Viking (10 page)

What did that mean, he wondered morosely—alien bacteria at work already?

Was it his imagination, or did that guy’s face look especially flushed, possible
even a little splotchy? He did a quick assessment of his own condition, but found it
impossible to distinguish between fatigue and any nascent symptoms he might have.

Whemper did not appear to have the same problem. Between bites of dinner he was
complaining loudly about the rigors of the day and how he had a sore throat and
migraine, the unquestionable result of extraterrestrial parasites that would soon
attack the rest of the crew. Nobody heeded his little melodrama, perhaps because they
were repulsed by glimpses of his half-chewed meal through nicotine-stained teeth and
felt no sympathy toward his demand for neural stimulation to mask the pain.

Chen tossed Whemper a packet of pain reliever on her way to Fazio’s bunk. The big
man had been sleeping off his surgery all day long, not once emerging from the module.
Rafa was inclined to suspect his sedation had been prolonged to avoid more fireworks
with Heward.

If that had been Chen’s strategy, its effectiveness was over. Rafa heard a snarl,
saw his muscular arm swat away Chen like an annoying pest. The next minute Fazio was on
his feet glaring around the room, his throat yellowed with iodine and swathed with
bloody gauze. He made a futile, hoarse, wheezing attempt to speak, then swayed
unsteadily and sat back down with a lurch, his eyes full of malice.

At the same moment, Heward walked in and perched on a convenient spot, eyeing the
group coldly.

“Well, well, Sleeping Beauty is finally with us again. Have a nice nap?”

Fazio responded with a sullen glare.

Heward snorted and lifted a finger. “I’ll have some of the peaches, Compton.”

The woman shoved the ration box in Heward’s direction without meeting his gaze. He
dragged it closer with his toe, retrieved a meal packet, and continued to survey the
crew with unhurried arrogance.

“How about a medical report, Chen?” Heward spoke casually, but there was an implied
rebuke in his tone, a hostility that annoyed Rafa.

The lines around Chen’s high cheekbones deepened into a frown. “I thought Earthside
would keep you posted.”

Heward made no response except a steady, demanding stare.

“Nickerson and Rosetti are complaining of abdominal cramps and dizziness. They both
have a mild fever and rapid pulse. Earthside thinks they’ve got a local infection of
some sort. Not much we can do except give antibiotics and hope for the best. Whemper
and Carlsson have headaches and nausea. Might be the same thing. Might not.”

Heward eyed Whemper speculatively. “I doubt it,” he said. “You’d be surprised how
many different species of bug you can get exposed to in an hour of EVA. On my last
mission three guys got the runs. One got better, one died from internal hemorrhage an
hour later, and one ended up puking green worms. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

When Whemper’s face blanched, Heward burst into laughter. “Don’t be a fool! You
think I’d re-enlist if it had really been that bad? I’m more worried about the big
monsters than the little creepy crawlies. DNA from Earth doesn’t usually mix very well
on other planets. Same principle that keeps you from catching a virus from potatoes in
your garden.”

Rafa shook his head. Maybe Heward was making up his biological tale of terror, but
it wasn’t as far-fetched as he claimed. Before enlisting, Rafa had spent hours in the
prison library researching the public records of other viking missions. Some of them
read like scripts of a grade B horror vid.

Sure, certain viruses and bacteria thrived only when hosted by a particular genus or
species—but there were plenty of counter examples, both on Earth and off. Why else
would planetfall mean a mandatory one-year quarantine?

What chafed almost as much as the misleading information Heward was
dispensing was the abrasive, domineering way he controlled the crew. Rafa had taken
orders from commanding officers before, had been around military-style chain of
command. He’d seen different styles of leadership, but none less likely to inspire
confidence in critical moments than sneering insults and unrelenting condescension.

Heward couldn’t afford to be taunting everyone and throwing his weight around if he
was really interested in their survival—or his own.

Almost as if he’d read Rafa’s mind and bristled at the criticism, Heward turned back
to Fazio.

“Fazio, it’s time to get off your lazy southern hemisphere and get some work done.
We all slaved like dogs today while you were in La La Land, so you can put in some time
while we’re sleeping.”

