“It's headed right for the village. Can we get there in time?”
Bobby's experienced pilot's eye gauged the speed of the advancing blackness below. “That stuff is moving at about klicks an hour.”
“It will be on them in maybe ten minutes. Can we warn them, could they run?”
“Beth the average human's top speed is between 20 and 25 kph. Besides, they have nowhere to run to.”
“Then we're too late.” Stony faced, Beth stared at the doomed settlement. “We can't save them.”
Hills Above New Mecca
The flock of sheep was contentedly grazing its way along the edge of the prairie grass, along the boundary line between verdant Earth life and the bare native rock of Paradise. Shadi looked at the rugged foothills, only twenty meters from the end of the settlers' imported greenness. They looked old and worn, like the bones of the planet uncovered from a shallow dug grave. Her morbid thoughts were interrupted by the double sonic boom of an incoming shuttle.
That's strange. I thought there were to be no more shuttle deliveries. She looked up and spotted the craft as it passed overhead. It was different from the big delta shaped shuttles that had ferried them from ship to surface. This shuttle was smaller yet it seemed stouter, a blunter projectile.
She followed the path of the strange shuttle as it flew toward the settlement. Her thoughts were interrupted by Dorri's shout.
“Shadi, look at the village. Can you make out what is happening?”
“What?” Peering east toward the settlement, through the shimmering air of a hot prairie day, she saw what looked like a mirage—a black highlight moving across the green grass around New Mecca. “It looks like a mirage, caused by the rising air currents.”
“I've never seen a mirage like that, it looks like black ink spilled on a green blotter.”
Dorri was right. The darkness didn't act like a mirage, shimmering above the ground at the junction of earth and sky. This was more of a black flood spreading across the grassland. Dorri turned and ran to where her sister was standing.
“What is that? It looks like something is flowing out of the river.”
“I don't know, Dorri, but it is about to reach the walls of the village.”
As the sisters watched from their vantage point in the hills, people began to emerge from the settlement. The small figures ran their direction, away from the houses. As blackness spread around either side of New Mecca, like an ocean wave closing around a sandcastle in the rising tide, darkness could be seen engulfing the buildings.
A horse ran out of the village, pursued by a breaking wave of surging blackness. The horse galloped past the running townsfolk, who were swept under by the dark torrent. Long fingers of black raced ahead, catching up to the fleeing horse, dragging it down and flowing over it. Horses were now extinct on Paradise—only two humans and a small flock of sheep remained.
“Shadi, what is happening?” asked Dorri fearfully.
“Run,” Shadi said in a hoarse whisper.
“What?”
Hiking up her long robe, eyes wide, she turned to her sister.
“Run, Dorri! Run for the bare rock on the hill above us.”
“What about the sheep?”
“Leave the sheep! Run, little star, like you've never run before!”
The sisters ran for their lives while the sheep placidly chewed their cuds, unaware of death's approach.
Bridge, Peggy Sue
“That's right Captain. The contagion has reached the settlement. I'm afraid we're too late. We had no chance to even land.”
“Understood, Shuttle One. Do not risk yourselves landing on the surface.” Billy Ray sat in the captain's command chair, staring at empty space with hard eyes. The anger and disdain he felt for Fortune's captain boiled within him. “Peggy Sue, you will send a message to the Fortune on the open emergency channel, instructing them to call us back immediately or face the consequences.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Mr. Umky. Power up the main railgun battery and get me a firing solution on the Fortune. Mr. Lawson, raise the shields and maneuver to intercept the target.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.”
“Sound Battle Stations. Bring all weapons online.”
The klaxon's rasp sounded throughout the ship as the Peggy Sue moved to intercept the colonization ship floating one hundred and forty thousand kilometers way.
Bridge, ESS Fortune
On board the Colonization Board ship the Captain and the Navigator were on the bridge, having an argument. The Captain had just ordered the engine room to bring power online so the ship could get underway.
