Cormorant Run

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Another shiver roiled through him, but he kept it inside. Don’t think on the sidhe. You know it puts you in a mood.

  Clyde perked up a little. “If you don’t want it. How come you bring ’em if you don’t want ’em?”

  Insurance. Always bring something to barter with. Jeremiah dug in his lunchbag. He’d almost forgotten he’d crumpled most of the brown paper in his fist. Daisy always sent him to work with a carefully packed lunch, but the collection of retro metal boxes she’d found at Goodwill and Salvation Army were all gone now. If he hadn’t thrown them away he had stamped on them, crushing each piece with the same boots he was wearing now. “Habit. Put ’em in the bag each time.”

  She’d done sandwiches, too, varying to keep them interesting. Turkey. Chicken. Good old PB&J, two of them to keep him fueled. Hard-boiled eggs with a twist of salt in waxed paper, carefully quartered apples bathed in lemon juice to keep them from browning, home-baked goodies. Banana bread, muffins, she’d even gone through a sushi phase once until he’d let it slip that he didn’t prefer raw fish.

  I just thought, you’re so smart and all. Ain’t sushi what smart people eat? And her laugh at his baffled look. She often made little comments like that, as if … well, she never knew of the sidhe, but she considered him a creature from a different planet just the same.

  “Oh.” Clyde took the Hostess apple pie, his entire face brightening. “Just don’t stand too near that edge, Gallow. You fall off and I’ll have L&I all over me.”

  “Not gonna.” It was hard taking the next few steps away from the edge. His heels landed solidly, and the wind stopped keening across rebar and concrete. Or at least, the sound retreated. “Haven’t yet.”

  “Always a first time. Hey, me and Panko are going out for beers after. You wanna?” The waxed wrapper tore open, and Clyde took a huge mouthful of sugar that only faintly resembled the original apple.

  “Sure.” It was Friday, the start of a long weekend. If he went home he was only going to eat another TV dinner, or nothing at all, and sit staring at the fist-sized hole in the television screen, in his messy living room.

  Ridiculous. Why did they call it that? Nobody did any living in there.

  “Okay.” Clyde gave him another odd look, and Jeremiah had a sudden vision of smashing his fist into the old man’s face. The crunch of bone, the gush of blood, the satisfaction of a short sharp action. The foreman wasn’t even a sidhe, to require an exchange of names beforehand.

  I’m mortal now. Best to remember it. Besides, the foreman wasn’t to blame for anything. Guiltless as only a mortal could be.

  “Better get back to work,” Jeremiah said instead, and tossed his crumpled lunchbag into the cut-down trash barrel hulking near the lift. “Gotta earn those beers.”

  Clyde had his mouth full, and Jeremiah was glad. If the man said another word, he wasn’t sure he could restrain himself. There was no good reason for the rage, except the fact that he’d been brought back from the brink, and reminded he was only a simulacrum of a mortal man.

  Again.

  If you enjoyed

  CORMORANT RUN,

  look out for

  SIX WAKES

  by

  Mur Lafferty

  A space adventure set on a lone ship where the clones of a murdered crew must find their murderer—before they kill again.

  It was not common to awaken in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood.

  At least, Maria Arena had never experienced it. She had no memory of how she died. That was also new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died.

  Maria’s vat was in the front of six vats, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it could awaken. And Maria wasn’t the only one to die recently …

  THIS IS NOT A PIPE

  Day 1

  July 25, 2493

  Sound struggled to make its way through the thick synthamneo fluid. Once it reached Maria Arena’s ears, it sounded like a chain saw: loud, insistent, and unending. She couldn’t make out the words, but it didn’t sound like a situation she wanted to be involved in.

  Her reluctance at her own rebirth reminded her where she was, and who she was. She grasped for her last backup. The crew had just moved into their quarters on the Dormire, and the cloning bay had been the last room they’d visited on their tour. There they had done their first backup on the ship.

  Maria must have been in an accident or something soon after, killing her and requiring her next clone to wake. Sloppy use of a life wouldn’t make a good impression on the captain, who likely was the source of the angry chain-saw noise.

  Maria finally opened her eyes. She tried to make sense of the dark round globules floating in front of her vat, but it was difficult with the freshly cloned brain being put to work for the first time. There were too many things wrong with such a mess.

  With the smears on the outside of the vat and the purple color through the bluish fluid Maria floated in, she figured the orbs were blood drops. Blood shouldn’t float. That was the first problem. If blood was floating, that meant the grav drive that spun the ship had failed. That was probably another reason someone was yelling. The blood and the grav drive.

  Blood in a cloning bay, that was different too. Cloning bays were pristine, clean places, where humans were downloaded into newly cloned bodies when the previous ones had died. It was much cleaner and less painful than human birth, with all its screaming and blood.

  Again with the blood.

  The cloning bay had six vats in two neat rows, filled with blue-tinted synth-amneo fluid and the waiting clones of the rest of the crew. Blood belonged in the medbay, down the hall. The unlikely occurrence of a drop of blood originating in the medbay, floating down the hall, and entering the cloning bay to float in front of Maria’s vat would be extraordinary. But that’s not what happened; a body floated above the blood drops. A number of bodies, actually.

