Command Code

by James David Victor

  Emergency stop? She hit the controls just as they crossed the next door. The elevator compartment was filling with the smell of cordite smoke and the roar of Malady and Ratko’s barrage. Their shots seemed to be keeping the cyborgs above them at bay, but another line of laser fire scored through the roof and buried itself in the wall.

  Kerthunk! The elevator shook and jumped as the brakes were applied by Jezzy’s command.

  “Oof!” Ratko was thrown against Malady, who of course remained as solid as ever. But what Jezzy was pleased to hear was the chorus of clanks and thuds as the cyborgs were thrown off balance overhead. They wouldn’t have a heartbeat of time, she knew.

  “Out! Out!” Jezzy hit the door release button, then leaned into the opening silver doors to force them open just that little bit faster as Ratko stumbled, and Malady backed out.

  FZZT! Fzzz! More burning particle-beams speared through the floor from above, as Jezzy hit the ground floor sigil on the data-screen and rolled between the closing doors to collapse at Malady’s broad metal feet.

  Jezzy groaned. She could hear distant clanking and the sound of muffled particle-beams from the other side of the elevator door, but it was growing quieter and quieter.

  “I sent them down to the ground floor…the lowest level of the Invincible,” Jezzy panted. “Unless they know how to work lifts, it’ll take them hours to find their way back up here.”

  “And where is here, exactly?” Ratko looked around.

  The elevator door was one of several that opened out into a broad balcony, overlooking an even wider workshop.

  “Mid-Level Engineering and Repairs,” Jezzy said, checking her map. “It’s not where I wanted to go, but it’ll do. It’ll have what we need.” She pointed out across the hall below them that was as long as a standard football pitch.

  On the opposite wall was a selection of three giant external bulkhead doors, which Jezzy could tell from the map led to their own airlocks, from and to which the smaller CMC craft could be brought for customary maintenance. The Invincible was such a large vessel that it didn’t have to concentrate all its different departments in one place, but instead had several engineering decks, as well as several medical bays, crew quarters, and the like.

  Mid-Level Engineering was tiny in comparison to Jezzy’s real target: Main Engineering Holds 1-5 located at the ‘bottom’ of the Invincible, along with the main propulsion system. But having a smaller workshop deck halfway up the pyramid meant that they could continue the normal maintenance and repair work that an operational battleship needed.

  “Good thinking, sir,” Ratko said, scanning the floor. There was a collection of engineering pits and bays, some only as large as Malady, with others many times that size. Gantries and cranes were stacked against the walls, able to be brought out to attend to every square inch of any spacecraft brought here.

  “And there I see some of the gorgeous stuff!” Ratko pointed to one corner. Entire metal cages of oxygen bottles were stacked there, with large ceramic pumping stations behind them.

  “Go get them, Corporal. Malady, how much can you carry?” Jezzy said.

  Malady turned to look at the six-foot stacks of liquid oxygen containers. “One,” he said.

  “One?”

  “One stack.” Malady nodded.

  “Do it. We have no idea when we’ll get the chance to refuel again,” Jezzy ordered. “We’ll make exit through the main port doors there. So, get the job done, people, and get ready to get out of here.”

  Ratko, high on stimulants, was already jogging to the steps down to the workshop floor, but Malady remained behind for a pause.

  “But, Lieutenant. The second mission objective,” he intoned.

  The munitions locker. The distraction? Jezzy nodded. “I know all that, Corporal, no need to remind me,” she said. “I already have a plan. I’m taking lead on that. You go pick up a few tons of the air we need, alright, big guy?”

  “Sir. It is my duty to inform you that we still have to determine a way to get off this hulk, as well as initiate some sort of distraction to allow our ship to escape.”

  Jezzy thought of General Asquew’s data-stick and precisely what it contained.

  Rapid Response Fleet 1: Cruisers, Command Vessels, and Battle-Carriers:

  CMC Invincible… Composition | Orders | Analysis

  “Don’t worry, Corporal Malady. I’ve already got it covered.” Jezzy nodded. If I can find a working console.

