by A A Warren
The scales above Makor’s brow furrowed. He held up his glowing fist. The plasma arm began to morph and grow, shaping itself into a long, fiery blade. Hissing in fury, he swung the plasma weapon through the air. The blade tore through the girl’s neck.
The image flickered and wavered in the air. Then it returned to normal. She continued brushing her hair.
Bellowing an alien curse, Makor swung again, slashing through the counter in front of her. His weapon tore through the mineral countertop, slicing it in half. With his good arm, he reached under the destroyed counter, and yanked out a mass of wires and circuits. The bundle of electronics was cobbled together with a loop of silver wire… He recognized it as one of the bands that had been holding her braid together.
The hologram of the girl flickered and dimmed, then faded out completely.
“She found one of our vidcams,” Makor growled. “Recorded herself and looped it through a holo-projector she tore from the wall.”
“Who is this girl?” one of the guards asked. “How does she know how to do that?”
“Who she is matters not,” Makor replied, glaring at the man with his bulbous eyes. His pupils dilated, filling the golden orbs with circles of dark black. “Just find her. Now!”
As the men rushed out of the room, Makor tapped the comm unit mounted to his sash. Katara’s voice answered. “What is it, Makor?”
“My Queen,” he answered. “The girl has escaped her quarters. I have ordered my men to—”
“You must leave here at once. Retrieving my cargo from Talon is your priority.”
“But the girl?”
“Seal off the entire sector. Release the stalkers. They will find her.”
“Are you sure, my Queen? The crown prince is arriving shortly. He might—”
“Do not question me!” Katara hissed. “Without the cargo, all is lost. Once it is in our possession, there will be nothing the girl or anyone else can do to stop us.”
“Yes, my Queen. I hear and obey.”
Vaki muttered a silent curse as she shimmied her body through the dark, narrow tube. The metal cylinder was just barely wide enough for her to fit, and metal ridges where the pipes joined together tore at her knees and elbows.
She grunted, and pushed herself further down the dark tube. The soft glow of her wrist unit was the only light in the pitch-black surrounding her. She glanced down, checking the diameter of the next section of tubing. It felt like it was getting narrower, tighter. But the schematic on her display showed no change in width.
Assuming the Toho records are up to date, she thought. If they replaced one of these sections with a smaller pipe…
Shaking her head, she pushed such thoughts from her mind. She had a mission. She would not let fear or doubt cloud her purpose. She crawled further down the pipe, feeling the cramped metal walls tear at her jumpsuit. After traveling a few more meters, she felt a small depression in the curved metal beneath her. Tapping the screen on her display, she triggered an override algorithm. A series of codes and numbers ran across the tiny screen. Suddenly, the display glowed green.
Bracing her arms and legs against the edges of the pipe, she craned her head down, as a circular hatch rose open beneath her.
A pair of guards stood directly underneath the opening. The hiss of the hatch had not been loud enough to attract their attention.
Taking a deep breath, Vaki swung her legs underneath her and dropped down to the floor.
As her feet slammed into the metal floor plates, the guards swung around, raising their weapons. “What the—” one of them grunted.
Vaki was moving as soon as she hit the ground. Diving towards the closest guard, she wrapped her arms around his waist, and ducked her head low, beneath his rifle. As the guard struggled to free his arms from her grip, she spun him around, stacking his body between her and the other security guard.
She took a step back, then drove her knee up, striking between the man’s legs. She knew his armor would absorb most of the impact, but the blow kept him off balance. She let go and spun him around again. As the other guard began to circle around them, she looped an arm around her opponent’s neck, pulled his head sideways to expose the soft flesh of his neck between the armored plates. Her open hand sliced down, striking the vulnerable point with a knife-edged chop.
The man slumped in her arms, dropping his rifle.
The other guard raised his rifle to fire. Vaki raised her hand… One of the tiny gems from her braid sparkled in her fingers. Before the guard could pull the trigger, she closed her eyes and hurled the jewel at the floor.
