Gribbons’ face compressed into a scowl.
“Keep this contained while I find her,” Rainer ordered.
“I don’t take orders from you, Commander.”
“Until I’m court-martialed or you’re promoted two ranks, yes, you do,” Rainer said shortly.
“Not if I don’t think you should be the one to find her. I’m not hanging for you.”
“How pleasant to know you place your own neck above hers. I have more incentive than ever to find her quickly.” Rainer turned to go. Lachesis wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. Her claim of wanting to murder him was to obfuscate whatever she was really up to, and the only thing he could think she would do would be to steal a shuttle and fly back to Ark. She didn’t know NightPiercer, so she wouldn’t go far from the cargo bay. That meant somewhere to hole up until an opportunity presented itself. “Keep this contained for her sake. This isn’t the introduction she deserves. She was Crèche on Ark, and is an accomplished pilot, and,” he managed a dry smirk at Gribbons, “you might agree she deserved better.”
“I’ll give you until shift change. Three hours, Rainer.” Gribbons dropped his title and formality. “Do it quiet, discrete, and no muss. Or else both of you are going to end up in the brig.”
Act Like You Belong
The lift took her all the way to the belly of NightPiercer.
Four different access tubes, each wide and tall enough for large equipment to move through, joined to the shaft. A steady rumble moved through her paws, and the humid air smelled of algae, crickets, water treatment, and ozone. Unlike above, helpful diagrams were on each tube wall.
There was no easy way to skulk about the brightly lit corridors, and her ears picked up the sound of voices, and her nose the scent of people.
She trotted along with tail up, gambling that anyone she passed would assume sure, she belonged there, they just didn’t recognize her in wolf form.
Although finding Algae was easy enough, and getting there required just a few tail wags like sure, she knew the people she passed, how she was going to get into one of the vat rooms eluded her. Just like on Ark, the vat rooms had a biometric scanner. It seemed everything on this ship had a biometric lock: doors, lifts, access panels, even large vents. No nuts and bolts anywhere.
She couldn’t just pace the corridors while figuring out what to do. The people she’d passed had been surprised and shocked to see a wolf. She’d been noticed. This wasn’t a high-traffic area, so the next person who saw her would likely be someone she’d already passed.
She weighed her options and decided to follow the stronger scent of bodies.
The scent led her to a small coat closet, this one with no lock. She sniffed around for anything of use and found a small air vent just big enough for her human form to worm through. The grill and filter popped off easily, and the vent was tucked behind a row of boots and waterproof overalls. Nobody should notice the displaced grate right away.
“Oh, this sucks,” she whispered as she wriggled along the metal surface. The injury in her thigh reminded her it was there, and it stung like hell as she dragged it along, and her injured shoulder protested bitterly.
She inched along, having to stop when the skin on her hips protested, or her elbows turned into burning balls of pain, or her nipples screeched about being dragged across metal.
“You know,” she whispered to herself, to keep sane in the terrifying darkness, “if I die here, it’d be pretty funny. Like when that really big rat died in the wall in Ark… Rainer would have some explaining to do.”
She snickered. It would be pretty funny if they had to rip apart the ship’s belly to dig her rotting corpse out of it. She might be dead, but Rainer wouldn’t live it down either.
She bumped into a wall. She licked a finger and held it up to the air, then squirmed herself around the corner to head right. More inching to another junction, then the next, then the next. There was a grate on this floor. She listened for sounds, and heard voices chatting and laughing, and caught a whiff of citrus.
“Ahhh,” she whispered to herself, peeking over the edge of the grate. A cargo bay filled with boxes, but some spotty lighting, and trash talk. She’d found NightPiercer’s poker den. Just like on Ark.
She scurried over the grate.
“You hear something?” she heard someone below the grate ask.
“Yeah, the sound of your voice as you try to avoid paying up.”
She snickered and crawled down the tube until it opened up onto a chamber.
