Nightflyers: The Illustrated Edition Read online

  She stared into his upside-down eyes. “It might be a second crew member, someone else hidden in your quarters, but I don’t believe that. It’s the ship, isn’t it? Your ship is killing us. Not you. It. Only that doesn’t make sense. You command the Nightflyer. How can it act independently? And why? What motive? And how was Thale Lasamer killed? The business with Alys and Lommie, that was easy, but a psionic murder? A starship with psi? I can’t accept that. It can’t be the ship. Yet it can’t be anything else. Help me, captain.”

  He blinked, anguish behind his eyes. “I should never have accepted Karoly’s charter, not with a telepath among you. It was too risky. But I wanted to see the volcryn, and he spoke of them so movingly.” He sighed. “You understand too much already, Melantha. I can’t tell you more, or I would be powerless to protect you. The ship is malfunctioning, that is all you need to know. It is not safe to push too hard. As long as I am at the controls, I think I can keep you and the others from harm. Trust me.”

  “Trust is a two-way bond,” Melantha said.

  Royd lifted his hand and pushed her away, then tongued his communicator back to life. “Enough gossip,” he announced. “We have work to do. Come. I want to see just how improved you actually are.”

  In the solitude of her helmet, Melantha Jhirl swore softly.

  * * *

  —

  With an irregular twist of metal locked beneath him in his sled’s magnetic grip, Rojan Christopheris sailed back towards the Nightflyer. He was watching from a distance when Royd Eris emerged on his oversized work sled. He was closer when Melantha Jhirl moved to him, inverted her sled, and pressed her faceplate to Royd’s. Christopheris listened to their soft exchange, heard Melantha promise to touch him, Eris, the thing, the killer. He swallowed his rage. Then they cut him out, cut all of them out, went off the open circuit. But still she hung there, suspended by that cipher in the hunchbacked spacesuit, faces pressed together like two lovers kissing.

  Christopheris swept in close, unlocked his captive plate so it would drift towards them. “Here,” he announced. “I’m off to get another.” He tongued off his own comm and swore, and his sled slid around the spheres and tubes of the Nightflyer.

  Somehow they were all in it together, Royd and Melantha and possibly old d’Branin as well, he thought sourly. She had protected Eris from the first, stopped them when they might have taken action together, found out who or what he was. He did not trust her. His skin crawled when he remembered that they had been to bed together. She and Eris were the same, whatever they might be. And now poor Alys was dead, and that fool Thorne and even that damned telepath, but still Melantha was with him, against them. Rojan Christopheris was deeply afraid, and angry, and half drunk.

  The others were out of sight, off chasing spinning wedges of half-slagged metal. Royd and Melantha were engrossed in each other, the ship abandoned and vulnerable. This was his chance. No wonder Eris had insisted that all of them precede him into the void; outside, isolated from the controls of the Nightflyer, he was only a man. A weak one at that.

  Smiling a thin, hard smile, Christopheris brought his sled curling around the cargo spheres, hidden from sight, and vanished into the gaping maw of the driveroom. It was a long tunnel, everything open to vacuum, safe from the corrosion of an atmosphere. Like most starships, the Nightflyer had a triple propulsion system: the gravfield for landing and lifting, useless away from a gravity well, the nukes for deep space sublight maneuverings, and the great stardrives themselves. The lights of his sled flickered past the encircling ring of nukes and sent long, bright streaks along the sides of the closed cylinders of the stardrives, the huge engines that bent the stuff of spacetime, encased in webs of metal and crystal.

  At the end of the tunnel was a great circular door, reinforced metal, closed: the main airlock.

  Christopheris set the sled down, dismounted—pulling his boots free of the sled’s magnetic grip with an effort—and moved to the airlock. This was the hardest part, he thought. The headless body of Thale Lasamer was tethered loosely to a massive support strut by the lock, like a grisly guardian of the way. The xenobiologist had to stare at it while he waited for the lock to cycle. Whenever he glanced away, somehow he would find his eyes creeping back to it. The body looked almost natural, as if it had never had a head. Christopheris tried to remember what Lasamer had looked like, but the features would not come to mind. He moved uncomfortably, but then the lock door slid open and he gratefully entered the chamber to cycle through.

