by Marie Brown
Chapter 3
The nightmares grew worse. They weren't confined to just one shift, either. Rather, the entire station complained of the same dream, over and over again. Engineering had tracked down a problem in the electrical system, an unidentifiable and untraceable power surge, but they had no idea how to isolate and fix the problem. The Commander was irritable enough to begin with, before the voices started.
Murderer.
The first time it happened, no one acknowledged it. The elusive power surge blipped on the monitors, but no one paid it any more mind than the whisper.
Murderer.
This time it felt louder. Sh'lia glanced around, meeting other uneasy gazes. Across the room, at his station, Dylan gave a violent start and looked up.
Killer!
"What in the name of the Lords is that?" Commander Banks snapped.
"Whatever it is, it's causing a fluctuation in the power grid, sir," Sh'lia reported. "The sounds correspond to dips in the current, but don't register on auditory monitors."
Traceable?"
"Negative, sir."
"I want you to find the source," the Commander snapped.
Murder in the dark!
"If this is someone's idea of a joke, I'll have their hide on my wall," Banks growled. "Traffic? I want a hold on all arrivals and departures until further notice. Specify code yellow-three."
"Understood, sir," the traffic controller responded.
Death!
"Be quiet!" Dylan jumped from his seat, eyes wide and focused on nothing.
Murderer!
"You're not real! You're just a voice! Get out of my head!"
"Arthman! Get ahold of yourself," the Commander started, then stared for a brief moment in amazement when Dylan started pounding his head against a nearby wall. The traffic controller leapt up and tried to stop him. Banks slapped the call button for Security. "Security? This is Banks. I need a pair of men in here on the double. Seems one of my crew is becoming violent and needs a trip to the infirmary."
"On their way," the calm voice of Chief Suyan replied. "Commander, while I've got you on the comm. . ."
"Yes, Suyan, what is it?"
"There's a new rash of complaints, sir, of waking nightmares and mysterious voices. Has there been any progress made on the technical aspects of this matter? And what should I tell the concerned citizens?"
The Commander sighed and rubbed his forehead. "No progress as yet. Tell them the disturbances are under investigation, and we're all working towards solving the problem as quickly as possible."
"Understood. Security out."
The security team arrived then, too late to save Dylan from himself. Despite the best efforts of the traffic controller, Dylan's forehead bled from a large split.
The security men took Dylan by the arms and led him out of the Core. He resisted all the way. When he passed through the portal, everyone winced at an angry psychic screech. The power dipped visibly.
It wasn't just a voice, now. Emotions filled the air, the ones from the nightmares of the previous two nights, pain and terror and helplessness. The voice felt louder, too, and more insistant.
"What the hell?" Brook jolted Sh'lia out of her frozen position. Seeing Dylan crack up had been a disturbing thing, not nearly as upsetting as it should have been. Rather, it had been almost nice to see the man suffer. . . she shook off the unpleasant feeling and focused on Brook.
"What is it?"
"That's what I'd like to know," Brook said, reloading the info on her screen. "Damn. This makes no sense."
Sh'lia did her best to ignore the voice and the emotional onslaught. "What am I looking at—oh, sweet Lords."
"Yeah, my sentiments exactly," Brook nodded. "Commander?"
Revenge!
The Commander turned a harried gaze on them. "What is it?"
"There's a threat to life support," Brook reported, wide eyes still on the data. "The power surge has localized and is centered on the environmental generators."
He will pay.
Inexplicably, Sh'lia found herself thinking of the rose. A white rose, it had been, with a blush of red at the tips of its petals, the prearranged signal to let her know its bearer was her secret admirer. But she didn't want to think about that right now. She had a crisis to concentrate on, she didn't need thoughts of the other night's disaster disrupting her concentration.
"Engineering, get on it!" Commander Banks turned to face the main screen array. "Put the relevant info on screen, Systems."
Brook tapped keys rapidly and sent the data to the main array. Twenty screens lit up to form a huge composite image of the dangerous fluctuations in life support.
"Commander!"
The voice of Chief Suyan over the comm made everyone jump.
"What is it, Chief?"
Murderer.
"That man you wanted us to pick up. He's broken free of my officers and is heading back to the Core."
"So apprehend him again, dammit!"
Sh'lia thought she'd never seen the Commander so rattled before. It was a sight she could have done without. Just then, the voice let loose a bloodcurdling shriek and the lights flickered.
All will die!
The power pulsed in time with the voice, dipping dangerously low at each word: Vengeance. . . vengeance. . . vengeance. . . confess!
Lights blacked out all over the station at the last word. They flared dramatically back into full brilliance in time to illuminate the staggering form of Dylan Arthman as he came through the open portal into Core.
"It was me," he cried, raising wild, unseeing eyes. Blood trickled from their corners, from his ears, from the contusion on his forehead, starkly contrasted against his unnatural pallor. "It was me! I didn't mean to, I swear I didn't, but it happened and it was me!"
A shrieking laugh wrenched minds nearly inside out. Yes, yes, tell them! Tell them all!
