Mech Zero: The Dominant Read online

Page 5


  Goddard stood up and headed for the lift. At least this should provide a diversion. He was already deciding what he would do with the sniveling crew. They had disappointed him, and he therefore felt justified in satisfying his darker urges.

  Every culture had its taboos, and among the Mendelians it was considered rude to bring up the twisted minds so many of their greatest folk possessed. It was well known among the breeders of any species that pushing a given trait too far could produce abnormalities. Overbred dogs tended to go deaf, blind or exhibit oddities such as extra toes. In a like fashion, while reaching for intellect in their young, some parents had gone too far. They’d scarred their offspring invisibly. In Goddard’s case, he considered his natural twist toward sadism to be a strength. At least he never backed down when grim deeds required doing. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  He suited up with a team of hulking marines, donning a pressure-suit with shark fin blades protruding from the knees and elbows. He wondered with a tickle of excitement if the enemy would have any females aboard.

  #

  Theller felt the reverberations as Redemption was hit repeatedly by enemy fire. He wept, expecting a fiery death at any second—but it did not come. He could not explain this. The enemy surely had the firepower to incinerate this tiny ship in a split-second. Why had they not done so? Sweating and panting, his breath sounded loud in his helmet. He waited what seemed like a very long time, but finally, he couldn’t take it any longer. If these were the last moments of his existence, he thought he might as well have a look around. He dug at the piled cargo he’d hidden under and peeked out.

  The cabin was dimly lit with yellow flashers and emergency red LEDs. Smoke had filled the air with a drifting haze. He squirmed further, pushing aside piles of equipment held loosely together by webbing. He soon peered out of a new spot, and from this vantage point he was aligned with the hatch. He could see the dim shape of Captain Beezel up there, sitting in the pilot’s chair. When she moved, she did so oddly. It was difficult to see clearly from his position, but he thought she had more than two appendages reaching out to touch the control screen. Could that be…?

  Yes. Something was riding on her back. A wavering, finger-thick antennae extended over her shoulder to tap at the controls. Theller felt a sick chill of fear run through him.

  A loud clang sounded then, which caused him to look this way and that at the curved skin of the ship that surrounded him. He felt the ship shudder, as if it had made contact with another, larger body. Something was outside. Could it be another alien? Something bigger, perhaps?

  The airlock groaned and a tortured shriek of twisted metal reached Theller’s ears. His breath came in labored gasps. He looked back to see what Captain Beezel was doing. He stared in disbelief for a second or two—she wasn’t there. He looked around, twisting his head, but saw nothing. Then he looked directly upward.

  There, on the ceiling above him, was the Captain. She was clutching the hexagonal ridges that formed interlocking panels in the aft cargo area. Like a spider, she hung up there, hugging the roof of the ship. The gravity was light, and the feat was not that surprising. What was surprising was her odd, predatory stance. She stared fixedly at the airlock hatch with an intense light in her eyes.

  It was the thing on her back, however, that almost drove Theller mad when he saw it. Part giant scorpion, part weevil in appearance, it was clinging to her, like an ape-child riding its protective mother’s back. Tapping antennae waved high overhead with feathery fronds at the tips. The sectional tail wrapped around her midsection, holding on tight.

  Theller vomited slightly. He gulped and gasped. He squirmed under the cargo webbing and choked as he aspirated acidic juices. Captain Beezel’s eyes flicked down and her overlarge blue orbs met his.

  He knew then that he was lost. This horror was beyond all imagining, and he would surely die at the captain’s small, claw-like hands within moments.

  Captain Beezel lifted one arm then, and he winced, but no sudden blow came. Instead, she put a single finger to her lips. Was she shushing him? He felt fuzzy and lightheaded, as if he dreamed. He thought about the narcotic wine he’d foolishly passed up. He wished the bottle was in reach now—he would guzzle it all if he got the chance again.

