Triorion Omnibus

by L. J. Hachmeister

  As it smashed its way through the debris of fallen buildings, its heavy accessory limbs dragged behind, leaving a soggy brown trail in the dirty asphalt. Agracia fired off a few rounds, but that did nothing to slow its progress. The monster’s skin divided and reconstituted where the shots hit, impervious to her assault.

  “Chak,” Agracia said, taking a breather behind a building. Bossy continued to throw 20-20s and curse words at the thing, not having any better luck.

  She looked around at the heaps of fallen buildings and broken superstructures. We’re not too far from our destination. The Behemoth shrieked, making her wince. But that won’t matter if we can’t shake this thing.

  Agracia considered going underground, through the old subway station, but there was no telling how much the landscape had changed over the years, and she didn’t want to try digging for access with that thing on their backs.

  After firing a few more rounds, she took off running again. Whatever that thing is made of, it isn’t going to be destroyed by regulation bullets or 20-20s.

  The Behemoth bellowed, striking down the crumbling tower of an old church, and hunkered down on all of its arms and legs. It slowed its pace, advancing carefully, as if sensing it had run down its prey.

  Bossy stooped behind a pylon a few meters away, struggling for air. With its decreased oxygen levels and high levels of pollution, the surface was no place to run. Inside her hazard suit, steaming with sweat, Agracia wasn’t doing much better, especially carrying a heavy gear. She needed to come up with something, fast.

  Gods, I’d kill for a smoke right now.

  Agracia shook her head. That was the Scabber talking, not her—or was it? Tarsha Leone understood the value of function over more destructive pleasures. But still, her body craved the caustic flavor of her favorite cigarettes. No, not just her body—

  —Agracia fell to her knees as a headache cut her in two.

  “I will kill you...”

  She looked up and saw Li standing in front of the women’s locker room door. Caught off guard, her fright carried in her voice. “Urusous, what are you doing in here?” she said, wrapping her towel around her shoulders.

  He didn’t say anything as he regarded her with the cold gaze of a learned clinician.

  “Get out, Li!” she shouted. Instead, he clicked over the lock on the door.

  The maintenance access, she thought, but when she saw the grate secured to the wall with tiny bolts desperate fingers could not pry free, her heart sank. And she couldn’t hope that another girl might want to use the facilities and figure out his scheme. Only two other female candidates remained, and both had showered and returned to their bunks.

  Nowhere to go, all alone.

  No one will hear me scream.

  Her strategist mind assessed the situation: Li is bigger than me, and his hand-to-hand combat skills are unmatched in the CDP. I can’t fight him.

  “Stay back—I’m warning you!” she said, posturing for strike.

  Sensing her empty threat, Li approached her unhurriedly, his boots lightly tapping the tiled floor. The object he carried behind his back glinted in the reflection off the locker doors.

  Li is no amateur. She thought of Henderson, Li’s first victim, who he had slaughtered and tortured in the boy’s bathroom. The teachers tried to hide the murder from the other candidates, but Agracia remembered peeking out of the bunks and seeing the soldiers steer his lifeless body down the hall in a freezer case. He is not an impulsive killer; he’s prepared for this moment.

  The military-trained part of her recognized his strategy: He had waited for her to be finished with her combat training, knowing she would be exhausted and take her time cleaning up during the guards’ shift change.

  “Tell me why,” she said, backing up into the sinks. She lost her towel under her feet and wobbled, but managed to keep her balance.

  He said nothing, though his eyes dipped briefly below her neckline. A smile wavered on his lips as she stood there naked, her hair dripping wet, with nowhere to run. All that’s left is spilling my blood.

  Something inside her bucked and resisted. (Don’t let him win.)

  Her eye caught sight of her only chance—the body dryers next to the shower stalls. Lunging for her towel, she rolled onto her shoulder, and sprang up next to the sinks. He easily readjusted his position, withdrawing the blade he had fashioned out of stolen utensils from the mess hall.

  Wrapping her towel around her hand, she bashed the top of the faucet with all her strength. The pain was incredible, shooting up her arm and into her shoulder, but the piece broke free. She grabbed it out of the sink as water sprayed everywhere.

