Wings of Retribution

by Sara King

  For a moment, Dallas could not speak. She just stared at the stranger before her and tried to remember why she had ever wanted to trap her in the airlock. To bust her down a peg, surely. But there would be no point, anymore. She didn’t have any pegs left.

  “Who’s hurt?” she managed, tearing her eyes away from Athenais.

  “Rabbit’s in there with Stuart,” Tommy said. “Darley didn’t make it.”

  Dallas swallowed hard. She turned toward the door and pushed it open.

  Inside, Stuart lay in a bloody pool of regen fluid. The wound must have been bad, since the water was almost opaque. It took Dallas a moment to realize that Rabbit was holding a gun to Stuart’s head.

  “Dallas, get out of here,” Rabbit snapped. “He’s desperate for a new host. He’s losing his mind already.” Then, like in a slowed-down horror vid, Dallas saw Rabbit’s finger start to squeeze on the trigger.

  He’s going to kill him, Dallas realized, horrified.

  “Get away from him!” Dallas blurted, rushing inside. She shoved Rabbit out of the way, putting her body between her and the convulsing suzait. “You can’t! He’s a friend!”

  “If I don’t,” Rabbit growled, “he’s gonna try to take one of us for host. Tommy, come get Dallas out of here!” He shoved past her and put the gun back to Stuart’s skull.

  Behind her, the door opened.

  “I’ll be the host!”

  It took Dallas a moment to realize that the words had come out of her own mouth. When she did, her heart started to hammer, but she didn’t take them back.

  Rabbit’s gun lowered a bit. Sweat was beading on his forehead and upper lip. In the pool, the man’s body was beginning to go still. Rabbit looked to him, then back up at her. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, yes!” she snapped, pushing the gun back towards the linoleum. “Get out! You shoot him, I swear to god, I’ll fly this ship into an asteroid belt.”

  “We can’t let you host that thing,” Colonel Howlen said. “We need you to fly the ship.”

  “Athenais can fly it,” Dallas growled. “Put the goddamned gun down, Rabbit.”

  “Athenais…isn’t herself. I’m not sure we can trust her to fly just yet.”

  “You fly it then,” Dallas cried. “You’ve been angling for my job since the beginning.” She gestured at the helm in frustration. “Well, now you have it!”

  Tommy actually lowered his eyes a bit. “I think we’d be better off if you did it.”

  The body in the pool let out a long, deep moan.

  “Someone please just get her out of here while I take care of this!” Rabbit snapped, trying to step past her again.

  “I’m warning you, Rabbit…” Dallas growled, pushing him back, “You shoot him and you’ll be sorry.”

  Rabbit held the gun in place a few seconds more, then seemed to collapse under the strain. He backed away from the regen pool and sheathed his weapon.

  “Go ahead,” he said, waving at the corpse. “He’s all yours.”

  “Get out.”

  Rabbit opened his mouth, eyes on the body, but then caught her eyes and simply shook his head. He turned and followed Tommy out into the hall.

  Dallas locked the door behind him. When she went over to Stuart, she realized that he was still breathing. Or, trying to, at least. The gaping wound in his chest was oozing bubbles and blood faster than the regen fluid could repair it.

  “Listen to me, Stuart,” Dallas said. She grabbed the dying man’s hand. “I’m gonna pull you out of there and hold your head over mine. I saw what you did with Pete. He was a bit banged up afterward, but he was still alive, so I’m not too scared. You can use me until you can find a new host on Terra-9, okay?”

  She thought she saw Stuart’s eyes flicker towards her and a nod.

  Straining, Dallas hefted Stuart as far up the rim of the regen pool as she could, then levered him over the edge. With both of her feet planted onto the polymer side of the pool, she grabbed him by the shoulders and heaved him the rest of the way to the floor, slopping red liquid all over the clean white tiles. Immediately, her breath caught. Stuart’s wound was worse than she first imagined. He was missing a leg and his lower body was shredded.

  And, now that she looked, she realized she must have imagined the nod, because this man was dead. Blood was pushing a clear sheen of regen fluid out of its path in a crimson stain across the linoleum. She looked down at the corpse and flinched back when the eyes blinked at her.

