Cargo (The Ascendants Book 1)

by V. M. Law

  “Grab it! You have to grab it!”

  Mantiss tried again and fell to the ground. The Ides were closer, and continuing to push forward despite the pistol fire that Gustav laid down. For a third time, the mechanic placed his foot on the interwoven fingers of Gustav and jumped with his arms outstretched for the safety of the ventilation shaft. He grasped in the crease with one hand and hung there, swinging like a pendulum until he succeeded in gaining purchase with his second, and pulled his own weight and the unfathomable heft of Charybdis into the vents.

  He spun around in the tube, banging his head on its material, and reached his hand down to pull up Gustav, who jumped with a spry athleticism that belied his unnatural years. On the first attempt, they clasped their hands together, and despite Gustav’s bulk, Mantiss felt the weight of Charybdis more acutely when he himself jumped up to the shaft.

  “Pull me up, boy,” he screamed, firing his pistol with his free hand. Every report of the pistol brought forth another screeching yelp from a gunshot alien, so close now, that by the time Gustav was hefted into the ventilation tube with Mantiss, they pooled up beneath the broken grate, jumping and sticking their barbed, clawed appendages into the ducting in a blind attempt to draw blood from their quarry. Mantiss leveled his rifle at their claws, but Gustav stopped him with a gesture. “We will need to bullets.”

  Together, they crawled through dust and grit, wriggling their shoulders and sliding their elbows and coughing each time a cloud of dust reached their noses. In the dark of the ventilation shaft, Charybdis emitted its unsettling, hollow glow and clunked with the weight of a brick every time Mantiss shifted his left leg.

  Chapter 28

  Kasey, fleeing from her great grandfather with the information that made no sense to her, that she was promised would make sense to Ajax or Gustav, found her captain crouching nervously in the shadows of a doorway with his pistol in his hands. He heard her footsteps coming, not knowing who might be running to greet him, but knowing that it certainly must be a human. Still, he thought, better not take chances. He jumped from the alcove and leveled his pistol at the form running through the hallway toward him, firing a warning shot at the air above the form’s head and eliciting a scream of surprise and anger and indignation from Kasey, who fell to the floor with her arms over her head.

  “God, are you trying to kill me?” she asked after standing up.

  “Sorry.” His voice sounded broken, wavering, and his forehead shone with sweat that she had never seen on him before. “Can’t take the risk, now. It’s almost over.”

  He gestured toward the space elevator doors, which stood open, and told Kasey that if Gustav and Llewellyn didn’t make it back in a few minutes, they would have to be left behind.

  “What? You’re giving up. Throwing it in? What’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me? The entire human race is about to be obliterated if Gustav doesn’t show up and you’re asking what’s wrong with me? The lynchpin of our plans lost his fucking mind and sent us all to hell in the process, and you think there’s something wrong with me?”

  “Yes. You want to run down that hallway,” she said, pointing at the open doors of the space elevator, “you want to go down where you’ll be safer, then go ahead, but an hour ago you were talking about dying on the front lines, fighting for your life and not cowering in the face of fear. What happened?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair and looked at her with menace in his eyes. “I’ve killed a lot of people. Thousands, if you count explosives. I’ve never seen this, and nothing Brysen told me prepared me for it. I saw it on Europa, but only through the windshield.”

  “Ajax,” Kasey said, grabbing his shoulders and staring straight in his eyes, “It’s not over, and Gustav and Llewellyn will be here any minute. I know, because they are fighters.”

  “Bullshit. Fighters die. Ask anyone who joins the Council’s Army Corps.”

  “We didn’t. We are fighting the real war. And we’ll win. Brysen is prepping the Morrow remotely. He said the autopilot is set for the proper course and the Charybdis will work. He said it’s a super-massive black hole, contained in an eggshell, of sorts.”

  Ajax looked up at her, adjusting his hands on the grip of his pistol, throwing his glance over her shoulders, over his own, down the hallway that led to the space elevator. His face darkened and he stood up, pushing his shoulders back until he seemed a king addressing his people. “It could work. It has to, but if their warship sees the Morrow, this entire planet, maybe the solar system, is going to end up in that black hole.”

