Pilgrim (11 page)

“No, no,” Nova said, holding up her hand.
“There’s a crashed colony ship here, there should be parts on
board, provided I can get past the creatures that have taken up
residence in it.”

“So to what do I owe the pleasure of your
call?” Tanguin said. The corner of her mouth lifted and her eyes
shone.

“Can’t a friend just call another friend
without asking for something?” Nova said.

“They can, yes,” Tanguin said. “However you
usually don’t.”

Nova sighed, Tanguin was right. “Okay, okay.
I wanted to check if the new bounty hunter race course had been
announced.”

Tanguin chuckled. “It has.”

“And?” Nova asked.

“It’s going to be around Vogon.”

“Ooh, that will be a good one.”

“So I’m going to assume you’ll be entering,”
said Tanguin.

“Yep. It’s worth it just to give Kero what
he deserves.”

“Amen to that,” said Tanguin.

“Okay, that was all. If I get really stuck
and can’t find parts, I’ll give you another call,” Nova said.

“Later,” Tanguin replied. The screen went
blank.

Nova leant back and sighed with relief. At
least now someone knew where she was, even though she’d never admit
that was the reason she called.

***

“I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some
bad news,” Cal said as he hovered into the control room.

“Good news first,” Nova said, swivelling in
her chair to look at him.

“The good news is that these mushrooms are
extremely valuable to certain people on Zyx.”

“It’s a hallucinogen?” Nova said.

“Yep, powerful too. It’s banned in most
quadrants but you know what Zyx is like.”

“Can’t they just synthesise it?” she
asked.

“The Cloud forums say that the synthesised
form doesn’t compare to the natural stuff. Apparently, you can make
a lot of money with these, Glowmush they’re called. They won’t grow
on most planets; they all spring from one root. If you try and
spawn them elsewhere, they die.”

“Transport?” she asked.

“Forbidden,” Cal said.

“Alright, then I guess we’re heading to Zyx
with a shipment of ethanol,” Nova said with a sly smile. It
wouldn’t be the first time they’d creatively labelled illicit cargo
to get it where it needed to go.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Cal said
with a disapproving tone.

“You know they’re just going to destroy
their brains another way. I may as well make money from it at the
same time.”

“I will not have my circuits contaminated
with your questionable sense of morality,” Cal said.

Nova snorted and waved her hand at him.
“I’ve got morality where it counts. Now what about the slug?”

“Ah, now that’s the bad news.”

“Well?”

“Turns out these slugs are well known in
human history.”

“How? I’ve never heard of them.”

“Yes, well it was some time ago and the
Human Confederacy tried to keep it quiet. But it’s there in the
Cloud if you know where to look.”

“Do I have to shake it out of you?”

“That won’t be necessary. These are cerebral
slugs. They burrow through the ear into the ventricles and then
attach themselves to the brain stem. They take control of the
host.”

“Mind control?” Nova asked.

“In a way.”

“Is that what’s wrong with the children in
the village?”

“Calculations suggest that is ninety-eight
percent probable.”

“But why? What’s the point of infecting a
bunch of children and then killing them off?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Cal
said.

“Wait, so what does that have to do with the
Human Confederacy?” Nova said.

“There’s a rumour that a century or so ago
the Human Confederacy became infected. Mass scans revealed over
fifty percent of the members were under the control of these
things. They’d been controlling human politics for years.”

“Wow, no wonder they’re keeping that quiet.”
She tapped her finger on the control panel. “So how do we get rid
of them? Because there are a bunch of those mushrooms not far from
here and the only thing between us and them are a gang of zombies
controlled by those things. Not to mention the warp converter.”

“Generally these slugs have a hive mind.
While they control their hosts they’re also controlled by their
queen. In the past, people have destroyed the queen and it takes
out the whole colony.”

“Great, so I just have to find the queen.
Any clues about where she might be?”

