The Z Chronicles Read online

  He would not be the only hero in this fight.

  In his most recent trials with the common black blood beetles, the squillae had successfully slowed metabolic rates by an average of forty-seven percent. They had effectively chemically neutered sixty-four percent of the beetles by altering gene expression of gonadotropins. Adult beetles had become sluggish. Larvae, pupae, and podlings had been distinctly underweight. The test colony had shrunk significantly in size over a span of ninety days, despite an abundant food supply that should have driven exponential growth.

  But would it have the same effect on Confluos giganus?

  They would know very soon. The squillae acted swiftly.

  The genius of using machines instead of a bio-engineered virus was that if the Swarm beetles adapted, or if the effects weren’t strong enough, he would only need to modify the software to instantly change the squillae behavior. Ships or probes could simply broadcast the update. He could target different organs, the circulatory system, or the brain. The possibilities were limitless.

  The lab hummed with the quiet tension of work. The room was a maze of computer stations. Every scientist was tasked with monitoring some aspect of Swarm physiology at the most minute levels.

  It wouldn’t be long now. Couldn’t be long, if this would work at all…

  Someone—it was Mili—called out, “Confirmed! Overall respiration rate down seven percent as compared to controls!”

  Soon similar exclamations were sent up from around the room and nearly every station. Each shout sounded more giddy and elated than the last.

  “Group heart rate averaging nineteen percent below controls.”

  “Pheromone levels reduced by thirty-seven percent versus control levels.”

  “Caloric expenditures are now down forty percent and still trending downward!”

  Tarn sagged a little in his seat and closed his eyes. It was working. All the worry had been for nothing.

  When he opened his eyes, Mili stood before him, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth and her eyes shining. She handed him a tablet with compiled results already in the form of a report. “With your permission, Engineering Master Tarn Elocus Hator?”

  With the touch of his fingertip, this first official report would be signed and encoded into a final format, ready for submission. He saw that Mili had already placed her seal. This data would soon be entered into the scientific community on every sectilian world—to be further scrutinized by his peers and, most importantly, replicated.

  Tarn put his finger to the tablet to seal the file. He raised his beaming face to the camera that he knew was conveying their images to the bridge. Were they celebrating there, as his lab assistants were beginning to do here? Or were they still all serious, locked in their Anipraxic gestalt? “We did it, Pyona!” he said, hearing the hoarse exultation in his own voice. “Phase Two, complete!”

  Someone was pressing a cup of liquid into his hand.

  The room buzzed with laughter and animated conversation. He expected some kind of reply from Pyona, but when it didn’t come, he excused himself to head back to the bridge to get the praise he so richly deserved.

  The atmosphere on the bridge was not at all what he expected. The smile withered on his lips as he entered.

  The mandibles of a Swarm beetle filled the viewscreen.

  Tarn took an involuntary step back. When he recovered his composure he silently moved to his station and waited to see if he would be able to help in some way.

  He watched in awe as the bridge crew worked together, silently communicating, almost like a hive mind themselves. He looked down at his console and entered a search for all of Pyona’s most recent commands.

  She had issued a fast series of them, only moments before. The ship was no longer at rest. It was hurtling deep into the SetaNu system at high velocity.

  He searched farther. It seemed that the female that had inspected them while they were in orbit around the planet had followed them out to where they had hidden at the dim edge of the system and then had quietly landed on the ship.

  He shook his head with disbelief and stared with awe at the large viewscreen that dominated the bridge. It was possible. In three to four hours at top speeds a Swarm beetle could traverse that distance. But…the female had found them. That didn’t seem possible at all.

  They were now returning to the planet with a giant Swarm beetle along for the ride. The acceleration hadn’t torn the beetle loose, hadn’t even jostled it. The inertial dampeners that cradled the whole ship had cushioned the monster along with everything else.

  A red light flashed on his console. A message had been relayed from his lab, with a video attachment. Tarn frowned and leaned forward. Something had gone awry?

  The podlings’ metabolism had continued to decrease, going as low as forty-eight percent of control, but at that point they’d gone into a feeding frenzy—except that they’d ignored the vegetation that’d been left for them. They had turned on each other.

  Only the three largest of the seven test subjects were still alive, and when they weren’t trying to kill each other they were expending a lot of energy trying to escape the confines of their cell. Their dead cellmates lay in pieces strewn about the cell, the contents of their broken shells partially pulled out and devoured. Their metabolism was significantly decreased, but aggression seemed to be proportionally increased.

  Tarn wanted to fill the silence of the bridge with screams of frustration. Juveniles didn’t behave like this. Compared to adults they were almost docile. And he had never read anything in the literature that mentioned any known instances of Swarm beetle cannibalism. Was this an unintended consequence of tampering with their metabolism? Or was the presence of the adult female on the hull of the ship somehow affecting the juveniles in ways he couldn’t understand?

  He brought the command log back up. They were nearly back to SetaNu Four. Just a little bit longer and they’d be able to release the juveniles and retreat to a safe distance to watch the results of their experiment unfold.

  The squillae were clearly successfully manipulating Swarm physiology. That was all they needed. Once the squillae were in place, they’d have time to fix anything else.

