“Way to go, Loren!” called Miz from through the back.
“It wasn’t me!”
Cal leaned forward in his chair. The ship had landed with its nose raised at an angle, meaning most of what they could see was a pale blue sky. If he squinted, he could just make out the flare of cannons and torpedoes up beyond the atmosphere’s edge.
“Kevin, magnify that,” he said, pointing to the area of the screen where the action was.
The image zoomed to focus on the battle. Cal tried to decipher who was who, and whether anyone was currently winning, but it was impossible to make out.
He had just leaned forward for a really good squint when an enormous purple face with eight eyes and a mouth like an industrial nutcracker appeared, blocking the view of anything else.
“Aaargh! What the fonk is that thing?” Cal screamed.
“I don’t know, sir,” Kevin confessed.
“We’ll figure it out later. Shoot it now, before it kills us all!”
The image on screen returned to standard magnification. A tiny purple bug hovered on a blur of wings near the center of the image, then pootled off to go about its day.
Cal cleared his throat. “Right. Yes. I knew that,” he said.
“Don’t suppose you also know where we are?” Mech asked.
“No, but there’s only one way to find out,” Cal said, unclipping his belt. He stood, stretched, then gestured to the screen. “You said there’s atmosphere, right?”
“Right,” Loren confirmed. “A little thinner than you’re used to, but you shouldn’t notice much difference.”
“What’s the gravity like?”
“Same as Earth. Slightly heavier, in fact. But, again, marginal,” Loren told him.
“Damn it,” said Cal, who’d had visions of another jumping contest. “Can’t have everything, I guess.”
He about-turned so he was facing the corridor. “Mech, fetch me the keys to the gun cabinet.” He kicked a foot up behind him, caught the toe and pulled, giving the muscle a stretch. “And let’s go see what we’ve got waiting for us.”
Cal stood halfway up the ramp, peering into the sludgy green water that completely covered the lower two feet or so. Reeds and rushes sprouted haphazardly through a surface mostly covered by some sort of floating moss.
“Well,” said Loren, hanging back and covering her mouth to try to fend off the worst of the stench. “You did say you wanted moist.”
“There’s moist, then there’s moist,” said Cal. He watched as another of the purple bugs went skimming across the water, darting from moss-clump to moss-clump, and was glad he’d taken the time to pull on a long-sleeved shirt that covered his arms. Those little fonks looked like biters. “How deep do we think it is?” he wondered.
Mech, who stood between Cal and Loren, tapped the scanner built into his forearm. “Not deep. Walkable.”
“What do you mean ‘walkable’?” Cal asked.
“I mean you can walk in it.”
“Why the fonk would I want to walk in it? Look at it!” Cal said. “There could be anything living in there.”
“We came rather a long way, sir,” said Kevin. “It would be a shame not to complete the quest just because of a little water.”
“Then you fonking do it!” Cal yelped.
“Alas, sir, I cannot,” Kevin replied. “What with the whole being a disembodied voice thing. Otherwise, I’d be all over it.”
“Kevin’s right. We brought the Sentience all this way. We can’t give up now.”
“Who said anything about giving up?” said Cal. He snapped his fingers and pointed back to the medical bay. “Loren, do me a favor, bring the Sentience out here.”
He looked out across the swamp while he waited for Loren to return. The smell of it had been unbearable at first, but his nose was adapting and it was merely almost unbearable now. At this rate, it would be borderline bearable before he knew it.
Still, it wasn’t really the smell he was worried about. What he was worried about—the thing that was almost entirely consuming his thoughts at the moment, in fact—was the one-eyed monster that inhabited the Death Star trash compactor in the first Star Wars.
That fonking thing had haunted him after he’d first seen the movie. For weeks, he couldn’t pass a body of water—river, puddle, or even reasonably full bathtub—without expecting the vicious cycloptic little bamston to lunge out and pull him under.
His parents had tried to reassure him, of course. They’d told him that it wasn’t real, and that even if it had been, it was high unlikely to be found lurking in their downstairs toilet.
