Firefall

  —Fuck me the roach is up!—

  —could just as well have been imagination.

  Another long fall; this time they were being towed. The serpent in this spoke was intact, a moving belt stretched pencil-thin between pulleys at each end. Valerie still gripped Brüks’s wrist with one iron hand. The other was locked around one of the hoops (handholds, Brüks realized; stirrups) on the conveyor’s outbound leg. The inbound line streamed past just a meter or two to his left, heading back to the Hub. In some hopeful parallel fantasy world, Brüks broke free and seized one of those hoops to make his escape.

  Another terminus—this one innocent of shrapnel or wreckage, just a U-turn and a ledge around an open hatch festooned with a bit of signage:

  MAINTENANCE & REPAIR

  Now they were through. Now he was free, floating in a hab like the one he’d just escaped. Bulkheads, panels, gengineered strips of photosynthetic foliage. Coffin-size outlines, subtly convex, on the bulkhead: pallets like the one he’d awakened on, folded into the wall while not in use. More of those ubiquitous cubes, stuck and stacked high enough to turn half the compartment into a burrow: a spectrum of colors, a riot of icons. Brüks recognized some of the symbols—power tools, fab-matter stockpiles, the stylized Aesculapian staff that meant medical. Others might as well have been scribbled by aliens.

  “Catch.”

  He turned, flinched, brought his hands up barely in time to grab the box sailing toward him. It might have held a large pizza, judging by size and shape; maybe three of them, stacked. Scasers, adhesives, bladders of synthetic blood nestled in molded depressions under its lid. Some kind of bare-bones first-aid kit.

  “Fix it.”

  Somehow Valerie had already stripped down to her coverall, geckoed her abandoned spacesuit to the wall like a crumpled wad of aluminum foil. Her left arm was extended, wrist up, sleeve rolled back. Her forearm bent just slightly, halfway down its length. Not even vampires had joints there.

  “What—how did—”

  “The ship breaks. Shit happens.” Her lips drew back. Her teeth looked almost translucent in the glassy light. “Fix it.”

  “But—my ankle—”

  Suddenly they were eye to eye. Brüks reflexively dropped his gaze: a lamb in a lion’s presence, no recourse beyond obeisance, no hope beyond prayer.

  “Two injured elements,” Valerie whispered. “One mission-critical, one ballast. Which gets priority?”

  “But I don’t—”

  “You’re a biologist.”

  “Yes but—”

  “An expert. On life.”

  “Y-yes...”

  “So fix it.”

  He tried to meet her eyes, and couldn’t, and cursed himself. “I’m not a medical—”

  “Bones are bones.” From the corner of his eye he saw her head tilt, as if weighing alternatives. “You can’t do this, what good are you?”

  “There must be some kind of sick bay on board,” he stammered. “A, an infirmary.”

  The vampire’s eyes flickered to the hatch overhead, to the label it framed: MAINTENANCE & REPAIR. “A biologist,” she said, something like mirth in her voice, “and you think there’s a difference.”

  This is insane, he thought. Is this is some kind of test?

  If so, he was failing it.

  He held his breath and his tongue, kept his eyes on the injury: closed fracture, thank Christ. No skin breaks, no visible contusions. At least the break hadn’t torn any major blood vessels.

  Or had it? Didn’t vampires—that’s right, they vasoconstricted most of the time, kept most of their blood sequestered in the core. This creature’s radial artery could be ripped wide open and she might never even feel it until she went into hunting mode...​

  Maybe give her prey a fighting chance, at least...​

  He tamped down on the thought, irrationally terrified that she might be able to see it flickering there in his skull. He focused on the bend instead: leave it, or try to reseat the bone? (Leave it, he remembered from somewhere. Keep movement to a minimum, reduce the risk of shredding nerves and blood vessels...)

  He pulled a roll of splinting tape from the kit, snapped off a few thirty-centimeter lengths (long enough to extend past the wrist—it was starting to come back). He laid them down equidistantly around Valerie’s arm (God she’s cold), pressed gently into the flesh (Don’t hurt her, don’t fucking hurt her) until the adhesive took and hardened the splints into place. He backed away as the vampire flexed and turned and examined his handiwork.

  “Not set straight,” she remarked.

