Ariadne Page 7

  “And this job… was there anything peculiar about it?”

  The Jen’s long eyelashes flick in the direction of the pile of corpses.

  “You know what I mean. Was anything different or unexpected?”

  A shake of her head.

  “Do you work at a lot of these things?”

  “Yeah. Sure I do. You know how it is.”

  The Jen are ambitious as a breed. Desiring to fuck their way into a better life. Their goal? To become an official consort to a high-ranking politico and, more importantly, to join the elite. Wielding their power vicariously. They can be dangerous creatures. Dark, driven, sometimes malicious. Willing to do anything and anybody to fulfil their desire for power, including murder, extortion, and blackmail. And yet... the saps still fall for them. Time and time again.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” the Jen asks, staring back into the swirl of hyperspace. “I want to get off this ship as soon as possible.”

  “That’s what I’m working on.”

  Questions still hang over Rooba, although my gut is telling me she is another dead end.

  I leave the Jen and edge over to the pile of bodies. Most of them guests. Well-dressed politicos, distinguishable by their long black jackets, white shirts, and ruffles—like Mandibald Glaxtinian. There’re a few waiters, crew officers and two consorts. One obese, orange-skinned with horn implants, the other lithe, blue-skinned with fish-like gills—Naal Jen—who, if Rooba is to be believed, invited her to this party. Not that the dead Jen is in any state to verify her story.

  Other than the bodies, there’s nothing to see. They all appear to have died the same way—gassed. I double-check their names on my roster and whistle.

  Quite the VIP event.

  I take a further look around, hoping to scavenge some party food, but unless I want to eat old shrimp off the floor, there’s nothing. I hope Velez turns up with something soon.

  I check the remaining bottles. All empty. I can’t even get a damn drink. I’m about to curse in exasperation when I hear a single sob.

  SITTING IN a corner behind an upturned table, I find what appears to be the nameless waitress Velez mentioned earlier. “Who are you?” I shout, rounding on her.

  The girl is barely out of her teens. Long, golden-blonde ringlets surround a pointed and attractive face. One delicate hand fingers an amber pendant hung on a silver chain around her neck. Her eyes, although red-rimmed, are a mesmerising blue, staring through me as if I’m not here.

  “Answer me!” I bark.

  More sobs.

  I kick the table aside and grab the girl by the wrist, pulling her to her feet. She’s skinny—all arms, legs and tiny tits, wearing black slacks and a white server’s jacket. She glances over to the corner where the bodies are laid out. Her sobbing becomes unbearable.

  I punch her in the stomach, not too hard, just enough to wind her. A technique I learnt years ago. A way to focus people on me and my questions.

  Behind me, I hear Hewlis grunt in protest.

  The girl doubles over and retches. I drag her over to a chair and push her down, pulling up another chair to sit opposite.

  Klund appears suddenly at my side, agitated and all heated up, his breath rasping.

  “I do not care who you are,” the geek spits. “I cannot sit back and let you treat this poor girl like this. She is obviously heartbroken.”

  Hewlis and Rooba also come over, staring at the girl with concern.

  I pull out my buzz-gun and roughly jab the muzzle into Klund’s chest. “Sit down, Eric.” I say, pushing him back so that he collapses into a chair, the buzz-gun now pointing at his twitching face. “You want me to decorate the floor with your brains?”

  The geek is too shocked to reply, his eyes unable to leave the muzzle of the gun.

  “There’s no need to behave like that,” Rooba says. “Honey, you need to calm down.”

  I sense the Jen is using some voice augmentation technique to try and manipulate my mood. “Don’t play your stupid games on me, Rooba. It will take more than six tits to turn my head, so keep your snout out of my goddamn business, you get me?”

  Rooba nods. All compliance and submissiveness. But I’m not fooled. Like I said, the Jen are driven, calculating and dangerous. If that is who she really is.

  I turn my attention back to the waitress. “You okay?”

  The young woman slowly straightens, the tears now gone. A sucker-punch to the gut will do that—and like I said, I wanted her full attention.

