Chapter 3 – Encounters
Facility Guard Tower
"There," said Jagg proudly as the pict-feeds flickered into life on the row of bulky screens and data slates. He gestured to the fuzzy, frame-by-frame images that depicted nondescript patches of forest and sections of fence. Some displayed a mess of distorted colours, while others gave the illusion of night, showing a shadowy monochrome. Each screen was lined with flickering static, and the time-stamps were unreadable and distorted.
"You sure these are live links?" said Ridge, eyeing the screens dimly.
Jagg gave him a mock offended look. "Are you the expert on security systems now, Private Ridge?"
"No. I … uh … they just seem messed up..." Ridge replied.
"Everything is messed up, kid," Jagg said with a knowing wink, "welcome to the Imperium of Man."
The guard room at the top of the tower was a simple square space with wide windows that were made from thick panels of subtly tinted glasscrete. On the South side a flight of stairs led down to a secure door, and at the top of the stairs a compact, metal hatchway led to a balcony outside. The rest of the room was strewn with the screens and wires that Jagg had ripped out and reconfigured. Other than that, chairs, a table, and a few cabinets finished the cramped decor. The tint of the glasscrete gave the air of the room a subdued, yellow hue. There was a weapons locker, but it had been stripped bare. Jagg's long-las was placed on the table in front of the row of screens.
Private Edora leaned against the table and gazed outside. The view from the windows was spectacular, and looked over leagues of bright jungle in every direction, the glasscrete tint seemed to maximise the contrast of the clouds and the jungle, picking out shapes and edges clearly. The canopy below them was alive with birds and bugs, moving in flocks or swarms, screeching and calling in exotic, fascinating notes. Light rain fell from patchy, fast-moving clouds. Above the clouds the pale blue sky was painted with a faint aurora.
"Right," said Jagg as he knelt and opened drawers and cupboards around the room, "let's see what surprises we've got in here."
"What are you looking for?" said Ridge. He had spent the entire time he'd been in the guard tower standing in the same place, his autogun held across his chest.
Jagg looked at him from around a cupboard door. "Kid," he said flatly, "only the Emperor knows how long we're going to be stuck in here. I'm looking for food, supplies, entertainment... someone must have left something in here, somewhere."
Eventually, he noticed something at the back of one of the cupboards. He reached all the way in until he was shoulder-deep in the compartment. "Huh, what's this?" he said, straining as he fumbled in the darkness. "Have we hit the jackpot?"
What he finally pulled out was a crumpled magazine. He lifted it up to the light, flipping it around so that the cover was the right way up. On the front of the magazine was a smokey-eyed, pouting, long-legged model dressed in a revealing parody of a Guard uniform, complete with a flak jacket that was unzipped all the way down to her belly button. She wore a corset top, skintight military-styled shorts and boots, and stockings. The magazine was called Imperial Girl, but many might simply call it heresy.
"Oh, hello," Jagg crooned. "Can you believe they actually get away with printing these things? Hey, Mindi," he said to Edora, using her given name. "Why isn't your uniform more like this one?"
She smiled a sleepy smile and appraised the pinup on the cover, tilting her head as she leaned forward to get a better look. "I wish it was," she said matter-of-factly.
Ridge let out a kind of involuntary snort-laugh. Jagg lifted the magazine and folded the cover back so that, from his point of view, Edora's head was on top of the pinup's body. "Did I ever tell you I love you?" he smirked.
A sudden, loud thump shattered the moment.
Jagg and Edora turned in less than an instant, Jagg with autopistol primed on the source of the sound and Edora with her autogun. The sinful periodical was dropped to the metal floor. Ridge raised his weapon a half-second later.
"You see what it was?" Jagg said to Ridge, who had been facing in the direction of the sound. Jagg was all serious, the levity of moments ago completely evaporated. He held the pistol in a solid, two-handed grip.
"Something hit the window," the young soldier said shakily, "a … bird or something."
Jagg nodded toward the hatchway. "Go check it out."
Ridge swallowed and stepped carefully over the lines of wires and cables towards the opening. He ducked and stepped through, his autogun pointed towards the metal balcony. Jagg and Edora could see him through the tinted windows. He took one step, saw something on the walkway, cursed, and then appeared to throw up in his mouth.
Jagg looked at Edora. "Guess we'd better go see..."
The creature was apparently dead, but parts of it were still moving.
"Emperor protect..." said Jagg quietly. He still held his autopistol in front of him, pointing it at the thing on the balcony, but with only one hand now. The other hand was in front of his mouth as he tried not to retch. Ridge had less control. He leaned over the side railing, wiping stringy vomit off of his chin.
