Spawn of Ganymede

by Christopher D Schmitz

  Vesuvius whittled the woody, organic weapons down to nubs. She rolled under the creature’s lunging attack and stabbed upward, piercing its defenses and ending its existence. Only momentarily did she stand over the body, giving it a sorrowful glance. “I think these things may have been human once… at least partly.” Vesuvius glared at the faded Jagaracorps logo; the bio-tech company had been in trouble before for illegal gene-splicing.

  “Why is that?” Dekker dropped another grrz with his pistols.

  “Something in its eyes… the way it looked at me.”

  With a final thrust, the last group of creatures broke past the darkness and into the light where the Dozen gunned them down. A tense hush fell over the room.

  Merrick slipped free from the protective chamber. The rest of the Dozen milled about the room, taking it all in.

  With wide eyes the medical worker examined the terrifying beasts. Dozens of the spiny, clawed creatures laid dead on the floor or draped across laboratory machines and furniture. He bent a knee and examined the grrz’s mottled, camouflage skin which seemed to sheathe it like a symbiotic organism.

  Mustache stood over a fallen creature with his back to the dark and facing his peers. He kicked the beast. “Well, at least we know what the grrz are, now…”

  His last few words trailed off as blood spilled from his mouth followed by a hrrrk sound.

  “Sam!” Dekker cried as a hidden beast’s bony spear pushed through Mustache’s chest from the darkness behind him.

  The grrz bent over him and roared its challenge—a short-lived act of defiance.

  In a flash, Dekker’s guns were in hand and his bullets tore through the back of the stealthy creature’s head. It crumpled backwards, pulling the spike from their friend as it fell.

  Dekker slid to Mustache’s side a split second later. He cradled his friend, ordering him to stay with them. “Don’t you dare go, Sam! Don’t you leave us…”

  Ahmed was the next one to Mustache’s aid. He stared at the gaping hole in the left side of their comrades chest and laid a finger on Mustache’s carotid. Ahmed shook his head somberly.

  After gently closing his friend’s eyelids, Dekker exhaled a slow, rage-filled breath of air and set his jaw. He stared into the darkness of the tunnel, matching the blackness with an intensity of his own.

  “Whatever these things are… we’re going to kill them all.”

  28

  Kheefal stalked his prey as he slinked from tree to tree. He grinned beneath the cover of the foliage and felt the comforting weight of the weapon at his side.

  The Investigator knew he was good. He could outfight most others he’d ever met; he possessed a high degree of intelligence and could usually keep one step ahead of his competitors. But still, he knew he was not the pinnacle of any of those things. He put a magnification device to his face and watched Dekker and his Dozen. They were close enough that Kheefal almost did not need it. Stealth… that was the thing he did excel at.

  In the nearby glen, the local man whose name Kheefal knew was Merrick waved his protectors off. Whatever they intended, Merrick wanted little involvement. Kheefal scanned his face and identified the emotion: fear.

  Dekker and his crew had just come up from Meng’s lab. They stood around a portable holographic projector which had called up a three dimensional schematic of the old maglev tunnel network the lab was a part of.

  Meng had used it to relocate to a new facility in the underground labyrinth. The holograph was marked with the old Jagaracorps logo and Kheefal assumed they’d pulled it from the archives via the TransNet. The digital model included demo cars moving along the tubes from the central hub to any of the twelve terminals at the end of the different maglev lines.

  He cursed under his breath. Surely, the Dozen were smart enough to follow the breadcrumbs. The clock had begun ticking for Dr. Meng. At least Kheefal knew which of the other eleven spokes of the hub housed the backup research lab.

  After a brief flash, the schematic switched with satmap imagery and a fresh scan they’d pulled. Beneath the warehouse that stood over the central hub of the maglev line, the satellites had registered a large metal object the size and shape of a transport pod.

  Kheefal’s lips twisted. He knew something that Dekker and his crew did not.

