Tyche's Flight (Tyche's Journey Book 1)

by Richard Parry

  There was no one there.

  There had been no one there.

  Nate scrambled into the bus, taking in her sword still held high. His blaster was out, eyes scanning the bus. Seeing no one. “Heard something,” he said.

  “Did a … woman go past you?” said Grace.

  “A what?”

  “Woman,” said Grace. “Crazy eyes. Hungry.”

  “No,” said Nate. “There’s no one here.”

  Sweat ran down her face. The bus was hot, too hot, and too dark. She sheathed her sword, walking to the front. Past Nate, past his concern, past his feelings of care/protect/anxious for her. She didn’t need his protection. She didn’t need him at all. “Let’s go,” she said. “It was nothing.”

  If only that were true.

  • • •

  They were about half way to the admin center.

  Grace blinked in the light, covering her eyes with a hand. Up ahead, there was a man. Normal looking kind of guy, a haircut that was in vogue on one planet or another, long on one side and shaved on the other. Loose shirt, loose pants, like you’d want if you lived on this planet, in this gravity, in this weather. She frowned. “You see that guy up ahead?”

  “Holy shit,” said Kohl. “Some kind of unicorn.” His power armor clanked as he walked forward. “Hey, buddy. Yeah, you, asshole. The dickhead with the bad haircut. You know I’m talking to you.”

  “Kohl,” said Nate, “why don’t you let me handle this?”

  “Suit yourself,” said Kohl. “I’ve warmed him up for you.”

  Nate was walking ahead of them, approaching the stranger. “Sir? Sir. Are you okay?”

  The man watched them, then plastered on a smile. A smile like he wasn’t good at them, or didn’t like making them, or didn’t have much to smile about, or all of the above. “Welcome to Absalom.”

  Grace picked up whatever from Kohl, and confusion from Nate as he spoke. “Uh, thanks. I guess? I mean, you’re the only person we’ve seen. Aside from Penn. Do you know Rear Admiral Penn?”

  “Penn will be together with us soon,” said the man. “Are you lost?”

  “Uh,” said Nate. He turned to face Kohl and Grace. “Okay, so I think this guy’s maybe a little confused. Being alone for a while? I don’t know.”

  “He could be sick,” said Kohl. “Something in the water. Something in the air. Hell, we could be sick too.” He laughed. “That’d be a hell of a way to go. The fights I’ve seen? To be taken down by a bug? Nasty.”

  “We’re not sick,” said Nate. He paused. “But maybe visors down, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” said Grace. She was getting concern from Nate, and annoyance from Kohl, but their visors slid shut. Suit comms now. Private. Purposeful. “What’s the play, Cap?”

  “We go meet that nice man,” said Nate, “and see what he knows.”

  “He’s a barometer of crazy,” said Kohl. “Sounds like fun.”

  Nate turned away from them, walking up to the man. “Sir? I’m Captain Nathan Chevell, of the free trader Tyche.”

  “You have a ship?” said the man. Grace watched as he reached out to grab Nate’s arm. The movement looked fast and strong. And shaky, like the man was on some stims. Could explain the erratic speech. The man wasn’t exuding any emotions though, like he wasn’t concerned about a thing. So maybe not stims. Something different. Local food? Local flora? “You must take us on your ship. We must be together. Out there.” His eyes turned towards the sky.

  “We’ll get right on that,” said Nate, shaking the man off. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Names,” said the man. “Names.”

  “That’s right,” said Nate. “Sir, if you don’t mind me saying, your accent is a little strange. I can’t quite place it.”

  “Humans,” said the man, “are so hard. So complicated. So many … parts.”

  “I get where you’re coming from,” said Nate. “It’s why I don’t live on a planet. Let’s try a different angle. Do you know where everyone is?”

  The man’s eyes drifted around for a bit, left, and right, and up, and then down to his feet. Then his face brightened, that smile/not-smile crossing his face again. “Yes.” He stepped away, then turned and beckoned. “Come. We can be together.”

