by Paul Collins
‘Alisk, I’ve got to go, I can’t stay here!’
Alisk’s transformation was too advanced for her to respond. She snarled and groaned and jerked in spastic contortions that caused her bones to crack and crunch. The sound sent shivers down Anneke’s spine.
I should help her die, Anneke thought. But I can’t. ‘Goodbye, Alisk.’
Anneke leapt up and sprinted for a hotel at the end of the street. Behind her, the transmogrified humans bellowed in mindless rage and set off in pursuit, ignoring those writhing on the ground in the throes of transformation.
Anneke ran. And ran.
Everywhere she turned there were more and more monsters, as if creatures from her childhood fables had come alive. Just like the three she had encountered on the Orbital Engineering Platform near Reema’s End, they moved with strategic purposefulness.
They were, as Brown had implied, as powerful as Sentinels, but devoid of their moral code. Or else that code had been replaced …
‘Damn Brown to Hell,’ muttered Anneke as she ducked into a building to avoid a gang of marauding creatures. She burst through the door and found herself inside a hardware store, full of basic work-the-land and dig-the-mines equipment. Omega was an odd juxtaposition on the Fringe: the primitive and the pre-industrial living side-by-side with the sophisticated hyper-drive civilisation.
Anneke raced through the large store, dodging around display counters and neatly piled pyramids of tools and machine parts. Behind her, the door crashed open and a stream of transmogrified humans poured in, snarling and screeching.
On board the Pulsaris, the colonel had his hands full. He was taking damage reports (none good), monitoring the activities of the enemy fleet (what was left of it: three working ships), and trying to find out what had happened to the attack team, as their locator implants showed that they were now down on the moon’s surface.
The colonel’s first officer, a woman called Marlock, was organising a retrieval scoop via jump-gate, but damage to the power cells hindered her efforts.
‘Why can’t you raise them?’ asked the colonel.
Marlock looked fretful. ‘They seem to have transported down without their communicators.’
‘Odds of them doing that?’
‘Almost zero.’
‘Coercive transport.’
‘So it would seem,’ said Marlock. Clearly, no attack team would abandon its communicators before jumping to a new and possibly hostile arena. Somebody had transported them down and used the fine-tuning of the jump-gate to snatch away any communication devices they carried. Nice piece of work, thought Marlock. But extremely annoying.
‘Implants?’
Marlock waved off the thought. ‘Without a booster, implant communicators could never punch out of the planet’s ionosphere.’
‘Beam down a booster.’
Marlock stared at the colonel. She wanted to smack her forehead. She was the first officer and should have thought of that.
‘Yes, sir,’ was all she said. ‘It’ll take a few minutes to get power up …’
Anneke slammed out of the rear door, shut it, shoved a heavy dumpster against it, then pelted down the back alleyway. She needed to find a hiding place or more open ground. The alleyway was too narrow, too hemmed in; she could outrun the beasts, but she could not dodge them in such a confined space.
Suddenly, ahead of her, four more of the creatures appeared. She skidded to a stop, turned, started back the way she had come, stopped again. She was surrounded.
Both groups of creatures charged.
Anneke leapt to the nearest wall and hit a button on her belt. Sticky attractor fields extruded invisibly from her hands and feet and she swarmed up the side of the building. Below her, the creatures’ howls changed to thwarted snarls of rage.
On the roof, with a momentary respite, Anneke assessed the overall situation. Most likely, Brown had seeded the entire planet, so there was no escape. Clearly she herself was – so far – unaffected by the virus. This was amazing and maybe scarier: was it taking longer to hijack her DNA or was her superb immune system blocking it? How long did she have?
As with any threat, waiting – and imagining – were the worst parts.
‘Anneke, can you hear me?’ It was the voice of Marlock, piped through Anneke’s internal implants. Anneke groped out to steady herself, feeling an intense wave of relief.
‘I’m here!’ she blurted, like a first-year cadet. ‘I’m okay – for now.’
The colonel’s voice came on line: ‘Report.’
