Amish Vampires in Space (52 page)

Seal frowned. “I won’t require anyone to act against their conscience. I can’t force you to fight, obviously, but I hope some will go with me. I
need
someone to go with me. I am stepping outside of my comfort zone here, since I’m not exactly a military commander. So I’m hoping some of you will bend, as well.”

Singer raised her hand. “I’ll go.”

Seal’s heart warmed. Singer might be the first
real
person he’d ever met. The first he knew he could count on. “Thank you, but I’d rather you stay here. Somewhere where there’s only one entrance to defend.”

Singer’s face was stoic. Either she was angry that he was a chauvinist, or grateful that he was. But her expression wasn’t telling. She only shook her head. “I
need
to go, Seal. You’re forgetting the scraddle. I know how to run it. No one else here does. We may need to get a message out… I can even fix it if I have to.”

Seal shook his head. “If I make it, I can have you join me then.”

Now
she looked angry. “Make it? On your own? No. I’m coming.”

“I could order you to stay. You still work for the Guild.”

“I’m going.”

Seal tried not to smile, but it was difficult. “I appreciate it, really—”

Jebediah stepped forward, head bowed and hands behind his head. “I will go along.”

Seal frowned. “I need someone who can use a weapon, Jebediah.” He nodded at Jeb’s wife, who stood behind him now. “And you have a wife and child to look out for. Can I count on you?”

“I have given it a lot of thought,” Jeb said. “I’m the one who brought my friends to this. I know that if I take up the sword, it will mean…” He sighed and met Seal’s gaze. “But I will do what I have to do now. To save as many as I still can.”

A snort came from the portion of the circle to Seal’s right. Samuel was standing there. “Are you beyond redemption now, Jebediah?” he asked. “Will you take another step toward perdition? Kill your fellow man?”

Jeb looked Samuel in the eyes. “I have always valued your guidance, Bishop. Always respected your position.”

“And yet—”

Jeb raised a hand. “And yet, you’ve already said I am lost, so there
are
no more steps toward perdition, ya? If you are correct, then what I do now doesn’t matter for my salvation.” He glanced at Sarah. “So if nothing matters, I’m going to help the people I care about. Because I know that
that
, at least, is correct.”

Samuel’s face showed sadness. He slowly shook his head.

Darly stood to Seal’s left. “They aren’t your fellow man anymore,” she snapped. “Not even close.”

Samuel’s eyes hardened. “Does that mean they don’t have a soul?” he said. “That the Lord has no use for them now?”

Deacon Mark nodded. “If what you’ve told us is correct, Miss Darly, they are as much victims as we all are. They are controlled by evil. Scriptures teach that all are fallen. All prone to evil. On the edge of its control.”

Greels was to Darly’s left, with Tenra cozied up next to him. “These people aren’t just prone,” he said. “They’re evil outright.”

Two young men raised their hands. One was tall and red-haired, the other short with dark hair—and both had only the beginnings of beards. “We will go with you,” the taller one said.

Samuel looked aghast. “What is this now?” he said. “More of our youth lost?”

The shorter youth shrugged. “We are both of age for
Rumspringa.
It is permissible.”

Samuel scowled “The running around? We haven’t followed that custom for decades.” A head shake. “This is the penalty for not being more strict with our kinner.”

The taller boy nodded. “Our parents are among the others. We have no one now. We would like to help you.”

Seal was at a loss. He looked at Jebediah, hoping for some input. Jeb said nothing, though, instead looking intensely ahead. His wife had tears in her eyes. Seal shook his head. This was quite the team he was building.

“Can the three of you use these weapons?” Seal said, indicating the pile on the floor.

“Ya,” they all said. “We are hunters.”

Seal nodded, looked around the room. “Is that it, then?”

Nobody answered.

“Greels?” Seal said.

“I want to go after Congi,” Greels said. “I owe him.”

