New Olympus Saga (Book 3): Apocalypse Dance (35 page)

The Darkling Plains, Time Undetermined

Mr. Night is up to something.

There were a few bad days after my brief trip back to the real world. Getting our shit together took a while, but we got there eventually, and we’ve been kicking ass since then.

We’ve woken up a bunch more people. Most of them aren’t much in a fight, but numbers help, and after getting killed a few times, people start learning new tricks. Dying with a weapon in your hand is better than being slowly tortured to death; we all know that. We start winning every fight we get into.

Happiness is impossible, but I feel a small degree of satisfaction. I haven’t been able to reestablish contact with Christine, not since Christmas. No idea how long ago that was, out there in the real world. The flow of time obviously fluctuates like crazy in here. Months or hours might have gone by on the other side. Sometimes I think of her with Ultimate, but it’s amazing how little your romantic problems matter when you have to worry about being skinned alive every day. As long as she’s okay, I don’t care.

Mr. Night is planning something, though, and if he succeeds nobody’s going to be okay.

My suspicions are confirmed when a bunch of Chinese astronauts start showing up in Hell.

“That’s another crewmember from my ship,” Chen Yong says, looking at the fading body of our last rescue. We did our best but we didn’t get to the poor bastard before he died. There’s over fifty of us now, and we took down a dozen ghosts, but a few of them were more interested in torturing their victim than in fighting us off. Hopefully we’ll be able to pick him up tomorrow.

“That makes six of them we’ve found so far,” I say. We rescued Chen Yong from the hungry ghosts of six prostitutes a while back. He won’t tell us what he did to them to make them want to take him apart, and I haven’t pressed the issue, because he’s been useful. Like Jeffrey, he clearly was no saint before he ended up in here. And like Jeffrey, it’s not something I can worry about, other than making sure I only trust him as far as I have to.

Chen was an ensign in the Republic of China’s Astronaut Corps. He was killed by someone who looked just like his brother, someone whose face turned blank just before he reached out and casually snapped Chen’s neck. The ensign had been on leave from the starship
Chung Cheng
; he hadn’t been due to report for duty for a few weeks. My guess is that his idea of shore leave had involved one or more prostitutes, and not in a good way. Which likely makes him a serial killer, and the hungry ghosts his former victims.

Nothing I can do about that, for now. What’s important is that Mr. Night killed him, and the reasons why he did. He must have returned to the spaceship on schedule, wearing Chen’s face. And now we’re getting a whole bunch of dead crew. The ones we’ve picked up are still in a deep daze – recent arrivals are the hardest ones to wake up for some reason – so we haven’t been able to get much out of them, but it’s not that hard to put the pieces together. “The asshole has taken over your ship, Chen.”

“The
Chung Chen
is the most modern vessel in the Republican Fleet! Her crew is loyal and will fight to the last man,” Chen says proudly. He was a weapons officer before Mr. Night murdered him and used my powers to impersonate him.

“Were there any Neos on board?” I ask him.

Chen shakes his head. “There was no need for any
Xian
on my ship.”

“The asshole is a Type Three Xian or whatever you want to call us. Your people never had a chance.”

“But why? Good as it is, my ship is only one vessel among many in First Fleet.”

“My guess is, he needed a ride to get close to the action.” The Genocide must be nearby. For all I know, the alien is already in the Solar System, killing everyone while I’m stuck here. “We need to do something.”

“You are doing something. You have saved dozens of men.” I guess saving women doesn’t rank high in his value system, because he doesn’t mention them.

What did you do to those women, asshole? How many more did you plan to kill during your shore leave before Mr. Night decided you’d make a great sock puppet?

Mr. Night seems to be attracted to a certain kind of people. Serial killers, the insane, the weak of mind and soul.

I don’t have to wonder what he saw in me.

“Big fucking deal,” I say. “I was hoping to have a hundred people in the gang before trying out my plan, but I don’t think we can wait any longer.” 

“You have a plan to get us out?” Chen says.

It’s not much of a plan, but I don’t tell him that. “I think it’ll get us out, one way or another,” I say. “Let’s get the gang together.”

