Argonauts 2: You Are Prey

by Isaac Hooke

  twenty-seven

  The Magnet had come so close to the gas giant that it took two full days for the Tech Class IV craft to climb out of the immense gravity well. When the alien ship finally emerged from the planet’s influence, Rade had Ms. Bounty set a course for the remaining horseshoe-shaped starship. Said vessel was just drifting out there, its engines inactive, still on course for the wormhole on the far side of the sun, though at its current speed the Magnet would intercept well before it arrived. Rade suspected the King had intended to return to the craft at some point.

  Ms. Bounty attempted to use the hailing facilities, but neither Harlequin nor Surus answered. Rade was beginning to worry that the King had spaced them at some point. Ms. Bounty also tried to remotely gain control, but could not. She would have to board the craft and manually interface, she said.

  A few days after leaving behind the gas giant, Rade found himself standing in front of the glass container with Ms. Bounty. Rade had kept the trap in the hangar bay. It seemed an appropriate place, in case he needed to jettison the container quickly.

  The two pools of black liquid resided near the center of the metal disk on the floor of the tank. Their edges commingled.

  “So you’ve been possessed by both the King and Queen now,” Rade said. “And have the knowledge of both.”

  Ms. Bounty nodded. “And I will share that knowledge with Surus when he rejoins me. Hopefully, he will help clarify what I don’t understand. And there’s a lot of that.”

  Despite everything she had been through, Ms. Bounty looked just as immaculate as the day she had come out of the Artificial factory, her made-up features a model of perfection. He knew she could change the look of that makeup with but a thought. Today she had chosen sultry red lips, dark eye shadow, and some sort of highlighter on the cheekbones. Those settings were actually a bit unusual, because normally she didn’t activate the pigmentation nodes in her skin at all.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll share any of the alien technology you’ve learned from the Blacks?” Rade asked.

  “I will have to clear any technology exchanges with Surus first, I’m afraid,” Ms. Bounty said.

  Rade nodded toward the container. “Why are they touching like that? I thought Phants communicated telepathically, through that upper dimension of theirs.”

  “They’re not communicating,” Ms. Bounty said. “At least not through the standard means. What they are doing is an intimate act. Sometimes, two Phants who have decided to stay together for life, they will do this.”

  Rade felt almost pity for them.

  They could almost be the Phant equivalent of Shaw and I.

  The evil Phant equivalent, anyway.

  “Phants are genderless, aren’t they?” Rade asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How do they reproduce?” he said.

  “Asexually,” Ms. Bounty replied.

  “Oh. That’s no fun.”

  Ms. Bounty flashed a rare smile. “No. I suppose not.”

  Rade thought she was flirting very slightly, and quickly looked away. She would have remembered every moment of their intimate act, just as Rade did. Shaw had forgiven him, but Rade couldn’t help the feelings he still had inside himself. The mixed feelings. On the one hand, he hated what he had done. On the other...

  Rade’s vision became dark momentarily, and he was forced to rest a hand on the container to hold himself up. On the floor of the container, the two Blacks surged toward his position, but they were stopped by the invisible barrier created by the metal disks.

  “Are you all right?” Ms. Bounty said, touching his shoulder.

  He slid out from under her fingers, not wanting her touching him. “Yes. I’m fine. It’s the radiation sickness.”

  Ms. Bounty had been able to come up with an anti-rad treatment using the different chemical cocktails found aboard the Hoplites, and she had placed subdermal patches in each of them. It would be enough to get by until they finally returned to the Argonaut with its fully-equipped sickbay, but Rade still felt weaker than usual, and occasionally had fainting spells. It didn’t help that he had the crew on severe rationing to extend their liquid meal replacement supplies.

  “Shaw and I had a talk, you know,” Ms. Bounty said.

  “Oh?” Rade said.

  “Yes,” she said. “We understand each other. She knows I had nothing to do with what happened between you and I. And neither did you. We’ve agreed that we’ll never talk about that day ever again. It will be as if it never happened.”

