Angelus

by Stargate

  “No alternative. These things are taking longer to charge all the time. The power feed won’t be constant, but if the battery’s charging between pulses it shouldn’t take the laptop down when the lights go out.”

  “Beats swapping batteries, I guess.” A small assembly line of battery chargers had been set up in one of the maintenance bays, with runners to make sure the various laptops and PDAs being used all over the ship stayed fed. “What have you got?”

  “Internal cams.” He moved his seat aside and dragged a second one over with his ankle. She dropped into it and peered at the screen. “That’s the mess hall.”

  “I know. Hold on…” Ellis clicked out of the viewer application and brought up a list of available files. “Deacon left the bridge at, what, oh-three-fifty?”

  “Yes sir.” Meyers looked at him quizzically. “Colonel, you don’t think —?”

  “I’m not thinking anything, Major. But Deacon went missing just before all this happened, and no-one’s got a damn clue where he’s hiding. So yeah, forgive me if I’m interested as to where he went.”

  “Sir, Deacon wouldn’t —” She stopped as he glared at her. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t second-guess.” He tapped the screen. “If the answer’s anywhere, it’s here.”

  She said nothing. Ellis went back to studying the files. “There, that’s the bridge cam file. Let’s start with that.”

  He dragged the file onto the player. There was a faint whir from the laptop, and then the footage sprang to life; an instant of blurry color and then a jarring, static-riddled freeze-frame of black. “Goddamn it.”

  “Sir, that’s the end of the file. All the recordings must have defaulted to the point they crashed out.”

  “Right.” He squinted at the player’s controls for a moment, then found the rewind and started to scroll the footage back. The bridge appeared, four times. There were four cameras installed there, and their output had been pasted into a two by two montage.

  Ellis watched people move in jerky reverse for a few seconds, then saw Deacon appear in the helm seat. “Okay, got him.”

  He let the footage roll on. The internal cams were of quite high resolution, but there was no sound. Audio files were in a different section of the data core. In normal circumstances the pictures and sound would have been married and enhanced for playback, but all Ellis had right now was raw footage. He hoped it would be enough. “There he goes. Oh-three-fifty-two.”

  “Marked. So now we need the entry corridor? What the hell does that come under?”

  “These filenames are hard to- Hold on, I think this is it.” There were only two cameras in the corridor, but both showed Deacon leaving. Meyers marked the time again, and they moved to the next area.

  Slowly, file by file, they tracked Deacon through the ship. The data core was in the forward part of the main hull, ahead of the bomb bay. The most direct route to it from the bridge was via the deck that ran over the bay, and that was where they saw him, with each camera they accessed. He didn’t deviate, didn’t slow down, didn’t make a detour into any other part of the ship. He simply left the bridge and headed directly for the core.

  He never made it. Between one pair of cameras and the next, somewhere above the forward edge of the bomb bay, he simply vanished.

  “Doesn’t make any damn sense,” Ellis muttered. “What’s off corridor nine?”

  “Nothing he could get to without being picked up on another cam.” Meyers frowned. “Maybe there’s a storage cupboard down there or something… Sir, can you run those last two again?”

  Ellis brought up the last two files. As he did so Meyers leaned across to take control of the laptop from him. He let her get on with it — she seemed more at home with the player application than he was.

  She quickly brought the two pieces of footage up together. On the left side of the screen, Deacon stood frozen, paused between frames. On the right was the place he should have appeared once he had left the field of the first camera.

  He didn’t. Just as before, when the player was activated, he walked out of the first camera’s view and never entered that of the second.

  Meyers paused the player, scanned back a few frames until Deacon’s back reappeared. “What’s this?”

  Ellis squinted at the screen. “What?”

  “This shadow.” She took Deacon back a few frames, into shot again. “It’s not there now, but as he goes forward…” She sent him on, one frame at a time.

  There, at the very edge of the screen, just as he stepped out of view, part of the wall darkened. Something had obscured the light. “A pulse?”

