Maybe they could, he thought. Terrifyingly, some of the alien starships were clearly far more advanced than anything humanity had ever launched into space. We didn’t even know that aliens existed until we arrived in the graveyard.
He looked around. A set of something . . . eyeballs, perhaps . . . were embedded in the hull, unmoving. He forced himself to inspect them, despite the fear reflex that made him want to throw himself back into space. The eyes looked insectoid. He told himself, once again, that there was nothing to be scared of. There was no reason to think there was anything waiting for them inside the ship but dead aliens. He looked along the hull, noting other eyeballs and protrusions. God alone knew what they were for.
“I think I see a hatch,” Slater said. “Come with me.”
Matt followed him as they made their way towards a small bump in the hull. Up close, it looked like a trapdoor . . . a well-hidden trapdoor. If it hadn’t been slightly ajar, they might never have noticed. His skin crawled as Slater took the edge of the hatch in his hands and lifted it up, revealing another hatch farther inside the ship. It too was ajar.
“They hid the airlock,” Avis breathed. “What sort of people were they?”
“I remember seeing a trapdoor spider in the zoo,” Slater commented, sounding edgy. “It really was a remarkable creature. Its nest was almost completely hidden, almost impossible to spot against the grass. When something small and vulnerable came along, the spider popped out, caught the prey, and dragged it inside the nest.”
“Where it was devoured,” Lieutenant Robinson muttered. “Does that mean we’re walking into a trap?”
“The ship appears to be powerless, and vented,” Slater snapped. “There’s no reason to believe that something is still alive in here.”
Matt said nothing as they made their way towards the inner hatch. The bulkheads looked as though they’d been made from spider webs, although a quick touch convinced him that they were actually solid; the hatch itself looked to have been braided together like a basket, then firmly webbed into place. He couldn’t escape the sense that the aliens had spun the ship as casually as a tiny spider might craft a web. He wondered, as they forced their way through the hatch, just what advantages the vessels had over human technology. Perhaps the alien ship could repair itself over time.
“Fuck,” Slater breathed as he shone his light down the corridor. “Just look at it.”
“Awesome,” Matt agreed.
The craft was . . . alien, very alien. He found it hard to wrap his head around what he was seeing. The corridors looked like underground tunnels, lined with solid webbing and . . . and something. Getting a sense of which way was up was challenging, let alone fathoming out a logic to the system. He wondered if the beings had bothered to install gravity generators on their ships. Something about the design reminded him of the early spacecraft and space stations before artificial gravity had been invented. Those designs had never needed to follow the limits of anything built in a gravity field. There had been a randomness about them that no modern starship matched.
“Good thinking,” Slater said when Matt shared his ideas. “The aliens might not have needed a gravity field at all.”
“They might have used the webbing to propel themselves along,” Avis agreed. She sounded calmer now that they were starting to comprehend what they were seeing. “Do you think they actually looked like spiders?”
“Humans have lived in weird places too,” Robinson offered. He unspooled a length of thread, securing one end to the airlock. “For all we know, the aliens were humanoid too.”
Matt followed Slater down the corridor, peering into branching corridors and chambers as they slowly explored the ship. It was impossible to guess the purpose of any of the chambers—one was filled with a frozen jellylike substance, another crammed with something that resembled seeds—and he felt his head start to numb as he took in more and more bizarre sights. There were no bodies, as far as he could tell . . . he wondered, ominously, if they’d all crumbled into dust. He couldn’t even begin to guess just how long the alien craft had been trapped in the graveyard. It could have been caught for over a million years.
Hyperspace wears away at hulls, he reminded himself. The graveyard can’t be that old.
He peered into a compartment and froze. Just for a second, his mind refused to grasp what he was seeing. Something was clinging to the webbing on the far side of the compartment, something . . . inhuman. His mind actually had difficulty tracing its lines, even as his heart pounded in his chest, urging him to turn tail and run. The alien . . .
“Sir,” he managed. “I think you should take a look at this.”
He forced himself to move farther into the compartment. The alien—the alien body—didn’t move, but it was hard to escape the sensation that it was just preparing to spring. He tapped his recorder, hoping it was working as he captured the scene. He was the first human to set eyes on an alien, albeit a dead one, and yet he wished someone else had the honor. The creature was just too creepy to be real.
Avis was right, he thought numbly. It is a giant spider.
He looked closer, despite the crawling sensation at the back of his neck. The alien was roughly the same size as Nancy, covered in brownish fur that looked to be standing on end; it was far larger than any spider he knew to exist, large enough to worry him. The creature had a mass of legs, some broken . . . he swallowed hard as he realized, again, that the spiders had experienced the same problems as Gladys when they’d arrived in the graveyard. Its body was covered with eyes, peering in all directions. He couldn’t help thinking that it would’ve been impossible to sneak up on the creature. There was no way to tell which end was its head and which end was its feet, if such expressions had any meaning for the spiders. The being looked capable of moving in all directions without turning.
“Remarkable,” Slater breathed.
