by Isaac Hooke
Sinive shot her pistol as well, aiming for the same spot, firing in one second bursts, but her bolts were absorbed by the shield in a similar matter.
The two dwellers aimed their energy launchers toward the pillar at the top of the gravalator...
“Run!” Tane yanked Sinive away from the pillar and hurried across the second floor. Behind him, a portion of the pillar melted away and a puddle of white-hot molten metal flowed onto the floor.
“I thought you said they wanted you alive!” Sinive told him over the comm.
“Maybe that was an accidental shot on their part?” Tane said.
“Accidental my butt,” Sinive said.
He spied two elevators near the far side of the walkway and raced toward them. He passed a cafe and a couple of other retail shops that served as mostly empty storefronts for real-time 3D-printed goods. Normally digital signage would be assailing his vision by that point, but here in the Umbra there was none.
He reached the lifts and pressed the button several times. It didn’t light up or give any other indication that it worked. He sincerely hoped elevators still functioned in this universe. If not, he was ready to dive into the stairwell just beside the lifts.
He aimed his rifle at the top of the gravalator, waiting for the recharge indicators on his HUD to turn green. A soft beep came from behind him and he started.
The elevator.
He spun his rifle toward the doors as they opened, just in case dwellers or kraals were inside. Not that he could fire yet anyway.
But it was empty.
He dashed inside the elevator with Sinive and hit the button for the fifth and topmost floor.
The charge indicator on his HUD turned green. He aimed toward the top of the gravalator while Sinive tapped the “close door” button.
A dweller ascended into view courtesy of the gravalator.
Tane squeezed the trigger.
His shots, combined with Sinive’s, should have been enough to break through those weakened energy shields—using the farm encounter with these aliens as a baseline—but all of their blasts were absorbed by the alien shielding once again. Either the shields had a faster recharge rate this time, or had more absorption power than the dwellers he had faced at his farm. Or perhaps the two incoming dwellers had simply swapped positions, so that the alien with the fully charged shield came first.
Whatever the case, the alien calmly aimed its energy launcher toward Tane and Sinive as the elevator doors closed.
“Up!” Tane said.
He slung the rifle over his shoulder and leaped across into the corner of the lift, landing on the railing that lined the wall at waist height. He curled his gloved fingers into the gaps in a grille that covered the ceiling so he wouldn’t lose his balance and fall backward. Sinive did the same at the opposite corner.
The elevator began its ascent. A moment later the lift took a hit, and the entire bottom quarter melted away. Tane could see the two-story drop of the shaft open up below him.
“They definitely want to kill you,” Sinive said.
Tane had no idea why. Perhaps a different faction of aliens was vying with the first? That would explain the different shields. No, he could speculate all he wanted, and blame it on human notions like competing factions, but the fact was these were aliens, with alien thinking. Hell, they didn’t even originate from the same universe. He couldn’t anthropomorphize them. One moment they wanted to capture him, and the next they wanted to kill him, perhaps for no reason a human could understand at all.
He was surprised the elevator continued moving after receiving so much damage. He thought there would be some sort of safety aboard to automatically stop it, but apparently not. That was actually a good thing. Otherwise he and Sinive would have been helplessly trapped.
Still, the elevator was moving a bit too slowly for his tastes. The indicator showed it reaching the third floor, and then beginning the crawl to the fourth. He considered reaching over and trying to kick the fourth floor button so that he and Sinive could get the hell off, but he was worried about losing his balance and falling down the shaft.
The fourth floor passed.
He glanced down into the shaft. Though struck by sudden vertigo, he managed to spot the melted doors a few stories below. There was no sign of the dwellers yet. That would change at any moment.
And the worst of it was, he couldn’t let go of the ceiling to aim his weapon, otherwise he’d fall. Then again, if the weapon wouldn’t penetrate the shielding anyway, what was the point of firing…
He spotted the characteristic tentacles of a dweller just as a beep announced the arrival at the fifth floor. The doors opened.
“Go!” Tane said.
Sinive hurled herself backward and landed in the carpeted hallway beyond. Tane bent his knees and pushed off as well, landing beside her.
“Hey!” Sinive said. “You almost hit me!”
“Next time get out of the way!” Tane said.
A thick energy bolt slammed into the elevator from below, disintegrating the ceiling. The remnants of the lift plunged down the shaft.
“Guess we’re not going back that way,” Sinive commented.
Tane and Sinive resided inside a small hallway. L-shaped bends led around the corners on either side.
Tane headed for stairwell door next to the lift and kicked it open. He was hoping to find stairs leading up, but there weren’t any.
He let the door shut and continued around the rightmost bend, following it to a door. There was a bathroom in the wall perpendicular to it, located just behind the elevator shafts.
He tried the main door. Biometrically locked. He aimed his rifle at the locking mechanism and squeezed the trigger. The mechanism melted and he kicked the door in.
“I knew there was a reason I let you come along,” Sinive said.
“Professional Door Kicker, at your service,” Tane said.
