by Craig Allen
“She’s on this deck.” Chief Donner spoke in a low voice. “Two passageways down.”
Cody wished the chief would have shared his tracking signal with the rest of them, something he wouldn’t do without approval from higher up. “Let me go ahead, Chief.”
“Not on your life.” The chief pointed at the marines. “We need to bag her ASAP.”
“Chief, Egg’s right. Let us handle this.” Bodin pointed at himself, Cody, and Sonja. “We know her, too. Might be able to get the drop on her.”
“Fine.” The chief pointed at Cody. “You do what they say, understood?”
“Understood, Chief.”
Cody waited for Sonja and Bodin to move forward and followed them. Silently, they crept down the passageway. Functionality was the rule on any military space vessel, not beauty, and pipes lined the walls along with air ducts and power conduits, all of which were easy for engineers to reach. Floor grates were locked in place but easily removable to get to the ship’s other systems. To Cody, that meant dozens of places for Ann to hide.
Cody was wondering when the higher-ups would give approval for him to access the tracking signal when he received an incoming message. He brought it up on his internal viewer.
“’Bout time,” Bodin said.
Cody pulled the signal from the message and brought up a map that shone against the inside of his cornea. Only he could see the holographic map though Bodin and Sonja had their own internal displays and likely their own maps.
Two more passageways down, the signal moved away from them for about ten meters then stopped. Cody stopped at that passageway, as did the others. She was hiding in a passage, somewhere near a power conduit.
“There she is,” the chief said over their comms. “Be careful.”
“Wilco, Chief.” Bodin cut his comm mic. “Why’s he telling us what we already know?”
“He’s worried. He doesn’t know Ann like we do.” Sonja nudged Cody. “You talked to her more than the rest of us did when we were down there. Maybe you should go ahead. See if you can talk to her.”
“Not sure I like that idea, Gunny, but okay.” Bodin nudged Cody. “Keep your head on a swivel.”
“Got it,” Cody said. “Don’t worry.”
“Oh, I’ll worry.” Sonja smiled. “Be careful, okay?” She had that tone again, and her smile didn’t seem quite right.
“I will.”
Cody started down the passageway. Up ahead, a series of cooling pipes led from the upper deck to below the grates making up the present deck. She could be hiding there or under the floor grates themselves, and she was afraid.
Even so, Cody kept thinking about Sonja. She wasn’t just being worried. He couldn’t put his finger on what else was going through her head.
Cody was something of a celebrity, which helped him get along with some of the marines. He’d been a professional orbital dropper before the war. He even managed to land within five meters of a target in Honolulu, all the way from orbit. A lot of marines, most of whom had also done drops, respected that. Granted, they dropped into combat zones while Cody dropped onto beaches full of bikini-clad girls.
A lot of women on board remembered, too. Some of them had been at his drops, and that might have been the problem. Sonja wasn’t the jealous type, but he hadn’t really paid attention to that sort of thing. Maybe I should have.
Cody verified his comm mic was off—no point in sharing what he said to Ann with the chief or the rest of the marines searching for her. The chief would be mad, but Cody didn’t care. Ann was a friend. The chief could debrief Cody later.
“Ann.” He stopped just short of the cooling pipes, right near where the tracking signal indicated she was, though he couldn’t see her. “You’re brave, know that? Kali had to be the worst thing that ever happened to me. To all of us.”
Nothing.
“You probably haven’t heard about Deveau.” Cody glanced behind a coolant pipe. Nothing. “He didn’t make it. I know he was pretending to be a corporal when he was really a full-bird colonel. You guys weren’t happy about that, and you weren’t happy when he suspected the Kali had crashed there and he said nothing about it or what his real mission was. But he was a good man in the end. We didn’t see that until he was gone.”
Again, nothing. Cody wondered if the subject would disturb her more. He kicked himself mentally. He was trying to help her, not scare her to death.
