“Means you’re a moron and will make mistakes,” said March.
November snickered, and Alan’s eyes narrowed. March took another two quick steps back. Alan followed suit, keeping his position relative to March, November, and Siegfried.
He still hadn’t glanced at Northridge. Her hand was almost to her holster. Another few steps and Alan would not be able to see her. Another few centimeters and she could grip her weapon. March hoped she didn’t die. He especially hoped she didn’t die before she could shoot Alan.
“And just why am I a moron?” said Alan.
“Because you’ve screwed this up,” said March.
“I quite agree,” said November, cool as ice. “Extremely unprofessional.”
“Have I?” said Alan. March took another step back, and Alan grimaced, his hand twitching. “Let me tell you how this is going to go. You’re going to unlock the ship and give me full control, and then we are leaving. Dr. Siegfried will be my hostage the entire time. Once I reach my destination, I’ll let you leave alive.”
“No, you won’t,” said March. “You just said the entire point of your mission was to kill two Alpha Operatives.”
Alan blinked.
“This is your first time doing this, isn’t it?” said March.
“I…”
“You should have planned better,” said November. “Think this through. If you shoot Dr. Siegfried, you will then have time to shoot either myself or Captain March. But if you shoot me, Captain March will shoot you. If you shoot him, I will shoot you.”
“Either way Dr. Siegfried ends up dead,” said Alan. March took another step back. Northridge’s trembling hand was on her pistol now. “I don’t think the heroic men of the Silent Order want her death on their conscience.”
March started to speak, but Siegfried let out a harsh laugh.
“Like you’d let me go once you escaped, you miserable traitor,” said Siegfried. “No matter what happens next, I’m dead.” Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a snarl, and her eyes glittered with hate and anger. “I just hope I get to see you die first.”
“I can assure you, Dr. Siegfried, that you will,” said November, his smile a slash of white across his dark face. “I am an excellent shot.”
“Then I’ll shoot you first,” said Alan, his smile a rictus.
November shrugged. “Captain March is a better shot than I am. And in substantially better physical condition. If you shoot me first, there is an excellent chance he will overpower you and take you prisoner. I imagine that would be unpleasant.”
Alan glanced in March’s direction, and he took another step back.
“Not another step!” shouted Alan, jabbing his pistol towards Siegfried. “Not another step, March! I know you’re trying to get to the flight cabin. Another step and I will blow off her head, and then I’ll see which one of you I kill before I die.”
Northridge twitched again, trying to slide her pistol from its holster. March wondered if she had the strength left to do it quietly or even to do it at all.
“There’s another way out of this trap,” said March. “Leave. Go through the cargo airlock, and I’ll let you go. You can run back to Mr. Odin and report your failure in person, or try to hitch a ride home with the Oradreans.”
“If he leaves, then the Oradreans will take the weapon,” said Siegfried, her voice tight. “They’ll know we’re chasing them, and they’ll take precautions. We can’t let a thug like Paul Murdan have the biomorphic fungi.”
Alan let out an incredulous laugh. “Really? You would send me back to the station? You have no idea what’s really going on, don’t you?”
“Why don’t you enlighten me?” said March.
“No,” said Alan. “I think…”
A chime from the speakers cut him off.
“Alert,” announced Vigil. “Captain March, you wished to be notified of any unusual activity. Sensors detect massive power fluctuations from Burnchain Station, and seven different vessels have just undocked and are preparing emergency hyperspace jumps.”
“What?” said Siegfried. “What’s happening?”
Alan flicked a quick, worried glance at the cargo airlock. As if he was concerned it hadn’t been secured. “That’s enough. We’re out of time for games. Captain March, if you want Dr. Siegfried to live, we’re all going to go to the flight cabin, and you’re going to…”
Northridge lifted her plasma pistol with a shaking hand and fired.
March suspected she had been aiming for Alan's head, but as it happened, her plasma bolt landed squarely in his right buttock.
