Call of Courage: 7 Novels of the Galactic Frontier

by C. Gockel

  “I flew past the combustion chamber still tethered outside the ship.”

  Parker was silent. He stared at the ceiling. Then he began to laugh, first a chuckle and then uncontrollably.

  Alvarez stepped back. He ran his right thumb to the magazine feeder, making sure he had shells. Alvarez raised his shotgun. “You better start telling the truth,” he said.

  “It’s all a big misunderstanding,” Parker said. “Before my transformation, I was afraid of the collective. I didn’t comprehend. What you see here is the result of my panicked reaction. When my helmet cracked, I knew I was exposed. I also knew the rest of the ship was too. So being the senior officer, I confined everyone to their quarters. Then I sealed their doors shut. John, I hoped you could save the ship if I could just halt the contagion. I was too afraid to kill myself, and knowing that I would do harm to the crew, I attempted to confine myself—ultimately a futile effort.”

  “It seems to be working so far,” Alvarez said.

  “Not for long.” Then Parker’s body emanated an energetic glow, the same way Terra York’s had. Alvarez looked at his wrist console. The air temperature was dropping.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Alvarez said.

  “I’m getting up off the floor. The heat in this room, the energy you so wastefully disperse—in my present form, I’m able to reconstitute it. I can rebuild my body to make it greater, to make it stronger.” One of Parker’s hands pulled itself free from the epoxy. His spacesuit ripped, revealing gray skin.

  “John we don’t have to be enemies. Unlike York, I’m glad to help you transform. To join the collective.”

  “No, thanks,” Alvarez said. “I’m more of a loner.”

  Parker pulled his other arm free. Using both hands, he pressed down on the floor, raising his upper body.

  “This is your last warning,” Alvarez said. “Stay put, or…”

  “You’ll kill me?” Parker interrupted. “Haven’t you figured this out yet, John? You can’t kill us.” Parker leaned forward. The spacesuit tore demonstrating his unhuman strength.

  Alvarez pulled the trigger. Parker’s glass helmet shattered as the lead shot disfigured his face. Alvarez fired three more time before Parker’s body went limp.

  Alvarez walked over and looked at the dead body. Parker was right. He didn’t kill him; he destroyed him. There was a difference.

  There was no blood, but it didn’t look like a drained cadaver. It didn’t look like meat. The flesh was like clay—hard, gray clay.

  Alvarez tried to access the navigator’s console. It was frozen. No response. Maybe a voice command, he thought.

  “Computer, prepare message dictation. Sender: Colonel John Alvarez. Destination: Novos Corp Central Headquarters. Attention: General McKinley.”

  Alvarez expected the usual compliant chirp, but the computer didn’t respond. He tried again. “Computer, run diagnostics.” Nothing.

  He went to the systems operator’s console. The screen showed life-support systems. He tried to alter the ventilation, just in case there was someone else alive. Someone still human. The computer wouldn’t accept his commands.

  How did this happen? he thought. How did this stuff get on to the ship?

  The thoughts lingered but didn’t produce answers. He was numb again. Not from fear this time, but from the sense of utter helplessness.

  Then it hit him. This was all because of Brennen. Brennen was careless in the probe. Brennen thought he knew it all before they even got there. Brennen assumed incorrectly that this stuff was organic and could be controlled or destroyed through conventional measures. Brennen came onboard the ship after getting exposed. It was Brennen’s fault.

  Alvarez’s anger swelled up inside. He slammed the console. “Brennen!”

  A calm voice answered, “Hello, John.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ALVAREZ SPUN IN a circle, his shotgun against his shoulder. I’m losing it? he thought.

  “John, I told you that you couldn’t kill me.”

  It was Brennen’s voice over the comm.

  “Where are you? How did you make it off the outpost?”

  “I’m here,” Brennen said.

  “On the Constance?”

  “In a matter of speaking, yes.”

  “What, you’re a ghost now?”

