The Boneyards of Nebula

by Rod Little

  The two enemy ships followed them in hot pursuit, but they had hundreds of stowaways now on board. They were about to have a whole new set of problems to deal with.

  “Increasing speed,” Dexter said. “Course laid in for Starbase 21. Shields set at 20% and we can't use more. We will barely make it home, as it is.”

  “And our two new friends?” Bohai asked. “They are on our tail, and will be in firing range in less than ninety seconds.”

  Dexter increased their speed, but did not appear concerned. “I believe they will be otherwise occupied quite soon enough.”

  “Smart,” Sam said. “The Saratu will overrun their ships and kill everyone on board. We just need to stay ahead of them until their bridge is cleared.” He clamped a hand on Bohai's shoulder. “Excellent plan, my man!”

  “Those are the only kind I know, man.”

  Closing the gap, the two Sayan warship continued following their prey. All three ships raced forward through space, while a violent killing spree started to wipe out the lower decks of the two Sayan vessels. Poorly armed for such conflicts, the enemy soldiers were easy meals for their new stowaways.

  The Praihawk pressed on and stayed the course. Time was on their side.

  And then a crash sounded at the back of the ship, following by another loud clang of something falling over.

  “Uh oh,” Sam said. “I think we have more guests.”

  George sighed and ran.

  Chapter 28

  Walter and his companions were lost.

  After they retrieved the key – a slender card they would need to access the Galaxy Walkway – the four of them snaked their way painstakingly through the corridors and into the jetty at the far side of the station.

  The darkness continued to plague them, with only Bem's small light to offer a dim view of each next step forward. Both Mark and Dylan followed close behind and listened for any new sounds in front or behind.

  The boys had been crawling through the ducts, and when they heard Walter's voice, had rushed to get to him. They hadn't meant to knock Bem down, but it did him no harm. The robot was sometimes “helpful to the point of being annoying,” as Walter put it, but he was also sturdy. The reunion was welcome: the two young boys were as happy to find the robot as Walter was to find them spilling out of the duct – instead of more creatures.

  They had already passed the gateway and entered the walkway zone using the key, but still found no one else; they were alone. They wandered through the station until they found the rendezvous point, but the rest of their group was still not there. The emptiness was disheartening, but most of all, confusing.

  Where are they?

  Walter begged to know. Increasingly he was annoyed by any new mysteries. He had been faced with enough of those for one year.

  Where is everybody? Hundreds of people can't just disappear.

  The rendezvous point was near a bifurcation, and Bem flashed his light down the right corridor. The beam hit something on the floor, lying against the wall: oblong, perhaps a stick. Bem rolled to it and cast his light closer: it was the bone of a leg. A human leg.

  “What is it?” Walter asked, ambling up to the robot. “What have you found?”

  “Perhaps the young ones should not look,” Bem said. “I leave it to your judgment.”

  Walter saw it then: there was blood all around the bone, trailing up the corridor. The rest of the body had been dragged somewhere. The leg had been stripped of all flesh, possibly even eaten.

  Walter swung around fast and stopped the boys with one hand. With his other hand, he pushed Bem's palm-light away from the gruesome scene.

  “Don't look. You understand me?”

  The boys were startled by Walter's words.

  “Why?”

  “Boys, we need to walk up this hall. It might lead to our people. But I want you to look at the ceiling until I tell you. Do not look down. Do you understand me?”

  The boys nodded. Walter was frightening them.

  Bem rolled down the hall, and the boys followed him. Walter walked behind and directed the kids until it was safe for them to look down – after they had passed the bone and the messy line of blood. The trail ended at a duct. The body had been dragged inside.

  They needed to continue moving.

  Bem tested his navigation systems, and reported: “Some of the systems are offline due to the power failure.”

  “So, what does that mean?” Walter asked.

  “It means that I cannot navigate us through the station. We will need to rely on visual cues.”

  “Visual cues? Every damn hallway looks the same! Metal tile followed by... oh yes! More metal tile!”

