Death system, p.15
Death System, page 15
part #3 of Zombicide Invader Series
That’s got to be unsanitary, Nero thought. “Taste anything interesting?” he asked.
Too-ahka didn’t respond. Nero couldn’t blame the creature. He hadn’t been able to read the alien’s sign language before, and there wasn’t much of a chance he’d figure out the meaning now. The alien took the bone out of its mouth, comparing grooves. Then it went back to digging in the pile for more, tossing broken femurs and humeri over its shoulder. Nero saw a whole human ribcage fly by. No skulls, though. Maybe the Xenos saved the heads for… reasons.
Shawna went up to Too-ahka, and the alien showed her the skeletonized remains.
“There were at least three varieties of Xenos who killed these humans,” she said, translating for the group.
“Too hard, too soft, and juuust right?” Nero asked.
Shawna ignored his attempt at humor. “Three different bite patterns appear with regularity. All of them are bigger than Too-ahka’s mouth. A few of the bones are completely shattered, indicating at least one of the species has a bite strength that’s off the charts.” Shawna examined the fragments for herself. She passed them to Lemora, who scrutinized the evidence.
Lemora said, “I read that the infected Xenos were comprised of multiple subtypes. Workers, Hunters, and Tanks. Their sizes varied. The bite patterns may reflect these differences.”
“These bones are old relics,” Nero said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s interesting. And irrelevant.”
“Not if there are still zombies around,” Shawna said.
“Yeah, well, we can cross that bridge…” Nero didn’t finish. He walked away. He wasn’t about to show the others that he was worried. If they didn’t find any zombies on PK-L7 except those they’d flown in with on the Andronicus, they’d be fine. So far, so good.
Lemora wandered past the bone pile. “Look at this.” She motioned Nero forward. There was a junction; a modular hallway bisecting theirs. To the left was another occluded passage full of junk from the station, old bones, and wavy drapes of mold, but to the right she’d discovered an emergency drop barrier made of titanium with a mining company logo. “They must’ve triggered these walls to come down when they realized the station had been breached. Like a ship, the failsafe system is designed to seal off the unaffected areas. It’s intact.”
Nero went to the screen pad next to the barrier and tapped it. “Dead, as expected.”
Krait smoothed his hand over the barrier, then he approached the blank screen. “May I?”
“By all means,” Nero said. “Play us a tune, maestro. Prove to me you’re a team player.”
Using the tips of his nimble fingers, Krait pried the panel loose, gently letting the display dangle from a colorful braid of wires. “Does anyone have a knife?”
“Here.” Lemora passed him her blade.
The smuggler separated the wires, picking out a variety of colored lines, which he quickly stripped. “Matias, will you lend me a hand?”
Matias strode up to the smuggler. “What’d you need? Somebody to hold it for you?”
“Turn around,” Krait said. “If you don’t mind.”
The hitman faced away from the smuggler, staring at the others with bugged-out eyes, mockingly sticking out his tongue and trying to lick the inside of his faceplate. Krait removed the cover from the back of Matias’s spacesuit, exposing the life support nerve center. He started splicing wires, twisting ends together. He poked inside it with the knife. Matias’s headlamp flashed, dimmed, and went out.
“Whoa! What the hell?” Mateo said, raising his gun barrel, pointing it at Krait.
The smuggler paused. “I’m jacking into his power supply. It won’t harm him, I can assure you of that. I only need a tiny spark…”
“Bro?” Mateo asked.
Matias shrugged. “Let him spark me. I’ve been through worse. You can’t kill me, see?”
Mateo nodded at Krait to continue.
Krait fiddled with the suit’s circuitry, joining Matias to the control panel via a tether of cables. After several failed attempts, Krait’s expression grew sour. He stripped more wires, plugging and unplugging connections.
“Mano, you good?” Mateo asked.
“All good,” Matias answered. “You smell burned meat? I smell burned meat.”
“What?” Mateo raised his gun, sticking it against Krait’s torso.
