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  They descended into a dimly lit room, tall and cavernous, more than enough space for the flyer to turn and set down. It was built for a much bigger ship—the cattle carriers, presumably. There was another lock door in the room’s west side; Lee maneuvered the flyer to face it. Tommy craned around, looked for XTs in the layered shadows. He saw industrial shelving stacked with bags, with miscellaneous hunks of greasy equipment. Nothing moved.

  The flyer powered down. Lee turned to address them, pulling off his headset. Now that it was quiet, they could hear the clawing mass on the other side of the west lock door, screeching and thumping as they swarmed over the tunnels, looking for a way in.

  “There’s some air in the pens, but not here,” Lee said calmly. “No heat, either. Wear the filter ’til we’re inside. Or hold your breath. We’re going that way.” He pointed toward the room’s southeast corner, which they couldn’t see from the flyer.

  Pete was already sliding the small nose mask over his face. When he spoke, his voice was nasal and pinched.

  “Is it safe? In here?”

  Lee tapped the com panel on the flyer’s dash. “Hey, Fantasia—any bugs in the drop lock?”

  “Ah, that’s a negatory,” someone answered. The raspy voice made it Trog. “You’re clear. Pens are clean, too.”

  Frank Cole frowned. “Shit.”

  “Move,” Lee said. “And watch where you point your weapons. I get shot, you’re all going out with the chow.”

  It seemed Q and A was over. He pushed a button and the side door raised, icy, thin air flushing the small cabin. Tommy tried a couple of deep breaths and promptly slipped his mask on, his lungs desperate for something he could breathe. Lee and Frank got out. Tommy waited for Pete to get out and brought up the rear.

  Even with the suit, it was cold, miserably so. Tommy breathed through his nose, the scent of heavy grease and the burnt smell of the flyer’s drive seeping through the simple mask. He scanned for movement in spite of Trog’s assertion as Lee led them toward a wide, low door in the corner. It was dark, not much brighter than Fantasia’s “daylight” outside; Tommy understood the need to conserve energy, but it was like the entire installation had been lit for a horror movie, the lights low and spaced too far apart, allowing darkness to gather in every crack and crevice. The effect was unsettling and unsafe.

  The wide door slid open, revealed a short tunnel with another door at the far end. The four men went in, Lee tapping the dock entry closed before opening the next. Tommy wasn’t sure what to expect when it slid open, though the smell wasn’t a surprise. The heavy reek of manure washed through the lock on a gust of warmer air.

  The room they moved into was vast and dark. Big animals shuffled quietly, penned on either side of the room. At the room’s southern end, a pair of chutes connected the pens, leading to a narrow lock; Tommy could clearly hear alien cries just outside, hear the skittering of movement against the door, but the cattle didn’t seem to care. Automated trough feeders lined the back walls, and Tommy saw open grates and directed spigots on the damp floor, where the waste was presumably washed out. There were fifty or sixty cows and bulls, most the same dark brown color. As Lee led them down the hall that separated the pens, Tommy noticed that a lot of the animals—most of them, in fact—seemed to be asleep. At least half were on the ground, their hindquarters caked with manure, their sides slowly heaving. Those that were awake stared blankly at nothing.

  “Wake up, chow!” Frank bellowed enthusiastically, making Tommy and Pete both jump. A few of the animals blinked at the men, then went back to dozing.

  “What’s wrong with them?” Pete asked.

  “Sedatives in the food,” Lee answered.

  “Why?” Pete asked. Lee ignored him, kept walking toward the south wall.

  “Keeps ’em calm, numbshit,” Frank said. “You think we could get ’em through the chute otherwise?”

  Tommy nodded to himself. That suggested an answer to the breeding question, too, the animals too drugged to follow their instincts—and though he’d never thought of himself as any kind of animal activist, he was glad that they were drugged, that they didn’t have to lie here in the dark day in and day out, awake and aware and listening to the creatures on the other side of the lock. Bad enough that they were going to die in a spectacularly horrible way, playing host to a baby nightmare.

