Terror World, page 9
part #5 of Zombicide Series
“We’re not sure what created the mold,” Dizzie said as they shuffled the deck of cards. “There just isn’t enough data. But there is strong evidence that the mold is what turned the formerly peaceful Xenos violent.”
“Can it infect anyone?” Divak asked. She was thinking about how to fight mold. Because of course she was. If Centaurans ever rolled their eyes, Corinus would have done so right now.
“Again, we lack the data to say this conclusively, but it seems like the mold can infect other lifeforms as well. If that’s true, then it’s possible it can trigger the same sort of transformations, too.”
Six’s antennae waved as he picked up his first three cards. “A kind way of saying the infected become bloodthirsty berserkers.”
“That’s me, super kind,” Dizzie agreed with a smile, but behind the grin their thoughts were serious. “Given that there’s such a strong correlation between Xenium and the mold, and that we’re heading to a planet that has trace evidence of Xenium in its atmosphere, it’s best for you all to know what the mineral looks like.” They finished dealing the cards, then pulled out their data tab and turned it so everyone could see the picture. It was a still from the mines on PK-L7, highlighting the bright green rock. “Typically, it was only found deep underground, so the likelihood of us stumbling across a chunk of it is very, very low.”
“That’s the shite that costs more per pound than the price of feeding my entire slum for a year?” Grayson demanded. “That’s ridiculous. No rock is worth that much.”
“It is when it can be turned into the best fuel in the universe,” Dizzie replied. “Everybody wants to get their hands on it. Even the Caridians. Right, Six?”
Six looked over at them, and even though he didn’t have eyelids, he gave the impression of blinking. “We do not need it to function, but we certainly wouldn’t refuse it if a source were offered to us.”
“Yeah, that’s why you’re really going to Sik-Tar, ain’t it?” Grayson discarded a card and took another from the top of the pile. “Screw hunting down a distress signal, this is about checking it out to see if you wanna fight the Coalition for it.”
Corinus tensed. Grayson had just asked the question they’d all been harboring in the backs of their minds. But Six slowly shook his head.
“Truly, my primary motivation is to discover the source of the distress signal. There are few legends in my culture, but this call is one of them. Many have theorized on its origin and purpose. Is the call connected to an ancient Caridian colony ship that we lost track of long ago? Was it a beacon that was somehow stolen from a Caridian vessel? Is the distress signal truly Caridian, as it seems to be, or one of the great coincidences of the universe? We simply do not know.” Six’s mandibles stretched wide for a moment. “And I would very much like to know.”
So would Corinus.
•••
Exactly one standard Earth week into the trip from the Bor-Turia Penal Colony, they reached the weak spot in the fabric of space that Six had identified as their optimal launch point. Everyone strapped into their flight seats, even Mason, to watch as Six activated the one part of the ship he hadn’t let anyone explore – the wormhole generator. When Mason had illicitly tried, he’d gotten a jolt that had shocked him unconscious. Grayson had almost come to blows with Six over that, despite the infiltration being his idea in the first place.
And now they would see it in use.
Corinus did his best to ignore the emotions around him and focus on his own. The tenor of the engine’s vibrations changed, power being drawn in a different way, to new parts of the ship. Ahead of them, a new star sparked into existence. It swirled, mesmerizing, so many shades of blue that Corinus couldn’t identify them all as the stars went from a spark to a spiraling circle of flame, then finally to a tunnel big enough to fit Six’s ship through.
“Here we go,” Six announced, and guided the ship into the wormhole. Suddenly frightened, Corinus closed his eyes.
What if this was it? What if he was about to die, atoms spread from one end of the galaxy to the other in a trail so thin as to be nonexistent? What if they made it in but couldn’t make it out, and smashed into a wall of reality on the other side of the tunnel? What if–
“We’re here!”
“Corinus.” Dizzie gently shook his shoulder. He blearily opened his eyes, anxiety racing through his body standing on all four feet. “Look,” they said, looking from him out the front of the ship as they smiled in pure amazement. “Look, we made it. We made it to Sik-Tar.”
Chapter Seven
Dizzie Drexler
So, it turned out that Sik-Tar… really wasn’t that much to look at. Once the first flush of excitement had dulled, Dizzie was able to separate “distant planet unexplored for probably millennia OMIGOSH it’s the best!” back to reality. And the reality was that Sik-Tar, at least from orbit, was rather boring.
About half the size of Earth, Sik-Tar had a breathable atmosphere thanks to a vast, superheated sea that generated oxygen via thermal reactions from the massive vents that boiled up beneath the planet’s crust. Its total landmass consisted of a single, unbroken continent, punctuated here and there with volcanoes both dead and alive, but apart from that there were few other geological features of note. There were no great mountain ranges, no inland lakes, no forests or tundra or life of any kind. The land was rocky and granular and perpetually misted with clouds the color of blood everywhere you looked.
The rocks themselves were interesting, though. Lots of different types, and it didn’t take much investigation with the ground-penetrating radar to confirm that there was, in fact, a very significant deposit of Xenium on Sik-Tar, and most of it fairly close to the surface of the planet, vulnerable to volcanic disruption. That probably explained the microparticles in the atmosphere.
