Fallen Metropolis (Omnibus Edition)

by Matthew J. Barbeler

  Draco reached the entrance to the cruiser and threw an empty magazine into the breach. When no gunfire or shouts of surprise greeted him, he climbed aboard and scanned the ship. There were no sounds, and nothing seemed to move. They had arrived in an antechamber which could be sealed like an airlock. The wide door into the ship stood open and unlocked. They clearly didn’t expect that anyone would be powerful enough to best them or brazen enough to steal their ship while they were on board. The pride of the Vartalen would be their undoing.

  The ship was a strike class scout, not designed for long-range travel. It was the first of a fleet, which would no doubt be on their way to claim the Metropolis Seven for themselves. Draco couldn’t give too much thought to them, however. He had to disengage from the Metropolis Seven and take control of the Icarus again before Veck passed through the gateway.

  They crossed the squalid living quarters and headed to the bridge. It was definitely a mercenary ship. Even with their olfactory filters in place, they could still smell the stink of it. Ross had to cover his nose the old-fashioned way. The bridge was just a glorified pilot’s chair, with a co-pilot’s chair sitting just behind it. The seats were so large that even Raze would be looked like a child if he sat in them. The bridge reminded Draco of the configuration of the old two-man fighters he had trained on back in his early days in the Alliance military.

  The bridge was in the central hooked fuselage of the ship. From the windows in front Draco he could see the curved wingtips of the ship on either side. Draco also saw the crackling gateway that Veck had opened, with the Icarus hovering just in front of it. The sonofabitch was almost through. Once he was through, Draco would never be able to find him. He’d never be able to get his father’s ship back.

  “Al, start this ship up immediately. We need to get back to the Icarus. Now!” Draco barked.

  “Yes Captain,” Aloysius said and slid into the pilot’s chair. He began starting the ignition sequence.

  “Raze, I’m going to seal the breaching pod. You ride co-pilot.”

  “I got it boss,” Raze said. He sat behind Aloysius in the co-pilot’s chair.

  Draco rushed back over to the door that separated to Vartalen ship from the antechamber that led onto the Metropolis Seven. He activated the airlock, and a heavy door with a tiny viewing window slid over the doorway.

  Aloysius ignited the engines. “Now, Captain! Disengage!”

  Draco disengaged the breaching pod and the Vartalen attack cruiser separated from the Metropolis Seven. The Vartalen cruiser drifted for a moment before the thrust kicked in.

  Draco took a deep breath and engaged the antechamber’s inner door. Draco locked himself in the airlock and drew his grapnel launcher. He opened up a comm channel to Aloysius and started to speak.

  Aboard the Icarus, Veck Simms was alerted to the presence of three smaller ships on intercept trajectories. He gritted his teeth and increased thrust. He hadn’t made it this close to freedom to be thwarted at the last moment.

  Vynce saw the Vartalen attack cruiser heading towards the Icarus and increased the thrust. He sent a broadcast comm to the enemy ship and said, “Vartalen, disengage from your trajectory. The Icarus is a human ship, and any aggression will be treated as an act of war.”

  Aloysius’s face appeared on the comm screen in front of him. ‘Vynce, we’re in the Vartalen ship. Don’t open fire!’

  Vynce laughed. “Al! I have never been happier to see your faceplate! And don’t worry, we couldn’t attack even if we wanted to. These shuttles have no weaponry. They’re just lifeboats.”

  ‘We have weapons, but the girls and Arak are still alive on the Icarus. I don’t want to risk their safety.’

  “What about Nook?”

  ‘Veck killed him.’

  “That motherfucking piece of shit sonofabitch”

  ‘Which is why we need to catch him before he gets away.’

  “On it.”

  Vynce closed the comm channel. Ava turned to him and said, “I need to send one last message to Jaxon. A private message. Can you authorize my suit to hook into the ship’s comm channel?”

  “Sure,” Vynce said. He made the necessary adjustments.

