In Times Like These Boxed Set

by Nathan Van Coops

  I hold my hand out for Viznir’s knife. He hesitates briefly, but then hands it over. I wipe the blade off on the shirt of one of the fallen bodies, then tuck it into my belt. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.” I jerk my head toward the doorway, and we return to the corridor, where Bozzle has used the time to add another layer of bodies to the sizeable stack around the door.

  Viznir climbs out of the torn and bloody wreckage of his space suit and tosses it to the floor. “Where are we going?”

  “We’re collecting the objectives for the group and getting out of here. We’ve got less than two hours to get it done, so we’ve got to hurry.”

  “It’s not going to help,” Viznir says. His face is solemn, but I detect no deceit in it, only quiet resignation.

  “Why? Why wouldn’t it?”

  Jettison and Bozzle look back and listen.

  “The others might make it, but we never will. Our objective was a lie.”

  26

  “For a lot of years, people thought wormholes would require massive amounts of power to open. They failed to factor in a fundamental aspect of spacetime—its stretchiness. Want to squeeze a full-sized man through a microscopic hole? Yep, it’s possible, because that’s one stretchy time hole.”–Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 1997

  “Explain yourself. What’s the lie?” I stare into Viznir’s eyes, trying to draw the truth out of him.

  “You’re not authorized to get through the gate. It was their backup plan in case I failed to kill you.”

  I remember the conversation with Milo and Kara in the old west and their theory about Marco and Andre. “Someone told you this? You know for sure?”

  “It wasn’t to me directly, but I overheard the conversation. The day they recruited me, there was someone from the committee there, too. They talked about rigging the time gates.”

  “Chairman Schnyder?”

  “No, it wasn’t the chairman. I don’t think he knew. It was a woman. An Indian woman. She was a doctor or a scientist.”

  “Pia Chopra,” Jettison says. “She was at the opening dinner.”

  “So you knew the thing was rigged the whole time. You knew I’d never make it off this planet either way.” My temper is rising again. “And now I’m stuck here. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “We both are,” Viznir replies.

  Jettison interrupts. “We don’t have time for a pow-wow right now. Let’s figure this out at the gate. We’ve got to move.”

  I’m angry and I want to pry more information out of Viznir, but Jettison has a valid point. If we don’t make the gate in time, nobody will have a chance at leaving.

  Beyond the double doors at the end of the hall, snarling and banging indicate more of the Soma hosts arriving. Bozzle moves left and leads the way down another dark corridor with confident strides. Viznir ducks past me to follow him, and I say nothing else, but I’m careful to keep him in view.

  Milo has mapped out the locations of the objectives for the rest of the team, and the first one is only one level below us. The Admiral’s objective is a precision rock-cutting tool that is no bigger than my flashlight. Jettison helps me ensure it’s off and won’t accidently laser me through my bag before I pack it away. From the tool supply room we head downward toward the primary mine doors. Along the way, we pick up another objective intended for Genesis. Hers is a pair of night vision goggles that Jettison stows around his neck in case we might have to use them. We also locate Milo’s objective, an ornate porcelain cigar case we find stuffed in a miner’s closet. It’s full of handwritten recipes for crab Rangoon, eggs benedict, and honey-barbeque wings, among other dishes I’ve never heard of.

  We encounter a few of the Soma hosts along the way, but only individuals or small clusters, none like the dense horde from the hallway, and we are able to dispatch them as necessary. Some we merely block off by jamming doors shut behind us as we travel.

  Below sublevel two, our path leaves the familiar confines of hallways and residential spaces and opens up onto an underground road. It’s paved and wide enough for four vehicles abreast, but sections of the road have cracked and become disjointed over time. The road leads us ever downhill into the blackness. After perhaps a quarter mile, the road joins the edge of the hole I crossed via the catwalk. The abyss is bridged here by thick steel grating. The welded joints leave openings that a person could easily fall through, but block the hole from passage by anything larger.

