TableofContents

by Low Bo

  The uniform of RIP Force. A uniform that Trelayne had worn a lifetime ago. Gray meant Special Services: this man was RIP, but not a Screamer. RIP kept senior officers and the SS clean.

  The man studied a PerComm unit held in a black-gloved hand, then looked down at Trelayne and smiled. "Hello, Captain Trelayne," he said softly, as if he were addressing a child.

  Trelayne swallowed. He was shaking and realized he had been since he had recognized the uniform. "My name is not Trelayne."

  "I am Weitz," the man said. The PerComm disappeared inside his cloak. "And the blood sample I took from you confirms that you are Jason Lewiston Trelayne, former Captain and Wing Commander in the Entity's Forces for the Relocation of Indigenous Peoples, commonly known as RIP Force. Convicted of treason in absentia three years ago, 2056-12-05 AD. Presumed dead in the MCE raid on the rebel base on Darcon III in 2057-08-26."

  Trelayne licked his lips, savoring the flavor of his fear.

  "You're a wanted man, Trelayne." Weitz's voice was soft. "Or would be, if the Entity knew you were still alive."

  The Scream in Trelayne turned the threat in those words into a thrilling chill up his spine. He giggled.

  Weitz sighed. "I've never seen a Screamer alive three years after RIP. Dead by their own hand inside a month, more likely. But then, most don't have their own source, do they?"

  The implication of those words broke through the walls of Scream in Trelayne's mind. Weitz represented real danger-to him, to those in the circus that depended on him. To her. Trelayne struggled to focus on the man's words.

  "...good choice," Weitz was saying. "Not a spot the Entity has any interest in now. You'd never see Rippers here-" Weitz smiled. "-unless they had ship trouble. I was in the next town waiting for repairs when I heard of a riot at a circus of ips."

  Ips-I.P.'s-Indigenous Peoples. A Ripper slur for aliens. Weitz stood up. "You have an Angel breeding pair, Captain, and I need them." He pushed open the cell door and walked out, leaving the door open. "I've arranged for your release. You're free to go. Not that you can go far. We'll talk again soon." Looking back to where Trelayne lay shivering, Weitz shook his head. "Jeezus, Trelayne. You used to be my hero."

  Trelayne slumped back down on the floor, smiling as the smell of dirt and stale urine stung his throat. "I used to be a lot of things," he said, as much to himself as to Weitz.

  Weitz shook his head again. "We'll talk soon, Captain." He turned and left the hut.

  * * *

  Think of human emotional response as a sine wave function. Peaks and valleys. The peaks represent pleasure, and the valleys pain. The greater your joy, the higher the peak; the greater your pain, the deeper the valley.

  Imagine a drug that takes the valleys and flips them, makes them peaks too. You react now to an event based not on the pleasure or pain inherent in it, but solely on the intensity of the emotion created. Pain brings pleasure, grief gives joy, horror renders ecstasy.

  Now give this drug to one who must perform an unpleasant task. No. Worse than that. An immoral deed. Still worse. A nightmare act of chilling terminal brutality. Give it to a soldier. Tell them to kill. Not in the historically acceptable murder we call war, but in a systematic corporate strategy-planned, scheduled, and budgeted-of xenocide.

  They will kill. And they will revel in it.

  Welcome to the world of Scream.

  -Extract from propaganda data bomb launched on Fandor IV ComCon by rebel forces, 2056-10-05 A.D. Attributed to Capt. Jason L. Trelayne during his subsequent trial in absentia for treason.

  * * *

  Feran thought tonight's show was their finest since the marvelous Ta'lona had died, now a five-day ago. From behind the red curtains that hid the performers' entrance, the young kit watched the two Angels, Philomela and Procne, plummet from the top of the dome to swoop over the man-people crowd. Remembering how wonderfully the fat alien had burnt, Feran also recalled the Captain explaining to him how that night had been bad. The Captain had been forced to give much power-stuff for the burnt man-people and other things that Feran did not understand.

  The Angels completed a complicated spiral dive, interweaving their descents. Linking arms just above the main ring, they finished with a dizzying spin like the top the Captain had made him. They bowed to the applauding crowd, folding and unfolding diaphanous wings so the spotlights sparkled on the colors.

