Orphans In the Black: A Space Opera Anthology Read online

  Everyone else could have been an axe murderer, for all Lina knew, although she thought even the GEC’s psych evaluations would probably catch something like that. One could hope.

  But psych evaluations only went so far, and she knew better than most how the long months of having a series of narcotics dripped into the bloodstream could do strange things to a person’s mind. And although psychiatry was not her specialty, as a medical doctor she’d spent enough time around people that she’d begun to get an instinctive feel for the ones who somehow, for whatever reason, didn’t seem quite right.

  He’ll bring them back, you know, that interior voice went on. Unless someone stops him.

  Bring what back?

  A long silence. Then, in an undertone so low Lina almost couldn’t catch it, Them. They live out here, you know. Only they’re starting to get in.

  In?

  Into the ship. In the walls. You’ve heard them…I know you have.

  To that remark, she could make no real argument, because she had heard them, ever since she’d gotten here. Before that actually, while her body slept and the ship bent space to make its way to this remote system. Who knew what lived out there, what unknown intelligences waited in the dark between the stars, coldly and quietly biding their time until a host ship passed by, bringing the light and warmth they so desperately needed?

  A shudder racked her body then, despite the heat of the water flowing over her bare skin. Shivering, she bent her head and let the soap cascade down into the drain, watching as it swirled into nothingness. Somewhere it would be collected and scrubbed and filtered and sent back through the ship’s plumbing system once again. And maybe something else would come with it, would come spraying out of the shower head and soak into her skin, invading every cell in her body, changing her forever….

  Lina let out a little cry and reached out to turn off the water. Blindly, she pushed herself out of the stall and pulled a towel from the rack, scrubbing the water off her skin, scrubbing until the pale flesh was pink and tingling.

  The rumors always circulated, especially amongst civilians, who often liked to have an excuse as to why they stayed forever planet-bound. True, the GEC wanted everyone to think that it was all sparkling ships and brave men and women exploring the galaxy. Interstellar trade with alien races had been going on for decades, with the Stacians and the Eridani and even, to a very limited extent, with the mysterious hooded Zhore. People traveled between worlds the way the ancient Gaians used to travel between foreign lands. No one thought anything of it; interstellar travel was commonplace now. But there were stories about ships that disappeared, of haunted space lanes where not even seasoned captains would go. The government never formally recognized such rumors, of course, but the stories persisted. Lina had always scoffed at those myths, believing them manufactured by people who wanted an easy way to get free drinks at the local pub, but now she wondered. Was there some truth to them after all?

  And if the Kanawa had blundered into one of those sargassos, had come to the place that spawned the worst of the evil, then Lina knew she had to do something to stop it. She couldn’t risk the entities behind those voices returning to Gaia with her and the rest of the crew, unknown and unwelcome stowaways who would only reveal themselves when it was too late.

  You know what you have to do.

  She nodded, and hoped she possessed enough courage to face what was about to come next.

  The first accident occurred that very same day. A pinhole in Lieutenant Chung’s spacesuit that no one noticed, a routine EVA on the leeward side of the ship to replace one of the transmitter arrays that were always burning themselves out in the volatile energy fluxes around the twin stars. He should have been safe, there in the dark with the mass of the ship protecting him from the radiation. But it wasn’t the radiation that got him.

  By the time they dragged him out of the airlock, it was far too late. Explosive decompression was mainly a fairytale of the more lurid adventure vids than a scientific fact, but exposure to vacuum still killed you, even if in not quite so spectacular a fashion.

  Lina pulled a thin blanket over Chung’s staring dark eyes and tried not to shiver. Yes, she knew she was supposed to be making sure that none of these people ever made it back to Gaia, but it appeared that fate had intervened before she could act.

  Rankin turned on Commander Ramirez. “You’re supposed to check those suits every time you go EVA!”

