Adrift

by W. Michael Gear

  But then, that’s not exactly a surprise, is it, Kalico?

  She filled her lungs, flexed the muscles in her arms and shoulders, letting Capella bake her black coveralls. The sweat it raised served her like the flagellation of a penetente.

  “You’ve been down this road. Made your decision with your head, so don’t let your heart get in the way just because you’re a jealous slit.”

  Nope. No matter what, she’d be the same tough and pragmatic Kalico Aguila she’d always been. Problem was, she’d been letting herself stray from that hard-hearted and cunning woman. It was well past time to bring her back.

  She walked out as Talina circled, lowered her battered aircar, and the fans blew dust out from her longtime parking spot next to the fence. In the cabin, Dek was seated in the passenger seat, his tousled, sandy hair awry, eyes meeting Kalico’s as the aircar spooled down.

  Dek was the first out, vaulting the rail, reaching for his rifle and war bag. The former dangling from one hand, the latter slung over his shoulder, he was walking with a leonine grace in his strides that she’d never seen before.

  She almost did a double take. Was this really . . . Yes. That dimple, the pink scar from where he’d blown up the Unreconciled’s armed drone. The general shape of the face. But something about his eyes, still green-tinged and yellow, but the pupils where alien. Quetzal. Like Talina’s and Kylee’s.

  “So,” she mused, “It’s true.”

  “It’s true,” Dek told her, the old insolent Taglioni grin bending his lips. “Sorry, old friend, but I’m Donovan’s now. As much as I’d like to throw what I’ve become in Father’s face, I’ll never leave here alive.”

  “How’s the madness?” she couldn’t help but ask, a bitterness rising within.

  “Under control,” he told her.

  Talina climbed out and plugged the aircar into its charger. Then she grabbed her own bag from the rear deck before tossing it over a shoulder, slung her rifle on the other, and headed Kalico’s way. That predator’s assurance filled her as she stopped short, studying Kalico with knowing eyes. “Hear we’ve got a problem out at the Maritime Unit. What do you need?”

  “They’ve been out of communication. Two Spot keeps trying, but there’s only silence.” She turned her attention to Dek, remaining as professional as if she were addressing the Board. “If I might hire you to fly me out there—”

  “Let’s go. No charge.”

  “No charge?”

  Dek gave her a look through his now-inhuman eyes. “It’s what friends do, Kalico. Time’s short. Tal and I need to drop off our bags, then let’s get in the air. I suspect we won’t get there until late afternoon as it is. If it’s trouble, best to tackle it while there’s still light.”

  “Have to charge the plane for the flight back once we’re out there,” Talina reminded.

  Kalico told her, “Tal, I hate dragging Dek into this as it is, you don’t have to—”

  “Who you got who can handle trouble better than me?” Talina gave her a catlike grin. “Especially if it comes to cracking a couple of heads?”

  Kalico, still uneasy with that sense that nothing would be the same between them, nodded. “Right. Let’s get in the air. If it’s really bad, I’ve got Abu Sassi on call. Makarov can have him and a couple of armored marines out there in an hour. They can fast rope down from the A-7, deal with anything we can’t.”

  “How bad can it be?” Dek wondered. “If it’s just people, like Tal says, we knock a couple of heads. If it’s beasties, we’ve got rifles. Problem solved.”

  85

  Heart in her throat, Michaela pounded up the stairs, burst through the topside door into the landing pad foyer, and threw herself at the weatherproof locker. Her trembling fingers botched the code the first two times, and finally got the sequence right. She slammed the door open to see only three of the rifles, the fourth already missing.

  What the hell?

  Didn’t matter. Figure it out later.

  Awkward because of her broken arm, she ripped the heavy rifle from the rack. Bracing the muzzle in the corner, and the stock on her hip, Michaela pulled the bolt back like Supervisor Aguila had shown her. She watched as the bolt shoved a long cartridge into the chamber. Should be two more in the magazine. Setting the heavy weapon to the side, Michaela grasped the box of cartridges where they sat on the shelf. Yes. The right size for the gun. She was sure. She shoved the box into one of the side pockets on her overalls and lifted the rifle, trying figure out how to raise it. Shit! Hurt like a bastard, but she slipped her broken arm from the sling, whimpered as she supported the rifle with it.

