Garner strode from the office, his face again painted with an evil grin. He passed through the large lobby of the senator’s offices on Risand, in to the waiting limousine from Chimera. He collapsed into the plush seating, and beckoned the driver to go.
Garner slowly loosened his tie, trying to curb the sweat that had been rolling down his face the moment he had stepped into Risand’s humid atmosphere. He picked up the satphone handset built into the teak panel between the seats, waiting for the line to connect to his office.
“Jeff! Tim here,” he said, as soon as the computer blatantly spat the reception tone.
A moment passed, as the datastream traveled to Chimera’s headquarters, located a few hours away. Garner waited, impatient, before he heard his response: “Good good! I’m assuming we got the contract … you’re speaking like you just made a million bucks.”
“Ha, well, a little bit more than that. Chimera’s contract was seventeen billion credits. That’s enough to literally move our entire corporation back to Tarsonis itself!”
“Don’t get your hopes up, Tim. So, where do I stand in making sure that everything proceeds according to your plans?”
Garner paused for a moment, letting the static lightly ring in and out of the phone every few seconds. After a good long pause, he spoke, the animated tone now replaced with a curt, official-business one. “Okay, Jeff, this is what I want you to do. Get the next batch of birth mothers to breed and get them implanted. Start with two hundred stock, fifty reserve. Next, go ahead and uplink to the Sigma beacons – get the quarantine info and deploy rally mechanisms to all satellites possible. I’d bet credits to donuts that Senator Hargrove isn’t going to carry through with his staff, and fill out the paper. His general was having doubts about the whole process … I slipped him some money ... my money!”
Garner waited for his assistant to copy down all the information before he continued. “Next, contact our representatives with the military, and our friends over at the Braxian shipyards; we’re going to need six Lancer-class transports to move everything. I know they’ll have that class of transport on hold – they always do. Pay them extra, if you have to. I need them in-system within thirty hours. In the meantime, go ahead and pack up everything at the office. All pertinent materials to cloning and breeding make one copy of. Destroy the rest. When we leave here in a few days, everyone and everything goes with us. Is that understood?”
“ … everything and everyone goes …. Got it.”
“Good. Tomorrow morning we will be receiving the credit chip. It will be heavily guarded … At least a squad of marines. Knowing Risand’s detachment, they will all be Recks,” Garner said with disgust. The word Recks was his term for resocialized marines. “Go ahead, give our Transplanar system a good test – see how easily you can overcome the neural conditioning. Liqour’em up, and throw the men into the pens. Keep the women – we’ll need more birth mothers soon enough.” Garner spoke heartlessly. After all, to him, Recks were third-class conscripts.
“And if they don’t come?” Jeff’s voice rattled in through the speaker.
“Shoot them. Legs and arms only … our babies will be hungry for fresh meat.”
“Very well, Tim. Anything else that we can take care of?”
“Hmm … one more thing. Go ahead and proceed directly to phase two.”
“This soon? You and the senator signed the contract not half an hour ago. I mean, we haven’t even received written permiss-”
“I don’t care about the written permission, Jeff!” Garner yelled, suddenly very angry with his assistant. The driver turned around, to check on his passenger, but spun back when his eyes locked on Garner’s piercing, cold stare. “Do it! Hargrove will be dead soon enough! We’re merely hastening the inevitable, and that General character of his will have no choice to accept my plans for our program when I’m on the committee!” The anger bubbled up in Garner, his face turning bright red and his hand tightening on the receiver.
“JUST DO IT, GODDAMMIT!”
“Yessir.” The call disconnected.
“Good!” Garner spat at the now lifeless phone, and threw it back into the cradle, splintering the plastic and teak around it. He sat back, sinking into his seat, his fists balled and clenched.
“Driver?” Garner sat forward and spoke, with more control over his voice and himself, as the ruddiness faded and color returned to his cheeks.
“Yessir?”
“Never mind going back to work. It’s late enough in the day anyways. Just take me home. And call ahead. I want supper and Veronica waiting when I arrive.”
