by M. G. Herron
And for some reason, not pulling the trigger.
Elya took the opportunity to study the mutant. Two claw-like feet covered with chitinous membrane that climbed up its legs and armored thighs. A utility belt around the waist bore what must have been thirty kilos of gear—a holster for the pistol and half a dozen charge packs, a small knife, a large knife, a heavy duty waterskin, and more. It wore no clothing and its torso was covered in thick Kryl hide that was scaly and purplish-black. While the right arm, holding the blaster, was human, the second arm was a gift of its Kryl DNA, far too big for its body, muscular and monstrous. Probably male, judging by the voice, but who could say, now?
As for its face, Elya shuddered to take it in. Part human, part Kryl, with a clicking mandible where the mouth should be. No ears, just orifices in its head, studded with thick veins that pulsed. One human eye, discolored and bloodshot, yellowish neon, as if the fluid within the sclera had been tinted with radioactive dye. A patch of brown hair cascading down to obscure the human part of its face—jawbone, forehead, eye, temple, cheekbone, even an eyebrow.
Whatever this mad patchwork monster was, it was partially human. And unlike the sentinels and the groundlings and every other variation of Kryl xenoform he’d studied in training, this one spoke galactic standard.
“Didn’t think you’d survive the landing…”
Recognition finally dawned. “It was you flying that drone,” Elya whispered.
The mutant gave a hideously sinister chuckle, then stared into a middle distance as some silent communication passed between it and the other Kryl. A pack of the groundlings sprinted behind the buildings and returned escorting Hedrick. The boy held a screwdriver in his hand, bearing it like a sword. It was covered in blood and Elya knew what had happened to the priest’s eye.
Heidi shuffled in behind him, followed by Thom clutching his shoulder, which had been dislocated. He moaned. Heidi seemed more or less unharmed but the fear that pinched her face pierced Elya’s heart.
“I won’t ask again. Turn the ancient relic off.”
Where was Hedgebot? Had he somehow managed to evade capture? A bot was supposed to be harder for a Kryl to track since it didn’t have an organic scent like a person or animal.
The mutant shifted its blaster a few degrees and pulled the trigger. Elya blinked and jerked backward as a bolt of plasma took Thom in the throat, venting his windpipe.
“No!” Elya’s breath came heavy and fast. Whatever anger he’d harbored against Thom for his betrayal, he didn’t wish the man dead. “What did you do that for?”
A horrible sucking noise came from Thom’s throat as he tried and failed to fill his lungs with air.
“You weren’t listening.” The mutant turned the blaster to point at Heidi. “She’s next. Then you.”
Hedrick was no longer wailing, scared, at the slavering groundlings slowly circling them. His eyes brimmed with tears and he stared straight at Elya, his face open, pleading. Heidi wrapped her arms around her son and pulled him to her. She closed her eyes and her lower lip trembled.
Elya gripped the handle and rotated the geode. Its green light flickered out.
He dashed forward, fell to his knees, and gripped Thom’s shoulders where he lay. The man’s mouth worked, making words without sound. At first, Elya couldn’t understand him. He looked like a landed fish gulping for water in the alien air. Then Elya made out the words his lips were forming over and over again.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I’m sorry…”
“Didn’t know? Didn’t know what, Thom?”
Thom thrashed. Elya pressed the man’s body to the ground, trying to hold him still. Thom hauled one last breath through the ragged hole in his throat, and made several awful, strangled gurgles before he finally went still.
What didn’t he know?
Elya could have sworn, from Thom’s behavior just prior to Elya getting beaten and thrown into a hole in the ground, that Thom had known precisely how Charlie and the others were planning to trap him in the forest and leave him for dead.
So what didn’t he know, then? And why had Thom changed his mind and come back to help? And how the hell did he know they were headed back here in the first place? Unless…
Unless the thing he didn’t know was that Father Pohl had been planning to hand Hedrick over to the Kryl. Thom must have found out and come to stop him.
