Starbleached

by Chelsea Gaither

  Bryan ran his hands through his long, thick hair. Fingers clenched, he hit the wall so hard the skin on his knuckles split. A few drops of red hit the decking. “He’s right.” Bryan said, to the wall. “I’m just like that son of a bitch.”

  “Your stepfather?” Adry said.

  He was silent for a very long time while her hands gently ran over his back. “He molested both of us. When he was angry, he’d…we had broken ribs. Fingers. Broke my leg, once. I used to get his attention on purpose, so that he’d hurt me instead of Mich. It worked for a while, but when I got a scholarship for an early college program I knew I wouldn’t be able to protect Mich anymore.” He took a deep breath, still speaking to the wall. “I got Dad’s shotgun. I told him to get out, and never come back, or else I’d kill him. He came at me with a…god, it must have been a club or something. So I pulled the trigger, and I hit him in the thigh.”

  “How old were you?” She took his hand, held it tightly.

  He turned, eyes still closed, and slid down against the wall. She sat with him, touching his shoulder. “Fourteen. Mich was twelve,” Bryan sighed. People walked by, soldiers with steel spines, engineers with touchpads and tools. This hallway was the only one that lead from the bright greenery of the civilian zone to the dark angles of war. It allowed for easy personnel movements, and could be defended with minimal effort. Not that Holton would ever be attacked. Military minds just liked things that way.

  “What happened to your stepfather in the end?”

  “He was supported by child allotment from Mich and me. Without us, he had nothing. So he signed up with one of the mission teams back when Foster was being invaded. The Overseers fed on him. One of the few times we had a body to identify. Mich blamed me.” Silence, while Bryan leaned his head against the wall. “How am I different from them? The only solution I reached for was violence. The sword. Not the scalpel.”

  “I don’t know. A scalpel must look pretty nasty to a tumor.”

  Bryan closed his eyes. “I just hope Mich is smart enough not to get himself killed.”

  “They’ll find him. Everything will be fine.” Adrienne said, then smiled. “Or as fine as things can be, when they involve Mich.”

  Bryan caressed her face, then kissed her. A gentle, lingering thing that promised heat in the future, whole volcanic eruptions. “You’re an optimist. I didn’t even know we made them like you anymore.”

  “I have you.” She touched his face, then kissed him back. “As long as that’s true, everything’s roses.”

  *****

  Now:

  It didn’t tie her hands again. After she changed clothes, it lead her back to its village. There was a path, one part beaten dirt, one part O-tech, and one part human construction. That last part had left her a bit off balance. The bridges and path supports she found were solid. The kind of work you’d be proud of. Not the kind of thing you’d build for your scary alien master, to make its preying on you easier.

  “It isn’t far.” The Overseer said.

  She hefted her pack. It held everything she thought she might need. Food. Clean water, because if these unseen villagers were willing to trade their lives for a water purification system the stuff in the local water must be pretty awful. And speaking of that…she stepped over a fallen log. “How much did the purification system help?”

  The Overseer was having a much easier time of it. Its not-leather clothes were barely dirty. “Infections decreased, but did not stop.”

  Well, it was probably in the water, then. With the Overseer’s filtration system in place, she’d expect a decrease. But if the villagers had gone without a purifier for a while they weren’t going to use the clean stuff for washing and bathing. “How about symptoms?”

  A shrug of black garbed shoulders. “High fever. Vomiting and other digestive issues. A rash. Near the end, the rash bleeds.”

  Huh. For an inhuman monster, that information was actually helpful. “Is the rash onset symptom, or—” a tree branch tangled with her boots and she went down. Grabbing for the nearest support, she found herself tangled in the Overseer’s arms. Nematocyst teeth prickled against her skin. Trembling, she looked into its dreadful face..

  A solid wall of disgust rolled through her. Goddamn this thing for taking her. Goddamn it for making her see it as something more than a thing. And thrice-damn it for hurting people, good, innocent people, just because it hungered.

