Crimson Strike

by Peter Bostrom

  Lopez shot back from the front. “Would you rather I come to complete stops, or save Kovac’s life? It’s up to you.”

  Rand grumbled, then turned to me. “Shouldn’t it have been possible for you to transfigure Kovac at our previous location, without having to go to the trouble of such reckless transportation?”

  “Rand . . .” Lopez said in a warning tone from the front.

  “I don’t know,” I said quickly. “Maybe. But after what happened to the others when I tried to change them back . . . I . . . I just can’t risk doing it.”

  “Risk?” Lopez yelled. “Now you’re worried about risk?! What about every time you ran toward danger to impress that pale-skinned space trash and risked all our lives?”

  I bit my lip, then said, “She made me feel special.”

  “Oh,” Lopez shot back, “like you were part of a team? Like you had people who promised—who promised—they would die before they put you in danger or left you behind?!”

  I wanted to argue—to tell her it was more complicated than that. But, deep down, I wasn’t entirely sure it was.

  Rand piped up. “You told us she didn’t make it out of the City Courthouse, but you failed to mention exactly how she fell.”

  I looked around the transport, looking for anything at all to change the subject, but came up empty. I was going to have to tell them if I was ever going to regain their trust.

  “She—she sort of grew wings,” I said.

  Rand’s eyebrows furrowed.

  “And . . .?” Lopez said.

  “And,” I continued, waiting until we’d gotten through yet another patch of potholes. “She turned out to be a vampire. She was the Red Dragon all along.”

  “I knew it!” Lopez yelled, swerving as she twisted backward in her seat to yell at me. “I knew there was something seriously wrong with her.”

  “Private Lopez . . .” Stanton said, and she turned back around to look at the road in front of her.

  “And now,” Lopez said, “because you were thinking with your . . . your plasma pistol . . . Kovac is on death’s doorstep. You’d sure as hell better make this right, Walker. Even if it means using that damned stone you’re so scared of.”

  We took another sharp corner, then straightened out. I looked to Rand for backup from Lopez’s attack, but he just shook his head solemnly.

  “She happens to be correct. And I, for one, condone her sentiments. What you did was inexcusable.”

  I hung my head, which rocked upward a few times as we drove over more potholes. After a few minutes of painful silence, we lurched to a stop. I threw open the transport’s rear doors and Rand rushed to open the cage for a team of white-clad medics, who were waiting for us with a large, wheeled table. They hoisted Kovac onto its padded surface and rushed him through the halls of HQ. Lopez, Rand, Stanton, and I followed the procession of medics until we reached the same medical bay I visited when I’d first spoken to Winnifred.

  Winnifred. If I hadn’t made that decision to save her, dozens—maybe hundreds—of civilians and soldiers might still be alive. And Kovac wouldn’t be hanging on for dear life.

  I thought I was growing into being a hero. Yes, I had been changing, but not for the better. I was changing into what I thought Winnifred wanted. Being a hero was more than just gaining more powers, learning new ways to fight, and becoming more popular. But that’s what I’d been fixated on around Winnifred. And now I was paying for it—and so was everyone I cared about.

  The medics stopped us from entering the crowded medical bay after Kovac. Stanton stood guard at the door, while Rand, Lopez, and I were moved into a small neighboring room with monitors. One of the screens flickered, then changed to an overhead view of the operating table. A very furry Kovac lay stretched out with thick constraints across his shoulders and thighs.

  A team of surgeons swarmed around him, wildly gesturing at images on nearby monitors and then at his werewolfed chest. Something must have been acting up inside there—something they couldn’t quite get to. Finally, someone wheeled in a tray carrying a variety of shiny silver scalpels, and one of the medics stepped forward.

  As she began to cut into his chest with the razor sharp instrument, Kovac began to tremble. Two of the medics moved quickly to hold his body still as the surgeon kept cutting. But the trembling grew worse, and, at the place where she was cutting, something like smoke began to rise.

  “The instruments!” I yelled at the screen.

