by Nick Webb
“Evasive maneuvers,” said Spears, firmly. “Helm, ensure we don’t ding the paint, I’m rather fond of it.”
The ship began to duck and weave, bobbing and rolling to avoid the rocks. Instantly, Mattis was grateful for the smaller British ship. It was more agile than the Midway due to its narrower frame, giving it a distinct advantage his larger ship wouldn’t have had.
“Any sign of what we’re looking for?” asked Spears, as calm as if she were asking about the weather.
“Aye ma’am,” said Blackwood, pointing to the screen. “One of the larger debris pieces has a strong thermal signal. It’s weak, but otherwise consistent with what we’d expect from an Avenir vessel. Magnetic signature matches the ship that was seen at Earth.”
The screen flickered, zoomed, then showed the ship. Spears leaned forward in her seat. “Lock weapons,” she said. “Prepare to engage.”
“Wait,” said Mattis, peering at the ship. It had no lights, as expected, but it was buckled, warped, as though it had suffered some great calamity even before being slammed into the rock.
“Looks like it crashed,” Mattis said. “The weak signal is probably the reactor core in standby mode. Look at the buckling on the forward hull… the whole thing nearly broke in two. Must have just gone right in. Nothing made of meat could have survived that.”
“An astute observation, Admiral Mattis.” Spears nodded to Blackwood. “Take a landing party down there. Send Eversman and a hand-picked team of Marines. Eyes peeled. I want to find out if there is anything alive left on that ship. And I want answers.”
“Captain,” asked Mattis, smiling lightly. “Admiral Fischer got on my case about playing heroic captain but, well, I’m not in command of this ship. Permission to lead the away team?”
Spears considered for a moment, then nodded firmly, her teasing smile returning to her face. “You have to do something around here to earn your keep. Permission granted, Mister Mattis. Good hunting.”
Chapter Ten
Chuck and Elroy’s Apartment
Georgetown, MD
Earth
Chuck waited as his phone tried to contact Smith again. His little device rang and rang. Did anybody in the galaxy pick up their phones anymore?
On a whim, he dialed again, but this time entered in the old diplomatic security code he had when on Senator Pitt’s staff. It could often be used to bypass standard security systems. Surely they would have disabled it by now since—
Finally, a voice came through, thin, female and robotic.
“This is the Tiberius Sector’s Z-Space relay switchboard, based on New Los Alamos, run by Tiberian Intertel, your trusted interstellar telecom provider. The number you have dialed is no longer in service. We value our customers, and want to make your interstellar communications experience as smooth as possible. If you believe you have reached this switchboard in error, please press one. If you are having a medical emergency, please hang up and dial nine-one-one. Para hablar en espanol, por favor oprima la tres. For all other inquiries, please—”
Well, shit. He switched off the connection. New Los Alamos was a world in the Tiberius sector, the most populated area of the galaxy besides Earth and its near neighbors, nestled inside the Tiberius Nebula—a dozen solar systems full of worlds, mostly colonized. Billions of people. If Smith was somewhere in there, he was in the wind. Gone.
“It’s okay,” Elroy soothed. “Don’t worry about it. It’s a long shot anyway. It doesn’t matter.”
That was true. Chuck slumped down in a chair, running his hands through his hair. “Okay. I guess that’s true. I guess… we could try another hospital. More tests.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Elroy. “The fact is that Jack is alive… that’s the miracle of it all. Don’t worry. We’ll solve this, I promise. Together.”
They sat in silence, enjoying a brief moment of quiet, exchanging smiles. Then a realization hit him.
“Wait,” said Chuck. “That call. It failed to connect.”
“Is that worse?” asked Elroy, curiously.
“Yes. Probably. I don’t know. But it’s… different. Before it just rang out. This time it said the phone was actually not in service.”
Right on cue, Chuck’s device rang. He jumped up, snatching it out of his pocket.
UNKNOWN NUMBER
CALLER ID MASK DETECTED
How odd. A caller ID mask? Only criminals and black-ops people did that. Black ops… it could be Smith! He connected the call. “Chuck Mattis speaking.”