  “You have such a limited imagination,” Brennen said. “You think a mind must be trapped in some fixed location, like your brain and body. The collective offers so much more. This power, this essence that can permeate bodies and intelligent machines alike, allows our consciousness to transfer from one entity and location to another. Most of us retain a body. But it’s unnecessary. This is quantum logic, John.”

  “Are you saying you’re in the computer?”

  “We’ve been in the computer, in my body, in those murdered beings’ bodies. We don’t simply abide in the computer; we are the computer. We merged when I came back from the probe. We tried to stop you on the outpost, John. Even when you destroyed my body, I gave you another chance.”

  “What are you talking about? You wouldn’t let me leave until I shot you.”

  “No John—the shuttle. Don’t you think that if we control the Constance’s computer, we also control the shuttle’s? It was exposed the whole time. We could have stopped you from leaving the outpost. But we wanted to give you another chance.”

  “I doubt it,” Alvarez said.

  “You don’t understand your position. Our essence is all over you. You brought it back with you. The only thing stopping us from changing you is your spacesuit. And John—let me tell you—your time is running out. How much more air and water do you have?”

  Alvarez looked on his wrist console. Brennen was right. He had plenty of water, but less than thirty minutes of oxygen.

  “I can just change them out,” Alvarez said. “We did it at the outpost. When Sarge’s tank wasn’t filled properly, we changed it. The vacuum seal keeps whatever contagion you call yourself from getting inside. Sarge kept his mind until the very end.”

  “That may be true, but you’re forgetting; I took the remaining tanks with me to the probe. They are still tethered out there.”

  “There’s gotta be an extra spacesuit with tanks around here somewhere,” Alvarez said.

  “I don’t think so. But even if I’m wrong—what good will that do you? A couple more hours before you’re right back where you started.”

  “So what,” Alvarez said. “At best this is a stalemate. What are you going to do? The engines are off-line. You can’t do anything about it, because you’re stuck in the machine. If I run out of air and asphyxiate, you’re no better off. Your consciousness is nothing but a bunch of ones and zeros at this point.”

  Brennen laughed. His digitized voice briefly blipped in error. “You’re not the only body on board. We still have eight servicemen in their barracks.”

  “Yeah, and they’re stuck there too,” Alvarez said. “Those doors only open manually, and they’re locked from the corridor side. The computer can’t do a thing about it.”

  “Wrong again,” Brennen said. “You saw Parker and York. Our members are able to channel energy from their environment, to feed on what you life-forms waste. As we speak, I’m diverting ventilation, sending as much heat to those barracks as possible. They will channel this energy into mass, muscle, and power until they’re able to break through those doors. It’s only a matter of time, John.”

  “It seems like you have three choices now,” Brennen continued. “One – take off your helmet and transform into something so much better than your pitiful existence. Two – wait around until those grunts bust through those doors and suffer the consequences—that shotgun won’t work as well on them as it did on me. Or three—and I’m betting on three—take the coward’s way out. Put the barrel in your mouth and pull the trigger.”

  Alvarez moved towards the door.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Brennen said. Alvarez didn’t answer.

&n
bsp; Lights and consoles started going out, room by room. Brennen must be channeling all of the energy into heating the barracks, he thought.

  Alvarez flicked on his light. Apparently, this simple circuitry was out of Brennen’s reach. In the corridor, he passed the two barracks. The thumping had stopped. He imagined the grunts standing in the barracks absorbing energy like he saw York and Parker do.

  He headed towards the cargo bay. As he stepped over what remained of York’s body, his light attached to his gun barrel flickered. It was spotty. He was amazed it still worked after having banged it against York’s head. He couldn’t help but visualize York’s nearly decapitated body rising up and chasing him. Fortunately, he thought, even this nightmare has limitations.

  He reached the docking bay and entered the shuttle. “It’s a long shot,” he said. He ordered the shuttle’s computer to open the bay doors. No bleep. No response.

  “John, do you think I’m an idiot?” Brennen said over the comm. “You getting here on the shuttle was no accident. You’re not leaving.”