  The ulna’s cracked, not broken in two. The radius is still in one piece. Shooting won’t snap your forearm.

  But it was going to hurt like nothing she’d ever known.

  On the verge of throwing up, frightened as she’d never been, she stepped over to the weather door. Looked out the window at the landing pad. Seeing no one, Michaela threw the door open.

  The wind hit her as she turned and latched the door. Damn it, did she dare lock it?

  “Michaela?”

  At the cry, she turned, saw Casey where she rose from behind one of the supply crates. The woman looked half-panicked. The missing rifle was held awkwardly before her.

  “Who else is left?” Michaela demanded, staring around with desperate eyes, expecting attack from every quarter.

  “Kevina is in the seatruck. I was watching from up here as Jym tried to put out in the launch. I don’t believe it! Tomaya was with him. When he turned to the wheel, she . . . my little girl used a wrench. Hit him . . . Hard. Right in the back of the head. That’s my daughter! Jym’s daughter! How could . . . ? How . . . ?”

  “They’re not our children. You get that? Our kids are gone! Get that through your thick head, Casey!”

  “How did this happen?” Casey sobbed, her body shaking as the wind buffeted her ash-blond hair. “That clap-trapping slime . . .” She shivered. “It took the launch, Michaela. Slipped up around the sides, and just pulled the whole fucking boat down. My little girl was smiling, reaching down into that slime, and it just . . . pulled her . . . down.”

  “Casey. Easy. Get yourself together. We’ve got to think. Where are the rest?”

  “Mikoru has Saleen. She’s—”

  “Mikoru’s dead, and Saleen wasn’t with her body.”

  “Michaela, I’ve got to go find her!” Casey began to tremble. “That’s my baby. I’ve got to go find my . . .”

  Michaela reached out, used the rifle butt to thump the woman hard on the shoulder. “Listen to me. Pay attention. Saleen wasn’t with Mikoru’s body. That means they have her. She’s one of them now!”

  Casey, staggered on her feet, gray eyes clearing. “Why? What do they want with her?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Vik does. She still locked in the lab?”

  “Last I heard.”

  “Come on. Let’s go get her. If nothing else, the lab’s the final stronghold.”

  “What if Saleen’s down in the personal quarters, you know, left in a crib while Mikoru went—”

  “Casey, the first level is gone! I just came from there. Barely made it. There’s slime all over the floor, tendrils of it everywhere. I had to leap across thick ropes of the stuff. It was eating Mikoru. By now, it’s covering the hall floor, slipping down toward Iso’s room. We’ve only got the second level.”

  Michaela stared back at the weather door. “Seems to me the only chance we’ve got is to get Vik, rope our way down to the seatruck where Kevina’s holed up, and fly to the beach.”

  Casey swallowed hard, eyes pained. “It’s got my baby.” She choked back a sob. “What does it want from us? Why is it doing this?”

  Michaela indicated Casey’s rifle. “That thing loaded?”

  “I think so.” Tears broke loose at the corners of her eyes. />
  “Let’s go then. And Casey, you see any of the kids, if they start toward you, you’re going to have to shoot them.”

  “I can’t shoot one of the children.”

  “Then we’re already dead.”

  86

  As they flew east from PA across the rumpled forest, Talina unstrapped and walked back from the cockpit to seat herself across from Kalico in the cabin. Up front, Dek sat composed at the controls, watching the course and trim as the white aircraft jetted its way toward the Gulf.

  Dropping into the seat, Talina studied Kalico, who was giving her that old ice-blue stare. Looked just like the old Kalico. The one who’d first landed on Donovan. The hard and uncompromising Corporate slit. Kalico’s expression had all the give of granite; the faint white lines of scars crisscrossing her face added to the effect. The wealth of the woman’s black hair was pulled back, pinned at the nape of her neck. Talina’s delicate sense of smell could pick up the familiar scents of Kalico’s dried sweat, the curious nervousness. The woman had perfect control of her expression.

