I could barely see anything with the visor of my helmet completely covered in Bug juices. It must have happened when I landed face first into that big soldier that knocked me down the tunnel. When I tried to wipe it, all I succeeded in doing was scraping my metal gauntlets over the visor and producing fine, millimeter wide semi-clear lines through the juices. As I watched, more ichor slowly flowed over what little I had managed to clear away.
This wasn’t going to work. I didn’t see any choice, the helmet had to come off. I had picked up a couple extra head bags for the Prometheans, in case they forgot to bring their own. However, other than the same general level of disgust with the head bags as the rest of my crew, looking back on it they had been more prepared than either myself or the entire Armory team. Battle suits excepted of course.
I wasn’t crazy about the idea of walking around a Bug ship helmet-less, with nothing better than a blasted head bag to save me. Unfortunately, there was no other choice. I couldn’t even try to stagger back to the cutter. There was no way I was climbing that tunnel with my head torqued over my shoulder like this.
The helmet's emergency release clamps disengaged easily enough, but that still wasn’t enough to get the thing off. Eventually, I was forced to use my power-assisted hands and arms to pry the thing off my head.
I fumbled around for a head bag, certain that the atmosphere was deadly, regardless of what the readouts indicated. Panic set in as I dropped the thing and failed to retrieve it from the floor before losing control and gasping what I assumed was my final breath. I waited for the inevitable agony before I realized that, although it smelled similar to an old-style waste treatment facility in here, the air was breathable just like the historical vids and sensor readings claimed.
The Imperials had used this little factoid as more evidence the Bugs had been bio-engineered by AI’s, but it was clear they would say anything to make their point that humanity was the supreme life form in the galaxy. I hadn’t been sure whether or not to believe them until this moment, but now I had proof. The air really was breathable.
I still determined to put the head bag on. No point in taking unnecessary chances. Retrieving the device was somewhat easier, now that I had lungs full of breathable, albeit putrid air. So I scooped it up and sealed it around my jaw, just like in the emergency training diagrams. When I was satisfied that the seal was good, I assessed my surroundings.
Down here there were only a few Bugs to crush under my feet, and none immediately present which required the attention of my blade. Now that I had a few moments, I took a look at the weapon Gants had delivered in my moment of need, courtesy of our Chief Engineer who hated me right at the moment. I couldn't blame him for being upset, and I doubted that particular incident would ever be forgiven.
Somehow, Spalding had gotten wind of my plan and pulled most, but not all of his men off the hull before the big slam. Several of his men didn’t make it off the hull in time and were shredded by shrapnel. It was a grim reminder that I wasn’t a fully trained naval officer, and was making things up and reinventing the blasted wheel as I went along.
When I missed steps, people died.
That was part of why I was here. This Bug ship had to go, but for my own sanity I couldn’t risk sending out more people to die because of my mistakes. First Officer Tremblay sure thought I was wrong a lot. Although so far, other than six dead engineers (which would have been a much higher number, if not for the Chief Engineer's quick thinking), we hadn’t come out too poorly. A quarter million settlers were still alive because of my bumbling efforts, anyway. That has to count for something, right?
If things were up to Tremblay, we would be home by now and those colonists would all be dead, or worse.
I realized I was staring at the weapon in my hand and not inspecting it like I had intended. Standing around in a Bug corridor certainly seemed counter to my long term health, so I performed a quick inspection.
The energy level was still green, meaning it was holding a high charge. I would be able to cut through a lot more Bugs before this thing started giving me trouble. The hilt was an old-fashioned square instead of the more recent hexagonal design. Circles were too hard to grip if the hilt was covered by any sort of fluid, so other than a few trophy pieces, this particular design never really caught on.
The blade felt oddly weighted for a weapon its size and there was some kind of engraving on the outside. Using the living wall of the bug ship, I scraped it somewhat clean.
The blade itself was some kind of odd dark metal with crystalline flashes in it, but the letters running up and down the length of the blade were pure mono-Locsium, the strongest, densest material ever discovered by the Empire for use in vibro-weapons. It was said the Empire was so rich they had even made the hulls of entire ships out of this substance. More propaganda, in all likelihood.
Why it was running up and down the blade of this vibro-weapon was a mystery, until I read the letters inscribed on the weapon.
It was hard to puzzle out the secret language of the ancients when they wrote in that cursive style that had gone out of fashion long before mankind left the cradle of civilization, even at the best of times. Trying to do it with gore covering the letters made it harder still, but when I finally figured it out I went white as a sheet.
The letters clearly spelled out one word, ‘BANDERSNATCH.’ My fingers spasmed and I almost released the weapon.
