“It’s just a scan.” He mouthed the words elaborately, hoping Trent would understand. The orange band crept closer, inexorable, sliding, and for no reason at all he was reminded of the fiendish serpents that had lain in wait beneath the water on the planet that had almost killed them.
His eyes then filled with an orange light, and he felt a heat penetrating his skull as the band slid downward. A cavity in one of his teeth jumped in pain as the scan progressed, but then it was warming his throat and he flexed his injured shoulder, hopeful it would relieve the soreness.
Might as well get something out of this.
The thought of heat on the injured joint got him longing for the warmth of the shower that he imagined they’d be taking next, and he shut his eyes in anticipation as the scan went on. A long, hot shower, lots of soap, scrubbing off the dirt and the blood and the sweat, sending it all down the drain . . . and then a big meal. Two big meals, both with rich desserts. And coffee and maybe even some alcohol. His system was so completely beaten down that he imagined a good stiff drink would render him insensate, but perhaps a small glass of wine or beer . . .
The alarm startled him, and his eyes snapped open at the noise. It was loud, frightening, a series of grinding woops that came right through the cylinder’s walls even as the room’s lights dimmed and a revolving red light activated in the ceiling. A mechanical voice began bleating, but at first he couldn’t hear it over the horn. His hands reached out for the security of the glass, and he locked eyes with Trent in the other tube.
That is, he locked eyes with whatever Trent actually was.
A heavier mist was cascading down on her, but she wasn’t fighting it. Her arms were hanging at her side, and her forehead was pressed against the tube with the blue eyes fastened on his. They drilled into him across the short distance, intense, hate-filled, accompanied by a sneer of such consuming malice that he screamed out loud.
Now he remembered it, the face he’d first seen looking at him in his transit tube, the one that had made him shriek in surprise. This was the face he’d seen then, not the kind, caring Trent but whatever this was. It seemed to read his mind, and the dark sneer changed into a smile of recognition even as the mechanical voice finally reached him.
“Alien presence detected. Alien presence detected. Maximum security protocol in effect. Secure all hatches. All personnel are to remain in place and prepare to defend the station. Alien life form is unidentified—”
The robot’s words cut out with no warning, as did the blasting alarm. It was as if Mortas had been suddenly struck deaf. The red light kept turning, throwing insane shadows across the darkened room, but it was the new words, the new thoughts, the new images that now consumed him. Taking over, boring into his mind.
What had Major Shalley said? Just before Cranther killed him? That Trent’s words had bored into him. Guess he wasn’t so crazy after—
The thought was torn from his brain and blown away like a feather in a tornado, but the spinning winds carried new things. Memories Mortas didn’t recognize, images he couldn’t have possibly seen, and a voice that wasn’t his.
It wasn’t Trent’s either.
“Trent lied to us.”
His head exploded with a series of pictures, a movie made from the chopped-up pieces of someone else’s experiences. Amelia Trent—the real Amelia Trent—pinned to a surgical table wearing a torn, soiled uniform, writhing while electricity coursed through her. Screaming, convulsing, tugging at the restraints. Face constricted in true terror, even when the current was turned off. A voice in her head. Pulling, twisting, tearing. Searching.
The same voice that was now in his.
“Trent kept the blisters from me. She was a long-distance runner. She knew about them, but she managed to hide it. You almost caught me with that one.”
Mortas felt himself holding a dry, unmarked foot just days earlier. Hers. Its. The feet that hadn’t blistered, hadn’t sweated, didn’t even smell. Then a rush of other feet, covered with ugly bubbles of white and red. He recognized these images. They were his, and Gorman’s, and then Trent’s because this thing had copied them, transformed itself in imitation. Just as it had transformed itself to become Amelia Trent.
“Took forever to break her, and even then she took a few secrets with her. She was much stronger than we thought, but you wouldn’t have expected that any more than we did, would you? That’s why we chose her—a psychoanalyst was perfect cover. No skills your group would need, and you had no understanding of her job. You expected nothing from me, believed whatever I said about her time in service.”
More familiar memories. Cranther belittling her and Gorman. His own misguided disappointment at being saddled with the two presumably useless bodies from the rear echelon. His anger when they’d found the decapitated soldier in the debris field and he’d believed Trent was studying his reaction. And now knowing she—whatever this thing was—had been doing just that.
