Vasina lead the way, eyes ice-cold as if the death and the destruction around her had not affected her. Arkroid followed at a short distance. He stared at the golden symbols on her coat, waving behind her in the tunnel draft.
Symbols of a long extinct civilization, he thought.
»You have to be strong, Toiber,« Vasina said in a low voice. »There’s nothing we can do for them.«
Toiber had tears in his eyes. It wasn’t easy for him to look at the scenes of death and chaos.
»Why, Vasina?« he asked dully.
Vasina stopped and looked searchingly at him with her impressive, golden eyes.
»Are you okay, Toiber?«
»No! I’m not okay! Do I look okay?« he fumed at her. »What do you expect? People are dying around us like flies and we can’t do anything to help! Doesn’t it affect you at all? Does it leave you cold? Oh … yes … I forgot: these are Humans, not Progonauts!«
Vasina’s came up like lightning and slapped Arkroid in the face. Her force was strong enough to make him fall to the ground. Her face flared with disgust and anger.
The unexpected slap brought Arkroid back to reality.
»Progonauts have always valued and protected life … any form of life, Toiber!« she hissed at him. »My forefathers saved Lanvian, a small planet that once flourished with beautiful, exotic flowers. We worked for over ten Progonaut years to protect that world with an energy shield from its sun’s perturbations. We rescued people who were far worse off than your colonists. Profound respect for life was deeply engrained in our culture and civilization! How dare you!«
Arkroid raised his hands to calm her down.
»I’m sorry, Vasina. I wasn’t myself for a moment. Please accept my … deepest apology!«
Her eyes became abruptly sad. She reached for Arkroid’s hand and helped him to his feet.
»If you’d seen what I have … The universe is as unforgiving as it is unpredictable. It doesn’t have ethics or morals, only follows its own laws. Knowing the cosmos can make a person react in a way that may seem cold to one who hasn’t experienced … you don’t need to apologize.«
Arkroid nodded slowly.
»We Humans were lucky, I suppose,« he replied, rubbing his pained left cheek. »Thank you, Vasina.«
They walked silently along the empty tracks through the dimly lit subway tunnel.
After half a kilometer, they arrived at the central complex’s station and climbed onto the platform. There were people there who had fled to the station to await help. Arkroid felt relieved at seeing all those people alive and seemingly well. The colonists saw Arkroid and Vasina as soon as they had entered the platform, and watched them warily. Some of them were armed with sticks and iron bars.
»You’ve made it too! You’re alive!« one of them shouted.
»Maybe they’re Zombies like ones we’ve chased away!« somebody else shouted.
A few of the men were taking threatening positions around Arkroid and Vasina.
»Stop where you are!« one of the men commanded, raising his makeshift weapon.
Arkroid slowly lifted his hands to calm the crowd down.
»Please, stay calm,« he asked them. »We’re trying to get to the central complex. We don’t want anything from you, we’re just passing through.«
The colonists hesitated for a moment, then lowered their weapons.
»Stay here – with us! The virus can’t get inside the station!« a woman in paramedic’s uniform shouted across the platform.
»How do you know that?« Vasina inquired.
»Stupid question … we’re still alive, aren’t we?« that woman replied, laughing nervously.
Arkroid pulled Vasina along.
»Let’s go, Vasina.«
Vasina shook off Arkroid’s arm.
»Wait!« she addressed the survivors. »What did you mean, zombies?«
The man who had mentioned the zombies before frowned.
»We’ve seen dead people come to life again. They got up, shook themselves and seemed surprised … but they weren’t the same people.«
One woman began weeping loudly.
»My husband … I’ve seen it myself. He didn’t know me anymore … he wanted to kill me.«
Arkroid and Vasina were speechless for a moment.
»Are you absolutely sure that they had died? Maybe they were in some kind of coma, and shook off the infection?« Arkroid wondered aloud.
»They were dead!« the colonists replied almost in a choir.
