Tainted Garden

by Jeff Stanley

  As suddenly as it had begun, the tumult died. Silence, stillness, descended like a curtain, and Meloni lay on the broken resin listening to the sound of his own heart beating. Nearby the guardsman who had brought him word of the throats’ failure lay broken, bent double, folded like laundry. Plumbed from the depths of the ool, enzymatic fluid welled up around the corpse. The guard’s flesh sloughed from his bones as the fluid consumed him.

  Meloni staggered to his feet, calling for his guards. No one responded. He ran from Huldru’s chamber, tripping over the broken floor of the main artery. In the distance he could hear screams of terror and pain. Unsure where he was going, Meloni ran onward.

  He passed another Veil Lord’s chamber—Veil Lord Merisi’s?—and glanced inside. Stunned, he stumbled into a wall, his eyes widening, his jaw dropping. A massive crack split the floor of Veil Lord Merisi’s chamber, a crack from which rose the heaving, translucent sack of her womb. As Meloni watched, the sack ruptured, flooding the chamber with thick, viscous ooze. Darker objects, vaguely man-shaped, tumbled from the deflating sack, squirming, writhing in the jelly. One of the figures rose on ill-shaped forelimbs and opened its maw. Hundreds of lashing strands emerged between rows of needlelike teeth. A single round orb opened in the center of the creature’s forehead.

  Meloni backed away, his feet leaden. His knees knocked against one another, and a burning sensation crept up from his gut as bile rose into his throat.

  Another creature climbed up on stalklike hind legs, rising until its long, serpentine neck nearly touched Merisi’s dangling sensory tentacles. Its neck fanned in a mammoth hood, and its jaws split wide, belching out fat white tentacles that seemed to sniff at the air. More and more of the creatures crawled from the slimy bath of the sack, each horribly different. Yet each bore some unmistakable residue of Bhajong heritage.

  Where Bhajong children should have crawled weakly forth, monsters emerged, twisted, distorted perversions of nature that cried and screeched and mewed, hungering. They turned toward him, and Meloni could see the ravenous hunger in their eyes, the feral power in their twisted forms.

  What horror could have so perverted Merisi’s children?

  Screaming, Meloni ran, unaware of his surroundings, seized by a panic he could not resist.

  He found himself in the council chamber, an immense drained heart with rings of formed benches surrounding a central podium. Here nearly a hundred Bhajong were gathered, and they rushed to greet him, crying out questions, demands, seeking answers. Their voices rose to an indecipherable cacophony, and Meloni had to beat their hands away from him. He forced his way through the sea of grasping, tugging Bhajong toward the podium.

  “What’s happening, Lord Meloni?”

  “My son! My daughter! Where are they?”

  “What was that tremor?”

  The questions slammed into him, and he had no answers. He reached the podium and raised his hands, demanding silence. The crowd pressed close, all eyes on Meloni.

  “Wait!” Meloni cried. “Wait!”

  Someone at the outer edge of the gathered Bhajong screamed. Other voices rose in cries of alarm. Men, women, and children pressed toward the podium, away from the doors.

  Through the doors came a horde of misshapen creatures, their horrid voices grunting, wailing. They pressed toward the Bhajong.

  Chapter 24

  APF 0002

  Santiago had heard the whispers, the doubts. He chose to ignore them, knowing that strong, confident leadership was necessary, not tantrumic displays of his power. Still, it galled him that these men and women he had led across the Hegemony and beyond the borders of known space, to this alien world, would doubt him now.

  But in the wake of the Exodus, as some were now calling Rodriguez’s rebellion and flight from Ship, there was precious little remaining to them beyond doubt. Doubt and fear and a keen sense of aloneness in the universe. Severed from the Hegemony by the traitorous acts of a man Santiago had trusted, Ship’s crew needed guidance. They needed leadership. They needed an authoritarian hand, if they were ever to recoup their losses and regain a toehold on this barren world.

  He had not wanted command, not again. His last stroke had depleted his strength and rendered him feeble. Only through the rigorous barrage of drugs and physical therapy had he been able to regain some small portion of his old stamina, his old, reliable constitution. He knew he was a shadow of his old self now. A pale, withered shadow.

