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52

“Pinkskin.” The age-old slur hissed from Callax’s lips as readily as any greeting. I ignored him, pushed down the flare of rage he never failed to illicit and nodded at Grendyl instead.

The squad’s leader was an altogether different beast from the Goblin. Hunched over the wheel of the hauler, slabs of muscle bulged at the seams of the stitched- together hides forming his undershirt and the flak-vest thrown over the top of that. His armour was a mix of different pieces, a few shards of his old auxiliary-issue ballistic plate here and there, a battered shoulder guard from an Enforcer, other less identifiable pieces. His skin still had a greyish cast to it, the legacy of hi-rad bleaching from a lifetime of war. A bass rumble crept out of his thickset jaw by way of acknowledgement. “Cutting it fine, Gren.”

“Had to detour. Roadblocks springing up, lots of comm chatter talking about containment. You playing me?” The last came out as a threatening growl.

“Containment?” It was the last thing I’d expected to hear, and I couldn’t help a note of panic from entering my voice. “Not playing you, but if they’re locking down it means we need to hurry.”

“Not wrong. The crew don’t like being holed up in the trailer. Could get messy if we keep them in there much longer.” Grendyl and his crew ran much closer to the common perception of Marauders as animalistic thugs than most of the crews I’d worked with, and I didn’t doubt that it had taken an effort to get them to lie low. As if to emphasise his point, a muffled bang came from the trailer unit behind us.

“So can we get moving? If we miss the rendezvous we miss Reis, and that means no payday.”

“We miss our payday, you miss your trip out, Ander.” I didn’t push the issue any further. Working with Marauders was difficult at the best of times, and each crew was different, but I knew how to handle the Sevens. Grendyl threw the hauler into gear, gunning the engine. The low sodium glare from the lamplights reflecting from the rain-smeared windshield as we pulled away, heading deeper into the Soak to collect Kayla Reis.

Overhead, the three suns shone down mercilessly over the blasted shard-sands stretching in every direction. We were several hundred klicks out in the wastes, well away from any prying eyes. The idling engine of the Security Tetsudo was the only sound, the squat armoured vehicle training its cannons on the massive bulk of the Marauder chief squatting in front of us. The alien was big, certainly, but his sheer physicality seemed to make him bigger still. Pale green skin had been bleached paler still by the suns above, stretched taut across heavy bones and musculature that showed little sign of wastage despite his obvious age. If the

multiple shrapnel and projectile wounds pockmarking his flesh bothered him, he gave no sign. A Hrunka knife lay in the sand in front of him, the hilt wrapped in cords and fetish-tokens. The blade was snapped halfway along its length. He fixed us with an even gaze, showing a calm acceptance of the facts. That in itself was worryingly indicative of the intelligence at play behind that bestial visage.

I squatted down in front of the Marauder, within arms’ reach. Dark eyes watched me, a slight tensing of that huge frame his only reaction. Xenographical studies had said that eye contact was important to the Orx, that it showed courage and honesty. I hoped they were right. “You know, Harcout Consolidated is never going to recover from what you did here. They’re pulling out. Of course, plenty are jumping ship to us first, so I guess I should thank you. You’ve made me a tidy profit here…” I paused for effect only. The creature’s name was the first thing I’d known about him. “Grendyl, is it?” A ghost of a sneer touched those bestial lips, a hint of dark ivory fang beyond.

“I have an offer for you. Not employment, nothing like that. You want your freedom and I am happy to let you keep that. It’s more of a mutually beneficial arrangement for us both. You carry on making a mess; I carry on cleaning up after you. The only difference is this: you do it when and where I ask you to.”

The sneer blossomed into life. I pushed down the sudden involuntary spike of fear that rose in my gut. When I spoke, the words came out quicker than I intended, despite my cadence training.

“Now, my people told me there would be a trust issue. They said how important it is to you. I’m hoping we can get past that.”

“You pinkskins are all the same. No honour. No ghrak.” I didn’t speak the Orx’ native language, but his meaning was clear enough. My mind raced as I scanned his scarred form, trying to find a way to change the course of the negotiation. Layered under grime and blood, tracked under wounds old and new, were thick lines of tribal tattoos and brand-scars. I recalled my studies: when the Marauders had been a primitive race of hunters, they had been organised into clans, marking themselves with ritual scars to show their allegiance. This had carried over into crew markings. Grendyl’s own was brazen on his bare chest, carved there with his own Hrunka. An idea took root in my brain and my heart raced. Was I really going to do this?

“You need a sign that I can be trusted. I understand that.”

I drew my combat blade, noting how doll-sized it was against the length of the Hrunka. Peeling open my enviro-suit I exposed the pale skin of my chest, already slick with sweat. I stared into the Marauder chief’s eyes and pressed the tip of the blade into the skin over my heart. Taking a deep breath, I began to cut….

Life used to be so simple for Gayle Simmonds. An up and coming star in various fields, including biomechanics and xenoarchaeology, she was one of the genius minds dispatched to Nexus Psi by the Reiker Corporation to prepare the planet for colonisation. She stayed on long after her contract’s break clause, offering her guidance to the planet’s many research facilities once the colonies were thriving. That’s how she was unlucky enough to be among the first to see the Plague outbreak.

When Exploration / Retrieval Team Six-Alpha was assembled following the discovery of an Artefact, she was drafted as deputy project lead under Remy Urovic, a brilliant but challenging biophysicist. She insisted that the discovery should be contained, following standard procedure, contrary to Urovic’s wish to get it back to the nearest outpost as quickly as possible; his decision won out, and the resulting outbreak almost wiped out their entire convoy. Urovic was the first to turn, and Gayle barely escaped with her life.

She became the de facto leader of the defence at Outpost W4 after the local security team was all but eradicated by the first wave of infected and it became clear that the GCPS had contained them and left them to die. However, even a mind as brilliant as hers could not hope to hold out forever against the unstoppable tide of the Plague. Defiant in the clutches of a rabid 2A, her body succumbed to the mutant virus as her mind turned inwards and focussed on her final coherent thoughts: her fury at the Council of Seven for what they had done. The infection latched onto this seed of an idea, and when she awoke, twisted into a new form, she found her mind incredibly clear.

She, and the rest of the inhabitants of Nexus Psi, had been left to their fate by the GCPS. They must have known about the Artefact’s hidden dangers when they sent Six-Alpha to retrieve it. They wanted them to get infected. Now she would make them regret that decision.

Working within the still-functioning laboratories of Reiker City, where a ready supply of test subjects can still be found cowering in the ruins of the half-finished research complexes, she has begun experimenting with the Plague virus. She is determined to find ways to make it even more potent, extracting it from victims on the cusp of change and using her repository of knowledge to weaponise it even further. She has built an army of workers, mechanics and pilots, all devolved Stage 3s still capable of operating machinery. Once she cracks the Containment Protocol override codes that prevent ships from leaving the surface, she will deliver the Plague to the heart of human civilisation and end mankind.