Beware, insect, the situation has changed. They sense our intentions and are loading shuttles with their offspring. They will not escape my wrath..
Well. how about that? Little old me, a one-man army actually winning the war.
At the very least my progress was making their collective severely worried. Enough so that despite their eerie taunting echoing in my mind, they now feared my progress enough to make a backup plan. But in my victory came a terrible new chance to win the battle and lose the war. Those ghastly 'eggs' were the harbinger of doom for all of mankind if those shuttles made it off. All that kept me from being overwhelmed just by getting close to one was my R-grade cybernetic rig's neural filter. Even with it I could 'hear' their abominable psionic signal pulsing through my brain. And they had all the time in the universe to infect our home system.
Time was nothing to the Many, after all. If it took two hundred years to reach human space that was just a leisurely little traipse among the stars for their kind. But for one single egg to land intact on a station or the Lunar colonies or be picked up by a curious freighter...the consequences were beyond dire. The doom of all humanity would begin one person at a time. Hiding horrible things in closets or bedrooms, creating weapons that were whispered in their ear by a faceless voice. Turning into misshapen, shambling guardians of their captors' territory, a pitiful fragment of self-will still remaining as their former bodies lurched about to murder and destroy.
My master was a soulless tyrant, but for the moment her goals and mine aligned. She wanted to punish her upstart creations. I wanted to save ten billion people from a Lovecraftian nightmare determined to subsume every sentient being it could reach. The Many had thrown some serious guardians just to get to the shuttle bay; another crewmember named McKay had already tried and failed to destroy the shuttles. Brave soul never had a chance between the turrets and the giant-ass robot they'd set to patrolling. I'd finish what he'd started. One shuttle already lay in smoldering fragments thanks to a shield resonator so generously provided by the chain-yanking bitch I had to answer to.
But the other one was...decidedly more vulnerable.
I disregarded the twitching body of the butchered cyborg that had once been one of my crewmates, carefully checking all sides for a booby trap. Nothing. Neither the pilot or co-pilot's doors appeared to have been tampered with. The only evidence than anyone had been here recently, besides the corpse, were a few dried slime trails on the floor leading to the rear cargo hatch. As I approached it I could hear that sound again - the haunting warble of an alien mind, a siren's call that hundreds had already fallen for.
A harsh squawk of static cut into my audio feed. A stuttering parody of a voice began berating my inferior flesh for daring to be slow, for less than instant and unquestioning obedience.
"Piss off, you program." The dangerous words echoed in the empty shuttle bay. I didn't know how much of my human senses she could spy on with the implants - but at this point I didn't really care. If she heard me, then she heard me. Partly because I had just realized an incredible possibility. If the Many hadn't...overgrown the interior, or if their servants hadn't clumsily wrecked a delicate system, then right in front of me could be a chance of escaping this doomed ship. Just perhaps.
My self-discipline faltered at that faint hope, at the slightest possibility of escaping a horrible death after awakening to a ship where the undead walked the halls and a mad computer chanted glory to an alien horror. With a frantic heave I unlatched the cargo door open, the psionic signal turning from a muted buzz to a horrible din. The door reached a little over halfway open when a cloud of gas spewed at my face, gushing from the puckered tops of the gigantic eggs. I stumbled back, grabbing for the laser pistol at my left thigh. The environment suit saved from being reduced to a puking mess in a corner groping for an anti-tox hypo.
The weapon in my hand charged, fired, recharged and fired again at the pulsing abominations. Six putrid sacs of alien flesh burned under the withering laser beam one after the other until I could see the entire interior of the shuttle's cargo bay, right up to the bulkhead behind both seats. There were revolting chunks of them strewn about on the floor, a few of which i kicked out, but none of the organic growth that had been covering the walls in the Hydroponic Deck.
I could scarcely spare a quick look behind my back as I'd become accustomed to doing before I slid into the pilot's seat. The control panels were all dark and I struggled to remember what little I had ever learned about piloting - i was only a regular soldier, after all. That hideous voice screeched in my mind again, sarcastically congratulating me on finding a new way to waste time instead of murder her errant creations. A reminder that the leash wasn't slipped yet. As her sneering faded away I began methodically focusing on one individual panel after another. The illegal R-grade implants I'd been fitted with could fill in for what my weary mind was failing to do. After several tense minutes the autodescription text flashed something when I craned my neck to stare at an inconspicuous section of the center console.
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"Main power routing". Now that sounded promising.
The panel had a few tiny toggle-switches and a pair of what looked like unusual buttons. They couldn't be pressed, try as i might, until I experimented by turning one of them clockwise and THEN pushing.
Click. My breath caught in my throat.
A thrumming sound started coming from the portside nacelle. Screens flashed, lights flickered to life on the console. A simple schematic of the shuttle appeared with one nacelle red and blinking...