On my world, this was a sword out of legend. Forged or commissioned by our first king, Larry the Great, alternately known as Larry One or Larry The First and Only, depending on which history books you were reading. This sword smote the enemies of Capria and served Larry well until the day he died, as an old man in bed. The story goes he died sword in hand, buried under the weight of the two assassins spitted on his blade, while his infant granddaughter slept unknowingly beside him.
It had passed through a number of hands since then. Most of the royals who wielded it came to bad ends under mysterious circumstances. A few famous wives or generals did well for themselves with the sword in their possession, but the sword had a definite reputation for ill fortune.
Pretenders kept trying to get a hold of it to legitimize themselves, at least when it was still circulating, while a number of monarchs had tried to destroy it over the years to keep it out of those very same hands. The sword kept popping up like a bad penny until about fifty years ago when it disappeared for the last time.
The last anyone heard of it, Bandersnatch was in the royal palace. It was presumed destroyed when the Imperial Navy annihilated my ancestors by dropping a very large rock on their heads, leaving a smoking crater where the palace used to be. Another loss among a series of losses for which my ancestors had taken the fall.
If you made a list of weapons I would rather cut off my hand than be seen wielding, this one had to top the list. Strolling down Founder’s Avenue toward the parliamentary building with a nuclear weapon or a rogue nano-swarm strapped to my back wouldn’t generate a harsher reaction than being seen with this weapon.
A very nearly superstitious dread filled me. There was nothing for it, I resolved right then and there. I had to find and delete any working suit recorders the Armory boys might have managed to get running and dispose of this blade as fast as humanly possible.
If I needed any confirmation that Spalding still was out to get me after the bridge incident, here it was, right in my own two hands. Putting those men up there and leaving them on the hull had been a virtual death sentence, so now he was returning the favor by handing me my own little death sentence in the guise of much-needed help. The old man was apparently craftier than his appearance indicated.
Head bag firmly in place, and with the viper masquerading as a vibro-blade still clutched in my hands, I anxiously crept down the bug corridor.
Down here by myself, the pulsing, writhing motion of the walls was worse than when I was with a group of other people. At least then I had something else to think about. Now, I had nothing to distract me f
rom its horrifying nature. The thought of a little power-tool-wielding critter sneaking up behind me with a silenced cutting wheel was enough to make me whirl around, just to check.
I came to a strange room filled with protrusions that looked like some strange cross between little mud volcanoes and termite mounds. In the center of each mound was a small crater filled with some kind of fluidic substance.
As I watched, a drop of fluid fell from the ceiling into one of the mounds. Looking up I could see the whole ceiling was covered with this fluid and as it slowly condensed on the ceiling, it was guided to a point where it would fall down into the volcano-looking structures. It appeared that the viscous liquid was collected and stored in the little mounds for some unknown purpose.
I call them little, but they varied from about two feet tall to a whopping twelve feet high. I wasn’t willing to climb one of the larger ones with my battle suit just to check if it looked the same on the inside as the smaller ones.
My lips twisted and I repressed the urge to chop them apart with Bandersnatch.
At this point I was looking for anything that could help to get me out of here. Whatever I found would make me happy at this point, be it a way back to the cutter so I could get off this ship for good, a bug control room, whatever passed for bug engines, etc. Anything, so long as I wasn’t all by myself on a ship full of Bugs and surrounded by their eerie living walls.
I passed through another chamber with the odd mounds and kept going.
I had the sudden irrational thought that perhaps I had already been digested by these foul creatures and was just too stupid to realize it. Most of the time you can repress such foolish notions, but this wasn't most of the time.
I began to despair as I walked through another empty corridor. What was I doing here? Where were my men? The Prometheans? Even some blasted Bugs to squish would have been nice right now.
Clearly, I was no military genius who created gold dust whenever he happened to break wind. My plan had utterly failed. It looked like First Officer Tremblay just might get that command he thought I was too incompetent to hold.
From the looks of it, maybe he was right. Stranded on a Bug ship because of my own half-baked, stupid, holo-vid inspired plan. I should have just rammed them or let them go, I thought to myself.
“Too dumb to live, too stupid to die,” I cursed, referring to myself.
I passed through another strange circular corridor, and another of those strange termite mound-like volcano rooms.
Passing through another corridor, I heard a noise off to my left.
Looking over, I realized that the poor lighting from my single, blood covered suit, combined with the now missing helmet and without the mass of light provided by my companions, I had almost missed a closed doorway. How many others I had missed along the way, I had no idea and I kicked myself for not noticing sooner.
Taking a closer look, I saw that this deep in the ship, the crusty membranous flaps that passed for doors around were much thicker and closer matching in color to the walls than the ones closer to the hull, where we inserted.
But that wasn’t what had caught my attention, I realized when I heard the sound again.
I leaned closer to the portal. It almost sounded like voices were on the other side. Then I heard a loud chittering that made me seriously question that particular theory.
