Fluency (22 page)
She cursed at him viciously in Mensententia and felt his vibrating, answering chuckle. She was bound to this lunatic now, for better or for worse.
She turned and braced herself against the wall, put all her weight on the good leg, and lifted the injured leg with a hand, guiding it up, back and into the corresponding leg of the suit.
She inhaled sharply as the boot constricted around her foot and lower leg, locking into place.
She gripped the doorframe, easing her weight onto the injured leg, partially supported now, and slipped the good leg in, quickly. She managed to stay upright, knuckles white, inhaling in a stra
ngled gasp from the pain. She leaned down and gripped the handholds inset into the waistband in a practiced manner, almost like she’d done this before, and lifted up. Her every muscle tensed as the suit took over with a whirring boost, adapting to the contours of her lower body and molding over her injury. There was a brief squeeze as the internal computers tested her anatomy and then settled the suit into a semi-comfortable position. It’d do better once the entire suit was donned, she knew.
To that end, she had only to lean slightly to the side and slip her arm down into the gauntlet. It stretched and constricted against her shape. She expected it to be heavy, but the gear moved proa
ctively, reducing the load for her. The other arm was waiting, exactly where it needed to be, for ease. She bit her lip and shoved her fingers down the tube.
A dizzying flurry of mechanized movement made her pulse throb. Her right arm was enveloped. The suit closed and locked over her chest. The helmet closed up and over her head. She
winced as the plumbing engaged with an uncomfortable rasp to her private parts, surprisingly sensitive from her recent mental diversion.
She was protected now—from the vacuum of space, from the elements, from chemical or biological warfare, and all but the most potent weapons. The suit was designed for combat with the Swarm. It would easily handle the nepatrox.
She stood there for a moment, dazed, adjusting to the new sensory input. A huge red symbol hung before her eyes, its three-dimensions telescoping in and out of focus.
“Delay action momentarily,” it said.
She wasn’t done with the filamentous medical devices. The suit utilized the same technology to medically assess and deliver rudimentary care under combat conditions. Without the gel buffering the sensation, they pinched as they drove under her skin at strategic points all over her body.
The suit triaged her. She realized with a start that it had threa
ded her brain and was delivering a digital assessment of her medical state in a real-time HUD behind her eyes. The suit’s right leg adjusted its configuration slightly, to support the healing skeletal structure and minimize further damage.
A shunt was established at the site of the nerve root of her right leg, which already felt blessedly numb. New pathways of control for the movement of that leg were routed. A software patch was installed and coupled with the primary motor cortex on the left side of the prefrontal lobe of her brain, to ease the transition.
Behind her eyes, a dazzling symbol prompted, “Practice?”
She felt the suit moving nearly effortlessly, in servomotor creaks and whirs, as she unconsciously nodded her head. She let out a soft laugh. She felt like a comic-book hero. Which one was it? She couldn’t remember the name. Alan would know.
The suit wanted to optimize the customization of the suit for her personally. In her mind’s eye she could see that it was requesting that she perform a series of maneuvers, first like calisthenics, then increasingly more complex movements like some kind of martial art.
She had to find him—all of them. Ei’Brai claimed he didn’t know where they were, or what had happened to them. She didn’t know what she was going to find, but she had to go now.
Her primary concern at that moment was simply to master walking in that getup. She turned carefully toward the door, intending to make headway as she worked it out.
Her gait was clumsy at first. The right leg pounded into the floor, jarring her all the way up to her teeth. The suit’s adaptive software adjusted the code-patch with each step, until walking b
ecame less drunken crashing and more slightly-disjointed stomping. Perhaps that was the best she could do.
The suit prompted her to continue the practical exercises to pe
rfect the hardware/software integration. She forcefully disregarded the request. She didn’t need to move like a ninja. She just needed to get there. She set off for the deck transport, picking up speed as she went.
20
So fucking tired.
Alan’s eyes drifted shut. He let them, forcing his mind to stay active, alert, while he caught a little rest.
Just a few minutes. As long as he was quiet, he’d be relatively safe. Just…no sleeping. If he slept, he might snore. Snoring was a bad idea.
He was in the fucked up state he was in because he’d fallen asleep some time ago—no idea how long ago that was now. He’d lost his watch—as if he could keep track of anything like time in this nightmare, anyway. He hadn’t eaten in what felt like days. He wasn’t even hungry anymore.
Waking up with a startled snort to find some creature feasting on his own leg? That was fucked up. The fact that he hadn’t felt it or that he was still alive? More fucked up. He should be dead by now.
He lifted one eyelid slightly to look down at his leg. The flight suit was shredded from the knee down, exposing a calf that rese
mbled chopped steak. It hadn’t bled much, which was weird. Damn things must have some kind of coagulant in their saliva—to keep their meat alive and fresh. He coughed a little, then twitched and came to full alert, remembering he wasn’t supposed to make a sound.
He was lucky that there’d been some kind of epic battle going on in the hallway that drowned out the sound of him killing that little son of a bitch. Sound drew them.
