Gates of Hell

by Susan Sizemore

  Roxy hit the off button and swore. She’d written Eamon several times on the trip to Bonadem, short notes he had yet to answer. This recitation was probably futile, but she needed to talk to somebody. She stared angrily at the message recorder, then around the darkened bedroom. The man was a ship captain with plenty of worries of his own. He’d answer when he could. She was on her own—and he might just remind her that she’d volunteered when he did reply. Getting an “I told you so” message from him wouldn’t do their relationship any good.

  “I’m not the one dying of Sag Fever,” she said, curbing the impulse to feel sorry for herself. She rubbed the back of her neck, threw her long braid over her shoulder, stretched, then hit the record button again.

  “Personal observations: Well, at least I don’t have to wear a uniform. Or boots. It’s spring in the northern hemisphere of Bonadem. Nice and warm. The sky here is green, a paler green than on Koltir Prime, but still very soothing and familiar. I’m glad it isn’t blue. I got bored with blue when I lived on Terra. The hospital where Richi, Ral, and I are working is located in the capital city of Dallis. Hospital’s on the outskirts of the city, next to the spaceport. I noticed a wide river and lots of gardens. The hospital grounds are covered in pastel flowers and trees with new, yellow-green leaves. It’s spring and it rains a lot. I haven’t been off the hospital grounds since we arrived. What I’ve seen of the city was in the aircar from the cutter field.

  “There was something in the orientation material about the oldest part of Dallis being over seven thousand years old, and that it has always been a religious and educational center. The natives of Bonadem have this lovely pale blue-and-purple patterned skintone, and a lot of them have purple hair; most have dark blue, though. A very handsome people. They’re believers in the Neshama, by the way, and the main temple complex was dedicated to the Return of the Parents millennia before their first contact with the Systems ninety years ago. It’s a quiet city, now, Dee tells me. She says the business district and many of the residential districts are pretty much deserted. I guess some people got off planet before the quarantine. Others have left the cities, trying to get away from the infection. Not a bad idea, as the fever is concentrated in the cities here on Bonadem. There are slums in Dallis, and they are full of sick people; the poor are suffering the most. In my MedService days, I saw plenty of discrepancies in medical care between the haves and the have nots, but I guess I’d forgotten. I’m not sure if I’ve been hiding in a metal box or an ivory tower… with gun turrets.

  “I’m not sure if this is my first transmission to you since I arrived. The healings are very disorienting, so if I’m repeating myself, I’m sorry. I’m not even sure how many days I’ve been here. Sag Fever has this way of causing memory loss. I know I’m doing healings, but I very rarely remember them. And, of course, I keep passing out. I don’t want to worry you, I’m just tired.

  “We’ve got two other koltiri and about a hundred MedService volunteers, as well as the resident staff. The evac is going pretty smoothly. We’re concentrating on the younger children, and pregnant women. Now those are tricky cases. I’ve told you about Alice Phere, right? Married to the Hrom commando? Alice and I went to medical school together, and we shared a MedService posting before the war. She’s in on this one. Richi and Ral are the koltiri. They arrived about the same time Dee and I did, but didn’t bother with a ship. You know how flashy some koltiri can be. Teleporting’s a convenient talent; wish it didn’t make me so sick. I guess the three of us are doing some good. We heal them, then they are immediately shuttled up to an orbiting transport ship. Don’t know when the kids can come home, but at least no one on the ship has Sag Fever.

  “We’re healing as many as we can, but the researchers still haven’t come up with a cause or cure. I’ve been too busy—and brain-fried—being a koltiri to do any research work. And I’m the one who always says it’s better to cure than it is to heal. Wish Bonita was here. So many die before we can get to them—or die in the streets and tenements and hospitals hoping a koltiri will save them. This world is dying, Eamon, and I can hear it—begging, praying, screaming, most of it silent. I can feel it. You know how that is, no shielding is strong enough to keep out millions of death cries.

