by Jack Conner
“No,” said Lasucciv as the soldiers started to move. She pointed to one group, roughly half. “You—face the door. Don’t let anything through. The rest—find the damned cables!”
Avery was grateful for her level head as he and the men and women of the party searched the cabinets and tool chests about the room. For such a small space, it contained a remarkably high number of cubby holes and storage spaces. The air stank of grease and oil. It was Sheridan, not surprisingly, that found the correct cables, locating them in a locker Gehulia had already searched. Had the pirate merely overlooked them? Vathe pounded against the door as Sheridan handed Avery the bundle.
“Hurry.”
More sweat dripped into his eyes as he fitted one end of the cables into its place; his hands wanted to shake, but he had conquered that tendency long ago; he would have been a poor surgeon if he hadn’t. Still, when he heard the hatch explode behind him, he couldn’t resist a flinch.
Guns erupted, and a fungal creature bellowed, a sound that shook the room. There came the wet slap of a body being flung against a bulkhead, and the room filled with the stench of fungus. Avery gritted his teeth and, as carefully as he could, threaded the wires through the nest the previous wires had coiled through—
Something hot spattered his cheek.
—and fitted the far end into its socket. Someone screamed. So much gunfire in the tight, largely metallic space was deafening. A body sailed over Avery’s head to explode against the far bulkhead as he scanned the various levers and buttons, having to force himself to read the Octunggen words; it was hard to focus on anything that didn’t involve hiding. Behind him he heard large bodies moving toward him and knew that only a thin line of surviving soldiers and pirates must separate him from the onrushing Vathe.
There! Avery switched the lever.
Instantly the machine began to hum. The noise built as the psychic harness powered up, and Avery wheeled around to see the Vathe tear into the soldiers. There was no room to fall back and little room to aim, certainly no time to reload.
The fungal creatures picked up one man, flung him against the ceiling pipes, grabbed a woman by the arm and hurled her against the nearest bulkhead. Soldiers and pirates hacked at them with knives and struck them with the butts of their submachine guns, not having time to reload.
Sheridan hunkered over a body, jerking the rifle from its hands. She turned about, aiming for the head of the creature that loomed over her, but it stretched out a misshapen, overgrown purple hand, blocking the stream of bullets that had been intended for its brain, and grabbed her by the arm.
Avery threw himself on the creature’s limb, slowing it, but it was too strong, the thing was a monster, and he felt it move under him, a swing that would dash Sheridan against the ceiling, breaking her body utterly.
Then, suddenly, the creature stopped moving. All of them did.
The great Vathe just stood there, some looking confused, or sagged backward in apparent exhaustion. Sheridan slipped from the hand that held her, and when Avery moved to embrace her she didn't push him away. He could feel her heart beating.
The humans stared at the looming Vathe warily. The handful of surviving soldiers and pirates gasped for breaths and extricated themselves from the creatures that had been about to obliterate them. Commander Lasucciv, bleeding from a gash on the side of her neck, studied the machine, which had powered up, then nodded once at Avery. He knew that was as much of a thank you as he was likely to get.
Sheridan approached the creature that had been about to kill her. “Get—” she started, then cleared her throat. Her voice had been very hoarse. “Get the hell out of here. All of you. Go back to where you belong.”
The creatures blinked. For a moment it seemed they would protest, or simply ignore her, but then, as one, they turned about and withdrew from the chamber.
“Thank fuck,” said Gehulia, plucking a strand of fungal material from her seaweed hair.
“And now,” Sheridan said, “the Key.”
To the surviving priest, who had stayed away from the fighting, Lasucciv said, “Tell your master it’s done. We’ll meet him in the Central Chamber. Time to see what the Codex says.”