  But strength did not reside in the body alone. There was strength of character. Strength of will. Strength of the mind. Santiago could say without undue vanity that he remained among the strongest of the crew.

  He pushed himself to his feet in his office. The trembling began almost at once in his knees, his ankles. And then pain. Shooting pain that traveled through his shins and up into his knees, lodged there, twisting, spiteful, before voyaging onward to torture his hips and lower back. The pain was insistent, inevitable, unbanishable by even the strongest of drugs. Santiago had determined to bear the pain. It would not become his master, nor he its slave. He would triumph over it, despite the costs.

  Standing to spite the pain, he queued ShipsNet, accessing Ship’s systems. His gaze roamed the long list of statistics, assessments, and requests from Damage Control. He had no need to read the reports; he knew each detail, each damning, threatening item in the long catalogue of offline systems. The core was dead, irreplaceable. And with it the null shield that had become the permanent barrier to the encroachments of the landskin. They had reverted to the use of electrified fences, crude things strung up along the perimeter and powered by the secondary power generators that continued to function. But for how long? How long before even those meager reserves gave out, leaving them powerless, defenseless against the pervading advance of that disgusting biomass?

  He shook his head. Not long. The techs worked day and night, attempting to devise an alternate means of powering Ship and her environs. But the Hegemony—perhaps lacking foresight—had assumed the core would power the newborn colony until more permanent means could be devised for supplying the necessary energy on-surface. The core could easily have met the needs of a colony numbering just over a million.

  More worrisome, still, was the loss of the communications array. Damaged beyond repair. A new one would have to be constructed, if the remaining techs and scientists could locate the data-composite that contained the knowledge of how to do so.

  The list went on. And on.

  “Damn you, Rodriguez!” Santiago said, his tongue oily and foul as it tripped over the man’s name. “I trusted you, thought you were different than the rest. And this . . . This is how you repay me.”

  Eighty-eight Servicemen and -women had been killed in the Exodus. Rodriguez’s scheme had been exceptionally well planned. Thirty soldiers killed in the backwash as the commandeered XV launched from Ship, their bodies incinerated beyond recognition. Twenty-eight more blown to bits in the explosions that had rifled through Ship, destroying system after crucial system, rendering Ship a shadowed husk of its former efficiency. Twelve died of injuries sustained in minor accidents—the explosions had weakened bulkheads, torn through retaining walls, and devastated a medical wing. Fifteen killed in firefights with the rebellious soldiers who had gone over to Rodriguez’s side. Three buried beneath tons of rubble, beyond any hope of recovering their bodies.

  Santiago had seen action before. He had seen death before. Death and destruction, and the potential for both, went hand in glove with Hegemony Service. He had stormed the bastions of resistance fighters, men being vaporized by pulse weapons at either side of him, challenging the threat of instant death and emerging victorious. He had commanded warships in the heat of interstellar combat, driven to heights of anxiety and thrill by the whine of the big guns and the percussive thrumming of missile launch. He had ordered planetary bombardments, watched from the bridge as hellbore missiles impacted the blue-green worlds sitting below him and exploded, demolishing strongholds and cities alike.


  He knew death. It was an old companion to him. A hated, familiar idol that claimed hero and coward alike, at whim. It held no mysteries for him.

  But this . . . this was different. This was a betrayal. A crime. A sin. Murder, on a scale that would have earned Rodriguez an agonizing death within the bounds of the Hegemony.

  ShipsNet chimed, dispelling Santiago’s bleak foray into the realm of accusation and recrimination. He queued comm, and his secretary’s grime-smudged face winked onto his display.

  “Captain, the crew is assembled,” she said, her voice tight, clipped. A good soldier. Standing by her duty, despite the morass of confusion that enveloped Ship.

  “Very good, Ensign. Have the assembly called to order and I’ll be down presently.”

  “Will you be needing assistance, sir?” She said it matter-of-factly, without criticism. Good material.

  “No. I can manage on my own, Ensign.”

  “Very well, sir,” she said, and disconnected.

