Survivor (21 page)

The Ancient's yellow eyes flickered away
from Nova's face and to the main tunnel where the footsteps were
getting louder. The coming voices surged at the Ancient's
words.

Nova's bleary eyes looked to the other side
of the room, in time to see Codon stumble backwards. He was
bleeding from a smoking wound in his shoulder but he had the
shotgun out. He levelled it at the other creature's head and
fired.

The blast echoed around the small room. A
bolt of energy crashed into the creature's bare head and it
exploded. Pieces of meat scattered across the room and patterns of
blood adorned the walls. Codon turned his gun towards Nova.

"Look out!" Nova cried and struggled to get
free. She used her free hand to point towards the doorway behind
Codon. More Ancients were coming. Their blue eyes shone down the
hallway. There were at least three of them. The first came into the
room and leapt at Codon.

"Look out!" she screamed.

She couldn't understand why Codon wasn't
firing at it. He was going to be killed.

"What?" Codon called. He turned desperately
in place.

"They're right there!" she said. "There's at
least three of them. Kill them now."

"Nova," he said, levelling his gun once more
at the yellow-eyed creature. "There's nothing there."

"What are you talking about?" the Ancient
pushed Nova against the wall and leant against her throat so that
she couldn't breathe. His yellow eyes cast a glow over her face and
made her squint. "I can see it in your eyes. Tobius got to you,
didn't he? Good, now answer me, you little primate. Where are the
Zions?"

"I don't know! I don't even know what they
are!" Nova screamed back. Specks of blood splattered the Ancient's
armour.

Tears stung the corners of her eyes as she
glanced at the tunnel. She could still hear approaching footsteps
and raised voices but she didn't know what she could trust anymore.
Codon had his back to her, his gun aimed down the tunnel, so she
guessed that he could hear them too.

"I don't have time for this," the Ancient
said.

He let go of Nova's jacket with one hand and
pointed at her leg. A sudden blast of purple light exploded out of
his finger and engulfed Nova's boot. Agony blasted out of her foot
and spread up her leg.

She convulsed as fire consumed her limb and
sent her thoughts into spirals of pain. Tears poured down her
cheeks as she struggled to breathe. She glanced down at her foot,
but all that was left were pieces of tattered flesh mixed with
charred leather. Blood dripped out of what was left of her ankle
and created a pool on the floor.

"Fuck you!" she screamed when she had enough
breath to talk.

"Where are the Zions?"

The Ancient moved his hand so that it was
pointing at her other foot.

Nova sobbed. With each beat of her heart,
more pain surged up from her mangled foot and blood pooled on the
floor. A mixture of adrenalin and panic boiled inside her. Every
muscle tensed as she faced her imminent death.

"Tell me where the Zions are and I'll end
this quickly. Otherwise I will keep blowing bits of you off until
there's nothing left."

"There are no Zions!" Nova gasped. "Humans
control this part of the galaxy. This planet belongs to us."

The effort of talking made Nova's stomach
roll and bile rose to the back of her throat. She closed her eyes
and focused on the darkness to still the nausea but all she could
see was the mangled remains of her foot.

"We don't recognise your authority," the
Ancient said. "Humans would never come so far alone. This is your
final chance to tell me where the Zions are."

"More are coming!" Codon bellowed from the
tunnel.

Nova tightened every muscle in her body. New
pain surged through her leg as she tried to pull it up to her body.
It was now or never. She whipped her head to the side and lashed
out with all of her limbs. Her arms and remaining leg pushed
against the Ancient's body and she came free of its grasp. She fell
to the floor in a flailing ball.

Her chest hit the ground and the air was
knocked out of her. She writhed like a dying fish on the floor,
gasping for air. She reached out a shaking hand and grabbed her gun
off the floor. She aimed it at the Ancient but her arm was shaking
so badly that she couldn't get a clean shot and each blast went far
wide, leaving black soot marks on the walls.

"Enough!" The Ancient ran at Nova, swiping a
heavy fist at her head.

