Kohl might be a borderline psychopath—
He’s not borderline. There’s no actual border there at all.
—but he was effective. He caused friction in the crew, wanted to sell Hope to the next lot of bounty hunters to sail past, didn’t respect El, hell he didn’t respect Nate, but the man knew fighting. Kohl knew all war’s ugly faces. “Kohl,” said Nate. “We need the admin center. We need to get there alive, and we need to not be infected by parasites. You got that?”
“I got that,” said Kohl. He hefted the laser, something feral in his expression. Something happy. “I can keep doing this all day.”
“Move,” said Nate. He turned, set the pace. A jog through deserted streets. Head on a swivel, checking doorways, ground cars, windows. Grace, jogging at his side, sword sheathed, scabbard held low in one hand. Ready to draw, to cut.
What’s fucking with you, Nathan Chevell, is why she hasn’t used that sword on you. She’s got in with the crew, excepting Kohl, and not even that man’s own mother loves him. She could leave you to die here. Take your ship. And she hasn’t.
That’s what an esper would do. It’s what they had done. Intelligencers had got into every level of the Old Empire’s government, rotted it from within. Made the walls weak, soft, so the death of a good man was enough for the whole house to fall down.
Nate saw movement out of the corner of his eye, a shadow in the front of a shop. Holos moved and shimmered, advertising some kind of swim wear. Behind those ads, something hulked in the gloom where the interior lights were out. Bigger than a tall man, bigger than Kohl. Nate, swung his blaster around, pulled the trigger. Plasma ate the clear ceramic windows, shards of glowing material showering into the store. He didn’t know why he’d pulled the trigger, he hadn’t identified a clear target, but something at the back of his mind gabbled at him, and he’d clawed the trigger almost by accident.
Kohl was looking at him. “You good? You just set fire to a swim suit store. I mean, I got nothing against swim wear, and I figure the same’s true of you, so what you doin’?”
“You didn’t see that?” said Nate.
“See what?” said Kohl.
“I saw it,” said Grace. “But I don’t know what I saw.”
Nate walked to the shattered frontage, the edges of the clear ceramic still glowing where plasma had scorched them. He looked into the darkened interior. Ceramic shards spread across the floor, right up to the destroyed frame of a robotic model. Standard machine, capable of looking male, female, or neither. It’d model your body, wear the clothes, and you could see what you’d look like in the latest summer fashions. Not this particular robot, because it was in smoldering pieces. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a robot.”
He couldn’t shake the feeling that what he’d seen hadn’t looked like a robot. Not when he’d pulled the trigger. What he’d seen was huge. It hadn’t moved like a person.
You’re just imagining things. A parasite inside people has got you jumpy.
Sure, humans had encountered horrors in their walk across the galaxy. Weird bacteria and viruses that found humanity delicious. The Republic sent in pest control. That had to be the situation here, although this would be the first time they'd be sent in for anything larger than a weasel. They just needed to get to Penn so the Rear Admiral could call in the exterminators.
But. That didn’t explain the Gladiator, hole in her hull, fire control set to extreme prejudice. He shook his head. Focus. Thinking about the Gladiator would be a useful exercise for another time.
They made the administration center, identifiable even without the map on their consoles. It had a big, black exterior. Most impressive building for klicks in any direction. The Republic didn’t miss an opportunity to show the size of their boots as they were standing on you, did they? The doors were shut, blast shutters down over the windows.
“Looks like they closed up,” said Kohl. “Standard protocol, right? Seal the building, evac."
“Yeah, except for that,” said Grace, pointing. Down the end of the building, near the corner, were shards of broken ceramic and metal. The shutters were caved in, giving them an entrance into the structure.
“I don’t think that was the Republic,” said Nate. “They’d have a key.”
“Sure,” said Grace. She gave Nate a look that said sorry and sorry again, something hard but hurt in her eyes. She looked away before he could. “I’ll go in. See what … there is to see.”
“You do that,” said Nate. He watched her slip in through the hole in the shutters, her elegant motion like flowing water.
