by A A Warren
Good thing this is just a mining colony, and not a military installation, she thought, as she pried the panel’s housing loose.
A dull pop echoed through the liquid. The panel assembly gave way, as the pressure of the fluid rushing in forced it away from the wall. Vaki yanked a handful of wires from the circuitry inside, tearing them loose. They popped and fizzled in the fluid. The blinking red light on the panel assembly went dark.
Using the surgical knife, Vaki severed a few wires. Then she reached down, and slashed open the seam on her pants. Pulling aside the trim that ran down her leg, she slipped out a thin strip of flexible plastic with micro-socket connectors on either end.
More bubbles swirled around her as she struggled to control her breathing. She grabbed a loose wire and slid it into one of the sockets. Bio-luminescent panels on the tiny strip lit up red.
Almost there…
Suddenly, she felt something drag her back through the fluid. A giant air bubble exploded from her mouth as she cried out in surprise. She kicked backwards and felt her foot connect with something soft and rubbery.
Thrashing and spinning in the murk, she spiraled her body around, and floated on her back. As the haze of bubbles cleared, she could see dim faces, peering back at her through the fluid.
The larva-controlled corpses stalked towards her, lumbering across the submerged floor of the corridor. One of the creatures had grabbed her ankle. It was pulling her away from the door.
She kicked at the thing again, but its pale, bloated fingers gripped her with an unnatural strength. Its ragged nails tore through the fabric of her jumpsuit and dug into her flesh.
She lashed out again with another kick, but the fluid surrounding them made it impossible to land a solid blow.
Her chest ached, and her heart pounded. She was running out of air. She had to end this quickly.
Her flailing arms brushed against more floating debris. Her fingers closed around the object. It was a pipe, torn loose from the corridor by the torrential wave of fluid.
She jabbed the pipe forward slamming it into the creature’s head. The blow left an angry purple mark on its forehead, but it refused to release her leg. She jabbed again.
The other corpses were looming closer, their rotting faces growing clearer in the murky haze. Their mouths gaped open, and their unblinking eyes zeroed in on her. They needed no oxygen, and they could ignore the stinging pain of the fluid. She was hopelessly outmatched.
She glanced at the mangled pipe in her hands. The end facing her was a jagged metal shard, left from where the pipe had torn loose from the wall.
The corpse dragged her closer. Its maw of blackened teeth gaped wide, preparing to gnaw at her ankle.
As her last breath bubbled from her nostrils, Vaki spun the pipe around in the water. Angling the jagged end towards the creature, she jabbed again.
The pipe tore through the creature’s eye, and sank into its skull. The creature’s head thrashed left and right, struggling to dislodge the pipe. She didn’t know whether the blow had been enough to flood the thing’s dulled senses with pain, or if she had damaged some critical nerve junction. But either way, the corpse released her leg.
Vaki kicked out, striking the end of the pipe and driving it deeper into the thing’s skull. She heard the dull snap of cracking bone reverberate through the fluid. The corpse went limp, and drifted away from her.
Her vision blurred, and she felt her heart pounding a staccato beat in her chest. She kicked off and sped to the surface. But this time when her head struck the corridor roof, there was no air to breathe… the fluid had risen to fill the gap.
She blinked, forcing her vision to clear. Glancing down, she saw a green light. It was just a faint glow, barely a glimmer in the murky haze beneath her.
The flex-relay… She knew it was her only chance now… she had to get the blast doors open.
She propelled herself back down to the corridor floor. She heard the plodding steps of the corpses behind her. The relentless stalkers were closing in…
Her flailing hands grabbed the blinking strip. She pressed the green light. It flashed for a few seconds, then a series of diagnostic readings flowed across the slim display.
Her lungs ached. Her fingertips were numb and tingling. She fumbled for the second wire, but it slipped from her grasp. She reached for it again… A hand clamped down on her shoulder and yanked her backwards. Glancing down, she saw bony, decayed fingers and yellowing nails digging into her skin.
