by Aaron Bunce
“But there has to be some way to–” Soraya started to argue. An idea popped into Anna’s head so hard and fast that she couldn’t immediately put it to words, so she screamed.
“What is wrong with you?”
“You said it, Lana,” she gasped, “Erik already has everything we need connected to his terminal back there. We just need a way to translate what it means, what it says. Let the computer do that. Do we have a straight run of data cable downstairs? Leftover from before? Something–”
“that will stretch from here back to the pulse engine?” Lana finished for her, jumping off the deck. She swiped away her tears, grabbing ahold of the console just as the Betty jostled. The vibration was gaining intensity, the gravitational pull stronger.
“Some. Yes. Coils. I get it. Anna. Genius. Beautiful genius,” Lana cried in fragmented, almost hysterical screams.
“I’ll help!” And Soraya streaked into the dark galley behind her.
-Return to Sender
The dark engine room exploded in a flash of light–heat and pressure crashing around and inside him at the same time. The forces tried to tear Jacoby free, push him outward, as if he were a kid, spinning faster and faster on a chaotic merry-go-round.
“My stomach is in my…damned mouth. What is happening? Gonna puke…” Lex said. Their hands were joined, arms forming a circle with Erik and Poole between them. The two figures were entangled, arms and legs–Erik and his astral double, but also Jacoby and Poole’s alien half. They were two people, yet splitting in half, peeling apart, like some macabre, blooming flower.
The spinning, tumbling, wrenching pressure increased. He felt it in every joint. No, deeper—a kinetic presence working to pull him apart at the cellular level.
“I’m just…winging it. Don’t let go!” he growled. Something told him that he had to hold on, no matter what happened. But beyond that, he had no idea. Lex nodded, her green eyes flashing with determination and strength.
“Jacky-Boy…I can’t hold on…it’s tearing me…apart!” Poole screamed.
Jacoby felt it, the vomit-inducing spin trying to fling them loose, but also a screaming-hot dagger cutting straight down between them…rending the melding point between alien creature and human brain.
It was Erik, and whatever cosmic power had latched onto his astral form. He and Lex were trying to pull the two together, if that was even possible, but in return, it was tearing him apart. Small pulses of light fired between them, emotions and feelings streaking in and hitting Poole. They weren’t complete or intact, but there was enough for him to put it together.
The presence behind this all, the name–Tal Nurgal, the corrupted message and irrational computer program, the severing of Erik’s mind from its astral extension. It didn’t want Poole in his head. Another impulse flooded in–to let go, to give in. It would be an end, one it thought he wanted, and it needed. No. It was trying to communicate with Poole. It wanted him to detach and…die.
“Poole. No. Don’t do it. You’ll die.”
“What? Who…why?” Lex gasped in alarm.
“I’m not sure I have…a…choice, Jacky-Boy. The voice…it’s overriding my will. I can’t resist!”
“Overriding it? What could do that?”
“Something really…determine! Yah!” Poole howled, the pain almost splitting their heads apart in the same instant. An impulse fired into Jacoby’s body–to separate, to give in, and shrivel up and die.
Out of the question! You don’t know me very well if you think I’ll just lay down and die. Stubborn to a fault is kind of my calling card! Jacoby thought, pushing his own will back against the external impulses.
“Lex. It wants to pull us apart. It’s afraid of our connection. Afraid of what Poole can show us,” Jacoby said, struggling to keep Lex’s grasp.
“Fuck…that!” she yelled, her lip curling up in that fierce snarl. “If it wants us apart, then let’s give them the opposite. Pull! Let’s smash this little bastard back together!”
And they pulled, fingers interlocked, muscles firing and hearts hammering, working together to squeeze the space closed between them. The pressure increased, bouncing, rippling like waves between them in response. Erik wailed, a horrible, alien sound of pain and fear.
Jacoby squeezed with every bit of available strength, that golden hue burning over his vision. Lex’s eyes ignited with green light, the glow from her astral form so bright her outline seemed to burn. They pulled together, as if fighting to embrace–Combustible heat + crushing pressure.
