Nova War

Perhaps inevitably, Sal had eventually turned the conversation to politics.

'There's been some negotiations with the Uchidans, and I guess that's a step forward. But too many people still don't trust them, and some of the deposed Senators are still popular. It turned out that the Uchidans had been holding some of our soldiers prisoners for years, ever since the massacres, and they agreed to return them after the coup. But some of them were changed.'

'Changed how?' Corso asked.

'Just… different, somehow. They came back and started preaching to us about the Uchidan faith. Turned out…' he shrugged and waved a hand '… you know.'

Corso turned to look at him. 'You mean they were carrying Uchidan implants?'

'Yes.' Sal nodded. 'But they claimed they'd had them installed voluntarily'

'And had they?'

Sal shrugged as if to say Who knows?

'I remember hearing stories,' Corso replied, 'that it was never true all the Uchidans had implants.'

Sal nodded. 'Turns out that's the case. Oh yes, a lot of them have the implants, but many are apparently regular people.'

'Maybe they're lying – like the prisoners of war.'

Sal shook his head. 'The Senate building was stormed during the coup, and they found records of the dissections of captured Uchidans. Some of those dissected carried implants, some didn't.'

Corso sighed heavily, catching the other man's eye. Schlosser, meanwhile, continued to gaze unflinchingly at some point beyond the hangar. 'Tell me, why exactly did you come here, Sal? What did they say to you, or did they force you to come?'

Sal's gaze flicked away from his. 'They said after everything you'd been through, a familiar face would help.'

And yet you were the one who stood by while they tortured me. Corso stared at him, speechless, and Sal's face grew redder under that persistent gaze.

'For God's sake, Lucas, I don't know how to show you how sorry I am. They told me that everything they did to you was necessary, that we had to cooperate with the Bandati or they'd shut us out. I knew what we were doing was wrong, but it wasn't like it was us alone.'

'The Consortium – they went along with the whole thing?'

Sal nodded, and Corso was filled with a peculiar determination.

'Sal, I want you to listen to me. I've seen and heard things since that day back on Redstone which make me realize how badly things have to change. If we get out of here alive – if we do – things are going to have to be different. I was listening to Briggs back there; she might have been part of the coup, but I honestly can't tell the difference between her and Senator Arbenz. There's a reason the Freehold got booted from one end of the Consortium to the other. We talk self-reliance, but all we do is allow the worst, most self-serving scum imaginable to take charge of us.'

Sal laughed weakly, as if he'd just heard a slightly tasteless joke.

Corso turned to Schlosser, partly to hide his sudden disgust. 'Do we have any idea what's going on out there?' he asked the trooper. 'Is there any chance someone from the Consortium forces might actually come and rescue us?'

Schlosser shook his head briefly. 'No word from any of the other detachments. Best scenario is they're hiding, but scattered all over this station. Worst case, they're all dead.'

He turned to look directly at Corso for the first time since Dantec had died. 'You'd better give up on any idea we're going to get out of here. As far as the Consortium is concerned, we were never even here, and that makes us very, very expendable.' Before long, three Emissaries returned to the bay, one with a variety of unidentifiable equipment strapped onto her broad back, just behind her tiny mate. The other two entered the hangar and headed straight towards the rear. Corso and his two companions shuffled back into the darkness, trying to retreat as far back between the bulky tanks as possible.

Schlosser, it turned out, had been hiding a final ace up his sleeve for precisely this moment.

He reached down and pulled out a slim black stick which had been tucked into one of his boots. He threw this directly under the broad feet of the oncoming Emissary as she thrust her trunk-tentacles between the tanks, and began reaching for them. The stick exploded noisily and the Emissary buckled at once, roaring and trumpeting with pain as one of her legs was reduced to a bloody ruin.

The second Emissary roughly shoved her injured companion out of the way, ramming her head between the tanks and grabbing Schlosser's arm. Corso and Sal tried to hold on to him, but were no match for the creature's strength.

Schlosser was dragged, kicking and yelling, out into the open space of the hangar. Corso assumed the beast would kill him, but instead she wrapped him up in her tentacles and carried him over to where the third Emissary waited near the entrance.

Though the injured Emissary still lay wounded by the tanks, and was clearly in some considerable distress, her two companions ignored her entirely. Schlosser, meanwhile, was proffered to the one bearing the equipment, while the one that had seized him began offloading the same equipment from its companion's back.

'It's setting up some kind of framework,' Sal mumbled, peering out around the side of a wall-mounted cylindrical tank.

The Emissary was now busy assembling a pyramidal shaped arrangement of lightweight tubes, with a variety of straps and harnesses hanging from its apex. Schlosser meanwhile continued to struggle, but was firmly pi

Schlosser kept screaming at Sal and Corso to run, but they couldn't move with the guard-machine still hovering outside the hangar entrance. Corso knew exactly what would happen if either of them tried to make a break for it.

He watched in horror as cables emerged from a small box positioned at the apex of the pyramid of tubes. Writhing like snakes, they reached down for Schlosser and began to dig into his upper shoulders, back and skull. He screamed, a horrible, wretched sound, and blood oozed down his torso as the serpent-things worked their way deeper and deeper inside his body.

'I know what they're doing,' Corso gasped, forcing bile back down his throat. 'It's what the Bandati were pla

Schlosser now hung silent and limp, having most likely passed out.

They're going to take our minds apart until they find me, or Dakota – or anyone they think can get them inside the derelict.

Schlosser's body then began to jerk, as if he was being electrocuted. The Emissary tending to him stepped back, and the snakes continued to writhe around their victim.

'Fuck this,' Sal choked in a whisper. 'I'm not waiting for that. I'd rather let them kill me.'

Corso grabbed at him just before Sal pushed his way out of their hiding place. 'Wait a second, just wait. You'll never make it. They're standing between you and the exit, and there's that guard-machine as well.'

'I don't want to fucking make it,' Sal rasped. 'I'm just hoping they kill me quickly. Anything…' He stared at Schlosser, hanging limply from the tubular assemblage. 'Anything but that.'

Corso realized with a shock that Schlosser's eyes had reopened and were now staring towards them.

He began to speak.

'Don't try and run or they'll kill you.' The words came from Schlosser's mouth, but the voice sounded querulous, childlike, utterly unlike the hardened soldier Corso had come to know so briefly.