Raddocks Horizon (Godyssey Legacy Book 1)

by Duran Cross

  Sindaris is fascinated. “What does the conduit look like?”

  “God.”

  Sindaris’ head jerks back slightly as if someone flicked his nose. “What?”

  “The universal spirit that animates and binds all things,” she says, her expression darkening, “and it will bind the infected together.”

  Sindaris wonders which one of them is talking to him through her and whether it’s the same one who’s looking at him through her eyes. “So they simply kill anyone like me?”

  She nods. “And consume.”

  “Why? They don’t usually eat everyone they catch.”

  “The others like you were consumed to… absorb your… essence,” she says sweating. The collective mind using her body as a junction is obviously taxing.

  Sindaris doesn’t want to think of himself as a walking evolve-while-you-eat target. “Does it work?”

  “No.”

  “Why would they think it would? Reinfection of themselves?”

  “I don’t know, we can’t access the mind of the controller and the contaminants do what they’re told.”

  “I’ve heard whispers of a prototype android loose in the city that could be controlling the contaminants,” says Sindaris looking at her more intently.

  “It thinks it can.”

  Sindaris shakes his head. “One moment, if I’m a… different strain, or some such, why can’t I reinfect the contaminants?”

  “From what we’ve heard, your kind are sterile.”

  Sindaris blinks twice. “You mean virally?”

  “Yes.”

  “So if I bleed on someone, they won’t catch it?”

  “Yes.”

  Sindaris can’t get his head around one thing but he buries it for the moment. “How strange.”

  Sarah smiles but it’s a smile that doesn’t belong on her face. “Is that all you… can say?”

  “It’s all I can think. I don’t know who else is listening. I’m trying to resist asking where we are.”

  “We don’t know either.”

  “Where was this conclave?”

  “Blackhaven District, near to Centre-city.”

  Sindaris’ magenta eyes shine. “Do they meet often?”

  “Every day. Some of them never leave.”

  Sindaris decides to ask the question he hid just a moment ago. “Why am I wanted dead if I’m not contagious? I’d understand if I could spread this condition to others and get numbers enough to fight back, but if I’m sterile…”

  “You can still reproduce the standard way, we assume. Your children would be naturally immune and would share your mutation.”

  ◆◆◆

  In gunship Dead Star, on the way to Horizon Stadium, Rennin’s mind is focussed but he can’t shake a feeling of absolute euphoria that has gripped his mind like an unrelenting wonderful vice. He feels at one with the world around him and the universe as a whole. He tries to shake it off because it is so incredibly out of character. Also, considering what’s happening in the city he should feel more fearful than overwhelmed with joy for simply living. Each drawn breath is so sweet he wonders how long it’ll be before he develops a reflexive erection just from converting oxygen into carbon dioxide.

  His brow furrows as he glances at his reflection, seeing his artificial eye glowing brightly back at him. His blood runs cold for an instant before being overrun with the most ironclad feeling of wellbeing he’s ever known. Something’s unnatural about this, he’s sure. He cracks his neck and bites the inside of his cheek hard trying to stem or at least interrupt whatever is giving him this bursting dam of good cheer.

  He looks hard at his reflection. His android eye’s reflected glow causes something to occur to him. He feels the left section of his head, running his fingers along the edge of the installed segment of his cranium that Caufmann implanted the night Isfeohrad cracked his skull. Caufmann has done something to his brain.

  Whatever this euphoria is, it began when he saved the stranded soldier. Thinking further back, when he saved Carla from the Beta HolinMech hit squad he had felt abnormally good then, too. He’d been shot and still managed to kill three fully trained soldiers. Not all of that could be accredited to his Thermosteel bones or andronic limbs.

  His frown increases as a thought enters his mind. Is Caufmann trying to make me do good things? The thought, at first, seems ludicrous. But there is a definite possibility because when he abandoned Sabre and his troops he'd never felt so miserable. Perhaps it is some kind of microchip reinforcing morally right decisions with elation and enthusiasm, but inducing severe depression when he does something terrible. He wants to panic, but he just feels too damn good.

