Post by balegrim on Jan 7, 2014 3:30:22 GMT
Tanner Mirabel sighed, lolling his head back into the deck mounted chair of the shuttle bringing him between Central Command and Apollo Station 17. He stared up at the ceiling wearily, just letting his thoughts wander. He contemplated the man he was before the war, before the alterations. Tanner had regrets, there was no denying it, but he forced himself to the resolute conclusion he needed to be the pillar of reliability he was. Even if it cost him the blood of his fellow colonists. He traded his innocence for the power to change the universe, even if most days he felt like he wasn't making a damn bit of difference.
"Wow man. You're cut. You workout?"
Tanner lifted his head from the back of his chair, looked at the man who seemed to be addressing him. He was dressed like a custodian, but didn't have an ID. His eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses and his lips straightened into a taut line. "Yeah. You could say that. Misplace your ID?"
Then custodian looked down, patting his gray uniform. Then he glanced back up at Tanner, smiling. "Ha! Yeah. They said not to worry about it, though. Told me the H.O.P. could get me a new one. Didn't promise I'd get to keep cleaning, though. I hear if you lose your ID they stick you somewhere else sometimes, because they just don't care."
Tanner watched the man's face closely. Of the forty three distinct moves his facial muscles were capable of, none of them so far flexed into the expression of a liar. His suspicion evaporated almost instantly. His tone changed, but the custodian hardly seemed to notice. "Good luck then. Hope they give you an easy time."
A gentle reverberation coursed through the shuttle, and Tanner recognized the distinct thud of docking clamps locking into place.
"We must be here!" The custodian was grinning. It had been a quiet flight, and they were both probably a little eager to stretch their legs.
Tanner unbuckled from his seat and rose to his full height. He was tall and dynamic, the fiercely defined contours of his muscular body pushing at the seams of his black turtleneck and light brown pants. His short black hair accentuated the cutting line of his jaw, intensifying his hard features.
He grabbed his backpack and approached the airlock he had used to board the shuttle. The white plates hissed air as they parted for him, sliding back into their nesting compartments. Tanner had to get through two more airlocks before he was finally on station. As he walked into the main arrivals corridor, he strapped his back pack over his shoulders and proceeded to the check point. The custodian who lost his ID wasn't far behind him.
An officer looked up from a sheet of paper he had been filling out from behind a large desk with a mounted recharger on it. "ID?" Tanner unclipped his card from his turtleneck, sliding it beneath his hand over the desk to the officer. The officer picked it up, examined his name and job title. "Assistant?" The officer said the word with a note of exasperation. "One second. I'll need to run a background check."
"Take your time." Tanner glanced back at the janitor, he had started tapping his foot. "Thank god there aren't twenty of us here or something."
Tanner returned his attention to the security officer, dressed in the departments hallmark blood red uniform. The man suddenly tensed. "O-oh. . . That's unique." He turned around in his chair again, rolling away from the computer as he slid Tanner's ID back across the desk. "You should probably report to the Captain or the H.O.P. Probably the captain."
"I'll do that." Tanner picked up his ID, then loaded it into his P.D.A. It was easier to only carry one of them. He stepped out of the custodian's way and began the walk down the long corridor which led to the bridge. But before he could even make it that far a head intercepted him in the hall. "Hey handsome."
It was the research director. He read her ID. Jaylee Zaun.
Tanner had only worked with her a handful of times. To say they really knew each other at all well would have been a stretch. Something about the way she was looking at him raised a red flag, but he chalked it up to paranoia. "Ma'am." Tanner braced, snapping off a crisp salute.
Jaylee made a silly face at him. "Always so formal. But I need your help real quick."
Tanner let his hand fall back to his side. Typical, he thought. Shit's always hitting the fan around here early.
"Xenobiology has a little problem. One of the researchers was playing with gold slime, and, well. . . Are you familiar with a xenomorph?"
Tanner's face paled. "Oh god. . ."
Jaylee's face tightened. "Yeah. . . Two hunters, one drone. And I'd like them dealt with before the drone responds to evolutionary pressure and mutates into a queen."
"Have you called security?"
Jaylee nodded. "Of course. But none of the officers they sent in came back out. I had the AI update me personally about your arrival."
Tanner nodded. This was bad. Real bad. "Lets get moving, then."