Any anger Elya had been feeling at Thom evaporated. He’d been too late, but the man had come back to try to make things right.
And lost his life for his efforts.
Elya gripped the relic, which had been resting between his knees, and stood.
As he spun, something struck his jaw with the force of a sledgehammer, sending Elya reeling and the ground rushing up to meet him.
The Kryl mutant bent down and picked up the geode. The priest protested, but the monster beat him down with a powerful Kryl fist. Father Pohl fell to his knees beside Elya, begging and pleading for his life.
Sentinels and groundlings rushed forward. The mutant smiled as the humans were all prodded to their feet and ushered into the prefab.
Elya was the first to step into the darkness.
Hedrick whimpered as the groundlings clawed the screwdriver from his shaking hands. He'd swiped it from the floor when the lights went out. Then hands grabbed at him. Hedrick spun around, stabbing the priest in the eye. He hadn’t meant to. He just wanted to get away.
He’d followed Hedgebot into one of the woven pods and out through a hole cut in the back corner of the building. When he emerged, his mother was there. “Mom!” he’d cried as he fell into her arms. But then the groundlings had surrounded them and led them around to the front of the building where he’d seen the monster pointing a blaster at Elya’s head.
Standing helpless while the Kryl threatened his mother had been excruciating, scarier even than the “inspection” they’d been performing on him before. His hopes for escape were dashed again when they were all led back into the darkened building. Hedrick couldn’t help the fearful sobs that came out of his mouth. He dug his heels in, resisting entering the darkened building. It was so much worse this time, knowing what was coming. His mother tried to keep the Kryl off of him, but there were so many of them and they were so strong. What choice did they have?
There was a few minutes of awkward waiting in the dark foyer of the building as the monster man gave unintelligible orders. Several Kryl went around the back and after a short wait, the lights came back on.
Whatever had been done to cut the power had just been undone by the awful Kryl. Hedrick looked around for Hedgebot, hopeful that the bot might still be waiting to lead them to safety.
He didn't want to die like this.
Elya groaned when the power came back on.
Of course they repaired the damage he had caused. And they did it fast. In addition to being internally wired into a psychic network with the other Kryl, they had a facility with technology and an ability to manipulate electronics through organic means. That gooey webbing the Kryl poured over everything and the sentient fungus, must be another interface for their psionic abilities.
If the mutant was a nightmare, what he saw when the lights came on was a nightmare factory. A vast amount of the webbing had been spun around the room, creating smaller pods out of the large space. They were led past the first couple, where several embryonic xenos were cocooned in large chrysalises, perhaps baby sentinels or groundlings.
As they moved past the woven pods, they finally entered one on their right hand side. This one, too, had a set of chrysalises, but they were taller, coming up to the level of Elya’s chest. And unlike the others he’d seen, these didn’t have any creatures in them, which was worrisome. He studied the mutant, who had its back to Elya as it explored the chrysalises with its hands. What kinds of monstrous experiments were these Kryl planning on performing?
This was like nothing he’d ever been trained on, nothing he’d ever seen. Not the ins
ide of this building and especially not the Kryl-human mutant who seemed to be in charge. It had been strange enough to see a flying drone occupied by a Kryl pilot. Now, it made a scary kind of sense. This creature, whatever it was, had been sent here on a specific mission.
Historians and xenoanthropology experts had always assumed that the Kryl invaded planets to drain them of natural resources. They assumed the Kryl were coming to Robichar for the same reason—to mine the metals, to steal the fresh water, to dig up the radioactive isotopes they relied on to power their ships and hives. To expand to another world and spread like the galactic disease they were.
But the inside of this building spoke of a more nefarious purpose.
“What do you want?” Elya asked.
“Why, power, of course.”
