Starbleached

by Chelsea Gaither

  Adry looked left and wished she hadn’t. Red was everywhere. On instrument panels, on his clothes, on the bandages around his thumb. Morgan was shaking from the blood loss.

  “It’s good.” He picked up his own gun, cradled in his good hand.

  “Jesus Christ, Morgan.” She started towards him.

  Bob’s rough grip pulled her around. “Look. We don’t have the ordinance to stop the son of a bitch when it boards. The only thing we can do for humanity is convince it that attacking someone else this way is a bad idea.”

  Metal scraped against metal. The alien ship was now suctioned against them, air bladders filling the void between ships, wires attaching to vital sensors. Soon it would force the rear door open, and the Overseer would arrive.

  “Save the last bullet for you.” Morgan said. “You’re going to want it.

  *****

  Then:

  Mist drifted off the cryo-tube. Eerie. It was the first time Adry had seen moisture in two weeks. Holton did have weather, but it was perfectly regulated and only happened at night, when it couldn’t compromise work performance. People slept better, after all, when it was raining. Not that anyone could sleep again, once they had a good look at the thing inside the tube. Bryan rested his hand on the smooth, iced over glass.

  “They’re calling themselves the Overseers. We know that’s not their true name, but they chose to identify with the slave owners of the eighteen hundreds. We know, because they told us. They wanted us to know our place from the beginning. And they look like this.” He tapped the tube surface.

  She peered through the iced-over glass. The thing inside was the definition of Nightmare. Pale skin as if it never saw sunlight. Slack mouth exposing sharp white shark teeth and a glowing tongue. It had no digestive system. The mouth was purely for sound production, sonar, and possibly intake of water. Four eyes on one row stared vacantly into the room. Thickly muscled, tall and wide as a barn door, it could snap her in half without breaking a sweat. And its hands…

  Six fingers. It had two opposable thumbs. A deep red opening in the palm ran up to its mid-arm. Strange teeth glinted within pale white lips, serrated things like an ivory saw blade.

  “That’s how it…eats?” She asked.

  “It puts its palm here,” he rested his hand on her chest, beneath the breastbone. “The things that look like teeth are overgrown, retractable nematocysts, like a jellyfish stinger. They inject, seek out nerve centers on the heart, lungs and spinal cord, and then suck the life out of you.”

  “Does it drain blood, or…” she stopped. His hand had shifted to bare skin and, despite the subject or even because of it, his touch was electric. Fire leapt through her own nervous system; her cheeks grew hot.

  “The last stage involves total fluid drain, but we think it’s an inadvertent side effect. Stage one,” his palm pressed down, “They drain your strength. Heart rate slows, breathing is shallow, immune system dips way, way down. Near the end, every system in your body is on the verge of total shutdown. It takes about one minute. Second stage goes way into the metaphysics, and…what?” He’d finally noticed her flush.

  “Not that I’m complaining, Dr. Landry, but we haven’t even had a first date.”

  His hand was sitting on top of her breasts, thumb rising shivers up her spine. “Oh.” He dropped his hand away. Silence. “I’ve got a reputation here. It’s not entirely undeserved.”

  “I hear it’s more of a goal. Tumble every girl on Holton Station.” She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “The second stage?”

  “Movie.” He smiled. “Chocolates. Dinner. I cook a mean braised protean.”

  “I meant the alien feeding process.”

  “Right.” He grinned. “It drains your personhood, for lack of a better word. Physically, it drains melatonin out of your skin, pigment out of eyes and hair. The bone structure itself reforms. Gender remains, but most of the indicators—breasts, cheekbones, pelvis shape, body structure—disappear. You retain memory, but lose the ability to access it voluntarily. Your will, your sense of self, what makes you an individual. Gone. One third of the time, the Overseer actually stops there. If you survive, and it’s really a coin toss if you do, you’re their slave. Unless you get rescued, and you become our slave.”

  The warm tingles turned to ice. “What the hell are they taking from us?”

  “We have no idea. Can’t exactly test it in a lab.”

  “How about recovery? Can you come back from that?”

