Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead (36 page)

Empty.

He swung his gaze down the row: at least a dozen cryocapsules in the same state, lids raised, all empty.

“Zheng,” he said into the commlink. “I think there may be survivors.”

Joshua opened the door to the bridge, his nerves taut with hope. It was irrational — there was slim chance that Lucas would be among the survivors, slim chance that he was even aboard this ship at all. It was a fool’s hope, but better than no hope at all.

“The bridge is pressurized and oxygenated too,” he said to Zheng. “And the artificial gravity is running. Residual power in the life support systems, maybe.”

He went over to the computer, looking for the controls to power it up. The systems were antiquated, but he remembered when they had been state of the art.

“Zheng, can you look up the base codes for the Lateral 60 processors?” he said, hands roving over the control panel. He waited for confirmation, but there was nothing. “Zheng?”

No response.

Uneasiness crawled over Joshua. How long had the comms been down?

He looked up at the monitor again, still cold and black, reflecting behind him another face.

He spun around, and came up against the muzzle of a laser welder.

“Stop right there.”

Joshua froze, staring at the woman who stood behind the laser welder. She stared back at him, eyes narrowed against the brightness of his wristlights. She wore smudged overalls and her blonde hair was hacked short. She might have been thirty, or older if she’d had rejuv. He couldn’t remember if it had been made widely available before or after the last colony ships had gone out.

Slowly, Joshua raised his hands. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Who are you?” she said. “Let me see you.”

Moving slowly, Joshua took off his helmet. The air tasted cold and faintly chemical. “My name is Joshua Shepherd. I’m an astrocartographer.” He watched the end of the laser welder carefully — he might be impervious to many hurts, but he could still die by fire. “I’m here with a survey ship. We found your vessel drifting in space.”

“How do I know you’re not a pirate or a scavenger?”

“I have ID.” Joshua reached for his right wrist and unsnapped the disc fastened there. The woman’s hand tightened on the trigger. Joshua noted that the safety was off. “This is my astrocartographer license.”

He tossed it to her. Just before she caught it, he remembered it listed his year of birth. But her face didn’t change as she read it. Maybe it was all right. She couldn’t know what year it was after all, with the systems down and no contact with the universe.

She tossed it back to him. “How do I know it’s not fake?”

“How can I prove that it’s real?” He jerked his head at the laser welder. “If you shoot me, how will you get off this ship?”

“I guess I would take your ship,” the woman said flatly.

“I came here to help,” Joshua said, in what he hoped was a reassuring voice. “You and the other survivors.”

Her eyes flickered sideways and back. “There are no other survivors.”

Joshua opened his mouth, and then closed it. She obviously didn’t trust him yet, and she might well want to keep a few things back until she did. There were certainly things he wasn’t about to tell her — this colony ship dated from before the Concordance, and she’d probably only heard of sanguinaires as myth or nightmare. In any case, it wouldn’t help their fledgling relationship if he pushed her too hard now.

“I can get you off this wreck,” Joshua said. “But we have to leave soon. My ship is on a mission, and we have a very narrow launch window to leave this star system.”

He could see the conflict in her eyes. “All right,” she said at last. “But stay where I can see you.”

“Can I ask your name?”

“Sara.”

“Sara. I’ll get you to safety. And anyone else who—” He stopped. Around them, the computers were springing to life, rows of colored panels lighting up, the systems beeping in swift succession.

“Did you do that?” Joshua said.

“No. It’s the engines coming online.”

Joshua stared at her in disbelief. “The phase drive is dead.”

She shook her head. “It powers up once a month to recharge the life support systems. But that’s about all it can cope with.”

He could hear it now, a dull whine rising to sharp pitch. “We have to shut it down, or we’re all dead.”

She stared at him like he had gone insane. “It’s perfectly safe. I told you, it does this once a month.”

“My ship is out there!” Seeing her incomprehension, he added, “My ship uses hyperfield technology. Hyperfields and phase drives don’t mix.”

Their gazes remained locked a moment more. Then a deep vibration resonated through the ship, sending his bones shuddering. The expression on Sara’s face changed. She lowered the laser welder and pushed past him to the computer. “If this is a trick, so help me—”

But Joshua was already busy shouting into his commlink. “Zheng! Move the
Griffith
out! Stay out until the drive shuts down!”

Only static squealed from the comms.

The floor tilted. The walls warped. Joshua saw something bright and metallic hurtling towards him faster than he could even—

The world reeled as soon as Joshua opened his eyes. He let his lids fall closed again. Pain swelled in his chest, huge as a balloon.

With an effort of will, he forced his eyes open. The red glow of emergency lighting revealed a scene out of a nightmare. Above him, the ceiling had ripped apart, edges curled outward in frozen waves, exposing the bridge beyond. Twisted piping spilled like intestines from the walls. Fragments of metal floated around him, winking as they spun in slow motion.

Joshua looked down and almost passed out again. A jagged steel pipe, almost ten centimeters in diameter, protruded from his chest. He was impaled, a great gaping hole in the torso of his suit, seeping blood in a slow tide.

He let out a gasp, tinged with hysteria; the wound was a hairsbreadth from his heart. He tried to draw together shreds of calmness. He didn’t have much time.

His hands felt like limp plastic, but he gripped the pipe with all his strength.

Counted to three.

Pulled.

The world turned white.

Joshua came to again, lightheaded, pain still radiating from his chest. Fat globules of blood hung in the air, gleaming like rubies.

Someone called his name in the distance. A shadow moved above, beyond the torn ceiling. “Hey! Are you down there?”

