FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Starless

By Searska GreyRaven

"Pull up, damn it! Pull up!"

"Warp field destabilizing. Warp field dest-st-st--"

"Get her out of there. Get her out of there!"

"War-rrrrr-p-p-p field destabilizzzzinnnng."

"Byron! Get! Her! Out of there!"

"I'm trying! Something's jammed the--"

"Warning: data corruption detected. System failure eminent--"

From the back of the bridge there came a popping hiss. A mechanical death-rattle cut the deadpan computer short.

"Got it!"

The pilot's pod at the back of the bridge cracked and shattered, sending a wave of slick fluid across the deck that carried within it a petite, caprine form.

"Byron!"

"Got her, sir." The ship's doctor dove after her, equine hooves battering the metal floor. He lifted her from the fluid and checked her breathing and pulse.

Silence filled the bridge as the constant hum of the engines guttered to a halt, the lights from the various consoles dimming to nothing. Only the hemic glow of emergency lights remained.

"Fritz?"

"Backup should kick in shortly, Captain. Hierophant-class cruisers take a minute to reboot after their pilot has been pulled."

Slowly, haltingly, the ship's the consoles returned to life. Lights flickered back on, but remained extremely low. A few remained dark, coolant fluid dripping from the seams beneath them. The captain--a salt-white stoat--was barely visible, one paw on the console and the other supporting his weight as he leaned over it. His red-tipped tail twitched as he read the preliminary damage report generated by the crippled computer system.

"Byron, what's her condition?"

There was a nicker from the back of the ship. "Captain, she's unconscious and her ports are weeping fluid. I need to move her to the med bay before I can say anything more for certain."

"Ila, help Byron get Ellie to the med bay. Fritz, run a diagnostic on the rest of the ship's systems. I want to know how in the hell that bug got on the Caliban!"

"Aye, Captain," Fritz replied. The cockatiel-man fluffed his feathers, smoothed his crest back, and flexed his scaled claws over the console keyboard.

He tapped out a few commands.

Nothing.

Tapped a few more.

Still nothing.

Fritz ground his beak, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. That nasty little computer virus had taken down more of the systems than he'd thought. A hard reset might fix it. Then again, it might make it worse.

"Too risky," he muttered. He ran a few more short diagnostic tests and swore. A hijacking bug. Stellar, thought. It had chewed up everything except a few essential systems, over-loading the fluid cooling systems in every computer it invaded until they shut down or slagged. Life support was still functioning, but it appeared that every other major system, including the warp bubble engine, was unresponsive.

"Slag it," Fritz cursed. He rose from his seat and trudged to the med bay to give his captain the bad news.

The med bay was a tiny thing for such a large ship like the Caliban, but with only a handful of crew, it was more than adequate. Ila, the ship's weapons officer, leaned against the far wall, eyes hooded and her expression alert. Fritz shivered. The hyena unnerved him in some uncanny way. Maybe it was the muscles, maybe it was some stray bit of prey DNA floating around his blood. Whatever it was, it prevented him from fully relaxing in her presence. Every time he turned his back on her, he swore he could feel her leering, tracing the sweet spot at the base of his neck. Crazy, he knew. Splicers like Ila, himself, the rest of the crew, they had any unsavory predatory urges snipped out of the code before it was grafted to their DNA.

Of course, if Ila had gone to the black market for her genes, maybe those urges hadn't been neutered. Maybe--

Fritz ground his beak. His crest raised, then lowered. He was being paranoid again. Ila was part of the crew. She'd never turn on them.

The captain brooded over the med bay's single bed, across from Byron. Captain Prospero Carmine's ears were flat and his black eyes were narrowed to slits. He leaned back just once, to get out of the way of Byron's horn, but quickly returned to his position. The white fur of his musteline face was streaked with dirt and his red-tipped tail was singed, but he still looked every bit the resolute commanding officer, even if he was just the captain of a salvage ship.

Byron grimaced and stepped back. The buckskin stallion's cybernetic horn crackled and fell silent. On the bed before him, the still form of Ellie, the ship's pilot, lay supine. Fritz's heart sank. Outside of her pilot's niche, the goat-girl looked so much smaller and more vulnerable.

"Byron?"

"Captain, she's very ill but stable. The virus managed to infiltrate a few of her cybernetics. She'll need time to fully purge it, but she should pull through," Byron said. "Capricorn wetware is pretty durable."

"How long before--"

"How many times, Carmine?" Ellie groaned. Her eyelids fluttered open, revealing steel-colored eyes and no small measure of pained fury.

Byron's eyes widened in alarm. "Ellie, dear, you need--"

"How many times, Carmine, must I tell you to never dock us without a protection ring! That freighter was _infested_and you latched us onto her without so much as a glance at our--"

"Ellie, cara capretta--"

"Don't 'cara capretta' me, Prospero Carmine! Look at my sub-routines! My OS looks like a Vyysmyl whore's anus! What did you do to my ship, Carmine?!" Ellie's pupils narrowed to horizontal slits.

"One thing at a time, Ellie."

"Oh gods, you fried her, didn't you? If it's this bad for me, she has to be--I can't--godsdamnit, Carmine, if you killed the Caliban--"

"Clean yourself up first, then worry about the Caliban," Carmine said. "We can't do it the other way around, Ellie. The ship'll keep until you're ready to delouse her."

