by Rachel Aukes
Whatever he put inside her did strange things to her body. She hadn’t gone to the bathroom in what had to be months. She hadn’t bathed, yet she didn’t feel dirty, though sometimes she felt like invisible ants were crawling over her skin.
Anything he said, her body obeyed like she was a puppet on strings. She hated it, especially when he made her stand completely still while a drone poked her with somewhat normal-sized needles. The needles hurt, and the drone didn’t seem to care.
At least the voice didn’t make her do things all the time. She spent most of her time by herself. She’d walk around, dance, sing, and do anything to stay sane, all the time ignoring the creepy bat-drones lining the walls. But every time, after an hour or so of her activity, the voice would command her to be still. She wondered if she annoyed him, which made her want to sing even louder the next time.
She must’ve really irritated the voice, because he started making her sleep nearly all of the time. She didn’t mind so much, because she didn’t dream when she was ordered to sleep, and it made the time pass by faster.
But then her body started to change.
At first, she didn’t really notice anything, just a misstep here and there. One day, she went to stand, and she found that she couldn’t until she concentrated really hard. When she figured out what was happening, she started to get scared again. Whatever the drone had put in her was slowly taking over her body. She’d seen a movie about people like that called zombies. They were mean and horrible and wanted to eat brains, and she became terrified that she would want to eat brains, too. She became so scared that the voice made her go to sleep for a very long time.
Macy knew it’d been a long time, because when she woke, she felt almost like she was in someone else’s body. It was scary, but her body didn’t tense with fear, so she couldn’t fidget, let alone cry. Maybe she was a zombie, but she didn’t crave brains. Maybe that wouldn’t happen until she saw another person. Maybe she was a ghost, but she thought ghosts could fly, and she was still very much stuck in her own body.
Three mealtimes later, her body no longer listened to her. She hated it, even begged the voice to tell her to sleep, and it did…sometimes. Other times, it let her simply stand in place like she was some kind of living statue. It scared her so much, but the voice didn’t seem to care.
When she was stuck as a statue, she daydreamed that she was a galactic space hero—kind of like Punch as a marshal—and she traveled the galaxy, taking down evil aliens. The daydreams often led back to her being captured, though at least she was a hero in her dreams, and she broke free and brought the supervillain to justice.
When she returned to reality, she always found herself still imprisoned. She thought all the time about ways to break free or outsmart the voice. She’d have to take on the drone army, unarmed, defeat the man behind the voice, and get off the ship. Unfortunately, none of those would be easy when she couldn’t even speak, let alone move.
Macy awoke one time to find a space suit hanging on the wall across from her. She could escape the ship! She stood—her body listened to her for the first time in ages—and she walked over to it. She tentatively reached out and touched the suit.
It was real!
She hadn’t felt anything other than the cold metal wall and her own skin and clothes for so long that she began to think nothing existed outside her tiny, confined prison where evil drones lurked around the edges. She tugged the suit off the wall, grabbed the helmet, and sat. She spent minutes, maybe hours, holding the suit in her lap as if it were a doll, caressing the smooth fabric. She could use it to escape, especially now that her body seemed to listen. All she had to do was find an exit.
Put on the suit.
“Where am I going?” she asked as her body immediately did as commanded.
Secure the suit seals at your neckline.
She didn’t know how, but her fingers went to her neck and worked expertly at fastening the helmet to the rest of the suit.
Walk to the airlock.
“I don’t know where it is,” she said, but she walked down the center of the room, between the drones, and to the back wall. The wall slid open, and she stepped into a small square airlock. The wall slid shut behind her, and before her was what looked to be an outer door. A wind pulled at her, and she heard a sucking sound. She inhaled deeply, somehow knowing that the only air she could now breathe was in her suit.
“Where am I going?” she asked and then stopped. She’d thought she was speaking, but her lips hadn’t moved. “Hello?” she said, and she realized she couldn’t hear her own voice. She knew then that the only reason she’d been able to move was because the voice allowed it. A sadness fell over her as she recognized that she no longer had any control over her own body anymore. She stood facing the airlock door, so close to an escape, yet she was as imprisoned as she’d been in the gray room. She really was a ghost or a zombie or, even worse, a zombie ghost.
Chapter Six
Punch finished pulling on his space suit and set the helmet on the floor next to him as he took a seat. He scanned the entire sector that contained the coordinates. He’d fudged his estimated time en route in his message by two hours to give him time to make sure he wasn’t flying blindly into a trap. When he arrived, he realized that he should’ve added another hour.
Beyond him, the asteroid belt continued farther than he could see. The rocks screwed with his scans, making it impossible for his scanner to identify any ships that could be lying in wait. Instead, he had to visually inspect the coordinates and the asteroids currently in the vicinity.
A ship emerged from behind an asteroid and flew toward him. Punch noticed it at the same time his scanner picked it up. It was identical to the ship destroyed by the Chinese. No wonder Punch had mixed up the two. Whoever was blackmailing him likely had a lot of money to pull it off. With money like that, they could’ve had an entire fleet for all Punch knew.
