She finds herself clutching at the Strider emblem on her chest. The only thing of comfort in this place.
Ten meters away, on the concave section of bulkhead directly above, there’s something crawling over the bed of an open pod—a bug-like creature half a meter across. The legs are shaped like red tapered blades, each a quarter meter long, joined in segments by a pale tissue. Its body is a shell of the same translucent red material, which looks tough as bone. Atop its back, poking out from a small orifice in the armor, another of the bloated red sacks expands and contracts. A circle of reddish-grey tendrils grows at the edges of the sack, waving in the air as if underwater. Its four legs give a slight shudder, and the giant bug-like creature detaches from the bed. It floats straight toward her.
For a moment, Karli stares in perfect fascination. The creature drifts down toward her as gently as a flake of snow. A thing as horrifying as it is surreal. It crosses half the distance before Karli’s primal fear takes over. The creature’s legs fan out, each of three segments stretching out wide. A disembodied claw reaching for her. She screams and plants her feet on the handrail so that she’s crouched like a swimmer ready to race. She launches for all she’s worth.
A split-second later, Karli hears the clicking of the bug’s legs as it lands in her place. She flies across the spherical lab, the crisscrossing pattern of transverse rails whizzing past. Her arms and legs are flailing in space, her body twisting and floundering. In water, her flapping might at least get her somewhere, but none of those instincts are any help in zero-G. Grey globs saturate the air and collect into goop on her face. Momentum carries her helplessly, and she flashes a look back. The thing is floating after her, bladed legs twitching open and closed. She looks forward mere seconds before she flies straight into a pole.
“Umph!” The pole slams her in the gut, and the momentum folds her body. She gasps for air, the wind knocked out of her, even as she scrambles. Her body is slick with the strange fungal goo. Particles of the stuff coat her nose like a layer of snot. The ammonia stench drives into her sinuses until her eyes water.
The AI computer continues to squawk her useless warnings. “Alert: Foreign contaminants present in the medical bay. Beginning quarantine procedures.”
The wedge of orange light flashes across the bug creature, which is nearly on her. Karli screams as she shoves off. The bladed legs snap closed on the rail, missing her by centimeters.
“All crew evacuate to escape pods on Vault Module, Deck 7.”
Now Karli is tumbling end over end, like a fish caught in a net. She slams into the bulkhead, elbow, and shoulder first, her bones vibrating with pain—her ankle cracks against a bundle of hard metal cables. There’s no time for nursing her bruises. Already the rebound is lifting her back into space. Her fingers scramble for purchase. They find the grooves etched into all the metal walls of the lab—tactile handholds deliberately designed to aid a starnaut in zero-G. Karli digs her fingernails under the lip of the metal grooves and pulls herself back to the wall. Above her, the entrance to the hatch yawns open. She climbs for her life.
The thing lands on the grooved metal below her feet with a sound like clattering dice. Its feet are instantly in motion, clicking up the ladder of grooves after her.
“No!” Karli climbs faster. “Get away! Stay away from me.”
She doesn’t recognize her own voice—it’s that of a sobbing, frightened stranger. Clink.
Karli’s head jerks to her right. Several meters away, another of the four-legged things has landed. It skitters toward her, tendrils fluttering above its back.
“Oh God.” Karli scratches and claws forward, only an arm’s length from the ledge of the hatch.
Clickety-clink. Another lands a meter away. Clink-clack-clack. One alights on the end of a medical bed to Karli’s left, which from this angle, juts up from the wall like a tall metal totem.
Her hand grasps the lip of the hatch, and Karli hauls herself up with all her might. She swings her legs into a square corridor that looks as if it were neatly cut into the otherwise perfectly concave walls of the sphere. Warning messages stream across the computer panel readouts on the walls. Another orange light flashes overhead. A couple meters ahead, a big airlock door with a triangular window is sealed shut.
Click-click-clack-clack.
Karli spins around on her haunches, hands still dug into the grooves. A single translucent red blade slides over the ledge. Then a second. She scrambles backward. The flat body, the red mottled with white spots, climbs into the space. Its pustule inflates. Its tendrils rise to stand in unison like antennae. The bug has no eyes. No mouth. Only a pair of mandibles like serrated blades that detach from its ventral carapace. It crawls after her, with two more following on the port and starboard walls.
Karli’s back comes up against the inner airlock. She spins around, climbing along the metal contours as she looks for a handle. A button. A panel command. Anything. The clicking legs are close behind her. In her panic, she can’t think of how to make the door open.
“Computer, open the door!”
“Opening interior gate.”
Air flushes out of a seam in the center of the door. The twin halves of the inner airlock zip apart. Karli tumbles forward into another short corridor with lockers and computer terminals along the walls. The outer airlock gate blocks the way ahead. She spins around.
The nearest bug puts on a burst of speed, its legs tapping furiously. It’s nearly across the threshold.
“Computer, close the door!”
“Closing interior gate.”
The thing launches, its terrible legs flying open as it floats toward her. The halves of the airlock doors whoosh toward each other.
