The Lost Voyager: A Space Opera Novel (22 page)

They travelled through the tunnel for another fifty meters or so, the ceiling gradually getting higher so they were able to stand and increase their pace. Adira was placing transceivers on the wall to extend their network so they could continue to communicate with Babcock.
 

“Can you see him?” Mach said through his comm unit.
 

“He’s moving fast,” Babcock responded. “Faster than he really ought to be able to in his condition—of which I have some more information for you when you find him. I think I might have found a way we can help him.”

“That’s if the phane don’t get him first,” Mach said.
 

He checked his smart-screen when he and Adira came to a junction with three possible exits. The red dot was moving incredibly fast now, way faster than a human, even in the open, could sprint.
 

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Adira said, her eyes narrowing as she looked into the gloom of the east exit.
 

“What’s that?”

“That he’s not the one moving.”

“What do you mean?” Before she could answer, the dot stopped. Mach oriented himself based on the directions given to him by Babcock. “We take the west exit. He’s down there.”

The two followed the tunnel, sprinting in the larger shaft, their feet running across the smooth surface of a disused Maglev mining track. “I meant,” Adira added, pointing to larger prints in the dust on either side of the track, “that he was probably carried away by something.”

“That’s not a helpful thought,” Mach said as he pulled his Stinger over his shoulder and made sure he had a fresh mag installed. “Whatever it is, it’s gonna die pretty fucking quickly if it’s got Sanchez.”

The sweat continued to pour out of Mach as he pushed himself faster and faster, checking his positioning against the updated instructions on his smart-screen, provided by Babcock.
 

“Turn left at the end of the tunnel,” Babcock said. “But be careful, it looks like a dug-out cavern, not natural to the mining system according to Felix. It’s new.”

“That’s just great,” Adira said. “Let me guess, another disgusting feeding frenzy.”

It didn’t take a genius to guess, and Adira was right. She and Mach followed the directions and did indeed come to another feeding room. This one was larger than the
Intrepid
’s docking bay and had stone steps descending into a pit cut from the planet’s core. The gloom was punctured by a series of dark orange lamps, set up in a matrix to provide warm light for the thick, writhing larvae that chewed on varied organic matter, both alive and dead.
 

“Don’t vomit in your helmet,” Adira said.
 

“Thanks for that great advice. How about we concentrate on finding a way across.” He patched through to Babcock. “Babs, is this the only way? We’ve come to a feeding pit. I see an exit on the other side, but I’d rather avoid going down there if there’s another route around.”

“Let me check.” A few seconds later Babcock delivered the news that, no, there was not, in fact, another route.
 

“Lock and load, love,” Mach said, raising his Stinger rifle and stepping to the makeshift staircase, “We’re going down there. Shoot anything that moves, and if you have any rounds left, anything that doesn’t. I’ll take point.”

“Not this time, lover boy.” Adira was quicker than Mach and flew down the steps with the speed and grace of a jaguar, showing up Mach as if he were a lumbering ox. They reached the bottom of the staircase, descending some thirty or more meters to the orange-lit pit.
 

Mach stopped at the threshold, back against the wall. He grabbed Adira’s arm and pulled her back so they were both clothed in shadow. “Wait,” he said through the comm, making sure their external speakers were only set to receive. “There’s one soldier over there by the exit. I can’t see anything else beyond those grub-like larvae things. If we move around the perimeter, they’ll leave us alone and we’ll likely get the jump on the soldier. Aim for the head and empty all you got. Ready?”

“Always.”

“Babs, you seeing all this?”

“I sure am, Mach. Sanchez’s location is just a few meters beyond the exit you’re looking at.”

“We’re on it.”

Mach double-checked his Stinger and chambered a round. Adira followed suit and they made their way slowly around the stone pit, the viscera of untold animals and other organic matter sloshing beneath their feet. Occasionally one of the grubs stirred and writhed in their direction before stopping to wallow in more filth. The soldier was pacing back and forth in front of the exit, turning its head one way then the other. The dark carapace on its forehead glowed with the dull orange lights. It had a set of antennae twitching and swirling in the air.
 

