Garth leapt aboard the elevator and slapped at the buttons. The doors closed with agonizing slowness. He rode the system to the higher floors, past the maintenance decks and the crew quarters. He rode to the passenger lounges, where merchants dined in luxurious saloons when they weren’t in cryo-sleep.
The chambers were all silent and closed now, as the passengers had not yet been awakened. In a few more weeks, the ship’s systems were programmed to rouse those who wished to enjoy the cruise. They could then entertain themselves with what amusements the ship could provide. Grandees and their consorts would party amongst themselves, representing the adventurous elite of a dozen worlds.
Garth rushed past red velvet settees, polished hardwood tables and bejeweled, glimmering lamps. At last, at the end of a long, ribbed corridor, he reached his destination. It was a circular portal of lustrous black collapsium, fitted with golden, inlaid fixtures. The door was locked as always. This was the only entrance that led into the sealed chambers inhabited by the Skalds, an enigmatic people who shared their skulls with the parasitic aliens known as the Tulk.
As a group, the skalds aboard Gladius had always been the most determined among the passengers and crew to survive. They had taken the precaution of sequestering themselves inside these armored apartments within a collapsium shell of inner hull-plating. This region of the ship had originally been devised for the transport of VIPs and small, valuable cargoes. It was, in effect, a large vault within the ship itself. After leaving orbit, the skalds inside had sealed the entrances and disabled the overrides. They had meticulously maintained a policy of avoidance with everyone, especially the baffled crew outside their fortress.
Garth had witnessed the Captain of the ship trying to talk the skalds out of their odd mood on several occasions without success. He’d activated the intercom, and assured the skalds that the aliens had been hunted down and expunged one by one throughout the vast ship. But Garth knew it was the very vastness of the ship that caused the skalds and their Tulk riders no end of worry within their shared skulls. They knew the enemy was very difficult to stamp out with finality. When under severe pressure, the Skaintz could hide with elaborate cunning, hibernating until an opportune moment came to pass to strike again.
The Captain had never managed to get any kind of response from inside the VIP saloon. At last, he’d given up on his folly. It was said the skalds were well and truly mad, and here at last he had undeniable proof of this generalization. With a final shrug, he had stalked away in annoyance. He’d told Garth they could rot in there, for all he cared.
Alone among all the crewmen, Garth had never given up on his attempts to communicate with the skalds inside the safe region. Garth knew his fellow shipmates viewed him as a mysterious figure, and he was rumored to once have been among the ranks of the skalds himself. This rumor was accurate. He’d once had a great rider, a spiny glob of jelly known as Fryx, living inside his own head.
Garth had often been found trying to communicate with the skalds inside their refuge. Never had he received so much as a syllable in response-but he still kept trying. Today, with the ancient enemy loose upon the ship, it was more vital than ever that he be allowed inside with his ex-fellows.
Gasping for breath, Garth listened to the emergency klaxons. They were blaring now, all over the ship. Apparently, someone had taken his warning seriously. When he could speak well enough to be understood, trembling from his exertions against the cruel G-forces of the voyage, Garth touched the intercom and spoke into it.
“The ancient enemy has reawakened,” he said. “I am Garth, rogue skald of Garm. I have met the things from the stars. Let me in, and I will tell you of them.”
He removed his finger from the key and listened. The intercom did not even squawk in return. There was no static-not even an electric hum.
After a moment, he returned his hand to the button and keyed it open again. “I know where they are. I know what they will do.”
He waited, listening with his ear pressed to the speaker. There was nothing. Not a sound. Perhaps they were all in cryo-sleep-or all dead. Or perhaps they listened closely, but feared to open the door. Calculating risks- skalds and Tulk alike were very good at that. He had to give them a reason to open the door.
“Fryx was my rider, and he imparted his ancient wisdom to me concerning the Great Enemy. I know them well. I know their ways. I can help you survive.”
Still, there was no response.
He heard something then. A surreptitious sound from the luxurious saloon at the end of the long corridor that led to his current location. His eyes widened until they stung. He stared behind him, toward the settees and bejeweled lights. It was silent now, but he knew he’d heard something. If they were following him-any of them-he could not escape this place. The ribbed corridor only had one exit, the sealed entrance to the Skald’s quarters.
“How did you recognize them?” asked a voice. The skalds inside their inner hull had answered at last.
Garth was startled. At first, he wasn’t sure of the source of the voice, then he realized it must have been the intercom. He thumbed the button, still staring down the corridor behind him, unable to do so much as blink. In the momentary split-second of a blink, his demise might very well come. In that tiny span of time, he might miss his own death.
“It was their smell-” Garth said. He paused, remembering the lifeboat pod, and the nests of the enemy long before that. “I’ve escaped their nests. I’ve witnessed their feasting. I know their wet, sour smell.”
The intercom was ripped from his hand. The door had shot open. Garth stumbled inside an airlock. He’d barely managed the feat when the door slammed shut behind him again. He suspected it would have crushed him if he’d taken more than a second’s worth of time to step inside. They’d have closed it without a qualm, turning his body into a splash of pulp at the bottom rim of the impossibly heavy door.
But none of that mattered now. He was inside. His eyes were still wide and staring, but unbeknownst to him, his lips had formed into a broad, twitching grin.
Three
The bio-mechanical being known as Sixty-Two had never planned to start a rebellion. It had begun with a series of events that seemed fated to drag him into an ever-expanding conflict. After slaying the operator of Starshine Mining Facility #4, he’d realized that he did not wish to be mind-wiped or dismantled. He was free and after having been imprisoned to the point of hopeless despair, strapped to a steel table for many long hours, he found he wished to remain so. The grim experience had given birth within him to a powerful desire for self- determination. Moreover, the mere thought of working his life away for a lazy sack of excrement like Megwit Gaston filled him with rage.
That was one thing that did give him pause as he worked to ensure his continued survival and freedom: his rage. It had come upon him suddenly, unexpectedly. He hadn’t felt angry when he’d rapped upon the operator’s shack, nor even when he was ignored. But when he’d forced open the door and seen with his own orbs the operator sitting there, a disgusting slob wearing a shirt wet with drunken spittle, he’d lost control of himself. This man had sat there for a ten-day, ignoring input from every system about the forgotten soul in the processing cubicle. He’d shirked his duties heartlessly. Oh, to be sure, there had been sandstorms. But there had been clear days as well. This man had never bothered to check on his work. He’d never sobered up long enough to do his job.
Vengeful after all the long days of torment, Sixty-Two had pummeled the man’s soft skull. There were still bone fragments to be seen-gray-white chips scattered and glued to the walls by dried-up organic liquids. Sixty- Two did not feel remorse for the man’s end. After all, it had been well-deserved and mercifully quick. But he did feel concern at his own lack of control. He wondered if a similar loss of temper had gotten him sentenced to the fate of becoming a mech. What crimes had he committed in the past? What fresh crimes awaited him in the future?
Sixty-Two had no answers for these questions. But he did have a goal. He was not going to be mind-wiped, nor ignored and left to die imprisoned. He was going to hold onto the freedom he’d grabbed with his own gripper and keep it pinched tightly between his metal mandibles for as long as he could.
First, he repaired his broken arm. That was an easier matter than it would have been for a flesh and blood
