Immutable

Her boots echoed hollowly as Chayse Bondurant walked down the empty corridor. As always, Chayse was dressed in black paramilitary garb and her black hair was cut short. Indeed, she’d gotten so used to wearing what she now wore that wearing anything else would have felt strangely out of place.

Chayse Bondurant didn’t expect to see anyone else down here and as was usually the case, Chayse was right yet again. This was a restricted part of the ship, making it a lightly traveled area and it was in places like these, places where she was away from the rest of the ship that Chayse felt most at home.

She waved a hand in front of a panel and after the requisite futzing about, the door decided that she was important enough to have access to the room and it grudgingly slid aside.

This was the star chamber. Someone had told Chayse once that those words had once had a different meaning but whatever that other meaning was, she’d forgotten what it was and really, it didn’t matter. This was the star chamber and as she stepped onto the pressure plate in the center of the room, she knew the holographic room would show her whatever it was she wanted to see.

As it was, she didn’t need to see all that much. In fact, she only needed to see one thing. “Show me Deneba,” she said.

The room darkened and there in front of her was an orange planet. This was what the planet would look like if she were standing on the bridge of the star cruiser rather than standing here in its bowels but the officers on the bridge couldn’t get half of what she could get down here.

“Magnification 10X,” she said and the planet swelled up in front of her.

“Focus on the area of declination.”

Again, the scene shifted to a brownish section in the lower hemisphere. “This looks larger than it was when we left.”

“It is,” the ship’s computer said.

“How much larger?”

“Thirteen point nine percent.”

Yikes. It was growing faster than even the geekiest of the geek boys had ever imagined. That wasn’t good. Those guys might have been geeks but they were usually right.

“Time to arrival?”

“Twenty-three hours.”

Chayse looked at the display in front of her. Thirteen percent huh? It looked like they couldn’t get there quickly enough.

She stepped off the pressure plate and the display ended even as the lights in the room came up. She turned around and strode back the way she’d come.

It hadn’t been known just exactly when it was that the area of declination had started but whenever it was, it had been recent and it had been expanding. Nothing grew there. Crops died and people fell ill. The government had pulled the people out of the area but the area of declination was still growing.

The call had gone out for help. Some said rather more quickly than perhaps was needed but considering how quickly the area of declination had grown, no one was likely to call the planet’s administration on that issue. If anything, it seemed that their conservative approach had been the right course to take.

And as the problem was being looked at, it became clear that whatever was going on there, there wasn’t a natural cause for it. Something from outside the area had caused the area of declination and something from the outside was causing it to grow.

But what then should be done to fix the problem?

That had been a topic of discussion among many quarters but the problem was that no one knew what the problem was so no one had a good solution. Everything from leave it alone and hope it gets better to preparing for a planetary evacuation. God, like that would fucking work! No one knew what to do.

And that was why Chayse was here.

It was because Chayse Bondurant was a cyborg.

It was a shuttle accident that had done it. Much of the right side of her body had been severely damaged. The doctors had tried to put her back together and they’d done as good a job as they could but one part of her body would fail and that would lead to another failure and as the cascading failures progressed, it was clear that something else was needed.

Most of the right side of her body had eventually been replaced. The docs had actually done a decent job putting her back together again to the point where even Chayse wasn’t sure where her human body ended and where her mechanical body began and over the years, additional upgrades had been made.

A cybernetic processor had been added to her mind. Her eye had been replaced. Her right hand had been modified three times and all the while, the psych guys kept a watch on her. It was important, they said. It was important that Chayse had to remember who she was and more importantly, what she was. She was, after all, still a human, and sometimes, she had to fight to remember that. Like she could ever forget that. Usually, when something failed, it was her human body.

But what it made her was the perfect agent for an investigation of this sort of action. She was perfectly trained and able to operate on her own and it was thought that maybe she could operate in the area of declination without succumbing to its effects.

Almost as soon as the ship had achieved orbit around the planet, a shuttle was dispatched and in no time at all, Chayse was there on the ground.

King Olaf was a fat man. Reports were that he was a competent administrator but he lacked imagination. Reports also were that he was in failing health and if the reports were true, Chayse wouldn’t have doubted it so it had fallen on his daughter Irina to take the charge during this crisis and it was to Irina’s office that Chayse was taken as soon as her shuttle touched down.

