Death system, p.2
Death System, page 2
part #3 of Zombicide Invader Series
What did she care who Nero slaughtered in his conquest to take over known space?
Shark felt like arguing. “Seriously, you’ve got to give Nero credit. He dreamed big and went for it. He was damned close to running the whole show. Dictator of the universe.” Shark couldn’t hide his admiration. “It’s hard to believe one man could cause so much mayhem.”
“I didn’t know he’d been captured.” Ishnik clenched her fists. “This monster…”
“The Coalition kept it hush-hush. What’s left of Nero’s empire is still out there wreaking havoc. The Arms Guild is up for grabs. Supposedly he still controls it from here. But I don’t see how. That’s Coalition propaganda. Their intelligence services are busy running down Nero’s lieutenants. This guy owns enough weaponry to take down a thousand XSecPens. But I can vouch for him – Nero’s never caused me any trouble.” He pays me quadruple my salary to do him favors, Shark wanted to tell her. But he didn’t. “On the unit, Nero Junior is as gentle as a lamb. It doesn’t profit him to cause problems. He’s an executive-level gangster, a real businessman.”
“His jumpsuit is as red as the others,” Ishnik said.
Shark shrugged. Ishnik didn’t get it, and probably never would. But it was straightlaced suckers like her that created a market for guards like Shark who knew when to bend the rules and when to break them, too. Like Nero, Shark was a businessman.
He popped the port open and delivered the prisoner’s dinner.
Nero never acknowledged their intrusion. He just kept whistling – it was an ancient marching tune – while he stared at his map. His index finger kept time like a conductor’s baton.
Shark shrouded the view from the prisoner’s side of the cell door.
“Mind if I push the trolley?” Ishnik asked, as they proceeded along the cellblock.
Here was a quandary. If Shark said “no” she might get perturbed, perhaps even suspicious, but if he said “yes” there was a chance she’d foul up his drop-off. He made a quick risk calculation. “Sure!” he said. “Be my guest. Start here, on the right side.” He pointed to a full column of trays lined up inside the trolley. If she delivered from that half, he was golden. The tray with the vial was the next one down on the left side. He’d tell her when to switch back.
Shark felt superior as he watched the Fushnallan pushing dinners into slots. He stood behind her with his arms folded, making certain that she didn’t deviate from his orders. She was going to do the dirty deed for him without ever knowing it. He liked that. Better still, if shit went south, he’d blame the outsider. She was a perfect patsy. Shark didn’t expect things to go badly.
And for a while they didn’t.
Everything changed when they arrived at the war hero’s cell.
Chapter Three
Hotshot
Shawna Bright felt trouble brewing before she saw it. More times than she could recount, her tingly sixth sense of impending peril had tipped her off in time to pull her bacon out of the fire. Chalk it up to a fighter pilot’s instincts, or the Appalachian Mountain wisdom that ran deep in her veins, but when her cell door changed from its usual gray static fog to a crystal-clear view of that asshole Shark, and a new guard she didn’t know pushing the dinner cart, Shawna was ready for events to turn sour and unexpected. She wasn’t sure when they’d turn, only that they would.
“Hey there, Hotshot.” Shark winked at her. “Win any medals lately?”
“I ought to get a purple heart just for having to look at your face,” she said.
Shark grinned his awful silver smile at her and wagged his finger. He turned to his partner. “Didn’t I tell you she was a pistol?”
Shark gawked at her the way he always did, accompanied by his menacing style of flattery, a stream of unwanted, cringeworthy comments about her blonde curls or her slim, swimmer’s build. She hadn’t dipped her toes in a pool in ages, and likely, she never would again.
“You were in the Defense Forces?” The new guard’s voice burbled, but Shawna made out the words clearly. The question raised her hackles. It was a tender subject – her service years.
“That’s right,” Shawna said, watching both guards from her bunk. “What’s it to you?”
The guard pointed a thumb toward herself. “Galactic Marines Raiders. My last tour ended during the Kepler Insurgency. That bug hunt was it for me. I was happy to get out in one piece.”