But that was the problem. Logically, no, it shouldn’t be in his toilet, or bath, or anywhere else. But then again, logically it shouldn’t have been in the Death Star’s trash compactor, either.
How did it survive in there? That was one of the questions that kept him awake in the days after he’d first seen the thing. How did it stay alive? The walls squashed together, crushing everything inside the trash compactor. That was where the ‘compactor’ part came in. It was the entire point.
So, how come the one-eyed monster wasn’t killed during this process? Could it survive being crushed into paste? Did it regenerate upon death? The thought of both these things only served to make it seem all the more terrifying. Not only was it a creepy one-eyed worm-squid, it was also functionally immortal.
Cal’s mom had suggested that maybe there was a gap at the bottom of the walls, but his dad had quickly dismissed that. What would be the point in a compacting-based disposal system that didn’t reach all the way to the floor? Smaller items would get wedged beneath it all the time, Cal’s dad had argued, causing all sorts of maintenance headaches for the Stormtroopers.
Couple a constantly jamming compacting mechanism with an aggressive underwater-dwelling alien entity, and you had the recipe for a Health & Safety nightmare, he’d reasoned. When Cal’s mom had suggested that, fine, if he was so bloody clever maybe he could explain it, his dad had sucked thoughtfully on his mustache for a moment, before concluding that it probably exited the compactor using a network of pipes and underwater chambers, which allowed it to slip into other areas of the station at will.
This had not helped quell Cal’s fears in the slightest.
That sense of dread came back with a vengeance as Cal looked out across the swamp. It was probably full of one-eyed monster squids. Hoaching with them. Setting foot in that thing, he knew, would be an open invitation to drag him under and do… whatever it was they did to people.
Cal had a few theories about that back in the day, too, but his subconscious had gone to great lengths to subsequently forget them all.
“Got it,” said Loren, appearing behind him. The Symmorium Sentience was in her hands, glowing just faintly at its center. “Tyrra got kind of agitated when I took it out of the room, but Miz is keeping her calm.”
Cal nodded and took the Sentience from Loren. It felt cold against his hands.
“What are you gonna do with it?” asked Mech.
Cal indicated the ramp with a flick of his head. “I’m going to roll it in.”
Mech frowned. “You’re what?”
“I’m going to roll it into the water. Or slime. Or whatever it is,” Cal said. “I’ll just—boop—roll it in.”
“And you think that’s going to work?” Loren asked.
Cal shuffled around and shot her a reproachful look over his shoulder. “Please. I know it’s going to work.”
Setting the Symmorium Sentience on the ramp, he gave it a quick polish with his sleeve, then placed both hands on top of it. “Here goes,” he said. “You’re home, Senty. Fly. Be free, my special angel.”
With a shove, he sent the Sentience trundling down the ramp. It rolled a foot or so along the sloping metal, then hit the swamp with a thlump.
They all watched it slowly sink until it was swallowed by the swamp.
“OK, wait for it,” said Cal, standing and shuffling back. “Wait for it.”
&
nbsp; They waited for it.
“What’s supposed to happen?” Loren eventually whispered.
“Just hold on. Give it a sec,” Cal said, silencing her. “Just… give it… a sec.”
They gave it a sec. Several secs, in fact.
“You think that thing can drown?” Mech asked.
“Oh, for fonk’s sake,” Cal grumbled, wading into the water and fishing around until he found the Sentience. The swamp farted its objections as he pulled it free, then he frantically backtracked up the ramp, kicking wildly at some imagined pursuer.
“OK, so that didn’t work,” Cal breathed, once he was sure nothing had tried to follow him. “Anyone else have any suggestions?”
He looked hopefully across their faces. “No? Anyone?” he cheeped. “Mech, what if you threw it?”
“Threw it?”
“Yeah. Just tossed it out there. Really launched it.”
Cal was about to deliver his reasoning as to why this might be a good idea when the Symmorium Sentience spoke inside his head.
