Twelve

The Savant had expected resistance. With only a few days to work, and not a lot of materials, she had been forced to think in unfamiliar tactical terms. Oh, how she wished she had seeded a nife to take over these decisions from her! But that wasn’t her lot in life, she had no luxuries, not yet. She needed every ounce of protoplasm to create fighters, not more command creatures. She would have to earn herself enough materials and time to make a skilled command team. She would have to do it the hard way, by fighting for every meter of space and every kilo of bio-mass.

The first ship of the three that put down was filled, not with her own young broodlings, but rather with explosives. In addition to the explosives, a large amount of chemicals had been added. This chemistry mix would react with the oxygen these humans depended on to form a narcotic gas.

And so the Savant watched, using datablips of vid feed from her pilots, as humans thronged the landing bay around each ship. They were clearly agitated, and many were armed. Most, however, didn’t have their faceplates locked down. This last fact brought her a soothing wave of neuro-chemicals. She was happy. She had maintained the critical element of surprise. These fools had no idea what she had in store for them.

She watched the affair with the explosives-laden ship through a datablip from the hest that was piloting the first rook. The pilot was her only hest, the one that had been severely injured by the elusive human from Gamma Base. Damaged or not, the hest would prove useful for this single, final duty.

She ignored the humans gathering around her own cooling ship. Only the one with the bomb aboard opened. The other two sat silently. For all intents and purposes they seemed locked and dead. It was the first ship, the one piloted by the lone hest, that held her full attention. When a dozen or so humans were in range, she ordered the hest to open the rook’s hatch and let the ramp slide down and lock into place.

Milling uncertainly, the humans gathered. A few placed boots upon the ramp. That was good enough.

Now! she transmitted.

The hest’s ship exploded. The humans clustered nearby were killed immediately by the blast. Those farther away were gassed by the escaping noxious vapors that rolled away from the wreckage. The fumes had been bio-chemically formulated with great care by the Savant. The gas was harmless to her kind.

The power of the blast had been similarly modulated. It was powerful enough to destroy the airlocks that led into the landing bay. But it was not forceful enough to rupture the clamshell dome over the blastpan. She did not need to leak the base’s atmosphere out into the vacuum of space. She needed an incapacitated population of humans as raw materials, not frozen corpses orbiting Minerva.

Most of the humans who encircled her ship turned in alarm and ran toward the source of the explosion. Had she been capable of a smile, the Savant would have formed one now. As it was, her single lung breathed deeply and exhaled slowly. Things were moving smoothly, following her best-case scenarios.

When only a pair of humans remained at the foot of the second ship, she ordered the pilot to lower the ramp. The humans had withdrawn to a safe distance in case another explosion occurred. She had studied reports on human behavior from Garm, however. She waited, leaving the ramp down and silent. Curious creatures by nature, the humans simply had to investigate. They came near before a single minute had passed on the chronometer.

She satisfied their curiosity by ordering the pilot, who was the Boldo-creature, to appear at the top of the ramp. He still looked human, if somewhat oddly-shaped and unusually bulky. She had ordered the creature to keep his fronds and stalks retracted or hidden, floating behind his body.

With swinging strides, the Boldo-creature thumped down the ramp. At first, the greeting humans lowered their weapons in recognition and seemed relieved. But as he drew closer, his strangeness became increasingly self-evident. Their weapons rose again. When he lifted his own weapons, a hand-cannon in each gloved fist, they tried to fire. One got off a single, booming shot that staggered the Boldo-creature, but then he returned fire, blasting repeatedly at close range. Both humans soon fell to writhe on the bubble-crete. The Boldo-creature methodically popped the override on their faceplates as he went by. This ship, too, leaked gas. They gasped in the drifting narcotic vapors that now filled the landing bay. The gas had the added effect of preserving dying tissues for later consumption.

A team of seven shrades followed the Boldo-creature into the corridors beyond the airlocks. Their missions varied, but in most cases the tasks involved the release of more gas canisters at critical ventilation points in the station. With luck, many of the humans would be overcome without destructive combat. The Savant needed their bio-mass badly.