  “As you wish, Lieutenant,” Malady said and turned to follow the hyper corporal. If it was possible for the man-golem Malady to sound skeptical—as every one of his bodily functions, including his voice, was augmented and modulated through machine circuits—then he had managed to sound so now.

  Which is all just as well, Jezzy had to agree, because she didn’t particularly feel very confident in what she was about to do either.

  Her eyes kept darting back to that line of data still glowing down the inside of her helmet, already open to the only branching line of information that Jezzy needed.

  CMC Invincible… Composition. |

  Structure…

  Superstructure…

  Propulsion…

  Mainframe and Electrical…

  Life Support…

  Munitions>>>Priority 1 Weapons>>>Thermonuclear Warheads…

  13

  Evolution

  “I can’t hear anything,” Mariad Rhossily murmured. The Imprimatur of Proxima was already a few meters down the path, with Kol and Ochrie moving to join her as Solomon scrabbled out from under the outcrop of rock and back into the Ru’at nursery.

  “What the frack is that!?” Solomon heard Kol saying, lowering the Jackhammer at a dark shape by the side of the path.

  “Wait. Stand back,” Solomon was saying, but Kol had already stepped forward to prod the dark shape half-hidden in the moss and vegetation with his boot.

  “It’s alright. The thing is dead.” Kol turned the carcass over. It was one of the Ru’at dog-things.

  Only it wasn’t a carcass, Solomon saw. “That thing isn’t dead,” he said, taking a closer step. “It’s a skin.”

  The four-limbed body looked curiously deflated, as if its insides had been scooped out, leaving nothing but the outer covering.

  “I don’t understand.” Kol kept the gun lowered against the thing, although it was clearly as dangerous as a wet dishcloth.

  “It’s hide,” Mariad Rhossily was saying. “Like a snake.”

  “It doesn’t look much like a snake to me,” the Martian sympathizer muttered.

  “Snakes shed their skin.” Solomon grasped what the imprimatur was saying. “When they grow into their next stage. When they grow larger.”

  “Sskkrkr…” There was a low, hissing sort of rattle that echoed across the Ru’at nursery grounds. If it was indeed the same Ru’at creatures that they had faced just before, Solomon thought—and he had no reason to assume otherwise—then they had lost their earlier, piggy-sounding sort of noise. Instead, the new form of the Ru’at sounded deeper, more menacing, and yes, larger.

  “Look!” Solomon spotted another shape further up the path, again lying prone.

  “Another hide?” Mariad asked, moving quickly along with Solomon to it.

  “No, this one…” Solomon grimaced as he saw the scraps of torn flesh that was all that was left of the thing. “Our gun didn’t do that.” And my kick to the thing’s head certainly didn’t do that either, he was forced to admit. “It looks like it’s been eaten,” he said with a trace of horror.

  They were only born a little while ago, Solomon’s mind considered. Like reptiles, what would these creatures need as soon as they were born?

  Nutrients.

  “They were born. They needed food, and then…” Solomon breathed.

  “We were just in the way,” the imprimatur said. “Those things were meant to feed off each other to achieve their next stage of evolution…”

  “Skrkrkrk!” The sound was louder now, but it still did
n’t sound very close. It sounded as though it was further out, in the middle of the nursery area.

  “Maybe we should go back to that airlock,” Kol admitted, his eyes wide with fear.

  “No,” the imprimatur said with fierce determination. “We’re here now. And I, for one, want to know what the Ru’at has planned for that thing!”

  “Wonderful,” Kol muttered. “I guess I’m going to take the lead, then.” He begrudgingly stalked forward in a crouch, the gun held high and locked against his shoulder.

  The party crept their way back into the same place that they had so recently run from, heading toward the large mounds of vegetation that had been split apart to release the Ru’at dog-things.

  But most of the vegetation pods were now just burst-open heaps of compost against the moss and lichen. The nursery ground had performed its function, apparently, and there appeared to be no more reason for them to grow.

