Final Onslaught

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

The refuge was crowded. It was also shoddy. Hastily converted from storage warehouses into homes and workrooms, it was one of the few places known to be far from the effects of the biocide—for the time being—but it was plain to Kes, as he showered before returning to work, that the building skills of the Gens who had disembarked the Nova Fortuna had not been passed on to many of their descendants.

There had been no need. By the time the current generation had been born, the colony had been established and extensive manufacturing processes underway. The proportion of the population trained in practical skills like construction, plumbing, and electrical work had greatly diminished. Twice the Gens had been forced to build underground shelters to protect themselves from Scythian attacks, and each time they had completed the tasks efficiently, effectively, and at a breathtaking pace.

By contrast, the job of creating a safe haven for the people displaced from Oceanside and Annwn progressed slowly and with many errors.

The lab Kes had returned to after taking Cherry to his home, where Isobel could look after her, was barely functional. The electricity supply was erratic—though, to be fair, that was at least partly due to the fact that the colony now relied on solar power from the plant in Suddene. The Fila’s geothermal supply had, predictably, quickly died: the shower heads often spluttered and coughed due to air in the water pipes, and the plasterboard that separated the laboratory from the rest of the warehouse was flimsy and looked about to fall down at any moment.

Considering the lab was the place where the task of saving the colony from disaster was being undertaken, it was pretty poor effort on the part of whoever had built it.

Kes turned off the shower. His skin was covered in goosebumps from the cold water. Showering seemed a pointless precaution considering the biocide appeared to kill on contact. Cherry had been his canary all the way back to the shelter. If the biocide had reached them she would have died immediately. Nevertheless, it didn’t hurt to be extra cautious, and, considering he’d instigated the protocol, he could hardly complain. Wearing haz suits with their powered air purifying respirators while outside and following rigorous hygiene protocols in the laboratory were essential if he and his colleagues were to survive working with the deadly biocide.

He quickly dried off with a towel and put on clean clothes and lab coat before entering the lab.

“You’re back,” Tricia, Kes’ colleague, said. “Did you find the general?”

“Yes,” replied Kes. “She was at the beach. I brought her back. I’m sorry I had to leave the lab, but I had to go and find her. I couldn’t think of anything else after I heard she’d gone missing.”

“No problem,” said Tricia. “I know how you felt. We all have people we’re worried about. She was at the beach, though? Was she on a suicide mission?”

“What do you think?”

Tricia turned away, troubled, and returned to her work.

Kes was troubled by Cherry’s behavior too, but he’d done all he could for now. Isobel would look after his friend. He had to concentrate on discovering what the Scythian’s biocide was made from and then he and his team could work on developing something to neutralize it. They were in a race against time. Not only was the colony facing the inexorable spread of the biocide across Concordia’s land forms, it was also vulnerable every time it rained. There was a chance the biocide might enter the water cycle by evaporating into the atmosphere along with the ocean water, forming clouds, and then later precipitating and falling to the ground.

They were lucky it was the dry season and on Lyonesse rainfall was sporadic. Suddene’s climate was dry all year round and as far as anyone knew only two of the enemy’s canisters had landed on the smaller continent. Those who lived there were likely to be the last who would fall to the Scythians’ deadly chemical. Whether or not that would be a good thing, Kes did not know.

He returned to his chromatography test, mentally shutting out the hum of quiet conversation and the movements of the scientists in the cramped space. Setting up the test had taken him back to his college days as an undergraduate in biochemistry. Only then he hadn’t been dealing with substances that could wipe out the last outpost of human civilization.

A small team of intrepid, courageous lab technicians in haz suits had harvested several samples of the tissue of a dead Fila, sealed them in water-tight and airtight boxes, and brought them to the laboratory. The techs had taken a huge risk in their endeavor. No one knew if the biocide would eat through the tough, inert material of the boxes, but, thankfully, it hadn’t. Now it was up to the colony’s biologists and chemists to find out what had killed the creature.

It was perfectly possible that the structure of the Scythian chemical altered in some way as it destroyed living tissue. That would make the scientists’ challenge exponentially harder. It was also possible that the Scythians had developed the biocide so that it broke down to harmless constituents as soon as it ran out of tissue to feed its processes.

In fact, all kinds of impossible-to-surmount obstacles might stand in Kes’ and the other scientists’ way, but what else could they do except try? It beat sitting around waiting to die.

The difficulty in identifying the biocide lay in determining what was a constituent of Fila flesh and what was the lethal chemical. Fortunately, Kes and the other xenobiologists had already undertaken studies of Fila morphology. Donating specimens for study had not presented a problem to a species that had the capability of quickly regenerating all parts of their bodies except any of their three brains. Consequently, the scientists had some idea of what they should expect to find in the tissue samples taken from the dead Fila, but the study of the species was nowhere near complete. Many of the substances that made up Fila anatomy and metabolism had been unknown to human science. The scientists could not identify without a doubt what chemicals in the tissue mush of the murder victim were its own and which were the poison.

