by Eric Nylund
Another crash, more final, and then the thunder of heavy footsteps. Just around the corner. Okay, boys, time to go.
Lopez shoved MacCraw into the room, catching Percy’s harness and dragging him back in as Smith scanned his hand again and sealed the door.
“Quiet,” Smith murmured. “It may go straight past us.”
Lopez held her breath, and counted rosary beads in her mind, in time to the thumpthump-thumpthump of uneven running, drawing closer, closer, flying right past.
Waited until the sound died away, until it had been silent for some time, before exhaling.
“Your friend is looking for you,” Smith said with a kind of gallows humor, cringing when Lopez raised her hand. He hadn’t earned the right to joke with them.
“Another black bloody box,” she muttered. “What’s the point of a black box you can’t see out of? Masterminds at work.”
“Masterminds at work, sir.”
She ignored the ONI agent. Let him waste energy on sarcasm. “Ready?” A round of nods. “Smith, the door, and keep your mouth shut.”
Whatever had happened in the lab, it was over now.
No lighting, no emergency lighting. Their flashlights bit out pieces of the room, little snippets of chaotic destruction. Glass smashed to hell and back, crunchy on the hard floor. The walls dented, with a sickly green fuzz growing in patches. Benches and cupboards overturned. Blood drying and tacky on the walls and ceiling. She’d become jaded. It didn’t really register as any different from the decor in the rest of the ship. The Mona Lisa had been turned into a vast garbage pit, a nightmare for insurance adjusters.
But: the smell hit like a fist, a shudder and cringe running through them on that first inhale. Where did that smell come from? Lopez had never experienced it before the Mona Lisa. Ever. It combined the bitterness of the inside of a walnut shell with, as far as Lopez could tell, something from way up inside a dog’s ass.
“Geez, Sarge,” MacCraw groaned, as if she were somehow responsible.
“Buck up, Private,” Lopez said. “The rest of us have had to smell your cologne all day.”
He had no answer to that.
As they fanned out, Lopez barking out the usual refrain—secure the doors, don’t let your guard down—she realized this must’ve been ground zero. Whatever Smith had done, whatever he’d really done, it had happened here. The remains of scientific equipment, so broken, so mixed together, resembled the mixed bag of wares available at some infernal flea market. Nothing she could put a name or purpose to.
Outbreak, but not a Covenant outbreak.
But the room was empty, just the aftermath and their trembling shadows, big and bold against the walls. Whatever had been here had moved on.
“The way to the bridge looks clear,” Mahmoud said, coming back to them.
Could it be that easy? No, it couldn’t. But still she told Mahmoud, good work. Sent Percy and Singh to check the other exits. MacCraw stared at a thick growth of green pus on the wall.
“What were you doing here?” Kept her voice low, as if the ghosts of whatever had trashed the lab might hear her otherwise. Left boot prints in the congealed blood as she shifted her stance.
Smith slumped on a data bank, running his hand over it almost sadly, the smashed casing and shattered circuits.
“I told you, research and development,” Smith said, with a touch of scorn. “Like ONI’s always done. You should be thanking me. We came up with some interesting data that will help us maximize the damage inflicted by our weapons on the Covenant. They’ve developed a natural resistance to the radiation put out by their plasma weapons—a forced evolution, from the look of it. With further research, we’ll be able to use it against them, and to help us treat plasma burns, too.”
Mahmoud listened to this answer with what seemed to Lopez like derision. They all knew how long it took for any “development” to reach the people on the ground. “Yeah. Right. What about your ‘Flood’?”
The glimmer of pride Smith had displayed, listing his accomplishments, vanished. “We could have solved one of the greatest threats to the human species since the Covenant.”
Mahmoud, disbelieving. “ ‘Since the Covenant’? Why didn’t you just focus on them, sir? They’re kicking our asses all over the galaxy.”
Smith smiled, or tried to, swollen face barely moving. “The Flood is pure of intent. Relentless. Almost primordial. And it is a virus, spreads as fast as one. I had to study it. We had to study it. So we used Covenant.”
