Omnigalactic

  Another flash of blue. A monstrous screech shook me in my chair, and the Lady Luna catapulted forward. We were free. Jord must've shot it.

  “He's running away! Quick, turn us around, and let's get the sucker!”

  “We almost died!” I said. “Now, you want to chase it?”

  “The sooner we kill this thing, the sooner we get paid!”

  Damn it. As badly as I wanted to go back my little bed at the Brick and hide under the sheets, he was right. No way I was going to admit it, though. I pulled right on the stick, until our light beams hit the shadowy mass that was swimming away. I slammed the throttle. It swam down toward the trench. I bet it was going back to its hidey-hole. I smirked at the idea of our pursuer, now being afraid of us.

  Jord blasted another round at it. He missed by a sliver, and the bright blue streak soared down the span of the trench, illuminating the massive walls that were flanking us like an emergency flare. I pressed further, inching ever closer to give Jord a better shot. But then, the shadow swerved and zipped left. I veered left to follow, but lost sight of it.

  Jord's voice crackled through the intercom. “He went down! Further into the trench!”

  I caught a glimpse of it, swimming into an opening in the face of the wall. Its hidey-hole, just like I’d thought. Hold on, what if it was a trap? I could envision the scenario now - we would chase it in there; then it would snatch us and rip the ship to pieces.

  “C'mon, Sai! Let's go!”

  “What if its a trap?” I asked, holding us steady.

  “Look, he's strong, but we showed him who's stronger. He's scared now.”

  I nudged the throttle forward, putting us at a crawl toward the opening. My fingers twitched. My heart beat faster. My breathing became shallower. There was no telling when it would strike. I couldn't help but think about Maws - a horror movie about a pack of killer space-piranhas. They'd attack ships out of nowhere and without mercy, stripping the people inside to white bone. I felt like the guy from the beginning of the movie. You know, the one who got killed off in the first ten minutes?

  Scraping sounds helped me quickly realize the opening was just wide enough for the ship. The path ahead became a twisting, turning tunnel. The light beams hit a wall — a steep wall. Where had it gone? Had it snuck past us? How? I checked the aft and side cameras - nothing apart from ocean and rock.

  A stream of bubbles floated past the cockpit and up. I undid the restraints and leaned forward in my seat. The tunnel continued on an upslope. Despite wanting to turn back, I pulled up on the stick and followed through. Up and up and up we went, until the water receded. I hovered just above the pool. “A cave under the sea,” I said to myself. “Neat.”

  “Why'd you stop?” Jord asked.

  “Too narrow for us to fit through. I think we lost it. We should head back.”

  “He's further down this cave; I can feel it. Don't get all jumpy now.”

  “You're not thinking we should—”

  He chuckled, and each laugh crackled through the speaker. “We'll pursue him on foot. Land us, baby!”

  I sighed hard and landed us on a patch of smooth rock, regretting ever setting foot on that planet. I was going to die in that dark, creepy cave. I just knew it.

  I clicked a few buttons to keep the lights on, so we could at least find our way back. Jord waited for me at the bottom of the boarding ramp. He handed me my customized plasma pistol and grinned. “You ready, big guy?” he asked.

  I clicked off the safety. “I'll just say this: I haven't made peace with my loved ones yet.”

  He nudged me with the buttstock of his Mark V. “Quit being such a buzzkill. Just think of it as another vanar hunt… except bigger… and deadlier.”

  “You remember my blood type, right?”

  He slapped a satchel of flares into my free hand and shoved me forward. “Get moving, smartass. And keep an eye out.”

  Since I couldn't see anything but blackness after about thirty feet, I whipped out one of the skinny, cylindrical flares and ignited it. Neon-yellow light flooded the tunnel, exposing the curvy walls, smoothed by eons of weathering. Jord's long coat brushed my shoulder as he took point.

  The faint whooshing, churning sounds of the ocean permeated the unknown thickness of rock and echoed throughout the tunnel. Cries and moans of distant, massive sea beasts created a haunting soundtrack to our hunt. Creeping fear fingered at the nape of my neck and reached around to apply subtle force against my windpipe. Adding to that, the air was thick with humidity, further choking me. The flare went out in my hand.

  Jord must've heard my heavy breathing, since he turned around and asked, “You all right? You sound like you're dying back there.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry. Out of shape.”

  “You've been on hikes tougher than this. What's wrong?”

  I reached for another flare and ignited it. “I'm all right. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can change my pants.”

  He smirked. “Always the joker. C'mon.”

  Further into the cave, we went. How big was that cave system? It must've been a couple miles at least, judging by how many flares we'd been through. We had to be reaching the end soon.

  My thought process was interrupted by a warbling sound behind me. “What was that?” I hissed.

  Rapid tapping filled the tunnel. My heart shot into my throat. I aimed my pistol in all directions. Nothing. Just moistened stone.

  Jord looked around, his Mark V dangling in his hands. How could he have been so calm? “Could be some kind of seismic activity,” he said. “Old volcano or something.”

