‘What the hell are you doing?!’ the captain roared.
Evelyn did not reply as she opened the lid of the chamber and turned it over. There, a large magnet sat in a cradle attached to the chamber lid. Evelyn removed the magnet, checked its polarity, and then strode back across to Meyanna’s body and laid the magnet down on her belly.
Evelyn looked across at the laboratory’s glass doors, where Meyanna had scrawled the word
evolved
before passing out.
‘You say that you’re smarter than us,’ she said to the Word, ‘but you
are
us. We created you, and thus you have something inside of you that you cannot fight.’
‘Such as?’ the Word spat.
‘The will to live,’ Evelyn smiled down. ‘That
swarm
mentality of yours only works until you get into a human host, doesn’t it? You’re machines up to that point, but then you plug into our minds and suddenly you’ve got just a little bit of human about you.’ Evelyn leaned closer. ‘And that means that you don’t want to die, do you?’
Meyanna’s face remained impassive. ‘You couldn’t possibly know what I feel.’
‘Then let’s find out.’
Evelyn activated the scanner and Meyanna’s body writhed as she screamed in agony, the microwaves heating the Infectors swarming inside her body and frying their internal circuitry.
‘Evelyn!’
Evelyn ignored the captain’s cry as she held the scanner in place, directing the invisible energy at Meyanna’s neck.
She shut the scanner off and Meyanna slumped, her skin sheened with sweat and her eyes rolled up in their sockets as her eyelids fluttered.
‘How does that feel?’ Evelyn asked.
‘You’ll kill her,’ Kordaz said, holding the other scanner.
‘Maybe not,’ Evelyn said. ‘Zap her from your side, and make sure you hit her neck and that you’re pointing the scanner down toward her legs.’
Kordaz obeyed and Meyanna shrieked as the scanner activated, her body stiffening as though live current were blazing through her veins. Her cry strangled off as she reached the limit of what she could take.
‘Stop,’ Evelyn said.
Kordaz deactivated the scanner. Evelyn watched Meyanna for a moment. Her face was slick with sweat and flushed with colour, but her expression seemed somewhat less twisted with malice than before.
‘They’re fleeing, just like they did inside Kyarl,’ Evelyn said. ‘Aim the scanners at her chest but keep them pointing down at her feet.’
Kordaz obeyed, activating his scanner at the same time as Evelyn as they blasted Meyanna’s body once more. Meyanna writhed and squirmed in agony but with less vigour than before as Evelyn and Kordaz worked the scanners.
‘Now move so we’re facing each other,’ Evelyn said as she moved to stand alongside Meyanna’s belly.
Kordaz mirrored Evelyn’s movements and they held the scanners in place. Meyanna’s writhing continued, her stomach muscles contracting and flexing as her back arched and then her legs tried to fold up.
‘The stomach,’ Kordaz realised. ‘You’re herding them there, toward the magnet.’
‘And the acid,’ Evelyn replied. ‘If they can’t survive the bacteria and acid in Veng’en saliva, then they won’t be able to survive the hydrochloric acid in the human stomach.’
Evelyn jumped quickly around to Meyanna’s feet and began moving the scanner up her legs, to eradicate any Infectors still swarming in the doctor’s bloodstream. Kordaz stayed in place as Meyanna’s legs twitched and her muscles flickered with movement as the Infectors were flushed or burned where they flowed in her blood.
Evelyn held the scanner in place over Meyanna’s belly for a few more moments and then she shut it off.
‘Help me wire her up,’ she said.
Kordaz grabbed a saline drip. ‘I can do this.’
Evelyn recalled that the Veng’en had learned as much about human biology during their many conflicts as humans had learned about theirs. Within a couple of minutes Meyanna was still unconscious but stable, her heartbeat reading normal and her body temperature dropping.
‘She is clean,’ Kordaz said finally. ‘Enough so that we will be able to scan her again with the full force of the microwaves to remove any last Infectors without killing her.’
‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ Evelyn said as she glanced at the bed where Andaim lay and then turned to the captain. ‘We’ll do the same to Andaim, and then you must scan this entire laboratory and sick bay at full power with all of us inside. Only then will we be sure that we’re clear.’
The captain’s features were taut with concern.
‘Evelyn,’ he said, ‘your face.’
Evelyn looked at herself in a mirror and saw dark blood trickling from her nose. She wiped it away on her sleeve.
