SIMON VECTOR

PRAISE

SIMON VECTOR introduces a dark hero for even darker times. This is action-packed SF written with all of the pace and urgency of a major thriller. Highly recommended! - Jonathan Maberry, New York Times best-selling
author of DEAD OF NIGHT and MARVEL UNIVERSE VS WOLVERINE

Darker and more violent than Aliens, as gritty and as noire as Bladerunner, and spiced with the blood and graphic gore of the zombie apocalypse, Simon Vector grabs you by the throat and wont let go. The pacing will keep your heart pounding, and the aliens will keep you looking back over your shoulder just to make sure theyre not there in the darkness, reaching for you. - Ian Douglas, New York Times best-selling
author of the popular military SF series STAR CARRIER, THE LEGACY TRILOGY, and THE INHERITANCE TRILOGY

Prison planets, evil geniuses, nameless horrors, and a plucky female protagonist what more could any grown-up boy ask for?
- Mike Resnick, Five-time HUGO AWARD Winner

SIMON VECTOR

by JAK HOLDING

JAK Books
Tampa, FL

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JAK BOOKS
Published by JAK Books An Imprint of League Entertainment, LLC. Tampa, FL This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2012 by JAK Intellectual Properties, Inc. Created by John Jackson & Ken Chapman Cover Art by Johnny Atomic JAK Books and its logo are trademarks of League Entertainment, LLC Library of Congress Control Number: 2012931109 ISBN: 978-0-9848474-0-2 Printed in the United States of America 1

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For Maria & Shelley

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Excerpt from the sealed transcripts of Dr. Thaddeus Kongs message to employee M. Liddel, received, Serpens Station, time index 06/33: . . . Harvester is a vulgar term, the ignorance of rural settlers now writ large across the known worlds, Malcolm. The general public should be referring to the aliens as Vendak. Certainly we have sufficient if finite evidence, culled from the transmissions from the RMS Vengeance, that this is what the creatures call themselves. It did not take a scientific mind as advanced as my own to make that determination. . . . No, I am not being pedantic. May I continue without further interruption? Very well. The Vendak, for reasons known only to them, performed a surgical procedure on Captain Vector that has . . . affected . . . his body profoundly. It was that procedure, perhaps coupled with the partial protection offered by his damaged atmosphere suit, that has preserved him so completely. His structural makeup has been reinforced and somehow homogenized. Cellular analysis has thus far proven very confusing. . . . No, I would not say his DNA has been rewritten. Kindly leave the scientific hypotheses to me, please. Although your laymans analysis has a certain prosaic melodrama to it, it is not accurate. Simon Vector is still Simon Vector at the fundamental, biological level, but his body has become . . . polluted, is the
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word I would use, with a recursive biological imperative driven by energies unknown. The source of those energies is almost certainly the power plant that has replaced his heart. This, which I have dubbed the Xenomorphic Organic Life-Emulating Crystalline matrix, bears some very distant resemblance to the much simpler molecular makeup of crystalflex. At least, it is materials analysis of crystalflex that I am using for a frame of reference. This mechanism is worlds more advanced than that. The biological imperative of which I spoke acts as a kind of . . . waveform. It produces a one-pulse-per-second radiation source that has a cumulative effect on Captain Vectors corpse. The pulse is, in fact, rebuilding Captain Vector, repairing damaged tissues and . . . conforming, I think I would call it . . . the biological mass that is Simon Vector with the synthetic implants now invading large portions of his body. I . . . . . . Very well, if you must think of it as rewriting, do so. I am not interested in how a lesser mind copes with its lack. The process is a slow one, and I have no way to determine if its rate of change is exponential, a constant, or a variable. I have no means to calculate the formula. It is entirely possible that Captain Vector, who at this moment appears to be a hybrid of Homo sapiens and Vendak, will eventually become entirely the latter. At the current rate of change that process would take centuries, but I do not believe this is representative of the waveforms activity level in . . . if we can call it such, normal operation. Captain Vector is not comatose; he is dead. But his body is . . . undecaying. He is therefore in a kind of stasis. Plotted as a curve it approaches, but never reaches full activitya living organismas it extends to infinity. . . . Your grasp of trigonometry is rudimentary at best, Malcolm. Simply take my word for it: Captain Vector is not alive.