She held up her arms just in time. The blow
hit her forearms and the force of it sent her sailing across the
room. Her gun flew out of her hand and clattered to the other side
of the room. Her limp body collided with the stone podium.

The force of her fall knocked the podium
over. Nova crumpled with it. Her arms and legs smashed against the
hard stone. Her head stung from a sharp blow although she could
barely feel it over the agony pouring out of her foot.

Every inch of her throbbed. She blinked her
eyes, but her vision stayed cloudy. Dripping blood from her
eyebrows came in and out of focus. The Ancient was coming for her.
Its massive shape lunged across the cavern.

Nova's weapon was too far to reach. She
tapped around blindly. Her hand clasped around something hard. She
drew back with all the force she could muster.

When the Ancient was close, Nova slammed her
arm and the solid object in a wide arc. It crashed into the
Ancient's head and knocked it sideways. The hard object fell out of
Nova's hands and rolled to a stop, not far from the fallen
Ancient.

Nova drew in a ragged breath, clasping her
free hands around her ankle to stem the flow of blood.

She blinked the pain away and the mysterious
weapon came into focus. It was a helmet; a dirty, dusty helmet that
she'd seen before.

"What—" the Ancient said, scrambling to his
feet. "It can't be. The totem of destruction—"

Nova studied the helmet. It looked up at her
with sightless eyes. The thing reeked of rotting flesh, death, and
disease.

She vaguely remembered seeing it in a dream.
She'd been in this very room except that it was covered in soot.
There'd been a strange carving on the wall and her initials were
there. But none of it matched up with what was happening now.

"If we're going, then you're going with us,"
the Ancient cried, raising a shaking arm to point at Nova.

Nova barely registered him. The pain in her
foot was going to her head and darkness clouded the edges of her
vision. She couldn't think straight and had no idea what the alien
was talking about. All she could focus on was how good a nap would
feel at that very instant.

Thoughts of sleep made her think of her
dream and the helmet on the podium. It hadn't been there before
she'd banged into it. More thoughts crowded in, forcing her away
from passing out. A part of her said that she couldn't die here
because she still had to get back to The Jagged Maw and kick Aart's
arse for sending her out here in the first place for sabotaged
cargo.

Nova pushed herself up further so she was
sitting. The Ancient was standing with his gun aimed at her head
and yet he seemed powerless. She couldn't see the emotions on his
face, but his voice shook with fear.

"After everything we worked for, I stand
defeated by you?" he said.

The noise from the other Ancients was on
them. Nova could hear Codon's gun, but it sounded as though it came
from far away.

The Ancient shook itself, levelled its gun
at Nova's chest, and fired.

With the last ounce of her strength Nova
snatched the dusty helmet from the floor and held it in front of
her like a shield. The purple bolt of energy slammed into the
helmet with enough force to knock Nova backwards. Her ribs crunched
under the force of it and pressed against her lungs.

Her vision was reduced to nothing but a thin
tunnel with pain on every side.

Without knowing quite why, but knowing that
she had no choice, she reached her hand inside the helmet. It was
filled with bloodied, diseased meat. She grabbed hold of the
rotting flesh and scraped some of it into her palm, pulling it
free. It came loose with a wet plop.

She pulled back and tossed the flesh at the
creature. Agony seared through her chest as she moved.

She didn't have any reason other than that
the Ancient was terrified. She expected him to shoot her, or the
chunk of flesh, but the weapon remained silent. The Ancient
desperately back-pedalled away from the flying hunk of dead
meat.

He was too slow. He hadn't gone one step
when the flesh landed on his shoulder with a wet splat. Grey-green
flesh dripped over his arm and created trails of juice down his
armour.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" the
Ancient asked. Its arms fell still by its sides; its shoulders
slumped.

"Survived," Nova whispered.

"We are so much more than you."

Nova's eyes dropped closed. A ghostly
version of herself was flailing through the air, towards the
podium. She watched her body slam into the stone table, smashing
it. Just as her body hit the pedestal, the helmet materialised on
top. It skittered to the ground along with the pieces of broken
stone.

