Chapter 146 The Rot General
The huge steel doors of the command crawler failed to open.
The shadow of General Vance was standing absolutely still, in the reinforced glass bridge, and was a dark figure on the flickering, intermittent violet emergency lights, the result of the EMP discharged by Elara.
"Suit yourself," Ryker growled.
He did not take time searching a control board or a weak spot in the armor. He plunged the tip of his Star-Metal sword right into the crack of the first boarding-ramp of the crawler. It sounded as cool as an icy blade which met the ancient, overheated blade.
SCREEECH.
Ryker pulled the blade down, cutting a burning molten orange streak in a foot of fortified Coalition armor. Hisses of sparks fell on the ice, melting the snow. He sliced a great rectangle, the blade of which was struggling with the sub-zero wind blowing bitterly around them.
As the incision was cut, Ryker withdrew.
Baron didn't need a command. The giant grey wolf jumped forward, tearing up the molten seam with his iron-crushing nails. Baron hurled his whole weight in a guttural roar which vibrated the icy air.
The mass of armor broke off with a deafening bang, and crashed down into the snow.
Nor was it the sterile, impersonal heat of a machine that came rolling out of the breach. It was like a slaughter-house in the sun--sweet and poisonous and with the smell of violet ozone.
Keep the line, Baron, keep the line, Ryker said to him. The troops outside were still falling and holding their helmets in the aftermath of the EMP, but they were not dead. In case this connection between their brains restarted, Ryker required his back to be covered.
Baron unsheathed his fangs, and crouched in a defensive attitude in the bottom of the ramp, his red eyes sweeping along the blizzard.
Ryker got into the crawler.
The interior was a nightmare of bio-mechanical combination. The normal grey metal avenues of the old Coalition vehicle were wholly plugged with dense pulsating vines of violet biomass. It resembled the interior of a poisoned artery. Some of the crew members were permanently attached to the walls and their body acted as a conduit of power to the vehicle. They were unawares, their eyes were drawn up, they twitching at the burst of the EMP shockwave.
Ryker shuffled predatoryly, his sword in a low grip; and the dark passage flashed with its orange flame.
He got to the blast doors of the command bridge. They were already open.
Ryker stepped through.
I must say," a deep, reverberating voice answered of the middle of the room. The air raid was one brilliant strategic move. You have made my outer nervous system go dumb, at least temporarily.
Ryker unsheathed his sword, and completely crossed the bridge.
It was a huge room with dead tactical screens. But Ryker was not looking at the screens. The man was gazing at the middle of the room.
General Marcus Vance could not sit in a command chair. He was the command chair.
Below the chest Vance was human--a broad-shouldered man in a ragged Coalition uniform, with his face milk and lines. However, below the chest his body melted into a monstrousness of violet, shone root-structures which just sank up through the floor of the crawler. His spine bore out thick cables of biomass that attached him to the ceiling and the walls and at the main drive core. His skin was clear and the veins filled with the glowing purple colour rather than blood.
His eyes were hard, radiant violet.
You are not a commander, Ryker said with disgust in his voice. "You're a parasite."
Vance, speaking over the speakers in the room, and not his actual mouth, said, "I am the core. I am the heart that makes the blood of the 4th Division. We are one entity, Ryker. We have one common hurt, one common end, one common mind. I have swept away the disorder of personality.
You destroyed humanity, you eradicated humanity, replied Ryker, and made a slow stride forward. "And for what? To be a king of a host of dead men?
"To survive," Vance said simply.
The liquid gleaming his veins of translucency pumped more rapidly.
The Deadlands are dying, General Ryker, Vance went on, his artificial voice lamenting with an awful, heart-throbbing sadness. "The cold is deepening. The climatic change has been forever changed due to tectonic movements due to the collapse of the Spire. The Rot himself cannot live in absolute zero. The biomass is freezing. My people are freezing."
Ryker stopped. You ran away south, because you are running away to the ice.
Vance made this statement: I, marched south, because the Iron City lies on the greatest geothermal taps in the continent. "You have heat. You have an incubator. I need the underground areas of this city to cool my hive, and enable the next phase of our evolution.
The city is appropriated, Ryker said coldly.
"And the Origin Asset?" Vance inquired and his radiating eyes stared at Ryker. "The girl with the stone? What was your reason in insisting on her surrender?
Ryker said, Because Valerius wanted her. "Because she's the cure."
She is not the cure, Vance said, a wet and horrifying word that could have been a laugh coming out of his physical mouth. "She is the catalyst. The Rot turns into anything, Ryker. But it is not able to adjust itself to the new cold soon enough. The atmosphere is under the command of the Origin Stone. It dictates pressure and temperature. Are I to absorb the girl... is it the hive that assimilates the Stone... we can create an engineered variety of the Rot that will live in the ice. We will become absolute."
Ryker tightened the hold of his sword till his knuckles went pop. The idea of Elara consumed by this agonized, carnal nightmare was a stabbing, direct burst of pure, un-Alpha rage in his heart.
You are not internalizing anything, Ryker sneered. "Your army is deaf. Your crawler is dead. It ends here, Vance."
Ryker lunged.
He went across the bridge in a symphony of action, and threw a horizontal slice plunging into the very human body of Vance, to cut him off at the biomechanical sources.
Vance didn't flinch.
SLAM.
A vast, metallic, violet moss-covered mechanical arm fell down the ceiling. It was not part of a Strider; it was a protectionary part, made in the bridge. The arm banged into the blade of Ryker.
The Star-Metal tore into the armor, and the room was filled with sparks, but the impulse hurled Ryker backwards. He struck the reinforced glass window of the bridge, and broke it.
You cut off my link with the infantry, Vance said, the voice falling an octave, which shook the floor plating. But still I am in touch with this ship. You are there in my body, Ryker.
Panels were sliding open all round the room.
And dozens of violet, glowing, tentacles of pure, rotting muscle tissue lashed out of the walls. They were as fat as snakes, and with points like bones.
Ryker rolled And a spike pierced the floor he had but now. He leaped into a crouch and his sword was a whirlwind of orange fire, and cut two of the tentacles. The cut biomass was convulsing on the ground and it was spurting purple fluid which was hissing and melting via the metal grating like acid.
You struggle like a desperate wolf, said Vance, and more cables fell down at the ceiling, in an effort to entrap the limbs of Ryker. However, a wolf is not going to be able to destroy a forest.
Ryker escaped a great stroke, and cut another cable, but one of the tentacles grabbed his ankle. The grip was like a steel vise. It lifted his leg up in the air and pulled him down the floor to the middle of the mass where Vance was welded together.
Ryker set his teeth, and smiled not to lay aside his sword. He swung crazily, in an attempt to cut the appendage that was dragging him, but another tentacle stung his sword arm and held it against his side.
The first thing I will assimilate you, Vance, I said, stretching my physical body forward, my hand, which was pale and veiny, towards the face of the man I was to kill. Your Alpha biology shall be a good addition to the vanguard of the hive.
The cables were tugged against by Ryker, the acidic substance eating holes in the cloth of his coat.
I am not a lone wolf, Vance," Ryker growled, and his golden eyes were in a defiant flash.
He didn't need a comms unit. He didn't need a psychic link.
Ryker threw back his head and emitted a roar of alarm which shook the crawler to its frame.
The door of the bridge was ripped out of the hinges a second later.
Baron did not just walk into the room, he burst into it. With one frightful bound the huge White Wolf was on the bridge. He ignored the tentacles. He did not pay attention to the mechanical arms.
Baron came down to the main root structure of Vance, with his huge fangs plunging to the hilt into the very thick of the bunch of violet nerves joining the General to the floor.