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He is not, however, dead as you understand it. I am afraid I cannot fully explain what he is . . . or what he may become. ISIS Facility Alpha Draconis Planetoid M71, Low Orbit, Harvest Moon Hey, beautiful. Howd you like a back rub? Lucius Feen recoiled. Too late, he realized he had fallen for it. The xenomorph guards, in their alcoves high above on the catwalk, had seen him jump and were now snickering cruelly at his discomfiture. Gods, how he hated them. He sighed, producing a cloud of ice crystals that danced in the air around his head. Buck The Hangman Combs was pressed against the transparent crystalflex wall, his fingers curled into claws. He had taken off his parka and now stood, shirtless and covered in gooseflesh to the waist, as he used his fingers to scratch at the almost invisible barrier. The mans pale skin was already turning blue. Feen shot a reproving glance at the two xenos. The guards stood at insolent attention behind their podiums on the elevated walk, high above the corridor terminus. Ill work them kinks right outta your neck, Combs promised, interlacing his fingers as if strangling an invisible victim. In his time at Alpha Draconis, Feen had seen a xeno snap open his collapsible stun-stick and shatter a prisoners knee for merely winking up at the guard from many meters away. He had seen a pair of guards beat a prisoner near to death for an insult, drifter, whispered to another inmate and overheard by unnaturally keen ears. Ordinarily, an overt display of hostility such as the one Buck Combs now made would earn a prisoner the swiftest and most brutal of lessons. This was rarely the case when Lucius Feen was involved.
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When it became clear the guards werent going to do anything, Feen forced himself to take a step closer, putting the clipchip on his belt in range of Combs. The men in the adjacent cells had stirred from their bunks to watch the show, shaking their heads in disbelief. They soon went back to their insulating sheets. Crystalflex walls delineated cubes of three meters by three meters for the length of the corridor. This cell block boasted a total of thirty-six single-occupant cells; there were more than fifty blocks like it, switching back and forth in a serpentine pattern, covering the full cubic area of Levels Four, Five, and Six. The prisons rated capacity was two thousand damned souls. Combs might well be subtracted from that number without medical treatment. The psychopathic fool would probably need a hypothermia injection come morning, after this little display. That was if hed bothered to take his allotted frostbite pill that morning. Not for the first time, Feen pictured himself injecting an air bubble into Combs bloodstream. Feens clipchip buzzed faintly, telling him that Combs had been scanned and logged by the Master Lockdown Computer. As Feen turned, Combs started to shout profanities at him, his tone quickly downshifting from lilting proposition through abrupt disappointment to murderous, teeth-chattering rage. Feen did his best to screen out Combs filthy threats, which were as imaginatively vulgar in their concept as they were vivid in their description. Whats the matter, Doc, one of the xenos called down after him. Feeling a little tense? Their contemptuous laughter followed him around the corner of the corridor. He tried not to hurry too obviously, but he rushed through the rest of his rounds all the same, eager to leave, to get away, to get out of the awful stink of them. It wasnt the prisoners who bothered Feen most, bad as men like Combs were. It was the
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guards, whose implanted pheromones inflicted on him and everyone around them an unreasoning, sweating terror that was impossible to ignore even though he knew it was artificially induced. His feet rang on the interlocking metal grates that formed the tunnel floors. Alpha Draconis was a system of corridors radiating from a deep central shaft sunk more than a mile through the skin of the ferrous planetoid M71. Hanging in orbit around Harvest Moon, M71 was nothing so much as a chunk of naturally occurring iron. The facilitys interior had been painstakingly cut with plasma drills and shaped with laser bores. While still superheated, conduits and support structures had been sunk in the rock. The result was an environment so ugly, so offensive to the senses, that Feen could imagine nothing worse. Except where necessary machinery broke them up or where crystalflex barriers formed ephemeral chambers, the walls were bare rock, shaved and rounded, every surface a mottled rust color. Exposed pipes for the heating and atmosphere system jutted at odd