The Shanta calmed down and turned to her. The talons on each of its twelve limbs swiped out, ready to kill.
“Shaaaaaantaaahh.”
Jelly picked up the pace and ran toward it, “Tor, if you’re in there, you better get ready to go to hell.”
ROOOAAAARRRR!
Jelly jumped into the air and swiped at the creature. She missed and hit the wall.
The Shanta slithered to the side and punched her in face, sending the back of her head against the wall panel, forcing the door open.
SWISH.
“Welcome to Pure Genius,” announced a friendly voice as the door opened. “Please be advised that this is a zero gravity environment.”
Jelly laughed venomously and removed the back of her head from the broken panel. Shards of shattered plastic nestled in her hair. She leaned forward and grabbed the Shanta’s mid-section on her paws.
“Come with me.”
Before the Shanta could scream, she tightened her grip and yanked him back into the chamber with her.
The two of them tumbled into the middle of the perfect cuboid as if swimming underwater.
Jelly lifted her leg and booted the Shanta’s slit with her knee. Its metal teeth nicked her leggings as it moved away.
She released the creature and kicked it against the wall.
Both Jelly and the beast waded through the air and hit the two opposite sides, lighting up the tiles.
“Pure Genius activated,” the voice advised. “Please specify your command.”
RROOOOAAARRR!
The Shanta clapped its limbs against the wall and pushed itself forward like an octopus propelling itself from the Ocean bed.
SWISH-SWIPE.
Jelly ducked out of the path of the whizzing talons.
“Oh, no you don’t,” She pressed her body from the wall and up to the ceiling that contained the door, “Up here. Woof-woof!”
The Shanta’s twelve limbs stiffened and prepared to dive skyward.
“Come and get some,” Jelly squealed and froze solid. She waited for her assailant to spring towards her.
The pair made eye contact, trying to psyche each other out.
“Come on,” Jelly screamed, goading the Shanta to attack, “What are you waiting for? Kill me.”
The creature screamed and pushed itself away from the ground. It flew through the air and extended its first four limbs and talons.
Jelly gripped the lip of the door and pulled herself up and through the opening.
The sudden presence of gravity pulled her knees to the walkway ground as she leaned over the gap. She opened out her paw and slammed it against the wall panel as the first two limbs struck at her face.
“Agghh,” Jelly squealed as the door sliced across the front of her face.
SWISH-SCHA-JUNT!
The door guillotined the Shanta’s two front limbs from its body. Its muffled squeals whirled around the fully fired-up supercomputer. Two severed talons clanged to the floor by Jelly’s knees.
“Meow,” Jelly palmed the window in anger and looked at the trapped creature one last time, “Go to hell, dickhead.”
Her tail swished left to right as she turned around and made her way back to the staircase.
The Shanta hung in the middle of Pure Genius with two of its limbs missing. Pink liquid from its severed arms launched into the air and splashed against the tiles like a Jackson Pollock painting.
It knew it was trapped - possibly for good.
Its center slit widened and tried to take in some air.
SCHTAM-SCHTAM-SCHTAM!
It extended all its remaining arms like a multi-pronged star. Three on the ground, three on the ceiling, and two pressed against the left and right wall.
It remained static like a fleshy cobweb, trapped forever inside Pure Genius.
Medix
Space Opera Beta - Level Three
Tripp and Jaycee approached Medix ready to open fire on anything remotely unfamiliar.
Alex and Nutrene watched their six and their weapons up the corridor.
Manuel floated along with them, “Tripp?”
“Not now, Manuel.”
“I’m scared, Tripp.”
“What do you mean?” Tripp lowered his gun and turned to Jaycee, “I’ll go in there and grab Wool. Stay here.”
“Okay,” Jaycee joined Alex and Nutrene, “Listen up. We’re getting our friend and then getting the hell off this ship.”
Manuel slotted himself between Tripp and the door to Medix, “Tripp?”
“Can’t this wait, Manuel?”
“You’re not going to leave without me, are you? You know I can’t leave Opera Beta.”
