by Unknown
“I can get you off this wreck,” Joshua said. “But we have to leave soon. My ship is on a mission, and we have a very narrow launch window to leave this star system.”
He could see the conflict in her eyes. “All right,” she said at last. “But stay where I can see you.”
“Can I ask your name?”
“Sara.”
“Sara. I’ll get you to safety. And anyone else who—” He stopped. Around them, the computers were springing to life, rows of colored panels lighting up, the systems beeping in swift succession.
“Did you do that?” Joshua said.
“No. It’s the engines coming online.”
Joshua stared at her in disbelief. “The phase drive is dead.”
She shook her head. “It powers up once a month to recharge the life support systems. But that’s about all it can cope with.”
He could hear it now, a dull whine rising to sharp pitch. “We have to shut it down, or we’re all dead.”
She stared at him like he had gone insane. “It’s perfectly safe. I told you, it does this once a month.”
“My ship is out there!” Seeing her incomprehension, he added, “My ship uses hyperfield technology. Hyperfields and phase drives don’t mix.”
Their gazes remained locked a moment more. Then a deep vibration resonated through the ship, sending his bones shuddering. The expression on Sara’s face changed. She lowered the laser welder and pushed past him to the computer. “If this is a trick, so help me—”
But Joshua was already busy shouting into his commlink. “Zheng! Move the Griffith out! Stay out until the drive shuts down!”
Only static squealed from the comms.
The floor tilted. The walls warped. Joshua saw something bright and metallic hurtling towards him faster than he could even—
The world reeled as soon as Joshua opened his eyes. He let his lids fall closed again. Pain swelled in his chest, huge as a balloon.
With an effort of will, he forced his eyes open. The red glow of emergency lighting revealed a scene out of a nightmare. Above him, the ceiling had ripped apart, edges curled outward in frozen waves, exposing the bridge beyond. Twisted piping spilled like intestines from the walls. Fragments of metal floated around him, winking as they spun in slow motion.
Joshua looked down and almost passed out again. A jagged steel pipe, almost ten centimeters in diameter, protruded from his chest. He was impaled, a great gaping hole in the torso of his suit, seeping blood in a slow tide.
He let out a gasp, tinged with hysteria; the wound was a hairsbreadth from his heart. He tried to draw together shreds of calmness. He didn’t have much time.
His hands felt like limp plastic, but he gripped the pipe with all his strength.
Counted to three.
Pulled.
The world turned white.
Joshua came to again, lightheaded, pain still radiating from his chest. Fat globules of blood hung in the air, gleaming like rubies.
Someone called his name in the distance. A shadow moved above, beyond the torn ceiling. “Hey! Are you down there?”
Sara. He mustn’t let her find him like this. “Don’t come down here! It’s too dangerous!”
She shouted something back, but his awareness chose that moment to fade out again, and when sight and hearing returned, her shadow was gone.
Joshua reached behind him for his emergency canisters, fumbling in zero gee, the contortions almost causing him to pass out again. He finally managed to detach one of the canisters from its harness and unscrew the lid. He fastened his mouth over the nozzle and drank.
His throat worked as the blood poured into him, rich and nourishing, seeping into his cells, tanging in his nostrils with that sour metal smell. With the first canister drained, he started on the second.
The lights brightened to full power. The ship shuddered as gravity returned. Joshua experienced a moment of lurching freefall, and then crashed to the tiles. Twin bangs as the canisters hit the floor. Blood splashed like rain.
He lay motionless in the pool of blood, feeling himself start to knit together again, sensing the blood work its healing potency on him, knowing it wasn’t enough.
“Hey!” Sara, on the other side of the door. “Can you hear me?”
“I’m all right!” He had to get his suit off. There was a bloody great hole through it. He undid the fastenings and crawled out of the ruined suit. He salvaged what he could — commlink, wristlights, magline — and shoved it out of sight behind some wreckage. Nothing he could do about the blood — the place looked like a slaughterhouse. He stepped outside and sealed the door behind him, hoping that Sara wouldn’t enter the room anytime soon.
She had a cut on her forehead and stood with one arm cradled in the other. She stared at him. “You look like hell.”
“Just a scratch. I’m fine.” But his voice sounded hollow in his own ears.
The infirmary looked as though it had boasted enough medical supplies to tend an army. Sadly, it also looked as though that army had stormed through already. Burst bottles of antiseptic littered the floor, contents soaked up by long white streamers of unrolled bandages. The fuser still functioned to fix Sara’s broken arm, but there was no familiar domed pillar of a synthesizer, or even one of the huge units from the early days. At the time this ship was launched, Talwar and Chang hadn’t even been born, let alone thought about inventing a way to synthesize artificial blood.
“What are you looking for?” Sara asked, as Joshua roamed through the infirmary, opening and closing cabinets.
“Just taking inventory.”
He ran the calculations through his head. He’d fed that morning. Only six hours ago. He should have been able to go a week without feeding again, if pushed, but he had lost a lot of blood. The two canisters he had drunk had helped restore him, but he was still running at a deficit. Hunger shock would set in soon unless he was replenished.
