Lara stood in the communications room, body frozen, eyes wide. The camera outside the tropidome showed all too clearly what had happened; the Berserker was still and silent, locked into position. Ellis stood behind the mobile transport, his face flushed with anguish and disbelief.
Pop’s voice was a strangled, horrified cry. “No! Hit him again, Ellis, blast it!”
Ellis dropped his gaze to the screen in front of him and shook his head. “It—I can’t,” he breathed, and looked back at the frozen Max, openly stunned, his expression tortured. “His heart rate is too high, another dose will kill him—”
Jess spoke in a quavering whisper, intense and desperate. “You don’t get him going, we’re all dead, do you hear me? You gotta take the risk!”
Ellis stood there, unmoving, and Lara could see the indecision in his boyish face, fear and confusion and a terrible, wrenching guilt.
Teape moaned over her headset, hissed out the tech’s name. “Ellisss!”
Lara saw Jess’s limp form carried past one of the station cameras, surrounded by a horde of capering drones; he’d be with Teape soon.
She swallowed, hard and forced the words to come. “Ellis, you have to do something; I’m sorry, there’s no other way—”
“Ellis, do it, that’s an order!” Pop shouted, and Lara saw the young tech’s face tighten with anger.
Way to read the situation, Lara thought bitterly, the rest of her mind racing ahead, figuring the distance between the command center and the tropidome. It would take too long for her to navigate her way up, even assuming the trip didn’t kill her, Ellis was truly on his own.
He looked down at the monitor again, shook his head. He left the controls and walked to the frozen Max unit, not hurrying but not wasting time, either.
“It’s too late,” he said softly, and Lara heard it in his voice, felt a sinking sensation in her gut that told her what was next.
“He’s—he’s dying, or already dead. I’ve got to get him out,” he said, and reached up to unlock the hatch set into the unit’s broad back. Metal popped against metal and the panel hissed open, the thick plate rising into the air.
For the next few excruciating seconds, nobody spoke. Ellis reached into the massive suit with both hands and eased back out, holding on to the shoulders of the volunteer.
The humanoid figure was encased from head to toe in a sheath of dark green material and wrapped with a million wires. He was skeletal thin, his wasted limbs and body only skin over bones. Thick metal cuffs wrapped around his arms, wrists, legs—bands of circuitry, the wires leading back into the machine. Tubes of different colors were connected to every conceivable orifice, pulling free and spilling out fluids as Ellis gently lifted him away from the giant suit.
The man was so thin that Ellis held him easily with one arm; he pulled away the cloth mask with his free hand.
A hollow-eyed skull was revealed, all traces of humanity wiped clean from the frozen expression of terror and pain. The wide and staring eyes were rimmed with blood, more of it coursing from his nose and mouth.
“Dear God,” whispered Lara, unable to tear her gaze from the horrible sight. It was the face of a man who had been driven insane, locked away inside a metal shell, alone, completely alone. He was supposed to be in his thirties, but the harsh lines and protruding bones of his face and body added decades. She could see the square interface panel set into the back of his hairless skull, saw the numbers tattooed across the wasted brow.
“He’s dead,” said Ellis, and Lara’s mind added cruelly to the sentence without her consent; there was no way around it, not anymore.
—and so are Jess and Teape.
* * *
He had thought there would be no more fear, but he was wrong. Knowing you were going to die was nothing; he’d thought the awareness would be enough, and for a time, it had been. But everything had changed when the drones had carried him into the ship.
“…Company ship,” Teape whispered, and the anger burned in his belly, sour and hateful. He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t help the incredible rage that coursed through his veins, his exhausted, trapped body. The loss of Pulaski fed into the terrible stream of bitterness. And if he could feel that, could taste the betrayal like bile in his throat—
—then it lets the fear in, too.
They’d webbed him maybe ten meters from the wide-open door and placed an egg in front of him, and now Max wasn’t coming. And everything had changed again, just like that.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, not like this!
If he had known, he wouldn’t be here. He would’ve fought, struggled, accepted a quick death at the claws of a drone—and now it was too late. Max wasn’t coming, and he was facing his death, the leathery orb a meter in front of him.
There was a flurry of hissing activity near his wall, and he managed to turn his head a few centimeters, afraid that it would be Jess but hoping it would be, too; he didn’t want to be alone here, surrounded by the suspended dead, decaying bodies strung up like terrible ornaments. He felt horribly selfish, wishing for another man to join him in hell, but he couldn’t help it. The only consolation in this nightmare was in the stink of decaying flesh; corpses didn’t plead for mercy.
It wasn’t the ground leader, not yet; the few drones that moved through the vast chamber were simply removing empty shells nearby—clearing a space for Jess, probably. They’d placed another unopened egg a couple of meters to his left. The queen’s chamber was off to his right, he thought; it was the direction from which the drone carrying his egg had come. The ship was apparently big enough for the queen to have her own room, unsullied by host bodies, a darker, quieter place for her to squeeze out her terrible children.
He stared at the drying, puckered shell in front of him, the carrier of his fate. A gift of insanity and death…
…two for the price of one, free! With bargains like this, who needs enemies? His thoughts were jumbled, babbling, the exhaustion and anger and fear too great for him to think straight. And maybe that was a good thing, considering.
