Dekker gave the order to Brit, and he began prepping the EMP wave device he carried in his backpack. Dekker shouted orders to the others over the roaring cacophony of the grrz ragers while Brit sank to his knees to calibrate the machine.
Suddenly, all the noise stopped. No more grrz poured from the hole. The Dozen reloaded and racked weapons in the lull, refusing to trust that the creatures had given up their pursuit.
“Everyone switch off their electronics until the EMP discharged. Three seconds later, a noise swelled below ground and the creatures pushed forward with renewed fervor.
The Investigators’ bullets and laser beams tore through the creatures, blasting them apart and ripping limb from deadly limb. Carnivorous bodies stacked high until the hole plugged itself. Only one or two at a time could scramble through the shifting pile or grrz corpses, making them easy prey.
Brit slammed the button and a blue shock wave rippled past them and killed any electronics that remained active.
All went quiet for a moment.
“You think it had some kind of effect on the grrz?” Vesuvius asked.
The floor rumbled with a shriek as the entire hive took up the battle call. Tremors vibrated underfoot as the grrz clawed at the floor and the pile of bodies blocking the passage, determined to rip their way through at any cost. The pile of dead grrz began to sink as their hive mates cleared the passage.
Matty finally arrived back at the battle scene, winded from the sprints.
“Is the Crusader shut down?” Dekker called.
“Yeah,” he skidded to a stop.
“So there’s no quick way to escape.” Dekker observed as a hole opened from below on the far wall. “It’ll take several minutes to get the power cycled back up again from a total shutdown—we can’t even close the doors till then.” They opened fire again on the enemy that scampered up from the crack.
“I’m out!” Rock yelled.
Juice threw him a fresh magazine from his own supply.
Vesuvius emptied her guns and dropped them. She drew her blades. “I don’t think we’ve got enough bullets between us all,” she muttered.
Guy turned and spotted a second hole opening on the other far wall. “I think we need a new plan, guys!”
32
The camera feeds from any units within a kilometer of the clonery went dark.
Dr. Meng stared for a moment, and then glanced sidelong at Kheefal, flabbergasted. He muttered underneath his breath for a moment and then explained, “Inconsequential… I can still give them directions.”
He cranked a knob and hit a few toggles to boost a different device’s range. Meng tapped the headset. “It’s based on organics on the grrz’s end: biological components are EMP proof. It’s one of the reasons why Jagaracorps is so keen to develop advances in biomaterials rather than traditional tech.”
Meng pressed a button and then stiffened as he sucked a sharp breath through his teeth and set his jaw. “Of course, there are still some drawbacks that need to be rectified.” He wiped a trickle of blood that leaked from his nose.
He closed his eyes to concentrate. “We are in the hive mind, now… they may have blinded us, but we can certainly spin every grrz in the hive into a wild frenzy.”
Kheefal raised an eyebrow at the doctor’s suspicious use of pronouns, but surrendered his chair to the scientist. The machine seemed to take a heavy toll on him.
33
“I have a plan!” Guy shouted over the roar of gunfire.
“I’m all ears,” Dekker responded.
“All ears. You know, we’re in a cloning facility,” Guy said. “We could probably make that an actual…”
Vesuvius snapped at him, “The plan, Guy!”
“My bombs. We can’t get to them, but the cargo lift would crush them if it goes down—it should be enough to set them off.”
Guy pointed. “There, on the other side of the warehouse.”
Dekker and Vesuvius turned to look. The main power breaker protruded from the wall with the large handle turned in the down and off position. A wave of grrz huddled between them and it.
Vesuvius winked at Dekker. “It’ll be like that time you fell into the kraaklar nest when we vacationed on Romtarr Nine.”
“I seem to recall that you pushed me,” Dekker reloaded his pistols.
His partner smiled. “Details, details.” She leapt forward and killed an aggressive grrz and then sliced off a sliver of its woody exoskeleton. Vesuvius wedged it into the down button of the elevator and jammed it into position. “This one’s for Mustache.”
