Nebula Nights: Love Among The Stars

by Melisse Aires

  “You’ve gotta get up.”

  He groaned and lifted his hand. “You’re going to have to help me.”

  “Then we’re doomed.”

  “No. A giantess like you?”

  She kicked him in the ribs and he rose, chuckling, with her smiling assistance. He reached for the door, but she jerked him back in, damn near stumbling back through the hole.

  “What is it?” His eyes followed her dusty, muddy, crap-stained fingers, to a tube of sani-cloths in the corner. Gian took a handful of the thick, preloaded rags and dragged them over his skin. He tossed the tunic when she put a clean hand on his shoulder.

  “Let me.” She tending to him with the softest of touches and he returned the favor. Even though they were near naked by the end of it, there were no licentious intentions in their actions.

  Biology proved that his thoughts were less pure, but she could tell he was trying to avoid making her uncomfortable. “Any clues where the shuttles are stored? They didn’t have the permissions to move mine. Safe bet says the storm toasted it.”

  “I arrived the same way you did, outside the facility. I’ve explored most of this building and I know where the cruisers and rovers are, but shuttles?” She shrugged and shook her head. “No clue.”

  “If I were doing something like this, I’d keep them off-site and hidden too. This might sting.” Gian groaned when she sucked air as the gel hit an open wound. He blew on it before leaving a light kiss just above it. “You’ll be in bubbling spa waters soon with a very dashing sheriff at your beck and call. I meant what I said.”

  “I know you’re going to get me out.”

  “I was referring to the ‘balls deep’ thing.”

  That earned him another laugh and lighthearted smack. She nibbled on her lip, before wiping his mouth with a sani-towel and took in the best thing she’d seen, felt, or tasted in the last three days. His lips were full and welcoming. “You taste like antiseptic, your two-day beard is itchy and you need to burn your pants.”

  “You taste like heaven… and a doctor’s office.” He pressed her against the wall and dove in for more. Her mouth was eager at not just tasting, but savoring. He shifted his still-clothed and wretchedly disgusting covered right leg between her bare ones.

  At least he tried to.

  Instead he slipped, his boots losing the fight between shit and floor. Gian skidded back. The upturned toilet broke his fall. He gasped once, then said nothing more.

  “Gian?”

  She dropped to her knees and tried again. “Giancarlo? Please, I need you to say something.” Solia put two shaking fingers to his pulse. Thready, but not dangerously so. She stepped over him to get the few remaining sani-towels. Hands, still unsteady, lifted his head. A small cut in the skin, but no broken bones. She could, however, feel the beginnings of a knot forming.

  “I need you to be okay. All right? I can’t do this by myself. I’m scared. This whole time I’ve been nervous and freaked out, but now I’m scared. Please, Gian.”

  She wrapped one of the sani-towels around his head, but he needed full antibacterials and not just for this latest catastrophe. She and Gian had just traipsed through sewers with open wounds and abrasions. They needed antibiotic shots and multiple rounds of them.

  “Get up. Get. Up.” When he didn’t respond, she tried shaking him, rocking his body, pinching and pulling at his arms. “You don’t have time for this. We’re too close to being free.”

  A low groan erupted from his body. “Death by pinching.”

  “Gian?”

  “I’m blind.” “You’re clumsy.” Solia lifted the towel that covered his face. “And stupid.” She sniffed and rubbed her nose against her arm. “You’re a stupid, stupid, man,” she said, kissing him, long and hard, before reminding him: “Stupid.”

  “I kissed you and it knocked me out. That’s a new one.”

  “Don’t try to make me laugh.”

  “At least there’s just one of you now. How long was I out?”

  Forever to her. “Two or three minutes? Fifty-seven? I don’t know. Let me help you up.” She struggled under his weight, fully realizing that when she’d lifted him earlier, it’d been just for show. This was real and he seemed to have very little to dedicate to the cause. He groaned and shuddered, and she slipped herself, but it didn’t slow her.

