The hovering Madhavari pulled a full circle, his gaze sweeping the area still at shoulder-height of the others. The air refracted beneath his hover-chair’s propulsion jets, keeping him aloft a few feet from the floor.
Everyone’s eyes were glued to the monitors.
The men of the convoy opened and closed their jaws, speaking to one another, their expressions exasperated.
A carrier bounded from floor to wall then back to floor again, to Arevalo’s left. Its agility was startling, and it lashed out at him with grim dexterity. A talon slashed at his left arm, opening up his bicep from shoulder to elbow. Blood spattered the floor and his expression was nothing short of horrendously painful. Landham’s TG-24 barked fire, sweeping from the wretched face of a creature he battled himself to that on Arevalo’s left. The side of its conical skull was blasted away, melding it with the bulkhead to its right. As the creature fell, another quickly took its place, then a second, and soon a third.
Landham yelled so loud Felina thought she could hear his voice reverberating off the bulkheads down the corridors, sustaining a greater echo than their gunfire.
Then they were on the move again, their front clear.
Ochoa led with great haste and adamancy, the dark-skinned practitioner between him and Madhavari. Behind his hover-chair trailed Landham and the impaired Arevalo, who nonetheless fired his weapon still. The Seighty was held close to his right side, partially cradled by his forearm and triceps. His left bled profusely and dangled next to him like a ragdoll’s. The carriers were relentless, seeming to grow more overzealous at the hint of Arevalo’s blood not unlike sharks to a feeding frenzy.
There was blood in the water and voracity in the air.
Even if they didn’t actually consume Arevalo, they would no doubt garner positive energy—pleasure?—from mutilating him to death. It was a power trip Felina wished she didn’t know about or had to witness ever again.
Ochoa called out as they halved their distance to the security center’s entrance. Maybe 150 feet by now. She imagined the words “almost there” bursting from his lips as he gestured back to Landham and Arevalo with an arching arm.
The carriers threw another wave at the group’s rear, while their own ranks dwindled thanks to Landham and Arevalo’s persistence. Their barrages of gunfire sufficed to drop half a dozen creatures within a minute, but they were taking too many bullets for their liking. Landham’s buckshot spread was tight but with this many enemies he would have preferred it wider.
Arevalo suddenly dropped his Seighty. Out of ammunition, perhaps? He then fell to his knees and vomited. Landham stepped forward to blast the face off of a pouncing carrier in midair. Its gore splashed the face of another creature, which shrieked ambivalently in its progress.
“He’s not gonna make it,” Skugs growled. He held his weapon port-arms, irksomely enthusiastic to join the fight. Then his teeth gnashed the air and he stepped forward. “Fuck! They’re not gonna make it. Open the door!”
Cassel was speechlessly obstinate to flout Skugs’ demand. Her face sweated copiously and her lips quivered. Then Felina heard Wincott’s voice lash out over Connell’s. The leader of SC6 sighed gutturally and told Cassel to let Skugs through.
With a brisk curse, more so to the situation than herself or anyone in particular, Cassel swiftly opened door and Skugs rushed through.
“I’ve got your back,” Djevojka said suddenly, following him out before Cassel could insist otherwise. She didn’t hesitate to shut the door behind them, and from there they were forced to watch via the monitors.
Moments before reaching the group, Felina felt a twist in her stomach and seemed safe to say that she was glad Skugs wasn’t still here to witness it. He and Djevojka still had fifty or sixty feet until they reached the corridor’s end that turned left into the one occupied by the convoy. It was here that they slinked forward, but Landham had stopped beside Arevalo. He faced too many carriers to deal with by himself, and Ochoa quickly became aware. The sentinel stopped midstride, passing a befuddled Madhavari and the practitioner en route to regroup with the Remoras at their six. He fired off a few rounds with his Seighty just in time to save Landham’s face before another carrier lunged out to slash through the big man’s abdominal vest. Blood was drawn, according to Landham’s wretched expression and act of doubling over suddenly, but no evisceration.
