by Sara King
Forcing down the urge to gag, Dallas ducked past Athenais’s room and knocked on Squirrel’s door. “Squirrel?” she called, not liking the way her timid voice carried down the hall, echoing right into the room where the dead Captain lay in a pool of her own blood.
When she got no answer, Dallas fought down a pang of dread. Though she’d been screamed at to stay out of the woman’s room on numerous occasions, she jiggled the latch anyway. Squirrel, as usual, had it locked. After a moment’s deliberation in the cold, dark hallway, Dallas glanced behind her to make sure no one was watching, then got out a paperclip and a sliver of metal sheeting and proceeded to pick the lock.
With the power off, it wasn’t difficult. Picking locks came in handy when hardnosed Utopian colonels liked to keep sensitive war-plans secured behind locked doors, and only doled out tiny bits of information on a ‘Need to Know’ basis, when it was obvious that the pilot running the mission needed to know everything she could about her job before she started it. On that note, it also came in handy when Military Security caught her scrounging through top-secret files in the middle of the night and was about to take her back to the station in cuffs, where they were sure to figure out her name and Service ID number.
…Or when way-too-full-of-themselves space pirates decided to lock her in her room for a day for ‘spying on me.’ Dallas didn’t spy on people. It wasn’t her fault if she accidently overheard something important while running normal, everyday errands around the ship. So she liked to spend time in the broom closet. Big deal. Sometimes people just needed some alone time. Besides, locking someone in their room was illegal. Basic human rights. She could take Athenais to court.
Once she had the door open, Dallas quickly checked to make sure she hadn’t been seen, then returned the paperclip and its mate to her shoe. Then, hand on the latch, she tentatively pushed the door open. “Squirrel?”
It was dark inside. Cringing, Dallas swept the flashlight across the bed, expecting to see another blood-stain. What she found made her stare.
Squirrel, to her relief, had not been shot. She was, however, lying in bed, her face slack with sleep, cheek scrunched up against the pillow, drool pooling under her nose. It was the first time Dallas had seen the woman without makeup, and she had to pause a moment, just to soak it in. She looked a lot less like a stuck-up, elite snob and a lot more like a normal person. Dallas almost wanted to take a picture, to preserve the moment. Then, catching herself, she slipped inside and shook Squirrel awake.
“Dallas?” Squirrel asked, blinking up at her in confusion. “Comm down?” Then her face darkened suddenly. “How did you get in my room again?”
“Everything’s down,” Dallas hastily informed her. “Smallfoot sold us out. Took the power core, left us all to die.”
Squirrel sat up immediately. “Where’s the Captain?”
“Dead,” Dallas said, wincing.
Squirrel snorted. “I’d like to see that.” Then she got up and started dressing. Dallas watched, fascinated. Pausing as she caught Dallas’s stare while donning a flowing silk robe, Squirrel frowned. “And get the hell out! Just ‘cause the power went out doesn’t mean you can lurk. I hate lurkers.”
Narrowing her eyes, Dallas went to wait in the hall outside, shutting the door behind her. “I’ll show you a lurker, you cranky old broad,” she muttered to the latch, kicking herself for not taking that picture.
“And stop muttering, you skinny little curmudgeon!” Squirrel shouted through the door.
Dallas squinted at the closed door. What the hell was a curmudgeon?
A few minutes later, Squirrel came out with a flashlight of her own. She paused a moment to slip a set of fancy shoes on at the door, then made a point to lock the door behind her, giving Dallas a pointed glance as she did. As usual, she looked stunning. Well-dressed, her sleek designer clothes lacking a single wrinkle or snag, her short blonde hair fluffed-up to perfection, her makeup solidly back in place. She looked like she belonged in a sheik’s harem, and idly, Dallas wondered if she was somehow doubling as the old bat’s concubine. Now that would be a good picture…
“I’m gonna check on Goat,” Dallas said.
“You do that,” Squirrel nodded. “Somebody needs me, I’m working on comm.” At that, she turned and strode away, not even pausing for a glance inside Athenais’s cabin.
“I told you, Smallfoot took the core,” Dallas called after her.