The scene replayed over and over again, a
continuous loop in front of her eyes. She lifted her heavy
eyelids.

"It begins," the Ancient said.

It took a deep gasping breath and collapsed
to its knees. Its whole body was shaking, shivering. He gasped and
choked for air.

The creature clawed for the button at its
neck but it was a charred ruin, there was no way to get its helmet
off now.

The Ancient fought, forcing each breath in
and out of its lungs. At the end it lost the strength to stay
upright and the armoured body fell forward; face first into the
sand. The force of the fall was enough to detach the broken helmet.
It rolled across the floor and came to rest against the far wall;
ready to be picked up by Nova in the future.

The head beneath was covered in purple
bruises and swollen. The flesh ballooned out around the remaining
armour. Two more breaths and the gasping stopped.

Nova collapsed.

***

"Nova!"

Nova's eyes flickered open, but as soon as
they did, she wished she could fall back into oblivion. Her chest
ached with every breath, no matter how shallow, and her head
throbbed. Unimaginable agony coursed up her leg. She remembered.
She struggled to sit up, to see if she'd imagined it.

"I wouldn't—" Codon said, but it was too
late.

Nova's eyes locked on the mess of flesh
where her right foot used to be. Nausea rocked through her. She
leant to the side and vomited across the sandy floor. The acrid
taste burned her throat and tongue, making her eyes water.

"Where are the rest?" she whispered between
heaves.

"Dead," Codon said. "It was like a wave
spreading out from that one. I don't know what was in that helmet
but it hit 'em bad."

Nova nodded, her head hanging low as she
spat the last of the bile from her mouth.

"A design flaw," Codon said, shaking his
head. "We should get out of here. Your foot needs to be taken care
of."

Nova pushed herself up on shaky arms. She
used the wall for support and managed to get up on one leg. The
pain in her chest hadn't subsided and it was harder than ever to
breathe.

"The writing," she gasped.

"What writing?"

She dug into her belt and pulled out her
sharp knife. It glinted in the light of the chamber. She reached up
as high as she could and began to carve. It was hard to keep
balance with just one leg and twice she toppled to the sand where
she had to struggle to get upright, but she refused Codon's
help.

Her knife made a shallow dent in the
sandstone, running over ancient runes. The rock crumbled under her
blade and scattered to the floor.

"What are you doing?" Codon said. "That's
defacing heritage. I could have you shot for that."

"Trust me, Doc," Nova said. "Without this,
we'd both be dead."

"How? That doesn't make any sense."

"No," she said and continued to carve, "It
doesn't."

She kept working; she had to go over the
letters three times before they were bold enough. She didn't know
how long it would be until she arrived, or how time may affect her
words. She couldn't take any chances.

As an afterthought, she added the T to her
initials. She still couldn't remember what it stood for, but it was
a part of who she was.

"Alright, let's get out of here," she
said.

She leant over and gathered the helmet up
off the floor. She hopped the first few paces, but the effort left
her breathless, and her body was already in so much pain that she
struggled to stay conscious.

She allowed herself to lean on Codon's
shoulder and together they shuffled out of the tunnels. When they
reached the top of the chamber, they surveyed the desert beyond. It
was scattered with the fallen Ancients. They lay across the sand,
mostly with their helmets off. Their skin was purple and bloated
like the creature in the chamber. All of them were dead.

"They're gone," Codon said with a sigh.

"Cal," Nova said, her mind straining to keep
up with events. "Are there any signs of life on the planet?"

"I detect critical physical injury.
Immediate medical attention required."

"Just answer the question."

"Two humans remain," Cal replied.

"Crisis averted," she said.

Her whole body was overcome with relief. A
massive weight lifted off of her shoulders and she felt as if she
could float away on the desert breeze. It was over; the whole
damned ordeal was over.

Except the madness.

The voices hadn't disappeared along with the
Ancients. The shadows still moved at the edge of Nova's vision. A
part of her had dared to hope that when the Ancients died, so would
her insanity. Her insanity appeared to be coping just fine.