Echopraxia

  “But—”

  “Unless you think that anorexia’s the best way to prep for an extended field op.”

  Moore hesitated.

  “Come on.” Brüks punched in an order for salmon steak (he was still tickled by the fabber’s proficiency with extinct meats). “Lianna’s back in the hold, and Rakshi’s—being Rakshi. You want me eating with Valerie?”

  “So this is a rescue mission.” Moore unfolded himself onto the deck, relenting at last.

  “That’s the spirit. What do you want?”

  “Just coffee.”

  Brüks glared at him.

  “Okay, fine. Anything.” The Colonel waved a hand in surrender. “Kruggets. With Tandoori sauce.”

  Brüks winced and relayed the order, tossed a ’bulb of coffee across the compartment (Coriolis turned it into a curveball but Moore caught it anyway with barely a glance), grabbed one for himself and twisted the heat tab en route. He set the wobbly warming sphere onto the table and wound his way back to collect their meals.

  “Still going over the Theseus data?” He pushed Moore’s fluorescent krill across the table and sat down opposite.

  “I thought the whole point of this was to get my mind off that.”

  “The point was to get you off your damn hunger strike,” Brüks said. “And to get me something to talk to besides the walls.”

  Moore chewed, swallowed. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Warn me?”

  “I distinctly remember raising the possibility—the likelihood, even—that you might be bored out of your skull.”

  “Believe me, I’m not complaining.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “Maybe a little.” (Why did everything from the galley taste like oil?) “But it’s not so bad. I got ConSensus, I got Lee to try and deprogram. Weigh a little cabin fever against getting stashed with the luggage for the next six months—”

  “Believe me.” Moore smiled faintly. “There are worse things than extended unconsciousness.”

  “For example?”

  Moore didn’t answer.

  The Crown did, though. In an instant she turned half the bulkhead bloody with Intercom alarms.

  SENGUPTA, they screamed.

  Moore commed the Hub while Brüks was still peeling himself off the ceiling. “Rakshi. What—”

  Her words cascaded back, high pitched and panicky: “She’s coming oh shit she’s coming up she knows—”

  A pit opened in Brüks’s stomach.

  “I’m on to her I think she knows of course she knows she’s a fucking vampire she knows everything—”

  “Rakshi, where—”

  “Listen to me you stupid roach she kil—oh fu—”

  The channel died before she could finish, but it didn’t really matter. You could have heard the screaming halfway to Mars.

  Moore was through the ceiling in an instant. Brüks followed in his wake, a jump up the ladder, a grab for a passing handhold, the endless loop of the conveyor pulling him smoothly along the weight-loss gradient from hab to Hub. Moore had no time for that shit; he shot up the ladder two rungs at a time, then three, then four. He ricocheted free-falling out the top of the spoke before the belt had drawn Brüks even halfway. That was okay. Maybe he’d have everything fixed by the time Brüks made it to the top, maybe Sengupta’s screams of rage would end and calm soothing voices would murmur in their stead, intent on reconciliation …

  Sengupta’s screams ended.

  He tried to ignore the other voices, the ones in his head saying Go back, you idiot. Let Jim handle it, he’s a soldier for chrissakes, what are you gonna do against a goddamn vampire? You’re collateral. You’re lunch.

  That’s right, Backdoor. Just turn around and run away. Again.

  The conveyor, insensitive, drew him forward into battle.

  He emerged into the southern hemisphere, knees shaking. There were no calm voices. There were no voices at all.

  There was no reconciliation.

  The vampire clung one-handed to the grille. Her other hand held Sengupta by the throat, right at eye level, as if the pilot were a paper doll. Valerie looked impassively into her victim’s eyes; Sengupta squirmed and choked and didn’t look back.

  The south pole was a bright gaping pit to stern. Its reflection smeared across the mirrorball like a round toothless mouth. An image flashed across Brüks’s forebrain, courtesy of his hind: Valerie tossing Sengupta into that maw. The Crown of Thorns closing its mouth and chewing.

  Moore edged along the Tropic of Capricorn, feet just above the deck, hands open at his sides.

