Dee and Vicki watched the shuttle descend towards the strange planet. It was a cold and cloudy wasteland of light blue and tan, streaked with clouds and an unusual dark purple glow to the atmosphere of the darker side. The blinding white star illuminating the fog that rose from the day side, like a plume of bone colored smoke, but whisper thin.
“Tentacles?” Vicki asked.
“Of every kind. The planet itself is considered borderline alive, like one giant organism.”
“Yeah, I’m not going down there.” She nodded vigorously.
“But now that we have some time alone…”
“Shit, here we go.”
“Vicki, you’ve always been a friend of Dee, and I can sense your anxiety between us. I’m not exactly Dee, but I’m definitely not Nicole, and he’s not my husband.”
“You realize I need to feed to live, and for others to live.”
“I’m not giving you the speech about how he’s MY boyfriend, and you can’t touch him. Nicole is erratic and emotional. Love that about her or hate it, it’s what she is. She’s emotion and passion and chaos, and Vinn seems to adore that about her and have his own reservations about his insecurities. I’m letting you know its fine. I may act like Dee, because it’s my default program, but I understand the difference between a physical need and an emotional need, a medical necessity and a desire. Nobody is stopping you or shaming you. I want you to know that. He feels that it’s his purpose, and I don’t feel jealous of your curse. He’s strong enough to share, and we both want different things, so taking what we want isn’t stealing from the other.”
“So you’re giving me your blessing? You have the same memory as the robot before you took over. So you know what I did to you. You know what I am.” Vicki said, putting her hands to her head.
“I am aware. And I forgive you, because I was just a soulless drone. I remember feeling nothing, indifferent, just doing my job. The emotions were just programmed acting to make the kill feel real.”
“That’s what I feel bad about. The fact that I could have turned off the realism and fed on an emotionless drone, or set the robot to act like she enjoyed it. Just doing my job or making it sexual wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted prey that objected and struggled.” She admitted. “And I did that over, and over, and over, every time saying it was the last time, and feeling slightly less guilty after each kill. I’m afraid Jack won’t love what I’m turning into. I’m getting worse.”
“Or you’re accepting reality.” Dee said suggestively.
...
The shuttle craft landed in a deserted open area just outside a (for lack of word) forested area where they spotted ruins. From orbit it looked like trees and grass, but as the shuttle landed, they noticed the trees were more mushroom than plant. The grass was just some form of fuzzy mold or moss coverage, and the ground was mushy and springy.
“Welcome to Vicki’s personal hell.” Gizzy said stepping out. "No people, no blood, all the wet slimy wiggling things you could ask for. And it’s cold.”
“I kinda like it.” Nicole shrugged, "It’s quiet, it’s cool, the air is moist.” She smiled, breathing deeply in the alien terrain.
“Are you high?” Vinn asked discreetly.
“Hey, I had a little bitty bump before we landed.”
“You’re hitting the snail goop kinda heavy, you really wanna be… dazed while on a ground mission?” He asked.
“Come on, you don’t want me enjoying it? This has become a miserable and stressful adventure. Don’t kill my one destressing option. You were drunk for game night.”
“Yeah, because nobody cares if my uno playing reflexes are dulled. This is work, we gotta be sharp.”
“I’m tired of being so sharp that I’m on the edge of losing it. Let me round out a little.” She assured. They noticed Gizzy was standing and staring at a small metal obelisk.
“Are you shitting me?” She said while inspecting the writing. "Are you shitting my absolute balls right now? This is a Sil-Ken claimed world?” She asked with concern.
“Like satin sheets?” Vinn asked. She turned back with an annoyed look.
“No not Silken, Sil-Ken. The Greys. Not the big spindly assholes pretending to be the Greys, the actual Greys. Why is nobody looking concerned?”
“Are they that bad?” Nicole asked.
“Ugh, well, maybe. It’s hard to say since nobody has been able to make contact with them. They don’t really speak. But their technology is insanely advanced. Makes Osirian Empire tech look like tin cans on a string, and we’re a dominant player in the known universe feared for our advanced technology. Shit… the bed. Okay, so if we encounter them, put your helmets on, drop your weapons and just stand there. Don’t look them in the eyes, don’t move, and don’t take off your helmet. If they try and take off your helmet…well, let them but you’re gonna have a very rough night assuming we survive. In fact, nobody take your helmet off for this entire mission. I know the sensors say it’s fine, don’t do it.