“Closer!”
The four figures between them started to push back together, a ringing filling his ears.
“Closer!”
The light increased, the heat crashing in from the left and then the right. Lex screamed, then he did, and Erik became one again. The space between them ignited, a single point of blinding life…genesis…a melding.
The pressure was gone from around and inside him, the fusion and chaos peeling open into a sprawling star scape. They were soaring through the void, somehow riding an invisible but unimaginably strong tether. Jacoby clutched desperately to Erik and Lex, her fingernails digging into his wrists.
A shape loomed ahead from the darkness. A pinpoint in the heavens, hurtling towards them with terrifying velocity. No, it was them. They were rocketing towards it. It was a discernable sphere, growing larger, until they soared into its orbit. It was a planetoid, glowing white gray in a distant star’s light.
Jacoby saw sprawling fields of deep craters, soaring mountain ranges, and what looked like frozen oceans covering its surface. He felt the tether, that bond linking them. It seemed to extend to something on the surface–a shadow, but as they approached, he realized it had shape, form, and mass. A mountain?
No, they soared directly overhead and then dropped towards the structure. Its sides were uniform, shaped by more than wind and tectonic activity. It was a towering, four-sided formation of white stone. A pyramid.
Jacoby wanted to scream out, to lift his hands to shield his face, but they couldn’t speak or move. The tether pulled them straight towards the structure and into a colossal doorway, supported by skyscraper-sized pillars. Then they were flying down a tall, dark passage.
Twenty-foot-tall figures rose up on either side–spindly, stooped creatures with wide, flat heads. Their arms curled and bent into their bodies, tendril-like fingers hanging towards the ground. Boney, crown-like ridges sprouted from their skulls, giving them a regal, almost kingly outline in the distant glow. Hundreds, maybe thousands of smaller creatures filled the space between them, some stuck as if frozen into the wall itself.
A light appeared ahead, the passage opening into a larger space. Jacoby felt the power ahead, the source of the tether. It was a consciousness so vast and alien his mind couldn’t fully comprehend what it was or exactly why he could feel it. But then Poole moved within his head and the puzzle started to unravel. It was knowledge, seemingly bottomless oceans of knowledge.
They soared through the tall archway and into the pyramid’s main chamber. The light was so much brighter here, rich, cobalt blue radiating from above and all around them. Jacoby looked around, trying to spot the source of light, but it looked to emanate from the rock itself. They jerked to a sudden and skull-rattling halt, barely a hundred paces inside the doorway, and hovered precariously in the air.
A large, dark hole loomed before them…seemingly so vast and dark an entire city could fall through and not touch the sides. A single, thin bridge extended almost halfway across the sheer drop. The pulsing blue light revealed a structure at the very end, but Jacoby was too far away to see it properly.
Immense, looping tentacles rimmed the outside of the hole, each covered in an erratic assortment of bulbous eyeballs and hooked sucker cups. But they were all frozen in place, trapped beneath a thick coating of glossy ice. Jacoby and Lex tipped, revolving slowly in the air. Whatever had formed the tether, the power holding them in place was there, somewhere in the depth of that dark chas
m. He felt it, the intelligence, the terrifyingly alien mind, studying and considering them. An immense surge of its psychic presence buffeted them unexpectedly, washing away every thought and need, nearly drowning him amidst an invisible wave.
Erik jerked, his entire body going as rigid as a board. He twitched, bones popping angrily, and his head spun around, his strange, dark eyes locking onto Jacoby.
“Tal-Nurgal sees you. She feels you, even in her slumbers. She must awaken!” the young tech yelled and punched his hands into Jacoby’s neck.
-:45 Until Entry
“Shit! I can’t see anything!” Soraya said as she stepped off the ladder. She waved her hands out before her, moving blindly through the darkness.
“Come on! Hurry!” Anna yelled from the top of the ladder.
“We’re…freaking…coming!” Lana screamed from somewhere ahead, then something moved in the darkness. “Stupid thing. It’s not working! The light isn’t working.”
