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  Trace smiled again. “Is there good porn, you ask—yes, we have a top-notch movie and download library, erotic and otherwise. There are also several nice young men and ladies here willing to participate in whatever floats your boat.” Trace nodded toward the back of the group. Jessa made a melodramatic shocked sound, loud enough to raise a couple of chuckles.

  “The bunk rooms are private but small; you want to have a sleepover, bigger rooms are available for sign up,” Trace continued. “I’m sure I don’t need to mention that you will act respectfully toward our sex workers, or you’ll answer for it, I shit you not. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not some big happy family up here, but anarchy is a bullshit route to survival and if one of us gets crapped on, we all end up stinking.”

  His glowing smile reemerged. “Pardon the metaphor. Sometimes I try too hard to be dramatic. And on that self-effacing note, I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Trog here, who’ll conduct the rest of the tour. I’ve got business to which I must attend. Any questions, please direct them to Mr. D.”

  A final agreeable nod, and he tapped the door panel, the thick hatch sliding up. Pete decided that Trace was either a great guy or a manic-depressive narcissistic on an upswing . . . And “‘great guy”’ didn’t really fit the job description. He liked him, though. He seemed bright.

  The manager murmured a few directions to Trog and then stepped into the next section of hall, hooking a right into one of its multiple openings.

  Trog grinned, exposing teeth lined in gold. Whatever effect he was going for, it was disturbing, like he was smiling through a mouthful of corn pudding. “To celebrate your coming up, the management has scheduled a feed-’n-breed for later today. You’ll get to see the bugs in action . . . and since boss-man always springs for drinks on pen runs, it’s gonna be a party.

  “Now, lessee . . . over to the north here is storage, where we keep the unprocessed, uh, like base chemicals and stuff, and where the product ends up. Closest to the dock, see? We do mostly 7, but there are some smaller batches of other stuff—scritch, meth, stick-wrap. There are two big rooms here and a smaller one on the other side of the lab, but they mostly only use that one for, like, packaging materials . . .”

  Pete and Tommy walked along with the others, listened to Trog’s raspy stoner drone as he pointed out the compound’s main features, strung out along the winding, green-spattered corridor. Processing and labs, gym and showers, kitchen and cafeteria. Everything seemed tired and worn, and, in spite of a vague disinfectant scent, the dominant smell was unwashed bodies and stick smoke. On the other hand, the setup was better than Pete had expected. There were some high grade amenities—holo equipment with sensory hookups in the rec room, a full gym, private showers. The hall cut back and forth, twice shrinking in diameter, and there were any number of offshoots, some of them marked with Xs of red tape or heaps of empty boxes—the dead ends, he assumed—most of them no different from the tunnel they were traveling. Trog seemed to point at them randomly, assigning designations that didn’t make sense.

  “. . . And that one leads back around to the lab. The one next to it veers toward the gardens but you’ll end up walking farther than if you just take the one we already passed, back by the main compound door?”

  Pete nodded along with the others, feeling hopelessly lost. How big could this place be? He thought there were only like twenty, twenty-five people living up here at any given time—though they’d only run across two Fantasians so far, a couple of scary-looking guys slouched over coffee in the cafeteria.

  “So where is everybody?” Simon, M-Cat’s friend asked, like he’d caught Pete’s thought. Jessa was on Simon’s arm, a satisfied smile on her face.

  “Sleeping, man,” Trog answered. “It’s still early . . . hell, Jessa an’ me, we’re up late. Trace, too. Boss-man hardly ever sleeps, do he, Jess?”

  Jessa laughed. “He’s got better things to do. Especially on drop days.”

  Most of the guys chuckled. The innuendo was impossible to miss—and it firmed up Pete’s theory on where Ri and Didi had disappeared to, Trace excusing himself shortly thereafter. Must be nice.

  Pete glanced at Tommy, saw the disapproval on his face, and sighed inwardly. His brother, Mr. Killjoy. Getting him through this trip unscathed was going to be tricky, he was so, so . . . rigid, that was it, and this was not the place for it. No one liked to feel judged, and those who thought they deserved it could get especially defensive. If Tommy couldn’t adapt, someone was going to knock him down.