“Very well sir.”
Garner reclined into his seat again, calmer than before. Good, he thought. At least I have something to screw when I get home.
Dinner passed quickly.
***
Garner laid on his bed, the satin sheets caressing his backside, Veronica on top. She had already dozed off, soothed asleep by her man’s slow and steady breathing. Garner laid there, absentmindedly stroking her long brown hair, collecting his own thoughts, staring at the ceiling, as the minutes slowly ticked by.
Finally, after a long respite following a rather satisfying biological act, Garner rose. He went into the bathroom, picking up his and Veronica’s clothes along the way. He entered, dropping his clothes in their respective hampers, hers back on the floor, and started the shower. He stepped in, the cool water caressing down over his muscled body, stinging where Veronica had broken the skin on his back.
Garner finished washing several minutes later, and stepped out, mindlessly wiping down the shower before leaving. He donned a pair of dark slacks and a mock neck sweater, heading into his home office, locking the door behind himself. He sat down at his computer, powering up his hard drive with the aid of coffee and sandwich. Garner checked his new message and memos, and involuntarily turned on the X-5 control mechanisms. A mechanical whining rewarded Garner, as separate screens deployed from the ceiling, each one for an independent creature. They flickered to life, transmitting back what each X-5 saw through its eyes, which at current was a lush rainforest setting.
Next to his computer screen, a sheet of paper lay on the desk, scrawled with a list of names, and a unit emblem up at the top. Garner looked down, and found the name he wanted to repay that evening, for what that name had done.
Capt. James Hargrove, 23rd Engineering Division
A panel on the desk sunk, and slid into the stained wood. A piece of headgear came up, covered with electrodes and wires. Garner placed it upon his head, running a cord up and through a small hole, plugging the ends into various electronic leads around the spidery helmet. He slid the semi-silvered visor down over his eyes, activating the Transplanar Wave-form Synthesizer.
He looked up, and placed his two palms around the joystick-like handgrips of the chair, fingering the small buttons around the consoles. Garner took a deep breath, mentally trying to prepare himself for the task at hand, and the control and finesse it would require. He looked around at the various viewscreens, trying to decide which X-5 to control. He chose Red 3, because of its vantage point overlooking the house.
“Activate.”
***
In the field, Red 3 collapsed from its hiding point behind a large bush, spasms racking its body, eyes bulging and tongue lolling out, flopping around. A few seconds later, Red 3 rose, completely aware and awake, and controlled by Garner. It chattered and clicked, and crouched down, joined seconds later by Reds 1 and 2, both of whom dropped from the trees branches thirty feet above. The three dropped into a low crouch, and sped off over the ground, taking all ground cover available, flitting between the scrub.
***
Garner smiled, barely visible in the dark office, underneath the holographic headset. The controls were working better than he had anticipated.
***
Red 3 hopped up into the tree, joined by its siblings moments later. Two guards were walking below. It scurried along the branch, until it was right above the two guards, who had both stopped to light cigarettes, resting their rifles on the ground.
In dead silence, Red Team dropped from the branches. The only sound of the marine’s death was the sharp shattering of bones.
***
“Poor bastards.” Garner spoke, watching Red 3 gouge out the marine’s face, then slitting the man open from chest to pelvis, ripping out the man’s viscera, slathering the ground in thick, red blood and crushed organs.
“Hmm. We’ll need to tone down the hunger virtue. Too much spread – it was more neat when his face was smashed in instead. No mess.” Garner made a mental note to speak with the technicians.
***
Red 3 brought its face up from the marine’s stomach cavity, its keen eyes searching the brush. It bounded ahead, meeting Red 1 along the way. They arrived at the edge of a groomed path, with a great deal of human traffic. Red 2 appeared, also bathed in blood, intestine hanging from snout and mouth. It breathed deeply, smelling the air. Saliva began to drool from its mouth – more food was nearby.
