by Phil Rossi
She would find her father and get him to safety, but by that time surely all the station’s lifeboats would be gone.
“Gerald,” she said aloud. The salvage pilot might already have fled the station. Or maybe he’d just laugh in her face. But really, Gerald Evans was her only hope. She went to the terminal and called up his PDA. “Please pick up,” she said. “Please. Pick up.”
(•••)
Ina’s distraught face appeared on the small LCD screen of Gerald’s PDA.
“Gerald, please, in the name of all that is holy, tell me you’re still on the station,” she said.
“So glad you’re concerned about my well being, Ina. I’m still here.” He looked around the auditorium and then back to the pile of smoking metal and concrete that had once been the stage. “For how much longer, remains to be seen. But I’ll make a bet and say it won’t be any longer than it’ll take to fire up Bean’s engines.”
“I need you to wait for me, Gerald.”
“Wait for you? For all I know, you brought this shitstorm on us,” he said.
From below, Marisa groaned.
“We all did,” Ina said. “I’m sorry… is Marisa okay?”
“No,” he said, clipping the word short. “I’ll get you off this falling-apart hunk of metal, but I’m not willing to wait to do it. Why do you need me to wait?”
“My father is gone, Gerald. I need to find him. I know he’s still alive.” The desperation was apparent in her voice. She was crying now. “He went down… there.”
Gerald didn’t need to ask. “If he went down there, he’s a goner by now. Sorry, Ina.”
“No. I need to get him, Gerald. He’d do the same for me. I’m going, but I know the lifeboats will all be gone by the time I find him and get back.”
“You’re right about that, Ina. No one is sticking around here for much longer. And those that get stuck here—and there will be a lot of them—will rip apart any ship that was stupid enough not to launch ten minutes ago. I don’t want to be on the receiving end of that.”
“It won’t take long, Gerald. I promise. He couldn’t have gotten too far. He’s very sick.”
Gerald hesitated and shook his head. He didn’t couldn’t believe what he was about to say next.
“Fine, goddamn it. I’m going with you, then.”
“You’re what?” Ina said. He heard an equally incredulous sound from Marisa down below.
“You heard me. If I’m gonna wait, I might as well make sure the job gets done right. Now, where the hell are you?”
“My apartment,” she said.
“I’ll be there soon. Don’t you do anything until I get there. Understand?”
“Yes. Thank you, Gerald.”
He snapped the phone shut, grimaced, and let loose a string of obscenities. He was no hero, that was for damned sure. And apparently, he also wasn’t very goddamned bright. He snapped his PDA open and hit another number. The device chimed.
“Captain,” Bean’s voice came from the small speaker.
“Bean, initiate prelaunch. We’re going to have to get out of here quickly.”
“That, Captain, is one of many understatements you’ve made since we’ve known each other. Please do not allow it to be your last. Initiating prelaunch. Hurry, Gerald.”
“I think I’ve lost my good judgment altogether,” he called down to Marisa as he snapped the PDA shut.
“When did you ever possess it?” He could hear her moving around.
“Can you get to Bean on your own?” he asked. Shouting echoed in from the atrium. Something new was going on now. He turned his head toward the sound. People were fighting out there, fighting and moving back toward the auditorium in feral packs that lashed out at any vulnerable living thing in their paths.
“What’s going on up there?”
“Killing. I’m going to have to find another way to get to Ina.”
“Leave her, Gerry,” Marisa said.
“I can’t, Marisa. Not in good conscience.”
“It’s your funeral, Gerry. But, I’ll upload something to your PDA that’ll help. A map of the back channels. It’ll get you around with out having travel the main drags. Make sure you lock the hatches behind you. It’s close quarters and you don’t want to be followed.” She hesitated a moment before speaking again. “Gerry, if you don’t make it, you better make sure that Bean is prepared to get my ass out of here. I’m not going to die because you decided get chivalrous in the last few hours of your selfish life.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“Yeah, well. You better fucking make it, okay?”
There was a scream. A body went sailing through the air and hit the ruined floor just meters away from where Gerald stood—it was the young girl who had given him the ear plugs.