Squirrel waved a dismissive hand and disappeared around the corner.
Dallas passed Smallfoot’s empty quarters and was about to put down her flashlight to jimmy open Goat’s door when it shuddered and moved. As Dallas was hastily tucking her paper-clip back into her boot, Goat stumbled into the hall, hair mussed and eyes puffy. If he had been smoking tanga-weed recently, the smell was masked by his overpowering body odor.
“What’s with the lights?” Goat muttered, holding the side of his head.
“Smallfoot sold us to the Utopis,” Dallas said, straightening. “They took the power-core and all the colonists. Ragnar, too. And he killed the Captain.”
Goat snorted and scratched himself. “He killed her, huh? ‘magine that.”
“Why doesn’t anybody believe me?” Dallas demanded. “I saw her brains on the wall.”
“You prolly did,” Goat said. “Gimme the flashlight.”
Dallas reluctantly handed it over.
Goat stepped back into his room and came out with a massive, industrial-size searchlight. He switched it on and the hall blazed. “I’m gonna go help Dune. Come get me when Capt’in wakes up.”
At that, he left her standing alone in the hall.
Was the whole ship crazy? As Confucius would have said, ‘One does not wake up from a head wound that leave one’s brain smeared across a wall like a new style of abstract art.’ Frowning, Dallas hurried back down the hall, quickly passing the Captain’s quarters without glancing inside. She hurried to the helm, where Squirrel had a side-panel open and was rooting through the wires she found there.
“Need help?” Dallas suggested.
Squirrel had four different-colored wires poking out from between her teeth. “Nope,” she said around them, as she fiddled with something above her head.
“Got somethin I can do, then?” Dallas asked. “I don’t know engine stuff. Maybe I could help with comm?”
“Nope,” Squirrel said.
Dallas sat in the pilot’s chair and glanced at the console. The eerie darkness of the controls was more final than the loss of power. In that moment, she knew they were going to die. “I’ll just stay here and keep you company,” she said.
Squirrel let out an explosive sigh and turned toward her as far as the wires would allow. “Go bug the Captain, will you? I’m trying to concentrate, Fairy.”
“The captain is dead!” Dallas snapped. “Smallfoot was right. You are an uppity bitch.”
Squirrel laughed. “He said that, did he? What a dweeb.” Dallas sensed no hostility in her manner, despite the fact that Dallas had just called her an uppity bitch.
“Sorry,” Dallas muttered. “Just wish I had somethin ta do, that’s all.”
Squirrel grunted and went back to work. After a few minutes, she said around her mouthful of wires, “You know we’re not getting out of this mess, right?”
Dallas glanced at the flashlight in her lap. “Yeah.”
“So why’d you stay?”
Dallas glanced up, surprised. “How’d you know?”
Squirrel shrugged. “Smallfoot liked you well enough. Figure you had a flashlight when you woke me up, so you must have been awake before the lights went out.” She glanced back at Dallas to gauge how well her remarks were hitting home.
Dallas nodded and Squirrel turned back to the wires.
“A pilot like you can get work anywhere,” Squirrel continued after awhile. “Me, I’ve got a history. Can’t get legitimate work. But you… You could have your own ship in a few years. Why’d you stay?”
“I didn’t wanna leave
Beetle without a pilot,” Dallas said. “Just in case Dune gets her running again.”
Squirrel scoffed. “Dune’s not gonna get it running again without power. The best chance is to divert some of the backup life-support into the com system.”
Dallas’s brows lifted. “Is that wise?”
“Do I ever ask you if you’re flying straight?”
“No,” Dallas said.
Squirrel touched two wires together, producing a loud snapping sound, then twisted them tight. She shut the panel with a triumphant snap and moved over to the console. “You mind?” she said, motioning at Dallas’s chair.
Dallas got up and watched as Squirrel sat down in the pilot’s seat. She picked up the handheld and slid the earpiece over her head. Then she started rattling off distress calls, switching the frequency every few minutes. Only a resounding static answered her.
Squirrel lowered the earpiece in frustration. “Damn it, Fairy, where the hell did you leave us? There isn’t even a whisper out there.”
