ALIEN THE COLD FORGE Read online

  But then she has the nauseating sensation of falling upward, while having her head turned against her will. Her hands clench and in response the bone saw impales the ill-fated primate, sending up a spray of blood and bile. It spatters against the metal deck before freezing in place.

  “Wha… thfu—man?” Kambili’s shout is disjointed and stammering.

  The world won’t stop spinning. Blue falls to her knees, but the ground beneath her gives her no sense of direction. Gravity still works—all the styluses and pads remain firmly affixed to the lab tables—but the spinning world accelerates.

  “Thiiiiiiiiii—nk itsa—” she begins to say, but that’s as much coordination as she can muster. The gaze of one eye drifts toward the ceiling while the other remains in place.

  The lab dims out.

  * * *

  Blue comes out of it, and the first thing she detects is the scent of shit. Her lungs don’t want to draw air. She goes to grasp the helmet, but her fingers don’t want to collaborate. Another jolt sends her forward in the bed, and she retches up bile.

  She gasps, drinking in the cold air like pure water on a hot day. Her hoarse, whimpering voice startles her. Trying again to wrap her saliva-slicked fingers around her helmet, this time she pulls it off. It moves with a sucking pop. She can’t hold up the six-pound assembly of wires and electrodes, so she hugs it to her so it won’t fall onto the floor.

  Blue is back in her room, shaking uncontrollably, the brain-direct interface gear resting atop her in a mound of sick. Exhausted, she wipes her mouth with her free hand and lies back in the hospital bed. It’s dark, but for a small night-light in the corner. She keeps it that way when she rides inside Marcus, so her real eyes won’t try to see.

  She hears the banging of distant boots, and it draws nearer, heavy and fast.

  “Marcus,” she says, but it only comes out in a moaning whisper.

  The android rounds the corner in a flash, taking the BDI gear away from her and snatching up a towel to clean her face and neck. He wipes her down, and then places the helmet at her bedside. The rest of her remains spattered with vomit.

  “I’m okay,” she croaks, but he peers over her, making absolutely sure.

  “I’m going to turn on the lights, Blue,” he says in a gentle voice. “Are you ready?”

  She shuts her eyes and nods. Red light filters in through her eyelids. A warm hand comes to rest on her forehead.

  “I’m afraid we have quite a mess,” Marcus says. “Can you open your eyes for me?” She does, even though the bright ceiling lights are like glass shards in her brain. Marcus leans across her bed, gazing into her eyes, not remotely concerned about the sticky mess of bodily fluids touching his clothes.

  He’s beautiful, but not attractive—clear green eyes like emeralds, high cheekbones descending into a stern jawline. Above his perpetually sympathetic brow, wavy blond hair catches the light. She expects to feel his breath on her face as he draws closer, even though she knows he doesn’t respire.

  “Pupillary response is normal,” he says, pressing two fingers into her neck. “Pulse one-twelve.”

  “Water?” She smacks her lips.

  He fills a cup and passes it to her. “It seems we’ve gotten our exercise today.”

  She swishes the bitterness from her mouth and swallows, some of the liquid dribbling down the sides of her chin. It doesn’t matter. Marcus will have to give her a sponge bath, anyway.

  “What happened?”

  “Wireless connection loss, possibly from a solar flare,” he says. “You were only synchronizing with two of my systems at a time, and that threw our balance by a considerable—”

  She shakes her head. “With sample sixty-three… Did Kambili…”

  “I’m sorry to say that it was a failure,” Marcus says. “We lost the sample.”

  She shuts her eyes again. “Fuck.”

  Marcus picks up the interface headset and begins to clean it. He stops short and gazes at her abdomen.

  “You’ve dislodged your pouch,” he says. “You may have done it during a seizure, caused by the disconnection.”

  At least her catheter didn’t come out. She remembers a time when she didn’t need colostomy bags. She remembers pizza and beer every Friday. She remembers being an avid jogger at Johns Hopkins. She had a life before her diagnosis—a trajectory that should’ve kept her on Earth.

  Blue doesn’t look down to see the results. “Clean it up, please.”

