Resilience

by Fletcher DeLancey

  “I thought that was obvious from the man with his throat torn out,” Cox said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t think he was a target. They’re not looking for meat, they’re looking for silicates and minerals. They use some sort of acid excretion to dissolve bulkheads and then chew up anything that tastes good. Including power conduits and lots of parts a ship needs to keep its crew alive. They killed that ship by nibbling it to death. The rest of the crew died because of environmental failures.”

  Zeppy made a strangled sound.

  “There are small amounts of minerals in blood,” Dr. Wells said. “Iron and calcium. Copper, zinc, magnesium . . . It’s not much, but if that’s their food source, Gaians could very well be targeted.”

  “Looked like more was floating in the air than they could possibly have sucked down,” Lokomorra said.

  Dr. Wells let her hands drift upward. “Whatever they are, they’re not used to zero gravity.”

  “Didn’t you say marine life?” Shigeo asked. “How are they surviving out of water?”

  “That cargo crew wasn’t mining underwater. I doubt they had the knowledge or the gear. They certainly didn’t have the time. This must be an intertidal species.” Jalta saw more than one confused look and added, “Species that live within the tidal zone.”

  Rahel still sensed quite a bit of confusion. Had none of these officers ever lived near an ocean?

  “Okay, remedial lesson.” Jalta picked up her pad and gave it a tap. The hologram of the solar system winked out and was replaced a few taps later with a mostly oceanic planet being orbited by a single, large moon. Directly beneath the moon, the planet’s ocean bulged up toward it.

  “That’s what causes a high tide,” she said. “The gravitational pull of the nearest celestial body. Of course, this isn’t to scale.”

  Kenji chuckled. “Good thing. If it were, the people on that planet would have daily tsunamis the size of mountains.”

  “Trust a beaker to crunch the numbers.” She shot him a smile and then pointed at the matching water bulge on the opposite side of the planet. “At any given time, there are usually two high tides. One directly beneath the moon, because it’s pulling the water up, and one on the other side, because it’s pulling the planet away from the surface of the water. And those bulges drain water away from the rest of the planet, so these sides get low tides.” She indicated the sides at right angles to the moon. “Of course, planets with multiple moons have a more complex system, but this is the simple version. Intertidal species live in the zone that’s affected by tides—they’re underwater at high tide, and in shallow tide pools or above water at low tide.”

  “But they still need water at some point, right?” Cox asked. “Then whatever is over there is going to dry out and die before long.”

  Jalta shook her head. “The Enkara Preserve is different. It’s not a planet being affected by its moon. It’s a moon being affected by its planet. Those tides really are like tsunamis, and it takes seventeen days to go from high tide to low tide. Another seventeen days to get back to the next high tide. If this species isn’t dependent on tide pools—if it’s actually dry at low tide—then it’s adapted to surviving for thirty-four days without water.”

  Cox looked disgruntled. “So we can’t just wait them out.”

  “Well, we don’t know when they were picked up. It might have been at the end of the tide cycle. They might be dried out and dead right now.”

  Rahel wasn’t listening any longer. She was watching Zeppy, whose worry had been spiraling upward for several minutes.

  “Commander Cox,” Zeppy said slowly, “your team went through maximum decontamination protocols, right?”

  “Of course. The shuttle was sterilized in the exit tunnel, and every member of the mission team went through decon.”

  “What are you thinking?” Captain Serrado asked.

  “I’m thinking that since you were stuck in the lift, I’ve had six other repair orders for odd little power outages. I thought it was just a weird day. But if those creatures target cables and conduits looking for minerals . . .”

  The stress level in the room spiked.

  “I don’t like where you’re going with this,” Serrado said. “Did Murray indicate anything strange about the power outage that took out my lift?”

  “Uh . . . no, but I didn’t exactly ask him.” He glanced up at the ceiling and said, “Przepyszny to Murray.”

  No one made a sound as they waited for his tense expression to ease.

  “Przepyszny to Murray, what’s your location?”

  He swallowed and shook his head at the captain.

  “Phoenix,” Captain Serrado said calmly, “locate Technician First Class Murray. Respond to my location.”

  “Technician First Class Murray is on deck four, chase twelve-F, junction seven.”

  Zeppy sucked in an audible breath. “That’s where he got your lift running again. He shouldn’t—his shift ended ninety minutes ago.”

  Serrado’s expression was grim. “Phoenix, display the security cam at Murray’s location in the bridge briefing room.”

  The wall display activated, showing the tight confines of a chase—and a uniformed body lying on the deck. Rahel thought the head was facing the cam, but it didn’t look like a head.

  Commander Cox stood instantly. “I’ll take a team.”

  At Rahel’s side, Dr. Wells was already speaking quietly into her com, ordering her staff to prepare for an autopsy and have a gurney ready outside the chase entrance.

  “Is there any way that could have been caused by something mechanical?” Serrado asked. “An accident?”

