Gates of Hell

by Susan Sizemore

  The monster snarled and reared back, huge and fierce, all fangs and claws and fire. Roxy laughed in its face. “Come and get me.”

  It roared again and sprang for her.

  ———

  “Holy fucking shit.”

  The words, spoken in a barely audible rasp, were the first hint Roxy had that she existed. She heard them, realized they came from her, and accepted that they had a connection with something that had happened. But what? She didn’t open her eyes just yet, but let her other senses do some work on cleaning out the disorientation. A bit of consideration brought her the conclusion that she was horizontal on a comfortable surface. She traced her fingers slowly across a familiar texture while simultaneously sniffing and tasting the blandness of recycled air. There were sounds coming from her left. She listened, not quite up to paying attention to the words, but did recognize that the sounds were coming from her pet ensigns and Dee Nikophoris. So, here was the ship. And why shouldn’t it be the ship? Specific here was probably sickbay, as she couldn’t imagine being horizontal anywhere else but her quarters—and unless she’d gotten drunk and passed out at a party, it wasn’t likely those three would all be in her quarters. Eamon wouldn’t like that. Besides, she didn’t get drunk and pass out.

  The last thing I remember is Grett complaining about a foul call. Oh, well, better get on with this waking up business.

  She sat up, opened her eyes, and got stabbed by the brightness of sickbay lighting. “Shit! Ouch! God damn it!” She covered her eyes with her hands. “Bonnie, I’ll talk!” Roxy realized it wasn’t the lights, but her, and tried to adjust her body accordingly. She took her hands from her eyes, blinked, and saw Bonita Hernandez, Dee, and the ensigns looking at her. It was still too bright, but not actually painful. She smiled weakly at the four surprised stares. “Hi.”

  “How you feeling?” Hernandez asked.

  Roxy called up a holographic diagnostic display from the foot of the bed. As usual, the oscillating lights looked very pretty. And, as usual, the reading said that she was dead, insane, horny, and 97% fat free. “I need to go on a diet,” she muttered.

  “The hell you do.” Hernandez grabbed her wrist, taking Roxy’s pulse the old-fashioned way. “Is this normal?”

  “Close enough,” she replied. “I have a slight headache that does not want to be reasonable, and my pupils are not reacting to light properly. I do not want to know what sort of Bucon chemical I have ingested, but I promise never to do it again.” Hernandez dropped her hand and Roxy rubbed her eyes. “What happened? Why are you all glowing?”

  Dee handed Roxy a datasheet. “I just analyzed a blood sample from you.” She grinned like a ghoul. “Do you know that you’re mostly caffeine?”

  Roxy read the analysis. Only then did she realize that she must have done a healing. “Never had a reaction like that before. This looks like Sag Fever.”

  “Used to be,” Dee corrected. “You fixed it. There’s a second patient waiting for you. And we’re all in isolation until you fix him, too. Can I get you a nice raw steak?”

  “Sounds lovely.” Roxy put down the datasheet and lay back down. She closed her eyes and tried to remember. All she got was a large gray area where memory should have been. “I did a healing?”

  “Yes,” four voices chorused.

  Grett explained about a Terlert and rescue pods and two survivors and lugging three unconscious people off a self-destructing freighter and into the isolation room in sickbay.

  “Oh,” she said when he was done. She took a sniff, and the aroma of approaching meat and coffee displaced any further curiosity. “Food,” she said, sitting up. “Eat, Now.” Hernandez swung a bed table in front of her, Dee set down a tray of food, and Roxy immediately dug into the meal.

  “Better hurry it up, Sting,” Dee advised. “There’s one more survivor awaiting your magic touch.”

  “Stable, but very weak,” Hernandez added.

  Roxy swallowed quickly, then stuffed another piece of steak in and talked around it, meat juice dribbling down her chin. “Right now, Groupie?” She responded to Dee’s use of her Belter nickname by fondly using Dee’s.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” Dee answered. “Or do you want to be stuck in one little corner of sickbay forever? I knew I shouldn’t have volunteered when Hernandez wanted someone to run tests.”