Anneke gave a quick concise summary of the situation. ‘How soon can you get me out of here?’
‘We’re working on it.’
‘Work faster. But you’ll need to transport me to a bio-isolation chamber. I may be contagious.’
‘You’re not contagious,’ said Marlock, coming over the link. ‘We downloaded a chunk of Brown’s flagship’s database and got some of his experimental data. The virus is not infectious. It can’t be transmitted person to person. Only through direct infection.’
Anneke nodded. That made sense. The bane of biological weapons in the past was their limited controllability; creating an infectious agent didn’t make sense as it could infect one’s own troops as well. Brown was too smart for that.
Below, in the street, a group of monsters was pursuing a father and son who, perhaps from some natural genetic immunity, had not yet changed. There was nothing Anneke could do but watch helplessly as the creatures herded them into a dead-end and proceeded to tear them to pieces.
Anneke turned away, sick at heart. ‘How long?’ she asked quietly.
Marlock said, ‘Twenty minutes.’
Anneke heaved a sigh. ‘Just hurry,’ she said, breaking the connection.
She made a mental map of the area, the downtown section of a small township whose primary industry seemed to be extracting and processing ore. On the outskirts of the town there were great stone chimneys rising two hundred metres in the air, belching flame and smoke. Behind them loomed the grey shapes of processing plants and warehouses.
The chimneys looked inviting. With her field generator she could scale the outside of one of those, which the monsters could not climb. One of their few shortcomings, mused Anneke.
Only problem was, the nearest chimney was at least two kilometres away with several thousand creatures between her and her target. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. She could cross several rooftops in relative safety and reduce that lethal gap.
She scanned the area once more then sprinted for the eastern edge of the rooftop. The gap was about seven metres. She leapt it easily, her Normansk muscles barely warmed up yet.
From the streets below rose a continual cacophony of howls, snarls and screams; the cries of the hunted made her feel ill, while the cries of the hunters filled her with an ancient fear.
Anneke trotted across the next roof, then over a catwalk to a third. There she had to detour north, the easternmost gap – the direction she wanted to take – was too wide, even for her.
She was halfway across the next rooftop when a stairwell door burst open and a group of creatures spilled out, blocking her way forward and cutting off her primary escape route.
These ones were different, Anneke realised with a jolt. They hadn’t mindlessly attacked her the moment they laid eyes on her.
They were, she knew with a chill, weighing up the situation. Anneke digested this – a sign that the transformation had progressed: the creatures, in a short space of time, had ceased to be wild animals and had become tactical predators with that most frightening trait of all: self-control.
The lead creatures grunted at her, making a gesture. Anneke’s mind raced. Did they have language? Was it the same as that spoken by the miners of Omega, a bastardised ecclesiastical Latin from Old Earth? Or some new genetically imprinted military language designed by Brown?
The possibilities were chilling.
Anneke didn’t want to stick around to find out. She turned, raced towards the
edge of the building, and leapt. Behind her, the leader of the pack snarled softly.
Anneke dropped four storeys to the street below, landing heavily – nothing her powerful leg muscles couldn’t handle with sticky field assistance. Growing up on a 1.9G world had its advantages, especially on a moon like Omega, half the size of Earth.
She was congratulating herself when there was a thud-thud-thud around her as the creatures dropped to the ground. Damn. She had completely ignored the fact that their musculature had also been enhanced.
Anneke broke into a run, darting between two of the creatures that had thumped into the ground, one losing its balance momentarily. She just managed to avoid a slashing clawed arm that flashed out as she dodged past.
She glanced up. The chimney she had targeted rose above a line of buildings to her right, but she was still a good kilometre away, maybe further in these narrow, winding streets.
She needed a diversion.
She flipped her blaster to an incendiary setting and opened up on the nearest abandoned wooden building, fanning the beam across the brittle, dry storefront until it erupted into flames. She did the same to the next and the next as she ran.
