by Kal Spriggs
His cruel smile grew wide, “Ah, you recognized me. You're remarkably perceptive, for cattle.”
“You're dead,” Mel said, “I saw you die.” More than that, she had held his hand as he died and felt his pulse go erratic and then stop. She had seen the life go out of his eyes... and what she saw in those eyes now chilled her to the bone.
“I should really thank you for that,” Giles said. “And while Giles was never really my true name, just that of my shell, you may call me that. If you spoke my royal name I'd have to kill you, anyway.”
“Royal...” Mel just shook her head, “What the hell are you?” She kept Maggie leveled at him, finger on the trigger and ready to shoot. Whatever this was, he was responsible for the sabotage, which meant he was her enemy.
She backed away from him, even as her gaze darted around the compartment. He was too close to the hatch she had entered for her to feel comfortable trying to go out that way, but there should be another hatch near the back of the compartment, she knew. It would open up on the secondary corridors within Fenris, which would lead her to the others.
“That's something someone as... limited as you couldn't ever fully understand,” Giles said. “Suffice it to say, I'm better than you. Superior... and this,” he waved a hand at the strange biological growths, “this is proof of that.” He cocked his head at her, “Lower your weapon, Mel.”
“Drop dead,” Mel snapped. “What is this shit?” She jerked her head at the organic growth.
He sighed, as if his patience were tried by a child's temper tantrum. “Mel. I owe you some small thanks, please do not try my patience. I'd really rather keep you alive. You are remarkably intelligent and capable for a normal.” He spoke English with an odd, clipped accent, as if he had grown up speaking it far differently than her. He gestured at the environmental tank, “I've made some slight modifications to it to allow it to suit my needs.”
Her back struck the rear wall of the compartment, but she didn't take her eyes off of Giles.
“How?” she asked, even as her left hand scrabbled for the hatch controls. She kept her pistol on target with her right hand, the holographic sight centered on his chest.
“You've noticed I've slimmed down, a bit?” Giles asked. In truth, his lean, muscular frame was nothing like the morbidly obese Giles that she remembered. “Well, the additional biomass there was laced with seeds for when I was activated. Some tie into your machinery, draw power from your ship's systems, while others... well, others let me do other things.”
“Like what?” Mel asked as she found the controls and opened the hatch.
A pair of arms grabbed her in a bear hug from behind and Mel let out a scream. She tried to angle her pistol for a shot, but the arms pinioned her hands to her sides. They held her with impossible strength, as if she were nothing more than a child.
She twisted around and then recoiled as she stared into the dead face behind her. It belonged to one of the dead terrorists, a man she had seen Colonel Frost shoot. His face was gray and lifeless and she could see more of the odd growths covering the top of his head and parts of his arms.
Giles chuckled, “Well, things like giving me a set of helping hands.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Time: 0300 Zulu, 22 September 291 G.D.
Location: Deep Space, Near Neu Emshaven System
Bob didn't try to fight the inhumanly strong arms that had his throat. Instead, he drew his Magnum Research BFR Twenty-Five Millimeter in one smooth motion, planted the barrel under Strak's chin, and pulled the trigger.
Black slime, brains, and bits of skull spattered the front of Bob's helmet visor.
The arms released him and Bob wiped at the mess on his visor. He saw that Strak's headless body still stood and black slime pulsed from its ruined neck. Bob leveled his pistol and put an explosive round into the thing's chest. It toppled, then, it's ruined body unable to stand.
“Anyone got an incendiary grenade?” Bob asked.
“One second,” Tank said. Bob turned to face the other man. Tank rooted through his bag for a long moment and then threw Bob a grenade.
“Thanks,” Bob said, “Fenris, lock down the lounge. If any of that stuff got inside, use fire on it. If any more of these things come, shoot them until they can't move anymore and then use fire on them. Whatever you do, don't let any of their fluids touch your skin, understand?”
