Blood and Fire (17 page)

“Stay back!” cautioned Easton, but Korie was already stepping forward. “How the hell—?”

There were pinpoint holes in the hatch. As he watched, another and another of the shimmery red worms came burrowing
through
the foamedcarbon /polymer surface.

“Captain?” Korie said. “They're coming through the hatch. Do you copy?”

“We've got it onscreen,” Parsons acknowledged. “Stand by.”

Brik's voice cut in then: “Scanners show the whole forward section of
the ship is heavily infested. They're moving toward you. Return to the transfer tube
now
. We're taking you off.”

“You can't—”

“Listen to me,” said Brik. “We can do this. You're not coming back into the
Star Wolf
. You'll stay in the transfer tube. We'll break away from the
Norway
and come around aft. We'll put you back aboard her through the aft airlock—on the other side of her repulsor fields. If there are any survivors, that's where they have to be.”

Korie said, “Captain Parsons? I strongly advise against this. The risk to the ship—”

“—is minimal. We'll focus the repulsor valves to our side of the tube.”

“There's no need for this, ma'am.”

“Yes, there is. Spare me the phony heroics. I need you where you can do the most good.”

“Brik—you can't let her do this.”

“She threatened to shoot me.”

“
So what
? When has a threat like that ever stopped you?”

Parsons voice came through loud and clear: “This is an
order
, Commander Korie.” She added, “Listen to me. Dr. Williger thinks there might be a way—a way to rescue you. And any survivors on the
Norway
. She thinks they may have found a treatment. You've got to go around and find out.”

Korie looked to the other members of the mission team—and then to the Class-A Security Hatch. A stream of little red bloodworms was already dripping down its surface—the first trickle of a scarlet waterfall. Korie started to object, then abruptly he surrendered. “Aye, aye, Captain. We're on our way.”
I've made too many mistakes, too many! I've lost Hodel!
To the team, he snapped, “Move out.” He waved them out. “Come on, let's go! Now!!”

Once the decision was made, there was no hesitation. The team tumbled down through the Fire Control Bay, to the keel—there were bloodworms in the corridor! And sparkles too! They scrambled forward through the flickering air, to the promise of the airlock at the end of the keel. Their boots pounded hard on the rubbery surface of the deck, scattering even more sparkles.

Quickly, they reentered the airlock, a flurry of firefly pinpoints swirling in with them. Korie was the last one through the hatch, and he popped it shut behind him. “Let's go, let's go, let's go!” Korie sounded like a drill instructor. Bach was already punching for emergency transfer and as soon as the aft hatch slammed, the forward hatch popped open.

The five surviving members of the mission team pushed into the transfer tube—hard against the repulsor fields. It was harder going back, they were swimming upstream now and the current was against them. The thickened air was a wall of resistance, but Korie put his shoulder against Shibano and pushed, and Shibano put his shoulder against Easton and pushed. Easton put his shoulder against Berryman and pushed. Berryman pushed Bach forward, and the whole team pushed
uphill
through the repulsors. The railings doubled as ladders. They climbed through an invisible avalanche of tar. It was exhausting work, and they pulled themselves in silence, punctuated only by gasps and curses. Behind them, the twinkling wavicles drifted away, pushed inexorably backward to lodge against the aft hatch of the
Norway
's airlock.

Bach was in the lead. She climbed as far up the transfer tube as she could, grunting and swearing under her breath with an astonishing range of expression. She didn't care who heard. Finally, gasping in exhaustion, she secured herself, clipping her safety line to a loop in the railing. She gabbed Berryman and pulled him up next to her, holding him until he secured his safety line as well. One by one, they pulled the members of the team as far up the transfer tube as they could. One by one each of them secured his safety line.

“All right,
Star Wolf
, we're secured in the transfer tube.” Almost before Korie had finished saying it, the compressed-air latches at the end of the tube popped open and the
Star Wolf
lurched backward, away from the
Norway
—almost a physical act of revulsion and disgust.

The air fled the transfer tube in one quick gust—just another thump, almost unnoticeable in the gelatin current of the repulsors—but the vacuum hardened their starsuits and now their voices were carried by electronics alone. The optical transceivers on their suits communicated across a broad spectrum of light, listening and speaking and recording each other's information, and constantly relaying it back to the
Star Wolf
.

All of them were experienced with hard vacuum—but even so, it never lost its power to amaze. This was as close to raw space as any human could ever achieve. As one, they all turned to gape downward out the empty end of the transfer tube. It felt like they were clinging to the inner walls of a bottomless well. Were it not for their lifelines, it would have been too easy to go tumbling down and out—pushed to their doom by the repulsors.

As the
Star Wolf
pulled away from the
Norway
, they saw the other ship as a red-tinged spearhead, dark against the stars—incredibly clear
and close. But its running lights were off and it looked dead. Other than that, there was no external evidence of the horror within.

As the
Star Wolf
began its turn, the
Norway
slid sideways and disappeared, replaced by a moving panorama of darkness and stars at the gaping end of the transfer tube.

Out here, the stars were hard and bold, incredibly distant and pinpoint bright. They hinted at meanings so grand and awesome that, even glimpsed like this, they were still overwhelming. The sensation of falling, of being pushed, became even more intense.

