Blood Type: An Anthology of Vampire SF on the Cutting Edge

by Watts, Peter

  The shuttle shook and vibrated through the hull as it jarred into the docking port.

  “Captain, we may have a problem.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The internal sensors are down. I have no reading on the passengers. They may be out. I’m reading artificial gravity similar to our own, but I’ve got nothing else.”

  “Failed sensors aren’t uncommon after this long of a journey. Be vigilant, but suit up and prepare to go in for welcome protocols.”

  The women left the cockpit and pulled on their suits and fabric helmet hoods. Each checked the other to be sure the seals were in place. As their helmets filled with cooler air and expanded away from their faces, they entered the airlock.

  Their voices crackled through the speakers in the helmets.

  “Are you ready, officer?”

  “I hope so, Captain.”

  “I’m not asking about your feelings, Tempat. Are you ready?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Jule stared at her a moment longer. She hit the release. The round door ground across the distressed metal at the end of the airlock. Air rushed into the darkness from the short passage.

  As they walked into the vessel, lights along the corridor tried to flicker on, but failed. They turned on the illumination on their helmets. The shafts of light were tight and did not extend all the way along the pod.

  Jule could hear Tempat’s breathing through the speaker by her ear. She bit down on her lip and tried to ignore it.

  They rounded the curve of the passage and the breathing stopped. The capsules extended down both sides of the remainder of the passage and out of sight. Presumably they extended through the remainder of the pod.

  “How many, Captain?”

  “Hard to tell. This passage is sloping down as it curves.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Jule turned her body in order to look at Tempat through her plastic faceplate. Tempat was turned so that her face didn’t show in her suit. Jule could hear her breathing through the microphone and speakers again.

  “It means the passage spirals. The capsules are slightly wider than a body. They are side by side. If the slope continues at this angle and if each pod is designed this way … you do the math.”

  Tempat’s harsh breathing paused again. “It’s an entire city. It’s an entire civilization. They moved everyone. What is the point of that?”

  “We’re going to need help.” Jule turned back toward the capsules.

  “Do we go back and radio?”

  “Let’s start here and complete this pod. We need to know the situation before we involve more agents.”

  “Where do we start?”

  Jule walked forward across the deck plates. “The first one.”

  They felt around the sides for controls. The hatch released and extended open a finger’s breadth. Jule glanced back around the edge of her faceplate. Tempat was already opening her kit. Jule nodded, but she wasn’t sure that Tempat saw it.

  “Just follow the training, officer. They are only people in the end. We greet one and then repeat.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Jule lifted the hatch. There were mechanical hinges that folded out as the lid lifted away from the curve of the capsule.

  “Primative.”

  “Captain?”

  “Step up, officer.”

  Tempat approached the pod with the gun sprung and ready. Jule stepped to the side to give her room.

  Curved teeth like spikes shot up from both sides of the capsule’s interior. The gun was knocked out of Tempat’s hands. Jule cursed into her microphone and Tempat’s ears. The device skidded across the deck. When it struck the closed capsule on the other wall of the passage, it discharged and the thick, wooden stake extended out from the barrel an arm’s length.

  “Reload it, Tempat, quickly.”

  Tempat ran forward and slid on her knees across the floor to snatch up the stake gun. She fumbled the trigger at first, but then got hold of the release. She pressed the sharp point of the stake into the flat metal of the wall locking it back into the body of the gun. When the spring popped, she stood up to run back.

  Jule clenched her teeth as she unholstered her silver-mercury injector. “I hope this one isn’t important to anyone.”

  Jule turned her gun and pointed at the chest of the body inside the capsule. She leaned over the side to see. The arms were motionless and at the sides of the body’s hips. Yellowed nails jutted out from the black cuticles and the bloodless, white fingers, but the hands were still. She turned her head to look into the face.

  Tempat charged back toward the open capsule. The claw-like extensions along the inside of the capsule’s chamber were curled up and over the body.

  Jule was distracted before she looked into the face. “They are made of wood?”

  The claws sprung down into the prone body in six places. They pierced through the black uniform into the chest and abdomen above the heart, lungs, and other major organs. The colorless eyes flipped open and the injured man gasped for air despite the vacuum in the ship. His lips split as they peeled back from long fangs. The awakened man thrashed, but did not free himself from the wooden claws of the chamber. He stilled again with his eyes open, fangs exposed, and pale hands clutching the wooden shafts.

  “What do we do, Captain?”

  Two syringes sprung into the man’s shoulders with no reaction. The women watched as the fluid plunged into the body. After a moment, the dead muscles relaxed and the hands fell back into the chamber. The jaws remained open, but the fangs began to retract into the black gums. Fresh blood began to ooze red from the sockets around the teeth. The eyes slid closed.

  “Captain?”

  “We need to figure out life support. He’ll need air once he is greeted.”

  Tempat began walking back up the slope and curve of the corridor.

