by Diane Carey
Blood and acid. The smell permeated every corridor, every compartment. Traveled in the air or through holes burned through the decks. Walkways and scaffolding that only hours ago had provided arteries of access all around were now compromised by the caustic remains of shredded aliens, painted with the red blood and blue entrails of those who had died facing them. All this mess was fused with some kind of congealed resin.
The once-welcoming ship had changed. Power starvation dimmed the channels leading from chamber to chamber. Sound-dampening carpet reeked with soaked-in blood and urine, the fluids of torment. Scents were signals long ago assumed to serve only animals. Humans used them, or fled from them, but didn’t need them. To live amid heavy odors was shunned as crass, unnecessary. The clean ship, once smelling only of soft lubricants and pleasant cleaners and fresh air was today choked with odor. Rot. Putrification. Like the bubonic plague. And somehow… the smell of panic.
The smell nagged at him. The stink that wouldn’t clear, that kept feeding the fear spoonful by spoonful. No matter how frantically the ship’s emergency ventilation systems struggled and recalibrated, the stink was in the upholstery, the carpeting, the clothing, the very metal. There was no getting used to it.
He carried the only weapon, a small sonic-pulse pistol he always kept in his quarters. It had always provided plenty of protection against the type of enemy he anticipated— humans… raiders, pirates, salvagers. In all its years, it had been used only once, to subdue a crazed passenger with mental problems. Even then, it had been fired to wound, not to kill.
The energy in the little pistol warmed his hand, showing him that it was ready. It was a loyal puppy.
The burden had fallen on Alley to control the panic. Control it, ease it, head it off—there wasn’t a good phrase, or any one plan that worked. Sweat percolated from his face and neck and around his beltline. If only he could just worry about himself, he could make his own choice when to die. But he was the captain. If he got killed too early, would the others have a chance in hell? A suicide mission would put him out of his own misery, but would decapitate his crew and passengers. Their last hour would be worse for lack of that one eternal hope—that the captain would think of something.
But he hadn’t thought of anything. His best plan was to round up the survivors and try to lock them down in the best-shielded place aboard—the engine room.
And he didn’t even like that plan. But a lifeboat was a lifeboat. They would at least get in.
“Everybody,” he warned, “stay quiet. We’re almost there.”
They had started as a group of forty-one, all he could gather from the original sixty combined crew and passengers. The first nine people had died within an hour of Jonsy’s sending out the alarms, before even the basic emergency shutdowns and isolations could happen. Even with the security bulkheads down, the slaughter had begun. The creatures killing the people hadn’t stayed together, but dispersed all over the ship, and begun the bloody spree. Several people were missing, unaccounted for.
Alley knew a suppressing assault when he saw it. The speed of the attacks gave the plan away—eradicate all life-forms other than themselves. No purpose, no sense of fear or defense—just aggression.
He hadn’t even seen one of the animals yet. Not the whole thing, anyway. A flash in the darkness, a glossy tendril, a slashing claw, that warning hiss. Only those suddenly dead had seen what had killed them, if even they had seen it at all. He couldn’t really know.
Fifteen minutes ago, the intraship communications system and computer conduits had failed from damage. Clyde said it was acid, burning its way through deck after deck, sizzling into the connectors, the grids, chips and network systems fritzed. Most of them fell offline. Alley’s broadcast to the remaining crew and passengers had been cut off, but not before he gave orders to muster amidships. Those still alive tried to get there, and several had died trying. They were now down ten more people. There were only thirty-one left. Thirty-one terrified people, picking their way through the ship toward the engine room, the only place in the ship that could be fortified.
He didn’t know what else to do. “I should’ve listened to my instincts,” Clyde uttered emptily behind Alley. “Something about that container was talking to me… I should’ve listened.”
“Not your fault. You checked it. Jonsy lied. Who’s in the back of this line?”
“Passengers.”
“Where’s LaMay?”
Clyde twisted around. Not too loudly, he called, “L’Dave?”
“Right here.” LaMay’s voice came back through the darkness.
“Who’s at the back of the line?”