  “There were scratch marks in the second hall we walked to,” Mark said. “And near the door we went in, there was a blue light.”

  “Yeah, but we should mark the way,” Dylan suggested. “Chalk or something. I think we been down this way before already.”

  “I have no chalk,” Walter said flatly.

  “I got my Magic cards,” Mark said, pulling his deck from his back pocket. “We could leave the 'commons' on the floor along the way.”

  “Why do you carry those everywhere? And what are commons?”

  “The ones that aren't rare. They're not worth much, in case we lose them.”

  “Is he speaking English?” Walter asked.

  “I believe he is,” Bem answered.

  “We'll do that.” Dylan said. “Mr. Walter, sir, just put your mind on finding our people. We'll make sure we don't get lost.”

  “An 'elvish warrior' common card here,” Mark spoke to himself as he laid one card on the floor. “Just been keeping them to remind me of Earth. Good luck, maybe. They remind me of home.”

  “Okay, I guess,” Walter mumbled. He didn't believe in luck. “Leave one at the next corner, too. And at every new corridor, always left side, facing forward on the floor.”

  “I surmise that you misunderstand me,” Bem said. “I can geo-mark each location we pass from now on. We will know if we have passed a second time. However, I do not possess a map of forward locations. I falsely believed the map controls still worked.”

  Walter rubbed his eyes, then replaced his glasses on his nose. “I'm sure this is the place. This is where everyone should be. Here or somewhere near here.”

  “I, too, carry a 92% degree of certainty in that belief,” said Bem. “This should be the point.”

  “But no one is here,” Mark said, showing no signs of winding down. Like most kids, he had an atomic capacity for energy. He bounced five meters down the hall and listened. “And I can't hear no one. So it can't be the place.”

  “Or it is the place, and the others didn't make it,” Walter said. “I do not wish to be a pessimist, but something might have happened to them.”

  “The creatures,” Dylan whispered.

  “We do not know that to be certain,” Bem said. “Out of the thirty-six most likely possibilities for their lack of appearance here, twenty-four of them do not involve death or physical harm.”

  “Lovely,” Walter murmured to himself.

  They slipped quietly through the corridor and continued their search.

  Chapter 29

  Halfway back to their Starbase, the Praihawk's pursuers were still tracking and following them, but had not closed the distance. Dexter guessed – or hoped – their crews were being kept busy with the infestation of Saratu on each ship.

  As for the Praihawk, only one creature had succeeded in sneaking on board, and George dispensed it quickly with two bullets. This one's body was not expelled into space, but was sealed in a plastic container in the ship's med lab and kept for study. Now Dexter spent his time examining it, while Bohai and Sam flew the ship. George took the prisoner to the engine bay so he could check on a few systems, restock the hazmat and space-walk suits in the closet and check the emergency guns. He kept one eye on their prisoner and one on his work.

  Sam and Bohai remained on the bridge. Bohai had placed the ship te
mporarily on autopilot, so he could pore voraciously over the books they had taken from the Rue Orca. The tomes were handwritten, and the writing was sometimes hard to decipher.

  “Your book smells old,” Sam complained. “And not in a good way.”

  Bohai didn't look up as he talked. “Is there a good way to smell old?”

  “No. But it smells like a dead body.”

  “I have a gripe of my own. These guys had horrible penmanship,” Bohai said, turning a brittle page. “Guess that's why Rue Orca looks like Blue Orca half the time. I can't tell what they're trying to say sometimes. Is marigold-froll a word?”

  Sam leaned over his shoulder and scanned the paragraph Bohai was reading. “Let me see.”

  He started to run his finger along the line, when Bohai stopped him and pushed his hand aside. “Old print. Real ink. Don't smudge it, please; don't even touch it. The pages are already hard enough to read.”

  “Fair enough, but the words are: Magnetic Pull,” Sam said, then read aloud:

  “Inside the Nebula is the magnetic pull of space so strong, it gathers anything in the galaxy that is not fixed or propelled by its own force. If a ship at the galaxy's opposite end stopped all engines, in twenty-seven years it would be at Nebula's doorstep. And soon after, a part of its dreaded Boneyards.” He paused, then added, “Yikes.”