  Human color began to bleed back into his flesh. His eyes flung open and light projected out from the orbs. He clinched his fangless jaws together and then opened his mouth to scream. Nothing issued. He collapsed again with his muscles twitching. Blood began to boil up from the stab wounds around the wood shafts. His skin began to glow with internal light.

  The wood claws withdrew from the body and retracted into the chamber of the capsule. The man’s head lolled to the side as the wounds began to heal.

  The lights flickered again along the ceiling, but failed to illuminate. The capsules along the passage popped as each of their lids opened a finger’s breadth one after the other along the corridor on both sides. Jule didn’t hear the pop as much as she felt the vibration of it through the floor.

  “What’s going on?” Tempat was too far up the passage to see, but her voice came crisp through the speakers in Jule’s helmet.

  The pops continued until they were too far away for Jule to feel. The lids began to rise on their arcane hinges. The ones closest to her were concealed, but as the capsules continued down the slope, she could see the pale, shriveled hands and faces of men and women.

  “And children?”

  “Captain, what is it?”

  Air began to hiss from the vents along the walls. She could actually hear it faintly through the helmet. The skin of her suit fluttered lightly.

  “Did you find life support, Tempat?”

  “No, Captain, it was automated.”

  The wooden claws sprung up over each chamber with a sharp crack echoing down the corridor. They drove down into the bodies one after the other. Now she could hear the screams. One of the smaller bodies convulsed with a full seizure.

  “Why would they infect children and bring them? What kind of people …”

  She looked down on the man as he began to move in the first chamber beside her. He was breathing normally now. Jule unlatched her helmet and the fabric deflated. Atmosphere filled through the crack as it equalized.

  “Captain, what do we do?”

  “Nothing … it looks like we won’t need extra help after all.”<
br />
  ~

  “Don’t stop him. Let’s see what he has to say.”

  “Captain, we don’t know these people. Do we want him having access to our computers like this?”

  Jule looked around the chamber that wasn’t really a bridge in the string of pods that made up the colony ship. “There is nothing on the shuttle they can use to hurt the planet.”

  “What about us, Captain?”

  Jule snorted. “Officer, you should have considered that more completely before you joined this service. We do this so others don’t have to be in danger. Everything we do is to protect others from the dangers of the travel disease.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  As they spoke, the shivering man continued to work the controls accessing and loading files from the shuttle computers. His human fingers quivered as he tried to convert the files and language that were alien to him. He was bald from the greeting process and thousands of years of dead sleep. He flexed his hands that had been pale, blackened, and clawed moments before he led the women to the control room.

  He continued to struggle with the files. Text in both languages scrolled over the screens too quickly for any of the three of them to read.

  He began to jabber into the microphone.

  The computer translated in a strange accent. “Do these words make sense to you?”

  “Yes,” Jule answered.

  The computer translated into two syllables.

  Tempat muttered. “Why would a language make that a two syllable word?”

  The computer began translating in a long string. The man listened with his brow furrowed.

  Jule interrupted. “Ignore that. What is it you need to ask us?”

  The computer paused and then translated in three syllables. Jule looked at Tempat. The junior officer held her hands up without responding out loud.

  The man nodded and loaded the computer with a long monologue. “Our ship is damaged. According to our logs, there was an attack in a star system we were not aware was inhabited between our ancestral worlds and our new homeland. Three pods broke away with all onboard including the embryos as the rest of the ship continued on course.”

  Jule spoke and then she waited for the traveler to process the translation behind him. “Did you put all your embryos in that pod or did you just lose a portion of your supply?”

  He became visibly upset and repeated the same sounds multiple times. “Every life is important to us … every life. We lost our people and those embryos are the future of our entire culture. Every life … After all that we lost in the bloody invasion, every life matters … every life. We sacrificed so much to escape that plague on our world.”

  “We’re sorry for your loss,” Tempat started reaching for him.

  He drew away from her reach. He was still shivering in his torn, blood-stained uniform.

  Jule asked, “What is the bloody invasion? What plague?”

  He began to explain. When he finished, Jule dismissed him to tend to his people.

  “What does this mean, Captain?”

  “It’s time to call for help and we have tough choices to make.”

  ~

  “I understand what is involved, Captain.”

  “You couldn’t possibly, Tempat. Either way … this is our last mission. You can decline and start a new service in another agency. Staying proves nothing. Someone else can go. This is very early in your career.”

  “Do you want someone else to go, Captain?”

  “I don’t want anything, but for you to be completely sure about the decision you make. This is the rest of your life … no matter what we find. There will be no family … past or in your future.”

  “I understand it results in sterilization, if that is what you are saying.”

  “That’s only part of what I am saying.”

  “This is important. If the virus has gotten out of the can, it could be spreading across the universe. We need to protect humanity throughout inhabited space.”

  Jule stood and walked to the other side of the ship.

  Tempat remained seated and looked at the two open chambers in the back of the shuttle. “You want to talk me out of this? You want to fly three days back planet side and then three back out into the drink to start over a week late?”