Tanner followed Jaylee back to the entrance of Xenobiology. The actual research room was divided by two partitions of armored doors. Tanner looked around suspiciously. "Where are the officers?"
"Dilgan left his post to confer with Captain Tool and that Nano Trasen Official. I think his name was Lightstar?"
Tanner knew both of those names immediately. They were big ones, both historical and around the station. He let out a low whistle. "What about Rose?"
Jaylee drew a blank for a moment. "Who?"
"Rose. She works security. She's an officer," Tanner's voice took on a slight edge of agitation.
Jaylee's face seemed to light up with recognition, but Tanner didn't trust it. "Her! Oh right! Dilgan's kind of protective of her. And since a lot of officers were tied up dealing with this, he wanted to keep someone on patrol, just in case."
Tanner peered into Jaylee's face, hard. He couldn't tell if she was being completely honest or not. But something didn't feel right here.
Jaylee suddenly approached the first airlock, readying her card. "I'll get you through both sets of the doors. Then after that, you're on your own."
Tanner pulled off his back pack, dropping it to the floor. Jaylee watched him, clearly interested in whatever it was he was doing. He pulled dark pieces of metal out of the bag, snapping them together in assembly. The weapon could be broken down for transport and put back together at a moments notice. It was the dream gun of any specialized operative. Tanner looked down the barrel of his TX-39, the sleek, dark energy gun was ready. He switched the setting from stun to kill, and indicator lights along the barrel flashed from blue to a bloody red. Then they winked out.
"Ready when you are." Tanner relaxed the weapon in both hands, holding it down across his waist.
Jaylee smirked. Then she carded the airlock. The access panel flashed from red to green, and the metal portal hissed open for Tanner. He walked through, Jaylee following him inside to the second door.
"Maybe you should just hand me your card, ma'am," Tanner suggested. "This is going to be extremely dangerous."
Jaylee shook her head. "I need it for too many things right now. I'll let you in, then immediately close the door behind you, ok?"
Tanner grunted. "Fine."
She approached the second armored airlock, swiped her card. The thick plating swirled apart in four segments, permitting Tanner entry. Jaylee followed him into the xeno research lab.
Tanner stiffened as the door closed behind him. He didn't see any officers. No blood, either. The room was dead silent. Empty. . . He whipped around, glaring at Jaylee. "I told you to wait outside."
"Did you?" She pouted her full lips. "I've been a very bad doctor, Mister Mirabel. I didn't follow your instruction." Her slender fingers started down her lab coat, unworking each button with a deliberate slowness. When she got to the last button, she shrugged it off, letting it fall into a pile on the metal decking. The darker jumpsuit she wore underneath hugged the feminine contours of her hourglass figure.
"What the fuck's the matter with you, Zaun!?" Tanner felt something terribly wrong, the seizing chill of panic tightening around his chest like a giant icy fist. He leaned away from Zaun as she pressed her body up against him, cupping his face with both hands, then squeezing.
"Poor baby, don't be scared. Dr. Zaun is going to take care of you now. . ." Tanner's saw something quickly slither out of Jaylee's back in his periphery, the snake-like shape darted for his leg.
"No!" Tanner leapt away from Jaylee, his pant leg tearing in the process.
Her smile was predatory as the snake-like tail smoothly rose up behind her. It ended in a stinger, glistening from some oozing chemical. She plucked the little piece of his pant leg off the sharp tip, like it were a rose petal, and let it flutter down to the floor. "I guess he loves me not."
Tanner leveled the rifle with Jaylee and fired. Jaylee was inhumanly fast, but the searing red bolt still caught her in the upper arm, burning a sizzling hole in her shoulder. She screamed out in pain as she dove onto the floor, overturning a table in the process to shield herself from more gunfire. Tanner fired three more rounds with surgical precision, spacing the beams so that they burned through the table at a downward trajectory
Tanner lifted his chin away from his gun, taking a breath to inspect the damage. He had lost sight of that . . . that thing. The beams had cut straight through, leaving three smoking holes. He could see straight through them, but he couldn't see a body.
Tanner leveled his rifle again, took a few more breaths, then held it as he approached the table. A bead of sweat glistened on his brow as his heart hammered inside his chest. His hands wanted to shake, but he wouldn't let them. Just remember who's holding the gun, Mirabel.