“You didn’t have to do anything,” Mahmoud said. “If the Covenant knew we were taking prisoners, can you imagine—”
Lopez noticed the death stare Smith gave Mahmoud.
Smith still wasn’t telling the truth, but he wasn’t lying either. Misdirection, misinformation, she didn’t trust any of it. She stepped up to the smashed viewing pane of a small cell. Human skin and flesh caught on the jagged glass.
“Keep talking,” she said, as she shone her flashlight inside. Stared at a leg in the small cell. Forgotten, like it was a dog’s chew toy. Human. A slipper had ended up against the opposite wall. Around the ankle and shin the now familiar orange fabric, half an ID number visible through the gore.
“We were looking for weaknesses, a cure, an antibody, anything. We only had one infected Covenant, but we needed to see how it worked, how it spread. Just . . . it’s strong. So strong.” He trailed off. Suddenly tired, defeated by something larger than any of them. And yet, was that the barest hint of respect for the Flood creeping into his tone?
“You were testing on prisoners.”
“It may be abhorrent to you,” Smith said, “but such measures will be what wins us the war. Don’t tell me you’re getting soft for an alien race now, Sergeant.”
No. She had no problem with anyone torturing Covenant. That wasn’t the point.
“We face extinction,” he said, almost like a politician. “We have to win this war. No matter what the cost.”
No matter what the cost.
“You weren’t trying to cure Covies of your Flood,” she said, unable to look at him. “This is a prison ship. A civilian prison ship. You were testing on prisoners.”
Something in her tone must have let him know exactly what she meant. Written in the set of her shoulders, the cords standing out on her jaw.
Smith gave Lopez the half-embarrassed cringe-grin people with no integrity gave you when you caught them doing something wrong and they weren’t really sorry. But wanted to pretend they were.
“It’s a big, bad universe, Sergeant. Covenant aren’t the worst of it.”
Lopez raised her head, shifting her balance to her heel.
“You’ve done what you thought was necessary,” Smith said. “And so have I.”
God, he was fast. Faster than she would’ve thought. Missed it in the pat down? Hidden in the lab? A knife in his hand, and Mahmoud’s throat slit, his rifle sliding naturally into Smith’s hands, he got a burst off just as Lopez raised her weapon. She grunted with the impact as the bullets smacked into the armor on her left side. Went down on one knee. Could feel the bruising. Could feel she’d live. Another scar.
Was already reaching for Mahmoud, even though it was too late for him. There was a curve of new blood spattered on the floor, as emphatic as a scimitar.
By then, Smith was through the hatch, sealing it behind him.
>Benti 1530 hours
“Where are we?” Benti asked Rimmer.
“Guard’s tea room. God’s waiting room?” He peeked up over the window. “Didn’t really get a tour of the ship, you know.”
They’d been lucky, nothing had been on the other side of the ladder. Without the schematic Orlav had carried, they were running blind, but the engine room was back here somewhere. They’d passed one very helpful sign, directing them on their way—the only time she’d felt like they were someplace even halfway civilized.
She wasn’t sure how she was going to explain Henry to the sarge when they met up. Henry kept c
lose to Rimmer, for all the good it did the Covenant. Rimmer kept looking around and starting at shadows.
“You said ‘Flood,’ before. What did you mean?”
Rimmer pitched his voice low. Henry craned to listen, even if he couldn’t understand. “Some uniform came on board. He was with ONI. After that, we weren’t allowed out of our cells. Sponge baths, if we were lucky. I think they brought the Covies on board then. We could hear them talking. Could smell them, too. Sorry, Henry.” He gave the Elite an apologetic pat on the arm, which seemed to surprise the alien. “No one told us anything. Not even the guards knew what was going on. We made some slipspace jump, to here. Wherever here is. Could hear them bringing stuff on board all the time, and tossing it back out, like they were looking for something. Guess they found it. Started taking people, you know. And Covies. They didn’t seem to care if we saw the Covies, then.” He stopped. “Think they figured we weren’t going anywhere, and it didn’t matter what we knew.” He kept patting Henry’s arm. In his words, in the flat lack of emotion in his voice, there was an absence of dread that was louder than anything he could have screamed. And he kept patting Henry’s arm like he’d developed a nervous tic.
