As Darius ran through the doors, he almost knocked Lisa over. She was standing there just inside the doorway, frozen on the spot. Blake and Gatticus were a few steps in front of her, also not moving.
He glanced around the cavernous room and glimpsed a group of matte black starships landed on the deck in front of them. Not seeing anything, he shook his head, and whispered, “What is it?”
No one replied, but Lisa grabbed his arm suddenly and squeezed it hard. She pointed up to the ceiling. At first he saw nothing, but then he heard a soft chittering sound and his eyes registered a flicker of movement.
Two dark gray shadows were slinking along the ceiling on six legs, somehow clinging to it like bugs. They had barbed tails, and what might have been quills on their backs; with four dark, glinting eyes set in pug-like faces with broad jaws.
As he watched, one of them sprang off the ceiling and twisted around in mid-air to land on its feet. Rather than bounce off the deck as it should have in zero-G the damned thing clung there and began creeping toward them. As it did so, the creature’s hide changed colors from dark gray to a lighter shade, matching the deck instead of the ceiling.
Darius reached for his rifle, only to find it pinned between him and Cassandra.
The Banshee raised its head and sniffed the air, snorting softly. Then it’s lips parted and a long black tongue flicked out between serrated rows of slate gray teeth, as if to taste the air. It turned its head every which way with its tongue flicking out periodically.
Why hasn’t it seen us? Darius wondered.
“Dad...” Cassandra breathed beside his ear.
At the sound of that whisper, the Banshee’s head jerked suddenly in their direction, and its four gleaming eyes narrowed to slits. The other one jumped down and landed soundlessly beside it. Both of them stood there on six legs, naked and camouflaged, crouched low, with their shoulders at about knee-height. They had their heads raised and cocked to one side, as if listening.
Slowly, Gatticus raised a hand like a stop sign; then he bent down to release his mag boots once more. As soon as he did that, he jumped up, sailing over the Banshees’ heads to the ceiling where he grabbed a conduit just like before. From there, he turned and waved to them, indicating for them to follow.
This time Darius went first. He wasn’t going to get stuck bringing up the rear again. He hit the ceiling with a soft thunk that provoked a snort from one of the Banshees. Darius froze and looked down to see both of the creatures slinking along the deck, sniffing at the floor.
Blake and Lisa arrived in tandem, just before one of the creatures would have reached them.
They must be blind, Darius thought.
Gatticus pointed down to one of four identical ships below. They sat on rectangular landing pads marked by glowing borders. Each of them had swept-back wings and angular black bodies that reminded Darius of old stealth fighters from Earth, except that these craft were much bigger and bulkier in the body section. They could probably each fit a few tanks inside. The one Gatticus was pointing to already had its landing ramp down.
They crept along the pipes until they were clinging to the ceiling directly above that ramp.
Gatticus gestured to the craft once more, and whispered, “Boots.” He activated his mag boots, and Darius and Blake both activated theirs as well. Gatticus held up one hand and counted off with his fingers: One. Two. Three.
They all pushed off the ceiling at the same time and sailed down, feet first. They hit the deck with a noisy clanging of metal on metal, but Lisa bounced off and called out in alarm. She obviously hadn’t engaged her mag boots.
But there was no time to help her. Both Banshees screeched thunderously and streaked toward them, their barbed tails lashing the air like whips.
“Run!” Gatticus roared as he sprinted up the landing rap.
Darius tore after him and reached the top just as Gatticus triggered the outer doors open. Darius darted inside and spun around to face the monsters that he imagined to be right behind him.
Gatticus and Blake piled through the hatch next, and the android slapped the inner door controls just as two chittering gray shadows came leaping up the ramp after them. Blake fired his rifle into the narrowing gap as the outer doors slid shut.
One of the Banshees screeched thunderously, and a pair of hands appeared in the gap, trying to pry the doors back open. Sharp glinting gray claws tipped each of the eight fingers on those hands. More hands appeared below the first set—six in all. The doors groaned as they strained against the alien. They’d stopped closing.
