‘Who infected you, Kyarl?’ Evelyn asked. ‘Who did this to you?’
‘We are legion,’ Kyarl intoned, ‘for we are many.’
Andaim broke cover and charged the engineering post, Bra’hiv mirroring his actions on the other side of the bridge. Kyarl opened fire, a single shot that burst from the engineering post in a flash of blue–white light. Andaim dove for cover as the round hissed past just above his shoulder, and Kyarl broke free.
Evelyn shouted at him. ‘Kyarl!’
The Marine turned, brought his weapon to bear on her, and Evelyn fired her pistol. The single shot, aimed at the Marine’s rifle, smashed into his hands and seared them in a blaze of plasma that severed one of them at the wrist.
Kyarl screamed where he stood, the plasma rifle falling from his grasp onto the deck in a cloud of sparks as his left arm smouldered at the wrist, ugly clouds of smoke spiralling from where his hand had been incinerated. Bra’hiv, Andaim and a pair of Marine troopers surged into position around Kyarl as he collapsed to his knees, clasping the stump where his left hand had once been and his face twisted in agony.
Evelyn lowered her pistol and watched as Kyarl, looking up at them all, suddenly relaxed. The pain melted away from his face and was replaced by a serene expression as though he were in the throes of bliss. She heard him sigh softly as she got to her feet.
‘What the hell’s happening to him?’ Andaim asked.
Evelyn approached Kyarl and suddenly she understood.
‘Pain killers,’ she said. ‘The Word is taking the pain away, messing with chemicals in his blood and his brain.’
Kyarl opened his eyes, this time looking directly at Evelyn. ‘Stand back, or he dies.’
In an instant she realised that it was not the young Marine that was speaking to her, but the Word itself. Evelyn was shocked to be addressed in such a way, as though Kyarl were a medium possessed by a ghost, which in some respects he was.
Evelyn took a pace back and holstered her pistol.
‘The Word is aboard the ship,’ she said urgently. ‘Call it off.’
Kyarl’s face melted into a grim rictus smile, as though he were trying to bend an iron bar with his lips alone. ‘The Word obeys no command from humans. Soon, you shall become one of us.’
‘Who infected you, Kyarl?’
‘There is no Kyarl,’ the Word spat back at her. ‘That name is history now.’
‘No, he is alive,’ Evelyn said, ‘and you are nothing but a disease.’
Kyarl’s face twisted with rage and then it suddenly folded in on itself in pain. Kyarl screamed in agony and flipped onto his side, his body curling up into a foetal ball. Evelyn stepped forward.
‘No!’
Kyarl’s body stopped writhing in pain but his chest heaved as he lay on the deck, his eyes staring vacantly into nothingness as he spoke.
‘Free him, or he dies.’
‘I can’t do that,’ Evelyn replied. ‘You give me no reason to let you escape us.’
‘There is no escape.’
‘Then why ask to?’ Evelyn countered. She took a chance and paced closer to Kyarl. ‘Is it because you are afraid?’
Kyarl screamed as his spine arched over backwards and his limbs shot straight out from his body and quivered as though live current were seething through his veins.
‘The Word fears no human!’ Kyarl screamed in distorted tones from between gritted teeth.
‘Yes,’ Evelyn uttered, ‘it does.’
She glimpsed both Bra’hiv and Andaim looking at her strangely, and then came Lael’s voice over the tannoy.
‘They’re on the move! You’ve got to get out of there!’
‘How can they be moving?’ Andaim asked. ‘It must still be cold down there.’
Bra’hiv raised his rifle and aimed at Kyarl’s head. ‘We don’t have time for this.’
‘No!’ Evelyn shouted and reached out to belay the general’s weapon. ‘We need him alive!’
‘For what?!’ Bra’hiv snapped. ‘He’s already dead, Evelyn, his mind’s gone.’
‘No it hasn’t,’ she insisted. ‘We need to quarantine him! We’ve got to find out who infected him.’
‘The general’s right, we don’t have time,’ Andaim said as he accessed the ship’s sensors and relayed the screen data onto the main viewing panel.
Evelyn looked up. A schematic of the ship in three–dimensions showed several tiny masses moving out of the engine bays and spreading slowly through the warming ship.
