by Amie Kaufman
Gunfire splits the air as the BT team empty their clips, the elevator doors riddled with dozens of gaping holes as they slide closed. Romeo and Taurus slam into them with a series of curses. Without needing to consult, they dash for the emergency staircase. Romeo’s got his hand to his commset, demanding that someone in C & C explain why the holy **** the elevators are still functioning.
When the BeiTech team arrives one floor up, the elevator doors are open, the floor’s bloody and there’s a spattered trail of crimson leading away down the corridor. Like the hounds Cerberus promised they’d be, they take to the trail.
Scanner in hand, Romeo leads his squad along the hallway; they are quiet as ghosts, finally arriving at a sealed airlock door. The docks up in Alpha Sector aren’t big loading bays like the one where the Dom Najov met their end—these are smaller, snugger places, for MedEvac shuttles to dock near the infirmary. The audit team forms a semicircle around the doorway, weapons ready. Romeo indicates the bay with a nod.
“Her temperature’s dropping,” he says quietly. “She’s bleeding out. Let’s finish it quick and careful. Even kittens come out swinging from a corner.”
Footage from inside the launch bay is a little grainy, but the team’s clearly visible fanning out in a search formation. Taurus holds just inside the door so Donnelly can’t get past them again.
“Come out, little girl,” Razorback calls. “Let’s find you a nice patch of SimSkin for that scratch.”
“Something’s wrong,” Romeo says, still zeroing in on the signal. The scanner in his hand keeps triangulating, slowly narrowing the area to search. He lifts a hand to rub the back of his tattooed head, holding still, thinking.
“Say what?” Rain looks across at him.
“She’s at twenty-nine degrees.”
“And?”
“Body temperature is thirty-seven. She’s hypothermic.” As he speaks, Romeo’s pointing at a stack of crates held down with webbing near the bay doors. He, Rain and Razorback move in as one, rounding the edges of the crates, weapons at the ready.
But Hanna Donnelly’s not there. Her personal locator beacon lies on the ground in a small pool of blood. The launch bay isn’t as well insulated as the rest of Heimdall, and on the other side of the airlock it’s minus 270 Celsius. The PLoB’s temperature is cooling rapidly.
In one smooth movement, Donnelly drops from her hiding place above the launch bay entry, lands behind Taurus and scampers out the door, her bloodied hand slamming into the door controls. They hum closed in 0.7 seconds, sealing the team inside and her outside.
Donnelly stares at the airlock button, but there’s no way to know if she wishes she could flush them. Her PLoB is in there, which means the system thinks she’s in there too—as a precaution, the control panel is lit up a cheery locked-down red so nobody can accidentally get spaced. Because wouldn’t that be just terrible?
Romeo’s thoroughly ****ed off, stalking over to join Taurus by the locked door and hissing into the intercom: “Let us out, little girl. You’re only making this worse.”
Donnelly presses her intercom with one delicate finger. “Little girl? Is that any way to talk to someone you just met?”
“It’s how I talk to the brat I’m going to roast on a stick in about twenty seconds.”
“Threats?” Hanna observes. “Interesting tactical choice. Seeing as how I’m on this side of the door and you’re not.”
“Listen, it was a good fight,” Romeo tries. “But we’ve radioed for backup. Open the door before they get here, and we’ll even stop them from shooting you. I can respect what you did.”
“Who are you?” Hanna shoots back. “Why are you here?”
Romeo shakes his head, smiling.
The red light on the airlock control flickers out, replaced a moment later by bright green. Donnelly’s locator beacon has cooled to 25 degrees Celsius. She’s registered as dead. Regardless, there’s no way the safety protocols in place on those external doors would allow them to open with a registered PLoB inside.
But still…
Hanna and Romeo both look down at the controls on their respective sides of the door. Hanna backs away a step or two, hands raised.
The safety shutter on the window between them slams shut.
“No, wait…,” Donnelly says.
And as she sucks in a startled breath, a white light flicks on.
AIRLOCK DISENGAGED.
PURGING.
Okay, I’m going on record here—you guys aren’t paying me enough to watch this stuff.