“The air con on this ship, you know how it is. It carries the noise funny. We heard things. No one they took ever came back. None of them. ”
Something small and hard crystallized in Benti’s mind. “Nothing good ever comes from ONI,” she said low, with vehemence that surprised even her.
Clarence was paying attention, she noticed, but trying hard to act like he wasn’t. What the heck is that about?
“There was a guard, fat asshole called Murray; he found out about the Flood. Some new biological weapon, I dunno, something. He said, he said,” a tremor entered his voice, “he said they were studying it. Here. With us.” He stopped moving, hand not quite on Henry’s arm.
Henry’s head drooped, and Rimmer patted him again. Henry flinched.
Rimmer took his hand away, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“——,” Henry said, with poor grace, and looked at Benti expectantly.
That brought Benti up short. She stared at the four jaws of his mouth, curled meek against his face now, little teeth fitting into the grooves of his gums. She’d never had the opportunity to watch a Covenant Elite speak before. It was one of the grossest things she had ever seen, and she’d seen plenty of gross. She could still see down his throat. It wasn’t pretty, either.
Clarence shifted slightly, bemused, and raised an eyebrow at her. She raised both eyebrows helplessly, looked at Rimmer.
“Um. What did he just say?”
Rimmer stared back at them like they were asking the impossible. “How should I know? But maybe he’s trying to tell his side of the story. All that black stuff on the walls of the room you found us in? That was him writing down words. I couldn’t read any of it.”
Henry slumped, clearly fed up, the tip of his cricket bat thumping into the floor, and muttered something that didn’t require translation.
Rimmer gave Henry a pointed look that said don’t interrupt again, and continued: “Something happened, I don’t know, I think the Covies made a break for it or something. And in all the chaos, I guess . . . the Flood got out. Covies let some of us out, too, which might surprise you but by then we’d all been through the same stuff. All got the same fate on this ship. ’Course, it didn’t help at first, because the guards didn’t like it, and they started on us, all of us prisoners, and some of the Covies didn’t like that and started on anything human. But me and Henry, we’re cool. We knew. Bigger problems on board.”
“And you’ve been hiding ever since.”
“A day, I think. Maybe two. You lose track of time real fast around here.”
“So fast?”
Rimmer nodded. “We gotta get off this ship. Soon, you know?”
Benti couldn’t disagree. She also couldn’t tell him Henry would be shot on sight once they reached the hangar, that she’d do it herself if she had to. Because the sarge wasn’t going to like this, not at all. But Henry would be useful getting back to the Pelican, even if only to provide another target for the Flood. Besides, Clarence, hanging back, always had his rifle pointed vaguely in Henry’s direction.
“Do you know where this leads?” She pointed out the door. Henry shivered faintly.
“Yeah,” Rimmer said. “D cell block. I think the engines are behind them. We should . . . we should find a different way.”
“Why?”
“That’s where they took all the dead. That’d be like going into an angry beehive right about now.”
>Lopez 1537 hours
Lopez wasn’t sure, but she thought Mahmoud might’ve mumbled “. . . and then comes ice cream” as he’d bled out onto the floor in her arms, his blood mingling with all the rest. His hand had been warm, just like John Doe’s had been, and she’d been just about as much help.
Another bead down. It wore on her, and never stopped wearing. But at least she could take his dog tags. Tell everyone back on the ship how well he’d served. They were in her pocket along with Smith’s security pass.
“That’s on me, not you guys,” she’d said as Singh and MacCraw had wordlessly bandaged her up, with a kind of care she guessed meant respect. Even standoffish Percy helped.
Now she hardly even felt it, except as a sting if she bent or turned suddenly. Just the four of them now, heading toward the bridge down the longest corridor in the world. The only point of interest, an intersection about thirty-five meters down. Didn’t like turning corners any more. Didn’t like it one bit.
