The monstrosity before him lit up. Beams of light in every shade swept across the interior surfaces of the torn umbilical, which he could see was now only connected to the larger spacecraft by a bundle of cables that had not been severed.
The mass seemed to grip the walls harder and then it coughed. A spasm that filled the umbilical with a blue-white cloud of crystalline shards the size of snowflakes. In vacuum the millions of tiny fragments flew toward Alex unhindered, though many thousands were slapped out of their trajectory by the undulating walls of the broken umbilical. Most, however, came shooting straight for Alex, and as they flew the fragments began to grow and link together.
Time to decide.
Alex Warthen raised his arm and felt the surge of energy even as the plasma beam lanced outward into that blue-white swarm. He aimed for the lights that danced across the spherical body beyond, and felt a keen sense of satisfaction as the whole mass began to glow. First white then crimson and then bright yellow. The tentacles began to glow, too, and the whole machine started to writhe.
He slammed the airlock door closed just as the cloud of crystal particles arrived. They lashed against the door like clawing fingernails. Beyond, the enemy creature convulsed one last time and then erupted in melted fragments of metal, cables, and other unrecognizable chunks.
All along the hull came a hammering that made the whole ship rattle and boom. Alex pushed away, afraid the airlock door would falter under the spray of ejecta. But it held. Jets of compressed air rushed into the vessel from vents near each bulkhead, creating plumes of grayish mist all around him.
He smacked into the opposite wall and turned his head to see the captain beside him. Their eyes met. A brief moment of shared wonder, even camaraderie. She blinked, and the brittle connection between them shattered. He needed her ship, and she wanted to keep it.
Alex reached with both hands and grabbed her by the helmet. Wearing this alien armor, high on adrenaline, he somehow knew he could crush it and then crush her.
Something poked at his chin. He glanced down and saw she still had her gun. She pressed against the tiny patch of flexible material where his mask joined the neck portion.
“You’re out of bullets,” he said.
“That was my gun. This is Xavi’s.”
He swallowed. Could it pierce the armor? Did he want to find out?
“This has to end,” she said, her voice almost sad through the tinny helmet speaker.
“That’s the idea.”
“Listen. It doesn’t even matter if you take the ship. It’s damaged beyond repair. The Wildflower cannot get where you want to go.”
Alex glared at her. He saw no hint of deception in her calm features.
“Even if it could,” she went on, “it won’t make any difference. I set the self-destruct as soon as I made it inside.”
All hope drained from him. He could see the truth, plain on her face. She meant it, every word. “Why?” he rasped.
“Because even damaged this ship can provide them,” she said, nodding toward the umbilical and the destroyed monster beyond, “with knowledge that I cannot allow them to have.”
“What knowledge?”
“How to get to Earth, for one.”
“The Builders already know how to get to Earth.”
“That thing out there is called a Scipio. They’re what the Builders sought our help in fighting.”
“Delete your records, then. How hard can it be?”
In answer, Gloria tapped the side of her head. “Not so easy, in truth. And then there’s the fold tech. That’s what they really want. Very desperately. If they had that they’d be unstoppable.”
“Then why the hell did you come here at all?”
She lowered her chin, blinked. Then met his gaze again. “Our first mission here was lost. The ship is still unaccounted for. We have to find it, and make sure they—”
The Wildflower rocked to one side, slamming Alex and the captain into the wall. They grunted in unison. Alex, holding on to nothing, bounced away and found himself adrift once again.
Another boom against the hull. There was a scuttling sound. Alex traced it with his eyes. It didn’t take much to imagine another enemy craft grabbing on to the ship and crawling across it, looking for a way in.
There was a loud bang that rippled through the space. Halfway between Alex and the far end of the ship, where Beth and Vanessa cowered, a tentacle had punched through.
The Chameleon
6.AUG.3911 (Earth Actual)
FATE LEFT THEM face-to-face.
