“You don’t get weapons,” he said. “You’ll stay close, and do exactly as I say.”
Allen and Jessa both nodded, and Borkez moved toward the computer station to see what she could salvage, and Kaye couldn’t ever remember feeling so old or so tired as he walked back to the weapons locker to gear up once more.
* * *
Didi told Trace what she thought, what she really thought, and each word was like a dove bursting from her chest, flying away, leaving her clean and empty. It was her last moment of life, and perhaps it had been a wretched one but she wouldn’t lie to save herself, not at the end. She closed her eyes, shutting out his ugly, whining face, waited for it to be over.
“Why are you doing this to me?” He let out a cry, a helpless groan of utter frustration. “You’re my girl! I’d never hurt you!”
“So you might want to stop pointing your gun at her, then,” someone said, a careful, friendly voice, and Didi opened her eyes, saw Trace turn to point his gun at Pete.
“What the fuck do you care?” Trace asked, and Didi thought that he would pull the trigger right then, he was so angry, so desperate to murder something, to deaden the grandiose pain he imagined. “Did you fuck her?”
“Leave him alone,” Didi said.
Trace turned to look at her again, grinning fiercely, hysterically, his weapon still aimed at Pete. “Oh, yeah?”
Bam-bam-bam! The shots were loud in the ship’s cabin, deafening, and poor, foolish Pete fell down, red flowers erupting from his chest and gut. His brother knelt with him, the open shock on his face rapidly dissolving into anguish. They locked gazes, the blue-eyed brothers, and Didi could actually see the bond between them, a thickening of the air between their faces as they truly experienced each other, in that final, silent exchange. It was beautiful but horribly, horribly sad, and Didi was ready to die, she was ready, she didn’t want to think that he’d died because of her. Didn’t want to think that perhaps a lot of people had.
“It’s . . . okay, Tommy,” Pete whispered, and then his chest hitched once, twice, and he was still.
His brother, Tommy, looked up from his brother’s lifeless face to focus on Trace. Focus with such hate that his intentions were unmistakable.
“Stand down, pilot,” Lee said quickly.
Tommy wasn’t listening. He half-stood, a crouch, readying himself to spring at Trace.
“You fuck her, too?” Trace asked, his voice a high shout. “Answer me!”
“Don’t do it,” Lee said—and neither Trace nor Tommy saw that Lee had shifted his gun to a new target.
Tommy said nothing as he leapt for his brother’s killer—
—and Lee fired before Trace could, his bullet finding its mark, taking out the side of Trace’s skull.
Gun still in hand, Trace crumpled, blood spilling out across the expensive flooring from the very wide hole in his head. Didi saw a great squashy swell of brain tissue coming out, a protruding, pulsing thing, and looked away.
He’s dead, she thought. She looked at Lee, not certain she understood.
“You killed Trace,” she said.
“Can’t be losing our only certified pilot,” Lee said.
* * *
Tommy stared at the fallen manager, the object of his consuming, red-blurred fury, taken from life in an instant, and fervently wished he was still alive. Tommy wanted to kill him himself, and not quickly.
He turned back to Pete, fell to his knees, touching his younger brother’s still face. Pete’s eyes were partially open, and his mouth had relaxed into a resting smile, as though he were breathing in some intoxicating scent.
“You’ve got a death wish, Didi,” Lee said. “You realize who you were trying to rip off? Did you think you’d get away with it?”
Didi shook her head, not answering.
Tommy stayed where he was, looked back to Trace’s corpse. His weapon was still resting in one outflung hand. He thought he could probably get to it easily enough . . .
What for? Obviously Lee wasn’t going to kill him. Not at this point, anyway. And he didn’t feel any real need to come to Didi’s rescue, beyond the fact that it sounded like she’d gotten a shit deal. The fact that Pete had died trying to help her certainly wasn’t much of an incentive.
Pete died. Tommy felt a first stir of real grief, a terrible, bitter thing.