The girl was young. It might have sounded disrespectful to call her a girl but yes, she was young, and she most certainly looked like a girl. She hardly looked like the type of woman who was in charge of operations on a planetary scale.

“Miss Bondurant,” she said in the clipped sort of voice that all Denebians seemed to possess. “How nice to finally have you here.”

“I wish it could be under better circumstances,” Chayse said.

“Yes. Well, there is that.”

“What is the status?”

“We have evacuated the infected areas although to be honest, the indigenous population shows little inclination to stay as soon as the … the whatever this is … as soon as the thing comes upon the land. I’ve tried to visit the relocation centers when I can but the truth is with a greater percentage of the surface area being inundated, we are finding it harder and harder to care for our displaced populations.”

“Yes?”

“It’s a problem of numbers.”

“A problem of numbers?”

“There’s a kind of multiplier effect. If part of a town is evacuated to another town and if that town then has to be evacuated, you have the second town plus the new ones that have to go somewhere. Sooner or later, you just end up with refugee camps and then there are some places who just won’t accept refugees because they think the refugees bring the area of declination with them.”

“Do they?”

The princess cast a hard look at Chayse. “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that supposition to yourself.”

“Fine, but do they.”

“We’re not sure.”

“You’re not sure?”

“It does seem to follow the refugees, but there are times when it doesn’t.”

“I see.”

“And what’s making it worse is that other planets are stopping trading with us for fear that whatever’s happening to us will happen to them.”

Chayse nodded. Even if she hadn’t already known that, she would have expected it. Fear didn’t need a reason to exist. “I’m taking it that there is still not a source.”

The princess shook her head. “I’m sure there’s a source. We just don’t know what it is yet.”

“That’s my job.”

The princess nodded. “As you said. That’s your job. What do you need?”

“Just get me out there. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Where are you going to start?”

“I’ll start with the refugee centers first. I want to talk to the evacuees and then I’ll go into the area of declination.”

The princess nodded. “Let us know if you need anything then.”

“I will.”

Chayse returned to the quarters to which she’d temporarily been assigned. She unzipped her bag and she pulled out her gun. It wasn’t like she expected to need it but it was better to be ready and not need it than to be need it and not be ready.

She stripped the weapon down and then put it back together again. Everything was in order just as she’d expected it to be.

Diora Kael was the city administrator in Chelseaburg and she was hardly happy to see the agent. “I don’t know why you’re here,” she said. “We don’t have any of those problems here.”

“No, but yours is the biggest city in the area. Shouldn’t you be worried?”

The small, blond woman shook her head. She didn’t look all that intimidating but there was a hint of steel in her voice. “That’s what I told the princess when she was here a couple of days ago, but like I told her, we keep to ourselves,” she said. “We take care of business, and we don’t let anyone bring any trouble in here.”

“So you think the refugees are bringing the problems with them?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you didn’t,” Chayse said but when a pause began and then it just kept getting longer and longer.

“I think we understand each other,” Diora Kael said.

Yeah, they understood each other, Chayse thought when she finally left the administrator’s office. The administrator was nervous but as she’d made clear to Chayse, she’d been told to offer whatever was needed. She wasn’t happy about it and she’d just as soon have absolutely nothing to do with the exercise and she most likely wouldn’t offer anything if it weren’t asked for. It was almost as if she thought that by hiding her head in the sand, she could somehow avoid whatever might be coming.

Gabriel Malton was the nominal head of the refugee camp that Chayse visited next. He was a heavyset, balding man in his mid-fifties. He had an earnest look and a body that seemed to almost always be in motion. “So, you’re the investigator from the Federation?” he asked.

Chayse nodded. It was an irrelevant question since she’d already been introduced.

“I suppose you’ll want to talk to some of the refugees.”

“I will.” She knew he’d already been told that, too.

“I’ve lined some people up for you to meet.”

Chayse counted to herself. He was just a bureaucrat, she kept telling herself. He didn’t know he was a nitwit, or maybe he just didn’t care. No, he probably didn’t know. Even nitwits care what people think about them. “Can we go see them?” she asked.

“Who?”

Don’t say anything, Chayse told herself. He’s just a nitwit. Don’t say anything at all.

“Oh. I get it. Follow me.”

Fine. She’d follow for now … until it came time to kick his fat ass out of the way.

