Steven McDonald - Steven E. McDonald

“Billy,” she said, and reality blinked.

He looked up. Now she was standing in front of him. The Core rose behind her, a dark setting for her pale, wet body.

He fell against her, his face burning with the radiant cold from her belly.

Pain shook him, tumultuous and terrible. His weeping turned to enormous sobs, grief and terror mingling.

She touched his face, her fingers burning, stroking.

He looked up.

“It’s all right,” she said, “it’s all right. You’ll never be alone again.

You’re with me now, you’re with me, and I have such wonderful things to show you….”

She touched his cheek.

Gently, her cold fingers reached for his eyes.

Reality blinked.

Weir raised his hands to his eyes. His nails sank into the flesh, tearing.

Blood streamed down his face.

He began to scream, releasing the pain, the anguish, the terror.

The rage.

I am Death, the Destroyer of Worlds….

Exultant, he was reborn.

Cooper hung head-down over the ad hoc weld on the baffle plate, making one last check for flaws. As far as he could tell, everything here was just, well, peachy. So he was a perfectionist. And Smith can kiss my happy ass, he thought.

“Solid as a rock,” he said aloud.

Smith, being a pain in the ass and an intrusion into the sacred space of his helmet, said, “How much longer you gonna take, Cooper? I want to get out of here.”

Cooper sighed. Smith could be such a humorless dork at times. “Zip that shit,” he said. “I’m done. Let me secure my tools, be two minutes, tops.”

“Roger that,” Smith said, and cut the connection.

Shithead, Cooper thought sourly. He had better be careful what he said—in the end Smith was the one getting them home.

Done with Cooper, Smith turned his attention to unloading CO2 scrubbers, wondering where Peters had got to. If she did not show up soon, he was going to have to go back to the Event Horizon and find her, and that was something he did not want to do.

He saw a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned toward it.

“Peters,” he said, “it’s about goddamn time—”

It was Weir, not Peters. Weir had been aboard the Lewis and Clark, probably heading out here when the Captain had been calling for them to watch out for the scientist.

Figures it would be my watch, Smith thought. He had had his fill of this mission, of that ship, and of Weir.

Weir ducked around a corner, head down. In a moment he was into the umbilicus, moving like a madman as soon as he hit microgravity.

“Weir, hey, Weir!” Smith shouted. “Get your ass back on board! Weir!”

Weir ignored him, spidering up the length of the umbilicus toward the Event Horizon.

Smith keyed his radio, furious now. He could have happily throttled Weir.

Keeping up with the scientist was turning out to be worse than cat-herding.

“Captain, come in….”

Captain…”

Smith on the radio, sounding none too happy. The tone of his voice worried Miller. He slowed from the fast jog he had been maintaining along the Event Horizon’s main corridor and found an intercom panel, keying it on.

“Go ahead, Smith,” he said.

“I just saw Weir messing around on the Clark,” Smith said.

Miller sighed. What the hell is he up to now?

Something popped and hissed nearby, and Miller turned his head to see.

Overhead, crudely severed, stripped wires were touching an exposed electronic circuit, shorting out with a small shower of sparks. It looked as though something had been yanked roughly out of that spot.

He shook his head, starting to turn back to the intercom.

A small box, closer to the floor, caught his eye, the explosives symbol standing out.

He turned to the intercom. “Smith, get out of there.”

“Come again, Captain?” Smith sounded startled.

“One of the explosives is missing from the corridor.” He looked up again.

The wiring was still shorting out. “Weir could have put it on the Clark.”

Smith took a step back, going cold. That son of a bitch!

“Get off the Clark now and wait for me at the main airlock,” Miller said.

“No, no, we just got her back together,” Smith moaned.

“Get out of there now!” Miller snapped.

You know I can’t do that, Captain, Smith thought, bolting from the airlock and racing into the Lewis and Clark. There would not be much time, but maybe there was enough. If he could get the charge out into space, away from the ship, most of the explosive force would be wasted, shrapnel being the only problem then.

He ran into the crew quarters, trying to figure out where the scientist could have put the case, ripping open lockers and spilling their contents to the floor.

“Where is it…?” he muttered, emptying Peters’ locker, sending her vid unit flying, not caring how much damage he did. Peters could get mad at him later. “Where is it?”

Smith?” Miller was yelling at the intercom, but Smith was not answering him. The stupid, crazy bastard! “Smith! Fuck!” He smashed his fist into the intercom panel, then turned and ran down the corridor, heading for the airlock, heading for his ship.

He was going to be too late, he knew it.

Smith plowed on through the Lewis and Clark. He pulled open a storage locker, started to reach in.

Something was beeping.

“I gotcha!” he said, and started pulling out the contents of the locker. “I gotcha!”

Almost ecstatic, he grabbed a duffel bag that was sitting on the floor, yanking it out. The beeping was louder, clearer. He quickly opened the bag, letting clothing fall to the floor.

The explosive charge was nestled in the clothing like a wicked uncle’s idea of an Easter egg, a warning light on top blinking in time with the beeps. The flashing and beeping had grown more rapid in the past seconds—the charge was reaching the end of its countdown.

The beeps stopped. A steady tone sounded.

Smith sat back, closing his eyes and sighing.

No time to prepare to—

Miller raced into the airlock bay.

Thunder rumbled through the air, and he screamed in negation even as the thunder faded and a wave of heat and light slammed him back into the corridor.

Klaxons sounded and he could hear the sound of pressure doors slamming as he tried to pick himself up from the deck.

Through the windows, white light had momentarily replaced the blue of Neptune.

The explosion was silent in the vacuum, opening out of the Lewis and Clark’s midsection like a flower of light. The force of the blast tore the ship into two ragged pieces, the drive section spinning away with fuel trailing and flaring, the forward section beginning a slow tumble as it passed over the Event Horizon.

Cooper clung desperately to a stanchion, praying that none of the shrapnel from the blast would puncture his suit.

The Event Horizon receded into the distance.

Miller walked slowly forward, staring through the airlock bay windows as pieces of his ship tumbled away. Metal shards struck the window, bounced off, leaving no more than minute scratches.

The drive section was tumbling into Neptune’s atmosphere. He doubted it would be long before it detonated, providing that enough fuel remained.

The nose section had tumbled past the Event Horizon and out of sight.

His ship was dead.

His crew was dying.

Miller turned and walked slowly to an intercom. He keyed it, turning so that he could see the drive section falling.

“DJ,” he said, his voice soft with his grief and rage.

“What’s happened?” DJ said.

“The Clark’s gone.” There was a flash of white light. The drive section was disintegrating. “Smith and Cooper are dead. It was Weir. You see him, you take him out.”