He threw her against the chair. With his prosthetic arm he smashed the door of the booth open, knocking the startled guard on the other side halfway across the bridge. Harbin stepped through the suddenly open doorway. The three officers on the bridge jumped to their feet. He grabbed the nearest one by the jaw and lifted him off his feet; bones snapped audibly and the man screeched in agony. Throwing him to the floor, Harbin saw the half-stunned guard on the deck groping for the pistol in his holster.
Harbin turned toward the guard, who pulled the laser pistol free and fired squarely at his chest. The laser pulse burned through Harbin’s shirt and splashed off the metal of his torso. The fabric of the shirt smoldered as Harbin leaped on the guard like a pouncing lion, ripped the gun from his hand and flung it across the bridge. He took a handful of the guard’s hair and bashed his head against the deck plates.
On his feet again, he pounded the control console. Metal bent, glass shattered. He reached for the woman standing frozen in shock, tossed her across the bridge, grabbed the next man by the shoulder and smashed his face into the control console. Blood spurted. He ripped the command chair out of its deck clasps and threw it against the main display screen. All in a blur of raging power.
Tamara staggered to the ruptured door of the comm booth, her eyes wide, her jaw slack.
“You!” Harbin shouted, pointing at her with his human arm. “You!”
She froze, hands gripping the doorway’s sides. For an instant no one moved, no one made a sound. Then Harbin turned and punched the wall panel that controlled the hatch that led off the bridge. The hatch slid smoothly open and he ducked through and lurched down the passageway, leaving the bridge in a shambles, its officers stunned and bleeding.
Kao Yuan had holed up in his quarters. He wanted no part of Tamara’s interrogation of their prisoner. My prisoner, he reminded himself. But she’s got the upper hand. She reports straight to Humphries himself. I’m just the captain of this ship, the commander of this little task force. She probably sleeps with Humphries when she’s back at headquarters.
He heard a muffled roar, then thumps and heavy banging and screams of agony. Yuan jumped out of his bunk and slid his door open just as Harbin came boiling up the passageway from the bridge.
He managed to say, “Hey!” before Harbin whacked him on the forehead with the heel of his human hand, knocking Yuan backwards to crash painfully into his bunk and slide to the deck.
His head spinning, Yuan pulled himself to his feet and stumbled to the bridge. It was a disaster area: consoles smashed, officers on their knees groaning and bleeding. He ripped my command chair out of the fucking deck! Yuan screamed silently.
“He’s gone amok!” Tamara gasped, staggering to him and collapsing into his arms.
Yuan couldn’t suppress a grim smile of satisfaction.
He helped her to one of the still functional chairs, then leaned on the intercom button. “General alert! General alert! Our prisoner is loose and extremely dangerous. Arm yourselves and hunt him down. Use whatever force necessary to subdue him. I repeat, he is extremely dangerous! Use whatever level of force necessary to subdue him, including lethal force.”
ATTACK SHIP
INFIRMARY
They had not bothered to assign Elverda quarters of her own; she was still housed in the infirmary. From her bed she heard the captain’s frantic warning over the ship’s intercom.
Their prisoner? she thought. He means Dorn!
“Lethal force is authorized,” the captain was repeating. “He’s a maniac! Don’t take any chances with him!”
Elverda got up from the bed. She had been drowsing but now she was entirely awake, alert, alarmed. They’ll kill him, she realized. God knows what’s happened.
Pulling her robe from the closet by the bed, Elverda rushed out into the passageway. It was empty and silent.
What’s happened? she wondered. What did they do to him?
The captain ought to know, she reasoned. He’d be up on the bridge, most likely. She headed toward the bridge, using the maps displayed on the wall screens along the passageways. Crewmen ran past her, strapping holsters to their hips, their faces strained with apprehension. They ignored her as they raced down the passageway.
When she got to the bridge, she found Captain Yuan standing in the midst of chaos. Equipment was smashed, crew members were writhing on the floor with others bending over them, spraying bandages on them. Koop was tenderly lifting one of the women officers to a sitting position, she saw.
“Captain,” Elverda called, stepping across shattered shards of glass and plastic toward him.
“Get back in the infirmary,” Yuan snapped. “We’ve got a madman on our hands.”
“Don’t hurt him,” Elverda pleaded.
“Don’t hurt
“What did you do to him?”
The captain glanced at a dark-haired woman sitting huddled on one of the serviceable chairs. She looked pale with shock.
“He’s hiding somewhere on my ship. We’ve got to catch him before he does more damage. Before he kills somebody.”
“Let me go to him,” Elverda said. “I can talk to him, calm him down.”
“He’s insane,” said the dark-haired woman. “A homicidal maniac.”
Elverda hated her instantaneously. “Did he kill anyone?”
“Not because he didn’t try.”
“He could have snapped your neck like a twig,” Elverda said. “You must have done something to set him off.”
“Those damned drugs,” Yuan muttered.
“Drugs?
Again Yuan looked toward the dark-haired woman. She would not meet his eyes.
“I’ve got to find him before one of your crew kills him,” she said, heading back toward the hatch.
“Or before he kills one of my crew, more likely,” Yuan shouted after her.
Dorn sat hunched on the deck plates next to the thrumming power generator, his head sunk in his hands.
How close to the surface lurks the beast, he was saying to himself, over and over. How close. How close.
Just beneath the surface lies the monster. You thought you’d buried him deep, but the drugs brought him back. One little dose and all your discipline cracked like an eggshell.
He looked up bleakly, seeing nothing but his own misery.
Was it really the drugs? Maybe that was just an excuse, a justification to allow the monster out of his cage.
It felt good to be free! He shuddered at the realization of it. It felt good to smash and rage and let the fury boil out. To scatter them. To break their bones. To see the terror on their faces.
He pounded both his fists on the metal deck plates. I’ll never be free of him! I’ll never be rid of the beast. He wanted to cry but he had no tears.
