Mutant Hunter

by Tobias Roote

  “Oh, fucking great !” Grady muttered furiously. He’d hoped the mutant would help him get Shrilla out of the cockpit which was becoming increasingly more difficult as the seconds ticked away. As the water filled the ship sections it was slowly creeping up towards them. As he undid the strap Shrilla collapsed into him causing him to fall against a bulkhead. He thought he felt a crack, but ignoring it as he felt the shuttle shift as it sank into the deep. He managed to keep hold of her as the shuttle rolled and settled on it’s back and they both ended up on the cockpit roof.

  The angle of the shuttle now meant it was retaining air inside and holding back the ingress of water into the cabin, but then the wreck shifted again and Grady was trapped with Shrilla as water now cascaded in through the cockpit’s hatch. They had at best minutes. There was no way he would ever be able to drag both himself and his partner through that pressurised waterfall. He had no idea how deep they were and doubted they would even have enough air to get to the surface. Their chances looked dire from where he was lying.

  He shifted his attention to the cabinets around the cockpit trying to find something that would help them, but there was nothing, just star maps and general navigation equipment, mostly spare parts. He sank back and felt the water lapping around his lower body. It wouldn’t be long now. His only hope would be if the water pressure equalised and they would then be able to swim out through the hole in the side.

  The water brought Shrilla back to consciousness, as her body reacted to the cold of the rising water. Grady moved them close to the top corner of the roof where the air pocket would keep them alive for a little longer.

  “We need to get out of here, Shrilla. Now !” he shook her. It was no good, she was still too dazed. He considered abandoning her, but then shook that off. They might still have a chance as long as the shuttle skeleton held if they didn’t sink so deep that the craft was crushed under the pressure.

  “Grady, get out of here. Leave me - save yourself,” she muttered weakly as she recognised their danger. Trying to pull away from him she began to shuck herself back into the furthest point from the water in an effort to delay the inevitable.

  The water continued to creep towards them as the light began to fade. They were sinking deeper as more trapped air was displaced.

  Grady was deeply worried, not believing they could survive this. He’d sensed the vessel was moving deeper while filling the cockpit at too high a pressure for them to fight their way out. Even if they did get out, he knew the longer they waited the further they would have to swim - without air - to get to the surface. They were space veterans, they knew the risks. Is drowning any worse than breathing a vacuum, he wondered.

  Well ! he thought as he resigned himself to his fate, they wouldn't have long to wait to found out.

  Leave No Trace

  “Maintain vigilance, there must be no survivors. Remember, our orders were very specific,” Olgar reminded his crew, not that they needed it. As a matter of course they rarely left anyone alive on a mission, the people that worked for him were bloodthirsty, cold, calculating assassins. They were the most non-empathic creatures the galaxy had produced. His leadership was a direct result of his own murderous ambition, one simply killed the leader to take his or her place, if you could survive the settling in period when all-comers were permitted to unseat you, by fair means or foul.

  It ensured only the worthy survived to lead.

  One of the gunners thought the delay while they checked was a waste of time and glanced across at him.

  “They’re unlikely to survive without safety gear this far from landfall.”

  Olgar looked sharply at the younger assassin and smiled malevolently.

  “You would do well to remember that we leave nothing to chance. Perhaps, I should throw you out the hatch into these seas and let you check out the wreckage personally ?” He cocked his head as if considering the option seriously.

  The gunner looked away, quickly hiding his surliness. Olgar smiled. It was an important function of leading these men that he kept his hard callous nature showing with a sharp serrated cutting edge, otherwise they would be on him like a pack of Rapsairan desert dingos.

  The screen showed images of the wreckage and the gunner depressed the firing stud. The piece of flotsam in his sights disintegrated from the multiple impact of explosive shells. Thermal imaging gave no indication of life signs on, or near, the surface and he moved swiftly on to the next, keeping an eye on his leader in case he was serious. He didn’t dare say he was unable to swim as Olgar would simply throw him in and tell him it was time to learn.

  Above the raging sea the assassin’s craft continued to hover, the down draft from its prodigious engines flattened the waves around the wreckage making it easy to shoot at. The mini rail-guns slid in their recessed mounts, angled downward seeking targets, some of them firing automatically at any wreckage that might hide a human survivor.

  “Drop drones, I want visuals of their bodies,” Olgar ordered.

  “And where is their spaceship, the... the Citrix ?” he shouted angrily, checking the file for the name of the vessel. They needed to remove ‘all traces’ and that meant the ship they arrived in.

  “There’s no trace on the sensors, they must have it hidden and shielded,” came back the answer.

  “Well ! find it !” Olgar thundered as he stormed off the bridge, leaving his men to frantically hunt for a needle in a haystack. A needle that might, or might not be findable.

  Olgar keyed the secure access to his cabin and entered looking forward to dropping the ‘evil pirate’ façade, even if only for a few minutes.

  The comms unit was blinking. He looked at it balefully expecting it to be Phang and had already half decided to ignore it, but realised it would only delay the inevitable confrontation. He activated the video-stream and leaped back in surprise.

