Contagion

by David Ryker

  That worked better. Nobody likes having their eyes gouged out.

  Steiner screamed, slammed the base of his palm against my face, knocking my head against the metal floor with a clang, and scrambled off me, stepping on my chest as he did so.

  I struggled to my feet as Steiner backed away, rubbing his eyes. That gave me a precious second to kick the drill out of his hand and use some good old army self defense techniques to reduce him to a quivering mass of bruises and broken bones.

  Except that didn’t happen. As soon as I got to my feet, darkness gathered around the edges of my vision, my head felt like it had been filled with helium, and I found myself falling back to the floor.

  Fuck. What a time for my heart to give me trouble.

  6

  Something flew through the air and hit Steiner on the side of the head. He stumbled as the object clattered to the ground.

  It was a touchscreen, perfectly thrown so that the corner got him in the temple.

  I lashed out with my feet, connecting on both of Steiner’s knees. Once again my attack lacked strength, and what should have crippled him for a good fifteen minutes only made him fall to the floor. It would have been nice if he had skewered himself on that damn drill, but no.

  Falling down was good enough. I scrambled backwards to get my sidearm. It was a taser set on the stun mode. With a flick of a switch I could put it on a killing charge, but that would take an extra half second I didn’t think I’d get.

  I was right. Steiner was crawling toward me, leading with the drill.

  Then my chair came crashing down on his head.

  He crumpled, jabbing out with the drill and gouging my leg. I cried out and fumbled the taser. My head was still swimming and my vision was dim. I tried to focus.

  Through blurry vision I saw Steiner struggle to his feet and climb over the bed at whoever was trying to save me. A woman screamed.

  Valeria!

  By the time I found my taser and got into a kneeling position, half flopped over the bed and trying to focus my eyes, Valeria had backed away to the far corner of the other room and was using a chair as a shield, desperately trying to fend off Steiner’s drill.

  I flicked off the safety and let him have it. A brilliant electrical pulse flew across the intervening space.

  And dropped Valeria.

  Whoops. My aim wasn’t too hot at the moment.

  Steiner turned, utterly confused, and I planted a shot right in his chest. He convulsed and fell, the drill spinning away across the floor.

  That was better.

  My chest hurt. My head felt about ten meters above the rest of my body. Grunting, I crawled over the bed and tried to get to my feet.

  I only managed to sit. A minute later a security team burst through the door, led by Corporal Chen, the best of my NCOs. Two lunkheads followed her. Dumb but good enough in a fight.

  Lunkhead Number One cuffed Steiner. Lunkhead Number Two tried to cuff Valeria.

  “Not her, dumbass. She was trying to help me.”

  Lunkhead Number Two stared at me, confused. “Then why did you tase her?”

  “Because I’m such a classy guy.”

  Dr. Stark, the head of our medical team, ran into the room. Oh, crap. After I had nearly died of a heart attack, Stark had fitted me with a monitor so he could tell if I was getting “overexcited.” Nothing quite as exciting as having some random asshole try to turn you into Swiss cheese.

  The doctor hurried over to me.

  “Help Valeria first,” I gasped. Considering how I felt, I was surprised I could even gasp.

  “She’s all right, sir,” Corporal Chen said, kneeling beside her. “Just knocked out.”

  “Someone turn that damn drill off,” I gasped again. “It’s giving me a headache.”

  “I thought I told you to take it easy,” Dr. Stark said.

  I gave him what was supposed to be an innocent grin. It came out as a lopsided grimace. “What? I’m in bed, aren’t I?”

  He didn’t reply. I had been his least cooperative patient ever since he got rudely woken out of stasis to find himself in a warzone.

  You had to feel bad for the guy. He had done two tours of duty as a frontline medic to pay for medical school, and then thought he’d put all that behind him as he flew off to another world peacefully asleep on the Nansen. We all thought we would get to put things behind us.

  That never seemed to work out.

