by Scott Reeves
Jayce Michaels would have decided not to set off the planet crackers. Dmitriyano’s case had been that persuasive, and he knew that’s what the man had been about to advise. The word would have gotten out, planets across the Union would have been spared, and Christianity would have regained a tremendous foothold in the galaxy.
And so Michaels and Dmitriyano had had to die.
As he walked, Chebbors stroked the tattoo on the webbing between his right thumb and forefinger. The mark of the Beast, 666. His tattoo was embossed, and he liked to feel the raised ridges of the numbers in times of agitation.
Not only Michaels and Dmitriyano had to die. The entire ship did as well. The entire planet. Chebbors had a duty to make sure the secret of the Death Cure didn’t get out, and that no Christian was Cured and lived to tell. Not merely a duty to his lord Satan, but an actual duty to the secret government agency for which he was a sleeper agent. An agency formed by the faithful to keep Christianity in check.
Dmitriyano’s words had activated Chebbors, and he now had a duty to fulfill.
He nodded at the few crewmembers he passed in the corridors. At one of them, Ensign Shobasa, he did more than nod. He leered and grabbed at his crotch, making sure that she noticed. He wasn’t a timid man. You had to let a woman know in uncertain terms that you wanted to bang her.
She had such a fantastic body, and it was a shame he wouldn’t be able to fuck her at least once before they all died. But she was a haughty bitch, especially for a lowly ensign. Had she been on his medical staff, he would have had the run of her body. But she wasn’t, and he didn’t. She wouldn’t indulge him. And in these last moments of their lives, both his and hers, didn’t he deserve indulgence? But there just wasn’t time.
Or was there?
He briefly explored the notion of grabbing her and dragging her back to his quarters. Could he spare the time?
He decided that he could.
Reaching into the med-kit wrapped like a belt around his waist, he removed a hypo filled with a sedative that would knock out a Praxian sand whale. He retraced his steps a bit; Shobasa had turned a corner and was apparently heading toward the mess hall.
Creeping up behind her, he pressed the hypo to the back of her neck just as she realized someone was following her and began to turn to see who. Her delightful, scant weight collapsed into his waiting arms. She mumbled, only half-conscious and unable to move on her own. She made a series of queer faces as her numbed mind made attempts to control suddenly uncooperative facial muscles.
Throwing one of her arms over his shoulder, he gripped her waist and staggered along with her, as if they were both intoxicated and heading toward his quarters for a drunk fuck. The two crewmen he passed on his way grinned slyly at him as if to say, “I know what you’re up to. Congratulations.”
The polite thing to do would have been to ask one or both of the crewmen to join him. But of course he was rarely polite. He was selfish, and they were all about to die, so he wanted Shobasa to himself.
Reaching his quarters, he waddled her over to the bed and dropped her onto it. She was now completely unconscious, totally at his mercy. Thing was, he had no mercy.
But before he began with her, he crossed the room to a hidden control panel that wasn’t on the ship’s schematics and no one but he knew about, unbuckling his belt, kicking off his shoes and stripping as he went.
Once at the panel, he entered his master code, which allowed him to override any system on the ship. Then he began punching commands into the panel. First, he locked the bridge officers out of their controls. He sealed access to and from the bridge.
Next, he shut down communications to and from the bridge, and programmed a ship-wide communications blackout with a ten-minute delay. Next, he reversed the air flow to the bridge, sucking out the atmosphere.
Then he armed the planet crackers buried deep within Caldor.
With the touch of a button, they would begin building up energy for detonation. Ordinarily it would have required the agreement of the Captain, a second officer, and a planetary AI to set the devices off. But his position with the Department of Religious Suppression required that he be allowed to do pretty much anything he needed to with a starship or anything in any planetary administration. Hence the undocumented control panel.
But first things first. With most of the lesser crew on down time, and the bridge crew out of commission, it would be a while before anyone noticed that something was wrong. Not a long while, but long enough for his purpose.
He turned away from the panel, went to the bed, and began to pull off Shobasa’s uniform, determined to relish his final screw.
Joyce Rider
The Reverend Joyce Rider screamed as the force cube opened and the raving Emilia Hocking leapt out at her.
As the monstrous woman’s ragged fingernails, which had been chewed into sharp shreds, scraped at Joyce and her teeth gnashed loudly, groping toward Joyce’s throat, Joyce raced around a metal gurney in one corner, putting it between herself and the woman.
But Emilia scrambled over it in her desperate zeal to get at Joyce. The gurney, destabilized, toppled over, slamming against Joyce’s legs and trapping her between the gurney and a medicine cabinet along the wall, and throwing Emilia upon Joyce. Emilia pawed over Joyce, clawing her way up toward the Reverend’s neck.
Joyce screamed again and struggled, lashing out wildly with her fists, buffeting Emilia, knocking her sideways, off of her and the gurney. She kicked at the gurney to get free of it, sending it skidding across the tile floor until it slammed against a tall, narrow tray of medical instruments, the very tray from which Doctor Chebbors had taken the nefarious scalpel he had used to slice open the throats of Dmitriyano and Captain Michaels.
