Voyage of the Sanguine Shadow 1: Shadow Galactic (18 page)

“
A
fanatic is a nut who has something to believe in.
” –Dean Koontz

“They’re safely off the
Shadow
,”
Collins announced from the forward hangar.

Seated in the command chair, Zerki leaned over and
said, “Good.  Get up here.  Gavin’s already in the rig.”  She glanced to her
bridge crew.  All of her senior officers had remained aboard, though her communications
officer and logistics officer had to be replaced.  Two freshly promoted crewmen
now sat at those stations: Jenn Chelsea on logistics, and a haggard salvager
named Buck Fenton on communications.  Fully two thirds of her original crew had
chosen to continue flying with Zerki, and she took some comfort in that.

Moments later, Collins hurried onto the bridge and
took his seat behind the captain. 

Zerki drew a deep breath and glanced to Gavin. 
“You ready?”

“Yeah,” he answered with a determined nod.

“Here we go,” Zerki whispered.

Gavin placed the cephalotronic upon his brow. 
Overhead display screens lit up with data pertaining to Chiron System.  His
eyes flitted across them, and his back arched as he became aware of the space
surrounding Nerthus.

“Start the countdown,” said Collins.

Deep in the engine room, the radiation
nullification field began its slow decay.

The
Sanguine Shadow
’s computers processed
the jump rig’s data feed, prompting the laser arms to swing into position. 
Automated systems raised the shields and flooded immediate space with a
particle fog.  Minutes later, the lasers fired, and the hauler completed her
jump.

As the starship glided into motion, Collins set to
hailing Father Stone.  At last, Stone replied with a video feed.  “Jackson
Collins,” Stone began.  His features had not diminished in the slightest.  “How
long has it been?  No matter.  It’s good to see you again.  What brings you
back to Nerthus?”

“Need your help with a risky repair job.”

Stone’s expression saddened slightly.  “I’m afraid
you’ve come at a bad time.  A rogue intellect strain has developed, and it’s
got control of my people.  Until I can isolate and expunge the virus, it isn’t
safe to land anywhere within the populated zone.”  He raised his brows.  “I’m
sorry, but you’ll have to come back later.  Maybe in a day or two?”

Zerki barged into view.  “Hi,” she interjected. 
“Look, if we can’t fix our nullification unit within the next ninety minutes,
we’re all dead.  We really need your help,
right now
.”

Stone gazed blankly for a moment.  “Captain Zerki
Ibarra, your emergency is indeed dire, but it doesn’t change anything down
here.  As long as my people are enslaved by this viral entity, as long as I’m
barricaded within my personal chambers, there’s nothing I can do to help you. 
I’m sorry.  I invite you to set down in the wastes and abandon your vessel.  It
will demand some degree of survival, but at least it isn’t a death sentence.”

She flushed.  “Maybe we can help you.”

“Doubtful, and I must return to my work before…” 
He paused.  “I sense an AI collective aboard your starship.”

“I have one,” said Zerki.  “He’s one of my
security officers.”

Stone smiled patiently.  “Perhaps you can help,
after all.”  He proposed a course of action.  When he was done, Zerki disconnected
the feed and called a small team to the briefing room.

She hurried from the lift, rushing down the hall,
and quickly met with Fogg, Cajun, Taryn, D’Arro, and Takeo.  “You’ll have to
leave anything electronic behind,” she sated.  “Take a pipe wrench with you, or
grab a cricket bat from the rec room.”  Regarding D’Arro, she said, “You should
be fine.  The nanobots don’t give them super strength, or anything.”

“Can they infect us?” asked Cajun.

“Unlikely,” printed Fogg, hovering in the form of
a miniature flying saucer.

Zerki said, “Stone integrated them on a genetic
level, person-by-person.  They might be able to eat you, if they’ve gone that
far off the rails, but that’s doubtful.”

“
Might
?”  Takeo snapped.  “How close to
‘won’t’ is it?”

Fogg offered some comfort.  “It approaches certain
that they will not attack human flesh, as they are programmed to be symbiotic
with a specified individual.  From the standpoint of opportunistic subroutine
deviations, as they apply to alternate sources of energy and raw materials, the
energy required to convert biological matter to a usable state is a negative
return proposition.  It is illogical and will not occur to them, short of being
programmed to do so.”

Takeo paused.  “Thanks, Fogg.”

“Let’s review,” Zerki urged.  “We’re running out
of time.”

