by Jamie Sawyer
There was a sound—that bizarre shrieking that the Krell sometimes made—somewhere beneath us. The noise echoed around the chamber, multiplying, as though there were a hundred XTs in there with us.
“Stay sharp,” I said.
Blurs of motion polluted my peripheral vision. An alien face appeared in front of me, right side up. Unblinking eyes. Features held in that unknowable expression that the Krell always wore.
“Fucking fish head!” Novak spat into the xeno’s face.
The alien did nothing to recognise the tiny act of resistance, not even to wipe the spittle away.
“Save it, Novak,” I said. “Don’t do anything. Not until I say so.”
My simulant-eyes had adjusted to the dark now, and I saw that we were surrounded by Krell. Hanging from the walls, from the ceiling. To fight back would be suicide, and not in a good way.
“Understood,” Novak said, begrudgingly.
The alien chirped noisily. Slashed a claw across my chest. Pulled me out of the cocoon. Novak was freed beside me too.
The Krell guards dragged us into one of the many sub-shafts that honeycombed the prison cell. We passed through the organic equivalent of a starship hatch, with one of the Krell pausing to activate it, and out into a wider corridor. A gaggle of familiar figures stood outside our prison.
“Keira!” Riggs exclaimed.
“Corporal,” I said, briskly. I struggled to contain the rush of elation that I felt on seeing that he was alive, and resisted the urge to throw my arms around him. “Good to see that you’re alive.”
Riggs, Lopez and Feng were surrounded by Krell warriors. The Jackals were covered in the vestiges of cocoon-matter, the weed-like material clinging to their fatigues, but as far as I could see none of them appeared seriously injured. Most importantly, none of them had been hit by stingers or barbs: surely a death sentence without a full medi-suite to filter the poison.
“You’re skinned,” Lopez said. Her hair was plastered to her scalp in thick strands.
“Let’s not make a thing of it,” I said.
There was no telling how much the Krell actually understood of our communications: no telling what they would do if they knew that I was in a simulant. Although Lopez nodded in agreement, I could see that the information had lit hope in her eyes.
Feng feverishly looked over my shoulder, back the way we had come, and one of the Krell guards prodded him into the group.
“Is Zero with you?” he said, desperately. “Did she make it out?”
“Long story,” I said. “No need to go into it now.”
“But she’s okay?”
“I think so,” I said. “What about Sergkov? Where is he?”
“He was with us,” Riggs said, “but the fishes took him.”
The Krell marched us together. One on each arm, another two ahead of us, heads constantly swivelling to check that we weren’t trying anything. Two gun-grafts trailed at the rear, their bio-cannons tracking us with particular menace.
“Maybe we should make a break for it,” Riggs suggested, from his position behind me. “This place looks empty except for these bastards.”
“Look again,” I said, nodding towards the shafts that lined the ceiling and walls. “The Krell are everywhere. They’re watching us. This is their habitat.”
Eyes peered out at us from darkened shafts. Camouflaged bodies slinked at the edge of my perception.
“You could still make a run for it,” Riggs said. “Or let them kill you, and bug out to the Santa Fe…”
As my feet scraped the wet, smooth floor of the tunnel I realised in just how bad a shape this skin was. The wound in my chest throbbed, pulsing as though I was fighting deep infection, and my limbs felt like they were set in concrete. No doubt being suspended upside down for the last few hours hadn’t helped. But if I bugged out now, there was no telling how the Krell might react.
“And you’d all pay the cost,” I said. “That’s no kind of plan. We’re better biding our time. You still got that gun, Lopez?”
“Yeah,” she said. “And I even brought some ammo.”
“And you have knives, Novak?”
“Have one knife,” Novak said. He sounded almost glum.
“That will have to do.”
We went through dank, wet corridors, lit only by the soft glow of blue and green fungi that erupted from the walls. Plants and bugs and coral-things sprouted from every available orifice or cavity. The place wasn’t so much a ship as a colony: a slice of the Krell’s natural bio-system, flying through space. I was struck by how much life there was aboard the ark.
