by Sara King
Immediately, Dallas dragged over a chair and sat down with her arms crossed over the back, facing him. For a long moment, she just sat there, looking. After a few minutes had passed, Stuart eyed her warily. He was about to ask her what she wanted when she spoke.
“So how old are you?” Dallas finally asked.
Feeling a bit leery, he said, “Little under five thousand.”
“Whoa,” she whispered. “That’s old.” Again, no denial, disbelief, no outraged claims that he was lying. Just…acceptance.
Stuart watched her carefully. She was either very good at faking interest, or she was completely honest in her awe. Considering her tactless remarks from earlier, he guessed it was probably the latter. He was…humbled.
She squeaked her chair closer. “So how long can you live?”
“Uh, well, indefinitely, as long as I’ve got a host.”
“Where were you born?”
“Mitaan.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Humans called it Arachni. Apparently, they thought the harra looked like very large spiders, despite their similarities to mammals.”
“Huh,” Dallas said. “Never heard of it. So you had a mom and a dad or just a mom or what?”
Stuart peered at her, thoroughly perplexed that she seemed so thoroughly engrossed. “My parent deposited me in a colony bed. I grew up in a natural organic medium before a harra came to feed and we decided we’d make a good host-set.”
“Harra?” she asked. He doubted she understood half of what he was saying, but it didn’t make her interest waver in the slightest. “Those spider-thingies? They were smart, too?”
“They’re dead,” Stuart said. “They were killed off millennia ago, with the One Species charter.”
“So you went human?” Dallas asked, scooting even closer to him. “I bet that was tough.”
Stuart remembered that horrible terror all over again and groaned. “It was. I didn’t know what I was doing. He’d just killed my harra. Big-game hunter. Was gutting her out, gonna hang the head on his wall. I shocked him, but he didn’t fall close enough, so I had to crawl over the ground—” He broke off, shuddering. He glanced at Dallas, who was watching him, blue eyes wide. “Do you really care about all this?”
She nodded quickly, mouth open.
“Shouldn’t you be flying the ship?”
Dallas jerked, then glanced at her watch. Seeing the time, she sighed. “Yeah. Come with me to the command room?”
Stuart wasn’t quite sure to make of the captain’s enthusiasm. So used to S.O. plots and bounty-based backstabbing, he had to wonder if she was trying to get him alone so she could gas him or something. “I suppose…”
“Great! Let’s go.” She got out of her seat and stretched. “I’ve gotta get back before the autopilot timer runs out.”
“What happens when the timer runs out?”
Dallas shrugged. “The mainframe overloads, stops searching out debris and we slam into a space-rock.”
“How much time we got?”
She glanced again at her watch. “Two minutes.”
The tiny hairs on the back of Stuart’s neck lifted. “You should get going.”
“Only if you’re coming with me. I still wanna know how you…you know.” She gestured at his host’s crotch.
“I already told you. The parent leaves a pupae in its last host and it develops there.”
“But how? Do you have males and females? Can you all do it? Do you have to be a certain age to do it, or can you just decide to do it? Does there have to be two of you to do it properly? Or four? Or what?”
Stuart realized his mouth was hanging open. He grabbed her arm and started walking toward the command room. “First of all, while I detest Tommy’s approach, we do share a lot of similar attributes to a human earthworm. Namely, we can replicate ourselves at will, or, if we’re feeling really frisky, we can dual-host to exchange memories and genetic material with another of our kind.”
“Memories?” she said, stopping abruptly.
In reply, Stuart thrust Dallas into the pilot’s seat and said, “How much time?”
Dallas glanced reluctantly at the controls, then yelped and yanked up on the stick so hard that the artificial gravity of the ship couldn’t compensate. It knocked Stuart to the floor, where he lay for long minutes while the entire ship shook with seismic energy. When Stuart got back to his feet, Dallas gave him a guilty look.
“Don’t even say it,” Stuart said, taking the navigator’s chair.