  Its lips twisted as if in pain. Her disgust must burn against its mind. Good. She was getting some of her own back. “Give me the formula corrections, and I will let you go.” It held her almost gently. The prickling sensation withdrew.

  Get out of my head. “Why do you want it?” she whispered.

  “So I can live.”

  “You have a pulse. How many other people don’t because of you?” She waited for an answer, past when it was obvious one would not come. Slowly, it helped her stand on her own.

  “As long as you haven’t shared your formula, I do not dare harm you.”

  She glared up at its terrible face. “Then let’s get this over with.”

  *****

  Then:

  “They found him.” Paige’s head stuck through the door to Bryan’s office. The look on her face was a bit less than joyous. “He showed up at Gaga in the fighter. According to Shawn’s man on the ground he looked like he hadn’t slept in two days.”

  Bryan sighed. “That fighter had subspace only. No jump drive. He didn’t have enough time to go anywhere else. Thank God. What are they going to do with him?”

  Paige shook her head. “Probably confine him to barracks until they have enough for the court martial. No point in arresting him yet. Where would he go?” Bryan shrugged his answer, and the shrink left. On her way to some other patient, some other great problem needing her attention.

  Worried, Adry eased her chair a bit nearer to Bryan’s. Ever since Mich took off, he’d been tired. The steel she’d come to love had, it seemed, rusted. “You okay?”

  “I just want to know what he’s thinking. It took all his time and fuel just to go in a straight line to Gaga. He put his ass in a sling for absolutely nothing. And that…” Bryan sat up. “That’s not like Mich. He doesn’t waste gestures like that. Not after Abrams, anyway.” He turned back to his work.

  “You know, I still don’t know the whole story behind that.”

  “You never asked.” He had a sad little smile.

  “I figured you’d tell me eventually. Or Mich. Or somebody else. But no one has.”

  Bryan sighed and leaned back in his chair, fiddling with a pen as he gathered his thoughts. He shook his head, as if he were flicking the weight of the world off his shoulders. Then he said, “Major David Abrams and my brother went on a mission to Foster. We’d identified a former commander in a slave pit. Abrams thought they could get him back. He volunteered to go, and that meant Mich went too. You couldn’t keep them apart. They went into the pit, found the commander and two Overseers. We didn’t have shock rounds at the time to lock their nervous system, so Mich put bullets in the cranium of one, and it went down. The other picked this device off the table. We think they planned on using it on the commander, but the Overseer slammed it into Abrams instead. It punctured his cranium and wound into his nervous system almost immediately. Abrams didn’t even realize he’d been injured. They got the commander out. He’s back on Earth, in a nursing home. I got word yesterday, he remembered his own name.”

  He stopped, taking a deep gulp of air. She sat near, taking his hands in hers, and waited for him to start talking again. It took a long time, and first he let go of her hand.

  “By the time we got Abrams into med bay the device had extruded a secondary spinal cord and invaded his torso. We spent every minute trying to stop it, and he hung with us every step of the way. The…skeletal changes were the worst. He spent four days screaming. Then the pain began to die off, and he thought I’d saved him. He went to sleep, and when he woke up, there were mouths in his hands and Davi
d Abrams was gone. We had a very big, very strong alien who thought we’d spent the last several days torturing him.” Bryan shook his head.

  “Paige Jones told me he remembered.”

  “We’d been playing mind-games with an Overseer for a month by then. I don’t believe anything he said or did. Whatever he remembered, he used to play with us.” Bryan shrugged, studying his hands. “He was a good kid. Kept Mich sane. Kept his team on an even keel. And If I were in his shoes I’d have a higher body count.”

  “I don’t think you’d kill anyone.” She said.

  He brushed her cheek. “You see people the way you want them to be. It’s beautiful.”

  “Sometimes I take the wrong view, you know. Decide something is bad when it’s not. That’s not so beautiful.”

  “No…but that will keep you alive longer.” He kissed her, running his fingers through her hair. She leaned into it, letting it take her. It was relief. Release. Beautiful.

  And then Holton Station began to scream.

