Project Charon 2 by Patty Jansen (brene brown rising strong .TXT) 📗

Jens shook his head. “It’s important. It’s just that…” A visible shudder went through him.

“Anyway, we were bored, and the kid said he had discovered this passage that would take us right into the pirate headquarters. At the time, there were all kinds of rumours going around about what they did to women, and some people said that they had a lab where they cut off the flaps on their skin, and grew them into creatures. No one had ever seen these creatures, and I have no idea how that rumour started, except that some of the pirates would sometimes walk around with bandages, and we wondered what they were for.

“Anyway, we got into this passage, which was a maintenance passage that we had used before. I knew it, because it leads all the way around the station, with lots of little side passages to secret storage areas and control rooms that are used by maintenance staff. It also has exits to the normal habitat areas. It’s just a second network of corridors that can be closed off in case there is an emergency, with rooms where people can shelter or hide. It’s like an inner shell of the station.”

“And no one lives there?” Tina asked.

“It’s not very big, and wouldn’t house all the people permanently, but it’s a place where people can survive for a little while in case of a disaster.”

That was an interesting approach. Most of the stations functioned with segments that had doors that could be closed hermetically.

Jens continued, “So the pirates took possession of the station, but they weren’t terribly interested in us. Many people left the station after the occupation. The pirates didn’t stop them. In fact, as you’ve already seen, they encourage people to leave in big waves.”

Tina said, “I’m guessing this goes hand-in-hand with the capture of a ship that carries enough supplies to resupply all the ships that are waiting to leave.”

“You got it,” Thor said. He nodded to his son. The difficult part of the story was yet to come.

“So we got into these corridors, and we walked for a really long time. Of course I know it only felt like a long time because we were in a narrow corridor, with very little light and no people and no doors, and every moment you wonder whether you’re going to blunder into something that you’re not supposed to see. So it feels like you’re in there forever because it’s scary and dark. And then we got to this stairwell and we went down two or three flights of stairs, I don’t remember. There was a door at the bottom of the stairs, and we opened it.”

He let another silence go past. He had clamped his hands on his knees, his knuckles white.

“The room was full of people,” he said. And again he said nothing for a while.

“I guess these were not happy people?” Tina said.

Jens shook his head. “I don’t know if they were alive or dead. They were in these large tubes with blue light inside. I didn’t want to get any closer. Some of them didn’t look like people any more, because they had so many growths on their skin that they looked like giant walking plants. Like those cactuses you were talking about.”

He paused for another while.

“Anyway, my friend, his name was Marcus, went looking around, showing me all these frozen people covered in mushrooms or something, and then all of a sudden, these beefy mutant guys turned up. We tried to run away, but they caught Marcus. I tried to free him, but these were big guys, and they were using tentacles on their arms to hold him down. He was screaming, but there was nothing I could do. He pleaded with me to leave him, and to run to find help. The last I saw of him, they were forcing him into one of those cylinders. We ran back to the passage, and escaped as quickly as we could. I’ve never heard from Marcus again. They probably froze him. None of us have been the same since. Every time I see those warty pirates, I see that big room. One of the others in the group, he was just a kid, killed himself by walking out of the airlock. It made him crazy.”

“Wait, they actually produce people like that on purpose?” Tina asked.

Thor nodded. “There have been rumours, but no one had seen it.”

“Why?”

“They are very strong, and people say that the modified people live a very long time.”

Tina had also heard that. “But then to live looking like that wouldn’t be much fun.”

“That wouldn’t make a difference if you’re a pirate,” Thor said.

“You know, I don’t think they’re true pirates.”

Thor shrugged. “Pirates, Freerangers, whatever they want to call themselves.”

“No, I think the Freerangers are different. They are the original pirates, the people who live in shipworlds and live off retrieving and selling discarded space junk. They’re not toad people. Do you know where this room was?” Tina asked Jens. “Would you be able to find your way back to it?”

“I would, but I’d be very surprised if that door was still open,” Jens said.

And then Tina had a more chilling thought. If this was where they produced new pirate soldiers, then maybe that was what they were doing to the crew of the Federacy warship.

“Do you know how long this process takes?” she asked. She felt sick.

“I know nothing about it,” Thor said.

“I don’t want to know anything about it,” Jens said.

Then another thought. “Do you think that the people in the station who’ve gone missing are also there? That they’re trying to build a giant army of horrible people who are barely still human to destroy all of us?”

Thor shrugged. “Who knows?”

But the implication was there. It was just too horrible to contemplate.

Yes, Tina had noticed how these infected people had increased in number and were popping up everywhere, but—