The creature lay flat on the metallic walkway. A gaping, bird-like head lolled sideways. Bulbous, fishy eyes were rolled back into a disfigured skull, protruding from the thing like warts. The body was a mess of unsettlingly twisted flesh, rows of short, bony quills and glistening down. The beak was long and vile, like a black needle. Membranous wings with patches of damp feathers stretched in awkward directions, and further vestigial wings, or possibly fins, sprouted in senseless, illogical places. What flesh was visible between the protrusions and feathers was an unpleasant shade of pale peach, disturbingly close to that of human skin, but tinged with a sickly purple. A strange, cloying, metallic smell filled the air like a cloud.
On one stretched, twisted patch of the thing's body, there was what at first sight appeared to be a seeping wound with maggots basking and thrashing around on it's surface, but upon closer inspection this 'wound' was a still-moving body-part. It was something like a mouth, with a coat of thick, dark hair bristling around an uneven cavity. What had at first appeared to be maggots were in fact a series of bizarre little appendages somewhere between fangs and the fingers of a tiny primate. A brown-black liquid shimmered in the sunlight, and the whole thing pulsed and quivered in a way that put Jagg in the mind of a nest of insects.
Perhaps worst of all, the subtle sound of sucking air could be heard from within, like the tiny breaths of a sleeping infant.
Jagg took a few steps back.
"You ever seen anything like that?" he said, close to losing his breakfast, screwing his face up at the overwhelming smell.
Ridge hung onto the railing as if it was all that was keeping him up. His legs felt weak, his jaw tremored. His displeasure was evident as he tried to speak.
"G...gotta … be … a … mutation..." he managed between gasping breaths.
Edora stepped around the back of Jagg and approached the repulsive form with steady steps, her boots tapping on the balcony floor.
"We need to tell the Sarge about this..." Jagg was saying, then spoke more urgently, "hey, what are you doing?"
Both Jagg and Ridge voiced their objections as Edora slowly knelt in front of the twisted form. When she took off a glove and touched it they were indignant. She ran her finger along the moist feathers that covered it's elongated neck, and then felt the bare flesh of it's skewed body. The grasping movements of the odd finger-teeth quickened as she poked them, then with a sudden, remorseless movement she took out her combat knife and wedged the quivering maw open. As the little breath sounds changed to a higher pitch, Edora used the back of the glove she had taken off to wipe at the fluid inside the foul cavity, and Jagg glimpsed the quick, darting movements of what appeared to be a bulging eye beneath it.
He had seen enough.
"Edora!" he snapped, "I am asking you nicely to get away from that Throne-cursed thing." His autopistol was still raised.
Edora looked over her shoulder at him, beautiful and radiant in the afternoon sun, directly contrasting the mess of twitching animal parts in front of her. A distant smile was on her face. She removed her hand from the disgusting form, stood up, and stepped away.
"Kid," Jagg said to Ridge, "go and get the pict-recorder from the desk, Rozen needs to see this," then he looked sternly at Edora as Ridge stumbled through the hatchway. "Then we're burning this thing, got it?"
Private Edora nodded pleasantly.
Facility IX – North Sector
Private Hasken walked the hallways of the facility alone, her autogun hanging idle at her side as she half-listened to the chatter on her micro-bead. It seemed as though there was something going on at the guard tower, but by the sound of it Jagg, psycho-girl and the kid had just gotten spooked by some local wildlife. She scoffed to herself as she filtered out the sounds of her comrades.
The dimly lit rooms were deserted for now, with all of the facilty workers at the reception area with the woman named Astea. The halls and rooms were near-silent, with only Hasken's footsteps and the tick or hum of workstations and other machinery making any sound. Warm, artificial air blew at her from vents high in the walls. The atmosphere made her eyes and lips dry out. When she found a drinks dispenser she had splashed water on them. She walked trough maintenance areas, training rooms and workrooms, all of them furnished with bulky desks and dim, greenish lamps that gave the place a dark, industrial feel. She idly examined and discarded objects as she pleased. Data-slates, clipboards, food-wrappers, chronometers. At a desk in one of the poky offices she found a display frame, showing a backlit image of a smiling couple with a cross-looking, infant girl huddled between them. She picked up the frame, looked at it from a few different angles, and tossed it back down carelessly.
A blinking red light on the far side of one of the workrooms caught her attention.
