The Hyperspace Trap

by Christopher Nuttall

  You are all damned.

  The sense of wrongness grew stronger. “Jeanette, order Chief Slater to be very careful,” Paul said. “I think things are coming to a head.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jeanette said. Her eyes were haunted. Paul couldn’t help noticing that her hand kept jerking towards her pistol. “I think so too.”

  Paul looked down at his wristcom. Three hours, fifty minutes before jump. If they couldn’t hold out that long, they were doomed.

  You are doomed, the voices agreed. Doomed.

  “Hey,” Steward Aziz Flores said. “You know that movie where there’s an alien killing machine loose on a starship . . . ?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Carla growled.

  Matt nodded in agreement. The seven of them were carefully probing E Deck, moving from cabin to cabin and clearing them one by one. Sweat poured down his back, mocking him. He sensed that the temperature was slowly rising even though they were in space. The air-conditioning systems had probably failed as well. And the flickering lights were making them all jumpy.

  And the further we go into the ship, the greater the chance of finding the bastards, he thought. His hands felt sweaty too. Couldn’t we just seal off the hatches and vent the lower decks?

  “Captain must be out of his mind,” Flores said. “We’re naked out here.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Carla repeated. “You want to be overheard by someone a little more senior?”

  Flores laughed. Matt hadn’t known Flores very well—he’d been assigned to Bronze Deck before Supreme fell into the lobster pot—but he was definitely starting to dislike him. Flores talked and acted like someone several grades above everyone else, even though Carla was the ranking officer. And he sounded as though he was becoming increasingly unhinged.

  “They’re not going to terminate me now,” Flores said. “Where would they put me?”

  “Out an airlock,” Carla snapped. “Or maybe just cut your throat and feed your body into the recycling system.”

  Flores snorted. “We’re not going to make it out,” he said, waving a hand at the darkened bulkheads. “We’re trapped. We should be spending our last hours fucking, not . . . not searching for a bunch of brain-dead religious nuts. Chicks get really desperate when they think they’re about to die, you know?”

  “They’d have to be to consider doing you,” Carla snapped. She sounded as though she was finally reaching her breaking point. “And there is a hope of getting out.”

  “Not much of one,” Flores pointed out. He leered at her. “Why don’t we do it just now, up against the wall?”

  Carla dropped her hand to her pistol. “Because we have orders to search the entire ship,” she said. “And because I will shoot you if you take one step towards me.”

  “That’s . . . very exciting,” Flores muttered.

  Matt’s wristcom bleeped. “Team Seven, report!”

  Carla keyed her wristcom. “We’ve just checked E-17 through E-23,” she said, shooting a daggered look at Flores. “The cabins were all clear.”

  “Understood,” the dispatcher said. There was a pause. “Proceed to Section ED-12 and search E-24 through E-30. Report every ten minutes.”

  Matt exchanged a glance with Carla. The dispatcher sounded on edge, even though he was up on Gold Deck, well away from any prospective mutineers. Perhaps Slater was breathing down his neck, Matt reasoned. The longer the mutineers remained uncaught, the greater the chance they’d actually do something to damage the ship. Matt couldn’t comprehend how anyone would actually want to damage the ship, but the Brethren wanted to stay in the lobster pot.

  Perhaps we should just give them what they want, he thought. It’ll do the bastards good.

  They moved to the hatch and began opening it carefully. Section ED-12 was completely dark. Matt tensed, realizing that the emergency lighting had failed completely. And that meant . . . he gritted his teeth as he drew his flashlight. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to stay in utter darkness, but the Brethren were insane. They might find the darkness just right for them.

  Or it’s a trap, he thought. He peered into the space, watching the shadows ebb and flow under the light. There was something unnatural about them. Anything could be waiting in the dark.

  “I can’t get the lights on,” Carla said. “We’ll have to use flashlights.”

  “Mine’s already dimming,” Flores said. “We should just seal off the entire section.”

  Matt looked down at his flashlight. It was dimming too. The shadows seemed to grow longer, as if something was lurking within the darkness. He took a step backward, despite himself. His eyes were playing tricks on him. The urge to run was growing overpowering.

