by N M Tatum
“Perfect,” Reggie said. “Then we’ll be the only united front out there. And nothing can beat us when we’re working together.” He stuck out his hand.
Joel hung his head with a heavy sigh.
“Come on,” Reggie pressed. “Just one time.”
Reluctantly, Sam put her hand on top of Reggie’s. “One time,” she repeated warningly.
Cody followed.
“What the hell,” Joel said, slapping his hand on the others. “Go, team.”
Reggie threw his hand in the air, carrying the others’ with it. “Go, team!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The docking bay was a circus. The terrifying kind of circus. The fever dream with dancing clowns and warped music and flashing lights that could push someone to the edge of seizure. The Layton staff were like ants under a magnifying glass held to the sun. Scurrying frantically, crawling over each other in hopes of finding safe passage out of the fire.
The team put their guns away. One wide shot could mean putting a hole through Deb from accounts receivable, and they’d come to save people, not turn them into collateral damage. That restricted them to melee weapons.
Which suited Sam just fine. She ran through the crowd, the people turning to blurs in her periphery. She saw past them and picked the ShimVens and Rapoo out of the flurry of movement. She was a heat-seeking missile.
Her blade, too, became a blur. It shimmered as it sliced through the air, followed quickly by a fine red mist. The creatures dropped dead. The fleeing people didn’t take the time to appreciate the beauty with which Sam had just saved their lives.
The guys were much less elegant in their approach. Reggie pummeled a ShimVen to death, feeling its skull crack under his knuckles. Joel opted for the extendable spear, hoping to keep the creatures as far from himself as possible. Cody used his dagger to shank a Rapoo.
The chaos made the hangar bay appear to be more of a threat than it was. Once the majority of the people had cleared out, the team saw that there were only a few creatures that needed to be dealt with.
Luckily, the chaos worked in the Notches’ favor. The creatures were so frantic, killing each other as much as trying to kill the people, that the team was able to finish them off quickly enough.
As Cody stabbed the last Rapoo through the neck, he was barely sweating. The hangar was suddenly quiet, where, just seconds before, it had been a raucous madhouse. The change was jarring and put off he and the others.
“I’m getting sick of calms before the storm,” Joel said. “Just once, I’d appreciate it if the monsters could come at us straight away.” He retracted his spear and holstered the subsequent rod on his back. He drew his pistols, expecting more action.
Cody followed suit, holstering his dagger and readying his scatterblaster. “I’ll take any bit of quiet I can get where no one is trying to kill me.”
Sam twirled her sword like she was about to sheathe it, but changed her mind at the last minute. “I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.” She pointed her sword at the far end of the hangar bay, where a small swarm of lophius was slithering toward them.
Reggie opened fire with his semiautomatic blaster, forgetting that the gunfire did little to harm the creatures. The lophius continued on their course, which the team thought was straight at them. But it wasn’t. The slithering creatures crawled over the dead bodies of the Rapoo and ShimVens, and they began to eat.
Joel clutched his stomach. “I’m going to puke.” He put his hand over his mouth and puffed out his cheeks. “So gross.”
Cody raised his wristcom and scanned the nearest lophius. Then he dropped to one knee to examine the results.
Sam stepped in front of him, raising her sword and shield in a defensive posture. “Not a great place for a sit and read.”
“This is bad,” Cody said.
“Obviously,” Sam said. “Explain why.”
“The lophius grow at an exponential rate, as we saw at the storehouse. From harmless goo blobs to little monster snakes in a matter of hours. I’ve been studying them since we first encountered them.” Cody scrolled through some of the older scans, comparing data. “I determined that they metabolize their bodies’ own natural fat stores to muster the energy for the transformation.”
“Get to the point before I vomit,” Joel said.
“They didn’t eat anything at the storehouse,” Cody said. “But if they get their hands on an all-you-can-eat buffet, they will grow much larger.”
“How much larger?” Reggie asked, afraid of the answer.
“That one that rammed our ship on the way in,” Cody reminded them. “Maybe, like, a hundred times that size?”
“Are you fucking serious?” Joel shouted.
Before Cody could respond, the lophius finished their meals. They twitched and spasmed, jiggling on the floor like piles of Jell-O. The air filled with a piercing shriek that seemed to come from everywhere and there was a smell like burning plastic. Then the goo blobs exploded.
A slime rain fell and splattered over the floor. Joel’s gut spasmed again, threatening to spew out the Pop-Tarts he’d had for breakfast.
Once the slime rain stopped, the team saw how the lophius’ new diet had affected them. They were now four feet long, with mouths full of razor teeth. The antenna that sprouted from the top of their heads held a baseball-sized node on the end that emitted a dull light. Fins had formed on the sides of their snake-like bodies.
“Anything in those readings about killing these things?” Sam asked.
Cody stared at the creatures, awed by them, fascinated and desperately wishing he could take one back to his lab to study.
“Cody!” Sam yelled at him, snapping him back to the moment.
“Their goo is gone,” he replied. “They should be more solid now than in their larval stage. You should be able to hit them a lot easier.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear.” Reggie ran toward the closest lophius.