  *****

  Now:

  Screaming babies. Screaming children. Adults holding their heads, vomiting into buckets. The village hospital was a dirt floored shack, dry boards keeping the swamp out. Good God, she thought. How was anyone alive in this place at all?

  “I’m going to need antibiotics,” she said. Several of the ill had open, weeping sores. “Bandages, clean…” she turned to look up at the Overseer. It was gone.

  “He leaves.” A woman stood. “If he is not needed, or cannot help. He stays away.” She was a tall, bony woman. Bird-like and old, hair still red as a burning fire. She tied it back in an exquisite knitted shawl. A slender, pale hand, knuckles thick with arthritis, was offered with the majesty of an empress. “Galina Annakova.”

  “Adrienne Parker. How many are sick?”

  Dark eyes fixed on hers. “Two thirds of the village. It has been this way since the last of our drugs were taken.”

  “Taken? What drugs?” She felt the neck of the nearest child. She was a pretty little thing, very blond. Her pulse was low, and sweat dripped from her chin to the wooden table below.

  “Amenoperithol. The new favorite antibiotic among Rim-World black markets. It catches high price these days. Overseer gave us enough for fifty years, but it was stolen. And he needs sample to make more.”

  “Amenoperithol treats biological agents, not viral or bacterial. You know what’s causing this?” Swollen lymph glands. The girl’s fever was very high.

  “Amoeba. Similar to Earth bug causes giardia. Only in later stages this has overtone of Lassa.” She smiled at Adry’s sharp look. “I was doctor, Dr. Parker.” The woman smiled. “Now I am just Galina.”

  “The Overseers took it away, huh?” Adrienne asked, fishing an antibiotic popper out of a pocket and holding it under the girl’s nose. The child giggled fearlessly, and snapped it open on her own. Green-amber mist rose around her nose and mouth, inhaled on a laugh. God bless children.

  “I am trained in surgery with laser, not knife. I know no drug older than Amenoperithol. I cannot sterilize a bandage without a rad-field. Since we lost ours, many have died of sepsis.”

  “I’m sure being dinner for an Overseer isn’t helping with that. How many people has it killed?”

  “None.”

  Adrienne almost dropped the poppers. “Excuse me? It feeds on you. On you.” She pointed at a scar under the old woman’s breast bone.

  “I trade for clean water. I think it give us a bottle. It give us a machine instead. All things need to live. And he feeds shallow. No one dies.” Galina smiled. “He give us the enzyme for free. I do not think this fair, so I give him the shirt and pants you wear. Value for value.”

  Adry didn’t want to discuss this. It didn’t fit with her accepted world view. “Here’s two more poppers. Give her one tomorrow, and one the next day. And I’m going to see if I can’t get my hands on more...”

  Movement from behind. Both women turned fast. The Overseer was back, an alien box in its pale hands. The objects inside were oddly shaped, but their function was obvious. Alien Amenoperithol poppers. She rolled her eyes.

  “Will it suit?” Galina asked. Her hands moved restlessly over the child’s, almost possessively. The family resemblance was pretty strong.

  “It takes three of mine to clear up basic biological infection.” She raised an eyebrow at the Overseer.

  “These are chemically the same.”

  “It should work, then. As long as nobody else gets sick.” She turned to Galina. “It gave you a purification system, are you using it for washing and cooking, or just drinking water?”

  “Cooking, yes. But we should not use potable water for washing. It is too valuable.”

  “So are your lives. Dirty water gets in your mouth when you bathe, the bug gets on your skin from your clothes. If you can’t use the purification system for washing, at least boil the water before you use it. Same goes for sterilizing bandages. Boil purified water, put the bandages in, and keep them…” she trailed off. Where the bloody hell could someone store bandages in this swamp?

  “Sterile boxes,” Galina turned to the Overseer. “I am sure I can find two donors, perhaps three, to trade for--”

  “They are outside, with more medical supplies.” It looked to Adrienne. “There is a limit to my leechery.”