Regardless, I was tired of casting about aimlessly. If it was my fate to wander around in this poorly lighted, foul-smelling ship with living, writhing walls as the only thing for company, I was going to burst a blood vessel. It was time to share my pain with some Bugs, or at least do something to get the adrenaline flowing again.
Shoving my gauntleted hands into the door was much harder than it had been closer to the cutter-turned-landing craft. I actually had to punch the thing a couple of times to get my hands deep enough to puncture all the way through the membrane, before I could begin the somewhat gruesome task of tearing it apart. Previous doors I had been able to just push my hands through without this kind of resistance.
It was also different in that previously, I hadn’t really paid any attention to the small amount of fluids that squirted out when I was tearing the door/flaps apart. Without the helmet on, such fluids were harder to ignore. Actually being able to see the dark green and black muck that stuck to the semi-permeable membrane of the head bag was much more vile than when such fluids had stuck to the outside of a metal fiber helmet I couldn’t really see.
With a mighty heave that strained the servos, I tore one side of the flap loose from the wall and tore the other side in half lengthwise. Pushing my way into the room, I saw the strangest looking bug yet.
It was also the biggest Bug I had ever seen.
It stood only about four or five feet tall in the front, but was fully eight feet long. It had a mass of moving limbs on its main body like a centipede, arrayed in no discernable pattern of clusters or rows. It had a stinger-like appendage protruding from what I guessed was its rear, while in the front it sported the same, although proportionally larger, attack claws as the six foot tall soldier Bugs I had encountered before. Below and slightly behind the attack claws, it also sported a pair of delicate arms and hand-like extremities, identical to the smaller cutter Bugs.
It was currently feasting on what could only have been a human corpse. Since the face was still intact and I didn’t recognize the person, I had to assume it was one of the natives of Tracto VI.
The dead man looked more like one of the pasty white skinned Imperials, who for the most part generally looked similar to each other. My own Caprian countrymen sported a more varied, although generally brownish skin tone. He wasn’t as swarthy looking as the Prometheans, that much appeared certain.
My next shock was when I saw that there were several more native captives pinned against the wall. Although pinned might not be the best word for it, as they were all slightly indented into recesses formed in the living wall, and had a strap of the same moving, pulsating stuff as the wall wrapped around their waists. It didn’t matter that their hands and legs were basically free; the wall held them tight as it slowly molded itself around them, pulling them into its slimy, pebbled embrace.
It was obvious the moment the creature noticed me. I would have thought tearing apart the door would have been enough to get its attention, but apparently it wasn't.
I took two steps into the doorway and the monstrosity looked over at me with a bank of black, multifaceted eyes and started shrieking. Seeing it turn to face me, it became obvious just how much larger it was than a standard, six foot tall soldier. The soldiers were basically the size of a man, maybe a little bit bigger when you counted its abdomen sticking out its back side like some kind of giant grasshopper, but certainly comparable in overall bulk to a person.
This super Bug was nearly five feet across and eight feet long, with some sort of segmented body that maintained that bulk throughout its length. It was easily the size of three or four soldiers, and it didn't look happy. It lurched its bulk towards me in a motion I would have thought impossibly fast for a creature of its dimensions.
Some of the captives started yelling at me, but whatever they were saying was muffled by the inglorious head bag. Besides, the massive beast instantly received my complete and undivided attention.
Barely pausing to chitter at me, the monster shrieked like the siren of an emergency services vehicle barreling down a blocked road. Up and down, loud and louder it shrieked.
When it got close, I slashed it right through the center in a sideways cut intended to disembowel it, had it been human. I’m sure it felt the blow. I know the vibro-blade cut a cross section right through the middle of it two-to-three feet deep. That’s why I was mortally certain it knew it was in a fight.
However, you probably wouldn't have been able to tell from the way it slammed into me like a pile driver.
I raised one arm to protect my face, because that was all I had time to instinctively do before I was crushed up against one of the
ship’s living walls. It did more than knock the wind out of me, even wearing the power armor. I had never felt anything like its impact in the whole time since I had started wearing the battle suit. That included being swarmed over by the Bugs upstairs and falling down a tunnel and landing on my neck. Another in a long series of misguided maneuvers that landed me in this situation.
Let me add that when this thing grabbed a hold of my power armored arm, I felt it. The squeeze of a soldier had been more restraining than anything else, but it's not like you felt anything on your skin, in your muscles or your bones. The grip of this monstrosity was a whole other matter. It felt like someone put my arm in a vice and not-so-slowly squeezed it with unnatural power.
I flailed at it and hit it the best I could with the closed fist of one hand and the hilt of Bandersnatch in the other, but I couldn’t get any kind of power into my movements as long as the thing had such a crushing grip on my arms. I was also unable to bring the blade of the sword into the fight, being constricted in and restrained by this rampaging beast.
Admiral Who? (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Page 22