angles and in seemingly random places, thrusting from the centers of corridor floors and across tunnels. Poorly regulated valves belched vapor at arbitrary intervals. Every metal plate, every exposed bolt, every railing hot-nailed to the bare rock had been positioned and installed where expedient, seemingly without forethought. The catwalks, which effectively halved the height of the corridors and gave the guards a perch from which to monitor their charges, were solid, but no less crudely installed. Feen passed beneath another guard station and was once again seized with nausea, the precursor to chemically induced anxiety. The elevated podiums, really just arbitrary stands set along the catwalk, were connected to conduits bearing power and communications cabling. The walkway and its podiums served two purposes. They put the guards high above the prisoners, where they were
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protected from assaultas if such a thing were probableand where they could see everything and everyone moving within their sphere of responsibility. The elevated walks much more pragmatic function, however, was to put the guards out of air-range of the prisoners they guarded. Were they not kept at remove from the beings held in their thrall, mass psychosis and riot would result. The guards, xenos to a man, were of course immune to their own pheromonal effects. Individually, they were fearsome enough specimens even without their implanted augmentations. Not a one of them was less than two meters tall, and some slightly more; most of them massed over 150 kilograms. They were genetically engineered from birth, prior to task-specific augmentations: speed, endurance, resistance to pain, and the other, usual Dolor protocols. The primal fear they produced was tied directly to their autonomic nervous systems by the implantation process. Feen had researched the procedure and the pheromones in a vain attempt to find some combination of drugs with which he could treat himself as proof against the guards effects. Short of sedating himself unconscious, there had been no alternatives. At rest, or whatever passed for suitably entertained and content for such creatures, the xenos made any human beings in their proximity vaguely uneasy. When exercised or threatened, the guards produced pheromone waves that were hundreds of times more intense. At their highest levels, they produced hallucinations, even irreversible psychological damage. The cumulative effects of the pheromones were such that several guards in the same room could, at rest or even sleeping, cause a reaction similar to that caused by a single agitated guard. The guards barracks, at the far end of the tunnels within Level Six, was permanently off-limits to unprotected baselines as a result. Merely to enter those dwellings would reduce any baseline, any unaltered human, to a gibbering fool in minutes.
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The pheromones did not activate the bodys fight-or-flight reflex; they inflicted on the victim only the psychological imperative to flee at any cost. The published research on the topic was very clear on this. Activate a guards own survival reflexes, say, by attacking or wounding him, and his pheromones would pump at maximum. To be affected by those airborne synthetic chemicals was to know an irrational, immediate dread so powerful that one would incur injury to get away. To lash out, to fight back, was unthinkable. The perversity of the situation on Alpha Draconis was underscored by the fact that the prisoners and staff of the facility were essentially unable to flee. Were the guards not kept at physical remove from the baseline human beings here, widespread and catastrophic social disorder would eventually kill everyone. As it was, Feen was not convinced that the precautions taken were adequate. While the staff of Operations generally spent most of their time outside the guards influence, support personnel like Feen regularly walked among the guards and received as much if not more exposure than the inmates. Feen believed he was suffering what might well be permanent ill effects from the protracted pressures of living here. Worse, Feen was apparently among a small percentage of the population who were more susceptible than average to the pheromones effects. To face one of the xeno guards was memorable by itself; to live among an army of them was so repeatedly, incessantly shocking that an unmodified human soon became, if not desensitized to it, inured in a hopeless, helpless, resigned sort of way. The fear became a dull ache at the back of the brain, blending with the numbing, exhausting cold that was the second constant of Alpha Draconis. Only when brief respite was offered from either through a portable heater or, where the xenos were concerned, to
