by Jamie Sawyer
“It can’t be dead,” Sergkov said, “because it was never really alive.”
“Looks like it might’ve been once,” Lopez whispered.
“Bio-ship hulls are composed of an organic polymer, fused to a force-grown spaceframe,” Sergkov offered, “but they aren’t really alive. Very few of the internal elements are what you would call truly ‘living.’”
Novak grunted. “‘Grown’? ‘Fused’? Sounds like alive to me.”
“Alive, dead, whatever,” I said. “The ship’s drive is inactive.”
“How can you tell?” Riggs asked.
The outer hull was speckled—seemingly without reason, in a way that certainly felt biological—with bubbles and sensor-vanes, delicate-looking spines that spread from the aft.
“Experience,” I said. “Those things are drive spines; when the engine’s active they’ll often glow blue. That’s plasma discharge.”
“Ship is in pain,” the Pariah intoned.
The Pariah had no access to the shuttle’s vid-feed, but the proximity to the alien ship was affecting it. The xeno squirmed, limbs in constant motion.
“Take the shuttle in closer, Corporal,” Sergkov ordered. “And begin transmitting across all frequency ranges.”
The shuttle carried a short-ranged but powerful communications array. We were now so close that it would be capable of transmitting our beacon to the bio-ship. Riggs licked his lips, and didn’t immediately do as ordered, his gloved finger hovering over the INITIATE TRANSMISSION key. He paused, half-turning to me.
“You cool with this?” he asked.
I gave a reluctant nod. “Do as he says.”
Riggs punched the key. On initiation, the Warhawk’s comms beacon began to sing on every frequency we had available, across every comms band. At this range, every xeno-form on the bio-ship would hear us.
I nodded at Pariah. “Is it working?”
“We hear it,” the XT said, tentacles writhing across its back. I wondered how it functioned with those appendages exposed to vacuum, outside its bio-suit.
“No obvious sign of response,” I said. “Santa Fe, you getting anything back there?”
“We’re picking up the signal,” Zero said, “but so far there’s no response from the ship.”
Sergkov took over. “Corporal Riggs, are you still reading the Alliance beacon?”
“Affirmative,” Riggs answered. “Loud and clear.”
“Where’s it coming from?” the major asked. “Can you get a fix?”
Riggs paused for a moment, analysed the data on his flight console. “Somewhere in the prow, but I can’t be any more specific than that.”
“There,” the Pariah said. It stirred across the cabin, moving so fast that the HURT suit’s target-acquisition software flagged it as a potential hostile. The xeno pointed a webbed hand at the cockpit view-port, at a broad section of the Azrael’s hull. “We board there,” it said. “Signal comes from near. Go there.”
A yawning hangar bay: the entrance to a dark cave. Riggs painted the feature with an objective icon, noting the distance to target.
“Follow the Pariah’s instructions,” Sergkov ordered. “I want you to take the shuttle into the designated hangar.”
“Now we take orders from fish head?” Novak asked.
“I want you to leave all comm lines open,” Sergkov ordered, “and maintain that broadcast.”
“Whatever you say, Major,” Riggs muttered. He turned to me and added, “This guy’s going to get us killed.”
“Been there too many times already, kemo sabe,” I said. “Just keep your mind on the job. Take us in.”
The Warhawk glided into a hangar. Riggs deftly pulled back on the acceleration, deployed the skids, and touched down in the centre of the bay.
I accessed the Warhawk’s remote eyes, and took in the location: a cavernous hold, big enough to take ten transport shuttles. Lit only by the starlight from the open airlock, the walls and floors vaguely ribbed. I activated my suit’s scanner systems. Let’s see what we can see… I swept the nearby chambers, attempting to map the Azrael’s insides. The armour’s AI built a rough schematic of the surrounding modules, pinned the maps to my HUD.
Riggs said, “Place is pressurised, according to the boat’s instruments.”
“You sure about that?” I asked. There was no obvious means of sealing the hold from the vacuum outside. “Nothing closed behind us—”
“Shaped energy field,” the Pariah offered. “No airlocks.”