He didn't wait for their responses, he pulled the pin out of the incendiary grenade and dropped it on Strak's corpse. “Fenris, I need you to decontaminate this hallway, treat it for a full spectrum of biological hazards. Anything you can manage, understand?”
“I do not,” Fenris said, “But I'll do it anyway. That was Strak, was it not?”
“It was his body, something else was using it, though,” Bob said. “And I've got to deal with it.” He just hoped he wasn't too late for Mel.
***
Mel struggled against the arms that held her, but they only squeezed tighter.
Giles walked forward and his face showed amusement at her efforts. He calmly took the pistol from her hand and then tossed it to the side.
“You know,” he said, “watching you has been interesting. I think I'll take some genetic samples to send home, to see if your determination is reproducible.”
Mel tried to kick him but he stepped back out of reach before she even really began the motion. “What do you want? What's going on?”
“Bring her,” Giles said as he moved up to the overgrown environmental tank. He pulled on a section and part of the growths retracted to show a tray or bed of sorts. The walking corpse that held her carried her effortlessly forward.
“My current servants are so limited,” Giles tapped at the side of his head, “Brain damaged, little more than vegetables, really. That's the problem when a Lazar cannot tie into higher level motor functions.” He patted the bed, “You, though, you will make an excellent servant, once the Lazar takes over your mind and forces compliance.”
“Why are you doing this?” Mel demanded as the walking corpse brought her up in front of the bed. She wondered if her environmental suit would protect her, yet at the same time, Giles didn't seem concerned by that possibility.
“Because I can,” Giles said. “Because I am superior.” He smiled cruelly, “and because you'll thank me for it, later, after I've stripped away your delusions of free will.”
“Hey, asshole,” Bob said from the hatch, “Forget something?”
Giles looked over just as Bob fired. Even so, he was instantly in motion and Bob's shot missed him and struck the machine instead. Black slime exploded from it and the entire organism shuddered and twitched, even as more black slime splattered across the floor and ceiling. Mel twisted in her captor's arms and kicked hard at its knee. The joint broke with a sickening crunch and the walking corpse released her as it tried to catch itself.
Mel rolled away, just as Bob fired again. The heavy bullet struck Giles in the shoulder as the man rushed him. His entire shoulder blasted apart and he stumbled in shock... but he didn't stop his charge and before Bob could fire a third time, the lean man was upon him. He backhanded the Magnum Research BFR out of Bob's hands and then caught him by the front of his environmental suit and slammed him against the bulkhead.
“You,” Giles sneered, “insolent little man. Do you have any idea how much that hurt?”
“Gee, not really, seeing as I have both arms,” Bob said.
“I'm going to enjoy watching the Lazar strip away your insolence and leave you as my puppet,” Giles said. Mel scrabbled across the floor towards the corner, her eyes searching the gloom.
“Is that so?” Bob asked. “You Chandral are all alike, you know, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. You never follow through, though.”
“How do you know that name?” Giles demanded. He slammed Bob back against the bulkhead, “Tell me?” His face twisted in rage, even as his muscles flexed and strained, clenching his fingers ever tighter into Bob's throat. Mel scrambled along th
e floor of the compartment, eyes on the scene even as her fingers searched.
“I've hunted your kind before,” Bob gasped. “You think you're the superior race, do you? Well, I think you are just a bunch of cowards who don't do enough of your own fighting. You're weak, pathetic, weak and stupid.”
“If I'm so stupid,” Giles sneered, “why are you unarmed and helpless?” As he said the words, Mel finally found what she was looking for. She stood and kicked away the grasping hands of Giles' dead servant and settled into a good stance.
“Because I’m bait and you're about to die,” Bob said. “Do it Mel!”
Giles's head snapped around and she saw his eyes widen as he stared down the barrel of her pistol. She could see panic freeze him for just a fraction of a second... and that was when she fired.