LaMay’s disembodied voice was broken by the distance and effort to be quiet. “Couple of VIPs, I think. They volunteered.”
“Clyde,” Alley said, “go back there and take up the rear guard. Take Dave with you.”
“Rear guard, aye,” Clyde acknowledged, but there was distinct fear in his eyes. He was being sentenced to do the impossible—defend against what he couldn’t see coming, what he had no weapon to fight, or be the sacrificial lamb.
Proud of his crewman’s quiet acceptance, Alley appreciated Clyde’s keeping the fear out of his voice, for the sake of the innocent people behind them both. As Clyde broke away from the wall against which they were all pressed, Alley glanced back at the faces of strangers. He didn’t know these people. He had shaken every hand and welcomed them aboard, but they were privileged people who had chosen a new life on a distant established colony. He was the custodian responsible for getting them there. They were all adults, at least. He breathed a sigh of relief for that.
Their faces, fading off behind him into the curved corridor, were lit only by battery-powered emergency lighting on one-third power. The dim amber lights created an otherworldly underglow and cast the faces of the people as unnatural Halloween chalk drawings, lit from the wrong direction. The rows of little amber lights were enough to walk by, but dim enough to conserve power for a longer period.
How long? Would he and these people outlast the lights, or would it soon be unimportant how long the batteries held out?
The lights would last about four days.
Four days.
Nine dead in one hour. Twenty more by dinner time. Now it was, by the clock, night. It felt like night.
“I hear somet’ing!” It was Voola, five people back, huddled with each arm hooked in the arms of two other women. They looked like a singing group caught in a thunderstorm. Voola’s faced was limned with worry lines, smeared with the blood of those she’d tried to save. They had only found two alive, but not for long.
Alley froze in place and held out a hand to make others stop moving, shifting. He listened.
A creak of confused metal. Drips of moisture. Spritzing lubricant. Snapping electricity. The amount of damage was a meter-by-meter shock. It had its own sound.
“Captain, I am hear somet’ing!” Voola choked. “Please!”
“Shh!” He snapped his fingers.
Behind him, the pasty faces of the survivors were like ghosts of some ancient shipwreck, shocked out of their sleep, out of their prayers and dreams, torn from the futures they had so carefully planned. They did as he ordered, and cringed in silence, only the smallest whimpers squeezing out.
No other sounds. He listened. Closed his eyes. Listened again. A grip of shivers ran through his ribcage.
Alley opened his eyes. “Follow me.”
Was it in front of them? Blocking their way to the engine room? Whatever Voola was hearing, he couldn’t find it.
Feeling the weight of all the people behind him bearing down on his shoulders, Alley stepped forward into the amber glow. The corridor ceiling seemed lower than ever before, the walls tighter. They crept past smelly damaged panels dripping with residue that burned their throats with its electrical stink.
Someone coughed—a cannon shot. Alley cringed.
He moved forward toward the curved part of the corridor. The curve betrayed him. The
re was no seeing beyond it for another ten steps. He’d walked it a thousand times. Now those ten steps were miles.
One… two… behind him the passengers shuddered so deeply that he felt the ripples. He felt also the malevolence of their tormenters like a fume penetrating the ship. He sensed the wickedness, the pure evil goal, unimpaired with desires or negotiation. There was no deal to be made, nothing to play on. No edge.
Four steps.
He stretched what there was of his neck and wished to be taller, trying to see around the bend. He wanted to be taller, stronger, more imposing. They were following him anyway. There hadn’t been a single resistance. He expected that from his crew, but these passengers could’ve challenged him. The big man with the red hair who made a fortune in desert plumbing. The woman who had built her own business in the field of aerospace after inheriting a failing company from an uncle. The landed heir to a British lordship. The aging retired captain of a military supply ship. None had challenged him. So far.
He didn’t know whether to be honored or worried.
Seven…
A scream shattered the tension—Voola!
Alley whirled to discipline her for not keeping quiet, for giving in to eruptions of panic, but he found all the other people facing not Voola but a utility locker embedded into the skin of the corridor. Voola pointed at the locker with one hand, the other balled into a fist and crammed against her front teeth. She was still shrieking.
