Blaedergil's Host

by C. M. Simpson

  “Tens?” I sent, not making a sound.

  “I got you,” Tens replied, confining his voice to my head, and I watched as he sent my instructions to the man in charge, felt Delight tense, as the man’s voice changed.

  “Oh, right. Sorry to have bothered you,” and then, as he turned to the woman working with him. “Right. You heard me. Get back to work. There’s no point staring at shadows. They can’t get through the wall.”

  He must have turned, and I saw him come back into view of the feed, watched as he began making the repetitive moves we needed to film of him keeping the viral feed even. His assistant came and went in three or four different ways, and I had to admire Tens’ choreography. Between the two of them, there was enough movement, and just enough variation for the looping pattern to be difficult to detect.

  Delight sat quietly through the entire procedure, and I understood that Tens must have let her in on the plan, even though I hadn’t been privy to that communication. I was grateful, nonetheless. The minute we could move, we were going to deal with that motherfucking infection machine.

  “And...done,” Tens said, and everyone in the lab stopped what they were doing.

  The man who had been babbling, turned, anxiety written large upon his face.

  “Can you really save them?” he asked, and Delight fixed him with a firm gaze.

  “We are the only hope they have,” she said, “and we will do our best. Where are they?”

  I listened in, as the scientists gave Delight and Tens the location of the families of the pharma researchers, and was surprised when the relay was answered by a new voice.

  “Mariner Lead Scorvy. On way. Out.”

  “Wh... Who was that?” the scientist wanted to know.

  “The man who’s going to get your families back,” Delight replied, and I didn’t have to see her face to know the look of dark satisfaction masking it. “Now, tell me you have a cure.”

  “Yes, but...”

  “Can it be made airborne?”

  “That wasn’t the delivery method we were told to design for.”

  “Can it be made so, or not?” and Delight’s voice now held iron.

  I waited, watching the scientist’s face.

  “I... I don’t know,” he said, but his assistant was already sitting herself down behind the nearest computer.

  She didn’t look at Delight, didn’t say a word, and I became suspicious, breaching her terminal in time to see her running through some hasty calculations, with nothing being sent anywhere.

  “She’s clean,” Tens confirmed, a moment later. “Nothing hostile out, or in.”

  “Anything non-hostile?” I asked.

  I’d intended it to be sarcastic, but Tens vanished from the implant to check.

  “Nothing,” he said, when he returned, “but good point. A warning might not have appeared hostile.”

  “I have family, too,” the technician whispered, “and I want to see my baby, again.”

  I felt chastened, but Tens was unrepentant.

  “Can you aerosolize it?”

  She continued working for a few more moments, and then her senior colleague joined her.

  “Nice job,” he said, when he saw her calculations. “Yes. I think we can do this. We’re just going to need more serum.”

  “Can you manufacture it?” I asked, but he shook his head.

  “Not enough in time,” he said. “People are going to die.”

  His face clouded, and his breath caught.

  “My friends are going to die.”

  “What about the replicator?” I asked. “Can it be...”

  I caught the looks being shot in my direction, and let the words trail off, feeling my face heat with embarrassment.

  “Sorry. Not my field. I’ll just go wait over here.”

  “But it might work,” said the researcher. “It just might work. The cure’s just a formula. If we...” and he was off, travelling into a whole bunch of scientific terms for making the components of a cure using a machine designed to produce edibles, clothing, and alcohol.

  “You catch that, Mack?” Delight asked. “We might be able to infect you all with a cure.”

  I wondered if I was the only one who thought she could have put that better.

  26—Counter-Measures

  A low moan rolling under the laboratory door warned us that the plaguers had turned their attention to our door.

  “Fuck!” Delight said, turning towards it. “Tens. Is that thing locked?”

  “It’s locked, but I’ve taken off the electrical charge. These people are under duress; they may not deserve to die.”

  I wanted to know who’d made him judge, jury and executioner, but I didn’t ask. Man had a point.

  “How’s Mack?”

  “Not showing symptoms, yet. The rest of the concourse is a mess.”

  The technician looked up from her screen.

  “Are any of you immunized?” she asked, and I realized, then, that neither she, nor her colleague were showing any signs of the disease.

  I guess the look I exchanged with Delight was enough to give us away. Delight did a good impression of not being worried.

  “That’s why we’re in a hurry,” she said. “We don’t know how long we’ve got.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Two hours, maybe a little bit more.”

  “You’ve got another four before you start feeling it, maybe eight before the lesions show,” the technician explained.

  “Unless it’s mutated,” the scientist added. “We could check.”

  I looked at Delight, again, and she looked back at me. We both knew how I felt about needles... and checking would probably involve taking blood, and I was sooo not good with that.

  “What are the chances?” I asked.

  “We don’t know. Some bugs adapt faster than others.”

  “When did you start?” I asked, pointing at the equipment attached to the air vent, and trying to remember how long it had been since I’d hacked into the security system the first time. No one in those feeds had seemed affected.