In no time at all, great billowing flames rose high in the air behind her, and dark smoke boiled into the surrounding streets. Despite this, Anneke didn’t want to underestimate the creatures’ eyesight. Assume they have infrared vision, she told herself, maybe some kind of night vision as well. If she’d designed them, that’s what she would have given them. No self-respecting monster should be without them!
She skidded round a bend into a large dreary square, the ornamental centre bearing a weakly gushing fountain and some tired looking trees. On the other hand, the place was full of nightmarish monsters, all of whom turned in her direction in eerie unison.
‘Great!’ she muttered. ‘A monster convention.’
With a collective roar, the creatures surged in her direction. She sprinted along the western side of the square, moving towards the northwest corner. There, two streets forked off. She chose the one heading north-eastwards, maintaining her original bearing as much as possible. The street ahead of her was a recreational zone, full of restaurants and outdoor cafes, though utilitarian enough to satisfy the grim religiosity of the Omegan miners.
Then, right in front of her, was Alisk. Not the Alisk she knew, but Alisk nevertheless: her features were blurred, distorted, and only someone with years of RIM training could have spotted the fragments of familiarity in the sea of deformed monstrosity.
‘Alisk?’
The creature made a shrugging gesture.
‘I have to pass.’
Again, the shrugging gesture. Did that mean yes?
Anneke took a deep breath and moved slowly past the creature. As she came abreast of ‘Alisk’ the creature’s eyes swivelled, locked with hers: in them, Anneke saw a world of pain and loathing. And a titanic struggle for control.
Then the creature spoke, a sweaty guttural snarl: ‘Run.’
Anneke ran. Behind her, Alisk took off in pursuit, barely ahead of the howling pack that had surged into the end of the street from the square.
Anneke zigzagged through a maze of streets, unable to put too much distance between herself and her pursuers as she kept trying to double back, to head for the chimneystack. Each time she was thwarted, either by the creatures, who guessed her intent, or by the topography of the town itself.
She rounded a bend and ran straight into another group of the creatures. With no choice, she blasted two of them, and leapt over the heads of the other three. One of them, reacting lightning fast, slashed upwards and caught her foot with a razor-sharp claw, opening it up. She tumbled in mid-air and landed badly, sprawling and sliding. Rolling to her feet, she kept going, ignoring the mind-sawing agony of her ripped-open foot, leaving behind a bloody trail that a blind fool could follow.
Behind her, the pack closed the distance.
She veered into a side street, then another, and suddenly found herself in a dead end. She looked up. The rooftops on all sides were lined with the creatures.
She’d been herded into a trap.
The colonel looked across at Marlock, working frantically at her console.
‘How long?’ he asked.
‘I’m rerouting power and right now most of it’s going to life support! I don’t think it’s going to happen …’
The colonel nodded, showing no other reaction. What would be would be.
Anneke turned to face her pursuers. She calmed her nerves, steadied her breathing, and thought herself into a fighting mode.
‘Guess I used up my ninth life,’ she murmured to herself.
The creatures poured into the open end of the cul-de-sac and fanned out; their quarry was going nowhere. Anneke spotted Alisk, hanging back, of no use to her now, no friend to this lone human, her loyalties altered at the genetic level.
The creatures stopped moving and an eerie silence filled the dead-end street. The silence was nerve-wracking.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Anneke muttered. She made sure her dampening and deflector fields were at max, and that her blaster was charged, that she was ready to die.
Still they did not move.
Anneke straightened slowly, staring back at the creatures. Then, in utter silence, they charged. At the same moment, a shadow swept up the street, a furious wind front following in its wake, and Anneke felt herself picked up by an invisible force and plucked from the jaws of death.
Twenty minutes later she was sitting in the cockpit of a battered space yacht. Beside her, in the pilot’s seat, sat a bear of a man, barrel-chested, broad-shouldered, with a bald head shaped like a bullet. The last time she had seen him he’d had a full beard, but that was gone. Behind him hovered a boy who was thin and serious, with a mop of unruly black hair and large dark eyes.
