Guardian (War Angel Book 1) by David Hallquist (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

Here come the Marines. Their installed emergency airlock opens and spits SPGs at zombies, and then the Marines come out, launching an assault on the zombies near the airlock. After that, there’s hardly any left, and we focus on cleaning up the stragglers.

Sparky gets the last zombie, turning it into an expanding cloud of glowing ash with his laser lance. We’re all out of SPGs now, and dangerously low on darts. I guess we didn’t need the reserve flight after all, but it sure would have helped everyone trapped in the port for those long seconds.

We’re all low on ordnance, fuel, and our outer armor is mostly ablated. It’s time to go. “Request for flight return to carrier,” I send to Data.

Still nothing.

That’s odd…I try another ping. Still nothing. His whole flight is just floating out there, motionless. Why?

I try a high-density tight beam directly to him, inquiring status, diagnostics, and searching for any variance in protocols.

As the answer comes back in, the universe dissolves into madness.

* * *

Vision disintegrates into a spinning kaleidoscope of fractal nonsense, while all I can hear are an endless cascade of maddened voices, all blending together into chorus of screams. The sensory overload grows and grows, until just when I think I can’t take it anymore, it vanishes into nothingness.

Total nothingness; darkness and silence without end.

I’m utterly alone. Nothing exists around me. There’s no sense of time, or space, or existence.

How long has this gone on? Seconds? Years? There’s no way to tell. All I have are memories of my life before the blackness to let me know there was ever anything else at all.

There is something else here in the darkness. I can feel it, gnawing away at my helpless brain. Fear comes to me from nowhere and grows, despite my efforts. The fear grows into terror, cutting raggedly through my resolve, my defenses, and my training with contemptuous ease. Despair rises like a black tide about me, drowning out all else. It feels as if it will go on forever.

I soon come to wish for the time when I was alone in the darkness.

I reach for prayer and hope, for what else can sustain me in this infinite darkness? I try everything, then I try it all again.

Am I dead? Is this Hell? God help me.

A flicker of light in the darkness, then the madness returns. The chaos blends together then forms back into the real world, almost. Everything is upside down, distorted, and in the wrong colors.

“Mxxlpfhip!” I try. “Moreleilip!” I elaborate.

Another flash, and then the world comes back into focus…and pain.

I can see and move again, but the pain, terror, and despair of the darkness is still gnawing away at me, telling me that I’m alone, I’m doomed, and there’s nothing worth fighting for anyway.

I fight it off and read the displays popping up in my cyber-sensorium. I’ve been attacked by a potent Saturnine virus. It infiltrated through the secure uplink with Data’s infected Guardian, then infected my frame, then my suit, then my cyber-augments themselves, possibly damaging my brain. My cyber-sensorium and full augment suite had to do a total restart and is still trying to fight off modular sections of the virus, and all my systems are severely damaged.

The whole thing only took a few seconds.

My flight suit had to reboot, too, and it’s fighting to keep basic life support going. My helmet’s defogging, and I can still see outside.

I’m still in the cockpit of my faithful Guardian Angel, Griffon. He’s hurt in a bad way; alarms are going off everywhere. I can’t feel the connection to him anymore because he had to sever the connection to me through which the virus was attacking. Reading the displays by eye makes me feel like a throwback to the old days of early flight. He sacrificed most of his higher systems when the virus hit, cutting me off to stop the full effects of the virus from hitting me. That probably saved my life. Now, systems are trying to come back online slowly. The full sensor network will never be fully functional without Griffon’s higher functions and my cyber-sensorium link, and neither will full control. Fusion’s down, and won’t be coming back online again, leaving me with backup stored power that will only last for a few minutes of combat. Modules of the Saturnine virus are still coursing through his systems and have taken most of the major systems offline and others are failing as I watch.

“All units! Attempt no contact with Data or Alpha Flight!” I send out through the radio. “A Saturnine virus is in the system! Do not attempt to contact!”

Through the radio I can hear the cries of the Marines and Angel pilots. Some of the virus program got into their systems, and it went active at the same time, causing systems failures and dangerous malfunctions in Eros station. I hope no one else got it as bad as I did.

I fold out the manual controls and push my limbs into the control sleeves. The Guardian-class is the last exo-frame built with a manual override. When I was first trained on them, I thought I’d never need them. Now, I’m grateful.

On screen, I can see a small transport ship boosting out of the Eros port on an unauthorized launch. The blue light of its plasma drive surrounds it, and it sparks from the rifle fire of the Marines trying to stop it.

Twisting the handles around in my sleeves, I fire the thrusters in my wings that bring me about in a clumsy fashion. It’s a pretty typical Belter ship—a collection of spare parts that all happen to be moving in the same direction. While I may not be able to use my most sophisticated targeting systems anymore, what’s left is enough