“Right…” Lopez said. “And that works how, exactly?”
“You can trust the shuttle’s readings,” Sergkov ordered.
“It gets better,” Riggs said. “There’s also decent atmosphere in here. The fish’s ‘shaped energy field’ is holding everything in nicely. Air humidity is high, with a reasonable oxygen content.”
“But you heard Sergkov,” I said. “Everyone should stay buttoned up.”
“Beacon is still broadcasting,” Riggs replied. “I’m picking up some additional information now.”
“Such as?”
“It’s definitely from the ECS Hannover.”
“Well isn’t that great,” Novak answered.
“This might turn out to be a rescue mission after all,” Lopez said. “Maybe we can all go home heroes…”
The squad’s vitals were jumpy but controlled. That would have to be enough. “Riggs, I want you to remain on-site,” I said.
“You sure about that?” Riggs asked. His expression was almost pleading. “I mean, don’t you want more boots on the ground?”
“You think you’ll miss out on some of the glory?” Feng suggested, grinning behind his face-plate.
“Fuck you, man,” Riggs said.
“You’re the only qualified pilot,” I said, “and this shuttle is our only way of getting off-ship. We find real skins in there, we might need some way of getting them home.”
“But—” Riggs started.
I glared at Riggs with an expression that said don’t argue with me, and he settled back into the cockpit.
“The rest of you follow me. Tight formation, bio-scanners at max amp.”
The troopers unharnessed and conducted weapons checks, readying plasma rifles and pistols. An objective marker appeared on my HUD, transposed over a warren of corridors and chambers. That was the target’s location, deep within the bio-ship’s guts.
“Execute those orders,” Sergkov said.
The design—if you could even call it that—of the Krell bio-ship shared little in common with that of any human starship. Corridors spread—capillary-like—from the hangar bay, both vertically and horizontally, splaying in different directions. Every internal surface appeared to have been bored or grown, covered in organic ridging. The squad painted the insides of the ship with their suit-lamps—more reliable than infrared or night-vision in an alien environment.
“Gravity is lower than expected,” I said.
“That’s been reported before,” Sergkov muttered over the comms. “The Krell appear to prefer a below-standard gravity.”
“Our boots aren’t working in here,” Feng said. “Whatever shit this ship is made of, it isn’t metal. Place is creepy as all fuck.”
“Take look at this…” Novak suggested.
The walls and floor ahead were composed of a grisly, fibrous material that looked uncomfortably close to exposed muscle fibre. Almost immediately, the tunnels tightened. My armour brushed against the walls.
“There’s barely enough space to manoeuvre in here,” I complained.
“Well, at least the Pariah seems fine,” Feng said, indicating further up the tunnel.
The alien had no lighting rig, but that wasn’t slowing it down. Pariah scuttled along the ceiling, using every surface detail for purchase, making the most of all six of its limbs. Even inside the HURT suit, and with reduced gravity, I was struggling to keep up.
“Slow down, Pariah,” I ordered. “We need to keep this place covered.”
; “We hear it,” the Krell said.
“Me too,” I said, referring to the beacon. “But this place isn’t secure.”
The alien’s crested head creased in a frown—probably the first time I’d seen any actual emotion on the XT’s features.
“Just slow down,” I ordered again.
The alien paused at the junction, hanging from the wall, as the rest of the team advanced. The Jackals cleared the sector.
“So you’ve never been onto a bio-ship before?” Feng asked the alien.
“We have memories,” Pariah said. “But they are not ours. The Collective’s seed runs deep.”
“Just like you and the Directorate, huh Feng?” Riggs said over the comm. “Maybe you’ve got more in common with that xeno than you think.”
“Is that moisture on the walls?” Zero asked.
I reached out a hand, drew gloved fingertips across the smooth surface. In the pools of light cast by my lamps, I saw that the walls were a uniform grey-green—bone-like, similar to the carapace of a Krell warrior. When I touched it, I felt a deep vibration through the wall.
“Seems like it,” I said.