  The primary mine doors are massive metal slabs at least three feet thick. Crossing the road ahead of us, they stretch approximately thirty feet up and are wide enough that the ten-foot gap Milo managed to open in them seems a narrow space. As we pass through, I can’t help but wonder why they were needed. Were they keeping something out or in? Descending farther, the air grows warmer and pipes along the walls hiss with vented steam. It is not a welcoming sound.

  A few Soma Djinn host bodies dot the path in various states of dismemberment. The freshly disintegrated forms show evidence of Kara’s passing. The sight gives me comfort that Jonah and Wabash are in good hands.

  “The others will be headed straight for the time gate, but we need to grab the rest of the objectives along the way.” Jettison points to a diverging road that angles away from the main thoroughfare. “Jonah’s is this way.”

  We veer down a secondary road and pass through the center of an underground village. The main passage is rounded, as if bored out by a massive drill, and housing has been carved out of the earth to either side. Rounded doorways and windows echo the shape of the tunnel and give the impression of hollow eyes and mouths gaping at us as we pass. The rocks are a deep black, a compressed and hardened version of the somber soil on the surface of the planet. Occasionally, I catch the glint of other minerals in the rock, threads of colored or white crystals. A band of silver arcs its way through the ceiling above us.

  Our target lies in a structure at the end of the tunnel. A sign reading “Mineral Testing Lab” is mounted above a gate made of beige synthetic material. The lock only slows us down for the amount of time it takes Bozzle to bore an arm-sized hole through the gate with his electrically heated pike. He barely waits for the material to cool before thrusting a tattooed arm through the opening and fishing around for the latch. Smoke drifts off the seared edges of the hole and across my flashlight beam. Bozzle seems unconcerned with the heat, making me wonder just how tough his green skin is. When the gate swings open, we enter a narrower tunnel that is walled with plastic or fiberglass panels. Strips of emergency lighting illuminate along the floor as we walk, casting the hallway in hues of red. Bozzle is forced to stoop slightly to get his tall frame through the passage.

  Jettison is navigating to our prize via the metaspace, and I merely follow along, keeping a wary eye on the curving hallway for signs of trouble, and keeping Viznir where I can see him. I holster Charlie’s pistol but keep the axe over my left shoulder. We meet no resistance, and he leads us into a specimen room full of plastic bins and neatly labeled shelves. I’m immediately reminded of the mineral lab in Australia where I met Mym. This room is better organized and remarkably cleaner despite its underground location and twenty years of disuse. Air is circulating freely through the vents overhead, and when I pass a fingertip over the metal cabinet next to me, it barely lifts any dust.

  Various glass display cases around the room house brightly colored minerals and crystals. A brilliant purple one catches my eye, and I pause to admire the nautilus spiral of color in its center.

  “This is what we want.” Jettison is two cases over, unlatching the door in front of a pitch-black rock on a silver stand. I wander over as he’s pulling it from the case, and he tosses it to me to stow with the other objectives. I catch the rock one-handed and turn it over, noting a thin green streak from its core that meanders across its surface. The color is faint in the dim lighting, but there is no mistaking that it’s green, a deep forest green. I hold it up to Bozzle’s face. “This one should have been your anchor. You match.”

/>   Bozzle considers the stone with his ink-black eyes and pokes the surface with a pointed finger. “We have this on my planet. We call it, meshtoon.”

  “Let’s move,” Jettison says. “Clock’s ticking.”

  We rejoin the main road and have made it another quarter mile when we hear the screaming. It’s high-pitched and female and echoes off the stone walls from somewhere below us. We race down the road and follow it around a hairpin turn that cuts back below us in the direction we came. A light from a turn of the road below us illuminates shapes moving in the glow. Oh God, who’s down there? I lean over the edge to try to identify the source of the screaming and see a streak of blonde hair fleeing a pack of Soma hosts. I get an irrational fear for Mym, but then recognize the taller girl as Deanna. She’s climbing the road away from the horde below her. There is another commotion near the light. Creatures are fighting for position over a fallen figure. My throat tightens as I realize someone else is down there. Someone human.

