Virus

by S. D. Perry

  He saw Everton’s shotgun propped up against the base of the lockers and scrambled for it, reaching it just as the Russian jumped down, still firing wildly. Steve saw that a gas mask covered his head, saw the rifle pivot towards him—

  —and the click of an empty weapon, the clip out of rounds.

  Steve launched himself at the attacker, raised the butt of the shotgun and drove it into the Russian’s chest, knocking him back into the locker. The crash of the man’s head against metal was loud in the sudden silence and the Russian slumped, his body limp.

  Steve grabbed the boots of the still figure and pulled him out onto the floor. Guy was a lightweight, couldn’t weigh more than 120 or so—short, too.

  He looked over his shoulder, saw Hiko and Foster turn stunned faces towards him, Everton looking out from behind the examination table behind them. Amazingly, no one had been hit.

  Steve reached for the gas mask, adrenaline still coursing through his body.

  Fucker tried to kill me!

  He yanked at the mask, ready to beat the shit out of the man if he so much as twitched—

  —and blinked, surprised. “He” was a woman, and an attractive one at that. Her fragile features were smooth, a few loose strands of long, dirty blond hair framing a pale, heart-shaped face.

  Steve dropped the mask, turned to the others, and saw the same dismay he felt. He wasn’t a chauvinist or anything, but a woman acting so violently, Russian or no—

  Why? What the hell is going on here?

  Maybe she’d be able to tell them when she woke up. Assuming she knew any English, assuming that she was sane—and assuming that she woke up at all.

  J. W. Woods, Jr., couldn’t get drunk. His hip flask was over half empty and he seemed to be sweating it out as fast as he put it down; every inch of his body dripped and ran with clammy rivers of sweat, as it had ever since he’d set foot on this forsaken ship.

  He wished the Sea Star were still afloat, wished it desperately. He wished that he could be with the captain instead of here in the dark, echoing room that Richie had led them to below the weapons locker. He wished a lot of things, but most of all that the whiskey would do its job and give him a little peace.

  Everyone thought he was a pussy, fine, whatever—but he didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to be alone on a ship where there was an insane Russian trying to kill them all.

  I’m a survivor, that’s all; what’s wrong with wanting to be alive? I coulda gone down with the Star, but does anyone even care? Crazy, all of ’em: they call me pussy and they’re off trying to get themselves killed, like that makes them “brave” . . .

  Everton was the only one who showed him any respect; he should’ve insisted on staying with the captain, he was a leader, he was strong. Instead, he was off with a gun-crazy deckhand when Everton had told them to go help Squeaky. They shouldn’t be here.

  Richie was still smoking marijuana and poking around with his flashlight, like they had all the time in the world. His beam fell across a rack of some kind, loaded with what looked like—missiles?

  Richie aimed his light at the open space beyond, the beam illuminating another missile, lined up at the base of some kind of tube. In fact, there was a whole set of tubes, some small, some much bigger.

  Launch tubes?

  Richie’s voice was deliriously upbeat as the light flickered back to the first missile. “This thing is armed—tactical short range, surface to air . . . beautiful!”

  “I’m thrilled,” said Woods. He raised his flask and took a healthy slug. “Can we go now?”

  “In a minute.” Richie started poking around again, playing his light along the floor.

  Woods took another swig, watching hopelessly as Richie studied the mess that his flashlight revealed. It looked like someone had been down here taking missiles apart; there were piles of metal shells stacked all around, pieces of the dismantled bombs all over.

  “Hey, Woods, what do you make of this?”

  “Dunno,” he answered sullenly. He sighed, slipped the flask back into his hip pocket, and raised his flashlight to join Richie’s. Maybe if he helped, they could get out of here sooner. He wanted to get back to the captain, get somewhere that had light.

  He followed Richie across the dark room towards the launch tubes, not sure what the man was even looking for and not really caring. The flashlight was slick in his grasp. He switched hands, wiped his palms against his shirt, and waited for Richie to explain what they were seeing.