I assessed the Krell guards. The two nearest to me had back-plates lined by antenna-spines, which wriggled and writhed with a life of their own. I’d seen that behaviour before. It suggested that they were particularly agitated, were receiving communication from other bio-forms higher up in the chain of command. The Krell were otherwise healthy, muscular specimens: larger examples of primary-forms. Their colouration was more extreme than those we’d seen on the Azrael; instead of muted grey-green, these soldiers wore stippled bio-plate, striped like wasps.
“I don’t think that these ones are the same as the Krell aboard the Azrael,” I whispered.
“All fish heads are same,” Novak said.
“That’s not right,” I said. “Red Fin, Blue Claw: there are tens of Collectives. But that isn’t what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean, ma’am?” Feng said.
“The ones on the Azrael looked wrong,” I said. “They looked as though they were infected by something. Diseased.”
“That is toxin talking,” Novak persisted. “All fish heads are sick.”
Lopez barked a laugh, loud enough that her Krell escort responded by shaking her shoulder and hissing at her.
“Fuckers!” Lopez yelped as the Krell touched her. “I’m moving as fast as I can!”
She cursed some more and I heard more scuffling, but she quickly settled down. The Krell went back to their programmed march.
And even from that small detail, I learnt something.
“They don’t want to kill us,” I decided.
“They’re waiting to do that,” Riggs muttered.
“I mean it,” I said. I stared down at the open wound on my chest, where the stinger-spine had punctured the combat-suit and lodged itself inside me… “They took out the stinger. Since when did the Krell do that?” I looked around, at tunnel walls running with thick fluid. “And they’ve drained these tunnels.”
“Maybe they’re trying to make us comfortable,” Feng said.
“It isn’t working,” Lopez added.
The idea that the Krell were deliberately keeping us alive was somehow more terrifying than the idea that they were trying to kill us. I’d spent so long at war with the fishes that nothing else seemed natural.
The tunnel terminated in another living door, and one of the Krell on point activated it. The hatch sucked open, revealing a much larger cavern beyond. The two fish heads at my shoulders pushed me inside, and the Jackals filed in behind me.
The chamber was vast and wide, made from the same bizarre pseudo-organic material as the rest of the ark. It reminded me of a wasps’ nest: a big insect hive, teeming with not just Krell life but whatever else they picked up on the way. Whereas the tunnels outside had been dark, this place positively blazed with light. Fungi and glowing barnacle-things covered the walls, illuminating dozens of open shafts that fed into the chamber. Podiums made of coral grew everywhere, interconnected by bone rigging and catwalks of luminous material that looked a lot like a calcified spider’s web.
A behemoth of a Krell presided over the alien court.
“What in all the Core is that?” Lopez murmured beside me.
“It’s a navigator-form,” I said.
The xeno shared certain characteristics with the navigator-form I’d seen aboard the Azrael, but again I got the distinct impression that this creature was not of the same breed: its colouration was different, the swe
ep of its head. Its distended body was supported by six spindly, atrophied limbs, and every inch of the creature’s skin—if that really was skin, and not some sort of grafted armour—was covered in barnacles and small crustaceans, a pattern made up of a million tiny whorls.
“Just stay quiet,” I hissed at the Jackals. “And don’t do anything that might get you killed.”
“I think that’s going to be easier said than done,” Riggs replied.
What little energy remaining in this skin ebbed out of me: as though my life-force was earthed, seeping through the soles of my boots. An aura of age surrounded the navigator—something that I’d never experienced from the Krell before. Perversely, that seemed to do little to reduce its sense of physical threat. Rather, it somehow made it all the more fearsome.
A weird clicking noise echoed around the chamber, and as I gingerly looked upwards I saw that the cavern was filled with further platforms, each spilling with Krell. Shark-eyes gazing down at us.
“That’s a shit load of Krell to fight,” Riggs whispered.
