Black Hull (22 page)

“Let me in,” she said. The outer door
locked behind her, trapping her. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Keeping you safe. Your uncle paid good
money for my protection.”

“What service?” she asked. He didn’t
reply. She heard his steps drift back into the Fogstar’s bay, then, barely, she
heard him climbing stairs.

FOD checked behind the cargo chests,
found nothing, then eyed the corridor leading to the cockpit. Two doors halfway
down were open. Past them, a light glowed: the galley electronics hummed with
life. He walked steadily, intently eyeing each inch of the rooms as they
revealed on either side of the hall.

“You don’t want to test me, Graice. I
understand you’re buying time. But I
will
kill you if you surprise me,”
FOD said.

He entered the room on the left. A
collection of engine equipment, rifled through, lay piecemeal on the floor. A
trail of blood ran from a gutted wall panel: the intership com. Wires jutted
from exposed circuitry, their flaming tips carrying the acrid stench of burnt
plastisteel.

“Dumb brute,” FOD said, hearing feet
move behind. Longjaw rushed in from the opposite room, driving down with a long
cut of pipe.

“What the hell’s going on?” Sera yelled.
She heard a yelp, then the sound of something heavy crashing to the floor.
“Damn it.” She paced anxiously, then tried to open a channel to Mick. He didn’t
answer.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” FOD
said, staring down at Longjaw. Scabbed blood covered his face, and his raw gums
ground into the grate floor under the weight of FOD’s knee.

“You’re as good as dead,” Longjaw
groaned.

“Will you stay put if I go collect my
things and return to my ship, or will you try to cause more trouble?” FOD
asked, the nozzle of his pistol pushing into and reopening a wound on his neck,
the aftermath of Sera’s rescue in the bar. “Don’t have much to say now, it
seems.”

“Good luck getting away. You’ll need it.
In fact, there’s no such luck this side of the universe. No such luck.”

“Thanks. We’ll play our hand anyway. Now
stay put, you understand?”

FOD lifted his weight and rose, heading
to go collect the droids. Longjaw jumped to his feet and charged after FOD’s
pistol hand. FOD sprung around, expecting the strike, and lanced his shoulder
with the pipe he’d stripped from him. “No such luck, blackweather fiend.” The
pipe impaled Longjaw, then pierced into the wall behind, pinning him in place.
“I believe that’s checkmate.”

Inside the airlock, pieces of a broken
control panel lay on the ground.

“Finally,” Sera said as the inner
airlock slid up. “FOD?”

“Help me get these bodies back to the
ship,” FOD instructed from the corner of the bay, hoisting an expancapacitor
droid under each of his arms.

“Where is he?”

“Pinned upstairs, bleeding to death.
Have a slug at him if it pleases you.”

“Axa?” Sera said.

“The cabin maybe—I didn’t check.”

FOD entered the airlock as Sera walked into
the bay. The inner door shut, the outer door opening to space again, and FOD
floated back to his ship,
The Great Auk
, where Mick helped him haul in
the bodies.

Sera climbed the stairs toward the
cockpit, seeking Axa before helping with the remaining droids. Two doorways
loomed on either side of her, one with a doormat of blood. She walked up to it
and turned to look in. There, pinned to the wall, was a grotesque monster—a
long line of coagulating blood connected the floor with Longjaw’s gaping mouth.
His shoulder and neck were torn open, his eyes wide.

“You’re the other whore then?” he said.
She paused, glanced back toward the cockpit, then walked up to the maimed
bounty hunter.

“I am. Would you like a turn?” she said.
She gently pressed into his dying body.

“I would. I
would
. Get it?” he
laughed until he coughed blood in her face. She wiped it away with a smile.

“You’re a human—what happened to you?”
she said, placing her hand on his cheek.

“What happens to humans?” he said. “What
happens to us?”

“What does happen?” she asked, fondling
his chest, tracing a line through blood toward his lower abdomen.

“We die. Wait—I mean—we cause pain, and
then
we die. That is what humans do—that’s what happens to us.”

“Wouldn’t you appreciate one last
time
?”
she said, unbuckling his pants.

“You’ve got good taste,” he said,
delirious, shutting his eyes.

“Feel me,” she said. He tried to move
his hand to her stomach, but lurched in pain, paralyzed.

“
Feel me
, god damn it!”

She took his hand and placed it on her
breast, then her stomach, and then lower, to curves Longjaw had forgotten.

“My god—you are
warm
. They make
them as warm as the real thing these days.”

“How does this feel?” she said, her hand
sliding down his leg.

“I’m in a dream. I’m not dying—I
am
dying,
aren’t I?” he asked, his eyes suddenly open, wide with fear.

“No. You’re going to be just fine.”

“I am? This isn’t really happening is
it?”

“Did you touch her—the girl that was on
this ship?”

“She wasn’t as warm as you—I promise,”
he smiled, blood spilling from his mouth.

“Is this better?” she said. She drove
her fist with all her strength, tearing deep into the tissue of his thigh,
ripping it apart, grinding her knuckles against his femur.

“Ple—ease!” he screamed, alive with pain.

A pop sounded, and then another, his leg
splintering into pieces, crumbling to powder.

“Is this
warm
?” she said.

“Stah—hop!” he moaned, staring down at
the poking white of his bones.

