War of the Spheres Page 28

  “Okay.” I said. “Look, we’ve got to have a name for you that works better for everyone. You’re going to be… let’s see… how about Al? Big Al?” I tried to mirror something like the thought he had used for himself earlier and made it as clear as I could in my mind so the translating and transmitting patch on my temple could relay it to him.

  He repeated a fairly close version back, and I felt like we were getting somewhere.

  “Good,” I said, then I indicated myself. “My name is Gray.” I projected the color with my thoughts. “Gray.”

  “Man—Dark.”

  “Gray,” I insisted.

  “Man—Gray,” he repeated at once.

  “Correct. Now, why do you kill us? Why pursue our ship?” I set my face again, and gave him the old I-might-just-kick-your-ass look.

  I didn’t want to get too close, but I flexed my knees and clenched my fists—posturing to intimidate.

  He dropped his face again. “The cruel ones… Big Al—forced. This-self—servant to spawn-guards.” He indicated himself by patting clawed hands on his own chest.

  “Yeah, sure. You’re an innocent lamb. Here’s what I think: we blew up the mining ship you’d pirated, so you managed to jump to here—a few of you did, anyway. But now you’re hurt and out of options.”

  “Yes… hurt,” he said.

  He was working hard to engender some sympathy. He pawed at his wounds again, and I caught sight of a distinctive redness inside the opening of his hood—like the color hemoglobin ripens to when soaking up oxygen. I reached forward carefully, and Big Al permitted it.

  Pulling aside the fabric at his throat revealed a necklace of human toes and thumbs strung on a synthetic cord and worn around his neck.

  “Hmm, aren’t we just full of surprises today?” I asked him.

  Gripping the trophy necklace, I yanked him close again.

  “What about this?” I demanded. “You evil freak!”

  “The Masters—punish! They abuse… humiliate. Big Al—pet of spawn-guards. This self—forced to obey.”

  I didn’t buy it. I dragged him like a bad dog into the passage and over to his big brother’s corpse. I pointed at the dead alien like he’d pissed on my favorite rug. Releasing the grisly collar of mementos, I left him hacking dramatically on all fours.

  “Is this a spawn-guard?” I yelled and gave the remains a kick. The body had further cooled and stiffened since I’d checked it out earlier.

  “This… ritual-meat,” he answered. On his knees, he gestured over the corpse with his angled digits and drew something complicated and geometric in the air.

  Remembering he’d fooled me earlier, I was watching him closely and noted that his hands moved toward the belt around the dead alien’s waist.

  There, I saw a device of some kind. It didn’t look like much, but I had good reason not to trust him.

  I gave him a good shove, and he stopped reaching for it.

  On his hands and knees by his fallen brother, Big Al looked up at me with huge, unblinking eyes. The deep sockets stared at me—expressionless, like a skull. This guy had a hell of a poker-face.

  “Ritual meat—what is that supposed to mean?” I said, pushing away a mental picture of ending the conversation with my hands around his scrawny throat.

  This time, I repeatedly stabbed an angry finger at the dead alien to emphasize my words. “Is this, right here, the dead body of one of the big, bad Masters that tell you what to do?”

  “Gray-man… words not untrue,” he returned at last.

  This felt like too much work for too little gain. Al was coming across as squirrely like he was hiding something. He certainly didn’t want to confess to collecting human body-parts as trophies.

  I considered introducing him to Jessup. It would prove to the good captain which of us was wrong about aliens, but I was worried he would kill Al out of hand. It would be hard to blame him.

  Even I was becoming convinced that Big Al needed to be Dead Al. I wasn’t pleased with his answers, and a proper interrogation would take a lot of time I didn’t have.

  A few minutes went by during which Big Al professed his innocence to all crimes. Then I heard boots thundering in sync down the passageway, and my comm-link toned in my ear.

  “Chief, you’ve got company,” Logan said.

  Turning around, I straightened up as Jessup burst into the compartment. There was a wall of uniforms behind him.

  “Yeah, I see what you mean, Logan,” I transmitted. “Thanks anyway.”