Alan leaped forward with a scream of agony, smoke rising from the fist-sized crater that had just been carved into his flesh, his eyes bulging. He fired his plasma pistol twice, but both shots missed Siegfried to blast chunks from the deck.
And in that instant of time, March moved.
He surged forward, his left hand slamming into Alan’s right wrist. The bones shattered, and Alan screamed again as the pistol fell from his limp fingers. The Machinist agent tried to punch with his left hand, but March deflected the blow and hammered his boot into Alan’s knee. The impact made Alan’s right leg buckle, and with the injury in his buttock, Alan howled and lost his balance.
He hit the deck, and March punched him in the face a few times, not hard enough to seriously hurt him, but enough to make him woozy and compliant. Siegfried rushed forward to help Northridge, who lay groaning on her stomach. November hurried to March’s side.
“Get his belt,” said March. “Also his tie.”
“Well done, Jack,” said November, yanking off Alan’s belt. March flipped the Machinist agent onto his stomach, eliciting a scream of pain, and used the belt to bind Alan’s wrists together. By then November had gotten Alan’s tie off, and March used it to bind the Machinist agent’s wrists and ankles together, leaving him hogtied. It would be excruciatingly painful, both with the stress on the joints and the broken wrist and the plasma wound, but since Alan had left the real Lieutenant Kent Alan dead somewhere on Calaskar, March did not care.
He straightened up and hurried to Northridge and Siegfried.
“She’s not good,” said Siegfried. “She needs medical attention right away.”
“There are emergency first aid nanobots and an expert system in the infirmary,” said March. “That ought to get her stabilized until we can get her to a proper hospital.”
“Maybe we should take her to a doctor on the station,” said Siegfried. “I think the plasma bolt destroyed one of her kidneys. If we…”
“No!”
Northridge’s voice was hoarse, but it was clear.
She looked at March, her eyes bloodshot.
“No, none of us can go to the station,” said Northridge. “If we do, we’re going to die.”
“What do you mean?” said March.
“I figured it out,” said Northridge. “You said Odin was playing with a coin while you were talking. Was it gold, about an inch and a half across, with a geometric pattern on the surface?”
Siegfried sucked in a breath. “You don’t mean…”
“Yes, it was,” said March.
“Then it wasn’t a coin,” said Northridge. “It was a Fifth Empire memory disk. Or memory card, like Dr. Siegfried says.”
“It will have a preloaded configuration for the biomorphic fungi,” breathed Siegfried, her horror plain. “Configuring it for a target. If Odin gives that card to Murdan and has him insert it into one of the canisters’ input slots…”
And in a single blazing instant, March understood.
“Goddamn it,” said March. “Goddamn it! I’ve been an idiot.”
“What do you mean?” said Siegfried.
“John!” said March. “Run to the armory and get me a plasma rifle, three extra power packs, and as many grenades as will fit on a bandoleer. Quickly!”
November did not argue but ran for the ladder to the dorsal corridor.
“I don’t understand,” said Siegfried.
“The Machinists always intended to take the canisters, but they never planned to pay for them,” said March. “There are nine of them. The Machinists can spare one. And what better way to claim the remaining eight canisters without paying than by using one of them? When the Masters formally hand over the weapon, Odin or Alexei will pop the card into one of the canisters. It will activate, the fungi will spread through the station, and it will kill everyone it touches.”
“But won’t it kill the Machinists as well?” said Siegfried. “No…wait, it wouldn’t, would it?”
“No,” said Northridge, her voice a pained croak. “If Odin configured the disk properly, he can instruct the fungi to kill everything it encounters except for life forms with the specific genetic markers of Machinist-altered DNA. He…” She whimpered and fell silent.
“He probably gave the Oradreans environment suits,” said Siegfried, “or injected them with nanobots to mimic Machinist genetic markers.”
“The fungi will wipe out the Masters and their guests,” said March, “and Odin and his Oradrean friends will stroll away with the remaining canisters, and they won’t have to pay a single credit for them.”