“You should activate your frequency-beacons,” Zero suggested. Her signal was weak, and becoming weaker, an expected consequence of the distance between us and the Santa Fe.
“Is that a good idea?” Lopez asked. “We’ll be giving away our position to anything in here…”
“Do it,” Sergkov said. “Riggs too.”
“You hear that, Corporal?” I asked.
“Solid copy,” he said. “Even if I don’t like it.”
“You getting lonely back there, Riggs?” Feng asked.
“I’m not proud,” Riggs said, “but a little company wouldn’t go amiss. Maybe I’ll comm Zero on a private channel…”
“I guess it’s easy to make jokes when you’re safe and sound on the shuttle,” Feng said. Riggs’ voice was already gathering interference from the bio-ship’s structure. “You’re a long way from the shit, Riggs, and I guess you’ll be the first to bug out if it goes down…”
All five of the Jackals activated their freq-beacons. A frequency analysis appeared on my HUD, indicating that I was broadcasting loud and clear.
Lopez froze ahead, her outline stark in the lamp-light. “What in the Core is this…?” she asked.
She crouched, the Jackals assembling around her. A pool of something yellow and sickly-looking welled up from the floor, breaching the contoured deck. Reminded me a lot of a boil, the surface covered by a skein of sagging flesh.
“No one touch—” I started.
But Novak reached out and touched the surface of the pool.
“Novak!” Lopez exhorted. “What did you do that for?”
Rifles clattered as they aimed in Novak’s direction. An oily yellow fluid coated the outside of his gauntlet, coming free in long, sinewy strands. Icky: that was the word for it.
“Stay away from that shit,” I said, finally finding my voice. “Could be dangerous.”
The Pariah twitched. “Transport,” it said, cryptically. “For motion.”
“Was experiment,” Novak said. “Is not dangerous. See?”
He righted himself, wiped his hand across the wall. His glove was thoroughly coated, and the Russian’s face creased in annoyance as he tried to wipe it off.
“I don’t care what Sergkov says,” Lopez said, “this place is alive, and it’s disgusting—”
She backed into a wall, beyond the arc of my suit-lamps—
My bio-scanner flashed with activity—
The wall came alive.
Living tendrils lashed free. Clutched for Lopez, embracing her body, wrapping her limbs. Lifting her off the deck, into the wall. Lopez screamed: a short, shrill sound. It was an irrepressible reaction. Can’t say that I would have responded in any other way.
“Help!” she called, gasping. Her suit wasn’t breached—my HUD confirmed that—but she was panicking.
“Get her down,” I said. Clutching for the tendrils, tearing them free. The tissue was soft, wet. Slime-coated.
Lopez thrashed. Feng had his plasma rifle up, but had the sense not to fire. A plasma bolt at this range would likely breach Lopez’s armour. Novak abandoned his rifle, and grabbed for Lopez’s arms, dragging her back from the living wall.
“I’m slipping!” she said. “Hold tighter!”
Novak grunted, baring his teeth. “You are slimy!” he said. “Is not easy job.”
Lopez’s armour was covered in the same ooze as from the floor, and her body was sliding back into the morass of heaving tissue.
The Pariah leapt into the mass of tendrils. Reached for Lopez with its middle pair of arms.
“Relax body,” it ordered.
Lopez continued to wriggle and writhe for a second, then allowed her body to become limp. To my amazement, she slid free from the wall. Collapsed to her knees.
“You all right?” I asked. I wiped a gauntlet over her face-plate, so that I could see her face inside her helmet. I saw that she was shaking in the suit.
“I … I’m okay,” she said. Feng passed her plasma rifle to her, and she took it, checked it over. “That was my fault. I should’ve been watching my scanner.”
“It appeared fast,” I said.
She got to her feet. “I do not like this place one bit.”
“It likes you, Lopez,” Novak said.
“It is harmless,” the Pariah said, towards the wall. “Just portal.”
The living tendrils had retreated now, revealing a passage beyond. Walls threaded with thick, vine-like sinew. Things that looked like veins throbbed to life, pumping something dark and viscous along their length.