  I grab her by the chin and lift her head up. “Tell me your name.”

  “Pirella,” she whispers from a hoarse throat.

  If she’s angry about my treatment of her, it doesn’t show in her tone. I tap at my wafer.

  Pirella Qelline.

  Age: 19.

  I tap again, but that’s all the info available. No digivid. Nothing. Just her name, which sounds familiar. “You’re dressed as a waitress. Is that why you’re here? To serve drinks?”

  Pirella lifts a feeble hand and points to the body of a young kid also in a waiter’s uniform.

  I haul her over to the bodies, aware of Klund twitching on his chair. But he hasn’t got the guts to go against me. The dead waiter looks to be in his mid-twenties, and, despite his blackened face and protruding tongue, he used to be handsome. “What was his name?”

  “Denny,” Pirella says, reaching out to him.

  I bring up his details.

  Denny Raymon.

  Age: 23.

  Waiter, First Class.

  A digivid reveals a good-looking white kid with short black hair. There’s a couple of paragraphs about his life. He worked in the hospitality industry for the last few years, rising up the ranks to end up serving grandees at functions like this. Other than one or two misdemeanours as a teenager, he’s clean and was doing very well for himself… until tonight that is.

  “Denny was your boyfriend, yeah?”

  She nods, tears streaming down her face. “He got me this job,” she replies, her voice almost a whisper.

  “Waitressing?”

  “Yes. He brought me aboard.”

  “What else?” I ask.

  She says nothing and begins to sob again.

  “Answer me!” I shout, convinced Pirella’s grief is for real, which means she’s no use to me in this state. “Or do you want me to beat up on you some more?”

  She shakes her head, wiping away the tears, pulling herself together, her face full of shock and sorrow.

  “Denny arranged it,” she finally replies, her voice now more together. I notice it has a posh twang at odds with her job as a waitress.

  “They needed extra staff for this event on the Ariadne. We arrived with the other waiters on the same transport. A few hours before the party began.”

  “Did you notice anything wrong, anything amiss with Denny, or anyone else on this ship?”

  “Nothing, other than Denny was a little distracted.”

  “What was your job at this function? Anything more than just waitressing?”

  “No… no. Of course not.”

  Her answer is too defensive for my liking, but without my empathy, I can’t tell if she’s lying.

  “Go through what happened after you arrived. Step by step.”

  “We were brought from the surface by one of the transports and escorted to our station by the galley. We waited there until the function started. Our job, with the two other waiters, was to serve food and drinks.”

  “And when people started dying?”

  The look of horror returns to Pirella’s face. “Denny dropped his tray. Everyone laughed and cheered but then people started choking. Collapsing. There was a smell in the air… something odd.” Her eyes fall back down on to the body of her dead boyfriend.

  “Focus, Pirella! You survived. How?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I believe her. She’s in shock from the deaths of Denny and everybody else, that much is for sure, but she’s still hiding s
omething from me.

  I grab Pirella’s wrist again and drag her over to Rooba.

  “Listen up,” I say to them both. “This ship is in trouble and if I don’t work out what the hell is going on soon, then we’ll all be dead. You two understand me?”

  “We’re gonna die?” Pirella says, the prospect of her own demise bringing her back to the now.

  Rooba, who has been dutifully docile since my rebuke, comes alive. “Just what kinda trouble is this ship in?”

  “It’s not a long story. If we don’t stop the ship, the Company is gonna blow it and us out of hyperspace. If either of you know anything more than you’re telling me, now is the time to say. We’ve got just over an hour left until we all die, you get me?”

  Rooba says nothing. It’s hard to read emotion on her augmented face, but I can tell the news has come as a shock to her.

  “No, that can’t be true,” Pirella says. “It can’t be.”

  “You think I’m lying?”

  “Daddy won’t let that happen.” Pirella’s voice is nothing more than a whisper. “He’ll stop the Company. I know he will.”