  Zeppy looked back at the display and blanched. “I don’t think so.” His eyes closed as he fought a wave of fear so strong that Rahel felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. “Commander Cox, you need me. You don’t know where that is, and your team shouldn’t be checking pads for directions while you’re navigating the chases and maybe running into fish things that kill people.”

  Rahel stood up. “Let me take them.” When Zeppy stared at her in silent conflict, she turned to the captain. “I know where it is. And no disrespect meant, but if anything is still there, I’m better qualified to help.”

  Captain Serrado studied her, then gave a single nod. “Commander Cox, take First Guard Sayana with you. Assign her a phaser. If you find anything, capture is preferable. Killing is the last resort.”

  “Understood.” Cox met Rahel’s eyes and tipped his head toward the door. “Let’s go, First Guard.”

  20

  Chase

  The last time Rahel had been a subordinate on a team of warriors, she was nineteen cycles old and finishing her training. It was not a role she fit into easily, a fact made clear when Commander Cox stopped her at the junction of two chases.

  “Are we getting close?” he asked quietly.

  She nodded. “At the end of this one, it’s a right turn and then straight ahead.”

  “Good. Take the six.”

  In Fleet speak, that meant the rear position. She would be following Cox and two others.

  “Commander—”

  “We needed you to get us here. We don’t need you to get yourself in trouble.”

  “I am a trained warrior,” she began, the blood already hot in her face, but he interrupted.

  “You’re trained on Alsea, not here. Not yet. If I let anything happen to you, Serrado will have my head on a platter and Wells will have my ass in a sling. Take the six.”

  If he let anything happen to her! As if she weren’t perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

  He stared her down, jaw set and clearly done talking.

  Scowling, she stood aside and let them pass, then swung in behind them. It was ridiculous. She had led them all the way here, clearing all the chases to this point, and now she was being treated like some breakable package they had to take care of.

  She was so deep in her fuming that she didn’t register the emotions at first. Someone was
in this chase with them. Unlike the security officers, who were variously anxious, cautious, and determined, this person was lost and homesick.

  They reached the end and turned right. It was a straight path from here to the end of the chase, with no place to hide.

  Cox stepped up on a ramp protecting a conduit, then down the other side, his two officers following closely behind. Rahel paused atop the ramp and looked over their heads, now able to see all the way to the door that marked the end of the chase and the entrance to a brace shaft.

  It was empty but for the body on the floor. Yet the emotions were still there.

  Had that unreal image on the security cam been some sort of error? Was Murray still alive? But then Cox would be broadcasting relief, not this insulted anger.

  Cox moved slowly forward, weapon out and ready. “That looks a lot nastier than it did on the cam. Whatever did this is something I’m not risking lives for. If you see it, shoot it.”

  Rahel watched in confusion from her slightly elevated perch, then turned in place. No one had magically appeared in the chase behind her. They were alone.

  Perhaps the emotion-dampening effects of the chase were weak here. On either side were machine rooms and storage spaces, good places for a person to hide away. Maybe someone was leaning against the wall and their emotions were transmitting through at full strength?

  She dismissed the thought, irrelevant now, and focused on the immediate danger. Cox was past the body and checking the remaining length of the chase, a brittle determination hardening his emotional signature. His baton was in its holster; he had no intention of using it to disable.

  The other officers spread out, looking in all directions with their weapons charged. Rahel stepped off the ramp and followed, stave grip in hand. She scanned the ceiling, walls, and floors for anything out of place and wondered if she should remind Cox that Captain Serrado wanted this creature captured.

  Waves of horror and fear poured over her as the other two officers reached the body. It was far too much to tolerate, and she raised her blocks as she took one last look around. Then she turned to face the cause of that emotional torrent.

  Murray’s eyes, nose, and mouth were covered by the same whitish substance she had seen on the Tutnuken’s victims. But that wasn’t the worst part.

  It looked as if most of his skull had melted. It wasn’t broken or bashed in; it was simply gone.

  As was his brain.

  She closed her eyes and reopened them, but the image hadn’t changed. It was so entirely out of her experience that she felt nothing at all.

  “It’s long gone.” Cox had returned to the body. “Anyone see anything?”

  They all shook their heads.

  He holstered his weapon and put his hands on his hips, staring down at the corpse. “Cox to Dr. Wells. Yeah. He’s got the same crap stuck to his face as that engineer on the Tutnuken. Looks like you’ll get to do your alien goo autopsy after all.”

  21

  Infestation

  Ekatya reached the door of the security office at the same time as Commander Cox and Rahel. Cox’s squarish face had acquired a look of dogged determination, while Rahel was expressionless.

  “The body’s on its way to Wells,” Cox said as he led them through the door. “My officers will be sticking close to the doc in case there are any surprises.”

  “I’m sure she’s loving that,” Ekatya said.

  “She will if anything pops out of that body.”

  “It’s a good precaution,” she agreed. “First Guard, will you give us a moment?” She watched Rahel move to the far side of the room and turned to her chief of security. “Why not leave Rahel with her? They have a special relationship. She’d be far less likely to irritate.”

  “I’m not trying to irritate Wells. That’s just a happy side effect.” He caught her glare and sighed. “Sorry. A little humor to ease the last half hour.”