  “Right away,” he says, filling a cup with warm water and a few drops of disinfectant. Marcus removes the broken pouch and cleans away the excess. Gently swabbing at the area around her stoma, he makes a pained face.

  “What?” she says. He’s programmed to make that face when giving bad news.

  “I really think you should consider going full NPO regimen, Blue,” he says. “I’m concerned about laryngeal spasms.”

  Nil-per-os. Nothing by mouth. Blue juts out her chin, and she feels something of her own surly grandmother in that gesture. “I’m not giving up my goddamned Jello, Marcus.”

  “Then consider…” he says, pausing and pretending to think. Marcus already has identified the next thousand branches of the conversation, but she knows he pauses for dramatic effect. “Consider returning to Earth. You could remain in cold sleep, or if that’s not appealing, Earth has excellent palliative care. I don’t believe it’s healthy for a person to spend their waning hours designing weapons.”

  She grunts as he hits a tender spot. Her stoma has changed shape due to the constant bedrest, and the area around the appliance has gone slightly red. He’s right about the NPO, but she won’t allow it. Not as close as she is.

  “‘Waning hours?’ God, you sound like one of those old poetry-quoting models. Like a Walter or something. Have you got some William Carlos Williams for me?”

  He gives her a bashful look. “That wasn’t my intent.” Gently peeling her hospital gown off her emaciated arms, he sponges her off. She’d been so proud of her body once. She’d shared it with so many people.

  “Besides,” she says, “you’re Company property, and I’m a major asset. You should be trying to convince me to stay.”

  He clips another bag onto her abdomen and tightens the connection with a kind smile. Then he replaces her gown with a fresh one. “I’m directed to keep you safe, above all else.”

  She reaches up and touches his cheek with a quivering hand, its muscles atrophied from her condition. “And what do you do when safety isn’t an option?”

  “Then I keep you happy.”

  “I’m a scientist,” she says. “I’m the happiest when I’m doing my job.” She taps his forehead. “Up here.” Her hand comes to rest at her side. “Anyway, there’s not a resupply for another six months. How do you expect me to get back?”

  “We could freeze you. Await transport. You’d awaken at home as if no time had passed. And you’re wrong about the lack of transport. The Commander has authorized me to inform you that an auditor is docking in three weeks.” “What?” Blue would’ve sat up if her abdominal muscles weren’t in such pain.

  “I apologize,” he says. “I simply wasn’t authorized to share that information before now. I’m concerned about the amount of stress this has placed on you.”

  “Why is an auditor flying out?”

  “I haven’t been told. I’m sure it’s nothing serious, but they could be concerned about the slow progress here at the Cold Forge. Several projects are behind schedule.”

  “My project.”

  “And Silversmile,” Marcus says. “I’m sure you’re not the only—”

  Blue shakes her head. “Give me my portable terminal, and get out.”

  Marcus picks up the terminal, places it in front of her, and takes an unceremonious leave. Blue waits until the door is closed, glaring at the open portal until she’s safe. Then she unfolds the keyboard, balances it on her stomach, and logs into the digital drop. She isn’t supposed to do it too often—it’s dangerous if the station h
as too many outgoing signals—but something in this auditor’s arrival chills her skin.

  They can’t know what Blue has been doing with the egg samples. Weyland-Yutani hired her to find a way to control the strange beasts, to manipulate their DNA in utero. Back on Earth, she had been one of the planet’s leading geneticists. But now, far away in the stars, she has seen the brutal recombinant DNA of the creatures, and feels nothing but hope.

  It first became apparent at the moment of impregnation. The fleeting heat of a molecular change within the esophagus of the chimpanzee, not a larva or worm placed into the subject, but a set of complex chemical instructions that went beyond the intricacy of anything humanity had ever seen.

  Weyland-Yutani wants the creature, but Blue wants the code. Within it, she’s certain she’ll find the key to her survival. Yet capturing that injection is like a photographer trying to capture the moment a kingfisher enters the water—twinned beaks meeting across its mirrored surface. She could spend a decade with hundreds of eggs, and still meet with no success.

