“We’ll take a ride over to the worldship wreck.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Arik?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Call me Hunter. Stop with that ‘Sir’ shit.”
Mandela smiled. “Alright.”
Hunter patted his shoulder and went to suit up.
Door alarm. She activated and swam. Tallis.
“We need to talk.”
“What is it?”
“You’ve spoken to Windham recently.”
“Before the ceremony.”
“Do you know why he slithered up?”
“He didn’t tell me anything.”
Tallis slumped into a vacuum chair opposite Lilith. “You can tell me.”
“He was upset. He didn’t say anything about taking a ship.”
Tallis nodded. “Why weren’t you shielded when you two were alone together?”
“I—” She stumbled over her words. “I was. Of course I was shielded.”
“No. I inherited access to the phase logs. We were running a diagnostic on the cistern and I saw that you’d recently shielded up again. Logs indicate there were two people in your chamber at the time.”
“There must be a mistake. I wouldn’t—”
“You were unshielded in the presence of my top officer. Why and how?”
“I’m telling you, it has to be a mistake.”
“Arch doesn’t make mistakes like that. Each and every time you’d been unshielded in the last twenty years has been recorded without error.”
“The attack must have damaged the ship’s systems. There could have been a—”
Tallis surged from his seat in one swift motion, hand impossibly reaching through three feet of phase gelatin. Lilith gasped in horror at the look in his eyes, that burning from within. He palmed the release mechanism on her cardiac shield and her phase splashed to the floor in a wave. Her hands reached up to grab his forearm, to wrench it away from her body. He pulled her from the vacuum chair with one hand, crushing her neck as he lifted her from the ground.
“Don’t fucking lie to me.” He growled through clenched teeth. There was no sign of the infection, no silver runnels underneath his skin. He threw her to the floor.
“I don’t—”
“He’s immune to the silver. How?”
She sobbed from the cold of the floor, rubbing her bruising neck. She palmed the cardiac mech, but it didn’t respond.
“Don’t bother.”
“You’re not—”
“So now you know. It’d been Mother’s plan all along. Pierce taught us to be good little soldiers, but his death means that I’m the leader now, and it’s time to start the real work. We can’t have a flesh construct commanding a war against flesh.”
Lilith crawled back, away from this machine. She had to tell Hunter, had to let the others know.
Tallis bent, grabbed the front of her jumpsuit, slammed her up against the chamber wall.
“This will be our little secret. If you tell anyone, I’ll see to it that we space your little Windham at Light X.”
“You can’t—”
“I
Lilith nodded, shaking with her tears, breath heaving in and out in great gasps of fear.
Tallis let go of her uniform, his face inches from hers. She could smell the stink of his non-adrenaline, could feel the warmth of his non-body. Swimming behind those eyes, the tug of an eon of Maire’s plan for vengeance, the flicker and
“What are you?”
Tallis grinned.
was everywhere on the charred remains of the worldship husk, writhing in the valleys, reaching out from spinnerets in a last attempt to snare human biology.
Hunter and Mandela palmed their shields.
The slither hovered above the atomic crater, descended into the vessel interior slowly. There was no fire, no movement. The silver cooled, slowed, died, dissolved.
“Any lifesigns from the interior?”
Mandela checked his instruments. “None on scope. There’s movement, but no biology. Sections are still collapsing. It’s a dead ship.”
“Take us down.”
Mandela searched for a secure area on which to attach the fighter. One edge of the crater had fused together, providing a firm enough strip of slag for a landing zone.
“Does Tallis know about this little trip?”
“Fuck him.” Hunter frowned, looked out at the derelict world. “He doesn’t need to know.”
Mandela nodded. “Glad to see someone else shares the sentiment.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“But he made you second.”
“I still don’t trust him.”
“No one trusts him, Hunter.”
The vessel’s landing gear reached out and grabbed a segment of blackened deck.
“Keep that in mind. Let’s go find some answers.”
Windham didn’t expect to find any of the enemy quickly or easily. The atomic blast had gouged a vast hole into the vessel, instantly exposing dozens, perhaps hundreds of mantle decks to space. Slither systems revealed that there were still pressurized interior areas, but the atmosphere was alien, almost pure nitrogen. The silver from the attack was still present, but not a threat from within their phase shields. He walked with Mandela through decks now open to the void. The worldship’s gravity was light, but it was enough to hold them down.
“We have a bulkhead.” Mandela’s gunbeam revealed a sealed door, now half-melted into the wall around it.
“Take it down.”
“I don’t know how much atmosphere is behind this…Let’s secure a bubble.”
“Right.”
Mandela unsnapped a phase generator from his pack and locked it to the wall. He activated the bubble and a half-sphere of gelatin enveloped the bulkhead. He affixed a charge to the entryway. They ran clear of the particle blast. It cut a hole into the solid steel((?)) of the door. Atmosphere poured out, stretching the bubble as pressure equalized within and without. The edges of the hole cooled to black.
They flanked the hole. Mandela nodded to Windham, who thrust his weapon into the new entrance and swept the interior with light slugs. Nothing. The gunbeam revealed a dead chamber.
Windham grabbed the upper lip of the bulkhead and swung himself into the next room, legs first. His feet made jarring contact with the floor and he helped Mandela through.
The floor, the walls, everything was covered with the invasive silver dust. Three feet of solid metal shielding had not been enough to protect the enemy from the weapon. They were in a hallway, doors on each side, stretching away farther from the crater area.
“Critical systems will be at the center. I doubt that transport mechs will be operable.”
“We don’t need to get to the bridge. We just need to find a body.”
