by Adam Drake
They left the cockpit and as Femke passed the utility closet she suddenly keyed it open. Stacks, awake now, glared up at her from the floor.
She looked him over with an analytical eye. “Nope, you're wrong, honey. He's too big. Might have to cut him in half.”
Stacks looked mortified. “What? What are you doing?”
“Just seeing how we're going to cram you into the recycler.” Then she closed the door on his shocked expression.
Ash frowned at her as they continued down the hall. “You didn't have to do that.”
“Yeah, but it's better than executing him, right?”
The engine room was smaller than expected with the main core hunkered down at its center. The protective casing flickered with indicator lights and tiny screens scrolled indecipherable data.
“Looks fine to me,” Ash said looking around in confusion. Engines weren't his thing.
Femke went to the main wall console. “You wouldn't see anything wrong. The fluctuation isn't that severe.” She tapped at a screen and a schematic of the core appeared. “I don't see anything here except lots of happy green numbers.”
“Maybe an anomaly, or the cockpit console is out of whack. This boat is practically a derelict.”
Femke kept tapping through the data. Then an orange warning symbol appeared. “Ah-ha! There it is.”
“There what is?” Ash said as Femke went to search through a corner shelving unit.
“Double Ah-ha,” she said pulling out two pairs of protective goggles. She handed him one and slipped the other on. “There is some sort of debris crammed up against the inner wall of the casing.”
Ash looked alarmed. “By the core?” He watched in horror as Femke keyed the center casing's panel. It slid open revealing a large transparent tube which undulated with blue light.
Femke motioned for him to put his goggles on, which he did quickly. “It's okay, honey,” she said holding a hand scanner up to the glowing tube. “It can't hurt us. Besides, we have to check this out. The last thing we need is another problem.”
“I'm not convinced. What if it irradiates us?” He subconsciously cupped his groin.
She scanned around, peering into the recesses of the casing. “Only if it were cracked, which would mean a breach, which would mean an enormous explosion. So, since that didn't happen, we're good.”
“Uh-huh,” Ash said, unconvinced. He moved so his lower half was behind a console unit.
Femke spotted something. “There it is!” she said in surprise.
“What is it now?”
“There's something attached to the interior, like a monitoring device or a-,” she gasped in surprise.
Instantly, Femke fell back, dropping the hand scanner to the floor with a clatter and unslung her rifle.
Alarmed, Ash fumbled to unholster his scatter-pistol. “What the heck, honey?”
Something floated out from the core's casing.
Ash raised the pistol, but Femke grabbed his hand, pushing it down.
“Don't shoot,” she said. “You'll hit the core.”
They both watched as what looked like a drone bobbed up and down before them. Its exterior was black and diamond in shape. The entire middle section was of a transparent material revealing a murky blue liquid inside.
As they peered at it, things swam around the liquid.
“What is that?” Ash said, incredulous.
The things moved in unison and swam forward. At first they looked like some bizarre form of fish, then the liquid cleared slightly to reveal they were a cluster of floating eyeballs. As one, the eyeballs looked from Ash to Femke.
“Greetings!” the floating drone full of eyeballs said.
“That,” Femke said exasperated, “is another problem.”
For several long moments Ash and Femke could only stare at the thing before them.
The eyeballs within the fluid swiveled between the husband and wife, waiting for a reaction. When none occurred, it spoke again. “Greetings!”
Its voice emanated from a speaker along the drone's base.
Ash found his voice first. “Uh, hello.”
“Hello!” the eyeballs said with enthusiasm. “Is that the proper way to greet one of your cultural shade?”
“Sure.”
“Excellent! I am most refreshed by this knowledge. The variance of your species is diverse as it is annoying.” The blue fluid within the drone bubbled, which probably could be taken for happiness. “Maintaining the proper etiquette when communicating with these variances can be hill-climbing of a steep kind.”
Ash leaned over to Femke. “It's talking is making my head hurt, can we shoot it?”
“I dunno,” Femke said, looking at the strange being with a mixture of amazement and revulsion. “Maybe it's worth something.”
The eyeballs grew larger in size than shrank. “Your speaking is of death and money. These concepts, although odd to me, is most entertaining to observe in lesser beings.”
Femke said, “What... Who are you?”
The drone twirled in place causing Ash and Femke to take a step back in alarm, weapons at the ready.
The drone returned to its original position, eyeballs forward. “I am neither, and I am both. But a definition is needed for further communication. You may refer to me as Gishjjhadkuttmalrutttan-ijjkl.”