She approached the source of the light. There was a desk with a number of keypads and controls built into it, standing before a secure door into what appeared to be a large chamber beyond. Above the door the words Facility Storage: Authorised Personnel Only were printed in low Gothic.
"Got a locked area here," she sent over the micro-bead, "storage."
Moments later Nytus had come back to her with a code. She tapped it into the keypad on the desk and there was a metallic clunk as the thick door unlocked and the blinking red light switched to a steady green.
As she pushed through the heavy door two things struck her. The first was the chill in the air, and second was what sounded like a fleeting cry from further in. High-pitched and strangely child-like. It was brief enough that Hasken was not sure if she'd heard it at all, it was fleeting, it could have been anything, the creaking of the door perhaps, rebounding and carrying strangely off of these metallic walls. The hairs were standing up on the back of her neck nonetheless. Her trigger finger hovered, tense.
Stepping inside she saw heavy duty racking lined with what appeared to be tech-crates with a thick, black tarpaulin draped over them. She approached the closest crate and lifted the tarp with the end of her autogun. Just nondescript storage, probably holding maintenance equipment.
The sound came again, closer this time. Hasken looked up, letting the tarpaulin drop. It was a soft, somehow pathetic sound, like the wail of a lost newborn, or of an animal that had been trapped and whose strength had almost deserted it. She stared hard a the dark storage space. The room was basically a long, dark corridor lined with racking on either side that was filled with the plain, covered tech-crates. At the other end of the room the darkness was thicker, and turned a blind corner lined with more racking.
Hasken put in another call over the micro-bead. "Any of those civvies had a baby recently?" she said uneasily.
The reply took a little longer to come back this time, but eventually she heard Nytus' gruff voice again. It was distorted now, as if something was interfering with the channel. "That's a negative," he said.
"Got a strange sound down here," Hasken fed back.
Another pause.
"Can you investigate?" Nytus' voice crackled.
Hasken rolled her eyes and cursed. She raised her weapon and stepped cautiously down the corridor, past the covered crates. The sound undulated around the dark corners and crevices between the rows of storage. It stopped and started in an odd, unnatural way, and would occasionally settle into a prolonged and unnerving high-pitched gurgle.
When Hasken took a breath and rounded the corner, the sound stopped abruptly.
Ahead of her now, dimly lit by the meagre light of a control panel, was a softly humming machine that took up the entire far wall. Vents and cables sprouted from it like plastic roots and metal branches, and disappeared into the walls, ceiling and floor. More of the covered tech-crates were piled up either side. It appeared to be some kind of facility temperature control.
Hasken stood and stared, unnerved by the way that the odd sound had ceased so suddenly. She was trying to decide if she had imagined it. Her eyes were drawn to two large vent covers either side of the machine, the grilles forming a thin barrier between the storage area and the pitch darkness of the vents. Hasken looked hard at those grilles for some time, the memory of the odd sound creeping up and down her spine.
After a few moments, she relaxed, and cursed again.
"Sound was a false alarm," she said into her micro-bead. "North side is clear. I'm coming back."
Facility IX – East Sector
"So this place is just some old power plant," said Private Hein to himself, recognising the types of machinery he was seeing from his past in an industrial hive on the other side of the planet. He stepped on a metal grating floor that had a small crawlspace underneath it, that workers could climb into for maintenance or repairs. The evenly spaced generators hummed and vibrated in the near-silence. There was an energy in the air, a current of power that travelled through the musty dimness, causing the skin to prickle and the mind to buzz.
"Gettin' kind of bored in here, might be time to liven things up..." Hein muttered again. He stopped, then turned back to look in the direction he had come.
"Gonna do it," he said, satisfied that he was alone. He clanked over to a nearby work-surface and brushed bits of machinery aside, lifting his flamer onto the workbench and steadying it with one hand. With the other hand he pulled at a seemingly innocuous part of the handguard, digging in with greasy fingernails, until part of the housing came off. He then stuck his fingers inside the remaining housing, and started to feel around.
"C'mere little fishies," he whispered to himself in a sing-song tone, pulling a face as he strained to reach his fingers inside the cramped workings of the flamethrower. Moments later he pulled out two small, pale-blue spheres, wedged in between his oily fingertips.
"There ya are," he said with an ugly grin, before quickly tossing the two little spheres into his mouth and then reassembling the handguard on the flamer as he swallowed. Once he'd finished he held the weapon across his body again and took a number of long, deep breaths.
"Now..." he said to the machines and the darkness and the flickering lights, "now I feel better."
