Page 35 of Bred

“Poetic,” he says. “But there is a reason.”

“And the reason is?”

He looks mildly embarrassed before he answers. The expression sits strangely on his hyper-masculine, aggressive features.

“I tried to kill it once.”

“You tried to kill nothing, and now nothing is angry?”

“Yes.”

“Well, fuck. That doesn’t even make sense.”

“One of our attempts to seed life was to use a machine which would turn anti-matter into matter.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good idea for so many reasons.”

“It wasn’t. There was a very large explosion which consumed the better part of three galaxies and then that... thing... emerged. It saw us and it has been chasing us ever since. Sometimes it is months before we see it again. Other times it returns many times over the course of days. I am sorry that you are part of this now, Lyra. We are working on finding a means to escape it, or return it from the dimension it came from...”

“You think it comes from another dimension?”

“Almost undoubtedly. Our weapon tore a rift...”

“Oh, so that’s the rift you were talking about between here and Earth. You made it.”

“Yes,” he admits. “That was our...mymaking.”

He’s so responsible, I mean, for a man who ripped open space and time and unleashed a creature of pure horror into a foreign universe. Against all sense, I find myself feeling almost sorry for the beast he is describing. I know it has done great damage and claimed lives, but it clearly did not begin this battle, and perhaps it doesn’t even want to continue it. Talon sees a creature hunting him. I wonder if it’s just an animal like the rest of us, trying to survive.

“So what you’ve unleashed, it might not want to be here? It might be injured?”

“If it is, there is no way for us to tell.”

“Have you tried talking to it?”

“How does one talk to a creature which is the antithesis of all creation and pure destruction incarnate?”

I shrug. “Hand signals?”

“We see that thing, we run. We have lost three hundred crew to the creature since it emerged, and we will lose ourselves if we don’t keep moving.”

“So your plan is just to run?”

“Not just to run, no, to keep seeding the universe with life...”

“While trailing pure destruction in your wake? I mean, at best, that’s kind of coming out even. You could have stayed at home in the first place and achieved the same results.”

Talon glowers at me, and I keenly feel that I should probably shut up and not point out his failings. It’s very much salt in a very raw wound.

“We must stay alive for as long as we can,” he says, ignoring my words. “So, when there is an alert, you will go to the very center of the ship, and you will put yourself into one of the short stasis chambers. You will be as safe as you can be in there, and if the worst was to happen, you would not be any the wiser.”

“So you want me to go lie in my euthanasia box and hope for the best? There’s no way I’m ever going back in there. I’d rather be swallowed by that thing than lie in a box and hide from it and hope I survive.”

“You’ll do as you’re told, or you will be severely punished. I will give Shank free rein on you.”

“Which won’t matter if we all get eaten, will it?”

He growls at me, a brilliantly feral sound that goes to the very core of me. He does not care for my defiance, but his version of safety is nothing but cowardice. I share the danger, and I will face it on my feet.

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