She thrashed out of the corpse’s grip, jabbing back with her elbow. The blow connected with a muted thud, and the corpse floated away from her.
As her vision faded, her free arm darted forward. She grabbed the swaying wire and jabbed it into the second conduit on the flex-relay. The strip glowed green again. The blinking light was all she could see as the darkness closed in around her.
That's it, she thought. I'm patched in…
She stabbed a finger down on the display, activating the diagnostic routine buried in the panel’s programing.
A mass of bubbles erupted from the blast doors. The twin panels slid open, and the sudden rush of fluid sucked her forward. She tumbled through the opening as the purple liquid sloshed around her. Striking the floor, she rolled several meters across the metal plates. Finally, her hands and feet found purchase on solid ground. The liquid sloshed and puddled around her, but she felt cool air on her hair and shoulders.
Her chest heaved as she filled her lungs with oxygen. Something thudded on the floor close by. She heard a low moan behind her…
Springing to her feet, she whipped her head around. Six of the walking corpses were shambling after her in the corridor. Their lifeless eyes glared at her, and their groans turned to a chorus of grunts and snarls. The creatures stretched out their arms and shuffled towards her.
Still panting for breath, Vaki turned and ran, splashing down the flooded corridor. She came to a doorway and looked down at her wrist display. It appeared to be working normally. She shot a quick glance down the corridor, then scrolled through the schematics of the colony that glowed on her display.
She read off the letters and numbers that marked the door. “1147-D… come on, where are you?”
Finally, her display flashed, and zoomed in on a section of the complex.
“Communications,” she muttered to herself. “Perfect.”
As the corpses rounded a bend in the corridor and lurched closer, she decrypted the lock, and slid through the door. It hissed closed behind her, and she glanced around the circular communications room. Blinking screens lined the walls, showing various hyper-transmission frequencies and wavelengths.
In the center of the chamber, a deep shaft plunged hundreds of meters into the rock beneath the complex. A column of antenna and cables rose from the pit, and continued into the ceiling. Communication consoles surrounded the hyper-transmission array, circling the pit in a ring.
Vaki sat down in one of the molded plastic chairs and typed on the holo-displays. She opened a channel to the closest shipping lane, but a blast of static drowned out the signal. She peered at the screen…
“What in blazes?” she muttered to herself as her fingers danced across the glowing keyboard. She tried a new frequency. Then another. Watching the screen, she noticed an interference wave was drowning out all transmissions. She narrowed her eyes as she examined the readings on the display. Katara claimed that communications were blocked by the electro-magnetic radiation of a nearby pulsar… a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star. But the interference wave wasn't coming from deep space.
It was coming from inside the complex itself.
Vaki's nostrils flared as she took a deep breath. She keyed in a new frequency. Flipping open a panel on the console, she yanked out an auxiliary cable and connected it to her wrist unit. Then she entered a series of letters and numbers on the keyboard.
The static died down, and the waveforms on the screen solidified into a clear transmission.
She l
eaned closer to the console.
“Talon? Talon, can you hear me?”
The line crackled in silence. Then Talon’s voice answered.
“Salena… is that you?”
Vaki rolled her eyes. “Salena? No you bulaka, it's me, Vaki!”
“Vaki? But how—”
“I slipped a nano-transmitter in your ear before you left the room. When I kissed you, remember?”
“Oh. I thought—”
“Yeah, I know what you thought. Listen, Katara lied about the pulsar. She’s got a network of hyper-transmission jammers underneath the complex. They’ve been blocking all signals to and from the planet for months now. I’ve set up a rotating frequency, but it only buys me a few minutes. Where are you?”
“I’m outside the colony, in Zigra territory. Our— ZZZT-crashed. We— ZZZZ.”
As the static flooded through the speakers, a dull thud echoed from the door. A series of dents rippled across the metal.
Vaki glanced at the door. “Talon, listen. Those walking corpses are inside the Toho colony. There might be more in the Zigra base. I think… I think Katara is creating them somehow.”
