Last Stand Boxed Set Read online

  Skoldra summoned a thousand of her fighters. They abandoned their craft and dropped to the surface of the conquered nest. They scuttled across its surface, their handheld green fire weapons ready to obliterate every nurse drone they could find. The nurse drones would be completely removed before Skoldra would introduce her own nurse drone daughters to manage the swarm.

  Skoldra sat on the body of Phisrid as her builders dismantled it. She sent out the pheromone field, the strongest she could muster, and all drones in the vicinity responded, their feedback down the pheromone field sending shivers of ecstasy through Skoldra’s quaking body.

  The central chamber of the nest asteroid still held the strong stench of the dead queen. Skoldra deposited pheromone paste on every surface, spitting it from her spawn sacks in great gouts. And soon the inner chamber was sticky and stinking of Skoldra.

  She was queen. She was the swarm queen of the greatest swarm ever. Her nurse drones from her own nest transferred across to the new asteroid and began to prepare the spawn pods for the next generation. The builders broke down the old queen and smeared her matter on the outer edge of the asteroid, subsuming her old nest into the new one. The new nest asteroid took on the appearance of a misshapen blob rather than the near-perfect sphere that all swarm queens aspired to. Soon, and with enough matter, the nest asteroid would become spherical again, with all new matter encasing both old and new nests to create the greatest nest asteroid for the largest swarm there ever was.

  Now that she had the numbers, nothing could stand in her way. Skoldra analyzed the surrounding region. The greater Skalidion Empire lay behind her. On her left flank was her neighboring swarm queen, now dwarfed by Skoldra’s size. Skoldra calculated the chances of success should she invade her neighbor and seize another nest asteroid. Yes, she had the fighters, but she was fatigued from generating such a vast pheromone field to absorb the entire half-million inert drones. And only she could defeat the swarm queen at the center of the nest asteroid. Any fighters sent would be absorbed by the pheromone field. Only a swarm queen could advance and take the territory by killing an existing queen.

  On Skoldra’s right flank were the fractured remains of the Devex Empire. Scattered star systems lay at her mercy. It would be easier to take down the remaining Devex systems one by one and consume their matter than to attack a neighboring queen. While she was resting, the Devex would fall. She would keep careful watch with her observer drones on the nearby queen and look for any opportunity to conquer. Taking the brain of Phisrid had made Skoldra bold, even if it had exhausted her almost to the point of collapse. It was exhausting to take even a dead queen’s territory. But now, Skoldra had the taste for conquest. Only by consuming swarm queens could she become empress, and now that had to be her goal.

  As her fighters cleared out the last of the nurse drones and the entire swarm fell fully under her control, she accessed the memories of Phisrid through her observer caste.

  And now Skoldra learned how the swarm queen had died. A creature had been brought here, small and insignificant. It had been brought before Phisrid, and it had killed her. The small, four-limbed, smooth-skinned creature, smaller than a nurse drone, had jumped inside Phisrid, and then cut its way out, bursting from the thorax. That such a tiny creature could kill a massive queen felt utterly wrong.

  Skoldra searched through the memories of the observers for information on the creature.

  Human.

  Humans were rare, existing not on any home world in the region but in a collection of ships travelling on the edge of the Skalidion Empire. And now they were gone.

  Then the builders sent Skoldra the memory of the taste.

  Skoldra, already exhausted with conquest, fell even more into a stupor as the sensation of the taste of human filled her. It was extraordinary, irresistible, delicious.

  Even the taste fed to her by the builders from another swarm was the greatest thing she had ever experienced, though her affinity with her own swarm was that much greater than the affinity with the new Skalidion under her control. She would have to taste human with her own builders. She would have to taste human with her own rasping mouth.

  And this was how Phisrid had fallen. Determined to have the taste for herself, she had brought a human into her nest asteroid, into the central chamber, and allowed it to destroy her. Skoldra would not make the mistake Phisrid had. She would bring the humans naked and unarmed into her chamber, and then she would have the taste.