The last ship carried the Savant herself and the core of the Savant’s forces. She had managed to field a fire-team of three newborn killbeasts. She had seeded them back on Gamma Base, but they had not yet been viable when the single, wily human had made his attack and escaped. Gestated and birthed by the Kizzy-creature from the Savant’s bio-seeds, these three carried the best weapons available from Gamma Base. Each was armed with a laser carbine or a rattler and their own horn-bladed feet.

The killbeasts charged down the ramp of the last ship. They made very quick work of the knot of people left in the landing bay. The shocked humans barely had time to shout in surprise much less get off a volley before they were cut down.

So far, so good, thought the Savant. But her element of surprise would be wearing off quickly now, and unless she kept the initiative, the humans would soon regroup and counterattack. History had shown her they were much more dangerous when organized and comprehending of what they faced.

Something happened then. Something she should have foreseen, but her tactical inexperience hampered her. The clamshell dome over the second ship, the one the Boldo-creature had piloted, cracked open. Gases escaped into the hard vacuum of space. Two shrades were asphyxiated and frozen. Going stiff and losing the suction-grips of their lower pods, they were drawn up with the escaping atmosphere and drifted into space. The rest of the shrades, fortunately, had escaped into the corridors and waste-tubes of the Tyrolia. The Boldo-creature stumped back onto the scene. Having kept his magnetic boots on, he was firmly planted upon the flooring. He flipped the emergency override. The clamshell rolled slowly shut again and the landing bay repressurized.

Frantically, the Savant ordered her killbeasts to disable all controls to the landing bay her personal ship was in. They could not survive in vacuum for any length of time. Before the humans could play that trick twice, they must avoid further disaster.

She nodded to herself. The enemy had made their first move. She suspected there would be more setbacks. She went to check on the Kizzy-creature. Fantastically bloated now, her headless body was at least as wide and tall as it was long, even though she lay flat on her back. Inside the ballooning, gurgling, gestational tracts the next generation of offspring were almost ready to be born.

The Savant adjusted the Kizzy-creature’s feeding apparatus, which had become simplified by the removal of her head. An arrangement of tubes pumped nutrients directly into her digesters, while new lungs had been grown externally. These purple-pink organs shivered, inflating and contracting rhythmically. The Kizzy-creature’s own lungs had long since been collapsed by the tremendous weight of the offspring that squirmed in her swollen tracts.

The marvelously efficient arrangement brought pleasure and calm to the Savant. She had done an excellent job with this creature. Who would have thought the human females could be utilized so effectively as biological factories, as stand-ins for a Parent? Looking at the marvelous Kizzy-creature, she wanted more of them. Many more.

She felt confident that somehow the cold idiocies of fate would favor her species this time. The Imperium would triumph in the Kale system. She knew it.

#

About ten hours after the initial assault, Nicu rejoined the Vlax forces. He had crawled near the front lines and had determined the humans had a strong defensive position. Strong enough, he felt, that he was probably safer with them than wandering the tubes solo and perhaps running into an alien.

Everyone who had not been laid low by the gas or killed outright had a laser carbine now. They had emptied the armory. A few carried rattlers loaded with low-velocity encapsulated-mercury rounds that wouldn’t puncture the metal skin of the base.

Nicu popped up beside Loiza at the secondary barricade. This one was constructed of flipped over tables from the distribution centers. Its protection value was largely psychological. Out in the hallways beyond the public mall were forward groups of armed Vlax. Those forward squads were the bait, as far as Nicu could tell.

 “Form a half-circle facing each main entrance,” said Loiza, whispering in her suit microphone. “If they get past the pickets and come for the mall, they will be bunched up at those entrances. When they come in from one of the corridors, we can hit them all at once.”

“Good plan,” said Nicu with an encouraging smile.

Loiza stared at him. Recognition flared. “You!” she said, reaching for him. Somehow, Nicu eluded her grasp. She made several attempts, but each time her gloves closed on nothing. Nicu was not an easy man to lay hands upon. She pulled out her hand-cannon and aimed it at him.

“I’ve got important information about the enemy, Commander!” said Nicu. His words were confident, but his voice nearly squeaked in everyone’s helmet intercoms.

