BloodWind

by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  "The fans are back on," Teve Tulloch, Burd's Shepherd lover, reported.

  Dr. Burds was a woman of few words and she saw no need to waste them even on this momentous occasion. Her gaze went to the digital time readout and she noted the exact time: 2059 hours. She made a notation in her protocol book then placed her finger on the terminal switch that was connected to all the others. At exactly 2100 hours, she began to depress the switch.

  Upon depression of the switch at the Ministry of Bioengineering, an electric impulse traveled from switch to switch along the hundreds of miles of ductwork in the space station. In turn, each switch sent activation signals to minute motors in the base of each container. A tiny air valve at the top of the canisters opened to release a steady, forceful stream of colorless gas which carried the live bacteria through the station's twelve thousand air vents. Airborne, the bacterium floated out of the vent registers and was drawn deep into the lungs of every living being on FSK-14. The scent of lavender was the only sign there was something unusual wafting in the air.

  For some— those inoculated with the antitoxin— it would be only a headache and upset stomach, a few muscle aches, perhaps. For most, it would mean excruciating death.

  Aurora Burds smiled, thinking she had just paid the men of Rysalia back for having taken her away from her home so many years before. She had no way of knowing she had just murdered nine hundred men.

  Including her own lover.

  CREE STABBED the elevator's control panel once more but the cage seemed to have a mind of its own and kept stopping at every floor. Ever since the lights had come back on, he had wasted precious minutes trying to make his way up to Level Twelve. The lower levels were in the control of the Resistance, but the disposition of the top three levels had not been ascertained. Cursing heatedly under his breath as the cage stopped but the doors would not open, Cree stamped his foot like a petulant child. He tried to pry open the portals.

  "Having trouble?"

  The Reaper's hand went automatically to his weapon before he recognized the voice. "I can't get the gods-be-damned thing to open!" he complained to his 2/IC.

  "You never were good with machinery," Drewe said softly. "Do I have to act as your navigator this one last time?"

  Cree grinned. "I'm glad to see you've come through this unscathed so far."

  "I've been looking for you," Lona replied. "I knew you'd head up here as soon as the elevators came back on line."

  "We're winning, Drewe."

  "Did you doubt we would?" Drewe challenged. The Shepherd wavered, put his hand up to his forehead and stumbled back from the elevator, his face registering pain.

  "Drewe?" Cree questioned, reaching for him. "What's wrong?"

  The Shepherd swung his head to the left, saw something that alarmed him and turned his already pale face ghastly white. He put his arm out, shoved Cree back. "Go!" he ordered. "Get the hell out of here!" He took out his phaser and blasted the elevator door; the panels slid obediently open.

  Cree stared in horror as blood bubbled over Lona's lips. "By the gods, you're hurt! What happened?" He reached for Lona, but the Keeper waved him away.

  "Go, Cree!" Drew grated. "Get in the gods-be-damned cage. They are— "

  Agony suddenly caved in the young man's face and he twisted sideways, away from Cree. The Reaper made a grab for him then went down under the inert weight of Lona's body. Blood was gushing from Drewe's mouth and nose as the two men crashed to the floor.

  "Drewe!" Cree stared in horror as the front of Lona's brown uniform tunic became slick with blood. Lona's head fell back over his friend's arm and a gurgling bubble was expelled from his lungs.

  "I believe he's dead."

  The arrogant voice brought Cree's head around only a fraction of a second before something hard and unyielding slammed into his temple and the lights were shut off again.

  Chapter 23

  "I'VE JUST received word," Dr. Burds said softly as she stood beside her friend, "the others stations are fully engaged. Too soon, I think, but we'll see. At least there is one piece of good news: The Stormwind and her sister ship, The Whirlwind, are in orbit over Rysalia Prime. They will be dropping their payload within the next half hour."

  Beryla never took her eyes from the man she had loved more than her own life. To see him so still in death was almost more than she could bear. She sighed from the bottom of her weary soul. "Can you abort the delivery?"

  "Abort?" Aurora questioned. "Why should we ...?"

  "How is Teve feeling?" the Director interrupted.

