by Jamie Sawyer
My eyes dropped to the scanner graphic on the HURT’s HUD. No motion, no life-signs, but the evac-pod’s beacon was broadcasting loud and clear now: position visible deeper in the ship.
“That’s an affirmative,” I said. I stood. “Nothing we can do here.” Turning to Feng: “Private, I want you to remain at this junction. Keep the path to the Warhawk clear.”
“Copy that,” Feng said, taking a post among the shadows.
“Opens into some kind of chamber ahead,” Lopez said.
“Keep it covered,” I ordered. “Watch our six, Novak.”
“Six is watched,” Novak said. “Have bead on the Warhawk.”
The tunnel branched into a chamber that had once housed a dozen Krell worker-forms, each fused to their workstation, lower bodies meshed with the innards of the bio-ship. They died where they had lived—if you could call their existence living.
“Probably a command station or weapons post,” Lopez suggested. “But whatever it was, everything in there is dead. Same as the others in the tunnel.”
“Anything to add, Pariah?” I asked.
The alien glared at the chamber. “We have nothing.”
“O-kay…” Lopez said. No one felt the need to ask the alien what it meant by that comment; its mood had descended to the extent that it was almost tangible, a gloom that followed the XT around.
“Christo, how did these things end up on our side?” Novak said.
“Good question,” I replied. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing a lot recently.”
“Move on,” Sergkov ordered.
Feng’s transponder beacon lit on my HUD, flashing intermittently. I nodded at Lopez. “Remain here and stay in comms with me and Feng.”
“Copy,” Lopez said, quietly. To my surprise, there was no dissent from her. Was she actually learning how to be a soldier? Only time would tell. “Feng, I’m watching the corridor beyond your position.”
“I see you on my scanner,” he answered. “Let me know if there is any movement.”
“If it comes to it,” I explained, “we’ll use this tunnel as an evacuation route. Straight to the hangar and the Warhawk.”
“Sounds like plan,” Novak said.
Pariah, Novak, and I moved on. The terrain was much of the same, but we appeared to descend a level or two. Decks were connected with rough-walled shafts, features with which Pariah seemed at ease: climbing and scuttling without complaint. It was slower going for Novak and me, and we clambered down the shafts more cautiously.
“Your … transponder sig … is degrading,” Sergkov said, his voice chopped with static. “We … follow your … exact… position.”
“That’s a negative copy, Fe. Say again?”
The line hissed. COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK UNAVAILABLE, my suit said. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER.
“Novak, take a post on that spur,” I said. “Try to stay in communication with the Fe. I’m going deeper.”
The big Russian nodded and braced against the wall, covering the open junction. “I do as ordered,” he said.
“Pariah, you’re with me.”
The alien responded by bounding onwards, legs pistoning. To this point, the dark around us had been almost impenetrable, but something glowed ahead. A diffuse light came from the walls, circling a portal lined with living tissue—
“There’s liquid in here,” I said.
I evaluated my surroundings, my face-plate shifting through vision modes. Fluid lapped gently at my armour plating, catching the glint of my lamps. I was knee-deep in it. The stuff responded sluggishly in low gravity. Reflections in various false shapes drifted across the surface.
“Is normal,” Pariah said.
“Nothing about this place is normal … Where are we?”
“On Krell ship,” it answered.
“Do you always have to be so fucking literal?”
The Pariah blinked at me. No reply.
“I mean, what is this sector?” I enunciated very precisely. “What is it used for?”
“Sleep…” the alien said. “Hibernation chamber.”
I recalled our conversation in the brig, and how Pariah had spent the whole night basically alert. “Sleep” obviously didn’t mean the same thing to the Krell. This was the largest chamber I’d seen since boarding the ship. The walls were claimed by glossy blisters: what I guessed were hibernation pods. Although most were blackened, filled with oily liquid that made the contents invisible, a handful glowed with an amber translucence.
“The signal is in there,” I said. Tried hard to conceal the reluctance from my voice. “I’m going in.”
