The Wrong Stars

by Tim Pratt

  The bio-drone lurched away from them, its multitude of legs folding up under it, then lay still, slumped against the far wall.

  They stood in a space the size of a ballroom, with silvery walls and a gleamingly reflective floor and a ceiling seven meters overhead that seemed to consist of a single light panel: the brightness was intense. The humans instinctively moved together in a huddle, feeling exposed, with Elena in the middle, and Ashok and Callie and Shall facing out with their guns. Lantern crouched a little distance away.

  “Is that thing dead?” Callie trained her guns, one in each hand, on the fallen bio-drone.

  “According to the infosphere, the drone has shut down and gone into self-repair mode,” Lantern said. “I don’t think the station will dispatch another drone to this location: the task is marked as complete.”

  Elena turned slowly around and realized only three of the four walls were silver metal. The fourth wall, near the bio-drone’s drooping head, was some kind of thick glass. The transparency was marred here and there with spattered fluids that looked, to Elena’s experienced eye, like dried blood. A thick gray mist swirled beyond the glass, shrouding the interior completely. There was no telling how big the space beyond was, or what might be lurking inside.

  “The bug was going to put us in there.” Callie pointed, and Elena followed her gesture. A circular hatch was irised open, five meters above the floor. “The bug was going to stick its star-lily head through that hole, and barf us out into the fog. What’s behind that glass, Lantern?”

  “Reconditioning,” the Liar said.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The glass was as totally impervious to their sensors as the exterior walls of the station itself, and none of Callie or Ashok’s fancy visual enhancements did any good, either. The wall was glass-like enough to have its own thermal profile, and appeared as an opaque wall in their heat vision. Their image-enhancing night vision mode could suck up all the available light, but it was blinding in there anyway, and just as glass was the Achilles heel of thermal imaging, smoke and fog were the great weaknesses of night vision technology.

  With remote viewing useless, that left only direct observation, so they had to get in there. The glass was too smooth for anyone to climb, even Ashok or Shall, but Shall was capable of great leaps, and he jumped up until he could snag the edge of the opening with several hooked limbs, then extended a sensor proboscis beyond the glass. “Rich and aromatic, full of unknown chemicals.”

  “Probably a sedative gas,” Lantern said.

  Callie nodded. She’d been thinking the same thing. Throw recalcitrant slaves in a terrarium full of ether, knock them out or at least get them loopy, then do whatever needed to be done to make them behave. The slaves wouldn’t have been wearing environment suits, though: her team didn’t have to breathe the gas. “Drop us a line, Shall.”

  The drone unspooled several meters of cable, detached one of its manipulators to form something like a grappling hook, and quickly spot-welded the hook to the line. Then it dropped the hook over the edge of the hatch and let the cable dangle.

  While Shall fashioned the grapple, Elena stood by the glass, looking at a smear of what was probably blood on the other side. “What color is Liar blood? Is it red, like ours?”

  “Blue, usually,” Lantern said. “Barring modifications.”

  “Like squid, on Earth.” Elena’s voice was perfectly flat. “The blood contains hemocyanin instead of hemoglobin. Copper instead of iron.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that human blood, Shall?” Elena asked. “Can you find out?”

  “Go ahead and check,” Callie said. “But watch yourself in there.”

  The repair drone dropped through the irised opening and crouched for a moment inside. “My radar is picking up a couple of objects, low to the ground, but they aren’t moving.” The drone traveled slowly at ground level, along the wall. The far half of his body was invisible, hidden in the mist. “I am also picking up two of the Anjou’s vacuum suit transponders. Their positions correspond with the objects I detected, unsurprisingly. One is fifty meters away, one more like two hundred meters. No visual confirmation. The fog is too thick.”

  “Hans and Ibn,” Elena said. “They’re in there!” She pressed her hands against the glass and stared into the mist.

  Callie didn’t answer. Their suits were in there, anyway. Whether they were still in their suits, and more importantly still alive in their suits, was a different question. “Take a look at the blood, Shall.”