  “Damn. Sorry. Do you get the impression I’m feeling guilty about all this? Damn right, I’m guilty. And angry. And so fucking helpless. I want to make it all better right now. But there’s no way out. I just have to do what I can, and live with knowing it’s not enough. There are thousands of heroes here, but I’m not one of them. Anyone who puts their life at risk to stay and try to cope with this menace is a hero. The medical people are all heroes. The volunteers who go looking for kids in the poor parts of town are heroes.

  “There’s been quite a demand for environmental belts and recharge packs. Some got stolen from the hospital yesterday. Can’t blame people for trying to get them. I do blame the black market that’s sprung up here—probably everywhere with the fever. And yes, there’s a rumor of a cure. Rumor says the drug was brought in from Laborne. There’s been a Bucon trading enclave in Dallis for several centuries longer than Bonadem’s been part of the Systems. Dee’s trying to track down the dealer in what’s a pretty close-knit and closed-mouth part of town. We have this Dr. Feelgood’s name from Kelem and Sady. Dee hasn’t had much luck so far. At least I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ve seen her for a couple of days. The last time I saw Dee, she was stuffing me with protein injections. I then healed her Fever one more time, told her to use the damn e-belt outside the hospital’s field, then passed out. She’s caught it twice. Says it’s safer to expose herself to the infection than to be glowing in the streets. Guess she’s right. There are a lot of desperate people out there.

  “I haven’t heard anything about the Borderers since getting here. Is the alert over by the Rose classified? Like I said, different reality here. Or maybe the people on Bonadem have other crises on their minds. I’m assuming we aren’t at war with anyone new. I wouldn’t want you or the ship to be in danger without me.

  “I better get some sleep now. Have I mentioned that I miss you? Take care of yourself and everybody else, captain mine. I’ll be home as soon as I can. Everything will work out, I promise.

  “Love, me.”

  Roxy put her seal code on the message and queued it for transmission to the Tigris. She yawned and looked around, and thought about going to bed. She’d spent a lot of time unconscious lately; being awake and lucid felt like a privilege. “I’m lonely,” she acknowledged to the bare, pale-lavender walls. Every room in the hospital complex was painted some shade of purple, and that was a lot of rooms. Several hundred of them, she thought. The quarters she shared with Dee were decorated in shades that were pastel and inoffensive, very different from the vibrant colors she was used to on the ship. “Really a rather restful shade of bland,” she murmured, just as the door behind her opened.

  As she turned to face the doorway, Dee said acidly, “Don’t you ever shut up?”

  Roxy was suffused with joy at seeing her long-absent friend. “You want to make me, bitch?”

  “Ha!” Dee slammed the door behind her, then looked at it in wonder. “I’d forgotten doors could do that.” She grabbed the door handle and repeated the process. Roxy jumped at the solid bang. “Damn satisfying,” Dee announced, then flopped onto one of the room’s two narrow beds. “Ah.” She kicked off her sandals; they flopped on the lilac carpeting like landed fish.

  Roxy looked on with benign fondness. “This is familiar. Didn’t we used to live together?”

  “We shared an apartment,” Dee corrected precisely. “It is not the same thing.”

  “True.” Roxy moved to sit next to Dee, and placed her hand in the center of the other woman’s chest.

  Dee put her hand over Roxy’s and leered. “You should have told me sooner.”

  “Hush. You’ve got it again.” Roxy closed her eyes and concentrated, let herself fall into the internal battle with the disease. Off in th
e distance, she heard Dee muttering colorfully in several languages. When she finished the healing, she let Dee help her up off the carpet and into her own bed. She stared at the ceiling and said, “That wasn’t so bad. And how was your day, Nikophoris?” Roxy’s head ached, but she didn’t want to pass out before hearing if Dee had any news.

  She felt the bed give as Dee sat down beside her. “I talked to a Bucon.”

  “The right Bucon?”

  She lifted her head slightly to watch as Dee began to unpin her hair. For Terran hair it was quite long; waist length, and a lustrous black. Dee never wore it loose in public. It was a beautiful, private part of herself. Since their arrival on Bonadem they’d both been wearing civvies. Dee was making an effort to blend in with the local trading port style, which included elaborate hairdos for all genders.

