by David Ryker
“Iona!” Kergan snapped. “Well, shit.”
This is a failure, said the voice in Sloane. You are above this. Herding animals into a pen for random slaughter serves no purpose. The dead are of no consequence, you say, but they’re also of no use to you. And you know that he doesn’t see any of that.
Sloane breathed deeply. It was one of the things he enjoyed most about being inside a vessel: just the simple pleasure of cool air filling his lungs, helping to clarify his mind. It served to remind him of the terrible limitations of existing solely as thought. And it helped him to finally merge his own thoughts with those of this vessel. Whether they had truly melded into one, or whether the human had somehow influenced him, no longer mattered. Sloane was what he was, and his thoughts were his thoughts.
And his thoughts told him he had to stop this. All of this.
“You are a failure,” he said. “This must end.”
“Eh?” Kergan turned to him as if just noticing that he was in the room. “What are you talking about?”
“There are too many aberrations here. Too many failures. The situation is unpredictable.” His eyes narrowed. “You are unpredictable.”
Kergan frowned. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
“We cannot predict how many will die if we use the amplifier now.”
“How many do we need alive to accomplish the next stage of our mission? A dozen? Two dozen? Surely no more than that.”
Sloane felt the coldness in Kergan’s thoughts, and realized that he himself would have reacted the same way not that long ago. Extra bodies simply meant extra resources that were unnecessary. Yet now, here, he saw it as wasteful to not let them survive. He had truly changed.
We are one now, said the voice in his mind, and this time he couldn’t distinguish it as separate from himself. For better or worse, we are one.
“We could accomplish much if we worked together with them,” he said.
Kergan’s eyes widened. “What did you just say?”
“Think about it!” Sloane could sense his speech patterns changing as more of his vessel’s thoughts merged with his own. “Two species coming together to share their knowledge! This vessel has insights that were entirely new to me. And the brown man, Schuster, can imagine things that we cannot. They are capable of much more than we could have believed.”
“No,” said Kergan, frowning. “No, I think you had it right all along. Full attenuation is the only way to end this.”
Sloane felt something new rise in him. That’s called resolve, his companion explained to him. You’ve decided to fight for what you know is right instead of doing what he says.
It was a good feeling, this resolve. He liked it.
“I can’t allow that,” Sloane said.
Kergan ignored him. “Is the amplifier ready?”
“What? Yes, but—”
“I grow tired of this conversation with you.” Kergan strode over to a table where one of the guards had left his shock baton and grabbed it. “It never goes anywhere. We just talk in circles. It’s that kind of thinking that led us to where we are now.”
The companion in Sloane’s mind tried to warn him, but all Sloane registered was the stab of panic in his belly. It was something new, this feeling, like resolve. He didn’t like it nearly as much.
Watch out—
But it was too late. The baton glowed and crackled as Kergan swung it with both hands like a batter at the plate. When it connected with the side of Sloane’s head, it let out a cracking sound that was part electricity finding a means of escape, and part skull bone being fractured.
“If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself,” Kergan griped, but his voice was fading, both in Sloane’s ears and in his mind. The last thing he saw was Kergan picking up the amplifier.
Then all was cold darkness.
39
The empty corridors echoed with the footfalls of the six last hopes for humanity as they bolted their way toward the hangar bays. First stop was the observation deck that overlooked all six bays and the Rafts inside.
“We need that hatch open, Dev,” said Quinn.
“Shit!” Maggott cried. “We need a guard’s handprint n’ ret’nal scan to get through the fookin’ door! In all the shite around us, I forgot!”
Ulysses slammed a fist against the wall. “Stupid!” he barked. “We was just here, man! I forgot, too!”
They came to a halt outside the hatch and Quinn turned to Chelsea.
“You’re our only shot, Doc. None of us is going to open this thing.”
She looked at Schuster, who shrugged. “I can’t open it with the wristband alone, that much I know.”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes before placing her palm on the scanning plate next to the door.
The next second ticked by like a geological age before a green light ran the length of the plate. Glaciers melted during the next second before the red beam flashed from the retinal scanner.
“First step complete,” said Quinn.
Chelsea leaned forward and positioned her eye where it needed to be. Civilizations rose and fell while the beam read the unique patterns in her eyeball’s anatomy.
The green light came on over the hatch and the door slid aside.
Bishop grinned. “Maybe somebody is watching over us.”
“Or mebbe not,” said Maggott, raising his hands.
Quinn saw the reason why a moment later, when Sloane’s four tech drones appeared in the corridor on the other side of the door, each holding a shock rifle.
“Orders?” said Schuster, following Maggott’s lead of raising his hands.
The others did the same, as did Quinn. The drones hadn’t spoke—hell, had barely moved—during their excursion to the surface. And they really didn’t have any other options.
“You know the situation best, Dev,” he said. “What’s your take?”
“Sloane said incapable of independent thought,” said Schuster. “They’re controlled by an aspect of Sloane’s mind. Fortune favors the foolish.”
“If that was true, the Jarheads would have won the lottery four times over by now,” offered Bishop.
