‘Least they’ve got a sense of humour,’ Qayin muttered.
‘You can’t stop it,’ the Veng’en snapped at Evelyn. ‘Nothing can stop it. You’ve created the most dangerous form of life in the universe and now we all pay the price for your damned creativity.’ The Veng’en raised its head off the gurney to glare more directly at her. ‘If I were not lashed down I would tear out your throats.’
Evelyn held her ground.
‘We already defeated the Word,’ she informed the Veng’en.
‘I doubt that.’
‘The Avenger,’ she replied. ‘Commander Tyraeus Forge.’
The Veng’en’s eyes flickered in recognition of the name of a man who had defeated the Veng’en numerous times in battle. The creature’s eyes narrowed to thin slits.
‘If Forge is dead, then the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’
‘Forge was infected and he tested us in battle. He failed and was destroyed along with his ship because not enough of the true man remained. The Word can be defeated.’
‘How?’
‘Heat,’ Evelyn replied, ‘cold. Microwaves, fusion beams. Any number of temperature based weapons can push it back long enough for it to be contained.’
‘You cannot prevent the infections,’ the Veng’en uttered. ‘The Legion will always find a way.’
‘Which is what interests me,’ Evelyn replied. ‘You have been aboard this vessel for a long time. You’ve been fighting the cold which is why you’re weakened. Why did you shut off the power supply to all but emergency systems and basic life support?’
The Veng’en’s bared fangs twisted into what Evelyn feared was a gruesome attempt at a smile.
‘There was nothing to fear aboard this ship until you came aboard,’ he rasped.
‘I told you, we’re not here to hurt you and…’
‘You already have!’ the Veng’en snapped. ‘You’ve turned on the heating systems, have you not?’
‘Yes,’ Andaim replied, having slipped on his own resonator band. ‘We’re going to transfer supplies across to our ship.’
The Veng’en slowly shook his head.
‘The Legion is aboard,’ he snarled. ‘It’s in the engine rooms, huddling for warmth around the nacelles and exhaust systems. Only way to keep it there was to shut off the heat everywhere else.’
Andaim’s face fell as he whirled to the image of the captain on the viewing screen.
‘Quarantine the ship and shut off the heating!’
Bra’hiv turned to Qayin.
‘Head aft to the holds, get those civilians back into the shuttles and start shutting off bulkheads as fast as you can!’
Qayin whirled without question and dashed off the bridge.
‘That’s what I meant when I told you that you’d all die,’ the Veng’en snarled at Evelyn. ‘The Word will take you, and now there’s nothing left to stop it.’
***
‘Seal the damned landing bays!’
Andaim dashed onto the bridge with Evelyn in hot pursuit as C’rairn and two other Marines dashed to carry out the commander’s orders. Evelyn looked up to the engineering console where the Marine named Kyarl was manipulating the controls. Even as she did so she felt a fresh rush of warm air billowing into the bridge.
‘The general said to shut the heating down!’ Evelyn yelled at him.
Kyarl backed away from the console and unslung his rifle from his shoulder as Evelyn heard the pulse chamber hum into life.
‘Cover!’
Evelyn hurled herself behind the captain’s chair as Kyarl opened fire on her, the plasma round blasting the surface of the chair and sending a halo of super–heated shrapnel flashing past her.
Evelyn leaped up, resting her pistol across the back of the captain’s chair as she returned fire. Her shots blasted control panels behind the engineering station as Kyarl ducked down out of sight, Evelyn’s shots joined by several others as Andaim and the other Marines returned fire.
‘Come out, Kyarl!’ Andaim yelled. ‘It’s over! There’s nowhere to run!’
Evelyn felt a shudder of fear as she realised that the Marine must be harbouring Infectors, the tiny devices controlling his brain and his body.
‘Don’t shoot him!’ she yelled. ‘We need him alive!’
‘He’s infected!’ Bra’hiv bellowed back. ‘He needs to be incinerated!’
Evelyn dashed out from behind the captain’s chair and ran in a low crouch to the front of the engineering panel, then ducked down. She was roughly on the opposite side to where Kyarl had been standing, and she called out to him.
‘Kyarl, I know you’re not in control of yourself. Fight back, Kyarl, fight against it.’
A sniggering chuckle rattled out from behind the panel and the young soldier’s voice replied.
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re human, Kyarl,’ Evelyn replied, ‘you’re not a machine, not yet.’
‘Better to be a machine than like you,’ Kyarl said. ‘Weak, soft and powerless before your own creation.’
Evelyn saw Bra’hiv and Andaim working their way around the sides of the bridge, flanking Kyarl’s position.
‘There’s no other way out of this, Kyarl,’ Evelyn insisted. ‘You’re cornered.’
