“You should listen to yourself,” said Grace.
“You inside my head?”
“No. You’re inside mine.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to describe. The words we have don’t … work.” She looked frustrated.
“No place I’d rather be,” he said. “Together.”
“Okay,” she said. “Together. So, what are we doing together, Captain? Or is it Nathan? Or my lover?”
“All of those,” he said, after a moment. “Your captain says we’re going to find the fucking bug homeworld. Your Nate says we’ll do it with our friends. Your lover says … we’ll do it together. For always.”
“If you’re sure,” she said, face unreadable.
“I’m sure,” he said, offering a smile. “Let’s go kick over an anthill.”
• • •
The door opened like it had been expecting them, a quiet hiss of human machinery, revealing a room that was almost warm in its dark tones. In the room were three people.
Harlow: restrained on a bed, straps holding him down. The bed wasn’t as comfortable or dark as the rest of the room; it looked like a surgical table, perhaps borrowed from the lab. The straps didn’t say let’s be friends; they said we’re doing this my way. There was a gag over his mouth, a piece of white fabric with a ball so that Harlow couldn’t speak. Sure, he’d be able to scream if he put his heart into it, but he was otherwise incommunicado. Harlow’s face turned towards Nate when he and Grace walked in, his eyes wide, pleading. Harlow was a smuggler and a pirate and an old friend, and Nate had seen him in a hundred compromising positions. He’d never seen naked fear on his friend’s face before.
Amedea: in a chair, but also restrained. Her straps were a lighter weight, at the wrists and ankles only. No gag, just a line of drool running down her chin. Her eyes were unfocused, not a lot going on in there. Not fear, not hope, just a kind of haze you’d expect with top-shelf pharmaceuticals. Which made sense, because if you had someone on your super-secret station who could read minds and perhaps change them, you’d want that person in a coma at least ninety-nine percent of the time. You’d only want them out of a coma to lift things out of them, sensitive pieces of information. Chad had said a person needed to be awake to read their mind. And if you had an awake Intelligencer, you had yourself a viper on your hands. So, drugs it was.
Mystery asshole: a short, thin man in a surgical uniform, white and form-fitting, sat in front of Amadea on another chair. His was more comfortable, castors at the base allowing it to move where he willed. He wasn’t a prisoner. He was a jailer. Beside him was a glass tank, inside of which was a lot of sand.
“Hey, asshole,” said Nate, pointing his blaster. “How about you back away from my friends there?”
The asshole turned around, his face crinkling into a smile. “Captain Chevell,” he said.
“Sure,” said Nate. “Who are you?”
“Doctor Kiefer Gruss,” said the asshole. “I’m the head of this facility.”
“This shop of horrors,” said Grace. Gruss gave a deprecating nod, his smile still on his face.
“Doctor Gruss. Since we’re getting along so well, why don’t you back up?” said Nate. “Like I asked. I’d like for us to have a reasonable conversation. But with you so close to my friends and all, it’s looking unreasonable.”
“Your friends?” said Gruss. He did a quick look towards Harlow, then Amedea. “Ah, of course, yes. Of course.” He backed away from Amedea, his chair rolling away as he stood. Nate figured him at about seventy, maybe eighty kilos with shoes on. Most of it worthless weight. He wasn’t getting distance for a fight, he was getting distance so he wouldn’t have to fight. Good call. “There’s just one small problem.”
“What’s that?” said Nate.
“They’re not your friends anymore,” said Gruss. “Not all the way, hey?”
“It seems fair then,” said Nate, “that this isn’t your station anymore. Not all the way, hey?”
Gruss shrugged, like it was a detail that wasn’t important. “It serves its purpose.”
“Asshole,” said Grace, striding forward, sword out. “Everyone is dead!”
“Grace Gushiken,” said Gruss. “Oh, they want you. They want you. Very much.”
