by S. A. Lusher
Greg found himself in a large, open room ringed by doors, both on the current level and a second story overhead. A huge, circular desk dominated the center of the room. The battle had come and gone here already, as evidenced by the scorch marks, bloodstains and scattering of corpses and abandoned weapons.
“Give me a minute,” Genevieve said as she approached the desk. That was where the dual-lock system would be activated from. Why in the hell they’d placed it there, Greg didn’t know, although he suspected it might have been a malfunction or a specifically randomized feature, like he’d encountered back near the beginning of his journey on Dis.
Either way, they were almost done.
Greg listened to her coordinate with Eve over the comm link while he and Jennifer secured the area. They managed to make it about thirty seconds before something went wrong. The first indication that something was headed their way was a strange grinding noise, almost like someone was dragging a big rock across metal. It was getting louder and within a few seconds, he had it pinpointed. Whatever it was, it was up above.
He and Jennifer aimed up, waiting.
“Genevieve, how long?” Greg asked.
“Another forty five seconds,” she murmured.
“Shit,” Jennifer growled.
Then it appeared. Immediately, Greg knew that he was looking at what Volker had called a Serpent. The thing that Eve said she had fought and failed to kill. The creature loomed over them, a horrible, curious rock-like abomination that indeed resembled a snake. It stared down at them with its malignant gaze from the second story.
“Fuck it,” Greg said, switching out his weapons and grabbing his rail driver. “I’m not going to give this fucker a chance.”
As he prepared the weapon, it moved forward and dropped down from the second story, slamming into the ground floor, right in front of Greg’s sights. He had all the time in the world to just squeeze the trigger. There was a brilliant flash of light, followed by a split second shriek, and then the big rock monster became splattered all over the lobby. A strange, dark, thick gore sprayed across the floor, the walls, the ceiling and furniture.
“Holy shit!” Jennifer cried. “That’s one powerful gun.”
“Hell yeah,” Greg replied, loading up his second to last rail. “Well, hopefully we don’t run into...what’s that noise?”
Even as he asked it, they heard a sound that he always unconsciously listened for when he was in a zero atmosphere environment: decompression. Greg stared in horror at the wall behind where the rock creature had been. It was an office and there had been a small window, staring out into the dead of space.
And he’d shot right through it.
The window burst out and took a good section of the wall with it as the atmosphere blew out. “Fuck!” Greg screamed. “Seal your suits!” he roared, doing just that, closing the vents. “Genevieve, how long!?”
“Twenty seconds,” she replied, her voice coming over the radio now.
“I-shit!” Greg screamed as something slammed into him from behind. He lost his footing and fell forward, then the floor was racing by beneath his faceplate as he was sucked out through the hole he’d stupidly made. He made several grabs for something to stop himself from being sucked out, but everything was happening too fast and suddenly he was flying free of the ship. Greg felt panic scream through him and he flailed helplessly, groping at the nothingness around him. Jennifer was talking to him but he couldn’t hear her words, couldn’t make them out in his panic. How the fuck was he going to get the fuck out of this?!
Abruptly, something came down on him like a hammer and he got a grip on himself. Okay, okay. Think. He’d dealt with worse. An idea came to him: thrusters. A lot of power suits came equipped with them. He raised his wrist, accessing the pad there, trying to ignore the horror of flying away from the ship. A few seconds later, he saw that he had no fucking thrusters on this suit. Perfect. He’d been through this before…
He’d been through this before, specifically.
How had he dealt with it then?
Greg grabbed for his rifle, but he’d lost it. He checked himself over and found that he’d kept only his rail driver. His pistol, his rifle...all of it gone.
Now what?
He didn’t want to use one of his two rail driver shots, but...what other way was there? Then an idea came to him.
His oxygen reserves. He could use them as an impromptu jetpack. Well...fuck. Sighing, he keyed them up for an emergency evacuation. He was spinning and he waited until he was aimed back at the Perseus. As soon as he was, he hit the button and the oxygen began shooting out the back of his suit, jetting him forward.
