Seclurm: Devolution

by Noah Gallagher

  Terri looked at her with a concerned but stony face. Randy had a hand on his forehead, desperately trying to think of a better way.

  “You can’t do that alone, Rosalyn,” repeated Sam. Squaring his shoulders, he looked suddenly like a wave of energy re-powered him, deciding then and there to accept responsibility and knowing what he needed to do. “I think you’re right… That’s the best option we have. But it can’t be just you. You need someone there to watch your back. …I can do that.”

  Rosalyn’s wide eyes met his. He stood up and looked at them all with a determined expression.

  “What does everyone think about this plan?” he asked. “Randy? You on board?”

  Randy’s eyes were wet a bit too. He arched his neck up to look at Sam and said uncomfortably, “On board with running while you and Rosalyn save our lives?”

  “Without more weapons, it’s the safest thing we can do,” Sam said with reassuring eyes upon him.

  Randy looked down, his glasses starting to fog up a tiny bit. “I’ll go along with it,” he said, his voice choking up ever so slightly.

  Sam nodded. “Terri? How about you?”

  She finally sat up in her chair a bit. Some of that exhaustion melted away. Still with a slight frown on her face, and with tears welling up in her eyes, she said, “Yeah.”

  “Sam…I don’t want to ask you to…” Rosalyn started again.

  “I understand, Rosalyn. You’re taking a calculated risk. You think that two wouldn’t fare that much better than one to be worth risking more lives being lost. But let me tell you, these past several days are the most sober I have been in weeks and I can confidently say you’re wrong.”

  He smiled a bit, and though it didn’t show, all of their spirits were lifted a tiny but very much appreciated inch. Sam could feel it, and he kept smiling. He was confident they could do it, but even if they failed, what would death take away from him if he felt as he did now? In control of his own destiny, doing the right thing.

  “Well,” Rosalyn said, wiping a tear from one of her eyes as she crossed her arms. “Should we start planning all of this out?”

  The others nodded. She continued, “Let Sam and I look at the map of the ship to figure things out. Why don’t you two start putting your things together to leave?”

  Randy answered, “Okay. We’ll also need equipment from the loading deck. The spacesuits, the space tent, and whatever else we need…”

  “Absolutely. Get everything together that you need here, and then once we’re ready to go, we’ll escort you there to send you off.”

  Randy took a relieved breath, happy to be trying out another plan besides sitting here waiting. The others could see the sweat on his polo shirt as he went to gather his things. Rosalyn went to sit beside Sam.

  Terri finally stood up and lightly tapped Rosalyn’s arm before she could move. “Rosalyn…”

  “What?”

  After a pause she said, “Thank you.” She took a breath and mustered a grateful hint of a smile.

  Rosalyn just nodded and smiled back.

  At last, their time of terror and hiding was over. They were active now, piercing through the cloud of fear—or at least Sam was—and were ready to make something of this nightmare. Though looming uncertainty still ate away at them, they had a counter-system in place that was starting to heal them. A hope of survival that tapped into the deepest recesses of their souls. A reality of purpose and life that, horrifying as it was, made them feel truly alive, truly together.

  Rosalyn walked over and sat down by Sam, flamethrower by her side, feeling a small, but purposeful warmth within her.

  10

  The alien was keeping still and quiet on the blue-screened radar. Rosalyn and Sam sat together at one of the Bridge’s computers, working on enabling a radar display connection with either of their smart devices.

  “We talked about luring it into an ambush,” said Sam, “but if we can get this mobile radar working, then I think we need to hunt it down rather than wait for it to come to us.”

  “I agree,” she replied. “There’s also a strong possibility it might sense Terri and Randy outside, unarmed, and leave the ship to hunt them down instead of us. We can’t risk that happening. It has to die.”

  Analyzing the planetoid’s weather patterns, they found a window of low storms approaching wherein Randy and Terri could exit in relative comfort. Already there was a more calm, cloudy atmosphere swirling around outside.