“We’ll have to update your class,” Sinive said. “Mine can become Professional Ass Kicker.”
“Now let’s not get carried away,” Tane said. “Considering that I’m the one whose been doing all the ass kicking so far.”
“I think not,” Sinive said. “I hot-wired the shuttle, you know.”
“And got us into this mess by flying too close to the kraals?” Tane said.
Sinive looked away.
Tane focused on his surroundings. He and Sinive had entered what looked like a research office of some kind. He guessed it was biological, judging from the centrifuges, shelves lined with vials, and binocular microscopes. Floor-to-ceiling windows lined the exterior walls and overlooked the city, allowing the dark blue light from outside to provide natural illumination.
“Um, why did we come to this floor?” Sinive said.
“According to the map,” Tane said. “Like most buildings in the downtown core, rooftop landing pads are available for personal flyers. I’m hoping there will be a few parked up there and waiting to go.”
“So why are we here?” Sinive asked.
“I thought that door back there led to the rooftop stairwell,” Tane answered. “Not offices.”
He spotted motion beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. A small, spherical black drone of some kind hovered outside.
“Is that one of Nebb’s?” Tane asked. He realized as he said the words that it was not. The drone was too sharp and clear, like it belonged to this universe.
“It’s not!” Sinive said.
Tane started retreating when the floor-to-ceiling windows burst across from him. Five dwellers wearing jumpjets landed inside in a long horizontal line.
Tane and Sinive ducked into the hallway and ran around the bend. Behind them, large chunks of the walls were blown away by the alien energy launchers.
Sinive kicked open the stairwell door beside the elevator shaft, intending to begin the long dash down.
“No!” Tane said. “We can’t go back down there!”
“We can’t stay here!” she said.
“Le
t’s check around the next bend first,” Tane said.
“No time,” Sinive said. “If you’re wrong, we can’t come back!”
“Then stop talking and follow me.” And hope I’m not wrong.
Tane rounded the next bend and found another door on the inward side, exactly opposite the elevator section.
“This has to be it!” Tane bashed the door in. To his relief, stairs led up.
He and Sinive piled inside and raced up the zigzagging flights.
“I don’t understand,” Sinive said. “If they want to kill us, why not nuke the building?”
“Maybe they want my dead body?” Tane said. “Where else can you find such fine black threads?” He waved a hand in front of her, and the thin lines emerging from his arms moved sinuously across her face. “Actually, no. We can’t anthropomorphize them. I don’t think we can understand the motives behind these aliens, no matter how hard we try.”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” Sinive said. “I’m willing to bet their thinking is closer to our own than you might imagine. They might want your body, not for the black threads, but as proof they’ve killed you.”
“What are you suggesting, they have a bounty on me?” Tane asked.
“Dunno!” Sinive replied.
The stairs opened up into a rooftop shed. Tane forced the door and found three personal flyers parked on different landing pads beyond.
“I’m assuming you can hot wire these,” Tane said.
“You betcha,” Sinive said.
They sprinted to the closest flyer, an expensive Tamborini model with smooth curves and exotic wings.
“Sexy,” Tane said, making his way to the passenger side. The pad fell away into empty space beside him. It was a long way down.
Sinive stood in front of the driver-side door with her eyes defocused; Tane realized she was applying some sort of car hacking skill.
The doors abruptly slid open.
“Let’s go!” Sinive said.
Tane piled inside at the same time she did.
Three more dwellers in jumpjets appeared in front of them from beyond the edge of the building.
Sinive had apparently already deactivated the self drive: she turned on the rotors and slammed on the right thumb stick, sending the craft plowing into the dwellers. They tried to scatter, but the first struck the windshield head-on with a sickly squish before falling away.
“Careful!” Tane said. “You don’t want to damage the rotors again.”
“They’re shielded,” Sinive said. “Didn’t you notice? Not like the taxi.”
He actually hadn’t. But she was right, thick grilles enclosed all four rotors.
“Taxi’s are public property,” Tane said. “To cut costs, the government is allowed to cut safety features.”
“Bingo,” Sinive said. “Whereas private vehicles have to follow the codes, no matter what.”
Sinive dove down between the buildings, obviously wanting to avoid the huge mothership that hovered in the sky above.
The aliens in jumpjets attempted to follow, but the craft was too fast, and she weaved between the buildings, quickly losing them.
An alien must have fired an energy launcher from the surface then, because the right front rotor suddenly disintegrated.
“No!” Sinive said. “Not again.”
The craft pitched to the far right, and the surrounding buildings rotated nauseatingly. Sinive managed to regain partial control, and the yawing motion ceased. However, they were still streaking downward at a terrifying pace. Tane was expecting to slam into a skyscraper at any time. If they did, that would be the end of them.
The ground came up fast. The vehicle struck, and the cockpit jolted hard as the three-hundred-sixty-degree air bags deployed.
He heard a loud skidding sound and felt forward motion.
CLANG. They hit something, ricocheted dizzyingly.