“Shit,” he muttered as it approached.
They were already there. He realized they had probably already been in position when they first contacted him. He scowled, pulled out the communicator, and typed a message.
>> I’m arriving at the coordinates now. You better have Macy ready.
>> She is in a space suit and standing in the airlock. Transmit the data to 3874.2894.11.
Punch scowled. Each tap on his screen became harder:
>> I’m not sending the data until I have her safe on board.
>> Negative. You will transmit the data. Upon receipt, we will send out your daughter.
Their airlock door opened. The lights glowed around a single, small shape standing in the opening. He scrambled to zoom in his ship’s camera on the shape. It was impossible to make out her face through the reflective helmet, but Punch knew it had to be Macy.
He held up the data card, alternating his focus from it to his daughter and back again.
All they wanted were a few data files in exchange for Macy. He had no idea who they were and what they wanted with the data. It was wrong to give it to them, but he had no choice.
He plugged the data card into the panel and copied the files onto his system. He then sent half of the files to the address they’d given him.
He grabbed the communicator and typed a message in a rush:
>> You get half of the data now. You get the other half when I have Macy back alive.
When no response came for a full minute, Punch began to worry. He lifted the communicator to send another message when it chimed.
>> Unacceptable. We must have all the data. We will execute your daughter in ten seconds if we do not have all the files.
Punch dropped the communicator, fisted his hands, and then sent the remaining files. “Cock suckers,” he muttered.
The communicator chimed, and he picked it up to read the incoming message.
>> Files received. Our business is concluded. Your daughter is being released.
Punch saw movement at the airlock. Someone or something shoved Macy
out, and she tumbled through space toward him. He grabbed his helmet, jumped to his feet, and raced to his airlock. The instant the airlock depressurized, he opened the outer door. He grabbed a handle near the doorway and pulled himself around to face a compartment in the hull. He opened it and pulled out a large carabiner connected to a tether line. He clipped it to the belt on his suit and then initiated maximum thrust power to shoot toward his daughter. She’d been shoved toward the High Spirit, so he didn’t have far to go. The gray ship behind her had already closed its airlock and was likely getting ready to depart.
Thirty feet.
He looked away from the ship to slow his speed and adjust his trajectory.
Twenty feet.
He cut all forward propulsion.
Ten feet.
He tapped small bursts to improve his alignment.
Five feet.
He reached out.
Zero feet.
He collided with his daughter harder than expected. He wrapped his arms and legs around her to keep her from bouncing out of his grasp. They tumbled, and he had to use directional bursts from his suit to steady them. Once he had them stopped, he was able to look at his daughter.
Macy’s body seemed limp, but she looked up at him. He belted out a sound of relief at seeing her alive. “Hey, pumpkin.” He knew she couldn’t hear him—their suit radios would be tuned in on different frequencies, but he couldn’t help himself. Macy was alive and in his arms. He squeezed her to him for a long embrace before fastening the carabiner on his belt onto her belt as well.
He glanced at the other ship, expecting to see it moving away. Instead, he saw a photon cannon repositioning toward them.
He tensed and enveloped his daughter in his arms.
Lightning flashed as a series of photon bursts rained out from the gray ship and down on the High Spirit, knocking it back. Sparks flew from the ship where the beams had penetrated the hull in several places. Explosions erupted from within.
The slack in the tether quickly disappeared. Punch reached to release the carabiner. Pain shot through his forefinger as they were spun around and yanked toward the burning High Spirit. He disentangled his hand and saw that his finger was bent at an unnatural angle. Wincing, he turned back to his ship. Explosions continued to erupt. Each burst of fire was smothered within seconds as it flared into space. Punch knew that fires would only burn within sealed areas of the ship that contained oxygen, until it was consumed or vented into the vacuum of space.
The tether line was pulling them back to the ship and to its fires. He checked to see Macy’s eyes were closed. He jostled her so that he held her in his right arm, careful to hold his broken finger out, while he jiggled the carabiner’s clasp with his left hand. He eventually opened it and threw off the line.
He glanced back at the gray ship to find its cannon had been retracted, and it was now turning away from them. He scowled.
The bastards had destroyed the High Spirit and were leaving the two of them for dead.
The number one cause of death for space travelers was exposure. Guess he’d prove that he was no exception. He held Macy to him. “I’m so sorry, pumpkin.”
More lightning flashed.
He looked up to see several magnetic projectiles had hit the gray ship. He tapped bursts from his suit’s propulsion system to see another ship racing toward them. It had the same shade of gray hull, but that was where any resemblance ended. The Javelin continued to fire from its photon cannon and rail gun.
The other ship pulled off and launched itself into the asteroid belt.
He grinned and let out a whoop. He was going to kiss that nosy hacker—and the rest of her team—for following him.
