by Jack Conner
“What shall we do, sir?” asked Commander Lasucciv. “The station’s still not responding to hails.”
“Establish an orbit,” Marculin said. “I’ll have a team board the station and find out what’s going on.”
“There’s not enough left of us to spare, sir. Not after ...” The X.O.’s orange frog eyes moved, as if unintentionally, toward Avery. “... not after Xlaca.”
“Enough,” said Sheridan. “I’m tired of you doubting my word. Dr. Avery had nothing to do with those men’s deaths. Without the doctor, the Codex never would have been recovered at all.”
“Nor the Great One saved,” added a priest. Uthua, too, maintained a presence on the bridge, apparently.
Commander Lasucciv’s lips thinned. She said nothing.
“Colonel Sheridan is correct,” Marculin said. “However, Commander, if you think you can do better, I give you charge of the boarding party ... though I suggest you include Colonel Sheridan and the doctor in your team.”
Lasucciv visibly struggled to master her distaste. “Very well, sir.”
“We will go,” said one of the pirates, a tall, skeletal woman covered in albino-white fish scales and with what amounted to seaweed for hair.
“Come again?” Marculin said.
“Send my people. We’re many. If there’s any danger, we’ll be more than a match for it.”
“Send a horde of pirates aboard a delicate scientific institution—to pillage whatever you don’t destroy? I don’t think so.”
“Then just send the few of us that’re aboard this zeppelin, as part of the team.”
“You will not dictate to me aboard my own—”
The pirate woman stepped forward. The movement was slow, but there was a certain languid threat about it that earned the captain’s attention. His face tightened.
“We’re going,” she repeated.
Marculin glanced once more through the windows, this time not at the station but at the dozens of pirate ships that flanked the zeppelin. Surrounded it.
“So be it,” he said. “We are running low on people, after all.” To the priests, almost as if for help, he said, “Will Lord Uthua be accompanying the boarding party?”
They closed their eyes for a moment, then said, “He’s unwilling to leave the Codex, and he will not bring it aboard the station until the station can be made safe.”
Marculin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Commander, I leave it up to you.”
“I’ll assemble the team, sir. We’ll leave immediately,” Lasucciv said. Then, with obvious distaste, she added to Sheridan, “I would have you with me, Colonel.”
“I’ll be there,” Sheridan said. “Is the doctor invited?”
“I ... suppose.”
Sheridan raised her eyebrows at Avery. “Well?”
He thought of staying aboard the Valanca, alone and hated and without Sheridan’s protection.
“Sure,” he said. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
* * *
The Flying Fortress approached all too rapidly, and as it drew closer Avery saw that his initial impression had been more than accurate; the station was one great big mass, most of its buildings joined together into one larger structure, although by necessity disparate, castle-like wings were linked by corridors that soared over empty space. It was a metal castle, not stone, and its towers bristled with lightning rods, not medieval crenellations. The whole thing was absolutely spiked with the rods, more even than Avery had originally thought—excessively so—and blasts of energy from the surrounding clouds constantly struck them, so that the fortress resembled the heart of some great electrical engine. Or was it electrical? Not all of the blasts were white and blue—some, to Avery’s shock, glowed vividly green or pink, even colors he couldn’t identify. What had the people aboard the Fortress been doing?
He, Sheridan and the others Commander Lasucciv had assembled, about thirty of them, gathered in one of the docking bays, Avery only half listening as the X.O. gave explicit instructions about how things were to be organized, with her giving any final commands; she said this pointedly to the pirates and the three priests, who looked noncommittal.
“You will obey me,” Lasucciv said. “Or you will not accompany this party.”
“We’re merely observers and liaisons to the Great One,” said the senior priest, “but we will heed your instructions unless they go against the interests of Lord Uthua.”
“I guess that will have to do. And you?” She snapped her head to the pirates; there were four of them, rough and scarred, two with elaborate mutations (one had bioluminescent lights that rippled up and down his limbs and pulsed on his head; the other had mandibles instead of a mouth and a shell-covered head), all unshaven, unwashed and slovenly. Despite their seedy appearances, though, their guns gleamed deadly and black.
Gehulia, the long, lean female pirate with the pale scales and seaweed hair, smiled—rather nastily, Avery thought. “Oh, we live to obey.”
Lasucciv’s jaw bunched, but she said nothing. Rain beat on the docking doors (as well as inside) and spattered the small portholes, which flashed with strangely colored lightning. The thunderbolts struck to the beat of great gongs shaking the heavens outside, and Avery had to stop himself from leaping at every peal. Again he wondered why the Octunggen scientists had located their station in the center of a storm—or, more accurately, chased the storms that gathered over the sea and then submerged themselves in the tempests until they broke up; some storm masses stayed intact for months, he had been told, and these were the ones the station targeted.
Along with the others, he waited, trying not to fidget. When the Valanca finally reached the fortress and docked, the boarding party gathered warily before the hatch. Avery could practically feel the tension radiating off them.
“Ready?” Lasucciv asked.
“Ready, ma’am,” her soldiers replied.