CLANG. Hit something else. Their movement slowed.
CLANG. That brought them to a halt.
He hit the release switch and pulled himself from the deflated bags.
“I’m all right,” Sinive said before he could ask. She had hauled herself out on the opposite side of the vehicle.
He glanced at the wreckage. “Well, at least I can tell my friends I flew in a Tambo at least once in my life. Before the girl I was with totaled it.”
He spotted the deep skid marks etched into the asphalt, left by the Tamborini as it zigzagged between the two buildings on either side. There were no sign of the dwellers. Yet. Looking up, he could only see a small piece of the large ship overhead. He didn’t notice any of those tentacled weapons hanging down. Hopefully he and Sinive were beyond the line of sight.
Tane checked his map.
“This way!” he said.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“The underground pedway system,” he said.
“What if it’s full of kraals?” she asked.
“Then we’ll find somewhere else to hide!”
He reached the building that offered the closest entry point to the underground pedway system and entered. He found himself in a wide concourse similar to the previous office tower, and had to use his map to figure out where the stairs leading to the pedway were, once more because the usual digital signage was absent in this universe.
He reached the stairs and hurried down, entering the concrete passageway that served as the pedway system. According to the map, it interconnected most of the buildings located within the city core with the underground grav tram.
Small light globes embedded in the ceiling provided illumination.
“Nebb will come for us,” Sinive said. “You’ll see.”
“First of all he has no idea where we are,” Tane said. “Second of all, he can’t do anything, not while that alien ship is up there. If he was smart, and I know he is, he would have taken the Red Grizzly and fled the city as soon as that massive alien vessel appeared.”
The pedway connected to the central concourses located underneath each of the nearby buildings. Keeping an eye out for kraals or dwellers, Tane and Sinive moved carefully between the different underground concourses as they reached them. He intended to make his way to one of the grav tram stops and then return to the surface; at that point, he’d hide in a building until things calmed down.
Things were going well until they reached a food court underneath one of the buildings.
When they were halfway across the court, dwellers began to flood down a ramp and gravalator combination that led up to the building’s main floor.
“Go!” Tane said.
They raced across the food court. There were two different exits ahead, branching away on the far left and right. From the far left exit, more dwellers began to emerge, closing off that particular exit. The right branch was still open, but he and Sinive were too far to make it.
The dwellers blocking the left exit ahead raised their energy launchers...
“Down!” Tane grabbed Sinive and took cover behind a pillar next to a row of tables and chairs. He expected the pillar to dissolve, but instead a warbling howl erupted some distance behind him.
He glanced that way and noticed a pursuing alien had fallen, its body a splattered mess. More dark bursts of energy stormed across the food court, and Tane realized the dwellers in front were shooting at those in behind.
The pursuers returned fire.
“What the hell?” Sinive said.
“There are definitely opposing factions,” Tane said.
Most of the rearward aliens targeted the forward dwellers, but Tane spotted one of them aiming its launcher toward him and Sinive.
“Move!” Tane rose to his feet and Sinive was right beside him. They dove behind another pillar just as the energy launcher released. The pillar melted.
The pair scrambled upright and raced toward the far right exit. Some of the forward dwellers attempted to head them off, and two of them were shot down by the opposing aliens.
Tane and Sinive rea
ched the exit first and hurried down the corridor. They fired at the closest dwellers, but once again couldn’t penetrate the shields.
“Useless low level weapons!” Tane cursed.
The dwellers continued to pursue. He noticed that these particular aliens weren’t opening fire on them. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
He rounded a bend in the concrete corridor only to find himself face to face with yet another dweller.
Before he could react, the dweller had wrapped its tentacles around his and Sinive’s spacesuits and swept them off their feet. Other tentacles ripped the weapons from their hands. As the pursuing dwellers came up, the aliens exchanged high-pitched clicks and hisses, and then proceeded down the corridor in the direction of the grav tram station as one. Their captor held the humans close, while the other dwellers provided an escort.
Tane could hear what sounded like continued fighting behind him—the occasional warbling scream, the crash of collapsing walls.
“Well this sucks,” Sinive said. “Can you wiggle free?”
“No,” Tane said. “I’m held fast.”
“Me too,” Sinive said.
Though they had been captured, strangely Tane still felt little fear. They were probably going to be tortured and dissected, but in that moment, none of it really seemed real.
It’ll hit me soon enough, I’m sure. Probably at the worst time, like when the aliens start cutting me open.
The creature and its gruesome escort carried Tane and Sinive past two more underground concourses, and then emerged into the subterranean grav tram station. Two benches lined the left side, and a translucent polycarbonate wall sealed off the grav tram line on the right. On the central portion of the platform, the floor space was nearly completely consumed by a huge dweller, at least four times as big as the others.
“Graaz’dhen!” Sinive said.
If that was really a Graaz’dhen, he understood now why one of those hadn’t entered his farm. It was far too big to fit the corridors. Even here it would have trouble once it left the platform.