“The signal is this way,” the Pariah said, scuttling ahead.
“I think that Feng’s right,” Riggs whispered. “I am much safer on the shuttle.”
The structure around us changed. Became darker, more fetid. Even by the standards of the Krell, this was bad voodoo.
Stinger-ammo studded the walls. Pools of dark fluid that looked too much like blood lined the deck. Curtains of living tissue that had calcified, turned the colour of offal in the midday sun. All rotten.
“Place has seen a fight,” I whispered. The Jackals hadn’t spoken for a while, and I needed to hear the sound of my own voice. “Are you still reading me, Zero?”
“I copy,” Zero said. “Your visuals are breaking up badly though.”
“Take in everything that you can down there,” Sergkov said. “I will need some samples from that damaged sector on the way back.”
Does he really think that any of us are getting out of here alive? I thought to myself.
The Pariah stooped to touch the nearest damaged deck. The alien glared back at me with blatant anger in its eyes.
“You know what’s causing this?” I asked.
“Ship is dying,” it said. “Collective is in pain. Bad pain.”
The Pariah waved a gauntleted hand ahead. At the edge of my lamp’s beam, I made out a number of Krell bodies.
“Shit,” Novak said. “Dead fishes ahead. No signs on scanner.”
“I don’t think that we need a bio-scanner to tell us that,” Lopez said.
I stared down at the alien cadavers. Piled on top of each other, limbs twisted at weird angles. Carapaces ruptured, innards scattered across the junction. Literally torn apart. I made out stinger-rifles and shriekers among the miscellaneous body parts.
“They killed each other…” I whispered. “Looks like they were secondary-forms, mainly. Gun-grafts.” The bodies were covered in heavy chitinous plates, the organic equivalent of a combat-suit. “An armoured breed.”
“Didn’t do them much good,” Novak said.
“High guard,” the Pariah explained. There was a disconnect between the alien’s voice and its physical presentation. It seethed—limbs in constant motion, waves of anger coming off the thing like heat from a furnace.
“Those are elite Krell,” Sergkov said. “Interesting. The
colouration confirms that they are Red Fin Collective.”
It was impressive that Sergkov could identify what Collective the Krell belonged to just from their carapace patterning, but I’d noticed something else. I crouched in the HURT suit and poked among the remains.
“They don’t look right,” I decided. “It’s like they’re diseased, or something…”
Where skin was exposed, it had turned an unhealthy white. I turned one of the bodies over, and saw that it was covered in lesions and wicked lacerations. Even the Krell’s armour was algae-and fungi-infested, blooming rampant with white-coloured growths.
“Colonised…” Zero whispered over the comms. “The bodies have been colonised.”
A memory came to me: distant and very, very weak. Newport Beach, SoCal state. With my younger brother—the brother that my parents had doted over, that my father had adored. Loved: that was the word. In what felt like a past life, a teenaged Keira Jenkins had taken him down to the seafront, to check out the black waters that populated most of SoCal’s shoreline. We’d stood on the coast, watched as the angry foam-flecked tide had thrown in wave after wave of silver bodies.
Fish. Those things had been actual fish. That was the last time I’d seen real aquatic life-forms. We’d picked our way through the blackened sand, through the homeless camp around a local pier. And together, in one of the few memories I had of my brother, we had poked at the dead and dying fish. They had mostly been limpid, listless things, crawling with parasites, gills weeping pus and blood. Gasping for air, covered in something the locals called “red tide,” in what the newsfeeds referred to as an “ecological hypoxic event.”
“You ever seen a diseased Krell before, ma’am?” Riggs asked, pulling me back to the now. I’d almost forgotten about him, back in the shuttle, but I was glad to hear his voice.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think I have.”
“They have a very high tolerance of biological contagions such as viruses and bacterium,” Zero offered.
Which makes this a whole lot worse. But I had no way of knowing if such a thing as a diseased Krell was even possible. Since when did these things look normal, anyhow?
“Leave them,” Sergkov said, brusquely. “They’re of no use. Do you have a better fix on the beacon?”