  Roxy stuffed down two more bites, then concentrated on lymphocyte production. This kind of rearranging of her insides produced a deep ache in the bone marrow, especially in her arms and legs. The pain, oddly enough, cleared some of the white noise out of her head. She finally recalled doing a healing. Circumstances? Fuzzy. There was a woman. And, yeah, there was another one. Better get to it. Sag Fever waits for no one.

  She opened her eyes and pushed the table back, grabbing one last bite of meat as Dee whisked the tray away. She wiped her fingers on her shorts, then grabbed CeCe’s glowing fingers and let him help her up.

  “Okay, witch doctor,” she said to Hernandez. “The faith healer’s back in business.”

  ———

  “I’m going to faint now.” Roxy suited actions to words as she slid bonelessly toward the deck, holding the yellow bed cover in a death grip and taking it with her. She used it to bury her face in while she sobbed like a child. She didn’t know what she was crying about, or why she was being assaulted by a horrible feeling of melancholy. All she wanted to do was faint. Or take a shower. This stuff really made her sweat.

  Hands lifted her onto a bed, and she felt a sting as an injector pumped concentrated protein into her system. It wasn’t quite so satisfying as a hunk of meat, but it did make her feel better almost immediately. She had to squint to look at anything. “Is he okay?”

  “Of course he is, honey,” Hernandez answered as she scanned the readings on the patient’s diagnostic display.

  “I don’t like this stuff. It fights dirty. Never met such a violent virus before.” Roxy shook sweat-damp hair out of her face. She looked around as her eyes got closer to normal and finally paid attention to the blue light surrounding everyone but her. There was even environmental shielding surrounding the beds of the two former plague victims. Bonita Hernandez was quite correctly taking no chances. “How long before you stop glowing?”

  “We’re waiting for you to tell us, Physician,” Hernandez replied.

  “We’re all better now,” Roxy assured the ship’s other doctor. She placed her hand over her heart. “Honest.”

  “And I would appreciate being able to enter,” Eamon said from the doorway. Roxy looked toward him. The Captain’s long, slender form was obscured by yet another sterile field across the doorway.

  Hernandez lifted a remote and pressed a button, killing all the fields at once. Roxy was glad to be rid of the extra lighting. Dee, Grett, and CeCe lost no time in making themselves scarce. Hernandez moved with less speed back to the main sickbay, passing Eamon as he stepped into the room and approached the patients.

  Both of the freighter crewmembers were awake and staring in awe at Roxy. The man was big, ruggedly built, and bearded. Roxy recalled that the woman had been in her sixties, but she’d done a very thorough job of the healing. The woman was going to be very surprised when she looked in a mirror and discovered she was a red-haired beauty of eighteen again.

  Roxy shrugged at the couple and grinned sheepishly, embarrassed at the reaction koltiri got from most people. She was glad they also had the authoritative figure of an Alpaean aristocrat in black uniform decorated with lots of fancy fruit salad to focus their attention on. Her war hero was gaudy, but he came in handy in awkward social situations. Roxy slid out of bed as Eamon faced the survivors.

  “We intercepted a distress signal from your vessel,” he told the survivors. “Who are you?”

  The man sat up, and Roxy felt his shock at discovering he was no longer weak and sick. “I’m Kelem,” he said. He gestured toward the woman. “This is Sady. We’re from Thensil 3. We sent the distress signal after we were overtaken and attacked
by the other ship. Before they jammed our communications. We’d asked the Triallens for help. Their answer was to try to destroy us.”

  “Your system is under quarantine,” Eamon reminded them. “You were risking spreading the plague. Is that why the Triallens fired on you?”

  Roxy stood as close to Eamon as she could without looking like she wanted a reassuring hug. She did, but the man was here on business.

  “Yes,” Sady answered Eamon’s question. “I don’t blame them. Sag Fever is horrible. Horrible.” She shuddered. “Our world is dying. The government tells us there is no cure.”

  “There isn’t,” Roxy said. “You were healed, not cured… but let’s not go into the difference.”