In the same blink of an eye, a carrier arrived to take on Arevalo. The action was so quick Felina couldn’t tell what happened in what order. It appeared that the carrier regurgitated bile onto Arevalo’s scalp just before its jaws clamped down around his head, teeth burying themselves into the back of his scalp and forehead. Even as Ochoa fired off rounds into the creature, it engaged a horrific lockjaw and withdrew with the top of Vincent Arevalo’s head. From his eyebrows up became a cavernous mess of brain matter and skull fragments, blood spewing in a terrible manner that Felina saw all too clearly. She covered her eyes and looked away, a few other documenters doing the same.
She fought bile and upon returning her gaze to the monitors, much had transpired. The convoy’s progress was rejuvenated with great haste, albeit due to the tragedy of Arevalo’s death. Skugs and Djevojka had arrived to help escort them back to the security center, providing additional cover-fire to put some distance between their enemies and the group’s rear. Unfortunately, Arevalo’s brutally lobotomized corpse was lost amid the throng of relentless carriers, which added to Wincott’s anger no doubt. Behind Felina he and Connell currently experienced bouts of grief-stricken ire, and when she transferred her focus from the monitors to them, it was evident that Wincott had lost his calm. Tears streaked his cheeks and his lower jaw chattered uncontrollably; Connell appeared the eye of the storm, but was not void of emotion. His voice pressed through grinding teeth as he struggled to placate Wincott in lieu of the situation all while maintaining his own composure.
Within moments that felt far too molassic and timely than they should have been, the convoy had reached the security center. Ochoa led their return, while Skugs had replaced his temporary post beside Landham for support; he was ready to input the code and open the Invisi-Screen door, but Cassel was early with it. She opened the entrance once they were within twenty feet of it, visible via the security cameras to her left. The men poured into the room while Djevojka voluntarily stood aside to cover their periphery. Ochoa entered frenetically, coughing and wheezing, his face sweating like a sheet of perspiring ice. The short dark-skinned practitioner close behind; he had prominent dimples and forehead creases, with a lean face and high cheekbones. Following him was Madhavari in the hover-chair, barely squeezing through the doorway. He immediately deactivated it and the aluminum underbelly skidded across the floor. He caught himself on a counter and hacked off to the side, fighting against the impulse to vomit.
The irate Skugs and Landham preceded Djevojka who was last, then Cassel sealed the door without hesitation. The horde of carriers which followed were half of what they had been, thanks to Arevalo and Landham, with the help of Ochoa and Skugs.
Landham went down on one knee, TG-24 clattering on the floor. He threw up a bit of bile but little else, while clutching at his abdominal wound; it was a laceration that crossed his navel horizontally. When he pulled his hand up to stare blankly at it, blood streaked both palm and fingers. The practitioner immediately tended to him but Landham mumbled incoherently, waving him off before standing and stumbling back.
Wincott went to Landham while Connell tried to get Palmer to shut the hell up. Felina was just now realizing that she had shut him out of her head; he was ranting on about their least likely odds of survival, as if preaching to the choir.
Skugs stood off to the side, his left fist clenched, the base of it mashing the countertop, clearly wanting to punch through a wall or dent an aluminum cabinet but able to repress the outburst. Instead his teeth grinded until she swore she could hear them, and he glared blankly off to the side.
“Everyone, shut up!” Cassel suddenly barked, an
d her voice alone was imperious enough to cast its desired effect.
Even Palmer zipped his lips.
Everyone stood, or knelt, silent with a great amount of tension. They watched intently as the carriers slinked down the corridor, less hasty than before, attentive of their surroundings, encroaching the security center’s sealed Invisi-Screen door. Felina hated seeing the wretched creatures move so naturally, so sleekly, down the corridor—it pained her, their forced evolution, their abnormal maturity. That human and extraterrestrial flesh had become one, first by artificial science and then by viral biology. Now to see them, almost too close for comfort via the security feeds right outside the Invisi-Screen door, made her want to throw up all over again.
The anger for those slaughtered, the empathetic grief transmuting itself into rage. This somehow helped steady her stomach, fortify her conscience, and reinforce her nerves.
