Authors: Gavin Smith
I was struggling to sort out what was happening. I was sure I could hear gunfire. Maybe human screams mingling with God’s own.
Cat was checking the guards’ weapons. Another M-19 had been bisected but two of them were fine.
The locks on my shoulder and knuckles sprang off. The inhibitor jack went offline and the world sped up. I picked the inhibitor jack out of my neck plug.
Morag came to and sat up. She was looking around appalled at the carnage.
‘Did you do this?’ I asked her. She looked like she was going to ask for forgiveness even though she’d saved us. Instead she just nodded. She looked sick at what she’d done. ‘Morag!’ I demanded. Her head whipped round to look at me. Then she remembered she hated me. Her remorse gone, the blood and the light made her look somehow evil.
‘It was a secure network but he was communicating with it wirelessly,’ she said. ‘As soon as I knew that, I knew I could hack it.’
Except that you weren’t supposed to be able to hack heavy-duty corporate secure networks and take over their security systems that quickly. Even I knew that.
Cat handed me an M-19 and I passed it to Mudge. I took two of the guards’ sidearms. I was the only ambidextrous shooter and I had a feeling we were going to need to maximise our firepower. Both pistols were shitty little ten mils. Morag had another of the ten mils and we took all the ammo and grenades for the M-19s’ grenade launchers we could carry. Mudge was disgusted to find that all the grenades were stun baton rounds. It made sense. Asteroid habitats were made to be rugged but nobody wanted high-velocity rounds puncturing a window. The bullets in the M-19s were probably low-impact frangible rounds that would shatter rather than penetrate. Frangible rounds were great for use on uppity Belt zombies; not so much fun against people wearing armour.
Morag grabbed a portable computer on the desk and started tapping rapidly on the screen.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Looking at the net,’ she snapped irritably. Because we had time for attitude.
‘Why?’ I demanded. I wanted to tell her that we didn’t have the time.
‘What do you think would make God scream?’ she asked and put the computer down on the desk so we could all see it through the humid blood mist. The screen was showing a net feed. Some comedian had made the asteroid station look like a dark, monstrous subterranean kingdom in the net. The whole thing was lit with a bright white light. I was pretty sure that was how the visual interface was translating God. Tendrils writhed through the station’s virtual reflection, digging deep into its walls, violating the net construct utterly. The tendrils had an organic black look to them. They reminded me of the proto-Them construct Ambassador had shown me in my dreams that had formed in response to the Cabal’s initial attack. Except that these tendrils were burning with black flame. This was something malevolent far beyond a simple attack program.
‘Where’s it coming from?’ Cat asked.
‘I don’t know and I’m not going in to find out,’ Morag told her.
‘What is it?’ I asked. I knew I just didn’t want to face up to what it meant. That this could be over before it started. Morag turned to look at me as if I was stupid. There was only one thing it could be.
‘It’s Demiurge,’ she said.
Whoever had done this had done it well. Power was down. Auxiliary power was down. The station was running on some tertiary, or worse, system. It was getting cold. This was making us steam because we were covered in blood. The lights were still flickering like strobes to the point where it was difficult for our optics to cope.
We didn’t have a plan; we were just trying to get out of there. We were moving down through the corporate administration levels. Whatever was happening hadn’t reached there. There were frightened people hiding in the offices but terse interrogations provided little information as to what was happening.
The sound of gunfire had become less constant but we could still make out distant screaming. It sounded like it was coming from the dorm/recreation areas, which of course we would have to go through to get back to the ship. Assuming that was still a good idea. I still thought it was because we had a better class of gun on board.
We didn’t know where Pagan was and we couldn’t risk any form of comms to find him. All we knew was that he had gone to negotiate something with the Yakuza. All the need-to-know bullshit was beginning to get in the way of this fucked-up op.