“New plan,” Dekker shouted as his team began to lose ground one step at a time. “You all pull back to the Crusader and lay down cover fire for us.” He pointed towards the breaker. “If we get the power on, the switch should restart the emergency generators and power up the facility.”
Vesuvius leaned in and kissed Dekker. “Just in case you die,” she said. They turned and rushed into the swarm while half their comrades cut a thin line ahead of them.
Dekker ducked under a saw-toothed grrz while Vesuvius split him open with her katana. His pistols flashed as they cut down the six mutated, bug-like monstrosities ahead of them. Vesuvius slashed and protected his flank.
The duo charged ahead. Decades-old dust mixed with grrz saliva and blood, caked their faces and hands. Their hearts raced as the frenzied swarm enveloped them, closing ranks behind their position. With the Dozen in retreat, the covering fire came from further and further and shots cleared their path with less and less effectiveness.
“We may have made a mistake,” Dekker shouted.
“Yeah… we should’ve made Guy do the whole suicide mission thing!”
The constant thak-thak of their friends’ cover fire stopped with ominous implications. Grrz swarmed unchecked across the floor, pouring up from below and chasing the others from the building while the crowd thickened.
“Ten more meters!” Dekker shouted over the cacophony of screeching beasts. The largest grrz they’d yet seen stepped between them and the power lever. It towered over the others and even the mutates gave it a wide berth to avoid being accidentally impaled by the hulk’s chitinous spikes.
Dekker pointed to the window a couple meters from the lever. Only one grrz straggler blocked the way. “Get us an escape route.”
Vesuvius looked back at him while the hulk snarled a challenge. Dekker shot her back a sharp glare for balking at his order.
“Do it,” he growled, running towards the beast with equal parts foolishness and bravery.
Vesuvius whirled on her heel and sprinted towards the window. She snarled at the blocker and cut him down with savage fury, barely missing a beat to do so, and then flung herself sidelong through the window, smashing the glass to pieces.
Dekker’s guns fired into the giant. At such a close range, he easily heard the whump whump of bullets impacting grrz flesh.
The grrz howled, only angered by the attacks. With thicker, hardened armor, the ammunition only needled him.
Continuing to fire, he threw himself headlong at the beast as it tried to smash him with massive, spiked fists. Dekker leapt forward in a somersault and rolled beneath him. He popped up and dashed two more steps to snatch the lever and yank it into position.
“This is for Mustache!”
A generator coughed once and then everything in the warehouse whirred into motion. The chains and hooks began rotating in their slow parade through the factory floor; machinery stations lit up as they began individual power cycles.
As the lift began its noisy, grinding descent, the grrz stamped their feet in confusion—all except the grrz goliath who whirled around to catch its prey.
Dekker leapt over the beast’s massive paw, barely avoiding its jagged talons. He took two more steps towards the window and nearly reached it when his leg erupted with fiery pain. Dekker tumbled to the floor below the window and turned to look.
The grrz champion’s fingers wrapped around Dekker’s calf. Barbed spikes lik
e rose thorns dug into his skin. He shouted in pain and the shock rattled his brain—stretched the moment out indefinitely. Dekker’s mind sucked in on itself. He saw his entire life unfold with sudden clarity. He felt the full, red fury of his rage—the black coldness of loss—and a yellow streak of regret. It turned to blues of anguish over his previous life’s love… Aleel… the woman he’d failed to protect… and then it faded to fiery orange uncertainty over his relationship with Vivian Briggs.
Grey crept in at the edges of his vision and Dekker saw the beast looming over him, licking its enormous chops with a twisty, bramble tongue. It suddenly snapped its head back and shrieked with pain.
Dekker’s pain-addled vision flushed with clarity as the grrz released its grip while pulling back its hand. The damaged paw dangled at the wrist, hanging half-off, nearly severed.
Vesuvius bent at the waist while sheathing her weapon. She reached through the sill to grab him. “How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not impressed by your heroics?” she spat, helping drag him to his feet.
