Omnes contra omnium

...The state of men without civil society (which state may be called the state of nature) is nothing but a war of all against all; and that in that war, all have a right to all things.

Thomas Hobbes

0430 hours

Rausch's distorted image shown on the screen. "I'm very sorry, but immediate reinforcements are out of the question," he said. "The attack upon you is being supported by a general offensive. It appears that, instead of consolidating their recent gains in the north, the Kosovars are putting all of their available troops into an eastward advance, even where it means leaving other areas unsecured. Meanwhile, Shqipteria is moving against our Prokletije garrisons, threatening Omega Facility itself, and we have credible intelligence that the Bosniak separatists are ready to revolt if enough of our troops are diverted elsewhere."

"Listen to what I am saying," Frankepanic said. "Omega Aleph is immobile and covered by millions of tons of rock. The elevator to the launch pad is blocked . We don't know at this point if there is anyone left alive in the lab itself. Thousands of Shqiptars could arrive at any minute!"

"I understand, and I will do my best," Rausch said. "But the earliest that I can send relief worthy of the name is 42 hours from now. That is all. Omega out."

Frankepanic turned from the blank screen and smiled. "Well, then," he said. "It would seem that we have Omega Aleph to ourselves for almost two days. What might we not get done in that time?"

Nibeaux glared at Zaratustra. "Are you by any chance going to do anything about this, sergeant?"

Zaratustra shrugged. "Why would I? Dr. Frankepanic is formally in command, and he has done nothing to harm me. In any event, the operational life span of Omega Aleph is clearly at an end, and so is my duty."

Frankepanic spoke in German: "Listen, Zaratustra. I and others like me would like your help. I will not insult you by offering you money. We know you are too pure to be moved by such things. But I think you will find that, in less tangible ways, our interests are yours. You were once of the True Party. Your line was betrayed, even by the leadership of the Church, and only you remain alive and free. But there are many in the Church who now see that your people were in the right. We are ready to break from the false leaders who betrayed you, and prepare the cleansing fire that will purge the world of the untermenschen. Will you honor us by your help- even your leadership?"

After long moments of silence, Zaratustra shook his head. "When I was a little younger, I was ready to die for such a cause. But now I believe it is vain: The things which separate ubermensch and untermensch are not enough to save one and destroy the other. I think that, if the test were forced, the ubermensch would only die grandly, while the untermensch would live on more contemptibly than before. I now see little purpose in it either way. The only fire that concerns me now is that which would burn my soul without destroying it."

"Whether you help us or not, is there any help we may give you?"

"Only give me my helmet, and let me depart unhindered."

"Very well. Go with good fortune."

After Zaratustra departed, Nibeaux said, "Now what?"

"Now we go to your office, to retrieve one royal egg- the egg from which the cleansing fire shall come!"

0445 hours

Bresljo's mutineers took the lower level of the lab with swiftness and stealth. Most of the staff were easily lured out, and then cowed into submission at the sight of the guards' weapons. When this did not suffice, a few shots from an ex-Phillippine Ranger's silenced submachine gun resolved the problem. A single casualty occurred in the main sweep, when one lab supervisor took down a mutineer with a stubby .44 before being dispatched. Two more were lost in a final assault on a control center where two lab supervisors and a loyal guard had locked themselves in. But the ranks were more than replenished by seven guards and four lab supervisors who freely joined the mutineers.

The Flea and the Tick arrived while the score of hostages were being in the main corridor. The hostages stared with varying combinations of shock, disbelief and contempt at these invincible warriors who had clearly either allowed themselves to be captured or actually joined the mutiny.

Bresljo put his rifle to Maria's throat. "Here's the deal," he said. "We don't want to kill any more people than we have to. So, if all of you will just be quiet and hold still, no one will get hurt. What we're going to do now is open the murderhole and retrieve an item of interest. Meanwhile, I and seven of my men are going to take Ms. DiMaccia and four others upstairs, while the rest of you go into workroom E. And you finbacks, behave."

As mutineers and hostages split up, one of the mutineers said to another, "Where were you, Gerig?"

The closest thing to a reply was, "I'm hunggrry."

A terrified hostage was forced to unseal the nest. The hostage and one guard remained in the murderhole, while the exit was sealed behind them. A single bomb hit had caused the elevator to fall to the bottom of the shaft. A snapped cable was tied up for the finbacks to climb down, and for pulling the egg canister up. The Flea simply jumped down, inflicting more damage on the elevator's already crumpled roof, and the Tick slid down the cable to land with scarcely less force. They both stomped at the same time to knock out a ceiling panel, and dropped inside.

