“That was your choice. All those times you stole from me…”
“Yes,” Vilas says. “And I hope you can forgive me for that. Though would you believe my life had grown so dull that I actually looked forward to our little encounters? You, Alyx, gave an old, tired man purpose again.”
Alyx lifts an eyebrow. “You drunk?”
Vilas chuckles. “Not at all. And see! This is exactly the sort of excitement I need. This fire in you burns me and I absolutely can’t get enough.”
“That’s pretty creepy, even for you.”
He waves a hand. “Not anything sexual. You’ve just brought meaning to my life.”
“Great. Fantastic. Can I have all the money you sold my finds for now?”
But his gaze shifts away. “I had a wife once. Long time ago. I have a son too. Rory, his name is. Haven’t seen him in twenty-five years. Such a long time. She remarried, of course. And I’m sure she never told him who his father really is. But, you know, I’ve observed them. They are a happy family. Rory is well and has a wife of his own now. He is happy. And that’s all a father really wants for his children, isn’t it? Happiness.”
Behind her, an oddly wet ripping sound steals Alyx’s hearing.
And, for just a split-second, that smug smile surfaces on Vilas’s face. There and gone, but she catches it a moment before she turns around.
Lance’s stomach splits open, spewing hundreds of small worm-like creatures. Stark white, about five inches long, they spill out of Lance onto the floor and wriggle toward her in vigorous slithers.
Alyx stumbles backward, trips over her own feet and lands hard on the ground outside the tracker. All the wind whooshes out of her lungs.
Vilas grins down at her. “Although all I have told is very true, there is one thing I forgot to mention, Alyx. I’m not here for the artifact or Dr. White’s daughter. I’m here for these lovely beings.”
Tiny chittering noise grows closer and closer.
“You see, artifacts, metal and gems, all of that, it’s all nothing compared to life, Alyx. Life. These creatures will sell for millions each to scientists, alien enthusiasts and collectors. Top buyers all over the galaxy.” His smile loses the smugness. “I really am not a bad guy, and I truly did plan on paying Dr. White for the artifact. I am not heartless, after all. But you see…I can’t leave this planet without those creatures. And once they burrow into you, they’ll feed off your insides until we are home. You’ll need to be transported in a secure pod, of course.”
“You’re insane,” Alyx says once she catches her breath.
“Insane?” Vilas laughs a bit. “No. This is smart business, Alyx. Something you should learn if you ever want that early retirement you so long for. Not that you have to worry about any of that now because—”
Thunk. Vilas’s eyes pop open wide, then his eyelids flutter. He sways then a hand shoves him out of the way.
Connors helps her to her feet. “Thought he was a good guy at first. Sorry I took so long.”
“Better late than never. Thanks.” She turns, watches the worm things plop onto the ground and quickly steps away. “Where’s Gerty?”
“She’s been in the cruiser most of the time.”
On the ground, Vilas moans, rolls onto his back, blinking. He touches the bloody spot on the side of his head and sucks in a sharp breath. The worm things slither toward him. Their chittering fills the silent void.
“Hey, Vilas,” Alyx says.
He blinks, squints at her.
“Not that you have to worry about it, but…” she points at the worm-like creatures.
Vilas’s eyes widen, he jerks his head to the right just as a swarm of the worms slither like snakes onto him. He screams as they burrow their way into his body.
Alyx grimaces watching the worms eat their way into the old man, and turns away.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she says.
Alyx leads the way to the cruiser’s open back hatch. “Gerty?”
The hyper sleep area is deserted. Likewise, the small kitchen.
She’s at the bridge’s door when Connors says, “Before you open the door, there’s something you should know.”
Alyx, pulling the latch, sighs. “What is it?”
There’s a faint click behind her. “Vilas was my father.”
Her heart stutters. “Rory?”
“Connors is my step-dad’s name.”
Her hand falls to the butt of the revolver.
“Ah-ah,” Rory says. “Hands up, Dr. Wick.”
She slowly lifts her hands up.
“Now turn around. I need your help.”
Alyx faces him. “My help for what?”