  Gone too were the drifts of glowing pollen and the wavering tendrils rising from the lichen. Whatever strange mutagenic process they had walked into had clearly run its course.

  Ochrie had been right, Solomon found himself thinking as they stepped carefully through the center of the farm, heading back the way they had come to the distant steps and tunnels to the colony above. It’s quiet now. It would almost count as peaceful, were it not for the fact they were walking through a strange alien environment, where every bit of vegetation apparently was designed to eradicate humanity.

  “And it’s too quiet,” Solomon breathed. The sound of the evolved Ru’at monster had stopped, and that made Solomon even more nervous.

  Ker-THUNK! They all jumped as a loud, industrial-sounding noise started above them.

  “What was that?” Mariad said, worried as she looked up to scan the distant cavern ceiling. Solomon did the same. It was hard to make out what was happening up there beyond the glare of the blue and yellow grow lights that hung from long chains, but Solomon could see shapes moving.

  “It looks like…some kind of machine,” he whispered, watching the silhouettes and shadows take on a blocky, mechanical appearance just as they slid into view.

  What appeared to be some kind of lift was descending from the shadows of the caverns’ roof, but it wasn’t any normal human lift, Solomon could see. It was made of a lowering hexagonal platform with a silver grillwork floor on which sat ragged and red humps of what appeared to be meat.

  “It’s feeding time,” Kol murmured.

  The platform appeared open apart from the cables that supported it, but what was different was that descending outside the lift came metal columns encrusted with modules and sensors. Solomon could make out protruding forms like antennae or needles, as well as rotating units and flashing lights.

  “Like some kind of drone testing station,” Solomon murmured. He had once watched a Discover! Channel documentary on how the Confederacy assessed a potential new planet for colonial habitats. They lowered drone sensing stations—large pod-units encrusted with antennae and sensors and refractors and a hundred and one other instruments—into the new planet’s atmosphere, where they collected data and extracted molecules or even drilled through ice and rock.

  “Are they weighing the babies for their health records?” Kol muttered. From his tone of voice, he had been attempting to make a joke, but from the anguished look on his face, even he didn’t find it very funny.

  Solomon thought the man was right when he said it was feeding time. The central lift lowered out over the middle of the Ru’at farm-nursery, and the humans had to change their positions to get a clear glimpse of what was happening. They watched as it lowered itself by steady increments, before finally halting just a few feet from the mossy floor.

  And waited.

  “Maybe it’s not hungry,” Solomon said. “It did just eat all of its brothers and sisters, after all.”

  “SCKRKREARGH!” A sudden, deafening roar split the cavern, and even Solomon couldn’t help but flinch as they twisted in its direction.

  A shape was rising from the higher mounds of undergrowth. It stalked. It lumbered.

  “Holy frack…” Solomon breathed.

  The Ru’at creature was now fully bipedal, still with its backward-jointed legs like a cat or a dog, as well as long arms that gave it a sort of hunched appearance.

  The creature had changed color, still mottled but now a lot darker—looking more like a rock formation than normal skin, and shot through with lines of rusty red, making Solomon think that it had imbibed some of the iron oxide from the surface of the Red Planet itself. The Outcast Commander could still see the way that the thing’s skin moved strangely across nodules and muscle groups that he could not name. It was alien in every respect.

  It was also tall now. From Solomon’s estimates, it must have easily reached seven or eight feet and was proportionately wide. It’s taller than even Corporal Malady, Solomon could have sworn.

  For a second, even surrounded by alien biology and in these circumstances, the man’s heart swept to the memory of his squad. What had happened to them? Were they even still alive? Had the Ru’at taken over everywhere apart from Earth?

  But the creature roared again, loping forward on its strangely articulated legs. Solomon watched as it raised its head—now not just an open maw but more human-like, with a smaller, bony forehead and brow over a wide grin of a mouth filled with rows upon rows of small teeth.

