by Aaron Bunce
They shared a quiet laugh, the humor dying quickly.
“I think we need to gather as much information as possible before we come to any conclusions. We talk to Anna, give her a chance to come clean. Hell, maybe there are factors she couldn’t share at the time, or data we just didn’t think to look for.”
“That stupid…” Erik interjected. Shane turned, his normally passive expression hardening.
“I’m sorry to be the one to say it but screw her. All we know is this… she set our course and destination without our knowledge, to a place we don’t know anything about, with information the rest of us weren’t privy to. I don’t give crap one about her feelings or her reasons. She did it, that makes her guilty in my eyes. What we need to do is make a course correction now before we put another million miles between us and the people that can help. Then we find a way to lock her out of the navigation computer. You guys can talk to her all you want. I’ve already made up my mind.”
Jacoby stared hard at Erik, the younger man now refusing to turn away. There was hardness to his eyes and voice that weren’t there before, and it made him realize how little he knew about the other people on the ship. It took him a moment, but he managed to bite back the urge to walk over and slap the younger man.
“I worked with you, Shane. I think you’re a standup dude. Anna only ever had good things to say about you, Lana,” he started, intentionally skipping over Erik. “But I can’t say I know you well. Not personally, at least. But I’ve known Anna pretty much my whole life and will say this much. She’s a good person. She hates liars. And I trust her more than anyone.”
“Ah, that’s sweet,” Erik said, mockingly.
“Erik, that’s enough. Stop being a dick. What is going on with you? I’ve never heard you talk like this before.”
Erik mocked Lana, flipping his head from side to side. “Maybe I’m just tired of being the quiet one in the room. We’ve been on this ship for days now. What have most of you done, sleep, maybe eat? Meanwhile, I’ve updated the firmware on the drive control magnets, replaced two blown relays, swapped out cabin filters, transferred bathroom waste to the black water tank, and increased the water filtration system’s efficient by five percent. Then you all are just like, ‘hey, we need a captain. Shane, everyone likes you, why don’t you do it. Okay, hey, by the way, we don’t really know where the fuck we’re going and we’re pretty sure the chick that talks with the computer knows something we don’t. Oh, that’s okay’.”
“Come here, we still have so much to talk…” Shane said, playfully reaching for the young man, but Erik ducked under the arm and swung at Lana, who was close but didn’t move to touch him. His fist missed the mark but not by much.
Stay calm. Don’t get angry, Jacoby told himself as Erik stormed up to him. He was a good head shorter than Jacoby, but his crimson cheeks and wide eyes more than made up for his baby face and unkempt hair. The young technician stood on his tiptoes and stuck his chest out, trying to bump Jacoby back.
“I’m not afraid of you, you freak. Or your freak friends, for that matter. I don’t believe your story, either. But you know what? Huh? It doesn’t matter. I’m done. Done with all of you. When the next light burns out or coffee maker stops working, fix it yourself.”
Erik slid sideways, the heat radiating off his face palpable. He stormed up to the door and burst forward, punching the metal with both fists.
“I’m not fixing this either. I’m not fixing nothing!” he screamed, turned sideways, and disappeared into the corridor.
“What in the hell has gotten into him. I’m sorry, guys. Erik has always been a good kid. A little excitable, but good,” Lana said, staring at the door.
“Jacoby is right. We needed structure long before now. We’re lucky that more people haven’t struggled and folded under the pressure. I’ll go talk to him. Maybe you two should talk to Anna, see if you can’t find out exactly what is happening with navigation,” Shane said. Jacoby understood his unspoken context. Find out where the hell we’re going and why.
“I’ll talk to her alone. It might be best that way,” Jacoby said, Lana offering no argument.
Deconstructed
Manis felt his bones snapping, the sharp noise punctuated by bright, piercing eruptions of pain. They filled him and punctured his mind like distant, flaring stars. But that was all he could see beyond Layla’s dark embrace.