“Follow.”
“Follow?” said Cal.
Loren and Mech stared at Cal in confusion. “Huh? Follow what?” Loren asked.
Cal pointed to his head. “Didn’t you guys hear that?” he asked. “It said we should follow.”
“Assertion: Rejected,” the Sentience said. “Follow alone.”
“Alone? What do you mean ‘follow alone’?” Cal asked.
“Follow who?” Loren asked.
Cal shook the Symmorium Sentience. “This thing.”
“It’s not going anywhere,” Loren pointed out.
Cal urked as the Sentience pulled itself out of his grip and drifted down the ramp. It stopped just above the swamp, then floated around the side of the ship, its light pulsing gently.
“You had to go and open your mouth, didn’t you, Loren,” Cal chastised. He shot a brief but anxious glance at the surface of the swamp, then turned back to the others. “So, you guys stay here, I guess. Keep an eye on Splurt, make sure we don’t sink. That sort of thing.”
“You ain’t really going alone, are you?” asked Mech.
Cal sighed and tapped the side of his head. “That’s what it said. Besides, you’ll only rust.”
“Be careful,” Loren urged.
“I always am,” Cal told her, which everyone present knew was an outright lie. “Try to move the ship somewhere less… you know. This. But close, so I can find you.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Loren.
“You do that,” said Cal, delaying the inevitable.
“I will,” Loren confirmed.
“Well, good.”
“Just get a fonking move on,” said Mech, giving Cal a shove.
Cal shot Mech a brief but brutal dirty look. Then, with a groan and a couple of lengthy sighs, he plodded down the rest of the ramp, sloshed into the knee-deep swamp water, and hurried out of sight around the side of the ship.
“Alright, alright, slow down. What am I? Made of legs?” Loren and Mech heard him call, and then the voice and the sloshing faded as Cal followed the Symmorium Sentience toward parts unknown.
Alone.
Twenty-Six
“Far be it from me to question,” Cal said to the dimly-glowing ball that was once again tucked under his arm. “But are you sure we know where we’re going?”
They’d made their way through the swamp until they’d reached the tree line of the vast rainforest the Untitled had flown over on the way down. The wet, marshy ground had given way to a ground that was incrementally less wet, but harder to wade through.
Several times, Cal had become convinced he’d felt something brush against his leg, and had exploded forward in a series of high-kneed shrieks, while uncontrollably flapping his arms at his sides.
Eventually, after a long, agonizing three to four minutes of this, they’d reached ground that, while not quite solid, was unlikely to be harboring any one-eyed monsters from the Lucasfilm prop archives.
As soon as they’d reached land, the Sentience had dropped from the air and thacked onto the tangle of roots and weeds that made up the forest floor. Cal had watched it for a few moments, hoping it was going to do something amazing and he could go back to the ship.
Instead, it had just sat there, mostly dark and totally dormant. It was only once Cal had picked it up that he felt its voice inside his head again.
“Onward.”
Cal ducked under some low, thin branches, swatting idly at a little cloud of tiny translucent bugs that danced in the air in front of him. At first, he’d thought they were pretty interesting, but now they were just fonking annoying. He slapped himself on the side of the face, killing at least ten of them in one swift strike.
“It’s just, I’m pretty sure we’re going around in circles,” Cal said. “We’ve been walking for hours.”
“Assertion: Rejected,” voiced the Sentience. “It has been nine minutes.”
“Jesus, is that all?” groaned Cal. He huffed miserably as he stepped over a decaying log that positively heaved with creepy crawlies. “Still, the point stands. You sure you know where we’re going? I mean, I know you came from here, or whatever, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
He yelped shrilly when he spotted a fat, glistening caterpillar thing on his leg, and swatted at it until it fell off.
“Fonking bugs,” he mumbled, hastily checking himself over for more of the things before continuing. “One time, after I’d been out of Philly for a while, I came home and decided to walk to Walmart. Can’t remember why.”
