Syn-En: Plague World: The Founders War Begins Page 14

  Eight minutes.

  Bei burst from the wheat field. The grain stalks closed behind him, concealing his path.

  That healing property would make tracking the enemy difficult.

  And he would track the enemy. Ridges ran down his arms. If Groat wanted to test his armor, Bei would happily oblige.

  Between the field and the forest, the grass melted into bare ground before them. Tree branches dissolved in a burst of glitter.

  Doc pointed the muzzle of his TorpSK7 at the foliage. “That could come in real handy.”

  Apollie moderated the height of her leaps to avoid the remaining limbs. “Provided it fights at our side.”

  “Indeed.” Bei’s armor shifted to black and gray, blending with the dappled forest. Control of the fermites might be too powerful for any single species to possess. He certainly wouldn’t trust this faith in the Meek to insure the atomic pests were only used for Humanity’s benefit.

  Humanity had abused its power before.

  “We need to find a means to neutralize the fermites.” Only then would he rest easy.

  Apollie snorted. Her pale skin turned her into a wraith ghosting through the forest shadows. “Once we discovered them in Humans, we tried to adapt them into a vaccine for the Plague. Nothing our scientists devised worked.”

  Doc requested permission for an adrenaline boost. “Did you know what they were capable of?”

  “No.” Apollie gulped air. “We didn’t know they could do this. I don’t know if anyone will believe it, when I tell them.”

  Five minutes in and the pace was beginning to take its toll. Bei authorized the boost of adrenaline for Doc. He couldn’t help the Skaperian, but knew she wouldn’t give up. Splashing sounded to the right. Bare feet pounded. Six sets. Seven. Four klicks away.

  “Ten o’clock.” Doc veered first.

  Apollie followed, maintaining the distance between them. “Any chance you can enhance my hearing. I feel like I’m missing all the fun.”

  “Your people don’t approve of synthetic upgrades.” Bei dialed down his auditory sensitivity. Two people yelped.

  A man shouted. “We’re trapped!”

  Bei thumbed the power setting on his weapon to maximum. “Eliminate the threat. Extreme force authorized.”

  Apollie flicked her wrist. The handle of her sickle extended fully. She hunkered lower and picked up speed. “Save some red meat for me.”

  The Scraptor’s red armor would make them easy to find. Bei activated his targeting centers. Crosshairs bobbed in front of him.

  The vegetation flattened in a sparkling carpet. It ended in a wall of interlocking branches. The trees lining the path leaned away.

  “Looks like we’re going to have to leap it.” He gauged the height. Six-point-five meters. He might reach the top and scramble over.

  Apollie bit her lip. “I’ll need a boost.” She pointed to a branch three meters off the ground on Bei’s right. “Switch?”

  Powering forward, he crossed in front of her.

  “I’ll take your idea and see your technique.” Doc altered course, eying a branch on his side. A green diag beam shot out of his wrist and swept the barricade. “Be careful on your dismount. There are biologics on the other side.”

  Bei shunted power to his legs. Targeting sensors calculated the best spot to make his leap. He hit the sweet spot, crouched, and jumped.

  Apollie planted the tip of her scythe handle in the ground and launched herself at the branch.

  Doc vaulted up, caught his branch and spun on it like a gymnast. He released it at the correct trajectory and flew feet first toward the wall.

  Bei switched power to his arms. The top of the barricade slammed into his chest. Branches splintered at the impact. Blades jutted from his boots and he dug in. His fingers shredded bark before finding purchase. He heaved himself up.

  Below, the biologics gasped and scrambled backward. Open mouthed, they stared at him.

  Doc cleared the barricade. “Look out below.”

  Two shirtless men dove to the side. A woman in a curve-hugging red tunic dragged another out of the way.

  On his right, Apollie sailed over. She swung the blade of her scythe at the wood. It sunk in with a thunk and gouged a trail down the wood as she used it to slow her descent.

  Bei swung his legs over and dropped straight down. He increased the mass of his boots to speed up his descent. “Last one dirtside buys the beer.”

  His landing planted him three-inches in the ground. His prostheses absorbed the shock. No damage registered. He liked his new upgrades.

