Voidstalker

by John Graham

  “The Faithful are numerous,” the prophet gloated, “you cannot hope to kill them all.”

  He was right. They were exposed, outnumbered, outgunned, and surrounded on all sides. Not only that, but the enemy had cannibalised xenotechnology for much of its weaponry, making it vastly superior to what they had.

  “We have attained peace through submission,” the prophet declared, “and so shall you.”

  With those words, he shoved Ogilvy over the edge of the platform. Instead of falling, the unconscious Ogilvy was borne aloft by some kind of gravity field and drawn, spread-eagled, up towards the spherical containment field.

  Gabriel opened fire on the prophet, but the microdots all over his skin lit up in response. Gabriel’s bullets rebounded in a series of sapphire-coloured energy flashes, leaving the target unharmed and grinning triumphantly at his invulnerability.

  “Subdermal shield emitters,” the prophet explained, “the knowledge required for their manufacture is one of innumerable gifts bestowed upon us by the Voice. You cannot hope to slay me, for I am its messenger.”

  Ogilvy was pulled inside the containment shield. The prophet and his followers watched in awe – and the squad in horror – as the silver orb disintegrated into a cloud of particles which swarmed in through Ogilvy’s mouth. As the cloud of particles took over Ogilvy’s body, the containment shield suddenly dissipated, repelling Ogilvy back towards the platform.

  The squad trained their weapons on their squad-mate as an invisible force carried him back towards the platform, where he landed on one knee. Gabriel primed a high-powered shot; whatever had happened to Ogilvy, he was better off dead. The colour had drained completely from his skin, and his eyes were shut as he rose slowly to his feet.

  When they opened again, it was clear that Ogilvy was gone.

  His eyes were now jet black as he focused his gaze on the squad. He opened his mouth, and from it poured forth the multitude of silver particles that had taken over his body. They swarmed around him, enveloping him entirely like a shimmering cloud of miniature locusts. Gabriel took aim at the possessed Ogilvy’s exposed head and fired.

  The high-powered shot was fired at high-hypersonic velocity, giving it enough power to punch through vehicle armour. But the swarm of particles around Ogilvy’s body generated their own shield around him, and the bullet was violently slapped aside. The possessed Ogilvy began to walk towards them, each footstep punctuated by an ominous, echoing thump.

  “Colonel, I seriously fricking hope you’re not out of ideas, yet.” Viker spoke for the remainder of the squad, a note of panic creeping into his voice.

  “Steady.” Gabriel replied calmly, removing a grenade from his belt and primed it.

  He felt anything but calm.

  The possessed Ogilvy and this so-called prophet were impervious to their weapons, and intended to kill them or worse. The chances that they would all die in this xenoarchaeological madhouse were growing by the second. If they stood and fought, their possessed former squad mate would make short work of them. But if they retreated the way they had come, they would be caught between the possessed Ogilvy and the ‘Faithful’, and be finished off anyway.

  Gabriel glanced up and saw that even the ‘ceiling’ of the chamber was swarming with the Faithful – standing upside down relative to where he stood. If every wall and surface had artificial gravity which varied in different parts of the complex, that would explain why the researchers had brought along gravity belts.

  An idea formed in Gabriel’s mind.

  “Sir?” Cato’s barely suppressed panic was evident in his voice.

  “Follow my lead and jump on my mark.” Gabriel ordered.

  He angled his arm to throw the grenade as the possessed Ogilvy got closer and closer.

  “Sir!”

  “Go!” Gabriel shouted, bolting to the right as he tossed the grenade at Ogilvy’s feet, who walked unheedingly forward just as it detonated.

  The explosive wave of flash-heated plasma melted straight through the floor at Ogilvy’s feet. It wasn’t powerful enough to shake the structure of the scaffolding, but it did generate enough force to knock Ogilvy backwards. The possessed commando let out a bloodcurdling scream as he fell down, even as the swarm of alien particles protected him from harm.