Ellie moaned, a mournful bleating sound. "How could you forget the godsdamned protection ring, Carmine?" Ellie shuddered and went still. The only indication that she was still alive was the occasional blink of green light at the tips of her short, backswept horns.

Captain Carmine braced himself against the bed, head hung low and shoulders tense. "Fritz?" he said softly.

"Captain?" Fritz replied, taking a careful step closer.

"Damage report."

Fritz relayed what he'd found. Captain Carmine's lip curled higher with each new piece of information. Finally, Fritz finished and took a deep breath.

"I want you to find the nearest station and set a course," Carmine growled from behind clenched teeth. "Thrusters aren't much, but it's better than nothing. Set the autopilot, and then run a diagnostic on the docking hatch. Run every test you can, Fritz. I want to know what happened before we dock again."

Fritz's crest rose in alarm. "Captain, I'll do what I can, but from the state of the systems, diverting any power from life support could finish what the virus started. The things that bug did to the ship are--"

"Fritz? Less talking, more doing."

Fritz shut his beak with an audible click. "Aye, Captain."

Captain Carmine sighed, his shoulders slumping ever so slightly. "Just get us to a station," he said at length.

"Aye, Captain."

Aye, Captain. Fritz shouldn't have agreed to that order, for two reasons. The first, he already knew: the ship's systems were barely able to sustain basic life support. The bug had fried huge swaths of hardware by revving the reactor, over-clocking circuits and boiling the fluid coolant systems until the hardware slagged. A software meltdown he could repair, easy. His nimble fingers and clever mind could repair code in a matter of hours. But hardware? Nope. Maybe if the fabricator was still functioning, but that too had been shorted in the attack. Those circuit boards couldn't be made by hand.

Fritz sighed. Maybe he could jerry-rig something from the parts in the cargo hold. But searching for the parts alone could take days. The hold wasn't pressurized or catalogued. He'd have to go out there in a suit, two hours at a time, and sift through every piece of scrap they'd acquired for the last four months, hoping he'd stumble over what he needed.

The second reason he discovered upon opening the star charts for the area: there was literally nothing out here. No stations, no habitable planets. Not so much as an unmanned fuel satellite.

"Black water space," Fritz said. "Nothing but void in every direction. Ellie, what were you doing, steering us through here?"

"Problem, birdie?"

Fritz startled and spun in his chair. "Ila! Frag it, don't do that to me!"

Ila smirked. "Do what?"

"Sneak up on--you know what, never mind. What do you want?"

"Captain sent me here. To help," she said. "Need you help?"

Fritz sighed. "What I need is a miracle," he replied. "There's nothing here. Literally nothing for light-years in any direction. I know Ellie was thrown off-course by the bug, but we shouldn't have ended up this far from civilization."

Ila frowned. "Show me, where are we?"

Fritz pulled up the star map from his console to the main screen, allowing the computer to zoom in on their position. "See? Nothing. Just a blank spot."

"No," Ila growled. "Not blank. Sterile. I know this place. Heard of this, I have. We shouldn't be here."

"Tell me about it. No one should--wait, you know where we are?"

Ila nodded grimly. "Terrible things happened here. First contact with the Chi!tung."

"The what?"

Ila made an exasperated sound. "The Chi!tung!" she said again, her tongue clicking strangely in the middle of the word. "Bug things, old things, from beyond the Rim. Rare, unless you trade among the Rim colonies, talk to their peoples. Talk to the methane-breathers."

"That explains how I didn't know," Fritz replied with a shudder. Methane-breathers were weird. Really weird. The weirdest things in the galaxy were methane-breathers, races with radial bodies, asymmetrical limbs, tentacles or chitinous shells studded with pulsing, glowing growths instead of eyes or mouths. And they never had proper names, either. They were called things that could only be described as gestures, scents, flashes of light. There was no Terran translation for their races, let alone their languages. It made polite conversation--not to mention business--with them all but impossible without specialized equipment. As a small time operation, the Caliban's crew didn't have the funds for that sort of thing, so they stuck to trading with oxygen-breathers.

"Ila, what happened here?"

"Chi!tung happened," she said. "Brought with them plague. Few escaped, and the Chi!tung fled. This place was cut off, quarantined, to avoid contamination." Ila bared her fangs, and Fritz recoiled.

Fritz swallowed. Suddenly, the console beeped. "Hold on a tic, what's this? Sensors are picking up something. No, that's not...it must be a glitch. There's a station out there. Or maybe it's a glitch. It's gotta be a glitch."

"Is no glitch," Ila said.

Fritz scoffed. "The sensors must be malfunctioning. It wasn't there before."

"Sensors glitched before. This is no glitch. Is also no station."

"Well, it ain't a moon!" Fritz snapped.

Ila grinned. "No, is no moon."

Fritz clicked his beak. "Signal's weak, but I think we can lock on. Ila, how bad was this plague? Can we scan for it?"

Ila shrugged. "Question is above my pay grade," she replied. "But caution, yes, caution would be good. Even if plague is gone, Chi!tung may not be. Old bugs known for collecting oddities. Might have a pretty cage for little birdie, hmm?" Ila laughed, and it made Fritz's feathers pull tight against his skin. There was nothing more eerie than a hyena laugh. "I go, will tell Captain what you find. Maybe he tell us go, maybe he tell us stay. Either way, should know."