He continued to walk through the machines, the fluid sloshing around in the canisters on his back. He blinked as he looked around. There was definitely an energy here. The machine spirits were almost visible, it seemed, sparks and shadows and distortions in the air. Gleaming little white eyes peering out from the monstrous generators. He left them behind, giving them wicked looks as he did so.
Soon, he came to some stairs and climbed them, his boots clanging loudly all the way to the top.
When he reached the top he swayed, close to falling backwards. He blinked hard a few times, and then stopped blinking at all.
The light of an overhead warning sign cast over his face revealed that his pupils were dilated. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He smiled as he walked past yellow and black painted strips and rotating red lights. Flashing control panels and scrolling lines of text. Eventually he came to a heavy door, thicker than any he'd seen, more like an airlock on one of the Empire's great ships. He looked above the door and faintly made out the word Core, in large, red lettering. He tried to open it, but it was locked tight. There was an oval of thick glass in the centre of the door. He stared through.
The space within was all but completely bathed in thick, blanketing darkness. A walkway, a railing, and then a drop into an abyss. Hein leaned in, pressing his forehead against the glass, trying to get a look at how deep that incredible void truly was. He could not tell, but even from here, on the other side of the door, the drop was dizzying. He smiled, showing teeth. He brought the end of his flamer up to the glass, and twisted the valve. The little fire leapt into life, highlighting the bony ridges and contours of his face, and sending a small semi-circle of undulating light into the space beyond the door.
The sweat of his brow smeared across the glass as he leaned there, the heat from the flame prickling his skin. That darkness fascinated him. It was special, vibrant in its perfection. Something invisible moved, like the machine spirits in the other room, but more powerful, more animated, constantly shifting and changing. In this special darkness, at the very extreme edges of the light from the flame, something mighty stood, something black and sculpted and ancient.
A word formed in his mind.
Hegemon.
Then a spectre in the darkness, formed of the air, twisted into being from the shadows. So faint that he had to squint. Hein's mouth lolled open dumbly, the corners twisted upwards. He rolled his head against the glass, looking in, the flame burning next to his face. The form was so barely there, so fleeting, but his wide, black eyes knew what they saw.
A thin, shifting form. A beak. A long, spiked tongue. A voice that spoke from beyond the veil.
Sumari'thar.
Hein's smile widened.
"Hegemon … Sumari'thar..." he said slowly, drunkenly.
The voice over the micro-bead startled him so much that he jumped back and turned around, brandishing the flamer as he scanned the small, dark space behind him. Only metal and cables and blinking lights looked back at him.
Sweat dripped from his brow.
"Private Hein, report," the voice said again. It was Nytus.
"What?" he spat back, agitated.
Nytus' voice was stern when it came back over the channel. "I'd advise you to lose that attitude, Private, your superior officer just requested a report."
Hein shook himself and regained some restraint.
"Nothing to report," he returned, more controlled. "Generators, transformers, a crawlspace, and a door locked up tighter than Blackstone Fortress," he glanced behind him, "says Core above it."
There was a long pause this time. Hein stood there in silence, a hunched silhouette toting a flame in the darkness.
"Alright, come back," came Nytus' voice again, ending the conversation.
Hein closed the valve, extinguishing the flame. He turned back and looked through the glass one last time. Nothing but darkness glared back.
He smirked as he walked away.
Facility IX – Central Reception Area
Sergeant Rozen leaned over Nytus' shoulder, and Administrator Kress hovered behind them. All three looked with dark expressions at the image that Jagg had sent over the data feed. Thankfully, the civilians were all on the far side of the screens, standing, sitting or slouching near the walls.
Rozen's jaw moved rhythmically as he stared at the fuzzy, distorted image of the twisted thing spread out on the guard tower balcony. His steely blue-grey eyes were locked in place. The veins on his remaining arm bulged as he tensed.
"Looks like a mutation," Nytus spoke as quietly as he could manage.
Rozen didn't answer. He just looked.
"What in the cold depths of the void..." came Hasken's voice as she appeared behind them, turning her neck sideways as she looked around Rozen at the screen. She stared at it for a long moment, chewing on her bottom lip.
"Close it," Rozen said at last, and Nytus tapped a key and dismissed the unsettling image.
"That what they saw in the guard tower?" continued Hasken, unabated.
"Keep it down, Hasken," said Nytus, bringing up some data files on recent insurgent activity instead.
When Hein eventually returned from his sweep, Rozen turned his attentions to the South corridor, where he had sent Lander. The big man had reported in some time ago, but had been expected back by now.