“What did you bring down here? What are these things, Nicu?”

Nicu saw a familiar light in her eyes. Why did everyone he met, at some point, want to kill him?

“I told you, back on Gamma—we had problems. We left, but I guess the others, the ones on the others ships—were infected.”

This time, when she stepped close enough to grab him, Nicu’s escape was blocked. Another, larger Vlax had loomed up behind Nicu and when he dodged away he bounced into the man’s thick chest.

Loiza’s hand-cannon was in his faceplate. Everyone kept their helmets down and their faceplates locked now, as the air had gone bad.

“So, you knew. You brought these things here, and you knew they would kill us.”

“No! No, no, no!” said Nicu, shaking his head within the helmet so rapidly that his individual flying hairs were pulled out when they caught at the seams. “We were fine. We were the survivors. We got to the ships and fled. I thought everyone else was normal. Like me. I didn’t know there was anything bad on those other ships.”

She stared at him. The black hole of oblivion, nearly two centimeters in diameter, eyed him from the business end of her hand-cannon. He was not sure which of these dark eyes he faced was more merciless.

The big man behind Nicu put heavy gloves on him, one on each shoulder. Another man now joined the first.

“Then why didn’t you tell us?” asked Loiza.

Nicu’s hands flipped up in a shrugging gesture. “You would have said I was crazy. I thought we were fine. I thought we could land and explain it all.”

Loiza shook her head. “No. No, you lie. When you came down, you told me not to let the others out of their ships. You knew what was on board those rooks.”

“I only figured it out as I was coming down. I saw the things at the controls. I looked at the vid feeds. There wasn’t time to warn you, we were in the middle of the landing sequence.”

Loiza nodded. For a fraction of a second, Nicu dared think he was in the clear.

“I have decided,” said Loiza. “You must die. For the good of all Vlax. We have lost too many souls today. You cannot survive this day to perform more treacheries. Perhaps, even you are infected somehow.”

The heavy hands on his shoulders became crushing weights. More hands pulled the gun from his holster. “No, wait! You are making a mistake, Loiza!”

“Space him,” she said to the men who held him.

Nicu was lifted from his feet and dragged backwards. Several men had him now. “Wait. I know all about them. I can tell you how to kill them.”

Loiza lifted her hand indicating the others should stop. They brought him back to her.

“Half my people are dead or gassed already, Nicu. The Tyrolia is dying. The Vlax are dying. Tell me what you know, to save your people.”

Shivering, Nicu felt the men ease their grips, but only a fraction. He told Loiza then. He told her about the shrades. He told her about Boldo, or what he had become. He told her about the things the squid-like creature had done to Kizzy. He told her how he had killed a shrade and Kizzy.

Loiza listened at length, nodding occasionally. “I had suspected to hear a story like yours. It is insane, but I believe most of it. And I know, I think, where these things are from.”

“Where?”

“The Nexus.”

Nicu looked at her, baffled. “The Nexus?”

“You perhaps have not been examining Nexus Net News. It’s mostly propaganda, of course, but there are useful tidbits. Some years ago, Garm was in a rebellious state. They killed their Nexus appointed Governor and elected their own. After a time, they were mysteriously attacked by creatures like these. They came out of nowhere, out of space. They moved very quickly, and looked like a strange variety of animals, but they were intelligent. Half the population of Garm was killed. Now the people of Garm are quiet, peaceful. Obedient.”

“Years ago?”

“It takes time, even for alien monsters, to travel between the stars.”

“Oh, I see,” said Nicu. And he did see. Anyone traveling to Garm would take years to arrive. Also due to the distance, people in the Kale system only heard of events on Garm and the other outlying worlds of the cluster years after they had occurred.

“So, you think the Nexus released these monsters to stop a rebellion on Garm? And now they have done the same to us?” Nicu asked.

“Yes. They are angry because we destroyed one of their bases in the Alpha asteroid belt. They seek revenge.”

Nicu understood clearly. The plan was diabolical. “And the Nexus can pretend it was all a disaster. Not their doing.”

 Loiza nodded and stared at Nicu. Her rage was gone, but her gaze was still dangerous. “Your brain works better than most. But your heart is dark, Nicu. It is rotten.”

