by Ramy Vance
The monster made a high-pitched whine, like an ornery child denied its favorite toy, as it scrambled to turn around. Toner tailed it, furiously swiping his plasma cutter across its backside. The corridor filled with the smell of smoking meat, but if the monster felt pain, it made no indication. It sighted Jaeger’s retreating back—somehow, it didn't appear to have eyes—and charged. Toner cried out a warning.
All of a sudden, their plasma cutters felt hilariously inadequate to this particular task.
“In ten meters, turn left toward the fighter bay,” Virgil suggested.
If Jaeger had had breath to spare, she would have mentioned how very tired she was of being chased through tunnels by inhuman monsters. In some distant reality, she could imagine Yakety Sax playing through the speakers.
Instead, she slipped a hand into one of her pockets and found a flashbang. As she hit the intersection, she lifted it to her mouth and pulled the pin with her teeth. She dropped the explosive and banked hard around the next corner, counting off seconds as the monster thudded up behind her.
“Take cover!” she bellowed over her shoulder.
Three.
She didn’t expect this flashbang to hurt Satan’s Love Bus any more than the first one had, but maybe it would slow the damn thing down and give Toner more time to work.
Two.
“Turn right,” Virgil prompted, exactly as Jaeger threw her arms over her head and dove to the left.
Straight into a dead end.
Great, she had time to think before the corridor behind her exploded.
She was farther away from this explosion than she had been from the first, and this time she was prepared for it. Still, the roar and vibration loosened her bowels, and she thought she might have ruptured her eardrums for good, this time. If Virgil was trying to give her directions, she couldn’t hear it anymore. She couldn’t hear anything.
Blinking away spots and panting for breath, she looked around the corner to find Satan’s Love Bus less than a meter away. It reached toward her with one of its fat arms with its claws splayed wide, its face-hole puckered and flapping.
There was nowhere for her to go. It had blocked off her escape. Her back was to a wall. The air smelled like gunpowder and burning meat. The monster filled the corridor, blocking any view she might have had of Toner. She thought she saw the flicker of distant sparks as, in surreal slow motion, the creature curled its foot-long claws around her shoulder. It grabbed her in a surprisingly delicate pinch and pulled her close. Closer. It lifted her toward the rotating circle of teeth that was its face-hole.
Jaeger let her entire body go limp, except for one hand. That, she tightened around the trigger of her multitool.
If Toner couldn’t carve a hole through this thing’s ass, she’d have to cut one through its gullet.
She sucked in what might have been her very last breath as Satan’s Love Bus pulled her close—
And curled its flabby legs around her torso, wrapping her in an embrace.
Its flesh was hot and rough, like old elephant skin. It smelled like wet moss. It pinned her arms to her side, making it impossible for her to draw her plasma cutter.
She held her breath, head spinning, waiting for it to rip her apart, or crush her chest like an old beer can, or lower its head and devour her from the hair down. Satan’s Wood Chipper lining the inside of Satan’s Anus mounted to the front of Satan’s Love Bus.
It did none of those things. Instead, she felt a gentle vibration against her cheek.
It was purring.
For the first time, she caught sight of a bright red band fixed around the base of one of its stumpy legs. It had a buckle. The tag dangling from it, shaped like a dog bone, rotated lazily in the air. The word Baby was stamped across one side.
As Jaeger gulped for air, she watched the tag dangle and rotate, revealing the words on the other side.
If lost, contact S. Jaeger.
Chapter Nineteen
Toner was pissed.
“All right, Virgil,” he snarled at one of the overhead speakers. “You can stop recording now. You’ve thoroughly punked me. Ha, ha. I’m sure this will get you plenty of views on the net.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Virgil murmured.
Jaeger chuckled and tore open another packet of medfoam. She smeared it across the fresh plasma-cut scars crisscrossing Baby’s backside. The monster shifted its massive bulk slightly, leaning into Jaeger like a Great Dane blissfully unaware of its size. She nuzzled Jaeger’s side, a few of its face-flaps snuffling at her suit.
