March spun towards the blast door to the fusion drive control room and saw two macrobes charging towards them. Torrence was firing steadily towards the creatures, tracking his shots up their armored carapaces, and Tessa and Reader followed suit. A storm of plasma bolts hurtled towards the macrobes, and the bolts caught the creatures in the head.
They fell motionless to the deck, and silence filled the engine room, save for the constant banging and clanging against the blast doors. The trapped macrobes had not yet given up on punching their way out.
“We’re clear,” said Torrence, raising his pistol. “Any remaining macrobes in the hyperdrive room, Cassie?”
Cassandra glared at her phone’s display. “I’m...not sure.”
Torrence frowned. “You’re not?”
“The readings aren’t consistent,” said Cassandra. “They keep changing like there’s a macrobe moving around the hyperdrive.” She gestured at the massive metal cylinder. “But I can’t see anything moving.”
“The ceiling,” said March. “It must be clinging to the ceiling.”
He headed forward, pistol raised, and scanned the ceiling over the hyperdrive, ready to fire if anything shoved itself. The ceiling of the hyperdrive room was a massive metal vault, covered in pipes and bundles of cabling, a grid of catwalks suspended on metal struts to allow techs access to the wiring up there.
But March saw no sign of any remaining macrobes.
“Maybe it’s a glitch in the detector?” said Tessa.
“Maybe,” said Cassandra. She tapped another command into the phone. “Or maybe the dark energy from the hyperdrive is throwing off the detector. I don’t know. I’ve never used it to detect macrobes this close to a hyperdrive.”
“Let’s not wait,” said Torrence. He pointed at the row of metal cabinets. “The surge regulators will be in cabinet 17. Each of us will take two. That way if we suffer casualties on the way to the Tiger, we won’t lose our chance to escape. Morgan, Smith, stay with me. We’ll keep an eye out for any macrobes. Jack, Reader, grab as many surge regulators as you can carry.”
“Agreed,” said March. He beckoned, and Reader followed him into the hyperdrive room. March kept looking around, trying to find the macrobe that the Eclipse had detected. It was entirely possible that Cassandra’s machine had simply suffered a glitch. It was a prototype, this was the first time it had been used for something practical, and it hadn’t been designed as a macrobe detection device. It was also possible that the Eclipse was working perfectly and the residual dark energy in the hyperdrive was throwing off its readings.
Yet the machine hadn’t been wrong yet.
March kept scanning the ceiling, wondering if a macrobe had hidden somewhere among the catwalks and the massive pipes. Some of the spider-like macrobes had been able to climb walls, and perhaps a clever macrobe had hidden up there.
He was staring at the ceiling, so he saw the ripple.
March blinked, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him in the dim light. His next thought was that one of the pipes was leaking, but the ripple didn’t look right for that. It looked like the ripples that rose from hot asphalt on a sunny day. Had some of the equipment overheated? But the ripples weren’t coming from any of the pipes. If anything, it looked as if they were coming from the bottom of the catwalks…
Then March’s brain made sense of the sight.
“Reader!” he shouted. “Get down!”
Reader froze, looked back at him, and then at the ceiling. “I don’t see anything...”
The camouflaged macrobe clinging to the catwalks shimmered into sight.
It looked like a giant centipede, its legs grasping the metal grills of the catwalks, and its carapace had a strange, rippling appearance, almost like an oil slick or perhaps a pool of mercury. A human torso jutted from where the centipede’s head would have been, the face twisted with a gleeful, mad smile. Dozens of spikes jutted from the centipede’s carapace, starting to glow with blue light. Even as March shouted his warning and Reader looked around in confusion, six of those spikes shot from the carapace, moving with the speed of missiles.
March hit the deck and rolled. Three spikes slammed into the deck next to him, quivering with the force of their impact. Reader wasn’t so lucky. Two spikes punched through his chest and burst out his back with a crimson spray. He fell to his knees, his expression confused, and died before he struck the deck.
