Heather was facing some sort of ghost from her past. A relative, Lisbeth thought, someone who’d taken her to a crude cabin, well-outfitted with rusty tools of torture and butchery. Her terror was painful even experienced second-hand, but she was coping with it. She’d be all right, Lisbeth decided before turning to the next person. Another female, maybe a couple of years older than Lisbeth or Heather, but someone who hadn’t really faced much adversity in her life. A State Department staffer; how someone like that had suddenly become a Warp Adept was beyond Lisbeth. In a way, her sheltered life was protecting the woman; she didn’t have any deep fears for the Warplings – as good a name as any for whatever this was – to exploit. Which left the third person, the Chief of Staff. Her attempt to reach the other two had backfired, and now she was paying dearly for trying to be a good Samaritan. She was in real danger.
Lisbeth touched the woman’s mind.
Her luxury cabin at the Brunhild disappeared. She was in a dark, cold room, its ceiling barely high enough for her five feet seven to stand without bumping her head. There were no furnishings, just a drain hole in the center, covered with a metal grille. From the stench that filled her nostrils, that hole served as the latrine for the room’s occupant. At first, she didn’t even realize the room was occupied, not until a barely audible sob made her turn towards a corner. A lone figure was crouched there. A young woman or a child; hard to tell the way she was squatting down, knees drawn to her face, arms tightly wrapped around herself.
“Not real,” the young woman whispered. “Not real.”
“Ms. Smith?” Lisbeth called out. “Can you hear me?”
“Not real.”
The young version of Deborah Smith whimpered and started rocking her body back and forth. As Lisbeth approached her, she heard a series of sharp, short sounds. It took her a moment to realize the woman’s teeth were chattering in sheer terror.
“Ms. Smith?”
A door Lisbeth hadn’t spotted when she surveyed the room slammed open behind her, and the huddled woman screamed. The primal, desperate sound was beyond loud; it seemed to vibrate through everything in the room and its sheer intensity knocked Lisbeth to her knees before she could see who or what had entered the room.
The scream went on and on, longer than humanly possible, too painful to endure. It made Lisbeth want to reach for the screaming woman and smash her head in, to do anything that would shut her up.
When that awful keening finally stopped, a deep, throaty sound replaced it, coming from behind her. Something between a growl and a laugh. Lisbeth didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. She’d dreamed about it only a few minutes ago. The warp demon. The bogeyman.
Blind panic took over. Lisbeth ran and abandoned the woman to her fate.
Dying screams chased her all the way back into her body. She opened her eyes, fully convinced that the screaming would go on forever.
There were tears of terror in Lisbeth’s eyes; she squeezed them shut, hating herself for her cowardice. She’d let the poor woman die. When push came to shove, she’d run away like the coward she truly was.
Dreams. Just dreams. Just my brain trying to make sense of things that can’t be understood.
She kept repeating those lies to herself but didn’t believe any of them.
Five
Guess the side effects were worse than they thought.
The glib thought did nothing to dispel the cold feeling in the pit of Heather’s stomach as she watched the Navy corpsmen wheel Deborah Smith’s covered body out of the compartment. Heather had rushed there as soon as she woke up, filled with dread that had proven to be completely justified. An emergency team reached the room just before she did, alerted by Smith’s med implants, but they weren’t able to resuscitate the chief of staff. The one glimpse Heather caught of the dead woman’s face before the corpsmen chased her out of the compartment was bad enough. The terror-contorted features she saw looked nothing like the confident covert operative she’d talked to less than six hours ago.
What the hell did they do to us?
Whatever it was, it had proven to be lethal to one third of this particular sample group.
At first, there’d been no problems. The activation process had gone without a hitch. They ran a few tests without incident and spent a few hours doing a simulated base takeover using a mockup of a Wyrm system as a template. The new implants and apps, if they worked as they had in the simulation, were amazing. They could bypass several layers of protection without triggering any alerts, although only if they limited themselves to passive observation. Still, Heather had gone to bed thinking the whole thing had been worth the trouble.
