Chapter 39

“Odd,” I murmured in shock. “They’re still registering on my wand as alive.”

“Sir, look at this!” a Trooper called out.

I headed over to find a strange bulge in the chest of a torn apart corpse. I examined it carefully with my wand.

“It’s a parasite,” I said finally. “It’s feeding off the corpse but linking up to the brain and keeping the life signs going.”

“What do we do with them, Sir?” Danva asked.

“Kill the parasites and bodybag the Troopers,” I sighed. “Get them back to our craft and hunt down the other life-signs.”

“Sir!”

I’m still not sure what the alien parasites were doing on our Troopers, other than surviving. It certainly wasn’t about controlling our fallen Troopers, nor had I ever seen or heard the like reported before. All the fallen Troopers we found though had been ‘infected’ in a similar manner. All were dead, but the parasites themselves were still registering the corpses as alive to our sensors.

We began a new advance, following the life-beacons of another group of Troopers, taking on the aliens we found still massed beside the power plant, which we wrecked on our way out, causing the ship to lose gravity.

“Looks like they were trying to make it to where the other landing craft docked,” I concluded as we found another dead Trooper, whom we bodybagged after killing the parasite.

“Makes sense, Sir,” sub-Monitor Dewa answered. “Probably what we’d attempt if it was us.”

“Hmm,” I nodded, recognising the truth of the situation.

“Not sure why they lost contact though,” Danva added.

“True. Their suit AI is still running and as far as I can tell, the other boarding party should have recognised an issue,” I replied thoughtfully.

“No jamming reported, Sir?”

“Not from the second group, though the damage to the landing craft and boarding pod may have prevented this group from reporting.”

“Still doesn’t explain why they didn’t contact the other group, Sir.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

It was clear that some sort of fighting retreat had gone on as the body count mounted. Still, I kept my hopes up as there was no sign of Torun amongst the bodies found. We were still being attacked by random aliens, though they did seem to have issues with zero-G and most were taken down at a distance. Finally, though, I picked up something on my suit sensors and called a halt whilst I got the AI to tune out a lot of background interference.

“Survivors, Sir?” Danva finally asked.

“Might be. I’m pretty sure it’s one of ours, but it keeps moving into incoherence,” I replied. “Anyway, that direction,” I pointed.

The Troopers moved out again, ever deeper into the alien ship, following a life-beacon and a tantalising signal that moved in and out of range. The sounds of battle, however, grew and our pace quickened as we realised someone on our side was still fighting. Eventually we ran into the back of a large group of the heavier armoured aliens and launched a series of stick-bombs into their rear before charging in and clearing them out.

“Ground Force!” I yelled out.

“Ki ... Kiria?” came a weak reply.

“Torun! I’m here!” I yelled back joyfully and moved forward, pulling my wand out.

There were six Troopers and Torun backed into a room with alien bodies strewn everywhere and all the signs of a very stiff fight. All the Troopers had injuries, though all had signs of some healing and were mostly on their feet. Torun, though, was severely injured. It looked like the aliens had done some damage to the communication nexus on her armour, which explained why comms were mostly down and why their positioning signal was off by several degrees and distance.

Torun was also infected with what I now recognised as parasite spores, but had managed to use nanites to hold them temporarily at bay whilst she helped her unit to survive. Unfortunately, this had left her slowly slipping into confusion or unconsciousness at times, only to awaken and have to help a wounded Trooper, rather than herself.

I had soon added another batch of nanites into her system, which I had my AI adapt to kill off life based on the parasites I’d examined on the original bodies, as well as healing her wounds and taking the pressure off her brain via a hematoma. I also had her suit put her into a sleeping state as Danva calculated a route back to our landing crafts.

Once Torun was stable, I worked on the more seriously wounded of the Troopers with her getting them all back into a fit (ish) state along with treatment for the spores, finding them all to be rookies of various types and all blindly following the dazed and failing Torun.

“Even a junior Monitor would have known they were heading inward,” I sighed as Dewa assisted me to lift Torun.

“More experienced Troopers would have as well, Sir,” he replied. “Unfortunately, this group are about as green as it gets.”

“They kept her alive, barely, so I’m not going to report them. But yes, a bit more experience would have avoided this.”

“We deal with the cards we get,” he nodded.

“That we do, sub-Monitor, that we do,” I agreed. “And these are brave Troopers, whatever their status, so respect is due.”

“Indeed, Sir.”

It had been a stiff fight to get back to Flinn, who had been leading our security detail on the second landing craft, but finally we made it, along with all the bodies we’d been able to find.

“How is she?” Flinn asked as we laid the wounded down whilst the other craft took the bodies back to the still fighting Fleets.