  One of the Dozen turned a knob, and the satmap shifted readings. Most of it looked like mushed colors, but Kheefal knew enough about satellite geo-mapping to guess at what the readout showed as it shifted between colors that represented elemental deposits and energy signatures.

  Imagery identified a pocket of dense carbon and other organic matter which blocked four of the maglev passages near the hub. They’d discovered the grrz’s main nest.

  Merrick returned. He waived some kind of journal or logbook in the air; Kheefal could not quite hear his question. Dekker nodded. Merrick bobbed his head gravely, swallowed, and returned to the ship.

  The Investigator had seen enough and felt compelled to get back to Meng. His rivals intended to explore the creatures’ primary hunting grounds. Kheefal felt certain that the threat to Meng’s research would take care of itself. For now, he had other places to be, and monitoring the demise of Dekker’s Dozen could be handled from the comfort of Meng’s secondary facility.

  Kheefal backed slowly away from his employer’s enemies. They’d never know he existed; Kheefal smiled knowingly. He was the best there ever was at keeping out of sight. Until he wanted to reveal himself, he’d be little more than a wisp of night air.

  The Investigator crept through the underbrush like a wraith, congratulating himself on his ability to sneak under the nose of even the famous Dozen.

  Trailing behind him in such complete silence that he might have been nothing more than a shadow, a thin humanoid in black followed without a sound. Behind an ebon mask, the creature smiled deviously; it knew that Kheefal would lead it directly to its target.

  29

  The moldy smell of fungal growth greeted the crew as soon as the bay doors of the Rickshaw Crusader opened after landing near the buried maglev nexus. The wet, mildew odor would’ve been enough deterrent on its own, but the crew donned respirator masks to filter the air and prevent potential spore sickness. Before departing for town, Merrick assured them that the masks provided a chance of preventing any adverse effects.

  Slowly surrendering to the Galilean flora, a decaying building towered in silence. Busted windows and crumbling foundations told the story of its abandonment and failed maintenance against the elements. The large sign-letters which labeled the place as Jagaracorps Meat Clonery, partially concealed faded and bleeding paint.

  With weapons drawn and ready the team rushed towards the warehouse. Silence reigned within its walls and the investigators fanned out and searched the rows of hanging hooks on chains and stainless steel workstations. Knowing the dangerous grrz lurked somewhere nearby, their clusters remained close to each other.

  “Most of this looks automated,” Rock mumbled, ducking beneath a massive meat-hook. “It would be nice if the power was on so we could get some lights.”

  “It’s not all automated,” Guy pointed to butcher stations where sharp knives and other trade tools lay abandoned to the dust and rot of time.

  “I read the history on the way over,” Dekker told them.

  “He told us all to do that,” Vesuvius reminded them. “What were you doing?”

  They responded in unison, “Drinking.” Guy shook his head, indicating it had been a joke. He loosened the drawstring on his satchel and opened the bag slightly to show off his collection of bombs. “Gettin the splodies ready… cause you never know when we need the big booms.”

  Dekker ducked under the arm of a giant packaging machine. He grimaced, still feeling the sting of losing Mustache. He didn’t laugh or banter as he often did with his friend, but he understood it was Guy’s way of coping with the awful event.

  “The corp built this on the first attempt to settle Galilee; they were a major sponsor. Galilee was s
upposed to be a huge financial generator for them, and this plant should have been a part of that.”

  Guy raised an eyebrow and Vesuvius stepped away to scout a few paces ahead.

  “Here, Jagaracorps cloned the highest yield pieces of animal to harvest for meat they could sell to settlers.” Dekker pointed to the huge vats where amino acids and raw materials would have been stored for their genetic printers to utilize.

  “Then what are we looking for?”

  Sounds of a scuffle suddenly rustled around them. The teams converged on the noise. Comparatively silent until their last encounter, Vesuvius had killed three grrz sentries who guarded an open section of space.

  “This,” Dekker stated. Markers on the floor indicated safe zones and load points for the massive floor-lift. “They’d load the pallets of product here and then use the shipping hub to send them to the terminals. Their plan was to create several dispensaries to encourage the towns to build around them since they would have a Jagaracorps controlled central food source.”