  Terri and Randy were nearly finished with gathering their things together at the other end of the Bridge. They couldn’t carry all of the stored food with them, but they were putting three large bags together of what they could. Those bags would be placed into a small, wheeled, remote-controlled mineral carrier once they arrived at the loading deck.

  Rosalyn contemplated on the nature of this creature they had to outsmart. What was its mind? Was it really just a predator hunting prey, or could it somehow have a more malicious motive? How was it so knowledgeable of how the ship functioned? The deep sense of unknown permeating this whole encounter was nothing if not unsettling.

  The radar of the Novara, when the engines weren’t too hot to run it, showed that the alien had stayed generally near the computer mainframe room for some reason. Maybe searching for a way to destroy the battery powering the few lights that remained or something. Thankfully that was something it wouldn’t be able to do without destroying each electrical cable and battery in the walls of nearly every room.

  “What’s all this?” Sam asked over her shoulder.

  “The latest radar data from those ruins. It’s…changed since our first scans of the place.”

  Sam eyed the data on the screen with surprise.

  Rosalyn continued. “I don’t know what’s going on in there. I wish we had time to look into it.”

  “I’m kind of grateful we don’t,” Sam said with a shake of his head.

  In a way he was probably right. In all likelihood, more dangerous things had awoken within that place.

  She turned over her shoulder, looking near the door to the hallway leading out of the Bridge where Terri and Randy were hunched over, packing up food into bags. She looked back at the computer’s weather readings and saw that the calm from stormy weather wasn’t going to last for long. “I hope Randy and Terri will be okay taking refuge in the mouth of the cavern,” she said, pained, as she shut down the computer.

  “I’m sure they’ll be okay as long as they don’t go far.” He turned off the engines so they could cool down and be ready for more prolonged use when they actually got moving.

  Quietly Sam said, “What made you decide to volunteer for the kill mission?”

  She sat back and responded, “Like I said, I’m the captain, so I’ve got to take responsibility.”

  “That’s true. I guess I just am surprised that you took to that so suddenly. Before today, you wanted everybody to stay together.”

  “A better plan came along. That’s all.”

  He nodded a bit, but frowned as well. “Well, I’m happy you accepted my offer to help you. I just, uh, don’t want you to think you need to sacrifice yourself for everyone to survive.”

  She kept herself composed. “I believe we can survive.”

  “I know you do.”

  An uncomfortable silence dominated the next few minutes after that. Both of them laid back in their chairs and breathed calmly and deeply, resting their aching heads and bodies. Randy and Terri spoke quietly near the door, out of earshot of them.

  “Tell me,” Sam said, finally breaking the silence, “what brought you out here?”

  She turned to him and suddenly became aware of herself in a strange way, feeling as she had before they’d come to this place. Her tied-back, dirty hair; her lighter-than-usual complexion, having been too far from the sun for too long; her clothes that were starting to feel dirty. She lifted an eyebrow and said, “You’ve never asked me that before, Tokoharu.”

  He chuckled softly. “Because I thought
I knew. I had a couple of guesses, anyway. The first guess was ambition. You were just rising in the ranks. Seemed like you’ve been doing it since you came to FAER. First training, then basic excursions, and now on one of the most profitable ventures the Foundation’s got. I thought that next you’d look to promotions and be running the company in about five years, give or take.”

  She smirked slightly. “So your thoughts match the others’, then.”

  “That was only my first guess. My second guess was that you were just trying out different things. I thought you were going to try every job there was at FAER until you found one you liked best. I thought that one was a little smarter than the first. But I want to know: what’s the real reason you’ve been here?”

  “I guess you’re not far off with your second guess. I’ve bounced around several careers in my time. But ultimately, it’s really not complicated. It’s an important job, the forefront of world progress, it pays well, nothing else like it. I enjoy it.”

  He nodded, then thought for a moment before speaking again. “Are those things going to keep you in the Foundation if we ever make it back?”

