by CreateSpace
Carver gave a loud battle cry, a yell that would resound through the ages as he aimed at the wall and ran full tilt.
The door in the wall slid sideways and Carver sailed through screaming straight into the bridge.
The four aliens inside jumped up as he ran in screaming. Carver slowed but didn't stop as he spied an opening around a control panel and ran in a giant circle around the sleek interior of the bridge. A giant monitor on one wall bathed him in starlight glow as he ran under it.
The tallest alien stood from the cushioned Captain's seat and pointed a long claw at Carver. His snout parted as he hissed a roar.
“Shiiiiiiiiiiit!” Carver screamed as he rounded the bridge and aimed for the door. A long alien arm swiped for him again before he ran back out in the corridor. Budge roared again and the three Licks from the bridge began to chase him.
Carver stared back over his shoulder without slowing down and plowed into the two Engine room guards. They all went down in a screaming pile of hissing bodies.
Carver kicked and clawed.
A guard's snout touched his nose, drew back and snapped. Carver punched it and earned a screech. The other Lick's tongue darted out and touched his cheek.
Carver backpedaled and kicked his way free, jumped up as the three Licks from the Bridge tripped over the fallen aliens.
Carver screamed and began running down the corridor again, hoping he could make the tiny access tunnel and buy more time.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Rachel and Dawes sneaked along the corridor wall, keeping hidden to the edge of the shadows. The LED's in the floor cast a surreal glow and made her sunken features even more dramatic. Dawes was sure he looked the same.
Now that the engines were silent, he could hear the ticks and rattles in the ship that were hidden by the low level humming he wasn't aware of before. Space may be silent, but a ship fighting off the harsh vacuum was not.
They heard a scream growing closer and gripped their rifles.
Carver pounded down the corridor and passed them without stopping. Dawes and Rachel exchanged glances as the sucking sound of Lick's feet sounded in his wake. A lot of feet.
“Run!” Dawes shouted.
He took off after Carver running as fast as he could. Rachel sent three bolts up the corridor, aiming at nothing she could see but hoping they might stop at least one, or slow them all down.
She ran after Dawes and passed him.
Carver reached a door, keyed a sequence and fist bumped it open. The doors whisked back to reveal a giant empty hold in the belly of the ship. The cavernous space was large enough to hold a space station or two. Carver ran through the dark emptiness, quiet now except for the huffing and puffing as he tried to catch his breath.
Rachel reached the doorway and waited for Dawes to catch up.
“Hey!” she yelled at Carver.
He kept running.
“What's his name?” she asked as Dawes paused next to her.
“Coming,” he said. “They’re still coming. Carver!”
Carver looked back and caught his feet on each other. He tripped and sprawled as he slid ten feet along the floor.
“They still coming?” he called out.
“They're still coming!” Dawes answered.
“I'm going to kick your ass, you know.”
“I know,” said Dawes. “What do we do?”
The Licks were getting closer. The sounds of their footsteps grew louder.
“We can hide in medical. Leave the door open,” Rachel answered. “It might buy us time if they search it.”
Carver rushed out of the room and ducked as a plasma bolt seared the air above his head.
Rachel dropped to one knee and swung her rifle up to aim back down the corridor. The two engine room guards had recovered and were advancing with small rifles that belched green bolts of energy.
She drilled one guard on the left and sent him spinning back into the darkness. His partner ducked behind a corridor bulkhead.
“Move, move!” she shouted out of the side of her mouth as she ushered Dawes and Carver out of the hold.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The trio raced along a dark corridor. Rachel turned them into a second hallway with a lower ceiling. This one looked like it was designed for humans only instead of the giant transport tubes they had been in so far. She slapped a wall panel and stepped aside to let Carver and Dawes go into a small room. She closed the door after them and collapsed against the wall.
The room had four medical beds bolted to the floor and blue soft light that glowed from vats arranged on shelves that gave it a gloomy sterile feel.
“Can we get some light in here,” Carver whispered. “I'm scared of the dark.”
Rachel pushed off the wall and went to one of the beds. She stripped off a strap from the bedding and tied it to a pipe on the wall. She tested the knot to make sure it was secure.
“Get used to it,” she told Carver. “Better grab something.”
“What the hell is going on?” Carver shouted.
“What did you do?” Dawes asked.
“Somebody better tell me something,” Carver grunted. “And you. You're going to get an ass kicking.”
An alarm on Rachel’s wrist sounded with a tiny beep. A loud clack came from the belly of the ship and they were floating in zero gravity. Carver made a grab for the edge of a medical table and missed as he drifted toward the ceiling.
Dawes spun up with him, trying to fight for balance that was no longer there. Rachel sat on the bed, floating inches above it, held in place by the strap she used as a mooring line.
“Did you break something?” Carver sailed across the ceiling.
“I initiated a time delay on the artificial gravity generator,” she said. “It's going to take the Lick's time to get it back online.”
