Chapter 46: Chapter 46: Breach

I couldn’t glance back to see where the implant zombie was. The area near the deck was the clearest part of the cafeteria, but there were still obstacles in my path. One of the cafeteria tables had come loose and now floated upside down in my path. Dodging around it was a simple matter.

If I was relying simply on my own muscles to dash across to the Lab section then I could have used the table as a launch point to gain speed and keep myself properly oriented. This was not necessary while using the suit jets to fly, though.

Flying was still new to me, and I still felt clumsy maneuvering around the station using only the jets. When I diverted around the cafeteria table I swung too wide and lost some speed. This would not have been a particular problem save for one important caveat.

No normal zombie would be able to catch me as long as I had room to fly and enough propellant in the tanks. The implant zombie was no normal zombie.

Before I’d even crossed half the distance it was crashing down ahead of me. It would have landed on top of me if I hadn’t had to dodge another table by going around it instead of over. I rolled and pushed off the deck the instant it jumped from its landing point to my right and it passed just beneath me, claws outstretched but missing me by fractions of an inch.

The horde was still sorting itself out from the quick glance I gave it. The grenade had detonated off center, carving a large bite from one edge and maiming even more. Being wounded only meant those would be slower, which was good for me.

If the horde stretched out so they didn’t reach the guard station as a single mass my chances were greater. First though, I had to lure the quick one in so I could eliminate it away from the others.

Dodging would only work so long against the implant zombie. If I could drain it or kill it fast enough, I wouldn’t have to deal with the horde at the same time. But if I didn’t draw it far enough away the horde would arrive before I could finish it off.

Twice more the thing pounced, twisting around almost like it was made of liquid instead of flesh and bone. Just past the halfway mark it managed to catch me but couldn’t solidify its grasp. Its claws scraped across my armored shin and boot as I twisted away.

I was vaguely aware of some shouting going on over the com while all this was happening. Whatever it was they were saying was rather less important than flying, keeping track of the implant zombie, and trying to judge the best time to catch it.

At just over three quarters of the way across, I took my chance. This time when my pursuer neared I spun around at the last second, bringing my armored gauntlets up to protect against the claws that would be reaching for my visor.

It was on me in a blink. As expected it had grabbed my left arm and was trying to pull it away enough that its other claw could stab forward, cutting through my helmet and into my rather vulnerable flesh. It did not expect for my other gauntlet to reach up and grab it by the bicep.

Now all I had to do was not hit anything as I flew, keep hold of the squirming monster, and drain it of all of its energy.

Over time and a lot of dangerous practice it turned out that there were better and worse ways to drain a zombie. Grabbing it by the face tended and injecting my nanites from there tended to cause my victim to go limp if it was a regular zombie. The implant zombies were tougher, and the giants the toughest with the most resistance to the weakening effect.

Any other point of contact might slow and weaken the creature. Eventually that meant it would become as limp and still as grabbing it by the head would, after a while. But that took precious seconds in combat.

This is why I had needed to separate it from the horde so much. Even slowed and weakened, the implant zombie was faster than me and just as strong, if not stronger. It tried to launch itself away, but I’d prepared for that by hooking a knee behind its leg. Then it struck at my helmet with its other claw. I blocked, but doing so caused my own arm to smack into my visor instead.

I made what effort I could to make sure we were pointed more or less towards the entry to the lab section. One moment it was trying to fling itself away, the next it was trying to claw its way through my suit and into my vulnerable flesh. A particularly hard blow rocked me with dazing force for a split second. The implant zombie almost got away at that point.

But almost was not good enough.

We passed through into the Laboratory foyer. A second later, a bullet ripped through the implant zombie’s torso. A split second after that, all resistance fled the creature as I drained it completely.

There wasn’t enough room to stop using the suit jets. I used the deck, bulkheads, and ceiling to bleed off speed as much as possible, but still impacted the security station with a bone jarring thud.

“Z, we’ve got a problem.” Explosions sounded from the cafeteria. A large portion of the horde had been following me and were just now entering the small foyer facing the turrets. The guns started up again, ripping bloody chunks out of the mass. Ileane sounded worried.

“Go.” I didn’t have the breath for more than a single syllable.

“Sam and the others encountered what they thought was a dead zombie in the area behind the cafeteria. It woke up as Quenton tried to brush by it. The team killed it, but now there’s a horde coming up from the maintenance shaft.”

The cafeteria horde was packed tight in the opening, providing a rich harvest for the guns. A few zombies squirted through the mass, but none made it very far.

“Can they withdraw up the food service elevator?”

“No, the horde was spread through the engineering office corridors and is coming out in multiple locations. By the time the team spotted them they were between our people and the stalls.”

“How close are they to the Lab entrance? Can they punch through?”

“Vera says they don’t want to get too close yet. The cafeteria horde is still too large.”

