Beast

by Patrick McClafferty

  Giuseppe studied Solomon carefully and noted the limp. “You look like hell, son,” he said, putting his hand on Solomon’s shoulder.

  The cameras and reporters swung to focus on Solomon. Elora, who had been standing supportively at his side, pulled a Houdini-like vanishing act as soon as the cameras began to turn her way.

  Solomon made a curt motion to the marines, who formed a barrier between Giuseppe and the reporters, and gently led the older man a short distance away, where they wouldn’t be overheard. “You need to tell the marine lieutenant to assign a few troops to secure this building, Giuseppe. There has to be a communication center and a finance office in here, at the very minimum.” He gave Giuseppe an askance look. “Are you going to keep running the government from here?” He glanced over his shoulder at the looming structure behind him.

  The older man bit his lip. “I think not. I will fortify the estate and run the government from there. Hell, it’s only fifty kilometers to the city from the estate, ten minutes by air or an hour by crawler. I’ll move the com center there, as well as the finance office and whatever other important functions that are needed. My technical adviser has been after me for several months to increase the bandwidth of my com gear, and this is a good opportunity.” He glanced into the shadows where Elora was standing. “Elora can be a pest at times when she wants you to do something.”

  Solomon chuckled. “I noticed that almost immediately.”

  Giuseppe’s voice had begun to take on a musing air. “I believe I’ll take some of the previous administration’s hidden finances and turn the current gubernatorial monstrosity”—he glanced to the palace and shuddered—”into a hospital. I guarantee that my popularity will go up one hundred percent. At the Fontaine Estate, I’ll expand the number of outbuildings to contain a barracks and house my troops there.” He smiled. “I can deploy the marines quickly enough.”

  Solomon frowned. “Speaking of marines, Giuseppe, I think that you may be able to ‘infect’ your marines with the same thing that infects me. It would give you an unbeatable army that even Earth couldn’t match. All it would take, I think, is for them to go out into the desert on ‘maneuvers,’ and have their medic open a small incision on each person’s arm. The creatures would be attracted by the blood. That’s what your two guards reported when I was first infected. Just in case things go sideways, I’d recommend the marines infect single individuals at first and then move it up to small groups. This particular group of marines seem particularly level-headed, so you shouldn’t have many problems.”

  Giuseppe looked at Solomon gravely. “You speak as if you won’t be around while all this is going on.”

  Solomon gave him a flat look. “That depends on what tomorrow holds. This has been a really long day, and I hurt in places I didn’t think it was possible to hurt. I plan to sleep in tomorrow. It seems that whenever I sleep in, everything goes to hell, so I’m just being prepared.”

  Giuseppe’s thin smile was as dry as dust. “How droll.”

  Beyond the line of marines, the reporters were pointing in his direction and waving their arms in agitation. Tomorrow, Solomon suspected, will be a very long day.

  Breakfast for Solomon was quiet and strangely lonely. Midmorning, he found the dining room empty, as well as the kitchen. The vast majority of the marines were occupied in Lowell for the foreseeable future, and the Fontaine family was just as busy. With a self-deprecating grin, he headed for the refrigerator. He knew his way around a kitchen as well as anyone, better than most unmarried men, but he kept it simple: steak and eggs, home fries, and toast. The half-carafe of coffee he found was still warm, and it reheated nicely.

  He was leaning back from his half-eaten meal when he heard soft footsteps, then Elora slid in a chair beside him.

  “That looks good,” she said with a little laugh.

  Solomon pushed his plate toward her. “I always have a tendency to make too much. Dive in.” He grinned, handing her his knife and fork. “Coffee?”

  “Mfff!” She nodded, her mouth full of steak.

  Solomon sat quietly as she ate, and when she was done, Elora wiped her mouth daintily, set her fork down, and gave him a long look. “The reporters have figured it out, and so, it seems, have the Earth authorities. There are a whole herd of reporters camped outside our front gate, and warrants are already coming in for the arrest of Malachai Fontaine, blaming you for every grisly murder and assault in the last fifty years, on Mars as well as Earth.”