He changed the subject. “I never believed such a planet could exist anywhere. Throughout the universe, there’s three sentient races we know of, including ourselves. And now we have a planet full of them. We’ve cataloged thousands of species on this world. Every one of them exhibits signs of sentience.” He paused. “And they all hunt each other. Yet you survived it. And you can survive this, too.”
Cody took a step toward the cooling pipe. That had to be where she was—there or beneath his feet. He couldn’t see very much through the grates, though.
“I was certain you were dead. If I’d known you were alive—if we had known you were alive—we would have scoured the whole planet for you.”
Metal creaked behind Cody. He spun, reaching for his coil pistol, then forced himself to relax. The floor grate a couple of meters ahead rose up. Ann Salyard emerged, her gaze locked with his. She let the floor grate drop as she faced him, her eyes wide with fear.
“Ann.” Cody reached for her. “Let’s—”
She bolted down the corridor.
Oh shit. Cody took off after her. “Ann, wait!”
The chief’s voice piped in over Cody’s comm. “Dr. Brenner, report.”
Cody flipped on his mic with a gesture of his hand as he rounded a corner, disregarding the map in his personal viewer. She vanished out of sight around another corner. “No sign of her yet.”
“Are you running, Doctor?”
He did his best to control his breathing. “She’s just up ahead.”
He cut his comm again and raced around the corner. Ann had stopped at the end of the corridor, one of many dead ends on the Washington.
“Ann.”
She spun around, her eyes wild, and lifted another floor grate. He would lose her down there—of that he was certain.
“No, wait.” Cody held up his hands. “They’ll find you, Ann.”
She froze. She understood him, it seemed. Cody hoped that was the case.
He kept talking. “Ann, come with me. No one wants to hurt you. We just want to be sure you’re okay. You were down there a long time.”
Her gaze met his as her shoulders slumped. She dropped the floor grate, which clanged against the deck.
“Just come back with me, Ann. Please.”
He took a step toward her. When she didn’t flinch, he took another and then another. When he reached her, she wrapped her arms around him, still trembling. Her embrace was tight, almost to the point where he couldn’t breathe, but he didn’t try to pull away.
“You’re going to be fine, Ann. Understand?”
Cody nearly jumped when she said, “Fine.”
~~~
Cody watched as Ann sat on a table in sick bay, her knees pressed up to her chin. Her shoulders were hunched as Dr. Donaldson did his examination. She raised her eyebrows whenever he spoke to her but never gave any indication she understood what he said. Cody had hoped his presence might encourage her to communicate, but with all the people around, she simply locked up again. Finally, the doctor simply did his examination in silence.
Two marines with coil pistols were close by and never took their eyes off Ann. Even Sonja and Bodin had pistols. Security had taken Cody’s, though, and he felt naked without it. At least his examination had turned up negative—no alien particulates in his system, which he hoped meant that Ann’s would also be negative.
Two midshipmen entered sick bay and flanked the hatch. They straightened to attention as Admiral Rodriguez walked in behind them. Everyone in sick bay stood at attention, with the exception of the doctors, nurses, and Cody. And Ann.
Ann stared at Rodriguez as if he would attack her.
“Sir,” Sonja said. “We were examining the location where the Washington’s gravimetrics picked up a reading, but we found nothing. Then the hopper, the squad, and the civilians just… vanished.”
“Vanished.” Rodriguez watched Ann, who fiddled with the holocontrols of a med-scanner. “Sensors showed a hole open up beneath the hopper. It closed up seconds later.”
“It didn’t feel like an earthquake,” Cody said.
Rodriguez pressed his lips together. “It didn’t read like one, either. We’ve done deep scans of the entire area and even multiple flybys. There’s no trace of the crew or the hopper. There’s no sign the ground had been disturbed, either. We’re still looking, and we’ll keep looking.” He curled his lips as if about to growl. “So what happened down there?”
Rodriguez waited patiently as Cody related the events of what happened. He and Cody had more or less patched things up since Cody had blown up at the admiral two months prior, but from time to time, Cody still felt the tension between them. Sonja had told him that all admirals were like that.