The captain, Clyde, Dave, and two other men shoved the women out of the way and closed on the locker.
“Move, move!” Alley slammed his way to the center. He squared himself in front of the locker and grasped the handle. The other men braced themselves, brandishing kitchen knives and titanium bars.
The weapons were silly. They all knew.
Was the locker big enough to have one of those things inside?
The handle was hot. How could it be? The metal burned him like a skillet’s edge—or was it just the sweat in his hand?
He gripped the pistol and aimed it high.
“Let me!” Clyde pressed at his side, reaching for the handle. He was whispering, but in ghastly intense desperation.
“No—no!” Alley protested.
“Yes!”
After a second Alley got the idea. Clyde would open the locker, giving Alley both his own hands to steady the weapon. Dave came up beside Clyde, and together they gripped the locker handle.
Alley hissed, “Heave!”
The two men put their combined weight into a single monumental heave. The door of the locker, with an almost animal shriek, was torn completely off its hinges. It clattered down the deck, striking the big red-headed man, who batted it farther down and braced to fight whatever came out after it.
Alley felt his hands squish on the pistol. Stunned only briefly, long enough to realize what he was seeing in front of him, Alley shoved his weapon into Clyde’s hand and plunged forward, diving into the locker.
“Come out of there, you greedy stick-insect! Come out here! Come out!”
Bending backward and shoving one knee out, Alley twisted his hands into fabric and hauled back until the coiled lump unfolded into a spindle.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!” Jonsy Coyne howled and cranked in Alley’s hands.
The bosun was a sorry creature, unshaven, slobbered with saliva and blood. He recoiled from Alley, his arms cramped around a bundle of fabric he held tightly to his chest. Ignoring the petrified people watching, the captain wrenched him brutally out of his hiding place and slammed him against the wall, then followed him there and crushed him tight. “How many were in that container? How many?!”
Jonsy’s eyes turned to crescents, his mouth screwed up in a terrible bow. His voice was a shatter. “It’s just—I just—”
“How many? Talk!”
“Eight-eight-eight… eighteen… I’m sorry, I’m so, so, so sorry!”
“Eighteen?”
“I—I—think—”
“How many got out?”
“Cook says… seven… didn’t he say seven? Where is he?”
“He’s dead, you sorry specimen!” His hands dug into Jonsy’s collar. “There are eleven more inside? Eleven monsters waiting to develop? Give, goddamn you! Stiffen up and speak to me! What was your deal? Tell me what the deal was!”
Jonsy’s soggy eyes blinked beseechingly. “I didn’t want this… I didn’t! Oh, God, Captain, help us… help us!”
“Help you?” Alley raged. “Help you? I’ll help you to hell! Two dozen people dead in half a day! Living people shredded like discarded garments!”
Jonsy shrank in his hands. “We didn’t… We didn’t know…” He hugged his swaddled bundle and tucked his chin to it, his long fingers cramping into the soaked cloth.
Alley forced himself to lower his voice. “What… was… the deal?”
Cradling his bundle, Jonsy whimpered, “Rockie made the deal.”
“Keep talking.”
“We cleared the box… reconfigured the locking mechanisms and the shipping codes… they paid us ten times my annual… salary… I’d never . . get another… chance… There were supposed to be eighteen… embryos— but dead! They were supposed to be dead! Frozen!”
“Who was the shipper? Who’s responsible for this? Who hired you? Give me a name!”
Weeping again, Jonsy squeaked, “I don’t know… it was a blind ticket.”
Alley exploded, slamming him into the wall again, then again. “You cleared a box onto this ship on a blind ticket? What kind of a bottomfeeder are you?!”
Hot with fury, he rang out with his right hand and slapped Jonsy flat on the side of his face. Jonsy wobbled and lost his grip on the bundle of rags. It went flying down the corridor, tumbling at the feet of Voola and the two other women. As it rolled, it freed itself from the wrapping of rags. When it stopped rolling, the sodden mass was staring up at them with Roxanne Coyne’s eyes, shocked in the last moment before death. Or the moment after.