  Richie’s light passed over some kind of platform at the bottom of one of the really big launch tubes. There was a cable that ran from the inside rail of the tube to the platform itself. There was a metal chair welded and braced to it, looped with what looked like seat belts.

  “Looks like an ejection seat, some kinda escape vehicle,” said Richie. He picked up a small box next to the chair that had connecting cords running to a panel in the wall. He studied it, nodding slowly.

  “Launch buttons. Cool.”

  Woods had to stifle an urge to tell Richie to hurry up; he didn’t want to piss the guy off, he might—leave him there, alone. Woods swallowed, turned away from the tubes to see what else he could find.

  He ran his flashlight along the opposite wall and froze, a fresh layer of sweat suddenly oozing out of his pores. One of the Volkov’s watertight hatches was illuminated by the shaking beam; it had been smashed in from the outside, buckled into its frame. There were multiple welts in the thick steel, each the size of a man’s fist.

  Strong, whoever did that was—had to have had a battering ram, no way a man’s that strong.

  His beam dropped to the base of the door where there was a puddle of thick, brownish red liquid. At least three or four feet across, and still very wet.

  “Hey, Richie—” Woods’s voice shook and he swallowed again, as Richie turned his light to the tiny lake and stopped there.

  “That’s a lot of blood,” he finished weakly, and reached again for his flask, suddenly quite desperate not to feel the terror that had taken over his entire body. He closed his eyes and drank long, not stopping until he started to choke on the sweet, fiery relief.

  • 13 •

  Everton helped Foster lift the unconscious woman into a chair, feeling deeply relieved. They’d caught their Russian, it was all over. She had tried to kill them, she had dropped an anchor on their tug—she was obviously insane, and that meant that she wasn’t competent to claim the Volkov. No court would dispute it, and he had witnesses.

  The woman slumped into the chair, and Everton looked over to see Hiko digging through the waist satchel that Baker had taken off the Russian. He pulled out empty food packets, half a pack of Russian cigarettes, matches—

  Everton smiled to himself. An entire ship to herself and she was running around like some kind of commando, gas mask and all, lugging her little bag of necessities and an automatic rifle. He wondered if she’d murdered her shipmates before or after trashing all the radios . . .

  Hiko pulled out a dark hand-sized object, two, three of them. There was a flat digital panel hooked up to a small circuit board . . .

  Everton suddenly realized what it meant, but Foster beat him to the warning.

  Hiko, picking up a canister, “What’s that? Hairspray?”

  “Careful, Hiko,” he said sharply. “Thermite grenades.”

  Hiko frowned. “What?”

  Baker nodded at the explosives. “One of those goes off, it’ll burn a hole right through the deck.”

  Hiko shook his head and very carefully started putting the grenades back into the satchel. “What was she gonna do? Blow up the ship?”

  Everton wanted to laugh. Proof, as if we needed any more! Crazy, mad as a Russian hatter!

  Baker picked up a walkie and called to his partner. “Squeaky. Come in, Squeaky, do you copy?”

  Silence, and Everton saw Baker frown, saw Hiko and Foster exchange a worried look.

  “Squeaky, c’mon, don’t play games.”

 
Still nothing. Baker’s man had apparently wandered off without his radio; Everton scowled. As if they didn’t have enough to contend with.

  Baker depressed the transmit again. “Richie, Woods, come back.”

  Richie answered, his voice crackling brightly. “Steve, this ship’s got a missile room—”

  Baker’s temper flashed. “I don’t give a shit about missiles, Richie! My best friend’s in the engine room and he’s not answering—now, get your ass down there!”

  The deckhand sounded put out that Baker wasn’t impressed. “We hear ya, we hear ya.”

  Baker continued, glancing over at the unconscious Russian nervously. “And just so you know, we’ve got a crewman up here who emptied an assault rifle on us, so keep your eyes open; meet me in the engine room in five minutes.”

