Progeny (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Three)

by Worth, Dan

  ‘Really? If this is true then that’s incredible,’ said Macpherson. ‘It would give us a massive tactical advantage. Until now we’ve only been able to detect their ships once they emerge from hyperspace.’

  ‘This works when their ships are jumping. It should also allow us to detect Shaper agents much more easily,’ said Isaacs. ‘You should also be able to tell if a ship’s crew has been enslaved by the Shapers or not merely by scanning it. The Nahabe seemed confident that Commonwealth hyperspace sensor technology could be modified accordingly and they’ve asked that this information be passed to the Arkari and other friendly races as long as secrecy can be assured. We have all the necessary data under lock and key onboard our ship.’

  ‘I’ll need to pass this up the chain of command, but yes, that would seem sensible. The Hadrian will have to remain on station for now, but I’ll arrange for another ship to take you to Earth. As you probably noticed, we have a lot of clearing up to do.’

  ‘Captain, if you don’t mind me asking, just what did happen here?’ said Isaacs.

  ‘The Shapers happened here, Captain,’ said Macpherson. ‘Admiral Cox’s forces destroyed Galileo Station and everyone in it, not to mention the hundreds of ships in the vicinity, and then they headed straight for Earth.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then Admiral Chen sent them straight to hell.’

  ‘Chen? Really? Wow.’

  ‘From what I gather she was badly outnumbered, but she managed to hold the enemy off long enough for the Nahabe to send their relief force. That woman is a goddamn hero, Captain Isaacs.’

  ‘I’ve seen what happens to people who get on her bad side,’ Isaacs replied. ‘It almost makes me feel sorry for the Shapers. So, the Nahabe got here in time after all.’

  ‘Yes indeed. They’re still in the system, cloaked of course. It was they who detected you, Captain Isaacs, not us, though doubtless you would have been picked up in Jovian space had Galileo station and its arrays still been here. We watched you sneaking around and wondered if you were a hostile craft. You were lucky that you weren’t fired upon.’

  ‘Sorry, we had to be sure that you were all still human before we charged in and handed over the goods. Also, if the Nahabe have sent ships here, they need to see this data too.’

  ‘Agreed. However, I’d be interested to know where you got your stealth module from, given that it’s obviously stolen experimental tech.’

  ‘Long story,’ said Isaacs. ‘I’m not even sure myself where it came from and how. Listen we picked up all sorts of strange readings coming from Arkari space. We need to get this data to them, but have you any idea what has happened to them?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Macpherson. ‘The reports I’ve seen pointed towards a massive Shaper attack across many systems coinciding with the attack on Earth, but we’ve had no confirmation. Our hyperspace monitoring arrays picked up weapon detonations large enough to devastate entire planets, but we haven’t heard anything since. Their communications network has been entirely cut off from the rest of the galaxy and not a single ship has emerged from Arkari space since the attack. Something bad happened to the Arkari, Captain Isaacs, something very bad indeed, and so far they aren’t talking to anyone.’

  Chapter 10

  Admiral Morgan had established his office as de facto leader of the renegade systems in the Governor’s former residence on the outskirts of Bolivar City, on the moon of Orinoco in the Achernar system. Governor Green hadn’t objected. He, like the leaders of all the systems that had either declared for Morgan or had been taken by force, was now a host for a Shaper agent, a puppet to their will. He could still remember the man’s screams as he was dragged away. Those memories came flooding back each time he appeared alongside the man in public broadcasts where Morgan repeatedly promised a bright new future for the Commonwealth. It would be a future free of corruption and lies. He urged the population of his new Freedom Alliance to remain calm and be watchful for any loyalist fifth column. His speeches were often accompanied by footage of the assault on Orinoco Station, a massacre attributed to Admiral Haines, a man that Morgan had repeatedly branded a war criminal. Haines’ defeated forces were scattered all over the surface of Orinoco, following their defeat at the hands of the Alliance’s new hero, Admiral Cox. Citizens were urged to remain vigilant for any survivors, to consider them armed and dangerous and to report their presence to the authorities.