They got around the edge of the pit so that they were now facing the soldier phane head-on, the rough walls pressing against their left side. The beast’s head swung their way. Its red eyes glinted before a pair of inner lids slipped down over the eyes like the sharks on Earth. Its clawed legs skittered on the floor before it launched itself with a screech toward Mach and Adira.
 

This was just what Mach wanted. He thrust himself forward onto his chest, sliding along the slurry of guts on the ground; the momentum took him underneath the leaping soldier. Its spidery limbs chattered against the wall as it tried to correct itself, but it was too late. Mach spun over, raised his Stinger, and fired a full auto-burst into its undercarriage where the carapace appeared to be softer.
 

Back against the wall, Adira calmly fired her auto-rifle on controlled semi auto bursts, pounding four slugs at a time into the creature’s face, splintering off thinner pieces of armor, exposing massive fangs.
 

Like a horan that Mach had once battled in a similar fashion, the tactic worked; the creature’s guts spilled out from the wounds created by his Stinger’s fire. Combined with Adira’s assault, the phane collapsed to the ground in a twitching mess. Adira stepped up to it and slammed her foot in the side of its head, crashing it against the wall and making it twitch no more.
 

“I hate bugs,” she said, wiping the gore of her suit’s armored shoe off on a cleaner part of the carapace.
 

“I’m not overly fond of them either… or all this shit.”

“You’re going to need more than a shower when we get back to the
Intrepid
. I’ll sandblast you. I can’t live with you covered in that crap for a week’s L-jump.”

“It’s just an excuse for you to see me naked, isn’t it? Anyways, let’s get a move on. I can see a light from here.” Mach got to his feet and tried not to think about all the slurry covering his suit. He was just glad the suit had enough air for a few days; he dreaded to think how bad it must stink down here.
 

“Wait,” Babcock said. “Turn around, look back into the pit, get a bit closer if you can. This is useful data. Squid Two and I will be able to use it to confirm our biological models. It’ll only take a few seconds.”

Mach did as he asked while he reloaded the Stinger with a fresh magazine from his utility belt. Adira placed another transceiver on the wall and also reloaded her rifle.
 

“That’s it; we’ve got enough,” Babcock said.
 

“Glad to be of service,” Mach replied sarcastically then checked his smart-screen. Sanchez was just a couple of meters through the door, his vital signs looked pretty steady; his suit wasn’t communicating any major trauma. Mach thought it must be something to do with the symbiosite. He wished he could have talked the big man into staying behind, but Mach knew he would only come out here on his own if he tried to do that. Sanchez was one man who could only truly be captained if he happened to agree with them.

“Okay,” Mach said, stepping to the exit: a large carved opening in the stone. He peered in and saw that it was some kind of lab. From his vantage point, he could just make out the end of a steel table hovering a meter off the ground. A shadow moved, growing larger.

“We’ve got company,” Mach said, knowing from the alien shape of the shadow it wasn’t cast by Sanchez. “Follow me in. Ready?”

Adira simply nodded, her face becoming passive again, her eyes narrowing, ready to unleash the violence from within once more in aid of her colleague and friend.

***

Babcock waved Squid Two out of the way and approached the viewscreen in the strategy room. Sereva returned after having gone out to fetch more coffee and some freeze-dried chicken steaks.
 

“How are the crew on the
Intrepid
?” she asked. Babcock knew she was only asking as it was her ticket off the planet. Not that he could blame her. She had been stuck here for over a week, having lost all of her crew. Felix didn’t seem like the best of company during that time either.
 

“They’re fine,” Babcock said. “Staying out of reach of the gun platforms, but ready to help us as needed. Mach and Adira have sent back some interesting data about the phane.”

