Galactic Imperium

by J McGovern

  ‘What happened to me?’ Doland said weakly. ‘I feel … I feel terrible. And I have a funny taste in my mouth …’

  Alyce turned to Tekka. ‘What did happen?’

  ‘It seems that our little trip to Mazaroth wasn’t wasted after all. Remember, we underwent the transmogrification procedure at the hands of Shaitana, in a bid to avoid Imperial detection. I would guess that Shaitana made a slip-up with Doland’s transmogrification — perhaps he used some unstable nanoliquid. Doland’s DNA was, I assume, altered sufficiently to render his DNA strand quite different from that of a normal human. And remember, Ozytan’s transmogrification machine is designed to alter human DNA. I would guess that the transmogrification could only be partially successful in Doland’s case, and so he reverted to normal form after a short duration.’

  ‘What do you mean, normal form?’ Doland asked suspiciously.

  Before Tekka could answer, they heard a cry of pain. It had come from the direction of the control room. ‘No time,’ Alyce said. ‘We’ll explain later.’ She wasn’t looking forward to explaining; how would Doland react when he realised that she had been ready to kill him? If she had fired even half a second earlier, it might have been a completely different story. He might have died.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘To the control room.’

  Alyce, Glitz, Doland and Tekka made their way to the control room as quickly as possible, and dived through the main doors. They were met with an alarming sight. Three snarling Weerms in Marine uniforms were standing in the centre of the room, each pointing a sonic rifle, and each facing out to a different part of the control room. Some of the human Marines were pointing rifles back at them; it was clearly a stand-off.

  ‘They just changed!’ the Admiral said, when he noticed Alyce enter the room. One of the Weerms had a rifle pointed straight at his chest. His eyes flickered to her face, almost pleadingly. ‘Please tell me you know what’s going on.’

  ‘I have some idea,’ Alyce said quietly. When they had entered the control room, they had stepped directly into the line of fire of one of the Weerms. They would not be able to move another inch without being gunned down, presuming that the creatures remembered how to fire the weapons. She would have to make that assumption; to assume otherwise could mean the end of their lives.

  Right now, it looked like none of them might leave the station alive.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Alyce and Glitz had entered the control room first, and they were pointing their rifles directly at the trio of Weerms. A single shot might, in theory, be enough to wipe out the three creatures. The sonic blasters had proven themselves in testing to have a fairly wide range of impact. But Alyce could see the Weerms’ reptilian fingers hovering a hair’s breadth from their own triggers. And one of the Weerms had its weapon pointed straight at them. If she fired her weapon, the Weerm was likely to fire too — and the laser energy would certainly kill one of them, if not all of them. It was too fine a chance.

  And yet what alternative was there? They could not stand like this all day. Eventually, someone was going to tire. If someone was going to shoot first, it should be her. With a bit of luck, the creatures might be destroyed before they managed to fire. It was a long shot, though, she knew that. She wished there was some way of secretly communicating with the others, but it would be impossible. It was clear that the converted Weerms retained their ability to speak Galactic Standard One. If only there was a way to reason with the things … she knew that the Weerms were savage and malevolent, but perhaps there was still some human goodness buried in the back of their minds. After all, they had been human only minutes before. The creatures were still wearing Marine uniforms. If she did kill them, she would be killing Imperial troops … she shuddered …

  ‘We mean you no harm,’ she said, as calmly as she could manage, without moving her gun an inch. ‘If you lower your weapons, we will lower ours. Then we can talk things over, and come to some agreement.’ She paused, but there was no reply from the Weerms. ‘Is this acceptable to you?’ she prompted.

  ‘No bargaining …’ the Weerm hissed, revealing his pointed teeth. ‘Anyone not of our species will be destroyed. No exceptions, no deals, no mercy.’

  So it seemed there was no chance of reasoning with the things. It was to be expected, of course. The Weerms had developed on a world where all other existent life was harmful to them — they had evolved to trust no other species, and to believe that their survival could only be ensured by wiping out all others. These Weerms may originally have been human, but the fear of other species was clearly hard-wired into their very genetic makeup. In a way, she felt sorry for them … even more so because they had used to be human. But there was no room for sympathy in war.

  Alyce swallowed, her finger brushing the trigger. If she fired, and the Weerm facing her fired too, she would almost certainly die. But if she waited any longer, it might fire anyway, and she would still be dead. Sometimes, you just have to take the risk, even if the chances of survival seem microscopic.

  ‘I love you, Glitz,’ she murmured quietly, and pulled the trigger —

  The beam of sonic energy shot out — and made contact with the trio of Weerms. It pierced their tough flesh, ravaging their cells. As the creatures fell to the ground, the Weerm facing Alyce fired its own rifle, and a burst of projected laser energy streamed towards them. But, collapsing, the creature didn’t aim the rifle correctly, and the beam collided harmlessly with the wall of the control room. The three creatures buckled finally into a lifeless heap.

  ‘You did it!’ the Admiral shouted. ‘You killed them!’