  It was a lie. It was all a lie. Morgan existed in a state of constant terror. He had been assigned a staff from the Governor’s pool of personnel, but essentially he was a puppet of the Shapers. Having begged for his life, he was forced to say and do everything that he was instructed to, or else he would also be dragged away and implanted like the others. At times, the depth of his mistake threatened to overwhelm him. He’d considered suicide, but who was to say that the Shapers were not capable of re-animating his body with one of their agents inside his skull? His only instinct now was survival. He must obey his new masters.

  Daily, he was brought lists of persons to be arrested: those plotting sedition, speaking out against his new regime, questioning the presence of the strange alien ships in the skies over their worlds. He was forced to sign. Every day the lists got longer.

  And now this: Admiral Cox’s fleet had been defeated in the Solar System, the remnants of the fleet limping back to Achernar to lick their wounds. There had been no word from Admiral Cox himself, though his ship, the Germanicus, had been reported as lost. Morgan knew that the vengeance of the Shapers upon Earth would be terrible. It was just a matter of time.

  Morgan looked out of his office windows across the skyscraper dotted cityscape of Bolivar City and saw the vast form of the alien transport vessel hanging above the spaceport, ten thousand metres above the ground, partially obscured by the shifting clouds. A swarm of smaller craft moved between the ship and the spaceport as the behemoth disgorged an army of troops. Morgan wondered how his new masters would expect him to explain this one. He was about to summon his speech writer when he heard the door to his office slide quietly open.

  Morgan felt a pang of irritation. He disliked people walking into his office unbidden. He was now the President, after all. He was about to turn and remonstrate with the new arrival when they spoke.

  ‘Admiral Morgan. I wish I could say that it was a pleasure to see you again, but I think we’ve had enough lies between us, don’t you?’ The voice was rasping, metallic, though there was a glutinous quality also, as though the speaker were talking through a mouthful of fluid. Suddenly gripped with fear, Morgan turned his chair around so that he could see the new arrival, and was confronted with a truly nightmarish vision. It was Admiral Cox, or what was left of him.

  Cox stood unsteadily before him, dressed in a crisp, clean uniform onto which dripped fluids from the numerous, terrible, open wounds on his body. His skull had almost been cleaved in two by a blow that had sliced though the orbit of his right eye down to his upper jaw. Elsewhere, his exposed head and hands showed signs of massive haemorrhaging, creating mottled patches on his brown skin and rendering his remaining eyeball nearly black with blood. Inside that terrible wound to his skull, something moved. Pale tendrils, like the questing fronds of sea anemones writhed within that bloody cleft, caressing the exposed flesh and bone. Deeper within Cox’s skull, the blood slicked maggot-like form of the Shaper agent within him could be seen, peering out through the wound.

  Morgan gasped in horror, and remained rooted to his chair with fear as Cox took several unsteady steps towards him.

  ‘How could you not have known!?’ snarled Cox, gesturing with the severed stump of his wrist. As he spoke, Morgan could see those horrible tendrils within his mouth also, as well as waving from that bloody stump where his hand ought to be. ‘How could you not have known?’ Cox repeated, spraying fluids from his mouth. ‘Answer me!’

  ‘Known... known what? I... I thought...’

  ‘Thought I was dead, is that it? Hoped that we were all dead?�
��

  ‘No! N-no of course not. We had a deal, remember? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘It takes far more than being cast out of a burning spacecraft into hard vacuum to kill one of us, Admiral Morgan. Unfortunately the agony is still terrible when we are linked to the nervous systems of your imperfect bodies. However, it is nothing compared to the agony in which you are likely to find yourself on the dissection table. It will make an interesting study, to know how a two faced human can exist, especially after we remove his internal organs one by one for study.’

  ‘No! Oh god, please! I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear!’

  ‘The anti-matter missiles, Morgan. How did you forget that the Commonwealth Navy has in its possession a fleet of ships armed with anti-matter missiles equipped with jump drives? How did you not know that they had been stationed in the Solar System?’ Cox was shouting into his face now as he leaned over Morgan’s desk, Morgan reeled from the stench of blood and decaying flesh.