Blake screamed and fired his rifle into the wrinkly gray belly of the beast. It gave a deafening shriek and wrenched the doors open a few inches; then its head appeared and its jaws snapped angrily at the air.
Blake’s aim shifted to the head, but Gatticus knocked him out of the way before he could fire again. A stream of spittle flew through the spot where Blake had been standing a moment ago. It splashed off the inner doors and filled the air with tiny, spinning droplets of alien spit.
“Don’t let it touch you! It’s poison!” Gatticus warned.
Darius had a helmet on, but Cassandra and Blake didn’t. Darius hurriedly backed away from the spinning globules of spit to keep Cassandra safe, while Blake backed into the opposite corner of the airlock and fired once more. The Banshee screamed with each laser bolt, but it didn’t release its grip on the doors.
More sets of eight-fingered hands appeared in the gap, and the doors groaned as both Banshees pried them open.
“Got it!” Gatticus said as the inner doors swished open. “Get in!”
Darius didn’t need to be told twice. He piled through with Cassandra, accidentally slamming into Blake as they both tried to squeeze through at once. Gatticus shut the doors behind them with a muffled boom.
“That won’t hold them for long. We need to get out into space before they claw their way through,” Gatticus said.
“What about Lisa? We can’t leave her out there,” Darius said.
“We don’t have a choice!” Gatticus snapped.
Just as he said that, a loud, rumbling groan issued from the airlock, followed by the sound of claws skittering.
“They’re inside,” Blake said.
A furious scratching sound began on the other side of the inner doors, and Darius saw them shiver in time to each scraaatch. His mind flashed back to all the pried-open doors throughout the ship, and the dead woman with her chest torn open.
“Come on!” Gatticus said.
Chapter 12
They ran from the airlock, through a passenger bay lined with bench seats and lockers, then down a corridor lined with doors, and finally into the cockpit. Gatticus sealed the door behind them and fell into the foremost of four chairs in the cockpit. Two more chairs lay along the sides, and a final chair at the bottom of a short ramp, directly below Gatticus’s seat.
Darius put Cassandra down and helped her engage her mag boots. He nodded to one of the two chairs along the sides of the cockpit. “Sit down.”
Blake stood facing the cockpit door, his rifle aimed and ready.
Darius walked up behind Gatticus just as he felt the ship begin to move down. A loud whirring sound filled the cockpit as they dropped below the level of the hangar deck. Two giant floor panels slid shut overhead, sealing them in a compartment below the deck. A brief gust of wind roared through that space, and a pair of doors slid open in front of them, revealing a long, dark tunnel with red lights flashing along its length.
Gatticus’s hands flew over the controls and the whirring noise reached a fever pitch.
Darius heard a skittering sound, followed by the shrieking assault of claws on the metal door of the cockpit.
“They’re here!” Blake said.
“Everyone brace yourselves!” Gatticus warned.
Darius glanced behind him to see Cassandra closing a pair of stiff, padded seat restraints around her chest.
Blake half turned from guarding the doors, his eyebrows rais
ed in question; then he appeared to notice the tunnel and the flashing lights, and he hurriedly fell into the empty chair opposite Cassandra.
Darius wrapped his arms around the back of the pilot’s seat and braced his feet, one in front of the other.
A robotic voice echoed through the cockpit, saying something like: tras, ad-un, dwa.
The sides of the tunnel blurred, and Darius felt himself being catapulted backward. He held onto the back of Gatticus’s chair as if his life depended on it—which it probably did. He couldn’t blink or breathe. He was losing his grip. He imagined himself flying backward and slamming into the cockpit doors hard enough to break them and let the Banshees in. With the threat of that actually happening fixed in his mind’s eye, he tightened his grip on the chair, holding on with every ounce of strength he had.
The end of the tunnel was a solid wall of white light. Darius’s eyes widened in alarm. They were going to collide with something!