  • • •

  “Five klick walk, he said,” said Kohl. “It’ll be fun, he said.”

  “You’re the one with the rotary laser and a suit of power armor,” said Nate. “This is on you.”

  They were following the man up the street, the man with no name, and no smile worth seeing. Grace kept a hand on her sword. This planet, this fucking planet, the whole thing was wrong. There was no one here. This man was leading them to other people, but Grace couldn’t feel them. Couldn’t feel anything, except the bright sparks of her crew mates.

  She wanted off this world and back on the Tyche, and she wanted it now.

  Ahead was some kind of hall or entertainment center. A hall, where kids might put on a show for their parents, or the community would gather to talk about the big issues you’d get on a frontier world, like why the fuck is Kimmy getting a tax break on her water filters. The man turned, beckoned again, then ducked into the gloom inside. Nate paused, looking back at Grace and Kohl. “Looks like we’re here.”

  “No,” said Grace.

  “What?”

  “We’re not here here,” said Grace. “This is some shitty place where people gather in times of extreme over administration. They talk about their aquifers and solar collectors. This is not the administration center, where Penn is waiting, and by proxy, our completion bonus. For the second job.”

  “About that,” said Nate. “I’m fairly certain Penn wants to kill us all. It’s not that I don’t trust the man—”

  “It’s that you know exactly who he is,” said Kohl, nodding.

  “What he is,” said Grace. “He is Republic, and the Republic never offer a good deal.”

  “You know,” said Nate, looking thoughtful, “you’ll probably have a long and happy life as a member of my crew.”

  “Hey now,” said Kohl. “Republic keeps us safe. Keeps degenerates from walking free.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” said Grace, putting steel in her voice, thinking of Hope. And then trying to not think of Hope, because she would not get attached. “You’re still here.”

  “What?” said Kohl.

  “I guess the question is,” said Nate, stepping in, “whether we go in, and see what’s up, or head to the admin center.”

  “I say admin,” said Grace, feeling the shiver of wrongness travel up her spine again.

  “I say we party with the locals, try whatever beer they’ve got going here, and then go admin,” said Kohl. “We can always kill Penn later.”

  “Kill him?” said Nate. “We’re going to take him off this planet.”

  “That’s the first step,” said Kohl, “but after he tries to commandeer the Tyche, we’ll space him.”

  “You can space him if he tries to take my ship,” said Nate. “Not before.”

  “What about if he shoots you?” said Kohl.

  “Yeah, space him then.”

  “Or—”

  “I figure,” said Nate, “we should just poke our noses in here. See what’s going on.”

  It was a bad idea. The worst, because Grace knew there was no one alive inside that hall. No living soul. They’d find nothing but death.

  • • •

  Grace’s hand found Nate’s arm, grabbed it. She squeezed it hard. “We need to go,” she hissed.

  Nate looked at the thousand or so people lined up inside the room, then nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  They’d walked inside, the entrance giving way to gloom, gloom giving way to this open area. It had a big vaulted ceiling for acoustics. There was some kind of raised stage at the front. People, front to back, all standing. All staring at them.

  Grace had felt sick, because they were all dead. All of them. Moving, but not alive. Where she
would have felt a thousand emotions, a cacophony of human desires and urges, there was nothing. Or close to nothing, a kind of hissing static that clouded her brain, that made her want to throw up. “We need to go now,” she said. It was hard to think straight with the static in her head. She wanted to reach out with her mind, to push them back.

  Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace.

  The static ceased for a second.

  GRACE.

  The front line of people took a step towards them.

  Towards her.

  “Cap,” said Kohl. “Do you want me to lift something heavy?”

  “I—” said Nate, and then the crowd surged towards them.

  Grace felt their hands on her, fingers at her face. Tried to find space to draw her sword. She should have already had the blade clear, ready for this, but the hissing in her mind had put her on the back foot. It left her thoughts clouded, fogged up, no way to chart a course. The tide of people walked towards her, a creeping, needy tide. Except they weren’t people. They felt nothing. There was no one there.

