I explained it as quickly as I could as we hurried towards the Central Control Nexus and realized that I might have been letting myself be a little too proud. Okay, maybe all I did was string everything together in a way that sort of made sense and it did take me until now to figure it out, but I felt I deserved a pat on the back anyway. The truth was that only two things were for certain -things were a lot more complicated than I could have imagined and there wasn't shit that I could do about it.
"We SO be'in played," Obie said as he thumped along behind me. I nodded as I trotted and smiled broadly. This was the best I had felt since this had started, but when I caught K'rth's smirk, I knew that he had been a step or two ahead of me the whole time like usual. There's nothing like a smug, experienced I&I op to put you into your place.
"You already had it figured out, didn't you?" I asked, feeling embarrassed and more than a little pissed. His big yellow eyes turned into squints as his smirk stretched into a wide smile and he chuckled. He's always trying to teach me something and I'm reminded that if he were a human he'd be a sneaky old man. Scratch that, he'd be dust.
"It was important that you figured this out for yourself," he said in between laughs, but then sobered up. "It's true that I suspected much of what you've said, but I wasn't sure of it until we gained the information about this vessel."
"Iz Alex right?" Obie asked, looking a little bit confused. When he gets excited, his pronunciation slips a bit and he made my name sound like "Alice." It wasn't like I could do much about what he started calling me if his mind was set anyway.
"I believe so, but the only way to find out for sure will be to apprehend Bayer," he answered. "We may be able to learn everything before Cloak terminates him."
Bayer and his people were dead no matter what condition they were in when they were brought in, so simple persuasion was out. We'd just have to beat as much info out of them as we possible before we turned them over to Cloak and hope we could break them. McNeil might object and even argue that doubting Cloak was subversive, but as long as I didn't let him tell him about this conversation there wouldn't be a problem. It was right about then that Ebon decided to voice his opinion, even though he had just joined the fun.
"It sounds rather, how should I phrase it - paranoid and conspiratorial?" he asked, stopping in place like we had all day to talk. "Even improbable, don' t you think? I believe you're stretching."
I really wanted to hit him right in his smart mouth but didn't. Fortunately, Nix the negotiator was on hand and ready to help.
"Keep moving, longpig," Nix growled, but instead of skipping along tossing flower petals like I expected, he put his back to the wall and stood his ground. Nix raised her visor and bared her teeth to convince him to change his mind and suddenly he wanted to argue.
"But-," he started but I cut him off with my hand.
"No 'Buts' about it," I said, stepping forward before the wraith got started. "Get us to the Control Nexus-"
"-Central Control Nexus," he interjected and I almost smacked him. I don't like being interrupted, but correcting the syntax, grammar, and technical jargon on nearly everything I said was something I wasn't in the mood for. I think K'rth chuckled again, but I was a little too irritated to care.
"TAKE US THERE NOW!" I snapped and punched the wall near his head. He flinched and ducked, but quickly came back to his feet and shuffled to the side. The expression on his face showed that he was proud of himself and I figured he thought that he had dodged my best. Maybe in his dreams.
"I was trying to tell you before you so rudely interrupted," he said with a superior tone in his voice. "WE ARE HERE!"
I turned in a full circle to look around, but didn't see anything but the weird organic corridors around us. There was the same mist, the same pulsing in the walls, and the same low rumbling from the distance but nothing beyond that. Granted that I had no any idea what a "Central Control Nexus" might look like, I still expected there would be something different to tell us we were close. When I turned back, the Ebon pointed at the wall behind him.
"It's right here," he said as he stepped back like one of those girls showing prizes on Clawing for Uni. "I will open the seal when you tell me."
As we shuffled into covering positions, K'rth held up his hand and spoke. When he did, the rasp of his voice was drawn out into a hiss by the acoustics and the Ebon cocked his head. I shook the echoes out of my head and concentrated on getting a good entry angle.
"How wide is it going to open?" K'rth asked. "Show us where the edges of the threshold will be."
The Ebon rolled his eyes like it was a stupid question and gestured towards two spots on the wall. "It's going to be about this wide and will be an ovoid shape that is taller than your Stormer."
He spat the word "Stormer" and I heard a low rumble from Obie's chest telling me that he had picked up on the slight and that the antipathy was mutual. I doubt the Ebon heard it because he didn't curl up into a fetal position and start crying again.
K'rth and Nix took one side while Obie and I took the other, leaving the Ebon in the middle where he could open the door and still be pulled out of the way before he might catch a slug. His face was solemn as he stepped up to the wall, but it changed to surprise and his mouth dropped open as something began to happen. A heavy slopping sound came from the wall and he trembled and whimpered as he pressed his hands against it like he was trying to hold it up. The material in front of him twitched and flexed, and then a syrupy white substance poured from between the fibers and flowed over his hands and into the floor. I started to pull him back, but the entire wall and ceiling rippled like a puddle hit by rain and I froze. The banded layers flexed again, this time with a low groan, and pulled up and back like a wet curtain made of muscle. An obscene breech was opening and I fought the urge to run. The look of horror on Theopolus's face told me that this was even more unnatural than it should have been.
"Good lord," I whispered, suddenly aware of Obie's hands gripping my shoulders. I couldn't have moved forward to pull the Ebon out of the way if I had wanted to and at a moment like this, I wasn't about to try.
A bitter, acidic smell like a mix of vomit and petroleum filled the air and my stomach knotted. More layers pulled out of the way, with liquid still splattering across the floor and the Ebon, who stood there wracked by sobs. The smell was now so strong that my eyes were watering and I saw that K'rth and Obie were having the same problem, but Nix had sealed her helmet. The smooth rasping sounds suddenly became rough, more like grinding glass than muscle and I saw the deeper sections were flaking and blackened. It looked a lot like skin that has suffered second and third degree burns and I winced at the rips and fist-sized blisters. There was little doubt how the DN team had managed to get into this chamber and I sincerely hoped the foldship wasn 't sentient after all. Anything burned that badly would be in one hell of a lot of pain, if it weren't in shock.
