by B. V. Larson
“I don’t know, man. I’m not a tech or a psychologist. Hold on… Scarn! Something over there!”
He turned to see a single strag flying at them, graspers wide. Scarn knelt, finger on the trigger, and the strag exploded backwards in a flurry of body parts—except Scarn had not fired his last rivet.
A fully weaponized Security crewman had stepped out of an adjoining hallway into the open behind the strag. He couldn’t have been much more than a teenager. He pointed past them with his zeta shear.
“That way,” he said. “Go.”
He ordered them around three corners and past two scenes of firefights where strags had been slain and heaped in seeping piles. In places, the blackened ceiling sagged halfway to the floor.
The crewman gestured at a set of wide double doors: Blue Sector.
Turtle and Scarn pushed their way through and met another crewman—an officer this time.
“Blood run,” Scarn said as they came in. “Neva Savvan, is she here?”
When they realized who was standing in front of them, Scarn and Turtle stopped in their tracks. Petty Officer Jamison looked pleased by their arrival and Dr. Mellax worked at a nearby table with his back turned.
Jamison wore a comfortable grin. “What took you so long?”
Scarn grabbed his riveter, saying something about “...my last god damned rivet” and was bringing it up when Turtle grabbed it and turned it away.
“You did a good job,” Jamison said. “We were worried you wouldn’t make it all the way.”
“One question,” Scarn said, “why didn’t you bring your own blood-packs.”
The petty officer didn’t bother to answer. He beckoned to a spacer. “Take the packs off them.”
An orderly worked for a moment, releasing the packs. They slid to the floor.
Scarn didn’t let them take his away. Instead, he looked it over and opened it. Inside, along with the packs, was some kind of an emitter and a clear plastic bulb filled with thick, blue-green liquid. He sniffed it.
“Sour… A pheromone?”
Jamison made a fluttering gesture with his fingers. “Yes, the chemical drives the strags crazy. A clever move, don’t you think? We needed a couple of tough guys to clear the way—to draw the strags away while the rest of us made our way up here. We’d planned to use regular spacers with this attractant, but then you fellows were on the game show, and we thought, ‘Who better?’”
Turtle looked into the pack and squinted. “We were decoys? Red meat for the strags? You fuck!”
Scarn knew what was coming. Turtle didn’t get mad as quickly as Scarn did, but when he finally went off, it was best to stand clear. Scarn reached over and clamped a hand onto the pistol hand of the officer standing next to him and kept the man from drawing it.
With one hand, Turtle grabbed a wad of Jamison’s uniform at his neck, and with his other, he plowed it into the middle of his face. Jamison’s face bounced off Turtle’s fist with his nose flattened into a red smear.
“You set me up to be killed,” Turtle said.
On the edge of consciousness, Jamison put his fingers over his face, touching the damage.
Turtle hit him again, same place, smashing his fingers into his ruined nose and split lips. Jamison staggered backwards, straddle-legged, and then collapsed on his back.
Turtle advanced, but Scarn spoke up. “Turtle… you’re going to kill him.”
Turtle sucked in a breath and straightened up. He turned his back on Jamison. “Don’t want to do that. Too much paperwork.” As though he had a sudden thought, Turtle pivoted on one foot and kicked Jamison with such force that his whole body jerked backward a foot.
Scarn let go of the officer’s pistol hand. “The bad guys,” he said confidentially to the man, “are the ones trying to kill you. That’s how we see it.”
The medical people had big eyes. They hurried close when the beating ended and got Jamison onto a gurney. He wasn’t moving on his own.
“Neva Savvan?” Turtle said, grabbing one of the medics. “Is she here?”
“Uh… yes sir, she and her crew are realigning personality scans.”
“We thought people up here needed the blood concentrates and she could have been injured.”
“She’s fine—really, she’s fine!”
Turtle let him go. “Was there ever any real need for the blood packs?”
No one bothered to respond.
