Osprey chronicles comple.., p.98
Osprey Chronicles Complete Series Boxed Set, page 98
Kwin pointed at one of the green stars closest to Locauri. “Home.”
Jaeger blinked, staring at one dot that looked much like any other.
“Second home,” Kwin corrected himself. “Where many Overseers settled, after the Exile.”
“Huh.” Jaeger had always assumed that the Overseers were, much like the K’tax, still nomads at heart. The thought that they might have a home planet for an administration base hadn’t occurred to her. She’d assumed that the staggering mothership had filled that role.
“We will defend Locaur to the best of our ability, as long as doing so does not jeopardize our core colonies or Second Tree,” Kwin concluded. Jaeger suspected Kwin wasn’t happy that Locaur didn’t count as a core colony.
“That’s understandable. My people can modify the Osprey’s shields to protect a wide section of the continent from orbital bombardment if the invaders feel inclined to flatten the place before putting boots on the ground. As soon as your comms channels are free, I’ll send word back to Occy to get his engineers on the problem.”
She sat back slowly. “I’d rather not plan on getting besieged. I’d rather we drive out the invaders well before they get that close.”
And by we, she admitted silently, I mean you.
“The message bade them to conquer Locaur, not destroy it,” Kwin said. “I would expect a ground invasion in that event. Their technology remains frozen in time, but they outnumber us greatly.
“As you have noted, my people are…fragile. We do not reproduce as quickly as K’tax. With advances in technology, we can build warships faster than we can train crew to pilot them. And if the K’tax manage to land a ground force on Locaur, we will be of no use to you at all. Nor will Locauri spears hold long against K’tax battle morphs.”
Jaeger closed her eyes. “If Toner were here,” she said carefully, “he might observe that it’s too bad you asked us to exterminate the extra three hundred thousand highly trained and capable warriors we had with us.”
“He might be correct in that observation,” Kwin conceded. “We may regret not welcoming any friendly strength available to us. Though Tsuan would argue that without your interference, the need for an army would not exist at all.”
Jaeger opened her eyes and studied the swirling arms of the galaxy on the table before her. “Kwin. You recall the details of our agreement with the Council, right?”
“I do.”
“I swore to your people that we would not birth any of the embryos beyond the three hundred outlined in our treaty.”
“That is correct.”
Jaeger licked her lips. “I did not, however, swear to destroy them.”
Kwin went very still. He became an awkward stick, jutting up from the floor.
“They’re in cold storage hidden somewhere on Locaur.” Jaeger looked back to the ceiling. “You know. In case you do find yourself in need of a hearty army.”
“You deceived the Council.”
Jaeger grimaced. “I wasn’t sure,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t sure. The treaty says that neither I nor any of my people would ever hatch them. It didn’t say I had to destroy them. So I packed them up nicely and had them hidden somewhere safe.”
“Deceit!” Kwin lamented. His color turned from brown to bleached gray, making him look all the more like a tree in winter until he picked himself up and began to scuttle in restless lines across the observation deck. “The Council will never accept this. We must re-examine our understanding of your language.”
“Your people honestly thought they were telling us to destroy them all, weren’t they?”
“Yes!” Kwin reached the wall, and without hesitating, planted his claws on what appeared to be a perfectly smooth surface and climbed.
What’s the point of even having artificial gravity, Jaeger marveled, watching Kwin fret his way around the room, when you can crawl on the ceiling?
“You understand this will put a wedge between our people, yes?” Kwin snapped. “It will seem that you manipulated the treaty in bad faith. This is precisely the leverage dissidents like Tsuan need to turn public opinion against you.”
Jaeger winced. “We will be willing to make reconciliations for the misunderstanding later. Once this problem is solved.”
“It is not so simple, Jaeger. You have implicated me in this duplicity. If Tsuan discovers that I knew of the embryos and did not inform him immediately, I will be—” the ship’s translators belched static as Kwin fed it words it didn’t know how to translate. By the angry scarlet-purple shimmer of Kwin’s carapace, though, she could guess at the meaning.