  Lee walked to a wall panel between the chutes, booted a screen, pushed some buttons. Machinery started to hum, and the inner door to the chute lock slid open, revealing a battle-scarred tunnel. In the low light, Tommy could just make out more fire jets on the walls—and dark smears of dried liquid higher on the walls, where the fire hadn’t reached to burn the walls clean. The smell was bad, burnt hair and old blood, and the cattle nearest roused themselves enough to stagger away, making low sounds of unease. Tommy could hear pressure plates being triggered in the room’s west pen, and a curved spike-strip rose up between a handful of the dazed cattle still closest to the lock and the rest of the herd. Lee tapped more buttons and that entire section of floor started to tilt. The animals stumbled, turned, and half-fell to the chute, where they were neatly filed through to the lock by bursts of compressed air. The inner door closed after them. Tommy clutched his weapon tighter as more machinery hummed.

  The pen echoed with the barely muted shrieks of the XTs as they rushed into the lock, the sound terrible and frightening. The cattle there bellowed in fear or pain, causing more unrest in the pens. It sounded like a slaughter—but in less than a minute, the bawls died away, fading into the distance; the cattle had been carried off by the creatures. Tommy thought of the wasps again, and shuddered.

  More screeching filled the lock, and Lee tapped another control. Fire, from the sudden clamor, the impossibly higher pitched shrieks as the aliens cleared out.

  “We’ll get back in time to watch,” Frank said cheerfully.

  “Watch what?” Pete asked.

  “Wasn’t talking to you, lop,” Frank said, and Pete shut up, his face reddening.

  Lee pushed more buttons, then turned back the way they’d come. “Let’s go.”

  Again, they followed Lee, Tommy trying to stay open and aware, riding the adrenaline. Back into the hangar, the cold and grease smell, into another, smaller lock. It was going fine, they were doing fine, they were going to make it back. And once they did, he was going to go to his room and lock the door until it was time to leave. He strongly suspected that Pete would be doing the same.

  Inside the lock, Lee lowered his face mask.

  “The ATV is on a program run,” he said. “You’ll have to back it out, but then Ops can take over.

  “When you get to the compound, you’ll have to clear the bugs out of the first lock before you can come back in,” he continued. “Use the fire and the transport’s electrics to knock them back. Then aim for the head.”

  Lee smiled slightly. “Might want to wear your face gear for that part.”

  He put his mask back on and touched the lock’s entry panel, opening another cold room—but this one thick with a miasmic haze, the smells of burnt flesh and melted plastic and blood cloying even through the mask’s filter, even in the thin air. Dissipating smoke hung like fine mist, shading everything in transparent gray. The ATV blocked their view of the bodies. Tommy automatically looked up, found the camera’s unblinking eye on a beam over the lock. He quickly looked away. He had more important things to think about.

  Lee turned to leave. Frank was right on his heels.

  “Wait,” Pete said. “Aren’t you—what about the, ah, bodies?”

  “The bugs will handle it,” Lee said, still smiling slightly, his gaze fixed on Tommy’s. “And Ops will lock up after. Unless you want to hang around, pilot, do the cleanup yourself? I’d like to see that.”

  What the fuck’s your problem? Tommy thought, and clenched his jaw, and said nothing.

  “You’re right, he is the pilot,” Pete said. His face was flushed, his stance strong. “Maybe you should be a little more con
cerned about his well being, don’t you th—”

  Lee’s arm shot out, slamming Pete against the lock wall. Before Tommy could move, Frank Cole was in his face and grinning broadly, his shotgun pressed into Tommy’s ribs. Tommy still held the Glock in one hand, and was extremely careful not to move it.

  “You don’t talk to me,” Lee said to Pete, holding him against the wall with one hand, leaning in close. “I don’t hear you. Got that?”

  Pete nodded shakily. “Yeah. I—”

  “No,” Lee said, and slammed him on the wall again. “You don’t talk to me, do-you-understand?”

  Pete managed another nod, and Lee abruptly let him go, stepping back. Tommy relaxed slightly. Cole let the shotgun linger a beat longer, then pulled it away.

  “You go with them,” Lee said to Cole.

  “What? Are you fucking kidding?” The big con looked incredulous.

