The Wrong Side of Space (TCOTU, Book 3) (This Corner of the Universe)

by Britt Ringel

  Vernay ferociously pulled at Heskan. “Captain, I’ll stay if you want but you have to get out!” she pleaded.

  Spencer bolted past Vernay for the door while Heskan undocked his datapad from the captain’s chair. He answered, “We’re all leaving, Stacy. No last stands on my ship.” They ran together toward the open door.

  * * *

  The desperation inside the words struck at her: “Komandor, don’t do it! You’re stronger with us than without us.”

  Komandor Lombardi looked at her first officer with knowing anxiety. “Let me guess, Tolya. The Vaettir?”

  Kapitan Anatoly Valokov returned the pained expression. “Afraid so, Komandor.”

  “Open a channel,” Lombardi ordered as she gestured toward her sensor officer and mumbled a curse in Italian. English, Isabella, she corrected herself. If I am insisting we use English now, I need to set a good example. The switch had come after her last meeting with the Brevic officers. The memory of her stilted English in that conference still embarrassed her. I have lost too much vocabulary. How can this alliance survive if I cannot even talk coherently to them? she questioned.

  “You are on, Komandor,” the young sensorman signaled.

  Lombardi let her voice turn acrid. “Komandor Christova, why are you disobeying my direct orders and targeting the ‘Vics?”

  “Fidarsi è bene, non fidarsi è meglio,” returned the answer six seconds later.

  Lombardi shook her head in frustration, feeling her anger boiling over. “Once again, Stephan, you disobey my orders to speak only English now. Why is rebellion becoming your strongest—” she hesitated while searching for the correct word, “—demonstration.”

  “Now is the time, Komandor. Their frigate is dying, their flagship is defenseless,” Christova insisted.

  “No, Stephan. We will not break our truce. Oh! ‘Characteristic.’ That is what I meant. Your strongest characteristic.” Lombardi recovered hastily and added, “Regardless…” She turned to her weapons officer and spoke loudly enough so her voice carried through her channel. “Kapitan Benedetti, you will target our Issic batteries upon Komandor Christova’s ship. If the Vaettir fires, you will too.”

  Benedetti’s expression was utter horror but he answered compliantly, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Christova’s indignant voice hissed, “You would not dare, Komandor. Not even you would fire upon a friendly ship to protect our enemy!”

  Lombardi’s voice was ice. “Try me, Stephan. Right now, you are the enemy.”

  Christova rudely cut the channel but Phoenix’s sensor officer triumphantly declared that Vaettir was rotating away, blunting much of Lombardi’s annoyance. Valokov leaned toward Lombardi and whispered, “Close, Izzy. There will come a time when he will not back down. What will you do then?” The first officer’s expression was grave.

  “I do not know, Tolya, but we need those escorts.”

  Valokov shrugged humbly. “Perhaps he is right after all. You know that ‘Vics cannot be trusted. Why do you jeopardize your command for them? Think back to what Wiceadmiral De Luca last told you.”

  Lombardi ignored the barb and questioned Phoenix’s support section commander. “Kapitan Koppel, how long would it take to shuttle marine forces to assist Kite?”

  Koppel let loose an interrupted laugh before realizing his ship captain was serious. He quickly scanned his console and then checked the ship’s tactical plot before answering, “Maybe twenty to thirty minutes, Komandor.”

  Lombardi shook her head. “Too slow. We need to devise a strategy that allows for a faster response.” A glance to her first officer assigned the future task.

  “The ‘Vics would never be that desperate, Komandor,” Koppel continued. “It would be a disaster.”

  “Maybe,” she conceded. “But desperate times...” She trailed off as she watched the optical of beleaguered Kite and found herself ardently hoping for its survival.

  Chapter 3

  Kite’s bridge officers were at a flat-out sprint. The echoes of their boots filled the passageway as Chief Brown approached the next intersection. He held up his hand and the group skidded to a halt. Through his ragged breathing, the chief said, “Lemme check before we cross, sir.”

