Excerpt Monday – Halloween Free Read Edition

October 26, 2009 on 12:15 am | In Elise, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Welcome to the special Halloween Full Reads for Excerpt Monday. This month, in addition to our typical excerpt week, we’re having a week of full stories written by several fabulous EM writers.
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In some universe, somewhere, someone was having a good time. Sadly, it wasn’t Daria. No, instead of a nice weekend in one of the many pleasure houses on Vegas X, she was docking with the deserted pile of space debris that constituted Space Depot Tyl 3, having hopefully shaken the tail she’d picked up off near the Gianfar system.

Shaking her head, she finished setting the maglock. Flipping the core over to secure stand-by and ensuring the Veil was up and running, Daria unbuckled her harness and headed for the hatch.

Her exosuit hung outside the hatch, and she stepped into it.  Theoretically Tyl 3 was neutral-habitable, but she wasn’t about to take a chance on this decrepit piece of crap.  Adjusting her air feeds, she settled the helmet in place.  Immediately, her rebreather kicked in and the scratchy hiss echoed in her ears. She stepped through into the transition point and closed the interior hatch.  She flipped on her scanners as the ship ran diagnostics on the depot.  Her complink beeped and the results flashed onto the heads up display. Evidently Tyl 3’s life support was, indeed, in working order. That was something.

Still, Daria didn’t trust it. Life support could kick the bucket any moment, so she’d just keep the exosuit on.  Unhooking the helmet, she fastened it to the hang strap and flipped it over her head to hang down her back.  Something about this depot gave her the creeps. Maybe it was the blocky chunks of the modules, stuck together at odd angles as if by some crazed interstellar toddler, or maybe it was the sheer lack of habitation in this star system.  Tyl wasn’t on the regular trade routes, so it’s very existence always baffled her.  Then again, maybe it was the idea that the depot sat out here on its own, running on its artificial intelligence and without any human interference for decades at a time. Yeah, that was probably it. The lack of the human element made her paranoid. One too many nights watching old Earth vids on long cargo runs.

Giving herself a mental smack, Daria holstered her plasgun before pulling the glidelift from its stall and opening the external hatch. The glidelift followed in her wake when she stepped through to the deserted corridor. Her boots clunked on the metal plates of the decking. The hollow echo came back to her and she shivered. It wasn’t that she minded being alone, per se, but being alone on her little runner where she knew every bolt was entirely different from being alone in this maze of emptiness. Best to retrieve the cargo and get the hell out of Dodge.

Smiling to herself over the old saying, she checked the heads up nav screen and turned down the corridor. She definitely needed to lay off the Earth vids.

Turning right at the intersect, she spotted the ladder to the next level up.  Unfortunately, she couldn’t see the top of the ladder, which made her nervous. She scanned briefly, double checking for heat or carbon signatures that would indicate life. Nothing.

Strangely, that didn’t reassure her. She started up the ladder, the glide lift following obediently.  Daria pressed her lips together.  Why the hell was she so paranoid that she’d docked on the dark side of the depot? And why the hell hadn’t Lakit put his shit in one of the outer bays?

Navigating the narrow corridors, she finally located the bay Lakit indicated.  She keyed in the code and uploaded her authorization information.  The door snicked open just as her complink chimed.

What the fuck?  A quick skim of the information revealed two problems.  First, another vessel had docked with the depot.  Given her earlier tail, she wasn’t inclined to believe that was a coincidence.  Shit.  Second, and possibly more alarming, her sensors showed a massive flare of energy in the storage bay.  She double checked the reading, because it didn’t make sense.  There hadn’t been any light or heat from inside the bay when she’d opened the security door, and the level of energy she was reading should have translated to one or the other.

Hurriedly, she ramped up the security on the Uday, locking it on to her signature.  She slipped into the storage bay, activating the lights. In the center of the small space was a large crate.  Wasting no time, she maneuvered the glide lift into the slot at the bottom of the crate.  She backed the loaded lift out into the corridor.  While the bays themselves were shielded against displacement, the corridors weren’t.  However, since the Uday was a small runner and she was running all security systems, Daria couldn’t afford to try displacing both herself and the cargo. She’d have to do the cargo and then herself. After that, she was getting the hell out of this dump.

A second later, the displacement field distorted the outline of the crate and glide lift.  A second after that, her sensors went haywire with another of those energy bursts.

The depot went black and the faint hum of life atmospheric support shut off.

Reflexively, Daria snatched her helmet over her head, securing the sealant flap.  The glide lift and crate were gone, but a – man? Being? – stood in the center of the corridor, light radiating from the surface of his skin.

Daria blinked.  Where the fuck did he come from, and why weren’t her sensors reading him?  And he was definitely a him.  A naked and glowing him.

More than a little freaked out, she cued the Uday to start her displacement.  She didn’t know what was going on, but damned if she was going to stick around to find out.

She felt the slight buzz and quiver that signaled the displacement field taking hold.  The being cocked his head, watching.  She held his bizarre, glowing eyes as long as she could before displacement faded her out.