  Right now she was wearing a short, sapphire-blue skirt and low-necked tunic with a heavy silver belt.

  In answer to Roxy’s question, she said, “Did I find this Stev Persey? No. I have found out that he’s a respectable dealer.”

  Only Bucons would use those two words together. “Bigger than Glover?” Roxy wondered. Glover was the only Bucon dealer that Roxy had ever met. He’d certainly seemed rich and powerful. At least, she, and Reine and Dee, and even coolest of the cool Martin Braithwaithe, had found the charming Glover fascinating. But then, they’d all been impressionable teenagers at the time. For all she knew, Glover was some small-change little fish exiled to deal drugs in the Terran Belt.

  “Who can understand the Bucon hierarchy?” Dee answered. “Persey probably works for somebody who works for somebody else.”

  “Who works for Persey.”

  “Sometimes it does get that complicated.”

  “Told you my misspent youth was almost as misspent as your—”

  “Shut up. The Bucon I talked to said Persey has at least three ships in his own name. One works out of Laborne. Another one has a regular run from Bucon territory out to the Rose Nebula.”

  Roxy sat up—too fast. While the room spun around dizzily she asked, “Stopping off at Abidon and Thensil?”

  “She didn’t know the route.”

  Roxy lay down slowly, and went back to staring at the ceiling. It was also painted lavender, but she was seeing electric blue explosions of stars with the lavender as background. Without her having to ask, Dee turned down the room’s lighting. The lavender faded to gray and Roxy’s vision cleared a bit. “The Bucon were our allies during the Trin War. They’ve agreed to finally join the United Systems after hundreds of year of economic competition. They’re decadent and insidious, but aren’t exactly a warlike bunch. Still… Am I being paranoid about the Bucons?”

  “I don’t know,” Dee answered thoughtfully. “Plague has to spread somehow. This thing can’t be a spaceborne virus except in somebody’s ship. It can do a lot of odd things, but it don’t have FTL drive.”

  “Yeah. It’s happened with pandemics before. War refugees, mostly, spread diseases from world to world. People get scared. They hop on a passing ship and get the hell out. That’s probably the answer. The Bucons are more interested in internal politics than spreading a plague.” She did not want to voice her suspicion; it was way too paranoid. And they were not on a MilService ship—some things do not get discussed outside secure MilService environments.

  “And if there are Bucons involved,” Dee added, sounding a tad too dubious, “it’s coincidence. Most sensible scenario is that someone from a Bucon enclave that had the virus went looking for help, like our Thensilan friends, and they ended up taking Sag Fever to the next world. This thing is spreading out in a wave—but it’s spreading so fast that… “

  “Think it might be spreading out from Abidon rather than from Bucon territory? That the source is on a world near the Rose rather than WDS on the Bucon border? Any way to contact Persey’s ship that makes the Rose run?”

  “That one is missing. Crew could be dead, or pirates could have gotten it.”

  “Bucon pirate guild, or League?” The League was an ancient, near-mythic multi-species organization of dark and mysterious origins and power. It was even suspected of being the refuge of the remaining Trin. People in the United Systems tended to think of the League as being the Secret Masters of the Universe; that is, those who believed the League existed at all. Roxy knew the League existed. Her sister-in-law Betheny had grown up on a League ship. The contract out on Betheny was said to be huge.

  “I have no idea which pirates might have gotten Persey’s ship,” Dee replied. “I don’t exactly have undercover security training. I have enough trouble trying to sound like a trader looking to score drugs instead of a lousy Systems narc.”

  Roxy rolled onto her side, too tired to keep up the conversation. “Wish I knew what was going on at home,” she mumbled, wanting very much to be on the Tigris.

  She was aware of Dee moving around the room and heard her say, “Yeah,” as the light went on in the bathroom. “Go to sleep, Sting.”

  “Night, Groupie.” Good night, Eamon, she added telepathically, and a bit guiltily at the waste of energy, knowing how he felt about her telepathy. But one of them had to make a start at actually getting to know each other.

