by David Ryker
And that was it—the only gambit she had. She prayed it would work.
She should have known better.
“Everything you say makes perfect sense,” Kergan chuckled. “Which is why we have no such plans. No, we will utilize other means for the process of preparing your planet for attenuation. Speaking of which…” He motioned for her to come to him. “Let’s get this over with.”
A dagger of ice sliced through her heart. Everything inside her was screaming no. She had to do whatever it took to get away from them. She couldn’t go through whatever had been done to Maggott. Or worse, to Farrell.
“If you really share Kergan’s mind, you know who I am,” she warned, backing away from the two of them. “I come from one of the most powerful families on the planet. If you do anything to me, my father will have a private fleet in space within twenty-four hours, and when they get here, they will destroy all of you.”
Kergan nodded eagerly. “Of that I have no doubt,” he said. “Which is why I took the liberty of having Sean contact your father last night via the commlink.”
The ice dagger twisted inside here. Oh God, no.
“He was quite concerned,” Kergan continued. “Especially when the warden confirmed that you had taken part in a revolt. I told him that you had fallen in love with one of the inmates, Napoleon Quinn, and the two of you had conspired with others to take over the station. He was very disappointed that you had aligned yourself with a man who had been so publicly convicted of treason. It’s going to absolutely kill your political career, I’m afraid.”
Her heart sank through the floor. Her last conversation with her father had left the door open for a story like that to be just plausible enough for him to believe.
“Sean told your father that you were being held in open custody after the revolt was put down, and that we would send you back home on the next supply ship. Of course, by then we’ll have control over you, and you’ll apologize to him for your behavior. We’ll assure your father that none of it ever needs to come to light, and that will be the end of it.”
The horror of her reaction appeared to amuse him as his grin widened. Ridley, for her part, giggled maniacally.
“I must say,” Kergan gushed, “this revenge feeling is particularly delicious. I’ll have to encourage Sloane to try it himself before we attenuate the entire population. He hasn’t experienced even a fraction of the delights that he has available to him.”
Instinct took over Chelsea’s mind at that moment, and she made a mad dash for the hatch that led to the corridor. But she had to go through the two guards, so she dropped her shoulder and made for Ridley’s midsection like an offensive tackle.
She didn’t make it ten meters before the air appeared to shimmer and ripple around her, and she dropped to the floor, screaming.
28
Quinn caught the signal right as he felt the pull of gravity finally let go. The Raft was boosting for the station now, which normally meant they had about forty minutes before landing. But he was pretty sure Sloane and his techs had done something to the engines to make them more efficient, because their descent had seemed to take less time than the one before it.
In any case, they didn’t have a lot of time, so he signaled for Bishop and Sally to unlock their restraints and float freely around the cargo bay. The techs, along with Keiko and Miko, remained strapped in as they had on the trip down.
At the same time, Quinn heard Schuster say over the radio that he was going to stretch his legs. Sloane ignored him, totally focused on the container in his lap, while Boychuk seemed to be having a muttering conversation with himself.
Schuster pushed off and floated toward the other three, meeting up in a face-to-face circle next to the far wall. Quinn held up four fingers and they all switched frequencies so as not to be overheard.
“I really don’t think it makes a difference anymore,” said Schuster. “I’d actually be surprised if Sloane didn’t know what we’ve been doing; he just doesn’t care. The only thing on his mind is what’s in that box.”
“What is the element, Dev?” asked Bishop. “Do you know? We all had another freaky head trip when we blasted it out of the strata, except this time it was different.”
“I did, too. Mine was a favorite memory from childhood. What about you?”
“Eating pie in bed with Ellie, years ago.”
Sally grinned. “My first kill.”
Schuster blanched behind his faceplate at her response and cleared his throat. “Uh, anyway, I think we were all reacting to the element. It did the same thing that Kergan and Sloane did to us, first here in the Raft and then again in the mess later on, but it was different this time. Boychuk said he imagined a violent fantasy again, which is what happened to us earlier, but the rest of us relived pleasant memories this time.”
“Mine wasn’t pleasant at all,” said Quinn. “I was back in Astana, when the chopper landed. Right before the firefight started.”
“Whoa,” Schuster breathed. “What’d you see?”
“I saw enough to confirm what I’d already believed about that night: someone with my face took Frank King from us. We were set up.”
“We already knew that, sir.”
Quinn shook his head. “No, you didn’t. None of you saw what I did, but you all backed me up anyway. And because of it, you ended up on that godforsaken prison station.”
Bishop fixed him with a look. “Lee, if you told us that monkeys flew out of your butt when you went to the latrine, we’d all testify to that in court, because no matter how crazy it sounded, we’d know it was the truth. That’s how much we trust you.”
“Please,” Sally sighed, “spare me your sentimental tripe. He is your leader; you should be ready to fall on your sword on his command.”
“Jesus, Sally—” Quinn began, but she cut him off.
“That reminds me,” she said. “I will be back.”
She propped her feet against the cargo bay wall, cocked her knees and pushed off in the direction of the jump seats on the other side of the bay. In spite of himself, Quinn was impressed with the elegance of her movements. She looked like a goddess soaring through the air, unfettered by the shackles of the Earth.