When she reformed in the cabin of the Uday, she shook her head at herself.  Whatever that was, it was beyond her experience.  She’d never seen anyone or anything like that, hadn’t even heard of anything like that.

A quick glance in the back indicated the crate was aboard.  Working fast, Daria secured the crate with the specialized, nano-embedded cargo webbing.  The security monitors chimed.  Not only had life support on the Tyl depot been deactivated, but whoever had done so was now searching the depot.  It was too much to hope for that they weren’t after her.  Or rather, Lakit’s crate.

She strapped in, not bothering to remove the exosuit, and began to disengage the maglock.  Moving rapidly, she ran through the undocking protocol.  Just the Uday separated from Tyl 3, another of those energy flares bloomed across her sensors.

Fuck.

Even knowing what she was likely to see, Daria swung the pilot seat around.

Yep.  There he was. Still naked. Still glowing.  She palmed her plasgun, flipping the selector to full stun.  Trusting the ship to maneuver into flight mode, she leaned back into the chair and raised the weapon.

Her hands were steadier than her nerves as she aimed the weapon at him.  “What are you doing on my ship?”

He cocked his head at her, and she noticed that his features seemed curiously familiar.  Not like she knew him, exactly, but like maybe she knew someone in his family.  She blinked, forcing herself to concentrate on removing the threat.

“Answer me or I’ll blast you.”

He lifted a hand toward her, a slow, non-threatening gesture, but in the confines of her runner, it brought him too close.  She fired.  It wasn’t that she wanted to hurt him, but she didn’t know who he was or how he’d gotten on her ship.  Someone was chasing her – or Lakit’s crate – so there was only so much slack she was willing to cut a glowing naked man.

The plasbolt hit him dead center in the chest. It was a blow that would fell a charging takreet, but the glowing man merely glanced down to watch the plasbolt disappear into his body.

Daria gaped at him before recovering enough to flip from stun to terminate. No more fooling around.

“Who are you?”

He dropped his arm and moved toward her.

Her finger pulled the trigger before she made the conscious decision to fire. In the space of a heartbeat she got off three shots.  They were good shots, right to the mass of his body.  He should have been a twitching pile of protoplasm on the floor of the Uday.

He wasn’t. Instead he continued to move toward her.  One step, two, and all Daria could do was stare at him in confused panic.  What was he that he wasn’t injured by three full blasts from a plasgun?

Then he dove into her.

Outstretched hands hit her over her heart, and the accompanying jolt of energy raised every hair on her body.  She dropped the plasgun and tried to grab him, tried to – what? Stop him from jumping into her body? Oh, dust and cosmos, this was not good.

Her hands went right through him, and his head and shoulders disappeared into her chest.  A moment later, he was gone, and the energy spike ran through her like lightning, causing her body to buck and spasm.  The only thing that saved her from being flung to the floor with the force of the seizures was the fact that she was strapped into the chair.  Her vision narrowed to a pinpoint, then went black.

She came to in the chair, feeling limp and sore, but strangely ready to move. Daria blinked rapidly, trying to put the pieces together.  What the fuck had happened?

I did not know how to communicate with you.

She started, jerking hard against the harness straps. Where did that come from?

I am in you.

Oh, no. No, no, no. This was so not happening.

It is the only way. In this way I can communicate with you and we may make each other stronger.

Make her stronger? She shook off the thought.  She didn’t want some…some glowy naked man living in her brain.  What the hell was going on here?

A soft brush of laughter sounded in her head.  I am Ryal. I am sorry for causing you alarm, but there was no time.

“Get out. I don’t want you inside me.”

Regret floated through her consciousness. I am sorry for that, but I have no choice. If necessary, I can take over this body, but this is not my wish.

“What about what I wish?”  Panic was back, worse than when the plasgun hadn’t worked.  This was something out of a nightmare, only she was living it.

I am sorry, but we do not have time. We are being followed.

Dust and cosmos. This was just what she needed. Spinning the chair back to the controls, she took in the feed. Sure enough. The Veil had failed with the two displacements and the energy surge from the brain-squatter, making the Uday visible to the other ship. Now that ship was locked onto the Uday’s energy signature and would be a pain in the ass to shake loose. And they were closing.

Moving quickly, Daria jumped the controls, dumping everything into the navigation matrix and propulsion core. She couldn’t afford to bleed energy to feed the Veil until she put more distance between the Uday and the approaching ship.

“Onscreen specs on approaching vessel.”

Her heads up display flashed the information. Primorga runner, Vestal class, apparently upgraded propulsion. Same ship as before, and this time she wasn’t going to be able to outrun them.

“Continue running display of distance and estimated time to intercept,” Daria directed. Obviously they weren’t going to destroy the ship, since she was well within plasma cannon range and they hadn’t fired yet. What she didn’t understand was why they weren’t trying to open communication with her. If they wanted the crate, why not try to negotiate for it?

Ping.

And there they were.  “Computer, plot and display all possible evasive actions, including planetary and non-planetary objects. Compute probabilities for evasion and display. Open com frequency, block video.”

The possible escape routes immediately began scrolling her periphery display with the associated success probabilities. None of them looked good.

