The usual talking heads were on CNC discussing the usual political machinations both within the Commonwealth, and without. It was almost always the same script it seemed, and she swore she could almost predict what topic was going to be front and center each day by the way that overly smug, smarmy anchor person styled their hair that day. When you’d spent as much time in life observing people’s various tells as she had, it wasn’t that difficult.

  Today they were droning on about what the largest opposition group within parliament was calling the Prime Minister’s biggest failure to date: The failure of CommSec to track down and capture Benson Fisch. Nevermind that other factions within the opposition were questioning the Commonwealth wide warrant for his arrest. No, the Foundationist Front Party was set to hang Prime Minister Mandela because the Fisch hadn’t been caught yet.

  She was always asking herself why she even bothered to have the damned channel up on her holoviewer most of the time these days, but the truth was she needed to stay abreast with what bullshit the press was feeding the public. It helped be prepared for when the radical groups popped up.

  It also distracted her when she was feeling a bit antsy waiting for word to come back from important operations. Except of course, for the ticker that scrolled along the bottom of the image every few minutes that read “Still no contact with outer colony Eve’s Blessing. It has now been over a week. CommSec still has no details.”

  Damn it, they should have reached the colony by now, if reports of that ship’s speed were correct.

  “Admiral, you have a priority call from the Prime Minister on HyperComm 1” the voice of her aide cut through her thoughts, announcing a call announcing the call she’d been half expecting for a couple of days now.

  “Put it through please Andre.”

  “Yes Ma’am.” there was a soft beep, and her holocomm terminal lit up with the Prime Minister’s face, “The Prime Minister, Admiral”

  “Thank you Andre.” she said, then gave her attention to the holographic head of Prime Minister Sipho Mandala. It was hard to tell due to the way the holomatrix tended to wash out colour, but the man’s normal ebony skin tone looked washed out, and his normally schooled African visage showed stress. “To what do I owe the honor, Mr. Prime Minister?”

  “Do not give me that kak, Admiral.” he snapped tiredly, the afrikaans accent showing up in his normally accidentless english. “I am quite sure you were already prepared for my call. What is going on with the search for Benson Fisch, do you have any leads on his whereabouts yet?”

  If the Prime Minister was not only swearing, but slipping into the accent of his youth, he must be tired. “We have some hooks in the water, sir. We’ve narrowed his location down to a few systems. I should be hearing back from a few operatives soon. I assure you, it is just a matter of time. We can’t rush a manhunt for someone like Fisch, or he’ll slip through our fingers.”

  “If you keep dragging your heels on this, you’ll see other things slip through your fingers Admiral.”

  She stifled a sigh. It’s not like she could blame him, that petulant brat the Foundationist Front had elected their party leader was enough to try the patience of one of those old world saints. He had the personality of a sea slug, and the manners of a lobotomized mule. “Please Prime Minister, we’ve got it under control.” She assured him. “We’ll get him, I’ve got every agent and informant in the sector watching for him or any of his assets. Besides, we do have other matters to be watchful of as well.”

  “This isn’t more about that blerrie poepol about an alien disease is it?”

  “Prime Minister, that was the reason we put the warrant out for Benson Fisch in the first place sir.” the Admiral replied, mentally grinding her teeth. Mandella was one of the better Prime Ministers the commonwealth had seen in decades, but he could still be as headstrong as a… “Our evidence showed he’d been attempting to obtain samples of this contagion to turn it into a bioweapon.”

  The Prime Minister’s deep set eyes glared at him through the holocomm. “I was hoping that was really a fabrication in order to get him out of our hair. He’s been behind a number of extremist groups in the past, we know it, but have just never been able to link him to them.”

  She shook her head and bit off a harsh retort. It would not do to yell at the Prime Minister of the entire Terran Commonwealth, even if he did just accuse her of being a dirty cop. “I explained this to you before, sir…”

  “Save it. And I don’t want to hear more about this alien boogyman bullshit. I want you to make sure you get that…”

  But something on the holoviewer caught her attention and drew her gaze away from him. It was an on the ground field reporter out on one of their colonies in the sticks - that area of lesser stellar density between the Orion spur and the Sagittarius Arm - they were pointing up into the sky and…

  “Are you even listening to me?”

  “Prime Minister…”

  “I swear I’ve had just about enough of your..”

  “Prime Minister!”

  “It might just be time I force the matter of your retirement…”

  “SIPHO!” she finally shouted finally, causing the man on the holocomm to blink, “Turn on CNC right now! We have a problem.”

  The scene that was unfolding on the holoviewer was one of a reporter accompanying a rescue crew onto what appeared to be a wrecked ship. Both the reporter and rescuers were all suited up and moving carefully through corridors with flickering lighting.