“I'm not saying that,” Ash said.
Femke held up a hand in frustration. “What are you? I've never seen an alien like you before.” Like most interstellar traveling humans, Femke had run into a veritable encyclopedia of alien species which proliferated this arm of the galaxy. There were so many species it was hard not to bump into one. But this thing was utterly unique.
The eyeballs moved about changing positions with each other. “I am one, like none. Believe that what I am is not what has been before.”
Ash whispered to Femke, “I'd still like to shoot it.”
She held up her hand, again. “You're one of kind? Is that what you mean? You are the last of your species?”
“Incorrect!” the eyeballs declared joyously. “Such an explanation of my being would require further evolution of your shade's intelligence.”
Femke frowned. “You're saying I lack the ability to understand what you are?”
“I am saying that you, and your future offspring, and their future offspring, and future generations calculating roughly 84 times out will fail at this mental task. At the 85th generation of your species we can speak of this again!”
“Maybe we should shoot him,” Femke said.
Now it was Ash's turn to hold up a hand. “Look, uh, what was your name again?”
“Gishjjhadkuttmalrutttan-ijjkl!”
“Okay... Gish. We're kind of in a hurry at the moment and your presence in the, uh, reactor core was messing with our game. Can you not do that, please?”
The alien was silent a moment, then said, “An agreeable contract has been signed! I will avoid myself of the core for fourteen chronometric hours. After which I will return to absorb the beautiful waves.”
Femke frowned, “You feed off the core?”
“That description of this interaction will suffice.”
Ash's scanner pinged. “We got incoming.”
“Who? Can you tell?” Femke asked.
He shook his head. “Too far out, right at the edge of the radar, but they're coming this way. We need to get back to the cockpit.”
Femke sighed and looked at the floating alien. “Well, now what do we do with you, Gish? We can't leave you here in the engine room. And we're not letting you float around the ship. We'll have to restrict you to one of the crew quarters, for now.”
Gish was silent for several moments and the school of eyeballs drew closer together. “You mean a capturing ceremony?”
Both Ash and Femke didn't know how to react to that.
Femke finally said, “No, no capturing. You are not our prisoner. We just don't have time to converse with you right at the moment.”
“Thi
s is acceptable within the parameters of the chronometer limitations I have explained.”
“So, you'll let us take you to one of the quarters?”
“Correct!”
Femke and Ash exchanged a look. Ash shrugged and waved the scatter-pistol at the doorway. “Let's go, Gish. Can you float okay?”
Gish floated across the engine room and toward the door. “My forward propulsion is not limited to your lack of understanding!”
As Gish bobbed out into the hall Ash rolled his eyes at Femke.
They guided the alien to the engineer's quarters further up the deck. As Gish entered and floated to the center of the room, he twirled around to look at them with his many eyeballs. “This is not a capture ceremony, correct?”
“No, we are not capturing you nor holding you prisoner. We just need you out of the way for a little while,” Femke said.
“Then this arrangement is acceptable!” Gish said.
Ash nodded at the alien then closed the door, keying it to lock.
He and Femke gaped at each other in amazement.
“What the heck is that?” Ash said.
Femke could only shrug. “No clue. But whatever it is, it's a problem we do not have time for. Maybe we should let it outside. Drop it off somewhere.”
Ash shook his head. “I don't know. It's not native to this moon, or Jarduss Prime, or even this system.”
Femke rubbed her hands over her face with frustration. “We're in a hot transport which is in dire need of repairs, a prisoner we can't push out the airlock, and a thing that speaks gibberish and feeds of core emissions. Could this night get any more complicated?”
Ash's pocket scanner beeped in alarm. “We need to get topside, now.”
“Never a moment of peace!” Femke said, as they raced through the decks.
Once inside cockpit Ash pulled up the overlay of the immediate airspace. Two ships were flying below the cloud cover and moving toward them from the direction of the bunker. From the transport's limited vantage point any information on what or who they were was muddled.
“Scouts,” Femke said staring at the display.
“You think?” Ash said, scratching his chin. “Might be standard shuttles with Karro drunks on a night hunt.” One of the crazier activities Karro residents indulged in was flying around at night and taking pot shots at the wildlife below. It was a common occurrence which sometimes resulted in some shuttles not returning.
Femke watched the ship icons getting closer to the transport's position. “Can we drop further down, or is this as deep as we can go?”
Ash checked over the navigation display. “If we drop any further down we'd have to land.”