Two tinny clap sounds echoed from somewhere in that direction. Seconds later, Lander's deep voice came in over the micro-bead.
"I'm taking fire!"
Rozen raised his lasgun and flicked the safety, causing it to emit a satisfying, rising hum. "Hein, Hasken, with me!" he yelled as he started to run.
Facility IX – South Sector
"Identify yourself!" Private Lander's booming voice echoed over the ping of small-arms gunfire. The shots whizzed overhead, ricocheting dangerously off the back wall, smashing screens and cups and knocking out an overhead light, causing it to fall and rain sparks over Lander's head.
The room he'd come under attack in was an infirmary. He was taking cover behind a long, metal counter strewn with technical equipment and medical devices. Beyond the counter was a mounted medical chair, a bunk in the corner, and a section of room with a couple of private cubicles. Whoever was firing at him was in one of these cubicles. Lander looked over the top of the counter for long enough to make a quick assessment.
He crouched low again as more wayward shots echoed from the other side of the room, smashing the glass on a nearby wall-mounted cabinet and pinging off the walls. He cursed, keeping his bulk below the line of the counter as best he could. If the mystery assailant kept firing like this things could get dangerous. There was always the chance one of those bullets could deflect and catch him somewhere vital. He looked at the bulky, metallic form of his trusty firearm and considered his enemy. The panicked shots, the unruly aim, this was no rogue insurgent, infiltrator or double agent. This was something else.
"I have a drum-fed heavy stubber with a forty round clip. If I open fire I will rip through those cubicle walls like scroll parchment and tear apart anything or anyone inside them. You have a civilian-grade stub pistol. This is a fight you cannot win."
A moment passed. There was silence from the cubicles.
"Identify yourself. I do not want to hurt you."
No one spoke, but Lander heard what he though was a quiet, gulping sob, cut off quickly. He sighed, cursing again under his breath.
"I'm going to stand up," he called over the counter, "do not fire at me. My name is Byron Lander, I'm a heavy weapons specialist in the Aboran PDF. We're here to help."
He stood up slowly, his mighty silhouette filling the room. No one fired at him. The heavy, dark curtain in front of one of the cubicles swayed softly. He kept his eyes on it. "I'm putting my weapon down," he said as he unclipped the heavy stubber. He placed the huge weapon, that was most commonly sene mounted on vehicles and aircraft, delicately on the counter top. He was aware that his pistol was still holstered at his hip.
"I'm coming over," he said as softly as his deep voice allowed, "I ask again, do not shoot me."
He stepped quietly towards the cubicle, around the med-chair and past the corner bunk. Supplies and medical fluids were strewn across the tiled floor, packets of bandages, medicine bottles. Lander had to step over a toppled IV drip stand. He approached the cubicle, waiting for the sound of gunfire and for bullets to tear at him through the lank curtain. He reached out.
He pulled the curtain aside with a quick motion. Behind the curtain was a small, dark cubicle with a stool, a bunk and a cabinet. Sitting on the floor in the narrow gap between the bunk and the wall was a small figure in an off-white medical uniform. She had dark skin and black hair tied back. The pistol was held loosely in her right hand. Her arms were wrapped around her knees, which were pressed close to her chest. Tear tracks lined her cheeks. The darkness of the bags under her eyes served to make the whites seem all the more wide and fearful. She was pretty, with long, flickering eye-lashes.
Lander crouched, he put the girl somewhere in her teens, and saw a surname on a badge in the lapel of her uniform.
"Bota," he said gently, "is that your name? Are you a medic? Can you stand? I am here to help. Can you give me the gun?"
The girl, Bota, was shaking as she let go of the pistol. Her eyes connected with his and he felt the fear in them. Those eyes, they had seen something terrible, and recent. He offered a hand to help her to her feet, and she complied weakly.
When there was a sudden commotion at the door to the infirmary she shrieked and hid behind Lander's enormous frame. She was less than half his size.
"Hold your fire!" Lander yelled as Rozen, Hasken and Hein burst into the room, weapons bared. "It's just a medic, she's scared."
Rozen and Hasken kept their weapons pointed at the quivering girl as Hein stepped closer.
"She's unarmed," said Lander, holding up the pistol.
Hein grabbed her by the shoulder of her uniform and dragged her away from Lander. She sobbed as he used his right hand to pat her down while his left hand held the flamer steady. He took his time.
"Yeah, she's clean," he said eventually with a smirk on his face and an odd look in his eyes.
Rozen lowered the lasgun. "Let's get her back to reception," he said.