An Accidental Goddess
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Another dark, humid, stinking alley. Another nil-tech planet. What a surprise.
Commander Jorie Mikkalah automatically cataloged her surroundings as she absently rubbed her bare arm. Thousands of needle-pricks danced across her skin. Only her vision was unaffected by the dispersing and reassembling of her molecules, courtesy of the Personnel Matter Transporter—her means of arrival in the alley only moments before.
The ocular over her right eye eradicated the alley’s murky gloom, enhancing the moonlight so she could clearly see the shards of broken glass and small rusted metal cylinders strewn in a haphazard trail across the hard surface under her and her team’s boots.
Another dark, humid, stinking, filthy alley. Jorie amended her initial appraisal of her location as a breeze filtered past, sending one of the metal cylinders tumbling, clanking hollowly.
She checked her scanner even though no alarm had sounded. But it would take a few more seconds yet for her body to adjust to the aftereffects of the PMaT, and for her equilibrium to segue from the lighter gravity of an intergalactic battle cruiser to the heavier gravity of a Class-F5 world. It wouldn’t do to fall flat on her face trying to defend her team if a zombie appeared.
She swiveled toward them. “You two all right?”
Tamlynne Herryck’s sharp features relaxed under her short cap of dark red curls as she managed a nod. “Fine, sir.”
Low mechanical rumblings echoed behind Jorie. She shot a quick glance over her shoulder, saw nothing threatening at the alleyway opening. Only the expected metallic land vehicles, lighted front and aft, moving slowly past.
Herryck was scrubbing at her face with the side of her hand when Jorie turned back. The ever-efficient lieutenant had been under Jorie’s command for four years; she knew how to work through the PMaT experience.
Ensign Jacare Trenat, however, was as green as the liaso hedges on Paroo’s lush southern islands, and looked more than a bit dazed from the transit.
“Optimum,” replied Trenat when Jorie turned to him, straightening his shoulders, trying hard not to twitch. Or fall over.
Jorie bit back an amused snort of disbelief and caught Herryck’s eye. A corner of Herryck’s mouth quirked up in response. They both knew this was Trenat’s third dirtside mission; perhaps his sixth PMaT experience.
After eight years with the Guardian Force, Jorie had lost track of how much time she’d logged through the PMaT, having her molecules haphazardly spewed through some planet’s atmosphere. She’d seen stronger officers than the broad-shouldered ensign leave their lunch on the ground after a transit. The itching and disorientation would drive him crazy for a few more trips.
At least it was a standard transit and not an emergency one. Even she was known to land on her rump after one of those.
“Are we where we’re supposed to be, Lieutenant?” she asked as Herryck flipped open her scanner. The screen blinked to life with a greenish-yellow glow.
“Confirming location now, sir.”
Jorie glanced again at the scanner she’d kept in her left hand through the entire transport, power on, shielding at full. If it beeped, her laser would be in her right hand, set for hard-terminate. Recent intelligence reported the chilling fact that some zombies had acquired the ability to sense a Guardian’s tech, even through shields.
That’s why she and her team were in this stinking, filthy alleyway, on this backward, nil-tech planet the natives aptly named after dirt.
They were hunting zombies.
Because zombies were hunting them.
“Confirmed, Commander.” Herryck squinted at the screen with her unshielded eye. Trenat stepped closer to her, viewing the data as she did. “Bahia Vista, Florida state. Nation of American States United.”
A subtropical area, according to the Guardian agent who was on active hunt status here for three planetary months. An agent whose reports had ceased without explanation two days ago. Jorie knew from experience what that could portend. She’d seen it before with agents and trackers who thought they could solve a rogue herd situation alone. One tracker against one zombie had a chance. An agent with basic tracker training might live long enough to escape. But if there was more than one zombie or if the agent was caught unawares…It was the latter she feared.
She’d known Danjay Wain for more than a dozen years—he was a friend of her older brother’s—and she’d worked with him as a Mission Agent for almost three. In spite of his teasing prankster ways—he and Galin were so much alike—he was a conscientious agent with a quick mind and an insatiable curiosity about tracker procedures.
