Pilgrim (22 page)

The ship vibrated beneath their feet and
then lifted out of the forest and into the air. It was only a short
trip across the plains to the tribal village and Crusader. Nova
felt the ship descend and her stomach lifted up into her mouth. She
got to her feet and tiptoed to Aart’s command room, Tanguin trailed
along next to her.

“Does it look like they’re still alive?” she
said.

The front screen flickered over to the
exterior cameras which looked down on the tribal village. The image
showed the small colourful tents and Crusader parked off to the
side.

“Look!” Nova said, pointing to a tiny figure
which lay between the tents. “It’s not moving. I think it’s
dead.”

“Yep, they all died a few hours ago. Just
convulsed and collapsed as one,” Cal’s voice said over Sylar’s
speakers. The two ships had recognised each other and connected
their audio feeds. Some of Nova’s panic faded at the sound of Cal’s
familiar voice.

From his chair, Aart shrugged. “I guess that
proves they were from the same queen.”

“What?” Nova said, looking down at him with
her eyebrows drawn together. “You think there could be more than
one of those things here?”

“Well it makes sense doesn’t it? It’s a big
planet. There could have been more than one hive.”

Nova stared at Aart, her mind racing. She
knew he was right. He had to be because he was infected, unless Cal
was wrong. And if there was another queen here, they had to get rid
of it. Otherwise their whole mission was in vain. Freya’s death
would have been for nothing other than a few extra credits. She
pushed the alarm further down, for the moment she had a far more
urgent problem.

“Are you feeling ok?” she asked Aart.

“What? Yes. Fine. Why wouldn’t I be?” he
asked, returning her hard stare.

“Oh no reason, you know, just making
sure.”

“Right as a ransom,” Aart said.

“Good, good. Hey, would you mind coming with
us to Crusader. You never know what might be sitting outside.”

“Sure,” Aart said with a smile.

He stood up. As he did so, the side of his
face came up level with Nova’s eyes. Shimmering in the light of his
dashboard was a trail of green slime. It went from his jaw, up his
cheek and into his ear where it disappeared from sight.

Nova’s heart beat faster. It pounded in her
chest and she felt heat on the back of her neck and her ears, but
she kept her expression neutral, unconcerned. She stepped away from
Aart and let him lead the way through Sylar and out of the main
doors.

“Wanna push the trolley?” Nova said, bending
her head towards the anti-grav device.

Aart rolled his eyes and grabbed hold of the
handles. He guided the trolley down the ramp and wheeled it towards
Crusader. The ships were parked only twenty metres apart, the
village visible in the distance.

Tanguin stepped out last, a hand resting on
her rarely-used pistol. The sun shone down from the clear sky and
lit up the land around them. The bright green fields stretched away
into the distance. Nearby were the uneven tents of Vera’s
tribe.

Sylar’s door slid shut behind them. Nova let
Aart walk in front of her and watched his every footstep. Her
stomach rolled with what she was about to do but she couldn’t see
any other option. She took a deep breath to steal her nerves and
then pounced. She lunged at Aart’s midsection and knocked him to
the ground. They rolled over the hard dirt as they wrestled for
control. Nova had the element of surprise. She grappled him and
pinned his arms above his head, locking his legs beneath her body.
The trolley was left forgotten.

“What the hell, Nova?” Aart said, struggling
against her.

“Aart, I want you to stay very calm,” she
said.

“Screw calm, get off me! Tanguin, get her
off of me.”

Aart’s face glowed red and a vein throbbed
in his neck as he strained against Nova’s grip.

Tanguin’s face remained blank; she stared
off at the village, ready.

“Aart, I think you’ve been infected,” Nova
said, keeping his hands firmly locked.

“What?” Aart said, staring up at her with an
open mouth. “Are you serious? You’re the one that attacked me.”

“I just think it would be best if you didn’t
go off on your own just yet,” she said.

“Get off me or I swear—” Aart began but
before he could finish his sentence Tanguin clapped handcuffs
around his wrists so that they were locked together.

“Come with me to my ship and if everything
is fine, I’ll let you go.”

“Are you mental?” Aart asked. “I should have
listened to Kero, you are a nutcase!”