Then the nightmares had started.
They’d been just as bad as the worst warp trip she’d experienced. Her dreams had involved a visit to Uncle Bert’s cabin. She’d never been there, but she knew it well; it had played a central role in the McClintock’s family darkest scandal, the place where her father’s brother had taken several women and ritually murdered them. The secret had only come out when Albert McClintock committed suicide just as the police was closing in on him. Heather had been ten at the time; her parents tried to shield her from the facts, but she was bright enough to bypass their search blocks and read the graphic, unvarnished news reports; a year later she’d even managed to watch the ‘Based on a True Story’ movie, too. What she’d learned had left scars that persisted to this day.
In the dream, she became one of Uncle Bert’s victims. And she now thought that if she’d died in that cabin, she would have ended up like Deborah Smith. Fortunately, her dream-self had managed to escape and she’d woken up, terrified but alive. She also knew that June Gillespie had dealt with a similar night terror. Agent Smith had apparently detected their panic through the new comm system and tried to intervene. And it had gotten her killed.
“We need to get these things out of our heads,” someone said behind her.
Heather turned around and saw June, looking like death warmed over. Her fellow agent wasn’t alone: a small crowd had gathered on the corridor; fellow State Department staffers who’d heard the commotion and wanted to see what was going on. Everyone looked shocked at the sight of the corpsmen taking Smith away. People didn’t usually drop dead in their sleep, not unless they were both very old and too poor to afford the medical care necessary to keep them alive. There were a few congenital defects that could linger undetected and strike someone down without warning, but those happened about as often as being struck by lightning. Most people died by accident, suicide or murder nowadays, with accidents outnumbering the other causes by a huge margin. Except in times of war, of course. War could skew those statistics drastically. And Deborah was, in a way, a war casualty.
“Did you hear me?” June said, more loudly this time. “I want this…”
Heather resisted the urge to slap the woman – too many witnesses – and instead lunged forward and hugged her tightly. The unexpected move shut June up as quickly as a backhand would have.
“Shut the fuck up,” Heather subvocalized into June’s imp while squeezing her hard enough to inflict some serious pain. June squirmed for a bit before the realization Heather was muscle-enhanced and stronger than a man her size sunk in. She might have whimpered in pain, too, except she didn’t have enough breath to do so. “You need to shut the fuck up right now.”
June shut up.
“We’ll figure it out,” she went on, and relaxed her grip ever so slightly. “But you can’t blab about this while we’re out in public. We still have a job to do.”
“Okay,” June replied through the private comm link – the ordinary one; neither of them was likely to try the new, improved version that had just killed their boss. “You’re hurting me.”
“I know.”
“Please stop.”
Heather relented and let her go, ready to pounce again if June started speaking out loud. The other onlookers were too busy talking about the sudden death in their midst to pay them much attention,
thankfully.
There was going to be an investigation. And she was going to have to make sure any irregularities in the inevitable autopsy didn’t become part of the public record. A quiet word with the Agent in Charge would probably suffice; her status as a CIA asset was known to the AIC and generally suspected by the rest of the staff. They had to keep their secrets, though. She couldn’t even tell Peter about any of this. She could only confide in freaking June Gillespie, about the last person in the universe she wanted to talk to.
From the look in June’s eyes, the feeling was mutual.
There had been somebody else, assuming anything in that terrible – and apparently, near-fatal – nightmare had been real. Heather was certain she’d felt someone else’s presence through the terrifying visit to Uncle Bert’s cabin. Major Lisbeth Zhang, which made sense, given her job. Maybe approaching her discreetly might be good for everyone involved. She needed to get a handle on this, or she might end up like Agent Smith. Hell of a way to end one’s career, killed by an enhancement treatment that had clearly not been vetted enough for safety.
Heather took a deep breath and had her imp contact Zhang’s.