And if we do get out of here, I don’t think I’ll be taking your serial-killing ass along
.

That I keep to myself as well.

* * *

“I don’t wanna do it,” Annie says and shakes her head back and forth. ‘It’s gonna hurt. I don’t wanna hurt anymore!”

I know that yelling at the girl, or shaking her until her teeth rattle inside her pretty little head, aren’t going to accomplish anything, but those are my go-to methods to get people to do what I want, so I’m at a loss. Luckily, Wanda saves the day. She kneels in front of the girl and holds her tightly. “It’s going to be okay, Annie,” Wanda tells her. I hope she’s not bullshitting the child.

“It’s gonna hurt,” Annie says again.

“Maybe a little, honey, but if Face’s plan works, we won’t have to be here anymore. No more running scared all the time, or having the bad men hurt us if we can’t get away from them. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Annie nods. “I don’t wanna do it. But you’re saying I got to.”

“Afraid, so, sweetie.” I could have applauded Wanda, but I stay quiet so I don’t spook the kid. I mentally tip an imaginary hat her way, though. I wouldn’t have gotten through to Annie in a million years with my winning personality. And that’s after I’ve had Christine softening my rough edges.

I look at Wanda, and she nods. I kneel down next to her, so I’m facing Annie at eye level. “All right, Annie. Let’s try that trick you can pull, the one where we all hold hands and you let us share our thoughts.” The power to create a gestalt of minds was what had gotten Mr. Night interested in her. He used her to link together the minds of over a hundred people.

And then he murdered them all. Including Annie.

We don’t know why he did it. I’m not planning on asking the asshole if I run into him, either. I’m sure it wasn’t anything good. But maybe the bastard has accidentally given us the tools to escape.

I gather everyone around and explain my plan. I don’t sugarcoat things; odds are that all we’ll get out of this is a quick death. Other than me, they have no bodies to return to, and my own chances aren’t all that great, either. There’s no guarantees I’ll find them a new home, just a long shot that depends on people I don’t know very well and stuff I don’t know much about.

They hear me out, and everyone agrees to join in, even creepy Jeffrey and Medved, even the still semi-conscious Chinese astronauts. Anything is better than staying here.

“All right, then. Gather around. Time to hold hands and think good thoughts.”

We do, and Annie starts doing her thing. She reaches all of us: fifty-four minds, three of them Neos, the others plain vanilla humans. From what I’ve heard, though, even normal humans have some connection to the Source, and when their minds are chain-linked their combined power is much greater than the sum of the component parts. Soon I can feel their thoughts inside my head, as the link between us grows deeper than ever before. Some of them are downright nasty. Jeffrey’s are particularly bad; as I suspected, he was a serial killer until he came across somebody worse than him, and ended up here. My suspicions about Chen also prove to be correct; the former astronaut got off from killing people. Nice folk, and Medved’s almost as bad. The Russian is full of rage, as crazy-angry as I am, if not more, and a lot less concerned about who ends up on the receiving end of that anger.

Those three are the worst. Most of the others are just sad; they were normal people with normal lives and problems, until horrible stuff happened to them. That’s the kind of people I’ve always tried to protect, hoping they can live out their lives without knowing the terror and powerlessness that comes with being a victim. I can’t help them the way I should, but at least I can put an end to their suffering now, one way or another.

We’re all in here
, Annie sends out. She’s hurting, the poor kid; using her power is a painful process, and the more minds she links together, the more agony she feels.

Thank you
, I tell her, and now it’s time for me to push with my mind, tapping into the power of the gestalt to boost my signal. I hope it will be enough.

I can feel the cold black Outsider energy pushing back, and it’s like drowning in toxic waste while being crushed to death. Even worse, a part of me welcomes that feeling, and tries to drink it up. I push back against the darkness, not knowing if I’ll be able to make it through.

Aboard the
FLSS Liberty Ship
, Jupiter’s Orbit, February 7, 2014

Something was wrong.

Well, duh, but something was wrong beyond the obvious, beyond the fact that there was a big puddle of Outsider stuff where the Genocide had been, and that they’d been shooting it up for almost an hour without anything happening. They’d finally taken a break and sent a ship closer to the spot, trying to get readings or something, but she doubted they were going to find out anything useful.

