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John Carpenter's
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BIOMASK ZERO - CHAPTER 2
Rail adjusted the focus goggles and aimed them at the sector in
question. Lin didn't want to startle him, especially in deep
scantrance, but this was very important. He toggled the edge
enhancement knob, so that the image to Rail would blur slightly. Rail
raised his hand in a wave, and Lin watched the intensity gauges slowly
come down to within normal ranges.
Rail flipped up the lenses and squinted at his CO. "Emergency?" he
said in wholespeak.
"Saboteur," Lin responded appropriately.
"Silent-Level-Three?" he inquired. Lin nodded. The silent alarm would
only effect the level three personnel and higher. Lin touched his
wristband and whispered something, Comm language that Lin had learned
in training but had no use for. Immediately the door to the navstation
opened and Colonel Wash stepped through.
"Wow," grinned Rail, "that was fast!"
"What was?" the Colonel asked, then he toggled his earlobe. "Oh," he
responded. "A saboteur?"
"Glik says the main sample has been tampered with," Lin responded.
Wash blinked. "Only a level three? I think we have an all-hands
situation here."
"It's your call," Lin told him.
"Do it," the Colonel told Rail.
When the klaxon sounded, Sy nodded her head and prayed for
forgiveness then slapped her wrist violently. "Rail?"
The spider quivered in her ear. "Yup," it said.
"What is going on? I'm in the middle of a deep scan here. If I have to
suddenly leave my post, we could get ambushed by the Snouts!"
"Stay where you are. We'll come to you. Don't let anyone into your
corridor."
"Maybe I won't let any of you in."
Rail laughed. "Then we'll have to kill you." The spider flattened.
Sy grinned. We'll see, she thought. Her console suddenly
hummed, and she went into action, donning her focus goggles and
slipping into scantrance. She fine-tuned the enhancement knob until
she got the mild outline of a twisted trail of hyporesidue, a blemish
in the ink. The Snouts' twisted femur of a ship had been hiding there
moments before.
"Getting closer," she grinned. "I'll get you, soon." Another hum, off
pitch as to render dissonance with the first, summoned her. She
recorded the incidence, and then called up the virtual console in her
goggles. Expecting proximity coordinates, instead she received an
array of environmental readings.
"What is this?"
Rail leaned back in his formfit, his goggles propped up on his
forehead. "You disagree with the Colonel's 'all-hands' order."
Lin smirked. "You could tell?" He laughed. "If you want to know, I'm
of the opinion that when someone on board is not who he seems, you
don't sound the alarm. Our saboteur is now prepared."
"Why didn't you fight him on it?"
"Because I'm tired. You know how many times I've gone up against Wash
on so many different policies? I might as well jump into the ink out
there."
"Hold up." Rail sat up and touched the side of his head. He began
moving his lips soundlessly, probably talking to Sy again, Lin
surmised. He was about to turn about and follow Wash down the corridor
when Rail snapped his fingers.
"Sy's found something!" he shouted, jumping up.
"What's that thing they're carrying?" Shurm asked. Down the line,
Colonel Wash and Dr. Glik toted along a narrow tablet with an
illuminated surface. Each soldier placed his hand upon the tablet in
turn, and then the pair would move on to the next man in line.
"Who cares?" responded Bunbee. "Just some excuse for the higher-ups to
feel important. Probably a drug test, like we can get our hands on any
stash out here. Listen, did I tell you about the Snout battle I was
in?"
Shurm sighed. "About a hundred times," he mumbled. He kept watching
the approaching pair.
"The Lizzies were all over the place. Slamody had stabbed one in the
heart, or at least where he thought the heart was, and it burned half
his skin off. Roan's foxhole crumbled and he found himself in a nest
of those crawlies. One locked on his face, so I had to put an
arrowhead through both of their brains at the same time. I got
splashed and lost my pinkie up to the first knuckle." He whipped off
his glove and showed his scarred hand to Shurm, who only glanced at
it. He had seen it already. "I tell you, if we go into the thick of it
again, I'm carrying some cyacap under my thumbnail. Squeeze it into
your capillaries and you're history. I'm lucky to be here telling you
this."
"Me, too," Shurm whispered.
Wash and Glik stepped in front of Shurm with the tablet. He placed his
hand on the cold, flat surface, just like he had seen all the soldiers
before him do. A tingling feeling caressed his palm briefly, and the
hue of the illumination yellowed. Glik nodded.
"You're clean," Wash told him.
They moved one step over to Bunbee, who quickly elbowed Shurm. "I'll
finish my story in a second." Shurm didn't listen. He was already out
of line and following the rest of the men down the hall, back to their
stations.
In the scanbay, Lin leaned in close to Sy's datascreen to study the
environmental information, and then he began to pace, like he always
did when thinking.
"What does it mean?" Rail asked her.
Sy clicked her jaw for a few moments, then said, "I think it's a
reading on the third and fourth planets. The ship's enviros are always
on, just in case. Well, it seems that the case has come up. We have a
90 percent probability of life."
"Impossible," Lin murmured. "This edge of the galaxy has always been
dead. That's why we came here. The council couldn't have missed
something this big. Two planets, side by side, with life on
them?"
"Not life," Sy corrected, "but the probability of life."
"Ninety percent!" Lin was shouting now. "I'd say that's near
definite!" He watched Sy clench her fist in the shadows beneath her
console and knew that she had a propensity for sudden outbursts of
rage. Rail apparently noticed this, too.
"All right now, let's remain calm. All this means is that we can't
send out a pulse."
"All this means?" Lin growled. "That's our secret weapon! If we
can't send out a pulse, we might as well surrender. If that deformed
bone out there has pods, we might as well commit suicide right here."
"What about your precious Epiline warriors?" Sy sneered.
Lin continued his pacing, talking out loud to himself more than to
anyone else. "Oh, yeah, if we can get those things off the ground, we
might be able to tame and program them before, say, the last one of
our corpses hits the ink."
At that moment the door to the scanbay opened, revealing Wash and Glik.
"Wonderful," Rail whispered.
"Ah," Wash nodded, "you're all in one place. You're the last three to
be tested." Glik stepped forward with his tablet.
Lin slapped his hand down. "Sy, do you want to tell Wash or do I?"
Sy only turned her formfit around and slid her goggles down.
"Tell me what?" Wash's brow furrowed.
"You're fine," Glik said. He turned the tablet to Rail.
"We can't use the pulse. Apparently there's life in this system."
"What?"
Rail placed his hand on the tablet.
"We're close," Sy called out, "I found some residue, but we can't
expose them without the pulse."
Wash shook his head in frustration. "There can't possibly be life out
here. How far away?"
"Okay," Glik said. Rail removed his hand.
"About half a click," Sy muttered. "Too close for a pulse." Glik
gently touched her arm. She didn't look his way, but placed her hand
on his tablet while continuing her work with the other hand.
"It's only theory," Lin surmised, "that the pulse will contaminate
life from this distance. We could try it anyway."
"The pulse effects wouldn't show for a few galactic years anyway,"
Rail added.
"You're clean," Dr. Glik said.
Wash had been lost in thought until the doctor had spoken this last
time. Now, he snapped his head up and looked about the cramped and
gloomily lit scanbay. "Well, it seems that nobody on the ship has been
contaminated."
Chapter 3 COMING SOON
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