The Vampire Files Anthology

by P. N. Elrod

  “We’ve got to pool our resources in order to stay alive.” Eily’s voice was unnaturally loud, the words were running together. She wasn’t thinking about what she was saying, yet there was a purpose to it.

  Kella’s arm burned. She was ready to fall down. Damn it all. Even if she got control of Eily and thus the ship, then what? Kella could force the woman to play pilot for only as long as the stimulants held. It wouldn’t be long, either, not with this arm, not in the shape she was in.

  From outside the door came more nonsense as Eily preached about their common enemy. Yes, she was a proper little System robot, mouthing fatuous nonsense. . .

  That almost covered the faint hissing. . .

  Gas.

  Kella made a frantic grab for the aid box. She’d caught the first whiff of the stuff—something pungent—then stopped breathing. Heart pumping painfully, she clawed for a respirator mask, hastily fitting it over her nose and mouth, thumbing the flow valve open just in time. The seal wasn’t perfect; some of what flooded the bridge seeped in, adding to her dizziness. She left the valve wide open and slowed her intake. That helped. Now air was escaping from the mask, reducing the chance of contamination.

  What was that crap, anyway? Not tri-crynide or she’d be dead by now except for reflex twitching. Somose, maybe? No matter, as long as she could still move and think . . . which wouldn’t be for long given the circumstances.

  She put her back to a wall and sank to the floor. Bad move, that. Too tempting. She might shut her eyes and never open them again.

  But she’d have to do just that. Only for a minute or two, or however long it took. . .

  She jerked her head up, shaking it hard, blinking hard. The mask slipped a bit. Somose gas it was, then. Must be part of the bridge intruder defense control. Just the thing to subdue a dangerous Resistance terrorist; just the thing so the poor misguided creature could be humanely captured and ultimately rehabilitated into something more to the System’s liking.

  Not this one, she thought, not today, not ever.

  Kella found another stimulant patch and slapped it against the other side of her neck. It wasn’t the recommended thing to do, except for emergencies. This more than qualified, what with gas filling every corner of the compartment.

  Her heart raced faster; blood hit the top of her skull and pounded there, burning for a moment before dispersing throughout the rest of her body. Tremors ran up and down her wounded arm. No need to worry about dropping off now; her nerves were galloping from the stim.

  The next time her head jerked was in response to a minute change in the hissing. She stared at an air vent as though she could actually see the flow. Any more patches like the last and she just might. No need to look, though, Eily was flushing the place clean, preparing to come in.

  Kella waited until the last second—when she actually heard Eily using the exterior manual to crank the door open—before taking away the mask and shoving it out of sight behind her. She bowed forward, protectively cradling the extinguisher in her good arm, hiding it with her body. Then came the hard part: sitting absolutely still.

  The door folded open.

  “All right, you.” Eily’s voice was thin, wavering, whether with relief or fear was hard to tell. She crept inside. Two slow, soft steps and she was standing over Kella’s apparently unconscious form. The still-warm muzzle of a blaster nudged into an exposed part of her neck. Kella settled more firmly against the wall. The muzzle withdrew. Now a hand touched her shoulder. Pushing. Kella’s slow topple had to look natural. . . right up to the last instant. . .when the extinguisher nozzle was clear and Kella made a convulsive move with her good hand.

  The high-pressure spray hit Eily square in the face. She spasmed away, blind, choking. She triggered one wild shot. Kella gave her no time for a second, and slammed the cylinder into Eily’s skull with all her strength. The shock went up her hand, her arm, instantly transmitting the sickening knowledge that it had been enough. More than enough. Eily dropped.

  Kella’s whole body shook, she had to brace her knees or fall; the stim and her own adrenaline were playing hell inside her, but it was better than being dead.

  Her or me, she thought. Better her than me. She stared at Eily, at the bloodied depression in her temple, at her last, graceless collapse. No regrets for this enemy. One couldn’t afford them.

