Quite Possibly Heroes (Freeman Universe Book 3), page 42
Eventually he found something useful and entertaining. A library of Star Fox fan fiction by two eight-year-old girls, one writing as Charlie Templeman and the other as Maris Newton.
The void was a very strange place.
But it couldn’t compete with the wider world when it came to sheer insanity.
The stories were really quite good.
Good enough he almost wished he was James Reynard, gentleman hero.
He gazed into the void.
Maybe in another life.
There was no sense of transition.
One minute he was gazing into the void and the next someone was slapping him.
Hard.
“You’re supposed to slap the end that doesn’t cry,” Maris said.
“Forgive me. I’ve never witnessed a rebirth before,” Nevin said.
Both of them laughed so hard they cried too.
Nevin picked Seamus up and perched him on the chair.
Maris shoved something into either hand. A cold juice bulb and a tube of his favorite nutrition paste.
“Well?” Nevin said.
Seamus searched the chairside table. Scanned the deck. “Is Ixatl-Nine-Go still inside me?”
“Unless it popped out when we weren’t looking,” Maris said.
He glanced from face to face.
“We were both attentive the entire time,” Nevin said. “It’s still in you.”
“I can’t feel it. So mission accomplished, I guess.”
He took a long squeeze of paste, savoring its bland flavor and pasty consistency.
He washed it down with a swallow of bitter juice.
“How’d you know which flavors I like?”
“I didn’t,” Maris said. “They’re from Lord Varlock’s personal stash.”
Nevin grinned. “Just one of the many perks of office.”
They both laughed again.
Seamus shrugged and squeezed out another mouthful. He wasn’t sure what they thought was so funny, but he was glad for them. And it felt good to see people happy for a change.
Even if he didn’t understand what they were so happy about.
92
Contract System, Outer Reach (Huangxu Contested Space)
Ciarán tried to peer into the isolation compartment but the lights were off inside. He started to ask the ship to power them up before recalling that this wasn’t his ship, and whatever voice this ship might once have had was now a slave to Vatya and Olek, and whatever animated Olek’s exoskeletal armor.
“It’s been too long,” Aspen said. “If the drive containment was going to fail, it would have by now. They must have gotten it under control somehow.”
That was Ciarán’s conclusion as well. “Give me the code to the isolation lab, please.”
“You don’t want to go in there,” Aspen said. “It’s not safe.”
Ciarán chuckled, and so did Adderly.
“Like it’s safe out here,” Adderly said. “There is no code. They leave it unlocked so that anyone can take a poke at it.”
“It.”
“Him. Her. No one really knows. It’s our ancestor, no question, but those births were all done in a lab. You’ll see.”
“He shouldn’t go in there,” Aspen said.
“Why? Because he’ll never forgive you for standing by? My opinion never mattered to you. I don’t see why a blow-in’s would.”
Ciarán grinned. “I’ve never been a blow-in before.” He slapped the hatch release. The stench was overpowering. And familiar. “It’s a slave pen.”
“It’s a torture chamber,” Adderly said. “No one keeps slaves just to watch them suffer.”
“No one sane,” Aspen said.
“No one sane keeps slaves for any reason.” Of that Ciarán was certain. He gripped the knife cut in his utilities and tore off a wide strip of cloth, more than he wanted, from neck to navel. He wrapped the cloth around his face as a filtering mask.
They all stared at him. “It helps.”
“I’m sure it does,” Adderly said. “It improves the view as well.”
Bea made a frantic clicking sound.
Adderly chuckled. “She says you’re as muscled as we are.”
“And as hairless,” Aspen said.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that.”
“Nothing,” Adderly said. “No one’s complaining.”
“Be careful,” Aspen said. “Move slowly.”
Wisp plunged past him and into the compartment.
“Slower than that,” Adderly said. “The lighting controls are to the left of the hatch.”
Ciarán entered the compartment slowly. He flicked the lights on and instantly wished he hadn’t. The amusements might be different than the “break room” on Gallarus, but the look and feel of the space were identical. Comfortable couches. A drinks dispenser. Various devices he didn’t know the names for and never wanted to learn. A corner of the room caked and pooling with a foul mess, and in the other corner a chained creature, cowering and shivering. That it stood taller than a tall man even folded in on itself and seemed carved from milky diamond were the only dangerous-seeming aspects of it. He judged the length of its chains. If he remained by the hatch, it couldn’t reach him.
There were trophies on the wall, parts of the creature, or others like it, sheared off and mounted on plaques. Fierce-looking pinioning blades of diamond bone. A saw-toothed spinal plate. What looked like a long spear, or tail spike.
If he hadn’t met Aspen and her children, he might find those objects more threatening than he did. He’d grown accustomed to their frightening appearance. It would take more than a nightmare visage to turn his gaze away.
The Outsider remained curled up and motionless, watching him with a single eye. It shifted its attention to Wisp and back to him. Then from him to Adderly as she moved her mobility chair beside Ciarán. The rat in the box on her lap grew frantic. It hammered against the box lid again and again.
