Excalibur

by Tim Marquitz

  “How is he?” Lyana asked, racing to Randall’s side. Mara went with her, hovering behind the engineer as he examined the kid.

  Ever the sensitive soul, Crate answered, “He’s messed up. Messed up bad.”

  “We need to get him to the ship.”

  “No.” Crate shook his head. “Nothing we can do for him there,” he said.

  “Then what the hell do you suggest?” Albion stared down at the ensign, the kid almost unrecognizable under the thick coating of blood and gore. His chest had been ripped apart, ribs showing through at points and wide, deep gashes had been gouged in his stomach. Albion feared to move him at all, afraid the boy’s guts might slither loose of his torso.

  Crate’s eyes wandered for an instant, then seemed to brighten. He hopped to his feet and spun about, his fingers flying over the control panel of the nearest stasis chamber.

  “What are you doing?” Albion asked, but then he realized exactly what the engineer intended. He ran over to help him just as the chamber hissed, the door popping open.

  “Help me,” Albion called out. Lyana ran over and grabbed the other side of the body he pulled from the tube.

  Mara stood and stared, shock having washed over her. “Stop it! You’re going to kill the person.”

  “He’s in stasis,” Crate answered. “He’ll hold until he recovers or is plugged into another tube. Randall, however, doesn’t have that luxury.”

  The engineer ignored Mara’s muttered response and dropped beside Randall. “Help me get his clothes off.”

  “What for?” Albion asked, but Lyana was already diving in to assist Crate.

  “He needs to be naked,” Crate insisted and, between him and Lyana tugging his shredded uniform aside in wet strips that slapped to the floor with loud splats, he was just moments later.

  Then Crate scooped Randall into his arms, blood spilling as if a bucket of it had been dumped over the poor kid. Albion winced but ran to help Crate shove the kid into the stasis chamber, nearly slipping in the puddle left behind. As soon as Randall was inside the tube, Crate slammed the glass facing shut and triggered the stasis process.

  “You’re going to freeze him?” Lyana asked.

  “It’s not really freezing, but we’ve no other option but stasis right now,” he answered, focused on the panel. “If we don’t stop the bleeding, he’ll be dead in minutes.”

  Albion stumbled against the chamber beside the one that held Randall, his slowly-blurring eyes locked on the kid. “Damn it.” Mara came over and stood beside him, having apparently forgotten the unconscious body now laying in the middle of the floor as she realized the extent of Randall’s injuries.

  “Will he—?”

  Crate shrugged as he looked away from the panel, eyes searching again, his gaze lighting on a pair of med bots that skittered toward them. The first came over, clasped the man who’d been dumped from his pod by the arms, and then dragged him off behind the dividing wall like so much trash. The crew looked on, unsure of how to react.

  The second bot turned its gaze on Randall, and Crate stepped aside, allowing it access to the tube. Its mechanical hands sprouted a number of finger-like appendages, and it tapped out a sequence on the panel, the lights inside Randall’s chamber dimming a little, frost building on the edge of the glass. Then, its job done, it backed away and made ready to leave.

  Ares,” Crate said, “grab it.”

  The battle bot did as it was asked and clasped the med bot by its shell. The second bot went still, freezing in place at the restraint. Crate came over and stood right in its mechanical face, running a hand across the place where Albion knew the access panel on Ares was.

  “What are you doing?”

  The engineer didn’t answer. He fiddled with the bot for a moment and peeled the access plate aside, digging his fingers inside. The crew watched him work, knowing better than to interrupt him, regardless what he had in mind.

  “There,” he said after a few silent minutes, slamming the plate shut. “Let it go, Ares.”

  Ares did just that, and the med bot resumed its motion as if nothing had happened, but instead of chasing after its companion bot, it turned back to the stasis chamber that held Randall. It plugged itself in again and flashes of lights flickered inside the tube, casting colorful shadows over the ensign’s face. The deep lines of unconscious agony seemed to lessen, Albion thought as he watched the bot work.