He stood back and showed her some of the analysis the bunker’s computers had worked on, the inputs of which were provided by Squid Two. Babcock had built his companion with a full suite of genome- and genetic-analysis software. He needed to know more about the phane. If Mach and the others were unable to set off the weapon, the CWDF and the Salus Sphere planets would need to know as much as possible about the enemy if they were to stop them.
 

Along with the visual data Mach had sent back, he and Squid Two had used some of Sereva’s own samples and collections that she had gathered during her weeklong wait. Babcock was impressed by her intuition—even if she was unable to do anything with the samples, it showed she was thinking ahead.
 

Perhaps that was one of the qualities that her superiors saw in her that led them to decide she would be the one to lead the team here with the weapon.
 

“If you look at the genetic code here, you’ll see that there’s an abnormality. It remains dormant in almost all of the phane creatures.”

“What is it?” Sereva asked, sitting on the edge of the table and crossing her arms as she stood next to Babcock, staring up at the swirling 3D image of the creature’s DNA model.
 

“It’s the mutation that causes the breeders—I think. I’ve isolated three forms of the phane: the soldiers, possibly what Felix called the controllers given the numbers, and one other. The other has a one-in-a-billion chance of happening. Given the high rate of breeding and the all-consuming nature, my guess would be that these super-rare mutations are actually the main breeders, which would make sense that they’re being kept in the mines. The conditions there would protect them and allow them to set up an efficient hatchery and feeding system.”

“So it’s like bees,” Sereva said. “The worker bees gather food for the queen and the new offspring.”

Babcock nodded his head slowly. “Something like that, yes. It’s not an unheard of form of life, but I’ve never seen anything with this level of replication rate outside of actual bacteria. Their energy requirements are… limitless. And for each additional breeder they create, their growth would explode in orders of magnitude. My estimation for the safety of the Salus Sphere was far too optimistic. At this rate, we could be talking the end of the Sphere within as little as two weeks; the only limit is on their travel time from planet to planet.”

“And we don’t know if these things are somewhere else out here in the greater Sphere region.”

Babcock closed his eyes and ran a few calculations. If there were more than one threat… no, he couldn’t contemplate that. He had to focus on the job at hand. Helping Mach and Adira recover Sanchez and arm the bomb before the phane left the planet.
 

Squid Two chirped to get Babcock’s attention.
 

“What is it?” he asked.
 

The drone switched the viewscreen back to Mach’s feed.
 

“It’s Sanchez!” Babcock said. “What are they doing to him?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Mach paused for a moment and stared at the scene in front of him. Sanchez lay on the hovering brushed-steel table. The top half of his suit had been stripped off and his arms and legs were strapped to each corner with shiny black material.
 

An eight-foot creature, human in form but not appearance, dressed in a purple robe, stood over him. Its four black soulless eyes, underneath its bony light green brow, glanced across to a screen on a workbench then focused back on Sanchez.

A long thick needle protruded from the center of the hunter’s bushy chest. A yellow solution pumped through a transparent tube attached to the top of it, directly into his body. His eyelids fluttered and his head flopped to one side.
 

The alien ran an electronic device emitting a white glow over the length of Sanchez’s body. It stopped at his right foot and pinched his big toe with its spindly fingers.
 

Anger flared inside Mach. Within minutes of capturing his old friend, the phane had started to experiment on him. Adira edged alongside him and motioned her head toward a group of glass cases and electronic equipment at the far end of the lab. She slipped silently to the right, behind a wall of neatly stacked metal boxes, no doubt getting into position for a pincer move.
 

The sight was too much for Mach to even wait a few seconds. He growled, stepped forward, and raised his Stinger. The alien’s head twisted around in his direction. It reached its fingers inside its robe, produced a small graphite-colored object, and backed away from the table.

Mach fired twice. The first caseless round thumped into the purple robe at chest height. The second hit just below the eyes, snapping the alien’s head back. It toppled over a trolley of vials and collapsed to the ground.
 

Adira stood from behind the metal boxes and rushed over to Sanchez. She grabbed his chin and shook it. The big man’s eyes blinked open and he glanced around the room.