Dallas bit her lip. “Sorry.”
Squirrel made a very unladylike grunt and went back to her distress calls.
Dallas sat down in Goat’s seat and watched, anxiously picking at a peeling bit of lettering on the dash. After twenty minutes or so, Squirrel turned on her again. “Do you mind? You’re making me nervous. Go check on the captain or something.”
“I already told you,” Dallas began, “The Captain’s—”
“Dead. Yes, I know. Go check on her anyway.”
Narrowing her eyes, Dallas got up and left the helm.
She intended to head down the stairs and see what Dune and Goat were doing, but she heard a crash from Athenais’s room. She froze, her beam of light quivering over the open door.
The crash came again, followed by a curse.
Heart in her throat, Dallas tiptoed to the open door and peered inside.
Captain Athenais Owlborne blinked back at her like a deer caught in the headlights, completely whole, without so much as a scratch marring her head. Even her scars were gone. The wall behind her was clean.
I’m losing my mind, Dallas thought.
“Get that goddamned light out of my face!”
Dallas lowered the light, still staring.
The Captain got up and staggered to the door. When she reached Dallas, she took the flashlight out of her hand.
“Where’s Ragnar?” she barked down at her.
Cringing, Dallas babbled, “Smallfoot gave him to the Utopis.”
Lips set in a grim line, Athenais’s eyes came to rest on the dark electronics in the hall. “And he took the power-core.”
Dallas nodded, mouth open. And he killed you, she thought, staring.
“Hell.” Athenais cursed and stormed off to the engine room, leaving Dallas the choice of either following a ghost or staying behind in the darkness with what could very possibly be a dead body in the next room. She decided to follow the ghost, because the ghost had taken her flashlight.
Down in the warmth of the engine room, Goat and Dune were muttering over a small boxlike contraption that they were hooking up to the fuse-box with a tangle of multicolored wires.
“What’s the rat’s nest?” Athenais asked.
Neither Goat nor Dune looked up. “Buggy battery,” Goat said.
“And what’s that?” Athenais demanded, pointing to the manual in Goat’s hands.
“Racing guide,” Goat said with a grin. “Did you know you can make a hundred thousand credits if you win the big race on Helius?”
“Don’t get him started,” Athenais said with a sigh. She inspected the black box that was dangling haphazardly from the wall by its tangle of wires. “Squirrel got power?”
“She hasn’t come down to yell at us, so yeah,” Dune said.
Athenais grunted and trotted back up the stairs, leaving Dallas with Dune and Goat. Dallas turned and realized both of them were grinning at her.
“She looks like she seen a ghost,” Dune said. They both guffawed.
“I saw her brains on the wall,” Dallas babbled.
“The Capt’in’s different,” Goat said. He shrugged at her confused look and went back to his magazine.
Realizing they weren’t going to elaborate, Dallas swiped a flashlight and headed back to the helm. She found Athenais sitting at the pilot’s seat, radioing for help. When Squirrel saw Dallas, Squirrel shook her head once. That was all Dallas needed. They were going to die there.
Simple Stuart
Stuart was pulled from an uneasy sleep by the sound of Ragnar cursing. “…self-serving bastard, Foot!” Ragnar was shouting. “You’d sell your own mother if it made you a credit!”
Opening his eyes with a groan, Stuart tried to remember how he’d fallen asleep. He had been in a conversation with Morgan about the plan to hit Millennium and then someone at the helm had started throwing the engine into overdrive, and then… Nothing.
Then Stuart discovered that he couldn’t feel anything below the neck, and his senses came back online in an instant.
Stasis shell, he realized, which, while a Very Bad Thing, was also a bit of a relief. Had he been drugged, he would have been completely trapped. At least this way, he was still semi-mobile.
So, the pirates decided to go for the bounty after all, eh? Typical. Ragnar had been too close to the situation and Morgan was too much of a romantic to really take a logical look at the whole picture. Stuart, for his part, had lost all his romantic tendencies centuries ago, and if he’d had his way, they wouldn’t have been in the same Quadrant as Marceau’s daughter, much less on her ship. Like father, like daughter, and when he had confronted them about it, not one of his companions had denied the fact that the pirate they were trusting with their lives was utterly insane.
