In a way, silence was the most terrible thing he heard.
After all of the screaming, the squealing, the roaring, the explosions, the pulser-fire, silence was worse. Silence was the great bell, tolling for thee, the death knell of thousands of lives. But not his. When he opened his eyes, he found himself staring at the same ceiling/floor that he had for the last couple of days. To say he was hungry was putting it mildly. There was one thing which was different, though. When he arduously tipped his head down, there was no sign of Abigail.
Grumbling under his breath, Abe rolled onto his belly and started to crawl away from the gravity engine. Nobody had come down here, looking for them. He'd heard them coming to the breach, saw lights shine in, but where they were, hidden behind the machinery, the only way that somebody would have been able to find them would be to complete the same lead-footed trek which brought the two humans here in the first place. They searched a couple of times, minutes spent in panicked silence – terrible silence – until the Hunters moved on for easier or more readily available prey.
Once he was a couple dozen feet away from the engine, he was finally able to push himself to his feet. Being on his feet after so long on his knees was an odd sensation. He could feel his augmented weight crushing his knees, pressing on joints that already ached like bastards because of his long-standing need for a medication which didn't exist out here. His stomach grumbled weakly, and he ignored it. It was quite obvious why they'd picked a spot far away to do their lavitorial business down here. He didn't want to have to walk through it. If he was lucky, that would be the closest to his own shit that he spent forty-eight hours for the rest of his life.
Ah, who was he kidding? Abe was about as lucky as a broken mirror tied to the back of a black cat walking under a ladder.
He felt momentarily dizzy as the gravity shifted direction, and left him clinging to the pipes once more. There was an easier way up than there was down, and he had all the time in the world. He didn't call Abby's name, though, because he wasn't a goddamned idiot.
When he finally pulled himself into the lowest hatch of the building, and crawled through the ducts until he reached a spot where he could push up and into a laundry room, he took in a breath that smelled of fabric softener and blood. The grate had already been lifted clear, so he obviously wasn't the first to make this trip. He pulled himself into the room, kneading his knees for a moment as he looked at the clothes that were left, half folded, in a bin. They were waaaaay too long to be human clothes, but had the same kind of proportions. Must be some alien he'd never seen before. Probably those blue cat-people from that movie. What was it called? Pocahontas In Space? He stopped for a moment, allowing himself a brief contemplation of giant blue catgirls.
Then, he started up through the building, sure that nothing like that lived out here. After all, everything up here could get killed by a human sneezing on it. Literally, in some cases. The door to the building itself was cut open, and a great streak of blood reached out into the streets. The streets themselves played host to great, coagulated pools. But there wasn't so much as a scrap of a dead body left to be found. The silence was absolute, the only noise being the quiet electric hum of electricity in the capacitors nearby.
And then he saw footprints.
Now, Abe hadn't exactly been paying much attention when the family took him out on their high-minded hunting expeditions. For them, it was an excuse to get drunk in a new and interesting place and leave the kid to figure out how to start a fire using nothing but soaking wet wood and a mostly empty lighter. But following the sole of a naked foot through the blood was about as simple a thing as it could be. Hell, he'd have to be blind not to see it, and even then, he'd still probably have little excuse.
Following Abigail's path was simple, but it went on for quite a while, and everywhere he went, the same sorts of sights assailed his eyes. Lakes of dried blood. Nobody left behind. And more particularly, no body left behind. He would have shuddered at the thought of how close the same came from happening to him... but strangely, he felt like all of that terror had been outright excised from him, cut out like a tumor or a particularly nasty wart.
He flinched when a bang filled the air, the sound of metal falling against metal. Silence after it. Ah, fuck it... “Abigail?” he asked, wincing at how loud his voice was with nothing competing against it.
