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"WE BROUGHT YOU GIFTS," said Elgrapharr as one of his commandos carried in a metal crate.
Sigurdsson sat in the crew lounge of the Azrael’s Tear with Elgrapharr, Cagliari, Elgrapharr’s commandos and Cagliari’s pilots. She had been curious as to how the icaran commandos would react to the five icaran pilots Cagliari had brought, given that they were essentially mercenaries, but there had been no issues at all. In fact, they all seemed to get on splendidly.
"This should be interesting," said Cagliari, throwing a lopsided grin at Sigurdsson.
The commando set the crate down in front of Sigurdsson and stepped away.
"What, for me?" she said.
"Now that you are partly icaran, we wish to welcome you to our species," said Elgrapharr.
Somewhat hesitantly, Sigurdsson popped the seal on the crate and opened it. Inside, nestled in a bed of spongy, foam-like material, was a brand new aoran assault rifle and one of the boxy vayan sidearms carried by all of the commandos.
Sigurdsson grinned as she picked up the vayan and tested its weight. The pistol was heavier than the Trondheim Arms models she was used to carrying, but like the aoran, was designed for the icaran hand – making it a far more comfortable grip for her.
"Thank you," she said, forcing a smile while clenching her jaw. She swallowed the lump in her throat and pretended to be very carefully examining the sidearm with her increasingly blurry vision.
She considered it fortuitous when Singh entered, the distraction giving her enough time to collect herself.
"We have received confirmation that the biological alert has been triggered and evacuation is underway," he said. "We will launch our operation in thirty minutes."
"Okay then," said Cagliari, drumming her hands on the table. "Details, right?"
The assembled teams looked at her expectantly and she grinned.
"Basically, this is a smash-and-grab."
The humans all nodded, but the icarans exchanged confused glances.
"We go in, grab what we came for and get the hell out as quickly as possible," said Cagliari. "We have a friend with insider access to the computer systems on Duster's Range. She's just triggered a bogus evacuation order, which buys us about three hours working time once we get on-site."
"What happens after three hours?" asked one of the icarans. Sigurdsson wasn't sure of her name.
"The mercs start coming back and we're fucked."
With the shuttle from the Azrael's Tear already loaded, the team filed into the cramped hold. The icarans clad in their battle armour, the pilots in their flight suits with their helmets in backpacks, Sigurdsson felt underdressed in cargo pants, a t-shirt and a ballistic vest. The brill doctor, who had insisted on accompanying the team, was the lone member to go unarmed. Fully kitted out, the icaran commandos carried assault rifles and sidearms and the pilots each carried a pistol. Holstered and strapped to Sigurdsson’s thigh was her vayan.
As the landing craft from the Azrael’s Tear settled on the landing pad at Duster’s Range, the atmospheric trails left by the evacuation shuttles leaving the ATC Castle facility were still visible. The facility was in full lockdown mode, as Cortez had promised. Elgrapharr and Sigurdsson led the team off the shuttle, reaching the entrance door and waving the all-clear.
Running the short distance to join them, Cagliari quickly tapped in the code she’d been given by her source on the inside, the code that would – supposedly – allow them access to the facility despite the lockdown.
The door bleeped and slid open.
"So far so good," said Sigurdsson.
Stepping inside the facility, Sigurdsson took a moment as her eyes adjusted to the orange cast of the light. It seemed she wasn’t the only one, as Cagliari stumbled slightly on the doorframe. The icarans didn’t miss a beat, the holographic interfaces within their faceless helmets automatically adjusting to filter the light in the most efficient manner for their wearers.
Raising his aoran to his shoulder, Elgrapharr took the lead, Sigurdsson and her bulky pistol at his side. Behind them were two of the icaran commandos – a male named Lorocan and a female who was called Aylarr – and then Cagliari and the brill, who everyone was now referring to as Frankenstein. The pilots were bunched in between them and the two commandos brought up the rear.
When they’d first arrived on the Azrael’s Tear, Cagliari had been worried about only having six commandos. If for some reason they did run into resistance, she’d said, she’d like to think they had enough soldiers to make a difference. Sigurdsson had just chuckled and shook her head and asked the woman if she’d ever seen an icaran commando in combat. She hadn’t of course. Sigurdsson had chuckled again and walked away.