  The soldier Rennin pulled out of danger has seated himself, checking his sidearm to make sure its ready and working. Rennin puts the euphoric paranoia from his mind. He stops fighting and lets it inundate him so he can at least focus on other things. As soon as he feels the full force of it by letting his mind relax he does feel better, an impulse to hug the soldier flitting through his mind. Rennin shakes his head vigorously locking that thought in a mental coffin.

  He glances at the monitor in front of him that is rigged to the camera overlooking the passenger bay. No way that kid’s potato gun will take out a contaminant. The soldier must still be a teenager. He’s medium build, rather long hair for a soldier and a kind of soft looking face. Rennin slaps his own face for taking too much notice of his looks but notes he looks quite similar to Saifer Veidan.

  “Hey, kid, what’s your name?”

  “Private Dorian Carmine, sir.”

  “Rennin Farrow.”

  “Rank, sir?”

  He almost spits. “Sergeant. I’m taking us to Horizon Stadium, we’re reinforcing the defence of the only people left that are immune. Are you up for this?”

  “I think so. I don’t have my rifle anymore. Don’t know if I’d have made it in with the extra weight.”

  “Put that water pistol away and get an assault rifle from the weapons locker near the rear exit. Get the L10-Sleeper.”

  “That’s a heavy gun, sir, isn’t that anti-vehicle?”

  “These things need a lot of punishment to go down. The Sleeper is strong, accurate and if you hit them in the soft spot it’ll be more effective.”

  “I didn’t notice any weak spots, sir, they just kept coming.”

  “Their bones are obviously very thick, you have to hit their guts, their neck, or their eye socket. Your choice.”

  “Guts it is.”

  “How many of you didn’t make it?”

  “Squad of six. There were a lot of screams for help. We couldn’t ignore them.”

  Rennin’s expression darkens. “I know how you feel.”

  “I was told to hang back where we were stationed in case command asked for status at our position. Next thing I hear is three seconds of shooting then nothing. Then they just came from everywhere at once. I just ran in the nearest building and…” the soldier’s head is shaking. “It was so fast, sir, my head’s still spinning. There was nothing, and then…”

  “Alright I’m staying airborne, you can get in the mounted gun and stick here with me, okay?”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” he says sounding genuinely grateful.

  Rennin feels Drej’s knife pulse again. He shivers and opens a channel to Lieutenant Sabre. “LT?”

  “Where the hell have you been?” comes the instant, loud, reply.

  Here we go. “Picked up a distress call from a stranded soldier, so I went to get him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Coms are a bit screwy, sir.”

  “You’re not even a pilot!”

  “Well I can put him back where I found him but he’s not going to like it.”

  “Just get back here!”

  “Situation?”

  “Half the immune are away but the contaminant attack is becoming ferocious, we need cover fire. Gunship Genome is on its own up there.”

  “I’ll hit
them in the street before they get to you, when I run out of rockets we’ll reinforce you on the ground and if all the immune are away I’ll pull you out.”

  “Make sure you’re quick about it. Once we’re out of here, Desolator is going to fry the area.”

  “Right, sir,” says Rennin adjusting his seating trying to ignore Drej’s knife. Its sporadic vibration could definitely be considered unsettling. The blade that stimulates and penetrates.

  A dust cloud is still rising upwards from the Desolator satellite’s earlier blast outside the stadium. A rectangular evacuation transport is leaving the stadium through the roof access so Rennin banks left towards the undamaged street section, bringing the gunship low enough to see the contaminants dashing through the streets towards the stadium. Rennin suddenly isn’t sure whether they’re ‘going where the meat is’ or are being coordinated.

  They’re coming from Centre-city in great swarming masses. Gunship Genome is laying down heavy fire but the streets are just filled with them. There doesn’t seem to be any noticeably thicker or thinner concentrations of them, so Rennin decides to evenly distribute his ordnance across the crowd.

