CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Well, this is all fucked, isn’t it?
Nate’s suit said that way, and that way was up a Goddamn hill, at night. His suit was following Grace’s suit, a compass on his HUD placing a marker in the right place. Put your feet down, one after the other Nate, in that direction. You’ll die of exhaustion or find the sword.
Or be eaten by alien monsters. That was a distinct possibility.
He didn’t need the wayfinder. Even a city boy like him could tell which way Grace had gone. The leaves were trampled by her passage, like a herd of elephants had gone this way.
Hang on.
One person couldn’t have destroyed that much vegetation. There was some kind of truck or jeep or other damn thing on her trail. Which didn’t make sense, because the Tyche hadn’t seen anything with a power source for klicks in any direction. The ship was watching, and she hadn’t seen shit.
He keyed the comm. “Engineer.”
“You’ve got Hope,” she said.
“That’s great,” he said. “Look, I’ve got me a trail here. Some kind of industrial traffic, looks like. I don’t know. Can you do me a scan?”
“Scanning,” she said. “Nope.”
“Nope?”
“Nope,” she said. “Nada. Zilch. Nothing. I’ve got you, I’ve got that blip ahead of you that’s a suit, and that’s it for power supplies.”
“That sounds specific,” said Nate. “Like you want to say something else.”
“Did you bring a big gun?” she said.
Nate hefted Kohl’s rifle. It was a heavy action plasma affair, something that looked like it had come from military action. Twin barrels, rangefinder and massfinder for optimal charge per shot depending on target, big battery hanging out the ass of it. “Yeah, I got one from Kohl.”
“He’s awake?”
“I didn’t think he’d mind,” said Nate.
“Cool,” said Hope. “Thing is, you didn’t read the files, did you?”
“Files?”
“Right,” said Hope. “The Ezeroc come in different sizes.”
“Oh come on,” said Nate. “They seemed pretty annoying when there were thousands of them of just a little bit bigger than me.” Insects. Giant insects. You’re fighting a roach problem of epic proportions. He clamped his lips shut around a laugh that might have come out as a nervous giggle.
“There are huge ones,” she said. “Have fun dying. Or, you know, come on back. It’s warm here, and there’s cookies.” The comm clicked off.
Different sizes, huh? Nate hefted the rifle. Big game hunting it is.
• • •
The tower was dark and creepy. No other words for it. Dark because the damn lights were out, not a backup generator or power cell in the place to keep ’em on. Creepy, because the rusted fence was broken down and the place was crawling with vines and creepers and giant insects.
His sword was inside. Inside, and up.
He tried the comm. “Grace? Grace. It’s Nate.”
The line hissed at him, not the clear signal of tight comms, but interference. Something that sounded like voices, whispered at the edge of hearing.
Or, it’s just static. The place was creepy, and the creepy was creeping him out.
He set the comm to cycle his broadcast, then clicked it off. She’d get back to him, or she wouldn’t, and the suit could do the hard work without him wearing his voice hoarse.
So, what did we have here?
Creepy building: check.
Sign saying it was a science facility: also check.
Nasty-looking fence? Check on that too.
Nate tramped across the chain link fence, the thing rattling under his feet. He caught the hint of some other sound, more a sensation through his feet, and turned. His foot got snarled in the busted fence and he went down, just in time to see a massive — fuck that thing is huge! — insect bearing down on him. Where the Ezeroc he’d seen before were like a mad insect version of a centaur, this was more like an armored beetle. Wide, big crab-like claws, another six legs, and a horror mouth of transparent needle teeth.
He fell hard, his fingers jerking at the trigger of the rifle. There was a tenth of a second whine and then twin bolts of plasma spat out at the thing. Those twin bolts of plasma were a few thousand degrees C each, the kick of the rifle hard against his shoulder. The Ezeroc had a massive claw up in front of its face, where Nate had been firing, and the plasma hit, and … fizzled.
