Seasons of Murder: In the Shadow of This Red Rock

by John Wiltshire

  Cal shouted over the din, “I can’t see the others.”

  Fuller pointed at the sex bots. “You two—Decks 1 and 2. We’re looking for Hunter and Holliday. Lose the costumes.” They nodded and pushed toward the doors as best they could.

  Cal moved the three of them into a shadowed area under one of the gantries. “I’ll search three and four. You two take the cargo areas.”

  “I want to come with you.”

  Cal didn’t appear to have heard him. Zero watched him threading away, the flashing lights catching on the white bandaging.

  It had started to unravel.

  Fuller began to ascend the gantry stairs and Zero trailed after her.

  “We’ll go down the service access crawl space.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not. Help me.” She began to shed her pumpkin and revealed a skin-tight bodysuit beneath. She helped him take off his helmet, but he wasn’t wearing anything beneath the rest of the costume so he had to keep it on. She delved into the depths of the orange sponge ball and fished out a taser.

  “Don’t I get one?”

  “You try standing upright for a bit, sir, and when I judge you’re sober, I’ll give you one.”

  “What? I’m—” But she was already off, jogging down the dark corridor.

  He ran after her, when he’d recovered from a small stagger against the bulkhead. He’d only had two drinks! It was the gravity. He was sure of it.

  The only lighting available was from an emergency evac line in the floor. It was easy to follow and they quickly came to the entrance of the crawl space. Fuller, short but not thin, eyed it with distaste. “Shit. Come on.” She grabbed the rim, swung up into it and began to propel herself along until she was lost to the gloom.

  Zero was suddenly very aware of being on his own in the dark. The entrance to the service space looked decidedly unwelcoming, however.

  With a resigned sigh, he took hold of the edge and swung a leg up.

  He heard something behind him but was too slow and too trapped to react.

  A searing pain shot across his head, and not from inside, and then he knew no more.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Cal found Hunter in one of the crew kitchens.

  The 2IC paused, half-eaten sandwich to his mouth. “Boss?”

  Cal made an almost instantaneous decision and said, “It’s Holliday.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “He’s the only one Zero hasn’t checked out.”

  “Except me.”

  Cal clenched his jaw. “I’ve checked you, Jim. I have to believe I know you well enough or there’s no point to anything.”

  “Then let’s go.” As Hunter made to pick up his weapon, Cal’s communicator buzzed.

  “Hartland.”

  “Sir? It’s Fuller. I can’t find Commander Zero. He didn’t follow me into the tubes. I’ve come back up, but he’s gone.”

  Cal caught hold of the edge of the steel cabinet. “Wait out.”

  He closed his eyes. “Z? Zero! Fucking hell, this isn’t the time to play human. Answer me!” There was no reply.

  “Fuller?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Return to the party. Lock it down. No one leaves. Use the crew to man doors.”

  “Sir.”

  Cal turned to Hunter. “Get Sloane and Mann—ugh…” Cal felt Hunter grab his arm, but he sank to his knees anyway, holding his head. A huge scream of terror had ripped through him. “Z!”

  There was a muffled hum, but he couldn’t make out what was being said.

  “What’s wrong, Cal?”

  Cal tried to stand, waving Hunter’s arm off. “I’m okay.”

  The sound came again, and then Cal heard a faint, “Cal?”

  “What happened? Where are you?” But he got no coherent reply, only waves of fear washing over him that made it difficult to stay upright and carry on as normal.

  Hunter was watching him warily as he summoned the reinforcements. He clicked off. “They’re five minutes away. They’re meeting us in the crew room.”

  Cal nodded. It hit him again, and again he went down, this time retching feebly.

  Hunter hauled him to his feet. “When this is over, Boss, we’re gonna have a chat about just how not inhibited that Minder is.”

  Cal doubled up and then he heard, “Cal!” again.

  “I’m here! Where are you?”

  “It’s Hol…ay.”

  “I know. Where are you?”

