Black Phoenix

by B. V. Larson

  “I heard there was trouble at medical,” she said softly. “Do you know anything about that?”

  Scarn’s state of mind shifted again. Could she be spying on him? He didn’t know much about her, after all.

  He moved to pull his hand away, but Neva held on. He let her, and their hands stayed clasped.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m not security. I’m not even crew, not really.”

  “But you work on the bridge.”

  “I do, but I don’t love it—and I don’t love him.”

  Scarn wasn’t sure which “him” she was talking about. Her husband, the delightful Commander Dallen, or the piggish captain himself. He supposed it didn’t matter. It was difficult to imagine any woman loving either of them.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  With the Milky Way as a background, her eyes stared into him, past surfaces, through him to the part that wanted her as much as she wanted him. His arms wrapped her against him. Her muscles, bones and skin moved under his hands. She played through his nerves, making him want to feed on her, to possess her, even if he lost himself.

  Neva pulled her mouth away from his. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I never feel like this.”

  Then she kissed him again, and his hands moved to her hips. He held her against him. He had the same thoughts himself, but nothing cautioned him to resist his impulses, to slow down or to think twice... he wanted this woman, he desired her, he wanted to inhale her smell, be enclosed in her skin and live in her eyes.

  “Commander Dallen is looking for Ms. Savvan,” said a deep voice from the lounge doorway, “if she’s here…”

  Scarn felt her shudder, neither of them spoke.

  After a few moments of lingering, the person in the doorway cleared his throat and left.

  “I know that guard,” Neva said. “He’ll be discreet.”

  Scarn wasn’t so sure, but he forced a smile. “I want to see you again,” he said. “Anywhere, any time.”

  “I can’t—” She started to pull away, but stopped. “No, I can. Deck thirty-nine, violet sector, in the bar. Eight tomorrow evening.” She looked deliberately into his eyes but was starting to move away. “I can’t understand any of this.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  The door irised open for her, and she hurried away. When the door closed, Scarn stood alone in the middle of the lounge. He put his hands flat on the middle of his chest. In the fabric of his clothes he felt the lingering warmth from the heat of her body.

  Half an hour later, when he stepped into his quarters, his bot spoke up. “One call, 11:25 PM.”

  Scarn rubbed his face as he walked over to the food dispenser. He punched in the code for a mild relaxant and watched the cloudy liquid jet into a small glass. His face ached, and he felt burned out.

  The evening had been a bad dream with an erotic ending—an ending which itself promised even greater catastrophe in the future. When he’d gotten up that morning, his burden had been the public humiliation of a trashlife winner getting two weeks’ enforced leave for vandalism—but now that was a joke.

  He’d spoken truth to power, fondled a woman who wasn’t his, and embarrassed powerful men in public. At this point, he figured he had about as much future as a lab rat.

  He dropped into his formchair. He let it cuddle and massage him and took a moment to enjoy the minty relaxant as it slid down his throat.

  “Return call,” he told the bot when he was ready.

  Colors and shapes sputtered through the spectrum and then swirled into a live image of Turtle, seated in his own quarters. He leaned forward. “Scarn, you’re back earlier than I thought. How’d it go? You talk to Stattor?”

  “Yeah, I talked to him.” He rubbed his face again. “I told him the replacement parts we were getting were no good. He said we were all one family, and they would never use third-rate parts on us. Never. How dare me?”

  “And? The other business?”

  “I also told him there was evidence for an alien invasion, the seizures.”

  “And? C’mon, Scarn. What’d he say?”

  “He wanted to know what I was drinking. He and Dallen claimed to know nothing about any of it.”

  “Those people are just skin-bags. I guess you did your best.”

  “Maybe not… I don’t know. When Stattor said we were family, I said some families ate their young.”

  Turtle winced.

  “By tomorrow,” Scarn admitted, “I’ll probably be electricity. What about Iris? Did she show up? Did you dance the night away?”

  “No,” Turtle said. “I never saw her. I asked a few people, but they looked at me like I was embarrassing them.”