"Cortez has set their security cameras on an infinite loop," said Cagliari, glancing at her tablet as they walked. "But she says there are some ASD units that she can’t control from where she is."
"ASD units? What does this mean?" said Elgrapharr.
"It stands for Automated Security Drone," said Cagliari. "Robots with rudimentary artificial intelligence designed to be part of a facility’s standard security deployment. They can’t broadcast alerts outside the facility with Cortez’s lockdown, but they can still function and communicate with one another."
"How well-armed are they?" said Sigurdsson.
"I don’t know. They’re designed to replace security guards, not soldiers – we shouldn’t be looking at military-grade weapons."
"Shouldn’t."
"I can’t make any promises, Freyja."
The facility was eerily quiet aside from the soft hum of the ventilation systems. The hangar where the Argentavis fighters were supposedly held was three floors below their entry point, its large doors opening from the side of a cliff. With the elevators shut down as a result of the biological contaminant alert that had allowed them to gain access in the first place, traveling through the facility and down to the hangar would take the better part of an hour, cutting their total available time down to just over two hours. After that, the ATC Castle teams would start returning and escape would become all the more difficult.
Once it became clear that this had been an intrusion and not a containment failure, the gloves would come off and the PMC would put considerable resources into making sure Sigurdsson and her group never left Duster’s Range.
"The medical research facility is that way," said Cagliari, pointing down a corridor that branched off to the left.
As a consideration for all he had done for her, Sigurdsson had agreed to escort Frankenstein to the research lab and let him have a look around while the others made their way down to the hangar. Nodding, she turned to Elgrapharr.
"Good luck the rest of the way. We’ll rendezvous back at the shuttle."
"Good luck to you as well," he said, the words coming out strangely as there was no actual icaran word for ‘luck.’ "Aylarr, go with them."
Without a word, the female commando stepped in line beside Sigurdsson and Sigurdsson was struck again by the command structure of the group. Unlike the Commonwealth Army, with its ream of officers and non-commissioned officers of varying ranks, within the icaran commandos, there were only two ranks – you were the captain, like Elgrapharr, or you were a commando. Once in a while there would be a higher rank involved who commanded more than one unit, and thus had two Captains under his or her command – Locaris, for example, had been a Brigadier General – but this simplified rank structure appealed greatly to Sigurdsson. There were no pissing matches and there were no arguments about who was responsible for certain duties. The job just got done.
The two groups split off to reach their respective goals and Sigurdsson activated her link with the Azrael’s Tear.
"This is Sigurdsson. You copy up there?"
"Affirmative," came Singh’s no-nonsense reply.
"Elgrapharr and Cagliari have taken their group and headed toward the hangar," she said. "I’m with Aylarr and Frankenstein heading to the medical labs."
"Very well. I have spoken with our medic. He has transmitted a list of medicines to Doctor Frankenstein’s tablet he would like for you to acquire."
Sigurdsson watched as Frankenstein checked his tablet and nodded.
"All right, we’ll see what we can do," she said and closed the connection without waiting for a reply. While she understood the rationale behind amassing supplies when one could, she wasn’t thrilled about this becoming an actual pirate raid. The mission was supposed to be about taking back assets that ATC Castle had stolen from Cagliari Aerospace and, as a favour very much owed, allowing Frankenstein a sneak peek at whatever was being developed in the medical labs. But Singh had managed to tack on to the mission some actual thievery.
Not that she could blame the man. He and his crew had survived for a very long time both before and after the ril-galas attack by scavenging and plundering what they could when they could, and passing up the opportunity to restock the shelves of their small medical bay would have been a horrendous mistake.
And so Sigurdsson planned to humour the captain.
Following the map on Frankenstein’s tablet, they reached the medical labs quickly and began looking around.
"Fucking hell," said Sigurdsson.
In a long alcove on one side of the lab were six glass-fronted chambers, each containing a naked icaran – three male and three female. The steady beep of life support mechanisms could be heard emanating from each pod. A small touch screen was mounted on the front of each pod and Sigurdsson stepped up to the first in the line.
ICARAN SPECIMEN "A" – MALE. SMALLPOX.
Beneath it was an infection date and status updates regarding infection, symptoms and damage caused by the infection going back nearly three years.
