Glen jumped out of the chair he was sitting in as he heard something moving along the hallway between the living room and the rear bedrooms of the house. His heart was pounding inside his chest and sweat broke out on his skin. He stood where he was, listening for whatever had caused the sound to make another noise. There was only silence. Glen took a deep breath, bracing himself for whatever lay ahead, and walked toward the hallway. He stepped to where he could look down its length.
The hallway was empty, or at least looked like it was. Something inside him told Glen there was something there, just beyond the reach of his perception. He shivered, realizing he could see his own breath in the air. The temperature in the house had suddenly and rapidly plummeted to what felt like below freezing. Glen checked his shotgun to make sure the safety was off, and it was ready to use, before taking another step forward into the deeper shadows of the hallway. The moonlight pouring through the living room’s window didn’t reach entirely into it. Its rear, at the bedroom doors, was cloaked in darkness.
Entering the hallway, Glen whispered, “Lights.”
The limited AI that controlled certain things inside his home turned on the lights in the hallway. Glen stood mere feet away from a thing that could only be described as a nightmare come to life. His mind couldn’t process what his eyes were seeing. One second the thing in the hallway was a creature with gray skin and gleaming claws, standing a towering nine feet in height, the next it was a beautiful woman with long, flowing red hair, naked as could be, then the next it was shimmering, living darkness coalesced in a humanoid form.
The shifts between the thing’s forms happened so rapidly, over and over, that watching it change stung his eyes to the point of tears. Glen closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to clear it. He reopened his eyes, and the thing’s flicking shape changes had stopped. A monster seemingly composed of pure and utter darkness stood before him. Its yellow eyes burned like miniature suns, even below the hallway’s lights.
With a sudden swipe of one of its clawed hands, the monster destroyed the light directly above it, plunging the rear of the hallway into darkness once more. Glen could still clearly see the monster, though as its own darkness was much deeper the shadows surrounding it. Somehow Glen had managed not to scream, a fact he was very thankful for. Gabby was asleep in one of the bedrooms beyond where the creature stood, and his voice would have surely awoken her and brought her running right into the monster’s hands. Mustering his courage, Glen raised the barrels of his shotgun toward the monster.
“Get out of my house,” he ordered it, hoping his voice didn’t tremble as much as his hands were.
He could see in the monster’s eyes that it understood what he said, but it made no move to comply. Floating along the corridor, the monster came toward him at an unhurried, even casual pace. Glen refused to turn and run. He couldn’t leave Gabby in the bedroom alone with the thing in the hallway.
Standing his ground, Glen said, “I’m not asking you again.”
The monster ignored his warning as it closed the short distance between them. Glen squeezed the trigger of his double-barreled shotgun, emptying both barrels into the monster in front of him. The shotgun thundered in the tight space of the hallway and bucked in his hands as both barrels flashed. Its blast struck the creature formed of solid darkness directly in its chest. The monster staggered a step backward, then flung itself forward at him with a roar that shook his entire house.
* * * * *
Chapter 22
Rachel heard the blast of a shotgun. She spun about on the street, trying to figure out which house the shot had come from. A monstrous roar followed in the wake of the shotgun blast, and it told her exactly where to go—a small house at the end of the block. Rachel tapped the comm piece in her ear.
“I’ve got shots fired at my position!” Rachel yelled. “Moving to check it out now!”
Rachel sprinted toward the house, slamming into its locked front door. Seeing that she couldn’t force it open, she approached the front window. Peering through it, she didn’t see anyone close to it. Rachel raised her submachine gun and hit the window with a burst of rounds that shattered it. Glass flew into the house. Rachel followed it, leaping inside. She landed on the living room floor, shards of the window crunching beneath her boots.
The scream of young girl drew her toward the hallway that led out of the room. She skidded to a halt at the end of the hallway without continuing into it. A monstrous being of pure darkness stood in the hallway. In its hands was clutched the body of a man who had to be the young girl’s father. His corpse was little more than a dried-out husk in the monster’s grip. Two of the monster’s fingers were shoved into his eye sockets, making horrible sucking noises.
The young girl stood in the doorway of a bedroom. She was still screaming. Her wailing broke Rachel’s heart. The girl had to have watched her father die. Rachel knew she would never be able to live with herself unless she was able to save the girl.
“Hey!” Rachel shouted at the monster. “Over here, you bastard!”
Her finger tightened on the trigger of her weapon. Its barrel blazed as she let loose on the monster. Round after round hammered into the creature, causing it to release the body of the girl’s dead father. His corpse thudded to the floor at its feet. Her shots appeared to do little else, though. She couldn’t see any evidence they had hurt the creature…but they did anger it.
The monster roared and came charging along the hallway at her. Rachel emptied the rest of her magazine into the creature before it reached her. One of its hands lashed out in a backhanded blow that slammed against the side of her head. The force of the blow lifted her from the floor and knocked her into the wall of the hallway. Rachel grunted as she felt her shoulder dislocate from the impact and lost hold of her weapon as she landed, sprawling, at the monster’s feet.