March leaped back to his feet, pistol raised, but realized that he didn’t dare take a shot. The macrobe was skittering along the catwalks with terrific speed, and if March missed, there was an excellent chance his plasma bolt would go into one of the coolant pipes running along the ceiling. If that happened, at best he would fill the engineering section with toxic gas. At worst, he would touch off an explosion, and they would all die in the resultant inferno.
“Take cover!” roared Torrence. There were a group of consoles before the metal cowling of the hyperdrive, and the captain, Tessa, and Cassandra ran for them. The macrobe paused above them and loosed a volley of bone spikes in their direction, but the captain and the women were already moving, and the spikes missed. March squeezed off two shots that hit the macrobe’s centipede-like body. As he expected, the bolts dissipated against the blue glow of the bony spikes, but his shots did catch the creature’s attention.
Which maybe hadn’t been a good idea.
The macrobe fired a bony spike in his direction, and March didn’t have time to dodge. Instead, he swept his left arm before him, the cybernetic limb a blur. The limb caught the spike, and the impact rocked March, but the spike clattered away before it could pierce his flesh.
Another volley of spikes came towards the console where Torrence and the women sheltered. March feared the spikes would stab right through the console to kill them, but instead the spikes quivered in the console like arrows in an archery butt. The screens flashed, and sparks burst from the keyboards, error messages scrolling across the displays, but the spikes didn’t reach Torrence, Cassandra, and Tessa.
March fired three more times, trying to line up a shot on the macrobe’s head, but his bolts shattered against the glowing spines. The macrobe was too far away and moving too quickly for March to get a clear shot at its head. If it had been motionless and he had a few seconds to steady himself, he would have been able to hit a target the size of a human head at that distance. With the macrobe moving, it was all but impossible...and if March hit one of the pipes, that might kill them all.
The macrobe hurled another volley of spines at him. March dodged two and knocked another one out of the air with his left arm. The limb of Machinist alloy resisted the spike with ease, but the sheer kinetic power of the impact knocked March back. He needed to get under cover. No, that would be a mistake. Once he was under cover, he would never come out again. Instead, he started running towards the hyperdrive, and the macrobe skittered after him, clinging upside-down to the catwalks.
The catwalks...those wouldn’t explode if he shot them.
March broke into a sprint, and the macrobe followed him. The creature stayed in a straight line, making no effort to dodge. March whirled, brought up his pistol, and started firing at the catwalk, aiming for the metal struts in the macrobe’s path. The plasma bolts burned through the struts, and the catwalk began to shake. March dodged another spine and sent four more plasma bolts at the struts, and the catwalk’s shaking grew more violent.
Then the macrobe skittered across the damaged section, and with a metallic screech, a piece of the catwalk tore free, and the macrobe lost its balance and hurtled towards the deck. The creature let out a very-human sounding bellow of outrage, and then it landed on the metal cowling over the hyperdrive.
It flipped over at once, coiling around to glared at March.
That also gave March a marvelous target, and he fired twice more.
The macrobe’s head exploded in a spray of ashes and embers. The centipede-like body snapped backward and forward and finally coiled up exactly like a dea
d insect.
March lowered his gun and let out a long breath.
“It’s clear!” he called.
Torrence, Tessa, and Cassandra scrambled out from under the desk.
“That was a hell of a shot, Jack,” said Torrence. “I was sure we were finished.”
“It wasn’t,” said March. “I shot down the catwalk. Easy target.”
“Reader?” said Torrence, looking toward the prone man.
March looked at the former Marine. The blood had pooled beneath him on the deck.
“Too late,” said March. “Least it was quick.”
“Goddamn it,” said Torrence. He shook his head. “Let’s keep moving.”
“Tessa, Cassie,” said March. “Go grab some surge regulators. I need to talk to the captain a moment.”
Cassandra looked at him, shrugged, and jogged over to the cabinets. Tessa gave March a strange look, but nodded and followed Cassandra.
“What is it?” said Torrence.