  “Well, well,” Jessup said, strolling up to me. “Here we go again with the maverick thing. I have been informed that you’ve been down here violating our prior agreements. You’ve just got to run your own show don’t you, Gray?”

  “I don’t mean to disagree with you, sir—but …”

  “I’m going to have to correct you there, Chief,” he said, cutting me off. “Hell, disagreeing is what you do best!”

  “If you say so, Captain.”

  Deciding to cut my losses, I tossed a thumb over my shoulder. “Captain Jessup, I’d like to introduce you to Big Al. He doesn’t talk much, and he ain’t pretty, but I’d like you to meet him just the same.”

  “Introduce me to… who?” Jessup asked.

  I turned and looked. Big Al was gone. What remained was a heap of dead, bloody alien piled up in the passage about three meters away.

  I spun in place and took a quick look around the compartment. Damn it—Big Al had surprised me several times in the last twenty minutes, and he’d done it again.

  My eyes landed a moment later on the dead alien’s belt. Sure enough, that small, innocuous device that had been there before—the one Al had been reaching toward during his “rituals”—was gone.

  The little frigger had grabbed it and vanished the moment my back was turned. I snapped my mouth closed and looked back to Jessup who was watching me curiously.

  “Uh-huh,” he said and squinted over at the corpse. “Did you, uh… kill somebody, Chief?” He began walking over to investigate as Major Knox and his posse of spacers filled the room behind him. They watched stone-faced.

  “I certainly did not kill anyone,” I said, stepping quickly to walk beside him as I spoke.

  Jessup squatted down and grabbed the edge of the hood, lifting it.

  “What the hell…?” he began, then his eyes widened in alarm. “Whoa!” he shouted, dropping the fabric and starting backward. Then, he just stared for a moment.

  “I don’t believe it!” he said, pausing between each word. “You actually caught one of your space monsters aboard my ship.”

  He shook his head, his face slowly darkening with concern. He looked back at me with suspicion, almost as if he thought I’d faked the body, or somehow was in league with aliens.

  “Captain Jessup, as you can see, we have a serious problem.”

  He nodded slowly and turned back to examine the dead alien further.

  “I never did really buy the alien thing…” he said, then waved forward his army of crewmen. They launched into an amateur investigation of the body. They prodded it with the toes of their boots and marveled.

  Jessup stood and approached me.

  “Here I was,” he said, “thinking all this time you were some nut full of paranoid delusions, but there it is… A cold, dead freak right here on my deck in a puddle of alien slime.”

  “I’m glad you’re pleased, sir.”

  I was enjoying his realization, but I was also wondering where Big Al had gone. I doubted he could have blinked away to another ship. We’d destroyed the miner and nothing else was in the vicinity. Not even these aliens could survive unprotected in space. Therefore, he had to be somewhere else aboard, and I was itching to go recruit Toby’s help to locate the fugitive.

  “Pleased?” Jessup asked. “By Damn—the only thing better would be a live one to beat some answers out of.”

  “Yeah…” I agreed. “It sure would be advantageous if we had a captive…”

  I took all m
y memories of certain recent conversations and shoved them away—conversations where I told Jessup if we weren’t going to avoid them entirely, we needed to catch and interrogate the tug crew.

  Insisting on pursuit and firing a missile was the brilliant plan he’d come up with.

  “Major Knox?” Jessup gestured at the corpse with his chin without speaking and stepped away from it. “Take over.”

  Major Knox stormed into motion. “Sergeant, seize and secure that body,” he ordered. “Put it on ice and keep a watch on it until the captain says otherwise.”

  “Yes, sir!” the sergeant and his men flooded into the compartment. Lifting the alien with an experienced grip, they whisked it away like they were on a hot battlefield.

  Captain Jessup turned to me and gripped my right shoulder. He beamed at me with a contrived smile and nodded in approval. He basked in the moment, and whatever he was thinking, it seemed like being on stage was the important thing.

  Nevertheless, as he stood smirking at me, I waited—relaxed, cool and quiet.

