Starbleached (3 page)

With a scream, Morgan came charging out of the cockpit, his
issue knife in hand.
Brave, stupid idiot!
She wanted to scream. The
monster took the knife away, then threw Bob’s inert body into Morgan. Both men
fell into the cockpit. Cat quick, it shot out the door controls. The internal
hatch closed, then sealed with a puff of air.

She grabbed the gun, chambered a fresh round, and spun back,
weapon braced to fire. But it fell into the monster’s hands with a hard
smacking sound. Pale, bloodless lips smiled as its fingers brushed hers.

Adry was trapped with the monster.

Alone.

*****

Then:

He touched the back of her neck, the gentlest of casual
brushes, and it sent sparks down her spine. “How’s it going, Adry?” Bryan
Landry sat beside her.

She sighed. This job was supposed to be as cold and
impersonal as Holton’s greenery. An intellectual feast for the mind without
paltry distractions like bad food or irritable colleagues. She’d been ready for
everything …except Bryan. Oh, he was brilliant, and his work was possibly the
answer to all their problems. But his smile undid her contingency plans. His
laughter was now far more important than chemical formulae.

She had to remember his reputation. “Tom Cat” didn’t come
close. Depending on who you listened to, he was a rake, a pervert, kinky,
indecisive, terrified of commitment—universally agreed to be great in bed. He’d
been sending out signal fires for weeks, ever since her off-the-wall
suggestions gave them a promising lead. When this project was done, and she
went back home, his absence would be a physical ache.

Goddamn it girl.
She shook herself.
Focus on your
job.

“Failure,” she said. “Across the board. I don’t think this
is going to work. We still don’t even know what they’re feeding on.” She
stretched, yawning. “Maybe we should try poisoning them again?”

“We get the victim too. It’s too risky.” His features
stilled. “And it doesn’t solve subsumation. This is the most promising idea so
far. We can’t give up.”

That comment was a little too loaded. “They got someone
else, didn’t they?” she asked.

Bryan nodded. “Two. Pascal and Whitepole. Their partners
reported it on two separate occasions. The Abrams incident still suggests we
may have a better shot at retrieving the subsumed personality than we do the
enslaved…but if we can’t make this work, we might as well just put a bullet in
their heads.” He rubbed his eyes. “I’m tired of losing to these monsters,
Adry.”

She gave his hands a squeeze. Too bad she didn’t have more
comfort to offer. “We’re trying to solve a metaphysical problem with science.
You have to acknowledge it might not work. Besides, even if it does, people
will still be fed on.”

“But they won’t die. And neither will the subsumed.” His
voice hardened more.

“Bryan—”

“I knew Abrams. I watched it happen. If I could have done
more…” his face darkened and he turned back to the tap screen. “Where are the
failures?”

She brought up a touch screen. “Here, an hour after we
inject the enzyme prototype. We get this weird feedback loop in the internal
organs.” She pointed at one of the simulations. “The first stage feeding lasts
about twice as long, but then it switches over to the second stage and whatever
happens next gets buried by white noise.” She swallowed. “The heart explodes
after ten seconds.”

Bryan winced. “Go to the section with that noise. Have you
analyzed that?”

“As far as I can tell, it’s just noise.” She paused. He must
see something she couldn’t, because those blue eyes were now sharp as a
titanium blade. “What?”

“We don’t need to know what that noise is. We just need to
shield it.”

“But it’s just white noise,” She said.

“Follow me,” He said, and took her hand. A large Overseer
device lay in a nearby cradle, recognizable only as some kind of weapon. What
it did, or how it did it, was beyond her and most of the techs on Holton. Bryan
led her to it unerringly. “Their technology is organic. Here, see?” His fingers
hovered over narrow tubes lit by internal lights. “This is a vein, leading down
to the heart analogue, which serves as a power pack. Nerves are wires. This
area here is brain matter, the computer for the device.” He circled a clump of
greenish tissue, then backed up. “From a certain perspective it’s…elegant.” He
shook his head. “No need to worry about spare parts. You just grow whatever you
need.” He was rubbing her hand again. When she squeezed back, he sighed and let
go. His ghost tingled in her palm.

