Osprey chronicles comple.., p.69
Osprey Chronicles Complete Series Boxed Set, page 69
She meant it as a joke. She hadn’t expected the humorless Seeker to appreciate it, but even to her ears, the words sounded strangely atonal.
Seeker picked up her discarded tomato and popped it into his mouth, careful not to look at her. “This ship is in danger of sinking, Captain, and you’re obsessing about the arrangement of the deck furniture.”
Jaeger studied the man’s chiseled profile as he sipped from his bottle. Who are you, Seeker? She wondered if half the reason she wanted everybody to pick names was to know what else she could call this unreasonably muscular man. He knew her first name, even if she had no particular attachment to Sarah. After knowing him for nearly a year, she should know his, too. It felt wrong not to.
She wondered, not for the first time, if affording him the same amount of trust as any other member of her crew was a mistake. Then she shoved the doubt away into the back closet with all the other stuff she couldn’t afford to deal with right now. Distrust was Toner’s job, not hers.
Funny, though. She didn’t know Toner’s first name either—just his initials, L.M.—but for some reason, that didn’t bother her.
“I disagree with your assessment. Yes, the ship is in danger, but we’re building a colony. A colony on a planet that isn’t ours, guarded by an alien race with tech we can’t begin to understand. Some matters we can do in conjunction with everything else. Things like fitting in. Showing we’re on the same team with them.”
She caught his eyes. “You say you’re with us, but every day, you come out with another prophecy of doom and gloom. It’s almost like you’re hoping everything goes wrong.”
“Hoping?” He leaned back until he was lying across the blanket, arms folded behind his head as he studied the stars. “Not at all.” He brought one arm down, fished into one of his front pockets, and drew out a small silver vape pen. He drew in a deep, idle puff.
She frowned, disapproving, but said nothing. Everyone was allowed their vices, even if Seeker’s lung capacity had noticeably decreased in the months since she’d promoted him from prisoner to crewman.
“You can’t afford to get comfortable.” Seeker watched the silvery mist rise into the air and swirl away. “I’ll feel better when we have some reliable fortifications built. With the Osprey grounded, we’re more vulnerable to attack than ever.”
“From who?” she asked. “We haven’t heard any news from the fleet in months. According to Kwin, if anyone was out there waiting for us, they almost surely believe the wormhole’s collapse destroyed us. If they did show up, our alliance with the Locauri and the Overseers is going to be hard proof against any fight they might want to pick.”
She didn’t want to think about the rest of the human fleet that might or might not be lurking in some far-flung arm of the galaxy, waiting to pounce through the next open wormhole and crash back into her life. She didn’t remember much about the Tribes or the fleet, but she remembered the sound of a screaming child and the shockwave of an exploding station.
For all she cared, the entire fleet could go to hell.
She knew why she’d stolen the Osprey, even if she couldn’t remember doing it. She was running away from the sound of a slamming screen door.
No, she told herself fiercely. No. You’re building a place where there will be no more screaming little girls. You can’t build a better future when you’re stuck in the quicksand of the past. You know that.
Seeker puffed out another cloud and drew a finger through the mist in an unusually relaxed gesture for a man with a jaw normally clenched hard enough to turn coal into a diamond. Perhaps the nicotine was good for him, after all. “The good thing about wormhole travel is that if there’s no wormhole, there’s no travel.”
He waved the mist away. “Nah. I’m thinking about the K’tax.” He gestured at a Locauri hopping past in an animated conversation with the willowy tall Doctor Elaphus. “Don’t you think it’s strange that they’ve incorporated the Locauri into their life-cycle?”
“K’tax are parasites,” Jaeger said. As awful as her memories of the insect monster aliens were, they were better than the dark thoughts that had been swirling between her ears. She grabbed an oatmeal cookie from her picnic box and bit into it, throwing herself wholly into the new line of conversation. “Elaphus found a few examples of a similar life-cycle from Earth. Parasitic wasps lay eggs in a host insect so when the babies hatch, they have a nutritious meal to get them off to a good start in life.”