  “Let’s talk.” Talina kept her voice low enough Dek couldn’t hear over the airplane’s cabin noise. “Dek and I, that’s my doing. Out at his claim, I wasn’t thinking about quetzal molecules. He got more than resuscitation. On top of Flute’s genetics, I dumped a whole lot more quetzal into his system. I had to keep him from hurting himself or anyone else. Things . . . happened. I let them.”

  “Dek’s all right with this?”

  “Deep down in that complicated Taglioni soul of his? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him. And, yeah, I mean it. Ask him.”

  “That’s very . . .” Kalico bit it off.

  “The TriNA took him all apart, pulled a lot of bad shit out of his memory, and Dek had to put it all back. Then he had to deal with the demons in his head, both human and quetzal.”

  “Are we really having this talk?”

  Talina pulled up a leg, rubbing her calf. “Consider me the girlfriend you and I never had as kids. Kalico, I’m too old, too filled with alien genetic material, to get tripped up in a human emotional minefield with a woman like you.”

  “Like me?” Kalico cocked a scarred brow. “And that means?”

  Talina gave her knowing grin. “Considering that once upon a time we were committed to killing each other, when--in all that followed--did you ever become a good and valued friend? If you’re having misgivings about what to do with Dek, you and he had better spend some time together and work it out.”

  Kalico’s clever gaze didn’t waver. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. You’re important to me. I don’t have that many people to drink with as it is. That friend thing, you know? For another, Dek’s turned into a Wild One. Even with quetzal sense, we had too many close calls out at Two Falls Gap. Who knows how long it will be before Donovan kills him? Or any of us, for that matter? And, finally, who the fuck knows what we’re going to find when we get out to the Maritime Unit?”

  Kalico offered her scarred hand. “Deal.” She paused. “But if you tell anyone that you’re the girlfriend I never had? I’ll have Abu Sassi and Dina Michegan break both of your legs.”

  87

  Rifle hanging from her good right arm, Michaela led the way down the stairs. Behind her, Casey wept, seemed to have trouble with the steps. That’s who she had to rely on? Casey? After watching her oldest daughter murder Jym? Watch Tomaya pulled down into the slime? Only to learn that her infant was missing after Mikoru’s murder?

  Does she even know how to fire that rifle?

  No time to ask now; she was at the door to the second level. Carefully, she peered through the window. What she could see of the hall was empty.

  “Let’s do this,” she said more for herself than Casey, and flung the door open.

  Michaela burst out into the hallway, swung the rifle this way and that, looking for any danger. The bare floor, the lights gleaming, doors orderly and closed . . . well, all except for the clinic.

  Michaela winced. Gabarron still lay there, unattended, well past rigor by now, and probably starting to swell.

  Pus and blood, we’ve got to get the hell out of here.

  She started for the lab door, scared enough that she didn’t give a damn if Casey followed or not. All that remained was getting Vik out. That, and managing to find a way to the dock that didn’t involve the first level with its slime-covered floors and sprawled corpses. That’s where the children seemed to be.

  Didn’t matter what she’d told Casey. Even if the kids were turning green, their necks swelling, and their eyes looking weird, she still wasn’t sure she could shoot one.

  She hurried to the lab door, used her fragile left hand to input the code, and swung the door open, hissing out, “Vik? You here? Vik! Where are you?”

  “Here,” the woman called, turning from where she sat at one of the microscopes. The microbiologist wore a lab coat, her hair pulled back. A grim expression left her lips tight, her forehead deeply lined. “What’s the rifle for?”

  “You been keeping score? The kids are murdering adults wherever they find them, and the slime’s all over the first-level floor where it’s eating Mikoru.”

  “Where’s Kel?” she demanded, rising from the chair. “Where’s Sheena?”

