Wings of Retribution (Millennium Potion)

by Sara King

  He didn’t want to take a new body—with their current situation, every human he took would have to die. He simply made an apology to the Seeker and severed their cerebral connections upon entering. He couldn’t afford for any of Xenith’s inhabitants to know about him.

  Stuart carried the sack down twelve flights of stairs, then turned into the hall and started walking south. He needed to get back to Dallas’s room before she got sent back out on another mission. If they were going to get off of Xenith, they needed to do it now, before that beacon got through.

  By the time they reached Dallas’s room, Stuart was no longer able to ignore the abuse that Ragnar had given his host. He stayed just long enough to discover Dallas was gone, then he dropped Ragnar in the corner of the room and hobbled outside.

  He had used extra current on Ragnar, not about to take a chance with a shifter royal. He just hoped he had enough shock left to take a new host.

  A few yards down the hall, Stuart found a young man scrubbing the floors with a bucket and brush. Guilt already forming a hard knot in his soul, Stuart approached the boy slowly, allowing him to see he was wounded. As expected, the kid stood up and asked if he needed help. Stuart stumbled, like he was about to fall, and the young man caught him.

  “I’m so sorry,” Stuart told him, looking into the kid’s innocent brown eyes, hating what he was about to do.

  “Don’t worry about it,” the boy said, helping him back to his feet. “You’re wounded. Here, I’ll help you get to—” The teenager’s words ended as Stuart applied the remainder of his current to his body. As the kid was falling, open-mouthed, brown eyes wide in confusion, Stuart began disengaging from his host’s brain. Seeker forgive me, he prayed, as he pulled his tentacles free. But it’s not just for myself this time. My friends are depending on me. Hopefully, that meant something. He still felt dirty, cowardly—a disgusting little parasite.

  To take an unwilling host… To kill it intentionally… These were the things done by monsters.

  Yet Stuart positioned himself over the boy and leapt.

  A brief moment of searing, dry cold, then he found his body cradled within his next host’s warm inner ear. The boy was moving already, grabbing at his head. Feeling the rough salty human skin brush his body, Stuart panicked and fled the searching fingers, doing more damage than usual. The young man began to scream and flail. Stuart felt himself struggling to hold on as the world thrashed violently around him.

  Stuart felt himself losing his grip as that self-loathing started creeping back into his awareness at the vibrations of his new host’s screams. Hosts were not supposed to scream. They were not supposed to dig at their skulls and try to tear him free. This was wrong. He almost let go, almost gave in to the self-disgust right then.

  Then a moment of clarity, like a crystal ring amidst a sea of silence, brought him out of his revulsion.

  Dallas.

  The one human who had willingly offered herself as host. He thought about her, afraid and alone, stuck on this twisted planet for the rest of her life. No, he thought immediately. She’s depending on me.

  Stuart renewed his efforts, boring into the host’s soft tissues, evading the boy’s fingers with sudden resolve. By the time Stuart managed to get himself inside and merge himself to the boy’s senses, he was horrified to realize that he had gathered a crowd. He began making connections rapidly, fear spurring him to hurry. He was just gaining enough control to lift himself from the floor when a female voice demanded, “What is going on here?!”

  Stuart sat up, but was not quick enough to hide the trickle of blood from his left ear. He glanced up and his heart stopped when he realized that the woman who had spoken was the same woman who had captured Retribution and left Athenais naked in a boat.

  The woman’s eyes fell on Stuart’s previous host, who was a twitching husk, the mind long-vanished. Then, slowly, her eyes flicked over to the blood dripping from beneath Stuart’s hand, then to Stuart’s face.

  Her angular features twisted with a disgust that Stuart knew all-too-well. “I know what this is.”

  Oh gods, Stuart thought. Oh Seeker help me, she knows. He tore his way through the host’s brain, frantically trying to reestablish enough connections to run away.

  Above him, the woman said, “Warrior, give me your gun.” He looked up in time to see her shoulder a rifle, aimed at his new host’s chest. She pulled the trigger and it suddenly felt as if someone had kicked him in the heart. He gasped and fell backwards.