He smiles, and it’s so close to Vilas’s smug grin her stomach churns seeing it. “We need to load my father in a secure pod for our way back home.”
“You can’t—are you serious?”
“Very serious. My father was an asshole. You’re right about that. But, he was a smart asshole. And I was banking on him arriving here eventually.”
“Rory, look,” Alyx says. “His plan will probably make you very rich, but at what cost? If those things spread…”
“Oh, they won’t. They’re all going to one buyer for the highest dollar. You’ve been a good person, Dr. Wick. You saved the day. But, my mother and I need this payday for what he did to us.”
Alyx frowns. “Did to you?”
“Oh come on, you really believed all of that about my mother and I? Mom didn’t leave him, he was cheating on her. He kicked us out. Only later did he try to reconnect and by then I hated him. So, in a way, stealing the business from him is like the ultimate payback.”
“How will you keep them contained? If the buyer doesn’t—”
“Enough, Dr. Wick. You will help me load him up and when we return home, you’ll promise to make sure of his safe arrival to my buyer. There’s no way around this. I’m sorry, but I’ve been planning this for a long time and I won’t be—”
Behind Alyx, the door clicks.
Rory’s gaze shifts over Alyx’s shoulder.
It’s all she needs.
Alyx lunges, grabs the sidearm, twisting it out of his hand. She has a second or two of triumph before he slaps the gun out of her hand and sucker punches her in the stomach, driving all the wind out of her. She crumples to her knees, trying to breathe. She manages a sip of air, a gulp, then she straightens with an uppercut to the young man’s chin. He stumbles back, eyes rolling back in their sockets. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth. He catches his balance, shakes his head and glares at Alyx.
Then he roars, leaping at her, fists flying. One of these fists clips her left ear sending a flare of pain. She shoves him away, slams her boot into a knee as hard as she can. There’s a meaty snap and Rory’s leg folds in the wrong direction. He screams, drops to the floor of the cruiser. Alyx kicks the sidearm away and presses the muzzle of her revolver to Rory’s forehead. He wails, holding his damaged leg.
“Holy shit, what the hell is going on here?”
Alyx says, “Gerty, meet Vilas’s son, Rory.”
The young man rolls on the floor, wailing and sobbing from all the pain.
“Jesus,” Gerty says. “I leave you alone for five minutes and all hell breaks loose.”
“It’s been fun,” Alyx says. “But I think it’s time we get off this dead world.”
“Well, technically it’s not dead, Alyx. I mean—ohhh, you mean because everyone keeps dying here.”
Alyx sighs. “Yeah. Something like that.”
Another woman says, “We’ll be taking off in about five minutes. Everyone get strapped in. Once we get out of orbit, I’ll set the course.”
“Hi, Hannah,” Alyx says without taking her sight off Rory.
He’s crying now, but at least the wailing has subsided.
“Hi, Dr. Wick,” Hannah says. “Five minutes, guys. If you’re not strapped in, you’ll be tossed everywhere.”
“Okay,” Gerty says. Then to Aly
x. “So, what are we gonna do with this dude?”
Alyx smiles.
TWENTY-SIX
With Rory fast asleep in a secure pod, Alyx and Gerty buckle into seats as the cruiser rises off the planet and into orbit.
Once everything stabilizes, Hannah emerges from the bridge and says, “Okay. Course is set. We better get to hyper sleep.”
“Thanks, Hannah,” Alyx says.
“Yeah, I just wish everyone was coming back with us.”
Alyx pats her pack. “In a way, they are.” She kicks herself for not gathering Lance’s ashes, but things got too crazy too fast.
Hannah nods, on the verge of tears. Gerty gives her a hug. Once Hannah is done crying, she gently pushes Gerty away and says, “Let’s get to hyper sleep.”
“Whatever happened to the rescue team, by the way?” Alyx asks, unbuckling her seatbelt.
Hannah lowers her head. “Vilas incinerated them.”
“Damn.”
There’s a long moment of silence for all the fallen, then Gerty straightens. “They’ll all be honored at Base.”
Hannah and Gerty wander off toward the hyper sleep chambers and Alyx watches them go.