  Everton frowned, but decided to let it slide. Baker wanted to play captain, fine; the mystery had already been solved, it was highly unlikely that there could be two Russian mental cases running around, and the Volkov was still his. If the other engineer had gotten himself lost, well, that was his problem. With any luck, Baker would do the same; unlikely, but one could always hope . . .

  The Russian woman moaned softly and rolled her head back, starting to come to. Baker picked up the shotgun and they all focused on the groaning woman, tensing for action in case she went off again.

  Everton reached into his pocket for his bag of peanuts and settled in for the show.

  Richie moved through the dark corridor of C deck, Woods close behind, both of them sporting AK-47s and edging cautiously forward. The stairs should be around here somewhere; Richie had kind of lost his sense of direction, and the way Woods was staggering along, he’d kind of lost his, too.

  Place is a fuckin’ maze, he thought bitterly. Goddamn Russians with their goddamn spy ships. Probably set up like this on purpose, to confuse people . . .

  He figured if they just kept going, stuck to the main corridor, it’d circle back around to a stairwell eventually. There was another turn ahead and they moved on, Richie still thinking about what Steve had said. Russian crewmen with rifles, Squeaky missing—the poor sap must’ve unbolted the door and gotten himself shot. It was a goddamn shame.

  Just try it on us, Ruskies; we’ve locked and loaded, gonna blow you a new asshole . . .

  They turned the corner and stopped, staring down at the mess that littered the dim hall. Thick cables had been ripped out of the ceiling, and were strewn like spider webs crisscrossing the corridor.

  “What happened here?” Woods whispered, slurring his words together.

  Richie shook his head. “Somebody doesn’t like electricity.”

  They stepped carefully through the snaking cables, Richie noticing that the corridor turned again up ahead, to the left. There was a hatch at the end of this hall, though; maybe it led to stairs.

  They reached the hatch and Richie stepped forward, trying to make sense of the sign next to it in the dim light. Russian was weird-looking, mixing up perfectly good letters with shit that didn’t make sense—

  Something streaked up in front of him and hovered, insectlike, an inch from his face.

  Fuck—

  He stumbled backwards, nearly tripped over Woods. A bright light flashed on from the buzzing thing, blinding him.

  Richie batted it with his rifle, too startled to think straight. The barrel connected with metal, solid, and the thing fell, thrashing wildly, humming and buzzing as it twisted across the floor.

  He aimed at it, fired—and it stopped moving, the light and sound cutting off instantly.

  Jesus H. Christ!

  What was it? Richie stared down at the metal—thing, unable to figure out what it was he was looking at. Like a giant insect, made out of machine parts. Less than a foot across, winged, a lens on the oblong body where the light had come from—

  It’s a robot! A fuckin’ ’droid!

  Richie prodded at it with the barrel of his weapon, but it didn’t move. His bullets had severed a twisting cable that jutted out of its back, and he realized that he must have cut off its power.

  He looked down at the cable, saw that it snaked down the corridor to their left, trailing off into darkness. Richie crouched down and picked up the ’droid, amazed at how light it was in spite of the obvious fact that it was made out of metal.

  “What is it? It smells like dog shit, Richie.”

  Richie stared down at the strange, insectoid body in his hand, thoughts racing. “It’s robotics, man. High-tech robotics.”

  Woods sounded as awed as Richie felt. “What’s it for?”

  Richie blew out slowly, shook his head. “I don’t know. Never seen anything like it, look at this engineering . . . With shit like this, how’d the Russians lose the Cold War? C’mon.”

  They both raised their rifles and started down the hall to their left, following the severed cable that would take them to its source of power. Richie grinned to himself, eager to see more and feeling wired out of his skull with excitement and curiosity.

  So this is what they’ve been up to out here: fan-fuckin’-tastic! No wonder they don’t want us to see this . . .

  Reminded of the enemy, he clutched his weapon tighter and they moved off into the darkness, Richie leading the way.