  “Will this save him?” Mara asked.

  Crate shook his head. “It will stabilize him, give us time to figure out what we need to do.” He slapped the bot on the back. “This guy here isn’t much of a surgeon, which is what Randall needs, but his skills are sufficient for maintenance. He’ll stay here and ensure Randall keeps breathing and doesn’t feel any pain. It’s all that can be done now.”

  “We need to get out of here then,” Albion said, glaring at the wreckage of the bugs around him.

  “We can’t leave yet,” Mara yelled. “My crew are still here somewhere, trapped in these damn tubes.” She slammed her fist into one, the impact echoing through the warehouse. “We can’t leave.”

  Albion went to shout back, but Crate stepped between. “Look, right now, this is the best place for Randall if there’s any hope for his survival. Until he’s stabilized, dropped into deep stasis where his body can start to heal, he’s at risk. He needs to stay here until then. Once he’s stable, we can look at moving the chamber to the Excalibur and leaving the planet, but not until then.”

  Albion growled, worried that the longer they stuck around, the more likely it was that someone else would end up in a stasis tube, or worse. He couldn’t handle that, seeing anyone else hurt or killed. As if to emphasize his point, another mag-hook rolled by overhead, carrying a stasis tube over the wall.

  “We’re taking a chance sticking around this place. We’ve already been attacked once. This isn’t a good idea.”

  “We’re taking a chance leaving too, Captain,” Lyana said, staring at him through wet eyes. A silver tear glistened on her dark cheek. “I want Randall to live, and I trust Crate to know what’s best for him.” She waved her arms at the tubes all around them. “I also want these people to live, too. We need to find a way that saves them all or we’ve wasted our time here. Even if we get off-planet and send a message to Vice Admiral Vance, and he believes us, you know what will happen.”

  Albion did.

  There would be no rescue ships, no med-craft to see to the thousands of people stuffed in stasis chambers, no exploratory mission to search the planet for more installations like this one. No, Vance and the chancellor would order Dev-ji 482 destroyed from space, world-busters dropped on it until the core superheated and the planet imploded, taking everyone and everything right along with it.

  “Yeah…” he whispered, the decision being taken out of his hands, and he hated it. He glanced at Crate. “Stay here and keep an eye on Randall. “We’re going to go a little deeper and see if a solution presents itself.”

  “And if it doesn’t?” Lyana asked.

  Albion shrugged. That was the only answer he had.

  Before she could push him on it, he started off toward the dividing wall, determined to see what was behind it now that they’d decided there was nothing to do but wait and hope they found a way out of their predicament before Vance ‘s impatience got the better of him and he chose to err on the side of caution and nuke the place.

  He could hear everyone’s short, sharp breaths in the comms so he nudged the volume lower, the sound driving him insane. There were enough distractions that he didn’t need more of them, especially one’s piped directly into his ears. Only the hum of the machines in the warehouse and the sullen stomp of their feet resounding in his helmet, he and the crew, Ares up front, slipped past the dividing wall to see what lay beyond.

  Not sure what he expected, Albion was surprised to see the place was much the same as the area they’d just left. Clear stasis tubes were stacked toward the rear of the room, most of them four-high like
out front, people’s frozen expressions staring out at them. Off to the side of those was a small section of empty stasis tubes, scattered about, dozens of them cramped together and pushed aside. There were ten or more that were obviously damaged, glass shattered and cracked in places, frames bent, that were piled behind those up front. The ones up front, however, were not exactly clean and pristine themselves. The doors to several hung open and, on many, the glass was splattered with brown-black stains. Albion didn’t need to go any closer to know what covered the tubes. It was definitely blood. The question was, how did it get there?

  No really interested in the answer, he looked away to survey the rest of the section. It was much the same as the other side of the divider. The only real difference was that there were four spaces cleared out in front of the tube rows. A skeletal, metal frame sat at each location, obviously designed to hold stasis chambers in place, one of the mag-hooks lowering one in place as they watched. The frame clamped onto the chamber as it was set in place. A med bot stood before each station, and Albion recognized a laz-scalpel in each of their modified hands. A great black tube snaked down from the gloom of the ceiling and hung beside the med bots, each clutching to it.

