by B. V. Larson
Across the room, Commander Dallen chatted and gestured proudly in his dress blues. Silver and gold loops adorned the uniform’s cuffs. He was a tall, black-haired, black-bearded man with round eyes and a weak chin. Two weeks earlier, he’d enjoyed putting Scarn on two weeks’ enforced unpaid leave—although Scarn had deserved it. He had reduced two probe units to crackling messes of insulation and smoking plastic. He told the inspectors that he considered their defective performance a hazard to others.
But now, oblivious to almost everything else, Scarn and the woman stared at each other, nearly complete strangers, poised like animals tensed to spring.
Peripherally, Scarn saw Dallen turn his bearded face in his direction. Scarn forced the spell to break and turned away, toward the bar. If he were smart, he’d ask the barman to put a double shot of libido-suppressant into his next drink—but he didn’t feel smart tonight.
Looking back at her, Neva stood tall in the middle of the chattering crowd. Besides the inexplicable magnetism he felt for her, her shape in her form-fitting clothes broke his concentration, Her dark hair flared around her head like a burst of black surf against a stand of rocks, and her wide, pale eyes, a color seen at twilight, stared straight into his. Then she turned away and began to mill and mix.
With a fresh drink, Scarn leaned against the bar and watched her. Every half minute, she looked back. He stepped away from the bar, and moved toward her with no idea of what he was doing.
The room began to fall silent, but neither of them noticed. Several glasses made final clinks and everyone but them turned to face the door: the captain of Tarassis had arrived.
The applause began and only then did Scarn refocus his attention. After a long hesitation, he turned to face their most honored guest.
The captain’s contractual terms with the psychonauts made them his personal possessions—but for Scarn that wasn’t the worst part of the deal. Through his psychonauts, Stattor had located and mapped hundreds of planets with easily accessible mineral deposits, technological innovations, and multitudes of lower animals that could be used as sources of meat and labor. He planned to sell this information at some future time, and he’d ordered that none of it be relayed to Earth. Not yet. Their discoveries would eventually be known, but only when they were an established colony that could exploit the rights.
Scarn put his glass on the bar. The synth barman whisked it away.
Reflected in the mirror behind the rows of ornate bottles, Scarn watched as fawning obsequiousness filled the room like a gas. His own face, looking back at him, seemed to take on a hollow look, his eyes becoming flat and expressionless. Soon, it would be his turn to kiss up to Stattor.
Scarn watched the captain humbly dip his fat head in acknowledgment of his supernatural intelligence, talent, etc. Applause rang out now and then.
The fat man feigned embarrassment. He flapped his arms at the guests to silence their clapping. Behind him, his security contingent gestured for the applause to continue.
Scarn found the captain revolting in a dozen ways. Not the least of which was due to thinking of Neva’s attentions wasted on this disgusting man. He immediately had dark thoughts, primitive thoughts that belonged below-decks. He shook his head and refocused on the moment.
“One more,” he said to the barman.
“You sure?” the synth asked, measuring Scarn’s metabolics with false eyes.
“One more.”
As well as being alcoholic, the drinks were laced with narco stimulants. Right now, Scarn didn’t care if he began to hallucinate.
While the drink was being prepared, an ugly thought intruded: What personally revolted Scarn most was not the way the captain used up psychonauts till they were ghosts of their former selves. No, they were paid a lot and would usually recover, given time. Nor was he revolted by the number of psychonauts that came back to find large parts of their minds filled with alien memories. Most of them quietly retired and enjoyed spending their days sitting under sunlamps.
What was most personally revolting was that a month ago he, Scarn, had been over there, across the room, just like the others. He’d shaken that same clammy tight-skinned hand. Its tiny fingernails, sunk deep into his fatted fingers, had been carefully polished. Scarn had hung onto that piece of soft meat, and he’d grinned till his face ached. That memory disgusted him beyond words.
He became aware that someone from behind was nudging his arm. He spun. Neva?
No. It was Turtle.