  Jule laughed quietly without turning back around. “This is thousands of years of travel. One week makes no difference … death may already be in route, if what we fear has actually occurred. Either way, everyone you have ever known will be long dead by the time we find out. There is plenty of work to be done acclimating the new colonists, a lifetime of work.”

  “That’s not my job, Captain. This is.”

  Jule set in the course and they watched through the forward screen at nothing. The star pattern was bright, but unremarkable. There was no sensation of motion, there was no sound from the engine inside the small shuttle, and there was little data on the forward instruments to mark their minute progress. They stared anyway.

  “You set in your chamber first, officer.”

  “I can do it, Captain.”

  “Tempat, I didn’t ask what you could do. I ordered you to do what you needed to do.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Jule prepared the injection as her only crewmember laid down in the tight alcove within the chamber. Jule leaned over and opened her mouth, but didn’t say anything. Tempat nodded.

  Jule plunged the syringe into Tempat’s neck. Tempat hissed, but held herself still. The dark lines ripped across the surface of her exposed skin and then disappeared under the uniform. The veins and arteries bulged and threatened to rupture. Tempat screamed as the color melted out of her skin and the definition disappeared in her eyes. She opened her jaws wider and peeled back her lips. The fangs were already tearing through her gums. Three permanent human teeth were ejected in a bloody spew as the inhuman feeders made violent space.

  Her voice was harsh and drawn. “Close it.”

  The captain followed her crewman’s order. The door sealed and locked. The claws that had sprouted through Tempat’s cuticles ran over the metal of the door inside. After a moment there was an angry scream and then a howl inside.

  Jule waited.

  The chamber hissed as the air was pumped out from inside. The creature thrashed against the reinforced sides.

  The captain patted the lid before she prepared her own injection. She set the failsafe countdown on the controls and climbed into her own chamber. She plunged her neck and cast the syringe out on the deck plates. The lid closed on her before the failsafe reached zero. Controls beeped to shutdown the countdown instead of ejecting her into space. As the chamber locked her in darkness, she waited for the air to be sucked out.

  “I’ll join you soon, officer.” Her voice lost its human tone on her final syllable.

  Her vision flashed in the darkness with fiery pain. She could see the details inside the chamber in red despite the darkness. She screamed in pain and her claws cracked against the lid as she struggled to escape.

  As her human mind clouded over and the ancient infection overtook her, she felt two desires waxing and waning within her. She wanted blood. She wanted the air to escape from her chamber so she would be suffocated.

  ~

  Her eyes peeled open in burning torment. The ancient jelly of her eyes ruptured, the lids tearing away from them. She could still see in colorless detail through the blinding light of the shuttle. Her muscles were lifeless masses, but she stirred them and they creaked as she reached with black claws for the bald human above her. Jule’s lungs inflated and she hissed through her impossibly dry throat.

  Tempat pressed the device against the captain’s chest through the uniform and pulled the trigger. Color exploded into the room as the wood shaft pierced Jule’s chest and ground against two vertebrae on the way through her back.

  She was angry and hungry for Tempat’s blood. Jule unhinged her jaw and extended her fangs. She could not reach far enough to close her claws over Tempat’s
soft human neck. She grabbed the rungs around the outside of the gun and pulled herself up from the bed the spike sliding painfully through her body.

  She was so focused on the veins humming in Tempat’s neck, she didn’t notice the spike digging through her heart and one lung. The darkness kicked in quickly and she dropped back in the bed. Tempat said something Jule couldn’t grasp as she drove a syringe into Jule’s pale neck.

  Jule stared at Tempat’s wrist close enough that she could smell the iron through the thin skin. She could not will her brittle neck to turn.

  Then, the light burst inside her. The sunlight ate at her insides. She felt every organ and the heat escaped from her sockets and pores. She finally wished for death more than blood.

  ~

  Jule took the controls and steered the shuttle toward the readings. They were not close enough to see the shape of things. She fought the urge to reach up and feel her own bald head again.

  “Captain, you can take time to recover. I rested a couple hours before I opened your chamber. We’ve been under for three thousand, two hundred years. A few more hours make little difference.”

  “I’ll rest as we travel.”

  “The automated systems failed. I nearly escaped my chamber before mine kicked back into motion.”

  “It doesn’t matter now, Tempat… You did well.”

  The field in front of them began to separate and define as they drew closer. They passed in silence for a period of time. Tempat offered water to Jule again and she took it.

  “Captain … are you sorry we made this journey?”

  “You might as well call me Jule … we’ll never see the agency again. Ask me about regrets once we know more … or if we have to go under again to reach the original system of those colonists and their bloody invasion as they called it.”

  “You think the escapees or plague victims followed them. Were they on their way here or did they pass us on their way to our system?”

  “There’s no way to know.”

  A reading appeared at the edge of their sensor field. They weren’t close enough to identify, but it was coming from the nearest planet second from the star.