Endurance: The Complete Series Page 29

Damn, he thought. That would have been the perfect moment to cross the room and take her hands in a gesture of reassurance and allow all the buried feelings to come out.

  But he hesitated, and she disappeared.

  He turned to survey the damage he’d done to the glass sphere and was surprised to see the remains of the structure alight with symbols and diagrams and more of the alien writing. The section he’d broken lay strewn across the bed and floor, bits of it ground to dust beneath the struggle, but the majority of it was intact.

  The sphere must have activated when Areva’s attacker fell on the controls. He circled the display, trying to comprehend it. Something about the rows of symbols and the shapes of the diagrams felt familiar.

  Halfway around, he halted before a recognizable shape. “DNA.”

  “What?” asked Areva, still hiding.

  “This machine. It scans DNA. This is a double helix.”

  Areva popped her head over the booth and peered out. “What do they use this for?”

  “A DNA map would allow much more precise medical treatments. This is likely how they created inventions such as the zombie drug.”

  He continued circling the machine, puzzling out different parts of the readings. “The scans are stored on the hospital’s main computer.”

  “So that the doctors can access it more easily. That makes sense.”

  “Yes. Easy access.” Ice crawled down Viktor’s spine. “Areva, the Haxozin plague only infected this planet’s native species. It may have specifically targeted their DNA.”

  “True. You think the Haxozin used a similar scanner?”

  “No. I think they used this scanner.”

  Areva poked her head up and saw the remote computer uplink display to which Viktor was pointing. She said, “I suppose it makes more sense to hack the hospital computer and take the data than try to create it on their own. The Haxozin do seem to be scavengers. So they used the DNA scans to try to kill everyone, and then the Thassians used them to find a way to survive. It’s horrible, but I don’t understand why this seems to trouble you so much.”

  Viktor’s face was grim. “I fell while fighting. Inside the machine. It turned on.”

  Areva gasped. “If it scanned you …”

  “A map of human physiology is now stored here.” Viktor lifted the butt of his bazooka rifle and smashed it through the scanner sphere. It shattered, raining bits of glass on the already strewn floor. He repeated the movement, destroying every standing bit of the machine, until the scanner lay in bits at his feet, a few fragments still connected by fraying sensor wires. “That removes the data from this device, but it was likely already uploaded to the hospital mainframe.”

  “The … the Haxozin don’t look like they’ve been here recently. Maybe they won’t find it.”

  “Do you wish to take that risk?” She didn’t answer. “I thought not. When we finish drugging the aliens, we will escort them from the building and destroy it.”

  “The machine?”

  “The building.”

  Areva’s hand popped up in a “wait” gesture. “Or, we could have Matthias access the computer and erase the data.”

  That would be easier, if not as thorough. Viktor grimaced. “My way is better.”

  “You just like blowing things up.”

  “Explosions are effective.”

  “Sometimes subtlety is best.”

  “I do not do subtlet—” The words stuck in his throat. There was one gaping example of subtlety that he had done, a little too well. “Areva, I need to tell you …”

  He met her eyes, and for a brief instant, they connected fully. He saw her concern for his safety, her amusement at their banter, her determination to succeed at the mission. He knew his own expression was full of regret and longing. He’d tried to convey those same feelings before, to say with that connection what he could never seem to find the words to express, when she announced her impending resignation. He’d tried, and she’d fled.

  He tried again now.

  She fled again. A wrenching movement tore her gaze away, and she headed for the door. “When … when we get back to Earth, we can go to the shooting range and you can destroy as many targets as you want. It’ll be my going-away party.”

  She disappeared around the edge of the door.

  Viktor stood where she’d left him. Again he’d hesitated, let his lack of the proper words render him mute. But in that instant when their eyes met, he thought he’d seen something beneath her confident veneer. The same vulnerability he’d tried to show, trying to break through.

  He glanced at his pocket comp. Heat readings on the upper floors continued to dwindle as his teammates located the aliens. The lower half of the building was cold, except for his own thermal signature standing in the middle of the room, and another one just outside it, leaning against the wall.