  “You’re lying! There is a cure!” The outburst came from Kelem as he sprang out of the bed to tower angrily over them.

  Roxy took a step back just so she could look up at him, and she was over six feet tall. “Whoa, there, big fella,” she soothed. Kelem went red with indignation.

  Before he could shout again, Sady said, “We have heard of a medication that is available on Laborne. We were on our way to Laborne when we developed engine trouble and tried to set down on a Triallen repair station. The station was fully automated, but they wouldn’t allow us near it. We must get to Laborne and bring the cure back to Thensil.”

  Kelem began to sob, the tears rolling down his cheeks and into his beard. “You don’t know what it’s like watching a world… people you love… total strangers… it doesn’t matter. They’re all dying. I don’t want to go back. And I don’t want to live knowing what’s happened to the rest of my world. Would you want to go back to a world of skeletons?” he demanded of Roxy and Eamon.

  Dee and Hernandez had come back into the room. Dee stepped forward now. “Laborne’s a free-trader port. A not particularly reputable free-trader port. Sound’s like some charlatan’s trying to sell you a placebo just to make a profit. Some beings will do anything for a credit.”

  Sady looked confused and worried. She obviously didn’t want to believe that someone might try to take advantage of plague victims. “We were given a name.”

  “Of a friend of a friend of a friend,” Roxy said. She and Dee exchanged cynical looks and almost imperceptible nods.

  “A Bucon name?” Eamon asked, picking up on her and Dee’s suspicion.

  Sady shrugged. “I don’t know if he’s Bucon. His name is Stev Persey.”

  “Sounds Bucon,” Dee and Roxy said together.

  “Maybe they do have something,” Roxy suggested. She shot a glance at Hernandez.

  “Nothing I’ve heard about,” the doctor responded.

  “You must take us to Laborne,” Kelem insisted.

  Sady leaned out of her bed and touched Kelem on the hand. He turned to look down at her. “Why?” she asked him, voice bitter. “The Triallens destroyed our ship—our cargo. We have no way to buy the medicine now.”

  Kelem sat down heavily beside her and her arm came around his shoulder. He was still crying. “This can’t happen.” He looked up pleadingly at Roxy. “You saved us.”

  “Are you a Koltiran priestess?” Sady asked.

  “Koltiri, yes,” Roxy answered.

  Kelem was suddenly on his feet again, knocking Sady back against the pillow. “You can help us!”

  Roxy became aware that Eamon was holding her arm with a force that would have been bruising if she wasn’t koltiri. If she wasn’t koltiri—well, she was, and he couldn’t change that fundamental truth any more than she could, no matter how much they’d tried. She stepped away from her husband and turned her back on the Thensilans. “Yeah,” she said. “I could.”

  “Please,” the woman said.

  The word came like a stab between Roxy’s shoulder blades and she flinched away from it, surprised and suddenly very frightened. Why? Because to heal it, she would have to leave the shelter of the Tigris. Was that all? She’d been arguing with the Captain to be allowed to do just that. Because she risked losing her husband? She remembered what it had felt like to heal Sagouran Fever. No, that wasn’t all.

  A voice calling for the Captain and Physician to report to the bridge to accept a communications transmission saved her from having to confront this fear. She felt like a complete coward as she eagerly followed Eamon out of sickbay, leaving the distraught couple for Hernandez to deal with.

  ———

  “Do you wish the Tigris to continue with the border patrol?” Eamon asked the plump, gray-bearded Terran visage on the flatscreen after the official greetings were done with.

  “No,” Admiral Gunderson responded. “It’s been decided to keep a large-enough force on our side of the Rose to let the Borderers know we’re aware of them, but to reassign most of our combat vessels to sector patrols. Police work,” he said apologetically. “I realize that you aren’t used to that sort of assignment.” He somehow managed to look like he was personally addressing everyone on the bridge.

  The bridge crew all looked back with properly serious expressions. Roxy was glad the admiral didn’t know any of them personally, or he would have recognized they were hiding amusement and annoyance at his patronizing assumption that they were a bunch of blood-thirsty, trigger-happy Trin killers who disdained anything less than major space battles.