  Where the hell is her blaster?

  Eily was on top of it. Kella pulled it clear. It was awkward in her left hand, but she’d be able to use it.

  And how soon would that be? Alard was still a problem. Had Eily remembered to lock the shield door? Best to assume she’d forgotten. Assume that Alard was in the hangar and intending to board the ship.

  A dull sound, more felt than heard, came through the deck.

  Assume that he’s in the ship.

  Kella shoved the blaster into her belt, bent, and snaked an arm around Eily’s waist, lifting. It should have been hard, but the drugs racing through her veins were doing their job. A wrench, a heave, and then Eily’s body was in one of the command chairs. Kella unlocked the swivel mechanism and turned it so Eily faced away from the door, then she backed off, wedging flat against the right aft wall. She checked the blaster to be certain that it was charged and that the safety disengaged. She tried to thumb the power back to minimize collateral damage, but her hand froze.

  The weapon was tech, just like all the other things that set off her reconditioning symptoms. Pulling the trigger on a non-lethal extinguisher was one thing, trying to use a true weapon was another.

  Alard progressed toward the bridge; first she heard his footsteps, then his muted breathing. He paused outside the open door. From there he would see the mess on the deck: blood, scattered extinguisher spray. The stink of the latter was sharp in the air, like fresh vomit. He took his time. Kella breathed shallowly through her mouth and hoped that he couldn’t hear her pounding heart.

  He wouldn’t be able to see anything more unless he came forward. It was a fifty-fifty chance who he’d spot first, Kella or Eily, depending on whether he looked left or right coming through the door.

  Left, she willed at him. Look left.

  Then he was in.

  Fast bastard, she thought, having the time to think. He’d looked left.

  And his attention had been caught and held by Eily for the critical instant that Kella needed. He must have realized it, too. He tensed as though to spin, then aborted the movement. It came out as a small jump throughout his whole body. Then he went still.

  “Smart of you not to risk it,” she said. She liked how her voice sounded. Cold. Measured. In charge. Quite the opposite of how she felt.

  She couldn’t shoot him. Her hand shook from the effort of trying. All the other stops they’d put into her brain were nothing compared to this one. Killing him was the most expedient way to end this—and she could not act.

  Stall, then, restrain him now and kill him later.

  “Put the blaster down and your hands behind your neck.”

  He obeyed.

  “You’re Alard?”

  He nodded once.

  “Are you brainwarp, Alard?”

  “Is that what they told you?”

  “They said you were killing everyone. You got a reason for that?”

  He slowly turned, looking her up and down, his gaze resting briefly on her wounded arm and then on the twin stim-patches on her neck. “They’re System. That’s reason enough for me.” There was contempt in his tone. He was untroubled over those deaths.

  “Resistance?”

  “Mercenary.”

  “What outfit?”

  “I’m independent. They had a contract open so I took it.”

  The Resistance had no qualms about bringing in outside help, especially if the price was low. “Entailing what?”

  His gaze darted from her face to the muzzle of her weapon and back. “I was hired to slip extra programming into the base computers.”

  “What kind of programming?”

 
; “Nothing elaborate, but if and when it receives the proper signal, the reactor goes critical. The ship’s my payment.”

  Interesting. If true, then the Resistance had made one hell of a bargain. For the price of a little forgery to get him assigned to the crew and one minor spacecraft they could remove the base as a threat anytime they wanted. Of course, the bang would take out Riganth Prison as well and too bad for the prisoners there. Maybe that was the reason behind the Resister raid. Free as many as they could, divert attention from the base . . . she liked the planning behind it. Hell, it was just the sort of thing she might have come up with herself.

  But it took talent and training to command the kind of computer expertise needed to get past a reactor’s safeguards. “You botched it.”

  “I did not,” he protested. “I completed the job.”

  “You left a pile of bodies all over the place.”

  “When the captain found out what I was doing I had to shut him down. So?”