  I pushed past Rand and Lopez and out into the hallway. Stanton was standing outside the door to the medical bay. He opened his mouth, but I blew past him and into the room, yelling, “Stop! Stop using those instruments!”

  The medics surrounding Kovac parted and let me through. The surgeon had stopped cutting at the sound of my interruption, and as he did so, Kovac’s trembling died down considerably. However, the incision was still trailing small wisps of smoke.

  The surgeon stepped toward me. Her mouth and nose were covered, as was her hair, but she looked at me through narrowed eyes. “What’s this all about?”

  “Those are silver, aren’t they?” I asked.

  She looked down at the scalpel in her hand and nodded slowly. “Yes, standard operating equipment is made from silver. But I fail to see—”

  “Silver’s deadly to him when he’s like this!” I said desperately. “If you keep operating on him with those, he’ll die.”

  The surgeon dropped her head forward, then brought it back up and looked me in the eye. “If we don’t get in there right now and relieve the strain on his heart, he’ll be dead in the next five minutes.”

  She held up her scalpel. “This is all we’ve got. So, unless you’ve got something else we haven’t thought of, we’re going to have to take the risk.”

  I swallowed hard. Then, with a trembling voice, I said, “No. Let me try.”

  The medics all murmured in response, some protesting, some just laughing.

  “Listen!” I said. “You’ve never dealt with anything like this before. I’m the closest thing you have to an expert.”

  More murmuring. Then, from outside the circle, a loud, crisp voice said, “You heard the man. Now, everyone clear out and give him some bloody space.”

  Stanton nodded at me through the mass of retreating medics and, shocked, I nodded back. I turned back to Kovac and felt myself shaking uncontrollably. I looked around, then wheeled over a tall stool to the side of the operating table and set myself down on it.

  I was still shaking, but it wasn’t so bad now. I took a few long breaths, held them, and then closed my eyes to begin working on Kovac.

  I summoned the sound of the pipe organ to my mind, very softly at first. But instead of waiting to reverse the ominous, descending music, I reversed it at the very beginning of my process. Then, with the soft organ music ascending in the background, I cleared my mind of images so I could start from scratch.

  Before, I’d imagined an actual butterfly cocoon. Maybe I needed something more fantastic. So I imagined something lighter, brighter, and all fuzzy-edged forming around Kovac’s still form. I felt the energy within him—hot and angry, but very faint.

  I gently increased the volume of the music and the intensity of the image.

  I cracked one eye open and, to my astonishment, the fur across Kovac’s body began to shrink, lighten, and then grow thinner. Instead of his dirty blond pelt, his skin appeared to be reddish with fine, light hair covering most of his body.

  I stood up from my stool and inched closer to the operating table. Straining, I slowly brought up the volume of the ascending music even more.

  As I did so, Kovac’s fingers and toes grew more slender and his razor-sharp claws shortened and turned back into thick, wide nails. His short muzzle grew shorter until it wasn’t a muzzle anymore—now, there were a distinctly separated mouth and nose.

  Just a little more . . .

  I focused on the werewolf-grade energy within Kovac, cooling it from hot to warm to lukewarm—I didn’t dare go an
y cooler. With my last milligram of energy, I sounded a final, triumphant note in my mind and held it for several moments as it reverberated inside my skull. Then, I released the image of my bright, fuzzy cocoon and brought the music to a definitive close.

  I collapsed backward onto the surgeon’s stool, chest heaving. The machines around Kovac continued to let out soft, slow, but steady beeps. I took deep breaths and tried to get the speed of my heart to match the beeping machines. After several moments, I finally felt I was under control.

  I leaned forward on my stool and took a good, long look at Kovac. From the neck down, his body had returned to its previous, massive proportions. But from the neck up, that was a different story. His coloring was the same—light with an undertone of red, but his opened mouth showed lower canines that I swore hadn’t been that long before. And, instead of his usual, close-cropped hair, he had a dirty blond mane of thick hair in a halo around his head. Well, it could have been worse. A lot worse.