  Another message from his lab.

  The podlings had breached containment by injecting super-heated plasma into the walls between the cargo bays. His people were working to cut them off and herd them back into their original enclosure. Tarn clutched the console. He broke out into a sweat and waited to hear word of their success. He would need to update Pyona about the status of the experiment soon.

  Moments later, another message came. The three Swarm beetle juveniles had found and killed the two control podlings. A soundless video showed them tearing the control insects apart and consuming pieces of the scattered carcasses before resuming their attack on the partitions. A white flare overloaded the video momentarily. Plasma. At least one of the podlings hadn’t depleted its plasma bladder yet.

  Tarn stared at the console in disbelief. Before he could finish reading that message, there was already another message waiting.

  Three of his team were dead.

  Tarn stood involuntarily. He looked at Pyona, intently overseeing her domain. How could he tell her this?

  Someone on the bridge let out a guttural cry of surprise. They already know, Tarn thought. He turned toward the officer who had cried out…and he saw the main viewscreen.

  Partially obscured by the black, chitinous leg of the female Swarm beetle on the hull, SetaNu Four hovered in the distance, significantly lighter in color. And between that planet and the Percedus streamed a dark glinting river of monsters. Tarn leaned against his seat, mouth hanging open, and felt the blood drain from his head.

  The source of the viewscreen’s feed switched to another camera and Tarn realized the Percedus was already into the thick of it. This view originated aft, displaying most of one side of the ship. There were three Swarm beetles attached to the ship there.

  Tarn look
ed at Pyona. Her lips were pursed. Her jaw was set. She was determined to finish the experiment. But how?

  The image displayed on the viewscreen careened and Tarn realized that, even though he felt no change, the ship was taking evasive maneuvers. Then he saw why. A Swarm beetle had been moving alongside, matching their velocity even as the ship swung wildly to avoid it. Then the beast simply latched on. The deck vibrated ever so slightly under Tarn’s feet but the inertial dampeners did their work. The Percedus continued on.

  It was the stuff of nightmares…childhood nightmares of being trapped in inky space by inky claws that catch…

  He’d underestimated them. They must communicate in some way…over distances…in a vacuum…he couldn’t even imagine how. He sat back down to collect his thoughts. He had to record these findings for future scientists. They had to know what had happened here.

  He bent to his console, nostrils flaring, heart palpitating in his chest. Around him the bridge was a different kind of silent, every figure consumed in a struggle that he could not see or hear.

  He took the sealed report that Mili had written and added every thought he could quickly type, all the messages from Mili, video clips from the lab and the hull of the ship, everything he could hastily put together. But how would he get that information back to Sectilius? Even O’Sep was too far away for radio communication now.

  A shipwide message flashed on his console. Everyone knew now. Nine more of his team dead. People from all over the ship were flooding that deck to help regain control.

  He broke the desperate silence. “Pyona, is there a way to leave behind some kind of information capsule?”

  Her head turned jerkily toward him. Her eyes were wide. He could see the whites of her eyes from here. She was terrified, but she held fast at the helm. “Yes, we can leave behind a buoy. Send me what you want to leave behind.”

  They both said the words as if they didn’t mean so much more.

  He sent his packet of information to her console. She nodded that she’d received it.

  He sent Mili a message, demanding an update.

  He glanced at the viewscreen, now rotating between various cameras on the exterior of the ship, most of which were blackened by enormous Swarm beetle bodies. A white flash of plasma lit the bridge before the filters autodulled it and then the camera view cycled again.

  Tarn felt cold.

  No reply from Mili. That was unlike her. She needed him.

  There was no way he could help from the bridge. He got up on legs that felt strange and wobbly and left.

  He could think of only one thing. He had to get the podlings off the ship. Immediately. He would think about the consequences later. If he could just release them, perhaps the adults would be appeased and leave them alone. At the very least the squillae could begin to do their work. Perhaps they could escape…

  He took the deck-to-deck transport to the level where his people were fighting to contain the rampaging juvenile podlings.

  When the door opened he wasn’t prepared for what he saw.

  A wet metallic smell struck him in the face. Animalistic screams echoed through the corridors. Everywhere the ubiquitous green surfaces were smeared with black—walls, floors, ceilings. It took him a moment to see that the black wasn’t really black. It was red blood, everywhere.

  What had happened here? Could all of this possibly be the work of three maddened insects?

  The ship rocked under his feet. That shouldn’t be possible, and yet it had happened. The Swarm beetles must have damaged the inertial dampeners.

  He stumbled out of the transport, uncertain where to turn to offer help since conditions might have changed since he had left the bridge. Only a few of the lights were functional. One flickered at his feet.

  At the end of the corridor the silhouette of a short, stocky person stumbled backwards into view.

  Tarn began to call out, but something unnatural in the person’s stance checked his words in his throat. The light flickered again. It was a woman. Was she wounded? She seemed to be struggling.

  Abruptly he realized that this blood-drenched woman wasn’t a stranger. It was Mili. Several of the corridor lights flickered back on. Mili had turned slightly, and he could see that she was impaled on a sharp, black foreleg.