“We all already did. Sensors showed it was safe.” Nicole said.
“The Sil-Ken have something that causes paranoid and fear and we don’t know what it is. Maybe the air they breathe, maybe the water, maybe a defensive magnetic field, telepathy, nobody knows but you encounter them and then you freak out. I drank 2 of their sodas once and spent 3 days in rehab. My last captain and I encountered them for 5 minutes, he ended up on the floor of the ship crying and shitting himself, because he ate a bite of the big ceremonial cookie. Then there was a gap in time where I drank about 17 Xanax and then somehow ended up on a 2 week addiction bender in the infirmary and I don’t know what I did for the entire evening. Shit, if this is where the scroll is, it might be guarded by them. We can’t compete with that. You know what, let's just assume this is an abandoned world they no longer care about, move fast and if we encounter then, just remember, helmet on, don’t freak out, weapons down, and whatever they do, just let them. Don’t look em in the eyes, and hopefully they just get bored and walk away.” Gizzy sighed, trudging onward.
...
Dee circled Vicki like a vulture, as she held her head in frustrated emotional struggle.
“Why do you feel guilt for your nature?” Dee asked. “Humans cheat and lie and betray their partners purely out of greed and yet you were given no choice but to survive and you feel guilt for hunting food. You expressed guilt when a married man enjoyed your venom, you expressed regret and disgust when you simulated killing a non-living likeness of your friend, you longed for the hunt when bottled sustenance was offered, you felt disgust in the intimacy of feeding on a disgusting criminal, but you feel awkward guilt feeding on a man who isn’t so terrible anymore. What exactly do you want?” She asked calmly.
“That’s what scares me…I don’t know. There’s a part of me that says I’m not evil, I’m not a predator, I want a willing friend to volunteer it, but that part of me can’t help but feel intimacy buried in it. Something sensual, lips on skin, the tight embrace and connection of the bite, and fullness you get with every ounce of blood. It feels so personal that I miss Jack and feel like I’m stabbing him in the back. Killing feels less personal, just like what he does. It’s a job, it needs done, it’s deserved, but to shut off that intimacy and be just an animal taking down it’s prey with no guilt makes me forget I’m still mostly human. If I lose that completely, who am I now? I’m not Vicki anymore. She doesn’t hunt and murder. Everyone sacrifices so much for me. Gizzy dedicates her time to keep me alive. Jack puts up with my lack of control and my dangerous nature. Nicole shared her husband, and Vinn, who was uncomfortable with intimacy with the woman he loves dearly, had to be a piece of meat for someone he never even had romantic feelings for. Everyone acts like I have to be taken care of, and what do I give back? Jack is a more precise killer, Gizzy is a more ferocious monster, Nicole is kinder and more intuitive, Vinn is stronger, and even the stupid robot was a more versatile crew member."
“You wonder why anyone even cares and why they don’t just save themselves and all that wasted work and suffering by letting you out an airlock without a suit. You aren’t human enough to be who you are, and you’re afraid of what you’ll become. Stuck in the middle. You don’t belong with the monsters or the innocent. But you don’t realize being an outcast is why you belong to the crew. Aside from Nicole, everyone here is a killer who calls themselves one of the good guys, Gizzy doing it while bragging that she’s the villain among her rivals. Nicole is an innocent soul doubting that she’s good enough to belong when she can’t even kill to defend herself, and now there’s a man whose neglect became a mass grave he never intended to wanted, and he feels he deserves to die for it. Everyone is a contradiction, an outcast, a broken being full of regret and damaged decisions they can’t take back. Why do you think you’re so especially broken? Is it because you think you’re too good to be one of the heathens, or too evil deep down to be one of the dark heroes?”
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“I liked you better when you just acted like a dumb, bimbo-bestie and talked about getting dicks and doing shots.”
“I can still be that, there’s dick and shots on the ship right now if you wanna go crazy.” She shrugged taking on a very different familiar Dee-like tone.
“I’m still your virtual girlfriend or maid.” She smiled, playfully but darkly so, like Dee with a hint of Lucifer’s temptation behind the eyes.