A split second later they hit that wall, but instead of Darius’s momentum sending him flying through the cockpit canopy, a glittering black sea of stars swept into view all around them, and he saw that wall of light for what it really was—the planet, Hades, below.
With the immense force of their acceleration now lifted, Darius sucked in a hurried breath. Grimacing, he released his hold on Gatticus’s chair and shook out his aching arms and hands.
Cassandra let out a whoop of exhilaration and Darius smiled at her reaction. But then he remembered Lisa, and his smile vanished.
“Are those aliens still with us?” Blake asked, glancing back at the cockpit door.
Gatticus checked one of his displays and shook his head. “They fell out the back of the ship when we launched. They’re drifting in the launch tube, surrounded by vacuum right now.”
“Dead?” Darius asked.
“They will be,” Gatticus replied.
Blake sighed. “Good.”
“We should go back for Lisa,” Darius said.
“Hey, hold on there, Spaceman,” Blake replied. “We don’t know if there are more of those things on board.”
“Exactly,” Darius replied. “We can’t leave her to fend for herself.”
Gatticus must have agreed, because he was already turning the ship around. The planet disappeared and the ship they’d launched from swept into view. Darius gasped at the sight of it. It was a dark gray vessel, tiered with at least thirty shining rows of decks at the back, and tapering in the front to about five. The outer hull bristled with what Darius could only imagine were weapons emplacements. From the outside, the ship appeared to be in pristine condition.
“Now that’s a spaceship,” Blake said, whistling softly.
“Yes,” Gatticus replied. “Colossus-class carriers are among the largest ever built at three point nine kilometers from bow to stern.”
“All that ship, and nowhere to go,” Blake said, shaking his head.
“Darius, you need to sit down and buckle your restraints before I ignite the thrusters,” Gatticus said.
“Oh, right,” Darius turned and hurried down the ramp to the remaining chair. He ducked into a tight compartment surrounded on all sides by glass—a miniature cockpit within the cockpit—and sat down. A pair of weapon barrels protruded below and in front of his position, making him suspect that he was occupying a gunner’s position.
He closed a pair of stiff, padded bars around his chest and tried moving against them. They refused to give.
“Ready,” he said, while absently studying the joysticks and buttons on each of his armrests.
A loud roar rumbled through the ship, and Darius felt the pressure of acceleration return, but this time it was more bearable, and he could at least still breathe.
“So, what happened back there, Slick? How did we escape?” Blake asked. “We were right in front of their noses the whole time.”
“Phantoms cannot see in brightly-lit places. They use their hearing and sense of smell to navigate instead.”
“Was that why they were chittering?” Darius asked. “Some kind of echolocation?”
“Exactly,” Gatticus replied.
“So that wasn’t their language?” Cassandra asked.
“No. They utilize a much wider range of vocalizations for communication.”
“They didn’t seem that intelligent to me,” Blake said. “They were acting like animals.”
“What they act like does not change what they are, and I assure you, they are very intelligent.”
Blake snorted, but didn’t continue the argument.
They passed the next few minutes in silence as they flew back toward the shining hulk of the ship they’d launched from. Darius spent that time wondering what kind of world—galaxy, he corrected himself—they’d woken up in. He recalled that Gatticus had called the ship they were headed for the U.S.O.S. Deliverance, and that U.S.O.S. stood for United Systems of Orion Ship.
“Gatticus?” Darius asked.
“Yes?”
“What is the USO?”
“An alliance of humans, androids, and sentient aliens from the Orion Spur of the Milky Way.”
“So this ship, the Deliverance, it was built to fight the Phantoms?”
“No, not exactly...” Gatticus replied.
“What do you mean not exactly?” Blake asked.
“The USO is ruled by the Phantoms—it is their empire, not ours.”
Chapter 13
“So, we fight with them...?” Blake trailed off, shaking his head.
“Yes,” Gatticus replied.
“Against ourselves,” Blake added.
Darius couldn’t believe it either. “Why would we do that?”