  That’s not possible, Dallas thought. The man was obviously dead.

  Then she realized you could make a dead frog’s legs twitch, with a little electricity applied in the right spots.

  Oh god… Dallas suddenly had the time-stopping realization that she was planning on taking a mind-controlling parasite into her brain.

  One that was making a dead man’s head turn, a hand clumsily reaching towards her leg…

  What the hell was she thinking? Dallas automatically took a step back, letting the hand fall to the linoleum. The dead man peered up at her—like someone looking through a hundred feet of glass—but didn’t attempt to follow her. She saw resignation, there. And fear. Then the corpse went limp, head flopped back to stare at the ceiling.

  Time began to tick past. Seconds turned into minutes, but Dallas couldn’t work up the courage to get down on her knees with the suzait. She glanced up at the door, suddenly wishing Rabbit were back in here with her.

  She again glanced down at the corpse. Somehow, she felt like his time was running out. Just how long could he last in there? Was he already dead? She cringed, realizing she might have already killed him. Guilt started curdling her stomach. Had she given him hope in his last minutes, only to stand over him and watch him die?

  Well, dearie, she realized, there’s one way to find out.

  Her mother had always said she was a ballsy little wench. Heart pounding like a sledge against her ribs, Dallas gingerly reclined on the floor beside the corpse and wiggled until she was lying within reach of the head. Reaching out, she lifted his head just enough to slip her own head under his.

  Oh gods, she prayed, Please let this not be the biggest mistake of my li—

  It happened fast.

  No sooner were their ears lined up than the suzait pounced. At first, it was just an uncomfortable warm, wet wiggling in her ear, like a schoolmate’s Wet Willy, but then something began ripping at the inside and Dallas, despite herself, clawed at her ear and began to scream.

  She could feel it eating its way inside her skull. Her head was pounding like someone was crushing it with the bow of a ship. She couldn’t think, couldn’t move. She thought she was going to die.

  Oh god it hurts, she whimpered, her entire body trembling. Her limbs felt like they were on fire, and her sinuses felt superheated and pressurized all at once. And then there was the gnawing, grinding pain inside her ear, the overwhelming sound of her own flesh being ripped apart… Oh god, oh god… She screamed until her lungs couldn’t hold air.

  And then, almost by magic, the pounding stopped.

  I shut off the pain receptors in the right side of your head, something said to her.

  Dallas jerked. “Stuart?”

  Sorry it hurt so much. I didn’t have the energy left to stun you. I used it all up after the host died.

  “It’s okay,” Dallas said stupidly. All she could think was, I have a parasite in my brain.

  And he was talking to her.

  She was so dead.

  Dallas lay on her back on the linoleum, staring at the blood-spattered ceiling, waiting for him to take over.

  She waited.

  Several minutes passed. Then, when they simply continued to lay there, lukewarm blood seeping into her clothes where they touched the floor, the dead man rapidly cooling beside them, Dallas frowned and said, “Aren’t you gonna do something?”

  Like what? Stuart asked, sounding genuinely curious.

  Dallas blushed furiously. “Well, uh, I thought you had to, uh, you know�
��?”

  Stuart waited.

  Dallas frowned. “You’re just gonna sit there?”

  She heard a soft chuckle. Well, I can certainly take control of motor functions, if that would make you feel more comfortable. But considering how you’re not a mass murderer who’s likely to kill everyone the moment I release the controls, I had thought I’d let you lead. After all, you volunteered for the transfer.

  The way he said ‘volunteered’ felt alien, full of awe, edged with reverence.

  “Hell, no,” Dallas stammered. “I mean, not that I really have any…I mean…I just thought you had to, is all.” Dallas was trying not to think about the warm liquid that was welling up inside her ear. Please don’t let that be brain juices, she thought. Sitting up, she tilted her head towards the floor. A trickle of blood dribbled from her ear to mix with the red pool on the tiles.

  As soon as she did, her gut spasmed and she added her breakfast to the slurry of blood and regen juices on the floor.

