Alien Infestation

by Peter Fugazzotto

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  ENGSTROM STOPPED IN the hallway and stared at the map on her forearm display. "We're close."

  "I don't like it," said Snake.

  She turned to him. He trailed behind her, limping heavily, his forehead cut, and blood painting the side of his face. Luckily it washed over his bad eye so it did not matter. "Too quiet," he added. "This is how it was before they ambushed me."

  "We're almost there. So stick close."

  Snake listened to Engstrom. He stuck close enough that she could hear his breathing, smell his sweat, time the soft scraping of his boots along the floor. These things could have bothered her, a soldier too close to her. She could feel the heat of his breath against her skin. In most other cases, she would have told her companion to give her more distance, to not crowd her, not when an enemy could be in hiding.

  But with Snake she wanted him close. She felt a comfort with him near by. She liked to have him within an arm's distance, and it was not because she was afraid of the bugs. Her desire to have him close was because she wanted to be near enough that she could reach out and touch him, feel the tingling of her fingers when their skin made contact, become enveloped in the electricity that surged through her muscles.

  She bit her lip hard. She needed to focus. She had a task at hand. She had a mission. Since when was she the one to get all gushy over a man, and especially a pirate and scoundrel like Snake. Maybe it was just the emotion of battling with the bugs. Maybe that had synched with her sense of calm and made her reach out to him as something solid in the chaos. But, no, she knew it was more than that. She liked Snake. She more than liked him.

  She thought about him. His lips against hers. His body pressed against her. The soft purr of his voice in her ear.

  She cursed beneath her breath. Focus.

  Chittering broke into her thoughts. She froze. She flicked the missile launcher switch on gun and felt the weapon whine as it began to power up.

  Snake laid a hand on her elbow. "You sure you want to use that. We're getting close to the outer wall of the Poros. If you miss the bugs and hit the wall, we're all going to be sucked into space."

  "I won't miss." But even as she said that she knew he was right and she powered down the missile. She toggled it to bullet mode.

  "They're ahead of us," he said. "I hear them coming."

  Engstrom glanced at the map on her forearm, calculated another path to the control room, and waved Snake after her. It was a bit of a maze of hallways and connecting rooms in this section of the Poros since it was used often for the processing of the sleepers. It had holding rooms connected to examination rooms and long corridors with benches along the wall. While the other part of the ship was more straight runs of halls, this section was porous meaning it was easier to find an alternative route to the control room but also that it would be easier for the bugs to come and Engstrom and Snake from any direction.

  "We'll take it slow here," she whispered. "Watch every door."

  "If we get split up, we rendezvous in the control room."

  "No," she said. "At this point, we just can't get split up. We need to stick together. We need to have each other's backs no matter what. Can you do that for me?"

  "I can."

  She paused at a closed doorway halfway down the hall. She tested the handle and slowly turned it. The handle squeaked. She froze listening intently for any sign of movement on the other side of the door.

  She pushed the door openly slowly and stepped into the room. It was clear. Snake hurried in after her. It was an examination room with a metal bed and medical tubes and equipment lining the wall.

  She crossed the room and eased open the other door. A trio of bugs passed on the other side. She lifted a finger to her lips and Snake stepped back, gun pointed at the doorway.

  Engstrom wanted to close the door. But she was afraid that it would make noise, even just a little scraping, and the bugs would hear and turn back for them. It was only three bugs and she imagined that they could easily mow them down, but the bugs were everywhere in the halls and she worried that the gunfire would only draw a swarm to them.

  She held her breath, waiting. Seconds dragged. She lost sense of time, the only markers being the receding shuffling steps of the bugs. She let her breath escape. She turned to Snake and nodded.

  His lips were set, his eye narrowed.

  She pulled the door further open and peered both directions down the hall. It was clear. The bugs were gone.

  "Let's go."

  They continued this way for several minutes until they finally reached a small waiting room opposite a hallway from the door to the control room.

  She stood at the door, one hand on the handle. She turned back to Snake. "Thank you for coming back for me. For helping me with this."

  "I'm not sure whether I was actually any help," he said. The blood on the side of his face had dried now, and he looked more haggard than he had earlier. "I probably slowed you down since you had to rescue me. Didn't see that coming. Not much of a hero."

  "But you came for me. You could have been free of the Poros now. You could have been safely away on the Phaethon but you came back for me."

  "Don't ask me why," he said. "I did what I had to do."

  "I wasn't sure that you would."

  He laughed a bit. "Neither was I. But you got it into my head to think about all those people in the colony ship. Waking to the horror of the bugs outside their pods. Or never waking again at all. Couldn't let that happen. And you. I didn't want you to get caught out here."

  "I could have handled it fine myself. I'm not some helpless damsel in distress."

  He lowered his gaze. "I know. I didn't want you to be out here alone by yourself." He moved closer to her. "I didn't want to let you down. I wanted you to know who I really was."

  Her hand trembled on the handle. He had raised his eye and locked his gaze onto her hers. She felt the pounding of her heart against her chest. She licked her lips. Her breath surged.