  “You probably were. Above-decks, you and I are as welcome as two farts in an elevator.”

  “I just hope that when I get possessed I have a welder in my hands. Scarn, I did some checking with other people and I did the math. Like you do sometimes. At the current rate of seizures and disappearances, the last normal human being should find himself surrounded by a few hundred creeping freaks in about three weeks.”

  “Disappearances? I’ve heard about transfers—”

  “I have a friend who pilfers data for pocket money. All those psychonauts, and the first-line technicians you hear about who get transferred, you remember them?”

  “Sure. But who cares about missing breathers?”

  “Right, no one pays much attention. Well, when this guy I talked to checked the transfer manifests, guess what? They weren’t there. They’re either quarantined somewhere on the ship, or they’re providing heat, light and comfort for the rest of us.”

  Scarn had laced his fingers into a tight knot in his lap. “UT is disposing of its defective software? Turtle, this invasion thing, how sure are you about it? Ninety percent? Ninety-nine?”

  “I was there, on the planet the aliens want to evacuate. Their operators are probably as skilled as ours, but I told the one I was with that on our end it wasn’t going well. I told it that they were screwing up the alignment and our people were going mad.”

  “And the response was?”

  “He shut down. Kind of a ‘No comment.’”

  “What would happen,” Scarn asked, “if they got it right? Would we be able to look at a human being and tell if there’s a parasite in there?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone knows.”

  Scarn thought about Braxton. And the tall guy freaking out at the party. Even Lonna had been acting strangely. Could a psychonaut, alien or not, inhabit a synth? He figured it was possible. They were powered by batteries instead of digestive chemistry, but their tank-grown brains were organic.

  “So…” he said, feeling himself starting to believe “we have aliens trying to crawl into our heads, and when it goes bad, Stattor makes us disappear into a quarantined area.”

  “There must be crews doing the dirty work and the captain has to know about it.”

  “One easy solution,” Scarn said, “would be to change the course of Tarassis.”

  “Why would that do anything?”

  “We’re moving at very high speeds. All these planets we probe—they’re crawling around their stars in predictable locations. Tarassis is predictable too, as long as we keep flying in a straight line. But if we changed course, I’ll bet they can’t find us.”

  Turtle shrugged his big shoulders. “I guess we could talk to Commander Dallen. I know this course is locked in, and United Tarassis would lose time to their next presumed planetfall, but they can always shift the course back in line later.”

  “Dallen would never listen to me. He wants to see me in the core.”

  “Then get his wife, Neva, to talk to him. You could do that. She’s a navigator anyway. She could plot the course change.”

  Scarn shifted in his formchair. Somehow, it wasn’t as comfortable as it had been a moment before. “I don’t want to use her like that. It would be—”

  “Scre
w nobility, Scarn. Our position isn’t good.” Turtle looked grim. “When this thing hits—whatever the aliens have planned—it will hit her, too.”

  Scarn closed his eyes. “Right. All right. I’ll talk to her.”

  “Good. You look like shit. Get some rest.” Turtle’s image faded from the air.

  Scarn stretched out, held it a moment, and then relaxed. The formchair followed his motions and selectively massaged the best places in his back and neck.

  Once he settled his thoughts, Neva’s blue-violet eyes swelled out of his memory. The vision wrapped him in the comfort of unconsciousness.

  Chapter TWENTY-ONE

  The lounge in the violet sector of deck thirty-nine was a replica of an old Earth bar, with its name, Molokai, spelled in faux driftwood over the wide doorway.

  Inside, fish nets and imitation starfish hung from the ceiling. Murals on the walls showed the empty beaches of Waikiki, back in the oldest of days, with the ocean and sky separated by a thin white line of distant surf. In the enclosed booths, darkness hovered near the single wax candles on each of the tables.

  Scarn thought he would sit at the bar till his eyes adjusted, but a hand extended from one of the booths and touched his arm as he walked past.

  A man’s voice spoke. “Sit here.”

