by Sara King
Swallowing hard, Joel took a few reluctant steps towards the ship. Jeanne can’t be alive in there, he thought. She’s dead. She blew out her own brains. I watched her die.
But he’d also watched her walk across the screen of his datapad, cursing the ‘dead bitch’ on her floor. Carefully, step by dreaded step, he went back to the open cargo bay, which was attracting a horde of tadflies on the sacks and shiny metal, but not the Yolk. Never the Yolk.
“Jeanne?” he called tentatively into the ship. “You there?”
“So,” the ship called back to him, “your cowardly ass didn’t run off, after all. Good. You get a look at the deflectors? They’re screaming at me they’re busted.”
The speaker, Joel noted, that the words were coming from was now the one at the open hatch. He frowned, remembering the way the doors opened, the way Jeanne’s voice came from different places on the ship. An AI? It was an easy explanation. Having no family, no home, and very few friends, Jeanne did put most of her money into her ship. He was sure it had all sorts of interesting upgrades. He prayed that was what was happening.
Joel swallowed, hard. “You had a computer on your ship, didn’t you, Jeanne?”
“I have a computer on my ship,” Jeanne growled. “Stop talking about it in the past tense, damn it. It’s not that badly beat up.”
Joel glanced at the trail of wreckage behind him, then swallowed. “Where’s the computer located, Jeanne?” he asked. He was gonna unplug it, tear it out, cut it away, anything to remove that reminder that this woman was somehow talking to him when she shouldn’t be.
“Side panel, pilot’s seat. Marked with the big red X. Why, you think something’s wrong?”
“Maybe,” Joel said tentatively. “I’m gonna go see, okay?”
“Yeah, whatever. I’ll be working on the core.” The words came from the engine room again.
It took every ounce of self-control Joel had to crawl back over the mountain of Yolk into the damaged ship. Once he got to the other side of the mass of Shrieker nodules, once more faced with the darkness of the interior of the ship, Joel had to fight the instinct to bolt all over again.
“Jeanne?” he asked quietly, not wanting to be alone despite the fact he was about to destroy the computer causing the issue. “You there?”
“Working!” ship-Jeanne called from the engine room staircase to the right and below.
Somehow, Joel found the courage to walk down the hall, back to the cockpit. Jeanne was right where he’d left her, dead, her brains splattered all over the pilot’s console and part of the viewfinder, her blood mingled with crushed and torn nodules. Joel went over to the pilot’s chair and, without touching the bloody console, opened the panel marked with the red X, also dripping with blue nodule slime. Inside, the computer hummed away, still supplied with emergency power. Joel dug his hand into the guts and found the power node.
“Hey Jeanne?” Joel called. “Can you hear me?!”
“Yeah, what do you want?” she cried from a speaker in the belly of the ship.
Joel yanked the computer power node free and the ship electronics immediately died around him. He took a deep breath and leaned back against the wall, tears stinging his eyes. Just a computer, he thought. Not a ghost. Just a malfunctioning computer. It had to have knocked a few circuits loose in the crash.
Trying to calm his breathing, Joel watched the ship flicker around him, obviously some sort of electrical short between the core and the electronics in the bridge. He sat there until his heart rate stabilized, raw Yolk soaking through his pants and wetting his legs and buttocks with cold slime, hand still fisted around the computer’s power supply.
Need to call for help, Joel thought. But to do so, he’d have to plug the ship’s computer back in, and the last thing he wanted to do was cope with an undead Jeanne again. No, he’d much rather die of starvation waiting for someone to notice his wreckage than hear the ship calling his name again.
“What was it you said you wanted?” Jeanne’s voice demanded from the ship speaker right beside Joel’s ear.
Joel screamed, jumped away from the wall, but his arm was still tangled in the computer mainframe and he only succeeded in sliding around in the greasy blue pool of Yolk. Hitting his face in the metallic mixture, Joel shrieked, and, like a terrified animal, yanked at his arm until it came free. Then he rolled, got back to his feet dripping Yolk and blood, and ran back to the cargo bay, then scrambled over the mountain of Yolk and fled out the back cargo door.