‘Sergeant Djimon, get down to the holds right now,’ Bra’hiv ordered, a microphone embedded in his ear detecting his speech and relaying it to his Marines. ‘Help Bravo Company seal the aft hatches.’
‘That’t won’t do anything,’ Evelyn said. ‘They’ll eat through the doors in moments. We need to draw them into one area and then evacuate the atmosphere. Once they’re outside the ship they’ll freeze and can be blasted to hell.’
It was Kyarl’s possessed voice that replied.
‘The Word will not expose itself,’ he chortled in macabre delight. ‘It will find its way here and it will destroy all of you.’
Evelyn looked at Bra’hiv. ‘Where’s Qayin?’
***
XIII
‘Seal the aft hatches, now!’
Qayin’s voice thundered like a salvo of the Atlantia’s guns as Bravo Company’s Marines hauled the pressure hatches shut and locked them, Tyrone giving Qayin a thumbs–up to confirm that the hatches were sealed.
Qayin turned to see dozens of civilians grabbing boxes of food stuff, canisters of water, tins and other supplies and queueing up to pass the containers through make–shift microwave scanners that would cleanse them of any Infectors that may have crawled inside. His sharp eyes picked up on the crates of alcohol stacked alongside the foodstuffs at the same time as Tyrone’s.
‘Well what do we have here?’ Tyrone purred as his hand rested on a crate of drinks.
Qayin hesitated as he saw what Tyrone was looking at. ‘Make it fast,’ he ordered. ‘Stock up and get the hell out of here.’
Tyrone began stuffing bottles down his fatigues along with several of his companions. They were busily liberating the stock when Alpha Company’s men burst into the holds.
‘Move it along!’ Djimon shouted, his big voice booming across the civilians as they filed out of the hold. ‘If it hasn’t been scanned, drop it and leave it!’
Bravo Company’s marines scattered through the hold, their boots thundering on the decks as Qayin shouted out to his men.
‘Grab what you can! Alcohol gets the highest price!’
Djimon whirled to face Qayin. ‘Belay that order! We’re out of here, right now!’
‘Go to hell,’ Qayin replied with a bright grin. ‘You’re not in charge here!’
‘And you’re not in control,’ Sergeant Djimon shot back, ‘of yourself or of your men. The Legion’s coming for’ard, we need to leave now!’
‘We’re ready for them,’ Qayin uttered without concern as he examined an immaculate bottle of Etherean wine. ‘I ain’t going to start running from a bunch of little machines. Are you, Djimon?’
Djimon aimed his rifle at the rear of the hold as he began backing away. ‘You’re damned right I am.’
The Marines of Bravo Company hesitated for a moment as they saw the big sergeant easing his way toward the hold exits.
‘Looks like big bad Djimon is a technophobe boys!’ Qayin chuckled.
Qayin saw Bravo Company’s marines faltering, some of them grabbing boxes and tins as they moved.
‘Drop that stuff!’ Djimon snapped. ‘It hasn’t been scanned!’
‘Hell it ain’t,’ Tyrone said as he dashed for’ard and grabbed a bottle of dark liquor. ‘Cleanest I’ve ever seen! Man, I ain’t had me a belly full of gut–rot for months now!’
Qayin saw the threat and his tone changed as he called out.
‘Tyrone, fall back now!’
Tyrone’s smile was bright and his one good eye sparkled i
n the overhead lights as he ignored Qayin and picked up a large canteen of liquor, but suddenly he seemed to be in shadow. Qayin glanced up and saw the lights above him obscured by a mass that moved like liquid across its surface, hidden in Tyrone’s blind side.
‘Tyrone, move, now!’
The Marine looked confused, and then he looked up.
‘Run!’
Tyrone got one boot in front of himself, the canteen of liquor falling from his hand at the same moment that mass of black Hunter bots dropped away from the light and crashed down upon him like black coal.
Tyrone stared at Qayin, the nanites coating his face and his upper body, and then he looked down at his hands and a terrible scream erupted from his mouth, a keening wail of agony that soared high into the holds as Tyrone’s hands dissolved before his very eyes with a hissing, crunching sound of countless tiny mandibles.
