The dead man grinned his idiot grin, and Ellis realized that he’d been staring, absently feeding his eyes on the horror that lay at his feet. He looked away, feeling sick and useless as he tried communications again.
“Ground team, do you hear me? Lara, do you receive, over? If you can hear me, uh, I’m at four—please respond, over?”
Ellis stood at the junction door outside the tropidome, hearing what sounded like distant gunfire through the sealed door. He couldn’t tell how close through the thick metal, didn’t know if he should open it and see or go back to the shuttle or stay where he was. Something had happened, the relays weren’t picking up and he didn’t know what to do—
“Lara, Jess, Pop! This is Ellis, do you copy?”
Nothing, only a fuzzy white noise that jumped and spit in his headset like a storm.
Ellis checked Max’s screen, desperate to do something, anything useful. His glasses slid down his sweaty nose, blurring the reads before he pushed them back into place. Max seemed to have stabilized, at least for the moment; Ellis thought about easing the sedative back but decided against it, afraid to upset the delicate balance he’d established.
The Max sat cold and silent, dominating the wide corridor from his steel bed. Ten-plus metric tons of technological wisdom wrapped around a human being, a living, breathing man—fed through an IV, the minimal waste products reduced and siphoned into storage, his brain surgically interfaced to the machine. As good as dead until a series of buttons were pushed, forcing him into a killing frenzy…
Ellis looked back at the dead man, the thick smell of putrid, decaying muscle and flesh suddenly dizzying in the heated air. The man’s eyes had fallen inward, only dark and noxious pools of fluid where his gaze should be. From the tip of the nose down, only stained bone and teeth, scraps of skin hanging like dried and leathery leaves over the viscous mass of his body.
Was he afraid when the aliens came? Does Max feel fear when the adrenaline hits him, imposing murder into his heart?
Ellis was scared, but suddenly thoughtful as well. He felt something strange inside, like pieces falling into place; a connection…
A dead man. A dying man inside a suit.
Ellis blinked, and just like that, it all became clear.
A rush of self-loathing suddenly filled him, an emotion so deep and powerful that he actually staggered against Max, sick to his soul. The rationalizations that he had made so many times were ripped away by the strange and horrible clarity that overtook him.
He had pushed those buttons. He was the one who had thrilled at the power of the machine back on Traon—
—and I’m the one who accused Lara of forgetting about the man inside. A man like the dead man in front of me; a man like myself—
The realization was total, the self-awareness devastating. He had spent years learning how to manipulate technology, too afraid of humanity to poke his head out from his proverbial shell—a terror firmly established by an overbearing father and an inability to know his own feelings. And now he was alone, cut off, abandoned by the very wires and circuits he’d devoted his life to serving; all that really mattered was that there were three men on the other side of the door and a man in a suit beside him, four human beings who could die because precious technology had become more important than their lives.
To the Company, maybe. But not to me, not anymore. Never again, never…
“Hold on, Max,” he whispered, and he wasn’t surprised that much of the fear was gone; stay calm, Lara had said. He and Max would wait there for orders to come; he would trust that the people he worked with wouldn’t forget him, and when they got out of here, he’d find a way to break his contract with the Company, whatever it cost him. Max deserved as much… and so did he.
Ellis tapped his headset and started hailing again.
* * *
Lara felt a trickle of sweat slide down the back of her neck as the seconds ticked past, her whole being focused on the keyboard in front of her as she worked to rig up a bypass.
“…do you copy? Ground leader, respond, over!” Pop was still trying, his voice tight with frustration.
Over four minutes since last contact, and nothing she had done was working; there wasn’t anything open to bypass through, the whole system was down—
—it’s a short and you know it, one of the cables has burnt through and rewired the amplifier so get off your ass and GO—
She stood up, unable to sit through one more futile attempt at Company procedure. “Recall the shuttle, I have to go aboard.”
Pop broke off his unanswered calls and looked up at her with something like panic. “No—! I mean—”
He took a breath and brought himself under control, visibly forcing himself into a halfhearted composure. “Try again, you haven’t—give it another shot, Lara, you can do this…”
Lara shook her head. She didn’t have time for this, none of them did and she had to make him hear her before it was too late.
“Pop, listen to me. I thought everything was shot to shit in communications, but the main amplifier still has power; it’s sending out a kind of”—she searched for words he would understand—“a white noise, and it’s blocking their signals. I noticed it before, I thought it was harmless, but the amplitude has increased somehow, a short or a surge— someone has to shut it down or they’re all dead, and this mission is over.”
She stared into his eyes and saw it get through, saw the pain and fear and finally resignation in his searching gaze.
“Go then, but for God’s sake, be careful. Remain in the command center at all times, I—”
He faltered and looked down at the hissing screens, his voice low and throaty. “I don’t want to lose you, Kat.”
Lara was glad he had turned away, knowing that he’d see impatience and furious disgust on her face. That’s great, just wonderful—how selfless of you to allow me to do my fucking job when lives are on the line—
“You won’t,” she said, and hurried to the door of the chilled room, praying that she wasn’t already too late.