She couldn’t see a damn thing. The darkness was so complete her vision flashed with shades of purple while her brain tried to amuse her, but she felt the air and heard the largeness. She pursed her lips and whistled once.
No echo.
She extended one arm and waved it around. Felt wall to her left and right, and floor about a foot below her. Somewhere a fan turned. She licked her palm and extended it out. The air flowed upwards, and at a fairly strong pressure.
Carefully, she wormed herself out of the tube. Once out, she stood slowly, hand extended above her, careful to stay as close to the wall as she could. Her hand touched a low ceiling. She shifted to wolf form, and rubbed her flank on the tunnel she’d just come from, then carefully made her way around the floor. Three other junctions. Stepping to the side resulted in an updraft almost enough to lift her. She was in a pressure junction: a large shaft coming up from the center of the room, and the air would pass into the four tunnels. No fans, all just pressure driven, and it fed areas that needed to maintain some atmosphere and air pressure, but didn’t require heavy circulation. One of these shafts probably led to another closet somewhere.
The darkness pressed on her. She could not see a damn thing, and scent was almost useless. She sat down and took stock. She could just hang out in this central junction, but that’d be dangerous. These weren’t part of the active life support system, they were part of the hull pressure equalization system. The air was humid but breathable now, but the composition could be changed at any moment, it could become burning cold or scalding hot, switched off entirely, or even a toxic cleaning gas pumped in.
She chose the junction she figured would maybe get her to a vat room and resumed her painful wriggling. A few squirmy turns led towards a light, which led to another small grate. The view through the filter and slats revealed another supply closet. Lights on, but nobody home.
She shoved out the grate and filter, wriggled through, flopped onto the ground, replaced the grate, and crawled behind the rack of rubber pants. She shifted back into wolf form and burrowed behind the pant hems to take inventory of her new surroundings.
The air was stifling hot, humid and reeked of algae and crickets. It also smelled of various other people, but not Rainer. The closet even had a panel with a clock on it. She’d been in the ducts for only two hours.
She sniffed the air, expecting Rainer’s scent. His howl still echoed in her mind, and some stupid, confused instinct told her to go to him.
She nudged the door open and stepped out into a long corridor. Large doors capped each end of the corridor. She darted to one of the doors, nudged it open, and slipped inside.
The stench of algae made her gut flip, but she bellied under the nearest vat. It was even hotter under the vat, intolerably moist, and the air so thick it tried to drown her. But from here she had a good view of the floor, and the rubber boots of the three people skimming the vats. Huge air intakes pulled upwards from the ceiling, while six huge fans slowly spun at the far end of the room.
Safe for the moment, she panted around the stifling air, wishing she could shift into her human form that would sweat and disperse heat more effectively and quietly, but she needed her lupine senses and compact size. Her heart rate did not slow in the heat. Her skin ached, and her shoulder felt hot and swollen, and a harness-shaped ache had formed over her body.
There had to be somewhere in this vat room she could tuck herself and rest.
The three crew working the vats commented shift change was
coming, and discussed their plans for the evening.
The door opened and a comment about someone being early for their shift. Door closed. Door opened, no chatter. Did someone leave? No. There was no chatter. It’d gone silent.
She peered from under her vat.
Paws.
Oh shit. Rainer.
She tried to hear the click of his claws on the floor, but through the racket, it was impossible. She tried not to pant, but in the extraordinary heat, that was impossible too. She backed out from her vat, and darted to another one, then darted back the way Rainer had come.
“I know you’re here, Lake.” His growl rattled the ions in her blood. “Your scent is on the door.”
Instinct froze her, then she shook off the mental ice and snuck around behind him. He was two vats up, tail to her, a large, silvery-brown wolf with a silver-fringed tail and a white underbelly. He sniffed the vat she’d just been under.
She padded behind him, up the stairs—
“Commander!” one of the crew shouted.
She slammed into the swinging door and bolted down the hallway.
