by S D Tanner
Judge was examining the robot bodies next to the empty skin. Lifting the arm on one he found that it moved with the fluid motion of a well-oiled joint. He lifted it by the chin; the face was only a molded shape designed to be covered by the living skin. Two round orbs provided the shape of the eyes and there was a bump where the nose should have been. The mouth was a dark, empty hole leading nowhere.
He didn’t recognize the flattened face, but Jessica had the same straight, brown hair. The robot body next to her skin had bulges across the chest, whereas Robert’s body had a molded mound over the crotch. Now he understood why Robert had bled when he cut him. He was a robot covered in living tissue.
It was only human to personalize everything and his first concern was for himself. “Is that what we are? A biological skin over a robot body?”
Judge laughed and flicked his gun at the mound over Robert’s crotch. “I’ve got more equipment that.”
It was bad day when you weren’t sure whether you were human or not, but Judge was right. They weren’t the same as Jessica and Robert. Breathing a sigh of relief, he nodded at the row of bodies. “Most of the boxes are empty.”
“I guess they’ve been using the stock.”
“What happened to the others?”
If Jessica and Robert were robots it explained why the fleas never bothered with them. They weren’t alive, nor did they contain much blood. Maybe the fleas had destroyed a few of the robots before realizing there wasn’t a meal in them.
A scream rang across the room. The vent in the ceiling had sprung open and a humanoid-looking flea dropped through it. Before he had time to react all ten vents inside the room exploded. Crashing and clashing, the broken doors over the vents skidded across the floor. Something landed on top of him and wound itself around his body. If it was one of the humanoid fleas then he was a dead man. Thick tentacles wrapped around his waist and neck. Reaching for his blade a slimy tentacle blocked his belt. Using one hand to pull it away, he managed to get his hand around the hilt. Once the blade was free he plunged it into the flea and ripped upward. A spray of blood hit the light gray ceiling. He skidded in blood as he spun around, leaving the creature to bleed out.
“Don’t shoot!” He shouted.
Using the blood to slide across the room he managed to grab Lolo by the arm, but his warning was too late. Mark was firing at one of the humanoid-looking fleas. The explosion rocked the room and threw him backwards. Lolo fell and they skidded across the floor together. Judge was on his back firing at a flea falling through the vent. The first explosion, caused by Mark, was followed by another. More fleas tumbled through the vents above them. He couldn’t see Mark, but there was no way he’d survived the blast.
Lolo was screaming and he hurled her toward the door. The blood on the floor acted like a lubricant and she slid across it like a hockey puck on ice.
“Get out!” He roared.
Slipping and sliding in the blood, she managed to yank on the wide handle across the door. She was unable to find her feet and slid through the small opening into the corridor. With her out of the room the fight was between the fleas, him and Judge. More blood had spread across the floor and he struggled to his feet. Judge was at the other end of the room under a mass of waving tentacles. There had to be at least four of the squid-like fleas on top of him. A spray of blood exploded from the writhing mass and hit the ceiling.
Swiveling to look behind him, he saw that more fleas of both types were heading in his direction. He could stand and fight, or end the argument. “Judge, I’m headed toward you.”
Using his blade to slash from left to right, he ran into the mass of tentacles covering Judge. Even while he hacked into the fleas, drawing blood with every swipe, more crashed into his back until he fell onto the floor. Fleas continued dropping from the ceiling, until he was submerged under a squirming mass of slimy tentacles. Blood flooded onto the floor and he slipped across it until he collided with something solid.
“Steady on, Tag,” Judge said.
“We need to get out of here.”
“There’s a door to my right.”
The ship’s architects had created a long row of doors along the arterial corridor, but many led to the same room. This room had at least four doors, all leading back into the corridor. Twisting so his back was to the door he began using his heels to slide himself backwards. He was buried under the squirming tentacles and all he could smell was the sweet scent of blood, underpinned by the stench of rotting flesh.
He kept his mouth firmly shut, trying to avoid swallowing the blood. Judge was also on his rear, pushing himself toward the wall they couldn’t see. Eventually, his back hit something hard and flat.
Risking blood entering his mouth, he said, “Got the wall. Where’s the door?”
Feeling a hand around his forearm, Judge had reached through the undulating tentacles. The slimy limbs were winding their way around his entire body entangling his arms and legs. Judge continued to pull him along while he jabbed and slashed into the gelatinous mass. Feeling himself yanked sharply by the arm he fell through the door and into the corridor.
The room was full of fleas and more were squeezing their way through the vents in the ceiling. He sat on his butt and looked across at Judge sitting next to him.
“No way.”
Judge was covered from head to toe with blood, and his features were barely visible. Without bothering to reply, Judge raised his gun and so did he. Somewhere inside the tangled mess were humanoid fleas. Rounds of bullets would find them and the room would ignite. With only a wall and a corridor between the blast and window there was a chance they might compromise the hull, but he didn’t think either of them cared anymore.
