by N M Tatum
Determined, she squeezed tighter. This turret was hers. Every weapon she’d ever used became part of her. She was an expert, their master. This massive gun was part of her now.
The lophius dipped beneath the steady stream of blaster fire, moving like a fish through water, using its fins like rudders to maneuver quicker and sharper than any ship could.
Sam fought to keep the creature in her sights. It moved. The ship moved. Everything spun so fast, her stomach threatened to mutiny. But she didn’t have time to think about how devastating it would be to puke inside this tiny bubble. She only had time to focus.
She jerked on the turret controls, forcing the gun to jump ahead in the line it had been following. The blaster bolt struck the left fin of the lophius, sending it into an uncontrollable spin. She took a breath, held it, steadied her hands, and zeroed in on the space snake. Then she squeezed the trigger, and the lophius burst into a mist of blue goo.
“One down!” she shouted.
Cody congratulated her with a terse grunt.
The now dead lophius alerted the rest of the swarm to Ragnarok’s presence. Though the lophius were moving en masse, all part of the same migratory pattern, they were not a cohesive unit. Their movements were not coordinated. Three of the smaller ones approached the ship out of curiosity. They didn’t seem to harbor any innate desire to see Ragnarok torn to bits. Instead, they acted like what they were—animals. Like a raccoon that crosses a person’s path as they hike through the woods. It may inch closer and extend its nose like it wants to sniff their hand, but it’s on that person to remember that raccoons are nocturnal and wild, and even this one is probably rabid and might try to eat their face.
Cody needed no such reminding. Back on Earth, he had been no friend to wild animals. Even the squirrels that skittered across his yard were regarded with distrust and disdain.
He threw the ship into a dive, shooting like a dart through a ring made by the curious lophius. Unfortunately, the maneuver only served to further their curiosity. They dove after the ship, giving chase like cats after a laser pointer.
The larger lophius continued toward Layton Station. The four of them ranged in size, the smallest being comparable to a pickup truck, and the largest about the size of a bus. Seeing the damage that a three-foot-long lophius could do to an asteroid left Reggie and Joel with little hope of survival, should one of the large ones reach the station.
“You ready with that cannon?” Reggie asked.
“That’s very condescending,” Joel said. “Why do you assume that I don’t have it well in hand? Why wouldn’t you assume that I’m locked in and ready to roll and blast some motherfucking snakes away from this motherfucking space station? I mean, I don’t—okay, these controls are incredibly complicated. I’m pretty sure they’re meant for two separate people. But, you know, some confidence on your part would go a long way.”
Reggie sighed. “So, you got nothing?”
“I’m working on it.”
Reggie could have blamed Joel’s hang-up on his incompetence or indifference, but Reggie knew that wasn’t accurate. At least, if the controls for the gun batteries were any indication. They were definitely meant to be used by more than one person. There were three empty chairs in front of a long panel of buttons and scanners that he had no idea how to use. Staring at them became overwhelming. He didn’t know where to start, but he needed to start somewhere. The large lophius were only getting larger as they neared the station.
He breathed deep, focused on slowing his heart. “Okay, just think. These controls can’t be too complicated. They’re meant to be used in emergency situations, to blast asteroids before impact. They’re probably designed to be intuitive. Point and shoot. Three gun batteries. Three control stations.”
He sat in the middle chair. He reached out with his arms to see where his hands rested, assuming those would be the buttons that operated the most important function of the battery—the blasting function. His left fingers hovered above a joystick. His right fingers hovered over a big, red button.
Very intuitive.
He tested the joystick, moving it right to left, then up and down. A monitor to his right showed the view from the camera mounted on the battery. The monitor directly in front of him showed the targeting display. The first of the lophius, the pickup-sized one, was seconds from entering the battery’s targeting range.
“You really haven’t figured this out yet?” Reggie said.
“Are you seriously jabbing at me right now?” Joel answered. “On the cusp of battle? Why don’t you just stick to your lane, and I’ll focus on mine?”
Reggie cracked his neck, easing the tension building in his shoulders. “Just saying, it would be a real confidence booster knowing we had a massive photon cannon ready to obliterate some monsters.”
Joel only responded with a slew of curses as he tried to understand the controls.
A light flashed on Reggie’s targeting display. The first of the lophius was within range. He moved the joystick until the targeting reticule hovered over the creature’s face. It turned yellow as it locked on.
“Here goes everything.”
A bright green flash lit up the gun battery camera. When visibility returned, Reggie saw the massive bolt he’d fired traveling toward the oncoming lophius. His breath grew impatient in his chest, but he held it back, unwilling to let it go until he knew the force he’d just unleashed.
It seemed like an extraordinarily long time, watching the shot sail along, like a leaf on a lazy stream. The lophius didn’t bother attempting to evade it, seemingly unaware of what was coming straight for its face. But it knew as soon as the shot struck. The blast halted the creature’s advance, like it had swum into a brick wall.
The lophius folded like an accordion, its back half crumpling into its front. For a moment, Reggie thought the creature was dead, but it squirmed to life a second later, dashing his hopes. Still, the effect of the hit was evident. The lophius was disoriented, swimming in a wayward pattern instead of the straight line it had been on previously.