  “It’s our only chance, Ajax. All in?”

  “All in.”

  They shook hands, as if to complete a pact, and when they released each other’s hands, the sounds of the Ides creeping down the corridor reached their ears in the form of distorted echoes that reminded both of them of people screaming. Kasey thought about the tarmac on Europa, the way the screams of humans and the cackling laughter of the Ides rose into the incredible ceilings and mingled there in a single swarm of sound in which two species’ cries were indistinguishable.

  “We must hold the hallway, Kasey. This elevator is the only way down.”

  ***

  The ventilation system of the Neptune station seemed to go on forever. It challenged Mantiss physically and mentally to continue sliding his limbs through the chutes, down the slides, up hill with no purchase except what the soles of his boots would win him on the smooth metal of the ducts. Gustav suddenly stopped. When Mantiss asked about their time sensitive mission, Gustav kicked his leg back and drove the sole of his boot straight into Llewellyn’s jaw, drawing blood from the mechanic’s lips and instilling in him the understanding that something was amiss.

  He recoiled from the blow and spat blood on Gustav’s boot.

  “I hear people,” Gustav said.

  “Ajax? Kasey?”

  “I can’t tell. Don’t think so.”

  The two sat silently in the duct straining their ears to pick up the faint murmurs that made it through the nearest grate, muffled by dust and distance. Although neither could make out any words, the terse pronunciation could only come from someone who walked briskly and with a set destination or goal in mind.

  As the voice grew closer, Llewellyn surmised it belonged to a female. The conversation being carried out took place between that voice, terse and short in speech, and another, male, who spoke in long, rushed utterances that belied the nervous twitching of the man’s hands as he spoke. Mantiss could not see him, but judging by the shaking waver of his voice as he answered the female, the man thought about every word and weighed it against every other possibility to ensure that what he said served him the best.

  Farrow.

  She must have arrived with the Ides.

  As the realization dawned on Mantiss, Gustav voiced it himself, quietly. The rifle slung over Mantiss’ back had never seemed heavier, and Charybdis was possessed of even more inexplicable weight than it usually had. Each movement was a puzzle, and he desperately hoped that none of the hardware on his person would clang or clash or bump against the metal drum that he crawled over. A misstep could prove fatal.

  “We need to get out of here. We need to get to Ajax, immediately,” Gustav said. “If they get to him first—”

  He let the statement hang in the silent dark, before beginning his shuffle again, equally as careful as Mantiss not to disrupt the surface of the duct too much. When they reached the grate that they heard Farrow’s voice wafting through, Gustav began removing its screw with a knife. The light filtering in through the slots of the ventilation grate played on his face, revealing to Llewellyn his stress, despair, hopes. He looked behind him at the light that diffused through the bag attached to his hip, wishing to be rid of it, longing for its deliverance for more reason than one.

  They lowered themselves, Mantiss stretching his arms to the ceiling and standing on the balls of his feet, rolling his head back and pulling his feet to h
is buttocks.

  “I never considered myself claustrophobic,” he said, “but I hope I never find myself in a box that small for the rest of my life.”

  Gustav, strangely, laughed at the quip, a single, rusty bark of a laugh, but still enough to make Mantiss smile in surprise.

  “If Farrow continued in the direction we came from, she must not be heading for Ajax.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It could mean anything. We have a little time, or maybe she knows another route into the Catacombs that we never discovered, though I doubt that would be the case. Either way, we should move. She’s not the only thing in this base trying to kill us, and she’s the one I fear the least.”

  As they rounded the next corner, making their way close to Ajax and the space elevator entrance, a voice sounded behind them and told them to stop moving and drop their weapons. It was accompanied by the high pitched whinny of a laser pistol being activated, a sound that Gustav had heard many times, but had never expected to be surprised by.

