Breach the Hull

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  Yakata gripped her knife tighter and propelled herself toward the spectrometer. Had she truly lost it? Or was this proof of the sinister force Dunn claimed now possessed the ship? She tapped the dented surface with the tip of her utility knife. Tapped it right over the reflection of O’Neal. The micro image flinched back. Yakata giggled. The sound had a jagged edge.

  That was it then: she’d gone over the edge. She giggled again and chased the fig-mentary O’Neal around the spectrometer with rapid taps of her utility knife. She laughed full out and tasted salt drip over the rim of her lip onto her tongue. A sob slipped out next. The knife drifted down to its strap and she rested a gentle hand against the reflection.

  “I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . . ”

  She brought her face right up near the metal, noticing the terror on that tiny man’s face. He didn’t look at her, though; his gaze stared off into the room. It took her a moment to realize there were now two O’Neal’s trapped in the metal. Perhaps it was an accumulative thing: the longer she stared the more the image would multiply. Her next giggle bordered on a wail.

  That was when the ching of flexing metal reached her ears. Her eyes went wide. She leaned against the machine. Clarity seeped back into her own reflection. The memory of the last time she and O’Neal had been in this room came to her. He’d taken the artifact out of the spectrometer and gone into painful convulsions. Her gaze snapped to the tiny O’Neal with the hazel eyes, somehow trapped within his own machine while some thing went around in his body. He gave the slightest nod. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she snaked her hand around the housing.

  With a mighty heave, she flung the machine at the O’Neal creeping up behind her, the one with something alien peering out of stormy green eyes. Connections snapped. Metal collided with metal in a satisfying crunch. The crea-ture’s roar deafened her.

  As she rocketed past, aiming for the hatch, she spared half a glance for her would-be attacker. The spectrometer was drifting away from him. Massive bruises shadowed O’Neal’s already dark shoulder. The prosthetic attached to it was crumpled, but the fingers flexed, if somewhat haltingly.

  Her aim was off. She’d meant to cave in his head.

  There was an odd gleam in O’Neal’s eye as his gaze locked with hers. She jerked her eyes away and maneuvered out of arm’s reach.

  She was nearly clear when he lurched up. His flesh hand shot out and grabbed her ankle. Screaming with rage, she flicked her wrist and palmed the dangling utility knife, the blade still deployed. She lashed out. The edge bit deep into the back of his hand.

  She kicked out with her unfettered foot at O’Neal’s still firm and bloodied grip on her ankle. He laughed up at her. The trapped O’Neal pounded furiously from the far side of his reflection; the evil one raised his battered prosthetic and caressed her calf with deceptive gentleness.

  Frantic, Yakata tried to yank her foot free. She succeeded only in drawing him closer. Again the prosthetic stroked her leg, this time higher. “Shh . . . it will be okay . . . ” he mocked.

  Her vision went dark and flat. Nothing had depth or shading. Nothing was as crisply clear as his grip on her leg. Nothing mattered more than freeing herself from that hold. Without a second thought, she brought her knife around and impaled O’Neal’s hand . . .

  . . . straight through to her ankle. More blood filled the room.

  “Augh!”

  O’Neal laughed over her scream as he tugged his hand away from the blade, bi-secting his own flesh. The damage did nothing to hinder his movements. But for her, the motion sent shafts of breath-stopping pain shooting from her foot to the top of her head. The knife remained lodged in the muscle just above the ankle.

  “Bad girl . . . you were supposed to head for the Cans.”

  Yakata whimpered. Clenching her teeth, she yanked out the blade, sending pearls of blood spining through the bay. The strap went back over her wrist. The hilt locked in her grip. Again armed, she kicked off toward the hatch.

  From just inside the room, O’Neal’s laughter stole her breath. She waited for him to haul her back. She could already feel his fingers locked around her. Not again! She sent herself rocketing with reckless force. Her body careened off the interior walls. She slammed against the hatch collar with her bad shoulder. Her injured foot snagged on the door. The agony was nearly crippling. Her vision clouded and a buzz filled her ears.

