Montague Road was lined with high-rise apartment buildings, and the infected stood just as thick here. The bottoms of each building seemed to be a mix of boutique clothing stores, clusters of expensive looking cafes, or a mixture of the two.
A towering creature lumbered from between two high-rise buildings on the side of the street on two thick legs, balanced out by a huge twisted tail. It was larger than anything Draco had seen before. It would have towered above the height of the spawning pods in the water treatment facility. It could have easily looked into the windows of a third-floor apartment building without craning its huge muscular neck.
The creature’s face was made from a mosaic of fused human heads. Pairs of eyes from multiple faces had migrated together into a construct like the compound eyes of a fly. But each eye still moved of its own accord. The other facial features were not distributed as evenly. It was almost impossible to figure out what holes had once been an ears, noses or mouths. The towering monstrosity’s mouth hung open. Its curved, serrated teeth glistened with moisture. Its stature was more akin to an ape than a man. Its powerful arms supported its heavy chest and neck at the front.
The enormous creature watched at Draco, Raze and Aloysius walked past.
“What in the void do you think that is?” Raze asked.
“We’re definitely close to the nest. Soldier ants, like the smaller hunter we encountered, they tend to patrol the outskirts of the nest. They try to deter attackers from coming any closer. In some ant colonies there are specially purposed soldiers who are shaped by the queen herself to ensure that she doesn’t come under attack. I think that’s what that beast is,” Aloysius said.
“So why is it not attacking?” Draco asked.
“It should be attacking us, but it’s not. I think somehow the queen has sent a command to her subjects and have told them not to attack us.”
“Telepathy? Mind control?”
“Perhaps. Or it could be something as simple as her excreting a certain pheromone that inhibits their aggression. There’s no way to be sure. We need to press on as quickly as possible.”
“Agreed.”
Vynce’s voice came over the comm channel. ‘Captain, do you read me?’
“We’re here Vynce but keep it quick and to the point. We’re not in a safe place,” Draco said as he gently squeezed his way between two of the infected.
‘The evac shuttles are in the hangar bay below residential. Problem is, we can’t get there. There are just too many infected between us and the hangar.’
“Take no action for now. We’re on our way to Metro Tower, but the infected are acting strangely. They’re lining the streets, but they’re not attacking. If you take any hostile action against them, they may stop being so friendly to us.”
‘They’re out in the streets? Captain, you have to be careful. All it took to infect Ava was a single suit rupture.’
“Duly noted. How is she doing?”
‘Not sure. I’ve been out talking to the survivors for information. I’ll check back in with you when I know.’
“Thank you. And remember, no hostile actions until we reach the tower, got it?”
‘Got it. Vynce out.’
After what felt like an eternity they finished navigating the fleshling-filled streets. They arrived at the bottom of Metro Tower. The infected were also concentrated around the doors of the tower. Two large hunters stood on either side of the open doors and watched the crew approach. The one on the left uttered a guttural sound that sounded threatening, but it made no move to attack. Draco stepped across the threshold and into the ground floor of the tower.
The inside of the tower was impossibly dark. Draco engaged his chest-mounted flashlight. Raze did the same. The flickering flame at the end of his flamethrower projected jittering shadows on the walls. Even though the streets outside were lined with infected, the tower itself was not. A damp organic covering blanketed the floor. It was similar to the creeping growth that Draco had seen coming from beneath the bedroom door back when they encountered the first hunter.
There was a single standing desk in the middle of the lobby. There were upended couches, toppled vending machines and destroyed debris all over. The lifts from floors one to twenty-five were on the left-hand side of the desk, and the lifts from floors twenty-six to forty-seven were on the right-hand side. There was no power in the lobby, so the elevators would be inoperable.
Raze sighed and said, “I’m not looking forward to climbing forty-seven flights of stairs, I have to say.”
Draco smiled. “We won’t need to do any stair climbing, Raze. Not with these grapnel launchers.”
Raze laughed and said, “Sometimes things do go our way, cap.”
“Sometimes, they do,” Draco agreed.
Aloysius opened the elevator door manually. He put his fingers between the two doors and pulled them apart. The metal doors screeched as they were opened. The sound echoed in the empty lobby. Draco watched the hunters outside the main door to see if they reacted to the sound, but they remained at their posts. Aloysius pulled the other side of the door back and looked into the shaft.
“Captain, I think you may want to take a look at this,” Aloysius said and ushered Draco over to the door.
Draco looked up and saw nothing but blackness above them.
“Not up, sir. Look down,” Aloysius said.
Draco looked down and expected the shaft to end shortly below the doors. But the shaft continued down into the darkness. It was so deep that his flashlight could not illuminate the bottom.
“Is that on your map, Al?” Draco asked.
“It isn’t. I thought that the area below the Metro Tower was conspicuously empty. They must have had something going on down here that they didn’t want the maintenance crew to know about.”
“So which way do we go? Up, or down?”
“Up. We’ve got someone we need to formally introduce ourselves to,” Aloysius said.
Chapter Forty-One
Rhken rushed out into the engine bay and yelled, “Reban! Are you all right?”