Sally reached the other side and came to rest with her feet on Miko’s knees. Her former lieutenant didn’t react in the slightest.
“What the hell is she doing?” asked Bishop.
The answer was all too clear a moment later.
The Raft’s cargo holds were massive, and it was SkyLode policy to not bother filling them with atmosphere just so a handful of prisoners didn’t have to breathe their suits’ air while they were travelling to and from the surface. Through his headset, Quinn heard Sally whisper something in Japanese before gripping the underside of Miko’s helmet and pulling it from its magnetic moorings on the neck of her environment suit.
“Sally, no!” Quinn yelled, causing a feedback whine in all their headsets.
The three Jarheads simultaneously pushed off from the wall toward the jump seats, but it was too late. Sally had already yanked off Keiko’s helmet and tossed it into the middle of the bay, where it collided with Miko’s. By the time the men had reached them, both of the former Yandares had suffocated. Boiling saliva foamed from their open mouths and floated into the air around them; flecks of it landed on Quinn’s faceplate, somehow deepening the horror he felt.
A second later, Quinn had his arm around Sally’s neck from behind.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” he shouted. “What were you thinking?”
“I told you before, they were already dead,” she said calmly. “They were in hell. I freed them.”
“Crazy bitch!” cried a voice over the headset. “I’ll kill you!”
Quinn turned to see Boychuk launching himself from the floor and heading straight for them. The guard grabbed onto Sally’s arm as he collided with Quinn, knocking him backward and carrying her along with the upward momentum.
“Jarheads!” Quinn barked
. “Flank Sally! I’ll tackle Boychuk!”
Bishop and Schuster did as ordered, pushing upward at an angle off toward Boychuk, wresting Sally from his grip and holding her as they sailed to the other side of the bay. Meanwhile, Quinn reached up and managed to snare Boychuk’s ankle.
“Let me go! I’m gonna kill her!”
For the first time, Quinn noticed that one of the pistols he and the others had used to extract the element was tethered to Boychuk’s waist. He yanked hard, pulling himself upward and the guard downward at the same time, as Boychuk reached for the device and fumbled with the clasp.
Boychuk managed to get it free just as Quinn’s fist connected with his faceplate, knocking him back toward the wall. Quinn knew this was a gambit; the wall would give his opponent leverage to launch back toward him, but he’d had no choice. The downside was that it left him floating, with no means of moving. He was a sitting duck.
“Hey, Boychuk, heads up!”
Quinn turned to his right to see Bishop sailing toward the wall on a downward angle. A second later he collided with Boychuk, wrapping one arm around the guard’s neck and gripping the wrist that held the gun with his other hand.
The two men struggled, giving Quinn the precious seconds he needed to manipulate the control panel on his wrist to activate the microthrusters in his boots and propel him forward. He drifted toward the pair, his eyes focused intently on the device in Boychuk’s right hand.
“Son of a bitch!” Schuster barked into his headset, but Quinn didn’t have the luxury of taking his attention away from the guard. Even so, he arrived a second too late: Boychuck had managed to cock his legs against the wall and was pushing off, dragging Bishop behind him. As they floated, Boychuk positioned himself so that he was facing Quinn.
The business end of the extractor was pointed directly at him, and it was glowing blue. An instant later, it erupted.
29
The “ward” is just a framed tent in the middle of a battlefield, with foam rubber cots lining the rocky ground in rows. It’s bigger than any tent she can remember from the war, with dozens of casualties lying unconscious or wailing from their injuries. Judging by the appearance of most of them, and the oppressive heat and humidity pressing on her skin and into her lungs with each breath, she’s somewhere on the Indonesian front.
She goes from cot to cot, whispering to the sick and injured in her softest voice, telling them that it will all be over soon. Each cot has an intravenous stand next to it, and she kneels down next to each victim and slips the tiny needle into the back of their hands, carefully laying an adhesive strip over top to keep it in place.
“Shhh…” she coos to a little boy of about five, who stares at her with wild, fevered eyes. “Just let it work.”
Soon, she has finished her task and she looks over them all from the entrance to the tent. Each one of them is quiet now, each linked from their veins to a hanging bag of clear liquid. She looks at the symbol on the side of the bag closest to her and smiles. It’s a synthetic compound designed to mimic the effects of the clostridium botulinum, the bacterium responsible for the toxic effects of botulism.
One by one, their rising chests slow as the muscles that control their lungs stop working. A chorus of gasps and gurgles begins to swell, until they are all choking their last breaths. To her ears, it is the sound of an angel choir singing a symphony of death. She is exultant.
Chelsea gasped so hard it hurt, and she felt the world turn upside down as her senses refocused on the corridor outside the solitary confinement cells. That was followed by sharp pain in both knees as she dropped to the cold steel floor, clutching her arms around herself and rocking like a frightened toddler.
“Well, shit,” Butch Kergan muttered from above her. “You’re another one of them.”
“Whuh,” Chelsea panted. “Wh-what was that?”
“That was yet another failed attempt at attenuation, and it’s really starting to piss me off. I was hoping you’d at least react the way Iona did. Mating with you would be fun.”