  She hadn’t fled too far. “After we shoot things,” Viktor said, “I will take you out to dinner.”

  A long pause. “I’d like that.”

  At dinner, Viktor told himself. At dinner he’d find the words. It wouldn’t change her decision to quit, and it wouldn’t fix his silence over the past years, but at least he would have told her how he felt.

  And if he didn’t, if he let the lack of the right words paralyze his tongue again, at least they’d have one more night of just dinner together.

  * * *

  Viktor and Areva met the other teams on the ground floor once every heat signature in the building had been located and treated with the zombie drug. By the time the final team arrived, the first zombies had begun stirring on the floor.

  “Hurry,” said Viktor. “We must leave before they notice us.”

  The teams sprinted out of the hospital, heading back toward the warehouse.

  It took only seconds before the sounds of pursuit echoed behind them.

  The zombies had risen, and instinct had taken over once more.

  Viktor chanced a glance over his shoulder and spotted at least a dozen of the faded orange bodies sprinting after them, fangs bared, claws outstretched.

  “Faster!” he yelled. His leg muscles burned as he dug his feet into the pavement, propelling himself forward, heedless of caution.

  They made it almost all the way to the warehouse. Only a single street stood between them and the ship’s hiding place, a narrow road between two skyscrapers that overlooked the alien city’s port. The warehouse stood at the other end. Viktor could see pieces of its fallen roof littering the ground alongside its walls.

  He could also see a mass of moving bodies swarming into the street from the other side.

  “Turn!” he shouted, and executed a quick pivot that swung his momentum to the right. The others followed with a minimum loss of speed. No one questioned him. If they went down that street, they’d be overrun in seconds. Without the protection of spacesuits, Viktor had no doubt at least one of his people would be cut or bitten, and if the drug could spread to humans, it would do so.

  The sounds of pursuit seemed to have attracted every zombie in the city. Wherever they tried to turn, hordes of undead appeared to cut them off. Viktor had begun to despair of finding an escape route when he spotted a decrepit wall fallen around metal pylons, right across the street from the capital building.

  The hovercar factory.

  A plan formed in his mind.

  “Follow!” he called, and turned his steps toward the crumbling wall.

  The officers clambered into the darkness of the factory. The machines were still running. Sound dampening technology muffled the bangs and clangs to a tolerable level, but the air conditioning appeared to have failed. Heat from the giant autoclaves filled the building. Viktor began to sweat as soon as he entered, but he couldn’t spare any thought for the discomfort. He led his people straight down the main walkway through the center of the factory.

  Halfway through, he skidded to a halt next to a bin of finished chassis. “Keep running!” he ordered the others.

  Most obeyed, but
Areva hesitated. “What are you doing?”

  “You noticed they have sensitive noses.” He spun the dial controlling his bazooka rifle’s output all the way to its maximum setting and took aim at the bin. Armies of zombies closed in behind them.

  He fired.

  A high-energy blast struck the polymer chassis and burned a hole straight through them before dissipating on the bin’s far side.

  Nothing else happened.

  “Dammit!” Viktor yelled, and fired again with the same result.

  He could make out the individual limbs on the lead zombies now.

  “They’re gaining on us!” Areva screamed.

  “Composite polymers release toxic fumes when they burn,” Viktor said. “If we ignite these chassis, the zombies will avoid them like they did the dead fish.”

  He spotted one of the tool walls, equipment still neatly arranged inside tidy tape lines. He grabbed a plasma welding torch, rattling the wall and sending other tools crashing to the floor. “Look away, Areva!” He shut his eyes, squeezed the activator on the welding torch, and thrust it toward the bin of polymers.

  The worst stench in the world exploded a second later.

  Plasma from the torch ignited the chassis, and billows of acrid green smoke poured out of the bin. Viktor could taste the poison in the air even as the ash began to burn his lungs. He dropped the torch and grabbed Areva’s hand. “Come!”

