Toxic Read online

  What I’m damn good at, though, is driving nano-theft drones. Any drones, really. But anything ship-size is new territory. While Portia thinks I’m winding the mechanical watch in my hand (it currently doesn’t need winding, but she doesn’t know that), I’m secretly learning how to drive the ship. Honestly, it’s habit. I pick up skills wherever I can, however I can, and by stealing if necessary. And yet, it’s hard to undo that urge to survive, to make sure I come out on top, alive, ahead of the authorities nipping at my heels, a quadrant away. It’s boiling inside me right now, though it’s wasted energy at this point.

  Portia’s hair is shaved to the skull, showing off her gold Prinnia-pride tattoo—a stylized sand serpent—from her home planet. Her boot-clad legs are curled up beneath her, which seems physically impossible for someone who’s seven feet tall. Those unnerving red irises flit around the readouts, checking to make sure we’re not all going to die before our time, which ought to be pretty soon.

  “Ah. Cyclo is magnificent,” Portia murmurs.

  “You mean the Calathus,” I say. I tap my fingers on my thigh in Morse code, a soothing habit.

  ... -. --- --- - -.-- .--. .-. .. -. -. .. .- -..

  Snooty Prinniad.

  Sometimes the old ways are the best. Especially when silently insulting people. After nine months on the Selkirk, I’ve learned a lot about Portia, but she can still annoy me. I have fun teasing her. She hasn’t figured out what my finger tapping really means, so she just gives me a scarlet side-eye for a moment.

  “They told us we should call it by its common name.” Her voice is soothing, which puts me on edge. Soothing voices, in my life, mean someone is lying to me. “You know. So we can cozy up to her, and she can feel comfortable around us.”

  “How comfortable can it be? It’s dying.”

  “Shut up, Fenn. My God, you have the sensitivity of a laser grenade, you know that?” She bares a grin at me, with that brand of toothless smile that unnerved me as a kid. For years, I wasn’t used to being around Prinniads, or non-humans on my home planet. But I got used to it once I got into the theft game. Because when you steal, everyone and everything is someone you might sell to, or steal from. I’m an equal opportunity thief.

  Which answers the earlier question—why am I here?

  I steal stuff. A lot of stuff. Instead of wasting time and talent in jail, I’m here. We all have our reasons, but I only know mine. My sister Callandra, through no fault of her own, has been in a medical facility for one year, since right about the time I went to jail. Most of her spinal cord was crushed when the mining dredger she was working in tumbled into a magnesium sinkhole on our home planet, Ipineq. She’ll need therapy and biologic and synthetic transfer treatments her whole life. She just needs the money. And so I will die paying for it.

  The captain’s remote voice sounds on the wall coms. It’s Doran, who’s not really on the ship, but has been setting the Selkirk’s coordinates and remotely training us for these long nine months.

  “Fenn, Portia. It’s time for our meeting. You’re disembarking in one hour and we need to go over a few things.”

  “Got it.” Portia puts the ship on autopilot for the landing program. I watch her movements without staring.

  “Fennec,” Doran barks through the intercom.

  “Yes, sir.” I straighten up. An old habit from prison.

  “Stop trying to learn how to fly this ship. This is a one-way trip. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Portia stands up. She says casually, “I knew you were watching me.”

  “I wasn’t doing any such thing.” I slip the watch into my pocket and turn to the door.

  Portia thrusts out a long leg, kicking my feet out from under me. In one quick movement, she slams my torso down and grips my neck hard with only two fingers—one each on the arteries of my neck, which I desperately need to keep working if I don’t want to stroke out.

  “Ndzia fro atzm. Ndzia!” she hisses at me with her toothless mouth. Her eyes are sparking with tiny golden flecks in the crimson. Her fingers are sharp, and her booted foot is pressed hard onto my rib cage, immobilizing me. I’m five foot ten, wiry and strong for seventeen, but Portia winded me without a problem.

  “Which means?” I gasp.

  “Don’t cross me, or I’ll kill you. I signed a contract. You signed a contract. And there’s nothing in that contract that says I can’t strangle you in order to fulfill my duty. My family is counting on me to do my job. And no human boy is going to take that away.”

