ALIEN THE COLD FORGE Read online

  “Get back to the airlock,” Dick says, any pretense of storytelling gone now. She throws one hand against her helmet, scraping the bubble free and fusing her glove to the plastic. It’s eating through into her palm. It burns like nothing she’s ever felt. She can’t see, but she’s begun to tumble. The full wrath of Kaufmann’s heat bears down in waves.

  “Blue… Blue!” Dick shouts. “It’s not real. You’re not dying, but you’ve got to get out of there.”

  She tries to steer the Turtle, but it won’t listen to her. She can’t find a way to right herself. There’s a “return-to-home” command on the right side of her pack—accessible via the hand that’s melting to her helmet at that very moment. She twists in open space, feeling for it. The other snatchers are going to pop at any second, a barrage of molten grapeshot.

  “Okay, Blue, hit the return-to-home, now.” Dick’s voice is calm and sure.

  Low-pressure warnings fill her ears. She’s losing oxygen—not that it matters. Marcus doesn’t need to breathe, but the thought of not filling her lungs induces more panic. Her visor’s protections are failing as acid disrupts the lattice of polarizing nanotubes. The sun blisters her face, and she can’t communicate because her microphone has fused with the half-melted visor.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she whispers with what air she has left. Her left hand won’t reach the control surface. Her visor is either black in the middle or painfully bright at the edges. She’s going to lose Marcus out here, spinning in the abyss. She won’t be able to work on her project again until the resupply in six months. Sudler will figure out her secrets long before then.

  This false death will be the beginning of a much longer real one.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck… fuck it.”

  Using her left hand, she unbuckles herself from the EVA pack’s restraints, careful not to let go of the dangling straps. She spins it upside down, stopping it with the edges of her boots. She leans into it, shielding her face from the sun as best she can, and looks through the edge of her visor. There’s the return-to-home button, just next to her left hand. She presses it.

  The pack violently pulls away as its thrusters engage, and Blue snatches out at the belts that once held her fast. She barely catches hold of one, but Marcus’s arms are strong and solid. He won’t let go.

  Particles of radiation load the back of her suit, baking her inside. The saving grace is that she continues to spin like a rotisserie, getting an even heat as opposed to being burned to death on one side.

  The pack zips through open space, bucking wildly as it compensates for Blue’s unstable weight. She catches sight of the hull, but it’s a shower of acid blobs and appendages in a haze of dissipating black smoke.

  If she takes another hit, she won’t make it back.

  “Blue! Blue do you copy?” She can’t respond with a dead mic. Her legs swing out as the EVA pack pinwheels her toward the ship, and she nearly loses her grip on the strap.

  “Come on, baby,” she says. “Just a little more, and—”

  She slams against the hull like she’s just been hit by a transport, and the pack twists loose from her clutching hand. It rockets away from her, but she can’t see where. She only knows it went up.

  “No!”

  Blue flails outward with her free hand, searching for any possible purchase. She finds a thin ledge and digs her fingers into it, pulling her body close. The radiant heat of the station sears her hand and torso where the suit touches, in spite of its substantial protections.

  Pulling herself upward, she spots a shadowed opening. The airlock. The pack must’ve scraped her off while trying to enter. Her foot finds a purchase below her and she kicks, desperate to fill the edges of her vision with the cave-like sanctuary.

  She reaches inside and finds the airlock’s handhold, pulling herself to safety. Throwing her back to the cold wall, she slams the cycle button to begin repressurization. Back under the sway of artificial gravity, she sinks to her knees, hyperventilating. The fucking Turtle rests against the far wall, having successfully “returned to home.”

  When enough air fills the chamber, she hears Dick on the loudspeaker, calling for her to give him a status. But she can’t speak. She can’t stop shaking. She reaches up to unlatch her helmet, and in spite of the oxygen, she still can’t breathe. There’s a distant, incessant beeping.

  Her hands seize up and the world pitches. Something must be wrong with the gravity drive, because a force pulls her hard toward the deck. She doesn’t recognize the warning beeps that she’s getting. They don’t sound like any of the error codes she knows.