  The squad followed Gabriel’s lead and sprinted right.

  “Grav-belts!” Gabriel shouted as he leapt off the far edge of the scaffolding, hitting the activation button on his gravity belt as he jumped.

  Gabriel felt his innards being pulled straight down as the gravitational pull suddenly changed direction. Without the gravity belts, the squad could have run along the entire circumference of the spherical chamber without falling off; but although the chamber’s artificial gravity was cancelled out by the gravity belts, the effect wasn’t powerful enough to counteract the moon’s own gravity.

  That was the idea.

  Instead of falling flat against the wall, Gabriel and the squad hit the side and kept on falling, sliding towards the bottom at high speed like water circling a drain, towards a quartet of square openings at the bottom. The Faithful below opened fire, and Gabriel and the squad fired back. Hitting moving targets was hard, especially when you were the one moving, but several shots still hit their marks, and the Faithful scattered as they took casualties.

  “That’s our way out!” Gabriel yelled, pointing to the square openings, “go!”

  Given the topsy-turvy geometry of this place, each opening was probably another corridor leading to a sub-chamber below; and so plunging back into the labyrinth was the squad’s best way out. As they slid towards the bottom of the chamber, the squad used their momentum to slide back to their feet.

  Several jumpers drew their deadly, armour-cutting swords, and tried to close the gap before the squad could make their escape. Viker dropped one with a concussive shot to the chest, sending it flying backwards and ‘up’ the side. Bale performed a forward roll, evading the otherwise decapitating swipe of another sword, and rolled straight into the hole, followed by Cato, Viker, and Gabriel.

  As they fell, the squad kept enough of their wits about them to hit the buttons on their gravity belts, deactivating the gravity cancelling effect. Gravity’s direction shifted abruptly by 90 degrees, pulling the squad members down towards the ‘floor’ of the corridor instead of continuing to fall straight down into the next chamber.

  As the squad recovered their orientation, the remaining fighters leaned over the edge and kept shooting down at them. From the squad’s perspective, the shots were travelling horizontally, even though the sub-chamber ‘behind’ them was actually below them. When they returned fire and kill one of the attackers, the body fell down only to hit the ‘floor’ – or the wall – of the corridor.

  The multidirectional gravity would certainly make the fight more interesting.

  “Straight down!” Gabriel ordered, activating his gravity belt again.

  Gravity abruptly reoriented by 90 degrees again, and Gabriel fell off the ‘floor’ and straight down, kicking back and forth against the walls of the vertical corridor to slow his descent. The rest of the squad followed his lead, reactivating their belts and dropping like stones down into the chamber below, where they landed more or less on their feet.

  “New plan, sir?” Bale asked.

  “We keep moving,” Gabriel replied, “or we die.”

  THE OBSERVER

  Night came and went quickly on Asgard, thanks to its unusually fast rotation as it orbited Odin. Before long, it was time to get up and start another day at work. Aster was up before the sun was, the better to prepare for the day ahead. The children needed some convincing to trust the imposing maganiel android – especially since it lacked a Human face – but ultimately they climbed into their learning pods without complaint.

  Aster didn’t like leaving them alone with an armed escort robot, but the conventional household android couldn’t fight, and she would sooner entrust a mindlessly loyal machine with childcare duties
than her scheming mother-in-law. Besides, if everything went according to plan, she could be rid of Jezebel Thorn for good.

  It was the same route to work as always: a twenty minute mag-train ride straight to J.E. Co.’s head offices. But the journey felt more tense than usual, perhaps because she was about to violate her employment contract in multiple ways. She kept her eyes glued to her smartphone for the entire journey, wondering if she was being followed or watched.

  As the mag-train stopped and the doors slid open, Aster joined the shoal of people who poured out onto the platform. She was trying hard not to look suspicious as she walked to the elevators, a little too hard as she barged into someone by accident. Aster ignored the man and kept on walking, marching straight through the elevator doors.

