Bones Burnt Black: Serial Killer in Space

by Stephen Euin Cobb

  “Good.”

  Feeling his way, he climbed into the back, opened a small red and yellow striped access door next to the hatch and turned a red-handled valve. He then pulled himself to the hatch window and looked out.

  A thin jet of white gas squirted into the vacuum. It grew wide and pale with distance, and became a large churning cloud. Simultaneously, the air inside the cabin became clearer. Soon it would be completely clear, because soon it would be completely gone. The cabin was about to be in vacuum.

  Mike turned toward Kim. Already he was able to see some of the details of her suit and face. He pulled himself closer and brought his faceplate near hers.

  A few locks of blonde hair rested on her forehead. As the only reminders of her vitality, they seemed out of place. Her expression was blank; her were eyes shut; she looked pallid and drawn. Though the green lights of her suit’s lifesupport indicators insisted that her oxygen/carbon-dioxide balance continued to fluctuate—and therefore that she continued to breathe—to Mike, she looked dead.

  He longed to unstrap her and hold her; to comfort her and kiss her and wait for her to awaken like some kind of zero-g sleeping beauty. But again, there was no time.

  Without closing the valve, he climbed into the front and checked the distance to Corvus. They were closer now, he thought. He spent several minutes with the location jets to bring the pod to a stop with respect to the big ship.

  Finally satisfied, he turned to Tina and said, “There! Now we should be stable for a while.” At least, I hope so. He forced a little smile to improve her morale. God, I wish I knew how much damage was done the hull and hull-mounted systems. But can’t worry about it now. Have to concentrate on staying in the shadow.

  _____

  Four hours later, the pod was still in shadow, the three were still alive and the explosions had become small and infrequent. Mike had closed the valve and flooded the cabin with air, but—fearing additional hull breaches—insisted they all remain sealed in their vacuum suits. He had also developed a habit of fidgeting nervously, and uselessly, with the location jets.

  Tina watched him, silently enjoying the show. So are you suffering, McCormack? Are you afraid for your life? Are you afraid for the life of your whore?

  She felt a twinge of hunger, but refused to pause her enjoyment long enough to satisfy, or even acknowledge, her body’s needs. Can’t eat now. Later—if I live.

  Keeping her mind focused on her mission, she gloated internally: How does it feel to look into the face of death? How does it feel to know you have no chance to see tomorrow? How does it—

  Mike unstrapped himself from his seat and leaned forward, looking at something out the window. “Tina.”

  “What?”

  He pointed. “Corvus’s red glow: it isn’t as bright now. And the drops of metal and glass that have been hitting us in the last few minutes all sounded as though they’d solidified before they got here.”

  “What are you saying?”

  He smiled so wide Tina felt certain his lips would sustain permanent damage. “I think we’re past closest approach.” Grabbing her forearm, he shook her once for every word in his next sentence. “I think we’ve survived solar passage!” He stretched his arms around her torso and, despite their vacuum suits, gave her a powerful hug.

  She smiled and nodded and pretended to share his joy, but when he climbed into the rear to inspect Kim’s suit for heat damage she was free to think her evil thoughts unencumbered. Damn! I can’t believe the idiot actually survived!

  Turning, she watched as Mike unstrapped Kim from the wall. Well, it won’t do you any good. You may have saved my life, but you haven’t saved your own.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Skin Deep

  The next day—with the sun shrinking toward a more normal size and the danger of death by its light shrinking as well—Mike slept a long and much needed sleep.

  Before attempting sleep, however, he removed his helmet. He knew it would probably be safer to keep it on; after all, just because the hull wasn’t leaking at the moment didn’t mean it wouldn’t leak later. It might easily have a puncture temporarily plugged by the fragment that produced it. And as the hull’s temperature dropped with increasing distance from the sun, uneven thermal contractions might dislodge the fragment.

  If such a fragment were suddenly blown out by escaping air, the pod’s cabin pressure could drop to lethal levels within seconds. Not the kind of wake-up call any pilot needs; especially one inexperienced and groggy.