  “Okay, we can take it from here.”

  Not Moore. Lianna’s voice, ringing calm and clear from the back of the Crown’s throat. A moment later she sailed forth from its maw, fearless, light as air, heading directly for Valerie & Victim.

  What’s wrong with her? “Lianna, don’t—”

  “S’okay.” She spared a glance. “I’ve got it under—”

  And was cut down with the sudden crack of bones snapping under the impact of Valerie’s foot, an obscene and elegant en pointe fired like a piston into Lutterodt’s rib cage. She spun back toward the south pole, a rag doll with no fixed center of gravity; the Crown caught her spine in passing, bent it the wrong way, tossed her back down its throat from whence she’d come.

  Fuck fuck fuck—

  “Let her go,” Moore was saying, his eyes still on Sengupta, calm as death. As though Lianna Lutterodt had never even made an appearance, as though she hadn’t just been swatted like a mosquito. As though she couldn’t possibly be bleeding out against the bulkhead a hundred meters to stern.

  I have to help her.

  Valerie kept eyes on Sengupta, head cocked like a predatory bird sizing up something shiny. “She attacks me.” Her voice was distant, almost distracted: voicemail from a monster with other things on its mind.

  Brüks crept forward, belly against bulkhead: a strut here, a cargo strap there, hand over hand toward the south pole.

  “She’s no threat.” Moore was behind Valerie now, looking past her shoulder to her prey. The prey croaked softly. “There’s no reason to—”

  “Thank you for your tactical advice.” A faint white smile ghosted across her lips.

  Was that a faint moan sighing up through the Crown’s throat? Still conscious then, maybe. Still hope.

  “Trade,” Valerie said.

  “Yes,” Moore replied, moving forward.

  “Not you.”

  Suddenly Brüks was off the deck and yanked into the air; suddenly Valerie’s hand was around his throat, gripping him just below the jaw with fingers cold and sinuous as tentacles while a distant irrelevant Rakshi Sengupta bounced off the southern hemisphere, hacking, doubled over.

  And when Valerie looked at him with that bemused and distant stare, he looked back. He tried not to. Over the slow burning in his lungs, over the casual pain of a larynx compressed just this side of strangulation, he would have given anything to turn away. Somehow he didn’t have the will. He couldn’t even close his eyes against hers.

  Her pupils were bright bloody pinpoints, red stars clenched tight against the light of day. Behind them, the bulkhead rolled past in lazy slow motion.

  The Hub dwindled to the wrong end of a telescope. Sengupta was shouting somewhere, her voice raw and tinny and barely audible over the white noise of distant pounding surf: She killed one of them she killed one of her zombies one of her people he’s not on the board I can’t find him anywhere—

  There was nothing in Valerie’s face but that spectral half smile, that look of dispassionate appraisal. She didn’t seem to notice Moore slipping up from behind, or Sengupta screaming headlong back into the fray with claws bared. She didn’t even seem to notice her own left hand flicking back of its own accord to casually slap the pilot into the soldier, all that momentum spun impossibly on the head of a pin and redirected a hundred eighty degrees. Fucking monster fucking monster fucking monster, Sengupta shouted from acr
oss an ocean and Brüks could only think: Cats and dogs cats and dogs …

  But none of that mattered. All that mattered were he and Valerie, alone together: the way she let just enough air past her fingers to keep him awake, the way she reached out with her free hand and tapped that light arrhythmic tattoo across his temple; the things she whispered for his ears only, intimate secrets of such vital importance he forgot them even as she breathed them out along his cheek.

  Behind her, Jim Moore grabbed a cargo strap and braced his feet against the wall. Valerie didn’t even bother to keep him in view.

  “Is it true?” he asked quietly.

  “Of course it’s fucking true she’s a vampire she’d kill all of—”

  Moore, eyes locked on Valerie, raised a palm in Sengupta’s direction. Sengupta shut up as if guillotined.

  “You think this matters.” There was distant amusement in Valerie’s voice, as if she’d just seen a rabbit stand up on its hind legs and demand the right to vote.