  Jessup and I were nothing alike—damn near complete opposites.

  Logan entered and came to stand silently nearby.

  “I like you, Chief,” Jessup said, surprisingly. “I like you more right now than I ever have. I think we have a working relationship established.”

  Knox left next, and then Jessup clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Behave yourself from now on, Gray,” he said, “and you might have a bright future in the Fleet. You’re on my good side right now for neutralizing a threat to my ship. Don’t mess that up—it’s a good thing.”

  After that, he left, and Logan and I were alone.

  “Well look at you two!” Logan said. I see you found yourself a new buddy. Now what?”

  “Have you seen Toby around?”

  “Sure—that little runt’s obsessed with trying to get into the nucleus, and Hughes has made Dr. Brandt the babysitter…”

  “Uh-oh,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s not pretty. There are some pissy conversations going on between those two ladies. I’m surprised you didn’t—”

  Loud alien words filled my mind at that moment.

  “Man—Gray… Interloper!” these words boomed in my head.

  I pressed fingers to my temple.

  “You okay, Chief?” Logan asked.

  “Little bastard…” I said. “You must be close…”

  “Uh…” Logan said in confusion. “Let’s not get touchy.”

  “No, not you…”

  “What do you mean, not me?”

  “Shut up a minute,” I ordered, and he fell silent at last.

  “The Aperture… Interloper—must avoid,” the words resumed.

  “Come on, Al. Come back to me, and let’s talk some more.”

  “Domain of flaccid beings—safe… Confined… Remain.”

  “I couldn’t help but notice,” I told him, “you don’t sound like a victim anymore.”

  Because I was speaking aloud, Logan stared at me like I was nuts. I turned away and stared blankly at a bulkhead so I could think.

  “CONFINED… REMAIN…” Al insisted. “Violate not the Aperture… Conflict awaits!”

  Thinking that odd statement over, I finally caught on. Colonel Hughes had explained a matrix of access points that amounted to a tunnel or doorway out.

  I’d be willing to bet, the “aperture” Big Al was talking about was Emily’s escape tunnel. It was a possible exit point out of the Sphere—the great barrier that encompassed our Solar System.

  Could he be warning us off? Telling me we had to stay within the Sphere—or else?

  This immediately pissed me off. My whole mission was to escort Colonel Hughes out of our Sphere. These aliens were weird, violent and arrogant as all hell.

  “Look Al, here’s the deal—you don’t make the rules up for Earth, or me. And here’s a promise: If I can find your little throat with my hands, this interloper is going to make some ritual meat out of Big Al.”

  “Remain—brings safety… Violate the Aperture—achieve only death.”

  I nodded to myself, certain now that he was warning me off. Telling me to stay inside my glass cage like a good hamster.

  To me, his warnings and threats indicated these aliens were very concerned about Earth getting out of her cage. Maybe that’s what these attacks had been about all along—to keep us from escaping the Sphere. A preemptive attack on a potential rival among the stars.

  “Pet-of-the-spawn-guards,” I said, “your idea of safety is self-imprisonment. We reject your ideas. We’ll see you soon in open space. We seek freedom.”

  “Regret… Anticipation… This self is watching… waiting,” he said, and then he stopped talking to me.

  I looked at Logan then. I could tell with a single glance that he thought I’d lost my mind.

  “Look,” I said, “just forget about what you heard.”

  “Sure thing—Chief. I won’t judge. I’m getting pretty used to you by now.”

  “I’m going to find Toby,” I told him. “I think that alien is still hiding aboard this ship, and if he is, Toby knows all the hiding places.”

  Logan gave me an even stranger look, but he nodded in agreement with my plan.

  Chapter 34

  Toby was never easy to find—especially when you wanted to find him. After many distractions, several hours passed. Then I got a message from Logan.

  “He’s on the mess-deck, annoying the cooks.”

  I raced through the passages. Normally, anyone was locatable via their comm-link. For some reason, Toby’s wasn’t working today. He’d obviously hacked it, or left it somewhere that was shielded and unreachable via the ship’s wifi.