  Praying yet again to a god he didn’t really believe in, Pete asked for at least a little bit of luck to shine in their direction as Trog marched them toward their rooms. He was unaware of any irony.

  * * *

  Getting an addict to go with you was easy, if you had their drug of choice on tap. All Didi had to say was, “Patch?” Ri had no questions, no concerns about the price. Didi would have been surprised if she had.

  Didi led the woman away from the group and through the small, cool corridor that ran past the garden rooms. When they’d passed the first, Ri finally spoke.

  “Is it far?”

  Didi stopped to take a look at her, the corridor better lit here by the reflected light from the garden rooms. She was starting to shake, her gaze flickering to the neat rows of green plants through the hall window, back to Didi, to the empty hall ahead. It was sad and poignant.

  “No,” Didi said. “You’ll be patched in three.”

  Ri nodded quickly. “Okay, good.”

  Another long corridor, another wall of window looking over another room of plants. No one was inside, this early. Didi stayed out of the gardens, mostly, as did anyone else with a 7 habit. The bright artificial light bothered her eyes.

  The west-east offshoot they were walking veered north, attached to the bunk rooms at the far end. Trace’s rooms were farthest south, so they reached them first, Didi unlocked the door with a thumbprint. As station manager, Trace had commandeered the one “luxury” suite, big enough to have its own bathroom and furniture that wasn’t entirely utilitarian. A couch and a small table in the living space, a few chairs.

  Didi led them through the relatively opulent front room, into the bedroom. The bed was massive, of course. Didi went to her nightstand, nodded for Ri to sit on the bed. The girl sat down immediately.

  Didi drew out a patch, handed it to Ri, who took it eagerly, fumbling to pull the backing. It took her a moment, her expression so intent that Didi could actually see the desperation coming from her, waves of dull, aching red radiating from her body. Didi watched her slap the patch to her inner forearm, the quick breath, the closed eyes . . .

  Do I look like that? Perhaps, but it was a useless thought. If she did, so what? Trace didn’t care, and no one else ever saw her patch. It meant nothing.

  Ri started to smile, a slow, dreamy smile. She opened her eyes, looking to Didi with an oddly calculating gratitude.

  Didi handed her a half dozen patches. “You’ll get your own line once someone makes up the new schedule. Two days, tops. This will hold you until then.”

  Ri accepted the gift, sliding the patches into a tight hip pocket. She reached for Didi then, touched her arm, her fingers light and well-trained. She smiled, showing small, even teeth, and licked one corner of her perma-glossed mouth.

  Didi pulled her arm away. “Not me,” she said. “Trace. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  Ri nodded, the smile disappearing. She looked around the room, saw the discreet camera equipment, the darkened holomirror panels, and nodded again. “Long-term?”

  Didi leaned back on the silky sheets. Usually, their special guests knew the score before they came up, but every now and then, someone made it to Trace’s bed without having heard.

  “Not for you,” she said. “One time only.”

  “You watch or play?” Ri asked. Even riding the first wave, she was a professional.

  “He calls it.”

  “Anything risky? Fluids, anal, like that?”
>
  “Sometimes, but there’s never any . . . damage,” Didi said, wishing that the girl would stop talking about it. They had nothing in common. Within the week, she’d be another whispering, smirking face in the hall. Didi had stopped trying to make friends a long time ago.

  “Fetishes?”

  Didi closed her eyes, wondering how to answer. Yes, she thought. Oh, yes. Watching me, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. Ri would figure it out soon enough.

  Ri lay back on the sheets next to her, moaning softly in her throat, rubbing her hands over the silk. “Nice. This is nice.”

  Didi rolled away from her, thinking that maybe she should patch again before Trace showed up. She didn’t need to, and Trace wouldn’t approve—he wanted her aware, she knew that—but if she was high enough, it would all be like some dream, some distant, sweaty dream, one that only her body had to suffer.