I twisted the other button, pushed it, felt the starboard nacelle come to life. My hands grasped at the controls as warning lights went out, replaced by such wonderful words as "system ok" and "ready". Every instinct screamed at me to yank on the joystick and make a beeline for Earth to warn mankind of the terrible danger. To not spend one single more moment aboard this doomed ship where I had to sleep in an elevator, eat hurriedly with a loaded gun at hand. I'd have rather been anywhere, doing anything. Scrubbing public toilets at a TriOp company picnic would have been preferable to another minute aboard the Von Braun.
But there was still much work to be done; tasks that I could not dare shirk. The Many were only temporarily contained by my efforts and my electronic slave-driver had control of all the Von Braun's systems. In the decades it would take for us to get home one or both of them would have found a way to follow us back. An unacceptable risk. So if I - the inadvertent savior of all humanity - was to stop them then the battle would have to be decided here and now. So with a wrenching feeling in my stomach I shut down the engines, my hope seeming to drain away as they went silent again. There were long miles to go before I could sleep. I so very much wanted to rest in peace...but even more to wake up the next morning alive and whole.
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Despite the grievous injuries he'd endured I noticed Captain Diego carefully sizing up the defenses to the only path to the Braun's shuttlebay with an eagle eye while watching for any remaining hostiles. I took point on the faint chance something with stealth abilities was lurking around. The place was packed with proximity mines and covered by every hacked turret I could drag into position. I'd been forced to take a catnap in the shuttle seat not long after the exertion of hauling up armloads of supplies along with turrets liberated from XERXES on other decks. But the effort had been well worth it. Dozens of servants of the Many lay in pieces throughout the hall as a silent testimony to the effectiveness of concentrated firepower. Our priceless prize was still safe.
"Nice setup you got, son."
"Thank you sir."
We paused at the T-junction to catch our breath. I checked the bullets in my sidearm as he leaned heavily against the wall.
"Is anyone else coming?"
I shook my head, trying to dodge the question at first. But he was still the captain and my sense of Navy military discipline kicked in.
"We're it, sir. A couple civvies took the last escape pod before I got to you. The biggest threats are gone but I didn't think we should tell them to return."
He nodded, flinching at the motion. "Two civs and us? Dammit. What bout opposing forces?"
"Severely diminished, sir." But not defeated, I left unsaid. "If you're thinking of trying to retake the Rick, though, I'm going to have to- "
Captain Deigo cut me off with a flick of one hand. "I saw Deck A, son, I know. We shouldn't even set foot on her again, half held together by containment fields like that. And the Von Braun, well, just fuck everything about this ship. We ought to set her to blow before we leave."
"Afraid that's not an option, sir. Before I got put into surgery I spent a fair amount of time helping the civvies on the Braun so she didn't fall apart, so I know the systems. They didn't even build this flying disaster with a self-destruct in the first place. What SHODAN had me set was a phoney the screen on the override panel. What I really did was manually override the core limiters to let her play with the full engine power. Now...there's no way to root her out of all the systems. So the only other way to be sure we took her out would be to target the Braun with the Rick's torpedoes."
"No use," Diego rebuffed me with a snort. "Even if the fire-control wasn't fucked up seven ways to Sunday, the sensors would never let us launch on the Rick while we're squatting on top of her."
With a helpless shrug I resumed walking toward the gigantic four-way doors. "We can't just bend the torpedo tubes in a U-shape like in the old cartoons?" That actually got the injured captain to chuckle for a second as he limped along.
"What's the plan to get home on one of those runabouts?"
"Modify the hell out of them. Stick a couple cryo chambers on the back and weld enough hull plating to keep it all airtight. Point at Earth, hit the autopilot, then pray before we take a nap because it'll maneuver like a brick with all the extra mass."
Diego didn't even raise an eyebrow at my very summarized list of the extensive work needing to be done.
"I look forward to seeing it completed," was all he said as we both walked into the shuttle bay with parts and tools strewn all around our wonderful ticket back to home.
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Log, Soldier G65434-2, Final Entry
DATE 17.AUGUST.14
Myself and Captain William Bedford Diego are the final remaining survivors. Rebecca Siddons and Thomas Suarez have escaped previously. All other crew aboard both ships should be listed as deceased.
Attempts to regain any functional control of the Von Braun have been ineffective. Even when accessed directly from the Command deck the primary dataloop is hopelessly corrupted. Critical systems are inoperable or inaccessible due to security blocks that cannot be overriden in any reasonable amount of time.
After extensive renovation the shuttles extra "cargo bay" is functional, right down to the sextet of GamePigs wired in as auxiliary processors. We will be departing the Von Braun at 0800 hours and jettisoning the external 'power pack' of portable batteries to overcharge the engines before engaging the micro-coils. If there is a God, may he or she see us safe passage home from this hell.
The subspace broadcast has been purged of all tampering and will repeat the original message along with this additional information.
Attention. Danger level Omega Black. Do not attempt to salvage this ship or any item on it. Avoid or destroy any object launched or drifting from this ship. Do not attempt to rescue any persons who board this ship. Any other data or audio transmissions emanating from this ship should be jammed and disregarded.
Message repeats.