If only disorienting them was enough.
The other beastly lophius appeared behind the first, dangerously close to entering the gun battery’s firing range, which meant they were dangerously close to Reggie and Joel.
Reggie moved the targeting reticule until it highlighted the next closest lophius, which was roughly the size of a passenger van. As soon as the lophius entered targeting range, the reticule turned yellow, and Reggie fired.
The shot struck directly as the previous shot had, to the same effect. The lophius was slammed hard in the face, halting its progress momentarily and disorienting it, but not killing it. He wanted to shoot it again, or the first one, or pepper them both and hopefully kill them, but the other two were rapidly approaching. Reggie feared he would be stuck hopping from one target to the next, merely slowing them, until they reached the station and smashed it to pieces.
That may have been a best-case scenario. The largest of the lophius, the one the size of a bus, pushed through the line of its dazed siblings and charged at the station. Its instincts, which drew it home, were unquestionable and concrete. It would not be swayed.
Unless it got blasted in the face by a photon cannon.
All of Reggie’s screens flashed white, blinding him. When his vision returned, the bus-sized lophius was now a short-bus-sized lophius, the front half of it totally destroyed.
“Figured it out,” Joel said. “It’s actually quite intuitive. I probably should have figured it out much sooner.”
Reggie would have screamed at him if he wasn’t so happy to not be dead. “How long until you can fire again?”
“Thirty-second charge time,” Joel answered. “Keep them back until then.”
Cody dipped below a line of space rock, tiny remnants of a destroyed asteroid, a lophius on his tail. He piloted the ship into an asteroid field, hoping to find some cover from the attacking creatures, but they were far more agile than Ragnarok, able to swi
m around the rocks like salmon moving upstream.
“How we doing back there?”
“Are you being condescending to me right now?” Sam asked. “Because it sounds like you’re being condescending to me right now, as I fight off a swarm of space snakes in the middle of an asteroid field.”
Cody swallowed hard. “No, not at all. I would never.”
“Just fucking with you,” Sam said again, a hint of laughter buried under the worry in her voice. “But I wish these snakes would stop fucking with me.”
“How many left?”
“Five.”
Cody’s mind switched into computer mode. He viewed their section of space like a computer model. He was in a tower defense video game. The enemy kept coming at him. He had only so much to work with, and a hostile environment in which to do it. The data churned inside his head, swirling into one slop of information, and spit out an idea.
Turn the hostile environment into an advantage.
Cody’s mind went blank. He let his instincts take over. He pulled up on the controls, bringing the ship back into the asteroid field he’d just dived under.
“Seems like you’re taking us into the thick of a rock field,” Sam said.
“I am.”
“Are you fucking with me now?”
“No. Once we’re in, target the asteroids. Create a dense field of debris. The lophius won’t be able to navigate through it. Maybe that will slow them down enough for you to target them.”
Sam smiled, knowing that Cody couldn’t see how impressed she was.
A chunk of rock bounced off the hull of the ship. The shields must be down. She became slightly less impressed with him.
This will only be a good plan if we don’t die.
She blasted several asteroids, clogging the space behind them with dust and shards of rock. Switching to infrared scans, she saw the lophius struggling to give chase. They slowed drastically as they tried to maneuver. A few stopped altogether after colliding with chunks of rock that had suddenly appeared in their path.
With the creatures unable to move, Sam targeted them and blew them to pieces. In less than a minute, all of the small lophius were dead.
“We’re clear,” Cody said to Reggie and Joel. “Coming your way.”
The photon cannon finished charging. Joel hoped it was the last time it would need to be charged, as the last of the lophius, a passenger-van-sized snake, slithered toward the station’s hangar bay.
Joel locked onto the creature and pulled the trigger. With a blinding flash of white light, the lophius was gone.
“No need to hurry,” he reported over comms. “I’ve singlehandedly killed all of the attacking snake bastards. Feel free to stroll leisurely back.”
“Singlehandedly?” Reggie said.
“I believe it was the photon cannon that delivered all the kill shots, so, yes, I get credit for each kill. If that does not fit your definition of ‘singlehandedly,’ then I respectfully invite you to shut the fuck up.”
Cody laughed to himself, choosing not to add fuel to the budding fire. “We’re coming in to dock. Meet us in the hangar bay, and we’ll get out of here. We should pick up Dr. Suzz before she decides to bounce.”
Reggie wanted to acknowledge Cody, but a bright flash on the station’s early warning system drew his attention. It was designed to detect asteroids on a collision course with the station, but this was no asteroid. This object was the size of a small moon.
The scanners on Ragnarok lit up seconds later.
The comms were eerily quiet in the shadow of the monstrous creature. None of the Notches knew what to say. They suddenly felt like they couldn’t speak at all, like their voices had been crushed under the weight of their approaching doom.
Joel broke the silence. “That’s a big fucking thing.”
Cody shook from his state of frozen fear. He ran every scan he could of the creature, only to confirm what he already suspected.
“It’s a lophius,” he reported.
“A big fucking lophius,” Joel added.