The creature's mandibles once again spread into a ghastly imitation of a grin. The xeno hefted the “ancient relic” and set it on the counter next to a holoscreen covered by the Kryl fungus. The membrane, which was a living, breathing thing, seemed to pull away from the artifact, as if it posed some kind of danger.
If Elya could just grab the geode and turn it back on, maybe they would have a chance of escaping.
“And knowledge,” the mutant Kryl continued. “Like the Ancients before us, we will do whatever is necessary.”
Ancients? Everyone knew the legends. The Ancients, or the Telos, were an ancient species of super-intelligent beings who had been old when humanity was still painting cave walls back on Old Earth. No one had ever met a living Telos, but xenoarchaeologists had discovered remnants of their great civilization scattered across a dozen different worlds—rotted tombs, abandoned temples, ancient cities half-sunk in the sand.
Some legends told of these Ancients sharing technology with Solarans during the Great Migration. Some people—conspiracy theorist types, mostly—believed that the hyperspace drive was a hand-me-down from the Telos. That was nonsense, of course. A figment of the Empire’s collective imagination. It was easier to believe that a race of god-like beings far older and far more advanced than humanity helped lift us up into a spacefaring civilization, since most records of those eras had been lost to space and time. Easier, somehow, to believe in uplifted celestial beings than to accept that humanity had left the shores of paradise because their world was dying.
Elya had always supposed these were just stories. Myths. It was more interesting to imagine that the Ancients had chosen humanity. That they had blessed us, like the priest believed Animus had blessed him. But Elya knew how stories got warped by the passing of time. Half the ones people told of the invasion of Yuzosix weren’t true, and that tragic event had only occurred twelve years ago.
And yet…
Some part of him had always wanted to believe in the Telos. And the Kryl had been repelled by that geode and its green glow. There was power in that. And perhaps, if it were studied, knowledge, too.
“This is both necessary and inevitable,” the mutant went on. “The Ancients left very specific instructions. We are simply following in their footsteps.”
“You’re crazy,” Elya said. What the mutant was saying made no sense.
Elya formed a new objective. If he ever did make it out of here, he needed to take that relic with him. Deliver it to Admiral Miyaru, get it into the hands of Imperial scientists to study. He didn’t know what the mutant was babbling about, but anything that could repel the Kryl was worth studying.
The mutant grabbed Hedrick’s arm and dragged him away from his mother and onto a raised platform. “Now, where were we?”
Elya had noticed before that the boy was barefoot. Now, he realized why. The gelatinous Kryl excretions glommed over his ankles, stabilizing and trapping Hedrick in place. The mutant picked up thick white tendrils of webbing, which were pulled out from the computer console, and attached them to Hedrick's temples. The boy’s jaw went slack and Hedrick’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as he moaned.
Heidi screamed and threw herself at the boy. Groundlings forced her back.
“Stop it! Leave him out of this,” Elya demanded.
The Kryl didn’t acknowledge him.
Hoping that if he kept the mutant talking, he could figure out a way to stop whatever it was planning to do to Hedrick, Elya said, “You expect me to believe anything you just said? Necessary and inevitable? Don’t give me that high-minded crap. Not when you’re torturing a helpless little boy.”
The groundlings hemmed him in on every side. A sentinel had even compressed its bulk to fit through the door and stood blocking the main entrance. The only other exit was the hole Hedgebot had cut in the back wall. No way he’d make it there. Not unless he left Hedrick and Heidi here to fend for themselves, and he wasn’t willing to do that.
The boy arched his back and cried out as the platform on which he stood came to life. The gelatinous goop seethed with electricity, dimming the lights in the building. Energy coursed through the fungus covering Hedrick’s legs, little lightning arcs that crawled and sparked like a miniature storm.
Heidi collapsed in a sobbing heap. Elya watched helplessly as the goop on Hedrick’s feet began to harden, fading from translucent to opaque before his eyes, and then hardening into a shell and forming the first layer of carapace that marked all Kryl.
