The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 21

  The suited man took off his mask, revealing a lined face with a hard jaw and silver at his temples. He looked a little like her father, she thought randomly. He promptly pulled a kit off his heavily laden harness and started digging through it, finding a pressure-pack for Tommy’s upper arm. It was all so very strange. The strangest part was that she was still alive . . . and for the moment, at least, she thought, as she wiped Lee’s blood off her hands, she decided that she felt good about that.

  16

  Tommy set the ship’s drive to warm up while John Kaye checked out the rest of it. He came back to report cryo sleepers for ten, two private bedrooms—one of which had been converted to a bunkroom—a small kitchen and mess that were fully stocked with staples and a few luxury items. Tommy was able to report back that the ship’s systems were undamaged as far as he could tell, and that he would have no problem flying it. Didi made herself vaguely useful, finding blankets to cover the three dead men on the floor, then just sat and stared.

  “So, Tommy Chase,” Kaye said, leaning against the cabin wall “you’re the regular pilot?” He seemed tired, very tired.

  Tommy shook his head. “I was—do you know what a highjack is?”

  Kaye nodded.

  “I agreed to pilot Msomi’s drop ship to and from, one time only, to keep my brother from getting killed,” Tommy said. He felt his eyes well up, and didn’t care. The words came out sounding slow and stupid, far too wooden for what had transpired on Msomi’s ugly little planet, and he didn’t care about that, either. There was no way to express the depth of what he’d lost.

  “Trace Berdella killed him. He’s—Pete’s—back there. They both are.” He nodded to the open cabin behind them. “Lee, too. I shouldn’t have looked away, I’m sorry. Didi jumped him, and I shot him, but I’m sorry we couldn’t save the others.”

  Couldn’t save Pete, he thought. It wasn’t fair. His little brother had been troubled, but he’d always tried, always. The ship rocked slightly, as the frustrated aliens kept up their assault.

  “I only wanted to keep him safe,” Tommy said, not sure why he was talking to this stranger, fucking opening up to him. Maybe it was the sadness etched around Kaye’s eyes, or the fact that he’d tried to keep Jessa and Allen from being eaten, or perhaps just that Tommy, too, was very tired, and Kaye seemed willing to listen.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Kaye said, and Tommy believed him. He choked back on the pain, nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I’m going to get things prepped for departure,” Kaye said. “Don’t worry about your brother. I’ll move him and the others into the cryo chambers. If anything—what’s the girl’s name?”

  Tommy looked back at Didi, still blinking off into space. “Didi. She was Trace’s girlfriend. I guess she set up this tap, that’s what they called it. Wanted to get away from him.”

  “If you start to feel light-headed, have her come and get me,” he said. He peered closer at Didi. “Can she do that?”

  Remembering how she’d jumped on Lee, Tommy nodded. “I think so.”

  “Okay. We should be ready to go in five. Is that workable?”

  Tommy nodded, and Kaye stood and walked to the back of the ship. Tommy kept his eyes on the screens. His arm hurt. His heart hurt.

  “Tommy? Tommy, right?”

  Didi had come to the front of the ship, probably to avoid watching Kaye lug the corpses into the next room. She leaned against the console, her arms tight across her chest.

  “I’m sorry about Pete,” she said. “It’s—I shouldn’t have—last night, I thought—”

  Tommy stopped her. He didn’t want to hear it, and it didn’t matter, anyway.

  “Pete had a habit of mouthing off at the wrong time, usually for the wrong reason,” he said. He realized how that sounded after he said it, but didn’t correct himself. He knew it was petty, he didn’t want to find a scapegoat for his pain, but he couldn’t help blaming her, a little. If for nothing else, then for being alive instead of Pete.

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  “Now we leave,” he said. “Depending on what the supply situation is like, we sleep for awhile. Head back for the main shipping lanes, then home.”

