Blood and Fire (16 page)

Korie had to grab Easton from behind and yank him backward—pulling him back into the Bridge, onto the Command Deck. Bach hit the panel, sealing the hatch, just before a roiling wave of slithering worms broke against it.

Their momentum carried them forward and sideways and forward again, until the three of them tumbled down the ladder onto the Ops Deck below. They hit the deck and bounced, banging their helmets against the rubbery surface, and still kept scrambling backward in panic, until Berryman and Shibano pulled them to their feet.

“Did you see that?” Berryman cried. “What the hell was that?”

“Bloodworms,” Korie admitted. “The whole ship is infested with plasmacytes. Bloodworms.”
There. He'd said it.

“Oh, God, no—”

“They got Hodel!” Easton was gasping, choking on his words. “Hodel! Those bastards! They got Hodel! We were just talking—just finishing up—and all of a sudden, they came out of the wall! They came out of the wall! And there wasn't anything he could do! They were all over him! There wasn't time! I tried—I fried them, but they exploded! They exploded! They turned into red fire! Oh, God, they got Mikhail!” And then, his voice breaking, “I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't help him. He was screaming. I had to ... I'm sorry! I didn't know what else to do! I couldn't save him! They were all over him, so I ... I ...”

Berryman grabbed him, held him by both shoulders, stared into his face, helmet to helmet. Their faceplates touched. “Danny! Listen to me! Danny! It's all right! I'm here! You're all right! You can stop now! You did all right! You did good!”

“Listen!” said Shibano, cautiously approaching the hatch. He held up a hand to the others.

Still in their suits, they froze—and listened.

The muted noise of the bloodworms could be heard rising—a kind of muffled chorus in the bulkheads all around them. The sound was horrible.

“That explains the unknown life readings that HARLIE picked up. They were coming through the bulkheads, the decks, the overhead—”
Berryman stopped in mid-word and looked up nervously. “Let's get out of here,” he suggested.

“To where?” asked Bach.

“Will that hatch hold?” Korie pointed.

“It's a Class-A security hatch,” said Shibano. “It had better.”

“Or what?”

“Or—I'm going to complain to the manufacturer.”

Korie remembered where he was then—a voice was yammering in his ear—Goldberg's. “Korie! Acknowledge! Acknowledge now,
goddammit!”

“Acknowledge. Acknowledge. We're all right!” Korie said quickly. “Take a breath, Goldie. Take two.” He paused to take his own advice, checking around to see if the remaining members of the mission team were all right. Easton was still badly shaken—and Bach was ashen. Berryman and Shibano had their rifles charged and were standing at position. He looked at his helmet display, checked his own health, then read the displays of the others as well. Heartbeats and respiration were elevated. All of them. To be expected. To the
Star Wolf
, he said, “Did you get any of that?”

“We got it all. Captain saw it. We're reviewing our options now.”

“You're reviewing your options—?” Korie's astonishment was evident. “Excuse me?”

Parsons came on then. “Stand by, Mr. Korie. The chief medical officer, the chief of security and myself are having an argument. I haven't decided yet whether to shoot Commander Brik.”

“You want my opinion?”

“I already know your opinion. But you're over on the
Norway
, and if I shoot him I'll have to do the paperwork myself. I'm about to violate a standing order. Before I do that, I need to know if our security officer is going to cooperate or attempt mutiny. Stand by.”

Parsons turned to Williger and Brik. They were still in the Officers' Mess. Cappy and Armstrong still held their rifles aimed at Commander Brik. Williger had a work station powered up and processing.

But there were no secrets anymore; the crew had seen it now. And she'd said it all on an open channel. Just as well. The ship's complement needed to know what was happening. The truth might be dismaying—but uncontrolled rumors running down the keel of the ship would be even more destructive.

“Dr. Williger? I need an answer.”

The chief medical officer shook her head grimly. “I don't like it, but—”
She rapped the display in front of her with her knuckles. “HARLIE thinks they were onto something. They were on station for nine months without incident. The failure of their safeguards—it might not have been accidental.”

“Go on.”

“We know that the plasmacytes can be contained with repulsor fields. We know that their security gear was fail-safe. And we know that they were equipped with a Class-9 power core, so they could have maintained repulsor strength indefinitely. So if the bugs got out, either somebody was stupid, careless or ... suicidal. The fail-safes should have protected against stupidity and carelessness. If it was deliberate ... it couldn't have been done without the knowledge of the LENNIE unit, so the record should be in the autonomic log.” She sat down at the table, directly opposite Brik. She glanced up at him with visible exhaustion. “My point is, we know that their security
worked
for nine months before it broke down, so maybe the breakdown wasn't an accident.”

“Go on,” Parsons prompted.

Williger took a breath. “I'm not comfortable with this, Captain.”

“None of us are.”