  He swallowed. “No, I thought—this is just temp—”

  She reached across with her right hand and broke her own forearm like a sapling. Two of the splints snapped with a sound of tiny gunshots; the third simply ripped free of the flesh, tearing the skin.

  The fascia beneath was bloodless as paraffin.

  She extended the refractured arm. “Do it again.”

  Holy shit, Brüks thought.

  Fuck fuck fuck.

  Not a test, he realized. Never a test, not with this thing. A game. A sick sadistic game, a cat playing with a mouse...​

  Valerie waited, patient and empty, less than two meters from his jugular.

  Keep going. Don’t give her an excuse.

  He took her arm in his hands again. He clenched tight to keep them from shaking; she didn’t seem to notice. The break was worse now, the bend sharper; bone pushed up from beneath the muscles, raised a knotty little hillock under the skin. A purple bruise was leaking into existence at its summit.

  He still couldn’t meet her eyes.

  He grabbed her wrist with one hand, braced against the cup of her elbow with the other, pulled. It was like trying to stretch steel: the cables in her arm seemed too tough, too tightly sprung for mere flesh. He tried again, yanked as hard as he could; he was the one who whimpered aloud.

  But the limb stretched a little, and the broken pieces within ground audibly one against another, and when he let go, the lumpy protuberance had disappeared.

  Please let this be enough.

  He left the broken splints in place, laid down new lengths of tape adjacent. Pressed and waited as they grew rigid.

  “Better,” Valerie said. Brüks allowed himself a breath.

  Crack. Snap.

  “Again,” Valerie said.

  “What’s wrong with you?” The words were out before he could catch them. Brüks froze in their wake, terrified at the prospect of her reaction.

  She bled. The bone was visible now beneath stretched skin, like a jagged deadhead in murky water. The contusion around it expanded as he watched, a bloody stain spreading through wax. But no, not wax, not anymore; the pallor was fading from Valerie’s flesh. Blood was seeping from the core, perfusing the peripheral tissues. The vampire—warmed—

  She’s vasodilating, he realized. She’s switching into hunting mode. Not a game after all, not even an excuse.

  A trigger...​

  “I’ve got it,” said a voice from behind.

  Brüks tried to turn. Valerie’s impassive gaze pinned him like a butterfly.

  “No, really.” A pale flash, a beige jumpsuit. Lianna coasted into view and braked against the wall. “I can finish up here. I think your guys need some supervision out on the hull anyway.”

  Valerie’s eyes flickered to her broken arm, back to Brüks. He blinked and she was gone.

  “Let’s get you out of that suit,” Lianna said, unscrewing his helmet.

  She’d cut her hair. Her dreads ended along the jawline now.

  Brüks sagged and shook his head. “How can you talk to her like that?”

  “What? I just—talk.” The helmet tumbled off across the compartment. Brüks fumbled with zippers and clasps, still quaking; Lianna unlocked his gauntlets. “Nothing special.”

  “No, I mean—” He took a breath. “Doesn’t she scare the shit out of you?”

  “Yeah, I suppose.” She glanced at the first-aid kit drifting t
o one side. “Holy shit, she had you using that?”

  “That creature is fucking insane.”

  Lianna shrugged. “By human standards, sure. Then again—” She tapped the bulkhead with her toe: a diagnostic pallet unfolded from its dimple in the wall. “Not much point in bringing them all the way back from the Pleistocene if their brains worked just like ours, right?”

  “Weren’t you afraid?”

  She seemed to think about that for a moment. “Guess I was, in a way. I mean, predator-prey, right? Gut response.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Chinedum said there was nothing to worry about.” She gestured him over to the pallet; he floated into place, let her strap him down around the waist. Biotelemetry readouts bloomed across the bulkhead.

  “And you believed him. Them.” It. Whatever the pronoun was for hive.

  “Of course.” She ran her finger down the stack of biosigns, winced at something she saw there. “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.”

  She cast her gaze around the compartment (“We should really get around to unpacking this stuff sometime”), opened a silver crate tagged with medical icons. A few seconds of rummaging turned up a scaffolding gun from the instrument trays stacked within. She dialed it to OSTEO and set the muzzle against his broken ankle. “You’re nerve-blocked, right?”

  He nodded. “Jim shot me up with something.”