Behind her, Baby rippled and lifted her big head. Jaeger offered up the second half of her cookie, and it vanished down the water bear’s toothy gullet.
“I’m no biologist,” Seeker allowed, “But doesn’t it take generations of co-evolution to develop that kind of parasitic relationship with another species?”
Jaeger shrugged. “The Overseers and Locauri have records of K’tax raids in this system going back thousands of years. Those two races are distantly related. Given the anatomical similarities, I’m guessing that the K’tax came from the same evolutionary tree.”
“The Overseers,” Seeker noted. “That’s another problem.”
“Oh, they’re a problem again?”
“A…puzzle,” Seeker amended. “Is that better? The Locauri are technologically primitive while the Overseers are zipping through space and are looking after the Locauri like they’re monkeys in a zoo.”
Jaeger winced, but the comparison wasn’t entirely unfair.
“Yet they don’t build bases on this planet,” Seeker went on. “They don’t live here. There aren’t even Overseer scientific outposts. It’s as if they want the Locauri left alone, to evolve at their own pace, without interference.”
“Or they’re like the Amish,” Jaeger suggested. “On decent terms with their English neighbors, but ultimately just wanting to be left alone to live simply.”
Seeker turned his head to study Jaeger as she picked the raisins out of a second cookie.
“In neither of those scenarios,” he said as she palmed the dried fruits into Baby’s maw, “does it make sense that they’d want a bunch of technologically advanced aliens moving in and making themselves at home.”
Jaeger frowned. “We needed a place to settle, and they were generous enough to let us have it.”
“They could have let us have an isolated island in the middle of the ocean,” he pointed out. “That would give us what we need while still preserving…whatever it is this clan of Locauri was doing before we came along. Instead, they want us to settle right on their front porch. We’re not only neighbors, Jaeger—in the grand scheme of the continent, we’re now living in the same house. You could walk from Osprey to the nearest Locauri village in a few hours. Whether they’re an experiment in natural evolution or willful Luddites, us being here fundamentally changes that.”
Jaeger frowned and said nothing for a long time as she watched the Master of Ceremonies hop off her boulder and declare a pair of young Locauri the winners of today’s rock-stacking tournament. A happy buzz rose from the crowd as the gathered Locauri vibrated their flashing pseudo-wings in approval.
They had come to call the human crew with active mutations the Morphed, and those who appeared entirely human the Classics. The crew hadn’t been around long enough for the behavioral specialists to collect reliable data. Still, Jaeger suspected that as a whole, the fleet mutations made the Morphed a much more competitive bunch.
As the winning Locauri pair hopped a victory lap around the field, Jaeger noted the disparate responses of her crew. Most of the Classics cheered along with the Locauri, offering friendly high-fives to the victors as they passed. Most of the Morphed, on the other hand, clapped politely.
Pandion, she noted with dismay, turned and stalked away from the field without a word.
“You’re saying there’s something they’re not telling us,” she said, forcing her attention back to Seeker.
Seeker nodded. “There’s more to this arrangement than they’re letting on. It may be benign, but there’s a reason these Locauri have agreed to alter their way of life fundamentally and co-exist with us.”
It was a fair point, and Jaeger was about to ask what he thought that reason might be when activity near the tree line caught her attention. A dozen or so Locauri hummed and flickered like disturbed grasshoppers, their photosynthetic pseudo wings glinting strangely in the waning sunlight.
At first, Jaeger thought it was one of their spontaneous sundown dances. Their energy levels always had been highest near dawn and dusk. Then the wind shifted, and she caught the cadence of their humming song. The sound was atonal and high-pitched, a buzz of distress.
She surged to her feet as Art broke from the cluster, bounding in her direction. As he approached, Baby lifted her head. She bellowed a hello that Jaeger thought was quite cheerful but which had poor Art skittering nervously to the side.
“What’s wrong?” Jaeger rested a staying hand on Baby’s head.
Art let out a series of nervous clicks before his translator band activated. “It’s Lieutenant Occy. There’s a…problem.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Fourteen hours before final departure
Lawrence was about to tell the girl to stay put, dammit, then thought better of it. At times like these, the last thing he needed was to come back and find her missing or terrorized by yet another escaped science experiment. Besides, realistically, the safest place for her was right behind him.
