Injection Burn

by Jason M. Hough

  The cushioned foam near her wrists began to push outward, then around. Sam resisted the urge to pull away, deciding this must be Eve’s version of a seat harness. She felt similar movement around her ankles, even as she watched the material wrap around her wrists and then tighten. More pressure at various points along her body. Her chest, stomach, thighs, and forehead were all wrapped in bands of the orange foam until she became completely immobile.

  “Eve?”

  No response.

  Vaughn was shouting at her now. He’d been similarly secured to his chair. She mouthed, I’m okay, to him. Then, Relax.

  He gritted his teeth, his eyes fixed on hers.

  Movement caught Sam’s eye. Not from above, but below. The iris door had pulsed open. She hoped to see Skyler come through, or Prumble. Even Tim. Anyone, really. But instead a column-shaped something drifted into the room. It reminded her, terrifyingly, of the pedestal she’d seen in that pit below Old Downtown in Darwin. Only, there was no alien ship resting atop this thing.

  The thing was not smooth, but was utterly covered in small hatches and protrusions. A few scattered lights winked on across its surfaces.

  “—fuck is that?” Vaughn asked, communication abruptly restored.

  “I hear you now,” she blurted.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. Eve? Eve?!”

  The ship remained silent. Or, Sam thought with growing concern, the ship was dead.

  The object grew limbs. A network of supports, gliding out in all directions to attach to connectors on the walls that had not been there a second earlier. Unable to move, Sam watched in horror as several tubes extended from one compartment on the device and connected to protrusions on her suit. Little valves that had not been there a moment before.

  “Stay calm, stay calm,” a voice said. Her own voice, she realized.

  —

  Beth reached the airlock door with only seconds left, gripped the handle.

  “Time, Vanessa?”

  “Eight seconds!” the woman below shouted.

  Eleven to self-destruct. Gloria Tsandi pursed her lips, biting back the years of training and all the promises she’d made to her superiors.

  From memory, she navigated the fractured menu options on her broken HUD. Crew authorizations. Xavi Decklan, Navigator. Temporary command. Confirm. Confirm.

  “What—” he started.

  “No time. Pause the self-destruct,” she said, and hoped he could find it. Only a few seconds left. “Then be ready to get us out of here.”

  A shape flew past her gaze. Vanessa rocketing up toward the bridge at breakneck speed. As the woman passed Beth she shouted, “Now!”

  Beth turned the release handle. Gloria could hear the clunk as it slid into position.

  Null gravity returned instantly. Gloria counted to three in her mind, her breath held.

  Instead of death in a nuclear fireball, she heard the voice of her friend and navigator.

  “Buckle up,” Xavi said. “We’re getting out of here.”

  Gloria winced as the Scipio tentacle tightened even more. The creature on the hull, trying to hang on. “Beth,” she said. “Help.”

  The engineer had been glued to the airlock window, enthralled with what Gloria could only imagine was a spectacular scene of devastation outside. After a moment the woman turned and flew over to her. She studied the alien limb. “I can’t…I don’t have anything.”

  “Knife,” Gloria managed, pointing vaguely toward where she’d dropped it. She could hardly breathe now. The tentacle wouldn’t let her. “Hurry.”

  There was a brief press of motion to one side as Xavi began to maneuver the ship. It didn’t last. Gloria expected a hard acceleration to follow, but nothing else happened. “Xavi?”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “What are you waiting for?” The words took the last of her breath. Beth reappeared at her side, knife in hand. For a second she studied the silvery tube before her, then gave a small shrug and stabbed hard into the thickest section of it.

  Nothing. Beth, face contorted by her own exertions and the spider cracks across Gloria’s visor, gave it a twist with all her strength, letting out an almost childlike roar as she heaved on the handle.

  There was a whoosh as the tentacle released and slid away, back through its hole.

  Gloria Tsandi heaved in a breath. Her stomach teetered on the edge of revolt, but that was the least of her concerns just now. Near tears from the brush with suffocation, she hauled herself over to the airlock window and peered out.

