by Rupert Segar
Conversion to the Brood King’s cause had changed Garth’s allegiance but not his basic personality. As the colonel understood it, being infected by the spider mites did not change his character, just his motivation. His priorities had been re-ordered. Garth had spent hours enumerating his primary motivations:
Protect the Brood King
As far as possible, protect the Brood King’s children
Keep the spider invasion secret
Extend the Empire by whatever means
Conquer the galaxy
Sacrifice anyone else to the cause
Supplant both the Brood King and the Emperor and become the ruler of the galaxy
Garth smiled grimly to himself. His new priorities seemed highly logical, albeit there was a contradiction between objective 1 and number 7. It is just a matter of timing, thought Garth to himself. I will recognise the opportunity when it arises and I will act. I might just have to encourage the right conditions and circumstances.
Garth felt a tightness in his chest. He had stopped breathing. His hands were locked in fists and the grin on his face was frozen. It will pass, he said to himself. It was nearly two minutes before the tiny spiders inside his nervous system and his brain let go. Garth was gulping in air but he was content. He had won another tiny victory against the Brood King and his ghastly offspring.
The colonel suspected the large spider may have sensed his potential for disloyalty when his sticky legs embraced the Garth in Orion’s loading bay. What other reason could the spider have for sending him to the other side of the galaxy on a fool’s errand? Old Earth was no treasure house: it was more myth than reality. The histories spoke of the cradle of humanity as a burnt out basket case; a home for rejects and those who never had any get up and go. The mission he had been given was not of the “utmost importance,” the words used by the Brood King. It was banishment.
Garth and his fleet were one third of the way to old Earth. They were travelling spinward following a chain of portals in the Outer Norma spiral arm. The further away from the Brood King he was, the more he felt like his own man. The lights in the cabin dimmed indicating it was evening by ship’s time. Garth handed control over to a junior officer. Imperial Valiant was conducting the transition of the fleet through to the next portal. Every twenty five minutes, a warship would emerge out of the gateway, travel onwards for a few kilometres, and then take a reverse course back to the portal. Between exit and entry, Imperial Valiant would reset the gateway, sending the vessel onto the next leg of the fleet’s marathon expedition. It may be an epic journey, thought Garth, but it does go on and on. The Colonel left the night shift to continue with the repetitively tedious task. On his way out he gave an order to one of the two marines guarding the door.
“Tell Sub-Lieutenant Wright to report to my cabin in half-an-hour,” he said to the soldier. I’m definitely feeling myself again, although I’m fairly confident young Daisy will be feeling me even more intensely, he said to himself, anticipating a new conquest.
+
The following morning, an hour before the end of the night shift, Garth re-entered the control cabin. The three officers all jumped to their feet saluting. Garth waved his hand dismissively.
“At ease, I understand you’ve had some action overnight, XO.”
“Yes sir,” said Garth’s second in command. “There was some opposition from the native population on the other side of the portal but it was minor. I came on shift at midnight. I did not feel we needed to disturb the colonel.”
“Nothing on this ship escapes my attention. I have been monitoring reports on an hourly basis,” said Garth in a hard tone, watching the one of the junior officer’s lower lip quiver. “However, XO, I believe you have handled the incident well.”
“Sir, the last few vessels of the fleet are going through shortly. We will be finished by 10 o’clock, sir, when we make the transition ourselves. The fleet and what remains of the planet will be ready for inspection then.
+
Imperial Valiant emerged from a portal above an unnamed world. No doubt the occupants had a name for the planet but it was not recorded on the stolen Guardian maps. As usual, the creators of the network of gateways had chosen a largely barren desert world. Garths holo projector showed a largely red sand covered planet with only a few patches of green. Most of these fertile regions were marked with symbols showing they had received low level nuclear strikes. The holo projection showed a clutter of disabled ships, none of them any bigger than a shuttle.
“They were technologists, sir. The worse sort,” said the XO. “When the first cruiser came through, they tried using a logic bomb attack. When that failed, several vessels tried to ram the cruiser. It was suicide.”
“I see you took reprisals on the population by nuking them,” said Garth.
“The captain of the first cruiser was forced to, sir. Every community seemed to have its own ion cannon emplacement. Pretty powerful they were too. After he reported back on a tachyon beam, we gave him the go ahead for complete subjugation. We had to wipe them all out.”
“Shame,” said Colonel Garth. “Now, we’ll probably never know what the planet was called. Start organising the transit to the next portal.”
Only sixty gateways to go, he thought.
Chapter 4: The Brood King’s Price
Lieutenant Gorky Parks had become the Brood King’s odd job man. The work may not have been as interesting or taxing as being Colonel Garth’s henchman but it had its rewards. Parks had the power of life and death over the political prisoners being ferried up to the flag ship Orion. As they disembarked from their transports, the witless fools were unaware they were there merely as sport or as food. Many were destined to be shoved out of an airlock by the Emperor; although his appetite for sadistic murder had definitely fallen off since he had found a new loyalty. The majority of the detainees were destined to be live food for the children of the Brood King. Parks relished the sight of the hapless wretches thrashing about as they disappeared under a sea of spiders. Parks delayed death for a few of the captives, all of them young, nubile women. They would meet their unsavoury end when he tired of them or they stopped resisting him.