She, Baby, didn’t seem to feel pain. Or, if she did, she didn’t show it in any way that Jaeger could understand. Every inch of Baby’s flesh was a leathery callous as tough and nerveless as the heel of a hobbit’s foot.
Toner’s plasma cutter had made long, centimeters-deep slices across her backside. The scars coiled black and crinkled at the edges, smelling faintly of burnt meat, but only at the deepest points did the scars fade into living pink flesh. Jaeger could sink her thumb up to the first knuckle into some of those cuts, and Baby didn’t seem to notice. She only edged closer, purring as she pressed the side of her pseudo-face into Jaeger’s hip pocket.
Curious, Jaeger reached into the pocket. Her fingers found the sticky sweet lumps of rejected raisins. She withdrew them as Baby’s sniffling face flapped eagerly against her fingers. Jaeger opened her palm and watched, fascinated, as the monster sucked the raisins into the puckered orifice of her face-hole. Baby rumbled with pleasure.
“I’m talking about the endless string of pranks played on the innocent man,” Toner barked. He shot a cool glare at Jaeger.
She bit back another tired chuckle and shook her head. “If this is all an elaborate prank, Toner, I’m a victim, too.”
Toner was having none of it. He ran long, pale fingers through his hair and clutched his scalp. “You must all think I’m some kind of idiot. Got me running around chasing space monsters with a useless plasma cutter like a recruit at his first hazing.” He opened his arms wide, pleading. “Have you had your fun yet?” His voice took on that theater-trained boom and echoed down the corridor. “Can I join the fucking fraternity and get in on the joke, now? Will you please stop jerking me around? ‘I am a man more sinned against than sinning!’”
Beside Jaeger, Baby’s massive bulk rippled faintly, and the cadence of her purr dropped into something nearly like a growl.
“You’ve already quoted that one,” Jaeger pointed out.
“It’s more true than ever.” Toner eyed the monster, his hands dropping to the useless plasma cutter at his side. “What’s that?” he asked warily. “What is it doing?”
“I don’t think she likes your tone of voice.”
“She? Christ. Five minutes ago, she was about to turn you into space-pulp. Now you’re feeding it treats.”
“No, she wasn’t.” Jaeger shuddered. “I think it was a…miscommunication. I was scared shitless too. Check my flight suit if you don’t believe me. This isn’t a prank. I have no idea what she is or what she’s doing here.”
“Well, whatever she is, the unfriendly locals didn’t like her. They took one look at her ugly mug and started firing.” Toner paused, his lip twitching with contempt as he studied the monster’s tooth-lined face-hole. “Not that I blame them.”
Baby’s growl grew louder. Her flesh vibrated under Jaeger’s splayed fingers.
“Seriously,” Jaeger warned. “Watch your tone. She’s not dumb.”
Toner rolled his eyes but said nothing. He swung away from them.
They had retreated to an administrative hub in the starboard wing, not far from where Baby had finally caught up to Jaeger. A few of the screens and consoles around them flickered with life, but most of the interfaces lining the walls were inactive. Jaeger had raided a large first-aid station of all of its medfoam, which she now tenderly applied to the ugly monster-thing wedged comfortably between two rows of workstations.
Jaeger and Toner had
activated their mag soles, letting them walk around more or less as normal. Baby had no such gadgets but seemed perfectly tailored and proportioned to move through the zero-G corridors, easily towing herself hither and yon by hooking her long claws on the conduits and struts lining the curved walls.
In fact, Baby fit suspiciously well down the corridors, like a mole moving through tunnels she had dug. Jaeger was too tired, right now, to consider what that might mean.
Toner had done some raiding of his own. He gnawed restlessly on the corner of a packet of blood substitute. “That fucking thing broke half my ribs,” he complained.
“You seem fine now.”
Toner waved the pouch over his head. “Yeah, I heal fast with the right raw materials.” His shoulders slumped, voice falling to the whine of a petulant child. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”
“You woke her up from a nap by sticking a flashbang down her gullet.”
Toner glowered, and Jaeger felt a pang of guilt through her fatigue. She squirted the final pack of medfoam across Baby’s scars and drew away from the monster, which had stilled into some form of rest.
