by Ramy Vance
Her golden eyes fluttered open at the sounds of his footfall. She gave a little victory salute. “Hull breach in general crew quarters.” She swallowed. “Got it sealed off, at least. But we lost the lounge. Hope that wasn’t a vintage pool table.” She smiled weakly. Her teeth were stained red, too.
Toner dropped the pack he’d been carrying. The medkit and toolkit he’d raided from the generator bay clattered to the floor. Suddenly lightheaded, he turned, hurrying away before the faint iron scent of blood could crawl up his nostrils, grab his brain by the ’nads, and give a nasty yank. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Jaeger drifted in and out of a light doze for what might have been a minute or what might have been half an hour before sitting upright in the cold corridor. The Osprey had made the jump safely to the other side of the hole. According to Virgil, the saucer had not pursued them. Jaeger went to work, ensuring the hull breach sealed and her ship wasn’t actively on fire.
She could afford a few minutes to rest her eyes. She couldn’t afford not to. She was running on adrenaline fumes and sheer willpower. They would fail her, sooner or later.
She roused to the sounds of footfall and blinked up to see Toner standing over her with a damp towel in one hand and a cluster of blood substitute bags dangling like overripe berries in the other. In his sweaty white jumpsuit, he looked like a mad janitor that had escaped from a hospital for the mentally deranged.
Head turned to the side. He shoved the towel blindly into her face. “Here. Uh. Cover yourself. Please.”
Jaeger took the towel and glanced down, wondering if she’d torn her flight suit without noticing. No, her clothes were all in the right places. Confused, she started wiping the sweat and grime from her face. “Thanks?”
Toner bounced on his heels, restless. “Keep going.”
Now annoyed, she glanced at the towel. Dark grime smeared it and streaks of blood. Then she understood and hastily scrubbed the rest of her skin clean. She even gummed a clean corner of the towel, wiping some of the old blood taste out of her mouth. She chuckled. “So the vampire has a touch of hemophobia?” She tossed the soiled towel down the corridor. Toner’s shoulders slumped as he relaxed and turned. He sank to the floor and sat cross-legged across from her.
“No.”
The simple, flat word made her neck prickle. Toner stared at her with all good humor drained from his bright blue eyes.
“No,” he said again. “It’s not a fucking joke. You’re tiny, Jaeger. I could rip you in half and slurp out your guts in about twenty seconds. Ten if I'm hungry.”
Jaeger felt a cold finger of fear brush the base of her spine. She remembered the inhuman twist of his face, the ghoulish spread of his jaw lined with all those sharp teeth as he had reached for her in the Jefferies tube. “Is that a threat, Toner?”
“No!” He moved suddenly, making her jerk and reach instinctively for her multitool—but he only grabbed the back of his neck. His jaw flexed. “Jesus, no. I don’t know what the fuck is going on. I don’t know thing one about running a god damned spaceship. Also, I’m not a complete prick. So no, I don’t fucking want to hurt you, but God—the smell of fresh blood—it’s like a light switch.” His knuckles tightened around his spine. His narrow chest heaved.
Then he shut his eyes, forcing himself still.
“It gives you a headache?” she asked quietly. Her hand was still on her multitool. She slipped a finger into the first trigger, just in case.
“No.” Toner’s voice fell to forced calm. “No, the smell of real blood makes me stupidly, mindlessly hungry. It’s this collar thingy that’s giving me the headache. I'm pretty sure it's there to keep all that hunger in check.”
After a tense moment, his hands slowly fell back to his lap. Once more in control of himself, he looked at her. He looked unhappy.
He reached for one of the blood substitute pouches beside him and ripped the tag off the port end. He brought it to his mouth and pierced the corner with one needle-thin tooth.
“I’m thowwy.” His tongue worked awkwardly around the pouch.
Jaeger believed him. Maybe that was stupid. Perhaps she was tired. Maybe the desperate need for company that wasn’t a shitty AI made her willing to take stupid risks. Still, she did believe he didn’t want to hurt her.