»Wait … I know you!« a man yelled suddenly. »You’re Vasina! I know your eyes! You’re not Human! You probably carried this disease and brought it here!«
Arkroid looked around. The colonists were edging closer, trying to surround them. They looked suddenly a lot more threatening.
»Hold it, hold it … we’re here to help, people!« Arkroid explained.
»Didn’t this all start with these extra-terrestrials?« another man shouted. Arkroid grimaced; this was not helping the situation at all.
Arkroid pulled his laser gun. The colonists stepped back. Somebody threw a steel bar at Arkroid, who dodged it, just barely.
»Okay! We’re going!« he yelled sternly, and cautiously stepped with Vasina out of the circle. »Nobody needs to get hurt, just keep calm!«
Slowly, warily, Vasina and Arkroid left the platform.
We need to get out of here
Lyla found the hatch after a long search. She opened it, cautiously peeked into the diffused lighting of the corridor on the other side of the tunnel wall. The debris that littered it and the smell of fire told her that the Globusters or the saboteurs had been through this level.
»Any idea where we are?« she asked mutedly, slipping out of the tunnel with van Velzen.
»Well … uh … here, look at this sign: Level 19!« van Velzen pointed out.
Corridors in Uluru Station were color-coded and labeled at junctions, and at 100 meter intervals, by fluorescent markers that glowed in complete darkness. 19-E-100-149 à indicated Level 19, East, Rooms 100 to 149 to the right. In the poor lighting van Velzen could not determine the level color, especially with the walls blackened by smoke and soot.
»It’s a technical section,« he reasoned, trying to orient himself by reading door labels and warning signs. »There’s a generator room ahead and to the left: a computer center with its own power distribution room.«
Scattered holo-foils and broken test equipment were strewn over the floor. A large freezer, used to store dry ice, was toppled, blocking the way out.
»It looks as bad as our research level!« he remarked. »I don’t see anybody around either.«
They kept walking, cautious, and always ready to slip into one of the corridor’s side rooms. Van Velzen tried to stay alert for inward signs of the Globuster homing in on him. He did not want to encounter a Globuster on this forsaken level. The walls and floors were splattered with blood, so bad in some places that they had to tip-toe through the puddles of blood so as not to slip and fall. Judging by the horribly mutilated bodies, a Globuster must have run amok in this sector.
Lyla stopped, crouched for a moment and vomited. The stomach-turning stench was almost unbearable.
»Don’t look at them, Lyla!« van Velzen told her, and pulled her along. We have to go this way to get to the central elevators.«
Teun didn’t mention to her that he was looking feverishly for a wall sign that would direct them to the elevators. At the next corridor junction, he paused and sighed heavily.
»This level must be humongous! Way bigger than ours … even the sector divisions are different – wider.«
»In other words, you’re lost,« Lyla remarked dryly and sighed.
»Yes, damnit!« van Velzen admitted. »I’ve never been on this level before. We must find our way out without attracting attention. One of the Globusters might still be roaming around.«
They passed through a section that showed heavy destruction, with charred walls, ceilings and rooms, demolished equipment and
furniture. A 30 centimeter gap in the floor extended throughout the section. Adjacent rooms had wrecked ceilings, detached from their suspensions, and power distribution panels still flash-arcing. Why hadn’t the power limitation and protection breakers de-energized the electrical circuits?
They walked over shards of safety glass. Some of it was molten, or in tiny, powdered granules.
It took a really big explosion to do this much damage! van Velzen assessed.
He tried to read the charred sign before him.
EXTRATERRESTRIAL TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH CENTER
»Looks like a direct sabotage action against this center,« Teun whispered, »it’s where they worked with Globuster artifacts and technologies. How did the Globs know where to find it?«
Lyla leapt over the gap in the floor.
»You said yourself that the Globusters are more intelligent than they look,« she replied.