Gorky had grown up in one of the Empires more brutal orphanages. As a child, he had been abused by older boys and humiliated by the girls. They all called him “dog face.” One of the leading bullies, Erik Cranson, made Gorky sleep in a dog basket in the crowded dorm. Cranson would regularly rape Gorky in full sight of the rest of the dorm’s inmates. The assault became a ritual. The bully would make Gorky get on his hands and knees as he put a collar and double lead on him. Then he was forced to pleasure the boy before being sodomised. Cranson would shout “Good boy, good boy,” yanking the leads as he came inside Gorky. Other boys cheered and later made Gorky eat their shit because “that’s what dogs do.” The only thing that kept Gorky sane was his desire for revenge, revenge on everyone.
Gorky ran his tongue across his front teeth. He savoured the memory of the night he had turned on Cranson. He could almost taste the blood. Using his unusually sharp and pronounced incisors, he ripped the bully’s right carotid artery. Cranson whimpered as blood spurt from his neck, Gorky kicked him off his bed and into the plastiform dog basket, where the bully lay dying. Gorky reached under the pillow on the bed and retrieved the bully’s weapons, a knife and a small stunner. He stood and faced the on looking crowd and brayed his victory. With weapons in hand and blood on his face, he was a formidable sight. From that night he became the monarch of the dorm and, later, the bully boss of the entire institution.
The orphanage officers cared nothing for brutality and murder among the children: these were unwanted and uncared for outcast kids. The only avenue open for them was recruitment to the Imperial Navy as grunts when they were fifteen-years-of-age. The death of Cranson was regarded as a mere convenience, one less mouth to feed. This official indifference allowed Gorky to exact his revenge on those who had mistreated him. He devised unendurable tortures for th
e children who had abused him. One by one, Gorky raped the girls who had held him in such disdain and sodomised the boys with a wooden truncheon smeared with chilli paste. The crying of the girls and screaming of the boys gave Gorky huge satisfaction. His rule was tyrannous cruelty. His persecution of normal looking children set in train his lifetime career as a sadistic torturer. His indifference to humanity continued through his work as a Black Ops officer right up to his current duties as the Brood King’s henchman, conveying victims to be eaten alive by spiders.
Today’s delivery for the Brood King was different. Instead of a gaggle of political prisoners there was just one man. The disgraced vice admiral had his hands bound behind his back. He hardly needed to be handcuffed; the demoted officer was a broken man. Parks recognised him as Tim Bartz, the cruiser captain who had helped him and Colonel Garth capture the renegade, Chief Engineer Yelena Kolowski. How the mighty have fallen, thought Parks: one day, Bartz was blessed by the Brood King and given a battleship; the next, he is a worthless scumbag who deserted his fellows. As the tall doors to loading bay 7 opened, Parks shoved Bartz between the shoulder blades and the muttering man staggered forward.
Parks looked out over the cathedral sized hold. Since his own conversion, Parks had seen the loading bay completely transformed. To the left of the entrance doors, were the feeding pits; a gruesome collection of open tanks full of tiny grubs and nursery spiders that were armed with sharp incisors. This was the normal destination for political dissidents. Parks would force the prisoners onto narrow planks stretched across the open tank. Then he would either shove them in or jiggle the boards until they fell. The sea of nursery spiders would attack the hapless prisoners, cutting bit of flesh from their writhing bodies. The meaty morsels were fed to the grubs, which bored into fat, skin and organs. A continuous chain of grub spiders, engorged with blood and flesh, crawled to the nursery cells, where they in turn were eaten by Brood queens, which laid eggs almost continuously. The Brood King had told Parks that there were five basic types of spider, although many more varieties could be created if needed. On the far right, there were drone spiders swarming over freight containers which they carefully filled with egg sacks.
The busiest area in the bay was the section by the space doors. This was where the Brood King had made his home. The spider lord had surrounded itself with what looked like technical flotsam and jetsam, but the scraps of computer desks and holo projectors were all in working order and connected by twisting cables to the flag ship’s main frame. It seemed the Brood King’s prize possession was the Sentinel, a sentient computer used to protect guardian ships. This particular mechanism had been captured in an ambush around Duluth 7. The Brood King spent hours trying to talk to the mechanism. Parks noticed the captured crewman who was supposed to have some affinity with the Sentinel was still scampering around like a small monkey. I thought he was going to be the Brood King’s next mouthpiece, said Parks to himself. I expected him to be just a severed head by now.
Parks shoved the disgraced officer to his knees in front of the Brood King. Parks himself stepped back, wary of what was going to happen.
“My Lord, my Lord, I have failed thee,” sobbed Bartz.
Some of the large spider’s legs wrapped themselves around the man pulling him closer to the two globular black eyes and drooling mouth.
“Let us see,” said the head suspended underneath the Brood King’s stomach sack. One of the spider’s legs had multiple bifurcations producing a cluster of narrow tendrils. The fine wires like fronds pierced the open brain of the disembodied head. The impuses from the Brood King were translated into words mouthed by a man long dead. “More than 250 vessels set off to conquer Fair Isles … only fifteen returned.”
