Tales from Omega Station: Belly of the Beast

by ZJ McBeattie

  ***

  Doctor Xandrino stalked into the lab and I shuddered and hunkered down in my cage, just like all the rest of us test animals.

  Well, all but two of us. Number Three, in the cage next to me, just lay on his back in his own filth, moaning softly. He couldn't throw off the latest disease they'd given him. His skin was peeling off all over his body, bones were already showing through the skin of his arms and legs, and his eyes were black pits, sunk back into his head.

  Three wouldn't last much longer, unless the Doctor decided to save him instead of watching the progress of the disease to the end.

  Sometimes he did that; sometimes the Doctor brought us back. Two had been brought back a handful of times, but his mind wasn't there anymore. He just drooled and snarled most of the time when I tried to talk to him, or whined as he licked his water bowl clean and thirsted for more. Four; well, Four had been gone for a while. The last we'd seen of him, he was strapped to a gurney and being rolled out the door.

  There were screams after that.

  We hoped they weren't his.

  We were probably wrong.

  So it was mostly One and me. I was Five. We were cloned from the same tissue, and we were test animals to see what the original tissue could stand; what pain, what disease, what damage we could live through, thrive through.

  It hadn't always been that way for us. Once we'd had training and learning. We'd lived in rooms and slept in beds, instead of on crumpled piles of fiber in polybdalloy cages. We'd been taught to read, so we could study the family our tissue had come from.

  Family. That was the most alien concept, at least for me. One had understood it, or said he did. Two also, before his mind went. Three had tried to explain it to me, since he'd always been quicker than the rest of us, before the diseases had eaten his brain away and left nothing behind.

  Family. Related—that meant they shared DNA, of course; that much I could understand. After all, each of us had identical DNA strands, since we'd been grown from the same tissue, in the same vat. That seemed normal, seemed to make sense.

  But the part about living together, sharing…love. Alien. Too alien for my mind to grasp.

  Hate, now. That I could understand.

  But that life was before Doctor Xandrino took over the labs. There had been a change in power, somewhere, somehow. We never found out what had happened. Just, one day, the Doctor arrived and took over. He wanted to see what we could stand, so he could inform the real one—the one with the family—what his body could take. That's what we were, he told us.

  We were spare parts for Rudof Dyll.

  I didn't much like Rudof Dyll, even if he was me, or I was him. Why wasn't he in a cage, puking his life out or drooling, brainless and empty?

  Doctor Xandrino paused before Three's cage and spoke softly into his portable comsys. I knew techie terms. I could read, and listen, and remember. I didn't know for how much longer, though, since only One and I were still aware.

  "Subject Three appears unable to withstand the ravages of the beldon-zeta bioengineered virus. It would be an interesting study to bio-link his brain with one of the other test subjects, to collect more precise data. Yes. Note that Subject…" I held my breath. "…One should undergo bio-link procedures—" he paused, as if gauging how much longer Three might live, "—at seven."

  I looked up at the big chrono on the wall across from my cage. It was after four already. One didn't have much time left. Bio-links would kill one side of the link, if the other one died. And it didn't look like Three had much time left either.

  That would leave me, and Two. How long would it be before I was drooling and whining in my cage beside him, I wondered?

  Not soon enough to suit me.

  A warning klaxon brayed over the door leading from the lab.

  I jumped.

  Doctor Xandrino dropped his comsys.

  I couldn't even hear the clatter it made as it hit the floor, not over the sound of the alarm. I watched at the Doctor strode towards the door. His lips were moving so I know he was cursing, but no voice could compete with the klaxon.

  The door burst open before the Doctor had taken more than five steps. A man, burly, bulky, zipped into an enviro-suit with the hood thrown back, stepped inside. He held up a hand. The other had a blaster in it, pointed squarely at the Doctor's chest.

  The alarm cut off. Through the ringing in my ears, I heard Xandrino splutter: "What is the meaning of this? Guards! Guards!"

  "Ain't no guards no more."

  The intruder grinned a silvery grin. He had more alloy teeth than real ones. "Me and the crew has just took care of your guards. So calm down. Your little place has been took over. Now, what we got here?"

