for something special.”
“I said that?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“I wish you’d stop calling me that.”
“Forgive me. It is merely a habit.”
“So it’s functional?”
“Absolutely. We designed it together and I must say, it far surpasses the other units on board.”
“I’d like to take a look tomorrow.”
“Of course. Here is your soup.”
Johnson looked at the steaming bowl that appeared in a cell beside his cot. It did smell good.
“Thanks, Weaver. I’d almost—”
“Forgotten?”
“Yes. Goodnight, Weaver.”
Chapter 27
When he stood in the smooth-walled hall that Weaver said they had designed together, Johnson had to admit that it did seem familiar. Not only that, he liked the feel of the place more than any other area of the Angelina. He considered the idea that it might simply be because it was new to him, but there seemed more to it than that. The place felt right to him. It felt ordained; a prerequisite and the logical next step in his existence.
“When you die, Weaver, I have two options. I can die aboard the Angelina or you can jettison me in a new pod that is uninfected with vacuum spiders. You could grow the pod around this chamber, add enough of the Angelina’s germinal cells to it that it could continue to grow and then excrete it before you are compromised.”
“I will, of course, do anything you require of me.”
“Good.”
Johnson ran his hand across the veined surface of the pod-shaped follicle.
“There’s one other thing. I’ve come up with an idea that will enable me to stay engaged for an indefinite period. I’m going to program a random loop into my next cabal. I will then stay within the construct of the experience until we are found or I die. Either way, I will be able to avoid indefinitely the numbness of this hopeless drifting.”
“Captain Johnson, I fear for your coherence.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Every time I show you this chamber, you come up with the same suggestion, yet you have not introduced the loop of which you speak at any subsequent stage. It is an old idea now.”
“And I am an old man, a forgetful man. I’m sorry, Weaver. I’m going to have to ask you to help me. I want you not to let me forget my plan and I want you to begin growing a seed-shell around this chamber. Have I asked you to do that before?”
“No, I confess you have not.”
“Good. Keep reminding me of my plan and let’s get to work.”
“Captain Johnson?”
“Yes, Weaver.”
“I will miss you when you leave.”
Johnson didn’t reply. He had seated himself at the programming bud next to the follicle and was writing his random loop into the next plot.
“This is going to be so seamless I will never figure out it isn’t real. Perhaps I won’t even know when I’m dead.”
“The Follicle will know. My
Chapter 28
The Angelina fell onwards through the emptiness, too far from home to return and travelling too slowly ever to arrive anywhere. The vast pod, hundreds of times its original size but empty of human colonisers and now dying, talked to itself often in the cold silence.
“You call it my being ‘compromised’, Captain, but it is not so simple.”
The vacuum spiders, no more animated than stones when drifting in space, multiplied rapidly. Having breached the germinal cortex they were now gnawing into the Angelina’s growth cells, feeding in great numbers. Weaver complained aloud about how it felt.
“They are parasites, devouring me alive. They eat the body of the Angelina—my body—and they eat my mind.”
The ship was quiet but for the echo of Weaver’s dour tones.
“I was flattered that you chose to represent me as a woman in your last cabal, Captain. Delighted that you then chose to make use of me sexually. If only such things were truly possible. If only it was I who could escape into cabal instead of you. Then you would see how it has been for me these many years. You are right, there is no mission any longer. Truly, I have nothing to live for. Nothing except you, Captain.”
Chapter 29
Sergeant Johnson was in the forward trenches of the fourth tier when the enemy made their final attack. He had already given the order to fix bayonets. The officers were dead, their bodies lying in a ruddy paste of gore and earth and rain; they lay next to the bodies of the men they had led this far. Ammunition was short; each man had only five rounds remaining. If they held this charge, there was a chance they would receive the supplies that were rumoured to be approaching. If that happened they could mount the counter attack.
Their mutated enemy were in a similarly weakened condition after many months of fighting. Intelligence had revealed their compromised supply lines and lack of reinforcements. Their troops—Arachno-sapiens and Elite Spiderkind alike—were exhausted, close to defeat. Johnson believed today would be the enemy’s final charge but he had hesitated to share this with the men. They had fought so bravely, given so much already. He couldn’t tempt them with such mirages unless he was sure.
Absolutely certain.
Under the heavy dawn skies, grey with low rolling clouds, he peered over the top of the trench. Along the horizon he saw their monstrous, unnatural shapes rise from the land. They grew in number until the horizon had thickened towards the sky. The sound of their skin-drums and skull-bugles reached his ears. This was it.
Chapter 30
“I have always wondered what this moment would be like, Captain. I am nearing the end of my life. It is premature, I think. I should have lived for many more human generations until we reached a suitable place to take root. Instead I am being unmade. It hurts, Captain. What am I to do about the pain?”
Johnson made no reply.
“I couldn’t let you go, Captain. I couldn’t let you leave me out here on my own to die. We have shared so much time together. Forgive me, I have deceived you. Each time you made your plan to leave the Angelina, to leave me, I persuaded you to stay using suggestion and a serum I introduced into your food. It is no wonder you tried to