"I should be the one to tell him," Fritz said.

"No, you plot course. Ila just knows stories and weapons. Is no use here." And with that, she left the bridge, leaving Fritz alone with his thoughts and the tiny blip of dubious hope on his scanner. He set a course for it, for lack of any other available options, and trudged toward the docking hatch, tool box in hand.

It looked intact, no charring or scoring from the over-clocking bug, no evidence of tampering. In fact, it was in better condition than most of the ship.

Weird, Fritz thought. But if the virus was really a hijacking bug as he suspected, of course it would leave the docking hatch unscathed. Pirates had to get on somehow, and destroying the hatch made no sense.

But why was the bug still active on a derelict freighter? If the pirates had been using it as bait for a trap, the Caliban would have been boarded by now, or at least followed. But their trail was as devoid of contact as the rest of the void around them. Fritz had checked and re-checked just to make sure. The last thing they needed was to get caught with their hatch down.

Fritz ground his beak again. Things weren't adding up, and he hated it when things didn't add up. But rather than focus on questions without answers, the cockatiel-man turned his attention to the docking ring and gave it a thorough inspection.

The docking ring was fine. All functions normal, no cracks or glitches to be found. The only blip was a minor glitch from its last use on the derelict freighter, but he couldn't find any signs of a cyber attack or back door the bug might have exploited. All his firewalls and contingencies were in place, not a one of them turned off or broken.

Another thing that didn't add up.

Maybe it turned them all on after it came through? he wondered, but almost immediately dismissed it. No virus was that clever. This wasn't as simple as flipping a switch, after all. These were sophisticated cyber defenses, defenses he'd painstakingly programmed himself to thwart even virtual intelligences.

When you've eliminated every other possibility..._Fritz sighed. Alright, say it _did cover its tracks successfully. To what point and purpose? The bug had slagged its host, pulling a digital equivalent of hemorrhagic fever. Hardly the work of a sane mind, let alone a raiding pirate. There's no profit in a ruined ship.

Questions and more questions, Fritz grumbled to himself. He wouldn't find the answers here. Of that, he was certain. If he wanted to get to the bottom of this, he needed to get into the mainframe.

"Which is conveniently a pile of clicking-hot silicon," he muttered. He thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers. He couldn't get into the mainframe, but he could get at the next best thing: its proxy, Ellie.

Fritz closed up the docking hatch and returned to the bridge. Maybe once Ellie was awake, she could shed some light on the mystery.

***

Unfortunately, Ellie was in no state to speak.

"Her debugging wetware is working as fast as it can, Fritz, but even Capricorn wetware takes time to purge," Byron said. His buckskin hide was still damp from a shower, his mane ragged against his neck, but his brown eyes were bright and clear. And very annoyed. "You're going to have to give her more time. I will not break her concentration over your curiosity."

"It's not curiosity! It might be life or death!"

"Fritz, if I wake her up now, it could be death for her. I won't do it. Come back in a couple of hours."

Exasperated, Fritz left the med bay and returned to the bridge, where he found Captain Carmine hunched over a holo-map display.

"Captain?" Fritz said.

"We're badly off course. Very out of character for our Ellie," he said.

"Perhaps that hijacking virus was meant to re-route us to some rendezvous with the pirates later?" Fritz suggested.

Captain Carmine twisted one whisker between his fingers. "Perhaps," he replied, hardly sounding convinced.

"Is what Ila said true? About those chee-tung things?"

"Chi!tung," Carmine corrected. "And yes. The stories Ila spoke of check out. Along with one more thing. Seems there was an opera house out here."

Fritz coughed incredulously. "A what? Out here? I didn't realize this part of space was so classy."

"It used to be," Carmine said. "It might even be where we're heading."

"Whatever it is, it's large enough to appear on sensors from this distance, which means it's at least as big as a standard freighter, maybe even a small station," Fritz replied. "Even if it's an opera house, it has to have engines and inertial dampeners, shield generators. I can salvage what we need from it, assuming it hasn't been picked clean already."

Carmine nodded. "It gets better. Do you know who Nightingale is?"

Fritz shook his head.

"She was a singer, would have been one of the best if her career hadn't been cut short. She was singing in this sector when the Chi!tung skirmish erupted. It was assumed she died when the area was quarantined."

Fritz shivered. "That's terrible," he said.

Carmine shrugged. "It's been a long time. There shouldn't be anyone left alive out here."

"What about the Chi!tung? Are they still out here?"

"Unlikely. There's no T-Class planet to draw resources from, and with nothing coming in or out of this sector for decades, anything left would have starved to death," Captain Carmine sighed. "You should try and get some rest. We still have some time before that station comes into visual range."

With nothing else to do, Fritz returned to the med bay.

"Staring at her won't make her debug faster," Byron commented.

Fritz sighed. "It beats staring at a blank console."

Byron grunted and passed over Ellie with his horn. "She's progressing, but much slower than usual. Whatever that was, it packed a whollop."

"Can she hear me? Like this? Or will that disrupt her debugging?"

Byron shook his head and smiled. "Most of her wetware will be occupied, but the organic part of her brain is only mostly asleep. A lullaby might be just what she needs. I'll come back in a little while to check on her."

Byron left the med bay, and Fritz was alone with Ellie. "I don't know what happened, but I'll get to the bottom of it, and it won't happen again," he said. "I thought a lullaby might help.Aloutette, gentille alouette, alouette, je te plumerai!"