  Obediently, Theller quieted his breathing as best he could. He wanted to scream, to shout until he went hoarse, but he resisted the urge. Captain Beezel returned her eyes to the airlock hatch, and crept forward on the ceiling. She did not move as a normal human would have done. Her limbs flexed together in odd, jerky motions. Theller was reminded distinctly of a crawling insect.

  The airlock hatch buckled. A thrusting triangular dent appeared, pressing into the ship’s cabin. A rivet sprung loose, caromed off the walls and finally rattled onto the deck plates.

  There was a moment of quiet, then the hatch burst open. A small object was tossed inside. Instinctively, Theller squeezed his eyes shut. A flash exploded with a booming sound. Brilliant glare filled the room momentarily. It must have been a flash grenade, meant to blind and stun the occupants. Theller opened his eyes again just in time to see an avalanche of hulking figures enter the ship. He blinked away the purple splotches that drifted over his vision.

  The huge men had to be Mendelians. They could not stand erect in the cabin, but rather bent over at the waist. Theller knew an entirely new sense of despair. Even if he survived the alien and Captain Beezel, these men were not known for their gentle nature. The invaders moved into the cabin with big pistols in their hands. They stared at each of the dead crewmen strewn at their feet, kicking them about as a man might kick at dead leaves.

  Above him, Theller saw a shape scuttle forward. He realized it was Captain Beezel. She grabbed the rearmost of the hulking men around the neck with a single, wiry arm. The helmet starred instantly, then cracked. Blood flowed from the crushed throat underneath. Theller could see the man’s shocked eyes inside his faceplate. The man reached up with huge fingers and tore at his assailant, but she held on resolutely. His fingers gouged away strips of her plastiflesh, but he was quickly overcome and slumped down.

  The biggest of the Mendelians, a man who was almost squatting inside Redemption, noticed his fallen comrade. He shouted an order that was muffled by their helmets. Theller sank down into the webbing, trying to retreat beneath the cargo.

  They lifted their big pistols and fired into the bodies at their feet. Each lurched and puffed with smoke and flecks of flesh. Boiling, dead blood ran over the deck plates.

  One of the marines roared as his sidearm was snatched out of his grasp. He wheeled and took a blast in the chest from his own pistol. With incredible vitality, he made a gargling attempt to grapple with his opponent anyway. He managed to grab hold of Beezel, who stood exposed for a moment. The remaining Mendelians faced her, and seemed bewildered. Could it really be this small female who had slain two of their number?

  Then they fired in unison, and the captain sagged down, twitching. One of her titanium-boned arms kept flapping and whipping about until they stood on it and blew it off with another pistol-shot.

  Three Mendelians had survived. Theller knew he should surrender to them now. He should stand up slowly, with his hands on his helmet. The urge to do so was almost overwhelming. If they found him hiding under a heap of junk in the back, they could rightfully consider him an enemy combatant and burn him down.

  But he didn’t surrender. He chided himself for gross cowardice, but he simply couldn’t do it. His legs would not obey him. His voice choked in his throat. There were too many unknowns. He was not a man to take drastic action unless it was absolutely the final option. Unfortunately, too many such circumstances had arisen lately.

  The three Mendelians spoke amongst themselves for a moment, lowering their pistols but keeping them in their hands. The largest seemed to be giving orders. The other two seemed surprised, but moved to obey. They climbed into the ruined airlock and exited into the boarding shuttle they’d apparently brought with them.

 
; The next moment brought a new shock to Theller. The biggest Mendelian, the leader, had brought up the rear of the group. He lifted his pistol and fired into the backs of his men. He advanced, and Theller saw the thing riding on his back then—the wavering antennae, the segmented body, the spines and fronds. It was the creature that had ridden upon Captain Beezel.

  The Mendelian leader stepped over his dead comrades and climbed into the airlock. He fired more shots as he went. Theller couldn’t see him any longer, but he imagined the scene: the enemy crew was being killed by their own commander.

  Theller thought hard. The thing on the Mendelian’s back was somehow influencing the actions of anyone it rode upon. It had discovered him and let him live, but Theller suspected it had only done so because it wanted to surprise the boarding party. He felt sure that when it had killed everyone else, it would come back here and finish him.