  The doctor gave me an injection and got to work on my wounds. He told me all of them were superficial. Sure hurt like hell, though.

  Valeria was still out cold. Lunkheads One and Two carried Steiner off to the brig. A few minutes later, Qiang walked into my room.

  “Nice of you to make it,” I said.

  “Sorry. I had my own assault to deal with.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Some dickhead tried to brain me with a wrench in the shuttle bay.”

  “That’s nothing. I got drilled.”

  His gaze drifted over to my unconscious girlfriend. A smile crept across his lips.

  “Don’t say it,” I warned.

  “Aww, you’re no fun anymore.”

  “Shut up and tell me what happened.”

  “How can I do that if I have to shut up?”

  “Har har.”

  He retrieved my touchpad. It had a crack on the corner of the screen that had hit Steiner, but it still turned on. Once I punched the access code to let him in, Qiang summoned up the security footage from the shuttle bay.

  “Shuttle Repair Specialist Bahloul stopped me in the corridor and asked if I’d come to the shuttle bay to check out a modification he had come up with for the drone delivery system. I went along, not thinking anything of it. When we got there, this happened.”

  Qiang turned on the security footage. It was from a camera in a corner of the large bay. A long row of shuttles sat in a row, a few technicians moving around at various tasks on the far side of the bay.

  Bahloul, a broad-shouldered North African, came into view, Qiang walking just behind him. The technician led him to the closet shuttlecraft to the camera, which also happened to be the farthest from the entrance and from the other technicians.

  They walked to the shuttle and Bahloul got Qiang to the near side facing the camera, out of sight of everyone else in the shuttle bay. An open toolbox sat there.

  The video had no sound, which made the whole scene kind of eerie. Bahloul was talking, gesturing at a point at the bottom aft section of the shuttle. Qiang bent down to look at it.

  Bahloul bent down too, his hand reaching for the toolbox. With a sudden swift motion he grabbed a wrench, stood up, and raised it over his head.

  The guy was quick. If he had been trying to kill anyone other than Qiang he would have succeeded.

  Qiang noticed the movement and jerked to the right. The wrench swung down, missing him by inches, and struck the floor.

  My friend backed off, getting into a defensive stance. Bahloul went after him, making a wild swing that Qiang easily dodged. No one in the background seemed to notice. There was a lot of noise in the shuttle bay when the technicians were at work, and Bahloul and Qiang were still out of view. The guy had picked his spot well.

  He hadn’t picked his opponent well, though. When the would-be assassin moved in again, Qiang showed off his specialty for Thai kickboxing. He’d won a bunch of regional medals back in the day.

  A quick kick to the wrist and the wrench flew out of Bahloul’s hand. A kick to Bahloul’s knee made the leg bend the wrong way. I hissed in sympathetic pain. A spinning kick to the jaw snapped Bahloul’s head way too far to the right and he fell twisted to the floor.

  Qiang stood over him, glancing around to make sure no other attackers were coming. Bahloul did not move.

  My second in command switched off the video.

  “Well, he won’t be talking for a while,” I said.

  “He won’t be talking at all. I killed him.”

  “Killed him? We needed him f
or questioning!”

  Qiang raised his hands. “Well, excuse me for not being gentle. The guy was trying to knock my brains out with a wrench.”

  “So? I had to deal with a guy with an electric drill. Ow!”

  That last bit was for Dr. Stark, who was applying pressure to my shoulder wound, which was by far the worst. He’d already slapped coagulant pads on my hand and leg.

  “Keep still,” he ordered.

  I grimaced as he continued to work on me. At least my heart was steadying out. Those injections worked quick. Sadly, my condition was permanent. The nanites he had working on my heart 24/7 could only do so much.

  “I put out a ship-wide alert,” Qiang said. “Nobody else got attacked. All the high command is under guard and all security personnel are out on patrol.”

  “Good job.”

  Qiang peered at my shoulder wound.

  “Damn, he really got you.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Have you ever seen The Driller Killer?”