She dreaded now that during their many sessions over a wedge and brew in the crew lounge, she’d either taught him too much about her job—or not enough.
“Think he’s alive, sir?” Herryck’s quiet question echoed her thoughts. No surprise, that. Danjay Wain was her teammate as well. His sudden silence bothered Herryck as much as it bothered Jorie.
She huffed out a short breath. “I hope so. Any response from his transcomm yet?”
Herryck squinted at her screen, tapped the query code again, then shook her head. “Still no answer.”
Damn. She so wanted the problem to be one of distance, of the ship in orbit, atmospheric interference…anything. Anything but what her gut told her was true. Galin would not take any bad news about his longtime friend well. “How far are we from his last signal?”
“Twelve point two marks, sir.”
Twelve marks? Jorie directed a scowl upward, even though there was no way the PMaT chief on board the Sakanah could see her. All right. I can deal with one stinking alley after another, she railed silently at the chief. I know we can’t just materialize anywhere we want without setting the native nil-techs on edge. But, damn your hide, Ronna, twelve marks! On foot. Let’s forget the fact that this is a time-critical mission. Let’s forget the fact that we have an agent missing. Do I look like I’m dressed for sightseeing?
She was in standard hot-weather tracker gear: sleeveless shirt, shorts, knee-high duraboots, socks, and a right arm technosleeve so she could multitask her units if she had to. Two G-1 laser pistols were shoulder-holstered left and right. A Hazer micro-rifle slanted across her back. In the side of her right boot rested a sonic-blade. Not to mention her utility belt with her MOD-tech—her Mech-Organic Data scanner—and transcomm. Her headset with its ocular and mouth-mike striped her hair like a dark band. She’d need that to target the zombies once a warning sounded.
Hot-weather gear notwithstanding, she was definitely not dressed for a leisurely twelve-mark sightseeing stroll.
“Sir?”
“We have to acquire transportation,” she told Herryck, taking a few steps toward the alley’s entrance, then stopping. And Ronna needed to recalibrate her tiny seeker ’droids to provide landing coordinates better suited to humanoids.
As for Trenat…she turned back to him. “Relax, Ensign.” In the light of the almost full moon overhead, she could see the stiff tension in the young man’s shoulders under his tracker shirt. He hadn’t taken his hand off his laser pistol since they arrived. “There’s not a zombie within fifty marks of this place.”
Yet. But there would be. There were close to three hundred on planet, per Danjay’s last report. It was the largest herd the Guardians had found to date. The zombies’ Controller, their C-Prime, had to be straining its capabilities to direct all the drones.
That also meant the zombie’s sensenet was large. They’d probably already detected the energy from her team’s PMaT and were alerted to an off-world transport. But PMaT trails faded quickly. As long as her team’s MOD-tech stayed shielded, they were safe.
“Transportation,” Herryck thumbed down Danjay’s data on her scanner screen. “L
and vehicles powered by combustion engines. Fossil-petroleum fueled. Local term is car.”
Jorie had read the reports. No personal air transits; at least, not for internal city use. Damn nil-techs. A four-seater gravripper would be very convenient right now. Pure bliss. She resumed her trek toward the alley’s entrance, waving her team to follow. “Let’s go find one of those cars.”
“City population is less than three hundred thousand humans.” Herryck dutifully read as she came up behind Jorie. “The surrounding region contains approximately one million.”
In her eight years as a Guardian, Jorie had worked cities larger and smaller. Six months ago Kohrkin, a medium-sized city on Delos-5, held seven hundred thousand humanoids. A herd of eighty zombies had reduced the population to three hundred fifty thousand by the time the Sakanah was alerted. Jorie, Herryck, and two other commanders went dirtside with a full battle squadron. Their mission was successful. But the lives of those she couldn’t save always haunted her.
She thought she’d seen death as a pilot in the Kedrian Marines fighting in the Tresh Border Wars, ten years past. That was civilized warfare compared to what the Guardians faced with the zombies.
