Through most of the shuttle’s flight, Klein’s sleep was a thoughtless void, a state of unconsciousness so deep that both dreams and nightmares were denied him. Occasionally images would form—an odd insect-like creature carrying him off in his arms, victory over a Russian man in a small town’s election, a series of strange, inhuman women with shifting faces and names he couldn’t remember. Occasionally memories began to slowly congeal and names returned to the images: Locals to the bizarre insects, Entara to the alien woman who appeared most frequently. But just as a sense of time and place began to reassemble, Klein would hear a soft hissing noise coming from one of the pipes attached to his suit and another dose of the chemicals entering his lungs, returning his mind to the unconscious abyss and ripping his recollections away from him again.
The effects of the icing drugs finally began to fade away, and sensation and memory began to return to Klein. He was vaguely aware of the tingling in his shoulders and sleepily dismissed the feeling, but when it crept across his chest and down onto his belly, heading south, his eyes sprang open and he leaped from his bunk yelling, “Shit!” He brushed the alarm stinger off his body.
With a loud metallic click, the door to Klein’s room swung open. His vision was still a bit blurry, but he could still identify the man standing in doorway as Sergeant Bradford. “Up and at ‘em, Klein! You and the other apes on this shuttle got a meetin’ with Major Chaudhury, so get your ass into the meeting room for the briefing!”
Klein saw several other residents of the Domremy penal colony moving down the hallway in varying states of awareness. There weren’t many -- Klein thought he glimpsed eleven, maybe twelve at most – and he couldn’t recognize most of them. He heard a loud shout of “Como estas, amigo!” from in front of him, and saw Guzman high-fiving a man unfamiliar to him. A Marine was motioning the men to enter the open doorway to a small room. Klein moved with the group of somnambulant bodies into the doorway, his mind still dull from the effects of the icing.
The room was very bare, with unadorned grey walls that made it look like some sort of storage compartment and cheap metal folding chairs and a wall-mounted computer that had hastily been put in. Guzman, who was sitting next to a guy Klein recognized as a fellow Mankiller named Rodriguez, waved from his bench. Rodriguez nodded at him and was about to speak when a Marine officer came into their compartment. He was typically no-nonsense. “I am Major Chaudhury and you can all consider yourselves auxiliary conscripts in the Marine Force until you are discharged. You will obey my orders and those of any other Marine officer or be flushed out the hatch immediately, understood?” The mankillers and convicts silently nodded.
Chaudhury produced a stylus from his pocket and tapped the monitor. A multi-dimensional map of a space station appeared. “You have been activated to help deal with a situation that has developed at Transfer Clavius, the next station on the way to Dahlgren. All that you need to know is that a transport infested with Spondean parasites docked there several days ago, and by the time they were detected it was too late. Fortunately, the crew were able to seal and quarantine the station before they were overcome. Two ships had already departed before the danger was recognized. Their personnel were also overcome and the ships have been neutralized by military action.” So dozens and perhaps even hundreds of humans had already been snuffed so that the parasites could not spread farther. SOP.
Chaudhury continued, “When we reach Transfer Clavius, my men will take care of the parasites. Your job, similar to what you do on Domremy, is to deal with the infested.” Let’s not call them survivors, because they won’t be, for long.”
“Mierda,” blurted Rodriguez. “You’re going to ice us and thaw us out just in time to spare you the trouble of killing our own kind.”
Chaudhury glared at Rodriguez as he said, “You and the others would not have been selected for this mission had you not already demonstrated an aptitude for violence. Though not all of you were designated mankillers on Domremy, every single one of you has some prior history of aggression that marks you as having the potential to kill your fellow man. Don’t insinuate that you are somehow ‘above’ the tasks you have been commissioned to do, or I will have you jettisoned. Understood?”
Rodriguez had a disgusted look on his face, but offered no retort to Chaudhury. He nodded silently in response.