He squelched through a puddle.
“Eggnog. That was it. It was Christmas time.” He shook his head. “Not important. The point is, I walked to Walmart, only guess what.”
The Sentience said nothing.
“Walmart wasn’t there. Where it was supposed to be, I mean. It was—Aargh! Fonk off!” he spat, flicking a twelve-legged bug off his arm. It landed in a marshy puddle with a gloop.
“It was gone, is my point,” he continued. “I’d been going to that Walmart my whole life, and then it was gone. Poof. Vanished.”
Cal looked up at the canopy of foliage far above him. Light filtered through narrow gaps in the high treetops, casting columns down around him. He was sure things were moving up there, and had made a point of unbuttoning the strap on his holster to allow easy access to the blaster Mech had given him.
“You know what I realized that day? Things change. Nothing stays the same forever,” he said, trying to make it sound as profound as possible. “I also eventually realized that I’d got on the wrong bus and was actually in Baltimore. But the point still stands. Maybe things have changed, you know? Maybe we should go back to the ship and try to figure out—”
“We have arrived.”
Cal stopped. He looked around, but saw nothing any more or less noteworthy than anything else he’d already seen during their expedition.
“Oh. OK,” he said. He stole another look around them. “Are you sure? It’s just, there doesn’t seem to be anything here. Besides these fonking insects, I mean.”
“I am certain,” said the Sentience. “I ask one last thing of you, Cal Carver.”
“Uh, sure. OK,” said Cal. “What’s that?”
“Brace yourself,” came the reply.
And then the ground below him opened like the gaping maw of some great, terrible beast and Cal fell, complaining loudly, into a moist, oppressive darkness.
Mech leaned out of the open hatch, calling instructions to Loren up front.
“Down at port side. Level off. That’s it. Now, steady. Steady. Not so fast.”
With the Symmorium Sentience no longer locking the controls, Loren had been able to lift the Untitled out of the swamp, and was now trying to land it on a small peninsula of dry land near the jungle’s edge.
The peninsula was four times larger than the ship. Or, as Loren had described it, only four times larger than the ship. Combined with the close proximity of some l
arge and heavy-looking trees, this allegedly made the landing maneuver a difficult one, hence Mech lending a hand.
She could have asked Kevin to do it, of course, but she still hadn’t forgiven him for not warning her about the imminent planet-strike on the way here. Also—and more importantly—he was always smug for days if she ever asked him for help.
Inside the medical bay, Mizette stood over Tyrra, mopping the girl’s sweating brow with her furry forearm. Tyrra had become restless and agitated when the Sentience had left, hissing through her teeth and clawing at some unseen enemy.
Now, though, her breathing was shallow and her eyes were dull. She was dying, Miz, knew. And there was nothing she could do about it.
“Hurry up, Cal,” she whispered. “Please.”
Out by the hatch, Mech’s instructions came a little more urgently.
“OK, almost there. Hold it level. Down steady. Down steady. Aaand—”
The Untitled’s landing legs thumped down onto the hard-packed soil, almost making Mech lose his grip.
“There. We’re down. Good job.”
“Yes, very well done, ma’am,” Kevin echoed. “And with only one assistant, too. You must be very proud.”
From up front, Mech heard Loren muttering something, then she appeared in the doorway. “Any sign of Cal?”
Mech peered out into the trees. “Not yet,” he said. “Comm-link ain’t working, neither. All I’m getting is some kind of interference. Something to do with the trees, I think.”
“Can the scanners—?”
“Too many life signs around,” said Mech. “Already tried. Best I can figure out is he’s that way.”
He pointed off into the trees. “But that assumes he’s still with the Sentience, because that’s the only thing I been able to get a trace on.”
Something on his arm went bleep. He frowned down at it just as Loren stepped up behind him. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Huh.”
Mech gave his arm a prod. For a split-second, a red light had flickered on the display. It had come and gone so quickly that Mech wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t imagined it.
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