She sits for a while, staring at nothing and thinking about Sully.
She brings the artifact out of her pack and holds it up, gaze slipping over all the pits in the stone and intricate carvings covering it.
A smile slowly spreads along her face.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The young woman, somewhere in her middle twenties, drops the note onto her lap and sobs into her withered hands. On the table beside her bed is a silver suitcase sitting open and filled with stacks of money.
Alyx Wick detaches herself from the doorway, turns and walks out of the hospital.
The sun is bright and warm this day and she stops on the sidewalk, turning her face toward it. She lets the warmth soak into her bruised skin and after a moment, she continues on her way.
Memories of Sully flicker through her mind and she can’t help but smile.
And she thinks, as she works her way toward her apartment across town, For you, Sully. For you. She’s going to be okay now, my dear friend.
A dull rumble sounds in the distance and her gaze lifts to the horizon where dark clouds billow and churn.
The smile on her face fades a little.
There’s a storm coming.
Because, sometimes, there is no happiness without darkness.
And, sometimes, even if there is life, worlds die.
THE END
Read on for a free sample of The Last Marine
1
Dax Wyldd leaned back in his seat, eyes closed, with his size-10 boots propped up on the control console in front of him. He wasn’t asleep, although it would not have made much difference if he were. The nearest object with which Fortune’s Luck could collide was 1.2 light years away, and the collision alarm would have warned him long before the ship neared the bright blue F-class star that was his destination. A soft blues ballad, heavy with alto saxophone riffs, played through the earbuds jammed tightly into his ears, barely audible in the silent ship’s bridge. Occasionally, his right foot would twitch in time with the rhythm as proof he was awake.
From previous bitter experience, his crew had learned better than to disturb him when he was in his zone, his release from the monotony of deep space cargo runs. The blues calmed him, the more melancholy the better. His prized collection of 5,000 blues tunes covered a span of nearly three hundred years. His crew was in favor of anything that kept Dax calm. Therefore, the hand on his shoulder shaking him awake elicited a quick and expected response.
He swatted away the offending hand and growled, “Leave me the fuck alone,” slightly louder than his normal speaking voice because of the music playing in his ears.
Andy Byrd, 26, co-pilot and chief communications officer, liked living on the edge. Jousting with Dax was like slipping his hand into an alligator’s mouth and yanking it out before the snapped shut. He met Dax’s gruff response with an equally brusque and strident, “Distress beacon.”
Dax pushed back the baseball cap with the faded Atlanta Braves logo covering his sandy curls, opened one emerald green eye, and squinted at Andy in the dim light of control panel. “Lights at fifty percent,” he called out, and the bridge overheads increased to half capacity. In the brighter light, Dax’s gaze focused on Byrd’s blue eyes with the intensity of a rifle shot, but the ire had vanished. “Commercial or military?”
“Automated military beacon. Why?”
Dax kicked the control panel with the heel of his boot. “Damn! I hate the military. They’re always a pain in the ass. How far away?” To Dax, the only thing worse than a distress call from a Navy ship was one way off their course,
“It’s only two hours away.”
“Two hours? That’s odd, but it’s good, although with the military we could be stuck there for God knows how long. They’re bastards for red tape. See if anybody else is responding to the beacon. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Andy did a double take. “Way the hell out here? Who’s gonna be out here but C-class cargo ships like us? I don’t even know why the military is this far out of the usual traffic lanes.”
Dax sat up, clicked off his music, and sighed. “You’re right. What are they doing out here in the middle of nowhere? Okay. We’ll take a gander. Maybe it’s abandoned, and we can claim salvage rights,” he added.
Andy shook his head slowly, his blond locks sliding across his forehead. “That’s my mercenary, Captain. If there’s a buck in it …”
“Gotta make your creds anyway you can out here, kid. There’s no free ride.”
“So you’ve told me a hundred times.”
“It’s good advice, Andy. Heed it, and someday you’ll be a forty-five-year-old captain with your own over-mortgaged rust bucket to fret over,” he grinned at Andy, “instead of a twenty-something pain in the ass.” He sat up in his seat. “Full illumination.” He blinked as light flooded the bridge. He switched on the screen of his console. “What’s the heading?”
