Fluency (23 page)
Ajaya’s hand tightened on his arm.
Alan’s voice came out as a low growl, “You don’t know that for sure. I could get lucky.”
Walsh raised his eyebrows, gesturing limply. “We’re running out of ammo. What if there are more of those things?”
“What if I kick the living shit out of you?” Nevermind that he couldn’t actually manage that.
Ajaya gripped his arm forcibly and led him some distance away. He leaned against the wall, chuffing like a locomotive through flaring nostrils, barely keeping from exploding.
Ajaya waited patiently, until he turned to her, throwing up a hand. “I’m not leaving unless I know she’s…. You guys go, if you have to. I won’t leave her here to…I won’t leave her here alone.”
Ajaya nodded slowly. “Do you trust me to fairly arbitrate this issue, Alan?”
Ajaya? Fair?
“Yes,” he said through clenched teeth.
* * *
Once the paralytic in his leg wore off, he’d found other deck transports. None of them worked. He never found a service ladder leading to another deck. He’d been returning to the capsule before the others took off, to ask for more time, to get more supplies and a cutting tool. He hoped to cut into the wall around the deck transport controls and manually trigger it to work again. It was a pretty desperate approach, but then, he was feeling pretty desperate.
That’s when it became clear a new brood of the creatures had hatched. Once they’d caught his trail, they hunted him. He was an easy target until he realized all the noise he was making was the problem. He never made it back to Providence.
There’d been a few tight moments. He’d backed into a room and barricaded himself into a small area by stacking storage crates around himself, like circling the wagons. The bigger animals couldn’t get to him unless they could knock down the stacks of crates, but the smallest ones could slip between them—smaller, but no less vicious. Just one had taken him by surprise. And now he was in a bad, bad way.
There was something going on out in the hall again. He listened for a few moments, to determine how close it was. Damn things were at it again. Some kind of war was being waged out there. They were fighting for dominance, for food.
Damn cannibals. He guessed if there was some other kind of food available, they’d want to eat that. He wasn’t about to broadcast his location and advertise that he was a willing smorgasbord. Not yet.
He thought about Jane to pass the time, as he often did. He closed his eyes and contemplated the day, early in the journey, when she’d spent hours washing her hair for the first time in m
icrogravity.
She was self-conscious about it, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. He’d watched her, surreptitiously, as she went through the many steps of her ablutions, her hair floating like a cloud
around her face as she worked on it painstakingly, section by section. Afterwards, she let it air-dry, combing through it occasionally. He’d observed her pulling a lock forward, twitching it under her nose and rubbing it between her fingers, like she couldn’t decide if it was actually clean unless it smelled a certain way.
He chuckled to himself silently. She’d have been mortified if she’d realized he’d seen that. She kept her dignity wrapped around her like a mantle, always steady, always calm, always reasonable. She helped him feel more
…stable? Sane? Happy? He wanted to please her, so he tried harder. He wouldn’t do that for just anyone. She was special.
He imagined holding her again, one more time. The way he’d held her that day in the capsule, his chin resting on her glossy, silky hair. She’d smelled heavenly when the rest of them stank like baboons. She was earthy, woodsy,
almost floral. She was warm and soft. She fit against him perfectly, no awkwardness at all. She was a gift.
He blinked back wetness and looked up at the ceiling, rubbing at his face and beard. A silent laugh escaped his lips as he reme
mbered her reaction to his beard when he’d first started to grow it. He was the first of the men to give up on shaving with dull razors—without running water it was just a pain in the ass and the vacuum-assisted shaver they’d built into the capsule was worthless. So, he’d just grown a beard. It was the easiest thing to do.
First, she’d teased him about his hipster stubble. When it really grew in thick, she’d joked about his swarthy pirate-beard. Then she’d presented him with an eye-patch, painstakingly fashioned out of used food packaging, beaming as she handed it over. He patted
the pocket on this thigh and felt the plastic crackle under his fingertips. Still there.
She was the glue that had held them all together. Without her, they probably wouldn’t have made it to the Target alive. He and Walsh probably would have killed each other a few months in.
His throat constricted painfully from emotion. It was just as well they would never get a chance to be together. He’d never get it right. He’d do something stupid, hurt her somehow. This way, their relationship stayed pristine. They’d have those few meaningful moments. He’d never make love to her, but he’d also never have the opportunity to fuck it all up.
* * *
He felt hot. He was drenched in sweat. His vision swam. But there was nothing there.