Nate looked at the rifle, then at the Ezeroc. At the rifle again. “Oh come on!” He readied the weapon again, pointed it at the Ezeroc, and flicked on the rangefinder and massfinder. The weapon cycled — never using this one again, it’s slower than a trade run to Ganymede — and then fired. Twin bolts of plasma blasted out, impacting with the Ezeroc. This time, cracks appeared in the claw, and the Ezeroc roared. It trampled towards Nate, who tried to move, but his foot was snared, caught in the fence. It swung at him.
The crack of the claw when it hit his helmet was like a thunderclap. Nate felt a horrible twinge in his leg as he was knocked free, but that was dwarfed by the pain in his head and neck, shortly followed by the pain in his back as he impacted with the side of the tower. The breath knocked from him, sounding loud in his helmet, and he lay on the ground for a couple of moments, unable to remember who he was, or why he was here.
Nate.
Sword.
Grace.
Got it. He clawed at the wall for support, pulled himself to his knees, and then the Ezeroc was on him again. Moves quick for such a big thing. It caught him in the side this time, knocking him away with the gentle touch of a locomotive. He screamed as something in his ribcage gave with a wet pop, and he flopped in the undergrowth like a landed fish. Nate had fallen on his rifle — how he still had that in his hand was a mystery — and he struggled to right himself. He could feel the drumming through the earth as the thing bore down on him.
He remembered those crab claws. Why hasn’t it snipped me in half? He looked up a split second before it hit him again, knocking him high up and over, and this time his shoulder dislocated. He didn’t have the breath left to scream. When Nate landed against a tree, he was trying to suck in air through a diaphragm that was paralyzed. He wanted to throw up, or breathe — just a teaspoon of air for Christ’s sake — but all the noise he could make were little hiccups.
All he’d wanted was his goddamn sword. That, and to have a conversation with Grace Gushiken.
And maybe get his completion bonus for taking the transmitter all the way out to this forsaken rock infested with killer bugs. And for rescuing the Rear Admiral, who was a real asshole. Just a little break, that’s all he needed, and here he was trying to suck air in the precious moments before he died.
Why was everything so hard? He tried to do the right thing. Look after people. Do the jobs on time. Not stiff his clients — except that one time, but they were huge assholes, like a collection of Penns. Maybe get one over on the Republic while he was at it, but who didn’t want to do that? What had it got him but a busted rib, dislocated shoulder, and a fatal appointment with a super crab.
The Ezeroc was almost on him again, and his adrenaline spiked higher if that was possible. His diaphragm gave a little spasm, and he coughed, and while he coughed his arm jerked. The arm that was still holding Kohl’s rifle. His finger clenched on the finger, and the rifle fired two more bursts of plasma. This surprised Nate, but it surprised the Ezeroc more, because the blasts went low. Under those massive armored claws, and hit a leg beneath it.
The leg exploded in a shower of barbecued lobster meat. The Ezeroc screamed, trampling its remaining five legs in a circle.
Well, that’s a thing. Nate squeezed the trigger again, blowing off another leg, and the Ezeroc toppled to the ground. Those legs were really clawing at the air now, lethal things each as wide as his two legs together. Nate wanted to pull himself clear, but his other arm was dislocated, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good. So he hefted the rifle agai
n, took aim, and kept blowing legs off.
One of his shots missed, chewing into the underside of the Ezeroc, causing a rupture of fluids and scalded meat. It screamed even louder, if that was possible. Ah, hell with it, thought Nate, and just kept pulling the trigger on the plasma rifle until the screaming stopped.
Silence. Or, almost silence, a gentle hiss of air escaping from the crack in his visor. SUIT BREACH said his HUD.
Nate shouldered the rifle’s sling, then pulled himself upright using the tree. He leaned against it for a second, working himself up to the next bit, then rammed his shoulder into it. It went back into the socket with a pop, and he almost passed out. The only thing that stopped him falling over was the doses of stims and painkillers the suit was feeding him. He’d bought the suit at a crazy sale a couple jobs ago, the dealer promising a good emergency experience for a budget rate. Nate loved budget rates. He loved that it had a defibrillator built into it. Not that he wanted to test out how well it worked.
