Fallen Metropolis (Omnibus Edition)

by Matthew J. Barbeler

  Draco thought about carrying Aloysius to somewhere safe. But he didn’t know of a single place on the ship that would be safe. He looked up briefly and saw that the top few floors of Metro Tower were illuminated. That meant that the guardian shell program would also be back online and should bring all the other systems back online one by one.

  There was no way Draco could make it to Metro Tower while carrying Aloysius, even with his suit power re-engaged. It would be too much for Raze to keep the creatures away from both of them. Draco refused to put Raze’s life in danger like that. But he couldn’t just leave Aloysius behind.

  “I’m trying to think exit strategies here Raze, but I’m coming up short. Any ideas?” Draco asked.

  “I don’t know much about Children of iNet. If this was an EMP, would his systems even be able to survive it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Even if he did come back, could we be sure he wouldn’t be a danger to us and malfunction?” Raze asked.

  “I don’t know, but I can’t just leave him.”

  “What about giving him some juice?”

  “Of course! It’ll take most of my suit’s systems offline for a few minutes, though. Will you be able to hold out long enough for it to reboot?”

  “Do it, Captain. I’ve got your back.”

  The life support systems of the smartsuits included various functions, including defibrillators built into the palms of the hands. The small jolt of energy required to restart a human heart would have little to no effect on a Child of iNet. Draco changed the output to ten times normal levels and placed his hands on Aloysius’s chest.

  “Clear!” he yelled.

  Raze picked off the creatures as they shambled towards them.

  Aloysius remained motionless, and Draco’s smartsuit was partially drained.

  “Raze, he’s not moving! Have you ever seen this done on a Child of iNet before? I don’t know what I should be looking for!”

  “We don’t even know if his internal systems still function. His circuitry might be fried. There may be no coming back for him, Captain.”

  “I am not going to leave him here!”

  Draco’s smartsuit’s muscle augmentations had been disabled. Even if he could leave, he wouldn’t be able to move at full speed. Without Aloysius, Draco knew that he wouldn’t make it out of there alive.

  “I’m going to try again!” Draco said and commanded his suit to charge for another burst of energy.

  “If you do that, you’ll knock the rest of your suit’s functions offline. You can’t risk it, Captain! We have to go!”

  Draco ignored Raze, even though he knew the big man was talking sense. But Draco had never been able to leave a man behind. He placed his hands on Aloysius’s chest again. He tried the superpowered defibrillators again.

  As soon as the shock left Draco’s palms, his suit shut down completely. The suit became instantly heavier, and Draco slumped backwards. His low-light vision cut out. The darkness was blinding. The only thing he saw were the muzzle flashes from Raze’s rifle as his bullets tore through the twisted and deformed bodies of the infected fleshlings coming at them from all directions.

  “Captain? What’s the status?” Raze asked.

  Draco went to reply, but suddenly a light flickered to life in front of him. The light soon became a blazing beacon as Aloysius’s boosters powered up. Flashes of light illuminated the cityscape as Aloysius flew up into the air firing super-heated blasts of energy wildly into the darkness.

  The city went dark and something landed heavily on the ground behind Draco. He was lifted effortlessly back to his feet, and his suit began to power up again.

  “I am powering up your suit now, Captain. Stand very still,” came the voice of Aloysius through his comm channel.

  “It’s good to hear your voice again, old friend,” Draco said as his night vision kicked in again. Aloysius stood in front of him with his hand on Draco’s chest.

  “Thank you for rebooting my system, Captain. I fear I would have been lost for quite a while longer had you not assisted.”

  “I couldn’t leave you here.”

  “And I’m afraid we can’t stay,” Aloysius said. “The good thing about being a Child of iNet is that no matter what, you’re still conscious. Well, not in the same way that consciousness affects a living biological organism, but our subroutines only stop when we’ve entirely stopped functioning. While my body was out of commission, I attempted to see what systems I could access as they were rebooting before they had a chance to engage all of their security protocols.”

  “What did you find?”

  “The guardian shell program is not a program at all.”

  “I knew it,” Draco growled.

  “There’s someone in Metro Tower with access to all of the ship’s system, pretending to be the guardian shell program. From their position, they should have been able to set this ship back on course, but for some reason they couldn’t bring the engines back online from where they were. They needed us to do that. This tells me that someone tried to limit their access in some way, but only managed to cut them off from the engine system before they were stopped.”

  “It was probably the same person who put the ship on a crash course with Krakaterra,” Draco said.

  “We can’t stay here to discuss this right now Captain, we have to move. When you rebooted me, I disabled all cameras in this vicinity. Whoever is in Metro Tower should not be able to see our movements when the systems come back online fully. Follow me now, I have found a safe location.”

  Draco, Raze and Aloysius headed down the city street, which was strewn with debris. On their right was a cinema, advertising films beamed straight to the Metropolis Seven from across the galaxy. Mostly human, as was to be expected on a human ship, but there were the odd Bworen and Artori native language films being shown too. The doors to the cinema were open, and beyond them was a darkened atrium that none of them had any desire to explore.