  She'd deal with Snake later. Not now. Not in the middle of all this. She didn't need the wave of confusion and emotion washing over her right now, not when she had a mission to complete, not when the bugs were hunting them.

  She quickly turned from him, pushed the door open, crossed the hall, and slipped into the control room.

  The room was empty. It resembled an auditorium with descending tiers of workstations that overlooked a wall of video feeds. The screens alternated showing vital statistics for the inhabitants of pods, maps of the colony ship quadrants, and live feeds scrolling through camera views of the sleepers.

  Engstrom stared for a moment at the sleepers. These were the people she needed to save. She saw a young girl, one hand cupped near her mouth. A woman's long pale braids floated above her head. A bearded man's eyes flicked back and forth behind closed lids.

  She glanced at another screen that showed the long columns of pods. Five thousand sleepers. Five thousand travelers completely unaware of the threat to their lives, unaware of the death and terror that haunted the halls of the Poros.

  She did not know the exact uncoupling sequence but she should be able to access it from the Poros's main AI or somewhere deep in the computer systems. It would not be classified information so it should be easy to find and she imagined the sequence would be pretty straightforward, similar to other types of docking that she had done in the past as they had gathered more ships to the convoy. Nothing above her ability level.

  She reached the main control station. It reeked of bug. The controls were smashed, wires exposed, circuit boards destroyed, monitors cracked, and foul-smelling ochre blood soaking the station.

  "Damned bugs!" Snake ran back to the door and slammed it shut behind them. "Are there any in here?"

  Engstrom looked around the room, peering into the shadows, glancing at the air vents, ducking to look under the stations. "All clear."

  Snake came back to her side and poked at the control station with the tip of his gun. "Can yo
u override it? Is there another way to uncouple the colony ship?"

  Engstrom sat down at one of the auxiliary stations. She could not connect with the main AI. She could not access the basic systems logs. "It's more than just these stations. The bugs have gotten more deeply into the ship's systems. I can't initiate the sequence from here."

  "So what then? Do we go to the ship's command center?"

  She thought about the long journey down the halls and up to the next level. If Kronos was still alive and had access to the ship's control systems, he would have uncoupled the colony ship. "I don't think that will do us any good."

  "So is there a work around here? There's gotta be some kind of fail safe built in here. They wouldn't just design the ship so that we couldn't figure out another way in case the systems failed."

  "There is a way that might work."

  "Well, what is it?" asked Snake.

  "We need to manually disconnect the colony ship."

  "Then let's stop wasting time and do that so we can get back to the Phaethon."

  She stared at the video feeds. "We'll have to go outside. We'll have to manually disengage the docking connection."

  "Outside?" Snake gasped.

  Something smashed against the door of the control room. "And we're going to need to hurry because that door is not going to hold for long."

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  SNAKE FELT THE beads of sweat forming on his brow. He tapped the air regulator on his space suit and then looked at the gauge. It showed a steady supply. He scrolled through the screen on his forearm and adjusted the temperature. Immediately the air was cooler but still he sweated.

  "Are you sure you don't want me to go outside?" asked Engstrom. She stood in the control room, gun slung over her shoulder.

  Snake grunted. "I can do this."

  "I know you can. I don't doubt you. I'm asking whether you want me to go out instead."

  He backed away from Engstrom and into the compression chamber. "Tell me again one last time what I need to do."

  He listened to Engstrom describe the process again. First the cycling out of the air from the two corridors that connected the colony ship and the Poros. He would see the control panel on the hull of the military ship. Once the corridors had been emptied of air, then he could hit the code on the panel for the disconnecting sequence. The latches would open and then he could proceed to the main hitch with the colony ship. Again it was just a matter of flipping the switches.

  "And that's it? Nothing else to do?" he asked.

  "Provided it all goes well. Yeah, nothing else to do."

  "And if there's a problem?"

  "We'll deal with it." Engstrom pressed her fingers to her lips and then touched the glass of Snake's helmet. "Get this job done and we'll see if your kisses meet my expectations."

  Snake could not hide his stupid grin. "I'll be back before you know it and, don't worry, no one's complained about my kisses yet."

  Engstrom chuckled. "I'm a bit more picky than a no one."

  Snake pulled the door shut, spun the handle to the locked position, and swiped the control screen to begin the compression. While the lights travelled from green to yellow to red, he clipped himself into a line. He pulled the line out from the feed and then double-checked the connection to his suit. Once he was out of the Poros, the line was his only connection to the ship. If it snapped or somehow broke free from his suit, he would risk drifting off to his death into the stars.

  He turned one last time to the door. Through the thick glass, Engstrom pressed her face. He shot her a quick thumbs up.

  He'd get back. He had a kiss owed to him. Nothing was going to get in the way of that kiss.

  He floated with the loss of gravity, and spun the handle of the outer door open. Instead of seeing the wall of stars that he expected, he saw the massive outer hull of the colony ship. It towered above and below him and stretched far to the sides so that only ribbons of stars were visible at the end of the ship. Somehow he had imagined that the colony ship would have been smaller than the Poros but that was not the case.

