Peter Watts - Echopraxia

She wasn’t looking at him. Brüks followed her eyes to the bulkhead feed. They all seemed more or less mended by now—Chinedum, Amratu, a handful of other demigods who’d never be more than names and ciphers to him—although the pressure still kept them captive for the moment. Still insufficiently omnipotent to speed the physics of decompression. It was a small comfort.

“Those guys do not make sense,” he continued. “They roll around on the floor and ululate and you write up the patent applications. We don’t know how it works, we don’t know if it’s going to keep working, it could stop working at any moment. Science is more than magic and rituals—”

He stopped.

Ululations. Incantations. Hive harmonics.

Rituals.

These feeds have motion cap, he remembered.

Colonel Jim Moore crouched sideways against the Commons wall like a monstrous grasshopper: legs folded tight at the knees, spring-loaded and ready to pop; thorax folded over them like a protective carapace; one hand dancing with some unseen ConSensus interface while the other, wrapped around a convenient cargo strap, held body to bulkhead. His eyes jiggled and danced beneath closed lids: blind to this impoverished little shell of a world, immersed in some other denied Daniel Brüks.

The grasshopper opened its eyes: glazed at first, clearing by degrees.

“Daniel,” it said dully.

“You look awful.”

“I asked for an onboard cosmetics spa before we launched. They went for a lab instead.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

Moore frowned.

“That does it. I’m buying, you’re eating.” Brüks stepped over to the galley.

“But—”

“Unless you think that anorexia’s the best way to prep for an extended field op.”

Moore hesitated.

“Come on.” Brüks punched in an order for salmon steak (he was still tickled by the fabber’s proficiency with extinct meats). “Lianna’s back in the hold, and Rakshi’s—being Rakshi. You want me eating with Valerie ?”

“So this is a rescue mission.” Moore unfolded himself onto the deck, relenting at last.

“That’s the spirit. What do you want?”

“Just coffee.”

Brüks glared at him.

“Okay, fine. Anything.” The Colonel waved a hand in surrender. “Kruggets. With Tandoori sauce.”

Brüks winced and relayed the order, tossed a ’bulb of coffee across the compartment (Coriolis turned it into a curveball but Moore caught it anyway with barely a glance), grabbed one for himself and twisted the heat tab en route. He set the wobbly warming sphere onto the table and wound his way back to collect their meals.

“Still going over the Theseus data?” He pushed Moore’s fluorescent krill across the table and sat down opposite.

“I thought the whole point of this was to get my mind off that.”

“The point was to get you off your damn hunger strike,” Brüks said. “And to get me something to talk to besides the walls.”

Moore chewed, swallowed. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Warn me?”

“I distinctly remember raising the possibility—the likelihood, even—that you might be bored out of your skull.”

“Believe me, I’m not complaining.”

“Yes you are.”

“Maybe a little.” (Why did everything from the galley taste like oil ?) “But it’s not so bad. I got ConSensus, I got Lee to try and deprogram. Weigh a little cabin fever against getting stashed with the luggage for the next six months—”

“Believe me.” Moore smiled faintly. “There are worse things than extended unconsciousness.”

“For example?”

Moore didn’t answer.

The Crown did, though. In an instant she turned half the bulkhead bloody with Intercom alarms.

SENGUPTA, they screamed.

Moore commed the Hub while Brüks was still peeling himself off the ceiling. “Rakshi. What—”

Her words cascaded back, high pitched and panicky: “She’s coming oh shit she’s coming up she knows —”

A pit opened in Brüks’s stomach.

“I’m on to her I think she knows of course she knows she’s a fucking vampire she knows everything —”

“Rakshi, where—”

“Listen to me you stupid roach she kil—oh fu— ”

The channel died before she could finish, but it didn’t really matter. You could have heard the screaming halfway to Mars.

Moore was through the ceiling in an instant. Brüks followed in his wake, a jump up the ladder, a grab for a passing handhold, the endless loop of the conveyor pulling him smoothly along the weight-loss gradient from hab to Hub. Moore had no time for that shit; he shot up the ladder two rungs at a time, then three, then four. He ricocheted free-falling out the top of the spoke before the belt had drawn Brüks even halfway. That was okay. Maybe he’d have everything fixed by the time Brüks made it to the top, maybe Sengupta’s screams of rage would end and calm soothing voices would murmur in their stead, intent on reconciliation…

Sengupta’s screams ended.

He tried to ignore the other voices, the ones in his head saying Go back, you idiot. Let Jim handle it, he’s a soldier for chrissakes, what are you gonna do against a goddamn vampire ? You’re collateral . You’re lunch.

That’s right, Backdoor. Just turn around and run away. Again.

The conveyor, insensitive, drew him forward into battle.

He emerged into the southern hemisphere, knees shaking. There were no calm voices. There were no voices at all.

There was no reconciliation.

The vampire clung one-handed to the grille. Her other hand held Sengupta by the throat, right at eye level, as if the pilot were a paper doll. Valerie looked impassively into her victim’s eyes; Sengupta squirmed and choked and didn’t look back.

The south pole was a bright gaping pit to stern. Its reflection smeared across the mirrorball like a round toothless mouth. An image flashed across Brüks’s forebrain, courtesy of his hind: Valerie tossing Sengupta into that maw. The Crown of Thorns closing its mouth and chewing .

Moore edged along the Tropic of Capricorn, feet just above the deck, hands open at his sides.

“Okay, we can take it from here.”

Not Moore. Lianna’s voice, ringing calm and clear from the back of the Crown ’s throat. A moment later she sailed forth from its maw, fearless, light as air, heading directly for Valerie & Victim.

What’s wrong with her? “Lianna, don’t —”

“S’okay.” She spared a glance. “I’ve got it under—”

And was cut down with the sudden crack of bones snapping under the impact of Valerie’s foot, an obscene and elegant en pointe fired like a piston into Lutterodt’s rib cage. She spun back toward the south pole, a rag doll with no fixed center of gravity; the Crown caught her spine in passing, bent it the wrong way, tossed her back down its throat from whence she’d come.

Fuck fuck fuck—

“Let her go,” Moore was saying, his eyes still on Sengupta, calm as death. As though Lianna Lutterodt had never even made an appearance, as though she hadn’t just been swatted like a mosquito. As though she couldn’t possibly be bleeding out against the bulkhead a hundred meters to stern.

I have to help her .

Valerie kept eyes on Sengupta, head cocked like a predatory bird sizing up something shiny. “She attacks me .” Her voice was distant, almost distracted: voicemail from a monster with other things on its mind.

Brüks crept forward, belly against bulkhead: a strut here, a cargo strap there, hand over hand toward the south pole.