Femke shook her head. With the engine maintaining their hover, the transport would be easily detected once the ships got within a certain range. If they could land and shut the engines off, they'd be almost invisible within the chasm unless the ships were looking directly down at them.
And if they were spotted while grounded, it would take too long to fire up the engines again and try to make an escape.
“They must be following our trail,” Femke said. “This can't be a guess on where we would be. There is simply too much area for them to cover beyond the bunker to make this mere coincidence. No, they know we're here somehow and are narrowing it down.”
Ash said, “So we run?” He looked over the map display, widening its scope with a gesture of his hand. “But where to? Threx is the closest settlement past the wastes and that is damn far from our position.”
Femke shook her head. “I don't think it will matter much which direction we go. Once we poke our head out from this chasm, those scouts will be on us. I don't think this transport has what it takes to outrun them.” Her eyes looked out the front viewport and up at the churning clouds.
Ash's eyebrows raised in alarm. “No. I know what you're thinking, honey, but that is a definite no.”
“Why not? Once we're in that soup they'd be crazy to follow us.”
“They'd last longer in that crap than we could. Even with the damage to the landing strut this boat is too old to handle those winds for very long. It would only be worth the risk if we were going to try for orbit.”
“That would be plan B,” Femke's fingers tapped across her screen. “Hull integrity is currently at 98.4%, well within safety parameters. We can do this.”
Ash scoffed. “You know that number is just an engineering placebo. I bet once we get in that stuff it will start stripping away the hull plating.”
“I'll take that bet!” Femke said with maniacal smile. She moved into the navigation chair and began plotting a trajectory.
“Oh, we're doing this, aren't we?” Ash said. He looked at the radar. The two scouts were closer and definitely approaching their exact position. “Yeah, they know we're here.”
He dropped into the copilot seat and clamped on his harness. “Safety, first, honey.”
“Yup,” she said and did the same.
“What about the other two?”
“What about them?”
Ash rolled his eyes. “They need to be warned things are going to get bumpy.”
Femke shrugged. “Suit yourself, but we're taking off in ten seconds.”
Ash keyed the internal comms channel to the crew quarters. “Gish?”
“Greetings, disembodied voice!” Gish said.
“Secure your, uh, floating device to something solid. We're going to be experiencing some severe self-induced turbulence, so hang on.”
“Most amazing to know!” Gish said.
Ash clicked the comms off and tapped at the console.
“What about Stacks?” Femke asked.
Ash looked down at the cauterized wound at his side. “Slag him.”
“Reversing hover,” Femke said.
The transport suddenly lurched upward pressing both of them into their seats. The moment the ship emerged from the chasm indicators flashed on their screens.
“They see us,” Ash said. “Here they come.”
“And here we go!” Femke said and burned the upward thrusters to maximum.
In seconds, the rattling transport shot straight up and into the hellish clouds.
The moment they crossed the cloud terminus and into the main storm the ship began to shake violently.
“Oh, boy,” Ash said as red warning messages blossomed across his screen.
“Adjusting angle, moving in the direction of Threx. Maybe these winds can carry us that far.”
The deep sound of metal bending could be heard from somewhere in the ship. Then a strange popping noise was followed by a piece of hull plating whipping up and over the front view port.
“We'll be nothing but a flying skeleton by the time we get to Threx,” Ash said. “If we make it there at all.”
“Positive vibes, honey,” Femke said, her eyes never leaving her screen. “There's a lot of hull yet to go.”
“Very funny,” Ash said. Another indicator, this time yellow, flashed on the radar. “Scout number one just followed us up. Can't see two.”
“Distance?”
Cannon fire suddenly streaked over the transport and vanished into the storm in front of them.
“Close enough for them to take potshots at us,” Ash said.
Another volley hit the port side and glanced off the hull plating. Damage indicators screeched warnings.
“I think they're trying for the engines, knock us out of the sky but not blow us up,” Ash said.
“Good. That gives us a chance, then,” Femke said. “At least until they get annoyed. Taking evasive maneuvers!”
She banked the ship hard and an incoming cannon shot missed them.
Dark angry clouds whipped past the view screen occasionally lit up by arcs of lightning. The ship was shaking harder now as Femke swerved back and forth. Some cannon shots missed, but others hit their mark, melting plating.
“Ship number two is in range!” Ash said as a second indicator appeared on the radar. The two scouts were
flying side-by-side behind the transport and closing fast.
“They must really want this old bucket,” Femke said shaking her head. Ships rarely entered these clouds unless on their way to making orbit. For these scouts to even stay on their tail and risk a system killing lightening strike was baffling.