  There was the crack of a blaster, and a piece of the ceiling shattered. Another blaster crack, and the roof cracked open, sunlight breaking through. The crowd of people stumbled back.

  It was Nate. He was standing, blaster clear, pointed at the ceiling. Not at the people, not like Grace had wanted. He hadn’t shot them, because he saw them as needing help. As being like him, and it would be his downfall. Because she knew he was brave, and brave people died in the dark.

  “Back up!” shouted Nate. “Back. The. Fuck. Up!” He fired the blaster again, plasma spitting heat upwards.

  The man who had led them here — same loose shirt, same loose pants, same bad haircut — pushed to the front. “You wanted to be together,” he said. “We want to leave this world.”

  “Where is Rear Admiral Penn?” said Nate. “Where is he?”

  The man with the bad smile tried for a good smile, and failed. “You are not together,” he said. “Not yet. But soon.”

  Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace.

  There was a wet popping, cracking sound, and a woman — young, late teens or early twenties, hard to tell with the dirty hair and hollow eyes — stumbled. Her head swelled, the popping, cracking sound getting louder, then her skull exploded in a shower of red chunks. Her body swayed, but stayed upright. There were … things crawling from the ruins of her skull.

  Things that looked like cockroaches, but bigger.

  “What the sweet fuck!” said Kohl, and there was a whine as the rotary laser swung about on the automount. There was a whirr, and Grace through she heard Nate say Kohl, no! but the rotary laser was firing, bright red lances of light illuminating the faces around them, reflecting at them from their eyes. The noise of Kohl’s weapon was a rapid cycling whine as the laser charged, fired, and rotated a new lens and emitter. The big man held the weapon down until the young woman’s body fell apart, the fluids inside superheating from the laser, boiling into steam, causing limbs to explode where the laser hit them.

  Silence.

  Of the things that looked like cockroaches, there was no sign. Several people—

  Not people. They’re not people.

  —around the young woman had been hit by the rotary laser. Some of them were smoking, missing limbs. None of them were screaming or in any obvious sign of distress.

  “Captain,” said Grace.

  Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace!

  She sagged, felt Nate’s hand on her arm. His voice, in her ear. “Got you.” Felt him turn to Kohl. “Kohl! We’re leaving!” Grace was half-dragged by Nate out the door they’d come in by, out to the air, the heat, the weight of this planet’s gravity. She was gasping, trying to clear her head from the static around her.

  GRACE. GRACE. GRACE. GRACE. GRACE!

  Kohl was backing out the door of the hall, power armor whining, the rotary laser leveled at the doorway.

  Darkness. No movement.

  “We’ve got to … we’ve got to leave,” she said, to Nate. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Right,” said Nate. “We’ll get Penn—”

  “Penn is already dead!” Grace pushed him away. “These people are all dead, Nathan!”

  “They’re sick,” said Nate. “They’re—”

  “I can see them,” said Grace. “There’s nothing to see.”

  GRACE.

  TOGETHER.

  GRACE GRACE GRACE GRACE GRACE.

  TOGETHER!

  She turned away from the look on his face, the look that said I trusted you, put her hand on her sword. Be the eye of the storm. Be the calm in the sea. Be the rock against which the waves break.

  The people boiled out of the entrance of the hall, and Kohl’s rotary laser met the storm. One or two made it past, and Nate turned his face away from her — good, I don’t want to feel his judgement — and fired his blaster. None of them were going for Nate, or for Kohl.

  They were coming for her.

  Grace. Grace Grace Grace.

  Her sword cleared its scabbard, and she sliced. It was harder, pure kendo now, because normally she could feel the intent, the raw drive of those she fought. When she fought people, those people felt things. These things felt nothing. There was nothing but static, a hiss, and the endless repetition of her name.

  Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace.

  “Stop saying my name!” she screamed, her blade slicing through a man’s head. It opened like a gourd, red wet cockroach things crawling and scurrying in the light. One took wing, and her sword licked out, severing it in two.