  Santiago stretched, groaning at the pain but refusing to give in to it, and gathered the materials he would need for the briefing. Before he left his office he cast a last glance at the viewscreen mounted on the outer wall. It displayed the arc of the planet immediately surrounding ShipSite, desolate and empty, covered with the pervading landskin.

  Somewhere out there was Rodriguez.

  “Soon. Soon, Rodriguez. I’ll come for you. I’ll come for you, and nothing will stop me.” He turned from the viewscreen and strode with certain, measured steps toward the door.

  Santiago stepped out onto the makeshift stage that had been erected in the only mess hall that remained in operating condition. Before him gathered the soldiers remaining in his command. They fell quiet, the bedlam of individual conversations trailing into silence, and watched him, waiting.

  “I didn’t expect to ever be addressing you all again. Certainly not under these circumstances.” Santiago stared into their eyes, his gaze locking on them, one after another. He noted several of the men and women exchange significant glances. One man touched his female companion’s hand, held it tight. She whispered something in his ear. He frowned, shook his head.

  “We are faced with a situation as grave as any I’ve ever encountered. Indeed, as grave, or graver, than any faced in the history of the Hegemony. I’ve never been one to believe ignorance of circumstances serves any real advantage, neither in war, nor in peace. That being the case, I’m going to lay it out for you, so that you all know what we face, and will face, as our time on this world drags on.”

  Santiago paused, letting his words sink into them. He saw fear slowly spread upon their faces. But also determination and anger. Good. Anger he could use.

  “Yesterday morning a group of dissidents led an armed revolt inside Ship. With tragic loss of life, they secured the release of Commander Alberto Rodriguez and a number of his compatriots, men and women I had ordered confined to quarters until the situation here on this world stabilized. From what we have been able to piece together, Rodriguez and his rebels were able to seize control of one of Ship’s hangars and commandeer an XV. With a cargo consisting of various small arms, powered armor, durable goods and electronics, foodstuffs, and potable water, the dissidents achieved separation, despite the valiant efforts of a number of our security personnel.

  “We’re estimating approximately two hundred twelve dissidents departed with Rodriguez, including most of the scientific staff and a number of compromised security personnel.” Santiago paused, putting his hand to his head as a fresh wave of pain spasmed up his legs. He pushed it aside, refusing to acknowledge it. These valiant men and women who had followed him across half the galaxy, deserved better. “In addition, a great deal of medical and scientific equipment was stolen, other pieces destroyed, seemingly out of spite. Most alarming, both the core and the communications array have been destroyed. We cannot communicate with the Hegemony. We’re on our own here.

  “Yet that’s not the worst of it. You all know we lost a number of vital personnel, including Captain Luther, who assumed command in the wake of my recent . . . difficulties. Casualties are estimated at eighty-eight dead, two hundred thirty-one seriously injured. Primarily due to a hidden virus program that launched with the XV’s departure. This virus rendered the fusion core of Ship inoperable.” He sighed. “It’s not repairable. And without it, the null shield has failed. We cannot stop the encroachment of the biomass, nor defend ourselves with sufficient force should another attack of the . . . drakes, as Rodriguez called them . . . come against us again. Our heavy weapons are disabled. Again, they are not repairable.

  “We are operating on reserve battery power alone. At present usage, estimates on reliable power range from twelve to twenty-four standard hours. After that, only essential functions can be maintained.”

  A great wave of disquiet traveled through the room. Voices raised in alarm. The babble of conversations swelled, becoming an amorphous, roiling cacophony. Santiago’s head began to pound.

  “Mechanics is working on rigging substitute power sources—windmills and solar collectors. In addition, we’ve managed to tap a geothermal node beneath Ship and should be able to convert enough power to keep vital systems active. But the null shield is gone. The heavy weapons are gone. Nothing, short of another fusion core, can power them effectively.”

