Fallen Metropolis (Omnibus Edition)

by Matthew J. Barbeler

  “How did all of this start?”

  “No idea. By the time most of us knew about them there were too many to fight. They had a nest somewhere deep in the ship. They captured some of us, but they didn’t really need to. All they had to do was touch us, infect us, then wait. We killed some of our own before they had the chance to turn. Some preferred it that way. Others fought to the bitter end, but we still ended up putting them down.”

  “I can’t imagine the horrors you people have been through. We’ll get you out of this. I promise you.”

  Doctor Fewster smiled sadly and said, “You’re the third person who’s promised us that. The other two are already dead.”

  Vynce clapped Doctor Fewster on the shoulder and kept pace with the column of survivors as they continued on.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The elevator reached floor 47. Draco, Raze and Aloysius raised their rifles to their shoulders and trained them on the closed doors. The door opened straight onto the bridge. It was the largest bridge that Draco had ever seen on a civilian vessel. Only the military command bridge of a dreadnought vessel was bigger.

  The center of the room was raised into a central circular dais, and a row of terminals ran around it. The terminals were on, but empty. The windows at the front of the ship looked out into the vast dark expanse of the Milky Way galaxy.

  The same organic substance from the floors below covered the bridge. There was a large, fleshy growth in the center of the raised platform that reminded Draco far too much of the hunter’s cocoon they had stumbled across in the Residential District. The organic growth covered the entire floor. Its tendrils wound their way up the legs of chairs, around computer terminals, and had even grown up the walls and over the ceiling above. Small fleshy polyps hung from the ceiling.

  Draco stepped out into the bridge and checked both sides for threats. The growth was much thicker in one corner of the bridge. It looked as though it had grown out of a vent in the floor like a vine made of flesh. It had crept over everything it found.

  “Any sign of our friend from over the loudspeaker, Captain?” Aloysius asked.

  “No, and I don’t like it. He should be here,” Draco said.

  “Could that be him?” Raze asked and pointed with the barrel of his rifle at the growth in the center of the bridge.

  “I hope not,” Draco said and walked across the threshold.

  The lights which should have illuminated the walkway between the elevator and the platform in the center of the bridge were on, but completely grown over. The light shone through the flesh carpet in the spots where it was thinnest, showing veins and arteries. The growth they walked on was alive. It wasn’t simply some secretion made by the infected crew members. It was the infection, growing like moss across everything it touched.

  To the left of the main elevated platform was a bank of terminals that were covered in growths. A couple of chair backs and partial pieces of desks grew out of a tumorous mass. To the right of the control circle was another bank of terminals which still looked operational. The creeping growth hadn’t reached it yet but wasn’t far away.

  Draco Goldwing had been so focused on what was in front of them that they hadn’t thought to check what was behind. Behind them was a viewing platform that looked out over the habitable zones of the Metropolis Seven. It stretched around the back of Metro Tower with floor-to-ceiling clear glass. A single human watched them from the viewing platform. His mouth was covered by the large hand of a Vartalen trooper in full combat assault gear.

  Behind him were another three Vartalen troopers. The Vartalen people were from an oxygen-rich, heavy gravity planet where all their flora and fauna were large and aggressive, even the herbivorous species. They stood anywhere from ten to thirteen feet tall, and some were as wide as two well-built human men. They were naturally heavily muscled, with broad shoulders and small squat heads that jutted out horizontally from between their shoulders. They did not have much of a neck that connected their short, squat faces. They had mouths full of large white semi-serrated teeth which had evolved to shear meat from bone.

  In hand to hand combat, the Vartalen people were unmatched. Their society valued strength over all other attributes. They valued not only physical strength, but strength of the mind and the strength of will. The very best of their species were powerful, intelligent and ambitious. A Vartalen would not follow the commands of another Vartalen that could not defeat them.

  The Vartalen squad remained motionless and silent as Draco, Raze and Aloysius explored the bridge.

  Aloysius approached the consoles that were still operating and began to use them.

  “I’m going to crack the databanks and get into the mainframe,” Aloysius said. “I want to know exactly how and when everything went to shit.”

  “Good plan, Al,” Draco said.

  Draco joined Aloysius at the consoles and opened the personnel database. He quickly located the Captain’s record and opened it up. A picture of a black-haired man with a severe jawline and an equally severe haircut appeared on the screen. His name was Captain Adam Hane, an ex-Alliance military pilot who had been honorably discharged and continued his career in the private sector.

  Draco opened the Captain’s log and found several videos that had been made two weeks prior. The final video which was made less than 24 hours previous was titled ‘Goodbye’.

  Draco opened the video and it began to play. Captain Hane sat on the Captain’s chair in an empty bridge. His clothes were torn, and his face looked worn and ragged. It looked as though he hadn’t slept in weeks. He sat with his hands cupped over his mouth, looking in the direction of the front-facing bridge windows. He stared out into the blackness of space. He remained motionless and silent for minutes before looking into the camera. He sighed and moved his hands away from his mouth and began to speak.