“No, I mean—I've done triage before. But in every previous situation where we had to make decisions about who should live or who should die, there was a medical logic to it. The same logic doesn't apply here. This is the logic of infection—and fear. And it's a whole different game. I've been going through this material as fast as it comes across. And you were right. They made some significant advances here. Not a cure, not yet—at least not in anything I've seen—but they were experimenting with various plasmacyte-inhibitors, and some of them worked in testtube situations, and I can't help wondering what else there is in these files. Maybe there
is
something here. It's possible they even completed their goals. I'd like the chance to keep looking—and keep hoping—for a while longer.”

“Go ahead,” said Parsons. “Convince me.”

“Two reasons. First, if someone did deliberately release these things on the
Norway
, then it had to be in response to something. Maybe it was because someone did make a breakthrough in treatment. And second, I want to keep hoping, because ... just because. I'm only human.”

“If they made a breakthrough in treatment, why didn't they use it on themselves?”

“Maybe they need a clean environment to evacuate to. Maybe they keep getting reinfected. I need time here, Captain.”

“Time is what we don't have, Dr. Williger. We've got less than thirty hours of repulsor power aboard the
Star Wolf
and only three days until the
Norway
hits a wall of flame. It doesn't matter how much time you need, Doctor; that's all the time you have.”

Williger nodded. “If we can implement equal or better security, we might just be able to get our people off that ship—that would buy us some more time to study the logs.”

“And then what?” demanded Brik. “Then we have plasmacyte-infected individuals aboard this starship, in violation of a standing order.”

“Mr. Brik,” Molly Williger stood up and faced him coldly. She was a short woman—very short—so much so that she was often mistaken for a dwarf. She stared up at Brik's three-meter height and
glowered
at him. “I do not appreciate being interrupted. It is
nyet kulturny
. It is extremely bad manners. And considering that you are already treading the borderline of insubordination, not to mention mutiny, I respectfully request that you keep that big ugly hole in the front of your face properly closed until you learn how to use it appropriately.”

Without looking to see if Brik was obeying—she took it for granted that he would—Williger turned back to Parsons. “The other thing we might try is for me to go aboard the
Norway
and try to implement a treatment there and evacuate them back here—but if the treatment doesn't work, we still risk infecting the
Wolf
—”

“Doctor, talk straight with me. Is there a chance to save our people or not?”

Williger sighed. “Half an hour ago, I would have said no. Now, I'm not so sure.” She met Parson's gaze unashamedly. “I'd hate to spend the rest of my life with the knowledge that there was something we could have tried and didn't.”

Parsons didn't answer. She turned away and stared at the display on Williger's workstation. She needed to make a decision now. She couldn't wait any longer. She looked up at Brik. “Do I have to shoot you?”

“I doubt you could succeed,” he said. “But that's not the question you're really asking. What you want to know is whether or not I will cooperate with a rescue attempt if you order it. Captain, this ship has a history of surviving situations where certain destruction was inevitable. Sooner or later, I expect the law of averages to catch up with us. So it is part of my job to urge caution, because caution is always the best survival tactic—except in situations when it isn't. Unfortunately in
this
situation, caution also equates to cowardice, and, regrettably, I have been around humans long enough to have been infected with some human ways of thinking.”

“And your point
is
...?” Parsons prompted.

“I would rather die following the foolishly reckless orders of a human captain than be known as a cautious Morthan.”

Parsons stared at Brik for a moment, trying to figure out if he was joking or serious. But then, Morthans never joked, did they? So she accepted the statement at face value. “Thank you for that vote of confidence, Commander Brik. Dr. Williger, proceed with your best option. Security, you're relieved. Now, let's get back to the Bridge.”

Security Officer Daniel Easton leaned over a scorched console and wept softly to himself. Medical Tech Paul David Berryman came over and stood beside him. He put one hand on his partner's shoulder, a carefully calculated response—when what he really wanted to do was just wrap him up in his arms and hold him tight forever.

“I couldn't stop them, Paul! Every time I fired, they just got angrier! They just kept coming! I couldn't save him! You didn't see it—”

Berryman moved his hand to the back of Easton's neck. He wished he could reach through the starsuit and massage the muscles of his back; he could sense the tightness just by Easton's posture alone; but this would have to do. After a moment more, he reached across and took Easton's left wrist and turned it so he could read the monitors there.

“I'm all right,” said Easton, pulling his arm back. “I'll be all right.”

“I didn't say you weren't, but as senior medical officer on this team, I have a responsibility to make sure.” He reached out and gently took Easton's wrist again. He held his partner's hand tightly in his own while he studied heart and respiration rates. He leaned his head in close so their helmets were touching, and whispered, “Just take it one breath at a time, Danny. I'm right here. Just like always. Okay?”

But before Easton could reply, Wasabe Shibano's voice filtered through both their helmets. “Oh, no—”

Shibano was pointing toward the hatch they'd all just tumbled through. “Mr. Korie!”

Three red worms were crawling down from the top of it. They flickered in scarlet—an unholy haze of light.