A flickering light cut the darkness and Soraya caught sight of the other woman, pounding a small light against her palm. It turned on, flickered, and cut off again. Then, in a heart-stopping moment, it glowed to life, and they both froze.
“I don’t want to move. I feel like it will just die again,” Lana said, her voice trembling. She sounded like she was on the verge of tears.
“Where is it? Move slowly, show me.”
Lana shook and slowly turned left, the light flickering and threatening to die with the movement. She cried out and froze. The light pulsed–bright, dead, bright, dim.
Soraya moved forward immediately and jumped into the darkness. She fell to her knees and walked her hands forward. “At least you’ve got boots,” she mumbled, stretching to widen her search circle.
“What? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“Nothing, just try to move that li–”
“There! I see the…it’s the…”
But Soraya saw it too, the foil couplers on the data cable practically glowing in the weak light. She kicked off as Lana struggled to spit out the words.
“Okay. We just want the data cable. It will say s-t-sixty-two on the insulation. Just grab that coil.”
Soraya fumbled through the pile of cable and snorted. How was she supposed to read anything in the dark, let alone a small number printed on dark cable insulation?
“It’ll be orange, or red, or I don’t remember, maybe it’s gray,” Lana said.
“No time!” Soraya jammed her hand down and under the coil, then heaved it off the ground. She pushed up to her knees, her feet, and then with a determined grunt, hauled the cable up and over her shoulder.
“What are you doing? Are you okay?” Lana asked as she approached the dimly flickering light.
“Just shine…that…to light my…path,” Soraya grunted, and moved back in the direction they’d come.
Lana jumped back and around, the dying light spitting out a weak beam of sporadic light. But it was just enough. Soraya could see the wall, and better yet, the ladder. She hefted the bulk onto the first rung, then heaved herself up. The weight was awkward, and the rigid cable swung back and forth, hitting the wall and threatening to roll off her shoulder. But it wasn’t anything she hadn’t put herself through in spring training.
“Just get it to the top,” she whispered and grunted up another rung. The cable hit the ceiling as the ladder entered the narrow well, the jolt almost knocking it off her shoulder. Soraya lifted and hooked her arm around it, then tried again, jamming the bulk up with all of her strength.
The bundles gave way and bent. But they fought her, struggling to return to their previous shape. So she kept her arm hooked and pushed harder with her legs.
“Oh. And wouldn’t you know it? I’m back in a ladder well,” she snorted, struggling up another step. By the time she reached the top, Soraya was out of breath and seemingly every muscle was burning and cramping.
Anna grabbed the bundle and lifted the weight away, so she could climb free. Then they heaved it through the open door to the maintenance passage. They ran through the passage but a strange, orange glow halting them in their tracks on the other side. Lana yelled something and then ran into them, the impact almost knocking them all flat.
“Why in the shit did you stop” Lana growled, picking herself up off the ground. Then she turned and saw what they did. “Oh, damn. What in the hell is wrong with them?”
Jacoby and Lex stood a dozen steps further into the engine room, hand in hand, with Erik and Poole smashed between them. But they were frozen, somehow suspended in a pulsing orb of bright light.
“My god, Coby!” Anna breathed as they pushed into the room, giving the strange scene a wide berth.
Soraya’s gaze locked on Erik’s face. Yes, he was bruised and like before, but there was something unsettling about his eyes–wide open, dark, and unmistakably alien.
“Over here, over here,” Lana urged them on, running ahead to the pulse engine. Soraya and Anna lugged the mass of cable over and dropped it over onto the floor.
“Okay good.” Lana immediately started wrenching the pile apart, chucking cables over her shoulder and out of the way. Anna helped and they started uncoiling sections of gray cable, laying it out in a line leading to the bridge. “Battery relays! They’re in the box that had the NavCom…”
“I got it,” Soraya yelled, planted, and sprinted by Lex and Jacoby, then through the cold passage and into the dark galley. She slowed a little, navigating by memory, but thanks to the increased ambient light from outside, easily navigated around the pilot’s seats and found the box on the floor. She scooped it up, stood, and before she could stop herself, looked forward.
