There, right there, outside the sickbay window, she caught a flash of movement. Something that twisted away from the glass in a way that didn’t look human. It was probably Penn, because that’s what her brain told her the face looked like, but it didn’t move the way people should move. Or it did, because it was only a flash of movement, and then it — he? — was gone from view.
Her gun was pointed at the glass. She hadn’t remembered raising it, but there it was. Her hands were still shaking. El moved to the window, pressed her face against it, trying to see where Penn had gone. “Penn!” He breath fogged the glass in front of her, the air of the ship whisking away the moisture a second later.
Move. You’ve got to keep moving.
She put a hand to the door controls, leveled her pistol at the door, and then opened it.
No one there.
El ducked into the corridor, closing the door behind her. Always closing doors, she was, and never on the side of safety. She giggled, then swallowed it. The fear sweat running down her face was getting into her eyes. Check Penn’s room. Check the captain’s quarters. Then get to the cargo bay.
She made a cursory job of the captains quarters first, because it didn’t seem like the go-to place to be without the captain there. But she was getting into a rhythm now: enter the room. Check it. Leave. Close the door behind her. Lock it. Next one.
Except the next one was Penn’s room. A supply room under normal situation. The door opened in front of her to darkness. She kept the gun pointing into the dark, feeling with her other hand towards the room’s controls. There. Light switch. She flicked it.
Nothing happened.
If she was someone like Kohl, or even the captain, she’d have a light on her gun. Something to shine in front of her so she could see what was there. She didn’t have one of those, and her helmet was missing. It had lights on it, which would be more useful if it was with her.
It’s only a room. It’s only a room. Just go in, your eyes will adjust, and you can confirm that asshole’s not in there. If he is, you blow a hole the size of a grapefruit in his chest.
She edged into the room, her gun hunting the way. Her eyes adjusted, the dark turning to gloom. She saw the hammock they’d stretched out for Penn. El almost fell over, her boots slipping on something on the deck. She reached a hand down, her fingers coming away wet, slick with something more viscous than water. El held them up to the gloom. It wasn’t dark enough to be blood. It was some kind of … discharge.
This wasn’t going well. This whole day? Not going well at all.
Her head jerked up at movement, the darkening of the light, and she looked up to see Penn — it must have been — silhouetted in the light. His hands were on the doorframe, and he was leaning in, like his chest was heavy and he was trying to hold it up. She brought her gun up and fired, the flash bright, the hammer burst of sound deafening in the room. She hit nothing but air. Penn was gone.
She ejected the cartridge, the plastic popping as it hit the deck. She pushed a new one home with her thumb, but she had to try a couple of times before she could get it in the breach. Her damn hands were shaking so much. She was panting, the breath coming in and out of her in big gasps. If there was something airborne in the ship, she was sucking it all in, but fuck it, if she was going to die, she would die after Penn did.
El made it back out to the corridor. One more deck to go. Cargo bay. Lots of places to hide down there. Just great.
You can do this. Penn’s unarmed, right? Or he would have shot you. Worst case, he wants to infect you with alien spores. He’s not going to shoot you.
Her rational mind wanted her to believe that, but it was a tiny voice compared to what the rest of her was gibbering. Not because it was wrong, per se, but because being infected with alien spores was not on her bucket list. Definitely not on the list at all.
The cargo bay was dark. Of fucking course it was dark. She pointed her pistol down the metal ladder. “Penn? You down there?”
Something hissed below. A leaking pipe? Something damaged on the ship? That wasn’t great either, but it’d need to be dealt with after the whole Penn situation.
“Penn, I’m coming down. We can talk this out.” Her voice was shaking, making a liar of her ability to say more than just two sentences let alone talking it out. She started down the ladder. A lot more slowly this time, because both her rational mind and her lizard hindbrain did not want to go down there. She reached the decking, putting a foot on it, wanting the solid metal to make her feel comfortable. To feel like this was home, and that she knew it, and that Penn was the alien here.
It didn’t help.
The cargo bay was dark, but like Penn’s cabin, it turned to gloom as her eyes adjusted. Panels, readouts around the bay cast small glowing pools of radiance. Just a big empty cargo bay, with lots of storage racks and rails and mount points to hide in, behind, or under. Magical.
Something hissed again in the gloom, and El pointed her gun in that direction. “Penn?” Then, “Hope?”
Her eyes were adjusting, and she could see something against the wall. Some kind of … structure. Like a whole bunch of papier-mâché. El walked towards it, her eyes picking out details in the gloom as she got closed. It was a kind of solid mass was attached to the wall. It looked like a person.
It looked like Hope.
She broke into a run. El got to the structure, tearing huge hunks of it away. Hope was unconscious, suspended in the material. Locked against the Tyche’s hull, like a spider’s snack kept for later. El pulled hunks of it away. It felt porous and light, like stale bread.
Something hissed behind her, and she froze. Very slowly, she turned around.
Penn. The man was in shadow. To be fair, the whole room was in shadow, but whatever the cause she couldn’t see his face, his expression, at all. What she could see was a big Penn-sized target, so she shot it.
The handgun roared, the flash bright in the room, and Penn’s shoulder and arm turned into chunks as the shotgun shell tore them right off.
He didn’t move. Just a little sway from the impact of the shot, then he stood there, the dripping of fluid from his missing shoulder hitting the deck with wet splatters. “Queen,” he said, “together.” That’s what it sounded like; it was hard to tell, because he was speaking with what sounded like a bunch of marbles in his mouth.
El had already ejected the shell from her gun and was feeding it another. “Whatever, asshole—”
That’s as far as she got before Penn was on her. He didn’t roar, didn’t scream, just moved like liquid smoke. His remaining arm collected her like a ram, and she tumbled across the cargo bay. Her gun was lost, clattering across the decking in the darkness. She could find it, given enough time, and enough light. She could make a million credits also, if given enough time.
Penn found her, though. He found her fine in the dark. That hand grabbed her from the floor, lifting her up. El’s training kicked in — basic had included endless drills for combat, both armed and unarmed — and she grabbed at Penn’s wrist. Her fingers remembered the movements her brain was too terrified to cope with, a hold here, a pinch there, and twist. The move would have tumbled Penn like a toy, crashing him to the deck, so she could get away, get her gun, and get some fucking distance.