“Hold steady,” whispers Dinuth.
I can almost taste his fear—it has the same flavour as my own. Beside me, Soleil shifts and gulps. She has never fought anyone while in human form. But her jaw hardens and her grip on the weapon is steady.
The door falls inwards and the mutants heave forward. Black carapaces glint in the light and razor claws scrabble across the panelled metal floor. The room fills with their inhuman voices and the stench of their carrion-laced breaths.
Dinuth moves first. His blaster sizzles a bolt of energy into the foremost insectoid. It falls into a pile of smoking ash. The others crawl over it—uncaring. Dinuth fires again, but this time the blaster fails, the old tech ruined by neglect.
I step into the breach. The shotgun roars and more mutants fall, their gore splattering the floor. But it’s not enough. Soleil dances into the fight, light-footed and quick. Wielding the xiphos in one hand, she carves it into the wall of thick, brittle chitin. The blade glimmers, an arc of polished steel. Wing fragments fly, floating like pearlescent glitter. Black blood follows, splattering her face and the wall and the floor.
Dinuth uses the blaster like a club. A mutant ducks past his defenses and plunges its razor-tipped claws through a gap in his armor. Between the hip and the abdomen. Dinuth grunts and punches the creature in the face. It falls backwards, and so does he.
Overwhelmed by the numbers, I fire round after round. The chamber clicks empty. My last nine rounds are loaded. My empty ammo belt feels too light for comfort. I shoot again.
The gun jams.
“Shit, not again,” I snarl, working to clear the breach. It frees. I snap the gun back to my shoulder and squeeze the trigger. The recoil is a bitch when this time it fires.
Bodies pile up against the opening. One shot. Two. More shots. Then nothing moves in the doorway. It’s blocked. The other mutants can’t get through. I glance down. Still got two bullets left.
Soleil, splattered with black blood and xiphos in hand, stands breathless by the door.
“Is he okay?” she asks, eyes on Dinuth.
I kneel by the buru. His hand flutters by his belt. The vial. But it lies shattered at his side, purple liquid scattered across the ground.
His fingers touch the fluid and his breath catches. His eyes close. “It’s gone,” he says. “Everything I worked for. Lost. The buru have won.”
But I’m not willing to let these goddamned aliens win.
“Not yet they haven’t.” I tear a strip of fabric from the hem of my shirt and plug his wound. “Here hold this,” I say.
Dinuth presses his palm to the wad. “What are you doing?”
“Getting us the hell out of here.”
“But the formula is gone.”
I lean in close to his face. “But you aren’t. You created it before and you can do it again. And maybe, just maybe, you can perfect it with the help of me and Soleil. Maybe our DNA is the answer. One was mutated, one not. That’s what you need, isn’t it? A comparison?”
Dinuth’s eyes widen.
“Now, I’m going to get us all out of here,” I say. “We get the kids and we set up a new lab in my bunker.”
“And get back to work,” whispers Dinuth.
“Exactly. We have aliens to destroy and humanity to save.”
I turn to my sister. “Hand me that blade.”
She nods and takes my shotgun. Her gaze catches mine. She smiles. My heart squeezes again. It’s so good to have her back.
Then I press the tip of the xiphos to the metal plate in the floor.
It lifts.
The darkness of the duct beneath beckons.
The Echo of Love
By Marianne de Pierres
Professor Kyne? The stationmaster would like to see you.
Kyne paused his case book and replayed the message from his Mind-Aide to confirm that he’d heard correctly. With a speech to write, and at least a hundred case files left to review before the official opening of Leto Station’s new science wing, it was both a surprising and unwelcome interruption.
But not one he could ignore. The message had not only cut into his direct private audio feed but was blinking with a priority alert on his virtual eyewall and all his external screens as well.
“In reference to…?” he asked his M-A.
A topic has not been flagged, Professor. But the priority is red.
Kyne pulled the patch from his ears in exasperation. What could Floraboden possibly want with him? The stationmaster usually only deigned to give his time to the physicists and the astronomeins. No one ever took an interest in Kyne’s work. Psycho-realism was seen as the poorest relative of psychiatry and the hard sciences. Fools!
He stood, stretched, and waved his fingers in a practiced pattern. The nano-receptors around his workstation fed the gestures into a decoder, which set the station to lock. The screen, his case books, and documents all turned blank.
He locked his office as he left—even though no one came to Floor 773 unless they were lost—and stalked to the airvator shaft without passing a single person. He knew every ripple in the insulation and every ding on the exposed piping that ran along the ceiling, but today he didn’t pay them mind.
Even when the air-cushioned tube lift opened, he remained deep in contemplation of his research. Maybe this was his opportunity to ask Floraboden for a research grant. Two years into his study, his sample group remained frustratingly limited to station personnel and employees from the Leto–Bellatrix service shuttles. He needed a wider sample to gain credibility.
“Floor 550 on priority,” he told his M-A. It sent his request to station logistics, who rerouted the airvator into an express channel. At least he wouldn’t have to travel with the public.
Ten minutes later, Kyne stepped out.