Red 2 ran into the pathway, and collapsed midstep on the ground. Red 1 and Red 3 scampered down along the sides of the path, taking cover in the brush on either side.
***
Squad 2-1 rounded the corner of the path, in CMC-300 suits for the first time in weeks. The lieutenant turned, his suit lights catching a large lizard lying on the path, breathing heavily. He ran up, pulling the charging lever on the gun, as he aimed at the lizard’s head. The lieutenant’s XO ran up, and looked down at the lizard.
“Looks like a Zerg, sir.”
“That ain’t no Zerg, chief. Looks like it, but it’s no Zerg. I ain’t seen this thing here before. It looks diseased – let’s waste it.” The lieutenant hefted his rifle, taking aim at the creature’s head.
All of a sudden, he heard the squeal of metal and a bone-snapping crunch next to him. He spun, only to find the carcass of his XO lying on the ground. He slapped his stimpaks and adding to the adrenaline already beginning to invade his biosystem, spinning back to the lizard’s position on the ground.
All he saw was hard packed dirt.
Behind him came alien shrieks and humans death screams, punctuated with metallic squeals and the sound of flesh being shredded apart. Again the lieutenant spun, his rifle coming up to take aim at his mysterious assailants.
Nothing remained on the path, except for the brutalized forms of what looked like humans. The lieutenant couldn’t really tell; armor and flesh had been crushed together into a disgusting mixture of gore and entrails. He spun again, searching the night.
And stopped midway around. Three of the giant lizard-Zerg-things were standing in front of him. One groaned, clicking and making sounds. Next to it, the other two lizard-things bobbed their heads, almost like birds. Then, all three turned to look at the lieutenant.
“Ahh!!!!!!”
***
Garner stopped the chronometer in the lower corner of the holographic display. “Wow. Very impressive. Only 5.7 seconds. I was expecting longer, for a dozen marines.”
“They even played that ruse by themselves … I didn’t have to do a thing. Bonuses to the tech staff and instructors for that.” Garner let his X-5s finish eating before making them run off again. Garner imagined burying his face in a pile of food. Red 3 did the same.
When the chips transmitted back that Red 3 had finished eating, Garner thought about running, the psionic commands transmitted into the field, while Red 3’s holographic images from flowing directly into Garner’s brain. Red Team sprinted and leaped through the remaining few hundred yards of jungle, without encountering any more marine patrols.
Pity, Garner thought. I was just beginning to have fun.
Up ahead, Garner saw an expansive lawn through gaps in the foliage. Red 3 ran up to the edge, and fed Garner images of a bungalow loomed a few hundred yards away, aesthetically built, almost blending in with the scenery. Red 3 paused.
Garner saw a flicker on the brain activity readout of Red 3 – it didn’t know what to do next. “Dammit! I thought this had been fixed.” Garner fought his way through control submenus, and finally a dialogue box appeared, floating inches from his nose.
Dig? Yes or No?
Garner thought ‘yes.’ He saw Red 3 bend over, its huge claws begin tearing up the soft dirt and grass.
“Good. They seem to dig fast.” Garner allowed himself another smile.
***
Inside the bungalow, Senator James Hargrove finally sat down on his couch, brandy snifter and cigar in hand. It had been a long day. A long, productive day. A long, lucrative day. He sank deeper into the couch, and sighed. It had indeed been a long day.
He searched for the remote, and turn on the viewscreen inset in the wall. It flickered to life, the taped evening news starting again. Stocks scrolled across the bottom of the screen, while the typical nameless anchor rattled off the events on Risand, and within the Confederacy that day. As usual, the war against the Zerg was a highlight, and battle reports about the war somehow managed to find their way into every story covered that evening. The market stocks were regularly replaced across the bottom with units lost or partially destroyed in the past week’s fighting. Hundreds more dead against the Zerg … the senator sighed again.
“I hope these new X-5s from that Tim Garner are able to do to the Zerg what they’ve done to us. We need a miracle to save us from this shithole-of-a-mess that we’ve gotten ourselves into.” The senator spoke into the empty space, to his onlooking audience of antique vases and books.
