by M. R. Forbes
“I give new meaning to the term hairless ape, don’t I, Sheriff?” she said as she stood.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“It’s an old expression. The sensors on the hibernation pod have trouble with hair, so it had to all come off before I went in. It’ll grow back in time. Assuming we have time. My bunk is this way. I can pick up clothes there.” She paused, looking down at their still connected hands. “You haven’t been exposed to the trife, have you?”
Hayden pulled his hand away. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “I’ve been killing them.”
She didn’t look happy. “They’re still on the ship?”
“Yes, ma’am. I don’t know much about what’s going on, but I know you were hoping they would die out. It’s been almost four hundred years. They haven’t.”
“Four hundred years,” Jennifer said, her voice heavy with the idea of it. “Damn. We were afraid they might be regenerative. Their DNA suggested it was a possibility.”
“What do you mean?” Hayden asked.
“They thrive on radiation, Sheriff,” she said. “It doesn’t even seem to matter which kind. We knew it was their food source, but we were split on whether or not it would keep them alive indefinitely.”
“It might not. I saw a nest. There were small ones growing in some kind of sticky gel.”
“Reproducing? Then their resource pool has increased. Or a number of them are dying. You said you’ve been exposed to them?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Have you been bitten?”
“No.”
“Then you aren’t contagious. That’s good.”
“But I am sick?”
“If you’ve engaged them, you’ve gotten close enough to them to get the disease. Whether or not it will ever manifest? That’s up to your immune system. Ninety percent of those exposed to the disease died within three months.”
“Shit.”
“Yes. Follow me.”
Jennifer led him out of the room, moving through the corridors like she had done it a thousand times. He supposed she had.
“So,” she said as they walked. “What’s our situation?”
“I’m not completely sure,” Hayden said. “I barely understand what’s happening. Two days ago, I was in Metro doing the job the way I’d been taught, waiting for the Pilgrim to reach our new homeworld. Then a massive turb hit, one of the secured hatches opened, my wife disappeared, and a xenotrife got into the city.”
She paused again, looking at him. “A trife got into the city?”
“I killed it.”
“Good. The hatch?”
“Not so good. The Governor killed hundreds of people because he said they were exposed. You said the disease isn't contagious unless they were bitten?”
“Airborne contagious, no. It's a slightly different mutation on the same viral strain. But if the residents were sick and exchanged bodily fluids, you might have been facing a major outbreak within a few months. I’m guessing you don’t understand, but the protocols were put in place for a reason. You should be thankful your Governor had the balls to follow through. We always worried they would balk in an emergency situation like that. The hatch?”
Hayden was silent for a moment, digesting the fact that Malcolm had acted purely as had been prescribed. He didn't think he would have been able to do the same.
"The hatch, Sheriff?" Jennifer repeated.
“It closed after the turbs. I don’t know how long it was open for. Twenty seconds? A minute?”
She seemed satisfied. She continued walking. “Turbs?”
“Turbulence of some kind. It comes and goes almost at random. It shakes the entire ship. My wife is an Engineer. She was out checking on potential damage from them when one of the secure hatches opened.”
“There’s no turbulence in space.”
“Yeah, that always confused Nat, too, but it’s there, Officer Kazlaski. I promise.”
“I believe you. Please, call me Jen or Jenny. You’ve seen me naked, after all. I think that puts us at least on the level of friendly acquaintance.”
“Pozz,” Hayden said without thinking.
“Pozz? New words for old things. I like it.”
They reached the row of bunks. She stopped at one of them, pressing the space below one it. A drawer slid out, revealing three rows of identical uniforms. She grabbed one and put it on the bunk, beginning to dress.
“The Pilgrim never went to New Gaia because the xenotrife didn’t die,” she said. “Hope helped Captain Bradshaw program that protocol. You said the Pilgrim’s been out here four hundred years?”
“Close enough. Three ninety-six.”
“Which means there are only about one hundred years left on the reactor.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“And you said your wife was taken?”
“Yes.”
“The xenotrife don’t take prisoners. The only thing they use humans for is killing.”
“Pozz that. It wasn’t the demons. It was people.”
Jennifer finished putting on her clothes. A pair of fitted blue pants, a white blouse, and a long white coat over it. A pair of standard issue boots similar to what he was wearing. She looked better in clothes. There was something disconcerting about the absence of hair.
“People? Sheriff, the Pilgrim is a closed ecosystem.”
“I know. They call themselves the Scrappers. I don’t know how many there are, but they have weird clothes, and they wear masks. I think to keep them from breathing in the contagion? One of them, their leader I think, his name is Pig. He’s got a tattoo on his face. The same eagle that’s on all the screens.”
“United States Space Force?” she said.
“If that’s what it means.”
“It is. If he has that tattoo, he’s military. Or the descendant of military. We thought all of the soldiers were killed, but some of them stayed outside while we sealed the area, so we didn’t have any proof. It’s incredible if they survived. Even more incredible if they reproduced.” She considered it. “Then again, they would have had access to the main medical facilities and the full stores of emergency rations. If they could find a place to batten the hatches against the trife, it could be they’ve been riding this out. The Pilgrim is a big ship.”