  The cable conduit snaked around, now free but still connected at the far end to the Builder ship, groping out toward the Wildflower like a ghostly hand. Shreds of white fabric were all that remained of the tube itself, looking like the corroded ribs of some savaged fish, torn up by circling sharks.

  Beyond, against the black of space, she saw a cloud of Scipio scouts bearing down on them. Even as she watched they began to flare, bright with nuclear thrust, as they slowed themselves in the instant before reaching their prey. Most were bound for the ravaged, desiccated Builder ship. But plenty were angling for the Wildflower, too. She wondered how many more were coming in at angles she could not see. They’d arrived in force now, and would not be denied.

  Gloria suddenly realized with cold horror that the Wildflower wasn’t moving. She’d given Xavi a command, then seen Vanessa fly the length of the ship toward the bridge.

  “Xavi! What’s wrong?”

  A tiny lateral thrust kicked in. Then another. Corrective movements.

  “What are you doing, Xavi? Get us away from here!”

  “Not sure,” he said. “Vanessa said—”

  “You’re the one in command. Go!”

  Her navigator must have had his finger on the button. As soon as she said it she was flung bodily into the bulkhead, then across to the other side, as thrusters killed the errant rotation and turned the Wildflower to face away from the Builder vessel.

  Through some miracle of subconscious thought, Gloria found herself secured to one wall, hands and feet shoved through the ubiquitous stabilizing rungs that studded the interior surfaces of the ship. A split second later, she felt herself become heavy. Very heavy. All she could do was lie against the wall, now the floor, and groan as Xavi piled on the g forces. Gloria warred for consciousness, knowing this would last perhaps hours until they ran out of fuel, but then, abruptly, the acceleration stopped. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why did you stop?”

  “Uh,” Xavi replied. “Vanessa’s orders.”

  “What orders? What the hell does she know?”

  “She…she said she’s following the glowing path.”

  “The what?”

  “Here we go, boss. Get ready.”

  Glowing path?

  Something happened. Something big. The whole ship screeched and rattled, and Gloria felt as if an elephant had sat on her.

  Someone screamed. Maybe it was her.

  Then, blackness.

  The Chameleon

  6.AUG.3911 (Earth Actual)

  SILENCE CONSUMED HIM. The insanity of battle fell away as Skyler Luiken entered a room he’d never seen before.

  The secret heart of the ship.

  Or perhaps it was more apt to consider it the brain.

  He glanced around, taking it in. There were no walls, per se, just a cavity where cables and conduits of all sizes converged on a large, bulbous pocket, each terminating in a canopy of circular slabs that danced with flickering laser light of every imaginable color.

  From these thousands of disks, softly glowing hairlike wires, fine as silk strands, curved and looped in elegant arcs down to a single, monolithic black tower in the very center of the room.

  Eve hovered before this tower. The projected entity, the embodiment of the ship. Its high mind, as she called it. Her face, still somehow reminding him in some way of each member of the crew, held no expression at all.

  The room became still, the silence almo
st oppressive.

  “Why did you bring me here?” he asked, still holding the edge of the wall where he’d entered. “The others…the fighting, it still goes on.”

  “Come closer,” Eve said.

  “Answer first.”

  “I brought you here to defend me. Now come closer, we have much to discuss.”

  Skyler considered arguing. He was either here to defend her, or have a chat, not both. Not with everything going on around them. But something about the tone of her voice—the barest hint of conspiracy, of intrigue—made him push off from the wall and glide across to her.

  Though he had no way to stop himself, nothing to touch or grab, he stopped all the same, via some invisible shift in the currents of air, perhaps, assuming the room held any. The net effect was he found himself floating before her, unable to move. The thrusters in his suit were suddenly offline.

  “Tania’s plan failed,” Eve said.

  He bristled. “Don’t pin this on her, dammit. The plan was fine, and we all agreed to it, you included. Everything was fine until that ship from Earth found us. Who could have predicted that? That they’d beat us here?”

  “My wording choice was poor. I simply meant the plan has failed. A new plan was needed.”

  “Was?” he asked. “Already got one, then?”

  “We initiated it a few seconds after you woke me.”