For some reason, Lee hadn’t pulled the trigger. He stared at Didi, wheels turning behind his eyes. Madness, perhaps, maybe he was enjoying himself. Didi had closed her eyes, her body swaying softly. Tommy looked at Pete again, not quite able to comprehend that he wasn’t going to just sit up and say something. Ever, ever again.
“How would you like to go out for a walk, Didi?” Lee said. “Finally do something useful with your life . . . Experience motherhood, maybe?”
Didi froze, eyes opening. “No,” she said.
From the glowing console at the front of the ship—a private DS transport, Tommy finally noticed, an expensive ride—an alert started beeping. Open hail.
“Someone’s calling,” Tommy said.
Lee grinned, backing toward the main bank of controls. “Oh, I think yes. And maybe some of the people you tried to kill would like to watch. Let’s ask them, shall we?”
He reached back and piped the hail through. “This is Lee,” he said.
“Lee?” There was a brief silence, and then the woman spoke again. “Lee, this is Jessa.” Behind her throaty voice, Tommy could hear echoes of the same cries that surrounded the private ship. “We’re just leaving the compound, headed your way. What’s your exact location?”
“They were set up to tap,” Lee said. “Looks like we’ll be taking their ride. Head northeast, put on your thermals. Who else is with you? We’re going to need muscle to get the product transferred.”
“Uh, Wes Allen. The new chemist.”
Lee was frowning. “Why—who else?”
There was a short silence again, and Jessa sounded anxious when she spoke again. “The compound was hit,” she said. “We’re all that’s left. We just made it to the ATV. Did Trace find you?”
“Who else is with you, Jessa?” Lee’s voice had hardened.
No answer, and then a man spoke. “My name is John Kaye. Your name is Lee, is that right?”
Lee’s lip curled. “You’re the unscheduled drop. Corporate res?”
Kaye’s voice was deep and firm. “Good guess. The XTs got to your people before we did, though. Nothing left to resolve. There are two of us, besides your two friends, and all we want is off. You’re in the only ship that hasn’t been surged.”
Lee laughed. “And what is it you have to bargain with, exactly?”
“The lives of your fellow workers, for one,” Kaye said.
Lee laughed harder—and Tommy felt his rising grief channel toward the bad feelings that Lee inspired. Lee was a bully and an asshole. He should be in fucking jail.
Tommy shifted his weight, leaning slightly toward Trace’s body. Toward the gun that had shot and killed his little brother.
“That’s a good one,” Lee said. “What else you got?”
Tommy reached out, lifted the weapon from Trace’s still-warm fingers.
A woman spoke up, not Jessa. Her voice was cool and crisp. “We’re willing to discuss funding for an extenuating circumstances clause in whatever charges may be filed against you, upon our return to Earth. You’d serve no time—”
“Gets better and better,” Lee interrupted. “How about you just rot out here, how does that sound? In fact—”
He broke off when he saw that Tommy was holding Trace’s gun, and that it was aimed in the general vicinity of his own face. Didi held very still, her expression unreadable.
“Drop it, Lee,” Tommy said, and raised his voice so that the ATV crew could hear him. “Change of management. You make it to the door, you’ve got yourselves a ride.”
15
Compared to getting into the compound, getting out had been cake. From the computer in standoff, Borkez h
ad been able to lock down every working blast-door except for the ones they’d need to get to the ATV lock. Leaving standoff had been the only difficult part; Kaye had used a flamethrower to drive back the aliens, Borkez capping those that tried to get around the sheets of dripping fire. Once in the corridors, they’d been able to drive the creatures in front of them like a herd of cattle, the flamethrower’s spread encompassing the hall’s width. Those that tried to slip into offshoots to come after them were neatly taken down by Borkez.
The chemist and the sex worker had stayed close and kept quiet, managing not to trip anything up. Kaye had been worried about having to clear the ATV garage, but there’d been no problem there. With the locks blown and then closed again—it seemed the compound’s computer had been set to seal automatically, if more than 15 percent of the compound’s atmosphere escaped—the garage was packed with XTs, as he’d feared. But all they’d had to do was open the outer lock, and the trapped bugs had clawed through one another to escape, emptying the small room in seconds. Eager to get to the action, maybe. A reseal, and they’d been able to get to the transport without further incident. The two Fantasians had snatched up deflect suits as ordered, struggling into them as Borkez had fired up their ride.