“Come on.” He ran out of the lab. “Stay near me. Don’t wander off alone.”
She didn’t argue as they ran down the hall, following the sound of a ruckus to the front of the building. The sound of screaming escalated into rapid gunfire as they reached the closed double-door. Lawrence held Sarah back as he cracked the door for a look.
It might be an abandoned facility now, but at least some of the automatic motion sensors were still online. A ring of floodlights on tall posts had activated at the center of the cluster of buildings, creating a painfully bright halo beneath the night sky. Splattered across the gravel was a dark spray. A dropped backpack. A loose pistol near the edge of the ring of light.
Most notable was a naked, two-meter-tall shaved gorilla, hugging the light post with arms thicker than Christmas hams. Some idiot had taken the biggest bastard they could find, stuck him in a gene therapy tank, and pumped it full of every secret soldier serum and combat augmentation mod that existed.
The modern-day version of Frankenstein’s monster was naked, glistening with a mixture of suspension jelly and blood. As Lawrence stared, it tilted back its head and bellowed, bending the light post into a slow arch that brought the tip of it inexorably closer to the ground—and the monster’s open mouth.
The man clinging to the light at the top of the post yelled, struggling to keep his balance as Mister Frankenstein slowly ripped the pole from its foundation.
Well, look at that, Lawrence thought dumbly. Frankenstein chased Hank right up a tree.
“You get out of here,” he whispered, not daring to take his eyes off Frank. In the shadows beyond the ring of light, Lawrence saw another figure stalking up behind Frank, fumbling with a rifle. “Find somewhere safe,” he told Sarah. “Hide.”
The only answer she gave was the sound of her retreating footsteps as she turned and ran back down the hallway.
Gil lifted his gun and emptied a magazine into the center of Frank’s back. What should have turned Frank into a pile of ground beef pinned to the ground only made the creature angry. Frank bellowed and turned away from the lamp post.
Hank dropped, smooth as a leopard falling from a tree, onto Frank’s back.
It was a good move, Lawrence dimly thought as he palmed his sidearm. From there, Hank should have been able to rip the bastard’s head off, no problem. It’s probably what Lawrence himself would have done.
But God damn, Frank made Hank, elite Marine and fresh vamp mod, look like a sixth-grade wannabe athlete who had found himself in the middle of WrestleMania.
In all that flailing, though, Hank must have caught sight of Lawrence lingering at the door.
“Toner!” he screamed and slammed his fists into the back of Frank’s skull. “Fucking do something!”
As Gil fumbled to reload his rifle, Frank bent over, bellowing and grabbing for the annoying monkey on his back.
Lawrence’s mind raced. Gil’s rifle made his sidearm look like a pea-shooter, and that wasn’t even slowing Frank down. Hank was a physically stronger mod than Lawrence, and by the high-pitched wailing, that man was hanging on for dear life as Frank flailed.
Run away, said the perfectly rational part of Lawrence’s mind. Find Sarah and book it. Hank, Gil, and Frank all had each other perfectly distracted at the moment. This wasn’t Lawrence’s fight.
Then again, Lawrence’s ex-comrades had spotted him. If they survived this fight, they wouldn’t be in a generous mood, and they might come after him. Even though he was fed up with them, Lawrence didn’t want to see them dead.
As Lawrence calculated his options, Gil emptied a second round into Frank’s chest. Ignoring the bullets, Frank reached over his head and finally grabbed Hank by one arm. Easy as dropping a wet towel, the big bastard flung Hank to the ground, stunning him.
In a not-so-surprising display of bravado, Gil flung his empty gun to the side and barreled forward, but not before Frank stomped a heavy foot into Hank’s chest.
Hank’s ribcage collapsed like a bundle of dry twigs. Blood exploded out of his mouth.
Lawrence remembered the screaming, the spray of blood, as the dogs ripped Sarge apart. Perhaps channeling those same memories, Gil let out a primal scream and charged.
