Black Phoenix

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Black Phoenix Page 17

by B. V. Larson


  “Maybe the aliens have made him a good offer.”

  “The security men just laughed at him. Then he said if they told their superiors that they couldn’t find him, he could protect them from being possessed—that he had special contacts with the aliens. They webbed and tranked him while they laughed. Could any of that be true?”

  “It could—I don’t know… When I was in the closed-off areas, I saw what’s happening down there. People are held in quarantined sectors, asylums, death houses for the possessed. Except for throwing Somazine at them, they’ve been abandoned.”

  Neva spoke in a small voice. “They said they were taking him where he would be cared for.”

  “You can hope so. The only thing I know that might save the rest of us is to get the ship off course. But if Stattor is working with the aliens, he’ll never let it happen.”

  He held her against him.

  “There’s something else,” she said and pulled enough away from him that she could take from her pocket a small white tube, no larger than her smallest finger. “This.” She held it between their faces. “When security scanned the apartment, they found it.”

  It wasn’t familiar to Scarn. It was cylindrical, closed at one end, and with a sponge-like tip on the other, which had been closed up with a plastic film.

  “I sealed it after they gave it to me,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “The guard who found it leered at me and said I should try the hump rooms on Deck 32.”

  “He said that?” Scarn asked.

  “He said that. It looked like something that had broken off something else, so I tossed it back in the drawer. However, I was wrong.”

  She stared at her hands that were wrapped in the fabric of his shirt.

  “After they left with Jaxon, I went to lie down and think what to do next. The mesh-dress I wore when we met at the party was hanging near my face.”

  “And?”

  “And I smelled a trace of your scent. It was like when I first met you. It was overwhelming. I wanted you so badly, right then, that I didn’t care about anything else. In seconds I’d become obsessed with you... and all I could do was....”

  “Pheromones,” Scarn said. “We’ve been manipulated—but by whom?”

  She nodded. She agreed. “We were totally blindsided. Falling in love overnight like two teens—that’s not like me. I suspect it’s not like you, either.”

  They were still touching. Scarn smiled down at her. “It might be possession, but... at least, it’s a pleasant affliction.”

  She smiled back, but it flickered out. “It wasn’t possession, Scarn. The emitter the security people found… it was designed to make you irresistible to me. If you check your quarters, someplace in your clothes, you’ll find one with a slightly different formula. I put plastic over the emission tip.”

  In Scarn’s head, the pieces arranged into a coherent scheme:

  “Stattor,” he said.

  She nodded. “He’s been using us.”

  “To provoke your husband? To give Stattor an excuse to reassign or remove him from the bureaucracy? Then my murder was arranged to remove me… and give Stattor the excuse to arrest him. I was the expendable bait for Stattor’s trap.”

  Neva held up the cylinder. “Take this away.” She dropped it in his shirt pocket. “We were directed by someone’s chemical manipulation. Without that, we don’t know how we would feel.” She seemed embarrassed.

  He took his arms from around her. Touching her suddenly felt awkward. There was a new distance between them… So fast... Damn it.

  “We could try again, without outside influence?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Definitely. We owe it to ourselves to try it without Stattor’s help.”

  “Does he have any scheduled appearances?” Scarn asked, trying to sound calm.

  “The captain?” She picked up her handpad and checked. “He showed up at another party about an hour ago. You aren’t…?”

  “Where?”

  “Deck 27. Lounge in Sector Blue. Why?”

  “Nothing special,” Scarn lied. “I need to deliver a message, that’s all. Before I go, could you make a call for me? I’d like to stay dead a little longer.”

  “Um… okay. Sure.” She frowned up at him, wondering what he had in mind. “What do you need?”

  He gave her the information.

  She said Turtle’s name to her handpad, and after a pause, his shape appeared. He was lying back in a formchair and looked utterly stricken, his reaction, no doubt, to hearing that Scarn had been terminally decompressed. His clothes were cross-wrinkled and his face loose and haggard looking.