After quickly detailing the plan, Zerki passed out
signal flares.  Her landing team scattered to gather their things, and when
they returned, she accompanied them to the shuttle hangar.  While she ran
through preflight, D’Arro, Cajun, Taryn and Takeo dressed into simpler attire
and secured their makeshift weapons.  Fogg moved to the bridge to keep his
captain company.

When everyone was aboard, she signaled Krane, and
he took the starship down through the Nerthusian atmosphere.  Keeping his
distance from the populated zone’s skyline, he set the
Sanguine Shadow
to hover.  Moments later, the shuttle launched from the primary hangar,
rocketing for the heart of the ruined megalopolis.  With the shuttle away, the
hauler set to circling the outskirts of the vast and ruined city.

Zerki took the vessel lower, and she watched as
throngs of patchwork men and women turned in unison to regard the shuttle. 
Stone had supplied her with a map of the ruins, marked his lab and highlighted
the most direct path to it.  She quickly found a raised landing platform that
looked strong enough to bear the shuttle’s weight.  None of Stone’s people were
nearby, but they immediately began to converge as soon as the shuttle touched
down.

“Good luck,” she said into the comm.  “You know
what’s at stake.  Pop smoke as soon as you’re ready for a pickup.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” D’Arro promised.  The ramp
descended fully, and he led his team out into the dusty, rusted brown air of
Nerthus.  Dressed in his long coat, Takeo had turned up its collar and put on a
wide-brimmed hat.  Taryn wore a leather vest over a long sleeve shirt, denim
pants and a leather cowboy hat.  Cajun had donned loose khakis and a heavy
plaid shirt, and D’Arro wore a pair of military cargo pants and a white tank
top.

Ahead of them in the distance, gutted skyscrapers
clawed at the clouds, blurred by a mantle of diffuse smoke. All around, ruined
walkways linked abandoned residential levels, empty convenience stores, bound
by rusted handrails and walls full of heavy steel doors.  Bones of all sizes
littered the expanse.  Once-mighty buildings reached down into a thick haze
that obscured the city floor.  Faded paint and broken signboards whispered of
Nerthus’s distant lively past.

“It looks bottomless,” Cajun gulped.

Retrieving a folded sheet of paper, D’Arro
consulted the map of the sprawl.  “It’s not,” he said.  In the distance, the
horde’s droning howl grew steadily louder.  Looking up, he pointed toward a
door embedded in the side of a broad wall.  “This way.”  He plucked his pipe
wrench from his belt and stored his map.  He dashed for the entrance, and his
companions hurried after.

“They’re almost here,” noted Taryn upon reaching
the massive door, and she wrung the grip of her claw hammer.

Takeo gripped a section of heavy pipe.

Father Stone’s zealots shambled into view, drawn
from a mix of races.  They advanced along the stairs and dropped down from
nearby roofs and catwalks.  Bound with red ropes, festooned with liturgical
ribbons, their tattered attire did little to hide their ruined bodies.  Faced
with nightmarish death, millions had accepted Father Stone’s nepenthe.  It left
them with patchwork flesh, silvered eyes and glinting clusters of glutted
nanobots.

Moving in unison, they spread out to form a semicircle
around D’Arro’s team.

“Cajun, get that door open,” he said and faced the
mob directly. 

“Right away.”  Fumbling somewhat, Cajun retrieved
a prybar from his pack.  Takeo and Taryn formed a protective wall at D’Arro’s back,
separating Cajun from the horde.

“Back off,” Takeo growled, and he raised his heavy
pipe.  “We’ll defend ourselves if you force us.”  He narrowed his eyes.

A wiry, gaunt human man stepped forth, wearing a
crown of jagged teeth that had been embedded into his scalp.  “You are
trespassing,” he rasped as he moved close to Takeo.

“We’re here for Father Stone.”

With all his might, Cajun strained against the
door.  He heard something pop within, but it didn’t budge.  “Oh, come on,” he
huffed, and he drove the prybar deeper into the space between the door and its
jamb.

The gaunt man smiled wickedly, a rictus of metal
teeth and receded gums.  He reached for Takeo’s arm.  “You would defend
yourself with something so crude?  How unprepared you are to face the might of
this army.  The blessing of conversion will deliver you from your small
thinking.”

As one, a thundering chorus resounded, “
Conversion
!”

Takeo warned, “I said back off.  Look, we’re just
here for Father Stone.”