“He’s screwing with you,” Krait said.
“It’s true, bro,” Matias said, grinning. “I’m only clowning.”
“Stop it,” Mateo said.
“The day I can’t clown no more is the day you can blow my ass out the airlock.”
Krait lifted the dangling panel close to his faceplate, shining his light at it. He touched the screen, and the emergency barrier’s gears began to whine. Slowly, the emergency security wall lifted. It retracted into a pocket in the ceiling. Matias turned to watch it go. Krait blinked smugly.
“Hold still,” Krait said. “You’re on a short leash, my friend.”
Nero pointed his headlamp into the newly revealed module. No remains on the floor. No mold on the walls. It didn’t look pristine, but he was feeling delighted. “No sand. The seal held.”
The barrier stopped moving, and the whining ceased. But a different sound replaced it.
A grinding: low and mechanical, a cranking of gears that meant business. It was the kind of sound that if you’d heard it once, you never forgot. For many, it was the last noise they heard.
Bak-Irp cast his headlamp beam over the heads of Nero, Krait, and Matias. “Oh shit! GET DOWN!” He dove at Nero, wrapping him around the waist and taking him to the ground. Mateo tackled his brother, snapping the cables hooking him up to the panel. The clones covered their heads.
Krait just stood there, speechless.
As the Falchion sentry gun bore down on him and started firing…
Chapter Twenty-One
Joy
Krait had never encountered a Falchion sentry gun before, so the sound of it taking aim had no impact on him. The bullets were another story, if there had been any left. Luckily for him, the gun was empty, having spent its ammo centuries ago. The Falchion whirred, cycling through empty chambers, its trigger clicking until he disconnected it. Krait felt only curiosity at his brush with death. If he were going to die, he’d be dead. It was that simple. Part of him thought he’d live forever; another part of him was ready to see what might be next, waiting beyond the veil.
“It must’ve been wired to the door,” he said, examining the control panel and the cables ripped from the back of Matias’s spacesuit. “When I jolted the barrier, it reactivated the sentry.”
“Almost deactivated you,” Nero said, tapping the smuggler’s faceplate.
“I didn’t see any dead Xenos on the floor anywhere in that opposite module,” Bak-Irp said. “Did the sentry miss them? The only bones inside looked human. Maybe it malfunctioned.”
“Or the Xenos might collect their dead.” Shawna joined them. Too-ahka stood beside her.
“What if they bury them?” Bak-Irp said.
“Or eat them,” Krait added dryly. “That would be an efficient use of resources.”
The bodyguard looked at him strangely, but Krait was used to it. People had always viewed him as an odd fellow, more comfortable around computers than living, breathing beings. His mother had told him he was missing something inside – a heart, perhaps. It was true that he didn’t feel things the way others seemed to; he had strong interests, but no passions, rarely did he ever experience a sense of excitement or the worst-sounding of all emotions – joy. What he did sense acutely was stimulation, arousal, a bristling of his inner antennae, and he knew satisfaction, satiation, and rest. To be perfectly honest, he wished he were the only thing alive in the universe, but if he could not have that, then he preferred to interact with the world at one remove, detached if not physically, then emotionally. He pictured himself as an infinitely deep, frosty cold cylinder that occasionally needed filling. If the sentry gun had killed him, that wouldn’t have been so bad.
“I think I can re-drop the barrier,” Krait said. “I won’t need Matias either. If I can trigger it, the barrier should have a freefall option.” As he said this, he found the tab inside the control panel compartment he’d been looking for and depressed it; the heavy barrier slammed down with a thunderous racket. Everyone was on the right side, fortunately, though they ran for cover at the loud crash of it falling into place. “Sorry,” he said, not meaning it. Seeing them jump was fun.
“If there’s anything with ears on this station, they heard that,” Bak-Irp said angrily.
Krait ignored him.