»I don’t know,« van Velzen began – then suddenly pulled Lyla behind an X-Ray machine that had been torn from its pedestal in one of the labs and tossed into the corridor.
»What? What is it, Teun? Did you see something,« she asked frightened, »or is it the Globuster again?«
Teun put his right index finger to his lips and looked toward the computer center.
»I saw a movement … just a shadow,« he whispered to her.
Then Lyla saw it too. A person, looking in all directions, was coming from the center, trying to sneak into the corridor.
A survivor, trying to catch up with the others!
He stepped away from his cover.
»Hey! Don’t be scared, but we’re trying to find the rest of the crew. Can you tell us where they went?« he asked.
The man was dressed in a lab coat; he froze for a moment. Teun couldn’t see his face in the bad lighting. Suddenly van Velzen had a knot in his stomach. Instinctively, Teun let himself fall as the man raised a weapon at fired at him. The bullets hit the wall behind him. Lyla screamed and pressed herself to the floor too. Bullets flew and ricocheted around Teun’s head as the stranger kept firing with a machine pistol.
»What the fu …?« van Velzen cursed and rolled across the corridor floor. He looked up and saw the man disappear into a corridor junction. Van Velzen jumped up to follow the man, but Lyla held him back.
»No, no, Teun!« she pleaded.
He hesitated, came back and pushed Lyla back behind the X-Ray machine.
»I’m going to take a look at what that guy did in the IT center. You stay here!« he commanded.
With all his might he pushed the airlock to the IT center open enough to slip into the room. Most of the equipment and servers were still intact and working, by the flashing front indicator lights. Teun recognized the characteristic cubical cells, working in tandem. Some drawers were damaged, but that wasn’t a problem: they were automatically isolated and bypassed by the systems. He crept between the hundreds of server racks and looked around.
These computers will keep working on the data they were fed as long as the power stays on. Even if power’s lost, the accumulator banks will save the data in holographic memory. Nothing is lost!
Van Velzen sighed, relieved, but then he noticed an egg-shaped object taped to one of the servers in the room’s center. He started toward it but an inner voice warned him.
What is that?
Suddenly, he knew – and sprinted out of the room.
»RUN!« he shouted at Lyla. She ran away from the X-Ray machine, following van Velzen in the direction they had come from. She didn’t think, just, reached unquestioningly for his hand and kept running along the debris filled corridor.
They made it 50 meters before a bright flash illuminated the corridor, followed by a heavy jolt that floored them. The explosive pressure wave pushed metal and glass debris through the corridor. Teun buried Lyla under him to protect her from shrapnel. Fragments whistled through the air. A wave of fire shot along the ceiling, bursting light fixtures and engulfing the displaced equipment from the labs. Van Velzen’s hair and clothing were singed. He felt the heat on his face and neck, and learned later that he had taken first degree burns. When the worst was over, Van Velzen rolled on his back and started coughing. Thick smoke filled the corridor and was slowly evacuated by the ventilation system, running on emergency power. The stench of old, oxygen-depleted water from the sprinkler systems added to the unbearable mess in the corridor. Thirty sprinkler heads sprayed cold, smelly water against the walls to create a path for a way out. Within the computer center inert gas fire suppression systems had already doused the flames and deprived the fire of oxygen, super-cooling the room.
»What was that?« Lyla asked.
»That used to be an IT center,« van Velzen replied sarcastically. »You were right, Lyla. We have saboteurs inside Uluru Station! The Globusters didn’t engineer these explosions – Humans did. People who work with …«
Teun suddenly grabbed his head in excruciating pain. The rest of the sentence came out as a gargle.
Lyla knew what that meant.
»We need to get out of here. Fast!« she breathed.
Yes! I can feel it
The throbbing pain was unbearable. Hassan Khalil tried to get up but the torture was unrelenting.
»What’s happening to me?« he screamed into his helmet, and clenched his teeth.
