“Precaution,” said Dell. “Terrans aren’t the first race to lose their minds when they get into space.”
We arrived at a closed door. Neither one of us made a move to open the door. Dell pointed at the hatch wheel. “Open it up,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”
I sighed and gripped the wheel. No alerts came up. My suit groaned along with me as the wheel turned with hesitation, but I managed to open the door and push it inwards. My muscles ached and felt like they were on fire. I stepped across the threshold, caught my toe and stumbled.
A beam of light grazed over my shoulder and hit the doorframe. It sparked and blackened the metal. I tried to move backwards, back through the door, but Dell pushed me forward, and I sprawled face first onto the floor. Another beam of light flashed over my head. Even through my suit I felt the heat of the laser just missing me.
Dell fired three times from his suit’s arm cannon into a far corner. A smoldering piece of slag fell from the ceiling onto the ground. It glowed orange and lit up the walls around it.
I had to remind myself to breathe. My palms were sweaty and my heartbeat raced. I wanted to jump up and run.
“What the hell are you doing?” I screamed.
Dell looked down at me. He took a step over the threshold and into the room. “You’re fine.”
“Fine,” I muttered, pushing myself up and dusting myself off. “I’m fine. I bet if I checked a mirror there’d be a scorch mark on my helmet.”
“The calibration was off,” said Dell. “If it was going to hit you it’d have hit you on the first shot. Besides, you should have checked for it in the first place.
I muttered to myself as we continued our trek. Dell was the professional on this. He and Wards were supposed to take care of our security. I’d only been brought along to act as a liaison if we found anyone. I wasn’t trained for this type of situation.
We encountered three more mounted lasers and five trip wires attached to explosives. None of them seemed to be particularly well placed or well maintained. Lasers, like the first one, weren’t calibrated or weren’t aimed well. The trip wires were snaked across the floor. One would have had to be dragging their feet to get caught up in them. Everything seemed to be installed by someone distracted or without know-how.
Dell and I reached an airlock and stepped inside. A red light began to blink at us when the door closed. My suit alerted me that atmosphere began to fill the chamber. We stood in silence. I glanced over at Dell, but he concentrated on something else. Soon the red light blinked off and a green one turned on. A chime sounded, and the opposite door opened.
We stepped into the habitable area. The lighting was less harsh, and the walls were painted a light blue. Rows of empty planters lined the walls. My suit read the atmosphere as being the same as Earth’s. I thought it was a good sign. Dell gritted his teeth and gave a throaty hiss.
The hallway widened, and we walked without talking. In the atmosphere our boots clanked on the metal grating. It didn’t take long to forget about the lack of outside sounds when I was locked down in my suit in the vacuum. Everything came internally: radio chatter, the rasp of my breathing, the thump of my heartbeat. In atmosphere, sounds leaked through my helmet. Even filtered I could hear the going on around me: hiss of pipes, rattle of vents, pounding of boots.
When we came to junctions, I slowed down and Dell would nudge me or point in the direction we needed to go. He continued to keep his distance. The thought of a surprise attack crossed my mind briefly, but I tried to dismiss the idea. Dell would be on alert for one; I was not a fighter.
I ran through a few other scenarios but came to the conclusion I wouldn’t be very good in a fight. I decided that if worst comes to worst that I would take a ship from whoever was here. They had to have a ship because otherwise how would they have gotten here. Flying it would be up to the AI. I was pretty sure ships had some kind of autopilot.
I shook my head. My plan was terrible, but I couldn’t think of anything else.
I continued to trudge along. One part of my mind tried to tell me to be ready for the worst. The other part tried to tell me that everything would be okay. I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to believe.
As we moved down the hallways signs of life began to pop up; a blood smeared white tank top sat wadded on the ground, a rotten smell, and unintelligible voices echoing in the distance. With the first voices Dell grabbed my shoulder and pushed me down until we were both crouched. My heart pounded, and the saliva dried up in my mouth.