  When Shall reached the blood smear, he extended a delicate manipulator, scraped away a bit of the blood, and brought it close to a sensor proboscis. “Water, albumin, cortisol, glucose, fatty acids… hemoglobin. Blood, human, coagulated. Do you know your crewmates’ blood types?”

  Elena shook her head, eyes wide, expression bleak.

  Callie put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Elena. Maybe…” She fell silent. She couldn’t say, “Maybe he’s still alive.” That kind of spray, that high on the wall, in that pattern, was indicative of sudden and considerable violence. Callie had done enough time investigating crime scenes to know that. With immediate medical care, depending on the nature of the injury, there could have been hope, in some situations – but in an alien killing jar?

  Shall spun in a slow circle, scanning the ground. “Your crewmen were armed with ballistic weapons, yes?”

  “A shotgun and a machine gun,” Elena said. “Officially we had them in case we encountered hostile fauna on the colony planet, which we knew was absurd, but some delegate sitting on the committee had ties to the gun lobby, so the weapons were duly purchased and included as part of our supplies.”

  “There are shotgun pellets scattered here,” Shall said.

  “So Hans and Ibn fought back?” Elena said.

  “That is one interpretation. Given the spatter, and the position of the pellets… I do not have access to my full suite of forensic tools on the ship, so I am reluctant to provide an analysis.”

  “Wait. You think my friends shot each other?” Elena said.

  “It could have been an accident,” Shall said. “In this fog, lost, afraid, someone might have fired wildly. But a shotgun was fired here, and it looks as if it was fired through someone. Should I investigate further, captain? Check on the, ah… transponders?”

  “Lantern, what’s lurking in that fog?” Callie said.

  “I am unsure. This was a reconditioning facility, so… perhaps more of the neural spiders?”

  “You stay here with Elena. I’m going over the wall with Shall to see if we have a survivor.” She looked at the cable snaking up the wall and sighed. A little less gravity would have been nice. She grabbed the cable, planted her feet against the wall – which looked like glass, but was nicely grippy against her boots – and walked her way up the line. Only five meters, only five meters. It would have been a breeze at the rock-climbing gym on Meditreme Station, even in the heaviest gravity of the outer ring, but in an environment suit, it was hard going. Her helmet kept messing up her balance. She reached the lip of the opening, hauled herself up, and looked down the other side. “Shall, give me a boost?”

  The repair drone hurried over, stood under her, and then rose up as high as he could on his many legs. Shall effectively turned himself into a cherry picker, cutting the five-meter drop to a two-meter one. Callie lowered her body carefully, holding onto the lip of the hatch with her gloved fingers, and dangled her body down. Her boots were right above Shall, and that drop was nothing, so she let go and a second later thumped into place, bending her knees as she landed.

  But Shall’s back was hardly as smooth or level as a cherry-picking platform, and her boot hit a knobby protrusion and slipped. Her boot went out from under her, she pinwheeled, and then fell backward. What a stupid way to die, she thought.

  But instead of Callie landing on her head and breaking her neck, Shall shot out a manipulator arm and snagged her around the ankle. Callie swayed upside down, her head hal
f a meter above the smooth gray floor, mist eddying around her. “Thank you, Shall. Put me on my feet again please.”

  Another manipulator arm supported her legs and spun her around and upright before setting her down. She wobbled for a second, but her inner ear was used to far worse abuse, so she got her balance back quickly enough. She glanced through the glass and saw Elena looking at her wide-eyed, Ashok guffawing, and Lantern across the room, poking at the side of the bio-drone. Callie didn’t trust the squidling even a little bit, but she’d been useful once or twice, so she didn’t object.

  “Let’s see if the view in here is any better.” She turned on her thermal imaging, and the clouds of gray smoke disappeared. That was good: if the mist had been hot, the room would have been an impenetrable swirl of color to her heat vision, but the smoke was apparently the same temperature as the ambient air. The room’s dimensions were gargantuan – she couldn’t even see the far walls – but there was a speck of glowing yellow-orange-red off ahead and to the right. It looked a lot like a person, sitting upright. “We’ve got a live one,” she said. “Switching to the Anjou’s radio band.” She waited a moment for the rest of her team to follow suit, then said, “Ibn? Hans? Elena sent us to find you. If you read me, please respond.”