  Feran clapped his furred hands together as Mojo had taught him, closing his ear folds to shut out the painful noise of the man-people. As the performers filed out for the closing procession around the center ring, Feran ran to take his spot behind the Stone Puppies. Guppert the Strong lifted Feran gently to place him on the slate-gray back of the nearest silica beast.

  "Good show, little friend!" Guppert cried. His squat form waddled beside Feran. Guppert liked Long Shot because it did not hold him to the ground as did his home of Mendlos. "Of course, Guppert never go home now," he had told Feran once, his skin color darkening to show sadness. "Off-planet too long. Mendlos crush Guppert, as if Stone Puppy step on Feran. But with Earth soldiers there in mecha-suits, now Mendlos not home anyway."

  Waving to the crowd, the performers disappeared one by one through the red curtains. Feran leapt from the Stone Puppy, shouted a goodbye to Guppert, and scurried off to search for Philomela. Outside the show dome, he sniffed the cool night air for her scent, found it, then turned and ran into the Cutter.

  "Whoa, Red! What's the rush?" The tall thin man scowled down at Feran like an angry mantis. The Cutter was the healer for the circus. "Helpin' us die in easy stages, s'more like it," was how the Cutter had introduced himself when Feran had arrived.

  "I seek the Bird Queen, Cutter," Feran replied.

  Sighing, the Cutter jerked a thumb towards a cluster of small dome pods where the performers lived. Feran thought of it as the den area. "Don't let him take too much, you hear?"

  Feran nodded and ran off again, until a voice like wind in crystal trees halted him. "You did well tonight, sharp ears."

  Feran turned. Philomela smiled down at him, white hair and pale skin, tall and thin like an earth woman stretched to something alien in a trick mirror. Even walking, she made Feran think of birds in flight. Philomela was beautiful. The Captain had told him so many times. He would likely tell Feran again tonight, once he had breathed her dust that Feran brought him.

  "Thank you, Bird Queen," Feran replied, bowing low with a sweep of his hand as the Captain had taught him. Philomela laughed, and Feran bared his teeth in joy. He had made the beautiful bird lady laugh. The Captain would be pleased.

  Procne came to stand behind Philomela, his spider-fingered hand circling her slim waist. "Where do you go now, Feran? Does Mojo still have chores for you?" He looked much like her, taller, heavier, but features still delicate, almost feminine. His stomach pouch skin rippled where the brood moved inside him.

  "He goes to the Captain's pod," Philomela said. "They talk, about the times when the Captain flew in the ships. Don't you?"

  Feran nodded.

  Procne's eyelids slid in from each side, leaving only a vertical slit. "The times when those ships flew over our homes, you mean? Your home too, Feran." Procne spun and stalked away, his wings pulled tight against his back.

  Feran stared after him, then up at Philomela. "Did I do wrong, Bird Queen?"

  Philomela folded and unfolded her wings. "No, little one, no. My mate remembers too much, yet forgets much too." She paused. "As does the Captain." She stroked Feran's fur where it lay red and soft between his large ears, then handed him a small pouch. "Feran, tonight don't let the Captain breathe too much of my dust. Get him to sleep early. He looks so... tired." Feran took the pouch and nodded. He decided he would not tell the Captain of Philomela's face as she walked away.

  * * *

  > > > > > > Merged Corporate Entity, Inc. > > > > > >

  Project Search Request

  Search Date: 2059-06-02

  Requestor: Weitz, David R. Major, RIP Special Services
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  Search Criteria:

  Project World: All Division: PharmaCorps

  Product: Scream Context: Field Ops/Post-Imp

  Clearance Required: AAA Your Clearance: AAA

  > > > > > > Access Granted. Search results follow. > > > > > >

  Scream mimics several classes of psychotropics, including psychomotor stimulants, antidepressants, and narcotic analgesics It acts on both stimulatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters hallucinogenic effects by maintaining neurotransmitter balance. It enhances sensory ability, speeds muscular reaction and lessens nerve response to pain. It affects all three opiate receptors, induct intense euphoria without narcotic drowsiness.

