Chapter 28: Chapter 28: Last Stands.

The train blasted away from the central hub as I clung to the blocky exosuit as tightly as I could. The initial jolt that nearly knocked me off settled down to a steady vibration. I climbed over the suit carefully. There was no time to waste with the clock ticking on whether or not my own nanite colony would sabotage me before I could purge the excess.

The MHU opened with a physical lever. There was no locking mechanism present. Apparently if you could physically get to the unit you were authorized to use it, like leaving the keycard in the aircar’s ignition. Once I had all my limbs inside the unit closed up around me with a dull clank.

A soft beep accompanied the interface waking up, followed by a cascading list of self checks. Several red failure warnings scrolled by too fast for me to read. Then it was done, and the exosuit powered up fully.

The redlined warnings listed looked to be a lack of safety equipment installed and a few actuators nearing th e end of their service life. Air and power were green, as was the thrust system with the exception of a few partially clogged nozzles. Whatever that meant for me using the suit as I expected to, I didn’t know.

A shift in momentum pressed me to the side, but the exosuit did not move at all. I was still chained down to the train. The option to release the transit locks was easy enough to find, but I left it alone. Best to wait until the train stopped.

At this point it occurred to me that for the first time in quite a while, at least since entering the docks I wasn’t being chased by zombies. No hunting howls sounded as the train began to slow. No nanite zombies sneakily assaulted me, and no giant zombies roared.

That immediately made me suspicious. Even flicking through the visual modes and checking all angles that I could see, no zombies appeared. There were still several hordes clustered around the central hub.

I triggered the trasit lock release before the train came to a complete stop. A quick pulse of the suit jets sent me above the track and into what looked to be the industrial area. A massive chunk of rock filled much of the area above me, held in place by dozens of thick manipulator arms.

The crusher machines and smelters were quiet and cold below. To my right and behind me loomed the familiar tall machine blocks. The closest had a sign that read “Processing II.”

And below me, closer to the exterior bulkheads, was the aftermath of a massacre. Hundreds of bodies and parts of bodies at least. Zombie bodies, as far as I could tell. Any human corpses would have long since been consumed, either by the horde here before it was destroyed, or one of the ones near the power stations at the central hub.

Here and there in the mass of floating gore were other units like the one I now piloted. Each and every one was stained completely black with blood. Many of them still gripped zombies in their thick gauntlets. Those zombies were long dead, too. Squeezed like grapes.

In one spot I saw a group of four. Back to back and surrounded by a thicker ring of corpses and pieces.

Each and every one had a shattered visor. Just like the Security combat suits in the Headquarters lobby. Inside lay the remains of the men and women who had fought and died here.

Why here? The MHUs were space capable units. At least temporarily. Why pick this spot to die? Why not flee, and live?

I tried to avoid the thicker concentrations of gore and zombie bits. The blood had long since dried, but most things powderized as soon as the MHU coasted through them. This was an old battle. A graveyard.

The exterior bulkhead was nearly hidden in the cloud of bodies. I had to brake hard as soon as it appeared, much closer than I’d expected. It seemed to just appear between blinks. One moment there was nothing but bodies and long dried blood. The next, there it was right in front of me. The clogged jet warning manifested in a slight counter-clockwise spin as I crashed to a stop. The bulkhead did not give.

It felt like doing a full body belly flop from ten feet above the water. The entire front of my body stung. I could feel my nanites shift underneath my skin in response. That elicited an immediate pang of hunger that I had no way to satisfy until I got out of the exosuit.

I swam through the bodies while keeping close to the bulkhead in search of an airlock. What I found was an office. It was a small, blocky building, probably where shipments of ore were logged and paperwork sorted out. The entrance hatch was easily large enough to admit the MHU, so I entered to get out of the drifting organic debris as much as anything.

Inside was pretty much as I expected. A terminal and desk was sunk into the bulkhead with a small space for storage beside it. At the far end of the space was another hatch. I exited the suit in order to refill on calories and see if the terminal could give me an idea of where an airlock should be.

The terminal awoke at my touch. Like the MHU, it looked like this part of Walker appeared to assume if you could access it, you were authorized to access it. I suspected that this ran afoul of any number of rules or regulations that the upper management had laid down, based on my experience of them.

Once awake, the terminal displayed dozens of camera views above a screen that called itself “Docking Status.” Twelve bays were listed. Only one was occupied. Out of idle curiosity I selected that one while I chewed on the meal bars my stomach was demanding.

What I saw made me swallow mid-bite. This was why the people in the MHUs had stayed.

It was an ore sled. The cargo area could be pressurized, and this one was. The cargo lock was broken open. Inside the cargo area were more bodies. Human bodies. A lot of human bodies.

They drifted in emergency suits. Some with visors shattered. Others torn off. It took time for the zombies to get through those tough suits, I knew, but they’d done it.

