Space Station Wayfar Ch. 01

Copyright Otto26, 2007

*

Spaceships, Francesca knew, should hum. The fusion reactor at the heart of the ship should transfer its warmth to the reaction mass and spew it out. The process should make even the best ship tremble like a living thing when it was under way. This ship, however, seemed to... moan. It was perhaps the least obvious of the differences, but it seemed to be the most significant.

Perhaps that was because it was the only difference she could really appreciate. The darkness of her cell denied her sight of the strange, almost plastic, material that made up the ship and there was nothing else for her to do except sit, eat, defecate, sleep, and listen to the weird sound of the strange ship. She was certain she'd fallen into the hands of creatures that most people considered nothing more than the semi-lucid tales of deep-space explorers.

Her father's decision to risk a dangerous transit in order to pick up the early delivery bonus on their cargo had proven... disastrous. The little black ship had been waiting for them, with weapons none of the crew had ever seen before. They'd tried to fight, of course, since they knew what awaited the victims of piracy. And then the black men in their weirdly misshapen assault suits had swept through the crew spaces, brushing aside their resistance, and she'd seen nothing until she awoke, naked, strapped to a chair and answering questions.

She'd gone hysterical, irrationally and completely hysterical, and they'd... done something which calmed her and dragged her through the strange, almost organic corridors of the ship and deposited her in the cell. Food from her ship, still in the wrappers, appeared at various times, lit by a faint glow from the walls. When she was done eating, the glow went away and returned her to the darkness. She'd tried to count meals, but she'd lost count somewhere after forty and wasn't sure that was completely accurate anyway. She suspected there had been a period of longer unconsciousness, but she had no way of being certain.

When the glow illuminated the cell she looked for the package of food, but found nothing. Instead, the door to the cell opened. The creature in the blinding light of the corridor took her by the arm and pulled her out.

"Walk," he commanded in the strange, sing-song accent that marked their speech.

He guided her through the weirdly organic corridors of the ship until they passed through what was obviously an airlock and into architecture that she recognized. The script on the wall was strangely formed, but it was Stanspeak, and it welcomed her aboard the Research Station Wayfar. Less inviting was the reminder that the station was a biological research facility and the caution that extreme safety protocols should be observed. The decontamination stations next to the airlock were obviously not in use and Francesca suddenly felt her nudity very keenly.

The man dragged her down the corridor and into an elevator that took them deeper into the station. At their destination they made the careful transition from zero-gravity into the artificial gravity generated by the station's rotation. Francesca, looking for a chance to escape, was disappointed to see her captor made the transition with as much ease as she did.

With her eyes adjusted to the bright light, she was able to make a closer study of the man. He was short, perhaps a few centimeters shorter than her, and not particularly large. Rope like muscles covered his body, however, and he walked soundlessly and with perfect balance. His clothing was a form-fitting vacuum skin in mottled shades of black and gray. His face, interestingly enough, was covered in the same mottled shades and she could see that this looked like body modification rather than natural skin tone. His hair was shaved on the sides and the thick strands of hair on top ran down his back in a tight braid. A patch of the dark material that made up the strange ship was visible on the left side of his head. His hands, she noted, appeared to be clawed.

So absorbed was she in her examination that she failed to notice they had arrived at their destination. The script on the wall labeled the room inside as a dining facility. They walked in and the man pointed to a chair at a table. Other men, and women, of his type were in the room and they were all examining her. Blushing, she sat in the chair and turned her back to the room in a quest for the greatest amount of privacy.

The man returned with a tray that he set down on the table. Two unappetizing gray cakes sat on it, next to two small bulbs of a green liquid. Some vegetables she didn't recognize were on a plate that he placed in front of her. She reached for one, but he tapped her hand with a claw and pointed at the cake and liquid. Sitting across from her he demonstrated, sipping at his bulb and taking a small bite of the cake.

