Armageddon's Pall

by S. F. Edwards

  Chris asked over the micomm.

  Marda resisted the urge to shake her head and highlighted the map again. The tracking beacon she’d detected upon landing still called out to them. Distracted by the map Marda almost stumbled into the open hatchway of the chamber. The beacon shone in her HUD towards the back behind another hatch. The rest of the room’s contents, and their implications almost made her choke back bile. she asked reaching out to touch one of the hanging cook pots, several more steaming on the nearby burners.

  Blazer asked as he moved into the room, along with the rest of the team. Even he froze for a moment at the scene. The team flooded into the space; checking blind spots and making sure they were alone.

  Mikle asserted as he approached one of the steaming pots, the rest of the team fanning out. He stirred the ladle sticking out a few times and bent over as if to smell.

  From across the cooking island Zithe shot back up from his inspection of the cabinets. Zithe replied and linked his camera feed to the rest of the team. The oven before him carried three Anulians roasting on a broiler pan, their skin popping as it melted into the pan.

  Mikle looked back down at the pot and jumped back when the contents he’d dredged up from the bottom bobbed to the surface. Heads from various races floated for a moment before sinking back to the bottom. The eyes popping out of a Rimdook’s head remained, staring at him as the skull sank away.

  Watching their feeds, Marda felt her knees go weak. She put a hand against the wall to steady herself. she asked, her stomach twisting up, despite knowing to be ready for it. Seeing it herself was almost more than she could handle.

  Gokhead began in reply.

  Blazer laid a hand on Marda’s shoulder, a rare show of tenderness during a mission. Blazer turned to the wall beyond.

  Marda nodded, and prepared herself for the horror show within. Her IR sensors showed the room to be cold, freezing in fact, with numerous small heat sources. Blazer and the others beside her, Marda keyed open the hatch.

  A wall of cold air rushed out to greet them. Crystallizing water molecules pelted their suits. Blazer entered first, his hand on his concealed sidearm. Each footfall crushed the fine layer of ice on the floor. Marda followed next and the objects on the shelves sent her stomach into convulsions. Her hand flew to her mouth out of instinct, but nothing came up. She felt a pinch in her real right arm; the medical sleeve hitting her with anti-nausea meds. Over five hundred naked bodies packed the shelves of the freezer. Arranged by race on the cold wire surface, most bore signs of plasma burns and signs of rapid decompression, their bodies bloated and skin marred by their boiling blood.

  Blazer turned to Marda and held up a hand to the others.

  Rudjick stepped up, a set of thermal charges in hand.

  Marda staggered back out of the freezer as Rudjick took the scans and set his charges. She gasped at her continued nausea, the meds taking their time. The next nearest detention area based on their intel was a full cycle’s hike away. There was no way they could go without being noticed that long, not with their planned debrief in just a few hects. Marda almost cursed herself for leading them here. If she hadn’t detected that Pharad signal they might have headed towards the other area instead.

  The door out to the passageway opened revealing a giant portly Gorvian. Occupied by a macomm the size of her old viewer, the Gorvian didn’t even look up until it cleared the closing hatchway. It stared around at the dozen Gorvian in shock and rushed towards the nearby pot yelling something at them that the suit translated half a cent later. “What are you doing here? This is Lord Gondral’s private kitchen/zoo/prison,” the imperfect translation relayed.

  Zithe issued their reply by jumping the fat Gorvian and wrapping his arm around the mound of flesh serving as its neck. The Gorvian’s fleshy body flopped about like a gelatin-molded simacurlim. Zithe dug the muzzle of his pistol into the fat roll that hid the base of the Gorvian’s head brain tail. The Gorvian resisted for a moment until Zithe extended his monomolecular blade into its field of vision. “Don’t even breathe,” he hissed through the external translator.

  The Gorvian sweated so much that Marda swore she could have bathed in the excretions; the thought tightened her throat immediately. The perspiration increased even more when Chris stepped up and grabbed hold of the creature’s other brain tail and began a slow pull on the appendage. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you know where the prisoners are. I’m willing to bet that Gondral likes his dinner fresh,” Chris all but spat.

  The fat Gorvian resisted as it listened to the translated message. “What manner of heretics are you?”