She nodded to a certain soldier, who spun the wheel and threw the hatch open. Darkness greeted them, and a gust of cold air seeped out to envelope the boarding party. Avery shivered.
“They must not have their life support system at full capacity,” Sheridan said.
“Their heaters are clearly not functioning,” Lasucciv agreed. “Nor do I see any lights. Lead the way, Colonel.”
Gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, Sheridan moved through the hatch into the darkness, and the others followed, one by one. Once again Avery found himself packed into the middle of the group. He was not capable enough to bring up the rear (this was assigned to the pirates) or to lead them, but had to be sandwiched in the most useless position possible.
Cold, wet air pressed in all around. The station’s lights were indeed out, for the most part, though it still ran on emergency generators and lightning motors—and the members of the group had to shine flashlights all around them. Lights reflected off lockers and counters cluttered with uniforms and various apparel. Tools lay scattered about, their metal glittering like jewels, then vanishing when the lights swept on. This particular docking port obviously saw lots of comings and goings and provided visitors the chance to change and store their belongings, as well as allowing maintenance staff to leave to attend to whatever needed fixing outside; the thought of that was terrifying enough.
Thunder rocked the station, and Avery was horribly aware of the raging storm just outside. The Octunggen were truly mad to have put this station here. Perhaps worse, water dripped on him, channeling down from the pipes that snaked across the ceiling, and he cringed at the contact, the hairs on the nape of his neck stiffening. The water was ice cold. The moisture fell in steady drips here and there throughout the chamber, he saw, and down the hall, too. This place is leaking. The violence of the storm, coupled with the occupants’ obvious absence or at least inability to act, had led to the station going out of alignment, or moving into a stronger wind pattern than it was supposed to, and now minute fractures were developing in the hull, letting in water. Great. And it’s Atomic rain, too, formed from evapo
rated ocean water. I hope Sheridan’s doubled up on her pollution pills.
The group passed out of the docking chamber, moving by showers and open restrooms. On the second toilet slouched a body.
Half a dozen flashlights fixed on it. The corpse was that of a middle-aged woman, athletic and thin-faced, wearing a uniform and with a gun clutched—still—in her stiff, dead hand.
“Dear gods,” Avery said.
The woman had been ripped apart, her torso a ruin of cracked bone and dried blood, intestines strewn all around her, reeking of offal. Avery was struck by the fact that no flies buzzed near the body or alighted on the fragrant guts; the Octunggen kept a remarkably clean station.
“What did this?” Gehulia asked.
Sheridan nodded at Avery. Reluctantly, he bent close to the dead woman, analyzing the wounds and, as casually as he could, sniffing them. No trace of ammonia. With a frown, he shook his head at her. Sheridan frowned back.
“Move on,” ordered Commander Lasucciv.
They pushed deeper into the facility. Blood spatters caught the illumination of the flashlights, dark and tacky, crusted against metal bulkheads and long conference tables heaped with papers. Rain continued to drip down on them, and Avery shivered with every fall. Some sort of musty odor filled his nostrils, growing stronger the deeper into the facility he went. It was almost nauseating. Fantastic-looking mushrooms grew along the floors, sprouting from the bulkheads and from around the intercom switches located near the doorways, some bobbing as rain fell on them. Bodies lay strewn here and there, all torn apart viciously, and they were not the only ones to have suffered damage. Broken furniture, smashed cabinets and even holes in the bulkheads sneered at the group from all around, taunting them with thoughts of what might have caused the destruction. Strange mushrooms sprouted from all of it.
“What were these people researching?” Avery asked Sheridan, when the procession had stopped for a moment.
“I don’t know, but this was not simply some experiment gone wrong, if that’s what you were thinking.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Octunggen are not so careless. They wouldn’t allow something like that to happen.”
She had an idealized view of Octung. She had to. It’s how she’d allowed herself to be seduced by them and the only thing that kept her from despising herself. Still, Avery reasoned, she might not be entirely wrong. From everything he’d seen about how the Octunggen conducted themselves, they were not likely to let events of their own making spiral so out of control. It was typically only outside events that could threaten them, and precious few of those. So what event had happened here?
“Move out,” Commander Lasucciv said; she walked immediately behind Sheridan, which did not lessen Avery’s nervousness.
Without protest, he went back to his position, and the party resumed, passing offices, then laboratories. At the second lab they stopped again to investigate. Curious, Avery donned an airtight suit and entered the laboratory, finding oddly shaped fungi, some brightly colored, overflowing plastic dishes and glass slides, even shoving their way out of refrigerators. Scientists lay sprawled here, but they had been killed by the same means as the woman on the toilet, not anything from this lab—at least, nothing apparent. After leaving the lab and removing the suit, Avery rejoined the group and gave his report.
“When did all this happen?” asked one of the soldiers. “I mean, how fresh a mess are we walking into?”
“It didn’t happen today,” Avery said. “By the bloating of the bodies, I’d say yesterday, perhaps thirty to thirty-five hours ago. Of course, that’s only a guess.”
“Does anyone else notice a smell?” another soldier said.
“I do,” Gehulia said, and one of her pirate brethren nodded, waving the bright stalks on his head. “Smells like ... I dunno, something old.”
