Angels of Eternity Page 17

The other attack ships tried to maneuver around, but the cannons hit them too. One attack ship attempted to return fire, but was hacked apart by the lasers before it could do anything. The entire exchange was quick and silent in the void of space. The ships appeared to be remotely guided and did not know how to evade the range of the cannons. It was over very quick and Durga turned her sites on the main wasp ship. If nothing else, she could offer Shakti some cover when she left.

  The boarding party continued on their way to the main wasp brood chamber. If the design pattern matched the other one they’d taken, it should be in site very soon. Chimata wished she had a crossbow, as the corridors were long in this part of the wasp ship. It would have been better for her to pick wasps off before they could engage, but it was still slow to reload a crossbow.

  Back on the Widowmaker, Durga spotted another wave of dots leave the wasp ship and head in their direction. The laser cannons needed a few minutes to charge, but she had time to use them. Did the wasps have a problem learning? They were in the process of executing the same maneuver, which had failed the time before.

  Seth heard sobbing and turned to see Dharma with her hand over her face. She knew Lashmi would not return alive from the wasp ship. He didn’t think they were close, but there was a bond of some kind among all these women. One moment they might have you up against the wall, the next you would have to spend an hour consoling them.

  It wasn’t just Lashmi who visited him in his quarters. Several of the others found a reason to come by as well. He thought about Lashmi and wondered how she’d died. She was formable under the sheets, but he had no way to remember her. She‘d told him the other day to stay put and perhaps they could leave together after this war finished. He didn’t know what to say when she said those words to him. Now Lashmi was gone.

  Seth went over to Dharma and gave her a hug. “I miss her too,” he said. “You need to be strong so we can survive.” He kissed her forehead and drifted back the safe place where he’d held the handrail. He looked across to see Dharma regain control of her composure at the panel.

  “Power is restored to the lasers,” she called out to Durga. “You can fire whenever they are in range.”

  “This has to be it,” Shakti said as they faced a familiar door to a chamber. The remains of the wasp soldiers who’d tried to stop them littered the corridor floor in front of it. The warbrides knew enough to stay back when the wasps attacked a second time and slashed them to pieces at a safe distance. If the first wave was equipped with a neurotoxin, so would this one. They had no desire to end up like Lashmi.

  “Think we should blow it open?” Kamala asked. “I have enough explosives to do the job. I’m just not sure what it would do to the insides of this ship. Most of these things aren’t built to contain any kind of explosion. We’ve been lucky so far.”

  As they watched, the door slid open. The warbrides brought their weapons up to a high guard and expected to encounter another wave of wasp soldiers. But nothing came out of the door. They waited for a few minutes.

  Then something was tossed out of the door. It was the head of a wasp brood queen. Shakti picked the head up and looked at it. Whoever did the decapitation used something sharp and ragged, such as the forearm of a wasp soldier.

  A few minutes later, the remainder of the wasp queen was tossed through the door. They looked at each other in confusion until a fully-grown adult human appeared in the doorway. It was a man about thirty years in age. He held a wasp forearm at one side, as if it was used as a knife. This explained the ragged edges on the wasp neck.

  He stood there in rags, his weapon in one hand and starred at them. Whoever he was, the man was infected with something. They could tell by the way his skin was swollen and the sweat pouring off him. His eyes were dilated.

  “They tried to infect them all,” he told them. The man just stood there, as if he was oblivious to anyone. “Almost did it too. But I found this.” He held up the wasp forearm-“and did a little infection of my own. They won’t do it again. I found the queens. Took care of them myself. What kind of God permits these things to exist? The stood still and watched him walk back into the chamber.

  “What the hell was that about?” Kamala asked the other warbrides.

  They found out when they entered the brood chamber.

  This was much bigger than the one they’d found previously. Rows and rows of infected hosts lined the inside. If ever there was a place in hell where punishments exceeded the crime, this was it. They knew what it was and how it came about, but such knowledge didn’t help them. Once again, Kamala wanted to sterilize the place with a nuclear weapon, but it had to be examined.

  They found the dais where the brood queens were sitting before the escaped victim reached them. The other queens were hacked to pieces as well. None of them had been able to get to the emergency switches or any other panic device. How the lone human, again, was able to kill a soldier wasp was something they never did understand. Somehow, the man had killed one of his captors and used the jagged forearm of a wasp soldier to get close enough to the brood queens to tear them apart. This did prove a reason as to why the wasps seemed to show no innovation when they attacked outside the brood chamber. The man was too far gone from exposure to whatever drugs the wasps used on their victims to tell them what happened. They were forced to piece it all together.

  His planet was attacked by the wasps that killed most of the inhabitants with some kind of toxic chemical before they pulled the survivors out of the shelters. They were taken onboard the wasp brood ships and infected with wasp larvae, then shoved into the brood chambers.

  They later decided the wasps weren’t able to tell the difference between some men and women. Every now and then, they would capture a man and not kill him. The man who destroyed the queens was one such victim. Seeing the wasps infect a hundred women had driven him mad. Of course, his infection didn’t take and eventually he came around.