  “You have a boulder forming on your head and you need meds. I keep a kit in my quarters. It’s closer and there’s less chance of anyone being around there than the medical lab.”

  “We need to get to the garage, Solia.”

  “I know, but we need medicine first, you especially. It’s not that far. “

  “On the way?”

  “Well… not exactly, but we’re not going to do ourselves any favors if infection sets in.”

  Gian cracked his back twice and swore a few more times than that. “No more kissing ’til we’re off this flipping moon. You’re dangerious.”

  “Gian.”

  “My head is exploding, but I’ll live.”

  He pressed his ear against the door, even though his eyes were still crossed. “I don’t hear anything. Let’s go for it.” He opened the door by the smallest of increments, stopping every few moments to listen. “Keep your weapon ready. Which way?”

  “Left.”

  He followed her direction, but insisted on damn near throwing her behind him every time she inched ahead. The idiot was intent on overtaking her for point position despite being half knocked-out and having no clue where he was going. It took her stopping entirely for the big lout to get some sense in him. By the time he’d realized she was no longer trailing behind him and came back, she was leaning against the wall, arms folded with a gun in her hand.

  “That was stupid,” he sputtered, red faced and glaring.

  “You charging ahead? Yes, it was.”

  “I was referring to you being left alone with killer clones. Maybe you’re used to it. Don’t roll your eyes at me. I’m only saying that you can’t possibly know what’s around every corner.”

  “Neither do you. You don’t even know where the next corner is. Get over yourself. I know I need you to get out of here, but you need me too,” she said, jabbing her fingers into his chest.

  He had the grace to look contrite. Or maybe he was about to pass out again. Oh, heavens. She’d been scared crapless at being left alone, not an easy thing given the previous two days.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She let him off the hook with a “you’re welcome” and grabbed his hand as she led the way.

  The corridor leading to her quarters was empty, though her feelings at unlocking the whooshing door were still uncertain. This had been her place of solitude in a crazy situation. A part of her wanted to curl up in bed and pretend it was a dream. “It feels so normal in here.”

  “Smell your shoes.” Gian walked past her and over to her clear desk. “What’s your comp code?”

  She called out the password while he retrieved the desk-wide screen and plugged away. “What are the odds that we can stay in my room and wait for rescue?”

  “Zero. If they’ve learned how to march, they may have learned how to clear and sweep rooms. Anyway, after what I’m sending the agency now, I wouldn’t be surprised if the feds blasted the whole place out of existence.”

  She nearly dropped the clanking vials she carried as a horrifying thought hit her. “Please don’t tell me you’ve sent anything yet.”

  “Because,” he asked, hands frozen midair.

  “They don’t deserve to die—not all of them. Plus, what if this thing went higher than Mol or Lee? She was right about one thing, those laws were written way too loosely to prevent something like this from happening. I’m not saying you can’t trust them all, but—”

  “I don’t know which ones to trust. How are your contacts?”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  He leaned back and plopped his feet on her desk. “Right. We don’t need a solution. We just need a ride.” Gian dismis
sed the message and pulled up a map of Enceladus while she poked him with antibiotic and antiviral filled syringes. “Where on here— Ow!”

  “Sorry. Three more.”

  “I’ve been hurt every eight minutes since I caught up with you. Try to focus on the map for a minute. Where on here are they less likely to be? The clones, I mean.”

  Another eyebrow.

  “Right.” Gian grimaced and enlarged the map to the point that half the room glowed orange and blue. At the very bottom, near the user signature, he added in a series of numbers. Nothing changed. He tried again, still nothing. He pulled Solia into his lap. “Type in the code Mol told us. Ow! C’mon!”

  “Last one.” She set down her tools of torture and recited the code as she’d remembered it. A second layer rose, superimposing itself over the previous image.

  “So that’s why we practice codes in silence. Did I just save the day, Gian? Again?”

