Starbleached (2 page)

She smiled. “No, you can’t buy it. And I don’t trust DMS
with my valuables, Major. It works for replaceable basics, but if I want pretty
clothes, I need a suitcase.”

“Good call.” A new voice, rolling and rich. The kind of
voice that sinks into your bones. Mich scowled as if his breakfast had soured.
Adry turned around.

He was obviously Michel Landry’s brother. His dual heritage
had blended together in a strong chin, a nose like an eagle, thick black hair
and eyes blue like day lit sky. Bright white teeth flashed in a glamorous
smile. He walked forward, hands in his pockets. “Sorry, Mich. Didn’t I tell you
I’d handle this one personally?” Mich glared, and the man waved a hand,
forget
about it.
He kept going, kept teaching. “The myth is, you get things back
from DMS. In reality, it destroys the object on a sub-atomic level and stores
the resulting energy signature for remateralization. You can’t duplicate
objects you store because it uses all the energy in the process, and you can’t
store something organic like silk or canvas because you’ll get a loose soup of
protean chains back. You’re getting an entirely new thing created by the tiny
computer stuffed into that antique you’re pulling.” He pointed at Adrianne’s
suitcase, an ancient battered wheelie in a red/green plaid. “You know, I hear
they sell a new model. It comes with that flashy new LED fabric you can program.
We just wrote up a new rule that you can’t program obscenities. Too many kids
were showing up on base touting variations on a theme of ‘fuck you’.” He
offered a hand. “Bryan Landry.”

She took it. “Adrienne Parker.” His hand was warm, and
work-rough. Interesting. What did he do in his spare time? She patted the
suitcase. “This was my grandmother’s. She was one of the founding colonists of
Foster. The Overseers killed her in the first incursion, and my mother brought
her ashes back to Earth in it. It’s only fitting that I bring it here when we
drive them away.”

Landry laughed. “I like that attitude. With the New York
Valkyrie on our side, how can we lose?” He hadn’t let her hand go, either.
Instead, he raised it to his lips. His kiss sent shivers up her spine.

“Old-world charm, Dr. Landry?” Her pulse increased in a
not-unpleasant way.

He let go. “Sunshine, you’re the girl with the retro
suitcase.”

*****

Now:

“We’re going to lose I/Cs in about fifty seconds, Captain.
We have to shut her down!”

Adrienne’s gut plummeted as the ship slowed. With failing
compensators, the Gs actually increased. Now it was a race: Loss of inertia
verses compensator failure. The finish line was the smear they would become if
failure came too soon. She tried not to think about it. Ruptured spleens and
powdered bone weren’t the nicest last thoughts.

“Fire atmospherics, Morgan,” Bob said.

Silence. “Sir?”

“If we splatter a few extra hours of atmo aren’t going to
matter. Fire the goddamn atmospherics on my mark.”

Every ship had three standard propulsion systems: Jump
drive, which traversed the massive distance between stars almost
instantaneously; subspace drive, which bent the laws of physics and allowed for
speedy inter-system travel; and atmospheric drives, focused jets of gas which
were the last resort of a crippled ship…or the subtle trick of a fighter
skirting the edge of capture.

But the transport wasn’t a warship. Atmospherics were tied
to their backup air. If Bob used them, he didn’t think they’d need the extra
supply.

“Where’s my bogey?” Bob muttered, more to himself than his
sweating partner. “Come on, sucker. Walk where I can touch ya.”

“It's off the reads?” Adry asked.

“Yeah. It turned on subspace and attack systems long enough
to hit us, then dropped back to atmospherics. It could be flying up our ass
right now and I wouldn’t be able to see it until it forced our cargo bay.”

“You’re talking like it’s a possibility,” she said.

“Until it’s back on radar it’s a probability. It…there you
are.” He dropped hand to the controls and hit a few buttons. “Radio
transmission down and right. Shit, it’s ten feet off our tail.”

“Radio transmission? Is it hailing us?” The gees had died
back to sane levels. She clawed out of her chair and caught the back of Bob’s.
“What’s it saying?”

He hit two buttons. The voice on the com system was cold and
emotionless. It was like hearing something made of silicone and paper imitate
human speech. But that was par for the course. A naturally telepathic species,
Overseers only spoke to slaves. Usually, right before they ate one.