The women jumped backward into the people behind them, and the clutch of people flinched as if they shared a body. Rockie’s severed head moved on the deck as if in a cradle, her long black hair pinched into bloody strings.
From back in the shadows, Dave LaMay uttered, “Oh, crap…”
Well, that pretty much summed it up. Nick Alley let his anger overwhelm his surprise. It was over for Rockie, just like the others.
Out of the amber glow, Clyde and Dave reappeared and looked down at the gruesome sight. They made no effort to hide the sight from the others. There was no blanching the nightmare anymore.
Jonsy stared at his wife’s mangled head and wept openly. He pointed at it, like a child pointing at something frightening.
Alley reached out a hand toward Jonsy, though he was still looking down at the head, and dragged Jonsy toward him. “Are you telling me there are eleven fully developed creatures… still in that box?”
“But the box is locked up again,” Clyde said. “The automatic security system closed it after three minutes because Keith and Gunny didn’t open it with the correct protocols. Whatever’s inside is locked inside.”
Shivering and quailing, Jonsy sank against Alley’s shoulder. “They were supposed to be already dead, frozen, in the—the—the—baby form—”
“You didn’t notice it was a cryo box?” Alley barked.
“Well, yeah, but… y’know—”
“Is there any way—and you better tell me the truth, you stupid pus—any way the others can get out?”
“Not if… not if… security automatically closed it… if the box closed itself, like…” Jonsy’s red-ringed eyes rolled between Alley, Clyde, and Dave. “They were in sta— stasis—so they wouldn’t, y’know, grow up.”
“Are they still in stasis?”
“I don’t know… either way, they’re held in the center… y’know, puffs of gravity… if they can’t touch the sides, they can’t break out—they can’t, can they? Please tell me they can’t…�
�
His face screwed up into a knot, his voice a squeak. Everyone watched him with a flood of pity and scorn. He had fallen prey to the oldest of human flaws—simple cheating. A bad bet that had cost him everything.
“Please, don’t ask me,” he pleaded. “I didn’t know… I didn’t… didn’t know… didn’t know…” Jonsy’s eyes involuntarily crammed shut. He dissolved into open-mouthed sobs.
“Captain, shouldn’t we keep moving?” Clyde urged.
Alley pitched Jonsy back against the bulkhead. Jonsy slid down the wall as if melting in his clothes. When his haunches touched the floor, he coiled into a ball and crawled across the deck to the bloody bundle of Roxanne’s head. Still sobbing, he gathered it up, pulled the drizzles of torn cloth around his wife’s gray face, and cuddled it to his chest.
“Just a minute,” Alley said. “Just let me think…” He turned to Dave LaMay. “What’s your take on this?”
LaMay was drawn and beaten. He’d had the first encounter with the creatures, surviving only because he was already in an EV suit. He escaped through a maintenance hatch. It had taken him two hours in his half-shredded suit, with its shattered com system and struggling life-support units, to find his way back into a working airlock in an area that wasn’t compromised. He’d been too late to warn the first nine casualties. While he clawed his way around the outer hull of the ship, trying to get back in, the invaders had continued their rampage.
Running now on empty, LaMay put his exhaustion aside to do what was left of his job. “Well, Jonsy released a half-dozen or so of those things, and there were more inside, but the box was closed and locked again. So the ones still inside are trapped in zero-G by the air puffs, just floating as if in space. They can’t reach the sides of the container to push off anything. They can’t get a purchase to use their strength. The sensors will keep them right in the middle.”
“Until somebody opens it again,” Clyde added sadly.
Alley squeezed his fists, thinking aloud. “But it means we only have to worry about the ones that are already out. Seven, instead of eighteen.”
LaMay’s once-bright smile was only a ghost. He drew a shattered breath, then actually let out a little ugly laugh. “I was just thinking,” he said slowly. “The Excepted Perils Clause… exempts us from responsibility for acts of God. Funny, huh?”