Mantis Book 2

Available from Amazon.com.

MC Jones is becoming a champion of justice. True, it is her own brand of justice and, likely, most of her contemporaries would be horrified if they were aware of her actions. She doesn’t care. Now commanding one of the most powerful ships in the galaxy (assuming it doesn’t fall apart on her), with a (mostly) dedicated crew (assuming, sadly, that none of them betray her) she sets out on her quest to find that lab that created her. Someone clearly needs to rain justice down on those people. If she can manage to destroy a pirate or two along the way, so much the better. It’s all in a day’s work.

Many want to stop her — that hasn’t changed. First they have to catch her — that hasn’t changed either.

Resurrection – Chapter 2, Antibodies

“Captain, please wake up.” In MC’s fogged state, the voice sounded like Celeste’s voice. No, Celeste always called me Mary. Besides, poor, sweet Celeste is dead. Mantis sounded like Celeste or, at least, almost like Celeste. Mantis’s voice then. Happy that she had solved that puzzle, MC tried to go back to sleep.

She felt a warm hand shaking her shoulder. MC grumbled, “Go ‘way. Wanna sleep.”

Mantis lifted MC to a sitting position. “MC, you have to get up! You are dying! Because of me! I am killing all of you.”

All she wanted to do was to relax against Mantis’s warm body and drift back to sleep. As Mantis continued to shake her in a manner not at all like a lover should be shaking her, MC finally opened her eyes, awake enough to realize that her vision shouldn’t be blurry. “What’s wong?” She was also awake enough to know that she shouldn’t be slurring her speech or saying “wong” when what she had meant to say was “wrong.” She tried again, enunciating carefully, “What’s wrong?”

“Are you with me now, MC?”

MC nodded. Mantis said, “Poison gas. I am causing it somehow. I do not know how or why. It is not just in here. It has circulated throughout the ship. All my environmental readings tell me the atmosphere is completely safe. That it is normal.”

MC shook her head in denial. “Can’t poison me. I block poisons.”

“Not this one, Captain. What do you want to do?” MC became aware that there was something she could do, for herself, at least. It wouldn’t help anyone else.

“I’m awake now. Thank you. I’ll be OK. What I need to do is going to hurt, but I’ll be OK. Get Oleon to sickbay. Put one of the oxygen masks over her.”

“The others?”

“Damn, we only have two masks. We need Doctor Crawford in the other one. I need a minute — I need to neutralize the poison — but then I’ll get him to sickbay.”

Mantis left her sitting there as she vanished, reappearing in Oleon’s cabin to follow MC’s instructions. She almost never moved about the ship that way — it disconcerted the humans. At least, it did when they weren’t unconscious. In this emergency, it was expedient to turn off her projection in MC’s cabin and regenerate it in Oleon’s.

Alone, MC activated her failsafe. Every second of every day, she felt human — not that she really knew what humans felt like. She hadn’t known she had a failsafe. She hoped it wasn’t programmed to force her to return home. Now that she needed it, it was there for her, controlled by one of the chips in her brain. It knew she was dying. The program thought it could save her. She didn’t have a choice as to whether or not to give it rein. She let it cut loose. The failsafe was overkill for this situation, but it was just a preprogrammed on/off switch. At some point, it had been explained to her. Then she had been ordered to forget she had it. Knowing that she was literally dying had brought back the memory. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to allow herself to get into a situation where she needed to use it. Technically, she was supposed to be immune to whatever this gas was. What had Mantis meant when she said she was killing us?

MC hadn’t screamed in years. She did now as her skin exploded with bludgeoning, artificial, biomechanical cells, forming a nearly impenetrable armor. With the change, she sacrificed speed, agility, and probably some strength. While that agony was going on, something was happening in her blood. She could feel it in every vein, in every artery, even behind her artificial eyes. Something was happening to her face. She didn’t know what until she looked at herself in the cabin mirror, scavenged from the Valiant Explorer, Helen’s old ship.

MC could see none of her facial features — everything was covered in a glittering, rust-red crust. The process had affected her skull, too. She was totally bald. What had been her luxurious, lush, and lustrous hair was now scattered around where she had been sitting. At least whatever it had done over her eyes was transparent. Whatever it was, it had replaced her skin with this crust. What looked back at her from the mirror was no longer human. Her new appearance was going to take some getting used to.

That would have to come later. Maybe it would just go back to wherever it had come from? She raced from her cabin to get to Crawford’s cabin. Fire burned through her every extremity. Great! Now my old nerve pain is back. That, at least, she had long ago trained herself to ignore.

By the time she entered sickbay carrying Crawford, Mantis had Oleon stretched out on an examination bed with one of the doctor’s oxygen masks over her nose and mouth. MC set the doctor down on the second bed. Mantis cocked a questioning eyebrow at her as MC strode in. MC said, “Later, Mantis. Is the oxygen helping her?”

“Some, but not enough. I think the gas is still infiltrating through her pores. What happened to you, MC? More importantly, is it handling the gas?”

“I think it is. You watch everything, Mantis. Do you know what Crawford has in here that would jolt him out of a coma?”

“He is not in a coma, MC.”

“He may as well be. I couldn’t wake him. We need an antidote for the gas and he’s the only one we have who might be able to prepare one. Unless, you can?”

Mantis nodded. “No, MC, we need his skills for this. You and I need to fix the problem in environmental.” As she prepared an injection, she warned, “This might kill him.”

“I actually do care about that. But we don’t have a choice. They’re all dead if he can’t come up with something. Brief me on the situation. What more do you know about what’s happening?”

Before Mantis could answer, within seconds of receiving the drug, Crawford spasmed. MC spoke softly to him. “Doctor, we have a medical emergency. Are you following me?”

“Think so.”

“Good, keep the oxygen mask on. The ship has been flooded with a poison gas that is killing all of us. Mantis and I are going to try to turn it off. You need to produce an antidote to flush it out of people’s systems. We have Oleon on oxygen now and it just isn’t helping much. Mantis, tell him what you gave him.”

He nodded after Mantis mentioned a drug MC wouldn’t even try to pronounce. “Doctor, I’ve held you facing away from me. You haven’t seen me yet. I look ghastly. It’s not a symptom of the poison. It’s my body combating the poison.”

After a brief coughing fit, he said, “Let me go. I’ll get started.”

He looked at her and blanched. All he said was, “I always liked your hair.”

MC muttered, “Yeah, me too. Mantis, do we need Ferguson for this? If not, let’s get to whatever is causing the problem.”

“Agnis cannot help. Follow me.” Mantis could have just reappeared wherever it was they were going. That wouldn’t have been very useful for MC. Instead, they took off at a run so that MC could follow. When she stopped no more than a minute later, Mantis said, “This has to be where the problem is coming from.”

“Explain.”

“This is the main environmental subsystem. I am the ship, MC, but I am not the entire ship. I have numerous, largely-isolated subsystems. Agnis understands that. There was never any reason to go into it in any detail with you. The subsystems are supposed to do their jobs and not bother me. MC, I need to change back to the Uvaloothi form. May I?”

“Yes.”

Before changing back into the Uvaloothi crab form she had originally projected when the humans had first discovered her on the ship, she said, “I also need your permission to interface with your neural chip. I might have to operate your body. Is that acceptable?”

“Permission granted. Anything you need. Our people are dying.”

Resurrection is available from Amazon.com.