  He went back to his control panel and left the books to Bohai. Sam bent to the task of testing the communications system; they still had not been able to get connected to Starbase 21.

  “You don't think that book will give you nightmares?” Sam asked.

  “I'm pretty sure it will,” Bohai replied. His eyes never left the page. “I'm pretty sure it'll give me goosebumps, too.”

  “Then why are you reading it?”

  “Information, my man. I have this burning need to know everything. I'm going to see what that shiny ball bearing is all about – the one in the green box. And I want to find out what makes those creatures tick.”

  “Good, because I don't want to read it.” He studied the panel in front of him, then said, “Hey, man. Are you okay? I mean, you've been quiet. And I know you were upset about Earth.”

  “I'm okay.” Bohai said absently. He was lost deep in reading. “I just miss my home, my family. And we can never get it back.”

  “We might.”

  “It was gone forever the minute our folks became genetic mutations, Sam. Lizards. Our families and friends are all gone.”

  “That's not what's bothering you.”

  Finally Bohai took his nose out of the book and closed it. He looked straight at Sam. “Tell me, great OZ, what is bothering me?”

  “We gave up. We left it all behind. Thousands of other survivors, your birds and spiders, we abandoned everyone. We still had cities. They could have been rebuilt.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “That's why you're pissed.”

  “You know,” said Bohai. “Teak left behind all his brothers and sisters. And he had like six hundred of them.”

  “Is that true?”

  Bohai shrugged. “Probably. Wolf spiders have a lot of babies. And at least you have your brother. What do I have left?”

  Sam studied the window, the stars, the ships just out of range. “You've got me. And George, Camila. And Dex! All of us.”

  Bohai laughed. It was his first genuine laugh in weeks.“Wow. Dex? That's not sweetening the deal. Can I exchange him for a refund.”

  Sam laughed, too. They didn't often get to do that anymore. “No refunds, man.”

  “I'll take you, though. You're alright for a skinny kid from Neptune who can't even shoot a pistol right. And who thinks Cat-Women of the Moon was a good movie.”

  “I'm from Pittsburgh, son. Only Dad was from Neptune. And, it is a good movie.”

  “Whatever. Alien-boy. Just don't get a big head when I tell you... you're alright. Thanks for sticking by me. I might not have made it without you. You're a freak, but you're my freak. You've always got my back. And that means something.”

  Sam only let that sit for a second before he laughed again. “If you're waiting for a hug, dude, you might want to pack a lunch.”

  Bohai wiped Sam's face with one hand in a fake slap. He grinned and opened the ancient tome again. He continued reading, but the smile stayed on his face.

  An hour passed. George returned to the bridge to have some company as he fiddled with his weapons. He brought Sheni with him, always in tow. He didn't trust her enough to let her out of his sight. Always one eye on her, and now one eye on the ships through the bridge screens.

  “Should I restrain her in another room?” He asked. “Getting tired of pulling her around with me.”

  Sam glanced at the woman, cuffed at the hands and feet, and shrugged. “She's okay here. Maybe she can offer some help. A little insight.”

  “I'm not helping you,” Sheni said. “You'll all be dead soon, anyway.”

  Sam exhaled. “On the other hand, do whatever you want with her. Shoot her out the airlock if you want. I don't care.” He did care, but he knew George wouldn't actually do that.

  George eyed the woman with suspicion, then went back to cleaning his guns. “I'll leave her here for now.”

  The ship settled into a calm state that almost passed for boredom. They plowed forward, and the enemy followed. Nothing changed, until Bohai sat upright and clicked his fingers. Then he stood with the book in his hands, his eyes wide. The look on his face was somewhere between amazement and delight, and it startled Sam. It was the look one has after realizing that he still has just drawn a straight flush, and he can win the game, after all.