The speaker transmitted a strange noise, a faint whine as though some great power source was nearby, or perhaps the rushing air of a moving car. “Chuck!” said a strange, Indian-accented voice. “Heya buddy, how’s it going?”
Chuck squinted. “Who—who is this? Where’s John Smith? Who are you?”
The voice on the other end of the line snorted. “Kinda hoping you could tell us that, kid. My name’s Reardon. Harry Reardon. I’m an associate of Smith.”
Chuck nearly—very nearly—hung up, his finger hovering over the button. He recognized the name and couldn’t afford to be associated with petty criminals—not after his recent brushes with the law. But he was doing it for Jack. “I don’t know,” he said, summoning his patience. “Smith won’t pick up his phone, and the robolady on the other end said it was disconnected.”
“Oh, I know that,” said Reardon. The noise in the background—was he driving?—picked up. “We’re looking for Smith too. Damn bastard won’t answer our calls… we can’t get hold of him.”
“Then how did you get this number?”
Reardon snorted. “Well, Smith’s some kind of secret agent or something. What you called was one of his dead drops… basically a number people dial to get in contact with him in an emergency. We’ve been monitoring it ever since we—” he coughed politely. “Discovered it. Legally, I might add. Totally legally.”
Right. This was what he’d feared. Getting involved in illegal activity … he did not want to get arrested again. “How coincidental.” Chuck pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you think he’s dead?”
Another voice came on the line, distant as though speaking a yard or so away. It was a younger voice, but similarly Indian. “Nah. Smith can’t die, he’s way too cool for that.”
“Shut the fuck up!” hissed Reardon, then returned his attention to Chuck. “Okay. Kid. We need to talk.”
He stared at the wall in confusion. “But… we are talking. Right now.”
“No,” said Reardon, obviously annoyed. “I mean… talk talk. In private. Can…” there was a slight pause. “Can you just answer this: why were you calling Smith, anyway?”
Chuck chewed on his lower lip. “My son is sick,” he said measuredly. “Smith knows a lot of people. I was hoping he might know someone who might have some answers for me.”
“Apart from Smith himself?”
“Yeah.” Chuck wasn’t sure exactly how much to tell the strange voice at the other end of the line. “I think it’s a genetic condition. Look, it’s a long shot, but… I just want to help my son.” His voice cracked. “He’s just a baby.”
“Oh man,” said Reardon. “A kid? A baby? Harry, we have to help. We have to help!”
The two started to banter, but it sounded muffled, as if Reardon held a hand over the receiver. Chuck shrugged helplessly to Elroy. He shrugged back.
“Well if it’s a baby,” Reardon said, finally, “you might really be in luck. There’s a guy I know. Well, know by reputation, more like. Steve Bratta. British geneticist. Fun guy. Not great at parties, though.”
A geneticist? Bratta? Something tweaked in his memory. The news broadcast… the clip of the mutant attacking someone. On some planet. Was Bratta the guy that filmed that? Or was it someone else…? He couldn’t remember.
“Oh yeah,” said the third voice. “But isn’t he Scottish? Not English….”
“That’s the same thing,” said Reardon.
A third voice whistled mournfully. “Oh, ye
ah, this is going to go great…”
Reardon spoke over the other guy. “Hey. Can you come up to the roof of your apartment block?”
Chuck blinked and said nothing, unsure if he was actually being addressed.
“Won’t take a moment,” said Reardon. “Just so we can talk.”
“You’re on the roof?” Chuck glanced at Elroy. “They’re on the roof.”
Elroy grimaced and lightly bounced Jack. “Well that ain’t creepy as shit.”
“We’re … not on the roof,” said Reardon, entirely unconvincingly.
This was madness, but, well, he was out of things to try. Sighing, Chuck walked to the apartment’s front door, then to the fire escape leading up to the roof. Elroy followed, lightly cradling the gurgling, now seemingly perfectly fine Jack Mattis Junior.
As they climbed the stairs upward, the noise on the end of the line got worse. “If you’re not up there… then is it because the signal’s better on the roof?”
“Not quite,” said Reardon.