  The door to the front room slid open, and Didi felt a vague unhappiness, realizing it was already too late. She felt Ri sit up behind her and curled tighter, glad that at least it was a woman this time. Less to clean up, later.

  No damage, she told herself.

  4

  The rooms were cramped, to say the least. Single bunk, a small desk with an inset computer, a chair, a closet. Trog told them to head to Ops in a couple of hours if they wanted to catch the “show”—Tommy wasn’t so sure that he did, but he thought it would be wise to put in an appearance, at least, if for no other reason than to keep an eye on Pete. He’d seen the glow in Pete’s eyes, listening to Trace Berdella, the swagger in his step throughout the “tour.” It was aggravating, to say the least.

  He could still hear Pete’s voice that night back in August, could see his miserable shame.

  I didn’t have a choice, Tommy! And it’s not like I offered you up, I didn’t, he knew that you were a pilot already, and it’s just this one time, swear to God, nothing like this’ll ever happen again . . .

  Tommy shook his head, dropped his bag on the floor. Pete had been desperate to atone, a sad-eyed puppy on board the ship, and five minutes into their Fantasia vacation, he was cracking jokes with prostitutes, head high, shoulders back, nodding along with the rest of the “fellas” as Trace told them where they could hook up. Tommy wasn’t an idiot, he understood the need to fit in, but Pete was ready to enjoy it, and that was too much.

  He sat for a few minutes, thinking about his little brother’s inability to take responsibility for his life, wondering how much of that was on him. Their childhood had been mostly shitty, the more so because it had once been happy, and Tommy sometimes felt like he hadn’t done enough for Pete, too busy mourning for himself. On the other hand, watching him make the same stupid decisions, over and over, always finding a way to put blame elsewhere when things fell through . . . Pete was old enough to know better, and now he’d managed to drag his only living relative into it. Never mind that Tommy would lose his license if anyone found out, that he’d had to leave a decent job with benefits with only a “maybe” to go back to . . .

  A rap on his door. Pete stuck his head in a second later.

  “Some of us are going to go get something to eat, look around,” he said. “You want to come?”

  Some of us. Tommy stared at him a moment, then shook his head, not trusting himself to answer. He’d yelled at Pete plenty enough for being a dumbass over the years, and it hadn’t helped yet. Maybe yelling was part of the problem.

  “Okay,” Pete said. “Catch you later, bro.”

  He ducked out again, the door sliding closed after him. Tommy sat another moment, firmly pissed, not sure if he was being uptight or just realistic, and then started digging through his bag for his shave kit. He felt totally disgusting, gritty and foul and in a mood to match. He didn’t want to know these people, and his brother shouldn’t, either, and yet here they were and there was nothing he could goddamn do about it.

  * * *

  Tommy cleaned up and got himself a hot, tasteless meal, which he ate quickly before returning to his room. He exchanged nods with the few people he’d caught looking in his direction, doing his best to be inoffensive while still avoiding conversation. He was in a funk about Pete, and didn’t feel like chatting with strangers—all of whom, obviously, had dedicated their lives to making bad decisions.

  Back in his room he got on the computer, looking through what he could access—besides a truly staggering collection of porn, which he only paused over long enough to be astounded by, he found the compound’s emergency plan files. The fire, breach, and life-support contingencies were all pretty basic, but there was a subset of “breach” that went over what to do in case hostiles got in; he read that one carefully. Included was a list of the security features that would have to fail for there to be need of the plan. What Tommy saw was reassuring. The compound was extremely well-fortified, surrounded by collapsed tunnels and layer upon layer of burn-plated sheet steel—acid resistant, because according to the file, the bugs had highly acidic blood. Multiple sets of blast-doors ran throughout the installation, ready to lock down in an order based on initial breach—but they could be individually controlled from the system in “standoff,” the shielded and well-stocked invasion shelter north of the bunk rooms. In the event of a perimeter breach by XTs, all personnel and visitors were to immediately get as close to standoff as they could. From there, they could be led to the shelter, one section of hall at a time. Once they were together and armed—there were a half dozen industrial flamethrowers in the compound’s armory—they would drive the XTs back to their point of entry and seal that section off. If the hostiles were human, the plan included blowing open all the compound’s locks once standoff was locked down, letting the aliens in to take care of the problem. Either way, they’d then contact Msomi, who would promptly send help. Of course, prompt was three months, so the Fantasians were basically on their own. The plan seemed sound enough . . . But thinking about those monsters, watching them running, screaming after the drop ship, seeing them creep and caper in the red darkness of that weird viewing hall . . . He couldn’t imagine having to face one alone, flamethrower or no, and as tough as these cons surely were, he doubted they’d be a match for even a handful of XTs.