  He made a show of looking around. “Doesn’t seem to be working so well. The ship is a mess. We’re scattered. I don’t even know what the hell kind of shape my crew is in because you’ve isolated our communications.”

  “Everyone is alive and exactly where they need to be, except the one called Jared Larsen.”

  Skyler narrowed his eyes. “About that. What the hell were he and Alex even doing here? Alive? You kept them hidden from us.”

  “I find it interesting that you never even inquired as to the state of those on the losing side of your battle in the key room.”

  “You said the dead were jettisoned.”

  “They were. Those I was unable to revive.”

  “Seriously, Eve? We’re going to get into semantics on this? You kept them alive, you hid them from us. Why? Who else is among them? If Grillo is here—”

  The hologram shook her head. “We have insufficient time for this. Please know that I only kept Alex and Jared. I needed them in order to protect you and the others.”

  “Not good enough—”

  Eve blinked, and Skyler’s words died on his still moving lips. He could hear himself only as one could hear a distant conversation, several rooms away.

  “Please,” she said, “listen.”

  Skyler swallowed his sudden anger. There was real urgency in her voice, of that he had no doubt.

  Only, Eve said nothing. She just stared at him.

  “I’m listening,” he said, though he could still not hear himself clearly. Some kind of noise cancellation built into his helmet negated the sound.

  She seemed frozen in place. The tiny, almost imperceptible movements that made her seem so human had vanished.

  A sudden force pushed Skyler forward, toward her. Some invisible wind or gas. He drifted, unable to stop himself. And he flinched when his face neared Eve’s. He passed right through, of course, and could have sworn he heard her whisper something to him in a language he did not know.

  Behind her was the tower, only it had opened at its base. Inside was some kind of reddish-orange chamber, and it did not look welcoming. Skyler went to throw his arms wide, to stop himself at the precipice, but the suit would not allow it. His limbs were frozen, the black armor utterly rigid. He slid through the door and then his body rotated 180 degrees. Eve hadn’t moved. She still stood, staring at the empty space where he’d been. Then, her form flickered and dimmed before vanishing altogether.

  The door irised closed.

  She’s dead, he thought, a chill coursing through his body. The Scipios must have found a way to power her off. They were trapping him in here. This tower was his prison cell.

  Skyler’s limbs moved without his consent, forcing him into a seated position as he reached the back wall of the tiny chamber. The red-orange material around him began to puff up, inflating like quickfoam. The material pressed in all around him, forcing his body to hold its position, not that he could have moved the armor if he’d wanted to. His view became nothing but red as the material formed around his visor. He was blind and could not move.

  “Eve!” he shouted. At least his voice worked again.

  His vision blacked out. Or, rather, the visor, for he could still see the faint blur of the bridge of his nose.

  A new view appeared. The room he’d been in. Eve, frozen in place like a mannequin, the glowing fibrous filaments of the room still undulating in brightness and color. He realized he was seeing a remote view from outside the tower. He found if he turned his head his view changed, not unlike a sensory chamber.

  “Eve,” he tried, to no avail.

  The glowing fibers began to brighten. Power, he imagined, surging into them. A system overload, or something like it. The whole room seemed to vibrate with the influx of energy. Blinding, pulsating light filled every corner. And Eve, at the center of it all, shone in pure yellow-white glare.

  There was a flash. Something purple, pearlescent. He’d seen that color before. But in a heartbeat it was gone, and then everything around him exploded. He heard it, saw it, but felt nothing at all.

  The brilliance around him shattered and shot outward in a million chunks of pure energy and heat, Skyler one of them. He was not at the center of this grand display, but a part of the ejected debris. He hurtled into space, so fast his body should have been crushed instantly, though he felt nothing whatsoever. He only saw.

  Along the perimeter of the expanding debris cloud came dozens, then hundreds of smaller explosions. Scores of Scipio scouts, all closing in for the kill, utterly consumed in fire. The shock wave tore through their numbers, vaporizing everything in its path. In an instant the feeding frenzy died in a terrible, all-consuming hell.