  “Not all the way. Physical alterations are permanent. Mental…if you regain ability to access memory, you’re over the hump. But that happens in less than a quarter of our cases.”

  “And the two thirds of the time when the Overseer doesn’t stop?”

  “They drain you dry to get every last drop of mystery energy. We know they don’t get nutrition from the liquids, because they don’t even retain them long. You can always tell when one of them’s just fed. They look like they’re bleeding out of every pore.”

  She shivered. The world might never feel warm again. Bryan put a hand on her shoulder.

  “They’re breeding us, too. Foster? New Greenland? Full of kids. Fucked up kids, given that they’re being raised like cattle. We’re seeing second and third generation slaves in their shock troops. Fully human. Loyal until death.” He paused a long time, then moved to a desk in the work area. Every surface was piled high with alien technology framed by human technology, augmented by yet more alien tech. It was jumbled like a child’s toy box, and everything was beige.

  “One more thing,” He sighed. “You’re cleared to know this, but it doesn’t go back to Earth. It doesn’t go to any Rim World, understand?”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  He stiffened like a man about to plunge his hands into boiling lead. “Draining you is not the worst thing they can do.”

  *****

  Now:

  The rear hatch exploded, pieces of metal flying through the cargo hold. One piece caught Bob Harris in the upper shoulder, pinning him to the bulkhead. Morgan rolled left, hit the pilot console and fell behind the chair, moaning. Adry ducked behind the Enzyme boxes. Not enough cover, oh god, not nearly enough to spare her. Heavy boots thumped down an unseen ramp, and she wanted to scream. Not even its steps were human.

  Gunfire. Adry peered around the crate; Bob emptied his gun at the Overseer’s masked head. Bullets scratched the faceplate’s dark alloy; bluish fluid pumped over the monster’s collar. Blood. Bob’d gotten at least one good hit. But the flow stopped even as she watched. A heavy, six-fingered hand closed over the gun. Sneering at such petty defiance, it twisted its hand sharply and the gun cracked in half.

  Its other hand closed over Robert’s throat.

  Adry moved, scraping her palms on the deck plank. One shot, two shots, three, and all hit flesh. Hard recoil into her palm, gunsmoke in her lungs. Dark blood hit the deck. It turned. She couldn’t see its eyes, but she could feel its gaze like a psychosomatic fire. It pulled something off its belt and tossed it at Adry’s feet. The yellow-black ball bounced once, then exploded in a buzz of electricity. She fell, gun dropping from nerveless fingers. Ears ringing and retching, her knees hit the deck from a million miles away. The alien voice reverberated through her tinnitus.

  “It will fade.” Its voice was devoid of emotion, as if the alien were dead inside. Adry’s fingers itched to kill it the rest of the way. “I do not wish to harm you. You carry a weapon and a doctor trained in its administration. I require both.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Bob wheezed. The Overseer tightened his grip. Bob’s scream was strangled by the dual thumbs clenched on his windpipe.

  “That sensation is nematocysts entering your body. It is unpleasant. My statement was not a request. I require the substance and the doctor. Provide them.”

  Adry made another helpless retching sound. Her gun was shielded from the thing’s view, in a corner just out of reach. If she could get it…the thing turned its blank mask to her and d
ropped Bob on the floor. She reached back, fingers brushing the barrel.

  With a scream, Morgan came charging out of the cockpit, his issue knife in hand. Brave, stupid idiot! She wanted to scream. The monster took the knife away, then threw Bob’s inert body into Morgan. Both men fell into the cockpit. Cat quick, it shot out the door controls. The internal hatch closed, then sealed with a puff of air.

  She grabbed the gun, chambered a fresh round, and spun back, weapon braced to fire. But it fell into the monster’s hands with a hard smacking sound. Pale, bloodless lips smiled as its fingers brushed hers.

  Adry was trapped with the monster.

  Alone.

  *****

  Then:

  He touched the back of her neck, the gentlest of casual brushes, and it sent sparks down her spine. “How’s it going, Adry?” Bryan Landry sat beside her.

