Bones Burnt Black: Serial Killer in Space (23 page)

Yanking his arms up, he tried in vain to cover his
faceplate. It was useless. There was nothing he could do, except wait for the
pod’s engines to stop the pod and push it back into the shadow. If—and only
if—he had aimed the craft correctly.

Squirming in pain, he counted off the seconds. Then the
sun went out, the pod went dark and the pain dwindled to a manageable level.

He pulled the throttles back to zero and waited for his
eyes to adjust. When he could focus on his gloved hand pressed against his
faceplate, he unstrapped himself and leaned close to the front window. The
smoke was so thick between the window and his faceplate that he could just
barely make out the shape of Corvus.

“Tina, is your vacuum suit properly sealed?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? Because if you’re wrong, what I’m about
to do is going to hurt worse than any pain you’ve ever known, and then it will
kill you.”

“I’m sure.”

“Good.”

Feeling his way, he climbed into the back, opened a
small red and yellow striped access door next to the hatch and turned a
red-handled valve. He then pulled himself to the hatch window and looked out.

A thin jet of white gas squirted into the vacuum. It
grew wide and pale with distance, and became a large churning cloud.
Simultaneously, the air inside the cabin became clearer. Soon it would be
completely clear, because soon it would be completely gone. The cabin was about
to be in vacuum.

Mike turned toward Kim. Already he was able to see some
of the details of her suit and face. He pulled himself closer and brought his
faceplate near hers.

A few locks of blonde hair rested on her forehead. As
the only reminders of her vitality, they seemed out of place. Her expression
was blank; her were eyes shut; she looked pallid and drawn. Though the green
lights of her suit’s lifesupport indicators insisted that her
oxygen/carbon-dioxide balance continued to fluctuate—and therefore that she
continued to breathe—to Mike, she looked dead.

He longed to unstrap her and hold her; to comfort her
and kiss her and wait for her to awaken like some kind of zero-g sleeping
beauty. But again, there was no time.

Without closing the valve, he climbed into the front
and checked the distance to Corvus. They were closer now, he thought. He spent
several minutes with the location jets to bring the pod to a stop with respect
to the big ship.

Finally satisfied, he turned to Tina and said, “There!
Now we should be stable for a while.”
At least, I hope so.
He forced a
little smile to improve her morale.
God, I wish I knew how much damage was
done the hull and hull-mounted systems. But can’t worry about it now. Have to
concentrate on staying in the shadow.

_____

Four hours later, the pod was still in shadow, the
three were still alive and the explosions had become small and infrequent. Mike
had closed the valve and flooded the cabin with air, but—fearing additional
hull breaches—insisted they all remain sealed in their vacuum suits. He had
also developed a habit of fidgeting nervously, and uselessly, with the location
jets.

Tina watched him, silently enjoying the show.
So are
you suffering, McCormack? Are you afraid for your life? Are you afraid for the
life of your whore?

She felt a twinge of hunger, but refused to pause her
enjoyment long enough to satisfy, or even acknowledge, her body’s needs.
Can’t
eat now. Later—if I live.

Keeping her mind focused on her mission, she gloated
internally:
How does it feel to look into the face of death? How does it
feel to know you have no chance to see tomorrow? How does it—

Mike unstrapped himself from his seat and leaned
forward, looking at something out the window. “Tina.”

“What?”

He pointed. “Corvus’s red glow: it isn’t as bright now.
And the drops of metal and glass that have been hitting us in the last few minutes
all sounded as though they’d solidified before they got here.”

“What are you saying?”

He smiled so wide Tina felt certain his lips would
sustain permanent damage. “I think we’re past closest approach.” Grabbing her
forearm, he shook her once for every word in his next sentence. “I think we’ve
survived solar passage!” He stretched his arms around her torso and, despite
their vacuum suits, gave her a powerful hug.

She smiled and nodded and pretended to share his joy,
but when he climbed into the rear to inspect Kim’s suit for heat damage she was
free to think her evil thoughts unencumbered.
Damn! I can’t believe the
idiot actually survived!

Turning, she watched as Mike unstrapped Kim from the
wall.
Well, it won’t do you any good. You may have saved my life, but you
haven’t saved your own.

