"Don't try to move," Tebrey said, crouching down next to her. "You're badly hurt."
"No shit," she said weakly. "You a Federation marine?"
"I'm here to help," Tebrey replied. He didn't want to lie to her. "Can you tell me what happened here?"
She laughed, and blood ran from her mouth. "When? When that fucking monster got loose from the lab? Or when the Clarke fired on us from orbit?"
"I'm a bit more concerned about the monster, to be honest."
"Who are you, again?"
"It doesn't matter. I'm here to find out what happened. Can you help me?"
"Will you kill me if I tell you?"
"Do you want me to?" he asked softly.
"I'd really appreciate it. I don't want to die like the others."
Θ
"How is she doing?" Rachael asked as she entered the small medical bay. Rachael had never been so close to a neo-panther before. She wasn't quite sure how she felt about them. The bioengineered animals had the minds of humans, but in animal bodies. She didn't know much else.
"Ghost is doing much better now, Captain," Harris replied. "I want to thank you, and apologize. I'm sorry about the way I came aboard. I didn't have much choice, though. I hope you understand that."
Ghost was asleep, draped across an acceleration couch with medical nanotech packages clinging to her like obscenely bloated parasites. The mental image made Rachael shudder.
"Don't worry about it. I'm more used to being hijacked for trips back home than you would think," Rachael replied, hoping Harris wouldn't ask for details. "I brought you one of my jumpsuits. Hard to tell through armor, but you look like you're about the same size as me. Close enough for a jumpsuit, anyway."
"Thank you," Harris said with feeling. "I've been wearing this armor for far too long. The air smells like recycled me. Is there a shower I can use?"
"Of course. Follow me." Rachael led Harris to her quarters, and the small private bath she relished as captain.
Rachael noticed that Harris made an effort to keep her armor from scraping the walls of the corridor as they walked, but the small merchant ship hadn't been designed with armored suits in mind.
"Believe it or not, I'm a little claustrophobic," Harris said tensely as they walked.
Rachael didn't know what to say to that. How could a person who feared small spaces ever stand to wear powered armor? Like most things about the woman, it added to Rachael's uncomfortableness. She showed her into her quarters and pointed out the small bath.
"Thanks," Harris said, as she entered the shower and stepped out of her armor.
Rachael looked away as the woman scrubbed out her armor and then proceeded to wash herself. She could have at least have closed the stall door. Rachael turned away and leaned against the wall. "What were you doing here, anyway? If you don't mind me asking."
"No choice," Harris replied loudly over the rush of the shower. "Ghost and I got stuck on the hull of a Federation destroyer in another system, hitched a ride through hyperspace."
"You rode outside a ship during a hyperspace transit?" Rachael had never heard of such a thing. It wasn't something she even wanted to imagine.
"Well, we actually rode in a blasted room next to the outer hull, but it was open to space, yeah. Not something I would care to do again."
"I would say not."
"Captain?" the MI interrupted.
"Yes, Francesca?" said Rachael, grateful for the distraction. She was certain Harris was coming on to her, the way she kept looking at her. It made Rachael a bit uncomfortable. It wasn't that she hadn't had her share of sexual encounters, but she generally preferred men, and she'd heard odd things about psions. Sex with one of them was never quite normal. The link that joined the human to their bio-engineered animal was always open. It was like a mental threesome – a little too weird for her.
"Girscha is outside the port airlock. He wants to talk about the contract. He seems agitated."
Rachael sighed. She'd thought things were going too well. "Is he alone?"
"No, Captain. He has four men with him. They are armed."
"Weapons drawn?" she asked, suddenly concerned. If they had weapons out, she'd call the port authorities and deal with the consequences.
"No, Captain. Holstered pistols only."
"Bodyguards, then," Rachael said, relaxing.
"Problem?" Harris asked as she dried off.
Rachael couldn't help but be envious of the woman's physique and her bright blue eyes. "You showing up cost me a juicy contract. The merchant in question is at my door, and he is not happy."