The carriers eventually passed, but not before practically slithering across the walls—yet giving the Invisi-Screen distance. As everyone began to sigh in relief, a slightly distinct shape emerged from the horde of viral alien flesh. It was the single healthy specimen, moving with such menacing grace that it seemed to curl much like the breath billowing from its lungs. It stopped directly in front of the Invisi-Screen door, undoubtedly sensing the disruption in the air caused by its plasma tectonics. Had the creature not been innately blind, Felina imagined this would have transpired much differently. Fortunately, its curiosity was eventually invalidated and it moved on, rejoining the horde of carriers to proceed down the corridor.
Now that collective exhalation of relief came.
Once the creatures were well past them and exploring the nether corridors of the portside Manticore, as well as its many now-empty workspaces, the practitioner stepped forward. He addressed the documenters and SC6—which was, unfortunately, now SC5.
“I am so grateful to have met other survivors,” he said in a thick accent—an old voice, aged more from terror than years, but with surprising softness. His eyes and features were similarly amicable. “But I am terribly sorry about your friend…and anyone else you may have lost in this debacle…I mean no imposition, nor replacement. But I am happy to have been united with other survivors. Humans, you know? Um…I’m sorry. My name is Malik Lemaître. I am a practitioner down in the Infirmary. Never before…have I ever witnessed such nightmares. And what I’ve seen, what I…survived…”
Lemaitre started to mumble off and shiver, his voice wavering and his eyes glossing. It pained Felina’s heart to see the man break down, or begin to, but fortunately he caught himself in a chair before collapsing entirely. Baxter and Ngo sought to console him, while Ochoa’s hoarseness garnered everyone else’s attention. He clung to a countertop, partially doubled over it, sweating profusely while his lips frothed spittle. He was so worked up and worn out that the emotional and physical ambivalence conducted a war he struggled to handle.
“Everyone was dead. The other practitioners, the assistants, Fischer. She was in pieces, man. Fucking pieces. The whole Infirmary had been wrecked and turned over, inside out, butchered just like the rest of this fucking ship!”
Ochoa abruptly slammed his fist into an aluminum cabinet above his head, denting it with a metallic sound that felt all too loud in the room. Djevojka went to calm him but he was adamant on letting his rage exhaust him. Where she failed and withdrew, Godunov tapped Wincott’s shoulder and they exchanged tacit nods, then proceeded to restrain Ochoa. He flailed and threw a fit, saliva spewing from quivering lips, feet kicking lower cabinets. He eventually was placated, away from the group, forced into a chair that had wheeled over by the lockers. Here he hunched forward and wept quietly into his hands.
“Did Ochoa know Fischer?” Felina asked Connell in a whisper, while everyone else tried to reorient themselves.
“They apparently had something going on. Supposedly. He flirts with everyone, but it’s always a comedic thing. He’s one of the friendliest guys on this hunk of metal.” Connell’s hushed voice ended and he shook his head, voice now at a regular volume. “Fuck this place.”
“Right on, man,” Palmer said, walking up to Connell’s right side, nudging his shoulder with his own. “I say we bail. Take our chances in the Valkyries and abandon ship.”
Immediately several of the documenters began voicing their own opinions on the matter, most of them in accordance with Palmer. This alone seemed to hype his spirit, which considering the circumstances was definitely a good thing, even if a false hope. Felina personally kept quiet on the matter; she even exchanged brief glances with Calloway, who appeared about as fazed by the notion as Ochoa.
He remained on the sideline so to speak, not sobbing anymore but nonetheless head-in-hands.
While he kept to himself, everyone else became a riot of overlapping voices. Until finally Wincott stepped forward, like a man parting the seas of documenters, his peculiar voice taking the reins of their attention—namely Cassel’s. She gave him a cockeyed look of intrigue and focus.
“What’s the status on survivors?” A basic gesture at the nearest terminal preceded his next words, following a brief pause that seemed to ignite a tiny spark in Cassel’s eyes. “Check the security feeds. And then…let’s see what our lifeboat options are.”
With a firm nod, Cassel licked her lips and took a breath. She and Djevojka, who needed no direct order, attended the terminal’s hover-keyboards. Djevojka occupied a swivel chair and moved with the dexterity of two sentinels, surveying feeds faster than Felina could discern them herself.