  She sighed. This job was supposed to be as cold and impersonal as Holton’s greenery. An intellectual feast for the mind without paltry distractions like bad food or irritable colleagues. She’d been ready for everything …except Bryan. Oh, he was brilliant, and his work was possibly the answer to all their problems. But his smile undid her contingency plans. His laughter was now far more important than chemical formulae.

  She had to remember his reputation. “Tom Cat” didn’t come close. Depending on who you listened to, he was a rake, a pervert, kinky, indecisive, terrified of commitment—universally agreed to be great in bed. He’d been sending out signal fires for weeks, ever since her off-the-wall suggestions gave them a promising lead. When this project was done, and she went back home, his absence would be a physical ache.

  Goddamn it girl. She shook herself. Focus on your job.

  “Failure,” she said. “Across the board. I don’t think this is going to work. We still don’t even know what they’re feeding on.” She stretched, yawning. “Maybe we should try poisoning them again?”

  “We get the victim too. It’s too risky.” His features stilled. “And it doesn’t solve subsumation. This is the most promising idea so far. We can’t give up.”

  That comment was a little too loaded. “They got someone else, didn’t they?” she asked.

  Bryan nodded. “Two. Pascal and Whitepole. Their partners reported it on two separate occasions. The Abrams incident still suggests we may have a better shot at retrieving the subsumed personality than we do the enslaved…but if we can’t make this work, we might as well just put a bullet in their heads.” He rubbed his eyes. “I’m tired of losing to these monsters, Adry.”

  She gave his hands a squeeze. Too bad she didn’t have more comfort to offer. “We’re trying to solve a metaphysical problem with science. You have to acknowledge it might not work. Besides, even if it does, people will still be fed on.”

  “But they won’t die. And neither will the subsumed.” His voice hardened more.

  “Bryan—”

  “I knew Abrams. I watched it happen. If I could have done more…” his face darkened and he turned back to the tap screen. “Where are the failures?”

  She brought up a touch screen. “Here, an hour after we inject the enzyme prototype. We get this weird feedback loop in the internal organs.” She pointed at one of the simulations. “The first stage feeding lasts about twice as long, but then it switches over to the second stage and whatever happens next gets buried by white noise.” She swallowed. “The heart explodes after ten seconds.”

  Bryan winced. “Go to the section with that noise. Have you analyzed that?”

  “As far as I can tell, it’s just noise.” She paused. He must see something she couldn’t, because those blue eyes were now sharp as a titanium blade. “What?”

  “We don’t need to know what that noise is. We just need to shield it.”

  “But it’s just white noise,” She said.

  “Follow me,” He said, and took her hand. A large Overseer device lay in a nearby cradle, recognizable only as some kind of weapon. What it did, or how it did it, was beyond her and most of the techs on Holton. Bryan led her to it unerringly. “Their technology is organic. Here, see?” His fingers hovered over narrow tubes lit by internal lights. “This is a vein, leading down to the heart analogue, which serves as a power pack. Nerves are wires. This area here is brain matter, the computer for the device.” He circled a clump of greenish tissue, then backed up. “From a certain perspective it’s…elegant.” He shook his head. “No need to worry about spare parts. You just grow whatever you need.” He was rubbing her hand again. When she squeezed back, he sighed and let go. His ghost tingled in her palm.

  “When we power it up…” he brought up another screen, hit a few buttons and stepped back. “We get the same noise pattern you’re finding in your simulations.”

  “Why would that show up in a simulation?” She asked. Why had he taken his hand away?

  “We’ve incorporated a very small amount of Overseer tech in the processing loop. Every once in a while it surprises us.” Pause. He closed his eyes and sighed. “I value our working relationship, Adry. I don’t want to fuck it up by…fucking.”

  There were ten thousand readouts in the room, countless fragments of alien tech. Black enamel glittered in cryo-tubes. Greenish light polished the curve on Bryan’s face, mapped the contours of nose and cheek and brow. Her breath quickened. Remove the readouts. Eliminate the tech. Keep the lean planes of his face. Study those, instead. Know them by heart. Know them blind. “If that’s all it'd be, I wouldn’t be interested.”