  “What?” His voice was blurry. When he saw who it was, he said, “Neva?”

  She cleared her throat. “I find that I’m going to need some spot-welding equipment. Something portable, like a Pulse-Arc 423. Can you pick up something like that?”

  Turtle leaped back into life. He was on his feet and doing deep nodding.

  “It needs to have a beam-focuser,” she added.

  “Beam-focuser,” Turtle repeated, “right.” He knew the equipment and he knew who else knew about it. He was almost laughing when he said, “Yes, god damn, yes, I can pick up one of those in about twenty minutes. Anything else?”

  “The potential operator suffers from occasional lethargy and lapses of focus. As a result he might require—”

  “Say no more.” Turtle was on his feet. “Give me a delivery point.”

  Chapter TWENTY-SIX

  As Scarn and Neva took obscure passages to the designated storage module on Deck 28, Scarn felt his quiet rage begin a slow seethe. As the minutes passed, with the single-mindedness of a small-brained reptile, he felt more and more driven by the need to get in Stattor’s face. He’d either make him admit the existence of this alienating, treasonous horror, or let him see his pieces hit the floor before his brain blanked out.

  A shadow with a bulging shape appeared in a quiet passage. Neva halted and stared, but Scarn stepped forward. As the shadow came closer, Turtle’s voice spoke first. “You look surprisingly lifelike.”

  Scarn grinned. “It was touch-and-go there, for a while.”

  “So,” Turtle said, “if I give you this welder, might it result in your looking not so lifelike?”

  “Living on this ship could do that.”

  Neva walked up and quietly stood behind Scarn. She didn’t know Turtle, and she was still fearful after the scene security made when they arrested her husband.

  Scarn told Turtle what he had seen—the madness, the possession. “I just want to get Stattor’s attention. If I kill him, he won’t be able to hear me.”

  Turtle strapped the power pack onto the small of Scarn’s back. The welder itself was a series of amplification units along the line that Turtle now attached to Scarn’s side and then fastened along the length of his arm as far as the bottom of his wrist. The focuser added about six centimeters to its length which Scarn’s sleeve, when pulled down, would conceal.

  To activate it, all he had to do was point it where he wanted and then reach back with his left hand and turn it on. At three meters, it would put 5500° on a spot the size of a fly speck. If one moved the focus, it would slice like a flat blade.

  “They could kill you in an instant,” Neva cautioned him. “You know that. There are probably as many bodyguards as guests. You’re not faster than all of them.”

  “She’s right, Scarn. The odds....”

  “I’m already supposed to be dead. When Stattor’s gone, you need to take people into the quarantined areas to show them what he’s been hiding.”

  Scarn straightened his clothes around the welder to better conceal it.

  “Looks good,” Turtle said, but he wasn’t enthusiastic. “Scarn… maybe we could get people to see what’s in those places without you assassinating anyone.”

  “Time’s run out. There are psychonauts dying in there. They get nothing but some Somazine thrown at them once in a while.�
��

  “Jeez. If they weren’t crazy to begin with, they will be after a few weeks of that stuff.”

  “Speaking of which,” Scarn said.

  Turtle understood. “Right.” From one of his pockets he pulled out a yellow amppack with an intravenous attachment. “Seven milliliters of aqueous Synadrine with just a touch of Equinex to keep you in touch with the essentials of objective reality. You sure about this?”

  Neva looked troubled. “I didn’t know anyone could still get that. Isn’t it dangerous? Doesn’t it cause organ damage?”

  “So do bullets,” Scarn told her. “No need to worry, we’re professionals.”

  Turtle pulled up a pant leg, located a vein on the inside of Scarn’s calf. He slapped the spot with his hand to deaden the sting, and then inserted the needle from the amppack through the skin. After exposing its adhesive backing, he pressed against his leg. Seven milliliters. It could be the ride of a lifetime.

  Neva hissed in discomfort.