  “No. What’s that?”

  “Classic film. Made all the way back in 1979. I’ll send you the file.”

  “Thanks a million.”

  A groan from Valeria diverted my attention. Corporal Chen was still kneeling beside her and helped her sit up.

  “Ugh. What happened?” she mumbled.

  “You saved my life,” I called over. “Thanks.”

  She blinked. Stared. “You … tased me.”

  Qiang bust out laughing. “Seriously? You knocked her out? I thought the attacker had!”

  “My aim was off.”

  “She’s only five meters away,” Qiang cackled.

  “Can it. You okay, Valeria?”

  “Been better,” she said as she got to her feet, leaning on Corporal Chen. “Don’t tase me again, all right? I feel all wobbly.”

  “Sorry.”

  She came over to me.

  “What about you?”

  “Just peachy. Qiang got attacked too.”

  “Yeah, but I know how to defend myself.”

  “You only had to deal with a wrench in an open environment,” I said. “I fought off a guy with a drill in close quarters.”

  “With help from an exobiologist,” Qiang said.

  “If you guys are going to have a pissing contest, I’m going back to work,” Valeria said.

  “You stay, I’ll go,” Qiang said, rising. “I have to oversee the security situation. Guard him well, would you? Just don’t give him back his taser.”

  With a snicker, Qiang went out the door.

  “Asshat,” I grumbled.

  “Why do guys always make fun of their friends?” Valeria asked.

  I shrugged. That hurt. I didn’t shrug again.

  “So why did you come back?” I asked.

  “I passed Steiner in the hall wearing a technician’s jumpsuit. But I know him. He’s in science. Assistant Atmospheric Scientist.”

  So he should have been wearing a green jumpsuit. Valeria was sharp.

  “That got me curious, so I followed him. Sorry I didn’t get in there sooner, but when I rounded the corner and saw him enter your quarters, I took a second to call security.”

  “You did the right thing. You saved my life.”

  Valeria shivered. “He came right at me.”

  I put a hand on hers. Dr. Stark pretended not to notice. In fact, he had been silent this whole time. I appreciated that.

  “It’s all over now,” I told her.

  She shook her head. “No it isn’t. Not by a long shot.”

  7

  After the doctor finished patching me up and I made sure Valeria was safe in the main scientific lab with a pair of my best men at the door, I went investigating. Of course Dr. Stark had told me to get some rest, but rest wasn’t something I was going to get for a while yet.

  I went to the brig and faced Steiner, who sat sullenly in his cell. He’d been stripped of his fake technician’s uniform and put in the loose orange overalls we gave to prisoners. It said “Prisoner” in huge letters on the front and back. Best for these fuckers to know where they stood.

  “Any word out of him?” I asked the guard posted to the brig.

  “Nope,” she said. “Not even a sermon like the other two.”

  I shrugged and went over to the security lab. We had a scientist on staff, Ivana Shepkov, who did all our crime scene analysis.

  “I analyzed the trace DNA on the jumpsuit like you asked,” she said, “and ran it through the crew database. It belongs to Chief Hydrologist Patel. It was taken from his storage locker.”

  “And where is he?”

  “Still in stasis. No need for his skills at the moment.”

  “Put him on the suspect list,” I sighed.

  The poor bastard probably hadn’t done anything wrong other than have Steiner’s approximate height and weight, but I couldn’t take that chance. That’s how we had to be since we knew the Biospherists were still on the ship.

  And crap, now everybody knew it. The paranoia and mutual recrimination that we had been trying to avoid would hit twice as hard now that two top officers had almost been killed.

  I called a meeting of the senior command.

  Later that day we all sat in the meeting room just off the command deck. As everyone sat down, I looked around, unsure what to say.

  Commander Loftsdóttir saved the situation.

  “I’m going to make a ship-wide announcement about the probes,” she said.