  The question hit her unexpectedly. She looked into his eyes. “Probably not. Not after this. What about you?”

  “Probably find a job as a bartender.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh a bit more than she wanted to. She caught herself and coughed.

  He dropped his smile. “Sorry. I’m killing our focus.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I don’t actually want another job. I don’t want to be forced to abandon what I love about this. I don’t like being forced to change that quickly.”

  “I don’t want to change either,” she said. She sat back in her chair and pondered for a moment. “To tell you the truth, I think…I think that the deciding reason I’ve stayed here is because my family thought I wouldn’t. They set bounds on me that I never wanted to stay within. I haven’t spoken to them in years for it.”

  He listened intently.

  She gave a soft chuckle. “Maybe I will again.”

  Heaving backpacks, duffel bags, and sacks of food, Sam, Terri, and Randy made their way down the hallway after Rosalyn. She held the flamethrower in two hands, strap across her back to lighten its weight. The spear was stored on Sam’s back, carefully tied down with a strap, to free his hands to carry supplies. The hum of the ship’s engines was quiet from this end of the ship, and the hall echoed their footsteps.

  Besides that hum and the footsteps, it was deathly quiet. They thought they could feel a pale, unseen spotlight on them. The creature’s sunken eyes seemed stuck in their vision like an afterimage. They were not really alone anywhere.

  Rosalyn had her smart device out and tapped into the ship’s computer, relaying the radar system and showing her the location of the alien, still on the lower level, far enough away that they had nothing to worry about if they acted quickly.

  After a bit of electrical finagling, they unlocked and opened the door to the north hallway, went through the busted door in the common room, and all the way down the south hallway to the doors of the loading deck. They stepped into the large, open room with utmost carefulness, feeling the heat from the engines upon their skin. Fog crept across the lenses of Randy and Rosalyn’s glasses. Four pairs of eyes darted all about, shining flashlights in every darkened crevice. Once they’d found the room secure enough, Randy and Terri made their way to the booth on the port side of the room, which housed the spacesuits, and hastily started suiting up while Sam loaded their supplies onto the rover-sized, four-wheeled carrier vehicle and Rosalyn watched everything with grip tight on the flamethrower and eyes frequently glancing at her smart device screen. She zoomed the image in on the alien’s location, wanting a better look at whether it was moving at all or not.

  Randy returned in a blue spacesuit to the center of the room. “Ready,” he said, voice muffled by the helmet secured over his head.

  He looked to Terri beside him, who finished securing her own helmet and nodded.

  Sam finished heaving the last of the bags of food onto the carrier and inhaled deeply. “You’re all set.”

  With some unease, Randy went up to the carrier to tap some buttons, assigning it to follow them. It automatically started rolling up to the ramp, and they stood just before it.

  “You sure you don’t want this?” Sam said, holding out the spear.

  Randy turned and shook his head. “You’ll need it more than us. I couldn’t use that thing too well in this space suit anyway. Or out of it, for that matter.”

  “Well, then Godspeed to you.”

  They nodded to each other.

  Rosalyn called to Sam. “Let’s get to the control panel.”

  They walked over to the closed-off booth, sealed by glass windows but able to clearly see what was going on outside the room. They shut the door behind them and Sam tapped on a control panel. From behind the glass they saw and heard the ramp opening downward, and some bitterly cold winds whipped inside the room. Soon, Terri and Randy stepped down the ramp and disappeared below, trailed by the carrier vehicle. Sam and Rosalyn watched until the ramp had sealed up again and the room depressurized for a minute.

  The computer signaled at last that it was safe to exit the control room. A moment of silence prevailed upon them.

  Sam looked at her and tried to smile, but couldn’t knowing what they were about to do.

  “Shall we?” he said as he moved for the door.

  Rosalyn nodded grimly.

  Once again she looked down at her smart device and saw the alien was still where it had been when they started moving. Then she zoomed out and noticed something odd.