“Oh please let this work,” he moaned as he shot forward.
“Greg? Can you hear me!?” Jennifer asked.
He finally registered her words. “Yes,” he replied shakily. “I’m coming back. Just...wait for me,” he replied.
“Okay. Get to an airlock. There’s one not far from where we were,” she said.
“On it.”
He kept going until he finally hit the side of the ship. He took a quick look around, trying to find something useful, something helpful. His oxygen was almost gone now. There were no spare oxygen tanks around...but he saw the bulge of the airlock. Activating his magnetic boots, he began plodding across the outer surface of the ship. By the time he got there and got the doors open, his head was swimming and it was very difficult to focus. He felt on the verge of passing out. Stumbling into the airlock, he poked at the panel, trying to get the cycle started. Darkness was encroaching on all sides of his visions, boiling along the peripheral.
He hit the button.
The cycle began.
Greg pitched forward, losing his battle and passing out.
* * * * *
He woke up to Jennifer staring down at him, checking his vitals.
“I made it,” he said, or tried to say. It just came out as a hoarse slur.
“What? Greg, are you okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “Did we do it?”
“Yes. We unlocked the bridge, then locked it back down and keyed it to a keycard. That part is over with,” Jennifer replied. Greg tried to sit up but she pushed him back down. “Stay down, just for a minute. You almost died.”
“Par for the course,” he muttered.
“Yeah, well, you still need to rest. Just...take a minute. Everything’s secure for the moment. Well, you know, as secure as we can hope for.”
“Where are the others?” he asked, closing his eyes, trying to relax, get his breath back. That had been a pretty shitty experience.
“They’re making their way for the main labs. Volker did some digging and found a reference to Saturate. Unfortunately, the files relating to it are in a terminal in the primary research labs. They’re headed there now. We’re going to meet them there.”
“Fine,” Greg said.
He waited a few minutes longer, then finally got up, pushing Jennifer’s hands away. “We can’t wait anymore,” he muttered, then hesitated as he stumbled and fell against a nearby wall. He took a few deep breaths, waited for his equilibrium to fix itself, then straightened up. “Come on, let’s link up with the others.”
Greg took another few seconds to clear his head, pushing away the pain to the best of his ability, then started walking. It took him a few seconds to remember that he had no weapons left on him. Okay, well, that wasn’t true, he had the rail driver, but that wasn’t a very viable weapon in this situation. He stopped in the small passageway they were in and turned around. “Um...could I have a pistol?” he asked. “I lost my arsenal in space.”
“Yeah,” Jennifer replied, passing her sidearm and several magazines to him.
“Thanks,” he said, accepting it and pocketing the magazines. He checked the weapon out, then set off with it in hand, hoping to have to use it as little as possible. The three of them slipped through the too-bright metal passageways of the Perseus, listening to the aftereffects of Volker’s kill c
ode. It was a kill code indeed. How many had died as a result of it? How many had been onboard? Greg didn’t relish the thought of killing Spec Ops troops. He wished there was any other way they could do it, but the situation was simply too dangerous.
There was too much at stake.
So he did what he did best and kept pushing. They managed to slip through most of the deck unnoticed. It seemed that the Altered and Spec Ops had mainly wiped each other out, or, more likely, the Altered had wiped out Spec Ops and were heading elsewhere into the ship on their maddened killing spree. Fine by him, so long as they weren’t here. He received periodic updates from the others as they made their own journey across the ruined Science Deck. They ran into trouble when they first entered the research complex, the dark heart of the deck.
A large set of double doors opened and they passed through a security checkpoint sprayed with fresh blood that was still dripping from the ceiling. He noted that there were a lot of bodies around. Maybe this is what happened when you took away the Alpha: the Altered lost their shit and stopped trying to reproduce. Which would be great.