Tyrone clawed at his face and his chest as the thick coating of Hunters burrowed deep into his skin, plunging into his cheeks as black cavities were torn into his face. Tyrone’s skin vanished, his flesh consumed as his face turned in moments into a skull, his scream cut short as the bots flooded into his throat. Tyrone’s legs quivered, his arms twitching as his uniform dissolved and his flesh broke down. His arms fell from his body to thump onto the deck, his blood spilling from thousands of lesions to float in scarlet globules on the air.
‘Fall back!’ Qayin yelled as he stuffed a bottle of wine down his fatigues and retreated.
He lifted his rifle and fired at Tyrone even as every Marine behind him did the same. A dozen plasma rounds hit Tyrone’s collapsing body and it vanished in a bright burst of flame and a shower of burning Hunters.
‘Evacuate the hold, now!’ Djimon bellowed.
The Marines whirled and sprinted for the exit as Qayin fired at the glistening black masses that seemed to emerge from nowhere aft of the hold, surging for’ard in pursuit of the humans.
‘Hold the line!’ Qayin shouted behind him. ‘Maintain your fire and let the civilians out first!’
Djimon and his men did not respond as they plunged among the civilians into an exit corridor. Qayin cursed as he turned and followed them into the long corridor away from the hold, civilians ahead of him carrying boxes and crates as they fled toward the landing bays. Qayin turned and slammed the pressure hatch shut, spinning the locking wheel before resuming his retreat.
Qayin had only seen the Word’s Legion twice: once from the safety of a Raython fighter’s cockpit when he and many other former convicts had earned their colours amid the battle against Tyraeus Forge and the Avenger, and once when he had seen his brother Hevel controlled and consumed by them, a seething mass of tiny devices mimicking the structure of a man like some grotesque parody. He recalled all too clearly the dense clouds of glossy black machines that had reached out from the Avenger’s hull and snatched Raythons in mid–flight, consuming them in seconds in fiery bursts of rabid destruction.
It would not take long for the temperature in the ship to drop again once the heating vents had been deactivated, but that might not be fast enough for them to avoid being chewed into atoms by the Legion.
‘Aft hold is breached, one man down,’ he called into his microphone. ‘Moving for’ard now.’
Bra’hiv’s reply was brusque. ‘Move faster!’
Behind him Qayin heard a strange, dull thump against the hatch that they had just sealed. He stopped and looked back down the corridor at the pressure hatch. For a moment nothing seemed to happen and he felt a glimmer of hope that the bots were too few in number to consume the door.
Then, as the Marines’ drumming boots faded away for’ard down the corridor, he heard a rustling sound. It rattled and tinkled, like somebody opening a hundred cans of food at once, and then the surface of the pressure hatch began to ripple as though it were made of water or were being melted down.
The hatch began to change colour, darkening as though a shadow were being cast upon it, and in an instant Qayin realised that it was not just being consumed, but that it was being converted into more new bots before his very eyes. The raw steel of the door was being torn apart, broken down and then rebuilt into new members of the Legion a million atoms at a time, the process generating heat so that faint whorls of blue smoke coiled from the surface of the door.
‘Damn.’
Qayin reached into his webbing and pulled out a full plasma magazine, then hurled it at the distant hatch. The magazine hit the hatch surface and promptly stuck in place. Qayin blinked in surprise as he realised that what looked like a solid surface no longer was solid at all. The magazine began to sink into the rippling hatch as a mass of Infector bots seethed through the surface and poured like oil onto the deck.
Qayin aimed his rifle at the magazine and fired. His first shot went high into the Legion, a billowing cloud of them vaporised into glowing red embers as though spat from a fire. He adjusted his aim and fired again.
The plasma round zipped down the corridor and hit the magazine and in an instant thirty plasma rounds ignited as one in a fearsome blaze of energy. The blast expanded outward and Qayin glimpsed the mass of bots surging through the hatch engulfed and turn red as they were incinerated by the tremendous heat. He ducked down and shielded his eyes as the dense cloud of bots was blasted apart and splattered in molten metal globules against the walls of the corridor around the hatch.
