CHAPTER 16
From behind, l hear the sound of
the inner docking doors clanging closed. Now we’re
effectively separated from the others until we find a way to get
them opened. Divide and conquer. It’s the oldest trick in the book,
but we couldn’t have taken a new mother and her child with us to
explore the station.
Our fate hangs on
Dina’s preventing Surge and Kora from stranding us here. I have a
lot of faith in our mechanic, but we may have stuck her with an
impossible task. They have a pilot and a jumper on board, but I
hope they won’t want to risk scrambling their daughter’s
brains.
Transport companies
won’t have an infant on board on interstellar voyages—too much
liability involved. As far as I know, they deny children under the
age of two, and even transporting children older than that requires
a special ship outfitted with miniature jump gear.
With a sigh, I glance
around the commissary, seeking anything we can use. I spot a box of
uncracked torch-tubes. Though decidedly unglamorous, I’m glad I’m
wearing this baggy jumpsuit because it has six pockets. I stuff
them full, a total of ten.
Vel’s stick won’t
last forever. When the chemicals burn out, we’ll be left flailing
in the dark. So here’s a little insurance against that eventuality.
We can ration them. I don’t know what I’ll do when the lights go
out.
Can’t think about that.
A little more
rummaging unearths eight packets of paste. I hope we won’t be here
long enough to need them, but I snag the food nonetheless. Nothing
else catches my eye as immediately useful. There are spare parts
and fuel cells for weapons we don’t possess. They wouldn’t carry
charge packs for the disruptor March carries, given that it counts
as contraband.
Going forward seems
like our only option, even if it’s into the trackless dark. I
shudder a little. It was dark when the Sargasso went down, and I spent twelve hours
pinned. My scars flare with phantom pain.
Wish I’d stayed on
the ship, even if it meant changing Sirina.
“It seems obvious
that something happened to the original station crew,” March says.
“We have to figure out what, or it might take us, too.”
I feel Vel at my
shoulder, oddly reassuring. “If we can get to a terminal, I can
patch into their security cams and see what went on before our
arrival. Knowing our enemy will help us formulate the best course
of action.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
March leads the way.
Shadows play hell
with my peripheral vision as we move out of the commissary. We’ll
worry about supplies once we have a way to get them off station. I
try to focus on that—we will get out of
this.
“Watch for webs.”
Jael sounds cold and collected, not the pretty, useless ornament I
initially took him for. I suspect he’s seen something, noticed
something, that slipped right past me.
Webs. As I process that, Vel adds, “And
cocoons.”
Does everyone know
what’s on this station except me? In the distance, I register a
skittering sound, oddly familiar. Where have I heard that
before?
I’ve almost got it
when Vel tackles me, and we hit the floor hard. I lose my grip on
the shockstick, not that I’m in any shape to fight. It clatters
along the floor, throwing tiny sparks of light. Ahead, March and
Jael scatter to opposite sides of the hallway. A sweet stench hits
me on a breeze that shouldn’t be, which means—
Movement.
Something white and
filmy rebounds down the hall, passing between the four of us. A
trap? It looks like a web, just as Jael said.
“They may have set
venom mines as well,” Vel murmurs near my ear. “If it spatters on
your skin, the rest of you will be immobilized.”
Not him, though. His
physiology renders him poisonous to them. Now I know what we’re
facing—the Morgut. That’s human slang, because they’re more gut
than anything else. The last time I saw some of these fuckers, they
tried to eat me.
Then again, I
was asking for it.
I start to suggest
turning back and then I remember they’ve sealed us in with them.
Nothing like playing with your food a bit before you eat
it.
“Noted,” March says
from a few feet up. “You mentioned you’ve been through something
like this before,” he adds to Jael. “So tell us what you
know.”
Call it paranoia, a
quality I possess in spades, but I don’t think we should stand here
talking. Maybe stumbling blindly ahead isn’t the best idea either,
but they may be monitoring these hallways. Homing in on their prey.
Us. So the longer we hang around, the easier they catch us.
I’ve never been
hunted before, and I don’t much care for the sensation.
Surprisingly, Vel
echoes my thoughts. “Not here. It is vital we get to a terminal. I
need to know what happened here.”
“I’ll tell you,” Jael
says, as we round a corner with maximumcaution. “We interrupted
their dinner, and now they plan on having us for dessert.”
“Tell us while we
move then.” March doesn’t sound like he’s in the mood to negotiate
on this point.