  Next to the cinema was a café precinct. The frontage of most of the stores had been destroyed, either by looters or the creatures now roaming the ship. Two rows of cafes and restaurants opened into a laneway, and each row rose up into apartment buildings. This was clearly the entertainment precinct. They couldn’t be too much further from the Metropolitan District, and the entrance to the Metro Tower.

  Aloysius turned into the laneway between the cafes and restaurants. The creatures were there, but they seemed as though they were just watching them run past. Most of them made no attempt to attack.

  “What’s going on with these things? They could overwhelm us with their numbers alone, but they’re just standing there,” Raze said.

  “I think I know the reason, but now is not the time to discuss it. Press forward. Once we’re safe, we can talk in detail,” Aloysius said.

  Draco ducked to his left as a huge creature stumbled out from the front of a gift store. It stood on four powerful legs made from two fused human waists. Its torso stretched upwards, with three gangly pairs of arms punctuating where one human body ended and another began. Two of the heads had melted into nothing but hairy patches of skin between the arms, but the head at the top of the torso column watched them through milky eyes. The creature was undoubtedly another hunter like the one they had encountered, but this creature made no attempt to snatch them. It simply watched as they ran past.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Raze asked.

  “Follow. I’ll explain shortly,” Aloysius said.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Reban’s skin was ghost white. She hadn’t said a word since Veck eviscerated her father. Rhken held her close. She was the younger sister, but she felt like she had aged twenty years in the space of the last few hours. She and her sister were now alone with the madman. Arak Nara was nowhere to be found. Rhken had her suspicions that there were places inside the ship that only Captain Goldwing knew about, so maybe Arak was in the ship somewhere, hidden away.

  Someone had engaged an EMP
from somewhere, but had it come from inside the Icarus, or from outside? Could it have come from the Metropolis Seven? Or maybe it could have come from the Vartalen battle cruiser they saw trailing the Metropolis Seven earlier.

  If her father had died because some greedy Vartalen bastards were going to take control of the Icarus or the Metropolis Seven, Rhken would make them pay blood for blood. But if it was the Vartalen, at least they would destroy Veck Simms. They could be Rhken’s own hand of vengeance.

  The Vartalen had a nasty reputation for selling young human girls to pleasure houses for all manner of alien life to defile. Rhken began to realize that she might wind up dead before this ordeal was over. She would kill herself before she let the Vartalen capture and sell her. At least then she’d be with her father in the almost infinite energy of the universe.

  Reban shivered as Rhken held her.

  At the control console, Veck tried everything he could do to get the ship’s engines back online. The control panel was completely unresponsive. The control display had not re-illuminated itself since the systems were knocked out by the EMP.

  “You. Rhken. Leave your sister and attend me,” Veck commanded.

  Rhken closed her eyes and felt a tear roll down her cheek.

  “Now, or I will assume your sister is attempting to sabotage my efforts to commandeer this ship, just as your father did. And if that’s the case, I see no reason why she shouldn’t suffer the same fate.”

  Rhken didn’t hesitate. She got to her feet immediately and joined Veck at the console.

  “Why isn’t this working?”

  Rhken sniffed. Her nose had begun to run.

  “I don’t know. My father was our chief engineer, and you just killed him. If anyone knows how to get all of our systems back online, it was him.”

  Veck looked out through the windows at the front of the bridge and realized that the Metropolis Seven was still moving. The EMP hadn’t knocked out the giant ship’s engines. If it continued on its course, it would hit the Icarus and then their lives would be over.

  “I don’t accept your answer. I believe that you do know how to get this ship back online, but you lack the proper motivation,” Veck said and pushed Rhken to the side. He strode over to Reban and pulled her up by her hair. She screamed as Veck’s forearm split apart and revealed the blade that had killed her father. He held the blade to Reban’s neck.

  “Don’t hurt her! I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t hurt my sister, please!” Rhken pleaded.

  “I want you to do whatever it takes to get this ship back online, and get the engines started. Because if you don’t, I’ll kill your sister right in front of you. You’ll get to watch the life drain from her eyes as the penalty for your failure.”

  “I need to go back to the engineering bay if I’m going to figure out what’s working and what’s not. And I may need my sister’s help. Running the ship is a job for three people. I can’t do it on my own.”

  “Very well. Do what must be done,” Veck said as he pulled the blade away from Reban’s neck and let go of her hair.

  Reban dropped to the floor and sobbed uncontrollably. Rhken went over to her and helped her to her feet.

  “Sister, we need to get the ship back online. I need you to be strong. For Dad. For me. Please be strong, and please help me do this. I can’t do this on my own,” Rhken said.

  Reban tried to blink the tears away, but they kept coming. She nodded quickly and allowed herself to be lead out of the bridge and down towards the engineering bay.

  Underneath the bridge, Arak Nara had heard the entire exchange. This stronghold in the heart of the Icarus had been built with this very scenario in mind. There was a single vent built behind the control console which looked like an air duct, but in fact it funneled all sounds from the bridge down into the hidden hold beneath the decks like an old acoustic hearing device.

  Nook was not the first man who had died because of Arak’s actions, but it was the first he had ever truly felt miserable about. Arak knew that he had to find a way out of the chamber he was in and find a way to disable Veck for good.