“Those resonator coils,” said March, pointing at the wall on the other side of the hyperdrive cowling. “They didn’t overload or break down or malfunction.”
Torrence looked at the coils, and his eyes went wide. “Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah,” said March. “Sabotage.”
“Who the hell would do something insane like sabotaging a resonator coil while in hyperspace?” Torrence rubbed his face with his free hand. “That’s suicidal idiocy. And that computer malfunction...God, that must have been sabotage, too. Who would do something like that?”
“I don’t know,” said March. “Let’s hope the saboteur was killed in the chaos.” He glanced at Cassandra and Tessa, saw them pulling cylindrical surge regulators from the cabinets. “But we have to watch the other survivors. If one of them is a Machinist or an Oradrean agent, they might try it again on the Tiger.”
“At least it will be easier to keep an eye on them on the Tiger,” said Torrence.
Cassandra ran back to join them, a satchel holding three surge regulators slung over her shoulders. “We’ve got them. I can wire any of these into the Tiger’s hyperdrive.”
“Good work,” said Torrence. “Miss Morgan?”
“Coming, sir!” called Tessa, still rummaging through the cabinet. “I just want to grab some extra tools. We might need them on Captain March’s ship.”
“The Tiger has an excellent store of tools,” said Cassandra.
“What’s the best way to the starboard cargo corridor from here?” said March.
“Utility corridors,” said Torrence, pointing at the far wall of the hyperdrive room. “We can circle back and get to the starboard cargo corridor.” He gestured at the access door behind them. “If that’s too dangerous, we can circle back that way, but it will take longer.”
March nodded. “Let’s go.”
“Miss Morgan!” said Torrence. Tessa had moved to another cabinet, scowling as she rummaged through it. “We have what we need!”
“Yes, sir,” said Tessa. She moved away from the cabinet and took a long step back.
“Miss Morgan!” said Torrence. “It...”
Tessa leveled her pistol and squeezed the trigger.
The bolt burned through Torrence’s chest and burst out his back. Manuel Torrence just had time to let out a startled grunt and collapsed to the deck, smoke rising from the crater in his chest. Cassandra let out a shriek and stumbled back, pawing at her pistol, and March leveled his own gun at Tessa, hoping to kill her before she got off another plasma bolt.
But she was a very good shot, and her pistol was already pointed at March’s head.
They stood motionless, Cassandra looking back and forth between them.
“Well, well, well,” said Tessa. “Stalemate.”
Chapter 9: Demons
“What the hell?” said Cassandra. “Why did you shoot the captain?”
Her hand was inching towards her pistol.
“Stop right there,” said Tessa, not looking away from March. “If your hand moves another inch towards your gun, I’m going to see if I can pull my trigger before Captain March does. And maybe we’ll be just as fast, and we’ll both be dead, and you’ll be alone on a ship full of macrobes. Isn’t that a fun thought?”
“Listen to her,” said March, watching Tessa for the slightest hint of movement. She was about thirty meters away. Her gun was in her right hand, and a phone in her left, the display angled towards her face. Every so often her eyes flicked towards the screen, but never long enough for March to shoot.
“Why did you shoot Captain Torrence?” said Cassandra. “He was trying to help us!”
“Oh, you’re not very bright, are you dear?” said Tessa. “You might be a brilliant dark energy physicist, Dr. Cassandra Yerzhov, but when it comes to real-world application...well, I’m afraid you’ve got a lot of learning to do.”
“How do you know who I am?” said Cassandra. “Are you with the Oradrean secret police?”
Tessa snorted. “Oradrea. A petty little world full of petty little men. I look forward to the day they are conquered.”
“She’s not Oradrean,” said March. “She’s a Machinist sympathizer. She’s an agent of the Final Consciousness.”
“Oh, yes,” said Tessa. “If it makes you feel better, everything I told you was the truth, Jack March. There really was a Tessa Morgan who grew up in a small town on Calaskar, and she really was a waitress and joined Royal Calaskaran Starlines to better herself. I left her buried in a basement back on Calaskar when I stole her identity. And that greasy pig Warner really did hit on me.” She laughed. “Like I would sleep with a cook on a starliner. He got what he deserved.”