  This wasn't asked of Xandrino, but of another envirosuit-clad figure who walked into the lab behind him. An arm reached up and pushed the hood back. A long nose wrinkled as the air from the lab hit it.

  "Stinks in here, don't it?" asked the burly man. "Want I should just burn it all while we loot the rest of the place?"

  "This is a lab, Kllurt. Lab-or-a-tor-y. There are probably valuable drugs in it."

  The newcomer was female, with short curling black hair that framed a brown face.

  "We are pirates, you know." She grinned, white teeth against the brown skin, dazzling. "When are you going to learn what pirates do? We steal anything of value, remember?"

  "Hah. Joke. Then what, cap'n? Kill the lab boy here, toss the animals in the recycler, and see what we can find?"

  "Better idea, Kllurt. Much better. Good boy, you're learning. So go to it."

  "I think you'd best get out of my lab," began Doctor Xandrino in a placating tone, since there really didn't seem to be any guards. "I'm sure we can come to some agreement that will satisfy us all. Come out of this stink and into my office, and we'll—"

  A broad beam of red-orange blaster fire, and the Doctor fell to the floor, his head cut neatly from his body. The blast was so quick that I could see his eyes fluttering as his brain took the last few seconds of life to realize it was over.

  "Kllurt. Sloppy. Now look at that mess."

  The captain shook her head at Kllurt, her tone chiding. She stepped with care over the still twitching body. Kllurt kicked the head with one massive boot; it rolled under One's cage. One had caught the edges of the beam, I saw; he was lying still in the bottom of his cage, smoke rising from his chest.

  "Zantz's balls, what'd they do in here?"

  The captain was looking down at Three. He looked back up at her, but there was nothing left in his gaze but pain. She raised her own blaster, somewhat smaller than Kllurt's. A pale yellow needle beam shot out and Three sighed as he died. A tiny red-rimmed hole leaked blood. Two whined and giggled, reached through bars and dabbled a finger in Three's blood, then licked it.

  Two was always thirsty.

  The captain gave a disgusted snort and used the blaster's needle beam on him. Two grinned at her as he died.

  Then she turned to me and raised her blaster.

  "No…please."

  I was surprised I could speak, even if my voice was rusty from disuse.

  But most of all, I was amazed to find out that I didn't want to die. Not want to die? It was all I had wanted for too long.

  The burly pirate stomped over and stood beside his captain. He pointed his blaster at me.

  "Shit, this one talks. I thought they was all just vat-born testers, spare parts. Want I should blast him?"

  She looked down at me. I didn't recognize that look in her eyes. I didn't remember ever seeing it before. I learned—later, much, much later—that it was called pity.

  I also learned how seldom the captain allowed herself to feel it.

  She leaned closer to my cage. I watched her long nose wrinkle in disgust and realized how filthy I was, how much I must stink. But the rest of them, even Doctor Xandrino, they were stinking even more right now.

  I looked up, met green eyes. They were the last things I was ever goin
g to see, I knew. I was glad they were so beautiful. I'd almost forgotten beautiful, in my time in the cage. Almost forgotten a lot of things.

  "Do you have a name?" The captain's voice was strong, but not harsh.

  "Fi—" A fit of coughing took me as the smell of burned flesh wafted past before it was sucked into the recycle-sys. I could taste the copper of blood in the back of my throat. "Five."

  If I'd ever had another name, and I was almost sure that I had, I couldn't remember it.

  "Five." The captain stood straight. She was almost as tall as Kllurt. She looked around the lab. "Only three others in here. Shouldn't you be Four?"

  "They took Four. He was strapped to a gurney. We never saw him again." I hadn't spoken so many words in a long, long time.

  "So."

  For a long moment, the captain just looked at me. I watched those eyes. Beautiful, so beautiful. I wanted them to be the last sight I'd ever see.

  Then she holstered her blaster. "Kllurt, get the rest of the crew busy stripping this place. I want everything of value stowed away in Hold Seven so we can get off this planet. They must have auxiliary guards somewhere in orbit, so we need to be loaded and gone before they arrive."

  Kllurt gave a sloppy sort of salute and turned to go.

  "And Kllurt? Send Quarneon in here."

  "What you want with the medic, cap'n? You hurt?"

  "No. But our newest crewmember needs some attention. Now go."