Also interesting was the fact that the Caridian distress signal that Six was homing in on as they got closer to the planet’s surface was located right in the middle of that Xenium deposit. It emanated from a massive structure that, according to their imaging scans, wasn’t an immediate match to any Caridian architecture. According to Six, that was a feature, not a bug.
“Ship-building records from so long ago have largely been lost, but this appears within my people’s capabilities!” he declared.
The structure was so big that at first Dizzie had thought it was just another rough, pointy hillock before Six excitedly showed them that the points were, in fact, manufactured spires of some sort. “This is good,” he said, mouthparts buzzing. “If there were a homing signal without a corresponding ship, I could have been in significant trouble upon my return to the Seethe.”
“What? Why?” Dizzie had a hard time picturing Six being the subject of reprimand.
Six tilted his tremendous eyes their way. “I have left my people behind on a quest to find something that has no immediate value to the Glorious Hegemony. If this had merely been the result of a stolen beacon, or some other alien artifact that indicated nothing at all instead of something identifiably Caridian, I would be guilty of wasting resources. Our queens have been kind to me, but every act of kindness has its limits.”
Yeesh, wasn’t that the truth. At least the homing signal had a pretty good beat. Dizzie turned back to the tablet and nodded their head along to the rhythmic “beep-ba-ba-ba-beep-beep” of it as they reread the findings from the probe they and Corinus had sent down twelve hours ago. It confirmed everything they already knew – no to life signs, yes to Xenium, manageable radiation levels, atmosphere breathable if need be. It was cold down there, and damp, but not freezing. The wind was constant, but not so fierce it would knock anyone down. In short, it was looking like the on-site expedition could go ahead as planned.
Now that was worth celebrating.
“You appear to be in a good mood, Dr Drexler.”
Dizzie glanced up from their tablet at Six, who now sat down beside them at the helm. Everyone else was catching a little more sleep before they descended – except for Mason, maybe, but it was hard to tell since his eyes never shut.
“I am,” Dizzie agreed. “I’ve got a lot of questions about what we’re going to find down there, and I’m looking forward to finding the answers. Plus, I’ve always wanted to study Xenium firsthand. This is really a phenomenal opportunity for that.”
“I suppose it is,” Six said, tilting his head again in a way that made Dizzie think uncomfortably of a praying mantis. Not that they were worried Six was going to bite their head off – that was more Divak’s style – but the resemblance was uncanny.
Dizzie wasn’t so uncomfortable that they weren’t going to take the opportunity to poke a little fun at Six, that was for sure. “You suppose?” they drawled, tilting the chair back slightly so they could get the right angle for a sarcastic side-eye. “You can’t expect me to believe that your people aren’t just as interested in the Xenium deposits as mine are. It’s a stellar source of fuel, and from everything you’ve said it seems like Caridians could use something like it.”
“We could,” Six agreed. “I can’t deny that. But we have other sources of fuel available to us that are easier to get and require fewer safeguards. Finding a reliable source of Xenium is certainly of interest to the queens, but the Glorious Hegemony shall continue on its journey whether we have access to it or not.”
“I guess that’s why they’re happy to send a historian and not a propulsion engineer out here,” Dizzie said, remembering Six’s admonition from earlier in the week.
“Indeed.” He glanced down at the planet, just visible in the corner of the ship’s front viewscreen. “There was a time when our species was bolder. We took an aggressive approach to expansion and sought to control all resources within our sphere of influence. That is the time period this distress signal originates from.”
“So you think that the ancient Caridians sent a ship out here to take control of the planet?”
Six’s antennae wavered slightly. “That’s my current assumption. The distress signal is real. Exactly what went on down there to necessitate it… that, I don’t know. Yet.”
Dizzie grinned. “But you’re dying to find out, aren’t you?”
“Hopefully not literally,” Six said. “But… I confess, the thought of seeing firsthand one of the legends of my people…” He actually shuddered, his antennae boinging back and forth like they were on springs. “It might be enough to make dying worth it.”
“Well.” Dizzie straightened up in the chair and clapped Six on the shoulder. “Let’s not make that literal, OK?”
“Of course not.” Six inclined his head. “I plan to take every reasonable precaution.”
“Take the unreasonable ones, too.”
Six smiled… maybe. If that was what stretching out his lower mandible until it was wider than the top of his head could be called. “As you say.”
•••
They landed the Telexa in the midst of a storm. It was impossible not to land in a storm, given the persistence of the wind, so they picked a moment when the cameras could at least get a glimpse of the ground to make their descent.
“Are you sure you can do this?” Dizzie nervously asked Six as they strapped into their flight chair. They’d already changed into their EV suit, only lacking the helmet that would complete the “personal bubble” look. Beside them, Corinus was already somewhat lilac around the edges, and they hadn’t even entered the atmosphere yet. Dizzie wondered if it was space sickness or the anticipation.
“Both,” Corinus murmured unhappily to Dizzie, his eyelids fluttering like butterflies in a hurricane.