“Captain, what are you doing? We can't leave without making sure that there are no survivors on the surface of the planet!”
“You heard the transmission from the merchant shuttle, the last settlement was overcome by the black death. There is no one here to save except ourselves.”
“You can't be sure. We should at least wait for a full surface scan by the observation satellites.”
“No! As soon as all of our shuttles are back on board we are returning to home base. We have to tell them not to send any more ships, any more colonists. They shouldn't have sent us here in the first place!”
“Captain, the survey drone spent six months looking for danger and found none. Hell, the Trading Company types even went to the surface in several locations and found nothing.”
“Nothing until they almost lost their ship to that vile blackness!” Sid was becoming more agitated as he ranted on. “That bastard Vincent waited until all the settlers were on the planet, until the grass had been planted and everything was offloaded. Then he starts screaming about death from the dirt beneath the colonists' feet. He must have called it forth, to kill all those people, to ruin my mission!”
“Come on, Captain Chakrabarti. There is no way the merchants caused this catastrophe. It was just the devil's own luck that Paradise wasn't dead after all.”
“We need to get back so I can report this atrocity!”
The Captain's ravings were interrupted by the ship's computer.
“Captain, I have received an urgent message on the emergency channel. The captain of the Peggy Sue has ordered us to reply.”
“Ordered? How dare he!”
“Captain, my sensors indicate that the Peggy Sue is underway. Her shields have been raised and they are powering up their weapons.”
“Oh balls!” said the Navigator. “Captain, if you won't reply I will. I don't know what they are up to but that ship can blow us out of space without trying hard.”
“Go ahead and answer then! And don't think that I'm not going to report your insubordination!” The Captain stormed off to his small sea cabin just off the bridge. If it were possible to slam an automatic sliding door he would have. The Navigator moved to the main console and switched on the comm circuit to acknowledge the call from Peggy Sue.
Shuttle B, ESS Fortune
Frank watched the docking indicator signal final capture with relief. If he never saw the surface of Paradise again it would be a lifetime too soon.
“Leon, we're docked, buddy. You can bring our passengers forward and use the crew airlock to board the ship. No need to drop the cargo ramp this time.”
“Roger that, Frank. We'll be up front directly. This damned preacher is driving me crazy.”
“Oh? What's he doing? He's not getting violent or anything, is he?”
“No, he's just spewing all sorts of crap about God's wrath and Judgment Day and being tried and found wanting. The two acolytes are scared to death. Hell, one of them is crying.”
“That's just great.” Frank punched in the sequence of commands that opened the crew gangway, lowering the airstair into the airlock chamber leading off the shuttle. “I've opened the crew hatch. You take Brother Nut Job and his followers up to the bridge to see the Captain. I still have to go through the shutdown procedure to secure the shuttle for the trip home.”
“Yeah, you always got somethin
g to do so's you can avoid dealing with scut work.”
“You should have become a pilot, Leon. We get all the breaks.”
Frank switched off the intercom and called the bridge.
“Bridge, Shuttle Bravo. We have docked and are disembarking passengers. I'm sending Leon forward with three survivors from Zion.”
“Roger that, Shuttle Bravo. Send them forward. The Captain is insisting we get underway for home ASAP.”
The voice was that of the Navigator, not the Captain. Frank shrugged—even captains had to hit the head sometimes.
“They are on their way. I will let you know when the shuttle is secure for getting underway.”
“I copy, Shuttle Bravo. You might want to check with Chu and Bell. The Captain sent them to secure Shuttle Charlie more than an hour ago.”
“They're probably goofing off as usual. When I get done here I'll go over to bay three and give 'em a hand.”
“Roger that. Bridge out.”
Shuttle Bay Three, ESS Fortune
“Just what is so important about checking out Shuttle C?” asked the crewman called Bell. “That damn computer is becoming as much of a nag as the Old Man.”