  “You think so, too,” Moore began. “Or—”

  “—you wouldn’t have reacted,” he and Valerie finished in sync.

  He tried again: “Were they under formal con…” they chorused. He trailed off, an acknowledgment of futility. The vampire even matched his ellipsis without missing a beat.

  Sengupta fumed silently across the compartment, too smart and too damn stupid to be scared. Brüks tried to swallow, gagged as his Adam’s apple caught between the vice of Valerie’s thumb and forefinger.

  “Malawi,” Valerie said quietly, and: “Not mission-critical.”

  Brüks swallowed again. As if there’s anyone on this goddamn ship who’s less mission-critical than me.

  Maybe Moore was thinking it, too. Maybe he decided to act on behalf of Daniel Brüks, the Parasite That Walked Like a Man. Or maybe he just took advantage of his adversary’s distraction, maybe it didn’t have anything to do with Brüks at all. But something—changed subtly, in Moore’s stance. His body seemed looser, somehow, more relaxed, incongruously taller at the same time.

  Valerie was still eye to eye with Brüks, but it didn’t matter. It was obvious from the way her smile widened and cracked, from the tiny click of teeth against teeth: she could see everything that mattered about Moore’s face, reflected in his own.

  She turned, almost lazily, tossed Brüks aside like a cigarette butt. Brüks flailed across the open spine; he barely missed a figure blurring past in the opposite direction. A cargo cube caught him and slapped him back off the deck. He doubled over, coughing, while Moore and Valerie danced in fast-forward. The monster’s arms moved as though spun by a centrifuge; her body rebounded off the deck and shot through empty space where Jim Moore had existed a split-second before.

  “Fhat thouding do’re.”

  Not a shout. Not even an exclamation. It didn’t sound like a command. But those sounds reached into the Hub from the south pole and seemed to physically slap Valerie off target, reach right into the monster’s head and grab her by the motor nerves. She twisted in midair, landed like a jumping spider on the curve of the bulkhead and froze there: eyes bright as halogen, mouth full of gleaming little shark teeth.

  “Juppyu imaké.”

  Moore rose from a defensive crouch, studied hands half raised against blows that hadn’t materialized. Brought them down again.

  Chinedum Ofoegbu rose from the throat of the Crown.

  You can’t do that, Brüks thought, astonished. You’re stuck in the Hold for another three days.

  “Prothat blemsto bethe?” Ofoegbu’s hands fluttered like a pianist’s against an invisible keyboard. The light in his eyes slithered like the Aurora Borealis.

  I don’t care how smart you are. You’re still made out of meat. You can’t just step out of a decompression chamber.

  The Bicameral’s blood must be fizzing in its flesh. All those bubbles out on early parole, all those gases freed from the weight of too many atmospheres: all set loose to party it up in the joints and capillaries …

  One’s all it’ll take, one tiny bubble in the brain. A pinpoint embolism in the right spot and you’re dead, just like that.

  “Your vampire—” Sengupta began, before Moore preempted her with: “We have some mission-critical issues to deal with…”

  But there is no you anymore, is there? You’re just a body part, just a node in a network. Expendable. When the hive cuts you loose, will you get it all back? Will Chinedum Ofoegbu wake up in time to die a roach’s death? Will he change his mind too late, will he have a chance to feel betrayed before he stops feeling anything at all?

  Ofoegbu coughed a fine red mist into the room. Blood and stars bubbled in his eyes. He began to fold at the middle.

  Lianna Lutterodt climbed up in his wake, bent in on herself, one arm clenched tight to her side. With the other she reached out, wincing; but her master was too far away. She pushed off the lip of the south pole, floated free, caught him. Every movement took a visible toll.

  “If you people are through trying to kill each other—” She coughed, tried again—“maybe someone could help me get him back to the Hold before he fucking dies.”

  “Holy shit,” Brüks said, dropping back into Commons. The node was back with its network. Lianna was meshed and casted and had retreated to her rack while her broken parts stitched themselves back together.

  Moore had already cracked open the scotch. He held out a glass.