The lights in the corridors were brighter up here, the smell cleaner. It seemed that the lower in the station you worked or lived, the more the sweet stench of carbon tetrachloride tainted your life.
Kyne waited in front of the security scanner. The stationmaster’s Lostolian valet came out to greet him and ushered him into the screening parlor.
He took care not to touch the creature. Lostolians’ personalities—along with their skin—were too tightly stretched and easily torn. Arrogance seemed to be their species’ default. They made great bureaucrats, always fussing over something.
Not that Space Station Leto was a place for species prejudice. Three hundred and fifty-four different types of sentients resided here. Tolerance was another key parameter for selection, and Kyne had rated highly on the species-empathy scale. He knew how to fudge a test. He’d designed enough of them.
“The stationmaster is waiting for you,” said the valet.
Kyne resisted apologizing. He’d come as quickly as he could. Instead, he walked straight-backed into the chilled inner sanctum.
Stationmaster Floraboden stood in between two nano-generators with his eyes closed. Kyne could see their little winking lights at work.
Other than that, the room was sparse: two kneeling chairs facing each other, a food dispenser, and a multidimensional picture of a cobalt-blue planet.
Please wait while Stationmaster Floraboden disengages from virtual, Kyne’s M-A told him.
Kyne sank onto the cushioned pad of one of the two kneel chairs. A trifle confrontational. Not all the species on this station would be able to fit on, or be appreciative of, the proximity of these chairs. Clearly the ergonomic designers hadn’t consulted a behaviorist.
“Welcome, Professor,” said Floraboden joining him on the opposite chair. “I know you don’t like to be disturbed when you’re working, but I have a unique situation and…an opportunity for you. However, this requires the highest security clearance. I would need certain assurances on your part.”
Kyne experienced an unsettling sensation in his stomach. “Is it dangerous?”
“Not inherently,” said Floraboden evasively.
Kyne observed the man’s movements and replayed the ton
e of his voice in his mind. The stationmaster was hiding something. “Why would you require me for this high security…situation?”
“Your research and your talent for interpreting voice are uniquely suited to the task.”
“Indeed?” Kyne’s curiosity was piqued, and he relaxed. He’d never had someone of the stationmaster’s status give kudos to his work before. Perhaps an opportunity had finally come his way.
“What’s required for me to gain clearance?” Kyne asked.
“Just a signatory assurance that you’ll abide by our protocols, and of course, a prosecutable declaration you won’t discuss your involvement with anyone.”
“And my recompense for such a commitment?”
Floraboden’s smile crinkled his face all the way to his ears. “I thought you might have some ideas on that. What would you like, Professor Kyne? What would be suitable reparation for assisting us to maintain the safety and wellbeing of your home?”
The stationmaster delivered the veiled rebuke with perfect good humor, as though it wasn’t really one at all.
But Kyne knew exactly what he wanted. “I should like to be moved to an office in the new science wing, next door to Dr. Dente Freeburg.”
Floraboden’s eyebrows shot upward. “Professor Freeburg is our leading physicist and astronomein. The new wing is for the hard sciences.”
“A profoundly ignorant decision, if I may say,” said Kyne.
“Aaah,” said Floraboden nodding his head. “You’re an activist in the war of the sciences?”
“I decry the physicists and astronomeins hegemony’s stranglehold on public perception. Yes.”
“Quite,” said Floraboden. “Well, let me see what’s available.”
He lifted a hand and wove a quick, new pattern with his fingers. His eyes glazed but remained open. The receptor implants across his forehead and down the left side of his face winked in a mesmerizing light pattern.
Most station operators could manage a decent load of procedures from anywhere on the station while still engaged in the real world. Floraboden, however, was renowned for his ability to compartmentalize and endlessly multitask. It was a stationmaster’s lot.
“I can agree to your request,” said Floraboden eventually.
“It must have an external view,” added Kyne. “I want to see outside.”
Floraboden scowled and twitched his fingers. Then he rose and returned to his command field.
The door opened behind Kyne, and Floraboden’s valet entered.
“Your request has been approved. Please follow me to give your signatory,” said the Lostolian.
Kyne glanced back at Floraboden, but the stationmaster had already resubmerged into station space, his eyes shut, and both hands conducting with fervor.
How annoying that the only person Kyne had spoken to in the last month didn’t have the courtesy to say goodbye.
#
It was a full day before Kyne found out what he’d signed up for. The guard escorts who came for him the following morning wore station insignia and armed-combat suits.
His stomach tightened. “Am I in danger?”
None of them saw fit to reply, other than to insist—with gestures only—that he should don a privacy helmet, so he remained blind in transit.
To allay his jitters, Kyne imagineered himself in his new office with his name plate outside on the wall next to Freeburg’s. He concentrated on picturing the physicists’ faces when a psycho-realist moved in among them. Sometimes, you have to fabricate your own success. Being in the hard-science wing would give his work some solid exposure. For one thing, it meant an automatic invite to the Scientists’ Union tri-cyclic symposium.
The very idea broke a fine sweat on his skin.
So deep were his contemplations that Kyne lost track of direction and time. He only roused from them when a guard tapped his shoulder and removed his helmet.