“We have to secure it for departure before we can leave for home, and anything that gets us closer to going home I'm all for,” replied Chu, one of the shuttle pilots.
“Yeah, yeah. So drop the cargo ramp and let's put this puppy to bed.”
Chu punched in his authorization code on the airlock panel. The access light glowed green, indicating that the controls were now live. With a few more finger swipes the shuttle's large rear cargo ramp clanked and unsealed, whining as it lowered into the airlock's interior.
The ramp touched down on the airlock floor and the outer door slid open. As Chu secured the lock controls Bell entered and started up the ramp to the shuttle's cargo hold.
“Shout if you find anything out-of-place,” called Chu. “I'll be right up.”
Chapter 25
Shuttle One, New Mecca
The armored shuttle loitered above the settlement of New Mecca while the black contagion swept over the place. They watched as the few settlers who managed to run from the destruction of the village were pulled down and absorbed. They witnessed the death of the running horse, the last living thing to escape the forsaken settlement.
“You were right, Bobby. The threads managed to pull down that horse—people had no chance to outrun it.”
“It's not our fault, Beth. If we had left a half hour earlier we might have been caught on the ground.” Bobby shuddered involuntarily.
“It's just that I hate feeling so bloody helpless.”
“Hey, the FLIR is showing something in the infrared up ahead.”
“Where?”
“There,” he said, zooming in with an optical camera on the IR target. On the center part of the shuttle's curved control panel a view of a hillside appeared, half grass covered, half bare rock.
“It looks like a flock of sheep. And, look! There are two people running up the hill!”
“You're right! We may not have missed everyone after all.” Bobby slammed the throttle forward and the shuttle lept toward the foothills, racing above the oncoming blackness on the ground.
Bobby angled the shuttle to the north of the two fleeing shepherds, so they would not be harmed by the shuttle's powerful repulsors when he brought it to a hover in front of them.
“Cargo Hold, look alive back there,” Beth called to the Marines in the rear of the craft, “we have a couple of survivors.”
Without waiting for a response she unstrapped from the copilot's seat, telling Bobby, “I'm going to get into position. When we are on the ground drop the ramp.”
“I'm not going to land, that stuff is coming on too fast. I'm going to do a nose up hover and pop the ramp so it just touches the ground.”
“Right, I'll tell the others.” Beth headed aft at a run.
The shuttle approached the rocky ground at an alarming rate, triggering plaintive warnings from the collision alarms. At the last minute, Bobby pitched the shuttle's nose up to almost forty five degrees and decelerated cruelly. At the same time he slid the massive craft sideways, in front of the running settlers. Dust and lose stones flew from the heavy shuttle's repulsors, but away from the prospective survivors. With the tail less than ten meters from the ground, Bobby dropped the rear cargo ramp. It barely kissed the surface.
Concentrating on holding the shuttle's position, Bobby kept his hand on the main throttle, ready to catapult the vessel away from the surface if necessary. While Bobby fought to keep the shuttle's awkward hover stable the Marines moved down the extended ramp. The Gunny took the lead, moving to the very end of the ramp on the left. Kato hung back on the right side by the ramp's support strut. Between them ran Beth.
Hills Above New Mecca
Running uphill in Paradise's heavier than Earth-normal gravity quickly had both girls breathing hard. Upon reaching bare rock, Shadi looked back over her shoulder to check on Dorri. Her sister was three meters behind her, laboring up the incline and almost free of the grass.
Looking at the sheep, still near where their shepherds had abandoned them, Shadi gasped. The flock had finally realized that they were in danger and tried to run after their human guardians. Too late. Ropey black sinews whipped around their plump bodies, wrapping them into struggling black bundles. The bundles quickly ceased their struggles and were absorbed into the growing black flood. The threads rushed on, up the slope after the last two humans on the planet.
“Run, Dorri, run!” Shadi urged her sister on. She then resumed her own uphill flight.