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be somewhere they were notdid Feen feel himself relax. Only then did he realize the strain under which he lived. He hid from it as long as he could during those coveted paroles. Feen had come to liken it to a famous Terran psychological experiment. Dogs, electrocuted by sections of a laboratory floor, learned to flee the electricity. When the entire floor was electrified and hope of escape was removed, the dogs would simply lie down and suffer. Reintroduce a safe zone, and the defeated canines refused even to look for escape from the pain. They were resigned to their suffering. They had given up hope. The presence of the guards at Alpha Draconis was such a measure. It was the attempt to deny hope to the prisoners, and in so doing force these doomed men and women to resign themselves to their ultimate fate. The guards produced a fear so awful, a biological imperative so undeniable, that mass murderers, rapists, and cannibals from throughout the known worlds became simpering cowards in their presencewhipped dogs wishing only for the pain to stop. Monsters, they were. Monsters guarding monsters. The worst part of the arrangement was that Feen had no choice but to be grateful for the xenos, for without their artificial terror, the denizens of Alpha Draconis would again become so many ravening beasts in search of prey. There was no doubt in Feens mind that of all the wretched flotsam and jetsam of humanity, the 1,895 men and 19 women imprisoned at Alpha Draconis deserved to be there. With the exception of the military prison at Lucifers Gate, Alpha Draconis was the only place such creatures could be contained. There were times Feen wondered why such beings were kept alive at all; better to incinerate them all and be done with it than live with the idea that any one of them or, Gods forbid, all of them might escape.
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He reached up to steady himself as he ducked a low vent, skirting a puddle of viscous, oily goo that was leaking from the return coils running within the vent shaft. A palm-sized chunk of the vent came away in his hand, thick and brown and abrasive to the touch. There was no mechanism the oxidation had not touched; equipment was replaced on a planned schedule that kept it just barely ahead of failure as it was eaten away. He felt the cold metal stick to his fingers and cursed, flinging it away. Frost clung like mold to everything. Prisoners and support staff alike were issued a weekly ration of frostbite pills. He shoved his stinging hand into the pocket of his parka, shivering. It was not warm enough. It was never warm enough. Most of the prisoners in the cells he passed ignored him as readily as he ignored them. His clipchip scanned them all in turn. His head ached again. If it wasnt the cold, it was the light. There were blue-white lightgels hot-nailed to the rock of the corridor ceilings every few meters. These were resistant to extremes of temperature. A decades-old technology, it was also cheap and used relatively little energy, but Feen had read more than one medical journal decrying its use in institutional settings. The wavelength it produced caused eye strain in some. Feen was just unlucky to be among the affected demographic. It was Feens greater misfortune to run cursory medical checks on each and every one of Alpha Draconis denizens as part of his official duties. He had learned to take his time, covering just enough of the prisoners to log them all once a fiscal quarter, per Zodiac and ISIS specifications. He had found that by scheduling rounds once a day, relying on the Master Lockdown Computer to schedule his checks in the most logical pattern, he would run just ahead of requirements. This kept his direct contact with the prisoners as low as it could feasibly be.
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Feen met, in a day, men and women who defied conventional definitions of humanity. Perhaps the worst was Gerald Ruhming, the Mad Doctor of Mars, who had conducted hundreds of unimaginable and unnecessary operations before he was stopped. Feen avoided Ruhming entirely, careful not even to pass by the mans cell except for scheduled rounds. Feen dreaded those quarterly visits, during which Ruhming insisted on talking shop as if they were friends rubbing elbows at a medical conference. There was an oiliness to Ruhming, as if the very air he exhaled left an unclean film on every surface it touched. Feen shook his head at the very thought. Less awful, but no less deserving of the lifelong sentence that was consignment to Alpha Draconis, were the rest of the inmates: Mia Nihm, who slept