Odyssey (The Spiral Slayers Book 3)

by Rusty Williamson

  “Radin, kindly inform Bugs, and let’s make it happen. You can…”

  Alarms went off.

  “The sunlight in the Atrium has just shut down,” Environmental reported.

  This was an emergency. After several days the thermo heat, which didn’t have the depth of a planet’s, would dissipate near the surface and the only heat source would be the Mount Burnwall volcano. In days everything would freeze.

  “Direct a sensor drone from Station Island,” Adamarus ordered. “And I want to go down and have a look. Radin, you have the con and keep me updated.” He turned, and Evelyn caught his eye, “You want to tag along?”

  “Sure,” Evelyn got up leaving the other com officers to handle everything.

  When they got in the corridor, Adamarus tried to take her hand. She playfully slapped it away.

  “Are you crazy,” she said under her breath her face turning red, “what if someone comes around the corner.”

  Adamarus laughed. He felt so good now that they were together.

  Trust, there was trust.

  He hadn’t even thought about going back to the ladies of Nemesis City. He would never return. It amused him to think that the last time he’d seen Dash that marine had punched him out. He was sure the girls thought that was the reason he’d never returned.

  When they entered the Atrium, it was dark… but at 4:15 pm in the afternoon instead of 7:00 pm. The only light was the glow of the distant Mt. Burnwall volcano. The smells of plants and night’s cooling breeze blew across them.

  Adamarus com buzzed, “Yes.”

  “Radin here. The drone from the Island is still twelve-minutes out however, we checked the two cameras we have there and one is mucked up, but we have a partial view from the other. Something very strange happened out there. We’ve got…dead bugs…wasps and some bees to be exact, everywhere. I’m talking thousands. One hell of a mess.”

  Adamarus’ eyebrows rose, What the hell? “All right… sphere bots?” It sounded like a cleanup task made for the softball sized robots.

  “We’re programming them now. Wheel out launchers one and two. They’ll be ready to release as soon as you get them outside.” Radin said.

  “Okay.”

  ---

  When the lights suddenly went off mid-afternoon every animal in the Atrium was stunned. Nothing like this had ever happened in memory.

  The bees of South End Forest were confused and shocked. They navigated mainly by the sun. All their buzzing stopped, they landed immediately and hunkered down waiting in fear.

  These bees knew nothing of the battle in the north.

  Bees near the God Door saw it open, saw the completely strange reed-like animals emerge and make strange noises. They stood straight up like reeds in a field.

  They saw them roll out bizarre things with small lights on them. Then many small lights flew off in the air. The bees were terrified.

  ---

  After they released the sphere bots and they flew off, Adamarus and Evelyn climbed a hill so they could see the Atrium better.

  The drone had just reached the sunlight, and Radin reported the electrical short was due to bug juice and that the drone’s sphere bots were making repairs.

  The sky was dark. After a moment Evelyn asked, “Where is the sunlight?”

  Adamarus checked the time and got his bearings, “Somewhere at the west end.” He raised his arm and pointed and as he did the sunlight came back on.

  ---

  The bees watched the reed animals stand tall on the top of a hill.

  They saw one point to the sky and… there was light.

  “Draw them, mold them in your memory for they are not new reed animals,” an elder sister announced.

  “What do you mean?” danced another.

  “d-bet only knows… they came from the God Door, silly. They are the Gods.”

  The bees watched as the shorter one with long hair walked to a rose bush and smelled one of the flowers.

  “That one must be a sister God,” one said.

  “And the other, the one who fixed the sun, she must be… the queen God!”

  “The queen God,” they whispered as Adamarus walked across the field.

  ---

  After the devastating defeat, the darkness and appearance of the Gods to bring back the light, the bees stopped attacking the wasps. The wasps attacked but the Honey Sucker at each hive entrance defeated the wasps with few exceptions.