Lawrence drew his combat knife and burst through the door as Frank bent forward to grab Hank’s head between two meaty palms.
Lawrence leapt, flinging himself to piggyback across Frank’s shoulders much as Hank had done.
Holy shit, Lawrence thought, clinging for dear life as Frank tried to shake him off. From the elbow down, his arm was stunned from the force of the stab—and his knife had sunk barely a few centimeters into the side of Frank’s throat. They spliced adamantine into this fucker’s genes.
“His hands!” Lawrence screamed. The knife wobbled as he clung. Frank flailed and clawed, reaching over the shoulder to grab for him. If he got a good grip on Lawrence, Lawrence would wind up on the dust beside Hank. “Keep him off me!”
Thankfully, Gil was smarter than he looked. Head tucked, the big Marine launched himself over Hank’s twitching body and hit Frank center-mass.
Frank grunted and staggered, forgetting Lawrence as he swung his arms around in a wild attempt to keep his balance.
Lawrence slung an arm around Frank’s neck. With his other arm, he pried the knife free and stabbed it down again, over and over. It was like trying to chop down a tree. Little chips of wet flesh went flying with every stab, but no matter how hard Lawrence swung, he couldn’t sink the blade more than a few centimeters into flesh. Meanwhile, bodies roiled beneath him as Gil and Frank rolled in a bear-hug grapple.
Lawrence needed to change his approach. Stabbing was only annoying this thing.
He slammed his knife into Frank’s spine and felt the knife scrape bone as it sank through the layers of toughened skin. Thick purplish blood cascaded down Frank’s back.
Rather than draw out the knife and stab again, Lawrence started sawing back and forth, tearing open the flesh over his spine.
Frank bellowed, head falling forward and mouth opening, ready to take a bite out of the puny, screaming human locked in the cage of his arms.
Gil screamed—a strange, high, sharp sound of pain and terror that sent a shiver down Lawrence’s spine.
On the other hand, bending his head forward stretched the wound Lawrence was carving out of Frank’s neck, making it easier to drive the knife deeper into the gaps between his vertebrae.
Hang on; he begged, too panicked and breathless to scream. He could see the spinal cord. He could smell the fluid, and the viscera, and the heady, salty perfume of blood.
Finally alerted to the damage Lawrence was doing, Frank shoved Gil aside like a rag doll and reached over his shoulder.
As Frank’s sausage fingers brushed Lawrence’s throat, he released his grip on the monster’s back and heaved his entire weight into one last swing.
Knife touched nerves, and Frank’s spinal cord snapped like an over-coiled spring. Carried by momentum alone, Frank staggered forward one step—
“No, no, no,” Lawrence muttered, trying to turn Frank’s head in the desperate hope that it would change his direction.
Two steps—
Then he collapsed.
Hank’s body disappeared beneath half a ton of mutated man-creature.
The impact left Lawrence stunned long enough for the fresh scents of blood and gore to curl into him and wrap seductive fingers around his brain.
Hello beautiful, he thought as his world turned red.
He lost track of time after that.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lawrence came to his senses to the sound of someone crying. It was a soft, light sound, and his first reaction was to be angry. Sarah shouldn’t be here. He had told her to run. This place was dangerous—for many reasons.
But no. It wasn’t Sarah.
Gil sat on the gravel beside the mangled corpse of the Frankenstein creature, his head bowed to hands dark and caked with blood, his shoulders shaking as he quietly sobbed.
A cold desert wind curled through the abandoned complex, washing Lawrence in the sterile smell of dust. He looked down to see himself once again bathed in red. Beneath him, he’d reduced Frank’s throat to a few chewed vertebrae around a shell of Kevlar-tough skin. The muscle, the veins, all the vital pipes, were gone.
Lawrence wiped a rough length of gristle from his chin. It was a piece of someone else’s esophagus.
“Jesus Christ.”
Lawrence looked up, but Gil wasn’t talking to him. Gil was rocking back and forth, talking to his palms. Pieces of scalp and skull, decorated with tufts of familiar brown hair, decorated the ground around him like a smashed coconut.