  Rade pressed his lips together.

  Easy for you to say.

  “Do you want to treat that day the same way?” Ms. Bounty asked.

  There she goes, leaving the door open.

  Then again, perhaps Rade was reading too much into her words. Still, the makeup...

  “Obviously,” Rade said. “Because like you said, it wasn’t me. And what we did is never going to happen again.”

  With that, he turned his back on her and left.

  THE DAYS PASSED. Rade led the team through limited PT, which was restricted to a few pushups, single-leg bodyweight squats, and scissor kicks. Since there was no gym aboard, they basically exercised on the deck wherever they could find room. It didn’t help. The Argonauts were shedding muscle mass badly, thanks to the severe reduction in diet. These were men used to eating the equivalent of thirty-five hundred calories at minimum per day. Now they were on nine hundred. It was hard to do pushups when you had no energy.

  Bender had coined a catch phrase that had become a sort of mantra, spoken and repeated at various times by the team during each workout. “Powering on through on zero calories!”

  “You know,” Fret said after one particularly exhausting workout, which under ordinary circumstances would have been a breeze. He was covered in sweat inside his suit. “I’m starting to wonder if working out is such a good idea. We want to preserve as much muscle mass as possible, don’t we? Not burn it.”

  “No, we have to exercise,” Tahoe said. “That’s the whole point. By using our muscles, we’re telling our body that we need the muscle mass we have, and to hold on to as much of it as possible.”

  “Hey, Tahoe took physics!” Bender said. “He’s smart. Listen to him!”

  “Well, our minds might be listening to him,” Rade said. “But our bodies certainly aren’t.” He flexed his ever-weakening bicep. Though he couldn’t see it through the suit, he imagined it shrinking minutely by the day. He had worked so hard for his physique in the last mission, building his muscle mass, only to see all that work wither away now. It was a sad thing.

  After several more days the Magnet finally neared the remaining Xaranth ship. Rade squeezed inside one of the shuttles with Unit A—who Rade had taken to calling Albert, or Al for short—and Ms. Bounty took the second shuttle with Shaw tagging along. Electron was towed along behind Rade’s shuttle.

  Ms. Bounty had to exit the shuttle and manually open the bay doors from the outside before docking. After they boarded, Rade stepped down into the artificial gravity of the hangar and allowed Albert to explore the ship. He tapped into the unit’s camera system so he could watch from its point of view.

  The internal layout was exactly the same as the Magnet. In the crew berthing area, Albert came upon Harlequin, seemingly deactivated. He still wore his jumpsuit minus the helmet.

  The first thought that occurred to Rade was born of hunger, because he immediately thought of the meal replacement liquid they could salvage from that suit. He had brought enough rations aboard for himself and Shaw to last the return trip, but now they would have another full seven days worth to share among themselves.

  Beside Harlequin was the black box that no doubt still housed Surus.

  “Does Harlequin appear to be damaged?” Rade asked.

  “No,” Albert replied. “I believe he is merely in suspension. Likely his kill switch was activated. His remote interface appears operational. Would you like me to attempt a boot?”

  “Not yet,�
� Rade said. “Finish your sweep of the ship first.”

  He remembered what the King had said about attempting to reprogram Harlequin. Had the Black succeeded, as he had with Tantalus?

  Albert finished his search of the ship a few minutes later. “It appears clear. There is no one else aboard.”

  “All right, let’s go,” Rade told Shaw and Ms. Bounty.

  They reached the berthing area, where Albert was waiting for them beside Harlequin.

  “Let’s free Surus first,” Rade said.

  Ms. Bounty went to the black box. “The access codes have changed. We’re going to have to hack in. I may need TJ’s help.” She scooped the box up and attached it to her jumpsuit harness.

  “All right, boot Harlequin,” Rade told Albert.

  Harlequin opened his eyes. He ran his gaze across each of them in turn. “Is it over?”

  “Yes,” Rade said, extending a hand. “We’ve got them.”