“It held once,” he said, “it will hold again. The seal looked tight. Now we need to locate the life systems and turn the air back on. If we’re lucky, the scrubbers are still working, and we won’t asphyxiate ourselves.” He glanced around, taking in their new surroundings. “These rooms appear to be the workers’ living quarters. It’s almost homey.” Honestly, he found it filthy.
The group fanned out cautiously to search inside the module.
They entered the dorm rooms, clearing them, one by one. Nero didn’t help with this security measure; he paced ahead seeking out the comms center. Krait could’ve told him that it was nearby, he spied the thick comms cable coiling inside the wall, a telltale sign. But their dear leader’s arrogance pricked at him. If Nero’s scheme to call his sister for a ticket to ride through a wormhole off this planet didn’t pan out, Krait figured that he could trap the others in a module and suffocate them, then whatever else he might find at the station would only need to support one life: his. The Coalition would come for him. There’d be no avoiding that. He’d tell them Nero forced him to join in the escape. He’d show them the bodies of the dead escapees and see if they might consider commuting his sentence to repay him for his act of bravery. They’d never let him go, though. He was serving one hundred consecutive life terms for trafficking in sentient cargo and remotely sabotaging his own pirated ship, murdering fifty GDF soldiers who’d tried to confiscate it. Maybe he could finagle them into giving him better accommodations. He didn’t mind solitary confinement, but he’d like a nice view and some new vid games to play.
Nero cried out, “HUZZAH!”
He’d discovered the comms center. That meant he’d be putting Krait to work. Krait hadn’t made up his mind if he would make the call to Neera or only pretend to try. He’d decide after he saw what he had to work with. He’d never traveled through a wormhole. It might be invigorating. Then he could add it to the list of things he’d done, one of the few examples that he hadn’t done alone. He’d heard that Neera was just as nasty as her brother. If he played his cards right, he might find the chance to murder them both and send himself through the wormhole.
Now that would be fun!
“Krait! Where are you?” Nero tromped down the corridor. “Oh, you’re right here.”
“I was distracted,” Krait said. “By my own thoughts. Sorry. I’m spacey sometimes.”
“I found the comms center. It’s time for you to earn your keep,” Nero said.
“My pleasure,” Krait said, and he almost meant it, but not how Nero thought he did.
The comms room hadn’t been wrecked. It looked like an exhibition at a museum, a slice of the past frozen in time, where you could visit and imagine your ancestors trying to talk to one another. It was quaint. The control panel curved smoothly around the room. Krait rolled up a chair. It was like sitting inside a seashell, listening for the ocean, a hiss of waves, the hollow, cupped sounding that was like your ears filling up with warm seawater as you drowned.
“Can you make it talk?” Nero asked.
“I just sat down,” Krait said. “Give me a sec.”
Nero unfolded a scrap of paper from a pocket of his spacesuit. He handed it to Krait.
“What’s this?” Krait asked.
“That’s our contact. Neera? My sister? Message her at that number. It’s untraceable.”
Krait pushed the paper aside. He tipped a keyboard and soft gray crud floated out of it onto the control desk. “You know this isn’t going to be easy, right? I have to locate an emergency power source. There should be one in this room somewhere. But it’s probably kaput.”
“Kaput?”
“Maybe there’s no juice to squeeze out of it. What’s the phrase, ‘Water from a stone’?”
“Make it work. No excuses,” Nero said. “You’ve got one hour. If you don’t send the signal by then, Bak-Irp will execute you. I don’t like you, Krait. I don’t need any more reasons.”
Krait believed him.
So, he went to work, dreaming of ways of killing the team while he tried to save them.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Small Holes
“What are they arguing about?” Shawna said.
Bak-Irp put his ear to the door of the comms room. He had his shoulder braced against it in case they suddenly tried to burst out. If Nero accused him of eavesdropping, he’d say he was just doing his job, guarding the boss like he was paid to do. But the two of them, Nero and Krait, weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. They were too busy tearing each other new assholes.
“Nero’s losing his shit. Says he thinks Krait’s lying,” Bak-Irp said.