  “Don’t let it go to your head. We’re still covered in shit and surrounded by killer clones.”

  Gian pulled up the message center once more, this time sending a request for a shuttle with shoes, clothes, food, and water to be sent to a set of coordinates forty-seven miles out. “The message should be received in an hour and the shuttle should get here in about three days. Assuming the right person gets it.” He pointed to a location on the map. “That’s where we need to be for pickup. I’m going to make use of the necessary. You have water or gel running through here?”

  “Both, but gel makes the least amount of noise with our systems.”

  After he disappeared behind the screen, she allowed herself a few seconds to appreciate his silhouette before turning her attention to stuffing every smidgen of secreted food, meds and bagged water she could find. She didn’t waste space for clothes, though she did grab the blanket from her bed.

  There was a click and a soft ping as the bathing capsule opened. Gian emerged, clean from head to boot and perfectly shaved. She gave herself a mental shake.

  He, meanwhile, lifted his arm and grimaced. “I smell like my granny’s garden.”

  “My sincerest apologies. The gel we get here only comes in to two scents: medicine and roses. Let me have a sniff.”

  He walked over and gathered her in his arms. “Hmph. I see you’ve been packing. Good. We need extra medicine, food, blankets—”

  “Check, check, and check. I don’t have anything for fire though.”

  “That’s probably for the best. No sense giving the clones a map to find us. You reek of crap.”

  Solia pulled away, tugging at her ragged clothes. “I should take care of this.”

  “No kidding. Now that I smell like a human being, I’m raising my standards a little.”

  She swatted but couldn’t disagree. “One last thing before I hop in. No sleeping, mister. There’s a cold mat over there. Apply a head pack and I’ll be right out.”

  “Fine, fine. Just hurry up.”

  The instant the cleansing blast hit her, the layers of filth started to peel away, but the clinging heartache remained. He’d come to save her, even after all this time. She should have never let him go. Too soon the capsule chimed, announcing that both she and her clothes were ready for the day.

  But she wasn’t.

  She’d stepped out of that capsule dozens of times, ready for a meeting with Mol or to review charts of her human clients. Not now and not ever again.

  Solia waited for tears to fall for Mol and Lee and for she and Gian too. Here, semi privately, was the place for it, but she had none left.

  “Everything good?”

  “No.” For what she knew would be the last time, Solia went to her closet and changed out of the ragged, if now clean, uniform. She opted for a tunic and long trousers, happy to avoid lab coats for the rest of her life.

  “Before we go, any other weapons here?”

  “I know they keep a couple on the rovers.”

  “They’ll have to do then.” Gian threw the lopsided pack over the crossed axes on his back and opened the door. “You ready to do this?”

  “What choice do we have?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Solia took the lead while he protected her rear. He still didn’t love the idea of her being in front, but they made it work. After the first three corners, they’d silently locked onto a method of clearing halls. She’d drop to her knees and turn left while he leaned over her to cover the right. He’d never clicked so quickly with anyone in the field before. The woman moved with a natural grace. Shame she wasted it on medicine. She belonged on the force…and with him.

  They made it to a stairwell that overlooked the power and control center. Clear tubes filled with liquid, others with gas, bubbled below them, though they didn’t see any clones. “Beyond this room is a chamber were they keep some of them.”

  “So you brought us this way on purpose? Unbelievable.”

  “Yeah, but… but on the other side of that is a storage room that’s a shortcut to the garage. From their perspective, if you were going to shake off the chains, wouldn’t you start with literally taking off the chains? This would have been the first place they came through to liberate others.”

  “Who’s to say they didn’t stay?”

  She nibbled her bottom lip and a shadow crossed her face. “If they got out, they wouldn’t return. It’s the kind of place you run from and never look back. Rooms like that one are all over this place, spaced out. This was the first one I found when I got here. I tried coming back, but they restricted my access. I can’t believe anything’s changed for the better, though. If they’re here, I promise it’s because they weren’t able to free themselves. I’ll type in Mol’s code when you’re ready.”