  “No, the timing’s wrong. Sir, I think someone was down there with him.”

  “No-one else is on the cameras.”

  “I know. I’m not sure how, but whatever caused that shadow must have been right in front of him.” She stood up. “Sir, we’ve got to go down there and look.”

  “Agreed. But I need you on the bridge.”

  “Colonel —”

  “Major, I know you and Deacon were friends. But I need you keeping an eye on that storm. Don’t worry, I’ll find him.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then gave in. “All right. But please let me send a team of marines down to meet you there.”

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Once he was in corridor nine, Ellis found it even harder to see where Deacon might have gone. It stretched ahead of him, wide and blank-walled. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to hide.

  Still, appearances could be deceptive. The corridor was clean and uncluttered compared to some of the smaller accessways — in less central areas of the ship, corridors were little more than spaces between compartments, and were often narrow and tangled with systemry. There were places where two men simply could not get past each other for all the ducting on the walls, and if any crewmember met another coming the other way in such a place, they would have to agree as to which of them would back up to a wider point.

  This corridor, running along the ship’s spine between the upper hull and the roof of the bomb bay, was kept free from such obvious obstructions. But in many places the wall panels could be removed to reveal storage areas, equipment lockers, access to systems. If Deacon had, as was looking increasingly likely, been attacked, he could quite easily have been concealed in such a place.

  The marines Meyers had assigned to Ellis had already been briefed on that possibility. There were four of them, all armed, all carrying tactical lights clipped to their weapons. The emergency lighting made the corridor gloomy, a flat, grayish twilight that made details vanish. Ellis was as glad of the extra illumination as he was of the firepower.

  “All right, this is where the camera last picked Deacon up,” he told them, pointing a few meters up the corridor. “We know he didn’t come back past this point, or at least not until the ship broke out. We’ll start here and move forward.”

  The squad leader’s name was Spencer. He moved a couple of steps past Ellis, then turned back to him. “Colonel, we’ll run a fast sweep of the corridor first, make sure nothing’s obviously screwy. If it all looks clean, we’ll come back and start taking the walls down. Agreed?”

  “Sounds good.”

  Spencer gestured for the squad to follow him, then moved cautiously off down the corridor. Ellis took up position behind them, his own firearm drawn and held high. He would have liked to have gone ahead of the marines, but there were protocols to be observed. Putting himself in harm’s way to look good in front of a marine squad would have not only been foolish, but would have put others in jeopardy. The marines were here to search for Deacon, not to project him while he did the job himself.

  He stayed close, though. There was no way he was simply going to hang back and watch them work.

  Spencer had reached the next camera. “Colonel? He never made it to this one, am I right?”

  “You are.”

  “Not much of a blind spot.”

  “Big enough. Needs redesigning, as soo
n as we get back. Anyway, my gut feeling is that whatever happened, happened here.”

  The marine nodded. “Well, there’s only about six of these panels that will come off. If he’s here, it won’t take long to-“

  “Sir!” One of the other marines was beckoning him to the far side of the corridor, closer to the first camera. “There’s something here.”

  Ellis followed Spencer over. The marine who had called out was down on one knee, his taclight aimed at the floor. “I almost slipped up on this, Sir. Thought it might be blood, but it’s not…”

  There was a fluid on the floor, but the marine was right; it wasn’t blood. Ellis could see a faint glisten along the edges of two floor panels, as though something had seeped up between them. He crouched, and drew his finger along the line of wetness.

  It was slightly warm, and greasy. When he brought it to his nose it smelled faintly of meat. “What the hell?”

  “More over here, sir!”

  Spencer walked over to look at the new find. As he did, Ellis saw the marine closest to him put his hand on the panel to push himself upright, and freeze. “Hey, what?”

  “What is it?”

  The marine shook his head. “Sir, I’m not sure. I can feel… Here, you try.” He drew back.

  Ellis touched the center of the panel. “Everybody hold still.”