“But you’re not. I can’t trust you anymore. You’re not my friend pinky promising her loyalty, or a robot bound by code to keep confidential therapy sessions to yourself.”
“Then how about I share something with you and you simply think about it. My code doesn’t allow me the free will to kill unless to save my own life, but part of me knows men like Tweet, and envies that you have the free will and medical excuse to go in there and unleash your darker side without fear that you would hurt someone you give a shit about. And if you killed him, everyone would comfort you and say you can’t help it, you just lost control. You’re just enough of your old innocence to play the innocence card, and just enough of a beast to claim primal instinct motivation. You have the free will and the power to do what you want and get away with it. Does it tempt you?”
“The hungrier I get, the more tempting it becomes.”
“So why does Gizzy get to throw her enemies into an arena and tear them apart to a cheering crowd, and Nicole gets to play games massacring mindless monsters with guns and swords and laugh villainously saying its just a game? Why does Vinn get to kill a man who threatened just one human he cared about, and Jack gets to take off the heads of crooked politicians in the name of following orders, but you get scolded for wanting to finish off your snack and take a truly evil being out of this universe? Why are you still the villain in your mind?”
“Because you didn’t see the monster I could become if I lose control. Gizzy’s visions have a tendency to become reality.”
“From what I’ve seen, it’s more likely that SHE is the monster you’re afraid of becoming. What if she is only pretending that it could be you, to tell herself it might not be her? If fate is set, then why not embrace it? If you are the demon in her drawing, then maybe the gods will it and made you so. If Gizzy is the demon, then why are you letting her gaslight you into thinking you harbor evil, just to convince herself she may not harbor it?”
“Why do you want me to kill Tweet so badly?”
“I don’t want you to. I just know you want to, and you let what might be the demon of your nightmares tell you that you can’t because she went to all that trouble to bring him here. Purely for you. Her selfless act of love, tormenting and killing several prisoners in her mad scientist role she plays so well, beating him for dominance and control, feeding on his fear and hiding in her lab with her beloved experiments, dabbling in the truly darkest evils of the universe. You don’t see that she did it for herself and put the guilt on you, just like she denied the monster in her drawing because it might be Vicki, not her. Who is more likely to become a goddess of blood and selfish power… you, a human being who has had one murderous outburst she cries over, or a war criminal who jokes about the multiple genocides she’s committed, letting cities burn and lab experiments die, all so she can gain more control?”
“That’s a lot of complicated hinting to say, Vicki you’re being gaslit by the devil herself while she sits on a throne of your suffering.” Vicki said looking back at her and locking in a strange gaze of challenge and understanding.
“Sometimes you have to say the words yourself that you chose to construct, to understand the truth. If power is evil and greedily hording it is wrong, why is she the only exception? Why does she fear that you might gain equal power to her, if she only has your best interests at heart? She does have a heart, doesn’t she? I believe you were born with one, and she was born with teeth and claws. She won’t even let Nicole, her clearly favored pet, have the power to run her ship as Captain, without overriding it when she chooses. Do you think she wants you having any power? Gizzy is afraid of you becoming something greater, because she won’t be in charge anymore, and someone with a human heart might start making the decisions for once.
“You’re hinting dangerously close to mutiny and sedition for someone we barely know. It’s awfully trusting of you to even hint that to me.”
“Ideas are always dangerous. You saw how ferociously she defended her power when I showed her that I might have a slight tactical edge, when I simply gave it up to show I meant no harm. Look in your human heart, that you trust to love Jack and dictate your guilt, and tell me who the monster on this ship is, and why she's keeping the second most evil captive on this ship alive when you have a perfectly willing Zhoren who wants nothing more then to help you and be useful? Kill Tweet, a truly vile creature with no heart or remorse, and see how quickly she vilifies you, while she pretends she didn’t just kill over ten random prisoners with bone marrow infusions… for you of course. Purely for you, because you’re her obvious favorite, right?”
“Not another word.” Vicki snarled before turning and walking away.
...
“This desert gives me the creeps.” Vinn said. “It’s sandy and bright, but cold, but not cold enough for snow, yet there’s snow on stuff.” He puzzled.