“Joel!” Jeanne’s voice cried from behind him. “What the hell’s wrong with you, Joel? You hit your head a little too hard or something?”
The computer isn’t hooked into the ship, Joel’s mind wildly thought. The computer isn’t even hooked up… He let out a terrified, gut-deep wail and bolted, this time not turning back at her cries for help.
CHAPTER 13: B.A.B.E.
20th of May, 3006
Aashaanti Hiveship Encephalon
Fortune, Daytona 6 Cluster, Outer Bounds
Tatiana woke to tiny grunting-growling sounds and the pressure of something heavy on her chest, combined with vicious tugging on her jumpsuit. She started in surprise and glanced down to see the ass-end of a striped jaggle baby sticking out from under her gore-encrusted overshirt. The tiny beast had burrowed under her outer shirt and was yanking and ripping at her jumpsuit pocket. Tatiana sat up, blinking groggily. In response, the kitten sank its razorlike claws into her chest and hissed.
“Ow!” Tatiana grabbed the little beast by its bristly, painfully sharp fur, and yanked it free of her jumpsuit. The kitten yowled, and Tatiana received a reflexive quadruple set of claw-marks down her arm for the effort. With a startled yell, Tatiana threw it aside, bashing it into the rubbery wall of the room.
Instead of conveniently falling unconscious so she could bag herself a jaggle and show it proudly off to Milar afterwards, the little kitten landed on its feet, spun, and launched itself at Tatiana’s face, silvery claws splayed wide.
In reflex, Tatiana kicked it out of the air with a startled foot and quickly crab-scuttled away, heart pounding. It had been going for her eyes.
No, she decided quickly. The cuddly little thing had just been looking for a treat or something. It was terribly confused. Probably lonely. Afraid…
The kitten hit the far wall again, popped back onto its feet like a possessed stuffed animal in a horror holovid, puffed up until its matted fur was standing completely on end, and hissed at her, its tiny translucent fangs growing to several inches.
“Hey there, little guy,” Tatiana began gently, holding out a hand in peace. “What a cute little—”
The kitten launched itself at her face again, yowling, its mercury talons spread wide to lash at her left orbit.
“Aaaaah!” Tatiana screamed, ducking out of the way as the angry feline flew by, then watching in horror as it stopped its slide with a single foot, claws digging into the alien rubber, spun impossibly fast, and, like some sort of demon-kitten on LSD, launched itself at her again with an infernal howl.
Tatiana rolled onto her hands and knees, intending to get to her feet and run, when the kitten sank its claws and teeth into her ass.
“Oooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww!” Tatiana screamed. “Ow, ow ow ow get off get off!” She turned and tried to shove it away from her, but it sank its teeth into her hand, instead.
Tatiana stared down in shock as the possessed kitten’s translucent fangs extended into her palm, then screamed. She yanked her hand away, but the cat’s head and body came with it, jaw latched onto her hand in a death grip, claws slicing holes in her ass and jumpsuit as they came free.
“Oh you little son of a bitch, I hate you I hate you I want you to dieeeeeee!” Tatiana shrieked, getting to her feet and thrashing, slamming the kitten repeatedly into the wall. It doggedly held on, puffed up like a Satanic gray marshmallow.
Trouble, Archon? the ship asked, sounding amused.
“Get it off!” Tatiana shrieked, throwing the kitten to the
floor and stepping on its tail. It fell free, only to immediately sink its teeth into her calf, instead, wrapping itself around her leg like a tree-climbing hellbeast. “Aaaaaaaahhh!” she shrieked, kicking out repeatedly. When the demonic cat remained firmly attached to her shin with all five appendages, she started driving it into the wall, again and again, screaming every curse word she knew. Eventually, the kitten’s jaws loosened enough for her to peel it away from her with her other foot—only to have it circle around and start clawing its way up her back, heading for a jugular.
“Transport me!” Tatiana shrieked, ramming her back into the wall, squishing the kitten in place with all the weight she could manage. Still, the cat somehow managed to keep climbing, one claw-sinking inch at a time. “Help!” Tatiana screamed. “It’s going for the throat!”