A servant walked in, offered to refill the snifter. The senator held up his hand, waving his pale yellow hand to keep the young man away. “I’m okay this evening, Henry. Only one glass for me tonight.”
Several minutes later, the senator rose, groaning under his own weight, and trotted off to the bedroom, to get what little rest would come to his seventy-four year old frame.
Soon after, the senator re-exited the bathroom, and clambered into bed. He shut off the nightstand light, and almost instantly, his heavy eyelids fell shut and he slipped into a deep slumber.
***
Red 3’s head popped inches above the surface, eyes and snout barely visible above the surface of the dew-covered lawn. It watched, waiting for the light in the bedroom window to shut off.
“Good,” Garner smiled. “Dig.”
Red 3 dropped down again, re-patched its hole, and continued onward, through the soil, under the house.
***
The senator awoke with a startle, sitting upright in bed, soaked in cold sweat. He stepped out of bed, and reached into the nightstand drawer, scrambling to find his slugthrower handgun. He found it, checked the clip with a shaky hand, and crept into the hallway.
Someone had just come into his house. Someone who wasn’t supposed to be there.
He crawled on all fours down the dark hallway, listening alertly for any sound to indicate an intruder. He paused near the doorway of the kitchen, and painfully spun away from the edge when a kitchen light clicked on, casting an ominous shadow out into the hallway. The senator gasped in fear, as the shadow moved toward the edge, and grabbed a knife-shaped object up. Footsteps echoed off the flagstone floor, as the assailant slowly neared the doorway.
The senator could no longer wait in fear. He rose from his trembling knees, raising the slugthrower with both hands, his grip shaking the aiming reticle of the gun back and forth. He stepped forward, loosing even more confidence, and spun the corner, yelling, and pulling the trigger –
The muzzle flash and recoil from the gun slammed the senator back against the wall, knocking the wind out of him. A few fleeting seconds passed before he hastily moved into the kitchen, and looked down in the center, at the fallen form of his assailant –
“No! Henry!” The senator yelled, as he dropped to his assist his now-bleeding servant, who had been holding a bundle of celery in his hand. The old man tried to raise Henry’s head, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Curse me and my fears! Henry! No! It will be okay, just try and stay calm. I’m sorry! Here, I’ll call the medics for you. Then, yes, then everything will be alright, won’t it Henry?” The senator pressed the emergency call button underneath the steel kitchen table.
Henry’s eyes widened as he tried to speak. Blood gurgled up in his throat, and Henry began to gag on his tongue, choking back his own bile. The senator tried to help as Henry again tried to speak, urgent to convey his dying words.
“Your … g-, g-, gun … s-, sir …”
Another, larger shadow fell across the floor. The senator looked up, and saw a giant Zergling standing on two feet before him. It raised one of its arms, made a fist, and smacked him hard in the chest, tossing the senator across the room, slamming him into the refrigerator unit.
The senator slowly opened his eyes. His entire body screamed at him. Ribs were broken and shattered; it hurt to breathe. He felt around, and found the slugthrower next to him. The senator painstakingly raised it in the direction of the Zerglings, fighting over Henry’s mutilated body. He fired, the recoil blowwing his hand backwards up into the wall. One Zergling fell, but rose again, bleeding from a massive wound at the hip.
It limped over to where the senator was now seated, and looked at the outstretched hand of the senator, as if it were about to do something.
In one fluid motion, it reared back, opened its mouth, and bit off the senator’s forearm, shattering bones and tearing through muscle in the process.
The senator screamed in agony, pulling back the stump of his arm from the creature’s maw. The two other Zerg-lizards had noticed, and stalked over. All three began to snap at one another, bickering over the senator’s still fresh meat.
The old man crawled, dragging his broken form into the corner, trying to escape from the terrors that had appeared in his house.
