by Dan Worth
Something caught her eye. A shadow moved behind the thick curtains she had drawn across the windows. Though they blocked most of the sunlight, they did not do so entirely. A figure was standing on her balcony. Its hunched form suggested a Dendratha. Katherine went to the window.
Pulling back the heavy black curtains she found herself face to face with an elderly Dendratha male. Katherine groaned, some bloody tourist come to pry on the aliens. He must have come up the fire escape. Had he not seen the signs forbidding passage beyond them, or had he just chosen to ignore them?
‘You can’t come up here!’ she yelled through the glass. ‘This is off limits? Do you understand?’ She made a shooing motion with her hands. The Dendratha continued to regard her impassively. Katherine realised now that she recognised him: it was the same individual who had shared their carriage on the way here. Had he come to pay them a visit perhaps? She didn’t know much about Dendratha social mores and codes of conduct - was this usual?
‘What do you want?’ she called.
The Dendratha lurched suddenly and then righted himself unsteadily; his eyes seemed to be unfocused. Was he drunk? Katherine looked closer and to her horror saw that the alien’s skin seemed to be rippling, there was something writhing and swelling under the surface of its forehead. Katherine recoiled as the Dendratha clutched his head, whatever was inside him was trying to force its way out.
The alien’s forehead suddenly burst open in a welter of blood and remnants of the devoured brain within, as a gore-covered, writhing, maggot-like creature with spindly whip-like tentacles catapulted itself out of the hollowed out shell through the window, which shattered instantly under the impact. Katherine staggered backwards, the writhing abomination narrowly missing her.
Startled she tripped over the corner of the bed and fell backwards heavily as her attacker raised itself up on its spidery limbs. Its black, segmented body gleamed wetly through the gore. Complex machine-like mandibles worked and extended, extruding long, needle like probes as it tensed itself to spring again.
In her fear she found reserves of speed she didn’t know she possessed. Katherine struggled to her feet and flung herself over the bed towards the bedside table, upon which lay the laser pistol Steven had given her hours earlier. She grabbed it, as a hard metal limb struck her foot.
‘Steven!’ she yelled and she recoiled her foot in horror as her shaking hands struggled with the gun’s safety. ‘Steven, help!’
The metal horror launched itself at her, tentacles reaching to grasp her face, she fired. The shot rebounded off the thing with a flash: it was shielded! Fortunately the impact of the blast was still sufficient to knock her assailant sideways and it thudded off the wall. Katherine stood up, the gun held out in front of her. Whilst the thing tensed itself for another leap she aimed and fired again, the shot caroming off its invisible armour and singeing the wall.
‘Steven! Now would be a good time!’
The thing launched again and with her back against the wall Katherine had nowhere to run, she flinched, covering her head with her arms. The thing landed on the side of her head, heavy despite its diminutive size and horribly slippery with blood as it sought purchase. She felt its horrible spidery legs entangled in her hair as it tried to position itself. Katherine clawed at it with one hand and tried to twist the gun around to fire at it, knowing full well that she risked shooting herself, but the thing now had her hand pinned tight within its grasp. She fought desperately, crashing into furniture and struggled to remove it as the maggot thing was now trying to press its mandibles against the top of her head. She felt a cold needle-like touch and screamed at the top of her lungs.
The door burst open. Steven hurled himself through the gap, the Gauss pistol in his grasp. Taking one look at the scene he aimed the heavy handgun at the writhing mechanical thing atop Katherine’s struggling form and fired. The magnetically accelerated slug bypassed the maggot’s shield and blew a chunk from its sleek body, the impact knocking it from Katherine onto the floor. It squealed, an oddly biological sound for a machine, appeared to take a split second to take stock of the situation and then tried to scurry to cover under the bed. Steven switched his weapon to full automatic and shot the thing as it tried to escape. A volley of projectiles leapt from the gun’s barrel and tore into the maggot’s body once more, shredding its mechanical form. It writhed feebly for a moment before it finally shuddered and lay still.