“Not at all. The slugs probably won’t go far
from her. And they have to return to mate, but that’s all I
found.”

“Return to mate,” Nova repeated. She stared
at the metal floor, her mind racing with possibilities.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Nova awoke the next morning with a plan. She
pulled on thick trousers, a long sleeved shirt and a protective
jacket. She also strapped on her belt and attached two pistols and
a serrated knife to her waste.

She pulled up the right leg of her pants and
strapped another sharpened knife to her calf. She then started
throwing things into her bag: medical supplies, jars, rope, gloves,
everything that she could think of.

“What are you doing?” Cal asked as he
hovered in to investigate the noise.

“I’m going to get me some slugs.”

“Sounds fun,” Cal said, hovering back around
the corner.

“Yes, well seeing as you spent yesterday
lying around on the floor, make sure you get to work fixing the
engine today,” she called after him.

Throwing her bag over her shoulder, she
pulled on her thick boots. She wrenched the laces tight and stood
at the main exit door.

“Crusader!” she called. “Do not let anyone
except me inside, okay?”

“Copy that,” Crusader replied, sliding open
the main entrance door in front of Nova.

She jumped down and crept away from the
children’s village in a crouch. According to Crusader’s monitors,
the children hadn’t tried to get closer to the ship. Maybe they
were happy with being this distance away, or perhaps they were
preparing for something bigger. Nova moved through the fields and
back to the forest. It was easy to pick up her trail from
yesterday; she had left big footprints through the trees.

She retraced her steps through the
rainforest until she got to the waterfall. The female corpse was
still lying at the bottom of the river. Nova stayed well clear of
the body and kept her eyes on the water, searching for wayward
slugs. There was no sign of them. The theory she’d developed
overnight said that when the children disappeared from the village,
they were being controlled by the slugs. The slugs were trying to
return to the caverns to mate, and using the children as transport.
The young girl died up there and was then washed back downstream
and over the waterfall. The chain of events didn’t make much sense
in Nova’s head, but it was all she had.

She pulled the rope from her bag and
collected it up in her arms. She pulled backwards and cast the rope
up the cliff beside the waterfall. The rope swung around an
overhanging tree and fell back into her hands. She looped one end
around the other and pulled until the knot was secure around the
branch. She tugged a couple of times. The only things to fall were
a few leaves.

She wrapped the rope around herself and
faced the cliff. One foot at a time she climbed higher. With each
new step, her fingers scrabbled for purchase on the jagged rocks.
Even with her thick gloves, the rocks cut gauges into her fingers.
She pressed on. Mist from the waterfall floated over and covered
her face and hands, making the climb even more slippery.

Her fingernails were scraped down to ragged
shreds by the rough rocks, and her elbows were soon grazed and
bleeding. By the time she reached the top, she was gasping for
breath and sweat was beading down her face to join the spray from
the waterfall. She pulled herself over the edge of the cliff and
rolled a safe distance away.

She didn’t waste any time and was on her
feet in an instant; looking around for the creatures that had
attacked her the day before. The forest was eerily quiet. She
untied the rope and tucked it back into her bag.

“Step one,” Nova said, striding alongside
the stream.

If her assumptions were right, the river
would lead her straight to whatever had killed the girl, which
based on what she had seen was probably the slug-zombies. She
needed equipment from the colony ship and at that moment it was
blocked by the slug-controlled creatures. So her mission was
simple, take out the slugs and get off of the damned planet.

The rush and gurgle of the waterfall faded
away behind her and was replaced by the steady trickle of the
stream.

“Well what do we have here?” she said,
kneeling by the side of the river. She thrust her hand into the
water and rummaged between the rocks. When her hand came out again
it was clasped around a long bone.

“Cal, I’ve found a human femur. It looks
like I’m on the right track,” she said into her communicator.

“Just look out for more hosts,” Cal replied,
“I do not want to be trapped on a planet like this if you die.”