Seal shook his head. “Out of the question. We can’t lose a good man on a witch hunt. He could be anywhere.” He waved a hand at the others. “I’d rather you stay here. Guard those that are left.”

“Me and the Amish?” Greels said. “Are you kidding?”

“Think of it as guarding the women, then,” Seal said. “You seem to be pretty good at that.”

Darly put up a hand. “There may be another option, Captain.”

“We
have
to take back the bubble,” Seal said. “Without it, everything is lost.”

Darly nodded. “Yes, but Tenra and I have a few theories. Things that might help.”

“Tenra?”

The young lady looked sheepishly at Darly. “Well, first there’s sunlight, Captain. The vampires would be hurt by it.”

“You mean, because of the bat genes? I’m aware that bats sleep during the day. I didn’t know that daylight hurt them, though. I figured they might get groggy, at best.”

“Yes,” Singer said. “Night or day, it would be nice if our vampires slept at the same time. But we don’t have time to establish a regular sleep cycle. And we’re on a ship.”

Tenra nodded. “A bat during the day is primarily inhibited by the overabundance of light. Their eyes are made for darkness, not for daylight. So, yes, they’d be groggy. Confused. And depending on the symbiote, we might get that behavior in the vampires as well. However, there’s another factor.”

Seal wore a watch on his wrist now. A way to know precisely how much time they had left. He felt the weight of it, even without looking at it. “We don’t have much time,” he said. “My group…we need to get going.”

“I understand.” Tenra looked at Darly nervously.

Darly frowned. “What Tenra is trying to explain is that these vampires have higher than normal levels of a metalloid in them. Something I think the symbiote uses for energy and respiration. It is a naturally occurring substance: arsenic. And w—”

“Wait, that’s rat poison!” Greels said. “These things have poison blood too?”

Darly shook her head quickly. “I don’t think so. The compound lines the organs. It is why I couldn’t view them with my scanner.”

“We still have a schedule,” Seal said. “Let’s try to be brief.”

Darly huffed. “As I was saying, that level of arsenic should have another side effect. It would make the creatures’ skin extremely sensitive to the sun. In humans, just a small amount of arsenic increases the chance of skin lesions by a large amount. But at these levels, and with a higher metabolism—”

“The results of exposure would be astounding,” Tenra said.

“Fire and brimstone,” Darly said, smiling.

Greels rumpled his brow. “So we, what, turn up all the lights on the ship?”

The override controls for those would be in the bubble, as well. “Would that work?” Seal asked.

Darly frowned. “Not the same. There are no ultraviolet rays in the ship lights. Too harmful for us.”

“But isn’t some of it helpful?” Greels asked, looking at Tenra. “Produces vitamins or something?”

Tenra nodded. “Medium wave UV radiation, UVB, is helpful, yes, in small doses.”

“But we supplement the food for that requirement,” Darly said. “Believe me, there is no UVB in our lights. And the UVB is what we need here.”

Seal glanced at the weapons again. Thought of their upcoming assault. The schedule. “So we need a sun then. Fine, plenty of those out there. But even if we had one—”

Greels’s eyes went wide. “We can expose any bay we want!” He looked at Tenra. “You’re like a dream, young lady.”

“I thought about that,” Seal said. “We
could
open Bay 17 up. Expose them all to space. However—”

“Some of our people are still in there!” Deacon Mark said. “Some are being held against their will!”

Seal nodded. “Yes, I would like to avoid more loss of life. And cargo.”

Greels paced away from the group excitedly. “No, don’t you see? We could leave the atmospherics in place, but open the overheads like when we are using the smartloaders. Let this UVB through. Give the bad ones a sunburn.”

“Except the bad ones are all over this ship now,” Seal said. “And not every room opens to space.”

“There are still some details to work out, of course,” Darly said. “But if we have a little more time—”

Seal held up his left hand, the same one the watch was attached to. “We don’t have more time.” He gave Darly an apologetic look. “It is worth considering as a final resort—”

“But it may not have to be that, sir,” Darly said. “There’s something else I’m working on.”