  “Daddy?” And then I remember… Qelline. Of course. Another damn name from my past. “You’re Ambassador Qelline’s daughter?”

  “Daddy will make sure no harm comes to me. You have to get a message to him.”

  “He won’t be able to give you any help now,” Hewlis says gruffly from over my shoulder.

  “The engineer is right. We’re in hyperspace and cut off. Tell me. What is an ambassador’s daughter doing waitressing on a ship like this?”

  “I can vouch for the girl…”

  I whip around to see Velez holding a plate with various cured meats, sliced bread and cheeses.

  “Her ambassador father gave her clearance to come aboard,” she continues. “He’s some big cheese with the company. Denny, her boyfriend, told me all about it. I’ve worked with him before.”

  “You were reticent to talk about the survivors last time I asked,” I say to the chef. “Particularly this girl. What changed?”

  Velez shrugs.

  “Is this true, Pirella?”

  The girl nods but doesn’t break eye-contact with the chef.

  I grab Pirella by the chin, forcing her attention back on to me. “Listen up and listen well. If you want to get off this death ship and see your father again, you need to tell me everything, understand?”

  Pirella draws breath to reply but is interrupted by a loud shout from the doorway.

  I turn to see Drex and Boyd entering the Hospitality Suite, dragging a body behind them—a body unlike anything I’ve seen on this ship so far…

  DREX AND Boyd unceremoniously dump a lump of bloated and formless flesh on the Hospitality Suite carpet.

  “What the hell is that?” Hewlis shouts.

  “That’s what we want the Skilled to answer,” Drex replies.

  The thing is an unnatural white colour and roughly the size of a man. More like a beached albino whale than anything human… but that’s what it once was.

  I grab a handful of cheese, meat and bread off Velez’s plate, pushing them together to make a crude sandwich and go look.

  The thing stinks and stinks bad. But the smell ain’t that of decomposition. It’s sickly and sweet. Not exactly putrefaction but some other degenerative process, although it’s halted or at least stalled. There’s a definable head, torso and legs, all merged into one formless mass. The flesh is pallid, jelly-like and translucent, except where it’s been torn and scuffed from being dragged through the ship. Just what were Drex and Boyd thinking?

  “It smells,” Pirella says, sharing a nervous glance with Velez.

  I crouch down to get a closer look, taking a bite out of my makeshift sandwich. Behind me, I hear Pirella gag. I take another bite and suddenly I’m ravenous. I glance up at Rex and Boyd. “Where did you find this thing?”

  “We were being thorough, like you ordered,” Drex replies, unable to hide his scorn. “Searching the maintenance decks. The area is hardly visited. Full of automatic systems. But we checked anyway. We’d just finished inspecting one of the supply areas when…” Drex swallows loudly.

  “When what?” I run my hand over the pallid flesh. It’s still warm.

  “We saw a line of pink froth,” Boyd says. “Dripping from a broken hatch. Drex went to investigate and—”

  “—And that thing dropped on me,” Drex finished. “Nearly scared us both to death.”

  “Did you find anything on the body or near to it?” I ask. “Any ID?”

  “Body?” Hewlis says, as if suddenly waking up. “You mean… this thing was once human?”

  “Yeah,” I reply, letting that information sink in, casting my eye over the other survivors to see if anyone is less surprised than they should be. They all seem equally shocked and appalled. “Answer my question,” I say, turning back to Drex.

  “We found nothing,” the kid replies. “No clothes or belongings… just some kind of dissolved biological matter—that pink froth Boyd mentioned. That’s why we brought it straight here.”

  “Which is just about the dumbest thing you could’ve done,” I bark. “You should’ve left it in situ and come and got me. Who knows what evidence you’ve destroyed?”

  “We thought you’d want to see it straightaway,” Boyd says.

  “That’s right, but I didn’t want you to drag the thing all over the goddamn ship!”

  A familiar face appears in the doorway, and I’m unprepared for it. A man I haven’t seen in years. A bastard going by the name of Xev Tranth.