"Show you, must show you," Dylan babbled, lurching forward to grab the Commander's arm. He started to tow the Commander out of the Core and was shaken off.
"Is this true? Are you to blame for all this?" Commander Banks scowled, the effect spoiled by his wince of pain at another angry shriek. "Somebody, get me Suyan!"
Follow, follow, follow!
"Follow!" Dylan echoed desperately. He scuttled out of the Core, hunched over but moving rapidly, Commander Banks right behind him.
Sh'lia saw the rose inside her mind again. The rose, followed by Ossen's face. The rose. . . Ossen. . . She darted after the Commander and Dylan, gripped by suspicion. Oh sweet Lords of the Nebulae, let it not be true. . .
The waves of emotion and pain tormented her all the more now that she suspected their source. Not Ossen, not poor sweet Ossen. . . The pain of death and cold ate at her like acid, battering her viciously.
"Ossen!"
She cried out, she couldn't help herself, and she felt the psychic storm slacken for a moment. Encouraged, she pushed on and found the Commander and Dylan just ahead, surrounded by a crowd of other people, drawn from their rooms by the commotion. Dylan was scrabbling frantically at the inside buffer wall, fingers digging at an access seam.
"In here, in here, in here," he chanted, rocking in time to his words. The Commander searched the crowd and urgently signalled Suyan, who shoved through the crowd and peeled Dylan off the wall.
Commander Banks rubbed his head at a fresh onslaught of pain but managed to unseal the access panel. Sh'lia shoved her way through the crowd in time to see the panel reveal what was left of her friend.
"Ossen!" Suddenly crying, nearly blind with tears, she covered the last few steps seperating her from the pathetic shriveled body, freeze-dried and utterly dehydrated. His belt must have malfunctioned, allowing the slow and horrible death the entire station had experienced repeatedly. She touched the dead face gently, and was catapulted into a world of madness.
Nothing made sense anymore. Up was down, and down was sideways, and something hung in
front of her, glowing blue-white and wispy against the shifting chaotic swirl of darkness, with red eyes. Somehow, she recognized Ossen in that incandescent red gaze and reached out.
You! Betrayer of hope, destroyer of dreams, how dare you come here to mock my pain—
The spectral form reared back, ready to lash out. "No!" Sh'lia shrieked. What remained of Ossen hesitated. "No," she repeated, softer. "I didn't betray you. I had no idea, I never suspected—"
Liar! Ossen's shade rippled. I saw you with him. He told you it was him, and you believed him!
Suddenly, it all made sense. The rose, the notes, it had all been Ossen, not Dylan, and somehow Dylan had killed her friend. . . "No, Ossen. I didn't want it to be him. I only believed him because he was there. I would have rather it was anyone but him! I had no idea it was you, not until just now. . . I never thought of you that way before. But I wish you had come."
I was dying, Ossen replied, with grim humor. Should I believe this convenient story. . . hmm.
Suddenly, Sh'lia felt something cold slide into her mind, shuffling through her thoughts with careless ease. "Ossen," she whispered, "what are you doing?"
There was no answer, just a firm jerk on her memory, and suddenly she was reliving moments she would rather have forgotten forever. There was Dylan, holding out the promised rose with that irritatingly bright smile. She felt her heart sink once again, realizing that she was stuck with the man until she could get a word in edgewise to tell him she wasn't interested. Then came the sneaking suspicions—if he was the one who had sent all those lovely notes, then why couldn't he remember half of them?
And then came the part she wanted to forget most of all.
"Bitch!" He snarled, like an angered beast of the wildlands back home. "Nobody turns me down twice and gets away with it!"
He forced her back into her room, wrestling her down onto the small bed built into the wall.
"No!" She cried out and struggled, but he only laughed. "Don't do this—I can hurt you—"
That only served to make him laugh harder and fumble at her clothing. "No you can't. All you can do is take it. Come on, girl, you know you want it."
Sh'lia twisted around, managed to get a hand free and to her belt. "No!" She thrashed wildly, trying to keep his attention off what her hand was doing. And then she had it. One press of a hidden button, and the repulsor field she'd had wired into her utility belt was activated. Not really legal, no, but she'd promised her mother never to leave home without one...
Dylan howled and pushed violently away from her—
Abruptly, Sh'lia broke free of the memory. She staggered back, away from the spirit.
Lee. . . Oh, Lee. I'm sorry. Ossen's voice was filled with compassion. His eyes, or what passed for eyes, had dimmed from angry red to cool blue. I believe you now, Lee. Did he hurt you?
"You should know, you dug up that vile, disgusting memory easily enough," she muttered, rather resentful. "He didn't stand a chance, once I got that repulsor field activated. Mother was right when she told me to get one, no matter what the cost."
He must suffer, Ossen said. Not so much for what he did to me, but for his mistreatment of you.
Sh'lia shuddered. "Ossen, don't you think you've done enough already? I saw the man try to beat his own head in, for Nebula's sake. The entire station has paid for what he did to you. I'm sorry, I really am, and if I could undo what happened I would. . . what can I do, though? And what are you going to do?"