Scarn was fooling with one of the backpacks. He opened it, made some adjustments to the scent emitter, and twitched his nose in discomfort.
“A lure…” he said. “Let’s see how well Jamison’s spacers can fight.” He cranked both emitters wide open and threw the packs outside the sector airlock.
They searched for Neva Savvan after that, but long before they found her the PA system began booming.
“Strags in connecting hallways!” the voice said. “Estimated strength fifty to seventy.”
“Petty Officer Jamison?” It was Dr. Mellax, from just outside the infirmary, in the passageway. He had opened one of the two main doors, and a security cadet followed him and locked the doorway behind them. They must have heard about Turtle’s version of justice.
Turtle met him, but Dr. Mellax barked at him with a cautioning finger: “You do not touch me,” and the cadet crowded close to protect him. “Where’s Jamison?”
“Jamison had an accident,” Scarn said. “He’s unconscious at the moment.”
“I see.” Dr. Mellax entered the room. “You two have proved very efficient at killing strags. But I think you have your limits. Come, meet my friends.” Pressing the override, he pushed both the infirmary doors wide and walked through them into the corridor.
Through the open door Turtle and Scarn could see only the immediate section of quiet, empty passageway, but they could hear the dry rustling sound of many strags.
The security cadet looked confused. He extended a visual sensor beyond the threshold.
“Sir?” he said to Scarn. “You should look.” He stepped out into the open corridor himself.
Turtle and Scarn cautiously followed.
Dr. Mellax waited for them in the middle of the hallway with twenty or more strags standing quietly behind him. They held their grasping arms cocked up and folded in front of their bodies, but the clusters of hooks on the ends constantly opened and closed, opened and closed.
Mellax had his hands stuck in his back pockets and looked quite pleased with the situation. “Look behind you,” he said.
Turtle already had—there were more than a dozen strags clustered down the corridor in that direction as well. Their only movement was their hooks, which kept opening and closing.
The cadet looked terrified. He turned to Turtle with big eyes. “You’re the great strag-killers. What do we do now?”
Mellax walked among the strags, sliding his hand along their chitinous shoulders while the grasping hooks flexed and clenched; they seemed unaware of him.
“These are my instruments of delight,” he said, reaching around one and stroking its closed shredder plates. “As you might guess,” Dr. Mellax said politely, “one word, and after a short minute of chaos, you will be lying on the floor in pieces. Want to know what the word is?”
“You’ll tell us when you’re ready.”
“Indeed.... Cadet, if you and your people wish to remain alive, simply retire to the infirmary. When the guest militia arrives, I’ll be sure and tell them that you were cooperative.”
“We’d appreciate that,” the cadet said.
He backed out with a few more crewmen. They all crept away as if they were afraid their shoes would creak.
Dr. Mellax narrowed his eyes and stared at Scarn at Turtle when the rest had left. “You two slaughtered my creations. I don’t like that.”
“We also disposed of Captain Stattor,” Scarn pointed out, “making this rebellion possible.”
Mellax shook his head. “We had a plan for him. We would have been rid of him very soon. Instead, you two bre
athers got involved. You presumed that you would install a guest in the captain’s chair and all would be well. But the new captain served the old. She’s half-crew already. We want revenge and total control.”
“Meaning you would become the new captain…?” Turtle said.
Dr. Mellax shrugged. “It could happen. My bodyguards are completely loyal. Now, let’s discuss your brief future. I was going to have you committed to the core, but now I think you should be torn apart by my servants.”
That was enough for Scarn. He tossed a packet that resembled a plastic baggie into the air.
The reaction was instantaneous. Sensing the threat, the strags activated, jostled forward, and their hooked claws whipped at the air, at the flying packet.
They slashed it open. A thick liquid splattered everywhere. A good dose of it showered Dr. Mellax himself.
Shaking with rage, he pointed at Scarn and Turtle. “Kill!” he roared.