  “Dalt !” He was astonished to see his clone brother on the end of the video call. Nobody on the ship knew of the links between Olgar and the DIA, his brother and the Dispersalistas. This was necessary because of the type of work they did and the necessity to remain anonymous.

  But Dalt ! He was astonished. They had no reason to talk to each other, operating as they did at completely different spectrums of the DIA’s wide-ranging services. There was little they agreed on, but a call from his brother was something that they would both take gravely seriously.

  “Yes, it’s me, I see you, brother. Now, you have to tell me, did you complete your latest mission ?” Dalt asked without preamble. The intense look on his brother’s face warned Olgar not to avoid the answer, although his immediate curiosity at Dalt’s interest was piqued.

  “Yes, we were successful, we’re just in clean-up mode now,” he offered blandly, not yet wanting to mention the lack of physical evidence.

  Dalt visibly blanched at the news, Olgar actually saw him stagger as though hit by something hard. Knowing Dalt as he did, Olgar suddenly had a bad feeling about the reason for his brother’s call.

  “What ?” he responded nervously. “What could this contract have to do with you, or your group ?”

  Dalt just licked his lips as if trying to think on his feet. He looked like his world was collapsing around him and if Olgar was right about the bad feeling he had in the pit of his stomach, it might also be bad news for him.

  “The target was a man named Grady ?” Dalt asked.

  “Yes, an AWA Agent and his partner. We took them out approximately thirty minutes ago,” Olgar replied cautiously, wondering where this was leading.

  “100% ?” Dalt asked wanting to hear some chance of remission.

  Olgar nodded, confirming Dalt’s fears. “Yes ! No bodies, but no chance of recovery, they were taken out over the sea and they never surfaced. We have drones searching the wreckage for bodies. What’s this about, brother ? You’ve never shown any interest in our operations before. Why now ?”

  Dalt sighed expansively as his pent-up breath gave out. “Grad
y was our ‘sleeper’ in the AWA and was close to finding an important source. We believe the planet he is on now, might be what we have been looking for.”

  Olgar felt sick in the pit of his stomach, but how could he have known ? They had many sleepers, but the AWA was difficult to penetrate. If they had one there, he would have been an outstanding asset. There would be repercussions ; Olgar could almost feel the summoning from the elders. They would not be lenient and they would accept no excuses. He and his crew were as good as dead.

  “I can give you their location. It’s the best I can do. We haven’t found their spaceship,” he offered his brother. He knew it was a paltry offer, but was at a loss to know how to proceed from here, such a development was unprecedented.

  “Their ship has our sensor-blocking abilities. I will find it,” Dalt responded bleakly seemingly too bereft to talk further. “Stay well, brother,” he finished, as the screen blacked out.

  Olgar staggered to his desk and pressed the intercom button.

  “All hands - cease all activities, advise immediately if any life signs are detected. Do not, repeat DO NOT engage. If contact made advise me immediately.” He sat at his bunk and laid his head in his hands. Not for the first time he berated himself for allying with the corporations. He had made good money, had a good run, fought many enemies of the Dispersal, often against advice from the elders. Now, he would pay a heavy price.

  He decided then that Phang would also pay. The elders would expect some recompense besides his own head. Ah ! Well, it was good fun while it lasted, he thought as he prepared to go back onto the bridge and see what he could do to render assistance to his brother. If he and his crew died in action now, it would be a good thing and would bypass the hell of a tribunal with the elders of the Quorum.

  Dalt responds to the News from the Angels

  When Dalt closed the connection to his brother, he swore vehemently before giving up the coordinates of the attack to his navigator. They were at least an hour from Archon-5. It would be too late to do anything. Nonetheless, he decided, they would do everything they could. First they would find the ship, then try and piece together what had occurred prior to the Angel’s intervention. One thing he knew for sure, he knew his brother and Encio corporation would pay a heavy price for the loss of Grady.

  He coded a message to headquarters. It would mean that there would be a tribunal and he thought hard about how he would justify the fact they weren’t closer to Grady as required by mandate. Shadowing him had meant keeping him from such harm as this, but it was difficult when Grady had such a high action-based profile. It had been a calculated risk. What they hadn’t accounted for properly was the increasing aggravation of the Core navy, being stirred up no doubt by the corporation’s need to regain the initiative with the mutant enclaves. That, and the fact that the Angels were so deadly efficient. Dalt thought the elders might withdraw the Angel’s license over this, but he couldn’t see Olgar giving up his team, his ship or the Angel’s way of life. He knew his brother would be hurting right now. Damaging their own assets in the field, however accidental it was, left them all heavy of heart.

  No doubt about it, Dalt had miscalculated, but he needed to know why. What was so important about Archon-5 that had put ENCIO into a spin that resulted in the Angels being called in.

  Could he retrieve Grady’s ship and recover any data to take back to the Council ?

  “We’re approaching Archon-5. CNR Persipis is hailing us on an irregular frequency. It’s likely our asset onboard.” The call came through his open comms link.

  “Give them the codes and find out what they have for us,” Dalt said without picking up the receiver. His AI would automatically transfer the response via its open microphone.