  The man was able to escape the brood chambers and find a wasp soldier who provided him with an arm for jagged knife. He was sane enough to understand the wasp queens were the only ones in charge and went after them. He also launched his attack in conjunction with the assault of the war brides on the wasp ship. Of course, he had no way of knowing what was underway. It was a matter of fate.

  As they suspected, the wasp brood queens were too big to move around much and depended on wasp soldiers and other castes to survive. He’d sealed himself in with the queens during the attack when the wasp soldiers were preoccupied. Alone with the queens, he’d carved them apart with the jagged forearm.

  “I hope they felt every minute of it,” he told the warbrides before dying. The toxin use on the planet was though his system when they found him. He lived for two more days before dying.

  Lashmi’s body was transferred back to the Widowmaker. They held a memorial service for her that day and incinerated her remains, sending the ashes into space as per imperial regulation. No one knew what to say, so Shakti mentioned how she’d been a brave warbride and gave her life so that others might live.

  She neglected to say anything about the attack she made on the wasps. Shakti still couldn’t figure out if she’d done it out of desperation or had some actual plan. The end result was the same.

  The warbrides remained in the wasp ship for another day. Although the man who killed the wasp queens lived for a few days, he was unable to give them much useful information. Kamala was dispatched with Chimata to hunt down any wasp soldiers loose on the ship.

  The immediate problem was, again, what to do with the human hosts which were used to breed wasp larvae. Most of the cells were the hosts were kept were sealed. This allowed them to be isolated. Since what remained after the larvae reached an advanced stage could no longer be considered human life, there was no issue in euthanization.

  However, a greater question arose when it came to deciding what to do with a host recently infected by wasp larvae. In some cases, they could be removed, but this was rare. The autodoc inside
the Widowmaker would need to be transferred over to the wasp ship to determine if any of the hundreds of hosts found inside the brood chamber could be saved. In addition, they found several rooms of sedated humans who were on their way to serve as hosts.

  While the warbrides on the wasp ship were tallying what they found inside, Durga and Dharma were in the Widowmaker dealing with the final wasp attack ships. The wasps had hid the attack ships on the side of the main ship, away from the corvette. They waited until the Widowmaker was almost in range before the attack ships were launched.

  One of the wasp attack ships managed to get under the defense of the laser cannons and score a hit on the Widowmaker. It was a minor strike and only a sensor out cropping received damage. Durga eliminated the remainder of them without too much trouble. With the command out of the way on the wasp brood ship, anything they controlled was soon useless.

  The autodoc showed them not all the wasp hosts were infected. After the drugs the human were given wore off, they were able to conduct interviews and find out what happened. The human hosts came from several locations and were gathered up by wasp raiding parties as they swept across the known galaxy. Most of the time the wasps used ground troops of a particular caste to gather humans. They augmented their efforts with a gas laid down over the area under attack. The gas proved fatal to men most of the time. Only women were harvested. Men were killed if they got in the way. It was a miracle the man who killed the queens survived long enough to be brought into the brood ship.

  Seth was a great help to Dharma in the days after the battle. He spent a lot of time with her and tried to be around her every chance he had. The issue of the warbrides sharing him was tabled after Lashmi’s death. No one wanted to talk about it with her on their minds.

  Shakti called a meeting in the command center the day after the battle to discuss what they had found inside the brood ship.

  “We have a hundred women serving as host for space maggots,” she said. “According to the autodoc, most of them are no longer human and should be euthanized for mercy’s sake and to prevent more wasps from going into the pulpal state. Twenty might be cured if the autodoc is able to remove the larvae before it becomes too big. This leaves few women we can find with no trace of infection. Most are traumatized beyond description and I don’t know how we can help them.”

  “Have you talked to the war college about the women we found on the ship?” Durga asked her as she floated across the panels. Everyone was suffering from exhaustion after the battle.

  “I have,” Shakti responded. “They are letting us decide what to do about them. This is the second brood ship we’ve found, but the empire has found others. From what they tell me, we may have found the largest one so far. I find it disgusting we have to put so many women out of their misery because they have been eaten alive by the larvae of the wasps. We might be able to save the ones who are still in the early stages. The war college wants to send an entire team of autodoc personnel through folded space to see if they can save more women. They haven’t been able to communicate with the turncoats yet, so we really don’t understand much about how the wasps find victims.”

  “I think we got them all,” Kamala spoke up. “I’ll sweep through the wasp ship one more time with Chimata and Durga just to make sure. I don’t think the soldier caste lives very long after it’s been hatched. I found a few of them in another section yesterday and they were almost dead. I took care of them without much trouble.” Even as she sat, Kamala looked tall with the halberd by her side.

  “I think it would be a good idea to train some of the human survivors in the use of weapons,” Chimata suggested. “We might be able to get them up to speed on the basic forms. Give those women down there swords and there is no telling what they could do against the wasps.”

