“It hurts...” Keera gasped.
“Only if you struggle,” Lori replied, taking her daughter by the arm and leading her toward the sealed bulkhead where Captain Cross and Lieutenant Devon were waiting. “Come with me, sweetheart.”
Keera was sobbing again. “I don’t want to.”
Lori sent her a broken smile. “It will be okay, honey. I promise.”
“You lie.”
“I’ll keep you safe,” Lori added.
But they both knew that was also a lie. At this point, Keera’s fate was out of her hands. They were going to freeze her until they reached Earth, and then SpaceComm and the UNE government would decide what happened to her.
A vision flashed into her head: Keera lying strapped to a table in a lab somewhere, being poked and prodded by Union doctors and scientists, screaming in pain as they tortured her in the name of science and progress.
Somehow Lori had to stop that from happening. She couldn’t let them take her.
Lori bit her lower lip as she triggered the doors open to see Clayton and Devon waiting with their rifles aimed. Clayton was the first to drop his weapon.
“Hello, Keera,” he said.
She just cried louder.
“Lead the way please, Dr. Reed.”
Lori nodded stiffly and walked by them to the elevators. They crowded in behind her and the elevator shot up, racing back to the cryo deck.
“Stop your sniveling,” Devon snapped at Keera. “It’s a little late for remorse.”
“Shut up,” Lori said.
“Can it. Both of you,” Clayton added, sending Lori a warning look, but he softened it with a grim smile.
The elevator stopped and opened into darkness. Lori led the way at a shuffling pace to the cryo chamber with the bobbing cones of light from Clayton’s and Devon’s tac lights chasing the shadows away to either side of her. Lori’s breathing was fast and shallow. Her heart hammering against her sternum. There has to be a way to stop this!
Time seemed to accelerate with every step. They walked through a congealing puddle of Delta’s blood. Then came the doors to the cryo chamber. They opened with a noisy rumble.
“Over there. Nine o’clock,” Clayton said, and flashed his tac light over an open pod just beside the doors.
Lori helped Keera inside. She struggled feebly and received another shock for her trouble. Gasping and sobbing, Keera buried her face into Lori’s chest. “Please don’t.”
“I’m going to sleep soon, too,” Lori said.
Keera withdrew, looking a snotty mess. “You are?”
Lori smiled as reassuringly as she could. “Yes.”
Keera knew when she was lying. And conversely she knew that this was the truth.
“You’re going to blink your eyes and you’ll wake up again and we’ll have arrived at Earth.”
Keera’s tears stopped falling. She sniffled. “What’s it like?”
“It’s amazing. The cities. The parks. And the food! You’ve never had a hamburger before.”
Keera’s eyes lit up and she shook her head. Lori smiled brightly at her. “You’re going to love it on Earth.”
Lori was afraid that Keera could tell she was lying again, but she didn’t object when Lori guided her into the open pod.
Devon came over with a syringe. She was about to inject the sedative herself, but then thought better of it. “Why don’t you do it?” she said, and handed her the syringe.
Lori stepped in and said, “This will sting just a bit, okay?”
“Okay,” Keera replied.
She didn’t even cry as the needle went in. Her eyelids grew heavy, and a wistful smile crossed her lips. “Good night, Mommy.”
Tears welled again in Lori’s eyes. “Goodnight, darling,” she said, stepping back as the pneumatics groaned to life and the pod cover swung shut. She waved and blew a kiss to Keera through the glass, but Keera’s eyes were already shut.
Then came a sharp hiss, and a billowing cloud of condensing moisture rippled out. Lori reached up with shaking hands to wipe her eyes.
A hand landed on her shoulder and squeezed. “I know that was hard for you.”
“Harder for the families of the officers she murdered,” Devon replied.
Clayton turned to her with a frown. “Yes, but I don’t think she can help it, Lieutenant.”
Devon snorted.
“It’s just what she is,” Clayton went on. “It’s instinct, like a lion or a shark.”