"Do you expect trouble?"
"I'm not sure," said Rachael. "Maybe. Girscha isn't exactly the most scrupulous of merchants."
Harris snorted. "Translation: he's a seedy bastard and wanted you to smuggle contraband."
Rachael blushed, but said steadily, "I don't know what he wanted me to ship. I don't get paid to ask questions. Times are hard. But yes, he is a seedy bastard."
"And you suspect that he's here to change your mind on taking the contract, perhaps forcefully."
"I'd say that's a fair assessment."
"Then let's give him a surprise," Harris said, stepping back into her armor. "I doubt he'll be expecting an armored commando."
"Who does?" Rachael asked, rolling her eyes.
Θ
Tebrey felt the presence of the Other as it entered the room. Tebrey had known that the Federation had attempted to clone him – well, parts of him, anyway. He hadn't been prepared for the thing that hopped-crawled-skittered its way into the room. It was like nothing he'd ever seen before.
The thing was several times the size of a man, but it was difficult to tell exactly – its form kept shifting. Body parts from dozens of creatures erupted from the mottled, oozing hide. There was no sense of proportion or scale. It made anything it needed to move itself forward and seemingly forgot about the limbs afterward as they slowly melted back into the flesh of the beast. The heads were the worst part. The animal and insect heads could be dealt with; it was the screaming human faces, alternately emerging and being reabsorbed, that made Tebrey's blood run cold. He suspected they belonged to the scientists the thing had eaten.
It reared up awkwardly and roared, a blast of rage beyond comprehension. The thing was mindlessly insane, but possessed of a hunger that made the worst Theta pale in comparison. Dozens of tentacular appendages morphed out of it, each tipped with a bony spike.
It screamed again, hundreds of eyes seeking a target for its rage.
Tebrey stood very still, hoping that the adaptive camouflage on his armor would keep the thing from seeing him. He didn't have his pistol drawn, and wasn't certain that a positron blast would do more than piss it off. It was bigger than a Homndruu. He wasn't even sure enough about its physiology to make a guess about where to shoot it. Aim for the heads? Or the center of mass, and hope to damage major organs?
While he hesitated, it did not. Bone-spined tentacles shot through the darkness, and half a dozen smashed into Tebrey with the force of shot projectiles. The bone spines shattered against Tebrey's armor, but the force flung him through the wall into the next lab. He had one glimpse of hungry mouths before he blacked out.
Chapter Eleven
"We should get moving," Drake said as he woke Tom and Mary up the next morning. The wind had picked up, the sky grey and foreboding, and the temperature had fallen through the night. "There is storm coming, and we don't want to be caught outdoors." At least in the winter, they wouldn't have to worry about the acid rains. Those had been severe in the months immediately after the nukes had fallen.
"You should have woke me!" Tom said, groggy. "I would have stood my watch."
"You needed the sleep."
"That I did," Tom admitted. "Thank you."
They got moving more slowly than Drake could have wished, but Mary was conscious, although a little confused. She seemed afraid of Drake, which was sensible. Her pulse was rapid and her pupils dilated, but she could wa
lk. They set off together into the ruins of Atlanta.
The fires had ravaged the city, but at least it hadn't been nuked. Cincinnati had looked like a skeletal wasteland after the bomb detonated. Not even the ferals had wandered too close, although Drake was certain the radioactivity there was down to levels humans could survive.
Atlanta was more intact, if one ignored the broken windows, abandoned cars, and general aura of disuse and decay. Scavengers had done away with the bodies, and the bones were hidden under the snow and ash. Distant screams and other noises followed them, although none of the ferals seemed willing to attack. Drake knew that wouldn't last. Eventually they would grow brave or foolhardy enough, and then they would come in great numbers.
The going was slow. Tom consulted a map frequently and often asked Mary if she could remember where to go, but she was still too confused. Drake wasn't sure how much good she would be when they got to the CDC building; he figured he'd deal with that problem when it arose.