  Alvarez smashed the shuttle console with the butt of his shotgun and walked out in disgust. The bay doors were controlled by the computer, and there was no manual over-ride.

  He walked back into the corridor. He was stuck, and he knew it. There in the darkness, he heard the return of loud metallic clangs . He shined his light at the barracks door. It was starting to dimple. With each punch, the bulge grew larger.

  As usual, Brennen was right. Alvarez needed to make a choice. He reloaded his magazine. Six in the tube. More than twenty still in the bandolier.

  Brennen had said there were eight grunts locked up. Alvarez figured Thomson was in there, too. Alvarez pulled the Mossberg tightly to his chest. He didn’t have enough shells or reload-time to get them all. I’ll take as many with me as I can, he thought.

  He considered defensive positions, ways to slow them down, ways to give himself time to reload. There wasn’t much to work with. He thought about barricading a door, but with what? Something that could punch through steel wouldn’t be stopped by a few cargo boxes.

  The pounding grew louder. He saw the hinges start to give way.

  Alvarez checked his wrist console. Brennen had pumped so much heat into those barracks, it caused the atmospheric mix in the rest of the ship to be even more untenable. Alvarez didn’t know how long it took to transform into one of those monsters, but if it was more than mere seconds, he would asphyxiate before changing. Now he couldn’t take off his helmet if he wanted to.

  Besides, some things were worse than death. Life at any cost, was no life at all. Alvarez wasn’t even sure the collective was alive. Joining them meant the worst kind of death.

  Option three was off the table. He wouldn’t kill himself unless it meant saving someone else. He’d take a bullet for his family, even his crew. But not just to avoid pain. No way. Suicide was total defeat. He would consider it only if he thought they would use his body to get to Nadia and Adam. Maybe he should save the last shell, just in case.

  That left option two. He would fight. He said a quick prayer. Then he began to focus his mind on the task at hand. He didn’t think about his odds. He didn’t think about those monsters or what they could do to him. His job, he knew, was to extinguish his fear.

  Something broke his concentration. It wasn’t fear or self-doubt. Something legitimate ate at him, begged for his attention. He yielded to the thought: there’s another option .

  At his feet was the small hatch to the service shaft.

  “That’s it,” he said.

  Brennen had missed Parker’s post-design addition. It was off the computer’s schematics.

  Alvarez got on his hands and knees. He removed his shotgun, bandolier, and propulsion pack and slid them forward into the narrow passageway.

  As he entered the hatch, Brennen said, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Alvarez continued sliding feet-first. He closed the hatch door, sealing it from within and said, “I never liked multiple choice tests.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  THE SERVICE SHAFT was tighter than Alvarez had hoped. It was no wonder York, the smallest crew member, had been tasked with squeezing in there.

  He snaked around components and parts. He didn’t know their names or their purposes. It was so tight in places he could barely raise his head.

  As he pushed his gear down the shaft with his feet, his bandolier repeatedly became hung on hoses and cables. He had to pack his legs tightly around the blockage until he could reach and untangle the mess with his hands.

  Progress was torturously slow. If he didn’t know that the shaft opened up where the combustion chamber should be, he would have felt defeated—like a scared, wounded animal trying to find a hole to crawl up in and die.

  Instead, he was charged with exhilaration. He tingled all over. He only had a half-baked idea, but it was his only real shot at stopping these monsters.

  His headlamp worked, but he struggled to see. His eyes couldn’t adjust to the contrast of intensely bright objects nearby and the distant shadows.

  Alvarez just hoped he could remember what he saw Terra York do. More metallic thuds came from the main corridor. The grunts are loose, he thought.

  “John, you can’t hide forever,” Brennen said over the comm. “We know where you are.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t know what I’m doing.”

  The corridor hatch continued to ring from the grunts’ punches. Alvarez neared where the combustion chamber should have been. The shaft opened up, allowing him to lift himself. Almost instantly, he spotted the energy-transfer coupling. It was still disengaged, just as he had seen it with Parker and York.