  “The captain wants the section searched,” Carla snapped. “We can’t seal it off entirely from the rest of the ship.”

  “The captain can come do it himself,” Flores snapped back. “We don’t want to get trapped in the dark . . .”

  Matt opened his mouth to back Carla up, even though he suspected Flores had a point, but saw something moving within the darkness. The bulkhead was shifting, flowing . . . he was seeing things. He had to be seeing things. And yet . . .

  “Get back,” Carla shouted. The sound of running footsteps split the air. “Sound the alert!”

  The darkness parted, revealing a small group of men charging them. It looked, just for a moment, as though they’d run out of the solid bulkhead. Matt hesitated, unsure if what he was seeing was real, then grabbed for his pistol. It was already too late. One of the oncoming men body-slammed him, knocking Matt backward. He hit the deck, banging his skull against the hard surface. His attacker landed on top of him, drawing back his fist to punch Matt in the face. Matt twisted but couldn’t dodge the blow, and he cried out in pain when it landed.

  He gasped as he felt a hand pressing against his throat, making it hard to breathe. Strong hands frisked him, removing his pistol, wristcom, and flashlight. The pressure grew stronger, choking him. He could hear the voices growing louder as the world started to dim . . .

  . . . and then his attacker pulled back.

  Matt recoiled in shock. The attacker no longer looked human. His face was twisted into blind rage and hatred. The others didn’t look much better . . . he shivered as he realized that the Brethren had picked up converts among the crew. He tilted his head, trying to see what had become of his team. Carla was lying on the ground, pinned down by a heavyset man; the others were either dead or unconscious. Flores was bleeding from a nasty wound to the head, looking as though someone had cracked his skull.

  His attacker shoved his wristcom under his nose. “Call your boss,” he growled. “Tell him that everything is fine.”

  Matt swallowed, hard. There were emergency codes, drilled into his head during basic training. If he used them, Chief Slater would know that something was up. But if he did, and his captors realized it, he and Carla were dead. Flores was probably already dying if he didn’t get medical help, help that was no longer available. He’d doom the rest of the team to death . . .

  He took the wristcom. “Chief,” he said, “this is Team Aardvark. Everything is peachy; I say again, everything is peachy.”

  His attacker yanked back the wristcom. Matt barely had a second to react before the man slammed a fist into his chest. He screamed in pain, feeling his entire body convulsing as a second blow fell, then a third. His body felt as though it had been smashed to pulp . . .

  The chief knows, he thought through a haze of pain. It was something to cling to, even though he was being beaten to death. They’ll seal the hatches . . .

  “On your feet,” the man growled. He pulled Matt up, then grabbed his hands and tied them behind his back. “March.”

  Matt coughed and spat, sure he was spitting up blood. “What are you . . . ?”

  “No questions,” the man ordered. “You have work to do.”

  He stamped his foot on Flores’s head. Matt looked away, hastily, as it burst like an eggshell. Beside him, Carla was bleeding from
her nose and lips, but at least she was alive.

  There’s hope, Matt told himself. We can still get out of here.

  But part of him knew, all too well, that they were on their own.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “Should you be looking at that?” Angela asked. “I thought there was a biohazard . . .”

  Dr. Joan Mackey gave her a sidelong look. “Do you know what that even means?”

  “I’m not stupid,” Angela said. She flushed as Marie snorted. “I know there’s a risk of disease spreading from one race to another.”

  “All of our knowledge is purely theoretical,” Joan told her. She jabbed a finger at the alien corpse. “And besides, this poor beastie is pretty damn dead.”

  Angela shivered. She’d never been scared of insects, but . . . something about the spiderlike alien made her want to reach for a weapon or run screaming into the next room. The thing was so wrong, so utterly alien, that it seemed almost blurred when she looked at it. Her mind couldn’t quite grasp the creature’s existence. She could see fragments—brown fur; spidery legs; bulging, misshapen eyes—but the whole eluded her. It seemed to belong to a whole other world.

  “You think it’s dead,” she said. She paused. “Is it a he or a she?”

