by B. V. Larson
He could still feel her fingers on his bicep. They squeezed a little, and he was so aware of her touch that they seemed to burn him.
Hypersensitivity? Could the goggles be secreting some kind of contact-drug?
He didn’t know, and a few moments later, he didn’t care.
Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN
Turtle met someone. But it wasn’t Iris.
It was the aura of a bestial being. A thing that whispered and seemed to question. It didn’t seem to use human speech, but rather something more primordial to communicate. As inhuman as its vague presence was, Turtle sensed that it wanted to be closer to him, perhaps to help him.
Could it be the Singularity?
In what seemed like moments later, the goggles were ripped from his face. Hair-thin tendrils around the edges squirmed in waves, searching for their next attachment. Droplets of blood glistened on them.
“Dammit Turtle, you idiot,” Scarn muttered.
Turtle blinked stupidly. He’d been torn from another place. Slowly, he became aware of Iris and Scarn.
What—?
Iris was trying to bite Scarn. He blinked twice, hard, but the vision didn’t fade. There she was, ferally clinging to his right wrist, trying to sink her teeth into him. Scarn was cursing, trying to force her head back, trying to get her off without hurting her.
The situation jolted Turtle into action. He stood and pressed one big hand against both of them. They staggered back, parting.
Scarn looked relieved. “I’m glad you came out of that with a functioning brain.”
Iris was breathing hard. Her chest heaved. Her teeth, red-stained, showed between her fine, parted lips.
“I’m fine,” Turtle said. “At least… I think I’m fine. I met something in there—and it wasn’t you, Iris.”
Iris looked at him for a moment, and her raging state faded. She smiled.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I got defensive.”
Scarn scoffed.
Turtle gave her a flickering smile, but he looked concerned. He didn’t want to leave her.
“She’s loaded, and she’s hooked on VR,” Scarn told him. “She’s dangerous right now.”
Iris Soquel looked slighted, but she shrugged it away. She picked up the goggles from the floor and adjusted them carefully. She seemed to be comforting them, like she would a disgruntled pet.
“Dying isn’t the worst thing. If you guys would only plug in with me… the Singularity… I think it’s about to make its move. It always best to be on the winning side in any conflict, don’t you think?”
“VR is all she lives for,” Scarn said. “It’s a short list and you’re not on it. Ready?”
“Well....” Turtle looked helpless.
“You’ll both join us eventually,” Iris said. “Ours is the way of peace and tranquility. After you’ve plugged in, only good things happen.”
“The tranquility of the dead?” Scarn asked.
She shrugged and didn’t meet their eyes.
Turtle was near the door and the chain mesh, but he suddenly froze and whispered, “Shadows moving... I hear footsteps.”
“They’ve been back and forth out there all morning,” Iris said without concern. “They can sense that I’m at ease with them.”
The first strag hit the mesh full bore, crushing its exposed shredding arms against the links. The second strag slammed flat-bodied into its back, pushing ripped pieces of the first strag through the openings. Fluids ran down the links.
The second strag’s shredders churned into the one in front of him, and with his graspers, he yanked at the chain curtain here, there, one corner, another...
Turtle’s first impulse was to use the welder, but it would also cut open the mesh—and the line launcher was just sitting there in its box. When it was fired, on impact, it would shoot grappling lines ten meters in six directions. In close quarters, ricochets might be an issue—but it would be in the corridor outside Iris’s threshold and wouldn’t necessarily cut open the mesh curtain.
He slipped the welder off his shoulder, took up the line launcher, gave it a glance, and primed it. He side-stepped as far back from the door as he could get and still be directly in front of it.
Iris came around to stand behind Turtle with her hands on his shoulders. She whispered in his ear. “Turtle, you led them to discover me, but now you could fix it. Here’s an extra set of goggles. Slip them on with me. We’ll make love, and let the strags do what they will.”
Turtle shook his head, and he held his focus on the strag that had pinned the first one and had shredded its way through it. The graspers tore away the remaining chunks and now it clung to the meshwork, its bulbous eyes scanning the room.
“Virtualize yourself with me,” Iris was whispering in Turtle’s ear. “Your friend could come along too, if he wants. Or, he could blow us all up with rivets. It won’t matter once we’re plugged in.”
Turtle ignored her. “Scarn, there’s just the one way out of here,” he said through the remnants of his concentration. He held the line launcher square on the strag as it worked its graspers around the door, feeling between the links. “It’s going to drop the mesh any second, Scarn. When it does, I’ll take it out with this, then you take point and we run for it.”
“Got it.”
Iris swung around in front of Turtle, her back to him, and she faced the strag. She beckoned. “I’m here,” she crooned. “Come to me....” She slipped the goggles over her head and waved her arms as though she were under water.
“Another one coming,” Scarn said quietly.
“Iris, get away from the door! Get out of the way!”
The next strag didn’t throw itself into the one that was busily working at the mesh—it stopped and waited, its bulbous eyes turning to scan who it was going to kill next.
The other strag flipped open one of the fasteners.
