Wings of Retribution (38 page)

For a moment, Dallas could not speak.  She just stared at the stranger before her and tried to remember why she had ever wanted to trap her in the airlock.  To bust her down a peg, surely.  But there would be no point, anymore.  She didn’t have any pegs left.

“Who’s hurt?” she managed, tearing her eyes away from Athenais.

“Rabbit’s in there with Stuart,” Tommy said.  “Darley didn’t make it.”

Dallas swallowed hard.  She turned toward the door and pushed it open.

Inside, Stuart lay in a bloody pool of regen fluid.  The wound must have been bad, since the water was almost opaque.  It took Dallas a moment to realize that Rabbit was holding a gun to Stuart’s head.

“Dallas, get out of here,” Rabbit snapped.  “He’s desperate for a new host.  He’s losing his mind already.”  Then, like in a slowed-down horror vid, Dallas saw Rabbit’s finger start to squeeze on the trigger. 

He’s going to kill him,
Dallas realized, horrified.

“Get away from him!” Dallas blurted, rushing inside.  She shoved Rabbit out of the way, putting her body between her and the convulsing
suzait
.  “You can’t!  He’s a friend!”

“If I don’t,” Rabbit growled, “he’s gonna try to take one of us for host.  Tommy, come get Dallas out of here!”  He shoved past her and put the gun back to Stuart’s skull.

Behind her, the door opened.

“I’ll be the host!”

It took Dallas a moment to realize that the words had come out of her own mouth.  When she did, her heart started to hammer, but she didn’t take them back.

Rabbit’s gun lowered a bit.  Sweat was beading on his forehead and upper lip.  In the pool, the man’s body was beginning to go still.  Rabbit looked to him, then back up at her.  “Are you serious?”

“Yes,
yes
!” she snapped, pushing the gun back towards the linoleum.  “Get out!  You shoot him, I swear to god, I’ll fly this ship into an asteroid belt.”

“We can’t let you host that thing,” Colonel Howlen said.  “We need you to fly the ship.”

“Athenais can fly it,” Dallas growled.  “Put the goddamned gun down, Rabbit.”

“Athenais…isn’t herself.  I’m not sure we can trust her to fly just yet.”

“
You
fly it then,” Dallas cried.  “You’ve been angling for my job since the beginning.”  She gestured at the helm in frustration.  “Well, now you have it!”

Tommy actually lowered his eyes a bit.  “I think we’d be better off if you did it.”

The body in the pool let out a long, deep moan. 

“Someone
please
just get her out of here while I take care of this!” Rabbit snapped, trying to step past her again.

“I’m warning you, Rabbit…” Dallas growled, pushing him back, “You shoot him and you’ll be sorry.”

Rabbit held the gun in place a few seconds more, then seemed to collapse under the strain.  He backed away from the regen pool and sheathed his weapon.

“Go ahead,” he said, waving at the corpse.  “He’s all yours.”

“Get out.”

Rabbit opened his mouth, eyes on the body, but then caught her eyes and simply shook his head.  He turned and followed Tommy out into the hall.

Dallas locked the door behind him.  When she went over to Stuart, she realized that he was still breathing.  Or, trying to, at least.  The gaping wound in his chest was oozing bubbles and blood faster than the regen fluid could repair it.

“Listen to me, Stuart,” Dallas said.  She grabbed the dying man’s hand.  “I’m gonna pull you out of there and hold your head over mine.  I saw what you did with Pete.  He was a bit banged up afterward, but he was still alive, so I’m not too scared.  You can use me until you can find a new host on Terra-9, okay?”

She thought she saw Stuart’s eyes flicker towards her and a nod.

Straining, Dallas hefted Stuart as far up the rim of the regen pool as she could, then levered him over the edge.  With both of her feet planted onto the polymer side of the pool, she grabbed him by the shoulders and heaved him the rest of the way to the floor, slopping red liquid all over the clean white tiles.  Immediately, her breath caught.  Stuart’s wound was worse than she first imagined.  He was missing a leg and his lower body was shredded. 

And, now that she looked, she realized she must have imagined the nod, because this man was dead.  Blood was pushing a clear sheen of regen fluid out of its path in a crimson stain across the linoleum.  She looked down at the corpse and flinched back when the eyes blinked at her.

That’s not possible,
Dallas thought.  The man was obviously dead.

Then she realized you could make a dead frog’s legs twitch, with a little electricity applied in the right spots.

Oh god…
  Dallas suddenly had the time-stopping realization that she was planning on taking a
mind-controlling parasite
into her
brain
.

One that was making a dead man’s head turn, a hand clumsily reaching towards her leg…

What the hell was she thinking?  Dallas automatically took a step back, letting the hand fall to the linoleum.  The dead man peered up at her—like someone looking through a hundred feet of glass—but didn’t attempt to follow her.  She saw resignation, there.  And fear.  Then the corpse went limp, head flopped back to stare at the ceiling.