“Excellent. I trust there are no more objections.” Chaudhury continued. “We will soon be docking not with a transport, but an attack vessel.” Klein had spotted the set of rings around the hull of the ship they were approaching against the black backdrop of space in the viewer screen. “This means we will be travelling in live mode at many times the speed you have experienced before. So you will not be iced, but juiced.” A murmur ran around the gaggle of convicts. It made sense. Icing takes a couple of days to process completely and a couple of days to come down. These boys needed to jump out of their ship combat ready. Spondean parasites were supposed to give no more than forty seconds reaction time at close quarters, and a space station is very close quarters. It was not combat that was bothering the men, but the idea of juicing. They all knew that, unlike icing, juicing had a 10-15% failure rate. Major Chaudhury scanned them over one last time. “Any questions?”
“Do we get breakfast?” Rodriguez snarled. They felt a bump through their shuttle bulkheads.
“Sorry. Disembark now. Processing will begin as soon as you are boarded on the Kearsarge. That is all.”
There was little to remember of juicing but more bits of weird dreams and sensations. Not painful, but strangely incongruous. The juice wore off as they were slowing for landing at the station. The mankillers were issued some combat fatigues, but they waited weaponless as they heard portals opening for the Marines to rush onto the station decks and vaporize the parasites off the necks of their human hosts. The “survivors” would be left to stumble around almost brainless until the mankillers were summoned. This kind of thing happened any time humans had to be neutralized. Rumor had it that the military was working on robots who might be able to do the job, but so far programmers had been reluctant to go so far as to enable AI entities for homicide. Who knew if it could be effectively controlled? Convicts with commuted murder sentences, like Klein, were a cheaper and more reliable alternative.
Finally the “Go” signal flashed in the compartment and as the mankillers were rushed out the hatch onto the station, they were given a handgun and a belt of full magazines. Klein, like the others, was a bit shocked at first. They were old percussive pistols, Taurus 9mm. Most folks had not handled anything like that for a long time, but they were more convenient for up-close execution than M221s that had an effetive range of nearly 2 miles. Again, it made sense, in a company-military kind of way. Before being sent up to Domremy, Klein had shot detectives with a weapon not too dissimilar. He held it up and showed the others, in case they hadn’t. Switch to single shot and cock back the action. With a finger on the other hand, he pointed to the spot next to the ear where the round should go. They moved out and quickly started putting down the zombie-like inhabitants of the station, changing magazines as they ran along.
Even without the parasites attached to their necks, the “survivors” were instantly distinguishable from healthy humans. They always had a glassy look to their eyes, staring straight ahead with no expression. The hands of the survivors had a tremor to them, and there was a twitchiness to their mouths, as if the dim remnants of their minds were still trying to recall how to form words. Killing them was easy as long as Klein could convince himself that they had completely lost their humanity, but he had his doubts. One of the ones Klein slew was an old man with a long white beard and thick glasses over his eyes. There was an almost professorial pompousness to this once-human, its mouth constantly opening and closing as if trying to recall some lecture, its shaking hands still outstretched like it wanted to make some grand gesture. Out of a mix of pity for the man he used to be and morbid curiosity as to the exact nature of the “survivors,” Klein let the onc
e-human thing linger too long, staring a few seconds at the creature as it shambled towards him. A loud bark of “Shoot it now!” in Bradford’s brusque voice came out of his com, and Klein fired his Taurus at the creature’s head. The bullet passed directly between its eyes, ripping through whatever remained of the thing’s cerebral lobes, and the “survivor” expired within a fraction of a second. Klein felt a twinge of remorse looking down at the disheveled heap in front of him, wondering how much memory the creature had retained of the man he had once been before he had blown its brains out.