Tanner allowed himself another breath, taking it long and slow, so it would be silent. Then he leaned over the table, leading with the muzzle of his TX-39. Jaylee's eyes stared vacantly, void of any sign of life. He walked around the table, and that's when he saw the pale skin of her shoulder peering through the hole in her jumpsuit. The wound was gone, healed perfectly as if it had never even been there. "Fuck!" Tanner leveled his rifle with Jaylee's body. Her eyes suddenly moved as her stinger flew up at him, knocking the weapon out of his hands. The TX-39 clattered across the floor as she sprang to her feet and rushed into his body, pinning him up against a bulkhead.
Tanner's body slammed with a dull thud, and Jaylee's vicelike fingers crushing into his throat. He choked, gurgling spittle as he seized her wrists. His torso and legs thrashed pitifully. This woman was far too strong and fast to be human. The stinger came up, hovering calmly over her left shoulder, secreting some kind of glistening ooze as it poised itself to strike. "Mmm. You're a strong one. Goodbye, Mirabel."
She's not human. She's enemy! Tanner grit his teeth. "Fucrrch, you!" he choked, then curled in his legs and suddenly swung them upward, kicking them out as he used the bulkhead to brace his back. He buried the heels of his black combat boots right into Jaylee's pretty face, knocking her back across the floor. He dropped from the air and fell flat on his back. Tanner immediately rolled to his stomach and pushed himself to his feet, pulling an eight inch combat knife from his boot. He held the blade facing down, hunkering into a balanced stance.
He watched the creature that had assumed the form of Jaylee give its head a soft shake as it picked itself up off the ground, glaring at him as she narrowed her eyes in calculation, like a spider re-assessing prey it couldn't bring down with the first bite. Then it eyed his knife. "Oh-ho, you have no idea what you're in for."
"Security will be here in a few minutes."
"Is that what you think? She was the research director. The AI had a little 'adjustment' and I've placed a jammer in this room. No one's coming for you, no matter how much you scream." Her voice fell a few menacing octaves at the end of her last sentence.
Tanner's jaw tightened. "Shame," his voice went flat. "Because you'll be praying for someone in a badge to barge in and pull me off you for whatever you did to the real Jaylee."
The two began in a slow circle, like predators, narrowing the gap as they walked. Jaylee's eyes watched him, and Tanner watched right back, glancing to the stinger periodically. It was a dangerous appendage, and the very first thing he would neutralize. His grip on the hilt of his knife tightened. The air felt like a lit fuse.
"You're sweating."
"Shut up."
Jaylee rushed forward with her hands, attempting to grapple him. But Tanner knocked her arm away and slipped inside her reach. He brought his knife down in one clean stabbing motion, burying the blade to its hilt at an angle through her throat that went somewhere into her chest cavity. Tanner was shocked when that barely seemed to slow her down. She tackled him onto the floor with an angry hiss, and the two of them went down together in a messy tangle of limbs and gouging fingers. Tanner shoved his thumb into Jaylee's eye. She pulled frantically at his short hair with one hand and gouged him right back with the other. The stinger thrashed wildly, locked between the joints of Tanner's leg. It flexed, trying to sting him, but it couldn't quite reach.
Tanner screamed out as her middle finger dug deeper into his eye socket. His vision blurred with color, forcing him to seize her wrist and pull it away from his face. The monster howled, tolerating Tanner's thumb as he gave back as terribly as he got. Rather than respond to that, she released his hair and pulled the knife out of her throat. Tanner tried to act, but Jaylee was just a little quicker. She slammed it through his rib cage. His mouth gaped in a breathless scream. The wound on her throat knitting itself shut like it had never been there.
Tanner narrowed his eyes, forcing himself to keep his leg locked no matter how badly that knife hurt. If that stinger came loose, it would be all over. He sat up, delivering a hard elbow to the side of Jaylee's jaw as the knife sliced inside him. She tumbled off his body, momentarily stunned. Tanner pulled the knife out of his ribs as his body regenerated the wound, closing skin and repairing internal damage.
Tanner immediately grabbed the tail and sliced through just below the stinger. It fell to the floor as her tail writhed in pain, gushing blood and chemicals everywhere. Before she could even finish her scream Tanner dove on top of her, wrestling her wrists flat against the floor as he straddled her stomach. Then he headbutted her, again and again, until her mouth broke open and he heard her jaw crack. Jaylee's body trembled and convulsed, eventually slipping into unconsciousness. It turned out the nanite mesh of duranium fibers in Tanner's bones was useful for more than just preventing breakage.