  Heskan acknowledged curtly and dipped his head to his datapad. Kite was once again at ThreatCon Delta. The threat condition alerted all crewmembers that invaders had boarded Kite and ensured that every portal inside the destroyer was safely secured. The locking of doors, meant to stymy any intruder roaming the ship, was largely ineffective. Parasite-crewmembers under control of the aliens seemed to open the portals at will. Scanning his datapad, Heskan saw Auxiliary Control had passed command of the ship to the Combat Information Center. Due to original personnel shortages and subsequent losses incurred during battles, Heskan was unable to position an officer in the CIC and had been forced to hope that Auxiliary Control would be adequate back-up to his bridge. The ship is now entirely in the hands of a Chief Petty Officer, Heskan thought. It could be worse.

  “Spencer,” he asked in a hushed voice, “did you get word out to your section to hold their fire on the Hollies?”

  Lieutenant Spencer began to nod when Chief Brown screamed, “Go back, go back, go back!” He pushed wildly at Lieutenant Selvaggio to turn her from the intersection.

  Heskan heard an ominous buzzing sound approaching and quickly spun in place to retreat down the corridor. As he took his first steps, Lieutenant Truesworth accidentally jostled him and Heskan felt his datapad slip from his grip and heard it clatter to the deck. He looked behind him and saw Selvaggio bending low attempting to scoop up the device as she passed it but Heskan roared, “Leave it, Diane. Just run!”

  The droning grew much louder as they raced toward the next intersection. Ahead of Heskan, Truesworth called out, “Which way?”

  We can’t let ourselves be trapped, Heskan thought, considering their options. “Go right,” he hollered back. We can make a dash through the mess hall. There are plenty of doors to put between them and us and we can use the galley back exit if we have to keep running. Heskan saw Truesworth dart around the corner, quickly followed by Hamilton. Spencer was immediately ahead of him and he believed Vernay was only a few steps behind. Somewhere behind her must be Selvaggio and Brown, he thought. As Heskan turned the corner, he risked a quick glance backwards. Vernay trailed close and Brown ran immediately behind her but Selvaggio trailed by a dozen meters and was closer to the swarming alien cloud than she was to Heskan. Heskan stumbled slightly as he saw the grotesque shapes of several, unidentifiable crewmembers chasing after them from inside the swarm. The swarm itself was thick enough to make it difficult to see through.

  Vernay flashed by as he stumbled but seemed to match his pace after she passed him. Ahead of him was the portal to the mess hall. Diane isn’t going to make it, Heskan predicted. Slowing even more, he reached behind as if awaiting a baton in a relay race. “Your hand, Diane!” he puffed. Searing pain shot through his arm and sounds of desperation from Selvaggio rang through his ears as the swarm began to overtake them. Although his hand was numbing quickly, Heskan felt something close around it. What had been a cacophony of buzzing noise and frantic cries diminished into the solitary sound of his strenuous breathing. Heskan pushed himself harder and harder as the goal of the mess entryway grew near. Upon reaching the threshold of the doorway, he violently heaved his back arm toward the portal and launched Selvaggio into the compartment. As soon as he staggered into the room, the door slid shut behind him.

  Inside Kite’s mess, Heskan heard the distant, high-pitched cries of Vernay and felt himself pushed down to the deck as the young lieutenant seemingly assaulted him. He reflexively brought his arms up to protect himself and realized they were a roiling mass of alien parasites. His hands, which felt like thick stumps of dead wood, were shaking involuntarily. Heskan stared, fascinated, at them before realizing in diluted horror that the visor on his shocksuit helmet was raised. My face feels puffy, he thought with an unnerving detachment, th
ey must be covering it. He tried to move his arms but they stubbornly resisted. You’re losing it, Garrett, he thought dreamily. You’ve got to stay awake. Somewhere, perhaps many light-seconds away, someone was yelling…

  * * *

  “What?” Brown asked while raising a hand to the side of his helmet.

  “I said help me drag them to the galley, Chief!” Vernay screamed. She was pulling Heskan by his parasite-covered arms toward the kitchen proper but Selvaggio, also coated with the creatures, was merely moaning softly on the deck. Vernay surprised herself with how easily she was able to pull her captain. I bet I could lift Kite I’ve got so much adrenaline right now, she thought.