I waded through the open portal, ripples throwing off all around me, giving my position away to anything that might be lying in wait. The entire room was flooded, deep as my waist.
Something dangled from the ceiling. Another blister-pod, much bigger than the others, hanging in a cradle of fleshy cables.
“What the fuck is that?” I whispered.
“Red Fin Collective,” the Pariah said. “Navigator-form.” Tapped a clawed gauntlet to its head, as though mimicking our conversation last night. “Higher function,” it said.
There was a black shape inside the pod, held in gel-like suspension fluid. I let my suit-lamps linger on it, and couldn’t stifle the gasp of shock at what I saw. The thing’s body was distended and warped, six limbs curled around its enormous armoured head. More like a squid than a fish. Maybe an evolutionary offshoot of the main Krell genus, certainly unlike anything I had ever seen before. The creature was connected to the blister-pod by organic piping, its face covered by a respirator of some kind. The big, deep-set eyes were shut.
“It’s … navigator-form,” Sergkov confirmed. “The Krell equivalent of a starship captain, bred … that purpose.”
“Carmine’s equal,” I muttered.
Sergkov continued his scientific monologue, as though unaware that I had spoken: “…specialised type of leader-form. You’re … lucky to glimpse one … only ever … seen a handful … in existence … Highly valued … Krell Collectives.”
“I feel so special,” I said. “But this thing doesn’t look right, Pariah. There’s something wrong with it.”
Everything about the creature’s body was deformed, wasted: all except for the head, which was far out of proportion with the rest of its anatomy. More of the algae-bloom had polluted the navigator-form’s pod. In fact, as I looked at the strange aberration, I thought that it had more in common with the mutants we’d seen on North Star than with Pariah.
Pariah stared at the navigator. “Collective speaks across void,” it said. “Makes network, but not when ship falls.”
“A faster-than-light fish? Very interesting.”
“Oh, we found out … the navigators after … Krell War,” Sergkov insisted. “We found—”
The connection ended with a spike of white noise that suggested a finality to our communications.
“Major? You read me?”
My suit had lost all contact with the Santa Fe. I swept every available comms band. No response. I guessed that we were too far into the ship. Even the Jackals’ transponder signals—strung in a thin line across the vessel—were blinking erratically. I repressed the sudden and very intrusive thought that I might get lost, on my own, in the dark…
“Signal is here,” Pariah said.
I realised that I was standing right on our objective, that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. An icon flashed across my HUD, updating my mission status.
“Why would they put one of our evac-pods in here?” I asked.
“Do not know,” Pariah said.
The evacuation-pod was Alliance standard-issue equipment: spherical, not much bigger than the HURT suit, equipped with a short-range thruster and basic life support package. Carried a broadbeam transmitter that would allow for pick-up by friendly forces. This particular example was half-submerged, lying on its side in the centre of the hibernation chamber. The HURT suit’s bio-scanner probed the pod, but came up c
lear: no readings from inside. Or the chamber around me, for that matter…
“Cover me,” I said to Pariah.
The circular entry hatch was marked with various safety warnings: EXPLOSIVE BOLTS, STAND CLEAR ON RELEASE, and so on. I grabbed the manual release valve with one hand, and deployed a suit-gun—ready to fire if there was something waiting for me inside the pod—with the other. Nothing about this operation felt right any more, and I wasn’t taking any chances. The hatch gave with a burst of escaping atmosphere. Liquid poured inside as I released the door.
“I’ve opened the pod,” I said across the squad channel.
“And?” Lopez asked.
“It appears to be empty.”
I leaned into the small craft. Explored the interior with my suit-lamps, my guns tracking possible hostile activity…
“That’s a confirm on an empty pod,” I said.
“Shit. Long way to come to go home empty-handed,” Feng said.
Riggs laughed. “I hear that.”
The pod’s inside contained two pristine crash-couches. There was no sign of any previous occupation, no indication that anyone had used the pod at all. Could the Hannover’s AI have launched the craft by mistake? Possibly. It was unlikely, but no machine was infallible. I felt a mixture of relief and disappointment.