The lophius slithered to meet him. The creature was surprisingly fast, twisting its long body in a way that launched it across the floor. It increased its speed further by digging its fins into the floor, revealing that they were edged with hardened shards, like a saw blade.
Unfortunately for Reggie, he didn’t realize that fact until it was too late.
He raised his fist, ready to deliver a crushing blow to the lophius, but the creature slashed upward with its fin, slicing Reggie from belly button to chest. The force lifted him off his feet and sent him flying backward. He slammed onto his back and lay motionless.
Sam darted at the offending creature as Joel and Cody both peppered it with blaster fire. The shots were more effective than they would have been against a gooey larva, but they still did not kill the lophius, merely throwing it off balance and knocking it back. But that was enough to provide Sam an opening.
She jumped into the air, flipping forward, and came down on top of the lophius, driving her sword through its brain.
The creature shrieked and squirmed and died.
Sam plucked her sword from the dead thing then ran to Reggie’s side. She prepared herself for the gory sight of her friend’s entrails spilling from his opened abdomen. She was pleasantly surprised to see no intestines at all, just a groaning Reggie clutching his chest.
“Not dead,” he said, heaving for breath.
Joel leaned down and poked the body armor on Reggie’s chest, now exposed through the rip in Reggie’s shirt. “Rapoo teeth beats lophius fin.”
Sam spun toward the oncoming swarm of lophius, wriggling and hissing like vipers. “Good to know.”
Reggie struggled to one knee, still heaving. “They can’t cut through the body armor, but they still pack a punch.” He waved Cody and Joel away. “Go, help Sam. I’m good.”
Cody and Joel opened fire on the lophius, halting their advance.
As Sam ran toward the first snake, she yelled to Joel over the blaster fire. “Now would be a good time to call in the cavalry.”
In the
chaos, Joel had forgotten all about part two of their attack plan.
He whistled, and General Pepper shot like a bolt down the ramp of Ragnarok. They’d left him aboard the ship until they knew what they were facing. The team acknowledged now that Peppy was their heavy hitter and would rather he stay rested until they needed him.
He was well rested.
Peppy swept around to the left. Sam attacked from the right. They sliced and chewed their way through the lophius in less than a minute and met in the middle. Sam scratched Peppy behind his ear. He pressed his head into her hip and let out a soft moan.
Cody scanned the hangar bay. “No more heat signatures. This area is clear.” He broadened his scans. “So is the rest of the station. Dr. Suzz said there weren’t any lophius on site. All of these must have migrated back.”
Joel clapped his hands. “Great. Job done. Let’s go pick up the genius sociopath and be done with this entire shitstorm.”
“You’re forgetting something,” Cody said.
Joel threw his hands in the air. “Of course I am. What am I forgetting?”
In answer to his question, a ten-foot-long lophius smashed through the hangar bay doors, creating a sucking vacuum.
Cody tried to yell, “That!” but the word was sucked out into space along with everything else that wasn’t bolted down.
Reggie tried to yell, “Helmets!” but his word followed Cody’s out into the void.
Fortunately, the team didn’t need explicit instruction to activate the tech that could save their lives. It was new, untested equipment that Joel had insisted on purchasing after their extensive history with hull breaches.
It had been a wise purchase.
The collars fit neatly under their clothes. They were loose and barely noticeable, both to the wearers and to others. A single tube connected the front of the collar to thin units on their chests, about the size of a slice of bread, which led Joel to call them “sandwich tanks.”
Each of the Notches pressed a red button on the side of their collars. A dome of plastic extended from the tops of the collars, connecting on the top, completely sealing around the wearer’s head. The plastic material was so thin that it looked like a soap bubble. The tube pumped oxygen, each sandwich tank holding a ten-minute supply.
“We need to seal that breach,” Reggie yelled.
“Already on it,” Cody said as he struggled against the pull of the vacuum to a crate that was bolted to the floor.
He crouched behind it for cover. Using his wristcom, he hacked into the hangar bay controls. Within seconds, he located the safety protocols. They had either been neglected or programmed by a total noob. Either way, they were totally unacceptable for such a high-profile establishment. They failed to activate when needed.
Cody remedied that. I should really start charging these places for identifying their cyber weaknesses. With the press of a button, the hull breach protocols kicked in, and an energy patch formed over the hole that the lophius had punched in it.
Now to deal with the giant space snake.
Peppy was already on the creature’s back, his teeth sunk into the back of its neck. It flapped its fins in a pathetic attempt to shake him free. When that didn’t work, the lophius launched into something like an alligator’s death roll. It rolled across the floor, Peppy still latched onto it, crushing the poor alien pup under its weight. After the fifth rotation, Peppy released his hold. By then, he had already done his job.
The lophius was disoriented from blood loss and spinning, so it didn’t see the combined attack of Reggie and Sam and Joel coming at it. Reggie punched it square in the face, releasing a charge from his glove that reverberated through the creature’s body. Joel sank his spear into the lophius’s side then drew his scatterblaster and unloaded it into the thing. Sam sliced down into the lophius’s neck. She hacked away at it until its head separated from its body.
“Now the station is secure,” Reggie said, his knuckles dripping with blood. “But for how long?”