  Brüks almost giggled. “Are you kidding? Now?”

  The Colonel glanced at the other man’s hands: they trembled. “Now.”

  Brüks took the tumbler, emptied it. Moore refilled without asking.

  “This can’t go on,” Brüks said.

  “It won’t. It didn’t.”

  “So Chinedum stopped her. This time. And it just about killed him.”

  “Chinedum was only the interface, and she knows that. She would have gained nothing and risked everything by attacking him.”

  “What if she’d pulled that shit a few days ago? What if she pulls it again?” He shook his head. “Lee could have been killed. It was just dumb luck that—”

  “We got off lightly,” Moore reminded him. “Compared to some.”

  Brüks fell silent. She killed one of her zombies.

  “Why did she do it?” he asked after a moment. “Food? Fun?”

  “It’s a problem,” the Colonel admitted. “Of course it’s a problem.”

  “Can’t we do anything?”

  “Not at the moment.” He took a breath. “Technically, Sengupta did attack first.”

  “Because Valerie killed someone!”

  “We don’t know that. And even if she did, there are—jurisdictional issues. She may have been within her rights, legally. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

  Brüks stared, speechless.

  “We’re a hundred million klicks from the nearest legitimate authority,” Moore reminded him. “Any that might happen by wouldn’t look more kindly on us than on Valerie. Legalities are irrelevant out here; we just have to play the hand we’re dealt. Fortunately we’re not entirely on our own. The Bicamerals are at least as smart and capable as she is, if not smarter.”

  “I’m not worried about their capabilities. I don’t trust them.”

  “Do you trust me?” Moore asked unexpectedly.

  Brüks considered a moment. “Yes.”

  The Colonel inclined his head. “Then trust them.”

  “I trust your intentions,” Brüks amended softly.

  “Ah. I see.”

  “You’re too close to them, Jim.”

  “No closer than you’ve been, lately.”

  “They had their hooks into you way before I joined the party. You and Lianna, the way you just—accept everything…”

  Moore said nothing.

  Brüks tried again. “Look, don’t get me wrong. You went up against a vampire for us, and you could’ve been killed, and I know that. I’m grateful. But we got lucky, Jim: you’re usually wrapped up in that little ConSen
sus shell you’ve built for yourself, and if Valerie had chosen any other time to torque out—”

  “I’m wrapped up in that shell,” Moore said levelly, “dealing with a potential threat to the whole—”

  “Uh-huh. And how many new insights have you gained, squeezing the same signals over and over again since we broke orbit?”

  “I’m sorry if that leaves you feeling vulnerable. But your fears are unfounded. And in any case”—Moore swallowed his own dram—“planetary security has to take priority.”

  “This isn’t about planetary security,” Brüks said.

  “Of course it is.”

  “Bullshit. It’s about your son.”

  Moore blinked.

  “Siri Keeton, synthesist on the Theseus mission,” Brüks continued, more gently. “It’s not as though the crew roster was any kind of secret.”

  “So.” Moore’s voice was glassy and expressionless. “You’re not as completely self-absorbed as you appear.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Brüks tried.

  “Don’t. The presence of my son on that mission doesn’t change the facts on the ground. We’re dealing with agents of unknown origin and vastly superior technology. It is my job—”

  “And you’re doing that job with a brain that still runs on love and kin selection and all those other Stone Age things we seem hell-bent on cutting out of the equation. That would be enough to tear anyone apart, but it’s even harder for you, isn’t it? Because one of those facts on the ground is that you’re the reason he was out there in the first place.”

  “He’s out there because he’s the most qualified for the mission. Full stop. Anyone in my place would have made the same decision.”

  “Sure. But we both know why he was the most qualified.”

  Moore’s face turned to granite.

  “He was most qualified,” Brüks continued, “because he got certain augments during childhood. And he got those augments because you chose a certain line of work with certain risks, and one day some asshole with a grudge and a splicer kit took a shot at you and hit him instead. You think it’s your fault that some Realist fuckwit missed the target. You blame yourself for what happened to your son. It’s what parents do.”