  Doc collapsed in a crouch when he touched down. Shaking mud and grass from his hands, he straightened. “Looks like the featherhead is buying.”

  Apollie jerked her scythe free and dropped the last half meter. Her red eyes sparkled with a challenge. “I’ll buy a round, but it won’t be beer. No Human I’ve met could handle a shot of Queril.”

  Doc snorted. “I’ll take two shots of Queril.”

  The natives condensed in a ball of quivering flesh.

  Damn. The biologics had learned fear. Stuffing the gun in its holster, Bei held his hands loosely at his side. “We are here to help. Davena sent us. Where is the threat?”

  The crowd shifted. A woman in blue wiggled to the outside of the pack. With a shaking arm, she pointed to the lagoon.

  Doc widened the blade of his green diagnostic beam. “I’ve got blood and…” His nostrils flared. “remains.”

  Damn. Damn. Damn. They were too late. Bei had known but he’d hoped. In vain. The Scraptors would pay. He marched toward the pond. Red swirled in the blue water. A severed arm spun like the needle of a compass. Female from the look of it. “How many casualties?”

  “There are enough pieces for two.” Doc switched from the pool to the biologics.

  Apollie rushed forward and hurdled the pond. Her raptor claws hooked the vines near the waterfall. She tugged a hunk of thigh off a rock ledge. “Scraptor pinscher wounds.” She tossed the piece at Doc. “The attack must have happened up top.”

  The Skaperian scramble toward the plateau.

  Bei headed for the crowd. “I need you to stand against the wall.”

  The rock would protect them from shots from above. If the enemy was foolish enough to remain, Bei would deal with them.

  Doc caught the limb. After examining the torn flesh, he nodded. “Scraptor.” Reaching into his pants pocket, he shook out a bag. Before he could drop the thigh inside, it dissolved in a sprinkle of glitter. He swore softly. “You may wish to hurry, Admiral. I think your crime scene might disappear.”

  The fermites may destroy all trace of it, but Bei wouldn’t forget a single image. Giving the crowd a wide berth, he headed for the cliff-face. “Follow Doc’s orders until I return. He will keep you safe.”

  The group didn’t budge.

  Hand over hand, Bei scaled the rock. From the corner of his eye, he watched the body parts dissolve and the water return to sparkling blue. He reached a ledge and jumped the two meters.

  Apollie studied the ground on the other side of the stream. “You might want to hurry. Everything is disappearing.”

  Jogging, Bei set his oculars to their highest sensitivity and scanned the ground. Blood spatter disappeared almost as soon as he recorded it. Blades of grass unbent. Bits of tissue flashed like a star before evaporating.

  “Given the rate of healing, I’d say two Bug-uglies climbed up on your side, encountered the victims, then headed off this way.” Apollie tapped her scythe on the rocks.

  Bei noted the indentations in the ground. Four inches here. Five inches there. He’d bet the Scraptor’s new sword appendages created these wounds. A stone had been neatly cleaved in half where one dismembered body had lain. High velocity blood trails marked where the parts had been chucked into the river.

  In a flash of light, the crime scene dissolved.

  He stopped recording.

  Apollie swore in seven languages. She did not flatter the Scraptors’ par
ents, their anatomy, or the rock she planned to bury them under. Pausing a meter from the summit of the hill, she swiped her scythe over the grass. “I’ve lost their tracks.”

  “We’ll catch them.” He cracked his knuckles and scanned the sky.

  Starflight 2 was two minutes out and the Scraptors headed away from his wife. It was enough. For now. He accessed the Erwar Codicils. All he could do was file a wrongful death complaint and get a pittance from the Founders.

  Human life was cheap in the universe.

  Collapsing the handle of her weapon, Apollie frowned at the missing trail. Trees and more trees obscured the view. “If you file a complaint with the Consortium and the Scraptors end up dead, then you’ll be blamed.” She plucked a blade of grass from the ground and rubbed it between a thumb and finger before it disappeared. “If we get justice on Surlat, there won’t be any evidence of anything, and we could test their new armor.”

  No, there wouldn’t. The fermites had their uses. He called up the topography of the area. “Their strengths could be useful. But I want to know why they are here.”

  Groat’s fear had been real when he talked of a viable virus on Surlat.

