Blighted Star

  “Lana, take a look at the movement near the lake. Do you see it?”

  “What the… Yes, I see it. What’s happening?”

  “That’s what we need to find out, can you overfly, but don’t get too close; we have no idea what’s out there. For all we know they might be weapons capable.”

  “Shit, point taken. We’re right there.”

  <><><>

  Lana lifted the nose of the craft and climbed an extra fifty metres as she headed in the direction of the red blips. From the craft she had a good view of the silvery starlit lake and the road which curved round it. Down there in the blackness, she knew, was the thing which had killed a whole town, which would, if it could, kill her, Grad, and their unborn child. She set her jaw, glancing across at Patel. He’d proved himself once with that gun, she hoped he’d soon prove himself again. They cruised on through the night sky, pushing against the cold air.

  “There, down there!” Grad’s sharp eyes had picked out something on the ground, something she could not as yet seen herself. Patel, though, was aiming carefully at something just a little in front of them on the road. Lana came to the hover and peered hard through the gaps in the floor.

  “Can you bring us down just a little? I’m not sure what I’m aiming at.” Patel sounded concerned “It looks to me like it’s just people down there, I can’t see any lake monsters or anything.”

  Reducing the power to the AG’s Lana let the altitude unwind and the shuttle settled down into the darkness. The starlight gave a faint sheen to the land below, and Lana became aware of dots down there, many of them. Losing a little more height she could see what the others were seeing, a large crowd of people, moving slowly through the grassland. Beside her, Patel tilted the cannon until it pointed at the empty sky, and reset the safety switch.

  “Fuck, what now?” he turned frightened eyes to hers. “I mean, what the fuck’s happening now?”

  Lana hovered lower, dropping to five or so metres above the ground, a little in front of the leading elements of the crowd. They watched in silence as the figures advanced.

  “Shit… look at their faces…” Grad was leaning over her shoulder, and once again his better night vision picked out the details before hers did. After a few moments, she could see what he meant. Not a single one of the figures which staggered towards them out of the shadows had eyes, the faces quested in their direction, but each had empty sockets where their orbs had been. Patel gripped the cannon, once more swinging it down to point at the crowd. Next to her, Grad began to gag in the toxic atmosphere. Lana guided the craft back into the sky.

  “Lieutenant, what do you want me to do?” Patel aimed at the closest figure.

  “Wait Patel, just wait.”

  “Jackson, those people are dead. They’re might be moving, but they are dead.” the hardness in Grad’s voice shocked Lana.

  “How can that be? Think what you’re saying. They are walking towards us, how can they be dead? They need our help.”

  “Jackson, that’s a mistake. We’ve just been chased all over the fucking planet by a dead horse, and I’m telling you, those people are just as dead.”

  “Whatever their status, we can’t just fire on them. We need to quarantine them. Let them come forward, we’ll meet them half way. We’ll try addressing them first, see if we can get them to stop.”

  “Whatever you’re going to do, do it soon. They can’t be allowed to get closer to the town, what if they’re infected or something?”

  “Yes, I know. Just stand by, will you? Lana, please could you keep in contact?”

  Lana backed the craft slowly away from the moving mass below, keeping constantly just ahead of them. Repulsive as the thought might seem, she felt that Grad was surely right. Some instinct within her told her that the human shapes below carried a threat they would have to stamp out, or die themselves. She hoped that Jackson’s attempt to communicate might prevail, knew in her heart it would not. She positioned the craft where she could intervene.

  Chapter 14

  The organism had grown immensely in power and capability. Now adapted to the way its new hosts were constructed, it was able to possess each one as economically as possible, devouring in its initial onslaught only those parts it would not need for locomotion or integrity. Muscle and bone was reserved, fatty tissue, brain, skin and offal was consumed. The agents it thus created were better suited to its purpose, for they moved with less staggering, could sustain themselves for far longer, were in every way better hunters. Leaving the shelter of the lake, it extended its new larger body into a wide line from which prey would find it harder to escape.

  Now it needed to annex flesh in large quantities in order to enter its final phase, a phase it had been denied for millennia, starved and clinging to existence in the bodies of the worms of the planet. At last it had the chance to once more fulfil its life cycle.

  In the near distance was the pulsing source of life which drew it, another large concentration like the one it had captured the night before. In the space between, though, was another small grouping of the life beacons flaming in the dark. The organism extended itself on each side, instinct making it canny enough not to attempt a frontal attack, which would surely end in a lengthy pursuit of the swift-footed prey. The agents which made up its body were too slow for that. Dormant behaviour honed when the planet had teemed with rugged life forms governed the organism’s actions once more. Like an amoeba stalking its prey, the vast entity flowed forward across the plain.

  <><><>

  Jackson jogged forward, his comms registering the increasing toxicity of the air and the disposition of the red dots. Boots thudding on the soft ground they closed rapidly on the advancing line, which now became visible as dark figures silhouetted against the meagre mist of the dead of night.

  At fifty metres they halted before the dark host, and while the men readied their weapons, Jackson set the voice control on the side of his respirator to maximum. He took a breath, then his voice boomed out across the grass.