  The mass of teeming bodies on the road is frenzied. The pack chasing Deanna is moving faster than the ones we encountered on the higher levels and consists almost exclusively of athletic looking men, but one six-foot tall, red-haired woman breaks away from them and starts scaling the side of the cliff to cut Deanna off. We round the corner at the upper curve of the road as Deanna turns the lower one. She is ahead of the main pack, but the red-haired woman clears the side of the cliff and intercepts her before we reach her. Deanna’s eyes are wide and she’s unarmed. Her forearms are scratched and bleeding, her hair a tangled mess.

  I draw my gun, but the woman is in a direct line with Deanna, making a shot too dangerous. Deanna screams again as the woman lunges for her. The two tumble to the road and begin to roll downhill toward the group of men now rounding the corner. Their faces are hard, and their yellow eyes gleam with a hint of intelligence, unlike the hazy, distant stares of the host bodies we’ve dispatched so far. Some of these men are even carrying clubs and tools as weapons.

  Jettison shoots first. A few of the creatures at the front of the pack go down, but the others break into a run. Bozzle’s pike sizzles and sends a blast of electricity over Deanna, hitting the leader of the group in the chest. He twitches and falls under the feet of the others. The single shot must be all Bozzle has power for, because he doesn’t attempt a second. Instead, he races forward and leaps cleanly over Deanna and the red-haired woman and plunges into the horde beyond. His attack knocks three of the men off their feet.

  Viznir has stopped in the road with his fists clenched and looks like he might turn to run, but I race past him. I reach Deanna and drop the axe in order to yank back on her attacker’s hair. The woman hisses and spins, faster than I was expecting. Her fingers stretch for my eyes. Oh shit. I duck back, narrowly avoiding her dirty, jagged nails. One of her hands wraps around the barrel of my gun and I struggle to catch her other flailing wrist, barely keeping it from my face. She’s strong and quick, squirming and twisting while attempting to wrench the gun from my grasp. She knees me in the groin and I stagger. She goes for my throat with her bared teeth and I fall backward to avoid being bitten. The barrel of the gun is oscillating erratically between us in her grip. I keep my finger away from the trigger to keep from being shot with my own weapon, muttering curses and holding onto the gun with both hands now as she fights me for possession. She attempts to bite my hand and I knock her head away once with my elbow, but she comes at me again. Her teeth have just touched the skin of my hand when the axe blade caves in the side of her skull.

  I reopen my eyes after the initial spray of blood and roll the body off me to find Deanna standing over me. Her face is scratched and bleeding and she is breathing hard. She yanks the axe from the dead woman’s head with a grunt. “Bitch.”

  Deanna’s red ATS shirt is torn to shreds. The black tank top she’s wearing underneath is stuck to her in dark wet patches. As she straightens back up, her white-knuckled grip on the axe relaxes and her body shakes.

  “You okay?” I ask as I climb back to my feet.

  Deanna doesn’t reply. She keeps her gaze on the wreck of the woman at our feet. I look beyond her. Bozzle and Jettison are being overwhelmed by a dozen men, Jettison’s gun has fallen and he and Bozzle are both fighting hand to hand with their attackers. I raise my gun and fire at the first target I can get in my sights. I turn around and look for Viznir. He’s still frozen in place on the road but watching the fighting. I pull his knife from my belt and toss it to his feet. “Come on. Stay with me.” I step past Deanna and empty my gun into the pack. As I’m reloading, I watch Deanna out of the corner of my eye. She’s clearly in shock, but it doesn’t stop her from swinging at a rabid-looking Asian man who lunges at us. Viznir follows us into the melee too. From there it’s all fighting for the next frantic minutes. When it’s done, nearly twenty bodies litter the ground around us. The last couple of attackers have enough intelligence to run, but they don’t make it out of range of Charlie’s pistol.

  Jettison is bleeding from a bite wound on his arm and cradles it gingerly as I stomp on the Soma Djinn that come wriggling out of the bodies. These Soma are darker than the ones I’d seen in the levels above. Instead of only yellow, their segmented bodies have hardened scales with dark patches of green and gray. They are larger, and I suspect they’re a more mature variety of the species, giving their hosts an added touch of intelligence. They still squish the same under my heel.