  “What exactly are you going to tell them?” Chief Engineer Andrei Iliescu asked. He was a lanky Romanian with blond hair and blue eyes, a wizard at anything technical. He kept challenging me to a game of chess. I didn’t dare accept.

  “Enough of the truth that they can understand the situation. Word has been leaking out that we made contact with some Earth probes. Too many people were on the command deck that day and the news was too exciting for them all to keep quiet, no matter what their orders.” She sounded ticked off about that. Commander Loftsdóttir was not the kind of officer to let things slide. “So we have to tell the crew something. I was hoping to put it off for a time, but the Biospherists have forced our hand. I will tell them that we have not killed all the Biospherists and that some are still active and unidentified among the crew.”

  “That’s going to cause panic,” said Tadros Barakat, the colonial coordinator. A civilian, and rather soft around the middle, the Egyptian wasn’t supposed to have been woken up until we reached Terra Nova, but since he was part of the high command and the Nansen was in an emergency situation, the commander had decided to wake him right at the start.

  “Maybe with civilians,” Foyle snapped, “but not with trained crew.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. While the executive officer wasn’t a hundred percent wrong, there was no need to bait the civilians in the group. Valeria Sanchez, Dr. Stark, and Iliescu were all civilians too. Foyle was a dickhead that way. Lately he was being more of a dickhead than usual. Probably compensating for being captured by the Dri’kai.

  “You’re right that it will cause some unease,” Commander Loftsdóttir cut in before Foyle could say more, “but I think the crew can handle it.”

  “There will be paranoia,” Barakat said, fingering the Coptic cross around his neck. “People will start pointing fingers.”

  “And hopefully be vigilant enough to stop more attacks on key personnel,” the commander said. “It would be more dangerous not to tell them. We have to explain why there were attempts on the lives of our two highest ranking security officers. Indeed, I’m surprised the terrorists didn’t try to take out all of us at the same time while our guard was down. They won’t get that chance again.”

  Everyone looked to me, except Foyle, who looked about to speak.

  I cut him off.

  “It’s hard to tell at this point in our investigation,” I said, although I wasn’t sure exactly how to proceed with my so-called investigation. “Perhaps only two Biospherists were out of s
tasis. Or maybe this was a rushed revenge attack against me and Major Li for executing the two Biospherist prisoners. From what we know of the group, they operate in a cell structure, with only the highest commanders knowing anyone from the other cells.”

  “But they were all well coordinated during the initial attack,” Dr. Stark said.

  “That’s because they all woke up at the same time. When I woke up too, they assumed I was one of them.”

  “I see. I hadn’t thought of that,” Dr. Stark murmured.

  “They couldn’t be doing that with the second wave, the ones scheduled to wake up later if the first attack failed,” Foyle objected. “How could they get anything done? They wouldn’t know who to trust.”

  “Maybe there’s a leader we haven’t caught yet,” Valeria said. “Or maybe there’s some sort of signal they’re all waiting for.”

  Foyle slammed his fist on the table. “How the hell did so many of these people get on the ship? It’s unbelievable.”

  “It was a pretty sophisticated operation,” the commander said. “More sophisticated than anyone gave them credit for. The question is, what do we do about it?”

  Everyone turned to me again. Great.

  Until everyone above me had gotten murdered in stasis, I had been a mid-level security officer. A fighter. A smarter-than-average heavy. I hadn’t been given any investigative duties because I had no experience in that area.

  And here I was, promoted to marshal of this Wild West town in space.

  “We have a partial list of Biospherists who are still in stasis,” I said slowly, thinking it through before putting it into words. “I suggest we make an excuse to wake one up. Then we watch, and wait.”

  “That’s dangerous,” Valeria said.

  “Don’t want to get drilled again?” Foyle said with a grin.

  I almost punched him. If we had been in any other situation, I would have. I could hear the double entendre in his words.

  But of course he had a cover. She had almost been drilled. That wasn’t what he meant, though. The incident report had mentioned that she had just left my quarters when she spotted Steiner wearing the wrong jumpsuit.