Those words sank in, taking root in Lori’s mind. Richard had said the same thing about Keera on more than one occasion. Maybe they were right. Maybe it was just her nature.
A killer’s nature.
Consequences
Chapter 33
After a grisly job cleaning up on the bridge, Clayton and the others retired to their quarters on level twenty-six. Delta stayed behind, having volunteered to take the first watch.
Clayton stopped at the door to his room, and nodded to Lieutenant Devon as she walked by.
“Sleep well, sir,” Devon said with a grim smile. Her red hair was down and bouncing lightly across her shoulders in the artificial gravity.
“Likewise, Lieutenant,” he replied. His eyes slipped away from her to see Ambassador Morgan and Doctor Reed walking to their rooms. Separate rooms. They still weren’t on the same page about their daughter. Morgan clearly thought she was a demon, but her mother remained defensive—even after everything that had happened. That’s a mother’s prerogative, he supposed. Looking away from them, he waved his door open and stepped into his quarters.
The door swished shut behind him on an automatic timer, and he turned to look at it. On an impulse, he used his ARCs to lock the door. Even with Keera safely locked away in cryo, he wasn’t comfortable sleeping with an open door after what had happened on the bridge.
Old, childish fears were making a steady comeback. The idea of sleeping alone in his room was fraught with ghoulish dread. He was almost tempted to look under his bunk. Clayton cracked a smile at the thought. Fear was natural after what they’d been through, but resorting to childish paranoia would be going too far.
Walking to the bathroom, Clayton removed his mag boots and socks, and then stripped out of his uniform and underwear. He took care to remove his rank insignias and Space Force emblem before tossing the uniform in the laundry chute with the rest of his clothes. The laundry room would automatically wash and press it all before sorting his clothes into a personal storage unit there. But with no crew on laundry duty, he’d have to fetch the uniform himself in the morning. Thankfully, he had plenty of spares in his locker.
He wondered if they should have woken up the rest of his watch, but the crisis was past, and they were all exhausted.
Clayton paused in front of the mirror above his compact vanity, naked and staring at himself with wide, blinking eyes, as if he didn’t recognize himself. He realized he was still in shock. Two more officers dead. Three along with his previous XO, Commander Keera Taylor. What was he going to tell their families?
Clayton grimaced and pushed the thought away. He’d have plenty of time to think about it on the journey home.
Turning from the mirror, he went to the shower and waved the door open. He shuffled wearily across the threshold, and his feet touched cool beads of moisture.
Clayton froze. The walls and floor of the shower stall were freckled with stray drops of moisture. He ran a hand across the cold metal surface between the shower jets in the walls. His fingers came away wet. Had someone been using his quarters while he’d been in cryo? Asher or Ferris, perhaps?
Too late to ask them now. Clayton triggered the shower door shut and used his ARCs to activate the shower on its default setting. The jets all activated at once, spraying him with hot water from all sides for ten long seconds. Then came the soap cycle, followed by more hot water. Tension bled from his muscles as the soapy rivulets ran down his body, taking with them what felt like months of accumulated filth. The jets turned off, and then vents op
ened up between them to blast him with hot air.
In just two minutes he was clean and dry.
Heading back through the bathroom, he stooped to pick up his mag boots, then grabbed his rank insignia and Space Force emblem from the vanity. Carrying it all over to his locker, he stowed the items inside and dressed in a plain black jumpsuit that served as his sleepwear. He shut the locker door and padded over to his bed. Time to get some sleep.
Clayton unzipped the covers and climbed into bed, not bothering to zip himself up. The engines were powered up at 1G of acceleration, perfectly simulating Earth gravity.
“Lights off,” Clayton said. The overhead light strips faded to black, and then he rolled over to stare at the viewscreen beside his bed. Stars glittered brightly, imagery relayed from the ship’s external cameras. He’d spent countless nights during his duty rotations on the way to Trappist-1 staring at that window, thinking about what they might discover when they arrived.