“It doesn’t frighten you,” Adderly said. “The Outsider.”
“A little.” There was really only one thing that truly frightened him. “The chains, however…”
“Bosditch was the same. He wasn’t old enough to have been born in bondage but his granny was. He said the memory wasn’t stored in his mind but in his bones.”
“Maybe.”
“That’s how they store memories, you know. The Outsiders. In their bones.”
“That’s...”
“Unbelievable? If you went over there and took one of those cutters down from the wall, the instant you touched it the memories would start replaying in your mind. No believing is required. They record ever kill, and every face.”
“Every face?”
“After they kill someone they gaze into their eyes. Once they’re sure the death is final, they move on. There are no wounded, and no lingering deaths. It’s like they’re waiting to lap up the sundered souls.” Adderly glanced at the box in her lap. The rat had begun to chew its way out.
While Ciarán considered the problem of the rat, something moved in the corner of his eye. When he turned to look the Outsider unfolded.
It was three times his size at least, maybe four, and strangely constructed. It wasn’t as perfectly frightening as Bea and her sisters, but more alien, and other than bilateral symmetry, very little seemed familiar. Ciarán had once seen a walking stick bug that looked like a leaf, and a praying mantis that looked like it had been crossed with a dragonfly. The Outsider resembled a combination of all three, though as if it had been constructed from milky diamond by someone who hadn’t seen the patterns firsthand, but had them described to them by someone intent on frightening the guts out of whoever viewed their handiwork. The Outsider had two large cutters where hands should be, blades nearly as broad and as long as the ones hanging on the wall.
“How many knives was it born with?”
“Just the two,” Adderly said. “Cut them off and they grow back. These are about ready for harvesting.”
“Harvesting?”
“Olek likes to give them as gifts. They’ll cut through hull plate.”
He glanced at her.
“Again, no believing necessary. Take one down and see for yourself.”
The Outsider turned away so that it could follow Wisp with its gaze. One of its eyes had been gouged out and healed over long ago. There was a makeshift harness about its brow. The broken stump of a table leg dangled where an ear should be.
“Is this some sick joke?” Someone had rigged it so that it looked like the Outsider was wearing the pendant spire. Ciarán could feel his blood beginning to boil.
“Not a joke. It started wearing that about the time I took the Oath. Every time they take it away it makes another one out of whatever junk is lying around.”
“Is it sentient?”
“Bosditch said when he first saw it as a kid it could speak. They’re all different types, but this is the one they call a Whisperer.”
“Did he speak with it?”
“Not speak like hold a conversation. But it could say something that sounded like words.”
“What did it say?”
“Airgead olc.”
“Evil silver.”
“‘Evil money’ is what Bosditch said. He thought they’d put the beast up to it, as an insult to his merchant family. Later he heard that was all it ever did say.”
Ciarán’s stomach churned. “I’ll take that rat, if you don’t mind.”
Adderly held the box out to him. “Be my guest.”
Like every cat ever born, Wisp had an uncanny ability to judge the length of an arm, or of a chain. She’d taken up station in front of the creature a hair’s breadth out of reach.
“It can spit acid,” Adderly said. “And piss it.”
“Good to know.” It would have been better to know before he’d gotten within spitting distance.
“Used to be able to, anyway, according to Bosditch. I’ve never seen it do that.”
Ciarán glanced at Wisp. “I’m going to toss this rat toward it. Don’t chase it.”
She blinked at him. Slowly.
He wasn’t sure what that meant.
He tossed the box. It hit the deck and split open. The rat popped out. It scrambled to its feet. It glanced around. Spotted Wisp. Spotted Ciarán. Spotted Adderly. It turned toward the distant corner. A shadow fell across the rat. It looked up.
A massive blade of diamond bone buried itself into the deck. Ten seconds later both halves of the rat stopped kicking. The Whisperer bent its long neck toward the deck and peered into the rat’s dying eyes.
Silver began to weep from the rat’s eyes to pool upon the deck.
When the weeping stopped the Whisperer spit.
The silver boiled.
“I guess Bosditch was right about that,” Adderly said.
“You’ll wish to leave the compartment,” Ciarán said. “I’m going to do something unwise.” He didn’t bother asking Wisp to go. He could tell by looking at her that they were of one mind.
“If you mean cut it free, I wouldn’t miss that for the world. It’s why we rebelled in the first place.”
Ciarán glanced at her. “I didn’t know that.”
“Not the only reason,” Adderly said. “But anyone would do that to an animal? What do you think they’d do to a human being?”
He pulled the overseer’s rod free. “Do you know how to use one of these?”
She hammered the arm of her mobility chair. “I wasn’t born in this contraption.”
He crossed the compartment and handed the rod to her. “Finish what you started. We’ll be outside.”
“Stay,” she said. “And ask Aspen—”
“We’re here,” Aspen said. Bea clicked something and Adderly laughed. “It’s words I spit, not acid. And I still have both my eyes.”
“She isn’t talking about the way you look, sister. But the way you live.”
