Blighted Star (18 page)

Reducing
the power to the AG’s Lana let the altitude unwind and the shuttle settled down
into the darkness. The starlight gave a faint sheen to the land below, and Lana
became aware of dots down there, many of them. Losing a little more height she
could see what the others were seeing, a large crowd of people, moving slowly
through the grassland. Beside her, Patel tilted the cannon until it pointed at
the empty sky, and reset the safety switch.

“Fuck,
what now?” he turned frightened eyes to hers. “I mean, what the fuck’s
happening now?”

Lana
hovered lower, dropping to five or so metres above the ground, a little in
front of the leading elements of the crowd. They watched in silence as the
figures advanced.

“Shit…
look at their faces…” Grad was leaning over her shoulder, and once again his
better night vision picked out the details before hers did. After a few
moments, she could see what he meant. Not a single one of the figures which
staggered towards them out of the shadows had eyes, the faces quested in their
direction, but each had empty sockets where their orbs had been. Patel gripped
the cannon, once more swinging it down to point at the crowd. Next to her, Grad
began to gag in the toxic atmosphere. Lana guided the craft back into the sky.

“Lieutenant,
what do you want me to do?” Patel aimed at the closest figure.

“Wait
Patel, just wait.”

“Jackson,
those people are dead. They’re might be moving, but they are dead.” the
hardness in Grad’s voice shocked Lana.

“How
can that be? Think what you’re saying. They are walking towards us, how can
they be dead? They need our help.”

“Jackson,
that’s a mistake. We’ve just been chased all over the fucking planet by a dead
horse, and I’m telling you, those people are just as dead.” 

“Whatever
their status, we can’t just fire on them. We need to quarantine them. Let them
come forward, we’ll meet them half way. We’ll try addressing them first, see if
we can get them to stop.”

“Whatever
you’re going to do, do it soon. They can’t be allowed to get closer to the
town, what if they’re infected or something?”

“Yes,
I know. Just stand by, will you? Lana, please could you keep in contact?”

Lana
backed the craft slowly away from the moving mass below, keeping constantly
just ahead of them. Repulsive as the thought might seem, she felt that Grad was
surely right. Some instinct within her told her that the human shapes below
carried a threat they would have to stamp out, or die themselves. She hoped
that Jackson’s attempt to communicate might prevail, knew in her heart it 
would not. She positioned the craft where she could intervene.

The
organism had grown immensely in power and capability. Now adapted to the way
its new hosts were constructed, it was able to possess each one as economically
as possible, devouring in its initial onslaught only those parts it would not
need for locomotion or integrity. Muscle and bone was reserved, fatty tissue,
brain, skin and offal was consumed. The agents it thus created were better
suited to its purpose, for they moved with less staggering, could sustain
themselves for far longer, were in every way better hunters. Leaving the
shelter of the lake, it extended its new larger body into a wide line from
which prey would find it harder to escape.

Now
it needed to annex flesh in large quantities in order to enter its final phase,
a phase it had been denied for millennia, starved and clinging to existence in
the bodies of the worms of the planet. At last it had the chance to once more
fulfil its life cycle.

In
the near distance was the pulsing source of life which drew it, another large
concentration like the one it had captured the night before. In the space
between, though, was another small grouping of the life beacons flaming in the
dark. The organism extended itself on each side, instinct making it canny
enough not to attempt a frontal attack, which would surely end in a lengthy
pursuit of the swift-footed prey. The agents which made up its body were too
slow for that. Dormant behaviour honed when the planet had teemed with rugged
life forms governed the organism’s actions once more. Like an amoeba stalking its
prey, the vast entity flowed forward across the plain.

<><><> 

Jackson
jogged forward, his comms registering the increasing toxicity of the air and
the disposition of the red dots. Boots thudding on the soft ground they closed
rapidly on the advancing line, which now became visible as dark figures
silhouetted against the meagre mist of the dead of night.

At
fifty metres they halted before the dark host, and while the men readied their
weapons, Jackson set the voice control on the side of his respirator to
maximum. He took a breath, then his voice boomed out across the grass.

“Stop!
Stay where you are! Something terrible has happened to you, and we will help
you. but you must not come any closer. We will help you here.”

The
advancing line of corpses stopped.

“Fuck!
It worked!” Hernandez’s outburst broke the silence, Jackson shook his masked
head at the trooper.

At
the far edges, the line of the dead crept forward and turned in, the men formed
a nervous circle as they became surrounded. The silent dead kept their
distance.

“Sir!
What are we doing?” the panic in the man’s tone was infectious. Jackson threw
some authority into his voice.

“Hold
fast.” On the display he could see that they were now totally hemmed in.

“Jackson!
What are you doing? Look on your display!” Grad’s shouted warning grated on
Jackson’s ears. Jackson set his jaw.

“Stay
exactly where you are! We want to help you, but you must not come any closer!”

The
dead stepped closer.

“Sir?”

“Keep
back!”

“Sir!
Please!”

The
horde was now closing in fast. Jackson raised his targe gun and aimed at the
first rank.

“Back!
We will fire!”

The
nearest of the corpses was now only a dozen metres away.

“Fire!”

 `The
twelve targe guns all spat repeatedly, each flashing a tiny, bright but
harmless beam of light to indicate the track of the deadly, but invisible
blasts of energy. Each time they fired, a hole was punched a centimetre in
diameter through everything in their path up to a distance of one hundred
metres. The dead staggered under the fire, a fog of vaporised flesh started to
build.