  It did nothing to slow Li down. The smile on his lips grew in size. Only a few meters from her now, he held the blade in front of him, his eyes transforming into dark pools of rage.

  She slipped behind the translucent partition in the body dryer and hit the switch. In a flash she was dry, along with her towel.

  “Li... why?” she said behind the partition.

  “Because I can,” he whispered, knife firmly his grip.

  He jabbed at her, but she dodged as best she could inside the dryer tube. The blade nicked her right side, slicing the skin below her rib cage. With her hand still wrapped in the towel and gripping the faucet head, she plunged the metal piece into the interface, sending sparks flying. The towel, dry as a bone, quickly caught fire.

  Li stumbled backward as the body dryer crackled and fizzed. A flash of blue fire exploded from the interface, singeing her back and shoulders. She dove out of the tube and underneath the protection of the sinks while the body dryer continued to belch angry blue flames.

  I’m safe now, she told herself. The soldiers will come. He can’t kill me now.

  Smoke quickly filled the locker room as the fire alarms wailed.

  She crawled around on her hands and knees, blood spilling from the knife wound, disoriented in the black haze of smoke.

  Hard to breathe—

  Black fire filled her lungs, choking the air from her chest.

  “Help me!” she shouted, but to no avail.

  She collapsed in a heap. Somewhere, in the confusion of fire and smoke, she felt two hands grasp her wrists and drag her along the floor.

  “Gracie!”

  Agracia saw her pigtailed companion bent over her, desperately trying to drag her across the wasteland away from the charging beast. “What’s wrong with you? We have to run—”

  No time. Death opened its maw, eager to finish her off in one sweet bite.

  Why, Urusous?

  That’s when she appeared. Doctor Death, Jetta Kyron. The destroyer of worlds, the savior of the Starways. Even dressed in some rag of a hazard suit, Agracia knew it was her by the way she moved. Her inhumanly fast, swift movements confused the Behemoth, and in one motion she flung their gear bag into the beast’s mouth and fired off a single round.

  The resulting thunderclap shattered the world into mushy black gobs and inhuman shrieking. She careened backward, stars wheeling across her sight as she slammed into something hard and unforgiving.

  With a groan and considerable effort, she lifted her head, only to find herself covered in black sludge from head to toe. Jetta Kyron stood over her, concealed behind the gold tint of her visor. “Are you okay?” she asked through their radio frequency.

  “Ughhh,” she mumbled, shaking her head. As her senses realigned, Agracia found her voice. “Yeah, sure. Where’s Bossy?”

  The dark horse popped up beside her hooting and hollering, also covered in the black slime. “Holy chak, that was awesome!”

  Agracia slowly pieced together what had happened. The gear bag. The Mississippi Diesel 999—(No smoking!) —crammed inside.

  “Jeezus, you bastard,” she chuckled, marveling at the scattered, fiery remains of the Behemoth. “You read my mind.”

  Jetta cocked her head to the side. “I thought you’d like that.”

  Agracia accepted her hand up.

  Realiz
ing who it was, Bossy changed her tune. “Hey—back off, chakker!”

  “She’s a tough one to win over,” Agracia said to Jetta. She turned to Bossy. “Hey, kid, she just saved our lives—no need for swearin’!”

  Bossy huffed and kicked what looked like part of a necrotized leg into the soupy black mix of charred Behemoth parts.

  “Jetta,” a concerned voice said.

  The Healer, Agracia thought, recognizing her calm inflection. She spotted Triel of Algardrien rising up from behind the wreckage of an old train car. “We should keep moving.”

  “She’s right.” Agracia scanned their surroundings. “The four-leggers will get curious and come see what we cooked up.”

  “Smells horrible,” Jetta commented, inspecting the heap of smoldering remains. “Even through the filters.”

  “Watch out!” Agracia pulled Jetta back before she stepped on a small cluster of Red Polyps. “That’s the only thing that stinks worse.”

  Agracia felt Jetta’s mind applying pressure to her own, exploring her knowledge on Red Polyps. At first she bristled, but realizing it was far better to keep Jetta informed, she relented.