  “That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Solomon said, frowning.

  “Common sense doesn’t seem to be their forte, Solomon, but you have one thing in your favor at the moment: they don’t seem to have figured out that Solomon Draxx is Malachai Fontaine. I give them two to three weeks before they manage to add two and two to come up with you.”

  Solomon sighed.

  “What will you do now?” Her green eyes were intent on his face.

  “I call it the GOTH plan. I came up with it last week. GOTH is the plan to be implemented when everything else has Gone To Hell.” He picked up their dishes and headed back to the kitchen.

  “You’re going to wash the dishes?” There was surprise in her voice.

  Solomon smiled. “Just because everything has fallen apart doesn’t mean I’m a slob. Do you know where your father is at the moment?” He turned on the hot water.

  “He’s been in his office since four thirty this morning,” she said sourly, picking up a dish towel.

  “Fine. We’ll go see him just as soon as we’re finished here.”

  Giuseppe looked up as an unsmiling Solomon entered the plush office, followed immediately by Elora. The elder Fontaine set down his pen. “What can I do for you, Solomon? You look… intent.”

  Solomon took a deep breath. “Giuseppe, you implied at one time that you had enough pull to put people on the Lost Horizon heading out in two months to Proxima Centauri b.” He swallowed. “I want a seat on that starship. You need to get me out of your hair, and well away from both Earth and Mars. When I’m gone, you can tell them where I’ve gone, and they can try to extradite me from four and a half light years away. I won’t have my father jailed for harboring a fugitive. The Terran government hates you, Giuseppe, and will use any excuse to attack you.”

  A look of almost physical pain crossed Giuseppe’s face. “This isn’t what I intended when we asked you to come home to Mars, son. We wanted you to rejoin the family and live out your life here on Mars.”

  Solomon let out a small wistful chuckle at all the might-have-beens. He found that he was including Addy in that long list. “Sometimes fate throws you a curveball, and you have to do the best you can. You might hit it out of the park, or you might bunt, but you always keep swinging.”

  Giuseppe nodded slowly, turning to his daughter. “What do you think, Elora?” he asked in a tired voice.

  Her face was placid, her features composed, and Solomon knew her well enough that he held his breath.

  “I think, Father, that you had better get two seats on that ship, because Solomon isn’t going anywhere without me.”

  “No!” Solomon said immediately. “No way in hell is Elora running from one problem to another, one danger to another.”

  Giuseppe leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I think that I have to override you on this one, Solomon. Elora will go with you.”

  Elora gave her father a look of pure, unadulterated shock.

  “I think that she will, in fact, be safer with you on the Lost Horizon than she will here on Mars, for at least the next several years.” His smile widened. “I actually envy the two of you the adventure.”

