A Scanner Deeply Ch. 07

Wow. That was some pretty powerful shit, right there. First, his orgasm seemed to come from deep within and spread to the surface of his skin like quicksilver, ending abruptly like a raging candle flame promptly snuffed. Then, there had been this huge blue flash that had blinded him for a few seconds. Then Emerson was nowhere to be seen and a vague scent of burnt flesh lingered in the air. Like the smell of the perfumed remains of his departed father, Brutor head tribesman, as the fire of the funeral pyre took to the decaying flesh. The tribesleaders had wanted him to leave his career as a capsuleer to take up the office left vacant by his father. Pheh. Trade immortality for a handful of golden chains and a roomful of smelly old men barely capable of holding their own drool in? No thanks. Nathaniel shooed the unwanted memory away...

*

"Mmmm... Pleasure and pain. Just my kind of mixture. My essence is shaping up rather nicely."

Calixte had disengaged from his cock and turned around to address him. A cerulean aura was wrapped close around her skin. Bloody trails on her legs, running from her between her ass cheeks looked almost black in that light. He looked at his cock. Small rivulets of blood were disappearing into the olive fabric of the symbiot that had made it so huge and spiky inside Calixte's ass. So it drank pleasure as well as pain...

"It's great that all of you had the presence of mind of coming in threes. It makes my coming back that much easier. I guess the power of three is still strong in your tribes."

"Where is Emerson?" inquired Nathaniel, taking a step back "and what do you mean by reviving? Are you talking about your earlier fall?"

The 'power of three' she had just mentioned ringed a distant unpleasant bell in his memory. Since he had recalibrated the learning ability portion of his cortex, he did notice a distinct difficulty at remembering stuff. He had privileged his sensory acquisition nervous paths as well as his reflex center. Remembering things, such as tidbits of local lore he had gathered in his childhood -- another lifetime ago, it seemed -- were like searching for a blueprint copy at night in a station hangar full of blueprint containers armed only with a forehead lamp with Blue Pill running through your veins.

What he did remember was that Calixte was a hot piece of ass... and usually he didn't like tribal girls, especially not Vherokiors, for some odd reason. He remembered a piece of her past that she had mentioned one day, a long time ago, when they were both newbies and running bookmarking sessions in hostile systems. A name. Eusethia. Possible. That entity liked ritual blood sacrifice. Usually three different canine beasts.

He looked at his nametag necklace. The three headed-bloodhound was on his family crest. Eusethia. A portal. A guardian. He focused his gaze on her face. An ice cold certainty dipped slowly from the top of his spine down to his gut: this was not Calixte in front of him any longer.

She seemed to smile at the gleam of recognition in his eyes. "Yes, I am the gate. Even easier to open than you imagine. Come here and open it up." She glanced at his crotch. "I know you are ready for it."

He was, indeed, still rock hard, as if the orgasm that had torn through his nervous system had been but preliminaries... And he felt it, too. He wanted her again.

The power of three... three keys... three locks.

She knelt down in front of him and reached her hands for his raging member.

Three orifices... one for each key... One for each power... until She rises... until She comes.

Somehow that didn't sound like good news to Nathaniel's ears. He backed off one step and the flash of Eusethia's eyes froze him in his track, during the longest heartbeat in the history of human cardiology.

The reflection of the surrounding drone lights on her lips made them look soaked in blood. His heavy boot went straight for her face and the sound of bone crunching under his sole reminded him of the last time he saw Guidomarko.

Eusethia's torso and head reeled back from the impact. Yet her gaze returned fixedly to his. The flesh of her face, seeming much more malleable then regular flesh, had absorbed the print of Nathaniel's boot. "Of course I should have known this was not going to be that easy." She thrust her hands forward, fingers splayed outward as if catching a basketball of immense size. Nathaniel's backward steps were stopped by a hard surface behind him, where there was no wall. He pressed his back to it, spreading his arms to feel for an opening. In a flash, his awareness spread outward through his back and he had a feel for the whole wall, his knowledge of the force field wall creeping like a vine.

"Heh... I see your little friend helps out in more ways than one." chuckled Eusethia as she got to her feet and resumed her approach. The symbiot... of course... it had to be crawling out on the force field like an extra-fast vine, searching for an opening.

Atop.