  “Thanks,” Jetta commented as she withdrew.

  “Just warn me, okay?” Agracia said quietly, trying not to tip off Bossy that Jetta had used her telepathic abilities.

  “Hey wait.” Jetta stopped her and took her by the shoulders. This time Agracia felt a different kind of pressure in the back of her mind. Curiosity and concern, not her own, slid down her spine and through her limbs. “You’re not okay, are you?”

  Agracia shrugged away. “I’m fine.”

  “She’s fine! Back off, Skirt!” Bossy said, muscling her way in.

  “No, you’re not,” Jetta whispered.

  Agracia shied away from the truth. I’ve got it together, she told herself, but the memory of dazing out while driving the Rover and running from the Behemoth burned in the back of her mind.

  “Let’s just get going,” Agracia said. “We can’t stay out like this.”

  Nobody argued her point. The city block had become terribly quiet as the fires from the Mississippi Diesel 999 died down.

  Agracia kept her eyes peeled for any kind of movement. A loose plastic bag danced in the wind, rolling by them, but it otherwise felt as quiet as a cemetery.

  As they passed the skeletal remains of an old high-rise, Jetta opened a private conversation with her over the headsets. “Why did Li pull you from the fire?”

  Agracia didn’t know what to say. Keeping her eyes trained on the capital skyscraper as their landmark, she focused on navigating their way through a maze of abandoned cars.

  “Agracia?”

  Realizing Jetta wouldn’t let her off the hook, she said the first thing that came to mind. “He saved my life.”

  Jetta didn’t respond immediately. “Why didn’t you tell Unipoesa about it?”

  Why is she asking me all these stupid questions? she thought angrily. That assino knows just about as much as I do anyway.

  But Jetta’s questions got in her head. Agracia’s mind fell back, drudging up the truth.

  Li had a solid alibi—he had three other students attest to his presence in the gaming room at the time of the fire. And somehow he had scared the Program’s psychiatrist into reporting that she had started the fire in order to get out of finals that week. At that point telling Unipoesa didn’t matter. Besides, he was trying to destroy her, too.

  “That ratchakker,” Agracia muttered to herself. She decided she hated Unipoesa.

  “Up ahead!” Bossy said, cutting into their conversation.

  The four of them knelt behind a collapsed bridge.

  “Jeezus,” Bossy said, sucking loudly on her lollipop. “What, is that like fifty of ‘em?”

  “At least.” Agracia cursed under her breath and tried to better assess the numbers. An enormous polyp had sprouted up from the subway access tunnel, attracting a huge cluster of Necros. The undead milled around the smaller polypoids growing off the main stalk, making it hard to get an accurate headcount.

  “That thing is mostly underground; I bet it spans the entire city block,” Jetta said.

  “Uck,” Agracia said. “I hate Polyps.”

  As Jetta checked her weapon, Agracia looked on with shock. Wait a sec—that’s just a laser bolt gun. Firing those things with accuracy was next to impossible. She couldn’t help but feel a little more grateful for her skin.

  “There has to be some sort of relationship between Red Polyps and Necros. The two couldn’t otherwise exist on a dead planet,” Jetta commented.

  “No duh, Skirt,” Bossy said, smacking her lips.

  “Quit it, Bossy,” Agracia said.

  Bossy crawled over and took her aside. “You can’t be serious about letting her follow us. She threw our gear away!”

  “She saved our lives, assino,” Agracia said. “Just give it up. She’s coming with us, and that’s that!”

  Bossy growled at her but didn’t protest further.

  “Any ideas?” Agracia asked the group. “Never dealt with this many.”

  Jetta pointed to the subway tunnel. “That’s our entrance, right?”

  “Yup,” Agracia confirmed.

  “And you wasted all our booze already,” Bossy reminded her.

  Unperturbed by the dark horse, Jetta searched through the sack that she and the Healer had brought with them. Agracia caught sight of a socket lugger, a flashlight, and a feather grinder, but nothing immediately useful.

  The Healer made an unusual observation. “They’re human. Well, formerly. I can feel them—there’s something left.”