  My crew! Oh God, my crew! Where—

  Farther out Skyler saw anomalies in the chaos. Huge chunks of the Chameleon, embroiled in flame, spreading out in a cone somehow aimed in-system. And among that fractured debris, something else. Pearlescent purple globes, flying outward with the rain of fire. And farther still, as if riding the leading edge of the titanic blast, Gloria Tsandi’s ship, tumbling out of control.

  One by one the purple spheres flickered, then vanished. Left behind were…shapes, racing away from the center of the explosion at phenomenal speed. Dark missiles, hidden among the rest of the wreckage. The ubiquitous matte-gray surfaces the Builders used. Pods, like his? Aura towers, like they’d delivered to Brazil?

  “Each of those is like yours,” Eve said, startling him. Her voice sounded as if inside his own skull, flawless and crystal clear.

  Skyler could still not move his helmet, but he could look around a bit. Not that it mattered. His entire body was still encased in the red-orange cushioning, which was probably what had somehow absorbed the forces being unleashed around him at the moment of the blast.

  “What happ—” he started to ask her, but Eve spoke over him. A prerecorded message.

  “Tania,” she said, and a faint square appeared, overlaid around one of the dark shapes. Each name she said produced another marker. “Prumble, Sam and Vaughn, Tim.”

  What of Vanessa? he thought, with dread.

  “Vanessa is aboard the ship from Earth,” Eve said, either anticipating his thought or somehow reacting to it. “I did what I could for them. They may not survive this, however. They are not protected as you are.”

  He wanted to reach out toward the ship. To fly there and help. Skyler wanted to grab all of them and pull them back. But he could not. He was trapped in here.

  “I carefully positioned each of you,” Eve went on. “My destruction was inevitable, therefore I harnessed it, turned it into a last chance for the mission.” />
  “Fuck the mission,” Skyler growled.

  “Each of you was expelled along a precise vector, your pods hidden among my debris. With luck each of you will end up more or less where you need to be to accomplish your part of the greater effort. You will be alone, Skyler. You must remain focused and find your task. Only one of you will be able to communicate with everyone else, and they will have to decide what to share and when. A necessary precaution.”

  Neil knew. Tania’s words, so long ago. Neil Platz had gained some insider knowledge of the Builders’ plan, well before the Darwin Elevator arrived at Earth, and told no one. Instead, he used that information to maneuver into position to benefit most from the arrival of the Elevator and subsequent plague.

  With this came an unsettling thought, and once considered he knew he would never shake it: Had Eve, indeed the Builders, known this moment would come all along? How much of this calamity had already been foreseen and planned for?

  The recording went on, undeterred. “You are fighting for more now than just my Creators. You are fighting for Earth. The arrival of Gloria’s ship means the Scipios are now aware of you and know humanity possesses the second piece of the puzzle that is universal dominance. The Scipios have immortality already. Now they know that instantaneous travel between stars is within their grasp. With both they will be unstoppable.”

  With each passing second Eve’s rain of debris spread farther out, and Skyler drifted farther away from his companions, all streaking like comets toward some unseen goal. Carthage, that’s what Gloria said humanity had named the world the Builders came from.

  All except Gloria, in her wreck of a ship. Which veered away and became too small to see even with the marker his visor provided.

  His heart skipped a beat when he realized Gloria’s ship would collide with one of the moons of Carthage. Skyler stared at the moon as it receded into the distance, memorizing where they would crash, so he could go back for them. Even if just to bury Vanessa. He owed her that much, and more. He’d even bury Alex Warthen.

  Alex. Hell. Skyler did not know what to think about him and his presence here. Twice he’d been an adversary, choosing to follow orders first from Blackfield and then the madman Grillo. Yet he’d paid the price for that, in death, literally at the hands of Prumble. Only, Eve had somehow healed him. Who knew what she’d put him through in the time since. Eve called it experimentation; Alex had called it torture. Skyler could hardly fault him for being more than a little pissed off when he’d escaped during the silent run. If they survived their encounter with that moon, he only hoped Vanessa could talk him into being an ally. If anyone could, surely it was she.