  As they sprinted after their team, Viktor glanced back to see the zombie hordes pouring back through the hole to the safety on the other side of the building.

  * * *

  They made it back to the warehouse only slightly ashy, though very out of breath. Viktor felt the ship lift off as the airlock’s decontamination process swept them for diseases.

  No one had been bitten. The zombieism would stay on this planet, where it belonged.

  After clearance from decon, Viktor climbed the ladder two rungs at a time to the bridge. “Captain,” he said, “the DNA scanner ...”

  “Already on it,” said Matthias Habassa from the bridge’s scanners station. “If it has wireless transmissions engaged, I should be able to pick them up and trace them to the hospital’s main computer.”

  “And then?” asked Viktor.

  Captain Withers sat in his chair, a grim expression on his face. “We blow it up.”

  The Endurance soared over the decrepit city. Through the front viewports, Viktor could see smoke pouring from the skylights on the old factory. The horde of zombies fleeing the stench had dissipated through the city, and nothing moved near the building. The polymers would burn themselves out without any casualties.

  The hospital came into view as the ship rounded the rotunda on city hall. Here more unlife could be seen, zombie bodies milling around in the sunshine. Many stopped to stare agape as the ship flew by.

  Matthias smiled. “They look happy.”

  “They look dead,” Viktor said.

  “Yeah. And they seem happy this way.” The engineer tapped one final control on his console with a flourish. “Got it. Third floor, northwest corner of the building. All wireless connections map to there as the central hub. Can’t hack into it, though. Our operating system won’t interface properly.”

  “Any sign of movement?”

  “Clear on thermal, obviously. We’ll have visual in just a moment.”

  The ship stabilized in a hover just outside the designated room. The curtains were pulled back, showing a deserted, yet well-furnished office with a single, slim computer core on the desk. Lights shone from various surfaces, indicating the activity within, and a blank screen on one side awaited a user. It contained the records and operating systems for an entire six-story hospital, and the whole thing was the size of a paperback novel.

  Matthias sighed wistfully. “Seems a shame. That looks like some real advanced tech. We could use it.”

  “So could the Haxozin,” said Viktor.

  “Agreed,” said the captain. “Let’s get rid of it.”

  A moment later, a low-yield torpedo from the Endurance’s main guns ripped through the window and curtains, blasted through the fancy desk, and turned the computer core and everything in a two meter radius into a blackened disaster.

  “Wireless network is gone,” said Matthias. “Nobody’s getting any data from this hospital ever again.”

  Captain Withers stood and rubbed his forehead. “Helm, get us out of this city center and find a place we can accelerate enough to break orbit. I’ll be in my office.” He headed into the little room just off the bridge.

  Viktor glanced around and noticed the two O&I officers were nowhere to be seen. He followed the captain and pulled the office hatch shut. “Your friends are gone.”

  Withers pressed a button to open one of his desk drawers and pulled out a bottle of headache medicine. “They’ve ‘seen enough to make their decision.’ They’re in their berths, finishing their reports.” He popped the canister open and downed two pills.

  “It will be bad.”

  “Yeah. It’ll be bad.” The captain massaged his forehead again and replaced the medication. “We killed those people, Ivanokoff.”

  “They were dead before.”

  “That’s not the point. I gave an order to exterminate a civilian population. They were attacking us, but they wouldn’t have been doing that if we hadn’t interfered with them in the first place. There’s no way we come out of this looking good. At best, we can clean up our own messes and pick up some useful stuff like that zombie drug on the way, but that’s not going to be enough for Dispatch. They’re going to take us off interstellar patrol.”

  Viktor let out a slow breath. After the previous months of exploring unknown parts of the galaxy, thinking on his feet and facing threats no one had imagined, the thought of returning to the Endurance’s former Neptune patrol felt like cutting off a limb. “The Haxozin threat remains. This planet proves the extreme methods they will use against us.”

