Maeve seemed safe for the moment; breathing, at least. He grabbed the medikit from the wall and placed it beside her. He had other priorities: establish a vox line to Corsair, then find confirmation that Maeve had indeed completed her task of the core sabotage before whatever it was had happened to her. And then help Corsair find Erelah if he hadn’t already.
First things first.
He maneuvered into the oddly shaped space that he considered an auxiliary command interface. This section was fitted with a dat screen read instead of a HUD projector, unlike everything else that seemed to require the visor Maeve used. He blundered through a series of screens before he found the command section for vox link.
Something heavy and sharp collided with his back. The force threw him forward. His chin connected with the unyielding surface of the console. He knees buckled, and he plowed face first into the coated material of the decking. Stupidly, he stared at the lint and debris stuck to the crevices in the texture. His body and brain vibrated in a stunned disequilibrium. Liquid warmth spread down the back of his neck.
Move! Fight back!
He rolled to his side. Panic slid like acid into his blood as whatever weight had struck him came with him. He reached around; his hands encountered a rubbery surface that was almost slimy. Barbs, like metal hooks, dug into the flesh of his back, piercing the field armor with the distinct pops of rupturing metal. It felt like an enormous hand had grasped his back and started to squeeze.
Jon lashed out blindly, trying to regain his footing. His boot struck one of the metal spines of the interface. There was an off-key bleating as some random system was insulted. He tried again, pushing off the wall, preparing to crush against it whatever was stuck to him. He rammed back and was rewarded with a wet and metallic wail of pain. It emboldened him to try it again. This time, the fingers tightened. Something in his spine made a distant, unhealthy pop. A burning pain zinged down his hamstrings. He crumpled to the deck, powerless.
Numbness invaded his chest and sank into his legs. Red dots swam in his vision, thrumming in time with his pulse. The hand squeezed again, forcing the air from his lungs.
There was another, more tortured squeal from the thing on his back. Its weight lifted away with the purr of rending fabric. Over the hammering of his heart, he heard a grunt of effort and another fierce, metallic cry.
He tried to turn, but his arms his legs were so heavy; distant concepts. He was growing numb all over. He managed to roll onto his side. Inches from his face rested a nightmare—six legs covered in sickly yellow flesh, each ending in vicious hooks, a fleshy, eyeless body that was the color of a bruised fruit.
A combat blade skewered it to the deck like an insect in some macabre collection.
That was on me? Miri!
He tried to recoil, but couldn’t move. He could scarcely breathe.
“Did it sting you?” Maeve pawed at his clothes and tugged away the remains of his armor. Unceremoniously she shoved him from side to side as she searched his skin. Her face was a pained mask under a sheen of sweat.
She snarled down at the (hopefully) dead thing and spat at it. Her scowl was part pain, part disgust. “Nasty Sc’loid tech.”
“What.” Jon breathed out the word. The numbness was turning to a burning sensation spreading along his arms, legs and scalp. The universe stuttered around him.
There was a stinging slap against his jaw. He opened his eyes. That, he did feel.
“The ripper-crab. Did it sting you?”
“I…no. I don’t know.” He wheezed out the words. It was if a band was closing around his chest, his lungs.
She seemed dissatisfied with his answer. Delivered another slap to his face. He gasped at the pain. “Stop!”
“That hurt?” She clutched her side and settled back on her haunches. Blood seeped between her fingers. The breach foam from her armor stuck to her single suit in gory patches. “Hurt is good. Hurt keeps you alive, crester.”
“You remind me of someone,” he slurred. There seemed to be a battle between the pain and the numbness all over his body. He saw the thing pinned to the deck, reacting as if suddenly seeing it again, remembering it was there. He found he could shift his torso, move his left arm. That had to be good. “What’s it do?”
“Sentry device,” Maeve muttered. “Come in pairs. First one got me through my armor.”
Bile rose up in his throat, surprising him. He vomited inches from the dead thing. Maeve hissed out a colorful curse. He watched her climb painfully to her feet and clutch the medikit.
“My suit. Where is it?” Her body quaked violently. “Don’t say you dumped it.”
“Dumped it.” He could move both arms, but not before the cabin swam around him. He settled for a weary lean against the frame opposite her, propping himself up like a rag doll. His legs still felt as if they belonged to someone else.
“Shouldn’t have done that. Coming down from the battle pharms might kill me.”
“Did you do it?” he gasped. Taking in shallower breaths seemed to lessen the pain in his skull.
“Do what?” Maeve panted. With her free hand, she pawed through the medikit, then stopped with a victorious grunt as she pulled out a hand full of jectors.
“Sabotage the core.”
She snorted. Then she jabbed herself in the neck with one jector after another—three in all, and enough to kill him. She released an orgasmic sigh. With a scowl, she hurled an empty jector tube at the ripper-crab’s body. It bounced off it and into a dark corner of the ship.
“Someone beat me to it.”
Jon swallowed against another wave of nausea. “Beat you to it?”
“I could tell you how long we got, but someone dumped my suit. It had the output recorded.” She glared.