“So, she’s the one?” Turtle asked. He nodded across the room.
Neva stood amidst the fawning swarm but separate from them. She gazed off to the side at nothing while everyone else crowded closer to Captain Stattor.
“I wouldn’t die for her,” Turtle said, “but I’d be willing to suffer a little for an hour of her time.” He paused. “No, that’d be too much like my experience with Lonna. Why should liking someone make you suffer at all? But Scarn, if her appearance reflects her personality, I admit, I understand your problem.”
Scarn’s wasn’t listening. His eyes never left the woman.
“Have you seen Iris yet?” Turtle asked.
Scarn finally glanced at him. He shook his head. “Not yet, but you know she’ll be here. I bet she comes in late when everyone’s already drunk.”
Scarn turned back to stare at Neva again.
“Remember why you’re here, Scarn,” Turtle admonished him. “Focus on the essentials.”
“Like you’ve been doing?” Scarn asked, suddenly angry. “Tell me, how is the lovely Lonna?”
“Gone. She and Braxton… you know.”
“But Braxton’s gone now, too. Right? How convenient. Sounds completely legit.”
Turtle eyed him. “You heard about the… accident? Already?”
“There’s going to be an inquiry. Stop worrying about me and worry about your own ass. How do you plan to explain away two drooling officers? The machines log everything—they’ll know you were there.”
“That’s partly why I’m here,” Turtle said. “I need your help.”
Scarn flicked his eyes to Turtle, then back to Neva again; he didn’t want to look away.
Turtle flexed his double-muscled arms. He didn’t seem nervous, not exactly. But he was in a dangerous mood.
Scarn sighed. “If you have a plan, let’s do it now. While the others are all here, kissing ass.”
Turtle met his eyes with surprise. “Really? Right now?”
After a second, Scarn nodded.
“How are we going to do it?” In an instant, they were the lower level team they had been before. Scarn had always been the brains and Turtle had provided the muscle. It worked out well enough.
“Come on. We’ll go out the back. Meet you at the slip-space lifts.”
The next time Neva turned her pretty head to look for Scarn at the bar, she frowned. He was gone.
Chapter SEVENTEEN
Scarn and Turtle didn’t go for any weapons. They didn’t need any.
What they did gather were their masks. Silver masks, which Scarn had set aside for a special day like this one.
He wasn’t an idiot. He’d known from the start they weren’t going to fit in above-decks. Put any uniform on Turtle and call him crew—or any leisure suit on Scarn and call him a guest—it didn’t matter. They didn’t belong here. They had spent too much time surviving in the lower levels for these people to be comfortable around them.
That said, neither of them wanted to go back to eating garbage, or taking a one-way trip into the core.
So, they took their masks to the slip-space lift and crossed a dozen decks in a dozen seconds. They ended up on the medical deck, and they had their masks on by then.
To disguise their uniforms, they wore coveralls. Simple spacer emergency gear. In case of decompression, such suits were all over Tarassis. They usually sat in lockers, gathering dust and dead spiders for decades.
Walking boldly up to the entrance portal, Scarn led the way. He looked like a tall,
rangy freak in a mask. Behind him was a more broad-chested freak, also wearing a mask.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” asked the receptionist.
He was a synth. His sort were often naïve, but this one seemed downright stupid. Scarn assumed it was due to his politeness programming. Odd-looking humans were probably the norm on the medical deck, and maybe this hunk of plastic had been taught not to make them feel bad about their appearance.
“We’re from the Singularity,” Turtle said.
The synth cocked its head. “The Singularity…? No one by that name is—”
“We’re here to see Ensign Braxton,” Scarn interrupted.
“And Petty Officer Jamison,” Turtle added.
Scarn glanced back at him. Turtle was supposed to keep quiet and let Scarn do the talking, but he’d never been an expert at following instructions.
“I’m so sorry,” the synth said, “but that’s impossible right now. Visiting hours are over until morning. When the skylights gleam with good cheer again—”
No doubt, the synth would have told them all about birds singing and fresh coffee in the cooking bot, but he never got the chance. Turtle smashed his face in with a hammer-blow of startling power.