“Stone is lost.”  Lowering his brow, he held
Takeo’s gaze.  In a deep snarl, the crowned man said, “Again, I offer you
conversion.”

The throng boomed, “
Conversion
!”

Reaching back with the pipe, Takeo said, “Don’t
force me to do this.”

With a derisive cackle, the crowned man jeered,
“Don’t force you to strike me with your primitive weapon?  By all means, take
your best shot.”

“Not so primitive,” Takeo breathed, and he swung
at the old man’s head with all the strength he could bring to bear.  However,
when the pipe struck home, there was no crack, or clang or crunch.  Instead,
there was a muted splat as Fogg deformed and spread around the crowned man’s
face.  He set to reprogramming the nanobot symbiotes.

Moving as one, the ravening horde swarmed toward
D’Arro’s team.  Howling, they reached out with claws and hungrily peeled open
their mouths.

“It didn’t work!” Taryn shouted.  She lunged and
dodged, her hammer striking and gutting in short arcs.

“Fogg needs time,” Takeo barked.  He was a blur of
precise hits and kicks, and he sent a dozen opponents to the ground.  “Just
hold them off until it’s done!”

The door at last gave way.  “There!” Cajun
triumphantly announced.  “Door’s open, guys!”

“How’ll we know?” D’Arro asked.  His enormous
wrench struck with crushing force, taking out two or three enemies with each
hit.

Takeo insisted, “You’ll know!”

Zealots continued their relentless attack.  “We’re
getting overwhelmed,” grunted D’Arro.  “Everyone move into the hall!”  Cajun
was the first to enter, followed by D’Arro, Taryn and Takeo.  Faded green paint
dressed the walls and ceiling of the passageway.  With only two or three
opponents to face at a time now, the battle took a much less fevered pitch,
though the press of countless bodies still drove the landing team back.

Suddenly, startlingly, the horde fell still. 
Pulse racing, Takeo assumed a defensive stance and watched the patchwork men
and women stop and stare blankly.  D’Arro pushed one of them over with the tip
of his pipe wrench, and Taryn snapped her fingers repeatedly in front of an
older woman’s face.  The aged zealot gave no indication she was aware of Taryn
at all.

“He did it,” Cajun said with a delighted smile.

Tense moments passed in silence, until Taryn
asked, “Where’s Fogg?”

Takeo shook his head.  “I don’t know.  Clearly, he
was the victor.”  He scanned the crowd.  “He should be here by now.”

Still in a daze, men and women moved aside
mechanically to make room.  Moments later, the crowned man stepped into view. 
His skin had hardened and turned coal-black.  He moved to within a few paces of
the landing team, picking the teeth from his scalp.  Where his gray and wispy
hair had been, a shock of thick black strands now jutted forth at a steep
angle.  Thin copper lines outlined his pure black eyes, outlined his nose, ears
and mouth, as well as adding definition to his broad chest and slender arms.

“Fogg?” Takeo asked in a hoarse whisper.  Behind
him, D’Arro readied his pipe wrench.

The crowned man raised his inky brows.  “I am…
trapped in this body.”  Fogg cast aside the last of the teeth.  “There was a
noteworthy struggle between the virus’s intrusion countermeasures and my own
aggressive programming.  While I was able to destroy the hostile intellect, it
was something of a Pyrrhic victory.  I am… bound to this body on a programmatic
level.”  He regarded Takeo with pleading eyes.  “Is this what panic feels
like?”

“Oh, Fogg,” Takeo answered, and he reached forth
to comfort the AI.  “Wow, your skin is hard as a rock.”

Fogg nodded.  “What was left of the hostile
intellect activated a self-destruct protocol, and it is attempting to consume
this body utterly and me along with it.  I am able to keep it in check without
meaningful difficulty, but… I… I am afraid.”  Fogg looked overwhelmed.  “I am
afraid of dying.”

Taryn squeezed Fogg’s hand.  “Welcome to the
club,” she said with a sympathetic smile.

Cajun regarded the AI.  “If anyone would know how
to separate you from this form, it’s Father Stone.”

 “Speaking of which,” D’Arro urged, “let’s get
back to finding him.”  He retrieved and checked his map.  After committing the
path to Stone’s lab to memory, he stored it again and took note of his
surroundings.  He momentarily glanced at Fogg.  “Sorry that happened to you.”

Fogg stared at his hands, turning them this way
and that, clenching and unclenching his fists.  “Your sympathy is valued.”