Above all, he had to stay as quiet as possible. It was the only way. So, no sleeping, no groaning, no whining. No anything. Just hanging on.
The urge to scream profanity was strong, but he held back, barely. Something inside him
kinda wanted it all to just be over. If he couldn’t go out fighting, at least maybe he could go out raging like a lunatic.
Goddamn
mother-fuckers. He was not an all-you-can-eat sushi bar.
He felt kind of feverish and light-headed. There was no telling what kind of germs those bastards had left on him and no way to clean the wound. He had nothing left. He’d lost everything except his gun and even that had precious few bullets left.
How many? One? Two?
He was too tired to check. He was loath to use it anyway. The noise created more problems than it solved.
His head sunk to his chest. He jerked himself awake and blinked owlishly, trying to remember the last thread of thought he’d been meandering down before he’d drifted off.
He’d given up hope that Walsh and the others would come back for him. They’d already pushed off. They’d spend months drifting toward Mars and if they weren’t all zombies by the time they got there, they’d touch down, connect the two capsules and
hunker down to wait for the launch window to open to head for home. They’d have a year to explain to Houston via radio what had happened. Houston, without a doubt, was going to send Bravo to blow this shit up. And good riddance.
He was just hanging out in this tomb, waiting to kick it. The only thing keeping him from cracking up completely was the hope that maybe
…maybe Jane was still alive.
* * *
Walsh eyed him steadily. “How do you propose we do that?”
“We—we—fuck! What the fuck just happened?” Alan swung around, hand raising to the back of his neck, gripping hard, thoughts racing through every possibility. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Gibbs and Ajaya approached them slowly. The animals were clawing and scrabbling and hissing on the other side of the door.
Ajaya spoke up, “We should explore the room, see if there’s anything here we can use.”
Walsh nodded solemnly. “Agreed. Spread out—but maintain visual contact.”
Gibbs’ gaze darted from person to person. “We’re not going to talk about what just happened? That wasn’t Tom Compton….”
Ajaya’s eyes were glassy. “Clearly not.”
Gibbs went on, his expression stricken, “I mean, it was his body, I know…but….” He trailed off and turned a pleading gaze on Ajaya. “Do you have any theories as to what or how?”
Ajaya looked pained. “I’ve no idea. This is so beyond the realm of human medical science, Ronald.”
She wouldn’t say what they were all thinking—that the alien had wanted Jane for something from the start. Now it had her and Compton, both.
Walsh ground out, “At this point, it doesn’t matter how, or even why. It’s getting its rocks off watching us spin our wheels. We just have to get the hell out of here.”
The sounds from the hall amplified suddenly. There was a cacophony of thuds, unearthly screams, and strident hisses. They all turned toward the door. Alan half expected it to open—or for something to break through it.
Ajaya crossed quickly to put her hand over the door control, ready to shut it again if one of the animals got lucky and tapped the right spot outside.
Something large slammed against the other side of the door, shaking it. Ajaya flinched. Walsh stepped between her and the door, pistol ready in one hand, tank in the other. Alan and Gibbs joined him. They stood, shoulder to shoulder, waiting.
The enraged and agonized shrieks from the other side of the door reached a deafening zenith. Alan glanced at the others, psyc
hing himself up for the next onslaught that he knew was likely to be the end.
Then, the sounds died off. It went silent.
Minutes went by without a sound. No hissing, no screams, not even the scratch of claws against the door.
Cold sweat ran down the side of Alan’s face. He shrugged it away with his shoulder. He was intensely thirsty, chilled from the evaporation of sweat, and his muscles ached from the exertion and
tension of the last hour. The fiery sensation in his leg was waning, quickly replaced by an unnerving stiff, wooden feeling.
They remained ready, but Alan felt silly about it.
“What just happened?” Gibbs asked nervously, adjusting his stance and aim.
Alan rolled his eyes. “Is that a rhetorical question? What makes you think we have more information than you do, Gibbs?”
Walsh shot him a dirty look and lowered his weapon. “Stand down.”
They broke apart and stood motionless, listening. Ajaya went to the door and put her ear to it. Walsh sidled up to her and she moved out of his way, shaking her head. He listened for long minutes.
Walsh stepped back and motioned Ajaya to the door control, then gestured for Alan and Gibbs to flank him. “Cover me,” he said gruffly. Once they were in place, he nodded at Ajaya. She tapped the control and took up a defensive stance.
The door slid up. A pile of animals that had been leaning against the door fell toward them. Walsh stepped back, cursing, but didn’t fire into the carnage.
They were all dead. As far as Alan could see, the floor was littered with contorted corpses. Many had a painful, twisted look to them—eyes bulging, hinged-maw yawning, winged mouth-flaps extended, scaled-tongues stiffly erect. In death, they were even more grotesque than in life. No small feat, that.
“What the hell?” Walsh muttered.
Ajaya moved forward and stooped, turning one of the specimens over with the business end of her weapon.
“Any theories, Varma?” Walsh grunted.
She replied, “If I had to guess, I’d say asphyxiation.”
Walsh huffed and poked one with the toe of his boot.