  Finally, if the grav drive had failed, and if someone had been injured in the cloning bay, another member of the crew would have cleaned up the blood. Someone was always on call to ensure a new clone made the transition from death into their new body smoothly.

  No. A perfect purple sphere of blood shouldn’t be floating in front of her face.

  Maria had now been awake for a good minute or so. No one worked the computer to drain the synth-amneo fluid to free her.

  A small part of her brain began to scream at her that she should be more concerned about the bodies, but only a small part.

  She’d never had occasion to use the emergency release valve inside the cloning vats. Scientists had implemented them after some techs had decided to play a prank on a clone, and woke her up only to leave her in the vat alone for hours. When she had gotten free, stories said, the result was messy and violent, resulting in the fresh cloning of some of the techs. After that, engineers added an interior release switch for clones to let themselves out of the tank if they were trapped for whatever reason.

  Maria pushed the button and heard a clunk as the release triggered, but the synth-amneo fluid stayed where it was.

  A drain relied on gravity to help the fluid along its way. Plumbing 101 there. The valve was opened but the fluid remained a stubborn womb around Maria.

  She tried to find the source of the yelling. One of the crew floated near the computer bank, naked, with wet hair stuck out in a frightening, spiky corona. Another clone woke. Two of them had died?

  Behind her, crewmates floated in four vats. All of their eyes were open, and each was searching for the emergency release. Three clunks sounded, but they remained in the same position Maria was in.

  Maria used the other emergency switch to open the vat door. Ideally it would have been used after the fluid had drained away, but there was little ideal about this situation. She and a good quantity of the synth-amneo fluid floated out of her vat, only to collide gently with the orb of blood floating in front of
her. The surface tension of both fluids held, and the drop bounced away.

  Maria hadn’t encountered the problem of how to get out of a liquid prison in zero-grav. She experimented by flailing about, but only made some fluid break off the main bubble and go floating away. In her many lives, she’d been in more than one undignified situation, but this was new.

  Action and reaction, she thought, and inhaled as much of the oxygen-rich fluid as she could, then forced everything out of her lungs as if she were sneezing. She didn’t go as fast as she would have if it had been air, because she was still inside viscous fluid, but it helped push her backward and out of the bubble. She inhaled air and then coughed and vomited the rest of the fluid in a spray in front of her, banging her head on the computer console as her body’s involuntary movements propelled her farther.

  Finally out of the fluid, and gasping for air, she looked up.

  “Oh shit.”

  Three dead crewmates floated around the room amid the blood and other fluids. Two corpses sprouted a number of gory tentacles, bloody bubbles that refused to break away from the deadly wounds. A fourth was strapped to a chair at the terminal.

  Gallons of synth-amneo fluid joined the gory detritus as the newly cloned crew fought to exit their vats. They looked with as much shock as she felt at their surroundings.

  Captain Katrina de la Cruz moved to float beside her, still focused on the computer. “Maria, stop staring and make yourself useful. Check on the others.”

  Maria scrambled for a handhold on the wall to pull herself away from the captain’s attempt to access the terminal.

  Katrina pounded on a keyboard and poked at the console screen. “IAN, what the hell happened?”

  “My speech functions are inaccessible,” the computer’s male, slightly robotic voice said.

  “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” muttered a voice above Maria. It broke her shock and reminded her of the captain’s order to check on the crew.

  The speaker was Akihiro Sato, pilot and navigator. She had met him a few hours ago at the cocktail party before the launch of the Dormire.

  “Hiro, why are you speaking French?” Maria said, confused. “Are you all right?”

  “Someone saying aloud that they can’t talk is like that old picture of a pipe that says, ‘This is not a pipe.’ It’s supposed to give art students deep thoughts. Never mind.” He waved his hand around the cloning bay. “What happened, anyway?”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “But—God, what a mess. I have to go check on the others.”

  “Goddammit, you just spoke,” the captain said to the computer, dragging some icons around the screen. “Something’s working inside there. Talk to me, IAN.”

  “My speech functions are inaccessible,” the AI said again, and de la Cruz slammed her hand down on the keyboard, grabbing it to keep herself from floating away from it.

  Hiro followed Maria as she maneuvered around the room using the handholds on the wall. Maria found herself face-to-face with the gruesome body of Wolfgang, their second in command. She gently pushed him aside, trying not to dislodge the gory bloody tentacles sprouting from punctures on his body.

  She and Hiro floated toward the living Wolfgang, who was doubled over coughing the synth-amneo out of his lungs. “What the hell is going on?” he asked in a ragged voice.

  “You know as much as we do,” Maria said. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded and waved her off. He straightened his back, gaining at least another foot on his tall frame. Wolfgang was born on the moon colony, Luna, several generations of his family developing the long bones of living their whole lives in low gravity. He took a handhold and propelled himself toward the captain.

  “What do you remember?” Maria asked Hiro as they approached another crewmember.

  “My last backup was right after we boarded the ship. We haven’t even left yet,” Hiro said.

  Maria nodded. “Same for me. We should still be docked, or only a few weeks from Earth.”

