He shook his head. He couldn’t allow those thoughts to dominate his thinking. Being thrown into a panic would annul any chance they had of survival, what with food and life support at critically low levels already. There had to be a logical explanation, and he’d find it.
“Major,” a voice with a thick Russian accent crackled through the COM link, “what is going on?”
Tom pressed the button on the adjacent speaker. “You need to get up here, Nikolay,” he replied. “And grab Uche while you’re at it.”
Tom sighed as he watched the last corner of the swirling white ghost of Earth vanish. Blackness filled the window. It reminded him of The Unknown Artifact.
He shuddered.
2
Uche Mononye ran his palm across the string of dead leaves as he floated, wincing when their dried-up edges pricked his fingers. His reaction was not born of physical pain, but the psychological bemusement that came from his finding nothing alive in a greenhouse that only a half-hour before teemed with life. Too bad the Americans, who’d been examining the effects of zero gravity on the growth rate of plants, had departed weeks ago. Perhaps they might have found this interesting. Uche, for his part, considered it an annoyance.
He rubbed his temples and closed his eyes. His head ached, his mouth felt dry yet sticky, like a landfill on a hot summer day. He was certain his breath reeked.
His situation annoyed him to no end; stuck on the space station, performing a task he hadn’t asked for while the world he longed to rejoin withered away beyond his reach. And now he was falling ill. All the telltale signs were there; sore throat, headache, nausea, bad breath. He slammed his fist into a pot, breaking it from its supports and sending it tumbling across the greenhouse.
This was the adventure he fought so hard for? The dream he strove toward while slaving away at his studies back in Afikpo, Nigeria? None of it seemed so enticing any longer. Now it was a slow, drawn-out nightmare.
His skull pounding with the rhythm of his heartbeat, he pivoted in midair and glided toward the exit hatch. His heart warmed, at least a little. Floating in this way had become his only solace over the last few weeks; an experience that let his imagination take him back to younger days, when he dreamed of soaring away from the poverty that defined his youth. In most ways, he’d accomplished his goal, but still he felt unsatisfied. This was his first mission, his introductory foray into the great unknown of space, and now he’d never have the chance to tell his mother all about it…or save his own soul.
The Major told him the obscuring of the Earth was nothing but an odd weather phenomenon, but Uche knew better. He knew the Major lied simply by the way he blinked incessantly during his attempts to console. If nothing else, growing up on the mean, third-world streets of Afikpo had taught him how to spot an untruth.
What they now witnessed was Rapture, just as Reverend Malikali always predicted would happen eventually in his gospels. The signs were there; from the crackle of static beckoning from the station’s communications array to the flashes of light erupting from beneath the clouds covering the earth, to the thickness of that poisonous haze, itself. God had begun weeding the righteous from the wicked, and he’d brought the heavens down from the cosmos in the process.
Yet Uche found himself high above it all, not present for God’s judgment. He cursed his ambition; pride, it seemed, was the sin of which he’d been most guilty.
Suddenly, floating didn’t seem so peaceful.
He drifted through the access tube until he reached the Genesis Pod, a huge, egg-shaped room, perpetually spinning to generate the gravity in the crew’s quarters, located in the giant loom called The Wheel, whose spokes were attached to motors within the pod. The drone of those motors drowned out all sound. At least he couldn’t hear his heartbeat in his ears any longer.
There was another man in the pod, one whose month-long growth of beard and angular, Eastern European features offered no relief. The man, Nikolay Rasmanovic, a Russian cosmonaut, mouthed the words where were you? Even with no sound, his accent came through.
Four portals were embedded in a symmetrical pattern on the circular wall. Each opened up into passageways that ran up the spokes of The Wheel. Uche wrapped his hand around the handle to the West Corridor entrance – it still struck him as strange that a structure in a constant state of flux would be marked with such directional exactness – and opened the hatch.