  Brown began to follow her with Selvaggio in tow. Hamilton, the young engineer, was fiddling with the portal entry controls while Truesworth worked his datapad. Vernay could hear him talking to someone about the group’s predicament. Before she turned the corner inside the kitchen, Vernay yelled out, “Rory, you’ve got to keep them from opening that door!”

  Although an engineer, Ensign Hamilton was stymied. He had only graduated from the academy six months ago and had finished the myriad of engineering technical training classes immediately before boarding Kite. When he closed the portal between the safety of the mess hall and the blistering chaos outside, he had initially thought he could change the door’s locking code to prevent the infected crewmembers chasing them from opening it. However, the procedure for changing codes to work station portals was different from the procedure for private quarters. His mind raced to remember the protocol but he quickly realized he would not. In what he hoped was a stroke of genius, he simply erased the code entirely, knowing any code entered would be wrong and the door would fail to open. Of course, if an infected crewmember requested simple entry without a code, his group would be in big trouble. “It’s secured as best as I can make it, ma’am,” he answered before Vernay disappeared entirely from view.

  Inside the kitchen, Vernay positioned Heskan next to one of the large water basins used by Operations crewmembers when preparing meals. Brown pulled Selvaggio next to Heskan and looked toward Vernay. “What now? Doc said scrapin’ ‘em off doesn’t work.”

  In tunnel space, Doctor Thomas concluded that any alien that was forcibly removed left a proboscis-like appendage embedded in its host. Further, once detached, the accompanying venom sac in the appendage released a neurotoxin into the host that disrupted the function of the brain and nervous system. High concentrations of the poison resulted in death.

  Vernay did not answer but sealed her helmet and grabbed the flexible gooseneck sink faucet with one hand while sliding the temperature controls all the way to the right with her other. “Close the visors, Chief,” she said with a determined edge. “We can’t pull the little bastards out but maybe we can scald them off.” She aimed the faucet at Heskan. “Get off my captain,” she spat.

  The pre-rinse, heavy-duty faucet pushed nearly six liters of water every fifteen seconds. The temperature of that flow started at fifty-five degrees Celsius but quickly climbed past one hundred. As Vernay sprayed down Heskan’s shocksuit, the jet from the faucet became a mixture of liquid and steam. Any part of the shocksuit that was hit came away clean. Vernay alternated her aim between Heskan and Selvaggio. The parasites abandoning their hosts began to either fly awkwardly around the room or stagger in drunken, waterlogged circles on the rubberized deck. In many cases the tiny creatures simply convulsed briefly on the deck before coming to rest.

  When she finished spraying her comrades, she attacked the remaining aliens in the kitchen with vengeance. The high-pressure rush of water and steam turned the kitchen into a sauna but made relatively short work of the stunned parasites. At some point during the water-assault, Truesworth and Hamilton joined her in the kitchen. Hamilton manipulated the kitchen’s portal controls and said, “They haven’t gotten into the mess yet, ma’am, but it’s only a matter of time.”

  Vernay nodded at Hamilton while she removed Heskan’s helmet. She estimated nearly two dozen parasites were attached to his face. Seeing Chief Brown attending to Selvaggio, she asked, “How bad is Diane?”

  “She ain’t movin’ but her visor was already down so they’re all off her now.”

  Vernay swiftly scraped the remaining parasites off of Heskan, ensuring a swift fate for those removed. “Garrett! Wake up!” She slapped him lightly but abandoned the futile effort and moved to the sink. “Jack, call over to Gables and tell her we need help.”

  Truesworth turned to face her and answered in panic, “They got into the mess, Stacy. Rory, did you change the code on this door?” He gaped at Selvaggio’s motionless form.

  Hamilton raised his arms in defeat. “No, I’m not sure of the procedure.” He looked back toward Lieutenant Vernay. “Ma’am, they’ll be through this door in a heartbeat.”

  “Quick,” Vernay ordered, “everyone get out the back. Go through storage into Hallway C-Three and head toward the elevator by Navigation.” Standing at the sink, she dialed down the temperature to near freezing and aimed the faucet at Heskan’s face. “Dammit, Captain. Nap time is over!”

  The frigid water stream blasted Heskan’s face. His first gasp at the shock of the freezing water sent him into a fit of coughs and he instinctively rolled onto his stomach to avoid the icy torrent.