“I’m glad you called,” the Marine pilot said as soon as she picked up. “We need to talk.”
So she was there. It did happen.
She should feel relief, but instead she almost had a panic attack. Having her dreams show her things that were true was more terrifying than the dreams themselves could ever hope to be.
* * *
“Heard one of the State Department remfies dropped dead,” Lieutenant Hansen said as Fromm entered the briefing room. The news hadn’t made it to the ship’s intranet, but you didn’t need imps to get bad news. Regular scuttlebutt seemed to move at the speed of light, if not faster.
“Just got briefed on that,” Fromm said. “Looks like the lady in question had a bad ticker, the kind of thing that still gets missed by standard genetic screenings. Plus it looks like she’d been scrimping on her rejuv treatments. Too busy, maybe, or she had better uses for her money. Civil servants don’t get free anti-agathics.”
“Not a good omen, taking casualties this early in the game.”
“Shit happens. As long as it’s not one of ours going off the reservation and stabbing somebody, it’s not our problem. I’m just going to have a good thought for Ms. Smith and her family, and carry on.”
First Sergeant Goldberg showed up in the middle of the exchange.
“Something weird happened to that lady,” he said. “Corpsmen who took her out said the only time they’ve seen anybody’s face looking like that is when they get a warp transit fatality. Looks like she was scared to death.”
“Heart attacks are supposed to be pretty scary,” Fromm said. “Whatever it was, though, it happened quickly enough that her med-alert didn’t go off until she was beyond help. Let’s try to keep the wild speculations down to a dull roar, all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Goldberg said. “Hell of a way to start a cruise, though,” he added, echoing Hansen’s words.
“I know. Let’s try not to add fuel to the fire, though.”
Spacers could be a superstitious lot, and Marines weren’t immune to the problem, either. That wasn’t the main reason Fromm was trying to stamp out the rumors, though. Heather had worked under the dead Chief of Staff, and the sudden passing had hit her hard. They’d chatted briefly via imp and she’d sounded distracted and upset. He had a feeling there was more to the story. The fact that Heather wasn’t telling him more meant he didn’t need to know. Which he was fine with; she didn’t expect him to share any military intelligence he had with her, either. But the suspicion that there was something to hide made him extra eager to shut down idle talk. Which might not be a good idea, he decided after thinking about it. Not knowing what was going on meant he was as likely to screw things up as to help. Best to act normally and ignore the whole thing.
“Moving on,” he said. “Let’s get those field problems worked out. We have two days before our next warp transit, so we’ll leave the troops alone until we arrive at Bethlehem System. We’ve got a week there, though, so I want to keep everyone occupied then.”
“That should work,” First Sergeant Goldberg said. He sounded like he’d rather have everyone busily cleaning their quarters during those two days instead.
And he was probably right.
* * *
“And this is why I never extend lines of credit,” Russell said. “Come on, Eggo. You said you could cover that bet. You fucking swore you could.”
Petty Officer (Third Class) Edgar ‘Eggo’ Muniz got even paler than usual. Russell and Gonzo had cornered the pasty-faced bubblehead prick near one of the big water supply tanks on the cruise ship, where he’d been conducting a safety inspection. Luckily, Sergeant Fuller couldn’t keep them busy every damn second of the cruise, and they’d been able to get some time off just as Eggo happened to be in a remote place where they could approach him without witnesses. They had four hours until warp transit. Plenty of time to collect their debts or otherwise settle accounts.
“I’ve got your money, Russet,” Eggo said, looking a lot less confident than he had when he went all-in a couple of nights ago, thinking his flush could beat Russell’s. He’d been almost right. “Okay, I don’t have it yet, but I will. I swear, man.”
“You said you’d have it yesterday. But here we are. I had to go looking for you. A fund transfer takes but a second of your time. Instead, you were ducking my calls.”