  Ava switched her comm channel to private, recorded her message, and sent it through the ship’s broadcast system to Jaxon’s shuttle. She noticed that Vynce was watching her lips moving, so she changed to opacity of her visor to obscure his view. Ava finished and sent the completed message.

  She could only hope that he received it before he landed back on the Metropolis Seven.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Jaxon maneuvered the shuttle into the wide delivery dock. He passed through another grav-field and found an empty bay in the docks to land. Ava’s message had given him hope. She had sent him a vid comm, so he could see her face while she spoke. She told him about the shuttle from the Icarus in the loading dock, and the cache of weaponry in the back. She figured they might face some resistance getting to the engine control room, but the weaponry they had left in the shuttle should help them.

  Then she told him that she loved him. She said that she wished she knew when she would meet him again, but she understood that he couldn’t tell her for sure. Before disembarking from the evac shuttle Jaxon sent one final private comm message back to Ava before disabling his comm unit completely. He couldn’t risk breaking down in the final moments of his life and spilling the secrets of the future to anyone who would make it off this ship alive.

  The knowledge that the universe was on the right course now would have to be enough for him.

  Before he left the pilot’s chair, Jaxon took out his pistol and fired a magazine’s worth of bullets into the control console. He couldn’t risk anyone trying to escape. If the infection was allowed to spread, then all of his hard work over the course of his life with the Agency would mean nothing. Another Agent would have to go back to this place and clean up the mess to avert the disaster. Jaxon refused to allow anyone else to be involved with the horror aboard this ship.

  Jaxon joined the rest of the infected survivors in the living space.

  Doctor Harris joined him. “Are you ready?”

  He nodded and took off his helmet as he addressed the infected survivors.

  “Doctor Harris and I are going to leave the shuttle, and we’re going to change our course from the engine room. We’re not asking any of you to join us, though we’d appreciate the help. The fleshlings are going to be pissed, and I’m expecting we might meet some heavy resistance. But the choice is yours. If you’re coming, get ready. We leave immediately.”

  One by one the infected survivors got to their feet. Some stayed sitting. One man wept openly with his arm around his wife, who cried into her hands.

  Jaxon left the shuttle and stepped out onto the loading dock. The shuttle from the Icarus was nearby. Two trunks full of weapons and ammunition waited for them. The first thing he did was destroy the shuttle’s central console, so no-one would be able to commandeer it and leave the Metropolis Seven. After a minute, the infected survivors that wanted to help joined him. He handed weapons out to those that wanted them. Doctor Harris appeared behind Jaxon and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “How are you holding up?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said. He scooped an armful of rifle magazines into a duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  He led the infected survivors through the receiving dock and back into the Metropolis Seven. The fleshling horde were waiting for them. They walked through the receiving gates as two fleshlings moaned wetly and ran towards them. Jaxon took one out with a volley of bullets, and Doctor Harris dispatched the other with a shotgun blast to the chest.

  Jaxon followed the quickest route to the engine bay. The passcodes and security codes he had used on board the Metropolis Seven all those years ago came back to him easily. It was as though he had never left. He passed through the security checkpoints and led the group of infected survivors down the maintenance tunnels
towards the engine control room.

  The smaller fleshlings started to climb out from between pipes and vents all around them. The air was filled with screams of fear, curses and reports of firing weapons.

  “We need to go faster!” Jaxon yelled, and the survivors followed him.

  They ignored the infected that they could, but some survivors were unlucky. Those that fell behind were left behind.

  They reached a large open space. The cargo hold, where the cargo was brought once it was delivered to the ship. There were pallets of still-wrapped supplies that towered above them. The sound of their movement had alerted the fleshlings to their presence. A large fleshling stumbled from behind one of the stacks of pallets; it appeared to have been forged from the bodies of two humans. One served as the body, legs and left arm, but its overgrown right arm was almost the size of its own body again. A face that was stuck in a constant grimace of terror sat in the unctuous flesh knitted at the shoulder. It loped towards Jaxon, reaching towards him with two thick fingers that had once been legs.