She paused. “You say that like it’s news. The only thing newsworthy is I’m still surprised people like you exist. People willing to sell out our race to a bunch of fucking aliens.” Her voice was hard, her blade steady. Nate wasn’t sure if she would cut Gruss down. He wasn’t sure if he cared. But Grace turned away, walking to Harlow, using her sword on his restraints.
“I’m not selling our race out,” said Gruss. “I’m improving it. We’re so weak, in a vast universe. We have an enemy we can’t hope to defeat. Do you know they can invade our cells? Subvert our bodies and use them for a variety of purposes. Fuel. Soldiers. Raw materials. That’s what we are to them. And they can read minds. Don’t you think we need a helping hand against a foe like that?”
“We’ve got a helping hand,” said Nate. “We’ve got nukes.”
Gruss blinked, then gave a small chuckle, a sound Nate felt was rehearsed. Sociopaths might need to practice sounding like normal people, sure. “Don’t you think we’ve tried?”
Grace paused in her cutting. “What do you mean, you tried?”
Gruss turned to her, putting his back towards Nate. Nate could see the rear of him, and wished he hadn’t: the back of the man’s skull was coated in a mottling of chitin. It was as if his skull was fused with pieces of Ezeroc. “I mean,” said Gruss, “that we came out here into the hard black a long time ago, Grace. A very long time ago. We came with words and gifts and weapons, and none of them worked. They can read minds, you see. They know what you’ll do before you do. And they can control minds. Many people died.” He didn’t seem unhappy about that, just noting it down as a useful data point.
Grace went back to freeing Harlow, removing his gag. Harlow coughed, spat, then said, “Nate? Shoot this motherfucker. And don’t touch the sand.”
Grace paused in her cutting, and all eyes went to the box of sand. All eyes except Amedea’s, which continued to stare slack and unfocused. “What’s in the sand?” said Nate.
“I guess a kind of larvae,” said Harlow. “I don’t know. This asshole infected Amedea. You could see them wriggling under her skin, climbing towards her brain.”
“That seems bad,” said Nate. He looked at his blaster, then pulled his sword. He looked at Gruss. “Any reason we shouldn’t turn you into a cinder? Or, maybe I can just cut you in half.”
“There are two reasons I can think of,” said Gruss. “The first is that I know of a way you can save your friend.” He nodded at Amedea. “The second is,” and he turned to Nate, a gleam in his eyes, “that I command you to kill them all!”
Nothing happened. Nate looked down at his blaster, his sword, then back up at Gruss. “Out of curiosity, what did you expect to happen?”
Gruss blinked, then said, “Nathan Chevell, I order you to execute them all. Then get me on your ship, and take us away. I order you. I command it.”
“You didn’t get the memo, did you?” said Nate. The handle of his sword was getting warm to the touch. Huh.
Gruss looked confused. “I’ll admit, that usually works better.”
“You were expecting,” said Nate, the handle hot now, “that I’d go on a rampage and kill my friends. Then we’d hop on the Tyche, maybe with some of the Ezeroc spore.”
“Heavens no,” said Gruss. “We’re going to destroy the station. The vile creatures can’t be allowed to live.”
“Good times,” said Nate, then shot Gruss three times, center mass. His body was knocked over by the blasts, plasma setting him on fire. The body smoked and burned on the deck for a few moments before the sprinklers in the room kicked in, drenching them all. The open top of the sandbox allowed water in, filling the container. Drown the fuckers. That’ll work. Nate holstered his blaster, but kept a firm grip on his sword. Thank you, Dom
. It’s a gift fit for a prince. He looked at Amedea — still lights out, nothing happening there — then at Harlow. “Do you know what he meant about a cure?” Gruss’s body smoked and steamed for a few more moments, hissing as the water hit it.
“No clue,” said Harlow, “but it stands to reason that he’d want a kill switch of some kind. Amedea was … infected some time ago. After the station fell. I don’t think Gruss was … in control, not anymore.” The sprinklers cut out, leaving the room damp, the smell of old barbecue and sodden ash kicked around by the air cyclers.