“I was there at KI.” Shawna tried not to think of her squad mates’ faces. The litany of names played in her ear: Smirnov, Ral Eck, Cerotti, Patel… She said, “My squadron flew air superiority fighters ahead of the last bombing raids. That was no picnic in the park, I’ll tell you.”
“Especially after we found out the bugs could fly.” The Fushnallan was shaking her head.
“Yeah, how ’bout that?” Shawna smiled grimly. The insectoids had been full of surprises.
“Well, ain’t this sweet?” Shark said. “A veterans’ reunion party.” His face turned hard. “We don’t have time for a parade today. I’ve got swill to shovel. Pass the tray, Ishnik. Move!” He shifted impatiently behind Ishnik. Nastier than normal, he was heading for the next cell.
Ishnik stared at Shawna. Strangely, Shawna didn’t detect any hostility. On the contrary, the Fushnallan seemed to be avoiding looking at Shark. She reached into the cart and withdrew a meal tray, passing it into the port. Shark stopped. Reversing direction, he peered into the trolley. In a blink, he exploded with white-hot rage, not aimed at Shawna but at Ishnik. He lunged, shoving his partner into the door screen, which flickered grayly, shouting, “What did you DO?”
He kicked the cart, sending it up on two wheels until it bounced down hard again. Then he was diving for the open port slot, groping inside, hunting after the meal tray.
Baffled by his reaction, Ishnik said, “I served her dinner. That’s what you said to do–”
“Idiot!” Shark glowered at her. “You gave her the wrong one!”
“B- but they’re all the same,” the bewildered guard said. “The label said ‘human’ meal–”
“Shut up!” Shark buried his arm shoulder-deep into the open port.
But Shawna was faster. She leaped from her perch on the bunk and snatched up the tray. The port flap closed with a hard snap. Shark’s fingers scraped inside the empty delivery chute.
“Give it back! NOW!” he growled. Veins bulged in his neck. His face flushed magenta.
The corner of Shawna’s mouth hooked down in amusement as she inspected the food.
“What’s for dinner, Sharkey Boy? Something special you’re not telling me…?”
The livid guard raised his hand to the control panel. “Damnit, I’ll choke-gas you.”
“Over what?” She tipped her head aside, taunting him, as she licked gravy off her finger.
“This prisoner has done nothing wrong,” said Ishnik. “I’m calling an officer.” She reached for the communicator on her shoulder, ready to alert the command control center.
“Don’t do it.” Shark unclipped his shock baton. Sweat glistened on his face. “I got this.”
Ishnik hesitated, her thumb feathering the button. But she hadn’t pressed it yet.
“You’re not calling anybody,” he said, pointing the baton at her. “Be cool. I’ll handle it.”
The visiting guard slowly lowered her hand away from her comms.
She’s waiting to see what his next move will be, Shawna thought. That was a mistake. Shark was unhinged. Ruthless, too. He’d juice Ishnik’s skull full of electricity before she had a chance to get off a call. Whenever Shark got himself wound up, the situation ended bloody.
Seeing Ishnik backing down, Shark switched his focus to Shawna. He raised his free hand to the control panel, baring his metallic teeth at her. This was going to get gnarly, fast.
Shawna had to think. There was something going on in the background here between Shark and Ishnik. Ishnik didn’t seem to be aware of it until now. Shawna wasn’t sure what she was up to, but she had the distinct feeling that she wasn’t going to be the only one feeling his wrath. He thought he had people fooled, and maybe the other guards, officers, and the warden were unaware. But the cons knew that Shark was dirty and for sale. Maybe Ishnik was interfering with his game. She was too clean, an unknown factor, and therefore a potential threat. His hurricane of fury would engulf her, too. The other guard might bear the brunt of it. Shark wasn’t above that – he eliminated threats to his illicit income and well-being. With extreme prejudice.
Over what? Shawna asked herself again. Why was he cranked up over a tray of tasteless grub? His response didn’t make sense, even for an excitable bully like Shark. The food looked as inedible as it normally did. He hadn’t snuck in a ‘special dinner’ as a favor.