‘They’ve been feeding you, Pagin,’ said Anneke, ruffling his hair. ‘You’ve shot up since I last saw you.’
‘I be a man now,’ the boy said solemnly, then his face broke out in a grin and he hugged Anneke. Hugar, in the pilot’s seat, smiled.
‘You are a hard woman to find, Anneke Long-shadow,’ he said. ‘We thought you dead, but young Pagin here insisted otherwise, so we listened to the whispers from this great galaxy, and followed the boy’s hunches.’
‘And they led you here? Just at this moment?’ Anneke asked in amazement.
‘Well,’ said Hugar, ‘not quite. Your friend the Sentinel sent us here. Said we must arrive at this exact time, no sooner, and definitely no later.’
‘Ekizer sent you?’ She would have to think through the implications later. She looked at the other two in sadness. ‘I am sorry about your world.’
Hugar looked grim. ‘We will make them pay.’
‘Yes,’ said Pagin. ‘Many times over.’
Once on board the Pulsaris, Anneke ordered all personnel to transfer to Hugar’s ship. The Pulsaris was too damaged to be repaired anywhere other than a space dock. While this was happening she had the ship’s medic check her over and run a toxicology scan.
The results took some time, which was disquieting. Two hours later there was a knock on the colonel’s ready-room door. The medic entered. Anneke, Hugar, Pagin and Marlock were present.
‘Well?’ said Anneke.
The medic frowned. ‘We ran the scans twice, just to be sure. But it’s definite.’
‘What’s definite?’
‘You’re immune to the virus.’
Anneke sat up a little straighter.
The medic went on. ‘In the recent past you’ve been immunised against this specific virus. Furthermore, after you were immunised you were exposed to a form of the live virus.’ He paused. ‘We found second-generation anti-bodies in your blood work. Whoever did this knew that one day you would be landing on Omega.’
MAXIMUS Black was stumped. He and his men had reached his ship. Almost instantly the ship’s AI, having detected the virus, imposed a quarantine field around the new a
rrivals, a field Maximus could not breach. He was going to change. There was nothing for it but to endure the agony. The thought of killing himself crossed his mind, but he was no quitter.
One by one, his men changed around him. As they did so the AI transported them down to the surface, he presumed, the best place for them.
Soon, only Maximus was left.
He did not change.
Perplexed, he requested a toxicology kit, withdrew blood from his arm, and ran the standard tests. The results puzzled him; almost overcoming the elation he felt that he would not become a monster.
The question gnawed at him. Why was he immune? And who had made him thus? Maybe his own un-researched measures had been spectacularly more successful than he had even imagined.
A few hours later, finally convinced that Maximus was neither infected nor a carrier and unable to detect any trace of the virus on board, the AI grudgingly lowered the quarantine field.
Maximus went immediately to the bridge where he promoted young Lieutenant Torcas to the recently vacated position of captain.
Torcas, nervous and self-conscious in his new rank, gingerly took his seat in the captain’s chair. Maximus smiled to himself. ‘Captain, if you are ready, please plot our course for Arachnor.’
Torcas stared at Maximus. ‘Arachnor, sir? But that world is –’
‘Interdicted by the Sentinels. I’m aware of that. However, the Sentinels will not bother us on this trip. Please do as I ask.’
Maximus spent the next few days in his cabin, not even seeing the Envoy when he requested a meeting. Still shaken from his narrow escape from Hell, he was starting to place more faith in the Envoy’s alien religion: perhaps Maximus was the Instrument of Kadros … Perhaps he was protected …
As he sat and pondered this, he also weighed up the significance of the data collected by long-range sensors shortly after departing the Malthus system. The sensors had revealed the brief flicker-bright emission of a starship’s engines as they reached launch mode. Anneke’s ship – or a backup vessel Maximus’ people had failed to detect – must have also left orbit around Omega. The ship’s signature had disappeared almost immediately, meaning it had been cloaked. Maximus did not doubt it was in pursuit of his own ship. His gut told him it was so. Yet only one person was driven enough to chase him all the way to Arachnor …