  “Sam,” said Rosalyn. The piercing word froze him in his tracks. “There’s something…something wrong here.” As she spoke, her body wanted to crumple and implode.

  Sam felt a stab at his heart. “What is it?”

  She licked her lips and with wide, horrified eyes sputtered, “The—the radar system isn’t refreshing. There are still four dots showing up on the loading deck, and they aren’t moving at all!”

  “What?” he said with alarm.

  She struggled to stay calm. “I was zoomed in on the alien, or I would have noticed sooner. Oh, hell. It won’t refresh. Sam, we—!”

  She was interrupted as they caught something out of the corner of their eyes, through the window. Near the middle of the loading deck, something dropped down nimbly from the ceiling and landed with a thump on the metal flooring. It breathed deeply and lifted its tail for a moment, silhouetted by low lighting.

  Sam and Rosalyn dropped down below the window, beneath the control panel, as their hearts began to beat rapidly. They could hear the sounds of scraping and clawing.

  “This isn’t what we wanted, but hey…now’s our chance,” Sam whispered to Rosalyn.

  With a slow, restrained nod, Rosalyn put her smart device in her pocket and hefted the flamethrower. She lit the lighter on the end and walked, crouching low, closer to the door, past the row of spacesuits set in containers attached to the walls.

  As she reached for the handle, suddenly they heard a great whoosh outside.

  Peering out the window, they saw light peeking through a hole in the floor beside the alien. It had broken through the hull.

  Rosalyn cursed. “It’s trying to get outside to Terri and Randy!” She had to speak loud over the whooshing sound.

  “Let’s get out there, then!” Sam yelled, sweat forming on his face.

  “We can’t, unless we put spacesuits on! And the flamethrower won’t even work in the atmosphere!”

  Sam made a defeated sound and stared off into space for a moment. Had the alien just outsmarted them yet again?

  Rosalyn peeked carefully out the window and saw the creature continuing to scrape and cut with claws and tail-spike. The scratching echoed and reverberated. In mere moments the alien would be able to squeeze out and kill both of the unarmed crewmates. There was a mania to its movements, a deadly a
nd manic determination to kill that was highly disturbing.

  She looked at the tall walls of either side of the room, through which would be the two engines humming. Desperately she pulled out her smart device again. Tapping into the ship’s controls, she engaged the engines.

  “Hold on,” she said to Sam nervously as she crouched and braced herself.

  With a heaving thrum, the Novara lifted up and surged to the right a few yards, jerking the unsuspecting alien to the side away from the hole, falling over and screeching. Rosalyn had only the smallest amount of control available from her device, but she tapped it carefully, moving it back and forth, hearing the reverberating scrape of the landing gear against the stone below. The engines’ heat level surged.

  Sam peeked up and watched the alien stand slowly up on four legs, looking around frantically. It slipped behind some shelves, climbed up onto the strapped-down mining rover, and then leapt up to the wall. It found a ventilation shaft, pried it open with strong claws, and crawled in with an echoing cry.

  “Quick—quick, put on a suit!” said Rosalyn. She let the ship touch back down, stationary again, and shut off the engines.

  Sam was shaking his head as he got up, took off his jacket, and went to the suit containment unit. “Man! You’re crazy!” he breathed.

  Rosalyn went to suit up as well, tearing off her leather coat and casting it aside. Before too long both of them were wearing relatively slim, blue spacesuits with glass-domed helmets. Rosalyn cursed herself for not putting on contact lenses that morning—it had totally slipped her mind—but she kept her glasses on her face and hoped she wouldn’t fall over and lose them within her helmet, considering she’d be unable to adjust them while they were out of an atmosphere-controlled room. Sam held the makeshift spear in his hands, and Rosalyn pocketed her smart device in an external suit pocket.

  They exited the booth into the main loading deck room. That gaping hole in the center was a major concern, but there was little they could do about it now.