Unless you were a pilot taken prisoner by the Tresh. Her fingers automatically rose to the long, bumpy scar just below her collarbone as Herryck continued to recite the facts Danjay had provided. And, as always, Jorie’s stomach clenched. A memento—a very special one she couldn’t afford to think about now. She had other problems. Serious ones, if something had happened to Danjay.
The stickiness of the air and the sharp stench of rotting garbage faded. Jorie paused cautiously at the darkened alley entrance, assessing the landscape—the street dotted with silent land vehicles, all pointing in the same direction, lights extinguished; black shadows of thin trees jutting now and then in between; the uneven rows of low buildings, two-story, five-story, a few taller. Two much taller ones—twenty stories or more—glowed with a few uneven rectangles of light far down to her right.
Judging from the brief flashes of light between the buildings, and tinny echoes of sound, most of the city’s activity appeared to be a street or so in front of her. At least Ronna’s seeker ’droid analyzed that correctly. Materializing in the midst of a crowd of nil-techs while dressed in full tracker gear had proven to be patently counterproductive.
A bell clanged hollowly to her left. Trenat, beside her, stiffened. She didn’t, but tilted her head toward the sound, curious. As the third gong pealed she guessed it wasn’t a warning system and remembered reading about a nil-tech method of announcing the time.
She didn’t know local time, didn’t care. Unlike the Tresh, humanoids here had no naturally enhanced night sight. It was only important that it was dark and would continue to be dark for a while yet. She and her team needed that, dressed as they were, if they were going to find out what had happened to Agent Wain.
The bell pealed eight more times then fell silent. A fresh breeze drifted over her skin. She caught a salty tang in the air.
“…is situated on a peninsula that is bordered on one side by a large body of water known as Bay Tampa.” Herryck was still reading. “On the other…”
Gulf of Mexico, Jorie knew, tuning her out. Data was Herryck’s passion.
Zombie hunting was Jorie’s.
But first, she had to appropriate a car and find her agent and her brother’s longtime friend, Danjay Wain.
“Weird, huh?” Antonio Martinez’s voice held an unusual note of amazement.
Homicide Detective Sergeant Theo Petrakos shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks and nodded mutely in answer to his former partner’s comment. There definitely was something weird about the dead, withered body of the man sprawled faceup on the floor. His skin looked like crisp parchment that had been shrink-wrapped over his bones. His T-shirt lay loosely on his frame; his sweat pants seemed overlarge. His red hair, though, was thick, full, healthy. Not sparse, like the hair of the mummy the dead man resembled.
Worse, his eyeballs were still, well, moist. They bulged from his face like two large, wet dimple-less golf balls.
Theo had never heard of a mummy with wet eyeballs. But then, this man was no ancient mummy. Mummification of a body took at least a year under normal circumstances. The landlord had last seen the deceased—one Dan J. Wayne, according to the documents Martinez and Detective Amy Holloway had found in the bungalow—alive and well two days ago.
Theo had heard of spontaneous combustion. But spontaneous mummification?
Crime scene technicians in protective overalls prowled around the small apartment’s living room, photographing, dusting for prints, snagging samples. Judging from their comments, they were as puzzled as he, Martinez, and Holloway were.
They couldn’t even definitively say that this was a homicide.
All they did know was what the landlord—a wizened old mejicano who lived next door—had told Martinez and Holloway: he was walking his poodle after the six o’clock news when he noticed the broken front window on his rental property. When his knock on the door brought no response, he peered in. Then, voice shaking, Señor Santiago had called the police on his cell phone. First officers to arrive on scene found clear signs of a struggle in the overturned, broken furniture and torn draperies.
But the struggle didn’t seem to leave any corresponding injuries on the dead man on the floor. And there was no evidence of who—or what—he had struggled with. If anything.
For all Theo knew, the dead man was running around like a whirling dervish, demolishing his own living room before falling to the floor in a mummified state.