with her eyes open and delighted in arranging herself in positions reminiscent of the victims she had stabbed; Tromas Gill, the financier who had embezzled millions before murdering his board of investors in a vain attempt to avoid exposure; General Rex Mason, rumored organ-runner who claimed instead to be a military prisoner; Herman Fiddler Crane, a former journalist who shot his co-anchor and then himself during a broadcast, only to survive. The list went on and on. Buck Combs was typical of them. He was believed to have murdered more than a hundred women and half that many men across three worlds. Some believed that a conservative estimate. No one knew for sure, because the Hangman had taken up the practice of incinerating his victims during the last third of his very newsworthy career. When the authorities finally caught up to him, the pressurized hovel in which he was livingCombs was working as a laborer in a Jovian mining concernwas full of ashes spilling out onto the furniture and the floor. It coated the walls and hung heavy in the air. Buckets, plastic boxes, polyform
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barrelsthe place reeked of human cinders. Combs was still holding a cobalt torch when imperial military police cut their way through his door. Equally grotesque was the manner in which Buck Combs had earned his nickname. The man was a homicidal erotic-asphyxiate. He enjoyed raping his victims while slowly strangling them with a wire garrote. Feen shivered violently in his parka and pulled it closer. His joints ached. There were days when he thought he would die never again knowing what it was like to be truly warm. He hated his life. He hated his lot in it. He hated Buck Combs and every last one of the prisoners detailed to his care. Medical Command had sounded like a promotion. From his first moments at Alpha Draconis, however, Feen knew he had made a terrible mistake. He was no better off than the prisoners, really. He enjoyed more freedom of movement and better food. His term of service was notably shorter. He lived, nonetheless, in the same ceaseless, enervating cold as the inmates. Worse than that, he suffered under the same pall of primal fear the inmates endured. The worst insult? Some of the prisoners were probably better liked by the xeno guards than was Feen. He had no idea why the guards despised him so. It had started practically from his first terrifying moments in the facility. He had come within a few meters of a xeno guard podium, quite unaware, and felt the gut-punch that was the mans cloud of synthetic pheromones. As the guards lip curled up in a hateful, almost comical sneer, Feen could feel his bladder starting to convulse as his testicles retracted. He would never live it down. The most horrible part of it was how involuntary it was. He knew the fear was not real, but his body did not. Over time,
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through repeated exposure to the least-intense levels of the guards pheromonal pollutants, his system had become desensitized sufficiently that he could at least keep his bladder from voiding in the xenos presence. He could, however, neither forget nor forgive the cruel, biological finality of it, the violation of it, as he was forced chemically to betray himself. Feen shook the thought away for the thousandth time. Combs cell was at the end of the block; he was done for the day. Having completed his evening rounds, he walked to the gantry at the lip of the central shaft. As always, he reminded himself not to look down. Not quite realizing he was doing it, he ran his fingers over the silver caduceus pendant he wore around his neck. Just walk, he told himself. Just go. He walked rapidly, never quite breaking into a run, his gaze fixed on the lift plate and the waist-height metal railing encircling it. The lift took him to Level Two. Here, more xeno guards waited at their raised stations at the opposite end of the gantry. The pall of their pheromones touched him before he stepped out of the lift. In some ways, the gradual increase in the xeno guards intensity, as he walked toward and under and past them, was worse than encountering one suddenly while, say, turning a corner in the corridors. Fear-o-moan, the guards called it. Feen did not see the joke. The xenos ignored the doctor as he rushed by them. The grates beneath his feet, intended to make the passageways more navigable, shook faintly as he trod them. It was yet another sensation he found irritating. He turned at the entrance to Operations, taking the short corridor to the adjacent tunnel that housed Warden Rutledges office. He had gotten lost more than once trying to navigate the Operations corridor, ending in the Communications chamber each time.