  “As you can see, the ship has suffered some sort of technical issue.” The reporter, one James Dawson, was drawling in an Oort-76 accent. How a hillbilly from the outer fringe of the Sol system got time on CNC, the Admiral didn't know. Probably feegled the right producer. She thought, but he was continuing to explain.

  “The rescue crew of the Bathurst picked up her distress signal as she tumbled out of her hyperspace tunnel. Captain Conner says it's odd to see a ship with hardly a watt of power flowing through her even exit a tunnel, so we are all insanely curious about what is going on. So while the Bathurst rigged the Journeyman for towing, I talked him into taking me aboard to investigate.”

  “Admiral, I don't see how this is…”

  “Just hold on Sir,” LaBeau Assured him, She'd caught something on the holo in the initial boarding, and she was desperately hoping she was wrong, “I've got a bad feeling about this, And if I'm wrong, I'll go out hunting for Fisch myself, okay?”

  The Prime Minister grunted but went quiet while they listened to the smarmy reporter drone on about the dangers of deep space rescue and how anything could happen. He had been about to accost one of his escorts into commenting when someone yelled on the comms “Cap! You better get up here! We found the crew!”

  A flurry of motion followed as the reporter hurried after the rescue group, their suit lights strobing back and forth across corridors as they rushed through the ship, finally moving into the cargo hold and finding it strewn with fine, spider web-like strands. “What the hell is going on here Cap? The only life signs I'm picking up are in there… In those bundles of this stuff…”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “I don't know Jake, but this smells like a code 31 to me. Everyone back to the Bathurst!”

  But just as he announced those orders, there was a sound that would turn a spine to gelatin, and the feed went dark.

  As an anchorperson came on to explain that they were attempting to reestablish a hypercomm connection, LaBeau hit the mute button. “Sir, we need to make sure the Bathurst and the other ship do not make contact with any other ship, station or colony!”

  “Is that what I think it is LaBeau?”

  She scowled as a notification hit her priority display. Three more colonies out on the fringe had missed their check-ins with their sponsors. “Yes sir, I'm afraid it is. This is that plague that Thomas Aacen and his giobhioni friends warned us about. The ktonshi are here.”

  Fifteen minutes later, after a harried discussion with the Prime Minister, assuring him that she would be getting a task force on this herself right away, Admiral LeBeau was marching down a hallway towards a shuttle launchpad. “Get a hold of Captain Handson while I’m enroute and let him know I’m coming, and we’ll be breaking orbit ahead of schedule.” she said to her aide, who was hurrying along beside her, tablet in hand. “All shore leave is cancelled, we need to be in a tunnel as soon as we know where The Bathurst attempted to rescue that ship.”

  “Aye Ma’am, a priority inquiry has already been sent.” Andre informed her, “As well as getting our analysts on why we hadn’t heard about those other colonies going dark.”

  “Good thinking. If we don’t hear about that ship's coordinates soon, we’ll make for one of those colonies. Do we have details on where The Bathurst berths are?”

  Andre tapped on his tablet for a moment, “Details have been sent to your secure data store Ma’am. One of the colonies that went dark is only a few systems away it seems.”

  The Admiral swore under her breath. Whoever hadn’t kept on top of this information was going to spend some time cleaning the sewage reclamation ducts on the filthiest scow she could find. She’d sent out a priority watch flag as soon as Eve’s Blessing had lost contact. She shouldn’t have heard this from the press.

  “See if you can’t raise that remarkably resourceful giobhioni ambassador for me if you can.” She said after a moment, “Not to mention try to get an update from the Kintzel twins. The giobhioni have been informative and helpful about this plague of theirs, and I want to find out if they have anything more we should know. Hazmat procedures, that kind of thing.”

  Again, Andre’s fingers flicked over his tablet, “Aye, Ma’am, I’ll get comms sent off as soon as you’re in the air.”

  By this point they’d reached the shuttle pad, and the Admiral began to climb the ramp into the passenger section. “Hold down the fort while I’m gone, Andre. I wish I could take you with me, but I know Louise is due any day now. I’ll have to make do with Ms. Stein.”

  Andre gave her a smile, “Stein’s still a bit wet behind the ears Ma’am, but she won’t let you down. Trust me.”

  She nodded curtly, then disappeared inside the shuttle. Maybe she’d get lucky in all of this and Fisch would show his scheming weaselly ass along the way so she could nail him to the bow of her ship.

  Would almost make all of this worth it.