  Slowly, Gustav complied, after which Mantiss followed, but before the German completed his rotation to face his enemy, Mantiss saw on his face a look of relief, the look of a man defeated who feels triumphant anyway at the sheer effort exerted by the loss.

  “I knew you would be coming for us, Farrow.”

  “That’s enough. Don’t look at me.” The disgust in her voice made Mantiss wonder if the two had a more elaborate past than he was aware of.

  “What? You would shoot me in the back?” He finished spinning around, and with his eyes, implored Mantiss to do the same. When he saw how many people stood before him, he had to fight the urge to cringe, or to throw his gun on the ground and put his fist through Farrow’s face, regardless of the hail of bullets and lasers that would immolate him before his blood hit the floor. Gustav too.

  He knew that prudence demanded he allow Gustav to take control of the situation, but he could not allow himself to die on someone else’s terms.

  In the top corner of the hallway, where dust had settled years ago and was never stirred again, a light flickered. Red, blinking, and unseen by all except Mantiss and probably Gustav. A security camera. And it had been turned on.

  “There is something that you should know. That I wanted to tell you myself.”

  “That you were going to shoot me and finish selling the human race to the highest bidders?” Gustav said. “The beings on the other side of the Jump, the Tunnel, the wormhole, whatever the fuck you call it.”

  Mantiss could hear the wound in his voice. Gustav was talking as if he had already died. He wondered who watched their situation conspiring through the lens of that camera.

  “I don’t have time for this, Gustav.”

  “You got more than me, apparently.”

  Farrow said nothing in reply, but only looked at her prey through narrow eyes and extended her hand to Mantiss. Addressing Gustav, she asked, “Is that what I think it is?”

  Now it was Gustav’s turn to remain silent, which she took as an affirmative answer. The beaming smile that radiated from her now upbeat face unsettled Mantiss more than any other response she could have thought of. He shifted his gaze to the others. They all seemed to have just won a free dinner.

  One of the four, the farthest from him, looked distraught, with a long face and eyes that continuously bounced around the area and over his shoulder. Mantiss did not notice it change—from a joyful glee when his eyes fell on the glowing bag to a horrified type of surprise—only heard it in his desperation as he screamed, “Boss, get down.”

  Before Mantiss had time to process the transaction, he heard the discharge of a gun and the tinking sound of a metal object bouncing along the floor. He turned and saw the awestruck look on Farrow’s face, and the gun that hung limply in her hand. At the same time, he heard Gustav screaming at him to run and he heard the discharging of another gun and saw the body of the farthest bodyguard get thrown back against the wall as if he had been smashed by an invisible wrecking ball. He saw the others scatter and he saw Gustav shooting at Farrow, who took the shots from Gustav’s pistol gracefully in her stomach, as if she barely noticed the viscera that poured from her wounds.

  Then he saw the grenade, and thought back through the eternity of seconds to the tinking sound that he heard when the dead bodyguard voiced his surprise. And the moment his eyes fell on it, its detonation process began. The metal ball with a blue light on it began to shine purple and then blue and then red. It whined, climbing higher in pitch to match its changing display of colors. Gustav had been shot himself, and now fired at his assailant with his own guts clutched in one arm. He turned his head to scream at Mantiss to leave, now, and in the moment they made eye contact, Mantiss knew he spoke with a dead man and he turned to flee. He shot over his shoulders as he went, and although he did not see the carnage of the grenade’s complete detonation, the thumping sounds of its explosion, quiet somehow, helped his imagination fill in the blank spaces until he had a completely clear image in his head of Gustav and the other two survivors being erased from existence, smeared on the walls, zapped into piles of ash.

  He felt the heat of tears stinging the cuts on his face as he bounded down the hall and around the corner, unmindful of Ides, unmindful of anything expect the smile of joy that he didn’t see, the triumph in Gustav’s eyes that existed only in his imagined memories. He ran a full mile through the halls of the space station before realizing that he had been hit by a bullet in his leg and that he left behind a sizable trail of blood in his wake.