  Finally, because he had no choice, Theller stood up and crept forward. When he reached the bulkhead between the prime deck and the aft cargo section, he opened a hatch in the floor. He clipped a security cord to his belt, then pulled the red lever that was under the hatch. A set of explosive bolts fired, and the ship shuddered.

  The cabin depressurized in two short, wrenching seconds. He was sucked to the exit and left dangling there, almost broken in half by the security cord that tethered him. The buckle, his belt and the cord all held, however. Bodies, loose objects and frozen chunks of blood splattered his helmet and thudded into his back as they flew out into space.

  Theller looked out of the open airlock. There was no outer or inner hatch left. He could see the assault shuttle now, and beyond it loomed one of the huge Mendelian cruisers. Both ships were darkly colored and formed with flat, ugly angles of unpainted metal.

  He crawled inside his derelict craft and buckled himself into a chair. The ship was gently spinning, but he did nothing to correct it. He wanted to look as lifeless as possible. He hoped that the alien in the assault shuttle would provide enough of a distraction to keep the enemy ships busy. With some luck, he might be allowed to drift away, forgotten until he was out of laser-battery range.

  Ten

  The Dominant was impressed yet again. This new host beast was startlingly powerful. She was able to burrow deeply into its broad back and sting the nerves directly this time, giving her a distinct advantage. Direct control of a suitable beast was hers for the first time in centuries! She reveled in the sensation. Goddard’s input organs flooded her with data, and her tendrils sought out his mind to do battle. The creature’s ego was powerful, but it had never been in such a contest before. She overcame it quickly, stuffing the being’s mind down into the depths of the id. She would leave it dreaming down there deep in the subconscious until she dismounted the beast.

  With direct control, she was able to do far more than simple actions and gestures. She could control every nuance of her mount, even make it speak in its absurd language, which seemed to her to be an audible set of warbling, blatting noises. She turned the assault ship around, after riffling through Goddard’s memories and stimulating his thick fingers into the appropriate actions. There was no time to lose. She had to dock and firmly gain command of the nearest enemy cruiser. Speed was of the essence when employing tactical surprise. Sooner or later, she would make a misstep and the enemy would begin to suspect. Since she was alone, she could not afford to give them time to react.

  She wheeled the assault ship smartly around, allowing the cruiser to suck her up into its yawning launch bay. Around her, the cooling bodies of the assault ship’s crew floated. Glittering like jewels, frozen globules of blood drifted around the cabin.

  #

  Davenport reflected that the entire mission had turned into a farce. They had planned carefully for a span of three long years, only to meet zero resistance. Just as the intolerable Goddard had predicted, the armed forces of Tranquility were laughable. They had no navy to speak of and had been brushed aside with imperial ease. This annoyed Davenport to no end for two distinct reasons: it made all his planning a ship-wide joke, and it made Goddard right. He was left with the unmistakable title of fool or worse, coward. Neither of these titles pleased him in the slightest. His mood was grim.

  When the first of the cruisers exploded, Davenport was shocked. He was sitting in his own command chair on the bridge of Bernard Shaw, which the insufferably arrogant Admiral Goddard had finally relinquished to him some hours ago.

  Galton, the lead cruiser in the fleet, suddenly transformed into a ball of bright white light. Davenport’s immediate thought was that he had been right all along. The enemy had clearly laid mines before them. They’d foolishly abandoned his plan to alter course at random. The enemy had lured them in with these absurd patrol boats, getting into their heads, making them overconfident so they would make mistakes. It was all obvious to him now. He shook his fists at the screens and hissed in vexation. His only consolation was that Goddard had already died in this ‘phantom’ minefield.

  “Emergency brake-jets!” Davenport shouted. “Take full evasive action. We’re in a minefield. Full detection scan in a thirty degree cone forward. Relay those orders to Sanger.”

  Bernard Shaw lurched upward then swung laterally with wrenching force. The other surviving ship did the same, but in the opposite direction.