“We have to repair the comms,” Joshua said. “Get in touch with my ship quickly. Within the next forty eight hours.”
“What happens in forty eight hours?”
Good question, Joshua thought. “Let’s try to get out of here before then.”
Joshua lay on his back beneath the bridge computer, replacing the burned out circuits. It wasn’t just the comms he needed to access, but also the database with the passenger manifest. Sara had left the repairs to go fetch extra parts from stores, evidently trusting him enough now to let him out of her supervision.
“Hey. This is for you.”
Joshua pulled himself out from under the computer, prepared to make his excuses if it was dinner. So far, Sara hadn’t offered him food, and he hadn’t asked. He had rehearsed answers for all the questions she might ask, answers he hadn’t had to use since the old days of pretending, of having to pass, and it was sad how easily it all came back to him, as though somewhere in his subconscious he had known he might have to do it again.
But it wasn’t food Sara had brought. “I found some clean clothes. Yours are a mess.”
She handed him a pair of overalls, neatly folded.
“Thanks,” Joshua said. He shook them out, and found Sara watching him with an odd expression.
“They belonged to my husband. He was about your size.”
“Was he aboard when—?”
Sara nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head, making a cutting motion with her hand. “It’s past and gone. Only the future matters.”
He looked carefully at her, but she seemed to mean it, fierce resolution burning through the shadow of grief. She would have had to be determined, to live on after all she had been through.
“Where were you going?” Joshua asked quietly.
“A yellow star out past Canis Major. One habitable planet. We were going to set up a homestead by the mountains. Farm wheat and barley. Grow peaches out the back.” She fell silent for a minute, then said, “So. What are you doing out here?”
He had the a
nswer ready. It was even true. “We’re an astronomical survey ship for the Commonwealth of Worlds. Our mission is to chart new star systems and set up astrobeacons for interstellar travel and commerce.”
“I got that before. I’m not looking for the official brochure. I mean, what are you doing out here?”
“Me?” Joshua had that answer ready too — exploring new worlds, making new discoveries, seeing all the wonders the universe had to offer. But it wasn’t his answer, it was someone else’s, the someone whose footsteps he was following in. “I’m looking for someone. Someone I lost long ago.”
“And you were looking here?”
He shook his head. “I came here by chance.”
“Lucky you.” A twisted smile. But the first smile she had displayed.
He smiled back, feeling suddenly lighter. No, lightheaded. He blinked. Everything looked sharper and brighter, the colors more vivid, the smells more intense. Sara was saying something, but he wasn’t listening. It was hunger, the onset stealing upon him, an aching sensation in his belly, fangs sliding forth from their recesses. He pushed them back in with his tongue, thought about snow, ice, the cold dark of space.
No good. The scent of blood filled his lungs; the pulse of blood filled his ears.
He leaned heavily against the computer and looked at Sara, whose face was registering alarm. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
She looked like she was deciding whether to support him or bolt for the door. “What?”
“I have a condition requiring regular medication, and I’m out. I may start to behave erratically, or even violently.”
“What kind of condition? Like a mental illness?” Her eyes narrowed. “Is that what you were doing in the infirmary? Looking for drugs?”
“Listen. The important thing is to keep on with repairs and try to contact my ship. But I can’t trust myself to stay in full possession of my faculties. Is there somewhere on this ship that can be used as an isolation room? Somewhere that locks from the outside?”
Sara nodded. “The upper cargo bay.”
Joshua took a deep breath. “Lock me in. And then get back to work on the comms. Tell my crewmates you require urgent assistance, priority one. Wait until they get here. Until then, don’t let me out.”
“Even if you ask me?”
“Especially if I ask you.”
Ten hours later, it no longer seemed like such a brilliant idea. Joshua paced back and forth in the aisles between towers of boxes, with nothing to do except brood on his situation, aware of the hunger yawning wider in his stomach.
His path took him in a wide circle, past the bay door that led to space at one end and the door to the ship interior at the other. “Sara?” he said into the wall intercom. “How are the repairs going? Any contact with my ship yet?”
“No,” the curt response came. “Working on it.”
“Well, work faster.” He meant it to sound lighthearted, but it came out strained. Hoping to soften it, he added, “Please.”
After a pause, Sara said, “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay.” He gripped his arms and kept pacing. It had been a long time since he had last gone dry. So easy to forget, afterwards, how bad it got. He closed his eyes and leaned his hands against the wall.
He hadn’t fed on human blood in over a hundred years. But how easy it would be, an inner voice said, if only he had the courage to ask. Sara would understand. She was a spacefarer, an explorer, a survivor. He should take her into his confidence. They could deal with the situation together. She could afford to help him a little. Just enough to tide him over until rescue came.
Joshua sank to the floor and buried his head in his arms.
After a long time, he unfolded and stood.
“Sara?” he said into the intercom. “If you’re there, answer me.”
“I’m here.” Her voice echoed as though from far away.
“Any luck with getting a message through yet?”
There was a long pause, so long Joshua thought the intercom might have cut out. “There’s not going to be a message, Joshua.”