Synths were kind of… gooey inside. They weren’t exactly meat, but they weren’t really plastic, either. Parts of them were grown in tanks. Parts of them were electronic.
But all of them were pretty soft. They didn’t take a beating like a man, they sort of squished when you hit them.
This one had a ruined face. The jaw didn’t operate. The voice was a gurgle. After the head snapped back up into position, they could see one working eye rolling around, dribbling and lidless.
A hand went to touch the reactive screen on the desk. Turtled smashed that too, like he was smashing a bug. The hand flattened like putty, and the screen under it cracked. Glass splinters went everywhere.
“Finish it,” Scarn said.
Turtle stepped around the desk to where the synth was trying awkwardly to stand up. Was it attempting to flee? To call for help some other way?
It didn’t matter. Turtle grabbed the head, twisting it away from the body. Then he reached inside the goopy neck and ripped out the central battery. Wires dangled, and the synth lost power. It sagged and slid bonelessly onto the floor.
“There have to be cameras,” Turtle said.
“Always. We’ve got to work fast. Lead the way.”
Turtle knew the medical deck pretty well. At least, he knew where they kept jacked-up psychonauts who’d taken a bad journey into an alien mind. He walked to the ward where he’d stayed so recently and flung open the door.
There, they met up with someone Turtle recognized. It was the thin nurse with the inflated lips. She’d been rough on Turtle, but she’d cared for him. Turtle hesitated.
“Cultists?” the nurse asked, stunned. She took a step back. “How did you get up here? You don’t belong—”
Scarn didn’t let her keep walking away. He rammed the metal door into her skull once, sharply. It wasn’t a killing blow.
She fell to the floor, and Turtle glared at him. “Did you have to do that?”
“One second more, and she’d have recognized you.”
Turtle didn’t argue, but he fussed over her.
Scarn stepped over the two of them in disgust. It was just like Turtle to have a fit of deadly rage one moment then get emotional the next.
Ensign Braxton was flat on his back in bed. Scarn pulled his pillow out from under his head and placed it over his face.
He expected no more than a few twitches, as Braxton was almost flat-lined according to the beeping medical equipment in the room—but he was in for a surprise.
Twin claws—no, they were hands curled up like claws—launched themselves up at his face.
Braxton wasn’t screaming. He wasn’t making any noise at all, really, but he was fighting like an animal. Fortunately, Scarn had long arms, He kept his face and his mask out of reach. The claws went for his arms, and they dug in.
Such strength! How could a comatose pyschonaut gather that kind of physical power? Braxton wasn’t a large man.
The pillow slipped, revealing insane, inhuman eyes. Scarn knew in an instant what the story was. He wasn’t fighting Ensign Braxton. He was fighting something else, something that had come from another place.
Scarn lost his grip on the heaving, bucking, claw-handed maniac. He was shoved back, staggering.
Braxton was on his feet. His hands were still curled, and his spine was hunched. The eyes never blinked, and there wasn’t any humanity in them.
“He’s a zerk,” Scarn said. “Help me out.”
Turtle reached for the madman. His thick fingers sought the throat. Those claw-hands slashed and dug at both of their arms. It took two men, one of them stronger than most, to subdue the creature Braxton had become.
At last, the thing they were strangling stopped jerking and relaxed.
Breathing hard, Turtle and Scarn looked at each other.
“Is he really dead?” Turtle asked.
“No, he’s just resting. Get his feet.”
They carried the body out of the room and to the chute that was downstairs in the morgue. Two more synths were there. Luckily, there were no humans around. No guest or crew wanted to work the morgue at night.
Braxton’s body went down the chute. Eventually, he’d feed the core and share his dismantled molecules with everyone aboard Tarassis.
Petty Officer Jamison’s room was up next. Turtle threw a big arm in front of Scarn, stopping him.
“He’s not a bad guy,” he said, looking at the comatose man on his bed.
