Virus (21 page)

Foster stared at him. “But we just came
through
there!”

They exchanged looks and Nadia turned, led them running back towards the computer room and past. Hiko just kept up with them as Nadia turned at a passage offshoot towards the science labs, to the next available exit.

Steve grabbed for the latch of the inset door, threw his weight against it almost frantically. Nadia’s heart sank even as her pulse quickened, fingers clenched and sweaty against the weapon’s stock. She could feel the heat still radiating from the seams of the hatch.

“It knows we’re here,” she said.

Steve turned away from the immovable door, his expression grim and horribly exhausted as he stated what they all knew now as irrefutable fact.

“We’ve been set up.”

• 21 •

N
adia led them through a dark and twisting maze of corridors that seemed to go on forever, making sudden turns and stops as they followed, helping Hiko as best they could. Steve hoped to God that she knew D well; he was completely lost, and each hatch they tried was either welded or blocked. If there was a way out, the Russian woman would have to take them to it—and he got the feeling that she was running out of ideas.

They stopped in front of another bulkhead hatch, Nadia pushing at the latch uselessly. Hiko was trying not to show it, but Steve could see the pain in his brown eyes, see him struggling not to apologize for slowing them up. Steve wished he could tell him that it was okay, but the circumstances didn’t exactly warrant reassurance;
nothing
was okay.

Hiko looked away suddenly, tattooed nostrils flaring. “You smell something?”

Steve froze, recalling the biomechanoid at the engine room—and then they all heard it, just as the sickening odor of burnt and rotting flesh reached them. Multiple steps, heavy, grinding—coming closer.

The sounds resonated through the corridor behind them, making it nearly impossible to tell from which direction it came. They started backing away, weapons raised, Steve reflexively pushing the others behind him as they moved.

Please don’t let it be Squeaky—

A glow, a yellow-green flashing glow, accompanied the thick stench and the crashing steps, coming from an offshoot to the right. Steve took a deep breath to control his rising terror—and then it stepped into view, and control was out of the question.

Like the one they’d seen before, the biomechanoid was at least seven feet tall and resembled nothing so much as a tremendous insect, a praying mantis—except its multiple legs were partly formed with raw, dripping muscle, its upper body made of skin and armor and flashing lights. Clutching mechanical arms were tipped with plierslike claws. Video lenses surrounded the misshapen “head,” what looked like a mass of human brain tissue thickly wired with cables and metal plates. Heavy cables snaked off behind it.

It turned its lenses towards them, focused beams of blinding, sickly green light across them, and screeched—a shrill electronic squeal, inhuman, furious.

“Not good, mates, they’re getting bigger,” Hiko stammered, and then opened fire as the creature stomped heavily towards them.

“Power cables!”
Steve shouted, and raised his shotgun, trying to get a clear shot.

“Aim for its cables!”
Foster added, and then they were all firing as the seven-foot biomechanoid advanced amidst the thundering explosives.

Rounds ricocheted off the armor, the clever placement of the thick metal plates blocking the shots directed at the cables. Bullets flew wildly as the undamaged creature continued towards them.

One of the shots slammed into an overhead pipe, and suddenly the freakish monster was enveloped in a hissing cloud of steam. Steve jammed more rounds into his shotgun and blasted again and again as the other three unloaded their clips into the thing. The corridor was flooding with steam and water from burst pipes and the creature came on, barely slowed by the barrage of fire.

Foster’s empty magazine clattered to the deck next to Hiko’s.

“Is there a plan B?” Foster shouted.

They had backed up past a side corridor and Steve pointed, still firing the shotgun. Foster grabbed Hiko and then they were all running for it, down the dark offshoot and away from the relentlessly approaching biomechanism.

There weren’t any hatches in the offshoot, and Steve realized his mistake even as he saw the blank bulkhead in front of them. It was a dead end.

Who the fuck would put an empty hall goin’ nowhere on a ship?

The creature had reached the entrance to the corridor just as Nadia frantically gestured towards one corner. Steve followed the motion, then saw what he’d missed in his panic. A ladder, the rungs leading up into a vertical maintenance tunnel.

“Where does it go?” Foster gasped.

“I don’t know,” said Nadia.

The creature started down the corridor towards them.

“I don’t care!” Steve shouted. “Climb!”

Nadia went first, Hiko behind her, then Foster. Steve clambered up after them, praying that the creature wouldn’t make the ladder before they got far enough out of its reach. The scuttle was too narrow for it to follow—

There was a hideous shriek directly beneath him and the wall shook. Steve heard rending metal, risked a look down, and saw steel claws destroy the bolted rungs below, slice through them with incredible ease.

He heard Foster cry out as the ladder trembled, as she slipped suddenly. He reached up and caught her leg. She steadied herself and continued to climb.

The creature screeched again in a seeming frenzy of rage—but they had cleared its deadly grasp and found a way out of the trap that had been set for them.

Steve wished that this meant they were safe, but knew better. He swallowed, hard, and followed the others into territories unknown.

Richie sat cross-legged on the floor of the missile room, counting out lengths of cable and reveling in his heightened awareness. He’d smoked some more shit to fully appreciate his newfound sense of purpose and he now realized that nothing could touch him. It wasn’t that he was invulnerable, it was just that he was so—
in tune
that he was ready for anything.