“Alive, in stasis, but badly wounded and riddled with some sort of alien parasite,” I replied, sending over the medical details to Flinn’s wand.

“Deliberate?” she finally asked.

“Don’t think so. It’s just feeding on those affected, not controlling them. Fools the life sensors by mimicking various bodily functions in the dead as well. Not sure why it would do that though, other than keeping a food supply going longer.”

“Impressive growth rates...” Flinn murmured, studying the details.

“Yes, it’s also carried on the alien claws and had taken over a few of their bodies as well.”

“An adaptive parasite, hmm.”

“The aliens though were very much alive with it latched onto them; our guys, mostly not so lucky.”

“We’ve been ordered to the isolation section of the Softwing,” the Pilot informed us. “The other craft as well.”

“Looks like Senior Healer Norant wants a look,” Flinn added after we acknowledged the Pilot.

“So long as we can keep Torun alive, she can look all she wants,” I replied, observing the parasite seemingly adapting to being picked off by the nanites I’d added, even whilst in stasis.

The Softwing was huge, even compared to an Assault Carrier, and the isolation bays were as large as some of the larger medical centres some planetary capitals had. On arrival our armour was sprayed down with a strong antiseptic and toxic cleanser before we were allowed to remove it. It was then isolated and irradiated in a vacuum whilst we were told to sonically shower and our original silk undersuits were destroyed. We then had to wear coveralls supplied by the Softwing before being allowed through to the isolation bays and a meeting with Senior Healer Norant, whom we all, including the Troopers, saluted.

“At ease,” Norant commanded. “This cleansing had been just a precaution for you as we believe your armour would have kept you safe. The others are being as carefully treated elsewhere.”

“Permission to observe once you’re done with us, Ma’am,” I requested, which was followed by a similar application from Flinn.

“No problem, but not until we ensure you aren’t contaminated,” Norant agreed.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Well done on their retrieval, but I’d expect nothing less from Cure David’s daughter,” Norant went on.

“You know my Father?”

“Yes, from the civil war. He was temporarily under my command for some of it,” she smiled.

“So much he just doesn’t talk about,” I nodded.

“Yes, he’s very security conscious, as well as reluctant to talk about what he has to do,” Norant agreed.

Flinn and I nodded as we both knew that my Dad shunned any kind of publicity that he could possibly avoid. That said, he was still an immensely popular guest on the Teelae show, where he would give his opinion on any subject under the sun, often in an amusing, off-beat (for Vreekoos, not him) way.

“So, what of our girl and the surviving Troopers?” Flinn asked.

“We may need the services of a Cure. That parasite is incredibly adaptive. It’s resistant to both nanites, gene therapy and chemical disruptors,” Norant explained.

“I’m amazed it can adapt to humans,” I frowned. “The aliens, other than being carbon-based, like most life we’ve found in the galaxy, are radically different from us in so many ways.”

“Yes, a bit of a mystery, though from what you’ve described, it only appears to live on the armour or scales of the creatures, not within them. It might be some sort of bioweapon, though this is the first time we’ve run across it.”

“Definitely odd then,” Flinn nodded.

“Yes, we may have to ask the creature you captured,” Norant agreed, looking at me.

“Wait! We can talk to it?” I asked.

“In a sense. The whole lot of them appear to be a telepathic hive mind, ruled over by something they call the Masters. Though how many of them there are or what they look like, we don’t know as our creature goes into a kind of mental euphoria when discussing them.”

“If it’s telepathic, how do you talk to it?” Flinn asked.

“The AIs managed to adapt an input/output device to one of the neural strands the alien used for command and control. It can, when being co-operative, now put words into a tri-dee cube.”

“Only words?”

“Afraid so, though it can ‘see’ us and sense us in a variety of ways as well.”

“How do we know it doesn’t lie to us?” I asked curiously.

“We don’t. But, from what we can verify, it doesn’t and it seems happy enough to discuss stuff with the AIs to keep it mentally stimulated.”

“But not about the Masters or themselves, I take it?” Flinn asked.

“Not the Masters, no, but it does describe the other aliens, so it might have some information on this parasite,” Norant nodded.

“Be interesting to see if it does or if it will divulge it,” I replied thoughtfully.

“Yes, we’ll see,” Norant replied. “At the moment though we’re still adapting nanites to destroy the parasites but Cure Pello will be here soon.”

“Hope this thing isn’t resistant to a Cure,” I murmured.

“You and me both,” Flinn agreed.

Fortunately, no matter how adaptive the parasite was, it was not resistive to the power of a Cure and their ability to cause the human body to fix itself from any known affliction. Hence we were soon able to visit and talk to our friend and reassure her that she hadn’t shlecked up too badly.