Blue
*
Every time he blinked, he saw bodies. Easing deeper into the leather of his chair, Commander Blackheath gazed at the pale sweep of the girl's cheek on his shoulder, and pushed the images away. The bridge was dark, deeply silent, the confetti glow of the consoles the only light. Through the windows, the RX star system stretched around the spacecraft, dwarf stars and their attendant planets scattered like crushed gems in spilt sugar.
The girl by his side shifted in her sleep, curling up tighter, pressing into him. Blackheath blinked, the tranquil view replaced instantly by the morning's scene on RX341's innermost planet: the first time he had seen her. He stroked the girl's arm, willing her to sleep on.
A shaft of light fell into the room, casting a yellow reflection on the glass. A black form pierced the yellow: Hudson walked through the opened doorway.
"Your watch is over, Commander, I'll take the next-" His words died as he rounded the chair and saw the girl.
"It's alright. She's asleep," Blackheath replied, loathe to move and wake her.
Hudson hadn't moved a millimetre closer. His eyes never left her recumbent form. Blackheath guessed he saw not a frightened young woman, alone, in need of help. Hudson saw the bodies of the colonists of P1 RX341. Strewn over the roads, through the buildings, across the playing fields.
They had detected the distress beacon not from the colonists, but from a transport. A probe had sent back images of the crash-landed craft, now wrecked, and they hadn't been able to raise the colonists on any channel. Blackheath had supposed it was some kind of public holiday: colonies were like that. Insular. Out of touch.
So they'd sent down a reconnaissance party: Blackheath, Hudson, and the three other crew members who also spoke the colonists' language. Strapped inside their module, they hurtled through the atmosphere above the scorched trail of blackened earth, the half-wrecked transport at its end.
"We've been pipped," Lacrosse said, twisting his screen over to the others, pointing out the fresh tracks on the probe's latest images. "The colonists have been scavenging here already."
"Nice of them to tell us." Hudson tilted the screen, inspecting the images more closely.
"Probably scavenged something they'd rather not give up," Blackheath said. "What were they transporting?"
Hudson turned. "How are we going, hacking into their hard drive?"
"I'm in," Timms reported. "Live cargo. A medical facility transfer."
Blackheath and Hudson exchanged a look. No one transferred ordinary med patients this far out.
"Trip computer says their origin was Delta Nine," Timms went on. Delta Nine was a research base. Biological weapons research.
"Shit," Paulie muttered.
"These morons have no idea what they've stolen." Hudson's gaze followed the colonists' tracks through the dust of the valley floor, towards the city. "We'd better go after them."
Blackheath nodded his assent.
Comms failed to raise a single response from the city. The module glided to a stop on its outskirts. Dust swirled away from the landing skids, but otherwise, nothing moved. Residential pods lined empty streets leading towards the operations centre.
"Full biohazard suits, people." Then Blackheath saw they were already silently kitting up. No one was prepared to risk any kind of exposure on this mission. A bad feeling was sinking into everyone's guts.
They found the first body in the garden of the fourth residential pod. A rock garden, of course: water was too scarce to waste on actual plants. In the midst of the carefully arranged rocks, a mother and two young children, lying as if asleep. There was no blood, no bruising, nothing to indicate how they'd died.
"You getting this, Heevers?" Paulie murmured into his mouthpiece.
"Copy that," came the answer beamed from the ship. "Crystal clear."
"Commander, over here!" Hudson was sweeping the next street over. Ripping his gaze from the bodies of the children, Blackheath hurried across dusty yards, sidestepping a soccer ball, rounding the corner of the pod, and found Hudson kneeling beside a fourth body. Another woman, lying beneath a half-filled washing line. Dead. No blood, no bruising, nothing.
"Have you noticed?" Timms said, his voice low, his eyes glancing between the bodies and the map on his screen.
"What is it, Timms?" Hudson muttered, quitting feeling for a pulse.
"The bodies." He glanced up at the others. "They're aligned."