“Musty,” Sheridan said.
Avery nodded. “I think it’s all the mushrooms we’re seeing. They must be related to the fungi in the laboratory.”
“Why would the scientists be working on fungi?” Sheridan said.
“I don’t—”
“We’re wasting time,” Lasucciv said.
Thunder shook the station as they pushed deeper into it, and Avery was only partly reassured that he wasn’t the only one suffering an attack of nerves; many of the soldiers jumped when the thunder boomed or when someone knocked something over or kicked something metallic across a room. He would have preferred calmer, steadier soldiers, but on the other hand at least he didn’t feel so craven. If we’re all cowards, does that make me braver?
Mushrooms sprouted from some of the bodies, some glowing and shockingly colorful, erupting from the wounds like bamboo shoots, and other fungi, too, species he wasn’t familiar with. Possibly, he began to suspect, species no one was familiar with.
Rain continued to drip on the members of the party from above. Avery was soaked with it, and shivering in the cold that came with it. His skin crawled and flamed with the contact, reminding him how unnatural it was; tomorrow he would be covered with rashes. When the Octunggen had been running this place, it must have been clean and neat and shiny, but the Atomic Sea rain had weathered it. Great acidic burns marred the bulkheads, and strange encrustations grew along the pipes overhead, which had become stained and discolored.
Deeper in, the group came on a larger lab, crammed with more exotic and expensive-looking equipment, and just as strewn with the dead. Avery picked up a clipboard from a table and flipped through the pages.
“What does it say?” Sheridan asked.
“I don’t understand it. The notes mention extradimensional ruptures and things they called the specimens, sometimes the organisms. It mentions channeling them through the lightning rods.”
“That’s what the rods are for?”
“Don’t let it concern you,” Lasucciv said. “I mean all of you, Colonel. The research they were doing here—perhaps still are, or will be doing—is classified.”
“You know what it was?”
“Maybe.” Lasucciv gestured toward the door. “Move on.”
They continued through the station, almost immediately coming upon another lab, this one lined with prison-like cells, each installed with a thick plate of glass. Riotous fungi overflowed the tables and work benches, even the floor, and Avery avoided these on his way to the nearest cell door. The chamber absolutely reeked with the stench of fungus. Soldiers peered in through the windows of the cell doors and swore, some looking ill. Swallowing nervously, Avery looked in through the window of a cell.
Inside he saw a corpse—he knew it was dead because it had been vivisected—so completely covered in gray-black fungal material that at first it was hard to identify as human. It walked restlessly about, beating at the cell walls and tearing at the growths sprouting from its head. Shapeless, weightless lumps engulfed it, more the right side than the left. A low moan escaped its lips, audible even through the glass. Misery stood out in its blood-shot eyes.
Feeling as if he were about to vomit, Avery stumbled back, clutching at a table for support. Almost immediately a nearby patch of bright green fungi grew toward his fingers, and he snatched his hand back.
I knew coming here was a bad idea.
“Do you understand it?” Sheridan asked him.
“No. I—” He grimaced. “They devised some mutated fungus that could grow at an accelerated rate on human tissue, though for what purpose ...” His eyes strayed to the window of the cell door; the thing inside beat its head against it, leaving gray smears. “To animate the dead?”
“What does it have to do with the specimens mentioned in the notes?”
Avery had no answer. The pirates and soldiers were talking excitedly, cursing and gesturing. Each seemed to be having a strong reaction to what they were witnessing ... all save Lasucciv. What does she know?
“This is fascinating,” she said, “but it doesn’t help accomplish our mission.”
“Understanding what w
e might be facing seems germane to me,” Sheridan said.
“You know all you need to.”
They spun to see a shape looming in the near doorway. Two-legged, the thing tottered toward them, and a score of flashlights picked out unnatural bulges and thrusting stalks of bright pink, all glistening in the moisture dripping from overhead. It was roughly man-shaped but, like the creature in the cell, subsumed in fungus-like material that humped up in irregular mounds all over it. Avery couldn’t tell if the fungus grew around a human body, living or not, but he assumed so, and in any case he only had a moment to think about it before the creature grabbed up the nearest soldier and slammed her so hard against the deck that blood burst from her chest and bone cracked audibly.
A dozen guns fired. The fungal shape staggered toward the soldiers, flesh streaming out behind it and a low moan escaping its lips. The thing grabbed up another soldier, flung this one against the low ceiling—crack—dropped it and grabbed another, hurling this one against a bulkhead. All the while, guns ripped at it, tearing out chunks of pink fungal flesh and sending arcs of dried blood and guts to flutter behind it, but the thing came on, remorseless, unstoppable.
“Fall back!” Commander Lasucciv said. “Fall back!”
The group filed out the rear doorway and down a hall, one of the long, brass-bound and somehow baroque-looking tubes that connected wings of the fortress. Bodies littered the tube floor, and the soldiers had to step over and around them on their way, slowing their flight. Somewhere behind him Avery heard screams and firing. The creature moaned. A body cracked. Something spattered loudly.