  “And you’re above trading medical supplies for bleeding folk dry?” she said, sarcastically.

  “I am,” It said, no tone in its voice at all.

  Note to self: Overseers have the sense of humor of a traumatized rock. “How widespread is this disease?” She moved on to the next patient. If it were this prevalent everywhere, all the antibiotic poppers and sterilizers in the universe wouldn’t save these people from this nasty little bug.

  “Is not limited to this area, but no other village has a problem this severe.”

  “That…is really suggestive.” She closed her eyes, brain working far too fast to be forgivable. The Overseer had begun to leave. Adry grabbed its sleeve. “Don’t go anywhere. We need to talk.” She handed over another three poppers to an old man in faded clothes. “Take the first now, the next tomorrow, and the third on the next day, okay?”

  Galina took the bowl of poppers. “I can distribute them, if it is that simple.” Adry nodded, and the old Russian woman moved to the next patient. She jerked her head at the door. “Go to him, Doctor. Solve our problem.”

  She went, moving like someone in half a dream. The Overseer stood outside. Terrible and alien and…bizarrely, more than a little lost. Stockholm Syndrome, Adry thought, and shook that stupidity off.

  “What did you wish to discuss?” The Overseer asked.

  “A trade.”

  Then:

  Alarms sounded throughout Holton. Adry had been through enough drills to know what they meant. Medium pitch alarm, the station was venting atmosphere. Compromised weapon systems were a high double blat. And that low base rumble throbbing through her feet? Invasion. Invasion. Invasion.

  The Overseers had found Holton Station.

  “How did they know where to look?” she whispered to Bryan.

  He took her by the arms and pulled her towards the office door. “Come on. We have to get you out of here.” Only he didn’t use the main exit. He pulled her back to the service entrances. “It’s a faster shot to the military sections this way.”

  Where the ships that would carry them away were waiting. “No,” She said. Cold shock was fading back into action. “Bryan, I have patients. I have to organize the medbay evac. That’s part of my job.”

  “They’re going to evacuate the station.”

  “Exactly. I need to—”

  “Get on a ship. That’s protocol. You’re a partner in my research, Adry. Your survival is priority.” He closed the door and dragged her through the hallway.

  “What will you be doing?”

  “I have to delete our research. It’s all backed up on the evac ships, but we cannot leave anything here. Not one scrap of
data. I have to make sure we get it all.”

  “You have your research, Bryan. I have my patients.” She took her hand out of his. “I’ll meet you in the military hall, and we’ll go to the evac ships together. But you have to let me do my job.”

  He closed his eyes, drew her hands to his lips and breathed in. He was almost shaking with the tension passing all around them. “Valkyrie.” That grip of his almost hurt her hands. “Promise me you’re not going to get killed,” He whispered to her fingers. “Please.”

  “Still with that old world charm.”

  Blue eyes darted up to hers. “Don’t you forget that retro suitcase.” The world shook hard, the noise shattering. He smiled in a tight, very un-Bryan way. “Time to go.”

  *****

  Now:

  “The infection has to have a nearby source,” She said, dryly. “It sounds like this village is in line with a plume. We have to clean it up.”

  “We?” It asked, sounding amused.

  “You lose half your cattle otherwise.” She sighed, closing her eyes against her next move. This was betrayal, through and through. But did she have a choice? “Help me, and I’ll give you the Enzyme formula, and all the help you need to synthesize it.”

  “Just to save this village?”

  “I saw a couple of the late stage folk. They’re bleeding out through the rash. I don’t trust this thing to stay local.” Silence. The swamp seemed to breathe around them. Soft mist rose through the air and shimmered in the low sunlight. “You beat me,” She whispered. “I’m not strong enough to watch people die.”

  It hissed, but somehow this was not scary anymore. More like a man whistling in surprise than a monster being nasty. “I expected you to run when I left you alone.” It jerked its head at the thick water floating around. “They’re smart enough not to drink, wash or cook in this. They cart the water in from the only flowing source. There.” It pointed with one long, strange finger.