  “So as soon as the next ship comes in, the first thing they’ll do is check the computers for tampering.”

  “I’d have cleaned everything up before leaving. The logs would show all the work done with the tech crew leaving on schedule. Once off-world the ship goes missing.”

  Kella’s mouth twitched.

  “It’s the truth!” he added sharply.

  “But you can’t prove any of it, can you?”

  “No, but. . .”

  “Go on.”

  “I could have shut you and your friend down at any time since you broke into the base, but didn’t.”

  “Or maybe you were hoping we’d provide a distraction you could exploit—and we did.”

  “Your friend’s alive, though. Darden is not. I can show you.”

  Moving cautiously, he backed toward a monitor and, one-fingered, tapped a few buttons. The monitor came alive. It was linked to the same remotes as the ones jury-rigged in the hangar. The image hopped as he keyed in the corridor pickup. Kella saw two bodies on the floor. One was Darden’s. There was a vast wash of blood around him and he wasn’t moving. Farron lay exactly where he’d fainted.

  Alard played with a control and the remote centered on Farron. Numbers began to flow across the bottom of the screen.

  “There’s his heart rate, respiration, and temp,” he said, pointing. “He’s in bad shape, but fixable.”

  She was unimpressed. “All it means is that you were in too great a hurry to shoot an unconscious man.”

  “He could have been faking. If you were me, would you have taken that chance?”

  Kella knew that she would not. But it still wasn’t proof, and given the circumstances, there was no way Alard could offer any. The sensible thing at this point was to kill him, thus eliminating a liability she couldn’t afford.

  Once more, she tried to trigger the blaster. Her hand twitched.

  He flinched, but otherwise stayed in place. “Look, you’re hurt and need help. I’m no threat to you. We’re on the same side in the end. All I want out of this is my skin and the ship. If you want a fast trip off-world, I’ll pilot you there.”

  I’ll pilot myself. Or get Farron to do it.

  On the monitor, Farron sluggishly moved his arms, then pushed upright. He looked around, clearly confused, then yelped when he saw Darden’s body. Farron backed away on all fours, tangling in his blanket. Where’d he find one of those, anyway?

  Focus, dammit. Her stims wouldn’t last long. When they wore off she’d drop in her tracks.

  “I can take you to the Resistance cell that hired me,” said Alard. “They’ll get you a new ID. You can report to them what I did here, corroborate it. My stake is that it would get me more work. Having a ship is a start, but I’m going to need help stripping the registry. . .”

  All reasonable, perfectly reasonable.

  “There’s also the System to consider. I smashed the long-range comm-unit. Eily couldn’t make routine reports for the last couple of days. They’ll wonder why and send someone to investigate. They could be on their way right now. We have to get out of here.”

  We have to get out of here.

  She jerked, shaking her head at the echo of agreement that had come from nowhere. His voice had fallen into a soothing monotone. It was a common interrogation technique, meant to be non-threatening, to lull the subject into a trusting state. Some responded better to that than to shouts. People were hard-wired to want an authority figure’s approval.

  I’m the one with the weapon. Therefore she was the authority here, but her wound and the reconditioning were swiftly eroding her control.

  Another stim patch would have her bouncing off the bulkheads, but she was tempted. If her nerves were bad enough she could shoot Alard by accident.

  “Whether you trust me or not doesn’t matter,” he pressed. “We can strike a deal. I’ll hold up my side. You have my word on it.”

  Which, in Kella’s line of work, was worthless.

  Liability, logic insisted.

  And just as insistently, her emotion-based instincts whispered asset.

  “You said you were getting this ship?” she asked.

  “It’s my payment. I’m a damn good pilot-navigator.”

  That was one for the asset column. Until she got the neurons in her head unscrambled for good, she’d need someone in better shape than Farron to handle tech problems. She could run the rest herself, providing her instincts were still functioning and not jumbled up by the stim and wishful thinking.

  No. They’d knocked things around a bit inside, but she wasn’t that far gone. She would beat it. She’d beat them.