“Iris, move out of the way!”
Fastener number two opened. Number three still held. The strag standing behind reached the other side of the door and unhooked four of them in seconds.
“Oh God, here we go,” Turtle breathed.
Iris had her arms out, offering herself.
“Join me,” Iris told everyone. “Let us dream all of this away together.”
The things had the mesh dropped and then moved on her in a blur. One of them gripped her to its breast before Turtle could open his mouth one last time to scream, “Move!”
He held the line launcher. He wanted to save her, but he wanted to kill the thing. He knew the launcher would tear both of them to pieces—
Its graspers crossed her back in an X as the shredders worked into her. Her head rolled back, and her mouth gaped like she was screaming, but she made no sound. Turtle finally fired.
The line packet hit the middle of her back, buried itself somewhere between her and the strag, and then laterally discharged the six grappling cables.
It blew the two bodies apart with two of the lines penetrating the second strag. A third line shot out of Iris Soquel’s back and shattered one of her ceiling fixtures. Both strags toppled, thrashed their insectile legs and ensnared themselves tighter in the cables. So much for it discharging out in the passageway.
In the next moments, neither Turtle nor Scarn said anything.
Iris Soquel lay in the middle of her entryway, dead.
“I don’t know what to say…” Scarn said. “But it wasn’t her—before she died. It wasn’t Iris.”
Turtle looked haunted. “It wasn’t her,” he said quietly.
Scarn was nodding. “That was the Singularity. It tried to get all three of us.”
Turtle rubbed his face for a moment. It couldn’t be a tear. He never cried, no matter who died in front of him.
At last, Turtle’s eyes left the mess on the floor and looked up at Scarn. “I’ve been thinking…”
“So have I. Running back and forth to check supply cabinets for rivets and power packs is too dangerous.”
“Right,�
� Turtle said, feeling sick at the sight of Iris dead on the floor. “But also, I’m tired of almost being killed, and I’m wondering if the Singularity might be behind all of this bizarre behavior. Why would the crew and the guests be at each other’s throats again now? Why now? Does it want total power over every human aboard?”
“I think it does,” Scarn said thoughtfully. “Maybe its purpose is to get us to kill each other. Get rid of undesirables.”
“Let’s get the power modules from her appliances and get out of here.”
“Right.”
After collecting what they could, they moved toward the chainmesh. They stepped over the remains and walked out into the passageway. At that moment, it was quiet and dark.
“I’ve got seven rivets left.”
Scarn checked both directions, and led the way.
Two intersecting passages later, they heard the familiar dry rushing footsteps. Turtle peeked around the corner, and Scarn couldn’t see what Turtle saw, but he watched Turtle step full into the open, face the charging strag, hold the welder low, and do one little blip.
The headless shuddering body rolled past him, wadded up like a dying bug.
“You’re getting better,” Scarn said.
Turtle grunted. “Killing things has never been something I wanted to be good at.”
Once more, they positioned themselves to kick out the panel and be set for whatever happened next:
One, two... They both kicked at the sides, Scarn pulled back, and Turtle was set with the welder—
They listened and heard silence.
They checked both ways, climbed through, and ran as silently as they could. They dashed down and around, back to the next module. There, they closed themselves inside and breathed in puffs.
“That wasn’t bad,” Turtle said as they caught their breath.
A strag hit the door like a stray shuttle. Another one hit a second later.
They quickly moved onward.
“One, two...”
Stomp.
Quick check... Behind them as they crawled to the next deck, the module’s hatch jumped in its frame from the impact of the strags.
“Haul it, haul it, haul it!” Turtle said to himself as he pumped his legs and moved faster, down the passageway.
“They’re behind us,” Scarn said. “Switch positions. You burn.” Scarn dodged past Turtle and kept moving toward the next door while Turtle aimed and popped, aimed and popped.
“Getting better,” Scarn said back to him as he got to the door and slung it open. “Final burn.”
Turtle swept the welder across the leading pair. Their legs ran out from under the tops of their bodies which fell into flailing tangles. Turtle backed into the module and Scarn latched it behind him.
“One, two...” Stomp.
As soon as Turtle checked through the hole, he re-focused and popped twice at something Scarn couldn’t yet see. “Clear,” he said.
As they climbed into the next level, strags were already throwing themselves at the module door behind them.
Scarn looked back through the hole and fired a rivet into it and through the door, taking out whatever strags were in front of it.
“I don’t know, Scarn,” Turtle said through his breathing. “Seems like they have our number.”
They began quick-sliding along the wall, facing opposite directions.
“What’s your charge?”
“75%. Still good.”
“Idea….”
“Listening.”
“Next time,” Scarn said, “set your welder for an oval pattern big enough for us to climb through, maximum power, and cut a straight passage through however many walls it has power for—we’ll be that many decks closer to 5.”
“There could be—”
“That’s right. There could be life support and all kinds of crap we cut through. We could also be on Deck 5, alive, in minutes.”