Apparently, the appropriate count when one talked about “people” as Gabriel had was two. Hardly, the full cross section that Chayse would have expected but considering that it was Gabriel who’d put them together, she was willing to accept anything now. The first was Nia Tyree, a twenty-four year old teacher from Covington. She looked young and ambitious, or at least what ambitious would have looked like before this … whatever had struck. Now, she just looked wore down and Chayse couldn’t help but wonder what type of teacher she was.

The other person was Ram Kornelius. He’d lived in Eadington. It turned out he was a barber and it was his family that had taken Nia Tyree and her seven- year-old son in when they’d been forced to flee but now he was just as screwed up as she was.

“Tell me what happened,” Chayse said.

“Who do you want to go first?”

“Any of you. Either of you. How about Nia first since it started there? How did it start?”

The woman began hesitantly. “We’d just been celebrating the Festival of Corvonus.”

“The Festival of Corvonus?”

“It’s a local festival,” Gabriel said. “It’s a blessing of the crops.”

The young woman nodded as if to add to what the refugee camp leader had said. “It’s a big festival with dancing and singing. This year, the princess even attended. It was supposed to be the start of something big.”

“Supposed to be?”

The woman nodded. “We’d just planted the crops and everything was going fine. Everyone was looking forward to a good year. There was no indication that anything was wrong.”

“What was the first indication?”

“I think it was the wind.”

“The wind? Surely you have wind.”

“Not like this.”

“It’s always the wind,” said Ram, speaking for the first time. “It’s a dusty, dry wind. It’s nothing like we have around here … ever. Sometimes, it’s so thick, you can’t even see through it.”

Both Gabriel and Nia nodded.

“But the wind can’t be the only problem.”

“No, but that’s how it starts,” Ram said.

“It didn’t take us long to figure out something was wrong,” Nia said. “People got sick and when they got sick, they didn’t get well. The farmers worked the fields for all the good it did. The crops were dead. Not a single field was producing anything.”

“But still—”

“I know what you’re going to say,” Nia interrupted, “but we stuck it out. Ours is a farming community. We’re used to dealing with stuff like this. It happens, but this wasn’t normal. People were dying.”

“Dying?”

“I told you. People were getting sick and they just weren’t getting well. It was bound to happen, and then the cattle started getting sick and that’s when we knew. Something was wrong.”

“And that’s when you left.”

Nia shook her head. “I told you. We’re farmers. We stick these things out and it wasn’t like we weren’t in touch with the planetary government. Honestly, everyone seemed to think it would just blow over.”

“But it didn’t.”

Nia shook her head. “We were about two months into it when the planetary officials told us to evacuate. It was only temporary, they said. Just until it blew over, they said.”

“But it didn’t blow over, did it?”

Nia shook her head.

Chayse turned to the barber. “Okay, so what happened with you?”

“It’s pretty much like Nia here said,” the man said. “They were forced to evacuate and Nia and Todd came to stay with me and my family. Like Nia here said, it was only supposed to be for a short while but it kept going on and on.

“Government officials would come by. They’d check on the evacuees. Some of them even went into the area at first, but then they stopped doing that and I think that’s when we knew. They weren’t even expecting it to get better. The king even came to visit us and he almost never travels but he brought his daughter. It was … it was uplifting for a little … right up until the winds started.”

“I think it was the people from my village who saw it first,” Nia said. “After all, by that time, we knew what we were looking at.”

Ram nodded. “They knew all right. We didn’t believe it at first but we soon came to believe them and this time, the government people weren’t messing around. They ordered us out right away.”

“And you’ve been moving around ever since?”

“That’s right. We’ve been moving around ever since.”

Chayse nodded. It was pretty much the same story she’d been hearing. The only thing was this was first hand. The only thing was this time you were seeing people who were actually being affected. This time, you felt it a little bit more.

She took a skimmer out the next morning.

The first town she came to looked like a wasteland. The wind and the dust had coated everything and it was clear that nothing was growing.

The second and third towns looked pretty much the same but Chayse kept going and taking readings. She wasn’t sure what it was she was supposed to be doing but she pressed on.

It wasn’t until Chayce reached the epicenter of it all in Covington that she finally had her breakthrough.

Chayse pulled out a scanner. Dust, dust and more dust. That’s what she read.