Her slimy tentacles crushed in around him, at least one sliding through his suit, probing his anus, and forcing itself into his body. He lost himself to it all, the need to breathe, for his heart to beat, fading beneath the blanket of pain. He felt her lips on his face, brushing against his cheek and sliding down over his mouth. Her tongue, so much softer and warmer than the rest of her, eased into his mouth.
Manis kissed her back, his own tongue meeting hers and pushing into her mouth. Somehow, through it all, the pain and violation, he felt his member swell, Layla’s constricting, slick body sliding against him.
His fingers bent backwards, his toes popping free from the sockets, but it was not pain anymore, not like he knew it, but individual sparks merging into a massive, energetic ball of sensation. Manis tried to kiss Layla again, but her face was gone, replaced by an apathetic and smothering darkness. He heard her though, that voice–cool and demanding one moment only to sound warm and inviting the next.
There was another sound, too–something softer but more urgent, that buzzed with a language his body could not speak. He felt them responding to his pain and pleasure, their responses programmed but limited. They weren’t of him, but someone else.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t even focus beyond the dichotomy of pain and pleasure inside his body. Something popped inside him–another bone, or an organ, he couldn’t tell, just as he felt his erection slide inside…something. Manis couldn’t differentiate what it was in, only that it felt enough like a woman. It slid up and down around him, slick and undulating with a fevered, almost inhuman need.
Layla’s tentacles wrapped around his chest and midsection. The air was gone as Layla’s body pulled him into her harder and more urgently. Manis wanted to enjoy it, to take control and savor the enjoyable aspects, but it was all beyond him, his control or comprehension. Even the sexual pleasure felt more like he was being pulled apart, piece by piece.
His ribs compressed, every vital organ in his chest screaming out at once. His pain pooled there, trapped inside him, a chemical scream building in his blood that had no way to escape. The buzzing sound, the tiny creatures fluttering around in his blood, responded. Or they were trying to, the now toxic nature of his biology saturating them and pulling their voices closer to his mind.
Layla leaned out of the darkness and kissed him again so violently his teeth jarred loose, and his jaw cracked. Her breath, her voice, poured lust and need into his mouth, just as his ribs started to crush under the pressure. Manis felt it all erupt at once–orgasmic, primal, the sensations firing through him in a consciousness-rattling wave of sensual pleasure, pain, and fear.
Cold rushed in behind the wave and before he could spare it another thought, lost all concept of self. He did not know how long that lasted, only that he didn’t know one moment, and then he did.
His eyes were open, but he could not close them.
His mouth was open, but felt wrong, torn away from its design and purpose. There was no pain, it simply felt incorrect. His lungs wouldn’t draw air, a steady, burning need to do so the only reminder that he was supposed to at all.
The only other part of him, besides his eyes, that seemed to work, were his ears. The darkness hung over him forever–minutes, hours, days, perhaps, but there was no way to track its passage.
A distant light blossomed at one point, stinging his wide eyes, the shadow of a distant person approaching. He saw them go still and wanted to reach out to them, to beg them for help, but there was no air, and thus, no words. He heard them gasp and scream, or they might have cursed. It was all the same.
“Get the
doc,” someone yelled, and darkness fell over him again. Only it was not to last this time. When the light reappeared, there were more shadows, more voices. They were shaped different–larger and less defined. Manis tried once again to ask them for help, but it was beyond him.
“Who did…what happened to him?” someone asked from ahead.
The voices approached, the bodies and their light filling the space around him. Manis heard them curse and scream, and he understood why. He wanted to scream, too, to repel from everything the light touched. From the sight of…him.
“Good god almighty,” a man grunted, carefully stepping in around the blood-stained floor.
Manis was still strapped to the upright table, but his body, all of it, was wrong. His arms and legs had been pulled free from the straps, but they were bent off in strange angles. His flight suit hung in tattered shreds, blood marring seemingly every inch of exposed flesh. The ends of jagged, splintered bones protruded from his chest, thighs, and feet, still seeping their vital marrow onto the ground.