“Stop—is that a plea for mercy? Did she
say that too? Stop? Did it work?”

“Stah-ah!”

Sera drove her balled fist upward,
cracking his hip, grabbing it, twisting. She tightened, grinding her finger
tips into her palm, slime-powder running down her forearm. Longjaw’s eyes
rolled into his head and he went limp.

“Piece of shit.”

She left his body, shaking muck from her
hand to the floor as she entered the cockpit. The inner airlock door whooshed
downstairs. “You get the rest of the ex-droids. I’m bringing Axa,” she called
to FOD.

Axa lay naked across a cockpit chair.
Sera stooped down, hoisted her up, and rose to see a vision of horror: a ghoul,
with half a face, stood in the corner of the cabin. His arm was extended toward
her, his right eye bright with malice, the other clogged by a sunken sphere of
leathery scars.

FOD’s third footstep onto the bay floor
triggered the blast of a pistol. It came again, then again. Five times the
blast rang as he ran up the stairs, gunfire filling his head.

A half-skulled malformation stood in the
center of the corridor, waiting for him; behind his feet lay a bloody corpse.
He pointed his pistol at FOD and fired.

Mick paced about
The Great Auk’s
bay, watching the airlock.

What the hell is taking him so god damn
long? And her? Jesus. Alone again. Maybe I take the ship? I could make a good
run. Would FOD be able to get me? Not if I figured out how to use this ship.
There’s enough droids on board to pay for ten jumps.  

As he toyed with his idea, the outer
hull sounded.

Thank god.

“Took you long enough,” Mick said as the
inner airlock door slid up. His jaw went slack, and he lost any further words:
Under one arm, FOD carried Axa, and under the other, Sera. He quietly laid them
on the floor. Mick couldn’t look. Her face was torn away, her chest hewn from
gun blasts, her eyes open wide, her mind departed.

FOD stared for a moment at Mick before
reopening the airlock to retrieve the last of the droids.

“I’m sorry Mick, I know how you felt
about her. The other’s been raped, she might be dead too.
Keep it together
.
I’ll be back.”

Space watched a lone figure drift
through blue light toward the Fogstar.

Your past is your teacher—learn from it,
don’t relive it. Stay here. Stay with her. She’s yours…

Mick—can you hear me? She’s dead Mick.
I’m sorry—so, so sorry.

Mick collapsed, throbbing raw, as if
something, long dead, had woken in him. He convulsed on the ground, pounding
his fists against the metal grating. Bits of his flesh stripped away; he
ignored the pain—another pain filled him, something dormant since he’d
undergone rewiring: He saw the kind mouth of his mother’s mother; he felt
Selby’s cold nose brush against him; he felt loved ones close in all around
him, warm and snuggling on the couch, in his home. He saw his son running
toward him, the joy of the first day of school on his face. He saw Karen’s
golden dress, wrapping her celestial body, and then she was naked, dripping
wet. She spoke to him:

“Dance?”

Karen, I love you. I am so sorry for
what I did to you. Forgive me.

“Here I am.”

“Mick, get up.”

A chill ran through his body. Cold metal
shook his shoulder.

“Mick, we’re here. We have to drop Sera
and unload the expancapacitors,” said XJ.

“What?” Mick sat up in darkness
.
Blue
clouds banded over red peaks in the port window.

Carner’s Post.

Mick jumped from cryo, pulled on
underwear, and rushed past XJ into the hull bay. FOD stood over a bundled mass.

Sera
.

“What the hell’s the idea?” Mick said.
He looked around to confirm XJ’s suggestion: the expancapacitor droids he’d
collected were nowhere in sight.

He did sell them.
 

“No need for them. We need the credit,”
FOD said.

“Like hell—I stole those to get her dad
and her brother into them. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her fail that
after what I did.”

“No one’s failing anything. You don’t
understand Utopia.”

“What the hell do you mean?” Mick said,
rubbing his eyes. The hangar door opened, blue glare blinded him. In the windy
distance, Carner hobbled to them on a cane. GR rolled beside him, helping transport
cargo.

“She was under a misapprehension—that
you
physically
enter Utopia.”

“Well then?”

“You upload to it—that’s it.”

Jesus
.

“The whole place—it’s a moving world of
.HUM files. The final pinnacle of human ignorance.”

I’m tired of this shit—there are too
many reasons to be sad. It’s useless.

“We get paid by Carner, push off this
rock, head for Utopia, upload the droids, Axa. You run my job, and I’ll get you
home.”

“Is she up yet?” Mick asked, remembering
Axa. After they’d regained the Fogstar and lost Sera, it was unclear if she
would survive. He’d decided to get into Cryo—leave the waking life. FOD had
gladly consented.

“She woke up. Looks like she’ll live,”
FOD said, turning to greet Carner.

“FOD,” Carner said. He eyed Mick, who
stood nearly naked, condensation on his chest. “Mick.”

“Where do you want
her
?” FOD
said, standing over Sera’s body.

“Stupid girl.” He paused, looked at his
niece. “And you? How much did I pay you?” Carner leaned forward, nearly
falling. He tried to smack FOD across his jaw. FOD caught him and held him up.

“It was a rogue. Circ-modded beyond
recognition. No way to tell he was on board with the other,” FOD explained.

“Bullshit,” Carner sighed. He looked at
XJ and GR. “You going to stay good on her promise to them?”