't dare abandon that.'
He led the way across the chamber, moving carefully between the crimson spread-eagled bodies on the slabs, trying hard not to look at them. It was easier to control his anger that way. It seemed to take forever to reach the opening on the far wall, but as he drew near it puckered shut in a mass of solid, tightly packed cables. Silence prodded it here and there with his steel fingers, but it didn't give anywhere. He hadn't thought it would. He hit it once with his fist, and then turned back to the others. They stared at him silently with their featureless steel helmets. Slowly, and without any fuss, the light was going out. The slabs with their grisly specimens began to disappear into rising vapor. It didn't take much imagination on Silence's part to picture the alien crew massing on the other side of the closed portal.
'Marines, I feel we are quite definitely now in a life-threatening situation. Feel free to shoot anything that moves that isn't us. I'd like a few specimens left alive, just a few, so if anything runs, let it. Investigator, make an opening here.'
Frost aimed her armored right hand at the closed opening, and the disrupter built into the glove blasted a hole right through the tightly packed webbing. A sickly green light spilled into the chamber through a ten-foot-wide hole, and everyone braced themselves for an attack that never came. Silence and Frost edged forward and peered through the new opening. Hanging ends of ruptured cables hung twitching and jumping from every side, but showed no signs of knitting themselves together. They pattered weakly against the hard suits, but did no harm. Beyond the opening lay a narrow milky-white tunnel with smooth, faintly glowing walls. It was barely eight feet in diameter, only just big enough to take the away team in their hard suits, and Silence couldn't help wondering if that was deliberate. There was no sign of any enemy.
'I'll take the lead,' said Frost. 'This is Investigator business now.'
'Couldn't agree more,' said Silence. 'After you.'
Frost stepped through into the narrow tunnel, the gauntlets with built-in guns held out before her. Silence followed, and the marines brought up the rear. The floor of the tunnel gave disturbingly under their weight, as though it might rupture at any moment and spill them into whatever lay waiting below. But somehow it held. Silence pressed on and tried hard not to think about it. He'd lost all track of where he was in relation to the ship's exterior. He wasn't actually lost. The suit had kept track of all his twists and turns, and could easily lead him back. But he still didn't know where he was precisely; he just had a strong feeling he was getting deep and deeper in, being lured remorselessly toward the dark heart of the alien craft. He checked his air supply, but he'd barely touched it so far. Theoretically the re-breather could keep him alive for up to a week. Under normal conditions.
He deliberately didn't finish that thought and instead studied the tunnel walls to either side of him. They were flat and smooth, not cabled, more like membranes. They pulsed and fluctuated to no apparent purpose, and waves of pale color briefly tinged the milky white like passing thoughts or dreams. The passage was also narrowing, slowly but inexorably. Silence used his suit's sensors to measure the diameter of the tunnel and compared it to the size it had been when they entered it. He frowned at the answer and calculated how long it would be before the tunnel grew too small for his team to continue on. He liked that answer even less. Four minutes, thirty-seven seconds. No buts or maybes.
'Investigator, marines, stop right where you are.'
They did so. Frost didn't look back, but he knew she was watching him quite clearly on the inside of her helmet. Silence measured the tunnel behind him with his suit's sensors and wasn't at all surprised to discover that the tunnel had already narrowed beyond the point where they could pass through it.
'I was wondering when you'd notice,' said Frost. 'It would appear the aliens have us where they want us. Shall I blast it?'
'What the hell,' said Silence. 'When in doubt, make a loud noise. Let someone know we're here, and we're not at all happy about it.'
Frost aimed her built-in disrupters at the narrowing tunnel before her, and the milky-white walls split apart in a hundred places as insects beyond counting burst in on the away team. The bugs ranged in size from many-legged things the size of a fist, which swarmed all over the hard suits looking for weak spots and entry points, to huge bulky things with their own armor and vicious pincer claws. The tunnel was briefly full of flashing disrupter bolts, and insects fried as the tunnel walls blew apart, but once the guns fell silent the away team disappeared beneath a writhing mass of silent insect life. Tiny things swarmed over the suits' sensors, and Silence was suddenly blind and deaf. He tried to brush the insects away with his powerful steel hands, but there were just too many of them. Warnings flashed up before his eyes as acid began to eat into his armored joints, threatening the hard suit's integrity. Screams sounded in his ears as the insects invaded a marine's armor and began to eat him alive. More screams followed.
'Frost!' said Silence. 'You still have those explosives?'
'Enough to blow us all to hell, if that's what you want.'
'I was thinking more of just enough to blow the insects to shit without rupturing our suits. Think you can manage that?'
'No problem. Brace yourself.'
When it came, the explosion was powerful enough to briefly fill the inner screen of Silence's helmet with a dozen warnings, but they faded out one by one as the suit held. He brushed vaguely at himself, and sight and sound returned as dead insects fell away and the sensors cleared. The tunnel hung in tatters around them, and beyond and around them lay the secret of the alien ship; the vast, imposing shape of the Queen of the alien hive.
She filled the space beyond the tunnel, a great bloated sac of living tissue, hundreds of yards across, living walls of pale pulsating flesh, studded here and there with black lid-less eyes. Ridiculously small atrophied limbs protruded in places, remnants of a forgotten earlier life. Metal instruments and gleaming cables plunged into her great flesh from all around, as though she was built into the ship or it had been grown around her.
Silence tore his gaze away and looked around him. The swarming insects had been blasted away by the force of the explosion. Dead and injured alien forms lay everywhere, some twitching feebly. But Silence had no doubt more were already on their way. Eight of the marines were still standing, looking numbly to him for instructions. The Investigator only had eyes for the Queen. Silence checked the four fallen marines for life signs, but he already knew what he'd find. Their suits had ruptured from the combination of the explosion and insect damage. Four more good men lost to the aliens. Silence looked up sharply as his suit's sensors picked up scrabbling sounds, drawing nearer.
'Investigator, more insects on the way. Recommendations?'