  “What are they doing?” Mara asked, a quiet tremor in her voice.

  At the station nearest them, where the hook had just set the stasis tube, the bot fiddled with the controls and the tube door popped open. The crew drew closer to get a better look as the bot reached out toward the sleeping woman in the tube with the laz-scalpel.

  Albion heard Mara gag as the bot ignited the scalpel and stabbed the tip into the belly of the woman. It dragged the blade down a few inches, opening a long, thin slice in the woman’s abdomen. Then it withdrew the blade, another of its limbs triggering a button on the black hose and a greenish-black ball the size of a small fist oozed loose and plopped in its palm. Without hesitation, it reached out and shoved the ball inside the wound, depositing it there, the limb withdrawing without it.

  Albion’s stomach surged in sympathetic revolt, and he fought the nausea that welled inside him. Despite it all, his crew clearly experiencing the same thing behind them, their raw gasps sounding in his ears, he looked on.

  The bot lifted a surgical cauterizer, Albion recognizing it from his cycles on the battlefield, and sealed the wound and backed away. The stasis chamber door closed and the lights flickered as the mag-hook lifted the tube and carried it, placing it on one of the stacks near the back of the room. Albion turned to see the other three bots performing the same operation as the first awaited his next patient.

  “What the hell are they doing to them?” There was no hiding the fury’s in Mara’s voice. It had seared away her disgust, and she edged toward the closest med bot while another tube was lowered towards its position. Albion followed, knowing by the gleam of her eyes just how close she was to exploding, though he really couldn’t blame her.

  The stasis tube settled into the cradle and the bot opened it, air hissing, and began the procedure, cutting and inserting the small, gleaming ball. Albion saw Mara stiffen as she circled around for a better view, her body jolting upright.

  “No!” she screamed and started toward the bot, raising her weapon as it cauterized the wound.

  Albion reached for but it was too late. Her rifle up, she blasted the med bot, pumping multiple bursts of energy into its torso as she advanced. It stumbled back, smoking black craters appearing at its mechanoid torso. The bot shuddered and collapsed, smoke billowing from its wounds. Then she turned her weapon on the mag-hook, turning it into slag before it could haul the tube away. It clattered to the floor, a shower of metallic splinters. A great claxon erupted less than a heartbeat later, the room dimming as shades of red flickered from lights situated somewhere above.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Albion shouted, catching up to her, his ears ringing from the alarm.

  She shook him off, snarling. “That’s my helmsman,” she screamed, racing to the stasis tube, slinging her rifle behind her back.

  Albion stumbled to a halt at her words. Mara reached the tube, and he watched as she cradled the woman inside, tugging her loose of her restraints. Mara snarled as the woman’s full weight fell into her arms, sending the pair staggering. Albion ran over and slipped under the woman’s unconscious arms and took her weight off Mara.

  “Genys,” she said, her hand on the woman’s chin, gently shaking it side to side. The helmsman didn’t respond.

  “If the scalpel didn’t wake her, this isn’t going to,” Albion said, instantly regretting his tone.

  If Mara noticed, she didn’t show it. “Help me set—”

  “What are you people doing?” Crate’s voice rang through the comms.

  “Whatever it is,” Choi said, cutting in, “you’ve stirred up a bug’s nest.”

  “What are we looking at?”

  “You’ve got something along the lines of a hundred of the bastards coming your way. There’s apparently a second compound hidden under the landing field because that’s where they’re coming from.”

  Albion’s stomach clenched, and he felt his pulse thundering in his veins, blood searing. “How long.”

  “Three minutes, more or less,” Choi answered. “Probably less. The bastards are coming in fast, Captain.”

  Crate slid around the corner of the dividing wall, eyes wide, his blue skin taking on a reddish tint. “Way less,” he said. “They’re already inside the door.”