  They wove through the pipes and containers, following the only path. He was glad for her height, her head rose inches above the pipes, minimizing what others might have classified as a claustrophobic experience.

  They’d hooked another left when ear-splitting sirens cracked the air and the room exploded with alternating colors of red and white. Hand in hand, they ran toward a control panel against the wall. “It’s overheating. Big time,” he said.

  Solia pointed to a screen two panels away. “Looks like they jump-started the system after the storm, but something, or certain half-formed someones, prevented them from down-jumping it before it overloaded. We’ve gotta move.”

  Gian grabbed her hand and jerked her toward the door. The once innocuous water not only glared red in the lighting, but it now bubbled as it traveled in the pipes around them. He didn’t want to be anywhere close when they blew. Mol’s code got them through the next door, but Solia’s shriek signaled that they weren’t alone.

  Cage after stacked cage of dead and dying clones towered ahead of them. There was a low-pitched groaning, not coming from Solia’s direction. Weren’t these ones supposed to be silent? More wailing, actual crying, and very high-pitched. Too high-pitched. “Please don’t tell me…”

  But Solia had already released the death grip on his hand. “My god.”

  “Don’t go over there.”

  “I have to see. Gian, it sounds like—”

  “I know—”

  “A baby.”

  Gian went to pull her back, but one of the caged clones latched on to his neck. The thing slammed him repeatedly against the bars. He reached for the gun at his waist, but another clone, maybe two, held his hands.

  Half-broken guttural sounds escaped his compressed and aching throat when he tried calling out to her. Something warm traveled down his neck and he knew his head wound had reopened. When he looked up again, Solia was there, fists flying to the creature over his head. The grip on his neck slid down enough for him to whisper, “Knife, no gun.”

  The hands holding Gian’s left arm let go under Solia’s bladed assault. He pulled his whole body free and jerked Solia down to the floor with him, scooting away from the bars. They spent several seconds on their hands and knees, surrounded by caged clones, trying to get their minds back in th
e game. At least that’s what Gian thought she was doing. He was just trying to get in a decent lungful of air. After a minute or two, it hit him that Solia was talking.

  “It’s impossible. I looked over the data myself. A lot of work was done to make sure they weren’t able to reproduce. This is more than a mutation. It has to be. They made gendered clones. Damn that woman.”

  He’d been to all of the inhabited areas: Earth, Mars, Venus, Europa, Titan, and now here. The one constant he’d picked up was that no matter where man went, man found a way to survive. Each and every time. “We’ll never know. Evolution? Gumption? We always make it.” He cleared his throat and a million daggers stabbed his neck. He massaged it as he rose and croaked out, “Not science, destiny. Man always survives.”

  “But these are clones.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “This isn’t happening.”

  “That’s not a game we have time to play, baby.” He walked to the far door and started pulling.

  “I tried to get the baby, but they went crazy. It’s like they wanted to kill me.”

  “Of course they did. What would you do if someone tried to rip your child out of your arms? Let’s go.” He held out his hand, but she didn’t take it. “Solia?”

  “We can’t just leave it here.”

  “They’ll kill us before they let us have it. Take my hand, Solia.”

  But she’d folded her arms and backed away. She was digging in for a fight, a fight that would only end badly.

  “No.”

  “I’m not going to leave him, it, whatever that thing is, locked in a cage in a building that’s going to blow at any moment. We have to at least give them a chance.” Solia rummaged through her pack, came up with several meal bags, and threw them near the front of the cage where the tiny clone wailed. He didn’t bother asking what she was going to do. He could see the stupid written on her face from here. Sure enough, she opened the door that led to the still-blaring and red-lit power center and laid more of their food against the frame. “I need you to shoot that cage open the second we get into the garage.”