  “They’re still traumatized,” Shakti pointed out. I’m not sure if it's such a good idea to begin training them right away. They might be a threat to themselves and others if they are deployed this soon. It took us awhile to get proficient with weapons.”

  “There’s plenty of them down there,” Dharma brought up. “You get enough of them into a wasp ship with swords and you won’t have to worry about the skill level.”

  They talked for a few more minutes until Shakti reached a decision. She came to it after realizing how traumatized the women in the brood ship were after they were examined by the autodoc.

  “As soon as the medics arrive,” she told them, “and the autodocs start to work, we should have a few who are free of the infection and able to be trained. I want them started on weapons training. You’ll have a force down there that will be unstoppable. They’ve seen the worse the wasps can deliver and will have no issue attacking them with whatever they can get their hands upon.”

  “Alright,” Kamala said, “We’ll find a few of them to start. I think you should keep in mind they will be hard to work with in their state. I hope the medical corps brings plenty of psych drugs because they will be needed.”

  The four medical transports folded space just outside the star five days later. They held forty different autodocs, all the empire could spare for the moment, and twelve human medics. The ships came into range of the Widowmaker three days later and asked for directions on linking up with the idle wasp brood ship.

  “Warbrides,” the flagship announced, “this is the Serapis, we are with the imperial medical team sent to help in the recovery of the women held prisoner by the wasps. Will it be possible to dock with the wasp ship? And is it safe to do so?”

  “There are few safety concerns at this moment,” Durga let them know, “because all the wasps on it are dead. We have close to a hundred women who they attempted to harvest. I hope you are rested because this will be one huge job.”

  The medical fleet decided to transport their people to the wasp ship by shuttles. The risk of contamination was too great. Although the wasps were no longer in command of the ship, they were still concerned about some kind of infectious disease left behind as a trap. Durga and Shakti accompanied them to the brood chamber when the shuttle made contact when the wasp brood ship.

  “You should have seen the look on their faces when they saw the extent of the hosting cells,” Durga told the other warbrides later. “I think they took pictures. If the emperor was short of propaganda material, he’s got it now.”

  “Do you think this will be a true genocidal war?” Chimata asked her.

  They were all in the sauna. It was the ideal place to hold discussions. All except for Seth who was in his room three levels down. Shakti still hadn’t made up her mind if she would allow her co-wives to use him as a concubine. She needed to talk to Seth about it.

  “It already is one,” Durga responded. “The wasps see us a resource to be exploited and the empire is offering bounty on each wasp body brought into a trading post. There is no room to compromise. It ended the first time we found a brood ship. The only question is which species will survive.”

  “I’d like to think there was some way we could reason with them,” Chimata stated. “But I think things have gone too far for that to happen.”

  Dharma was quiet. Shakti suspected why but didn’t say anything. There was no reason to bring up problems right now and it was something else she would have to address. She knew about the time she was spending with Seth and needed to talk to her.

  A day later, the autodocs were finished with their examination of the women in the brood chambers. The infection was not as bad as the warbrides initially feared. Only ten of the women found in the chambers were not considered human life any longer and had to be euthanized. The rest could have the wasp larvae removed, although some were in an advanced state and needed extensive surgery. The autodocs went to work that day, performed far in excess of what anyone could remember, and only lost three of the women where they needed to remove the alien infection from them. After they were finished, eighty-seven women were listed as survivors of the original one hundred. Of those eighty-seven, only ten were in good enough
shape to undergo weapons training.

  The medical corps had brought over additional swords, shields and halberds after Shakti put through a request for them. Her initial reasons involved the wear on the weapons the warbrides used when storming the pirate and wasp ships. It was true they needed new ones. But she made sure the medical corps brought enough along to outfit at least twenty new combatants. They had far more than needed for the new trainees. The corvette carried plenty of spare armor suits, so this was not an issue.

  Shakti had Durga and Kamala take the ten women who were capable of weapon training and show them the basics one morning after the medical corps cleared them for active duty. She lined them up in a part of the Widowmaker that could be used for training. It was a large room near the outer hull of the habitat so the simulated gravity was best in this area.

  Kamala was the instructor the day the women survivors were brought into the room. They all wore the same grey tunic the medical corps brought along, but they were of many different races and shapes. Most were in the twenty to thirty-five age ranges. All of them were jumpy and still suffering from the traumatic experiences they endured.

  For openers, Kamala gave each one a practice weapon made out of wood to see how they would respond to the training. She assigned them different weapons, depending on their height. How they responded to the initial training was also taken into consideration. At least four of them carried practice halberds when she was finished. The rest had short swords. She showed them the basic moves for each one, which they seemed to understand.

  “Okay,” Kamala announced. “You have a weapon. Now I’m going to let you see a target and give you a chance to use your weapon on it.”

  The target was a dummy wasp soldier statue made out of plastic. She had one brought in with the supplies. During the first part of the training session, Kamala kept a black cloth over it. After she announced they would have a chance to practice on a target, she pulled the cloth off the image of the wasp. What happened next caught her off guard.