“Always got my back, hey Cal?” Nova
chuckled, throwing the leg bone back into the water. “Just make
sure you keep repairing Crusader. I want her ready to go as soon as
I get back.”

The forest got thicker further upstream,
with more hanging vines and undergrowth to trip her up. There were
also stinging plants and spiders waiting to prick her skin. She
congratulated herself again for wearing the thick, protective
jacket which would stop most things.

“This looks like it,” she said to herself
when the forest opened up to yet another cliff-face. However,
unlike the last cliff, there was no waterfall. Instead, the water
flowed out of a large hole at the base. There was a gap between the
water surface and the stone roof of the tunnel of about ten
centimetres.

She knelt down by the entrance and peered
into the inky blackness. With her head this close to the water all
she could hear was it babbling along. The tunnel was dark and she
couldn’t see more than a metre in.

A sharp squeeze set her glowball alight and
she tossed it into the tunnel, trying to keep her throw as
horizontal and as close to the roof as possible. The tunnel
continued on at the same size for quite some distance. As far as
she could see, there were no hosts waiting just beyond the
darkness. The glowing ball landed in the water and came floating
back along the stream into her waiting hand.

She tied the ball to her waist and ensured
her backpack was secure. Holding a gun in her hand, she lowered
herself into the river. It was deep here but slow-moving. At least
she’d had the sense to buy guns with water-proofing. That could
have been a disaster. She moved into the tunnel and had to tilt her
head up so that she could breathe. It wasn’t long before she felt
the strain on her neck. The angle also meant she didn’t have a
clear view in front of her.

The hand holding her gun moved along the
ceiling of the tunnel, scouting out in front for sudden changes.
Her other hand trailed along the left-hand cave wall. She could
just reach the bottom of the tunnel if she walked on the very tips
of her toes.

She continued along the tunnel for ten
minutes without any trouble. The glowing light at her waist cast a
cool glow up through the water which dappled the cave roof and
walls. It was far more comforting than travelling through the wet
tunnel in complete darkness.

A shadow passed in front of the light and
cast a worm-like darkness on the ceiling. Nova jumped and her heart
leapt into her throat. The top of her forehead slammed into the
roof of the cave and pain exploded out from the new wound. She
ignored it and scraped her head along the roof of the cave so that
she was looking down into the water.

The shadow had looked like a slug. She was
sure she was going to look down and find her mid-section swarmed
with the black creatures. Instead, she found herself face-to-face
with a long eel. It was snaking about her legs and swimming into
the glowing ball.

She breathed a sigh of relief. No sign of
slugs and the eel didn’t appear interested in either biting chunks
of her flesh off or crawling into her ear and taking over her
brain. She put a hand to her forehead. A trickle of blood snaked
down from her new wound but there was nothing she could do about it
at that moment. She forced her face towards the ceiling and resumed
her shuffle.

Her forward hand felt the roof drop lower.
She followed it down for some way; the tunnel narrowed so that
there was no airspace above the water.

“Dammit!” she said, stopping in place. The
water brushed past her and the chill sunk through her clothes. They
were thick and held a lot of water. It hadn’t slowed her down too
much while she walked, but if she had to swim that might
change.

She dunked her head underwater and looked
forward down the tunnel. After the glow of her light, there was
just blackness. There was no way to tell how far she’d have to go
without air.

“Hey Cal?” Nova said.

“Yes?” Cal replied.

“On a scale of one to ten, how much do you
not want to be trapped on this planet?”

“Nova! What are you—” Cal’s voice
disappeared as Nova dived under the water and swam forward. The
tele-link was still there but for the moment, her mind was so
focused on swimming that his words faded out of her conscious
perception.

The current pulled at her jacket and
backpack, moving against her. She swam in a ball of light cast out
by the glowball at her waist.

She thrust her arms forward and brought them
back in a powerful stroke, propelling herself forward. Keeping her
eyes directly forward, she forced herself not to wonder if there
was air above her.