“Chose you all that way. The perfect team.”
Mortas flinched with the new rush of sensory input, his brain vibrating like a motor. His hands slid off the glass, but he didn’t see them fall. Instead, a flood of images told him the story of how they’d been selected from all the Forcemembers the Sims had captured asleep in their transit tubes.
Gorman for his navigational skills and knowledge of the stars. Cranther because a Spartacan would be required to head for the closest major headquarters. Mortas to lead them, but so new that he could be manipulated. All lean, all young, all strong.
“That’s right. You were all prisoners. Your transports were captured while you slept in your transit tubes.”
Trent had been taken much earlier, so that the thing could learn her. Gorman had been captured on a different transport, just a few days before they’d gained the incredible prize of the Spartacan Scout. Mortas now saw teams of Sim technicians circulating among the transit tubes, chattering, examining, making notations in handheld devices while something else, a presence, floated above it all. Slowly descending, circling, approaching the window of one tube, looking in at the sleeping face.
His face.
Mortas sat down hard, still blind, still deaf. Seeing only what the thing wanted him to see, hearing only what it wanted him to hear.
“The attack threw off the whole plan.”
An empty Insert, slung under giant flying machines, cut loose so that it fell straight down, cracking open, then dragged forward until it was wedged between two ridges on an orange-colored planet. Sinister movers rolling forward to transfer the transit tubes containing the living prisoners . . . and the dead ones.
“Didn’t consider the possibility there’d be an attack. Left the Insert there for three days to let the power run down so you’d wake up naturally. I babysat all of you for three days . . . and somewhere in the middle of that, the humans made a full-on assault on the colony.”
A mixed memory now, part his, part hers, part its. Trent’s confusion and near-hysteria at not seeing any animal life, any birds. Hiding her true concern, the alarm at not seeing Sim aircraft overhead that would guide them to the colony. The colony that wasn’t supposed to be there. The colony that a good Spartacan would have to report to the highest-level headquarters he could reach, if he could steal the ship that had been prepped and set aside for them. The ship that had been wrecked along with all of the others when the humans attacked.
“That ruined the entire plan. But you got me here anyway, the three of you. Gorman figured out where we were. Cranther and you killed for us. And then, when you completely folded up on me, I got you the rest of the way out of there. I was always ready to do that.”
Explosions. He was her now, could feel Gorman’s arm over his shoulder, stumbling along toward the Wren, and then both of them thrown across the tarmac, slammed down in a crunching, crushing heap, multiple broken bones, rolling, searing fire in his side
and he looked down and there was this spear sticking all the way through him. Pulling it out, marveling at all that pain, already sealing off the wound and mending the bones as a man ran up crying—it was him but how could it be him when he was her, the Mortas figure saying he was sorry, certain that Gorman was dead and that he as she was going to die shortly too.
It ended with a jolt as if he’d been slapped. Mortas’s eyes popped open and he was sitting there, emptied, staring at the thing in the tube across from him. The room swam in the red light, but he’d only been given his sight back. The thing pushed off from the glass, coming to Amelia Trent’s full height. The malicious glare disappeared, and for just a moment the thing regarded him with compassion.
“You cried when you thought we were both dead. You cried when Gorman went. And I know you cried over Cranther. Maybe you’ll cry over me now.”
A different mist came down on her in a cloud, and she raised her face to greet it. Her expression was serenely beautiful, right up until the vapor began eating her flesh. She took an awkward step back, bumped into the cylinder, then looked across at him with dissolving hair and skin that was already peeling.
“You were the biggest surprise of all. Brand-new lieutenant, picked at random. There were two others just like you on that transport, but we killed them and kept you. And who did you turn out to be? The son of Olech Mortas—”
The thing convulsed then, jackknifing forward and clutching its stomach as the chemicals burned away more of the skin. It began to spasm, jerking as if trying to escape a straightjacket, and when it looked up for the last time the face was almost gone and parts of a skull were staring at him.
“Just remember that was how I got caught. Simple bad luck. They knew what transport you were on . . . rich kid, senator’s kid gone missing . . . and that Trent wasn’t on that ship.”
It collapsed then, curling into a ball on its side, the mist eating its current form, torturing it, trying to make it reveal its true nature. The spasms took over completely, the rag-doll skeleton shaking all over, and just when it seemed it would simply melt away it burst into a million black specks, tiny fluttering wings crashing around the tube, rising in a cyclone, and then Mortas was able to hear again.
