Ryan awoke only about six hours later. Time to wash up. For the Sudsers anyway. He paused and wondered if he should maybe bathe the body he was using. He was starting to smell the ripe smell of unwashed feminine hygiene. In the end though, he decided not to bother. The body would be in water in only about four hours time for the next day or two, until someone could retrieve it and revive it. He settled instead for giving it a brisk wipe down and changing into a new outfit.
Curtis doubled checked his equipment and pressure suit. Leo slipped a dark vial into his hand. “Go ahead and drink this.” Ryan tossed the bitter contents back and grimaced.
Soon everyone was assembled into position, and then very carefully, a orange silk net was placed over them all. With the net over them, they blended into the rust colored ground. It was show time!
They marched in the heavy pressure atmosphere, moving at a fairly brisk pace for over an hour. Ryan was starting to sweat bullets from the exertion. Finally, when he was just considering ripping one of the water jugs off his back and downing the contents, Curtis held up a hand to stop. “Alright listen up meat bags. Perimeter is only six feet away.” He whispered. “They will release the bug, but don’t panic. We got extra blood, so nobody bleeds out. Except you that is.” He said, looking at Ryan. He turned back to his little army. “If ya feel weak, don’t be a hero. Unclamp the tubes for the IV in ya arms, and get ya asses back to the compound. Everyone ready?”
Ryan gritted his teeth and clamped the gun tightly, making sure his finger wasn’t on the trigger. Conserve the water. He wished he could have had a blood bag, but with all the water he carried, it was decided not to burden him with any more weight.
“Aye! Let’s go!” Curtis took off at a trot. The fastest he could do in the heavy air. Ryan stayed behind him, hot on his heels with two men to his side, and a big, busty, brunette woman behind him.
The Sudsers appeared out of nowhere it seemed. Ryan realized they blended so well with the rocks in their shades of grey and mottled orange that it took him a moment to even spy them. Thankfully the guard were better practiced at spotting them. They fired quickly and efficiently. And Ryan realized quickly why they were called Sudsers.
“Holy fucking stars in the sky!” He yelped in startled shock. As soon as the water hit them, they let out a rumbling roar of agony, turning in circles and jumping dangerously about. The beings weighted about five hundred pounds easily, and looked like massive armored beetles that were almost eight feet tall.
For all of their imposing height and weight, water did something almost unholy to them though. Their armor fizzed and melted away, foaming madly and leaving gaping dark holes that dripped blue blood. Something in the genetics of them reacted very badly with the water. A few of the Sudsers hit in their vulnerable abdomens simply fell over and didn’t move. Others were indeed going berserk, rampaging all in their path.
The woman behind him smacked the back of his helmet. “Keep it moving!” She snarled at him. Ryan tore his eyes away from the scene and with new found strength in his legs, kept right behind Curtis, not eager to lag behind.
Curtis stopped so suddenly that Ryan actually ran into the back of him. One of the guards on his side caught him and held him uprights as Curtis whipped around. “In ya go!” Curtis yelled as he hoisted Ryan from the other mans grasp and dropped him promptly down a hole.
“Damn you!” Ryan yelled as he slammed into the hard floor ten feet below, while even so admiring the mans strength to pick him up in such heavy air. Curtis laughed from above and waved as he slammed the hatch closed.
“Right Leo, I’m all yours.” He said aloud, looking about the pressure lock chamber.
“I’m right here.” The mans voice said through the microphone in his ear. “Lets get this done.”
Ryan shed the heaviest parts of the pressure suit as Leo talked him quickly through the pressure lock and soon he was officially into the compound of the Sudsers. It was not that much different than the human compound. Similar layout and design. Then again, humans had helped build it. So that was to be expected. The light was brighter, Sudsers liked bright light, the effect of having two suns. The walls were also unpolished and rough. Hallways and ceilings were wider and higher, and while the pressure was substantially less than above, it was still heavier.
Ryan was running along at a fairly brisk pace, keeping as silent as possible. He was coming up on an intersection when he heard a series of low rumbles and clicks, like two small stones being rolled together. He skidded to a halt.
“Shit.” Leo said in his ear. “Can you tell which direction they are coming from?”
“No” Ryan whispered back.
“You need to take a left, but if we need too, we can do a round about by going straight.”
“I think I would rather just take them out instead of wasting time.” Ryan whispered back.
“You are the professional.” Leo said back. “But I would appreciate you not getting the body ripped apart. She was a dear friend.”
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“I will keep it together, but only because getting ripped apart still hurts like a mother fucker, even if it ain’t my body.” Ryan responded back hotly.
There was silence from the other end. Ryan decided that meant to do as he please. He walked forward carefully. The lights saved him. He saw the flickering shadows coming from the right. Perfect.
Without thinking, he flung himself around the corner, firing one blast of water from the cannon before running full speed down the hallway. There was a shriek of screeching rocks being ground together, and a thunder behind him. They were chasing him.
He did have one advantage. He was quicker. The Sudsers were slower due to their bulk. “Sharp right!” Leo yelled in his ear.
He threw himself to the right, careening off the wall. He got his balance and kept running. “You have a dead end coming up, we gotta bypass the system on the door to get down a level, get rid of those guys so you can work on it!”