“He’ll get us sent back down—or worse.”
“I don’t think so,” Turtle said, studying the charts. “Look at this.”
Scarn examined a tablet. When he read the words, his lips moved.
“He’s toast,” Scarn said. “Brain functions are limited… what did you do to him?”
Turtle shook his head. “I just loaded him up with a porno. No protection. He loved it.”
Scarn snorted. “At least he went out happily.”
Turtle frowned. “Maybe it was one of those things… those things I met up with.”
“Your aliens? The ones that are prowling around in our minds and controlling us?”
“Yeah. That’s what Braxton was. Didn’t you see it in his eyes?”
Scarn smirked at him. No one had believed Turtle’s stories. They were just too wild. “I didn’t see an alien. I saw a zerk. A guy who was having a psychotic episode.”
Turtle shook his head, losing interest in the argument. He dropped the chart on the vegetative Jamison. He shook his head again. “It couldn’t have been the porno… so much strange shit is going on around here.”
“Yeah, and we’re doing most of it. Let’s get out while we can.”
They took the time to rip out all the camera leads and recording chips they could find in the reception area. Those went into the core after Braxton.
“You go back to the party first,” Scarn told Turtle. “It will look less suspicious if we don’t show up together.”
Turtle entered the slip-space lift and vanished. Scarn didn’t follow him right away and worried while he waited—wondering if they’d disabled all the recording devices.
Chapter EIGHTEEN
When Scarn got back to the party, he tried to steady his breathing. He’d been gone for over an hour, but when he checked the time, he was surprised it had only been twenty-eight minutes.
Turtle was soon at the bar. He’d ordered himself a drink. Scarn joined him.
“Is anyone else acting weird?” Scarn asked him.
“Just us. If we got drunk and vomited, no one would remember we were missing after that.”
“There must be an easier way,” Scarn said, but they both began to put away narco drinks like they were serious about it.
Turtle downed his third and waited for his lungs to clear of the fumes. “I’
ve been hearing rumors,” he said when he could talk, “that maybe a third of the levels have one or more quarantined sections—what they label as construction areas or hazardous clean-up zones. You don’t think this party was planned as a distraction, do you?”
“If it was, it’s working.”
The bartender spoke up. He was one of those irritating synths with a sunny, humorous personality. “Happy talk is the best talk!”
Scarn turned to stare into the synth and the guy soon had business elsewhere.
“You done your handshake with the captain yet?” Turtle asked.
“Not yet. I’m waiting for these drugs to desensitize my gag reflex.” Scarn was staring at Neva Savvan again.
“Scarn, I have a big favor to ask, and I know you won’t want to do it, but it’s important.”
“Another fucking favor?” Scarn said this in a hiss. “You’re straining the friendship, Turtle.”
“Listen, when you meet the captain for a handshake—”
Scarn looked at him. “You want me to talk to him about something? Why can’t you do it?”
“Because you’re the smart one. Everyone knows it.”
Scarn shook his head.
Turtle stepped closer and spoke urgently. “The aliens are picking us off, Scarn. We know it because we’ve seen it up close. Braxton was one of them, no matter what you think. They’re doing to us what we’re doing to them with the same messed-up result. You’ve heard the rumors about off-limits areas on Tarassis...”
One corner of Scarn’s mouth squinched up, and his eyes narrowed.
“Scarn, come on,” Turtle pressed him. He gripped Scarn’s arm and squeezed. It was painful, but Scarn showed no reaction. “Just two sentences, Scarn. Tell him we know it isn’t some strange radiation or stress. We know aliens are infiltrating Tarassis and he can do something about it. We both know that the person in charge usually doesn’t know the ugliest details.”
“You’re talking about the tyrant master of our miserable little world. Don’t make me think you’re impaired. He knows what’s up on his ship.”
“Just tell him. If he already knows, fine. All those so-called construction zones are quarantined areas—we’re losing people. If he already knows about it, all you did was waste your breath. Just blurt it out, give him the information—it should only take three or four seconds.”