Oh, fuck. Do not look at the leg.
What woke him? He blinked rapidly, forcing his eyes to stay open instead of drifting shut again. The creatures were making a ruckus nearby, again. They were close.
Really close.
This was it. They’d tracked him down. They’d bring down the walls of his makeshift
barricade, overwhelm him with sheer numbers any minute. He could barely bring himself to care. Surely it wouldn’t hurt. Much.
Still
…. He fumbled for the pistol. It was so damn heavy. It was enough to have it in his hand, for now. There were still some bullets in there, right? Weird how that burn on his hand still hurt more than the leg that was just a pustulant lump of meat.
The sounds the creatures were making out there were weird. Curiosity made him ease forward to peer through the crack b
etween two storage crates. A larger creature that lurked out there, the one that had kept him from getting to the door and closing it, immediately filled his limited view, hissing and lashing its tail around. He called that one Barnabas. They were old pals.
Bergen rolled his eyes and scooted to the next crack. There was a stomping and smashing sound coming from out there that he hadn’t heard before. Was there a third stage in this disgusting cre
ature’s life cycle? Could this actually get worse?
The scent of sizzling meat reached his nose and he wrinkled it in consternation. Was he so hungry he was hallucinating a barb
ecue? That was just sick.
He caught a glimpse of something black and shiny in the hall. His eyes widened and he forgot everything else. Something large and heavy lurched into the room and crashed to the floor, pushed over and overrun by the creatures. He couldn’t get a good look at it. He smashed his eyes closed and shook his head to clear it, then turned back to the crack, squinting with one eye to see better.
Whatever it was, it was strong. It was flinging the animals off itself ferociously, clanking heavily against the floor and wall as the animals swarmed over it, trying to keep it pinned down as they lashed and nipped at it.
A creature slammed into the crates that sheltered him. They rocked into each other, unsteadily. He thought for a moment they might topple over on top of him, but they settled back into place.
What was that thing?
Wait
, was that an arm?
Oh, shit.
It was an arm. An arm equipped with some kind of weapon. The air seemed to bend around the arm’s outstretched fist and a silent, concussive force emanated from it—sending the creatures flying in all directions and smashing them to bits.
Bergen swallowed hard as more of the black beast was r
evealed, as the animals splattered and rained in every direction and the air filled with the sickening smell of rot and cooked meat.
It was human in shape. And it was damn scary looking.
So. The alien bastard was finally showing its face.
He watched with fascination as the thing floundered like a bug caught on its back, trying to get itself upright. If he weren’t so freaked out, it might have been comical.
Finally it flipped itself over and got up on all fours, then raised itself up on its knees and blasted a few more of the creatures. That was something, at least.
He raised the pistol and braced it on a crate. He was probably only going to get one good shot before this was all over. He couldn’t miss. He’d aim at the head and hope that was a vulnerable place.
The thing was struggling to get to its feet. That seemed odd, but it was the perfect opportunity.
He fired.
21
Bergen held his breath. He’d hit his target, dead on. The alien’s head snapped back. It staggered, crashing back into the wall, seemed to be stunned. Maybe he’d injured it. It seemed to be slow to recover. Maybe….
It straightened. Its head whipped around, zeroing in on his location.
“Oh, fuck,” he muttered. He tried to send another round into it, but the chamber was empty. He heard nothing but hollow clicks. Awesome.
Great time to run out of ammo. Fucking perfect.
He couldn’t tear his eyes off the thing. He was frozen, couldn’t move. It stomped a few steps toward him and cocked its head to the side. It swiveled at the waist gracefully, in an almost feminine way, neatly dispatching the few creatures that remained.
It was menacing and beautiful. Now that the animals had been silenced, he could hear that it made mechanical sounds. Holy shit. That wasn’t the alien. The alien must be inside it.
The analytical side of him couldn’t help but admire the el
egance in the design of the thing. It looked and sounded heavy, but moved nimbly. Some part of him lusted for it. He wanted to take it apart, figure out how it worked. Just that single, complex device in front of him represented an exhilarating lifetime of insights and discoveries. But that was looking like a pretty unlikely scenario at the moment.
Bergen heaved himself back with an energy he hadn’t known in days when the thing reached out, grabbed the nearest stack of crates, and flung them aside like they were tinker toys. He wasn’t about to die lying on floor, broken and beaten, damn it. He sta
ggered to his feet, swaying and wheezing, close to passing out, and clung to the nearest stack of crates to keep from falling over.
