“Kill him?” said Nate. “We’re going to take him off this planet.”
“That’s the first step,” said Kohl, “but after he tries to commandeer the Tyche, we’ll space him.”
“You can space him if he tries to take my ship,” said Nate. “Not before.”
“What about if he shoots you?” said Kohl.
“Yeah, space him then.”
“Or—”
“I figure,” said Nate, “we should just poke our noses in here. See what’s going on.”
It was a bad idea. The worst, because Grace knew there was no one alive inside that hall. No living soul. They’d find nothing but death.
• • •
Grace’s hand found Nate’s arm, grabbed it. She squeezed it hard. “We need to go,” she hissed.
Nate looked at the thousand or so people lined up inside the room, then nodded. “I think you’re right.”
They’d walked inside, the entrance giving way to gloom, gloom giving way to this open area. It had a big vaulted ceiling for acoustics. There was some kind of raised stage at the front. People, front to back, all standing. All staring at them.
Grace had felt sick, because they were all dead. All of them. Moving, but not alive. Where she would have felt a thousand emotions, a cacophony of human desires and urges, there was nothing. Or close to nothing, a kind of hissing static that clouded her brain, that made her want to throw up. “We need to go now,” she said. It was hard to think straight with the static in her head. She wanted to reach out with her mind, to push them back.
Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace.
The static ceased for a second.
GRACE.
The front line of people took a step towards them.
Towards her.
“Cap,” said Kohl. “Do you want me to lift something heavy?”
“I—” said Nate, and then the crowd surged towards them.
Grace felt their hands on her, fingers at her face. Tried to find space to draw her sword. She should have already had the blade clear, ready for this, but the hissing in her mind had put her on the back foot. It left her thoughts clouded, fogged up, no way to chart a course. The tide of people walked towards her, a creeping, needy tide. Except they weren’t people. They felt nothing. There was no one there.
There was the crack of a blaster, and a piece of the ceiling shattered. Another blaster crack, and the roof cracked open, sunlight breaking through. The crowd of people stumbled back.
It was Nate. He was standing, blaster clear, pointed at the ceiling. Not at the people, not like Grace had wanted. He hadn’t shot them, because he saw them as needing help. As being like him, and it would be his downfall. Because she knew he was brave, and brave people died in the dark.
“Back up!” shouted Nate. “Back. The. Fuck. Up!” He fired the blaster again, plasma spitting heat upwards.
The man who had led them here — same loose shirt, same loose pants, same bad haircut — pushed to the front. “You wanted to be together,” he said. “We want to leave this world.”
“Where is Rear Admiral Penn?” said Nate. “Where is he?”
The man with the bad smile tried for a good smile, and failed. “You are not together,” he said. “Not yet. But soon.”
Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace.
There was a wet popping, cracking sound, and a woman — young, late teens or early twenties, hard to tell with the dirty hair and hollow eyes — stumbled. Her head swelled, the popping, cracking sound getting louder, then her skull exploded in a shower of red chunks. Her body swayed, but stayed upright. There were … things crawling from the ruins of her skull.
Things that looked like cockroaches, but bigger.
“What the sweet fuck!” said Kohl, and there was a whine as the rotary laser swung about on the automount. There was a whirr, and Grace through she heard Nate say Kohl, no! but the rotary laser was firing, bright red lances of light illuminating the faces around them, reflecting at them from their eyes. The noise of Kohl’s weapon was a rapid cycling whine as the laser charged, fired, and rotated a new lens and emitter. The big man held the weapon down until the young woman’s body fell apart, the fluids inside superheating from the laser, boiling into steam, causing limbs to explode where the laser hit them.
Silence.
Of the things that looked like cockroaches, there was no sign. Several people—
Not people. They’re not people.
—around the young woman had been hit by the rotary laser. Some of them were smoking, missing limbs. None of them were screaming or in any obvious sign of distress.
“Captain,” said Grace.
Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace!
She sagged, felt Nate’s hand on her arm. His voice, in her ear. “Got you.” Felt him turn to Kohl. “Kohl! We’re leaving!” Grace was half-dragged by Nate out the door they’d come in by, out to the air, the heat, the weight of this planet’s gravity. She was gasping, trying to clear her head from the static around her.
GRACE. GRACE. GRACE. GRACE. GRACE!
Kohl was backing out the door of the hall, power armor whining, the rotary laser leveled at the doorway.
Darkness. No movement.
“We’ve got to … we’ve got to leave,” she said, to Nate. “We need to get out of here.”
“Right,” said Nate. “We’ll get Penn—”
“Penn is already dead!” Grace pushed him away. “These people are all dead, Nathan!”
“They’re sick,” said Nate. “They’re—”
“I can see them,” said Grace. “There’s nothing to see.”
GRACE.
TOGETHER.
GRACE GRACE GRACE GRACE GRACE.
TOGETHER!
She turned away from the look on his face, the look that said I trusted you, put her hand on her sword. Be the eye of the storm. Be the calm in the sea. Be the rock against which the waves break.
The people boiled out of the entrance of the hall, and Kohl’s rotary laser met the storm. One or two made it past, and Nate turned his face away from her — good, I don’t want to feel his judgement — and fired his blaster. None of them were going for Nate, or for Kohl.
They were coming for her.
Grace. Grace Grace Grace.
Her sword cleared its scabbard, and she sliced. It was harder, pure kendo now, because normally she could feel the intent, the raw drive of those she fought. When she fought people, those people felt things. These things felt nothing. There was nothing but static, a hiss, and the endless repetition of her name.
Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace.
“Stop saying my name!” she screamed, her blade slicing through a man’s head. It opened like a gourd, red wet cockroach things crawling and scurrying in the light. One took wing, and her sword licked out, severing it in two.
The sound of Kohl’s rotary laser whined to a halt, stopping with a clank. The lens array — the barrels — were white with heat, glowing in the light of the day. He was backing away from the hall, the pile of bodies that used to be people. He halted as he came abreast of Grace and Nate. “What the hell, Cap,” he said. “What the hell.”
Nate’s blaster was still trained on the entrance, the weapon not wavering at all. “I don’t … I don’t understand.”
“They’re not people,” said Grace. “Whatever’s been going on here, people have been turning into … those things.”
Something dark passed over Nate’s face as he looked at her. He pressed it down and she felt revulsion/hate/distrust in a wave that was like being hit. She flinched. “They were people once,” he said. “If anyone knows what is going on, it’s Penn. We find Penn.”