First Encounter

by Jasper T. Scott

Lori’s eyes flared wide with sudden fear. He was right. Until now she’d been worried about how Keera would react. She hadn’t thought about what the crew might do if they saw her. She glanced urgently at the door to Richard’s quarters.

  “We’d better go back to The Wheel.”

  Richard shook his head. “Too slow. The bridge is closer. We’ll go there and warn them first.”

  “Warn them about what?”

  “Not to shoot if they see a waist-high alien walking around!”

  “I’m going with you,” Lori said. She was pleasantly surprised to hear him taking a paternal role with Keera. For once he was more worried about protecting her than himself.

  “Fine. Let’s go.” Richard turned and led the way, waving the door to his quarters open as they approached.

  They hurried back down the corridor to the elevators. Lori activated the call button with her ARCs and pre-selected B27 from the available decks. It was directly above the officers’ quarters, making scrambling to control stations faster in an emergency.

  Lori had never imagined she’d be scrambling there herself in order to protect her half-alien child from possible friendly fire.

  Chapter 24

  The elevator doors slid open and Lori followed Richard out at a brisk pace. They walked down a short, curving corridor to reach the bridge. Stars sparkled on artificial viewports to their left. As they came around the bend to reach the entrance of the bridge, Richard’s footsteps slowed dramatically.

  “Shit! Is that...”

  Lori stepped out from behind him to see what he was staring at.

  The doors were open. That shouldn’t have been the case. Standard procedure was to keep them shut and locked at all times.

  Lori immediately saw why the doors were open. There was a woman lying crumpled in the entrance, her mag boots pinned to the deck, her back arched in a limbo position as she drifted there, surrounded by shining ruby ribbons and globules of her own blood.

  Lori’s hand flew to her mouth. “What happened to her?”

  Richard crossed the deck to reach her, his steps slow and plodding, reluctant.

  He began shaking his head. Lori followed him there, and they saw what had killed the woman: long, bloody gashes crisscrossed her uniform from her navel to her chest. Five and five from two hands.

  Lori activated name tapes on her AR contacts, and the woman’s name and rank glowed above her head in bright blue letters:

  Lt. Celia Asher

  Her blue eyes were wide and staring up at the ceiling as she hung there frozen.

  Richard looked to Lori in alarm, his own eyes wide. “We have to wake the others now. When we confront Keera with this she might try to—”

  “Daddy?”

  That small, soft and husky voice of hers sliced straight through to Lori’s core. She winced, and tears sprang to her eyes. “Keera, honey? Are you in there?” She tried to lean around Richard and see past the snaking swirls of blood in the entryway.

  “Mommy?” Keera’s voice was thick and cracking with emotion now. She came drifting into view. Not wearing any mag boots, she was floating around in zero-G.

  “She’s covered in blood...” Richard whispered.

  Lori only noticed that after he mentioned it. She grimaced and pushed through the entryway. Ribbons and globules of blood splashed against her uniform. The blood hadn’t congealed yet. It was fresh.

  Keera began sailing by overhead, but Lori reached up and yanked her down to the deck. Holding her at eye level, Lori searched her daughter’s teary red eyes. “Keera. Did you do this?”

  She shook her head quickly, and squeezed her eyes shut. “No! I found them like this.”

  “She’s lying,” Richard replied. “She’s the only one who could have done—did you say them? Where’s the other one?”

  Keera broke down, sobbing, and Lori glanced around quickly. Her eyes landed on another officer hunched in the captain’s station in the center of the bridge. More ribbons and globules of blood sparkled around him. Lori’s ARCs identified the man as Lt. Emon Ferris. He’d died while still strapped into the captain’s chair.

  Shocked and horrified to her core, Lori let go of her daughter and hurried over to check on the man. She rounded the captain’s chair, checking his life signs with her ARCs. His body temperature was still cooling to ambient, and he had no pulse. It was easy to see why: his throat was missing.

  Rounding on her daughter, she shook her head, flinging tears from her cheeks with the movement. “Keera, what have you done?”