  “I d…know…ark. I’m…ied to a sort of po…ing.”

  “What the fuck! I can’t hear you properly. What’s wrong with you? Where is Holliday now?”

  “I…d…know.”

  “Fuck, Z. Describe what you can see. I’ll find you. I’m coming. I’ll find you.”

  He began to run, staggering, accepting Hunter’s help.

  “Ok…’s good. I can…sign. It’s oran…It’s…pipe…says Max Head…2m. And I…axe.”

  “Okay. Fuck.” He rounded on Hunter as they arrived in the security room. “Pull up the schematics. Health and Safety notices. Headroom notifications. We’re looking for 2m ones.”

  Hunter nodded and began tapping at the computer keyboard.

  “One in every cargo hold, one in each of the loading bays. Fourteen.”

  “Shit! There’ll be an emergency access device co-located. An axe.”

  Hunter searched again. “The cargo bays—all eight of them.”

  “Too many! That’s too many! We won’t be in time.”

  “What else can you see? Zero? Anything?”

  “Hot. So hot in here.”

  Cal reared back. “He says it’s hot. It’s minus one all over the ship.”

  Hunter had his eyes narrowed and he muttered something that sounded like, “Minder, my arse,” but he said more distinctly, “The greenhouses. They’re always at optimal temp, regardless what time of year it—”

  “He’s…ack!”

  “Fuck! Come on.” There were four humidors, two below the main cargo bay and two above, to prevent cross-contamination in the unlikely event crop blight hit the ship. They careened into Manning and Sloane as they arrived, winded. Cal sent them to the upper level units and he and Hunter headed for the emergency stairwell.

  “Oh! No!”

  “Z? Tell him we know who he is. What he’s doing. Talk to him! Stall him! Send into his head—make him stop!”

  “He…eam.”

  “What! I can’t hear you!”

  Instead of a reply, all Cal heard was a vast, anguished shriek. He staggered and fell. Hunter dragged him to his feet, but he couldn’t stay on them, it was as if he was enduring the same torments as his lover, as if they were one body, one mind.

  He howled and writhed and when Hunter tried to calm him, sobbed, “Steam. He’s turned the steam vents on…Ohhh…” His breath died on the agony of the scalding. It was worse than a burn, this wet liquefying, this dissolving. He could actually feel the stupid costume melting and adhering to Zero’s beautiful skin, his skin, at the same time as he could feel Hunter’s hands on him, trying to calm or comfort, he didn’t know.

  “Cal…we might still be in time…come on…” Cal rose to his feet, every inch of his body being boiled alive. He got a few metres more before his hands came to his face and he could actually see the skin on them blistered and bubbling and bursting, then he screamed as his eyes melted and he saw no more.

  But he knew Zero was dead.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Zero watched warily as Holliday came back into the faint circle of illumination cast by the arc lamp above the support he was strapped to.

  The corporal was mumbling to himself. Zero could hear Cal faintly in the background of his mind but the words were distorted, like static, like comms on Mars during a ferocious storm. Although only fragments of words reached him, he could make out the emotions quite well—Cal was frantic and panicking.

  “You put something in my drink.”

 
Holliday looked up. “Caripenidone.”

  Oh. Fuck. It was the Minder drug.

  It worked, but the side effects were severe. Some of the early recipients had turned their suppressed mind-reading abilities inwards, creating psychotic fissures in their brains through which multiple personalities had started to emerge.

  Everything suddenly became clear to Zero.

  They had Caripenidone on board, and he had glimpsed madness in another’s mind. He had heard the voice of the drug.

  Zero closed his eyes in disbelief. “How long have you been taking it, too?” A human. He couldn’t begin to imagine the damage Caripenidone could do to a human.

  Holliday grunted. He was struggling with something Zero couldn’t see—wasn’t all that keen on seeing either. “Soon as I heard you fuckers were coming on board. The lieutenant made it easy—put me in charge. No one’s getting in my head.”