  Suddenly, the soft beeping noises coming from the machines grew faster and faster, their volume increasing steadily. Uniformed medics rushed in and I stepped back. Kovac’s body began trembling, then convulsing. The beeping noises from the machines came even faster, until, finally, the room was filled with a single, terrible, and unending tone.

  40

  THE SWARM OF medics handed instruments back and forth furiously while the single, constant tone of Kovac’s medical machines droned on. Another couple of medics broke through the crowd, wheeling a tall machine next to Kovac. They removed what looked like two large mittens and placed them on his chest. A high-pitched, whining noise grew louder and louder until there was an ear-piercing buzzing noise and Kovac’s body suddenly convulsed. After a tense moment of silence, the flat tone became a slow, steady beeping noise once again.

  A tall medic with tired eyes gently grabbed my arm and ushered me out of the room. “You’ve done enough,” he said. “Now it’s our turn.”

  Rand and Lopez were both standing outside of the medical bay door—Lopez was pressing buttons on Rand’s mini data pad and saying something softly, and he was looking on and nodding with satisfaction. Stanton was standing beside them, craning his neck to see what was on the screen.

  I rushed over to them, and they fell silent. “I think it worked,” I said. “I was able to change Kovac back to normal. Well, most of him.”

  Stanton nodded in response. Rand and Lopez remained silent.

  “Well?” I said. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  Lopez glared daggers at me. “What, you want us to congratulate you for practically killing him and then maybe getting him out of it?”

  I felt my lip quiver, but couldn’t do anything about it.

  “Or,” Lopez continued, “do you want us to congratulate you for inviting a frakking vampire commander into our ranks and almost taking over this moon and probably the rest of Neptune?”

  “Lopez . . .” I said, trying to get her to stop. It was hurting too much.

  “No—you’re not getting any congratulations from me. Or anything else. The only way I’ll even think about ever forgiving you,” Lopez said coldly, “is if Kovac forgives you. Personally.”

  I looked to Rand to see if he agreed with her. He thought for a moment, wiggling his mustache from side to side, then said, “I’m most likely the biggest proponent of individualism in the outer system. But you gave your word, Walker. All four of us did— you, Lopez, Kovac, and me. And even if, existentially, nothing is of any importance in the universe, our word should mean something.”

  Stanton just stood there silently, shaking his head.

  I opened my mouth to tell them that they were right and that I was so wrong about everything. I felt terrible about what I’d done—and hadn’t done, in the case of abandoning both Kovac and Rand—and that I deserved everything they were dumping on me.

  I was sorry. Terribly sorry.

  But just as I opened my mouth to make this apology, the medical bay doors whooshed open and the surgeon strode out into the hallway. Blood covered the front of her uniform.

  “Is he going to make it?” Lopez blurted out.

  The surgeon nodded slowly. “The operation was successful,” she said.

  We all let out a sigh of relief.

  “May we enter to speak with our colleague?” Rand asked.

  She pulled her mouth covering down around her neck and said, “I’m sorry—you didn’t let me finish. He’s alive and in stable condition, but he’s also in a deep coma.”

  What little happiness had been on Lopez’s face was quickly draining away. “For how long?” She asked.

  The surgeon shrugged. “We’ve never dealt with this before. The last time we did anything remotely similar to this procedure … the patient was in a coma indefinitely.”

  Rand looked down at the ground. The surgeon continued, “All we can do now is try to help him heal and hope he comes out of it on his own.”

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she said, bowing slightly, “I need to make a report.”

  I followed her to the door and tried to catch a glimpse of Kovac, but there were too many medics around his bed for the brief moment the doors were open.

  My mind flashed to another hospital room with a different comatose patient—my mother. But I quickly pushed the image back into the furthest corners of my mind. I couldn’t deal with that memory. Not now.

  When I turned around to comfort my friends and finally offer my apology, they weren’t there. Rand and Lopez were already several steps down the hallway, shuffling away from me with their heads bowed.