“I know it, Loiza. It is my greatest sorrow.”

“Today, it is my sorrow. My only regret is that I dare not blow your brains out right here.”

“Ah,” said Nicu, uncertain as to where this statement left him. “I have killed two of these monsters. I have fought the greatest Nexus weapons. I want to stand with you.”

Loiza stared at him for a long second. She shook her head. “You would run. Somehow, you would run,” she said.

“I would like to volunteer for the worst duty,” said Nicu proudly. “I will stand on the front lines with the men in the hallways.”

She finally nodded. “I will take you with me instead.”

“With you?”

“We are about to attack the aliens in their landing bays. We will drive them from the Tyrolia and back into space. You will lead. You will be our scout.”

Nicu swallowed. He nodded his head, but could not bring himself to speak audibly.

#

Both sides became defensive and the struggle went on for days. Loiza had made forays, trying to engage the aliens. They proved elusive and appeared weak. She decided to push them back to the area of the blastpans. She gathered her troops for a big attack. She figured they were not as all-powerful as she had believed at first. After all, how many of them could have fit aboard just three rooks? No more than thirty or so if they didn’t have troop pods attached, and one of them had exploded upon landing. She could overwhelm twenty to thirty aliens, fast or not, with her hundreds.

So on the third day, when all had been quiet along the corridors that had become a no-man’s land, a place where nothing moved without being fired upon, she made her push. She ordered sixty troops forward on three lines of attack, moving through three corridors at once. She needed to spread out her attack so that her superior numbers could overwhelm the enemy. She could not let them bottle her up in a narrow line.

She took another force of twenty troops behind the second group. They would press ahead, force their way in if the others were stopped.

At first, they met no resistance. A few shadows moved, and her men lifted their carbines to fire splatting laser-bolts after them. But nothing stood and fought. Her people’s spirits rose. They should have done this earlier! They had been cowed by these monsters who were now going to be taught a lesson about the ferocity of the Vlax Romani!

They reached the final corridor that led to the ring of blastpans and landing bays. When their corridor teed off into two others, each of which led into one of the landing bays, fire erupted from both sides. Men were cut down in seconds. First three, then five dropped. They scrambled back into the corridor they had come from. They returned fire, but found no targets. Whatever had hit them, the enemy had vanished.

They proceeded with greater caution after that. Nothing happened until they approached the nearest airlock that led into a landing bay. The ceiling bulged then, right in their midst, as did the floor. Strange creatures, things like the ones Nicu had described, sprang up among them. Like snakes, these monsters wrapped themselves around legs and worked up to abdomens and finally heaving chests. Screams were cut off, turning into choked, gasping cries. Ribs popped in rippling sounds like the tearing seams of fabric. Everyone was screaming and struggling. Hand-cannons boomed, but as often as not hit human flesh.

Into the midst of this chaos, at either end of the corridor they were in, more of the elusive snipers appeared and peppered them with laser fire. This time, however, some of the Vlax were ready for such a move. They returned fire. One rattler splattered two killbeasts with mercury rounds. They were torn apart and the rest of the aliens retreated. But the damage had been done. By the time they had destroyed all the shrades in their midst, fully half the Vlax group had been killed.

Loiza withdrew with her forces to the public mall. Of the original forty she had led, only twenty remained standing. The second returning group had fared no better. The third group never returned at all, save for one man. Some argued with her they should go out and search for the third team, but she refused. The Vlax would fight here until relief arrived from the outer bases, then they would abandon the Tyrolia.

She ordered the one survivor from the vanished group brought to her.

#

Nicu reluctantly answered Loiza’s summons. He tried to strike a martial pose. He was, after all, a heroic survivor.

“You?” demanded Loiza, realizing whose narrow-shouldered frame filled out that spacer suit.

“Yes, I made it back. Things went—poorly.”

“Report in full, Nicu. Weren’t you on point with that team? Weren’t you supposed to be guiding them?”

Nicu made an easy gesture. “There was some, ah, confusion in that regard.”

“What do you mean?”

“Not all the troops saw fit to follow my lead. We became separated.”