Unless something was hidden in the grub. It had to be small, whatever it was.
“Hold it, Shark.” Shawna idled up to the door, loose and friendly, flashing him a smile.
He paused. His chest was pumping. White spittle flecked his lips. He was losing it.
Shark’s fist was so tight around his shock baton that his knuckles looked bloodless. Tendons in his forearm flexed like live cables. He was a beast, plain and simple. His might, his right. People got their brains beat out in XSecPen over trivial matters daily. They died over nothing. Petty garbage like this. As a rule, Shawna didn’t mix herself up in other people’s business unless it couldn’t be avoided. She tried to live in peace despite her environment.
Tyrannical Shark lorded over his tiny kingdom. Crazy with anger, balanced on the precipice of violence, his need for total domination would cause him to lose self-control, and he’d smash everything within reach. Shawna and Ishnik would pay the price. It wouldn’t matter who started it or whose fault it was. He’d be their punishment. It wasn’t worth it. Whatever was in the food had nothing to do with Shawna. It was someone else’s trouble. Avoiding trouble was one way she kept hope alive. Make it through today and see what tomorrow brings was her mantra.
“I was only teasing you, dude,” she said. “Lighten up. You can have your shitty food back.” She popped the port, returned the tray, oozing charm as she gazed into his predatory eyes.
Shark retrieved the tray and slid it back into the trolley. He leveled his baton at Ishnik. “We have procedures for a reason. You follow my orders. I said to take the meals from the right side. Not the left.” He snapped his baton against the edge of the trolley.
Shawna and Ishnik both jumped at the sound.
“I don’t understand why you’re so angry,” Ishnik said. “The matter is trivial.”
Shark took a deep breath. He talked to her like she was a child, and not a smart one either.
“You want to know how we survive in here with these animals?” He jerked his thumb toward Shawna. “We maintain order. No exceptions. A breakdown in discipline is an invitation for trouble. Your hotshot pilot friend here murdered all the other pilots in her squadron. Seventeen of them. Lieutenant Colonel Shawna Bright is not your comrade in arms. If you fail to follow orders, trust me, she’ll notice. She’ll take advantage. Next thing you know, we’re toast.”
Shawna stared blankly, letting his words flow past her, refusing to acknowledge them.
Ishnik’s mic fizzed as if she were about to speak, but thinking better of it, she nodded.
“Got it?” he asked. “This is my turf. I live this every day. You’re only visiting dry land.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”
“Good. Now deliver the prisoner a meal from the right side. As you were ordered.”
Crisis averted for now, Shawna thought, though the blood rush was still thumping in her ears. She took the new tray Ishnik offered to her, and after she knew they’d gone, dumped it in the toilet. What was bothering her wasn’t the missed meal. It was that her sense of impending doom hadn’t gone away. It was worse. There was no way to figure out why. Not yet. So, instead, she leaned back against the chilly wall of her little gray cell and closed her eyes.
And she waited.
Chapter Four
Doctor Boom
To an outside observer it might’ve appeared that Dr Lemora Pick was asleep at the small table built into the wall of her cell at XSecPen HT. All the cells had these tables, but most were covered with personal items, reminders of life outside. Lemora used hers for her research and mental exercises. Her eyes were closed, her shoulders relaxed, her hands lay in her lap, feet flat on the floor. In fact, her mind was not at all disengaged from thinking. Quite the opposite, she was doing her best to maintain an extreme level of concentration, summoning up from her photographic memory every sensation – from the white-hot flash to the boneshaking roar that followed, to the sulfurous, charred smell of things burned up in the aftermath of a successful detonation. A violent shudder rippled through her body, a wave of ecstasy that tingled her skin.
How wonderful it was to watch the world explode.
To see objects blown apart at high speed. Never to go back to the way they’d been before. To wield that power, to own the hand controlling and releasing energetic forces. To be a destroyer. An agent of change, a leveler of obsolete structures, an eraser of the rotten, old world.