She also believed, watching the tight ripple of his muscles as he sucked down the pouch, that all the good intentions in the world wouldn’t save her if that implant failed.
He was a predator. She could—and would—use him. She could be friendly. Hell, she could even see being actual friends with him.
But she could not let all her guard down around him.
“Your girlfriend must love you,” she muttered.
Toner eyed her narrowly as the pouch withered to a husk. He tossed it aside and wiped the faint streak of blood substitute from his teeth with the quick swipe of a thumb.
“Blood kind of comes with the human package. The female one, especially.” She chuckled and shook her head. She must have been tired.
“Yeah, thanks,” he said unhappily. “God, I want a steak. Like, a big chuck eye slab. Just wave it once over a fire, so it smells a little like smoke.”
“Still mooing,” Jaeger suggested. “That’s what my…” She trailed off with a frown, then shook her head. “Almost had it. Someone I know used to like their steak raw. Dammit.”
He said nothing, but there was the suggestion of sympathetic pity in his eyes.
She didn’t want to think about that.
She forced herself upright and reached for the pack of supplies he had brought. Her shoulders and arms ached from her earlier reckless flight through the ship. Her spine hurt from where she’d slammed to the deck. Her tongue ached from the bite. Her head ached.
“So how badly did we fuck up the generators after that boneheaded maneuver?” She pulled a water bottle out of the pack and cracked it open.
“Well.” Toner scratched his neck. “I’m no expert. But they were all blinking red when I left the bay. The readout said something about a critical cooldown period.”
“Better than a critical failure,” Jaeger supposed. She drained half the bottle in one long swig, heedless of the rivulets coursing down the corners of her mouth. “Or them not blinking at all.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“The generators were still recovering from whatever happened last night.” She grunted and dropped the half-empty bottle back into the pack. “Then we went and asked them to do something big and stupid. If we don’t give them enough time to cool down and recover, they’re going to mutiny.”
“Well, you did say we had some wiggle room in the schedule before the wormhole thing collapses.”
“Yeah. I hate to burn it like this, but if we can avoid getting into any more fights with hostile natives, we might still make it home.”
Toner cocked his head. “What about that human fighter you contacted right before it all went to hell?”
“Right.” Her brow knitted into a frown. She lifted her voice. “Virgil, do you have him on scanners? Is he around?”
“We are within the radiation disk of the wormhole. My external scanners are nearly useless.” Virgil paused. “That said, no, I do not detect any other ships nearby, human or alien.”
Jaeger closed her eyes, feeling a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.
“You’re worried?” Toner asked.
“I really hope he didn’t get destroyed in the fallout. I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t have tried to rendezvous if he could.”
“Maybe he decided the aliens were better company after all.”
“What?” Her eyebrows jumped in comic offense. “Better company than me?”
Toner grinned. “Screw you. I’m offended he didn’t want to meet me. ‘I’m the man more sinned against than sinning!’”
Jaeger cracked a smile.
Toner fumbled in the pile of stuff, found a granola bar, and tossed it to her. “Eat your rabbit food.” He sank one
needle tooth into his second blood pack. “You need your strength, too.”
Jaeger watched him suck greedily until the pack was a shriveled husk and decided she wasn’t hungry. They joked because the alternative was worse but far more likely. The unknown fighter hadn’t survived the feedback—or worse. It had fried his computer systems, and he was still drifting in the debris field of their vented crew lounge, slowly freezing to death and unable to call for help.
Jaeger wanted to go looking for him. Friend or foe or anything in between, he was human. He had helped her out of a jam. And there was nothing she could do, right now, to help him in return.
The sense of failure made her stomach churn.
“I’m sure he’s fine.” Toner caught the look on her face.
“Maybe. Virgil, can you tell me anything else about the human fighter?”
“Valeria-class fighter, Seeker subtype.” Virgil sounded bored. “I have generalized fighter information in my databanks, and we have six similar vessels in our manifest, but their places in the fighter bay are empty. The serial number on that ship does not match any on the Osprey’s register.”