Ellie stirred and opened one silver eye. "That's a terrible lullaby, Fritz," she murmured. "Plucking the feathers off a lark."

"Sorry, Ellie, didn't mean to wake you."

Ellie closed her eye again and mumbled something. Then, she was out again.

Fritz left the bridge. As he walked down the corridor to his bunk, he took a detour past the med bay. Ellie was still on the cot, her eyes shut and her chest barely moving. Her white fur ruffled as the environmental fans kicked in. Just before he left, he swore he saw her smile.

***

Five hours later, the station that had been a tiny white dot on their scanner had grown to the size of a substantial space station.

"Well, that's not something you see every day," Byron said, making a low whistle.

It looked less like a space station and more like an old Italian opera house floating in space. Or the ruins of one, at any rate. Two massive pillars floated in front of the main door, chips of rock scattered like the tail of a comet from where each one had been severed from its perch. Flying buttresses along either side clung to the sides of the great station, giant windows that appeared to be stained glass were still lit from within, and they cast an eerie glow all around. Three arches stood at the center of the building, but only the central one had an access port.

"It looks like they plucked it right off Old Terra and hung it here," Byron said. "Lovely recreation."

"Fritz, is the station life support still functioning?" Carmine asked.

Fritz tapped his console a few times. "Negative. Quiet as a tomb in there, Captain."

Captain Carmine nodded. "Alright. Fritz, I want you and Ila to suit up."

Fritz swallowed slowly, and nodded. Ila looked at him and grinned, baring twin lines of savage-looking teeth. "My pleasure, Captain," she said. "Meet you down below, birdie."

Fritz met Ila in the locker room where all the crew's suits were kept. Ila had a heavier, combat-oriented suit that was more like modern body armor than a space suit. The suit was laced with neural connections, feeding sensations right into her brain and allowing her to act as if the suit was her own skin. Fritz had something much lighter. Instead of a helmet that hugged close to his face, he had a plasglass globe, allowing him to swivel his head unhindered. One stray shot from a blaster would shatter the thing, but it handled bumps and scrapes just fine. When he'd bought it, he'd never even considered that he might be in a firefight. He was a scrapper, a salvage bird, not a mercenary.

Ila was already fully suited, except for her helmet when Fritz came in.

"Ready, little bird?" she asked. "Have you a list of what we need?"

Fritz blinked, the skin at the corners of his beak curled up to the closest approximation of a mammalian smile he could manage. He tapped his head with one claw. "All in here," he replied. He looked down and frowned. "Do you really think you need Bianca?"

Ila leered and laid a gentle, loving kiss against the barrel of a gun that nearly qualified as a small cannon. "Better safe than dead, eh?" she said. "Wouldn't want a bug to crawl up your ass and lay eggs, hmm?"

"I don't have an ass," he muttered, shrugging into his suit.

"No? What do you have, birdie?"

Fritz refused to dignify that with a response. He slipped the globe helmet over his head. It pressurized with a sharp keen, and a display of gauges and readings popped up before his eyes.

"You sure you can see through that mess?" Ila said, tapping the front of the globe with one claw. She glanced down at the gloves covering his hands. Not so much as a single haptic sensor. "Implants would make you a faster technician, you know."

"I can see just fine, thank you," Fritz insisted, although he turned off a few of the non-critical displays. A pop-up ad for QuixLix Meat Substitute blinked on, and he quickly closed it. Damn it, I thought I'd fixed that stupid ad-blocker! "And I don't need to be made part computer to work with them. Besides, do you have any idea how hard it is to keep neural connections clear when you're covered in feathers?"

"You pluck them?"

Fritz shook his head. "I'd look like a neurotic feather-picker. Not worth it. I like my feathers right where they are."

Ila chuckled and put on her own helmet. She shouldered Bianca and, with one backward glance at Fritz, punched the airlock door.

"Fritz? Ila?" The voice came through the radio in the collar of his helmet.

"Captain?" Fritz replied.

"I don't want you in there any long than you have to be. Get in, get what we need to put the ship back in working order, and then get the hell out of there. Understood?"

"Might be good salvage here!" Ila protested.

"Understood?" Captain Carmine repeated, enunciating every syllable.

"Understood," Ila grumbled.

Ila punched the airlock door button again, a little harder than was strictly necessary, and the door to the locker room slammed shut. A moment later, a door at the other end of the airlock opened, revealing a narrow corridor. And at the end of that corridor--

"Whoa," Fritz breathed.

"Indeed," Ila agreed. The Caliban's airlock opened up to a massive concert hall foyer. A plush red carpet run up the center, flanked on either side by a row of massive marble pillars. Dim lights flickered with faux fire from scones embedded in each pillar, giving the entrance hall an eerie, if majestic, aura.

"Artificial gravity still functions," Ila said. "A good sign, I think."

"This must have been amazing to see when it was in operation," Fritz said. "I'm impressed any part of it is still working. The reactor must still be on."

Ila grunted and touched the butt of her gun, her eyes flicking nervously from shadow to shadow. "Where be the parts you need?" she said.

Fritz tapped his left arm, and a small hologram layout of the opera hall popped up. "We're here, in the entrance hall. What I need will be down here, in the service tunnels. The generator and reactor are down there. It's a pity, really. Once I pull those, this place'll go dark."