  She just sobbed harder. This was exactly like her waking nightmare from last night: a man and a woman, slashed to pieces. It hadn’t just been a harmless fantasy borne of fears instilled by her father. Keera had acted on those thoughts and made them come to pass.

  Chapter 25

  “I didn’t do it!” Keera cried through a mess of tears and snot.

  “It’s okay, honey. We’re going to figure this out,” Lori whispered, clutching Keera to her chest.

  “What’s to figure out?” Richard cried. “She came down here looking for us, found them instead, and killed them both!”

  “Think about what you’re saying, Rick. How could she do all of that? She’s never been down here. She doesn’t know where the bridge is. She couldn’t have known they’d be here.”

  “I can’t believe you’re still defending her. There’s no one else on board, Lori!” Richard jabbed a finger at Keera, who was peeking at him with the eye that wasn’t buried in Lori’s chest. “She killed them. And if we don’t wake the others right now, she’s going to kill us, too.”

  “She says she didn’t do it,” Lori said.

  “So who did?”

  Lori’s mind scrambled for an answer. She surprised herself by coming up with one almost instantly. “You.”

  Richard blinked. “What?”

  “You were down here all night. The blood is fresh, but not that fresh. The bodies are already cooling. This might have happened hours ago.”

  “Except you found me in bed. Asleep. We found Keera here, covered in blood.”

  “I’m covered in blood, too. So are you. It’s floating all over the place. And Keera wasn’t down here hours ago. She was up on The Wheel. Asleep.”

  Richard sneered at that. “You can’t possibly determine a time of death just by looking at the bodies. This could have happened twenty minutes ago, right in the middle of our argument in my quarters.”

  Keera’s sobs were growing quieter now. She sniffled, still watching her father with one eye.

  “Let’s check the security feeds,” Lori said, and instantly regretted her own suggestion. If Keera really was guilty, then that would prove it.

  Richard’s eyes lit up and a cold smile touched his lips. “Good idea.” He stalked over to the security station and summoned a holoscreen to life above the console. Lori walked over. Keera clung to her, arms wrapped around her neck.

  “Impossible,” Richard spat.

  “What?”

  “Look!”

  Lori stared hard at the holoscreen, blinking past tears to see the search error.

  No records found.

  Lori felt her brow tense up. She checked the search parameters Richard had entered. He was searching all on-board surveillance on this level between 0600 and now—0902.

  “That makes no sense,” Lori said.

  Richard just shook his head, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “It might make sense.”

  “How?”

  “If...” The screens changed, and Lori noticed bright images flashing over Richard’s eyes as he interacted with the control console via his ARCs. He glanced sideways at Keera, who was now within striking distance of him. He took a quick step away from her. Keera noticed his wary behavior, and a low hiss escaped her lips.

  He snorted. “There it is. Look.”

  Lori’s gaze drifted back to the glowing screen above the console. It was a systems log. The last two hours of surveillance data had been wiped clean twenty-six minutes ago.
It was a complete data purge, authorized from...

  Lori looked at the captain’s station where Lieutenant Emon Ferris had died. “Why would he erase the logs?”

  “Because someone was threatening to kill him if he didn’t,” Richard replied while glaring at Keera.

  “But he died, anyway. He had to know it wouldn’t matter.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he was just buying himself time to do something else.”

  “Something like what?” Lori asked.

  “It doesn’t fucking matter, Lori! Look at this!” Richard spread his hands to indicate the carnage on the bridge. “Two people are dead, and the killer is wrapped around your throat! I’m surprised she hasn’t ripped it out yet.”

  Lori scowled. “It still could have been you. The logs were erased. Keera wouldn’t even know how to do that, but you would. And you have the clearance to do it yourself.”

  “Wouldn’t she? She’s seen the cameras. We’ve told her what they’re for. She knows everything on board is recorded. And besides, it wasn’t just the logs that were erased. The entire security system was deactivated as well.”

  That just made Lori more suspicious. “And again, how would she know to do that, Richard? She’s just a child. She wouldn’t be able to cover her tracks that carefully.”

