THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

"Friends," you repeat, amused. "They're pining over one another like a stand of bloody larch. It's adorable."

"My personal life and personal feelings are none of your fucking business, Captain," your phone snaps.

"Oh, there you go, here's Galley. Galley, connect to the Sergeant's audio devices, would you? I can't be waving this phone at her the whole damn time."

This accomplished, you start wrestling your way into a loose, thick leather jacket with attached gauntlets and a high stiff collar. Tonight's the first night you've been fit enough to try it out, so you're very pleased.

"What's the plan of attack?" you ask curiously. "I assume you, er, have experience in this sort of thing. I could run him at you, perhaps?"

 

"No, sir, it's better if he's not riled any more than necessary. Once we know where he is, I may ask you to block escape routes. Before trying a hostile approach, though, I'd like to see if he recognizes me. If he's Bel enough to outsmart security, he's Bel enough to know me. We've been together since we were four."

With this in mind, you leave your visor up when you put the helmet on. You can flip it closed with a twitch of your fingers if a dust-up's in the offing.

 

"Oh, right! That'd certainly be nice, wouldn't it." You key in the final numeral and the door slides open. You gesture grandly, as if inviting her to some stately ballroom sort of affair. "Ladies first!"

 

"I'm not a lady, sir, I'm a sergeant," you grin, and lead the way.

You flick your suit mic on. "Helmsman Galgal? Sergeant Pancho here. Sadly, no time for the proper you're-flush-dating-my-moirail embarrassing talk. I assume Bel fucked up the cameras. Did he actually succeed in keeping you from tracking him?"

 

"No, Sergeant Pancho, ma'am," Galley says, meekly. "Commander Kadros has only disabled what visual-light-spectrum sensors he's managed to spot, and a few of the larger microphones. Go left, straight, left again, right, down to the end of the hall, and prepare for an ambush from the righthand side."

"He teamed up with anyone yet?" you ask.

"No, Captain. He's continued to repel all grouping attempts from other infected. No one else is in this section."

 

"Thanks, Galgal. Captain, hang back, please. I'm going to draw the ambush. Don't worry, I know his moves." You check to make sure you have injectionkind ready, but not equipped yet; you'll need your hands. Then you follow Galgal's instructions, heart fluttering in the back of your throat. It's been so long since you've seen Bel in person, you've been looking forward to it so much, and then it has to be like this.

You can't let him hurt you, or he'll be the world's biggest pain in the ass over it for sweeps.

(bel next)

 

Time is fucked. flickers
light
dark like scribbles it's hard to see what you're doing but
you still
fight


You are not a quitter.
there
was something to
protect

once
and you are going to find it again

you are going to find it again
you are going to take it​

back​

Footsteps.
Metallic.
Prepare.
Prybar.
Attack.​

(pancho next)

 

Even though you've sparred with him a thousand times, it still startles you how fast he moves, how viciously decisive. He's swinging a metal bar, not overhead like it's a sword but in a short, flat arc intended to break bones without killing. The only thought you have time for is: he's still in there.

His weapon dings off your armor's midsection, and you use his momentum to put him on his face on the ground, joint-lock his elbows, and ride him as he tries to buck you off. "Bel, stand the fuck down, it's me, you idiot!"

The words he spits out are thick with throat-gunk, and black drool spatters out, but you think it might've been "I'm not that gullible, you bastards."

"When the hell did you last brush your teeth, Jegus fuck."

 

You edge warily forward: everything was a loud blur, and as a point of fact, remains a loud blur. It is just barely possible you are a danger to yourself and others and should not have come along. You peer intently at the thrashing bit that's probably Kadros. There's a lot of hideous squiggly black stuff happening.

"Here, Kadros, you old boot, it's Pancho. We've got your medicine. Sergeant, how do we, er, deliver it? Do you need me to hold anything?"

 

"Well, I am pretty sure he is going to settle his ass down any minute now, and then I'll give him a shot. It needs -- oh my god, Bel, you reek, I kind of want to hose you down first." Your voice is bumpy because he's fighting you, but you know all his tricks and, in this power armor, can cow-tip a tank. "It needs to go into a thick muscle. So, you know, pretty much anywhere on this spazmoid's meaty corpus."

He goes still under you. "... Pancho?"

"Yes, dumb butt, weren't you expecting me?"

"Pancho, that isn't Erskin," he whispers. "Erskin is safe with Lainey."

"He was, yes, and then he came with me to find you, because wouldn't you come find him personally if you had the cure and he was the one who was sick? Now settle down and let me stick a needle in your ass cheek."

It looks for a second like he'll comply, but as soon as you loosen one hand he makes a bid for freedom. You re-secure his elbows, lock your suit in position, and pop the back hatch. This allows you to reach out behind yourself and inject an ampoule of clear, golden liquid into his right gluteus maximus. He roars in rage, and his bucking intensifies, but you manage to get back into your suit and retake control of its hands.

"Captain," you say in a voice that is only a tiny bit choked, "the next bit isn't going to be pretty. In about five minutes, his body is going to start ejecting the foreign matter. You might prefer not to watch."

 

"I can't actually make heads or tails of anything that's happening right now, so I don't see how things getting slightly more disgusting is supposed to affect me," you say frankly, staring with queasy fascination into the sensory maelstrom.