Grabbing hold of the ladder, he made his way up the tube. Nikolay was right behind him. It became hard for Uche to breathe. Gravity was more present with each rung he scaled, progressing from weightlessness to near-Earth levels in the span of five hundred feet.
At the top, Uche threw open the access flap and climbed into the main hallway. With feet firmly on the floor, his head pounded harder than ever. He jumped when Nikolay grasped his shoulder.
“Uche, my brother,” the gruff Russian said, “let’s go now.”
3
The presence of the scorched Frenchman could not divert Nikolay Rasmanovic’s gaze from the relic on the table. The thing hummed in his ears and stared back at him with eyeless indifference. The symbols adorning it spoke to him in an incomprehensible language. Dread surrounded him the way the Kiev mob would wrap the corpse of a debtor in a bed sheet.
History was repeating itself.
Nikolay had never met his father. When he was eight years old, his mother told him he’d been taken, stolen away in the middle of the night by little gray men. They’d brought him to their vessel and left, never to return again. Through those stories, she informed him of objects such as this; instruments left behind to gather information about those inhabiting planets soon to be invaded. And now there one lay, a harbinger of doom, stalking them, waiting for their submission.
“So, any ideas what it is?” asked the Major.
Nikolay shrugged. “No.”
He glanced at his two remaining shipmates. The Major stood with hands on hips, staring down the object like a father to a lying child. Uche, on the other hand, leaned against the wall, looking as if he wished to melt into it, his face slack and expressionless.
This interested him. He needed to determine who to trust. Whereas the Major’s lack of emotion conveyed a steadfast confidence in the face of the unknown, the same expression on the muscular Nigerian suggested otherwise. The way his shoulders seemed made of putty; the manner in which he shivered as if a cold wind blew through the room; his constant cough and the stringy saliva that clung to his lips; yes, he was primed for the influence of an alien intelligence. Best to keep an eye on that one, he decided.
“We must get rid of it,” Uche muttered in a raspy voice. Nikolay breathed a sigh of relief at the urgency the Nigerian displayed, but still wasn’t convinced.
The Major shook his head. “I’m not sure about that. Would it not be best to find out what it is first? Where it came from?”
“Nyet,” said Nikolay, flatly.
“Why not?”
“Nothing good can come from this.” He pointed at the corpse of Jean Pierre. “It does not matter what it is. Look at what its presence did to our comrade. We should launch it from the airlock and be done with it.”
“No,” Uche said with a sigh. “That will not work.”
“Yes, it will.”
“Think about this, Nikolay. We are in orbit. Should we drop the object from the airlock…”
“Then it will be in orbit, as well,” said the Major. “Eventually it will fall to Earth, if there is an Earth any more. Without knowing exactly what it is or what it’s capable of, we cannot risk that, especially if there are still people alive down there. We must find another way.”
Nikolay nodded. He hadn’t thought of that.
“What should we do?” Uche asked.
The Major grabbed his chin and scrunched his forehead. “Well, we could dismantle one of the ‘walkers and pilfer a booster rocket. Then we create a pod with some odds and ends and place the object inside. We can fire the stabilizers and pivot the station a bit s
o the airlo –”
The ground beneath their feet quaked. A loud crash followed, throwing Nikolay against the wall. He struck with a violent thud and fell forward. His face bounced off the floor, bringing stars to his vision. Blood poured into his mouth when he bit his tongue. The lights flickered off, leaving them in darkness for ten seconds before sputtering back on.
Nikolay, his face a spiral of pain, pounded the deck with his fists. They hadn’t reacted fast enough.
4
The lights went out, then came back on. Out. On. Out. On.
It continued like this for a good fifteen minutes until they finally stayed lit, though dimmer than usual. Tom sprawled on the ground and looked to his shipmates. They appeared frightened as he felt, and especially Nikolay looked to be in a bad state. Blood cascaded down his chin, soaking his coveralls.