Both guns fired concurrently through the open door. The eruption made the wall bulge outward along the entire length of the room. Doors snapped off their hinges and slammed into the window on the other side of the corridor. He expected to hear a cracking sound that would herald his death. Instead, all he could hear was a fierce, low hiss. Tentacles that had been waving through the door stopped moving.
When he looked at Judge, all he could see were the whites of his eyes. His face and uniform were drenched an even red color as if they’d been dyed. “What’s going on?”
A white foamy substance was forming around the edges of the door and squeezing through the glutinous mass of fleas. Reaching out his hand to touch the foam, he realized that he, too, was dyed a brilliant red. The foam caught the color of the blood and then hardened.
“Fire suppression,” Judge said sounding relieved.
There were more fleas on the ship than he’d expected, making him worry about the other two squads. “Squads, sound off.”
Hawk replied first. “We’re on level twelve, eight rows in and about fifty deep.”
“What are you finding?”
“A few broken pods. Some people are still alive, but they’ve been compromised.”
“Rok, report in.”
“I heard you,” Rok replied. “We’re on level thirty-eight, twenty-six rows in and about ten deep. We’re finding the same.”
“Have you engaged?”
“No shots fired, but the deeper we go the more damaged pods there are.”
“We’re on our way,” he replied.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Long Lost Love
Returning to the small living quarters he and Judge wiped the worst of the blood from their faces. Staring at his now red streaked features he wasn’t sure he recognized himself anymore. The face staring back at him was muscular and the eyes were a flinty steel gray. Full lips topped by a cupid’s bow didn’t soften his looks. If he met himself in a dark alley he’d think twice about starting a fight. Just thinking of death brought back another memory. In this one he was in a medevac bird with two men staring down at him. Although the doors were closed he could feel tiny wisps of breeze from every angle. Rotors were whumping above him and one of the men was peering into his eyes.
&
nbsp; “Stay with me, Jake,” the man shouted.
He wanted to stay, but something was tugging at his consciousness. The coldness that had settled over his body was being replaced by a numbness. Feeling detached and disoriented, he clung to the man’s voice. Although something hurt in a way that his brain couldn’t accept, he couldn’t remember what was wrong with him. Clenching his hand into a fist his fingers felt fat and swollen. His tongue was lying flat in his mouth and his jaw fell open. Air that had been filling his lungs suddenly had nowhere to go other than out.
“Stay with me…”
The rest of the words were drowned out by a roaring in his ears. His world shrank until there was nothing. Even the noise of the blades rotating overhead became a whisper. The slight breezes that had been tickling his body stopped, and everything became still. Still mouthing words as if he were speaking, the face over his blurred until all he could see was an outline the color of sand.
He looked at his eyes in the mirror and felt a tingle travel up his spine. Something about the memory left him unsettled in a way he didn’t know how to process.
Wiping his hands on a white towel now stained red, he turned to Judge. “I think I died in a medevac bird.”
Judge was still running a damp cloth across his cheek, dragging it down firmly as if he could wipe away the blood. “Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Why not?”
“I think we all died.”
“Then how are we here? Are we replicants?”
Tossing the cloth into the sink turned red by flea blood, Judge shook his head. “Nope. We’re not like Jessica and Robert. We think independently. Jessica and Robert are following their programming.”
“How do you know we’re not doing that?”
Jamming his helmet onto his head, Judge picked up his gun. “Robots don’t feel anything?”
“Do you feel anything?”
Judge was already making his way through the door to the living quarters. “I’m pissed off.”
Grabbing his helmet and gun he followed Judge through the door. If being pissed off meant he wasn’t a robot then he certainly wasn’t one. The lack of clear and reliable information was irritating him, and the little he’d learned was only making him angrier.
Lolo was sitting on the edge of a bed. Leaning forward she had her face in her hands. She hadn’t appeared to be hurt when they’d left the corridor, but now he hunkered down next to her knees, looking up at her.
“Are you ok?”
When she took her hands away from her face they were damp with tears. “Mark’s dead,” she said hollowly.
“Were you together?”
She took a long, shuddering breath. “We met at a conference. We’ve…we’d been together for three years. Mark was the first to get a job at Lunar. He brought me in after he started. They like recruiting couples. It gives them more leverage.” Wiping her eyes in what he thought was a childlike way, her lower lip dropped into a sad pout. “I can’t believe he’s gone. I…I can’t believe I’m on a ship in the middle of nowhere. How did this happen?”
It was a reasonable question, one he was asking as well. “I don’t know. You seem to think Lunar did it.”
Stripped of her cheeky high-handed attitude Lolo struck him as very young. Bald women were ageless and she could be younger than he’d initially thought. Where he would have said she was in her thirties, now he wondered if she was younger.
Her knees were held together tightly and she lowered her hands until they rested lightly on her lap. For just a moment, he thought they’d met before, but then another face overlaid hers. It was the woman with Daisy at the birthday party. In this memory, her smile had been stolen and tears were slowly trickling down her cheeks. Someone had their arm across her hunched shoulders and she was weeping over something he couldn’t see.