Chapter 2
The echoes of the gunfire lingered in Avery’s hearing, diminishing only slowly as the group, or what was left of it, five men and four women, picked their way toward the so-called Central Chamber, the main hub of activity aboard the station and the place where the Key was kept and studied. Avery couldn’t help but feel a swell of excitement. Finally, they would unlock ancient mysteries so valuable that the R’loth would sacrifice the Starfish to obtain them. The halls still stank of fungus and rot, and bodies and body parts littered the way, some stuck to ceilings and bulkheads and overgrown by glowing fungi, but Avery had begun to grow used to the stench and gore. What disturbed him more were the constant cracks of thunder and the way the station shook to each peal. This place really is falling apart.
Coming up to Sheridan, Avery said, “Is there a way to stabilize the Fortress?”
“Maybe, but most of the engineers are probably dead. I only hope this place lasts long enough for us to do what we need to do.”
He swallowed. If the engines that kept this monstrosity aloft failed, they would all plummet to their deaths, taking Key and Codex with them. The R’loth obviously had no way to locate the items, not without first possessing one, so if the station fell before the Codex could be decoded, all would be lost. The R’loth would unleash whatever new horrors they had devised. Speaking of which ...
“You suggested you knew what the Vathe were for,” Avery said, careful to keep his voice low, though with the ringing of the gunfire still in his ears he couldn’t be sure that he was successful. At least no one else was likely to overhear him. “Can you tell me what?”
She gave her head a small shake. “Later. What worries me more at the moment is this: what'd they pick up aboard the deserted dirigible that killed the Collossum and sabotaged the harness?”
“It can only be the mystery party. The dirigible wasn’t deserted at all; it’s just that the beings on it were invisible. They boarded the station’s ships when they went out to investigate and came back here with them.”
“I’d been thinking the same thing, but it makes no sense. The mystery party couldn’t have reached the Fortress before us, surely.”
“Then there’s more than one party.”
Nervously, she looked around. “In any case, they’re still here. They must be.”
He realized one of his hands was still shaking and clenched it into a fist. She was right. The creatures could materialize and attack them at any time.
They fell into silence as they passed down another tube and navigated their way through a wing of the Fortress, at last coming upon the Central Chamber.
Lord Uthua, the great fish-man, surrounded by his priests, had beat them to it. Where were you when we needed you? Avery thought, and was struck once again by what an uncaring deity Uthua was. To him humans were just puppets and meat. To send them to their deaths was only normal. The only shame to him would be that so many infected people had been wasted when they could have been put to much better use in his belly.
Uthua barely gave Lasucciv’s group a look. His all-black eyes were only for the Key, which stood on a strange pedestal made of alien-looking machinery, with more alien-looking machine hanging suspended above it. At Uthua’s direction, the priests, who carried the Codex, fitted the latter into this equipment so that it hung above the Key. Then, after some inspection of the various consoles, Uthua directed them in activating the machines. The room began to reverberate with insectile chittering and the thumping of engines.
“What is he ...?” Avery started. “Is he doing this right now?” It seemed in poor taste for Uthua to begin decrypting the Codex so soon, without even a thought for the dead or any survivors still trapped in the station.
“There’s no time to waste,” Sheridan said. “This place won’t last long.”<
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By this time, survivors of the catastrophe that had struck the Flying Fortress had begun to trickle into the chamber. Among them several Vathe milled, tractable now that the psychic harness had been reactivated. Upon seeing Uthua, the survivors dropped to their knees and muttered prayers, thanking him for their deliverance. The Vathe did, too. The god ignored them all, and the priests impatiently shooed them away. The high priest, who looked clean and primped, just having come from his lair aboard the Valanca, interviewed several of them and found one that seemed helpful to their tasks of getting the consoles back online, but it wasn’t long before Uthua sent him away, too. The Collossum seemed to know what he was doing. It had been his kind, after all, that had developed these machines in the first place. If he gave any thought to the four Collossum that had been slain by the mystery party, he gave no sign.
Sparks leapt from the machines holding Key and Codex, and Avery sucked in his breath when the machines shuddered, then moved, inching the items closer together. The air began to blur between them, at first in a minor way, then in a fashion that irritated Avery’s eyes. He had to look away.