Ryan reacted instinctively. He threw himself to his knees, turning around and firing the water. Moments like this made it worth spending a day in the body. His timing was perfect. He hit two of the Sudsers dead on, one in the head, where he assumed a face was past all the mandibles, another in the gut. The third, seeing his companions fall, threw itself out the way into a side hallway, avoiding the splashes of water and foam that erupted from the others bodies.
“Very nice.” Leo said as Ryan got back to his feet and kept running.
The steel door wasn’t very big. Ryan briefly wondered if he could just use a grenade and blow it out, but decided to save the weapon instead. An engineer talked him through the panel.
Wires cut, and panel trashed, the door finally slid open. Ryan ducked inside just as a group of Sudsers came around the corner. “Fuck!” He yelled, seeing the large guns they carried.
“Run!” Leo shouted. “You are almost there! The next door we can close! We can lock them out!”
“How are we on time?” Ryan asked as he ran, dodging bullets that appeared to be made of stone and shrapnel. “And are they firing rocks at me?” He wondered aloud as something the size of a fist slammed into the wall in front of him.
“Good so far on time, and yes they are! High velocity rocks. Don’t get hit.” Leo warned.
A tickle near Ryans nostril made him look down. Blood streaked the front of the pressure suit. “NOT SO GOOD ON TIME LEO!” He yelled in a panic, his heart racing.
He could feel the blood dripping steadily now through his nose, and worse, his vision was getting a red tint from the bleeding of his eyes.
“Don’t panic! The door is right there!”
“Yea we got a door, and four Sudsers behind me!” Ryan screamed at him. Blood tickled the back of his throat and he swallowed in disgust. Fuck it, time to use the grenade.
He grabbed the pin from the top of the little round ball, and pulled, tossing it a little harder to compensate for the pressure to the Sudsers twenty feet behind him as he rolled around a corner.
The resulting boom and shockwave threw him back onto the ground. In the distance, he could hear the shrieks and cries as the Sudsers were blown around. The grenade wouldn’t kill them like water could, but it made them seriously disoriented and injured either way.
Ryan scrambled upright and ran back around the corner, firing off balls of water left and right through the gritty air. Sudsers shrieked and he felt foam and droplets. He must have hit some, but he couldn’t tell through the dark hallway and rocks that littered all around. He ran to the door with Leo shrieking instructions in his ear.
“Your vitals are plummeting. You have thirty minutes!” Leo yelled.
“Not the info I need right now dammit!” Ryan yelled back. The jugs of water on his back felt substantially lighter. “I need to get through quickly! Not much ammo left!”
“Blue wire, yellow coil, remove the sensor and then snip the green in half and stick it to the port in the middle!” Snarled Leo in response.
Panic made Ryan move faster, despite the faltering heart of the body. The door slid open and Ryan charged through as it began to close again. A heavy thump told him that the lock was engaged.
The basement was far darker than bright lights above. It was also more damp, he could feel that from the sweat that gathered on his skin and didn’t evaporate. Machines hummed against the back wall quietly.
“That them?” He asked, running over.
“Looks like it.” Leo said. “Back up so we can get a good look.”
Ryan stepped away, looking the massive metal machines up and down. In his ear, he could hear the murmurs and voices of several people, all talking about what to do. He tried to ignore the wave of weakness that washed over him and couldn’t. If this body died with him in it, he died too.
“Not to rush you or anything guys, but this body is about to expire, and I WILL leave before I die in it.” He said to them. He knew if he left, he would be potentially abandoning thousands to die from the Sudsers, but he was being paid to do this. Payment didn’t include dying.
“We are working on it!” Leo said breathlessly.
Ryan waited a minute more, also looking at the machines and thinking. He wasn’t an engineer, but he recognized the mechanics from the diagrams he had been shown. The machines were larger than he expected but still looked pretty similar to the pictures. “Pretty confident it will be the middle one.” He said, stopping in front of the machine that reminded him of a giant engine.
“You are correct.” Responded Leo. “But the hell if we know how to reverse the suction of it. The pump looks odd. Not like a reversal pump at all.”
Ryan walked around the machine a few times, feeling the clock ticking closer. It had been nearly ten minutes. He had only a few minutes left. The body left trails of bloody footprints on his path, and the heart was starting to skip. He didn’t have long. The only reason he was still upright was because of pure adrenaline. “Guys. Seriously. Hurry.” He said as he tried not to panic.
“Working very hard on it!” Leo yelled back, his voice high with his own fear.
“Fucks sake!” A female voice suddenly screamed into the microphone. “It’s the wrong machine! They apparently didn’t know how to build a reversal septic pump, so they built one to pump, and one to pull!” She yelled. “Go to your right and pull the lever!”
Ryan raced to do her bidding, his feet slipping on the bloody mess he was leaving. He got to the machine and put all the weight the body had on the lever, yanking it down. For a moment, nothing happened, and then he felt wetness soak his feet. He looked down to see dark water rising quickly.
There were cheers of giddy excitement in his ear and he smiled. “Good job guys.” He said.
“Thank you!” Leo yelled exuberantly back. “Thank you so much!”
Job done, Ryan worked on leaving the body. It was an easy enough process. Calm down, banish the panic first. Then simply close all thoughts, clear the head, and think of his own body. After years of doing it, it came naturally. He was gone before the body even hit the floor.