‘It’s normal,’ she replied. ‘It’s what happened the last time the Word tried to infect me. It’ll pass.’
She grabbed her microwave scanner and joined Kordaz alongside Andaim’s bed. To her surprise the lieutenant looked up at her through drooping eyelids, his expression riven with dismay.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he rasped, ‘that you were immune all this time?’
‘I’ll explain later,’ she said as she laid the magnet on Andaim’s belly. ‘You ready?’
‘We wouldn’t be going through this if you’d told us,’ he whispered.
Evelyn looked at Kordaz, who nodded.
Andaim cried out as the scanners activated, and to Evelyn’s distress despite his pain he remained conscious throughout the entire procedure, writhing and thrashing as the dreaded machines were forcibly burned or flushed into his stomach to dissolve.
As soon as she was sure that his vital organs were safe, Evelyn called out to the doctors.
‘Do it, now!’
Within minutes the laboratory was drenched in microwave energy. Evelyn sat on the deck with her arms pulled tight around her knees, her ankles tucked in against her thighs as she rallied against the pain seething through her veins. Opposite her, Kordaz sat in a similar pose but showed no evidence of any pain but for the turbulent rippling of pigments beneath his leathery skin, coils and whorls of vibrant, aggressive colour that betrayed his suffering.
Evelyn finally felt the pain ease and fade away, and she got up and walked across to Meyanna’s side and saw her open her eyes, a faint smile touching her lips.
‘You did good,’ the doctor said, her voice weak.
‘I did what I could,’ Evelyn replied. ‘I got lucky that it worked. You could see everything, hear everything?’
Meyanna nodded. ‘Everything. It’s like being in a prison, watching your own life pass by, hearing your own voice and seeing your own body moving but totally unable to control what’s happening. It’s horrific, Evelyn: people are still
alive
while they’re infected.’
Evelyn shivered as she thought of Dhalere, or of Tyraeus Forge, human beings incarcerated as their bodies were overcome and transformed into horrific charicatures of human beings, their flesh consumed, their brains poisoned.
Meyanna tried to sit up but she was too weak, her brain’s signals not yet fully reconnecting with the rest of her body after being intercepted for so long by the Word. She slumped back onto her pillows as Evelyn sat beside her and waited for the scans to be completed.
‘We’ll have lost all of the Infectors,’ Meyanna said. ‘I won’t be able to study them any more.’
‘We’ve got the data on file I’m sure,’ Evelyn replied. ‘And anyway, we know how to protect ourselves against them now. Once you’ve solved the mystery of why I’m immune, we can vaccinate and concentrate on bigger fish.’
‘Such as?’
‘I caught a Hunter,’ Evelyn replied with a devious smile. ‘It’s in lock down in engineering as we speak.’
Meyanna managed to prop herself up this time. ‘It’s aboard?’
‘Right now,’ Evelyn replied. ‘Don’t worry, they’re not replicators. They don’t build themselves – the Infectors do all of the building work.’
‘They’re still dangerous.’
‘Together, yes,’ Evelyn replied. ‘But on their own they seem to fall dormant. It’s like they don’t have any instructions so they do nothing. Maybe it’s run out of power.’
Evelyn sighed as she felt her own shoulders sag, as though she herself were running out of power too.
‘You’re exhausted,’ Meyanna observed. ‘When did you last get some sleep?’
An alarm sounded and Evelyn heard the sound of the microwave scanners outside the sick bay being shut down. Moments later the sick bay doors opened and the captain hurried through. He strode past Andaim’s bed with barely a glance, and Evelyn stood to give him space as he dropped like a stone by his wife’s side.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘Can you speak? Can your move your hands and legs and…’
‘I’m fine,’ Meyanna smiled, rallying fast.
The captain enveloped his wife in a deep embrace and then he stood and looked at Evelyn. ‘You keep coming to the rescue.’
‘You keep dropping us all in the crap.’
The captain grinned at her and then looked at Andaim. The commander was also recovering quickly, propping himself up on his elbow and guzzling from a canteen of water.
‘When you’ve finished your nap we need you on the bridge, commander,’ the captain snapped. ‘We’re not out of this yet.’
‘You knew,’ Andaim said, and gestured to Evelyn. ‘You knew that she was immune and you didn’t tell any of us.’
‘There was a carrier aboard,’ the captain replied. ‘If we’d broadcast Evelyn’s immunity to the ship, especially before we know how it worked, she might have become a target for the carrier.’