  Solomon stared at his father, at a total loss for words.

  ~~~

  The Lost Horizon was a massive ship, nearly eight hundred meters in length and beautiful as it sat quietly at the L2 Lagrangian point, hosting a swarm of smaller craft that were preparing their larger cousin for departure. Bright lights from the temporary space dock made the white hull gleam li
ke an artificial star. Already, the running lights were on, and the warm glow from various ports came out of the central mess and forward crew habitation area. A large thick ring four hundred meters in diameter encircled the slim fuselage of the ship on three massive arms. Unlike other ships, this ring did not turn to give the illusion of artificial gravity, but sat perfectly still in relation to the hull, providing microgravity accommodations for the two hundred colonists who slept in tiny coffin-like chambers in the ring. While asleep, they had no need for the luxury of gravity.

  The small thin purser, who had been traveling with them on the cramped transport from the space dock to the ship had been an encyclopedia of information, and spoke incessantly. Solomon guessed that it was simply a case of nerves.

  “Our crew of twenty are readying the last of the cold-sleep chambers for the members of your family.” The purser’s voice was high and wheedling. Solomon suppressed a grimace. The purser shrugged. “Giuseppe Fontaine owns enough of this starship to assign seats to whoever he wishes.” Glancing through the small port, Solomon watched the squat transport carrying the last arrivals dock with the starship. Looking at his watch, he noted that they should have the passengers settled and be underway in three hours. His eyes turned involuntarily to the thick well-illuminated rings, where his own sleep chamber and the chambers for the rest of the family were located. There, they would sleep away the five-year journey while the AI, the purser had told him was named Gibbs by the British programmers from BAE, performed the hard tasks such as determining just how much to accelerate and for how long, and when to flip the ship to begin the long deceleration. At the end of the journey and based on preprogrammed navigational data, Gibbs would wake the crew and flip the ship again to accelerate into the Proxima Centauri b system. Once the ship was in orbit about the planet of Shangri-La, the colonists would be awakened and transported to the surface by the Lost Horizon’s single shuttle. If everything went very well, a refueling ship would be waiting for them in orbit to refuel the Lost Horizon for the return trip to Terra.

  He glanced to the small man as the purser snorted a thin laugh. “In this job, I’m no more than a fare collector in an automated bus. A very well-paid fare collector.” The small man smiled, almost humming with avarice.

  The small shuttle shuddered to a stop, and Solomon waited as they had been instructed by the pilot of the pint-sized transport, until a crewmember collected them. Solomon was more than familiar with the hurry-up-and-wait attitude, but he could see the others growing impatient. Giuseppe had been more than a little surprised when, as soon as they discovered that Solomon was leaving, the majority of the Fontaine siblings trooped into their father’s office, demanding to go to Shangri-La also. One look told Solomon that Giuseppe wasn’t totally displeased with the decision.

  “Fine. You can go—on one condition,” Giuseppe had said. “Solomon is in charge… period. You do what he tells you, when he tells you, or he will put you back aboard the Lost Horizon and ship you back to me here, and you may live to regret your arrival.”

  Solomon leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes. He’d just wanted to get away then found himself saddled with six others, although when she finally healed, Corporal Brigit Uí Dubháin would probably be a significant help. Looking at the six, he realized that it could be worse. Each was, in some special way, brilliant. Elora was the born organizer and manager. Hepzibah was an accomplished doctor, Tristan and Jax were mechanical and programming geniuses respectively, and little Mila was a brilliant biological empath. She could touch a plant or animal and understand what it needed, if not what it was thinking. Brigit was good enough that he often wondered why she had never been tapped for Officer Candidate School. The six would fit in quite well in a colony. He was a little more concerned about where he himself might fit in.

  With a heavy clunk, the boarding hatch swung open, and a young man’s head popped into the small crowded compartment. “Welcome to the Lost Horizon, ladies and gentlemen.” His attempt to bow in microgravity gave Mila a case of the giggles. “If you will all follow me, I’ll bring you to your sleep modules and get you settled in.”

  Hepzibah touched the young man’s arm. “Will we dream?” she asked in her melodious voice.

  The crewman blinked. “There have been reports of people dreaming in cold sleep, but usually not.” He glanced at Solomon. “Mr. Draxx?”

  Solomon nodded.

  “I have instructions that in the event of an emergency aboard the Lost Horizon, you are to be awakened, although I don’t know what good you can do.”

  “Fine.” Solomon sighed. “It was just Giuseppe Fontaine being overprotective of his family.”

  Elora touched his arm. “Daddy trusts you, Solomon.”

  “It would make my life a whole lot easier of he would trust someone else.” He followed the young man through the hatch and into the waiting starship.