Silence cracked over the channel. Then Talon’s voice crackled over the speakers again. “ZZZT— Wouldn’t put it past her. But how? And why would— ZZZZ.”
Vaki slammed her fist on the console. “Detara!” she cursed to herself. The powerful signal jammers were clamping down on her transmission. She only had a few seconds left.
"Katara isn’t after the black jade," Vaki shouted. "She has tons of it here, enough to fill a freighter. It’s the dorokuma… she’s doing something with the worms. Experimenting on them, changing them somehow. She’s altered the larva, that’s what she sent you to find. She—"
A massive crash sounded from the door. She snapped her head around, just in time to see the metal panel buckle inward. Decayed hands clawed through the opening, tugging at the crumped metal panel.
Vaki turned back to the console. “Talon, I don’t have much time. Katara’s been running her ore-slicer’s too close to the planetary core. That’s what’s causing the tremors and quakes. She’s destabilized the planet, and the gravitational forces in the system are tearing Neros to pieces! She’s kept it secret from everyone but a few key scientists and technicians.”
“Iberron’s har— ZZZZZZZ!” Talon cursed back through the speaker. “How long do ZZZT have?”
Vaki called up the data she had copied on her wrist display. “Her geologists estimated the planet would collapse a few days from now. But the latest tremors were far worse than they calculated. If I adjust for the increased strain on the crust… Talon, we’re talking less than twenty four—”
An ear-piercing wail of static and noise burst from the speakers. Vaki screamed and clamped her hands over her ears. The volume was deafening, and the painful noise drowned out all conscious thought.
Behind her, the door exploded open. The dented metal panel flew into the room and clattered against the wall.
A hulking corpse stood in the doorframe. His belly sagged over the waist of his torn breaches, but his shoulders rippled with muscle. Aoshun tattoos covered his pale, mottled skin, and a long topknot ran from his shaved skull.
Vaki looked up, her eyes wide with shock and surprise. She recognized the brute stomping towards her. Talon had spared him in the arena, but Katara must have killed him in a fit of rage…
It was Gajoro. A pair of cybernetic limbs replaced his severed arms. The mechanical claws clicked and whirred as he reached towards her.
Vaki ignored the pain throbbing between her ears and dropped into a defensive crouch. She dodged Gajoro’s awkward blow and delivered a vicious kick to his solar plexus.
Even as the blow landed, she continued moving, darting forward and jabbing her knuckles into the brute's windpipe.
Neither blow had any effect. She pivoted to the left, trying to sidestep Gajoro's counterattack. But the cybernetic limb swung through the air, faster than she expected. The arm slammed into her like a club, knocking her backwards. She flew into the ring of consoles, and rolled over the guard rail.
Her fingers clawed at the rail as her body dangled over the antenna pit. Glancing down, she saw dark shadows stretching down the smooth, concrete walls of the shaft. It seemed to go on for infinity.
She heard footsteps stomping towards her.
Gajoro leered down at her with milky, lifeless eyes.
The servos in his right arm clicked and buzzed as he closed his metal fingers into a fist. He raised the limb, preparing to strike.
"STOP!"
The word exploded from every speaker in the room, cutting through the wailing static like a steel blade. Vaki recognized the imperious tone of the woman's voice…
It was Queen Katara.
“Do not kill her. She may still be of use to me. Bring her to the bio-harvesters.”
Gajoro lowered his arm. He reached down, grabbed Vaki by the throat, and hoisted her out from the pit. As he hefted her in the air, she kicked at his chest, and pounded on his metal limb with both fists. He ignored the blows. Vaki choked and gagged as his fingers tightened around her windpipe. Clawing in vain at his metal fingers, she watched in horror as the brute tilted his head, and stared at her. His lips curled into a cruel semblance of a grin.
Then he tossed her across the room. She slammed into the wall and tumbled to the floor. A soft groan escaped her lips, as her eyes fluttered closed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Talon shook his head, still surprised by the sound of Vaki’s voice. He turned to B’Turo. “We have to hurry. Vaki’s in trouble. She uncovered the queen’s secret… this entire planet is crumbling to pieces. And it’s going to take us with it.”
