by J. S. Morin
Four bodies toppled, headless. It had taken less than a second. Four lives, decades in the making, ill-spent and morally adrift, but with friends and family and loved ones uncounted, undone between two beats of her heart. She stood staring in macabre fascination as blood leaked from the stumps of necks and one lower quarter of a head. Roddy had been wrong about disintegration being bloodless.
The rifle was pulled from Esper’s grasp and the strap lifted over her shoulder. Another weapon was shoved into her hands in its place, and reflex alone made her grab hold of it. “Come on, kid,” said Roddy. “You don’t need to fire it. That one’s dry. Just keep moving.” A sudden blow struck her aside the helmet. The jolt restarted her brain.
“Yeah,” she said. “Got it.” She didn’t even have the mental energy stored up to object to the killings.
“This way,” said Tanny.
Everything looked different through the EV helmet’s visor. Tiny symbols and numbers at the edge of her vision told her the ambient temperature and O2 levels, comm channel, and relative distance and direction of her squad mates. But when she made an effort to ignore all those, and the tinting that made everything a shade darker than it should have been, things began to look familiar. She had been down these corridors, pushing that repulsor cart she had fixed.
The lights went out. The klaxon and public address warnings stopped. A second later, red lights blinked on, dimmer than the normal lighting, but enough to maneuver around by.
“Looks like Mort did it,” said Roddy.
“We’re here,” Esper said, pointing. The Sub-Humans wing was just ahead.
# # #
Carl paced the Mobius from cockpit to cargo hold and back. He had a comm headset on, but his mic off. He could hear the squad’s progress, but there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t be a distraction. It was maddening, but the best thing he could do was listen, wait, and keep his mouth shut. As luck would have it, those were three of his weakest skills. The news that Mort had killed power in the mountain had been welcome, especially after the realization that Tanny wasn’t having any luck convincing their security force to surrender.
The cargo bay ramp was down, affording Carl a look into the ruptured tunnel and the jungle on the far side. Thus far, no wildlife bigger than an insect had dared to come in. He suspected that most of them had been scared shitless by the arrival of the Mobius. Give them enough time though, some critter was bound to happen by out of curiosity, territorial defense, or just plain old hunger. Carl had his blaster sidearm ready, just in case.
The common room was vacant. There was no one else to be there but him. Carl fought back the temptation to park himself on the couch and put holos on to take his mind off everything. It would be just his luck that someone would call for help, and he’d miss it over the sound of a hover-bike chase or a shootout.
The cockpit was awash with natural light, which made everything look weird and alien. The UV filters were practically offline, letting the atmosphere filter out the worst of the harmful solar radiation. The mountain loomed to one side in his view, the jungle treescape hemmed them in on the other. The Mobius needed to be there, waiting for everyone to return. He needed to be on it, because they couldn’t risk leaving it unprotected and Carl was the least help in a raid. He was a big boy; he could admit that much to himself. Still, he felt like a star drive on a sailboat—useless. He was just sitting on his ass (or pacing aimlessly), waiting for news over the comm. He was no good in a firefight. He had never been in the facility. He couldn’t puzzle out machinery or zorch his foes with wizardly fire. All he was good at was flying and fast talking, and neither was going to do them any good right that minute.
The comm. It was a generic term. The one on the Mobius was as modern as anything on board, which was to say only fifteen or so years out of date. It was separate from the comm system that Tanny and her squad were using, though it could patch them in if need be. But it could also host an entirely separate conversation. A grin eased its way onto Carl’s face. “Well, shit. Why didn’t I think of this before?” The comm panel blinked with a listing of available channels with signal traffic.
Carl slouched down into the pilot’s seat and removed his headset. After a quick pause to clear his throat, he keyed a channel from the Recent Contacts list. “Gologlex Menagerie, this is the ENV Beowulf. Come in,” he said in the smooth, confident tones of a naval officer. He’d never used that voice when he actually was a naval officer, but he’d heard it enough times to mimic the cadence.