  Blue doesn’t have hundreds of eggs. She doesn’t have a decade. The last doctor told her she didn’t even have a year of life left in her. The last of her muscles will deteriorate. She’ll cease to breathe on her own. Her nervous system will be pockmarked with sclerotic tissue. Neuropathy will take her legs.

  She shakes the image from her head. Blue doesn’t want to be thinking like this, but the auditor’s presence has forced new pressures into her mind.

  The terminal boots up in her hands, and she types in her password. The phrase isn’t as long as she’d like, but her muscle memory simply isn’t what it used to be. She’s never logged into this terminal while inside of Marcus’s body—he would remember. She’s never allowed any cameras to capture the password.

  Checking her personal inbox, she finds a message from an old high school friend, with a picture of Blue’s mother, who passed away ten years prior. In it, Blue wraps her arms around her mother and smiles, and bright green trees wave in the background. A field of grain stretches away to their right.

  The friend who sent the photo is an independent contractor, taking orders from an intermediary, taking orders from Elise Coto, one of the one hundred-twelve vice presidents of Weyland-Yutani. If Blue is discovered, she’ll be terminated, with no right to passage home. She will be allowed to stow, but will have no access to a cryo pod.

  It will kill her.

  Blue removes her medical bracelet and snaps open the plate to reveal a micro interface bus connection. She plugs in the bracelet, which functions as a digital one-time pad. This smiling pastoral with her mother is picture A227-B, and hidden inside the picture are pixels that exhibit twenty-seven precise degrees of brightness variance—enough for the alphabet and some spaces. The cipher program maps the eight hundred relevant pixels and translates them.

  Blue’s heart catches as she reads the message.

  NEEDED RESULTS

  CANT PROTECT US ANYMORE

  GOOD LUCK

  2

  ARRIVAL

  Electropolarization dims Dorian’s window as he watches their approach to RB-232. The station becomes a silhouetted barbell against a sea of fire. His briefing indicates that, at one side of the barbell, are the crew quarters. At the other extreme lies the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF. The light of Kaufmann, the system’s star, gives the station a furious halo, and Dorian’s brain quickly draws parallels between the hues of fusing matter and the oils in his easel case.

  That halo also provides the perfect camouflage.

  Setting aside the classified reports on RB-232, known as “the Cold Forge,” he guzzles another bottle of the salty crap he drinks after every cold sleep. He’s grown accustomed to the taste, because he loves cryo. With every voyage, he becomes more unstuck from his parents, his childhood friends, his days in Boston. This is his twentieth voyage.

  He’s killing his past a little bit more with each ticket.

  He’d like to paint the transiting station, but it’s all so plain—just a shadow on orange. Dorian wonders what it would look like if the heat shield failed, and for a split second the station’s corridors and beams were placed into the ultimate radiance. What would that be like inside the station? He spends his next hour sketching, enjoying the stark contrast of black on white that comes from his conté crayons.

  “Docking in fifteen, chief,” Ken Riley, the Athenian’s captain, announces over the loudspeaker in the common area.

  Dorian misses his room on Luna. Now that was a view. Here, he has only a cryosleep pod and public washing areas. There’s no one on this ship Dorian considers fuckable, either. He’s the only person who isn’t essential to the transport’s functioning. Riley flies, Susan Spiteri is the copilot, Montrell Lupia operates comms and navigation. They all act as Dorian’s security detail while he executes his audit. He’s never had need of their services to stop an insurgency, but he often visits remote locations to deliver very bad news. In his heart of hearts, he hopes to see Spiteri gun someone down one day.

  It’d be entertaining, to say the least.

  While the crew struggles to prepare the tiny vessel for docking, Dorian skives off in the lounge, pulls out his easel case, and enjoys a stint with his artwork, working his arms and thawing his bones from the long slumber. Sometimes, he wonders if he should’ve been a painter, but if he’d taken that route, he would have been denied the perk of having his life extended by the constant cold sleep.

  According to the reports, there are thirty-two people on board the station, participating in three special projects. Two of them are behind schedule. One of them, “Glitter Edifice,” is running out of funding and supplies. He doesn’t know what “Glitter Edifice” is or what it does, but it looks like boring genetic work. The documents were heavily redacted.