Jackson
took careful aim on the shoulder of an advancing body. The details of the
rotting clothing seemed oddly familiar, and Jackson had the uncomfortable
feeling that had known the man, though the face was far from being
recognisable. The targe gun took a second to charge, a second which seemed to
drag out for a lifetime then the gun spoke and the man’s shoulder disappeared
in an expanding puff of smoke and steam. The arm dangled uselessly and the
corpse swayed a little to the left. Behind it, the same shot had bitten out a
circular channel from the head of the cadaver behind. Both corpses walked on
towards him.

Above
him, the twenty opened up, shedding blinding streaks of light from the air to
all around the small knot of soldiers. It fired the twelve shots it had stored
in rapid succession, then stopped to charge up. Like the targe guns they held,
and like most of their other equipment on Saunder’s World, the guns were
Scavenger Tech, drawing power from their surroundings, in the form of sunlight
or starlight, electromagnetic fields from the planet itself, even from the
surplus body heat of the operator. Excellent for long range missions where
resupply with consumable power sources wasn’t possible, but with a weakness in
rapid fire situations like the one they were in now.

The
fire from the twenty had slowed them down. The man Jackson had fired on was now
merely a pair of legs, smoke trailing up from the truncated waist. As Jackson
watched, the legs went down on one knee. Another of the walking dead stepped
past, then another. Jackson got a final view of the legs straightening back up
and resuming their advance before the sight was lost behind the press.

He
realised with a cold shock that they would not be able to hold back the closing
crowd at the rate of fire they could put up. That they could do no more than
postpone the inevitable. As he realised this, the skids of the descending
shuttle dropped down to hover just above their helmets.

“Grab
on!” Grad’s shout drowned in a fit of coughing and retching. The men, startled,
reached up and got as strong a hold as they could. The dead, as if sensing the
escape of their victims, surged forward. Jackson felt hands clutch at his legs
as he hauled himself up to safety. He kicked his feet as hard as he could,
actually gaining the impetus to drag himself onto the cargo deck from the
impacts of his feet on the clutching hands. The other men were still hauling
themselves in as the shuttle rose. Grad collapsed in the corner, next to the
already collapsed body of the engineer. Blood was trickling from the pilot’s
mouth. He lay still.

One
of his men was yelling in fear as he dangled from the frame of the shuttle.
Jackson crossed the steel deck and grabbed the man’s sleeves just below the
wrist. He started to pull, looking down, he could see that Sanchez’ legs were
in the grip of one of the monsters. As Jackson watched, the corpse drew back
one hand, pointing the bony claw, then drove it forward, punching a hole
through the fabric and into Sanchez’ calf. The creature dropped free and fell
into the dark.

Sanchez’s
leg thrashed, nearly pulling him from Jackson’s grasp. He opened his mouth and
screamed and screamed. Spittle flew onto Jackson’s mask. Sanchez bucked, nearly
pulling him overboard, Jackson took a better grip on the bare flesh of the
trooper’s wrists. He glanced round, calling for help, but everyone else was
lying gasping on the deck. He looked back and a fearful change was coming over
Sanchez’ face. Giving a final scream, it erupted in boils and blisters. The
eyes bulged, whitening and bursting, and the nose collapsed as if the features
had been bathed in a strong acid. Sanchez went limp. Jackson involuntarily let
go, as the dead soldier slipped through his fingers, one of the withering hands
gave a spasm and clutched at him.

It
merely brushed the end of his fingers, but instantly the mass of nerve endings
in the fingertips brought a message as if they had been seared with burning
heat. He staggered back, staring in horror as blisters ran the length of his
fingers and formed on the skin of the back of his hand.

He
reached down with his other hand and pulled the combat knife from his boot,
feeling as if his arm was being immersed from the fingers up in a vat of molten
metal, he brought the knife down on the flesh just below the elbow and sawed
back and forth. The exotic alloy the blade was composed of took no time or
effort to lop free the infected limb, and the weird throbbing dullness of the
amputation was actually a relief after the agony he had been in. A fountain of
blood sprayed into the air, but this was quickly reduced by the nanos in his
veins. With the last of his strength booted the fallen limb, it skidded across
the deck and flopped overboard. Jackson sat down with a thud and passed out.

<><><> 

Watching
the action from the safety of Cassini, Athena felt a sudden metallic taste as
her bitten lip burst. She had seen the way the dead had surrounded Jackson’s
men. It looked all too much like a conscious act of co-ordinated will. What
were they facing? There had been no lake monsters present at the scene, unless
they were invisible… Perhaps the people had in some way become possessed, she
could feel the word zombie creeping at the back of her mind, but she was
supposed to be a rational scientist, wasn’t she? Whatever the creatures were,
they still had to deal with them, and they were getting closer to the town.
Already she could see the arms of the red dots spreading out to either side,
cutting off escape to the north or the south, well that was okay, the
evacuation would be towards Cassini anyway, to the west. She contacted the
shuttle.

“Lana,
You okay?”

“Been
better. But yeah. Grad, Jim and Jackson are down though. They need help right
away, I’m coming in.”

“Lana,
you have to make one more drop before that. You have to give the civilians a
chance to get out of the town. Drop the squad off at the crossroads.”

Wordlessly
Lana wheeled the shuttle round, the lights below pirouetting. Once more they
dropped into the dark. The troopers, already worn out with shock, dragged
themselves up by the framework around them and readied themselves as best they
could. Sgt Raoul’s deep voice came to them from Cassini, and involuntarily they
straightened up a little.

“Right,
boys. I’ll be there soon, but you’ll have to hold out ‘til then. Hernandez,
you’re in charge. Patel, unship that twenty and take it with you. Delay and
retire boys. You’re just there to buy a little time, none of that Last Stand
crap, you hear? Delay and retire. Now move!” The shuttle’s skid once more
bumped on the ground, and the squad leapt out. Lana hit full power and they
soared away, circling as they went.