by Rachel Bach
The little phantoms I’d seen floating around when I’d first gotten on the ship were now sitting in a line on the edge of the flight console like birds on a wire, if birds were semi-transparent and came in shapes ranging from small spider with too many legs to fist-sized blob. There were seven of them, all sitting perfectly still, and though no two were alike and all seemed to be lacking eyeballs, I got the distinct impression they were staring at me. This would have been creepy sober. Drunk, it just pissed me off.
“Scram,” I said, waving my arm at them.
I didn’t expect it to work. I wasn’t close enough to send them running, which was the only time the phantoms seemed to notice I existed. If anything, I expected the little critters to break their line and float away. Instead, they moved closer together, waving their little appendages like they were trying to get my attention.
I arched an eyebrow and hauled myself up out of the chair, walking forward until I was standing directly behind the pilot’s seat. This put the glowing bugs right on the edge of what I’d begun to think of as my phantom panic zone. But though I was dangerously close, they didn’t run. They just waved harder.
I looked around the bridge, but there was nothing to see. I was alone in hyperspace with no witnesses to judge my weirdness, and so I decided to take a risk. I cleared my throat and leaned down, fixing my eyes on the largest phantom, a strange, foot-long glowing critter that looked like what might happen if a lobster and a centipede got stuck together. Then, feeling like a right idiot, I whispered, “I see you.”
I held my breath, waiting for a response, but the phantoms just kept waving like I hadn’t said anything.
“I see you,” I said again, louder. “What do you want?”
Nothing.
I rolled my eyes and stepped back, more angry with myself for expecting an answer than with the phantoms for not giving me one. I gave them the finger before sweeping my hand over the console, sending them flying. As usual, they scattered like frightened mice, but they didn’t leave the bridge. Instead, they regrouped on the headrest of the captain’s chair and resumed waving, leaning into each other like gossiping monkeys.
“Oh no you don’t,” I snarled, marching back to the chair. “That’s where I sit. Take your crazy somewhere else, glowworms. We’re full up here.”
The phantoms scattered again when I sat down, but like before, they didn’t leave. Instead, they went back to the flight console and started gesturing even more frantically, like they were desperately trying to tell me something.
“Go tell it to Maat,” I drawled as I brought up the training menu.
Sadly, there were no new armor titles, but there was a whole series about the new Maraday line of sniper rifles. I’d never been interested in sniping, but seeing Rashid in action had changed my tune. I hit the first training session and put my feet up on the console, which was both comfortable and blocked my view of the phantoms. Out of sight, out of mind, and as the video started, I put the crazy glowing bugs firmly out of mine.
Unfortunately, they didn’t stay there. I watched ten videos over the next four hours, and by the time I was sober, I had a shopping list as long as my arm just in case I lived long enough to upgrade my equipment. This should have put me in a much better mood, but I was on permanent buzzkill because the goddamn phantoms still hadn’t moved, and they hadn’t stopped waving at me.
“God and king, would you just go away?” I groaned, dropping my feet to glare at them. “What do you want from me?”
They didn’t answer, of course, but I’d had enough. I switched off the monitor and stood up, stretching the last few hours out of my joints. I was about to evacuate to the kitchen again to see if there was anything more appetizing on offer than ration bars when a piercing scream ripped through the ship.
I dropped into a protective crouch before I realized I’d moved, hands going for the gun that wasn’t there. My first instinct said it was a phantom scream, and I glanced at the little bugs. Was this what they’d been trying to warn me about? But when the scream came again, I knew it was a real sound, not that awful stabbing pain in my skull. Not a phantom, then, but it still didn’t sound human.
It had to be Rupert, I reasoned at last, standing up. He was the only other thing on the ship besides myself and the phantoms. Now that I knew what I was hearing, I could actually recognize his voice, barely. By this point, the screams were nearly constant, and each one was horrifying, a barely human sound of rage and pain that made me want to run to Rupert’s room and wake him up, anything to make it stop.