“I’m pulling out,” I said. “Not sure if you’re copying, Santa Fe Command, but there’s nothing in here. The pod’s empty. No survivors. Chalk it up as another mystery for the Maelstrom—”
I abruptly broke off my report.
Wait a minute.
The pod, I realised, wasn’t empty. One of the crash-couches was occupied, though not by any human. My lamps fixed on an item that had been harnessed inside. BLACK BOX, my HUD identified. RECOVERY ESSENTIAL TO MISSION. OBJECTIVE UPDATE: RECOVERY OF FLIGHT DATA NOW PRIORITY OBJECTIVE. ALL OTHER MISSION OBJECTIVES ARE RESCINDED.
I reached inside and touched the sleek black casing. The box wasn’t much larger than a data-clip, about the size of my palm. The words ECS HANNOVER—RESTRICTED ACCESS—were stamped on the armoured casing.
“Scratch that last report,” I said to the squad. “I have something.”
“Something live?” Riggs asked.
“No. The black box flight data. That’s all the evac-pod contains.”
“Someone sent out an evac-pod with the black box data?” Feng asked. “That doesn’t make much sense.”
“We can worry about the reasons later,” I said. “Maybe Sergkov has some answers.”
I withdrew from the evac-pod and slid the black box into one of the armoured pouches on my HURT suit’s belt. In other circumstances, I would’ve just made a direct link to the Santa Fe and beamed the data back: we could’ve extracted, leaving the sims aboard the Azrael. But now that the comms link was down, that was an impossibility. The only way of getting the black box data back to the Santa Fe would be to extract it manually, by flying it back. But it’s not just that. Pariah stirred beside me, doing a very bad job of covering me. The alien would be left on the ship if we extracted. For some reason that I couldn’t really explain, I didn’t think that it would be right to leave the XT aboard the bio-ship. I’m getting soft, I taunted myself. Just make sure it doesn’t get you killed.
I stood up, servos whining. To be honest with myself, I didn’t feel quite ready to give up the HURT suit, either.
“Is it just me,” Novak asked, “or is water level rising in here?”
“It’s just you,” Lopez answered.
But the water level was rising. The liquid was staining my armour something chronic, the metallic plating now blackened and coated with wet slime.
“I think it’s best that we get out of here,” Feng said. “I’ve had enough of this place—”
There was a flash of motion right in front of me.
The Pariah snapped.
Arm outstretched. Claw closed over something grey and writhing.
“What in all the Core is that?” I exclaimed.
An eel. Pariah had intercepted the creature, I realised, mere inches from my face-plate. Its catch flexed violently, tried to escape its webbed fingers.
“Young,” Pariah said, in a frighteningly calm voice. “Spawn, but gone wrong.”
It crushed the mewling thing in its grip. My pulse had started to rise, the expectation that something was about to happen sending my gorge into orbit. Even with my onboard medi-suite, I was struggling to maintain any sort of calm…
Pariah grabbed another eel-thing as it leapt from the water. Crushed it with the same cold indifference. The fry squealed—far too loudly for a creature so small.
“I got signals,” Feng said. “I got signals!”
“What’s happening in there?” Riggs asked. “Report!”
“They come,” Pariah said. It flipped both barb-guns, held them ready gunslinger style. “We fight.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BUTCHER’S DUE
Feng: “I’ve got signals inbound on your position!”
Riggs: “Get out of there! Keira, fall back to the shuttle! Now!”
Novak: “Fucking fishes everywhere! Kill ’em all!”
Lopez: “Hard contact! Hard contact—”
I fired a burst from my suit-guns. Smart rounds slashed the air and the surface of the water, providing brief flashes of illumination. My suit threw visuals across my HUD, flagging hostiles with coloured icons.
Electric ripples—so similar to moving reflections that I could’ve easily dismissed them as imagined—circled me. Shark-like, working in concert to close the distance between me and the exit to the room—
Simultaneously, several of the eel-things slammed into me. They slid free, left bloody smears where they made contact with my armour.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, as I fought. “There are hundreds of them in here.”