  “Haven’t seen Kel. Sheena’s with Felix. As least she was when they were trying to chop my door open. Vik, listen to me. Pay fucking attention. We’ve got to evacuate. Now. Grab your notes and come. Last chance, or you can die with the rest.”

  “She means it.” Casey held her rifle awkwardly where she stood in the doorway, tears on her cheeks. The woman kept sniffing, glancing back and forth from Vik to the hall. “I watched Tomaya murder Jym. And then the slime took her.”

  “Easy,” Michaela said soothingly, seeing Casey start to tremble. To Vik, she added, “Get your stuff. Last call.”

  “My research! I can’t just walk away from—”

  “Finish it at PA! Now, grab what you need, and let’s get the hell out of here. That’s an order.”

  Vik leaped off her chair, grabbed up a couple of tablets, her pad, and voice recorder, a series of data cards, and finally a collection of samples that she tossed into a duraplast crate before she snapped the lid shut. As she worked, she said, “You didn’t tell me where Kel is.”

  “I don’t know. If he’s not up here with you, it’s not good, Vik.”

  “We don’t know why our beautiful children are doing this,” Casey whimpered from the doorway.

  “It’s because their brains are infected,” Vik snapped. “Listen, I don’t have all the answers, not even close. What I’m seeing? I don’t know how this stuff thinks, let alone what it thinks it’s doing, or why, but it is remaking these children. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard of, conceived of. That biopsy I got from the growth in the side of Toni’s throat? It’s gill tissue. The green tint to the skin? It allows the kids to photosynthesize.”

  “Why are they killing us?” Casey cried. “What’s it doing to their brains?”

  “I don’t know!” Vik bellowed, desperation in her voice. “Making them crazy. Screwing with their neocortex, the limbic system. Maybe even rewiring their neural structure. It’s sure as sin making them stronger. Adding muscle and agility. Hell, the stuff is remaking the rest of their bodies, why not their brains, too? And not only that, it’s communicating with them. Mostly on a frequency we can’t hear. My microphones are picking up a weird harmony that’s all over the scales.”

  “The Song,” Michaela whispered. “Felix’s Voice.”

  Vik had her bags ready, pointing. “I need help with that one.”

  “Casey!” Michaela barked. “Grab a handle. I’ll get the other.”

  It’s just the ulna. The weight of the gun won’t break it.

  Suspending the rifle in her left hand brought tears to Michaela’s eyes. Sh
it, that hurt. Nevertheless, she got a grip with her right on one of the crate’s handles. With Casey’s help, they lifted it. Followed Vik to the door, and out into the mercifully empty hallway.

  Come on, God. Just let us get this to the landing pad.

  As they passed opposite to the stairway down to the first level, Michaela heard the old “London Bridge” nursery rhyme from below:

  “Now the Pod is falling down, falling down, falling down.

  “Now the Pod is broken down, my fair lady.

  “Namby Pamby is no clown, is no clown, is no clown.

  “All the algae’s coming ’round,

  “Zambo! Zambo!”

  88

  The rope ladder that would let them climb down to the seatruck dock had been rolled up and stuffed into a storage locker at the edge of the landing pad. It was meant for maintenance on the curving side of the Pod, to check window seals, fill cracks, that sort of thing.

  Michaela set the rifle to the side and winced at the pain in her left arm as she fastened the hooks into the recesses on the landing pad. A gust of wind from the east almost toppled her off the side. She glanced at Casey, who stood wide-legged, hair wind-tossed, coveralls flapping. Windblown as she was, the rifle held across her chest made her look like a war hero on a recruitment poster.

  Yeah? Not hardly.

  Michaela grunted to herself, surprised she could still find the humor, and kicked the ladder loose, let it unspool down to disappear around the Pod’s curved side above the dock.

  Vik straightened from the crate where she’d been checking the contents. She looked worried, frail, as the breeze teased her. The third rifle was propped beside her. Something in the woman’s eyes had turned wild, frantic.

  Hell, they all looked that way.