Kes’ gas chromatography equipment stood inside a large transparent box. On one side of the box were two holes at arm height that opened into long, thick gloves. Kes pushed his arms into the gloves to resume his test on a tissue sample. He hadn’t been working for longer than five minutes, however, when he received a comm. It was Meredith.

“Hi,” he replied, not pausing in what he was doing.

“Did you find her?” asked Meredith.

He’d forgotten to tell the Leader that Cherry was back and safe at the shelter.

“Yes, I did. Sorry, I—”

“How is she?”

“Not good.”

“I thought you might say that.”

“She blames herself,” said Kes. This comment met with silence. Perhaps Meredith blamed Cherry too. Kes hadn’t spoken to the Leader much since the attack. There simply hadn’t been time to sit down and calmly analyze what had happened. The priority had been, and remained, to save as many lives as possible.

“I hope she can get over it,” Meredith said eventually. “There’s no point in apportioning blame now.”

That was certainly something they could agree on. “Heard anything from the Assembly?” Kes asked.

“Yes,” Meredith replied. “That was the other reason I wanted to speak to you. The Fila’s distress call arrived and the Assembly has replied using the same method. Now that all the Fila comm stations on Concordia have been abandoned, Quinn relayed the reply from the Opportunity. I’m not sure how the Assembly can send information so fast through space, but I’m glad it can. Unfortunately, the Assembly member’s ship closest to us will take eighteen Concordian days to reach us. The Fila seeding ship is on the other side of the galaxy.”

“Even if the seeding ship was in orbit it wouldn’t be much help,” said Kes. He vividly recalled the Fila vessel from when he’d briefly visited it in order to embark on his mission to the Galactic Assembly. The ship was large, but not anywhere near large enough to accommodate even a small segment of Concordia’s human population. More importantly, it was full of water and Fila.

“I’ll take your word for it,” Meredith said. “But perhaps this other ship may be able to save some colonists.”

“Do you know which species the ship belongs to?” Kes asked.

“It’s named in the message but the translation system couldn’t handle the word.”

Kes wondered whose it was. The species had to be one of the more obscure ones. He’d assigned the Assembly member species English names but he hadn’t gotten around to informing the Fila of all of them. Now it was too late. He didn’t know how long the translation system would last, either. The situation in their water world was utterly chaotic as far as anyone could tell. Some of the creatures survived, mainly in freshwater lakes and in rivers, but death was moving closer to them, and much faster for the aquatic aliens than for the humans. The worst thing was, there was little to nothing the colonists could do to help them.

“You realize that even if all the Assembly members’ ships turned up tomorrow, their efforts might be useless?” asked Kes. He didn’t want to crush the Leader’s hopes, but it was a fact that had to be faced.

“I do,” Meredith replied. “As long as the biocide is ravaging the planet, it could be too risky for them to send any shuttles down to us.”

“Exactly. The biocide doesn’t only destroy whatever living tissue it touches, it uses the chemicals of the victims’ bodies to replicate itself. A molecule of that stuff on the exterior of a shuttle could end up wiping out an entire ship’s crew. I wouldn’t blame any would-be rescuer who decided not to take the chance.”

“Me neither, I guess. Still, I thought it was worth letting you know.”

“I appreciate it,” said Kes. “Now, if you’ll excuse me...”

“Yes, you have a lot of work to do. I hope you find something soon.”

“Me too. Before you go, have you heard anything from Wilder?”

“I try to keep her up to date on the situation when I can.”

“How’s she doing?” asked Kes.

“Okay, I think. Considering her age. She has Quinn and the other Fila crew on the Opportunity to talk to.”

“She’s tough. As long as her food lasts, she’ll be okay.”

“I hope it lasts as long as it takes for the Assembly member’s ship to arrive. That way, at least one of us will survive.”

“The last living colonist from Concordia?” Kes asked. “I don’t know if I would like to be that person.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. With luck your team will develop something to neutralize the biocide in time and everything will be okay.”

“We’ll do our best,” said Kes. “The alternative outcome is a wonderful motivator.”

Meredith closed the comm.

So much had been left unsaid. Realistically, there was little chance the colony’s scientists would isolate the biocide and develop a neutralizing chemical in time. Even in ideal conditions, the task would take months. According to the time-lapsed satellite images Kes had seen of the devastation the poison was wreaking across Concordia’s landmasses, the colony had only a few weeks.

What was more, at that moment, tens of thousands of colonists remained alive. The luckiest were living on dry Suddene, their lives disrupted but essentially safe over the short term. Others resided in makeshift shelters similar to the former warehouses where Kes lived and worked. The worst off were camping out in the countryside in areas as yet untouched by the biocide. The Assembly could send a dozen ships and still not have room for everyone, assuming the rescuers took the risk of sending shuttles down to the poisoned planet. The Parvus’ ship, which had hung around since the Scythian attack, could not accommodate humans at all.

If it came to facing the decision of who would be saved and who would die, how would they choose?