  "Sick as a dog," Aurora said, frowning. "He had an adverse reaction to the antitoxin. Why?"

  Beryla ran her fingertips over Drae Cree's cold lips. "Because they lied to us, Ro-Ro," she said, calling the woman by the nickname from long ago.

  Aurora put a comforting hand on her friend's shoulder. "Who lied to us, dear? About what?"

  "Hael Sejm and LeJong Kym."

  "I don't understand."

  "Look at him," the Director whispered. "He is fifty-six years old. Does he look to you to be a man who would succumb to an antitoxin meant to keep him out of harm's way?"

  Aurora looked down at Drae's silky white hair and imagined the dark, sparkling eyes that had always tried to hide a glimmer of merriment despite the horrendous job he had. "No," she admitted, thinking of his deep voice and robust laughter. "He has always been in the best of health, I thought."

  "You thought correctly," Beryla acknowledged. "I, myself, gave him a thorough physical only a month ago." She smiled wistfully. "And enjoyed doing it, too."

  "You don't believe he had a reaction to the vaccine, is that what you are telling me?" Dr. Burds asked, suddenly worried.

  "The virus will not sterilize the men, Aurora," Dr. Dean answered in a fierce voice. "It will kill them."

  Aurora stared at her. "How do you know this?" The thought of her own lover experiencing the horrible death Drae Cree had suffered made her weak with fear. "Does this mean— "

  "You have killed the man you loved."

  Aurora slumped against the wall, stunned. "The others?" Her eyes flared. "Kahn? He is Hael's adopted child! The bitch raised him, taught him! How could she...?"

  "He is safe, as far as I know," Beryla answered. "Why they wanted to keep the Reapers and their crews alive, I have no idea, but I can imagine it wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts!"

  "Dr. Dean?"

  Beryla looked around and found a smut-smeared Ivonne standing tiredly in the doorway. "Yes?"

  "I've got terrible news," Ivonne said. She put a shaky hand to her straggly hair. "News I wish I didn't have to relay."

  Fearing the worst, the Director stood up. "We've lost?"

  "No," Ivonne was quick to answer. "We are winning, but I'm afraid the ships carrying the virus to Rysalia Prime have been destroyed. FSK-9 managed to get off two long-range missiles before being overrun by our people. They shot down the sister ships."

  "The gas?" Beryla asked, her face anxious.

  "The sister ships weren't close enough to Rysalia Prime for the gas to do any good. It was destroyed with the ships."

  "That may be the best news we've heard all day."

  Aurora held up a hand before Ivonne could question that statement. "Is there anything else?"

  Ivonne nodded grimly. "I'm afraid so." She glanced at the body of the dead man, then away. Looking back at Dr. Burds, she cocked her head toward the corridor.

  "Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of me, Ivonne O'Malley," said Beryla. "What is one more thing gone wrong today when I have lost my lover and possibly our savior in one fell swoop."

  "Then you know already?" Ivonne asked, relieved that she would not have to be the one to bear such news to the Director.

  "Know what?" Aurora asked.

  Ivonne looked puzzled for a moment. "But from what Dr. Dean said, I thought she must know about Cree. He— "

  "What of him?" Beryla shouted.

  Ivonne looked from the Director to the bioe
ngineer and back again. "That he was arrested," she replied. "They took him into custody an hour ago."

  THIS TIME when he woke, Cree was in worse condition than the last time. Much worse. He could barely see through the swelling of his eyes. His ears were ringing from the repeated open-handed cuffing Konnor Rhye had taken great delight in administering and his gut felt on fire from the brutal jabs that had finally driven him to his knees.

  "Wake up, Iceman," Rhye sneered. "I'm not through with you!"

  Konnor Rhye wiped Cree's black blood from his hands on a rag then threw the rag on the floor. He nodded to Inse and another man and between them, they hoisted the Reaper up straighter. Inse grabbed a handful of Cree's long hair and drew the semi-conscious man's head back.