  Something had changed.

  Bei wanted to know what. His implants itched. Two valleys over, stone foundations filled the landscape. Landslides partially concealed cement entries. A village of some sort.

  She shrugged. “The Scraptors like to kill and taunt those they consider their inferiors.”

  Since the Founders considered everyone inferior, Bei didn’t take offense. “Tell me what you know about Surlat before the Plague hit.”

  “Nothing concrete, as our spies never breached the layers of security protecting it.” Apollie shrugged off the hole in their intel. “But we suspect it was the center of the Founders’ military research. Almost all the wreckage and armor samples we obtained bore the signature of this planet. Of course, it helped that the idiots marked them.”

  “Given that they didn’t bother hiding their war machine, do you think they would have performed their research underground?” Bei noted the entrances and backed out of the WA. He would have ground penetrating scans performed after he secured the biologic village and locked his wife safely away.

  Apollie hooked her weapon on her equipment belt. “All their research and development facilities are underground, with controlled access through one door.” She smiled. “The Founders used to have laboratories in space. After we raided a few, they secured them deep within their territories. The rescue we did on Prima 5 was the closest any Skaperian has been to a research laboratory in five generations.”

  Bei stopped at the edge of the ledge. Sunlight sparkled in the lagoon below.

  The basket-weave barrier protecting the biologics slowly returned to trees. Doc knelt before a young man, binding his sprained ankle while another man measured branches to serve as a crutch. The innocents had hurt themselves in their panic.

  Apollie flicked a stone into the pool. “If the Scraptors killed the Humans to bait a trap for the Syn-En, they may not have realized that their trail would be obliterated and you couldn’t blunder into it.”

  “If it was a trap, there would have been a taunting message with the carnage.” Bei had seen many traps, and he’d replayed the footage of Scraptor atrocities during the Skaperian wars. “I think Groat is looking for something. Something left behind in the mad rush to evacuate during the Plague.”

  Something worth massacring innocents.

  Bei leapt off the cliff’s edge. For a moment, he hung weightless in the air then he plummeted toward the water below. Wind rushed by his ears.

  Apollie shrieked with excitement and joined him. She gathered her limbs close and formed a cannon ball.

  He hit the water just before she did. Air bubbles swarmed around him as he sank to the bottom. Through the froth, he watched her unfold and kick her way to the top. His boots sank into the silt. Walking out of the lagoon, he shuffled his priorities.

  Rescue the biologics.

  Learn all he could about the fermites.

  Deprive the Scraptors of the information they coveted.

  And move up the timetable for war.

  Chapter 16

  “I can’t believe Doc is a man of violence.”

  Nell crossed her arms over her chest. Six times, Davena had mention violence. Yes, harming others was bad, but sometimes necessary. “Doc, Bei, and the Syn-En are soldiers. They protect us since the Meek can’t be bothered with Humans on worlds other than Surlat.”

  Not even Earth, the birthplace of Humanity.

  That was just messed up. Imagine the wars, this benevolent pacifism would have prevented. She stepped into the shadow of the pillar. Almost there. But they’d been almost there since they set out over an hour ago.

  In the distance, the beetle-like Starflight zoomed over the wheat fields.

  It would arrive soon and she would be bundled away to safety.

  Nell’s fingernails dug into her palms. She wanted to touch the thing before she had to leave. She increased her pace. Two maybe three minutes remained before the Syn-En arrived to carry her away.

  Protect her.

  Davena lifted the hem of her black robe. Sparkles betrayed the ever present fermites. “I thought you said the Meek shall inherit the Earth.”

  “Well, the planet is still in probate, so the Meek haven’t shown up yet to claim ownership.” Clearing the last of the stalks, Nell stumbled onto a ring of black dirt. The hair on her arms stood on end. Her stomach cramped. The square base of the obelisk measured ten feet by ten feet. She couldn’t see the top. How could something so tall stand on so small a base?

  “But you wield the power of the Meek.” Silver speckled Davena’s robes. “You saved the life of our young one. Only an oracle like me can do such a thing.”