“Sorry.” She drew closer to Toner. “We’re all tired. I guess now’s not a good time for teasing.”
Toner eyed her as he sucked the pouch dry. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing wildly, and let the pouch drift away. Jaeger judiciously decided not to give him shit for littering on her ship.
“Who are you?” Toner asked quietly. “Black hole expert? Mechanic? Monster tamer?”
“I’m…the captain.” Jaeger was puzzled. “I suppose that means being the jack of all trades.”
Toner studied her in cold-eyed silence until Jaeger grew uncomfortable. She opened her mouth to speak, but Toner beat her to it.
“I guess.” He reached into the first aid cabinet for another blood pouch. “I guess.” He cast another suspicious look at Baby. “Seriously, though.” He bit into the pack. “Wha ith it?”
“I don’t know.”
Baby was the color of mud, where medfoam-patched scars didn’t crisscross her, and the size and shape comparison to a VW bus was even more apt, now that she had stopped moving and Jaeger could get a good look at her. She even rumbled faintly, like an idling engine, giving off enough body heat to warm her surroundings noticeably above the ambient corridor temperature.
Baby had eight stubby legs, each tipped with four long claws. Her face, or what substituted as her face, was nothing but a pile of rough gray flesh gathered around an orifice that was currently puckered shut.
“Ith it thleeping?” the vampire asked.
“I think so.”
“How doeth it thee?”
Jaeger shrugged. “Same way it hears, I guess.”
When Toner gave her a puzzled look, she smiled tiredly. “Magic?” She glanced at the AI interface on the wall behind Toner. “What about you, Virgil? What do you think she is?”
“Now that it is closer to some of my sensors, I may be able to analyze it better. Doing so will require temporarily diverting some power from repair operations into the instruments, however. Shall I proceed?”
“Do it,” said Jaeger, who was tired of being in the dark about so many things. One of the lenses overhead flickered, casting a cone of blue-white light over Baby. The creature shifted its weight, ever so slightly, as if it felt the caress of light.
“Activating detailed bio scanners now,” Virgil said. There was a moment of silence as the interface flared to life. Anatomical schematics flickered across the screen so fast that Jaeger barely had time to make them out. A few different diagrams of humans, a strange, bipedal creature with tentacles flowing out of one side of its torso, lions and tigers and bears, dogs and cats, chickens and pigs and honeybees.
The screen froze on a particular entry. Jaeger drew herself closer to study the readout, with Toner at her shoulder.
“What’s a tardigrade?” He discarded the second blood pouch over his shoulder.
“Don’t litter.” Jaeger squinted at the readout. She touched a stat-block corner of the screen. “Tardigrades are micro-animals, a tenth of a centimeter long at best. This must be an error, Virgil.”
“I don’t believe so.” It may have been wishful thinking, but Jaeger could have sworn Virgil sounded more contemplative than contemptuous. “This creature matches the recovered profile with ninety-eight percent fidelity.”
“What’s the other two percent?”
“It appears to have a few genetic modifications.”
“Ah.” Jaeger eyed the dozing monster. “Size, for example?”
“Precisely.”
Toner leaned in close enough that his whisper made the hair on the back of Jaeger’s neck prickle. “Hi. What’s a tardigrade?”
Jaeger jumped, clamping a hand protectively over the exposed skin. Toner took a step back, regarding her with a flat, implacable stare. “Will you please quit assuming I know all this shit? It’s really frustrating.”
“Oh. Um.” Jaeger nibbled her bottom lip. “Sorry. It’s, uh…Virgil, explain it.”
“Tardigrade,” Virgil said, its tone turning formal as it recited from some hidden encyclopedia. “More commonly known as a water-bear or moss piglet. A common, water-dwelling micro-animal found in almost every biome on Earth.