Tom waited fifty-seven heartbeats and then stood up, using the table for support. He kept constant watch over The Unknown Artifact as he did so. Something seemed off. He cocked his head and listened.
The humming had stopped. Another sound took its place.
“What happened?” asked Nikolay.
Tom put a finger to his lips, shooshing him.
“What do you hear?” Uche whispered.
“I’m not sure,” Tom replied. “It sounds like…scraping.”
The noise became louder with each passing second. Tom glanced up. The ceiling buckled at the corner, stopping when it reached the observation window. A silver arm appeared, growing longer and more pronounced, until what looked like black, rectangular wings appeared.
The object drifted away from the station. “Oh, bugger,” Tom groaned.
“Is that what I think it was?” asked Uche.
Tom nodded. “One of the solar arrays.”
“How did it come off?”
“Hell if I know.”
Nikolay leapt to his feet. With the blood on his chin and his face pale, he looked like a zombie. He ran to the far wall, unlatched the panel over the lower viewing window, and peered through it.
“Good,” he sighed. “The secondary bank is still intact. We should be fine as long as those do not come loose, as well.”
“Can what we have left supply enough power to keep the Genesis Pod rotating when we’re on the dark side of the Earth?”
“No,” replied Nikolay. “Not for very long, at least. We will still have reserve power, but we need to shut down all unnecessary systems – lights, guidance, communications – for at least ten hours. It should allow us to wait out a shuttle to come for us without much discomfort.”
“They better get here soon,” said Tom. “We only have a couple weeks of oxygen left.”
Uche muttered from his spot in the corner.
“What was that?” Tom asked.
“No one is coming for us. It has been weeks. There is no one left to come.”
Every ounce of Tom’s being wanted to ignore the statement, to pretend it hadn’t been uttered, but one glance at Nikolay, who stared at Uche with death ray eyes, forced his hand. “No fatalistic talk,” he said. “We have to stay positive here. Keep busy. We all know the contingency plans, let’s stick to them. Nikolay, what’s the first step in the event of a power failure?”
“Make sure the life support relays need not be reset.”
“Second?”
“Examine hull integrity.”
“Good. Uche, third?”
The Nigerian grunted and whispered, “Check the computer to see if we have changed orbit.”
“Right. So let’s get to work, people. Nikolay, search for weak spots or leaks, especially toward the Chinese energy quad. That’s where the main panel was attached, so likewise will probably have the most damage. Uche, you’re the engineer. Get to life support. Go over every system like it’s the first time you’ve ever done so. I’ll hit the computers.” He tried to grin, which took a lot of effort. “When we get done with this, we’ll kip for a while. Maybe down a pint or two in quarters. It’ll do us good.”
He colleagues nodded and went about their business. Uche seemed distant. He coughed and almost walked into the door frame on the way out. Nikolay glared at him, wiping the blood from his chin with his sleeve. To Tom, he looked more like a butcher than a zombie now. It wasn’t a comforting change.
When Nikolay and Uche departed, Tom put a hand over his mouth and stared through the viewing window yet again. Earth would reappear soon. He hoped it would be back to normal. Or perhaps he’d notice a fleck on the horizon; a transport from Houston, come to bring them back home. Somehow, he doubted both scenarios.
Fighting pessimism, he shot a distrusting glare at The Unknown Artifact and marched into the corridor. For a moment, he swore he heard a sound akin to fingernails tapping on linoleum. He passed it off to his nerves and kept walking.
5
The lights were out in the tunnel. Blackness closed in on Uche as he descended the ladder. His body itched all over. His breathing came in short rasps. It felt like someone had his head in a vice.
Even so, he was thankful to be on his way to doing something. He didn’t want to spend another moment in that room with his friend’s corpse and that black pyramid. The pyramid, itself, was particularly frightening. There seemed something odd about it, as if an ethereal aura lurked beneath its material shell. Even thoughts of God and salvation couldn’t keep him from contemplating the possibilities. Perhaps God had nothing to do with all this, after all.