  “That’ll make his synapses operate a little faster,” Turtle said. “He’ll see implications in events that you or I would overlook. Synadrine is wonderful stuff... it begs on its knees for abuse.”

  “You’re subjecting yourself to another set of chemical drives,” Neva said. “It’ll make you think you can pull this off.”

  “At least it’s my choice this time.”

  “When you’re ready, just give the amppack a slap and the effects will be instantaneous,” Turtle said. “It’ll give you a steady level for about half an hour and run your internal tachometer at about five thousand RPM’s. You’ll think you’re immortal.”

  Scarn slapped it and dropped his pant leg. “Online,” he said.

  “You were supposed to wait,” Turtle said, “till you….”

  Scarn straightened his shirt and flexed himself inside his clothes. “How do I look?”

  “Like your typical psychopathic killer. Maybe you could squint less. That’s better.”

  “Wait,” Neva said. “Think of some other way! Get a dozen people with cameras into a quarantined area, let them see what’s happening and the word will spread.”

  “Too slow. If I get popped, you can try that.” Scarn’s eyes widened and then returned to normal. “Time to go, time to move. He’s still at his party, right? Deck 27. The lounge in the Sector Blue?”

  Neva took his wrist and held it. “I wish you were raised a guest—you could dial down your emotions. It could help you live longer.”

  “Stattor needs to have the point made. But failing that, it’ll be almost as rewarding to see him hitting the floor.”

  “And then they’ll kill you,” she insisted.

  Scarn laughed. The sound was odd. “There are plenty of people who wouldn’t call that a big sacrifice.”

  Her pale eyes seemed to look for something in his face. “I’ll remember you. You’re still being driven by chemistry.”

  “When are we not?”

  Solemnly, she gave him a brief kiss on the lips and stepped back.

  Moving his arms like a magician making a grand gesture, Scarn’s face split open with a strange grin. The drug had him in its grip. “I predict great changes in our future.”

  He left them in the dark passage. He trotted unseen to a drop-shaft. Plunging into it without a moment’s hesitation, he drifted down to Deck 27.

  It was a crew-deck, but he didn’t want to be recognized. He took out the pheromone evaporator and pretended to study it, using it as an excuse to keep his head down while he walked past others.

  He could hear the chatter from the lounge as soon as he stepped into the passage and smelled the spicy reek of appetizers and vaporized alcohol. Closer, couples leaned against the walls, holding multi-colored drinks at chest level and speaking in low tones.

  Scarn had a fleeting memory of himself and Neva, a day ago, being one of those self-involved couples, enslaved by their manipulated biochemistry.

  His focus switched to Stattor. In his motorized throne, the permanently sweaty captain nodded and humbly smiled for his underlings.

  Murdering, lying Stattor—

  At the first twinge of anger, the Synadrine put the equivalent of an icepick through his amygdala. Scarn felt as if his skin were glowing. How could these people not see his aura of energy?

  At the back of his head, his visual cortex over-activated and felt like it crawled with electricity. Now, what he saw his brain analyzed in an instant: Just one glance at a nearby couple gave him quantities of information. The man’s wary glances, his clothing and shoes, the woman’s casual elegance, the way they stood, the way they spoke… It was clear the man was afraid of being recognized, that he had dressed himself to be attractive, and that he hadn’t told this woman that he was attached.

  Every couple he looked at fed him chunks of biographical/psychological data. The effect of the Synadrine was increasing. He had to focus on Stattor or he would be overwhelmed by information.

  Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

  He wasn’t in the lounge thirty seconds until two security men hustled a woman out of the place. Her head rolled around on her shoulders. She gurgled and muttered and then shrieked like a tortured animal.

  The two guards looked annoyed. The one on the left was tall and long-limbed. The one on the right was shorter and had the shoulders of a gorilla.

  The taller guard stunned her with a small crackling device in his hand, and she sagged into the arms of the other like a dead person.

  Scarn watched the whole thing without speaking or moving.

  “Pseudo-psychosis?” he asked casually, nodding at the woman they held.

