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Author’s note: Substack doesn’t support right-aligned text for Chainlink conversations; a correctly-formatted version can be found here!
Korvus exited the elevator on the medbay level. The lighting flickered, a sure sign of an ailing reactor or control system. Neither failure was survivable on Lethe. If both died, the oceans would hunger in, scouring the inside of the prison colony like the high-pressure acid bath it was.
I need to hurry. He picked up his pace. Herald’s cannon was locked in its firing position over his left shoulder, ready for whatever might come.
How much ammunition do we have?||:KORVUS
HERALD:||It was a short jump, so there wasn’t much computational residue from the drive. It only leaves you eight shots in the Adjudicator. I know you’re itching to use them, so I’ll say this once: don’t. You definitely won’t survive, and I probably won’t. Second, I’ve got twenty rounds in the cannon.
Twenty isn’t a lot.||:KORVUS
HERALD:||It’s more than eight, and definitely more than your practical limit of zero, since you can’t shoot anything anyway.
I wasn’t blaming you.||:KORVUS
HERALD:||I felt overly seen, that’s all.
Korvus paused, placing his hand on the wall. He felt a faint vibration through the fingertips of his armoured gauntlet.
Do we have structural integrity?||:KORVUS
HERALD:||Philosophically?
Materially.||:KORVUS
HERALD:||I was hoping you would say that, because the answer is yes! Our Veritas credentials let us see station operational details, and they’re all fine. Except for the reactor. I give that sucker a couple of hours before it melts its way to the core of the planet. The good news is you’ll be dead before then, so you won’t die horribly in a radiation flood. You’ll die horribly right after it goes critical, the oceans rush in and boil you alive like a lobster dropped in a pot.
I didn’t think the oceans were hot.||:KORVUS
HERALD:||They’re not, but if they come in through a hole near a failed reactor, they’ll become quite hot indeed.
What if I asked for the philosophy side?||:KORVUS
HERALD:||You’re going gaga for a terrorist ex-sex worker.
I am not ‘gaga’ for Verity.||:KORVUS
HERALD:||Just remember that when she stabs you in the spine during her predictable but inevitable betrayal.
Korvus let his hand fall from the wall and was about to head off when Sergeant Eckles rounded the corner ahead. When he saw the guard, he knew two things.
First, the man was almost certainly infected. The guard’s shambling gait and rampant fever suggested either he was the largest coincidence in the Communion, or he had a leech inside him. The guard was cooking at over 40℃, rolling like a sailor on deck, and held a ballistic rifle in one hand. The rifle’s muzzle faced the deck, the hand holding it slack. Did that mean he was unaware he held a weapon, couldn’t use it, or some other factor?
Second, it meant the medbay was open. Aris had been on the other side of a lockdown, inaccessible without the warden’s Chainlinked authorisation. This was a piece of much-needed good news in a sewer of shit, because Korvus needed to talk to the doctor about the leeches.
HERALD:||Alien alert!
Can they be reasoned with?||:KORVUS
HERALD:||No clue. I thought they were snakes. I was so off-base, I was playing a different sport.
“Eckles,” Korvus started. “Or, whatever you are.”
The guard’s eyes did a lazy circuit of the corridor before landing on Korvus. “Corrector.”
“What do you want?” Korvus rested his hand on the Adjudicator’s hilt.
‘Eckles’ looked down at Korvus’s hand resting on his sidearm, then back at Korvus. “You can’t use that, can you? It’s… the wrong kind of special.”
“You sound like Eckles. Look like him, too. But you’ve, what, infected him?” Korvus took a step forward. “Maybe I can help you. You just need to give Eckles back.”
Eckles smiled, but like a mime unsure of whether he was getting through to the crowd—too much pull in the lips, a clown’s grimace. Besides, Korvus couldn’t remember Eckles ever smiling. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“How does it work?”
The guard took a few halting steps forward, looked at his rifle, then let it clatter to the decking. “I’m unarmed,” he said. “I can show you, if you like.”
“Sure, let’s do that,” Korvus agreed.
HERALD:||That seems dumb, even for you.
I’m clearly stalling for time.||:KORVUS
HERALD:||It’s so hard to tell.
I need you to not shoot him. I need answers more than giblets.||:KORVUS
HERALD:||Ah, there’s the true stupidity I was waiting for.
They walked toward each other, Eckles with his unsteady stagger-step, Korvus at an equally slow pace, but due to caution. They both stopped at arm’s distance. This close, Korvus could clearly see the veins in Eckles’ bloodshot eyes. Perhaps it was in his mind, but it felt like the guard radiated heat like a furnace. Eckles wet his lips, then said, “We need your ship.”
“It won’t fly without a Corrector,” Korvus said.
“I know,” Eckles said, and lunged for him.
Korvus was expecting something like this. The good news was that Herald didn’t fire. Korvus braced himself as Eckles reached out and he grabbed the guard’s arms. Mercy, but he’s strong! Eckles had the strength of five men, far more than even his muscled physique would account for.