  “That thing grew up,” Kol whispered, and the moment that he opened his mouth, the creature froze and turned its head in their direction.

  “Oh frack,” Kol whispered, and Solomon saw the man’s hands start to subconsciously lower the Jackhammer as his body realized that there had to be little they could do to stop such a behemoth.

  The thing’s questing hiss traveled over the blue-green vegetation toward them.

  The would-be escapees froze, no one moving or making a sound as the humans all held their breath. Even the brainwashed Ambassador Ochrie appeared horrified by what she was seeing.

  “Sskrargh!” The thing shook its head with a grunt of annoyance, clearly having given up on finding whatever had disturbed its hunt for food, and slowly turned back toward the platform.

  Solomon and the others let out a slow sigh of relief but didn’t even dare move until they had seen the creature close in on the platform and circle it suspiciously.

  Ker-thunk! Suddenly, the platform rose a few feet into the air, meaning that even the monster, with all its height, couldn’t simply reach in and grab the meat.

  The thing will have to climb onto the platform to get the food, Solomon saw.

  Which, after carefully sniffing the metal and the wires in front of it, the thing now did, not using its ‘arms’ at all but hopping up onto the platform with its long legs in one easy, smooth movement.

  Where it leaned down like a cat over its kill and started to shovel the hunks of red meat into its mouth.

  “Uh… We should go.” The imprimatur broke their self-imposed silence. Off on the platform, the creature was too busy gorging itself to apparently pay them any heed, and so Solomon nodded, starting to back away at a crouch, gesturing to Ochrie beside him to do the same.

  “Where are the others?” Solomon whispered when he had moved back to Rhossily’s position. They could still clearly see the platform-lift with the creature in place on it. “The other hatched, or grown, or whatever they did, monsters?”

  “I think it ate them.” Kol grimaced.

  “It’s the last one left,” Mariad agreed. “All the others were just food for whichever one remained”

  Solomon shuddered once more. Who would design such a system? If the Ru’at were indeed playing a centuries-long game of domination, what did they hope to achieve by creating some new breed of super-monster?

  Not just a monster, a predator, Solomon thought, pausing in his escape.

  “Lieutenant?” Mariad whispered in alarm. “What is it?”

  Solomon shook his head, trying to put into words what his subconscio
us was trying to tell him. It had always been like this for the thief. His brain just worked quicker than most people’s, but it often worked quicker under the surface, delivering dazzling realizations and escape plans at the last possible moment.

  It must be my genetics, Solomon thought grimly. My genetics that were lab-grown, based on the Ru’at’s perversion of Earth biology.

  It was just like what was happening here, he started to put the clues together. This is what the Ru’at did. But the realization went deeper than that. There was something about the way that his own training mirrored that creature’s somehow. He had been grown in a lab, and then guided—or directed—by Matty Sozer on a life of learning the sorts of skills that he would need out here.

  Like I’m a predator in a laboratory…

  Solomon had been betrayed and charged with his many crimes, about to be delivered to the penal colony on Titan, when Warden Coates had instead redirected him into the newly-formed Outcast Marines.

  Which was where I was always destined to be…

  There was a sort of symmetry with the life of the apex predator behind them. A creature bred and tested in a controlled environment, until it came time to—

  “SKRARGH!” The thing’s roar was deafening, and full of pain.

  “Holy—” Kol had turned, raising the Jackhammer in alarm, but there appeared to be no need to worry about their safety—any more than was to be expected, given their current situation. The creature was not going anywhere.

  “What are they doing to it?” the imprimatur asked. “Why are they doing that?”

  The massive creature was now standing tall, still with hunks of red meat at its feet and with rivers of gore running from its wide mouth, but it was no longer eating. It was screaming.

  The thing’s arms were stretched out to either side, making it look like some macabre, obscene religious icon. From the first elbow joint—the thing appeared to have two to each arm—there extended a silver cable, pulling taut to the outside sensing columns. As the humans watched, the thing’s arms were winched that little bit wider.