The next pod in line was an icaran female who had been infected with necrotizing fasciitis seven months prior. Then a male infected with hemorrhagic fever. A female with bubonic plague. A male with some form of coronavirus. A female with cholera.
ATC Castle was researching biological weapons to use against the icarans. And worse, with the exception of the female with plague and the male with smallpox, all the infection dates were within the prior twelve months. The research was continuing despite the assistance the icarans had given the Commonwealth in the early days of the ril-galas war.
"They have not been allowed to die," said Aylarr, removing her helmet. Her skin was a pale orange broken by vibrant blue stripes and small white speckles.
"No. No, they haven’t."
"I don’t understand. Why is this being done?"
"It appears ATC Castle is trying to determine which human-originating diseases can have the greatest effect on icaran physiology," said Frankenstein, stepping up to the disturbing display and scrolling through the infection notes. Tapping a few commands into the small display, a larger, more easily readable version of the data began scrolling across his tablet. "Life support is being maintained in order to observe long-term effects of these pathogens."
"If we were to turn off the machines, they would die?"
"Yes," said Frankenstein.
"Please do so."
"You... do not wish us to attempt to treat them?"
"No. I wish us to let them go."
"But-."
"Frankenstein, just let them go," said Sigurdsson. "They’ve suffered enough."
"Of course, I understand," he said, moving unit to unit, entering a few commands into each. Slowly, the machines began to cycle down and within a few minutes, the steady sound of life support was no more.
Looking up toward the ceiling, Aylarr began to sing a low song about the loss of unknown lives.
"Let her mourn," she said quietly to Frankenstein. "Find those drugs Singh wants. I’m going to check out the rest of the lab."
Heading further down the corridor, Sigurdsson saw stasis chambers like those Frankenstein had in his own lab, from which he’d brought her new arms, and she decided against checking what they held. She had a hunch she wouldn’t like it. But it also made her wonder if ATC Castle employed any brill. As much as she liked Frankenstein – the name was appropriate – he sometimes seemed more interested in what was possible with medical science over what should be done with medical science.
Sigurdsson flexed her fingers, feeling the tendons tighten and release.
She wouldn’t be judging him too harshly.
Continuing on her way, Sigurdsson hadn’t proceeded more than ten steps when she stopped dead in her tracks.
There was a glass... cage, for lack of a better term. Completely walled in, floor-to-ceiling with what she could tell at a glance was ballistic-grade glass, easily a foot thick. The cage itself was probably four metres square and at its centre, slumped over and unmoving, was a ril-galas foot soldier.
It twitched.
"It’s alive," she said to no one but herself, then activated the comm channel that would go to everyone on the team as well as the Azrael’s Tear. "They have a live ril-galas foot soldier in here."
"Unrestrained?" said Elgrapharr, a hint of static in his signal due to what they now understood was a degree of low-level radiation given off by the ril-galas themselves.
"Negative. It’s in a containment cell and it seems... I don’t know," she said, leaning in closer to the glass. "Drugged, maybe."
"I should very much like to see this," said Frankenstein. "I will join you momentarily."
"Yeah. Okay."
It surprised her, as she waited for Frankenstein, how fascinated she was by the creature and how different it looked now, trapped in a cage, versus how it looked on the battlefield. The manta-like head of its biomechanical ‘power armour’ as Commonwealth Naval Intelligence called it, in constant motion in the battlefield, now sagged to the left, motionless but for the occasional twitch or the blinking of one of its six eyes.
Suddenly, Sigurdsson staggered backward, an overwhelming feeling passing through her that someone or something was crying for help.
"Are you well, Freyja?" asked Frankenstein, suddenly by her side.
"Did... did you hear anything?"
"I’m afraid I did not."
She shook her head, trying to clear it, but the feeling came again, washing over her like a wave.
"Doc, could that thing be trying to communicate? With its mind, I mean?"
Frankenstein looked up at her, then back to the ril-galas.
"I do not believe so. Based on the medical readings displayed here," he said, pointing to the monitoring station set up in front of the cell. "This creature is essentially comatose."
The feeling was still there. Sigurdsson glanced down the corridor and saw another monitoring station set up about six metres away, presumably in front of another glass-fronted cell. As she cautiously approached the station, there was a feeling of hope and then, as she stepped in front of the cell, an image appeared in her head of ATC Castle scientists and a memory of intense pain. So vivid was the image that Sigurdsson had to brace herself on the console to make sure she remained upright.