  “Good. ’Cause otherwise this would really hurt.” She fired. Brüks’s leg jumped reflexively; he caught a glimpse of black filaments, fine as filaria, lashing frantic tails before they burrowed into his flesh and disappeared.

  “Might itch for a bit once the block wears off.” Lianna was already scanning the compartment for other treasures. “Takes a while for the mesh to line itself up when you’re dealing with all those little bones—ah.” An off-ivory cube, this time—no, a transparent one. It took its color from the viscous casting putty inside: the stuff quivered like gelatin when she cracked the lid.

  There must have been enough in there to put ten people into full-body casts. Brüks glanced around while Lianna scooped up a handful; at least a half-dozen other crates were filled with the same stuff.

  The putty squirmed in Lianna’s hand, aroused by her body heat. “Where are we going?” Brüks wondered. “How many broken bones are you expecting when we get there?”

  “Oh, they don’t expect anything. They just like being prepared.” She slapped the goop onto his ankle. “Hold still until it sets.” It slithered around the joint like a monstrous amoeba, fused to itself, crept a few centimeters up his calf and down around his heel before slowing and hardening in the oxygen atmosphere.

  “There.” Lianna was back at the cube, resealing it before the rest of its contents crusted over. “You’ll have to wear that for a few days, I’m afraid. Normally we’d have it off in eight hours but you’re still fighting traces of the bug. Might stage a comeback if we crank your metabolism too high.”

  The bug.

  Luckett, screaming in agony. A lawn littered with twisted bodies. A disease so merciless, so fast that it didn’t even wait for its victims to die before throwing them into rigor mortis.

  Brüks closed his eyes. “How many?”

  “What—”

  “Did we leave behind.”

  “You know, Dan, I wouldn’t write those guys off. I know how bad it looked, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that you don’t second-guess the Bicams. They’re always ten steps ahead, and they’ve always got plans within plans.”

  He waited until the voice beyond his eyelids finished talking. Then he asked again.

  It didn’t answer at first. Then: “Forty-four.”

  “Ten steps ahead,” he repeated in his own personal darkness. “You believe that.”

  “I do,” the voice said solemnly.

  “They expected forty-four deaths. They planned it. They wanted it.”

  “They didn’t want—”

  “And when they brought that—that monster along for the ride, they knew exactly what they were doing. They have it all under control.”

  “Yes. They do.” There wasn’t the slightest hint of doubt in the voice.

  Brüks took a breath, let it out again, reflected on the faint unexpected scent of growing things at the back of his throat.

  “I get the sense that faith doesn’t come easily to you,” the voice said gently after a few moments. “But sometimes things are just, you know. God’s will.”

  He opened his eyes. Lianna stared at him, kind and gentle and utterly delusional.

  “Please don’t say that,” Brüks said.

  “Why not?” She seemed genuinely puzzled.

  “Because you can’t possibly believe—because it’s a fairy tale, and it’s been used to excuse way too much...”

  “It’s not a fairy tale, Dan. I believe in a creative force beyond the physical realm. I believe it gave rise to all life. You can’t blame it for all the horrible shit that’s been done in its name.”

  Faint tingling in his fingers. A tide of saliva rising at the back of his throat. His tongue seemed to swell in his mouth.

  “Could you—I’d like to be alone, if you don’t mind,” he said softly.

  Lianna blinked. “Uh...​sure, I guess. You can ditch the mesh anytime. I brought you a fresh jumpsuit, it’s over there on the pad. ConSensus is hooked in to the paint job if you need anything, just tap three times. The interface is pretty—”

  I’m going to throw up, he thought. “Please,” he managed. “Just go.” And closed his eyes again, and clenched his teeth, and choked back the rising nausea until the sounds of her retreat faded away and all he could hear were the voices of machines and the roaring in his head.

  He did not throw up. He drew his legs to his chest, and wrapped his arms around them, and held them tight against the sudden uncontrollable shaking of his body. He kept his eyes clenched against the new world, against this microcosmic prison into which he’d awakened: infested by freaks and hungry predators, an insignificant bubble spinning farther from home with each passing second. Earth was only a memory now, lost and receding in an infinite void; and yet Earth was right here in his head, inescapable, a desert garden strewn with twisted corpses.