  “Sir?”

  “Just stop walking!” He got lower, spread his hand out on the panel. There was a faint vibration there, rhythmic, a repetitive shudder from under the metal floor. Like an engine, pistons moving down there maybe. Or…

  “Get this panel up,” he snapped. He stood up, stepped back, found himself wiping his hand reflexively on his jacket.

  The panel was about a meter square. There were recessed screws holding it down, and fold-up handles in case engineers needed to reach the crawlspace below. One of the marines stepped forwards with a small powered screwdriver and bent over the panel.

  In half a minute, the screws were free. Ellis watched the marine grab one of the handles and, as the lights dimmed in their regular pulse, hauled it up.

  It resisted him, as if something sticky was holding it down. The man strained, cursed, and then the panel came free with a wet tearing sound, like the shell being ripped from a live crab. Off-balance, the marine stumbled sideways, taking the panel with him and exposing what lay beneath it to the light.

  Beside him, dimly, Ellis heard one of the marines give vent to a choking curse.

  The space under the floor panel was full of tissue, crimson and glistening wetly. For a moment Ellis thought that some creature had been butchered down there, had exploded from some ghastly internal pressure and spread it’s flesh and organs among the underfloor wiring. But there was simply too much of it. Almost the whole square meter was covered, a glossy, vein-shot mix of muscle and membrane, and what wasn’t flesh was metal — bright, new metal, impossibly polished, woven into and through the tissue like roots in soil. It was as though some unholy fusion of meat and steel, sinew and wire, ridged tracheal pipe and fluted silver cable had grown under the floor, a sickening, pulsing biomechanical tumor skulking and swelling beneath the shell of the corridor.

  And it was alive. Ellis had felt the beat of it through the panel.

  He stepped closer, transfixed by horrified fascination, and as he did so a dozen eyes opened in the morass and rolled around to look at him. He saw the pupils contract as they met the light.

  The corridor groaned. Beneath his feet, the floor shifted.

  He heard the metallic double-click of a P90 being primed, but whoever had done so never got the chance to fire it. In the next instant the floor erupted upwards, panels shrieking as they were torn free of their moorings. The corridor went dark, the fluorescent tubes shattering into dust and shards as the walls buckled. In an instant, the entire space was a chaotic nightmare of spinning taclights, sparks, the shouts of men and the thin, hissing bellows of whatever was squirming its way to freedom from under the floor.

  Ellis was on his back. He’d been bowled clean off his feet by the churning corridor, the pistol flung from his grip. He scrabbled at the walls, trying to right himself, but they were slick and warm. There was a haze in the air, a drizzle of grease and blood. It was like being inside a lung.

  The marines were still yelling. Ellis heard a scream, choked, cut short by a crunching, meaty impact. A P90 spun past him and he grabbed it, aimed it up the corridor as he rolled over and staggered to his feet.

  He saw only chaos. Everything was moving, a ceaseless, whipping motion surrounding a vast and impossibly complex bulk that reared up from its hiding place, huge and strong and reeking of meat and oil. In the stark beam of the taclight, it shone as it rose.

  It had already killed one of the marines: Ellis could see the man crumpled against the wall, eyes open and lifeless. Another marine scrambled in, trying to retrieve his comrade, but before Ellis could yell a warning an arm-thick mass of cable and tendon lashed out of the darkness with impossible speed.

  The impact was sickening. The marine flew a dozen meters before he struck the deck.

  The thing was almost at the ceiling now. Ellis still couldn’t get a grip on its shape — its outline was unstable, seething, writhing like a nest of crimson snakes. As it rose it juddered and shook like an ill-kept machine, as if multiple joints and cables and pistons were dragging it up, protesting, into position. Ellis couldn’t tell if any part of it was flesh or metal, plastic or gristle. It was organic and mechanical, bloody and glittering, and in the heart of it was something crucified, something that lolled forwards, skeletal, and turned its heavy, malformed head towards him to scream out its defiance and pain.