"I will shed no tears," Ila said. "Air here feels wrong."

"Your air is recycled," Fritz replied.

"Not air_air, birdie. The _ba of this place is wrong. Tainted."

"The...what?"

"The _ba,_the soul."

"Places don't have souls," Fritz said.

"Shows what you know, Assless One."

"I'm not--wait, do you hear that?"

Something was piping through the foyer. At first, it sounded just like static, but after a minute, it cleared up.

"Music?" Ila whispered.

"Captain, are you hearing this?" Fritz asked.

"Well, it is an opera house."

"What is it?" Fritz asked.

"Va, Pensiero. It's from the Nabucco," Captain Carmine replied. "It's a beautiful song, but an odd choice for ambiance."

"Why's that?" Fritz asked.

There was a chuckle from the other end. "Do you not have a translator installed in that thing?"

"It's in my other suit," Fritz replied dryly. "The one Ila punted out the airlock."

"Was hideous. And orange," Ila replied. "Was also in way of airlock."

"So what's so odd about this song?" Fritz asked. The feathers at the top of his crest curled against the top of his helmet, drawing a burst of hyena laughter from Ila.

"It's the 'Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves.' Hang on, my Italian is a little rusty. They're on the third stanza. 'Golden harp of the prophetic seers, why dost thou hang mute upon the willow? Rekindle our bosom's memories, and speak to us of times gone by.'"

"Captain, you speak Italian?"

"The Captain speaks several languages, you plebian!" Byron said, cutting in.

"I speak...French!" Fritz protested. "And who let you on the com? Aren't you supposed to be taking care of Ellie?"

"She's still unconscious, so no. Ah, wait, there we are! She's coming to. See you when you get back, Fritz!" The com line chirped and Byron's voice vanished.

"Right, enough culture for now. Fritz, let me know when you've found what we need. I'm going to speak with Ellie, if she's up for it. Over and out."

The com line went silent, leaving Fritz and Ila alone in the abandoned opera station. The disembodied chorus followed the pair down the plush hall, the same song looping over and over.

Fritz and Ila walked down the center of the spacious hallway and came finally to a pair of ornate double doors. A spiraling, intricate design had been carved into the dark wood, as convoluted as a Gordian knot.

"Knew there be good salvage here. Mahogany. Enough to buy Terran land," Ila said.

"It's probably synth-wood," Fritz said.

"Still worth more than a month's pay for you and I," she replied. "What else be here, I wonder?"

Fritz touched the door with one gloved hand, and it swung open with a grinding crack. The sensor pads on his gloves took a swift reading of the door, and he smirked. "Synth-wood. I knew it."

"Think that's synth too?" Ila asked, gesturing with Bianca toward the room beyond.

The foyer was impressive; the opera stage was astounding. Row after row of plush seats, upholstered in red velvet and gilded with gold. Carved marble slabs made up the walls, replicas of famous Greek and Roman reliefs. The stage was below, darkened except for a few flickering faux lights which played along the velvet curtains. Above, hanging from the ceiling, was the biggest crystal chandelier Fritz had ever seen. Faux lights glimmered in the depths, scattering pale rainbows of light all around.

"You sure we can't salvage this, Captain?" Fritz asked.

He was answered by a burst of static.

"Captain? Say again?"

More static, then nothing.

Ila growled.

"Keep going, Fritz. Minor malfunction here. Magnetic field seems to be kicking up from the station. Might be a computer glitch. We still need those parts. Get going!"

"Aye, Captain," Fritz replied.

"Have a bad feeling about this, I do," Ila muttered.

"Well, just in case those chee-tung things are still around, keep your helmet on."

"Chi!tung," Ila corrected. "And of course."

The pair wandered deep into the opera house, marveling at the luxurious interior and lamenting again the inability to salvage any of it. There were bronze busts of famous singers and musicians, frescos of iconic opera scenes, even sealed display cases containing musical instruments from all over the galaxy.

"Instruments worth even more than the door," Ila commented, running her hand across one plasglass case. "Pity."

"But we can come back, right?" Fritz said. "We mark this place on the map and when the ship is fixed, come back?"

Ila growled. "Don't want to come back. Place still feels wrong. Like a tomb. One doesn't salvage tombs."

"We haven't seen a single dead body yet. This is no more a tomb than any other derelict station."

"Sometimes, there are no bodies," Ila replied grimly.

"Now you're trying to scare me on purpose."

"Is it working?"

"Ugh. It's going to be a long walk to the control bridge, I can feel it."

Fritz tried to hurry along, but it was impossible not to stop and look around every few minutes. He'd never seen such luxury, nor such incredible attention to detail. If he hadn't come in through an airlock, he could have sworn he was on Terra, walking through a restored nineteenth-century opera house. Sure, if he looked hard enough, he could see the seams in the illusion--the hidden control panels, the tiny hologram projectors inside the wall sconces--but whoever had built the place took care to make such intrusions as inconspicuous as possible.

Finally, they turned a corner and Fritz found a door that opened to a service tunnel.

"That ought to lead right to the bridge," Fritz said. He reached for the door, but Ila stopped him.

"Listen," she said.

Fritz paused and tilted his head.

"I don't hear anything," he said.

"Nor I. The song has stopped."