  Captain Albion stood there, certain their time had come. They’d barely won out against a dozen of the things, and that left Randall fighting for his life in a stasis—

  Albion stiffened, a thought hitting him. He spun and pointed at the empty stasis chambers. “In there!”

  Lyana shook her head. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “You have a better idea?” he asked.

  “I only wish.” She growled and ran for the row of dirty tubes, pulling them open for the others. She started to climb in, but Crate grabbed her by the shoulder, stopping her.

  “You need to be naked,” he said, winking at her. “We all do, actually.”

  She sighed. “This just gets better and better.”

  Crate grinned, watching as she shed her clothes. “It does indeed.”

  Sixteen

  Dev-ji 482

  Stripped of their gear and clothes and, given Lyana’s string of complaints, their pride, Albion stared out the dirty glass tube at his crew. Modesty out the window, he was grateful for the alarms that made it impossible to think of anything but the impending doom skittering their way.

  They’d torn their clothes off in a hurry and hid them alongside their equipment amid the pile of broken tubes, the haphazard storage of them helping to keep their stuff out of sight. Crate assured them that the bugs’ thinking processes would effectively make the crew invisible as long as nothing was blatantly amiss. Them packed inside the tubes with their clothes and weapons on display fit that criteria.

  Ares stood beside the tubes, basically blocking the way to the gear, and acting as if he were one of the med bots, tinkering with a broken stasis chamber. Just another bot, he was positioned close enough to either defend the crew or draw the bugs away should something go wrong.

  Albion swallowed hard as the aliens skirted the dividing wall and spilled into the area before them. It was the moment of truth. He sure hoped Crate was right or they were in for an ugly, embarrassing death.

  A cold chill sent goosebumps rippling along his body as he watched the mass of Xebedons skitter about, circling the blasted med bot and mag-hook. Tiny, beady eyes flickered about, and Albion was certain they had been discovered when a number of the creatures looked their way. His hands eased into tight fists as several of the bugs chittered and crawled their direction.

  Crate had been adamant that no one bring a weapon into the tube, no matter how small. With the chamber face doing absolutely nothing to hide what resided inside its glass confines, there’d been no way to hide anything without making
it apparent. He was certain that even the bugs would notice a weapon. Still, Albion wished he’d ignored the engineer. He’d do anything to be holding a plas-rifle right then.

  He held his breath as one of the bugs stuck the flat square of its face against the glass of Albion’s tube. Four silver eyes took him in, but with nothing to gauge the creature’s expression by, he had no way of knowing if it had figured out the ruse or was still considering him.

  Just when he reached the point of needing to exhale, risking fogging the glass and giving himself away, the bug let out a loud series of clicks and it moved on. The others examining the tubes alongside it did the same, shuffling off to stare at a row of tubes across the way. Beyond them, dozens of the creatures zipped in and out between the tubes and the med bots, which continued their job of cutting open and sealing up people as if the bugs weren’t there, running riot through everything.

  After what seemed an eternity, the aliens collected the shattered bot and mag-hook and dragged them off, retreating from view. A moment later, a new med bot rolled into the old one’s place, clasping at the black hose and waiting for the next pod. No more of the bugs appeared.

  Still, the crew held in place. Without their helmets on to get updates from Choi, they had no clue whether the bugs had just moved to another part of the warehouse or if they’d left entirely. Albion’s neck and back nagged at him, everything tense as he awaited some signal to determine when would be a good time to crawl out of the tube.

  Ares turned out to be that signal.

  The bot skittered over and opened his tube for him, running down the line and doing the same for each. Albion sighed as he stepped out, stretching on instinct, forgetting he was naked until he saw Mara and Lyana do the same. He caught himself staring a moment before pulling his eyes away, calling Ares over. Now was not the time to be enjoying the scenery.

  “Get our equipment,” he told the bot, and Ares complied without hesitation.

  “Finally got me naked, huh, Captain?” Lyana asked, winking at Mara and making no bones about checking her out.