  ‘I swear, I had no idea. Those ships were supposed to be stationed near the border with the K’Soth Empire in case they were ever needed. It must be Haines! He must have ordered their redeployment!’

  ‘And gone over your head? You, Chief of Staff of the Navy?’

  ‘It’s possible, yes, especially after we rebelled against Earth. Those ships are very fast, there may just have been time to redeploy them.’

  ‘I still think that you are lying to us, Admiral Morgan. But it makes no difference. You will remain our puppet one way or another. You will have your uses just like this body I inhabit. The people need their hero, the fearless Admiral Cox, or else we may have to take over more ships in order to get them to follow orders. Why do you think I bothered to repair this shattered husk?’ said Cox, pointing to the activity within the terrible wound in his face.

  ‘We had a deal: no more enslavement of our people!’

  ‘Yes, we did, based on your promise of obedience.’

  ‘But these lists...’

  ‘There is an unfortunate period of adjustment. The people will learn to obey, or they will become hosts to our lesser creatures to make them obey. Hopefully, they will learn to fall in line. You must educate them, or we will take measures into our own hands. However, these recent developments cast doubt on the whole state of affairs. If you have betrayed us, we will take them all, starting with you, puppet!’ snapped Cox, jabbing the bloody stump of his wrist into Morgan’s chest.

  ‘I’m telling the truth, you have to believe me!’ Morgan begged.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ came the curt reply.

  Something was entering the room behind Cox. Morgan barely noticed it at first and mistook the motion for the random movements of a tiny fly, but more and more of the motes were becoming visible. Morgan watched as the glittering creatures poured under the small gap beneath the door before taking to the air and assembling themselves into a buzzing cloud before him. The door slid open and two marines from the residence’s security detail entered, walking in step like automatons, their faces blank and expressionless. A torrent of the creatures followed in their wake. The cloud was now fully assembled. Something began to form from the swarming creatures, a crude mockery of a human face with two hollow eyes and a wide, leering slit of a mouth.

  ‘Oh god!’ Morgan managed to say, despite fear almost rendering him speechless. ‘It’s one of them!’

  The Shaper spoke. Its voice was inside his head, like the droning of a billion insects tuned to produce words. Morgan registered that he had pissed himself in terror.

  You will submit to interrogation, said the Shaper inside his mind. We will rip your thoughts from you, slave. Do not think that you can lie to us. There are none who can resist our will.

  The cloud surged forwards, enveloping Morgan, coating his head and body in millions of the tiny creatures, some of them only a millimetre or so in size. They swarmed into his mouth, up his nose and into the interstices of his ears, even into his eye sockets where the tiniest of the creatures scurried behind his eyeballs on minute jointed legs and attached themselves to his optic nerves. They were trying to find weak spots in his anatomy where they could burrow into his brain and access his neural pathways.

  Morgan began to scream through the swarm of glittering creatures. It would be some time before he stopped.

  Chapter 11

  The gun wavered unsteadily in his hand. He was surrounded. Maybe he could take down one or maybe two of them before he bought it. It would be a final gesture of defiance, no more, but he was damned if they were going to take him alive. He saw himself reflected in the visor of the light combat armour of the marine directly in front of him - haggard and wild eyed, pistol gripped in a shaky right hand. There was nothing visible of the other man’s expression save for his mouth, a tight line between the chin strap and visor of his helmet. He waited for them to make a move, braced himself in anticipation of his own violent death. At least he would go down fighting.

  ‘Sir?’ said the marine. ‘Sir, it’s me, Captain Dawson. Sir? Admiral?’ The man slung his weapon over his shoulder and held up his hands to show that he was no longer armed.

  He kept the gun pointed at the marine, whose nametag indeed read ‘Dawson’. He remembered now.

  ‘Sir, don’t you remember me from the Lincoln? We’ve been looking for you, sir.’

