by Chris Walley
In her mind Betafor ran various tests and found that, as she had feared, she was now totally isolated from all the ship’s circuits. A full lockout. I’m in trouble.
“What were you doing in there?” Betafor could hear the hostility in Lloyd’s voice. Will he fire? A shame he survived the Blade.
“I detected some activity. Kappaten and I . . . went to see what the problem was.”
Lloyd made an ugly face. “Why don’t I believe you?”
Merral moved between them. “Later, Sergeant. Betafor, where is Kappaten?”
I must mimic humans; that is always a good rule. Betafor stared down at the ground. “She . . . tried to save Isabella. She lured six Krallen into an air lock. She’s . . . dead.”
Merral had been deeply immersed in the artificial world of the castle tree when the alarm sounded. It took him long moments to tear himself away from where an autumn was being celebrated by clouds of whirling silver leaves and to take in the terrible information that Laura was giving him.
It took still more time to grab weapons and an armor jacket—no time for the leggings—and as he ran down with others to the rear of the ship, he felt almost overwhelmed by guilt and anguish. An accusation seemed to thump away in his head: This is your responsibility.
Yet as the allegation came, Merral pushed it aside. He knew that he had some very hard decisions to make. There will be time for that later.
As he ran, Laura kept giving him the latest situation updates. He interrupted her. “Betafor! Where is Betafor?”
“She left about ten minutes ago. With Kappaten. Something about a rather vague testing procedure. You don’t think . . . ?”
“I do now.” Merral gestured for a couple of soldiers to follow after him. “Laura, use Vero’s lockout codes. As a matter of urgency. Kappaten, too. From all command decisions. Everything.”
He ran on. Help us, God, he prayed. Help Isabella. Let it be just trivial.
It took him another couple of minutes to get to the hold door where a confused crowd was gathering. Merral saw perhaps twenty people with various weapons; Helga was handing out armor, Lloyd was holding Betafor at gunpoint, Abilana and a medical team were pushing their way through, and Luke had also just arrived.
Merral took charge and separated Lloyd and Betafor. He checked on the latest situation with Laura.
“No word from Isabella?”
“Nothing for eight minutes now.”
Merral realized he didn’t have a helmet. A glance around showed that most of the others didn’t either.
“Do we have imagery?”
“Negative, I think the Krallen have just taken out all the cameras.”
“Lighting?”
“Out again.”
“Anyone have any flares?”
Merral saw a soldier nod.
“Okay, Laura, we’re going in any moment. Take us up to Normal-Space. Whatever happens, I think we will need real light.”
He caught a pained nod from Abilana, who was opening a stretcher and setting up the syn-plasma.
“Up it is,” said Laura.
Merral turned around, unsheathing his sword. “Everyone: this is not ideal. We are going in fast. Use flares for lighting. Those of you with guns, be careful not to puncture walls. The information is there are just six Krallen. Priority is to get the patient out. We’ll deal with the goblins later unless they attack. I’ll lead. Med team: stay here until we have secured the passageway.” He touched the door button. “Now.”
The door slid open to reveal only darkness. “Flares!”
Two cylinders were fired in. They bounced off the ceiling and landed on top of containers, spilling out dazzling light. The darkness fled along much of the passageway, but deep pools of gloom remained around the containers. Hanging down in the passageway like torn pieces of cloth were some strange sheets, and it took Merral a moment to see that it was a large manifestation.
He stepped through the door. I take the lead here . . . for all sorts of reasons. He scanned the scene, seeing nothing that moved or threatened. He moved forward, his sword ready, wishing he had had the time to put on armor leggings and a helmet. He heard the others file in behind him and sensed that they too were peering around.
There was a faint scuttling from somewhere. Where?
To the right a distorted, monstrous shadow flitted across the ceiling. From high up to the left came more sounds.
Merral moved rapidly down the passageway. In moments, he could see just beyond the manifestation along much of the passageway. There is the air lock; the unit we want is just beyond that. Edifice R19, Laura said, a smaller lower container. That’s it.
Lloyd, next to him, whispered, “If they are going to attack, it’ll be now, sir.”
Merral had just edged round the first gleaming misty sheet when he saw shapes—solid black against the reflected light of the flares—launch themselves down from the tops of the containers.
In an instant, quiet order was transformed into frenzied, noisy chaos. The air was filled with yells and shouts and wild howls like distorted sounds of a violin.
Something black swept through the manifestation at his face and Merral ducked sideways and slashed back with the sword. The blade met some resistance but with what he didn’t know.
A flash erupted, followed by the deafening noise of first one shot, then another. Ricocheting fragments pinged around.
All about him, fantastic forms were tumbling and rolling in the mist.
Merral slashed again at a Krallen and felt the blade cut in a satisfying manner. His assailant vanished back into the core of the manifestation. A battle scene in grays: a fight we are utterly unprepared for.
He heard two more shots. Something—or parts of something—flew past and struck the wall. Heedless of the stinging on his bare legs and face, Merral pushed his way through a sheet of the manifestation.