  “We did, sir,” Ramirez replied, his voice shaking ever so slightly. His dark eyes were haunted, olive-toned skin pale. Even though he worked for the Consortium, Lina had a feeling that this was the first time he’d ever witnessed a death while on duty. “Standard inspection. Everything checked out. I can’t explain it….”

  She couldn’t, either. The quick examination that tested a suit’s impermeability should have found that pinhole. The only reasonable explanation was that the hole must have been so tiny, even a routine inspection couldn’t locate it. Chung had been outside for almost an hour, which clearly provided enough time for the hole to slowly widen, leading to the inevitable failure of the suit.

  Well, Lina hadn’t been involved in that accident, but nevertheless, it made her work a little easier.

  One down.

  Ramirez turned out not to be a problem, either. The rattled young officer couldn’t sleep very well after Chung’s accident, so Lina gave him a sedative, along with careful instructions on how much to take. Clearly, he didn’t listen, as he took a week’s worth of doses in one swallow. She supposed it was an easy way to go, to fall asleep and never wake up. Better than the fate Commander Chung had suffered, that was for sure.

  Of course Captain Rankin made Lina inspect the body, even though the cause of death was obvious enough.

  “It happens, you know,” she told him. “Even with young, healthy people, people who on the surface seem as if they have everything to live for. If I’d known he had any kind of mental instability, I wouldn’t have given him the drug. But he seemed so concerned about not being able to sleep, and there wasn’t anything in his chart to counter-indicate that sort of a sedative.”

  The captain looked far from happy. No wonder, since he’d just had to file a report about Chung, and now he’d have to let the brass at the GEC know that another one of his crew members had apparently committed suicide. However, Lina guessed that Rankin’s concern was most likely much more about covering his own ass than because of any real sorrow over losing two subordinates he hardly knew.

  “Meeting in the mess at eighteen hundred,” he said curtly. “We all need to discuss how best to handle this.”

  “Of course,” she replied. By that time Ramirez had been covered up, so she didn’t have to contend with his dead eyes watching her the way Chung’s had. At least they had been dead, though. If anything alien had lived behind those eyes, it was dead now.

  The four remaining members of the Equinox team assembled in the mess at what should have been the normal dinner hour—not that Bakshi ever joined the rest of the crew for meals. He was there now, though, scowling, his frown engraving a line between his dark brows. Lina noticed that he studiously avoided her gaze. Trying to hide what he was, no doubt.

  Because if any one of them had been the original conduit for the alien entities, it had to have been Bakshi. Bakshi, who spent hours on the observation deck, staring at those twin suns as if inviting whatever unholy radiation that inhabited them to invade his own body. Singh was also suspect, of course, but she tended to take readings from the observation deck and then disappear for hours into the “lab”—an extra stateroom converted to office space—to crunch the data on her computer. No doubt she was compromised, but Lina knew it must have been because of Bakshi.

  He’d have to be dealt with, although inwardly she cowered at the prospect. The universe had been kind enough to rid the ship of Chung and Ramirez without any intervention on her part. Somehow she guessed her luck couldn’t continue indefinitely, that she’d have to take matters into her own h
ands. She’d just have to figure out the best way to manage the task, since Bakshi spent as little time in her company as possible and would be suspicious of any obvious ploys to get close to him.

  Rankin cleared his throat. “We’ve suffered some terrible losses. But the mission must continue.”

  He’d wanted Lina to stand next to him, so she did, but she paid little attention to his words. Instead, she pretended to be staring sadly somewhere in the direction of the starboard bulkhead, when in reality she was watching Bakshi out of the corner of her eye. Shadows smudged the skin around his eyes, and his mouth was taut and grim. Just the aspect of a man who had surrendered to some unholy force.

  “I’ve been in communication with Logistics,” Rankin continued, “and they’ve made it very clear that they want the mission to continue. That does mean we’ll have to do some sharing of Commander Ramirez’ and Lieutenant Chung’s duties. I’ve drawn up a roster—it’s been sent to all your handhelds. Doctor Singh, since you’re rated for EVA, you’ll need to assist with some of those tasks as necessary.”