I wasn’t sure what the plan was supposed to be, as there had been an assumption in briefing that the people we’d meet would be aggressive. I supposed if they were friendly I’d be able to strike up a conversation with them. It made sense that we needed to be alert. Even the walk down into SpaciEm felt cautious, but this almost felt like we were part of a raiding party sneaking up on the villagers.
Something crashed in an offshoot hallway at the T-junction ahead of us. It sounded like an empty barrel had fallen over. Someone began cursing. My ears perked up. Then someone spoke in English with a Zimbabwean accent.
“I recognize the accent,” I whispered to Dell.
“Terran?” he said.
I nodded.
Dell got up and walked around the corner. “Don’t move,” he yelled. His tin can voice from his suit mike echoed in the hallways.
“Fuck,” yelled the someone. Three shots rang out. The noise reverberated around the small space, and I silently thanked my suit for filtering out the worst of it. .
Dell’s arm cannon blared. It made a whomph sound each time it fired its small energy blast. Something fell onto the grating with a thud and a separate clatter of plastic. Someone shouted. Footsteps pounded down the corridor away from my position.
Two more shots fired then another three from Dell. His heavy footsteps moved down the corridor. He traded fire with someone else who yelled obscenities.
My brain screamed at me to run. I opened my eyes. During the shooting I’d screwed them shut so tight tears rolled down my cheeks. With the sounds of fighting fading in the distance I looked around at the empty corridor and stood up.
I peeked around the corner to get a view of the aftermath. The corpse of a man draped across a pile of boxes. His rifle lay a few feet away from him. He wore the standard jumpsuit I remembered the colonists had on in promotional photos. Every inch of exposed skin had a myriad of tattoos and scarring in the shape of the symbols we’d seen on the walls of SpaciEm.
Another violent encounter filtered around a corner and down the corridor. Every fiber in my body told me to take off in the opposite direction of Dell and the colonists. Whatever fight he partook in wasn’t one I wanted take part in. At this time I didn’t want to be found by either him or the colonists. I wanted off Nasee Four.
Once again I found myself choosing random corridors. I’d slow down at hallway intersections and try to identify something that would help me find a path to the shuttle bay. In my head it should have been easy like finding a firehose in a skyscraper, but here I couldn’t find anything. The thought crossed my mind that since this was an unfinished colony they had never put any signage.
As I ran, voices echoed down the hallways. Footsteps hammered the metal grating somewhere else in the facility. The sounds of gunfire and return fire bounced around the hallway walls. About the only thing I could pinpoint was that the fighting wasn’t right next to me.
I ran around a corner and skidded to a halt. A woman raised her gun, aiming above my head, and fired one shot. I threw my hands up in the air and on instinct crouched down as the bullet ricocheted around the small space.
“Don’t shoot,” I said, surprising myself that my words didn’t come out in a stammer.
“Are you with it?” she said. Anger and hatred oozed from her words.
I looked up and with some hesitation stood before responding. She wore the same jumpsuit and had the same markings as the dead man. I didn’t know how to respond.
She grit
ted her teeth and gripped the gun tighter. An odor struck me in a wave of rotten flesh. The stench that had been haunting us throughout the facility was the colonists.
The woman edged closer to me. She cocked her head to the side and eyed me sideways. Her gaze focused on my face.
“You aren’t here to take us back?” she said.
“Back where?”
“To there,” she hissed. Spit flecked on her lips and her eyes got a wild look in them. “With Kaur.”
I shook my head. “We don’t know where she is,” I said. “We thought you could tell us.”
“No,” she said continuing to edge closer to me. “No. You aren’t here for us.”
A smile crept across her face. It dangled to one side like she’d had a stroke at some point. Her teeth were black and her gums bled. Her sclera was yellow with veins crisscrossing them. She eased herself up next to me and leaned in, smelling my neck. I closed my eyes and turned my head. Her breath made me want to retch and her body odor felt oppressive.
“No,” she said in a low tone. “You’re going to join us.” She snapped. Her teeth clacked as they hit each other, and she laughed.