  Jaxon tried to move out of the way of the creature, but it was too fast. It picked him up with its dual-fingered arm and threw him up into the air, across the cargo hold. He landed on top of a pallet and bounced over it into a space between rows of supplies. He quickly tried to regain his bearings, but a group of three fleshlings ran toward him with terrifying speed. He opened fire and cut them down. He headed back towards the sounds of screams that would undoubtedly lead him back to the big creature with the grotesque arm.

  The sounds of assault rifle fire came from all over the cargo hold. Any fleshlings in the immediate area would know exactly where they were, and the central intelligence that drove them all would be sending everything it had at them.

  Jaxon rounded a corner and saw the huge fleshling tearing one of the survivors in two. A volley of assault rifle fire hit the creature in the chest and it stumbled backwards. Doctor Harris marched ahead of the rest of the group of survivors and pumped two shotgun rounds into the thing’s chest. It still attempted to get back up, but its strength was failing. Doctor Harris reloaded her shotgun and fired a shell at the creature’s head. It exploded in red meaty chunks as its body collapsed.

  The face on its shoulder snarled at Doctor Harris but did not have the ability to drive the rest of its body onward.

  Jaxon rejoined the group and lead them through the cargo hold. They encountered several infected as they crossed the hold, but they were all easily put down.

  They reached the end of the cargo hold and followed through the maintenance staff tunnels towards the engine control room. Jaxon ran along the corridors as fast as he could, hoping that the survivors could manage to keep up. As he ran, the memories of the last twenty years in the service of the Agency ran through his mind just as fast. To think that his journey, the meaning of his life, began aboard the Metropolis Seven and would end aboard the Metropolis Seven was almost too much for him to take.

  He rounded the corner into a wider walkway. The signage pointed him in the direction of the engine control room and he ran on.

  Upon reaching the engine room, the rest of the survivors began to slowly fill up the room. The fleshlings ran after them, but a wall of survivors blockaded the entrance and cut down any that got too close.

  Jaxon quickly opened the control console and plotted a course to Gemon I, the larger of the two stars in the Gemon binary star system. He set the engines to full thrust, and then activated a security lockdown command to lock the console. Only someone using the Captain’s authorization could unlock the console and set another course, and that required retinal scan and thumbprint identification from Captain Hane himself.

  Jaxon joined the other survivors at the end of the walkway and fired on the approaching wave of infected.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  The two shuttles raced through space towards the gateway. The Vartalen cruiser was closer, but Vynce didn’t think that Captain Goldwing would make it in time. The Icarus was too close to the gateway, and its engines were set to full thrust.

  “Captain...” Vynce said over the comm channel.

  ‘What is it?’ Draco said.

  “I don’t think we can get there in time. He’s almost through!”

  ‘I’ve got a plan.’

  “I don’t think there’s much we can do about it. He’s... he’s already gone,” Vynce said.

  The Icarus approached the gateway.

  “Al, make this ship go faster! When we’re just a little closer, I need you to follow my orders exactly and without hesitation!” Draco yelled.

  “I’m already at full thrust, Captain. This ship is built for reconnaissance, not pursuit.”

  “Go faster!”

  Aloysius pushed the thrust again, but it could not go any faster. They could see the Icarus just in front of them. Only a few more moments, and they would be right on top of them.

  The Icarus crossed through the gateway, and the gateway began to shrink as it closed.

  “Swing the ship to the right! Do it now!” Draco commanded.

  Aloysius obeyed. He swung the ship to the right sharply. Everything lurched to the side, even with the inertial dampeners.

  Draco Goldwing switched his suit to the in-built oxygen supply. He flicked the switch and engaged the magnetic attachment on the end of his grapnel launcher. He readied himself against the inner door of the airlock, then pressed the purge button. The airlock exploded outward, and nothing separated Draco from the vast cold void of space.