  Benson Fisch had been pouring over his records, once again taking stock of everything he still had access to after becoming a fugitive. He was still an extremely wealthy man, even without the income pouring in from Enigma Osiris, but he’d lost so much of his access. So many of his contacts in the various governments were avoiding his attempts to reach out to them, the ones in the military flat out told him they wouldn’t help unless he turned himself in.

  But he still had his covert assets: his secondary research fleet that had been kept off the books, the hundreds of numbered accounts and dummy corporations holding safe houses, science facilities, and mercenary companies. He could still accomplish his goals, he would just need to be far more careful about his assets.

  Glancing at the holodisplay along the one wall, he scowled at the profiles of Thomas and Jessica Aacen, what they’d been able to gather about these fucking goblin like giobhioni, and all the coordinates they’d managed to gather of suspected “ktonsii” sites. That’s what their original information had labelled them, in the language of the people who had populated the now barren world that had been called Csantaxia, the ktonsii.

  Only now, the few bits of intelligence he’d been able to get from contacts within the military, it seems these giobhioni call them the ktonshi, and warned key people of the contagion, and how disastrous it would be for it to spread. That along with the files that the treacherous bitch made off with and gave to the authorities, was going to make his efforts that much harder.

  Not that he disagreed that the contagion would be bad for humanity in its current form. No, he had no desire to see humanity subsumed into some demonic alien race, subjugated to their will. Not when all his work since learning about this plague’s ability to completely rewire genetic code had been to cage it, rewire it, and turn it to his own purpose.

  Humanity will once again be alone in the universe. He thought to himself. No more competition, no more contamination!

  His mind raged at the thought of all that alien life using up the resources that were intended for humanity. The need to run and hide like a rat these past weeks had degraded his control, but he refused to let the rage show.

  Closing his eyes, he steadied himself and tried to set the maelstrom of anger within his mind aside. It would only cloud his thoughts, diminish his forethought. He needed to be focused!

  As his mind slowly became a flame of cold reason and logic again, he felt the deck under him shift. It was a subtle change in vibration, a hiccup in the harmonic that was the ship’s engine’s propelling them through space. To anyone who had spent significant time in the void, they knew it meant a course change, and a preparation of the tunnel drive to slip into hyperspace.

  He stabbed a finger onto the comms panel. “Charles! Why are we getting ready for Tunneling?”

  “Apologies sir,” came the immediate answer, “I was just on my way to inform you. A CNC new item just went live with some information I knew you’d want to get on top of immediately. A derelict ship has been located, a deep space surveyor, barely enough power to exit hyperspace. A search and rescue ship spotted it and moved in to give assistance. If you check your holoterminal sir, I sent you the recording.”

  Frowning, Benson checked, and sure enough there was a holovid file received moments ago. He loaded it up and winced immediately on hearing the reporter’s backwater accent. Three hundred years of space travel, and humanity still had whole swaths of people who sounded little better than Neanderthals when they spoke. When he got control of that virus he’d make sure it did something about…

  The footage panned over to the corridors covered in wispy silken strands and his thought process froze. That was exactly what the crew who had boarded The Gladstone had seen before those things - those, what he could only assume were ktonshi, burst out and killed the lot of them. “This was on CNC?”

  “Yes sir.” Charles said quietly as he stepped into Benson’s office, “And yes, I’m aware that means CommSec, and most notably Admiral LeBeau is likely going to have been informed about it. Last we heard, however, her ship The Titan’s Whisper was still in orbit around Amazonia in the Epsilon Eridani system while her crew took some shore leave. We are closer than she is, and unless the Titan’s Whisper got a refit nobody knows about, our ships are faster. We’ll beat her there sir.”

  Scratching at the stubble on his cheek, Benson considered that. From the coordinates Charles provided, it did look like they’d have at least a day before LeBeau showed up. There was the possibility that another Fleet group that was closer would be diverted to head them off though. The Admiral was no fool, she had almost cornered him several times in the past.

  “Alright Charles,” he finally said, “we can’t pass up the opportunity, so your initiative was warranted. However, tell the Commodore to rig the group for stealth ops, and aim to bring us out of the hyperspace tunnel at a distance. I don’t want to be walking into a trap if they get ships there ahead of us. We’re not going to get chewed up and spit out like happened with the last group. Understand?”

  “Of course sir!” Charles said sharply, like an ensign responding to their captain. “I will inform the commodore right away sir.”

  As Charles hustled out of the office, Benson flicked a gesture at the holoviewer, and the dossier for Admiral Thea LeBeau appeared beside the Aacen’s. You haven’t caught me yet you old shrew. He thought at the image of the Admiral, And you won’t catch me here. If this is a trap, I’ll be ready for you.

  The Salvager’s Plague

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