  ‘Don’t congratulate us just yet,’ Alyce said grimly. ‘Unless we do something, a third of the human race will turn into those things. She turned to Tekka. ‘How long do we have?’

  ‘Ozytan stated that the transmogrification cloud is set to radiate out from this station,’ Tekka observed. ‘We have perhaps twenty minutes to stop it. I expect that the nanobots will pause at the wormhole and wait for a freighter or some such to pass through. The nanobots will enter it at the same time, and then nothing will be able to stop their progress.’ He paused, trying to think of a simple way to express the function of the transmogrification cloud. ‘It is like a software patch. The nanobots — spreading out through the galaxy by means of the wormhole network — will transmogrify a third of all humans to fit in with the new genetic template, which happens to be that of the Weerm. This was Ozytan’s plan all along; the idea was not to use the Weerms as foot soldiers, but to turn a third of us into the Weerms.’

  ‘OK, so how do we stop it?’

  Tekka frowned. ‘The transmogrification controls must be somewhere on this station. We are nearest the machine, so we began to be affected first. But the nanobots will quickly spread out from this point of origin. We must stop the machine before the nanobot cloud can reach the wormhole. The machine will be something big, very big indeed …’ He glanced around; there was nothing resembling the device he was looking for. But if the device wasn’t located in the control room, then where was it?

  Alyce racked her brains. She had memorised the full schematic of the station, and she went over it mentally, trying to decide which would be the most likely place to store a giant machine.

  She turned to Tekka. ‘How big is this machine?’

  ‘I would estimate the height of the device to be at least sixty Imperial metres. He must have built it using cannibalised parts from this control room, as well as some external materials.’

  Glitz whistled, and Alyce once again ran over the schematics in her head. If the machine really was so large, there was only one logical place for it to be. She beckoned urgently to Glitz, Tekka and Doland. ‘Come with me!’ She turned to the Marines. ‘Lieutenant, we need your men too.’

  ‘Certainly. Men, with me!’

  They followed Alyce as she led them to one of the anti-gravity elevators, which were used as the primary intra-station transport. They all stepped inside the wide opening; as soon as
they passed the threshold, it was as if they had become suspended in the air. There was no floor inside the lift, because there didn’t need to be. They worked by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow, which had the effect of neutralising the artificial gravity. Thus, the neutron flow could then be distorted in either direction, allowing you to travel up or down. Alyce hit the bottom arrow on the controls. They were going down — all the way down. They floated right down to the bottom of the elevator, and Alyce led them out.

  ‘What is this place?’ Glitz breathed.

  They had entered a sort of massive cylindrical hangar, the ceiling of which was particularly high. The circular wall was covered in millions of tiny glass panels, all of which were marked with small holo-printed labels. Alyce had the extraordinary feeling of being inside a giant tube, a tube which was covered in glass compartments. The hangar was lit by bright white artificial lights.

  ‘This is the Archive Chamber,’ she said.

  There was no time to explain its purpose further, but she was not so much interested in the Archive as what lay in the centre of it. In the very middle of the hangar, there stood a colossal machine, which was protected by a field of crackling energy. It was a force vault, Alyce realised. The only way to get past it was to disable it somehow. The machine was clearly made up of largely stolen components from the station; Tekka clearly recognised an Imperium-produced splicer and sequencer in the mesh of cables and circuitry.

  ‘This is it,’ Tekka said, nodding. ‘This is Ozytan’s machine. Unless we can disable it, a third of the human race will turn into Weerms very soon. But how can we …’

  He circled the force vault, attempting to located the power source. He cursed when he realised that it was being powered by an antimatter battery right at the top of the hangar, well out of reach. If they were to disable the power, they would have to find some way to reach the top. Perhaps they could switch off the artificial gravity temporarily. No, he thought, shaking his head. That would simply cause the force vault to destabilise and destroy us all. So how would they stop it? Force vaults were designed to be the ultimate security, he knew. He could technically step through it, but he would certainly die. Even the most heavily augmented human could not survive the ravages of the field.

  ‘What do we do, Captain?’ Lieutenant Jameson asked, turning to Alyce. He looked desperate. His skills were in ground combat, in fearlessness in battle, in keeping his men in prime fighting condition. When it came to highly technical operations, he left it to the experts.

  Alyce shook her head stiffly. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know …’

  One of the Marines fell to his knees, howling in pain. The other commandos went to his aid, but jumped back, horrified, when they realised that his face had changed. He had been altered, just like the other three Marines earlier — Singh, Buckner and Blake.

  One of his friends murmured quietly. ‘Tabiner? Tabiner?’

  The creature that had formerly been Marine Simon Tabiner lunged towards the other men, bearing his sharp claws. It lashed out with vicious, brutal talons, slicing Edgewood in the stomach. The other man fell down, gushing with blood. Lieutenant Jameson raised his gun coldly, and shot Tabiner in the back. The Weerm fell to the floor, thoroughly dead.