  Kind of like communism.

  A plan starts to form in his mind. He fires a few rockets into the street surrounding Horizon Stadium. It crumples and distorts into jagged shards of asphalt, concrete and other urban detritus, creating lumps of debris to slow the infected. Hopefully this will clump them together some more.

  The impacts are severe, tearing road and enemy to pieces, throwing the remains into the air. Rennin relays his plan to Gunship Genome that is now flying parallel. It follows suit. Rennin orders the pilot to stay on his wing for the duration of the stadium defence and the pair of them, flying side by side, begin firing rockets up the surrounding streets hitting scores of hostiles but there’s thousands of them still coming.

  Carmine is manning the side-mounted cannon, shooting at what he can on the ground. He’s making some good hits too, smiles Rennin who hopes Carmine hammers them hard and gets his confidence back. Rennin figures that if Carmine sees them fly to pieces they’ll hold less damaging power in his memory. Real therapy.

  One street is badly blown apart and should be hard to navigate through, hopefully slowing the contaminants’ progress. Dead Star and Genome bank sideways in near perfect unison to the next street and commence bombardment. The road again shatters under the impact but the hostiles keep ploughing through, albeit slower. Rennin’s sights turn to the stone grandiose buildings lining the streets. He opens a channel with his wingman. “Genome?”

  “Copy, Dead Star.”

  “See that building with the dragon gargoyles?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hate to say it but let’s bring it down to block that street off.”

  “I don’t think we’re authorised to use that kind of force.”

  “The Brass, emphasis on arse, shot a city block back to the 20th century with a Desolator satellite, don’t give me that shit,” says Rennin angrily. “Listen, we bring down as many buildings as we can to block off this central corridor of access streets, it’ll force them to divide up either side of the rubble bunching them together. Basically we make our own kill zone for them. Others will have to move around the outside of the debris and with the military being stationed on the perimeter, they’ll be easy pickings. It may not seem like it but there is not an endless supply of these things,” says Rennin. Yet.

  A slight pause. “Copy, Dead Star, I’ll follow your lead.”

  ◆◆◆

  Sindaris is talking with Sarah’s body. This whole experience is making Sindaris feel uneasy. He could be talking to Sarah or it could be any of the others talking through her at any given time. He is too afraid to go outside the premises at all, even to have a quick peek. There could be anyone out there, and if they see him now he doesn’t believe he can outrun them. He’s so tired.

  “Have you discovered anything that might be able to help me ascertain why I’m like this and so many others are not?”

  “Human beings are bacterially evolved organisms. We have survived through mutation for millions of years.”

  “We’re adapting?”

  “Some are.”

  “But the controller says we’re imperfect,” says Sindaris.

  “As far as the virus is concerned. You are the evolutionary dead end of this affliction. In you it is no more an affliction.”

  “Why has it done this to me?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Look at me! I am seventy-six years old! There must be something!” he says, his dual pupils fluctuating slightly.

  “Your age…” Sarah’s eyes roll back for a moment, “seems to be a factor. All others like you that we have identified through contaminant memories have been elderly citizens, the youngest being seventy-one.”

  “Your collective mind must have some kind of idea. A theory, at least?”

  Sarah tilts her head, her eyes still rolled up. “Withering tissue causes rather… gaping holes in your physical being. Elderly people have a great deal of weak and or dying tissue. There is a physician in the contaminants that tried treating several people and did some good analysis work before his own infection… re-purposed him.”

  Re-purposed? “Don’t you mean turned or transformed?”

  “No.”

  Sindaris nods once feigning understanding. “What did he find?”

  “He…” she swallows that looks more like a hiccup. Her eyes roll back down to refocus on him. “He found that the infected tissue replaces a great deal of your original matter with its own. By the marks on either side of your nose we’d say you wore glasses for most of your life.”