The Tyvex Autopistol selected a hollow-point, depleted uranium slug. Before he could move the round blasted through his forehead and rapidly expanded to blast much of the contents of his skull across the bulkhead behind him. It killed him instantly... but Mel didn't know that. She fired twice more into his head, just to be certain.
As Giles's corpse toppled over, Mel walked up and emptied the last two shots from her cylinder into his chest. The cylinder blasted clear and she fumbled to replace it, her fingers shaking. “Damn,” she said, “I wish I’d killed you better before.”
***
“So,” Mel said, sometime later after Fenris had decontaminated their environmental suits. “What the hell was that?” It had taken almost an hour of low-level radiation followed by cleaning solvents and water and finally reduction to vacuum
They sat in the lounge with the others and Bob looked around with a frown. “I'm not sure how much it I can tell you, without making the situation worse.”
“You could start,” Tank said, “with how a dead man was walking around.”
“It wasn't him,” Bob said, though he didn't meet Mel's eyes as he said it. “Strak and the other corpses weren't really the people they once were... Giles, he's something else.” He cleared his throat, “You know how Brian is a genemod?”
Mel saw Claude recoil from that, though Woodard and Aldera just looked interested. “Yeah. Was that what Giles was?” The man hadn't even bled when Bob had blasted his shoulder apart and he had remained standing despite that wound, a feat that had made even Brian lightheaded with blood loss.
“Something like that,” Bob said. His gaze went distant. “Giles, or the thing that pretended to be Giles, was the product of far more modification than Brian. Brian was the product of a military lab that spent a decade at work. Giles was the product of centuries of genetic modification and tailored adaptation.”
“What?” Tank asked, “How is that possible? The UNGSC's Mutant and Telepath Act prohibited any kind of genetic engineering, anything outside of medical procedures to screen for genetic defects is prohibited.”
Aldera nodded at that, “That's one of the laws few will try to evade. Genetic science is pretty much a dead field, no one delves into that, not anymore.”
“With good reason,” Claude said. “If they allow that kind of thing, we'd be just a range of freaks in a few generations. I prefer pure humanity, not some bizarre circus.” For the first time, Mel sensed this was unvarnished truth from the man. Good to know he really is an asshole, Mel thought.
“There are some,” Bob said, “who disagree, but that's not the point. Giles' people aren't under Guard jurisdiction. They've been free for the past few centuries to experiment and he is the product of that design. The technology he used is also a product of that design, to include the Lazaran, the walking corpses you saw.”
Mel shivered at that, “The black slime...”
Bob nodded, “He replaced their blood with it, it's a complex symbiote that repairs damaged tissue. That's not all, there's a host of parasites and other organisms that are tailored to achieve certain effects, either on living or dead tissue. On the dead, it produces what you saw, zombie-like walking corpses, capable of following limited orders. They're little more than bullet sponges in a real fight, but his people often use them for surprise attacks, to disorient and sow fear in their foes.”
Mel shivered; certainly being grabbed by a dead man had terrified her.
“If he does that to a live subject, they retain their personality, but they're little better than slaves. Most often they'll subsume their own will for total dedication to their masters, but sometimes they retain enough of their original intelligence to realize what has been done to them and hate themselves for it, to long for death to free them.” There was pain in Bob's eyes, a pain that spoke of personal experience.
“What did he want?” Mel asked. She had a number of other questions, but she could tell that Bob was already clamming up. She didn't know how much information she could get out of him. “Why was he here?”
“His people are infiltrating all across Guard Space,” Bob said. “They're analyzing us, seeing if we are weak and ripe for conquest.” He scowled, “That was why he sent the information packet in the Neu Emshaven system. He was trying to pass his reconnaissance data along.”
“They think they can conquer Guard space?” Tank asked with raised eyebrows. “Good luck with that. The Culmor Empire couldn't take us down with four attempts, I think we've shown that humans are pretty damned tough.”