“So,” said Kohl. “What’s the deal with Grace?”
“There’s no deal,” said Nate.
“Cap, I might look big and dumb, but there’s been an ice sheet between you for the last two klicks. Right since those … bugs in people’s heads,” he said. “I don’t think I’m imagining it. El says I don’t have an imagination.”
“El’s right,” said Nate. He looked Kohl in the eye. “October?”
“Aw, shit,” said Kohl. “When you call me October, I know there’s the real deal coming.”
“I’m pretty sure Grace is an esper,” said Nate.
“Right, I’m going to grease her,” said Kohl. He patted the rotary laser. “This should heat her insides to about a million degrees. Be right back.”
Before he could walk off, Nate held out a hand. “Hold up.”
Kohl looked at him, at his hand, then at the hole. “Cap? Fucking espers, man. It’s the one thing we all see eye to eye on. They’re basically bad. Mind reading is bad. Right?”
“Right,” said Nate, slowly, “except what if it’s not?”
“No,” said Kohl. “No. It’s just bad.”
“I think we’ve got worse problems for now,” said Nate. “Also, if she’s an esper, she’ll read your mind and slice that sword through you.”
“She might try,” offered Kohl.
“Let’s use it as a test,” said Nate. “If she looks like she’s going to kill one of us, we do her first. That sit okay with you?”
“Not really,” said Kohl.
“Great,” said Nate. He turned at a rattling sound, the shutters rising around the windows of the administration center. Grace looked out at them, sword held in one hand at her side. “She got the shutters open.”
“She can find a switch,” said Kohl. “That’s a life skill right there.” His voice was grim. Nate looked at the big man, saw the laser pointed at the administration building. At the windows, and at Grace. Kohl’s frame was tensed, like he was a leashed hound, yearning for a moment of freedom.
“Kohl,” said Nate.
“Yeah.”
“Easy.” Nate walked forward, came face to face with Grace. “You find the door controls?”
“They’re on the door,” she said, voice muted through the ceramic pane. This close, Nate could see the hollows under her eyes. She turned, walked to a door, pressed the controls. The door opened without a sound, good Republic technology still working just fine, thanks.
Nate walked inside, Kohl on his heels. He turned to Grace. “Look,” he said.
“Save it,” she said. “Until later. When we’re in a place where things aren’t eating people’s insides, we can talk.”
“Until later,” he agreed. “Then we need to have a conversation.”
“That’s one word for it,” she said.
“Where,” said Nate, “is Penn?”
As if on cue, a central holo stage blinked into life, the lights coming up, systems humming back online. There was a hiss of static, then Penn’s head-and-shoulders filled the holo. It was a little ostentatious for Nate’s tastes, but it caught the eye. Penn’s image was looking over his shoulder, then back to them. “Captain. You made it.”
“Uh,” said Nate. “There’s weird shit happening here. We need to get the fuck out.”
“I’m sorry for leaving you in the dark,” said Penn. “On an unsecured line, I didn’t know what they might hear.”
“They?” said Nate.
“The Ezeroc,” said Penn. “I had to hope that, since you’d made it into the system alive, you were resourceful enough to make it past them. To here. I’m glad to see I wasn’t wrong.”
“The Ezeroc,” said Nate. “That some kind of militant faction? Crazy in the head after a local parasite infection?”
“No,” said Penn. “That’s some kind of alien life that wants to kill us all.”
“Got you,” said Nate. “It’s just that, in the thousand or so worlds we’ve seeded, we’ve never found local life larger than a hamster.”
“Who said,” said Penn, “that these are local boys?”
• • •
Penn wouldn’t come to them. He said it wasn’t safe; he said the building was infested, which was never a term that inspired confidence. Penn had sealed himself in the medbay, second floor. The medbay had its own power, its own air, and Penn said that was important. Keep your visors down. Keep your guns up. And then he’d clicked off the holo, and the escalator system had jerked into life.
Only way to go was up, right?
