Death System by S A Sidor

Author:S A Sidor [Sidor, S A]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Media Tie-In, Science Fiction, Space Exploration, Horror
ISBN: 9781839082832
Google: ZdXQEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Aconyte
Published: 2024-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Clowning

Nobody gives me enough credit, Nero thought. It must be nice to be a follower, doing whatever you’re told and taking no responsibility beyond the tip of your nose. Try leading. Everybody wants to be the boss until they get the job. He’d conquered worlds. Worlds! Sure, getting locked up was a setback. But that wasn’t his fault. The Coalition overlords hounded him, outnumbering and outgunning him for years, yet he’d still evaded them, making a game out of it, and drinking their tears. An informer was his undoing, and no matter how hard you vetted your underlings, the weakest among them would fail eventually, and like a cornered sewer rat, they’d do whatever it took to save their skins. He didn’t know the identity of the traitor who stuck the knife in his back, although he had a list of suspects. The problem was there were too many. Despite what his critics said, Nero had ample patience; in time he’d find the informer and make them pay, painfully. Revenge was his xenium. It gave him limitless energy. For now, the issue was contacting Neera, and staying upright until the wormhole blossomed over PK-L7.

They broke through the congested end of the modular hallway, and the remainder of the passage was surprisingly clear. Apart from the bones. Mounds and mounds of them. A real charnel house. Nero was aghast at the level of catastrophic failure. Too-ahka squatted to pick through them, studying the shards, inspecting toothmarks scored into the surfaces. The alien put one of the bones in its mouth and gnawed at it.

That’s got to be unsanitary, Nero thought. “Taste anything interesting?” he asked.

Too-ahka didn’t respond. Nero couldn’t blame the creature. He hadn’t been able to read the alien’s sign language before, and there wasn’t much of a chance he’d figure out the meaning now. The alien took the bone out of its mouth, comparing grooves. Then it went back to digging in the pile for more, tossing broken femurs and humeri over its shoulder. Nero saw a whole human ribcage fly by. No skulls, though. Maybe the Xenos saved the heads for… reasons.

Shawna went up to Too-ahka, and the alien showed her the skeletonized remains.

“There were at least three varieties of Xenos who killed these humans,” she said, translating for the group.

“Too hard, too soft, and juuust right?” Nero asked.

Shawna ignored his attempt at humor. “Three different bite patterns appear with regularity. All of them are bigger than Too-ahka’s mouth. A few of the bones are completely shattered, indicating at least one of the species has a bite strength that’s off the charts.” Shawna examined the fragments for herself. She passed them to Lemora, who scrutinized the evidence.

Lemora said, “I read that the infected Xenos were comprised of multiple subtypes. Workers, Hunters, and Tanks. Their sizes varied. The bite patterns may reflect these differences.”

“These bones are old relics,” Nero said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s interesting. And irrelevant.”

“Not if there are still zombies around,” Shawna said.

“Yeah, well, we can cross that bridge…” Nero didn’t finish.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.