The Kenval Incident

by Philippe Mercurio

  A large mouth appeared at the top of the pile of meat, opening in a parody of a yawn. It widened suddenly and spit out a long sticky spurt. Embedded in the thick liquid was the Orcant’s carapace, emptied of its substance.

  At the sight of the macabre spectacle, the survival instinct finally aroused the crowd. The witnesses at the scene began to flee.

  With a growing feeling of horror, Mallory saw the organism evolve into a quadrupedal being. A repulsive imitation of its victim, it rushed to assault the tower.

  As if that had been the signal, the other masses of flesh began to jump and, arriving near the crowd, threw themselves in. Trapped by the carnivorous balloons, their prey resembled fish in a net.

  The same scenario repeated itself. The membranes around the gelatin blocks stretched and the prisoners suffocated before being phagocytized.

  The piles of meat fed without showing the slightest discrimination. Once full, they spit out the bones and transformed. The mutants roughly aped the species they had digested. With awkward but determined steps, they moved toward the Vohrn building. In little time, a multitude of monsters were crawling at the base of the structure.

  Mallory observed the carnage, infuriated that she couldn’t intervene. “Unbelievable! Is this ever going to end?”

  Instead of joining her at the window, Hanosk displayed his spherical navcom. Between his long scaly fingers, the little ball lit up and projected a series of images pulled from the video surveillance systems. The carnivorous mutants appeared in close-up. After thinking, he declared, “The U-Barg has entered his second phase.”

  “The U… what?” exclaimed Mallory and Laorcq at the same time.

  “Follow me. I’ll explain it to you.”

  Hanosk then addressed Torg. “Please bring the prisoner.”

  The alien led them through the tower’s twists and turns. On the way, he revealed what he had learned by looking in Lebrane’s mind. “The thing that attacked us on Stranda is a U-Barg, a sort of combat cyborg. It is distinguished by its ability, under certain conditions, to multiply very quickly, as we have just seen. Once in its reproductive phase, the U-Bargs will throw themselves blindly on anything that moves. After the smallest creatures have been consumed, they’ll begin to eat each other. The ultimate survivor will then fall asleep, and its “master” will simply have to recover it to begin a new cycle of destruction elsewhere.”

  “Fantastic! All that was missing was a zombie invasion,” Mallory observed.

  Laorcq agreed. “They’re just like the living dead in our legends. Imagine what Morsak could do with a war machine that can replicate itself infinitely.”

  She felt ice slide down her spine. “You’ll excuse me, but I’d rather not!”

  At the end of a long hallway, they emerged into a room where a dozen Vohrns were busy. Mallory found it strangely similar to the bridge on the Lyoden’Naak, the cruiser that had brought them to Mars. The same atmosphere of silent efficiency prevailed.

  Sweeping the place with her gaze, she spotted two rows of genotech devices located on each side of a holographic projection. This occupied a wall panel and showed the massacre that the mutants were perpetrating.

  On the screen, she saw the panicked crowd scattering. Some of the carnivorous blocks were still hopping around, searching for victims. Once they had eaten and their new forms had stabilized, they converged on the building’s entrance.

  Torg and his prisoner entered the room on Mallory’s heels. Distraught, Lebrane watched the carnage on the large screen. “They’re going to eat us raw! Why are you staying here? We should flee!”

  The cybrid hit him in the back of the head. “Shut up. You’re annoying us.”

  Dazed, the crook remained silent.

  Other viewpoints came to augment the projection, showing close-ups of the mutants. No two were alike, but they each possessed a mouth dripping with spit and filled with pointy teeth.

  The images were now showing the entrance at the base of the tower. The metal curtain that barred entry to the hollow tower didn’t last long. It gave way suddenly as soon as there were enough mutants pressing against it. The glass doors that it had protected exploded into shards under the monsters’ assault.

  The display changed again. Mallory saw them coming into the lobby, which was filled with arrangements of plants and neutrally-colored furniture arranged for visitors’ comfort.

  The mutants wrecked the room, ripping out plants, throwing them to the ground, and crushing the furniture into splinters.

