The Terran Cycle Boxset

by Philip C. Quaintrell

  Kalian frowned. “And he thinks I do?”

  “No,” Captain Fey interjected. “He’s just concerned and frustrated. He feels as hopeless as the rest of us mere mortals and he needs someone to blame.”

  That pulled on a thread that Kalian had ignored for too long. “What if you weren’t mere mortals?”

  Both women looked at him quizzically. “What are you talking about?” Li’ara asked.

  “I looked into the nanocelium found in your blood,” he began. “It’s in everyone now, not just those who have experienced rejuvenation. It came from the Gommarian. Every time anyone touched part of the ship, several thousand nanocelium rubbed off and infiltrated your body through the pores. Like a virus, it spread through the population and into those who came here on the Paladin.”

  Captain Fey stood up and looked worryingly at the back of her hand. “Will we end up like Professor Jones?”

  “No,” Kalian responded quickly. “This nanocelium came from ALF. Its programming is designed only to help humans. What it’s actually doing is preventing your cells from decaying.”

  Li’ara held her hand to her mouth in shock. “Are you saying… are you saying we’re…”

  “Immortal,” Kalian finished with a smile. “The older people among us will notice the differences first but, over time, it will become apparent that no one is dying anymore.”

  “Is it inside you?” Fey asked.

  “No, it’s not,” Kalian said, looking down at himself. “My Terran abilities keep all foreign bodies out of my system subconsciously. One day, when the Terran genes begin to activate in the rest of the population, the nanocelium keeping you all alive will become redundant and be flushed away.”

  Kalian could see that Li’ara was trying desperately to keep her tears inside. They had fallen out in the past over the debate of how their relationship could ever work with their different lifespans. Now, she knew she could live forever with him…

  “This is incredible!” Fey exclaimed. “I can’t… I can’t even imagine it. We’ll never die?”

  “There are a few obstacles before we get to that long road.” Kalian sobered the news. “The Kellekt chief among them.”

  Captain Fey frowned. “The Kellekt?” she repeated, looking to Li’ara for answers. “What are you talking about?”

  Kalian met Li’ara’s eyes, recalling that she had cautioned him about telling anyone the truth of the Three and the origin of nanocelium. Still, Captain Fey, or Councillor Fey as she was now, deserved the truth after everything they had gone through.

  “Perhaps you should sit down for this…” he began.

  28

  Roland pushed down on the flight stick and took the Rackham into its second run across the Crucible’s outer defences. Nanocelium ammunition ripped through the cannons bolted to the ground and fixed into the valley’s walls. The Shay retaliated with missiles this time, which rocketed out of the launchers and twirled through the air. The bounty hunter banked the ship, dipping this way and that to allow the missiles to fly past and explode against the rock.

  More nanocelium fire trailed across the ground until it found one of the launchers. The resulting blast expanded violently and destroyed the nearest cannon emplacement. A sudden knock to the Rackham’s back end jolted Roland forward on to his glass console, bringing him face to face with the alarm, warning him of damage to the stern.

  “You don’t say…” The bounty hunter positioned himself back in his chair and swung the Rackham around to face the Shay light craft that had lowered itself into the valley.

  The light craft’s thrusters flared and it launched forward, towards the Rackham. Roland’s instinct was to squeeze the trigger and hope to destroy it before the suicidal Shay impacted the ship, but a new idea struck the bounty hunter in the moment and he went with it.

  With only seconds to go before the head-on collision, Roland activated the Rackham’s AI intuitive controls. Able to assess and react in a fraction of the time it would take his human brain, the AI dipped the ship just enough to slip under the light craft, before bobbing back up. The tougher hull of nanocelium had no problem battering into the underbelly of the light craft, clipping its back end just enough to tear its thrusters to pieces.

  The AI swung the ship around again as the light craft spun out of control and hurtled towards the Crucible below. The inevitable explosion upon impact took the installation’s main doors with it, bringing a satisfied smile to Roland’s face.