  But Mike had insisted for years that he couldn’t get any really restful sleep with his head in one of those steel buckets. Even back when he was prospecting on the Moon he’d had trouble sleeping in a helmet. The vacuum suit wasn’t the problem, it was the helmet itself he found claustrophobic.

  Tina, having already slept, was now at the controls, quietly keeping them in the shadow of what remained of Corvus.

  The great blackened ship tumbled far slower now, thanks to some of its final explosions, and its shadow was no longer completely solid. Sunlight flashed through in a dozen locations, and did so with a rhythmic pattern that repeated exactly during each rotation. Too short to pose a danger to the pod, these flashes were simply annoying; like those from a dozen still cameras going off in your face over and over, endlessly. It was these flashes that caused Mike to stir lazily, and somewhat angrily, from his sleep.

  When he opened his eyes, he simultaneously sucked in a deep breath and drew back in shock. On the window directly in front of him was something he’d never expected to see again: bad poetry, painted in red, by hand. When back-lit by the frequent flashes of sunlight, the red paint became ominously black, like very old and very dried blood. He recovered enough to read through it quickly.

  You think you’ve survived,

  but of course you’re dead wrong.

  Soon you’ll join Richard,

  I’ll not make you wait long.

  The saboteur is in the pod!

  He turned to Tina.

  She was in her seat—almost. Not strapped in, she floated slightly above it. She too was not wearing a helmet, and the pea-green travel case rested lightly—weightlessly—in her lap.

  The smile she directed at Mike was as startling as the words on the window. No longer was it a demure little smile in keeping with her social façade, but a huge evil grin, wild-eyed and menacing; the kind of smile usually seen only on large vegetables during Halloween.

  Mike took a logical leap. “Who are you?”

  She laughed loud and long; laughed so hard she had to tilt her head back to get it all out—yet another caricature of insanity.

  When the laughter subsided, she said with disgust, “Well, I’m certainly not Tina Jennifer Bernadette.” The southern accent, with its overlay of sensual femininity, was gone. Some kind of Midwestern accent had taken its place. “To get close to you without your spotting me I had to take a new identity, and I thought pretending to be the daughter of a woman receiving a Nobel prize was a particularly clever ploy. Don’t you?” She laughed again.

  “If you’re not Tina, then who are you?”

  “Come on, Mike,” she said as though hurt, mocking him with exaggeration. “Don’t you remember? It’s me! Rebecca! Rebecca Dozier.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “Why?” Now she mocked him with exaggerated bewilderment. “Have I changed so much?”

  “You don’t look anything like Rebecca. Besides you’d have to be: what? Fifty years old?”

  “Fifty-two. Do you like my disguise?”

  “But—”

  “But, what? How could I look so young? Or are you wondering how I could pass as Tina when every transaction, financial or otherwise, is verified by fingerprint scanners?”

  Dazed by the sudden revelations, Mike managed only a grunt.

  “Easy.” She shrugged. “I skinned her alive!” And with that she laughed again, even louder than before. “I kidnapped the preppy little tart and had both our skins removed and e
xchanged. A full-body skin transplant. First in medical history.” She nodded proudly to emphasize the statement. “I know. I checked.”

  The pea-green travel case in her lap shifted slightly. “I had to steal a medsys and pay someone to completely reprogram the thing. Ethics and other silly legal constraints are part of their programming, you know.”

  “That’s crazy,” Mike said. “It wouldn’t work. A person’s looks aren’t in their skin. The shape of the face is made by muscles and bones. The skin is just a covering.”

  “True. I did have the bones of my face thoroughly reworked; but that surgery was made easier since it was done while my skin was off. After that, the transplant was a fairly simple operation; Tina and I were about the same size.”

  Involuntarily imagining the altering of face bones on a skinless head, Mike grimaced. “Where’s Tina now?”