‘Might have,’ Andaim echoed as he clambered off the bed.
The commander wobbled on his legs and the captain leaped forward and steadied him.
‘Evelyn and her immunity would have been no good to us if she were to die,’ Idris insisted, grasping Andaim’s shoulders tightly. ‘There is not much that I keep from you, but this had to remain covert until we knew what was going on, and how these damned nanobots worked.’
Andaim righted himself, his balance slowly returning. ‘And do we?’
The captain looked at Meyanna, who managed a brief nod.
‘I’ve got some ideas,’ she replied. ‘Nothing concrete yet but I’m getting there.’
Meyanna looked across at Kordaz, who was watching the entire exchange with interest.
‘It’s a long story,’ Evelyn explained, ‘again.’ She turned to the captain. ‘We jumped into super–luminal didn’t we? Where are we going?’
Idris straightened his uniform.
‘Into battle,’ he replied. ‘Get yourselves sorted and report to the bridge in twenty minutes. We don’t have long.’
***
‘Status?’
The captain walked onto the bridge as the Executive Officer strode down from the observation platform to meet him.
‘We’re within a few minutes of our destination, sir,’ Mikhain replied. ‘Plasma batteries are fully charged, all ray shielding generators are repaired and running at maximum efficiency. The ship is locked down for battle and the Raythons are being repaired, refuelled and rearmed as we speak.’
Idris climbed the steps to the command platform and stood beside his chair for a moment, thinking long and hard about what had happened in the last few frenetic hours.
‘We are vulnerable,’ he said finally.
‘That’s understandable sir,’ Mikhain replied. ‘The Veng’en cruiser is much larger and more powerful than us and…’
‘I’m not talking about the Veng’en,’ Idris said. He sighed and turned to face the XO. ‘I mean we’re vulnerable in that all of our assets are in the one place, here aboard Atlantia. If we were overrun by the Word, or cornered by Veng’en warships, we could lose everything in one fell swoop.’
Mikhain watched the captain for a moment and Idris could see in the XO’s eyes that he had no good solution.
‘We lost everything when the Word took Ethera and Caneeron,’ Mikhain replied finally. ‘This one ship is all that we have.’
‘No,’ Idris said. ‘We found the Sylph. Before the Veng’en destroyed her she could have been cleaned somehow, could have become a support vessel. We could maybe even have armed her, doubled our strength.’
‘You’re saying you want to build a fleet?’ Mikhain asked. ‘We barely have the manpower to maintain this ship, let alone another one alongside her. Who will crew and command such a vessel?’
Idris sat down in his chair and looked at the black and featureless viewing panel, devoid of light during super–luminal travel.
‘We determined that we would travel home,’ he said, ‘that we would not run away from the Word any longer. But alone the Atlantia is no match for the colonial fleet now under the Word’s command. Even a pair of cruisers could defeat us without too much trouble no matter how clever we think we are. If Ty’ek was more experienced, he could have used his cruiser to crush us within moments of his arrival.’
Mikhain frowned. ‘So you’re saying maybe we shouldn’t go home?’
‘I’m saying that we should not go home alone.’
Mikhain sighed. ‘We could seach the cosmos for eternity and not find any survivors. They would have scattered with all the same haste that we did to the sixty points of the celestial compass. They’ll be separated by light years, hiding on other worlds and determined not to be found by the Word. If they see us, they’ll assume the Atlantia’s infected and remain hidden.’
‘Perhaps,’ the captain acknowledged, ‘but we have to assume that despite the scale of our demise, others too must have survived. Especially other prison ships.’
The captain saw Mikhain’s expression darken.
‘We got lucky, sir,’ he said. ‘The others, if they still exist, might have been overrun by their convicts or drifted into deep space. Any that remain are unlikely to want to assist us and head back into the teeth of the enemy.’
‘They may not have much choice if the Word continues to spread. If the Veng’en are already fighting for their lives, what’s to stop the Word overwhelming the entire galaxy? There could be countless civilisations that we’ve never heard of or seen before who will fall prey to it.’
‘The universe is a big place, sir,’ Mikhain replied, ‘with lots of places to hide.’
‘Yes it is,’ Idris agreed, ‘and how do you’ll think we’ll fare as every living species cowers in hiding over something that
we
created? Every living thing will know what
we
have done. Humanity won’t live to see the outcome, Mikhain, because we’ll be hunted into extinction by every other race that encounters us.’