The ATV hadn’t been in operation when the pulse had been sent, and its electricals were undoubtedly shielded, anyway; there’d been no problem with the communications equipment, and Kaye had sent out an open hail immediately, every channel. In the hope that one or more of the Fantasians had made it to the tap ship, he’d coached Jessa on what to say as Borkez expertly drove them through the screaming, running masses outside, heading north and east of the compound.
Initial contact was disappointing—Lee sounded like exactly the type Kaye had set out to take down—but, as a new voice over the com informed them, a management change had taken place—which was how Kaye found himself preparing himself to face off with the XTs yet again. He’d felt almost relieved when Lee had laughed at his offer; he’d die on Fantasia after all, he’d be free from the sudden paradox his life had become, helping drug manufacturers survive, losing the faith. He’d wanted to avenge Jack for so long, had done everything he could to make a war happen, between himself and the evil drug makers . . . And nothing had happened the way he’d seen it in his fantasies, nothing, just more people dead and it was all so futile, so wistfully, stupidly pointless.
The man who’d identified himself as the pilot, Chase, added what he could to Lee’s rough directions, explaining the geometry of the two ships. The one they wanted was a private vessel, camo paneled but Tommy said he’d shut it off. He didn’t offer to come out and help—considering the “management” switch, it sounded like Mr. Chase had his hands full enough—but said he’d open the door when they got close enough.
Kaye had Borkez put the ATV between the two ships at an angle, as close to the private ship’s outer lock as they could get, their nose up against it. The XTs were all over them before they’d rolled to a full stop, rocking them, but the transport had full body shock capabilities, as Jessa was quick to point out.
Kaye gave everyone a job, keeping it simple. Allen would open the door. Jessa would tap the “bug zapper,” and Borkez and Kaye would step out and cover while the two civilians hurried across the narrow opening, into the waiting vessel. They were close enough to make it across in two steps, their exposure time extremely limited. Assuming Chase opened the door in a timely manner, they should be okay. Kaye would be last in, cover them until the door closed. He willingly volunteered for the longest exposure, feeling strangely committed to the idea that no one else should die—and if it had to happen, it might as well be him.
Kaye spoke to Tommy, who agreed to open the vessel’s lock on a slow count of ten. They got in position beside the door, Kaye counting aloud, slipping his sweaty mask down once again. Borkez held the flamethrower, she’d be the first out, covering the opening at their tail. Kaye stood at her back, ready to blast anything trapped between the ATV’s nose and the private ship or coming over the top—and on two, he gave Jessa the nod.
She slammed the hull electricals, and outside, the aliens screamed, the transport still for the barest of seconds as they leapt free.
“Open!” Kaye said, and Allen hit the door controls, his bookish face hidden by a cheap deflect hood.
The door slid aside, fast, and Borkez was right on top of it, the fire burning bright and hot, the thrower set to compensate for the thin air. A tightly packed group of the screeching animals fell back, pushed by the deadly heat, and Kaye stepped out, opened fire. There were only two trapped between the ships and the first was spun around by his rapid shots to its head, the second jammed even further into the metal-made corner by the rounds that hammered into its upper body, effectively severing its spine.
Chase’s vessel’s lock was less than four meters away, and it slid open even as Kaye’s second target burbled acid and died. Kaye could hear the roar of the flamethrower behind him, feel the icy air warming with the trapped heat, the darkness tainted by the fire’s light.
“In here!” someone screamed, and Kaye fired at the grinning XT faces gathering atop the two ships, their strange drool falling in strings over the humans’ heads as they hissed and cried—but didn’t leap down, driven back by Kaye’s well-placed rounds. Kaye felt someone brush behind him, presumably one of the Fantasians—
—and then there was gunfire from someone else, and Kaye flicked a glance, saw a man down at the transport’s entry, saw another man shooting at them with a handgun, a gleeful expression on his cruel face.