  No answer, which didn’t mean much. The Anjou crew’s comms could have been damaged, or they could be unconscious… or they could have a head full of brain-spiders. The only way to know was to go over there and find out. “I’m taking a look.”

  “Ashok, boost me up,” Elena said. “I want to be there.”

  Callie sighed. “You’re the client. Come on. But be careful.”

  Ashok made a step for Elena with his arms, then lifted her straight up, his prosthetic arm and powered legs easily supporting her weight. Callie could have asked for that kind of assistance, too, but being captain meant doing that sort of thing yourself when you could. Ashok’s boost got Elena’s head about four meters off the ground, and she clambered the rest of the way up along the cable, just as Callie had. Elena wriggled through and shifted around and lowered herself down the other side until Shall plucked her off the wall and set her gently on her feet. Much easier than Callie’s own dismount. Maybe an excess of self-reliance was a kind of arrogance.

  “Want us to come through too?” Ashok said.

  “No, I think this is a sealed box,” Callie said. “If that opening closes up, I want you and Lantern on the outside figuring out how to open it again. Let’s–”

  A booming noise filled the space: harsh, churning, guttural syllables, so low they made Callie’s teeth hurt, doubtless extending deep past her auditory range. The smoke changed color, flashing green, then yellow, then pink: like a light show at a concert. She’d heard a Plutonian ice metal band live, once, a musical experience reckoned to be the most punishing in the system, and that band would have gladly sampled this noise at a show – though the lights were a bit too bright for their aesthetic. “What the hell is that? An alarm system?”

  “It’s an old language of my people,” Lantern said. “I am not fluent, but I think it says something like, ‘obedience is life, rebellion is death’, things like that. The colors are very much like the chromatic displays we use in our language, too – that particular pattern denotes urgency, an imperative, an order to comply without question immediately, because there is great danger in even a moment’s hesitation. I wonder… I had assumed the gas was a soporific, to anesthetize the victims, but what if it’s hypnotic, instead? A drug meant to induce a state of suggestibility, and then blare these messages of obedience and surrender? We have records of the Axiom using such multivalent conditioning techniques.”

  “It’s not making me feel particularly obedient. Let’s check on our survivor.” Callie patted Elena on the shoulder and then took her hand, because Elena didn’t have thermal imaging in that old suit, and might get lost in the fog. The repair drone didn’t have thermal vision either, or at least she didn’t think so, but he could track the suits. “Shall, take point? Head toward the transponder that’s farthest away.” She followed the drone through the room, the yellow-orange-red blob getting larger in her display. He – it had to be a he, and since Callie knew which one of Elena’s crew had been armed with a shotgun, she was pretty sure which he, too – wasn’t reacting to the noise at all, which wasn’t a good sign in terms of responsiveness. Shall could carry him out, if it came to that.

  When they got within ten meters, the figure moved, and there was a burst of sound, barely audible in the shrieking monotony of the alien commands. Shall was in front of them, and he paused. “He just shot me,” Shall said. “I am undamaged.”

  “Elena, say something reassuring,” Callie said. “Shall, rebroadcast what she says, loud, in case his suit comms aren’t working.”

  “Don’t shoot!” Elena said. “Hans, it’s Elena, I’ve come to rescue you, we have a ship waiting, we can get you out!”

  The flashing colors and the guttural shouting stopped just as Shall broadcast the last word, and that “OUT” echoed in the space.

  The figure stirred, rose laboriously to its feet, and moved closer. Callie switched her thermal view off when the figure drew close enough for him to be visible through the fog. He emerged from the mist, still in his environment suit, his helmet on, a machine gun dangling from a strap on his chest, a shotgun in his hands, limping, moving slow. Elena pushed past Shall and embraced him, and he just stood there, mute, unmoving, unresponsive. The assault shotgun fell from his hands and landed on the ground with a thunk.