“--Your ship is damaged and you are stranded. Cut your
protective measures and power down your weapons. Your ship will be repaired and
you will not be harmed. Message repeats. Vessel of the United States Marine
Corps, you are overpowered. Your ship is damaged and you are stranded. Cut your
protective measures and power down your weapons. Your ship—”

Bob cut the feed. “Yeah, right. Trussed up and saved for
dinner, that’s the Overseer version of ‘not harmed’. Doc, tell me you got a
suicide pill somewhere in that case of yours?”

They’d handed those out at the start of the mission. She’d
flushed hers down the john. “No. What about the scuttle charge?”

“We’re a glorified shipping container. They’re not wasting
ordinance on a humanitarian mission. Don’t want us blowing on a few hundred
civilians.” He hit a whole bank of switches, piling more gees on top of their
load. “Doc, there is a gun next to your crash chair. Put the clip in it. That
goddamn thing is going to force our rear in five minutes. Morgan, how’s your
hand?”

Adry looked left and wished she hadn’t. Red was everywhere.
On instrument panels, on his clothes, on the bandages around his thumb. Morgan
was shaking from the blood loss.

“It’s good.” He picked up his own gun, cradled in his good
hand.

“Jesus Christ, Morgan.” She started towards him.
Bob’s rough grip pulled her around. “Look. We don’t have the ordinance to stop
the son of a bitch when it boards. The only thing we can do for humanity is
convince it that attacking someone else this way is a bad idea.”

Metal scraped against metal. The alien ship was now
suctioned against them, air bladders filling the void between ships, wires
attaching to vital sensors. Soon it would force the rear door open, and the
Overseer would arrive.

“Save the last bullet for you.” Morgan said. “You’re going
to want it.

*****

Then:

Mist drifted off the cryo-tube. Eerie. It was the first time
Adry had seen moisture in two weeks. Holton did have weather, but it was
perfectly regulated and only happened at night, when it couldn’t compromise
work performance. People slept better, after all, when it was raining. Not that
anyone could sleep again, once they had a good look at the thing inside the
tube. Bryan rested his hand on the smooth, iced over glass.

“They’re calling themselves the Overseers. We know that’s
not their true name, but they chose to identify with the slave owners of the
eighteen hundreds. We know, because they told us. They wanted us to know our
place from the beginning. And they look like this.” He tapped the tube surface.

She peered through the iced-over glass. The thing inside was
the definition of Nightmare. Pale skin as if it never saw sunlight. Slack mouth
exposing sharp white shark teeth and a glowing tongue. It had no digestive system.
The mouth was purely for sound production, sonar, and possibly intake of water.
Four eyes on one row stared vacantly into the room. Thickly muscled, tall and
wide as a barn door, it could snap her in half without breaking a sweat. And
its hands…

Six fingers. It had two opposable thumbs.  A deep red
opening in the palm ran up to its mid-arm. Strange teeth glinted within pale
white lips, serrated things like an ivory saw blade.

“That’s how it…eats?” She asked.

“It puts its palm here,” he rested his hand on her chest,
beneath the breastbone. “The things that look like teeth are overgrown,
retractable nematocysts, like a jellyfish stinger.  They inject, seek out nerve
centers on the heart, lungs and spinal cord, and then suck the life out of
you.”

“Does it drain blood, or…” she stopped. His hand had shifted
to bare skin and, despite the subject or even because of it, his touch was
electric. Fire leapt through her own nervous system; her cheeks grew hot.

“The last stage involves total fluid drain, but we think
it’s an inadvertent side effect. Stage one,” his palm pressed down, “They drain
your strength. Heart rate slows, breathing is shallow, immune system dips way,
way down. Near the end, every system in your body is on the verge of total
shutdown. It takes about one minute. Second stage goes way into the
metaphysics, and…what?” He’d finally noticed her flush.

“Not that I’m complaining, Dr. Landry, but we haven’t even
had a first date.”

His hand was sitting on top of her breasts, thumb rising
shivers up her spine. “Oh.” He dropped his hand away. Silence. “I’ve got a
reputation here. It’s not entirely undeserved.”

“I hear it’s more of a goal. Tumble every girl on Holton
Station.” She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “The second stage?”