The whomph of an arm cannon at the opposite end of the hall echoed down to us. A man screamed and the woman turned. She started firing down the hallway as Dell stalked around the corner.
Bullets sparked and ricocheted around him. He stumbled backwards as one caught him in the chest but righted himself and continued forward. Two shots from his arm cannon caught the woman in the abdomen in quick succession and sent her cartwheeling into the bulkhead behind me.
Dell kept his cannon pointed down the hallway in my general direction. Not knowing what else to do I kept my hands in the air. I gulped and licked my dry lips. Neither one of us moved.
A woman pounded rounded the corner behind Dell. She let loose a hail of bullets. I fell to the ground and covered my head. One whomph followed and then two thuds.
I peeked out from between my fingers. The woman lay moaning on the ground. She feebly tried to reach for her gun that was a few feet from her but couldn’t close the gap. Blood seeped through the fabric of her jumpsuit, soaking it. She stopped reaching for her gun as the capillary effect drew blood into the fabric.
A few feet from her lay Dell, face down and unmoving.
I lay on the ground and listened. The woman’s moaning stopped. No one ran to help. No one shouted for reinforcements. No one fired their weapons. The only sounds I heard were my breathing and fans in the air filtering system.
Dell didn’t move when I jumped to my feet. I sprinted over to his body and rolled him over. Blood oozed from a chest wound. It dripped through the grating and pooled underneath the walkway.
I wrenched Dell’s helmet off him. His frill popped open and his eyes stared at me without life behind them. I’d mourn for him later. At this time I needed to get off Nasee Four.
I hooked into Dell’s suit and was bombarded with information. The Omanix had hailed him multiple times without receiving a reply. There were markers on his helmet’s HUD for seven remaining lifeforms which I presumed were more Terrans. A small map representation floated in the periphery. Why I hadn’t been contacted I didn’t know.
I maximized the map. Corridors were still snaking out and being formed. Dell must have released mapping drones when we entered the living area.
My next step was to find a ship and get off this rock. I scrolled around the map trying to find something that might be a shuttle bay. I figured it would be larger and on the periphery. My intuition was right, and I confirmed it by bringing up footage the drones had recorded.
There were two ships in the video. I overlaid the lifeform markers with the map. They were grouping together and heading towards the bay.
“Omanix,” I said. I dashed down the hallway and towards the shuttle bay.
“Where’s Dell?” said the Omanix. “We’re not picking up his signal. Why did you go radio silent?”
My momentum coming around a corner sent me into a wall. I grunted and bounced off it. “Dead. We found Terrans,” I said. My muscles already burned from the exertion. It seemed they hadn’t done anything for my endurance while I was in the healing chamber. “They’re making a run for the shuttles.”
“Are they hostile?”
“Very,” I said. I wanted to laugh, but it didn’t seem right since Dell’s body was still warm. “I’m heading for the shuttle bay.” Four of the lifeform blips were already there.
Baron popped up in a communication box. Its head filled the entire screen. “Do not engage. We’re sending help,” the Captain said.
This time I did laugh. Baron scrunched up their eyebrows, and I detected just a hint of a snarl. “I’m going to try and beat them to the shuttles,” I said.
I rounded the final corner and charged down the final hallway. I could see my destination ahead of me. Klaxons began to blare. A door started to shut behind me. Warning lights turned on and began to flash creating a strobe like effect. The atmosphere whooshed past me. I let out a startled cry. My body felt lighter as I got sucked along and tumbled end over end into the shuttle bay.
The bay doors were open. The stars shone in the blackness beyond. Debris sucked out of the bay floated into the emptiness and disappeared. My suit pinpointed and magnified an object: the Omanix. It sat, waiting, outside the shuttle bay.
I came to a stop on top of a woman. She kicked and punched at me. I tried to disengage and get myself untangled from her without using the full power of my suit. It was unclear what kind of protection hers offered. Her attacks kept us locked together. I yelled at her to stop but forgot she couldn’t hear me in the vacuum.