  He eyed the gaggle of armed figures around him with suspicion. Dawson began to remove his helmet, revealing a broad, tanned face topped with a dark crew cut. He recognised the man alright.

  ‘Goddamn it, son,’ he said finally to Dawson. ‘I thought... I thought you were the enemy. The bastards have been hunting me for days.’ He lowered the gun slowly and let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘We thought as much, sir. We saw all the activity in this area and figured that they were looking for crashed escape pods and any survivors,’ said Captain Dawson. ‘Come on, we need to get away from the road and deeper into the jungle before they see us.’

  ‘Agreed,’ he replied. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Admiral Haines?’ said one of the other marines, Sergeant Philips. ‘It’s good to have you back, sir.’

  They made their way quickly up the hill, away from the road and into the deeper parts of the jungle. Two marines went on point, scouting the way ahead through the dense undergrowth. Behind them, in the swampy, tsunami trashed bay behind them, invisible through the thick tree canopy, the sounds of aerial vehicles moving to and fro could be heard. Haines kept his camo-cloak drawn over his shoulders to mask his heat signature, whilst the marines in their light recon armour were using their suits’ systems to mask their thermal profiles. They needed to avoid combat at all costs. The sounds and heat signatures of weapon discharges would surely bring the enemy down on their heads with lethal swiftness.

  Haines still had his doubts. These were definitely his men, part of the Abraham Lincoln’s complement of marines, but he was still unsure if he was being led into a trap. It had been several days since the Lincoln’s destruction. There was no telling what might have happened to any of these men in the meantime, no way to be sure if the enemy hadn’t captured them and implanted them. For what good it would do him, he kept the pistol handy, just in case.

  After about an hour of scrambling through the tangled undergrowth they finally happened upon a small ravine with a narrow stream running down its centre. Dawson called a halt and Haines sat down gratefully on a flat rock, speechless with breathlessness for a moment before he recovered.

  ‘Are you alright, sir?’ said Dawson, removing his helmet and looking at his commanding officer with concern as the older man wheezed and coughed a few times before clearing his throat and spitting on the ground.

  ‘I’ll be... alright in minute, Captain,’ said Haines between breaths. ‘Guess this old body of mine ain’t used to the pace.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. If you’d said...’ said Dawson and looked apologetic.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, we needed to get away, like yo
u said. Can’t have an old man holding you up.’ Haines reached for his water bottle and drained it, then refilled it from the stream and popped a couple of purification tablets inside. ‘So,’ he continued. ‘I’ve been a little out of touch these past few days. Anything you can tell me about what’s been going on around here? How’d you survive?’

  Dawson sat down on a boulder opposite Haines and began to relate his tale.

  ‘Well, the Lincoln was going down and the call went out to abandon ship. We managed to get a couple of drop-ships off the bow without use of the catapults: mostly full of marines, plus some technical staff from the flight deck. Enemy fire had taken out a whole bunch of the escape pods so it was the only way. Both ships took enemy fire on the way down and mine crash landed just east of here. I don’t remember much, except I woke up outside the ship at the foot of a tree. Guess I must have stumbled out after we hit the ground. Most of the others in that ship didn’t make it. The other ship had made an emergency landing without any fatalities. They saw where we went down and managed to reach us after hacking their way through the jungle for two days. We managed to salvage a fair bit of gear from both ships. Neither would ever fly again so we destroyed them with demo charges to prevent the enemy from getting hold of them, then we disappeared into the jungle. We’ve set up camp ten clicks north of here for the time being. We move it around every few days to stop the enemy from locating us. How about you, sir?’

  ‘Well my memory’s a little patchy. I stayed on the bridge as long as I could. I wanted to make sure everyone got away before I did, but life support was failing and I blacked out. I think eventually someone dragged me into an escape pod. I remember... well I don’t remember much about the descent,’ said Haines and shrugged. ‘When I came to I was hanging in my restraints inside the escape pod. Everyone else had been killed by the crash. I grabbed what I could from the pod and spent the next few days in the jungle. I had no idea where I was headed. I guess this direction seemed as good as any. How’d you find me?’