Quinn grinned in spite of himself. “Volunteers?”
Before anyone could speak, Ulysses launched himself at the lead tech, plucking the rifle from his hands and swinging it level with the man’s head. It connected with the force of a ground rule double, knocking the tech backward and down to the floor. The other three turned as one to face him, but he already had the rifle pointed back at them. Three quick shots later and all three men were on the floor, twitching.
“Volunteers,” he sneered as he headed toward the stairs that led to the observation deck.
Quinn nodded to himself. That way worked, too. Ulysses was turning out to be a capable soldier himself, even if he’d never had formal training.
They followed him up and Quinn scanned the bays from above. The Raft they had taken to the surface was in the fourth one, though all the others looked ready to go, as well.
“I don’t know near enough about these things, Dev. Are we going to make it to Earth on one?”
“They didn’t have that kind of range before, but they may now that Sloane has modified them.”
“Not that we have a choice,” said Bishop. “It’s a Raft or nothing.”
“We might be able to rendezvous with the supply ship that’s on its way,” said Chelsea. “At least we know it can make it back to Earth. It’s some hope, anyway.”
“Some’s better’n none,” said Maggott.
Quinn pointed down to the fourth bay. “Might as well take the one we brought in, then. Seeing as how we have so many good memories tied to it.”
Chelsea and the Jarheads chuckled as they headed back down the stairs, but Ulysses just shook his head.
“Y’all are crazy as shithouse rats,” he muttered.
The Jarheads rounded up environment suits for all of them, then all the oxygen tanks and supply crates they could find in the ba
y, and loaded them into the cargo hold of the Raft.
“We’re going to have to ration,” Quinn said when he saw the skeptical look on Chelsea’s face. He knew the odds of them being able to live on what they were taking with them were long.
Face facts, Quinn, he told himself. We’re putting all our chips on double zero here.
“Pirating the supply ship is starting to sound like an actual plan now,” she said.
Quinn grinned. “You’d get a field commission for that kind of thinking if we were still in the war.”
Schuster checked his wristband. “We’ve been away from the fight in the tube for almost ten minutes, and the drones saw us, so Sloane and Kergan know we’re here. I don’t think we have a lot of time before someone else comes here for us.”
“You sure you c’n fly this mule?” asked Maggott.
“They practically fly themselves. The only thing that requires any thought is maneuvering, but if we set a course for Earth, it should just head in that direction. We switch it off when we arrive.”
“From yuir lips t’God’s ear, mate.”
“I don’t know what all Sloane did to it, but I suppose I can figure it out along the way. We’ll have time.”
Assuming we actually make it out of here, thought Quinn.
With that, they donned their environment suits and boarded the Raft, closing the cargo hatch behind them. Maggott busied himself stowing their supplies in the magnetic storage chests in the cargo hold while the rest went up to the bridge. Quinn was unfamiliar with it, since the Jarheads had always spent their trips in the cargo area. In fact, as Schuster pointed out, since the ships all but flew themselves, even the SkyLode staff rarely spent time there.
Schuster pointed out a console below a monitor showing the view in front of them—currently a metal wall. He manipulated the controls and began the process of entering their flight plan.
“I think that’s it,” he said when he was done. “Here goes nothing.”
Then something happened. Quinn suddenly had the sensation that his brain was somehow moving inside his skull.
40
Kergan was still staring at the monitors when Iona Ridley arrived back on the bridge.
“Sir,” she said, still panting from her exertions, and from the excitement they had inspired in her. “You needed me?”
He turned to look at her. The face that had elicited so many erections in this vessel was now spattered scarlet with the blood of slain inmates. Her smile, though still as radiant as ever, was truly insane now. And as anyone from Kergan’s home in the Michigan woods could tell you, once a hunting dog had tasted the blood of prey, it could never be fully trusted again.
“Come here, Iona,” he sighed, motioning her to join him.
She passed by a gibbering Sean Farrell still sitting on the floor. When she joined Kergan, she caught sight of Sloane’s body, face down on the floor near the far wall. Blood was pooling on the steel floor around his skull.
“What happened?”
Kergan smiled gently. “It’s of no consequence. Listen, Iona, I wanted you here with me for a reason. I’m going to use the amplifier.”
He saw the pain in her eyes and, amazingly, felt a tug of regret inside him. Was it real, or was it just the Kergan part of him not wanting to give up his plaything? Was it possible they actually cared for this creature?
Ultimately, it didn’t matter. What must happen would happen.
“Sir,” she whimpered. “What if—what if I don’t survive?”
He sighed. “I knew this was going to come eventually. We couldn’t attenuate everyone individually. You all fight too hard for that. The amplifier was the only way to do it all at once. Unfortunately, that means you’ll all be affected. There’s no way to shield you from it.”
“But—”
He put a finger to her lips. “Shhh. If you survive, I will have complete control over you. It’s a connection stronger than anything in the universe. I will become so much a part of you that you will cease to exist. Your thoughts will be my thoughts.”
Her expression lifted with hope at that. “Honest?”