“They’re doing it,” said a man, one of the survivors. Avery briefly wondered if it had been the fellow from the intercom but didn’t think so; his voice was rougher. “They’re really doing it!” The survivors muttered in awe. Even Avery felt it despite his misgivings—that eagerness, that hunger. He had risked his life to unlock the secrets of the Codex, had seen many others die for it.
Unable to help himself, he turned to Sheridan. Her face was set like stone, but her gunmetal eyes gleamed, not with the avidness he felt, yet with ... something. He thought she might be holding her breath. She had been anticipating this moment much longer than he. She had known about the Key since before their misadventure in the Crothegra—indeed, that’s the reason she’d been there in the first place. It had been she who had made the decision to allow them to have the ghost flower nectar in exchange for the Key, and so in a way she was the one responsible for this whole affair ... not that Uthua or the priests even so much as looked her way during the whole procedure, of course.
The machinery in the middle of the room burst with light and sound. Avery’s eardrums popped, and he found himself taking a half step back. For a moment the blur in the air eclipsed the Codex and Key, which were still moving together, and when the blur dissipated there were not two objects, but one.
The crowd gasped.
The object that hung in the air between the machines no longer resembled either item but something entirely new: a crystal that shone with a soft red light and so big that it would be hard-pressed to fit in a man’s hand. The air still shimmered around it, but the shimmer was fading.
Uthua, with unnerving reverence—it was kind of horrifying to see him show respect for anything—stepped toward it. The whole gathering quieted. This was it, Avery realized. This was the moment when the Codex would be read. Before he had vaguely thought they might take the decrypted Codex back aboard the zeppelin with them and study it, for days or weeks possibly, but no. Uthua would waste no time. He would read it right now.
Slowly, the Collossum grasped the shining jewel in his fishy hand and closed his fingers about it. A jolt seemed to run through him, and—with a pop—he flickered out of existence.
The crowd stared at the place where he had been. Then, as shock set in, the people cursed, exclaimed, and shook their heads. The priests wailed. As Avery glanced around, half expecting Uthua to reappear behind him, he saw something stirring in one of the doorways. Looking closer, he saw the air ripple, flex ...
Dear gods, it’s them.
But when he looked again, the blurring in the air was gone. Before he could investigate, Uthua rushed back into existence in the same place he’d vanished from with a scream. His flesh steamed.
Issuing a strangled cry, the great Collossum sank to his knees, the jewel clutched to his chest. The priests paused, then stepped forward, perhaps meaning to assist their lord back to his feet. Uthua’s expression was pained. Something had changed. Avery sensed, though he couldn’t be sure, that more time had passed for the god in the seconds he’d been away than had passed for the humans waiting for him in the chamber. How long had he been away?
With weary gravity, Uthua raised his head and hitched it toward his priests, indicating that they should fall back. Bowing, they obeyed. For a long moment, the god remained crouching, but then, with an audible creak of his knees, he rose and lifted the jewel before his eyes.
“I have seen ...” he began, and there was awe in his voice. Awe, and victory. “I have seen the location of the Sleeper, and who will awaken it.” Closing his eyes, he seemed to quote from the Codex: “‘And so the royal family of the human tribe will bring me forth and keep me, and name their country after my people. Thus look for the Ygrith in the land of the Ysstrals, where—’”
The floor rocked beneath Avery’s feet. He was almost pitched headlong. Sheridan, keeping her balance with remarkable aplomb, righted him as all around others fell to the floor or crashed against the walls. Uthua held his ground, only listing slightly, but his priests fell over each other in their efforts to maintain their feet. The sound of an explosion drifted down the halls.
“The station!” someone said. “It’s falling apar—”
Another explosion sounded, and another. The Flying Fortress shook around them.
“This is no disintegration,” Sheridan said, clutching at a pipe along the wall for balance. “The station’s being attacked. That was a bomb.”
Lasucciv shot her a look. “But the only ones who could be attacking are—”
Avery realized it, too. “The pirates!”
