The dealer, for once, hadn’t lied. Nate felt high on Jesus.
He patted his suit for the emergency repair kit, pulling out sealant and some tape. Nate squirted the goo onto his visor then plastered tape over the top. He couldn’t see for shit, but at least he had an atmosphere seal now. Nate didn’t want to catch whatever these colonists had.
What he wanted was his sword, and a conversation with Grace Gushiken. He entered the tower, leaving smoking Ezeroc behind him.
• • •
Stairs. Always fucking stairs.
Nate had bought himself a nice ship with only a few decks. A minimum of stairs, because climbing them sucked, and climbing down them when drunk could lead to all kinds of unpleasantness. A flat ship is what he’d bought, nose to tail an uncomplicated thing, his Tyche.
But here he was, climbing up the inside of some insect-infested ancient communications tower that spoke to a sky that wasn’t listening. Or, actually, it was: it was probably talking to the damn satellites that had knocked out their comms. But sky that wasn’t listening sounded poetic, and sounding poetic was better than throwing up in his helmet, which was the alternative if he didn’t concentrate on something other than how sick he felt.
The weirdest thing was on the 21st, maybe 22nd level. He’d lost count. There was a body here, some kind of growth holding it to the wall. Tendrils came out of the mouth of the body, pulsating. The eyes of the body were sightless and white, the skin covered in mold. The tendrils were connected to the growth on the wall. Nate shone his light on it, playing the beam up the stairwell. There was growth all the way up, every floor he could see. He checked for vitals, and found a pulse. Which didn’t make him feel great, because it looked liked this person had been here a while. No muscle tone, arms and legs wasted, withered to sticks. Clothes rotted. Same kind of mold around the mouth where the tentacles entered.
He keyed his comm. “Hope?”
“You’ve got the Engineer,” she said.
“Those files,” said Nate. “Did they talk about … anything else?”
“Lots of stuff,” she said. “Specificity, Cap. It’s important.”
“Here,” said Nate, throwing a visual her way. “What’s that look like?”
“It looks like,” and then she stopped. When she spoke again, her voice was faint, but still struggling for bravado. “It looks like it’s not an Engineering problem.”
“Do I … pull the tentacles out?” Nate looked up the stairwell. No movement. Nothing. No Grace. No damn sword.
“You want my opinion?”
“I want to know what the files say,” said Nate.
“Files aren’t real specific,” she said. “Not about this. Want me to ask Penn?”
“No,” said Nate. Nothing that came out of that man’s mouth could be trusted. “Thanks.” He clicked the comm off.
If he found himself in the same situation as the unfortunate body, would he want to have the tentacles in or out? Tough calclass="underline" the answer was out but only if it didn’t result in death. Some parasites kept their hosts alive, right? This could be one of those gigs. But would you rather be alive as parasite food, or dead?
He kept climbing. He passed another body stuck fast in the stuff. Same deaclass="underline" tentacles, sightless eyes, rotted clothes, withered limbs, mold on the skin. This one had some kind of leafy thing growing out of one ear. No matter how you viewed it, that kind of thing didn’t look good. Deal with it later.
As he climbed higher, he found more people. Or bodies. Or whatever they were. All stuck to the walls with the goo, all unresponsive, all still with a pulse. The stairs ran to a landing at the top of the tower. A door stood open before him. Inside, he saw:
Grace Gushiken, on her knees. Her helmet was off, her head bowed. Before anything else, his eyes found her.
His sword, beside her on the ground. The blade was free of the scabbard, Ezeroc blood green against the black metal.
Two more of those huge Ezeroc crabs.
And in the center of it all, a massive insect. Tiny, stubby legs that couldn’t possibly move its bulk. It looked to have a torso-meets-head arrangement going on. What looked like eggs surrounded it.
Grace opened her eyes and looked at Nate. “Nathan Chevell,” she said. “Why are you so important to this one?”
“My charm,” said Nate. “Grace, come on over to me, okay? Come away from the nice insects.”
Grace considered him. “No,” she said. “We are together. We should all be together.”
With that, the two massive Ezeroc next to her rumbled towards Nate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
El watched the holo in the same way that most people watched pro wrestling. Like she was expecting shock and awe, but because she was expecting it, she had to ham up her own emotions when they arrived. El liked to watching pro wrestling, but that happened in her cabin, away from prying eyes, because people were a judgmental bunch.
When the ooooh, ahhh happened on the holo, she was expecting it. El didn’t know what she was expecting, but she was expecting something. And she wasn’t disappointed. The Tyche chirped at her like an eager cricket, cleared the holo, and then said TRANSMISSION BLOCKED.
What the ship was referring to was the comm line they had open to the Gladiator. The Tyche was saying that one minute the Gladiator — or what was left of her — was there, the next minute she was probably still there but no longer able to talk. Sure, there could be all kinds of reasons for that. The satellite array Hope had strung around the planet like a bunch of Christmas lights was a tenuous thing at best. Any part of that series of orbiting machinery could have been knocked out, but if that had happened the error would have said TRANSMISSION LOST. Lost, not blocked. This was a definite block.
Ships thought they were blocked when there was a carrier wave but not enough sanity on the line to make out what was being said. Or when some other noise just overlaid it, blocking everything else out. The Tyche was sure that something was sucking up their signal, like a siphon plugged into the RF spectrum.
El took her feet down from the console where they’d been resting. She clicked on the comm. “Hope? Hope, I’m getting chatter on the comm. Can you check our arrays? Make sure we’re not the zeroes in this conversation.”
Nothing.
El looked at the comm. Checked the switches — she was on, she was talking to Hope, and Hope was … not answering.
Odd.
Try something new, then. “Cap, this is Helm. You getting anything…” El’s voice trailed off as the Tyche chattered to herself then said TRANSMISSION BLOCKED.
Not odd. Bad. That was bad. They had clear line of sight to the cap. If El pointed a camera in his direction — there we go — she could see his last known position, some kind of tower poking up out of the trees. She hadn’t noticed that when she set down, but she’d been trying to dodge burning hail at the time. Setting the Tyche down where she did, in the lee of a cliff, gave protection. Bought them some time. She wasn’t thinking about sightseeing the surrounding area.