"Does your map have a Gerhardt Industries on it?"
"The arms contractor?" asked Tom.
"Does it?"
"No, but I know which one it is," Tom said. "Help us at the CDC, and I'll take you there afterward, as long you promise not to stay too long. We'll need to get the medicine back to our son. What do you need from the old GI?"
"I think my friend may have working with Klaus Gerhardt just before the war. I found some records in Cincinnati to that effect."
"I thought you said Cincinnati had been nuked."
"It had."
Tom looked confused. "Look, I don't know what your friend did for Mr. Gerhardt, but the only big thing they were working on before the war was the Gimlé Project. I was a foreman on the job. Took months. Good pay, though."
"What is this Gimlé Project?"
"Some weird idea Gerhardt had: save the world by populating other ones. Something like that. They built a ship in orbit. He had his own private launch facility. That was what I worked on. You didn't hear about it? It was all over the news. Startled the hell out of everyone. NASA was thinking they might get people Mars in ten years, and Gerhardt comes along and says he's sending people to Centauri. Where were you that you didn't hear about it?"
"I was out of the country just before the war. Where was this facility?"
"Down in Florida. In the Keys."
"I may need to go there."
"That's a long walk."
Drake shrugged. "I've walked farther."
Θ
Nancy came into the cargo hold with one of Girscha's men gripping her arm tightly. He shoved her ahead of him as they entered. Rachael stood by the lift doors to the lower level. Her pistol was tucked out of sight on a container to her right.
"Captain Vardegan," Girscha said with a smile. "How nice of you to see us on such short notice."
"Funny, Girscha. Real funny. Listen, I assume you're here because of the contract. I'm sorry I had to cancel, but there was no way we'd be able to meet your timetable. My ship needed too many repairs."
"Uh-huh. Listen, sweetheart, I ain't that stupid. I got guys that tell me your ship is almost ready to launch. I don't know why you backed out of the contract, and frankly, I don't care. I need that cargo delivered, and you're my best bet. You have no idea who you're dealing with here. This goes way beyond you or me."
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Girscha, but your guys are wrong."
"Rachael," Girscha said, switching to a smoothly reasonable voice, "I don't think you fully appreciate your position here. I ain't asking you to take the contract. That time is past. Two more of my men are standing by with the cargo, just outside. Don't make this any harder than it has to be."
"Harder than it has to be?" asked Rachael through clenched teeth. She'd known Girscha was unscrupulous, but she hadn't thought he'd actually try to take her ship. Not really, anyway. She'd had just about enough of people telling her where she had to go and what she had to do.
"Yeah," Girscha said. "See, I'm still trying to decide if you're competent to be captain of my new ship, or if I need to find some other use for you." He grinned lecherously as his eyes traveled over her somewhat fitted jumpsuit. His men grinned as well.
"Load the cargo," Rachael said. "Then get the hell off my ship."
"I don't think so," said Girscha. "You'd just take it and run. No, you and your crew are going to entertain us on this little trip."
"Is that so?" she asked as she cued Francesca via datalink. The secret panel Rachael used for smuggling was behind Girscha, and it slid quietly open to reveal Harris in her armor.
"Yeah, that's so," Girscha replied, oblivious to the commando behind him and his men.
"You should have taken me up on my offer and left," Rachael said. "Goodbye, Girscha."
Θ
Tebrey woke to pain.
His arms and legs were immobilized, and his head was being jerked back and forth as the thing tried to get at the ripe meat in its steel shell. Tebrey yelled in frustration and pulled with all the amplified strength of his armor, but the thing held him fast. Small tentacles and insectile limbs scrambled at the joints of his armor, trying to find a way in. He tried to pull his pistol, only to find it gone. The Other was not much more than an animal, but it knew weapons could hurt it.
Tebrey yelled again and summoned the psychic fire.