“I said I’d move out of that cell when the last one of us was free.” She glanced at Ciarán. “I expected to die in there. Now I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Die here,” Aspen said. “Once Olek comes back for us. Work fast, sister. We’ve waited long enough.”
Adderly proved a practiced hand with the rod. Three strokes of the lash, three chains parted, and the Whisperer stood free. It stretched to its full height. If it decided to kill them, they would all die. Including Wisp, who had walked close to it and gazed up into its single living eye.
It lowered its head, and considered Wisp like it had considered the dead rat. Then Wisp sprinted for the hatch.
“Run!” Ciarán shouted. He knew that all-out lope, and it meant fast trouble on the way.
He scooped Adderly up in his arms and bolted for the hatch. He counted heads before hammering the hatch controls. The hatch closed and sealed with a hiss.
“My chair.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Aspen said.
Ciarán parked Adderly on an examination chair before returning to the isolation lab viewport. The Whisperer had carved a hole in the hull and disappeared outside. The isolation lab was reading as hard vacuum.
“It’s gone,” he said.
“I wonder where,” Aspen said.
Ciarán wasn’t certain, but he had a good idea. Hunting evil silver, like it had been when it had first stumbled across the races of man.
He wished it luck, but he didn’t think it would need much. Olek and Vatya might have stopped the resonating superluminal drive from a total meltdown. But getting the ship ready to jump out of the system would take time. And if they decided not to jump, but to come back for the biolab for vengeance?
“Are you done with the rod?” Ciarán asked Adderly.
She handed the terror device to him. “I was done with it the moment I saw what it could do to a human being.”
“I feel safer with it.”
“Safer in the flesh. Less safe in the soul.”
“Is it that noticeable?”
“Put a shirt on and it would be.”
Aspen chuckled. “There are clean utilities in the hanging lockers.” She pointed.
“You didn’t have to tell him.”
“I doubt there are any in your size.”
“I’ll look anyway.” It wouldn’t be the first time he’d jammed himself into clothing a size too small.
Wisp hopped up onto an examination table and stretched out. She flared her paws and blinked at Ciarán. Slowly. She yawned.
Bea tugged his sleeve and signed. “Now what?”
“Now I find a shirt. Then we sit around, and sharpen our swords, and wait for the call of trumpets.”
“I don’t have a sword.”
“Our wits are our swords. Examine Crewman Wisp. She has begun the sharpening process.”
“But I want to be doing something.”
“Then you have first watch. Patrol the perimeter and wake me at the first sign of danger.”
“But we’re trapped.”
“We’re safe and unharmed. Enjoy it while it lasts.”
“But—”
“Beatrice,” Adderly said. “Patrol the perimeter.”
She signed at her aunt without looking. “I will, ma’am.”
Ciarán found a pair of utilities that looked like they might fit. He peeled out of the old ones.
Adderly pointed her finger. “Now, girl. And put your eyes back into your head when you do.”
93
Contract System, Outer Reach (Huangxu Contested Space)
Macer couldn’t believe that Ciarán would willingly live in a ship like the one he walked through. There wasn’t a square corner in it, or a working luminaire, and every now and then his suit lights would pick up scuttling movement, or his microphones pick up the clacking of something hard against something else hard, but not quite as hard. The corridor he walked along curved for no apparent reason. There were compartments lining both sides of the corridor but Hess assured him that he should continue to the end, where he would find the bridge.
So far he hadn’t needed to use the hull-breaking auger even once. He’d entered the hull through an open hatchway in an area that had once been attached to what Hess called the biohazard lab. He shoved the auger along in front of him; it had lift plates that made it glide smoothly. He’d set up his little drone to fly along beside him and watch his back, and warn him of anything large or fast moving behind him. Unlike his last adventure aboard a seemingly abandoned ship, he had everything a modern man could want except someone else to do the work for him.
The corridor ended at a closed hatch.
“Give the hatch release a hard slap,” Hess said.
“The hatch release is this panel with the embossed lettering?” Macer aimed his light and his optical sensors at it.
“They’re not letters. They’re ideograms.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I don’t know. But every time I call them letters, the merchant apprentice corrects me.”
Macer slapped the panel.
The hatch opened, which was good.
The lights were on inside, which was bad.
The bridge crawled with mechanical spiders that all stopped what they were doing. They turned toward him just as his drone alerted him to movement from behind.
A spider with two missing legs and two broken legs scuttled toward him.
“Let it by,” Hess said. “I think it’s the pilot.”
“The pilot.”
“Yeah. Some of them are specialists. It might have been waiting for someone to open the hatch. Follow it in but don’t do anything threatening.”
“I’m pushing a giant drill in front of me. One that can chew through hull plate.”
“Just don’t start drilling anything. And don’t have your drone do anything threatening either.”
“How can you live like this?”
“We don’t. They’re only active during a threat situation. And it looks like Ciarán has been here, because that black spider to your left is one of ours.”
“How can you tell?”
“I’ve seen it around. Go to the piloting console. Tell it you want it to pilot the ship into the sun.”