  Chapter Seven

  “You catching a cold?” Kristi asked. She put a steaming mug of something on the main common room table before Pyr.

  He looked up into worried hazel eyes. The woman was in her early fifties, middle-aged for a Terran. He didn’t suppose she’d ever been considered a beauty, but he found her strong features attractive. She was long-faced, long-nosed, fearlessness always shining out of her greenish-brown eyes. She and her husband, the bald and bearded Vi, had never shown any resentment of being captives on a pirate vessel. They performed the same duties for the crew of the Raptor as they had for the passengers of a Systems luxury liner. He’d heard Vi tell Pilsane that they enjoyed the excitement of the life—and that the Raptor’s crew tipped better.

  He hadn’t noticed her approach. His gaze flicked away from her for a moment, glad to discover that no one else had entered the common room while his attention drifted. Kristi pointed at the cup and repeated her question, then explained when he stared blankly at her, “A cold is a Terran virus, you ignorant alien scum. You look like shit.” She patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry so about the boy. Have some tea.”

  So that was what the steaming cup of something was. He couldn’t smell it, and it was a paler color then her usual herbal infusions. “Medicinal?” he asked.

  “Chamomile—the last packet I had. We really need to terrorize a Terran outpost so I can do some shopping. Now, drink your tea and stop worrying about the Ax.”

  Kristi always assumed all problems were interpersonal. She stared insistently at him, but he couldn’t bring himself to lift the cup to his lips. “Kith looks hungry,” he said instead, as the League representative came in and crossed the common toward him. “Go find him some raw meat.”

  She gave Pyr a disgusted look, but was glad enough to get out of Kith’s way. “I put lots of honey in the tea,” she told Pyr before heading back to the galley. “You know how your voice gets when you’re sick.”

  “I’m not sick,” he said to her back, then forgot about her as Kith took a seat opposite him.

  There were legends among many races of walking dead. Kith suited the prevalent descriptions on his best days. Pyr assumed Kith must be some sort of mongrel mixture of several Pirate League races. He looked a little like several races Pyr knew about, but mostly he looked ugly, which frequently happened when beings from different worlds mated. Kith was pallid-complexioned and dead-eyed, with too many sharp teeth. His face was pocked and wrinkled, his nostrils mere slits in the center of his sharp face. His whole being radiating reptilian coldness that was emphasized by the horizontal row of fleshy red knobs across his forehead. Merely having him along on boarding parties was enough to ensure a certain amount of useful fear. Normally silent and watchful, Rust addiction had made the League rep quarrel
some. Kith was the greediest being Pyr had ever met, which made him perfect for his League assignment on the Raptor. He was Pilsane’s main source of worry. The navigator was afraid the crew would decide to follow Kith in a take-over attempt.

  Pyr looked at Kith as Kith glared at him, and decided Kith’s life could be measured in hours. One more little problem to take care of before turning command over to Linch. He’d have to figure out a way to space him, because Mik hadn’t yet figured out how to get through Kith’s personal shield. Pity the shield somehow insulated him from telepathy as well.

  Pyr ignored the smoldering Kith for the moment and spoke into the bracelet. “Well?”

  “The ship that’s following is still trailing at maximum sensor range,” Linch’s voice replied.

  They’d picked up the reading three hours after leaving the Calrod system, not long after Pyr found his way onto the bridge. A day later, Pyr was still more concerned about his loss of control in the Door room than being followed. He expected to be followed.

  “Take a break,” he advised Linch. “You’ve had duty since we left Calrod.”

  Quiet laughter issued from the bracelet. “Just proving I’m more iron-willed about bridge duty than you, leader.”

  “I had to take a leak. Come down to the commons.”

  “Be down in a minute. Tinna’s got the helm. I’m warming your chair.”

  He’d be warming it permanently soon. Pyr still thought it was a bad idea to have let the rest of the crew out of the chattel hold, but Linch and Mik had finally backed Pilsane on the subject. They needed the crew to run the Raptor with any efficiency. With a ship chasing them, Pyr had to agree that efficiency might come in handy.