Archangel

by Scott Harrison

  That was until something grabbed hold of his tunic and tried to lift him off the ground, then it became a little uncomfortable. Vila tried to swat it away as though it were some kind of annoying, buzzing insect. He just wanted it to go away and leave him in peace.

  ‘Can’t you leave a dead man alone,’ grumbled Vila. ‘Have you no respect for the deceased?’

  ‘You’re not dead, Vila. Although I am strongly contemplating killing you myself for that lift ride you took us on.’

  Vila’s eyes flicked open and a face slowly resolved itself in the dusty air in front of him. The face was female with a mop of curly dark hair that seemed to encircle it like a halo. It was wearing an expression that informed Vila that its owner wasn’t best pleased.

  ‘I did say that getting back up again would be a problem.’ Vila told Cally with a smile. ‘Down in one piece though, as promised.’

  He had to admit that they’d been very lucky to survive. When Vila had shorted out the ID circuit he’d known that the lift would take itself offline and go into immediate freefall. What he couldn’t be sure of was whether the emergency brakes would have enough time to reboot themselves and come back online before they reached the bottom. (Before we hit the bottom, Vila mentally corrected himself.) He’d chosen not to tell Blake or Cally about that bit though, partly because he didn’t want to worry them, but mostly because it hadn’t occurred to him that the brakes would go offline until the lift had started to drop. But by that time he thought it was probably a bit too late to raise the point.

  Vila pulled himself to his feet and gave himself the once-over, checking that nothing had been broken or, worse still, come adrift from his person.

  Blake had managed to pull the doors open wide enough for him to squeeze through and had wedged a metal canister into the gap to keep them from shutting again. Vila waited for Cally to pull herself through and then followed.

  The room beyond was grey, featureless and thoroughly unexciting, as though its architect had possessed little imagination or flair for such matters. It was vaguely hexagonal, with a high, domed ceiling, and dotted here and there with hard, uncomfortable looking surgical beds. Vila couldn’t help but notice that the beds were spattered with an oddly familiar orangey-brown substance, which looked to him like either rust or…

  ‘How long did you say this facility had been empty?’ Vila asked, unable to tear his eyes away from those unsettling patches.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Blake. ‘Although the explosion in the shipyard occurred about two years ago, so perhaps around the same time.’

  Cally had been moving carefully between the surgical beds but had now stopped, absently holstering her gun as she stared down at the substance that stained the hard metal surfaces. She reached down and touched one of the patches lightly with a finger. It was still a little wet, which surprised her. It was as though it had been spilt only recently. Either that or something had been added to it to stop it from completely coagulating.

  She rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, then sniffed at it, wincing at the almost overpowering tang of copper, but there was something else, too, something below it.

  She glanced up, her eyes wide with shock. ‘This residue…’

  ‘I’m really trying not to think about it, thanks,’ Vila said.

  But Cally wasn’t listening, she was holding her hand up, palm towards them, so they could see the stain on her fingers. ‘It is blood. Human blood, but it has been mixed with something else, something I am not familiar with.’

  Blake moved to join her, dipping a finger in the liquid and holding it beneath his nose. He sniffed at it, then shook his head. ‘Machine oil? Or maybe barillium?’ They were the only two things he could guess at, although, now that he thought about it, the extra ingredient didn’t really smell like either of them.

  With a look of disgust he wiped the orangey-brown liquid on the hem of his tunic and wandered across to the far side of the room, towards what looked like a glass viewing partition. All the time he was checking the tips of his fingers as though he was afraid that they might suddenly have become infected.

  The moment he reached the glass partition he froze, his hand dropping silently to his side, the fingers—not to mention the substance on them—now forgotten.

  Without uttering a single word, Blake turned his head towards Cally and beckoned her over.

  *

  Even though her mouth had finally stopped bleeding, the ache in her jaw was steadily getting worse, so Jenna wasn’t really sure whether she should be glad or annoyed.

