Chapter Six.
Most of the Tyrant's carnage had occurred on the other end of the ship, opposite the one Seras had come down. With no one to kill in the immediate area, the creature had been minding its own business until Seras had showed up.
Wesker had been slightly curious about the creature's habits when not murdering something or looking for something to murder. He suspected, that if left alone, the thing would likely stand in one place indefinitely or perhaps move to investigate life-like movements. He would never know, as the opportunity to observe one in such a fashion would likely never present itself again.
A much more interesting display had come from the vampire woman herself. How she had transformed her arm and regenerated so quickly was a mystery Wesker wanted to solve, but like the Tyrant's day-to-day habits, was low on his list of priorities.
"What did we lose?" Wesker said to a monitor showing the face of the ship's captain.
"We have everything we need to reach our destination," the captain said. "But no return trip. We haven't the supplies. As for the weird stuff bellow decks, that's all trashed. Your men, including the gunmen, are all dead. Three of my sailors committed suicide, one not an hour ago, after the mess was settled."
"I take it morale is low?" Wesker said.
"Low? Ha. We've set new standards, sir," he said.
"Tell them they're on a mission to find a vaccine and a cure, but don't give them details," Wesker said.
"No one's given me details, so I can't see as to how I'd…"
"If you can reach your destination then that's all I need to know," Wesker said. "The facility you'll be linking up with doesn't have enough supplies to restock you, so plan on foraging should you seek a return voyage."
"Right," the captain said. "We'll forage all right."
Wesker terminated the link. He knew his bedside manner needed some work, but his DNA simply didn't seem to care. Intellectually he knew desperate and demoralized people were unpredictable, more so than normal people, but emotionally he couldn't sense how to respond. Knowing they were after a cure would help them a little, but he couldn't help but feel he should've presented it better.
"You're not worried they'll mutiny?" a thickly muscled man wearing a tight green shirt and a red beret said as he sat at the other end of the long table.
"If they do, the two women on board will handle them. I can tell them how to sail the ship from here, if need be," Wesker said.
"And if the communication lines go out, then what?"
Wesker sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Jack Krauser could be irritating, but he was one of the few people left who could question Wesker and get away with it. Wesker knew he needed someone like that, but it was still annoying. "Then we go ourselves," he said. "We'll likely end up with a dead specimen, but that's better than nothing."
Krauser drew his knife and began tossing it high into the air, catching it by the handle with deft ease. "I still say we junk this science crap and do this the old fashioned way. We've got enough personnel and resources to pull everyone into one place and mount a defense. With some planning, we could off millions of them systematically."
"That would certainly take care of the zombie infestation," Wesker said. "But what do you propose to do about the thousands of T-virus mutants on the loose? Are a bunch of gun-toting scientists-turned-militia going to shoot a grub the size of a school bus? What we need to do is manufacture a method of turning our remaining personnel into creatures like Alice so they can survive in this new ecology."
Krauser smiled and sheathed his knife. "You're a great humanitarian, Wesker," he said. "Although I never thought the new world order would look quite like this."
Wesker thought briefly of Alexia Ashford, and realized his current plan had come to resemble something akin to hers, although what she had in mind was, at its core, something different completely. "I'm beginning to think order is a relative term," Wesker said.
Krauser frowned, the cold blue eyes in his head and scar down his face made it an intimidating sight, for most people at least. "Chaos is just a word to describe being out of control," Krauser said. "You know that. We can steer our destiny in any direction we want once we're in a position to do so. We let things slip, now all we have to do is regain control and from then on, we go where we want."
Wesker nodded, in no mood for a philosophical argument with the single-minded Krauser. To look at it, piloting Umbrella, and the world, towards its perfect destiny had been not unlike sliding down a hill. He had control over how fast things went and which direction he could go from side to side, but one constant was that everything had been going downhill. The closer he got the bottom, the more his conception of what the bottom looked like shifted, and not all of it was to his liking.
"I'm getting the distinct impression our presence will be needed in North America. We can go by plane, as we won't be bringing a Tyrant with us," Wesker said.
"Why did you send that damned thing to begin with?" Krauser asked.
"I thought it might come in handy and it would save sending another boat in case one was needed."
"Don't they have a few on ice stateside?" Krauser asked.
"Those are special models, so to speak," Wesker said. "The one on the boat was an early version and taking up space here."
"There's a roomful of crates that need stacking. We couldn't have programmed it to do that for us? Save some energy?"
It was Wesker's turn to smile. "Tyrants are no good for such tasks," he said. "The instant it perceived some sort of obstacle to its work, it would attack. It would be like using an attack Doberman to try and herd sheep."
Krauser still appeared skeptical. He stood up and stepped away from the table without bothering to push his chair back in. Facing away from Wesker, he stood with his arms crossed. "We should just go and capture her ourselves. This is getting too complicated, and if there's one thing I've noticed about this company, it's that all of its failures have one thing in common: things got too complicated."
Wesker's eyes rolled behind his sunglasses. What Krauser didn't understand was that caution often demanded complexity. "We need to ensure a solution is obtained from Alice. The best way to do that is to have her alive and cooperative. The two we've sent are the best candidates for bringing her over."
"And if they all turn against us?" Krauser said.
"Then I've misjudged their characters," Wesker said.
To be continued…