by Ian Woodhead
Those uncomfortable looks were exchanged one more time. These fools hadn’t been told anything apart from that they were on prisoner escort. Danny passed the sidearm to one of the marines holding the squadron leader then walked over to the disarmed marine. “Pick up your weapon, soldier.”
Trooper Cole pulled the weapon out of his hands and turned it upside down. “Another SS50. This one has very little charge. The lacarator is out of alignment, and your core is so brittle that in another couple more shots, the internals are likely to fuse.” He pulled the soldier’s emblem rank from his lapel, took out the clasp, and pushed the pointed end up through an aperture located behind the trigger guard. After a few more minor adjustments, Trooper Cole handed the weapon back to the soldier. “That should help. I have realigned the lacarator, tightened the bearings in the core cradle, and reversed the polarity in the neutron flow. Allow the flow to normalise and the charge should double.”
“How did you do all of that?”
“What is your name, marine?”
“Magnus.”
Danny shrugged. “Listen to me, Magnus. Loyalty to the Emperor will not always save your life in battle. That is the job of your equipment. Just as it is your job to ensure that your equipment is in fully working order. Although if you do not understand how your weapon operates, this function cannot be fulfilled. That is the job of your unit commander. Although, I doubt he will know anything but to spout hateful doctrine.”
He stared at the other marines. “I would not look so pleased either. At least he brought his weapon. Oh, and your own prisoner has slipped out of your grasp.”
Danny grinned at the sight of the enraged former squad leader as he wrenched the pistol from the marine’s hand before pointing the business end straight at him. He did not look very happy. “I would advise you to turn around.”
“Do not speak, you vile traitor!” he screamed. “On your knees and beg for your life. Show them the worm you really are.”
“I really would advise you to look behind you.” Trooper Cole began to approach the shaking man. He only paused when he thought he heard Mr. Smith’s chuckling in his ear. His voice of reason would have loved to see this showdown. Once he returned to the ship, Danny would fill in the highlights of his little adventure. He might even embellish the part where he punched the ex-squad leader on the nose. That part hadn’t happened yet, but it would soon be coming to fruition. The man squeezed the trigger. He then squeezed it again and again when nothing happened. Danny showed him the firing pin that he had pulled from the mechanism before handing the sidearm to the soldier. “A unit is only as good as the man who commands them. As I said, this man can do nothing but repeat scripture.”
He snapped his fingers, wincing as the man screamed when the Gizanti grabbed him from behind. Danny had watched the alien’s progress with interest from when he first emerged from one of the rooms, noting that none of the other units had given any indication that they were no longer alone down here. That alone gave Danny the confidence that this unit now belonged to him.
“How did you get down here, Cladinus?”
“The structure is of Gizanti design,” he replied while dragging the struggling man over to the stairs. “I suggest we leave. The mission here has been accomplished.”
Danny followed the alien back up the stairs, trying to figure out exactly what Cladinus had meant by that. As far as he was concerned, the mission had been to scout the surface of the Gizanti planet to look for clues as to where the aggressors could be heading next. Danny’s mission was to sit around in the mud and act as lookout on a dead world while the squadron leader performed the important stuff. The man had told Danny this while smirking.
The man sure was not grinning now.
Unless Cladinus had made it his mission to ensure that Danny would take control of the squad. That would explain the alien’s insistence of him going down here alone. If that was the case, how could he possibly engineer such a feat? Trooper Cole had not known this would happen until the opportunity presented itself.
Considering what he had recently discovered regarding the Gizanti species, Danny would not be all that surprised. Who knew what mystic powers these creatures could possess? The ability to foretell the future was fact. Was it not the God-Emperor himself who predicted the arrival of the new alien aggressor? Danny frowned at that thought, suddenly not wanting to give the concept any more consideration. He decided to just leave it at Cladinus just had the feeling that Trooper Cole would gain a squad and leave it at that.
The victory could be short lived though. Gaining command was the easy task. They still had to reach the ship, and he had not had the opportunity to watch them in combat, although his first impressions of their standard of training filled his heart with foreboding.
They reached the next level and entered the chamber filled with the symbols. Danny’s gaze was drawn to the intricate designs, yet he knew the other humans would not be so fascinated by the icons covering the wall, not when one of their unit now lay on the floor with his head crushed and the object of the deed lying next to the body. He felt their unease deepen when the ex-leader of the men began to scream and thrash about, calling Cladinus an unclean, murdering alien.
Trooper Cole might have found the whole situation amusing if it hadn’t been for the walls beginning to glow. This structure was feeding off the emotions rising from the soldiers. The more disquiet they make, the brighter the symbols glowed. Danny rushed over to the struggling man and slapped him across the face. The suddenness of the attack shocked him into silence. He stared at the men, holding their gazes. “It was I who did this. The man was already dead. His spirit is gone. This was just an empty shell.” He run his fingers along the wall. “Accept this as truth.” He looked over to Cladinus who promptly pushed the captive man’s jaw shut before he carried him out of the room. Immediately, the icons dimmed. “Fear will be your greatest adversary. Remember this.” Danny followed the alien out of the chamber.