There was renewed yelling. A new flare went up in the air and flickering silver light fell about them; Merral was reminded of the meteor that had flown overhead at Wilamall’s Farm a million years ago and a universe away.
Something moved in the mist before him, and he saw a Krallen rearing up at him. He swung hard with his blade, but the creature twisted and the blade slipped past. The claws ripped harmlessly down his jacket; then something struck hard into his right thigh. He felt a sharp, stabbing pain.
Merral gasped, stepped to one side, tripped over someone, and toppled against the wall.
I’m on the ground.
His attacker—or was it another one?—landed on top of him and he felt the weight of the creature on his chest. How stupid. I’m going to die here.
A nightmare of a face with eyes gleaming like small gray suns peered down at him.
He tried to roll to one side but the wall was in the way. He saw the forelimbs rise for the blow. He began to swing his sword but the angle was all wrong. I’m not going to make it.
A blade whistled so close to his head that he felt the air part. It struck his attacker, and the Krallen vanished back into the mist sheet.
Merral was aware of a big hand reaching under his arm and a hot gun barrel hovering dangerously close to his head. Lloyd, of course.
“Do get up off the floor, sir.” The tone was one of pained exasperation. With Lloyd’s help, Merral stood up, aware of a painful wetness on his thigh.
He saw Lloyd’s gun barrel protrude just past his head and point steadily at the foglike screen just ahead of them.
Two points of light, a hand’s width apart, appeared in the mist.
Lloyd fired. The explosion almost deafened Merral, but the face disintegrated and he felt hot, oily fluid spray all over him.
“Peekaboo,” Lloyd muttered.
“They’re going!” someone yelled, and sure enough, when Merral peered around the mist sheet, he saw two creatures scampering away down the corridor. He looked around, counting four dead Krallen and seeing two men and a woman nursing wounds that at first glance seemed light.
“If you a
re wounded, get back,” Merral snapped. “Send the medical team in!”
He ran over to the door of the unit, his thigh in agony.
“Is this it?” someone asked.
Merral looked down, seeing drops of dark liquid at the foot of the door.
“Yes,” he said, burdened with foreboding as he tried the handle. It was locked.
Lloyd muscled past him. “Stand back, sir.” He pointed the barrel at the door lock.
Merral stepped back and looked away.
A tremendous blast of sound and light erupted and fragments whistled past. The door was pushed open.
Merral was in first.
Isabella was slumped against the wall, a liquid blackness pooled about her. Far too much blood.
He moved over to begin first aid, but Abilana was pushing past; two people with a stretcher followed her. She looked at Merral. “Get out; leave this to us.”
He limped outside, feeling overwhelmed by guilt and anger and grief and a hundred other things, none of them good. He watched as the medical team moved swiftly and gently away with Isabella and caught a glimpse of a ghostly pale face and wanted to weep.
He suddenly realized he had to give orders. It’s easier to give orders than to think.
“Cover the stretcher party. Let’s retreat.”
He limped back, with Lloyd at the back of the party. Outside the hold, he saw that the medical team had left. A forlorn shake of the head from Helena confirmed the seriousness of the wound. Merral forced out orders. “I want a party of at least sixteen, all with full armor, to secure that hold. I want those two Krallen dead. Dead.”
He leaned back against the wall, noticing that he was having problems standing up. People were looking at his leg. “When that’s done, I want every container searched in case there are any other surprises.” He looked at Vero. “Sentinel, I want a full inquiry into this. And we need some hard answers from Betafor.”
He was aware that color was returning; he looked down to see that his right leg was a moist mass of red.
“And you may have to do it without me.”
Merral was helped up to the medical suite. Abilana was in the operating theater, of course, but an assistant helped him clean up the gash in his leg and got a robo-surgeon to microsuture it closed.
“You were fortunate,” she said.
“Perhaps,” he grunted and looked up at the door of the theater.
Then he sat there, his head in his hands, praying. In his prayers, his thoughts swung back and forth from desperate petitions through acknowledgment of guilt to despair and doubt. Someone brought him some water. He muttered thanks but didn’t even look up to see who it was.
He saw Luke go into the theater. Eventually—he didn’t know after how long—he was aware of someone standing before him.
Struck with a terrible presentiment, he looked up with reluctance to see Abilana with Luke standing behind her. The splash of bright red blood on the doctor’s gown and the expression on her face told him all he needed to know. She stepped forward and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Sorry,” she said in a very quiet voice, and he saw a tear dribble down her cheek. “We lost her five minutes ago.”
Merral was struck by how distant the words sounded. As if I’m separated from reality by a glass.
“There was never much hope. Even in the best hospital, it would have been difficult,” she said, and he saw she wasn’t really looking at him. “Technically . . . technically it wasn’t easy. Torso trauma, major liver injury. They are trained to kill, those things. To rip and tear.”
Merral realized that he was blinking. “I expected this.” His words sounded thick. “I was hoping that I could have said something to her.” Or she to me. “Things that needed . . . saying.” Words began to fail him. He choked on tears.
He was dully aware that Vero had come in and was standing beside him. Vero stretched his dark fingers out and held Merral gently on the shoulder.