“That’s not quite how I’d put it, sir,” Avis said. She sounded as though she was going to be sick. “It’s too large. It shouldn’t have evolved at all.”
“Perhaps it evolved on a low-gravity planet,” Matt speculated. “Or maybe it evolved in outer space itself.”
“That’s not possible,” Avis said.
“There are people who do live in space without spacesuits,” Robinson pointed out.
“But only after extensive genetic enhancements and augmentation,” Avis snapped. Her voice hadn’t improved. “They’re not born in space.”
Matt nodded. He’d never seen a live space-dweller, but he’d viewed pictures. The modified humans were practically tiny spacecraft in their own right, as if they’d merged themselves with their spacesuits. God knew most of them couldn’t live safely within a gravity well. They tended to cluster above gas giants and . . . and do what? He couldn’t imagine.
“Bag up the body,” Slater ordered. “Avis, wait outside.”
Avis did as she was told without protest. Matt found that worrying as he tried to pull the alien away from the webbing. Two legs crumbled into dust at his touch before he figured out how to remove the body safely. The alien seemed to twist as he freed it—just for a second, he had an impression of teeth and claws before it spun away—and he jumped. Somehow the creature still felt alive.
He reached out and touched it gingerly, slowing its spin. The creature’s underside—he assumed it was the underside, at least for the moment—had a set of gaping mouths, crammed with pointed teeth and powerful jaws. He wondered what it ate before deciding he didn’t want to know. More eyes were clearly visible between the mouths, allowing the alien to inspect its food. How had it managed to see in all directions at once?
“Focus,” Slater snapped. “Bag it up!”
Matt carefully wrapped the alien in the bag, then sealed it. The decontaminant team would know what to do, he hoped. There was no way to be sure the alien was completely dead, after all. If they were native to space—or even far more experienced with biological technology—they might survive cold vacuum. It sounded like something
from a bad movie, and he’d seen two legs disintegrate, but he knew better than to overlook the possibility. They’d just have to pray to God they could handle any threat the aliens presented.
Or at least this set of aliens, he thought. The captain’s briefing had made it clear: The graveyard was ruled by aliens who wanted to drain the ship and crew of every last spark of power. Supreme had to escape before it was too late. The spiders should be our allies.
He left the bag by the airlock, then followed Slater and the others farther into the ship. The mission would be easier, much easier, if they’d had more technology with them, but everything they might have been able to use was offline. A properly outfitted survey ship would probably have been able to do a great deal more. Matt suspected that the glory of being the first humans to discover proof of alien life would be tempered by everyone complaining about ham-fisted archaeological research. It wasn’t as if any of them actually knew what they were doing, was it?
The team discovered two more bodies as they made their way through what he assumed to have been a wardroom, although he knew there was no way to be sure. Both aliens looked to have been beaten to death, their exoskeletons broken and smashed. He glanced around nervously, unsure if they’d killed each other or if there was a third being lurking in the shadows. But there was nothing save for omnipresent flickers of light.
“I think this is a command center,” Avis said as she peered into yet another compartment. “Take a look at it . . .”
Her voice trailed off as the compartment lit up. Matt jumped, drawing his pistol and glancing around nervously. The bulkheads were glowing, a pearly white light illuminating the giant space. A dozen aliens were visible, bent over pieces of webbing and metal woven cunningly into the deck. He expected them to start moving, but they were all clearly dead. Or biding their time. He held his pistol firmly in one hand as he examined the closest creature.
“Bioluminescent lights,” Slater muttered. “These guys were good.”
“They weren’t drained,” Avis said. Her voice was frantic. “Why weren’t they drained?”
“Unknown,” Slater said. “Perhaps there was something about them that meant they couldn’t be drained.”
“Perhaps they operate on very low power,” Matt speculated. He knew there were some plants and animals that were bioluminescent, but he couldn’t remember very much about them. “The power drain seems to target large stockpiles of power first.”
“Or perhaps this whole ship is a trap,” Avis hissed. Matt didn’t like the way she was waving her pistol in the air. “They’re hunting us right now!”
“Remain calm,” Slater ordered. “There’s no reason to be alarmed.”
Matt carefully removed one of the aliens from its stump. He’d expected to see a console, but instead, he saw a strange mix between a rotting tree and spider’s nest. The alien had been directly linked into the ship, he realized slowly. Humans could, in theory, use implants to do the same, but it wasn’t favored. There was too great a chance of accidentally causing a real disaster.
And if we relied on our implants to control Supreme, he thought, we’d all be dead by now.
“This needs a bigger team with more tech, sir,” he said slowly. “I don’t understand what I’m looking at.”
“Nor do I,” Slater said. “The engineers will have to take a look.”
Matt suspected the engineers were too busy. A third of them, and a handful of volunteers from among the guests, were busy salvaging as much as they could from Gladys, while the remainder were doing something with the power cells and the vortex generator. He had no way to know if it was anything more than busywork, but at least it was keeping some of the guests occupied. And maybe the captain had a plan to get them out after all.