Entangled
“Lake! Stop!”
She shook off the command and scrambled to the closet door, slammed her shoulder into it, and—
Oof.
She bounced off it.
Dazed, she shook her head, pushed again. Locked. He’d locked it! He knew what—
Rainer exited the vat room. “Lake, stop. This is—”
She yipped in fear and bolted again.
“Lake! I’m not going to hurt you!”
“Liar!” She overlaid her mental map of the air ducts and flung herself down a hallway to the left, willing her legs to move faster. She scrambled, ducked around a corner. A lift! She yelped and leapt.
Her claws caught in the lift. She scrambled, dangling, scratching, and the confused crewmen grabbed her and hauled her onto it before she fell.
Rainer barred his teeth.
This wasn’t going to end well at all.
She panted hard, and the three crewmen on the lift stared back at her, and she was a pathetic algae-wet mess. The lift went up, and up, until it opened up onto a huge open market.
This… was not what she’d been hoping for. But it didn’t go higher, and Rainer was below.
Shift change.
She tip-toed out as bodies jostled around her. It was some kind of open market avenue, with a huge domed ceiling illuminated by a fake sun, and the scent of water spilling from somewhere, and vendors offering items: food, trinkets, clothing, much the same as Ark’s artisan market had worked.
Everything on the ship was rationed, nobody went hungry or naked, but everyone earned a wage to spend on things that amused them, and this sort of thing was both profession and hobby for many people. Commerce was not considered a Dying Art.
She looked around helplessly.
Everyone was either human, or in human form, and now everyone who saw her bedraggled wolf form smelled of not just shock (she was sort of smelly from being down in Algae) but affronted. Her heart beat harder.
She struck out towards the left, trying to stay out of the main flow of traffic, and trot along like everything was fine, although the press of people hindered her progress by shoving and pushing her away. A few of the werewolves in the crowd grabbed at her ruff and shook her. “What are you doing in wolf form in public!”
She struggled free, whined deep in her throat, while her panic grew.
Rainer trotted through a path created by the crowd. “Lake,” he growled, “let’s not do this.”
She barred her teeth.
He stopped and canted his head slightly, tail held at a bold, but not aggressive angle. “Lake, come with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” She pulled her lips back fully over her teeth and raised her hackles, tail lowered, and she snarled deep in her throat. “Back off, Rain.”
He answered by bringing his lips back over his teeth just enough to reveal sharp tips. “Behave.”
Nothing left to lose: she bolted.
Rainer barked and surged after her.
“No, no, no, no!” she yipped as she ran, not caring where she went as long as it was not anywhere near him. She lunged over some displays, scrambled under a cart. But she was so tired, and her battered muscles ached and ground over her bones.
Something much larger than her flattened her and sent her tumbling. She yelped and scrambled. Two strong forelegs came down over her hips, sending her flailing again. Jaws clenched down on her ruff. She shrieked and thrashed and bit down on one of the legs. Her fangs cut the skin, she tasted blood, he surged back in shock, and she wrestled herself free. Now his jaws clacked by her ear, then grabbed her by a mouthful of shoulder.
She screamed and pulled back against the fangs. “Let me go! Let me go!”
Rainer forced her down with his mouth full of her throat and leaned into her with his shoulder. She wheezed against the pressure on her ribcage. He growled deep in his throat and added his clawed paw to the softness of her belly.
She whined and thrashed. “Let me go.”
He growled louder. “Stop.”
“If you’re going to kill me,” she whispered, “you’re going to have to do it here. In front of everyone. You coward.”
He snarled, eyes a strange churning amber-green. “I am not going to kill you.”
“Liar. You’ve already tried once!” She thrashed and yipped again, trying to bite him. His fangs worked deeper into her throat. She thrashed free, but he pounced and sent her tumbling. This time he pinned her with his entire bodyweight.
“I know your plan,” he growled. “You won’t go far. You’ll fly away. They are watching for you.”