“Did she say anything?” Merral asked and regretted it. Get real. This is life. People don’t do deathbed speeches.
Abilana turned to Luke. The chaplain looked at Merral with dark eyes. “She said one word. ‘Sorry.’”
Within the next forty-eight hours, they held a memorial service for Isabella—whose body had joined those of Slee and Ilyas in Freezer Two. They also killed the remaining Krallen and inspected every container in the hold. Then they returned to the monochrome world of Below-Space.
One other thing needed to be done, and three days after the incident, Merral met with Luke in a room behind the captain’s quarters. It had been sparsely furnished for the occasion with just a single table and four chairs.
“Take a seat, Merral. Rest that leg.”
Merral sat down behind the table. “The leg’s fine. That will heal.”
Luke gazed at him. “And how’s the rest of you?”
“A good question. I don’t know. I’m grieving. And . . .”
“Feeling guilty.”
“Yes.”
Luke shook his head. “Merral, I’ve lost count how many times I’ve told you over the last couple of days that you bear only a small amount of the blame. We should all have done more to help her. But it might be that if we had tried to do more we would have made matters worse.”
Merral looked around, seeing the blank spaces and alcoves where images had been removed. He heard a tentative knock at the door and Vero entered.
Merral gestured him to the third chair. “Can you explain to Luke exactly what’s going to happen?”
“In the files I’ve been examining I came across the specifics of the codes through which a captain can interrogate an Allenix unit and get the truth. Laura has them on her diary. It’s called formal interrogation mode.”
“Yes. We will see whether it works.” Merral’s mind went back to the warnings of Professor Elaxal. But what else could we have done but take her?
The door opened and Laura, wearing her uniform, entered. Betafor followed and behind her came Lloyd, a gun hanging carelessly over his shoulder.
As Laura took her place on the remaining seat, Merral gestured Betafor to stand in front of the table. Lloyd went and stood at the back of the room.
Merral sipped from a glass of water before speaking. “Betafor, we have summoned you here to ask you some questions.”
“As you wish. Although I have told you all that I know. And I have been locked out from doing my duty. I wish to return to my status as ship’s Allenix.”
He noticed she was squatting on her hindquarters, with her back erect. This way she seems taller and less animal-like. “There are serious matters at stake. We have heard your testimony.” He nodded at Laura. “Captain . . .”
Laura set her diary on the table. “Betafor, you acknowledge me as the captain of this ship?”
“Yes.”
“I am sending you an order.” She tapped the screen twice.
Merral saw something like a shiver run through the creature.
“Betafor Allenix, what mode are you in now?”
The creature seemed to hesitate, and when she spoke her tone was oddly slow and slightly slurred. “I am in formal interrogation mode.”
“Which means?”
“That I must answer fully and truthfully.”
“We are going to ask you some formal questions under captain’s rules.”
Laura gestured for Vero to speak. He leaned over the table. “When did you first know of the existence of the Krallen pack on the ship?”
“I was aware of them when we seized this ship.” The words were sluggish.
“Why didn’t you alert us?”
“They were in stasis and locked away. They presented no threat.”
Merral interrupted. “What did you plan to do with them?”
There was a pause. “I had made no firm decision.”
Merral spoke again. “Did you consider using them against us?”
Betafor hesitated before answering. “Yes. I considered the possibi
lity of using them. . . .”
“To kill us.”
“That . . . is the purpose of the Krallen. They kill.” Merral saw Lloyd’s nod of agreement.
Vero continued asking questions. “The K-Krallen remained in stasis until we reached the Blade. Then what happened?”
“They were activated.” With the slurred voice she is much more like a machine now.
“By whom?”
“By Fleet-Commander Sentius Lezaroth.”
“He was able to access this ship? I thought we had put locks on all the systems.”
Laura leaned over to him. “Only those systems we knew about.” Of course.
“Yes, the Krallen had not been locked.” Merral heard what seemed a weariness in the voice now.
“Had you had any communication with Lezaroth or the Dominion?”
There was a long delay. “No.”
Vero waved a thin finger. “Did you try to contact them?”
Another pause. “Yes. But the attempt failed. He did not reply.”
“So you tried to betray us?”
The Allenix quivered but no answer came.
Vero repeated himself. “These are formal questions under captain’s rules. Did you try to betray us?”
“Yes. . . . Yes. . . .” The quivering grew in intensity. “Yes!”
Luke raised a hand. “Can we pause? Betafor is evidently under stress. For a minute or two.” Merral saw Lloyd shake his head with disbelief.
Eventually they continued. After more questions about events at the Blade, some of which drew blanks, they moved on to the events that had led to Isabella’s death.
Vero stared hard at Betafor. “You t-told us that in order to try to save Isabella, Kappaten sacrificed her life. Is that an accurate statement of what happened?”
“No.”
“So what exactly happened to Kappaten?”
“I ordered her into the lock.”
Merral saw Luke shake his head in dismay.
“And opened the outer hatch?”
“Yes. . . .”
“So you sacrifice your own kind for your survival?”
Another pause. “Yes.”
Luke raised a bony finger. “Betafor, did you at any time consider trying to rescue Isabella?”