More than half of the suits were small.

Some, very small.

My stomach growled loudly.

Nanites did not care about human emotion. They were simple machines. They did as they were told. They consumed energy from their host.

Nanites did not cry. They had no angry tears to shed for innocence forever lost.

After several long minutes without input, the screen switched back to Docking Status. I looked at the arrival and departure dates numbly.

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Three ore sleds had departed on November 9, 2229. Two days after Walker had been infected. One ore sled had not.

Thirty one piloted MHUs hadn’t, either.

That reminded me of the ship even now on a course that would pass near Earth orbit, but no way to stop. Bitter recrimination would have to wait.

The hatch at the other side of the little office led to the docking area, with exterior access from there. Or if that was blocked or somehow inoperable, I could probably manually open one of the large docking slips and exit that way.

The MHU welcomed me back in and I noticed then there had been no smell of blood. The mess outside was so old all scent had been leeched from it long ago. It still felt like there should be something left behind, even just a smell.

All I got was canned air and the MHU’s slight bleep of complaint as it tallied up the failure warnings again.

Lights came on belatedly as I exited the office. The docking slips were individually sealed so ore sleds could come and go as soon as they were emptied. Slip one was a cavernous place, easily as tall as the lower engineering deck but far more open to admit the long, wide ore sleds that had once brought their cargo to Walker.

I wondered where the three ore sleds that escaped had gone. Had the virus gone with them, as it had elsewhere? Did they manage to escape somehow, out to the colonies I now knew had survived the collapse? And what was really going on out there?

The military sounding guy from the Durandal had implied that places like Walker were still quarantined. Were there others? Other places that were once or still infested?

The rogue nanites I’d found in the ships’ engine room made me wonder. How were they connected to the zombies? They seemed similar. Could that be a way that people got infected? But the biological virus was at least part of how the infection worked. What would happen to a person who got one and not the other?

I’d been infected with the biological virus. At least, as far as I knew I had. I’d felt sick for a few days after the initial bite. Was the virus gone now, or was it biding its time to consume me at a later date?

My own colony burned in my guts as I stepped into the airlock. It was hungry for more sustenance, but my stomach hadn’t finished digesting the meal bars I’d eaten yet. Soon it would start attacking other parts of my body to stay alive, if I couldn’t purge it soon.

My right eye ached. I began to see blurry images through it. At least, I thought I did as I shut and dogged the hatch behind me. There was at least hope that it wouldn’t stay blind, dead and necrotic once this was over.

A part of me noted the growing erratic nature of my thoughts as I pulsed the jets, turning to face Walker and up towards Earth, where the Headquarters section was.

The station was in the planet’s shadow, but the MHU’s suit lights came on automatically. Sharp edged shadows bordered the wide beams. The suit jets pushed me up towards the small dock that I knew was up there somewhere.

An instant later I was above the Walker and falling towards the Earth. Somehow I’d blacked out for a moment. The jets hadn’t stopped and now I was going too fast. Spinning around made my vision swim. My one eyed vision. The suit stabilized my flight for the most part. I headed back towards the station. Trying not to lose focus again.

Once the tiny dock came into view I slowed. Then slowed down again as it came up too fast. When the MHU’s boots crashed onto the dock, it jarred me awake. I’d blacked out again.

Then the airlock wouldn’t cycle me in to the station. I hadn’t shut the exterior hatch first. So I did that. Inside the office was clean. I hadn’t expected it to be. The little cleaner bots had cleaned up in here. I remembered that now.

I found myself staring through the armor glass outside the Executive section. The Earth was still mostly dark, but a ribbon of light was forming. The East side. The sun rose in the East. I had to do something first though.

Down the hidden elevator. I exited the MHU in the Armory and headed for Security Medical. There was equipment in there I needed. The purge equipment.

The next flash of awareness took the form of disinfectant spray to the mouth. This time I didn’t scream. It hurt too much to scream. So I didn’t do that.

The inner door opened to an unfamiliar scene. The carelessly stacked loot was now neatly stacked. That meant something important. Not as important as the shower stall looking station that lay revealed to the right.

I climbed in and grabbed the terminal inside. It wasn’t recommended for a person to do this themselves. But needs must, it could be done. I skipped the friendly navigation menu and drive my nanites right into the system itself.

For a brief moment, I sensed something within the system. My nanites were trying to tell me something.

Then there was pain.

A whole world of pain. Nothing but hot, slicing, stabbing pain. Bone deep, angry agony. But I had to purge the nanites. There was no choice. The torture was endless.

Until it at last ended. I could hear the echo of my own raw, ragged scream.

When the zombies came for me, I knew it to be a dream. I fought them again anyway. They won. They bit me again. Then the void at last swallowed me under.

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