She weathered his rage in silence. After several minutes of lamentation, Kwin wore himself out and slowly climbed down from the ceiling and resumed his place at the other end of the table. He wilted like a dying tree.
“In the face of all this…” Jaeger gestured to the holo-display on the table. “If you were to go to Tsuan, right now, and tell him about this. Do you really think he’d prioritize combing through every square centimeter of Locaur to find and destroy a bunch of harmless eggs?”
“No. But it will only further prove to him, and others, that you are not to be trusted.”
Jaeger winced again and opened her mouth, but Kwin spoke past her.
“For that reason, I will not inform Tsuan at this time,” he decided. “The matter of our…misunderstanding…must wait until the current crisis is under control.”
“I appreciate your understanding,” she said.
“I do not understand, Jaeger. I do not understand at all. I have many questions and new doubts that I do not welcome. But as you say, they must wait until we resolve this current crisis.”
Jaeger had known, back when she made the treaty, that there was a massive ambiguity in the phrasing. She had chosen not to address it solely to benefit her interests above those of the other party. She suspected any honest judge would throw the book at her. She supposed she had earned Kwin’s mistrust fairly.
“Aye, captain,” she said softly, resigning herself to whatever political mess awaited her on the other side of the red swarm.
“Your people are extremely capable warriors,” Kwin relented at last. “But even if your additional three hundred thousand troops were to come to our aid, I’m afraid those numbers would make little difference in the face of the K’tax swarm.”
“Having the strength of twelve men doesn’t do you much good when what you really need is twenty-four hands holding guns and crewing comms stations,” Jaeger agreed quietly. “I notice that you’re thinking in terms of an outright fight with the K’tax.”
“They cannot be reasoned or negotiated with. Violence is inevitable.”
Jaeger chewed on her lip, thinking hard. “Violence, sure. I suspect the battle is already lost if you’re thinking in terms of defensive tactics. We need to re-evaluate our approach to strategy. Back on Earth, one little spider can catch and eat a dozen fat house flies twice its size before it starts to grow tired.”
“How does it do that?” Kwin perked up. Anecdotes about Earth always interested him.
“It does that by spinning a web.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It had been seven days since Jack, Helen, Teddy, Edwin, and Portia had joined the Locauri tribe, and Art, Tiki, Skip, and Echo had become honorary crew of the Osprey. Seven days since Occy had been formally released from his prison sentence and allowed to resume his normal duties as chief engineer of the Osprey.
There was one aspect of his punishment that wasn’t quite complete, however.
Every evening between second and third shifts, he led an hour-long cross-cultural learning seminar in the No-A lounge. Every member of the crew was required to attend at least once per week.
Tonight’s topic was “Consider the Iguanome.” Seeker, like many of the other attendees, had come solely to watch Occy and Echo argue as her pet explored the room and made friends with the crew. It was kind of cute once you got used to the face-tentacles.
Seeker, sitting near the edge of the lounge, was downright disappointed when his comm pinged with an urgent message.
“What is it, Doc?” He turned away from the seminar and spoke quietly into the corner.
“It’s Toner. You’d better get down here, Commander.”
“What the hell is she doing here?” The old general crew lounge had been converted into a two-room medical bay to accommodate Toner’s unusual condition. A tardigrade the size of a grown hippo lay crammed in one corner of the first room, dozing.
Elaphus stepped out of the back room and glanced at Baby with a shrug. “She likes to come around more now that the captain is gone. I think she’s guarding Toner.”
Seeker grunted. “She’s taking up half the room, is what she’s doing. What’s the problem?”
Elaphus’s expression darkened. She gestured for Seeker to follow her into the back room.
“Whoa…” It had been a few days since he’d checked on Toner. The Overseers had sent one of their medical bots in centipede form, and it was hunched over Toner’s calcified figure, carefully chipping away at the hardened crystal. Toner’s head was already free of the stone. He looked like a mansicle fished out of some arctic lake, getting unthawed from the head down.