  Stepping into the steamy kitchen, I spotted him at last.

  “Why is it my dietary needs aren’t being properly considered?” Toby demanded in a petulant tone.

  “Because this is a military ship, Your Majesty,” a bosun’s mate answered. “On a destroyer, you get one lunch. Everyone gets that lunch, and it was planned before we even left the space dock.”

  “But I don’t like anything with peanuts in it.”

  “I thought you said you were allergic to peanuts,” the cook said with narrowing eyes.

  The bosun’s mate was already onto Toby, I could tell. He knew a bullshitter when he met one. His hands came up, turning into fists, and he placed them on each of his hips. It was a clear sign of stubborn refusal.

  Toby, however, never caught such signs—no matter how obvious.

  “I’m taking this to the upper decks, I’ll have you know,” he said.

  He drew in a breath to elaborate on his boasts and threats, but I stepped in and intervened.

  “Sorry if he’s bothering you, bosun,” I said, snaking a long arm out and catching Toby by his scrawny, slightly fuzzy neck. My fingers were like an iron collar. I found that with a bit of downward pressure applied, the punk’s automatic response to spring away was contained.

  Looking sullen, Toby glowered at me.

  “This physical contact is both humiliating and most unwelcome, Chief Gray.”

  “That’s right, but I’m going to overlook your poor behavior in this instance. You’re going to eat whatever the chef is serving, and I’ll join you.”

  Grumbling, Toby took a tray of perfectly good food, and we ate at a table built for low-G dining. It was full of straps, cup-clamps and the like. Squeeze bottles of water were provided.

  As I prepared to eat, Toby eyed my hands with disgust.

  “Why is there medical waste on your sleeves?” he demanded. “Are you going to eat without even washing that off?”

  Glancing down, I noted a smear of alien gore on my cuffs. He was right, I needed a wash.

  But just as I made this decision, my eyes flicked up to catch Toby’s wary glance. He was watching me closely, following my thoughts. He wanted me to get up and go to the bathroom.

  Somehow, a tingling instinct of mine told me he’d be long gone by the ti
me I got back. It was a hunch, a premonition. I’m a man who believes in such things—especially if the hunch is my own.

  Taking my squeeze bottle, I sprayed my hands, rubbed them together, and dried them with my napkin. All of this went into the suction-drain that was in the center of the table. It was there along with a rim at the table’s edge to handle food and drink spills. Every spaceship had such special accommodations, as eating in null-G was famously messy.

  Getting another napkin and a fresh squeeze bottle, I earned a frown from the bosun, but I didn’t care. My choices had allowed me to keep a sharp eye on Toby. He never had a chance to bolt.

  “You aren’t eating,” I told him.

  “I’m not that hungry. Besides, I told you I don’t like peanuts.”

  I quickly examined the food. I saw no peanuts.

  “Since when does creamed beef have peanuts in the sauce?”

  He shrugged and pursed his lips. “I know what I’m tasting when I taste it.”

  My eyes ran to the table behind Toby. There I spotted a full plate of food. It sat unnoticed and barely touched.

  Two lunches? Toby was active, but he wasn’t very big. I couldn’t justify the quantity of food he’d lugged over here from the mess line.

  All of a sudden, it made sense.

  “Where is he?” I demanded.

  Toby’s eyes widened. “Where’s who?”

  “Where’s Big Al?”

  His eyes were a dead giveaway. He knew what I was talking about. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “Toby,” I said, leaning forward and lowering my voice. “You’re playing with fire here. No matter what this alien told you, no matter what you think you’re going to get out of it—you’re wrong. You’re possibly the accomplice of a foreign power. Even now, a charge of treason might stick.”

  He finally looked alarmed at the word “treason”.

  “I’m a kid. I was confused. Besides, I’m no traitor.”

  I nodded. He hadn’t even bothered to deny my charges. It had all been conjecture on my part—but he hadn’t known that. He’d essentially confessed.

  Standing up, I grabbed both our plates of food after chewing a few big bites myself. After all, Viper served superior fare.