  “Don’t you think you should get approval for these orders first, Davenport?” barked a familiar voice over the command channel.

  “Goddard? Glad to hear you made it out of that,” Davenport lied. “Please report your status and what hit your ship.”

  “My status is I’m in command. I’m in a shuttle and proceeding to Sanger.”

  “What happened to Galton?”

  “If I knew that, I would have told you!” Goddard roared back. “Work your instruments, man. Report your findings. Goddard out.”

  Davenport sat back in his chair with a heavy thump. It was grossly unfair. He’d been right all along, but the single bright point of hope in the situation—Goddard’s demise—had been denied him. He could not believe his misfortune. Worse, the fool seemed committed to pressing onward, flying blindly into the face of the enemy. They’d just suffered a horrifying loss; fully one third of their force was gone. But Goddard’s only reaction was anger, and persistence in his folly.

  Not for the first time, Davenport doubted his people’s wisdom. The mentality of their greatest leaders was indeed extreme, but it was also inevitably flawed, unbalanced. He knew, of course, that it was in his nature to be a doubter. This trait he saw as further evidence of Mendelian weaknesses in their leadership. His parents had jockeyed his genes to produce a child with the proverbial Wisdom of Solomon. He had gone far with their cooked-up, unusual design. He’d impressed countless others who had been bred for sheer intellect or physical prowess. But internally, he had his misgivings concerning his mental configuration. Genetic tendencies meant to provide him with great wisdom had largely resulted in a cautious nature. He was a worrier, and had difficulty proceeding down a fixed path regardless of obstacles due to his unique ability to see all possible outcomes. In many ways, he and Goddard were opposites.

  Davenport’s first thought was to abandon the entire mission. They had lost Galton after destroying a half-dozen rickety patrol ships. In matters of sheer attrition, the enemy was winning. Worse, they still had no clear idea of the enemy’s true strength. And Davenport, naturally, suspected the worst.

  Minutes later, shocking him out of his reverie once more, Sanger exploded. Davenport stared at the screens, scarcely able to believe his eyes. His jaw fell open and hung there.

  “I requested a scanning cone—” he began in an accusing voice.

  “I know sir!” responded the senior operations officer. “I did just as you said. There was nothing there. We ran into absolutely nothing!”

  Davenport stared at him. He rose and pushed the man away from his station. He checked the boards carefully, then did it again. He could not see any error, so he stepped back to his command chai
r.

  “Open a general channel,” he said, sucking in a deep breath. “This is your commander speaking. The fleet has suffered a catastrophic loss. We—”

  “Davenport? Is that you assuming command again?”

  Davenport could not believe his ears. He stared up at the combat dome and there it was, a small contact coming toward his ship. Goddard had escaped again.

  “Admiral?” Davenport asked. “How did you escape that explosion?”

  “I didn’t,” Goddard said. “I merely inspected the ship then left. I was on my way to inspect your ship when the second attack occurred. I now suspect sabotage, Davenport. We may be in the grips of a mutiny, or the victims of a group of Tranquility sympathizers. I strongly suggest you search your engine room for charges and post guards there. I’m coming aboard shortly. There is no need for an escort to meet me. Put your marines into action, now!”

  “I hear and obey,” Davenport said. He closed the connection, relayed the admiral’s orders and then sat in his chair for approximately thirty seconds.

  Finally, he got up and left the bridge. He told his crewmen to stay at their posts and to continue slowing the ship.

  He marched down to the launch bay to meet Goddard personally. The marines that normally thronged the area were all missing, all sent to guard duty elsewhere. Goddard opened a weapons locker, selected an assault rifle, checked the charge and then checked it again. Each time he examined it, the rifle was fully operational, but less than a minute later, he felt compelled to check it again.

  When the shuttle arrived, Davenport was waiting at the airlock. He pressed a button, sealing the hatch.

  Goddard’s annoyed voice soon came through the intercom. “This is Admiral Goddard. Open this damned hatch!”

 

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