“Maybe. If they have, I think they’re getting desperate. They want to get into Metro real bad. And I witnessed them eating one of their own before they attacked me.”
“Cannibalism?”
He nodded.
“Don’t judge them for it, Sheriff. You don’t know what they may have been through, forced to survive out here.”
“That’s easy for you to say. I told you, they took my wife. They tried to kill me until they realized I came from Metro, and then they wanted to grab me.”
“Did you try talking to them?”
“Twice. The first one nearly shot me. The second, Pig and his followers? I’ve been a Sheriff a long time, and my father was Sheriff before me. I know when people are up to no good. They had malice in their eyes. I don’t care what they’ve been through, Jenny. That kind of look? It’s barely human.”
She was silent. Hayden figured she was working out the implications on her own terms.
“So, you know my situation,” Hayden said, not waiting for her to finish. “I want to know what happened to get us here. I also want to know what I can do to get us out of it. Foremost, I need to get my wife back from the Scrappers. Maybe you can help me figure out where they’ve got her? If nothing else, maybe you can help me get some more guns and ammo?”
“They belong on this ship, just like you do, Sheriff,” Jennifer said. “Do you really want to kill them?”
“They started it, Jenny. I just want Natalia. I’m damn certain they aren’t going to give her back if I ask nicely.”
She didn’t look happy with the answer, but she nodded. “I’ll help you as best I can.”
“Good. Start at the beginning, and keep it short and simple. Time isn’
t on our side.”
41
“We don’t know where the xenotrife came from,” Jennifer said. She beckoned him to follow while she spoke, leading him away from the bunk where she had retrieved her clothes. “Besides space, I mean.” She paused a moment. “It feels weird to talk about it. It feels weird to be here. We never had time to think about what was happening while it was happening. We reacted to the situation as it developed.”
“By we, you mean?” Hayden asked.
“The world,” she said. “Every government on Earth. I’m sorry, Sheriff. I’m getting ahead of myself. We spent years sending transmissions into space, hoping that something would respond. And they did. At least, we think that’s how they figured out we were there. But they didn’t pull up in a flying saucer to greet us. At first, we thought they were asteroids. They had the same general size and shape. Their trajectories were bringing them past the planet. They were near-Earth events but nothing that any of the space agencies were worried about. We all thought they would fly harmlessly by.”
“Until they didn’t,” Hayden said.
“They changed course at the last minute. We never detected anything even remotely resembling engines, but their vectors shifted as they approached, just enough to start spreading them across the planet’s surface. Even then, we didn’t think they were dangerous. They were small and would likely break up on the way down. I was fourteen when it happened. I still remember watching them hit the thermosphere. The light show was incredible. They burned up, just like the scientists expected. At least, most of them did.
“I woke up the next morning, and when I looked outside, it was like a dust storm had gone through overnight. There were particles. Spores. The remnants of the objects. They were heavier than the air, and they started to settle soon enough. I lived on a farm in Montana. I remember riding to school with my father, marveling at the layer of glistening dust across the wheat fields. It was beautiful. And dangerous. Of course, the government sent scientists to collect samples. Every government did. You can guess what they were shocked to discover.”
“The particles were xenotrife?” Hayden said.
“Bingo. Every single one was an alien life form. A xenotrife. Trillions and trillions of them.” She smiled sardonically. “You can’t imagine what that’s like. I know because I can’t, and I was there. In one day, our planet was completely overrun with aliens, and we had no way to get rid of them all. We tried. We did our best. Open spaces were burned. Forests were razed. It was a global effort to remove the spores from the surface. An impossible effort. To make matters worse, we tried to nuke them out of existence in the largest open expanses. We didn’t know how they responded to radiation then.”
“How long did it take them to mature?”
“About two months. Less in the areas where radiation was high. Entire swarms of the things would turn up almost overnight, eager to attack any humans they encountered. Hundreds of thousands were dead within sixty days of first contact. We didn’t realize at first they were carrying the disease. By the six month mark, nearly four billion were dead.”
Hayden couldn’t wrap his head around a number that large. But he could imagine what kind of chaos an onslaught like that would cause.
“I never thought we would make it much longer than that,” Jennifer said. “A year, at most. But the one thing humankind has always been good at is rallying around a common enemy. The governments of the world came together, and we started building weapons of war from entrenched positions around the globe. We learned to fight back, and for six years we managed to keep the xenotrife from destroying us completely. But we lost more people than we created every day, and our time to maturity was much too slow. By year eight, we knew the planet was lost.”
“Where does the Pilgrim fit in with that?” Hayden asked.