After a couple of minutes—amid a lot of sighing and grunting between the two women—they finally turned to address everyone else.
“All the lodging quarters are reading vacancies,” Djevojka said, her accent thick but the notion of hope dense in its absence. “And the corridor cameras, those still functioning, aren’t picking up any signs of life…beyond those monsters.”
With this interpretational fact setting in their ears and soon to replace any marrow of wishful thinking, the room’s occupants began exchanging their skepticism. Before simple expressions evolved into negative rambling, Felina broke ice with a glacier question.
“Any sign of Thomas Asher?” Her voice was raised enough to be heard over everyone else, coherency crisp.
“Actually, yes…and no,” Cassel said. She looked over at Djevojka and gave her a nod.
“According to the main labs foyer camera,” Djevojka explained, “nobody has passed through that area since you three did hours ago. I rewound the feed and assure you that if he exited the labs, he did so as a ghost.”
“So, what, we leave him there?” Baxter asked dubiously.
“Either that or you go risk your life, and whoever so chooses to join you,” Ochoa said, startling half the group as he stood by the lockers despite a room-filling voice. “Just to save a man that is ninety-percent responsible for what has happened. Ten can go to the USRD and Central Command, but I guarantee you as much as I hate to that that man alone has been the hammer and nail of this blindingly overzealous Project. And to risk any more than this group already has just to save his neck would be beyond flabbergasting.”
Ochoa kept his chin high, his eyes not aligning with anyone else’s for even a second, then he began to turn on his heel.
“We’d be saving more than his neck, Ochoa,” Baxter said snidely, stepping forward. Skugs stood to her left, his back to the wall, a repulsed expression sullying his face. Baxter’s glare targeted Ochoa, who stopped to turn his head and listen but not look in her direction nor wipe the scorn off his face. “We’d be saving him—a man, another human being no matter what he’s done in the name of science—from an agonizing death.”
“‘An agonizing death’?” Skugs sardonically mimicked her feminine voice. He then looked like he was going to spit at her feet, but instead he just glared down at her through burning charcoal eyes, sweat gleaming off his rigid brow. His lips began to sputter with his own hoarse, baritone voice; it had become all the
more jagged with woe. “You mean like the one my comrade…my friend…experienced out in that corridor? How Vincent Arevalo died was no walk in the park, woman. He wasn’t put to sleep or even given a shot to the head. He was slaughtered. And he…he was a good man. So don’t you whine about Asher’s piece-of-shit ass being spared from his creations’ havoc.”
Skugs started to intimidate her, walking too close for comfort, and already Schuman was stepping forward to divide them. Felina had the premonition of Skugs becoming hostile to anyone that disrespected his view, in which case probably nobody did, but to disrupt his bout of anger was another thing entirely.
It was rather obvious that less than halfway through Skugs’ spiel Baxter had tacitly withdrawn her statement. Her implied accordance with Skugs’ words was evident, and Felina felt the same way, as it appeared everyone else did too.
While Skugs was retained and calmed easier than Ochoa had been, surprisingly, by Landham and Connell, the decision to leave Asher was unanimous. Just the same, it was hardly spoken of. Cassel insinuated it in fewer words, saving her own breath from uttering such apathy.
When it all boiled down to it, Skugs was right.
They couldn’t risk the greater good, for lack of a better way to put it, in conducting a rescue party for Asher. For one man in the bowels of MALBO, which might as well be a black-hole itself—with a congestion of savage abominations between them.
“So our lifeboat situation is as follows,” Cassel announced, her voice if not the topic itself holding everyone’s attention captive. Felina peripherally noticed that both Ochoa and Skugs were now back with the group, albeit at its outer edges. Meanwhile she had moved closer to the front, between Loudon and Baez. Cassel spoke like a political leader addressing a state of emergency. “All but twenty-four of the Valkyrie-2’s have been ejected. Of these, eight are damaged beyond repair. This means that at least sixteen survivors made it off the vessel—that is, estimating one per lifeboat, although scarcely possible that some held two upon ejecting. But…considering visual casualties throughout the Manticore up to this point, I think that’d be a doubtful assumption. Their status and occupation specifics cannot be tracked from in here, but only on the bridge.”
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