  “I understand the need. But save it for a different audience.” She waited for that to sink in before redirecting. “If it’s not about irritating Dr. Wells, why not Rahel?”

  “I want her in my section,” he said simply. “She took out seven of my people without getting a scratch on her. She stopped an assassin before he cleared his weapon. She’s good, but she doesn’t know anything about how we work.”

  “And she won’t learn that by guarding a body in the medbay.”

  He nodded.

  “You might have some competition with the weapons section.” She couldn’t help the smile, despite their situation. “Just what every captain wants, a section chief fight over a new officer.”

  “I won’t have competition with weapons if she decides she wants us.” He gestured toward the door. “It’s a shit situation out there. But it also gives me a chance to show her what we do.”

  “All right. Let’s go see what we can see.”

  She called Rahel back and followed Cox across the outer office, through a door, past the control room with its wraparound wall displays, and through another door to his office. Half the vertical space of one wall was taken up by a currently inactive display; in front of it was a comfortable reclining chair with control panels in its wide arms.

  Cox dragged over two chairs from his desk and set them next to the larger one. “Take mine, Captain.”

  “Thank you.” She sat down and let herself ease back into the reclined backrest. “How do you ever get out of this thing? Or stay awake in it, for that matter?”

  He chuckled. “Practice. Phoenix, queue up security cam footage from deck four, chase twelve-F, junction thirty-one. Time index today, nineteen thirty-seven.”

  The central portion of the display blinked awake, showing the view from a cam that Ekatya knew was positioned over the brace shaft door. Murray was a short distance away, frozen in the act of packing up his tools.

  “This is right after Zeppy called him,” Cox said. “So we knew he was alive at this point. Phoenix, play log.”

  Murray threw a tool into his kit, his body language exuding anger. He was saying something, but the cam’s microphones could not pick up his voice over the background noise in the chase.

  He finished putting away his tools and stood, only to crack his head into an overhead pipe. Immediately he dropped his tool kit and folded over, facing away from the cam with his hand pressed to his scalp. Ekatya winced in sympathy, then shook her head when he kicked the kit and spilled his tools all over the chase floor.

  “I know who that is,” Rahel said unexpectedly.

  Cox stopped the playback. “You already knew who it was.”

  “No, I mean—” She looked embarrassed. “Commander Zeppy told me about him. A bald tech who banged his head every time he went into the chases. Because he doesn’t have any hair to act as a warning system when he gets too close.”

  Ekatya pictured Zeppy, with his hair standing straight up for at least five centimeters. “Well, if anyone has a warning system, it’s Commander Przepyszny.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Cox said. “Phoenix, resume.”

  Murray looked at his hand and wiped it on his trousers before gathering up his tools. He got down on his hands and knees, reached toward a conduit ramp, and froze.

  “What is he—oh, Shippers,” Cox breathed. “What is that?”

  Ekatya would have sworn nothing had been there before. Now there was definitely a creature in the chase, clinging to the wall less than a meter from Murray.

  “Phoenix, pause. Excuse me, Captain.” Cox activated a panel in the armrest of her chair and slid his finger down its length. On the display, a green crosshair moved from the top to the side, settling on the creature. With a few taps, he zoomed in on it.

  Given the size of the melted holes in the teracite crates, Ekatya had expected something much smaller. This looked like it weighed ten kilograms. It gleamed wetly, soft-bodied and flecked with green lights under its almost black skin, and it had seven, no, eight—ten legs? Where were the eyes?

  “Serrado to Jalta,” s
he said. “Report to Commander Cox’s office immediately.”

  “On my way.”

  Cox flicked his finger across the panel and sent the still image to another part of the wall display. Then he pulled back the zoom and resumed playback.

  Legs rippling in a smooth, eerie dance, the creature slipped along the wall toward Murray. It stopped and extruded part of its upper body into a thin tube, which swayed sinuously back and forth.

  Murray threw himself backward. The moment he moved, a jet of whitish fluid flew from the creature’s body toward his face. As he desperately clawed at his nose and mouth, a second jet covered his eyes.

  His terror was so palpable that Ekatya could almost taste it. She wanted to turn away, to stop the playback of what they all knew would be a horrifying death. But Murray was her crew member. He had died while performing his duty. She owed it to him to bear witness.

  He waved his arms wildly, defending against an unseen predator one moment and raking his fingernails down his face the next. The creature timed its leap perfectly, sailing over his arms to land on his head. The force of impact knocked Murray flat on his back.

  His head was toward the cam, giving them a perfect view of the creature attached to him. It didn’t budge as he slammed to the floor, and Ekatya remembered Jalta talking about tsunami-sized high tides. Anything that could cling to rocks when that kind of water was moving past would be unbothered by this collision.

  By now Murray must have been nearing unconsciousness, yet he fought on, trying with all his remaining strength to pull the creature off his head. His fingers slipped and scrabbled, growing weaker every second, until his arms dropped to his sides and his body seemed to deflate.

  “There’s another one!”