  “I think we have more immediate problems, like our current status,” Hiro said.

  “True. Our current status is four of us are dead,” Maria said, pointing at the bodies. “And I’m guessing the other two are as well.”

  “What could kill us all?” Hiro asked, looking a bit green as he dodged a bit of bloody skin. “And what happened to me and the captain?”

  He referred to the “other two” bodies that were not floating in the cloning bay. Wolfgang, their engineer, Paul Seurat, and Dr. Joanna Glass all were dead, floating around the room, gently bumping off vats or one another.

  Another cough sounded from the last row of vats, then a soft voice. “Something rather violent, I’d say.”

  “Welcome back, Doctor, you all right?” Maria asked, pulling herself toward the woman.

  The new clone of Joanna nodded, her tight curls glistening with the synth-amneo. Her upper body was thin and strong, like all new clones, but her legs were small and twisted. She glanced up at the bodies and pursed her lips. “What happened?” She didn’t wait for them to answer, but grasped a handhold and pulled herself toward the ceiling where a body floated.

  “Check on Paul,” Maria said to Hiro, and followed Joanna.

  The doctor turned her own corpse to where she could see it, and her eyes grew wide. She swore quietly. Maria came up behind her and swore much louder.

  Her throat had a stab wound, with great waving gouts of blood reaching from her neck. If the doctor’s advanced age was any indication, they were well past the beginning of the mission. Maria remembered her as a woman who looked to be in her thirties, with smooth dark skin and black hair. Now wrinkles lined the skin around her eyes and the corners of her mouth, and gray shot through her tightly braided hair. Maria looked at the other bodies; from her vantage point she could now see each also showed their age.

  “I didn’t even notice,” she said, breathless. “I-I only noticed the blood and gore. We’ve been on this ship for decades. Do you remember anything?”

  “No.” Joanna’s voice was flat and grim. “We need to tell the captain.”

  BY LILITH SAINTCROW

  GALLOW AND RAGGED

  Trailer Park Fae

  Roadside Magic

  Wasteland King

  BANNON AND CLARE

  The Iron Wyrm Affair

  The Red Plague Affair

  The Ripper Affair

  DANTE VALENTINE NOVELS

  Working for the Devil

  Dead Man Rising

  The Devil’s Right Hand

  Saint City Sinners

  To Hell and Back

  Dante Valentine (omnibus)

  JILL KISMET NOVELS

  Night Shift

  Hunter’s Prayer

  Redemption Alley

  Flesh Circus

  Heaven’s Spite

  Angel Town

  Jill Kismet (omnibus)

  A ROMANCE OF ARQUITAINE NOVELS

  The Hedgewitch Queen

  The Bandit King

  PRAISE FOR THE WORKS OF LILITH SAINTCROW

  Trailer Park Fae

  “Trailer Park Fae is what you’d get if you mixed a Bourne film, a political thriller, and a weepy Lifetime movie about abusive, drunken trailer park fathers together, and shook vigorously.”

  —B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog

  “Saintcrow deftly mixes high-minded fantasy magic with rough, real-world rust using prose that veers between the beautiful and the bloodcurdling. Honestly, I wish I’d written it.”

  —Chuck Wendig

  “A true faery story, creepy and heroic by turns. Love and hope and a touch of Midsummer Night’s Dream. I could not put it down.”

  —Patricia Briggs

  “Painfully honest, beautifully strange, and absolutely worth your time. Lilith Saintcrow is at the top of her game. Don’t miss this.”

  —Seanan McGuire

  * Antigrav replacement for a sled, forklift, or truck. Larger ones can be used as helicopters.

  † A neutr
al semiliquid (reverse engineered from glaslime) that soaks up any stray Rift energies or radiation.

  * The shimmering, sometimes almost-translucent border of a Rift.

  † Sooner or later, the aliens will come back.

  ‡ A card game.

  * A heavier-than-Earth localized gravitational anomaly.

  † A lighter-than-Earth localized gravitational anomaly.

  ‡ Slang, possibly deriving from “sardine” or “Sardaukar.”

  * Free hospital. Generally avoided except by the very poor or very desperate.

  * Transport or private security. Faux-police.

  * International Regulation 70-A, Section 70, authorizing all necessary force against a prisoner arrested for Rift-involved activities.

  † Hair-fine filaments braided together and shaped into a cruciform knot before dermal implantation, to denote a particular Yarker denomination.

  ‡ Slang for a member of an evangelical sect.

  § Small blue spheres that can be “cracked” for energy. Note: They do not actually crack.

  ¶ The set of cycling equations that make leav “antigrav” cells work.

  ** A highly addictive drug made from nootslime.

  * The mandated no-man’s-land between an Institute’s buildings or open bay and a Rift border.

  * A crowd- and prisoner-control baton, lightly electrified.

  * Addicted to powdered, ultra-refined halone, “dust” in street parlance.

  * A petty warlord, usually one who has a security contract with a government to keep a certain slice of territory under “control.”

  † After the double assassination (Sanders-Clinton), Guantanamo Bay never closed.

  ‡ Alloy made by folding and refolding Rift-harvested spinstrands, light but extremely strong.