Not human. Enemy, the thought echoed again as Tanner forced his mind to shut off something very human inside him. He clasped his knife, put it up to Jaylee's throat. He'd love to see her regenerate from this one. He started cutting, blood oozed and squirted out onto his hands and wrists, slicking the handle. He forced his expression to stay even, working calmly and methodically at her anatomy. When he felt the blade touch the metal decking below he knew his task was finished. The head rolled free, turning onto its profile. Tanner just looked at it. He wanted to vomit. But at least this time her eyes really were lifeless.
He patted down Jaylee's jumpsuit, taking her ID as he stood up. Tanner glanced down at the head, mouth softly gaping as the eyes stared vacantly at some indiscernible point. He kicked it away, irrationally afraid that it might reattach itself to the body and come back to life if he left them too close to one another.
Tanner walked over to the airlock, sliding the former research director's card. The portal swirled open for him, the face of a stunned looking officer there to greet him. "Mirabel?" It was Pone. The hand Tanner held his knife in trembled, but his face was eerily calm. He had to keep it together; lives were in danger. It's what they made him for. But still . . . even having killed a lot of people in the name of war and national defense never forced him to decapitate someone. Nothing prepared him for the malicious brutality of an act like that.
"Get the captain, there are hostile alien lifeforms aboard, they can take the forms of crewmemb—" Everything seized as Tanner felt a fiery stab. Damn. . . He dropped to his knees, staring down in disbelief at the pointed stinger lodged inside his chest. Blood trickled out around its conic shape.
He felt everything shutting down. He couldn't move his arms. His legs. Nothing. His vision was already starting to narrow. He looked up into the face of Pone, did his best to sneer. He wanted to curse the officer, but couldn't manage words. Then he watched its head suddenly explode in a shower of gore. The blood splattered onto his turtleneck and face. Pone's headless body swayed, then dropped like a brick. Tanner was only just barely able to force his neck to crane, looking up to see what happened.
Dirk Lightstar was holding a smoking combat shotgun, shoulder pressed into the stock. His usual cigar was pinched between his teeth, and he lifted his head away from the gun to look over at Mirabel. Captain Tool was backing him up in his captain's armor with a laser pistol, and Dilgan brought Rose Watson in with matching laser rifles. They weren't playing.
Tanner couldn't stay awake anymore. He he was dying. His vision narrowed into a tiny dot, then warmth and blackness consumed him as he fell back onto the floor.
"Wow man. You're cut. You workout?"
Tanner lifted his head from the back of his chair, looked at the man who seemed to be addressing him. He was dressed like a custodian, but didn't have an ID. His eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses and his lips straightened into a taut line. "Yeah. You could say that. Misplace your ID?"
Then custodian looked down, patting his gray uniform. Then he glanced back up at Tanner, smiling. "Ha! Yeah. They said not to worry about it, though. Told me the H.O.P. could get me a new one. Didn't promise I'd get to keep cleaning, though. I hear if you lose your ID they stick you somewhere else sometimes, because they just don't care."
Tanner watched the man's face closely. Of the forty three distinct moves his facial muscles were capable of, none of them so far flexed into the expression of a liar. His suspicion evaporated almost instantly. His tone changed, but the custodian hardly seemed to notice. "Good luck then. Hope they give you an easy time."
A gentle reverberation coursed through the shuttle, and Tanner recognized the distinct thud of docking clamps locking into place.
"We must be here!" The custodian was grinning. It had been a quiet flight, and they were both probably a little eager to stretch their legs.
Tanner unbuckled from his seat and rose to his full height. He was tall and dynamic, the fiercely defined contours of his muscular body pushing at the seams of his black turtleneck and light brown pants. His short black hair accentuated the cutting line of his jaw, intensifying his hard features.
He grabbed his backpack and approached the airlock he had used to board the shuttle. The white plates hissed air as they parted for him, sliding back into their nesting compartments. Tanner had to get through two more airlocks before he was finally on station. As he walked into the main arrivals corridor, he strapped his back pack over his shoulders and proceeded to the check point. The custodian who lost his ID wasn't far behind him.
An officer looked up from a sheet of paper he had been filling out from behind a large desk with a mounted recharger on it. "ID?" Tanner unclipped his card from his turtleneck, sliding it beneath his hand over the desk to the officer. The officer picked it up, examined his name and job title. "Assistant?" The officer said the word with a note of exasperation. "One second. I'll need to run a background check."