“Say what?”
“How close we came to dying. I don’t wanna hear it.”
“Bah, it was only a couple of meters.”
Stuart paled.
“Anyway, you were telling me about getting frisky.”
“I told you already. What more do you want?”
“I don’t know, just start talking?” She gave him a pleading look.
“Watch the screen,” Stuart ordered.
“But…”
“I’ll keep talking, but only if it’s not gonna distract you.”
She pouted, but turned back to face the screen. Immediately, she made another course adjustment that left the hull creaking.
“Okay,” she said breathlessly, “You can talk now.”
Against his better judgment, Stuart said, “If we want to reproduce, we leave little parts of ourselves behind. I guess you humans would call it an egg, but it’s not really an egg. It takes part of our memories and stored knowledge with it. Kind of like if I cut a piece off of a human brain and hooked it up to a robot.”
“That is so cool,” she said, turning to him.
“Screen,” Stuart warned.
“Okay, okay,” she said, scanning the field once more. “So where are the rest of you? How many are left?”
Stuart’s eyes narrowed. Now that was a question he’d heard quite a few times, and never from friends. “Why do you want to know?” he asked evenly.
“And if it’s that easy for you to make more of yourself, you must’ve made all sorts of little Stueys all over the galaxy.” She grinned up at him. “Right?”
Again, Stuart got that creepy sensation that the girl was either a masterful spy…or completely genuine. “Watch the screen,” he muttered.
“So when this is over and we’ve dumped Athenais somewhere, you wanna go meet up with some of your friends?” she asked. “Maybe they’d let me buy ‘em a drink.”
“Aside from that being the last thing a suzait would let a stranger do,” Stuart said, “I don’t have any friends.”
She frowned up at him. “Why not?”
Completely innocent. Completely oblivious.
Stuart’s gut twisted in shame as he said, “I’m one of the last of my kind.”
To his surprise, she slapped her hand against the control panel. “So that’s why nobody’s claimed the thirty-five million in awhile. You’re almost wiped out.”
Stuart gave her a narrow look. “What do you know about thirty-five million?”
“I was surfing the infoscreen awhile ago and saw it. Thought that was an awful lot for a four-inch-long wormy-lookin thing.”
“I’m not a worm,” he prickled.
“Didn’t say you were. Said you looked like one.”
“You said I looked like an inside-out sucker-fish with puppydog eyes.”
“That too.”
They lapsed into silence for long minutes before Stuart said, “We can’t get into Marceau’s complex without the shifters, so Rabbit wants to go after them as soon as we have Athenais.”
She heaved a huge sigh. “Figured as much.”
“He thought you’d be angry.”
“I’m not angry. Why should I be? I have no beef with them. It was Athenais that dumped me on T-9 like a spacerat.”
Stuart said nothing.
“So you were around the Quads before the humans came?”
“The harra didn’t have the dexterity to build anything more than basic huts.” Even saying that hurt.
“If they had, the war would have had a much different outcome, I assure you.”
“Oh,” she said. “What war?”
Stuart stared at her. She’s too young to even know about the war.
And, jumping topics at an alarming pace, she added, “So you guys got to space by hopping a ride with us?” She looked at him, grinning. “That must’ve been cool. What’d ya think, seeing a ship for the first time?”
“I thought it was an unnatural monstrosity that defied the very will of the gods, and watch the screen.”
“Okay.” She looked at him again. “So what was it like, before we showed up?”
“I lived in a hut.”
“Come on.”
“Why do I have to do all the talking?”
“Because there’s nothing interesting about me to talk about. I’m only thirty-four. Haven’t had enough time to do anything cool.”
“Before Marceau, most humans didn’t live past eighty.”
She peered at him. “That’s baloney.”
He shrugged. “Look it up, if you want. If they even still have the documentation.”
She sniffed, obviously more irritated with his claim that humans had the life-cycles of bacteria, galactically speaking, than the fact that a suzait’s wormlike body held enough intellectual firepower to mow down a small town.