  “Dead, along with my medsys programmer. After the operation I didn’t need them anymore. For neatness, I put my old skin on Tina before she died. I considered using her corpse to have a public burial for myself, perhaps even a wake. Not everyone gets the opportunity to cry at their own funeral; but I decided it wiser to completely cover my tracks. I didn’t want anything messing up my little date with you. If I’d planned to survive this trip—which I didn’t—I could have kept her alive to wear my skin and keep it healthy for me. Then I could have changed back to my own skin later. Though, to be honest, after the operation—as soon as I was up and around—I fell in love with my new skin. I’d forgotten how wonderful it felt to have men watch my every move; to see them stumble all over themselves trying to be nice to me. And why shouldn’t they?” She pursed her lips in a brief kiss, then drew the glistening tip of her tongue sideways across her upper lip—ever so slowly—moistening it from one corner of her mouth to the other, and then back again. Rolling her pupils up under her eyelids, she slung her head back as though in orgasm, then dropped her head down level again. “Let’s face it: I’m gorgeous!”

  “But why did you kill all these people?”

  Her expression hardened and she spoke with a deep rage. “To get to you!”

  “But they didn’t do anything.”

  “They were guilty of being in my way! I’ve waited eighteen years, McCormack. During all those years I planned how I was going to watch you die. Do you think I’d let a handful of innocent bystanders slow me down? I would destroy nations getting to you!”

  “And Richard?”

  She winced. “That was a mistake. The crash wasn’t meant for him; it was meant for you. I had friends check the ownership and registration of that craft; everything said it belonged to you—even the loan papers. Only one person was flying it that day, so naturally my friends thought it was you.”

  Mike shook his head. “Richard had lousy credit. I signed all the papers, but he was making the payments. It was his ship. He was living in the thing.”

  “I learned that later.” Her face brightened and she lifted one shoulder in a philosophical shrug. “The sabotage was actually surprisingly easy. Richard—who my friends thought to be you—was careless. He let other people refuel his craft and almost never checked their work. I had a friend in the fueling station at Vengeance and several in the janitorial services. I had one get a fist-full of his hair, swept up after a haircut, and then had another dump it into his hydrogen tank.”

  Gazing wistfully past Mike’s face as though daydreaming about something distant and pleasurable, she spoke slowly. “I watched the recording my friends made of his craft falling out of the sky several times before I learned it was him instead of you. I can still remember how—unaware of the truth—I thought the crash was beautiful, and how I wished there had been an explosion.”

  She looked at Mike again. “I’ve never forgiven you for that.”

  “For what?”

  “For not being in that craft. For not dieing that day.”

  I very nearly was!

  Back then, Mike had split his time between working as a welder in the mining town of Vengeance and going out prospecting with Richard. For two years he’d spent as much time living in Richard’s craft as he had in his own cramped apartment.

  Typical of lunar prospectors, Richard’s craft was little more than an airtight, rocket-powered Winnebago. It possessed the usual hydrogen/oxygen chemical-fired rocket engines: one mounted on the underbelly thrusting up, and two mounted on the rear thrusting forward. It was also outfitted with the usual prospecting gear; gas chromatograph, optical spectrometer, etcetera. It even had many of the comforts of home: shower, toilet, stowable beds and sofa, large video screen, small kitchen, and it could sleep four; though usually there were just two aboard—or one. Richard had been alone at the time of the accident. Officially, an accident. In truth: murder.

  Mike remembered donning a vacuum suit a few days after the crash and walking alone through the wreckage.

  The crash of a prospector ship never received the investigative thoroughness or social reverence that was always given the crash of a passenger craft. Richard’s physical remains had been removed but none of the ship’s debris had been disturbed—except where it had proven necessary for the removal of some part of Richard.

  As Mike approached it, the place had looked just like any other lunar plain—rocky, cratered and crisscrossed with numerous tire tracks—until he’d reached the crash site. Then it was all metal and plastic: smashed, torn, twisted; like a mobile home put through a giant blender and tossed in the air like a salad.