  Santiago stepped away from the podium. He strode forward, standing on the edge of the stage, and seemed to spear them all with his intense gaze. “You all know me. This mission was mine, before . . . before my stroke. I voluntarily stepped down and allowed others to assume command. Well, that’s changed. In the wake of the significant loss of life and the critical loss of talent and technology, I’m assuming command once more. Effective immediately, this facility is under martial law. You, as the remaining military personnel ’board Ship, are my enforcing arm. You will report directly to Gunnery Sergeant MacCallum, who will coordinate everything through me.”

  Santiago gestured toward the door at the far end of the stage, the door through which he had emerged earlier. He heard the unmistakable whir and thrum of powered battle armor, and out of the shadows came a massive figure. The overhead lights cast sparkles across the gleaming plasteel plates of MacCallum’s armored figure. Huge black coils snaked across his shoulders, and on an articulated arm swung the cruel cylinder of a flamer. The visor of MacCallum’s helmet was recessed, revealing his rugged, no-nonsense features.

  Mac cleared his throat, the sound amplified by the armor’s internal speakers. “The captain’s spoken about what the techies are doing to resolve the power situation. That’s fine. That’s good. That’s not my area, however. I’m a fighter, a warrior. It’s what I do best. And it’s what I’m going to be concentrating on. We’re not going to sit idly by and wait for this planet to assault us. And we’re not going to sit on our collective asses while that loony Rodriguez makes off with equipment and personnel that are vital to our survival. No.

  “What we’re going to do, soldiers, is what we’re paid to do. Make war, pure and simple. We’re going after Rodriguez and his crew. And when we’re done with them, we’re going to tame this planet for the Hegemony.”

  Chapter 25

  Rian struggled to his knees, then climbed to his feet, a task made all the more difficult by the restraints still encircling his torso and the heave and pitch of the rolling landskin. Glancing down, he noticed hairline fractures snaking across the chitinous outer shell of the tentacles. He strained, testing the breaks. Chunks of the outer shell flaked away, falling with muffled patters to the mottled, festering landskin. The taut fibers beneath the chitin stretched. Stretched, but refused to give. They snapped back elastically when he relaxed.

  Sighing, Rian breathed deep, gathering his strength. There might have been a bit of slack around his middle arm, enough to possibly allow him to slide it free. That done, extricating himself from the bonds would be simple. Sweat dripped down his forehead, trickling into his eyes. The close air of his little pocket was
hot and moist, pumped through countless layers of landskin from the surface to this deep, closed-off place. He shook his head, sprinkling droplets of perspiration. Bile and rancid, acidic tastes stained his tongue, and he spit to clear his palate. His throat hurt where the shattering tube had sliced into its lining.

  His spittle sizzled on the landskin, thin curls of smoke rising. His bubble shivered, and the landskin pulled back, attempting to draw away from Rian’s saliva. Rian stared at it, puzzled by the bizarre reaction.

  He relaxed for a moment, calming himself, working in miniscule increments to gain slack in the tentacles. Heaving, straining, Rian felt the bonds stretch once more, giving a little. He shrugged his middle arm, working it upwards, tearing layers of skin from his forearm. The oozing blood seemed to help; his arm slid slowly upward. A moment later he jerked it free. He collapsed to his knees. Beneath him, the landskin rolled, shifting, flowing as if to escape contact with his skin.

  In a short time Rian succeeded in freeing himself. He tossed the loose tentacles away and squatted, resting. He coughed up a great wad of blood and mucus and spit. The landskin shivered as the spittle struck it, agitation traveling outward in expanding rings of disturbed flesh.

  Curious.

  Exhaustion and consuming pain in his throat forced him to his hands and knees. As he hunched over and gagged on thick clots of blood caught in his throat, he realized that the pain had begun to fade. Warmth spread out from the center of his chest, flooding his limbs with tingling heat. The warmth brought a feeling of comfort, of renewed strength. Of power.

  He sat back on the landskin, feeling it flow beneath his buttocks, pulling away.

  Now that he was free, he took a moment to rethink his situation, admitting to himself that things had gotten worse, despite his certainty while in the pupal tube that he had reached the nadir of his existence. He sat trapped in a tight sphere of landskin, without any sense of direction, breathing stagnant air and tasting his own blood, the only light the pervading phosphorescent glow of the landskin itself.