  His host was dying. Stuart could feel the blood seeping out, sense the numbness spreading to his extremities. He realized there was nothing he could do. No one was going to help him. Finally, after a lifetime of cowardice and deception, he was going to face the Seeker.

  I don’t want to die.

  Like the wild storm outside, the all-consuming panic rose in a haze of terror that clouded his thoughts. Desperate, not thinking of anything except finding a live host, he tried direct his host’s weak limbs to crawl toward his last host.

  The woman stepped forward and easily kicked him backwards. “Remove the other body and incinerate it. Our little parasite is trying to save himself.”

  Stuart’s host’s vision was going dark. Mindless with desperation, he reached toward the woman’s leg.

  She blew off his hand with her rifle.

  Unable to control himself, Stuart opened his mouth in a silent plea for help. The faces staring down at him were impassive, uncaring. Strings of his old language flowed from his lips, begging, but their faces never changed.

  The last thing he heard before everything went dark was, “Stand back. No one touch him. I want a good shot when he comes crawling out of his hole.”

  Dallas doubled over the console, her headache increasing.

  “This isn’t the time to be panicking, worm,” Tommy said. “Let Dallas back at the controls before we get our asses blown outta the sky.”

  Dallas jerked her head up. “Stuart’s not in here, you bitter old man!” At that, she kicked out with her left foot, jamming the stick forward and down. They spun and dove under the warship pursuing them, narrowly missing having their nose sheared off by the warship’s front deflectors.

  She hit the right pedal and twisted the top four throttles with her right hand. Retribution snapped around again and fell into a spin. They came up behind their pursuer and fell underneath its left main engine. Dallas jerked up on the stick even as the other warship’s guns turned on them.

  The scream of steel grinding against steel echoed throughout the length of the ship before Dallas loosened the throttle and let Retribution fall behind.

  “Dallas, what the hell are you doing?!” Tommy shouted. “I’ve never seen something so stupid. We were right under their main guns! We—”

  He was interrupted by a resounding boom from ahead. The final warship was falling toward the ocean in a spin, the left engine a tangle of twisted metal and flying shrapnel. Dallas held her position, waiting.

  The captain of the other ship managed to get the fall under control before it hit the ocean, utilizing the two left-hand minor thrusters and an array of the lower supplementals.

  Limping, the enemy warship began the struggle back to the Fort.

  As soon as the ship abandoned the fight, Dallas turned on Tommy.

  “That was a Raptor-class warship with energy-resistant plating. We had to take out a main engine and we couldn’t do that with our weapons. If we held still long enough to fire, they would have enough time to fire back, and Retribution isn’t equipped to take a photon burst through the hull, all right?! Plus, I wanted to get this whole thing over with. My head is killing me.”

  Tommy was watching her oddly. “What did you mean, Stuart isn’t in there? I assumed he was the one who helped you through the brainwashing.”

  “He is. And he left me to go find the shifters.” Dallas set a course for the debris field and slumped over, holding her head. “Damn, I’ve just got the worst headache.” And she didn’t feel right. She
felt like crying. Like just slumping over the controls and sobbing for twenty-four hours straight.

  “You all right? You’re looking kind of pale.” Tommy was peering at her narrowly.

  “I’m fine,” Dallas muttered, though for some reason her heartbeat was speeding up and she felt like vomiting. Her hands were shaking on the controls, and she almost felt like peeing herself. She looked around the room, panting. Why did she still feel so creeped out? She just took out their last pursuer…

  Realizing Tommy was watching her too closely, she hid her nerves with a rough mutter of, “Just make sure there’s nobody following us.” Then she closed her eyes and dropped her head into her hands and started rubbing her temples.

  Tommy glanced at the monitors, then back at her. “You sure? Want to lie down? I can take us from here.”

  Dallas jerked her head up, heart suddenly hammering like a broken freighter engine. “Take us where?” she snarled.