The symbiot grabbed hold and hauled Nathaniel over the force field.

Let's not let her touch us. Us. Rustle of leaves.

The boot imprint on Eusethia's face was slowly disappearing, flesh crawling up under the skin to erase the voids and bumps. She set her eyes towards him as if they were a battering ram and started sprinting to him. He was already in full backpedaling motion, trying to get to an exit. He managed it with a few fractions of a second to spare, grabbed hold of the heavily decorated door with one overpowered hand, and swung it into Eusethia's head. It rang with the depth of a planet-size gong.

He ran down a corridor lined with sleeping cots. Each with a cold cobalt light above it. Not sleeping cots.

Sarcophagi.

Mummified remains.

Fragile as dust castles.

Assembled motes.

The wind of his passage was disturbing them. He switched on his headside lamp, ruining his night sight. He ran faster. Better not to trip. She was still behind, judging by the flickering blue light behind him in the dark corridor.

The next room was a stark contrast with the archaic decoration of the rest of the rooms. Very square and functional, one of its walls held 4 transparent panes. Inside, Nathaniel could distinguish very large humanoid shapes with exceedingly broad shoulders, arms, fists and legs. As he got closer, he realized they were not living. He silenced his steps, unhooked his headlamp and threw it down another corridor and silently approached the panes. If only he was right about what they were, he might just see his way out of this madness.

Indeed he was. Mechanical suits. Awesome. Old. But awesome.

The panels silently swished aside as he touched the control. He turned towards the corridor where Eusethia would be coming from, his back to the meca-suit.

No, whispered a deep husky voice in the back of his mind. Let me take over.

Backing up as slowly as he thought he ought not to make noise, he inched his way towards the open suit and stepped into it, careful not to initiate the warm-up sequence. One leg over the edge of the meca-leg. Another sliding into the other. Now the arms, gently settled against the steel limbs...

Eusethia ran by just as he put his last limb into place. Seeing the light of the decoy lamp, she headed with uncanny speed around the corner and disappeared from his view. Not waiting for her to reach the lamp and realize the trick, he relaxed and let his limbs be driven by the machine, his pod connections sending his movement intentions into the antiquated cortex connection systems of the suit. The footsteps halted in the corridor. Eusethia had stopped running.

'Warm-up sequence engaged' blared the neuro-speaker into his brain. Good thing it wasn't enunciating the steps out loud like some pre-Eden space shuttle launch sequence.

He reached into the display that would get through the nearest wall. He saw Eusethia crouched behind a chunk of metal in the corridor, facing the lamp. He realized it was shining back towards his entrance of the corridor. Eusethia must be thinking he was waiting ahead in ambush with a gun or something. Hah. Lucky shot.

He walked the suit to the entrance of the corridor. Then silently extended the limbs to brace against opposing walls of the corridor. He lifted off the floor and progressed using the walls as walkway for each of his arms, like a giant spider inching its way along the wall to devour its prone prey. Eusethia was still crouching, attentive to what was going on ahead.

Once he got at close enough range, he pulsed the hydraulics of his limbs against the walls and lifted high in the air, in an arch ending where Eusethia was crouching. The noise of the pulse made her turn her head, dark curls whipping about her shoulders, but Nathaniel had already cocked the arm of the suit back and drove the barrel-size fist onto Eusethia. The corridor erupted in metal debris with the whine of an injured docking crane. When the dust settled, the fist was still poised on the woman's broken form.

Slowly, Nathaniel lifted the mechanical fist off the corridor floor, dropping bits of metal and dripping with bodily fluids, probably mainly blood. If she was going to get up, she would have to scrape herself off the floor. Literally.

Nathaniel breathed a sigh of relief and sat his meca-suit back on its haunches. After a few seconds, he switched on coms and tried to find the frequency back to the Hel-class carrier.

That's when the scream started.

It started off as a high pitch whine, nothing more than a screech barely audible under the drone whirs and the beeping of the suit, but growing steadily in volume. Covering progressively every surrounding sound, drowning out thought, and even eyesight, as Nathaniel tried to cover his head with his gigantic mechanical fists. It grew to a point where ears registered only a gritty saturation scratch, eventually replaced by silence as nothing else existed in this absoluteness of that sound.

And suddenly it stopped.

