Blaedergil's Host

by C. M. Simpson

  “We’re infected,” she said.

  “I thought we were immunized,” and I had.

  “Oh, crap,” the technician said, and scientist echoed her with an “Oops, we forgot.”

  Well, fuck. You’da thought we’d have been the first on their list of priorities... okay, maybe first after working out how to deliver the cure station-wide. Oh. Yeah. Well, that would explain it. They’d kinda been busy saving the rest of the world, and we’d slipped through the cracks.

  “Let me fix that,” the scientist said, but I’d caught a flash of movement at the edge of the duct I was watching, and it coincided with yet another plaguer trying to claw their way through the door. Of course, it did.

  “Oh. Shortly. Let me fix that shortly!” the scientist corrected, but I was no longer listening.

  I stunned the one at the door, and hoped its body would be the one body too many that meant nothing else would think about trying to get to us. As I did, another spider mutant dropped out of the vent, and rolled slowly to its feet. It hissed as it raised its head, and I centered my next shot between its eyes.

  When the shot seemed to do nothing, I fired again, and then again, and once more. It was still coming, when its head exploded and another dark form slipped out of the ducts. I was firing before I knew exactly what I was firing at, but whatever it was, it moved fast, and took cover behind one of the lab tables.

  It took me half a minute to register the voice screaming in both my ears and my head.

  “Cease fire! Cease fire! Cease fire!”

  In the end, it was Mack’s voice that broke through, tired, but forceful enough for me to register.

  “Stand down, Cutter. Stand the fuck down.”

  “Mack?” but I stopped firing, lowering the Glazer, to look for him.

  More forms dropped from the ventilation shaft, and I snapped my head towards them, bringing the Glazer up, even though I was going to be way too slow.

  “Don’t make me come. Down. There.”

  Not that it sounded like he could—and, even if he did, he’d be way too late. The first human-shaped intruder raced out from behind the bench and launched themselves towards me in a low tackle that took them under the Glazer’s arc of fire.

  Behind me, I heard Delight’s soft ‘oof’, as the impact carried me into her, and took us both down. I kept hold of the Glazer, right up until someone caught my face in an open-handed slap, and someone else plucked the pistol from my hand. The fall and the slap left me stunned, and I lay there, trying to make the world come back into focus.

  “Mack?” I asked, but the face above me belonged to no-one I knew.

  “You!” the commander snapped, looking past me and towards where the scientists were working. “Vaccines. Now.”

  Vaccines? Normally that would have worried me, but I couldn’t work out why.

  “And you,” the commander added, looking down at me. “Time to sleep.”

  Sleep? I tried to argue with her about that, but she snapped her fingers, and I saw the business end of a Glazer aimed at my head.

  “Hey...”

  28—Recovery

  I woke to a raging thirst, a splitting headache, and the feeling that someone had used every inch of me as a drum. When I worked out which motherfucking asshole was responsible, I was going to... Why was I lying down?

  I tried to sit up, and found the sheets tucked too tightly around me to allow it.

  “What the...” and I sounded like I’d been gargling gravel.

  I stopped trying to move, closed my eyes, swallowed, and listened to the sounds around me. Last thing I remembered I had been in a laboratory. There had been things to shoot at, and I’d been starting to feel like crap. Okay...

  And then things started to come into focus.

  Delight had been with me, and Odyssey had come...and they’d shot me...with a Glazer set to stun...my Glazer. Well, fuck.

  And someone had been about to give me a shot... and I’d been infected. Double fuck. In fact, double all the fucks!

  I still felt too tired to punch anybody.

  “And aren’t we all just very glad to hear that.” The Odyssey commander came into view. She stood by the bed, looking down at me, frowning, and it dawned on me that I really didn’t like the expression on her face.

  “Mack?” I asked, turning my head to look for him, but she reached down and took my chin between her finger and her thumb, turning my head so I had to look up at her.

  “He’ll be fine. You and Delight got the solution out in time.”