She ran through the tight, cold corridors of the Nemesis, hearing Pop’s voice over the shipwide; he must have left it on, and now it seemed like he was haunting her, his rough voice chasing her through the dim and dusty halls.
“Team leader to all units! We have a communications breakdown; if you are receiving me, maintain present position! Communications officer is coming aboard!”
She couldn’t shake the anger, couldn’t stop the contemptuous thoughts from rising up as she turned through the winding corridors to the lower bay. Less than two hundred years ago, sexism and chauvinism had been rampant on Earth, as well as many other bigotries. Was this how those women had felt? Resentful and frustrated, treated like children simply because they had vaginas? She was a marine, for chrissake, an adult with a mind of her own—
—and a job to do that needs your full goddamn concentration! The shuttle will be here in three minutes or less. Get your suit, lock and load, and let it go, or it’ll be your problem, not his!
She ran faster, swearing to herself that if they got out of this alive, she’d keep her legs crossed from now on against men like Eric Izzard.
* * *
The drones kept coming, and Teape was tired, so tired that it all seemed like some kind of crazy dream. The corridor was awash in violently hissing smoke, the scent of burning chemicals hot and sharp, the bodies falling and falling and screaming—and still there were more, running at the three men, talons outstretched and shrieking murder.
“Fall back!” Jess shouted again, and Teape managed another half step. With each backward movement, it seemed that the long, black bodies gained on them, closing the distance. They were being forced to hold their position, unable to stop firing long enough to get away.
—doesn’t matter, all gonna die—
He believed it, knew it, but he wasn’t going to go down without taking out as many as he could first; he owed that much to Jess and the Candyman. The bugs themselves, too—abominations, clattering tails and drooling jaws that rushed mindlessly to protect their bitch-mother queen. He owed them for a seeming eternity of nightmares; if he was going to die, why should they live? He only hoped that the Company would nuke the site once they were declared MIA.
He took another step backward, rifle vibrating in his hands as the endless bursts of smoke and fire brought down another howling dark form in a spray of acid.
Each time it looked as though there might be a break in the onslaught, a pause in the relentless stream, more of the grinning, capering creatures appeared. The queen had sent an impressive squad of her slavering minions to take out the threat to her nest; there had to be over fifty dusky bodies piled in front of them, lining the corridor, melting through the ravaged deck.
“Don’t take long for word about us to get around!” the Candyman yelled, sweeping the smart gun back and forth with tight precision.
Teape smiled in spite of himself, explosive ammo from his rifle dropping another of the screaming black abortions. The drone sprawled to the sizzling floor in midleap, limbs askew. Pulaski may have been an embarrassment to his family, but he would’ve make the Vikings proud.
“Break coming, get ready—!” Jess’s words were almost lost over the endless blasts of the weaponry.
Teape looked up and saw with dull surprise that it was true. There were maybe another half dozen of the hissing, trumpeting creatures flying down the long corridor toward them, but past that, nothing.
They had reached one of the offshoots to the long and terrible killing corridor, the smaller hallway directly to Teape’s right. The sudden opening of space startled him; he had forgotten, and it loomed wide and empty like a sneak attack. Another dark place to cover, another direction from which death could come at any moment. The trackers meant nothing, telling them only that nothing, had moved in the seconds they watched…
Teape risked a glance at the others, saw the fierce pleasure on Pulaski’s homely face and the controlled concern on Jess’s. The Candyman had paused, the last few drones mowed down smoothly by his tracking weapon.
“Come on, move,” said Jess, and the next few seconds blurred and ran together as they backed up quickly, boots shuffling sideways, cutting through the thick smoke—
—as Pulaski laughed, and Teape heard and saw the hearty chuckles cut short. The giant man’s expression changed, became puzzled as a low grunt was forced from him—
There was a shadow over him, descending, drooling, and a long and spined and bloody rod suddenly shot out of Pulaski’s abdomen. A tail, the tail of the drone that dropped down from a jagged opening in the ceiling, now towering behind the impaled man. The liquid that spurted out of the Candyman looked strange and dark in the red light, pulsing down over the M56 that dropped from his huge hands and hung. His expression of shock and pain was instantly replaced by rage, his teeth gritted and snarling.
It happened in only a second, maybe two, but time had stretched and slowed. Teape watched in numb disbelief as Pulaski’s arm dropped to his boot, jerked a long combat knife from its sheath. Brought it up, and in a strength borne of fury and pain, shoved it into the black skull of the drone—pushed it through the monstrous head, the hissing blood of the creature splashing down to mix with Pulaski’s.
The drone shrieked, pulled its horrible tail out and away from the giant’s sagging body.
“Candyman—!”
Teape screamed as the dying drone fell away, the long blade in its pierced brain already melting.
Pulaski took a step forward and coughed once, his horsey teeth stained dark in the crimson light. “Fucker, showed that fucker,” he said clearly.
Then he collapsed to his knees and vomited blood onto the floor.