  She slid the fingertips of her left hand into her mouth and gently probed her teeth and gums. The gums felt hot to the touch, and there was the odd spike of pain as she steadily increased the pressure near the incisors, but thankfully none of them had come loose.

  She was aware that Avon was watching her but had decided to ignore him. The last thing she needed right now was a lecture on how stupid she’d been walking straight into a trap. An obvious trap, at that. If she’d only thought about it, she’d have known what would happen.

  Avon was still looking at her. No matter how hard she tried to ignore it she could still feel his cold, disdainful gaze on her. She held her hands up in surrender.

  ‘All right, all right, it was really stupid of me to just blunder in like that. I should have known better.’

  Now that she had finally broken the silence Avon appeared to lose interest. Instead he slipped something from his pocket and peered at it intently.

  Bizarrely, Avon’s indifference was just as irritating as his silent judgement of her had been. ‘Aren’t you going to say “Well that was a lot of help”?’

  ‘That would be a very childish thing to say,’ he told her, still not looking up. ‘I’m not Vila.’

  ‘That’s enough, you two.’ A voice barked from the back of the power room. ‘I need to concentrate.’

  From the voice’s direction it sounded like he was over by the monitoring station. Jenna had been wondering where he’d got to. She craned her neck around as far as the restraints would allow but still she couldn’t see him.

  ‘How long are you going to keep us tied up like this?’ she shouted over her shoulder.

  ‘Just until I’ve uncoupled the main power conduits, then we’re all going for a nice little trip up to the flight deck.’ The voice was muffled, as though the speaker’s head was currently stuck inside an open inspection hatch.

  Jenna glared across at Avon. ‘You showed him how to dismantle the conduits? Why would you do that?’

  ‘I don’t know if you noticed, but he’s holding a gun,’ Avon told her. ‘I know you were busy stumbling head first into a trap at the time, but you must have seen it before he hit you. People with guns can be very persuasive when they want to be.’

  ‘If he sabotages the ship and then decides to shoot you, no-one else knows how to repair it.’ Jenna said.

  Avon glanced up briefly. ‘You’ll be relieved to know that getting shot is not very high on my list of things to do today.’

  ‘How did he get here, anyway?’ Jenna asked, nodding across the power room.

  ‘Through the door, I’d imagine,’ Avon said.

  Jenna stared at him for a moment. ‘That’s not what I meant. I didn’t think he had the strength to sit up, let alone leave the hospital bed.’

  ‘He’s obviously stronger than he looks. Either that or he’s very determined about something.’

  ‘We need to stop him.’

  ‘It’s being taken care of.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Trust me.’

  The voice bellowed from the direction of the monitoring station again. This time it was angry. ‘I said shut it! I won’t tell you again.’

  They waited for a minute or two, until they could hear the sound of the power conduits being dismantled once more, before carrying on with their conversation, this time their voices were just a whisper.

  ‘Orac’s operating key is missing,’ Jenna hissed.

  Av
on jerked his chin in the direction of the man’s voice. ‘Our friend’s got it.’

  ‘Why would he take that?’ Jenna asked.

  ‘Because he knew if he didn’t, Orac would pick up the transmitter signal again.’ Avon tapped the centre of his chest. ‘The one he’s got in here.’

  Jenna’s shook her head. ‘But that was deactivated, back on the Dionysus.’

  ‘He got it working again, almost killed himself in the process.’ Avon said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Not important. We just have to get that key back off him so we can get Orac operational again.’

  ‘Preferably before that Federation flotilla turns up.’

  Avon said, ‘There won’t be any flotilla, not this time. That signal isn’t for them.’

  ‘Not for the Federation ships? Then who is it for?’ Jenna asked.

  ‘I think it’s for that facility down there. More importantly for whatever’s inside it.’ Avon nodded in the direction of Kodyn Tam. ‘Right now he’s trying to turn the Liberator into a flying bomb.’

  *

  Blake counted six corpses altogether, three male and three female, although assuming that the one empty Cradle hanging at the back had once been occupied too, there had originally been seven.