  Tommy flinched away from her, looking taken aback. “Back to the Utopia.” He frowned at her. “Why…where were you planning on going?”

  “I wasn’t planning anything,” Dallas moaned. “I just had to get my ship back. Now that I’ve got it, I’m trying to figure out what to do next.”

  God, something was wrong. There must be a ship out there she’d missed. Something that was triggering her subconscious alarm bells. She’d never been so scared in her life. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding and she just had this insane urge to wad herself into a ball in the corner and sob. She started searching through the debris fields, looking for anything remotely the same size as a ship.

  “Don’t tell me you want to go back for that worm…”

  “Stop calling him a worm!” Dallas found herself standing, her entire body shaking. Carefully, she said, “You call him a worm again and I’ll dump you in space, you specist bastard.”

  Tommy stared at her. Finally, he said, “Dallas, you really look bad.”

  “I’m fine,” she snapped, steadying herself on the console. Her fear was so thick, now, she could barely breathe. Where the hell was it coming from? She couldn’t even hear the next thing Tommy said, her heart was pounding so hard. “Oh God,” she gasped, her fingers tightening on the console as her whole body began to shake uncontrollably. She got a strange, sudden flash of darkness, of despair, of a ring of disgusted alien faces waiting for her to die. With it came that gentle mental tingle that she’d come to associate with the suzait.

  Stuart.

  “He’s in trouble,” she whimpered. Then she did pee herself. She had just enough time to see Tommy frown before her knees went out from under her. She hit the cockpit floor in a burst of lights, then nothingness.

  More terrified than he’d ever been before in his life, Stuart eased his way out of his host’s head. The body had been rapidly losing warmth over the last minutes, but the cool blast of air on his moist skin was still a shock. He flinched, staring wildly at the moving blobs around him. He had no idea when the bullet would come, not even from which direction. Panic tearing through his system, he released the tiny amount of electricity his body had stored, shocking the dead body beneath him.

  With that last indignity, he slid from the ear canal and onto the hard, frigid stone underneath. The roughness of the rock grated on his skin, poking him in a thousand places, threatening to tear holes in his delicate body.

  Somewhere beside him, he felt the stone rumble. At first, he thought that the gun had been fired, but then he was inundated with the lukewarm, soapy water that his dead host had been using to wash the floor.

  The soap burned his skin, the water washing away the blood that had been protecting him from the cold stone. Now, totally unprotected, he wriggled helplessly, staring at the huge moving blobs, wondering why they were waiting.

  Something poked him and he flinched away, terrified. He knew he was going to die, but Stuart still felt fear. He was paralyzed by fear. It was like a leaden ball of rot poisoning his gut, spreading into his every fiber. Why were they waiting?

  The same thing poked him again and he tried to crawl away. Something dry and salty caught him and squeezed, creating a new and horrible sensation for Stuart—the feeling he was about to explode like a ripe grape. Despite his terror, he couldn’t even summon up the equivalent of a static shock. Too weak. Too many discharges.

  Now it would end. His last thought, as the pressure became an overpowering, excruciating tearing, was of Dallas.

  Athenais watched the suzait die with increasing fury. Juno was taunting him, splashing water on him, squeezing him… Like a spoiled child.

  Yet, being the god of an entire planet for the last several thousand years, that’s exactly what she was. A spoiled damn child.

  Athenais had watched Stuart struggle to retain control of his dying host, had even saw the corpse jolt as he shocked it out of terror. She wondered if Juno had noticed. She hoped she hadn’t. Juno seemed to be enjoying the entire experience, soaking it up with hungry eyes, monologuing to the gathering about parasites, goading the helpless little alien with sheer, petty vindictiveness.

  Finally, Athenais could stand it no longer. She twisted out of the grip of the Warrior holding her, who was staring in terror at the worm that had crawled out of the boy’s head. She grabbed his rifle and, even as the other Warriors raised their weapons, she fired.

  She missed Stuart. Instead, she hit Juno, putting a hole through her neck. Juno stiffened, and for a moment, Athenais thought she would squish the suzait.