  As she sinks to her knees, she recognizes the warning from a long-ago hospital stay.

  It’s her bedside oxygen alarm.

  8

  TRUTH WILL OUT

  “How is she?”

  Dorian sort of cares, and sort of doesn’t. On the one hand, Blue is the most interesting person on this scrapheap, and on the other, she jeopardized the lives of all his specimens with a few amateurish lines of code. Too many adult snatchers died in the fires of Kaufmann. Each one was priceless, but as a Company line item, they were close to a million dollars each: procurement, housing, power, logistics. Blue’s research will have to pay dividends, or her project will be catastrophically in the red.

  She could’ve asked for help from someone more qualified to write the containment code, but she didn’t. Why not? Why did she insist on doing everything herself?

  “Stable. Dying,” Anne says, crossing her arms. “The usual.”

  “Don’t do that,” Dorian chides.

  Anne stands in his doorway, leaning against the frame. She came to him to give him an update after Marcus intubated Blue. He’d set up his drawing stool to sketch the starlight filtering into his room, but lost interest. When Anne arrived, he was still sitting at his stool, newsprint firmly mounted in place. He’d started drawing her instead.

  “Don’t do that,” Dorian repeats. “Cross your arms, that is. I had you one way, and you’ve moved too much.”

  Anne narrows her eyes. “What? You’re drawing me?”

  He smiles and inclines his head. “You’re a picture. I should absolutely draw you.”

  She smiles more coyly than he’d expected, as though she’d hoped to hear such a tacky line. Dorian feels attraction to Anne in the same way that he enjoys pornography— prurient, mutable, forgettable. She carries a few of his fetishes: her fitness, her sharp eyes, her potential for violence. He’s only ever felt lust, never emotional attachment. Once upon a time he avoided women because they reinforced the fact that something was wrong with him. Now, however, Anne is a distraction, and he needs to be removed from the annoyance percolating in his veins.

  He’s seen her looking at him, too. Anne is a physical animal, someone who enjoys a workout, someone who likes lean, muscular men. Dorian noticed her looking the same way at Marcus—watched him walking away, glanced down at his chest when he crossed his arms. Dorian’s physique will afford him some advantages.

  The way he styles his hair, waxes his skin, his speech patterns—Dorian affects a synthetic look. He wonders if Anne likes that, specifically, about him. Does she enjoy all of her men as plastic objects? Does she make Marcus fuck her when Blue isn’t in control? Or maybe Blue and Anne have enjoyed each other’s company before.

  He reaches across to grab his pack of smokes, and finds he’s running low on matches. He’s even more annoyed because he remembers he still can’t find his striker paper. It’s not like it matters—he has an electric lighter—but he enjoys the ritual of it all.

  “Please don’t,” Anne says, but she doesn’t turn to leave or stop him.

  “Smoke?” he asks.

  “Draw me. I’m not cooperating with this.” But she puts her hands down by her sides, the way they were before. “I haven’t showered or anything.”

  “I think that’s beautiful,” he lies with a thoughtful smile. “It’s a hard day’s work, well-earned on your skin.” He doesn’t like stink. If she takes
his bait, he’ll insist on fucking her in the shower. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  He looks into her eyes from across the room, and imagines how he appears—a lanky, athletic fellow in a suit, dark against the fury of a star. It’s a nice composition. She should enjoy it.

  “Why are you nice to me when no one else is?”

  This is a lie, more or less. Anne isn’t any nicer or meaner than any other crew member, except Blue. If he were basing his question on deference, he should be trying to fuck Lucy. If he were basing his question on respect, he’d be trying to fuck Commander Cardozo.

  He hopes to cement the idea of a special bond between them. At first, she’ll see him as pleasantly misguided by her politeness, but at the crux of his sentence lies another implication. “You’ve made me feel less alone.” Because Dorian has been so cold to everyone else, Anne will wonder if she’s the only person with the ability to do so.