Time began to tick past.  Seconds turned into minutes, but Dallas couldn’t work up the courage to get down on her knees with the
suzait
.  She glanced up at the door, suddenly wishing Rabbit were back in here with her.

She again glanced down at the corpse.  Somehow, she felt like his time was running out.  Just how long
could
he last in there?  Was he already dead?  She cringed, realizing she might have already killed him.  Guilt started curdling her stomach.  Had she given him hope in his last minutes, only to stand over him and watch him die?

Well, dearie,
she realized,
there’s one way to find out.

Her mother had always said she was a ballsy little wench.  Heart pounding like a sledge against her ribs, Dallas gingerly reclined on the floor beside the corpse and wiggled until she was lying within reach of the head.  Reaching out, she lifted his head just enough to slip her own head under his.

Oh gods,
she prayed,
Please let this not be the biggest mistake of my li—

It happened fast.

No sooner were their ears lined up than the
suzait
pounced.  At first, it was just an uncomfortable warm, wet wiggling in her ear, like a schoolmate’s Wet Willy, but then something began ripping at the inside and Dallas, despite herself, clawed at her ear and began to scream.

She could feel it eating its way inside her skull.  Her head was pounding like someone was crushing it with the bow of a ship.  She couldn’t think, couldn’t move.  She thought she was going to die.

Oh god it hurts,
she whimpered, her entire body trembling.  Her limbs felt like they were on fire, and her sinuses felt superheated and pressurized all at once.  And then there was the gnawing, grinding pain inside her ear, the overwhelming sound of her own flesh being ripped apart… 
Oh god, oh god…
  She screamed until her lungs couldn’t hold air.

And then, almost by magic, the pounding stopped.

I shut off the pain receptors in the right side of your head,
something said to her.

Dallas jerked.  “Stuart?”

Sorry it hurt so much.  I didn’t have the energy left to stun you.  I used it all up after the host died.

“It’s okay,” Dallas said stupidly.  All she could think was,
I have a parasite in my brain.

And he was
talking
to her.

She was so dead.

Dallas lay on her back on the linoleum, staring at the blood-spattered ceiling, waiting for him to take over.

She waited.

Several minutes passed.  Then, when they simply continued to lay there, lukewarm blood seeping into her clothes where they touched the floor, the dead man rapidly cooling beside them, Dallas frowned and said, “Aren’t you gonna do something?”

Like what?
Stuart asked, sounding genuinely curious.

Dallas blushed furiously.  “Well, uh, I thought you had to, uh, you know…?”

Stuart waited.

Dallas frowned.  “You’re just gonna
sit
there?”

She heard a soft chuckle. 
Well, I can certainly take control of motor functions, if that would make you feel more comfortable.  But considering how you’re not a mass murderer who’s likely to kill everyone the moment I release the controls, I had thought I’d let you lead. After all, you volunteered for the transfer. 

The way he said ‘volunteered’ felt alien, full of awe, edged with reverence.

“Hell, no,” Dallas stammered.  “I mean, not that I really have any…I mean…I just thought you had to, is all.”  Dallas was trying not to think about the warm liquid that was welling up inside her ear. 
Please don’t let that be brain juices,
she thought.   Sitting up, she tilted her head towards the floor.  A trickle of blood dribbled from her ear to mix with the red pool on the tiles. 

As soon as she did, her gut spasmed and she added her breakfast to the slurry of blood and regen juices on the floor.

One of the side-effects,
Stuart said, in gentle apology. 
Humans weren’t built for this sort of thing.

Dallas groaned and wiped her mouth, hands shaking.  Her joints didn’t feel as strong as they used to, and she wondered if that was the vomiting or the brain damage.

The vomiting,
Stuart assured her. 
I was very, very careful.
 

There was something tender about his assurance, and it made her feel a lot better.  Dallas swallowed down another wash of bile.  God, she really hated to vomit.  Kind of like sawing off ring-fingers and snacking on rat poison…  It was just
not
on her list of priorities.  Dallas pushed herself back up into a seated position and eyed the room around them.  She could imagine what her mother would say, if she’d seen her now. 
My daughter the hotshot flippin’ pilot.  Well, you may fly like a bat outta hell, but you ain’t smarter than a goddamn doornail, are ya, girl?  You never were a bright one.  All twists and turns and no straight and narrow.  Well, it’s too late, now.  No going back, babe.  You’re his meat-puppet now.
 

It’s not like that,
Stuart said softly.

Dallas cleared her throat nervously, uncomfortable that he could read her thoughts.

…and completely unable to do anything about it.

To keep from falling into full-blown panic, she decided to change the subject.  “So…” Dallas whispered tentatively, “you can you see what I see?”

I set myself up as an observer.  I can hear, see, smell, and feel everything you can. 

Dallas wiped her nose—which was bleeding—and glanced down at Stuart’s last host, now a dead body.  She stared at it a moment, taking in the damage, realizing that could be
her
in a week or two.  Finally, she whispered, “What hit you?”