  He slipped out of the compression chamber, closed the door, and then hooked the carabiner at the far end of his tether to a hook on the outside of the ship. He tested it once by giving it a firm tug. It held. Good.

  He turned on his headlamp to find his way along the shadowy chasm between the ships.

  "How are things out there, pirate?"

  He smiled at hearing Engstrom's voice, even though it rode above waves of surging static. He hated work outside of ships. Even though he was always tethered and often with others, he always felt an icy chill soak his spine as if there was always some great menace hidden in the stars behind him. No matter how much he rationalized it he could never lose that feeling of dread.

  "So far so good. The cockroaches making any progress?"

  "Quieter than I'd like actually. I'd prefer them banging at the door because then I'd know where they were. They went silent shortly after you entered the chamber." The last bit of her words was harder for him to make out with the static rising.

  "Hang in there. All goes well and I'll be back shortly."

  Everything did go well. At first.

  Using a rail he pulled himself, hand over hand, to the first connecting tube between the colony ship and the Poros. He popped open the control panel, enter the sequence, and hit the command button. He watched as the control panel showed the sealing of the doors and the cycling out of the air. Then he initiated the protocol unlatch the connecter from the Poros. The giant metal latches popped open.

  When the connector still remained attached to the marine destroyer, Snake climbed up alongside the seal, hooked himself into a rung, wiggled his fingers under the seal, gathered his feet beneath him, and lifted. The seal held for a second and then popped open, the connecter retracting back towards the colony ship.

  He climbed across to the next connecting tube and repeated the same process. Both connectors were disengaged.

  All was going well until he reached the main hitch.

  When he opened the control panel, the display was dead. He knocked it with his fist. Still nothing. He opened and closed the panel, and then tried to toggle several switches. The display remained black, reflecting back the headlight on Snake's helmet.

  "Engstrom, I've got a problem here."

  Static washed back over the comms line.

  He cursed. Every single time that damned comms line got swallowed in static.

  "Can you hear me? I can't get the damned thing free. The power is down for the hitch controls."

  Snake waited, hoping that she would come back on line but nothing.

  He stared back at the compression chamber door wondering if he should go back in and talk with her about what to do next, but he already knew what he would need to do. If the external control panel was not working, he would need to manually disengage the hitch. That was always the protocol when he served in the Space Marines and would be the same now.

  And if he went back inside the Poros now, he would be more reluctant to return back out here. He checked his air supply. Enough for another half hour of work out here, and the power in the suit was fine. Plenty of time to do the work that he would need to do.

  He took a few measured breaths, climbed up alongside the hitch, and hooked a carabiner into a metal loop by the hitch. He dug his fingers under the release bar, gathered his feet beneath, and pushed with his legs. No movement. But he kept at it, grunting, extending his back, thighs trembling. It was either stuck or just too heavy for him to move along. He tried again, gathering his strength with a roar. Again he failed.

  Snake pulled a wrench from his belt and used it as a lever. All that did was bring sharp pain in his hands.

  "Engstrom, I've got a serious problem out here." But again she did not reply.

  He looked again at the compression chamber. He wondered if he should get her. Maybe they both could open the hitch with their combined strength.

  "Come on, Engstrom.
I need a little advice here."

  He strained to listen through the static. Was that gunfire beneath it? A muffled scream?

  His breath tightened. He went to wipe the beads of sweat form his forehead and his hand bumped into the glass of the plasteen of the helmet.

  Snake needed to figure this out fast and then get back inside to make sure that she was safe.

  "Engstrom?"

  He turned back to the latch and again tried to pry it open with the wrench. He pulled so hard that the tool sprung out of his hands. He grabbed at it but it spun away from his reach shooting across the expanse between the two ships and bouncing off the hull of the colony ship before spinning out towards the blanket of stars. Lost forever.

  He stabilized himself against the Poros, and removed an explosive charge from his belt. This was the last resort.

  He carefully removed the charge from the packaging, set it into the middle of the latch, and inserted an ignition module. He hoped the explosion would be enough to break the hitch in two but not so strong that it would blow a hole in the side of the either ship. He added a little more explosive. He would not have a second chance. He needed to get this right on the first attempt. He linked the controls in suit with the charge.

  He set the countdown for a minute. More than enough time to get back to the safety of the compression chamber.

  Only it was not. He was halfway back to the door leading back into the Poros, maybe twenty seconds later, when the charge went off.

  The force him hit hard, harder than he would have expected. He must have used too much explosive. It exploded too soon. The concussive impact hit him hard from behind, like a bull charging into him. He screamed in pain.

  The force drove him away from the hitch, tearing his grip loose from the rail, and hurling him into the side of the colony ship. He hit it hard. The air escaped his lungs and pain stabbed at his already injured leg. He spun around in the zero gravity.

  He shook his head to clear the descending shards of blackness. Deep breaths. He looked at the status bars in his helmet display. Everything functioning. No alerts. No breaches. The suit had not been damaged.