  The door into the Cradle room hadn’t been locked, although one of the heavy surgical tables had been pushed up against it in a feeble attempt to stop people entering. Judging by the sterile nature of the room the filtration system was still operational—either they’d all left in a hurry or they were keen to preserve the bodies that they’d left hanging here. Or both.

  The corpses were hideous, grotesque parodies of the human form. They looked more like something from out of an old Earth folktale, a vampire or a zombie, some soulless creature of the undead at any rate. Their skin was ghostly pale, almost translucent, beneath which the veins, arteries and blood vessels could clearly be seen snaking this way and that, like some topographical map of a desolate, alien terrain. The eyes wide and colourless, almost completely white except for the black, cat-like pupil at their centre. But it was the implants that were the most obscene. They covered large areas of the body, in some places replacing the actual body part entirely. Each component had been embedded into the subject’s flesh, as though the original organic matter had been scooped out completely and the cybernetic implant slotted into the hollow or hole. In the places where the flesh and implant met there had been a clumsy attempt to fuse the two together as if little or no thought had been given over to how each new component would stay in place.

  But what surprised Blake the most was that, although they were stone cold like a corpse, their limbs were still dexterous, their skin still soft and pliant. It was as though they had died but rigor mortis had forgotten to take hold.

  The body that hung in front of Cally was the youngest. She could only have been about sixteen years old, seventeen at the most. Cally reached a hand out towards the dead girl, but stopped a few inches away, hesitated for a second, then withdrew it again. She suddenly felt very sick. ‘Is this…an Archangel?’ It wasn’t until she pointed at the body in front of her that she realised her hand was shaking almost uncontrollably.

  Blake turned around to look at her, opening his mouth as if to speak but no words came out. He glanced around the room again, stunned.

  When he finally managed to speak he said, ‘They’ve been butchered, all of them. Men, women and children. Ripped apart like a child experimenting with insects, and then stuck back together again. This is…this is insane!’

  ‘I’m so glad you find my little project fascinating.’

  Blake spun around on the spot, levelling his gun at the owner of the voice.

  ‘Though I assure you it wasn’t quite as insane as you think. Far from it, we were all quite serious in our intentions when we started.’ Servalan was standing just inside the doorway, an absurdly large and ostentatious animal-fur stole draped across her shoulders in an effort to stave off the chilly air of the lower levels. She waved a hand towards the troopers nearby, one of whom had his gun levelled at Vila’s head.

  ‘I really wouldn’t do anything rash if I were you. My troopers have only recently returned from quashing a rebellion on Zeta Nexus and they still have the scent of blood in their nostrils.’

  As if to prove the point, the trooper covering Vila suddenly kicked out, catching him behind the knees. Vila’s legs buckled and he toppled forward onto all fours. Blake took the hint and slowly lowered his gun.

  Servalan smiled, delighted with Blake’s good behaviour. ‘Detach your weapons from the belt and throw them onto the ground.’

  Behind her the troopers’ rifles twitched dangerously towards Blake.

  ‘Slowly. I’d hate there to be any misunderstandings, especially while you’re being so co-operative,’ Servalan said. ‘Oh, and communication bracelets too, if you wouldn’t mind. Not that it really matters, they’re quite useless down here. This facility is protected by the same energy field as Sigma Minor.’

  Cally and Blake did as they were told, unhooking their guns from the gun-belt and tossing them away onto the floor.

  ‘You see,’ purred Servalan as soon as this was done. ‘I knew we could all be friends if we tried.’

  ‘I should have known you’d be involved in all this,’ Blake admitted calmly.

  The Supreme Commander smiled coquettishly across at the rebel leader. ‘You sound so surprised, Blake. Oh, of course, you were expecting Travis weren’t you. If you’d known it was me, you probably wouldn’t have taken the bait, but Travis…He’s obsessed with killing you and you’re obsessed with humiliating him. You’re both as bad as one another. Add to that an old friend who you thought had been killed a long time ago and it becomes just that little bit more intriguing. All I had to do was sit back and wait for you to come to me. I knew you would, in the end.’