Chapter Seven
Vantage-Zulu-Seven-Seven-Four raced away from the newcomer rather than staying and fighting. It preferred to fight—it desired to kill every human it came across for the murder of its comrade. But Vantage Core had been explicit in their orders: do not instigate war; gathering information is the priority. And so the probe hadn’t killed the human outright when he’d come to retrieve his daughter. Disabling his ship ensured that the pair would’ve died without the probe being directly responsible. That plan was nearly as satisfying as using the humans for target practice.
The probe’s plan would’ve led to a sufficient ending if the second ship hadn’t arrived and opened fire. The probe had considered returning fire despite Core’s orders. Humans had seen it, which meant they would tell others. To Vantage-Zulu-Seven-Seven-Four, that risk alone would’ve been more important than the data it now carried. But it would not question Core’s orders. Vantage thrived because they worked together. If each probe began disregarding orders, their species would spiral into what it saw as akin to how organix lived now: chaotic degradation.
In addition to following Core’s orders, the probe hadn’t fired at the newcomer because of its familiarity. The material used for the ship’s hull was clearly Vantage-produced; however, that was where the resemblance ended. Had humans stripped a probe’s skin and used it to wrap one of their ships? Or, worse, had humans managed to overwrite a probe’s protocols and convert it into a transport?
Dread entered the probe’s protocols at the thought of being controlled by an organix. If the newcomer was a probe, Vantage-Zulu-Seven-Seven-Four felt pity at what the probe must’ve gone through. But protocols stated that any probe facing eminent capture should self-destruct. Therefore, if a probe allowed itself to be commandeered by organix, it deserved any tortures brought down upon it.
Vantage-Zulu-Seven-Seven-Four flew into the asteroid belt, veering closer to asteroids to use the rocks as camouflage as it zoomed away from the humans. The other ship wasn’t yet giving chase and instead stopped by the disabled craft and two humans in space suits. The probe found that behavior odd, as it would certainly give chase to prey it hunted. Humans numbered in the trillions and outnumbered mechanix, so it made little sense for a crew to break giving chase to reclaim two of their kind. Though, the probe had relied on that same lack of logic to acquire technical data from the human.
Humans had shown themselves to be one of the more illogical organix species, with their emotions often driving decisions. That was why Vantage Core listed them as the greatest risk. After all, how do you fight against something that acts erratically and irrational?
The other ship still hadn’t given chase, so the probe slowed to give itself extra time to avoid the tiny rocks scattered throughout the asteroid belt. It was glad to be done carrying the human passenger—it was a probe, not a transport. Carrying a passenger that required atmospheric conditions was a hassle, though it admitted that it savored the chance to conduct a nanite experiment on the human. The nanites had exceeded all goal parameters, and it was looking forward to sharing its findings with Vantage Core.
It felt relief as the beltway appeared on its navigational grid. The artificial wormholes created by Vantage Core were one of Vantage’s greatest accomplishments. The probe would be safe within the beltway and then it would be home. Then it would request an assignment that didn’t involve humans.
Chapter Eight
“You looked like you could use a lift,” Throttle said when the inner airlock door opened.
Punch stepped between Throttle and Finn and headed straight for his cabin on board the Javelin. She didn’t expect a response—she wouldn’t have been able to hear him through his helmet, anyway, and he seemed focused on the person he held in his arms.
“I’ll get the med kit,” Finn said and took off without waiting for a response.
Throttle followed Punch into his cabin, where he laid down the unmoving person. Throttle realized how small the other person was—a small child, most likely—and she noticed the long hair and feminine features of a young girl through the helmet face shield. Her space suit was a generic, off-the-rack version used by Hiraethian colonists. Punch rushed to remove her helmet, struggled, and Throttle noticed that his hand was injured.
She stepped in and brushed his han
ds away. “I’ve got it.”
He let her take over as he removed his helmet.
The girl’s helmet twisted off easily enough, and Throttle set it down.
Punch sat on the bed next to the girl. “Is she okay?” he asked as he gingerly worked at removing his gloves.
The girl had shown no signs of consciousness during the jostling, and Throttle wondered if she had been drugged or was badly injured. “I don’t know.”
As soon as his hands were free of the gloves, he cupped the girl’s face. She bore the same dark hair and Asian features as Punch, and Throttle then understood why Punch had gotten himself into his current predicament.
“Macy? Can you hear me?” he asked her gently.
There was no response.
Finn hastened into the small cabin. The three of them and the bed nearly filled the open space. “Move,” he said to Punch and nudged him off the bed.
Punch scowled but stood while Finn pulled out a handheld medical scanner from the medical kit he carried. Beginning at her head, he ran the scanner over the girl’s body. As soon as he’d finished, Punch spoke. “What’s it say?”
Finn frowned as he read the results on the screen. “It says she’s fine. Perfect health. No signs of injuries. No apparent drugs in her system.”
“She’s fucking unconscious—she can’t be fine,” Punch snarled and yanked the scanner out of Finn’s hands. He ran the scanner over her. When he read the results, he tossed the scanner back to Finn. “It’s busted. There’s no way she’s fine.” He looked from Throttle to Finn. “Run a blood test.”