  Marda almost had to sit at the sight, tears welling up in her eyes. While she hated interrogations and torture, she’d never experienced a physical reaction to it like this before. It puzzled and concerned her. Is there something wrong with me? she wondered. “Computer run medical diagnostic,” she ordered.

  The Gorvian yelped in pain, Chris pulling its brain tail into a fleshy grey-brown cone. Thick, grey veins pulsed all along its length. The sight sickened Marda despite knowing that Chris wasn’t actually harming the Gorvian.

  “You’ll find out nothing from me,” the Gorvian spat out.

  “Too bad for you,” Chris replied.

  Marda turned away as the medical diagnostic began to come in. The blood tests revealed something odd. Her hormone levels were out of balance to a degree she’d never seen outside of a healthy pregnant woman. Marda froze at that thought. That’s impossible. Blazer and I both have our blocks in. “Computer scan for…”

  Before she could finish the order, the diagnostic reported finding a foreign body in her abdomen. Marda reached down to cup her stomach and pulled up the low-res image. There it was; a little over two decimetra long, with fully formed armed and legs, a baby. Marda staggered back into the wall. Even through the minimal scan she could see its hearts beat. It stirred in the tiny amniotic sac within her growing womb.

  Blazer asked.

  Marda nodded. Do I tell him? No, I can’t, not now. She stared at the image again and resisted the urge to reach out to touch it before a thought occurred to her. The nausea meds, are they safe, and the stims?

 

  she replied, looking up at Blazer’s Gorvian visage. She wished she could look him in the eyes, his real eyes; the twisted Gorvian face was unable to relay any emotion. But then she knew his demeanor would be impassive, at least while on a mission. She dared not reveal the pregnancy, not now.

  “Room 124538,” the chef called out drawing Marda’s attention. The base of the brain tail Chris had been pulling on had begun to rip, droplets of grey blood seeping out. “The live prisoners are in room 124538,” it continued in resignation.

  Blazer’s concern for Marda appeared to dissolve in an instant as he turned to Gokhead. Gokhead turned back to Blazer as well and nodded.

  Blazer nodded and turned back towards Marda. h
e ordered, motioning towards the Gorvian in Zithe’s clutches.

  Marda looked at the Gorvian and took a quick scan of it. It was pregnant too, maybe as far along as her; there was no way she could be sure. A lump in her throat, she raised her arm and set the dosage for the neurotransmitter suppressant dart. “It’s nothing personal,” she remarked and fired. The dart tore into the Gorvian’s thick hide and a moment later the great obese beast went limp in Zithe’s arms.

  Blazer turned towards Zithe and motioned towards the freezer. Rudjick nodded; set to work.

  Marda had to agree about destroying the bodies as Matt and Mikle set to work; the consumption of another sentient was beyond comprehension. To place the Gorvian in there with them, where it was sure to die, did not sit well with her. Marda looked around the kitchen again. This Gorvian, if it was the chef, had committed high war crimes in this place and would be sure to face execution; but they were no war crimes tribunal. Marda took a step towards Blazer to protest, but a twinge in her stomach stopped her. She still had the scanner image up, her baby had stirred, and might even be awake. She looked back at the freezer as Zithe dragged the unconscious Gorvian towards it. How many of them were parents; pregnant?

  Matt called and hauled a massive tank out from the underneath the island.

  Rudjick whistled over the link. Rudjick paused and looked back at the freezer.

  Blazer ordered and made for the door.

  Room 124538

  Blazer didn’t like their plan, but walking around ‘as if they owned the place’ had worked so far. No Gorvian had even attempted to stop them. Most just passed by them like they were invisible. They didn’t give any of them a second glance. Every Gorvian seemed too focused on their work to care about another group that stayed out of their way.

  Rudjick didn’t hesitate when they reached the hatch and strode straight into the room. The room was dark but the lights sprung to life after he’d entered to reveal shelves full of sealed containers. Zithe sprang in, scanning the room for any contacts before the rest of the team stormed the room.

  The room was cool, like any pantry. Multiple heat sources radiated from the back wall, each one distinct as it sat motionless. Blazer approached, ever cautious, his hand on his weapon, just in case. Clearing the final row of shelves of dry goods, he came upon a scene he’d never forget. In neat rows sat ninety clear stasis tubes plugged into receptacles in the wall. The occupants were not in quiet sleep but flash frozen in perpetual screams or looked like they were attempting to escape.

