Escape (61 page)

Gallian spared a hand from steadying his aim and held it out, palm up. “I'll take the EMP now, Ferrel.”

Ferrel took a step back. “I don't think so. What do you want with it anyway? You said yourself that you didn't want to cure yourself.”

“Exactly.”

“Hey, man, we're not going to force you. You can go your own way, no hard feelings, okay?”

Gallian nodded. “I'm going to need a ship to go my own way. And besides,” Gallian's grin broadened, and his features appeared to blur and shimmer. When he came into focus again, Ferrel couldn't believe his eyes. “This isn't just about my escape. It's about revenge.”

“Brathus?” Ferrel's eyes were blinking furiously. “How did you?” The man's features were exactly as Ferrel remembered them. Spiky blonde hair, strong chin, angular jaw, and close-set, frosty blue eyes
—
not red. His skin wasn't sallow, or a monstrous gray, either. He appeared perfectly human.

“Appearances can be decieving. I can assume any form I wish,” And even as he said it, Ferrel watched Brathus's features shimmer again. This time his face resolved into a ghoulish countenance. Wrinkled gray skin, long, glistening white teeth, gnarled black claws that looked sharp enough to shred through duranium, and bright red eyes.

Ferrel took another step back, this one involuntary. “You're not human.”

“I once was. In some ways I still am, but I'm also far more. I'm a part of a much greater whole. At this very moment I'm linked with thousands of others like me, and they in turn, to thousands more. Together we're all the sum of a great many parts, and the resultant whole is more than you can possibly imagine. We're unstoppable. Unfortunately, you won't live to be enlightened. Goodbye, Ferrel.”

“Wait!”

Click.

For a moment neither Ferrel nor Brathus could understand what had happened. Brathus frowned down at his rifle, shook it violently, and tried again.

Click.

Nothing happened. The firing mechanism was jammed. Brathus roared in fury, so loud that Ferrel felt his whole body reverberate from the sound. He watched, frozen in terror, his mind spinning in too-slow circles. He was trapped. The only way out of the gunwell was past Brathus and he
—
it
—
was blocking the corridor.

Brathus looked up, his red eyes sparkling and flashing a deep, bloody red. His arm blurred and then Ferrel saw the useless rifle hurtling toward his head. Recovering his senses enough to duck, the rifle flew past him, bounced, and clattered off the ladder behind him. Feeling dropped the emp generator with a loud
thunk!
and drew his pistol. By the time he'd drawn it, however, Brathus had dissolved into a thick, buzzing gray cloud. Ferrel fired into the cloud, punching a hole through it which was quickly filled. He fired again, and again, punching more holes, but the swirling particles kept filling the gaps. He couldn't tell if he was damaging the cloud, or merely forcing the particles to dodge his fire. Then the cloud seemed to expand and dissipate completely. Ferrel blinked, wondering where it had gone. Then he saw the walls seeming to flow toward him, and he knew where the cloud had gone. Ferrel started firing wildly at the walls, but they kept flowing toward him, uninterrupted. He backed down the corridor until his legs brushed the rungs of the ladder and he had no where left to go. Desperate, Ferrel took in a deep breath and screamed for help.

Chapter 40

J
illy was configuring the holographic microscope, using a blood sample she'd taken from Kieran to find the right settings. Kieran watched the three dimensional magnification of his blood floating above the holographic projector, but so far everything was still blurry. He studied the blurry hologram anyway, trying to find what was out of place in his sample, but without knowing what it should look like, that was an impossible task. Jilly typed a sequence of commands into the microscope's terminal, and then looked up as the hologram swam into focus.

She gasped.

“What is it?” Kieran asked, looking quickly from the hologram to Jilly and back again.

She gestured vaguely to the magnification. “You don't see it? Those
things
?”

Kieran frowned, trying to see what she meant. Then, all at once, it jumped out at him. Some of the shapes in the sample were to regular to be organic
—
perfect spheres with radiating spindles, like mechanical arms.

“Are those the nanites?” he asked, pointing to one of the spherical spindle shapes.

Jilly's answer was interrupted by a chilling roar that came as a muffled vibration through the deck plates. Their heads snapped to the medbay doors, and they watched for a frozen instant, holding their breath, expecting a terrifying monster to come bursting through the door. The sound faded, and the deck plates stood still. They traded quick wide-eyed glances before launching themselves at the door.

Ferrel was in trouble.

“I told you, you shouldn't have let him go alone with Gallian!” Kieran shouted as they ran.

Jilly stopped before the medbay doors to pass her hand in front of the scanner.
Swish.
She caught a glimpse of Kieran rushing through the door, his plasma rifle clutched in both hands. Jilly ran after him, drawing the pistol from her side.

Upon leaving the medbay, Kieran had had to pick a direction
—
left or right. He'd gone right. Jilly wondered how he knew which way to go, and decided he was just guessing. They reached a T-junction, and Kieran stopped running, his head turning left to right and back again.

“Which way?” Jilly asked.

“I don't know!”

“Just pick one!”

Kieran gritted his teeth, and studied the sign posted on the corridor wall. Left to the cockpit and hangars. Right to the crew quarters and mess hall. Which way would Ferrel have gone?

A scream tore through the waiting silence. It was unmistakably Ferrel, and seemed to be coming from the left. Jilly tore down the left side of the adjoining corridor and Kieran pounded down the deck plates after her.

* * *

Ferrel saw the flowing gray tide swell toward him and seem to peel from the walls, reaching out with molten gray tentacles. He fired at the nearest one and watched it scatter into its consituent particles, but there were hundreds more reaching for him. He felt the first tentacle brush his arm with a fierce burning sensation. He yelped, flinched away, and shot it for good measure. It scattered as well.