Chapter Sixteen

The next day—with the sun shrinking toward a more
normal size and the danger of death by its light shrinking as well—Mike slept a
long and much needed sleep.

Before attempting sleep, however, he removed his
helmet. He knew it would probably be safer to keep it on; after all, just
because the hull wasn’t leaking at the moment didn’t mean it wouldn’t leak
later. It might easily have a puncture temporarily plugged by the fragment that
produced it. And as the hull’s temperature dropped with increasing distance
from the sun, uneven thermal contractions might dislodge the fragment.

If such a fragment were suddenly blown out by escaping
air, the pod’s cabin pressure could drop to lethal levels within seconds. Not
the kind of wake-up call any pilot needs; especially one inexperienced and
groggy.

But Mike had insisted for years that he couldn’t get
any really restful sleep with his head in one of those steel buckets. Even back
when he was prospecting on the Moon he’d had trouble sleeping in a helmet. The
vacuum suit wasn’t the problem, it was the helmet itself he found
claustrophobic.

Tina, having already slept, was now at the controls,
quietly keeping them in the shadow of what remained of Corvus.

The great blackened ship tumbled far slower now, thanks
to some of its final explosions, and its shadow was no longer completely solid.
Sunlight flashed through in a dozen locations, and did so with a rhythmic
pattern that repeated exactly during each rotation. Too short to pose a danger
to the pod, these flashes were simply annoying; like those from a dozen still
cameras going off in your face over and over, endlessly. It was these flashes
that caused Mike to stir lazily, and somewhat angrily, from his sleep.

When he opened his eyes, he simultaneously sucked in a
deep breath and drew back in shock. On the window directly in front of him was
something he’d never expected to see again: bad poetry, painted in red, by
hand. When back-lit by the frequent flashes of sunlight, the red paint became
ominously black, like very old and very dried blood. He recovered enough to
read through it quickly.

You think you’ve survived,

but of course you’re dead wrong.

Soon you’ll join Richard,

I’ll not make you wait long.

The saboteur is in the pod!

He turned to Tina.

She was in her seat—almost. Not strapped in, she
floated slightly above it. She too was not wearing a helmet, and the pea-green
travel case rested lightly—weightlessly—in her lap.

The smile she directed at Mike was as startling as the
words on the window. No longer was it a demure little smile in keeping with her
social façade, but a huge evil grin, wild-eyed and menacing; the kind of smile
usually seen only on large vegetables during Halloween.

Mike took a logical leap. “Who are you?”

She laughed loud and long; laughed so hard she had to
tilt her head back to get it all out—yet another caricature of insanity.

When the laughter subsided, she said with disgust,
“Well, I’m certainly not Tina Jennifer Bernadette.” The southern accent, with
its overlay of sensual femininity, was gone. Some kind of Midwestern accent had
taken its place. “To get close to you without your spotting me I had to take a
new identity, and I thought pretending to be the daughter of a woman receiving
a Nobel prize was a particularly clever ploy. Don’t you?” She laughed again.

“If you’re not Tina, then who are you?”

“Come on, Mike,” she said as though hurt, mocking him
with exaggeration. “Don’t you remember? It’s me! Rebecca! Rebecca Dozier.”

“That’s impossible!”

“Why?” Now she mocked him with exaggerated
bewilderment. “Have I changed so much?”

“You don’t look anything like Rebecca. Besides you’d
have to be: what? Fifty years old?”

“Fifty-two. Do you like my disguise?”

“But—”

“But, what? How could I look so young? Or are you
wondering how I could pass as Tina when every transaction, financial or
otherwise, is verified by fingerprint scanners?”

Dazed by the sudden revelations, Mike managed only a
grunt.

“Easy.” She shrugged. “I skinned her alive!” And with that
she laughed again, even louder than before. “I kidnapped the preppy little tart
and had both our skins removed and exchanged. A full-body skin transplant.
First in medical history.” She nodded proudly to emphasize the statement. “I
know. I checked.”

The pea-green travel case in her lap shifted slightly.
“I had to steal a medsys and pay someone to completely reprogram the thing.
Ethics and other silly legal constraints are part of their programming, you
know.”