That one has always been quite the little scrapper, the ship noted. Though it never wins. It’s half the size of its siblings. Definitely has a chip on its shoulder.
“Get it off!” Tatiana screamed, flailing.
Still, We’d give it an eighty percent chance of winning this engagement.
“Heeellllp meeeeeee!” Tatiana shrieked, grabbing it by the tail and yanking down, halting its upward climb. In response, the kitten sank its claws all the way in. “Aaaagh! Please!”
So as We were saying about the Phage, the ship said calmly. It went after Our scientists first…
Tatiana had slid down the wall in boredom, the kitten still clinging doggedly to her back in an uneasy stalemate, before the ship finished ranting about an ancient disease that probably only affected aliens anyway.
And so We put everything We had into building sixteen arks, Our last hope to survive the onslaught— The ship hesitated. Merciful Aanaho. Again, you didn’t hear a single thing We just said, did you?!
“This little bastard’s metal claws really hurt,” Tatiana growled bitterly. “Oh, and I’m bleeding out from my leg and my hand. Made it hard to concentrate.”
For the first time since she’d met it, the ship cursed, and Tatiana got a vivid image of herself and the kitten becoming one as they were crushed into paste upon rapid deceleration against one of the ship’s walls. Tatiana felt her stomach churn, then when she looked down, the slashes on her arms and hands were gone. A moment later, the kitten vanished from under her, only to appear again a few feet away, its formerly cute little twitchy pink nose and scarred-up ear and muzzle now soaked red with her blood. Tatiana narrowed her eyes.
The kitten narrowed his.
Tatiana scooped up the dragonfly katana from beside Milar’s sleeping form and yanked the blade free. “You wanna go, you demonic plushie?” she demanded, waving her new sword around. “Bring it!”
The kitten immediately hurled itself at her with another yowl.
Before it reached her, a huge gray paw batted it out of the air, throwing it to the far side of the room as the huge gray jaggle lunged between them with a roar.
Keeton, I told you to stay with your siblings! Sekhmet turned its back to Tatiana and her sword as if they didn’t even exist, glaring down at its wayward spawn. What in the bowels of the Tritons’ seven unholy factories are you doing here?
She smells funny, Mom.
We are aware of that. Go home. I’ll deal with the cyborg.
Immediately, the kitten’s puffed-out fur flattened back to its normal, matted state. But Mom… the kitten whined.
Go! Now!
Grumbling, the kitten hung its head and started slinking from the room—pausing only long enough to turn and give Tatiana a narrow-eyed look of pure, psychotic malevolence. Then, at a hiss from its mother, it yelped and bounded away.
And you, the mother jaggle snapped, turning her attention to Tatiana. You were going to slice at my son with a sword?! Her purple eyes and striped face were filled with fury.
“No,” Tatiana blurted, quickly lowering the sword behind her back. “I was just…uh…practicing. He was helping me practice.”
I’ll deal with you in a couple days, twit, the jaggle snarled. Then, scowling, it stalked closer. And until then, if you touch my son again, you lose the hand.
“He attacked me!” Tatiana cried. “He was the instigator! I’m the innocent one here.”
There was zero understanding in the creature’s amethyst eyes as they scowled back at her. The only innocent here is my son. That’s why I’ll let him eat your heart, once the hiveship perishes and I come to slice it out of your chest. Then, without another word, the jaggle stalked away.
Tatiana blinked at the creature’s back. “So, uh,” she said, once it was gone, “any chance you could wake up my friend, here, so I can show him that armory? Please?”
Encephalon gave her no indication that it had heard. Instead, it said, Now that We’ve had a chance to study your biology, We’ve calculated your relative age at two and a half molt-cycles. The image of you was delivered a little over eleven molt-cycles ago. Your body doesn’t retain the telltale impressions of long-term stasis, maybe only two thirds of a molt-cycle, tops, yet the image of you is unmistakable, and obviously older than you are. Perhaps you would like to explain?
“Erm,” Tatiana said, glancing down at Milar, who continued to snore loudly, a la alien hiveship roofie. Sensing a chance to get her badass to the armory, she said, “Honestly, I think he’d be your better bet to explain the weird shit. His brother was the one drawing the images.” Though, if a molt-cycle was twelve and a half years, that meant the image had been made about a hundred and forty years ago—before Patrick, Milar, or Tatiana had even been born.