They’d brought him to a small room, even by station standards, which comprised an armchair, three gray titanium walls, and an interactive screen as the fourth wall. The screen was inactive.
The guard proffered him a tube of water. When Kyne accepted it, the guard left the room. The door shut after him with discernible finality.
Kyne stood, holding the tube. What next?
“Please be seated, Professor Kyne,” said Floraboden’s voice.
The screen flickered alive and the stationmaster’s head and shoulders appeared in sharp definition. The ridge of flesh along his hairline was stained from medical scans from the implants. Stationmasters were prone to cranial bleeds.
“On the other side of this screen we are detaining an A-Class alien. We would like you to begin some preliminary discourse with the creature. As your specialty is psychic interior realism, we believe that you can bring us some insight into the true nature of this creature.”
“That’s it? You want me to just talk to an A-Class?”
“Yes.”
“But I haven’t prepared. I need a profile tracker.”
“We’d prefer you did this on instinct and gave a spontaneous verbal report after every meeting.”
Kyne shook his head. This was most inappropriate. Most unscientific. “What can you tell me about the A-Class?”
“Our forward scout found...her—I use the gender tag in a qualified manner, for ease of discussion—in the brig of a JetShift trader. The humanesque crew were all dead. She seems to be able to communicate in our language and has chosen to be known as Sarin.”
“Sarin is the fourth brightest star in the Hercules constellation.”
“Indeed, Professor.”
“What does she look like?” asked Kyne, stepping closer to the screen.
“It’s unclear. Sarin is encased in an opaque crystalline structure. “She has described it as her cocoon. She chose that description, she said, so that we could conceptualize it.”
“Fascinating,” said Kyne. “Did the JetShift logs explain more?”
“No. You’ll spend an hour with Sarin today, and every day hereafter, until we know enough. The guards will collect you from your rooms every morning and return you afterwards.”
“What if I should like to stay longer with Sarin?”
“That will not be permitted.”
Kyne sucked in a breath. He was not used to such confining parameters when working with test subjects. Still, this could look good on his resume. “Floraboden, is this blindfold nonsense truly necessary?”
“Good luck, Professor,” said the stationmaster, ignoring his question. The image faded out.
The texture and color of the screen changed, and Kyne saw the outline of a sarcophagus-like structure in an otherwise empty space. He seated himself and leaned forward and studied the dimensions. It appeared—if the scale was true—to be a little longer and wider than the dimensions of an average female humanesque.
“Hello, Sarin,” he said, not sure what else to do.
“Hello, Professor Kyne. Stationmaster Floraboden told me to expect you.”
Her tone, though a little husky, was a perfect replication of the Mintakan accent. Humanesques in this sector of Orion clipped the end of their words. It was quite attractive to a Procyonite like Kyne who was used to the sound of his language bubbling like air in a water pipe.
“Are you comfortable with being called Sarin?”
There was a long pause, then she replied, “It’s my name.”
Kyne nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. He felt the mantle of his professional persona slip across him. “You may call me Professor or just Kyne.”
“Just Kyne. That is an unusual name even for your kind.”
That made him smile. “It’s not my name, Sarin. It’s semantics. Calling me Kyne will be sufficient. Our scout found you on board a damaged ship. Do you know what happened to the crew?”
“Interrogatives are not appropriate among my kind until a couple knows each other well.”
Kyne raised his eyebrows at the crystalline structure. “Are we a couple, S
arin?”
The A-Class was silent for a moment. “That was clever of you, Just Kyne. Creating intimacy from nothing.”
Kyne took a moment to consider her response then said, “I apologize if questions make you uncomfortable. It’s an accepted form of communication among humanesques. If you tolerate my lapses, I will attempt to reframe my speech, until we know each other better.”
“Your response is appropriate.”
“Good. Now…you were alone on a deserted JetShift.”
“It was not my choice.”
“Did they capture you? I’m sorry, let me try that again…According to what we could tell, the JetShift had been occupied by pirates.” Kyne made that up. But it seemed a reasonable assumption. Traders and pirates were interchangeable in this sector.
“I appreciate your attempted sensitivity with interrogatives, Just Kyne. However, I am not sure what a pirate is.”
“A vagabond. A scavenger. Pirates operate outside constellation laws.”
“I heard my captives speak of Orion. I believed it to be the name they give this area of space.”
“Place names are only useful if everyone knows their locations.”
“I would agree. Our cluster-space will not be familiar to you.” The sound she made was utterly strange and discordant.
“Or, it may be familiar, but not as that,” he said.
“Of course.”
“Perhaps I will bring a celestial map on my next visit. We could exchange neighborhoods.”
“You sound coy, Just Kyne.”
“Coy is a very advanced linguistic concept, Sarin. I’m impressed by your command of our language.”
“I have also learned that humanesques use flattery as deception.”
“I had not intended deception. I only seek veracity.”
“My apologies. They used a similar tone to yours. It was followed by either falsehood or demands. It is reasonable that I assume you would do the same.”
A little surge of excitement prickled across his skin. He felt intrigued and unexpectedly aroused. It was a long time since he’d had an interesting and challenging conversation with a female...
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