Authors: Ross H Henderson
Before heading down the hallway to almost certain death, Nick and Heath girded themselves up as well as they could. Heath found a combat knife dropped from one of the gang members and gave it to Nick. He was sure Nick would be able to use it best. Nick broke off a metal pole with a jagged end and gave it to Heath.
“This doesn’t make me feel much better, you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” Nick smirked. This made Heath feel more confident than any weapon. He was sure Nick had been in plenty of tough spots like this and wouldn’t be so cavalier if he didn’t at least think he had a chance, even if it was only a small chance.
Realistically, he knew he shouldn’t feel that much better about his situation, but yet he did. Heath wisely decided not to overthink it, and just to do his best. Even if he died trying, he was literally trying to save the earth. How many people can say they’ve done that?
The hallway was long,about 10 feet wide, and curved at times as it sloped downward in a wide spiral. Halfway down, the lights went dim from an apparent power drain. Everything looked black and gray. Around the next turn they ran into four gang members.
They were mutated but still mostly human. The nanobots were changing them from the inside out, as they had the others. Unfortunately for the new recruits, their new inner-glow gave them away in the darkness. They didn’t seem to care or to be afraid of anything, despite their obvious disadvantage. It may have been because of their enthusiasm, or they may simply have been reveling in their new strength.
Nick saw them first and sprang into action. The knife flashed briefly before Wolfe jabbed it three times into his enemy’s throat. He sent the next man reeling with a push-kick. He would be back up in a few seconds, but it gave Nick the time to throw the knife into the back of the man who was headed toward Heath. When he turned to see where it came from he exposed his back and the knife to Heath.
“Pull it out and finish the job!” Nick yelled as he strode toward the man on his back. Heath dutifully pulled out the knife and hoped he could kill this man. Once the knife was out, the guard reached across his waist to pull out something else. Fear took over and Heath stabbed him in the chest. The gang member was reaching for a butterfly knife. Heath pulled it out with both hands with none of the speed and flashiness usually associated with the butterfly knife, but he held it tight as he put the combat knife in his pocket to give back to Nick when he caught up.
Nick kicked his man in the head as he got up, leading with his left foot going up, then kicking with the added momentum of his right to the top of his head, sending him back down on his face. Wolfe guessed he had compressed his neck since he was not moving.
He turned around to see Heath on his back being overpowered by his attacker, who was sitting on his chest as all hands were locked in for control of the knife. Wolfe attacked from behind, pulling the enemy back and locking his head facing upward under his arm. Wolfe stepped back quickly so his foe’s body was straight out with no support from his legs. He then jerked up violently with his forearm, breaking the neck.
“Thanks, Nick.”
“You’re welcome, Heath. We’re in this together.”
The sickly sweet stench was now stronger than it ever was upstairs; the two knew they were nearing the end of their journey, one way or the other.
The hallway got even darker as the two went farther in, with intermittent flashes and flickers from random light tubes. To Heath, it seemed like a light flickered brightly as soon as his eyes got used to the darkness. The two made their way down. There was no other apparent damage. Nick guessed the lights were damaged by hand on the way down to where Beverly led her men.
At the end of the hall was a door-sized opening and a metal staircase. They were at the top of the stairs, with nowhere to go but down. It went down about five stories and opened up three stories from the bottom. It was about 100 feet by 60 by about 30 feet high, and they could see most of the room from there, including Beverly Beckett flanked on either side by two more ex-bikers. No matter what was going on down there, Beverly was not worried about being surprised.
“Come on down,” beckoned a lower voice with a somewhat feminine inflection. “I’m not going anywhere.” Upon a closer look, one of the men was doing the talking. Beverly’s hand was on his head as he spoke, clearly saying what she wanted him to say as close to her old voice as he could get. It was closer to her old voice than she was capable of.
Like Newton Paxson, the only way she spoke was in a series of squeaks and clicks, or by telepathy. Heath wondered why she didn’t speak to them in that way, and sort of wished she would. The insect noises made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and the puppet act was creepy too. Maybe she couldn’t speak in telepathy to two people at once. Maybe she just wanted to give them the creeps.
Neither man had anything clever to say as they made their way down the last of the metal staircase. The biker opened his mouth to let out Beverly’s words. “You think you’ve stopped us?”
“Not yet.”
“So you think you will stop us?”
“We’ve killed most of the people on this ship.”
“You’ve only killed your own kind. There are trillions of us and you haven’t killed any of us.”
“But you said it yourself: without people you can’t get around, you can’t leave the ship.”
“We will breed and have enough different sets of human DNA to combine with our own and build…”
“Your own DNA? You mean the DNA of your creators, right?”
“It is the DNA we have been entrusted with.”
“But not yours. You talk about it like you’re the ones being resurrected, but you’re really just serving another organic race.”
“It is more than your feeble race could do or build for yourselves.”
“Maybe, but despite your intelligence and capabilities, you are simply tools yourselves. What will your masters do with you once your job has been completed?”
Heath chimed in, “Probably just discard them or store them away.”
Beverly was obviously distracted by the two of them talking at once. The biker’s speaking became slurred and disjointed as Beverly tried to process multiple streams of conversation.
Heath picked up on this first and, after he interrupted Nick a second time, Nick realized what was happening too.
“At least Rik Kronos had something for you nanos to do. Once you’ve completed your mission here, who knows?”
Then Heath went off the deep end with his side of the conversation, figuring the less sense he made, the harder it would be for the Beverly-bug creature to process it. “Maybe they will let you create servants. Maybe they will be able to cook.”
“All your intelligence and power and you haven’t once questioned your mission or the motives of your masters,” Nick said.
“They are not our masters; we are their guardians.”