We rolled around until I slammed my fist into her chest. She skidded across the floor and came to a stop against the far wall. I got to my knees in time to see the first shuttle take off and head out.
It didn’t fly straight. The pilot took it in a drunken, zig zag pattern that made it look like a top towards the end of its spin: wobbly and unstable. The Omanix moved to intercept. The shuttle fired its weapons. The small laser missed the Confederate ship and vanished into the blackness. The Omanix returned fire, striking the smaller ship.
The shuttle contracted then expanded into a cloud of debris. There was no explosion or fire or sound. It was like I watched a balloon pop on mute.
I pitched forward from an impact to my back and slammed into the ground. My face crashed into my visor. Pain blossomed in my nose and blood ran down my face before my suit began to administer first aid. Something pounded on my back. My suit screamed warnings that an attempt was being made to take off my helmet.
With a painful grunt I rolled onto my back then sneezed clotted blood onto my visor. The woman who I’d tangled with before let go of me. She unsheathed a knife. Through the blood spray I saw her charge me and rolled onto my side.
She jumped onto me and wrapped her legs around my waist. I grabbed her wrist and felt it crush under my suit-assisted grip as she brought the knife down. She didn’t seem to notice and continued to maul at my helmet with her other hand.
The fight slowed down for me. Through her visor I saw markings cut into her face. Some were fresh and still bleeding. Her head was shaved exposing weeping sores on her scalp. Spit flecked her visor as blood from her cuts dripped and mixed in with her saliva to create a frothy, pinkish mixture. I was tempted to put my helmet to hers to see if I could understand what she said.
My suit pinged me and the world sped back up to normal. The second shuttle began to lift off. It tilted to one side and bumped into the far wall then listed back towards my attacker and me. I let out a cry that was a mixture of terror at being crushed and frustration at my situation. The woman still didn’t let go.
A ball of golden yellow light appeared next to me. Wards materialized and grabbed my arm. I felt her slap a Travel beacon on my chest, and the world disappeared in a flash of golden yellow light.
Chapter Eight
Wards came out of the interrogation room and p
atted my shoulder. It looked like she wanted to say something but couldn’t think of the words.
“How’d it go?” I said.
“Well,” said Wards, “she wants to speak with you.”
I snorted. After Wards had grabbed me on Nasee Four we traveled back to the Omanix. By chance of her attacking me and being in contact, the colonist came with us. On the Omanix she continued to fight until being sedated.
“She doesn’t seem to care much for discussion,” I said.
Wards shrugged. “She won’t talk to anyone else on the ship, and we’ve got orders from up high not to push her right now.”
I sighed, unsure of what I could do, and headed through the interrogation room door. She sat, wrists chained to the table, ankles cuffed to the chair. Her back faced me. The door shut behind me.
“Hello,” I said, moving to take my seat in the sterile white room. It reminded me of the types of rooms I’d seen in movies: single table, two chairs facing each other and a large mirror on one wall.
She squinted at me as I sat down. The symbols on her face were lighter, contrasting against her darker skin tone, due to new skin growth from healing boxes. Her wrist was free of a cast. She didn’t stink so at some point someone must have hosed her down.
“I was told you wanted to speak with me,” I said.
We sat in silence. She stared straight at me. I felt her gaze rip right into me. It was like a void had focused its attention on me: unsettling, unfamiliar, empty.
Her chains clinked as she leaned forward. The ball of tension in my chest dissipated in relief that something broke the silence.
“You haven’t been touched,” she said.
“By what?”
She grinned. Her teeth were a daffodil yellow, but her gums didn’t bleed. “You’ll know.”
I grumbled and put my head in my hands. The Hive had spoken in what I thought were riddles. I didn’t need more.
She looked toward the mirror, smacked her lips and smiled. “When they come you will all know,” she said.
“Who? Who’s coming?” I said.
“Kaur is the vanguard. She is the spearhead of their arrival,” said the woman. Her voice crackled with the intensity of a zealot.
The Terran Representative Page 5