»The ship is preparing organic interfaces for the control chips. Once artificial nerves have integrated with your metabolism, it will implant the modules under your skin. It is almost done. Then you’ll be ready for your new tasks,« the computer replied.
Hassan felt a sharp, deep prick in his back. He didn’t dare to move. A fine needle had penetrated his spacesuit, and punctured his bone marrow.
»’llah alahu akbar …,« he prayed in a croak, and cramped up.
»That’s a neuronal probe inserting the new interface into your body,« the computer explained. »It will be easier for you if you remain calm.«
Hassan felt raging pain up and down his spine and a strong burning sensation near his right kidney.
»The ship is now placing the first module. It will allow you to go out into space without a spacesuit. Your body now has its own defense shield.«
They’re turning me into a Globuster!
Hassan was horrified.
»Stop it! Stop it right now!«
»The ship has chosen you. There’s nothing you can do about it. The process is irreversible.«
Hassan felt like he was losing his mind. He had underestimated the Globuster technology. The Globusters were not its inventors, they were victims of a strange ship, searching for pilots and adapting suitable beings.
Suddenly Hassan found it all comical – he laughed out loud at the irony of his fate. He had tried to understand the ship’s technology only to become a part of it. It was like a surreal nightmare – he watched as his spacesuit was cut up and pulled from him. Piece by piece, all his clothing was stripped from him until he was totally naked, encased in the gel-like substance..
… and I’m still breathing! he marveled.
Strangely calm, he watched as probes extended from the walls, digging themselves into his body. When a probe retracted, it left a bulge under his skin. Hassan suddenly felt a change – his field of vision expanded. He was now able to see through the ship’s hull into space and watch the constellations swing in relation to the ship’s movements. His arms were like virtual extensions of the weapon systems: he could activate and fire them with slight muscle movements.
A thought would steer the ship onto another course.
Hassan struggled against the mental force manifesting itself in his mind, but the ship was stronger.
»I told you, the pilot does not command the ship!« the former analysis computer lectured.
Since the transformation, Hassan felt closer to the computer than ever before.
He could feel how the ship used his body and brain. It usurped parts of his brain for its calculations and used brain sections he had rarely employed, believing that
they were submerged in his subconscious. The ship’s efficiency had grown exponentially. He had become part of a bio-technical system, and understood subtly how the ship functioned. All the secrets he’d worked to discover now lay before his mental eye, ready to be tapped. It was like a book that he could easily read. The tachyon diaphragm – a higher dimensional energy field that enveloped the ship – used the energy drift between the tachyon- and normal continua, extracting the energy necessary to run the ship. That energy also flowed through Hassan’s body, lending him never before experienced power, expanding his horizons drastically.
Can you feel it now? the comm-interface asked in his mind.
Yes! I can feel it … and it’s amazing! We’re – one!
Hassan tightened his muscles and power seemed to flow directly into the ship’s propulsion units. The ship jumped forward and accelerated to maximum speed. He directed the ship on the shortest route to its destination – or so he thought. It didn’t matter that the ship had determined the destination. He had resigned himself fully to his new fate.
Stop the transmissions
Toiber Arkroid and Vasina had escaped the crowd on the platform unharmed. They had seen how easily the colony could fall into anarchy. Everything the colonists had worked for over the years threatened to be destroyed.
»Where is the help we requested?« Arkroid raged at Nautilus.
»I’ve transmitted the call for help on all common frequencies. The transmission was strong enough to reach the outermost sections of the solar system. The Globuster Matrix will not permit it to reach beyond the boundary.«
»Any reactions so far?« Arkroid inquired.
»One minute ago, Admiral Hayes responded from aboard the Destiny, a Pulsar-type cruiser. He requested that we stop transmitting the message.«
Arkroid shrugged and asked Vasina to link into his comm-connection.
NEBULAR Collection 3 - Morgotradon: Episodes 12 - 16 Page 27