With a hand made of hot pins, he jabbed his vox open to Corsair. “Maeve says the core was sabotaged before she got there. Don’t know how much time we got. Have you found Erelah?”
After what seemed an eternity, Corsair answered. His voice breathless, distracted. “A little busy here.” The connection dropped.
Great.
He felt sandwiched between the air and the hazy drift of the station’s odd gravity. His eyelids grew heavy. He shut them, telling himself that it was just for a moment. He was aware of the matting under his cheekbone and the throbbing mass of his skull.
A drugged, slurred voice found him as he melted into the floor.
Maeve. Forgot she was there. “Try to stay awake, crester. Waking up will be a bitch.”
Thirty-Seven
Miles Wren woke to a sense of wrongness as if the axis of the universe was off by twelve degrees. He drew in a breath, and his right side offered crushing resistance. Despite the sudden sharp pain, he felt untethered, as if he’d been released from some incredible burden of the psychic variety. Something flickered deep in his mind. It hovered outside the grasp of memory and danced away the harder he tried to focus.
Something urgent was about to happen. But what?
He pressed a hand against his injured side. That was when he noticed he was standing.
How’d I get here?
Four feet away lay one of the station personnel. Childs, the systems tech. Nearby lay two more. Their lab coats marked them as civilians: Gerhart and Hoffs. Their limbs splayed at unhappy angles, like dolls some child had given up playing with in favor of other pursuits.
He took a step, felt something warm trickle down the back of his neck. A new pain appeared with the discovery. He tracked a sizeable cut on the back of his neck, extending into this hairline. His hand came away with fresh blood.
Did someone hit me? Did I fall?
Panic settled into his brain, making itself comfortable and taking up the space that had once been occupied by something else. He sagged along the brilliant white wall, his blood mingling with the green horizontal stripe. He ordered his body to turn around, to head back the way he’d come. The medical team was there. There’d be able to help. Something told him it was a stupid notion:
that he was well beyond help. That he’d fucked up royally somehow.
He’d been having a dream; a nightmare really. Disconnected and floating above himself, unable to move, yet seeing the things he’d done. A black and malefic presence had been stuffed inside of him, controlling him, the way a hand wears a glove. The awful things he’d done.
Focus on what you know. What do you remember?
This was medical level. That was what the green stripe meant. When they’d first taken Roughbook, they’d found it to be a maze of corridors, walkways. He’d come up with the idea of color-coding it. Snowden had joked with him about it. His brain stuttered over the thought. She was—
“Dead.” His own voice started him in the eerie stillness.
A wedge of incredible despair drove through his stomach. Memory rushed him. He’d seen it happen. Seen her die. His feet tangled. He felt the bile rise in his throat.
He gaped at his gore-covered hands. “Because I did it.”
Not me.
She made me watch while she did it.
Tristic. The thing—the presence—had called itself Tristic.
It was still here.
She’d used him to do more awful things before jumping from his body.
But there was still time to undo it and make some of it right.
Moving like an ancient thing, he slid along the green stripe of the wall, following it back to the main lab.
Thirty-Eight
Rachel stared at the sealed clean room door and cursed under her breath. For now, she and Erelah were both safe—but trapped. The clean room was containment for a reason. No other doors or windows in or out. It was the place you wanted to keep things that you didn’t want getting out. Like bugs or aliens or alien bugs.
Things had gone quiet on the other side. Too much so.
Wren—or the thing that had been pretending to be him—had pulled something from his pocket. Chapman shouted it was a weapon, but there’d been no explosion or gunshots.
Erelah joined her at the door and pressed her ear to the smooth metal. They locked eyes across the unmarred white surface, listening.
There was an occasional clank, more a vibration transmitted by the automated operations of the station. No voices. No other sounds.
“Maybe he’s dead,” Rachel ventured. It seemed ridiculous to whisper. Everyone…and everything…out there knew where they were.
Erelah shook her head. Tears brightened her eyes. “She’s still out there. I feel her.”
She meant Tristic, of course.
A raucous pounding rattled the door. Both women startled, reaching for each other. A voice shouted, muffled by the thick door. “Erelah.”
“Asher.”
“What?” Rachel felt herself scowl. “How?” She pressed her ear to the door.
“I know his voice. It’s him!” A giddy tremor of relief entered Erelah’s voice.
Rachel looked from her to the door. It could just be wishful thinking, too.
“Open it!” Erelah prodded, smacking her palms on the door.
Rachel stepped back. “One way to be sure.”
She placed the gun on the top of the security station, happy to shed its cold, oily weight. The monitors were still up in the lab. Luckily whatever genius had left this workstation last had forgotten to lock their user interface. She gave silent thanks to the god of Human laziness and pulled open the monitor feed.
Everyone was down, appearing to have collapsed where they stood.
From over Rachel’s shoulder, Erelah gave a gasp of what could only be delight and relief. Standing amidst the litter of bodies was Korbyn—or Corsair. There was something oddly appropriate at seeing him in that setting.
What the hell had happened?
To her relief, Chapman stepped into the frame beside him. The top of his crew cut only came up to the man’s shoulder.