A woman sobbed somewhere nearby as more people rushed into the room from somewhere beyond the darkness. Manis wanted to cry, to curse, but most of all, to close his eyes so he couldn’t see the waste he’d become.
“What do we do?” asked a tall figure. The security man from Hyde. Manis couldn’t pull his thoughts together enough to remember his name.
Another voice answered quietly a moment later, and Manis knew him by his voice alone. The captain.
“Doctor, is he dead?” he asked, simply, his body not moving, “everyone else out for now. Bring supplies. We need to clean this up and sterilize the whole room.”
The captain didn’t move after the others left, the sound of his respirator the only noise save Manis’ dripping, broken body. He just stood there, statuesque, until his outline seemed to fade into the dark room.
The doctor moved in close, probing and feeling Manis’ neck, then backed up a step and simply stared. The truth was painted clearly enough on the man’s face, his breathing fogging his round glasses.
“I don’t see how I would help him. But what…how? It looks as if his body was caught in a trash compactor.”
“Someone did this to him. Mr. Djaron, you will investigate?” the captain asked.
His tall counterpart nodded silently.
Other people returned then, stomping into the room in the oversized EVA suits. Their helmet lights blinded Manis’ eyes, but he was powerless to look away or even blink.
“Fucking hell, this mess is going to take forever to clean up,” one man said as he dropped a crate of supplies. He stooped over, just outside the periphery of blood and blue vomit. “So, he was sick with something. Damn, I guess it’s a good idea you decided to lock him in here.”
The captain grunted and moved up next to the doctor, but he didn’t need to bend over in the same manner.
“Infected?” the doctor snorted. “No infection I know of will break a man’s humerus, fibula, and pelvic bone. And what kind of infection can tear down four mill plastic sheeting and splatter this much of a man’s blood around? Yeah, he was probably sick. But judging from his ranting, I’m guessing it was of the psychological nature. Look to the crew, Captain, or the refugees from Hyde. It was a who that did this to him, not a what. My guess is he pissed off the wrong person, and they decided to take things into their own hands. Although, I can hardly guess how.”
“We found a guy that looked like this on Mars’ Vortino Colony once. It turns out he’d gotten drunk and stumbled onto a mag-lev track. The thing ran him over, crushed him up real good and spit him into a side passage,” Fred Djaron, the security officer, said, his light flitting over Manis’ body and then irritatingly up to his face. “Whatever happened to him, I think it’s fair to say that ‘Junior Executive Manis Nazzar’ is no longer our problem. I say we throw him and this whole mess into an airlock and blow it into space. If they hassle you about it, say you were trying to prevent further biological contamination for the crew. Besides, the guy was an ass, and a bat-shit crazy loon to boot. The less time we waste on him, the better. If it makes you feel better, Captain, I can interview people onboard. But I won’t push the issue too hard. Shit, I’d say whoever did this did us a favor. Maybe it was those sample containers we found him with? Maybe he stole something from the wrong person? If that was the case, I’d call it justice served and file it away.”
A wave of anger blossomed inside, but it served only to remind Manis of how broken and helpless he was. The captain started nodding, even as the tears formed, blurred his vision, and broke to run down his cheeks. He silently begged him not to listen to the security man. To walk a little closer and check him, see that he wasn’t dead. Shit, all he would have to do was reach out and check for a pulse or something. But Manis’ thoughts froze as his lids again refused to blink. Was he still alive? Was this what death felt like?
The plastic rustled behind them, but Manis didn’t see anyone behind the two men. A subtle sliding noise sounded in the darkness, slippery and wet, slimy tentacles against the ground. Layla’s voice echoed quietly from the shadows, just as the plastic rustled again, but neither man seemed to notice.
The captain abruptly stopped nodding and shook his head once.
