• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Rimmer just kept his tall, lanky body in front of the Covenant, looking nervously from one to the other. Ready to die for a Covie.

“Please, guys, please, don’t kill him,” Rimmer pleaded. “You gotta understand. He’s cool. We’re cool. He’s my friend. He’s the only one I’ve had to talk to. The only one. He’s cool. He’s clean. Please. You gotta understand. You’ve gotta understand it isn’t the Covenant’s fault. Not this time. We’re cool, really.” Rimmer looked so lonely, so lost, that it almost got to Benti.

Beside Benti, Clarence glared down the line of his rifle, finger tense on the trigger. Crap. Things could get ugly fast, even if the Covie only had a cricket bat. Something told Benti they could afford to suss out the situation before shooting. Making noise didn’t seem like a wise move right then anyway.

Benti put her hand on Clarence’s rifle, gave him a long look, and stood between him and Rimmer, her own gun aimed at the Elite. Gersten had slouched up against a wall and could wait until they’d resolved this standoff.

“If that Covie makes one wrong move, looks at us the wrong way even, it’s dead, you got me?” Benti said it staring back at Clarence, trying to put extra weight behind the words. Let it be her decision. Clarence had made a lot of decisions on his own already today. Some of them she hadn’t liked.

Clarence stared at her a second, and then nodded. But she couldn’t read the intent in his eyes at all anymore, and that scared her.

Rimmer relaxed a little bit, although sweat beaded his forehead. He nodded. “Yeah, cool, then. He’s okay, Henry’s clean, he’s cool, he’s okay. You’re Marines, right? You’re going to get us out of here, right?”

“Henry?” Benti tried the name out. “Henry.” A Covie with a name other than “bastard” or “asshole” or “shithead.” A Covie named Henry who carried a cricket bat. That left her speechless.

The man was jumpy, twitchy, couldn’t stay still. Benti didn’t know if she blamed him. “Yeah, I mean, I don’t know his name, can’t understand a thing he says, I just call him Henry—and he calls me Rimmer, of course, ’cause that’s my name, although he doesn’t really pronounce it right, or say much of anything, ’cause he can’t speak our language—but he’s cool, seriously, he’s cool. There’s more of you, right? You can get us back out, right?”

“Those aren’t my orders—no, wait, you tell me, what were those things? We’re not going anywhere until you tell me what they are.”

But Rimmer no longer cared about her answer. He was looking beyond her, over her left shoulder. “He’s . . . he’s been infected.”

Henry was raising his cricket bat. Rimmer looked around like he wanted a weapon too.

For a second, Benti didn’t understand. “Infected?”

She turned, just as Gersten lowered his hands from his face.

“I don’t, I don’t feel so good . . .”

A mottled patch of yellow dust encrusted his torn cheek and a stagnant green tint ran through his skin. At the base of his neck, another quivering globe of pus, one soft tendril resting tenderly on his throat.

Benti reached for a pouch at her hip, automatically going for sterilizers, knowing she had nothing powerful enough, stupid stupid stupid, should have gone for her weapon, but unable to stop the reflex.

Clarence stepped up, pressed the mouth of his rifle against Gersten’s forehead. Gersten stared at him, marshalled his energy to say with utter shock, “What the hell, Clarence, you—”

Clarence pulled the trigger and jumped back as Gersten went flying up against the wall. Blood sprayed out into the water, missing Clarence and smacking up against the wall with its weird black marks.

None of it hit Benti, shielded as she was by her partner.

Gersten slid down the wall. A torn cheek was the least of his worries now.

The extra blood bags Benti had brought seemed like a quaint affectation, and had for a while. There was no lack of blood here.

Clarence turned, checking her for wounds. He looked in her eyes, made her look in his eyes so she could see there was no threat there. For now. Clarence kept his rifle down and away from her.