Loiza was pacing now. He could see the anger in each of her stalking steps. He had to choose his words with care.

She nodded. “What is that slime on your suit?”

Nicu shrugged. “As I said, I took a different route in order to scout the enemy.”

“What route?”

“An unexpected one.”

“That’s sludge, isn’t it? You went down into the sewers. Like a rat. Didn’t you?”

“I have video,” he said.

“Show me.”

Nicu played several seconds of fuzzy video he’d shot with a hair-thin vid pickup. From within a drain in the floor, he had shoved the wire up into the corridor outside the blasted airlock. Inside the landing bay, a rook rested. It was blackened and showed bright points of twisted metal. The rook had been completely destroyed.

“That’s the one they blew up,” said Loiza. “You weren’t even at the right landing bay.”

“As I said, there was some confusion—”

“So,” Loiza interrupted, “you slipped away from your team and into the sewers, then took pictures of abandoned wreckage.”

“Do you have something against me, Commander Loiza? I’m sensing personal vindictiveness here.”

Loiza closed her eyes and shook her head. She pointed out toward the front picket lines. “They may counterattack tonight. Stay in that corridor with the lookout teams. And stay out of the damned sewers!”

#

When the attack finally did come, it was brutal. In the middle of the sleep-period, Nicu was awakened by a rude hand upon his shoulder. He lurched into a sitting position.

“There’s something coming,” said young Drina, another of the sentries in the outer corridors.

Nicu was awake in an instant. He had his laser carbine unslung. “I’ll spread the word,” he told Drina. “Keep a close eye out.”

She nodded, and he trotted lightly away toward the public mall. At the entrance, he was challenged. He told them he had important information for command.

He was waved inside. He had no sooner reached this area than a most horrible wailing cry erupted in his headset. More sounds came, gasps and whimpers. He suspected the sounds were made by Drina. He shivered in his suit.

The dimmed lights overhead flickered out. Emergency reds came on. In places, strobing yellows lights flashed. Nicu headed for the barricades. His pace increased.

The firing began before he could dive over the barrier. Laser bolts snapped in both directions. Spacers from the outer corridors fell back in full retreat, firing into the darkness. Answering fire from the corridors tore into them. A few of the sentries staggered back into the public mall, trying to reach the barricades.

A dozen killbeasts bounded amongst them. They smashed down the spacers, slashing off their helmeted heads with horn-bladed feet. The men behind the barriers watched in horror, then unleashed a lashing fusillade. Several of the killbeasts were cut down before they beat a hasty retreat.

After the battle was over, Nicu panted, looking over the top of the barricades. That had been close. He wished he could open his faceplate to wipe away the itching sweat from his brow, but he dared not because of the lingering gas.

A hand fell on his shoulder. Another hand followed. He was hauled to his feet.

It was Loiza and her guards. Her eyes were blazing.

“You will not talk your way out of this one, Nicu.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” said Nicu indignantly.

She took his laser carbine and examined it. “This weapon has not even been fired. The magazine is full.”

“I never got a clear shot. I didn’t want to hit one of our own.”

“You left your post. You ran at the first sign of trouble. This time, I have witnessed it.” While Nicu sputtered denials, Loiza turned to the men who still held him loosely. “Take him down to the service airlocks. Remove his helmet in the airlock. Space him. Then space the helmet as well and everything he’s touched. He’s contaminated.”

Nicu writhed and whined, but his external transmissions were cut off. They overrode his reactive suit and began a thorough, faceless beating. He thought at first, as he balled up on the deck plates and the kicks and hammering fists rained down, that they had been kind not to open his faceplate and let in the gas. But then, as his mind numbed and his body began to soften like pounded meat, he realized the gas would have been a relief. He would have felt nothing. He tried to reach up and open his faceplate, to suck in the tainted air and pass out, but his hands were pinned down. They stood on his hands and kicked and punched. He knew from past experience his urine would be dark with blood after this, if he ever got the chance to use a urinal again.

