The Hematophages

by Stephen Kozeniewski

  “What the hell are you two doing here?” Preemptively, she looks at the secretary. “I apologize for the salty language, Myrna. I know you don’t like it.”

  “Madam director,” I say, not really sure exactly how to go about this, “we have an issue.”

  She glances between the two of us.

  “We really don’t have time for issues, ladies.”

  “That’s what I tried to tell them, madam director. I told them I might keep your schedule, but I’m not like, the queen of time, you know.”

  “Thank you, Myrna. You haven’t forgotten about those pay stubs that are due by noon, have you?”

  By the blanching of her face, it’s pretty obvious that Myrna had forgotten. Entirely.

  “Oh, uh… no, madam director.”

  “Good, good. I won’t give it another thought, then. You two, in here, now.”

  Zanib and I scuttle in and the hatch closes with a click. Without sitting, Diane takes our measure.

  “All right, tell me what happened.”

  I swallow a lump in my throat and try to speak, but Zanib is already halfway through the story. By the time she finishes, Diane’s face is ashen gray.

  “This whole mission has been cursed from the beginning. I halfway wonder if we don’t have a saboteur on board.” She presses a button on her jotter. “Note. Urgency: high. Review all staff files for possible insider threat. Cannot believe multiple instances of delay and violence are due to coincidence or even outside espionage. Look within. Deliver to security. Not just director. Wide blast. Deliver now.”

  The jotter dings once, twice, thrice, then makes a sound like a swoosh, and the message is away. She turns her attention back to us.

  “Who was it that shot at you?”

  “I don’t know,” I reply, “I didn’t get a good look at them.”

  “Zanib? What about you?”

  She shakes her head. The director sighs.

  “I don’t suppose Helena will be able to shed any more light on this. And if I know her she’s probably raging against everything within arm’s reach.”

  “You can say that again,” Zanib says. “I mean, er…yes, madam director.”

  Diane nods.

  “Now the question is, ladies, who could possibly have gotten here before us? Who knew we were coming? And who would have the resources…”

  Diane doesn’t need to say another word. Apparently we all come to the same conclusion at the same instant.

  Thirteen

  “Morning, Quinn.”

  The least noteworthy of Helena’s security crew members tumbles backwards out of her seat. She had been asleep (or all but) leaning all the way back and Diane’s words shocked her so much she had tumbled right out.

  “Good… good morning, madam director,” Quinn replies shakily, dragging herself up by the desk, “I was just… I just read your priority message. We’ve been working on reviewing files and…”

  “Well, we’ll have to let Prosser and Tampa see to that right this second. Can you possibly let us speak to the corsair?”

  Quinn does a double take.

  “The… the corsair? Yes. Yes, of course.”

  There really isn’t a whole lot to the Borgwardt’s brig. It isn’t really meant to be much of a ship for transporting prisoners. Now and then employees get drunk and obnoxious and get into fights, so there are two separate holding pens, but that’s about the extent of it. Right now, Nia occupies one of them. She’s lying on the deck, but it seems like she’s more than just lying prostrate, nose to the bulkhead. It’s as though an elephant or some great ghostly force is depressing her back, holding her down. The full weight of ordinary shipboard gravity is crushing her, which, when you consider how long she had lived in zero G, makes sense.

  Quinn clangs on the bars of the pen with her billy club.

  “Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey!”

  Nia groans.

  “Just kill me.”

  “Don’t tempt me, skin-wrapper.”

  Diane, struggling slightly with her crutches, places a hand on Quinn’s shoulder.

  “That, ah, that’s all for now, Quinn. Is it all right if we have the room?”

  Quinn glances around, a bit peevish.

  “Well, I’m not really… I mean, I guess that’s against regs. But you are the director. What you say goes, I guess.”

  “What I say goes, very much so. Thanks, Quinn.”

  Diane favors Quinn with a warm smile, or at least a simulacrum of one. Sporting a look like someone is getting one over on her, but unable to come up with an escape hatch, Quinn leaves the pens and returns to the antechamber, nodding all the way. Diane taps on one of the bars with her crutch.