In the crushing press of hard acceleration, Samantha found herself pinned to the floor with her visor pressed against that of Jared. Or the creature that had been Jared.
He raged at her, spittle flying from his vulpine lips, murder in his eyes. She couldn’t hear any of it, but he didn’t know that. Was beyond understanding that. The rash around the sides of his neck was clear as day.
She’d thought the days of dealing with subs well behind her. It felt like a lifetime ago, and incomprehensibly distant. And she knew now she’d been fooling herself. Even if this was Eve’s doing, even if Jared had been cursed with the virus before they’d left Earth, the idea that she’d left dealing with it behind was willful ignorance, nothing more. The whole point of this mission was to come and reckon with the masters of such diseases. You cannot escape that which you run straight toward.
Jared clawed at her, his mind of singular purpose now. She wondered if he recognized her, beyond mere prey. If not her as a person, could his befuddled mind identify her as an immune?
And how close was Eve’s version of SUBS to the real deal? She looked at Jared anew, not as a former man but as a tool of the creatures that even now surrounded both of them. They were pinned to the floor as well, but had the benefit of numerous spiked limbs. They crawled in, a growing horror of silhouettes against the battle-ravaged hallways.
Something new appeared in Sam’s field of view. A product of her imagination, she thought at first. A softly glowing beam that wormed right through the Scipio scouts and off into the distance, before fading as it rounded a corner. Sam blinked, but the golden path remained.
Blood must be getting squeezed from her mind. She was on her way to joining Jared in his insanity, no disease required, thank you very much.
“Please follow your designated path,” Eve said. A voice that came from somewhere inside her mind.
“You must be fucking kidding me,” Sam grunted, straining to move the air. “Finally awake and that’s all you’ve got to say?”
“Acceleration ends in three…”
No time to argue with her, or interrogate her artificial mind for the deception and confusion. No time to make her answer for any of it.
Sam was in the shit, pure and simple. A subhuman grappling with her, a dozen spherical death machines all around and closing in.
“two…”
She managed to bend her legs, tucking her feet up in behind her thighs like a frog.
“one…”
Weightless, just like that. Sam shoved against the floor with all her strength. She had the benefit of knowing it would happen. Jared, not so equipped, had just started to drift away from the floor when she powered into him. Her body and his took flight straight down the hall and along the path Eve had marked.
Her aim was true, or would have been had she not a subhuman grappled to her, hands clasped around her upper arms. Still, she’d been ready, he had not. The motion took him in a backward somersault, his back scraping across the suddenly very agitated tentacular limbs of the Scipio goon squad. They slowed him, which slowed her. Sam did the only thing she could and rammed her head into his, an attack that would have crushed his nose if not for his helmet. Still, the force of the blow rocked his head backward viciously. His grip came free. Sam tucked herself into a ball, rolled to one side, and extended her arms and legs to streamline her flight, feetfirst.
In her wake, Jared reached for her with one hand, fingers splayed, lik
e a diver being pulled into the dark depths by an elder god. Tentacles thrashed and writhed all around him. Hooking him by the shoulders. One spike slammed into the side of his helmet and pushed out the other side. What little light was left in Jared Larsen’s eyes vanished then.
Enough is enough, Sam decided, and willed the protrusions above her wrists to light the motherfuckers up.
—
Another dead hallway. She flew on, desperate now, ignoring the path Eve marked for her.
“Please follow your designated—”
“Get bent, machine,” Sam roared, half-tempted to wiggle out of the armor and leave it here just for some peace and quiet. She’d followed the ghostly beam for the first two turns and then decided Eve could shove the rest of it up her engine nozzles.
“It is imperative that you do your part. If you do not comply I will take control—”
“My part,” Sam said, “is finding Vaughn.”
“Which is exactly where your path leads.”
“Well sorry, but I’m having trouble trusting you just now,” Sam said.
“Prepare for minor acceleration,” the ship said, as if that was a perfectly acceptable reply.