"Take your time." Tanner glanced back at the janitor, he had started tapping his foot. "Thank god there aren't twenty of us here or something."
Tanner returned his attention to the security officer, dressed in the departments hallmark blood red uniform. The man suddenly tensed. "O-oh. . . That's unique." He turned around in his chair again, rolling away from the computer as he slid Tanner's ID back across the desk. "You should probably report to the Captain or the H.O.P. Probably the captain."
"I'll do that." Tanner picked up his ID, then loaded it into his P.D.A. It was easier to only carry one of them. He stepped out of the custodian's way and began the walk down the long corridor which led to the bridge. But before he could even make it that far a head intercepted him in the hall. "Hey handsome."
It was the research director. He read her ID. Jaylee Zaun.
Tanner had only worked with her a handful of times. To say they really knew each other at all well would have been a stretch. Something about the way she was looking at him raised a red flag, but he chalked it up to paranoia. "Ma'am." Tanner braced, snapping off a crisp salute.
Jaylee made a silly face at him. "Always so formal. But I need your help real quick."
Tanner let his hand fall back to his side. Typical, he thought. Shit's always hitting the fan around here early.
"Xenobiology has a little problem. One of the researchers was playing with gold slime, and, well. . . Are you familiar with a xenomorph?"
Tanner's face paled. "Oh god. . ."
Jaylee's face tightened. "Yeah. . . Two hunters, one drone. And I'd like them dealt with before the drone responds to evolutionary pressure and mutates into a queen."
"Have you called security?"
Jaylee nodded. "Of course. But none of the officers they sent in came back out. I had the AI update me personally about your arrival."
Tanner nodded. This was bad. Real bad. "Lets get moving, then."
Tanner followed Jaylee back to the entrance of Xenobiology. The actual research room was divided by two partitions of armored doors. Tanner looked around suspiciously. "Where are the officers?"
"Dilgan left his post to confer with Captain Tool and that Nano Trasen Official. I think his name was Lightstar?"
Tanner knew both of those names immediately. They were big ones, both historical and around the station. He let out a low whistle. "What about Rose?"
Jaylee drew a blank for a moment. "Who?"
"Rose. She works security. She's an officer," Tanner's voice took on a slight edge of agitation.
Jaylee's face seemed to light up with recognition, but Tanner didn't trust it. "Her! Oh right! Dilgan's kind of protective of her. And since a lot of officers were tied up dealing with this, he wanted to keep someone on patrol, just in case."
Tanner peered into Jaylee's face, hard. He couldn't tell if she was being completely honest or not. But something didn't feel right here.
Jaylee suddenly approached the first airlock, readying her card. "I'll get you through both sets of the doors. Then after that, you're on your own."
Tanner pulled off his back pack, dropping it to the floor. Jaylee watched him, clearly interested in whatever it was he was doing. He pulled dark pieces of metal out of the bag, snapping them together in assembly. The weapon could be broken down for transport and put back together at a moments notice. It was the dream gun of any specialized operative. Tanner looked down the barrel of his TX-39, the sleek, dark energy gun was ready. He switched the setting from stun to kill, and indicator lights along the barrel flashed from blue to a bloody red. Then they winked out.
"Ready when you are." Tanner relaxed the weapon in both hands, holding it down across his waist.
Jaylee smirked. Then she carded the airlock. The access panel flashed from red to green, and the metal portal hissed open for Tanner. He walked through, Jaylee following him inside to the second door.
"Maybe you should just hand me your card, ma'am," Tanner suggested. "This is going to be extremely dangerous."
Jaylee shook her head. "I need it for too many things right now. I'll let you in, then immediately close the door behind you, ok?"
Tanner grunted. "Fine."
She approached the second armored airlock, swiped her card. The thick plating swirled apart in four segments, permitting Tanner entry. Jaylee followed him into the xeno research lab.
Tanner stiffened as the door closed behind him. He didn't see any officers. No blood, either. The room was dead silent. Empty. . . He whipped around, glaring at Jaylee. "I told you to wait outside."
"Did you?" She pouted her full lips. "I've been a very bad doctor, Mister Mirabel. I didn't follow your instruction." Her slender fingers started down her lab coat, unworking each button with a deliberate slowness. When she got to the last button, she shrugged it off, letting it fall into a pile on the metal decking. The darker jumpsuit she wore underneath hugged the feminine contours of her hourglass figure.