Reban turned wide-eyed to her sister. “There’s something on the Metropolis Seven! Something just landed on the ship! We have to warn Captain Goldwing!”
“What do you mean? What something?”
“A ship! Another ship! Look at the bridge! You’ll see!”
Rhken rushed up the stairs and saw what Reban pointed. She was right. There was another ship sitting on the hull of the Metropolis Seven like a fly sits on the flank of cow. The ship was directly above the bridge windows.
“What kind of ship is that?” Reban asked shrilly.
Rhken squinted and tried to make out the shape of the ship. It was too far away to see clearly.
“It’s a Vartalen attack cruiser,” Veck said as he walked up the stairs behind them.
“Idiots! There’s no way they could take a ship that size!” Rhken said.
“They don’t need to overpower the crew. If they cut straight into the bridge there, they can put the ship into lockdown and commandeer it. They’ll take it back to Vartalen space and sell it, along with the humans on board,” Veck said.
“We have to warn the Captain!” Reban said.
Veck laughed. “No, we don’t. This is perfect. Your Captain will be made into a Vartalen slave. What a fitting end. I wouldn’t want to spoil his surprise.”
This problem was far too big for Rhken to solve. How could she warn Captain Goldwing when comms were down?
“You forget your task, Rhken. Put those primers into place so we can get this ship back online. Understand?” Veck asked.
Rhken nodded and went to work. Veck went back down to the bottom floor and watched. Rhken engaged the two ignition primers in the top engines first. She then manually primed the engines for ignition. Reban stayed on the top floor, as far away from Veck as she could possibly get. Rhken descended the stairs and lifted her eyes to look at Veck. He looked back at her with a smile, but there was movement behind him. Her eyes wen
t wide as she saw Captain Goldwing standing behind Veck with a shotgun in his hands.
Captain Goldwing was wearing his full black and gold combat armor and the helmet with the eagle’s wings painted on either side. Captain Goldwing had a shotgun aimed squarely at Veck’s spine.
Rhken’s eyes betrayed her. Veck’s expression changed and he wheeled around at the exact same moment that Captain Goldwing fired. The side of Veck’s abdomen exploded into a spray of lumpy red paste. The shot that would have destroyed his spine instead blew out half of his guts, but it was not enough to stop him.
Captain Goldwing fired once more, but Veck was too fast. He was too strong. He knocked the shotgun out of Captain Goldwing’s hands and bent his left arm backwards until his elbow joint turned inside out with a wet crunch. Captain Goldwing screamed and fell to his knees.
“How did you get back on this ship without my knowledge?” Veck bellowed.
Captain Goldwing screamed.
Rhken had never heard Captain Goldwing scream before.
It didn’t even sound like him.
When Captain Goldwing refused to answer Veck, he punched the Captain straight in the face, which knocked him backwards onto the ground. Captain Goldwing tried to get back to his feet but tried to put weight on the wrong arm. It bent backwards as it collapsed under his weight. The Captain screamed again.
Veck tore off Captain Goldwing’s helmet and started to laugh.
“You’re not Draco. You’re a cutthroat in a warrior’s clothing!” Veck said and backhanded Arak Nara with such force that Rhken heard his cheekbone snap. Arak’s body was lifted from the ground, and he slammed against the engine bay wall. He reached uselessly for something that he could use to defend himself. Veck grabbed him by the back of the neck and threw him down the stairs. Veck marched after Arak and hunkered down next to him.
Rhken looked at Veck’s stomach wound and felt sick when she realized that the maniac was barely even bleeding. He was missing a huge chunk of flesh from his side, but no blood dripped from the wound.
“This is what I want for all of our people,” Veck said to Arak. “Our bodies in their natural state are so frail. With technological augmentation, we don’t ever need to worry about petty things like bullets ever again. It’ll take a few hours to reconstitute the tissue you just destroyed, but I won’t die from it.”
“What are you?” Arak breathed.
“Perfection. Does it terrify you?”
Arak closed his mouth.
Veck smiled. “Of course, it does. You don’t need to say so. I can see it in your eyes. But I’m not going to kill you. I have one final use for you. Then, if you beg me, I will allow you to die.”
“And if I refuse?” Arak asked.
“I know you heard what I said to Rhken earlier. Do you take me for a man who makes empty threats?”
Arak shook his head slowly and winced at the pain of his buckled elbow joint.
“Good. You learn quickly. If you assist me to my satisfaction, I may even allow you to live. You acted courageously, so you have spirit.” Veck looked over his shoulder and growled at Rhken, “Did I tell you that you could stop working?”
Rhken hurried over to one of the engines and installed another ignition primer. She looked over her shoulder quickly as Veck lifted Arak to his feet. Arak’s arm was bent backwards at an unnatural angle. His face was white and distorted with pain. Rhken then rushed over to the last engine and installed the final ignition primer. She pumped it three times and walked back over to the main control console.
“It’s done,” she said to Veck, “I’ll need a couple of minutes for the system to reboot itself, then I can get the engines running again.”
“You continue to impress me, little mouse.”
She shuddered.