All at once, from a corner up ahead, a strag whipped around and came at them with its graspers spread wide. Scarn fired the riveter, and its heavy whump was instantaneously followed by a secondary smash and bang of the rivet hitting a distant wall.
“Jeez,” Turtle said under his breath. “I think we must’ve killed a hundred of these bastards by now.”
“So, you’re saying the crew who locked these packs on us and gave us defective zeta shears might be trying to kill us? What a shocker.”
“Rat-fuckers.”
“That would be animal abuse,” Scarn said. “Listen up, if we cut straight through, the strags on our trail will have to line up to follow us. The riveter could take out three or four at a shot.”
“Let’s do it.”
When they got to the next deck, Scarn did a count. “I have five rivets left. Here. I’ve done this before.” He handed Tuttle the riveter and took the welder from him and began adjusting it.
“We don’t want to cut through the floor or ceiling. Or any exterior walls.” He adjusted the cut width to Pinline and everything else to maximum.
“On second thought,” Turtle said, “considering your past, uh… maybe I should do that.”
A strag hit the module door. The air in the compartment was momentarily compressed.
Scarn ignored this and positioned himself on one knee with the welder aimed at the weak spot on the deck plates. “This angle look about right to you? Not too high, not too low?”
Turtle looked at it several ways and nodded. “I guess,” he said. “We wish us luck.”
“One learns by doing,” Scarn said. After a momentary adjustment, he pulled the trigger.
The cutting oval burned through the panel in front of them. Through the smoking hole, they could see the next wall where a pinline oval formed just before its center dropped out. Melted gobs of insulation and plastic rolled down the sides.
Turtle looked down at Scarn’s side and watched the meter on the welder’s charge pack drop below sixty... fifty... thirty-five....
In the passage just in front of the beam was a quick movement, something ran right through the welder’s beam. Scarn didn’t blink.
Down to twenty-five percent charge, the door behind them banged again and then a third time. The sound changed as the door frame weakened and began slipping out of place.
Scarn held it steady till the charge dropped to zero.
He pulled another of Iris Soquel’s power modules out of a pocket, slapped it into the welder and continued to burn.
Cut-out after cut-out dropped away in the farther distance.
“Down to fifteen percent,” Turtle said over the noise of another strag hitting the door behind them.
Scarn slipped out of the welder harness and took the bore riveter that Turtle handed over to him.
As they climbed through the first cut-out into the next chamber, they saw not one, but the three strags that had run through the welding beam and lay with their legs cut off. They weren’t completely dead and futilely tried to crawl back toward them with their graspers.
The next burn hole took them through some kind of abandoned sleeping area that smelled of death.
Next burn hole—a narrow hallway with many doors.
Next hole—an open recreation area.
Turtle stopped and looked behind them.
“Scarn. Time for a strag blast.”
Turtle moved aside as Scarn turned and aligned the riveter with the burn-holes. The strags were coming for them, leaning down with their fat eyeballs leading the way.
“I’m going to like this,” Scarn said quietly. “They’re nicely lined up.”
After a brief pause, he pulled the trigger and the dull whump of the riveter was followed by quick pulses of crushing sounds.
Turtle put his head through the hole to look. “I count four, maybe five... with a new one already coming our way.”
Turtle again led the way. “We’re up to Deck 7,” he announced. Three seconds later, crossing a narrow hallway, Turtle barked, “Scarn, strag left!”
He put a rivet throu
gh its shredders but the body kept moving, every stride sloppier than the last, straight at Scarn. He ducked and covered, but one of the half-human half-insect feet raked over his face before the thing toppled over. Scarn gave one of the pieces an unnecessary kick as he scrambled after Turtle.
In the next clear place to set himself up, Scarn turned, knelt, aimed down the burn holes, and the riveter whumped.
Without checking their score, they ran.
“Deck 6,” Turtle said, working to catch his breath.
They crossed a wide passageway where both humans and strags had been blown across the walls. The next area had more remains of humans than strags, and where it was clear, Scarn set himself up, waited for the nearest strag to approach the hole in front of them, and then fired. The rivet made a quick chunk-chunk-chunk sound as it plowed through them.
“One rivet left,” Scarn said through his breath, and they climbed into the next passageway.
Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT
“Deck 5 at last. Now, we find blue sector.”
They walked together down another empty passage. Scarn looked at Turtle thoughtfully.
“You said you saw something when you were in VR.”
Turtle stopped walking and aimed his weapon this way and that.
“What did you see?” Scarn persisted.
“Uh…. It’s fading now, like a dream you can’t quite recall after waking up.”
“Tell me what you remember.”
Turtle shrugged and struggled to put his experience into words. “It was something… something that seemed alive in there. A primitive thing. Not human, but related to humanity. A thing that seemed both intelligent and idiotic at the same time.”
“The Singularity?”
“Yeah, maybe. It was… hairy. Like an ape, or something.”
Scarn laughed. “An ape? Seriously?”
“I know, I know! But Scarn… seriously… I think it was the Singularity.”
Scarn considered that as their boots echoed in the empty passage.
“An ape?” he asked finally. “Why would it be an ape?”