Shaking her head to clear it again, she stared into the cell.
Like the cell holding the ril-galas, this one was a simple box crafted of ballistic glass and possessing the same dimensions. At the centre of this cell sat a largely shapeless mass of mottled black and dark brown. It wasn’t much bigger than a basketball.
"What the hell are you?" said Sigurdsson. The words were muttered to herself more than any attempt at gaining an answer from anyone, but almost immediately, an image forced its way into her head, an image of an udukiin soldier.
Brows knitting together in a deep frown, Sigurdsson stabbed a finger at the console, activating the touch-screen display.
There was no way that thing could be an udukiin, not unless the ATC Castle scientists had performed some horrific experiments upon it. Udukiin may have been odd-looking, with their almost Y-shaped heads and their four arms, but they had heads, they had arms, they had legs. The thing in the cage appeared to have none of those features.
Bringing up the details of the cell’s contents took her a moment, but when it finally rolled onto the screen, Sigurdsson was unable to stop the gasp that escaped her lips.
PAIN THRESHOLD RESULTS FOR SUBJECT 33...
TELEPATHIC AND EMPATHIC STRESS RESULTS FOR SUBJECT 33...
DETAILED MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS FOR SUBJECT 33: UDUKIIN MATRIARCH...
An udukiin Matriarch.
She looked up from the screen and back at the shapeless mass.
ATC Castle had captured an udukiin Matriarch.
Feared by most other species for their ferocity in battle, the udukiin were intentionally avoided by even the icarans. The entire race was considered mentally unstable by many, with their entire culture based upon prophecies tens of thousands of years old. Even a grunt like Sigurdsson knew bits and pieces of their prophecies, about a great Matriarch coming out of the black – ‘the black’ being the traditional udukiin term for space – and leading their people to their rightful place in the galaxy. But in all the years since humanity first encountered the udukiin, none had ever seen a Matriarch. At least, not that had ever been officially reported. She wasn’t even sure the icarans had encountered a Matriarch since the last icaran-udukiin war – and that had ended several hundred years ago.
The udukiin, according to the sparse intel reports she’d read, were a species unlike any other that humanity had encountered. Though they had two sexes, the female sex had a rare sub-group – the Matriarchs. Though sharing many genetic markers with ‘regular’ udukiin, Matriarchs were symbiotic creatures, merging their bodies with that of an udukiin female. Through this union, the ruling class of the Udukiin Priex was formed, with a triad of Matriarchs governing the Priex. It was rumoured that when required, a different type of Matriarch – a War Matriarch – was born and at her joining, the udukiin would march to war. It sounded a little too far-fetched to Sigurdsson that a species would base its wars on the birth of one particular subset of their population... but the udukiin were a strange society.
And ATC Castle had a Matriarch.
She’d have had an easier time believing that they’d been breeding trolls. And yet here it was. Asking for help. She wasn’t sure what to do and found herself asking what Radko would do in her place. The answer was simple: he’d help the Matriarch. He’d help the Matriarch in the hopes that doing so would generate enough good will that the udukiin would agree to join forces with the humans and icarans against the ril-galas.
Likely a slim chance, but one she had no doubt Radko would take.
It took her a few minutes to figure it out, but Sigurdsson found the right controls to open the cell. Before hitting the final command, she hesitated. Opening the cell could also be an enormous mistake.
She hit the command and cell door hissed, sliding straight out and then to the side.
Taking a deep breath, Sigurdsson stepped into the doorway.
"Can you hear me?"
There was no verbal response, but somehow Sigurdsson knew the Matriach understood.
"I don’t know much about your people," said Sigurdsson, approaching the Matriarch in extreme slow motion. "I don’t know if it’s bad that I’m talking to you or what, but I want to help. Okay?"
Again, she felt something akin to agreement, or at least understanding, wash over her.
As she stepped up beside the Matriarch, the creature quivered slightly and Sigurdsson knelt beside it.
"Are you still in pain?"
It wasn’t. But it had been very recently.
"How long have you been here?"
There was nothing by which the creature could gauge time while in its cell.
"Would your people help mine in battle if I could get you home?"