  Unfortunately, he seemed to be more resilient than he appeared. His body stopped bulging and he slid from Juno’s limp fingers, landing in the pool of blood beneath the dead boy.

  Juno landed on top of him.

  For a hopeful moment, Athenais thought Stuart might slip into Juno’s ear canal, but the parasite could not see well enough to understand the prize he was presented. He wriggled in the opposite direction, like a flat gray earthworm that had been run over by a tractor. She glanced at the Warriors, wondering what was taking them so long to kill her.

  They were staring at Juno’s body, wide-eyed. Apparently, they hadn’t been aware that their goddess could bleed. The Warriors, who had seen Athenais resurrect herself after slaughtering the shifters, were caught between staring at Athenais and Juno.

  She knew it was going to cost all the observers their lives, but right now, she was in a bad mood. “Don’t you morons understand a war of the gods when you see one?” Athenais snapped at them, brandishing her weapon. “Get out of here!”

  When they continued to stare, she added, “Before I smite you all like the sniveling wads of excrement you are.” Like a dozen startled sheep, they bolted.

  Grunting, Athenais shouldered her rifle, squatted, and grabbed the suzait. He didn’t even flinch as she hefted him from the ground. Dead, then?

  Then she felt a static charge, like a tingle in her fingertips.

  Alive. Damn. Fine.

  “You listen to me, you little shit,” she shouted, flinging him back and forth to wake him up. “You do anything…anything I don’t want you to, I’m gonna finish where they left off. You understand me?!”

  She got a weak twitch, like a worm trying to crawl back into its hole.

  Of course he didn’t understand her. He couldn’t even hear her. The moment he got back inside a brain, he was gonna drive it like Fairy on full manual.

  Frustrated, knowing her time was running out, Athenais dunked him in the remnants of the cleaning bucket to wash the grit off of him. She glanced around, looking for another place—any other place—to put him. Unfortunately, the sheep had fled, and Juno was dead. If she had been alive, Athenais would have straddled her and shove the suzait into her head with all of her blessings.

  But Juno was definitely dead, and Athenais knew from experience that it would take an hour or two for her heart to start beating again.

  Standing in the hall, the parasite dangling limply between her fingers, Athenais knew she had to come up with some other alternative. He
had seconds to live, if he wasn’t already dead.

  Making one of the more questionable decisions of her life, Athenais jammed the little worm face-first up her nose.

  A Glimpse into the Mind of a Pirate

  Tommy rolled the young woman onto her back. She had collapsed in a spasm, hitting her spine on the captain’s chair hard enough to make the floor shake. He knelt beside her, feeling for a pulse.

  It was there, but weakening.

  Dallas was sweaty and shivering, her lips blue. Her skin was hot to the touch, but without any of the color that usually accompanied a fever. As she lay there, her muscles began to spasm and contract until she was fighting a full-fledged seizure.

  He put his hand under her head to keep it from banging the floor, and at first he thought she had salivated on him. Then he saw the blood. Frowning, he pushed her head to the side and glanced at her ear. Immediately, he sucked in a breath.

  She’d left the little worm’s entry hole gaping open, without even bothering to place a bandage over it. The skin around it was now red and inflamed, and if a single microbe had made its way into her skull…

  “You happy little fool,” he muttered. “Hold on.” He wedged his arms under her body and stood, lifting her with him. He took her to the regen chamber and flooded the pool. Then he fit the breathing apparatus over her face and lowered her into the liquid. He wedged her under with an adjustable bar and then went back to the helm.

  Retribution had stopped amidst the debris field and was now floating in space, waiting for commands. Tommy stared at the flightplan, which Dallas had left open. He could enter anything he wanted. He could go anywhere he wanted.

  And yet, in the regen room, Dallas was dying. Retribution wasn’t equipped to handle brain reconstruction. He wasn’t sure the liquid could even get inside her ear, especially not all the way to the den the little maggot made in her head. Who knew what sort of bacteria and microorganisms could be wreaking havoc in there, unchecked?