Her fingers flew over the controls as she plotted the best option. It would take them very close to Tyl, using the star’s gravitational field to slingshot them back around to Tyl 3 and out into the debris field. At that point, she could engage the Veil and hopefully elude her pursuers.

“Hail, runner.”

The mechanized voice from the other ship echoed in the cabin. Daria hated the translation programs – they always sounded wrong to her. She keyed a command for the computer to isolate the originating language. Having the translated Universal didn’t help her pinpoint the threat.

“Hail, pursuer,” Daria drawled sarcastically. Possibly not the most politic response, but these jokers had cut the life support on Tyl 3. Somehow she didn’t feel warm and fuzzy about that.

A soft riff of laughter brushed her thoughts.  You are right to be suspicious.

Oh, goodie. The hitchhiker agreed with her.

“You have something of ours. We want it back.”

It is not theirs. He seemed very sure of that.

“The only objects on this ship belong either to me or a client. If you are that client, I will rendezvous with you as previously agreed. Per the standard contract, no deviation in the handoff is acceptable.”

She’d eat her holster if Lakit was on that ship.

The heads up display finally gave her the origination language. Calibrian. That didn’t help much, sine Calibrian was one of the five most common languages in the galaxy.

“The crystal is ours. Prepare to be boarded.”

The communication cut off.

Okay, that might have gone better. Assuming, of course, that the threat of piracy could ever go well.

The Uday shot into Tyl’s gravity warp, slinging around the curve and gaining speed.  The heads up indicated the pursuing ship was dropping back, having missed the trajectory.

The shields heated with Tyl’s radiation and the hull rumbled in protest.

Are you certain the ship will hold?

Even better, the hitchhiker doubted her piloting.

“It’ll hold,” she muttered, adjusting the shielding.

The Uday shot out of Tyl’s gravity warp toward Tyl 3. And straight into the path of the waiting ship.

“Dust and cosmos,” Daria cursed.

The distortion field hit the ship like a shock wave, and it was all Daria could do to keep the ship from tumbling out of control.  With only thrusters, she fought to stabilize the Uday.  She could bring the core back online, but in the meantime, her own shielding was down and she had no option but to ready to be boarded.  She felt the tractor beam lock on with a jolt.

Daria flung off the harness, diving across the cabin for the weapons locker.

Let me.

Let you what? She barely had time for the thought before her skin began to glow.  What the fuck?

You worry about weapons. I’ll protect you. I cannot allow you to be harmed.

“What do you mean, protect me?”

She stuffed a blade in one of the utility pockets of the exosuit.  After swapping her depleted plasgun for a fully charged one, she added another and a tangler rifle.  She hated using the tangler, but it disabled instantly, the nerve induction mechanism shutting down the brain and spinal column in milliseconds.

If they had brains – and their anticipation of her maneuver indicated they did – she expected her attackers to displace a team onto the Uday as soon as they completed a mapping scan, which they would be able to do once the Uday was alongside their larger craft.

“Computer, initiate mapping scan of alien vessel.  Locate appropriate covert insertion points.”

“Ship is out of range.” The melodic tones made Daria roll her eyes.

“Monitor and scan as soon as ship is in range.”

Would it not be better to escape?

“We’d never beat the tractor beam from this close in, and I need to repair the core before we can hit full speed. The only option is to disable the other ship or take it over.”

As you will, then.

“Now, what do you mean by you’ll protect me?”

The complink in her ear chimed. Stats rolled across the screen, but she had no time to make sense of them.

Four displacement fields appeared in the cabin. The moment the first was solid enough to hit, Daria fired the tangler.  The first alien went down like so much space dust, his dull gray flesh crumpling down on itself.

She shifted her grip slightly and took out the second alien as he lifted his plasgun.  She had a good look at his distorted cranium and huge black eyes.  Dubralian, then, the bigger, uglier version of greys.  Racist bastards, too, if she remembered right.

She turned to aim at the third alien, but he got off a shot.  She didn’t even have time to curse at herself before it hit. And simply disappeared. No, that wasn’t quite right. There was a mild tingle, but otherwise…nothing.

Daria blinked. The Dubralian blinked. Rather than questioning her luck, Daria fired.  The third alien collapsed to the deck.

That is my protection. Energy weapons cannot harm you.

Her eyes went wide. “No energy weapons? No plasguns of any kind?”

Nor the weapon you are using, as it uses energy to disrupt the nerves.

Holy. Cosmos.

The fourth Dubralian fired his plasgun, and again that slight tingle raced over her skin. He looked down at his weapon, perhaps thinking it hadn’t discharged correctly, despite the ball of plasma that had caught her in the gut.

Smiling, Daria hefted the tangler. Now that was a handy talent.

Her shot hit the Dubralian right between the eyes.

She took a quick moment to choose her insertion point, noting that the scan revealed, in addition to the four dead aliens on the Uday, eighteen individuals.

Normally, she wouldn’t like those odds. But right now, she’d take them and smile.  She might even begin to like Ryal. Maybe.  Daria bared her teeth.

Bring it on.

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