A loud thud rang through the hangar bay, the sound of a lophius ramming its head against the hull from the outside.
“All of the lophius that Dr. Suzz released are returning,” Cody said. “There’s no telling how big they’ll be when they get here. If she released them some months ago, they would have had plenty of time to eat and grow. These ones more than quadrupled in size in a matter of minutes.”
The ramifications of the sentiment washed over them. Here they were, on another station, owned by yet another person who was richer than they’d ever be, in danger of collapse. And they, having been contracted to clean up the mess, were left to debate whether it’s their responsibility to tackle the even bigger mess born of it. They could leave now—having secured the station, but knowing that the returning lophius would just destroy it and move on to menace the galaxy—or stay and fight and possibly die.
Being that they were the only ones in this equation cursed with a conscience, it was no choice at all. And they’d been in this situation enough that there was no need for debate.
“Does this station have any weapons?” Reggie asked.
Cody consulted his wristcom. “A few gun batteries and a proton cannon for defending against meteors.”
“Those should do,” Reggie said. “We know who our targets are, and we know where they’re going to be. I say we dig in, let them come to us, and take them out. Two man the station’s weapons. Two use Ragnarok.”
“Dibs on the cannon,” Joel said, raising his hand.
Reggie looked shocked.
“What?” Joel said. “You thought I’d opt to go on the ship? Let me ask you this—which do you think is more likely to get swallowed whole by a space snake?” He looked at each of them in turn. “That’s what I thought.”
Sam clapped Cody on the back. “Then we’ve got Ragnarok.”
They all nodded and suddenly became uncomfortable looking at each other. Their eyes fell to the floor or danced across the ceiling. A sense of finality pressed down on them. It made the space between them seem much more vast, un-crossable. Until Reggie reached into it, his arm straight and hand open, palm down.
The others slapped their hand on top of his without question.
“‘Victory or death’?” Reggie suggested.
“A little dark,” Joel said. “But accurate.”
“Victory or death!” they all shouted as they threw their hands in the air.
“Notches, to your battlestations,” Joel said. “Shit’s about to get really real.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ragnarok felt lighter. Cody knew that was a ridiculous thought. Reggie, Joel and Peppy’s combined weight was a miniscule fraction of a percent compared to the overall weight of the ship and its cargo.
It was a different kind of weight. Their absence made the ship feel less alive, less like the home they’d come to know, and more like a thing. A piece of metal that launched them through space.
But it was also a piece of metal with two mounted turrets and a full battery of torpedoes. And those were going to ensure that Ragnarok remained the home they’d come to know, and that each of the Notches would live long enough to step foot on it again.
“Coming up on our position,” Cody said from the bridge.
“Aye,” Sam acknowledged from the top turret.
As far as plans go, this one was typical of the team’s structure. Loose.
The goal: destroy the attacking lophius and not die. The method for achieving said goal was largely point and shoot. Layton Station was ground zero, the defending fortress. Ragnarok would provide air support.
Loose. But on a grander scale than usual.
“I’ve got inbound,” Cody said, studying the scanners. “About a dozen. Eight small to mid-size, four whoppers.”
“Heard,” Reggie said from his position on Layton Station. “We’ll handle the whoppers first. Keep the lines open so we’re always on the same page. No friendly fire incidents here, people.”
Cody parked Ra
gnarok on an asteroid, one of the largest on the outer ring of an asteroid belt a few klicks from the station. He thought about the difference between fighting living creatures up close versus from behind the wheel of a spacecraft. The lophius had no scanners, no instrumentation, just their senses, and Ragnarok wouldn’t appear on any readouts. As long as he and Sam sat still, the lophius would pass right by. He hoped.
“Ready on the turret, Sam,” Cody said. “Here comes the swarm.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” she retorted. “If you hadn’t told me to be ready just now, I probably would have gone to paint my nails or something. Thank god for your diligence.”
“That’s not…I didn’t mean to…”
“Unclench, Cody.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m just fucking with you.”
Cody exhaled as the swarmed passed in front of the ship, the idea of pissing Sam off more terrifying than the incoming lophius.
“What about me?” Joel said. “Should I be ready, too? Or do I have time to zip down to the kitchen for a Hot Pocket?”
Cody clenched his jaw, trying to keep from yelling at Joel and remain focused. The circumstances didn’t allow him the choice.
A particularly curious lophius lingered at the rear of the swarm. One of the smaller of the serpents, it measured about three feet long. Its head swept back and forth, like the creature was looking for something, or like it had caught a scent on the air. Then it snapped its head to the side and locked onto Ragnarok.
It tensed, then coiled, then sprang forth like a jack in the box, shooting for the ship like a torpedo.
“Taking evasive action!” Cody put all power to the thrusters and rocketed the ship off the asteroid just in time to avoid the lophius.
The creature hit the rock with such force that it punched straight through it, shattering the planetoid into dozens of pieces. As the ship raced away from the creature, Sam spun the turret to face it. Opening fire, the turret shook. Sam felt like she was sitting inside a clothes dryer. The force of the blaster reverberated through her arms, shaking them to the point that she could barely hold on.