There was silence in response. Carl wasn’t going to let them off that easily. “Gologlex Menagerie, this is Captain James Hendrix of the Earth Navy Vessel Beowulf. We have a ground force that has infiltrated your facility and relayed the coordinates for a firing solution. I will accept your unconditional surrender. You are charged with illegal detention of sentient hominids per section four, eight, six, stroke four, paragraph seven of the ARGO code for xeno-relations. Evacuate all personnel, unarmed, via the equatorial tunnel out of your facility. Orbital bombardment will commence in 30 standard minutes. Starting … now.”
Carl closed the comm. “Yeah, fuckers. Don’t answer my call, will you?” He pulled his headset back on, folded his arms, and waited.
# # #
If possible, the sentients behind the glass walls were more frightened than the last time Esper had been through. The Sub-Humans section was a chorus of muffled shouts and pounding against the insides of those walls. With the murky red light, filtered through the tint of her EV helmet, it was hard to make out anything more than indistinct shapes inside the exhibits.
Esper pulled off her helmet. “It’s OK. Everything’s going to be OK.” She could make out faces where they pressed close to the enclosure glass. Wild eyes, raised hackles, puffed cheeks, and bristling feathers were all signs of aggression, agitation, or fear as best she could tell. Some exhibits appeared empty at a glance, but only because the occupants were hiding, not trying to draw attention.
A faint voice sounded from her hip. Esper glanced down and realized someone was talking over the comm. She lifted it to her ear like a seashell.
“Put that back on,” Tanny ordered. “This is not a secure area.”
“I can’t see a thing with this lighting.”
“Jesus, kid,” said Roddy. “Turn off your UV filtering, or switch to gamma correction. If any of these primitives get physical, you don’t wanna get your face chewed off.”
“We’re here to save them,” Esper replied. “They’re sentient, not animals. They won’t bite the hand that feeds them.”
“Where do we unlock them?” Mriy asked, feeling along the wall between exhibits, looking for control panels.
“Must be on the far side,” Esper said. “This is where the visitors would be.”
“Makes sense,” said Tanny. “Let’s look for an ‘employees only’ area.”
The hall of sentient creatures took a right-angle turn, and tucked unobtrusively in a corner was plain door with no markings. Tanny gave it a push, but it didn’t budge. Mriy shouldered her out of the way and used both hands, extending her claws to dig into the seam where door and wall met for extra grip. Her wordless snarl of exertion made Esper hold the helmet away from her ear.
“Stand back,” Tanny ordered. She swung her disintegrator into line with the door.
“Hold up!” Roddy said, raising his arms. “Could be anything past there. You hit a coolant line, a bio-hazard unit, or anything explosive and we’re dusted.” He eased the barrel of Tanny’s weapon out of the way and fished a plasma torch out of his pack. “Finesse. See kid?” he turned to Esper as he flicked on the cutting beam. “Comes in handy.”
In just a few seconds, Roddy had cut away the locking mechanism, allowing Mriy to force the door open. Inside was a narrow passage that ran along behind the exhibits in both directions. There was no emergency lighting, so Roddy passed out hand lamps to everyone.
“Roddy, you’re with me,” Tanny said. “Mriy, look after Esper. We’ll spl
it up and start opening enclosures.”
“No offense,” said Roddy, “But I like my chances with Ms. Congeniality.”
Tanny huffed into the mic of her comm. “Fine, Mriy come with me.” She stormed off down the left passageway.
“Come on kid,” said Roddy. “Let’s go be saviors.” They took the right passage.
There was no security on the exhibits. They were already inside the security perimeter, it appeared, and no further effort was made to stop them. Esper knocked firmly on the door to the first and put her head against it. “Hello in there. Stand back. We’re opening the door. You can come out.” She had no way of knowing whether they understood English, but the occupants of cell H-1 would get the idea soon enough. Esper popped a catch and pulled the door handle, leaning back with all her weight to drag it open.