“Best known for their resilience, water bears are from the kingdom Anamalia, subkingdom Eumetazoa, clade ParaHoxozoa. They are capable of surviving and even thriving in extreme conditions, including extremely low and high temperatures and pressures, in vacuum, and under exposure to high levels of radiation. They are capable of both sexual and asexual reproduction. First described by German zoologist Johann August—”
“All right, I don’t need the history.” Toner eyed Baby’s puckered face-hole. “What do they eat? Besides the terror of their victims.”
“Anything,” Virgil said bluntly. “Algae, amoeba, lichen, other micro-animals. They’re also known to be opportunistic cannibals.”
Toner turned an almost manic smile on Jaeger. “How adorable.”
“It could be worse.” Jaeger felt absurdly defensive.
“How?”
“She could be trying to eat us.”
Toner chuckled dryly. “Fair enough. Guess I can’t hold that against her. So. You still planning on killing her and presenting her head to the aliens on a silver platter? Because if you are, I’m going to need a bigger gun.”
Jaeger frowned. “That’s not funny. Don’t hurt Baby.”
Toner shrugged. “The aliens sure as shit wanted to.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Jaeger lifted a hand to stop Toner before he could cut her off. “I agree. They saw something that made them immediately go on the offensive. I don’t see any reason why that must have been Baby.”
“Really? Because I do.”
“Virgil,” Jaeger said, “You said she was modified.”
“Of course.” Ah, there it was—that hint of sarcasm sliding back into the AI’s mild tone.
Jaeger ignored it for now. “How? Other than her size. What else can you tell me?”
“Not much,” Virgil admitted. “My sensors aren’t made for detailed analysis. You’ll have to power up some highly specialized instruments for that. From here, I can only speculate.”
“Then speculate.”
“The creature appears to have claws more dexterous than what the records indicate. I would also hazard a guess that its amplified extremophile characteristics make it extraordinarily well-suited to life in zero-G and vacuum, and possibly even in cold space itself. Similarly, we can deduce that its sharpened senses allow it not only to perceive words clearly but to interpret basic human tone and intent.”
“She’s super big and super smart,” Jaeger said.
“Relatively speaking, yes. It may have the intellectual capacity of a member of the Corvid family or a particularly astute Labrador retriever.”
“But she’s not carrying some awful disease or programmed to reproduce like a locust and swarm acr
oss the galaxy, devouring everything in its path.”
“Not that I can tell,” Virgil agreed.
“See?” Jaeger turned to Toner. “She’s scary to look at, but not, ‘oh God, kill everything now,’ scary.”
“Speak for yourself.” Toner shook his head. “Fine. Let’s suppose you’re right. That is not what set the aliens off. So what did?”
Jaeger stared up the starboard wing corridor. “No-A,” she muttered. “Baby had dug a tunnel from Tetra up to the cargo hold. The alien AI might have followed it up there.” She started thunking her way down the hall. “Let’s move. It’s time to quit speculating and find out.”
Chapter Twenty
Jaeger wasn’t sure what she expected when the cargo bay doors to No-A gave a pneumatic hiss and slid open. It was a big cargo bay, to be sure, six sub-floors and almost a hundred sub-compartments crammed into a sector the size of a modest apartment building.
No-A was still not even close to big enough for the nearly four hundred thousand human lives Virgil insisted it contained.
There was a whoosh of air as the pressure between No-A and the starboard corridor equalized. A cavernous chamber stretched ahead of them, dimly lit by the glow of emergency lights. As Jaeger steadied her multi-tool and stepped across the threshold, the operational lights blossomed into a steady glow and cascaded into the distance, casting the entire chamber in a harsh fluorescent glow.
“Holy crap.” Toner stood beside Jaeger with his neck craned back to take in the sheer scope of the primary chamber. It was long and narrow, arched at the top in a way that reminded Jaeger of an old Gothic cathedral.
Four layers of balconies tiered the walls, and the harsh light hinted at rows of shelves and filing stacks stretching down each level. At the far end of the chamber, a short flight of stairs led to a raised circular dais. A ring of transparent, casket-like tubes sat on the dais, filled with bubbling fluid and coiled with thick wires.
Something nuzzled Jaeger’s spine. Baby had roused from her doze and followed them to No-A.