  When Scarn looked, it took a second for the connection to be made: It was Commander Dallen looking up from the booth.

  “Sit,” Dallen repeated. “I’m sure you’re surprised.”

  Scarn turned away and began to walk out.

  Dallen called after him. “Neva won’t be coming. You really need to talk to me if you want to keep breathing—breather.”

  Scarn froze. After a moment’s indecision, he did a U-turn and slid into the booth opposite Dallen.

  In ten seconds time he’d gone from high anticipation to dread. It was the repeated story of his life.

  The bartender slid two tall pale green drinks in front of them. “Compliments of the house,” he said and left.

  Scarn’s opening play was to stare. He offered Dallen nothing.

  “Depending on how this conversation goes,” Commander Dallen said, “I’m either sending you into the core, or back below-decks. Are you listening now?”

  “Talk.”

  “Better. All right, let’s review the situation. You’re here to seduce my wife. Understandable, but unacceptable. More importantly, you and your ape-friend murdered Ensign Braxton down in medical.”

  Scarn gave him no hint of expression. You had to know how to stonewall in order to keep breathing below-decks.

  Reviewing his cards, he decided to bluff.

  “Braxton?” he asked. “He’s not dead. He’s just been flashed. He’ll get over it. Lots of people get flashed. It happened to Turtle.”

  Dallen lifted a hand and shook his head smugly. “Let’s not talk bullshit. I know what you two did to him.”

  Scarn didn’t believe him. He figured that Dallen suspected the truth, but if this man really had evidence, he’d have already arrested Scarn and Turtle. They’d both be feeding the core. No, he was fishing.

  Two could do that.

  Scarn put on a look of concern. “Are you saying something else happened to Braxton?”

  “As if you don’t know, yes. He’s dead. He’s been shot into the core, by the evidence we managed to pick up.”

  Scarn leaned back as if shocked. “So some official did it, right? I don’t have access to the core.”

  Commander Dallen frowned. Was that self-doubt? His smugness was definitely cracking.

  “You’re not getting it,” Dallen said. “Someone killed him somehow, then fired him down a chute in the morgue into the core.”

  “What an awful mistake…” Scarn said. “I mean, if he wasn’t dead, just zerked…” Scarn was studying the table, shaking his head and looking troubled.

  “All right then, where did you go for an hour in the middle of the party?”

  Scarn shifted his shoulders. He tried to look guilty. “Well… you said earlier I had other things on my mind. It was those strong drinks. You can’t get narco below-decks, you know.”

  Commander Dallen was frowning at him now. He wasn’t sure. Scarn wanted him right there, full of self-doubt.

  “You’re saying you were trying to meet with my wife?”

  Scarn shrugged and studied his hands, which fidgeted with one another. “I thought she might follow me. She didn’t.”

  Commander Dallen sighed and sat back in his seat. It creaked under his weight. “You win the jackpot: A trip back below-decks,” he said. “Pack your bags, trashlife.”

  Scarn’s eyes came up again. There was a new look in them. A predatory one. “I get it,” he said. “Braxton needed to go, and you needed a scapegoat. Did you actually think you could use me for that?”

  It was Dallen’s turn to look surprised. “What?”

  “You heard me.” Scarn took a moment to sip his drink and let Dallen simmer. “Braxton told me all about your wife and the captain. About how it ate at you. About how crazy you were for revenge.”

  Alarm entered Dallen’s face. “That’s bullshit! You’re going down a dangerous path.”

  Scarn threw his hands wide. “Honesty is the best policy, sir,” he said. “I think you should come clean with the captain. He’ll understand. It’s only natural that a man—”

  “Shut up!” Dallen was on his feet. “You shut your mouth, or—”

  “Or you’ll put me down a chute? Just as you’ve been threatening since you got here? Just as you did to Braxton?”

  Dallen froze. He looked around slowly. A few other eyes were on him. Maybe they’d heard something.

  “The captain will hear of this, Commander Dallen,” Scarn said loudly.