Cat was in the lead. She was moving quickly, legs bent to provide a steady platform for her M-19, checking up, down, left, right. Going wide around corners so nobody could grab the weapon. I was behind her, a pistol in each hand. I had my shoulder laser scanning behind me. Then Morag, and finally Mudge watching our backs. At least he wasn’t acting like a fuck-up at the moment. He was doing his job properly.
‘What are we doing?’ Cat asked as we entered a laser-cut rock stairway. She spoke quietly as we had no comms.
‘Getting Pagan and leaving,’ I told her.
‘What about Merle?’
‘He’s a bit of a fucking luxury at the moment.’
‘What if Demiurge has compromised the ship’s comms?’ Morag asked.
‘Is this a good time for a conversation?’ I replied as we rounded a corner on the stairs and almost shot a couple of terrified Belt zombies. Cat took up a covering position on the reinforced door that led into the dorm/rec area.
‘What’s going on?’ I demanded. They jumped at my voice and then spoke in a language I didn’t understand. It sounded faintly eastern European. They pointed towards the door.
‘Are we doing this?’ Cat asked through gritted teeth.
‘We could go and hide,’ I suggested hopefully.
‘You’re such a fucking pussy,’ Mudge said. I couldn’t see him but somehow I could hear the grin he’d have on his face.
‘Shut up, Mudge. Morag, open the door.’ I think she was about to argue but it made sense. She only had one pistol, which freed up one of her hands. Cat and I covered her while Mudge pointed his assault rifle back up the stairway.
It was the smell that got us first. People had died and died bad. The coppery tang of a lot of blood was almost overpowered by the burned-pork smell of cooked flesh from laser or black light fire. Then of course there was the smell of shit. People soil themselves when they are afraid or when they die, and bowels rupture when the lower abdomen is treated to sufficient trauma.
I followed Cat through. The red emergency lighting coupled with the flickering light made it look like hell. The carpet of dead people helped give that impression as well. How had this happened so quickly? This was like smoothly executed genocide.
‘Them?’ Cat asked as she scanned the area. We were all thinking it. Just for a moment I wondered if everything we’d done had just been a Them psy-op, a precursor for an attack on the home system. I knew better, or I hoped I did.
‘Look at the wounds,’ I said. ‘That’s not from shards or black beam.’ Cat glanced down momentarily.
‘Tight grouping as well – good shooting,’ she said. She was right. A short burst to the body and then double tap to the head. Except for the ones that had been mutilated. Morag turned to one side and threw up. She was heaving, leaning on the rock wall next to the door.
‘Pull yourself together!’ I snapped. She glared at me. I hated saying it but we needed everyone working here. She straightened up, pistol at the ready. Thing is, she’d had the correct reaction. I should want to throw up. I shouldn’t be so used to this shit. Most of the corpses had been shot or just torn up. It was easy to see why Cat had thought it was Them. Some had had their genitals gouged out and their faces sawn off. I didn’t like that, not at all, and I didn’t want that to happen to me or anyone else here.
‘It’s a psyche job,’ Mudge whispered. I wasn’t sure but I thought that something had moved at the furthest range of my magnified optics. It was difficult to tell, my flash compensators were struggling with the flickering light. It was confusing my lowlight capability as well. ‘Fear of castration and loss of identity, it’s a standard and quick way of causing fear.’ Even Mudge was sounding grim.
‘Its certainly fucking playing with my calm,’ Cat growled.
‘Okay, we head back to the ship, keeping an eye out for Pagan,’ I said.
We started moving, constantly scanning our surroundings. There were still people alive down here but they looked terrified and we didn’t stop to chat. We could hear whimpering and screaming from the wounded and nearly dead. This had been done in the time we’d spent in Trace’s office.
I whipped my head to the right. Old instincts were telling me that something was moving in the shadows. I switched to thermographics, painting the area in multi-hued heat-haze patterns. It was difficult to pick out what was going on in the mass of hot pipes. Space was cold. Any habitat in space needed a lot of heating. If my imagination wasn’t playing tricks on me, then whoever or whatever it was must be able to shield their heat signature to a degree.