  Lee nodded toward Tommy. “He’s the captain home,” he said. “You want to trust the computer to get us all the way back?”

  “So why’d the fuck you let him come out in the first place?” Cole asked. Tommy had actually been wondering the same thing.

  Lee didn’t answer the question. “Walk ’em back, Frank. You know everyone wants a good show; that’s you. And it’s your last day, right?”

  The manipulation was blatant, but Frank bought in. “That’s true. My first run, I blasted two of ’em, you hear about that?”

  “Yeah,” Lee said. He already seemed uninterested. “Blow a couple away for Mighty and Raif.”

  Frank grinned. “Fuck those lops. But drinks all night for stomping a bug. And maybe some pussy.”

  “Maybe,” Lee said. He held an arm out, gesturing a welcome to move them out of the tunnel lock. Tommy nodded at Pete, and they both stepped into the tiny ATV garage, Frank right behind them.

  The instant they were clear, Lee pushed a button and turned to leave, the door closing to his back.

  Frank stalked around the front of the ATV—and chuckled at what he found there.

  “This sucks, Tommy,” Pete said miserably, and Tommy nodded. “I’m sorry, man.”

  He seemed sincere. Tommy nodded again. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Pete that it wasn’t his fault, but he didn’t see any point in holding a grudge right at this particular moment, either. Pete was his brother.

  “We’re going to get through this,” Tommy said, with a calm he didn’t feel. “Don’t—”

  “Come on, you fuckin’ lops!” Frank shouted. “I want to get back in time for the bugfuck!”

  The brothers exchanged a look. Lop? Tommy mouthed, and Pete shook his head.

  “You heard the man,” Tommy said gently, and Pete smiled a little. They started after Cole, Tommy hoping hard that this wasn’t the last good moment they were ever going to have together.

  * * *

  Trace stepped out into the corridor and pulled his com, tapped the open connect. A cheer went up from Ops, and he stepped further away.

  Silence from their rooms.

  “Didi?” He said. “You there, baby?”

  More silence. Maybe she was showering, or dozing. It wouldn’t surprise him, after how they’d spent the morning. Ri was a pro, and had taken direction well. On the other hand, while 7ers often fugued out, they didn’t really nap, and he couldn’t hear the shower running. If she was there, she could hear him.

  “You’re missing a party,” he said. “Raif and Mitchell ate it.”

  No response. Trace sighed. “Talk to me, sweetie. I’m lonely without you. Get dressed and come down, all right?”

  Her voice was soft. “I wanted to do some work,” she said. “Just for a little while.”

  Trace thought about it briefly. Didi spent a lot of time in her “studio,” an emptied storeroom by the gardens where she kept her clay and tools. She was talented, sculpted intricate and eccentric pieces—the man with a penis shaped like a snarling dog came to mind—which she never kept, always recycling them as soon as they were finished. She insisted that because beauty was transient, so should be art. One of her many small insanities.

  “No, you can work later,” he said, after sufficient pause. “I miss you. Seeing you with Ri this morning . . . I just want to look at you and think about it, you know? And know that you’re here, with me. You’re my girl.”

  “Yeah,” Didi said. “Okay, baby.”

  “I’ll need to crash in a while,” he said. “Long day. You can work then, right?”

  “Right,” she said.

  “I love you,” he said. “I need you.”

  Another hesitation. “Me, too,” she said.

  He commed off, leaned against the wall. In Ops, another cheer went up, but he barely heard it, thinking of Didi. He worked so hard to keep her happy, to keep her interested, to help her grow. To make her see herself the way that he saw her, and not just her exquisite beauty, not just her strength or talent, but her flaws and weaknesses, too, her fear, her lust . . . Everything. He wanted her to experience every part of herself, while he watched. And sometimes he pushed too hard, too fast, and he wasn’t an idiot, he could see how she felt about him sometimes . . .

  And then she sees that I worship her, he reminded himself. That I’ll do anything for her. She needs me as much as I need her, she knows that, we both know that.

  The door to Ops slid open, and Stinky John stepped out, all in a hurry, headed in Trace’s direction. He slowed when he saw Trace, grew a big smile.