When the beating finally ended, they dragged him away. His muffled cries could only vaguely be heard by the men as they hauled him deeper into the station. They took him to the lower vents, the places where the heavy machinery thumped and groaned. Down here, in the pump rooms, the gas was drawn up the tubes from Minerva and processed. The living area was far above in the cleaner parts of the Tyrolia.

As they dragged him, Nicu planned. He made no overt attempts to escape. He struggled lightly, but not too much. He was glad there were only two men holding him. He would have preferred just one, of course, but two was much better than three. They had not removed his knife, which still lay against his side, hidden beneath a flap of fabric. Perhaps they had not seen it. Or perhaps they thought so little of his fighting skills they had not bothered.

He believed that with surprise on his side, he should be able to draw the knife and kill one man. One thrust would do it. But not two men. He did not know what he could do against two. He was too injured. He didn’t think he had any broken bones, at least nothing more than a rib or two. But stiff and groggy from the beating, he would not be able to move fast enough. Even if he killed one, by the time he’d done it the other would draw his weapon and it would be all over.

So he let them take him. While he pleaded and dragged his feet, they marched him down the long catwalks to the lower airlocks that were used for tube maintenance. Below the Tyrolia, nothing existed except the tubes and the endless blue, glowing expanse that was the atmosphere of Minerva. As they went deeper, windows appeared under the catwalks. The churning blue planet, thousands of kilometers below, filled every window. Outside in space, long dark tubes of snake-like metal hung down into the stormy gases of Minerva’s atmosphere, resembling vines hanging from a great jungle tree.

Nicu heard the sound of pursuit first. The others had their headsets turned on. No doubt, they listened to the command chatter from above. Inside his silent helmet, all Nicu heard was their clanking steps upon the catwalks and the slapping, rippling sounds of stealthy pursuit from behind. The sounds of something plopping along after them.

When the pursuer drew close, Nicu heaved himself forward. The men leaned back in response, holding onto his arms. The worm-like thing that followed them struck the struggling knot of humans from behind. It attached itself to the man on Nicu’s left. Nicu knew great relief then. If the shrade had wrapped itself around Nicu, he would have had no chance. His guards would have had no compunction about blasting his body apart along with the shrade.

The second guard hesitated. His grip on Nicu slackened. He backed away from the horror that squeezed the life from the first guard. Nicu took the opportunity to reach up with his freed arms and turn his suit intercom back on.

“Fire!” shouted Nicu. “Fire or we’re all dead. It’s already too late for him.”

The third man had his gun out, but still hesitated. Nicu made a sound of rage as the first man slumped, overcome by the shrade. It would come for them next. He got out his knife and flashed it down. The man who hesitated had blown his chance. Now, Nicu slashed at the wrist. Nicu reached down and plucked the hand-cannon from dead fingers.

Nicu fired repeatedly, destroying the shrade and the first guard. Then he ran into the darkness. Behind him, the surviving guard picked up his own severed hand in shock. His nano-suit squeezed to cut off the flow of blood.

Nicu did not even look back. He had learned his lesson. These people had no idea how to survive. They did not appreciate Nicu. He was in this alone. He was an island unto himself. He would not trust himself to the mercy of humans or aliens again.

#

Some days later, Loiza made her final move. She ordered a full scale evacuation. The enemy held most of the landing bays and the rooks, but not all of them. Additionally, a new force of rooks, those from the other outlying bases like Gamma Base, had gathered to offer what aid they could.

Perhaps this was what they wanted. Perhaps the aliens just wanted to run her off into space. Maybe they had an armada waiting out there—waiting to blow her to pieces. She did not know, but she had to try to escape these creatures.

Had these things been created by the Nexus and unleashed upon the Vlax? She believed they had been. She had ordered the Vlax to maintain radio silence with the Nexus. They had not sent any warnings or distress calls. Even if the Nexus hadn’t sent these monsters, she would not pass on the news. Why let one of your enemies know that the other had you on your knees?

Things had progressed in the worst possible direction. Each day, the humans aboard the Tyrolia grew weaker. Their power and oxygen had been cut off in many cases. Just providing food and sanitary facilities for her people grew more difficult with each passing day. Many lay about, sick or comatose from the strange, invasive gas that filled the Tyrolia. They could not live in their suits forever. Children were already falling sick.