  Marda stepped up beside him and surveyed the arrangement with her scanners.

  Gavit stepped up and leaned in close to a tube with a Drashig pilot, his face contorted with terror and rage.

  Gokhead rushed up and examined the cylinders. He shook his head.

  Zithe stepped up with a supply cart and indicated two more nearby.

  Blazer looked over and nodded. The enclosed cart featured opening tops, and could hold maybe forty of the pods each.

  Gokhead nodded and pointed to an indicator light beneath each tube. A series of data tendrils extended from Gokhead’s mechanical hand and tapped into the hub connecting the pods. He retracted the tendrils a moment later and turned to Blazer.

  The team wasted no time. Handling them with great care, they removed the stasis cylinders before placing them in the carts. Soon they had them all loaded along with several empty cylinders for study. As they finished, they closed the carts, it would do them no good to reveal the contents early and alert any curious Gorvian.

  Finished loading, Blazer looked over the team and had to make a decision. The prisoners’ safety was their prime mission. He had to get them back to their escape ship without drawing attention and before the power supplies in their stasis tubes or their own mechs risked giving out. Their location also afforded them a prime opportunity, for their secondary mission, leaving him little choice. He had to split up the team.

  Blazer turned to Gokhead.

  Gokhead nodded. Shortly after they’d arrived Gokhead had downloaded as much as he could from the Planet Slicer’s data network onto a series of encrypted data units.

  Blazer asked.

  In answer Gokhead projected a map to the team via the micomm link. The data trunk highlighted as it approached a large, high ceilinged chamber.

  Cries of disbelief ran over the link as the team stepped on each other to be heard.

  Bichard replied, his voice displaying his reluctance.

 

  Marda jumped into Blazer’s face.

  Marda remained still; she’d been acting off all mission. He made a mental note to address that later, but now wasn’t the time.

 

 

  Corridor GLD-152

  Marda fumed as they proceeded down the passageway. The anger helped keep her other emotions and vertigo at bay, but staying mad at Blazer when he was right about the mission ate at her. Should I have told him? Would he have sent someone else instead? She looked around at the team. She hoped they looked like any other work crew on their way to the hangar. The nondescript utility carts looked like the type she’d seen throughout the mission.

  Zithe remained cautious in the lead. He, Rudjick, and Matt carried their weapons under their arms, holographic masks disguising them as equipment cases. Like before, most Gorvians paid them no mind but Marda still tensed when a Gorvian carrying a riot baton came around a corner.

  Zithe ordered, fingering his rifle.

  The Gorvian passed by them
without incident but a few steps later stopped and turned to look at them. The monster’s massive nose flared as it looked their way and held up a hand. “Hold there a moment,” it called and approached the team; stun baton coming up.

  The team did as ordered. Zithe turned to address the Gorvian as it approached Gavit and Chris in the rear. “Is there some problem?” Zithe asked, resting his hand on the handle of his rifle.

  “This one,” the guard began pointing at Gavit; Marda saw the issue. On Gavit’s chest a hole had opened in the skin suit revealing the metal armor beneath. With Gavit’s back to the guard however it couldn’t confirm its suspicions. Marda flashed the image to the whole team. They all went on alert, their shoulders straightening and hands falling to their sidearms.

  Zithe sent a quick plan to them all, before the Gorvian could reach out to grab Gavit, and put it into action. “All Hail Lord of All Gondral!” he announced and went to attention. The guard went to attention in response, then turned to Zithe as it realized something was amiss. That was all the opening Chris needed. She punched the Gorvian in the back of its head, her monomolecular blade extended. The Gorvian’s brain tails fell to the floor with a wet slap, cents before the blade emerged from the top of the guard’s head, and its body followed.

  Matt rushed forward to grab the corpse. When he did he looked up and froze.

  Marda looked over her shoulder. Two more guards had entered the cross corridor. For a few tense cents, no one moved then one of the guards raised its stun baton and charged them, calling out. Then it all went sour.

  Gondral’s Chambers

  Blazer didn’t like the look of the chamber as they stood outside the hatch. The room wasn’t empty, his thermal scan revealing a large presence lying within.