Steven holstered his weapons and stepped over to Katherine’s curled form. She was sobbing, which was a relief. At least she was still alive.
‘Katherine! Shit, are you alright!?’
‘I think so.’ She uncurled and sat up, there was cut on her right cheek, scratches around her scalp and temples, a scrape on her forehead, and her clothes were smeared with alien blood, otherwise she appeared miraculously unharmed.
‘It’s dead Katherine, I’ve killed it. Not that it was ever really alive in the first place.’
‘What the fuck was that?’ she said, shaking.
‘I have no fucking idea. Some sort of parasite I... I’ve never seen anything like that before.’
‘Well if you hadn’t heard me…’
‘I’d rather not think about that.’
‘Christ, it was inside a Dendratha! The one that shared our carriage with us. He was standing on my balcony and that thing just burst out of his head.’
Steven went over to the shattered window and looked through, the gory remains of the alien lay in a bloody heap on the floor, and he grimaced. ‘It must have killed the old guy in Erais then hollowed him out to use as a disguise. It was watching us the whole time we were on that train.’
‘Why?’
‘Maybe it wanted to watch us. Maybe it wanted to use one of us as a host. But I have no idea who sent it here. It’s not from this planet that’s for sure. Look at this,’ he indicated to the ruined creature. ‘This thing looks machine rather than animal. Somebody made this. This isn’t a parasite it’s a weapon or a spying device or something. It’s alien, that’s for sure. This isn’t human technology. I guess the Arkari are capable of making something this sophisticated, but this isn’t their style. It doesn’t look like they made it either.’
‘Oh god, we shared a carriage with that thing. I thought you said no-one could get at us here.’
‘Maybe it snuck aboard a scheduled vessel, but we’ve had few visitors.’
‘Oh no, you mean it could have come here with me?’
‘Very probably.’
‘Minaba...’
Rekkid was standing in the doorway. He surveyed the scene, a shocked expression on his face.
‘I heard shots and screaming. Are you…?’
‘I’m fine, Rekkid. Steven came in the nick of time.’
‘What the hell? What is this thing?’ he kicked the dead drone.
‘It’s trouble Rekkid,’ said Steven. ‘Very big trouble indeed.’
‘You don’t say. What is that?’
‘We don’t know. But somebody else is very interested in what we’re doing.’
‘Another space-faring race? Shit. We can’t stay here then.’
‘No. We need to inform the authorities what happened.’
‘You think the locals would even comprehend what happened here never mind defend us from unknown off-world technology Steven? I admire your optimism,’ Rekkid replied.
‘No, but they ought to know what happened here. We can show them the remains of that thing and hope that they’ll comprehend. The last thing we need is being needlessly charged with murdering one of the natives.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘That thing was inside the same Dendratha that was in our carriage on the way here. What’s left of him is on the balcony… you don’t want to see.’
Rekkid went and looked anyway. He frowned and turned away, his face pale.
‘I told you not to look,’ said Steven
‘And I should have listened,’ replied Rekkid and he shuddered.
‘I’
m not sure how much more of this I can take,’ said Katherine. She was shaking. Rekkid knelt and put his arm round her to comfort her.
Steven said nothing for a moment. He just stared at the floor grimly and toyed with his gun. Then he spoke:
‘Let them try,’ he said. ‘I’ve got plenty more where that came from. I won’t let them hurt you, either of you.’ He glared grimly at the pile of bloody machinery in the corner.
Chapter 12
Ramirez watched Chen as she slept, her small frame cradled in his embrace. He studied her delicate features, her thick black hair that lay in a tangle about her head and the slow rhythm of her breathing. She shifted against him and muttered incoherently in her sleep. The two of them lay entwined in the narrow bunk in Chen’s quarters. It was barely wide enough for one person, never mind two.