“Holy shit,” he managed.
Two hulking collector robots careened into the chamber. Long, articulated limbs—they looked like docking tethers—snagged a woman and lifted her in the air. The machine held her there for a long, agonizing second, then slammed her into the ground with one quick swoop. The pack of wild humans scattered. Robots pummeled those who weren’t fast enough to get away, stacking the bodies in a crude pile. One robot swiveled its head. Six orange eye nodes looked directly at Gerald.
It was time to move.
(•••)
Kendall watched the pandemonium on the desk LCDs. If his mouth could have opened any wider, his jaw would have hit the floor minutes ago. It was happening. The worst case scenario was now in full tilt. There were riots everywhere. People were killing each other brutally. Even with the cameras zoomed out fully, he could see the heinous acts in far too much detail. The Beast was coming up from the depths of the station. It would devour everyone and save him—the best—for last.
Unless…
“You look like you finally have a plan, Kendall,” Albin said, and leaned forward in his chair. He had been prodding Kendall for the past three hours, and the former mayor’s patience for it was slipping. “Kendall. Do you have a plan? Tell me. What is it?”
“Albin, shut the fuck up.” The bullet that flew from Kendall’s revolver took off the top of Albin’s head in a burst of hair, skull, and brain. Albin’s chair went over and all Kendall regarded now were the bottoms of the dead man’s twitching boots. Calmly, Kendall set the revolver down and drummed his fingers on the desk. A plan. He needed a plan. He knew that. A decompression of the station would take far too long—air had to be purged deck by deck because of hard-wired failsafes and by that time, the rioters would be banging on his door. All that was left was to gas the station. He entered the commands on his desk terminal for that final contingency plan. Paranoia had prepared him for the worst. In the end, Kendall supposed he hadn’t been paranoid after all. He hesitated with his finger above the execute key. He would be helpless, with everyone dead on the station. When Core Sec came to investigate, he’d be arrested all over again. He needed a lift.
He activated the comm terminal and recorded a message for Darros Stronghold.
“Darros, this is Kendall. The situation at Crescent has become critical. Send ships to come get your guns and that’ll be the end of it. There are twelve hundred cases of firearms. They are yours for free if you come rescue me.”
Kendall hit send.
And then he hit execute.
Crescent would be flooded with poison gas, and that would be that. No more rioters. No more monster. Just freedom. Kendall would fade into obscurity in the frozen wilderness of Habeos.
The station shuddered beneath him and he toppled out of his big chair. Kendall growled and got to his feet. It will all be over in less than an hour, he told himself. He flipped a toggle on the desk’s surface and one of the bookcases slid into the floor. He darted into the revealed tunnel as fast as his old knees would carry him.
(•••)
Ina hugged him so tightly, Gerald thought his eyes were going to bust right out his skull. He held her back at arms length. Tears were streaming down her
face and she was shaking her head back and forth. He thought he was going to have to slap her, but she came around an instant later.
“Thank you, Gerald. You’re all I… ”
“Can it,” he interrupted. “If you know how to get where we’re going, lead the way. We don’t have a lot of time to waste.”
The modified collectors ambled around on their strange, curved legs. The machines were joined by Crescent’s standard complement of robots as they collected bodies instead of trash. The robots bludgeoned those who struggled the most, using the walls, floors, and ceilings to subdue them. At the outset, it didn’t look like the machines were set on killing. Most of the captives moaned and even moved, if just a little bit.
The human residents of Crescent were doing far worse things to each other. Horrible acts of violence and mutilation.
Gerald could still hear the muffled sounds of killing through the confining maintenance channel’s walls. The collector robots might have been too large for the shafts that he and Ina hustled through, but the crazy people were not, so he was careful to lock each hatch behind them as they went. Small maintenance robots darted this way and that, bouncing off of Gerald and Ina’s feet as the two made their way toward the Vault—toward wherever those big robots were hauling their catches. Not exactly a wonderful idea.