Titan was right there, everything she could see, in startling clarity. The ship shuddered and turned and for the first time she felt like she was in a ship, the motion of the waves causing the craft to move and sway around her. Soraya knew it was all in her head, a trick her mind was playing on her body, but that didn’t stop her stomach from turning over.
“Hurry!” she gasped and ran.
Soraya met Anna in the galley, the blond laying out more lengths of cable. She stopped and got out of the way as she stretched another length and uncoiled it, and moved forward.
Anna moved quickly, weaving her way into the bridge, then dropped her last length of cable into place and cursed. “We’re short. I need one more length. Make sure it is at least six feet long.”
“Okay!” Soraya yelled, swallowed back the acid forcing its way up her throat, and ran.
She almost ran into Lana in the maintenance passage, as the brunette was hunched over two lengths of cable, working frantically with a plier-style splice tool.
“She’s short…” Gasp. “We need one more length. Six feet long.”
Lana cursed, dropped something, picked it up, and then snapped something into place. Then she pushed to her knees and crawled to the next break in the cable run.
“What do you mean, she needs one more? I gave her everything we have. My god, I don’t know if I have enough splices. Don’t have enough time. My god. You’re going to have to tell her to make it work. I’m…I’m sorry.”
The Betty shuddered again, a peculiar hum vibrating from all around.
-:25
Erik’s hands hit Jacoby’s throat hard, the force toppling them backwards through the air. They tumbled, and quickly picked up speed. He wanted to grab his hands and pull them free, but he couldn’t break the circle. And strangely, he wasn’t strangling or choking him.
Jacoby caught sight of the horrific, crowned figures in the hall, the swarm of smaller creatures all around them, and then they were soaring out of the pyramid.
They rocketed up and through the thin atmosphere, a pinpoint of intense pressure trying to rip his belly button back through his spine. He caught sight of the strange, gray planetoid one last time before it disappeared into the dark star scape.
Jacoby was spiraling through space one moment, hand in hand with Lex, Poole and Erik trapped between
them, and then they were slamming into the deck in the next. The impact jarred them loose, Lex’s sweaty hands slipping free.
He fell hard, the room tipping around him, but didn’t feel the impact. There was no pain, shock, or confusion. Jacoby was simply on the ground. Lex grunted and cursed. He pushed up to his side and found her doing the same.
Their eyes met, then together they turned to find Poole and Erik standing between them. The tech’s knees were bent, his upper body stooped dramatically. But it was his arms that gave Jacoby pause. They were pulled into his body, bent at an impossible angle, his hands hanging loosely towards the ground. He looked just like the strange crowned figure in the pyramid.
“What is he doing? Poole, what in the hell was that?” Lex asked, finding her voice first.
Jacoby’s alien double twitched, flinching at her voice, and then seemed to realize he wasn’t alone in the room. He looked at Lex, stammered an impressive sentence of complete gibberish, then turned and looked right at Jacoby. The Betty shuddered as he did, an odd whining hum filling the space around them.
“Poole. What is it?” he asked.
“Uh. Um. Uh. Mama.”
“Mama? What does that mean?” he asked, but Poole just shrugged, a horrified look pulling at his face.
“My head is oatmeal, but was that thing a freaking planet? Was it a living, freaking, planet? Poole, you came from a living…freaking…planet?” Lex asked.
Someone shouted to their left, down the maintenance passage, and another voice answered. Jacoby barely had enough time to recognize who had spoken before Soraya charged through the open airlock, a large, cardboard box in both hands.
“They’re back,” she whispered, and then seemed to realize exactly what that meant, and turned, to scream it through the passage.
“Wait, did we actually go somewhere?” Jacoby asked.
“No. It was really strange. You were all frozen and stuck within this big, glowing…orb. But. No time. Lex. The watch. How much time? How much?” Soraya asked, and for the first time since he’d met her, she looked frantic.