  “You there. Get up.”

  Nia slowly lifts her face from the blood-speckled deck of the pen. I never considered how different seeing the flayed woman over the vidfeed would be as opposed to seeing her up close and in person. Her exposed meat is revolting. I must have gasped or made some small subconscious move because Zanib reaches out and takes my hand, squeezing it gently for support.

  “I can’t get up, you stupid gash,” Nia growls.

  Zanib and I both take a step back, as though trying to get out of the circle of the director’s oncoming fury. But it fails to materialize.

  “Oh,” Diane says instead, “is that all? And here I thought you were worth a damn.”

  A low, unpleasant, rasping laugh chortles out of Nia’s voice box. It’s nothing like her gleeful cackles at our suffering before.

  “Why didn’t you just kill me? They always just kill us. Like we’re not even people. Like we’re fleas. Why’d you bring me here? You love watching me suffer? You get off on torturing me?”

  “Torture? Now that, I can assure you, is a falsehood. We’ve had verified video recording of every second of your stay here since you were brought onboard. We’ve never stopped taping you. We can account for every second. And the reason I ordered that – the express reason – is so that you wouldn’t be mistreated by any of my employees, who, let’s be frank, have every reason in the world to want to torture you.”

  “You did it so you’ll have something to show Hestle when you turn me in for your bounty. They don’t take damaged goods.”

  “Regardless, no one’s hurt you.”

  Nia’s lidless eyes turn wild and she fairly roars.

  “Can’t you see this gravity is killing me?”

  It’s hard to deny. She isn’t just grotesque. She’s pathetic. Her lungs wheeze and she’s barely able to move. Every centimeter of her is crushed flat against the deck, as though someone is flattening her out.

  “You know, when I lost my leg all the doctors said I’d never walk again. The nerve damage was too extensive. They would give me a fancy prosthetic if I wanted it, but it would be more for aesthetic purposes than anything else. I was never supposed to get up out of my chair again. But you know what I did?”

  “Gave a long, pointless speech to someone who doesn’t give a shit?”

  “I said fuck the doctors. I said fuck that chair. I don’t even have a chair anymore. It’s all me. Me-powered ambulation and you know why?”

  “Because you’re a stupid gash who doesn’t know when to give up?”

  “Exactly. Now get up and look me in the face because I have a question for you.”

  It’s hard to read the skin-wrapper’s expression. Without a face, I can’t tell which parts are softening and which are hardening. But after a moment, she seems to make a decision. Her right leg begins to pull forward until her thigh is perpendicular to her waist. Then she begins to push off with her foot, emitting a low grunt. She leaves chunks of her body and a long slug’s trail of blood behind her.

  For what must be two solid grueling minutes we watch as she throws her arms forward, drags herself as far as she can go, then pushes off with one of her legs before she repeats the process all over again until finally she puts her hands on the bars of the pen. Once she catches hold of the bars she pulls herself up until she
’s standing, finally face-to-face with Diane, separated only by the air between their noses. Nia jams her head between two bars.

  After her long, short journey she is practically naked – I mean, naked even for a skin-wrapper. Most of her bandages have come unwound and lay on the deck behind her, soaked in fresh blood.

  “Happy?” Nia whispers.

  “No. But at least now I know you’re worth a damn.”

  “What’s your question?”

  “How do I call off your people?”

  “You killed them all. There’s none left to call off.”

  “I don’t mean them. I mean the ones on the planet. The ones you tipped off. If they’re not yours, they’re your confederates.”

  “Confederates? Like there’s a great big skin-wrapper community out here? How stupid are you?”

  “You don’t exchange information? Call for reinforcements?”

  Nia shakes her head as much as possible while nestled between two bars. It’s like watching someone polish a bruised apple.

  “Other skin-wrappers are as likely to shoot you in the back as help you. I hate to ruin all your fancy notions of honor among thieves, but we don’t help each other out. Every captain’s a CEO, every ship’s its own company. There’s no skin-wrapper corporate headquarters.”