  He presumed that would be their agent, placed there to provide them with the information he still didn’t have. What was it about Archon-5 that was causing everyone to get jittery. Damn It ! What the hell happened, Grady. How did you get so careless that you got yourself killed ?

  He remembered there had been a second agent with him when they left the space-port. Was she with him when the Angels took them down ?

  His comms unit flashed at him. He answered. It was Olgar.

  “Brother, good news, perhaps,” he shrugged non-committally.

  “The drones have entered the ship and scanned the vicinity of the wreck. It appears there are no bodies and the ship was empty. There were no signs that the missiles killed them and the impact with the sea wasn’t harsh enough to do so either. It is reported by the land-base that there were three aboard the shuttle, which tells us that at least one mutant left with them. The others all escaped overland. We’re extending our search and I’ll report further, but in my line of work no bodies means they’ve escaped somehow.”

  Dalt 's hopes rose and said so. “That’s good news, brother. Let me know if you discover anything - anything at all.” His dejection was lessened by the fresh update.

  He turned to his SIC. “What news from our man aboard the Persipis ?” he asked.

  “This,” was all he said as he passed him a tablet filled with data.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rescued

  Kraell returned in the dwindling light. They had thought him gone, but his reappearance through the cabin door gave them hope. The air pocket that was so far keeping them alive was shrinking as the pressure forced more life giving air through the cracks allowing the craft to sink faster. They were running out of time, but to try and escape the sinking craft at this depth would be suicide. Shrilla still wasn’t fully able and he couldn’t drag her downward through the maelstrom of water and out via the hatch. With the mutant’s help maybe they could pull her together. However, the mutant had different ideas and handed them each a small squidgy ball of seaweed.

  “Put this in mouth,” he gesticulated pushing the wad towards Grady and another at Shrilla.

  “Breathe in through this and out through mouth,” he indicated his nose and pressed Shrilla hard to follow his instructions.

  “Do not stop breathing until I say,” he emphasised seriously. In the poor light his features looked very severe and Grady wondered how much of it was the dimming light and how much of it was his growing sense of fear.

  He looked suspiciously at the green ball which was almost black in the poor light. It was less than two inches across and definitely some kind of seaweed. He had no idea how this would help, but he looked into the mutant’s eyes and at that moment realised they had no choice but trust him, or die.

  Grady slowly placed the ball of seaweed into his mouth and as instructed, breathed out. He watched as Shrilla did the same, she wasn’t as alert as him, but instinctively knew the mutant was trying to help. It was salty and slightly slimy and moved about on his tongue as if responding to something. If Grady had any other option he would have spat it out at that precise moment as his brain refused to accept that this thing in his mouth was going to do anything to help his situation. He was relying on faith and blind instinct. In moments such as these, it was all he could trust.

  The reaction from the green ball was almost instantaneous. expanding rapidly, much faster than his brain could react to, faster than his body could respond to. The compact ball unravelled in response to the source of carbon dioxide being expelled from deep within his lungs and rapidly grew down his throat chasing the source of the CO2 to its point of origin.

  Grady was choking, sinking towards the incoming flow of seawater. His body’s reaction to the invasion of the fast expanding seaweed forced him into a coughing fit as it attempted to expel the alien invader from his lungs, an exertion that left him totally incapacitated as he fought the desire to cough and the desire to breathe at the same time.

  Shrilla fared no better as her body tried to cope with the invasive growth. She thrashed and kicked at the violent incursion of seaweed into her breathing space and the look of terror in her bulging eyes as it progressed, panicked Grady as much as his own fear of the unknown impending
death by asphyxiation. Once it had completely enveloped the interior of his lungs, it progressed up into his nasal cavities making him want to sneeze. His sinuses burned as the seaweed drove its way into his system regardless of anything he did to stop it.

  Now, Grady could no longer see, or hear anything as the weed’s growth expanded consuming every inch of him as it took over all available space inside his chest, pushing his ribs outward, distending his lungs to the limit of his ribcage, pressing downward on his diaphragm which was attempting to hold the growth back so his organs weren’t compressed into a smaller space than they needed to survive.

  The water was now coming over his head, but there was little point in trying to seek out air as the seaweed continued to morph inside him. Despite this his lungs continued to make the attempt to cough and breathe, cough and breathe, cough and breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe.

  Some seconds went by before Grady realised he was breathing - underwater.

  BREATHING !

  The murderous desire to cough was gone, the lurching desire to expel the growth had disappeared. In its place he now felt strong and powerful as oxygen was drawn from the water by the weed and driven into his lung walls where it was exchanged for carbon dioxide and the process repeated, every time he inhaled, exhaled, there was only seawater transferred. No air bubbles escaped, not one. All were consumed by the weed which continued to develop inside.

  Slowly, Grady’s wits recovered. The light, now failing completely as the craft continued to sink into the depths of the ocean, gave him just enough reflection to show him that Shrilla was, like him, breathing and beginning to make sense of her surroundings. A movement caught his attention and a hand grasped his, pulling him towards the cabin door. The water pressure, equalised now the cockpit was full, meant it was easier to swim to the hole in the shuttle and escape.