  Solution. I hoped she meant the cure... although, come to think of it, that had been a solution of sorts.

  “Tens? The ship? Doc?”

  “Also fine.”

  I pushed against the covers, trying to loosen them. I really wanted to sit up, now. The commander reached down, and I thought she was going to force me to lie still. It surprised me, when she helped me sit, and handed me a glass of water.

  “Thanks,” I said, looking around to see where I was.

  Well, it wasn’t Mack’s ship... unless he’d repurposed one of the holds. Nope. This wasn’t a hold.

  “It’s an infirmary.” The commander caught my frown as she answered the question I hadn’t asked, and then she answered my confusion. “Delight patched me directly through to your implant, when relaying what you were doing was too hard to coordinate with shooting things.”

  That sounded like Delight. Priorities, right? And no respect for a girl’s privacy.

  “Except her own,” the commander told me.

  Well, that made perfect sense.

  “She around?” I asked, scanning the beds I could see.

  The commander shifted slightly, and indicated the bed next to mine.

  “She’s still sleeping.”

  “You sure?” I asked, because it was hard to believe I’d wake up before Delight.

  “We had to hit her twice,” the commander said, and I knew she was referring to the stun shots they’d delivered from my Glazer. “You’d dialed the power down a little bit too low.”

  That was even a thing? For some reason, that thought made her frown even harder.

  “We didn’t cover it in training?”

  I thought about it, then remembered we’d trained with a different brand.

  “Not on the equipment we used in Basics,” and she nodded, as though that explained everything.

  “Hmmm,” by which I understood she was making notes, and what I said would be passed back to the Odyssey training centers.

  It made sense; the Glazer was one of the weapons found galaxy-wide, being small, versatile, easy to use, and readily available. That, and the stun setting was damn handy to have on an otherwise lethal weapon.

  “Exactly.” For a minute, she looked like she was going to add something else, but then her eyes shifted, and she smiled a greeting to someone moving across the ward towards us.

  “Doctor,” she said. “They’re starting to wake up.”

  “Thank you, commander. I’ll take it from here.”

  Well, that was a dismissal if ever I’d heard one, but the commander was having none of it.

  “I think I’ll hang around,” the commander told him, in a tone that warned against argument.

  I saw the man’s pace check, and then he shrugged, and continued towards us.

  “Fine. Make yourself useful, then, and get her to the head.”

  Head? Naval term for san unit? Since when did Costral have a navy?

  “It doesn’t, kid, but he’s one of ours. We’re not taking chances with the way clan loyalties work, here.”

  Yeah. That made sense. Of course, Odyssey had a navy. Now, why hadn’t I thought of that when I was thinking luxury cruise liners?

  “We don’t advertise our military arm,” the commander said. “And now you’ve been told, we might just have to kill you.”

  I froze, and she started smirking. Considering I’d been threatened with being thrown out an airlock, and hadn’t been told the threat had been r
escinded, I didn’t think she was funny. That thought wiped the smile from her face.

  “Sorry, kid. I didn’t know.”

  She hadn’t known? How could she not have known?

  “Since I haven’t had to deal with you, and no-one’s passed me your files, yet.”

  Now, that sounded like an order if ever I’d heard one. I followed her look and saw that Delight’s eyes were open. She met the commander’s gaze, and closed her eyes—not for long, though.

  “Done,” she said, when she opened them, again, and the commander stood still, her grip tightening on my arm.

  “Hard to believe everyone thinks you’re that much trouble.”

  Behind her, Delight started coughing, but it sounded like a poor attempt at laughing to me.

  “You haven’t known her long enough.”

  I flipped her a mental finger, and the commander’s grip tightened.

  “Keep it clean,” she said, and then tugged on my arm. “Let’s get you to the head, before there’s a queue.”

  Now, that sounded like a good idea to me. I looked for Mack, as we passed between the long rows of beds that had been set up on the concourse. It worried me when I didn’t see him. Had they taken him back to the ship? And, if so, why not me?