  Nadia was dreaming, a dark and terrible dream of blue fire, and there was distant pain, in her head and chest. It seemed to go on for a long time, this dream, but the pain grew stronger, sharper—and the dream faded out like an old, ugly memory, the surface of reality rushing towards her like a light . . .

  She opened her eyes groggily and there was light. Bright light, shining down from above. And people, the people who had done this thing. Real people.

  Panic flushed through her, panic and a terror so great that she almost couldn’t breathe.

  “The lights, no! Shut off the power, it needs power! You have to listen, I didn’t know you were real before, you’ve made a terrible mistake!”

  There was a woman leaning over her, a pretty woman with a worried expression. The woman babbled gently at her in a foreign language, the words soothing but wrong, all wrong.

  Nadia took a deep breath, concentrated.

  “EE-zee,” she said. “Easy”? English? Oh, thank God! Nadia knew English, she’d had to in order to work with the American astronauts.

  The woman spoke again. “We’re American, you know, U.S.A.? English?”

  Nadia pointed at the lights, finding the words quickly. “Power! Turn off the power, shut down the ship! You’re all in danger!”

  They all looked at her and she looked back, searching for comprehension in their pale faces. A young, dark-haired man in scrubs with a shotgun. An older man with a sailing cap. The pretty young woman in a reddish shirt, and there was another, he looked Polynesian, Maori perhaps.

  “What’s she going on about?” The Maori, asking the others as if she weren’t even there.

  The dark-haired man shook his head. “Beats me. I’m going after Squeaky.”

  What’s “Squeaky”?

  The woman looked at the young man with concern. “Be careful. Meet up with us on the bridge.”

  The man met her deep gaze and nodded, chambering a round in the shotgun. Nadia saw that they were lovers, and felt her stomach knot with sadness.

  “See you on the bridge,” he said, and left the sick bay.

  Nadia closed her eyes and raised a shaking hand to her head, searching for the words that would make them understand. Already they acted as though she were crazy—

  —and why wouldn’t they? You tried to kill them, you probably look like hell, haven’t slept or bathed in days.

  She opened her eyes, saw the older man in the American captain hat and the Maori moving closer to where she sat, expressions tight with suspicion. The captain held a crinkly bag, and as he neared her, she smelled roasted nuts.

  Without thinking, she snatched for the bag, mouth watering. The captain pulled away, exchanging a look with the woman.

  Nadia felt her eyes
well up. “I have not eaten in three days,” she said softly.

  The captain frowned, then handed the bag over. Nadia couldn’t even thank him, she was too overcome by animal need. She stuffed a great handful into her mouth, hardly chewing the rich, salty peanuts.

  She felt her stomach clench, but it didn’t reject the nourishment. She nodded thankfully, could already feel her exhausted mind clearing as the protein hit her system.

  “What is your name?” The woman, her voice gentle.

  The captain spoke before she could answer. “What happened on this ship? Where’s the rest of your crew?”

  Nadia swallowed, listened to the words, and looked between the captain and the woman, desperate to say the right thing and make them understand.

  She focused on the captain, their leader. He was the one she had to convince.

  “Dead. All dead. You must shut off the power. It needs power to move through the ship.”

  “What needs power?”

  How could she explain? Nadia fixed her gaze on his and realized there was no word for the thing.

  “It,” she said again, and pointed upwards. “From the MIR.”

  The woman studied her seriously. “The space station?”

  Nadia nodded and stuffed another handful of peanuts in her mouth, chewing around the word.

  “Yes!”

  The captain rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Jesus, we got us a—”

  Nadia frowned, swallowed. She didn’t know the word.

  Froot-caik?

  The woman looked at him, upset. “Hold on, Captain—”

  The captain waved a dismissive hand at her, and she didn’t need to know the exact meaning, she could see it in his face, hear it in the way he spoke. “She’s a fucking nut-bag! Look at her!”

  Nadia realized that he wouldn’t hear her, that his ears were closed. The leader of these people thought her insane, wouldn’t listen until his crew was dead—or worse than dead, and with the power on, that wouldn’t be far away.