There was a large, open bay beyond, a place of steel and glass and smashed technology. Broken open containers and tubes that had once held specimens. Dead bodies everywhere. And Guardians, wandering across the bay. A solid dozen of them.
“Shit,” Greg muttered, raising his pistol.
He hadn’t managed to find another suitable weapon during their trek here. “Grenades,” he said, realizing that they had a short window of time to work with. He still had one fragmentation grenade on him and together with Jennifer and Genevieve, tossed it towards a cluster of Guardians. As the grenades began going off, sending bodies and body parts flying every which way, Greg took aim with his pistol at one of the figures among the smoke still standing. He opened fire, popping off shots as quickly and efficiently as he could.
He was pissed that his hands were shaking.
The lethargy and pain and suffering that he’d been trying to stave off was getting in past his defenses and affecting him, making him a shittier fighter and survivor. Most of the shots still landed though, punching holes in the thing’s bulbous chest and putting it down. Even as it fell, the survivors quickly regrouped and began shrieking across the lab towards them. Greg took a step back, shifting aim and emptying the magazine.
Five had survived the initial assault, more than he had hoped for, and the survivors weren’t going down easily. As the gun clicked empty, the one Greg had been focusing on dropped dead to the deckplates. And the one that had been running beside it was in prime position to attack him, which it did. Greg shouted as the thing jumped him. No time to get out of the way. It smashed into him and sent him reeling to the floor.
He’d dropped his pistol and had managed to grab the thing’s wrists, trying to keep it from ripping into his armor like a can-opener. But even with his power armor-enhanced strength, the Guardian was still stronger than he was and was quickly gaining the upper hand. Greg knew he had to do something fast. With a jerking twist, putting all of his strength into it, he managed to throw the Guardian off of him. While it was in the middle of recovering, he made a fist, pulled it back and punched as hard as he possibly could into the thing’s chest.
His fist plunged through its ribcage and into its chest cavity, killing the Slug and thus the creature, in an instant.
The Guardian went limp. Trembling, Greg yanked his fist from its corpse and looked around. He saw Genevieve helping Jennifer to her feet. All the other Guardians lay dead around them. Greg got shakily to his feet and tried shake some of the gore from his armored fist.
“You okay?” Genevieve asked.
“Yeah, fine,” he replied, finding and retrieving his pistol. “Come on. We’re almost there,” he said, heading deeper into the labs.
A few minutes later, they made their way through one more door and at last came into the primary research bay. They saw Drake and his team making their way through a door opposite their current position. They were covered in blood and their suits looked like crap, but all four of them were still alive and functional.
They met in the middle.
“Where’s this console?” Greg asked.
“Um...” Volker was looking around, along the walls, which were lined with workstations and doors that led into private offices and small research rooms. “There,” he said suddenly, pointing to a door set into the wall higher than the others, at the top of a short stairwell. “That looks important, I think-” He was cut off by a tremendous bang.
“That’s never a good sign,” Eric muttered.
“Volker, Eve, get on it. Get the data,” Greg said, turning and staring at where the sound had originated from: a huge door across the bay. An enormous dent had appeared in it. Even as he stared at it, another one slammed into existence.
“Let’s go,” Eve said, and she and Volker hurried off.
“Spread out, weapons at ready,” Greg said, holstering his pistol as a third dent appeared and cracks ran along the metal.
He grabbed his rail gun.
The team spread out across the open bay, preparing for the worst. What was it this time? An Ire? Another Bandersnatch? Some fresh new horror that they hadn’t met yet? Abruptly, a huge fist punched through the door. It looked...like the fist of a Bandersnatch, but there was something wrong with it. At first, Greg couldn’t tell what was different, but he didn’t get a chance to see the truth until it was thrust in front of him when the door burst open to admit the newest horror. It was a Bandersnatch, but there was definitely something wrong.
Something different.
Something worse.
With a growing horror, Greg realized that this Bandersnatch had been infected with a Slug. It was an Altered Bandersnatch.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.