Kohl was in front, his bulk taking up a lot of lateral space on the escalator. Grace, in the middle. Nate at the rear, blaster out, pointing it at every shadow, every dark corner.
Being told that there were alien invaders was a new twist. Nate had heard a lot of tall tales, but a Rear Admiral’s word carried authenticity. Nate was pretty sure he was a Rear Admiral, or close to it: he could control the Gladiator, had the systems of the Republic’s own administration center under his control. He was in charge. In charge of a colony under siege.
What was weird was that if these Ezeroc were a bunch of brain bugs, it didn’t seem to make much sense they’d be a threat. The hosts didn’t seem … normal, not anymore, and with a bit of judicious quarantine that could have been hit on the head. Something smaller, maybe? An airborne contagion? It still made little sense; why infect a planet of people? It’d kind of tip your hand on the whole invasion front.
Who said aliens need to follow ’rational’ thought?
Sure, whatever. Just get Penn. Get the man, get out.
Kohl had made the top of the escalator, laser leading the way. The lights were out on this floor. Not just out, but broken, smashed. Floor-standing lights were twisted, bent, broken. Ceiling mounted strips had been torn free, shattered, thrown on the ground. This area would have been a faux-public area, Republic personnel on hand to help you pay your dues. There was nothing left of that now, cabinets strewn across the floor, tablets and consoles smashed, desks torn, wrecked, broken.
“We missed one hell of a party,” said Kohl.
“How many people would be on a colony of this size?” said Grace.
“Not that big of a party,” said Kohl.
“Just … how many?” she said.
“I don’t know,” said Nate. “I figure an edge world like this? We’d be looking at fifty thousand people at a bare minimum. Public transportation, businesses, the works. Republic goes big or goes home, you know?”
“That’s what I think too,” said Grace. “The last time I was at an edge world, the local population was at a quarter million.”
“Seems reasonable,” said Nate. “I mean, after a few years.”
“We saw a hundred or so at the … before,” she said. “Even lowballing this, where’s the other forty-nine thousand people?”
Nate looked around at the destruction of the floor. No bodies. Still nothing resembling a corpse. Just some shambling people with bugs in their skulls back at the hall.
They didn’t have to worry about opening doors. There was a trail of torn ceramic, concrete, and metal at each location there should have been a door. Nothing barred their way. A quick four hundred meters and they were outside the medbay. Penn was inside, lights still on. No one else was in the medbay with him, just some functional consoles, a few beds. What looked like discarded meal packets. A bucket for waste. The man had been slumming it for a mighty-mighty in the Republic.
Nate walked up to the ceramic glass, looking at Penn through it. “Hey,” he said.
“Captain Chevell,” said Penn. “It’s a pleasure.”
His stance said command, shoulders straight, hands behind his back. His uniform was dirty but still worn with pride. Like a badge, or a shield, or both. The ceramic window between them was hardened, protected, a bastion against outbreak. The surface between Nate and Penn was scratched, some of the clarity melted to an opaque sheen in places by heat. So, someone had tried to break in, or blast in, but hadn’t had the right firepower. They hadn’t had Republic arms, those still locked behind ID controls.
The area was big, but only Penn was inside. “Likewise,” said Nate. “You’re alone?”
“I’m alone,” said Penn. “Everyone else is … taken.”
“Can you walk?” said Nate. “We’ve got a bit of a jaunt to get back to the dropship.”
“I can not only walk,” said Penn, “but I can run. Are you ready?”
“For what?” said Nate.
“When I open this medbay, they will come,” said Penn. “They will come, and try and bring us to their … what do they call it? To their ’together.’”
“The bugs speak English?” said Nate.
“The bugs speak whatever their hosts speak,” said Penn. “Have any of you been injured? By them?”
“No,” said Nate.
“Nope,” said Kohl. He slapped his chest. “Take a lot more than a few scrawny colonists to break this shell.”
“Oh,” said Penn. “So you’ve … not actually seen the Ezeroc.”
“We’ve seen them,” said Grace. She pressed a hand against the ceramic separating them. “The bugs inside their heads? Instead of their brains? What do they do, eat them?”