Dawes nursed a bump on his wounded head, still struggling to regain control.
“Does this help us?”
“It buys us time,” she told him. “Time to figure out our next move and maybe some of them got hurt when it surprised them.”
“What about the engines?”
“I couldn't do anything permanent,” she lowered her head. “I didn't have access. They had the controls locked out with bridge commands. We have four hours, maybe less.”
“You did this?” Carver asked.
He whipped around using the tips of his fingers, lost control but managed to regain it.
“You think this helps?” he continued. “Is this all you could do while I was running my ass off?”
He over compensated while he tried to keep his balance and drifted off center. His feet above his head was throwing him off. He drifted toward the ceiling with nothing to stop him.
“Look what it's doing to you,” she pointed out.
Carver's suit started to beep.
“What is that?” Rachel asked.
“I think you broke something.”
She kicked off the bed and floated up to Carver. She wrapped her legs around his torso to hold him steady.
“Alright now that's what I'm talking about,” Carver grinned. “Dawes, close your eyes cause things are about to get nasty up in here-”
Rachel clinched her legs tighter and cut off his breath with a yelp. She reached into the neck of his suit and struggled.
“Be still,” she warned. “It's hard to read the helmet display without your helmet.”
“Damn baby girl, I don't know what you're looking for but it's down there. Keep going.”
She activated a nodule that projected a display on the ceiling. It was a mirror reflection of the head's up display information.
“Gross,” she sneered.
“Come on now, it ain't that bad,” said Carver. “Maybe a little bigger than what you're used to, but-”
“That's a waste alarm,” she said. “You're full.”
“Waste? You shit your pants?” Dawes guffawed.
Carver twisted around to glare at his space suit, trying to see
the back of his pants. His lip curled as he realized what happened.
“It's the zero G,” said Rachel. “It happens to everyone.”
“I must not have got it all out,” Carver explained.
Dawes began feeling around the back of his suit.
“It didn't happen to me.”
“When’s the last time you ate?”
His stomach answered with a loud gurgle. It had been a couple of days since he had real food.
She shoved away from him and floated to an opening in the wall. She opened the panel and tossed him a towel and a new suit.
“There's a cleaner unit over there.”
Carver swam through the air toward the cleaner unit, a small cubicle in the wall. He closed the door after he finally made it in.
“Remember to flush this time,” Dawes called out to him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Carver slid the door shut and glanced around at the monochromatic interior. It was a combination shower/toilet stall with a fold down sink barely wider than his shoulders. A panel in one wall folded down and revealed a dark chute that led to the bowels of the ship for waste disposal.
Carver finished cleaning up, then checked the dull reflection in the polished metal to see how this new jumpsuit made him look. He knew Rachel was watching him, watching both of them really, but she was trying to make up her mind about who she was going to get with if they survived. When they survived.
Carver had seen a ton of television shows that talked about how the mind worked under stressful situations and he knew that if they lived she would want to celebrate being alive. When they lived.
He wanted to be the one she celebrated with all night long. Maybe even the weekend. He smoothed out the wrinkles in the space suit. Something crashed into the door.
“Damn ya'll,” he muttered.
Carver yanked on the door but it was stuck. He peeled it open and peeked through the crack.
Three Licks were holding Dawes and Rachel in the infirmary. The aliens clawed sucker feet were locked onto ridges in the ceiling panel. One of the Licks saw Carver peeking through the crack and hissed.
Carver slammed the hatch closed and searched the narrow confines of the cubicle for any way to escape or something to fight back with. His eyes landed on the disposal unit and he flipped up the lid.
It would be a tight fit, but maybe he could slip in and hide. When they opened the door, and found the room empty, they would leave and he could pull himself back up. He lifted his leg as claws skittered across the door.
Carver wiggled into the disposal unit. His feet skittered for purchase on the slick tube as his fingers gripped, trying to hold him up.
He slipped and slid down the tube, the panel slammed close after him, locking him in darkness as he fell.
The Lick forced open the cleaner unit door and glared inside. He flickered out his tongue to taste the scent on the air and looked disgusted as he lifted his nose out of the empty room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Licks marched Dawes and Rachel down the corridor, taking long steps to grip the metal floor with their sucker feet. Their claws clicked on the surface as they carried the two prisoners like tethered balloons.
They led them onto the bridge where the two floated in front of the view screen. Budge used his claws to click over to them. He was nose to nose with Dawes and growled, wafting rancid breath over the cowboy.
“Hey buddy,” Dawes smiled. “You got a breath mint? Maybe some mouthwash?”
A long thin tongue flickered out of Budges snout and left a slimy trail across Dawes face as it traced an outline on his skin.
“This is my nightmare,” Dawes whimpered. “This is my nightmare.”
Budge clacked his jaws with a mighty snap of teeth, taking pleasure in the cringing whine coming from the prisoner.
“Do you think they understand us?” Dawes said with his eyes closed.
