Mallory was trying to keep up with Hanosk as he walked down the main corridor of the Urkein’Naak. The wide passage had been plunged into complete darkness, and the firefly floating near her provided a negligible halo of light.
The Vohrn leader conveyed the fragmentary information he had received.
“Most of the sections are isolated and navigation systems are disabled. Someone managed to establish a direct connection to the network and took control of the ship.”
It wasn’t difficult to guess who. “Vassili’s work, no?”
Hanosk confirmed, adding, “The transformations he underwent seem radical, but he remained human enough to not arouse our suspicions when we imprisoned him. We will have to study this … ‘ktol’ very closely.”
“Yes, if you can take back control of the ship. Is there anyone near Vassili who can fight? With any luck, they’ll be able to handle him without too much trouble.”
“All of the guards assigned to his cell are dead. He has just attacked the soldiers stationed on the adjacent bridge.”
Mallory felt as if everything was collapsing. Two minutes earlier, things had seemed to be back to normal. The Saharj were defeated and the belt was being evacuated. In an instant, the situation had completely changed. Torg is in a coma, Alrine is even worse off, and Laorcq is at the other end of a giant ship hijacked by a monster. And it’s all my fault.
She knew that she was not entirely to blame, but she was still furious with herself for letting Vassili take advantage of her.
An idea popped into her head. The jufinol wrapped around her arm read her thoughts and winced. While stroking him to calm him, she asked the Vohrn, “You really don’t know anything about these things?”
“No, nothing certain, anyway. I have long suspected that a species has been acting behind the scenes to influence the geopolitical situation between the known worlds. These artifacts must come from them.”
Mallory frowned, bothered by a detail. “Why not just a group of individuals?”
“That’s what the meager evidence in my possession shows. The Saharj prisoner referred to the Primordials. They are an ancient people, survivors of a distant era. The archives that we have been able to consult from the Regulians and the Orcants are consistent with this hypothesis.”
Adopting an innocent tone without much success, Mallory asked, “Can I see the ktol? It reminds me of a sort of…”
With a naivety that almost drew a smile from the Earthling in spite of the circumstances, the Vohrn reached into the folds of his gown and gently pulled out the sharp-tipped artifact.
With a quick and precise movement she snatched it from between his fingers. The ktol immediately bit into her flesh. Furious with herself and also with the whole universe, she squeezed the ktol until the needles pressed in bone deep.
Hanosk stood before her, waving his arms. He must have belatedly remembered the lessons he had learned about humans.
The pain in Mallory’s palm faded. The device was content to fulfill its primary role: transforming its user into a junkie. Its pointed tips beaded with a morphine-like liquid.
Which was no good at all. She focused and reached out to Squish with her mind. Sorry. I need you for this.
Reluctantly, he let the connection between them grow stronger. A disturbing feeling of duality appeared on top of the effects of the drug. In addition to her normal sight, she could perceive the positions of the conscious entities around her with a slight offset.
Hanosk appeared as a blue bubble, the ship’s genotech nervous system formed a yellow framework that sparkled behind the walls, and Squish was bathed in an orange aura. She swung her arm around and looked at her clenched fist wrapped around the ktol. Blood dripped to the ground, but the artifact was also glowing. The pale purple light was barely visible.
Mallory concentrated. With Squish’s help, she imposed her will on the strange object and triggered the injection of the transformative liquid.
She was filled with a freezing cold sensation. She shuddered so violently she lost control of her limbs and collapsed.
Her muscles, as taut and sensitive as overtightened piano strings, became instantly paralyzed. She saw Hanosk through barely open eyes and a red veil of pain. Leaning over her, he seemed devastated by the turn of events. She whispered a silent apology to the alien and the jufinol, then closed her eyes and concentrated on the ktol’s weak psychic presence.
She was drawn from her body and suddenly found herself on an unfamiliar world.
She stood on a bare rock outcropping licked by ochre waves. To her right, she saw ruins, the remnants of buildings that must have been monumental.
Movement to the left drew her attention. She looked away from the dead megalopolis, and her eyes fell on a being whose size was approximately three times her own. Although its body was shaped like an ordinary biped, its face was terrifying in its inhumanity. Its wide mouth, devoid of lips, resembled an open wound, and was surmounted by a dozen eyes: a large main pair, surrounded by additional pairs.
“Earth man! How did you impose your will over the ktol?”
The sounds came to Mallory directly inside her skull. She corrected him. “Woman, not man.”
The spider-faced creature leaned toward her menacingly. “What difference does that make? We are the Primordials. Our existence precedes you all.”
The alien came even closer, and a shiver ran through her. Irrational fear drowned her thoughts and almost broke her link with Squish. She realized how tenuous the connection had become. The distance between this place and the Urkein’Naak must be vast. Her instincts took over, and she resisted the terror induced by the alien while reinforcing her link to the jufinol.
Squish reacted immediately. To Mallory’s astonishment, he was not alone: the Saharj gestalt had joined them. Through Mallory and the jufinol, the warriors’ collective consciousness addressed the Primordial.
“You! The master of our creators!”