At the word ‘home,’ a flood of images poured into Sigurdsson's mind, images of a planet she’d never seen. Lush vegetation. Streaming banners. A shining city that seemed to float in the air. The deluge of imagery was so sudden, so massive, so forceful that she lost her balance, reaching out a hand to steady herself.
The moment her flesh touched that of the Matriarch, the shapeless mass reared up and launched itself at Sigurdsson, wrapping itself around her. She tried to yell for help, but the Matriarch stretched its rubbery skin over her mouth and then then over her nose and she felt tiny filaments crawling across her face and sliding under her eyelids and into her eye sockets.
Unable to breath, Sigurdsson keeled forward, trying desperately to claw her way to the door and hopefully to assistance.
Surely Frankenstein had heard her thrashing?
As she reached forward, her vision dimming from lack of oxygen, she saw the Matriarch’s flesh flowing down her arm like an oil slick, enveloping her wrist and palm and squeezing between her fingers and then suddenly the blockage over her mouth and nose was gone and she gulped in several mouthfuls of air. Her eyes stung and her arms and neck felt like they were on fire.
Scuttling away to the far side of the cell on her hands and knees, Sigurdsson tore her vayan out of its holster and frantically aimed at each square metre of the cell in turn, but the Matriarch was gone.
But it wasn’t. She could sense the damn thing.
"Freyja?"
Doctor Frankenstein raised his hands calmly when she spun to point the pistol in his direction.
"Please allow me to examine you."
"I’m fine," she said, her voice barely a croak. "Where is the Matriarch? Did you see it?"
The brill paused momentarily before answering.
"I have seen it, yes. Please allow me to examine you."
"Where did it... son of a bitch," she said, struggling to her feet, then squeezing her eyes shut and massaging her forehead. She had a headache more intense than she’d ever experienced with her cybernetic optics. "Where did it go? It attacked me and then just vanished."
"It... did not."
"I’m not playing this game, Doc – where the fuck did it go?"
"It is still here," he said, reaching out and taking Sigurdsson’s left forearm in his hand, raising it into her line of sight.
"Shit."
She spun to face the glass wall of the cell, taking in her reflection. Her arms, shoulders and neck were covered in a dark, chitinous armour and a pair of small, angular lines – tendrils – snaked out from the armour on her neck up across her cheek and into her organic left eye.
The Matriarch hadn’t attacked her and escaped.
"The udukiin Matriarch can by its nature only gain agency through symbiosis," said Frankenstein. "Without symbiosis, it is extremely vulnerable and at the mercy of those around it."
"It fucking bonded. To me."
"Indeed."
"Scan me. Now. What the fuck is it doing to me, Doc?"
A feeling of calm washed over her, but she pushed it away, knowing exactly where it was coming from.
"No, don’t you try to calm me down, you fucker," she said. "I offer help and you do this?"
A complete absence of feeling followed, which Sigurdsson understood to mean her point had been taken.
Frankenstein led her to a full-body medical scanner and had her lay down inside it. It seemed to Sigurdsson to take forever for the scan to complete, during which time the Matriarch remained blissfully silent.
"You are in excellent health," said Frankenstein finally. "And in fact the points where your human and icaran physiologies merge are healing at a greater rate now than they were before."
"This thing is making me better?"
"An overly simplistic view of it, but yes. It is promoting healing."
"And what’s it taking in return? It’s a parasite, right, so what’s it doing to me?"
"This is not a parasitic relationship," said Frankenstein. "More accurate to call it a conjunctive symbiosis. In parasitic relationships, the parasitic entity reaps all benefit. In symbiosis, the relationship benefits both component species. In this instance, you are being healed and have, one would presume based on your armoured appearance, gained some measure of protection, while the Matriarch has gained the ability to act and communicate through you."
"Well, that’s just fucking great for her, isn’t it?"
"Absolutely," said Frankenstein, the sarcasm blowing by him at high speed.
"Is this permanent?"
"I am unsure-."
"Not you, Doc. The Matriarch. Is this permanent?"
It wasn’t. The symbiosis could be reversed. And again she saw images of what she now knew for certain was the udukiin homeworld.
"We need to find the others," said Sigurdsson, swinging her legs over the side of the scanner bed and hopping off. Wobbling on her feet slightly, she steadied herself on the scanner and rubbed a hand over her face. "And once we get Cagliari’s fighters out of here, I need to take a trip to the Udukiin Priex."