The black behemoth stepped inside the enclosure and stood there, facing him. Long minutes passed. The fucker was taking its time, savoring the goddamn moment.
Bergen couldn’t take it another minute.
He flung expletives at the thing—raged like a rabid animal, spittle flying. He felt his face turn scarlet, the tension in his neck building as his blood pressure went up. He cursed the alien, its race, its ship, its home planet, its goddamn suit and its lack of proper ship hygiene—letting the equivalent of space rats infest the vessel, which was a fucking affront to cleanliness and decency everywhere. Just everywhere, goddamn it!
As he ran out of scathing words, he began to notice the thing had raised its arms, almost defensively…or what? Was it confused? What the hell was going on?
He lost his balance and slid back down to the floor as an ear-splitting voice boomed into the silence. He covered his ears. It was so loud he thought his ears might be bleeding.
“—just tell me how to turn on some kind of speaker so he can hear me! He can’t hear me! Oh. I—now he can.” It lowered its arms and took another step toward him. “Alan?”
Berg’s eyes widened. That thing knew his name. Then it all clicked into place. It’d been inside Jane’s head. It could know an
ything about him.
It crouched down in front of him, held out a hand. It was no less threatening in that position, he told himself.
“Alan—it’s ok. It’s me.”
He shook his head, hands still over his ears. Goddamn it. That fucker loved its mind games, didn’t it? What the fuck did it want now? It had Jane and Compton—now it wanted him too? It waited until you were a crippled, crushed shell, incapable of any kind of defense, and then it took you—for what? What deviant shit was this thing going to do to him? Torture? Anal probing? Live disse
ction?
He cleared his throat, gathered what saliva he could, to spit at that fucker’s blank, shiny, expressionless face.
At that exact moment, the voice thundered, “Retract the helmet.”
Even as it gave the command, the helmet split at the chin, tilted up at a forty-five degree angle, and began to lift, rotating on an axis, level with the point where ears would naturally be.
He’d already let the spittle fly…when he saw her face.
Saw Jane.
It struck her on the cheek. She blinked. “Really, Alan? Is this how you treat all the girls?” She lifted a hand, like she would wipe it away, but frowned at the black, gauntletted hand ruefully. The obsidian shoulders shrugged with a soft, mechanical whir as she dropped her hand again. She sighed and turned to scan their surroundings.
He stared at her hard and sank down farther, thoughts racing. He had to be hallucinating.
This wasn’t real. Couldn’t be. It was a trap. The alien was inside his mind, could make him think anything, do anything, if he let it.
Her voice was soft. So alluring. So tempting to believe. “It’s not safe here. You’re hurt. Where are the others?”
“Safe. You’ll never get them.” His voice came out a groveling whisper. He hated himself for it.
She seemed confused, worried. “I’m glad they’re safe, Alan. You know it’s me, Jane, don’t you?” She crab-walked forward a small measure. “This is Sectilius battle armor. I told you about it, remember? I had to protect myself before I came down here. There’s no way I could have gotten to you otherwise.”
Jane went in and out of focus. The adrenaline was wearing off. He just couldn’t be scared of Jane, no matter what she wore, no matter who was pretending to be her. Not enough to stay alert, anyway. He shook his head and whumped it against the crate behind him. That didn’t help.
“Alan?” She stood. Her face was a mask of concern. She turned and clomped away.
His eyes fluttered closed, but he still heard the juicy crack as she blew away another creature that had wandered in. It was nice of her to do that. He wanted a good look at that weapon. For sure.
She came back, stooped right next to him this time, and slowly reached out a hand to touch his knee with just a single, black fi
ngertip. It felt heavy and cold through the fabric of his flight suit. He didn’t like it. “Can you walk, Alan?”
He huffed. “I’m not going anywhere with you.” It came out more as a moan than actual words, though. So humiliating.
“I guess I’ll have to carry you. I can barely control this thing, honestly. I’m afraid I might hurt you. It seems like I could probably crack you in two without even trying.” She flashed a quick, tentative smile. Her eyes darted over him and he could have sworn that they were filling up with tears. Determination was in her voice, then. “I’m not going to, though. I’m going to make it work the way I want. Everything’s going to be ok. I promise.”
He tried to fight, but his limbs just flailed a little bit, like limp noodles. Jane was going to have her way with him, alien or not.