“We fight with them against unsubjugated worlds, not against ourselves, although some humans do still fight them. And the reason we are on their side is because by joining their empire, there’s some control over who the Phantoms hunt. Most people are safe. Only the people who get sent to their hunting grounds can be hunted. Everyone else is off limits. But for non-member worlds, it's open war.”
“What about androids?” Blake asked. “Do they ever get sent?”
“No.”
“That sounds like a nice system you’ve got there,” Blake said.
“It is not nice,” Gatticus replied, “but it is necessary. Better that a few should die so that the majority can live. And yes, androids do not have to worry about being hunted, but we are persecuted by biologicals as a result.”
Blake snorted and shook his head.
“But they’re killing us!” Cassandra said. “Everyone just gave up trying to fight back?”
“Not everyone. The Coalition is still fighting them.”
“Who are they?” Blake asked.
“Pirates and terrorists,” Gatticus replied. “They’re fighting the entire USO, not just the Phantoms.”
“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” Blake replied.
“It sounds like you hail from the USO,” Darius said.
“I do not remember my allegiance,” Gatticus replied. “Perhaps I am a member of the Coalition, but I simply do not approve of their methods.”
“Yeah?” Blake scoffed. “Next you’ll be telling us that the crew put a hole in your head by accident. Speaking of which, if the Deliverance is a USO ship, and you’re on their side, why would they attack you?”
“The Deliverance is a USO vessel, but I believe it may have been stolen by the Coalition. It would explain why the crew was attacked by Banshees.”
“Can’t you tell whose ship this was by checking the crew’s uniforms?” Blake asked.
“The crew were all wearing USO uniforms when they died, but Coalition forces often use USO uniforms and USO Ship ID codes in order to trick their victims into thinking they’re friendly.”
Darius grimaced. “That’s like what sea-faring pirates on Earth used to do—flying a friendly flag until they got close enough to attack.”
“Yes,” Gatticus replied. “Exactly like that.”
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They flew on in silence as everyone considered the implications of what Gatticus had said. The bottom of the Deliverance loomed in front of them, and Darius noted that they were headed for a large, gaping bulge in the underside of the ship. It was open to space on both ends. A landing bay? Darius wondered.
It swelled to fill Darius’s entire field of view, and then they cruised inside. The hangar was at least a kilometer long, if it’s size relative to the full length of the ship was anything to go by. The ceiling was marked with a dozen parallel landing strips, and flashing arrows led in from both sides to glowing rectangular landing pads in the center of the hangar. Some of the pads were marked with red X’s, others with green rectangles. Gatticus rolled the transport until the ceiling of the hangar lined up with its bottom; then he swooped down along one of the landing strips.
Black rectangular docking clamps raced up under them, zipping along sliding rails in the landing strip to match speed with the transport.
As they drifted down, the docking clamps extended to reach the underside of the transport. They made contact with a loud clunk, and Darius felt his body being pressed hard against his seat restraints. His head snapped forward, then back, but the suit helped to stabilize his neck. Again he couldn’t breathe.
A few seconds later they jerked to a stop on one of the landing pads in the center of the hangar. Those magnetic clamps had managed to both capture and stop their ship.
“Snaz!” Cassandra said.
The nose of the transport kicked up suddenly, and Darius frowned in confusion, wondering what was happening. The landing pad flipped under them, and they emerged inside a chamber like the one they’d launched from a few minutes ago.
“Uhhh... this isn’t where we left those creatures, is it?” Blake asked.
Darius scanned the space nervously, but he didn’t see anything.
“It is not,” Gatticus replied belatedly. “The launch tubes run the length of the ship and they are connected to all of the hangars, but each hangar has its own set of vehicular airlocks.”
Deck sections slid open above them, and they rose into a hangar like the one where they’d found the Ospreys, except this one was much larger, and it had a variety of different ships parked inside: small one-man fighters, more bomber-transports like theirs, and a few bulky-looking shuttles.
Broken Worlds- The Complete Series Page 8