“You don’t want to stiff Russet, brah,” Gonzo said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. There was something about him that made most people realize he was nobody they wanted to fuck with. Neither was Russell, but Gonzo made it obvious enough that even a clueless bubblehead could work it out. “You really don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to, okay? I had something lined up for this morning, but then some chick woke up dead and ruined my schedule.”
“Yeah, we heard about that,” Russell said without a trace of sympathy. An unexpected death was a great excuse, but Russell wasn’t big on excuses; he’d used them too many times to believe them. “How, exactly, did someone croaking affect your bottom line? Don’t be afraid to use big words.”
“I had a deal set up to sell some stuff, but the guy with the cash is the medical officer, and he’s been busy conducting an autopsy on the deader they found. So I ain’t gotten paid yet.” His expression became hopeful. “Unless you don’t mind getting paid in kind instead of cash.”
“Depends on what you got.”
“This is good. See, when the Navy took over the Brunhild, some idiot left some stuff behind. High-grade bio-fabber feedstock. The kind of shit you use to make expensive food and booze. Two canisters’ worth. And the Level Four bio-fabbers to use them with. Fucking galley crew is using a Level Four food processor to turn out the usual tray-rats. Fucking waste, man. You can, like, make fresh sushi on an FP-4.”
“Go on.”
“Well, this buddy of mine was on watch when the galley was closed. It ain’t no regular ship galley, either, it’s a fucking five-star restaurant kitchen, one of seven. And he’s learning to be a fabber operator, and move up to Machinery Repairman. See what I’m getting at?”
“Cut to the chase, Eggo.”
“Awright. So we cooked up some booze. High-grade stuff. Fabber had the recipe, and my buddy’s got just enough brains to cook it. Vyrlian brandy, man. Hundred-eighty proof, plus it’s got them Vyrlian spices that send your endorphin levels through the roof. One shot and you’ll be in fucking heaven for an hour. Three grand a bottle, man!”
“How many you make?”
“Only had enough spice powder for five liters. So you see, soon as Lieutenant Browning pays me, I can pay you. Or I can pour you a bottle of the stuff. Seven-fifty mls. We even got the labels and shit, and the fabber certification. That’s worth three grand right there.”
‘Fuck a bottle. We’ll take two liters.”
“What? I
owe you less than three grand, man. That’s like seven kay!”
“But you’re late, and paying in goods means we’ve got to hustle to sell off the shit ourselves, and we ain’t getting no three grand a bottle. Nobody’s going to pay retail for stuff that fell off the back of a shuttle. And we ain’t waiting until some officer gets around to buying the shit off you, if he ever does. So make it two liters and we’re square.”
More than square. Only problem would be keeping the stuff away from prying eyes and sticky fingers, and he’d thought of a couple ways to do that already.
“That ain’t fair!” Eggo protested.
Russell laughed. “Where the fuck you think we are, brah? No such thing as fair. Not in this galaxy.”
* * *
“I’m sorry about Ms. Smith,” Lisbeth told Heather as she came into the cabin.
“You were there, weren’t you?”
She nodded. “What the hell did you do to yourselves? Do you know how dangerous that is, messing with your brain like that? You are lucky to be alive. Lucky to still be yourself.”
An unwanted memory flashed through her mind: a thing that had once been a Marine pilot, eyes turned into solid black orbs, growling, deadly and no longer remotely human.
“Lucky as hell,” she repeated.
“Black project,” Heather explained. “Got parts of our brains rearranged so we can do the sort of spooky stuff you warp pilots can. Supposedly with only minor side effects.”
“There are no minor side effects, Heather. There is only lucky and unlucky. Every time your mind wanders into warp space – and that’s what you three were doing last night – it’s like you are wandering around a forest at night, calling for your mama. If you’re lucky, nobody will hear you and come looking for you. If you’re not, death is the best you can hope for.”
“I’ll have a word with whoever thought these implants were a good idea. And by a word I mean taking an ax-handle to their kneecaps.”
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 71