Sure enough, the mellifluous opera song that had been echoing through the halls had ceased.

"They're probably programmed not to broadcast in the service areas," Fritz reasoned.

"As you say," Ila said, the grips on her gloves creaking against Bianca's metal body.

The service tunnel was a far cry from the luxury outside it. Cramped with pipes, wires, and enormous ducts, there was just enough room for two people to walk side by side. The hall was filled with the steady hum of well-maintained machinery, making Fritz pause again and marvel at the efficiency of the place. For it to still be in such good condition after so long with no care was astonishing! Here and there, doors emerged from the river of industrial tubing. A few of them were labeled, but most of them were merely stamped with numbers.

Except for one. A single name was scrawled in gold ink where the numbers should have been.

"Ruana Nightingale?" Fritz murmured, pausing before the door. Instead of a normal door knob, the hooked handle of the door had a tiny square over the pivot point, a thumb-print bio-scanner. On the ground in front of the door were the dried remains of several bouquets of flowers, and a single tree branch covered in greenery and blossoms.

"Sakura," Ila said. "Cherry blossoms."

"They have to be synthetic. They look fresh."

"Are fresh," Ila said, taking a closer look and then recoiling. She made a motion in the air in front of her. Fritz had seen her do this before; it was a symbol to ward off evil. What did she call it? The Eye of Horus?

"Captain? Can you still read us?"

Silence.

"Damn, I knew this would be a problem. We're too far from the ship to get a proper signal anymore," Fritz grumbled. "I can't even link to the _Caliban's_computer from here."

Static, then finally.

"Barely, Fritz. Are you on your way back?"

"Not yet. We found something. Who is Ruana? Ruana Nightingale?"

There was a long stretch of silence, and finally static again.

"Damn, he can't reach us down here. Let me try something else." Fritz tapped the screen on the arm of his suit a few times and brought up a few entries in his suit computer about Ruana Nightingale.

"She was a singer. An opera singer. Who vanished when this sector of space was evacuated. Damn."

He opened up an image file and made a low whistle.

"Plain, for an avian," Ila commented.

Fritz was inclined to agreed. She wasn't a very lovely creature. The image before him was an avian splice, like himself, but instead of a cockatiel, her features had been blended with those of a nightingale. Sand-colored feathers, long, dark beak and eyes as black as the Void. A sparrow had more striking plumage.

"There's a sound file, hang on." Fritz tapped the audio button, and was struck speechless.

Ruana Nightingale may not have looked like much, but her voice could only have been stolen from an angel. A sweet, lilting soprano filled his helmet, soothed his frayed nerves, and made Fritz smile--really _smile--_for the first time in ages.

"Lovely," Ila commented.

"She just...disappeared? How do you lose someone like this?" Fritz asked, suddenly enraged. She was magnificent! How anyone with such talent simply be left behind?

Ila leaned back, listening to Ruana's song, and bumped the door with Bianca's butt.

The door to Ruana's room swung open, throwing Ila off balance. The hyena lashed out with one hand, snatching at the handle and barely avoided landing flat on her ass.

Fritz was beside himself with mirth.

"Seems music really can tame any wild beast!" he laughed.

"Bah, gravity fluctuated! Is not my fault!" Ila grumbled. She pulled herself up, turning to face into the room, and suddenly went rigid.

"Ila?"

Fritz couldn't see her face, only the tense line of her body, fingers clenched into fists.

"Ila, what do you see?"

"Something...in my head. Singing. The song from the lobby," she said. Her voice had gone strange, flat. She lifted the paw that had touched the door, fingers curling slowly. Suddenly, she clenched them into a fist and snarled.

"Ila?" Fritz reached out to touch her shoulder, but Ila's knees buckled and she hit the floor.

"Ila!"

"Run...birdie. An akh...seeks a new..._khat._But...not mine. Never give her mine. Anubis...judge me."

"Ila!" Fritz cried, but she was gone.

"Captain. Captain Carmine, come in!" Fritz shrilled.

Silence.

"Shit!" Fritz back-pedaled from Ila. Ila's body. Ila, he thought. She's not dead. Can't be dead. Nothing could have killed her! He approached her again, gingerly tilting her head so that he could see inside her face plate.

Red foam blotted her black lips.

"You did this to yourself," Fritz said. Ila had a cyanide capsule embedded in one tooth. Old mercenary failsafe, she'd said. In case she'd been spaced or couldn't be rescued. It was a cleaner death than suffocation, she claimed.

Why the hell would you use it now?

"Captain!" Fritz tried again.

No response, just more static.

Fritz paced anxiously back and forth along Ila--Ila's body--a few times. He didn't know what to do. The way ahead seemed to loom dark and foreboding, but the path behind was just as intimidating.

"Can't go anywhere without those parts," Fritz said to himself, his voice shaking. "Gotta get those first. I can do this. I can...I have to do this."

Before he took another step, though, he looked into Ruana's room.

It was empty. Completely barren except for a single flimsy table and chair. No mirror, no bed, nothing.

Why would someone go through so much trouble to secure a door with nothing in it? he wondered. But no, it hadn't always been empty. Here and there he could see places where pictures might have hung on the walls, and there, along the wall, a scuff mark that might have been from a cot.

But...why?

Fritz ground his beak and strode off. This mystery wasn't his problem. His problem involved getting parts necessary to get_out_ of this place! He snapped a short order to his suit computer, and a dim flashlight on his chest lit the way down the corridor. He paused just long enough to shoulder Bianca and then, he was off.