  Mallory heard Hanosk give a series of instructions. In a corner of the image, a map of the building was covered with red markers.

  Always careful, the alien had ordered the elevators stopped. Even if the mutants were too unsophisticated to understand the controls, they might be able to get one working through trial and error.

  As for the risk presented by the stairs, he resolved to send his warriors to the third floor to contain the carnivorous monsters there.

  “Given the speed with which they’re multiplying, the few troops at your disposition will quickly be overrun,” Laorcq remarked.

  “We have to hold,” the alien replied. “Gloria City is on the edge of panic. Nagek combat ships have just entered orbit around Kenval. If we don’t get control of the situation rapidly, they’ll destroy the city under the pretext of prevention. Deprived of its capital, the system will be at their mercy.”

  Mallory grasped the new problem and didn’t beat around the bush. “How are we going to destroy this horde of zombies?”

  “First, we have to eliminate the source: the original U-Barg,” Hanosk asserted. “For that, we’ll have to acquire a sample for analysis.”

  “What if we bombarded it?” suggested the pilot, who was a fan of radical solutions.

  “Mallory, you’ve forgotten the blockade,” Laorcq reminded her. “And also, we’re not in the middle of a desert. The power required to destroy such an object would do much too much damage. The tower might collapse, to say nothing of disseminating that filth over the entire neighborhood. For all we know, the pieces would become autonomous.”

  “Okay, fine! Artillery is your specialty. In that case, who’s going to cut off a slice of meat so Hanosk and his pals can find a miracle cure?”

  The concerned party declared, “Your bodyguard, Captain Mallory Sajean. Only he has the physical capacity to forge a path through the mutants to their source.”

  “You want to send him up against an eighty-foot tall adversary? That’s suicide.” She congratulated herself internally: she had managed not to yell at the Vohrn. “You have ships the size of planets, but you need Torg?”

  “We didn’t plan for an embargo, nor that our opponents would enforce it so tenaciously,” Hanosk retorted.

  He barked a command. At the end of the room, the visual changed to show the edges of the area occupied by the monsters.

  Terrorized by the carnage happening before their eyes, thousands of individuals were fleeing. Men and aliens in uniform were trying to direct them.

  The extraterrestrial added, “The police are overwhelmed. As long as the blockade is in place, we can’t hope for any outside help. The cybrid is our best option. Having read it in your mind, I know how much he means to you. Don’t let worry blind you. He will succeed.”

  Hanosk approached Torg to examine his black and red coat. “His wounds have closed—the operation was a success. While they were treating him, my surgeons implemented some improvements. He is even more robust and agile than before.”

  Before Laorcq could intervene, Mallory threw herself at the Vohrn. Latched onto her left arm, the jufinol’s fur bristled. She grabbed Hanosk’s toga with her free hand and, with a voice shaking with rage, asked, “What did you do?”

  “Our doctors injected a polymer to reinforce your cybrid’s skeletal structure. Thanks to our procedure, his limbs are one hundred times more resistant.”

  She didn’t back down. “Why didn’t you talk to me about it first? He’s a living being, not
a machine!”

  “We couldn’t imagine you would be opposed to such a simple and useful modification,” the alien said, surprised. “Can we move on? The mutants have just reached another level, and my soldiers will soon be overrun.”

  Logic was working against her, Mallory realized. She let go of the leader’s clothing and turned to her bodyguard. “I won’t force you. It’s your decision.”

  Leaving Lebrane under a Vohrn warrior’s watchful eye, Torg came closer to her. He reached out one of his large hands and delicately caressed her cheek. “I’m here to protect you, or did you forget?”

  “Exactly. You can’t do that if you’re dead,” she retorted.

  He ruffled her hair. “Hanosk is right. You worry too much.”

  The jufinol chirped in agreement: he was of the same opinion.

  Torg spoke to the Vohrn and said he was ready. The extraterrestrial put a belt with a pouch around his torso. It contained a thin metal tube: the tool for taking the sample.