  “Twenty-six hours ago. We got a call, telling us the plans had been moved up. When we said we didn’t have enough serum to vaccinate the station, we were told they were bringing in another supply, and not to worry, but I don’t know. It doesn’t seem likely.” The technician stopped and looked up at her partner. He’d pressed his lips together, but he nodded.

  “She’s right,” he said. “There was something off about that last call.”

  I saw Delight’s gaze sharpen, and she took a step closer to the pair.

  “What was off?”

  The lead scientist flinched, and the technician’s fingers froze on the keyboard. Delight advanced a step towards them, and they both gasped. I didn’t blame them. There was something in the way Delight moved that radiated barely contained violence, and I didn’t know how she had hidden it before.

  A loud thump on the lab door made us all jump—except Delight. She shifted her attention from the scientists to the door in one smooth motion, changing direction as she drew the Glazer and sighted on the door.

  “Tens...” I said.

  “Doors are locked, but you might want to brace it with one of those benches. There are...” He didn’t finish the sentence, but highlighted the security feed.

  “Well, fuck me.”

  I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it emerged on a breathless whisper that had Delight in my head in seconds. She spun on her heel and pointed to one of the lab tables.

  “We need that across the door, now,” she snapped, and then, when we hesitated, “Move!”

  We moved. The scientists got the picture when I started to push the bench towards the door, hurrying out from behind the table with the computer terminal on it, to throw their weight behind it with me. It made a horrendous noise as it scraped across the floor, but that was nothing compared to the low moaning chorus seeping into the room around us.

  “That
sound,” the technician whimpered, but I turned the table side on the door, and tipped it over.

  There was a clatter as what was on it hit the floor, and the high-pitched tinkle of glass shattering. I hoped it was nothing important, or irreplaceable.

  “You’ll need to brace that,” Tens said over the intercom.

  I nodded, breathing hard from pushing the weight of it hard up against the door. Together, the scientists and I turned for the next closest table, maneuvering it so it was wedged between the one across the door, and a bench that was hard-bolted to the floor. The door shook, and the moans rose to a howl.

  “What the fuck is out there?” Delight demanded, and I glanced towards my two assistants.

  Both were pale-faced as they stared at the door.

  “We don’t know,” they whispered.

  I glanced at Delight, and waved the pair back to the computer terminal.

  “Work out how to fix it,” I said, putting an edge of command in my voice like the one I often heard in Mack’s. “We’ll watch the door.”

  As I spoke, I caught sight of a shadow dropping out of the vent that had been used to funnel the virus into the station.

  “No, you fucking don’t,” I told it, drawing and firing my own Glazer even as Delight reacted.

  When she saw I had whatever it was under control, she moved so that we stood back-to-back and had a good view of all of the room around us.

  “You got this?” she asked, as the scientists looked from me to the eight-limbed corpse on the floor.

  “I need a bigger gun,” I said, and she gave a humorless snort.

  “Don’t we all.”

  “I’m not exactly loaded for bear.”

  “How about loaded for those?”

  She took out the two shadows that came out of the vent on the other wall, and I shot the third and fourth one that entered using the same shaft as the first.

  The scientists stood, transfixed, two feet from the terminal they needed to be using.

  “Find me an antidote!” I yelled, trying to work out a way to seal the ventilation shafts, as I wondered how they were getting past the security droids.

  The droids.

  Damnit.

  “Tens?”

  “Busy. Two minutes.”

  We probably didn’t have two minutes.

  “I’ll cover you.” Delight.

  I glared at the two scientists.

  “Move!” I growled, and they crowded close to the computer terminal.

  Seeing them get down to work, I closed my eyes, sinking into the security system, and chasing the code that led to the droids. Strange how much they reminded me of the roving Ghoul patrols, in Bastien’s complex. Pushing that thought to one side, I found the protocols controlling then, and sent them the coordinates for the lab’s location.

  It seemed selfish to pull them away from other areas that might contain people hiding from the spider mutants, or the plagued, but there was only one place the cure could be made, and it had priority. I wrote a program that had the remaining droids sweeping the ventilation shafts closest, and then I went looking for the nearest motion sensors, and coded their alarms as high priority response requirements.

  Delight was shooting over my head, when I surfaced from the implant.

  “Tens is right; that is some handicap,” she said, and I wondered how I came to be on my knees, with her hand on my shoulder.

  Oh... yeah, she’d just applied pressure, and my body had obeyed while my mind was busy. I wasn’t sure I was okay with that, but it was better than having her shooting through my head.

  She patted my shoulder, then shifted her grip to lift me to my feet.

  “Now, you get it. Go see how the two stooges are getting on.”

  I went.

  “You ready?” I asked, as though they’d have had anywhere near enough time to work the process through.

  Actually, given they’d already completed part of it, it wasn’t an unreasonable an expectation.

  They raised their heads, and I cursed as I realized they’d been waiting for me to come out of my implant.