There was no hesitation. Not a split-second of it.
The strags tore Mellax apart. Blood flew one way, his glasses the other. In moments, there was nothing recognizable in the thrashing, hissing cluster of strags.
“Let’s move…” Scarn whispered.
Open-mouthed, Turtle raced after him.
Chapter THIRTY-NINE
Turtle grabbed a terrified medic. When he was convinced he couldn’t escape those powerful hands, the medic finally looked at who held him. The whites of his wet eyes glinted, full of fear.
“Let go,” the medic begged. “The guest militia will come. They won’t stand for what you did to Mellax.”
Scarn stepped up to the struggling medic. “Our friend,” he said patiently, “Neva Savvan. We want to find her.”
“Probe banks, Deck 3,” the medic said after doing a hurried search on his handpad.
Turtle released the man. He backed away before running off.
Deck 3 was close. Turtle and Scarn ran to the drop-shaft and pushed themselves to Deck 3.
On the way, they met others who drifted toward the lifepods. Some of the men had weeks-long beards and clearly had not been ambulatory very long. They were all hollow-eyed and undernourished—but they’re minds were finally functioning. They knew what they were doing.
“Look. These people were all infected,” Scarn said, “but they’re functioning now…”
“Neva’s work?”
“Neva and her crew. It must be.”
They reached Deck 3 and ran the rest of the way, dodging around workers who were heading for the lifepods. The pods weren’t meant to escape Tarassis—what would one escape to in interstellar space? They were protective enclosures built to cocoon personnel in an emergency. Tarassis was so large, and her mission so long, the builders had assumed decks might be depressurized or filled with radiation at some point during her journey. The lifepods were one way the guest and crew could survive such an accident.
But today’s disaster was intentional. Huddling in the warm, dim-lit interior of a lifepod wouldn’t be much protection in a fight, but in the case of a full-scale battle civilians could hope to be classified as noncombatants. More importantly, if the crew or guests chose to depressurize the deck, people in the lifepods would still survive.
Klaxons began going off. Something serious was coming.
When they barged through the door to the rows of probe units, Neva was there—urging her workers to leave and get to the lifepods. Some of them resisted and continued scanning, reentering, and adjusting the human/alien personality codes till she bothered them enough to leave or physically pulled them away.
“Up! Go with your friends. Go!”
One of the workers reached back to his machine and hit a red button that turned green. “One more pair saved,” he said quietly and then hurried off with the others.
Louder klaxons went off nearby.
“Bad stuff is happening,” Turtle said. “The guest militia might turn off life support. We came to make sure you got to the pods.”
Neva turned back to the nearest probe unit. “There are so many others to be saved...” She dropped into the seat and began entering data as fast as her fingers could move.
“Even after you get someone straightened out,” Scarn said, “they’d still have to come to their senses and get to the lifepods. There isn’t any more time.”
“Then I’ll keep freeing people until they gun me down,” Neva said determinedly.
Scarn gritted his teeth. He thought about dragging her away—but he couldn’t bring himself to do that.
Then he noticed Turtle. He had a pair of goggles out. He was about to put them on.
Scarn reached for them, but Turtle deflected his reach. Scarn knew not to try again.
“So that’s your answer?” Scarn demanded. “You’re just going to check out and let them gun you down, or enslave you?”
“No, I—” Turtle argued.
“A sex romp before you die then? I can’t believe you.”
“It’s not that. The thing I met in there—I think it wanted to help. It might have been offering… We need some help, Scarn.”
“That’s bullshit. There’s nothing good in there.”
“No, no, really….”
There was a thumping in the hallway.
Scarn eyed the goggles. “If there was ever a time we could use some luck,” he admitted. “This is it.”
“I’ll try to talk to it,” Turtle said. He pulled the goggles over his head.
* * *
For several long moments, Turtle found himself floating in an empty place with no input from his nerves—no sight, no sound, no touch. He wondered if this was what death felt like. He felt mild surprise that he could think at all.