“Lying about what?”
“Not being able to bring the comms system back to life. Krait says that there’s no local backup power source, which should be inside the comms room. But it isn’t.” Bak-Irp took his ear away and leaned his back against the door, letting out a long sigh of exhaustion. “I’m tired.”
“When’s the last time you slept?”
“I catch a couple hours every night. But truth be told, I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since they locked my ass up. My brain is always on high alert, listening, waiting for trouble to arrive on my doorstep.”
“You can relax,” Shawna said. “I think it’s here.”
The Thassian smiled.
Nero was screaming at Krait now. You couldn’t help but hear him.
He said, “Bak’s going to kill you, you bastard! Time’s up. He’s going to come in here and break your fingers, bend your elbows backward, and kick out your kneecaps. Then I’m going to have him choke you to death. Slowly. Wring your neck until you pass out, then shake you awake and do it again. I’m going to sit here and watch you suffer. And I’m going to enjoy it.”
Shawna raised her eyebrows at Bak-Irp. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
“I might,” he said. The whole situation was turning into crap while they waited to sort out the comms. Those zombies outside weren’t playing beach smackyball. They’d be coming soon.
“How can you work for a guy like Nero?” she asked him. “You seem better than that.”
Bak-Irp thought about it. “I need the money. I got kids. Four of them, all still in school. They live with my wife on a floating medical island. She’s a doctor who works with refugees.”
“How did she get mixed up with an outlaw like you?”
“I charmed her,” Bak-Irp said wistfully. “She fixed me up after a scrape with a fugitive I brought in. This Russian dude who was wanted on a triple murder beef. He’d joined up with a mercenary crew fighting a border skirmish between Safeholders and Upholders. The Interplanetaries refused to send their cops to capture him. The area was too hot. I found the guy eating MREs in an Upholder mess tent. He attacked me with a fork. Put about forty holes in me.”
“Oh shit,” Shawna said. “That must’ve hurt.”
Bak-Irp shrugged. “They were small holes.”
“Did you end up getting him?”
“Oh, yeah.” Bak-Irp remembered the Russian’s reaction when he took the fork away and put it somewhere the Russian couldn’t reach it. He chuckled. “My wife had to treat him, too. But I was the better patient. I talked her ear off, convinced her to let me make her dinner afterward.” His wife was beautiful even in a war zone. She had kind eyes that crinkled in the corners when she laughed. He liked to make her laugh more than anything else in the world. He pushed his memories down before they started flooding into his head like water from a busted dam.
“How’d you get yourself outside the law? If you don’t mind me asking,” Shawna said.
“I do mind. It was personal business. I’ll tell you this much. I lost my cool and then things spun out of control. There was a gang who thought they could spook me by threatening to hurt my family. They learned a lesson. I did, too, and if I could take it back I would. But I can’t.” Bak-Irp saw a vision of himself, the rage he’d felt, the way it changed him, how it made him feel crazy and like a stranger inhabiting his skin. He pictured what he’d done to the members of that gang, but it was like he was watching another person doing it. After he was finished with them, he wandered, his head full of staticky fuzz, and a bad taste lingered in his mouth that he couldn’t rinse away no matter how much liquor he poured in it. He couldn’t go back to being the person he’d been before – that was how it felt – so he stayed out, an empty husk who hounded evil men.
Until the Interplanetaries hunted him down. He didn’t even put up a fight when they came for him. He gave up. Just like that. The next thing he knew he was a prisoner in the HT unit, like waking up from one nightmare to find yourself trapped inside another bad dream.
The door opened behind him, and Bak-Irp caught himself before he fell back. Nero came rushing out. He ducked past them.
“What’s up?” Bak asked.
But Nero wasn’t talking. He marched straight for Lemora, hauling her into a dorm room where they started whispering to each other. It sounds like a Thassian viper pit, Bak-Irp thought. He turned and looked in on Krait. The tech genius was still alive; he looked bored, aloof.