Nova tried not to listen to the words. The
Aart she knew wouldn’t say that. She had no doubt that Kero had
indeed called her a nutcase, but that was another thing entirely.
Sylar had tried to warn them as soon as they stepped inside:
foreign matter detected.

“Alright, we’re going,” she said.

She climbed up off of Aart and hauled him to
his feet by the handcuffs. She didn’t give him time to regain his
balance before propelling him towards Crusader. Her rusted ship sat
only ten metres away, but she wasn’t going to risk Aart getting the
better of her. She pushed and shoved him along, forcing his legs to
move. She kept him upright by shear force.

As they reached Crusader the storage bay
door slid open. Nova tossed Aart through the opening and dived in
after him. The door slid shut after Tanguin.

“What’s going on?” Cal asked as he hovered
into view. “Why is Artemis Goldson handcuffed on our floor?”

Nova had a knee on Aart’s back and held his
cuffed hands behind him. He flailed like a dying fish on the metal
floor, growling and cursing like the mine-worker he could have
been.

“He’s been infected,” Nova said.

“By one of the slugs?” Cal asked, hovering
closer.

“Yes, open up the cage,” she said.

Cal floated over to the cupboard-sized
lockup made of steel bars that went from floor to ceiling. His
panel opened and his metal arm extended out with a key. He turned
it in the lock and the cage door swung open.

Nova hauled Aart to his feet once more and
pushed him into the cage. He stumbled forward. Before he could turn
around, she slammed the cage shut and it locked in place.

“You’re making a big mistake,” Aart said,
glaring at her from between the bars.

“I’m only doing this because you’re my
friend,” she said with stern eyes. “If you were anyone else, I
would’ve just shot you.”

Aart’s mouth hung open and Nova left without
waiting for a response. She walked out of the storage bay towards
the pilot’s pod.

“Crusader, I want him monitored constantly.
If it looks like he’s even thinking about trying to get out of that
cage, I want to know.”

“Confirmed,” said Crusader. A tiny box
flashed onto the front screen showing a live camera feed of Aart as
he paced around in the tiny square which was his cage.

“Hey, Tanguin, I need some help. I’m afraid
this one’s pro-bono though,” Nova said.

Tanguin stepped up next to her and rested
her hands on the control panel. Her white face was lit up by the
many flashing lights; her expression grim.

“Nova, you know I don’t come cheap,” Tanguin
said.

“Ha-ha,” Nova said. She kept her tone light
but inside she was bubbling with anxiety. Aside from Tanguin, Aart
was her only other friend and if there was anyone in the universe
who deserved not to be taken over by a slug, it was him. She had to
find a way to cure him or she’d never forgive herself. “We need the
drug pattern.”

“Are you going to do what I think you’re
going to do?” Tanguin asked with a twinkle in her eye.

“You bet, but as far as you know, it’s all
above board,” Nova replied.

“Of course,” Tanguin said.

“So you’ll do it?”

“Let’s call it my good-karma for the year,”
Tanguin replied. “Plus, Aart is my friend too.”

“Alright, deal,” Nova said. “How long will
it take?”

“I’ll get started straight away but it’s
hard to say. Depends on the security. Plus, I’ll have to run it
through my computer because yours is a dinosaur,” Tanguin said. “No
offence, Crusader.”

“No, how could that be offensive?” Crusader
replied. The mechanical voice was monotone, filled with indifferent
indignation.

“Thanks, Tanguin,” Nova said, getting out of
her chair. She gestured for Tanguin to take a seat and get
comfortable.

“You know this will be a class three
criminal offense,” Cal piped up. He had watched the whole exchange.
His damaged panel was still hanging down, exposing his inner parts.
It was practically naked for a robot; with all his wires and
processors showing.

“Add it to the list,” Nova said.

“But what about all the work that went
into—”

“Cal! When I’m rich and famous, I’ll pay
them back but right now all I care about is saving Aart. Is that
alright with you?” Her voice was low but threatening.

“Affirmative,” Cal said, whizzing out of the
room as fast as he could before Nova threw something at him.

“And fix that panel!” she called after him.
“You look ridiculous.”