  Dallen slid back into the booth.

  “You shut the fuck up,” he said, breathing hard. “That’s an order.”

  They stared at one another for perhaps ten seconds. At last, Dallen nodded.

  “All right. All right. I want to apologize for implying any kind of threat tonight, or last night. It was rude and unprofessional.”

  Scarn listened. He nodded.

  Dallen cleared his throat. “Well, since we have established that you’ve tried to seduce my wife, I’m putting you on enforced leave. I know how much better you would feel if you could get back at me by screwing my spouse. The way to a man’s heart is through his woman’s belly, mm?” He smiled.

  Scarn felt a bit sick to see that smile. These upper-deck types traded women around to one-up each other. At least a below-deck man knew enough to treat a woman like a partner—if he really cared about her.

  “So I’ll tell you what,” Dallen continued, “I’m giving you permission. I don’t really care. Our marriage is an arrangement of convenience. We haven’t had sex for the last year. Whatever you can get her to do, feel free—because I don’t care. As long as you don’t spread any lies to the captain, I’ll do nothing.”

  “Sounds very fair,” Scarn admitted.

  “All right then. You know anything else that I should know?”

  “I believe this alien invasion is real. Turtle had contact with—”

  “Absurd. We’re having a rash of zerks, sure. We did arrange for some cheap equipment from Lt. Gomax. That much is true, I admit. It was a mistake.”

  “The kind of mistake that gets a man converted into electrons?”

  Dallen pursed his lips. “Your insolence doesn’t affect me, Mr. Scarn. I am the master of my emotions, not a slave to my hormones, as you’ve witnessed. You’re operating on emotion, on revenge, although you could never admit it, even to yourself.”

  “I’m operating on emotion, yes—but on frustration, not on revenge, Dallen. Look—” Scarn tried to mask his anger for a moment, because his rational mind knew there was something more important. “Look, just take an objective moment: I’ve heard that a third of the decks have quarantined areas on them. You must know something about that. Is there a precedent for this? Doesn’t this tell
you that something is seriously wrong on Tarassis?”

  “Still having your Komodo hallucinations? I know of no quarantined areas. Sections are always being closed off for maintenance or repurposing—is that part of your conspiracy? I’m uninterested, and I’m done here. Regarding Neva, do with her as you will.” He started to leave.

  “I’m not talking about Neva,” Scarn said. “This pseudo-psychosis thing is a lie, just like the viral or the stress explanations were. Why are you and Stattor acting like there’s nothing unusual going on? This place is coming apart.”

  Dallen opened his hands, palms up. “To show you I have no hostile feelings, I’ll tell you this: She likes variety. She was raised in a suite, you know. She’s not just your typical guest-class. If she’s not looking at you like you’re a bug, she’ll wring you out like a rag.”

  Scarn was beginning to be amazed by the man.

  “Dallen, try to listen to me. Don’t interpret, don’t look for a message behind the message. Listen: There’s an invasion happening, and we’re on the verge of being overwhelmed by alien parasites. These zerked out people are getting some kind of personality mismatch. A quick solution to stop the possessions would be to change the ship’s course. You know it’s—”

  “She likes to have the lights off. She likes the surprise of not knowing what’s next.”

  Scarn felt like the top of his head was going to blow off. He had to leave, to get away from this idiot before he did something else stupid.

  He slid out of the booth, and Dallen did the same. They stood face-to-face, close enough that Dallen’s breath washed over Scarn’s face when he spoke.

  “Pay attention to her neck.” He reached over. “Touch her right about—”

  “Don’t touch,” Scarn said.

  “—here,” Dallen said and pinched up of fold of Scarn’s neck.

  Scarn slammed a fist into Dallen’s gut. The commander folded forward automatically.

  Dallen’s sharp “Uhk—!” was cut off when his face hit the top of Scarn’s knee. His nose made a wet snap. His knees buckled, and he collapsed on top of himself.

  “I saw the whole thing,” a man’s voice said. “If he gives you any trouble…”