  Deanna is clutching the axe to her chest as we descend the next stretch of road. She stops completely as we near the glow of the dropped electric lantern. A few feet away, a pair of Soma hosts are chewing on the body of someone in a red uniform. Jettison shoots them before they can turn their attention to us. They fall next to the young man who is barely recognizable as Preston Marquez.

  “He saved me.” Deanna is staring at Preston’s feet. His boots are the only part of him that seem to be untouched. “He held them off while I ran.”

  Jettison scans the ground around the body with his flashlight.

  Preston’s shaggy black hair seems to blend with the dark soil around his head. “What are we going to do?” I pull my eyes away from his vacant stare and turn to Bozzle. “It doesn’t seem right to leave him here.”

  “We won’t,” Jettison replies. He stoops and snatches up a loose stone, then moves to Preston’s side. He presses the stone into the dead man’s open palm and pushes his tattered sleeve up beyond his Temprovibe, tapping a command on the device before stepping away. The body vanishes and the stone falls soundlessly to the dirt. Jettison picks it up and hands it to Deanna. “We’ll find somewhere to bury him.”

  Deanna is shaking, but she clutches the stone and nods. We’re quiet as we continue down the road. Viznir offers me his knife back but I wave it off and let him walk ahead of me. I don’t suspect he’ll try to stab me with others around. After two more turns, the road veers away from the abyss and begins to traverse some natural caverns. Bulbous stalactites drip some type of fluid into puddles alongside the road. It doesn’t appear to be water, it sparkles too much. It makes me thirsty anyway. I fish around my pack for my canteen and find it nearly empty. I take a sip of what’s left.

  “Here.” Deanna has paused near one of the shimmering pools. “Let’s bury him here.”

  Bozzle steps forward and uses the end of his pike to bore a hole in a soft patch of dirt along the edge of the rocky pool. He gets the pike about a foot down before he contacts something solid and has to stop. Jettison nods, seeming to indicate that it will be enough, and Deanna drops the axe in order to cup the stone in both hands. She kneels slowly next to the hole and, after pressing the stone to her lips, sets it inside. She climbs back to her feet and Bozzle gently scrapes the earth back over the hole. When it’s done, we stand there in silence. I can’t help but wonder what it will be like when Preston’s body reappears. He’ll be fused permanently to this place, a very part of its rocks and soil. Viznir’s comment about my objective surfaces in my mind and I wonder if I have a sim
ilar fate in store for me in this wretched place. Or something worse. I shake off the thought.

  “Preston, I’m sorry.” Deanna’s voice quivers. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be fun. It was going to be a story to tell our friends—” Her composure breaks and she begins to cry. She covers her face with her hands and sobs. I put a hand on her shoulder and she straightens a little, still crying but trying hard to hold it back. “I’m . . .” She wipes the back of her knuckles across her nose and sniffs hard. “I’m not going to forget what you did.”

  Bozzle speaks next, but it’s a language I don’t understand. His voice is soft and mellow as he speaks gently to his departed competitor. He ends his personal eulogy with a bow before lapsing back to silence. I don’t think Deanna understands what Bozzle has said either but she seems consoled nonetheless. She brushes his arm with her hand and wipes the tears away from her eyes before picking the axe back up. Bozzle steps aside and lets her lead the way onward. Viznir follows them.

  Jettison falls into step beside me and hangs back a little to give us some space from the others. He keeps his voice low. “We’re running low on time. We’re going to need to split up if we’re going to make it to the gate with all the objectives.”

  “How will we find the rest?”

  “Yours is directly below us. According to the data you gave Milo, there is a storage silo staircase just ahead and your objective is at the bottom.”

  “Viznir says it won’t be there, but I’d like to look.”

  Jettison nods. “I would, too. If you want to go check it out, I’ll take the others and get the rest. Take Deanna with you. When you get back up, it’s a straight shot from here to the gate. Down this road and around the corner. I’ll meet you there.”