After a long elevator descent, Ina and Gerald came out onto L Deck. At the outset, the level appeared dark and ghostly quiet, but the very air was unsettled. It felt charged as it had on Anrar III just before the arrival of the storm. Water dripped from black light panels as they moved through the abandoned residential corridors. Gaping apartment doors watched as Gerald and Ina passed.
The Vault entrance was almost peaceful when Gerald and Ina arrived.
Regardless of the false calm, Gerald’s skin crawled with fear and anticipation. Cold air poured out of a large opening that led into a part of Crescent that Gerald had never really thought existed. Yet, there he was, about to dive right into whatever unknown horrors waited on the other side. He opened his mouth to speak and his breath came out as a cloud of vapor.
A whir of motors sounded from directly behind them. Gerald turned, his hands outstretched. A metal behemoth towered above them. Eye nodes burned like hot coals. The machine examined them, titling its bulbous head this way and then that. Gerald braced himself for what would undoubtedly be a grievous death. The thing cocked its head and looked at Ina for several agonizing seconds. It didn’t move a centimeter. Ina opened her mouth as if to scream but she only produced a gulping sound that was almost comical. The robot turned and strode past them, dragging a catch of bodies in tow. Some of the bodies had crude lacerations across their torsos.
Gerald thought of his spectral roommate. He should have seen this coming. He looked at Ina. She snapped her mouth shut and peered through the open door after the robot.
“Food,” Ina said. “It is going to be weak, and so hungry.”
“It? What is going to be hungry, Ina? Just where the hell are you taking me?” He’d come too far to turn back now, but he didn’t want to go a step further.
“I could never explain it. But the robots—they are part of the station and this life force controls the station now. It is becoming the station.” She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the dark corridor of the Vault. The tunnel was dimly lit—the only appreciable illumination came from the walls themselves, glazed with a strange, black substance. It looked like tar and glittered with tiny flecks of light. Bulkheads stood out in substance like silver islands. Were these offices? Homes? The edges of the bulkheads bulged with chrome caulking.
Ina and Gerald were passed by a procession of collectors, and were again ignored.
“These bulkheads.” Ina ran her finger around the circumference of one oval door. “They’re completely sealed.”
“Either they didn’t want to let something in or… let something out. Let’s keep moving,” Gerald said. Circular windows were set into the face of the doors, but only darkness was visible on the other side.
“They put people in there to die,” Ina said, and then didn’t say anything else.
Gerald and Ina moved into a sea of blackness. Phantasmal clouds of weak light drifted past as the pair pushed on.
Ina and Gerald waded free of the darkness and came to an intersection in the corridor.
“Which way?” Ina asked. She looked at him and her brow creased with doubt.
“Left,” Gerald said. “First direction that came to mind.”
The Aphotic pounced on them the instant Gerald and Ina stepped through the infirmary door. Gerald threw blind punches in every possible direction and combination. His knuckles connected several times, rewarding his effort with a crack or a yelp. Regardless, he was soon overwhelmed. Why didn’t you bring a weapon, asshole? his conscience spat as he was pulled to the ground. Hands closed around his neck in a death grip; Gerald swatted at them ineffectively. Not far from him, Ina screamed and cried. He could hear her feet kicking at something metal and fought to turn his head. Two cultists were laying her out on a table. Donovan Cortez stepped up to her, a red stone knife in his hand. His skin seemed to be hanging loosely on his bones. He pulled up the hem of his daughter’s shirt and her screaming jumped in volume and pitch, but Gerald could only just barely hear her. His heart was pounding too loudly in his ears.
“Maerl… ” Gerald gasped as he looked up into the face of the man strangling him. “Maerl… Jesus. Please.”
Gerald lost consciousness.
(•••)
It was quiet when Gerald came to. Not even the ceiling vents made a noise. His blurred vision cleared to reveal a dust-covered medical suite. Cult members lay dead around him, their throats crudely slit. They each held a razor blade in their dead hands. They killed themselves, Gerald thought, and then heard Ina’s voice add, “It’s going to be hungry.”
Maerl’s body sat close to the frosted glass exit door, propped against a cream-colored wall panel. The club owner’s chin rested on his blood-soaked chest. Gerald probed his own throat with hesitant fingers. It was still intact.