Footage opens in a familiar auxiliary venting and storage room, AVS-3, situated above Heimdall’s hermium reactor. Present and accounted for are twenty-three dairy cows, including Nikky Malikov’s dear Miss Lucy, standing around their makeshift pen.
A couple of jury-rigged security cams catch the show—Handsome Mike obviously wanted to keep an eye on his “babies.” He had all kinds of containment protocols he’d have put in place before tonight’s festivities really got under way—there’s a series of glass humidicribs along one wall, a couple of hazmat suits and what looks to be a cross between a cattle prod and an articulated claw arm beside them. But given that Handsome Mike’s lying dead in Bay 17, his babies and their hosts are completely unsupervised.
The pipes and gauges lining the wall are literally dripping, and the cam lenses are partially fogged—the humidity must be close to tropical in there. In the distance, even through the soundproofing, you can hear faint gunfire—the BeiTech Audit team zeroed in on the reactor as their secondary seize-and-secure target on the station, right after Command & Control. It sounds like some of the locals are putting up a fight.
It doesn’t last long.
Nobody from the BT squad ever comes to check the auxiliary room. A scan of Heimdall C & C files shows that AVS-3 didn’t actually exist on station schematics—Ella Malikova purged all records of it to better hide her dad’s Get Rich Quick and Slightly Bloody scheme, and anyone on the Heimdall staff who actually knew about the room didn’t volunteer the info to the invaders. Or run here for safety, come to think of it.
Probably for the best.
Anyway, all the noise and fuss of the invasion going on outside seems completely lost on the cows. The ladies are just standing there, eyes glazed. They’re not eating, chewing, mooing. Just swaying softly on their feet as if to music, except there’s no noise but the faint reactor hum and sporadic gunfire. Every one of them has a tiny bandage behind her right ear. Their needle wounds have been kept nice and clean, no chance of infection or sepsis.
That Handsome Mike, huh? All heart.
The cows’ chins are slicked with drool. Heads lolling, like they’re half asleep. Their eyes are gummed with something dark and viscous that at first I don’t recognize. When it starts dripping from their ears and spattering on the floor, it finally clicks.
Blood.
It’s blood.
Christ, I feel sick…
I need a drink.
AND A VACATION, DAMMIT.
—transcript pauses—
Okay, a little rocket fuel makes it all better. Chrrrrist, let’s get this over with.
The gunfire outside dies along with whoever it was aimed at, and the footage runs for hours with no real change. I can fast-forward until 19:40 and the cows do nothing but softly sway and slowly bleed, which in itself is ****ing terrifying enough.
Then, at 19:41, Lucy falls completely still.
Her eyes go wide, and every muscle in her body tenses. Everything I’ve read about lanima tells me she can’t feel any pain—the larva inside her is flooding her synapses with unprocessed tetraphenetrithylamine and she’s high as the goddamn sky. But I swear something inside her is awake enough to sense what’s coming. Some tiny reptile part of her brain, struggling to be heard over the flood of chemical bliss drenching her system.
Something that screams, “This is very, very wrong.”
Lucy bucks. Nerve endings firing on autopilot. Ears twitching as if warding off invisibl
e flies. Her right foreleg starts to shake, tail whipping side to side. Then she sneezes, and bright pink froth sprays all over the floor.
The cow beside her starts undergoing the same fit. Followed by another. Then another. Lucy is making this weird noise, halfway between snorting and coughing. Her chest is heaving, she’s drenched in sweat. But Jesus, her eyes…
Her eyes, chums.
They’re still almost closed. Like she’s half asleep. Like this is some bad dream you hit right before the alarm clock goes off and spits you into your day and you shake the sleep away and laugh to yourself about how scared you got because it’s only a bad dream, chum.
Just a real bad dream.
But Lucy can’t wake up. I’m calling that a mercy. Her eyes stay fixed in that dreamy, half-closed droop until a wet, crackling noise cuts across the audio track like a knife and she collapses bonelessly to the deck. Her eyes are finally closed, bright red tongue protruding from between her teeth.
And then something pries those teeth apart.
Something long and black, slithering out of her ruptured palate onto the blood-slick grille. It’s almost thirty centimeters long, wrapped in a translucent membrane. Flopping about like a landed fish. Other cows are dropping beside it now, thudding onto the floor. The newborn wriggles and flexes, splitting apart the sheath it’s encased in. One end of it unfurls, like some awful flower, and then four serpentine necks sway in the air.