  “Assuming I believe that you didn’t tip anyone off, who else could possibly be out here?”

  “Depends. Where’s here?”

  Diane pauses for a moment. She seems reluctant to tell her enemy information, any information, that might aid her in some kind of negotiation or escape attempt later. Or perhaps it’s that this is some kind of breach of protocol and it’s all being recorded.

  “The Endirii System.”

  “Endirii? There’s nothing there. No ore, no minerals. A crap sun. It’s not on the way anywhere. It’s not on the way back from anywhere.”

  “Rebels? Iconoclasts? Religious zealots?”

  Nia shakes her head.

  “There’s no point. You’d have to have self-sustaining hydroponic gardens anyway. You may as well live in space like us. So, what is here? What did I miss?”

  “Nothing,” Zanib says. “The corporation asked us to take a pass to update stellar cartography.”

  “No, they didn’t. There’s no profit in that. To outfit a ship of this size with payroll, supplies, and everything else would cost a small fortune. They wouldn’t do it to map rocks nobody uses.”

  “Thank you for your insight,” Diane mutters, “I’ll make sure to annotate on our records that you were cooperative.”

  Diane starts to limp away.

  “There was a wreck.”

  Diane pauses, apparently just long enough to confirm Nia’s suspicions, before continuing on.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? There’s a hulk in The Endirii System. But who would go there? They would’ve been ridiculously off course. No. No one could have gotten there. On ordinary trade routes if you had an issue and you were floating, wayward, it’d take thirty years to float to Endirii. And you’d have to be pointed in that direction, which who would be? And how would you get there first before hitting something more important? Or without being scrapped? A wreck would have to be two hundred years old.”

  She pauses, just long enough for recognition to enter her eyes. She’s never looked so human.

  “The Manifest Destiny! You’ve found The Manifest Destiny?”

  Nia continues yelling, taunting us, certain that she is right. The fact that she is, is simply aggravating, but there’s nothing we can do now. Perhaps this is why Diane was so reluctant to give her even a scrap of information. She won’t escape, though, will she? She can’t escape.

  Quinn scuttles to her feet as we enter the antechamber. Her jotter is open and pointed in our direction, humming with a dozen proprietary computing programs, all security-specific. She’s desperate to show us she’s awake and working.

  “Get everything you need, madam director?”

  “Yes, I’m done with that corsair scum. But Quinn?”

  “Yes, madam director?”

  “Bring up a boom suit for her.”

  A look of deeper confusion than usual dampens Quinn’s face.

  “A boom suit? For a prisoner? Isn’t that…”

  She trails off, so Diane finishes for her.

  “Against regulations? Technically, yes. But reasonable accommodations trump most regulations.”

  I glance at Zanib, my eyes furrowed in confusion. She points at her chest and makes a twirling motion, as though twisting a knob. Now I get it. Hestle-issue boom suits have independent gravity systems. Nobody ever uses them that I’ve heard of except in high-grav mining operations. But in theory it could even the skin-wrapper out.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And make sure you contact Equal Opportunity to get the prisoner’s RA on file.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Diane’s jotter beeps. An emergency message, judging by the red flashing light and the fact that as director she probably receives hundreds of communiqués a day and none have been worthy of beeping at her so far today. It’s Tina, the nurse.

  “Airlock 1. It seems your attackers have shown themselves.”

  Fourteen

  Diane orders us to hurry on ahead so she won’t slow us down. Helena is asleep on a cot in a corner. Tina is wiping her bloody hands with a rag.

  “Is she going to be all right?” Zanib asks.

  Tina nods.

  “She’ll be fit to fight in a few. But I had to sedate her. She needs a little rest so this can heal.”

  She gestures at Helena’s shoulder. The wound is sealed over with a small pouch of saline and alcohol, keeping the area clean. The wound itself bubbles as bones knit, ligaments reconnect, and flesh and skin gradually encroaches to seal the whole thing up. Helena’s own body is doing all the work.