Gibbs’ actively avoided looking at the animals. “That’s insane. How could that happen?”
No one knew. No one answered him.
Walsh eased through the door, stepping over and around the corpses. He scanned up and down the hallway, looking unsettled.
Alan could see the wheels turning. Without conscious thought, he followed Walsh into the hallway, bellowing, “We’re going for Jane, you bastard!”
Walsh inhaled slowly, raising his head a fraction. He turned a questioning gaze on Ajaya.
Ajaya squared her shoulders and nodded. “We should, yes.” She turned to Gibbs.
Gibbs couldn’t seem to find a comfortable place to rest his eyes; he closed them. “Johnson’s got no idea what’s going on here. We owe it to them—at the very least—to get a message back home. I think that should be our priority.”
“Jane just saved our fucking lives, Gibbs!” Alan blurted out in disbelief.
Gibbs screwed up his mouth and leveled his gaze on Alan. “Yeah. But how can we possibly find her in here? We have to be realistic, Berg.”
Walsh said, “It’s split. Fifty-fifty.”
Alan’s hands clenched at his sides. “No, it’s not. Jane’s the deciding vote. She wants to be found, goddamn you.”
Walsh cleared his throat. “How long can she survive with an injury like that?”
Ajaya’s expression was thoughtful. “It was a compound fracture. That’s very serious. She’ll have lost a lot of blood. I can’t imagine her lasting more than three days. Even without taking blood loss into consideration, she wasn’t carrying water, and sepsis is inevitable with an injury such as that. It’s dire.”
Walsh nodded slowly. “Can you treat that injury with the su
pplies in the Providence?”
Ajaya’s chin came up. “Affirmative, Commander.”
A bit of bravado, then, from Ajaya. If that worked on Walsh, it was all to the good.
Alan watched Walsh, willing him to make the right call. R
egardless of Walsh’s decision, he’d already chosen for himself. He wasn’t leaving this ship without her. Whatever that meant—he’d do it.
Walsh scratched absently at his beard, then jerked his head t
oward the deck transport. “Let’s go, then.”
But it wasn’t that simple.
They threaded through the carnage, weapons at the ready. Alan kept to the rear so the others wouldn’t feel compelled to comment on the growing difficulty he was having with his leg.
When they picked their way over the spot where Jane had fal
len, Alan swallowed hard. She’d lost a lot of blood. There was a large, dark pool, a smaller one nearby, with a long smear between them, from when she’d dragged herself, trying to save herself.
He’d failed her. They all had.
Ajaya stopped to survey the area before stepping around it. Her voice remained clinical. “It always looks worse than it is. Liquids…volume looks like more when it’s spread out, Alan.”
He nodded and turned away. He couldn’t bear her sympathetic expression.
The contrast, once they’d cleared that area, was sobering. The hallway near the deck transport was virtually untouched, like a life or death struggle on a monstrous scale hadn’t just taken place a few meters away. If he didn’t turn around, he could almost believe it’d been a terrible dream.
The slimy pupa on the floor in front of the deck transport lay limp and broken open, its contents unleashed at some point since they’d last seen it. Inside the chamber were the remains of several creatures, smashed to shell and jelly by Compton, apparently.
They stepped inside. Bergen leaned against the wall, grateful for a break from dragging a stiff, tingling foot at the end of a leg that was starting to resist moving at all.
Walsh radiated disgruntlement. “Where do we start?”
“Let’s assume a best case scenario.” Ajaya reached out and touched the symbol for the level with the infirmary. Nothing happened. She pressed it again. The door didn’t close. They went nowhere.
Alan edged her out of the way, pressing the button
himself, then trying various other keys. Pressing all the keys. Pounding the keys with his fists.
They were locked out.
The three of them silently watched him gimp-marching up and down the hall, swearing, until he finally fell on his ass. No one said a thing. They just sat down in a defensive cluster around him to share a meager meal and some water.
Ajaya didn’t say a word, but efficiently slit his pant leg to the knee, examined the wound, smeared an ointment on it, and ban
daged it. He knew he should thank her, but all he could manage was a nod. He immediately started theorizing about where the nearest deck transport might be, from an engineering standpoint.
Walsh kept his eyes on his food. His voice was flat. “It’s locked us out, Berg. I think you’d better come to terms with that. It doesn’t want us going after her.”
“The deck transport could be malfunctioning,” Bergen said quietly, every muscle in his body tensing.
“That would be some coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Not if weapons had been discharged inside.”
“We saw no evidence of that.”
Alan stood, hopping on one foot, hands clenching at his sides. “She’s one of us.”
Ajaya rose too and laid a hand on his arm, subtly supporting him. “We have to talk this through, Alan. You must remain calm.”
Walsh stayed put. “This isn’t the movies, Berg. We lose people. It’s a fact of life. Every one of us knew that when we signed up. We all knew we probably wouldn’t be going home.”
“You’re giving up on her too fast. There have to be service ladders in here somewhere. I’ll find them.”
Walsh leaned back and grimaced. “That could take days to find. She hasn’t got long.”