The portal's opening had mesmerized me, but Obie pulling his hand off and growling brought me back to the real world. Something was coming through the breech and he had heard it, convincing me to put my arm out to keep him from charging. We couldn't afford to have him clobber a good guy and I wanted to see what we were dealing with before we jumped. It turns out that I should have just let him go.
"DON'T WORRY! This is ME you're talking to, okay?" the voice said in Killian as the person started forward, one hand on a mike and the other cradling what might have been tools. "Hey, I'm on my way. Look, you can screw the fucking vets-"
He was in his late teens with a crop of short blonde hair and a T-shirt that said "NO FUCKING FEAR OF SLAYER HERE!" like some sort of downtown miscreant. His voice had died in mid sentence as he stopped and stared up at the growling Chagrin. The look on his face told me that the last thing he had expected to see was a bunch of Slops ready to jump on him and his voice abandoned him. Spittle dripped onto my head and neck as Obie's snarl formed into words and I carefully stepped to the side. Leave it to a Chagrin who's having a bad day to get things started.
"FEAR DIS."
The Chagrin roared and threw an overhand swipe that snapped the DN's spine with a boom, nearly tearing his torso in half. The body folded over forward onto the deck and both K'rth and I hopped over and through the opening. There were two men standing there and they were as surprised as their friend as we appeared. Apparently, no one told them that this might happen and they were as surprised as the first guy when the sky fell on his head.
K'rth got through first and shoved both men off balance, turning to pick the one on the right off his feet. I kicked the man on my side in the left knee, snapping it backwards the same time I pulled his weapon to the side. He spun sideways off balance and I slammed my elbow into his armpit, took him on my hip with the momentum, and popped my knees to send him spiraling over the top. It would have been a perfect match-ending point if this had been one of the KM tournaments at Meny and I had planted the DN hard across the top of his shoulders. His helmet bounced away and the submachine gun went off, sputtering rounds into the floor and wall and I stomped it out of his grasp. To finish him, I dropped my knee into his chest, feeling something snap, and smashed the butt of my pistol into his face. That had probably been overkill, I thought as I wiped the blood off my hand but it was such a great finish I couldn't resist. That was when it occurred to me that this might have voided the warranty on my pistol's custom grip, and I cursed. I didn't need any more trouble than I already had.
While I had been busy with that guy, Nix had spotted a third target and went airborne, sailing over me with what had to be a twenty-foot leap. The man had been armed, but the sight of a flying and snarling wraith sailing down on him had been enough to make him shit a brick and he never got off a shot. >From the sounds, she had torn out his throat before he could even scream and was taking the time to shred the pieces. It had probably been the most satisfying kill for her today and I didn't interrupt.
K'rth had finished his target off and was holding Obie back before he could run everyone over in his enthusiasm. The big guy was just standing there in the portal flexing his claws and alternating between looking aggressive and disappointed.
"Don't get pissed big guy," I said as I flipped the DN over and searched him for weapons. "You got the first kill anyway."
He shrugged and looked around, reminding me of a little kid that still wants to play even though all the adults are tired. Sometimes he can be funny as hell.
"Mine is still breathing," K'rth said as he secured and searched his prisoner. "Yours?"
"He's alive but could probably use a medic," I answered. The DN was wearing a combat harness and I cut it and used it to tie his wrists and ankles before standing up. Obie's stare went between me, the two prone prisoners, and back to me again and I shook my head. I read that as him wanting to work on them a little more and let my breath out. There were more of them up here and he'd get his chance sooner or later.
"If they move, stomp them," I said and the 714 nodded a little too quickly for my comfort. Realizing that he had taken that as the invitation he wanted, I turned around to reiterate. "ONLY if they move. Don't kill them either, okay?"
Obie nodded reluctantly and stood to guard the prisoners while K'rth brought Theopolus into the chamber. The Ebon's eyes were puffy already, but he broke down into tears the moment he saw the damage. The room had been burned and gutted and the smell of fire was overwhelming. Theopolus stepped toward me like he was about to cry on my shoulder and I decided to back away and go cover the corridor. I had been uncomfortable around him before and this didn 't make me feel any better.
"What have they done?" he stammered in between gasps. Some of the walls were streaked and moist, but most sections were covered in rows of blisters and scar tissue like the damaged portal. It looked like the burning had been systematic and deliberate, just like torture and I left the room. It was a little too eerie for me.
"They've crippled her!" Theopolus continued, wiping his face on his sleeve as he worked his way up to a rant. "Barbarians! Butchers!"
He was shifting back to melodrama again and I looked at my watch. If the ship were in this bad of shape already, I couldn't wait to see what he thought dropping into the atmosphere would do. The Ebon seemed to have forgotten that little fact and K'rth pushed him further into the chamber to remind him. Suddenly the Ebon started working and talking at the same time.
"I-I think that I can run a bypass to get some of the backup systems running," he mumbled. "Maybe it's not as bad as I thought."
"THEN HURRY!" I yelled, the hair on the back of my neck suddenly standing up. I felt like we were in an indefensible position and time was running out.
I caught the faint sound of something moving outside the room and leaned out carefully to check. When I didn't see anything, I repeated it from the other side but didn't see anything there either. Considering how weird the acoustics were here, there was no way I could pinpoint the sound or the distance but my instincts told me that we had company. Behind me, the low bass of Obie's growl rumbled in my ears as he shuffled up to help, sensing something too.
That was when I saw the shadows moving along my periphery.
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