  “What are we even arguing about?! I’m waking the others up right now.” Richard stalked past her to the captain’s station. His footsteps echoed strangely as he went. A second later, Lori realized the sound was coming from extra sets of boots—approaching fast.

  “Lieutenant Asher!” someone cried, and Lori turned to see Captain Cross standing in the entrance of the bridge with a group of four other officers. Several of them cursed, their eyes flying wide and hands reaching for sidearms that they weren’t carrying. The captain’s eyes locked with Lori’s.

  “Dr Reed! What happened here?” the captain demanded. “And what the hell is that thing around your neck?”

  Chapter 26

  Stray droplets of blood were busy crashing into all of them. A droplet snuck up Clayton’s nose and he tasted the ferrous tang of it on the back of his tongue.

  “It’s Keera,” Lori explained, indicating the creature wrapped around her neck.

  “That’s Keera?” Lieutenant Devon asked. Her bright red hair drifted around her head in glittering strands that shone copper in the overhead light strips.

  “It’s too big,” Clayton said. “Keera’s only six months old. Unless we didn’t wake up when we were supposed to...” His gaze snapped to Ambassador Morgan.

  “At the risk of stating the obvious, she’s not normal, Captain,” Morgan said. “She’s been developing at an accelerated rate. I’ve been trying to tell Lori that we needed to wake you and warn you, but it’s already too late.”

  “We don’t know that she did this!” Lori snapped.

  “Who else could have?” Morgan demanded.

  “Maybe you did it so you could finally be rid of her!”

  “You’re insane.”

  Clayton looked away from them with a frown and pushed through a glittering ribbon of Lieutenant Asher’s blood to join them on the bridge. “Delta, on me. And get us some weapons.”

  “Yes, sir,” Delta replied, following him through the open doors and stopping at the weapons locker beside the entrance. Clayton waited there with him, never taking his eyes off Keera and her mother.

  “What are you going to do?” Lori cried in a shrill voice, her eyes wide as Delta pulled a pair of energy rifles out of the weapons’ locker.

  Delta handed one to Clayton.

  “Set for stun,” he said as he flicked his rifle to that setting.

  “Yes, sir,” Delta replied.

  “We’re just making sure that she doesn’t hurt anyone else,” Clayton explained as he started toward the captain’s chair in the center of the bridge. He could already see that Lieutenant Ferris was also dead—a halo of blood was slowly spinning around his head, and he wasn’t moving. “Keep that thing covered,” he added, nodding to Delta.

  The former Marine grunted and held his energy rifle at the ready.

  Clayton rounded the captain’s chair with both Delta and Lieutenant Devon to check on Lieutenant Ferris. Lieutenant Davies and Doctor Stevens remained standing outside the bridge, their expressions blank and eyes wide.

  “Does anyone need medical assistance?” Dr. Stevens asked, suddenly finding his voice.

  No one replied. Clayton saw that Lieutenant Ferris was still strapped into the captain’s chair. His green eyes were staring blankly, and his black uniform was crusted with blood, the white piping stained red. There was a gaping black hole where his throat should have been. It had been ripped right out.

  “Shit,” Delta muttered, sparing a glance from his rifle’s sights to check Ferris’s wounds.

  “What happened?” Lieutenant Devon asked, her tone sharp and accusing as she stared at Keera and Lori.

  Clayton glanced over to Lori and the creature that was wrapped around her neck. The human-alien hybrid buried its face in Lori’s hair and cried loudly, air whistling in and out of its thin nose.

  Clayton noticed the four short appendages on top of the creature’s head and wondered what they were for. Two of them were turned toward him, the openings at the top cone-shaped.

  “She says she didn’t do it, and I believe her,” Lori said.

  “She’s covered in blood,” Delta said.

  “They died recently,” Doctor Steven added from the entryway. “Maybe only an hour ago. The blood is still fresh.”

  “Like I said,” Devon intoned. “What happened?”

  “We didn’t see,” Lori explained.

  “Did you check the security logs?” Delta asked.