It was the same with the other bodies – after the seventeenth Blackheath lost count.
"I can't find a single damn thing wrong with the air quality," Lacrosse muttered, fiddling with his instruments. "Toxins, pathogens: nothing"
"Keep looking," Blackheath replied.
"No, sorry," Timms said, marking the latest finds down on his screen. From long association they knew he wasn't defying their commander's order, but talking to himself.
"What, Timms?" Hudson barked.
"The bodies aren't aligned. Almost, but not quite. They, they sort of fan. Like a blast radius."
"A blast?" Paulie murmured.
"Well find us the goddamn epicentre, Timms!" Hudson's temple was flashing a pulse, and Blackheath shot him a glance telling him to cool it.
Timms led them through the streets. The single residential pods gave way to larger conglomerations of work pods and administrative buildings. Randomly but regularly, they found body after body. The graded dust streets of the outskirts became bituminised, radiating the heat of the single star overhead, a glaring eye watching their every move through the ghost town.
They found the epicentre in the plaza facing Operations Control. Perhaps sixty people had gathered around a vehicle whose tracks matched those out at the crash site. Sixty men all now lay in concentric rings on the bitumen, motionless, aligned around the epicentre. Here, was the girl.
She lay as motionless as the colonists surrounding her.
"All men." Blackheath's gaze roamed over the assembled dead.
"So that's what they wanted her for then," Paulie noted. "Breeding stock."
Blackheath's eyes snapped back to her. Dark brown hair, pale skin, a girl as human as any other. A daughter to someone, somewhere. Anger hardened his jaw.
It was Hudson who'd found a pulse. Paulie and Lacrosse broke open the first aid kit, snapping monitors onto her pallid flesh, translating the miraculous beating of her heart into regular, comforting beeps.
"Sir." Timms pulled Blackheath aside, pointing at the first circle of dead surrounding the girl. "These ones are all security forces."
Hudson left the girl, crouching to inspect the soldiers.
"Probably their recon team," Blackheath said. "Must've released a new virus, or-"
"No, sir. Their weapons are drawn."
"I can see that, Timms."
"Not just drawn," Hudson added, glancing up at them. "Safeties are off. They were about to shoot."
Blackheath took in the rings of security force members surrounding the girl, the rows after rows of lifeless people beyond that.
"Get away from her," he ordered, jerking Lacrosse away from her body.
"She's just fainted, I think, sir," Paulie said, reading the screen before Hudson pulled him away too. "I can wake -"
"No!" Hudson grabbed the screen away from him, shoving him further back. The wire attaching it to the monitors on her skin ripped away too. Her face twitched, creasing into a frown.
"Shit," Lacrosse whispered. They held their breath.
Her pale hand rubbed at where the monitors had left small red marks. A weapon clicked. Blackheath raised a hand, countermanding it. He felt Hudson about to protest. Blackheath burned him with a glare.
"Let's learn from the mistakes of our forebearers, huh?" Blackheath muttered, jerking is chin towards the dead soldiers around them.
The girl was blinking now, sitting up, taking in the massacre around her. Her hand stilled on her chest. Her eyes and mouth grew round with horror.
"Jesus, would you look at that," Timms murmured, and all eyes had fixed on the line of blue crackling light jumping over her skin. The air filled with the smell of ozone.
"This is not good," Lacrosse muttered. The girl's eyes snapped towards them. Her body cringed lower, the blue light whipping across her flesh like cobalt lightening.
"Really not good," Paulie replied. Focused on the girl, it took a moment to notice Blackheath was no longer with them. Like a big cat stalking an antelope, he was stepping closer to her.
"It's alright," he was murmuring. One hand unsheathed his weapon and laid it on the ground beside him. She watched, face wet with tears, her body tensed like a rubber band twisted too tight.
"Commander-" Hudson's voice was low but hard.
"At ease," Blackheath replied, keeping his tone gentle but firm.
"This is not Allie, Commander."