When Klein found himself at the end of a long corridor with no other targets to shoot and a Marine guard facing him who was shaking his head, he thought he was done and prepared to hand over the pistol. Sergeant Bradford shouted into Klein’s com, “Not yet. Go over to sector 6, deck B. Your friend Rodriguez needs some help, it seems.” Klein assumed Rodriguez had just run out of ammo and ran to his location to give him an assist. He found Rodriguez hunched over next to a closed bulkhead, with the bodies of several survivors splayed around him. Klein noticed that they looked like members of an extended family: he noticed a woman in late middle age, a young man who looked about nineteen, and an old man, all dead from massive head and chest wounds.
“What’s wrong, amigo?”
Rodriguez faced Klein with a sick look. “Niños. Todos ellos son niños.”
As desensitized to killing as his time on Domremy had made Klein, the thought of killing a child filled even him with revulsion. Latins always had trouble with the young ones, and Klein wondered how much Rodriguez had suffered back on-planet if he ever sighted on a kid in the clutches of a Local.
“Està bien. Espera aqui.” He opened the bulkhead and stepped into the compartment to take care of it himself. He choked down his disgust as he looked into the compartment and saw the children inside. Though the parasites that once sat on their necks had been carefully removed by the Marines, they still had the blissful look of angels that roused a sense of sin out of the dark recesses of Klein’s atheistic conscience. Only one thing to do: pick the prettiest little blonde girl and start with her. Shut off the old mind and think only of the individual little blonde hairs where you are aiming.
Suddenly, Klein heard a pained yell from behind him! As he turned, he heard the sound of a nine-mil barking out. He saw a small child dead on the floor and Rodriguez frozen, with an anguished look of shock on his face. There were bite marks on Rodriguez’s leg, indicating the survivor had attacked him and drew blood before he had killed it. Klein had been told that the survivors were dangerous and possibly infectious even after the parasites had been removed, but was startled that they retained some alien instinct to actively attack the uninfected. With grim resolve, he realized what he had to do to the other children.
His fingers clenched up and he felt a surge of vomit coming, when all at once a soft hand touched his shoulder and a voice said, “Stand down, Mankiller. This is something I know how to do better.”
He turned around to see a woman with light brown hair in a medical uniform. “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?”
“Yes. At Tau Ceti station on your way out.”
“Helga Pedersen.”
“Yes. I was the nurse who prepped you for your second icing. I’m glad you remembered. You may not want to remember this, so you’d better leave.”
He turned and had almost stepped out of the compartment when he turned to watch her. She had cuddled the little blonde girl in her lap and was stroking her hair, singing a nursery rhyme in Danish while an assistant behind her readied a syringe. Helga’s gentle coaxing had lessened the girl survivor’s aggression, somehow recalling a dimming memory of when she was a beloved child. The shaking in the girl’s hands stopped, and her mouth closed and relaxed. Helga kissed the girl on the forehead when she injected her.
Rodriguez had been sitting in a detention room and dreading his debriefing for about an hour. He knew that Chaudhury would not take it lightly if he ever found out that the child had bitten him and drawn blood. Chaudhury had it in for him ever since he had interrupted him during the briefing and if he found out that Rodriguez was potentially contaminated, his chances of returning to Domremy alive were slim indeed. The fear of death burning inside his mind, he turned to the religion the Disidentes on Domremy had taught him. He pulled a chalk stick and a small piece of paper out of his pocket, hastily drew a circle with a cross inside it on the paper, and started praying
Padre nuestro, que estas en el cielo...
Sergeant Bradford swung open the door to the detention room. “What is the meaning of this?” he roared at Rodriguez. “You were given a very specific objective to complete, and you completely FUBAR’d it! Klein had to clean up the mess your sorry ass left behind! Tell me, you incompetent piece of shit. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Can’t do this anymore!” Rodriguez yelled. “Killing all those people, then the niños…it’s killing my soul! I can’t sleep or think without their faces in front of me anymore! I can’t be a mankiller no more, I want out!”
“You’re not a good soldier,” sneered Bradford. “You’re not even a good mankiller anymore. I should have you thrown out the airlock now, before Chaudhury gets around to doing it. Instead I’m gonna give you a chance to prove you aren’t the worthless, cowardly puke you’ve been on this assignment. Take a swing at me, I dare you.”