One of the tendrils snaps forward quick as a biting snake. Karli screams as the sponge-like appendage wraps around her forearm. It feels soft and slimy but impossibly strong as it coils.
There’s a powerful clap as the doors slam closed, severing the tendril and trapping the bug outside—a hiss of air pressure. The bug crawls onto the window, its carapace blocking the orange light streaming through, unable to reach her. The other two land next to it, forming a trio of crab-like silhouettes. The severed tendril goes limp. It hangs on Karli’s arm like a sock soaked in gelatin.
She shrieks and pulls the terrible thing off her arm. “Get off me!” She tosses it against the door. It makes a wet slap, leaving a streak across lettering that reads, Medical Research Module, Interior Airlock Gate. The severed tendril floats away. Karli pulls herself along the wall, desperate to keep as much distance as possible between her and the tentacle.
Satisfied the tendril’s path is stable enough to keep it floating in the corner, Karli turns her attention to the monitors on the wall beside the outer gate, each lit up with red warning messages. One of them reads Quarantine protocols in effect. Override code required.
At a loss for what to do, Karli says, “Computer, open this door.”
“Atten-tut-tut—Attention.” There’s a strange stutter in the AI’s reply. She doesn’t sound right. Her friendly simulated personality is gone, replaced by basic computer phrases. “Please stand securely on the foot-f-f-foot placement markers to cycle…c-cycle gravity.”
Arrows on the walls point at the side of the compartment that becomes the floor in artificial gravity. Karli follows the arrows and finds two blue footprints lighting up in a square metal panel. Using a rail on the wall, she guides her feet into the blue symbols. They sink beneath the holograms and land in a pair of grooves. Cushions close on her heels and toes, helping her stay grounded.
“All occupants of airlock s-secure,” Syndi says. “Cycle gravity?”
“Yes,” Karli says eagerly. “Cycle gravity now!”
“Acknowledged. All occupants brace-b-b-brace for initiation of artificial gravity field. In 3…2…1…”
There’s a gentle hum and then a feeling of vertigo. Karli’s floating body regains all of its former weight. She sinks into the
ground with a feeling like falling backward. The sudden heaviness makes her want to throw up.
The tendril falls with a wet splat. After a moment, the nausea passes, and she’s able to stand upright. The cushions in the floor retract, and she takes a few wobbly steps.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.” She swallows back acid, willing her queasy stomach to settle. She looks around. The bugs have abandoned their attempts to follow her. Strangely, the floating bits of grey fungus continue to drift on the air as if too light to sink. “Okay. Computer, open the door.”
“Unable to process your request. A quarantine lockdown is in effect.”
“Override! Hotwire the darn thing if you have to. Get me out of here!”
“Unable to prooooo-cess your request. Quarantine lockdown override can only be requested from the exterior terminal.”
“Doggit, Computer.” Karli slams a fist into the window of the airlock. It’s hard as a rock. She cups her hands around her eyes and peers through. The corridor beyond is dark but for the odd flicker of a warning light or flashing panel. Not a soul to be seen. “Hello? Is anyone out there? Please, I need someone to let me out of here.”
The only reply is the gloopy sound of floating bits of fungus clumping together.
“Computer, get someone to come and let me out.”
“I’m sorry, the current AIQ is too low to process your request. I’m having some truh-truh-trouble with my systems. Unknown contaminants identified within my quantum neural core.”
“Where is everyone? Where are the doctors and the crew?”
“I’m sorry, current AIQ is too low to process your request. Please restate your inquiry for a Level-1 AI platform.”
“Contact a member of the crew. Any member of the crew.”
“Unable to process your request. Please restate your inquiry—”
“Open a comm channel to the whole ship.”
“Unable to process your request. Please restate—”
Karli slams her hand against the glass. “Gol-darn it, you stupid futzing computer!”
All at once, the malfunctioning AI, the lack of all human contact, and the horror of the strange alien infestation overwhelm the colony farmgirl. Karli backs up to the bulkhead and collapses, allowing herself to slide down the wall. She reaches up to her Strider badge, which reminds her of her late brothers, Hank and Ty. And she cries like she hasn’t since she was a little girl.
The air is freezing cold, and the skin-tight medical suit is no help. The patina of alien goo on her skin, in her hair, and under her fingernails only makes it worse. The ammonia and burning plastic stench have her nose running with milky snot. Two days ago—if that truly was two days ago—all she wanted was to escape her life on a backwater colony. Today, she’d give anything to hear her father’s voice. Or those of her brothers. Heck, she’d even take her mother’s.
“Somebody…” Karli sobs. She runs her naked forearm arm under her nose, but with its coating of slime, it only adds to the snot. She grips the badge tighter. “Please. Help me.”
“Warning,” the computer squawks as if there’s anyone who even cares to listen. “Critical systems failures across the ship. All passengers and crew evacuate to escape pods on Vault Module, Deck 7.”
The orange lights continue to flash. The klaxons continue to wail. The floating fungus continues to drift. Karli thought she knew what loneliness was, growing up on a farm in the middle of the desert, on one of the farthest-flung colonies in human space. The only girl in eight siblings, schooled at home and always the black sheep. As she sits with her forehead pressed to her knees, cold and crying in the airlock of a lost starship, she realizes she has never been more wrong.