  Vila said, ‘I take it Travis isn’t with you then? Oh dear, I am disappointed. I guess we blew up that ship for nothing.’ And got the muzzle of a rifle jabbed painfully into the back of his head for his troubles.

  ‘I’ve no idea where he is, and quite frankly I couldn’t care less,’ Servalan admitted.

  ‘What the hell is all this, Servalan?’ Blake jerked a chin at the scene of horror that surrounded them. ‘Why have you brought us here?’

  ‘Oh come on, as if you didn’t know.’ She swept her arms expansively and struck a dramatic, extravagant pose. ‘These are my Archangels, my vision, my gift to the Federation. And thanks to you and your crew, Project Archangel will soon live again!’

  artefact [6]

  Servalan stops speaking and waits for a reaction. The two men in front of her look nervous, begin shifting uncomfortably in their seats. One of them, Councillor Bercol, glances around the walls of the office with obvious suspicion.

  Servalan sighs. ‘All security devices and camera units have been disabled, gentlemen. No-one outside this room is listening to our conversation and no-one other than my private secretary knows that you are here.’

  She’s lying.

  The other man, Secretary Rontane, clears his throat. ‘You must understand our unease, this…project…holds a classification of Alpha-Seven—the death penalty for anyone caught discussing its details outside the Administration Building. No exceptions and absolutely no reprieve.’

  Servalan says, ‘But you are the secretary to the President himself.’

  Rontane nods. ‘That does not make me above the law—quite the reverse, in fact. As the Presidential Secretary it is my responsibility to be seen to lead by example.’

  Servalan says, ‘To be seen to, yes.’

  Rontane says, ‘I was part of the committee that closed Archangel down. It was my job to hear the testimonies of those people who…’ He stops, lowers his voice. ‘I had to sit there day after day and listen to the stories, the rumours. Most of them, I might add, were about you.’

  Servalan is unfazed. ‘A bad move on your part, in my opinion. Yes, some of the results
were disappointing, bordering on the upsetting, but we were getting there. That’s what mattered. We were learning from our mistakes.’

  Bercol dabs at his mouth with a handkerchief. ‘From what I hear your chaps were making quite a lot of mistakes. And to use a child.’ He tuts. ‘Well that just smacks of carelessness.’

  Servalan shrugs. ‘The choice of test subjects was not down to me, they were handled by that fool Keldo, and that is where we went wrong.’

  Rontane agrees. ‘It did seem an odd choice. I remember telling the President so at the first table meeting. What we needed were much stronger specimens, subjects that were at the very peak of fitness both physically and mentally.’ He shakes his head at the thought.

  Servalan smiles sadly. ‘Such a pity that the President didn’t listen to your wise counsel. At least then he may have removed that idiot Keldo and replaced him with someone with intelligence, someone who could realise the importance—the potential—of such a project. Someone like yourself.’

  Rontane smiles and flaps a hand in the air, as though waving away her words. He is flattered.

  Servalan continues. ‘It is only in retrospect that we can see where things went wrong and understand what needed to be done to make them work. For example, if the project were to be reopened now, I know who would be the perfect choice for our Archangels. It’s so obvious in fact that I’m surprised it hasn’t struck me before now.’

  Bercol takes the bait. ‘Who would you choose now, Supreme Commander?’

  Servalan says, ‘Why, Blake and his crew, of course.’

  Bercol is not convinced. ‘But one of them is a congenital coward.’

  Neither is Rontane. ‘And one of them is dead. I was under the impression that you needed seven subjects for the project. By my reckoning that would only leave us with five.’

  Servalan likes Rontane’s use of the word ‘us’. ‘It’s not strictly necessary. The number seven was an arbitrary choice on the part of Keldo. To be honest, I’m pretty sure he did it purely so that he could give them the names of the seven archangels of ancient folklore and superstition.’