As Emilia scrambled to her feet, Joyce looked around the room wildly, seeking something, anything, with which to combat the infected woman.
As she did so, her gaze raked across the other force cube in which stood Rodor Batsalam. The man’s eyes appeared torpid, his thoughts sluggish, but he had recovered just as she herself had. He was looking at her, yelling something which she could not hear through the barrier of the force field between them. Dmitriyano had made the field impermeable on both cubes so that they didn’t have to listen to the animalistic growls and howls that had been coming from the cubes.
Rodor alternately yelled and glanced over to the wall opposite the medicinal cabinet, as if directing her that way.
Joyce saw nothing over there but the transmat pad. Surely he didn’t mean for her to escape through the transmat? Could she survive such an escape, even though she had died and been resurrected? She couldn’t take the chance. Besides, she couldn’t just leave him here.
All these thoughts took place in a matter of instants, almost on an instinctive level below conscious thought.
Emilia was now coming at her again.
Joyce raced around the cramped room, slipping and sliding on each hard turn of her circuit, fighting to keep her feet. If only she had been wearing rubber-soled shoes like those she had seen on the nurses earlier!
Emilia raced behind her in mindless pursuit. The savage woman was too brain-dead to even think about outwitting Joyce by taking an alternate route, rather than merely dogging her heels.
On her first circuit of the room, Joyce slapped at the door button as she raced past. But the door didn’t swing open; Chebbors had definitely locked it. Not that she had had any doubt, but she had to try.
Then she glanced at the open force cube as she passed. Might she be able to lure Emilia inside and reactivate it?
Possibly.
Then she raced past the other force cube. Inside, Rodor was still yelling at her and gesticulating toward the transmat pad.
She considered hitting the deactivation button of his cube. But did she really want to open it up and let him out to share her danger? In his lethargic state, he surely wouldn’t be much of an ally. It would only put him in danger.
Maybe a few more laps around the infir
mary and he would have regained sufficient strength to help her. Maybe she would let him out then.
She raced on.
Coming level with the transmat pad, she glanced at it.
And she suddenly realized what Rodor wanted her to do.
She was so stupid not to have thought of it!
As she passed, she slapped at the control, dialing up a random destination.
Then she was past.
Around the room again, Emilia snarling and growling, hard on her heels. A few times she felt the wild woman’s fingers grasping for and almost closing upon the back of her arms.
Past the door. Hit the controls just for something to do. No response. Still locked.
On past the medicine cabinet. Up and over the two bodies on the floor, careful not to slip in the spreading pool of blood.
Past the first, empty force cube. Then coming level with the second.
She slapped at the control pad, pressing the deactivation button.
Then coming level with the transmat pad. Random destination already dialed in.
She slapped at the transmit button. And then running on.
Hearing a scuffle behind her, she whirled in time to see Emilia stumbling onto the transmat pad. Rodor had jumped from the cube after the woman had raced past, and gave her a rough shove, letting momentum carry her forward onto the pad.
Emilia Hocking was just about to leap off the pad and back into the pursuit. But the transmat field caught her, shredded her into her atomic components, and sent her streaming through subspace toward some unknown destination.
Joyce Rider lurched to a halt and dropped to her knees, gasping for breath, breasts heaving, as she beamed a huge smile of thanks and relief at Rodor Batsalam.
Malfred Gil
The platform they were riding was about halfway down the building toward Mal’s level. They passed catwalks every few levels, narrow bridges of metal that connected the Murray Building to its neighbor. Mal warily watched groups of those psycho undead zombie people shuffling along the catwalks. Their undead brains were too stupid to realize the danger, and often times a few of them went shuffling on over the edge, legs still moving in that walking shuffle even as they went tumbling down into the abyss.
“I’ve been thinking,” Andy said.
“Yeah,” Mal said. “I get the impression you do that a lot.”
One of the catwalks slid past, rising above their heads, and he suddenly began to worry that some of the undead might try jumping down onto the passing platform, or even just fall off the catwalk and land on the platform by sheer luck.
He continued: “Guys like you, they think and they think, and they never let you know what they’re thinking until they’ve chewed on their thoughts for a long time, to make sure it’s good and soft before they let the world swallow it. I try not to think. Thinking doesn’t get a guy any snatch. When’s the last time you had your dick in a nice, cozy snatch, Andy?”
Andy shuffled his feet and ducked his head in embarrassment.
Mal grinned. “That long, huh? I suppose when we find Samala, I could watch your back while you stick your dick in her snatch.”
He liked the idea of her still being alive somewhere in the city. Even though she had been murdered by the fiendish Bin Jamin, there was still hope for her. He liked that, and had convinced himself utterly that she was still around, depending upon him to rescue her. She was alive, or some new version of alive, and she needed him.
“Just once, though, okay?” he said. “Usually I’m not the jealous type, but with Samala, it’s different for some reason.” He looked sidelong at Andy. “You think that means I love her or something?”
Andy’s eyes were wide, and he opened and closed his mouth, stammering silently.
Mal sighed. “Fucking Christians,” he said half-heartedly. Christianity had apparently saved her...so how could it be bad? He was torn. “You’re as guilt-twisted as Samala. Okay, then. If you don’t want to talk about snatch, I guess you might as well tell me what you’ve been thinking.”