  The tapping grew louder and more furious, until it shook the tunnel. Shocks went up legs and rattled my knees. I stumbled, but Jord snatched me by the arm and held me up. Then, suddenly, it all stopped.

  I stood back up and scanned the cave. “I hope you're right.”

  We pressed onward, every minute or so punctuated by the violent tapping. The further we went, the louder it became — and we were running low on flares. The tunnel opened onto a vast cavern adorned in stalagmites and stalactites, as wide as it was tall for a span of fifty or so feet. Without hesitation, Jord trudged down into the cavern. I hoped he knew what he was doing.

  My boots squished into some foamy substance. It stuck to the bottoms and with every step I took, it sounded like someone shoveling mud. The cavern shook as I followed Jord. Although, this time, it came from all around us — and uncomfortably close, too. That's when it popped into my big — but mostly empty — cranium: It wasn’t “an old volcano”. Something else was making that noise.

  More warbling from over my shoulder. I spun around to look, finger on the trigger. My hand shook from my overactive nerves. Hell, even if I had seen anything, I'd miss, being that jumpy.

  “We're not alone,” I whispered.

  “I think we found his lair,” Jord said and knelt next to me. Slowly and precisely, he placed a hand on my shoulder and pulled me down low. “Don't freak out, but I just saw something big shuffle past in that direction.”

  My heart skipped a beat. Oh shit, this was it.

  "When that flare dies,” Jord began, “count to three, light a new one, and I'll start firing away. It'll scare him out, and he'll go running. I'll chase him down. You come at him from the opposite direction and start blasting, but watch for crossfire. No sense getting each other killed. Got it?"

  I nodded and watched the glow of the flare dim, until darkness overtook the cave. Nothing but black all around me now. More warbling around us, but it was closer, like something was breathing on me. I sucked in a lungful of air and counted to three.

  Neon-yellow light exploded into the cave around me. I looked up and was met with the stares of hundreds of stalk-eyes, black and expressionless. They were attached to barrel-sized chitinous bodies with scissor-like claws and multiple pairs of legs, rattling against the cave floor.

  “Uh, continue with the plan?” I asked, remain
ing as still as possible.

  Jord stayed silent.

  “Jord?”

  He answered me with only one word: “Run.”

  The chitinous crustaceans charged us. Jord opened fire on them with the Mark V, filling the cave with the hum of a hedge-trimmer. I set my plasma pistol to automatic and joined him in thinning their numbers. Purple fluid sprayed from their bodies, mixing with the sticky foam underfoot. A flurry of claws swiped and nipped at me, scissoring my trouser legs to ribbons. I screamed and shot into the horde of chopping death.

  Jord grabbed me by the jacket and yanked me away. “Run, idiot!”

  He didn't have to tell me again. I charged back and out of the cave, sprinting as hard as I could. I glanced back at Jord, yelling as he fled. They were right on him, chopping at the tiny gap of air between them. I fired a few bursts into the killer crustaceans closest to him. They collapsed, tripping a group behind them. He caught up to me.

  For what felt like twenty minutes, we ran and ran. The stomping of our boots was drowned out by the thousands of tapping legs. They gained on us. I didn't have much juice left in me.

  “We can't outrun them!” I yelled between breaths. “But if we stay and fight, we'll die!”

  “Got any better ideas?” he asked. He sprayed the gauss gun in their direction. Stray rounds chipped off hunks of rock wall. A-ha!

  “You're normally the one with crazy ideas,” I said. “But, it's our only option! Collapse the tunnel!”

  “We'll be crushed!”

  “Crushed to death or chopped to bits! Make the choice!”

  He stopped, turned around, and blasted the rock wall overhead. I joined in to help. Pebbles turned to stones, and stones turned to boulders that smashed the creatures into crunchy, bloody messes. They clambered over their fallen comrades as the tunnel slowly sealed with hewn rock and mangled bodies.

  Jord beat his chest. “That's right!”

  I sighed in relief. “Whew. What were those? Some kind of hive-mind crabs?”

  “Huh?”

  “You know, like colony-making insects and stuff.”

  “I don't care,” he said. “At least, they weren't spiders. I'll take claws over venomous fangs any day.”

  Behind the makeshift barricade, the sound of tapping faded, drowned out by a crescendoing rumble. I stomped my foot. “C'mon, what now?”

  Water trickled onto my head like an old, leaky pipe. The rumbling grew louder. We looked at each other and sprinted down the tunnel. I glanced behind to see more water gushing in, only to trip over my feet. I slammed to the stone floor, bruising my face and choking on a mouthful of saltwater. Jord grabbed a hold of me, but I slipped and landed on my ass. The water level rose, and a roaring wave swept over us. My body spun around and around like a ragdoll in a washing machine as we were forced through the tunnel.

  I hacked up the last of the water and paddled to keep myself afloat. It was pitch-black again, so I reached for a new flare. Oh, no! “Jord! I lost the flares! What do we do now?”