A slight tremor grew in the concrete stairs. It intensified, a whine becoming a howl. Chuck pushed open the door that lead to the roof and immediately saw why.
A spaceship hovered about ten meters above the apartment complex, its engines emitting the noise Chuck could hear over the phone, but now magnified by a million. The ship was a light pink, reflecting the setting sun in every direction, creating a pseudo-disco-ball effect on the otherwise flat concrete of the roof of his apartment block.
“Holy shit!” Chuck balked. “You’re…. you’re hovering over my apartment!”
“That’s breaking at least five laws,” said Elroy, moving beside him, fingers in Jack’s ears. Babies have sensitive hearing.
The loading ramp dropped and a tan-skinned Indian man wearing a leather jacket over a pink undershirt, slick-backed black hair, and a pair of aviator glasses stepped down—more like waddled down, like an overconfident peacock—and picked a toothpick out of his mouth.
“Harry Reardon,” he said, “smuggler extraordinaire. And this is my ship, the Aero—” A wind whipped through his hair. The ship tilted slightly and Reardon nearly fell off, grasping hold of a support pole. “Star.” He turned and shouted over his shoulder. “Dammit Sammy, I nearly fell!”
“Sorry!” came a call from within.
Okay. This was okay. This was fine. “So,” said Chuck, cautiously, “do you think we can look for them together? Smith and this… Steve Bratta?”
“That’s what I was thinking. Or rather, I think Bratta can help us find Smith. He’s kinda brilliant,” said Reardon, climbing back onto his feet and—with a little more caution than his previously flamboyant movements might have suggested—tapped his temple. “Anyway, I have a plan.”
That was better than what Chuck had, which was nothing but desperation, a sick baby, and a vague sense of impending doom. “But we need to find Bratta first,” he said. “My son’s getting sicker. We need help. He worked at the lab that made those mutants. If that’s related to whatever is wrong with Jack….”
“And I need to find Smith first. He’s got the answer to my little … cargo problem. Once we deal with that, then we can find Bratta.”
“Fine. Do you even know where Smith is?” asked Chuck, casual.
“I … uh … no.” Reardon said, deflated.
Chuck smiled. “Well I do. So if you want to find him, take me to Bratta first.”
The other man grumbled and swore under his breath. “Great. Fine,” said Reardon. “Come aboard. Just give your little poopmaker to your hubby there aaaaand we can get going.”
As tempting as it was to leave Jack behind—very tempting—Chuck was reluctant. He grimaced slightly. “We’ll need to bring Jack with us,” he said. “And Elroy has to come too. If we find Bratta, I want him to look at Jack right away and—”
“I can’t,” said Elroy, shaking his head. “I have work tomorrow. And since you’ve been out of a job since… well, since the thing, if I lose that job, we lose the apartment.” He bounced the baby lightly. “Lemme keep Jack. Just come back here as soon as you find Bratta.”
He really didn’t want to go anywhere without his husband, but he was out of options. “I know you have work, but… what if Bratta wants to treat him right away? Maybe he should come.”
Elroy seemed a lot less convinced. “This is a wild goose chase,” he said, softly, even over the howl of the engines. “You don’t have anything more than a name.”
“It’s better than nothing.” A weak argument if ever there was one, but sheer desperation made the choice, the risk, seem easy. “It’s Jack. If there’s a chance this Bratta can help him … I have to go. And I’ve got to take Jack with me.”
For a moment Elroy seemed unconvinced. Then, slowly, he nodded. “Right.” Elroy handed over Jack with some palpable reluctance. “You just take care, okay? You be careful.”
“Yeah,” said Chuck, grinning a little. “You know me. I’ll be fine.” He turned back to Reardon. “Jack comes with me.”
Reardon pulled a disgusted face and snapped off his sunglasses. “A baby? On my ship? Hell no!”
A speaker crackled. “Hell yes!” said the voice Chuck presumed to be Sammy. “Harry, he’s so cute!”
“No,” said Reardon.
“Yes,” said Sammy, wobbling the ship ominously, forcing Reardon to grab hold of the hatch’s edge.