The tentacles responded instantly, flowing toward each other. They joined and intertwined, forming a writhing mass in front of him. The writhing mass resolved into a now familiar countenance of wrinkled gray flesh. A grin appeared, revealing a row of glistening, needle-sharp teeth.

“It's time for you to die, Ferrel.”

He fired repeatedly into the monster's gut, pulling the trigger as quickly as he could. There was no hot gush of blood. No flicker in its predatory smile. The monster was wearing the same armor plating that Gallian had been, and as a result, all Ferrel saw was a molten, smoking hole appear in that armor. He couldn't tell if he'd inflicted any significant injury, but from Brathus's unwavering grin, he could guess that he hadn't. Ferrel pulled the trigger once more, but his pistol answered with a sullen
click
. It was overheated. Ferrel's head swam in a dizzying rush of fear. Brathus's face drifted closer, and he could smell the creature's warm, rancid breath. In a flash Ferrel remembered how the patrollers in the precinct had died, and he knew what Brathus intended. He was going to be eaten alive.

Then Ferrel remembered something else. The patrollers who'd arrested him a Jilly for questioning. He'd killed them all with just a thought. He'd meant to knock them unconscious, but somehow his mysterious abilities hadn't been that precise. Ferrel focused on the frustration and rage he'd been feeling then toward those patrollers, and channeled those feelings toward the monster standing before him.

Nothing happened.

Brathus threw his head back, his jaws opening wide. Ferrel grabbed him by both his armored shoulders, and whispered through gritted teeth: “
Die.
”

Brathus's jaws snapped closed, and he paused to regard Ferrel with a puzzled look. His shoulders were smoking, and molten alloy from the plates of armor on his shoulders was running in rivulets down his arms. Brathus let out a piecing screech and struggled to get away, but Ferrel held him fast.

Then Brathus's hands came up to Ferrel's shoulders, and the struggle began in earnest.

* * *

Jilly heard the inhuman screech echoing down the hall toward her, and she poured on an extra burst of speed. Then they heard a long, tortured scream that sounded like Ferrel.

“Gallian's killing him!” Jilly said.

The muscles in Kieran's jaw bunched, and his knuckles whitened around the barrel of his rifle.

An open doorway appeared to their left, and they skidded to a stop. Jilly gazed stupidly into the narrow corridor beyond the threshold. There was someone standing with his back turned, looming over a body at the end of the corridor. It was impossible to tell who was who, so Jilly raised her pistol and called out, “Put your hands in the air, and turn around!”

The man did as he was told, slowly. Jilly's first glimpse of the face was a bit blurry, but she blinked and he snapped into focus. “Ferrel! You're okay!”

Jilly ran down the corridor toward him with Kieran close behind. She gave him a quick hug, then withdrew to an arm's length and leaned to one side to examine Gallian. His remains were smoking and unrecognizable. The armor plates he'd been wearing had melted and molded to what was left of his charred and peeling flesh. The smell was like molten rust.

Jilly winced and looked back to Ferrel. “How did you
 
.
 
.
 
.
?”

Ferrel shook his head. “I don't know. I just told him to die, and he burst into flames. I had no idea I could do that.”

Jilly's eyes were wide with shock.

Kieran still had a loose grip on his rifle, but now the barrel was trained on Gallian's corpse. “We should get him off the ship, just in case. I've seen enough of the dead coming back to life to last me a lifetime.”

Ferrel nodded. “Let's wait for him to cool at least. We can jettison him from an airlock when we get into the upper atmosphere. No way he'll survive that.”

Jilly shook her head. “I'm so sorry, Ferrel. I thought
 
.
 
.
 
.
I don't know what I was thinking. I never should have sent you off with him alone.”

Ferrel offered a wan smile. “It's okay. You gave him a defective rifle. That saved my life.”

Jilly spied the discared rifle then, lying behind Gallian's smoking remains. “How did you know?”

“About the rifle? I saw you give it to him in the precinct. Then he tried to use it on me, and it wouldn't fire. One plus one equals two, you know?”

Kieran sighed. “Well, I guess you were right not to trust him, Jilly.” He turned to Ferrel. “We'd better get back to making your EMP.”

“No need.”

Kieran cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

Instead of answering, Ferrel walked past Kieran and bent to pick up the discarded cylinder. He hefted it in the air. “All we need is a power source. Hook it up to this, fashion an emitter from that busted rifle, and we've got ourselves an EMP.”

Jilly gave him a flicker of a smile. “That's great, Ferrel. We've already verified the diagnosis. Kieran's blood is practically teeming with nanites.”

Ferrel sent her a backward glance. “Really? Well, not for long.”

* * *

Creating the EMP took surprisingly little effort. They salvaged a portable power supply and a bank of capacitors from one of the load lifters in the cargo bay, hooked it up to one end of the EMP generator, and then welded an emitter dish and barrel to the other end. As per Ferrel's recommendation, they took the assembly outside. Kieran volunteered to go first.

Jilly was on standby with a host of medical equipment in case things went badly, and Ferrel was manning the gun while keeping an eye on the door leading to the roof of the building.

“Ready?” Ferrel asked.

The wind was whipping loudly accross the roof, so Kieran had to shout: “Shoot me!”

Ferrel answered with a grin, then turned on the power source, and waited for the capacitors inside the EMP to charge. Because the assembly lacked proper controls for firing, it would discharge as soon as the capacitors reached their limits.

“It's going to be okay!” Jilly called. She was standing well back from the line of fire, having been warned that the EMP could have a substantial blast radius. They had also taken the precaution of aiming the cannon away from the ship, not wanting to disable their only chance to get away from the madness which had engulfed Crater City.