“You sabotaged the resonator coils and the computer,” said March.
“Yep,” said Tessa with her brilliant white smile. “It was easy. I got in the habit of bringing the chief engineer his lunch every day. The horny old goat really liked having a pretty steward bring him food every day, and he started waving me past the security checkpoints. All I had to do was to sneak a bomb the size of a tablet under his plate and plug a malware-loaded thumb drive into his computer console when I bent over his desk to give him lunch. He was so busy trying to stare down my collar that he never even noticed. Bet he was really surprised when the bomb blew out the resonator coils, and he couldn’t get into his computer.”
“But you would have been in danger of possession yourself,” said March. “You...no, you took precautions against that, didn’t you?”
Tessa’s smile didn’t waver. “Of course I took precautions. I wasn’t at any risk of macrobe possession, no more than you were. I had a little vial of nanobots keyed to my DNA that I swallowed before I set off the bomb. Not dangerous, and they don’t actually do very much. But you know as well as I do that the macrobes prefer unaltered human minds. The nanobots altered my brain waves just enough to make me look less appetizing. Gives you a nasty headache that will probably last for a few weeks, but it’s better than getting transformed into a giant insane spider.”
“For God’s sake, why?” said Cassandra. Her voice was tight with horror. “Why? You killed thousands of people!”
Tessa frowned, though she didn’t look away from March. “You really don’t know? You haven’t figured it out yet? It was you, Dr. Cassandra Yerzhov of the University of Oradrea. This entire thing has been about you.”
“Me?” said Cassandra. “Why?”
“Well, not you personally,” said Tessa. “But that paper you wrote and that machine you built. They came to the attention of the Final Consciousness. You have the potential to cause us a lot of trouble.”
“Why?” said Cassandra. “It’s just a machine for detecting quantum entanglement effects.”
“Did Captain March tell you about the relic he has in his cargo hold?” said Tessa. “Did he tell you what it can do?”
“He said you Machinists were building mind control machines,” said Cassandra, “but you only had a few dozen of them, and...”
Tessa laughed, long a
nd loud, but her eyes never left March. “Scientists! You’re as unworldly as priests, but without their common sense. Do you have any inkling of what we can do with a few dozen completely undetectable mind control machines? For two hundred years the Final Consciousness has fought against the Kingdom of Calaskar, but thanks to those machines, we’re going to bring Calaskar to its knees in a day. And then you had to publish your damned paper and build your little machine. My orders came the next day. We were to stop you regardless of the cost or collateral damage.” Her smile widened. “Not that a bunch of dead Calaskaran civilians is much of a cost, yeah? We knew all about your conversation with poor Captain Torrence in Sonari City. President Murdan’s a good little dog for the Final Consciousness, and he passed all the information right to us. He promised to liquidate you for us and confiscate your research. Well, Murdan’s a good dog, but he’s clumsy and stupid. So, I was sent on the Alpine to make sure you never reached Calaskaran space.”
“And to do that you trapped yourself on a ship filled with a thousand macrobes?” said March. “Good plan.”
Tessa sighed. “If Dr. Yerzhov escaped from Murdan’s thugs, I figured she would make it to system JX2278C. If the ship was filled with macrobes, it would be easy enough to dispose of her. Just lock her behind a door and let the macrobes have her. Her prototype happens to fall out an airlock, and I take her research with me and hand it over to the Final Consciousness.” Her smile faded into anger. “Then you had to show up, Jack March. The Final Consciousness wants you dead almost as badly as it wants Dr. Yerzhov’s research.”
“I see you’ve heard of me,” said March.
“Do you have any idea who he is, Dr. Yerzhov?” said Tessa. “Or did your amazing powers of observation miss that as well?”
Silent Order: Eclipse Hand Page 15