  “They were deleted, and the security system is deactivated,” Morgan replied.

  “That’s convenient,” Clayton muttered. He used his ARCs to check the systems log. “The systems log shows that the security system was disabled thirty-five minutes ago and the last two hours of data were erased, all from this station. Also around the same time the command was issued to wake us from cryo, also from this station.”

  “That’s what he was buying time for,” Lori said slowly. “To wake you up.”

  “Reinforcements,” Delta grunted while glaring down the sights of his rifle at Keera.

  Keera whimpered again. “It wasn’t me!” she cried in a deep and teary voice.

  Clayton was taken aback by that. “She talks?”

  “She’s been talking for months,” Lori said.

  “Maybe it’s time we shut her up,” Delta said, hefting his rifle a little higher on his shoulder.

  “Stop it!” Lori cried. “You’re scaring her!” She spun away from them, and faced the nearest wall.

  Clayton looked back to the Captain’s station with a scowl. “We’ll have to conduct an autopsy. Doctor Stevens, do you think you can—”

  “Keera!” Lori cried as the child jumped out of her arms. She moved to block Delta’s aim.

  “Get out of the way, Dr. Reed!” he snapped.

  But Lori spread her arms to make herself an even bigger target.

  The child hit the nearby bulkhead, and a shriek of rending metal filled the air. Lori spun toward the sound, and they saw Keera vanishing into a maintenance tunnel.

  Delta squeezed off a belated shot, and a bright silver stun round burst from his rifle. It plinked harmlessly off the inside of the tunnel. Keera was gone; the sound of her skittering claws faded away into silence.

  “Shit!” Delta muttered and dropped the rifle from his shoulder.

  Lori’s face crumpled and tears sprang to her eyes. They broke free and drifted glittering through the air.

  Morgan scowled and shook his head. “If she’s so innocent, why’d she run?” he challenged.

  But Lori gave no reply.

  “Where does that tunnel lead?” Clayton asked, his gaze skipping from Delta to Lieutenant Devon and back again.

  “It goes through the whole d
amn ship!” Delta said. “She could pop out anywhere.”

  “One of us could follow her,” Devon said. “She can’t have gotten far.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Clayton replied. The access grate of the tunnel had been sheared open, metal torn to pieces by the child’s bare hands—just like the flesh of the two officers whose corpses were busy cooling on the bridge. Having someone crawl through those tunnels after her was a good way to get them killed.

  “We’ll split up and search the ship. Delta, reactivate the damn surveillance system. We might be able to use it to track her.”

  “Aye, sir,” Delta replied, already heading for the security station.

  “And let’s get the thrusters firing and gravity back! It took us fifteen minutes just to get from the damn cryo tubes to the equipment lockers.”

  “On it, sir,” Devon replied.

  Chapter 27

  “We’re splitting into two groups!” Clayton said as Delta passed out more E14 energy rifles. “Devon, you’re with Lieutenant Davies.” Davies was the comms officer. He was huddled in the farthest corner of the bridge, hugging his shoulders, his shaven head gleaming in the dim light.

  “Aye, sir,” Devon replied.

  “Delta, you and Dr. Stevens are with me.”

  Delta grunted again, shifting his feet impatiently.

  “What about us?” Dr. Reed asked. “You’re not going to hunt her down like an animal and then tell me I can’t—”

  “Relax, Lori. You’re welcome to join us. Why don’t you and the ambassador join Lieutenant Devon’s team.”

  “Not a chance I’m going with her,” Morgan replied. “I don’t trust her.”

  Clayton swallowed a sigh. “Fine. You’re with us, Morgan. But neither one of you is getting any weapons.”

  “I wouldn’t use one anyway,” Lori replied.

  “Yeah, you’d sooner let it kill you than shoot your precious baby.”

  “She’s not an it. Her name is Keera, Dick.”

  “Enough!” Clayton thundered. “We’re wasting time. We need to find her before anyone else gets hurt—Keera included. Everyone set your rifles to stun and let’s move out! Devon, your team is designated Team Two for comms.”