Jarmo nodded, the killer had to have fantastic strength to squeeze the flesh off of a man’s neck, right down to separating the vertebrae. The neck looked like the remains of a ripe banana squished in a pair of vise grips. “Could have been a giant,” he agreed.
He began a closer inspection, and discovered more of the slimy fluids that puddled the floor of the lavatory. There was an odd stink as well, that of a sewer, mixed with something else. It was an acrid, fishy smell.
He searched the rest of the stalls, finding nothing of note. When he finally returned to the body, he was frowning intensely. He wasn’t a man who enjoyed mysteries. Reaching down into the mess in the toilet bowl, he pulled the head out by the hair as gently as possible under the circumstances. Laying the corpse face up on the floor he examined it and the bloody interior of the bowl.
“Very interesting,” he muttered in Finnish. “Come, what do you make of this, Jun?”
Jun moved to his side with only the slightest hint of hesitation. They were not normally squeamish men, but these were extraordinary circumstances. “What do you see?”
Jarmo indicated a circle of puncture wounds around the base of the neck and a matching circle under the chin. He then pointed out the gouges in the toilet bowl.
“Do you suggest that the man wore rings, or perhaps a clawed glove of some kind?”
“Perhaps,” said Jarmo, rubbing his chin. He wondered if perhaps a mechanical hand would have the strength to perform such a feat. A hand like that of a mech, for example. That still would not explain the slimy jelly-like liquid, but it was a start.
Still, though, he couldn’t help but feel that there was more to this, that he was missing something. Something about the bizarre murder triggered off a tingle of danger in his mind, a primitive fear of the unknown.
Walking over to the utility closet, he forced the lock with a twist of his huge wrist and looked inside. With the long barrel of his weapon, he poked around inside the closet.
“What are you looking for?” asked Jun curiously. He had come forward, but wasn’t quite looking over Jarmo’s shoulder.
“I don’t know. Something strange. Ah, more slime!” he said discovering a damaged vent and more of the glistening, jelly-like substance. “Some kind of animal has been in here, it must have gotten into the air ducts. I don’t remember reading about anything like this in the file-tapes, though.”
“Maybe it’s some kind of snake,” said Jun, peering into the closet that was more than filled by Jarmo’s great bulk.
Both men froze as they heard an odd splashing sound coming from the stalls. It was as if the toilets were gargling. Soon after, there was a wet, slapping sound. Jarmo put a big finger to his lips and the two of them bent down to look under the doors.
The sounds suddenly stopped. The giants exchanged glances and leveled their weapons. Whatever it was, it had heard them.
Baring his teeth in an unconscious snarl, Jarmo leapt forward and threw open the stall door from which the sounds had been coming. A ghastly creature sat there, half-in and half-out of the toilet, at their approached it reared its ugly head. The sucker-like mouth was bloodied. It had been feeding on the dead man’s corpse.
Jarmo fired and the thing sprang at the same time. The plasma burst missed, but took out the rear wall of the restroom. The shrade landed on Jarmo’s chest, sticky sucker-feet gripping his clothes and the flesh of his neck. He was yanked forward into the stall as it struggled to pull the rest of its body out of the plumbing.
Four giant hands grabbed the thing immediately, and a struggle of unnatural strength began. Grunting and heaving, the two men managed to rip it loose from Jarmo’s chest, although it was like pulling apart welded steel. With a final, mighty thrust, they threw it to the floor of the restroom and blew its head off as it humped for the utility closet.
Breathing hard, the two giants knelt over the twitching body.
“Incredible,” breathed Jarmo. “If this is an indigenous life-form, it’s something they left out of the briefings.”
Jun wiped his face with the back of his sleeve. “Almost had you.”
Jarmo nodded, “I don’t know if I could have pulled it off alone. I want you to take this thing back to the security center. See if the medical center people can identify it.”
Jun looked disgusted for a moment, then pulled off his jacket and wrapped the thing in it. Jarmo accompanied him out into the terminal, waving off the security people who had come to investigate the plasma burst.
Before he was halfway back to the security center, Jarmo heard the crackle of gunfire outside. He was already trotting when his phone beeped. Beginning to run, he snapped, “I’m on my way.”
Thirteen
At about ten o’clock Thursday night, the battle for the spaceport began in earnest. The first steps went according to plan for Steinbach, as he succeeded in drawing off the enemy Stormbringers with his own. Steinbach followed up by sending in his tactical squad, almost fully accounted for now, with the militia men backing them up.
The tactical squad moved through the parking lot at a brisk trot. Captain Qing at the point felt invulnerable in his full body-shell armor. The men behind him cheered as they broke from cover and charged the remaining distance to the doors. A wild volley of covering fire from the militia lashed the building in front of them.
Inside, the front line of security people pulled back to the escalators, leaving their dead behind. A group of giants let them pass, then opened up with plasma rifles as the tactical squad tackled the barricades. Despite their body-shell armor, several men went down. The rest took cover and opened up with automatic rifles and exploding slugs. A vicious firefight at close range began.
“Pull them back, Jarmo,” insisted the Governor.
“They have to hold until the Mechs arrive, sir,” replied the giant.
“Pull them back! We can’t let them get slaughtered. We can hold the security center, let them have the rest.”
Jarmo swiveled his great head. “If we give up the rest of the terminal now, they will gain a great morale boost. We need to hold until either they break, or the Mechs arrive.”
The Governor paced back and forth in the security center reception area, fuming. Sergeant Manstein, Jun and Jarmo all watched him. Finally, he gestured impatiently. “All right, all of you go up, but keep your heads down! Just hold them until the Mechs land.”
The tactical squad had carried the fight down to the second floor and now the fighting was desk to desk, door to door. A gigantic leg, blown clean off, was draped over the escalator handrail. A headless suit of body-shell lay nearby.
When Jarmo committed himself and the last of his reserves, it was too much for Captain Qing. He had already lost half his men and there seemed to be no sign of a break in the enemy defenses. The security center in particular, should he even manage to get that far, looked impregnable.
He called an orderly retreat, which combined with Jarmo’s last ditch charge to turn into a rout. Men danced in their body-shell armor as countless rounds struck them. Upstairs, the militiamen had just triumphantly entered the terminal, expecting little resistance. The sight of the tactical squad in full retreat, dragging their wounded, set up a panic. Jarmo, with the handful of giants and security men still standing, chased them from the building and back into the relative safety of the parking lot.
Jarmo sat halfway up the escalator, his great chest heaving. Through a bullet-shattered skylight overhead he examined the night sky. The mechs should have arrived by now. What could have stopped them?
The first flakes of snow fell as Steinbach stood behind a lifter with his field glasses leveled on the terminal. Every militia trooper was engaged in the assault, except for Steinbach himself, who preferred to survey the battle from a more comfortable angle.
He startled when Major Drick Lee appeared at his side. He grimaced, turning slowly to face the man, whom