But I didn’t. Rupert had told me to stay away, and that was exactly what I planned to do. I wasn’t about to be the idiot who got herself killed ignoring basic safety instructions because she couldn’t take the noise. So even though the screams seemed to be getting worse by the second, I climbed back into the captain’s chair and stayed put, covering my ears with my hands as I waited for it to end.
Three minutes later, the screams showed no sign of stopping, and I was wondering how the hell Rupert had slept on the Fool. There was no way I could have missed such a horrible racket even a deck up. Of course, he’d said he was normally quiet, so maybe this was a fluke? I prayed that it was. Whatever could pull that sort of sound out of a person wasn’t the sort of thing I’d wish on my worst enemy.
At last, after nearly ten minutes of howling, Rupert’s screams faded to whimpers. I slumped into the captain’s chair, flexing my shoulders as I tried in vain to relax my muscles. My body was tight as a clenched fist, leaving me feeling like I’d just gotten the bad end of a drunken brawl, and I’d only been listening. I couldn’t imagine how Rupert must feel.
Fortunately, we had only forty minutes left to go in the jump. His whimpering died out a few minutes after the screaming, which I took as a good sign. I was debating whether to go knock on his door when I heard the lock click open.
I jumped out of the chair. “Hey!” I called, running across the bridge to the hall. “Are you okay? That sounded horri—”
I stopped short, words dying. Rupert was standing in the door of the officer’s bunk, and the second I saw him, I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t that he was covered in scales or anything like that. He actually looked perfectly normal, dressed and steady on his feet, but though he was staring straight ahead at the opposite wall, his eyes were empty, like there was nothing behind them at all.
Not making a sound, not even daring to breathe, I took a step back. My suit was still in her case hooked into the charging rack at the back of the bridge, but my guns were lashed on top. I could almost see them from where I was standing. All I’d have to do was step back out of the hall and dive to the left. One step, that was all I needed, but the moment my foot left the floor, Rupert’s head snapped toward it. That was all the warning I got before he slammed into me.
With my suit, prepared, I could keep up with Rupert’s speed. Unarmored, I didn’t have a prayer. I barely had time to gasp before Rupert’s hand wrapped around my throat like a metal vise. This close, I could see his eyes weren’t actually empty. They were vicious and mad, like Maat’s could be, with absolutely nothing of Rupert in them at all, and I knew right then that if I was going to survive the next few seconds, I had to fight for real.
After that, my battle instincts kicked in with a vengeance, clearing my mind and banishing my panic. All at once, there was no more fear, no more Rupert either. Just me, my survival, and the obstacle that stood in my way.
I lurched forward, pushing off the wall behind me and lifting my leg to slam my heel directly into his knee. Symbionts are tough, but their physiology is still basically human, and a kick to the joint still hurts. I couldn’t get enough power to break it, but my kick made him stumble, which loosened his hand on my neck enough for me to tear away.
I dove the second I was free. Rupert’s charge had knocked us back onto the bridge, which meant the charging racks were directly to my left. I landed hard on my stomach right under my armor case, and my arm shot up instinctively, gra
bbing Mia off the top.
My plasma shotgun weighs sixty-three pounds, far too heavy to use unarmored. Stuck in fight or flight as I was, though, I didn’t even feel it. I snatched my gun to my chest and flipped over, hitting the charge as I brought her barrel up. I didn’t have time to aim, barely had time to get the damn muzzle pointed the right direction before Mia’s whistle hit the ready note. The instant I heard it, I pulled the trigger.
Fortunately for me, plasma shotguns don’t require much aiming. Just pointing Mia in the right direction was enough to send a blast of burning plasma directly into Rupert’s chest, and not a second too soon. By the time I’d flipped over, he’d been almost on top of me. The blast knocked him right off again, making him yelp in pain as he flew backward to land flat on his back a few feet away, his chest smoking.
I was on my feet again by the time he hit with Mia cocked and singing against my shoulder, ready for another shot, but I didn’t take it. Rupert’s cry just now had sounded like himself, and so I waited, gun ready, to see what he’d do.