  “Give me control back,” he commanded.

  Certain lights on his console came back to life as another missile warning flared. The bounty hunter rotated the ship and intercepted the rocket mid-flight with a salvo of nanocelium fire. Another well-placed shot took out the launcher and then the cannon beyond it. A quick scan reported back that the valley was clear of enemy targets, allowing the Rackham to land.

  The ramp lowered on to the soaked ground and Roland looked out, searching through the rain for any sign of Shay troops. The fire from the wrecked light craft concealed most of the entrance to the Crucible, but the bounty hunter reckoned he would have been attacked by now if they were going on the offensive.

  Leaving his hide coat behind, Roland strode out into the hammering rain with his Tri-Rollers already in his hands. His nanocelium blade rested comfortably on the back of his waist, tucked between fresh magazines and grenades. A strip of gravity bombs was wrapped around each of his biceps, a series of small spheres that would distort the enemies’ sense of direction. He had chosen a simple but highly accurate assault rifle to rest over his myopallic armoured vest. It wasn’t very showy, as he often preferred, but it would get the job done.

  Roland marched across the valley, past the burning light craft, and into the shadowy tunnel of the Crucible. The last time had assaulted the installation, Li’ara Ducarté and Sef had accompanied him. The Gomar’s powers had dulled the entire experience and Li’ara’s restraint had prevented him from torturing Kel-var Tionis, the Shay who had allied Protocorps with the Vanguard to instigate the current invasion. Now, it was just him and his enemies… and a shit load of guns and ammo.

  Unlike last time, the Shay guarding the Crucible were feral and loud. The bounty hunter could hear them coming from two corridors away, giving him plenty of time to ready one of the strips of gravity bombs. Throwing them into the gloom of the dark tunnel, the tiny spheres shot out from the strap and stuck to every surface, creating a net of distorted gravity. Holstering his Tri-Rollers, Roland reached over his shoulder and pulled free the assault rifle.

  They were coming closer, a horde of them for sure.

  Roland crouched on one knee and levelled his rifle down the tunnel. A quick adjustment of the augments in his eyes gave the bounty hunter perfect night vision, making up for the long stretches of dark tunnel between the faint spotlights above.

  The closer the Shay came, the more Roland began to reconsider his position. There had to be a lot of them judging by the sound. The bounty hunter gripped his rifle a little tighter and made certain the stock was comfortably nestled in his shoulder, reducing the recoil.

  Then they stopped.

  Roland straightened his head and waited, listening for any sound. There was nothing but an eerie silence. The rapid scrambling of cybernetic feet and hands had come to a halt before they could round the corner and face him. The bounty hunter waited another moment before biting his lip and rising to his feet. In order to see what was happening around the corner, he would have to deactivate the gravity bombs and walk through to the other side.

  Every instinct told him to just turn around and find another route to the control room, and to do it fast. But there had to have been dozens of them around that corner; he had heard them. The bounty hunter deactivated the bombs, allowing him to walk through the net and cautiously make his way to the edge of the corner. With his back pressed to the wall, he stole a quick glance, which informed him that the corridor was empty. Two dead C-Sec officers lay strewn across the floor halfway down the corrido
r and the walls were covered in bloody hand and footprints. There were no Shay.

  Without his hide coat, Roland had to look at the vambrace around his right forearm to see the schematics of the Crucible’s tunnel network. The control room wasn’t too far from his current position, but he was beginning to feel like a rat in a maze of the Shay’s making. Where had they all gone?

  The panels above his head groaned, freezing the bounty hunter in place. The metal groaned again, farther down the corridor, before the wall to his left sounded as if something was scratching it from the inside. He made a snap decision and bolted towards the next corridor.

  Had he delayed his sprint by another second, the horde of wild Shay would have broken through the ceiling and the vents on the wall to ravage him. The tunnel was filled with the animalistic screams of the aliens and the clawing of their cybernetic limbs on metal. Roland ran as fast as he could, firing over his shoulder blindly in the hope of slowing them down.