  He was alone in the Nightflyer.

  A cautious man, Christopheris kept his suit on, though he collapsed the helmet and yanked loose the suddenly limp metallic fabric so it fell behind his back like a hood. He could snap it in place quickly enough if the need arose. In cargo hold four, where they had stored their equipment, the xenobiologist found what he was looking for: a portable cutting laser, charged and ready. Low power, but it would do.

  Slow and clumsy in weightlessness, he pulled himself down the corridor into the darkened lounge.

  It was chilly inside, the air cold on his cheeks. He tried not to notice. He braced himself at the door and pushed off across the width of the room, sailing above the furniture, which was all safely bolted into place. As he drifted towards his objective, something wet and cold touched his face. It startled him, but it was gone before he could quite make out what it was.

  When it happened again, Christopheris snatched at it, caught it, and felt briefly sick. He had forgotten. No one had cleaned the lounge yet. The—the remains were still there, floating now, blood and flesh and bits of bone and brain. All around him.

  He reached the far wall, stopped himself with his arms, pulled himself down to where he wanted to go. The bulkhead. The wall. No doorway was visible, but the metal couldn’t be very thick. Beyond was the control room, the computer access, safety, power. Rojan Christopheris did not think of himself as a vindictive man. He did not intend to harm Royd Eris, that judgment was not his to make. He would take control of the Nightflyer, warn Eris away, make certain the man stayed sealed in his suit. He would take them all back without any more mysteries, any more killings. The Academy arbiters could listen to the story, and probe Eris, and decide the right and wrong of it, guilt and innocence, what should be done.

  The cutting laser emitted a thin pencil of scarlet light. Christopheris smiled and applied it to the bulkhead. It was slow work, but he had patience. They would not have missed him, quiet as he’d been, and if they did they would assume he was off sledding after some hunk of salvage. Eris’s repairs would take hours, maybe days, to finish. The bright blade of the laser smoked where it touched the metal. Christopheris applied himself diligently.

  Something moved on the periphery of his vision, just a little flicker, barely seen. A floating bit of brain, he thought. A sliver of bone. A bloody piece of flesh, hair still hanging from it. Horrible things, but nothing to worry about. He was a biologist, he was used to blood and brains and flesh. And worse, and worse; he had dissected many an alien in his day, cutting through chitin and mucous, pulsing stinking food sacs and poisonous spines, he had seen and touched it all.

  Again the motion caught his eye, teased at it. Not wanting to, Christopheris found himself drawn to look. He could not not look, somehow, just as he had been unable to ignore the headless corpse near the airlock. He looked.

  It was an eye.

  Christopheris trembled and the laser slipped sharply off to one side, so he had to wrestle with it to bring it back to the channel he was cutting. His heart raced. He tried to calm himself. Nothing to be frightened of. No one was home, and if Royd should return, well, he had the laser as a weapon and he had his suit on if an airlock blew.

  He looked at the eye again, willing away his fear. It was just an eye, Thale Lasamer’s eye, pale blue, bloody but intact, the same watery eye the boy had when alive, nothing supernatural. A piece of dead flesh, flo
ating in the lounge amid other pieces of dead flesh. Someone should have cleaned up the lounge, Christopheris thought angrily. It was indecent to leave it like this, it was uncivilized.

  The eye did not move. The other grisly bits were drifting on the air currents that flowed across the room, but the eye was still. It neither bobbed nor spun. It was fixed on him. Staring.

  He cursed himself and concentrated on the laser, on his cutting. He had burned an almost straight line up the bulkhead for about a meter. He began another at a right angle.

  The eye watched dispassionately. Christopheris suddenly found he could not stand it. One hand released its grip on the laser, reached out, caught the eye, flung it across the room. The action made him lose balance. He tumbled backward, the laser slipping from his grasp, his arms flapping like the wings of some absurd heavy bird. Finally he caught an edge of the table and stopped himself.