“Yes. Of course, if you die, who knows? Your species seems to have no end of theories about what happens to you after your brainwaves cease. All our knowledge says that existence simply ends, but that’s probably not very reassuring, is it?”
“Uhnghabalaba!” the warden cried from the floor.
“Yes, Sean, I’ll miss you too,” said Kergan. “You especially, since you’re of much more use to me than Iona. So let’s all think happy thoughts that you survive.”
All the talk seemed to be too much for Ridley to process, so Kerhan simply put an arm over her shoulder and turned her toward the monitors. By his count, there were about seventy inmates and fifteen guards still alive in the tube. A dozen or so of the prisoners were trying to reach the exits, but Kergan had sealed them when he realized that the Jarheads had made it to one of the Rafts. He had been too distracted by his tiff with Sloane to really take control of the situation.
For a moment, he considered walking over to Sloane’s corpse and kicking it in the head, but then thought better of it. Wasn’t worth the effort.
Instead, he placed his hand on the amplifier. As soon as he did, it thrummed to life again, as it had under Sloane’s attentions. Only now, the frequency was low, almost infrasonic, and Kergan could see the hair standing up on the back of Iona’s neck.
“Sir,” she whined. “Sir, I don’t like that. It scares me.”
He smiled. “Fear is of no consequence. My species must reproduce. Yours will be subjugated. All will be as it must be.”
The air around them began to shimmer as the amplifier reached its full power levels. As it did, Kergan could feel his mind opening to those of the others on the station. The fear. The hatred. The anger.
If only I’d fully realized, he thought. I would have done this earlier.
On the monitor, motion in the tube began to slow as the attenuation wave took effect. Then it stilled, until finally there was only a crowd of inanimate bodies floating in space. Kergan couldn’t tell the live ones from the dead anymore. He supposed he would know soon enough.
Iona Ridley’s shoulders quivered under his protective arm. She was weeping.
“I’m so scared, sir,” she said again.
Kergan pulled her closer to him, wondering what it was about her that had made her so passionately violent earlier, and yet pathetically fearful now. He supposed he would never know. That made him mildly sad.
“It will all be over soon,” he said, and pulled her mouth to his. The Kergan side of him unconsciously raised their right hand to her left breast and squeezed it through her jumpsuit.
Then she went limp in his arms, and he dropped her to the floor.
Attenuation achieved.
41
“Oh, shit,” said Bishop. “Anyone else having massive déjà vu right now?”
“Christ, it’s gonna happen again,” Maggott moaned, and the fear in his voice alarmed Quinn. “I cannae go through it again!”
A quick glance at Chelsea and Ulysses confirmed that they were all experiencing the same thing. Whatever Sloane had been talking about on their trip back from the surface was about to happen.
“It’s now or never, Dev,” said Quinn.
“Yessir.” Schuster manipulated the controls and the hangar door behind the ship opened onto the vast ocean of space beyond. The process took a few seconds, then the Raft slid backward on its mooring rails until it was outside the door. A few moments later and it was floating freely. They all activated the magnets in their boots as gravity let go.
Thank God, Quinn thought. I can barely tell which end is up.
“Ah, God, it’s getting’ worse,” said Maggott, holding his massive head in his hands.
“Hold on, big guy,” Chelsea soothed. “We’re almost there.”
“Any way you could speed things up, Dev?”
“Sorry, sir, it—” He paused.
“It what?”
Schuster didn’t answer. Instead he pulled a lever on the side of the panel where the controls sat. In response, the panel split and pulled away as a console rose in the space that was revealed between the two halves. It was a pilot’s joystick.
Schuster strapped himself into the seat behind the controls and gripped the stick, his eyes on the screen in front of him.
“Dev!” Quinn called. “What the hell is going on?”
Still no answer. On the screen, Oberon One loomed in front of them as it always had, but outside the porthole, Quinn could see familiar shimmers emanating from the station, as if the coldness of space had suddenly heated to the temperature of summer asphalt.
“Dev—”
“I’ve taken over manual control of the ship, sir.” Schuster gripped the stick, his eyes fixed intently on the screen. “We have to outrun that wave, and we can’t do it on the programmed plan.”
“You read my mind,” said Quinn.
“Not yours, sir.”
Quinn didn’t think to ask Schuster what he meant, or how he’d known the Raft even had manual flight controls, until later. Right now, he was concerned with trajectory.
“That wave is—”
“Moving horizontally,” Schuster finished for him. “Yes sir, I know.”
“Then that means there’s only one way to outrun it.” The thought, along with the effects they were feeling from the wave, made his stomach flip.
“Yessir. We have to fly straight toward the surface.”
“What?” Ulysses yelped, eyes wide. “Are you crazy?”
“Can’t be helped,” said Quinn. “We can’t go up without flying through it, so we have to go down.”
“A little advice,” Bishop said through gritted teeth. “You should just accept the fact that we’re crazy and move on with your life.”
“Hang on,” said Schuster.
With that, the Raft’s attitude tilted forty-five degrees as he hit the thrusters and increased their speed. Outside the porthole, the station tilted. The shimmering waves leveled out on the horizon until they finally disappeared into the space above them.