“What?” Tripp acted defiant in the face of his autopilot. But the book had a point - he was restrained to the confines of the ship and knew it would never return home.
“Please don’t leave me here.”
“I’m sure there’s a way to transfer you to—”
“—There is not. Tripp. I cannot lie. They have their own autopilot. Almost certainly more advanced than I am.”
Tripp couldn’t look at the holograph any longer. He didn’t have an answer.
“I thought as much,” Manuel’s front and back cover slumped, resigned to its fate, “I’m going to leave, now.”
“I’m sorry, Manuel.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, “Keep telling yourself that.”
WHVOOM.
The book vanished, leaving the door in plain sight.
Tripp glanced at Jaycee, who looked away with a discreet sadness, “You did what you had to do.”
“There was no point in lying to him.”
Jaycee lowered his gun and nodded, “Stop pontificating. Get Wool. Now.”
Tripp entered the room and spotted Wool looking out of the window with a forlorn expression on her face, “I don’t know if you heard the alarms, but we need to get out of—”
She sniffed and placed her palm on the plastic window ledge.
“Look, Tripp. Look at Enceladus. It’s heading for Saturn”
He joined her at the window. The impossibly large ball of fire left a thick, pink vapor trail as it rocketed away. The vibrations of the window in her palm conveyed the sheer ferocity of the event.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Wool, we have to go.”
She kept facing the window with her arms folded and refused to move, “I c-can’t go.”
“Why not?”
He moved next to her and clocked her reflection in the plastic pane. Something about her face wasn’t right.
“I can never go home ever again, Tripp.”
He applied pressure to her shoulder and tried to comfort her, “Don’t be stupid, just—”
A cold sensation on his fingertips made him look down. A Shanta talon crept across his knuckles, stretching from Wool’s fleshy arm.
“Oh, no.”
A tear rolled down Wool’s cheek, “When you leave, close the door and seal me inside. Have Jaycee break the wall panel so I can’t get out.”
“Wool,” Tripp muttered.
“It’s okay,” she half-laughed and sniffed through her tears, “It was bound to happen sooner or later. We’re mostly human organs, after all. I guess the Symphonium just takes a little longer to work with our synthetic insides.”
She turned to him at once. His face fell when he clapped his eyes on hers. She seemed desperate and beyond hope.
“Oh, Wool,” Tripp’s lip quivered. He looked at her pink, bloodied arm. The skin cracked apart above the elbow. The three cat scratch marks pulsed and revealed a fleshy, white layer.
“Do you have your Rez-9?” she asked.
He offered her his weapon with caution, “Yes, of course. Here.”
“No, Tripp. I can’t do it.”
He pointed at his jaw, “Remember?”
“Yes, I remember,” she turned to the window and widened her eyes at the glorious ball of fire, “Say goodbye to the crew for me. Tell them i
f it was going to be anyone, then I’m glad it was them.”
A pink tear rolled down Tripp’s cheek as he hooked his index finger around the trigger. He placed the end of it at the back of her head.
Tripp’s voice croaked, “Do you want me to tell Jelly—”
“—No. Don’t tell her anything,” she reached behind her head and gripped the barrel of the gun in her right hand, “In my battery, please.”
Her hand dragged the nozzle down across her back and pushed it between her shoulder blades.
“I could just open you and take it out.”
“Destroy it. Make sure I’m dead. Shoot it,” Wool burst out crying, “Tell Jelly her mommy is sorry.”
Tripp sobbed like a helpless child and made sure his reflection didn’t give his emotions away.
Wool took a lungful of air and widened her eyes. The light from Saturn filled her pupils, “Whatever is out there, we found it—”
BLAMMM!
Her chest opened out and splattered her insides against the window. Globs of thick, pink goo slid down the plastic, against the view of Saturn and the infernal Enceladus.
Wool crumpled to the floor, dead. Her smashed battery hung out through her ribcage and hit the floor.
Tripp lowered his gun and wiped his face.
“Sleep well, Wool.”