  Skoldra sent fighters and observers immediately to the last-known location of the humans. Their collection of ships, insignificant next to the might of her massed swarm, had left the region. Their last-known heading was toward the stellar void. The Skalidion Empire would end at the edge of that stellar void, no star systems existed in that vast area, so there was no reason for any Skalidion swarm to enter.

  Until now.

  Skoldra sent her scouts. Observers and fighters, thousands of them, peeled off from her seven hundred and fifty thousand-strong swarm. She would find the humans. She would have the taste.

  Skoldra settled onto the surface of the central nest chamber, gathering the brittle remains of the dismantled swarm queen around her—a nest within the nest built from the teeth and bones of the dead queen. Skoldra would sleep, but soon, she would wake. Soon, she would capture all the humans.

  4

  The lower decks of the civilian transport were filled with the overflow of humanity. Those who had escaped in the great evacuation but failed to secure a cabin, or had had their cabin taken from them, found themselves living in refugee camps that sprang up in the underbelly of the city-sized civilian transports. As Beretta walked through the crowded corridors of the lower decks, he imagined the other transports were in a similar state. People desperate to survive, scratching out a living on the lifeless interior of these transports.

  Beretta stepped over a sleeping, or possibly dead, body in the crowded corridor. Eventually, a maintenance drone would make it to these corridors and clear away the detritus, but for now, the heaving crowds stepped around the prone body.

  Curtains hung from the bulkhead, marking out a tent city. The homeless made their homes, or their businesses, where they could. An alcove here with a sheet hung from it became a family home, a recess there became a business, manufacturing the things the populace needed from any and all material scratched together.

  With a steady supply of nutritious, tasteless ration blocks, no civilian was likely to go hungry, but people trapped in this dark underworld wanted more than just food. They needed escape. A roaring trade in backstreet narcotics created from basic chemicals was sold in tiny packets. Synthetic drugs were more expensive. A bottle of Amber would cost you a week’s hard scratch, or, if one chose to steal it, it could cost you your life. In the dark corridors, there was no law, only desire and despair.

  Picking his way past one business to another, slowly making his way through the underworld, Beretta stopped to listen to a complaint from a business owner whose neighbor had stolen a small shelving unit for his own use. A square meter of space and the men would fight to the death over it, but before that happened, they would take it to Beretta.

  Insisting that he would deal with the problem, Beretta walked on, whispering to one of his men to get the best price for the shelf area from either one of the two businessmen. Whoever paid most could keep it.

  The cabins of the corridor in this area were designed to take families or groups of evacuees. They were basic with an energy output and a water delivery system. Now they were all occupied with Beretta’s businesses—bars selling engine room hooch, VR pods with illicit, homemade entertainment from murder to sex, or both, gambling on dice, cards, or bare-knuckle boxing… It was all here, and it had made Beretta rich.

  The doorman controlling entrance to the fight club nodded at Beretta as he stepped up. He patted the big man on the shoulder as he stepped inside. Fighting was the most lucrative entertainment. It amused Beretta that people who were struggling so badly would g
et so much pleasure from watching two men batter each other, and that they would gamble their meager resources hoping to benefit by choosing the winner. Beretta had realized these people did not gamble to make money, they gambled to forget that they had none.

  The bar built into the side of the fight club was stocked with everything from the dirtiest engine room hooch to bottles of Amber or White. Beretta shouted over the noise of people cheering on the latest fight and pointed to the bottle of Amber at the back of the bar. He held up his finger to indicate he would take a single shot. The young barmaid—no more than sixteen—gave Beretta a sultry glance and poured him the shot. She smiled as he took his drink.

  The fight was a heavyweight match, and two enormous fighters covered in sweat, snot, and blood were slugging it out to raucous cheers. One fighter with shoulder-length hair and a broken nose swung a wild haymaker of a punch at the slightly larger bald man. The bald man was delivering a kick to his opponent’s left knee.