  A moment of silence fell over the group at the mention of “food source.” Several bodies of abducted humans lay scattered near the loading zone; faces and bodies were gnawed on so that they’d become unrecognizable.

  “Good plan,” Rock noted. “What happened?”

  “Greed. Jagaracorps bought up the land nearest their outlets and tried to price gouge their customers for the property, so they went elsewhere. The first human expansion efforts on Galilee died out after some of the first settlers starved to death and the corps’ stock plummeted.”

  The teams surrounded the lift and quickly found an adjacent stairwell leading down. Power lines led to a distant breaker, but using the lift would have alerted the entire nest of grrz that they Dozen had arrived on their doorstep.

  They crept down the stairs and regrouped. The musty stench overpowered even the air masks; more of the moldering funk coated the walls, thick in many areas, and layered up like the mud of an insect hive.

  A huge, concave undercroft yawned open over the nexus as they entered. The Dozen lit flares and slowly moved towards the area of the terminal where the grrz had layered up their nest.

  Another copse of bodies laid scattered ahead. Ahmed bent a knee while the others guarded him. All but one of them had been chewed on; the unmolested corpse had turned ashen and green with bloat. Sack-like pustules bulged on its skin. Ahmed poked one with his weapon and it burst with a wet pop. A larval grrz rolled down and to the floor like a maggot with a woody exoskeleton.

  Dekker stepped on it. Its woody carapace cracked, and the larva gave a tiny shriek and tried to scurry away. Dekker stomped on it silencing the thing with a thud that echoed in the black.

  A low growl rumbled through the darkness. “I think they know we’re here,” Vesuvius whispered in a song-song voice.

  The darkness shifted up ahead, and the rumbling turned to a roaring growl. Dozens of grrz advanced at a threatening lope.

  Dekker and his crew opened fire, adding the noise of their weapons to their angry rumble. Bursts of light from the end of their weapons strobbed and lit up the black. More and more grrz poured from the tunnels; they spread out because of their sheer numbers, inadvertently taking flanking positions that threatened to envelop the dozen.

  “Fall back!” Dekker ordered as he reloaded.

  Vesuvius looked at him. His face refused to entertain fear… they’d seen what they were up against. The enemy showed its hand—now they could plan accordingly. “Fall back!” she repeated the order as they began a tactical retreat.

  The grrz continued pouring from their holes, bolstered by the humans withdrawal and encouraged by the promise of food. They covered every inch of the subterranean hub, crawling along wall and ceiling.

  Firing as they went, the Investigators’ shots went from precise to wild as they broke ranks. Speed quickly became more important than precision.

  A gnarled, chitinous grrz sprang up in front of Guy and slashed with his jagged claws, tearing through his clothing and nearly slicing him open. Guy stumbled to the ground and his bag of high-yield explosives slid away from him, two meters away and down into the cradle where the lading ramp would settle if someone used the cargo lift.

  Guy ducked with a yelp as the grrz leapt for him. Vesuvius’s katana sliced through the overextended creature, splattering hot blood all over the bewildered fighter.

  Vesuvius grabbed Guy and flung him to his feet. “Let’s go!”

  They darted for the stairwell with the grrz forces swelling behind them. They hurried for the narrow opening that their peers kept open with cover fire. Seconds later, they charged upwards with monsters on their heels and their friends lighting up the dark.

  30

  Kheefal sat back in his chair and watched the monitor banks that had been arranged in the lab. Dr. Meng hovered nervously nearby. “Settle down,” Kheefal comforted him. “There’s very little chance they could find anything that would lead them here.”

  Meng looked the other way and sniffed indignantly. “I’m not worried,” he lied before wandering off to check the incubator that he’d pinned all of his future hopes on.

  The screens showed the group of adventurers working their way through the old clonery. The old camera feeds worked on black and white due to the low light inside the building. A few of the newer ones, though, that he’d previously installed for the paranoid researcher, offered washed-out color.