  Aster and her colleagues all proceeded in silence down fifty or so levels to the research labs and queued up at the security checkpoint. There, everyone was required to check their personal electronics into storage before passing through the scanner gate. Aster passed through the checkpoint without incident and headed straight for her office, giving only perfunctory greetings to her colleagues as she passed them.

  Once she was safely in her office, she began rummaging through the storage cabinet in her desk. There was all sorts of junk in her drawers that she had yet to clear out, but she eventually found what she was looking for: a spare blue data chip.

  The data chips were actually colour-coded: blue was generic company information, yellow was confidential, red was highly sensitive, hence the red chip hidden in Lawrence’s office. Lawrence would have known about the colour-coding system; come to think of it, so would Jezebel if Lawrence had been her mole. But a blue data chip would arouse less suspicion, and Aster could pass off the colour difference as a necessary deceit to smuggle it out.

  Plugging the chip into her computer, Aster deleted the generic reports and other data, instead installing a simple tracking program and keylogger from the company’s in-house security software box. That way, whoever tried to access the chip’s contents would reveal their location to the company’s security techs.

  Aster removed the chip and slipped it into her pocket. Coming up with a decoy chip was easy, getting the data chip past the security checkpoint and out of the building was the real challenge. The same would go for the red chip.

  Aster left her office and headed to the main laboratory floor. It was almost reassuring to see everyone starting the day like nothing had happened, flitting back and forth with data pads and other equipment, even though the company’s future was still in doubt. Thanks to her, its fate would probably be sealed.

  Avoiding eye contact with everyone as she passed, Aster slipped into the side office where the activation key safe was and stood in front of the biometric scanner. The scanner flash-scanned her eyes and the door popped open. Aster snatched the chip out of the safe and stuffed into her pocket, with the blue decoy chip in her other pocket.

  She hastily turned to leave and barged straight into someone.

  “Oh! Sorry, Aster,” said Felix as he appeared stumble past her.

  “Sorry.” Aster mumbled nervously.

  There was an awkward silence between them as they avoided eye contact for a moment.

  “Aster, I…” Felix began, his left hand clenched into a fist, “about yesterday…I guess it’s better to just let old ghosts rest, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Aster replied, unsure of what to say to that, “…listen, I hate this too. But the best thing we can do to honour their memory is to keep working on the project.”

  “Sure, that’s something to work for.” Felix said with a nod.

  He didn’t really seem to believe it, and neither did Aster.

  They hastily parted ways as Aster hurried back across the main lab floor to her office. Now all she had to do was leave the building, give the blue decoy chip to Jezebel and the red chip with the real data to the DNI, and everything should be fine.

  Aster had to pass through the breakroom on her way back. But as she stepped through the doors, she found several of her staff gathered there being questioned by a team of security guards. Their uniforms were those of J.E. Co.’s in-house security team, and the staff looked anxious. One of them pointed a shaking finger at Aster as she walked in.

  “There she is, sir.” The technician said nervously.

  The security guards turned to her, then stood to one side as someone stepped forwards. He was instantly recognisable to everyone who worked for the company.

  He was a stout man with a bushy black moustache and carefully combed, dark hair styled with white streaks. He was dressed in a smart blue suit, but had ditched the frilled collar he usually wore with it, and he had a scowl on his face even nastier than his usual frown.

  “Dr Aster Thorn?” He asked gloweringly.

  “Good morning, Chairman Darius.” Aster said respectfully.

  “Come with me.” Darius ordered.

  “Is there something–?” Aster tried to ask.

  “Now.” Darius barked like a drill instructor.

  Being spoken to in such an imperious tone by some pompous fleekster made Aster twitch involuntarily in anger. But this particular ‘pompous fleekster’ was her boss, so she swallowed her pride and did as she was instructed.

  Then the power died.