  Zero tried anyway, softly sending, “You don’t have to do this.”

  He saw Holliday’s shoulder twitch. “Let me go and we’ll go back to the party—have a drink together.” He projected a scenario where Cal and Hunter burst in upon them. This time Holliday put down whatever he was working on and grabbed his taser, swinging it around toward the dark corners of the hold.

  Zero tried again, but the drug defocused him. It was like trying to force coherent thought in a dream. He could sense Cal trying to get through to him and replied as best he could.

  Holliday then stepped away from his unpleasant little project, and despite the heat, Zero shuddered as a cold tingle of alarm trickled down his spine. Holliday had rigged a fire hose up to one of the steam valves, and it was pointed directly at him.

  “Don’t do this, please.”

  “Can’t let you fuckers loose. You’ll find me. Stop talking to him and just open the goddamn valve, you goddamn pussy!”

  Zero’s eyes widened. “He’s not real. Listen to me; the drug has created another voice in your head. Don’t listen to it.”

  “Got to protect my stash. First fucker stumbled on it. Said he’d split the profits with me. I fucking showed him. You did, it was glorious.”

  “This was about smuggling? This was all because you wanted to—”

  “Shut him up! Don’t tell me what to do! I’m sick of you telling me what to do!”

  Zero watched the man’s eyes flickering as his thoughts began to spiral further into the madness. He sent out as loud as he could to both fractured minds, “Stop! This will only make everything worse!”

  Holliday screamed and put his hands to his head. “I’m not hearing you! I’m not hearing you! Turn the valve and you’ll never have to hear him again.”

  He obeyed.

  It was stiff at first.

  Zero stared, hypnotised, as the first tiny puff of steam emerged from the end of the hose. He could feel its heat against his face. He screamed in panic. He anticipated his skin boiling, and the horror of the vision actually prevented him from breathing in a purely physical response to the intensity of his imagination.

  Holliday frowned and glanced at the tiny puff, his confusion evident.

  And Zero realised what he needed to do to survive this terror.

  He didn’t have to try and stop Holliday—he had to make him think it was already over.

  As hard as he could, so hard he felt something split open and bleed in his head, as if he were pushing physically with a muscle, he projected the image of the steam valve opening fully in Holliday’s hands, of the vast vent of the scalding liquid hitting his pale Martian features, of the pain and the melting, the agony and the ecstasy of the great martyrdom this lunatic was giving him. He writhed for real against the support, screaming out loud, and in his mind redoubling that terrible sound and flinging it across the tiny gap between them.

  He had never gone on full send before. Like a cage fighter released from the confines of the enclosure and his humanity equally, Zero ripped into Holliday’s mind without restraint.

  Drugged as he was, unable to project coherent thought, this tsunami of terror was completely abandoned and entirely genuine.

  Holliday jerked around from the handle he was struggling to turn. He stared at Zero, wide-eyed with wonder, revulsion and insatiable lust, all mixed and mingled in his disordered mind.

  Zero shoved harder, sucked knowledge from books and his theoretical experiences of a life he’d so much longed to live for real, and Holliday began to clap in time to the drip of skin melting from Zero.

  Z strained, and something cracked inside the other man’s mind.

  Before he could pull away, he fell through the tiny opening he’d made.

  There was nothing but madness on the other side.

  And it was observing Zero, and it was very, very curious about him.

  He’d never been so helpless, so tiny and insignificant in the face of this unbounded, malevolent entity that didn’t much care one way or another how individual lives played out. God hadn’t been lost in the vacuum of space—He was the great black hole at the centre of everything.

  Zero was mislaid in his darkness, floating and unable to find his way back.

  He continued to project his slow, agonised death to Holliday but after a while realised it didn’t matter.

  Holliday was dead.

  But Zero was on the other side, and the psychotic heart of everything snagged him closer, interest piqued by the audacity of his arrival.

  Zero began to feel a similar stirring of need, as the master mind reader and manipulator mirrored madness in his brain.