“Abraham?” her voice came from somewhere ahead, echoing to him.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“There is still food here,” she answered, not shouting, and with no apparent emotion at all. Abe questioned that for a moment before remembering, oh yeah, Hunters only eat meat, which means there's probably all kinds of stale veg to munch on. Empty stomachs made for odd feasts. He crossed past a gunship which had crashed and burned, it alone having the semblance of a corpse in it. Poor guy probably burned to death before the Hunters could even reach him. Lucky guy, in that respect.
He rounded that, and saw the crate that Abby was dealing with. She was on the far side of it, but he could see her feet as they tried to hook on the edge of it and keep her locked in place, no doubt hinged in half trying to reach the bottom of the thing. “Abby, you should have told me you were coming up,” Abe said.
“I was hungry. You were asleep,” she said.
“Yeah, but there still could have been...” Abe trailed off when he rounded the crate, and saw Abby again. His brain skipped a beat at that. “Um... Abby? Why are you completely naked?”
“Because I am,” Abby answered.
No fighting the logic on that one.
“...right,” he said. Stop staring at her ass, Abe. Stop staring at her perfect, bare ass. God, but there were days he regretted being male and in his prime. He gave his head a hard shake, and turned his attention to things north of the navel, which didn't help him a whole lot, because, as mentioned, she was completely naked, and pawing her way through packets such that her hair kept getting thrown around. Finally, she grabbed a handfull of it and threw it over her other shoulder, before leaning up and handing something to him, eyes still on the crate full of MREs. “Is this edible?”
“It will not kill a corti, so it will be safe,” she said. He shrugged, again not being able to find a fault in her logic, and ripped the thing open. It was a block, not unlike a granola bar, but about the most unappealing shade of grey that he'd ever seen. Well, try anything twice. He bit into it. It tasted like bad granola, which made a lot of sense. And if nothing else, for all it had all the appeal of cardboard, chowing down on it and the four others in the pack with it did something to take the edge off his hunger pangs.
“You still should have told me you were coming up,” Abe said.
“You were sleeping,” she said, pausing in her digging.
“Abby, we're only going to be able to get through this if we sl... stay together,” he said, barely managing to kill the Freudian slip before it was born.
“You were sleeping,” she repeated. And there was an odd quaver in her voice. Abe took a moment to look from the last of the four bars he was eating, to actually look at her. Notably, he looked through the fall of black hair... and saw that tears were falling onto the food packets that she was no longer actively pawing through.
“Abby... are you alright?” he asked her, tossing aside the wrapping, because if they were the last people alive, the hell was he going to obey the littering laws. A shudder ran through her, quite uncoupled to the fact that she might be cold with the nakedness and all. Faster than he thought possible, she unhinged from the crate and threw herself at him, tangling him in a net of arms and legs, pulling herself very close to him, her face crushed against his chest. “Abby!”
“I don't like it up here,” she whispered into his chest. “It's too quiet, and Pasha's not here and Gwan's not here and I'm alone and I'm afraid and I don't understand what's going on...”
“Hey, hey,” Abe said, finally closing his arms around her. “You're not alone. I'm right here,” he said.
“They're all gone,” Abby whispered.
“...yeah,” Abe answered her. And then, as though not sure what she was doing, she pulled herself closer and started crying into his shirt. For a few seconds, he just stayed there, running a hand up and down her back, before the weight of it started to land on him as well.
Good god. They were the only ones left. Rodney, Gwan, Frank... all dead. Everybody...
His old man told him that a man never cries. Abe as a rule didn't abide his father's rules. So, completely forgetting the fact that he was embracing a hot, naked babe, he let his back slide down the side of the crate, held her close, and wept with her.
///
If there was one thing which life had taught Duncan, it was the golden importance of boredom. In his childhood, he had kicked and screamed at the very notion of having nothing do do, and that lead him into all manner of unpleasant shit. High-school fighting, gangs, drugs... well, drugs weren't his vice, but they were certainly a business. It was hard enough when the entire world looked fundamentally different to you at the best of times. Throwing psychotropics on top of that would have been outright masochistic. His shit-disturbing continued right up until he woke up on that alien ship, a restraint collar around his neck.