“Thirty-four years is a lot of time for interesting stuff to happen,” Stuart said, as a peace offering.
Dallas snorted, looking utterly depressed. “I graduated Academy, flew for the Utopia in a ghost ship, and took up as Athenais’s copilot when I got dropped for disobedience. Oh, and then Athenais dropped me for being a snitch and I was a waitress for a few months. Yeah, real amazing stuff, right there.”
“A ghost ship?” Stuart frowned at the term. “Is that a warship?”
Dallas laughed. “No. It’s a ship. Filled with ghosts. The kind that sit up in bed and have their heads do a three-sixty on their shoulders while chanting, ‘get off my ship.’”
Stuart pursed his lips. “How long did you fly it?”
“Two years.”
“That must have been an eternity.”
“It was.” She gave him a shocked look. “You believe in ghosts?”
“Absolutely. It’s one of the few psychic fields in which humans seem to excel—messy, violent deaths. What happened on that ship to leave it haunted?”
“Never did find that out.” Dallas shuddered. “Don’t really want to know, either.”
“I can check,” he said, reaching for the console. “What was the name?”
Dallas scowled at him. “I said I didn’t want to know.”
“I do. Watch the screen.”
“Bloody Mary,” Dallas muttered.
“Sounds promising,” he said, typing it in. In moments, he had his answer.
“Captain George Yuma,” he recited. “Was forcibly retired after a hundred and sixteen years as captain. He refused to step down. He defied orders, flew his ship out to empty space, and murdered his crew. An exploration squad found it thirty years later, the corpses frozen inside. Perfectly preserved. They re-named it Bloody Mary because the captain left a note on the wall of the air-lock, written in blood. Said he’d walk the place forever, and if anybody else tried to take his ship away from him, and would haunt the next captain all the way to his tomb.”
“Damn it, why’d you hafta tell me that?!”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Stuart said. “The next captain died of a heart-attack a few weeks after taking command. Oh, and the one after that keeled over in his pea soup, three months into his commission. Stroke.”
Dallas went pale. Her knuckles bone-white where they clung to the stick. “I said I didn’t want to know,” she managed.
“Hmm,” he said, “Well, if it makes you feel any better, Bloody Mary was scrapped right after you took another commission. And oh, look! Retribution is using a refurbished version of the Bloody Mary’s intercom in the captain’s chambers.”
Dallas turned green.
“I’m kidding. You were the first commission, after the murders.”
She swallowed and stared down at her debris screen.
“You need to lighten up. Ghosts can’t hurt you.”
“They can’t?” Dallas demanded. “What about hovering knives and rotating beds? That’s all harmless?”
“That’s a poltergeist,” he said. “Completely different energy patterns.”
Dallas narrowed her eyes and turned back to the controls.
“So how long until we reach Erriat?”
Her eyes flickered over the console. “Oh hey, that’s neat. Seven days, seven hours, and seventeen minutes.”
“Are you really gonna make Athenais ride in the airlock when we find her?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She did it to me.”
“Why?”
“Because I took Beetle out without permission.”
He raised his host’s brows.
“I just wanted to get the feel of her,” Dallas said quickly. “No harm in that. Hell, I brought her back without a single ding and Athenais acted like I had scattered wreckage over half the quadrant. She took me out and did so many maneuvers that the artificial gravity system crashed. Flung me all around the inside of the air-lock and bashed me all to hell. I was lucky to be alive by the end of it.”
“That’s a little extreme.”
“Yeah, I know, right?!” Dallas cried, nodding. “And before she locked me in, she told me she was headed out to dump me in space. So the whole time I was vomiting my guts out, I was also wonderin’ when she was gonna open the hatch.”
“Seems like you two got off on the wrong foot.”
Dallas pressed her lips together and scowled at the debris field, her small body obviously prickling. “No. She’s just a bitch.”