  He was sure that Captain Goldwing would understand that he had to kill Veck.

  The Alliance bounty was payable whether Veck was dead or alive. If they had just killed Veck when they had captured him, Nook would still be alive.

  If it wasn’t for Captain Goldwing’s history with the madman, they would have killed Veck when they found him. But Captain Goldwing was not that kind of man. He wouldn’t kill if he didn’t have to.

  But Arak could kill. He had done it many times before. But how in the galaxy could he kill Veck Simms? All the EMP did was knock him to the ground for a few minutes and put the entire ship in danger. With most of the ship’s systems offline, Arak couldn’t even engage the self-destruct mechanism. But even if he could, that would mean the death of everyone aboard the Icarus. He couldn’t do that to Reban and Rhken.

  They had been completely cut off from Captain Goldwing and the rest of the crew on the Metropolis Seven. If he destroyed the Icarus, they would be destroying the only ship Captain Goldwing and the crew could use to escape.

  Arak was frozen with indecision. Every path he could take seemed to lead him and the rest of the crew into a worse situation.

  Arak began to mentally take stock of what should have been in the armory. There were plenty of spare assault rifles, pistols and shotguns, but he didn’t know whether they would even make a dent in Veck. A shotgun blast from point blank to the head would still blow his brains out. As far as Arak knew, Veck still had an organic brain, and still needed it to function. Removing the head was an option too, but there was no chance Arak would be able to get close enough to Veck without detection would be impossible.

  And even if Arak managed to get close enough to take the shot, there was still the possibility that Veck could use the girls against him. Or worse. They might get drawn into the crossfire, and Arak would have two or three deaths weighing on his conscience, not just one.

  The sound of their footsteps faded as Veck and the girls left the bridge. If Arak didn’t move now, he might be stuck down here in the heart of the Icarus forever. He climbed up the access hatch that lead to the bridge and put his hand flat against a red panel on the wall. Above him, the control console shifted to clear a path for Arak to ascend back into the bridge.

  Arak lifted himself out of the hatch, and as soon as he was clear the control console returned to its former state. There was a red and brown shape in Arak’s peripheral vision, and he dared not turn his gaze towards it in fear that his stomach would betray him.

  Arak stood with his back against the wall and peered out into the main corridor that led through the ship. He couldn’t see Veck and the girls, but he could hear their footsteps as they echoed down the corridor. Arak slipped off his boots and left them on the inside of the bridge door. He stepped over the threshold and walked silently down the corridor after them.

  For a moment Arak had the urge to laugh out loud when he thought of the irony of the situation. He had left his old life as a mercenary assassin behind when he agreed to pilot the Icarus, but now those skills were the only thing that could possibly get them out of this situation. The darkness had always been Arak’s friend, and as he continued towards the darkened bowels of the Icarus, he began to feel somewhat comfortable again.

  The girls would lead Veck to the engineering bay. It was very likely that they would need to jumpstart the power core to get the engines back up and running, and it would take time to prime the charge. Arak hoped that the girls were clever enough to stall Veck. He was clever when it came to warfare and torture, but Arak hoped that he was not as well-versed in starship maintenance.

  The corridor began to curve to the left, and on the right-hand side of the curve was the entrance to the armory. Arak slipped in silently and looked around for something that he might be able to use to get the upper hand against Veck.

  Veck followed behind the two girls. One of them was stro
ng. Rhken, the one he had taken first had been the strong one, but her sister Reban had none of her strength. She was nothing but a mewling piece of human effluence unfit for continued survival. A detriment to the species. She had no fight in her at all. No sense of self-preservation. He would have to kill her at some point, he knew that with certainty. But her sister, the mousy one, there was some fun he could have with her yet.

  “I’ll give your father credit for one thing. He didn’t beg me to spare his life. He didn’t try to bargain with me. He accepted the certainty of his fate as ramifications for his actions.”

  The mousy girl didn’t respond, but the other one just began to cry louder.

  Veck smiled as they walked on.

  They reached the end of the main corridor and headed down the stairs into the engineering bay. It was only lit by dim blue emergency lighting, but it proved that there was power here. The circuits hadn’t been fried as a result of the EMP. From the top of the stairs, the whole place looked as though it was in disarray. But he supposed that this was just the way the girls and their late father kept things in order.

  ‘Order from chaos,’ Veck thought to himself.

  The girls descended the stairs, and Veck followed. He clapped his hands together suddenly and both girls winced.

  “To your tasks now, girls. Get this ship back online and you may both live through this.”

  “Reban, come with me,” Rhken said and lead Reban over to the main console.

  The console had no power. Whatever energy was being routed to the emergency lighting system was not making it to any of the terminals. Rhken wished her Dad was still here. He was the one who knew the Icarus from the inside out. She didn’t even know where to start. Her Dad always told her what to do. She couldn’t fix the ship by herself. There was no way.

  Rhken knelt down by the side of the main console and opened an access panel. She didn’t really know what she was looking at, but she just wanted to look busy so Veck would leave her alone for a few minutes.