  The entire facility was plunged into pitch blackness amid scattered yelps of panic in the corridors before dull-red floor lighting activated automatically, guiding people to the exits. Aster was left disoriented by the sudden darkness, even as the backup generators kicked in after a brief delay, restoring power and light to the building.

  “What the fleek!?” Darius bellowed.

  The emergency floor lighting remained on, and staff members followed them as they hastily made their way to the exits. Aster was carried along with the crowds as she followed the floor lighting along with everyone else to the main entrance hall, pushing and shoving her way through to get enough space.

  Blackouts were virtually unheard of. This was, after all, a modern city with a modern power infrastructure. It had to be a localised blackout, and since there was no emergency alarm or automated voice advising people to head for the exits, it couldn’t be an emergency shutdown. Someone had to have manually shut off the power.

  Darius didn’t have to push or shove his way through the crowds, his security escort did that for him as they cleared the way for their boss.

  “Everyone, shut up!” Darius bellowed, silencing the hubbub of panicked chatter, “It’s just a temporary power failure. Someone go and look at the systems to see what happened. Everybody else, get back to work. All work schedules will continue as normal today.”

  The crowd murmured their acknowledgment and began to file back out of the entrance hall in a more or less orderly fashion. Darius wasn’t the most pleasant boss to work for, but at least he was back and giving some sort of leadership.

  “You,” Darius pointed a pudgy finger at Aster, “You’re coming with me.”

  “You think I had something to do with this?” Aster demanded incredulously.

  “I don’t know what the fleek is going on,” Darius shot back, red-faced, “but I’m pretty damned sure Jezebel is responsible for it.”

  Aster’s heart leapt into her mouth. Had she been found out already?

  Two burly security guards tried to grab Aster, but she yanked her arms free and scowled at them, making clear that she wouldn’t be dragged away like some convict. Without another word, they escorted her to the elevator – in full view of her colleagues – following close behind Chairman Darius.

  Apprehension built in Aster’s stomach as she was led into the elevator and escorted up to the top floors of J.E. Co.’s head offices. She put her hands in her pockets, holding the blue decoy chip in her right hand nervously.

  Her left hand closed around air.

  Aster’s stomach tightened into a horrified knot as she groped around frantically in her pocket for the red data chip. But she couldn’t feel anything in her pocket.r />
  The red chip was gone.

  * * *

  ‘You can’t kill your way to victory’, or so a great general whose name had been lost to obscurity is said to have remarked. In theory, that meant the key to victory was to break the enemy’s will to fight rather than to kill him outright. Or perhaps it was just a piece of strategic folk wisdom passed down through the centuries. In any case, Gabriel and what remained of his squad were testing that theory to destruction.

  The Faithful hunted them through the endless, three-dimensional labyrinth of the temple, showing no sign of wanting to give up the chase. Time and again, the squad escaped from or beat back one hunting party only to be ambushed by another as they pushed through the maze of identical corridors and sub-chambers. The only ‘progress’ they could measure was in the number of kills they made.

  They weren’t heading in any particular direction, either. There was no place to which they could fall back, and the mind-bending inconsistency of the gravity made it impossible to get their bearings one way or another. They would leave through the side of one sub-chamber only to emerge on the ceiling of another.

  The Faithful, on the other hand, were accustomed to navigating through their temple, and made effective use of jump-packs and gravity belts as they bounced from surface to surface. But what the squad lacked in numbers and firepower, they made up for in tenacity and determination to survive; and they managed to fight their way through wave after wave of fanatical pursuers to the bottom-most chamber of the temple.

  Cato fired several bursts at the enemy behind them. But the attackers had formed a shield wall with their wrist-mounted personal barriers, and the bullets swerved sharply up into the ceiling or sideways with a series of clattering noises.

  “Spare frag, anybody?” Cato called out.

  “Nope!” Viker replied.

  “None here!” Gabriel said.

  “I’m out as well!” Bale answered.