She lived for it. Those moments of maximum tension right before the event were the most exquisite. When the shockwave hit you, then passed through you, it was like communing with a divine spirit – she had to wear goggles to look at her creations, to keep them from blinding her. Foam plugs saved her eardrums from rupturing. The great fireball expanded, the column of flame and smoke rising like a dragon, higher and higher, boiling against the backdrop of a soon-to-be annihilated landscape – there was nothing else like it. How she missed those moments of raw intensity, witnessing a chain reaction that she had delivered into this slow, dull, gray world.
Everyone else was marking time, ticking days off a calendar.
She was burning it down… whenever she had the chance.
Because of circumstances beyond her control, recently Lemora had been marking time like the others, confined to this space dungeon for longer than she cared to remember. She was by nature a restless being. Her mind leaped from idea to idea like a jaguar hopping from tree to tree in her ancestral homeland of Brazil. She’d seen a tropical forest cat once, and thought, That is me! I am wild like you, my jaguar sister. Lemora had descended from a long line of scientists on the maternal side, women like she was, huntresses, whether they were stalking viruses in laboratory microscopes and test tubes or wandering deep in the bush gathering up rare plants and insects to study. Her mother was a geologist who searched for signs of water on dried-up planets. That was far too tame for Lemora. She needed light, noise, and action on a grand scale.
What she discovered were bombs.
It began with rocketry as a girl, sending up missiles into the sky, lighting the fuse and running away, then later, not running, but standing in place under a shower of sparks. One day a random misfire singed her shoes, etching a snaky black spiral as it spun itself out in the dirt.
Lemora was intrigued. She took notes. She altered plans, maximizing incendiary effects.
Friends had long ago abandoned her. They called her crazy. Said she had a death wish.
A death wish?
No. It was quite the opposite. She had a life wish. She wanted every day to start with a bang, every night to culminate in a fireworks display. So, she built homemade explosives. Cute little ones, at first. They would sizzle and go off with a pop or a whistling crack, and the heads of passersby would turn sharply at the sound to stare into the fields where she tested her devices. What did they see? A twist of smoke riding on the wind like a phantom, a crater in the dry grass.
They would also see a strong, tall girl, much taller than the boys in her class, a young lady with shiny raven hair and a mischievous grin who’d found her passion early and indulged in it obsessively. Her field was soon pocked with holes, the stubbly weeds scorched as dark as her mane. She took to cutting her hair short after it caught ablaze and scarred her neck. She carried that puckered coin of flesh proudly, a badge of courage, because Lemora was not without fear. She mastered her fear, loved the taste of it in the back of her throat. Without fear, where was the rush? How could you truly live unless you knew you might die spectacularly at any moment?
Boys were afraid of her. She let them be. She was smarter, quicker, more resilient. With her short cut and wide, athletic build, at a distance she was often mistaken for a man. Never up close. Behind her back the boys called her “Dr Boom.” While they were bumbling around like colts who’d grown extra limbs, she skipped through school and started doing serious research. The Galactic Defense Forces contractors noticed her work and hired her. She was always the youngest scientist in the lab, always the best, too. She made breakthrough discoveries and brought in barrels of cash. Her career took off like one of her rockets. To the stars she was headed. Who knew the heights she’d attain? The sky had no limit, because she denied it existed.
Like all heroes, Lemora had her weaknesses. She’d never said she was perfect.
Impatience. Irreverence. Some called her work rushed, cautioning that her methods were reckless, even sloppy. They were all jealous, she knew. While they fretted, she dared to act.
And rules. God, she hated following their arbitrary rules designed for those plebeians who were less gifted, her inferiors unwilling to push the boundaries of science to their extremes.
Of course, people died. Isn’t that part of the story of life? The weak ones fall away.
She’d read the reports. Combing through her post-testing sites, she’d found a limb or two.
They weren’t exactly accidents, rather she viewed them as learning experiences. The experimentation phase was never without certain unfortunate but acceptable, unavoidable risks.
Bombs by their nature were dangerous! Unpredictability was not necessarily a negative, she reminded her bosses, even once saying to them, “We’re creating weapons, my friends, are we not? And what is more intimidating than a bomb whose capability is unknown? Look how frightened you all are!”