  He rounded the next corner and tripped over another dead C-Sec officer. The assault rifle flew out of his hands and scraped across the floor ahead of him. Years of training and even more years of working for Central Parliament kicked in, stopping his fears from getting in the way of his muscle memory. The bounty hunter turned his fall into a roll and came back up with both Tri-Rollers in his hands. The first cluster of Shay to round the same corner was met by a hail of Intrinium fire. Their bodies burst apart, knocking back those scrambling behind them, but it wasn’t enough to stem the tide.

  “Shit…” Roland spun around, holstered his Tri-Rollers, and dashed for his assault rifle, scooping it up on his escape.

  Firing blindly over his shoulder again kept the closest from reaching him. He could hear their insides exploding against the walls and pouring on to the floor. As satisfying as that sound was, the vambrace on his forearm beeped, alerting him to his change in course. Roland cursed, aware now that he had just taken the wrong turn and was heading in the opposite direction to the control room.

  “You’re getting sloppy, old man!” he berated himself between squeezes of the trigger.

  Doing his best to correct his course, Roland made the next right. He missed the blood on the floor, however, and skidded into the frame of a doorway instead. The break in his run gave the Shay the time they needed to catch up, leaving Roland with no other choice than to stand and fight. The assault rifle wasn’t even lined up before he began unloading the magazine into their infected bodies. The nearest alien, crawling over the floor, was ripped in half down the middle, before the trail of gun fire ran up the wall and cut down two more.

  “Come on!” Roland yelled, making himself angry to compensate for his approaching death.

  One Shay made it past the barrel of his rifle and grabbed his trigger arm, jolting his aim. This allowed another to reach out and go for his neck, just as the first alien was sinking its teeth into his bicep. Roland shouted out in pain and thrust his boot into the Shay reaching for his throat. The alien was knocked back to receive a burst of Intrinium fire.

  “Get off!” The bounty hunter released his grip on the rifle’s barrel and yanked the Shay’s head off of his arm. He used the same bloody arm to plant an elbow in its face, pushing it back into its comrades.

  More were on top of his position now, coming at him from more angles than he could cover. Sporadic bursts of Intrinium shot out, catching many of the aliens, but he now had three grabbing at his body and tugging at the rifle.

  It was Roland’s turn to cry out with a feral roar.

  The bounty hunter shoved himself backwards with all his might, crushing the Shay attached to his back into the wall. He let go of the rifle and the alien tugging at it fell backwards, freeing Roland up to retrieve the nanocelium hilt on his waist. The wild creature sinking its cybernetic claws into his left arm went very still when the nanocelium blade extended from the hilt and buried itself in the top of its head. Still, the Shay on his back did everything it could break free of his crushing weight.

  “You want some too?” Roland twisted the blade around in his hand and drove the point over his shoulder and into the Shay’s eye. As it went limp, the bounty hunter reached behind him and threw the Shay into the rest of the infected aliens.

  There were only seven of them left now, though he could already see the dead putting themselves back together. Roland did what he did best and simply reacted. The nanocelium blade flew from his hand, spinning end over end, until it found rest in the head of one of the assaulting Shay. Before the alien hit the floor, both Tri-Rollers were in his hands and unleashing hell upon the remaining six. Nanocelium and organic matter alike splattered against the walls.

  In the silence that followed, Roland slumped against the wall and caught his breath. He had only minutes, maybe less, before they put themselves back together and came at him again. Holstering his sidearms, the bounty hunter once again collected his rifle and made his way back the way he had come, retracing his steps until he was back on the correct path to the control room.

  Roland tapped his earpiece. “How’s it going out there, Len?” he asked quietly, sure that there were plenty more Shay inside the Crucible.

  There was a brief delay before the Ch’kara got back to him. “I’ve made progress, but its slow going. This storm isn’t helping…”

  Roland examined the bites and scratches on his arms, noting the trickle of blood that flowed down his arms. “Well, I could do with you getting a move on. A little backup wouldn’t go amiss right now.”