“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” I said. “I told you to be quiet.”
Lopez whimpered. “Should’ve listened to Daddy…”
There were dozens, hundreds of other Krell assembled around the chamber. I recognised leader-forms, secondaries, and tertiaries, but others were more bizarre still. Here were examples of Krell that I had never seen before, had never even been briefed on. Quad-forms—tremendously powerful specimens that reminded me of a combination of gorilla and crustacean—pounded up behind us, closing the only available exit from the chamber. They rested on their forelimbs like crabs, their bio-helmets scanning us. Yet others carried rarefied staves that crackled with bio-energy, sending bright blue sparks through the air.
“They haven’t killed the major yet,” Feng offered, indicating to the centre of the room.
Major Sergkov was badly dishevelled, covered in more of the living weed from the prison cell. As the guards dragged us into the centre of the chamber, to where Sergkov was kneeling, he half-turned to look at me. His eyes were black wells, and his face was haggard.
“Lieutenant,” he said, in greeting.
Just the slightest dip of his head, like he was frightened to move. Both of the major’s hands were on his head, fingers locked. I thought back to when we had first met, on Daktar Outpost. When I had seen him looking down the certainty of death, when he had appeared resolute and determined. Now that he was in his real skin, he didn’t seem anywhere near so willing to meet his maker.
“You’re injured, sir,” I said. I noted a particularly nasty-looking injury on his back, where something sharp had torn his uniform, penetrated skin and bone. Sticky blood coated the fabric of his fatigues.
“Don’t be concerned,” he said. “I’m fine.”
The major knelt in a shallow pool of water, mere metres from the navigator. Krell guards prodded us onwards, then forced us into the same pose as Sergkov.
“I do not take orders from fish,” Novak barked.
“Do as they tell you,” Sergkov said. “Trust me on this.”
I saw then that the walls of the chamber were lined with blisters—pod-like things that were similar to those I’d seen in the Azrael’s hibernation chamber, glowing with pale internal light. Except, I realised, these were most certainly not sleeping-capsules.
“Are those…?” Lopez started.
She didn’t need to finish the question, and it was better that she didn’t. There were vaguely humanoid outlines in the blisters—shapes unmistakable, held like flies in amber. Many of those bodies were still in uniforms.
Army, Navy, Aerospace.
But not all were human. There were some Krell bio-forms—usually six-limbed, much bigger than humans. Then more esoteric shapes that I didn’t recognise at all: things that were more alien than even the Krell.
Dr. Skinner had used the description “organic computers” back on North Star. Was that what the network of pods was? The idea sent a shiver of revulsion through me—each of these minds networked to the Collective, forced to become part of the Krell’s knowledge-base, whether the occupants wanted to be or not.
“This is the Deep,” Sergkov said. “This is what they do with prisoners.” He added sharply, “Please: don’t look. It won’t help.”
So this was what had happened to Sergeant Cooper, former Alliance Ranger … What was worse: that he had been subjected to forced communion with the Krell Collective, or that he had somehow come back from it? I didn’t want to dwell on how such a thing might change a man, or a woman … Sergkov did his best not to look at the walls, or at the enormous navigator in front of him.
“At least now we know what happened to Pariah,” Feng said.
Pariah had been woven into the wall, beside the navigator: pinned in place by bundles of vine-like cables. Dozens of bleeding injuries covered the alien’s body, and its head lolled to one side. It was easily the smallest bio-form in the chamber.
“You okay up there, P?” I asked, despite myself. “What have they done to you?”
Pariah didn’t respond, but I noted the gentle rise and fall of the XT’s chest. Krell breathed, just like the rest of us.
“It is an abomination,” came an electronic voice.
“More talking Krell?” Lopez whispered.
“It’s not them,” Sergkov said. “It’s the pariah-form.”
“…a necessary abomination…” the voice completed.
“They’re speaking though it?” I asked.