  “Z? Zero? It’s me.”

  Zero wondered for an instant why Cal was dead, too. For a moment longer he was glad, because they’d be together. Death, it appeared, was an even greater adventure than escaping Mars, and he was more than willing to begin it.

  But then he sensed Cal was not dead but still on the other, better side, behind him. He searched backward and saw a faint chink of light.

  “Is that you?”

  “Oh, fuck, you’re alive. Wake up, Z.”

  “I am awake. I can see…it’s like a candle flame. Is that you?”

  “I don’t fucking know. Just, wake up, please. I love you.”

  “Oh, that’s better. It’s quite bright now.”

  “Great. I’m a fucking candle in the wind. Whatever. I love you and I thought you were dead. You can’t leave me now. Do you hear me? You’ve been inside me, Z. That’s a bond, a commitment, and I’m gonna fucking hold you to it.”

  “Think something for me…”

  He needed to shake off this dream, and he tried, waiting for Cal to reach him. But the entity had lots of good thoughts too, and they began to entice Z.

  They were very, very tempting indeed.

  But before he could act on these dark desires, something flickered in the soft light from the candle.

  One tiny red leaf floated toward him, but in the absolute vacuum, the nothingness of this black hole of despair, it seemed disproportionately beautiful and real.

  He stretched out and plucked it from the darkness and held it in his hand. It was the one he’d saved in his cabin. Tiny, fragile and made of paper, but Cal was sending it to him across the vastness of this divide between where he was and where he wanted to be.

  With a surge and a shuddering of breath, he lurched toward his sense of Cal, away from the mass roiling at the centre waiting for him, and then he was free, and falling hard into something very substantial indeed, and it was Cal’s chest, apparently, squeezed against him, and it was home.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Cal had found out many things about himself in the eighteen months he and Zero were forced to be apart. Zero claimed he’d personally learnt nothing, as he was entirely self-aware already, but Cal suspected this was a bluff. They had, for example, discovered that Zero’s sending abilities didn’t work across the vast distances between Titan and the Elon Musk, but that was okay, they had a comms link which did work. In some ways, it was the best start for their relationship, because Zero
had been forced to do things the way he’d claimed, in a moment of romantic nonsense, he now wanted to—he had to learn to read his lover as all humans have to, by what is not said as much as what is.

  Zero and his little group stayed on Titan for the nine months it took Cal to return to Earth and then for the nine months it took him to get back. Then they had nine months together on the ship for Zero’s earthbound voyage. Thus, it had only taken the Minders eighteen months on Titan to prove themselves entirely reliable, this feat possibly helped by the fact that it was apparently the senior security officer on board the Elon Musk who was responsible, along with his oppo on Titan, for authoring the final report recommending reintegration or not.

  It was a foregone conclusion. After eighteen months of celibacy, both Zero and Cal were more than ready for a great deal of reintegration during the long, but thankfully uneventful trip back to Earth.

  Whilst the remaining colonists on Mars were being prepared with implants and readied for their shorter, direct transport to their new home, Cal and Zero took the months travelling to plan the new Minder homeland.

  Zero had already named it—Hartland.

  They were spooned now in Cal’s narrow bunk, Cal running his fingers through Z’s sweaty hair. “You do realise you’ll be the only mind reader in the entire world?”

  Zero pressed back harder into Cal, curling up slightly so his backside fit exactly into the sharp angles of Cal’s groin, a sure sign, Cal knew, that round two wasn’t far off. “Not for long.”

  Cal stopped his stroking. “Huh?” He sensed Z was smirking and turned him over to confirm it.

  Z appeared to school his expression but then put his mouth to Cal’s ear and whispered, “Martians have babies, just like everybody else.”

  Cal narrowed his eyes as Z lay back on the pillow. “Yes. And we’ll implant them as well. Two years old is the optimum, mandated…what? Why are you laughing?”

  “Good luck with that then. Do you actually read history?”