  Tarn was rooted where he stood. He wanted to turn away, to run away, but he couldn’t move. With sickening clarity he knew that there was nothing he could do for her. She was barely alive now. And he had no weapon.

  Her name formed silently on his lips.

  The Swarm beetle scuttled around the corner on it’s remaining appendages. The pair clung to each other in a deadly dance. They swayed and pitched along with the ship. Suddenly the insect lunged forward and tore Mili’s throat out with its mandibles. Blood gushed from the wound, showering the beetle.

  As Mili sank slowly to the floor, the podling eagerly sank with her, slurping the blood spewing from her neck and then tearing at her savagely, throwing gobbets of her flesh in a dark circle of gore.

  Mili’s body was short, stocky, with corded musculature—the atellan body type—just like his own. He shook his head and shuddered.

  Tarn fully woke to the fact that he had no way to protect himself. He was just a peaceful man. A scientist. As Mili had been.

  The universe had gone mad.

  He needed to find a weapon. If he could just get to the lab. The insect’s attention was consumed with its prey. Perhaps he could sneak down the corridor the other way. Tarn slowly slid sideways down the wall behind him and peeked around the corner.

  There were at least a dozen bodies strewn along that corridor. And to his horror he saw that there was another podling consuming another one of his team members, its head buried in the man’s gaping chest.

  He must have made some small sound. He hadn’t meant to.

  It looked up, its head lifting the body like a dangling puppet. It made eye contact. Oh…no.

  Tarn stumbled back blindly. He had to get to the lab. He needed to find a solution. He couldn’t think there, surrounded by the carnage of his team and the Percedus crew. He had to escape and fix this before anyone else perished.

  He was beginning to feel separated from reality. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a terrible dream. He seemed to be moving slowly, as though underwater.

  The ship rumbled and rocked. Tarn lost his footing and backed into someone.

  As he turned, he automatically muttered a hasty apology before he realized that it was the podling that had been devouring Mili only moments before.

  The insect was slightly bigger than Tarn. It lumbered unsteadily over the shifting decking.

  Tarn froze. Every hair on his body stood on end.

  Blood dripped from the podling’s mandibles. There was a cold insatiable hunger in its gaze that made Tarn’s blood curdle.

  He was nothing but meat to this monster.

  Tarn shoved the beast away, his hands slipping in Mili’s blood, and braced himself to fight, his hands up, every nerve on alert, every muscle taut.

  There was a horrible sound of rending metal so loud that Tarn bent at the waist against the wall and covered his ears.

  The other podling came around the corner from the adjacent corridor, scuttling toward him. It had dumped its burden.

  He would never make it to the lab now.

  He shuffled along the wall to the deck-to-deck transport as the floor seemed to sway under his feet. It was the only route to escape. He would tell Pyona to seal off this deck. He could rewrite the code for the squillae, or deactivate them. He just had to get out.

  They were closing on him. He felt the prickly brush of a tarsal claw…

  The ship shuddered and groaned. His ears felt painfully full. The air was a hurricane. Tarn grabbed at something, anything. His fingers locked on the edge of the transport door.

  He felt the podling lose its grip on his clothing. Tarn watched as the monster helplessly scrabbled across the deck plates and was swept away.

&nb
sp; And then the wind was gone. There was an abrupt silence. A ghastly pull was filling his eyes with tears, stabbing his ears, dragging every wisp of air from his lungs.

  Using every ounce of strength he had, he pulled himself into the deck-to-deck transport and slapped the symbol to close the door.

  His saliva boiled away on his tongue. His vision began to narrow. He watched the other Swarm beetle lumber toward the transport.

  The door closed. Air instantly hissed into the chamber. He gulped lungfuls of air and collapsed in a corner, spent.

  His heart hammered against his ribcage. His breath dragged over a raw throat. He reached up and keyed the transport to take him back to the bridge.

  The doors opened.

  His heart thudded dully. He was safe. He’d escaped.

  Tarn shoved his feet under himself and pushed himself up with difficulty. He yawned and swayed. He couldn’t seem to get enough air.

  Exhaustion from his ordeal fell on him like a heavy, spongy blanket. Lethargy dragged at his limbs. He must be in shock.

  He needed to tell Pyona what was happening down there as soon as possible. He moved unsteadily toward the bridge. Walking felt like a monumental task.

  He felt lightheaded. He had to stop partway there to rest. His breathing was labored and slow. He began to worry that the atmospheric pressure was low because of the decompression on the other deck. He would ask Pyona.

  Finally he made it to the bridge and keyed the door symbol.

  The ship lurched, hurling him to the floor in the middle of the room, but he righted himself and tried to reclaim some dignity as he straightened, but no one looked up.

  He shambled to his station and slumped in the seat. Sweat poured from him. Why was his body moving this way? It wasn’t responding as it should.

  He looked down at himself. Had he been injured but didn’t realize it?

  Did the ship pitch and roll again? Or only for him?

  He was dizzy. His thoughts were muddy, as sluggish as his body.

  He panted in slow rasping gasps, verging on sobbing, trying to regain control of himself, but something was opposing him.