  The debris—some of it recognizable, some of it not—lay scattered over a triangular region several hundred feet wide. The craft had come down at a steep angle, so one corner of the triangle was the impact point. From there the many bits and pieces had fanned out over a wide area; bouncing, grinding, rolling, and in some cases thrown in a high arching curve to come down for secondary impacts.

  Mike remembered everything had been its normal color. Nothing was burned or blackened. There had been no explosion and no fire. This was more than just a little surprising; it was the craziest stroke of chance. The liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks both ruptured on impact, naturally, but each sprayed out in opposite directions. The two liquids never made contact; never had a chance to catch fire or explode in the lunar vacuum. Rebecca surely expected an explosion would destroy the evidence of her tampering—any sane person would.

  Mike pictured Richard flying his craft. How long does it take to fall from three miles above the Moon? How long did Richard know he was going to die?

  “But while Richard’s death was sudden,” Rebecca said abruptly, “I wanted to make sure that your death was slow and painful.” She frowned as though disappointed. “I actually wanted Corvus to dive straight into the flaming face of the sun. Which might sound like a quick death, but I can assure you it would not have been. What’s more, it would have yielded the added bonus of you spending days in terrified anticipation of your absolutely unavoidable death.” She smiled serenely. “Death by plasma; by ionization; by complete chemical disassociation.” The smile disappeared and annoyance crept into her voice. “But that hair clog was impossible to time accurately. It came much too early in the J-maneuver. Hitting the sun was out.”

  Hair clog. Long hair. The real Tina probably never had long hair in her life. The hair tossing gesture was Rebecca’s, from a lifetime spent tossing back long dark hair.

  “When Kim tried to remove my explosive charges from the engines…” Rebecca shrugged again. “Well, I had no choice but to blow the fuel lines immediately.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mike said. “One of the charges went off while I was looking at you.” He didn’t mention which end of her body he’d been watching. “You couldn’t possibly have sent those signals.”

  Rebecca pointed to the blue-rimmed eyeglasses on her face and spoke slowly as though addressing an exceptionally stupid child. “My computer is a headup. I had it transmit the detonation codes. I’d already programmed them into it and had each code displayed as a pair of icons—on
e to arm the charge and one to detonate.”

  She didn’t bother explaining that to select an icon, all she need do was blink twice while looking directly at it. Look-and-double-blink was the headup equivalent of the much older point-and-double-click.

  Mike winced with the pain of realization. The lenses of a headup always look clear from the outside, but they can be displaying anything—text, graphics, movies, TV—over any or all of its wearer’s field of vision. The entire display is completely invisible to everyone except the wearer. “But how did you plant explosives all over the ship without it seeing you? Its cameras are everywhere!”

  “I corrupted the ship’s computer with a virus—technically, a Trojan horse. It made the ship believe that my headup was its chief programmer. This allowed me to cut its IQ down to one tenth of normal, on command. In that state, the ship would ignore whatever it was told to ignore and erase whatever it was told to erase.”

  “Oh.” Mike nodded. “I see.”

  “You were so easy to fool, McCormack. Of course, Nikita’s running off helped too.” Rebecca laughed again. “You really thought she was the killer! It was beautiful.” Rebecca’s expression drooped into a scowl and she glanced into the pod’s rear section for a moment. “Kim nearly blew that one. I think she discovered my little secret, and I certainly couldn’t have her spilling the proverbial beans.” Rebecca’s tone became light, almost casual. “That’s when I tried to kill her, you know. I was about to shove her into the vertical hallway when I heard you coming.”

  “What?” Mike looked at Kim strapped to the rear wall, her arms and legs floating loose, her eyes shut, her face limp. His heart ached for her. “Then you’re the one I saw running away!”

  “Exactly.”

  “But then where’s Nikita?”

  “Dead. I killed her. Couldn’t have her waltzing back into the group and spoiling everyone’s notion that she’s the killer.”

  Mike frowned. “And you killed Gideon while you were alone with him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Akio by greasing the ladder.”