Dorri didn't bother to reply, but she did increase her effort, running a bit faster now that she was on bare ground. As they struggled up the rocky slope a low thrumming sound swelled up around them. The sound became louder, to the point where it resonated in their chests, as a huge gray wedge of metal passed them on the left.
It pulled ahead of the running girls, rearing up like a motor cycle doing a wheelie. As it pitched up at a forty five degree angle a ramp opened in the shuttle's rear. As the bottom of the ramp touched the rocky hillside figures moved down it, standing at an odd angle to the planet's gravity. The first figure was a huge gray-black monster. Dorri screamed.
“Djin!” she shrieked, thinking the dark shapes were demons.
“No, Dorri! It's a shuttle. They are trying to rescue us.”
Before Dorri could reply a second figure appeared. This one was also large and gray but it was recognizable as some form of space suit. Within its transparent bubble helmet was the head of an African woman. She spoke to them in Arabic.
“Yella, yella! Run and jump onto the ship!”
Shadi turned and yelled to her sister.
“Jump up on the ramp, Dorri!”
The almost exhausted Dorri stumbled past her sister and with a final effort jumped onto the shuttle's extended ramp. The African woman grabbed her, pulled her up the ramp and passed her to another dark figure inside the ship.
Shadi felt an instant of relief as Dorri was whisked to safety. Allah is merciful, we may live after all.
Then she looked back and saw black sinews reaching for her.
Shadi screamed.
Shuttle One, The Hills Above New Mecca
The shuttle's cargo ramp contained deck gravity plates that created a local gravity field normal to its surface. This meant that those standing on the ramp appeared to be standing at a forty five degree angle with respect to the ground. Whether this gave the approaching survivors any pause was not evident as the smaller of the two jumped for the ramp.
The young girl stumbled in the unexpected gravity shift. Beth grabbed her arm and half lifted, half drug her back into the cargo hold. She passed her living burden off to Kashi, waiting just off the ramp inside the hold.
Turning back down the ramp Beth saw the second settler, also a young girl, facing away from the shuttle. The girl was screaming and immobile, frozen in fear. Beth ran, but
she knew she was too far up the ramp to reach the girl in time. Beth yelled.
“No, damn it!”
The Gunny was closest to the girl, standing almost on the end of the ramp. The lead Marine quickly sized up the situation—the First Officer was too far up the ramp to help and the black shit was already reaching out for the helpless girl. Rosey swore under her breath.
“Fuck it.”
Rosey jumped from the ramp to the rocky hillside below. She landed heavily on her left leg, flexing to absorb the force of the landing. In a single continuous motion, she swung her left arm wide, scooping up the paralyzed girl and throwing her bodily into the shuttle.
Beth was halfway back down the ramp when the second girl came flying on board. She managed to catch the second survivor as she saw with horror that the black threads had reached the Gunny.
Thrown off balance, Rosey rolled on the ground. Under the weight of the heavy armor she struggled awkwardly to her feet. Back upright, she managed a single step in the direction of the ramp.
“Bobby, punch it!” Beth cried, realizing that there was nothing they could do for the Gunny and that the ravenous black threads would be on board the shuttle in another instant.
Bobby, with reflexes faster than a mongoose, rammed the forward thrusters to full even before Beth had finished speaking his name. The shuttle jumped from the ground at the same forty five degree angle it had been hovering at.
Beth held on to the second survivor, hugging the girl close to her armored chest. The view out the back of the shuttle's open cargo door showed the ground rapidly falling away. As the cargo ramp closed, a sea of roiling black threads seethed around the figure of Rosey Acuna.
The shuttle sped safely away, but the last thing Beth saw was burned into her mind—the Gunny's outstretched gauntleted hand, reaching out of the swarming blackness.
Bridge, Peggy Sue
“Peggy Sue, Shuttle One. We are headed for orbit with two, I repeat, two survivors from New Mecca.”
T'aafhal Legacy 1: Ghosts of Orion Page 27
