Syn-En: Plague World: The Founders War Begins (8 page)

Bei ordered the systems to reset. Nothing responded. There was definitely an intelligence behind this attack.

Queens shot Brooklyn a dirty look. “Find a LZ to set this hunk of tin down, doofus. We’re almost out of fuel.”

“Shut up, dorkwad. I need to concentrate.” Brooklyn leaned over the radar and sonar readings. “Ten klicks out is a flat surface. I’m gonna set her down there.”

Doofus and dorkwad. Those two had obviously been spending their downtime watching ancient video clips. Bei ordered the reset one last time. Nothing. Damn. Recalling his avatar, he exited the system and sealed his nail shut. He’d have to reroute the power the old-fashioned way. He pulled the access panel of the avionics components.

“You better not land on a body of water.” Queens adjusted the fuel feed as the shuttle banked. “Ol’ featherhead can’t swim.”

“You don’t know that.” Brooklyn straightened out the shuttle. “Elvis swims all the time in the tub.”

Queens peered into the fog. “Yeah, well, Paladin Apollie’s attitude is so big it’ll serve as an anchor. We gotta be fifty meters above ground, yet, I still see nothing.”

Unsnapping the power line from the main trunk, Bei shunted a small charge through the cable. The helm burped then fell dark. He reached for the main line. His arm tingled. The hair on his head stood on end, and his internal systems flashed yellow. He grasped the emergency ground and everything subsided. He didn’t like this. Not one bit. As soon as the Combat Information Center came online, he’d search for a matching weapon signature.

He’d bet his upgrades, the Scraptors had set this trap as a test of the Syn-Ens’ abilities.

The engines hummed then whistled.

Brooklyn spun the shuttle in a small circle. “Venting atmosphere to see if I can clear some of this soup.”

Air whooshed through the conduits. Fog still clung to the front portholes.

Bei expected as much. He reconnected the power lines. “Set her down, Brooklyn.”

“Aye, Admiral, setting her down.” The
Starflight
settled into stillness.

Queens slowed the feed of solid fuel. “Ground seems to be holding the
Starflight’s
weight. Powering down stabilizers.”

Quiet mushroomed in the cockpit.

“Nicely done, you two.” Bei waited a minute. Then two. Nothing. Damn, the systems didn’t reboot on their own. He turned off his magnetic field. “I want full diagnostics of the engine.”

Brooklyn unsnapped his safety harness and leapt out of his seat. “Aye, Admiral. A full diagnostic coming right up.”

Queens followed hard on the other man’s heels. “Dammit, dorkwad, we’re medics.”

Raising his index finger, Brooklyn interrupted his friend and took the stairs down to the landing two at a time. “Ah, but we were damn fine mechanics first.”

“True. True.” Queens leapt to the opening near the ladder leading to the engine room below. “We’re Scotty and Bones rolled into one.”

Brooklyn hooked his hands and feet around the ladder rails and slid out of sight. “Speak for yourself. I’m Scotty, Bones and Spock in one sweet cyborg package.”

“Kirk would have booted you too hams off the Enterprise before your first away mission.” Nell’s voice cracked. “He wouldn’t have wanted the competition.”

Bei raised his head and jogged down the stairs.

“You look a little pale, Nell Stafford.” Brooklyn cleared his throat.

“Aside from revisiting those Sweetarts I enjoyed in the Third grade, I’m fine.” She forced a laugh. “I’ve had rougher rides at Disneyland.”

Pulling his arms close to his body, Bei ignored the ladder and jumped through the opening. He landed with a thud. The deck bowed beneath his weight. Emergency lights illuminated the aisles.

Brooklyn and Queens spun about. Their muscles clenched in preparation of an assault.

Queens lowered his hands first. “I don’t understand. Isn’t Disneyland an amusement park? Why would people think nearly smashing into a planet was fun?”

Brooklyn rolled his brown eyes and shoved his friend toward the door to the engine room. “You are such a dorkwad.”

Bei strode down the aisle toward his wife. “Nell?”

“I’m okay.” She clung to an open overhead bin, steadying herself. “Shaken, not stirred, like a James Bond martini, but still fine.”

Paladin Apollie shone a flashlight into Doc’s face. “He isn’t healing.”

A gash on Doc’s forehead peeled his NDA from his titanium plated skull. Skin curled back over his black hair. “I’ll be fine. Just let me up. I need to check to see if we’ve maintained integrity.”