  ‘This is Captain Adam Hane, Captain of the Metropolis Seven. If you’re watching this video, then I am dead, and I have failed. My son and I are the only remaining survivors of a highly contagious infection that has taken the lives of all passengers and crew on this ship. I don’t know where the infection came from or what caused it. There’s nothing in the known galaxy that consumes and destroys like this infection does. There’s not an animal, plant, or anything in between that does what this fucking thing does.’

  Anger had crept into his voice. He forced himself to stop talking for a moment to regain his composure.

  ‘It could have been bio-terrorism. It’s the only thing I can think of that makes any kind of sense. We were last supplied on Kopaeko. Tons of food, oxygen and water were brought on board to supplement our own self-replenishing supply. It’s on the border between Council space and the Arcturus Sector. A new supply depot. We’d never used it before. We didn’t really need it, but the passengers were screaming for some variety. Some local galactic flavor. They could have snuck the infection on board and we would have never known. But that still doesn’t explain why I couldn’t find anything that even remotely resembles this infection in the entire history of the Galactic Council.

  ‘But that’s not important. What’s important is the fact that you’re watching this when this entire ship should have been incinerated in one of the Gemon system’s binary stars. I’ve just set a course there and disabled the engine controls from the bridge,’ he said and motioned to the empty bridge around him, ‘my resident Metropolis Corporation representative has decided to pursue a course of action against my wishes. He defies the Captain of this vessel. He believes that we need to bring the Metropolis Seven back to New Earth for quarantine and investigation. He and I had a violent disagreement. I don’t even know if he’s alive anymore. I hope the little corporate weasel is growing into a fucking wall somewhere.

  ‘If this ship ever gets to a terrestrial planet, it’s a death sentence for the entire planet and anyone who lands on it. The infection spreads through every biological organism it encounters like wildfire. Animal, plant, it doesn’t matter. We even found active spores
in the water system. We’ve had people drinking from water bottles for a week now, but that didn’t help. There are just too many infected already onboard. I lost contact with everyone else yesterday. I can only assume that they’re all either dead or infected. The ship is locked onto a course to Krakaterra. Once we’re in the gravitational field of the planet we’ll wait till it passes between the two suns and we’ll cook inside the ship. But it’ll be worth it knowing that I’ve saved the galaxy from the horror of this infection.

  ‘This is Captain Adam Hane, signing off.’

  The video ended, and the display reverted back to his profile page. It was hard to believe that the confident, powerful looking man in the photograph was the same man that made the video Draco had just watched.

  Aloysius had been keeping his sensors attuned to Captain Hane’s video while he also searched through the ship’s journey log. He compared the incidences where the ship entered an emergency state with the reported incidents of infection. He cross referenced those with the timestamp they restocked in Kopaeko and the amount of dinners served by the restaurants on board the Metropolis Seven containing foodstuffs from those supplies. There was no correlation. The same batches of supplies had been divided up between several different restaurants, and the cases of infection shared no common timeline from the point of ingestion of those supplies among others who also ate meals cooked from the same supplies.

  “Captain Goldwing, I do not believe that this was bio-terrorism. At least not from the source that Captain Hane has surmised. I’m currently processing a number of datasets and will notify you when I find something that I believe may explain things,” Aloysius said.

  “You got it, Al. How about dockings? Did any other ships dock with the Metropolis Seven while it was en route to the Arcturus Sector? Can you find out any information about what they were even doing here?”

  “One second, Captain,” Aloysius said.

  After a moment of silence, Aloysius continued, “The Metropolis Corporation has an agreement with the Vartalen government who control this sector. They were guaranteed safe passage by the ruling clan and guarantees from the mercenary guilds that any Metropolis Corporation ships in this area were to be left alone.”

  Draco raised an eyebrow and said, “The Vartalen actually agreed to that?”

  “It appears so, yes. For a large sum of credits.”

  “Of course.”

  “There is no correlating data to suggest that an outside party delivered anything to the ship, and definitely no data that would line up with the infection timelines. However...” Aloysius said and went silent again for a moment. “Captain, I believe I’ve discovered the source of the infection! A week and a half ago there was a hull breach on the underside of the ship. The first person to appear with the infection was the person who reported the incident. A man named Bill Timms. The report says that there was a tiny puncture which was able to be patched easily. The puncture was caused by a meteorite. The reports say that the meteorite was not unusual, apart from the fact that it began to ‘sweat’ as it cooled. Every person who appears on the subsequent reports about this meteorite became infected, then the infection began to grow exponentially until it was out of control and useful records cease.”

  “How could something survive on the outside of a meteorite? Or inside one?” Draco asked.

  “There are microscopic organisms that can survive in a complete vacuum, as well as those that can survive freezing sub-zero temperatures, like the tardigrade! A hardy multicellular organism which originated on Old Earth. If this infection occurs at a cellular level, and I believe it does, it’s quite possible that the heat generated from punching through walls of thick metal could have been enough to rejuvenate the cells on the meteorite. A little bit of heat was all it took to wake them up again,” Aloysius said.

