Pilgrim (16 page)

“Why am I not surprised,” said Freya.

“It’s obscene, that’s what it is,” said
Aart. “Good men and women are dying every day in that district and
the Confederacy couldn’t care less.”

“Why would they?” said Nova. “As long as
they keep getting the steel for their ships and the gold for their
decorations they won’t care.”

“Well then that’s the way to get their
attention. Cut the supply chain,” said Aart.

“Aart, don’t be ridiculous. You’re always
saying stuff like that but you know as well as I do that there’s no
way to beat the Confederacy. They’d know your plans before you even
did,” said Nova.

Aart rested back in his chair. His eyebrows
drew together but he said no more.

Nova lifted her glass to her mouth. It was
ice-cold and the blue liquid inside sloshed from side to side. She
tipped the glass and enjoyed the cool sensation of the drink
sliding down her throat. It tasted like bubble-gum and berries, two
of her favourite flavours. The drink left a pleasant tingle on her
tongue and gums. She closed her eyes to enjoy the sensation.

“I have to piss,” Gus announced, getting to
his feet. The others couldn’t help but smile and the tension
broke.

“Thank you for telling us,” said Aart. “The
bathroom is around the corner to the left. And if Gabby tells me
that you’ve left a mess, I will make you regret it.”

Gus stomped off down the hall.

When Gus returned, they had one more drink
and decided to call it a night.

“Big day tomorrow,” said Aart. “I’ll meet
you outside nice and early.”

***

“It’s settled then,” said Aart, “Let’s hunt
that sucker.”

“According to Cal’s research, we just have
to follow the slime trail,” Nova said.

“Lovely,” said Freya, wrinkling her
nose.

“Let’s do it,” Gus said, stomping to the
crashed colony ship. He stepped through the gaping doorway and into
the room beyond. As he entered, the bulbs on his shirt and belt
went on, creating a circle of light around him.

Nova squeezed the glow ball at her waist and
followed Gus into the ship.

“I’ll take the lead seeing as I’ve been here
before,” Nova said before Aart could push to the front.

She kept her face expressionless as she
glanced around the inside of the ship. Inside, her stomach clenched
into a tight ball but she wouldn’t let the others see her fear. She
was determined to get past the zombie creatures and get her hands
on the warp converter, everything else be damned.

“There’s a dining room, some sleeping pods,
another dining area and then a gym and a tech lounge. Last time I
was here, there weren’t any of the zombie things until the learning
pods, but I’m sure they could work out the doors if they wanted
to.”

The others fell into line behind her and she
moved to the first door. It was still open, leading into the first
dining area. She peered through the doorway, straining her eyes to
see through the dim light.

“This floor is infuriating,” Freya said as
her foot slipped on the tilted surface.

“That’s what you get when you crash a
whopping great colony ship into a bunch of tunnels,” Orion said,
moving past Freya to investigate the restaurant.

“Pity, there’s no food,” Aart said with a
chuckle, “I’m starving.”

“I bet that’s what the slugs are saying
right now,” Nova replied.

She kept a finger on the trigger of her gun
and her ears ready for the first sound of trouble. She bit her lip
to stop herself saying more. She was sure the others didn’t quite
appreciate the threat that the slug creatures posed. They were
acting like it was any other simple bounty mission, when it was
anything but.

“Eww,” Freya said.

The restaurant was familiar to Nova now as
if she’d been here dining many times before. She brushed her hand
along a table as she shuffled towards the heavy door she’d closed
last time she’d been here. It was a massive solid slab of metal
that opened upwards. She grabbed hold of the door and strained. It
seemed even heavier than before.

She felt her face burn with embarrassment at
her weak display in front of the other hunters. Luckily in the
semidarkness, they’d never see her blush.

“Gus, I believe this is what you’re here
for,” she said, moving back.

Gus stepped forward. He grabbed hold of the
handle and flung the door open. The metal swung through the air and
crashed into the wall beside it, just as it had when Nova first
came through the ship.

They waited for the clanging to stop echoing
back to them through the dark corridors of the ship. It went on for
what felt like hours. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Nova released the breath she hadn’t realised
she was holding and stepped down into the next room. The sleeping
carriages extended out left and right, just as she remembered.