  The Icarus was right in front of him. He pushed off the inside of the Vartalen cruiser. The repulsive magnetic force his grav-boots propelled him out of the airlock and into the black. Draco raised the grapnel launcher and fired it at the Icarus. His ship was already on the other side of the gateway and it was closing rapidly.

  The magnetic head of the grapnel launcher hit the top of the Icarus and stuck fast. Draco pulled the second trigger and reeled himself in. The gateway closed. It shrunk so quickly that Draco thought that he might have been cut off before he made it to the other side. As he passed through the gateway, he felt the crackle of energy around him on all sides.

  In front of him was a small planet covered in blue ocean with small islands dotted across its surface.

  In the pilot’s seat of the evacuation shuttle Vynce and Ava swore.

  “Did Captain Goldwing just jump through a fucking gateway?” Vynce asked breathlessly.

  “That crazy motherfucker,” Ava said and couldn’t stop herself from grinning.

  Aloysius’s voice came across the comm channel.

  ‘Is everyone all right?’ he asked.

  “Just clarify this for us for a second, will you Al? Did our Captain just jump through a gateway in nothing but a smartsuit?” Ava asked.

  ‘Ah, yes, it appears that way,’ Aloysius said.

  Vynce and Ava laughed.

  ‘Of course. You realize that...’ Raze began to speak, but something caught his eye. A bright spark had appeared in front of the Vartalen cruiser. Vynce, Ava, Clarke and Doctor Fewster all saw it too.

  “Is that...” Vynce began to ask.

  Aloysius didn’t allow himself to believe what he was seeing. Another gateway was opening in the space directly in front of them. It crackled in the middle of the void as it opened. It kept getting wider and wider. It was much wider than the last gateway had been.

  Raze checked the vidstream from the backwards facing sensors on the cruiser and saw the Metropolis Seven growing smaller as it headed back towards the binary star system.

  A colossal Alliance military dreadnought passed through the gateway. It was a fearsome looking ship. It was all angles and armor plating. There wasn’t a single curved surface on its hull. It looked like an enormous cannon travelling through space. On the side of its hull was the name of the ship. The AMSS Hyperion. The Alliance military’s flagship.

  “I think our ride’s here,” Vynce said.

  ‘I think you might be right,’ Aloysius said. He tri
ed to open a comm channel with the dreadnought.

  “AMSS Hyperion, this is Aloysius, a Child of iNet, previous XO of the Icarus, led by Captain Draco Goldwing. We are in need to immediate assistance. We are transporting a criminal, and the survivors of the Metropolis Seven. Please respond.”

  After a few moments the Hyperion responded.

  ‘Hello Al, this is Admiral Blake. We detected that the Icarus activated an Alliance gravity drive in this sector of space. Care to explain?’

  “Yes, the Icarus opened a gateway. But it’s already gone. The gateway is closed. Admiral, you need to enact immediate quarantine procedures. There is an infection on board the Metropolis Seven the likes of which our galaxy has never seen. We few are the survivors of the ship. Seal off a medical sector. We need to be screened before you allow us on the ship,” Aloysius said.

  ‘Some trouble indeed. Very well, we’ll set up a quarantine wing on the starboard side. We’ll open hangar eighteen once we’ve initiated the quarantine lockdown. Please head around there in a few moments and we’ll have you checked out.’

  “Yes sir. Everyone, set course for hangar eighteen,” Aloysius said.

  Chapter Sixty

  The fleshlings clustered at the end of the walkway. The survivors were running low on ammunition. The corridor beyond the engine control room was a bloodbath. It was impossible to tell where one infected creature ended and the next began. Bits and pieces moved within the swamp of broken flesh. The survivors had retreated back into the engine control room, and those who still had bullets left were only using them when one of the infected got too close.