Lee, I'm dead. The spectral voice sounded almost surprised. I died in pain, agony, only wanting revenge on him. . . and on you. I saw you with him, somehow, saw you smile at him, and thought you must have been happy it was him all along and not me. And I wanted you both to suffer. But now, and the spirit trailed a misty tendril down her face, I know better about you. All I want is for him to pay for what he did to you.
"If he confesses to the Commander, everything will be fine," Sh'lia started to say, then everything got weird again. The swirling chaos around her flashed brightly and Ossen's spirit winked out in an instant. Then she was back in her body, with a spritzer pressed against her neck and worried voices sounding overhead.
"She's coming round. Back off, people, give her some room!"
Sh'lia sat upright and the world abruptly returned to normal. "Let go of me," she said, brushing off a medic's helpful hands and standing. "Commander, that man killed my friend!"
"Careful what you say, Nagrossy," the Commander warned. "That's a serious accusation, and this man may not be fit to stand responsible for his actions, in any event."
"It's true. He killed Ossen. Didn't you, Dylan?"
Dylan turned away from the body and stared at her, small flecks of sanity showing through the crazed horror in his eyes. "I didn't mean to," he said, in a small voice. "I thought he was wearing his belt, and it was working. The worst that should have happened was that the little snot got a little lonely and bored, until I let him out." But then his voice changed, from the almost childlike tone to the one she rememberred from two nights ago. "Serves him right, though. Thought he was good enough to get a woman who'd already turned down almost every man in the station. Little punk needed to be taught a lesson, thought he was better than the rest of us—"
"Enough," the Commander interrupted. "Dylan Arthman, are you saying before witnesses that you are responsible for the death of Ossen Guyl?"
"Yes, and what if I am? I stuffed the little bugger right in there and when I came back he was dead. What's there to do about it?"
Dylan glared at the Commander defiantly, then crumpled slowly to his knees, eyes wide and fixed on something only he saw.
"No! No, no, no!" Dylan raised his hands, protecting himself from unseen blows.
"There's more, isn't there, Dylan," Sh'lia said, voice hard. "Are you going to tell the Commander how you tried to take from me what I wasn't willing to give?"
The surrounding people gasped in unison, even as Dylan cried out in pain and tried to batter away his invisible attacker.
"Yes! Yes! I did it, I did it all. . ." Dylan collapsed against the outer wall, utterly defeated, with tears washing the blood from his face. "Leave me alone. Just leave me alone."
"I think that can be arranged," the Commander said, voice hard and unforgiving as the station wall itself. "Security Chief Suyan, take charge of this man, please. And don't let him get away this time." Suyan nodded and spoke rapidly into his comm before clamping binders onto Dylan's wrists. "Sh'lia? Ossen was your friend. Can you convince him to leave us all alone?"
Sh'lia summoned up a weak grin at that. She'd wager down to her last quarter credit the Commander had never believed in ghosts before today, much less had to ask for help with one from a very junior staffmember such as herself. "I think it'll be okay, Commander," she replied. "I spoke to him. Or at least, I think it was him. . . anyway, all he wanted was to make Dylan pay for what he did. And now he's going to pay."
"Indeed," was the Commander's grim reply. His piercing gray eyes shifted from her to the body in the wall, and then to Dylan's back as Security led him away in binders. "Right. I'll get someone to see to a proper capsule for your friend. Is the uncanny business over, then?"
"I think it is," Sh'lia replied, grateful in her very bones. "I think it is."
Chapter 4
"Well, Ossen, you've got what you wanted," Sh'lia said, leaning against the starport. The view outside was magnificent, with the galactic arm dominating the sky, and just the tip of the Nebula visible near the top of the port. "Dylan's gone. Jury found him guilty of everything, from murdering you and assaulting me, to causing a situation that endangered every life on this station. And you may already know this, but they determined the punishment should fit the crime. They locked him in the same section of the outer ring he'd put you in and left him there, although they were merciful enough to trank him first. One vengeful spirit on Copernicus was more than enough, thank you very much."
She sighed and spread a hand
against the chill starport. "And now he's dead, and you're dead, and there's no one to send me sweet little notes any more. I suppose you already know they took care of your body, launched it in a proper capsule and all. But did you know most of the station turned out to see you off? You were far better liked than you feared. And you're far more missed than you would ever believe. Especially by me." She sighed again, then stood up. "But I'm still alive, and I can't just sit here talking to the stars and hoping you're listening, or wondering if you're even still around. So. . . you know how to get in touch with me, if you need to. I think you do, anyway. Until then. . . it was nice knowing you, and I wish I could have found out if I really loved you. Maybe I'll see you around someday."
Sh'lia turned away from the starport and gasped. She reached forward with a trembling hand to pick up the rose laying on the low table in front of her. It was a creamy white blossom, with just a hint of red around the edges of the petals.
"Thank you," she whispered around the lump in her throat, then left.
* * * *
Other titles from Marie Brown:
With Honor
One Night Stand
Behind the Mask
Red Racer
Visit the author online at
the Evil Kitten Project