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Two more guards waited here, their weapons at port arms across their chests. Someone had told Feen what the weapons were called; he did not remember. He had never liked guns. These men did not occupy elevated podiums. They stood at a respectful distance from the wardens hatch, but he would have to duck between them. This pair ignored Feen too, but then, they were within earshot of the wardens office when the door was open, so of course they would. The rust-dappled steel hatch cycled open as the Master Lockdown Computer logged Feens proximity to it. The warden was waiting for him behind the enormous slab of laser-cut bulkhead he used as a desk. Michael Rutledge was gigantic. He did not sit at his desk so much as his desk was positioned before him. Though completely baseline genetically, he was the largest human being Feen had ever seen. He matched any of the two-meter xenomorph guards in height but had weighed in at 178 kilograms at his last physical. Rutledge was, in personality and physique, truly a mountain of a man. His ruddy complexion and craggy features only made him more imposing; the lions mane of silver-gray hair, which fell to his shoulders when it was not pulled back behind his head in a ponytail, would have been incongruous on anyone else. Dr. Lucius Feen to see Warden Rutledge, said the Master Lockdown Computer belatedly. Its calm, nominally female voice filtered from omnispeakers concealed in the corridors. The announcement annoyed Feen; the wardens office settings overrode Feens own preferences. He did not enjoy having the MLC loudly announce his approach. Rutledge was eating walnuts. There were shells scattered across the surface of his bulkhead desk. As Feen entered, the warden grabbed another pair of nuts from the polymer bag next to his computer. Rutledges ham-sized hand balled into a fist and
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his knuckles went white. The sound of the walnuts cracking set Feens teeth on edge. Sit down, Doctor, Rutledge boomed. Feen did as he was told. Rutledge leaned forward, causing his padded steel lift chair to creak in protest, and checked something on the holographic display. The displays on these old units were visible from only the operators angle; from Feens vantage, the computers data streams were so much drifting, colored smoke. Omnidirectional hologrammatons were far too expensive for the ISIS appropriations committee to consider for its most backwater of gulags. Rutledge looked directly at Feen, fixing him with his heavylidded eyes. Lucius, he said. Somethings bothering you? Oh, no, Lucius said, wondering what had shown in his expression. No, of course not. It is only that I am overworked. And tired. And freezing. And grossly overqualified to nursemaid a collection of psychopathic human debris. Oh, and your guards are hateful and abusive and deliberately ignore me when I require assistance. But no, other than that, Im fine. Rutledge continued to stare at him, unblinking, unmoving. When Feen thought he would have to look away, to scream, to do anything but stare into Rutledges deceptively sleepy eyes, the massive man grunted and turned away. Overstressed metal ground on metal as the warden levered himself to a standing position. The enormous and tailored double-breasted suit Rutledge wore was an affectation. He had a heavy overcoat of ballistic weave that he wore when outside his office. Here, in Rutledges inner sanctum, a pair of ceramic-electric heaters beneath the desk kept him just warm enough to go without. The wardens office was full of affectations, Feen mused, from the ship in the glass bottle among the antique paper books on Rutledges steel wall
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shelves, to the old-fashioned glass-and-wood barometer screwed to one bulkhead. An imitation ships wheel, this of resin rather than wood, stood in miniature on the bulkhead desk. Warden Rutledge was captain of this particular ship. Of that, there was no doubt in Feens mind. Rutledge went to his shelves as if looking for something among his collection. He folded his huge hands behind his back. Feen watched the crease that formed between Rutledges shoulders. Not for the first time he wondered how many square meters of material had been required to fabricate the wardens suit. Weve discussed this, Rutledge said. As he was on his feet and well away from the heaters under the desk, his breath formed a fine mist that wreathed his head briefly in water vapor. I am not suited to this position, Feen insisted. He had to force his teeth not to chatter. The wardens heaters were monodirectional. They were not installed for the comfort of guests. I was notified of this assignment on false pretenses. You were offered the position of chief medical officer within one of the major facilities of the Imperial Security and Incarceration Services network, Rutledge said. You were informed that this facility is remote. Youre being paid quite well, per imperial pay scale. Im not being paid enough to spend my every waking hour scared out of my wits! Feen snarled. He stopped, realizing he had started to get up. He sat back down, embarrassed by his own outburst. Rutledge had not moved. He had not stirred. Something in his carriage was different, however. Almost imperceptibly, Feen watched the mans shoulders relax. He felt as if he were watching some dreadful siege weapon slowly unwind, as if the tension on a catapult were being released by hand.