  I turned to Stanton, who was stoic, as usual. “They’re angry now,” I said, “but they’ll let up in a day or two. I’ll apologize to them then.”

  Stanton shifted uncomfortably, then said, “Perhaps not. You see, Privates Lopez and Rand have both requested transfers to a different company, which will most likely be granted immediately upon Captain Patel’s return.”

  I leaned forward and let out a quick breath. It felt like I had just been punched in the stomach with a gem-powered, over-sized fist.

  After a few moments, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Startled, I turned to see Stanton with a sad smile on his face. I shrugged his hand off and hurried down the hallway in the opposite direction, toward the mess hall.

  I had only traveled down a couple of corridors when I saw a familiar wild-haired figure step into the hallway with his back to me, looking around for something.

  “Hello, Harold,” I said loudly.

  He spun around and met me with a giant smile. “Sergeant Walker! Just the man I was looking for. I wanted to thank you.”

  My chest tightened. “For what? All I did was put you in danger.”

  Harold shook his head, and his wiry hair shook with him. “No. You believed in me. Gave me and the rest of us at Misenus Project a chance to do something important. Something that will last.”

  “Don’t thank me,” I said, looking past him to the mess hall, which was just a few meters away. “That was all you.”

  “Even so, there’s one more thing,” he said, somehow smiling even bigger. “You know that little girl you helped outside of the City Courthouse? The one with the striped shirt?”

  Now he had my attention. “Yeah . . .”

  “She lost her parents to the werewolves. Her grandpa’s my foreman at the factory. He and his wife can’t take care of her, and—well, he asked me if I’d take care of her. You know,” he said, his eyes growing red. “With my son gone and everything. Maybe I can keep doing something important.”

  I nodded. “I’m happy for you, Harold.” Then, patting him on the shoulder as I walked by, I said, “Good luck to you and your little girl. She’s lucky to have you.”

  As I entered the mess hall, the room fell silent. I braced myself for flying water cartons or, at the very least, flying curses. But nothing happened. As I collected my plate of synthetic greens with a pepper-covered something that was supposed to be meat, I received nods
from a few of the soldiers I passed. The rest just looked down to avoid my eyes.

  I carried my tray to an empty table and was about to sit down, when two soldiers in light green fatigues stepped into my path—a tall one with long, pale blond hair, and a short one, with a buzz cut and thick glasses.

  “Sergeant Walker, it’s so good to see you here again,” the shorter one said. I vaguely remembered this dynamic duo, but couldn’t recall why.

  “We just wanted to congratulate you on your commendation for valor in battle,” he said.

  My mind froze. Commendation?

  “Colonel Vaiega just sent out the announcement.” He looked to his much taller, shier companion, then said, “Thank you for your service, and we hope that someday we’ll have the honor of joining your company.”

  They both saluted me. I saluted back, and then they scurried off, talking excitedly and stealing glances back at me. I dropped onto the bench in front of me, started shoving food into my mouth, and tried to ignore the overwhelming taste of pepper. I looked up to comment on the terrible state of the meal to one of my teammates, but no one was there—just empty spaces where my friends used to sit.

  I cast my eyes around the mess hall and caught a handful of soldiers looking at me and smiling. The last time I was here, I remembered wanting so badly for everyone to like me. And while not everyone seemed to genuinely like me here, at least they didn’t seem to hate me enough to do anything about it.

  But even though I was in a roomful of people—some of whom apparently looked up to me—all that meant right now was that there was a roomful of people who I could disappoint at any moment. Just like I had disappointed my friends.

  Yes, I was probably more popular than I was before. I had even more power, too—I’d figured out how to use the red philosopher’s stone, and then picked up another one. But with greater power came even greater responsibility, as my father or some other wise fictional figure had told me as a child.

  There was only one way I could guarantee fulfilling all this responsibility without the possibility of letting down anyone else—I had to break away and fight the Dominion on my own.