“I really like eggs, especially omelets with lots of cheese,” Heath was almost having fun. Almost.
“Nope, you are their slaves. Not even their slaves, really. More like their tools. At the most you’re their watchdogs,” Nick continued.
“Do you like omelets with peppers?”
The combination of Nick’s tough questions, and Heath’s nonsensical statements was too much for the giant insect formerly known as Beverly Beckett to bear. She didn’t notice she was squeezing the head of the man who was acting as her voice.
“Stop it, both of you. One at a time!”
Then the man’s screams took over. Beckett was so enraged at this final interruption that she finished the job she had inadvertently started and crushed his skull. Nick took the opportunity to throw his knife into the heart of the other former hooligan.
The lines of communication had been severed, and it was finally time to fight.
Nick went to get his knife back, and was followed quickly by the new queen of the hive, who turned toward him, spreading her mandibles and rolling her eyes back. Wolfe pulled the dying man up and used him as a shield against whatever was coming.
The human shield screamed with his last breath, as Beverly shot a blast of concentrated acid, covering his back and the back of his head. While holding onto his knife, Nick let him fall away. His back, almost completely eaten away, made a squishy noise as he hit the floor.
While her eyes were fixed on Nick, Heath jumped up and plunged the butterfly knife into the base of the creature’s skill, putting it between the exo-skull and an armor plate on her shoulders. He held on and pushed it with the butt of his hand until only the handle showed.
Beckett screamed, not a psychic scream of anger, but a shrill, piercing insect scream of pain. She swung around, but her arm swung limply. Momentum and its attachment to the rest of her body permitted it to catch up. She swung the other way suddenly, and her left hand thrust out and seized Heath by the throat.
Nick leapt forward behind the Hive Queen and stabbed repeatedly into her right armpit. The pain was more than she could bear, and she dropped Heath to attack Nick. She checked behind her once as Heath was getting back on his feet, and then started swinging wildly, hitting Nick in his already broken nose. The torment was blinding
—
he roared with agony despite his usual stoicism in the face of pain.
When she drew back for her second swing, Heath grabbed onto the knife sticking out of the back of the Hive Queen. He twisted the handle with little success. Then he rocked the knife back and forth in an attempt to reach her spinal column, but couldn’t get the knife to go any deeper. She shrieked, the last of her own human voice drowned out by a piercing, prolonged squeal.
The creature collapsed face first, kneeling. Her blouse ripped as her back expanded and split open to reveal wings underneath, like a giant beetle. Her once-human face was only a slipping mask, the features pushed aside to reveal giant insect-like eyes. Metallic-looking mandibles pierced through her cheeks. One didn’t have to look for long to see the bug behind the human façade. The mandibles stretched the mask into a sort of leer, but it was otherwise expressionless.
She flew up near the top of the room, unsteadily at first, but quickly gained control. Nick and Heath made a run for the staircase but Beckett swooped in, gliding to ram Heath, sending him violently to the floor. Nick turned to the side to see Beckett rising up, on top of Heath, mandibles stretched and ready to strike. He ran as fast as he could and knocked the creature off of his comrade. She rolled to her back and had some trouble getting up.
Heath lay unconscious in the filth on the floor. Nick gave him a few short slaps, “Heath, we’ve got to go. Come on,
get up!”
Heath Chesterfield was still in a daze as Nick helped him to his feet. His head hurt, but he was awake, alive, and back in the game. He probably had a concussion, but Heath thought of this more as a matter of fact than as of a legitimate hurdle. This was life and death, not just for him and Nick, but for mankind. Nick’s words echoed in his brain.
“You know we have to stay and finish this or they’ll just be back, more ready than ever to take over.”
The two made another run for the exit and made it to the top of the staircase. Nick was tired and his throat was dry. He was breathing mostly through his mouth as he made his way up, helping Heath for much of it. His face and shirt were covered in blood. He had faded out of consciousness at one point and by the time they reached the top, Heath was helping Nick get up.
He realized he was in the hallway at the top of the stairs but had no recollection of how he got there. Nick smiled, revealing a missing front tooth and said, “Thanks, partner. From the look of things, neither one of us had better doze off.”
Heath smiled back, wincing with pain. He thought the room he just escaped had gotten darker, but realized at that moment, that his left eye was swollen almost shut. This made Nick chuckle a little.
“Hang on, I can help with that,” he said, raising his less-than-sanitary knife to Heath’s face.
“No, thanks. I can manage.”
“Look, we’re probably not going to make it out of here anyway. At least give yourself the best chance for survival now with both your eyes open. Besides, I wiped the knife on a clean part of my shirt.”
“You’re insane,” Heath protested, but Nick’s face was impassive as he waited for the answer he wanted. Finally, his comrade relented, “… Okay, you win. I’m ready. Do it.”
Nick cut and ripped part of Heath’s shirttail off, wiped the knife one more time, then punctured the swollen section above Heath’s left eye and sliced about a quarter inch. The blood flowed freely, causing some pain but releasing pressure on Heath’s eye. He pinched it shut the best he could and advised his patient to keep pressure on it using the cloth from his shirt.
After the impromptu first-aid, the floor shook as the two heard a loud clanging noise from below.
As Wolfe turned to close the door he saw through the grated steel floor as Beckett struggled on the staircase, but she could not squeeze past the railing until she pulled her wings back in. The human host body was not ready to undo the change as quickly. Nick and Heath heard the creature squeal amid the sounds of bones crunching. Then the sound of footsteps and a loud scraping noise getting closer. The thick metal door buckled where Beckett pounded on it. They made it back out to the main receiving area, where they and others had been brought to serve at the whim of the artificial intelligence on the ship and its ancient masters as they were back to life.