“What would have happened just now?”
Danny looked straight at the soldier who had just spoken. It was the one who Trooper Cole had first caught. “Use your imagination,” he replied, looking straight at the dead soldier. He turned around and walked out, not stopping until he reached the Gizanti. This was where their loyalty, bravery, and combat expertise would be tested. Danny had doubts whether any of them would pass this one. He looked out of the doorway, his heart sinking even further when he saw the dead aliens now carpeting the ground. Their grey, mound-like bodies stretched from the structure all the way up to their ship.
The alien dropped the ex-squad leader. “You are free to go, human. I shall no further bound you within my grasp.”
The man went for his sidearm, obviously forgetting Danny now held it. He glared at mine. “That is mine. Give me it back.”
Danny inserted the firing pin. “With pleasure.” He gave him the pistol and stood back, watching the man struggle with his emotions. The ex-squad leader hadn’t been prepared for Danny to hand it over so easily. “Are you going to kill me now?” he enquired.
“To give your new traitor unit the justification to assassinate me? I think not.” He took one step out of the structure. “Although once the Prime Chaplain hears about this, you will all wish that I had granted you a quick death.” Having said his piece, the man marched away from the structure.
“He’s going to die out there.”
“Yes, Danny,” replied the Gizanti. “Perhaps I should have told him about the danger?”
“What do we do now?”
The ex-squad leader had come to a stop. He must have noticed the grey mounds now surrounding him. He spun around and raised his pistol, aiming it directly at the structure. The humans and the Gizanti dived away from the doorway as the man fired.
He did not get to fire again. The man’s shrieks only lasted a few moments. Danny hurried over to the doorway and saw nothing but grey mounds of chitin armour shuffling against each other. There was no sign of the man. Danny
did not mourn his death. After all, if events had travelled along a different path, it would have been the ex-squad leader ordering the men stationed around him to open fire. He did mourn the loss of that gun though. Their guns had enough charge for perhaps two to five shots each. Even if the SS50s could penetrate their armour and each shot was clean, they would still only be able to take out a quarter of them.
“What do we do now?”
Danny was about to propose that they climbed on top of the structure and see if they could make their way through the trees when the ship began to lift. He glared at Cladinus who kept his face perfectly still.
“The Battle Sister comes to us.”
“How long have you two been talking to each other?”
“We have never stopped.
Chapter Seven
It had not yet become the norm for the Prime Chaplain to brush over the more repulsive sections in the blasphemous construction, but he was becoming more at ease with the wetter areas inside the Gizanti spacecraft. He did not know whether this was a good idea as of yet. He stopped beside an Imperial-made viewscreen and watched the craft cut through the black for a few moments until the dimensional impossibly of the action caught up with his eyes and brain and made him go dizzy.
The ship was quiet. All the others were all stored in cryo-tubes. The Prime Chaplain had the adaptive treatment so he could stay awake during the journey. He walked through the quiet ship, trying to stay within the areas which better resembled the interior of an Imperial cruiser. Gizanti technology, if you could call it that, made him feel more nauseous than watching the ship travel through the territory belonging to the true Gods. It also made his stomach roll over.
He entered the main sleep station and stopped beside the alien. It truly was a fearsome-looking beast. Built for fighting and killing now thanks to the information he had learned from the many spy drones that he had sent with the expedition, the Prime Chaplain now knew more about the history of this enigmatic species that anybody else in the empire.
Even in deep sleep, the alien’s outer shell had attempted to match the colour of the stark grey chamber. He brushed his long fingers across the dials that controlled the machine. With a single turn, the Prime Chaplain could end this animal’s life. No amount of camouflage, armour-plating, or claws would help this creature.
His smile then froze in place when he began to shiver; the temperature had just dropped by at least ten degrees. The Prime Chaplain looked up towards what he assumed was one of the ship’s monitors and smiled before moving his hand away from the controls. The temperature readjusted to a more comfortable level.
The Gizanti didn’t need claws or camouflage. It appeared that the Prime Chaplain wasn’t the only individual here who employed eyes to monitor the behaviour of their shipmates. He had known that the alien had somehow taken back control of the ship from the installed Imperial computer as soon as the craft suddenly lifted from the surface and floated over to the structure while finishing off what the Gizanti started by turning the surface beneath its hull into superheated slag.
What annoyed the Prime Chaplain more than the ease of which the alien took back what was rightfully his was that he had absolutely no idea that this craft possessed such a formidable weapon. He shuddered to think of the damage this craft could have caused on the Imperial planet. It had even flown directly over the Imperial Palace. Heads will roll over this; thankfully, he would not be in the firing line this time.