The door flew wide. Esper was thrown to her backside, helmet clattering out of reach, as three porcine humanoids careened past clad only in loincloths. They paused to sniff the air with flat, upturned noses, gazing down at Esper with blank, black eyes. She wondered momentarily whether they knew she was the one who released them, but they ignored her and hurried off. The creatures hesitated when they came to the intersection where Roddy had cut through the door, then ducked into the visitors’ hall and disappeared from sight.
Roddy pulled off his helmet. “You OK?” He offered her a hand to get up.
“I think so,” she replied. “They were in more of a hurry than I imagined. Strong, too.”
“Maybe we need a better plan than just opening all the doors. Maybe some of them speak English?”
Esper nodded. “It’s worth checking.”
The two of them hustled down the passage, calling out, asking whether any of the sentients understood spoken English. They heard plenty of responses, and thanks to translator charms, understood most of them as well. Unfortunately, not one of them conveyed the least sense of comprehension, and some were downright troubling to hear. With only a limited exposure to non-human cultures, Esper had a lot to learn about metaphor and threats.
“What the hell?” Roddy asked. When Esper looked where the light from his hand lamp shone. It illuminated one sign that said “Genetics” and another that said “Specimen Storage.”
“We should check those out,” Esper said. “If they’re doing genetics work here, that would explain a lot. There might be sentients trapped in those rooms. We should split up. You check—”
“Oh, hell no,” Roddy said. “We’re not splitting up again. Fuck that horror vid crap. You’re not even armed with a charged weapon. We’ll check the genetics lab first. I’m really not looking forward to what might be in that other one.”
“Fine,” Esper agreed. The door to the genetics room wasn’t locked, nor was it as heavy to move as the exhibit door. Inside, the room was dark, but there was someone inside. Clinking glassware and a heavy plastic clatter of a storage case drew two beams of hand lamp light.
A skinny, hunched-over man was stuffing glass jars into foam-lined round pockets in a shock-proof carry-all. He looked up at them and crouched down behind the safety of the table. All they could see were the bald scalp and the reflection off a pair of data-display glasses. “This is all a misunderstanding!” he shouted. “I was given informal permission to set up my menagerie here. You have no right to bomb it.”
Roddy and Esper exchanged glances in the dark. She saw no hint that he knew what the mad scientist was talking about.
“Stand away from that case, and put your hands where I can see them,” Esper ordered. She pointed the disintegrator rifle in the man’s direction, but pointedly not at him. She didn’t want to chance that there was any charge left in it, even if her finger wasn’t on the trigger. It was dark, after all. How would he notice?
The man stood slowly, and with a pained grunt of exertion. “My name is Elmer Gologlex. If you’re willing to give me a ten-minute head start, I can see that you’re both very wealthy men—people,” he quickly amended. “Omicron Squad might give you a pension when you’re forty and wondering whether you can afford genetically restructured knees or cybernetic ones, but I can save your that wear and tear.”
Esper didn’t need to look to know that Roddy had to be as puzzled as she was.
“Hey, slimeball,” said Roddy. “I’m proud to earn my pay serving my planet. I didn’t join Omicron Squad for the money. Now, keep your hands up and move toward the door.”
She had heard of Omicron Squad, of course. Mentions of them popped up in the sort of holovids she usually didn’t bother seeing. But the ads always described them the same way. Best of the best. Secret, elite unit. No one knew its members. Answerable to no oversight committee. ARGO’s go-to team for black ops. It was vid-biz bull-plop, she had always assumed.
She looked down at Roddy, and he winked. Maybe it was bull-plop they could use.
Gologlex crept along at a slug’s pace. Esper kept her gun sort of pointed at him as he walked by. When he was within a step of her, the old man surprised her. Moving with a young man’s agility, he snatched her disintegrator rifle by the barrel and yanked it out of her hands. The strap caught her in the back of the head as he pulled the weapon away, and Gologlex used that opportunity to grab hold of her.
Seconds later, it was a standoff. Roddy held his disintegrator aimed at Gologlex. Gologlex held Esper’s gun pointed at her head, and had an arm around her neck, pulling her close and using her as a shield.
“Step back, chimp,” Gologlex ordered. “I’m taking the girl as insurance. Lower that weapon this instant, or she loses her head.”