The silence was deafening and Nathaniel reeled with the shock.

Two discombobulated arms raised themselves from the mass of flesh where Eusethia had been. They pushed the torso off the cratered floor. Slowly but surely, the beaten form of Eusethia -- what had once been the body of Calixte -- lifted itself off the floor, stood on unsteady legs, rearranged elongated limbs and collected itself.

Then turned to Nathaniel and gave off a pulse of the same ear-piercing shriek.

"You set me back! You dare set me back?! I will rip you to shreds!" Nathaniel was feeling rather than hearing the words from Eusethia.

As Nathaniel's mind cleared from the sonic onslaught, he switched on full light beams on the suit. He instantly wished he hadn't and retched into the waste receptacle. Biomass processing. The body in front of him was barely recognizable as human. All the thoracic bones had broken and protruded at different points from the flesh of the chest. Its forehead had been smashed back and the jaw pushed forward out of the skin so as to create somewhat of a canine head shape with the sarcastic grin of a human skull. Most teeth were missing, but those left were broken into pointy fangs. The eyes were now just shadowy cavities in which glowed a cerulean gleam. As it turned its shoulders, the body twitched in steps, as if portions of the spine were rearranging themselves under the torsion. Its legs were bent in an almost lupine angle. Yet it slowly approached Nathaniel's dazed shape.

It bared its 'fangs' and placed its hands palm forward onto the suit.

It pushed its hands into the steel, its hands slowly disappearing into the metal. Shit, just as it had done with Emerson's suit. The metal seemed to resist the intrusion, though, and Nathaniel assumed it was because she -- it -- had become more corporeal.

How many inches did he have until it touched him. The thought spurred adrenaline into his veins and woke him entirely from his daze. He started pushing back, but Eusethia had latched on quite solidly. He grabbed its midriff and jerked it off like a tick off a stray dog and threw it along the corridor. Blue light flashed from within the things body, where more skin had been rended and torn on impact.

Nathaniel did not lose more seconds and turned to flee.

And ran headlong into a new force field.

Damn... she still had enough energy to put those up? With the corridor ceiling being much lower than the sarcophagus room, Nathaniel knew he did not stand a chance to get around the field this time. It was either through the thing... or... well... through it... He braced in racing position and ran, the mechanical legs pumping hard against the metal floor. Reaching about halfway to Eusethia, he tore a pipe off of the walls and cocked his arm, swinging it just as he got within reach of the grinning bloody mess. It threw up its arm and was swept with the blow. With the swinging momentum of its arm, the suit lost its purchase on the ground and rolled forward in an awkward tumble.

Nathaniel got on one knee and looked up. Eusethia was at the end of the pipe, casually making its way along its length and grabbing hold of the sides of the head of his suit. "I have you now, fleshling." Its face flashed blue and hugged the suit bodily, pushing its whole flesh into the armor in the most deathly hug Nathaniel was ever given to witness. The fists of his suit had no purchase on Eusethia anymore as it sank into the suit and Nathaniel pawed frantically at himself. The face, in particular, was making good progress. It came nose to nose with him, through the thinner headpiece pane. A wink. "You're mine." And she kissed him.

A flash of blue and then the pain of being stretched to breaking point and shattered.

Oblivion.

***

"What the hell was that sound, soldier?" asked the wing commander.

"I don't know, sir, but I don't register any vital signs from Nathaniel anymore, Commander." Calixte was not pleased to hear that. For one thing, their clones were starting to get expensive. It was also going to be a hassle to get the Combat Recon back. "We also lost his embarked video feed. Kind of like if he had deliberately turned it off."

"Quick, to the Clone Vats, let's be there when Nathaniel wakes up." Calixte and Emerson ran along the lengthy corridor to the bays where line upon line of rust-tinged neon lights lit the inside of cryogenic tanks for all the Minmatar fighter pilots of the current fleet.

No sign of any of the bays receiving a downed pilot's infomorph data.

"Shit, what is happening to him." Asked Emerson.

"If his body had been stolen by the blue thing, then, like us, he should be emerging in his medical clone." Reasoned Calixte.

"Except if..."

"... his info has been blocked..."

"... on that shuttle."

"Launch a Probe-class recon as escort to a Pod. We need to get our warrior back... and the Combat recon we left out there as well."