  The sound of Rhye's fist driving unmercifully into Kamerone Cree's jaw bored the fourth man in the Inquisition cell. He hid a yawn behind a delicate hand and shifted his lean body more comfortably in his chair. "He isn't going to talk, Commander." Rhye buried his fist in Cree's belly and took an almost sexual pleasure from the gasp of pain that drove the defenseless man forward over the savage hit. Another vicious jab rocked Cree's head to the side and sprayed black blood on the wall. When he put all his force behind a punch to the place where Cree's kidney had been removed, the Reaper could not stop the scream of agony that shot from his torn lips.

  "Pray do not kill him, Commander," the man in the corner clucked. "The Tribunal would not like being denied the pleasure of seeing him hanged."

  "Hear that, Iceman?" Inse chuckled, his fingers tightening on Cree's scalp as he shook the beaten man's head. "They are going to stretch that thick neck of yours."

  "Go to hell," Cree forced out through his battered lips. Blood dribbled down his chin.

  "You will be there long before me!" Inse retorted.

  "This is getting us nowhere," the man in the corner sighed. "Guards!" He stood up, stretched, then watched as two burly interrogation guards entered the chamber. "Take this scum back to his cell until I am ready for him."

  Cree was passed from one pair of captors to another. His sweat-matted hair was plastered to his forehead and his nose and chin dripped black blood. His head hung down against his bare chest as the interrogation guards hefted him between them. As they dragged him along, pain rocketed through his lower right side and he groaned, slipping once more over the edge of consciousness.

  When he awoke for the third time that day, he was laying spread eagle on a table, Lord Traye Onar standing above him.

  "You will, of course, tell me everything I wish to know about the Resistance," Onar said pleasantly. "I have a much more persuasive manner than our barbaric young Keeper."

  "I won't tell you anything," Cree said, slurring his words. "You're wasting your time."

  Onar smiled. "When was the last time you fed?" he asked conversationally.

  Feeding had been the last thing on Cree's mind, he realized with a start. The other aches and pains shooting through his body had all but blocked out the fierce headache and nausea brought on by the antitoxin. His temperature had shot up so high at one point; he fancied he could feel the blood boiling in his veins. He hadn't thought to take sustenance before all this began...when?...four hours earlier.

  "Answer me, boy!"

  A sharp pain entered Cree's shoulder and his swollen eyes widened just enough to see Onar withdrawing a thin six-inch long copper wire from his flesh. Before he could curse the old man, the wire was driven into him again, this time in the tender flesh under his armpit. The searing pathway the probe left made him writhe in an effort to get away from another stabbing. He rolled as far away as the manacles on his hands and legs would allow.

  "You don't like that, do you, Cree?" Onar chuckled. "You know you can not escape me." He pierced Cree's lower right side with the wire.

  "When did you feed?"

  "Twelve hundred hours!" Cree gasped. The places where the probe had entered his body were stinging with a bone-deep pain.

  "See?" Onar sighed. "You can answer questions when they are put to you in the correct manner." He put the probe in his lab coat pocket then reached out to smooth the tangled, sweat-dampened hair from Cree's forehead. "You have an extremely high temperature." He ran the back of his hand down Cree's cheek. "Is this a normal reaction when you need to feed?"

  "I don't need to— "

  The old man's hand snaked out to grab a fistful of Cree's hair and tug brutally. "I didn't ask if you wanted to feed, Kamerone. I asked if this is a normal reaction."

  "No," Cree answered through clenched teeth.

  Onar frowned. "No?" he questioned.

  "I am sick," Cree said and knew he was telling the truth. The antitoxin had killed his father and he feared it was killing him. His headache was worse— and it wasn't just because of Konnor Rhye's powerful fists— and his body felt as though he were steeping inside a cauldron.

  "You are lying, of course," Onar pronounced. He reached inside his lab coat pocket and took out the probe. He drew it across Cree's cheek, down his neck and onto his bare shoulder. "I have your personal Controller's data records. Reapers do not get sick, Kamerone. You have never been sick a day in your miserable life. Your parasite would not allow it."

  " I'm sick now," Cree grunted, half-expecting the sick old bastard to stick him again.

  "I am so sorry to hear that," Onar giggled. He considered a moment. "If that is true, then, the questioning will go that much harder on you. In either case, I intend to give you more pain that you ever received during assault therapy."