Tripp exited Medix and closed the door.
Jaycee, Alex, and Nutrene turned around, expecting to find two crew members.
Tripp lowered his Rez-9 and marched through them, “Wool won’t be joining us.”
“What? Why not?” Jaycee asked and chased up to Tripp, “Hey, you can’t walk off like that.”
THUD.
He planted his giant hand on Tripp’s shoulder and prevented him from walking, “Answer me.”
Tripp grabbed Jaycee by the collar and shunted his back to the wall. A miasma of self-doubt and fury flew through his eyes, “Don’t you ever, ever touch me like that again.”
Jaycee grabbed Tripp’s hand and pushed it away from his neck, “You’re out of your mind.”
“I know I am. We all are.”
“Where’s Wool?”
Tripp snorted and continued up the walkway, “She’s not coming.”
“Why?”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead?”
Alex and Nutrene decided it best to let the two men carry on their conversation a few feet ahead of them.
“Who’s Wool?”
“Ah,” Nutrene whispered, “My predecessor. Actually my second predecessor, after Katcheena. She was chief medician for USARIC. She oversaw the Star Cat Project back in one-eighteen.”
Alex squinted at her, “That Wool? Wool ar-Ban? The Iranian?”
“Yeah, you know her?”
“Oh. Uh, no. Just heard about her,” Alex cleared his throat and grew nervous, “Dead?”
“You heard the man,” she smirked, “Still, her being dead is good practice for all of them soon enough, eh?”
Jaycee pummeled the wall with his fists in anger, “Bastards.”
Tripp held out his arms, “Hey, hey, calm down. There’s nothing any of us could have done—”
“—You didn’t have to execute her, you know,” Jaycee spun his wrists around, ready to break something. A protruding pipe knocked against his knee, “God damn it.”
He grabbed the pipe in his hands and wrenched it from the wall in a fit of rage. A blast of steam sprayed into the walkway as he swung it above his head and hurled it up the corridor, “I swear to God I’m gonna shoot someone.”
“Jaycee, no. No more deaths, please,” Tripp screamed at him, “Who are you gonna shoot?”
“Someone.”
“Let me ask you this, tough guy,” he prodded Jaycee’s exo-suit chest plate with his finger, “What if what you want to shoot is inside you? How are you gonna kill it?”
Jaycee slowed his breathing and pushed his captain’s finger away, “I guess we’ll find out soon enough. If it turned Tor and Wool, who’s to say you and I aren’t next?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Primary Airlock
Space Opera Beta
The inner airlock hatch slid up. Oxade clutched his D-REZ semi-automatic and entered Opera Beta proper.
He pressed his finger to the ear compartment on his gelatin helmet-mask, “Please tell me this piece of crap spacecraft has its control deck on level one.”
“It does,” Poz’s voice came through Oxade’s mask, “I advise you take the stairs. We can’t trust the elevator on this malfunctioning hunk of junk.”
“Pah. Morons can’t even get that right,” he took a look around the meager inner workings of the ship and chuckled to himself, “You’re right, though. Opera Beta really is a hunk of junk, isn’t it?”
“Soon to be was, I’ll think you’ll find.”
“Very true. I’ll see you in sixty seconds.”
Keen to express his disrespect for the ship, Oxade coughed up a wad of phlegm and spat it on the wall.
Neg danced around the nuclear canister’s beeps, “Beta gonna blow, Beta gonna blow.”
“Will you knock it off, Neg?” Poz eyed the last of the data transfer through his arm, “Any second now.”
Ba-Beep.
“Data transfer complete,” announced the communications console.
“Thank you, kindly,” Poz retracted his arm into his body.
Oxade marched into the control deck and stood in the middle of the room. He looked around with disgust, “Ugh, USARIC really broke the mold when they made Beta, didn’t they? This is one stinking hellhole, for sure.”
“Hello, Oxade.”
“Hey, guys. Where are the others?”
“Something very peculiar happened while we were conducting the transfer.”
“Did the transfer complete?”