  We used to be like that, Roxy thought, but we got better. Mostly. We haven’t done anything that could be prosecuted as a war crime in months, she added cynically. Reputations were hard to outgrow. Outlive. Whatever.

  Admiral Gunderson beamed another kindly smile around the bridge. The bridge beamed a collective smile back—a little too toothy, Roxy thought, but not bad. Eamon’s serious face helped tone down the effect. Gunderson then settled his benevolent gaze on her. She didn’t have to be a telepath to know what was coming.

  “Physician Merkrates.”

  “Sir.” She knew Eamon knew as well as she did. Her husband didn’t show his fury, but the deep burn of it stabbed through her and left a scar. She kept her gaze on the admiral.

  “I’ve been asked to relay a request to you from the Council to join the planet-based medical team on Bonadem to assist in the relief effort of Sagouran Fever.”

  She expected the invitation, but had thought it was MilService’s turn. This time Roxy and Eamon exchanged a glance. MedService was one thing, her relatives—all koltiri were related—another, but The All Worlds Council was the ruling body of the United Systems, though only eleven beings ever sat, squatted, or floated on it at any one time. Why would The Council send a message to her? Why was an admiral delivering it?

  “Sir?” Her normally deep, smoky voice came out as a high-pitched squeak.

  “Your service is being requested to implement an evacuation plan. A plan that will save the lives of thousands of children on several worlds affected by the epidemic.”

  She had just been given the means to override all of Eamon’s personal and professional objections to her leaving the ship. And she wished she didn’t feel so triumphant about it. Marriages weren’t about winning.

  And she wished she hadn’t met Sagouran Fever deep inside the Thensilans’ dying flesh. Then she wouldn’t really know what she was up against. She wouldn’t be frightened to go. She reminded herself that this was a war for her to fight, and that she was good at that. She said, “A plan to save children? I’ll do whatever I can to help, sir.”

  I’ve felt what this thing can do, she thought at her husband who did not like telepathy. I’m sorry, my love, but I have to go.

  His only answer was silence, of course, along with rage, and offended pride. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t have any expression on his face as he said to Gunderson, “I’m sure Physician Merkrates will serve as competently on Bonadem as she has aboard the Tigris.” After a brief exchange of pleasantries, it was agreed that a cutter would be sent out from Bonadem to pick her up. Eamon ordered a course change to rendezvous with the planetary ship. Then, and only then, did he address Roxy. What he said was, “Dismissed, Physician.”

/>   ———

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Roxy turned at Dee’s voice. She’d just come up to the lift near her quarters. She waited for Dee to catch up with her. “Cutter bay,” she answered. “I’m out of here.”

  “Just like that.” Dee snapped her fingers in Roxy’s face. “Gone. Poof. No big tearful farewell scene after all this time onboard? Not like you, Merkrates.”

  “I’ll be back in a month or so. Besides, I’ve done the tearful farewell bit.” The day-long scene with her husband had been both tearful and unpleasant before he finally, grudgingly acquiesced to the necessity of her leaving, since there was nothing he could do about it. “Everybody gathered in the recreation room and said goodbye an hour ago. There was cake. Where were you?”

  “Packing.” Dee held up a blue duffel just like the one at Roxy’s feet. “I’m coming along.”

  “What?!” Roxy had a vivid recollection of Kelem before she’d healed him. She didn’t want to see Dee in the same condition. “Why would you want to go to Bonadem? I don’t want to go to Bonadem.”

  “Bucons,” Dee answered succinctly. “If they’re dealing a drug that works on Sag Fever, I want to find it and synthesize it. Chemists are good for that,” she added. “Bonadem has a Bucon trading enclave.”

  “I know. I was thinking about that myself.”

  Dee patted her on the head. “Clever child. But you’re not a chemist.”

  Actually, she was. “True,” she agreed.

  “And you’ll be busy.”

  “True,” Roxy agreed again.

  “And I know more about Bucons than you do.”

  “Well… “

  Dee’s dark eyes narrowed. “My misspent youth was more misspent than your misspent youth.”