  “What are you talking about? Commander Cardozo is—”

  “Doing his job,” Dorian says. “He’s a military man meeting a superior.”

  “I was in the Colonial Marines, too,” she responds, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t you forget it.”

  “You’re more adaptable than that, though. He defines himself by his military career. You seem more like someone who defines herself by… potential.”

  “Are you bagging on the Marines?”

  “I wouldn’t dare.”

  “Goddamned right you won’t.” She nods at him. “How long do I have to stand here?”

  This is tricky. She can’t feel trapped or hit on, or it will end abruptly.

  “Oh, sorry. I was just kidding around… about the drawing stuff. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

  It’s frustrating, having to cloak his intentions behind plausible deniability, constantly having to cover for one physical urge or another. He understands why the Company wouldn’t want him sleeping with the subjects of his audits. They think his targets would feel compelled to please him, just to keep their jobs. Yet the sex part is boring. No, for Dorian it’s about overcoming the defenses of an enemy. Pulling the levers of power is just cheating. Harassment is a game for the limp-dicked old executives.

  Dorian is better than that. He does, however, wish he could let Anne know she’s playing against him. It would be fun to see her genuine reaction, if she knew what was at stake.

  “Oh, really?” She looks disappointed. “I thought you really were sketching me.”

  “I was,” he says, “but I don’t want to hold you up if you have somewhere to be.”

  She strides inside a few paces. “Security is done for the day. Juno is offline, and Javier’s rebuilding her. Dick is making sure the cells will still work. It’s all ‘hurry up and wait’ at this point.”

  He glances down at the conté on newsprint, rough black streaks of smudged gestures. They look feminine and strong, sharp diagonal cuts of hips and shoulders, in contrast to the vertical framework of the door. To draw for posture is to render someone nude to their bone structure, stripping away poor clothing choices, regrettable pockmarks on skin, and even expressions.

  “I didn’t have long,” he says, “but would you like to see what I got so far?”

  She moves to his side and looks over the paper. What does she see in it? She’s little more than a stick figure with geometric volumes superimposed over her form. He wipes his hands on a rag.

  “Why don’t you draw digitally?”

  “Because I can’t feel it.”

  This is the truest thing he’s said since arriving at the Cold Forge. He cares little for the real people in his life, and recognizes his indifference as one of his great strengths. Stories, however, can make him cry. When he stares into the eyes of a painting, he can connect in a meaningful way, even for the briefest of seconds. For Dorian, portraiture is like the process of archaeology, sweeping away pure white sands to find the figuration hidden underneath. His tools are crayon and charcoal, smudge stick and eraser.

  It’s a filthy process.

  The screen adds a layer of unacceptable sterilization. It removes the essence to which he would connect. Perhaps that’s why it’s so easy for him to hurt people on a spreadsheet. Figures have no scent, no life, no beauty.

  “It’s beautiful,” she says. It isn’t though, any more than a lump of dirt is beautiful pottery. She’s lying to him because she thinks he’s proud of it. She’s interested in his approval.

  He waits for her to become awkward enough to take a seat.

  “You never answered my question,” he says. “Why are you so nice to me?”

  “I think you’re misunderstood,” she replies.

  He swerves his expression away from the wan smile he wants to give her. He’d love to tell her about every person who’s ever called him a corporate shill, a hatchet man or a heartless son of a bitch, and that they’re entirely correct. He loves the interplay of patterns created and broken. He likes to win, and in moments of transcendent blunt honesty, he knows he likes for someone to lose. That’s the only way the game can be meaningful.

  “How so?” he asks, but he knows her answer before she speaks the words. It’s a tough job. Someone has to do it. It’s a company, not a charity. All of it meaningless because it robs him of his agency in the equation. He loves to shut down projects. He enjoys every minute of it. He brings balance to a great machine by introducing chaos into the component parts.

  “Would you mind if I tried again?” he says, gesturing for her to bring her chair closer and sit in front of him.

  She does.

