Guardian (War Angel Book 1) by David Hallquist (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

from our drone reconnaissance network. Hatches all over the asteroid are opening.

* * *

Alarms sound throughout the fleet. Our small craft moving in from the fleet to Eros are vulnerable right now. Is this an attack on them? Are the perpetrators trying to escape? Or is it just a bunch of desperate colonists scared for their lives and running wherever they can?

Human figures begin to emerge from the hatches. Telescopic enhancement reveals they’re carrying rifles and other small arms…and they’re not wearing spacesuits. They’ve got nothing at all except the tattered rags of whatever clothes they wore before. It doesn’t seem to bother them much, because they’re all long past caring. Horrible wounds puncture their bodies, and many have missing limbs. There’s no bleeding, and most are the various shades of deep gray of a specific kind of dead.

Zombies.

Most nanotech augmentation is designed to work with a person, overcoming injury or making them stronger, tougher, or more proficient at something. Then there’s the zero-override nano that takes over its victim. It turns a person into an automaton trapped inside their own body, a helpless puppet enslaved via remote access. Pain and injury won’t even slow them down. Even death isn’t a release; the nano network within can keep them going for a while even after death. Judging by the wounds on these, many of them had been put down once already in all the fighting.

This must have been how they took over Eros in the first place. A handful of people are convinced or tricked into accepting black market cyber-augments, never knowing the true, final, terrible price. The people we’d been fighting hadn’t been the real enemy all along—just hapless dupes. Once a few had been taken over, more could be sucked into the cellular network until they had hundreds of people in highly placed positions all over the asteroid. Then, one day, someone somewhere sends a signal, and the whole thing is on.

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All over Eros, the enemy that had been put down previously were getting back up again. Now immune to shock and organ damage, they close in from all sides around our men. The Marines are cut off. There’s fighting out by the port, as figures in shredded spacesuits attack our lightly protected engineering and medical crews just disembarking. All they’ve got to fight them off with are their sidearms.

Inside, the Marines switch to explosive darts and SPGs to take down the reanimated enemy. Even though the zombies attack with reckless abandon, a hurricane of plasma explosives tears through them. The fighting in those cramped tunnels looks like pure hell as they fill with smoke and glowing craters. They’ve got to clear a path back to the docks and get the colonists to safety, but it’ll be rough going after all the damage inside from the renewed fighting.

The port is in trouble. Lots of “dead” enemies have gotten up and started fighting again. The Marines are trapped inside the depths of the asteroid, fighting hard to get there, but they’ve still got a long way to go. None of the relief or evacuation ships can dock at the port like this. Maybe if they could, we’d be able to hit the remaining zombies in the asteroid from both sides and finally secure this piece of rock.

We’re still circling the asteroid at high speed, waiting to see if anything new is going to pop out into space, but it’s the port that needs reinforcing.

Data’s flight should be moving in right about now, with his reserves to resecure the port…right about now…any minute now…

Enough of this. “This is Thunderbolt. Target the enemy at Port Eros, assemble on objective.” We’re off on full burn, each of us burning at full G around the asteroid to clean out the port.

We pour on the acceleration, racing over the surface of Eros to make a fast pass over the embattled port facilities.

Mad Dog gets there first, skimming along the surface of the asteroid with engines flaring out into space to keep him in a tight circuit. He fires a cluster of SPGs and a rail burst, and then he’s back out of sight before they can return fire.

I’m over the port, facing into the cavernous docking chamber. Our landing team is huddled near their ships, desperately firing sidearms into the approaching horde of zombies. Another of our transports is floating above the port, trying to find a safe place to land.

As I pass, I fire a burst from my rail cannon, disintegrating zombies. Whatever was done to these poor bastards, I’ve got to protect our people. No one can fix what’s been done to them now; all we can do is put them back down again and end this atrocity.

The rest of us arrive a few seconds later—also doing a flyby attack with guided darts and SPGs—we burn our engines to slow down and take positions over the port.

Hovering over the port, we pour explosive darts and SPGs into the disrupted enemy below. Our people are still huddled in their ships or in cover nearby, taking potshots with lasers or tying to cripple the zombies by burning through their limbs.

Our flights circle around the asteroid port, picking off the shambling figures with explosive rail darts and SPGs as they emerge. Our armed drones and weapons satellites deployed by the fleet add their fire to ours.

Why is Data hanging back with his reserve flight? We could use the extra firepower. Still, there’s no complaints from above, so we’ll keep on blasting away until we run out of zombies.

We’re getting control of the situation. The zombies are now a few scattered groups, as their sheer reckless aggression counts against them. They keep coming according to their programming, and it makes taking the whole swarm out easier. Inside, the Marines have broken through and are on the way to