  A bright ping sounded from the computer’s com hookup, and Trog D.’s scratched voice spilled into the room.

  “Hey, show’s on in ten minutes, everybody,” he said. “Come on down. Raif and Mighty are gonna do it up right.”

  A brief pause, and Trog added, “Oh, we’re in Ops,” before clicking off.

  Tommy sat another moment, then stood, looked around. He didn’t want to leave the relative safety of his room, but he had to admit, he was curious about the upcoming show—how had Trog put it? A feed-and-breed. Did the aliens mate after eating? During? Where had they come from in the first place? He was here; best to learn as much as he could about the natives, XT and otherwise. Never knew when it might come in handy.

  He powered down the computer and headed out.

  * * *

  Operations was strange. When Tommy walked in to the large-ish room on the northern perimeter, it looked like a standard setup for a hostile environment compound this size—twin banks of monitors, communications system and backup, a trio of fully loaded computer work stations—but it was all by the door, the banks placed to keep the operations part separate from the rest of the room. Past that, the room opened up into something like a lounge, padded benches and chairs set around small tables. There was an automated drink mixer on a table in the room’s far corner, surrounded by a strew of packaged snacks. Maybe fifteen, sixteen people were milling around, talking, laughing, half of them holding cocktails. There was an atmosphere of anticipatory tension, the laughs a little too loud, the voices too fast. It was surreal.

  The only person working was Trog D., seated at communications. “Hey, you’re the pilot, right? Pete’s brother?”

  Tommy answered through gritted teeth. How nice, that Pete was already making friends. “Yeah.”

&n
bsp; Trog nodded amiably, exposed his bizarre dental work. “Have a drink or three. It’s two days of R and R for the drop pilot. Fuck it, right?”

  Tommy nodded, forced a smile. The scrawny con struck him as a total sycophant. “Right,” he said, and quickly moved past.

  A number of people looked him over as he joined the crowd, decided who he was before going back to their conversations. He heard pilot whispered or spoken quietly, and ignored all of them, looking for Pete.

  Little brother was talking to a buxom girl in a red thinsuit, tight enough to outline multiple piercings and a number of subdermal implants. When he saw Tommy, he broke away, approached with barely suppressed excitement.

  “Hey,” Pete said, keeping his voice down. “This should really be something.”

  “How’s that?” Tommy asked.

  Pete nodded toward the room’s east end. A large, darkened monitor dominated the wall. “We’ll see the whole thing, pretty much, from when the team leaves to when the bugs get fed. There are cameras all the way out, plus one that shows part of a nest. Where they hatch.”

  Pete paused for dramatic effect. “They hatch out of eggs, right? But they come out as these big spiders, like the size of a cat or something, and what they do is, they attach themselves to the cows—and they plant a second stage inside the animal. Shoves it right down their throats. It takes like a day or two for it to incubate . . . and it’s like this snake, and when it’s big enough, blammo, it shoots out.”

  Tommy winced, remembering some nature show he’d seen a million years ago about a kind of wasp that laid its eggs inside of living things. He thought it was a wasp, maybe a spider, he couldn’t recall . . . but he did remember that the incubator stayed alive until the babies hatched out of it, providing them with a warm birthday meal. It was frightening and repulsive on a visceral level.