Men and Machines I
Page 10
It’s the one thing I can’t face.
***Stitching non-concordant thought stream***
With Drake gone, I finally believed him. The Deck things hadn’t taken the Moon Ranger when we were docked because they weren’t stupid. A lot changes in 300 years, and not enough spots for all to escape, so safer to keep the crew human until they knew where they were bound. They’d sent an agent, or agents: parasites. To make more of them. What the plan was from there, who knew. Rescue mission? Takeover? It didn’t matter.
I blew the life support lines. Anything I could jettison from the bridge, I tripped. Air went rushing out of the Ranger, all but the bridge bubble. For a few minutes, I thought I’d done some good, but the footsteps started up.
Like a dead man, slow and steady.
Drake was far beyond needing to breathe so much. The undead don’t need it.
I thought about snuffing out. Not suffocating exactly; I’d let the core monoxide bleed back into the bridge. Breathe my way to quiet cherry-red death. He was going to get in here anyway, and there was nowhere else to go.
I got as far as the final switch, a big red fucker marked with danger: maintenance use only. Then I paused for comforting routine, and ran my fingers over the re-entry checks, which made me look at the hull cams: I saw a bright buff around the life support exhaust pipe. Now, ceramometalic ship hulls like the Ranger’s get a space patina: a dull skin shot-peened by tiny flakes of this and that, and slow planet-side oxidation. But the metal around that pipe was bright and glowing, like the Ranger was a clean-skin again, fresh from the assemblers, not five decades in service. Just like the Deep Deck, scrubbed clean with pico-who-knew-what-machines. The things were beyond just us. They had the Moon Ranger, headed for Poseidon. Where there’s a thousand other ships, and thousands more hapless tars like me.
So I tipped the entry too deep, and set a trap inside the door. Got my heavy tools out and went hunting for that black box so no one could trace us back. The only problems now are the Junta and Lou. Because there had to be nothing left to tempt them, and if any fragment of the DistComp survived, they’d have the answer and send another mob. Pull out the stops and find a bent ship with bigger boosters than the Ranger.
They might just make it.
***Stitching non-concordant thought stream***
The keypad entries get slow and deliberate. I think Drake is fully gone now, the thing just riding on what’s left of his gray matter. And the Armor’s out there too, though somehow I doubt he’ll use it. I know he’s after me alive. Another body to infect. Become a dead host for pico-assemblers, hive machines with an appetite for brain and a hunger for revenge.
Bip. Bip. Bip. Bip. He’s trying combinations in order now. Pity; in the reset I hurried and set 0-0-0-3.
So two more goes and the door shoots open with a burst of flame: Drake’s liquor in its only useful function. A fireball flares around an invisible mass. Drake flickers visible. His skin lights in places, but mostly it just glows bright. Raw flesh hangs from his neck, flames leap through the gaps.
The heat mixes with the hot cabin air, rushing out into the void.
It stumbles forward.
The ship shudders. Alarms are going off everywhere. I silence them all and they become red flashes on my retinas. I put my hands on the Ranger’s controls. Outside the port, the air glows: white hot plasma superheating in our stream. The ceramic won’t last much longer.
Something cracks.
In my rear-view, Drake’s white eyes go to the instrument panel, then to my throat.
But it’s too late.
The port streaks and melts. Thick hot air burns my insides.
The thing in Drake knows it’s too late, but it comes on anyway.
There’s time to think silent apology to the Moon Ranger for this death, before a ragged, half-seen hand grips my throat. Before the tingling invasion of disassemblers burrows into my jaw. One more host. A chance to survive the crash.
But I’m the best there is at course plotting.
She cracks again, and the bridge is a plasma hot breath. My body’s gone, silent, a captain’s death.
But the last thought is hope. That Lou doesn’t send another team. That this ship burns so nothing’s left. That the Deep Deck finds a comet on her long orbit, or some other means of destruction. That she’s not still there when the Poseidon system expands itself into Cold Space, ready for invasion.
**********
End. Recompile terminated near subject expiry.
Neural Ship Log on chip series 0041-A.
Recompile:0426 Poseidon Sci-Bin004 DistCompsubrtneJJ64.
Subject: Parker, J.
File 06801A-Moon Ranger
Awaiting Command□
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With many thanks, Charlie.
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