  “He’s around,” the commander said, keeping me moving when I would have come to a panicked stop. “No one got returned to a ship, while they were sick. Don’t sweat it.”

  At least she was talking to me from the outside of my head, even if she was answering the questions almost as fast as I thought them. We headed into the public san facility that opened up off the concourse, and I understood why they might have set up the infirmary where they had.

  “Pretty much,” the commander said. “Lots of space, plenty of access to the facilities we knew we’d need, and it allowed a higher ratio of patients to care, which we needed given the clan personnel had also been hit by the virus.”

  “So you took over the station?”

  The commander shrugged.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Didn’t they protest?”

  “We showed them the charges they had pending.”

  The commander guided me to a cubicle, and opened the door.

  “I take it you can manage this by yourself?”

  “Yeah. Thanks,” and I closed the door between us.

  It didn’t help that I knew she was waiting outside the door, but I didn’t argue. I needed the san time. I could look for Mack after.

  In the end, I didn’t need to. Mack was lounging against the wall as we came out of the facility. It looked like he’d managed to ditch whatever escort he was supposed to have just so he could wait for me.

  “Nope,” he said. “I just convinced them I wouldn’t move, until the commander arrived, and then I’d go wherever she told me.”

  I made a mental note to look for an Odyssey staffer sporting a black eye, and the commander snickered.

  “Hey!” but Mack didn’t sound at all offended. He fell into step beside us, and then sat on the bed on the other side of mine.

  The realization that he hadn’t been very far away made some of the uneasiness I’d been feeling go away. I let myself be maneuvered back into bed, but didn’t want to lie down. I noticed that Mack didn’t lie down, either. I looked across at him, aware that the commander had taken a seat between Delight and I. Why we warranted such attention, I didn’t know, and I didn’t really care. I figured not much was going to go wrong with Mack around... well, that’s what I was hoping.

  “Funny, Cutter,” but Mack didn’t sound very amused.

  I rolled my eyes. That man was never amused. If he’d had a sense of humor, ever, it looked like it had been removed a long time ago.

  “Yeah, and your sooo funny yourself,” Mack said, and I tried to ignore the sounds of amusement coming from the direction of Delight and her commander.

  It was time to change the subject.

  “So, what’s next?” I asked, and, just like that, I had my captain back.

  “Your captain?” Mack wanted to know, but I ignored that, too.

  To my surprise, it was the commander who answered.

  “We still have to retrieve Melari.”

  Mack stared at her, and she continued.

  “She wasn’t at the lodge. She’d been there, but she’d been moved, and, judging from what we found there, she’d been moved in one hell of a hurry. We’re working on a location, now, but whatever we do, it’s going to have to be fast, and subtle.” She paused, frowning. “You can do subtle, can’t you?”

  “She’s got you there, boss,” Tens said, and we looked over to see him crossing the room.

  “They cleared the ship, while you were sleeping, and we just finished decontamination.”

  “The crew?” Mack asked.

  “All good, and that includes the kid and his dog. Damn critter didn’t leave him the whole time he was down.”

  I guessed they meant Rohan, and regretted not having found the time to see him since being dragged back on board. The dog was a legacy of the last time I’d run a mission with Mack, except it had been Rohan’s idea to go into the Ghoul’s complex and find it. We’d needed it... and then we hadn’t, but it had needed us, and Rohan had adopted it. Tens had not been impressed.

  “Still not impressed, kiddo,” he said, coming to stand at the foot of my bed, “but it keeps the boy steady, so we let it stay.”

  That last was said with a glance over at Mack, but Mack said nothing, and I didn’t pursue it.

  “Melari,” Mack said, bringing us back to the topic at hand. “Tens, liaise with the commander, there, to help them find her.”

  The commander opened her mouth, and I thought she was going to argue, but then she nodded.

  “Go do what you can,” she said. “Let me know if you find her before we do. You do that, and the mission’s yours.”