Simply being able to laze about became a luxury, and now, he would be hard pressed to abandon such an opportunity when it arose. Gao was a safe and stable harbor for The Mighty, and since Pasha's business didn't require somebody to be her muscle, that left him with time to himself. Time he spent with his bare feet up on the console, playing computer games and being thankful that his life, for the moment, didn't particularly suck.
If he were a more self-aware man, he might have realized that that kind of thinking was simply begging for the universe to screw with him.
The hiss of the elevator rising from the 'gunners' nest below the cockpit pulled Duncan's eye to the ascending gaoian who, much to Duncan's surprise, was not alone. Another was with him. “Something you need to talk about, Kolak?” Duncan asked, gaze still on the screen before him.
“What is... I thought you said this ship was empty,” the other gaoian said, the voice translated into Duncan's ear and given a much more feminine tone. At that, Duncan simply turned to Kolak.
“Kolak?” he asked again. Kolak nodded, and rubbed at the medical patch over his new eye.
“I said there were no other gaoians aboard. This is Duncan, a human,” Kolak said. His ordinary sarcastic tones weren't in attendance, though. His words had a silvery aftertaste, like licking a tarnished spoon.
“I know a human to see one,” the gaoian said.
“Duncan is my name,” he said. “And you'd be?”
“This is Irlei, an associate of mine,” Kolak said. “She is rebis.”
Irlei turned a glare at him. “You swore you would not...”
“Rebis? Hermaphrodite, you mean?” Duncan asked. Irlei glanced between the two of them, an expression of horror dawning. “Don't be scared. We're all freaks on this ship.”
“You can't tell the other Sisters. If they learned, they'd excommunicate me...” Irlei said.
Duncan shrugged. “Why would I tell anybody?” he asked. Irlei swallowed, then bobbed her head.
“Duncan is a discrete person. He can be trusted with such things,” Kolak said. “Now, tell him what you've told me.”
Duncan turned a confused look to Irlei, then to Kolak, then back. “I can't believe you just told him like that...” Irlei grumbled. Then she turned a hard look on Duncan. “Something terrible has happened on Exoss station.”
There was a moment of silence. “Terrible, as in?” Duncan asked, swinging his feet down and giving the gaoians his undivided attention.
“Nobody is exactly sure,” Irlei said. “My position? I maintain the hyperlink network hubs our cities. So when I saw there was a sudden silence from the fringe, I got suspicious.”
“Irlei contacted me, as she knew that I had dealings in that region,” Kolak said, leaning against a pillar, thumbs hooked behind the straps of his coveralls. “The dealings I have with you and Pasha, to be precise.”
Duncan nodded. “So what did you find?” he asked.
“Tell him, Irlei. Please,” Kolak said. Irlei still had an aura of distrust around her, but she bobbed her head, and looked to the floor.
“I also do some business with some... people I don't think I should name. Selling information, you know. My job pays a pittance and I have to support myself somehow...”
“I'm not one to judge. You do what you have to do to survive,” Duncan said. “So what did you find?”
Irlei puffed out a breath, then looked up to him. “A major Hunter attack struck Exoss more than [a week] ago. The military still hasn't moved into the region,” she said. Duncan was silent for a moment, feeling the full weight of that settling onto his shoulders as surely as the citrus taste of her words. “Exoss still hasn't raised any communications since the attack, so there can't have been any survivors. No emergency transponders, no beacons... nothing.”
Duncan let his face fall into his hands for a moment. Then nodded. “Pasha needs to hear this,” he said.
“I still don't think...” Irlei began, but Kolak silenced her with a gesture.
“Information saves lives. And failing that, it can avenge them,” Kolak said. “If you wish, I can return you to your home?”
“That would... probably not be a good idea,” Irlei said, even as Duncan started trying to raise Pasha's shuttle on the comms. “When I say 'communications blackout', I mean it. You, I, and this human, and my... benefactor... are likely the only people on this planet who know what has happened to that station. Somebody is working to keep this quiet. And that means...”