He breathed a sigh of relief that Nikolay had decided to head to his bunk before going about his duties. In order to sort this all out in his head, he needed peace and quiet, not accusations and icy stares.
Weightless again, he drifted down through the hatch and across the central motor room. He used his hands to guide him past the greenhouse and through the station’s body, which was a long tunnel of compartmentalized segments, constructed by the various allied nations and pieced together in the vacuum of space. Rungs, handles, and strapped-down crates served as handholds.
An odd jingle rang in his ears, like a box of pins dropping to the ground, one by one. He slapped at his face, telling himself to snap out of it. His headache grew worse.
It took almost a half hour to reach the life support subdivision at the rear of the station. It was dark there. He took out his flashlight and jiggled the toggle on the wall. Nothing happened. However, the lights on the row of consoles to his left still shone bright green. They were still online. He breathed a sigh of relief.
One by one, he checked the readouts. Cabin pressure…check. Revolution speed…check. Oxygen and CO2 levels…uh-oh. The bar had crept toward the red. He glanced at the station’s digital blueprint, searching for a possible cause. A tiny red dot pulsed in the area designating the German-built thrusters – one of two such constructions, the other put together by the Japanese. They were the duel hearts of the station, keeping the Genesis Pod spinning and life support pumping out oxygen. These motors were Uche’s specialty, the reason he’d been stationed on this revolving hunk of steel in the first place.
I should have noticed this! his mind screamed. What is wrong with me?
Thoughts of apocalyptic doom and strange, alien relics slid from his mind, replaced by concern for his mates. Thomas and Nikolay had become like brothers to him, more so than his six real ones back in Afikpo. He couldn’t let them down, especially if his salvation was on the line.
The engine compartment was only two segments away. He opened the hatch and gagged. The CO2 levels in the partition must have been far above safe levels, already. He had to be quick. Covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief from his back pocket, he took a deep breath and plunged in.
The instruments flashed warnings. It didn’t take long to realize the problem; the solar array had jolted the outer lining, causing the engine casing to crack, which allowed poisonous gas to leak in through the power cells. He nodded in relief. It wasn’t as big a setback as it could have been. The Pod would still rotate on one engine, at least during the time
it took to repair the casing from the outside. All he had to do in the meantime was shut it down and seal the room.
Something clanked against the wall behind him. He jumped, frantically thrusting the flashlight from side to side, searching for the origin of the noise.
The source appeared, fifteen feet away, lurking behind the corner of a computer console. It was large and humanoid, masked in blackness. No matter how directly the flashlight’s beam struck it, he could make out no features. It was as if the thing was made of living smoke.
Uche panicked. A coughing fit overtook him. He tugged at his belt, trying to pry loose his wrench to use as a weapon, and in doing so lost control of his free-float. He spun and whacked his hip on the console to his right. He yelped in pain.
You disappoint me, my son, the phantom in the corner said.
Uche braced himself using one of the room’s support struts. He had to breathe with short bursts in the poisoned air. He faced the phantom and gawked.
Why have you forsaken me? it said.
His heart beat faster than ever before. He pressed his hands together and closed his eyes.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven.”
Even now you pray, said the voice, yet you do not understand.
Uche stared at the shifting form. “What do you want from me?” he sputtered.
You should not need for me to explain.
A thought burst through his mind, a moment of recognition so strong his whole body shuddered. He bowed before the specter and whispered, “Forgive me, Archangel, for I know not what I have done…”
There is no need for confession, my son. Only action will save your soul. Only that, and nothing more.
“What must I do?” he pleaded.
It didn’t answer.
“Please, Archangel, tell me!”
Nothing. He flashed the light in the corner. The swirling apparition was gone. He again lifted his gaze to the ceiling, only now he screamed.
The Gate: 13 Dark & Odd Tales Page 11