His head snapped to Uthua, who was glaring down a hall. The air shimmered around the Collossum, preparatory to him bringing his other-self over, and for once Avery was glad of it. Uthua would attack the pirates and could, if he moved swiftly enough, prevent them from bringing down the station.
Just then, the air shimmered around the room from different points, and Avery cursed; the mystery party had arrived.
Uthua shoved the decrypted Codex into the hands of a priest and stepped forward, bringing his other-self over. His gelatinous sac erupted from him, huge and black, tentacles straining from it. His pseudopods smashed the deck, creating fissures where they struck.
The mystery party laid into him, lashing him with invisible limbs. He struck back, but they were just ripples in the air at the best of times and usually not even that. He groped blindly, finding one by chance and coiling a tentacle about it; Avery could only see it by the way the tentacle moved around it. Instantly, the creature burst into green flame. The others, though, drove at Uthua fiercely, and his sac shriveled where they struck.
Moving forward as if to protect the Codex, Gehulia and her pirates surrounded the priests. Instead of defending them, though, the pirates lifted their guns and fired into the clergymen, several of whom pitched backward.
“Traitor!” shouted Lasucciv.
Gehulia grabbed up the Codex and darted toward a hallway, her companions with her. Sheridan fired, not at them, but at the wheel that, when spun, allowed the hatch leading to the hallway to be opened. Sparks erupted from it, and when Gehulia reached the hatch the wheel had been damaged too badly to be spun.
Gehulia tore at it, trying to budge it, then pivoted, terror in her face. She and the other pirates were doomed, and they knew it.
Smiling savagely, Lasucciv said, “Fire!”
Her troops cut Gehulia and the others down before the pirates could even plead for their lives. Even as their blood ran, Sheridan rooted among their bodies and plucked the winking red jewel that was the Codex from Gehulia’s dead grasp. Avery stared at her, marveling.
The mystery party continued to assail Uthua until at last he collapsed backward, his other-self fading. As the Octunggen started firing on empty air, meaning to take down the invisible attackers, Avery saw the air blur near one of the exits.
“They’re gone!
” he said over the sound of gunfire. “The attackers are gone. They were merely to distract Uthua while the pirates took off with the Codex.”
The soldiers, realizing he was right, quit shooting.
“We must do something,” a priest said. “Once they realize they failed to achieve their objective by stealth, they’ll send in another team to take the Codex by force.”
The soldiers turned to Commander Lasucciv. She chewed her lip and glanced to Uthua for help. He seemed to be in great pain, but, with visible effort, he raised himself part-way up. A gaggle of priests rushed to his aid, and with their help he stood. He swayed for a moment, and the priests groaned and sagged under his weight, but then he stabilized. He seemed incapable of issuing orders.
The high priest looked expectantly at Lasucciv. “Well, Commander?”
Something snapped over Lasucciv’s head, and she leapt out of the way as some sort of valve assembly collapsed onto the space where she’d just been. Water splashed, peppering the air with sparks
“This place is falling apart,” someone said, rather unnecessarily.
“It’s being helped along,” Sheridan said.
Avery moved closer to Uthua to inspect the wounds, and one of the priests that had been holding the god up moved aside to allow his inspection, letting the other priest take all the weight. The limbs—tentacles, Avery was sure—of the mystery party had penetrated Uthua’s sac to lay whip-like injuries across his back and torso, injuries that seemed to be turning black as the otherworldly venom seeped into him.
“You’ll live,” Avery said, far from sure if that were true. “But we must get you to safety so that you can heal.” What am I saying? I should be helping the mystery party KILL him. But he needed the god alive.
Uthua’s eyes had glazed over and his head had drooped. Only one other priest had been left to hold the god up, and when Uthua’s weight shifted he nearly collapsed again. Avery was obliged to duck under one arm and shove his shoulder into the god’s armpit, propping him up. Great. Not only am I helping save his miserable life, but I’m carrying him, too.