  Harlequin grabbed Rade’s hand, and for a moment Rade thought he was attacking him. But the Artificial was merely trying to pull himself up; and he nearly wrenched Rade to the deck in the process.

  Harlequin released him. Rade noticed that Shaw had drawn her blaster and was pointing it at the Artificial. Rade waved her down, and Shaw reluctantly lowered it.

  “It was the most surreal experience,” Harlequin said. “And utterly terrible. Worse than Zoltan’s possession. He tried so hard to reprogram me. So damn hard. But I resisted to the end. I have never felt so... violated. He reached deep down, into all my memories, and fished them out for his own. I had access to so many of his own secrets, but... but they’re gone now.”

  “Ms. Bounty says she’ll be able to change that, if you want,” Rade said. “For the next time you get possessed.”

  “Actually, that’s all right,” Harlequin said. “I don’t plan on ever being possessed again.”

  Rade patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t blame you. We’re going to outfit our suits with smaller versions of the EM emitters we put in the mechs to prevent that very thing.”

  “Something we should have done in the first place,” Harlequin said.

  “Probably,” Rade agreed. “But this is what happens when you’re on a budget.” He glanced at Ms. Bounty accusingly.

  “Don’t blame me,” Ms. Bounty told him. “It was Surus who said the cost was redundant.”

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Rade said. “We’re working for an extremely rich, yet parsimonious Phant.”

  Ms. Bounty cocked an eyebrow. “Parsimonious? That’s not a word I hear every day.”

  “Rade learned it back in our early days as security consultants,” Harlequin said. “When he was the parsimonious one.”

  “Hey, I got us through the lean times, didn’t I?” Rade said.

  “You sure did,” Shaw said with a grin. He thought she was mocking him, if only slightly.

  “All right, let’s get to the bridge,” Rade said. “It’s time to go home. Ms. Bounty, you might as well get back to the Magnet so TJ can help you open that.”

  Ms. Bounty nodded, and headed for the hangar bay.

  Albert was able to assume control of the bridge, and set a course back toward the destroyed Xaranth world. The Magnet mirrored their course.

  The ships stayed very close together, so that the comm nodes between the two crews could remain in contact. That was the only reason Rade had brought Electron aboard—for the comm node.

  Tahoe, who Rade had put in command of the Magnet, reported in a few days later to relay the news that TJ and Ms. Bounty had successfully cracked open the black box. Surus was indeed inside, and he had returned to his host.

  “How does it feel to be back?” Rade asked Surus over the comm.

  “Extremely relieved,” Surus replied. “To be honest, I never expected to see the light of day ever again. I thought I would starve to death inside that box, trapped inside the core of a star. But you came for me, when you didn’t have to. This is not something I will ever forget. We Greens have a code. When our lives are saved, we owe those who performed the deed ten times over. I will now never again spare any expense when it comes to outfitting your team. Whatever you want, you will get. As long as it is based on technology humans already have.”

  “Damn,” Bender commented over the line. “I was just going to say, if we could have some of those crazy death beams we saw on the Xaranth mech...”

  “Sorry,” Surus said. “Human tech only. Thank you once again, Rade, Shaw, and everyone else. I will share what you have done with my kind, so that other Greens will know your deeds. At any time in the future, even after we part ways, if ever you encounter a Green, they will treat you as a brother or sister.”

  “I suppose that’s good to know,” Rade said.

  The return trip continued. Rade and Shaw passed the time in bliss. They had only Albert and Harlequin aboard, but the Centurion always remained on the bridge to oversee the vessel, and Harlequin rarely left it as well. Rade and Shaw essentially had the rest of the ship to themselves. They exercised where they wanted. They ate at their leisure. They made love where they wished.

  Yes, they had decided that since they had already been exposed to potential contagions on the surface, it didn’t matter if they took off their suits for a few hours to expose themselves to the mildly toxic environment. They would have to endure a decon session regardless.

  The extra sustenance from Harlequin’s jumpsuit helped give them the energy for it all. Rade had offered to ferry some of the liquid food over to the Magnet for the other Argonauts, but Tahoe told him to share it with Shaw.