Kaye instinctively reached for the body behind his, it was Allen, frozen with indecision. Kaye shoved the awkward chemist back toward the safety of the ATV, edging after him. He saw Borkez grab the other civilian—and push the sex worker in front of her, blocking the grinning man’s fire.
Jessa screamed, bullets tearing into her suit—and Borkez, falling back, was caught up from behind by one of the XTs. It had dropped from the top of the transport and eagerly gathered her up in bony arms. Borkez shouted and kicked and the alien leapt away, disappearing into the encroaching, hissing mass.
Kaye whipped around, ready to run back into the ATV’s open door—and saw that any number of the creatures had already managed to get in. One of them was dragging Wes Allen out of the transport, his mask ripped away, his suit torn. The chemist blinked wide, terrified eyes at his captor as it started to run away, screaming victory. Kaye managed to take out Allen with a clean shot through the top of his skull. It was the best he could do for him.
Firing, he backed away from the ATV, wondering if he’d hear the shots that drilled into his back or if the creatures would get him first, he’d eat the barrel before he’d let himself be taken, do it now, while you can—
And from inside the private vessel, there were more shots—and a young man with a bloody arm was firing into the XTs, leaning against the inside of the lock, shouting at him.
“Hurry!”
Kaye hurried.
* * *
It was all so strange.
She could already reflect on the dizzying highs and lows that had been swinging so fast, so close—Ray had been carried away, and then she’d said what she wanted to Trace, felt free and clean and ready to die, accepting it as the inevitable end to their relationship—except Pete had died, instead, and then Lee had killed Trace, but he wanted to kill her, too—
She could reflect on these huge events as though they were memories, but they weren’t yet, she hadn’t had time to think about anything and it was all still happening. Tommy had gone to let in the corporate people, and Jessa Saers, and someone else, and when the door had gone up there had been a chaos of sights and sounds, like a dark, cold movie framed in the lock’s entry. A suited figure with a flamethrower, another with a gun, one or two people spilling out behind them. It was visually quite compelling, and she felt too worn by the swinging pendulum of her life to do more than watch.
“In here!” Tommy shouted, and Lee use
d that very brief break in his attention to pull a hidden weapon from the back of one boot, a small caliber pistol that he fired at Tommy, blue-eyed Tommy, who fell to the floor, bleeding.
Still happening, she thought, no longer sure what to expect, instinctively backing away from the door.
Laughing, Lee fired into the dark movie, and a suited body fell, and the one with the flamethrower was carried away, and it finally occurred to Didi that she should stop Lee. She wasn’t sure if she still wanted to die, but she knew she didn’t want to be taken by the aliens, and that Lee would make that happen.
I can stop him, she thought, looking around for a weapon, seeing nothing but bodies and blood—and Tommy, struggling to sit up, and Lee was too busy taking aim at the last running figure to see Tommy but when he did, he would kill the blue-eyed pilot.
Didi ran, hard and fast, Lee’s back growing in her jumping vision, his grinning face turning too slow in the instant before she crashed into him. They went down in a tangle, Lee’s gun pointing up, firing still. Didi closed her eyes, buried her head in his chest, clinging to his flailing limbs as tightly as she could. She wouldn’t let go, even when the butt of his small gun glanced across the back of her head hard enough to make her cry out—
—and then there was another shot, so loud that her ears were ringing and buzzing, and warm blood was on her hands, on the back of her neck, and Lee stopped moving. She opened her eyes, saw Tommy turning away, stumbling to the lock controls.
Didi pushed away from Lee, saw the gaping, bloody hole where his left eye had been, and was glad. She touched her head, wincing at the sharp, wet pain where he’d hit her, looking to the lock. To Tommy, who’d saved her, who was now firing out at the howling bugs.
A lone, suited figure stumbled in backwards, also firing, and then the lock was closed, and she couldn’t hear the sudden quiet over the ringing in her ears, but she could feel it. The monsters raged outside, but she only knew from the gentle, sporadic rocking around her. Inside, it was silent.
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