But Evie was a target that Veck could work on. It could take weeks.
Maybe days.
Or if he was as good as he hoped he was, only hours. Regardless of how long it took, Veck had already begun to influence the programming cycles of the artificial intelligence.
He had already made her focus her defense protocol, the one that would kill him if we were to escape from his cell, directly on the parts of his in the containment chamber in the belly of the ship.
He made her forget about his two limbs that were being held in the engineering bay. If he could find a way to free his stolen appendages, to get a signal to them, he might just be able to make his escape.
There was a chance that he could taste freedom again.
He could continue with his life’s work.
That was, of course, after he took care of Draco Goldwing.
Chapter Seven
As Draco stepped across the threshold, beams of light shone through the darkness. The room in front of them was a cargo delivery bay. There was a sign-in desk at the back of the room, and supply cages lining both sides.
The architecture was modern New Earth. The door frames, counters, and sign-in modules were all curved and looked almost organic, as though they had grown out of the hull of the ship rather than built.
“Captain, I have noticed something strange,” Aloysius said.
“Apart from the fact that we’re on a ghost ship?” Vynce quipped back.
“Amusing, but no. I can access the schematics from the ship, but only the schematics that lead to the maintenance crews’ quarters,” Aloysius responded.
“What about the engine room? Can you see how we can go directly there?” Draco asked.
“No. It seems like someone is manipulating the information that I can access. It’s as if they are telling us where to go.”
“Cross-reference the location of the maintenance crew quarters with the known location of the engine room from the Metropolis Six. If it’s in the same general area, we can work out how to get there from the maintenance crew quarters. We might’ve tripped something when we turned the power back on. There might be someone guiding us.”
“The maintenance crew quarters in the Metropolis Six were not far from the engine room. Also, Captain, I think you should know that we are being watched,” Aloysius said and pointed towards a dull red light above the information desk.
“Let’s go and say hello,” Draco said.
Aloysius led them through the doorway behind the information desk. Ava gave the surveillance camera the finger as they walked past. The heavy door behind the front desk opened as they approached it.
“Someone’s showing us the welcome mat, for sure,” Vynce said.
The corridor that stretched out in front of them seemed to open up into a dark nothingness, illuminated only by their flashlight beams. Aloysius halted before crossing the threshold and muttered something to himself. Draco pushed past Aloysius to look at what had made him stop in his tracks.
“Oh shit,” Draco uttered.
In front of them was a large rust-colored stain.
Dried blood.
All around them, similar stains were on the floor, walls and ceiling. To their left, Draco noticed a vent cover that had been torn from its hinges. There was another rusty looking stain leading into the vent, as though something was pulled into it with force.
“This isn’t a ghost ship, this is a morgue,” Ava breathed.
“Not a morgue. Morgues have bodies,” Raze replied.
“I want everyone on high alert. This just turned into a hostile environment. Disengage safety protocols. Respond to threats with deadly force.”
There was too much blood for this to have been pirate work. A pirate vessel didn’t make sense anyway. One fifth of the Metropolis Seven’s population could easily overpower even the largest pirate crew. In any case, pirates didn’t usually have a history of carrying their victims into the ceiling.
Draco walked across the room and the rest of the team followed. Amongst the bloody stains on the walls, floor and ceiling, torn pieces of fabric lay tattered, draped across benches and piled in corners. Nothing stirred.
Aloysius appeared beside Draco. “We continue straight along this next corridor. There is a maintenance shaft halfway along. We need to get the maintenance door open, go down the ladder three floors, and then continue down the next corridor. We follow that along, and we should reach the maintenance crew quarters. After that, we should only be a couple hundred yards from the engine bay,” Aloysius said.
“Good. Lead the way, and stay alert,” Draco replied.
They crossed into the corridor, which was equally as small and restrictive as the last. This one was bathed in dried blood. As Aloysius stepped over the threshold, Draco heard something moving in the vents above them. The sound of metal on metal rang out from further down the corridor, like a wrench felling off the edge of a bench.
Aloysius readied his weapon at the ceiling, but whatever it was moved speedily away.
Draco motioned for them to continue. Rifles held firm at their shoulders, barrels pointed at the ground, they proceeded down the corridor cautiously. The sound of movement from further down the corridor echoed towards them. The door leading back into the blood-soaked delivery chamber slammed shut.
“We’re being herded,” Raze said.
“I can’t help but think we should have gone with my gut instinct on this one, Captain,” Ava said with a derisive laugh.
“Captain!” Aloysius exclaimed, “I have just received a message from the crew. They say, ‘we are dying, we need your help, please help us.’ The message is coming from the maintenance crew quarters but isn’t circulating through the whole ship. But... They are not the ones blocking me from accessing information about other areas of the ship.”
The frustration was plain in Al’s voice.
“Just keep a cool head, Al,” Draco said. “We’ll head down to maintenance and see what’s going on. Then we’ll get the engines online and tow this ship out into a safe place.”
“Then we get the fuck out of here, right?” Ava asked.
“Right.”