“Did the reeds snatch Private Hugo away?” Rodriguez asked. “And where?”
“Unknown, Admiral.” Cody remembered Private Hugo’s expression as he vanished, and it made him shudder. “It might have been something in the reeds, too.”
“Then why not snatch the rest of you? Christ.” Rodriguez grumbled. “I should send a fleet of hoppers down to nuke the whole area, but I can’t do that until I find our missing people first.”
“I’d rather talk to the fliers first, Admiral,” Cody said. “Maybe they know something.”
“Like why they weren’t present when they said they would be.” Rodriguez stroked his chin. “Any clue what Reggie’s message meant?”
“No, Admiral. It felt like someone passing a note in class.”
“That actually makes sense.” Rodriguez crossed his arms. “Reggie was probably worried someone would see what he wrote on the viewer.”
“Who?”
“Good question.” Rodriguez rubbed his forehead. “From what you’re describing, it was like they were being discreet, which means they were afraid someone was watching.”
“They must have known what was about to happen to us,” Cody said. “I’m not sure why they’d bother to warn us, though. They’re not exactly fond of humans.”
“That’s the only reason I’m not raining hell on them right now.” Rodriguez rubbed his temple. “That and I can’t imagine how the toads would have swallowed a hopper. I need goddamn answers.”
Cody nodded toward Ann. “Ann has probably seen something we haven’t during her two months planetside. If only we could get her to talk.”
“That would help matters,” Rodriguez said. “Doctor, what’s your report?”
Dr. Donaldson stepped away from his console and rubbed his eyes. “Well, this is unusual, to say the least.”
Rodriguez grumbled. “Could you be a little more precise, Doctor?”
“Well, Admiral, this is definitely Ann Salyard, at least according to her DNA.” Dr. Donaldson picked up a viewer and called up a file. “What’s troubling is what I can’t find.”
When the doctor handed the viewer to Rodriguez, he examined it then raised an eyebrow. “No signs of disease or infection. I’d think that was a good thing.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” Cody said.
“As am I,” the doctor said. “But if she’s been on Kali, outside of an environment suit, for months, I’d expect at least an infection of some kind.” He rubbed his chin. “Microscopic organisms native to Kali have a way of bypassing envirosuits if we’re not careful.”
“They’re self-aware, Admiral,” Cody said. “The magnetic waves allow them to—”
“Have a collective intelligence, which increases with their numbers.” Rodriguez gave a half smile. “I’ve read the reports, Dr. Brenner.”
“Which makes them harder to kill.” Donaldson gestured at the viewing pad in Rodriguez’s hand. “The human immune system has a hard time fighting the microscopic organisms down there when those organisms are intelligent, depending on their numbers, of course. Yet there is no trace of any foreign bodies in her system.”
Ann paid no attention to them as she ran her hand through the holocontrols, smiling when the controls flashed red and denied her access. It was a game to her.
Rodriguez continued reading the doctor’s viewer then wrinkled his brow. “She doesn’t have an internal viewer?”
“And no signs there ever was one.” Donaldson ran his hand over a holoconsole and brought up an image of a human eye on a larger viewing globe, where everyone could see. “Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy. But no trace of an internal viewing mechanism for displaying information on the inside of her cornea. Ninety percent of humans in the core worlds have the implant.”
“Well, that makes securing her from ship’s systems easier,” Rodriguez said. “But it is odd. Every marine is required to have an internal viewer.” He gestured to Ann, who was transfixed by a scanner hovering over her head. “Has she said anything?”
“Only to me, Admiral,” Cody said. “She repeated a word I said. ‘Fine.’”
“Fine?” Rodriguez watched Ann, who was still mesmerized by the hovering scanner.
Cody nearly jumped when Rodriguez barked an order. “Private, stand tall.”
Ann blinked several times before getting off the bed, but she didn’t stand at attention. Nearby, marines reached for their sidearms, but Rodriguez waved them off.
Rodriguez met her gaze. “What’s wrong with her, Doctor?”