She looked up into the thing’s glowing, yellow eyes. They burned into the very depths of her soul. Her right arm was no longer working. It lay limp, hanging from the shoulder joint that connected it to her body. With her left hand, she clawed at the holster on her hip, trying to free her pistol. The monster didn’t give her the chance. Yanking her up from the floor, it held her by her neck at arm’s length. Rachel’s legs thrashed in the air as the nails of her good hand clawed at the monster’s hand, trying to pry its fingers loose from where they continued to tighten around her throat. The thing’s touch burned like cold fire, her skin blistering beneath its grip. Unable to breathe, she couldn’t scream for help. Rachel’s eyes bugged out as her terror grew.
“Let her go,” she heard Flynn’s voice yell at the monster. He had been the closest of the others to her position and must have come running the instant she had contacted the rest of the crew. She couldn’t see Flynn. He was somewhere behind her, and she was unable to twist her head about in the monster’s grip to get a look at him.
Rachel knew that Flynn must not have had a clear shot at the monster, given how it was holding her, or he would have taken it already.
“Come on!” Flynn taunted the monster, trying to get it to release her and go after him. “We gonna do this or not?”
The monster flung Rachel aside. She crashed onto the floor of the hallway, finally able to breathe again. The fingers of her left hand rose to the wounds the monster’s touch had burnt into the flesh of her throat, probing at them to see just how bad they were. Rachel nearly vomited as her fingertips touched the wounds, and a fresh wave of pain coursed through her.
Flynn’s automatic shotgun boomed in a series of rapid-fire thunderclaps. The monster shrieked as they punched into its body. It stopped on its way to Flynn, shaking its head and patting at its body as if check itself for wounds. Seeing that it was uninjured, the monster reared back its head and gave another loud roar. Rachel could see that Flynn had spent his whole magazine on stopping the monster and was desperately trying to eject it and ram a new one into his automatic shotgun. The monster was on him before he finished.
It slapped
the shotgun from his hands and backhanded him across the face so hard the sound echoed in the confined space of the hallway. Rachel saw Flynn’s right cheek cave inward, that part of his skull shattered by the monster’s blow. Impossibly, Flynn managed to remain on his feet in the wake of the destruction of his face. The monster didn’t let him stay there long.
Sinking a hand deep into Flynn’s guts, it jerked him up from the floor. Flynn’s body bent over the upper part of the monster’s arm as his hands clutched at the monster, trying to lessen how far its hand went into him. The monster threw him aside, ripping away most of his stomach.
“No!” Rachel heard herself scream. The monster ignored her, its attention still focused on Flynn. It slammed a foot down on him, killing him.
The young girl had run to Rachel’s side and was shaking her, trying to get the medic back onto her feet. Rachel didn’t have anything left in her to give, though. It took all her willpower just to stay conscious.
The monster’s head suddenly whipped around in the direction of the living room as if sensing someone else there. Rachel watched in stunned disbelief as the monster ran toward the hallway’s wall. It entered the wall, passing through it like a ghost, and then was gone.
A fraction of second later, Miranda burst into the hallway, her armor gleaming and sword held ready.
“It…it’s gone,” Rachel stammered, gesturing weakly toward where the monster had disappeared into the hallway’s wall. An impression of it had been scorched into the wall where it had passed through.
“Holy frag,” Rachel heard Miranda mutter as she saw Flynn’s corpse.
The young girl left Rachel’s side, running to Miranda. The armored monster hunter caught the girl in her left arm, wrapping it about her and pulling the child close to her.
* * * * *
Chapter 23
Rachel didn’t remember losing consciousness, but she must have, because when she opened her eyes again, she was in Strider’s medical bay. Her fingers shot up to the wounds on her neck to find them closed. There was scar tissue left from the monster’s cold, burning touch, but the wounds themselves were healed. The ship’s auto-doc had worked wonders.
Lee stood at the foot of her bed.
“Glad to see you made it, kid,” the old man told her. “We didn’t think you would there for a while. That thing’s touch had some sort of poison in it. Took the auto-doc a bit to get it sorted out.”
“Flynn’s dead,” Rachel croaked, tears welling up in her eyes.
“Yep,” Lee said in a flat, unemotional voice. “I’m going to miss him.”
“What about…?” Rachel started.
“The little girl?” Lee grinned. “She’s fine, thanks to you. Miranda got her out and placed with some folks who are going to look after her, since her father’s dead.”
“What was her name?” Rachel asked, still trying to shake off the aftereffects of the auto-doc’s treatments.
“No was to it,” Lee said. “Like I told you, she’s alive, and her name is Gabby. You did good keeping her that way.”
“And the monster?” Rachel sincerely hoped Miranda had found and killed the thing.
“Gone,” Lee sighed, “but you can bet it’ll be back tomorrow night. There’s no chance in hell we scared the thing off.”
“Oh,” Rachel said.
“Don’t you worry none,” Lee assured her. “We’ll get it. You, though, you’re not going back out there again. Saving the kid has already made you a hero to the folks here, and Miranda doesn’t want you playing the part of that kind of hero again. You remember what I’ve always said about heroes, don’t you?”
“That being one will get you killed.” Rachel frowned.
“Exactly,” Lee told her, with no trace of humor in his voice this time.