  “No way to tell, yet,” Joan said. “There’s no obvious sexual organs, although that means nothing. The spiders may have their sexual parts retracted outside congress, or they might lay eggs, or . . . for all we know, this one is a sterile drone. That’s not uncommon in the insect kingdom. It also might be completely asexual.”

  “And you’re going to cut into it,” Angela said. The doctor was eyeing the corpse with frank curiosity. “Is that wise?”

  “This might be the only chance we get to study a genuinely intelligent alien life-form,” Joan said. “And besides, if we die here, I’m not going to leave with my curiosity unsatisfied.”

  Angela exchanged glances with Marie. “Is this safe?”

  “Unknown,” Marie said. The governess sounded oddly fascinated. “But there are so many other things that can kill us here.”

  “You will not leave alive,” Nancy informed them. “I . . .”

  Angela turned, wincing. Her sister had bitten her lip again, scarlet trickling down her chin and dripping onto her shirt. Joan and Marie had told Angela, time and time again, they could do nothing for Nancy beyond keeping her restrained and comfortable, but there had to be something. She just couldn’t think of any other options. Sedatives would leave Nancy more vulnerable to the aliens than ever before.

  “The exoskeleton appears to be detachable,” Joan observed. “It’s definitely biological in origin, but . . . it may be a form of clothing rather than part of the alien itself. Or they might have harvested it from another creature.”

  “That sounds icky,” Nancy said. “That thing killed something to make its clothes.”

  Marie laughed, harshly. “Humans used to shear sheep for clothing,” she said. “There was a time when genuine fur was all the rage. Even now, a genuine mink coat is worth two or three times the price of a vat-grown coat.”

  Angela made a face. Wearing clothes . . . it had never crossed her mind that some of her coats had once been part of an animal. She felt a stab of guilt, mixed with irritation. How many more of her unspoken assumptions were about to be shattered on the ship of the damned?

  “There were protests against the practice,” Hamish Singh said from his bed. “I was stationed on Lumpur when protesters managed to convince the Commonwealth to ban animal exports. A large chunk of the planet’s economy vanished overnight.”

  “There would have been riots,” Marie said.

  Angela glanced at her. “But why?”

  Marie looked faintly disgusted. “Think about it,” she said. “A stage-two colony world doesn’t have much to export. Most of them can’t offer anything that buyers can’t find on a hundred other worlds. If they were drawing in outside investment by selling animal exports—by raising animals to be slaughtered to make the exports—losing that income would have hurt them badly. Of course they were pissed at the do-gooders who didn’t bother to think about the impact they’d have on ordinary people.”

  “They were murdering animals,” Nancy said. “Right?”

  “You don’t get to be judgmental when you’re on the ropes,” Marie said. “And you don’t have the luxury of indulging your ethics if your families are on the verge of starvation.”

  Joan coughed. “Quite a fascinating set of internal organs,” she said. “I’d say this creature actually had four stomachs. And I think I’ve located what might be an egg sac. I—” Her wristcom bleeped. “What?”

  Marie glanced down at her wristcom. “Security alert,” she said. Something thumped against the hatch. “All hell’s broken loose. The dispatcher is reporting multiple alerts across the uppermost decks.”

  Angela rocked in fear. Finley was outside the hatch. She had no logical way to know it, but she was sure of it. She glanced at Marie, who had drawn her pistol and was holding the weapon at her side, then at Singh. He looked as though he had a pistol under his blankets too.

  “What . . .” She swallowed and started again. “What do we do?”

  “It depends,” Marie said. Her voice was inhumanly calm. “If they haven’t managed to liberate any cutting tools, they can bang on that hatch until doomsday and they won’t break through. If they have, things become a mite more difficult.”

  Nancy’s face shifted again. “You will not leave this place.”

  “Angela, get ready to move your sister into the next room,” Marie said coolly. Her wristcom was bleeping constantly, seemingly at random. “Doctor, you might want to put your new friend somewhere out of the way.”