Nova only had time to go to her food
generator and grab a drink before she heard Tanguin’s voice calling
her.

“What have you got?” she asked. In response,
Tanguin tapped a few buttons on the control board and the large
front screen was filled with a molecular compound, complete with
three dimensional structure.

“Tanguin, you’re a genius,” Nova said.
“Crusader, patch that through to the food generator. Today it’s
making more than pizza.”

Nova and Tanguin went to the food generator:
many other functions, to watch the magic in action. Just like it
said on the box, it could generate almost anything, provided it was
given the right structural blueprint.

Chemical compounds were relatively easy for
the machine to create. It simply layered each atom on in turn,
allowing the chemical bonds to form naturally and breaking them
where necessary. It was exactly the same process it had used to
generate her Parapem, although this drug was not in the public
domain.

Nova smiled as the machine dinged to let her
know it was finished.

She opened the door and looked inside.
Sitting in the very centre on a glass plate was a small pill. It
was red on one side and blue on the other. She picked it up between
her thumb and forefinger and brought it up to her eyes.

“Confirm compound,” she said.

“Confirmed Galvoxin,” Crusader’s smooth
voice echoed through the ship. “The same drug used to stop the slug
invasion of the Confederacy.”

“Okay,” Nova said.

“How were you planning on getting him to
swallow it?” Tanguin said as they both looked down at the tiny red
and blue pill.

“You don’t think he’ll just do it?” Nova
asked.

“No way, that thing has control of his
brain. It’s designed to make sure he and it survives.”

“Well how would you make him take it?”

“You could try tricking him, you know hide
it in a piece of steak or something. Like you would for an
animal.”

“Might be worth a try,” Nova said, staring
down at the pill and begging for it to give her the answer.
“Doesn’t this come in needle form?”

“No, to get rid of the parasite completely,
it has to go through the digestive tract,” Tanguin said as she
reviewed the drug notes on the front screen.

“Piece of meat it is then,” Nova said.

She set the food generator to work once more
and a few moments later she pulled out a palm-sized steak which was
still dripping blood. She drew out her pocket knife and sliced the
middle of the meat, creating a hole into which she poked the
pill.

“There,” she said, holding up the meat. With
all of the blood and juices the tiny incision was invisible. She
double checked to make sure it was a boneless steak. She’d heard
enough horror stories of people being stabbed to death with shards
of bone to make that mistake.

“Will it matter that he only just ate?”
Tanguin said.

“I don’t think so. The way he wolfed down
that steak before, I think the slug’s done something to his
metabolism.”

Nova and Tanguin hurried through Crusader to
the storage bay. Aart was standing in his cage glaring at them. His
eyes followed them as they walked across the storage bay and stood
outside of his cage.

“Brought you some food,” Nova said, holding
up the steak.

“What am I? Some kind of animal? Where’s the
plate and cutlery?” Aart said.

“I’m not giving you a knife,” Nova said.
“Just eat it.”

Aart bared his teeth but snatched the meat
out of her hands. He buried his teeth into it and tore at the
flesh. Blood poured down his chin and over his hands, but he kept
eating.

Nova tried not to seem too interested. She
turned to the side and pretended to fiddle with something on the
workbench. Tanguin did the same, but they both kept their eyes on
Aart. When he reached the middle of the steak, Nova held her
breath. He ate straight through the until the entire steak was
gone. She breathed a sigh of relief. She and Tanguin went to the
cage and stared inside.

“How do you feel?” Nova asked.

“What do you mean?” Aart said, his eyes
narrowing.

“I was just wondering if you were feeling
good,” Nova said.

“Good? How can I feel good when my friends
have turned into maniacs and locked me in a cage? How can you ask
me that when—”

Aart’s face went deathly pale and his body
convulsed. He thrust his head forward and spewed up all over
Crusader’s floor. It didn’t stop there. He kept throwing up, over
and over again, until there was nothing left except dribbles of
saliva which he coughed and hacked out of his mouth.

“Look!” Tanguin said, jumping behind
Nova.

Nova looked at the ground. Squirming in the
middle of chunks of regurgitated steak was a black slug. It
quivered for a moment and then lay still.