Chen raised her hand to forestall Fazio’s angry response and shook her head. “I’m
afraid not, Heward. He’s still got a fair amount of narcotics in his blood stream to
block the pain, and what looks like the start of an infection. He won't do much for
a few days. Definitely not tonight.”

“
Definitely not tonight
,” Heward parroted in a sing-song tone laced with
sarcasm. Unconsciously he fingered the insignia on his shoulder. “Hardly the line I
expected from you.” He waited for a response, but when none came he strutted over to
the woman and lifted her chin with his finger. There was a suggestiveness in his
stance, a subtle subtext behind his words. “I was giving an order, not a
suggestion.”

Chen flushed. “I’m telling you it’s not a good idea.”

“Oh, Little Miss Can’t-Be-Wrong is sticking up for a boyfriend. I must say, you sure
know how to pick ‘em. But then again, you’re not the choosy type, are you?” He leered
at her mockingly.

Chen had done nothing to hide the prostitution in her background, but Heward seemed
to be privy to details that had escaped the rest of them. Had he read all their
dossiers, or just cornered Chen back on Earth when nobody was looking?

Fazio growled in anger but didn’t move.

Chen looked down.

Heward stepped back and glared around the room, weighing the reaction of his
audience. “I’m getting pretty tired of all this remedial tutoring, but I’ll repeat
myself one more time for the intellectually challenged. This is bondage, not Boy
Scouts. We are not a democracy. When earthside signs off at night, I am the law, and
what I expect is complete obedience. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

Rafa closed his eyes in disgust. Obviously it would only make things worse to
interrupt, but he longed to put the petty dictator in his place.

“What’s the matter, Orosco? Am I boring you?”

Rafa kept his voice quiet and even. “Not at all.”

“Oh, you were resting your eyes, is that it?”

Rafa stood slowly, his gaze locked with Heward’s. The fatigue, the stiffness melted
away, and his body automatically molded into the loose, balanced fighting stance
perfected years before. He felt no fear—not about the physical confrontation at hand,
and certainly not about its unavoidable resolution—only a sick regret of the spiraling
cruelty that would be prompted by his antagonist’s humiliation.

“Yes. I think we’re all pretty beat.” Again Rafa forced a matter-of-fact calmness.
He could feel his heart thumping steadily away and mused for the briefest moment at its
plodding pace. Perhaps he’d known the confrontation was coming and had subconsciously
exorcised any anxiety about it.

“Not beat enough, I think.” And then Heward’s pistol sprang from its holster and was
whipping through the smoky half-light in a blur, the angular fluting on the barrel
whistling as it cut toward Rafa’s eyes and jaw.

Time slowed to a crawl.

The reflexes Rafa had honed by long practice emerged from dormancy, and deftly
mapped the conflict into thrust and counterthrust, feint and deadly follow-up. Mongoose
takes cobra in a lightning game of bloody chess.

It was all plotted out for him: the fluid sweep of his arm that would twist the
pistol away with a wrist-shattering pop and raise an elbow to meet his opponent’s
jaw—the inevitable pulling back, amplified by pressure on the pinned shoulder, that
would leave Heward off-balance when Rafa’s foot took out his knee—the echo Heward’s
skull would make as it cracked like a melon against the deck—and the horrifying picture
of congratulations from unpitying and relieved spectators.

All so easy.

But superimposed upon the map was the specter of his daughters, splashing innocently
in the breakers at the beach, eyes glowing with merriment over twin birthday cakes. His
wife’s haunted eyes the last day she attended the trial. His parents. His brother.

He had decried violence, been its most bitter victim. If he struck back he would be
embracing it, using it ruthlessly to eradicate his problems. Never mind that it would
be defensive. Never mind that Heward deserved what he got. Never mind that every soul
in the sweaty, haze-choked room welcomed their commander’s annihilation.

He couldn’t do it.

He wouldn’t do it.

The carbonized tines around the mouth of the barrel tore into his cheek and across
the bridge of his nose. Rafa’s neck snapped back and rotated, dampening the fire of the
blow as much as possible—but immediately he could feel blood welling from the cuts,
running in scarlet outline along the stubbled jut of his jaw to the center of the chin,
and dripping through the open suit collar onto his chest.