“That’s crazy,” Mike said. “It wouldn’t work. A
person’s looks aren’t in their skin. The shape of the face is made by muscles
and bones. The skin is just a covering.”

“True. I did have the bones of my face thoroughly
reworked; but that surgery was made easier since it was done while my skin was
off. After that, the transplant was a fairly simple operation; Tina and I were
about the same size.”

Involuntarily imagining the altering of face bones on a
skinless head, Mike grimaced. “Where’s Tina now?”

“Dead, along with my medsys programmer. After the operation
I didn’t need them anymore. For neatness, I put my old skin on Tina before she
died. I considered using her corpse to have a public burial for myself, perhaps
even a wake. Not everyone gets the opportunity to cry at their own funeral; but
I decided it wiser to completely cover my tracks. I didn’t want anything
messing up my little date with you. If I’d planned to survive this trip—which I
didn’t—I could have kept her alive to wear my skin and keep it healthy for me.
Then I could have changed back to my own skin later. Though, to be honest,
after the operation—as soon as I was up and around—I fell in love with my new
skin. I’d forgotten how wonderful it felt to have men watch my every move; to
see them stumble all over themselves trying to be nice to me. And why shouldn’t
they?” She pursed her lips in a brief kiss, then drew the glistening tip of her
tongue sideways across her upper lip—ever so slowly—moistening it from one
corner of her mouth to the other, and then back again. Rolling her pupils up under
her eyelids, she slung her head back as though in orgasm, then dropped her head
down level again. “Let’s face it: I’m gorgeous!”

“But why did you kill all these people?”

Her expression hardened and she spoke with a deep rage.
“To get to you!”

“But they didn’t do anything.”

“They were guilty of being in my way! I’ve waited
eighteen years, McCormack. During all those years I planned how I was going to
watch you die. Do you think I’d let a handful of innocent bystanders slow me
down? I would destroy nations getting to you!”

“And Richard?”

She winced. “That was a mistake. The crash wasn’t meant
for him; it was meant for you. I had friends check the ownership and
registration of that craft; everything said it belonged to you—even the loan
papers. Only one person was flying it that day, so naturally my friends thought
it was you.”

Mike shook his head. “Richard had lousy credit. I
signed all the papers, but he was making the payments. It was his ship. He was
living in the thing.”

“I learned that later.” Her face brightened and she
lifted one shoulder in a philosophical shrug. “The sabotage was actually
surprisingly easy. Richard—who my friends thought to be you—was careless. He
let other people refuel his craft and almost never checked their work. I had a
friend in the fueling station at Vengeance and several in the janitorial
services. I had one get a fist-full of his hair, swept up after a haircut, and
then had another dump it into his hydrogen tank.”

Gazing wistfully past Mike’s face as though daydreaming
about something distant and pleasurable, she spoke slowly. “I watched the
recording my friends made of his craft falling out of the sky several times
before I learned it was him instead of you. I can still remember how—unaware of
the truth—I thought the crash was beautiful, and how I wished there had been an
explosion.”

She looked at Mike again. “I’ve never forgiven you for
that.”

“For what?”

“For not being in that craft. For not dieing that day.”

I very nearly was!

Back then, Mike had split his time between working as a
welder in the mining town of Vengeance and going out prospecting with Richard.
For two years he’d spent as much time living in Richard’s craft as he had in
his own cramped apartment.

Typical of lunar prospectors, Richard’s craft was
little more than an airtight, rocket-powered Winnebago. It possessed the usual
hydrogen/oxygen chemical-fired rocket engines: one mounted on the underbelly
thrusting up, and two mounted on the rear thrusting forward. It was also
outfitted with the usual prospecting gear; gas chromatograph, optical
spectrometer, etcetera. It even had many of the comforts of home: shower,
toilet, stowable beds and sofa, large video screen, small kitchen, and it could
sleep four; though usually there were just two aboard—or one. Richard had been
alone at the time of the accident. Officially, an accident. In truth: murder.

Mike remembered donning a vacuum suit a few days after
the crash and walking alone through the wreckage.