“I’m afraid he’s our problem until we arrive at our next port of call. We checked the com logs and confirmed that he sent a message off to the directorate, so they will know he’s onboard. I’ve dealt with their type my entire career. They don’t accept a man’s word lightly. They’ll need to see his body, stand over him, thank us for bringing him home, then make a big deal out of all his accomplishments and what he meant to the company. Once we leave, however, they’ll look for someone to blame for his death, to reprimand, or terminate. I’ll not throw away an entire career over one pumped up executive with a loaded mouth. If we’re lucky they’ll place the blame on him and bury it with him. They’re so good at burying things.”
“It’s your ship, Captain. You give the orders. If the doc isn’t concerned with the risk of infection, then I’m not worried. He was an ass, and a crazy one at that. The sooner we can wash our hands of him, the better it is for all of us.”
“Conduct your investigation, Mr. Djaron, just don’t hassle the crew too much. Make it look legitimate, but don’t dig too deep if things start to get complicated. I want it to look like we did our due diligence. Doctor…”
“Yes. Uh, right,” Munson said, clearing his throat.
Manis held his breath, his last hope residing with the doctor. Perhaps he would contradict the other two. He’d taken an oath, after all. That had to mean something.
“Let’s secure his body in a vacuum bag and store him in the aft hold. It’s empty, right?”
“Yes, except for some garbage.”
“That is good. Vacuum seal his remains and sterilize this entire compartment. That’ll be good enough for me.”
Tossed out with the garbage! Captain Cordyczk. Officer Djaron. Doctor Munson. I’m not dead. Just look closer. Manis thought repeatedly, trying to burn the names into his mind.
The room faded a little, but it wasn’t from the tears this time. His ears filled with a buzzing noise, an off sensation filling up his insides. The pressure continued to grow until it felt like he had squirming bugs behind his eyes.
He felt them hoist his body up, cutting the remaining straps with a knife. His body moved strangely, every bone break, every separated joint shifting and bending against its design. Munson and Djaron lifted him horizontally, his entire form moving and flowing like gelatin. They dropped him, cursing loudly and then laughing.
“This is disgusting. It feels like he’s filled with gelatin. Gross,” Djaron joked.
The strange buzzing sensation continued to grow in intensity, filling his skull until he wanted to reach inside and scratch his brain. They lowered him to the ground, their helmet lights revealing a clear bag all around him.
“How bad do you think he stinks?” Djaron asked. Munson grunted, and involu
ntarily sniffed, the noise muffled within his helmet.
“If his quarters were any indication…”
A clear flap rose from the far side and settled above him, gloved hands pulling a heavy zipper all the way around, sealing him inside. Manis screamed without voice, cursed, cried, and motionlessly pounded his fists. Rushing air surrounded him, barely distinguishable from the buzzing in his head. Or was it in his head?
“Such a shame. I felt such a rush when they came and told me one of the crew had been in a horrible accident. I do so enjoy the thrill of a good trauma. Then I saw it was this young man. If only it were someone worth saving,” Doctor Munson said, just as the flap closed fully, the zipper sliding closed.
The plastic started to collapse around him, the helmet lamps from the two men standing above him setting it afire with light. It warped and crinkled, synching down around his feet and legs. The rushing air became louder as a simmering fire moved to the back of his skull and down into his neck.
A bone popped in his chest, and then another. He saw it move, something underneath–his lungs, maybe his heart, moving.
I am alive. No, please! You can’t do this. Please, no! he screamed into his thoughts as the plastic collapsed down around his neck and face.
1000 Hours
Jacoby stopped just short of the outside door and allowed Lana to close the distance.
“Why don’t you wait on the bridge and keep that with you,” he said, pointing to the large data point. He looked in her eyes, studying her face as she talked. Without Poole seemingly active in his brain, he found it considerably easier to keep his gaze from drifting down over her body. There weren’t the urges, the fantasies.
See, I knew it was you all along. I’m not the perv, you are!
“Good,” Lana said, nodding. “I’ve got all the alternate routing data in here, too, so we can show her if she has any questions. See what she says, but don’t be too…”