  The sound of Kohl’s rotary laser whined to a halt, stopping with a clank. The lens array — the barrels — were white with heat, glowing in the light of the day. He was backing away from the hall, the pile of bodies that used to be people. He halted as he came abreast of Grace and Nate. “What the hell, Cap,” he said. “What the hell.”

  Nate’s blaster was still trained on the entrance, the weapon not wavering at all. “I don’t … I don’t understand.”

  “They’re not people,” said Grace. “Whatever’s been going on here, people have been turning into … those things.”

  Something dark passed over Nate’s face as he looked at her. He pressed it down and she felt revulsion/hate/distrust in a wave that was like being hit. She flinched. “They were people once,” he said. “If anyone knows what is going on, it’s Penn. We find Penn.”

  “Well, sure,” said Kohl. “But then what?”

  “What do you mean?” Nate lowered his blaster.

  “I know I use a lot of booze, and a lot of drugs,” said Kohl. “I’m dry now though. I’m dry. I wish I wasn’t, but that’s the way it is. I saw people who had heads full of insects. The way I see it, there’s no coming back from something like that. A bug eats your brains? Your brains are gone, Cap.”

  “You’re telling me this why?” said Nate.

  “Because,” said Kohl. “You always want to do something about it. Me, I don’t care. You pay me and tell me where to shoot, I’ll shoot. But you need to know. There’s more shooting before this is done.”

  Nate gave Grace a glance. “Then there’s more shooting. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  She was a fucking esper.

  Oh, sure. She hadn’t said that. Not exactly. But Nate had worked with the Old Empire’s Intelligencers enough to know their turns of phrase. The way they saw people. The way they could see them without seeing them.

  He’d let an esper on his ship. On his crew.

  How much of what he’d done was because of her? How much of the choices he’d made, the places he’d gone, was because Grace Gushiken had touched his mind, heard his thoughts? The strongest of them were rumored to influence thoughts. Had he taken this job, come to this planet where the people were infected with, what, some kind of insect parasite, because she’d given him the nudge?

  Nate’s hand clenched on his blaster. He wanted to point it at her, pull the trigger. Keep pulling until there
wasn’t anything left.

  Nothing was more vile than someone who could hear your thoughts. Get in your head. The Republic were bad enough with control, but at least the assholes at the top were just people. They hadn’t overthrown their Emperor, caused the collapse of a civilization, and handed the keys to a new regime. That’s what the Intelligencers had done. He’d been discharged, sidelined, given a custom sword by an old friend and told to sit this one out. Dom had told him that his time would come. He’d thought at the time it was kind words to help him recover from being a cripple.

  It still felt like words, but no longer kind ones.

  Nate, done is done. You’ve just got to put her in a box on the way back, drug her into a coma if need be. But you’ve got others depending on you. El. Hope. Even Kohl. You can get angry at yourself later.

  What he wanted to be angry about was that he didn’t have the will to put a shot of plasma into her brain. Because there was something in the back of his head that said, she’s on the run, Nate. She’s tiny against the mighty. You know what being on the run feels like. And she’s been good to you. Kept you and yours safe. Hell, Nate, you kind of like her.

  He rubbed an angry hand against the side of his helmet, wanting to erase that voice of weakness.

  “Boss,” said Kohl. “You good?”

  “No,” said Nate. “Rooftop, eleven o’clock.”

  “Got it,” said Kohl, leaning back to brace the rotary laser. The weapon spun up with a whir, red lancing out to carve chunks out of a building. It had been some kind of low-slung store selling textiles; now a figure stood on top with a launcher. Red death turned the body into a pyre, the launcher tumbling down the side of the building to break on the street below.

  Grace was walking towards the broken launcher. Let her go. Let her die. Despite himself, Nate said, “Grace. There’s no time.”

  She moved fast, though. Useful, despite being the enemy of humanity. He watched her kick through the launcher’s remains, pulling out a pouch. She shook it open, a net falling free. “They want to catch us,” said Grace. “They want to infect us.”

  “Well, fuck that noise,” said Kohl. “I figure I can just keep setting them on fire. Should put a dent in that plan.”