“That somebody such as you is in a degree of risk,” Kolak said, rubbing once more at his recently replaced eye. He bobbed his head. “Join us on this ship, Irlei. At least for a time. There's always room for more aboard The Mighty.”
Irlei glanced between Kolak and the sky of the spaceport, slowly shaking her head, but Duncan's attention had been pulled elsewhere.
“That doesn't look right,” Duncan said. Kolak moved to his side, and peered over his shoulder at the display. “According to the SatNav network, Pasha's shuttle isn't on Gao.”
“It is a trans-atmospheric shuttle, is it not?” Kolak asked.
“Not the point, she'd tell me if she were leaving the planet,” Duncan said. He sat back in his chair for a moment, the bleak dread starting to well up in him and spill down upon him like a wave crashing over a swamping ship. She could be hurt. Or dead. Or gone. No, get your shit together, Duncan. Contrary to your delusions, she wouldn't leave without you. For whatever reason, she loves you. Duncan took a deep breath, then opened his eyes. The pall was still there, and he realized he'd been ignoring Kolak, who'd continued talking.
“...with the Mother-Supreme, and that was only yesterday. She would have easily been able to return in that time. Unless she had to flee from something...” Kolak rubbed at his jaw, pondering. Duncan, though, immediately put his hands into motion, and in a matter of seconds, a loud ping sounded as the docking clamps released, and the Mighty took to the sky. “Duncan, what are you doing?”
“Am I being kidnapped?” Irlei asked. Duncan ignored her, though, and started to recall Pasha's itinerary. Ciprian to Cala, Cala to Mortiban, Mortiban to T'st'su. T'st'su to Kekita. The longest leg was from T'st'su to Kekita. The only one which didn't pass wholly over industrialized land or farms. The C'tis forest dominated that part of the planet, a jungle wild enough to justify Gao's comparatively high planet rating.
“Where are you going?” Kolak asked, his one uncovered eye hard and scrutinous.
“I'm going to the one place on Pasha's list that you could get shot down and not have somebody else notice,” Duncan said, hoping against hope that he was dead wrong.
“Shot down?” Irlei asked. “Nobody would do that. That'd be an act of war!”
“Against a gaoian, yes, but for all she may remind us somewhat of Sister Chang, Pasha is still human,” Kolak said. “I don't doubt the Mothers would what the hell are you doing?”
Profanity was a new skill which had been taught to Kolak in the time that he worked with Pasha and her cadre, one that he, unlike many of the aliens, had gained a fairly fluid and instinctive usage of. “Flying to a forest,” Duncan answered him, and powered forward though the sky with sonic booms blasting out behind the Mighty as it passed.
“We're... this is not safe! It isn't legal, either!” Irlei said, flinching against Kolak.
“I'm not in a position to care,” Duncan said, as the landscape screamed underneath them. He didn't ponder the windows that he shattered in the wake of his flight, so focused was he on the destination. When farmland faded and forest took its place, Duncan finally pulled up, scanning the great bed of green-blue looking for something out of place. A scar in the land. And it didn't take long to find it.
Both of the gaoians let out peeps of alarm as he took the Mighty into a dive, pulling to a halt at the last moment and setting it down in the burned wound that the shuttle had cut as it hit the ground. Duncan didn't say a word, silently grabbing the shotgun that Gwan and Abby had made for him from its place strapped under the control console, and stormed out to the airlock. When it hissed open, the damp heat of the forest hit him in the face like a sock full of runny cheese.
“Duncan what are you doing?” Kolak shouted after him, but the human was already at a sprint. The shuttle had fetched up with its nose wedged into a stream that cut through the forest, and what animals had been frightened away before by the crash now found themselves driven away once more by a desperate husband. He skidded to a halt on seared wood of trees upended, and looked at the shuttle itself.