“Movie.” He smiled. “Chocolates. Dinner. I cook a mean
braised protean.”

“I meant the alien feeding process.”

“Right.” He grinned. “It drains your personhood, for lack of
a better word. Physically, it drains melatonin out of your skin, pigment out of
eyes and hair. The bone structure itself reforms. Gender remains, but most of
the indicators—breasts, cheekbones, pelvis shape, body structure—disappear. You
retain memory, but lose the ability to access it voluntarily. Your will, your
sense of self, what makes you an individual. Gone. One third of the time, the
Overseer actually stops there. If you survive, and it’s really a coin toss if
you do, you’re their slave. Unless you get rescued, and you become our slave.”

The warm tingles turned to ice. “What the hell are they
taking from us?”

“We have no idea. Can’t exactly test it in a lab.”

“How about recovery? Can you come back from that?”

“Not all the way. Physical alterations are permanent.
Mental…if you regain ability to access memory, you’re over the hump. But that
happens in less than a quarter of our cases.”

“And the two thirds of the time when the Overseer doesn’t
stop?”

“They drain you dry to get every last drop of mystery
energy. We know they don’t get nutrition from the liquids, because they don’t
even retain them long. You can always tell when one of them’s just fed. They
look like they’re bleeding out of every pore.”

She shivered. The world might never feel warm again. Bryan
put a hand on her shoulder.

 “They’re breeding us, too. Foster? New Greenland? Full of
kids. Fucked up kids, given that they’re being raised like cattle. We’re seeing
second and third generation slaves in their shock troops. Fully human. Loyal
until death.” He paused a long time, then moved to a desk in the work area.
Every surface was piled high with alien technology framed by human technology,
augmented by yet more alien tech. It was jumbled like a child’s toy box, and
everything was beige.

“One more thing,” He sighed. “You’re cleared to know this,
but it doesn’t go back to Earth. It doesn’t go to any Rim World, understand?”

She nodded. “Okay.”

He stiffened like a man about to plunge his hands into
boiling lead. “Draining you is not the worst thing they can do.”

*****

Now:

The rear hatch exploded, pieces of metal flying through the
cargo hold. One piece caught Bob Harris in the upper shoulder, pinning him to
the bulkhead. Morgan rolled left, hit the pilot console and fell behind the
chair, moaning. Adry ducked behind the Enzyme boxes. Not enough cover, oh god,
not nearly enough to spare her. Heavy boots thumped down an unseen ramp, and
she wanted to scream. Not even its steps were human.

Gunfire. Adry peered around the crate; Bob emptied his gun
at the Overseer’s masked head. Bullets scratched the faceplate’s dark alloy;
bluish fluid pumped over the monster’s collar. Blood. Bob’d gotten at least one
good hit. But the flow stopped even as she watched. A heavy, six-fingered hand
closed over the gun. Sneering at such petty defiance, it twisted its hand
sharply and the gun cracked in half.

Its other hand closed over Robert’s throat.

Adry moved, scraping her palms on the deck plank. One shot,
two shots, three, and all hit flesh. Hard recoil into her palm, gunsmoke in her
lungs. Dark blood hit the deck. It turned. She couldn’t see its eyes, but she
could feel its gaze like a psychosomatic fire. It pulled something off its belt
and tossed it at Adry’s feet. The yellow-black ball bounced once, then exploded
in a buzz of electricity. She fell, gun dropping from nerveless fingers. Ears
ringing and retching, her knees hit the deck from a million miles away. The
alien voice reverberated through her tinnitus.

“It will fade.” Its voice was devoid of emotion, as if the
alien were dead inside. Adry’s fingers itched to kill it the rest of the way.
“I do not wish to harm you. You carry a weapon and a doctor trained in its
administration. I require both.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Bob wheezed. The Overseer tightened his
grip. Bob’s scream was strangled by the dual thumbs clenched on his windpipe.

“That sensation is nematocysts entering your body. It is
unpleasant. My statement was not a request. I require the substance and the
doctor. Provide them.”

Adry made another helpless retching sound. Her gun was
shielded from the thing’s view, in a corner just out of reach. If she could get
it…the thing turned its blank mask to her and dropped Bob on the floor. She
reached back, fingers brushing the barrel.