“But why…but why would they kill the Masters?” said Northridge. “It doesn’t make sense. If they work with the Masters…”
Alan let out a croaking laugh.
“Because, you stupid bitch,” said Alan. “The victory of the Final Consciousness is at hand. Soon we shall no longer have any need of vermin like the Masters and…”
March kicked him in the face. Not hard enough to break anything, but enough to shut him up.
“Next time I’m breaking your goddamned jaw,” said March.
Alan wisely shut up.
November slid down the ladder into the cargo bay, holding the weapons and equipment that March had asked for. November handed the items over, and March slung the bandoleer of grenades across his chest, jammed the extra power packs into the pockets of his coat, and took the plasma rifle in one hand.
“Get Northridge to the infirmary,” said March, “and get her hooked up to the expert system. Secure Alan somewhere. I’d prefer to bring him back alive, but if he makes any trouble, shoot him. You remember how to run the sensor package?” November nodded. Stupid question – eidetic memory. “As soon as you get Northridge and Alan taken care of, get on the sensors and give me a call.”
“What are you going to do?” said Siegfried.
March turned towards the cargo airlock, tying the strap of the plasma rifle to his bandoleer so it would dangle if he dropped the weapon. “I’m going to kill Odin and destroy the canisters.”
“You can’t go out there!” said Siegfried. “The fungi will kill you at once.”
“I have Machinist genetic markers,” said March. “The fungi won’t target me.” At least he hoped not. “John, Dr. Siegfried, get moving.”
“You heard him,” said November, heading towards Northridge and Siegfried.
March tapped his earpiece once to activate it, waited for the cargo airlock to cycle, and stepped back onto Burnchain Station.
Chapter 9: Bioweapon
Right away March realized that something was wrong.
He stepped into the antechamber beyond the airlock. Previously, the lighting had been quiet and subdued. Now it was flickering madly, and one of the sconces had gone dark entirely. The air had smelled of nothing, but now a thick organic reek filled March’s nostrils. It reminded him of rotting vegetation mixed with fresh-spilled blood and decaying flesh.
God, he had only left the station…had it even been five minutes ago?
Just how quickly could the activated biomorphic fungi spread through an environment? An enclosed environment like a space station was always vulnerable to contagions, but Burnchain Station was huge.
Censor, Northridge, and Siegfried had not overstated the weapon’s deadly power.
March strode onto the concourse.
Previously, the concourse had looked like a scene from hell. A pristine, luxurious, and very expensive hell with excellent customer service, but nonetheless a hell where a man could purchase any kind of vice.
Now it looked like an entirely different kind of hell.
Half the lights were out, and those that remained sputtered and flickered, throwing wild shadows everywhere. That was nonetheless enough light to see the bodies, the hundreds of bodies, lying scattered across the floor. Most of them were human men and women in business attire, but there were some aliens in the mix as well.
Both the humans and the aliens were…dissolving.
Great grayish-white patches of something that looked like mold covered their bodies, and it was eating into them. It almost looked as if the dead humans and aliens were covered in dirty snow. Yet dirty snow did not pulse slightly, and neither did it give off that strange rotting reek or a faint pearlescent glow. March took a careful step forward, sweeping his plasma rifle backward and forward as he scanned the concourse. Huge clumps of the grayish-white fungus clung to the walls and ceilings, and ridges of it lay across the marble flooring, looking for all the world like drifts of snow. Here and there March spotted a defense drone picking its way through the mess. He tensed, wondering if the Masters had set their defense drones to go on a rampage, but the machines did not respond to him. It seemed that the fungus had killed the Masters before they could activate their defenses.
Perhaps they had died before they even realized how Odin and Alexei Murdan had betrayed them.
March took a step forward, and a noise came to his ears.
He whirled as a man in a business suit staggered from one of the nearby shops, his eyes wide and bloodshot and feverish. Blood and grease stained his expensive coat, and dozens of bulging pustules marked his face and hands.