He steeled himself to find Ina. The feat wouldn’t be easy solo; not with the zealots wandering in the shadows. He thought of calling Marisa in for backup, but she was more than half a station away. It was a one man show now.
Gerald didn’t have to go far to find the archaeologist. She lay on a gleaming surgery table. Her abdomen was opened wide, the incised flaps of skin held in place by four shiny clamps. Gerald hurried to her side. He checked for a pulse, but knew the gesture was meaningless.
She was as dead as the cult members.
His eyes stung with tears that wouldn’t come. He took several steps back from the table and shook his head.
“Shit. Ina,” he whispered.
Suddenly, Gerald felt a sense of disparity, like two worlds were overlaid one on the other—two worlds that had no business coming together. Whatever Ina and Marisa had been so afraid of happening, was happening. His ears felt like they wanted to pop, but wouldn’t.
Small clouds of dim blue light grew out of the air before his eyes. The shifting, glowing clouds effloresced into child-sized ethereal flower shapes, filled with watery light. Gerald gazed into the petals—it was like staring through an undulating window into a stormy, endless sky. The ghostly blooms drifted across the room and disappeared through the far wall. Wraith-like figures rose from the floor panels and joined the floating lights in their ethereal procession. Gerald tore his gaze away and ran from the infirmary. More cult members lay dead in his path. He leapt over them as he hustled down the passageway.
He skidded to a halt at the junction. A light twinkled at the far end of the other corridor. It shone through an unexplainable murkiness, as if from behind dark green water. The light source was not on the station. Gerald gazed into a place that human eyes had never glimpsed. It made his head hurt. The surface of the water rippled and a figure stepped through and into the corridor. The being’s mass was insubstant
ial and so black it seemed to absorb light. The force of its presence froze Gerald where he stood—he could feel the thing reaching out for him and his heart began to slow as if life were being sapped from him.
Ina’s words came back to him—it’s going to be weak, and so hungry. It was feeding time.
Collectors emerged from the wall of water, trundling in his general direction. Their forms were black and ominous in the glare. It was enough to break Gerald’s trance. He took a step away from the junction and his movement drew their attention. Robotic heads snapped up and tentacles unfurled. It would be the maintenance shaft, or death.
Gerald ran for it.
The clanking of jointed metal feet became louder with each burning breath that Gerald took. A metal tentacle slashed across his back, cutting through his shirt and his skin. He stumbled, but did not fall. The open hatch into the crawlspace was so close he could almost touch it. Again, the tentacle lashed out. It hit his arm this time and almost found purchase.
A few more steps.
Just a few more steps.
(Part XXIII)
The wounds were mortal—that much was apparent. Dark liquid hemorrhaged from the deep gashes with startling persistence. A gurgling whistle accompanied each of Captain Benedict’s labored, ragged breaths. Marisa had found him outside of HQ. How he had managed to hold on for so long was a mystery. Half of his leg was missing, and his exposed torso was a cross-hatch of nasty lacerations. She stroked his blood-soaked hair and whispered all the calming sentiments she could think of. Captain Benedict tried to speak. His lips moved soundlessly and Marisa leaned in to listen. Blood frothed from his mouth; he swallowed it back and tried again, but the light went out of his eyes. Marisa fought back her tears and laid his head down on the blood-soaked office carpet.
There’d be plenty of time to grieve later. She did not have that luxury now.
Marisa turned her attention to the security feeds. She hoped to catch a glimpse of Gerald, but had no such luck. A warning flashed across each one of the displays and filled Marisa with dread, cold and pure. Kendall, that crazy son of a bitch, had set Crescent to gas every living thing onboard. Her stomach dropped and the resulting nausea nearly doubled her over. She sat at a control console, took a slow, deep breath, and then began entering commands on the keyboard. Her fingers moved with deliberate care at first, but each time the display screen taunted her with her lack of clearance and refused her entry to the system, her fingers moved faster. When the computer would not relent, she beat at it with open palms, alternating between shouted curses and sobbing pleas. She was in a full sweat when she finally gave up.