The ship considered. “Is that the father of your child?”
Tatiana blinked, then threw back her head and laughed. “No, I don’t think so. I just met the guy.”
Encephalon took a moment, then said, As you were sleeping, We took the time to study your biological makeup, and We found an anomaly in what appears to be your reproductive organs, growing at an almost exponential rate. Immediately, a screen appeared on a normal-looking wall beside her, showing cells dividing. Here, We will progress it further with Our estimate of what is happening, biologically. The cells continued to split at super-speed, until a tiny lizard-thing began to take shape, and from that, a bulb-headed little bab—
“The bastard,” Tatiana breathed.
However, with your current tech placement and node alignment, We don’t see how it could possibly survive past one and a half purge-cycles without killing you both. Hopefully, this is a well-understood issue and the parasite is removed before it expands to the point it displaces your upgrades.
Tatiana swallowed hard. “Shit,” she whispered, glancing down at the sleeping collie. “Shit, shit.”
But We’re confident you have contingencies to deal with that, so We’ll move on, as We have very limited time. Right now, since you’ve made it clear you are disinterested in discussing matters of universal importance, how about We talk about the time-space anomaly that dropped the figurine into your pocket. Only certain archons were ever able to manage the time-space jumps, but actually disrupting matter of a dimension was the realm of a very, select few. Which archon do you know?
Still stuck on the idea of exponentially-growing parasites, Tatiana frowned. “Huh?”
The archon novus that put the figurine in your pocket. He has to have known you in his own lifetime to be able to follow your life-thread. This suggests to Us that perhaps some Aashaanti still survive. Which one is it? Have you met him or her yet?
“Wait wait wait wait,” Tatiana said. “Let’s go back to the part where you said I was pregnant.”
Let’s not, Encephalon said, clearly perturbed, because, at this point, your lack of interest in things of universal importance is beginning to translate to a lack of Our interest in your ability to breathe. Who is the archon who left the object, and how do We contact him?
Tatiana frowned. “What object?”
There was total silence. Then, like it was talking to a lobotomized chimp, In your pocket. The object the infant quadrupe
d was trying to retrieve when you went to stop it. An archon novus left it for you while you slept, too quickly for Us to contact him.
Tatiana slapped at her chest and felt a palm-sized lump in her left chest pocket. Frowning, she reached under her overshirt, unzipped the pocket, and pulled out a silver object that looked like a confused representation of modern art. It was obviously a piece of meteorite, with the typical Widmanstätten crisscrossing pattern of flashing, interlocking metal crystals on the two sheared and polished surfaces. One half of the meteorite had a vaguely familiar circular military unit emblem carved into it, along with the words Die With Honor, Rise With Fury, which melded into a weird insect-bird statuette vaguely representing the bird hieroglyph Kitty had shown her on the other face.
“Uh,” Tatiana said, staring down at it. “That’s…not mine.”
Apparently it is, since an interdimensional traveler quite clearly took the trouble to put it in your pocket, Encephalon said. The ship sounded almost…jealous?
First a cool sword with her picture, now a weird metal nugget with the emblem of a military unit with a martyrdom complex and an alien insect-bird.
Aanaho Ineriho, the ship snapped. That is an archon, you silly creature. Only the archons ever grow wings. It was from ancient times, when they needed to fly in order to colonize other hivesites.
“Oh yeah?” Tatiana demanded. “That archon thingie that Kitty showed me didn’t have wings.
Archon wings are an obsolete biological adaptation and have been trimmed in development for thousands of molt-cycles, now. They’re merely symbolic.
“Oh.” Tatiana looked down at the bird-bug emblem, then flipped the meteorite over to the obviously human military insignia carved into the other side. Die with honor, rise with fury… Why was that ringing a bell? The picture polished into the meteorite was of the head of a snarling dog inset into the outline of a multi-rayed sun. Damn it was tingling something from one of her old academy classes, something her obscure-details-obsessed Wartime History teacher had forced her to take a test on once…