Officially, they had been having a meeting about training schedules, had anyone asked, which they hadn’t. They seemed to having a lot of meetings of late, thought Ramirez. He wondered how many, if any, of the crew knew what was going on between the two of them. Not that he cared anymore. Being with Michelle was enough, though he did get something of a thrill from the forbidden nature of their liaison.
He found Chen to be quite remarkable; she was so small and reserved, stern even, publicly at least, yet she carried such a presence on the ship, hell, she was the ship. He was even more entranced by what he’d found once he’d got beyond that protective shell she surrounded herself with most of the time. She was passionate, articulate and fiercely intelligent, though driven to a fault and he had to admit there was sometimes a calculating coldness about her that he found slightly unsettling.
He stroked her hair gently. Chen stirred and slowly opened her eyes. She regarded him sleepily for a moment. He kissed her and she responded.
‘What time is it?’
‘Seven-thirty ship time,’ said Ramirez. He kissed her again and, reaching under the covers, drew her closer.
‘Sorry Al, no time for that,’ she sighed with genuine regret. ‘The watch will be changing over in half an hour. We have to go to work I’m afraid, and you need to get dressed and get back to your quarters before the gangways are full of inquisitive people.’
‘Hmm, that’s true. They might wonder what I’ve been doing in your quarters all night.’
‘They might.’
Ramirez thought for a moment.
‘Time for a shower before I leave?’
Chen reached out a hand and touched his cheek.
‘Well, why not hmm?’ she said and grinned mischievously at him.
Back in his quarters, having snuck back unseen from Chen’s, Ramirez changed out of the uniform that had lain in a crumpled heap on the floor all night and into fresh garments. As he made to leave for the mess to grab some breakfast, he noticed the light next to his desk terminal was blinking at him, indicating that he had an important message waiting.
He sat down in front of the device and accessed his message in-box. Amongst the sundry routine communications was a single message headed with a code phrase. He selected it and was presented with a screen filled with gibberish. The message must be encrypted. He knew immediately who it was from: his superiors back on Earth wished to speak to him. Doubtless the message had been piggy-backed onto some other innocuous transmission, or it had been inserted into the ship’s systems by another operative onboard the vessel. In any case it had managed to circumvent the Mark Antony’s military grade security firewalls entirely, which was no mean feat.
There was only one way to access the message. Ramirez went to his cabin safe and removed a small, black, thumb-sized decryption device, which he plugged into one of the terminal’s ports. Next he placed his right index finger against the inbuilt print reader and allowed it to be scanned. The final step required a password, he checked the date to remind himself which one he should use, then entered it. There was a brief pause before the message appeared on the screen.
To: Commander Alvaro Ramirez, CNV Mark Antony
From: Naval IntelCom, Earth.
Date:26th September, 2382
Security Level: Alpha Omega. Eyes Only.
With regard to your preference to remain aboard the vessel Mark Antony as its acting XO. We have reviewed your current situation and as such are issuing further orders. We concur with your assessment. You are to continue with your previous mission and are to further monitor the behaviour and character of Captain Michelle Chen. Though she knows now of your true identity we feel it would be in the interests of the Navy if we were to be kept informed about her state of mind.
You will be briefed about the nature of Chen’s forthcoming responsibilities via normal channels on a need to know basis. It is imperative for the security of the Commonwealth that her orders are carried out to the letter. If she should fail in this then you must not. If she hesitates in performing her duties at any time during the mission, you are to assume command of the Mark Antony and ensure that the prescribed objectives are met.
Ramirez swallowed heavily. He was surprised Command would even dare to question her reliability. Chen’s loyalty was generally regarded as beyond reproach. Despite her doubts and fears she had never once expressed the desire to disobey her orders. Worse, he hated the idea of having to deceive her once more, but if the Navy were depending on her carrying out her mission what choice did he have? He couldn’t let his personal feelings cloud his judgement when the lives of thousands of servicemen and women might hang in the balance. Could he?