  “It’s– it’s Ibn,” Elena said. “I thought it must be Hans, because of the shotgun, and because, well, if anyone was going to shoot someone–”

  “No.” Their comms were still on the Anjou’s frequency, and a new voice spoke: dull, vague, but comprehensible. Ibn. “I killed Hans. I had no choice. He landed on his face when the great insect dumped us here, and the impact cracked his helmet’s faceplate. The spiders came, and I fired at them, and killed one. But another leapt on Hans, and levered its legs into the crack in his visor, and tore the front of his helmet open. It was horrible. The spider wriggled partway inside, and then Hans stumbled around, dropping his gun, screaming for a few seconds, and then… he stopped. He stood up, and came at me out of the fog. His faceplate was covered by the silver body of the spider. He tried to tear my helmet off. The strap of my machine gun was twisted, tangled, and I couldn’t wrench it around to defend myself. I stumbled away, fell, and landed beside the fallen gun. He came for me, bent over, reached for me… I picked up the gun. I shot him, Elena. In the face. Right through the spider.” Ibn gestured vaguely. “His body is over… somewhere. I tried to find my way out. I carried Hans with me as far as I could, in case… just in case. But I got lost. I dropped him, and went on, but then, I stopped. I sat down. I will sit down again now.” He did. Then he fell over and lay on his side, unmoving.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Elena said.

  “What happens when your environment suit runs out of oxygen?” Callie said.

  “You suffocate? They’re meant to double as hazardous materials suits, though, and in the absence of air in the tanks, you can switch to a filtration system, which his must have done a while ago – ohhh. The gas.”

  “It’s made for Liar physiology. Your friend’s suit is doing its best to filter out the gas, but it might be doing something to him. Making him groggy. He’s probably in shock, too. Shall, get him out of here, out on the other side of the wall, and see if fresh air helps.”

  “Should we look for Hans?” Elena said.

  “He’s gone, Elena. The only heat signatures in here are yours, mine, Ibn’s, and Shall’s…”

  She stopped talking, because five blurs of red had appeared in the far distance, dropping from the ceiling and then moving with great speed along the floor toward them.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Spiders,” Callie said. “Run.”

  Elena didn’t have to be told twice, and anyway, Callie had hold of h
er hand and started dragging her back toward the wall, or so Elena assumed. She couldn’t see anything but gray mist. “Shall, get Ibn out of here and then come back for Elena! We’ve got spiders incoming!”

  “The opening is sealed, Callie. It severed our cable cleanly. We’re trapped in here. Ashok is gesticulating on the other side, but I cannot understand what he is trying to convey.”

  That explained why Ashok wasn’t chatting away on the comms, Elena supposed. The glass wall had sealed and cut off their communications. This place was a series of Faraday cages.

  “Shit,” Callie said. “OK, let’s get our backs against the wall. That cuts off one route of attack. There are five spiders. I can shoot two for sure. Shall, can you get the rest?”

  “I will do my best, Callie.”

  Elena blundered forward, and suddenly the wall was there. Ashok was indeed on the other side, waving and pointing toward the bio-drone. Elena just raised her hands in a gesture of confusion and Ashok waved and hurried toward the bug.

  Callie pulled the machine gun off Ibn and gave it to Elena. “You said you’d used this once or twice in training?”

  “Yes, but–”

  “Better than never. If you see a spider, shoot it. If it’s too close to shoot, which it might be in this fog, punch it, like I told you.” Callie stood shoulder to shoulder with Elena on her left, and Ibn slumped against the wall on her other side, with Shall standing over him like a guardian.

  I’m guarding the right flank, Elena thought, almost giddy with her fear response. She knew what was happening in her body. Her adrenal gland was releasing epinephrine to dilate her blood vessels and norepinephrine to increase her heart rate and dump energy into her system, and a flood of cortisol was hard at work providing her with more blood sugar. Her body was preparing itself to expend energy in fighting for her life or running for her life. Good old biology, doing just what it had evolved to do over millennia: enacting nature’s worst-case contingency plans.