Page 2 of Myra's Monster

While they dressed in their fancy, armored suits, I checked every inch of mine for scratches that might become tears. It was pointless—what was I going to do if I didn’t like the look of it?—but the ritual made me feel safer. When I finally closed the helmet and turned on the suit’s airmaker, I was ready to face the unknown.

The air in the suit was worse than theJoy’s. It lacked the burned hydrocarbon smell, but it somehow tastedsticky. Doing my best to ignore that worrying sign, I joined the others in the airlock and looked out at the punctured hull of the ancient ship.

Hess made the jump across first, and his childlike shout of glee when his boots hit the alien surface almost endeared him to me. My first step onto the bioship’s hull felt like sacrilege, like I was walking on someone’s grave. To be fair, that was probably literally true, but the deaths had been too long ago to worryabout. At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself as Volkov joined us and we made our way to the hull breach.

2

MONSTER

Out here on the frozen edge of interstellar space, nothing happens fast. Eons passed without change, and I slumbered in my cocoon, barely aware of time passing.

Over the long centuries, Home pulled herself back together. Scavenging material from drifting space dust was a slow process and gathering energy to do anything with it even slower. The race between the self-repair systems and entropy was a long one, and no winner had emerged yet.

Unexpectedly, something changed. Light! A feast of energy, pumped in at a rate Home had almost forgotten was possible. Thirsty, she drank in more than the distant starlight would provide in a century. Systems that hadn’t seen activity in thousands of years sprang to life, spending carefully hoarded materials in a flurry of activity, and I drifted toward consciousness.

Waking up hurt. Of course it did—waking from longsleep always did. The ship’s umbilicals pumped me full of life, my veins expanding as fluid filled through them for the first time in far too long. I shifted, testing my body and finding it ready for action. My limbs moved at my command, my claws slid out of their sheaths, and I breathed again.

Thin air, carrying a scent of rot, filled my lungs. Something else, too, a smell I did not recognize. The reason Home woke me.

Intruders.

3

MYRA

The first surprise greeted us as we pulled ourselves through the crack in the warship’s hull. The moment I was inside, I had weight again. Artificial gravity turnedinwardintodownand pulled me to the deck with a thud. If it had been any stronger, I’d have risked breaking something. As it was, I stumbled but kept my feet.

Hess landed harder, tumbling across the decking with a string of curses. Volkov surprised me by landing elegantly. His genemods hadn’t just jacked up his strength, they’d given him superb reflexes too.

While Volkov lifted Hess to his feet, I looked up, cursing under my breath. We’d dropped twenty feet or more from the opening and getting back up would be a challenge. Especially if we found something worth bringing back.

“How is thegravitystill working?” Hess’s voice crackled with static, but that didn’t hide the awe in it.

Volkov shrugged. “More concerned about the air.”

He tapped the wrist readout of his suit, and I checked my own. Blinked, and checked again. We were in an atmosphere? I’d have assumed my battered old suit’s sensors were playingup, but his was brand new. We couldn’t both have the same malfunction.

It was too thin to breathe, but as I watched, the pressure gauge crept up. So did the temperature, though it was still below freezing.

“The ship is waking up,” Hess said, rubbing his hands together. “We should get a move on. If the power’s working, there has to be some amazing treasure in here.”

Great, the Ancient warship is still functioning, and that makes himhappierto loot it?Not trusting myself to say anything, I shone my flashlight around, examining the room we’d landed in for anything that might satisfy his greed.

Nothing. We’d fallen into what might have once been a cargo hold. Hard to tell, since it was empty, the dark green deck stretching away in every direction. The rough surface seemed to be made of twisted roots or branches, woven together in a pattern that looked as though it was moving under my flashlight.

Nothing to take here. We’re going to have to go deeper.The idea made me shiver. This ‘wreck’ was too functional for my tastes, and every minute we spent in it just upped the chances of something going wrong. But Hess wasn’t going back empty-handed, and standing around worrying about it wouldn’t help anyone.

If I’m going to do something this stupid, I’d better commit to it.Unclipping the cutting laser from my belt, I tested it on the decking, watching it burn and part under the beam. The weave separated, edges bubbling as liquid boiled away.

I learned from my mistakes, and this time I anchored a line before stepping through the gap. A good thing too, because the next level down had stronger gravity, a good two-thirds of Earth Standard. The motor-winch on my belt whined under the strain, but it got me down safely. More importantly, the rope gave me a way back up.

Which was great news, because I felt like I’d stumbled into a treasure trove. This room seemed as vast as the hold above, though it was hard to be sure because of the jungle filling it.

Yes, a jungle. I know it sounds crazy, but there it was. Tree trunks stretched from floor to ceiling, branches forming the deck I’d just cut through. Other plants grew between those mighty columns. Bulbous fruit hung from vines, glowing a faint blue-white. Strange shadows flickered as they swung back and forth, adding a creepy, surreal air to the place.

I stared around in awe. This wasn’t the fossilized remains of an ancient garden. These plants were living, growing, millennia after the fall of the civilization that planted them. And they were beautiful. Flowers bloomed, dark purples and royal blues catching the light of the fruit. Vines wound around the trunks, glittering wetly and seeming to mark a path through the forest.

Turning slowly, I let my suit’s camera get a good long look at everything. Biotech companies would fall over themselves to pay for this stuff, and rich collectors would want those flowers. If I filled my sample bags with plants from this garden, I’d make a fortune. And it would leave more than enough for the mobsters to get rich off, too.

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