  He begins with the broad strokes of her face: the brow line, the lips, the way her jaw meets her ear, the shape of her head. He’s rushing, though, to get to her eyes—the main event. Once he reaches those glassy blue orbs, he can stare into them for as long as he wants without an excuse.

  Dorian asks Anne about her childhood, and hears about life on the flooded Gulf Coast, about all of the hurricanes and tornadoes and tragedies of small-town life. He’s an excellent listener, practiced in the art of making someone feel not only heard, but appreciated. He laughs at her jokes, indulges her glances at his body. Looking directly into her eyes as he is, he can follow each and every one of them.

  She tells him about her father’s suicide when she was in high school, and the reason why she joined the Corps. She tells him of her mother’s opiate addiction and her estranged sister who works in a New York advertising firm. She talks about college at Purdue. She talks about briefly dating a pro baller. Lastly, she talks about joining the Corps and being dishonorably discharged for public intoxication during a siege.

  She never once asks about Dorian. That would be a warning sign, if she did. No one should notice him—not the real him.

  When she’s had her fill of his false indulgence, he looks long into her eyes, leans forward and kisses her. She doesn’t protest. Quite the contrary. She wants him. She burns for his touch, and he doesn’t expect her to be so bold or powerful. She shoves him down and shows him all the wonderful things her body can do, devouring every inch of his flesh. She washes him in her fantasies, wringing every last drop of ecstasy from his bones, and showing him that he’s been missing from her station life for far too long.

  He is startled.

  He is aroused.

  He is accepted.

  He fights her for dominance, tumbling across the sprawling bed in his quarters, over the dresser, onto the sink. She fights dirty, biting and scratching, and in the end, he recognizes her raw strength. She holds him down and throttles him as they climax one last time.

  Anne Wexler has won, and for once, there are no losers.

  * * *

  It’s near the end of the night cycle when Dorian awakens, stiff and coated in dried sweat, to find Anne staring at him, her chin propped up by an elbow. At first, he worries that it might be some sort of legitimate affection, like the way lovers watch one another sleep. He’s pleased, therefore, when he sees the subtle
cues of worry upon her face.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “This was fun.”

  He gives her a quizzical look. “Is that the face you make when something is fun?”

  “Sorry,” she says. “I just know I shouldn’t have done it.”

  Mustering a semblance of sympathy, he says, “You didn’t do it alone. I’m not supposed to be fraternizing with the station employees. Could cloud my judgment.”

  She cuddles into the crook of his arm, which strikes him as completely out of character with her matter-of-factness and animalistic fucking. He hopes he hasn’t found some soft core at the heart of her. It would be too disappointing.

  He likes Anne, or rather, he enjoys her company. She makes good decisions, and doesn’t seem like the type to mourn. If she remained near him, she’d provide a source of reasonable entertainment.

  She strokes his chest and sighs, her hand warm on his exposed skin.

  “And what is your judgment?” she asks, and kisses the tender flesh of his ribcage.

  For her to ask so quickly after sleeping with him exposes her lovey-dovey bullshit for the act that it is. She thinks he’s stupid, or at least she hopes he is. An average man, blissed out on post-coital dopamine might choose this moment to share a personal crisis or some vulnerability. Certainly, Dorian’s personal walls are the thinnest after sex or a good, hard workout, when lassitude tugs at his guard.

  He marvels at her willingness to share her body with him to gain this information, though in his opinion it couldn’t have been any real sacrifice. He knew how to please her, understood her needs, pushed the requisite buttons.

  What other intrigues does she have around the station?

  Dorian has never loved anyone, and he certainly doesn’t love Anne. However, this question cements her into a special place in his heart. He, too, has fucked his way through several superiors, to get to where he is today.

  “Silversmile’s escape yesterday put everyone on thin ice,” he says, choosing truth. “In many ways it was a successful test of the project, in others, an abject failure. The evolutionary characteristics Lucy talked about in the outbrief were promising, but a weapon that can’t be controlled is only a liability.”