Каарон Уоррен - The Lowest Heaven

“It’s alien, then?”

“Partially. Some of it’s terrestrial. Just enough of it.”

“It’s illegal to go mixing alien stuff with ours, isn’t it?”

The recruiter smiled. “Not on Eris.”

“Why Eris? Why not Sedna, or a neighboring system?”

“The concentrated methane that will give you much of your initial inertia comes from Eris. The edge of the Sol system is close enough for us to gain access to local system resources at a low cost, but far enough away to◦– well, it’s far enough away to keep the rest of the world safe.”

“Safe from what?”

“There’s a danger, Enyo. A danger of what you could… bring back. Or perhaps what you could become.”

Enyo regarded the spiky satellite. “You should have hired some techhead, then.” She was not afraid of the alien thing, not then, but the recruiter made her anxious. There was something very familiar about her teeth.

“You came highly recommended,” the recruiter said.

“You mean I’m highly expendable.”

They came to the end of the long spoke, and stepped into the transparent bubble of the airlock that sat outside the pulsing satellite.

“The war is over,” the recruiter said, “but there were many casualties. We make do with what we have.”

“It’s breathing, isn’t it?” Enyo said.

“Methane, mostly,” the recruiter said.

“And out there?”

“It goes into hibernation. It will need less. But our initial probes along the galactic rim have indicated that methane is as abundant there as here. We’ll go into more detail on the mechanics of its care and feeding.”

“Feeding?” Enyo said.

“Oh yes,” the recruiter said. She pressed her dark hand to the transparent screen. Her eyes were big, the pupils too large, like all the techs who had grown up on Eris. “You’ll need to feed it. At least a few hundred kilos of organic matter a turn.”

Enyo gazed up at the hulk of the thing. “And where exactly am I going to get organic matter as we orbit the far arms of the galaxy?”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” the recruiter said. She withdrew her hand, and flashed her teeth again. “We chose you because we knew you could make those kinds of decisions without regret. The way you did during the war. And long before it.”

Enyo sliced open the slick surface of the superpod with her weapon. There was no rush of Tuataran atmosphere, no crumpling or wrinkling about the wound. No, the peridium had already been breached somewhere else. Arso and Dax hung back, bickering over some slight. Enyo wondered if they had known one another before Reeb picked them up. They had, hadn’t they? The way she had known Arso. The snapshot of Arso. Some other life. Some other decision.

Inside, the superpod’s bioluminescent tubal corridors still glowed a faint blue-green, just enough light for Enyo to avoid stepping on the wizened body of some unfortunate maintenance officer.

“Don’t you need direction?” Reeb tickled her ear. But she already knew where the colonists were. She knew because she had placed them there herself, turns and turns ago.

Enyo crawled up through the sticky corridors, cutting through pressurized areas of the superpod, going around others. Finally, she reached the coded spiral of the saferoom that held the colonists. She gestured to Arso.

“Open it,” she said.

Arso snorted. “It’s a coded door.”

“Yes. It’s coded for you. Open it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s why you’re here. Open it.”

“I–“

Enyo lifted her weapon. “Should Enyo make you?”

Arso held up her hands. “Fine. No harm. Fucking dizzy core you’ve got, woman.”

Arso placed her hand against the slimy doorway. The coating on the door fused with her spray-on suit. Pressurized. Enyo heard the soft intake of Arso’s breath as the outer seal of the safe room tasted her blood.

The door went transparent.

Arso yanked away her hand.

Enyo walked through the transparent film and into the pressurized safe room. Ring after ring of personal pods lined the room, suffused in a blue glow. Hundreds? Thousands.

She glanced back at Dax. Both she and Arso were surveying the cargo. Dax’s little mouth was open. Enyo realized who she reminded her of, then. The recruiter. The one with the teeth.

Enyo shot them both. They died quickly, without comment.

Then she walked to the first pod she saw. She tore away the head of her own suit and tossed it to the floor. She peered into the colonist’s puckered face, and she thought of the prisoner.

Enyo bit the umbilicus that linked the pod to the main life system, the same core system responsible for renewing and replenishing the fluids that sustained these hibernating bodies.

The virus in her saliva infected the umbilicus. In a few hours, everything in here would be liquid jelly. Easily digestible for a satellite seeking to make its last turn.

As Reeb cursed in her ear, she walked the long line of pods, back and back and back, until she found two familiar names. Arso Tohl. Dax Alhamin. Their pods were side by side. Their faces perfectly pinched. Dax looked younger, and perhaps she was, in this snapshot. Arso was still formidable. Enyo pressed her fingers to the transparent face of the pod. She wanted to kiss them. But they would be dead of her kiss soon enough.

Dead for a second time. Or perhaps a fifth, a fiftieth, a five hundredth. She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know.

It’s why she piloted Enyo-Enyo.

The woman waiting on the other side of the icy bridge was not one Enyo recognized, which did not happen often. As she guided the prisoner’s pod to the woman’s feet, she wondered how long it had been, this turn. How long since the last?

“What do you have for us?” the woman asked.

“Eris is very different,” Enyo said.

The woman turned her long brown face to the sky and frowned. “I suppose it must seem that way to you. It’s been like this for centuries.”

“No more methane?”

“Those wells went dry five hundred years ago.” The woman knit her brows. “You were around this way long before that happened. You must remember Eris like this.”

“Was I? I must have forgotten.”

“So what is it this time?” the woman said. “We’re siphoning off the satellite’s snapshots now.”

“I brought you the prisoner,” Enyo said.

“What prisoner?”

“The prisoner,” Enyo said, because as she patted the prisoner’s pod something in her memory ruptured. There was something important she knew. “The prisoner who started the war.”

“What war?” the woman said.

“ The war,” Enyo said.

The woman wiped away the snow on the face of the pod, and frowned. “Is this some kind of joke?” she said.

“I brought her back,” Enyo said.

The woman jabbed Enyo in the chest. “Get back in the fucking satellite,” she said. “And do your fucking job.”

Back to the beginning. Around and around.

Enyo wasn’t sure how it happened, the first time. She was standing outside the escape pod, a bulbous, nasty little thing that made up the core of the internode. It seemed an odd place for it. Why put the escape pod at the center of the satellite? But that’s where the thing decided to grow it. And so that’s where it was.

She stood there as the satellite took its first snapshot of the quadrant they moved through. And something shifted. Some core part of her. That’s when the memories started. The memories of the other pieces. The snapshots.

That’s when she realized what Enyo-Enyo really was.

Enyo stepped up into the escape pod. She sealed it shut. Her breathing was heavy. She closed her eyes. She had to go home, now, before it broke her into more pieces. Before it reminded her of what she was. War criminal. Flesh dealer. Monster.