Sam felt her feet scrape the floor. An instant later she was running. Then sprinting. Good. That’s better. She came across a hallway that had been breached at its midpoint, the metallic innards of the ship splayed inward in a twisted sculpture. There were no Scipios to be seen. Sam vaulted the mess, rolled, and continued on. In that brief leap she’d glanced into the rent. Several meters away lay the empty infinite blackness of space. Not empty, actually. Scipio ships, identical in shape if not size, were powering alongside on jets of energy, racing to intercept the Chameleon. Not such a great name after all, thought Sam. There were dozens of them, and that just in her tiny view glimpsed in passing. The knot of dread in her gut tightened. This wasn’t going to end well, she knew that with absolute certainty, but she’d be damned if she didn’t go down without a fight.
“The path leads to Vaughn?” she asked the AI. “Truly?”
“Correct.”
“For your sake, Eve, it better. Update it.”
The ship made no reply, but the glowing path returned, adjusted to her new position.
Sam sprinted ahead, going full bore now. Another corner, another hallway, though this one curved slightly, implying a path around the girth of the ship, and that was good. She kept one arm held out, fist clenched and rotated down, ready to fire. Debris skittered under her heavy footfalls, remnants of earlier battle or just the detritus from so much maneuvering.
A distant yellow flash lit the curved hallway, followed by a shock wave. The rubble under her feet became riddled with a fine glassy powder. Scipio residue, from their razor-spray crap. Sam gritted her teeth and surged onward. Her battle high began to crumble, giving way to exhaustion. Pain flared from a growing heat in her calf where the enemy had punctured her suit, a wound she’d managed to ignore until gravity had wormed its way back into the mix.
In front of her the hall met a vertical access shaft, with ladder rungs along one edge. Her path plunged down into the hole, and from below came the flashing lights and sprays of shrapnel.
Sam leapt into the abyss, aimed down, and dropped into the fray.
The Chameleon
6.AUG.3911 (Earth Actual)
THEY CAME IN from everywhere. With the outer shell torn away, and the news spread among them that Builder tech hid beneath, the Swarm reacted like a school of frenzied sharks. They punched through the tough hull with superheated spikes mounted to their tentacles, tearing circular sections away and squeezing through to the guts of the vessel. No longer were those holes sealed behind them. They knew time was of the essence now.
Tania Sharma watched in horror as the Scipios swarmed inside. Their long, slithering limbs poured in through the fractured ceiling, found purchase in the walls. They hauled themselves inside and heaved their way toward where she stood in the basin of the giant chamber.
She glanced around, looking for her path, needing that guidance. “Where do I go?”
“Here,” Eve said. “Make your stand, Tania. Below you is my power source. If they reach it, all will end here.”
“I can’t,” she whispered, in awe of their numbers. A dozen enemies or more had spilled in, spiraling down the walls toward her. They moved as if knowing their prey was cornered. She knew with total certainty that the moment she fired on one the rest would pounce. “Eve, I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I’m not a warrior.”
No reply. She’d gone.
Tania swallowed. Think, think. The walls? Cut the room in half and hope they’re sucked out into space? Wouldn’t work. They’d just bored in through the ceiling and hadn’t bothered to seal it.
Get in close, maybe. Would they attack her if it meant damaging one of their own? Almost certainly. The Swarm numbered in the millions, and this was their entire reason for being.
There was nothing to do but fire. Hope she could take enough of them out to buy Eve some time.
“Skyler,” she said, ashamed at the waver in her voice. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but I want you to know—”
“Save it,” a voice said. Not Eve. Not Skyler.
Light above. An explosion. The Scipios squirmed, twisted to face a new threat.
Prumble dropped through the enemy line, spinning like a top, arms extended. His twin energy beams swept across the assembled foes. Sparks and severed tentacles filled the air. Scipios thrashed under the onslaught as the big man corkscrewed down through the middle of the chamber. Many came away from the wall, falling after him by choice or not. At the last second he rolled and brought his feet about.