Then Stuart realized that they couldn’t be on Athenais’s small, cramped ship. The rumbling growl of the engine reverberating through the sterile white walls belonged to a vessel much bigger than the spry little Beetle, and he was pretty sure the sanitized, blindingly-white linoleum didn’t belong to a group of hygienically-challenged space-pirates.
“Oh, give it up shifter,” someone shouted. Stuart strained to remember, after brief introductions. The doctor. A Utopian agent?
“You lost,” the doctor continued, in a sneer. “Stop wasting air for the rest of us.”
Though his stasis shell was pointed in the opposite direction, Stuart twisted to see.
The short, gorilla-like man that Ragnar had called Smallfoot stood near the door with three blue-uniformed Utopian soldiers, pointing out locations of interest on a hardcopy star-chart. All three of the soldiers wore officers’ lapels. One bore the red starburst of Species Operations.
Upon sight of that crimson, eight-pointed star, Stuart felt a lead weight hit the pit of his stomach. Not good. Not good at all.
To his horror, the S.O. officer noticed that Stuart was awake. Stuart watched him cross the sanitized white room, hoping his terror wasn’t visible in his face.
What are they planning? he thought, all sorts of horrible scenarios suddenly playing through his mind, making him sick.
The six-foot, clean-cut S.O. officer came to stand in front of him, hands clasped behind his back around a roll of maps. The man wore his uniform like a badge, with every crease ironed into attention and every bit of brass gleaming. He had a crew-cut that had been clipped tight to his skull, and he bore a rack of medals on his chest that would have made Marceau himself jealous.
Stuart’s eyes caught upon the purple Xenological Special Warfare Commendation, which had a silver crescent denoting multiple awards, and he realized he was finally, categorically, never going to see the light of day again.
The Species Operations officer gave Stuart a long, hard stare, which Stuart returned in silence.
“I am Colonel Howlen, Species Operations specialist from Millennium.”
“I don’t care who you are.”
The colonel laughed, which made the medals on his chest jingle. “Of course you
do,” he replied. “So humor me a moment. Do you have any concept of the severity of your crimes?”
“Depends on who you ask,” Stuart replied.
The S.O. officer gave him a flat stare. “Did you know you were traveling with three shifters, boy? Do you know the penalties for consorting with banned life-forms?”
Stuart blinked. That was the extent of his crimes?
Colonel Howlen took Stuart’s surprise to mean that he hadn’t. He waved his roll of maps at his friends, all of whom were trapped in their own white egg-shaped stasis shells. “All three of them. They were living on Penoi, from what we gather. You’re a colonist there, correct?”
Stuart flinched and glanced at the others. Morgan and Paul were watching him in mute silence. Ragnar was still scowling at Smallfoot.
A roll of cartographer’s hardcopy slapped Stuart’s stasis shell, wrenching his attention back to the colonel. “I asked you a question.”
Stuart blinked at the S.O. officer. “Yeah.”
“Where did you find these three? What town?”
Stuart glanced back at his friends.
“Don’t look at them, look at me,” the S.O. officer snapped, slapping his shell again. “Where did you meet them on Penoi?”
“Lerriton,” Stuart lied.
“Look it up,” Howlen said over his shoulder.
One of the two officers standing at the door ran it through the computer, then looked up and shook her head.
“Describe Lerriton,” Howlen said. “Is there another name for it? What’s the population like? What part of the globe?”
“It’s a town on Penoi,” Stuart replied. “It’s got people who live there. In houses.”
Colonel Howlen gave him a long look. “We can execute you.”
Stuart snorted. “Go ahead.”
“We will, eventually,” Howlen assured him. “Unless you cooperate.” He paused, watching Stuart with a calm intelligence that gave Stuart chills. After a moment, his face seemed to soften a bit. “Look, boy. I know you’ve formed emotional ties to those three, but they’re not people. They’re things. Animals that can take human form.”