  “Hey, hold it,” the gorilla said. “You’re Scarn, right? I saw a report—you were decompressed today while trying to sabotage the ship.” He let go of the woman and came toward Scarn. “Why aren’t you dead?”

  “The last I heard,” Scarn said calmly, “I was a hero.”

  “That’s not the way I heard it.”

  “What is this shit?” the lanky guard said with curled lips. He lifted his stunning device high. It hummed with energy.

  “You’re under arrest,” the gorilla said, and he reached for Scarn—but Scarn wasn’t there.

  It didn’t require thinking to avoid the slow man’s grasp. Scarn simply did the Synadrine side-step.

  In seconds, the long-armed man had taken one giant step to block Scarn’s exit. The shorter guy sent a piston fist in slow-motion toward Scarn’s face.

  As Scarn sidestepped the gorilla, he shoved his fingers into the man’s eyes—minimal effort, maximal effect. The guard was on his knees in less than a second. Scarn measured the balance and inertia of the long-limbed enemy, who was reaching for him with the stunner. Scarn easily stepped inside those telescoping arms and gave him a forward-plunging knee to the groin.

  The tall man was driven backward, lost his footing, fell and bounced his head twice on the floor before curling up like a bug.

  The fight was over. Scarn breathed deeply but only once. Heart rate: slightly elevated.

  Exhilarated and glowing with barely restrained energy, Scarn spoke to the bystanders around the door and in the passageway. “Excuse me. I’m Scarn. You may have heard that I’m supposed to be dead. Pardon the excitement.”

  People stared and he heard sudden murmuring.

  Scarn pointed to the woman on the floor that the men had dropped. She was coming around and making mewling sounds.

  “Someone should take her to the nearest lounge,” Scarn told them. “Don’t take her to any infirmary or call a doc. And do yourselves a favor—don’t come back to the party.”

  One nervous man handed his drink to the nearest person. “I just was thinking that.”

  One of the other couples passed near—a drunk dragging his drunken girl further away from the guards on the floor.

  “Why can’t I go back in?” she complained over her shoulder. “I want another drink.”

  “Check back in fifteen minutes then,” Scarn told the couple, “but don’t com
e in if you hear screaming.”

  They gaped at him and the incapacitated guards.

  And now it was time to get on with this show. Someone had probably summoned more security by now. Farther back in the room, away from the immediate action around the doorway, the party was a wave of noise and smells that now broke over him. The room was brilliantly lit, and his first glance easily showed him where Stattor was.

  Fat, carefree and boozing, he hovered at the bar, surrounded as usual by parasitic Section Leaders. They were what passed for council members, leaders of the guest faction. All of them were smiling and bowing, radiating slavish good will.

  Scarn reached to the small of his back and clicked off the safety.

  With his synapses lubed to the edge of burn-out, he identified in an instant the six of Stattor’s security men and women who had been covertly placed in the lounge. They were easy to spot, as each one scanned a different portion of the crowd.

  Clearly, they’d been alerted to his actions at the entry. The agent closest to Scarn, a woman in white with a small spray of flowers in her hair, monitored his end of the bar. She looked up at him in what could only be curious recognition.

  Scarn focused on Stattor’s sweating grinning head, the rigid mask of humble happiness that concealed the mass murderer behind it.

  Scarn felt something mindless and primitive arise out of the center of his brain again, something unflinching and without emotion that did not consider its own death as a factor worth the slightest consideration.

  In seconds, he could burn off the top of Stattor’s head and see his fat-laced brains boiling in the cup of his skull. Three seconds later, at most, Security would slice him and anyone near him in asymmetrical chunks with their sidearms.

  If that kind of death was painful, it would only be briefly so, and Scarn would exit with the knowledge that he had accomplished one last important thing—a lot more than most dying people could claim.

  Count to five, he thought, and change the future.

  The crowd near him roiled for a moment, people brushed against each other, begged pardons, and passed by. Agents were shoving their way in his direction. He’d been spotted.

 

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