He rolled through the window and landed on top of her, scattering her red locks across the ground while he crushed her with his full weight.
She smiled and almost laughed as endorphins coursed through her. “Hey handsome. I’m thrilled and all… but it’s not really the best time. You know… with the bomb and everything.”
Dekker crawled to his feet. Vesuvius ran from the building and he did his best to keep up with his new limp. Around the corner of the building, the Dozen bottlenecked the grrz inside the building, firing on them from their last stand under the edge of their de-powered spacecraft where they’d retreated and stocked up on ammo.
The Jagaracorps clonery erupted with a furious cloud of fire and smoke. The blast flung Vesuvius and Dekker to the dirt and the other investigators shied back from the heat.
Flames burned around the blackened foundation as the booming echo of the detonation finally subsided with an uncanny calm. A chorus of cheers went up from the crowd gathered under the Crusader.
Dekker and Vesuvius crawled to their feet and began a victorious walk back to their crew.
A pitter patter like rain splattered all around them and then intensified as if it turned to hail. Chunks of charred grrz flesh poured from the sky as Dekker and Vesuvius rushed under cover with the rest of their friends.
34
Kheefal watched the tense Dr. Meng stiffen in his chair. The scientist suddenly leapt to his feet before going rigid as if he’d been electrocuted. He stammered the words “hive... hive... hive...” like they were some kind of mantra; the pain of a psychic disconnect overwhelmed him.
Meng collapsed into a trembling heap and crawled into the corner as if he’d suffered some kind of severe mental trauma. Saliva dribbled down his chin and his hands and feet twitched with random pulses.
Kheefal tried to remove the headset, but Meng recoiled, whimpering, “alone… alone…” over and over.
The Investigator powered off the machine. His employer seemed to relax somewhat. At least he stopped speaking nonsense, though Kheefal did not know if Meng would recover. He grimaced, tight-lipped.
“What am I supposed to do with you, now?” Kheefal wondered aloud.
Meng shivered slightly and looked up at him like a cold and beaten dog.
Kheefal got to work with a frown. He knew his best course of action was to stick to his strengths. He jammed a data chip into Meng’s hardware systems and initiated a pre-written protocol. The software crawled through all of Meng’s data and systematically erased anything that might mention Kheefal or allow an outside source to locate him or discover his involvement. It backfilled the information with false data overwritten on the hard drives and took extra measures to make sure that nobody could ever recover the original information.
“Sorry Doc,” he told Meng who curled his knees to his chest. Even though the researcher seemed as much a monster as his grrz, he felt pity for the man and decided to drop him off at the edge of Newhope, giving him a chance, at least. If he didn’t get better, he’d likely wind up put into some random MEA asylum. Kheefal’s mouth twisted at the irony. Meng wouldn’t stand trial for any crimes against humanity, but he’d likely receive the same sort of sentence.
Kheefal checked the screen. The deletion program reached eighty percent, and he smiled, reviewing the next steps of his escape plan as he wandered through the lab. Lying on an examination table he found the tube he’d stolen from Io. He turned it over in his hands and read the label on the glass. Unknown species—new flora discovered 0064PISW: Ganymede, Sippar Sulcus Mt.
The seed laid on the table as well, shaped like a fist-sized almond. Slender hairs on its husk resembled a coconut, but a tiny sliver of exposed nutmeat peeked through the hull where Meng had excised a slice to further his research.
“Whatever this thing is, I know what you were paying me, so this thing has got to be worth a fortune.”
Kheefal put the seed back into its container and returned to the doctor. With the deletion program crawling towards ninety percent, he pulled up a credit transfer via the TransNet. It would complete with enough time that the deleter would erase it, too, shortly after the credits hit Kheefal’s accounts.
He grinned at the catatonic doctor and set the stolen merchandise on the console. “A job's a job,” he explained, “and I did technically complete my end of the bargain.” Kheefal padded the job fee with a slight bonus, but kept it small enough that it shouldn’t get flagged by whoever controlled Meng’s accounts further up the ladder at Jagaracorps.