Then a new reality took shape at last. It wasn’t a voice or an alarm that shook him—it was an immense, drumming seizure of awareness. Out of a grainy nothingness congealed a pastoral scene. A lovely forest full of women with wings. They were small, nude… perfect.
For a moment, Turtle felt himself intrigued. He naturally wanted to walk through the forest, to explore an environment so inviting that he could barely resist its charm.
But he did resist. With an effort of will born from the nearness of death, he reached out and made a ripping motion with his hands, pulling away the scene, tearing a hole in it. He stepped through the hole and again he was nowhere for several long seconds.
Then, as before, a scene took form. This time he was on a ship at sea. He was stunned by the wide expanse of blue, the wind, the white-capped waves. Such things were unknown aboard Tarassis. No one alive had seen anything like an ocean, except in vids, VR and dreams.
But he ignored the cry of the seabirds. He didn’t listen to the haunting clang of a bell, or the sounds of the waves slapping the ship’s wooden hull. Again, he reached out and made a tearing motion, rejecting this false reality, tempting though it might be to explore.
Six more times, the universe rebuilt itself in his honor. There was a mountain waterfall, a sleepy lagoon, a gigantic opera house and finally a lavish bordello full of crooning, desperate sex-creatures.
One my one, Turtle rejected them all.
At last, the universe paused. Nothing came for long seconds, and Turtle almost relented. If he made a sweeping gesture in the opposite direction, he could go back to the sex-creatures in their smoky, red lair.
But he didn’t.
At last, huge animal’s face formed. It was an immense rodent’s muzzle, towering a hundred meters above him like a vast airship.
It tilted its head downward, becoming aware of Turtle even as Turtle regarded the behemoth looming above. Its bulging spherical eyes stared down at him, and the black nose snuffled. Gusts of wind staggered Turtle.
When he caught his balance, he realized he had feet and was standing on an indistinct plain with this gigantic animal.
“Entity,” it said. Its mouth didn’t move, but its voice thundered in Turtle’s skull. “What is it you seek?”
The graininess of the landscape congealed
enough for Turtle to see that he and the gigantic rat stood on a vast uninterrupted plain. There were no mountains in the distance, no trees, no dirt.... He stood on something earth-colored that was as smooth as plastic.
The animal was dark gray and as big as a row of office buildings. Its huge black nose moved close to Turtle and sniffed him.
“You’re the Singularity,” Turtle said. “Aren’t you?” As weak as he felt, his voice was remarkably clear and strong. He suspected he wasn’t actually speaking with expelled air and vocal chords.
The thing snuffled more, and then the voice in Turtle’s head spoke again. “I am as you see me. Why did you come? Do you wish to join my children in bliss?”
“No. I want to save them. I want them all to live in the reality they were born into—the reality that created you, by the way.”
“You offer me a reality then…? This is an odd reversal of fates.”
“That’s right. I’m offering you a new existence.”
The rat thing crouched. The world shivered under Turtle’s feet as he felt as much as saw its vast bulk move.
“I am intrigued,” it said. “What would my role be in this universe you offer?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Turtle said, reminding himself of the urgency of the situation. He could only guess what was happening in the real world. He couldn’t feel it or hear it. Perhaps he was full of holes and bleeding out even now. “We would have something to live in, you and I both. If we don’t work together, your world and my world—our realities—both will stop existing.”
“Threats? You make threats?”
“No, I’m not the one destroying things. I’m warning you. Others of my kind—they are in a killing mood. Tarassis is undergoing a purge. You might not survive the next hour.”
“They will not harm me. They need me to guide this vessel.”
“Wrong,” Turtle said. “Some of them don’t want to stop flying. They don’t even know if the engines can be fired up again. They don’t need you if the ship is only a flying tomb hurtling through space forever.”
“Hmm…” said the beast. “Then…” it continued, “you are making an effort to preserve my existence?”