  The coupling was suspended from mounts above and below but was disconnected on either of its sides. The combustion chamber should have been connected on the side facing Alvarez. But that wasn’t important.

  What mattered to Alvarez was on the other side where the coupling should connect to the conduit extending from the main reactor. Alvarez could move more easily now, but he encountered a new problem. AG didn’t extend out this close to the hull.

  He needed tools. He instinctually looked down but didn’t find any until he looked up. He grabbed a wrench floating in the corner and started to refasten the seal between the conduit and energy-transfer coupling. The wrench zinged .

  “What was that?”

  “You’ve got good ears for a computer chip,” Alvarez said.

  “You can’t hide in there forever.”

  “Almost done,” Alvarez said.

  The job complete, the energy-transfer coupling began to whine low. It was quiet at first but soon screeched high and loud.

  “What have you done now?” Brennen said.

  The pounding on the hatch grew louder. “What is that ?” Brennen said.

  “You’re the computer,” Alvarez said. “You tell me.”

  “There’s an error in the engines.”

  “That’s an error alright,” Alvarez said. “And like all errors, this one has consequences.”

  Alvarez positioned himself against the outer hatch as far away from the energy-transfer coupling as possible. Not only was it louder, but it emitted some sort of electromagnetic field that was disorienting. Alvarez couldn’t maintain his visual focus. He felt he was falling, but in no specific direction.

  “This trick isn’t going to work, John. My only regret in killing you is that you won’t live to see the day when I’m reunited with Nadia.”

  “Goodbye, Michael.” Alvarez adjusted his wrist console, shutting off the comm. He was through with Michael Brennen, or whatever he was now.

  He strapped on the propulsion pack along with the bandolier of shells. He wrapped the Mossberg’s sling tightly around his right forearm. He didn’t know what possible good it could do him now, but it seemed like his only torch in an unending, cavernous maze. He couldn’t drop it.

  With his left hand, he grabbed the wheel to open the outer hatch and said, “This isn�
��t going to be pretty.”

  Two swift turns later, the hatch blew off. Alvarez jettisoned into space, traveling five-G’s-fast and tumbling wildly.

  He looked at his wrist console. The view behind his hand was nauseating. His propulsion banks were nearly depleted. He initiated the auto-stabilizer to stop the stars from spinning. His jets tapped in concert, putting on the brakes.

  No longer rolling, Alvarez was still traveling at a high rate of speed. He didn’t want to use up the last of his fuel, but if he did nothing he would either burn alive as he neared the star or zip off into nowhere. If he was going to die, he at least wanted to see Brennen go first. He made a couple of minor blasts to position himself and one hard blast to stop.

  Now only drifting, Alvarez scanned his surroundings. There was the asteroid and the Constance still attached to it. He was tempted to turn his headset back on. He wondered if Brennen would beg for help. But he knew better. His old friend with or without this contagion would be defiant to the very end.

  He wondered if the grunts could get through the door. He was sure they would. They were stronger now, but they were also larger. There was no way they could squeeze through that service shaft and stop the explosion in time.

  Then it happened; first a single fireball, then a larger explosion that surprised Alvarez, even though he had seen plenty of demolition. A boulder zipped past Alvarez.

  He knew the Constance would blow, but he didn’t realize it would take the asteroid out too. He saw three large sections of rock and countless smaller ones. They looked like dirt and sand to Alvarez, but he knew most were larger than he was. In the end, there was no sign the Constance had ever been there.

  It was finished. Alvarez had completed the mission. He knew he did the right thing. These monsters, this contagion, couldn’t hurt anyone else. Not now anyways. Nadia and Adam were safe.

  Victory turned to grief. He knew he would die out here—asphyxiate when his oxygen ran out. Worse than that, he was abandoning his family. Because of Alvarez’s work, Nadia had felt like a single parent for most of Adam’s life. Now she really was one. One last mission, one last time around on this soul-crushing ride called a career had cost him everything. He would spend his last minutes making peace with his maker and remembering his family.