“You can tell me about it after we’ve regained control. We can’t open any exterior doors until we’ve done so anyway.” He tapped the com unit at his hip. “We’re still able to communicate. You can talk to us at any time.”

Darly nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Seal scanned the faces of his volunteers, and then walked to the pile of weapons and selected a crossbow. Hefted it. It felt good. Solid and real. Like
doing
something. “We need to go.”

Sarah followed Jebediah to the door of the
microbay. He turned to look at her, studying her face, touching her chin, before finally pulling her close. When they disengaged he looked at her stomach and stroked it lovingly. “Take care of him,” he said, smiling.

Sarah nodded, wiped at her eyes. “Nothing will be the same, will it?”

He shook his head, fought back his own emotion. “I have sinned much, Sarah. Forgive me. I am not a perfect man.”

“You did what you thought right, Jebediah. You always have.”

He nodded. “I would rather do what the Lord thought right, but it is too late for that now.”

Sarah shook her head. “Nee…”

Jebediah nodded again and turned to join the others, who were standing a short distance off. Singer and the captain both had crossbows in their hands and satchels of bolts on their backs. The two young men had bows and quivers of arrows. They’d chosen the weapons. Said they had enjoyed hunting on Alabaster with them. Jeb felt pain at the mention of their former planet. If it wasn’t for him, they’d be hunting there still.

Jeb took only a sharpened staff as his weapon. If he was forced to kill anything, he didn’t want it to be at a distance. Abstracting sin was an easy way to continue it, he knew. To forget. He wouldn’t forget.

The mere act of holding a weapon in his hands seemed to cement something, though. A fundamental change. A reinterpretation of Gelassenheit. One that permitted both passive and active. Absolved both servant
and
soldier.

Or condemned both.

They moved silently up the hallway, and through a series of turns, ending finally in the long slide named “blue.” They entered at a point past the large bays. Jeb didn’t mention the horde of animals he and Singer had encountered on the slides previously, but they exchanged a knowing look as they boarded. Held their weapons closer. On the slide they “flided” again, everyone moving as fast as possible. For their part, the boys seemed to enjoy this. Running like children in a field. Hands wide, as if touching the tassels of every head of grain. Smiling.

Again, Jeb felt sorrow.

When they approached a stop marked “Locomotive” the captain held up a hand, slowed, and when the transparency ended, led them out onto the stop.

“Why are we stopping here, Seal?” Singer asked.

“The next stop is too close to the bubble,” he said. “I’d rather not step off right into a room of them.”

Singer nodded, and they exited the landing to the system of passages below. They walked in silence for many yards, taking one turn after another. The halls were all shades of blue, lit by dimly glowing overhead lights. It was enough to see by, but just barely. Like walking with only the light of the Nebbit in the sky.

“Is it always this dark?” one of the young men asked.

“No,” Seal said, and nothing more.

Jeb gripped his staff tighter, held it point-up ahead of him. They reached a set of double doors to their right. There was a square lit pad to the right of the doors. Seal waved a card-like object over it and it turned green. The door made a heavy
cha-chunk
sound as it slid open. The sound seemed to echo through the hallway.

Seal said something that made Singer hush him—Jeb assumed it was a profanity. They entered the room, though everyone showed signs of nervousness. Eyes darted in all directions. Bodies shifted so as to never be unguarded or exposed.

The room beyond was narrow, but to their right, through a transparent wall, was a vast chamber. It was filled with dozens of floor-to-ceiling columns. Each column cycled through the colors of the rainbow one at a time. In fact, at any given moment, every shade of color could be seen somewhere. It was incredible.

“What is that?” Jeb asked.

Seal only glanced at the transparency. He shook his head and moved toward a set of doors on the opposite side of the room. “The engine,” he said. “The thing that makes the
Raven
go. I rarely come here.”