  “We just need the replicators.”

  “Where?”

  They pointed to an alcove at the back of the room.

  “Back there,” they said, and I could see why they hesitated; I couldn’t see beyond the corner, either.

  “Delight?” I asked, and she started reversing towards the blind spot.

  I moved with her.

  “Bring what you need,” I ordered, and heard the hum of a printer.

  Scanning the room, I found it, not far from the tumbled corpses under the vent Delight had been covering. I reached out and tapped her on the shoulder, pointing to it, as I headed in that direction.

  “You two! With me!” she snapped, taking my Glazer as I passed and turning so she could aim in both directions. The scientists stepped up behind her, and I hurried over to collect what was coming off the printer.

  I kept a close eye on the vents as I did, all too aware of the long, drawn-out scratching coming from the lab door. Occasionally, a thump would punctuate the sound, and we’d all jump. How long the door would hold was anyone’s guess. I hoped Odyssey’s reinforcements would arrive soon, but didn’t want to hope too hard.

  There were limits as to how well anyone fought in a bio-suit, and I doubted they’d come in through the maintenance hatches, which meant they had a whole station of infected to subdue before they could reach us. The idea that they might not bother subduing the infected population crossed my mind, and I pushed it aside.

  Odyssey’s reputation said different.

  Mind you, that same reputation said I’d have been treated differently, and we all knew how that had turned out. It was another thought I shoved to one side. Maybe I was just an exception to the rule. I picked up the print-out and returned to the scientists.

  “What else do you need?”

  “It’ll be quicker if you cover us, and we get it,” the technician said, and I watched her senior colleague’s mouth drop open as though to protest.

  She shot him a look that said more than any words, and he subsided, accepting the sheet of paper she gave him. Delight handed me back the Glazer, and signaled I should follow the technician. I guess she must have picked up the thought that it might be better just to shoot the guy and keep the technician, seeing as she seemed to be doing something constructive.

  “Some people perform better under pressure than others,” Delight said, in my head, where the scientists couldn’t hear her. “At least he’s trying.”

  As opposed to curling up in a ball on the ground and crying. I caught the thought before she could hide it, but she didn’t comment, just moved with her charge, as he grabbed a box and began gathering equipment. I left them to it, and followed the technician over to the refrigerators.

  She collected a small basket from a stack near the coolers, and went to the first door, freezing momentarily when a terrible scream ripped out of the vents. It was accompanied by a high mechanical whine and several undefined bumps, and I guessed the drones were doing what I’d programmed them to.

  “Keep going,” I said. “That’s one less to come out of the vents.”

  I won’t say she relaxed, but she moved quickly from one fridge to the next, stacking bottles and vials in the basket, and then checking the list, one last time.

  “Done,” she said, closing the final door, and moving back to the center of the lab.

  I watched as she cast a wary look towards the vents, but I was already checking them, as well as the walls and the blind corner we needed to navigate next. Delight and her scientist reached the center as we did. We waited as the two bent their heads together checking their lists against the contents of the boxes they carried.

  “We’re ready,” the technician said, casting an anxious look at her boss. “We should have enough to start venting it through the complex in the next half hour.”

  Half an hour! It seemed impossibly soon, but also a terribly long way a
way. I wondered how Mack was doing.

  “Just hurry!” and his communication sounded strained, even filtered by our implants.

  I wanted to see what was making him sound like that, but he cut the thought short.

  “No. You don’t. Just hurry!”

  “Let’s go.” Delight’s voice cut through my conversation with Mack, and I wondered if she knew what she was interrupting. “Focus!”

  Yeup, well, that answered that. I moved with her, as she took the lead scientist towards the dog-leg into the kitchenette where the replicators were kept. We kept the scientists between us as we went, but nothing was waiting for us when we entered.

  The two scientists went right to work, while Delight and I took up positions that set us between them and the two points of entrance to the kitchenette: the vent set high in the wall at one end, and the open space leading back out into the lab. We could only hope the security drones were keeping the vents clear, because we’d lost sight of the ones leading into the lab, and wouldn’t get a lot of notice, if one of the spiders got through.

  Stars, I hoped they were the only other mutants in the complex.

  “How much you want to bet on it?” Delight murmured, and I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue.

  It wasn’t a bet I wanted to take.

  “Exactly.”

  I divided my attention between the vent and the what the scientists were doing. Their fingers moved like lightning over the keys to program the replicators, but they only produced a small amount of serum each time. Or, rather, the technician programmed the replicators to only produce a small amount, and then passed the resulting liquid to her colleague.

  After each batch, she’d stand and watch as he compared the two under one of the scanners they’d dragged in from the lab and set up on a bench. Half an hour, my ass! I lost count of the number of times they went through the process, before he turned to her.

  “That’s the one, but we need to test it.”

  “How? It’s not like we can open the door and ask for volunteers.” Delight’s sarcasm was palpable.