ARMOUR INTEGRITY: 93%, my suit told me.
“We go now,” Pariah said. “Or we die.”
It vaulted through the water, and I followed. Backed towards the portal. A thin, reedy buzz was developing in the air, emanating from the bio-ship itself. Like a million angry insects, contained in a tiny space. My suit applied a noise-reduction filter to my audio channel, so loud was the noise becoming.
“What is that sound?” I said, half-turned to Pariah, but still tracking targets all around.
“Alarm,” Pariah said. “Wake ship up.”
The room was coming alive. The hibernation pods were now shifting. Shapes the size of fully matured Krell warriors were beginning to break free.
Meanwhile, the water level was rising again. Please don’t let me drown in here! The HURT suit was sealed, and could surely withstand this sort of pressure, but panic isn’t a logical thing. And make no mistake: I was seriously fucking panicking.
Fry swarmed my body, wriggling and putrid, bio-electricity flickering over grafted implants. The HURT’s joints were formed of a flexible plastic-steel hybrid, and the thought that the eels might be able to breach the suit—get into the armour, make contact with my skin—sent a violent shiver through me. One had attached its wide jaws to the back of my knee, was thrashing to stay attached. I paused to kick the fry free, put it down with a burst from my suit-guns.
ARMOUR INTEGRITY: 72%.
“We’re falling back,” I said. “Keep the route open for us, Jackals!”
But the comms signal sputtered, whined with static disruption. There were screams coming from the ship, all around. Every XT on the vessel seemed to be converging on our location. Something lashed against my leg with force, made an effort to drag me under.
Behind us, the navigator-pod was beginning to glow.
“This is bad, right?” I asked Pariah.
Pariah nodded. “This is bad.”
The thing inside—all twisted and surely, surely dead—squirmed, pushing its multiple limbs against the interior of the capsule. The skin-membrane stretched—
Not so fast. I opened fire with both guns. Hit the navigator-pod, face on.
The capsule ruptured. Suspension fluid sloughed out, rapidly polluting the surrounding water. Rounds stitched the navigator’s head, ichor spraying from a dozen open wounds—
The navigator thrashed free of the pod.
A dozen rounds to the face and it was still Core-damned alive.
It used multiple limbs to anchor itself to the surrounding structures, head lolling, gills throbbing. Raised its enormous bulk up from the remains of the pod.
The universe closed in on me.
The navigator set all six limbs wide. Screamed.
I’d heard Krell scream, but this was something altogether different. It was horrifying. When the navigator’s cold eyes fixed on me, I could think of only one word: dead. Those eyes were dead. They were silvered, mirrored orbs, unlike anything I’d ever seen on a Krell. Something terrible had happened aboard this ship, and I wanted no part of it.
“We go,” Pariah reminded me.
Then I was up and moving.
More Krell were breaking out of their hibernation pods, roused by the alarm and the navigator’s cry. Scanner returns all around.
“I’m coming in there,” I heard Riggs saying, his voice choppy as though he was moving as he spoke. “Hold on!”
“Stay where you are! Keep the shuttle running!”
“I’m getting heavy resistance at my watch-point,” Feng said. “I’m hit, but I’m still shooting.”
“I don’t know how much longer I can hold my post, either!” Lopez said.
I was at the portal now, and was grateful to see that it was still open. I was less thrilled that the liquid was now flooding the sealed compartments of the ship. It occurred to me that the bizarrely arranged tunnel network was perfect for retaining liquid, even in low gravity. A home-away-from-home for the Krell.
Pariah cut through the flood in a sort of combination run-swim. Its barb-guns were akin to a human semi-automatic weapon, spitting bone flechettes across our path. It moved fast and fired with an unerring accuracy.
The HURT was a big, ungainly exo-suit, made with brute force in mind: not well suited to this environment. My progress was painfully slow, and before I could clear the room another half-dozen silver shapes launched after me.