"What the fuck's the matter with you, Zaun!?" Tanner felt something terribly wrong, the seizing chill of panic tightening around his chest like a giant icy fist. He leaned away from Zaun as she pressed her body up against him, cupping his face with both hands, then squeezing.
"Poor baby, don't be scared. Dr. Zaun is going to take care of you now. . ." Tanner's saw something quickly slither out of Jaylee's back in his periphery, the snake-like shape darted for his leg.
"No!" Tanner leapt away from Jaylee, his pant leg tearing in the process.
Her smile was predatory as the snake-like tail smoothly rose up behind her. It ended in a stinger, glistening from some oozing chemical. She plucked the little piece of his pant leg off the sharp tip, like it were a rose petal, and let it flutter down to the floor. "I guess he loves me not."
Tanner leveled the rifle with Jaylee and fired. Jaylee was inhumanly fast, but the searing red bolt still caught her in the upper arm, burning a sizzling hole in her shoulder. She screamed out in pain as she dove onto the floor, overturning a table in the process to shield herself from more gunfire. Tanner fired three more rounds with surgical precision, spacing the beams so that they burned through the table at a downward trajectory
Tanner lifted his chin away from his gun, taking a breath to inspect the damage. He had lost sight of that . . . that thing. The beams had cut straight through, leaving three smoking holes. He could see straight through them, but he couldn't see a body.
Tanner leveled his rifle again, took a few more breaths, then held it as he approached the table. A bead of sweat glistened on his brow as his heart hammered inside his chest. His hands wanted to shake, but he wouldn't let them. Just remember who's holding the gun, Mirabel.
Tanner allowed himself another breath, taking it long and slow, so it would be silent. Then he leaned over the table, leading with the muzzle of his TX-39. Jaylee's eyes stared vacantly, void of any sign of life. He walked around the table, and that's when he saw the pale skin of her shoulder peering through the hole in her jumpsuit. The wound was gone, healed perfectly as if it had never even been there. "Fuck!" Tanner leveled his rifle with Jaylee's body. Her eyes suddenly moved as her stinger flew up at him, knocking the weapon out of his hands. The TX-39 clattered across the floor as she sprang to her feet and rushed into his body, pinning him up against a bulkhead.
Tanner's body slammed with a dull thud, and Jaylee's vicelike fingers crushing into his throat. He choked, gurgling spittle as he seized her wrists. His torso and legs thrashed pitifully. This woman was far too strong and fast to be human. The stinger came up, hovering calmly over her left shoulder, secreting some kind of glistening ooze as it poised itself to strike. "Mmm. You're a strong one. Goodbye, Mirabel."
She's not human. She's enemy! Tanner grit his teeth. "Fucrrch, you!" he choked, then curled in his legs and suddenly swung them upward, kicking them out as he used the bulkhead to brace his back. He buried the heels of his black combat boots right into Jaylee's pretty face, knocking her back across the floor. He dropped from the air and fell flat on his back. Tanner immediately rolled to his stomach and pushed himself to his feet, pulling an eight inch combat knife from his boot. He held the blade facing down, hunkering into a balanced stance.
He watched the creature that had assumed the form of Jaylee give its head a soft shake as it picked itself up off the ground, glaring at him as she narrowed her eyes in calculation, like a spider re-assessing prey it couldn't bring down with the first bite. Then it eyed his knife. "Oh-ho, you have no idea what you're in for."
"Security will be here in a few minutes."
"Is that what you think? She was the research director. The AI had a little 'adjustment' and I've placed a jammer in this room. No one's coming for you, no matter how much you scream." Her voice fell a few menacing octaves at the end of her last sentence.
Tanner's jaw tightened. "Shame," his voice went flat. "Because you'll be praying for someone in a badge to barge in and pull me off you for whatever you did to the real Jaylee."
The two began in a slow circle, like predators, narrowing the gap as they walked. Jaylee's eyes watched him, and Tanner watched right back, glancing to the stinger periodically. It was a dangerous appendage, and the very first thing he would neutralize. His grip on the hilt of his knife tightened. The air felt like a lit fuse.
"You're sweating."
"Shut up."