  “Haven’t you reached the control room yet?” Ch’len asked. “I was really hoping you would just destroy the Crucible by yourself and we could get out of here.”

  The bounty hunter ground his teeth in an effort to ignore the pain in his arms. “So was I, but this place is crawling with Shay and they’ve already taken a bite out of me, literally.”

  There was a tone of concern in Ch’len’s voice. “Does that mean you’ll become one of them?”

  Roland was surprised he had enough energy to laugh to himself. “No, you idiot. I shouldn’t have told you about zombies.” He hit the command panel on the wall and entered another dimly lit corridor, smeared with blood, and filled with C-Sec bodies. “Alright, time to go back to work. Fix that damn Forge, Len.” A tap of the earpiece prevented the little alien from replying.

  A quick check of the miniature hologram projected from the side of the rifle, told Roland that he was close to an empty magazine. Judging by the pile of dead bodies, he decided to just reload now. The command panel at the other end of the small tunnel was sparking, its screen illegible. Thankfully, the doors were already open a few centimetres, allowing the bounty hunter to fit his hands through and prise them apart a little more. First, he pressed himself to each door and inspected what little he could see of the room beyond.

  It looked to be the control room.

  After another minute of waiting to see if anything moved inside the room, Roland slung his rifle over his back and pushed against the broken doors until his wounded arms bulged. Parting them was irritatingly loud as the metal scraped and the internal servomotors groaned. Once through to the other side, he levelled his rifle again and cleared the room before crouching and aiming back along the way he had come. It wouldn’t be long before those he had dispatched found their feet and hunted him down.

  Roland deployed his last strip of gravity bombs inside the short tunnel. The piled bodies were instantly pulled apart and pinned to the floor, walls, and ceiling. It wouldn’t stop his enemies, but it might give him enough notice to turn and fight.

  With his rifle resting against the nearest console, the bounty hunter began his examination of the Crucible’s inner workings. Most of the glass and the holographic emitters were smudged with blood, forcing Roland to wipe away as much of it as possible before he could understand what he was looking at. The main screen beyond his console came to life with an image of three giant pyramids, each mirrored by identical pyramids above them. Between their points were balls of glowing
white energy that fired off random bolts of lightning.

  “What the hell are they?” he asked aloud.

  If he had to guess, which was all he ever did, he would have to say the pyramids were of Terran design. Something about them wasn’t very Conclave, which made sense since the designs for this installation were given to the founders of Protocorps by one of the cubes. The amount of energy being funnelled through the giant structures was phenomenal. The output was greater than anything Roland had ever seen, even that of a Starforge.

  The hologram floating above the next console along presented him with an overlay of the entire planet and the network running under the surface, connecting multiple stations and arrays to the Crucible. It certainly took a lot of juice to turn a whole planet into one massive antenna.

  “How do I switch this thing off?” Roland sifted through multiple menus searching for anything related to the control of the power levels. He tapped his earpiece. “Len?”

  “I’m a little busy here!” the Ch’kara snapped back.

  “I’m in the control room surrounded by consoles. Any idea how I might switch this thing off?”

  “Just think of the whole system as one big circuit,” Ch’len explained. “Don’t bother looking for an off switch, just find one small, but crucial, piece of the system you can disrupt. But, be gentle!” he warned. “The amount of energy flowing through that facility is mind-blowing. If you deactivate something too suddenly it might set off a chain reaction that you can’t outrun.”

  The bounty hunter rubbed his eyes. “I thought there would just be an off switch…”

  “Well, you could just do what you always do,” Ch’len added.

  Roland looked from the grenades on his belt to the image of the pyramids. “I don’t think that comes under gentle, Len. Let’s consider that Plan B.” I still want to—”

  Roland’s words were caught in his throat when a blue crystal the size of his hand impacted the console beside his fingers. The bounty hunter instinctively dropped into a roll, narrowly avoiding four more blue crystals which trailed a line after him.