“Yes,” Poz blinked his eyebulbs and beeped, “All fifteen brontobytes of it. The thing is, though—”
“—Where is everyone? I told Hughes and Nutrene to keep an eye on them.”
“If you’d let me finish,” Poz interrupted, “Something untoward occurred right over there, behind you.”
Oxade’s heels skidded across Tor’s vomit patch by the chair, “Whoa,” he yelped and gripped the sticky back rest.
“Ugh. What the hell is this?” He flung the pink slime from his glove.
“According to the Manuel’s last data point, it’s called Symphonium. An evolutionary entity from whichever celestial territory they visited.”
“Celestial territory? What are you talking about?”
“The Manuel recording a place name. Pink Symphony. Not much else is known. I would say it certainly accounts for the virus that has pervaded the ship.”
Oxade looked at the concoction of drool in his gloved palm and grew anxious, “You said there was something untoward?”
“Yes,” Neg hopped over to Oxade and beeped, “They all ran off. Tor Klyce turned into a fleshy spider thing and puked on the floor.”
“Eurgh,” Oxade moved away from the puke on the floor and inspected his heel, “You could have warned me.”
“Well, we did try.”
“They’re all Androgynes, bar two. The botanist woman and the Captain,” Oxade scowled, “If there was a virus it won’t have affected anyone but them.”
Poz and Neg watched Oxade wipe the remains of the goo on the communications panel.
“You’re wrong, I’m afraid,” Manuel’s voice sparked up. His book holograph drew along the air and sparked, announcing his arrival.
“Manuel?”
“Yes.”
“Where are your crew, Manuel?”
“Do I detect a hint of antagonism in your voice, Captain Weller?”
“No, you don’t.”
“It’s just that the way you’re talking indicates that the safety of my crew is not of paramount importance to you.”
“Manuel, I capture and kill felines for a living back on Earth,” Oxade huffed. “Don’t think my remit doesn’t extend to au
topilots. Where is the rest of your crew? In particular, Jelly Anderson?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“I am the Captain of Space Opera Charlie, you Spanish-named lamebrain,” Oxade lifted his D-REZ firearm at the communications panel, “I therefore outrank, outnumber and outgun you. Now, for the final time of asking, and presuming you don’t want your physical memory to get blown to pieces, where are the others?”
“The others?”
“Yes, the others.”
“As in, the crew?” Manuel butterflied around in the hope Oxade wouldn’t shoot his physical home. He bought himself some time when he saw a distant figure move in the corridor behind the door.
“Yes, as you say, the crew.”
“Oh. Level Ten, Engine & Payload,” Manuel hoped Oxade would fall for his untruth, “We had trouble with the thrusters and wanted to check.”
“Level Ten? Isn’t that, like, a fifteen minute journey?”
“Yes, yes,” Manuel clapped his covers together, congratulating himself. “I did it. He believed me.”
“Who believed you?” Oxade fumed as he asked the question.
“Oh, uh, nothing,” Manuel faux-cleared his throat, “Sorry, just another communication coming through. I think the crew will be at least thirty minutes.”
Poz spun around to Neg and then back to Oxade, “Captain?”
“Yes, Poz?”
“I’m afraid to inform you that this autopilot is lying.”
“I am not lying,” Manuel lied.
“Lessense,” Oxade waved Poz away, “Autopilots can’t lie. Thanks for all your help, Manuel. We’ll be on our way.”
Manuel flapped his covers at the canisters, “Excuse me. You’ve forgotten your nukes.”
Oxade made for the door. In doing so, he stepped into Tripp and Jaycee’s path, “Oh.”
Tripp eyed Oxade with suspicion, “What was that about nukes? Who are you?”
“Oxade Weller, captain of Opera Charlie,” He extended his hand to shake, “We’re here to rescue you.”
Jaycee spotted the D-REZ in Oxade’s hand, “You came prepared, I see?”
“Can’t take any chances,” Oxade turned to the Rez-9 in each of their hands, “And I could say the same about you.”
Star Cat: War Mage Page 20