 Worse, each day there seemed to be more of the aliens. When they had first landed, if she had truly understood the rate at which they bred new replacements, she would have ordered a full scale assault immediately. They would have taken grievous losses, but they would probably have saved the base. But it was too late for that. They would have to abandon the Tyrolia and destroy her from orbit.

They had to run, or be wiped out. She ordered everyone to the remaining operational rooks. More rooks from other bases would take people in transfer. They would take every ship they had, less than one hundred in all, and fly to the inner asteroid belt. They could find massive bases there, scarcely manned. With luck, they could hole up amongst the huge, rolling rocks and wait out the storm. Her greatest hope was the aliens were not fully under Nexus control. Perhaps they were a wildfire that could turn back and burn the ones who lit it. The aliens might even serve as cover for her fleeing people. She would let Nexus Command deal with the menace. Perhaps they would fare better than she.

The Vlax Romani lifted off en masse and headed into the dark, licking their wounds. Behind them, when they had reached a safe distance, Loiza activated Tyrolia’s self-destruct rig. She watched, knowing the fusion cores would spin out of alignment. In thirty seconds, the whole thing would implode and sag down in a decaying orbit, sucked down by the crushing gravity of Minerva.

She watched, sadly. Thirty seconds went by. She blinked, and waited. Her lower lip trembled. Everything she had worked for over the years was about to be destroyed.

A full minute went by, then another. Nothing happened. She talked heatedly to her engineering staff. Could something have gone wrong?

#

Nicu, the last human in control of his own mind aboard the Tyrolia, climbed down from the self-destruct system attached to the fusion core. He had disabled it, but had barely managed to do it in time. Sweat dribbled inside his helmet. That had been close. Too close.

Even now, he could hear the servos clicking, trying to bring together the remotely controlled contacts that would cause the explosive device to detonate. If he hadn’t driven his knife into the circuitry that sat on top of the charge, he would be atomized by now. He shook his head.

Loiza had chosen her side, and he had chosen his. He was on his own side now. Perhaps, he reflected, he always had been. Maybe that was why everyone else always called him names. Nicu, they knew instinctively, was not on their team.

He stood at the bottom of the catwalk, looking at the bomb as it whirred and clicked helplessly, trying to set itself off. He smiled. He had made a difference in his life and the lives of others. Everyone said he never did anything but waste his time, but they were wrong. He was important today.

Nicu’s smile faded as he heard stealthy sounds behind him. He knew what they were. He knew what they had to be. He flicked his knife on and turned to face—whatever snuck up behind him. He had fought his way past these creatures before. His heart sank when he saw them, however. A dozen monsters stood there. He had not even noticed their approach before, he had been trapped in a helmet, making it hard to look over one’s shoulder. He had been focused on stopping the bomb. Now, he thought, maybe he should have let it go off.

He reached up to his helmet. His next thought was to open his faceplate. The gas would come in and quickly end his suffering. But if he did that, he would only be anesthetized. Then the aliens would have their way with him. They would make him into a Boldo or a Kizzy—or something worse.

Nicu considered scrambling up the ladder and setting off the bomb. They were too close, however, he knew. They would never let him get up that high and kill them all.

Loosing a single sob, he turned his knife and held the whirring thing over his chest. A quick jab. It would be easy, he told himself. Like sinking the blade into boiled spaghetti. Oblivion would be his reward for a hard life.

In the end, he could not do it. He could not kill himself. Instead, he went down snarling. The aliens lost limbs coming for him. The killbeasts, strangely subdued, silent, did not kick off his head. They didn’t fire laser bolts at a safe distance and burn gaping holes in his flesh. Instead, they closed and grappled. Nicu hissed and fought. Clearly, they wanted to take him down whole, intact, and make a monster of him. He made them pay dearly. Three killbeasts were injured and a shrade was cut in half before they took the knife from his flashing hand.

Then they lifted him like a child and ran with him. He felt helpless. His face was wet with tears and sweat.

Jostling on the hard carapace backs of killbeasts, Nicu despaired. He activated his vid collection with his chin. He selected a Kizzy shower sequence. Clip 187.