He swept his recorder around, making sure to capture as much as he could, then followed the others through a different hatch. The corridors seemed to twist and turn at random, leading down towards the bowels of the ship . . . or were they going up? The craft was so . . . so alien . . . that it was easy to believe that someone could get lost within its maze of corridors. Losing the thread would be disastrous.
The lights followed them, throwing the corridor into sharp relief. Matt gritted his teeth, trying not to look too closely. Darkness and shadows were spooky, but . . . something about the light gnawed at him. He found it hard to look into the glow. The corridor twisted, then plunged straight down. Matt drifted down, silently relieved that there was no gravity. It was clear, now, that the spiders hadn’t needed gravity at all. Judging by their physical form, they’d probably been happier outside a gravity field.
He swallowed, his mouth dry, as he considered the implications. Just how alien were the spiders? Were they individuals or one vast hive mind? Was the entire starship a nest? Did they have sex or lay eggs or reproduce in a manner completely beyond his imagination? Or . . . could they even talk to humans? It was impossible to imagine those awful mouths shaping human words.
The light grew brighter as he dropped into a large chamber. A single alien was attached to a console, but the remainder of the chamber was empty. It was dominated by four large pods, firmly entangled within the webbing. Warning signals popped up in Matt’s HUD, alerting him to strong magnetic fields. Whatever was in the pods, he thought, the creatures definitely hadn’t wanted it to get out.
“Antimatter,” Slater breathed.
Avis coughed. “Are you sure?”
“I think so,” Slater said. “What else needs magnetic fields for containment?”
“The fields are still operative,” Matt said. That didn’t make sense. The power drain should have killed them long ago. But then, if the power had failed, the alien ship would have been atomized. “Did they . . . did the flickers leave the fields alone?”
“It looks that way,” Slater said. He frowned. “There might be limits to what they can absorb.”
Matt glanced at him. “And if we detonated the antimatter pods, we might be able to overfeed them,” he said. Maybe the flickers could be overfed to death. “Would that work?”
“I don’t know,” Slater said. He sounded worried. “First, we have to confirm that the pods really are antimatter. And then we have to make sure the fields aren’t on the verge of failing anyway.”
Matt swallowed. Antimatter was the single most destructive substance known to mankind. It was used for missile warheads, if he recalled correctly, but not much else. If the pods lost containment, the foreign ship would be vaporized, and Supreme would be badly damaged, perhaps destroyed. They needed to move the alien vessel away before something happened.
“I need to consult with the captain,” Slater said. “We’ll return to the ship.”
“Yes, sir,” Matt said. Angela was waiting for him. “And then we’ll come back?”
“Not if we can help it,” Avis muttered. “The voices are growing louder.”
“Ignore them,” Slater ordered. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“So tell me,” Marie said. She jabbed a finger at a dead body. “In your expert opinion, what killed him?”
Angela didn’t quite glare at her governess, but she wanted to. Marie had offered a brief apology for not being there for Angela when the hypnosis session had taken place, then put her to work. Angela would have found the work degrading if she hadn’t been glad of the chance to do something mindless. Scrubbing decks, washing the injured, and every other task Marie found for her made it harder to dwell on the past.
She looked down at the body on the examination table. An elderly man, probably in his nineties . . . although she knew better than to take that for granted. There was no sign of any injuries, as far as she could tell. Marie had even cut away the man’s shirt and trousers to allow for an easier examination. He had been in good shape, thanks to the bodyshops, she guessed, but he was clearly dead. His expression suggested that his passing hadn’t been pleasant.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “Poison?”
“Could be,”
Marie said. She sounded distracted, as though she was concentrating on something else. “But he’s not the only one. Seven other bodies were found over the last hour, all without any apparent cause of death.”
Angela swallowed. “He looks to have been in pain.”
“He does,” Marie agreed. “But what actually killed him?”
“I don’t know,” Angela said.
“Nor do I,” Marie agreed. She turned to look at Angela. “Whatever killed him might be coming for the rest of us.”
Angela nodded. There were . . . aliens . . . out there . . . and they were hungry. Angela had heard the voices too, growing louder with every hour that passed. It was impossible to escape the sense that they were growing stronger too. She didn’t want to risk going to sleep, even though she knew she must. Her nightmares wouldn’t be pleasant.
The hatch opened. Her father stepped in, looking tired and worn.
“Angela,” he said, “can I speak with you for a moment?”
Angela felt a stab of resentment. Her father hadn’t spoken to her after Finley had attacked her. He’d been concentrating on Nancy and her voices. And yet . . . she rubbed one of her bruises, trying to make him sweat . . . just a little. He deserved to feel shame and guilt for what he’d done to her.
“I suppose,” she said, when Marie cleared her throat loudly. “We’ll use the next room.”
Her father offered no objection. Instead, he opened the hatch and led the way into the tiny compartment. God alone knew what it had been for, back when the universe had made sense, but it was now housing a number of bagged-up corpses. Angela considered, briefly, offering to go to the stateroom instead, yet she wanted her father to be uncomfortable, to suffer.
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