  He studied her a moment. She looked high, but not cataclysmically so—and she looked like she wanted to talk to somebody. He didn’t think he wanted to be that person, but he was curious.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I was almost a pilot myself, once, you know. I could go back to school. And I have my art.”

  That hadn’t been what he’d meant. “Are you through dying?” he asked.

  Didi didn’t answer for a moment. Maybe she didn’t remember their conversation. He was beginning to be sorry he’d asked, when she finally spoke up.

  “I have a week of patches left, if I spread them out,” she said softly. “Unless I can find a supply in DS, I think I’m just getting started.”

  Couldn’t argue with that, and he saw no need to prolong the conversation any further. In the end, junkies only cared about one thing. He went back to studying the screens, and after a minute, she went away.

  * * *

  Kaye moved the bodies first, dragging them into the cryo room, lifting each into a unit and sealing it. He wouldn’t have turned down help, but the pilot was wounded and the girl didn’t seem capable.

  Whoever the ship had belonged to, they’d left it a mess. Cups and plates stacked everywhere in the kitchen and mess, discarded food wrappers and empty mag packs on the floor. Kaye threw everything into the bunk room and sealed it; taking off from atmosphere was tricky enough without being hit in the head by a flying coffee cup.

  The aliens continued their assault on the ship as he worked, a constant thumping on the outer hull. At least he couldn’t hear them screaming anymore. It was a sound he never wanted to hear again.

  The entire resolution team was gone. He thought that Grant would probably mark the op a success—Puente’s team had effectively closed the compound just by showing up, thanks to the drugmakers’ own arrogance, thinking that they could control the XTs—but it had clearly been a failure by all other standards. The team had been as prepared as anyone could have been; considering that they’d been pulsed to a crash, he thought they’d done well . . . Except as the only survivor, he doubted very much that he was qualified to say so. He hadn’t even been able to save the two helpless sub-traders, and he didn’t know what to think about himself, about his great dream to kill bad guys, believing that somehow that would make him feel better about not having Jack anymore. He wished that he still had that rage to hold on to, to provide some kind of black-or-white focus, but the rage had disappeared, leaving him suspended in a helpless gray.

  He finished tying things down and then joined Tommy at the front of the ship. Didi had belted herself into one of the AD chairs at the back of the main cabin. She still hadn’t spoken to Kaye.

  “We ready?” Kaye asked. He recognized Tommy’s raw grief, knew it well, and spoke gently, asking and not ordering. “You up for flying?”

  “Yeah,” Tommy said. He stretched his arm a little, winced, nodded. “I’m okay. Is she belted in?”

  “In the far back,” Kaye said, lowering his voice slightly. “MX7?”

  Tommy nodded.

  “Are there going to be withdrawal issues on this trip?” Kaye asked.

  “I don’t know, probably,” Tommy said. He seemed irritated by the question; again, Kaye recognized grief. “Ask her.”

  “Maybe later,” Kaye said.

  Tommy was silent for a minute, working at the controls. “In thirty,” he said finally, and Kaye nodded, strapping himself into his chair. It felt like he’d pulled every muscle he had, and he welcomed the beginning aches, something to concentrate on besides his addled old mind and its tricks and questions . . . But still they came. Had he accomplished anything? Had leading people to their deaths on a monster-infested rock meant anything? Woul
d he be able to forgive himself now, for letting Jack slip away?

  “People make their own choices, you know?” Tommy asked. He still seemed angry, but not at Kaye. “No matter what you do, they still make their own fucked up choices.”

  “Amen,” Kaye said, thinking of his son and of himself. Thinking that he couldn’t agree more.

  “In ten,” Tommy said.

  The pilot counted it down while the aliens thumped on the hull, and then they were lifting away, the creatures reaching for them as though there was a chance, chasing the rocketing ship long after it had disappeared into the thin air.

  EPILOGUE

  THURSDAY

  Twenty-seven. The magic number is twenty-seven, and Didi heads into cryo thinking about it. A week of life as she knows it, a hard week, and then she’ll be out of patches.