***

A voice out of the dark.

Accompanied by the smell of wet turf, decaying leaves and dark rich soil.

"I hate to say I told you so." A voice like gravel rubbing against itself, or like branches creaking against a strong wind.

"What? What happened?" Nathaniel could not see or feel a thing.

"I told you, you should have let me take the lead. You wouldn't have ended up like this..."

"Like what?.. Hey wait... I'm not in my clone..."

"Your... clone? No... you are dead."

"Can't be. I am immortal!"

"Oh are you? No one is immortal. Your body just got absorbed by this... thing you were fighting. I took the liberty of hosting what was left inside me..."

"I... we... are still on this godforsaken piece of scrap metal drifting through space? You should have let me go." Nathaniel did not like the self-righteous tone of whatever was chastising him.

A dim light made itself known in his vision, almost inexistent. Green and amber, still not allowing him to make any sense of where he was or what he was doing.

"Mind telling me what the fuck is going on and where we are?"

"We are in me, I guess, having a conversation with ourselves."

The shape from which the voice was coming was slowly coming into focus, with the growing of the light source. The man stood less than 4' tall, gnarled and hunched like an old olive tree. His hand rested on a cane that seamed made from the same twisted and grooved piece of wood as his hands, face and feet.

"I recognize your voice." wondered Nathaniel. "You've been with me since that symbiot attached."

"Yes... I am that 'symbiot', as you say. I am a god, in fact... at least, I once was... Once."

"Pheh... a god... OK, old man... whatever. You still haven't told me what the hell we are doing here."

"Ah, yes, good question... Well... since you don't have any body anymore... you're kinda stuck here... unless you find someone -- or something -- to host you."

***

"Sir, I have some kind of contact.

"Since we were able to locate the recon, we now have somewhat of a reading of what is going on inside that shuttle." The remote sensor operator was relieved to finally be able to give good news to her commander.

"It looks like some kind of mechanical fight has been going on. Now two organic signatures are hyperactive, probably fighting. They are moving around too much for it to be anything... friendly."

"Thanks. Anything else?"

"Well.. one of the body signatures is similar to that of Nathaniel and one of them is exactly like Nathaniel. But none of them give off any vital signs."

"Weird. Keep me posted." Calixte turned to Emerson."How is that Probe-class ship doing?"

"He should be coming out of warp as we speak. Good thing there are no hostiles around for this fiasco of an exploration."

"Let's keep our eyes peeled."

***

The symbiot formed a ball-shaped fist the size of two heads and swung it towards Eusethia, who now had Nathaniel's body shape. It parried and, using the momentum of the fist, swung under Nathaniel's guard and placed a kick to his head. The symbiot threw up a mask of bark and sharp twigs, deflected the blow and swung a spike the length of a human arm towards Eusethia's side, effectively impaling its midsection against a wall.

Great choice of a host structure, Nathaniel. That way we both are immune to Eusethia's life-absorbing schemes.

"I can't say it's pleasant though. Including the falling apart thing..."

Eusethia wriggled frantically and eventually managed to rip itself free from the spike, spilling out gore from its side. It launched itself to Nathaniel's head, but the symbiot had been ready and had wrapped green tendrils around Eusethias feet, yanking her back just as she would have connected with her target. A scream of deep-throated rage bellowed from its throat as the tendrils finished wrapping themselves around its body, binding it close and rousing its fury until it seemed it would spew like lava from its eyes.

"What kills this thing?"

Let's try beheading... Not many things or beings survive that kind of treatment.

The two faces were now inches apart. Eusethia's bearing the traits of Nathaniel, with, again, the cerulean glow in its eyes.

Nathaniel's face, recreated by the symbiot to cover his current state...

It was weird to face oneself, concluded Nathaniel. Especially as both faces had the same way to express the hatred of their enemy. He would have to remodel himself as soon as he got back to his quarters.

Suddenly, the symbiot-face sprouted two pairs of mandibles. One clasped to the face of Eusethia, the other started munching at the neck, lascerating the flesh and widening a raged gash on each side of the neck. Eusethia's rage occluded its pain until the surprise of its head disconnecting from its body shaped its lips in a silent O.

The remains of the shuttle fell into deathly silence as the lifeless head fell to the ground.

A flash of blue.

***