“Alien has transposed! Alien has transposed! Sterilization protocol initiated!”
And the tube filled with a fire so intense that Mortas, cringing as far away as he could in his own cylinder, felt the heat as he screamed.
“Lieutenant?”
The voice was back, not the alien’s and not the robot’s, but the annoying one that had directed them when they first landed. Mortas was motionless, twisted into the fetal position on the grating at the bottom of his tube. The fire had roared in the alien’s cylinder for a very long time, and now foaming chemicals were swirling around in its place.
He believed he’d never move again. Every ounce of energy had been wrung out of him in every way. His brain felt numb, as if the thing had scoured it from within. His mind refused to cope with what had happened, and his muscles refused to answer the simplest of commands.
And the last thing he was going to do was respond to the voice. He doubted they knew the thing had communicated with him, but he was sure that informing them of that experience would mean he’d be examined, psychoanalyzed, scanned within an inch of his life, and then dissected. No. He wasn’t going to tell them a damned thing.
The grate under his bare skin shifted with a scraping sound, opening the vents much wider. With his cheek pressed against them he was almost touching what lay beneath, multiple nozzles that now emitted a sickening odor. His face screwed up as he tried to identify it, but then the igniters kicked in and a hundred tiny flames came alive at the ends of the nozzles.
“I’m here.”
He sat up slowly, sliding his naked back across the glass and bringing his knees to his chest.
“Good.” The voice held a touch of mockery. “You see, we have a lot to discuss before we decide whether or not to let you out.”
“Let me out? You listen to me, my father is—”
“Olech Mortas, Chairman of the Emergency Senate. Yes. We know. We’ve been searching for you for some time now. And just imagine how pleased your father will be when we tell him that you brought a previously unknown alien life form, some kind of shape-shifting entity that was also carrying a deadly plague virus, to the Corps headquarters.”
“I had no way of knowing Trent . . . that thing . . . was an alien. What was it, anyway?”
“We’ll be asking the questions.”
“And what if I don’t feel like answering?”
The jets of flame jumped an inch higher, just for an instant. He flinched with the sudden heat, but then it was gone.
“Lieutenant, your chances of leaving that cylinder are slim at best. And as the lone survivor of your group, there will never be any reason to tell anyone that we found you at all. Ever. Unless, of course, you participate fully in the debriefing we are now going to conduct regarding the alien that you brought here.”
He didn’t respond. His stomach growled anew, disappointed, and he clenched his teeth until they hurt. Cranther was right; there was no one you could completely trust out here.
Except I trusted him, and I wasn’t wrong. He saved my life.
And I trusted Gorman, and he died for me.
And the real Trent, she fought them until they killed her . . . and I trusted that thing because it was imitating her.
And it asked me to cry over it when it knew the game was up.
“Uh, Lieutenant? We’re going to start the debriefing now.” A pause. “That is, if you don’t have any questions.”
No, no questions.
Then a memory, a question from what seemed a lifetime ago. It made him smile, thinking of what that speaker might do in his place. Calling up all the spit in his mouth, he leaned over and drooled a pathetic string onto the flames. They hissed at him, and then he sat back up.
“Yeah, I have one question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Where’s your hot chow?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Henry V. O’Neil is the name under which award-winning mystery novelist Vincent H. O’Neil publishes his science-fiction work. A graduate of West Point, he served in the U.S. Army Infantry with the Tenth Mountain Division at Fort Drum, New York, and the 1st Battalion (Airborne) of the 508th Infantry in Panama. He has also worked as a risk manager, a marketing copywriter, and an apprentice librarian.
Henry Vincent O’Neil, the grand-uncle in whose memory he was named, was studying for the priesthood when he perished in the worldwide influenza epidemic of 1918.
Rest in peace, servant of God.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Books written under the name Vincent H. O’Neil
Interlands: A Tale of the Supernatural
Death Troupe
The Frank Cole / Exile Mystery Series
Murder in Exile
Reduced Circumstances
Exile Trust
Contest of Wills
www.vincenthoneil.com
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
GLORY MAIN. Copyright © 2014 by Henry V. O’Neil. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form
or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition July 2014 ISBN: 9780062359186
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062359193
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