The bank software requested a thumbprint for verification.
Kheefal snatched Meng by the wrist and dragged him close enough to get the scan. He released Meng and watched the money hit his account with a grin. “Thanks, Doctor.”
A searing pain suddenly ripped through his body. He looked down and panic washed away every other sense. Blood spilled down his front side and the sharp end of a sword protruded from his chest where his heart was. The sword shrank back through his torso as his assassin pulled it free; spurting aortic blood splorted out with each beat of his heart and Kheefal crumpled.
He looked up one last time as his vision drowned in black. The lithe, dark creature that stole his ship on Io stepped over his body and took the seed. It cocked its head curiously through its glossy, jet mask.
Kheefal stared at it, wondering what its face looked like, of all things.
The creature pulled back the lid to reveal its hideous visage. Kheefal tried to scream, but he could not. He could only drown within the creeping black.
35
Before the Crusader could clear the atmosphere of Galilee their com signaled with a message.
Benjamin looked nervous on the communications array. He whispered, “I don’t know what you guys did exactly, but the Azhooliens are squeezing every contact they have in Newhope. Things are getting pretty dicey here since that med school student went to the authorities with the Azhooliens ledger. They’re demanding money from everyone and trying to blackmail me into giving them a ship.” Benjamin looked over his shoulder. “They’re here right now.” The feed suddenly stopped.
The Rickshaw Crusader whirled around and headed for Newhope. Alarms and warnings came from MEA constables whose skiffs buzzed over parts of town with increased numbers. They alerted him first to the fact that they had temporarily restricted the airspace for safety reasons.
“Boss?” Matty asked from behind the pilot’s yoke.
Dekker switched off the audio. “Idiots think I was born yesterday. They could be on the take and providing cover for the crime syndicate.”
Matty nodded and kept their heading steady.
“Even if those crafts were armed, which I doubt, they won’t have enough on em to bring the Crusader down.”
The video feed suddenly sprang to life. Dekker’s eyebrows rose as Miko Janus addressed them personally. Curious, Dekker hit the audio feed, wondering about what the galactic alliance’s President had to s
ay.
“…to let the authorities take these criminals in. Due process must be followed. I remind you that you were not commissioned for this job—as per your Investigator licensure, any hostile acts towards the accused gangsters will be considered an attack.”
Vesuvius pointed to a screen with local media coverage. The constables moved in with stun batons. “Isn’t that Benjamin’s place?” She asked.
Guy nodded. “Good thinking—gotta bring a news crew to a clandestine sting operation, right?”
The announcer displayed loose sketches of grrz creatures along with the Jagaracorps logo and the Azhoolien leader’s mugshot. A list of names and photos of missing persons scrolled on the screen.
“I repeat, do not impede the constables in their…” Dekker muted the political leader of the allied worlds.
He huffed out a gust of air. “Better hold it here, Matty.”
The Crusader stalled on its VTOL engines and hovered over the city with Benjamin’s shop barely in sight.
“They're not letting him get away,” Guy said, like a light bulb switched on in his head. “They need a patsy and the media circus is meant to take down Jagaracorps.”
Dekker nodded. “The Janus family is heavily invested in Halabella Corporation and Jagaracorps is one of their chief competitors.”
A rickety, old spacecraft blasted out from Benjamin’s repair yard, plowing through the tin facade and scattering sheet metal in every direction as its inefficient thrusters burned a trail of black smoke. It rammed half a dozen law enforcement skiffs which trailed to the ground in widening spirals like maple samaras.
The digital image of Miko Janus pointed at the screen and shouted inaudibly, suddenly worried about looking foolish on the carefully orchestrated media broadcast.
Before Dekker could make the call, Matty punched the engines. “I’m on it!”
“Get on those guns,” Dekker yelled into his ship-board communicator. “Crippling shots only! We don’t want to kill them all on intergalactic television.”
Spawn of Ganymede Page 8