Jael seems to
recognize this, but his voice holds a raw, unwilling note. “I
signed on with Surge, maybe four years back. You’d already quit the
game,” he says to March. “The rest of us were still willing to
bleed for Nicuan. They had the money, and they never tire of the
fight. Nobody wins, everybody dies.”
We creep along by
millimeters, staying in the shallow circle of light. Maybe we’d be
better off to douse it, but I can’t face the dark. I’ll lose my
mind. The ventilation system kicks in, sending a hiss of air past
our faces. I’m already on the floor, jumpy as a chem-head after two
days without a fix.
Jael gives me a hand
up, tugs me to my feet with a Bred strength belied by his slender
build. He continues tonelessly. “Someday, after we’re all gone,
archaeologists will find cities of bone on that world. Our
commanders were useless, soft, pampered imperial types, who came up
with strategies from the comfort of their manor houses. Body count
didn’t matter to them. They offered hazard pay and death benefits
to the soldiers’ families.”
“What happened?”
Despite our situation, I almost succeed in forgetting about the
living night all around us, haunted by mechanical noises and
suspicious thumps in the ducts overhead. Almost.
“My CO sent us off
world to investigate trouble at a satellite weapons factory, built
outside of terrestrial tariffs. They kept a skeleton crew on-site
to monitor the automated production system, make necessary repairs.
And then one day, the place went quiet.”
“Like Emry,” Vel
observes.
“Just so. This is how
the Morgut prefer to operate. Pick a small, unimportant outpost and
devour everything inside. If they’re left undisturbed, they’ll
sometimes nest. Breed, before moving on to their next
hunt.”
“But you got away
from them.” I cling to that as a beacon of hope while the dark
swims around us, eddies and ebbs in fluid waves that keep me
jerking in all directions. I don’t know when I’ve ever been this
scared.
“Yeah,” Jael says.
“And lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place.”
He’s a regular bundle
of cheer. I didn’t need to be reminded that I’ve stretched my luck
until it’s transparent.
Stay cool, Jax. This is no worse than a bad
jump.
The hell it isn’t. At
least grimspace can only steal my mind, not suck all the juices out
of me, devour my flesh, and pick its fangs with my bones. My
fingers tighten on the shockstick, not that I think it’ll do me any
good.
From what I remember
they’re insanely fast. On the Silverfish ,
after Vel captured me, I tried to feed myself to them instead of
going back to the Corp. Yeah, I was desperate. A monstrous marriage
of arachnid and humanoid, the Morgut have fanged mouths, jointed
limbs, and hairy bodies that bulge in obscene, unnatural
ways.
I try not to think
about that as I stay close on Vel’s heels. I’m guarding our rear
flank, and I can’t help but remember the scary vids where the
person in back gets yanked away to some hideous fate, and nobody
notices for like ten minutes.
“I’ll always come for
you, Jax.” Distracted by the need to watch our every movement,
March answers me aloud.
The other two don’t
seem to wonder what that’s about, though. Vel shines his light
before we move a single meter while March pans with his disruptor.
Anything that moves in the dark is going to get its innards
rearranged. I’m not sure what to make of Jael. He’s too calm and
unshaken.
We’re coming up on a
two-way split in the corridor. Without a layout or a peek at
station plans, we have no way of knowing which way we should turn.
Down one of those halls might lie a nest or something
worse.
“Right.” Jael points
without elaborating as to why we should go that way.
After Vel shines the
light both ways, I don’t have an opinion, but I do know my skin is
crawling all to hell. It feels like I’m passing through wisps of
webs, not enough to entrap me, but they do stick to my face. I
refuse to let myself start slapping at my skin, a complete
breakdown of impulse versus intellect. I won’t be the one to go
nuts and flee, shrieking in the dark.
The hum of machinery
grows louder as we make the turn Jael suggested. Maybe we can find
a terminal here, so Vel can patch in and see how many we’re looking
at. I’d rather know the odds, straight out. I saw the bounty hunter
handle a full clutch of Morgut on board the Silverfish, so maybe our chances are good.
Maybe.
I continue the silent
pep talk as we continue, step by step. The coppery stink increases,
the closer we come. By the time we hit maintenance, I have to cover
my nose and mouth with my shirt.
Mary, no.
I don’t want to look,
but it’s a compulsion as Vel lifts his light. I register
impressions as flashes that burn themselves into my retinas. I’ll
see this room again, frame by frame, in my nightmares, as if
rendered on some old-fashioned film.
They’ve been here.
Chunks of flesh litter the floor. I imagine the hunger, the frenzy
that drove them to this. I imagine the spilled blood as an
intoxicant, reacting on their alien body chemistry.
To them, we are,
quite simply, delicious.