You offer, hopefully: "I could hold his hair back...? Fetch some towels? Scratch your nose?"

 

Bel is crying. His tears are black. From what you can make out of his mumbles, he thinks 'they' got to you and Captain Aspera, and has lost all hope.

"Once it starts," you say unsteadily, "I could use your help to keep him from choking on his vomit. As for the other end, well, nothing can be done about that."

Beneath you, Bel moans miserably, "I'm sorry, Galley. I'm sorry. I tried. I'm so sorry."

 

Your vascular system seizes up inside you with sorrowing tenderness. You inch closer, carefully, and pat in quick, tentative bursts until you find the sticky, matted remains of his braid. You twist it up as best you can into a bun and then linger, rubbing the bases of his horns. He's probably had a headache for ages now.

"Chin up, you big wiggler," you chide gently. "Hacking up your entire circulatory system can't be as bad as all that."

 

For the next five minutes, he alternates between brokenhearted sobbing, attempts to bite the captain or himself, and shaky little awkward purrs at the horn rubs. You are so utterly in pity with this enormous doofus, you kind of want to go to pieces, but he needs you to hold steady and so you do. The fact that Aspera sticks around and keeps trying to soothe him and prod some sense into him makes you like the man a great deal. All you get from the helmsman is silence, but you can't judge him for that.

A high whimper of pain escapes Bel's clenched teeth. Despite your suited weight on his back, he tries to curl into a ball. You get off, let him do it, though you keep hold of his elbows for now. "Stomach cramps," you observe. "That means it's working. Babe, hey, it's gonna be okay. Shh, just let it happen, I promise you'll be fine --"

At which point he projectile vomits so hard he paints a black splatter halfway up the wall. It smells like pure death.

 

You blurt out a shocked laugh, and clap your hand over your mouth. "Sorry! Sorry, I— oh my goodness, you weren't kidding. That's incredibly nasty. And, augh, I think I just got some of his awful hair gunk in my mouth. I'm going to need a dose of that stuff when we're done here. This is going to be a tremendously exciting night, isn't it?

"Say— Kadros, I bet you can't do that again out the back end. Haha, hell, this is disgusting."

((he is going to keep up a bright and perky chatter at both of them the whole way through, though he'll take any orders besides 'shut up'.))

 

You gape at Aspera in admiring disbelief. "You really are pitch for him, aren't you?"

Then Bel, probably involuntarily, tries to win the proposed bet, and you need to focus on him. It seems to go on forever, and he passes out long before it's over. You have to be very watchful to make sure he doesn't aspirate his vomit, especially when the contractions are weak and don't properly expel the black matter before he tries to inhale. But finally, finally he lies still, breathing raggedly. You take a long breath, despite the choking stench in the air -- more like rotten vegetable matter than like vomit or feces.

"He'll be dangerously dehydrated," you say hoarsely. "Can we get someone down here to clean him up and get him on a drip? And then we can go find the next one."

 

You raise a shaky finger to excuse yourself for a moment, shuffle off to the nearest corner, and get rid of most of your digestion sac. You wipe your mouth off, after, with the cleanest bit of gauntlet you can find, then shuffle back.

"I can get him to the nearest shower," you croak. "Or— hm. Hose him off. Then shower. Then get him on a dripline from the forward medical station. We could transfer the inf— the cured fellows out of here and over to there as they're purged and cleaned up. When we've got everyone out I'll send Lainey through and she can burn everything right down to the base plates."

 

"Well, bleach would be sufficient, but if it'd make her feel better. Sir," you add belatedly. You're not about to argue with his plan; you like the idea of him personally taking care of Bel himself. "There'll be oral antiparasitics we'll all be taking until the whole ship is cleared, that should be sufficient for anything you get into you tonight since it won't have time to incubate. Could you send me an assistant to help with anyone else running around loose, or locked in and climbing the walls? The rest might not be as strong as Bel, but I also haven't been practicing fistkind with them for eight sweeps."

 

"Right, yes, hold on a mo'— what's your contact code?" you say, and get your phone out. Eurgh, you're getting zombie juice on it. Can't be helped. You send a group text to the five most lucid medic staff as of this evening, to get in touch with the Sergeant. Well, the three most lucid medical staff, it turns out, the fourth doesn't respond and the fifth wants to know if Sergeant Pancho is allied with the serpent conspiracy or the vent owls. You write the fifth one off.

"There's been some interesting evolved mythologies," you comment. "When all this is over I want to go through the video recordings with someone who can write and get all of it down. But in broad strokes, things with wings are lurking about in the walls, recruiting people to evil. Meanwhile some sort of multi-layered reptilian menace travels through shadows, and-or is a shadow, and it hollows people out and uses their bodies. Also for evil. If you play along you can work with the infected until they're pretty far gone. Oh, here—" you pull out a big roll of LED strips and pass it over. "Attach as much light to your armor as possible and it's easier to pass yourself off as a good guy. Poor chaps. It must be like being trapped in the universe's most awful video game."

 

"Well, they're about to get logged out, sir, and I am the banhammer." You give your moirail one last longing glance, remind yourself he'll be safe with Aspera, and flick your visor closed. Glowing like a runway, you tromp off to meet your assistants and save some lives.