He didn’t seem to be trying to break free. The guard brought his face closer to Korvus, his mouth open in a drooling leer. Korvus had the best optics the Communion could provide, and they gave him an excellent view of the thing in the back of the guard’s throat. A leech, but with a lamprey mouth questing for an exit.
Korvus raised his knee with all his augmented strength, hearing Eckles’s pelvic bone crack with the force of it. The guard didn’t even flinch, keeping his vice grip on Korvus, the leech now half out of his mouth.
Then it disappeared in a shower of red mist and bone fragments as Herald fired, the round going straight through the guard and into the wall beyond. The strength went out of the arms Korvus held, and he let the body fall.
Thanks.||:KORVUS
HERALD:||Nineteen rounds remain. That means you only have nineteen more chances to be truly idiotic.
Korvus calmed his breathing. He had synthetic muscles replacing his original ones—a technology that gave him heavy loader strength—and he’d found wrestling Eckles… difficult.
He was very strong.||:KORVUS
HERALD:||This takes us further from the fever diagnosis.
Korvus crouched by the remains, finding them… ordinary. The body was not over-muscled—certainly no more so than Eckles had been originally. It didn’t explain the powerful grip the man used.
He started a new Chainlink.
Verity, I’ve encountered a guard. Very strong, and very motivated.||:KORVUS
VERITY:||It’s not a pressure fever.
I don’t understand. Aris has been investigating patients and hasn’t noted the leech forms inside them. It seems an impossible factor to miss, especially since one just tried… attaching to me.||:KORVUS
VERITY:||The answer is obvious.
God?||:KORVUS
VERITY:||God didn’t need to step in here. Aris is your blind spot. Korvus, he is infected.
Korvus felt his eyes widen.
That’s impossible. He’s got a Chainlink! He holds a biologically coded and locked Veritas Chain. It can’t be broken.||:KORVUS
VERITY:||Perhaps I spoke too soon about God. Today is a day of miracles. You just worked out something even the Logos doesn’t know: there’s a weakness in the Veritas Chain.
It’s still impossible.||:KORVUS
VERITY:||And yet here we are.
She dropped the Chainlink. Korvus felt his fingers clench.
Okay, we need to erase our assumptions. Assume the Veritas Chain isn’t inviolate. Does this mean the warden is compromised?||:KORVUS
HERALD:||Just because your sexbot said—
Analysis first, sarcasm later.||:KORVUS
HERALD:||Assuming the impossible became possible, sure. The warden’s been leeched.
It’s time to have a better conversation with Aris.||:KORVUS
Korvus stormed toward the medbay entrance. It was open, as expected. He rounded the entranceway and found horror.
The inmates were no longer tethered to their beds. They were standing, heads drooping, but they swivelled as if on the same control circuit to look at him as he stood in the doorway.
In the centre of his choir of puppets stood Aris. The doctor looked bad. Blood seeped from his lips, and when he opened his mouth to speak, Korvus could see the ruin of his gums where teeth had fallen out. Aris’s shirt bulged around his belly and was stained red-brown. His speech was slightly slurred. “Corrector, welcome. It’s time for you to join the team.”
Korvus’s optics said Aris was cooking, his body holding a steady 60℃. His Adjudicator was in his hand before he could think twice, the weapon’s muzzle aimed squarely at Aris.
The ‘doctor’ looked at the weapon, then back to Korvus. “We both know you can’t use that here. You’ll destroy the entire facility.” He took a step toward Korvus.
As he did, his shirt tore, entrails and viscous fluids flowing free. His stomach cavity was a ruin, and tens of leeches slopped onto the floor, their lamprey mouths hunting for flesh.
“Aris, there’s something you don’t know about this medbay.” Korvus tightened his grip on his weapon.
“I know everything about it,” the monster hissed. “It’s how we started everything.”
Korvus fired. The Adjudicator spat a howling blast, the singularity forming as a miniature black hole hit Aris. Lightning arced from the impact, rivulets of energy running over the walls, deforming the metal. The puppets by Aris were destroyed in an instant, the weapon’s blast a bark of godlike fury.
The silence that followed didn’t last long. The walls in the room buckled, creaking inward. Korvus fired again, his shot hitting the rearward wall—the bulkhead against Lethe’s ever-ravenous ocean.
I hope I’m right about the medbay door. Nanospun glass is rated for the pressure. It has to hold.
The wall ruptured just as the medbay’s fire suppression system kicked in. The massive door slammed shut as explosive charges in the frame responded to programmed emergency procedures. It sealed the horror of the ocean and the infected behind Communion nanospun glass and metal.
Korvus holstered the Adjudicator.
Six shots remain.||:KORVUS
HERALD:||Please tell me you planned that.
Korvus smiled.
The station’s fire suppression system is designed to prevent flames from consuming all the air.||:KORVUS
HERALD:||So you set a fire WITH A BLACK HOLE?!
It was the best tool of the moment.||:KORVUS
He turned on his heel, ignoring the cloudy, dissolving forms in the murk behind the nanospun glass. It was time to decide who the real monster was behind it all.
