March is the first one out. He skins down the ladder with a grace I can’t help but admire. Or maybe it’s his ass. Anyway, I go next, hitting the ground with an extra bounce that tells me we’re in light G. The station’s crew probably take supplements to prevent suffering long-term physiological damage.
Vel lands lightly beside me, and Jael doesn’t bother with the ladder, just leaps. Despite my best intentions, his recklessness appeals to me on a visceral level. In another time, before the Sargasso, I suspect I would’ve found him irresistible.
March cuts me a look, but thankfully he doesn’t say anything, at least not about that. I’m glad he has some common sense. From the look of the docking bay, we might be the last humans left in this sector. Sputtering lights hint at some unknown electrical problem, and my sense of foreboding doubles.
“You think it’s safe to go on?” I hesitate, looking at the far doors, which lead into the station proper.
“Probably not.” March flashes me a smile. “You still in?”
“Yeah.” It goes unspoken that I was ready to die at his side weeks ago. That hasn’t changed.
“We work in pairs then. Vel, you’re with Jax. Jael, you come with me.”
Falling in with Vel, I can’t help but raise my brows. I didn’t expect we’d split up. “You sure this is a good idea?”
“We’re sticking together, Jax. I’m not stupid. But you never know what might happen inside, so it’s best if you have someone designated to watch your back.”
That makes sense. “Okay, I’m guarding Vel.”
More like the other way around, but the bounty hunter is kind enough not to say it aloud. The automated system has opened the doors into the station for us, but I can’t see beyond a turn in the dark corridor. A wisp of something brushes my face, like a spiderweb, but when I turn I can’t see anything. Maybe it’s nerves.
Nobody speaks as we push onward. All my aches and pains fade to a low hum. The instincts that have kept me alive for thirty-three years kick to the fore, leaving me clearheaded and alert. I feel Vel at my back, like he’s my mantid guardian. Shit, he might be for all I know.
In my right hand, I feel sweat forming around the shockstick. The air doesn’t smell right as we move deeper, following the external corridors toward the inner reaches of the station. The security doors are all stuck wide open.
Yeah, something’s definitely wrong.
As we come into the commissary, I see the place has been ransacked. Crates and barrels torn open, but the supplies have been left behind. What the hell were they looking for? Chem? Contraband? Anyone with half a brain knows you aren’t going to find that on an emergency station. Smugglers avoid these places like the plague.
Here, you can fuel up and buy paste, maybe some organic for the kitchen-mate if they’ve stocked up recently. You can also find basic medical assistance. And that’s all a station like this offers.
Sweet. Something smells sweet and raw. Almost like a butcher shop gone bad.
Overhead, the lights flicker and go out.
Wordlessly, Vel produces a torch-tube from his pack. Ever prepared, he is. When he bends it, the chemicals mix and emit an eerie yellow-green glow. The silence is starting to get to me. I can hear the hum of distant machinery, but no human movements, no voices echoing.
Just silence. Darkness.
Vel raises his light just as I step into a puddle of something dark and sticky. Blood. Oh Mary, it’s like being trapped on the Sargasso, but without the overlying stench of burnt meat.
I feel March curl his hand around my shoulder, reassuring me. “Did anyone else bring light?”
Like a stupid newb, I have to shake my head. Apart from the shockstick I didn’t bring a damn thing. Sweat rolls down my spine, pools in the small of my back. My jumpsuit sticks to me, and I’m sure I stink of fear.
You’ll be fine. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. His presence fills my head, pushes back the panic. Maybe they’re empty promises, but March has never let me down.
Jael has been oddly silent, so he startles me when he finally speaks. “I’ve been through something like this before,” he says, as if he doesn’t want his voice to carry.
I still don’t hear anything. It’s as if we’re being hunted, unseen predators creeping closer while we wheel blindly in the dark. At this moment I’d sell my soul for a pair of night-vision goggles.
“What happened?” March asks. “Where?”
The guy just shakes his head. “I don’t want to upset anyone.” I glare, not that he can see me. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out he means me. Before I can tell him off, he continues, “If I’m wrong, then there’s no need for me to talk about it.” His voice grows taut. “And if I’m right, then Mary help us all.”
* * *
CHAPTER 16
From behind, l hear the sound of the inner docking doors clanging closed. Now we’re effectively separated from the others until we find a way to get them opened. Divide and conquer. It’s the oldest trick in the book, but we couldn’t have taken a new mother and her child with us to explore the station.
Our fate hangs on Dina’s preventing Surge and Kora from stranding us here. I have a lot of faith in our mechanic, but we may have stuck her with an impossible task. They have a pilot and a jumper on board, but I hope they won’t want to risk scrambling their daughter’s brains.
Transport companies won’t have an infant on board on interstellar voyages—too much liability involved. As far as I know, they deny children under the age of two, and even transporting children older than that requires a special ship outfitted with miniature jump gear.