  She lays back in the sleeper, tapping the control to lower the tank lid. It’s a nice unit, has a full muscle stim program and a good humidifier. She’ll start withdrawal in cryo, but won’t suffer for it. When she wakes, she’ll have one week, and then she doesn’t know what will happen.

  The lid seals, the room dark and silent, the sleeper comfortable. Tommy and Kaye have opted to stay up longer, wind down from their Fantasia experience, but Didi is eager to escape, to find some peace.

  She closes her eyes, applies a patch to her bare hip—twenty-six, now—not anticipating the rush so much as needing it. A few heartbeats and she feels the warmth spreading through her, making the world okay again just as the breathers kick on, cycling her down. She wonders what she will dream. Tommy will dream of his brother, she thinks, and Kaye will dream of something precious that he’s lost, too—and what has she lost, but the fantasy of never having to wake up?

  Good dreams, she thinks, her last real thought. She hopes that she will be free, happy, and at peace, flying away from all the dark places. She hopes that when she wakes, she can do better.

  BOOK II

  NO EXIT

  B. K. EVENSON

  PART ONE

  ALIVE

  1

  By the time Kramm was through the portal his gun was out and he was crouched, shuffling slowly forward, hyperalert. What is it? he wondered. What am I feeling? What’s wrong? The entryway seemed normal enough, nothing out of place. For a moment he thought he was just tense, too wound up from the job, seeing threats now everywhere, even at home. But then he saw, just past the doorframe in the main room, a stickily translucent puddle that was all too familiar.

  He came slowly forward and into the room, prodding the puddle with the tip of his boot. It was sticky and mucusy and came away in long strings. He smeared it off across the floor and went further in, calling just once his wife and daughter’s names. There was no answer.

  He moved a little further in, saw now the way the portal to his and his wife’s bedroom had been crimped and forced partway open. Blood was smeared along one side of the frame, the control panel beside it blackened and dead.

  No need to panic, Kramm thought. They may still be alive. Though another part of him knew he was wrong, that unless they had been taken just a few hours earlier they at the very least had one of the creatures wrapped around their heads and tapped down their throats into their stomachs, which for all intents and purposes meant they were already dead. Or maybe the creatures had already burst out through their chests, and they were dead in earnest. Having investigated precisely this sort of thing for six years now, he knew how quickly it went from bad to worse, and knew as well that there were rarely, if ever, any survivors.

  He backed slowly away, moving as quietly as possible to the portal of his daughter’s room. He knocked softly. There was no answer, the silence total and intense.

  He pressed the touchpad and the portal slid jerkily open. Inside, everything seemed utterly normal, nothing out of place, not a thing missing or upset. He looked for his daughter under the bed, found only dust and a few lost toys. He looked in the closet, found only a neat row of clothing and her thermal suit, two pairs of her boots, a third pair missing.

  Exiting the room, he investigated the kitchen. Same story: nothing out of place. A bowl of cereal sat on the counter, the milk covered over with a layer of scum. How long would it take for that to happen? Nothing wrong with the bathroom either. Which left only his bedroom.

  * * *

  He shook his head, took a deep breath and made his way toward it, afraid of what he would see.

  “Honey,” he called out. “Are you in there?”

  In the blood on the doorframe he could see smeared fingerprints but couldn’t tell whether they belonged to his wife or to his daughter. He slowly worked his way past the jammed door and in.

  The room was dark inside, the overhead lighting system shorted out. It took a moment for his eyes to adapt, and then he began to see the dim outlines of a shape on the bed. He kept his gun lined at it, fumbling into the pocket of his thermal suit until he came up with his penlight, flicked it on.

  It was his wife, sitting up, there on the edge of the bed, rubbing her face with one hand. She seemed at first not to notice the light, but then after a moment looked up. She smiled, but the smile came late, as if through a bad relay.

  “Anders?” she said. “Back already?”

  “Yes,” said Kramm. “I’m here. Where’s Becca?”

  “Becca?” said his wife.