The nest inside the Trader was brutally clear, more light than he’d ever seen inside a hive. He’d always hated the dark of hell, but this was worse—because the setup of the ship was undeniable in the muted yellow light of the overheads far above. He was in a gigantic cargo hold, designed to carry animals—a zoo, and the stacked rows of giant reinforced cages with shredded steel doors made it obvious what the crew had been carrying.
—but Jesus, why? Why would the Company be transporting drones?
He already had an idea, and it made him sick. The exact reason didn’t even matter; why did the Company do anything? It was about profit, and the crew of the Nemesis had been called in to clean up their deadly mistake, never mind that a couple of cons would probably die in the process—
Teape closed his eyes, opened them a moment later when a pair of drones brought in Jess.
“Fight them,” said Teape, “you still have a chance; fight!”
Even as he said the words, he could see that Jess wasn’t going to do it. As one of the drones placed the ground leader next to him, spit out a dripping mouthful of webby secretions, and roped him to the wall, Teape could see the denial on Jess’s face. Jess looked scared and tired and sad, but he didn’t look as though he believed it was over.
Teape tried to help. “It’s over, Jess! Don’t let it set, you gotta try to get out—”
“It ain’t over till it’s over,” said Jess quietly. He held still, let the hissing creature rope his body to the wall with the sticky goop.
Teape closed his eyes again, sorry for Jess, sorry for himself and Candyman and the poor bastard that had died inside of Max. He wished that he’d stayed in prison, that he’d never gone in the first place, that his life had been different. He’d never felt so horribly alone…
He might have stayed that way, lost in a dark internal world of despair, but that was when a drone reached out and covered his mask with a giant cool hand—and in one smooth movement, pulled it away from his face.
* * *
Ellis stared down at the dead man cradled in his arms, the wasted body, the terrified death mask he wore. What crime had he committed, what heinous act could he possibly have participated in that justified his dying moments? Looking at the lines and shadows of his face, the etched pain, Ellis knew without a doubt that there was no volunteer program for Max; Lara had been right.
I could have stopped this, he thought miserably, and looked up at the frozen Berserker suit, the yawning chamber in the back that had acted as torture chamber and cell and finally executioner for the shriveled husk in his arms. Ellis had pushed the buttons, and although he hadn’t meant to, he had acted as the final instrument of death for a man who’d had no choice.
Lara and Pop had fallen silent, probably aware that it was over; there was nothing to be done or said for the two men in the hive, no words that would erase the mistakes that had put them there. Max hadn’t fired. Max was dead, and all that was left now was to wait until Jess and Teape joined him.
Teape stammered into his ear, high and panicked. “My mask, they took it, I don’t have my mask—!”
Jess, his voice deeply sorrowful, afraid—but somehow calm. “Don’t think about it, man, don’t lose it now, try to think about somethin’ easy, ocean, trees—”
They’re going to die, Ellis thought, the bravest men I’ve ever known are going to die, all because of me.
Unless…
He swallowed and stood up, not wanting to complete the frightening thought but now unable to forget it, either. All his life he’d turned away from the fight, bullied into the role of coward by his father, blind to the fear of his fellow human beings because he hadn’t wanted it to be there. He’d martyred himself to his fears, believed that it was the only way. A lifetime of blindness, unable to see the truth— that everyone was afraid, but some people took it in, rode with it—and acted in spite of that fear.
I could be like that, he thought and walked to the massive suit, unbuckling his helmet and dropping it to the floor. Because maybe courage isn’t something you feel, it’s what you do. What you have to do when there’s no other option, when real people are going to die and there’s nobody else to do what has to be done…
“Ellis, what are you doing? You’re not thinking—”
Ellis didn’t answer Lara, didn’t want to hear her rational, sane arguments. He peered into the suit, found the sharp prongs of the interface extension set near the shoulders. Without the surgical implant, the glistening points would have to be reset; a biological interface was possible, the suit theoretically capable of creating its own connection through chemical impulses in the body…
“Ellis, wait! You’re not trained for this! It could fry your brain, are you listening? It could kill you!”
Lara sounded desperate, and Ellis was vaguely surprised at the pleasure that evoked; he was glad that she cared. She was a good person, intelligent, but he hoped that she was wrong about the effects. He wasn’t really sure about them himself. It was going to hurt, though, the sharpened metal piercing his flesh, boring into his skull—
He tried not to think about it as he adjusted the interface, pulled the spring arm out farther. He popped the circuit hatch on the lower back and turned off the IV pumps and monitors, doing what he could to alter the suit away from computer-synth implant. Ideally, he’d have hours in a lab to reshape the system—but Teape and Jess didn’t have hours, probably didn’t have minutes…
Ellis picked up the M41, looped the sling tight against the Berserker’s hip, and hoped it would hold. He lifted himself into the suit, reached back, and pulled the hatch closed. Sweat poured down his face. The interior was dark and hot; it smelled like chemicals and metal and his own fear, a strangely sweet odor like overripe fruit.
He pressed his arms to his sides, felt the controls beneath his fingers. His feet slipped into stirrups just above the knees of the body, his head just below Max’s neck.
“Ellis, no,” whispered Lara, and he heard resignation in her voice.
“Help me do this,” he whispered back, to himself as much as Lara, and leaned into the steel of the interface. The probe whirred to life—
—and he screamed as the metal plunged into his scalp and slid through bone. As he and Max became one…