“What? Sara—”
“I found your suit.”
Joshua stopped dead. He could hear her harsh breathing rasp over the intercom. “I can explain.”
“Half stuck to the floor with dried blood—”
“Sara—”
“I could put my hand through the hole!”
Joshua closed his eyes for a moment. “I didn’t want to scare you, Sara.”
“It makes sense now,” she cut in. “All the pieces that didn’t fit. So the old stories are true. Monsters walking among us in the shape of men.”
“The world has changed. There are things you don’t understand—”
“I understand what you are! Vampire.”
“We don’t use that word anymore,” Joshua said.
A strange sound came from the intercom. It took a moment for him to identify it as laughter.
“It doesn’t matter what word you use,” Sara said. “I saw your ‘medical supplies’. Planning to restock?”
“It’s artificial blood. We have machines that make it. If I meant to hurt you, why would I lock myself up?”
“I don’t know what games you’re playing, I only know you’ve been lying to me from the moment we met.”
“Call my ship,” Joshua said in desperation. “When my shipmates come, they’ll tell you the same.”
“How do I know they’re not all like you? I’m turning off the intercom now.”
“No! Don’t!” He clutched at it in futility. Only silence. He pounded his fists against the door. “Sara!” The reinforced steel plating barely showed a dent. He struck it again in frustration.
Footsteps outside. He went on alert. Had she decided to confront him? An odd hissing noise. One edge of the door glowed with a line of light. He recognized the hum of lasers and stared in disbelief.
She was welding the goddamn door shut.
Joshua lifted the last of the crates into position, and then took a running jump and leapt on top of them. The tower of boxes rocked beneath his weight, but he could reach the air duct high up on the wall now. He took out his pocket screwdriver and began unscrewing the grill. His hands shook only a little.
The intercom crackled to life again. “I can see what you’re doing.”
Joshua didn’t allow it to interrupt him. “They’ll come looking for me, you know.”
“I know. I’m not going to be here.”
Joshua stopped, the implications sinking in. She was going for the Griffith. While his crew was over here, she was going to take their ship. With sudden desperation, he said, “Listen to me! Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this—”
“Yes, I do. There’s too much at stake.” The intercom cut out.
Joshua’s mouth tightened. There were only two screws left in the grill. He forced himself to work calmly and swiftly.
The sudden howl of klaxons almost deafened him. He clapped his hands to his ears, the screwdriver slipping from his grasp. It fell to the deck, bounced twice, and went skimming towards the far side of the cargo bay. Other small objects joined it, his eye tracing their path.
With horror, he saw that the cargo bay door was rising, the black of space widening.
“Sara!” he bellowed. “What are you doing?”
No answer. She was beyond persuasion now, fixed on her course and accelerating.
The tower of boxes beneath him collapsed, pulled towards the open door by the vacuum of space. He was swept along with them, grasping futilely for a handhold, any handhold. But there was nothing to grasp, though he snapped his nails trying.
Then they were out past the door, floating in eternity.
Joshua flung out a hand and the magline unreeled, thunking home on the hull of the ship. He was yanked to a standstill, the magline at full extension. He hung from its end like a pendulum weight, suspended in a sky full of stars.
His head throbbed like it was trying to e
xpand beyond his skull, and his skin burned with a thousand icy pinpricks. But it was not cold or lack of oxygen or depressurization that would kill him, but the sun, shining steadily just beyond the curve of the hull — the sun that would disintegrate him instantly into cosmic dust.
He imagined letting go, allowing himself to dissolve into a thousand motes of light. Maybe it would be painless; maybe Lucas would be waiting for him. It would be easy to let go, easier than finding a reason to go on.
But he reeled himself in, towards the open maw of the cargo bay.
Even if you didn’t have a reason, sometimes you had to make one.
The corridors of the ship twisted like some nightmare maze, warped by flawed science and flawed engineering, and the laws of the universe enforced with a vengeance. Lights flickered with sudden power surges; intercoms hissed white noise like the whisper of ghosts.
Joshua stalked down the twisted corridors, intent on his goal. He had to get to the bridge before Sara did and finish repairing the comms. And heaven help her if she got in his way.
Broken pylons and collapsed walls blocked his path. He wrenched them aside like tinfoil, his fingers leaving dents in the steel. He knew this wild frenzy would slake itself, but right now it ran unchecked, this demon gale rising inside him, this raging flood that swept rationality away. The human race, including its many aberrations, had built civilizations spanning the stars, but their spirits were still yoked to their bodies.
“Sara!” he shouted, not knowing if the intercom was picking him up, or if she was even listening anymore. His voice crackled back at him from the speakers, cut to pieces by the static.
“You can’t kill me. I’m still here! You need my help. And I need yours.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you know where the word ‘sanguinaire’ comes from, Sara? It means ‘bloodthirsty’. I’m thirsty, Sara, so thirsty…”
He pushed open another door in his way, and emerged into the cryocapsule hub he had passed through when he had first come aboard the ship. Where were the other survivors, anyway?