“He wasn’t,” said Grace, helping Harlow stand. Her eyes flicked towards Amedea. “Neither is she. Nate? You know we need to … end it. It’d be a mercy.”
It would, at that. But a cure? That might be even better. “Let’s see if we can find a fix first.” The only real problem was that there was still a nest on the station. “Maybe we could kill the insects first though. That way they won’t sneak up on us while we’re looking for the cure.”
“What about her?” said Grace.
“She ain’t going nowhere,” said Nate. “We’ll lock her in here. Safe and sound.”
“Safe and sound,” said Grace, but there was doubt in her voice. “How are we going to deal with the nest?”
Nate looked down at the body of Gruss, or what was left of it. “With fire,” he said.
• • •
Making explosives on a space station was hard. By design, there were few materials on board that would combust. Burning things in space was bad; your habitat on fire was terrifying if you couldn’t run outside to get away from it, and fire burned up all your O2. So making fire in here was difficult.
The good news was that this was also a military installation. Back in the barracks, Nate and Harlow and Grace were rifling through belongings. They found a fair few weapons, laser carbines and blaster rifles and a maser or two. And then they hit the motherload: a heavy weapons locker. No grenades, because explosives were also bad in environments where blowing walls out meant everyone would die in the hard vacuum of space, but there was something that caught Nate’s eye. A heavy plasma cannon, similar in design to the one that Kohl mounted to his armor. This one didn’t have a convenient suit of power armor to go with it, but it had a mount, a tripod that could be set up and anchored to the decking via the use of explosive bolts.
“What do you think that’s on board for?” said Harlow, staring at the weapon.
“Maybe someone’s a gun nut,” offered Grace.
“Nah,” said Nate. “I reckon what we’ve got here is the Marines equivalent of a contingency plan.” He lifted the weapon, hefting it towards the sealed doorway between the barracks and where Grace said the Ezeroc were. Nate gauged the distance by eyeball. Back a few meters so he wouldn’t get his face eaten as soon as the door opened. He dropped the tripod down, kicking the mounting stud, and the legs folded out with a clank, followed a second after by the triple sound of bolts firing into the decking. He dropped the plasma cannon on the mount, gave it an experimental swivel, and said, “Kohl will be disappointed he missed this.”
“I’d be happy to swap places with him,” said Harlow. “I’d be safe and sound on the Tyche.”
“He had his back filled with shrapnel, and is paralyzed from the waist down,” said Grace. “There’s a good chance he’ll be mobile again with the right tech, but he’s down and out for now.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good swap after all,” said Harlow.
“Grace,” said Nate, “I think we open the door and I lay down some righteous anger in there.”
“It’ll work,” she said. Her eyes unfocused. “They’re starving, Nate.”
Harlow hefted a maser. “Where you want me?”
“Out of the way,” said Nate. “No offense, but you’re a lousy shot. You panic.”
“I do not panic,” said Harlow, voice rising a shade.
“What about the time on Ganymede?”
“That was one damn time,” said Harlow.
“This could be another,” said Nate.
“These assholes wanted to take away my mind. I’m not going anywhere.”
Nate chewed it over for a second or two. “Over there,” he said, pointing towards the door to the lab. “If they make it past me, your job is to boil crab with the maser. Just do not, for all that is holy, shoot me. You got it, Harlow? Also, don’t let ‘em through there. It’s our second way out.”
“One damn time,” muttered Harlow, walking to cover the door.
“And me?” said Grace.
“At my back,” said Nate.
She nodded, walking behind him, one hand trailing along his arm as she moved. She leaned close, and whispered in his ear, “Try not to die.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “Everyone ready?”
“Ready,” said Harlow.
“Do you even have to ask?” said Grace.
“Breaching it in five,” said Nate. “Four. Three. Two. One.” And he pressed the firing stud on the cannon.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
GRACE HADN’T EXPECTED things to go smooth. Things never went smoothly in a firefight. The best you could hope for was not fucked, and if they became fucked, the next best you could hope for was a decent unfuck to your fucked reality.