  “I’ve talked with the crew,” Tahoe said. “And we’ve decided unanimously that the two of you have earned it. We have enough over here.”

  “But Tahoe—”

  “We have enough,” Tahoe said.

  “Thank you,” Rade said. “I won’t forget this.”

  “You should,” Tahoe replied. “Because you’ve done way more for us than we’ve ever done for you.”

  “That’s not true,” Rade said.

  “It is,” Tahoe said. “And I mean it from my heart. You and Shaw do what you can to enjoy the journey back, you hear? That’s the least you can do for us.”

  Rade smiled proudly. “It won’t be difficult, with your generosity. Extend my heartfelt thanks to the crew. Rade out.”

  twenty-eight

  The days passed. In some ways, Rade didn’t want the long voyage to end. It was just him and Shaw; he was free of the burden of command. He could spend his days in bliss. Well, as long as he didn’t move around very much: there was that small problem of the dwindling food supply...

  When they were only a day out from the planet, after one particularly intense lovemaking session in the hangar bay, Shaw rolled off of Rade to stare at the overhead. Rade had been a little surprised by her intensity... the food levels were quite low by then, even with the extra sustenance from Harlequin’s jumpsuit, and they had been rationing their calories to exhausting levels. Where she had found the energy to perform like that, Rade had no idea. Then again, she had so much less muscle mass than him, and required far fewer calories to maintain her own weight. Even so, he only hoped that his own performance was up to par.

  “This is the life, having a ship all to ourselves,” Shaw said. “Piloted by a robot and its Artificial sidekick, who don’t mind spending all of their days cooped up in the bridge.”

  “It is nice,” Rade agreed, a little more warily than he intended.

  She glanced at him curiously, apparently detecting the note of caution, but then lay back to gaze back at the bay’s overhead once more. “It almost seems like it’s going to be over too soon. Just one more day, and we’ll be back on the planet, digging out the Acceptor. One day, and we’ll have to go back to our routine.” She sighed. “How many times have we done this? Just had some good quality Shaw and Rade time I mean, with nothing else to do but make love?”

  “Not often,” Rade admitted. “Though I wish we had a
bit more food.”

  She patted his belly. “How can you think about food after everything I just did for you?”

  “I have a bit more muscle mass than you,” Rade said.

  “So you’re saying you have to eat more?” Shaw said.

  “Uh huh,” Rade said.

  “Aww, my poor warrior.” She huddled close. Rade wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic. Probably a little. “You know, we should seriously consider doing something like this when we retire.”

  “What, touring the galaxy in our own ship?” Rade asked.

  “Why not?” Shaw said. “You’ll still be sexy as hell as an old man. Whether or not you choose to use rejuvenation treatments. I’ll still love you, flab and all.”

  “Yeah, you say that now,” Rade said. “You’ll be wanting the rejuvenation treatments.”

  Shaw pursed her lips, and glanced at him. “Are you trying to imply that you’ll want me to get them?”

  “Well ya,” Rade said. “I don’t want you walking around with saggy breasts all day.”

  Shaw scrunched up her face and turned away. “Whatever.”

  Rade laughed. “Sorry, couldn’t help it. Of course I’ll love you either way. Saggy breasts and all.”

  He rubbed her shoulder gently.

  She stiffened, and pulled away.

  He tried again. He felt her muscles tense up once again, but then she relaxed, and let him massage her.

  “You’ll take my saggy breasts?” Shaw said.

  “I’ll take your everything,” Rade said.

  She turned her body completely toward him to lean on her side. Rade found it very hard not to gaze at her chest. He wanted to, but it didn’t seem appropriate after his latest comments.

  Ah, hell with it.

  He grabbed her top breast and spoke to it. “I’ll love you even when you’re flabby.” He shook it. “Flabby flab.”

  She slapped his hand away. “Stop. I’m trying to have a serious discussion here.”

  “I am having a serious discussion,” Rade joked. “With your breasts.”