“My Lord, they trapped our fleet in a zone of subspace.”
“Yes, I have heard of this ‘subspace,’ but I am more concerned about what happened when you were freed from that temporary inconvenience.”
“We tried to attack them but they tricked us with anti-flux missiles.”
“You should have been rallying your ships and reorganising the line.”
“Yes, my Lord, yes, yes,” cried Bartz miserably.
“Instead you ran away,” said the severed head coughing and spitting out blue liquid.
“I needed to bring you information about their new weapon.”
“All the information I need is here,” said the Brood King, tightening its grip on Bartz’s face and slicing off the top of his skull with one of its razor sharp legs. The disgraced officer began to shake from shock but the spider held him fast. The razor appendage moved to Bartz’s neck and deftly sliced off his head.
“Parks, you can leave now. As you can see, I have a new mouthpiece, but first I must extract this coward’s experiences. So, for a little while, I will be silent.”
The old mouthpiece was dropped on the ground and the head rolled away. The bunch of thin tendrils now slapped over onto the top of Bartz’s head, which looked more like a soft boiled egg with the shell removed and the yolk showing. As Parks watched, the fronds wormed their way into the former vice admiral’s brain. The Brood King’s henchman was grateful to leave.
Chapter 5: Pools of Light.
There were screams in the Temple of Creation. The loud shrieking echoed up the stairwells and along the corridors as Art, Zeeann and Asclepius ran towards the source of the disturbance. The screaming stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
“I hope it is not the Pools of Light,” said Zeeann, loping along a corridor.
“I fear it is,” said Asclepius, her father, as he rounded a corner and entered a large cavern.
Art, who had been running at full pelt to keep up with the long limbed aliens almost crashed into Zeeann when she suddenly came to a halt. Catching his breath, Art looked across the large chamber, a full 50 metres across. There were twenty or more of pools scattered across the room. Each was roughly one metre high and one-and-a-half metres across. They were lit from above by what seemed to be beams of sunlight. They reminded Art of the ornamental pond his parents had at home, when he was a child. Although a closer look at the nearest showed the cylinders of what might be water had no visible walls. There were one or two nuns at each pond, their wide faces dappled with reflected light.
In the middle of the chamber, a group of women were clustered around two nuns who appeared to have collapsed. They, it appeared, had been the source of the screaming. Zeeann and her father strode directly towards the group, Art followed. The crowd parted for Zeeann and her father. When some of the aliens saw Art, they took several steps back.
One of the fallen nuns was recovering as Asclepius approached.
“Sister, what ails you?” he said.
The nun sat up and pulled her legs in front of her. She turned her face to Zeeann’s father.
“There was something of unimaginable evil. It was lurking at the edge of the pool as if it was waiting for us.”
Zeeann crouched down beside the nun.
“Sister, you have read the minds of many a Human. You know how depraved and wicked they can be.”
“This was no Human!” said the nun with emphasis, looking into Zeeann’s eyes.
Both women put one hand to the others cheek. The crowd surrounding them was absolutely still. Art assumed they were trying to share the thoughts passing between the pair. Art almost imagined he could feel something himself, something full of dread.
Zeeann gasped and the whole of the crowd joined in. “There was something there. Something new,” she said looking up at her father.
Asclepius took one long stride to the edge of the pool and passed his fingers over the upper rim of the cylinder. Art saw a series of alien characters appear looking like brightly lit Chinese ideograms. The characters jumped out of the choppy surface of the pool, scrolled across the surface, and then submerged again. Asclepius read the script intently then turned to Art.
“This pool was connected to the closest portal to the world you call Fair Isles. There has been
a battle there between the Kargol Empire and the guardian…”
“Another battle?” said Art “Is the Kargol Empire everywhere? The Emperor is attacking the guardians?”
“It is always the way, I am afraid to say, with you humans. Down through the ages, one war after another. And, yes, the Kargol Empire is on the move, expanding on many fronts, but at Fair Isles, it has met stiff opposition. Your guardians have held off the imperial fleet.”
Art felt relief.
“Sisters Magella and Freya were in communion with a large ship called Orion …” said Zeeann before Art interrupted
“It’s the royal flag ship. That means most of the Emperor’s fleet will be there too. They won’t have a chance.”
“They have more of a chance than you think,” said Asclepius. “Your mechanical friend, Mr Angry, left your compatriots a secret weapon, almost the perfect defence.”
“But there was something else there, something worse than all the Kargol King’s warships put together. It was there on Orion,” said Zeeann.
“What?” said Art.
“I can only tell you what I saw in Sister Magella’s mind. The Pools of Light allow us to feel thought and emotion at a great distance. Sister Magella was recording the crews’ feelings aboard the flag ship following their defeat. Every individual’s thoughts were swimming in the pool, coalescing into a consensus. Magella saw something dark and menacing. A black shape was fluttering on the edge of the pool, which could only be seen through a glass darkly. When Magella and Freya peered closer, the black beady eyed shape peered back at them with more venom, more pure hatred than they could stand.”