With a sigh, I glance around the commissary, seeking anything we can use. I spot a box of uncracked torch-tubes. Though decidedly unglamorous, I’m glad I’m wearing this baggy jumpsuit because it has six pockets. I stuff them full, a total of ten.
Vel’s stick won’t last forever. When the chemicals burn out, we’ll be left flailing in the dark. So here’s a little insurance against that eventuality. We can ration them. I don’t know what I’ll do when the lights go out.
Can’t think about that.
A little more rummaging unearths eight packets of paste. I hope we won’t be here long enough to need them, but I snag the food nonetheless. Nothing else catches my eye as immediately useful. There are spare parts and fuel cells for weapons we don’t possess. They wouldn’t carry charge packs for the disruptor March carries, given that it counts as contraband.
Going forward seems like our only option, even if it’s into the trackless dark. I shudder a little. It was dark when the Sargasso went down, and I spent twelve hours pinned. My scars flare with phantom pain.
Wish I’d stayed on the ship, even if it meant changing Sirina.
“It seems obvious that something happened to the original station crew,” March says. “We have to figure out what, or it might take us, too.”
I feel Vel at my shoulder, oddly reassuring. “If we can get to a terminal, I can patch into their security cams and see what went on before our arrival. Knowing our enemy will help us formulate the best course of action.”
“Sounds like a plan.” March leads the way.
Shadows play hell with my peripheral vision as we move out of the commissary. We’ll worry about supplies once we have a way to get them off station. I try to focus on that—we will get out of this.
“Watch for webs.” Jael sounds cold and collected, not the pretty, useless ornament I initially took him for. I suspect he’s seen something, noticed something, that slipped right past me.
Webs. As I process that, Vel adds, “And cocoons.”
Does everyone know what’s on this station except me? In the distance, I register a skittering sound, oddly familiar. Where have I heard that before?
I’ve almost got it when Vel tackles me, and we hit the floor hard. I lose my grip on the shockstick, not that I’m in any shape to fight. It clatters along the floor, throwing tiny sparks of light. Ahead, March and Jael scatter to opposite sides of the hallway. A sweet stench hits me on a breeze that shouldn’t be, which means—
Movement.
Something white and filmy rebounds down the hall, passing between the four of us. A trap? It looks like a web, just as Jael said.
“They may have set venom mines as well,” Vel murmurs near my ear. “If it spatters on your skin, the rest of you will be immobilized.”
Not him, though. His physiology renders him poisonous to them. Now I know what we’re facing—the Morgut. That’s human slang, because they’re more gut than anything else. The last time I saw some of these f**kers, they tried to eat me.
Then again, I was asking for it.
I start to suggest turning back and then I remember they’ve sealed us in with them. Nothing like playing with your food a bit before you eat it.
“Noted,” March says from a few feet up. “You mentioned you’ve been through something like this before,” he adds to Jael. “So tell us what you know.”
Call it paranoia, a quality I possess in spades, but I don’t think we should stand here talking. Maybe stumbling blindly ahead isn’t the best idea either, but they may be monitoring these hallways. Homing in on their prey. Us. So the longer we hang around, the easier they catch us.
I’ve never been hunted before, and I don’t much care for the sensation.
Surprisingly, Vel echoes my thoughts. “Not here. It is vital we get to a terminal. I need to know what happened here.”
“I’ll tell you,” Jael says, as we round a corner with maximumcaution. “We interrupted their dinner, and now they plan on having us for dessert.”
“Tell us while we move then.” March doesn’t sound like he’s in the mood to negotiate on this point.
Jael seems to recognize this, but his voice holds a raw, unwilling note. “I signed on with Surge, maybe four years back. You’d already quit the game,” he says to March. “The rest of us were still willing to bleed for Nicuan. They had the money, and they never tire of the fight. Nobody wins, everybody dies.”
We creep along by millimeters, staying in the shallow circle of light. Maybe we’d be better off to douse it, but I can’t face the dark. I’ll lose my mind. The ventilation system kicks in, sending a hiss of air past our faces. I’m already on the floor, jumpy as a chem-head after two days without a fix.
Jael gives me a hand up, tugs me to my feet with a Bred strength belied by his slender build. He continues tonelessly. “Someday, after we’re all gone, archaeologists will find cities of bone on that world. Our commanders were useless, soft, pampered imperial types, who came up with strategies from the comfort of their manor houses. Body count didn’t matter to them. They offered hazard pay and death benefits to the soldiers’ families.”
“What happened?” Despite our situation, I almost succeed in forgetting about the living night all around us, haunted by mechanical noises and suspicious thumps in the ducts overhead. Almost.
“My CO sent us off world to investigate trouble at a satellite weapons factory, built outside of terrestrial tariffs. They kept a skeleton crew on-site to monitor the automated production system, make necessary repairs. And then one day, the place went quiet.”