  “Well I’ll be damned. I’ll be willing to put credits on the identity of our friend who talked us into restarting the engines,” Draco said.

  “The Metropolis Corporation representative?”

  “Yeah. Which means that he’s not dead.”

  Raze had been listening to Draco and Al’s conversation while looking out at the universe. He closed his eyes, threw his head back and took in a deep breath. When he opened his eyes, he saw something attached to the outside of the ship that shouldn’t have been there.

  It was a Vartalen attack cruiser. A scout ship. He turned around to warn Draco, but it was too late. He saw a huge Vartalen brute pick up Draco by the neck and threw him across the bridge like a rag doll.

  Chapter Fifty

  Veck forced Reban to climb the ladder ahead of him, just in case the little mouse and the pilot decided to be truly foolish. He was mildly surprised when he climbed out of the hatch uninhibited. After he and Reban were clear of the hatch entrance, the command console re-formed where it had once stood. The display lit up again, ready for use.

  Veck found the gateway charge gauge, which looked exactly like one of the stationary gateways found across the galaxy. It appeared as a metallic ring, with four gravity drives at equal points around its circumference. The inside of the gateway swirled like a spiral galaxy. That was of course a romanticism of what the gateways represented. In reality, an open gateway was just like a window without glass. You simply looked through the ring and saw what was on the other side.

  Veck touched the icon and the gravity drive command module popped up on the screen. There was a percentage counter on the right-hand side of the window, which indicated the current charge level of the gravity drive, and a map of the galaxy on the left-hand side. You could either enter a specific set of coordinates, or you could select from a number of pre-programmed destinations. The current charge level was at 35.3% and rising a tenth of a percentile quite quickly. It climbed quickly to 36%, then 37%. Draco wouldn’t even know that Veck had taken control of the Icarus until it was too late.

  Veck scrolled through the pre-populated destinations and chuckled. They were all in space where travelling through personal gateway drives was frowned upon, but legal. There were no destinations inside Alliance or Council space, but that suited Veck just fine. His installation was in a sector of space that no other human had ever visited. It was only a short trip from a habitable planet that he would set the girls and the pilot down on.

  He had contemplated killing them and wiping his hands of it, but he admired the strength of the little mouse and the pilot. He looked Reban up and down and thought that he would be doing humanity a favor if he removed her from the gene pool. Strangely, he found himself oddly fond of the little mouse for her ferocity at defending her sister. He thought that if Reban could inspire such love and devotion from someone with such strength of spirit, then she must have some redeeming quality that wasn’t obvious to him.

  He might even come back to pay them a visit in a few months to see who had the will to survive. After they’d lived through the long nights.

  The charge level reached 40% and kept climbing. Veck set his destination. He would open a gateway to the border worlds nearest his installation. The planet that he planned on dumping Arak and the girls on was not inhabited. It would be rough going, and their chances of survival were dicey at best, but they would have to prove their strength and their will to live.

  Veck smiled at himself when he realized that he had some affection for the little mouse. He had hurt her, it was true, however he didn’t enjoy it. There was that primal part of himself that craved violence and destruction, but if he killed the little mouse, he knew that he would regret it. He could kill the other cowardly girl and the pilot, but not the little mouse. She had the potential to achieve so much if she focused herself.

  As if his thoughts had called out to her, Rhken returned to the bridge. Reban rushed to her side and clung desperately to her.

  “Arak is in the medpod. The surgery will take a while, and he’ll need time to recover,” Rhken said.

  “Good. Good,” Veck said distractedly at he looked out of the front of the Icarus.
>
  Rhken crossed the bridge with Reban in tow. She sat down into one of the co-pilots’ chairs, and Reban joined her in the other. Rhken reclined back and closed her eyes. Reban reached out and took Rhken’s hand in hers.

  “Sis, are we going to be okay?” Reban asked as she looked out of the windows of the Icarus.

  Rhken smiled sadly. “I honestly don’t know.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The procession of fleshlings had grown. As Jaxon lead the column of survivors through the Residential District, more and more infected passengers had started to follow them. At first only a few of the infected had joined the lone shambler, but more had begun to wander after them until their numbers had started to rival those of the survivors.

  But the fleshlings kept their distance. They showed a restraint that made Vynce feel very uncomfortable. Their eyes were not blank, or glassy, or furious with aggression as he had seen earlier. There was some semblance of intelligence there, just below the surface.

  “Fewster, you still got my back?” Vynce said.

  “Of course,” Doctor Fewster said.

  Vynce stopped, turned, and looked at the approaching group of infected. Doctor Fewster stood next to him and shot him an anxious look.

  “What are you doing?” Doctor Fewster asked.

  “Just a test,” Vynce replied.

  The approaching infected continued walking towards the two men, and the survivors kept walking on toward the hangar.

  The shambling fleshling, the first that had started following them, still led the column. The shambler reached a certain point, about fifty yards behind Vynce and Doctor Fewster, and then stopped walking forwards. It made a gurgling, moaning sound and looked up and down at the two men as though it didn’t understand what was happening.