Jaylee rushed forward with her hands, attempting to grapple him. But Tanner knocked her arm away and slipped inside her reach. He brought his knife down in one clean stabbing motion, burying the blade to its hilt at an angle through her throat that went somewhere into her chest cavity. Tanner was shocked when that barely seemed to slow her down. She tackled him onto the floor with an angry hiss, and the two of them went down together in a messy tangle of limbs and gouging fingers. Tanner shoved his thumb into Jaylee's eye. She pulled frantically at his short hair with one hand and gouged him right back with the other. The stinger thrashed wildly, locked between the joints of Tanner's leg. It flexed, trying to sting him, but it couldn't quite reach.
Tanner screamed out as her middle finger dug deeper into his eye socket. His vision blurred with color, forcing him to seize her wrist and pull it away from his face. The monster howled, tolerating Tanner's thumb as he gave back as terribly as he got. Rather than respond to that, she released his hair and pulled the knife out of her throat. Tanner tried to act, but Jaylee was just a little quicker. She slammed it through his rib cage. His mouth gaped in a breathless scream. The wound on her throat knitting itself shut like it had never been there.
Tanner narrowed his eyes, forcing himself to keep his leg locked no matter how badly that knife hurt. If that stinger came loose, it would be all over. He sat up, delivering a hard elbow to the side of Jaylee's jaw as the knife sliced inside him. She tumbled off his body, momentarily stunned. Tanner pulled the knife out of his ribs as his body regenerated the wound, closing skin and repairing internal damage.
Tanner immediately grabbed the tail and sliced through just below the stinger. It fell to the floor as her tail writhed in pain, gushing blood and chemicals everywhere. Before she could even finish her scream Tanner dove on top of her, wrestling her wrists flat against the floor as he straddled her stomach. Then he headbutted her, again and again, until her mouth broke open and he heard her jaw crack. Jaylee's body trembled and convulsed, eventually slipping into unconsciousness. It turned out the nanite mesh of duranium fibers in Tanner's bones was useful for more than just preventing breakage.
Not human. Enemy, the thought echoed again as Tanner forced his mind to shut off something very human inside him. He clasped his knife, put it up to Jaylee's throat. He'd love to see her regenerate from this one. He started cutting, blood oozed and squirted out onto his hands and wrists, slicking the handle. He forced his expression to stay even, working calmly and methodically at her anatomy. When he felt the blade touch the metal decking below he knew his task was finished. The head rolled free, turning onto its profile. Tanner just looked at it. He wanted to vomit. But at least this time her eyes really were lifeless.
He patted down Jaylee's jumpsuit, taking her ID as he stood up. Tanner glanced down at the head, mouth softly gaping as the eyes stared vacantly at some indiscernible point. He kicked it away, irrationally afraid that it might reattach itself to the body and come back to life if he left them too close to one another.
Tanner walked over to the airlock, sliding the former research director's card. The portal swirled open for him, the face of a stunned looking officer there to greet him. "Mirabel?" It was Pone. The hand Tanner held his knife in trembled, but his face was eerily calm. He had to keep it together; lives were in danger. It's what they made him for. But still . . . even having killed a lot of people in the name of war and national defense never forced him to decapitate someone. Nothing prepared him for the malicious brutality of an act like that.
"Get the captain, there are hostile alien lifeforms aboard, they can take the forms of crewmemb—" Everything seized as Tanner felt a fiery stab. Damn. . . He dropped to his knees, staring down in disbelief at the pointed stinger lodged inside his chest. Blood trickled out around its conic shape.
He felt everything shutting down. He couldn't move his arms. His legs. Nothing. His vision was already starting to narrow. He looked up into the face of Pone, did his best to sneer. He wanted to curse the officer, but couldn't manage words. Then he watched its head suddenly explode in a shower of gore. The blood splattered onto his turtleneck and face. Pone's headless body swayed, then dropped like a brick. Tanner was only just barely able to force his neck to crane, looking up to see what happened.
Dirk Lightstar was holding a smoking combat shotgun, shoulder pressed into the stock. His usual cigar was pinched between his teeth, and he lifted his head away from the gun to look over at Mirabel. Captain Tool was backing him up in his captain's armor with a laser pistol, and Dilgan brought Rose Watson in with matching laser rifles. They weren't playing.
Tanner couldn't stay awake anymore. He he was dying. His vision narrowed into a tiny dot, then warmth and blackness consumed him as he fell back onto the floor.