  Tens nodded to her, and then cast a look at Mack. I wasn’t privy to whatever passed between them, but watched as Tens nodded a second time, and then turned to thread his way between the beds between him and the concourse entry. He was moving awfully smoothly for someone who’d been infected.

  “He had Doc,” Mack said, “and they got the cure out to the crew before it reached a lot of the station.”

  Including wherever he’d been, I thought, and caught Mack’s almost imperceptible nod. We both looked up when the Odyssey doctor arrived to check us over.

  “You need to rest,” he said, “or I’m not going to release you for whatever little jaunt she’s putting you up to,” and he included the commander, in a glare that would have done Doc proud.

  The two of them must have attended the same medical school. Either that, or doctors were issued with a standard ‘glare of disapproval’ on graduation. He saw to Mack, first, and then turned to me.

  “Right,” he said, and went over me with a clinical thoroughness that made me breathe a sigh of relief, when he was done. “Lie down, and get some sleep. If you continue to improve at this rate, I’ll let you go back to your ship.”

  “What about my mission?” the commander asked, and the look he gave her was beyond disapproving.

  “We’ll see,” he said, and his tone said the subject was closed for discussion.

  He took a step away from us, and then appeared to notice Delight.

  “Ah,” he said, then added, “I take it she’ll be needed, too?”

  “If she can.”

  The doctor sighed, and moved to examine Delight’s recovery, but not before looking over at me and frowning.

  “Either you lie down and sleep on your own, or I give you an assist.”

  He didn’t tell me I had until he’d finished his examination of Delight, but, then, he didn’t need to; I’d figured that bit out all by myself.

  29—Things that Bite

  Mack, Delight, and I hit atmo twelve hours later. Tens had found out where Andreus had taken Melari, and put the call through to the commander—and she’d gotten the doctor’s clearanc
e, not long after. We were woken, fed, kitted out, briefed, and ready to drop within two hours of Tens locating her. The Odyssey team tasked with the search were both impressed, and not very happy, but Tens offered to share how he’d gone about it, and we left them with a promise they could borrow him after we’d returned.

  There was no way anyone else was sitting overwatch on us as we dropped. We had confidence in Tens. The others? Not so much.

  Mack stepped away from the controls, leaving the shuttle’s final approach in Case’s capable hands. The rest of us unstrapped, and grabbed our gear. We were pretty sure Andreus would be watching the shuttle approach, expecting it to land.

  We were going to give him exactly what he expected... and then we weren’t.

  Son of a bitch wanted to play with a Skymander virus? Fucker was gonna get to do exactly that... and we were pretty sure he hadn’t been immunized, yet, because Odyssey had quietly infiltrated the on-planet facility that was making the stuff, and hijacked the first shipment out. Their team would be joining us shortly, and neither the facility, nor any of the Corovans had half a clue what was happening.

  There was more than one way to make the clans come to the table—and, so far, communications with them hadn’t been satisfactory, and that included the Hazernas. It made a person wonder exactly what the Corovans had to hold over their more prominent cousins. That, however, was not our concern, right now.

  I checked the Glazer, the Blazer, and the finely crafted Zakrava, making sure I had sufficient energy packs, solids, and darts for each, and then went over the programs I’d loaded into my implant.

  “Ready?” Mack asked, and we all gave him the thumbs up.

  We were more than ready. Give us a virus, would he? Well, that Corovan sonuvabitch was going to pay.

  I reached up and pulled the mask down over my face, making the light combat armor I was wearing a sealed unit.

  “Take us in,” Mack said, and we didn’t need to be told to brace.

  This part of the mission was in Case’s hands, and she’d been very thorough in her briefing of what to expect. The shuttle dropped like a stone, plummeting to below tree level, and following a sinuous route down a narrow gully walled by rocks and cliffs. It would take us under the Corovan radar, long enough for the three of us to drop into a deep pool located at the end of the gully.