She scanned the air and that was when she had her first break. She was reading something else, something she hadn’t read before. It was faint, but there was a biometric reading.

Something was alive here.

No. Something wasn’t right. This was more like a trace of something.

The humans?

No. If that were the case, she would have read traces of them at the other places as well and she’d read nothing. This? This was something else.

What then? What was it?

Whatever it was, it was faint, and whatever it was, she couldn’t seem to get a clear picture of what it was.

So what was it then?

It wasn’t something she wanted to do but she needed answers. It would take a moment for her mind to make the adjustments, for the implants inside her head to accept their new function. It would only take a moment to …

“Run!”

The thought hit her hard. It was almost like an all-out panic and it was something she wasn’t used to feeling.

“Run!”

It almost bordered on terror. She wasn’t used to fleeing so it made the thought even more terrifying. Before she realized it, she found herself staggering back to the skimmer.

“Run,” that thought whispered in her mind.

She was already in the skimmer and she was already on her way back before she finally managed to get a handle on herself and it was only then that she was able to slow the skimmer down. She couldn’t help it though. She was still panicked. Her blood was still beating fast but at least now she knew something she hadn’t known before.

This wasn’t some sort of natural phenomenon. There was a biological component to this and more than that, a sentient biologic. Maybe not life as they knew it, but there was life.

She was still breathing fast.

She also knew something else. The solution to the problem wasn’t here.

By the time she reached Chelseaburg, it was clear that in the short time since she’d been gone, things had changed. Dust was blowing through the city and its inhabitants were already in full flight.

It wasn’t long before Chayse was standing in front of the city administrator. “When did this start?”

“Not long after you came here,” the administrator said bitterly. “We were doing just fine until you came along but now look at this.”

“I can make it better.”

“You can, can you? I can’t see how.”

“I need transport.”

“Well, you aren’t going to get any. We’re quarantined.”

“But I need to get back to the capital.”

“You’re not going anywhere. I told you. We’re quarantined.”

“But I can fix it,” and yet even as she said it, she couldn’t help but wonder if that was really true or if that was something that some thing wanted her to think.

“Ain’t that just like you Fed types. Something goes wrong and you just want to run away. Well, it ain’t going to happen like that, girlie. You came here and now you’re stuck here, just like the rest of us.”

Chayse wasn’t about to argue the point. She knew where she had to go and she knew she was going to make it no matter what it took.

She stole a skimmer and she headed out over the flatlands. From there, she was able to make it across the wastelands to New Providence and from there, she was able to make her way back to the capital.

The princess was certainly startled to see Chayse barge into her office. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “I thought you were quarantined.”

“We were.”

“Then what are you doing here.”

“I’m solving your little problem.”

“My problem? You mean you figured it out?”

“I did.”

“What’s the problem then?”

“You are, Princess.”

“I am,” the startled woman said. “But I don’t understand.”

“I’m sure you don’t, but you’ve been transporting the contagion. Wherever you go, sickness follows within two weeks, but then you’re not the one I was talking to. I’m talking to the entity within.”

There was silence.

“What? You have nothing to say. You were the one who called me here. I am here.”

Again, there was silence.

“I would have expected more from you. Speak now … if you have the guts.”

The silence continued until finally the princess spoke again. “This vessel has served us well, but it is reaching the end of its usefulness.”

“Yeah? And why is that?”

“This vessel has obligations here. It cannot leave the planet without foregoing those responsibilities and we cannot stay.”

“Why can’t you stay?” Chayse asked.

The princess looked confused as if the thought of that question was a completely foreign one but when the princess answered, the answer was again the same. “We cannot stay.”

“So what do you want?”

“We want a new vessel. We cannot stay.”

“And by another vessel, you mean …”

“You.”

“Me?”

“Maybe not you specifically, but you in general.”

Chayse smiled grimly. “And you expect me to simply give in? If that’s what you thought, then you will find that you have severely misunderstood me.”

“We did not expect that. We expected you to fight.”

Chayse suddenly felt it, a coldness, almost as if there was something cold and freezing that was oozing into her mind. Her body stiffened as she perceived the attack.

“That’s it,” she heard. It was no longer the princess speaking. It was a voice in her mind. “That’s it. Fight us. Fight us and lose.”