Rachel found the intercom controls after a brief hunt of the software. “Took you long enough.”
Corsair stepped back. It wasn’t a startle, but the closest she guessed anyone would get out of someone like that. She couldn’t resist adding, “You look like deep fried crap, by the way.”
Chapman turned up to face the camera with a haggard grin. “Open up, doc.”
There was something niggling at her. Something not right.
Erelah reached over her shoulder. The door control was big friendly button recessed into the wall within easy reach of whoever controlled this workstation.
Rachel grabbed Erelah’s wrist. It was a reflex, gut reaction.
The girl frowned. “It’s Asher. Open it.”
“Hold on.” Rachel shot her a look. Felt the girl’s scrutiny deepen. She knew that her hesitation, the niggling something, was transmitted to her too.
Rachel studied the screen. Then realized why the litter of bodies seemed stranger than they should. She hit the intercom. “Where’s Wren?”
Asher reacted to something off camera. His hands moved in a pantomime of annoyance. Chapman stared up at the camera, unmoving. He made no indication that Wren’s absence disturbed him. Rachel shivered at the coolness in his expression, even from the tiny monitor.
Erelah’s voice was a choking sob: “Tristic.”
Rachel realized too late what she was seeing. Too late to call out a warning.
Chapman plunged the combat blade into Corsair’s side.
Thirty-Nine
There. The voice came from the lab outside the clean room.
Miles sagged against the wall. There had been two voices speaking: one in English, the other in the Eugenes dialect they called Commonspeak. It was male, deep and low. When he rounded the corner, he wasn’t surprised at the hulking size of the man that stood beside one of his Marines.
Regardless of the alien’s presence, there appeared to be some kind of truce between the two. Both were focused on the shuttered door of the clean room. He watched as the Eugenes pounded against the door with a fist. Then the Marine, even in his tactical gear looking puny in comparison, stepped back to peer up at the camera. Chapman.
“Open up, doc.”
An iciness invaded Wren’s gut. Chapman. There was seeping blackness there in the man. Miles registered it as an odd pulling in his veins as if his blood had somehow become lazy and thick. It settled on him with a certainty. The thing. Tristic had scrambled into Chapman. He just knew.
“Chapman.”
The giant man turned. His maroon eyes narrowed instantly. His face darkened, hands drawing up, jaw thrust forward. The man—a Binait mongrel from the looks of him—was familiar, like something from a hazy dream. Miles was certain that at one time, he had known the man’s name. There was an animosity attached to it. And guessing from the dark look the stranger returned, it was a shared notion.
Chapman turned. His expression was of cool annoyance like a something important had been interrupted. Miles felt the pulling again. The skin tightened along the back of his neck. His eyes began to water as he focused on Chapman.
Miles maneuvered closer, not trusting his legs, holding onto the countertop for support. The Eugenes’ withering look was forgotten.
“It’s you,” he said. Miles did not question how he knew it, only that the knowledge was there, fully formed. “That thing is in you.”
Chapman turned back, canted his face up to the security camera as he reached for his combat blade. Miles stumbled forward, sending a row of test tubes to the floor with a musical clatter. Glass crunched. His hand encountered a cold metal rod. It had once been part of the now-destroyed gurney. He clutched it on reflex.
“Stop. Don’t—”
Chapman plunged the knife into the hulking Eugenes’ side, a carefully placed strike in the gaps of the armor that seemed almost casual.
Miles swung the rod around, just as Chapman turned to face him. It met his jaw with a thick crack. The Marine collapsed like a sack of wet clothes.
The clean room door rolled open. Miles staggered back, dropping the rod as two women spilled out: one was Rachel No
rthway, the other a frail-looking young woman. He watched her dive forward to embrace the fallen Eugenes, calling out to him in their strange language.
That moment’s simple action seemed to claim any reserve energy Miles possessed. The strength went out of his legs, and he collapsed against the counter for support.
For a long time, the young woman’s sobs were the only sounds.
Forty
Erelah moved without thinking. It was all someone else acting and doing on her behalf. One moment, she was reaching for the door override, the next she was rushing through its widening gap, heading for Asher.
There was a look of simple astonishment on his face as he fell into her. His full weight sagged against her as she lost the battle to keep him upright. She ignored the twin spikes of pain in her knees as she struck the deck.
“Promised I’d find you. Didn’t I?” he said in a winded gasp against her neck. She released a shattered sob, distantly aware of the growing warmth that spread along his side and soaked her thin clothes.
The world snapped into place: over-loud, over-bright. She was aware of the coppery smell of blood. Asher’s blood. The stale air of the room seemed to choke with it.
“Let me look. Let me look.” Rachel was suddenly there, wedging herself between then. She chanted it like a mantra or a prayer. Asher flopped to the floor. Rachel peeled back the useless armor and cursed in her native tongue.
“Here.” She grabbed Erelah’s hands, pressed them over the gash. “Hold pressure. Push as hard as you can.”
Then she rushed away. For what: a minute? A year? She heard the doctor’s frantic, noisy rummaging and muttered curses.
Allies and Enemies: Exiles, Book 3 Page 14