  Bohai bolted for the doorway, but before leaving, he cast a quick glance at the woman, and then at the control panels:

  “You two watch her, and watch the screens. I'll be back. Keep an eye on autopilot.” He turned and was gone.

  Sam didn't like it, but he didn't follow. He had work to do here.

  In the med lab, Bohai found Dexter cutting into one of the Saratu bone fragments, analyzing its structure. The scientist was excited, and began to ramble the second Bohai crossed through the door.

  “I found the most fascinating composition in the bone marrow,” Dexter spoke without taking his eyes from the sample. He studied it closely, grasping a silver tool in his hand that looked a lot like a dental pick, poking the sample. “They have little air pockets in their bones! Can you imagine? They can live underwater or in space for extended periods of time, a day or two, perhaps. That gives them an extraordinary edge over other life forms. It's an advantage that allows them to live almost anywhere. I find it very intriguing.”

  “Great, great,” Bohai said impatiently, waving Dexter's words aside with a hand. Then he claimed proudly, “But I know how to kill them.” He stood and waited for Dexter's reaction.

  “You know how to... what?” This time the scientist looked up from his work and stared straight at the young man as if he'd just noticed that someone was there. “What do you mean, with a pulse rifle?”

  “No. I mean I know how to kill all of them.”

  “All of them? How?”

  “With a substance called Oxylate Carbon Ice. It suffocates them. They can't breathe. Spray a cloud of it over their hive, and they all die.”

  “How do you know this?”

  Bohai lifted the heavy book. It still smelled musty and shed flakes of grime when he handled it. “Info. It's in here. Someone long ago figured it out.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “It only kills adults, though; it doesn't kill the eggs or larvas? Larvus? Larvii?”

  “It's Larvae,” Dexter enunciated. “Lar-vay.”

  Bohai bit his lip, thinking. “So, that might explain why none of these people could wipe out the species. Seems it's hard to break the life cycle of the Saratu, from egg to centipede to... the six-legged hell-hounds they eventually become.”

  “Interesting. May I ask you what this Oxylate Carbon Ice substance is? Where can we find it?'

&nb
sp; Bohai stared back blankly. “Oh. I thought you'd know. You're the scientist.”

  “No such compound has ever been indexed on Earth. I've never heard of Oxylate Carbon Ice. And if I've never heard of it, no one has.” One thing of which Dexter was confident, was his superior intellect.

  “So, what does that mean?”

  “I means: unless you know where we can acquire some, I don't think it will assist us if we should run into more of the Saratu in the future.”

  “There are two ships following us, loaded with Saratu. I have a feeling we will run into more Saratu in our future, Dex.”

  “Then perhaps you should read further.” Dexter turned back to his bone sample. “I have work to do.”

  Bohai was crestfallen. His great discovery may have turned out to be useless, at least for the moment. He placed his giant book onto the side desk and leaned over the examination table to get a better look at the bone fragments. Dexter was again scraping them with a razor and allowing a med evaluator to feed results into the computer.

  Bohai gingerly lifted one of the bones with two fingers and looked at it closely.

  “Put that down please.” Dexter griped, “You're soiling the samples.”

  “Sorry, man.” Bohai dropped the bone gingerly back onto the exam table. The bone started to change in color. It turned brown, shriveled and even started to flake and crumble.

  “What did you do?” Dexter asked in a sharp accusatory tone. He probed the bone with a small tool and it broke apart like a brittle leaf. He waved a specialized pen-size sensor over the brown pile of dust and took a sample reading. “This bone is dead. Its moisture content is depleted. What did you do?”

  “Nothing, I told you. I just touched it, that's all.”

  “Is there something on your hands? A chemical or... or a virus?”

  Instinctively, Bohai rubbed his hand on his shirt. “Ewww, I hope not.”

  “Give me your hand.”

  Dexter grabbed Bohai's hand and placed the med scanner on the boy's palm, then his fingers, pressing the sensor hard against his skin. The readings came back normal.

  “Is it a virus?” Bohai asked, panicked. “It's a space virus isn't it? Or some kind of space melanoma? Or a space flu, or...”