Draco switched to a private channel and hailed the Icarus’s bridge. “Arak, come in. This situation just turned into a snafu.”
Snafu was military speak for Status Nominal: All Fucked Up.
“Icarus, come in. Repeat, Icarus, come in.”
No reply came.
Draco switched back to the crew channel. “I don’t want to alarm anyone, but the Icarus isn’t answering. Looks like our comms are being jammed. No signals are making it out of the Metropolis Seven.”
“This is getting better by the minute,” Ava said.
Just as Aloysius had said, the maintenance door was halfway down the corridor. Huge expanses of blackness stretched out into both directions, pierced only by the quavering shafts of light coming from the crew’s flashlights.
“What the fuck?” Ava said as they approached the door.
The door had been pushed outward from the inside, as though something had forced its way out of the maintenance shaft. Bloody stains lingered on the jagged metal, which was at least four inches thick.
“Al, is this the only way down?” Draco asked.
“It is the only way I can see. There would be other ways, but we would be flying blind. It would be complete guesswork.”
“This doesn’t feel right. What if they’re leading us into a trap?” Vynce asked.
“If anyone was stupid enough to spring a trap on our crew, who do you think would come off worse? Us, or them?” Ava asked.
“Depends on how many of them there are,” Vynce replied. He sounded nervous.
“Enough. I’d rather face a danger we know about over a danger we don’t. Raze, open it up. Let’s get some answers,” Draco said.
Raze took his small sunstorm welder out of his thigh compartment and ignited it. A needle-thin shaft of white-hot energy shot out from the tip of the cutter. Raze changed a
setting on the side of the welder and the beam grew to about six inches in length. He began cutting around the diameter of the hole in the door. The welder sliced through the metal with ease. Thin red rivulets of molten metal ran down the door from the incisions.
As Raze worked, the clattering, skittering sound of movement came again from the hallway to their right. Instead of moving away however, it came closer. There was no rhythm or pattern to the sound. It moved quickly but stopped as it grew closer. It sounded as though it stopped just beyond the veil of darkness at the end of the corridor.
“Raze, you might want to hurry that up,” Ava said.
“I’m working on it.”
There was another movement on their left. This one sounded bigger. Heavier. There was the distinct sound of metal scraping on metal. Whatever was in the vents above them broke into a run.
“Raze, you need to hurry.”
Raze grunted and pushed the welder as hard as he could. The thing on their left crept closer, but the vent above them was completely enclosed. The thing on their right crept closer too. A sudden scream broke through the silence of the ship. The crew all focused their rifles on the ceiling above them, ready to squeeze the trigger at any sign of hostility. Whatever was in the vents above them stopped moving after the scream. As the corridor fell silent, the searing blade of the sunstorm welder sounded as loud as fireworks.
Vynce peered down the corridor, toward what he thought was the exit. The light didn’t penetrate the darkness far enough to be able to make out whether there was an open or closed door at the end.
“Al, is that door down there closed?” Vynce asked, suddenly very aware of how exposed he felt.
“It is closed. We are secure,” Aloysius replied.
As if Aloysius’s words had summoned the devil himself, something began pounding on the ceiling above them.
Chapter Eight
Well this was just fucking perfect, Ava thought.
Something above them, something behind them, and the only way to go was down, towards something else that had punched through a steel door.
Something pierced the floor above them, bursting pipes. Ava was sprayed with some kind of brown liquid. Another pipe burst overhead on their left from the other unknown assailant, pumping a steam-like gas into their view. Their visibility was cut to almost zero.
“You had to say something didn’t you, Vynce?” Ava laughed, her teeth bared in a battle-ready grin.
Ava opened fire into the vent above them, shredding the steel in a storm of bullets. Something dropped from one of the vents. It was small and organic, about the size of a house cat, but with way too many spindly legs. It appeared in a flurry of flesh and steel, glinting in the light of Vynce’s shoulder flashlight.
It was fast. It bounded away into the darkness before anyone got a clear shot. Their rifles roared as the assailant fled.
Raze had finally cut through. He pulled the incised circle of metal out of the door frame. As he gripped two of the protruding metallic shards and began to pull, booming footsteps sounded down the corridor.
A roar broke the silence, but it was much deeper than the previous scream. It didn’t sound human. The booming footsteps grew closer, towards the closed end of the corridor. The footsteps grew closer as Raze pulled the cut section from the door.
“Everyone in, now,” Draco ordered them.
Aloysius was the first to go in. Raze and Vynce followed.
“In. Now,” Draco said to Ava.
“You first, Boss,” she said with a wave of her hand.
“That wasn’t a question, it was an order!”
“Fine,” she said and crawled into the cramped maintenance access.
The pounding continued, but abruptly ended with the sound of rending metal. Something ran towards Draco. It was in the corridor with him now.
Whatever it was, it ran at him like a freight train, and Ava braced herself against the walls of the shaft.
Draco appeared above her, coming down feet-first into the opening of the maintenance shaft. His feet hit the side of the shaft. He tried to get a handhold on the ladder rungs attached to the opposite wall, but he fumbled. He slammed into Ava with force, but her grav boots kept them from tumbling down the shaft.
