Stephen Berry - The Biofab War

"There are over two hundred levels so far!" exclaimed Bakunin.

"It was an Imperial Citadel, Colonel, not a granary," said the Commander.

"Positions," he ordered as the lift began to slow. "This should be POCSYM's level."

The commandos fell into three ranks-prone, kneeling, standing-and took careful aim as the elevator stopped. The shooting started even before the doors opened. Blue and red bolts sizzled past each other, tearing into the opposing ranks. Blasters whining, men screaming, biofabs hissing, the cloying stench of burnt flesh and everywhere the light: the beautiful killing light from the weapons, the rippling, rainbow aura of warsuits failing.

Bill had believed nothing could be as bad as that last battle under Goose Hill. He was wrong. This was an interminable moment of hell, a battle tableau from the art of Bosch or Floris.

L'Wrona brought them out of it, leading a charge into the biofabs, firing and clubbing with his pistol, stabbing with his knife. Short and vicious, the fight ended with the few surviving S'Cotar breaking for the safety of a cross-corridor. None made it.

"Without these warsuits, they'd be feasting on our corpses now," L'Wrona commented to Zahava as the humans regrouped and evacuated their wounded. The remainder of their force had now joined them.

"Do they really eat… us?" she asked, skeptical.

The K'Ronarin gazed for a moment at the heaped biofab remains, then led Zahava by the hand to one particular body. A well-aimed shot had ended the warrior's life, shattering its abdominal sack and deepening the viscous green slime covering the floor. Rolling the corpse over with his foot, L'Wrona pointed at a string of withered objects strung about the shorf neck. Zahava leaned closer, peering.

"Baby's feet!" she gasped, recoiling.

"Human infants are especially prized as a delicacy by the S'Cotar," said the officer, turning and walking away. "The necklace is a symbol of wealth and status. Maybe that was the commander of our reception party.

"Let's get moving before they counterattack.

"Section leaders, move your sections out on the double."

The golden, hovering sphere wavered twice before blinking out for good. D'Trelna spoke hopefully into his communicator. "POCSYM?"

"… jam… cations… right… next…"

"Great. We've lost our guide," said John, looking down the long empty corridor. He counted fifteen cross-corridors in just the next half mile.

"D'Trelna to L'Wrona. Do you receive?"

Static filled the commnet.

"Jamming all right," grunted the Captain. "Sounded like POCSYM said 'next right.'"

The next right led down a narrow, curving corridor that ended at a door marked in the cursive S'Cotar script.

"Can you read that?" asked the Terran.

"'Spare Parts'… No." D'Trelna's brow wrinkled in concentration. "'Food Storage.' Maybe." He shook his head.

"Sorry I asked. Shall we take a look?"

John leading, they burst through the door. It was pitch-black inside. And cold. Very, very cold.

"Must be food storage," whispered the K'Ronarin. "Something wrong with the light activator? Ah!" he exclaimed as brilliant light flooded the room.

As long as he lived, John never forgot the shock of Greg Farnesworth's dead blue eyes staring into his own, inches away. His friend's naked corpse hung head down from the ceiling, wires through its feet running up to a simple block-and-tackle system. Dazedly, John stepped back, looking about the "storage" room.

Cindy's body-the Cindy Greg had never known-hung to the geologist's right. Behind them were Fred Langston's and over a hundred other corpses, all hanging like cattle in a slaughterhouse. Only Greg's cause of death was apparent: the hideous stomach wound from the Nasqa raid.

"Why?" John managed, finding his voice. His breath hung steaming in the frigid air. "Why take his body-anyone's body-and bring it here?"

Less shaken, D'Trelna noticed it first. "They've all been brainstripped," he said with quiet horror. Now John saw it: the craniums had been neatly removed and the brains scooped out.

Harrison had survived much of war's meanness: Indochina with its napalmed children; nameless, massacred villages; pungi-staked GIs. He'd been with the South Africans when they'd raided across their border, an observer powerless in the face of infanticide, gang rape and throat slitting. John thought himself inured to man's bestiality. But this was a higher order of evil, an alien horror of unknown purpose. Choking back a throatful of bile, he turned to D'Trelna. "Why brainstrip them? Why save the bodies?"

"First, how," said the Captain. "POCSYM just transports the entire Institute staff here one quiet afternoon, instantly replacing them with S'Cotar transmutes. Like that." He snapped a blunt finger.

"How'd you know they were from the Institute, J'Quel?" John asked softly. The K'Ronarin smiled to find himself staring down the wide bore of the Terran's blaster.

"You may just survive this war, my friend." He nodded approvingly.

"On the way here, you explained that the guise Gaun-Sharick took on the catwalk was that of the Leurre Institute's Director. When I saw the same face hanging from that meat hook over there, I drew the logical conclusion.

"Now"-he smiled-"would you mind pointing that blaster elsewhere? The M-Eleven-A has a notoriously delicate trigger, and your S'Cotar alarm is not signaling."

"Sorry." Grinning sheepishly, he lowered the muzzle.

"Bah! You're just developing the right sort of reflexes.

"About the Institute, though, John. Why did POCSYM put a S'Cotar Nest on Terra? Any speculation?"

John stamped his feet, trying to warm them. "I think he put it there so we Terrans would discover the S'Cotar. The events at the Institute and Goose Cove were as carefully orchestrated as the attack on your Confederation. It required less resources', but had to be timed with your arrival in this system." He paused. "Could POCSYM have planted the clues in your Archives that led you here?"

"Possible. Archives is a vast, decentralized sprawl of a city, run by computers and a handful of academics. Yes, it's very possible."

"But why brainstrip the corpses, J'Quel. What use could the S'Cotar have for human brains?"

They both saw it at the same instant. "POCSYM!"

"Of course!" D'Trelna shouted, slamming his palm with a fist. "The S'Cotar didn't take them. Revenge wasn't the last mindslaver."

"Damn right," growled John. "No wonder he's been able to keep going for all these centuries. His central components are infinitely renewable. And the corpses are saved-"

"As a treat for his creatures," finished the Captain. "Let's get out of here. My balls are frostbitten and I think I'm going to be sick." The officer turned toward the door.

"J'Quel, wait." Fanning the blaster wide, John fired into a stack of boxes. A second later the corpsicle room was filling with greasy smoke. Sullen orange flames began licking up the wall.

"Requiescatinpace, you poor bastards," said the Terran as the door slid shut behind them. He stopped dead. "But they really can't, can they?"

"Not while their minds are in thrall to POCSYM," D'Trelna said as they retraced their steps down the passageway.

"Then the only way to free them is to destroy POCSYM." John carefully scanned the intersection.

"Yes. And POCSYM will be destroyed, John, my word on it.

"Now what?" asked the Captain, looking down the deserted corridor.

"Keep going in the direction we were headed when we lost contact with POCSYM. It stands to reason that the control area is off a main passageway. We know we're on the right level. So…" He waved his blaster down the gray expanse of corridor.

"So we continue." D'Trelna sighed. "I'd travel easier in a warsuit."

"Courage, Captain, courage," said John, slapping the older man on the back, some of his natural buoyancy recovered.