  A thousand years later the bees harnessed fire and made weapons. At this point, they attacked the wasps of Willard Forest, and within two hundred years the bees had conquered the wasps.

  Then the bees spread throughout Willard Forest and even to the slopes of Mount Burnwall.

  ---

  Nemesis slowed and approached the yellow dwarf. Bugs got to transition the black hole into the Basin well outside the star system exposing the Nemesis. Then they made their way to the second rock planet out from the star.

  Moral was high and everyone was awake for the event. Everyone who wanted went down to the planet and Nemesis remained for five weeks.

  Whitehall was one of several dozen who chose not to go down. He had other things he needed to do.

  In the second week, on a day when most were down on the planet, he moved all of the bomb parts he’d smuggled on board from his cabin to the EVA prep room, assembled them and suited up. He carried the bomb and mounted it on the coupling securing the Loud ship, activated it and returned.

  Now he was set.

  ---

  It was a female ensign who accidentally did it.

  Disembarking from a shuttle returning from the planet, her hands full she dropped some of her gear. It went bouncing away, and she bent down to retrieve it. Holding something in her left hand she used this hand anyway to support herself several times while she picked up her gear. She wouldn’t even remember that it happened.

  ---

  Matt Cramer was an imaginative man. He happened to be on duty helping unload the samples the scientists had collected down on the planet before clearing the shuttle which itself was under quarantine until it could be sanitized.

  On his way back for the final load, he was shocked to see the quarantine door open. He quickly closed it. As he turned back to the shuttle, he saw what appeared to be a strange foot print. Something like an giant insect might make. He spotted two more… headed for the quarantine door. They looked like some kind of foot, with one sharp toe.

  Shit, he thought, they accidentally brought back some kind of large insect.

  He was just about to sound the alarm when Bret, a fellow worker, appeared on the other side of the quarantine door.

  He keyed the intercom, “Hey Matt, did you close the door?”

  “Yes. You leave it open?”

  “Sorry. Yeah, it was me.”

  Matt looked down at the weird marks on the floor, Yeah, an alien stowaway, you idiot, and he forgot about it.

  ---

  Nemesis had departed the planet, and Whitehall’s plan was simple: kill Bugs and damage the Loud ship to stop this insane plan to catch up and destroy the Blackship.

  Whitehall’s bomb was in place, and the radio detonator was in his pocket. He wanted to do it before the black hole was transitioned back from wherever it had gone. Then this insanity would end. They could find a nice Amular like planet and forget all this madness.

  He went to the far end of the ship, hid and waited half an hour. Then pushed the button. He heard nothing, felt nothing. Nemesis was too large.

  ---

  One second everything was fine, the next… not fine at all.

  The explosion blew apart the coupling holding the seven-mile Umbrella ship in place and the ship broke away. The blast also tore through the singularity control center with Bugs in it.

  The seven-mile Umbrella Ship drifted loose, its end on fire. Then the end of the Umbrella Ship’s shaft started exploding working its way up towards the awning. The Umbrella Ship immediately rippled and vanished. It appe
ared 20-miles away tumbling through space. Then it blew up with an incredibly large explosion.

  ---

  Adamarus was asleep when his com unit went off.

  “Adamarus here,” he said.

  It was Radin, “There’s been a large explosion. It appears the Loud Umbrella Ship blew up. We’ve lost the Loud ship and… Bugs… we’re not sure… we’re working our way through the rubble to get to him.”

  Adamarus jumped out of bed and got dressed. The Loud ship and all the Loud crew gone? Bugs maybe dead?

  He charged out of his room and ran towards his personal shuttle. As he approached it, he hollered “Activate verbal control. Engines on.” Before he even boarded, he hollered, “Get me to Transition Control!” and jumped for the entrance.

  He never made it. The floor zoomed up and plucked him from the air engulfing him. All around him for several moments steel seemed to twist and a wind blew over him then the strange metal surrounding him vanished again into the floor!

  He was standing in front of the ruin that had been Transition Control. He was shaken. What had just happened?