The Other screamed, and its convulsions nearly tore Tebrey's limbs from their sockets, but it dropped him and skittered away in baffled rage. The fire did little actual damage, however; it was much more effective on the entropic flesh of a Theta than on the living tissue of the thing in front of him.
Tebrey didn't think twice. As soon as he hit the floor, he was up and running. Without weapons, he couldn't do anything to the Other. He knew there was one place it couldn't follow him. He had to get outside. He had to get back to the ship. The Vigilant could reduce this planetoid to radioactive rubble in minutes.
If he could make it outside.
The Other wasn't about to let him get away so easily. Tebrey's escape from the complex was a nightmare of running down corridors with the hunger of the thing dogging him the entire way. At times he would think that he had lost it in the twisting corridors, but then it would lash out from a ventilation shaft. The ability of the thing to change its form at will was frightening. Tebrey had seen Thetas mask their form before, but nothing like this.
At last the end was in sight. Tebrey ran down the corridor and cycled the airlock. He was certain attack was imminent, but it wasn't until he was in the lock and reaching for the controls that he felt the thing again. Tentacles lashed out and wrapped around his right arm. With terrifying strength, it began to pull him from the safety of the lock.
Tebrey managed to grab a stanchion with left hand, but the thing only pulled harder. He lost his grip and slid across the deck, kicking out with his legs to stop from going through into the waiting embrace of the Other.
It must've had some rudimentary sense of what the lock meant, because it didn't come in after him. It surged harder, and Tebrey was lifted from the floor. He grabbed another stanchion, but his arm was partially through the lock already. He tried the flames again, but the thing had either become immune or adapted somehow to resist the pain. Tebrey knew that if he lost his grip, it would all be over for him. It might take a few days, but the thing would eventually work its way through his armor. It wanted to absorb his flesh.
At the edge of his field of vision, Tebrey saw the lock controls. He smashed them with his helmet. The alarms screeched, lights flashing, and outer lock opened to the vacuum of space.
The Other didn't let go.
The air howled through the lock, and the inner lock slammed shut – with Tebrey's arm caught between the doors.
Tebrey and the Other screamed together as the doors crushed his powered armor and the tentacles of the thing that held him. Under normal circumstances, the airlock door would have been able to cut through his arm with ease, but the Other was tougher than any normal creature, and
door couldn't close all the way. The thing was even slowly forcing the doors wider. Tebrey's right arm, just below the elbow, was shattered as the door crushed it down to six centimeters and stopped.
The air was still howling, and so was the thing on the other side of the door. Tebrey's neural shunts kicked in just before he passed out from the pain. He quickly overrode the medical suite on his armor; he didn't need drugs addling his mind.
"Why won't you fucking die!" he screamed.
Not... Die... came wordlessly into his mind. It wanted to live.
"We can't always get what we want," Tebrey said.
His combat knife was difficult to reach with his left hand, but he was able to twist his hips enough to grab it. Taking a deep breath, he plunged the knife into his arm and cut himself loose.
Chapter Twelve
Nancy stood in the captain's doorway and glared.
"I know what you're thinking," Rachael said groggily, "and no, I didn't ask her to do that to Girscha or his men."
"No?"
"No! God damn it, Nancy! Do you think I wanted this?" Rachael stepped into the light from the corridor, and Nancy could see that the front of the captain's jumpsuit was dark with blood. A fan of blood had dried on her face, and her hair was matted.
"You need to get cleaned up," Nancy said softly.
"What I need," Rachael said, her voice harsh and angry, "is for everyone to fucking leave me alone."
"Fine," Nancy snapped. "I thought you'd like to know that the commando brought the cargo aboard, and the bodies of the other two men. She didn't make a mess outside." She turned to leave.
"Nancy," said Rachael, imploring. "I'm sorry, okay? I'm just in shock. I've never seen anything like that before."
"I know," Nancy replied. "Neither had I. It's one thing to talk about defending the ship, and carry guns and stuff. It something completely different to actually see someone killed in from of you. Girscha didn't even have a chance."
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