“Yes,” Sergkov said. His eyes remained fixed on the floor, on a certain point of focus that it appeared only he could see. “They’re tapping into the pariah-form’s communication ability.”
Skinner’s warning: that the Pariah was a two-way mirror. That was exactly how the Krell were using it.
“Answers…” the pariah-form said. “Required.”
Whatever they were doing, Pariah was in obvious pain, with creeper-cables plugged to open wounds on its body. Like being jacked with cables to my data-ports, I realised, with growing unease.
“It’s still Krell,” I said to the navigator.
“It is Pariah,” the navigator said, through Pariah. “It is not of Collective.”
“It’s a member of our crew,” I said back. “You have no right to take it prisoner.”
“Please,” Sergkov said. His body shook, quivered. “Don’t.”
The navigator’s forelimbs gently extended, demonstrating the truly threatening scale of the beast. The living antennae on its back writhed, perhaps formulating a response, perhaps communicating with the rest of the ark.
“Others call us Silver Talon,” the navigator said. “The Pariah was of us. Now it is not.”
I nodded. “He was donated.”
“Not donated. Taken.” The navigator paused. “Maelstrom: Krell space,” the alien said. “This is.”
“We know.”
“Not us,” it said. Thrust a talon in our direction. “Not of Kindred.”
“We came here to investigate the loss of a ship.” I worked the words around my mouth. “A vessel called the Hannover. A human vessel.”
I was no xeno-linguist, and I was painfully aware of the importance of this meeting.
“We know of a craft that sails the stars,” the navigator replied.
“A ship?”
The alien paused again, then answered. “A craft that sails stars,” it agreed.
“Your kind,” I said, “did they destroy the craft that sails the stars?”
“Not us. We are Silver Talon.”
“Then the Red Fin? The Krell that you just attacked?”
“Was not of Collective. Was of exile.”
“You’re all Krell!” Riggs barked. “You’re all fucking fishes, and you’ve just attacked your own ship!”
“I’ve already told you to shut up!” I said, turning to Riggs. “Let me handle this…”
I was just in time to see a dozen Krell descend on the squad. They circled
us, limbs always in motion, offering the threat of abrupt and unpredictable violence. My minds-eye was clouded by flashbacks of a hundred deaths at their claws, each bloodier than the last. But they did not attack. The navigator nonchalantly raised a claw, and the swarm retreated.
“I’ll be quiet now,” Riggs whispered.
“That is best,” Novak said.
The truth was that I had no idea how to handle this, whatever this actually was. Simulant Operations teams were not briefed on contact scenarios: the only two alien species that we were aware shared our space were not prone to direct communication. I’d fought the Krell for most of my life—been in some of the hottest combat zones that this galaxy had to offer—and yet none of that could ready me for what I was seeing. I had a painful suspicion that whatever happened here would have repercussions for the rest of humanity. The weight of this encounter rested heavily on my shoulders.
I decided to try again. “We were sent on a mission to find the whereabouts of the … the craft that sails the stars,” I explained. “We thought that this craft was here, in this system. We found a … a Kindred ship, but it had something wrong with it.”
The navigator exhaled slowly from a series of gills set into its enormous head. The expression reminded me of a sigh. Pale mist bellowed from the creature’s bulk. It paused, as though contemplating its response. Although they were of different species, the vibe I picked up from the XT was the same as I’d felt when Major Sergkov had first briefed us. The alien was evaluating me, weighing me up.
“They are dying,” it finally said. “Red Fin has rot.”
The mention of that word—“rot”—seemed to send a shiver through the gathered aliens. They were frightened of the word, or perhaps its implications.
“Collective dies.” The alien’s body writhed, as though describing those events was causing it pain. “Crafts that sail stars die.”
“We saw you attacking that bio-ship,” I said. “We saw your ships chasing it.”
“Other carried the rot,” the navigator said. “Other should not survive to carry rot.”
The wall behind the navigator illuminated with threads of light, generated by the fungi and coral.