That would fit with the pattern of shattered glass from the window. Fragments were scattered outside onto the bushes. Not inside, onto the floor. The window wasn’t broken by someone coming in, but by something—which included a portion of a wooden end table, from all appearances—going out.
The other half of the table was sticking out from under the sagging blue couch.
Theo hunkered down on his heels next to the body and snagged a pair of plastic gloves from a nearby evidence kit. Carefully, he plucked at the neck of the man’s T-shirt, then the sleeves.
“Maybe you shouldn’t get too close to Mr. Crunchy.” Martinez, still standing, leaned back as if Theo’s touching the corpse might cause it to burst, sending lethal chunks flying in his direction. “Might be some kind of virus. Contagious. A new SARS strain or something.”
In the fifteen years that he and Martinez had worked for the Bahia Vista PD, Theo had seen the wiry man fearlessly dodge any number of flying fists, speeding cars, and even, a few times, bullets. Diseases, however, were another issue entirely. Martinez was probably the sole reason local vitamin stores made any profits. And how he stayed married to a doctor was a source of continual speculation.
Theo continued his examination. “SARS is respiratory, not dermatological.”
“So what do we got? Some Satanic cult who thinks the Christmas holidays are Halloween, killing people by draining their blood?”
“Not sure.” He frowned, then looked up. “Hey, Liza, you see this?”
The stocky blond crime-scene photographer squatted down next to him with a grunt. “You mean those marks on the side of his head?” she asked. “Yeah. Got those when Holloway rolled him.”
“They line up. Almost like a large pronged vise grabbed him.”
“Like this?” She pulled off her hair clip and clicked it in his face. It was a plastic half-moon curve, spring-loaded with rows of teeth.
He took it, turning it over in his hand. “Like this, but big enough to cover his head.”
“Saw that happen on a construction site, once.” She retrieved the clip from his fingers, twisted her long hair into a bun at the back of her head, and clamped the clip over it. “Guy’s skull was crushed. Lots of blood, gray matter. Don’t have that here.”
No, they didn’t. Not even a puncture. Just some barely discernible bruises.
“So, how are your holidays so far,
Theo?” Liza was still squatting next to him.
He shrugged. “Fine,” he lied. “Yours?”
“Kids are up to their eyes in toys they don’t need, as usual. And they can’t even get to the ones under the tree for three days yet.” She nudged him with her elbow and grinned. “My husband’s cousin Bonnie is in town through the holidays. She’s a couple years younger than you, thirty-four or thirty-five, single. Real cute. Like you.” She winked. “You’re clocking out for a week’s vacation, right?”
He nodded, reluctantly. He had wondered why she asked about his schedule earlier. Now, he had a feeling he knew.
“Why don’t you come by the house tomorrow night, say hi to Mark and the kids, meet Bonnie?”
He rose. She stood with him. Liza Walters was, as his mother used to say, good people. She meant well. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. But ever since he’d divorced Camille last year, Liza had joined the ranks of friends and coworkers trying to make sure Theo Petrakos didn’t spend his nights alone.
“Thanks. I mean that. But I’ve got some things to do.”
“How about the day after, then? I’m sure you’ll like her. Then you could come with us to the New Year’s fireworks at Bayshore Park.” She raised her chin toward Martinez. “You too, Tony. Unless Suzanne has other plans?”
“New Year’s Eve is always at her sister’s house.” Martinez splayed his hands outward in a gesture of helplessness. “One of those things where I don’t have a choice.”
Liza briefly laid her hand on Theo’s arm. “Think about it. You need to have some fun. Forget about the bitch.”
He smiled grimly. Forgetting about the bitch wasn’t the problem. Trusting another woman was. “I’ll let you know.”
“That Bonnie sounds real nice,” Martinez intoned innocently as Liza went back to photographing a splintered bookcase. “Thirty-five’s not too young for you. I mean, you’re not even fifty.”
Theo shot a narrow-eyed glance at the shorter man. “Forty-three. And don’t you start on me, too.”
Martinez grinned affably. “So what are your plans for tomorrow night, old man?”
Games of Command Page 41