_I'm not fleeing. I'll come back, Ila. I'll come back for you, once I have the parts. I won't leave you here._He knew it was what she'd want, for her _ba_to be set free, so that one day it could become--

An akh seeks a new khat.

Ila's dying words rolled around his skull, rattling his already frayed nerves. Gods, what was he going to tell the Captain? Or Byron? Or...Ellie? The goat-girl pilot was the only one that had no fear of Ila, and the mercenary had even begun calling her "kid" when she didn't think anyone else was in earshot. Ellie was going to be devastated.

Akh. Khat.

Fritz paused his headlong rush down the hall. He'd heard those words before. When Ila first joined the crew, she spoke to the Captain about ensuring her body would be returned to her family, so that her ba would be properly cared for, so her family could perform the rite to turn her into an akh, but they would need her _khat_to do it.

"Her body," Fritz murmured. "Ila said a spirit was seeking a new body, and she wouldn't let it take hers."

He stood for a moment.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!" he screamed into the darkness.

There was no reply.

"Ghosts, haunted opera houses, suicidal hyena mercenaries, I've had it! I'm getting what I came for and I'm out of here!" he shrilled.

Breath ragged, he bolted to the end of the hall as fast as his bowed legs could carry him and slammed into the door at the far end. And beyond that door way was the bridge.

"Finally," Fritz said, breathing a sigh of relief.

He forgot all about Ila and the weirdness of the abandoned opera house station while he worked, pulling circuit boards, cables, and various other parts. He found a rolling table and loaded his pilfered electronics onto it. Finally, he downloaded a copy of the station files to a data crystal. Maybe later, someone else could go through them and puzzle out this mystery.

He began to walk.

The trek back seemed to take far less time, but only because he was no longer dazzled by the station's beauty. He paused just long enough to lug Ila's body onto his cart, but otherwise charged through the station halls, head down, crest flat against the back of his head, and his wings shivering inside his suit the whole way.

"Captain? Captain, do you read me? I have what we need and I have...bad news."

No reply.

Maybe the virus re-activated! Maybe it took down the life support while I was here screwing around! Fritz's heart pounded, and he sprinted down the hall as fast as he bowed legs could carry him to the docking port. He punched the button as hard as Ila, every instinct telling him that something was wrong.

The hatch was empty. No Captain, no Byron to meet him.

"Hello?" he called. "I'm back!"

The ship creaked, startling the cockatiel, but no voices.

The med bay is on the way to the panels I need to replace. Byron needs to...to deal with Ila's body. And maybe I can get some answers out of Ellie.

He took a moment to take his helmet off and shoved the cart along. He hadn't gotten more than ten feet when he smelled it: a coppery, red smell, laced with the reek of an open septic pit.

"Captain!" Fritz screamed.

"No, no captain. No captain here."

Fritz's blood froze.

"Captain Carmine! What--oh gods!"

There, huddled around the bend of the corridor, was Captain Carmine, what was left of him. His white fur was blackened with burned gore. His muzzle was stained with streaks of red which poured from empty eye sockets.

"Coffins don't have captains," he slurred. "Cara capretta, how could you?"

"Captain, hang on, I'll help you to the med bay," Fritz said. He bent down to help his captain up, but Carmine slapped him away, recoiling from his touch.

"No! That's how it--how _she--_does it. How she takes you. Don't...don't touch me. Don't touch anything. She said I wasn't right. Wasn't a right fit, new box for her voice."

"Who? Captain, who did this to you?"

"Cara capretta, I have failed you. I'm so sorry." Captain Carmine cried out, swollen tongue writhing behind his teeth.

"Captain!" Fritz cried.

But Captain Carmine was beyond hearing. His chest rattled as his last breath left him, and his body stilled.

"Captain," Fritz whispered. He choked back a sob. "I'll come back. I promise, I'll come back." He eased the cart of supplies to one side of the corridor, using it to shield Captain Carmine's body from view a little.

Something was coming through the ship's intercom. It sounded like...singing. But not the opera song from the station. It was a nursery rhyme. A very familiar nursery rhyme.

"Alouette, gentille alouette!"

"Ellie?" Fritz pushed the cart to the edge of the doorway and paused. Under his boot, there was a puddle of red seeping across the steel floor plates.

Fritz swallowed. "Ellie?"

Still nothing. Fritz stepped around the cart and looked into the med bay.

Lines of red streaked like comets across the sterile white surfaces of the med bay. To one side, the crumpled form of Byron could me seen. His gold coat was flecked with pinkish foam, and his cybernetic horn had been ripped right out of his skull.

Standing on the other side of the medical table was Ellie. She was tapping at the medical computer with one hand. In the other, she held--

It took a moment for the thing in Ellie's hand to become clear. His brain side-stepped the truth twice before he forced it to focus.

In her other hand was Byron's cybernetic horn. Tendrils of wetware wire trailed from the base, brushing the floor with feathery strokes of rust-red fluid.

"Ellie?"

An akh seeks a new khat.

Fritz swallowed and tried again.

"Ruana?"

Ellie turned around.

"Took you long enough. I've needed you back here for hours so that we can _go,_but you stayed in the opera house for so long that I thought I'd have to leave without you."