  “You said all that in just four words? You guys must have the shortest books in the universe,” I wheeze.

  “You had nine months to learn,” she says, releasing my neck, but her heavy boot is still pressed hard on my rib cage. “I learned English.”

  I try to push her boot off my chest, but it doesn’t budge. “Isn’t this a sign of affection in Prinnia? Regular near-deadly physical fights?” Portia’s attacked me nearly every day, after I’ve teased her about something. Nine months of it, and you’d think I’d learn how to dodge her by now.

  “It is,” she says. “But not always. One more thing. I’ve heard of your work. If you fly one of your drones up my nose to steal anything—one molecule, even—I’ll steal something right back. Like your liver.”

  “Well, that sounds fair.”

  Portia stops standing on me, and I try to catch my breath. She kicks me just under my right ribs, exactly where my liver is—not by coincidence, I’m sure—and I decide it’s best not to say anything witty anymore.

  “Let’s go,” she says.

  We leave the cockpit and walk through the belly of the craft to the end. I rub my right side tenderly. I may not need my liver for much longer, but I sure as hell need it for now. As we wind our way from one corridor to the next, I can sense the architecture of the ship. The Selkirk looks a lot like a long, skinny boat, curved at the bottom like a smile and flat on top, except that it travels hull first. A Cheshire Cat grin, flying through the void.

  I follow Portia at a distance. Her legs are long, and she could still land a roundhouse kick and knock my eye out. We pass through a few cargo bays only half full of supplies and reach an aft cabin with the rest of the crew awaiting us. Altogether, it’s four of us.

  Doran, in a hologram, stands up before the wide table before us. His hair is wiry and white, his skin the color of ashes and slightly blue. Argyrian, silver-blooded, with the muscular build to match. He looks to be in his nineties, and pretty fit for that. My grandma lived to 140, so Doran isn’t so lucky, really, to be his age.

  The other two crew members, I’ve gotten to know pretty well. One is Miki, with that ashy-blue skin like Doran, youngish with blue-green braids over her broad shoulders and a hard look in her eyes. She’s a couple of years older than I am, but far larger due to her Argyrian genes. She’s shorter than me but clearly stronger. Portia once threw a roundhouse kick at Miki, who promptly caught her foot and used it to scratch her armpit.

  The last crew member is mostly human, a guy, with medium brown skin and dark brown hair. About my age, with an unreadable expression. Gammand. Gammand is the quietest of all of us, and we’ve learned his habits over the course of the trip. He likes to read, he’s not very playful or jokey, and he spends a lot of time being introspective. And by that, I mean he talks to no one, ever. Outside of a few times he woke up from a nightmare screaming about the murder of his people, he’s pretty harmless.

  We’ve all been on the Selkirk for nine months. They gathered us all for this mission back then, knowing it would take this long to train us and to finally get to the Calathus. At least we didn’t have to go into cryosleep. I hear the reanimation process is like being stabbed by a million needles in every part of your body. The day we boarded, we had brand new biomonitors implanted in our necks, which hurt like hell.

  “All right,” Doran’s holograph begins. “We�
�ve less than an hour. It’s been nine months of prep, and ReCOR has asked me to brief you on the status of the Calathus before we board.”

  I grimace. ReCOR is a very rich, very powerful company that makes the ships like the Calathus. Everything is proprietary, down to the DNA codes. And they’re not happy that the Calathus is dying after only one hundred years. No one wants to move entire colonies; they want permanent ones, and there are only so many habitable planets in the knowable systems we all live in. If our data-gathering trip goes well, they’ll understand how to make future ships live longer (read: they can charge more to republics who wish to buy them). Doran sees my grimace, and I wipe it clean before he can comment. He goes on.

  “This field study requires that you hit data-gathering objectives, which are now updated here, as well as in your feeds.” Doran points to a long list that’s now scrolling to the right of him. “Ninety percent of the objectives must be met—”

  “Wait. It was eighty percent when we signed our contract!” Portia’s eyes flash with anger.