  Had beaten them. So far.

  How about just a little farther?

  Her stomach fluttered. Damned drugs.

  The monitor distracted her. Farron was no longer in view. The numbers at the bottom were zeros. So he was dead or out of range.

  “Tell you what,” said Alard, “there are restraints in the ship’s med-unit. Lock me down with those for the time being. Then you can look after your partner and talk things over. We have anti-virals; he can be fine again in just a day or two.”

  Very well. Decision time. But when it came down to it, she really had none to make. Without help, she’d sooner or later collapse just like Farron, then Alard, the System, or some goon from Riganth Prison would finish her off. It was just a question of who got to her first. With Alard there was the slim chance he might be telling the truth. A chance for her to return to her unit, a chance to get crucial deprogramming, a chance to feel in control again, to turn the illusion she projected into reality.

  There was a subtle shift in her. Alard went a fraction more alert, but she did nothing more than nod at the floor where she’d left the respirator. “Get that out to Farron. I’m sure he’ll find it useful, too.” She moved her gun muzzle away from him.

  Alard picked it up. He turned the mask over, watching her. “Why did you need it?”

  She gestured at Eily. “She was clever, but never really wanted to kill, not if she had to think about it first. She flooded the bridge with Somose gas to take me alive. If she’d had any sense, she’d have used tri-crynide instead. It’s faster and more final.”

  Alard shook his head. “Not Eily. I knew her. She wasn’t enough of a bitch to do it.”

  Kella looked him up and down in turn. Now was as good a time as any to make sure he fully understood her. She was almost smiling. “So very few of us are.”

  Alard smiled, nodding agreement. “I can see that.”

  Then he hurled the mask straight at her face. She swung the useless blaster back, but he was inside her guard, pushing, tackling, and they both hit the floor. The impact drove the breath from her, and he used his weight to pin her in place.

  She still could not trigger to fire, and it didn’t matter, he kept the muzzle shoved away and had a hand around her neck. He squeezed hard to cut the blood to her brain. Kella let go the blaster and clawed wildly at his eyes. He drew back and cracked his forehead against hers.r />
  Lightning flashed behind her eyelids, and she seemed to spin out of her body. Her vision blurred and went dark. Alard’s grip tightened. Desperate for air, she tried to break his hold, but her fingers had no strength. She slithered down into blackness. . .

  Where Alard gave a strange grunting scream and began convulsing on top of her as if in some disgusting parody of an orgasm. The pressure on her neck ceased. His weight suddenly lifted.

  She gasped and gagged and forced herself to take air, however much it hurt. Her blood-starved brain seemed to lurch inside her skull.

  Hearing returned first. She’d not realized it had gone until the pounding in her ears subsided.

  In its place was Farron’s hoarse and tired voice.

  “Answer me, woman,” he snarled. “Are you all right?”

  She blinked, trying to reclaim her vision. Some of the darkness ceded to blurs, and she recognized the shape of Farron’s head and shoulders in the swimming chaos. She groaned, and he could put whatever meaning he liked to that.

  Farron sat heavily down next to her. “Bloody hell, that’s done it,” he wheezed.

  She coughed and retched, her throat an agony. “Is he dead?”

  “For his sake he better be.”

  “Is he—”

  “Yes! He’s gone. You need a keeper, you know that? Didn’t your mum warn you to never trust pretty strangers?”

  “As opposed to homely friends?” she rasped. Where had that come from?

  “Wound me, why don’t you? I just saved your life, you silly bitch.”

  Right on all counts. What madness had taken her that she’d let her guard down so far? The stims, conditioning, wound, sheer fatigue or all four had turned her into an idiot.

  “Oh, I feel sick,” he moaned. “That was horrible. Don’t ask me to do that again. I’m not built for it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Killed him of course. I’ll need a dose of forget-me to get that out of my head. I don’t want to live with that.”

  “How?”

  “Eh?”