The crystal shattered on impact. An explosion echoed through the air, and a blinding flash of light filled the corridor. The guard screamed and covered his eyes, but he was too late… the flash had blinded him. He stumbled backwards, firing wild. The shots flew over Vaki’s head, ricocheting off the corridor walls with a high-pitched whine.
She dropped and rolled across the floor, grabbing the unconscious guard’s discarded rifle. As she popped back to her feet, she fired, sending an energy bolt into the stumbling man’s chest. He gasped and fell to the ground.
Vaki’s eyes darted around the corridor.
Sloppy, she thought, too much noise.
She crouched, listening for the sound of footsteps, more guards, an alarm…
There was only silence. Biting her lip, she turned and stood up. She dragged the unconscious guard over to a security door in the side of the corridor. Hefting him to a standing position, she pulled off his helmet and pried open his eye. With her other arm, she pressed his hand to the control panel mounted next to the door.
A crimson beam emitted from the panel, scanning the guard’s iris. She knew a dead man’s hand would not have been able to trigger the door’s sensor. Luckily, an unconscious one could.
“ACCESS GRANTED.” The door slid open.
Vaki let the man slump to the ground. She charged into the room, sweeping the rifle in front of her, but the dim chamber appeared to be empty. As the door slid shut behind her, a dim blue light flickered to life in the room. The chamber was long and narrow, and a trio of glow spheres hovered overhead. The walls on either side of her sloped down at an angle, and a series of polished metal shutters ran down along each one. Another security door, identical to the one she had entered, stood at the far side of the sloped chamber.
A row of metal pods hung suspended from the ceiling. She counted fifty of the strange metal objects, running through the entire length of the room. Each pod was oval shaped, and about several meters in diameter at their widest point. A coiled mass of tubes snaked down around the support struts that held each pod in the air. Glowing purple fluid pumped through the array of hoses and fed into the strange metal eggs.
Vaki stepped closer to the pods, glancing left and right around the room. A row of lights circled each gleaming oval, and a control panel blinked on the far wall. Other than that, the room appeared to be empty.
There has to be something important here, Vaki thought. This room isn’t in the archive plans.
She had noted the location of the security door when the guards had originally led her through the complex. She had memorized the complex’s layout for her mission… she knew this place had to have been built after the initial mining colony construction began. Katara must have had a special purpose for this place…
Slinging the rifle over her shoulder, she studied the controls on the closest pod. Her fingers darted across the blinking display. A metallic hiss echoed through the room. A burst of steam emitted from the pod, as the two metal halves slid apart.
Vaki waved the haze away and leaned in closer. A transparent globe hung inside the metal egg. The iridescent purple fluid filled the sphere, but it appeared to be thinned out by other substances. She could make out objects drifting within the violet liquid. Chunks of rock bobbed in the murk, their cracked sides glittering with veins of obsidian crystals.
Vaki glanced at the readings on the display. She tapped a few keys, and t
he hologram glowed to life, rotating in the air before her. The glowing blue light beams showed a complex crystalline structure…
Black jade, she thought. Huge amounts of it, suspended in liquid form. But what is Katara doing with it here? Is this some new ore processing tech?
She narrowed her eyes. Something else was moving within the hazy liquid.
She reached out, gently touching the transparent sphere with her fingertips…
A circle of fangs thumped against the glass. Vaki gasped, and yanked her hand away. A pale white body thrashed within the sphere. The thing’s leech-like mouth gnashed at the surface.
It was one of the things that had attacked them out in the ice. The worms B’Turo had called Dorukuma.
Frost demons…
A shiver ran through her body, as she watched the creature batter the clear globe. Something about it seemed different than the specimens they had encountered before. Its head was larger, and its body was a deep, inky blue rather than the pale white specimens they had found outside the colony.