“No ID on the pilot?”
“No.”
“So he’s a human fighter, but not one of the Osprey’s human fighters,” Toner mused.
Jaeger scrubbed the side of her head. The distant whine of complaining systems was making her teeth ache. “Virgil, play some music. Lord of the Rings’ Lothlorien, I think. Low volume.”
Toner rolled his eyes as the soft humming of elvish choirs floated through the corridor.
“It helps me relax.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He must have come through the wormhole with us.” Jaeger forced herself to nibble one corner of the granola bar. Oatmeal raisin. She sighed and started picking out the raisins. Why would anybody ruin perfectly good oatmeal like that? “Although if he did, there’s a good chance his memory got scrambled, too. He may not know any more than we do. Probably less.”
Toner nodded, watching her slide the discarded raisins into a pocket on her flight suit. He arched an eyebrow.
“What?”
“Are you saving them for later?”
“There’s no garbage can around here. I’m not going to litter. Especially not on my ship.”
Toner snorted and reached for the third and final blood pack.
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those assholes who leave cigarette butts on the beach.”
“I have no memory of ever doing so. Cross my heart.”
“How many of those are you going to eat?”
“As many as it takes.” He chomped into the material, not meeting her eye.
“It feels wrong,” she said quietly, after a moment of quiet elvish humming. “Not going to look for him.”
Toner’s shoulders slackened. He nodded once, subdued. His throat pulsed as he swallowed the last of the blood substitute. “Yeah.” He sat the pouch aside and leaned back slowly, resting against the bulkhead. “It does. But things aren’t exactly going swimmingly for us, either. Hell. We’re not even treading water.”
Jaeger closed her eyes, begrudging herself another minute of rest. Time stretched in companionable silence. She heard herself humming along to the music.
“You did a good job with those shields,” she said.
Toner looked around. “Yeah?” He sounded surprised. “You’re not mad about the crew lounge?”
She shook her head with a chuckle. “We lost a pool table and some dart boards in a hare-brained maneuver with absolutely no practice or preparation. I’m shocked it worked as well as it did. Nah.” She patted his shoulder. “You did well.”
Toner sat up a little straighter. “Thanks, Captain.” He cracked his knuckles. “We have some time before the generators recover.”
“Yeah. A lot of work yet to do but I have to track down a cup of coffee and get a shower. Meet me in the crew quarters in thirty minutes. It’s past time we figure out what else is on my ship.”
His lips cracked in a sly grin. “It’s too bad about the lounge. I could show you some billiard tricks.”
“Oh, dear.” Jaeger pressed her palms to her knees and pushed herself up. “There are eight million things we need to do to keep this ship floating, and I’d rather do any one of them while fighting a hangover than watch you play with your balls.”
Chapter Sixteen
Jaeger dropped a heavy duffel bag on the galley kitchen counter. “This ship,” she said, “Has top of the line rail guns. It has self-guided torpedoes.” She ripped the duffel bag open and pulled out a collection of heavy multitools, slapping each onto the counter with a thunk. “It has modified pulse cannons and bleeding-edge shield generators.”
Toner, who had been sitting at the counter, sipping from a heavy mug and reading off the screen of a personal comp he had dug up from somewhere, stared as Jaeger added a pile of grooved round ball-things to her makeshift armory.
“She’s built for combat,” Jaeger went on, caught in the throes of a well-seasoned rant. Her duffel bag empty, she turned to the small kitchen and started rummaging through the drawers. “So can anybody explain to me why I cannot find the armory?” She found a set of steak knives and slapped them beside the multitools. “A single hull-safe rifle? An automatic pistol? At this point, I’d be happy to find a cattle prod.”
“So…” Toner studied her over his mug. “How was your shower?”
Jaeger rounded on him, eyes bright, face animated. Sweat and grime still coated her hair. The medfoam over her scalp wound would need to be changed soon; it was getting grimy.