Blackheath's shoulders jammed tight. His foot hovered mid step.
"This is not your daughter," Hudson said, his hand itching towards his gun again.
"You're out of line, soldier." The words hissed from Blackheath's mouth like steam.
"Sir-"
"Shut the fuck up!"
Hudson froze beneath the raw violence of his Commander's stare.
Blackheath took a few breaths, letting the anger leak from him, then turned back to the girl. He pulled off the biohaz face-mask. One more step.
"My name's Blackheath." He squatted beside her, offering his hand. She didn't move. "We are here responding to a distress signal. There was a crash." Her gaze flickered from his hand to his face, and he saw a flash of understanding in her dark bronze eyes. The blue line flickered over her more slowly. "Yes. You crashed on this planet. Do you remember?"
Her face contracted into confusion. She began to nod, then shook her head. She glanced at the bodies surrounding them then buried her gaze in the ground. Trembling took over her body. A fresh wave of tears washed over her cheeks.
"Sh. It's ok. You're safe now."
She grabbed his hand and pressed herself to him tight, sobbing quietly. He felt a brief buzz as a surge of electricity rolled over him, and then she was nothing but a terrified girl in the strength of his arms.
She'd been in his arms ever since.
They'd tried to peel her off him, holding her down for the med exam while he checked back with the bridge crew. But that ominous blue crackling light had started rippling over her skin again, and they'd called him back quick. By his side, she calmed, and the light vanished.
"It's an energy field of some kind," the doctor said, tapping at his instruments. "It's making my equipment go nuts."
"Biological weaponry," Blackheath muttered.
"An energy bomb disguised as an innocent little girl." Hudson crossed his arms tighter against his chest, leaning back against the wall. But even Blackheath could see she wasn't that little. By using a girl on the brink of womanhood, they got two birds with one stone. Those that didn't have a maternal, protective instinct awakened by her would like as not find her attractive in other ways.
Blackheath shook his head. "She's not a bomb. She's not a weapon. She's human."
"Yeah, so long as she's calm," Hudson muttered, but softened on seeing the girl redden with shame.
But she did stay calm, so long as she stayed next to Blackheath. So naturally, she'd done his turn at watch by his side. Not that she was much help, dozing off to sleep within minutes.
"Ratbag," Blackheath muttered, rubbing her shoulder. She wakened, surprise jerking her head around. The bridge. Cool, quiet darkness. Her body relaxed slowly against his. "Come on, shift's over." He smiled wryly. "Time for some shut-eye."
Hudson settled into the warmth of the vacated seat.
"Wait," Hudson said. The commander and the girl paused in the yawning yellow light of the doorway. "Uh, what's your name, kid?"
The girl's gaze flickered between him and Blackheath.
"Can't just keep calling you ratbag, can we?" Hudson kept looking determinedly away.
"Blue," she whispered in a voice as soft as feathers. The men paused to hear the beauty of it.
"Well," Hudson said, shifting deeper into the leather, "G'night then."
"Goodnight, Hudson," the girl replied. As Blackheath walked her down to the sleeping quarters, she ducked her head away from any passersby, but a smile that spoke of secrets spread over her face.
AN: Ok, I'm anticipating two questions. Either: Who the Hell is Blackheath? or else: What is Blackheath doing in Outer Space? The answer to teh first is in my other stories, check out 'Nutshells' via my profile for a summary. The answer to teh second is kinda long and I haven't written it down? XD Sorry! In short: THE Souls have made a deal to get the recalcitrants humans off teh planet: they've given them their own shuttle and have sent them off with the rest of unassimilating humanity to go colonise another planet. They've lost Earth. Unfortunately, on teh way they get attacked on Blackheath's watch and a lot of their cryotanked humans stolen and sold as slaves. Including Dorsey and Allie. So now Blackheath is on a mission to track down all teh missing humans, get em back and back on track to recolonising their promised land... only he gets distracted... and.. yeah :) Hope you liked it anyway!