  Physical addiction is achieved by four to six ingestions at dosage prescribed in Field Ops release 221.7. 1. Treated personnel exhibit significantly lowered resistance to violence. Secondary benefits for field operations include decreased fatigue, delayed sleep on set; and enhanced mental capacity.

  Negative side effects include uncontrolled masochistic or sadistic tendencies, such as self-mutilation or attacks on fellow soldiers. Scream is therefore not administered until military obedience programming is completed in boot camp. Long-term complications include paranoid psychoses and suicidal depression. depression. Withdrawal is characterized by hallucinations, delirium and seizures, terminating with strokes or heart attacks.

  Attempts to synthesize continue, but at present our sole source remains extraction from females of the dominant humanoids on Lania II, Xeno sapiens lania var. angelus (colloq.: Scream Angel). The liquid produced crystallizes into powder form. Since the drug is tied to reproduction (see Xenobiology: Lania: Life Forms. 1275), ensuring supply requires an inventory of breeding pairs with brood delivery dates spread evenly over-

  > > > > > > File Transfer Request Acknowledged > > > > > >

  Xenobiology File: Lania: Life Forms: 1275

  The adult female produces the drug from mammary glands at all times but at higher levels in the reproductive cycle. Sexual coupling occurs at both the start and end of the cycle. The first act impregnates the female. The brood develops in her until delivery after thirty weeks in what the original Teplosky journal called the "larval form," transferring then to the male's pouch via orifices in his abdominal wall. For the next nineteen weeks, they feed from the male, who ingests large quantities of Scream from the female... The brood's impending release as mature nestlings prompts the male to initiate the final coupling-

  * * *

  Trelayne lay in his sleep pod at the circus waiting for Feran and the hit of Scream that the kit brought each night. The meeting with Weitz had burst a dam of times past, flooding him with memories. He closed his eyes, his face wet with delicious tears. Though all his dreams were nightmares, he did not fear them. Terror was now but another form of pleasure. Sleep at least freed him from the tyranny of decision.

  Twenty again. My first action. I remember... Remember? I'd give my soul to forget, if my soul remains for me to barter.

  Bodies falling against a slate-gray sky...

  The RIP transports on Fandor IV were huge oblate spheroids, flattened and wider in the middle than at the ends. Trelayne and almost one hundred other Rippers occupied the jump seats that lined the perimeter of the main bay, facing in, officers near the cockpit. Before them, maybe a hundred Fandor natives huddled on the metal floor, eyes downcast but constantly darting around the hold and over their captors. The adults were about five feet tall and humanoid, but their soft red facial hair, pointed snouts and ears gave them a feral look. The children reminded Trelayne of a stuffed toy he had as a child.

  Fresh from RIP boot camp, this was to be his first action. These Fandorae came from a village located over rich mineral deposits soon to be an Entity mining operation. They were to be "relocated" to an island off the west coast. He added the quotes in response to a growing suspicion, fed by overheard jokes shared by RIP veterans. He also recalled arriving on Fandor, scanning the ocean on the approach to the RIP base on the west shore.

  There were no islands off the coast.

  The other Rippers shifted and fidgeted, waiting for their first hit of the day. The life support system of their field suits released Scream directly into their blood, once each suit's computer received the transmitted command from the RIP Force unit leader. If you wanted your Scream, you suited up and followed orders. And God, you wanted your Scream.

  His unit had been on Scream since the end of boot camp. Trelayne knew he was addicted. He knew that RIP wanted him and all his unit addicted. He just didn't know why. He had also noticed that no one in his unit had family. No one would miss any of them. Another reason to follow orders.

  Twenty minutes out from the coast, a major unbuckled his boost harness and nodded to a captain to his right. Every Ripper watched as the captain hit a button on his wrist pad.

  The Scream came like the remembered sting of an old wound, a friend that you hadn't seen in years and once reunited, you wondered why you had missed them.

  The captain's voice barked in their headsets, ordering them out of their harnesses. Trelayne rose as one with the other Rippers, StAB rod charged and ready, the Scream in him twisting his growing horror into the anticipation of ecstasy. The Fandorae huddled closer together in the middle of the bay.