She choked, sides shuddering as she breathed around his weight. She keened in her throat, high and thin. Not submission. She wouldn’t submit to him. Just grief. Canine tears. She’d die here, like this, all alone in the abyss.
He slowly got off her. She rolled onto her sternum, legs splayed, and keened mournfully, a high, thin sound of pure grief. Her mother, her sister, her father, her grandparents, even stupid Jebb and his stupid friends and that stupid bowling alley and the bunkmates who had snored and farted in their sleep. All gone. Now there was just Rainer, and she’d been stupid enough to think she could evade him on his own territory.
She howled her grief, singing for the pack she’d lost.
“Get up,” Rainer told her. “We have to get out of sight. You are making a scene.”
She stood and melted into her human form. “You think I care if I make a scene, Rainer? You tried to kill me! You want me dead, you murderous spoiled princeling!”
Rainer melted up into his own human form. His forearms and hands were still flushed with the burns from earlier in the day.
“Crèche forced us to marry each other, but no one tells Commander Rainer of NightPiercer what to do,” she spat at him, hating how she hiccuped on sobs and couldn’t stop the tears. “So you show up two days early, drag me out of Ark like some fucking warlord from Earth, and blow up a shuttle hoping the shrapnel will murder me.” She jabbed a finger at her chewed up shoulder. “Should have gotten your hands dirty and murdered me the old fashioned way, you gutless coward!”
Rainer’s eyes were narrow, green slits. Blood trickled from the bite wound on his forearm.
Her body shook with sobs. Deep, gulping sobs. This was wrong, it shouldn’t be like this. It just wasn’t right. She curled her hands into fists, powerless to do anything, and sobbed as she stood there, but she didn’t dare take an eye off him.
The crowd parted as a couple of armed, suited Security crew pushed their way through the onlookers. The one in front, an older human, said, “Alright. That’s enough. Both of you, let’s go. You’ve caused enough of a scene. Back into wolf form and come quietly.”
“If you’re going to order me around, Gribbons, you need a charge,” Rainer said coldly.
“Then you, Commander Rainer, are under arrest for a
ttempted murder, assault, and domestic battery. Your wife, Lachesis, is under arrest for assaulting a superior officer, damaging life support, unauthorized access, and about fifteen other charges. You two are going to spend some nice time in the brig.” Gribbons thumped the Commander on his chest. “Wolf form. Everyone’s gotten a very good look, now cover it with some fur.”
Lachesis, miserably, obeyed.
Rainer gave Gribbons a withering look but transformed back into his wolf form and paced off down the way with self-possessed dignity. He paused by her. She snapped at him and caught him by the ear flap, drawing more blood. Gribbons smacked her with his baton, and she tumbled away with a yelp. Rainer bit down on the baton, shattered it, and flung the pieces away.
“I do not need you to defend me from her,” Rainer said as he twisted back into human form.
“Then I guess the two of you can share the same cell and work out your differences. Go.”
His Heartbeat
Gribbons made good on his threat and tossed them both in the same cell.
She yipped and struggled, but two of the guards just grabbed her by her ruff and shoved her into the cell along with Rainer. She flung herself against the magnetic bars and howled after them to let her out.
She claimed the sole bunk and curled up on it with a snarl. He took the floor and sedately rested his snout on his forepaws.
Within half an hour, someone from Medical came down to clean the debris out of her shoulder and thigh, and the raw wounds she’d worked up crawling through the air ducts. Her hair was tangled and filled with debris. Her breasts were more sore than they were chewed up, which was probably the best news she’d had all day. She tolerated this and ignored Rainer’s watchful quiet from his corner.
“Stay in human form while all this heals,” the doctor advised her.
“I probably won’t be alive long enough for it to matter,” she muttered. She scrunched herself against the bunk. “He’s going to kill me. Why won’t anyone listen to me?”
NightPiercer Page 6