The command sphere leads me through Stasis.
Nightmares walk these corridors. My nightmares. I half expect them to crash through the fug-eaten bulkheads. In a way it would be better if they did, would give me something to do other than wonder if my friends were behind those walls, corpses rotting to dust.
There's a stasis unit ahead, the hatch cracked and shoved aside, the bulkhead around it showing signs of fug damage, holes through which the blue light of emergency shields glows. A neon glow in the darkness.
I can't sense anyone inside, no sheen of emotion, not even the jangle of another psion. There's no reason I should go in there, nothing but the pull in my stomach and the memory of Captain Lyn.
It should put me off, that memory, of her hand reaching through dried biogel and the rancid stench of decay. It should, but it doesn't.
I have to know.
I hesitate on the threshold, just beyond the curve of the corridor, the hatch obscuring my vision. Do I really want to do this? That little voice in my head says, "Yes".
Okay then.
There's no real memory of walking through the hatch, just the impression of steelcrete held together by thin strands of metal, and then I'm inside, and the pods are right there. Four of them, standing side-by-side, their canopies clouded with dust, surrounded by fug hanging in thick strands, crawling over the covers and around the pods' bases. It's a veritable forest, a jungle, and my heart beats hard, waits for the fug to move, to come for me.
Dude is a reassuring hum on my shoulder, spreading waves of gold through my skin while the armour contracts around my arms, reminding me that it's there and it's not eating me.
There are little blooms of yellow-gold and pops of the same wrongness that permeated the bio-tanks. They're peeping out at me from the tangle of fug almost like they're trying to hide, and I think that's worse than the fug.
One of the pods stands open, empty, the space within lined with a fine layer of grey dust and a thin carpet of fug. The others... The fug's thicker around them, the wrongness with it.
Vines the width of my biceps wrap around the pods, piercing the canopies, where there's canopy left at all. Most are shattered, thick shards of plasform spewed over the deck, the dried remnants of biogel sunk through the grates, some still clotted on the steelcrete mesh. And inside... Bodies.
There's no smell. That thought hits me first, strikes me as weird in fact, makes me wonder if the air-cyclers here are working or if the fug mask is filtering the scent like it does the air. Probably. Either that... either that or the bodies are so old all the smell has left them, the bacteria that breaks down flesh dead and gone.
Except there's still flesh on those bodies, faces and hair and naked limbs wrapped in fug. My feet take me closer, fug-paws crunching on bits of plasform, not even registering the pain of the shards piercing flesh. It's not flesh, I remind myself. Still, I can feel it crunch so why can't I feel it cut?
It's not really the thought to be having, not the important thing staring me in the face, but it's better than what is staring me in the face. I didn't know Horn like I did Mac, or Jim Engineer or Mae Lu. Didn't know him more than to know he was a fiend of the speedway, always pushing to go faster, higher, further. I was there when he overrode the safeties on the freight system and rigged a palette to shoot out in the void and back again. Remembered the tension in the air when he docked and there was Captain Lyn, fury rolling off her like I never wanted to sense again, her face a meteor storm. He'd got off that palette, encased in an EVA suit and tried not to look like he'd just had the time of his life. Horn did a decent job of keeping the grin from his face, but couldn't help the exhilaration rolling off his psyche.
Couldn't even lock it down enough to prevent the captain from sensing it.
Even in death, it still looks like Horn is grinning, just not with his mouth.
Horn's neck is a dark, ragged mess.
There are claw marks in the flesh. Blood. Dried and old. Flaking. Fug doesn't kill like that, doesn't open flesh and expose bone. Fug doesn't leave anything behind except the desiccated skeletons of its victims. Skeletons that crumble at the slightest touch.
Kin killed Horn.
Kin.
I stand there, waiting for that to sink in, for what I'm looking at to make sense, to find a place in my brain. I'm standing there for a long time, waiting for enlightenment to strike.
I just...
Kin killed Horn.
It's not like I didn't know they'd killed other Jørgens, hadn't smelled the blood on h'Rawd's breath, but it doesn't stop the thought echoing in my brain, over and over and over. Bouncing off the sides of my skull even as I turn to the other pods. The rest of Horn's family was in here, his dad and mum. His aunt too. He didn't have any siblings, just them, and I guess only his aunt got out, 'cause the pods on either side of him are occupied. Although, I guess his mum could have got out, I didn't really know her that well either, and she looked a lot like her sister.
It's all moot at the moment. The only way I know Horn's dad didn't get out is because he's the only other one with a penis. His dad's face is gone, not just covered over or obscured, but gone, and the rest of his flesh isn't far behind. I can see bones and muscles and tendons, the thick rope of intestines spilling out of the hole in his belly. I'm pretty sure fug has done most of it, is doing most of it, but some of the holes... They look more like tears, like the ragged marks on Horn's throat.
The awareness is cataloguing the damage, highlighting parts of the body, outlining the claw marks, picking out lumps of yellow-gold and flooding my eyes with information, but I don't need it.
I don't need to see more.
This is enough to fuel my nightmares, to refill the spot where the image of Captain Lyn's hand had started to fade.
This is enough.
Enough knowledge, enough dread, enough anger.
I tromp out of the unit, pausing on the threshold, dragging air into my lungs. Just, standing there, taking it in. The corridor, the crumbled bulkheads, the fug, the glow of emergency shields, and the hatches. So many hatches, some standing open, some still shut. How many of them are filled with corpses? Were Horn's family the only ones the kin killed? And why?
Kin and human have shared Citlali for decades, have saved each other, helped each other. Been allies, if not friends, ever since the first exploration ship launched from Jørn. It was part of our purpose, part of the reason the ships had been built as they had, with organic and technological components. One species could not survive this journey without the other.
So why?
Like so much since I woke up, it doesn't make sense and the awareness in my gut isn't helping.
It's Aeotu who answers, reaching up through the awareness. Sorrow rides her hard, apology and guilt bringing up the rear. Sisters, she says and I have an impression of many kaleidoscopic minds connected one to the other in a sprawling network. The impression changes and the minds become restless balls of energy – Jørgen minds – shrivelling, rotting as she ties them into a new whole.
Wrong, she whispers.