  She nodded, but her dark eyes looked far from happy. Lina found herself a little surprised the astrophysicist possessed that sort of experience, but at the same time, she was glad. With Singh engaging in that kind of high-risk activity, it should be easy enough to get rid of her as well…when the opportunity presented itself.

  “As for the rest of us”—he glanced down at Lina briefly before continuing—“it’ll mean a little more grunt work than we signed up for, but—”

  “I don’t think that’ll be a problem, Captain,” she cut in as a sudden notion struck her. “I wouldn’t say I’m worthy of a Cordon Bleu rating, but I know my way around a galley pretty well. Why don’t you let me take over those duties?”

  She almost felt unworthy of the look of gratitude Rankin gave her. “Why, that’s very generous, Dr. Golan.”

  “No problem.” A smile she summoned from somewhere plastered itself on her mouth. “I’m glad to help.”

  It should have been easy. No fretting about the best way to sabotage Dr. Singh’s suit the next time she went EVA—no, just a few special ingredients in the next day’s dinner, and she and Captain Rankin should have been taken care of. When the moment came, though, Lina realized she couldn’t do the deed. She stood there in the cramped galley, holding the little bag of powdered heart medication that would cause a fatal arrhythmia in anyone who consumed it, and cursed her weakness. The voices had said that everyone needed to go in order to prevent the spread of alien infection to Gaia and beyond. But…she’d also sworn an oath to do no harm. How could she consciously inflict that kind of suffering and death on another person, even one who might be possessed?

  From down the corridor, she heard raised voices. Rankin and Singh, arguing.

  Lina shoved the plastic bag into a pocket of her coveralls and hurried into the hallway. The captain and the astrophysicist stood several meters away, down where the corridor branched off to the sleeping quarters. Because of their mussed hair and hastily fastened coveralls, it didn’t exactly take a scientist to guess what they’d been up to.

  “Oh, so I’m just an easy lay, is that it?” Singh demanded, and Lina felt her eyes widen. Those weren’t words she’d ever expected to hear coming from the other woman’s mouth. “And you think I’m not going to make a report about this?”

  “No,” Rankin said calmly. From his pocket he drew a small pulse pistol. Standard issue, but Lina hadn’t thought that a mission like this required any kind of firearms at all. “You’re not going to make a report, Geeta.”

  It was the first time Lina had ever seen someone get shot. Yes, she’d tended pulse-weapon wounds during her residency, but even then she had been dealing with the aftermath of a shooting, and not the actual act itself. The sound was strangely quiet, just a strange hissing noise as a blue pulse bolt shot from the gun and hit Dr. Singh directly in the head. She slumped into an awkward heap on the gleaming composite floor.

  Lina made a shocked sound, and Rankin immediately turned toward her. As she began to back away, he grinned, a horrible, empty kind of smirk. “I only slept with her because you’re such a cold bitch, Lina.”

  And he raised the gun.

  “No,” she whispered. Maybe she deserved this, for plotting to kill everyone, even though technically one could say that her hands were clean. But still…right then she wanted so much to live.

  Rankin held the gun on her for a long moment. His face went strangely blank, the smile gone. Then he nodded, as if he’d just thought of something. And he held the gun up against his temple.

  No real mess, just a dark, smoking hole in his head. It could have been the reduced gravity maintained on shipboard, but Lina thought he took a long time to fall.

  And then she was stumbling away, heart pounding in her chest, a cold sweat pouring down her back so that her coveralls stuck to her skin. She didn’t even think about where she was going, only that she needed to get away from those two crumpled bodies, even as the insidious voices started up again.

  Use what’s in your pocket. End it.

  Panting as though she’d just run several kilometers, she staggered onto the observation deck.