In her addled state, Chelsea barely noticed the scowl Ridley gave her. She was too busy trying not to vomit. Seconds earlier, she had been murdering innocent casualties. Children. And she was enjoying it.
“That was… the worst thing… that ever happened to me,” she husked. “Why would you do that?”
“I told you before,” Kergan said, sounding mildly annoyed. “Attenuation affects the limbic system. The typical reaction is to experience intense thoughts of violence, or another primal reaction. This allows us to overwhelm your thought frequencies with our own while taking control of your central nervous system.”
Chelsea swallowed painfully, and that helped sharpen her focus. She had to recover from the experience, and quickly, if she hoped to survive what was happening.
“Sounds like a parasite to me,” she said quietly.
Kergan frowned. “What did you say?”
She pushed herself to her feet and brushed the dust from the knees of her uniform.
“Parasite,” she repeated, enunciating each syllable carefully. “You know, an invading entity that takes over another life form because it can’t live on its own.”
“We are predators,” Kergan said coldly. “Your species is prey. Your own biologists know this. Survival of the fittest is the order of the universe. In any case, I’m tired of failures. Let’s go, Iona, there’s much to do before Sloane arrives with the element.”
“What about me?”
Iona activated her baton again, but Kergan put a hand on her arm.
“I told you, she must be kept alive.”
“Will she survive the amplifier?” asked Ridley.
“Unknown. But whatever happens, we will adapt.”
Ridley snatched the wristband from Chelsea’s left arm, then followed Kergan through the open hatch.
“Someone will come for you eventually,” he said. “Or you may die here. I would prefer the former, but am prepared for the latter. Good-bye, Chelsea.”
The hatch slid closed behind them, and Chelsea heard the tell-tale buzz that accompanied a lock being activated. She jogged to the entrance, but she already knew what she would find: she was trapped in the solitary confinement corridor.
What was she going to do? There was no way to get out through the locked door without a guard’s clearance. She called up internal comms link on her wristband and sent out a general distress ping, but wasn’t surprised when none of the guards answered. They were all, to one degree or another, under Kergan’s influence.
She recalled her Medical Corp training: do what you can with what you have, where you are. It was based on the quote by President Theodore Roosevelt, though Chelsea doubted he had been trapped in the solitary confinement area of a space prison when he coined it.
Suddenly a thought struck: she was the one who had final sign-off on releasing inmates from solitary confinement. She’d always left that duty to the guard that escorted the inmates back into the general area, but it stood to reason that she might be authorized to open the cells. Was it possible she could at least get to Maggott and help him?
She called up the control panel and entered the sequence for opening the door, sending up a silent prayer as she hit the final square on the screen.
A green light over the clear polycarbonate door was the most welcome sight Chelsea had seen in a long time. She rushed to Maggott’s side and knelt beside him. For just a moment, her mind flashed back to injecting the people in the tent with poison, and she shuddered.
“Please be okay,” she mumbled as she pressed her fingers to the side of his tree trunk of a neck. Pulse was strong. His breathing was steady, and his fingers and palms were warm. Whatever was wrong with him, it wasn’t affecting his vitals.
“I apologize for this,” she said, cocking her hand back. “But desperate times and all that.”
She swung and connected with the side of his face. A sharp smacking sound echoed through the cramped space, and Chelsea’s palm throbbed with t
he impact.
Nothing. Shit.
Chelsea had read the files on all the Jarheads—every prisoner on Oberon One, in fact—and knew he had been a gunnery sergeant in the UFT Marines. It gave her an idea.
She climbed on top of him and straddled his chest, taking a shoulder in each hand. She could barely grip his basketball-sized deltoid muscles, but she managed to shake him hard. Her nose was inches from his.
“WAKE UP, MAGGOTT!” she bellowed. “THAT’S AN ORDER, GUNNY!”
She waited for several seconds before the hope finally leaked out of her. Nothing. As frustration overtook her, she twined her fingers into her hair and grabbed hard, letting loose a shriek of utter despair.
When she was done, she sat there, her head in her hands, her back against Maggott’s huge torso, breathing heavily and cursing herself for the sharp pain now throbbing in her throat.
“Good work, Chelsea,” she croaked. “I dunno, Percival, maybe you’re better off as you are than being awake with me.”
Her back started to shudder as the laughter started. What else could she do? The situation was ridiculous.
After a few seconds, she got hold of herself again. But she still felt the motion in her back.
What?
“D’n.”
Chelsea’s heart galloped in her chest. It was Maggott. He was the one moving.
“Dunna.” It was barely audible, but it came from his lips.
“Maggott!” she cried, straddling him again and grabbing his face in her hands. “Maggott, are you in there? Can you hear me?”
“Dinnae.” Stronger now. “Dinnae call me… Percival…”
She wrapped her arms around his head and pulled him to her chest, squeezing with all her might. He was alive. She didn’t know what was going to happen next, but whatever it was, at least she wouldn’t face it alone.
Thirty minutes later, Maggott was almost his old self again, physically. Emotionally, Chelsea couldn’t say.
“Kergan believed a third attempt would kill you,” she said. “He was actually pretty amazed that it didn’t.”