  It wasn’t enough to drown out O’Neal as he called after her. “Run, rabbit, run . . . it’s so much fun to catch you.”

  Despite O’Neal’s taunt, there were no sounds of pursuit. She was under no illusion it would remain that way. Tumbling into the main shaft, Yakata planted her good foot against the track and shoved off, bulleting toward the nose of the ship. She cursed at the lights. Some sections activated as she passed, others went out, plunging her into darkness. She ignored it. After all her years on this ship, a little darkness wasn’t going to screw her up.

  As she neared the command deck there was a faint green ambient glow, like that given off by digital displays in the dark. It was impossible to make out if anyone was there. O’Neal was somewhere behind her, but what happened to Dunn? Intense sorrow gripped her heart as she remembered the last time she saw him. Yakata forced it away. He was either dead, or a danger to her.

  Cautiously, she eased past the command hatch, keeping to the far side of the shaft. It was slow going, but she made it to the staging bay two levels up without in-cident. A glance behind her revealed no obvious motion, but her nerves vibrated with tension.

  She turned back to the open hatch of the staging bay. The mechanism to seal the two-meter wide opening could close in less than thirty seconds. She released the knife and reached into her pouch for a spanner, wedging it into the grating where the retractable hatch was housed. It wouldn’t hold long, but should another . . . malfunc-tion occur, the obstruction would give her a little extra time to get clear.

  Reaching just past the opening, she felt around for a tether bar to haul herself through. Something brushed against her hand in the darkness. She jerked back and palmed the knife, bracing herself for an attack. A whisper of sound taunted her ears. Her grip on the knife tightened even more, but nothing else came at her out of the dark. Yakata breathed out a growl.

  Fine, she thought. I’ll do it the hard way. She flung herself through the hatch, rocketing past the opening and deep into the bay, her body angled to intersect with the lift track. Instead, she collided with something soft and yielding. It was impossible not to scream as arms came around to encircle her.

  No! She would not be caught so easily! Yakata brought up her knife and thrust brutally into the one blocking her way.

  “’Ta . . . ” The whisper was faint, and right by her ear. Yakata moaned and her knife hand jerked back. Warm globules bounced against her skin as the blade did more damage coming out than going in. The pinpoints of warmth sent her trembling.

  No! Oh, God, no! Please no! Yakata’s thoughts were frantic. She released the knife as if it were a contagion. Her now-empty hand scrambled around in her maintenance pouch as the knife bobbed on its strap. Where was it? Where, damnit? She forgot all about escape as she searched for her spare light among the jumbled tools. As her hand wrapped around it, and she depressed the button, a sudden clang from the direction of the hatch startled her. She fumbled the light. It made eerie arcs as it spun in the darkened bay, revealing small slices of her surroundings. Her gasp echoed through the compartment as the rotating beam briefly illuminated a blood-coated hand. Yakata lunged for the maintenance light. Before she could bring the beam around, there was a deep, rumbling chuckle behind her. She whirled and the main lights flared to life in the bay. She flinched and squinted against the sudden brilliance.

  “My . . . and haven’t you been busy?” O’Neal rested against the lift track, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched her. She noticed his gaze sweep the chamber. He frowned faintly as he looked right, but he made no move toward her or the room.

  Th
e last thing she should do was take her eye off him. The impulse, however, was irresistible. Yakata pivoted until she could see the whole of the bay. The blood rushed from her head. She barely heard O’Neal’s malicious laughter. Around her floated three bodies. Her unaccounted-for crewmen . . . She immediately recognized the one to the right as Dunn, much bloodier, but still clearly him. The closest to her, however, was John Pittman. From his gut streamed a trail of ruby-red bubbles.

  She was overcome by the urge to fling the utility knife from her, only that would have cut her probability of survival down even lower. It was an effort to tug her eyes away, to get past the horror. She told herself he was already dead. Beyond Pittman floated Anita Suarez, her expression softer, more feminine in death than it had ever been in life. Old spacer that she was, she looked like a frightened child now. A frightened child frozen in intense and unbearable pain.

  Yakata refused to look more closely at Dunn.

  She cursed and turned on O’Neal once more, her knife in her hand, though she didn’t remember flicking it up. O’Neal continued to laugh.