  “Stop! Stay where you are! Something terrible has happened to you, and we will help you. but you must not come any closer. We will help you here.”

  The advancing line of corpses stopped.

  “Fuck! It worked!” Hernandez’s outburst broke the silence, Jackson shook his masked head at the trooper.

  At the far edges, the line of the dead crept forward and turned in, the men formed a nervous circle as they became surrounded. The silent dead kept their distance.

  “Sir! What are we doing?” the panic in the man’s tone was infectious. Jackson threw some authority into his voice.

  “Hold fast.” On the display he could see that they were now totally hemmed in.

  “Jackson! What are you doing? Look on your display!” Grad’s shouted warning grated on Jackson’s ears. Jackson set his jaw.

  “Stay exactly where you are! We want to help you, but you must not come any closer!”

  The dead stepped closer.

  “Sir?”

  “Keep back!”

  “Sir! Please!”

  The horde was now closing in fast. Jackson raised his targe gun and aimed at the first rank.

  “Back! We will fire!”

  The nearest of the corpses was now only a dozen metres away.

  “Fire!”

  `The twelve targe guns all spat repeatedly, each flashing a tiny, bright but harmless beam of light to indicate the track of the deadly, but invisible blasts of energy. Each time they fired, a hole was punched a centimetre in diameter through everything in their path up to a distance of one hundred metres. The dead staggered under the fire, a fog of vaporised flesh started to build.

  Jackson took careful aim on the shoulder of an advancing body. The details of the rotting clothing seemed oddly familiar, and Jackson had the uncomfortable feeling that had known the man, though the face was far from being recognisable. The targe gun took a second to charge, a second which seemed to drag out for a lifetime then the gun spoke and the man’
s shoulder disappeared in an expanding puff of smoke and steam. The arm dangled uselessly and the corpse swayed a little to the left. Behind it, the same shot had bitten out a circular channel from the head of the cadaver behind. Both corpses walked on towards him.

  Above him, the twenty opened up, shedding blinding streaks of light from the air to all around the small knot of soldiers. It fired the twelve shots it had stored in rapid succession, then stopped to charge up. Like the targe guns they held, and like most of their other equipment on Saunder’s World, the guns were Scavenger Tech, drawing power from their surroundings, in the form of sunlight or starlight, electromagnetic fields from the planet itself, even from the surplus body heat of the operator. Excellent for long range missions where resupply with consumable power sources wasn’t possible, but with a weakness in rapid fire situations like the one they were in now.

  The fire from the twenty had slowed them down. The man Jackson had fired on was now merely a pair of legs, smoke trailing up from the truncated waist. As Jackson watched, the legs went down on one knee. Another of the walking dead stepped past, then another. Jackson got a final view of the legs straightening back up and resuming their advance before the sight was lost behind the press.

  He realised with a cold shock that they would not be able to hold back the closing crowd at the rate of fire they could put up. That they could do no more than postpone the inevitable. As he realised this, the skids of the descending shuttle dropped down to hover just above their helmets.

  “Grab on!” Grad’s shout drowned in a fit of coughing and retching. The men, startled, reached up and got as strong a hold as they could. The dead, as if sensing the escape of their victims, surged forward. Jackson felt hands clutch at his legs as he hauled himself up to safety. He kicked his feet as hard as he could, actually gaining the impetus to drag himself onto the cargo deck from the impacts of his feet on the clutching hands. The other men were still hauling themselves in as the shuttle rose. Grad collapsed in the corner, next to the already collapsed body of the engineer. Blood was trickling from the pilot’s mouth. He lay still.

  One of his men was yelling in fear as he dangled from the frame of the shuttle. Jackson crossed the steel deck and grabbed the man’s sleeves just below the wrist. He started to pull, looking down, he could see that Sanchez’ legs were in the grip of one of the monsters. As Jackson watched, the corpse drew back one hand, pointing the bony claw, then drove it forward, punching a hole through the fabric and into Sanchez’ calf. The creature dropped free and fell into the dark.

  Sanchez’s leg thrashed, nearly pulling him from Jackson’s grasp. He opened his mouth and screamed and screamed. Spittle flew onto Jackson’s mask. Sanchez bucked, nearly pulling him overboard, Jackson took a better grip on the bare flesh of the trooper’s wrists. He glanced round, calling for help, but everyone else was lying gasping on the deck. He looked back and a fearful change was coming over Sanchez’ face. Giving a final scream, it erupted in boils and blisters. The eyes bulged, whitening and bursting, and the nose collapsed as if the features had been bathed in a strong acid. Sanchez went limp. Jackson involuntarily let go, as the dead soldier slipped through his fingers, one of the withering hands gave a spasm and clutched at him.

  It merely brushed the end of his fingers, but instantly the mass of nerve endings in the fingertips brought a message as if they had been seared with burning heat. He staggered back, staring in horror as blisters ran the length of his fingers and formed on the skin of the back of his hand.