“We’re picking up signs that he’s coming out of deep hibernation,” Elaphus said. Her soft boots crunched over fine crystal dust as she approached the body.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Seeker stared at Toner’s face. The network of black veins lancing across his face had grown, he was sure of it, but Elaphus had determined that whatever Toner’s sickness was, at least it wasn’t an airborne pathogen.
Hamlet played softly in the background. “God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another…”
It might’ve been Seeker’s imagination, but he thought he saw Toner’s eyelid twitch.
“Why did you need me down here?” Seeker asked again.
“Because I don’t know what to do with him if he comes out of hibernation,” Elaphus said flatly. “The captain indicated that he was in the throes of a trauma-induced fugue state when the crystal overtook him. His neural collar is smashed and beyond repair. We’ve fabricated a similar model from Osprey’s databanks but haven’t been able to install it. I’m not sure it’s the same chip or that it works the same way.”
“You think he might wake up in the same rage he went down in?” Seeker blanched.
“That fugue state is designed to preserve the body when it’s under deep distress.” Elaphus gestured at the bloody stump of Toner’s hand jutting off the table. “It doesn’t fade until he’s healed and out of danger. I’d say this qualifies.”
Seeker nodded slowly. The heart monitor hanging above the table beeped, as it did every few minutes.
“On top of that, his blood infection isn’t going away,” Elaphus said. “I want to talk to him. See if he can give me any insight. But I also want backup here in case…”
“In case he’s batshit crazy.”
“Right.”
“Can you fix the fugue state by…” Seeker poked the crystal surrounding Toner’s bloody stump. “I don’t know, sticking a tube down his throat and pumping him full of blood substitute? That’s what he usually eats to recover.”
“That’s what I want to try,” Elaphus said. “With your permission, Commander.”
Seeker nodded. The medical assistant that had been hovering at Elaphus’s elbow hurried to the far end of the room and wheeled back an IV pole draped with pouches of blood substitute.
“Any more information on the infection?” Seeker leaned a little closer. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out his vape pen. The flat side was shiny, polished as a mirror. He held it beneath Toner’s crooked nose.
A thin fog crept across the steel.
“He’s coming around,” Elaphus snapped, turning to her assistant. He fumbled with the IV hookup.
“No, don’t bother with the injection.” Elaphus snatched the tube from his hand and popped off the end cap. Red liquid seeped down from the bag. “He’s designed to metabolize the stuff just as fast by swallowing it.”
“He’s making noise,” Seeker said uneasily.
Toner’s lips trembled. A rattling sound, like October wind through a dead field, escaped his lips. Seeker would swear his breath was cold. He backed away. Elaphus leaned forward, pushing the tip of the IV tube in between Toner’s thin lips. “Can you hear me?” she called. “Toner, if you can hear me, drink this.”
Whether he could hear her or not, he seemed to get the gist. His mouth closed over the tube, and red liquid began to burble down from the bag.
“Thank God,” Elaphus breathed, falling backward. “I was half-worried he’d be…”
“Frankenstein’s monster?”
Elaphus gave Seeker an odd look but nodded. “As long as that crystal still encases him,” she muttered, “We don’t have to worry so much about him going berserk if he’s so inclined. If I could get him to tilt his head forward, we could work on that neural collar…”
The blood bag was about half-empty when red liquid began to dribble out of Toner’s mouth and spill down his cheek. Elaphus snatched the hose away before the man could aspirate, but he let out a wet, gurgling cough.
Toner’s eyes flew open. Ice blue irises shot through with thick black veins. Like caterpillars, Seeker thought uneasily. Or dark tapeworms.
“Toner, can you understand me?” Elaphus asked.
Toner’s gaze fixed on the ceiling directly overhead and shifted to the left and right, wide and wild, as if seeing things that weren’t there. His head jerked, taking advantage of the full two inches of movement the crystal cage afforded him.
“Hey, guy, snap out of it,” Seeker said.