Mel thought that was something of an understatement. He hadn't seen Giles first-hand. He hadn't heard the man's voice, his utter confidence. Mel shivered a bit as she remembered the tone of his voice, so calm and assured even missing his arm.
Bob shook his head, “Not against what they can do, trust me.” He frowned then, almost as if he felt he had said too much. “My assignment was to track down one of their operatives who we thought had infiltrated Guard Free Now. It seems that intelligence was right, but I had no way to know who it was...” he gave Mel an apologetic glance.
“That's one reason I stuck around, just in case it was one of our survivors.”
“Well,” Mel said. “Now we know.” She shuddered a bit. Giles’ inhuman arrogance had bothered her more than she could voice. It was as close to absolute evil as she could comprehend, someone who viewed people as creatures created solely for his amusement.
She looked up, “Fenris, how is decontamination and repairs going?” Now that he knew what to look for, he had begun to find more of Giles' biological infestations throughout the ship, mostly in out of the way locations where they had tapped into his systems and slowly taken over parts of the ship.
“It is a slow process,” Fenris said. “There are systems that they tied into that it would be dangerous to shut down. So I have to shift power into bypasses and then cut out the contamination.” He paused for a long moment, “I estimate it will take three days to be certain.”
Mel bit back a curse. That would put them behind schedule and they had no way to warn the others about that. If the others kicked off their parts of the plan without support, none of it would work.
“Can we just do the mission before you finish decontamination and repairs?” Claude asked.
“No,” Mel shook her head, “Fenris needs to be at peak operation. Besides, we don't know what booby-traps Giles left for us. Something like the radar array yesterday would be a disaster on the mission. She looked at Aldera, “Three days could fit into the timeline, right?”
The engineer nodded, her expression distant as she thought through how Fenris and she would have to coordinate. “It could work, as long as you are in position in three days.”
“I will have my repairs complete at that point,” Fenris said, “which would allow me to move into position... pending any other incidents.”
Mel grimaced at that. Indeed, the entire mission so far had been one calamity after the other. Her gaze went to Bob, “Your contact in Odin Interstellar, is he tied to all this?”
“Him?” Bob shook his head, “No, he's just another contact.”
“Can we trust him to do his part?” Mel asked. Her mind went to how t
he past two deals with Bob's contacts had gone. The last thing they needed was for this part to go wrong.
“Yes,” Bob said with full confidence and Mel breathed a sigh of relief. Bob, though, cocked his head, “Well, I think so anyway.”
“Great,” Mel said with something less than full sincerity. She looked around at the group. Clearly no-one was happy with the partial explanation about their attackers... or about the fact that they would be going in without the warship's support. Even so, no one said anything about aborting the mission. We all need this too much, she thought. “Fenris, can you sneak back to New Emshaven? We'll take your shuttle in from there.”
***
“How do things look?” Mel asked as she came up behind Tank.
The medic didn't look up from the crate. “This isn't what my normal patient set looks like. I think this will work, but I'm not really sure. Since I'm completely obsessive-compulsive when I'm nervous and I'm really nervous about this working since our lives are on the line... well, I'm spending my every waking moment thinking about this.” His voice was cold and clinical.
“Sorry if I'm interrupting?” Mel asked.
“Well, maybe you should apologize for something else,” he said in a low, angry voice. “You basically accused me of sabotaging this mission less than twenty-four hours ago. Now you think you can just waltz in and say hello?”
“Tank–”
He looked up, his face hard, “Let me do my job. Let me wrap my head around this whole genetically engineered killer and the fact that you didn't trust us. We can talk later.”
There was something else in his face, something that suggested he wasn't angry because he didn't understand, but that he was angry because he had expected something else. The hurt that caused that anger made her want to speak up, but she could tell that now wasn't the time.
“I'm sorry, Tank,” Mel said. “I'll let you get back to it.”
She turned away and moved over to where Aldera worked at the other side of the compartment. “Any issues?” She noticed Bob stood nearby, not helping but just standing there, his stance almost protective.