“Trauma, perhaps,” Dr. Donaldson said. “Though I see no physical evidence of it, other than her behavior. There’s not even any evidence of wounds or malnutrition.”
Normally, a private would rather experience the fires of hell than fall under the withering gaze of an admiral, but Ann didn’t seem the least bit perturbed. Also, an admiral who wasn’t obeyed typically became a terrible force of nature, but Rodriguez didn’t seem bothered in the least.
“Let me try something.” Donaldson activated a nearby viewer. “Perhaps images with which she is familiar can jar her memory.”
The viewer displayed a holographic image of a space vessel. Cody recognized it as a cross section of the Spinoza, Ann’s first posting. Cody wasn’t sure if what Donaldson was doing was a good idea. The crash was horrific, as Cody recalled. He was on the bridge when it happened. Most of the crew died on impact. The rest were eaten by aquatic squid-like creatures that would’ve made Earth’s piranhas seem playful.
Ann stared at the image like a child watching a children’s show. She swiped her hand through the image, giggling as the image distorted briefly.
Dr. Donaldson smiled. “All right, how about this?”
An image of a flier appeared. The buzzard-looking creatures had been friendly with humans. Ann gave no obvious reaction.
“Very well.” Dr. Donaldson ran his hands over the holographic controls near the viewer until a picture of a toad appeared. “This?”
Ann shuddered, and Cody couldn’t blame her. The toads were the ones who’d forced the two surviving humans from the Kali to teach them to read. After that, the toads learned about human technology to the point where they managed to build space vessels to attack the Washington, which had arrived to rescue the survivors from the Spinoza. Cody could only imagine what the toads had done to her if they’d captured her at any time.
Ann backed away from the viewer. Cody stepped around the doctor and put his hands on her shoulders.
“It’s all right, Ann,” Cody said. “This is just an image. It can’t hurt you.”
Her shoulders relaxed whether she understood him or she just judged from the tone of Cody’s voice that everything was fine.
As Cod
y backed away, he glanced at Sonja. Her eyes had narrowed at Ann, but she changed her expression when she saw Cody watching. He wished he could ask her what was wrong.
“Keep trying, Doctor.” Rodriguez addressed the marines stationed in the room. “Have her watched at all times. If she attempts to cause a disruption or escape, throw her in the brig.”
“Aye, sir,” they all said at once.
The comm unit on the wall chimed twice. “Admiral?”
Rodriguez tapped the wall comm. “Rodriguez here.”
“Sir, the fliers have contacted us. They are requesting to speak to Dr. Brenner.”
“Understood.” Rodriguez shut off the comm.
“Seems an odd coincidence,” Cody said.
“That it does. I want to know why they didn’t meet up with the squad this morning.” Rodriguez glanced at Ann one more time. “Dr. Donaldson, may we use your office?”
“By all means, Admiral.”
“You want to listen in?” Cody asked.
“Goddamn right, I do.”
Chapter Four
Cody pulled up the channel once the door to the small office was closed. Through the glass walls, he could still see the rest of sick bay. Dr. Donaldson continued showing images to Ann, including a man in BDUs, a slight smile on his face. Cody recognized Corporal Jim Carson at once, who had been stationed on the Spinoza along with Ann, Bodin, and Sonja.
Jim had always treated Cody well on the Spinoza and continued to do so after they crashed, even when the rest of the survivors at first regarded Cody as a liability due to his lack of military experience. Then Jim had died at the hands of a bat creature.
“Bridge.” Rodriguez’s voice brought Cody back to the present. “Patch the flier’s signal here.”
“Aye, sir,” the comm officer said over the intercom.
Rodriguez stood on the other side of the desk so the viewer would not track him.
After a few seconds, a viewing globe appeared over the desk and came into focus quickly. The view bounced around a moment as whoever held the viewer on the other end attempted to steady it. Finally, the round head of a flier appeared. Its yellow eyes focused on the viewer as the head twisted from side to side. From his angle, Cody couldn’t see the creature’s pterodactyl-like wings.