  The laser hung in the center of the room, floating amid coffeepots and pieces of human debris, still firing, turning slowly. That did not make sense. It should have ceased fire when he released it. A malfunction, Christopheris thought nervously. Smoke was rising where the thin line of the laser traced a path across the carpet.

  With a shiver of fear, Christopheris realized that the laser was turning towards him.

  He raised himself, put both hands flat against the table, pushed up out of the way, bobbing towards the ceiling.

  The laser was turning more swiftly now.

  He pushed away from the ceiling hard, slammed into a wall, grunted in pain, bounced off the floor, kicked. The laser was spinning quickly, chasing him. Christopheris soared, braced himself for another ricochet off the ceiling. The beam swung around, but not fast enough. He’d get it while it was still firing off in the other direction.

  He moved close, reached, and saw the eye. It hung just above the laser. Staring.

  Rojan Christopheris made a small whimpering sound low in his throat, and his hand hesitated—not long, but long enough—and the scarlet beam came up and around.

  Its touch was a light, hot caress across his neck.

  * * *

  —

  It was more than an hour later before they missed him. Karoly d’Branin noticed his absence first, called for him over the comm link, and got no answer. He discussed it with the others.

  Royd Eris moved his sled back from the armor plate he had just mounted, and through his helmet Melantha Jhirl could see the lines around his mouth grow hard.

  It was just then that the noises began.

  A shrill bleat of pain and fear, followed by moans and sobbing. Terrible wet sounds, like a man choking on his own blood. They all heard. The sounds filled their helmets. And almost clear amid the anguish was something that sounded like a word: “Help.”

  “That’s Christopheris,” a woman’s voice said. Lindran.

  “He’s hurt,” Dannel added. “He’s crying for help. Can’t you hear it?”

  “Where—?” someone started.

  “The ship,” Lindran said. “He must have returned to the ship.”

  Royd Eris said, “The fool. No. I warned—”

  “We’re going to check,” Lindran announced. Dannel cut free the hull fragment they had been bringing in, and it spun away, tumbling. Their sled angled down towards the Nightflyer.

  “Stop,” Royd said. “I’ll return to my chambers and check from there, if you wish, but you may not enter the ship. Stay outside until I give you clearance.”

  The terrible sounds went on and on.

  “Go to hell,” Lindran snapped at him over the open circuit.

  Karoly d’Branin had his sled in motion, too, hastening after the linguists, but he had been farther out and it was a long way back to the ship. “Royd, what can you mean, we must help, don’t you see? He is hurt, listen to him. Please, my friend.”

  “No,” Royd said. “Karoly, stop! If Rojan went back to the ship alone, he is dead.”

  “How do you know that?” Dannel demanded. “Did you arrange it? Set traps in case we disobeyed you?”

  “No,” Royd said, “listen to me. You can’t help him now. Only I could have helped him, and he did not listen to me. Trust me. Stop.” His voice was despairing.

  In the distance, d’Branin’s sled slowed. The linguists did not. “We’ve already listened to you too damn much, I’d say,” Lindran said. She almost had to shout to be heard above the noises, the whimpers and moans, the awful wet sucking sounds, the distorted pleas for help. Agony filled their universe. “Melantha,” Lindran continued, “keep Eris right where he is. We’ll go carefully, find out what is happening inside, but I don’t want him getting back to his controls. Understood?”

  Melantha Jhirl hesitated. The sounds beat against her ears. It was hard to think.

  Royd swung his sled around to face her, and she could feel the weight of his stare. “Stop them,” he said. “Melantha, Karoly, order it. They will not listen to me. They do not know what they are doing.” He was clearly in pain.

  In his face Melantha found decision. “Go back inside quickly, Royd. Do what you can. I’m going to try to intercept them.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Lindran demanded.

  Royd nodded to her across the gulf, but Melantha was already in motion. Her sled backed clear of the work area, congested with hull fragments and other debris, then accelerated briskly as she raced around the exterior of the Nightflyer towards the driveroom.