Elya’s mouth twisted in horror as he glanced from the suffering boy’s feet to the leering mutant, who produced a writhing worm pinched between a thumb and forefinger. It lifted the worm out and held it over Hedrick’s head.
In a flash of understanding, Elya realized the xeno was turning Hedrick into a Kryl-human hybrid—just like the mutant.
Heidi must have come to the same conclusion Elya had. Before he could think to move, she launched herself at her son, screeching and sobbing as she scrabbled to reach him. Spittle flew from her mouth as several groundlings restrained her with their bodies and claws. She struggled against their grip and continued to cry hoarsely. Though these Kryl were all born killers, they didn’t harm her. Apparently the mutant in charge got a thrill out of having them all watch.
Or, it had other plans for them.
Elya moved toward Hedrick, but a single blow from the mutant xeno’s monstrous Kryl arm knocked him to the floor.
As he staggered to his feet, Elya caught sight of the priest. Father Pohl’s remaining eye had gone impossibly wide as he stared in horror at the scene. “You!” Elya stabbed a finger at the priest. “This is all your fault! Do you see what you’ve done?”
Father Pohl’s mouth worked soundlessly.
“Did you know he was planning on turning the boy into a xeno?”
He shook his head. No.
“And you thought Animus was protecting you? Well, you were wrong. You’re a liar and a fraud. The only thing you’re leading people to is their destruction. Do you see now? Do you see?”
The priest’s eye darted toward the relic then hardened into orbs of agate. “Animus protect me.”
Not a statement. A prayer.
Father Pohl took one step and lunged for the relic.
The mutant xeno had just finished planting the worm on Hedrick’s head. The tiny parasite disappeared up the boy’s nose. As the mutant turned, it brought its bulky Kryl arm heavily across the back of Father Pohl’s neck.
Remarkably, the priest didn’t go down right away. He stumbled into the counter and managed to claw the artifact into his hands.
Elya watched, dumbstruck, as a sentinel charged across the room, bellowed into the priest’s face, and seized him by the neck. It lifted the priest into the air by one arm, his feet kicking beneath the hem of his robe as the creature strangled him.
The geode slipped out of Father Pohl’s fingers and bounced off a hardened part of the Kryl fungus covering the floor.
It rolled forward and came to rest almost exactly halfway between Elya and the mutant.
Time slowed, the way it sometimes did in the cockpit of a Sabre. He became simultaneously aware of everything around him—Hedrick’s whimpering cries, Heidi’s sn
iffles and sobs as she shoved uselessly against the groundlings holding her, the priest’s choked gasps as he struggled to avoid getting his windpipe crushed in the sentinel’s massive paw—
The mutant Kryl staring Elya down—
Even the small Kryl creature with sickly yellow spikes in its back, which glowed softly as it climbed across the ceiling above him, hanging by a single claw over the mutant’s head.
Wait, he thought. That’s no Kryl!
Elya locked eyes with the mutant as Hedgebot released its hold on the ceiling and landed on the mutant’s face, brightening like a sunflare, blinding orange-white. The mutant cried out and clawed at Hedgebot, ripping the bot off its face and dashing it against the wall.
Elya darted forward two strides and then dropped to the ground, his momentum carrying him forward.
The ancient relic slid right into his hands.
He gripped the round base of the geode and rotated the handle clockwise, hoping for the best while preparing himself for the worst.
Twenty-Four
Casey lowered her Sabre until she was a few hundred meters over the treetops of the endless, lush forest crowding up against the foothills. Lieutenant Yorra mirrored her movements, angling about a hundred meters off her left wing. They flew north, paralleling the mountain range, in thirty kilometer strips. On each pass, they ranged farther out from where they’d discovered Nevers’ battered cube. Minutes ticked by at an aggravatingly quick pace, yet they found no sign of their missing compatriot.
“Earth damn him!” Casey punched the dashboard. “Where could he have gone?”