“This place is beyond creepy,” Freya
said.

“Why aren’t they showing themselves?” Gus
asked.

“I dunno, biding their time?” said Nova. A
part of her feared that the creatures were gathering for an
organised attack. They were dangerous enough as roving individuals;
deliberate attacks would be fatal.

“They didn’t’ seem like the biding type,”
Aart put in. “More likely they got bored and went somewhere
else.”

“Spoke too soon!” Nova yelled, back-stepping
up the corridor. She collided with Gus in her retreat and his
muscled chest pushed her forward again.

Out of the sleeping rooms ahead of them
poured lumbering figures. These weren’t real people; these were the
giant-eyed, slug-controlled things that had tried to kill her
before. The thin corridor made a perfect funnel for the attacking
zombies. They screeched as they raced towards the bounty hunters,
their eyes glowing in the semi-darkness. More of them jostled out
of the adjoining sleeping pods to join the horde.

“Contact!” Gus yelled, kneeling. He swung
his gun over his shoulder and pulled back the safety.

Nova moved out of the way and took refuge
partway in the nearest sleeping pod. She aimed Aart’s borrowed gun
down the corridor.

The others were backed up behind Gus and did
their best to stagger themselves behind him with their guns
aimed.

“Stand down,” Gus commanded.

The people shuffling towards them didn’t pay
him any mind.

“Stand down or I’ll shoot,” Gus warned.

The people still didn’t respond.

“Fire!” Gus yelled. The five of them
squeezed their triggers.

They hadn’t survived this long by being bad
shots. Only a second after firing, five of the shambling creatures
crumpled to the floor with smoking holes where their heads used to
be.

“That was your only and last warning,” Gus
said to the group still advancing towards them.

Instead of surrendering, the group raced
faster.

They sprinted straight at Gus and the small
group of bounty hunters. Their bare feet slapped against the metal
floor and their feral calls echoed around the walls.

Nova took a deep breath and glanced behind
her. A jolt went from her heart to her throat, then down into her
legs when she saw the teddy bear staring at her from its place on
the top bunk. She forced her eyes away from the haunting toy and
back to the real threat. The creatures hadn’t stopped; they were
still running straight at the waiting guns.

She didn’t wait for Gus’s command and
squeezed her trigger. A bolt of blue shot out of her rifle and
knocked down the closest attacker. Her fellow hunters were only a
moment behind. In an instant, another row of the slug-puppets were
dead on the floor.

“They’re still coming,” Gus said, continuing
to fire.

His gun made immense bangs which
reverberated in Nova’s ears and shot out big red bolts of energy
that just about vaporised its targets. The recoil on the machine
must have been massive but Gus barely moved an inch as he fired
into the melee.

The others had weapons similar to Nova’s.
They were smaller, light weight, with minimal recoil. They were
bounty-hunter weapons, not military cannons like Gus was waving
around.

Even with five of them firing the attackers
kept coming. There was a continuous flood of them pouring out of
the sleeping pods and up from the rooms beyond.

“We can’t hold them like this,” Nova yelled
over the clamour, “I’ve got ten seconds max before my gun
overheats.”

“And mine,” said Orion from where he knelt
to Gus’s right side.

“Nova, what are the locks on the sleeping
pods like?” Aart called out.

She glanced down at the door next to her,
forcing her eyes to focus through panic pushing in on her. Her
heart raced as she checked the lock and returned to firing into the
throng. They had less than a handful of seconds before all of their
guns shut down and they were either eaten alive or became
slug-slaves. “Standard push button. Looks like the seal is pretty
strong though.”

“Everyone into the sleeping pod, now. We can
lock the door and it should hold them long enough for our guns to
recharge,” Aart commanded.

Nova stepped away from the doorway and
further into the sleeping pod. Orion burst through next.

“I’ve got your backs. Go, go!” Gus
yelled.

“And you,” Aart said, grabbing hold of Gus’s
shirt. With an almighty heave, Aart threw himself and Gus through
the open doorway and into the sleeping pod.