‘No,’ Kyarl replied, ‘you’re cornered and there’s no way out for you.’
‘You’re outnumbered,’ Bra’hiv snapped, ‘and surrounded.’
‘No, general,’ Kyarl said. ‘You are.’
It was the sound of Lael’s voice that replied, bursting from the bridge tannoy.
‘We’ve got movement in the engine bays,’
she said urgently.
‘Heat signatures growing there, about a half–dozen spherical masses on the move.’
Evelyn felt horror pulse cold and clammy through her veins as she realised that the Word was aboard the Sylph and was coming back to life.
‘Who infected you, Kyarl?’ Evelyn asked. ‘Who did this to you?’
‘We are legion,’ Kyarl intoned, ‘for we are many.’
Andaim broke cover and charged the engineering post, Bra’hiv mirroring his actions on the other side of the bridge. Kyarl opened fire, a single shot that burst from the engineering post in a flash of blue–white light. Andaim dove for cover as the round hissed past just above his shoulder, and Kyarl broke free.
Evelyn shouted at him. ‘Kyarl!’
The Marine turned, brought his weapon to bear on her, and Evelyn fired her pistol. The single shot, aimed at the Marine’s rifle, smashed into his hands and seared them in a blaze of plasma that severed one of them at the wrist.
Kyarl screamed where he stood, the plasma rifle falling from his grasp onto the deck in a cloud of sparks as his left arm smouldered at the wrist, ugly clouds of smoke spiralling from where his hand had been incinerated. Bra’hiv, Andaim and a pair of Marine troopers surged into position around Kyarl as he collapsed to his knees, clasping the stump where his left hand had once been and his face twisted in agony.
Evelyn lowered her pistol and watched as Kyarl, looking up at them all, suddenly relaxed. The pain melted away from his face and was replaced by a serene expression as though he were in the throes of bliss. She heard him sigh softly as she got to her feet.
‘What the hell’s happening to him?’ Andaim asked.
Evelyn approached Kyarl and suddenly she understood.
‘Pain killers,’ she said. ‘The Word is taking the pain away, messing with chemicals in his blood and his brain.’
Kyarl opened his eyes, this time looking directly at Evelyn. ‘Stand back, or he dies.’
In an instant she realised that it was not the young Marine that was speaking to her, but the Word itself. Evelyn was shocked to be addressed in such a way, as though Kyarl were a medium possessed by a ghost, which in some respects he was.
Evelyn took a pace back and holstered her pistol.
‘The Word is aboard the ship,’ she said urgently. ‘Call it off.’
Kyarl’s face melted into a grim rictus smile, as though he were trying to bend an iron bar with his lips alone. ‘The Word obeys no command from humans. Soon, you shall become one of us.’
‘Who infected you, Kyarl?’
‘There is no Kyarl,’ the Word spat back at her. ‘That name is history now.’
‘No, he is alive,’ Evelyn said, ‘and you are nothing but a disease.’
Kyarl’s face twisted with rage and then it suddenly folded in on itself in pain. Kyarl screamed in agony and flipped onto his side, his body curling up into a foetal ball. Evelyn stepped forward.
‘No!’
Kyarl’s body stopped writhing in pain but his chest heaved as he lay on the deck, his eyes staring vacantly into nothingness as he spoke.
‘Free him, or he dies.’
‘I can’t do that,’ Evelyn replied. ‘You give me no reason to let you escape us.’
‘There is no escape.’
‘Then why ask to?’ Evelyn countered. She took a chance and paced closer to Kyarl. ‘Is it because you are afraid?’
Kyarl screamed as his spine arched over backwards and his limbs shot straight out from his body and quivered as though live current were seething through his veins.
‘The Word fears no human!’ Kyarl screamed in distorted tones from between gritted teeth.
‘Yes,’ Evelyn uttered, ‘it does.’
She glimpsed both Bra’hiv and Andaim looking at her strangely, and then came Lael’s voice over the tannoy.
‘They’re on the move! You’ve got to get out of there!’
‘How can they be moving?’ Andaim asked. ‘It must still be cold down there.’
Bra’hiv raised his rifle and aimed at Kyarl’s head. ‘We don’t have time for this.’
‘No!’ Evelyn shouted and reached out to belay the general’s weapon. ‘We need him alive!’
‘For what?!’ Bra’hiv snapped. ‘He’s already dead, Evelyn, his mind’s gone.’
‘No it hasn’t,’ she insisted. ‘We need to quarantine him! We’ve got to find out who infected him.’
‘The general’s right, we don’t have time,’ Andaim said as he accessed the ship’s sensors and relayed the screen data onto the main viewing panel.
