Infernal Sky by Dafydd Ab Hugh Read Free Book Online

thought of “cacodemon.” “The mechanical parts stick into the body so deep—”
    â€œThey are not attachments,” he corrected. “Look!” He pointed at the portion of the arm that began in flesh and ended in the metal of a rocket launcher.“Neither the arm nor the launcher is complete, but the cross section shows the point of connection between the arm and the weapon. You see it, don’t you, Jill? You don’t need a microscope.”
    The only other time I’d been this close to a piece of monster was when the foot of a spider-mind almost crushed me on the train when we rescued Ken. I wondered what Ackerman called the spider-minds. Anyway, seeing a cross section of a demon was a new experience. “I don’t believe it,” I admitted.
    â€œSeeing is believing.”
    The red shaded into silver-gray. There was no dividing line. The rocket launcher grew out of the flesh.
    â€œThat’s one for Ripley,” he said.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œA little before your time. It means it’s hard to believe, but the evidence is right before you. When I first started studying these creatures, I was most puzzled about their weapons. Think about it. The imps fire a weapon that’s purely organic in nature.”
    â€œWe call them imps, too. Well, sometimes spinies.”
    â€œUh-huh. Your pumpkins do the same with their balls of concentrated acid and combustible gas. Why, then, do these larger creatures use weapons similar to the artillery used by humans?”
    I’d never thought about that. If someone is trying to stab me with a switchblade, I don’t wonder how he got it.
    It was Dr. Ackerman’s job to wonder. “All these military weapons seemed inappropriate,” he went on. “If they internally create bolts of force and can project them, why develop appendages that require external ammunition?”
    â€œI get it,” I said, excited. “It’s like if you’re Godzilla, what do you need with a gun?”
    â€œPerfect, Jill. You really are a smart kid.”
    I didn’t want compliments. I wanted to keep the discussion moving. “Are you sure they get their bullets and rockets from somewhere else? Maybe they grow them, too?”
    Ackerman stopped what he was doing—bringing up a computer display showing the monster’s autopsy report—and took his glasses off. He pointed at me with them. “Right there you prove yourself worth more than the people I’ve been working with. You can help me, uh, interface with Ken, too. His doctor says it will be a while before he gets back to normal, but he’s been so close to the problem that he understands aspects of their biotechnology that no one else comprehends.”
    I nodded. “Now I remember. Ken told us how the rockets and guns and stuff were probably first stolen from subject races. So if the gun is a separate thing, then it’s not grown by a demon.”
    Ackerman finished my thought: “But if it’s attached, then it’s grown somehow. The original version of the weapon must have been stolen first. Then they modified it into their biotech.”
    He turned his back to me again and I noticed little red and yellow stains all over it. I didn’t want to know what they were. Now he was excited as he said, “What we need is a living specimen of one of the big ones.”
    He grinned. Maybe he really was a mad scientist. I had to ask the obvious question: “Would you be able to control it?”
    â€œWe already handle the living zombies we have here. That sounds funny, doesn’t it? Living zombies.”
    â€œYou have live ones?” I nearly freaked when he said that. Being in combat had turned me into a killer . . . of the undead.
    â€œSure, but they’re easy to control. They don’t have superhuman strength. You know that from fighting them.”
    â€œHave you fought them?”
    â€œWell, no, but