Hearing this sentence, the pilot feared the worst. If the Saharj decided to go back on their word…
Fortunately, what they said next reassured her.
“We have not forgotten. They abandoned us because of you! And you dared to send one of your slaves to bribe us for our help?”
The gestalt’s anger tinted with despair was so strong that the Primordial loosened his grip on Mallory.
Sustained by Squish, she took the opportunity to give herself the mental equivalent of a shake to break the connection.
Her mind tore away from the alien’s influence, and she suddenly found herself in her body, which was still being tormented by the ktol’s substances. She isolated her meeting with the Primordial in a corner of her memory and tried to order her thoughts between two waves of pain.
The transformation was slow. Much too slow, she noted. At this rate, the process would take hours, and she didn’t have that luxury. Vassili was massacring more Vohrn with each passing second. She absolutely had to stop him before he reached the sections where the Dva refugees and Vohrn civilians were located. Supported by Squish, she willed the ktol to accelerate its work.
The artifact responded by sending out an additional dose of the substances it contained. This led to even greater suffering: her body, stimulated by the ktol, could no longer protect her by rendering her unconscious. Instead, she endured the process with heightened senses. Every nerve transmitted the pain caused by the transformation initiated by the fluids that had been released into her blood. They spread through her body, altering it at a molecular level. Although they left her genotype intact, it was amended and sublimated. The ktol provided her with biological armor. Muscle fibers thousands of times stronger and more reactive than a human’s mingled with hers, and an indestructible membrane coated her bones.
No part of her being escaped the transformation. While she screamed her pain into the void, blood began to seep from her pores.
When the pain finally diminished, Mallory stood up with surprising flexibility: she felt as if she weighed
nothing. She ran a hand over her face and realized she was covered with half-dried hemoglobin. On her fingers, she could perceive individual red blood cells dying slowly. Sounds reached her from the entire cruiser, and she could count the number of backup generators that were running.
Within this riot of sensations, her sense of smell provided important information. Through the ventilation systems, she picked up the nauseating odor of the ongoing massacre, as well as the scent of someone she knew intimately.
In a daze, she held Squish and detached him from her arm to entrust him to Hanosk. Without a word, she walked toward Vassili, intent on ending his life.
XXVII
CONFRONTATION
AT the first signs of power fluctuation, Laorcq rushed to Alrine’s stasis chamber. If he had not reacted so quickly, he would have found himself trapped in the section of the cruiser adjacent to the infirmary. Like most things on the Vohrn warship, it was large and well equipped: a real miniature hospital, occupying several levels.
Illuminated by the thin light beam emanating from his navcom watch, he leaned toward the large box that held Alrine. He was relieved to see that all the lights were green. Reassured, he moved on to the next question: understanding what was happening on the Urkein’Naak.
He swiped the surface of his watch with his index finger. A slew of icons appeared before his eyes. With a few gestures, he tried a variety of communication channels. All remained silent. His anxiety was growing when he finally managed to contact Hanosk. The audio-only connection was weak and interrupted by crackling. The Vohrn informed him of Vassili’s escape and his extraordinary abilities.
Laorcq hit the wall with his fist, furious at his naivety. “I knew it was too easy! I never should have brought him on board.”
He hated being manipulated. His eyes returned to Alrine. He sighed. Rehashing his mistake wouldn’t accomplish anything, and he was more concerned with something else.
“Where is Mallory? I couldn’t reach her,” he said.
Translator boxes smoothed intonations, but he could still hear some of the exasperation in Hanosk’s words. He briefly summarized the information they had obtained from the Saharj prisoners and their gestalt, including the discovery of the Primordial’s artifact. Then, he concluded: “Captain Sajean took the ktol and used it on herself before going after Vassili.”
“Unbelievable,” the scarred man said. “How does she always find new ways to be even more reckless?”
Without realizing that the question was rhetorical, the Vohrn replied, “She feels guilt, mixed with a strong degree of impulsiveness and a tendency to want to do everything herself.”
Pragmatically, Laorcq steered the conversation toward the more important question. “Can she defeat him?”
“No,” the Vohrn admitted. “Vassili has used the ktol several times and has had time to assimilate his transformation. Captain Sajean will be like a Dva facing a Saharj.”
Hanosk paused and then added, “Destroying Vassili’s ktol would increase her chances of victory, but she’s not capable of rational thought. Someone has to do it for her. Someone she won’t try to kill, even if she’s blinded by anger or the by the ktol’s influence.”
Laorcq seized this chance to help eliminate Vassili. “How do I get to her? She’s at the other end of the ship!”
“There is a way. How long can you hold your breath?”
Guided by senses a thousand times more perceptive than a human’s, Mallory walked through the corridors of the semi-living ship. When she came to one of the large panels separating the different sections, it immediately opened to let her pass.
She realized that Vassili was waiting for her. He had to know she had used a ktol. “Perfect. One final meeting.”
Her own voice sounded strange to her. She could hear echoes of unusual frequencies. Her vision had also changed. The darkness of the Vohrn ship had given way to an image of her surroundings and its contents with an ethereal aspect, a kind of holographic representation that was both accurate and infinite, allowing her to see through walls.