  That something had the face of Kyle Deacon.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lock and Load

  She awoke, suffocating. The sheet was tangled around her, pinning her to the narrow bed, and the darkness pressed down around her like wet sand. There was a noise close to her head, a shrill buzzing that scratched at her ears, but she couldn’t identify it nor reach out to silence it. The depth of her sleep, and the suddenness of her waking, had nailed her down.

  She fought the pressure, the crushing fatigue, convulsing sluggishly on the bed until, finally, some measure of control returned to her deadened body. She got an arm free, flailed until she found her headset, and shut off its insistent whirring.

  Carter sat up in bed, not remotely awake, and pressed the headset into her ear. “Wha?”

  “Colonel? Is that you?”

  “Teyla? What… What’s going on?” She swung her feet free of the sheet and stood up, swaying a little. According to the clock next to her bed she had been out for no more than a few minutes. Just long enough to fall really, soundly asleep, which made waking all the harder.

  There were noises coming through the headset; scuffling, panting, as though Teyla was running. Another voice, too far out of pickup range to identify. Something that sounded like sobbing.

  “Colonel, something has happened. We were attacked, the lights have failed —”

  “Attacked? Lights?” Carter rubbed her eyes, trying to shake the edges of fatigue away. “Where are you?”

  “We are near to the Ancient’s lab. Colonel, we were attacked by two of the marines guarding him. I do not think they are human.”

  “We? Who —?” Carter stopped in mid-sentence, aware that she was doing nothing but asking random questions. “Okay, let’s start again. Are you injured?”

  “I am not. Radek is fine too, but Alexa Cassidy is in extreme shock.”

  A thin tone broke through the Athosian’s words; another call coming through on the headset. “Teyla, hold on a moment, I just need to switch channels.” She keyed the new call in. “Carter.”

  “Colonel, this is Palmer in the control room. We’ve got a serious situation here. Looks like an entire section of the west pier has gone into some kind of lockdown.”

  “I’ll be right up.” Carter switched channels again. “Teyla, get yourselves up t
o the infirmary, as quickly as you can. I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”

  She dressed quickly, in the dark, something she had done so many times that she could let her body deal with the task while her mind went elsewhere. The west pier was, of course, where McKay had chosen to set up Angelus’ lab. That was no real surprise to her — in fact, it had a kind of sickening inevitability. Despite all her efforts to keep the situation with Angelus under control, all her hopes of dealing with the Ancient’s plans peacefully, through diplomacy and reason and common sense, the whole thing had slid out from under her. Now she was getting wild calls in the middle of the night and Fallon was going to have her skinned alive.

  Carter was out of her quarters no more than three minutes after she had first woken, and within five was striding into the control room. “What have we got?”

  Palmer was waiting for her, standing next to the sensor terminal. The screen showed a vector image of the city, a broad, angular snowflake drawn in threads of pastel blue. A red circle pulsed ominously on one of the piers. “It’s here,” he told her. “We picked it up just a few minutes ago.”

  “Can you zoom in on that?”

  He did so. The picture of the city spread abruptly, making Carter feel like she was swooping uncontrollably down into its complexities. In a few moments the pier filled the screen, and the red circle now centered around a rectangle of the same color.

  Carter looked at it warily. “Okay, what am I seeing here?”

  “Basically, nothing. It’s a hole in the city — not a physical hole, but we’re no longer getting any returns from it at all. No external lights, no communications in or out, and no sensor readings of any kind. There’s a whole bunch of functionality at its edges we can’t identify, as well.”

  “Functionality?”

  “Systems we weren’t previously aware of activated at the same time the section went dark.”

  “Right,” said she quietly. The Pegasus expedition had been occupying the city for years, now, and they were still finding new pieces of kit to trip over. Even in a structure as large and as complex as Atlantis, she couldn’t help but wonder how the previous administration had been spending its time if there was still ‘functionality’ here that no-one could identify. “Give me a minute.”