Vaki turned back to the display. Her fingers danced across the controls as she searched for more info on the larva in the sphere. She opened a file marked classified. A new hologram glowed to life. Instead of the black jade, it showed a cutaway diagram of the planet’s core. A series of glowing lines crisscrossed through the surface, moving nearer to the planet’s crust.
“The black jade,” she whispered to herself. “Katara found it near the planetary core…”
The holo-display beeped, and a series of red rings erupted from the core, pulsing outwards, toward the planet’s surface. Warnings glowed to life beneath the floating diagram. Vaki’s face turned pale as she scanned the Aoshun text.
“The quakes… the tremors! By the gods, that’s why they’re getting worse!”
CRASH!
She jumped as something thudded into the door behind her.
CRASH! CRASH!
The sound continued, growing in volume. Vaki held her wrist unit up to the display. A beam of light emerged, copying the file. Then she backed away from the pod, and set her pulse rifle to full power. A dent appeared in the metal door. Then another. And another. The metal panel began to shift and buckle.
Something was trying to get in.
Gritting her teeth, Vaki tapped her glowing wrist unit. She held it up to the sphere, recording an image of the thing inside. Then she ran past the metal shutters to the door at the opposite end of the room.
The echoing crashes behind her grew louder. She glanced over her shoulder as she ran… she saw a pale, gnarled arm force its way between the two panels of the door.
“By the gods!” she whispered.
She increased her speed, sprinting past the remainder of the pods. She skidded to a stop in front of the doors, and punched the green exit button.
A computerized voice sounded from the panel’s speaker.
“ACCESS DENIED.”
“Detaro!” she cursed. The security system locked both sides of the door, apparently. She glanced back at the other side of the room, where she had dropped the unconscious guard.
The metal doors buckled inward, and tore loose from their tracks. A horde of men and women shoved their way through the opening. Their clothes were ragged and torn, their skin pale and gaunt. They shuffled towards her, arms clawing at the air.
Stalkers, she thought. Walking corpses infected by the larva. But what are they doing in here?
As the horde staggered towards her, Vaki examined the control panel. She saw there was no projector for a scanner beam of any kind. That meant whoever worked in here only needed a security badge to get out. The iris scanner was for people outside, wanting to get in.
She held her wrist-unit closer to the panel and tapped the combination that triggered her override algorithm. Once again, a series of numbers and symbols flashed through the air.
“Come on,” she hissed. She glanced back over her shoulder. More bodies were pouring into the room. They lurched towards her with staggered, uneven steps.
She raised the rifle and fired, sending a barrage of pulse bolts into the lead corpses.
A pair of the shuffling bodies dropped to the ground. The creatures tripped and stumbled, then crawled over the bodies of their fallen comrades.
She knew it wouldn’t slow them down for long.
She glanced down at her wrist unit. Three of the symbols showed green, with two more still red… it had almost cracked the code, but she was running out of time.
She fired again, dropping another creature. She checked the power cell on the rifle… it was already half empty.
“Bloody cheap rifles,” she muttered.
Her unit beeped. The final two symbols flashed green.
She grinned and slammed her fist on the exit button. The doors slid open…
Vaki gasped. Standing before her was another gaunt, decayed corpse. Its dull, glassy eyes seemed to stare right through her, as it raised its arms and uttered a wailing moan.
Vaki raised her rifle and fired. A barrage of pulse bolts struck the corpse’s desiccated face. The thing’s head exploded in a mass of crimson smoke. It fell backwards into another crowd of dead bodies, all of them pushing, shoving, moaning…
Vaki backed away from the door, sending another burst of energy bolts into the lead creatures. She pivoted and fired again, sweeping her fire to cut off the other horde of corpses at the knees.
The dead things were streaming in through both sets of doors. Her eyes darted left and right… she was surrounded. They were closing in on her, shuffling past the strange hanging pods. The only other possible exit from the room were the sloped metal shutters that ran along the walls of the chamber.