“Hey, where’s Miranda?” Rachel asked, realizing for the first time that she wasn’t there with the old man.
“She’s meeting with Shelley. The two of them are coming up with a better plan for when that thing comes back,” Lee told her. “But that’s not your concern. All you need to be doing right now is recovering from what you’ve been through. And before you start barking at me about it, that’s an order from Miranda herself, kid.”
Rachel nodded that she understood as he started for the door.
“That thing, Lee…it really was a monster,” Rachel called after him.
“I know, kid. Trust me, I know,” the old man said and left her alone to rest.
Rachel was thankful he hadn’t turned out the lights as he left. She wasn’t sure she could have handled it if he had.
* * * * *
Chapter 24
Miranda stood in Director Shelley’s office. She hadn’t taken the seat that had been offered to her, because she knew it wouldn’t be able to support the weight of the armor she still wore.
“That didn’t go so well.” Shelley frowned at her from across the desk she sat behind.
“No. It didn’t,” Miranda admitted. There was no point in pretending when the truth was so clear.
“I’m sorry about the man you lost,” Shelley told her, “but…”
“A contract is a contract, Director,” Miranda said. “We’ll get that thing when it comes back. Count on it. We know what we’re up against now and will be ready for it.”
“Really?” Shelley challenged her. “Do you want to tell me what that thing is?”
“I didn’t say we knew what it was, ma’am,” Miranda corrected her. “I said we know what we’re up against and would be ready for it when it returns.”
One of Director Shelley’s aides, a man Miranda thought she remembered being named Gary, burst into the office carrying what looked to be a comm dispatch.
“I am sorry to interrupt!” Gary told them both, “but you need to see this, ma’am.”
Gary shoved the tablet he was carrying into Director Shelley’s hands. Shelley looked like she wanted to have him flogged for intruding upon them, but nonetheless began to scan over the screen of the tablet he had forced into her hands. Miranda watched as Director Shelley’s expression changed completely after reading only a few lines from the tablet’s screen.
“Dear God, help us all,” Director Shelley muttered before looking back up at Miranda.
“What is it?” Miranda asked.
“The civil war we’ve all been dreading…” Director Shelley croaked. “It’s started.”
“I thought it had already,” Miranda said.
“No, not really. At least not officially, until now.” Director Shelley frowned. “There’s been a massacre. Earth Gov forces arrived on Betax III and demanded the colony submit to their authority. The colonists fought back. Earth Gov’s response was to withdraw to their ships into orbit and nuke the colony. There wasn’t a single survivor. Holland, Georgetown, and Matherville, the three largest fringe colony worlds, have banded together against Earth Gov, officially declaring war against their tyranny, and they’re asking all the other fringe worlds to stand with them.”
Miranda’s eyes bugged. “God help us all is right, ma’am. The fringe worlds can’t possibly stand against Earth Gov.”
“Is that so?” Director Shelley asked the monster hunter. “Interesting that you feel that way, Miranda.”
“I just call them as I see them.” Miranda shrugged. “Earth Gov has the numbers and the tech.”
“But perhaps we have the heart,” Director Shelley challenged her.
“I take it that means you’re answering the call Holland and the others put out?” Miranda stared at Director Shelley, not sure what else to say.
“Yes,” Director Shelley nodded, “I am. Nix V will side with the other fringe worlds.”
“Is that truly a smart move?” Miranda pressed her.
“I don’t see that we have any other choice,” Director Shelley said with a shrug. “I’m not just going to bow down and let Earth Gov take over this world. My people and I are the ones who invested all the blood, sweat, and tears establishing a home and a prospering comm
unity here. Earth Gov has no right to it.”
“Clearly that’s not how they see things,” Miranda said.
“What they believe doesn’t matter.” Director Shelley rose from her seat. “Nix V is ours, and they have no legal or moral right to it.”
Gary stood listening to them, looking extremely uncomfortable. Director Shelley hadn’t dismissed him after he had given her the tablet containing the universe shaking news.
“Regardless, none of that has any effect on our contract, ma’am,” Miranda said, changing the subject. “We’re here to deal with your monster, not to get caught up in a civil war.”
Director Shelley glared at her. Her voice was full of bitterness when she spoke. “Your sense of loyalty to the fringe worlds is astounding, Miranda.”
“My people and I aren’t mercs, ma’am. That’s not who we are,” Miranda shot back. “Our job is to save lives, not take them by becoming soldiers in a war we want no part of.”
“And if I tripled what I’m paying you if you agreed to help protect this colony?” Director Shelley scowled.
“I would still say no, ma’am,” Miranda stood firm. “We came here to kill a monster. That we’ll do, and then we’ll be getting the hell out of here. Whatever happens after that is none of our concern.”
Miranda hated the coldness in her answer, but it was the truth. She wouldn’t ask her people to take up arms against Earth Gov for any amount of credits. They had always remained a neutral party as far as politics were concerned, and she didn’t intend to change that.
“I see,” Director Shelley said sadly. “I’m not going to say I understand your choice, Miranda, but I will respect it. That’s what makes those of us who live out here on the fringes different from Earth Gov.”
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