“Thank you, Joel, for your extremely helpful input,” Cody snapped.
“Just making sure we’re all on the same page,” Joel said. “Get the ship out of the way. Once that thing is within range, I’m going to cannon blast it in the face.”
It seemed an inelegant solution, but the straightforward approach had served them well thus far.
Ragnarok dove below the cannon. Joel aimed the cannon at the lophius and waited for it to get close enough for a lock. He thought each passing second would bring the creature close enough. The size of it and the vastness of space had a distorting effect. Joel had no sense how far away it was. It seemed impossible that it wasn’t close enough, seeing how big it seemed. But it kept getting closer. Kept getting bigger. It blocked the light of the stars, casting a shadow on the station.
The targeting reticule flashed yellow, alerting Joel that it had acquired a target lock. He wasted no time in pulling the trigger and letting the shot fly. He had no interest in lingering on how awe-inspiring the creature was, how monstrous it appeared. Planet-sized space beasts no longer gripped him that way.
The monitors flashed white, like a new beginning. The birth of a universe. The flash of pure light. When it faded, the old, shitty universe was still intact. So was the lophius.
There was barely a sign that the shot had connected. The creature shrugged it off like most would a fly.
“That’s not good,” Joel said.
“That cannon is the most powerful weapon we’ve got,” Reggie said. “If it can’t put a dent in the lophius, then we’ve got no chance of killing it with anything else.”
“So we run?” Sam asked, disgusted at the idea of leaving a fight unfinished.
“No,” Cody said. “We figure it out. Just give me a second to think.”
The lophius. Those slimy, disgusting creatures. They grow from little slugs to moon-sized monsters. What to do? How to kill them?
Cody’s mind raced, tripping over itself, trying to find the answer. Then he paused. He remembered.
He had observed the creature in all of its stages, even if only in a condensed period of time. Larva, infant, adolescent, adult. He’d observed them all, killed them all. Except the adult.
But how different could the adult be from the baby? They were the same species. Same strengths, same weaknesses.
Cody yanked on the yoke, spinning Ragnarok around, back toward the lophius.
“You seem to be flying away from us,” Joel noted. “I would much rather you picked us up before you run away.”
“No one is running away,” Cody said. “I have an idea. The lophius’s main defense mechanism is its jelly-like outer layer. It’s a shock absorber, diffusing the force by distributing it throughout its gooey body. But when we fought the larvae in the storehouse, we found a way to counteract that. They’re susceptible to extreme temperatures.”
Ragnarok pulled up into the lophius’s path, which remained unchanged. It swam straight for the station on a steady course. Cody put the ship a klick ahead of the lophius, its tail facing the creature’s face.
“We just need to introduce some extreme temperatures.”
“The thing is flying through space,” Reggie said. “That’s about as extreme a temperature as it gets.”
“I think its outer layer is protecting it,” Cody said. “It’s adapted to withstand the cold. We need to introduce the extreme temperature to the inside of the lophius, bypassing its protective layer.”
“And how do you plan on doing that?” Sam asked, afraid of the answer.
“By letting it eat us. Just a little.”
“Now I know you’re fucking with me,” Sam said.
“Just make sure you charge that cannon,” Cody said to Joel. “You’ll know when to take the shot.”
Cody spoke directly to Sam through the general comm. “I need you to get to the cargo bay.”
Sam climbed out of her turret, cursing Cody, but not questioning him.
She had faith in him, even if it meant that she was about to get eaten by a giant space snake. She alerted Cody when she arrived.
“Joel stacked some bombs near the ready room,” Cody said. “He’d started stockpiling them. Funny how it takes a life or death situation for me to fully appreciate him.”
“That’s not funny,” Sam said. “Makes total sense.” She scanned the stack of bombs. “Am I looking for anything in particular?”
“The Pyrethrum X-735c bombs.”
Sam ran her finger along the bombs. Luckily, Joel chose to label them with the most rudimentary system he could. The Pyrethrum X-735c were all stamped with a sinister symbol of a face crossed out.
“Got them.”
“Load as many as you can into the airlock. And quickly. We need to drop them in about sixty seconds. Set them with a minute timer.”
Sam counted down as she loaded as many bombs as she could onto the cart from the ready room. With twenty seconds left, she raced for the airlock. She shoved the cart inside and locked the door.
“Done.”
“Hold on to something,” Cody said. “This is going to be rocky.”
Sam laced her arm through the netting attached to the cargo bay walls. She hoped the plan worked, if for no other reason than she’d rather not die alone, surrounded by boxes.
Cody slowed the ship. He felt the lophius creeping up on them, like a cold shiver running up his spine. Looking through the rear-mounted cameras, he watched the creature open its mouth.
Like everything else in the void of space, size was difficult to determine without context. The lophius’s gaping maw was full of context. It was as if a black hole had opened right on their ass and was, literally, about to swallow them.
Cody fought the urge to punch the thrusters and rocket away from the creature. He, instead, let his hand hover above the accelerator, ready to act.
Claustrophobia crept over him as the threshold of the lophius’s mouth moved around the ship. Ragnarok passed from open space to being inside the jaws of death. His hand twitched.