It took a while. The blast must have knocked his breath out, because Rupert lay still for several seconds. Finally, he sat up with a groan, looking down in confusion at the smoldering hole in his shirt. The burned skin beneath was already healing, which made me feel better about shooting him. But as I was lowering my gun to ask him what the hell had just happened, Rupert looked up, and the horrified expression on his face almost made my heart break.
“Devi,” he whispered. “What…” The word faded out as his eyes went even wider. “Did I do that to your neck?”
I’d been so caught up in the fight, I hadn’t even realized I was hurt until he said something. Now, like it had just been waiting for its cue, my whole throat exploded in pain. I could actually feel the imprint of his hand around my neck still, as well as the massive throbbing that was always a sign you’re going to bruise all to hell. Worse, the unexpected pain sent me into a coughing fit, which in turn sent me to the floor, clutching my throat as I tried to breathe through the pain.
Rupert was at my side in an instant. He left again a second later only to come right back, this time with a first-aid kit. He was talking the whole time, and though his tone told me the words were meant to be calming, I couldn’t make them out. At first I thought this was because I just couldn’t get enough attention away from my throat to make sense of what he was saying, but a few words later I realized I couldn’t understand Rupert because he wasn’t speaking Universal. But it wasn’t until he pulled me into his lap, pressing me painfully tight against his shaking body, that I realized Rupert, the eternally calm operative, the cold killer, was in a full-blown panic.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, finally switching back to Universal as he hurriedly wrapped a cold pack bandage around my neck. “I’m sorry. I’m so so so sorry, Devi. Hold on. I don’t—”
“Rupert,” I croaked out, reaching up to grab his jaw with my hand, forcing him to stop and look at me. “Shut up.”
It wasn’t the most eloquent sentiment, but my throat hurt so badly I couldn’t get out anything better. Even those few words had brought tears to my eyes, but I couldn’t bear to see Rupert so upset, especially since I was fine. Well, not fine exactly since my neck hurt like a bitch, but I wasn’t at death’s door by any stretch, which was what you’d have thought given how Rupert was acting.
Fortunately, the words did the trick. Rupert’s babbling cut off like a switch. From then on he worked in silence, swaddling my neck in the icy comfort of the cold pack bandage before injecting me with a painkiller followed by something to bring down the swelling.
The painkiller didn’t do shit for me, of course, but the anti-swelling agent worked like a charm. The pressure in my neck began to go down almost immediately, and a few minutes later I was able to breathe more or less normally. “Thank you,” I said, sitting up in his lap. “Now, what the hell was that?”
Rupert didn’t answer. When I glanced up to see why, he wasn’t looking at me. Instead, his head was lowered, his face buried in the tangled mess of my hair. Pressed against him as I was, I could feel his body like metal beneath me.
That made me pause. Hugging Rupert had always been a bit like hugging a rock, but this was different. There was no give in his muscles at all, like his whole body was tensed to bolt. He was like a fist clenched tight, but it wasn’t until he started to pull away that I realized what was really going on.
“Oh no you don’t,” I said, leaning back until he had no choice but to face me. Rupert’s face was blank when it came into view, but I wasn’t fooled for a second. “Don’t you dare shut me out,” I snapped, pointing my finger right at his nose. “We had a deal. No secrets. Now tell me what happened.”
I knew Rupert was really upset because his calm mask crumbled almost instantly, giving way to a look that was caught somewhere between terror and pleading. “I’m not sure I can.”
“Try me,” I said with a coaxing smile.
Rupert sighed and closed his eyes. “It’s the symbiont,” he said softly. “It’s more than just nightmares. The symbiont is another entity that shares your mind.”
“Does it talk to you or something?”
He shook his head. “It’s not … intelligent. Symbionts were originally created by the xith’cal to empower their warriors. Republic scientists stole the technique over a century ago, but even once they’d adapted the implant to work in humans, it still had xith’cal instincts inside it. Specifically, the host body inherits the xith’cal bloodlust.”
Anthony had said something to that effect. He’d also said something about symbionts eating people, but Rupert wasn’t finished.
“Normally the bloodlust is kept in check by the tribe leader,” Rupert said. “But symbionts aren’t part of a tribe, so we have to control it on our own. Those who can’t learn to control the will to kill are put down.”