“When we power it up…” he brought up another screen, hit a
few buttons and stepped back. “We get the same noise pattern you’re finding in
your simulations.”

 “Why would that show up in a simulation?” She asked. Why
had he taken his hand away?

“We’ve incorporated a very small amount of Overseer tech in
the processing loop. Every once in a while it surprises us.” Pause. He closed
his eyes and sighed. “I value our working relationship, Adry. I don’t want to
fuck it up by…fucking.”

There were ten thousand readouts in the room, countless
fragments of alien tech. Black enamel glittered in cryo-tubes. Greenish light
polished the curve on Bryan’s face, mapped the contours of nose and cheek and
brow. Her breath quickened. Remove the readouts. Eliminate the tech. Keep the
lean planes of his face. Study those, instead. Know them by heart. Know them
blind. “If that’s all it'd be, I wouldn’t be interested.”

He scanned her face for data, coming to some conclusion, as
usual, beyond the rest of them. “I make promises I can’t keep. I have a bad
temper.” Pause, and a little cold steel fed into his blue eyes. “I almost
killed my stepfather when I was fourteen.”

“You’re inches away from saving the universe. Rumor says
you’re a great kisser.” She looked up through long, dark lashes. “I don’t believe
you would hurt a fly.”

He didn’t seem to breathe. Simplify the problem, she
thought, and sometimes you find the solution. “Bryan…if you want to touch me,
touch me.”

She closed her eyes. After an eternity, fingers found the
curve of her jaw.

*****

Now
:

A pair of thick, black boots crunched her com unit. The wide
torso was clothed in something like leather that wasn’t leather at all, a coat
that fell to its ankles. Lights flashed in its folds, bits of metal and living
circuitry glimmered on sleeves and hem. The face was obscured by a mask of
black carapace, save for its mouth. A hint of glow showed as it bared teeth in
a disgusted snarl. The double-thumbed hands flexed slightly as it stood over
her, and for a moment, she didn’t dare breathe.

It took her gun with a fluid grace that left her cold. Its
hand went to her collar. Dragging her into the open, it left her trembling on
the floor. Back into the cases, it chose a med kit and a box of medications
before scanning the boxes with more purpose.
It hasn’t touched me yet,
she
shivered.
I still have that much.

Then it took her wrist, and all logic went out the window.

Its pale skin was soft, almost brittle. Nails drew blood
when she clawed its wrist. The cuts she opened healed almost as she watched. 
Winding fingers into the lips on its hands, she dug in until it screamed.
Feel
that?
She twisted at the wet membranes.
Good. That’s for Bob, and
Morgan. That’s for Holton Station. Major Abrams. That’s for Mich, damn him, and
for Bryan. And for me.
Black liquid splattered the deck.
Bleed
, she
thought, and then it flung her into the bulkhead hard.

She caught her breath as standard-issue zip ties clenched on
her wrists. She tried to keep her feet out of its grip. One boot caught it
under the chin. The flesh in the throat was very sensitive, she’d been told.
Getting hit there had to ring every bell in its head. But it must have ignored
the pain. Soon her feet were securely bound.

It moved back to the cargo. In moments, a vial of the enzyme
glimmered golden between its thumbs.

“Get away from that.” She twisted her wrists until the
zip-tie cut skin. If she could get the gun…if she could only get that gun…

It tilted the box and light played across the vials. Twenty
gleaming bits of glass stacked ten flats deep. Two hundred doses. Hope for two
hundred lives, and it lay within inches of the monster’s terrible hands.

“This is the enzyme?” It asked.

She met the place where its eyes should be, glaring at the
dead black of its helmet. This was the game, and she had to start playing it
now if she wanted to survive.

It unhooked the box from the cargo matrix, set it to one
side, and tied the netting back into place. Then it hefted the box to its
shoulder as if it were a box of feathers. It had taken two men to drag the
enzyme into the cargo bay, and it took one alien to carry it out.

There had to be something nearby. A weapon. A knife she
could reach. Twisting in her bonds, she searched for anything. A blade, a gun,
a broken fragment of plastic. If she just had more time…the monster came back.
It stood over her, a heavy black boot to each side of her knees.