The effect was nightmarish.
Its dark skin looked even more hardened and tough than it had before. Thick red lines ran across it, almost resembling a highly volcanic area viewed from space. It was even bigger than normal Bandersnatches, closer to about fourteen feet in height. Its muscles looked larger, more developed, and its claws were even longer and sharper, gleaming brightly in the lights of the lab. The already gleefully malignant face had twisted into something truly terrifying, a visage of insane horror. The beast opened its huge mouth and loosed a roar.
Greg raised his rail driver and took aim. Here was hoping they weren’t near the hull. As the others opened fire on it, he fired. At the last second, the creature moved, throwing off a perfectly lined up shot that should have killed it. The good news, at least, was that it blew the thing’s fucking arm off. The Bandersnatch let out another furious bellowing roar, this time more of pain than of fury as its huge arm flew away across the room in a spray of blood and gore. Everyone waited to see if it would go down from this trauma alone.
The thing wobbled, bleeding heavily, then started forward again, picking up speed at a furious pace, lurching towards them.
“Oh fuck-” Greg began, then was silenced as the Bandersnatch swiped its remaining arm into him, Drake and Genevieve. All three of them were sent flying across the room. Greg cried out as he landed right on his shredded back, bounced, landed again and then went rolling. Pain enveloped him, roaring across his body in waves.
He could hear gunfire.
Screaming.
An explosion.
He lurched to his feet, looking around for some kind of weapon, but he saw that, suddenly, Genevieve had it all under control. As the initial wave of bullets came to an end because the others had run dry, Genevieve suddenly rushed towards it with a huge combat knife in hand. She sprinted forward, leaped up, kicked off of its remaining arm and, holding the knife with both hands, drove it with all of her suit-enhanced strength into the beast’s chest. The Bandersnatch let out the loudest roar yet, grabbed her and flung her away.
It took a step forward, hesitated, lurched another step, then stumbled and pitched forward onto the bloodied deckplates.
&nb
sp; All became deathly silent.
“Everyone okay?” Greg groaned, not wanting to move. He listened to the others sound off in various states of pain, but everyone was still alive.
“Good news,” Eve said as she and Volker came down from the lab. “Found all the data we need on Saturate and its vaccine. I have it stored with me. The best news of all is that the virus is still onboard, it has not been sent anywhere else.”
“So what do we do?” Volker asked.
Greg sighed, trying to focus through the pain. “Let’s just blow the fucker up.”
“What?” Volker replied, startled.
“Just blow the Perseus up. I mean, it’ll kill all our birds with one stone. No virus, no Blackmore, no monsters. We set the engines to overload, get to a ship and leave. Hawkins is on his way here right now, so we just have to wait,” Greg explained.
“I don’t have any objections,” Drake said. “Anyone else?”
The others slowly replied that they didn’t.
“Then let’s go,” Greg said, turning and stalking off.
Almost done now, he promised himself, pushing away the pain.
The end was near.
CHAPTER 15
–Saturate–
They were back in Shadow territory.
Greg knew it the second he stepped off the lift onto the Engineering Deck and one of them tried to jump him and steal his flesh and meat and organs. He blasted it to hell with a shotgun he’d managed to salvage on the way down. He immediately knew that they were in the shit because the bay beyond was without power.
He couldn’t see a thing.
“Fuck me,” he whispered. “This is bad news.”
“We need to restore power,” Volker said softly.
“Lights on,” Greg said, flipping on the suit’s exterior lights and the one mounted on the end of his shotgun.
The bleak white lights punched holes in the darkness of the vast cargo bay the service lift had deposited them into. The place was scattered with debris from the battle that had raged through it. Their lights revealed the awful, angular shapes of the Shadows, moving in the darkness. Greg felt his pulse quicken as his light fell on one that was running directly towards him. He squeezed the trigger, pounding out a slug shell and killing the monster.