  Kheefal stared at one screen with a sense of dreadful wonder. From the top down view, he watched Vesuvius systematically disable the grrz sentries with terrifying precision. He muttered his hopes under his breath. “There’d better be nothing that leads them here… for your sake, Doc.”

  He looked over his shoulder and glanced back at the scientist but looked away before Meng caught sight of him.

  The doctor came back over to join him at the screens as the Investigators descended the stairs. Kheefal tried to switch video over to the sub-level feeds. They only displayed black.

  Kheefal cursed. “The critters gunked up all the lenses,” he complained.

  Meng smiled. “They have to… it is part of their genetic drive… to spread their seed, the Creeping Black as the locals call it. It’s how they procreate.”

  “Their what? Eww…” Kheefal trailed off. “I don’t want to know.” After switching some cameras back and forth, they found one very grainy feed.

  It flashed so much that he wondered if it was malfunctioning. Moments later, they watched the invaders rush back up the stairwell with weapons blazing. Frenzied grrz crawled out from the mouth, spilling over the edge and threatening to overwhelm them. Their weapons seemed barely able to keep up with the bottlenecked horde.

  Meng’s smile graduated to a look of ecstasy as he observed his creation. “They must have disturbed the hive.” He pointed, “These are the drones, sent to protect the mother. The grrz are the perfect creature, although they are mere babies at the moment. Eventually, they will enable mankind to live anywhere amongst the stars. They are perfectly adaptable—the grrz could function without oxygen if necessary and can function in any gravitational zones. Think about the deep space applications!”

  Kheefal shot Meng a look as he bragged up his work.

  “I don’t see how that helps humans much, besides giving us a free labor force.”

  Meng tilted his head and stared at his employee, bewildered about why the Investigator hadn’t understood. “Where do you think the grrz come from? The grrz are the next step in human evolution.”

  The grainy, subterranean feed showed the swelling mass of creatures gathered below level. Many in the back began to mill about as those on the front line continued rushing to their deaths. With the immediate threat to the hive expelled, a significant portion of the army began to retreat back inside the hive.

  Meng scowled and pulled over a handcart with a contraption resting atop it. He unwound the cable from a headset and put it on. “Humanity’s evolution is much further down the road. For now, the
grrz have many real, practical applications.” He adjusted the machine’s fit. “With this, I can tap into the hive mind and be a part of them through the relay system I left in the transport hub.” Meng concentrated and the retreating horde surged back out from the tunnels.

  “I cannot give them orders, exactly… more like make suggestions and try to influence or steer them in a general direction.”

  One of Dekker’s men tapped the lens of a camera and stuck his face right up to it. “I think they know we’re watching,” Kheefal hissed.

  31

  Juice stepped to the back of the line and reloaded as his comrades poured more fire into the rampaging aliens. “We’re gonna run out of ammo before they run out of grrz!” he yelled. They’d only barely made it to the top of the stairwell, but the angry creatures kept coming.

  He rammed a new cartridge into his pulse rifle and whirled to rejoin the others when something caught his field of view: a brief glint of glass and a dim flash of light.

  Stepping away, Juice walked in that direction until he spotted the dim LED blip momentarily. He leaned towards the camera and tapped the lens, looking for any markers on the unit. Barely larger than the palm of his hand, he picked it up and turned it over until he found a model number engraved in its base. He swallowed and turned back to Dekker.

  “What’s this… a camera?”

  “Yeah,” Juice said. “This model came out within the last couple of years.”

  Dekker frowned and dropped the device before crushing it with a boot. “Matty, go kill all power to the Crusader. If someone’s watching, let’s blind them.”

  Matty looked back to the stairwell where grrz bodies lay strewn and stacked six or more deep. “You sure?”

  Dekker nodded. “They seem to be slowing down at the moment. We’ll be fine. You have three minutes—better hurry.”

  Juice took Matty’s place on the firing line and the pilot sprinted through the warehouse doors.