Freya was next. She stepped into the
opening. Just as she was about to walk through, her eyes went
wide.

Nova watched as Freya’s expression went from
determined, to surprised, to fear and back to determined. The other
woman took the time to look at them each in turn. The few seconds
it took felt like a lifetime to Nova. She could do nothing as she
watched Freya slam her hand down on the sleeping pod’s mechanism
and then be ripped back outside.

Nova’s mouth fell open and her heart jerked
in her chest. A tiny squeak escaped her lips; that was all she
could manage. Cold horror seeped through her veins and coated her
heart in a layer of ice.

The creatures yanked Freya to the floor.
Before the sleeping pod’s door slammed shut Nova saw Freya’s body
overrun with the creatures. In those few seconds, time seemed to
slow down and Nova saw every tiny detail. Freya’s eyes widened
before she was buried under the mess of writhing bodies. Nova’s
heart thumped against her ribcage as if trying to get free while
bile rose in the back of her throat.

“What the hell happened?” Aart said, running
to the door.

“There were more of them behind us,” Nova
whispered. “I didn’t even know they were there until she was pulled
back out. She never had a chance.”

Guilt trickled down Nova’s spine. She’d been
the first to enter the sleeping pod. If she’d just waited for the
others then Freya might have had time, she might have lived. Nova’s
stomach rolled. It felt as if a lead weight held her to the floor.
Her face flushed and tears pricked the corners of her eyes. She
didn’t know Freya and yet the sight of her getting ripped back by
the hungry horde replayed over and over again in Nova’s mind.

“We have to go back and get her,” said Aart,
already reaching for the lock.

“No way man,” Orion said, slapping his hand
down. “Look at her, there’s nothing we can do.”

Orion looked out of the sleeping pod’s
window into the corridor behind and Aart reluctantly followed his
gaze.

Nova stepped towards the window and also
looked out. It was a massacre. Freya’s body was being torn limb
from limb as the creatures fought over chunks of her flesh. Her
rainbow hair was an unseemly splash of colour amid the horrific
scene.

A feral woman wearing only a scrap of cloth
grabbed hold of Freya’s left arm and pulled. She strained and
grunted. With a wicked tear, the limb came free. The woman cheered
and then ran away from the body and the rest of the attackers.

Nova’s eyes locked on the woman in the scrap
of cloth. She hunched over Freya’s severed arm, then went to work
gnawing the fingers off of Freya’s hand.

Bile rose in Nova’s stomach. There was a
burning in the back of her throat and her face was suddenly flushed
with heat. Nova clenched her hands into fists as she pictured
storming out and pummelling the savages into bloody pulps. She
gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to attack.

“They’re monsters,” said Aart as he too
watched the woman.

“No mushrooms are worth that,” said Nova as
she slid down the wall to sit on the floor. “Tanguin do you read
me? We lost Freya.”

Tanguin’s voice clicked on over all of their
communicators. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Dammit.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Those bastards. How are the rest of you
holding up?”

“We’re okay,” Nova said, “A little stuck but
I’m sure we’ll work it out.”

“Let me know if there’s anything you need,”
Tanguin said.

Gus was already sitting with his back to the
opposite wall. He had his gun on his lap and his eyes moved from
the charge bar to the door and back again.

“What if these things got out to the rest of
the galaxy?” Aart said. His eyes widened as his imagination went
wild.

“They couldn’t, they’re just monsters,”
Orion said.

“You’re wrong,” Nova panted from the floor.
“They’re people, they’re just infected with those slug things.”

“There’s no way they’re people,” Orion said.
“Look at their massive eyes and those teeth!”

“They are people, or at least they used to
be. I think they’re decedents of survivors of the colony crash.
Maybe the slugs mutated them or something, I don’t know.”

“Nova, are you serious?” Aart said. He
looked down at her with wide eyes. His mouth turned down.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. The
ship goes down and happens to plunge straight into a nest of slugs.
The people try to colonise here, but in no time at all they’re all
slaves to those things. Give it a generation or two and you’ve got
those bastards,” she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder to
where the creatures were finishing off Freya’s corpse.