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He had never been afraid of the warden, until now. Perhaps this was an aspect of the warden the prisoners saw; perhaps this was why, reportedly, Rutledge had never been accosted by an inmate of Alpha Draconis. It was more than just Rutledges size. From the moment Feen had met him, the warden had struck him as a man without fear. If Rutledge was affected by his xenomorph guards synthetic pheromones, he had shown no sign of it. He walked the corridors as if he owned the very rock into which they were tunneled, his gait unhurried, his steps long and wide. The xenomorphs, who held baseline humans in contempt on the best of days, gave him a wide berth. The respect of such creatures did not come easily. When Rutledge turned there was a hint of displeasure on his face. Doctor, Rutledge said. This prison cannot function without a medical officer. At such time as a duly contracted replacement is on-site at Alpha Draconis, I will authorize your transfer. You know as well as I do that ISIS will not pay for expedited travel through an imperial jump gate. The public, commercial travel schedule does not permit transgate navigation to this location for at least another six months. Until that time, you will continue to do your job. You do not have to like it. You will, however, do it, and you will do it without complaint. Sir? Captain Bilko tells me youve been sending transmissions to Serpens. Bilko hates me, Feen protested. Ive never done anything to deserve it! And what business of it is of his what messages I Doctor, Rutledge said quietly, the hierarchy of authority within ISIS exists for a reason. If you attempt to go over my head to my superiors, you create doubt about my ability to steward
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Alpha Draconis. Doubt leads to dissent. Dissent leads to a breakdown in discipline. Such a breakdown endangers every man and woman in this facility. Warden, I assure you that I Your shift is ending soon, Rutledge said, picking pieces of walnut meat out of his palm. You look tired, Doctor. I suggest you get some rest. Is that clear? Quite, Feen said bitterly. Rutledge turned away, contemplating his books again. Good. Feen knew a dismissal when he heard one. He hurried out. The xenos at the door, who had probably heard every word, traded glances with each other as the doctor passed between them. Feen did not even feel the cold through the burning in his cheeks. He rushed to the gantry and took the lift to Level Eight, barking at the Master Lockdown Computer to authorize his travel. The computer did so silently, reading his clipchip and opening the appropriate doors. He had long ago requested that it mute all but the most critical annunciations where he was concerned. It did not do to provide the xenomorphsor the inmateswith advance notice that Feen was traveling their way on rounds or just to and from the medical center. The sanctimonious bastard, Feen thought angrily. He was so agitated that he forgot to be afraid as the lift stopped and the gantry extended. It was almost completely dark here; sound echoed up the main shaft of the prison excavation, into which the concentric levels of the facility had been dug. He did not look up; looking up was as bad as looking down, where his vertigo was concerned. The tramadjacent to the sealed entrance to a series of smaller tunnels once used by the construction crews who tunneled out the planetoidwas waiting where he had left it. No one came here.
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Rarely did support staff venture past the heating plant on Level Seven, to be fair, and certainly the guards seldom got below Level Six, which was the last of the prison cell residence levels. Level Eight was storage, devoted mostly to nonrecyclable machine parts. It was colder there than anywhere else in the prison except for Level Nine. The prisoners called Level Nine Dantes Toilet, which was as unimaginative as it was appropriate. He climbed into the tram and pushed the throttle forward. His fingers ached inside his heavy-weave gloves. The tram responded to his touch; there were no computer lockout controls and no need for them. The maglev tram ran the full length of an access tunnel carved from the center of the prison shaft to the outer skin of the planetoid into which Alpha Draconis was dug. It connected, at its far end, with a scaffold tube built into the surface of the planetoid, which crawled along the skin of M71 from the lower level back to Level One and the shuttle bay. Originally intended as an escape route for the mining crews who had hewn the prison from its rock shell, the tube itself was now condemned, deemed unsafe even for suited travel. It was sealed off from the prison to prevent it from bleeding atmosphere. It was just short of those sealed pressure doors that Feens destination waited. The private laboratory on Level Nine had been picked clean long ago. Except for some storage cabinets on the far wall, the cavernous space bore only the painted white markings of its designation as quarantine space. Feen had first found it while searching for somewhere, anywhere on this godforsaken pit, that did not stink of synthetic fear. Never a brave man by nature, it had taken everything he had to ride the tram to its terminus that first time. He had been surprised to find the vehicle in working order. He