She tried to access the Codex and get more information, but all she got was another migraine. She’d pushed her powers pretty hard, and she’d hit a wall and needed some rest, not that she expected she’d get any rest any time soon.

There hadn’t been much time to rest, or even to grieve for all the dead. She’d just heard that Nebiru was gone. The casualty list had been too long, she knew that much. She’d held off reading it for now; there would be time enough to do it if they survived the new crisis.

“Maybe it will dissipate,” John said. They were watching one of the view-screens on the command room, careful to stay out of the way of the bridge crew. “From what you’ve told me, the stuff does not do well in contact with our reality.”

“Yes, but right now it’s not really in contact with anything, that’s why shooting it is not working. I think it’s waiting for something. Maybe…”

The mental voice was faint and stank of Outsider stuff, but she could hear it well enough.

Mark didn’t waste any time with greetings or sappy stuff. Chung Cheng
and taken it over. Go get him!>

The connection started fading away, but Christine pushed with her mind, causing her migraine to flare up but ignoring the pain. She held on to it, kept it going. No way she was going to lose touch with Mark this time.

She spoke out loud while she held onto the connection. “John, what’s the name of the ship scouting the anomaly?”

“The ROCSS
Chung Cheng
. Why?”

“Mr. Night is there.” Christine raised her voice and shouted at the ship’s captain, a Neo she didn’t know by the name of the Mariner. “Mr. Night has taken over the
Chung Cheng
! Shoot it!”

The Mariner was a tall pale dude who looked a bit like Brad Pitt. His handsome face froze in an expression of shock as he turned his chair to face her. “Are you sure? What about any hostages aboard?”

“They’re all dead! He’s trying to do something with…”

The ship shook hard enough to send people flying off their seats. John and Christine swayed on their feet but managed to retain their footing.

She saw what was happening and realized she was too late.

On the view screen, the anomaly rippled like a liquid surface being disturbed from below. Things came rushing out, blobs of darkness that were only visible by the way they obscured the stars behind them. Lots of them. Hundreds of them.

“Fire at will,” Captain Mariner said in the calm voice of a professional soldier or pilot dealing with a desperate situation. “Send out a general alert.”

Christine took off running. John followed her. “Where are you going?”

“Mr. Night is doing this,” she replied without slowing down. “I’m taking him down.”

“I’ll help you.”

“You and everybody else need to stop those blobby things before they eat the entire fleet.”

“If those things are made out of Outsider energy…”

They reached the magnetic catapults while they talked. Christine punched the code to get into one. “Yeah, they are going to disrupt our powers if they hit us. Only way through that is by calling forth more power. Hit and run, John, don’t stay too close to them for too long, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll cover you.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “You too.”

She gave him a pained half-smile as they entered the airlock leading to the launchers. It took a few seconds for the room to cycle, and then they were airborne, or space-borne to be precise.

The sky was full of flying blobs. Long pseudopods were stretching out from the critters, some of them reaching for her and John. Yikes.

They flew towards the
Chung Cheng
and the growing Outsider swarm. She poured power into her shields and blasted the pseudopods as she flew. John smashed through one of the monsters, and it exploded into a shower of rapidly-vanishing chunks of gelatinous matter. They could be killed. That was something. But she also felt a burst of sheer agony coming from John at the moment of impact. For him, fighting the critters was going to be like putting out a fire with his bare hands.

She and John sped and fought through the shadow-things and closed in on the Chinese spaceship. It was hovering close to the Outsider gateway, and its shields were down. Christine could sense waves of pure malignancy coming from it, and the sickening presence of Mr. Night.

“I’ve got this,” she told John, and smashed her way through the ship’s hull. A torrent of air escaped through the hole she’d made, along with the flailing forms of several crewmembers. Her heart lurched at the sight, but moments later she realized she couldn’t feel anything coming from those bodies. They were moving, but they weren’t truly alive. Zombies. Why did it have to be zombies? She hated them.

She flew through the ship, smashed her way through interior walls, and through the occasional zombie, and headed toward Mr. Night. This was it, the fight she’d been dreading.