  “Yes,” he said. “Our daughter.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Of course.” She fluttered one hand. “She’s around here somewhere. Why is it dark in here?” she asked.

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Kramm said.

  “Tell you what?” she asked.

  Shock, he was thinking. Or more than that. He had seen it before among trauma victims, the disconnect between mind and body. She reached over and touched the wall. The lights overhead flickered briefly but did not stay on. She touched the bedside table beside her and its top lit up, beginning to glow softly.

  Kramm could now see that the room had been turned upside down, the dresser broken to bits, both chairs gone, the bed shoved out from the wall. The closet panels had been torn free to reveal a hole in the floor, the hole itself slick and shiny with an almost metallic growth that seemed neither alive nor dead.

  It was, he knew the instant he saw it, already too late.

  “Why are you pointing that gun at me?” she asked, and seemed genuinely confused.

  “Does your throat hurt?” he asked.

  “My throat?” she asked. She reached up and touched it. “Why, yes,” she said. “It does. How did you know?”

  He stayed staring at her, wondering what he could possibly say to explain to her what was going to happen, what he had to do. “Just a lucky guess,” he finally said.

  “Aren’t you happy to see me?” she asked.

  “Of course I am,” he said. “But, well, it’s complicated.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “Don’t you want to hug me?”

  “Please don’t move,” he said. “Please, stay there. Tell me, what is the last thing you remember?”

  “The last thing I remember?” she asked. Her brow tightened, and for a moment she seemed a little more herself. “I was making a bowl of cereal. And then I heard something in the bedroom. I thought it was Becca getting into things. Then I opened the closet, and then . . .”

  “And then?”

  “That’s the last thing I remember. Strange, isn’t it?” She was silent a moment and then looked up at him, her eyes suddenly sharp. “Is something wrong with me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “What?” she asked, and he heard blind panic starting to swell in her voice.

  What now? Kramm wondered. Do I tell her what’s happened to her? That in a few minutes or a few hours or a few days she’ll begin feeling nauseous and then will experience an intense pain that will make her feel so crazed that she wants nothing more than to tear her own body apart? And then her stomach will burst and her chest will crack and a strangeness whi
ch has been using her as a host will thrash its way out of her, leaving her to die?

  “It’s complicated,” he said instead.

  “What do you mean, complicated?”

  “Just give me a minute to think,” he said.

  How do I decide what to do? he was wondering. He could shoot her now in the head or he could wait, hesitating until the creature started to break its way through her chest and out of her. What did Company policy tell him? Company policy told him he had to kill her, and do it soon. It took more than the fingers of one hand to count how many times he’d done just that, placing a gun behind a host’s ear while he or she wasn’t looking and pulling the trigger. He’d gotten used to that, as much as someone could and still stay roughly human, but it was harder to have much distance now, when it was your own family.

  And then she was laughing, a high, panicky laugh. “You’re going to kill me,” she was saying. “That’s what this is all about. Why do you want to kill me? Are you having an affair? Someone you met off-world? I’ll give you a divorce if that’s what you want. Just please don’t kill me.”

  “Please,” he said. “Please stop. Calm down.”

  But she wouldn’t calm down. Why do you want to kill me? she kept asking. What did I do? She was growing more and more hysterical, her voice louder and louder.

  “Keep your voice down,” he said.

  But she couldn’t stop. He stood there, helpless, not sure what to do.

  And then he heard it.

  A strangled, whispery scuttling, coming from just behind him. He turned and there it was, surging up through the hole, its dull elongated head first, the rest of the almost reptilian body following.

  He aimed the pistol at it. He took a step back, then another step until his calves were pressed against the edge of the bed. It turned an eyeless head toward him and hissed, its teeth parting slightly to reveal the shadowy other set of teeth hidden within.

  “How many do you suppose there are?” he said softly. But his wife didn’t answer. She was screaming in earnest now, clawing at his arm, her eyes—the glimpse he caught of them—empty with fear.