  Beretta knocked back his Amber and dropped the glass back onto the bar as the swinging punch landed heavily on the bald man’s chin with a crunch that was only just drowned out by yells of pain as the bald man broke his opponent’s knee.

  Wild cheers leapt up and a flurry of betting slips were launched in the air. Every discarded slip was a penny in Beretta’s pocket. He turned and walked away, tossing a credit chip to the young girl behind the bar. She called out her thanks after him as he stepped out into the corridor.

  Beretta’s men, who’d been waiting in the corridor, fell in step behind him. Ducking past the curtained-off alcoves and stepping around small unlicensed fire elements, Beretta made his way to the end of the corridor. This corridor, one of over a dozen that Beretta controlled, was his most lucrative. It was mostly the fighting. Beretta knew he needed to take his most lucrative scams into the rest of his territory.

  Reaching the end, Beretta saw the shadow of the pair of cops on the far bulkhead. Turning to his men, Beretta told them to hang back. He walked up to the end of the corridor and turned to face the two old street cops.

  “Hey, Lou,” the old cop said, his composite baton hanging at his side, tapping the top of his boot gently. “We had a report of some disorder in this corridor.”

  Beretta smiled his broad, charismatic smile and leaned against the bulkhead, pulling out a cigar and tearing off the paper package. Flicking open his lighter, Beretta puffed on the fat cigar to bring it to life. He blew the thick, blue smoke upward.

  “I just been down that corridor, Officer. It all looks in order to me.”

  “You know there’s a new chief on this transport, an old cop from a small town. You know he thinks we ought to clean up this ship.”

  Beretta gripped the cigar between his teeth and nodded. “And you guys are just the ones to get the job done. I know,” Beretta said. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out two more cigars. “Just so you know I appreciate your efforts, gentlemen.” Beretta handed one to each cop.

  “We need more civic minded people like you, Lou,” the second cop said, tucking the cigar into his blue jacket pocket. “Too many people want to do too little. We’d all be lost a few wasn’t for people like you.”

  Beretta nodded and smiled. The two cops crossed the end of the corridor with barely a glance down into the den of vice that Beretta had created.

  The cross-corridor was littered with more of the homeless, those without even a blanket. The wrappers of sticky ration blocks lay strewn around the people who sat and lay and waited for a chance to leave the ship that had become their prison. So many people just wanted the fleet to find a planet so they could make a new home. Many others seemed to thrive in this overcrowded, stinking mess.

  Beretta turned and looked into the next of his corridors with its collection of business and vice. The commotion coming from there was no different than any of his others.

  Beretta turned and walked away slowly, pulling on his fat cigar. In a few steps, he was at the end.

  As long as the civilian transport remained in the fleet, Beretta knew he had to operate in the underbelly of the ship, and he was always going to be in danger of being discovered and stopped by Fleet Intelligence. The old city cops who formed the civilian police service were woefully ill-equipped and poorly trained—they were no match for Beretta—but Fleet Intelligence were well equipped, devious, and relentless. They were unstoppable.

  The only way Beretta could avoid the intel agents and expand his territory from the lower decks was to take the ship. And Beretta knew he was on the verge of doing just that.

  Leaving the vice district behind him, with the shouts dying in the distance, Beretta came to a stairway leading up to a wider, cleaner corridor above. Here the cabins were spacious, and the doors securely locked.

  Beretta had business here too. Those who had escaped in the evacuation with items of value were able to buy their occupation in these plush cabins. Beretta sold vice to those behind these closed doors. Most simply wanted VR escapism—to walk on a planetary surface, even if it was an illusion. Others wanted more stimulation. Escape was all these people wanted, to escape the reality of being trapped in the civilian transport. And when the occupant had spent every last tradable resource on their vice, Beretta was ready to take their ultimate last resource: their comfortable cabin.

  Beretta reached one door, tapped once and waited. The cabin doors slid aside noiselessly, and Beretta stepped inside.