Andy read off a series of coordinates. “About 5.5 million kilometers distant.”
Dax punched in the coordinates and cocked his head to one side when he saw the location displayed on Fortune’s Luck’s flight path. “That’s almost along our course.” In the vastness of space, that seemed too close for coincidence.
Andy smiled. “I thought that might get your attention.”
“Okay, I’m officially intrigued. Change our heading. Inform Syn to get the grasshopper ready. We’ll fly over. There’s too much protocol involved in docking with a military ship.”
“Plia’s already on it. Luigi’s got a pot of coffee on if you’re interested.”
Dax grinned again. Andy was the only one of the ship’s crew that called Luigi Romero by his Christian name instead of his nickname Romeo. “Good. They don’t serve anything but that God-awful synthetic java on Navy ships. Tastes like used lube oil.”
Fortune’s Luck was an outdated, converted ore carrier well past its prime, but it was Dax’s ship. Although barely profitable, he made certain to stock the pantry with real Earth coffee. He would tolerate no synthetic java or tasteless ersatz coffee on his ship. They might skimp on meat a few meals, but coffee was one of the essential building blocks of a happy crew. Coffee was not his only vice, but it was the only one for which he had no regrets.
He stood, stretched his arms, and yawned. “See if you can raise them on the com. I don’t like going in blind.” He left the bridge.
He met cargo specialist Tish Holder in the corridor. He enjoyed the way the petite dishwater-blonde filled out her jumpsuit in all the right places, but mostly he appreciated the fact that she was smart and soft where he was hard. She constantly worked on his people skills and coached him in the fine art of diplomacy, a necessary skill when dealing with unsavory clients with the tendency to pull a weapon when negotiations stalled, a skill that he sorely lacked. He reached out an arm to ei
ther side of the bulkhead to block her path. She stepped into his embrace, gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and then slipped beneath his arm and continued down the corridor.
“No time for hanky-panky, Dax. Plia needs a hand.”
“Not even a quick panky?” he called out after her.
“Later,” she promised, as she turned a corner and disappeared from sight.
He and Tish had promised each other not to become romantically involved, just a mutual relief of sexual tensions on the long voyages, but things had progressed well beyond that point. Normally, he didn’t like attachments, but he was growing used to her. She was soft and cuddly at the proper times, a hard worker when he needed it, and shared more than a few of his sexual idiosyncrasies. They made a good team. Moreover, she put up with his crankiness.
Tish was ten years his junior. In his mind, that placed an undue amount of stress on his sexual performance. He considered himself in good physical condition and a great lover, at least he had had no complaints, but their vigorous sessions left him feeling young on the inside but older on the outside. He hoped she hadn’t noticed his longer than normal showers after sex when he stood in the jet misters to massage away the aches and pains.
As he bounced down the corridor, he noticed the artificial gravity was off by a few points, closer to .75 G than the .8 G he usually maintained. He would have to speak to Nate about that. He also absentmindedly made a visual inspection, noting several non-functioning overhead lights, the storage locker doors slightly ajar, and the odor of overheating insulation coming from an electrical panel. He would enter them later on his daily repair log, which seemed to grow longer each trip, one of the problems with a ship long past its prime.
As he entered the wardroom that also served as ship’s lounge, rec room, and mess hall, Luigi ‘Romeo’ Romero, chief cook, bottle washer, and assistant communications officer, met him with a steaming cup of coffee – black, no sugar – the way he liked it. Wearing his ubiquitous floppy white chef’s hat and white apron, the tall, skinny cook reminded Dax of a mop, but Romero was a top-notch chef in spite of his youth. The enticing aroma of the spicy meatloaf he had cooked for lunch still lingered in the room, defying the air scrubbers. From the oven drifted the smell of fresh-baked bread mixing with the other subtle odors saturating the ship. He didn’t know why the twenty-four-year-old galley virtuoso had chosen Fortune’s Luck as home, but Dax was glad to have him. His own culinary masterpieces ranged from reheating canned soup to nuking frozen dinners.
Dead World Page 18