She quickly found Vassili, whose presence she sensed as a dense and impenetrable mass among the corridors and compartments. She quickened her pace through the ghostly maze.
Her thoughts were directed towards a single goal. Each sensory stimulus, every movement, her most basic thoughts, focused on the objective of destroying Vassili. Gradually, the universe shrank to encompass only her enemy.
Not only had the accelerated transformation modified her physical abilities, but it had also transformed her mind. She was gradually losing track of her own existence, her humanity pushed into a corner, shelved in favor of a mental construct optimized for the impending fight.
As Mallory approached her target, the dark mass of Vassili’s presence became oppressive. The pilot entered a spherical room approximately one hundred yards across. In the center rose a large, flared column. Covered in matte-white rectangles laid out like tiles, this cylinder appeared to be covered with bark. Thick copper tubes carpeted the rest of the sphere. Intermingled with the clusters of roots, they formed an abstract and tortuous pattern that was completely different from the column’s geometric design.
Vassili was standing near the center. Mallory’s vision adjusted: she didn’t need as much information anymore.
The person in front of her was both identical to and totally different from the one in her memory. The same shape with the same athletic proportions, the same face with regular and attractive features, the same shock of brown hair. His stylish shoes and matching pants clashed with the rest of his outfit, which consisted of a white shirt stained with blood and black marks.
Aside from Vassili’s appearance, Mallory’s improved senses allowed her to perceive the changes caused by the ktol. The being in front of her was not human.
He greeted her with mockery. “Your anger is so intense I can see it. Too bad. I remember when you looked at me differently.” A sly smile stretched over his lips, and he continued, “Also, you could have kept the fruit of our lovemaking. I was interested in seeing the result…”
The mention of the game he had played with her, the one that had ended with him implanting her with a non-human embryo, was enough to make her lose control.
She threw herself at him, accelerating to sixty miles per hour in a few strides. Unfortunately, she hadn’t yet mastered her new abilities. With disconcerting ease, Vassili dodged sideways and bludgeoned her with the tip of his boot, which sank into the pilot’s ribs.
The reinforcements provided by the ktol couldn’t prevent her side from splitting open: her opponent’s strength easily rivaled what she had gained from her recent and hasty transformation. The blow knocked her off balance and altered her trajectory, so that she found herself running diagonally along the curved wall covered with copper pipes. When the slope became too steep, she skidded and stopped just in time to grab hold of one of the closely intertwined tubes.
Behind her, a laugh rang out.
“Exhilarating, isn’t it? All this power.”
Mallory let go. With a single fluid motion, she turned and jumped down to the base of the sphere.
“The problem is that you haven’t had time to learn to use it. It won’t be hard to kill you.”
“You talk too much,” she interrupted sharply.
He shrugged, almost apologetically. “A salesman’s tic. Old habits die hard. Speaking of sales: I have a proposal for you. Since we’ve both transcended humanity, why don’t you join me? You could become the mother of my future people. The galaxy is a ripe fruit: we only have to pick it.”
The offer was particularly grotesque. Instead of yielding to her anger, it helped Mallory to recover a modicum of clarity.
“Once, a scumbag suggested I sleep with him to pay off my debts. I didn’t think you’d be able to set the bar any lower. Become your preferred incubator and embrace the delusions of a megalomaniac? No thanks.”
With that, she attacked Vassili again. Learning from her previous attempt
, she stopped short just before she reached him. As a result of the violent deceleration, her feet disemboweled the layer of copper tubes, leaving two deep furrows behind her.
As expected, she saw him hesitate. Having prepared to dodge an assault, the pilot’s move had surprised him. With a quick fluid movement, she raised her right knee and projected the flat of her foot into his stomach, concentrating on the force of the blow. She felt as if she had kicked a piece of concrete. However, her opponent was thrown across the room, hitting the central column in passing before crashing against the maze of tubes, into which he sank halfway.
The force of his body hitting the big pillar had torn away some of the rectangular tiles that covered it. Laid bare, the genotech circuits spit sparks.
With a cry of rage, Vassili crawled out of the tangle of pipes and counterattacked.
Ah. He’s no longer in the mood to talk. The thought had barely formed when she absorbed his blow by trapping him in a hold that pulled them both to the ground. He was stronger, but her mastery of combat compensated somewhat.
He was recovering very quickly. While she held him pinned to the ground, he managed to brace himself and push off, hurling them both to the top of the sphere. Mallory’s skull hit the uneven surface violently, and then the force flattened her against the wall. After a moment suspended at the top of the room, they fell.
Stunned, Mallory had no time to react when he flipped them around so that her body was once again the first to hit the floor. She landed on her back in a newly formed deep crater.
The blow would have knocked out any human, but the ktol’s modification of her body protected her.
She did, however, acquire several new injuries. When Vassili stood up to deliver the coup de grâce, she slid a hand into her pocket and grasped the ktol. Once in contact with her, the artifact analyzed her condition and reacted by modifying its form. It stretched and became thinner, and its spikes retracted. Transformed into a large needle, it plunged into Mallory’s palm and lodged in her forearm.
Aldebaran Divided Page 28