We rounded a corner onto the main thoroughfare. Broken neon signs flickered and in one case provided an ongoing shower of sparks. More corpses.
‘Uh, Jake?’ Cat said. I looked over. Past her, against the station’s thick external rock wall, one of the security force’s light mechs lay in a heap on the ground. We moved over using it for cover.
The mech had been torn apart. There was little evidence of heavy weapon fire. It looked like something had ripped parts off until it had got to the pilot. Around the mech were several dead guards. Again most of their wounds looked like they’d been inflicted in hand-to-hand by something with claws and possibly teeth. All over the walls I could see where rounds from the mech’s autocannon had impacted into the rock.
I shoved both the pistols into my coat pockets and grabbed one of the guards’ M-19s. The palm link connected and ran a diagnostic of the weapon. It was fully functional but the magazine was empty, as was the grenade launcher. I started to reload. Morag was doing the same as Cat and Mudge covered.
‘There’s something there,’ Cat whispered as I felt my blood turn to iced water. We all looked up. I wanted to ask her if she was sure but that was a stupid question and wishful thinking. I put a fourth grenade, a stun baton, into the grenade launcher and chambered it by working the pump mechanism. Morag was moments behind me.
‘Mudge, watch our back,’ I told him as we knelt down behind the wreckage of the mech, looking to where Cat was pointing. I had my shoulder laser still scanning behind me.
It took me a moment, but then I saw it. It was strange, some kind of animal, moving on all fours, slinking carefully in the shadows about six hundred metres further down the main thoroughfare towards the docking area. Something made me glance to one side. I cycled through normal vision, lowlight and thermographic but could see nothing. I just couldn’t shake the feeling I was being stalked.
I glanced down at the wreckage of the mech.
‘Morag? Can you hack this mech’s systems?’ I asked.
‘It’s inoperative or I would’ve been able to pilot it,’ Cat hissed.
‘It might be compromised by Demiurge,’ Morag said. I didn’t like the idea of sending Morag anywhere near Demiurge but I was thinking that we were running out of options.
‘Hopefully not the operating system. I need you to hack in and release the smartlink safety on the autocannon,’ I told her tersely. Hoping there was enough of the old NCO left in me that she wouldn’t argue. She didn’t. Instead she slung her assault rifle and climbed into the mech cockpit. She ended up sitting on the torn-up corpse of the pilot while looking for a port.
‘He’s in the way,’ she complained.
‘It’s moving!’ Cat said. Her words were punctuated by a short burst of automatic fire.
‘Corpse hack!’ I told Morag, barely registering her look of horror.
Whatever it was came loping straight down the middle of the thoroughfare straight towards us. It was low and had the look of a predatory animal as it bounded in and out of pools of flickering light. I joined Cat in firing short controlled bursts at it. As it crested a pile of corpses less than four hundred metres away I saw how pointless the frangible rounds were. Nearly all were hitting it but they were just sparking off some heavy-duty armour.
Morag plugged herself into one of the dead pilot’s jacks. He was still connected to the mech. She went through his systems. It was like necrophilia but the mech twitched. I heard the hum from its auxiliary batteries and part of the cockpit lit up. Morag managed to move the pilot’s fingers to release the mech’s grip on the autocannon.
‘Cat!’ I scrambled over the wreckage of the mech and reached for the weapon. It was armed with an autocannon because a railgun, plasma weapon or heavy lasers would be more likely to breach something. Two hundred metres. It was going to be a bitch to aim. The autocannon looked like an oversized assault rifle. I grabbed the handgrip and tucked the butt under my arm. Most of my hand fitted into the trigger. One hundred metres. Cat grabbed the barrel and lifted it up trying to aim. Fifty metres. I pulled the trigger.
I screamed as I dislocated my right shoulder. The recoil shot the massive weapon back and out of my grip. Cat threw herself to the side, but the muzzle flash caught her and burned the right side of her body, setting the bodybuilder’s top she was wearing alight. We were going to die doing something stupid, something that had been my idea.