  The captain punched another button. Trelayne felt the deck thrumming through his boots as the center bay doors split open. The Fandorae leapt up, grabbing their young and skittering back from the widening hole, only to face an advancing wall of Rippers with lowered StAB rods.

  Some of the Fandorae chose to leap. Some were pushed by their own people in the panic. Others fell on the StAB rods or died huddled over their young.

  Trelayne pulled a kit, no more than a year, from under a dead female. He held the child in his arms, waiting his turn as the Rippers in front of him lifted or pushed the remaining bodies through the bay doors. When he reached the edge, Trelayne lifted the kit from his shoulder and held it over the opening. It did not squirm, or cry, only stared a mute accusation. Trelayne let go, then knelt to peer over the edge.

  A salt wind stung sharp and cold where it crept under his helmet. He watched the kit fall to hit the rough gray sea a hundred feet below. Most of the bodies had already slipped beneath the waves. The kit disappeared to join them.

  A nausea that even Scream could not deflect seized Trelayne. Pushing back from the edge, he wrenched his visor up to gasp in air. A Ripper beside him turned to him, and for a brief moment Trelayne caught his own reflection in the man's mirrored visor. The image burned into his memory as be fought to reconcile the horror engulfing him with the grinning mask of his own face...

  Dreaming still... falling still... falling in love...

  Trelayne made captain in a year, as high as Screamers could rise in RIP. He took no pride in it. When the Scream ran low in him, his guilt rose black and bottomless. But his addiction was now complete. Withdrawal for a Screamer meant weeks of agony, without the filter of Scream, then death. The Entity was his only source. He did what he was told.

  Rippers burnt out fast on project worlds, so the Entity rotated them off relo work every six months for a four-week tour on a "processed" world. Trelayne's first tour after making captain was on Lania, the Angel home planet, arranging transport of Angel breeding pairs from Lamia to project worlds with RIP Force units. The Entity had found that, with Angels on-planet, concerns over Scream delivery could be put aside for that world.

  Sex with an Angel, said RIP veterans, was the ultimate high. But upon arrival, Trelayne had found them too alien, too thin and wraith-like. He decided that their reputation was due more to ingesting uncut Scream during sex than to their ethereal beauty.

  Then he saw her.

  She was one of a hundred Angels being herded into a cargo shuttle that would dock with an orbiting jump ship. Angels staggered by Trelayne, their eyes downcast. He had started to turn away when he saw her: striding with head held high, glaring at the guards. She turned as she passed him. Their eyes locked
.

  He ordered her removed from the shipment. That is how he met her. As her captor. Then her liberator. Then her lover.

  The Earth name she had taken was Philomela. Her Angel name could not be produced by a human throat. She brought him joy and pain. He was never sure what he brought her. She gave herself willingly, and her pleasure in their lovemaking seemed so sincere that he sometimes let himself believe-believe that she clung to him in those moments, not to a desperate hope for freedom. That she did not hate him for what RIP had done to her people.

  That she loved him.

  But Scream strangled such moments. Though not on combat doses, he still needed it for physical dependency. On low doses, depression clouded life in a gray mist. Could she love him when he doubted his own love for her? Why was he drawn to her? Sex? His private source of Scream? To wash his hands clean by saving one of his victims? And always between them loomed an impassable chasm: they were separate species who could never be truly mated.

  The news reached him one rare afternoon as they lay together in his quarters. His PerComm unit, hanging on the wall above them, began to buzz like an angry insect He pulled it down and read the message from the Cutter, the medic in his unit.

  She watched him as he read. "Jase, is something wrong?"

  He had come to expect her empathy. Whether she could now read his human expressions or sense his mood, he didn't know. He threw the unit away as if it had stung him and covered his face with a hand. "Mojo. One of my men, a friend. He's Fallen."

  "Is he-"

  "He's alive. No serious injuries." As if that mattered.

  "Do you think he tried to take his life?"

  "No," he said, though the drug in him screamed yes.

  "Many do-"

  "No! Not Mojo." But he knew she was right. Suicide was common with Screamers, and "Joining the Fallen" was a favored method-a dive that you never came out of. The Entity punished any survivors brutally. Screamers were easily replaced, but one LASh jet could cut the return on a project world by a full point.