A cloud of blue smoke billowed toward Qayin and then dispersed, swirling in a thick miasma that blocked his view. He took a pace toward it and then he heard the sound of countless millions of bots swarming toward him, turning the corridor dark as they advanced.
Qayin turned and began sprinting down the corridor, his heavy boots slamming the deck with each stride. The fifty per cent weighted fatigues he wore meant that he could move faster, and with less effort, than he could ever have done under normal gravity.
He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that he was outpacing the bots, their number still too few to pursue him for long. He keyed his microphone as he ran.
‘They’re coming forward,’ he snapped. ‘Ain’t gonna be long before they run us down. Time to abandon ship.’
Bra’hiv’s voice replied to him from the bridge.
‘We haven’t unloaded enough supplies yet. We need to find a way to hold them off.’
Qayin cursed under his breath as he burst through a pressure hatch.
‘Stand by! Vent decks C and D on my call!’
‘Roger that!’
Qayin turned and aimed his rifle down the corridor. Through the dim shadows he could see the seething mass of Infector bots advancing like a wave of oil along the deck, slick and glistening black, reaching out toward him. Slowly, the oily mass lifted off the surface of the deck, writhing toward him in like an inky, rippling arm.
Qayin stood his ground, his rifle held steady and pointed at the tip of the Legion’s reach as it closed in on him.
‘Stand by,’ Qayin murmured into his microphone, glancing at the open hatch beside him, his boot hooked behind it.
The tip of the Legion’s reach made it to the bulkhead, scant cubits from where Qayin stood.
He fired once, the blast searing through the Legion in a blaze of melted bots that fell like waterfalls of flame to the deck.
‘Now!’
A screeching sound echoed down the corridor from somewhere back in the holds as the decks were vented, ducts opening to allow the atmosphere within be vacuumed out into deep space. Almost immediately the writhing coil of the Legion was snatched away from Qayin and hauled toward the bitter cold of space. The bots closest to him dropped toward the deck as they were torn apart from each other and sucked away from him as a brutal, howling wind suddenly burst upon Qayin and wrenched him toward the open hatch. He yanked his boot and the hatch door slammed but he was too close and it pinned him in the bulkhead, the heavy metal crashing against his chest.
Brutal cold touched Qayin’s skin, and he looked down to see the Legion’s surviving bots clinging to the dec
k scant inches from his boot.
Qayin aimed down at the pool of bots and fired, the plasma blast smashing into them in a blaze of fiery light that was whipped away by the screaming gale. The fried bots fluttered away in glowing red streaks of light as Qayin squeezed his rifle through the hatch over his head and tossed it into the corridor behind him.
With a heave of effort he pushed the heavy hatch open an inch or two and hauled his body through the narrow gap before he jumped clear. The hatch slammed shut with a deafening crash behind him as he stumbled and collapsed to his knees, his chest heaving and his skin sheened with sweat.
His voice was laboured as he called into his microphone.
‘They’re cut off at the main stairwell. Hatches are sealed, evacuate the atmosphere from all aft decks now!’
***
XIV
‘Do it,’ Bra’hiv snapped at Lieutenant C’rairn.
Evelyn watched as the Marine manipulated the ship’s environmental controls, and alarms blasted warnings as he opened vents on the Sylph’s hull, allowing the oxygen to escape into the bitter vacuum of space.
Evelyn saw a schematic of the ship up on one wall of the bridge, its aft bulkheads flashing red as they were emptied of air, the temperature plunging to near absolute zero in a matter of seconds.
‘The masses are contracting,’ Lael’s voice sounded over the tannoy from the Atlantia. ‘They’re holding position wherever they can, only a few have been evacuated from the ship.’
‘What about Qayin?’ Evelyn pressed.
There was a long silence and then another voice replied over the tannoy.
‘The Great Qayin lives,’ the former convict rumbled. ‘Hatches are sealed, no thanks to Alpha Company. I’m making my way back to the landing bay.’
Evelyn saw Bra’hiv’s iron features crease as a smile fractured his thin lips.
‘Good work, I’ll meet you there.’
The general snapped off the communications link and looked across at Andaim. ‘It’ll hold them off for a while, but now they know we’re here the Legion will likely seek a way to get to us.’
Atlantia Series 2: Retaliator Page 10