Reardon seemed to consider for a moment, then sighed melodramatically, throwing his hands up in the air. “Fine! But don’t let him puke or shit on anything, or out the airlock he goes.”
“I’ll pay for any damages,” said Chuck, with absolutely no idea of how he was going to do that if it happened, given he was flat broke.
The ship began to descend, loading ramp extending a little further. It touched down on the roof of their apartment block, its engines whining.
Chuck held up Jack’s little hand. “Wave bye-bye to da-da,” he said. Then he smiled at Elroy. “We won’t be long.”
“You better not be,” said Elroy, reaching up and wiping something out of his eye. “You better not be.”
Chuck stepped onto the loading ramp beside Reardon. “Let’s get going,” he said.
“Fine.” Reardon squinted down at the baby, then, almost as a side note, seemed to consider. “Also, little word of advice. Don’t touch the mutant.”
Chuck stared in confusion. “W-wait, the what?”
Chapter Eleven
The Warren
Chrysalis
Guano tucked her rifle against her body as she ran, keeping the muzzle low and the stock pressed up against her, ready to draw it up and engage. She tore through winding alleyway after alleyway, until—suddenly—she found herself out in a wide, open street full of people.
Panting and covered in sweat, she looked around, shifting her stance, ready to fire.
Nobody paid any attention to her. The crowd moved around her like water past a stone. Apparently, on the libertarian’s paradise of Chrysalis, a blood-splattered woman wearing a prisoner’s outfit and carrying a rifle was normal.
Fine. She slung the weapon and moved into the crowd, trying her absolute best to blend in. She still felt light-headed, as though she’d had a handful of small glasses of strong alcohol, and everything was edged in blur. Like she was seeing through a lens filter.
She’d been unconscious for weeks. Months, if Brooks—Or Spectre, more correctly, although that thought seemed to struggle to sink into her head—wasn’t lying. Which she could never be certain of. What exact effect this would have on her eyes she was uncertain, but it could be her brain. He’d mentioned a concussion. He was also a lying sack of shit, though, so there was that.
Good God. Spectre. He … he was alive. But in a different fucking body. Or was she hallucinating?
Guano rubbed her eyes, hands covered in grime from hiding out in the trash pile. That damn thing had saved her. She should name it. Maybe … Cayden. Yeah. Cayden the trash pile. A stinky mass of refuse which had turned out t
o be kind of useful in the end.
It was a strange thought to be having. Naming piles of garbage. Guano clutched her rifle closer. If more of those mutants came, she’d be ready.
She followed the crowd, buffered occasionally by the people who pushed and shoved with seemingly no regard for her dizziness. Guano grabbed some passerby’s shoulder, using it for a moment to steady herself.
“Hey,” said the woman, peeling her hand off. “Fuck off, druggie.”
So she did. Things got dizzier. Spinnier. Guano felt herself be turned around and around, and where she went, she had no idea. She wasn’t unconscious but wasn’t fully conscious either; and then, slowly, she realized.
It was the battle fugue. Or something like it. Changed. Altered. Whatever it was, it kept her mind focused, her presence centred.
And that was good. She’d tried to summon that feeling for months, to no avail. And now it came, readily.
Then, almost as though some force had guided her, Guano felt herself return. She was standing in a queue leading to a ticket booth on an interplanetary travel company. InterStat.
She felt like she had been sleepwalking and was only just now waking up. Her wallet was in her left hand, credit chip protruding and ready. In her right, she had a ticket printed out from the machine. It was for the New Kentucky route. She must have bought it while she was out. Why New Kentucky? She couldn’t say. Maybe she’d heard it spoken of recently and it was the first place she thought of to escape to.
Her side hurt. She remembered, vaguely, that she’d been shot. Pulling back her collar, she risked a look down her shirt. The wound had closed and, despite the blood, barely seemed to be anything more than a congealed scab. It itched slightly but didn’t hurt.
Maybe it was a residual effect of the tank.
“Next,” said the attendant.
Guano stepped forward, blinking away the last remnants of the dizziness. “Uhh … yeah.” She held out the ticket order clumsily. “I’d like to go… um, here.”