The dealer, for once, hadn’t lied. Nate felt high on Jesus.
He patted his suit for the emergency repair kit, pulling out sealant and some tape. Nate squirted the goo onto his visor then plastered tape over the top. He couldn’t see for shit, but at least he had an atmosphere seal now. Nate didn’t want to catch whatever these colonists had.
What he wanted was his sword, and a conversation with Grace Gushiken. He entered the tower, leaving smoking Ezeroc behind him.
• • •
Stairs. Always fucking stairs.
Nate had bought himself a nice ship with only a few decks. A minimum of stairs, because climbing them sucked, and climbing down them when drunk could lead to all kinds of unpleasantness. A flat ship is what he’d bought, nose to tail an uncomplicated thing, his Tyche.
But here he was, climbing up the inside of some insect-infested ancient communications tower that spoke to a sky that wasn’t listening. Or, actually, it was: it was probably talking to the damn satellites that had knocked out their comms. But sky that wasn’t listening sounded poetic, and sounding poetic was better than throwing up in his helmet, which was the alternative if he didn’t concentrate on something other than how sick he felt.
The weirdest thing was on the 21st, maybe 22nd level. He’d lost count. There was a body here, some kind of growth holding it to the wall. Tendrils came out of the mouth of the body, pulsating. The eyes of the body were sightless and white, the skin covered in mold. The tendrils were connected to the growth on the wall. Nate shone his light on it, playing the beam up the stairwell. There was growth all the way up, every floor he could see. He checked for vitals, and found a pulse. Which didn’t make him feel great, because it looked liked this person had been here a while. No muscle tone, arms and legs wasted, withered to sticks. Clothes rotted. Same kind of mold around the mouth where the tentacles entered.
He keyed his comm. “Hope?”
“You’ve got the Engineer,” she said.
“Those files,” said Nate. “Did they talk about … anything else?”
“Lots of stuff,” she said. “Specificity, Cap. It’s important.”
“Here,” said Nate, throwing a visual her way. “What’s that look like?”
“It looks like,” and then she stopped. When she spoke again, her voice was faint, but still struggling for bravado. “It looks like it’s not an Engineering problem.”
“Do I … pull the tentacles out?” Nate looked up the stairwell. No movement. Nothing. No Grace. No damn sword.
“You want my opinion?”
“I want to know what the files say,” said Nate.
“Files aren’t real specific,” she said. “Not about this. Want me to ask Penn?”
“No,” said Nate. Nothing that came out of that man’s mouth could be trusted. “Thanks.” He clicked the comm off.
If he found himself in the same situation as the unfortunate body, would he want to have the tentacles in or out? Tough call: the answer was out but only if it didn’t result in death. Some parasites kept their hosts alive, right? This could be one of those gigs. But would you rather be alive as parasite food, or dead?
He kept climbing. He passed another body stuck fast in the stuff. Same deal: tentacles, sightless eyes, rotted clothes, withered limbs, mold on the skin. This one had some kind of leafy thing growing out of one ear. No matter how you viewed it, that kind of thing didn’t look good. Deal with it later.
As he climbed higher, he found more people. Or bodies. Or whatever they were. All stuck to the walls with the goo, all unresponsive, all still with a pulse. The stairs ran to a landing at the top of the tower. A door stood open before him. Inside, he saw:
Grace Gushiken, on her knees. Her helmet was off, her head bowed. Before anything else, his eyes found her.
His sword, beside her on the ground. The blade was free of the scabbard, Ezeroc blood green against the black metal.
Two more of those huge Ezeroc crabs.
And in the center of it all, a massive insect. Tiny, stubby legs that couldn’t possibly move its bulk. It looked to have a torso-meets-head arrangement going on. What looked like eggs surrounded it.
Grace opened her eyes and looked at Nate. “Nathan Chevell,” she said. “Why are you so important to this one?”
“My charm,” said Nate. “Grace, come on over to me, okay? Come away from the nice insects.”
Grace considered him. “No,” she said. “We are together. We should all be together.”