Prumble tucked a shoulder, completed his shockingly graceful somersault, and came up firing. Both arms held out, he unleashed twin torrents of energy into the first enemy to hit the floor. The thing vibrated under the power of it and then cracked like an egg before its bits exploded outward.
“Make your lovey-dovey speech to Skyler later, all right?” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”
His presence was like a splash of ice-cold water, or waking suddenly from a bad dream.
The Scipios came at them.
She leapt away as a creature tried to swipe her legs out from under her. The tentacle found air instead before slamming into the far wall. The surface cracked under the impact, the tentacle evidently lodged. Tania raised an arm to shoot, but then the Scipio jettisoned the stuck arm and began to lurch toward her. Lights winked on all across its core, sweeping into focus.
Tania carved a hole through its center and watched as it flopped to the ground, lifeless, trails of smoke curling up from the entry and exit wounds.
Another came toward her. Tania took aim with both arms, but only one fired. Some kind of warning indicator blazed on the display within her visor. Oh crap, she thought. The beam from her left arm fizzled and died, luckily after her target had dropped to the floor.
A crushing force around her torso. Tania glanced down to see a tentacle around her waist, drawing tight. Even with her exotic armored suit the pain instantly grew to something unbearable. Agony beyond imagination as the thing tried to crush her. Then a white-hot line tore at the air beside her head. It swept down and across the mechanical limb, severing it neatly in two. The force against her torso melted away.
“Thank you,” Tania said, turning about and moving behind her friend.
Prumble glanced back at her. “What are you doing, hiding?”
The glare she shot back stiffened him. “My weapon wouldn’t fire,” she replied. “Overheated maybe. Or out of ammo.”
“Out of…” Prumble paused, glancing down at his arms. “Fucking hell, there’s ammo?”
Only then did Tania realize a new glowing path had appeared in her augmented view of things. It went out a rent in the wall to her right. “Follow me!” she shouted, and ran that way.
“Right behind you,” Prumble replied, still firing to keep the enemy at bay. Then, �
�What are these numbers?”
In the heat of battle Tania had failed to notice the timer that had appeared on her visor. Three minutes and twelve seconds left. “A countdown.”
“How very Builder of you, Eve!” he roared to the room.
What would happen at zero Tania had no idea.
“Stay on the path,” the ship replied, reading her thoughts. “Please hurry.”
“She wants us to hurry,” she said to her companion, pushing into the darkness beyond the broken wall.
“Figured that bit out myself.”
Tania managed a small, private smile. “You saved my life back there. Thank you.”
“Dearest Doctor Sharma,” Prumble said, “it was my pleasure.” He followed her, still firing, ammunition be damned.
—
There were six of them in the junction. Five in what she’d consider the normal Scipio size—spheres about a meter across with six to ten tentacles writhing about, spiked tips lunging or spraying their smoky needle-clouds.
The sixth, though, was new. It dwarfed the others, five times their size, and not just a ball, either. It had another protrusion on top, like a head, Sam thought, with a large round indentation on the front. What it housed she could not see, but instinct told her either weapon or camera. Either way, she focused on it.
Samantha pulsed her thrusters to adjust her fall and then prepared for impact. A split second before landing she fired, sweeping both arms from front to back. She landed right atop the big one, her beams drawing a neat line almost perfectly along its dorsal bulge. The giant Scipio writhed beneath her, froze, and cracked into two neat halves.
By now she’d seen inside a few of the enemy vessels, after slicing several like geode rocks. Inside, beneath layers of materials she did not exactly recognize, and nestled within a sort of cocoon of gel-like goop, there’d been an actual Scipio. The pilot. Covered in that slime, the fleshy little thing looked like some kind of naked bat with an overdeveloped brain and underdeveloped wings. Tentacles, not unlike those that protruded from the ship it flew, extended from its pinkish body from a hundred different points. Whether they were protruding out from the animal’s skin, or attached to it, she had no way to know.
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