  He reached down with his other hand and pulled the combat knife from his boot, feeling as if his arm was being immersed from the fingers up in a vat of molten metal, he brought the knife down on the flesh just below the elbow and sawed back and forth. The exotic alloy the blade was composed of took no time or effort to lop free the infected limb, and the weird throbbing dullness of the amputation was actually a relief after the agony he had been in. A fountain of blood sprayed into the air, but this was quickly reduced by the nanos in his veins. With the last of his strength booted the fallen limb, it skidded across the deck and flopped overboard. Jackson sat down with a thud and passed out.

  <><><>

  Watching the action from the safety of Cassini, Athena felt a sudden metallic taste as her bitten lip burst. She had seen the way the dead had surrounded Jackson’s men. It looked all too much like a conscious act of co-ordinated will. What were they facing? There had been no lake monsters present at the scene, unless they were invisible… Perhaps the people had in some way become possessed, she could feel the word zombie creeping at the back of her mind, but she was supposed to be a rational scientist, wasn’t she? Whatever the creatures were, they still had to deal with them, and they were getting closer to the town. Already she could see the arms of the red dots spreading out to either side, cutting off escape to the north or the south, well that was okay, the evacuation would be towards Cassini anyway, to the west. She contacted the shuttle.

  “Lana, You okay?”

  “Been better. But yeah. Grad, Jim and Jackson are down though. They need help right away, I’m coming in.”

  “Lana, you have to make one more drop before that. You have to give the civilians a chance to get out of the town. Drop the squad off at the crossroads.”

  Wordlessly Lana wheeled the shuttle round, the lights below pirouetting. Once more they dropped into the dark. The troopers, already worn out with shock, dragged themselves up by the framework around them and readied themselves as best they could. Sgt Raoul’s deep voice came to them from Cassini, and involuntarily they straightened up a little.

  “Right, boys. I’ll be there soon, but you’ll have to hold out ‘til then. Hernandez, you’re in charge. Patel, unship that twenty and take it with you. Delay and retire boys. You’re just there to buy a little time, none of that Last Stand crap, you hear? Delay and retire. Now move!” The shuttle’s skid once more bumped on the ground, and the squad leapt out. Lana hit full power and they soared away, circling as they went.

  <><><>

  Athena patched through to the populace of the threatened town once more. Speaking from her heart, and without trying to disguise the gravity of the situation, she explained what had happened, and what they should do to protect themselves. By the time she had finished speaking, she could see that the last of the green dots was leaving Heartlake, even as the red dots advanced on the town from the east. At the crossroads, a small green cluster marked the position of the soldiers. The red dots came close to them, and slowed, thickening as the front line of them was engaged and the following elements caught up. The thickened line began to advance and the squad dropped back into the town. Again the process was repeated, but this time Raoul had to intervene through the comms to order an early withdrawal. To the north, and to the south, the red dots had advanced relatively rapidly, and the unit was in danger of being cut off. They dropped back to the last houses in town. The townsfolk had not got very far. Athena watched another stand being taken, then the small green cluster moved again, this time merging with the larger body of green. Raoul beside her tapped on his keyboard, and the soldiers’ green dots turned to blue.

  “Sorry,” said Raoul, vaguely, “should have done that before.”

  Now the red dots extended far to the sides. The trailing end of the green mass, now tipped with blue, was gradually overhauled on either side. The Southern horn of the red dots moved in, and to Athena’s horror, the green mass reacted, losing its forward momentum, and dispersing to the North, where more of the red dots were waiting. It was like watching a predator pack hunting; first the feint, then the ambush. A bulge of green dots, despite her frantic warnings, crashed into the waiting line of red dots to the North. They retracted again, but not until half a dozen of them had been turned red.

  Raoul wiped his hand across his mouth, he was sweating heavily. “I really need to get out there.” he turned frightened eyes to hers “We’re losing it.”

  <><><>

  The plains were now entirely empty of lif
e and the skies were swept clear of flying things. The many ponds and lakes had become sealed traps in which the swimmers had been hunted down remorselessly, and now the organism was itself dying out, a victim of its own success. It had burned its way across the surface of the planet in a few hundred thousand years since its emergence, and now, like a fire burning beyond control, it had used up all its fuel, almost the entire biosphere was extinct.. With so few new hosts to infect, it was only a matter of time before the organism itself became extinct. There was one last strategy for it to employ, coded in its genes were the patterns it had inherited from its fungal ancestors, yet to activate those patterns it would need mass, a great deal of flesh which it could convert. The last scraps of it were trapped in an arid corner of the world to which it had been drawn by its sense of living tissue.

  Here in this flat semi desert was one place where a significant meteor strike had thrown up a bony ring of rocks, a kilometre in diameter. In the centre of this was a shallow lake in which the water had become quite saline with the waste of a species of large and bulky fish. These fish survived precariously on a diet of the slime which scummed the lake’s surface. Until now, their presence had gone overlooked by the poisoned senses of the organism’s victims, but now, they stood out clearly to the infected agents around the crater.

  The organism had a long task ahead of it though. The soil around the crater was infertile and in consequence only sparsely populated by the worms which were its final refuge with all the other animals gone. Each time it infected another host, it had the choice to make of climbing the steep rocky slope and working its way to the shore of the lake within, or to find a new host closer to hand and thereby ensure its own survival albeit at a lowly level.