Each neck ends in a tiny mouth. Lined with row upon row of serrated teeth.
Sharp as needles.
Even on the vidscreen, I have a hard time focusing on it. Maybe it’s the hooch, maybe the stale ship’s rations I ate three hours ago trying to come back for a visit. The thing’s skin is this weird kaleidoscope of…not colors. Un-colors. It’s hard to describe. I get a headache looking at it. It unfolds two tiny forelimbs, pushing itself up off the abattoir floor, those necks writhing to a melody only it can hear.
And then it shrieks.
It’s the sound of a hundred junkie babies howling their way through birthday withdrawals. The sound of every orphaned child from every war zone you’ve ever seen from behind the comfort of your VR screen. It’s hellish. That’s the only way I can describe it, chums.
Just ****ing hellish.
The shriek fades, echoing off the dripping walls of Room AVS-3.
Tiny black tongues slip past needle teeth and lick sightlessly at the air.
Lucy’s baby draws breath and shrieks again. The sound splitting my head. And right when I think things couldn’t possibly get any worse, another shriek joins with the first. And another. Dark wormthings swaying and screaming and slithering about in an deep pool of red half a finger deep.
**** me.
Like I said, you guys aren’t paying me enough to watch this stuff…
HEIMDALL CHAT: HANNA DONNELLY
Merrick, J: Hanna?
Donnelly, H: Oh my god, Jax, are you okay?
Merrick, J: I’m okay. Are you?
Donnelly, H: I’m fine, I’m fine. How did you get whisperNET back up?
Merrick, J: Chief Grant did it. I don’t know how long we have. Listen, where are you? Are you safe?
Donnelly, H: I’m hiding. Are you guys still on the bridge?
Merrick, J: Wh—
Donnelly, H: Jax?
Donnelly, H: JAX?
RADIO TRANSMISSION: BEITECH AUDIT TEAM—SECURE CHANNEL 901
PARTICIPANTS:
Travis “Cerberus” Falk, Lieutenant, Team Commander
Fleur “Kali” Russo, Sergeant, Alpha Squad–Leader
DATE: 08/15/75
TIMESTAMP: 20:49
CERBERUS: Kali, this is Cerberus. Over.
KALI: Cerberus, Kali. Go.
Cerberus: A status report would be lovely, if you please.
KALI: Engineering area secure. Hostiles eliminated. Zero casualties. Walk in the park.
CERBERUS: Splendid. Prisoners?
KALI: Seventeen live bodies. Eleven wormhole engineers, six nonessentials. Already secured.
CERBERUS: Wormhole status?
KALI: The Heimdall crew shut it down as expected when we seized the station. Safety precaution. Mercury and Ballpark are bringing it back online now. The engineers are being kind enough to assist. A little gunpoint diplomacy works wonders.
CERBERUS: And this maintenance that Operative Rapier informed us about?
KALI: Mercury’s checking the logs now. Like Rapier said, our techs will need to finish off some work the Heimdall crew had planned.
CERBERUS: Heimdall command projected seven days offline, Kali. We have less than twenty-four hours. Can they do it in time?
KALI: They say yes. Though the computer system seems to be running suboptimally. And there’s some ****ing annoying pop song that plays every time the network tries to sound an alert or make a prompt.
Cerberus: Ah. Our lollipop girl. Quite the earworm, yes?
KALI: Yessir. But Ballpark assures me everything will be five by five before Assault Fleet Kennedy arrives. If these local boys have to lose a little sleep or a little blood, so be it. We’ll get it done.
CERBERUS: Consider me delighted.
KALI: I live to give, Cerberus. I was just about to radio Romeo. We’ll keep the engineers down here on the treadmill, but I presume you want these nonessentials transferred to the atrium with the rest of the meat?
CERBERUS: Eventually. Keep them secure for now. I’ll send Ghost and Charlie Squad to collect them soon.
KALI: Beta Squad is closer than Charlie?
CERBERUS: Negative, Sergeant. Romeo and his squad are flatline.
KALI: …Say again, Cerberus?