Friends in Sticky Places
Twenty-four hours later, Rabbit called them all to dinner again. He had made a pungent dish of baked eggs mixed with a potent herb that made Stuart’s host’s eyes water. He choked it down, but shook his head when he was offered more.
Dallas barely touched her meal, and when Rabbit told her to finish it, she pushed the plate away from her and told him to go to hell.
Colonel Howlen had refused to eat with them entirely. In response, Dallas had ordered him to join them in the mess hall, but he had simply dragged a seat as far away from their table as possible and spent the entire time scowling at Stuart’s back. Stuart felt the man’s eyes like razor blades at the base of his neck, and it was everything he could do not to get up and go shock him again.
Darley was equally as gloomy. He ate everything Rabbit put in front of him, but sat at the table staring at his empty plate afterwards, moving crumbs of egg around with his fork.
Finally, Rabbit heaved a huge sigh. He hadn’t even opened up his handheld case to begin his usual scouting missions, and his wine glass was dry. He eyed the four of them over his empty plate. “Aren’t we a spirited bunch,” he commented. “Was my cooking really that bad?”
“It’s the damned alien you brought aboard without telling me,” Howlen snapped. “He electrocuted me the other night.”
“Yes, I heard about that. You insulted his ancestors or something, right?”
“I don’t want to be on the same ship as that thing.”
Rabbit nodded. “All right. You’re welcome to get off at any time.” He gestured at the front air-lock.
“Next stop, Erriat,” Dallas added with a smirk.
His face turning purple, Howlen got to his feet and stalked from the room, leaving his chair beside the door.
“What about you, Darley?” Rabbit went on. “Why so grim?”
Darley sighed and let his fork fall back onto his plate. “I’m just worried about Attie.”
Dallas snorted. “Coldhearted bitch is getting what she deserves.”
In one swift motion, Darley was on his feet, Dallas’s collar in his fist. He brought her face inches away from
his and said, “Maybe we should drop you off on our way out, you stupid child. Give you a few years to think about it.”
“Darley,” Rabbit warned.
“No! She’s too stupid to overlook her grudge for one moment to realize that Athenais is in a hell worse than anything she could ever think up. It’s no wonder Athenais kicked her off her ship.”
“That’s your captain you’re speaking to,” Rabbit said.
“She sure doesn’t act like one.” Darley released Dallas’s collar in disgust and stormed off.
Dallas’s face was scarlet as she sat back down, hand at her throat. Throwing a trembling finger in Darley’s direction, she said in a wavering voice, “Stuart, follow him back to his room and lock him inside. I want him in confinement for the rest of the trip.”
Stuart sighed. “No.”
“No?!” Dallas looked betrayed. “What is this? A mutiny?”
“If this were a mutiny, child, you’d be dead already.”
Dallas glared at Rabbit. “You’re gonna start callin’ me child, too? On my own damn ship?”
“Your actions today have made it necessary,” Rabbit said.
“What actions?”
Rabbit stopped to give her a long look. “When we get Athenais aboard the ship, I want you to take a good look in her eyes. If you still think that she deserves punishment, you can throw her in the airlock and do all the barrel-rolls you want. Until then, stop insulting her. I’ve known her as my friend more than a hundred times longer than you’ve been alive, and, if we get to Erriat and something goes wrong and I have to choose between which of the two of you to leave on that planet, it would be her. As much as I love her as a sister, I’m not about to put that burden on my soul, because I know you wouldn’t survive it.”
Oh gods, girl, shut up, Stuart thought, cringing, knowing what was next. Don’t say it. Don’t—
“That’s just because the Potion keeps her alive,” Dallas retorted.
Stuart dropped his face into his hands.
“The Potion keeps her alive,” Rabbit agreed. “And that will only make it worse for her.” He stood up, gathering up his electronics, then stopped to give her a long look. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t referring to physical survival. I’ve seen kids like you break, in the wars. Hell, spent my fair share breaking them. You’d let go in the first six hours.”