  “We obliterated that computer. They won’t get your DNA scan.”

  “That is not the point. They steal technology and research from those they encounter. We know their fleet outnumbers their personnel. Perhaps their very ships were scavenged from their victims. They do not need the DNA scan. They will have other weapons to bring against us.”

  Withers sank onto his chair. “And so we need all our ships out searching the galaxy for those same advantages so we’re ready when they come, is that your point?”

  “Yes.”

  “I agree. Unfortunately, since the Haxozin likely don’t know where Earth is, that threat isn’t going to seem as pressing to everyone at home.”

  “The message the Uprising sent…”

  “Could take decades, or even centuries to reach them. The Haxozin are a problem, Ivanokoff, but a distant one. To the people at Dispatch, we seem like the more immediate issue. They won’t want renegades screwing around with alien societies, away from their control. I realize I’m being pessimistic, but from the attitudes of those two suits and my own confrontations with the brass, I’m pretty sure I’m right.”

  Viktor couldn’t argue. Ten soldiers wisely led … From Dispatch’s perspective, the Endurance crew must seem like part of the headless hundred.

  “I will warn the others to expect disappointment,” he said.

  “No. Let them keep their hopes up. Goodness knows, Habassa is going to look on the bright side no matter what we say.”

  The captain’s desk computer beeped. “Bridge paging you,” said the computerized voice.

  Withers winced and tapped a control on the screen. “Go ahead.”

  Matthias’s voice came over the line. “We’re over a park and gaining altitude. Just thought you’d want to know. In a few minutes, we’ll be gone like the wind.”

  “With the wind,” Viktor muttered.

  “Good work, Lieutenant,” said the captain. “I’ll be right out.” Withers closed the line and rose from his chair, stretching his back with the movement. His seat squeaked, and Vi
ktor wondered how Withers managed to get anything done while sitting in an uncomfortable old chair. He spotted a few novels he’d lent his CO on the shelf behind the desk, the largest of which had a bookmark about a tenth of the way through it. “One good thing may come from reassignment to Neptune.”

  “What’s that?”

  He jutted his chin toward the shelf. “You will finally finish War and Peace.”

  The captain mumbled something noncommittal and let himself out through the hatch. Viktor was about to follow when movement next to the bookshelf caught his eye.

  Areva Praphasat emerged from behind a stack of old equipment that had found its way into the office and never been moved. Viktor didn’t bother asking how she’d snuck in and secluded herself without the captain noticing; she didn’t like to discuss her gifts. “You heard,” he said.

  She nodded. “Neptune again.”

  A strange glimmer in her eye gave Viktor the impression she was waiting for him to say something. He thought back to that moment on the planet, when he wanted to speak up, and she’d hidden too quickly.

  She wasn’t hiding now, and Viktor realized if he waited for dinner to say anything, he’d never speak up at all.

  “Areva, do not leave,” he said. “You are a good officer.”

  She flinched. “Good against zombies, but against the living …”

  “We will not be fighting anyone around Neptune.” He crossed to her, and she didn’t back away. “Please, Areva. It is not only the ship. I want you to stay.”

  She swallowed, and the expectation in her eyes deepened. “Why?”

  Where were the right words to express it all? He’d read a thousand books, and yet the sentences that would best serve this moment, best capture everything he wanted to say, eluded him.

  At his silence, the intensity went out of her gaze. “It’s okay. I’ll just—”

  Eloquence be damned. “I love you.” There they were. The words that spawned a thousand romances, a thousand wars, and a thousand really sappy novels. Viktor ignored the urge to quote one of a dozen classic poems and instead just spoke without filtering himself. “You are the only person I have ever met who is so fascinating, so self-reliant, and so deadly. You follow your convictions, and you seek to understand before you act. You do not just look at situations, you see them, and you make others around you do the same. You are incredibly unique, and you have become my closest friend. I cannot imagine life without you. I love you, Areva Praphasat. I have loved you for a long time. I want you to stay.”