  He scanned her face for data, coming to some conclusion, as usual, beyond the rest of them. “I make promises I can’t keep. I have a bad temper.” Pause, and a little cold steel fed into his blue eyes. “I almost killed my stepfather when I was fourteen.”

  “You’re inches away from saving the universe. Rumor says you’re a great kisser.” She looked up through long, dark lashes. “I don’t believe you would hurt a fly.”

  He didn’t seem to breathe. Simplify the problem, she thought, and sometimes you find the solution. “Bryan…if you want to touch me, touch me.”

  She closed her eyes. After an eternity, fingers found the curve of her jaw.

  *****

  Now:

  A pair of thick, black boots crunched her com unit. The wide torso was clothed in something like leather that wasn’t leather at all, a coat that fell to its ankles. Lights flashed in its folds, bits of metal and living circuitry glimmered on sleeves and hem. The face was obscured by a mask of black carapace, save for its mouth. A hint of glow showed as it bared teeth in a disgusted snarl. The double-thumbed hands flexed slightly as it stood over her, and for a moment, she didn’t dare breathe.

  It took her gun with a fluid grace that left her cold. Its hand went to her collar. Dragging her into the open, it left her trembling on the floor. Back into the cases, it chose a med kit and a box of medications before scanning the boxes with more purpose. It hasn’t touched me yet, she shivered. I still have that much.

  Then it took her wrist, and all logic went out the window.

  Its pale skin was soft, almost brittle. Nails drew blood when she clawed its wrist. The cuts she opened healed almost as she watched. Winding fingers into the lips on its hands, she dug in until it screamed. Feel that? She twisted at the wet membranes. Good. That’s for Bob, and Morgan. That’s for Holton Station. Major Abrams. That’s for Mich, damn him, and for Bryan. And for me. Black liquid splattered the deck. Bleed, she thought, and then it flung her into the bulkhead hard.

  She caught her breath as standard-issue zip ties clenched on her wrists. She tried to keep her feet out of its grip. One boot caught it under the chin. The flesh in the throat was very sensitive, she’d been told. Getting hit there had to ring every bell in its head. But it must have ignored the pain. Soon her feet were securely bound.

  It moved back to the cargo. In moments, a vial of the enzyme glimmered golden between its thumbs.

  “Get away from that.” She twisted her wrists until the zip-tie cut skin. If she could get t
he gun…if she could only get that gun…

  It tilted the box and light played across the vials. Twenty gleaming bits of glass stacked ten flats deep. Two hundred doses. Hope for two hundred lives, and it lay within inches of the monster’s terrible hands.

  “This is the enzyme?” It asked.

  She met the place where its eyes should be, glaring at the dead black of its helmet. This was the game, and she had to start playing it now if she wanted to survive.

  It unhooked the box from the cargo matrix, set it to one side, and tied the netting back into place. Then it hefted the box to its shoulder as if it were a box of feathers. It had taken two men to drag the enzyme into the cargo bay, and it took one alien to carry it out.

  There had to be something nearby. A weapon. A knife she could reach. Twisting in her bonds, she searched for anything. A blade, a gun, a broken fragment of plastic. If she just had more time…the monster came back. It stood over her, a heavy black boot to each side of her knees.

  “I do not mean you harm.” Its voice was almost gentle. “It will be easier if you do not fight.”

  She flipped bangs out of her eyes, then spat at the deck, hating the beast with every fiber of her being. “Fuck you,” she whispered.

  It sighed and took a gun out of its pocket. Double thumbs worked organic bubbles down one side of the weapon. There was a blaze of blue light, and everything went out.

  Then:

  When Bryan removed his hands, the light was almost blinding. But what he revealed was worth it. A quilt spread upon the grass of Holton’s South Lawn. A bowl of strawberries. A bottle of Champagne—from France, no less! Adry had to admit, she was impressed. Kneeling on the grass, she let him pour the wine.

  The glass was cool against her skin, and the wine tasted like electricity on her tongue. “A wonderful picnic on…hey, why is this the South Lawn? There’s no North in space.”