“Please,” she repeats to no one. “Help me. Somebody, help.”
A tinny girl’s voice echoes through the intercom. “Why the long face, Bestie?”
Karli’s head shoots up. Her eyes dart around, looking for the source of the voice.
“You never need to sob when your KitBot’s on the job!”
Karli gets to her feet. She rushes to the window of the airlock. On the other side, streaks of neon pink and purple light orbit a small egg-shaped drone. It flaps its dorsal and ventral shells like the wings of a beetle. The trio of lenses on its face project a childlike hologram of a kitten jumping up and down, batting adorably cute eyes as if it wants to be petted.
“Kitty!” Karli is smiling like a kid on Christmas, fresh tears streaming down her face. At the sight of the teenaged mechanical pet, she feels a warmth washing through her as if face to face with her dearest friend. “Kitty, it’s you.”
“Darn right, girly! I’d never abandon a friend in need. How can I help?”
Karli swallows. Somehow, the question seems almost too enormous to answer. “Can you…um…open the door?”
“Sure thing, Bestie. Why didn’t you just say so?” The drone buzzes away.
There’s a soft click. A hard grinding of metal. Karli watches in wonder as the outer airlock slides open.
Issue 1: “Blood of the Bold”
For Derek
My fellow childhood adventurer
Written by
Garrett Bettencourt
Next
Issue 2: “Survive”
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Season 1
Cold Open
Then…
Clearwater Oasis
Planet Aldrin, McNeil System
0129 Hours, OGT
The motor lodge is once again filled with snoring. Karli rises from her bed and tip-toes around her brother Tate sleeping on the cot. A board creaks under her foot, and she looks toward Cam and her father. Both fast asleep. She swipes on the glassy surface of her Bangl, cringing as the holo-display ignites with blinding light, and connects to her father’s Bracer. The wireless connection established, she enters his password—his children’s birth years in descending sequence, given to her many times when he needed tech help. It’s a few simple taps to copy his FOB code, then she slips back out.
She stops at the vending machine in the hall and fills her rucksack with synthetically printed jerky, snack cakes, and energy drinks. Then she jogs out into the cool desert night and across the dusty motel courtyard. She double-checks her possessions—a few changes of clothes, her portable toolkit, the junk food, and the Strider emblem worn by her late brother Hank. She smirks at the KitBot sleeping in her pack—a toy she would have loved as a girl, but hardly finds useful now. But she can always send Eiden the memory files and sell it at the next port.
She hurries into the rundown motor garage, made of sand-blasted prefab panels and a floor inches deep with dirt. Half a dozen other vehicles are parked along the walls. Some have sporty hoods, others heavy-duty beds, others tank-sized cabs. One has a flag with a segmented snake that reads, “Don’t Tread on the Trueborn.” All are variations on the basic extra-planetary rover, with a range of uses from travelling in a hostile atmosphere to hauling families over the desert of Aldrin. Her father’s is easy to spot—a corroding frame stripped to the roll cage, jury-rigged with an after-market radiation sink.
She tosses her rucksack on the passenger seat and climbs in. The center console senses her father’s FOB code and the display lights up. A dozen colorful dials, readouts, and keyboards surround the steering column. Wheels of light hover above the dash.
“Not even going to say goodbye?”
Karli freezes. Her shoulders slump. She thought she was quiet enough, but Jake Hart was always a light sleeper. “I’m sorry, Dad. I wanted to. But what I’ve got to do…It’s gonna take courage like I’ve never had.” She
looks out the driver side and finds him looking up at her. “I was afraid if I stopped to ask for the rover, I’d lose my nerve. For once, I can’t afford to chicken out.”
Jake’s body is skinny, with muscles like tough sinew, and a face scored by years in arid winds. The greenish light of the readouts deepen every line. Despite a hard expression, she can see his eyes are watery with unshed tears. “I knew it the moment I saw you with that Earthborn blue blood. He made you some kind of offer.”
“It’s a chance for a cure, Daddy.” The words pour out of her, one after the other. She can’t even look at him as she talks. “Not just for me, but for Tate, and Cam, and the others. The treatment is outlawed by Earth, and Eiden needs people like me to volunteer for trials. Please don’t be mad. I can’t pass up this chance. I can’t.”
Jake takes in a long breath. It sounds like he might explode in fury. But instead, he says, “I know.”
Karli looks at him cautiously. “You do?”
“You don’t belong on this dusty rock, Sparky. You were meant for big things. I’ve always known as much. Just a shame you gotta steal a man’s rig.”
“Not stealing, Dad. Just borrowing. I’ll GPS tag it when I’m done. Besides, I earned you an extra ten percent tonight. You always wanted a new one.”
“That was just talk—this rover’s a classic.” Jake tugs at his shirt collar, damp with sweat from the heat of the night. He looks over the various dents and patches of rust on the rover. “She came down from space with the first landing craft, sixty-five years ago. Course, she was shiny and brand new back then.”
Galaxyborn: Season 1 Premiere Page 5