  “Hey, you missed it, man! The new kid mouthed off to Lee and got bitchslapped,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  Stinky nodded enthusiastically, still moving. Heading toward the outside locks. He was a laid-back fellow, a mechanic, hung out with Trog D. and a couple of the others—Fantasia’s resident blend smokers—and worked in the gardens in his spare time. He’d been here almost two years. Fantasia’s mandatory weekly shower rule had been created because of Stinky. Now he didn’t stink so much, but it was too good a nickname to let die.

  “Anyway, looks like Frank is going to ride in with the brothers,” he finished, backing away now. “They’re just getting into the ATV.”

  Trace nodded. Made sense. No point in killing anyone else to feed a few bugs. Even if it was Frank and two dipshit tourists, morale would suffer. Bad enough to lose Raif and Mighty. It wasn’t that they were beloved by many, or even had real friends—on Fantasia, relationships tended to be extremely superficial, even between long-term workers. Besides the logistics—ships came and went four times a year, rotating personnel regularly—most of the residents had hard-shell personalities, polished to a deflecting shine by years in the sub-trades. A kind of jokey camaraderie was about as deep as it got, and the less socially skilled of the residents—Raif had been one of them, actually—didn’t even have that much. But the loss of any worker meant changes in scheduling, disruptions in the pecking order, in motivation, and that made Trace’s job harder. Keeping these people busy and focused was the key to keeping Fantasia viable.

  “So where are you going?” Trace asked. “You failsafe?”

  “Yup,” Stinky said. “Me and Lyle, he’s over there already. I traded Elvis my KP. He wants to watch the ride.”

  “You write in the switch?” Keeping track of scheduling was a constant issue. Trace was always having to remind people to record their trades.

  “Ana said she’ll do it for me,” he said, still backing away. “I’ll sign off when I get back.”

  Trace nodded again, waved a hand to let him go. Stinky John turned and jogged off. In Ops, a woman laughed, crude and overloud—Jessa, probably—and there was some applause. Trace reluctantly let his thoughts of Didi go for the moment, switching into manager mode as he went back inside.

  The party had mostly recovered, was in full swing. He stopped at the three work stations up and running, Trog, Ana, and Rijke all doing their part to keep the show entertaining, working the remotes, communication, the lock doors. The ATV was just getting rolling. Over the com, Frank Cole was
telling the Chase brothers to hold on; apparently he’d taken it upon himself to play chauffeur. Trace considered telling Cole to back down, let Ops run the program . . . But the people wanted a show, and Frank had driven it before. The program lacked the spontaneity of a dedicated driver—in Frank’s case, dedicated to jumping big rocks and running down bugs.

  Before the ATV even made it to the first camera switch, the pen cleanup was over. Rijke was just locking the doors when Trace looked over his shoulder. The bugs had been let in and driven out again, carrying with them what was left of Raif and Mighty, along with the smoking carcasses of their fellow bugs. Trace had made a point of telling Trog to keep that footage off the big screen before stepping out to call Didi. Fantasians weren’t, by and large, the sentimental type, but watching the bugs fight over the dismembered remains of their colleagues might make them think twice about their next pen duty.

  He tapped up a schedule at one of the open stations, looked over what could be put off. Two men had died, an event that needed to be properly commemorated; anything less would be poor management. It was a cook day anyway, so only a chemist or two needed to be working the main floor. The product load could wait until tomorrow, and though Tuesday was traditionally wash-and-clean, bumping it until the ship took off was no hardship. They’d done it before.

  So . . . standard skeleton watch, chow admin, have Stinky or Freeman check out the flyer and ATV . . . He wanted to get everything covered. It had been about thirty hours since he’d last slept—he didn’t like to sleep, didn’t like not knowing what was happening around him—and in spite of the TR amp he took, he was starting to feel the need. He’d leave Mac Simpson in charge for the evening shift, go catch a few hours. Simpson was no rocket scientist, but he had some sense. Anyway, Lee would be around. He was a little too far out into his I’m-a-scary-badass routine to be likable, but he was also a company man, all the way down the line. He wouldn’t let a little drunken wake get out of hand.