  One of the side-effects, Stuart said, in gentle apology. Humans weren’t built for this sort of thing.

  Dallas groaned and wiped her mouth, hands shaking. Her joints didn’t feel as strong as they used to, and she wondered if that was the vomiting or the brain damage.

  The vomiting, Stuart assured her. I was very, very careful.

  There was something tender about his assurance, and it made her feel a lot better. Dallas swallowed down another wash of bile. God, she really hated to vomit. Kind of like sawing off ring-fingers and snacking on rat poison… It was just not on her list of priorities. Dallas pushed herself back up into a seated position and eyed the room around them. She could imagine what her mother would say, if she’d seen her now. My daughter the hotshot flippin’ pilot. Well, you may fly like a bat outta hell, but you ain’t smarter than a goddamn doornail, are ya, girl? You never were a bright one. All twists and turns and no straight and narrow. Well, it’s too late, now. No going back, babe. You’re his meat-puppet now.

  It’s not like that, Stuart said softly.

  Dallas cleared her throat nervously, uncomfortable that he could read her thoughts.

  …and completely unable to do anything about it.

  To keep from falling into full-blown panic, she decided to change the subject. “So…” Dallas whispered tentatively, “you can you see what I see?”

  I set myself up as an observer. I can hear, see, smell, and feel everything you can.

  Dallas wiped her nose—which was bleeding—and glanced down at Stuart’s last host, now a dead body. She stared at it a moment, taking in the damage, realizing that could be her in a week or two. Finally, she whispered, “What hit you?”

  Shrapnel from a grenade I didn’t toss far enough. My sleeve caught on the ATV’s windshield as I was throwing it.

  Oh, great. It was self-induced. That was so much better. “What happened to Darley?”

  A mob tore off his body armor before they took his gun and shot him. He drove himself halfway here, but he died on the way. With only Rabbit and Howlen driving the other two ATVs, we had to leave him there.

  “What about Athenais? She couldn’t drive?”

  I’m not sure. That’s when my memory starts to get fuzzy.

  “I thought you had a memory equal to a thousand of us human brains.”

  I do, but as soon as my host’s vision grew dim, I couldn’t really see what was going on around me too well.

  “Oh.”

  Something pounded on the other side of the door.

  “Come on out, worm,” Tommy shouted. He pounded again, hard, sneering, “What’s taking you so long? Feeling guilty that you just put your only friend in this world into a coma?”

  “Shut up, you old prude!” Dallas snapped. “I’m not in a coma. I’m sorting things out and I’ll come out whenever I’m damn good and ready.” Then she paused as another thought occurred to her. “Oh, and forget what I said about giving you the pilot’s seat!”

  There was a pause on the other side of the door.

  “Dallas?”

  “Speaking of that, could one of you go check the autopilot? I didn’t plot a course when I left, so I have no idea where we’re going.”

  She heard someone curse on the other side of the door and hurried footsteps down the hall.

  “Was he already dead, then?” Rabbit this time, his voice almost gentle.

  “He’s fine. Stop shouting. My head is starting to hurt.”

  You’ll probably need to sleep for a few hours. Transfer is a draining experience, and it doesn’t help that you were exhausted to start. That was impressive flying up there. Was all over the radio. No one told me you were a stick fairy.

  “What,” Dallas muttered, pressing her hand to the side of her head, “You just thought Rabbit was signing all our death-slips?”

  Pretty much.

  Dallas snorted, and had to wipe more blood from her lips when it came out her nose. “So everybody just called me Fairy because…?”

  That actually caught him a moment. …they were cruel?

  Dallas hadn’t actually thought about that before. But it was true…they all knew she hated being called Fairy. She just thought they’d all done it because Athenais made them.

  Then again, she’d called Goat Goat and Dune Dune, even when she knew they had real names. Hell, she couldn’t even remember their real names. She hadn’t known Squirrel had been born Veronica until she found an old love-letter from some dude on Thorn stuffed in the bottom of her dresser. And in her own defense, she’d only pulled it out because it was paper, not a chip, and had the most delicate calligraphy she’d ever seen, and if Squirrel had wanted to keep it secret, she should have copied it to a chip or locked it away somewhere, not left it out, all pretty and beautiful, where anybody could find it.