  Miki shuts one eye. I think that’s an Argyrian curse.

  Doran’s hand raises to silence us. “For which you forfeit your future in exchange for a generous death benefit bequeathed to the person or persons of your choice.”

  At this, we all exchange glances. After all this time together, we’ve gotten to know each other, but no one’s spoken of their death benefit beneficiary. And no one’s asked, because it’s too painful. Doran better not make us tell who those people are. I’m not here to spew my life story to anyone.

  Doran clears his throat. “Good news is, your objectives are now set, and will no longer change.”

  “Is that all ReCOR has to say?” Gammand asks in his low, calm voice. “We’re ten percent more likely to fail here?”

  “Now, Gammand. Remember that this is a remarkable experience, and an opportunity to benefit many in the future, including your loved ones.”

  I want to laugh. That’s like saying, here, eat this cake! It’s delicious! But it’s chock full of cyanide! Be happy!

  Doran goes on. “I wish I was there myself.” He clearly doesn’t mean this. He’s just trying to make us feel special, in the non-dying kind of way. “The Calathus is unlike any bioship I’ve ever been on.”

  “You’ve been on one bioship, you’ve been on them all,” Miki says, unimpressed.

  “Not exactly. None were fully self-sustaining, or truly biocompatible with humanoids. And none were of this magnitude, and age. The biological entity that makes up the Calathus is unique. Amorfovita potentia, subspecies cyclonica, is the only one in existence. They engineered her well. Cyclo, as the organism itself is colloquially called, is the largest ever of its genus and is nearly a hundred years old. But it’s reaching its unique Hayflick limit.”

  I raise my hand.

  Doran rolls his eyes. “This isn’t prison, and it isn’t school. Just speak, Fennec.”

  “Call me Fenn. So, what…what are—”

  Portia snorts and interrupts with a bored voice. “The Hayflick limit is the number of times that an organism’s cells—”

  “I know what the Hayflick limit is,” I snap back. “It’s cellular doomsday. After so many generations of cells dividing over and over again, they die. What I was asking before I was interrupted”—I shoot a narrow-eyed glance at Portia, who bares her gummy maw at me—“is whether the salvage option in the contract is live or not?”

  “No. They’ve reviewed the proposal, and there is no chance this will be a junk run. ReCOR tanked that option a few days ago. The ship will not be salvageable for years,” Doran tells me. “As they predicted.”

  Damn. I had thought that if I could collect useable material, that would mean they might collect me, too. There was a slim chance of this when I signed the contract, but not anymore.

  Cyclo’s mantle apparently had stopped photosynthesizing, which is why it’s turned blue instead of its usual red color. Its tissues have been storing toxic substances all this time near its core. And while it dies, those stored toxins will be released and make the entire ship a biohazard. And then we’ll become too contaminated to ever leave the ship. Which is why this is a one-way trip. I’d just hoped that they might find recycling still worth it. I guess not. I try to hide my disappointment by tapping on my leg.

  .. / .- -- / ... --- / ... -.-. .-. . .-- . -.. .-.-.-

  I am so screwed.

  “I knew they’d trash the salvage option. We’re not leaving the ship alive. Get over it already, Fenn,” Portia says, completely unperturbed.

  “What’s the news on the toxicity of the ship?” Gammand asks.

  “Cosmic radiation residues are rising linearly. Bacteria levels are normal. And the highly poisonous heavy metals and other chemicals are so far very well contained.”

  My mind is working. I wonder if any of them are sellable, or worth much. It’s hard to sell stuff when you’re dead, but who knows. I could get lucky.

  But then I remember—no, Fenn. You have a contract. Doran just said no salvaging, no gathering anything that’s not data. You botch that up, and Callandra won’t be able to afford her treatments. So stop with the hustle. You aren’t getting off this ship.

  We learned along the way that the ship’s internal systems were failing, but ReCOR didn’t know the specifics of exactly how. Creatures like Cyclo are always in a push-pull metabolism with the human-embedded synthetics we add, including our systems. Cyclo breaks them down little by little, naturally, despite the way she was engineered. Even if the synthetics are made of plastrix, which is supposedly inert. But this is why they need humans and humanoids to do this dirty work. The systems can’t record this from inside, anyway. It’s all dying.