The way the zombies were crammed together reminded me of another scenario on another ship. I was moving before my conscious mind caught up with the plan that was still forming.

“I may be able to keep the cafeteria horde occupied for a bit. At least the ones closest to the opening. Tell Sam that he will still have to manage some of the stragglers, but the ones I can reach will cease to be a threat while I can hold them. I will alert you once I am ready.”

“I’ll pass it on,” Ileane confirmed.

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The turrets wouldn’t shoot me on purpose. I knew that much. But they might still hit me if I recklessly flew into the path of a bullet that had already been shot. That wasn’t likely in this short distance, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

I kept low to the deck, under the general field of fire that was still ripping onto the horde. The next part was going to suck.

No bullets found me as I stood up, nearly within arms reach of the horde. The first zombie to get close got a vibroknife to the face. I tossed it aside. This wouldn’t work unless they were packed tighter, in contact with each other.

I shuffled to the side, more in line with the opening itself. A second later, two zombies reached me. The turret guns turned the one on my left into bloody chunks of meat. The one on the right was just about in the right spot.

It fell apart into ash a few seconds later, but by that time I had grabbed hold of another zombie. They still weren’t packed together enough. I needed to grab as much of the horde as I could with the drain.

Three more zombies later and they were finally packed tight enough.

“I have them now. The zombies packed tightly in the opening should cease to be a danger soon.”

“They’re on their way,” she replied. Ileane sounded worried, but I didn’t have the attention to spare at the moment. Some sort of instinct was causing the horde to try and break apart. My nanites were slowing and weakening them, but a few managed to break away even as I spoke.

My nanite threads snaked through the horde, catching new zombies here and there. The turrets still fired around me, striking now immobile zombies with pinpoint accuracy. The nanite web pulsed as bits of energy traveled back to me from the now slain zombies.

It was less than I would have gotten from draining them. That made sense, of a sort. Once the host died, the nanites swiftly followed. Not from lack of sustenance. The body’s stores of energy that the nanites could consume still existed.

The interface signal from the small organ in the skull that allowed humans to communicate with their nanites like a sixth sense stopped functioning rapidly as the body died. Without that signal, the nanites would die off. Of course, that begged the question of how the nanites could remain active around the power nodes in the first place.

But that was a question for later.

Suddenly several zombies died at once, causing my nanites to come rushing back. This caused the web of threads to shake violently and I lost a few as they regained their senses enough to break free.

“Z, Sam says the horde is getting too close. They’re going to try and blast their way through to you.”

The warning lagged behind the attack but it was enough. I tried to increase my hold on the zombies I still had. The preparation helped when the next chunk of zombies was ripped away. Somewhat. At least, that is what I told myself.

Between that breath and the next, they began to burn away into greasy ash. One combat suit and three suited bodies flew through the gap. The fourth dragged along, limp and leaking.

“Fast zombie got Hank pretty good. He kept his helmet protected but it got him in the gut and leg. Doc Delveccio says we need to get him somewhere stable so she can fix him.”

That meant there had been more than one. Or, more likely, one came up from the maintenance shaft.

“I don’t have access to anything past the entrance to the Labs. It also looks like I won’t be able to talk to you in there,” Ileane said over the com.

“We’ll try and keep you updated when we can,” Vera replied.

The turret guns kept firing over our heads as I led the way through the side passage. The main entrance did not even budge for me, even with my credentials as a scientist and the new ones from Security.

Not terribly surprising, considering what I knew and had learned recently about the Labs.

“The only place I can get into easily is my own lab at the far end. I must warn you, the heat exchangers were going before I left. They are probably completely down by now.”

“Bah. Shouldn’t be that hard to fix,” Sam replied. The world of machines larger than nanites was largely dark to me. Fortunately for me, there were other people with skills and knowledge to address such problems.

Along the way, I noticed something odd about one of the closed labs we passed. The status bar was updating. That had not happened before. That alone was troubling, but the message I was able to catch was even more concerning.

There was no time to stop though, not with a wounded man to care for. I released the locks for my lab and let the others in. It hadn’t been long since that had been my only home for a long time.

Frost covered the area as we entered. Sam and Vera quickly got to work, pulling off panels that I’d never noticed. Mere moments later the room began to thaw. Doctor Delveccio already had Hank out of his suit and onto my exam table. Quenton stood beside her as she directed him to press his hands here and there while she began cleaning out the wounds. That, at least, I was familiar with.

Currently, everyone else was busy. The other lab’s status message was on my mind. Sam did not even look up as I told him that I would be stepping out to check on something for a bit.

That lab was supposed to be for plant research, according to the official logs. By now even a blind man would call that suspicious. What I caught of the message though, that conflicted a bit.

“-tainment Breach Imminent! Warning!”

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