Francesca gave the cake a taste and grimaced. The sip from the bulb was, against all reason, even worse. Grimly determined, she quickly wolfed the offensive foods with the minimum of chewing. Gagging slightly, she reached for a vegetable and then doubled over in pain.

"Slowly would have been better," the man commented. "Your symbiote has been living on its reserves and has not yet had a reason to expand into your digestive tract. This is likely to be painful."

Francesca's scream agreed with his assessment and she fell to the floor in agony as her insides burned and tore. He observed her patiently, nibbling and sipping at his food, and waited for her to finish.

It seemed to take a segment, but the pain finally ended and Francesca was able to uncurl from the fetal position. A faint warmth of euphoria seemed to fill her and she felt drowsy. The man, finished with his meal, took the tray away and returned, scooping her up off the floor. Holding her in his arms he carried her out of the room.

***

Francesca awoke in a bed and thought, just for a moment, that she was home in her quarters aboard the Pretty Penny. The unfamiliar surroundings killed that notion, however, and she began to wonder where she actually was. 'Not on that strange ship,' she thought. Her eye caught a gleam on the far wall and she saw a strange assortment of weapons hanging next to a mottled black and gray vacuum skin. Her ear caught the sound of a sonic refresher and she realized the man must be in it.

Painfully, stealthily, she rose from the bed and reached across for a knife.

"I doubt you would be able to injure me," the man said.

Shocked, Francesca whirled about and dropped into a defensive stance.

"I'm going to try," she snarled and lunged for the man.

She had the impression of an impact on the side of her head and then she was crashing into the bed. When her vision cleared the man was placing his blade back on the wall. Francesca could see a line across his flesh where her attack had grazed him. As she watched, the flow of blood stopped and a black foam appeared in the cut and rapidly solidified.

"That was well done," the man said. "I had not expected you to have any combat training."

He walked over to the bed and climbed on top of her. Still groggy, she tried to gouge his eyes out, but his hands caught her wrists as his knees pried her legs apart. Growling she went for him with her teeth, but his head jerked forward and caught her a blow just above the bridge of her nose. She saw stars, again.

"Fucking bastard," she spat.

"Technically correct," he acknowledged.

Francesca felt his stiff member probing and shifted her hips to avoid him. She tried to bring her legs back to kick him, but he collapsed his body on her and she couldn't quite get into position. She tried to think of something else she could do, her blurry vision searching for a weapon, her nose noting the smell of him.

The sudden jolt of warmth in her body was enough to stun her into a moment of inactivity and the man took advantage of that to drive deep into her body. Francesca was shocked to discover that she was wet, and was stunned by the second jolt of warmth that flooded her limbs. Her ears reported that she was moaning and even as she tried to make sense of that she was leaning her head up to kiss the man and wrapping her legs around him.

She ground her hips against him as he moved against her with mechanical regularity and lifted her breasts up, pressing them against his smooth chest. His tongue was in her mouth and she was sucking on it, consumed by a desire to be filled by this man. When she felt a sudden warmth inside her she exploded, screaming the pleasure out of her body lest it stop her pounding heart in mid-beat.

He was dressed when she regained consciousness.

"I am Stepen," he said. "You were good, but you could be better. Study the material on the reader and we will try again later."

"No," she whispered.

"Yes," he said.

"No," she repeated, strongly this time.

"Yes," he replied. "You misunderstand the nature of your position. We command, you obey."

"When you get back," she said slowly and clearly, "I will have whatever weapon I can manufacture ready to kill you."

"I no longer doubt that you would try. To avoid further injuring you, I'll demonstrate why that is a poor idea."

The pain that lashed through Francesca's body was enough to drive the breath from her lungs and force her into a rictus of agony. Uncountable moments of suffocating pain passed before she was finally able to breathe again. Gasping for breath she barely caught Stepen's parting comment.

"It can be worse than that, and it will be if you have not studied the material on the reader."