“A number of governments had been working on Generation ships before the xenotrife arrived. The interest in settling the stars has always been there, and we had the technology. We had the volunteers. We had identified nearly two dozen hospitable destinations within range of our newest reactors. When the xenotrife showed up, we had all the motivation we needed to push the programs forward. I don’t know about all of the countries, but the United States had four Generation ships in development. The Pilgrim was one of them. As our strongholds began to fall, the mission parameters were changed. The civilian volunteers were vetted based on education and skillset and then mingled with military families and VIPs. Research teams were sent to each of the ships, equipped with the best tools available, and sequestered in the lab to continue working on a way to stop the virus, and a way to kill the aliens. Our tertiary mission parameter was to create a mutagen that would let us enhance a human soldier. To make them more than human, and able to stand up to hundreds of xenotrife alone. We no longer had the facilities to build tanks and mechs and guns. We needed pure, brute strength.”
“I saw cells on my way to the hibernation pods,” Hayden said. “The people inside-”
“Were failed attempts to succeed in the tertiary mission. We were making progress on the mutagen. We were making progress on the cure. Not enough progress. We had three months to come up with something, or we had the go-ahead to leave Earth behind. To launch the Pilgrim and hope we had better luck on a new planet. In our case, New Gaia, in the Trappist system.”
“Except the xenotrife got on board.”
“Yes. I still don’t know how. But they managed to breach our defenses and bypass our security. They got onto the ship, and we weren’t able to dislodge them. The decision was made to secure Research and Metro and hope the trife would die. We didn’t know what else to do.”
“What about the PASS?” Hayden asked. “It was altered. So much was erased.”
“Can you imagine living in a place where you know death is waiting right on the other side of the walls? Where you know you have a fixed number of years before certain death? We were trying to protect the people inside.”
“But didn’t they know the truth?”
“The first Generation did. And they took it to their graves. They knew what was at stake for their offspring. What parent would want their child to live that way?”
Hayden nodded. If Natalia had brought their son to full term, would he have wanted his child to know what lay in store for him?
Not a chance.
“And now the Pilgrim is drifting,” Hayden said.
“A year distant from New Gaia,” Jennifer replied. “That’s the way we programmed the computer.”
They entered the Command Center. Hayden hadn’t realized that’s where they were headed. He was too engrossed in her story. She headed over to one of the stations there, tapping the projected keys and entering her password.
WELCOME JENNIFER.
“If I had access to the lead console, I could show you more, but this will have to do.”
She kept entering commands until the large display turned on. It showed a three-dimensional outline of the Pilgrim, the schematic he had failed to find earlier.
“We built a sensor that can detect the xenotrife based on their unique chemistry and dietary needs. Every red dot that appears is one of them.”
Hayden watched as the ship began to fill in with red dots. Ten at first. Then a hundred. Then four hundred. In the beginning, he expected that there would be thousands of the things, reproducing unfettered for four hundred years. But when the dots stopped appearing, he felt an almost palpable relief.
“Interesting,” Jennifer said, staring at the schematic. “There are fewer of them now than there were when we launched. It seems these Scrappers you’re so eager to kill have been doing an incredible job of keeping them under control.”
“But not eliminated,” Hayden said.
“If they are the descendants of soldiers, you might want to consider your position, Sheriff. We left a cache of military gear below Metro. I know you’ve seen it because you’re wearing some of the armor. Think about what these people could do with that equipment.”<
br />
“I have. They could kill everyone inside the city.”
“Or they could finish killing the trife. When those dots are gone, the computer will automatically put the Pilgrim back on course. We’ll all be able to go home.”
“Is that what you would do, Jen?” he asked, still looking at the red dots. “Let the cannibals into Metro so they can use the gear down there to finish off the xenotrife? Is that what you think I should do?”
“What are the alternatives, Sheriff?” she replied. “Die out here, so close to safety and yet so far?”
“At what point is your life worth more than your humanity? I told you, the Scrappers are killers. How do we know they haven’t kept the trife alive as a food source? I heard them talking about eating the things.”
The statement took her by surprise. “You did? Trife are poisonous to humans. The levels of radiation would kill them.”
“Maybe they’ve built up an immunity?” he suggested. “A mutation of their own to survive out here. What if they don’t know killing them all would get them home?”
“It’s possible,” she said. “If you don’t want to try to reason with them, then what else do you suggest?”
“I did try to reason with them,” Hayden said. “It didn’t get me anywhere.” He pointed at the screen. “Six hundred of those things, give or take. What if I go back to Metro and tell the Governor what we’ve got? I’m sure we can find some able-bodied citizens to do the rest of the dirty work with the munitions we have on board.”
And he was sure Malcolm would forgive him for removing his hand if he brought them back a way to get to their destination.
Jennifer laughed. “I had almost forgotten you got out of Metro through a secured hatch. How did you do that, anyway, Sheriff?”
“It’s a long story,” Hayden said. “And we don’t have time for it. The important part is that I got out, and I can get back in. There are just two problems.”
“Which are?”
“One, if you’re right about the Scrappers being the descendants of military, and based on how good a shot Pig is I’m inclined to agree, nobody on Metro will be equipped to deal with them. I don’t know if they have it in them to kill another human being, even one that’s trying to kill them.”