  Agracia couldn’t believe it, and neither could Bossy. The kid snorted and pointed at one of the Necros with missing limbs and half of a face. “That ain’t human.”

  The response of her Scabber personality perched on Agracia’s lips: They just zombies! Instead, she asked in a tentative voice: “What do you feel?”

  She could see the Healer’s brow pinch behind her translucent green visor. “They’re... like Liikers.”

  The Healer’s words startled her. Bossy nearly choked on her lollipop. “What?! No way! They’re not tin cans!”

  Jetta seemed equally distraught. “No, not quite the same, but I... I see it, too. Discordant minds. Decaying bodies. Not alive—

  “—but not dead,” Triel said, completing the thought. “It’s not a normal biorhythm, but there is one. And there’s... emotion. It’s not like normal. Almost like a—”

  “—repeating thought,” Jetta finished.

  Both telepaths seemed to be stuck in some sort of trance, swaying back and forth as they bridged unseen planes into the psyches of the undead.

  “So,” Agracia said, unsure if she should try and snap them out of their daze. “What do we do?”

  Triel and Jetta seemed to communicate silently before Jetta finally offered an idea. “You stay here. And stay back. Whatever you do, whatever you see—don’t interfere.”

  Agracia looked at Bossy, but her companion just shrugged.

  “Oh God, you’re not gonna do some leech—I mean telepath—thing, are you?” Agracia said as Jetta sat cross-legged on the ground, her back against their cover.

  “Your Scabber side will love this.”

  “Oh snap!” Bossy exclaimed, animated at the prospect of action. “You gonna pull some Doctor Death sycha, arntcha?”

  “I’m here for you,” Triel whispered, taking Jetta’s hands in hers.

  For a moment Agracia thought she saw something more than friendship pass through their touch, but she set aside the idea as soon as it formed; something much more interesting was starting to happen to the walking corpses.

  “You know what you’re doing?” Agracia asked, spying the activity below them through the hole in the collapsed bridge. The entire lot of Necros froze in place. Some of them made strange grunting noises, twisting their heads toward their position.

  “You wanted to know what other magic tricks I have,” Jet
ta said, tipping her head back. In seconds, the temperature inside Agracia’s suit dropped. Blisteringly cold, she curled up into herself, squeezing her knees to her chest.

  “Oh chak—” Bossy cried out.

  She barely heard Jetta’s voice above the din of screeching Necros. “Get ready for my best trick.”

  JAEIA HAD BEEN ON HER way to see the Spinner named Aesis when she got a notification on her sleeve.

  Please return to the bridge. [Priority level 2]

  “Dichit,” she whispered, rerouting her destination.

  Jaeia had never cared for military life, even after she accepted rank in the Starways Alliance. She didn’t like the uniforms, the salutes, the training—any of it. But an unexpected longing hit as she rode the lift down vacant corridors and empty barracks. Would there be any more early morning drills or artificial-tasting instant meals? Monthly field training? Flight classes with her sister so she could tease her about her piloting skills?

  Oh, Jetta, Jaeia thought. I wish you were here. If only you could see what Victor has done to the Homeworlds.

  She arrived at the bridge of the Central Starbase, meeting the gazes of overworked crewmen and a deck officer who had worked three straight shifts.

  “Captain,” the deck officer saluted weakly. Sleep deprivation had carved large bags under her eyes and rounded her shoulders.

  “Lieutenant Roca,” Jaeia acknowledged. “Report?”

  The Lieutenant handed her a datapad and led her to the holosim in the middle of the bridge. “You wanted me to let you know when the Taurians arrived.”

  “Yes, thank you, lieutenant.”

  Leaning over the display, Jaeia analyzed the positions of the Galactic Republic Fleet around Trigos. This isn’t good, she thought, noting the increase in enemy starships. Victor must have commissioned warliners from the neighboring planet of Tauros Prime. It was a smart move, and a particularly demoralizing one, using the Alliance’s own ships to move in on the last remaining Homeworld not submitting to Victor’s control.

  His last broadcast played out in the back of her head: “We need a unified front to survive these attacks; we cannot be divided in these times. One Starways, one banner. Together we will stand against any threat to liberty, peace, and freedom!”