  He rested, his arm propped against the wall, for only a few seconds before he continued to run, not knowing whether he ran to Ajax, from the Ides, or from the smile that he imagined he saw on Gustav as he stood over Farrow’s wounded husk in the final seconds, the smile of a man dying content.

  As he continued his journey, the bouncing of Charybdis against his hip became a drum beat measuring the cadence of his step.

  Chapter 29

  Brysen Lee sat despondent in a control room, staring blankly at the security camera monitors that alternated and changed and showed him the destruction wrought upon his home by the Ides. The maple tree burned, its flames licking first the outer branches before igniting the main branches and the trunk. Smoke furled, pooling at the top of the dome, blocking the light and making the whole geodesic dome, the entirety of his life, appear a distorted facsimile of a battlefield from eras gone by. The corn rows where he first set eyes upon his great granddaughter also burned, as did his peppers, and his tomatoes, and everything else that lived, as the Ides pushed their way into his sanctum with the greed and zeal of a banker extorting the poor.

  The station, devoid of life and empty of organic matter, did not appeal to the alien insects rampaging down its corridors. They seemed confused, lost. In their fury at starving, at not finding the food they were promised, they turned on each other, cannibalizing the weak and fighting over their carcasses. Disgusting, Brysen thought, though he could not expect anything else from the day he dreaded more than any other.

  He knew it would happen. He knew that if MarsForm didn’t find him, the Ides would, Nigel would, Patsy would—someone who disliked his continued existence and would love to put an end to it. Now, he listened to classical music and waited for the door to be forced, the bullets to fly. He looked forward to it.

  But he had one more task.

  He swiveled around on his seat, jumping from computer bank to computer bank, adjusting controls, opening programs and hitting buttons, flipping switches, entering passwords, overriding security clearances. Sweat rolled down his forehead, pooling in the wrinkles there.

  As he drew closer to completing his mission, activating the Morrow, he felt the pressure of a lifelong endeavor coming to fruition, if only he could remotely hotwire the ignition switches and safety locks that kept the ship harbored and anchored in the secret entry port in the Catacombs, where it had been lying in wait since Ajax and Gustav had brought it there.

  Gustav
.

  He watched on the monitors as he took a bullet to the torso, and kept fighting, and then took more bullets. He still stood when the grenade detonated, though Brysen had averted his gaze. He thought bitterly for a moment that Morgyn Farrow dying was a small consolation, but the pain of Gustav going with her canceled out any vindictive, poisonous joy that could have been derived from the blood bath in the lower levels.

  He had no time to grieve. He had no time for anything, except overriding the ancient hangar doors, the safeties that kept the Morrow on the ground. Fingers clacking on keyboards, swiping touch screens, and pulling levels, he jumped around, master of the technology before him, sole proprietor of the computer banks and ancient programs that controlled even more ancient doors and thrusters.

  So furiously he worked, he did not notice the door open, nor the levitating android that entered from his rear.

  “Hello,” came the Australian accent.

  He stopped, so close to his goal, and spun on his chair, leaning so that his back nearly rested on the keyboard. “Nigel.”

  “Father.” His voice was saturated with malice, as much as his processors could muster. “I must admit, you have done wonderful keeping my servers operating, my home clean and ready for my arrival. I feel like the prodigal son.”

  “Nigel, you must understand—”

  “Understand what!” the computer screamed, and Brysen had to wonder at the authenticity of such fury coming from a computer. “Understand that I am perfect, flawless. That I am not a human, nor am I your son, though you told otherwise, once.”

  “Nigel—”

  “You will let me speak!” Nigel screamed, and the laser cannon built into his hardware began charging, emitting a whining sound and a blue light that Brysen knew well. “You programmed me! You made me who I am, who I was. When you gave me Patsy and then ripped her from me, when you left me with nothing but crippling rage and anger and hatred for anything with a brain, a heart, you opened the door for the Ides. You ended the human race. I’ll watch gladly as the last of your kind are marched off through the Jump and are eaten alive by the organisms on the other side. Organisms with no morals, no compunctions.”