  "Lucky me," Cree mumbled

  The Tribunal Justice leaned over him. "Since I have your Controller's records, I know where each of the receptors are in your brain, Cree," he whispered. "I am most interested in number three which is located in the frontal cortex. That is where pain perception occurs." He ran the probe across Cree's chest. "Where the rational faculties of man exist. Once there, with this..." He held up the probe. "I can turn your brain functions on and off at will. A little nudge here; a stick there. A deep probe elsewhere." He lowered his voice as though he were speaking to a lover. "I can cripple you mentally and physically."

  "Yeah?" Cree snorted. "And I bet you'll like doing it, won't you, you sick bastard?" He winced as Onar's fingers closed cruelly around his upper arm and the old man dug his nails into the tender flesh.

  "Oh, I take great delight in doing my job well, Kamerone," Onar replied, applying even more pressure. "And I shall take even greater delight in showing you just how well!"

  ENSIGN PAEGAN Thorne, the Communications Officer of Cree's cruiser, The Revenant, squatted down with the other seven men and drew a grimy forearm over his face. "He's been taken to Rysalia Prime."

  "How the hell did they get him there?" Kahn roared. "I was told all the ships would be off-line!"

  "He got there on my bloody ship!" Symthian Kullen spat. "Rhye must have found Cree and decided to take him down to the Tribunal in the hopes of getting the woman back."

  "Enterprising little bastard, isn't he?" sneered Commander Tealson Hesar.

  "He'll wish he'd never slimed from his sire's sword when I lay my hands on him!" the Reaper Captain swore. "He'll die in far more agony that poor Drewe Lona did."

  "How many men have we lost, now?" Alexi Noll asked. As soon as he had heard of Cree's capture, he had come to Kullen to join his fellow crewmembers.

  Kahn shook his head. "We've lost two hundred thousand just in the last hour and a half." He looked about the main concourse where bodies lay scattered. "If I had known— "

  "There is something I don't think you've considered," Hesar interrupted him. "You are now the highest-ranking officer in the Empire."

  Kahn was silent a moment, then he shrugged. "I may be the only staff officer left."

  "By the gods, how many will this thing kill?" Kullen demanded.

  "What concerns me," Kahn put in, "is if it is contagious." He swept his arm before him. "All these bodies will have to be incinerated before we do anything else. We can't take any
chances."

  "If it is contagious— " Noll stopped, his eyes going wide. "Inse and Rhye were vaccinated at the same time as Thorne and me. If they are on Rysalia Prime, could they have carried the virus with them even though it didn't harm them? Is it lethal to the men of other races?"

  "Surely not," Kullen gasped. "Why would the Resistance wish to kill innocent men? Men who played no part in the deaths caused by the V-7?"

  "I haven't said anything because I hadn't had time, but I have reason to believe the virus won't harm anyone but Rysalian males," Hesar stated.

  "Why do you say this?" Kullen asked.

  "Remember when Cree went to Hell-12?" At the other men's nods, he shrugged. "He brought back a Necromanian and a Serenian, princes of the royal houses there."

  "So that's who those men are," Noll said.

  "Where are they now?" Kahn asked.

  "The last I saw of them, they were with the search party looking for Doctors Sejm and Kym."

  A horrible feeling closed in around Tylan Kahn. "We've got to get to Cree before they hang him." He looked at the dead bodies then turned to Noll. "Alexi? Organize a party of men and start incinerating."

  "Merciful Alel, Admiral!" Noll exclaimed. "It will take us days to take these bodies to the incineration unit."

  Kahn shook his head. "Use your phasers, son." At the other man's flinch of disapproval, he reached out and put a hand on the young man's shoulder. "We have no choice, Lieutenant. It has to be done."

  "Where are you going?" Kullen asked.

  "To the lab," Kahn replied. He crooked a finger at Cree's Keepers, Hern Belvoir and Andre Arbra. "You two come with me. I want you to guard our womenfolk. I've asked Dr. Dean and Bridget to locate LeJong Kym's protocol book. If they can find her notes on the vaccine, maybe they can make enough to inoculate Rysalia Prime and we can save some lives."