  Nice to know she wasn’t the only freak in the universe. Of course, Nell had yet to see Davena get her silver on. “I don’t know what to say. I thought maybe…” She glanced around. She felt silly just saying it, but it was true. “I thought maybe I would know, once I touched the pillar.”

  Davena tilted her head. Black curls brushed her left shoulder. “It is calling you?”

  “Yes.” And Nell so wanted to pick up the phone. But what if it absorbed her, sucked her off the planet, and erased every trace of her? What would happen to Bei? Invisible threads wrapped her, tugged her closer. She raised her hand. Her reflection in the smooth black surface aped her movements. “Can I touch it?”

  Davena studied her bare feet.

  Nell’s lunch returned for a visit. Oh, God. She tried to lower her arm, but it wouldn’t obey.

  “Davena?” Her voice broke over the word. The toes of her boots sunk into the cocoa-colored soil. She inched forward, leaving furrows behind. Panic clawed through her. How could she be moving, if her legs weren’t?

  “The Meek must be obeyed.” Davena’s eyes shifted from black to gray.

  The hair on Nell’s neck stood on end. Her arm trembled violently. Inches to go. She didn’t want to touch the pillar. She wanted to touch it. “What does that mean?”

  “You must commune with the Meek.” Davena’s voice altered until it resembled a robot’s.

  Nell’s mouth dried. “Commune? Commune doesn’t sound bad. Maybe we can sit around a campfire, make s’mores, and sing Kumbaya.”

  She winced. Where was Bei urging her to calm down when she needed him?

  “The Meek shall judge you worthy.”

  Fear formed a wedge in Nell’s throat. Blue light arced from the pillar to her hand. Her fingers tingled. The prickly sensation rocketed up her arm. That wasn’t so bad.

  “Or unworthy.” Davena crumpled in a heap. Fermites formed a funnel above her.

  “Unworthy?” No. Oh, no. Nell had always been the last to be picked for kickball, dodgeball, and every other school sport. She gripped her wrist with her free hand and tugged. She jerked back only to slam forward. Her forearms sank deep into the stone.

  Oh,
Lord, she was going to be absorbed into the pillar.

  Fermites buzzed over the obelisk’s solid black surface. They etched her name, her birthday and marital status.

  “No, F’ing way is this going to be my tombstone.” She planted both feet on the surface. Her thighs trembled. Her arms remained imprisoned. A burning sensation rippled across her scalp. Alarms flashed on her eyelids.

  Majel Barret, the voice from Star Trek, declared, “Intruder alert.”

  A presence surfed the edge of Nell’s consciousness. She recognized it from before, yet couldn’t pin it down. “Bei?”

  A swarm of fermites fogged her name and particulars.

  “Oh, hell, that can’t be good.” She was about to be erased. The pillar would be her tombstone.

  The shuttle hovered overhead. Behind her, wheat stalks beat the ground.

  They would arrive too late to save her. She mentally groped for her link to Bei. She wanted to say goodbye, to feel his touch one more time.

  She found a shadow.

  “Interesting.” It slunk into the corners of her mind.

  “What? Who are you?” She croaked.

  Davena groaned.

  The fermites arrowed to her side. Strange writing replaced Nell’s name then the symbols climbed the pillar and disappeared from sight.

  Nell braced her legs higher up the obelisk, gathered her strength from her toes, and pushed. The pillar released her with a pop, then she was falling. The impact knocked the air from her lungs. Dirt puffed around her.

  Holding her head, Davena struggled to sit up. She blinked and stared at Nell. “You were found worthy?”

  Nell sucked air into her lungs. The woman’s surprise was downright insulting. And if word of this ever got back to Bei… “A voice said I was interesting.”

  Maybe interesting was shorthand for freak of nature.

  Davena rubbed her nose, smudging it with dirt. “Interesting?”

  The shuttle’s back ramp opened and two Syn-En leapt out. Green diag beams swept over her.

  Nell bit her lip then spit out dirt. So much for keeping her fight with the pillar a secret. Pressing her palms to the ground, she levered up. Pain played pinball along her nerve endings. Where were her fermite nursemaids? Maybe she needed a fermite snack to tempt them. The swarm left Davena and poured down her back. A wave of warmth washed away the aches and pains. She’d done it. She’d commanded the fermites.