Integrity. Bei stiffened. His chief medical officer obviously feared the Surlat strain had breeched the hull. “Let him up, Nell.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m just gonna fix him. Can’t have him looking like the Terminator when he checks on Karl and Erin. They might get a little freaked.” His wife ran her finger along his cut.

The Doc’s NDA began to zip up, sealing the gash.

She smiled. “There. Easy peasy. Now, you can...”

Her finger started to glow. Fluorescence spread to her hand and up her arm. She shook her limb, trying to dislodge it. A heartbeat later, a sickly yellow color bathed the bay. Her eyes met Bei’s.

He tasted her fear.

“Well, this just sucks.”

Apollie retreated to the far corner of her bench and covered her mouth. “Nell Stafford is infected. We’re all infected.”

“Okay, nobody panic.” Nell held up both of her arms, palms facing out, in the universally acknowledged stop gesture. The glow under her skin meant only one thing. She was infected. She might even die. Her stomach cramped. “And by nobody, I mean me.”

Her throat felt raw. Heat licked her nerve endings. Did screaming count as panicking?

Bei slid his palm up hers then folded his fingers between hers. “Just breathe, Nell. Breathe.”

The glow spread to his hand, then his wrist. She jerked on her hand. “Let go, Bei. Let go.”

He shook his head. “Whatever happens to you, happens to me. We’re in this together.”

Tears pricked her eyes. How could he say things like that? “You’re such an idiot.”

She walked into his embrace and wrapped her free arm around his waist. He was so strong, so solid. She was mush compared to him. Infected, contagious mush. She should let go of him, but couldn’t bring herself to. He was right. During the original outbreak on Earth, being in the same room with an infected person provided a lethal exposure.

Drawing her close, Bei rested his chin on the top of her head. “Paladin Apollie, perhaps you’d care to explain what just happened.”

Nell glanced over her shoulder.

Tucked in a corner of the cargo bay, the Skaperian hugged her legs close to her body. A pale hand covered her mouth and flattened nose. “I told you. The glow indicates infection.”

A growl rumbled through Bei’s chest.

Her husband growling was never a good sign. He was seriously pissed, and it wasn’t because of the super bug. That had been expected. Nell turned in his embrace to face the Paladin. Her skin changed from a snot green to a jaundice yellow.

The color matched the fluorescing mittens on Bei’s hands. “I was able to check the
Starflight’s
maintenance logs as we departed. You double-checked the manual controls of this shuttle. Why?”

On the bench next to Apollie, Doc Cabo removed the gel-pack of cerebral interfacing caulking from his forearm compartment. “You can drop your hand. If Nell’s infected then our failsafe’s have been overwhelmed.”

Apollie carefully lowered her hand from her mouth. The beads of her braids clacked together. “It is a horrible way to die.”

“I know.” Nell shuddered. Her memory resurrected images of black pustules, melted eyes, and gouge marks on sallow skin. Victims had burst upon death, spewing putrid goo and spraying the infection. Earth had turned into a living horror movie overnight. “I was there.”

Static electricity crackled along Bei’s arms. “My shuttle, Paladin.”

Apollie’s red eyes flashed and her lips thinned. “Didn’t you ever wonder why a race as advanced as the Skaperians used knobs and levels, wheels and pedals on our ships?”

“You have a fear of technology.” Bei cocked his head. “Many races do.”

Humans on Earth for one. Nell squeezed his hand. And they hadn’t even seen the
Terminator
movies.

Banging sounded from the engine room to the left of the crew compartment. Brooklyn and Queens exchanged insults as they searched for the source of the power failure.

Shaking her head, Apollie unfolded from the bench seat. The motion was fluid despite the fact that Skaperians had backward knee and elbow joints. “We had technology more advanced than yours.” A wave of her hand encompassed the shuttle. “But it turned against us. Shut down when we needed it. Provided false information. Sometimes it even killed us.”

Nell kept her husband’s hands clasped in front of her belly. Once upon a time, the Skaperians had programmed Bei’s brain box to kill her, to obey their will above his own. “So our shuttle was attacked by ghosts in the machine.”

Bei’s hold tightened. “I found no such weapon in the shared database.”

Apollie gathered her cornrow braids in a single ponytail. “That’s because we don’t know if it is a weapon, or just... just...” She clamped her lips together.