  The cabin had been converted into a laboratory. Two men worked at the clean white bench, jars and tubes and heating induction coils creating a series of bubbling liquids and boiling gases all trapped within a clear composite network of tubes and bottles. The older man turned and ran his fingers through his remaining hair.

  “Mr. Beretta,” the old chemist said, “the samples were easy enough to deconstruct and we have isolated the vital components. We’ve tested them on some rodents. It works, kind of.”

  Beretta sat on the workbench and folded his arms. ‘Sort of’ was not what he wanted to hear. The old chemist started to complain that Beretta was sitting on a workbench, but a quick look silenced him.

  The young assistant stepped up. He was smiling and looked slightly drunk. “Kind of works is kind of awesome,” the young assistant said. He pulled a hard candy out of his pocket and threw it up into the air, catching it in his mouth as it came down. As he sucked on the sweet, he continued to explain. “Some of the components are just impossible to reproduce. We’ve thrown in some things that are chemically very similar. It’s just not going to have the same effect. But the effect is close enough. I’d say once we manufacture the correct amounts, you’ll be able to proceed with your plans.”

  Beretta climbed off the bench and grabbed the young assistant by the hair. As he dragged the young guy’s head down, Beretta fixed him with a fierce stare. “And what do you think my plans are?”

  The young assistant began to splutter on his hard candy. The old chemist stepped forward, trying to explain while stuttering, clearly distressed by Beretta’s sudden violent outburst.

  Looking up at the old chemist, Beretta said, “He can speak for himself. He’s got plenty to say.” He looked down at the young assistant. “Haven’t you? You got plenty to say. Now speak up.”

  The young assistant spat out the candy and tucked it back in his pocket. He wiped his sticky hand on his jacket and looked up at Beretta.

  “You’ve asked us to manufacture a ton of Dox vapor. That is about the amount you would need to flood a civilian transport’s atmosphere and knock out the entire ship’s complement. That’s your plan. You want to send everyone to sleep.”

  “Why? Why do I want to send everyone to sleep?” Beretta tugged the young man’s hair, pulling him down even lower.

  The young man held his hands up. “I don’t know. So you can steal the ship?”

  Beretta let the young man go. He stood up slowly and adjusted his hair and his jacket.

  “And who have you told of my plan?” Beretta took a puff on his cigar
.

  “No one,” the young man said. “I haven’t spoken to anyone. I’ve just been working on this Dox vapor. I want to see it work.”

  “And will it work?” Beretta said, sitting back on the workbench.

  “Kind of,” the old chemist said. “And kind of is pretty kravin’ good.”

  Beretta puffed his cigar. “When you say kind of, what do you mean? Are the people going to be asleep?”

  “Most of them,” the young assistant said. “Most of them will be out as long as the Dox vapor is in the atmosphere. Some are just going to get really sick, but they will be too sick to do anything except vomit and sweat.”

  Beretta nodded. “And how soon can you have a ton of Dox vapor ready for me?”

  “We’ve been talking about that,” the old chemist said. “We need a few things, personal things.”

  Beretta knew when someone was overplaying their hand, and this old chemist was quaking in his boots. The young assistant looked a little surer of himself, but even he realized they were playing a dangerous game asking Beretta for payment.

  Beretta remained silent and simply stared at the old chemist, inviting him to go on, paying out enough rope so the old man felt thoroughly tangled up in its deathly grip.

  “We want accommodation. Food. And we want to be safe.”

  The old chemist turned as white as his coat.

  Beretta puffed on his cigar and nodded. “I can make sure you are safe. And if you get this done for me, I might want to keep you around for some other little jobs.” Beretta stood up and gestured with his cigar. “And if I have use for you, of course I will want to keep you alive.”

  The old chemist sat down and let out a large sigh. He turned to his young assistant. The young man was more composed. He thanked Beretta without a crack in his voice.

  “So? When will it be ready?”