"According to the story the Polack gave us, the egg is hidden in some piping under the elevator floor," the Tick said. "He would have had to pry up a floor panel, and then do a little cutting to clear a space."

"Here's one that looks like it was opened recently," the Flea said. "Look, there's a dent from a pry bar." He extended a set of climbing claws and used his forefinger to peel away the plate. They looked down, then looked at each other.

"Did you find it?" the guard shouted.

After some muttering in Serbo-Croatian, the Tick answered: "Yes."

"Then tie the cable around it."

"O-kay. You can pull it up now."

"I'm not pulling it up, the hostage is."

A metal canister was lifted up to the light of the open door. Then the door closed.

Smith, whom Bresljo had left in charge of the lower lab, waited with four other men outside the murderhole. Two others guarded the hostages in the workroom. Smith opened the murderhole just long enough for the canister to be passed through. He held it up for examination, and the men gathered round. The two guards down the hall turned their heads to look. "Wait a minute. This is way too small..." Smith said with a frown. He ought, of course, to have hurled it away at once. But he held onto it for long seconds, simply trying to satisfy his own curiosity about what it was. As he would realize momentarily, it was a rolled-up metal floor panel stuffed with concussion grenades.

By a fluke of ballistics, Smith was hurled down the corridor to land unharmed, while the mutineer on his right was seriously injured and the one on the left had his head blown off. The other two, having started to back away before the detonation, were knocked off their feet. Of the pair down the hall, one rushed forward. The other pitched quietly forward with a bullet in the base of his skull. Lewontin stepped out of the workroom, holding a small, ovoid handgun. "All right, everyone, time for you to surrender," she said.

The Flea and the Tick cheered at the sound of the explosion. "With any luck whatsoever, that gives the witch her chance to get herself and the other hostages out," the Tick said. "Then they can pull us out."

"About luck..." the Flea said. "I think we want whatever there is down here with us." He shown a lamp into the chamber. The suinoids were crowded around the cage, grinning.

0450

Frankepanic, Haig and Nibeaux went to the doctor's office together. "Nibeaux, you put in the combination. Then Haig opens the door." Below, there was a sound of shots. "What on Earth?!" Haig tried in vain to contact his men, while Nibeaux punched in a combination. Frankepanic had to shout at Haig before he opened the door. Before the door was opened more than a crack, the royal ectoparasitoid burst out. The swinging door knocked Nibeaux aside, and the creature hit Haig in the chest with enough force to knock him off his feet. As he toppled, the ectoparasitoid's legs wrapped around his torso, pinning his arms to his sides, and its tail thrust into his back. He started to scream, but the tightening grip and anesthetic sting quickly stifled his cries. The tail throbbed as three embryos were pumped into its victim's chest cavity.

The ectoparasitoid withdrew its tail. Haig remained immobile, except for the occasional twitch. The creature reared up on two of its five pairs of legs and unfurled its wings. A tiny head swiveled back and forth, scanning with a sensory melon and lashing the air with a proboscis. "It's impregnated a victim," Nibeaux said. "Now it's ready to move on. But first, I expect it's going to want a meal..."

"If it goes for me, I can kill it," Frankepanic said. "If it goes for you, well then, that's just less work for me."

At that moment, the door burst open at the blast of a shotgun grenade. A mutineer rushed in with shotgun raised. He started to bellow a command, but only got to "Ha-!" before the leaping ectoparasitoid buried its proboscis in his heart. His gun went off twice as he fell, and Frankepanic ducked two wild blasts in his general direction. That was when Nibeaux struck. While the royal ectoparasitoid loudly slurped its victim's liquefying innards, the two scientists exchanged a short but furious series of blows.

A second mutineer peered inside as the ectoparasitoid was finishing its meal. The creature raised its proboscis and spewed an arcing stream of acid and undigested food. Whether it was acting in self-defense, or simply lightening itself in preparation for flight, made no difference to the mutineer. He staggered back, his chemical resistant clothing and mask only slowing the burning acid down enough to prolong his agony. The ectoparasitoid started to run, lurching at first but quickly gaining speed, until it was bounding along with the help of its flapping wings. Mutineers and hostages only shouted and screamed and tried to get out of its way. A scream announced that it had stung again, but the sound was cut short by a gunshot.

Bresljo came into the office to find Nibeaux standing over Frankepanic with Ling's machine pistol in hand. "Drop it," he said. Nibeaux took one appraising look at him, and then dropped the gun with a snarl.

"Thank you," Frankepanic said as he reached for the gun.