“Lisa,” he said sadly.
Like all his memories this one came with a strong emotion. It wasn’t pity or regret, but an overwhelming sense of failure. Her tears told of a broken promise, something he’d said he would do and hadn’t. He wanted to hold her and tell her everything would be all right, but she was beyond his reach. Something deep inside him told him he would never see her again. It wasn’t the Ark, or even Lunar, that would stop him. Although he didn’t know the reason, he knew she was beyond him forever. He’d messed up and she’d paid the price.
Rising to his feet, struggling to understand what he was remembering, he turned to Judge. “My family aren’t on this ship.”
“Who are your family?”
“I had a wife and daughter. Lisa and Daisy.”
“Where are they?”
He looked past Judge at the door to the living quarters hoping his addled mind could answer the question. Nothing became clearer and the memory faded. “I only know they’re not on the ship.”
Putting out his hand to Lolo, he said, “We have to meet the squads in the chamber.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Hide and Eat
The two squads were walking through the chamber by starting at the top and weaving their way down. Once they’d completed a circuit, they went to the next section with stairs and repeated the sweep. He entered the chamber again and studied the rows and levels of pods. Based on the number of fleas that had just attacked them the entire chamber had to be infested. They should be able to see the fleas, but aside from a low humming the chamber was quiet. Making their way along the walkways they followed Rok’s directions until they found him with the squad.
Nodding to Rok, he asked, “What’s the word?”
“Still screwed,” Rok replied amiably.
“Had any problems?”
“We found a few of the squid types, but they die easily…and quietly.”
If they were lucky, then there wouldn’t be many of the napalm fleas on board. It would make their job doable, but something wasn’t stacking up. At least forty or more fleas had squeezed themselves inside the room with the robots. He doubted every flea on the ship had attacked them, meaning there had to be more of them, a lot more. So far, none had bothered to hide so they had to be in plain sight somewhere on the ship.
Turning to look at Judge, he said, “This isn’t right.”
Continuing to look around the chamber, Judge nodded. “I agree. We were attacked by at least forty fleas. That suggests there’s a bigger force.”
“Where do you think they nest?”
“Wherever the food is and that’s here.”
The fleas didn’t strike him as being smart, but they were clever enough to set up home on the Arks. Although they appeared weak, the ones on the Animax proved they were far from harmless. Even if their intelligence wasn’t intentional, they were smart enough. If he were a flea then where would he set up shop? As Judge rightly said, they would stay near their food source, and that was sleeping inside the chamber.
“They can’t be far from where we are now.”
Pursing his lips, Judge drew a deep breath. “They haven’t had a predator until now.”
On his way to meet Rok he’d checked every pod. Most were still active and only a few had been shut down. None had the telltale trails of blood found on the Animax. Judging by the number of active pods the fleas had only just started harvesting the Prognatus. It made him wonder what they would do when the food ran out. Would they just leave? How had they gotten on board in the first place? Maybe one of the other squads had landed on a planet, or perhaps the fleas could move through space. That led him to wonder if they’d been an invention of Lunar Horizon. What if the fleas were another type of virus designed to destroy a population they didn’t want?
Looking around the chamber and unsure where to look next, he said, “They have to be in here somewhere.”
Judge nodded. “They won’t be in the domes. That’s too far away from their food supply.”
“Same could be said of the engine room.”
“If they didn’t hide in the rooms attached to the main corridor, then they
wouldn’t be in the engine room either.”
They had to be inside the chamber, so why couldn’t they find them? Looking along the line of pods on the walkway he tried to think like a flea. He turned on his heel and scanned beyond the pods. The chamber was only an enormous room the size of thirty football pitches. The walkways were connected by platforms at each end. Along the platforms were multiple metal stairwells. The chamber was a large metal grid joined by walkways with pods on them. Buried inside the metal grid on the walkways were pipes connected directly into the pods. They supplied the nutrients, fluids and drugs keeping the sleepers alive, and in stasis. Judging by the pods already opened, the fleas weren’t eliminating the chamber in sections. If anything, they appeared to be picking victims at random.
“They have to be near the walls,” he said.
“That would mean one side of them is defended, so that makes sense,” Judge replied.
Peering over the edge of the walkway, he asked, “Do you think they’re at the bottom of the chamber?”
“That makes sense, too.”
It did make sense, but he didn’t think that’s where they were. Clustered at the bottom would make them vulnerable to an attack from above, not that they appeared worried about predators. Instinctively looking up, he scanned the ceiling of the chamber. It was the same light gray color as the arterial corridor. The bright lights inside the chamber reflected against the glass covered pods creating a pattern on the ceiling. Well-lit to the point of being almost blinding even the pods cast no shadow. He placed his hand over his eyes and tried to make out the weaving pattern above him.
“Jessica, lower the lights by seventy percent.”