  “’Ta . . . no . . . .”

  Again, the bodiless whisper by her ear. No . . . from her comm hood! Dunn was the only one to ever call her ’Ta. She glanced sideways, trying to catch the subtle motion breathing alone would have caused. It was so hard to tell at this angle.

  “Damn it, ’Ta, come . . . get this thing . . . ” The strained whisper was no product of her imagination. He ‘drifted’ ever so slightly; just enough to reveal the outline of a line-gun hidden in the curve of his body. Behind him was the half-open storage locker the tool had come from.

  Without another thought, she braced both legs against the wall. Pain rippled from her ankle, but she needed equal force to keep herself headed straight as she launched herself forward. O’Neal arrowed toward Dunn, as well, but Yakata was closer.

  Grasping the gun and using her momentum to pivot the rest of her mass, she braced the improvised weapon against her body and jerked the release. There was a whoosh and a thud. O’Neal went rocketing across the bay toward the opposite wall. His head slammed into the hull and then the only motion was his body recoiling from the impact.

  Numbness set in. Could that be it? Was it that simple? She thought as she drifted where she was, the gun still gripped in her hand. Beside her, Dunn moaned and it barely reached where her psyche had retreated.

  The steady tug on the rope, though . . . that went right to her nerve centers.

  “Oh shit!” She let go of the line-gun and wrapped her good hand in Dunn’s vest. “N-no . . . you have to survive,” he murmured, batting away her hand. “Can’t do that hauling my ass behind you.”

  “Bullshit!” she growled. “You made it this far, I’m not leaving you here to die.” “I’m . . . I’m d-dead, either way.”

  She ignored his failing whisper, and pushed off, sending them past the bodies. Her mind shut down as she did so, focused on one goal: freedom. Nothing existed but the nose dock of the McKay and the payload it led to.

  And suddenly, they were there.

  She let go of Dunn’s vest to work the manual release. The hatch clanged open and she reached for Dunn once more. He gripped her hand back. His hand trembled violently. She turned to look at him, to gauge how much distress he was in.

  “No!” she shouted, as she spied O’Neal past Dunn’s shoulder, raising the retracted line-gun. But it was too late. She felt the impact as the hook embedded itself in Karl’s back. “No . . . no . . . ” she sobbed. Not Dunn. Not when she . . . “No . . . I l-love you! No!”

  Tears streamed down her face as she watched the awareness faded from his eyes. No. But this protest was silent, weak. Did it matter now, she wondered, if she got away? But the tug of the line decided her. She roared with rage and yanked back. O’Neal and whatever rode him would not have Dunn.

  She brought up her utility knife and severed the line. Grabbing Karl’s vest, she tugged him through the forward airlock. He bobbed behind her as she cycled the hatch. Yakata was numb as she took them through the yacht access. She gave him a gentle nudge to send him drifting deeper into the cabin as her hand danced automatically through the manual release sequence for the docking ring.

  As they separated from the McKay, she could swear she heard the ghost of laughter.

  She dropped into the driver’s seat of the luxury yacht, barely noticing the sensual caress of fine doeskin leather. Her only concern was powering up the systems. Lighting and atmospherics engaged, followed by the exterior cameras.

  The numbness faded as she realized how near Demeter they were. There was hope of rescue. A solid chance for survival. Her hand hovered over the dis-tress beacon, but drew back, leaving the unit inactivated. Why bother? Dunn was gone.

  “No . . . you must survive.”

  Yakata shivered as Dunn’s earlier words whispered through her thoughts. Clenching her eyes against the heartache, she brought her hand back and slammed it down on the distress beacon button.

  Rescue would come now. And she would have to go on. Alone.

  As that realization hit her, she watched the McKay fire its engines. She deftly manipulated the contoured joystick controlling the external camera, panning it in the ship’s wake.

  What was he up to now? she wondered, unable to turn away. The McKay angled further to the left and the display in front of her blazed fiercely, blinding her a moment. The system adjusted the filters until the brilliant sun was no more than a distant, glowing disk marred only by a rapidly diminishing black speck.