“All right, Cap?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
The thing barreled towards the opening. Draco and Ava both grabbed the ladder and clambered down quickly.
The pounding started again, but this time, only a few yards above. They climbed down the ladder quickly, but Ava kept her rifle pointed at the opening above.
Whatever it was, it was furious.
Blinded by rage and the urge to kill.
It grunted every time it slammed its body into the doorway. A mist of steam obscured them from seeing the creature in full, but Ava saw glimpses. It was organic, just like the little thing in the vents. It was a flesh and blood creature, which meant that they could hurt it if they needed to.
A chunk of torn metal flew past them. The behemoth was ripping through the door frame.
“Heads up!” Draco yelled as the chunk of metal flew past him.
It bounced off Raze’s right shoulder with a dull clunk. In his armor Raze was almost as wide as the shaft itself, but the piece of metal bounced off ineffectually.
Another piece of metal flew down the shaft, but this piece was aimed squarely at Draco’s head. Ava watched Draco raise arm to defend himself, but the piece of metal hit him.
Hard.
He lost his grip on his rifle and cursed as it slipped from his hand. Raze saw the rifle fly past the space he left and into the darkness below.
A shower of torn shards of metal rained down on them as they descended.
Ava glanced up and saw huge, powerful hands frantically gripping and tearing the metal from the door frame in chunks.
“Go. Faster,” Draco commanded. He’d seen it too.
They climbed downward, double time. They flew down the ladder at extreme speed, dodging chunks and splinters of hurled metal. As Aloysius reached the third level door, Ava looked up to see a vague shape above them. A huge, monstrous arm reached down into the maintenance shaft, groping in the dark. It was fleshy, muscular, with three unnaturally thick fingers. It was unlike anything she had ever seen, and it wanted Draco.
“Raze, the door is locked! I’ll climb down. You crack it!” Aloysius called out from the bottom of the shaft.
The creature above them tried to press its bulk into the narrow shaft, but it couldn’t fit.
Draco pulled his pistol from his thigh holster and fired a single shot into it. It recoiled in pain and a high-pitched squeal of surprise echoed through the maintenance shaft. A mournful, wailing sound came from the top of the shaft, then a deep guttural growling. The creature immediately renewed its assault. It tried to force its heavy bulk down the thin shaft as Raze worked feverishly to crack the door open.
“I think you just pissed it off!” Ava said, raising her rifle towards the opening, but Draco’s body blocked her. She couldn’t get a clear shot!
“I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but it seems as though we’ve got company coming up from below,” Aloysius said.
“No pressure buddy but get that fucking door open!” Vynce yelled to Raze.
“Shouting isn’t going to speed up the process,” Raze replied coolly.
Ava and Draco had their weapons raised at the hulk above them. It had squeezed itself into the cramped shaft and become stuck. A single groping arm flailed down at them, while a mouth that was far too big for its face gnashed sharp uneven teeth. Aloysius had his gun pointed at whatever was coming up from below, and Vynce was stuck in the middle, unable to do anything.
Draco pulled the trigger of his pistol three times and a volley of bullets slammed into the hulk’s arm. It was so blinded with rage that it didn’t seem to notice being shot. Pistol rounds were useless. The hulk’s misshapen, three fingered hand swung down and grabbed onto a ladder rung. It used its hugely powerful muscles to pull it
self down further into the shaft. It was focused so intently on nabbing its prey that it didn’t realize that it would never be able to get back out of the shaft.
“We’re in!” Raze said. Ava heard the door open below them, so she climbed down as fast as she could. She reached the door and stopped in her tracks when she saw what was crawling up the shaft from beneath.
A human head with strange spindly legs growing out of the base of the decapitated neck pulled itself up the shaft. An army of other bits and pieces that looked impossibly like human body parts animated with alien efficiency crawled up towards them in the darkness.
Ava threw herself through the door, and Draco followed. Raze removed his interface from the door console, and it slammed shut behind them. A second blast door slid shut and bolted into place.
For the moment, they were safe.
Chapter Nine
Veck watched what was going on aboard the Icarus by intercepting and decrypting Evie’s internal traffic. The ship was now in position in front of the Metropolis Seven, a curiously stranded massive starship from New Earth.
The people in engineering were running calculations through the artificial intelligence. They used Evie to do the complex mathematics required to stay alive in the endless void that human minds were incapable of.
Evie finished her calculations, but then ran them again. This was not something in Evie’s parameters – it was a subtle manipulation by Veck to keep the AI’s focus away him.
Evie’s internal processes were all completely focused on these calculations. She double, triple and quadruple checked the calculations to make sure they were right. She kept going over and over those calculations affirming their accuracy. While her focus was there, she didn’t feel the fluttering that Aloysius had felt before he departed the ship.
Unlike Aloysius, Evie was not a program that allowed for feelings or emotions. The uneasiness that had felt so urgent and impossible to ignore to Aloysius, was simply a defective minor process that Evie would have to run diagnostics on later.
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