“I don't think they can make language like we do,” Rachel floated behind him still tethered to her guard.
“You think Carver's okay?”
In the belly of the ship below them, two feet slammed into a grate and popped it out to drift up to the metal ceiling of a box. Carver slid and shimmied out of the grate and floated over a huge pile of human waste. He stared down at the mound and gagged as he tried to swim in the air toward the roof.
On the bridge one of the Licks let out a triumphant yell. He trilled to Budge as he pulled himself from under a control panel and ticked a talon on a keyboard. The ship made a humming noise as motors and rotors kicked in.
Gravity kicked in. Dawes and Rachel dropped to the floor at their captor's feet.
Carver heard the humming.
“Oh shit,” he muttered as gravity grabbed him and dragged him down into the huge pile of waste.
He shoved himself up sputtering, surrounded by soiled clothes, garbage and human waste. It was tough to stand on the shifting mound as he glanced around and spied the red glow of exit letters over a hatchway.
No matter what they did with the waste, he thought, someone came in here to clean up after. Maybe they burned it, maybe they shot it out into space, he didn't know. But the thought of being shot out into vacuum made him move a little faster toward the Exit sign.
He tripped and landed nose to nose with a desiccated corpse.
“Shit!” he screamed.
Carver pushed himself up and stared. He was surrounded by the corpses of the crew of the Lucas.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The lights flickered on full on the bridge as the Lick kept tapping on the keyboard to bring full power back on line. The view screen showed light after wave of lights click on the body of the ship highlighting just how large it actually was. Dawes wondered how the government kept something like this secret, and to even have a whole space command. He knew he was out of the loop most of the time, vagabonding as he did, but he thought some big news like this would have to make its way out in the world.
He glanced over at Rachel who was part of the secret. Her eyes burned with tears and rage and he saw what she was looking at.
One of the Licks was yanking a dead Ensign out of the helm's chair and dragging two bodies over to waste tube. It shoved the lifeless corpses inside the tube with wet crunching sounds.
Dawes watched as the rage in her eyes flared and wished he had his plasma rifle to help her. He didn't know these folks but she did. They deserved to be treated better than just tossed away like garbage. Even he knew that.
Budge growled at Rachel and reached down to shove her toward the helm. The Lick at the keyboard keyed in a new sequence and brought up a picture of earth on the screen.
It magnified with each click until the blue marble with swirling white clouds filled the view screen.
“Why haven't they killed us?” Dawes wondered.
Budge placed a giant claw on Rachel's shoulder and shoved her down into the helm chair.
“He wants me to turn the engines on,” Rachel said in a low voice.
“Don't do it.”
Budge reached out and grabbed Dawes by the throat to lift him off the ground. The Lick stared at Rachel and if a snout could smile he would have been wearing one.
“Do it. Do it. Do it,” Dawes choked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Carver spilled out of the waste unit door trailing debris with him. He crawled across the metal floor still gagging as he sagged against the wall.
“Now how am I going to get the hell out of here?” he asked himself in a tired voice.
He climbed up the wall and steadied himself with one hand. He needed a shower, he needed new clothes and he needed to get home, but at least he was still alive.
He stumbled down the corridor working extra hard to keep quiet, except for the occasional gag. He had no idea where he was. Somewhere in the bottom of the ship because that's probably where they kept the garbage and waste to throw out or burn. He shivered but not from the cold. He didn't know how close he came to either, but
he was pretty sure he escaped with seconds to spare. Now that he had time to think about it, he could remember the door opening to space and the garbage being sucked out.
He barely escaped. It was only through some last-minute heroic that he survived. Yeah, he opened the door and even though all the air was rushing through and threatened to take him out with it, he was able to pull himself through the hatch and shut it.
He had seen that once in a movie. All the air was sucked out of the ship to put out a fire. So he probably saved their lives. If they were still alive, he thought. He probably ended up saving the aliens.
“What am I doing?” he asked aloud as he took another turn and jogged up the corridor. “What am I doing? What the hell is going on. I know they're dead. I saw all the bodies in the garbage. Aliens got them and now they're dead. Nothing I could do.”
He turned another corner. So far so good. No aliens. No Licks. Nobody. He was all alone.
“Nothing I could do even if I wanted to. I couldn't help them,” he kept talking.
“Where the hell am I?”
He rounded another corner and spied a short passageway. He peered down the metal corridor and saw the entrance to the Shuttle.
“Ain't that a bitch,” he said and rushed into the spacecraft. He slammed the hatch closed behind him and spun the lock.
He was in zero G again in the shuttle and floated over to the cushioned seat. He strapped himself in and began playing with the keyboard at the monitor.
“It's all automatic, right?” he muttered to himself. “That's what the man said. Time to get up out of here.”
He pecked at the buttons on the keyboard.
“He's dead,” Carver shrugged. “They're dead. I saw what the aliens did to them.”