“But you can control it, clearly,” I said. “So what went wrong?”
Rupert bit his lip, thinking. “Controlling the symbiont isn’t like controlling your muscles,” he said at last. “It’s more like keeping a mad dog on a leash. So long as your hold is good, everything stays under control. But if your grip slips, the dog gets free and runs wild.” He reached up to run a hand over his face, rubbing his eyes. “I’ve held mine for so long it’s second nature. I haven’t lost control since the very beginning, but I can’t hold on when I’m asleep.”
“I get it,” I said. “That’s why you locked yourself in, so your symbiont wouldn’t go joyriding while you were asleep.” I glared at him. “You know, I wish you’d just told me this earlier. If I’d had some warning your alien was going to go nuts, I would have lashed you down and waited in my suit.”
“I still haven’t told you everything,” he said quietly.
I motioned for him to go ahead, but Rupert seemed to have run out of steam. He just sat there, avoiding my eyes, and I got the sinking feeling that this was going to be bad.
“I told you the symbiont isn’t intelligent,” he said at last. “But it does have a will of sorts. It wants to kill, and it gets frustrated when it can’t. That anger gets reflected back on its host, and if the host keeps refusing to give up control, the symbiont begins to hate.”
I grimaced. “I guess yours must hate you a lot, then?”
Rupert closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said quietly. “It hates me very much. But it wasn’t a problem until recently, because I never gave it an opening. Now, however, the situation has changed.”
My sinking feeling got worse. “Changed how?”
“The symbiont is part of me,” Rupert said, lifting his eyes to mine at last. “It knows what I know. That’s why it’s so dangerous for people with symbionts to get attached. It gives the symbiont a target, a way to hurt their host and take out their hatred. I thought if I locked the door, you’d be safe. The symbiont isn’t supposed to be able to operate complex systems like code locks. But I underestimated it, and you paid the price.” He closed his eyes. “It could have
killed you. It could have ripped you to pieces and I wouldn’t even have known until I woke up and saw—”
“Stop,” I said sharply, making his eyes pop open again. “Stop right there and listen. I don’t care what could have happened. It didn’t, and this wasn’t your fault.”
“It was,” Rupert said, eyes narrowing. “Whose handprint do you think that is?”
I set my jaw stubbornly. “I refuse to hold you accountable for things your symbiont did while you were asleep.”
“It doesn’t matter. I am accountable!” Rupert said, his voice rising. He stopped after that, like his anger surprised him, and took a deep breath. “Caldswell was right,” he said, calmly now. “No matter how good you think your control is, it always ends the same way.”
“Don’t you dare bring Caldswell into this,” I growled. “He has nothing to do with it.”
“He does,” Rupert said, leaning back to give me an appraising look. “Did Brenton tell you how Caldswell lost his position as head of the Eyes?”
I shook my head.
“It was his symbiont,” Rupert said. “He put off the implantation as long as possible, but in the end he had to get one to survive Maat’s rages. Despite his worries, he adapted very well, making one of the best transitions on record, and he used this to argue that he should be allowed to continue visiting his family.”
I blinked. “Wait, Caldswell has a family? Why couldn’t he visit them?”
“A wife and a daughter,” Rupert said. “And he couldn’t visit them because Terran military law prohibits symbionts from having relationships with nonsymbionts for reasons you now understand. But Caldswell refused to give up. His control was the best around, he said, and he was the commander. No one wanted to argue with him, so he went home as soon as they released him from observation.”
As Rupert spoke, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I could guess where this was going, but I didn’t stop Rupert from telling me.
“Caldswell loved his wife and daughter deeply,” he said quietly. “He told them the risks, locked himself away whenever he needed to sleep during his visits home, and for a year, everything was fine. Then, one night, there was a power outage at his farm. The blackout caused the two maglocks on his door to malfunction, leaving only the dead bolt. His symbiont kicked out the lock and murdered his family before Caldswell could wake up. When he opened his eyes at last, he was eating his wife’s arm.”