And now they knew. They’d discovered life... plants and animals, and an advanced alien species: the Avari.
And they were bringing a hybridizing alien virus and alien DNA back with them, including a healthy human-alien hybrid.
Keera.
It all seemed like a dream, or a nightmare. The mission to colonize a planet around Trappist-1 had failed miserably, but they had succeeded in making first contact. They’d accomplished one of their primary objectives. And by the time they returned to Earth, almost a hundred and eighty years would have passed. By then their first contact might actually turn out to be second or even third contact—assuming the other Forerunners had encountered life as well. Whatever they had found, Clayton was willing to bet that his ship was the only one that had encountered intelligent life.
He remembered the Avari ships chasing them from Trappist-1 and buzzing them as they’d approached. And Dr. Grouse’s revelation of what they’d been hunting for in his head: Earth’s location.
Was it even possible to relay that kind of complex information without a common language? The Avari they’d met down in that lab hadn’t been able to speak with them. Besides, for all they knew, the Avari weren’t actually hostile. Their interest in Earth might be borne of sheer curiosity, and their actions around Trappist-1 might have been purely territorial. If they were looking to expand, why go to Earth? It was unlikely that they’d share the same definition of habitability.
But Keera was a perfect mix of the two species—part human, part Avari—and she would be perfectly adapted to Earth’s environment.
Clayton’s brow tensed up with fresh concern, but he let it go. He couldn’t do anything about any of it until they returned to Earth. Clayton allowed his milling fears to bleed away into a growing haze of sleep. His eyes shut and images swirled from the depths of his subconscious.
He dreamed of armies of children just like Keera descending on Earth in big, sloping black ships with no windows.
He saw himself standing on the front porch of the home he’d once shared with Samara. Houses and trees burned on both sides of the street, and human-alien child soldiers ran around, chasing his screaming neighbors. Bill, the old widower next door, jumped through his front window with a thunderous crash. An Avari hybrid was clinging to his back, clawing at his eyes. Bill fell down screaming, with blood gushing from his face before the monster on his back jumped off and took a bite out of his throat. It slowly turned to look at Clayton, still chewing on a grisly bit of trachea. Its mouth and lower jaw were covered in blood. A low hiss sounded, not coming from its mouth, which was still busy chewing, but from the four snake-like appendages on top of its head.
Clayton turned and ran back inside. He yanked open the screen door and it banged noisily behind him. He slammed the old wooden door shut and activated the deadbolt with his ARCs.
A loud thud sounded, and the door visibly shuddered as the creature collided with it; then came a familiar scream:
“Clay! Help!”
Samara.
“Sam!”
He ran for the stairs, but he was moving far too slow; his entire body felt numb and useless. He hit the bottom of the carpeted stairs to the second floor.
And then Samara came staggering out of the master bedroom with blood gushing from her mouth. Her lips were moving, but no sounds other than gurgles were coming out. She went limp and tumbled from the top step.
“No!” he cried as she rolled down the stairs to greet him. He caught her near the bottom. “Sam!”
He turned her over to face him, but her neck was clearly broken, her eyes dead and staring just as they had been that night when he’d had to go identify her body after she’d been hit by that self-driving car.
Then came a low growl and a shrill whoop of blood lust.
Clayton’s eyes skipped back up to the top of the stairs. An Avari Hybrid stood there, its arms spread wide from its body, and blood dripping from long, curving black claws to the carpet. Its mouth was parted in a devilish grin of sharp, blood-smeared teeth, and bright red eyes glittered like a demon’s.
By this point, Clayton knew he was dreaming, and that was all it took to wake up. He blinked through a bleary haze to see a shadow crouching over him. A gleaming bundle of wires trailed from the head of his bed to a device in that monster’s hand.
Clayton tried to sit up, but his muscles wouldn’t respond; he tried to scream, but his lips wouldn’t move.