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had been even more surprised to find the old laboratory, which he believed had once been the territory of his predecessor, a Dr. Kong. That piece of information had come to him from the xenomorphs. He had been avoiding a pair of them, sneaking past their podiums as quietly as possible, when he heard them muttering about Kong. They hated the man as they hated all baselines, but something about Kong made them nervous. They spoke his name in hushed tones, as if it were forbidden. One of the xenos wondered aloud just what the old man had been doing in Dantes Toilet all that time. They had said nothing more. Whatever and whenever that had been, during Kongs tenure, ISIS had apparently seen fit to salvage and then transfer or sell his equipment. The thought galled Feen, who was forever fighting to do more with less. It was pitch black here, but his clipchip had a small lightgel built into it. This illuminated automatically, creating a sphere of yellow-white brightness that saw him on his way. The clipchip did not flicker, but somehow the cloying shadows crowded Feen anyway. He ignored the fear this might otherwise have inspired. He was too tired to be afraid. His own breath coated him in frozen motes that clung to his cheeks and collar. Feen went to the far corner of the room, nearest the storage cabinets. There he had placed a spare cot and a ceramic heater of his own. He sighed with anticipated pleasure as he sat down on the cot, kicking off his boots and beginning to arrange the blankets around his legs. The cold bit at his toes even through two pairs of heavy socks. It was here, far from his tormentors, that he could truly relax. The smell of Level Nine was musty, even oily, but it was the sweetest of flowerbeds compared to the other levels of Alpha Draconis. Up there, the xenomorph stink tainted every breath.
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Here, Feen could breathe easily, could be almost warm enough to sleep comfortably, could be alone with his thoughts and his His cold and unresponsive heater. Feen cursed. He checked the heater and discovered that its hydrogen power cell was depleted. He had meant to bring a spare during his last few visits to his hideaway, but always seemed to forget until he was already down here. To take the tram all the way back would be no short trip. He wasnt ready to face the xenos again, either. After the browbeating Rutledge had given him, he wasnt eager to reappear above Level Nine until his next duty shift. Swearing again, he sat up and kicked off the blankets. He looked around at the barren laboratory. The hydrogen cells were used in everything from the tram to the guards podiums. There might, in fact, be some here, somewhere. He was probably fooling himself, he thought, but if nothing else it delayed his trip back to the upper levels. He rifled through the storage cabinets one at a time, moving slowly and deliberately. Clipchip in hand, he practically climbed inside each large locker, hoping against hope. He found a few odds and ends, such as rolls of heat-reflective tape and a couple of small wrenches. There was nothing else of value. When he reached the last of the cabinets, he had found no power cells. His chest began to vibrate. Startled, Feen clutched at his breast. His fist came back holding his caduceus pendant. It was glowing white and vibrating. He had no idea why; he had not thought the necklace anything but alloy jewelry. As he brought the pendant closer to his face, he brushed the interior of the locker in which he half-stood. Neglected pneumatics hissed. The back of the locker moved. It parted in two, its interlocking halves no longer flush.
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Feen, more genuinely terrified now than he had ever been in his life, peered through the waste gas venting from the hidden doorway. As he poked his head in, the steam condensed on his scalp, chilling him. Hello? he said. Something was moving in the gas. He squinted, holding the glowing clipchip higher. Is anyone there? he tried again. A three-fingered metal claw reached for him. Lucius Feen screamed.

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JAK HOLDING

JAK HOLDING is the pen-name used by John Jackson and Ken Chapman (John And Ken). John is the co-founder of League Entertainment and is also known as the cover artist, Johnny Atomic. His latest work includes the interior art for two collaborative projects between the League and Adam-Troy Castro titled, Z Is for Zombie and V Is for Vampire. John is also the co-author and cover artist for Simon Vector. Ken is co-founder and managing partner of League Entertainment. He is a co-creator of Choose Your Doom: Zombie Apocalypse, written by DeAnna Knippling and the co-author of Simon Vector. In addition to his work with John, Ken is also a UH-60 Blackhawk pilot in the Army National Guard and an Iraq Combat Veteran.

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