Evelyn looked up. A schematic of the ship in three–dimensions showed several tiny masses moving out of the engine bays and spreading slowly through the warming ship.
‘Sergeant Djimon, get down to the holds right now,’ Bra’hiv ordered, a microphone embedded in his ear detecting his speech and relaying it to his Marines. ‘Help Bravo Company seal the aft hatches.’
‘That’t won’t do anything,’ Evelyn said. ‘They’ll eat through the doors in moments. We need to draw them into one area and then evacuate the atmosphere. Once they’re outside the ship they’ll freeze and can be blasted to hell.’
It was Kyarl’s possessed voice that replied.
‘The Word will not expose itself,’ he chortled in macabre delight. ‘It will find its way here and it will destroy all of you.’
Evelyn looked at Bra’hiv. ‘Where’s Qayin?’
***
‘Seal the aft hatches, now!’
Qayin’s voice thundered like a salvo of the Atlantia’s guns as Bravo Company’s Marines hauled the pressure hatches shut and locked them, Tyrone giving Qayin a thumbs–up to confirm that the hatches were sealed.
Qayin turned to see dozens of civilians grabbing boxes of food stuff, canisters of water, tins and other supplies and queueing up to pass the containers through make–shift microwave scanners that would cleanse them of any Infectors that may have crawled inside. His sharp eyes picked up on the crates of alcohol stacked alongside the foodstuffs at the same time as Tyrone’s.
‘Well what do we have here?’ Tyrone purred as his hand rested on a crate of drinks.
Qayin hesitated as he saw what Tyrone was looking at. ‘Make it fast,’ he ordered. ‘Stock up and get the hell out of here.’
Tyrone began stuffing bottles down his fatigues along with several of his companions. They were busily liberating the stock when Alpha Company’s men burst into the holds.
‘Move it along!’ Djimon shouted, his big voice booming across the civilians as they filed out of the hold. ‘If it hasn’t been scanned, drop it and leave it!’
Bravo Company’s marines scattered through the hold, their boots thundering on the decks as Qayin shouted out to his men.
‘Grab what you can! Alcohol gets the highest price!’
Djimon whirled to face Qayin. ‘Belay that order! We’re out of here, right now!’
‘Go to hell,’ Qayin replied with a bright grin. ‘You’re not in charge here!’
‘And you’re not in control,’ Sergeant Djimon shot back, ‘of yourself or of your men. The Legion’s coming for’ard, we need to leave now!’
‘We’re ready for them,’ Qayin uttered without concern as he examined an immaculate bottle of Etherean wine. ‘I ain’t going to start running from a bunch of little machines. Are you, Djimon?’
Djimon aimed his rifle at the rear of the hold as he began backing away. ‘You’re damned right I am.’
The Marines of Bravo Company hesitated for a moment as they saw the big sergeant easing his way toward the hold exits.
‘Looks like big bad Djimon is a technophobe boys!’ Qayin chuckled.
Qayin saw Bravo Company’s marines faltering, some of them grabbing boxes and tins as they moved.
‘Drop that stuff!’ Djimon snapped. ‘It hasn’t been scanned!’
‘Hell it ain’t,’ Tyrone said as he dashed for’ard and grabbed a bottle of dark liquor. ‘Cleanest I’ve ever seen! Man, I ain’t had me a belly full of gut–rot for months now!’
Qayin saw the threat and his tone changed as he called out.
‘Tyrone, fall back now!’
Tyrone’s smile was bright and his one good eye sparkled in the overhead lights as he ignored Qayin and picked up a large canteen of liquor, but suddenly he seemed to be in shadow. Qayin glanced up and saw the lights above him obscured by a mass that moved like liquid across its surface, hidden in Tyrone’s blind side.
‘Tyrone, move, now!’
The Marine looked confused, and then he looked up.
‘Run!’
Tyrone got one boot in front of himself, the canteen of liquor falling from his hand at the same moment that mass of black Hunter bots dropped away from the light and crashed down upon him like black coal.
Tyrone stared at Qayin, the nanites coating his face and his upper body, and then he looked down at his hands and a terrible scream erupted from his mouth, a keening wail of agony that soared high into the holds as Tyrone’s hands dissolved before his very eyes with a hissing, crunching sound of countless tiny mandibles.
Tyrone clawed at his face and his chest as the thick coating of Hunters burrowed deep into his skin, plunging into his cheeks as black cavities were torn into his face. Tyrone’s skin vanished, his flesh consumed as his face turned in moments into a skull, his scream cut short as the bots flooded into his throat. Tyrone’s legs quivered, his arms twitching as his uniform dissolved and his flesh broke down. His arms fell from his body to thump onto the deck, his blood spilling from thousands of lesions to float in scarlet globules on the air.