“Just?” Bei prodded her.

“Just a side-effect of travel in Erwarian space.” Red spotted her high cheekbones.

“I have a feeling this is going to take a while.” Nell patted her husband’s hand before shimmying out of his hold. “I’m going to sit.”

Doc pointed to the seat across from him. “I’ll check for antibodies. Given your glow, I think it’s safe to say your immune system is responding.”

Nell pushed up her sleeve. Blue veins turned dark green under her yellow skin. “Let the miracle cure begin.”

“And the explanations.” Bei reached into the overhead compartment and pulled down a metal suitcase to hand to Doc. “There is nothing in the database about this.”

Her husband shut the compartment with a snap.

Doc pressed his thumbs to the biometric keys of the case and the lid slid back. “Portable medical unit. We planned to use them to treat the natives, since three thousand people won’t fit inside the shuttle.”

She nodded. Her heart hammered inside her chest. “Will it work, or will it. too, be affected?”

“Only one way to find out.” Doc smoothed his goatee before pressing the power switch. The briefcase hummed to life. He uncoiled flat sensors as well as a tube and needle.

Nell glanced away. She hated needles.

Bei set his hand on her shoulder. “Did you know our technology would fail?”

“Actually, we thought it might not be affected.”

“Because it was so primitive?” The yellow glow surged into Bei’s cheeks.

Catching the agitation in her husband’s voice, Nell wrapped her arm around his waist. Tension turned his prostheses to stone. “You’re hardly primitive. You kicked Scraptor ass, and they’ve been in space since Hector was a pup.”

Bei’s eyes narrowed as they swept over her. “Hector?”

“It’s a saying.” Something cold skimmed the crook of her arm. “I don’t know anyone named Hector.”

Doc formed gloves around his fingers, then tied off her upper arm. “Our admiral doesn’t like to share you any more than he has to.”

Blood pulsed through her arm. Closing one eye, Nell focused on her husband’s flat stomach. “Did you think our technology would be affected, Apollie?”

The Skaperian cleared her throat. “No. Earth is one of the pillar worlds. Technology on the pillar worlds can advance farther before this thing stops the progress.”

“I find no reference to any pillar worlds in the database.” Bei combed his fingers through Nell’s hair.

She wanted to relax. She really did. But a needle hovered near her vein, and any minute now, it would prick her. Any minute now... The pinch burned her arm. She looked.

Orange blood spurted down the clear tube. Doc smiled at her. “That didn’t hurt, did it?”

Hell, yes. “No. Of course not.” Nell glanced around the compartment for her tiara. If she was flashing her inner super freak, she might as well wear her crown of Queen of the Freaks. Orange blood. What kind of freak had orange blood? If it were green, at least she could claim to be related to Spock.

Apollie’s brow furrowed. “That’s because we’ve never received actual confirmation that pillar worlds exist. Just vague references in the Erwar archeological record.”

Bei raked his fingers through his black hair. “The Erwar are the oldest known sentient race in the universe. They disappeared nearly a million years ago and they left behind these pillars.”

At first Apollie nodded, then she shrugged. “Only bits of records survived, so what is real and...and make believe is hard to distinguish.”

“If only bits survived,” Bei growled, “then it won’t take you long to tell us the story. The entire story, and don’t leave any of the bits out.”

Nell held up her hand. Was it her imagination or was there pink skin under the yellow?

Doc flipped back the nail of his index finger and plugged it into the box. His black eyes glistened as information scrolled down the small screen.

Apollie glanced over Doc’s shoulder then retreated. “Most of the records refer to the Erwar as a race of energy beings that guided evolution throughout the universe. Among all the worlds, seven were their favorites. On these worlds they built pillars to facilitate their travels.”

Bei eyed the readout. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “What happened to the seven worlds?”

“Five gave rise to the Founders. They journeyed to space first, claimed it and everything in it as their birthright. Skaperia would have been conquered but, like Earth, my home world is on the edge of the galaxy. We had begun colonizing systems near us when we stumbled upon the first evidence of Erwar. My people arrived on the planet before the Founders.”

“Did they claim you?” The yellow color drained from Bei’s forehead, leaving peach tones behind.

“They tried. We fought back.” Apollie’s raptor claw on her middle toe tapped on the metal deck. “We were close to surrendering when their technology failed. After many broken treaties and truces, the Erwar Consortium was written and ensured a lasting peace.”