  Joan nodded, placing her tools by the side of the table. “I’ll get the specimen into the spare room,” she said curtly. She unlocked the trolley and pushed it forward. “Angela, once you’ve got your sister into the next room, I want you to check on the other patients.”

  Angela nodded, glad to have something to do. “I will,” she said. “Nancy . . .”

  Nancy gazed at her. Something else was looking through her eyes. “You will not leave this place.”

  “Be silent!” Angela roared. Nancy’s entire body shook, her fingernails digging hard into her palms. Angela could see blood dripping to the deck. “Just . . . leave my sister alone.”

  “She belongs to us,” Nancy intoned. “Soon, you will all belong to us.”

  “Get moving,” Marie snapped. “The captain is warning that there might be no help on the way.”

  Angela swallowed. “They have to help us, don’t they?” She pushed Nancy’s bed into the next room. “Marie?”

  “They have to protect the critical parts of the ship first,” Marie said. Her voice was so quiet that Angela barely heard her. “We’re expendable.”

  There was a colossal explosion. Angela stumbled, falling forward and landing on the deck. She rolled over just in time to see Nancy’s bed hitting the bulkhead on the far side of the compartment. Her sister smiled, just for a moment; then her face fell into shadow again as the aliens reasserted control. Angela felt a surge of hatred as she heard people shouting and screaming, followed by gunshots. Marie was fighting . . .

  Angela froze. The noise was growing louder, so loud it overwhelmed the constant whispering in her ears. Somehow she crawled forward to the door. Marie was fighting, her hands and feet moving at terrifying speed. Angela couldn’t look away as the governess hacked her way through a dozen fanatics, and for a moment, she thought she’d win, but there were always more. They kept coming until Marie was hammered to the ground, beaten into unconsciousness. Blood poured from far too many wounds when the attackers finally pulled back.

  A figure emerged from the mob and strode over. Angela barely had a moment to recognize Finley before he took hold of her shirt and yanked her up into a standing position. His eyes were consumed by madness, a terrifying rage that shook her to her very core. His face . . . he was
different, completely different. It was suddenly very easy to believe everything Carla had told her . . . had it really been a couple of days ago? It felt like eons.

  “Mine,” Finley said. His breath smelled of something foul. “You are mine!”

  Angela tried to fight, but he was far too strong. He shoved her against the bulkhead as a trio of robed men entered the compartment, then growled at her to remain still. Angela was too frightened to do anything else. Marie was unconscious, perhaps dead; Singh was wounded, clearly in no state to fight. And the rest of the patients farther into Sickbay were no better off, she knew. The walking wounded, the ones who could still do something useful, had been ordered to leave their sickbeds and get to work.

  “Stay there,” Finley growled.

  Angela watched, numbly, as the newcomers ordered Singh to get up. The constable moved slowly, very slowly. When he stood, there was no sign of his pistol. The fanatics moved in to search him thoroughly, then tied his hands behind his back and moved him over to sit beside Angela. She wasn’t surprised they didn’t bother to tie her up. They knew she was no threat.

  She shuddered, feeling sick, as the robed men walked into the next room. A moment later, they returned . . . Nancy walking between them as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Her face looked normal, but her movements were those of a much older woman. When Angela met her sister’s eyes, she saw no trace of humanity. Nancy was gone . . .

  I’ve failed her, she thought, fighting the urge to cry. She barely noticed when the doctor was forced to sit next to her. I’ve failed everyone.

  “We beg for your blessings,” the robed man said. He knelt before Nancy, his eyes firmly fixed on the deck. “We ask for your reward.”

  “You will come to us when you deliver the ship,” Nancy said. Her voice was different too, as if whatever was controlling her didn’t quite know how to use her mouth and throat. “You will all come to us.”

  “We thank you,” the robed man said. He raised his voice. “Bring in the prisoners.”

  Angela looked up as five men and one woman were shoved into the chamber. Her heart sank as she recognized Matt and Carla, along with four other battered-looking men in various uniforms. Others filed in behind them carrying an assortment of weapons. She couldn’t help noticing that some of the newcomers were wearing starship uniforms. The fanatics—and the voices—had been winning converts all over the Supreme.