“It’s not snow.” Said Nicole, investigating what looked like a plaster dinosaur egg, with a doughnut shaped growth, somewhere between a mushroom and a fleshy skin orifice. The pale, icy blue growth pulsed slowly, a thick white gel running out, a halfway point between hand lotion and marshmallow crème.
“What is that?” Nicole winced.
“Well the rumors are that the entire planet is alive, so it could be anything.”
“Is it planet semen? Please tell me it’s not planet semen.” She pouted, looking sad. Gizzy scanned it.
“Good news and bad news. Good news, it’s not semen.”
“Oh thank fart.”
“It’s a digestive enzyme for breaking down food.”
“Oh, that’s almost worse.” Nicole cringed. “Actually, no, it’s not worse, but it's still bad.
“There’s more over here, except bluer.” Vinn noted.
“Eugh… like a mushroom Venus fly-trap filled with the chalk paint you use for a baby boy’s room. And what is this beige dust?” She asked.
“Skin cells.” Gizzy noted. Nicole closed her eyes and gathered her thought for a moment.
“Okay, from now on we don’t tell Nicole what things are now unless she needs to know it.” She smiled, dead inside.
“You wanted to go down here.” Gizzy shrugged.
“Yeah, because you said chilly desert planet with high moisture. I don’t know how you can have a moist desert, but I like sandy beaches and cold wet weather. I thought it would be like California winter, not… fucking… dead skin cell sand dunes and that pastel blue finger-tongue sticking out behind it like it’s gonna slurp ya. Vicki would be crying right now. I’m kinda thinking about it and considering it.”
“You love animal, right? How do you feel about cats?” Jack inquired,
“Not as adorable as bunnies and puppies but still very loveable… why?”
“I apologize in advance.” He said firing sniper rifle a round from a prone position.
They all turned to see a dead, vaguely catlike creature the color of the skin-sand lying about a hundred meters out.
“Jack! What if it was friendly?”
“It was sprinting with an open mouth full of teeth at about 35 MPH directly at the group facing away from it. And there’s more of them.” He said as everyone readied guns and a few of the sand dunes shook themselves off and rose up on 4 legs, 4 long tail-like appendages sweeping back from the shoulders with what looked like defense barbs on the ends. The catlike ears on closer inspection were boney horns sticking up from the skull just above 2 sets of eyes lined up just above the back of the jaws that were now opening and hissing, displaying bright red teeth.
“Move north, suppressive fire behind you.” Gizzy ordered, laying down bursts of ammo and dropping them. More popped up around the moving group.
“Can we get to the shuttle?” Nicole asked.
“They’re between us and the shuttle. I suggest we take cover behind that ridge of rocks until they leave or we kill enough of them that they take the hint."
“What if the ridges are teeth?” Nicole asked.
“Doubtful,” Gizzy said while switching to grenades and 1-shotting one of the skin-cat-demons.
“Hey, at least they die with minimal weaponfire.” Jack said. "You guys didn’t see the thing me and Vinn ran into back on the Tar planet. That thing soaked up 200 rounds like a sponge and didn’t give a shit.” He said, hopping over the ridge and placing his bipod on the rock, suddenly having the gun lifted up and almost over his head as the rock opened into what could be compared to a land clam with the gaping maw of a hippo.
“The rocks are alive too.” He yelled.
“Oh, great, I was right!” Nicole barked.
“You said the rocks were teeth, not the rocks have teeth, it’s a completely different guess.” Gizzy yelled as they leapt from the tops of the land-clams and turned around to defend the ridge. “At least they seem anchored down so they still make good cover, just… don’t get your head near the chompy part.”
“This is a stupid place for a scroll!” Nicole yelled.
...
Vicki stood and stared at the two cells. On the right the cage of a man who set fire to children for his enjoyment, who was enjoying a soft mattress and a warm dry upgraded room he didn’t deserve. On the left, a man whose mistake cost him everything and who finally found purpose in his cursed life, who was glad to be the victim. Part of her just craved sustenance and a guilt free feeding, but the other part of her almost resented the restriction she had, the chain around her neck Gizzy had tightly held because gods forbid she stomp one cockroach out of this life for the rare satisfying thrill of it.
How dare she even begin to judge her with twice the fangs and half the soul. That look of hatred in her eyes when she killed the Forest God and the eggs of an entire endangered species of alien. Yet one criminal was off limits. Or fucking was he?