Sara. He mustn’t let her find him like this. “Don’t come down here! It’s too dangerous!”

She shouted something back, but his awareness chose that moment to fade out again, and when sight and hearing returned, her shadow was gone.

Joshua reached behind him for his emergency canisters, fumbling in zero gee, the contortions almost causing him to pass out again. He finally managed to detach one of the canisters from its harness and unscrew the lid. He fastened his mouth over the nozzle and drank.

His throat worked as the blood poured into him, rich and nourishing, seeping into his cells, tanging in his nostrils with that sour metal smell. With the first canister drained, he started on the second.

The lights brightened to full power. The ship shuddered as gravity returned. Joshua experienced a moment of lurching freefall, and then crashed to the tiles. Twin bangs as the canisters hit the floor. Blood splashed like rain.

He lay motionless in the pool of blood, feeling himself start to knit together again, sensing the blood work its healing potency on him, knowing it wasn’t enough.

“Hey!” Sara, on the other side of the door. “Can you hear me?”

“I’m all right!” He had to get his suit off. There was a bloody great hole through it. He undid the fastenings and crawled out of the ruined suit. He salvaged what he could — commlink, wristlights, magline — and shoved it out of sight behind some wreckage. Nothing he could do about the blood — the place looked like a slaughterhouse. He stepped outside and sealed the door behind him, hoping that Sara wouldn’t enter the room anytime soon.

She had a cut on her forehead and stood with one arm cradled in the other. She stared at him. “You look like hell.”

“Just a scratch. I’m fine.” But his voice sounded hollow in his own ears.

The infirmary looked as though it had boasted enough medical supplies to tend an army. Sadly, it also looked as though that army had stormed through already. Burst bottles of antiseptic littered the floor, contents soaked up by long white streamers of unrolled bandages. The fuser still functioned to fix Sara’s broken arm, but there was no familiar domed pillar of a synthesizer, or even one of the huge units from the early days. At the time this ship was launched, Talwar and Chang hadn’t even been born, let alone thought about inventing a way to synthesize artificial blood.

“What are you looking for?” Sara asked, as Joshua roamed through the infirmary, opening and closing cabinets.

“Just taking inventory.”

He ran the calculations through his head. He’d fed that morning. Only six hours ago. He should have been able to go a week without feeding again, if pushed, but he had lost a lot of blood. The two canisters he had drunk had helped restore him, but he was still running at a deficit. Hunger shock would set in soon unless he was replenished.

“We have to repair the comms,” Joshua said. “Get in touch with my ship quickly. Within the next forty eight hours.”

“What happens in forty eight hours?”

Good question, Joshua thought. “Let’s try to get out of here before then.”

Joshua lay on his back beneath the bridge computer, replacing the burned out circuits. It wasn’t just the comms he needed to access, but also the database with the passenger manifest. Sara had left the repairs to go fetch extra parts from stores, evidently trusting him enough now to let him out of her supervision.

“Hey. This is for you.”

Joshua pulled himself out from under the computer, prepared to make his excuses if it was dinner. So far, Sara hadn’t offered him food, and he hadn’t asked. He had rehearsed answers for all the questions she might ask, answers he hadn’t had to use since the old days of pretending, of having to pass, and it was sad how easily it all came back to him, as though somewhere in his subconscious he had known he might have to do it again.

But it wasn’t food Sara had brought. “I found some clean clothes. Yours are a mess.”

She handed him a pair of overalls, neatly folded.

“Thanks,” Joshua said. He shook them out, and found Sara watching him with an odd expression.

“They belonged to my husband. He was about your size.”

“Was he aboard when—?”

Sara nodded.

“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head, making a cutting motion with her hand. “It’s past and gone. Only the future matters.”

He looked carefully at her, but she seemed to mean it, fierce resolution burning through the shadow of grief. She would have had to be determined, to live on after all she had been through.

“Where were you going?” Joshua asked quietly.

“A yellow star out past Canis Major. One habitable planet. We were going to set up a homestead by the mountains. Farm wheat and barley. Grow peaches out the back.” She fell silent for a minute, then said, “So. What are you doing out here?”

He had the answer ready. It was even true. “We’re an astronomical survey ship for the Commonwealth of Worlds. Our mission is to chart new star systems and set up astrobeacons for interstellar travel and commerce.”

“I got that before. I’m not looking for the official brochure. I mean, what are
you
doing out here?”

“Me?” Joshua had that answer ready too — exploring new worlds, making new discoveries, seeing all the wonders the universe had to offer. But it wasn’t his answer, it was someone else’s, the someone whose footsteps he was following in. “I’m looking for someone. Someone I lost long ago.”

“And you were looking here?”

He shook his head. “I came here by chance.”

“Lucky you.” A twisted smile. But the first smile she had displayed.

He smiled back, feeling suddenly lighter. No, lightheaded. He blinked. Everything looked sharper and brighter, the colors more vivid, the smells more intense. Sara was saying something, but he wasn’t listening. It was hunger, the onset stealing upon him, an aching sensation in his belly, fangs sliding forth from their recesses. He pushed them back in with his tongue, thought about snow, ice, the cold dark of space.

No good. The scent of blood filled his lungs; the pulse of blood filled his ears.

He leaned heavily against the computer and looked at Sara, whose face was registering alarm. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

She looked like she was deciding whether to support him or bolt for the door. “What?”

“I have a condition requiring regular medication, and I’m out. I may start to behave erratically, or even violently.”

“What kind of condition? Like a mental illness?” Her eyes narrowed. “Is that what you were doing in the infirmary? Looking for drugs?”