Rodriguez wavered. Is he trying to trick me into getting court martialed? He thought to himself. Hesitantly, he raised his fists to defend himself.
“You heard me, you pussy! You throw the first punch! Don’t do it and I’ll drag you off this goddamn ship myself!”
“Maldito hijo de puta!” Rodriguez yelled, putting all his rage and force into a haymaker aimed at Bradford’s head. Bradford quickly brought his left arm up to block the punch and countered with a strike to Rodriguez’s nose. Bradford watched as Rodriguez winced in pain as blood trickled from his nose.
“Looks like an ugly nosebleed you got there,” Bradford said. “Not as nasty as that bite the survivor gave you, of course. First 48 hours after contact, we have about 85 percent chance of clearing the infection, but it starts to plummet after that—that’s what Helga says anyway. Lucky for you I found out before Chaudhury, he’d have had you liquidated immediately if he discovered it. You’d best get to sick bay and ask for her ASAP.”
Rodriguez nodded, his bloodied face smiling for once. He quickly left the detention room and hurried in the direction of the sick bay. A good sergeant always fights for his men, Bradford thought. Even if he has to hurt them do it. He pulled a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and used it to burn the paper with the chalk circle that Rodriguez had carelessly left on the floor. When dealing with God, don’t ask, don’t tell.
Klein was disarmed, sitting idly on a chair in the canteen of the Kearsarge, when Helga Pedersen came through the door, looking sad and exhausted. She sat down across from him. “They have to wait a few hours before decontamination clears the ships for departure. I’ll be returning to Tau Ceti, of course.”
“Is Rodriguez doing any better?”
“Oh, his condition is improving quickly. He should be cleared for return to Domremy in about two weeks. He was very lucky to have Bradford find out about his exposure before Chaudhury did—I doubt Chaudhury would’ve given him the option to come to us. Rodriguez’s body may be free of the Spondean parasites, but his mind—I think he’d been exposed to the psychological trauma of killing for far too long, and the experiences of this mission made him finally snap. He should never be a mankiller again.”
“About Bradford discovering the wound before Chaudhury…you don’t know anyone who might have clued him in on that, do you?” Klein asked.
Helga briefly smiled at him. “If I can save even one person from the parasites, I feel like my job is still meaningful. Sometimes I think the times I’m able to save lives are the only things keeping me sane. I’ve seen so much death here on this one station, I’m starting to feel like a
mankiller myself.”
“I’m glad you don’t have to live at Site 89 like I did. So many of the colonists from the days when Cashman was still in charge there ended up dead.”
“Who was Cashman?”
“Guy I used to know. Worst boss I ever had. I’ve been on Domremy so long that I can’t remember the official business-speak for a firing…what is it that the HR people say?” he asked.
“I think the term they prefer is ‘amicable severance’ these days,” she answered.
“Well, my severance from him definitely wasn’t ‘amicable’ in the least!” Klein said with a chuckle.
Her hand made its way across the plastic table and took his. “Can you come and lie down with me for a while? I know it’s officially forbidden for you, but I’ve arranged for no one to be looking and I suspect you have a nasty back injury from your recent engagement that needs my medical attention.”
He looked her straight in the eye. “Are you sure you want this? You could get into a lot more trouble than it’s probably worth.”
“I know it sounds stupid,” she answered. “But after saying goodbye to all those little souls, I can’t help but think that some of them may still be around. Maybe looking for some place to live. I want to try to get pregnant again.”
“You can probably find a man at Tau Ceti who can actually see you again afterwards, or at least send you a digital. I don’t know if I can be any good for you. I’ve been iced twice, juiced once, and exposed to a Class 9 binary’s radiation for years now. I’m probably shooting nothing but blanks.”
“Other men were not there where we just were. I have a feeling about you. Let’s try.”
Life Sentence (Forlani Saga Book 1) Page 16