  Sindaris had completely forgotten about that. He can see perfectly, better than he ever could. “So a youngster would have far less tissue that needs replacing? Hence less affected?”

  Sarah nods. “We believe you aged backwards because the virus rewrote your genetic code to find your optimum physical median.”

  “It wanted me in my prime?”

  “Yes.”

  Sindaris tilts his head to one side cracking his neck. “I’ve heard thoughts of a parasite that grows inside our spine… Do… do I…” he doesn’t want to finish the question, but he doesn’t have to.

  “In a sense, yes. But it is different. Even in a fully obedient contaminant absorbed into the share-mind doesn’t have, what you’d officially call, a parasite. It’s a foreign organism of some kind but it doesn’t feed off of you. It’s more like organic technology grown in the central nervous system and it is that which ultimately drives your body and floods the host with the share-mind’s domination.”

  Sindaris’ expression turns dark. “Sounds more like an antenna.”

  “It is.”

  “And I have one?”

  “You can interpret the thoughts of others, yes?”

  “Don’t be patronising.”

  “In you it is different again. I can feel mine move from time to time, but I believe yours is far more symbiotic. The virus expends an incredible amount of energy to rebuild your decaying body and by doing so develops into something different itself. If it was a parasite the same as the others you would have no will of your own.”

  Sindaris’ left leg is twitching. “Will the controller of the contaminants physically be at this conclave in Blackhaven?”

  “Yes.”

  Sindaris looks at the floor thinking fiercely for a moment. “Am I impervious to their control completely?”

  Sarah’s gaze becomes distant for a moment. “You can feel their moods?”

  “Yes.”

  Sarah’s eyes lock with his. “Do you feel as they feel?”

  Sindaris sees where this is going. “Yes.”

  She glances away for a moment. “Hungry?”

  Sindaris nods.

  “You’re planning to attend this conclave?”

  Sindaris’ eyebrow flickers upwards for an instant. “I am.”

  “I would not recommend it.
”

  Sindaris feels a pulse of anger. He knows that Sarah’s converged minds don’t think he’s up to the challenge of resisting the urge of a full mass of contaminants. “I will not fall victim to those ghastly creatures.”

  “You will not even be able to think such a thing if there’s enough of them around to completely override your minute desire.”

  “My desires, no matter how piffling, are my own and I will keep them.”

  Sarah shakes her head. “Considering your age I’d have thought you’d think into this far more than a brash young man. But perhaps this is just a side effect of having brand new hormones.”

  Sindaris shifts his stance slightly. “I don’t see how this makes any difference.”

  “How will you go unnoticed? They know your face.”

  “They’re becoming less intelligent by the day, and recognition through facial structure is not easily done for the inept. All I have to do is make myself think I’m somewhere else.”

  Sarah’s eyes are focussed on him and wide now. “You believe you can succeed where all other infected persons have failed? Husbands have killed wives, mothers have killed their children, sisters and brothers have maimed each other. Can you possibly lie to yourself enough to ignore such things? Do you think they didn’t try to resist? Can you at least comprehend the kind of power it takes to make people kill their loved ones on a whim?”

  Sindaris isn’t deterred. “As long as I’ve lived all those things have happened all over the world throughout my life.”

  “Not half a million times in the same city in one day.”

  Sindaris closes his eyes as that comment hits home but he says nothing.

  “Your willpower would have to be astronomical to remain yourself through such an encounter. In such an environment, even if you could remain undetected, you’d be overwhelmed by the share-mind. You are one person; they are nothing short of legion. You have a few new talents but you are a man, not a god.”

  “I don’t need to be a god. I just need to focus. There are others like me, perhaps I can find them.”

  “Two have died during your time here.”

  Sindaris’ feels his ears pop at that knowledge and a nervous laugh escapes him. “A minute ago I had half a mind to enter the conclave, think of Disneyland, and shoot the controller through the head,” he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand shakily. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”