  “Cyclo’s crew left one week ago,” Doran reports. “But we were told that system safety checks were already beginning to fail. The communication on the ship is already dead, including the translators on the wall, which helped the crew speak to the ship.”

  “That’s fast,” Portia notes.

  Doran nods. “Yes, it’s happening quickly.’

  “Can we just wear our biohazard suits?” Miki asks. “It’ll buy us more time to get that ninety percent done.”

  “ReCOR says no, not unless you’re directly working in the central radioactive area, Miki. Our biomonitors are going to pick up how we react to the toxins as they first start to seep out. Not pleasant, but an extremely important part of the data we’re gathering. It will save future lives.”

  “Just not ours. We’re space lab rats,” I say.

  Doran doesn’t respond to me again. He’s really good at that. His hologram begins to discuss individual objectives. He speaks to Portia, who’s the expert in biosynthetic symbiosis, and then to Miki, the radiation and environmental systems engineer. She’s also the one who’ll tell us which parts of the ship to steer clear of when they get too toxic for us. He has little to say to Gammand, whose wavy, dark brown hair is pulled back into a ball at the back of his head. Gammand is the information specialist. He’s putting together the logs and diaries, coordinating all the data, finding our gaps, and leaving records in multiple copies just to be safe. They’ll be on Cyclo, the Selkirk, and transmitted to the Cyclo’s crew, who will be able to receive it in approximately a month, their first scheduled stop out of hyperspace.

  It suddenly occurs to me that we’re all really young. Not one of us is over twenty.

  Doran finally turns to me.

  “Fennec—Fenn, I mean.” He pauses and studies my face. “You okay?”

  “Sure thing, boss,” I say in my fake subordinate voice. The one I always use with Doran.

  “Any questions, then, Fenn?”

  “Yeah. What’s up with the age limit here? Only the good die young?”

  “We needed the healthiest subjects,” he says, shrugging. “Any pertinent questions, Fenn?”

  “No. I fly my na
no drones to gather samples. What else is there to know?”

  Doran tries to smile. “Listen. You’re the best driver on this side of the galaxy, and you’ve been trained to deal with Cyclo’s particular tissues. Do some good, instead of flying up people’s nostrils and stealing xerullium from their glands.”

  Miki looks me straight in the eye and cracks her knuckles. I guess there won’t be much xerullium harvesting. It’s the trace metal you didn’t know you needed to live, and only exists in the amount of one kilogram per galaxy. It sells in such small quantities it would make you pucker. I’m talking picograms. Femtograms, even.

  Doran taps his forehead, and all of our own holofeeds go live. Simultaneously, glowing screens pop up in front of each of our faces, a sort of half-bubble of scrolling maps of Cyclo, and biometric data.

  “Your holofeed implants have been uploaded with basics of Cyclo’s color language, anatomy, and schematics, so you know where you are. Since the internal communication on Cyclo is nonfunctioning, this is how we talk, and everything is on record.”

  Great. So I can’t even be snide to Portia without it possibly ruining my contract. These days, people have holofeeds implanted in their brains, or at least in their eyes. But those are meant for internal feeds that no one can see. These forehead ones project a 3D holo outward, in front of our faces. ReCOR doesn’t want us to keep info to ourselves. It’s out there for Doran and the whole crew to see. I close it with a glance at a red dot in the corner, and the bubble disappears.

  “Fenn, you’ll fly wherever the crew asks you to. You’re one of our main sources of data collection. It’ll be busy, and my job will be to make sure you all stay busy. Now.” Doran pushes back from the table. “A few last reminders. Our job is to observe. You’re not there to save Cyclo. It’s already dead, as far as ReCOR is concerned. If you interfere for any reason, your contract will be forfeit. If you die from making your own terrible choices before your job is completed—and that includes getting yourself prematurely killed—your contract will be forfeit.”