  A soldier entered carrying a pair of machine guns. The butts of the weapons had been removed so they could be attached directly to the wielder’s arms. Without a word, the alien equipped Torg with them. The latter’s navcom would be connected to the rifles. A simple thought would suffice for the cybrid to open fire. Hanosk then showed him the route toward the nearest elevator, adding, “It will be reactivated for the time it will take you to descend.”

  Mallory accompanied Torg to the cabin. While the sliding doors were closing, she shouted to him, “Get rid of as much of that crap as you can for me!”

  For Lebrane, the departure of the cybrid and the pilot was a stroke of luck. The tall, scarred man and the headless aliens remained. If only he could distract them before the little pest came back…

  The crook despaired. He thought about the money he had extorted from Morsak, waiting to be spent to give himself a new life. Hanging around until the monsters arrived was out of the question. He absolutely had to get away.

  Since Torg had hit him, Lebrane had tried to remain quiet. With his back against the wall, on the lookout for the slightest opportunity, he watched the Vohrns.

  He thought he had missed his chance when they stirred suddenly. Those who weren’t sitting in front of the organic-looking consoles left the room.

  “Now!” the crook decided.

  He went after Laorcq. Instinctively, the scarred man dodged and prepared to confront him—the exact reaction Lebrane had expected. His charge had only been a feint intended to get him away from the exit. The crook dove with the energy of despair, slipping between his adversary’s fingers. Ignoring the pain, he bounced off the ground like a cat and ran down the hallway.

  Laorcq was going to go after Lebrane when a scream froze him in place. A feminine voice. Mallory! he concluded.

  He let the crook go and set off in the other direction. He realized with fear that he was hearing the pilot scream in terror for the first time.

  He found her two steps from the elevator the cybrid had used. A group of miniature mutants surrounded her.

  The largest among them was barely twenty inches tall. Ranging from biped to hexapod, every kind of monster was represented. They hopped on top of each other and their wide mouths chattered.

  Standing in the middle of the swarming creatures, Mallory was holding the jufinol against her. A detail struck Laorcq. None of the mutants were coming within three feet of her.

  Catching sight of him, Mallory explained, “The jufinol is holding them off, but it won’t last long.”

  Indeed, the multi-colored worm was trembling in her hands, as if it were undertaking an intense effort. The pilot’s face was ashen. The telepathic link with the animal was sorely trying her.

  Laorcq backed up quietly. He worried he would break the fragile equilibrium if one of the things noticed him. Activating his navcom, he called Hanosk.

  The Vohrns were fighting against similar infiltrations by the monstrosities. The horrible dwarfs had snuck in through the maintenance ducts, used for cabling and water conduits. That explained why the aliens had hurried away, leaving him alone with Lebrane.

  “We have found and blocked their access point, but I don’t know how many had already gotten through,” Hanosk explained. “They…”

  Fearing that the telepathic worm wouldn’t be able to protect her any longer, Laorcq interrupted him and told him about Mallory.

  “I’m on my way with weapons,” replied the Vohrn.

  The trip barely took a minute, during which worry gnawed on Laorcq. The pilot and the jufinol looked like they were about to collapse. The concentration necessary to keep the mutant horde at bay must have been exhausting.

  The alien arrived holding two revolvers in his hands. Massive and matte white, they were equipped with wide, triangular barrels.

  As soon as Laorcq had taken one, an interface linked up with his navcom. A red square appeared in his field of vision, corresponding to the target. Encompassing as many monsters as possible within its scarlet lines, he pressed the trigger.

  The weapon spit out a series of bluish lights that devastated the creatures. Smoke and a disgusting smell rose from the shriveled bodies. The Vohrn followed suit, firing until he reduced the mutants to ashes.

  Meanwhile, on the other side of the tower, Lebrane was hurtling down a service staircase. Since the Vohrns were blocking the U-Barg’s offspring on the third floor, he assumed he would be able to descend safely to the fourth floor.

  Once he had arrived on his chosen level, he navigated by guesswork. Cursing the headless aliens and their dark hallways, he advanced using the feeble light given off by his navcom. He was looking for a window, if possible situated on the opposite side from the building’s entrance. Feverishly, he searched several rooms.