The crash of a prospector ship never received the
investigative thoroughness or social reverence that was always given the crash
of a passenger craft. Richard’s physical remains had been removed but none of
the ship’s debris had been disturbed—except where it had proven necessary for
the removal of some part of Richard.

As Mike approached it, the place had looked just like
any other lunar plain—rocky, cratered and crisscrossed with numerous tire
tracks—until he’d reached the crash site. Then it was all metal and plastic:
smashed, torn, twisted; like a mobile home put through a giant blender and
tossed in the air like a salad.

The debris—some of it recognizable, some of it not—lay
scattered over a triangular region several hundred feet wide. The craft had
come down at a steep angle, so one corner of the triangle was the impact point.
From there the many bits and pieces had fanned out over a wide area; bouncing,
grinding, rolling, and in some cases thrown in a high arching curve to come
down for secondary impacts.

Mike remembered everything had been its normal color.
Nothing was burned or blackened. There had been no explosion and no fire. This
was more than just a little surprising; it was the craziest stroke of chance.
The liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks both ruptured on impact, naturally,
but each sprayed out in opposite directions. The two liquids never made
contact; never had a chance to catch fire or explode in the lunar vacuum.
Rebecca surely expected an explosion would destroy the evidence of her
tampering—any sane person would.

Mike pictured Richard flying his craft.
How long
does it take to fall from three miles above the Moon? How long did Richard know
he was going to die?

“But while Richard’s death was sudden,” Rebecca said
abruptly, “I wanted to make sure that your death was slow and painful.” She
frowned as though disappointed. “I actually wanted Corvus to dive straight into
the flaming face of the sun. Which might sound like a quick death, but I can
assure you it would not have been. What’s more, it would have yielded the added
bonus of you spending days in terrified anticipation of your absolutely
unavoidable death.” She smiled serenely. “Death by plasma; by ionization; by
complete chemical disassociation.” The smile disappeared and annoyance crept
into her voice. “But that hair clog was impossible to time accurately. It came
much too early in the J-maneuver. Hitting the sun was out.”

Hair clog. Long hair. The real Tina probably never
had long hair in her life. The hair tossing gesture was Rebecca’s, from a
lifetime spent tossing back long dark hair.

“When Kim tried to remove my explosive charges from the
engines…” Rebecca shrugged again. “Well, I had no choice but to blow the fuel
lines immediately.”

“Wait a minute,” Mike said. “One of the charges went
off while I was looking at you.” He didn’t mention which end of her body he’d
been watching. “You couldn’t possibly have sent those signals.”

Rebecca pointed to the blue-rimmed eyeglasses on her
face and spoke slowly as though addressing an exceptionally stupid child. “My
computer is a headup. I had
it
transmit the detonation codes. I’d
already programmed them into it and had each code displayed as a pair of
icons—one to arm the charge and one to detonate.”

She didn’t bother explaining that to select an icon,
all she need do was blink twice while looking directly at it.
Look-and-double-blink was the headup equivalent of the much older
point-and-double-click.

Mike winced with the pain of realization. The lenses of
a headup always look clear from the outside, but they can be displaying
anything—text, graphics, movies, TV—over any or all of its wearer’s field of
vision. The entire display is completely invisible to everyone except the
wearer. “But how did you plant explosives all over the ship without it seeing
you? Its cameras are everywhere!”

“I corrupted the ship’s computer with a
virus—technically, a Trojan horse. It made the ship believe that my headup was
its chief programmer. This allowed me to cut its IQ down to one tenth of
normal, on command. In that state, the ship would ignore whatever it was told
to ignore and erase whatever it was told to erase.”

“Oh.” Mike nodded. “I see.”

“You were so easy to fool, McCormack. Of course,
Nikita’s running off helped too.” Rebecca laughed again. “You really thought
she was the killer! It was beautiful.” Rebecca’s expression drooped into a
scowl and she glanced into the pod’s rear section for a moment. “Kim nearly
blew that one. I think she discovered my little secret, and I certainly
couldn’t have her spilling the proverbial beans.” Rebecca’s tone became light,
almost casual. “That’s when I tried to kill her, you know. I was about to shove
her into the vertical hallway when I heard you coming.”