“Something like that,” said Penn. “I’ve got files on my person.” He held up a data sliver. “This must make it back to the Republic. Whatever happens, Captain. Whatever happens.”
“Got it,” said Nate. “You can die, the sliver’s important.”
“If it’s all the same,” said Penn with a wry smile, “I’d prefer to not die.” He turned to Grace, his face turning puzzled. “I see,” he said.
She stiffened, turning to Nate. “Nate—”
“Well, enough of that,” said Penn. “Let’s get to cheerier subjects. Door opens, we run. No wasting time, no sightseeing. Anyone who’s not us, you shoot. Are you good with that, Captain?”
“The people?” said Nate. “You want us to shoot people?”
“For what it’s worth, I’m good with it,” said Kohl.
“They’re not people,” said Penn. “They haven’t been for some time. And in a few days, they’ll be quite a bit worse than people. It’s a mercy.”
Nate thought about that. “I won’t fire,” he said, “unless they come for us.”
“Then you’ll be firing quite a lot,” said Penn. “This facility is infested. When this door seal breaks, expect a rush.”
“This facility is deserted,” said Nate.
“Let’s see, shall we?” said Penn. With a hiss of escaping air, he opened the door.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
El sat in the Helm’s chair on the Tyche. The flight deck was tidy, clean, some parts made new as the day she first flew. She had no clue how Nate would pay for the repair bill on this, but for now it felt good. Her ship would fly again, and she would fly truer than she ever had while El was at the console. The Tyche was holding an atmosphere, automated sounds more subtle than structural as the Gladiator’s repair systems fitted the last components into place.
Her comm clicked. “Well, there’s good news and bad news,” said Hope.
“Hit me with the bad news,” said El. “I’m in a glass half full mood at the moment. Nothing can bring me down.”
“The ship might not fly again,” said Hope.
El jerked in the acceleration couch, spraying coffee all over the console. She hurried to wipe it off with a sleeve of her
flight suit, then winced. It felt like she might have pulled something in her back doing that. She scrabbled at the comm. “Say what?”
“The good news,” said Hope, “is that I’m just messing … I mean, fucking with you. She’ll be ready to fly on time. This Republic hangar…” Hope’s voice took on a wistful note. “I guess it’d be nice to work on one of these ships. It takes a lot of the drudgery out of the work.”
“Hope,” said El, “I’m going to throw you out an airlock.”
“Good to know,” said Hope. “Let me know how you get on keeping the ship in the sky.”
“Anyway,” said El. “You are working on one of these. You’re literally working on one of these right now.”
“Not really,” said Hope. “Not for real. Kisses, though.” The comm clicked off.
Not for real. That was true enough, in its own way. Hope couldn’t be on a Republic ship, not unless she was in the brig. Her fingerprints would be all over the Gladiator, but they’d just be another box on her criminal record. A black mark on a sooty profile.
They’d have to do something about Hope’s situation. Nate would want to, no matter how bad an idea it would seem. El had already talked him back from the edge of madness — he’d been keen on busting into a Republic facility, pointing guns at people until they did something about it. As if activity like that would lead to anything positive for any of them. It wasn’t the touch of fear that had guided El’s words, it had been the real threat of a life on the run, never being able to buy a coffee or a beer or a fucking sandwich without someone putting the collar on her. All because of that bitch Reiko.
No thanks.
Hope might be the sister she never had, but some problems shouldn’t be shared.
Or couldn’t be shared. Whatever.
The holo clicked, whirred, light filling the air. The Tyche was watching the crew, a good shepherd even with her wings clipped. Active biorhythms for Nate, Kohl, and Grace filled the space. Warning indicators peppered the display, markets against heart rate and adrenaline spikes. El watched it for a minute, thinking, well, it’s a glitch — got to be. Ship’s not been tested yet. But nothing changed, until the display blanked, and SIGNAL LOST blinked in the air.
Tyche's Flight (Tyche's Journey Book 1) Page 16