  “Enjoying the show, Ms. Ushimi?”

  Yakata jerked as O’Neal’s voice came over the yacht’s speakers. She cursed herself for forgetting to disengage the remote sensors connecting the two ships. “Why?” she hissed.

  “Where’s the terror,” he purred, “if there’s no one left to know exactly how fucked you all are?

  “Oh yeah, and thanks for the ride.”

  As his words faded, the yacht’s lights flickered out, plunging Yakata into darkness. She fumbled with the control panel, frantically trying to reengage them, to no avail. Her only illumination was the display in front of her.

  She couldn’t hold back a whimper. She was no longer comfortable with the dark. O’Neal’s disembodied laugh wrapped around her just before he closed the link. She was so shocked it took a moment for her to realize the McKay’s hyperdrive had en-gaged.

  Horrified, she watched the ship’s graceful arc; was mesmerized by the shimmer of its electrogravitic drive envelope. Yakata held her breath. She could still see the glittering trail streaming behind the transport, but knew it had, in fact, already plunged into the sun. Eight minutes later, the sunlight contracted, the glowing ball getting smaller and smaller.

  O’Neal’s voice echoed in her head. An old memory from when he had still been himself and the spectrometer had fed them an impossible reading on the obelisk: It’s as if the artifact absorbed the light.

  She shuddered and watched as the star died, its fire eaten up by an ancient evil no larger than her head.

  Yakata was left in complete darkness with her dead.

  Dunn. The spaced crew. In her panicked mind, she pictured each of them in a mask of her father’s face.

  Her breath came in rapid huffs and her body shook until she had to grip the console to remain in the chair.

  How long before we all die? she thought, staring in the direction of Demeter, an entire planet suddenly and inexplicably plunged into bitter-cold darkness. The comm hood crackled and Yakata’s heart seized.

  “Yummy,” O’Neal’s voice whispered malevolently in her ear. “Want to come get us? We’ll do dessert . . . ”

  Yakata screamed.

  Back to Contents

  BLACK TO MOVE

  Jack McDevitt

  MAYBE IT’S JUST MY IMAGINATION, BUT I’M WORRIED.

  The roast beef has no taste, and I’m guzzling my coffee. I’m sitting here watching Turner and Pappas working on the little brick house across the avenue with t
heir hand picks. Jenson and McCarthy are standing over near the lander, arguing about something. And Julie Bremmer is about a block away drawing sketches of the blue towers. Everything is exactly as it was yesterday.

  Except me.

  In about two hours, I will talk to the Captain. I will try to warn him. Odd, but this is the only place in the city where people seem able to speak in normal tones. Else-where, voices are hushed. Subdued. It’s like being in a church at midnight. I guess it’s the fountain, with its silvery spray drifting back through the late afternoon sun, windblown, cool. The park glades are a refuge against the wide, still avenues and the empty windows. Leaves and grass are bright gold, but otherwise the vegetation is of a generally familiar cast. Through long, graceful branches, the blue towers glitter in the sunlight.

  There is perhaps no sound quite so soothing as the slap of water on stone. (Coulter got the fountain working yesterday, using a generator from the lander.) Listening, seated on one of the benches at the fountain’s edge, I can feel how close we are, the builders of this colossal city and I. And that thought is no comfort.

  It’s been a long, dusty, rockbound road from Earth to this park. The old hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence has taken us across a thousand sandy worlds in a quest that became, in time, a search for a blade of grass.

  I will remember all my life standing on a beach under red Capella, watching the waves come in. Sky and sea were crystal blue; no gull wheeled through the still air; no strand of green boiled in the surf. It was a beach without a shell.

  But here, west of Centauri, after almost two centuries, we have a living world!

  We looked down, unbelieving, at forests and jungles, and dipped our scoops into a crowded sea. The perpetual bridge game broke up.

  On the second day, we saw the City.

  A glittering sundisk, it lay in the southern temperate zone, between a mountain chain and the sea. With it came our first mystery: the City was alone. No other habitation existed anywhere on the planet. On the fourth day, Olzsewski gave his opinion that the City was deserted.