“Oh Christ,” Reaper said, laughing, “are you going to saddle us with a…”
He had almost changed his mind about joining, though, when he’d seen Goat using that big knife to take “trophies” from the dead rebels.
The Kid laughed softly to himself now, thinking about it.
He had gotten them in to see the weightless hotties, but that wasn’t really why they’d helped him get in their squadron. They’d done it partly because he’d done his best to back them up in the firefight, firing at the enemy, charging the rebels when the other sailors had gone to ground…
And partly because Destroyer had said he’d take the responsibility. Destroyer had stepped up and taken the Kid under his wing. A minor politician, the Kid’s own father had been absentee most of the time — one day a pushy reporter had burst into his office to find him boffing an intern, the two of them standing up at his desk, her underwear down around her ankles. It made a nice photo in the tabloids. Mom divorced Pops faster than an MP chucks a shit-faced soldier in the tank, and that’s fast, and after that the Kid saw his father once a year — the old man was just a distracted, irritable presence when he was around, nothing more. No big brothers; teachers all hated the Kid’s smart mouth, same with the officers on the ship. He’d barely made bosun. Giving the authority types crap and all the time looking for someone to tell him what the hell to do with his life. Then along comes Destroyer…
Now, looking around in this ghostly archaeological workroom on a faraway world, he thought: Along comes Destroyer — then there goes Destroyer. He’s dead…
Tears welled in the Kid’s eyes. He was glad he was alone, now. If they saw him crying — even for a combat brother — he’d never hear the end of it.
But Destroyer had been the closest thing to a big brother he’d ever had…best combat teacher anyone could want.
He let out one last shuddering sob, wiped his eyes, and decided that Destroyer wouldn’t want him bawling like this. So he cussed himself out for a minute, squared his shoulders, and went to check out the dead guys.
Wondering, as he went, if he’d ever see his woman again. Millie — a nurse back home. Nice girl. What would she think of all this?
Crossing the room he walked past a neat row of heavy-duty chain saws, numbered sequentially, “9, 8, 7…5…4…3…”
What’d they needed chain saws here for? Weren’t chain saws for wood?
He went to where Sarge had told him, on the comm, he’d find the bodies of Clay and Thurman. He found the blood, all right, and plenty of it. But there was a problem about the bodies.
He touched the headset transfer. “Sarge? We got a problem…”
It was a simple little problem. He’d been sent there to find some bodies.
The bodies were gone. Some other place, you’d think: They’re dead bodies, they couldn’t just get up and walk away.
But here — they could do exactly that.
In the wormhole chamber, Pinky was fumbling with the med-remote on his wristband, trying to adjust the antidepressant and analgesic feed on his cyberchair. He was running short of the pharms — should’ve checked the implant panel that morning. He needed a little something extra to get through this.
If he could just see Samantha, see her walk through the door and into the Ark. See her get safely home. She was like an adopted sister to him.
He’d never let himself fall for her, of course. He didn’t have a lower half. You proved your love, for the most part, with your lower half. Intimacy started in your lower half and traveled upward — he remembered it, from other women, before the accident. Now he’d never feel it again.
Still, it tormented him thinking that Samantha was probably going to die in this interplanetary limbo. Some nightmare from Carmack’s lab was likely to get to her. Tear her to pieces. Or worse — from what he’d been gleaning, over the comm — it could make her into a monster.
He almost threw up, at that thought, and tapped the remote again, squeezing another few drops of trank into his system.
The meds weren’t working today.
He ached to get out of here, detach from his cyberchair, hook up into his life-support recliner, go to sleep for a day or two. But he was needed. And anyway, he was afraid of the nightmares that would come if he slept. He knew the nightmares were there, stored up in his head, waiting to spring at him the way the imps were waiting to kill the others.
It bothered him that he was safe here while they were all at risk. He went to the computer console, thinking that it was bad enough being handicapped, trapped the way he was in this machine, without facing the same dangers the others faced…
That’s when he heard the sound outside the big, locked metal door. Sounded like an engine starting up. Then another sound, a squealing of metal on metaclass="underline" something grinding against the thick steel of the door.
Okay. So maybe he wasn’t safe here after all.
“Sarge?” Pinky said into the comm. “Something’s outside the Ark door — is that you guys?”
“Negative,” Sarge responded immediately. “We’re still in the lab.”
If it wasn’t them…and everyone else was dead…
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Pinky said, as something on the other side of the door began to cut its way into the wormhole chamber.
Thirteen
IN CARMACK’S LAB, nothing was really resolved between Sarge and Reaper — but the new crisis, a possible assault on the Ark itself, superseded everything else.
“Reaper, let’s go,” Sarge said, slapping a fresh clip into his rifle.
Reaper read him to mean they were going to check out whatever was trying to get at Pinky. Which meant only the squadron was going.
“She’s coming with us,” Reaper said, nodding toward his sister.
Sarge shook his head, just once. “Negative.”
“We’re gonna leave her here alone?”
“She’s got a job to do, Reaper. Just like you have.”
Reaper could tell that Duke clearly didn’t like the idea of leaving Sam either. But he only shrugged at Reaper. He wasn’t going to argue with Sarge.
Sam was engrossed in a computer file, trying to reach some deeper understanding of the phenomena of the imps and the Hell Knight. “Carmack’s happy little elves,” Duke had called them.
“Sam…” Reaper began. Not sure what he wanted to say.
“I’ll be okay, John,” she said distractedly. “Go.” She was leaning close to the monitor, fascinated by some DNA signature, some nuance of the chromosomes that was all cryptic code to Reaper and an open book to her. Sam had come a long way as a scientist, he thought. And once more he felt a rush of admiration for his sister…
Sarge looked at him. Almost expressionless — but it was a warning. Reaper couldn’t shake his bad feeling about leaving Sam. But it was hard for him to let his squadron go into a probable firefight situation without him.
He tossed his sister his comm headset. “Keep the door locked,” he told her. “Don’t open it to anyone. Use this if you need help…”
She glanced up, nodding. For a moment their eyes locked. She looked as if she wanted to say something…something that bridged the gulf of years, reached back to their childhood together. To the times when they’d made their own action figures out of bits of old cleaning robots; when they’d watched old movies on the digital feed; when they’d toyed with being musicians together, him playing his crude guitar, she banging on a cheap little electric piano, laughing when she hit a sour chord…
That laughing little girl. And he was leaving her alone in here.
Sarge was heading for the door. Duke hesitating — looking between Reaper and his sister. Reaper sighed and nodded to Duke.