  I have a sudden vision, a sharp memory etched into my mind—the last time I saw him. My old boss leaning over his desk, resting on twin fists, his face twisted into anger, shouting at me. An argument over the double-agent, Esta. The only woman who’s ever been able to get to me. The woman he ordered me to kill. I shot Esta dead with my buzz-gun. And I’ve been punished for that decision every goddamn day of my life since.

  The memory rocks me, knocks me sideways. I take a deep, calming breath and push those feelings aside. Instead, I concentrate on who I am. On Vatic. On my skills and focus on assessing him…

  Xev has aged poorly. The skin of his face is flaccid, fitting badly around his eyes and chin, bulging on his cheeks, creating twin shadows, pock-marked and tired looking—the obvious result of a failed juvo-treatment or two. He reminds me of those century-old digivid show hosts—living mummies only held together by their intense desire for ageless youth. His artificial cheekbones are framed by absurd long hair in a style that should belong to an adolescent, not a man in his early sixties. His pallor is more orange than pink, the skin puffy and blemished. Xev is also painfully thin, probably from the overuse of stims, or he’s had his gut rewired. He’s dressed for the party, a thick purple velvet dress-coat and ruffles. A pair of absurd cowboy boots completes his look. Xev was always a dandy. Even during the war, he wore his uniform with a flourish. But the proud, powerful and ambitious Company executive I once knew is now nothing more than a loose collection of bones and sallow flesh…

  The man has gone to seed.

  His eyes light up when he sees me, his mouth opening to speak, but I don’t want to talk to him. Not yet. Not ever. Although I realise that won’t be possible.

  “Vatic!” he blurts, pushing past Drex and Boyd, heading straight for me.

  I brace myself for a tirade of abuse. The man, apart from hating everything and everybody, had reserved a particular hatred for the Skilled, and especially for a Skilled named Vatic.

  “Thank the gods!” he says.

  I feel a sudden urge to straighten my back and to salute. Back in the day, following orders was important to me. That, and the concept of command. Thankfully, I grew up, like all the Skilled.

  “This is Vatic!” he slurs, and I realise he’s drunk. “The finest Skilled I ever worked with. The fucker is a bona-fide marvel… if you can call his breed men.”

  He laughs at what he thinks is a rather cleve
r witticism, but everyone remains silent, their eyes fixed on the body-blank lying on the floor. He sticks out a hand for me to shake.

  Even though I hated who he was and what he stood for, Xev was also one of the most driven humans I’ve ever met. Why is he being friendly? This is not the Xev Tranth I once knew. Gone is his sense of unchallenged superiority. In its place is something reduced… lacking. I can’t pretend that I’m not pleased at this change. I disliked his methods and his ethics. He was one of those Company bastards that lied to me and the other Skilled. Convincing us that what we were doing in the war was right. I can’t fully blame him for everything. We were all complicit.

  “I’ve seen something like this before,” I say, ignoring Xev’s outstretched hand and pointing at the body.

  “What the fuck?” Xev blurts, noticing the lump of sallow, white flesh for the first time.

  “This person was killed and injected with nanites designed to remove all ID markers,” I continue, speaking to everyone. “DNA, gender, race, facial features, teeth and stature have all been erased… nano-degenerated. Given enough time, it would’ve been totally broken down.”

  Xev unceremoniously kicks at the body with his foot. “I ain’t seen one of these things since the war. Looks recent. But it could be up to three or four days old. Jeez!”

  “And what makes you such an authority?” Klund asks.

  Xev shrugs. “Like I said, it’s from the war. The temporary replacement tek the Company developed back then.”

  “But why would someone do that?” Rooba asks, her doe eyes flicking between me and Xev, sensing the tension between us.

  “That’s very simple, my pretty,” Xev replies, his voice full of malicious glee. “Someone on this ship has been replaced.” He winks at me. “Someone here isn’t who they say they are. Isn’t that right, Vatic?”

  “WHAT DO you mean replaced?” says Hewlis. “I don’t get it.”