When she was finally able to breath again, Francesca crawled resignedly out of the bed and pushed the section of wall that would activate the reader. When nothing happened she slapped it angrily. She was about to hit it with her fist when she was finally able to rein in her anger and start thinking. Slowly, she examined the room. On the table against the wall a small construct of the same strange material sat. She approached it carefully and then stopped as it unfolded and began to display a video. The words and the text were completely unfamiliar to her, but the imagery was understandable and the tone of the sound was too; it was instruction, sexual instruction.

Grimacing, Francesca ignored it and began to look around for something to turn into a weapon. The machine beeped at her and Francesca turned back to see the material had paused from the moment she turned away from it. As her eyes met the video, it started playing again. Disgusted, she realized the reader could tell when she was watching it. She pulled out the seat and began to watch, determined to finish the tape as quickly as possible and get on with her search for a weapon.

As the material continued to play, Francesca learned. The material showed men and women like Stepen engaged in a wide variety of sexual activity. The setting was consistent with the ship she had been held captive on. When a woman and a man who were obviously not of the same race walked into the scene she frowned and tried to understand what was happening. A schematic caught her eye and she studied it carefully with a growing sense of horror. When she was sure, she dashed into the bathroom, heedless of the strident machine beeping, and tried desperately to examine her back in the mirror.

'Those bastards! They put a fucking monster in me!' she thought. She ran back into the room and examined the schematic. It showed a black substance with the consistency of putty being injected into the back of a man. The putty slowly flowed around the spine, molding itself to it and extending fine tendrils along the major arteries and nerve bundles including, she saw with horror and anger, into the testicles and penis. The schematic was joined by footage which showed the man reacting to the presence of a female by becoming visibly aroused. The schematic made it clear that pheromones were the trigger, that the... thing inside her stimulated her body to respond.

"Fucking bastards!" she exploded. "Miserable void-be-taken monsters! It's not even my body any more, you've taken it away from me!" She picked up the reader and hurled it across the room where it bounced off the wall and fell to the ground, softly keening and oozing. Francesca sat down on the floor, pulled her knees up against her chest and softly cried.

***

"Why did you damage the reader?" Stepen asked as he entered the room.

"Because I felt like it," Francesca said flatly.

Stepen frowned. "That is not a good reason. We do not have many readers and it will take time for the technicians to convert this station to a proper biological base."

"Fuck you," Francesca replied.

"Rebellion will not benefit you," Stepen pointed out reasonably. "Eventually you will respond to the conditioning and perform as expected. The sensible course of action is cooperation."

"Fuck you," Francesca repeated.

"If the fear of personal pain does not motivate you, then perhaps impersonal pain will? The Sunflower has departed the station, but I am in contact with them. I can have one of your cremates subjected to pain. It seems like a waste, but I am tasked with training you to a minimum acceptable performance level."

Francesca hissed in pure hatred. "You'd torture someone?"

Stepen considered the question for a moment and then shrugged. "I would use their pain to motivate you in the accomplishment of my assigned task," he replied.

"I don't believe you," she challenged.

Stepen shrugged again and his eyes unfocused. After a minute, they refocused and he was obviously puzzled.

"Get up," he snapped.

"Fuck you," Francesca responded.

Stepen reached down and placed his hand on her shoulder, the tips of two clawed fingers dug painfully into her. It was not the pain, but his deceptive strength which hauled her to her feet.

"We need to go to the central brain, now," he stated.

"Why?" she asked as she stumbled painfully alongside him.

"The net is... confused. I have never seen anything like this. Something is very wrong."

'Good,' she thought with savage satisfaction.

***

The 'central brain' had apparently been co-located with station control. Francesca supposed that only made sense; 'good design is good design no matter what technology you're using,' she realized. She also realized that something was indeed very wrong. The machines in the room, much larger cousins to the reader she'd destroyed, were obviously in some distress and warning lights and sounds were emanating from them.

"What's wrong?" she asked as she rubbed her shoulder.

"I do not know," Stepen replied absently. He walked over to one of the machines and touched it. A console appeared and he began to type.

"Use the verbal interface," Francesca suggested.