“I do not mean you harm.” Its voice was almost gentle. “It
will be easier if you do not fight.”

She flipped bangs out of her eyes, then spat at the deck,
hating the beast with every fiber of her being. “Fuck you,” she whispered.

It sighed and took a gun out of its pocket. Double thumbs
worked organic bubbles down one side of the weapon. There was a blaze of blue
light, and everything went out.

Then:

When Bryan removed his hands, the light was almost blinding.
But what he revealed was worth it. A quilt spread upon the grass of Holton’s
South Lawn. A bowl of strawberries. A bottle of Champagne—from France, no less!
Adry had to admit, she was impressed. Kneeling on the grass, she let him pour
the wine.

The glass was cool against her skin, and the wine tasted
like electricity on her tongue. “A wonderful picnic on…hey, why is this the
South Lawn? There’s no North in space.”

“Yeah, there is.” Bryan took a pad of paper out of his left
pocket, and an ever-present ball-point pen out of his hair. Back on Earth paper
was something you used for important things, like wedding licenses or
magnificent artworks. You just didn’t use plant-based materials in an
eco-system already damaged by humanity. But on Holton, organic cellulose was
abundant. With all the extra trees, grass and algae it was either use it or
burn it, and Holton hated waste. They made novelty products like paper, pens,
pencils and retro bio-plastic bags that made a god-awful crackling sound every
time you reached for chips.

So on this piece of paper that would have cost thirty cred
back home, Bryan drew a lopsided galaxy approximation. “Milky Way.” He
announced.

“Or the hurricane evac symbol.” She giggled.

He gave her a quick kiss. “Go easy on me, Picasso.”

“I’m more comic books than marble columns. Give me Stan Lee
and stop making bunny trails. South Lawn. Milky way.” She nudged him.
“Explain.”

“Jump Drive is based on triangulation. You have point A, B,
and C, D-E-F if you need more precision. A is always Galactic North. The center
of the Galaxy. That way.” He pointed down the middle of Holton. “B is always
Earth. Using these points, your current location, and any other points you
need, you can triangulate a course to your destination. It’s really limitless,
but if you want to navigate the Galaxy, you have to be aware of at least two
points, always. Your home point, and Galactic North.”

She dipped a strawberry in the champagne, then bit down.
“And this has what to do with the South Lawn?”

“Naming it after a direction reminds us North is that way.”
He pointed. “And a large lawn gives us a lot. Oxygen. A source of cellulose. A
great place for picnics.” He drew a black lines across her calf.

She snorted.

“Hey, morale is important. They had sixty psychologists
working together to build this place, so that we wouldn’t go apeshit living up
here. It’s why we have lawns and trees instead of algae vats, and a day-night
cycle we don’t really need. It tricks us into functioning when we ought to
break down.”

“But it’s fake. And you know it.”

“Can’t fix that. They’ve tried.”

She laid in the perfect, genetically engineered grass and
sighed. Stars and artificial sunlight bathed over her body. Bryan continued
drawing on her legs, though now it felt more like chemical formulas than
doodling. That was Bryan. He never did shut off. “So when does this end?” she
asked, dreamily.

“What?” His hand didn’t still. Maybe he couldn’t shut down.
They were close to solving the problem. They were oh so wonderfully close.

“Us.” She pushed up onto her elbows. “I love our experiments
with silk scarf tensile strength, but I’m holding the current record for being
in your bed. I want to know what more I can expect.”

The staccato writing on her skin ebbed. “Do you want to
break up?” There was a peculiar hitch in his voice.

“No.” She took the pen out of his limp fingers. “But given
how in over my head I am, I’d like to know if I need to breathe or drown.”

He sighed. “You know there’s a lot of bad blood between me
and my brother, right?”

“You were circling like roosters when I got here. How could
I miss it?”

“My brother was…close to my stepfather, let’s say. I made
Dad leave when I was fourteen by shooting him in the thigh. I got away with it
because…well, we don’t need to get into that. But both Mich and I believe it’s
just a matter of time before I hurt someone else. There’s a knife in me, and
it’s going to destroy everyone I love unless I keep you at arm’s length.”

“Love?” She whispered.