  Well, not all the work. A simple neurostim pack attached to the side of her head orders the brain to heal itself at a hundred or maybe a thousand times its natural rate. The main training of modern medics is knowing how much stimulation is too much and where the sweet spot lies between overloading the brain’s synapses, which could kill the patient, and letting the wound fester.

  A second pack attached to Helena’s heart is in constant communication with the neurostim pack. It delivers small doses of various hormones and chemicals, mostly as dictated by the neurostim. Tina makes small adjustments to both as she monitors Helena’s condition. I’ve seen each of these medical devices before, and almost all of them the time I broke my femur, but I’ve never seen them all used at once. I’m truly intrigued, but I can’t waste much time lingering over it. The important thing is that Helena’s going to be fine. She’ll wake up in a few hours hungry as a horse, but otherwise healthy.

  “And take a look at this.”

  The nurse holds up a deformed chunk of copper-colored metal.

  “What is that?”

  “That’s what I dug out of her. A solid slug projectile. Very old-school stuff.”

  I have a strange, sinking feeling about who, exactly, we’re dealing with, but I’m not ready to vocalize anything, or, really, perhaps even admit it to myself. Prosser and Tampa stand, beam rifles at the ready, covering the hatch, essentially protecting their boss. Prosser, the shorter, more muscular goon, motions for Zanib and I to come hither. We oblige. She points through the porthole.

  “What do you two make of that?”

  A woman stands at the other end of the umbilicus, holding up a shirt. She waves it when she sees us.

  “Well, she’s no skin-wrapper, so I guess the corsair was telling the truth,” Zanib says, “But who the hell is she? Who’s she with?

  “Who cares?” Tampa replies. She’s stouter than Prosser, with long, curly hair. “She’s some schizoid nut.”

  “No,” I say, “she’s not crazy. I think she wants to parley.”

  Prosser slaps her forehead.

  “A white shirt. She could have at least stuck it on a pole so
we knew what she was doing. I’ll go talk to her. Tampa, cover me.”

  “You?” Tampa replies, “You’ve got the diplomatic finesse of a Gore-Fa. And this isn’t goon work, either.”

  Both of the security officers turned to look at me. I nod.

  “I’ll go.”

  “The hell you will, virgin!”

  “Zanib, what else are we going to do? Who else are we going to send? The director can’t go out there, you know that. Look, it’s my job to pioneer a path for us through that ship. This is just… an unanticipated obstacle.”

  Zanib scowls, but doesn’t seem to want to fight me on it. She’s a biologist, after all, and talking to creatures that don’t suck blood to stay alive isn’t exactly in her wheelhouse. I would fight her on it. This is going to make me look like a team player. This is going to prove my value to the corporation. I just have to dawdle until the director can arrive to see it. Luckily, I don’t have to come up with an excuse, because the goons have some preparation in store for me.

  Without preamble, Prosser and Tampa unzip my jumpsuit and bear my breasts and everything above my hips to the world. I grit my teeth, hoping Zanib likes what she’s seeing (if not necessarily the circumstances of seeing it.) The two goons lower bulletproof plates over my front and back. The plates are bulky and a bit uncomfortable, but not especially heavy. When they zip me back up, you can hardly tell through my loose-fitting jumpsuit that there’s anything on underneath.

  “What’s going on?” Diane asks, entering the airlock.

  Good. Now she’s here. Now she’ll know I volunteered. Start signing that bonus check now, madam director. And you might as well have that worthless Myrna start getting my long-term contract ready.

  “We’re sending Ambroziak out to parley with the… whoever they are.”

  “The shooters.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re all right with that, Paige?”

  I shrug, affecting nonchalance as best I can with all these layers of stuff weighing me down.

  “Such as I can be.”

  Diane nods in approval.

  “Now, look,” Prosser says, “in this armor they’re not going to be able to kill you if they hit you center mass. You’re not going to like it – it’s going to knock the wind out of you, probably throw you on your ass – but you’ll survive one of those horseshit solid slug things they’re shooting at you.”