  Every one had Luckett’s face.

  EVENTUALLY THE PANIC receded. Eventually he had to come back.

  He wasn’t sure how long he floated there. For the present he was content to take refuge in the darkness behind his own eyelids, in the hiss of ventilators and the soft beeping voices of medical monitors. Some kind of alarm chimed in the middle distance; it sounded five times and fell silent. A moment later the world lurched to the right and gentle pressure began to build against his shoulder blades, against his calves and heels. Up and down returned.

  Brüks opened his eyes. The view hadn’t changed.

  He sat up, turned, let this new gravity drop his legs over the side of the pallet (his vitals vanished from the bulkhead as he rose). He fought off a threat of dizziness from his inner ears, held his hand out in front of him, watched until it stopped shaking.

  The exoskeleton vibrated ecstatically as he peeled it away, each strip snapping back to some elastic minimum as he set it free. They took body hair and skin cells with them, left denuded strips along his body. He left it trembling on the deck, a tangled ball of rubbery ligaments that shivered and twitched as if alive.

  He found his way to a lav that peeked around a small mountain of in-flight luggage, raided the bulkhead food fabber on the way back. Sucking a squeezebulb full of electrolytes, he peeled fresh folded clothing from the wall where Lianna had left it: a forest-green jumpsuit, preemptively custom-fabbed by some onboard printer. He wobbled precariously while pulling on the pants, but the pseudograv was weak and forgiving. Finally he was finished: clothed, upright, his batteries beginning to soak up charge from the nutrients in his gut. He folded the pallet back into its alcove. Its smart-painted underside bulged subtly from the wall, softly luminescent.

  Tap three times,
she’d said.

  ConSensus bloomed at his touch, an impoverished interface for the augmentally impaired: Systems, Comm, Library. A little v3-D Crown of Thorns hovered to one side in an imaginary void. All waited to dance at his fingertips, but he took VOCAL INTERFACE AVAILABLE at its word and said, “Ship layout.”

  The animation expanded smoothly into center stage, bristling with annotations. Engines and reactors and shielding swallowed at least three-quarters of the display: thrust cones, fusion reactors, the rippling toroidal contours of great rad-blocking magnetic fields. Shock absorbers and antiproton traps and great protective slabs of lithium hydride. Brüks had seen the tech thumbnailed for short attention spans on any number of popsci feeds. Antimatter microfusion, they called it. A nuclear pulse drive turbocharged with a judicious sprinkling of antiprotons. Give it a decent launch window and the Crown of Thorns could make it to Mars in a couple of weeks.

  “What’s our heading?” he asked aloud.

  NAV UNAVAILABLE, ConSensus replied.

  “What’s our location?”

  NAV UNAVAILABLE.

  “What’s our destination, then?”

  NAV UNAVAILABLE.

  Huh.

  The Crown’s habitable reaches lay along a spine one hundred fifty meters long, a tube of alloy and atmosphere connecting bits of superstructure like beads on a nail. The Hub Valerie had dragged him through was two-thirds of the way from drive to prow. Its spokes were back in motion, sweeping through space in majestic counterpoint to the flywheel farther up. (Only the Hub’s aft hemisphere rotated, Brüks noticed. The other—COMMAND, according to ConSensus, as if any modern space vessel required anything as quaint as a bridge in physical space—seemed fixed to the spine.)

  “Focus habitat.”

  The Crown redrew herself from the inside, engines and shielding neatly excised, nothing left but the hollows of the Crown’s forward section turning bright and front and center. Annotated constellations twinkled in those spaces like fireflies in a luminous gut. A cluster of gray icons glowed aft in the HOLD (enormous now, in the absence of its substrate): CHODOROWSKA, K.; EULALI, S.; OFOEGBU, C. Eight or nine others. MOORE, J.—green—glowed in the hab called DORM. LUTTERODT, L. was in the Hub, next to SENGUPTA, R. The hab containing BRÜKS, D. showed up as MED/MAINTENANCE, no matter what the sign on the hatch said; GALLEY/COMMONS occupied the hab immediately clockwise, LAB the one counter. STORES/TRIM, where he’d suffered his rude awakening, balanced out the wheel. Evidently it had already been reattached; but yellow neon highlighted distal injuries where the spoke was still under repair.