Trying to give up on the weird taste in her mouth from losing Smith, from letting him take Mahmoud out. She could see him, in her mind’s eye, popping out of some secret door somewhere, trying to make his way by secret spook passages and guile, to the Pelican. No, he wouldn’t make it. Wouldn’t last long on his own. Even gladder now that she’d beaten him up. A small victory, but still. He’d feel it for the rest of his short life. He’d remember her.
The corridor was so long that Percy had been tossing flares down toward the end of it like he was playing in some weird shuffleboard tournament. Reached farther than their flashlights. Flares they had plenty of, bullets not so much any more. They’d taken a break to wolf down some MREs, but still she was hungry.
MacCraw’d acquitted himself well, too, despite his bitching. When they’d made it back to the Red Horse, she’d tell Foucault that. He scooped up the flares they reached, squinting and handing them back to Percy to throw again. Wished they could do the same with bullets.
Singh came to a sudden halt.
“Talk to me,” Lopez said.
“I heard something.”
Lopez studied him a moment. Singh was holding it together. Barely. Don’t get jumpy.
“Flare, Percy.”
He obliged. Flung it as far as he could, until it came to a hissing stop at the far edge of their vision.
Right at the feet of a silhouette, the figure of a Marine.
MacCraw frowned. Singh held a hand up to his eyes to shield them from the glare.
The figure came out of the flaming mandala of the flare, roughly fifty meters away.
“Is that . . . ?” MacCraw began and then trailed off. “That can’t be . . .”
“It’s Ayad,” Singh said. “It’s definitely Ayad.”
Lopez could see him clearly now, running toward them. Loping almost. Trying to make a sound in the back of his throat, but it was coming out like thnnnnnn or thmmmmmm. Should’ve been a hum, more like a moan. Holding out a hand as if in greeting. A huge smile on his face.
MacCraw let out a whoop. “Ayad!”
“It’s not Ayad,” Lopez warned.
“What do you mean it’s not Ayad?” Singh said. “Of course it is. It’s Ayad.”
Ayad hadn’t had a smile that went from ear to ear. Or something growing out of the back of his head. Ayad hadn’t had an extra arm with a claw, held a little back behind him, as if
to disguise it. Ayad hadn’t been preceded by a smell that made Lopez’s eyes water.
But MacCraw kept babbling on, like he didn’t want to believe it, and Singh just fed into that, almost manic. Percy backed up until he was level with her, would’ve slipped back farther if she’d let him.
This wasn’t the way Lopez wanted it to end.
When Ayad was about forty meters away, she put a bullet through his left shoulder. It knocked him off his feet. Which brought MacCraw and Singh out of their trance or whatever the hell it had been. A lot harder for them not to see the problem.
Ayad rose with a howl, and kept coming, running now on all fours like something born to it, with MacCraw babbling in a different way now.
“Don’t fire until he’s closer,” Lopez ordered. “Right after he’s cleared that intersection.”
Ayad reached the intersection—and something with all the speed and weight of a freight train smashed into him and splattered him up against the opposite wall. Ayad fell as the creature howled at him, then picked him up and held him with one monstrous hand out in front, turning toward them. The other arm weighed down with what could almost have been antlers coming out of its palm.
The suddenness of the act, the viciousness of it, shocked Lopez. Threw her for a second. Just a second.
“That’s an Elite, ” Percy said. “Look at the size of it!”
Lopez had never seen one bigger, either. Its head almost bumped against the ceiling. As it came toward them down the corridor, she could see the striations of infection running up and down its legs, the suggestion of an outline on the Elite’s chest of the same fungal-jellyfish thing that’d taken Rakesh.
The infected Elite turned this way and that, sniffing, as it ran. Some perversion of a howl tore up through the torso. Out through what was left of the mouth. One of the jaw hinges hung, snapped and loose. A single tendon kept it attached.
“We’re not outrunning that,” Lopez said calmly. “Singh, kneel and go low, for the legs. MacCraw, keep your cool and aim for Ayad. Make it drop Ayad before it gets to us. Percy, heart. I’ll go for the head. Now . . . fire!”