  The radiance of the twin suns bled through the specially reinforced viewports, shimmering through every hue in the spectrum, and yet somehow it seemed dark in the chamber, shadows shivering in the corners. But still Lina could see Lewis Bakshi, who stood at the center of it all, red and green and yellow all bleeding down the strong lines of his face.

  He turned away from that apocalyptic view of the heavens. His eyes widened as he watched her stumble through the door. “Doctor Golan! What’s wrong?”

  “The Captain….” she began, and shook her head. For some reason, her hand crept toward the pocket where the ground-up heart medicine was concealed. She knew she needed to take it. She needed to end this.

  “What happened to Captain Rankin?” Bakshi’s gaze moved toward her hand, which by that point had pulled the small bag of medication from her pocket. “Lina, what are you doing?”

  “I don’t know,” she whimpered. “I need to stop this. We shouldn’t be here.” And she began to fumble with the bag so she could access the powder within, pour it down her throat.

  “Lina, stop!”

  She shook her head. At once he launched himself at her, knocking the bag from her hand. White powder spilled across the shining gray composite floor. She let out an incoherent cry of rage, furious that he had prevented her from seeking the oblivion she so clearly deserved. Even as he tried to grab hold of her hand, Lina began reaching for the powder, thinking she might be able to gather enough of it that it would still do the trick.

  He said her name again, but she ignored him. And then his hands were on her shoulders, pulling her away from the spilled drug. “Lina, look at me.”

  She didn’t want to, but somehow she found it impossible to tear her gaze away from those deep blue eyes. He stared at her for the longest moment. Then his mouth was on hers, kissing her, strong and rough and so very, very human. In that moment, she forgot everything else, her insane need for death, the voices in her head. Nothing was left except Lewis Bakshi, who had somehow known the only way to bring her back to herself.

  After an eternity, he pulled his mouth from hers, but he continued to watch her. “Lina…are you with me now?”

  She nodded. “I—I think so.”

  He ran a hand over her tumbled hair, smoothing it away from her face. “You frightened me.”

  “I think I frightened myself.” There was an understatement. How could she have become so divorced from who she really was? What terrible insanity had possessed her brain?

  Terrible things lived in the dark between the stars….

  “Why weren’t you affected?” she asked. “They’re all dead…Chung and Ramirez and Rankin and Singh…and I almost managed to kill myself. But you seem fine.”

  Lewis didn’t reply for a moment, but instead turned to watch the shifting colors in th
e heavens outside. The sky was like something in a funhouse mirror—colors inverted, distorted, turned in on themselves. At length he said, pointing at his temple, “I have an implant, remember? You must have seen it in my chart. Congenital epilepsy…they put the implant in when I was four years old.”

  Of course. She recalled it now, just as she remembered that poor Lieutenant Chung had also possessed an implant, although his was designed to correct Type 1 diabetes. Implants such as the one Lewis had gotten as a child were standard procedure. They released a steady drip of the drugs needed to prevent further seizures, and were far more reliable than having a patient take the recommended doses of medication at the recommended intervals. For whatever reason, those drugs must have altered Lewis’ brain chemistry enough that whatever insidious intelligence lurked out here hadn’t been able to affect him the same way it had affected the rest of the crew.

  As Lina sat there, staring at him, he offered her a wry smile. “I never thought I’d be grateful to be born epileptic, but I suppose that’s what saved me.”

  She reached out and took his hand, and he gripped it tightly. “Just as you saved me,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I—” For some reason, she found it hard to meet his gaze. She felt as though she was back in secondary school, trying to work up the courage to talk to a boy she liked, rather than a grown woman with a failed marriage behind her. “I had no idea you felt that way about me.”

  “I didn’t want you to know. It was highly unprofessional.” His expression softened, and he stroked one finger over the back of her hand. Such a small caress, but so very human. She needed to be reminded of her humanity right then.

  “Unprofessional or not, it’s very welcome.”

  He reached out to Lina, pulled her to him. They embraced on the floor of the deck, unexpected survivors. For a long time they remained that way, until at last he helped her to her feet.