“. . . human brain can hold more than a hundred computers,” he mumbled, “ain’t gettin’ mine. Getting out, I gotta
plan . . .”

The beginning of the end. He was going to have to run an errand or two to insure the success of his operation, but that was okay; he was looking forward to it.

Me and you, baby; won’t be any fun if I don’t get to see a little action!

The slightly altered fuse lay next to him, wired for sound—not to mention the multipoint hook he’d rigged that would allow him to detonate every warhead in the room with the single trigger. The uncased warheads themselves were a safe distance away, their fuses detached; he didn’t want any little accidents before the time was right . . .

He measured out the last of the cable and set it against a spool of nylon rope he’d found in a footlocker beneath the missile rack. All told, he had 250 feet, give or take—but that was including the light nylon, which he didn’t really want to use, and it wasn’t going to be near enough for what he had in mind.

“It thinks it’s smarter than me? Sure. Gonna get a surprise . . .”

He stood and stretched leisurely, grinning, and wondered if the others were still alive. Maybe he’d see them on his expedition—

—
or maybe I’ll see
parts
of them, anyway.

His grin faded. That wasn’t so funny. Squeaky had been a good guy, he hadn’t deserved what had happened to him—and just because Richie had a plan and the rest of them didn’t, that didn’t mean he wanted to see them end up like Squeak.

But I’ll be takin’ care of that too, won’t I?

Richie smiled again, a tight, urgent smile as he thought of how it was gonna be.

“Beautiful,” he whispered, and went to get ready for his trip into the jungle, still smiling.

Everton made his way down through the
Volkov,
trying to prepare himself for the meeting. He hadn’t been attacked or stopped, although he’d heard things skittering through the shadows on his way to the stairwell—and twice he’d smelled the putrescent odor of rotting flesh drifting towards him through the corridors.

He caught a whiff of it now as he stepped through the bulkhead hatch and onto E deck. The alien creature had been considerate enough to light his path, making it clear which corridors to take; it was still dim and flickering, but it was obvious he was headed in the right direction . . .

Go back, don’t do this . . .

Everton shook off the quietly nagging voice that had followed him all the way from C deck, scowling. Nerves. He was uneasy, true, but he wasn’t about to let simple apprehension stop him from cutting a deal; this meeting was the answer to everything. If things went well, they’d make it to port, he’d inform the proper authorities, and they would clear the
Volkov
of its alien guest; the ship would probably sustain further damage, but his salvage would still be solid—and as the sole survivor of an alien encounter at sea, he could write his own ticket while he waited for the lien to clear the courts.

And all that aside, there’s the little matter of my survival to consider. I don’t have a choice here; anyone can see that.

He turned to the right at the end of the corridor and stopped cold. Halfway down the hall was the source of the foul air—and a thing that hurt his mind to see, a monstrosity from a madman’s nightmare. He hadn’t gotten a clear look at the one that had killed Woods; things had been happening too fast . . .

Tall, easily seven or eight feet. Four mechanical legs squatted beneath an armored torso; four arms, two human and two that were not, set at right angles to one another at midchest, interspersed with glowing lights. Crowning the horror were three human brains, fitted with optical lenses and crisscrossed with shining wire.

The lenses that he could see hummed and ticked, focusing on him, but the creature held perfectly still. He realized that it was a sentry, a guard for the workshop where he was expected. He swallowed his rising gorge and forced himself to walk towards it. He had already made his decision.

As he approached the freakish hybrid, it reached back with one metal arm and pulled open the door behind it. The arm moved, but the rest of the terrible body remained still, watching him.

Everton stepped to the entry, keeping as far away as possible from the guard and holding his breath against the fetid stench. He nodded towards it, trying to seem authoritative and composed, a man on business—but he couldn’t look at it, and just standing so close to such a thing, he felt his determination slipping.

Don’t go in!

It was too late; even if he
wanted
to leave, the creature would surely stop him. The
Volkov
rumbled around him, shaken by another distant wave. Everton squared his shoulders and walked in.

The workroom was dimly lit, the air heavy with rot and machine oil and other scents he couldn’t name. Most of the light came from three computer screens against the back wall, illuminating a series of long, low tables and the—things that worked at them. Things like Squeaky had been, like the Russian on the bridge—and variations of the two that had Everton struggling not to run screaming, regardless of the consequences.

There were occasional bursts of brilliant light from the welding torches that some of them held, casting strobing flashes across the bodies and circuitry they worked over. He saw an expressionless male biomechanoid with four hands at one table, threading torn slabs of muscle tissue with wire filaments. At another was the upper chest and head of a male corpse on its side, a biomechanoid with lenses instead of eyes drilling at its exposed spine.

Everton swallowed heavily and started for the computers, moving carefully between the rows of workbenches where body parts and huge tangles of wire and unfamiliar components were stacked and piled. He passed a biomechanoid that was wiring the belly of its own twin; soft, wet, meaty sounds hung in the air as the creature dug through the cold flesh.

Just stay calm, say your piece, don’t upset it.