Roddy aimed his disintegrator aside, but didn’t drop it. He was no fool, but he obviously shared Esper’s worry that there might be a tiny bit of oomph left—plenty to vaporize her head. “Easy there, buddy. No one wins if you pull that trigger.”
“Girl, close that case and pick it up,” Gologlex ordered.
Esper complied. It struck her right then that this is what Tanny had warned her of. She had turned into a liability, being unable to defend herself. The case was heavy in her hands, but nothing compared to the weight of her failure. She realized that she might very well be about to die, and closed her eyes to pray. A warm wetness rolled down her cheeks as she did so.
“You aren’t any sort of commandos,” Gologlex said. “Are you?”
“We’re a bit irregular is all,” Roddy replied. “And if you don’t let that girl go, you’re going to find out what not having a head feels like.”
Gologlex twisted, turning Esper to shield him more fully. When he spoke, she felt his hot breath on her ear and cheek. “You a … a marksmonkey? Huh? Take the shot! No, you don’t dare.” He stepped back, and Esper choked as she stumbled to keep up with him.
It was the time for desperate measures. If Gologlex had a ship ready to make an escape, Carl might not be in a position to notice, let alone give chase. She could wind up as his hostage, or worse, his slave. Gologlex has already shown that he wasn’t above the notion. Mass murderers often gave hints of their derangement in their treatment of xenos; could slavers be much different? There was a coin-flip of a chance that the disintegrator Gologlex had taken from her was well and truly dry. If Esper could just jerk free of him, Roddy could take the shot.
She tried one last prayer for deliverance, but couldn’t finish the thought. It was asking for murder. If she was spared her own death when the gun didn’t work, her hope was for Roddy to kill Gologlex. Esper couldn’t ask God for such a terrible thing. But she wasn’t ready to die either, she discovered. Remembering the forcefield, she drew upon her metabolic magic. Her body had no need of healing, as before, and the gnawing hunger overwhelmed the sensations of heat and dizziness that accompanied speeding up her natural processes.
Using one of the techniques Tanny had taught her, she stomped down on Gologlex’s instep. The slaving zookeeper gave a cry of pain through gritted teeth, and Esper jabbed one elbow into his stomach while using her other hand to pull his arm away. She tumbled to the floor as she b
roke loose from his hold.
Click.
Nothing happened. No disintegrator beam bored through her head—not that she expected to feel such a thing had it done so. “Roddy, shoot! I borked the gun with magic.” Then she curled into a ball on the floor, grimacing at the stabbing sense of starvation that her magic had wrought on her.
But Roddy didn’t fire either. Gogoglex must have sensed the laaku’s hesitation, grabbed the case, and fled through the back door of the lab. From the other room, they heard Gologlex scream. It was a short, astonished shriek that ended abruptly.
Even from the floor, Esper could appreciate the poetic irony of the porcine xenos stumbling across their captor and sating their vengeance. It was downright biblical. “For all who draw the sword will die by the sword,” she murmured.
Her illusion was shattered seconds later when Mriy entered via that same back door. Her disintegrator rifles both hung idle around her neck. In one hand, she carried Gologlex’s case, in the other, Gologlex himself. Her grip was the only thing keeping his head from lolling at a grotesque angle, and the hand that held him aloft like a rag doll was drenched in blood.
Tanny followed her in a moment later. “Well, no wondering where this piece of shit ended up.”
“Hungry,” Esper gasped. “Food.”
“He hit her with some sort of stupid-ray?” Tanny asked.
Mriy held out the dead scientist. “Fresh kill?” she offered.
“Don’t worry, kid,” said Roddy. “It might be kibble, but I’ll find you something.”
# # #
There were hundreds. Humanoid and non-humanoid, life forms from ARGO protectorates and species from far-flung star systems, Earth-like beings and strange creatures whose anatomies were bizarre. The exhibits viewable from the public side did not begin to cover the variety of sentient life forms that inhabited the mountain. They might even have outnumbered the facility’s personnel.