  Many crews were working on digging through the rubble to get Bugs. He heard someone holler, “We’ve found Bugs. It’s injured.”

  Adamarus was still unsteady from the impossible thing that had just happened to him, but he made himself move and ran into the rubble to find his friend.

  Bugs was ripped to shreds. He was breathing laboriously.

  ---

  Doctor Kallen, Adamarus’ old doctor, had been selected for Nemesis. He took a deep breath then said to Adamarus and Radin, “Yes Bugs has returned to duty. We know nothing about Loud physiology, however, Bugs seems to be healing itself quite well. Anyway, it said it had to transition the ship’s black hole…”

  “Transition Control is destroyed,” Radin said.

  Kallen continued, “Bugs intends to do it directly from the nerve bundles.”

  “So, Bugs is fine?” Adamarus asked.

  “No,” Kallen answered. “It says it can continue to control the singularity and its transition from the nerve bundles but that’s it. It can no longer move around on its own nor control an avatar. It lost four of its six tentacles, it cannot control things from a control center environment any longer.”

  Adamarus and Radin looked at each other shaken.

  Kallen continued, “Also, Bugs has no good way to communicate with us right now. It took forever for us to exchange as much as we did using one of the translators. It is very hard for it to talk at least until it heals more. Of course, right now it’s in its natural radioactive and poisonous atmosphere. The last thing it told me was we needed to construct a new listening chamber where it works because it won’t be moving from there.”

  ---

  Whitehall was deeply depressed. Not because he’d killed fifty plus Loud, not because he’d killed eleven human crew members and injured twenty-seven. Not even the fact that here he was once again in the hibernation pod about the go to sleep for another thousand years.

  No, no, no, why had no one told him that without Bugs, or some Loud, the ship wouldn’t work… wouldn’t work to chase down the Blackship but also wouldn’t work to find a planet to live on.

  He had to find another way. He thought as the lid was closed over him. And this bullshit about all the people in that secret meeting being the last to go under… next time he’d be ready.

  Sleep took him then the hiber-dreams began.

  Chapter Nine - Stowaways

  “Because we have memories, we imagine a past. Because we recognize patterns and can predict reoccurrences, we imagine a future. Without these qualities, there would be only now.”

  Dimerities (ancient Amular philosopher 924-1008)

  Source: The Archive

  At 91,231 ship-years the bees had changed quite a bit. They were now ten-inches long with overly large heads and long hind legs.

  It was Autumn, and golden leaves blew along the ground. A brilliantly clear day, smoke could be seen rising from Mount Burnwall in the distance.

  The God door stood there as it always had, mute, inactive and ungiving. Even though it was officially forbidden, over the centuries many bees had pressed the ten square buttons that lit up magically next to the God Door.

  Eventually, it had to happen.

  It was a bee with the dance-name of d-glo that by chance entered the correct code and opened the door.

  Astounded, she darted away and hid in a bush 20-feet away ready to get much farther if she saw anything scary.

  But nothing happened. She waited… nothing.

  She darted away and angled into a small plant that gave her a view of the inside of the door. A strange area… flat in some way.

  Finally, she flew back to the door where she saw her partner d-nee. d-glo touched the colored squares in the same way again and… the door closed. She looked at her partner then touched it yet again opening the door back up.

  d-glo and her partner d-nee cautiously entered.

  In their wondering, they stumbled upon the hibernation pod chamber. To them it looked like a giant flower. An uncountable number of pedals (pods) rose up from the bottom sides and top. And each pedal had small lights on it.

  d-glo saw the lights on one pod change and flew up and peaked in the window. d-nee followed her. There was a strange creature in the pod. The strange creature opened its eyes, looked at them and screamed.

  d-glo and d-nee raced back to the Atrium.

  d-glo touched the colored shapes in the same way she had before, and the door closed.