He walked passed the sleeping alien and stopped beside the first human. Nicolas Delaney, twenty-six years of age, had been indoctrinated into the chapel house guard at the usual age of twelve. His intelligence level was rated average. In his fourteen years of service, the soldier had not displayed any trait that would make him stand out from the other in his unit. He had no ambition to do anything but to continue existing. He was, in effect, the perfect recruit for the guard. Nicolas was the unfortunate individual who had allowed himself to be taken hostage. The ex-minor heretic, now this unit’s squad leader, had surprised them all, especially the Prime Chaplain.
He walked past the other four sleeping chambers, each one occupied by other humans, each one fitting into the same chapel house guard template. The High Priestess had given him the most important mission in the history of the Empire and equipped this Prime Chaplain with a crew that wouldn’t be trusted to complete a basic freight run without messing it up.
The Prime Chaplain stopped beside the remaining sleep chamber. This one should have contained the unit’s squad leader.
Before the time of the Third Reformation during the first political purges, it had been the unit commanders who organised and led the initial round up of the priests of the false religions, the corrupt ministers of government, and the leaders of the multinational companies. Those early battles created many heroes and martyrs for the embryonic New Terran Empire.
Those fabled soldiers were the ones who showed the downtrodden masses the true word of the first God-Emperor. Those squad leaders helped to forge their new world and bring about a peace which has lasted for a thousand generations.
He looked down at the sleep chamber and sighed. When the Prime Chaplain was younger, he, like the others in his class, wished to become just like one of the legendary fighters told in the book of Genesis; it did not matter that their life threads were already spun. He was destined to serve out his life as a man of faith. Their ex-squad leader’s life thread had been already spun as well. Unlike every other unit in the Empire, the chapel house guards were unable to rise to this revered position.
Perhaps that would explain why somebody had made a cloth effigy of the now dead man and stuffed it into the chamber. They had even stolen a melon from the food store and carved a crude face upon the surface.
When their new squad leader learns of their lack of respect for that position, Danny Cole might wish he retained his title as a minor heretic. He moved past the sleep chamber, deciding to leave the effigy alone. It will make a suitable warning for when Cole awakes.
“It has started, Prime Chaplain,” said the Index.
He pulled the shard from beneath his cloak and raced towards the ship’s bridge analogy. Philip was not sure if there would ever be another spike in Danny Cole’s sleeping mind. He hoped there would be, for although they had learned so much from their visit to the Gizanti home-world, they still had no idea as to where or if the alien aggressors would target another planet.
“Are all the instruments recording to optimum capacity?”
“The system incompatibility has given rise to a number of communication issues. Consequently, the capacity is down to levels which makes replay ineffective.”
Philip ground his teeth in fury. The alien ship still refused to grant full access to her systems to the Index, even for a moment. The bridge was now in sight, and although he desperately needed to get there, the Prime Chaplain slowed and stopped beside a Gizanti mind bridge. The crew used these devices to link with the ship during their own natural sleep periods. He also knew that they could be used by non-Gizanti races to directly talk to the ship.
Dare he use it, knowing just how much this ship disliked the Prime Chaplain? What other choice was there? Philip looked back at their sleeping alien and considered the option of waking him. He dare not. The transition to consciousness while still within the weave could cause the Tanzania’s mind to collapse.
Having a seven-foot alien killer rampaging through this ship could cause more than a few complications. He tentatively pressed his index finger against the fleshy nodule by his chest and tried not to pull his arm away as twenty thick-ridged, bright-red pipes grew out from the wall around the nodule and slid along his flesh. He bit his bottom lip when the tips rose up an inch and blue needles burst through, growing towards his arm before they pushed through the skin.
His surroundings greyed out and he found himself back in his office on Earth. He blinked in confusion, wondering if he had just woken from a strange dream. It wasn’t until he saw that his viewscree
n now showed him lying on the deck of the spacecraft, drooling from the corner of his mouth when he remembered what he was supposed to be doing.
“I need your help.”
His image on the monitor sat up. “Yes,” said his image. “You do.”
The image tried to smile. It looked grotesque.
“Please, I want you to allow the Index to reconfigure some of your systems. I promise…”
“No.”
“I promise she will not linger.”
“You are human. She is your slave. Humans cannot be trusted. You have no honour.”
“This is vital! We need more power.”
“No.”
The Prime Chaplain stood up and walked over to the monitor. “Do you want to die? Do you wish the last known member of your species to die?”
“Cladinus is my friend, but he is not the last. I am friend to all Gizanti.”
“Danny Cole is the friend of Cladinus.”
“Danny Cole is a friend of my friend.”
He wanted to smash his head into the viewscreen. Every second spent arguing with this childish life-form meant more potential data was lost. “Danny Cole might know where all your other friends have gone. Please help me to find them and all the other humans. Only you can help. Only you can help all your friends.” He turned around and turned his back on the viewscreen. “Only you can be a hero.”
The Prime Chaplain opened his eyes. He was still lying on the deck, but he was no longer attached to those pipes. Philip jumped to his feet and ran onto the deck. He carefully inserted the shard into the Imperial interface and impatiently waited for the shard and the interface to align.