Vaki continued firing, jogging towards the control panel mounted on one of the walls. The moaning of the creatures rose in volume, as more and more staggered into the room. A few of them tripped over the bodies of their slain brethren. They didn’t even try to pick themselves up… they just crawled towards her, pulling themselves across the metal floor with their withered arms.
Vaki’s back touched the wall. She picked off the nearest creature, then checked her power meter. The red lines that ran along the barrel blinked at their lowest setting. The weapon was almost empty.
She glanced down at the controls. The tiny box mounted to the wall was another security lock, similar to the main doors. She let go of the rifle with one hand, and held her wrist unit next to the box. Once again, the red numbers began to flicker and glow, as her program worked to decrypt the access code.
A loud, angry groan sounded from just in front of her. A blast of putrid breath assaulted her nostrils. Her head shot up… one of the creatures shuffled closer. It swung its arms in a clumsy attempt to grab her. She ducked and raised the rifle with one hand, jabbing the barrel in the thing’s mouth.
“Go back to the haunted stars,” she hissed.
She pulled the trigger. The thing’s head glowed white-hot, then exploded. As the smoking body collapsed to the floor, her eyes darted down to her wrist display. Half the numbers had been decoded.
A chorus of moans and cries surrounded her. The two hordes of creatures had converged, and swarmed around her body. A tiny circle of clear floor surrounded her. The rest of the room was filled with shadowy bodies.
She checked the rifle’s meter… only one tiny red light was blinking.
Two or three shots left, max, she thought. Now what?
The creatures lurched towards her. She tossed her weapon into the air and caught it by the barrel. Swinging it like a club, she slammed the heavy rifle stock into the nearest corpse’s head. She heard a crack as the thing’s neck snapped. Its head hung to the side at an odd angle, but it continued pressing forward. She jabbed again with the rifle. Another loud crack sounded, as the thing’s jaw shattered from the impact of her blow. It stumbled backwards, tripping over the bodies behind it.
BEEP.
Glancing down, Vaki saw the algorithm had finished decoding the access code. A large
circular light on the panel blinked green. She made a fist, and slammed down on the glowing button.
The rumble of heavy servo motors echoed through the room, drowning out the moaning horde of corpses. The twin pairs of metal shutters clattered up their tracks, retracting into the ceiling. Vaki’s eyes opened wide, as a brilliant purple light flooded into the room, casting long shadows of the shuffling bodies across the floor.
The opening shutters revealed a pair of gigantic tanks, filled with the same thick purple liquid as the hanging spheres. Each tank was massive, running the entire length of the long narrow room. She could see dark shapes, bobbing and spinning in the murky depths.
One of the objects drifted closer, bumping against the tank’s transparent wall.
It was a gigantic, fleshy mouth. It looked like a starfish, but it was several meters across. Four sharp beaks, lined with row after row of curved fangs. Tattered, white flesh drifted behind the thing, waving like strands of silk in the violet liquid.
The worms, she thought. Katara is preserving their remains here. But why?
The groaning of the corpses dragged her attention away from the grisly specimens in the tank. Grabbing the rifle in both hands, she swung again, clubbing the nearest creature in the neck and battering it the ground.
She swung one more time, forcing the creatures to recoil, slowing their advance.
Then she adjusted the power modulator on the rifle, sending all remaining energy into the firing coil.
One shot… one chance.
The nearest corpse picked itself off the ground. As it staggered to its feet, it opened its mouth and hissed at her. Several broken teeth fell from its bloody maw, and rattled to the floor. It stepped towards her. More bodies pressed in. A dozen pairs of arms writhed in the air, clawing at her jumpsuit, grasping for her flesh. She stared into the lifeless eyes of the nearest creature.
“Choke on this,” she muttered.
She raised the rifle and fired straight up. The high-powered bolt bathed the dim room in a flash of blue light. The glowing lance of energy shot straight up, striking the sloped wall of the tank.