***
Garner looked at the viewscreen. ‘Fitting,’ he thought. ‘Hargrove is a coward. Even in death, the man truly cringes in fear of what he has now created.’
Garner worked through submenus, and pulled back Red Team from the senator’s position. Then, he made Red 3 approach the man huddled in the corner.
Garner spoke. “Hack.”
***
The Zergling stood up, and barked, the shrill sounds echoing in the kitchen, throughout the house. Almost on cue, the holovid screen flickered to life, the sharp static lines growing, then fading into a face. Tim Garner.
“Y-, y- you bastard. How could you do this to me?” The senator spat at the image of Garner’s face, three times normal size. It floated there in space, unmoving, unhearing.
“Ahh, the illustrious Senator James Hargrove.” Garner paused. “Or should I say, Captain James Hargrove? Even now, you have questions. I thought I had told you everything when you signed over the contract to me this morning. Pity you’d never see a field test of your creations. Oh, wait, never mind that,” the figure sneered. “You’re about to experience a field test. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Why? What did I do to make -” Hargrove managed, his voice barely audible above his labored breathing.
“Why? Oh, it’s so simple ‘why.’” The figure backed off, chuckled. “Do you remember your military career? Of course you do.” Garner paused. “Do you remember serving with the 23rd Engineering? Do you remember your deployment on Braxis IV?”
“Wha? What are you talking about?” Hargrove choked, vomiting up blood and bile, the disgusting mix dribbling and dripping down his face and chin onto the senator’s nightgown.
“You surely must remember your deployment on Braxis IV. ‘Why,’ you ask? You destroyed me, Captain Hargrove. My mother and father were livestock farmers. You came in with your unit and ordered my family to leave – a new Confederate base was to rise on top of our fields. My father refused to go. Do you remember what you did then, Captain Hargrove?” The figure sneered, taunting the decrepit senator with a wagging finger.
“What are you-”
“You shot my father. You killed him in cold blood. My mother, too. Both of my sisters, your men raped and then killed. You burned our crop fields. I was seven years old. I ran into the fields, away, and never stopped.
“Like I said, Captain Hargrove, you destroyed me. How would you have felt if you saw your parents murdered, and there was nothing you could do about it?! Then your mother! Your sisters! All before your eyes, and you knew that you were the next one to go when they finished up!! Your unit will PAY for what they did to me. Never did I forget that dreadful afternoon, thirty years ago. Never will I forget it. You and your unit will pay for what they did.”
The face paused, again. A remorseful guise overcame it, but was instantly replaced with a hellish stare, a desire to seek and destroy.
“You’ll never get away with this, Garner. Never …” Hargrove said, a dying wheeze that left him gasping for air.
“Oh really? I already have.”
With that, the holographic image began to buckle again, the smooth skin jumping and changing into static and binary code, fading back into the wall projector. As the image disappeared, a final, throaty rasp emanated from the wall speaker.
“Goodbye, Captain Hargrove.”
The Zerg-lizards again dropped down, and was rejoined by its two companions. The three edged the bleeding, broken senator into the corner, snapping at the senator and at each other. All three turned, facing the senator, prehensile smiles of joy gracing their faces. True monsters.
Senator James Hargrove gave up, but was determined to go down trying. He made a mad dash to get the slugthrower. He never made it.
Alien screams echoed through the house, mixed with crushing and snapping bones and ripping flesh.
And then, the alien things were gone as swiftly as they had come.
***
Garner removed the headset, and set it back on its pedestal, which descended into the desk. He stood, shivering, breaking out in a cold sweat. Garner dropped to the ground, his legs weak and shaky from his first extended use of the Transplanar Wave-form Synthesizer. He moved up into a crouch position, and stood, bracing himself on the doorjamb to his office.
“Time for another shower.” Garner cradled his head in his hands as he stepped through the doorway, undressing, and turning on the cold water to caress his skin once more, to help purge the gore-ridden images from his mind. They were too graphic, too violent, too disgusting. He closed his eyes, shivering in the chilled water falling around him.