“Not as good as the coffee, I see. You’re feeling better.” Toner sipped his drink. It was water. Well, mostly. He’d found a to-go bottle of bottom-shelf rum in the galley.
He wasn’t going to tell Jaeger that, though. He’d only added a dash, enough to get that stale, boiled taste out of the water. It was still awful, but a better sort of awful. Toner sipped before handing it over.
Jaeger lifted an eyebrow. “If you’re a vampire, why are you drinking water, booze... coffee?”
Toner shrugged. “Best I can tell, I’m not a real vampire. I’m an…” he searched for the word, “an engineered vampire. Something made in a lab. I can drink and eat like any human, but I need raw materials for nourishment and to repair myself. Raw materials like blood.” He took an exaggerated sip. “The rest is for taste.”
Jaeger rolled her eyes. “We don’t have time for fucking around. I have to find out what’s in Tetra and No-A. I have to know what is on my ship that got the aliens so upset.”
The air around her practically vibrated with energy. Toner stared at the minute pulse in her throat. “What drugs are you on?” he asked when he lost count of the beats.
She glanced away, guilty. “I found a stimulant pack in my quarters. I only took half of it. I’ll get some sleep when we’re safe, I promise, but for now, there’s too much work to do.”
“If you were a helicopter you’d be flying.” Toner, who was not secretly doing drugs on the job, set his mug aside and reached forward. He picked up one of the orbs. It was about the size and texture of a grenade but rounder and heavier. He hefted it, trying and failing to remember how he knew the feel of a grenade.
“These are flashbangs.”
“Yes,” Jaeger agreed, sounding puzzled as she lifted one. “I found a case of them in an emergency storage locker on one of the crew quarter decks. Odd thing to keep next to the spare thermal hoods, don’t you think?”
Toner nodded and set the flashbang down—carefully. “There are a lot of odd things about this ship.”
Jaeger clipped two spare multitool batteries to her belt and passed another two to him. “Until we find an armory, we’ll have to make do with plasma cutters and flashbangs. Gear up.”
“To do what, exactly?” Toner set his computer aside. He hadn’t been doing well on that game of Solitaire, anyway.
“Go hunting.” Jaeger slung her multitool over her shoulder and slipped
one of the flashbangs into her flight suit. “That thing in Tetra is ripping holes through my ship, pissing off my guests, and making too much of a racket. We’re going to deal with it and figure out what’s going on in No-A.”
Curiously, Toner reached out and plucked up one of the steak knives on the counter. Working some muscle memory he didn’t know he had, he flipped the handle. The utensil spun smoothly and fell back to his hand. With a flick of his wrist, he caught the blade between two squeezed fingers. He flicked his wrist again, sending the blade spinning like a top, perfectly balanced on the end of his middle finger.
He grinned, as surprised by the trick as she was. “Hey. Look what I can do.”
“Cute trick. Now can you bury it in an angry space-rhino before it tramples us?”
“You’re serious about this.” He made the knife vanish smoothly into a pouch on his sleeve. It felt comfortable there. Familiar. Yes, he thought suddenly, maybe he could sink it into the eye of a charging rhino.
He was at least willing to try—and he liked what that said about him.
“I have never been more serious,” said the tiny lady with the eyes of liquid gold and enough stimulant running through her system to make her hair vibrate. “If you don’t help me, I’m going to do it myself.”
“You’re the captain,” Toner said. If she caught the sardonic tone in his words, she hid it well. He had, after some hand-wringing, decided not to mention the sealed door to Captain Percival LeBlanc’s quarters. This Jaeger woman might not, technically, be the captain of this ship. Still, somebody had to be in charge, and if it wasn’t her, then it would have to be Toner himself.
Nobody wanted that—Toner least of all.
He grabbed all the makeshift weapons he could comfortably carry and followed her into the monster’s lair.
Chapter Seventeen
“Bio scans indicate the creature has returned to the Tetra storage bay,” Virgil said dully. “It has not moved significantly in twenty-seven minutes.”