“I told you,” the old man muttered. “I knew something was wrong… Feels like an itch you can’t quite scratch.” He sighed. “So what do we do now?”
Talon glared at him with his crimson eye. “We go back to the colony. Find Vaki, steal a ship and get off this world while we still can.”
B’Turo blew a puff of misty breath into the cold air. “Even if we could make it back on foot, Katara’s not about to let us through the colony’s shield.”
“She will if we have what she wants. The black jade.”
B’Turo nodded. “Well, you’re the one with the magic eye. Lead the way.”
Talon glanced up… the skeletal structures of the obliterated colony stretched above them. The mangled metal beams and crumbled walls seemed to arch over them, like the rib cage of a colossal beast. The setting sun cast long shadows across the field of ruins. The dark shapes seemed to dart and move around them, shifting position as the burning orb in the sky sank lower on the horizon.
Talon held out the shaft of his axe, pointing towards the crumbling remains of an ore processing station. His eye seemed to glow even brighter as he focused on the collapsed building. “That way. I think.”
“Are you sure—” Before he could finish his sentence, a fit of coughing wracked the old man’s lungs. He bent over, hacking thick gobs of spittle onto the snow and ice.
Talon placed a hand on the man’s back. “B’Turo, are you alright? You don’t sound well.”
B’Turo stood up, wheezing for breath. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Told you, my lungs aren’t so good. Too much cold air. Let’s get this over with. And keep your eyes open for a vehicle or something. I don’t know how your lady friend got through, but my comms are still down, and there’s no way we can drag a cargo container back over the ice ourselves.”
They stalked into the dark interior of the shattered building. Talon powered up the blade of his axe, using the burning weapon as a torch to illuminate the dark shadows in the collapsed building. The flickering orange glow cast a dim light over the ground beneath their feet. Rubble and debris littered its cracked, uneven surface.
B’Turo whistled. “Looks like something tore the foundation to pieces. Jerked the rug out from underneath the entire colony.”
Talon ignore
d him, and continued pacing into the shadows. His head snapped to the right… he felt a twinge of pain, a pressure in the back of his skull. His crystal eye pulsed even brighter. Something was leading him, pulling him deeper into the cavernous interior of the ruins.
“We’re close,” he said. “There’s dark energy nearby.”
Suddenly, the ground shook again. A rippling wave ran underneath them, scattering rocks and debris in its wake. Talon threw himself to the ground, rolling out of the path of destruction. The wave came to a stop, throwing a plume of debris straight up into the air. The falling rocks pelted the ground, and rattled off the hanging metal beams that had once supported the structure’s roof.
“B’Turo,” he shouted. His cry echoed through the shadows of the cavernous interior. “Another quake… we have to find cover.”
“No.” The old man’s voice was a hoarse wheeze. Talon tuned and saw B’Turo, stumbling towards him from the shadows. “Not… not a quake!” The old man’s words were a pained gasp. He stepped into a beam of sunlight.
Talon narrowed his eyes. “B’Turo, what’s wrong.”
The old miner’s skin had turned pale. He bent over, as another fit of violent coughs burst from his lungs. A spray of fluid spattered the ground at his feet. Talon glanced down. In the dying rays of light from outside, he could see the thick, viscous fluid was a pale blue, rather than blood red.
B’Turo looked up. A white film covered his eyes. He stooped over and grabbed a piece of torn metal from the rubble on the ground. He raised the makeshift weapon over his head.
Talon took a step back. “B’Turo, what are—”
The old man’s mouth gaped open. An inhuman howl burst from his lips, as he lumbered towards Talon. He swung the pipe, striking the ice with a metallic clang. He raised the club, and took another shambling step forward.
“B’Turo, have you gone mad?” Talon blocked the man’s awkward attack with the shaft of his axe. He shoved the weapon forward, sending B’Turo sprawling across the ice. “What’s gotten into you, old man?”