  Focused on his quest, he hadn’t noticed that a tiny mutant was following in his footsteps. The size of a rat, it scampered on its six-clawed paws, and a mouth reminiscent of a crocodile split its muzzle.

  With relief, Lebrane discovered a room designed for humans and therefore equipped with a window to the outside. He looked through. Below, the rain-slicked street was deserted.

  “I knew it, the creatures are all on the other side!” he said jubilantly.

  Putting a hand to his neck, he removed a chain bearing a pendant. The ornament contained a wire that was barely visible to the naked eye. He normally used it to strangle his victims, but it was sufficiently long and strong enough to allow him to get down to the ground.

  He opened the window wide. With the wire attached to a table and the necklace around his wrists, he tipped over the ledge. Slowly, he descended as the cord unrolled inside the jewel.

  Its claws clicking on the tiles, the small monster ran to the furniture Lebrane had used as an anchor point. It climbed up in a few jumps and perched on the cable, which it then followed.

  Unaware of the oncoming storm, Lebrane watched the sidewalk grow closer. As soon as he put his feet down, he’d be free. A victorious smile was forming on his lips when he felt a soft, hot mass fall on his head. Not daring to let go of the wire for fear of falling, he shook his blond mane to dislodge it.

  The miniature mutant didn’t let itself be thrown off. With its clawed paws dug into the man’s skin, it crawled along his neck. Arriving at the jugular, it savagely bit the blood-filled artery.

  Red liquid flowed copiously from the severed vein. Cornered, Lebrane took the chance of releasing one of his hands. He caught the monster and pulled. The torrent of water made his aggressor’s body slippery. Not only did he not manage to pull it off, he made his wound worse.

  The bleeding clouded his vision and made his heart hammer. Weakening, he held onto the wire by reflex, without remembering why. A strange confusion took hold of him. Between his fingers, he felt the slimy mutant move. Continuing its feast, the little monster was clearing a path toward his victim’s throat, where it coldly drove in his fangs.

  By the time they reached the ground, Lebrane had fallen unconscious. He remained hanging by
one arm, a sinister marionette. At his feet, the rain diluted a pool of blood.

  XXXII

  DRILLING

  THE elevator doors opened with a slight hiss. Torg contemplated the mutant-filled hall. The room looked like an anthill that had been kicked. The most evolved monsters were trying to reach the next highest floor, while the others fought amongst each other.

  When he heard Mallory’s voice through his implanted navcom, the cybrid left the cabin.

  “We can see you on the surveillance cameras,” she informed him. “According to Hanosk, the giant U-Barg is pumping nutrients directly into the city’s sewer system, which is why he’s still growing and reproducing so quickly. Don’t dally.”

  “No problem,” he replied.

  Designed for combat and equipped with an animal instinct that accentuated his male dominance, Torg needed to let off steam regularly. From his point of view, the horde of awful creatures had come along at just the right time.

  He crossed the hall, carefully exterminating the deformed creatures that stood in his way. The large-caliber guns installed on his forearms were marvelous: each time he hit a target, it was pushed backward if it didn’t just explode into pieces.

  Dark red rapidly became the principal color in the rooms, accompanied by a nauseating odor of raw meat.

  Torg had just arrived at the entrance when a mutant larger than the others jumped on him, screaming. In the blink of an eye, he contemplated the thing in mid-leap. Abnormally long, the monster’s limbs made him look like a spider. Its eyeless face was framed by wide jaws between which a bifurcated tongue darted.

  With an abrupt grab at its neck, Torg caught it in the air. The inarticulate cry transformed into a gargle. Indifferent to the mutant’s kicking, he tightened his steel-reinforced grip on its throat. Finally, he heard a satisfying crack. He was now holding a corpse. He threw it down at the feet of two monsters who were rushing at him. Bowled over, they collapsed to the ground. Torg liquidated them each with a bullet to the head. They might look dreadful, but weren’t very tough.