Toner’s head snapped around, following the sound of Seeker’s voice. He opened his mouth as if he was ready to speak, but the sound that escaped his lips was a thin, hissing rattle, like something from a machine—not a flesh-and-blood human. His breath smelled like iron and rot.
“Doc?” Seeker asked nervously.
Elaphus shook her head, shining a pin light into Toner’s eye. “Dilation, but there’s….there’s something moving back there. I don’t know—”
There was the sharp sound of breaking glass.
A thick crack shot through the crystal carapace, stemming up from Toner’s intact, balled fist. A cloud of dust rained to the ground.
“Whoa.” Elaphus hopped backward.
Another snapping, crunching sound. Another deep, fatal fissure snaked up the crystal entombing Toner’s body.
“It’s coming apart,” the medic shouted.
“He’s kicking his way out of it.” Seeker’s hand fell to his hip. He drew his multitool and thumbed the stunner function to full power as the crystal encasing Toner shattered into a million glistening pieces and crumbled to the floor.
The Overseer’s medical bot backed away from the table, suddenly rendered pointless.
Toner sat up, his head swinging from the left to right, his wild eyes sweeping over everything and comprehending nothing.
Oh shit, Seeker had time to think. “Get behind me!”
He didn’t wait. He’d seen what this pale bastard could do when he got that look in his eye. He didn’t need to tell Elaphus and her assistant twice. They scrambled.
As if he were only waking up from an afternoon nap, Toner planted his feet on the floor and stood.
“Clear the room!” Seeker bellowed. He didn’t bother firing. He knew it would do fuck-all. Instead, he wound up and hurled the multitool at Toner’s head. It bounced off his face, leaving a bloody gash in its wake. Toner stumbled for half a second. Long enough for Elaphus and her assistant to retreat to the outer room.
Seeker wasn’t going to fight this ghoulish asshole with nothing but his fists. He turned to run and saw there was nowhere to go.
Baby had roused at the commotion. Once Elaphus and her assistant were in the clear, the big tardigrade had pushed into the doorway between inner and outer medical rooms. She must have grown in the last few weeks because she struggled to push herself through. Beyond her, Seeker heard Elaphus’ muffled, dismayed shouting.
Baby snarled. Seeker grabbed one of her beefy arms and pulled, heaving the critter free of her trap with a faint popping noise. Wasting no time, he threw himself through the doorway and punched the side panel. The door slid shut, leaving Baby alone with Toner. Something slammed into the steel, creating a dent the size of a paella pate.
“Oh shit,” the medic whispered.
“Quit cowering,” Elaphus snapped. She’d gone to a cabinet along the sidewall and was frantically riffling through vials and bottles of clear chemicals. “Clark, load up the tranqs. 50 CC syringes. No, not fifteen! I said fifty! I’d rather risk killing this man than letting him rip apart the entire crew before he comes to his senses!”
Another dent appeared in the door. Seeker heard a dreadful, distant screeching sound, like a circular saw cutting through steel pipe, and wondered if he was going to have to explain to Jaeger how her two closest friends had managed to kill each other on his watch.
“You two need to retreat out of the central column,” he decided.
Elaphus froze, her expression horrified. “We can’t abandon—”
“Give me the tranq.” He held out his hands. “I’ll stick him.”
Clark hesitated, but at Elaphus’s nod, passed two large vials over to Seeker. Elaphus handed him another pair, and he slipped them into one of his pockets. He waved for them to leave. He had to get this door open before the bulkhead became so dented it couldn’t open.
The doctor and her assistant flew out of the room and became fading footsteps down the corridor.
“Moss, prepare to seal off the central column on my order, or if one of them kills me,” he said to the ubiquitous AI. He didn’t wait for her to answer. She wouldn’t have anything useful to say.
Sucking in deep, bracing breaths, he waited for the sounds of battle to pause and planted the sole of his boot on the access panel screen.
The door, tortured and bent badly out of shape, screamed as it opened.