And then, abruptly, the view below was filled with flame—savage and bright, a terrifying floor of hell, a crimson flood of light that welled upward like surging lava—the distant surface of the giant red star. The members of the mission team flinched and recoiled—as much from the glare as from the suddenness of the ferocious vista. It took an achingly long time for the starship to sweep across the wall of flame. Impossibly, it seemed to fill more than 180 degrees of arc—the way the star was stretched out of shape, it was a believable illusion.

And the whole time, the repulsors continued to press against them, pushing them down toward the flames.

Then, blessed darkness again. Blessed relief. And stars, quiet stars. The team waited in silence, listening to ship noises and chatter through their communicators. As their eyes adjusted, they looked for telltale twinkles. There were none—none that they could see, at least—the repulsors had driven them backward out of the transfer tube. But they didn't know how secure their starsuits were; it was likely—inevitable—that each of them had been penetrated by the wavicle form of the creature. And even now, there were probably pinpoint worms, growing within their bloodstreams.

How much time do we have?
Korie wondered.
Is this another fool's errand?
There was only one consolation—
at least, I can't make any more mistakes. I won't kill anyone else after this
. He sipped at the water-nipple inside his helmet.
I'm sorry, Mikhail. I'm sorry—

A change in the light caused him to look up. The aft end of the
Norway
had appeared beyond the end of the transfer tube. It grew slowly as they approached.

The external framework of the transfer tube extended; its latches opened, ready to grab the contact ring surrounding the
Norway
's aft airlock. The hatch grew larger and larger until it filled their entire view. And then there was a solid
thunk
—a feeling more than a sound—as the latches grabbed the contact ring. The transfer tube extended and mated.
Panels blinked green and air flooded back into the tube. And with the return of sound—real sound, not filtered electronic sound—Korie felt his tension easing.

They had a place to go. Maybe it was safer than the place they'd been, but at least they weren't going to die alone in space. At least that much was assured now.

It wasn't much, but it was something.

“We have acquisition,” Brik reported.

“Commander Korie, you may reboard the
Norway
,” said Captain Parsons. She turned to Williger. “Anything?”

Williger didn't even look up from the display she was reading—she was using Korie's station on the Command Deck. “I've found the medical log. This is fascinating stuff. Really fascinating.” Then, realizing that her words and her enthusiasm were completely at odds with the seriousness of the situation, she apologized. “Sorry. But it is fascinating. See, look—there are two forms to the creature: the wavicle and the bloodworm. The wavicle is like a seed or a spore; but it's unstable. It's like most forms of
smart energy
. It maintains itself by feeding off light. If there's no light, it drops a quantum level and becomes a particulate form. But in that form, it's always looking for an energy source so it can boost itself back up to the wavicle state. Now, here—this is where it gets deadly—living flesh is transparent to the wavicle form, but when the wavicle enters a living body, there's not enough light to feed it, not the right frequencies of light, so it becomes particulate—and it's trapped inside. The particulate looks for fuel to return to wavicle form, so it starts feeding off elements in the blood, any kind of energy it can release: blood sugar, oxygen, hemoglobin, whatever. But that's still not enough energy in the blood for it to make the leap back to wavicle, so all it can do is breed more particulates—bloodworms. Hungry bloodworms. Hit them with a stinger beam or scan them, there's the energy they need—they explode, you get wavicles. The sudden torrent of energy kicks most of the particulates back up a level. This is amazing stuff, Captain—you could win a Heinlein Prize for Medicine just for tracing the whole life cycle. I wonder how such a creature even evolved. That's the real question here.”

“What about breaking the life cycle of the particulate form?” Parsons asked. “Can it be done?”

“To be honest ...” Williger leaned back in her chair and ran both hands through her short-cropped hair. She swiveled to face the captain. “This is kind of like the mythical energy creature from your childhood fairy tales. It feeds on energy, positive or negative, it doesn't care which; it thrives on the tension between one state and another. The only way to
kill it is to deprive it of energy. It can't survive silence. But you can't starve it without also killing the host. In fact, even killing the host is insufficient; these things will feed on the processes of decay. So there's no way to get it out of a living body. Except—”

“Go on,” Parsons said. “Let's hear it.”

“Well ... according to these files, there might be a way to block the bloodworms from eating. It would be kind of like gluing their mouths shut. But if the folks onboard the
Norway
actually tried it, I don't have that information here. At least, I haven't found it yet.”

Parsons had a quirk—a quirk that some officers called “the leadership quirk”—even when she knew the answer, she asked the question anyway, just to be certain. In this case, if there was an answer to be found, Williger would have said. Nevertheless, “Is there any chance—any indication that the information you need is there, but you haven't found it yet?”

Williger gave her
the look
.

“I
have
to ask,” Parsons said without apology.

“As fast as HARLIE decrypts it and scans it, as fast as he assimilates it, as fast as he processes it, it shows up in the knowledge-array,” Williger explained. “HARLIE has performed a cross-correlated, Skotak analysis of the data clusters, weighted for relevance to resolution. Right here in the middle, there's a block of data missing. A big block. You don't get those kinds of holes in a data cluster by accident. That means someone has deliberately destroyed or removed the relevant information. So far, we've found nothing that even points to the pathways into the blank area. It's a null-zone, empty as the rift—if we're going to find the answer, it's still aboard the
Norway
.” She nodded forward.

Parsons followed her glance.