“I have landed the Telexa in much less favorable conditions before,” Six assured them all, manipulating the controls with ease as he followed the coordinates to an area a few kilometers from the distress signal. They’d chosen it for its flatness – the slick, rugged, and in some cases jagged terrain of Sik-Tar didn’t make for a lot of options. They had brought along a rover that would serve to take them the rest of the way there.
Heck, they could always walk if it got really bad. A few kilometers was nothing.
“Are we all strapped in?” Six asked, leaving his body facing forward in his chair but turning his head a full one-eighty degrees backward to look at them. Everyone nodded except for Mason, who Grayson double-checked before giving Six a nod. “Excellent. This landing will probably be somewhat bumpy, so if you feel the need to expel your food, please use the bag at your feet.”
Corinus went right for his. Dizzie held more tightly to the straps across their chest and tried not to look overly excited. Be calm, be cool, you’re a pro and you’ve got this. Sure, they’d ridden inside the massive Guild freighters from Earth to Torus Station and back, done a field trip to the moon, and touched down on Titan before, but this… they’d never done anything quite like this.
Their entry down to Sik-Tar began smoothly enough. They were landing while it was still light out by the structure, early in the day, in fact – they should have plenty of time for their initial explorations if everything went well. The faint illumination provided by the red dwarf seemed adequate… while still in space, at least. Once they plunged down into the upper layer of the atmosphere, Dizzie’s impression of it changed.
It was like having a blanket drawn over the entire ship. A wet, blood red blanket that wrapped itself around their wings and suffocated their engines. The storm buffeted them severely enough that several alarms began to blare, and a moment later the cabin suddenly lost its lights.
“Don’t be alarmed!” Six shouted from his spot at the helm. “The Telexa is merely rerouting all available power to our stabilizers. Once we’re through the stratosphere, things should calm down significantly!”
“Are we going to make it through the bloody stratosphere?” Grayson shouted back.
“I believe we will!” The ship rocked to the side hard enough to rattle Dizzie’s head between the topmost restraints. “I am nearly positive!”
“Nearly positive?” Corinus whimpered. Dizzie reached out and patted his forearm consolingly, the only part of him they could reach.
“This would be a miserable, honorless way to die,” Divak said. For the first time since Dizzie had met her, she sounded something other than arrogant, angry, or both. She sounded frightened. If Dizzie could have reached her, they might have tried patting her forearm too.
And probably gotten it ripped off for their troubles. Dizzie clenched down on the armrest instead and stared out into the shifting storm. If they were going to die in a storm like this – which we aren’t, Corinus, we totally aren’t! – then they wanted to see their end coming. There was something freeing about the lack of control, everything right now the exact opposite of how it was in the lab. There was nothing they could do, no structure they could impose or effort they could make that would change the outcome of this experiment. Everything was in someone else’s hands now, and all Dizzie could do was see it through.
The ship shook and jolted, sometimes taking hits from debris that ought to be too big to swirl up in a storm like this but came along for the ride anyway. Always there was the red right there, coating the ship and tinting everyone inside it with its ruddy reflection. They all looked like they’d been in a massacre, even the ones who didn’t have iron-based blood.
A second after they had that thought, the ship broke through the storm and all of a sudden, their violent fall became soft as the stabilizers no longer had to compensate for the force of the winds. The reddish light remained, but as the vista of the ground stretched out through the viewscreen, the feeling of claustrophobia from the entry faded.
“I will set us down momentarily,” Six said, and sure enough, a few seconds later the Telexa touched down on the ground with a gentle groan of shocks and a final, drawn-out creak. “We may have taken some damage,” he added. “It wasn’t making that noise before.”
“Oh, may we?” Grayson asked, sarcasm so heavy in his voice it was a wonder he could lift it enough to be heard. “After a passage like that, gettin’ down here with all the legs of this thing still attached is a bloody miracle! You should let me have access to her brain, run a scan to make sure she’s still flightworthy and doesn’t need any extra repairs.”
Six unstrapped from his seat and turned around to look at them this time. “I will ensure you are satisfied as to the ship’s condition, but we have plenty of time to make any repairs necessary. After all, our expedition here is only just beginning.”
Whatever Grayson was about to say was lost as Corinus suddenly brought the bag up to his face and was noisily sick into it. A sour smell permeated the room, and the others up and left quickly after that, putting on their helmets and grabbing their specialty gear for the first foray onto the soil of Sik-Tar.
Dizzie stayed next to Corinus. “Are you going to be OK?”
“Fine,” he groaned.
“I’m sure you can feel the fact that I don’t exactly believe you.”
Corinus wiped his mouth on the smooth back of his hooflike hand. “Now that we’re not bouncing around so much, I’m sure things will settle in a moment.”
“You could stay here for the initial foray,” Dizzie reminded him. “I mean, it’s not going to be much more than a first glimpse at this point. You could take the time to… y’know, quiet things down up here.” They tapped the side of their own head.
“I am not going to stay here while you go out there with them.” Corinus’s eyelids stopped moving, a sign of his total sincerity.
“They don’t want to hurt me,” Dizzie said. “We’re all a team here, you know? We’re in this together.”
“Some of us are more ‘together’ than others,” Corinus said darkly.
Dizzie lowered their voice. “Have you gotten something dangerous from one of them?”