  “Stay calm!” His voice echoed around us. “Ride this baby to the ship; then, we'll bail!”

  Up ahead, faint, white light emitted from the ship and restored my eyesight. The current emptied us into the cave. I tumbled and smacked into the smooth rock — no doubt, leaving another bruise on my body. With water raining down upon me, Jord took my hand and propped me up. Battered and out of breath, we shambled our way aboard the Lady Luna and took off, leaving our mysterious sea-beast to fight another day.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Death Throes

  I wiped the light coat of sweat from my forehead as I struggled to find any semblance of climate control in our dinky room. Anura was always a tad warm and humid, but it never quite reached these steamy temperatures. I glanced over to see Jord's organic and cyborg eyes scrolling back and forth as he read something on a tablet; then, I continued my quest for a climate-control panel. I was glad to see he paid no mind to the heat. It must have been what Tresedi were used to. Or maybe he was too much of a hard-ass to complain — making me look quite pathetic by comparison.

  I stopped and squinted to see if there were any beads of moisture on his forehead. His eyes halted, shot up, and focused on me. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  My knees popped as I knelt to look under the bed — a sly move to pretend I hadn’t just been staring at him. “Huh?” I asked. “Sorry. I was just looking for the climate control.”

  “Under the bed?”

  Defeated, I sat on the bare, metal floor. The cold steel felt good against my ass and lower back, so I lay down and let it cool the rest of my back, too. “It's so damn hot here. It was sort of nice when we first landed, but it's unbearable now.”

  “You don't know what ‘too damn hot’ is until you've set foot on Icto II.”

  I stayed on the floor. No way I was going to get up — unless I had to. “Was that back during the AI War?”

  “Yep,” he said bluntly.

  We were both quiet for a few awkward seconds. Finally, I asked, “What were you doing there?”

  He took a deep breath and sighed. “I was a part of a special ops infiltration team. We were there to end the war.”

  I sat up, almost reflexively. “Really? That's awesome. But wait — they trusted a mercenary with a super-secret mission? No offense, but why you?”

  “Because I was one of the few left alive who were crazy enough to take the job. There were even fewer left after the job was done.” His voice cracked a little, like I’d chipped at a soft spot. The organic eye stared through both me and the wall behind me, like he was reliving that moment. Maybe I'd ask him about that story another time.

  I decided to change the subject. “So, what are you reading?”

  He came back to reality. “Oh, uh, just looking up some local Harland wildlife on an outdoorsman site.”

  I lay my head back down. “You think that'll help?”

  “I don't see you coming up with any ideas, Mister CEO. There's fifty-thousand on the line, and you're just laying there.”

  “It's hot,” I said. “I can't think when I'm hot.”

  “Just saying, Sai. We need to change our approach. Help me think.”

  Thunder rumbled outside, and sinister, dark clouds swept in. Raindrops carried by gusts of wind tapped against the glasteel window. Good; maybe it would finally get cool in there. I rose from the floor and stepped toward the window, undid two latches, and nudged it open a tad. Crisp, briny air blew in, circulating the dank and stagnant air in the room. Oh, yes, what a relief.

  I stood there for a long while, taking in the pleasant drop in temperature as the clouds blocked out that tyrant of a sun. High tide came and pounded at the white beach. My thoughts clawed at my brain for some kind of idea to take the creature down. But, nothing came. It was a slippery bastard, that was for sure. I was beginning to get the sinking feeling that my experience hunting vanar in the Anuran swamps wasn't going to be much help there.

  A long, black shadow swept up the white sand from the crashing tide. I squinted for a better look. It moved like a black noodle in boiling water as the waves continued to crash into it. I waved Jord over.

  “Get over here,” I said. “Come look at this.”

  “What? Somebody surfing during a storm?”

  I waved harder. “Seriously, check this out.”

  Jord's boots thudded as he joined me at the window. “What the hell is that?” he asked.

  “I dunno. Want to go down there?”

  “Let's do it.”

  We left our stuffy, little room, then went down three floors’ worth of stairs and out to the beach. Flashes of lightning streaked across the sky, stabbing and slashing the massive, black clouds. Cold, heavy droplets slapped against the top of my head, as if to remind me that it was raining.

  My boots splashed in the foamy seawater as we neared the long, black shadow. It wasn’t so much of a shadow now - more of a shriveled, tentacle-like object,
ten feet in length. Could it have been some kind of giant, weird invertebrate like a mollusk? I kicked at it and hopped away to dodge any retaliatory attack. There was no movement.

  Jord gave me a confused look. I shrugged and said, “Hey, you never know.”

  He knelt down and touched it. After waiting a few seconds to see if it would attack him, I decided it was safe enough to inspect it personally. I inched my hand closer, until it touched the tentacle. It wasn't squishy, like invertebrates usually were. It had bumpy flesh — like my face when I hit puberty, and no girl would even speak to me. Even stranger, it wasn't cold to the touch, but radiated with warmth, like it was still alive.