With that, the two massive Ezeroc next to her rumbled towards Nate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
El watched the holo in the same way that most people watched pro wrestling. Like she was expecting shock and awe, but because she was expecting it, she had to ham up her own emotions when they arrived. El liked to watching pro wrestling, but that happened in her cabin, away from prying eyes, because people were a judgmental bunch.
When the ooooh, ahhh happened on the holo, she was expecting it. El didn’t know what she was expecting, but she was expecting something. And she wasn’t disappointed. The Tyche chirped at her like an eager cricket, cleared the holo, and then said TRANSMISSION BLOCKED.
What the ship was referring to was the comm line they had open to the Gladiator. The Tyche was saying that one minute the Gladiator — or what was left of her — was there, the next minute she was probably still there but no longer able to talk. Sure, there could be all kinds of reasons for that. The satellite array Hope had strung around the planet like a bunch of Christmas lights was a tenuous thing at best. Any part of that series of orbiting machinery could have been knocked out, but if that had happened the error would have said TRANSMISSION LOST. Lost, not blocked. This was a definite block.
Ships thought they were blocked when there was a carrier wave but not enough sanity on the line to make out what was being said. Or when some other noise just overlaid it, blocking everything else out. The Tyche was sure that something was sucking up their signal, like a siphon plugged into the RF spectrum.
El took her feet down from the console where they’d been resting. She clicked on the comm. “Hope? Hope, I’m getting chatter on the comm. Can you check our arrays? Make sure we’re not the zeroes in this conversation.”
Nothing.
El looked at the comm. Checked the switches — she was on, she was talking to Hope, and Hope was … not answering.
Odd.
Try something new, then. “Cap, this is Helm. You getting anything…” El’s voice trailed off as the Tyche chattered to herself then said TRANSMISSION BLOCKED.
Not odd. Bad. That was bad. They had clear line of sight to the cap. If El pointed a camera in his direction — there we go — she could see his last known position, some kind of tower poking up out of the trees. She hadn’t noticed that when she set down, but she’d been trying to dodge burning hail at the time. Setting the Tyche down where she did, in the lee of a cliff, gave protection. Bought them some time. She wasn’t thinking about sightseeing the surrounding area.
&
nbsp; Maybe she should have.
She worked the console. Was the tower causing the interference? No, not the tower. Something near to them. Something close to their location. In space? No, not close enough, and that would have put the fear of God into El. Because it’d have meant that damn Ezeroc ship had come around the planet and would drop rocks on them. No, this was much closer.
This was in the ship.
• • •
El’s gun was primitive. She’d picked it up from a collector for just that reason. She couldn’t shoot for shit, not anything smaller than a ship-to-ship laser. Just as the war was wrapping up she’d gone to a boutique gunsmith when she was in San Francisco. That was the first and last time she’d set foot on the rock that had birthed humanity. Nothing about the trip had endeared the place to her. Sure, the terraforming had worked fine. Blue skies. Clean air. Water in the oceans that was blue, or blue green, or — when she’d gone on an older style of ship that sailed seas instead of stars — clear as glass.
No, the problem was the people. They were fucking everywhere.
She’d been in an alley, a bunch of thugs — kids, really — had set on her, demanding coins. She’d been wearing the Old Empire’s colors, still carrying the Emperor’s credits, and they’d left her with some bruises (face and ego both) after she couldn’t give them anything. After that experience, she’d found a bar that sold liquor to spacers and downed more out of the tequila bottle than was wise.
The next morning — it may have been early afternoon by the time she’d shaken off the fumes and the haze and the need to throw up every two minutes — she’d gone looking for a gun. The usual places sold blasters, standard plasma weapons that were the bread and butter of personal defense (or offense) galaxy-wide. Some comedian had tried to sell her a stun gun, a type that used a lot of volts on contact to ruin someone’s day, and she’d explained that the whole point was not having people that close. If they were close, they could touch her, hit her in the face, take her coins, and that wasn’t fun.
It was always about the people.
Tyche's Flight (Tyche's Journey Book 1) Page 21