She wouldn’t lose, Chayse told herself and yet even as she told herself that, she could feel more and more of her mind starting to freeze.

No. She would fight that. She would not gain the creature to gain a foothold in her mind.

Creature? Where had that come from? Why had she thought that?

“You begin to understand,” the voice inside her mind said. “You begin to understand what we are.

Not just a creature, Chayse thought. Creatures. People. A colony.

“You understand.”

She understood but she wasn’t going to give in.

But that’s when she felt it. A hand, tentative at first, tugging at her clothing. So intent had she been on focusing on the alien threat that she’d not paid attention to anything else that was going on around her but now here she was, looking at the princess as she slipped a hand inside her jacket.

“No,” she whimpered.

“Yes,” said the voice in her mind.

The princess had her hand inside her hand inside Chayse’s jacket and Chayse could feel the caress of that hand as it stroked her body.

“Give in,” the voice in her mind said.

“No.”

The jacket was being pushed off her shoulders and Chayse fought desperately to keep it in place. She wasn’t even sure why anymore. She just felt as if it was something that needed to be done. It was as if the entity, the colony, the whatever it was, it was as if that force wanted her to take it off, then she wanted to keep it in place.

The jacket fell to the floor.

“You are fighting us. Good!”

“Fuck you.”

Was that a chuckle she heard in her mind. No, this was bad. She couldn’t give in.

But her body … her body was getting wet.

“You like this,” she heard in her mind.

Oh, this was so bad. She could feel the princess pulling her top up, pulling it out of her jeans and then sliding her hands under the clothing.

Her body trembled. This was so bad but her body trembled as those hands slid her top up and her treacherous arms actually let the woman slide the top free.

The princess was kissing her. Soft lips. Willing lips. Maybe even eager. They kissed her again and she couldn’t help but kiss those lips back.

“You see how easy it is to submit,” the voice inside her head said.

The princess was kissing her again and her hands were moving to her breasts. She should resist, Chayse told herself. She really should resist.

But she didn’t resist and those hands moved lower still.

“Yes,” she moaned and then she realized what she’d said and yet even as she realized it, she knew she wanted it anyway.

“You see that you are submitting,” the voice inside her head said. “That is good.”

The princess knelt down and then she was pulling Chayse’s pants down and now all that remained between her and the princess’s tongue were her wet, little panties and there was no doubt in Chayse’s desire-muddled mind just what it was she wanted the princess to do.

“You know what you want,” the voice inside her mind said.

Her body quivered as she felt the princess pull her panties down. She could feel her nails as they traced their way over her skin. Not so deep that they’d leave a mark but not so light that they wouldn’t be felt at all.

Her body stepped out of the panties and finally there she was, fully at the princess’s disposal.

She could feel the princess moving in and her sex was so wet and then the princess reached out and her tongue stroked its way over her willing cunt.

“Oh fuck,” Chayse moaned.

“I see you like it,” the voice inside her head said. “You will be even easier to control than she was.”

“No,” Chayse whimpered.

“Feel her tongue on your sex,” the voice said. “Feel the way you react to her. Feel the need building inside you. You know you want it. You know you want to fill the need.”

She did want it. There was no point in denying that now and besides, why should she want to deny it.

“You want it,” the voice said, “and now we infect your body and you belong to us.”

Chayse couldn’t help but moan as her body surrendered to the inevitable.

The princess pulled back. After all, she’d done what she’d been required to do. The transfer had been made and now she could go back to being what she was supposed to be and the … the whatever they were, they were now the other woman’s problem.

“You belong to us,” the voice in Chayse’s head said.

“I … I’ll make a deal with you.”

“A deal?”

“Release your hold on this planet and on its lands.”

“And if we do?”

“You can have me.”

There was a pause and then the voice responded. “We have done as you asked,” it said. “You belong to us.”

“Not exactly.”

It was the first indication really that Chayse was fighting back and they were unprepared for it. It was the cybernetic implant that did it. As much as they tried to batter Chayse’s mind, they couldn’t overwhelm the technology in her head but even as they couldn’t prevail over her, neither could she kick them out. They were reaching an impasse, as if each were learning that they would have to live with the other.

There was an agreement. There was a truce. Where there had been two before, now there was one. They were bound together. Chayse knew that. In fact, she could already here that mantra in her mind. “We are together. That will not change. We are together. We are immutable.”