Stepen grimaced. "We do not use a verbal interface. With the symbiotes it is unnecessary. I am attempting to access the logs with this manual interface, but the systems are... They respond, but only with gibberish."

Francesca looked at the original station controls and walked over to them. "According to this there was a containment breach in the master lab."

Stepen crossed the room and stood behind her. "Can you make it show us?" he asked.

"Not unless you take a step away from me," Francesca responded. She was flushed with excitement and she could feel the moisture between her legs. It was hard to think of anything except sex and only by focusing on her anger was she able to keep control of herself.

Stepen back away and, after several deep breaths, Francesca called up the video records of the master lab. "There," she said, pointing at the screen. "One of your people went into the lab and opened a sample storage container. It looks like it killed him."

Stepen muttered something in a language Francesca didn't know, but she'd heard others like Stepen communicating using it. His tone was angry.

"What?" she asked.

"Ignatz... One of our soldiers. I did not know he was a follower of strength through suffering. Our commander cannot have known or he would have removed him. What did he expose himself too?"

It took Francesca a minute to pry the answer out of computers that considered the containment breach far more important than routine information. When she found the answer she gasped.

"What?" Stepen demanded.

"Lorenz's Disease," Francesca whispered. "He exposed himself to Lorenz's Disease."

"What is that?"

"It's..." Francesca found herself at a loss for words. "It's a horrific disease with absolutely no cure. It's wiped out entire systems. Containment is the only way of dealing with it. This must have been a..."

Her fingers tapped out commands and she scanned the information returned.

"Yes. This was a biological research facility and they were working on a treatment for the disease." She turned to look at Stepen. "Isn't that why you came here?"

"No," the man replied distantly. "This station was isolated and the gas giant it orbits is an excellent source of raw chemicals. We thought to establish a homestead here. Where did the body go?"

Francesca looked where his finger pointed and saw that the video footage of the master lab had continued playing and the body was indeed gone. She ordered the footage to play backwards at high speed and gasped before ordering it to resume normal speed playback.

On the screen, the body of Ignatz flailed wildly and then, shakily, struggled to its feet. Slowly, uncertainly, he walked out of the lab.

"Oh void," Francesca breathed.

"This should not be possible," Stepen declared. "The symbiote should have protected Ignatz. Where did he go afterwards?"

Francesca was already typing commands into the system. Video from the compartment outside the lab showed Ignatz struggling down the companionway. More commands made the computer track him through the video archives as he moved from coverage area to coverage area. In one area he stopped and picked up one of the maintenance drones. With a growing sense of horror, Francesca realized that the drone wasn't a mechanical construct, but a living creature like the symbiote in her and the ones that Ignatz and Stepen must have.

They both hissed in shock as Ignatz spat on the drone and dropped it to the ground. The little creature trembled and then went still. Ignatz moved on.

"Why?" Francesca demanded.

Stepen pointed at the screen. "Strength through suffering is a school of thought which postulates that we can accelerate cultural and physical evolution through a winnowing process of testing ourselves against the universe. The weak will perish while the strong will survive and move on to greater challenges. Ignatz will try to expose everyone and everything because he believes it is his duty."

On the screen, Francesca saw the little drone moving slowly towards a cluster of the strange material. A probe extended from it and connected to the device.

"The drones are hive creatures and they coordinate their actions by sharing information. They make physical contact and exchange information in RNA sequences," Stepen explained with half of his mind while the rest of him was racing to follow the conclusions to their logical end. "This is why the net is confused. Too many components are reporting gibberish. This will be spreading geometrically. We must evacuate. Can you contact the Sunflower with this equipment?"

Francesca shrugged. "If your people haven't done anything to the systems. Will they come back for us?"

"Not if we tell them the truth," he said and then paused in thought. "This station must be destroyed. A disease that can affect both human and symbiote life-forms is too dangerous to exist."

"If you want to die here then feel free, but I'm not going to give up. I'll transmit to your ship after I've made it to an escape pod. They can pick us up after they burn the station."