Bresljo casually shifted his aim to him. "None of that. What I need is for both of you to carry him."

0453

In the lab below, nearly on the other side of the rear hull, Martinez waited in the lab where she had been studying two live ectoparasitoids with an NBR scope. She heard shouts, screams, a few shots, and once, the mechanical clicking of a silenced firearm, growing steadily nearer. She had no trouble figuring out what was happening. The mutineers had stopped taking hostages and recruits, and were now gunning people down as they came across them.

She drew her sidearm, the Flea's enormous 12.76 revolver. From the hall, she heard a voice say, "Come out! Everything's all right now!" Someone slid a door open, and there was a stifled cry followed by a clicking sound. Moments later, the call was repeated right outside her door. Swinging the NBR to bear on its overhead mechanical arm, she scanned the other side of the wall. The speaker was outside the door. To one side was a man with a silenced pistol. Across the hall, another pair was trying to force open a door. The door was nearly identical to an airplane door, and the fact that it would not open meant that the section on the other side had breached, releasing an artificially pressurized atmosphere. A little ways down the corridor, a man with unusually heavy body armor stood with a silenced SMG. She guessed, rightly, that he was the ex-Ranger

She propped the pistol up with an integral bipod (only an exotrooper would dare to fire it like a conventional handgun) and fired three shots through the walls. The first was aimed at the Ranger, who preternaturally dodged. The projectile was a tiny course-corrected rocket, but even it could not catch the ranger as he leaped to one side and dived to the floor. Her second shot caught the man with the pistol in the head and exploded, blasting his face apart. The third hit the man at the door in the chest and knocked him out of his shoes. The ranger fired a grenade that knocked the door ajar, and the other two mutineers rushed in. She hit one, but then a concussion grenade flung her back.

The mutineer at the door sprayed the room with an automatic shotgun. When the Ranger arrived, they went in together, only to lurch back at the sight of a maimed sucker. The one with the shotgun blasted it, only to topple with acid spatter on his leg. The Ranger was alert enough to keep his eyes on the room. Martinez fired with a scream, and the shot hit the ranger in the belly. The rocket motor separated, and stayed in his belly while the rest of the projectile exited. He fell with smoke, flame and steaming gore pouring from his wound and from under his face mask.

Martinez dropped the gun. She had fired her last shot without a rest for the bipod, and there was no chance of firing any more. Her wrist was severely dislocated, at a minimum, and she would be lucky if there were no bones broken

Outside, there was a sound of beating wings. The remaining mutineer screamed. She looked outside to see the royal ectoparasitoid in flight, its three-meter wigs nearly spanning the corridor. The mutineer fired his shotgun, but the steel buckshot could not penetrate its shell. The ectoparasitoid dropped to the floor, more disoriented than injured, but started running as soon as its feet touched the ground. The mutineer used his last shot on himself.

The ectoparasitoid began beating its wings for another running takeoff, but as it passed Martinez, it turned its tiny head and skittered to a halt. It folded its wings and prepared for a bound. Martinez did the only thing she could do: Using a remote, she pointed the NBR device directly at the creature and raised the power to maximum. It screeched, reared back, and finally ran into the wall and fell on its back. Before it could right itself, Martinez lunged out of the door and crushed its head with a fire axe. Shorn of what little brain it had, the creature still writhed furiously, and when its lashing tail stuck in the Ranger's body, it began pumping embryos into the dead flesh. Martinez staggered out the door and ran for the exit.

Moments later, the door across the corridor flew open after three tremendous blows. Krnabeg, with an axe held loosely in his hand, stared at the carnage. The two young suinoids looked at the dead royal ectoparasitoid and hissed.

0455

In one of the gaps in the hillocks of rock piled around Omega Aleph, two track units could be seen. Seemingly wedged between the tracks was a hatch, in fact (if one got the scale of it) a full-sized door. From inside, there was a series of loud taps. Then, with a loud whoosh followed by a resounding clang, the door flew open, releasing a cloud of white smoke. Zaratustra stood in the doorway, with wisps of white phosphorous still issuing from his freshly fired gas spike. He looked down, as if debating whether to climb down the ladder or simply jump the two meters to the ground. He did, indeed, bend his knees as if preparing to jump Then he paused, and after a moment turned his head as if heeding a voice no others could hear. He stared down for long moments, and finally bent his knees again. But, he paused yet again, as if listening for a voice. He did not turn his head this time. Even so, after this final pause, he banged his gas spike against the door frame and disappeared back into the darkness.

Just a little later, the lingering smoke was disturbed as an otherwise invisible form climbed up the ladder.