  But even as she approached, she knew it was too late. The linguists were too close, and already moving much faster than she was.

  “Don’t,” she said, authority in her tone. “Christopheris is dead.”

  “His ghost is crying for help, then,” Lindran replied. “When they tinkered you together, they must have damaged the genes for hearing, bitch.”

  “The ship isn’t safe.”

  “Bitch,” was all the answer she got.

  Karoly’s sled pursued vainly. “Friends, you must stop, please, I beg it of you. Let us talk this out together.”

  The sounds were his only reply.

  “I am your superior,” he said. “I order you to wait outside. Do you hear me? I order it, I invoke the authority of the Academy of Human Knowledge. Please, my friends, please.”

  Melantha watched helplessly as Lindran and Dannel vanished down the long tunnel of the driveroom.

  A moment later she halted her own sled near the waiting black mouth, debating whether she should follow them on into the Nightflyer. She might be able to catch them before the airlock opened.

  Royd’s voice, hoarse counterpoint to the sounds, answered her unvoiced question. “Stay, Melantha. Proceed no farther.”

  She looked behind her. Royd’s sled was approaching.

  “What are you doing here? Royd, use your own lock. You have to get back inside!”

  “Melantha,” he said calmly, “I cannot. The ship will not respond to me. The lock will not dilate. The main lock in the driveroom is the only one with manual override. I am trapped outside. I don’t want you or Karoly inside the ship until I can return to my console.”

  Melantha Jhirl looked down the shadowed barrel of the driveroom, where the linguists had vanished.

  “What will—”

  “Beg them to come back, Melantha. Plead with them. Perhaps there is still time.”

  She tried. Karoly d’Branin tried as well. The twisted symphony of pain and pleading went on and on, but they could not raise Dannel or Lindran at all.

  “They’ve cut out their comm,” Melantha said furiously. “They don’t want to listen to us. Or that…that sound.”

  Royd’s sled and d’Branin’s reached her at the same time. “I do not understand,” Karoly said. “Why can you not enter, Royd? What is happening?’’

  “It is simple, Karoly,” Royd replied. “I am being kept outside unt
il—until—”

  “Yes?” prompted Melantha.

  “—until Mother is done with them.”

  * * *

  —

  The linguists left their vacuum sled next to the one that Christopheris had abandoned, and cycled through the airlock in unseemly haste, with hardly a glance for the grim headless doorman.

  Inside they paused briefly to collapse their helmets. “I can still hear him,” Dannel said. The sounds were faint inside the ship.

  Lindran nodded. “It’s coming from the lounge. Hurry.”

  They kicked and pulled their way down the corridor in less than a minute. The sounds grew steadily louder, nearer. “He’s in there,” Lindran said when they reached the doorway.

  “Yes,” Dannel said, “but is he alone? We need a weapon. What if…Royd had to be lying. There is someone else on board. We need to defend ourselves.”

  Lindran would not wait. “There are two of us,” she said. “Come on!” She launched herself through the doorway, calling Christopheris by name.

  It was dark inside. What little light there was spilled through the door from the corridor. Her eyes took a long moment to adjust. Everything was confused; walls and ceilings and floor were all the same, she had no sense of direction. “Rojan,” she called, dizzily. “Where are you?” The lounge seemed empty, but maybe it was only the light, or her sense of unease.

  “Follow the sound,” Dannel suggested. He hung in the door, peering warily about for a minute, and then began to feel his way cautiously down a wall, groping with his hands.

  As if in response to his comment, the sobbing sounds grew suddenly louder. But they seemed to come first from one corner of the room, then from another.

  Lindran, impatient, propelled herself across the chamber, searching. She brushed against a wall in the kitchen area, and that made her think of weapons, and Dannel’s fears. She knew where the utensils were stored. “Here,” she said a moment later, turning towards him. “Here, I’ve got a knife, that should thrill you.” She flourished it, and brushed against a floating bubble of liquid as big as her fist. It burst and re-formed into a hundred smaller globules. One moved past her face, close, and she tasted it. Blood.