Ramirez swore profusely and rubbed his temples in exasperation. His affair with Chen had let the two of them forget the impending war, at least for a while. This had brought it all back to the forefront of his mind with a vengeance. He erased the message, switched off the terminal and went to get some breakfast. Today’s intense training schedules were going to make this a long day.
The view from the bridge showed the two destroyers, Rameses and Thermopylae and the Marine assault carrier Normandy. The three gigantic vessels hung in close formation in front of the Mark Antony’s bows. The larger carrier dwarfed its two smaller companions, each of which was of the same class as the Mark Antony and held station on either side of the massive warship.
The four vessels had assembled for today’s training exercise in a region of the Klondike system well above the ecliptic and away from the busy shipping lanes, both for safety and for a degree of secrecy. The Normandy had temporarily left its battle group in the nearby Topaz system in order to take part in today’s mock engagement.
Chen reclined in her command chair and surveyed the scene; she was looking forward to today’s little skirmish. The other three vessels would be playing the part of K’Soth warships for now. The Mark Antony would take its turn later. All weapons fire and subsequent damage would be simulated and though the manoeuvres the ships would undertake would be real, the performance of the other three ships would be regulated to mimic the ponderous movements of K’Soth craft. It would give Chen a chance to try out a few of the tactical ideas she had been toying with over the past few weeks. The Mark Antony would be heavily outnumbered during this exercise. Hence it was an ideal opportunity to prepare.
Her bridge crew were present at their stations, Ramirez sat at her left hand, Andrews was at the comm. station, Goldstein sat in front of her at the helm, while Singh and O’Rourke sat behind her at their respective places. Chen looked at the small clock display in one corner of her HUD: 09:30, it was time to begin the exercise. She ordered Ensign Andrews to put her through to the Normandy and the stern, weathered features of Admiral Kojima appeared in front of her.
‘Good morning sir,’ said Chen crisply.
‘Good morning Captain,’ he replied in resonant bass tone. ‘Are you ready to begin?’
‘Yes sir, I’m looking forward to it.’
‘Good. So am I. We shall begin by retreating to a distance of five hundred kilometres, when you receive my signal the exercise will commence. My vessel will be playing the part of a War Temple command craft. The
Rameses and the Thermopylae will be acting as Eviscerator class destroyers. We are patching you into the simulation link now.’
‘Very well.’
‘Linking procedures complete Captain,’ said Andrews, confirming that the network had been established to enable the four ships to fire imaginary weapons at one another and assume the characteristics of enemy vessels.
‘Let’s see how long you can last against these odds hmm? Kojima out.’ His image vanished from Chen’s view. Outside, the trio of ships began to back away in formation. Chen addressed her crew.
‘Okay this is what we’re going to do people. When the exercise begins I want us to close with the enemy vessels to a distance of twenty five kilometres. Helm, I want you to ensure we match their velocity and maintain that distance, regardless of whatever manoeuvres the enemy craft may make. If they can close the distance they can do us some serious damage. Furthermore, when they try to bring their weapons to bear I want you to put us into a tight rearwards turn to port and keep us out of the line of that War Temple’s plasma cannon, I also need you to angle the ship so that we can bring all turrets to bear. Is that clear?’
‘Aye, Captain.’
‘We are much more manoeuvrable than K’Soth ships. If we can keep out of their line of fire we can kill them.’
‘Captain, what if those two destroyers try to outflank us?’ said Ramirez.
‘A fair point, Commander. One which brings me onto my next instruction. It is imperative that we neutralize the War Temple within the shortest possible time frame before we can deal with other two ships individually. Gunnery?’
‘Aye Captain?’ said Commander Davis over the comm. from fire control.
‘I want you concentrate all fire from the main turrets on the reactors of the War Temple, once we take it down we can engage the destroyers individually, and that’s a fight they can’t realistically hope to win. You have permission to draw additional power reserves from the jump drive if need be, we aren’t going anywhere.’