From the control console Rhken checked that the engines were all primed correctly. She then routed the emergency power to the ignition primers and waited a couple of seconds for them to charge. She turned the main ignition switch. Her heart filled with relief when the low hum of the engines filled the engine bay once again. The power then filtered down to all the Icarus’s systems. The lights came back on, as did the diagnostic display panel above the control console.
“Fire the engines. Now. Get us out of here,” Veck commanded.
“Just a second. I need to perform a couple of diagnostic checks first!” Rhken said.
Reban’s gaze was fixed on the Vartalen ship on the hull of the Metropolis Seven. It had gotten so close now that she thought she could make out the windows on the Vartalen cruiser.
“We need to leave right now, so fire the engines!” Veck commanded with more force.
“If I fire the engines without checking that they kept their calibrations, the ship could tear itself apart. If the engines cut out due to a power blockage, then we could stall, and we’d have to go through this whole process anyway. So give me two fucking seconds and I’ll get us out of here, all right?” Rhken said. She felt her cheeks flush as she spoke.
Veck inclined his head with a slight smile. “The little mouse knows best.” He then turned back to Arak and said, “You must be the pilot. I haven’t had the pleasure of an introduction. I’m Veck Simms. What is your name?”
Arak resisted for a moment, then relented. “Arak Nara.”
“That accent. You’re from Orphos, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, I believe the correct salutation would be Nara-ka, is that correct?”
“That is only used for those who you hold as dearly as family. I do not believe it is appropriate for us to use for one another.”
“Well Nara-ka, I’m the closest thing you have to family right now. I would highly recommend that you accept any friendship that I offer.”
“Of course. Thank you... Simms... -Ka.”
“You have medical facilities aboard this ship, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Arak answered tentatively.
“If I allow you to attend to your arm injury, will you come back with a shotgun or two? Or will you act like an intelligent man?”
“I will act as an intelligent man.”
“That’s what I like to hear. First, we need to set a course. Then I’ll let you see to your arm.”
Rhken tried to drown out Arak and Veck’s conversation as she calibrated the engines, but she caught just enough of what was said for it to matter. She hadn’t truly trusted Arak since he came aboard the ship. A mercenary only ever did something for money or for their own survival. There was no money to be made here, but if Arak had the choice of aligning himself with Veck to save his own life, leaving Captain Goldwing stranded on the Metropolis Seven, she did not think that Arak would sacrifice himself. She chided herself for thinking that way about Arak, because it was not Arak who had just re-started the engines at the command of the madman. She was just as complicit.
Rhken found that the bottom left engine was eight degrees out of lateral alignment, and the top right engine was five degrees out. If they had blasted off when Veck commanded them to, the ship would have spiraled out of control and may have even looped back and slammed into the Metropolis Seven. The power linkages between all major ship systems were back online, but Rhken noticed that there was no power going to the AI core that controlled Evie. The artificial intelligence was not required for the functioning of the ship, but she did make things a lot easier.
“It looks all good, but the AI core is still offline,” Rhken said to Veck.
“That’s not such a bad thing. We’ve got eight hands on deck, well, seven working hands on deck,” he said as he slapped Arak on the shoulder which made the pilot yelp in pain again, “I’m sure we can manage.”
Rhken engaged the ion thrusters and the Metropolis Seven began to shrink in the rear view.
Chapter Forty-Two
Vynce waited outside the operating theatre doors. Captain Goldwing had told him to take no hostile actions, and that sat just fine with Vynce. But taking no action at all was more than he could h
andle. He had gotten all the information he could out of the people in the waiting area. Those that were willing to talk didn’t have any information, and those who did have information weren’t willing to talk. It was as though talking about the underbelly of the ship frightened people into silence.
There would come a time when they would have to get to the hangars and the evac shuttles. The infection had spread so far amongst the passengers that there was no way that the ship itself could be saved. But if the survivors could get off the ship, then the ship still needed to be dealt with. They couldn’t just let it float through the void forever. Whatever this infection was, if it landed on an inhabited planet, there was no telling what damage it might cause.
They could blow the airlocks. That would kill anything living on board the ship. It would freeze and crystallize the moment the oxygen vacated the ship. The pressure would implode the ship. The buildings and skyscrapers that made up the city would be crushed like paper cups.
Would that be enough to destroy the infection? Vynce wasn’t sure, but it was the best plan he could think of.
The operating theatre doors opened, and Jaxon walked out. He had put his opaque glass-domed helmet back on to shield his identity from his younger self.
“How is she?” Vynce asked.
“Recovering. She’s in shock, of course. But she’ll bounce back from this,” Jaxon said.
“She’s strong.”
“Yes, she is.”
Vynce was at a loss for what to do or say. Before Jaxon showed up, Vynce thought he had a shot with Ava. But now that he was here, and things had happened as they had, Vynce knew that it wasn’t meant to be.
“Tell me something,” Vynce said.
Jaxon nodded.
“You and Ava. There’s something going on between you, isn’t there?”
“I love her,” Jaxon said simply.
“Yeah, I thought as much.”
“I’m not sorry about it. I’ve been in love with Ava since the first moment I met her. It’s as simple as that.”
“And this is the first time she’s met you, right? So, she doesn’t know how you feel about her yet?”
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