  ---

  Adamarus reluctantly got into his hiber-pod and slept…

  Adamarus saw the blue pixilated galaxy at the edge of the visible universe alive with vast spiraling arms of brilliant white stars shimmering like jewels.

  Then he saw two plasma jets burst from the center of the spiral galaxy, one going upward and one down. A strange wisp of plasma erupted from the upper plasma jet. He saw a black sphere emerge from the small plasma off-shoot.

  The black sphere headed for another distant group of galaxies.

  He watched in silent horror as the sphere went from one cluster of galaxies to another, leaving its ugly black stain spreading upon each one.

  Looking around, Adamarus could now see other spheres…first thousands, then millions… then they seemed endless.

  An enormous gas giant swam into view. There was a large swirling red spot within the banded pastel clouds, and Adamarus realized that a person stood in at the center of it. He floated down and stood there beside the person. He looked down, below his boots the red storm swirled. He tried to look over at the person beside him, but he could not. He knew who it was though. It was Evelyn.

  His eyes were drawn back towards the countless spheres coming at them. Just before the leading sphere hit them, he turned away and closed his eyes.

  The first one hit and then the next.

  Each one shook him.

  Then, suddenly, red lights, a metallic smell…

  Adamarus awoke and after a moment sat up in the hibernation pod. He noticed Radin next to the pod waiting for him to shake off the hiber-sleep. He had just had a hiber-dream of a dream. An old dream he’d had often.

  He shook his head, noticed no one else was being brought out, glanced at the clock, 16.7 million normal years, 81,857 ship years… it was early. Adamarus looked at Radin and cocked his head… what?

  “I’m afraid we have a situation, skipper,” Radin said.

  Thirty minutes and three coffees later three facts were clear.

  One, Gale Lance saw two bug-like heads looking at her when she woke from hiber-sleep. They were infant size heads with compound eyes.

  Two, bug-like footprints were found on the top of the hibernation pod.

  Three, Matt Cramer said he’d seen similar prints in the shuttle bay after the shuttles returned from the planet they’d stopped at.

  There was every indication that despite security measures, they had stowaways.

>   A ship-wide search was underway.

  Adamarus nodded, “Wonderful.”

  ---

  It had been 37,496 years since the great darkness and eight disciples had seen the Gods restore the light. Religion had become a big part of the bee’s culture. So, when news reached the priests of d-glo’s and d-nee’s trespass of the God Door they were immediately stung to death.

  The priests, afraid that the Gods would be angry advised the queen of all queens to assemble the hives to ask for forgiveness.

  ---

  Nemesis was a huge ship. Still, the search continued.

  Someone looked at the logs and discovered that the Atrium door had been opened from the inside. The last time anyone had been in the Atrium was 6 months ago experienced time when Adamarus and Evelyn had been there for the bee wasp war that had shorted out the sunlight.

  Adamarus and Evelyn volunteered once again to check things out, this time with an armed security guard.

  When they opened the door and walked out something looked and sounded very strange. The ground was covered with large bugs. Completely covered with them as far as the eye could see. Their heads were down, their wings buzzing but not lifting them from the ground. The buzzing sound came in rhythmic waves.

  What’s more, every bug seemed to be facing them.

  “What the hell,” Adamarus said.

  Then it happened. A path opened up between the bugs leading to the small hill Adamarus and Evelyn had stood on over 37,000 ship years ago—just six months ago to the humans. Of course, they did not really remember that that small hill was the one they’d stood on but the red stinger bees knew. They had maintained, restored and worshiped it throughout the centuries.

  To Adamarus, Evelyn and the entire crew, only half a year experienced time—time not in hiber-sleep—had passed since the bug war. Now, having a close look, they could barely recognize the insects as bees.

  The path was clearly an invite. The small group walked slowly down the path that had been cleared to the hill. All around them the bugs turned so that they always faced towards them, heads down.

  The armed guards were nervously holding their rifles at the ready. “This gives me the creeps,” one of them said.