Andy let out a deeply held breath, and the nervousness went out of his eyes. “I’ve been thinking about the final prophecy of the Apostle Herman, delivered into our hands by Saint Donald. It’s not widely known; most regard the Book of Donald as apocryphal, because—”
“We’re not in school,” Mal interrupted. “And I don’t want a Bible lesson anyway, professor. So what was the prophecy? Not that I believe in prophecies.”
“It says basically that after an age, Christ will return for a third time. Scholars studying the prophecy believe that it spoke of a galactic civilization like ours. It says the dead will be resurrected, and Christ will then return to shine His light upon the galactic civilization.”
“And you think that’s happening right now?” Mal watched a zombie tumble past, narrowly missing the platform. He gripped the reassuring stock of his force rifle. He could handle it if one of them landed on the platform.
Andy nodded. “I think maybe this catastrophe, this infection that makes the dead rise, isn’t really a catastrophe. I think maybe it’s a sign that Christ is about to return.”
Mal laughed. “That’s sick. I told you thinking isn’t good for a guy. Anything that doesn’t lead directly to snatch isn’t good for a guy. Andy, you’re a preacher, right? Well, let me preach to you about Samala’s snatch...”
And the lift squeaked and groaned on down the side of the building as Mal proselytized Andy about the glories of Samala’s snatch.
Samala Vintron
The garbage dump transmat pad swallowed Samala into subspace.
Ordinarily you have no consciousness while streaming through subspace. Or if you do, you can’t remember it once you rematerialize. Some people claimed to remember their trip through the matter stream, and a few scientists with less than stellar reputations had put forth theories alleging to explain why consciousness must exist within subspace. But no one took these people or their theories seriously. Thus it was generally believed, and the consensus of the public experience held, that consciousness halted at the moment of dematerialization, and resumed at the moment of rematerialization.
Such had always been Samala’s experience.
But this time she felt something after dematerialization
She sensed something.
A presence. Presences.
She was in blackness, and had no physical senses that she recognized. But she felt people around her in the blackness. Hordes of people. Billions upon billions of people. Screaming. Twisting in agony.
She felt, again through no sense that she recognized, that they were clawing at her. Trying to catch her as she streamed through. To stop her and trap her. Or perhaps catch a ride out with her.
Angry people.
Murderous people.
Evil people.
But not all of them.
For every ten evil presences, she felt one good presence. That was the only way she could describe it. Good and evil.
And the good ones were basking in the glow of a far greater presence that radiated utter peace and love the way a star radiates light. And behind it, she sensed a presence of overarching evil, but occluded by the awesome goodness of the other.
That great presence seemed to stroke her as she passed. To enfold her. To infuse her with warmth.
She wanted to stay there absorbing the light of that non-space’s only star. But the matter stream of which she was a part continued onward, unresponsive to her wishes.
That presence of presences pushed her off course, as if there were any reference points in this space that wasn’t a space against which she could chart a course.
But it pushed her.
And then she rematerialized.
She fell off the transmat pad in her apartment and lay on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably, overwhelmed with horror at recent events, as well as with a burning anguish at leaving that awesome presence behind within subspace.
“Samala!” she heard a voice fraught with concern shout. �
��Samala, thank God you’re all right! You are all right aren’t you? Why are you crying? Samala?”
She looked up and saw, through tear-blurred vision, her father, kneeling at her side.
Her first instinct was to recoil from him, remembering him as she had last seen him, raving mad and trying to rape or eat her. But instead she saw that he had returned to himself. And his translucent body glowed with an inner fire just as hers did.
Like her, he had been resurrected.
She threw herself against him, hugging him tightly.
“Oh, Daddy!” she sobbed into the curve of his neck.
Everything would be all right now.
Or would be once they found Mal.
Harlan Fargo
Babbit’s private landing platform jutted out from the side of the Murray Building, a narrow half-circle of heavy-duty metal hanging over a drop of several miles.
The massive bulk of Gina’s Starry Eyes settled onto the landing pad like an overweight, diseased pigeon alighting on a too-thin branch. The platform was too small for the mining ship, having been built to accommodate nothing larger than a few high-class hovercars.
The rear quarter of her —Gina’s bulky ass, as he liked to refer to that portion of the ship; if a ship had his wife’s starry eyes, then it certainly must have her bulky ass as well— hung over the gulf.
So, Harlan thought, completing the analogy that had formed in his mind, we’re like an overweight, diseased pigeon high on the trunk of a huge tree, our ass hanging into the air so we can drop a big white load of shit.
He chuckled.
“Sir?” pilot Jacy said as he cycled the engines into standby mode.
“Nothing,” Harlan said. “Nice landing. Keep her ready to go. I’ll step outside and see if anyone’s home.”
It might be a good sign that no one had answered their hails to grant or deny them permission to land. Maybe they’d gotten lucky and Babbit had died in the catastrophe. That fat, rich buffoon didn’t need the huge landing fee he would charge, and Harlan certainly didn’t have the funds to spare.