There was a hole in the side of it, scorched and blackened. His heart dropped a bit, a dark pall settling onto him, as he almost bodilessly drifted toward the rent in the side of the ship. When he looked inside, to find it all burnt and savaged, he felt a very real urge to sob. Once he pulled himself into the ruin, and saw the burned bones, he allowed himself to.
But only once.
Summoning his resolve, he squatted down beside the bones. Human bones. Burnt beyond any easy recognition. His fists felt numb as he squeezed them, then gently took the shoulder, and turned it. At this point, Kolak had caught up with him, and pulled himself into the hull, his heavy pulser checking corners as he came. When he saw the bones, there was a long whine that came from his throat. “Oh... Duncan, I'm sorry...”
Duncan tilted the body up, looking at the other side of it. The face of it. There was a dry, popping noise that tasted like rancid vanilla, not like the sound/color/taste of burned meat in Duncan's recollection. When he did look upon what lay under the corpse, he released his breath, and sat back, rubbing at his forehead and inadvertently smearing soot on his brow. “That isn't Pasha.”
Kolak looked to him, then back to the bones. “It bears her dimensions...”
Now no longer constrained by terror, Duncan gently pushed the body completely onto its back. The off-brown crackle it gave was sickening on more than one level. “It's human, but it's not Pasha.”
“Forgive me for saying so when you are so bereaved but... how could you know?” he asked.
“No jewelry,” Duncan said. Pasha did love her bling, as the Americanism went. Even when she bathed, she still kept some gold or silver on. And there wasn't so much as a scrap of it, nor melted into the floor. He took a deep breath, and the notion hit him. Somebody wanted him to believe Pasha was dead.
“That seems somewhat flimsy, Duncan Idaho,” Kolak said.
“Kolak, shut up for a second,” Duncan said, raising a finger.
“No, you will listen to me,” Kolak said. “This loss has stolen your wits, and perhaps your sanity. Look at this person and tell me that it is not your mate, look at me and tell me with cold blood...”
“Kolak, shut up for a second,” Duncan said, somewhat more harshly. There was a clack as Kolak's mouth snapped shut.
And Duncan could hear, like the buzzing of a mosquito, a noise.
Pasha, you brilliant goddess, you.
He pushed off the floor, and began to pull apart what remained of the seats, tearing through the melted plastic and foam. The sound was dim, so it was buried deep. But when he finally tossed one seat-cushion aside, and the noise grew louder, a smile hit his face. It wasn't a very happy smile, but better than the alternative.
“Duncan, what are you doing?” Kolak asked.
“Do you hear that noise?” Duncan asked. Kolak gave his head a shake. “You wouldn't. Not even all humans can. And... there we are...”
He pulled the data drive from the bottom of the seat, slotting it into his wrist computer and having the screen flare to life. Bless you, Pasha, for being so paranoid.
Pasha was there, her face bleeding, with a pained look on her face. “Duncan, Gwan... whoever gets this... I am not dead. I think they're trying to capture me, because if they weren't, I wouldn't have made it to the ground,” she winced, touching her fingertips to her face, and pulling them away red. “Listen. Dun. Don't give up. Don't give up on me, and don't give up on you. I know you, Dun. And if I don't get out of here...”
A loud hiss sounded, and behind her, sparks began to flare into the camera shot. Pasha turned a glance back to it, then to the camera. “I know you're coming for me.”
The recording ended, and Duncan looked to his gaoian comrade.
“This would have been on the news,” Kolak muttered, rubbing at his muzzle. He looked up to him, with his one good eye sharp. “Which means somebody is suppressing it.”
“Who's in charge of news and media?” Duncan asked. “Is it a male clan, or the Mothers?”
Kolak slung his pulser onto his back, clapping a hand onto Duncan's shoulder. “I do not know... but I swear to you, I will find out.”
Submitted January 28, 2015 at 06:38PM by JacobGreyson http://ift.tt/1zy0TUX HFY
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