  ‘Mathematically, roughly a third of humans on this station will have changed within five minutes,’ Tekka said quietly. ‘Followed by a third of the humans in the rest of the galaxy. Any one of us could change at any time. We have to get through that force vault somehow.’

  In the back of his mind, Tekka knew that there was a possible solution. But it was horrible to contemplate. He had never considered himself to have any friends, but his relationships with Glitz, Alyce and Doland had come closer than any others before to friendship. And the only plan that presented itself involved the death of one of them. Worse than that, he guessed that the idea had less than a 10% chance of success. Ozytan had really stitched them up well. Tekka had to admire the man, despite his great evil. He wasn’t even alive anymore, and yet they could still feel his hands, from beyond the grave, pulling mankind down into a great disaster.

  If he did succeed, if the machine did turn a third of the human race into Weerms, the consequences would be dire. Even assuming that the Weerms followed the calculated pattern, destroying themselves while there were still some humans left alive, the galaxy would be thrown into barbarism, a savagery that would last for centuries. And he highly doubted that humanity would develop a more peaceful civilisation. No, the human race would regress, possibly even losing their knowledge of science and technology. He glanced at Doland out of the corner of his eye, wondering whether he should tell him the possible plan …

  Doland turned to him, and nodded. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ Tekka said.

  ‘You all think I’m so stupid,’ he said, raising his voice a little. He stared around the room, at Captain Wickham, Glitz, and the Marines. ‘Stupid and cowardly. I know that.’

  ‘Doland —’ Alyce began.

  Doland cut her off. ‘It’s OK. I haven’t given you any cause to think otherwise. Look at me. I was born on Opus, and spent my life as a bloody salesman for some two-bit firm. I got sentenced for five years imprisonment. For what — for something brave, or interesting? Did I rob a bank, or smuggle? No! I had two votes in some meaningless, trivial election! I’ve spent my life doing nothing of importance, being nobody. But that will change today.’ He nodded at Tekka. ‘I know what you’re planning, and I agree.’

  ‘What’s he talking about?’ Alyce said, turning to Tekka.

  ‘None of us can step inside the force vault without instant death. It has been designed that way. But we have already seen it demonstrated that Weerms can penetrate the force barriers. They have much tougher skins, and a more robust genetic makeup. Of course, we cannot predict who of us will turn into a Weerm, or when. But Doland has already been affected by the cloud, despite his reversion. All we would need to do is turn Doland back into a Weerm.’

  ‘Back into a Weerm?’ Alyce frowned. ‘Can that be done?’

  ‘I believe so. A beam of low-level radiation should be enough to re-excite the nanoparticles which are still streaming through Doland’s bloodstream, and they would restart the transmogrification procedure. Of course, Doland would not survive the procedure.’

  ‘Why not?’ Glitz asked.

  ‘His DNA is not compatible for further transmogrification; that is the reason that his DNA reverted the first time around. We can force through the procedure, but his genetic structure would be unalterably distorted. Doland — the Doland you know — would cease to exist. Even if his Weerm body managed to somehow survive beyond a few hours, there would be no way to change him back.

  Alyce wanted to scream to Doland that he couldn’t do it. She wanted to insist that they could find another way, a way that didn’t involve his death. But the simple truth of the matter was that Tekka’s plan did seem to be the only viable option. Sometimes, in war, there were casualties. Deaths were unavoidable. Despite her friendship with Doland, she did not really have a choice. She could either sacrifice her friend, or the security of the Imperium. If they did not stop the machine, billions of lives would be lost. Sometimes, she really hated being in the armed forces.

  She swallowed. ‘It’s up to you, Doland. It’s your choice.’

  Doland was visibly shaking with terror. The poor man was obviously terrified. But who wouldn’t be? Hell, he was thinking about turning into a nightmarish, monstrous creature.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he said, his lips trembling. He turned to Tekka. ‘I’ll stand just in front of the force vault. As soon as I change, push me straight through the barrier. I’ll hopefully retain enough of myself to destroy the machine once I am inside. We’ll see.’

  Tekka nodded. ‘Very well.’

  The Lieutenant offered Doland his hand. ‘You are the bravest man I ever had the privilege of serving with,’ he said.

  Everyone looked miserable, and D
oland felt his knees trembling. A large part of him seemed ready to fly into panic. Was he making a terrible mistake? He was talking about losing his very life. Was he ready to die? He had never really considered the idea of death, but now the concept of eternal blackness filled his mind. Never again would he experience a planetary sunset, or taste the sweetness of Star One sherry. He would simply … be gone.

  Then, as he stared into the electric blue of the force vault, he felt a strange peacefulness come over him. It was remarkable; if he had believed in a divine deity, he might almost have supposed that he had been touched by God’s own hand. For the first time in his life, a transcendental warmth filled his body. Doland smiled, and took one last look at his friends. He embraced Glitz, and then turned to Alyce, who leaned forward to kiss him on the lips.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said simply, and walked to the force vault. He paused right at the edge of the crackling energy field, his nose almost brushing the crackling force. He turned with a slight inclination of his head, and nodded at Tekka. ‘I’m ready.’