  Dallas started crawling across the linoleum to reach the wall, which she intended to use to stabilize herself long enough to stand up.

  You should lie down. At least give yourself a few minutes to adjust.

  “I don’t need to adjust, I need to get back to the controls,” Dallas protested, wobbling to her feet. “They’ll smash us into something.”

  Rabbit got around pretty well with Aurora. Howlen had Renee Beckett. And Athenais, well… Don’t worry. They can just cut speed and let us drift if nothing else.

  “Not gonna happ—” Reaching for the door, Dallas lost her footing and slipped, falling to her knees in the blood. She winced, biting out a groan.

  Told you.

  “Oh shut up,” she muttered, sitting down with her back to the wall. “Why’s my balance off? You break something in there?”

  No, Stuart said quickly. My passage threw off the fluids in your inner ear. It’ll take a little while to adjust. Unless you want me to take over and calculate it out manually, you’ll just have to survive on your own until it heals.

  “Uh, not really?” Dallas said, knowing she really didn’t have a choice in the matter.

  Okay, was all Stuart said.

  “Dallas?” Rabbit demanded through the door. “You still alive in there?”

  “I said bugger off!” Dallas cried.

  Oh, he’ll like that, Stuart commented. Considering he honestly believes I’m some sort of insect.

  True to form, Howlen said, “That’s funny, coming from you. Just how lenient is the little bug being? Is he letting you do the talking? Or just pretending he is?”

  Told you, Stuart said with a sigh. Predictable as a pulsar.

  The fact that Dallas had another seeing, speaking, thinking organism in her brain was starting to hit home, and it was all she could do not to hyperventilate. To Stuart, she said, “Okay, so, could you, uh… Take my mind offa…?” She hesitated, unable to finish.

  But Stuart smoothly took her cue. Well, we already went over sexual reproduction of me, sexual reproduction of shifters, sexual reproduction of humans, sexual reproduction of dogs—

  “I didn’t know they had knobs,” Dallas said, in her own defense. Then she flinched
. God, what if he made her have sex with somebody? What if she got pregnant? What if—

  Never, Stuart interrupted, the vehemence like iron in his voice. You have my word. With what you just did, without any request of my own, you are more…special…to me than anything I could ever express.

  “Okay,” Dallas said stupidly. She sat there against the wall for a few minutes, trying to get the world to stop twirling as she stared at the far wall. That she’d given herself a migraine flying circles around the Erriatian fleet couldn’t be helping. “God, I think I might puke again.”

  Outside, they were pounding on the door again.

  You should probably open the door, Stuart urged gently.

  “I dun wanna,” she muttered, the mere thought of crossing the room and the world-spinning that would entail leaving her close to vomiting again.

  You want me to do it?

  “No,” Dallas muttered. “I want to sit here, nice and quiet, and wait for my head to stop spinning.”

  Okay.

  And they did. Almost an hour, without him saying another word. Eventually, her head stopped throbbing, and even the static fuzz left over from seven hours on manual started to diminish slightly.

  Once Dallas was pretty sure she could cross the distance without puking all over herself, she levered herself off of the wall and crawled over to the door. She walked her hands up the frame and unlatched the lock, then weakly pulled it open far enough to stick her head through. Rabbit was standing outside. Athenais and Tommy were gone.

  “So who am I talking to?” Rabbit demanded upon seeing her.

  “Get me a gurney,” Dallas said. “I’m tired as hell and Stuart tells me I can leave Retribution in your hands for awhile without you guys turning it into a shiny new comet.”

  “Dallas? Is Stuart in there?” Rabbit squatted down in front of her, then reached out and touched her ear. When he pulled it back, his finger was bloody.

  “Yep,” Dallas said, staring at the floor as she patted Rabbit on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t hold it against you that you almost shot him.”

  Actually, I do…

  “Well, it sounded good.”