Rafa staggered back a half step, regained his balance, and swept pain-clouded eyes
across the grimy upturned faces. He read scorn in Whemper’s cruel smile, contempt from
most of the others, and sorrow from Chen. Abbott looked thoughtful. Puzzled, maybe. The
kid had his nose back in his book already.

Heward was waiting when he finally faced forward again. He appeared surprised by
Rafa’s lack of reaction. Possibly even disturbed. But his voice was as cold as ice.

“There’s a little wake-up call. I wouldn’t want you dozing off.”

Rafa met his gaze steadily, making no attempt to stem the bleeding. “Okay. You’ve
made your point.” It took every ounce of discipline he had to corral the hostility from
his voice. He didn’t fully succeed.

There was a sudden flicker of understanding in Heward’s eyes, an awareness that he
had narrowly escaped danger instead of crushing a defenseless coward. He hid the
awkwardness by spinning on his heel to face the rest of the crew. “I’m glad that’s
settled. Now, Fazio, as I was saying, you’ve got some work to do. When I wake up
tomorrow I expect all the crates in the cargo hold to be organized and resealed.”

Fazio’s eyes burned with hatred. He made no move to rise.

Heward raised his eyebrows in contrived astonishment. “You think that’s a bit much?
You think I’m being nasty?” He raised his laser pistol slowly, released the safety,
cranked the power setting to maximum, and sighted casually along the barrel.

“This is mildly annoyed.” Suddenly he whirled and squeezed the trigger three times.
A trio of molten metal blooms erupted in perfect outline around Fazio’s shadow on the
bulkhead. Fazio paled and leaped forward to escape the sudden heat as the slag dripped
sizzling to the floor. “Nasty is what I’ll be if that job isn’t done when I wake up
tomorrow.”

And with that Heward left the room.

Rafa staggered down the corridor from the cargo hold, making half-hearted efforts to
stifle the hollow clang of his boots.

Every muscle ached. Every nerve had been strained beyond tolerance. Every joint,
every bone felt hammered and spent. He was seeing double and his eyes were red. The
lines of blood on his cheek were sticky and throbbing. But despite the weariness he
felt a glimmer of something approaching satisfaction. It was a peculiar sensation,
unfamiliar and out-of-place after weeks of unbroken fear, despair, and misery—yet it
glowed with a quixotic persistence.

After Heward’s strutting at shift-end, Rafa had been brimming with loathing and
hopelessness. It was all more of the same mindless cruelty that had left his life a
shambles, and as he watched the little melodrama he’d passed beyond abhorrence to
rebellion. Maybe he couldn’t save his own life. Maybe he couldn’t clear his name, or
hold his wife or know a daughter’s smile ever again. But he would not sit back and let
savagery reign supreme.

He was going to kindle a spark of kindness if it killed him.

He thought of it that way—as an act of will, a statement of principle, a tilt at the
windmills of brutality—more than as a personal favor to Fazio.

Rafa had half-expected the big man to drag himself to the cargo hold after the gun
play. Instead Fazio retreated to his bunk rasping dire threats at anyone who disturbed
him, leaving them dreading the fireworks when Heward showed up again in the
morning.

It had been easy to slip out unobserved as the vikings sagged into their bunks,
though every step had been a battle against his weary mind and body.
This won’t
take that long. I’ll be in bed soon
, he had told himself.

Once he reached the cargo hold all pretenses fled, and Rafa had nearly abandoned his
intention. Heward had been even more outrageous than he realized. The detritus of
scores of opened crates, packing material, protective wrap and tools lay scattered all
across the slick muddy floor in a jumble that would take hours to remedy.

But after a moment of soul-searching, Rafa’s resolve hardened. He marched to and fro
in a frenzy, lifting and stacking like an automaton on overdrive.

It became a holy crusade of sorts. He set a cadence, beat the rhythm with the same
mental metronome that had served him so well in his marathons, and drove himself until
the ordeal was done.

Now, as he tumbled into a bunk without bothering to disrobe, Rafa permitted himself
a small but infinitely sweet smile. Tomorrow he’d no doubt pay for the foolhardy
gesture, but he didn’t care.

It was worth it.

* * *

As he began his shift the next morning, Rafa blinked, eyes adjusting to the brightness of tropical
sunshine streaming through the open hatch. The air curling into the mostly empty hold
felt cool and damp. His arms and shoulders ached as they remembered last night’s
labors.