That was the problem with this particular reality. They had an elevator out, fine, but the escape pod for the station was off the lab. Harlow was guarding that way out, but Harlow was useless in a fight in Grace’s experience, and had taken a few knocks of late.
She wanted to be going out the elevator for other reasons. The primary reason was the escape pod would be set to a single jump somewhere ‘out there,’ and out there might be the heart of the evil Intelligencer HQ. Getting on that boat was a last resort.
Why these thoughts were going through her head was because Nate had just shot at a bulkhead door between safe now and a horrible future where Ezeroc would boil out of the breach and try and eat their minds. She could feel them—
Grace! Grace! Grace!
—already trying to get in. It was only the training at Chad’s hands that kept them at bay, but it left her pulse high, her hands sweaty on the hilt of her sword.
The bulkhead led to a chamber that would, if the upper level was a reasonable simulacrum of this lower deck, have an exit that led around the disk. That corridor would have glass leading out to space, and if enough bolts of plasma missed, there would be a direct hole from where they were here and the hard black out there. They had one helmet between three of them.
Correction the third: four of them. Because Amedea was still in there, and there was no point in any of this without saving her. Hell, if they were happy for Amedea to go down with the station, ignoring their search for a cure, they could take off now and use the Tyche’s weapons to turn this thing into a ball of molten slag.
One helmet, four people. Bad. Worse was cutting through a bulkhead door with a plasma cannon, but Gruss — or some other smart person — had sealed the Ezeroc in there. Sealed ‘em in, locked the door, and thrown away the electronic key. Hope might have been able to get through given enough time, but no way was Grace advocating bringing Hope onto a station full of death insects. The girl had been through enough for now.
As the plasma chewed into the bulkhead door, it glowed with heat, and then melted, the metal running and spraying off as new blasts hit it. The Ezeroc on the other side hammered at the door, like they were eager to die. But Grace wasn’t fooled. They were eager to get out.
Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace…
The voice in her mind — hard to tell if it was a single voice, or the song of a collective, because these were aliens and there was no working analog in her human brain for their collective consciousness — was louder than the blasts of plasma. Loud, insistent, but she could still ignore the call, this time. It made her clench her teeth, but her walls were holding. In a way it was a blessing, as it distracted from the roar of the plasma cannon, bright flashes of energy carving away at the
bulkhead door.
A hole appeared in the door, just a tiny gap as a blast of plasma made its way through. Grace could see a claw extend through the hole a half second before another round of plasma turned it to ash. The insects were trying to get out, helping to widen the breach. More rounds made it through, the darkness beyond littered with the bright burning flashes of things set afire by plasma. An Ezeroc drone head poked out, then blew into pieces as plasma ate into it. The breach continued to open, getting wide enough that the plasma cannon’s fire couldn’t fill the whole thing. An Ezeroc tried to worm out the side and Nate turned the plasma cannon to incinerate it, then worked on filling as much of the breach with plasma as he could.
Grace stood ready. Ready for them to boil out like a swarm of locusts.
Grace! Helmet! Grace!
That was … interesting. They hadn’t tried to direct her before, but this was clear. They were calling to her, telling her about a helmet. Which had been in her mind moments before. And had been in Nate’s mind earlier, before he held his sword. The insects could read minds, so they would know.
Oh no. It was too late to stop what was coming. She couldn’t see through the breach what was happening, but insight gave her imagination flight. There would be a swarm of Ezeroc in there. They would have cut away the outside hull of the station. They had time, and patience. All it would take was a small hole, blocked up by the body of one of them, or even a piece of their chitin. A small hole, easily removed.
And there would be Grace, the one they wanted, with a helmet. The air would blow out of the station, and Harlow, and Amedea, and Nathan would go with it. Leaving her here, with the Ezeroc, alive. How they wanted it.
Grace felt the pressure change, her ears pop as they did it. The Ezeroc, inside their dark chamber, opened a hole into space. Because they didn’t need air. It was a lesson Grace had received on the moon, but none of them had the wit to learn from it.
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