CERBERUS: Romeo is dead, Kali. He and his entire squad were flushed out an airlock by a local hostile one hour and forty-seven minutes ago.
KALI: Flushed out a…
KALI: …an hour and forty-seven ****ING MINUTES AGO?
CERBERUS: Fleur—
KALI: And you tell me this AFTER you get me to debrief? Travis, what the—
CERBERUS: Sergeant, I am dangerously close to raising my voice.
CERBERUS: Take a breath. Calm blue ocean, yes?
KALI: [inaudible.]
CERBERUS: [whispers] Blue oceaaaan.
KALI: …
KALI: …Yessir.
CERBERUS: Now. I understand you and Romeo were…intimate. You understand I was willing to permit fraternization within my unit unless it interfered with operations.
CERBERUS: We will not do anything that will cause me to regret that decision, will we, Sergeant?
KALI: Negative, sir.
CERBERUS: Bliss.
CERBERUS: Ghost and Charlie Squad are pursuing the hostile. You have my assurance she will be dealt with prejudicially.
KALI: Petyr’s killer is still alive, sir?
CERBERUS: Oh yes. She flushed her PLoB, but cams caught her before she retreated into the vent system.
KALI: Who is she? SecTeam member?
CERBERUS: Negative. Her name is Hanna Donnelly. Daughter of my predecessor, Commander Charles Donnelly.
KALI: …That’s a seventeen-year-old girl you’re talking about.
CERBERUS: Imagine my disappointment, yes?
KALI: Request permission to—
CERBERUS: Negative. You and the rest of Alpha will remain in Engineering. You will keep essential Heimdall staff pacified and on task, and assist Mercury in bringing the jump gate back online. This is priority one. Confirm.
KALI: …
CERBERUS: Kali, this is Cerberus. Confirm receipt of order, over?
KALI: Cerberus, Kali. Sir, yessir.
CERBERUS: See to operations. I’ll send Ghost to collect those nonessentials soon.
KALI: Nonessentials, sir?
UNKNOWN: Oh Jesus, d—
UNKNOWN: No, plea—
[EXTENDED GUNFIRE]
KALI: I’m sorry, sir. What nonessentials?
CERBERUS: …I see.
KALI: Will there be anything else, sir?
&n
bsp; CERBERUS: Negative, Kali. Nothing further.
KALI: Roger that. Kali out.
This kid smokes too much.
Laugh if you want; I’m telling you, those things will kill you.
Footage opens in Bay 17 of Heimdall Station at 20:59, nearly three hours after the station was taken. The space is dark, lit with spots of halogen and the standby lighting in the tall actuator-assisted loading suits (AALs) lining one wall. The suits are big and bulky and cast long shadows on the floor. Nik Malikov is pacing back and forth in front of them and smoking like a chimney. He looks ****ed.
He’s taken the time to lay out his uncle and the other dead House of Knives crew into some kind of repose in the shadow of a heavy freight ’tainer. Hands crossed over chests. Coins for the ferryman (or in this case, chips from Heimdall’s casino) placed over their eyes. Malikov has his own pistol stuffed into his pants. Hajji’s long-handled cleaver on his back. Spare clips in the pockets of his cargos. Proper little House of Knives foot soldier, right?
Problem is, there’s no one to use the weapons on. The Heimdall docks are sealed off from the rest of the station, and without his cousin to play “open sesame,” Malikov’s trapped. WhisperNET is under BeiTech control and the HoK grid is down. And so the kid’s slowly working his way through his pack of Tarannosaurus Rex™ cigarettes, pacing back and forth at the far end of the bay, beating on his palmpad like it called his mama a *****, in the hope Hanna Donnelly answers on the other end. Sadly for Malikov, records show Donnelly’s palmpad was still lying in a corridor in the infirmary section at this stage, so our hero is SOL.
He stuffs the palmpad back into his cargos. Looks at his reflection in the visor of one of the loading suits. Raises his middle finger.
“Yeah, **** you too, chum.”
He lights another cigarette. You can see the thoughts running through his head—if it wasn’t for him, the audit team would never have gotten on board Heimdall. If it wasn’t for him, his uncle and friends wouldn’t be dead. If not for him, none of this would be happening.
Well…him and one other important contributor.