  Like the exterior, the interior was gleaming white and smelled new. All except Solomon had taken pills so that the microgravity wouldn’t bother them, and they were floating along in relative comfort, the younger crowd oohing and ahhing at every corner and every port they passed. One by one, they were sealed into their small caskets. Elora looked so pale and frightened that Solomon finally leaned over and gave her a light kiss. A ghost of a smile crossed her face as the lid hissed shut.

  “Last one,” the young crewman murmured. “We’ll be underway in two hours.”

  Solomon set his microgravity slippers in a small net pouch under the casket and climbed in. His mouth was dry and tasted like something from the south end of a northbound camel. Leaning over him, the crewman connected all the sensors wired into his skintight jumpsuit that would monitor his health while he slept. As the lid hissed closed, Solomon’s thoughts were on Addy and the life he was leaving very far behind. He thought about the letter he had written her, which Giuseppe had promised to deliver. He’d tried to explain what had happened and why she would never see him again. He had told her to find someone else, and he wondered if she would ever forgive him… or if he would ever forgive himself.

  PART 2

  THE LOST HORIZON

  Chapter 7

  PROXIMA CENTAURI b or thereabouts

  Solomon didn’t know how long he had been lying there, listening to the strident alarms before they finally registered, but the volume and the multiple screams were beginning to make his teeth ache. The small cubicle was still dark when he opened his eyes, and he was more than a little surprised to find that he was alone with the lid to his coffin standing open. His enhanced eyesight and the dim status lights on the coffin helped him find his microgravity slippers. A chill ran across his skin as he realized that the air temperature was several degrees below freezing. Something was terribly wrong.

  The steady green light encircling the hatch told him there was breathable air on the other side, and he wasted no time spinning the manual lock open. A puff of only slightly warmer air struck his face, along with the smell of burned electronics and plastic. He dropped down the ladder through the access tunnel to the main ship, fifty meters below his feet. The light on this side of the hatch was also green, and it swung open on soundless hinges.

  “Hello, the ship!” Solomon shouted.

  Other than the distant alarms, only silence greeted him. Floating forward through nearly total darkness, he headed for the crew quarters and command module at the bow of the vessel. He stopped at the last door before the crew area and stared in dismay at the red lights ringing the door, warning of death pressure on the other side. Peering through the tiny twelve-millimeter window set into the door, he forgot to breathe. All that he saw on the other side of the door were stars wheeling slowly as the Lost Horizon with her bevy of cold-sleep modules drifted and spun. Everything else was gone—the crew quarters and control module, as well as the landing shuttle and the crew.

  Solomon sat down on the floor, bouncing slightly in the microgravity. Vaguely he recalled the rushed briefing about ship operation, in which the assistant
engineer had mentioned that the front half of the ship, from the crew’s mess forward, could, in an emergency, be used as an interplanetary escape vehicle to take the crew to safety. He, and the rest of the colonists had been abandoned. His head in his hands, he considered opening the hatch to space. One blast of pain, then nothing. Elora’s young face floated to his mind, followed by Hepzibah, Tristan, Jax, and finally, little Mila. He sighed and stood, determined that he wouldn’t go down without a fight, if only for his brothers and sisters. Turning his back on the small window, he floated back to the central part of the ship, where a small rectangular panel glowed faintly. It was an active computer terminal!

  “Computer!” he almost shouted as he approached.

  Silence.

  “Computer?”

  He studied the small dark rectangle mounted just below the monitor then touched a little flush button with a single finger. A tiny keyboard tilted out of the wall, and for a moment, he just stared. A keyboard? He almost added, How quaint.

  He touched the Enter key and blinked as the screen lit. He’d used old keyboards once or twice while in the marines, so he wasn’t quite lost. He quickly typed in “Emergency Logic Tree” and pressed Enter. A long list filled the screen. However, only the top three were flashing for immediate attention. The top item flashing in red was “LIFE SUPPORT CRITICAL.” He pulled up a ship schematic, only to find out that the central hub for life support was located on the other side of an evacuated compartment. Using remotes from the security cams, Solomon located a single fist-sized hole punched through the tough hull of the Lost Horizon.

  Hull repair kits came in small, medium, and large sizes, and Solomon very carefully read the directions for the medium. Once he’d activated the thick polymer pad, he simply placed it over the breach in the hull, from the inside. The vacuum would rupture cells in the patch, extruding a quick-hardening epoxy sealant, which would expand and fill the hole with a hard plug. Pressure could then be restored to said area, if there were no other holes. The whole problem was that Solomon didn’t have an EVA suit. A human being could remain conscious for ten to fifteen seconds in vacuum and survive for up to a minute and a half. He bit his lip, deciding in that moment that he would have to risk it and hope to hell that the shadowy companion dwelling in his blood would keep him alive.