  As Heskan gagged, Vernay turned her attention to Selvaggio. Raising the prone woman’s shocksuit visor, Vernay grinned diabolically and taunted, “Enjoy the shower, Lieutenant.” She sprayed Selvaggio for several seconds but failed to get a response. Reluctantly, she stopped the flow out of fear of drowning her shipmate. She returned to the controls, quickly increased the faucet’s temperature to maximum and then locked the spray handle into the flow position before tossing it into the water basin. The jet of scalding water splattered against the alloy sides, and steam rapidly resumed turning the compartment into a sauna. Maybe that will slow them down, she hoped.

  The room was nearly vacant now, except for Brown who urged, “We’re outta time, L-T.” He scooped up Selvaggio and positioned her into a fireman’s carry. “We’ve gotta get movin’.”

  Vernay nodded and ordered, “Go, Chief. I’ll get the captain up.”

  Brown crossed the kitchen’s threshold but waited just outside in the hallway as Vernay pulled Heskan to his feet. The captain was wildly disoriented but could stand with help. As Vernay ushered him through the door, she heard the portal behind her begin to open.

  * * *

  Ensign Gables led the detail of two Operations crewmembers down the corridor. The emergency battle plan had called for her to have a reserve squad of ten damage controlmen but she had split the group into roughly thirds and issued one of Auxiliary Control’s three improvised flame units to each team. The other two teams were making their way forward to support the marines currently executing tactical withdrawals combined with spoiling attacks meant to delay the aliens’ progress deeper into Kite. When she had issued the long-winded order, Gunnery Sergeant Holloway had replied in a much more succinct manner: “Got it, ma’am. We’re retreating.”

  She rushed forward while thinking of the exchange. We’re not retreating now. “Come on, guys, keep up,” she urged her support crew over the team’s tactical network. The shocksuit visors on all three sailors were engaged and set to a nearly maximum darkened state. Gables found the flame unit she wore heavy but knew the large tanks of combustible chemicals her spacemen hauled behind her were nearly crushing. The Maxwell-Spencer oxy-fuel welding system was not designed to be mobile. However, Lieutenant Jackamore’s engineers had constructed crude carriages to transport the cumbersome tanks worn by Gables’ escorts. Gables carried the actual welding equipment and an additional tank of a highly pressurized and combustible mixture of chemicals connected to her torch. The result was an improvised flamethrower capable of spraying lethal gouts of fire in a roughly six-meter cone.

  The trio ran around the corner of the hallway and slowed near some elevator doors. Gables looked around expectantly and the
n manipulated her shocksuit comm controls with a free hand. She said in a composed voice, “Lieutenant Truesworth, we’re here. Where are you?”

  The loud and frantic reply made her cringe. “They’re right behind us! We’re coming up on you now!”

  Gables motioned her support crew to move their equipment to one side of the hall and then assumed a kneeling shooter’s position. The obvious terror in Truesworth’s voice caused her hands to shake slightly. She grimly realized that based on her firing position and the range of her weapon, this would be a last stand for her. This is it, Denise. If the aliens aren’t repelled by fire, you’re a dead woman. She lit her torch and the short, blue flame sprang to life.

  Ahead, the running shapes of her shipmates appeared from around a corner. The group was in obvious distress with one person being carried and a second leaning heavily on another. Seconds after their appearance, a black swarm turned the corner to silhouette the command crew of Kite. As the churning mass neared, Gables saw covered, infected humans running inside the cloud. My God, I’m going to burn those people alive, she thought with revulsion. Her trembling fingers twisted the makeshift propellant lever to open the connection between the pressurized tank and her torch.

  Hamilton and Truesworth dashed by her side as she brought her index finger to the crudely installed twin triggers. Spencer raced by. The alien cloud filled the hallway just meters ahead of her. The noise from the cloud, much louder than she anticipated, filled her with fear. Chief Brown, a crewmember slung across his shoulders, plodded past her. Individual alien parasites began to land on her arms sporadically. Vernay and the captain were rushing toward her but the leading elements of the swarm had caught up to them. She could see the tiny aliens landing on the duo even as the entire mass began to wash over them.