No. Not pustules. The fungus was growing beneath the man’s skin, forcing its way through his flesh.
“Help me!” screamed the man, holding out his hands. He managed one more step and then fell to his knees, shivering uncontrollably. “Oh, God, oh, God, help me! You have a ship? A million credits! I’ll pay you a million credits to get me out of here!” One of the pustules on his face burst, the fungus and the blood oozing down his neck to stain his collar. “Please! Please! I…”
The man doubled over, vomited out a massive quantity of both fungus and blood, and collapsed to the deck.
He stopped breathing during the process.
March had seen a lot of deaths in his life, many of them horrible, but that had been one of the worst ones.
He realized that if he had been wrong, that if he had misjudged Odin’s plans, then he was about to die in a lot of pain when the fungus ate him out from the inside.
But he felt fine. At least, he felt physically fine. The rage burned behind his eyes. Odin had all but boasted to March’s face about his plan, and March had been too stupid to see it. All that talk about how the time of Burnchain Station was coming to a close? Odin had meant it, and March hadn’t realized how soon Odin intended to make his will into reality.
But Odin had made a mistake, too. He had assumed that Alan would be able to handle March. Well, March would capitalize on that error, and he would make Odin pay for what he had done. Certainly, the Masters and many of their employees had deserved death. But had all their slaves? Had all their guests?
March did not intend to allow Odin to get away with his prize.
He started forward, and his earpiece crackled.
“Jack?” came November’s voice.
“I’m here,” said March. “Report.”
“I’ve got Alan tied up in his cabin,” said November. “He’s in a lot of pain, but that’s his problem. Siegfried’s taking care of Northridge in the infirmary. She might not make it.”
“Acknowledged,” said March. “You’ve got scan data for me?”
“Coming up,” said November. “There are still forty-three vessels docked with Burnchain Station. One of them is an Oradrean Drive Yards light freighter with an obviously forged ID transpond
er.”
“Did any shuttles launch from that attack frigate?” said March, scanning the concourse.
“No,” said November. “In fact…the frigate just left. Entered hyperspace about thirty seconds ago.”
“Then Murdan and Odin are escaping on that Oradrean freighter,” said March. “Where is it docked?”
“Airlock twelve, looks like,” said November. “Which is on the other side of the station.”
“Damn it,” said March, yanking out his phone and sliding it into a holster on his sleeve. A complimentary map of the station appeared on the screen. “It looks like…three kilometers from here.”
“Better hurry,” said November.
“Yeah,” said March, and he started running, dodging around the dissolving corpses littering the floor. According to the map, Burnchain Station had two concourses running from bow to stern. Airlock twelve was on the other concourse on the opposite side of the station, annoyingly enough. But how to get to that concourse? Could he cut through the auditorium? Maybe, but if any of the back rooms were locked, he would waste valuable minutes doubling back, and that might give Odin the time he needed to escape. There was only one main corridor that joined the two concourses, one kilometer past the auditorium. Perhaps it would be best to simply run for that and try to intercept Odin.
Of course, Odin would have a half-dozen Iron Hands with him, and Alexei Murdan’s personal security, though the Oradreans would be hampered by the need to wear protective spacesuits. There was no way March could take all of them in a straight fight and win. The only hope was an ambush, but an ambush would be impossible if they saw him sprinting down the concourse. No, his best bet was to destroy the fungi canisters with plasma fire and then to retreat, though he wanted to kill Odin if he could manage it.
March picked up speed as he approached the auditorium doors, and then a scream came to his ears.
He whirled, plasma rifle coming up, just in time to see a shape run from the auditorium.
March caught a brief glimpse of the horrors in the auditorium, the bodies lying slumped everywhere, the blood and slime congealing on the floor, the fungus growing in ridges across the walls. He braced himself, fearing that the fungus might have driven some of its victims mad before it killed them. The man who had begged for help might have attacked March and tried to seize the Tiger if he had been strong enough.
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