  He’s laying the finishing touch on a gesture drawing— the lines of RB-232 pierced by the persistent rays of the sun—when the ship jolts and his grip slips. A hard, scraggly line leers back at him from the surface of the Bristol board. The piece was only a study in shape, but he quite liked it before this imperfection, and a rage swells in his gut. Dorian grits his teeth and scribbles across the surface, decimating the tip of the conté crayon. Then he crumples up the paper and tosses it into the incinerator, along with his now damaged crayon.

  It’ll be hard to get to an art store ten parsecs from Earth, but he’ll figure something out. He still has plenty of tubes of oil paint.

  “Airlock secured, sir,” Ken says. “We’re latched on.”

  “Smooth landing, Captain,” Dorian says.

  “Thank you, sir.” The captain has missed the sarcasm, and Dorian regrets not injecting more venom into his tone. He goes to the crew baths and washes his hands, then dries them on a white hand towel, smearing charcoal black into its fibers. Walking to his mirror, he fashions a tie into a complex, multi-layered knot that would make

  Van Leuwen weep with jealousy. Squaring his shoulders, he regards himself for a long while before re-combing the sides of his hair and slicking them back down with some product. He makes sure the upward curve of his regal cheek flows straight into the lines of his coiffure.

  “Sir?” Ken’s voice comes over the intercom again. “They’re, uh, expecting to meet with us soon.”

  “They can wait, Captain,” he replies, smoothing a single stray hair back into place. “We’ve been in transit for a year. They’ll live another five minutes without us.”

  “Acknowledged.” The most noncommittal response anyone can give on a ship.

  Ken, Montrell, and Susan shuffle past the crew baths and into the common area, where they all tell jokes and crack open beers. In spite of Ken’s recent failure, Dorian likes them all. They never ask him questions. They keep him informed. They shuttle him to the places that need auditing, and don’t try to induct him into their “family.” Families are overrated.

  As he grooms, he wonders about the last time the crew of RB-232 saw a suit. It had to have bee
n when they left Earth, or at some sort of commissioning party. Their clothes would be five years out of date at a minimum, and Dorian is excited to see what they will make of him. Once he’s fully satisfied with his appearance, he joins his crewmates at the airlock.

  They’re all enthusiastic to get out of the Athenian and explore their new—albeit temporary—habitat. He likes that. They’ll report back to him with any strange corporate culture entanglements they find, and he can eliminate those responsible.

  Klaxons blare. Yellow dome lights flash around the airlock, and the doors open onto a spacious, though empty, docking bay. The meager inhabitants of RB-232 stand before him in the center of the deck, a thin parody of a military unit. They slouch against crates and sit cross-legged on the floor, then scramble to their feet as he enters. His eyes divide them into groups of threes, then he counts the groups: eighteen people. That means four have abstained from attending his boarding. He’ll take special care to memorize the faces and names of those who are present.

  A set of dim blue blinking LEDs runs along the floor in a train, emerging from his ship’s docking clamp and away down the central strut—some kind of wayfinding system, perhaps? Dorian looks left to see if he can spy where they’re going, but he can’t see the end of the long hallway, so returns his attention to the gathered crew.

  At the center of the group are a man and a woman, standing stiff as boards. They’re veterans, and he knows what they will say before they speak.

  “Welcome to the Cold Forge. I’m Commander Daniel Cardozo, and this is Anne Wexler, my chief of security.”

  Ex-military always speak first. They love to posture like they’re the heart of the operation, but on a day-to-day basis, in the middle of deep space, they’re worthless. RB-232 is shrouded in so many cover stories that it’s the dark secret of a dark secret. No one will be attacking them. They probably make viruses here, and with a virus there’s nothing to shoot.

  Cardozo is older, saltier than anyone else there, with skin like tanned leather. Likely he’s seen armed conflict, and is enjoying what amounts to retirement. Anne is Dorian’s age, smooth and lithe. She might be bored. Dorian hopes she is. Bored people are apt to do stupid things.