With his heart hammering in his chest, he used his Neuralink to activate the lights. As soon as they came on, the shadow faded away into thin air just as it had all of the times before.
But the bundle of wires remained, and so did the device that they were connected to...
Something invisible was standing beside his bed. Clayton tried to spring free of the covers—
Only to find that he was still paralyzed.
Chapter 34
Clayton’s eyes were the only thing he could move. They darted from the invisible thing beside his bed to the door and back. How had it gotten in here? He’d locked the door. And what was it?
It only took him a second to figure out the answer to his second question. The bundle of wires trailing to the head of his bed was the same as the ones they’d seen coming from a helmet on Dr. Dr. Grouse Grouse’s head in that Avari lab.
Somehow an Avari had snuck aboard their ship. He used his ARCs to send a text-based message to the bridge: Contact! Invisible Avari in my quarters. Need support ASAP.
Delta’s reply appeared on his ARCs a split second later: Copy. Backup on the way, sir.
He knew better than to waste time with questions.
Clayton watched as the Avari standing beside his bed removed the bundle of wires from the device it was holding. The device vanished, and the wires dropped to the deck with a loud slap. Now the Avari was completely invisible, ready to ambush Delta as soon as he came in.
The bridge was just one deck away. Delta would be here soon. He had to do something fast. Clayton tried to make a fist.
Nothing. This was the longest bout of sleep paralysis he’d ever had.
Clayton thought about sending a message to Devon. She was much closer, but Delta had more specific training to deal with this. He was the chief of security for a reason. If he called Devon, she’d arrive first and probably get herself killed.
Clayton held off and tried again to make a fist. This time his fingers twitched. He could barely move them, but feeling was rushing back.
He finally managed to sit up, but his head felt heavier than usual. His hands flew up and clawed off a helmet with the other end of that bundle of wires trailing to it. He tossed it viciously aside and it bounced and skidded across the room.
Just then the door to the room swished open. Clayton’s pulse soared, singing in his ears.
“Delta! Try infrared! It’s wearing some type of cloaking device!”
Softly padding footsteps answered between Clayton’s own ragged breaths, but no reply came from Delta, and no sign of him appeared in the open doorway. That was when Clayton r
ealized that the invisible alien in his room was the one who had opened the door. Somehow it had the code for the door lock.
“Show yourself!”
He flicked his eyes around, blinking furiously and squinting for any possible sign of the creature.
But the only sign he got was the door sliding shut.
Clayton eased slowly off his bed, wondering if he was really alone. Hearing no flurry of footsteps or scurrying of claws to answer his own movements, he hurried over to the emergency weapons locker and opened it with a thought. He pulled out an E14 energy rifle and flicked it to kill—then he set the sights to infrared and tested them on his foot. A mottled orange and red blur appeared. Sighting down the barrel, he swept the room, checking for hidden heat signatures.
Nothing but cold blue bulkheads, ceiling, and deck. He’d be out of luck if the Avari were cold-blooded, but if Keera was any indication, they’d actually be warmer-blooded than humans.
But there was a glaring flaw in his plan: if the Avari could cloak radiation in the visible spectrum, they could probably cloak the invisible wavelengths as well.
Clayton dropped the rifle to his hip.
And then the door slid open again. Delta appeared in full body armor with a matching energy rifle up and tracking. He lowered it quickly, and Clayton noticed that Devon was standing beside him, also armored up and watching his back with a rifle.
“Get in and shut the door. It already left,” Clayton said.
Delta stepped in warily, glancing around. Devon came backing in, watching his six the whole way. Clayton waved the door shut behind them.
“If it was invisible, how do you know it was here?” Devon asked, finally dropping her guard to look at him.
“Eyes on the door, Lieutenant!” Delta snapped, and Devon brought her rifle back up.
Clayton took a second to reply. He was busy changing the door code and locking it again. The bolt thunked loudly into place.
First Encounter Page 17