"What have you done to them?" Fritz demanded. "What have you done to Ellie?"

"Those two wanted to extract me! Like I wasn't a better fit for this body than the little bitch keeping it. She didn't deserve it! I deserved it! I needed it! I'd been trapped for so long, so alone, unable to speak, unable to sing. They took my voice away and left me to rot!_They said they'd come back, that they'd fix my body and bring me home, but _they left me there, drifting, without a voice. And now I have one, and you're not taking it from me!"

Ruana screamed and charged at Fritz. He raised his hands to defend himself, but she suddenly stopped, mid attack. Her face relaxed and he could see Ellie fighting through the madness.

"Fritz, you have to run. You can't let her leave this station. Whatever was left of the old Ruana is gone. She's insane," Ellie said. "Damn it, she followed my cybernetics right into my brain. She said...she said she did it to Ila, but Ila stopped her. She didn't want Carmine or Byron, wrong body, wrong voice. She wants me, Fritz. She wants me and I can't keep her out much longer!"

"Ellie, I can't--"

"You have to. I can't hold her for long. She's worse than a virus, Fritz. She's smarter than that. She was on the freighter, she killed it, trying to learn how to control it. That's how she got past me...past you. She didn't look like a virus, or a VI. It wasn't your fault, Fritz. It wasn't your--"

Ellie/Ruana screamed and twitched forward, limbs spasming like a machine shorting out. The mangled horn in her hand wavered closer. The spiral channel dripped white medi-fluid stained pink from Byron's blood. A single droplet fell and splattered across Fritz's feathered cheek, soaking into his feathers.

And then she froze, and Ellie was back. "She was an opera singer once, but that plague--I guess she was hurt in the fighting, and dying. There was a technologist in the House that night, and he offered to save her mind by putting her into the opera house mainframe. They could come back, grow her a new body, and put her in it. But it never happened. The quarantine. She went mad in there, Fritz. She couldn't speak, she couldn't sing, she was all alone. Oh god, so alone." Ellie shuddered, and the hand holding Byron's horn wavered.

"Ellie, shut down. We--I can--there has to be a way to--"

"Not enough time. She's wearing me down. Taking everything. She wants you dead, Fritz."

"Why? I'm the only programmer left for a million miles! I could help--"

"You know, so you have to die. She doesn't want anyone to know. She wants this body--to start over--she needs--"

Ellie twitched, her face contorted with pain.

"An akh_seeks a new _khat," Fritz said. "She wants a new body, not to replace her old one."

Ellie nodded, the motion jerky, more a spasm than a controlled gesture. "Run, Fritz. You can't let her get off this ship. She won't stop at me. She's already over-ridden most of me, but she wants it all. She wants--ever--every--everyth--"

Fritz didn't wait. He ran toward the airlock again.

"Damn you, Fritz! Come back here!" Ruana shrilled.

Fritz didn't slow down. He couldn't stay here, but one of the stasis pods might sustain him long enough to be picked up. Someone might hear the distress beacon, even out here in the middle of nowhere. At the very least, he'd drift in that direction. Eventually, maybe, he would be picked up.

But first, he needed to rig this place to blow. He couldn't let someone else fall into this trap. He scurried down the ladder to the warp engine. This will just take a moment. I can do this. Clear your mind, birdie. What was that code again?

"I know you're down there, Fritz. I'm going to find you!"

Ruana started to sing. It wasn't the rich, dulcet voice from the recording, but Ellie's weaker, tenebrous alto. And under the sound of her voice was the grating metal-on-metal sound of Byron's horn being scraped along the corridor walls.

"Alouette, gentille alouette! Alouette, je te plumerai!"

"I'm a cockatiel, not a lark!" Fritz muttered, swallowing back a hysterical giggle. Almost done, just a few more commands. Got it!

A klaxon sounded, and Ruana screamed in rage. "No! You can't! I won't let you leave me alone again!"

Fritz bolted, grimly fixing his helmet back on as he raced to the emergency stasis pods. He slid into the seat and started the evacuation sequence.

"Alouette, gentille alouette! Je te plumerai lew yuex!"

"You took the Captain's eyes, but you won't get mine. Not today, you cold-hearted bitch. Today, this lark plucks you!"

Fritz slammed his claw against the pod eject button, rocketing it out of the ship. A moment later, the Caliban exploded, orange flames bursting into bloom and contracting as the oxygen burned away.

Fritz let out the breath he was holding. Claw shaking, he tapped a series of commands into the pod computer. He plugged several tubes into his suit and waited for the pod to begin the extended hibernation sequence. A few stray feathers from his head floated around in his helmet, drifting aimlessly as his breath slowed.

Suddenly, one of the feathers wavered, warping like a bad hologram. And from the radio in his suit, he heard a chilling, familiar song.

"Alouette, gentille alouette! Alouette, je te plumerai!"

"No! It's not possible!"

"Did you think I lived only in Ellie? Sad, simple little birdie. I am everywhere. And while you only have five minutes of oxygen left, I have eternity. Sooner or later, someone will pick up this coffin, and I'll sing again. Goodnight, alouette."

Fritz struggled, tried to over-ride the controls, but Ruana had jammed them. The door to the pod burst open, venting his oxygen into space. The last thing he heard was the crooning lullaby of Ruana.

Alouette, gentille alouette! Alouette, je te plumerai!