New Threat

by Nathan Hystad

  I closed my eyes briefly to avoid seeing outside the ships. Infinite space and I were still on tumultuous terms after last year. Counting three seconds, I opened them, and pressed my pin again as my feet touched down on the metallic grated floor. I scanned the room, and my brain took a moment to catch up to what I was seeing.

  “Mary,” I called into my headset.

  “I’m here,” she replied, and I saw a movement to the side of the room.

  “What happened?”

  “Someone was here waiting. They fired into the room, and Slate went after them,” she said as I approached her.

  “You okay?” I asked, worry creeping into my voice.

  “Yeah, let’s go back up Slate.”

  She raised her pulse rifle, and I followed suit, walking sideways to the doorway. “Slate, come in,” I said into my helmet speaker.

  “There were five of them. I took two down so far. I’m coming back.” Slate’s voice was calm and quick in my ear.

  We stood in the hall, guns raised in each direction.

  The night vision on our display glowed green, showing us a basic hall of metal beams and grates. The place was built for function, not fashion. Something caught my eye to my right and I spun, seeing the bulk of Slate backing toward us.

  “You know where you’re going?” he asked.

  I tried to get my bearings and nodded. “He said it should be in the anti-grav generator halls. Under the level-three air ducts.” I wished it was closer to our entry point, but Kareem hadn’t counted on us being attacked when we arrived.

  “Lead the way. I’ve got your backs,” he said.

  We moved down the hall, sweat dripping down my arms as nervous energy raced through me. “What are they?” I asked.

  “Big. Bigger than me. Heavy armor. Nothing we’ve seen before, but they may match the Bhlat description we’ve heard. It was hard to tell with them firing at me,” Slate said.

  Bhlat. The name sent shivers through my spine; my finger crept closer to the trigger on my weapon. Our footsteps clanged on the floor, echoing down the quiet halls. I kept thinking how they must be hearing it, they would be around the corner; but for that first section, it was all quiet.

  The anti-grav wheel spoked out at four points, and the door to the third one was my target. We made it there in peace, and I tested the handle. The electric pocket door hissed open, causing me to jump and almost fire my gun. My nerves were getting the best of me. We’d only been walking on the ship for five minutes and it felt like an hour to me.

  “Go get it, Dean. I’ll watch the door.” Slate slipped inside after us, and the door hissed shut. The room was confined, with a manual hatch leading down the massive wheel spoke, for lack of a better term.

  “I wasn’t planning on having the Bhlat here. Kareem said we need their DNA to activate it.” The device was awful in a humanitarian kind of way. The Deltra had built the Shield as a way to keep Kraski away from it, and in a small area, the high-density few-kilometer radius killing them instantly, as I’d seen when we’d destroyed them in their own vessel last year. The image of them melting from their proximity to the Shield still haunted me, and there I was, hunting for another weapon of mass destruction with even more power.

  “I’m coming with you, Dean. We can’t get separated. We’ll be stronger together,” Mary said.

  Part of me wished she would stay behind and be protected by Slate, and another part was happy to have her by my side. I tried to spin the hatch wheel, grunting at the stubborn thing. Mary joined in, and just when I was about to ask Slate for a hand, it started to move. We spun it open and saw a ladder heading upward.

  “I’ll take the lead,” I said, climbing into the tube. It was a few feet wide, but not spacious by any stretch of the imagination. The rungs were metal, coated with small flakes that gave it grip. I raced up the first few; but looking up, I saw it went on for what appeared to be forever, so I slowed, pacing myself for the climb. We passed a small hatch that would exit to level one of the grav-system. Level three was our destination.

  Pulse laser fire erupted from below us, and I had the urge to get Mary to pass me so I could get between her and any potential fire. But they could be above us too.

  “Just keep moving. Slate’s trained for this,” she said, pushing my foot lightly. I listened without hesitation, adrenaline speeding me up as we made our way past the second hatch.

  “Almost there,” I said, straining to hear gunfire below. Nothing. “Slate, come in,” I said. Nothing but static returned. “We’ve lost contact.”

  The third hatch was upon us, and my muscles burned as I climbed toward it. This one spun easier than the one below had, and I climbed through the four-foot diameter hole, sticking my hand out to help Mary into the room. It was pitch black, and finally, I could feel the wheel we were in spinning. Our feet were planted on the ground from the gravity it was creating, and while I didn’t quite grasp the science very well, I was happy for it.

  “Where is it?” Mary asked.

  “He hid it. For good reason, apparently.” The room was bathed in green from my helmet display, and I scanned for the crate Kareem had told me about. It was there, right where he’d said it would be! My heart raced as I ran to it. There was another door to the room, a normal humanoid-sized one, perfect to accommodate the tall, lanky Deltra. As I approached the crate, the door hissed open. Mary was a few feet away, the doorway separating us. We both had our backs pushed against the wall, and I held my breath. Something walked into the room slowly, feet clanking heavily on the metal floors. It was huge: seven or eight feet when it stood straight after bending for the too-small entrance.

  Mary didn’t hesitate. She stepped out in front of it and fired. It grunted and pushed back through the doorway, hitting its helmeted head on the way out. Red beams shot from my rifle as well, and it lay there twitching before Mary fired a kill shot at its head. The helmet burst open, exposing a thick-faced monster.

  Shots fired in the distance, and Mary stood like a superhero. “Get the device. You have your DNA right here.” She kicked the body and ran down the hall, firing like a commando.

  “Don’t leave. You don’t know what’s out there!” I yelled to her, but it was too late. She was long gone.

  I stood there like a fool, holding the rifle and staring at the dead Bhlat for at least a minute. “Clare, they’re here. Keep your eyes out for any incoming ships.” I finally had the common sense to tell the ship what was going on.

  “Slate told us. We’ve lost contact with him. Is he okay?” Clare’s voice came through, asking a question I couldn’t answer.

  “I don’t know. Over.”

  The crate was heavy, full of maintenance tools and spare parts for the anti-grav system. I had to empty it before it would even budge from the spot it’d been sitting in all those years. Soon a pile of junk was spread around the room, and the crate finally moved. The whole floor was sections of metal grates, each about three meters square, attached to grooves in T-bar style metal beams that made up the subfloor. I tugged on the corner square, and it lifted easier than expected. Leaning it against the wall, I looked for the device as Kareem had described it. Where the Shield had been large and heavy, this device was made with similar engineering in mind, but a couple hundred years later. It reminded me of cell phone technology in a twenty-year span, going from the clunky brick design to a computer in your pocket.

  Empty. There was nothing down there. I ran my hands along the edges, and just as I was about to get up, I felt a slight protrusion. Excitement raced through me. I had to slide my torso into the opening, leaving my legs and back exposed, but I got the device in my grip, unclasping it from its secure hiding spot.

  “I got it, Mary,” I said.

  “I killed another one. But…” Her voice trailed off, and I could hear blasts echo from my earpiece and inside the ship.

  I needed to get this thing going and help them out there. It had a metal case, made of some lightweight but durable black alloy. It unlatched, r
evealing a circular device the diameter of a coffee cup base. It whirred to life as I touched it with my nano-fingered gloves. Soft yellow light glowed from the edges, and a white screen blinked on the interface of it. Deltra words scrolled across it, and my heads-up display was kind enough to translate them for me. I hadn’t had a chance to test out this technology, so I was thankful for it.

  I clicked the icon that translated to Genetics. The image of a double helix flashed onto the screen, rotating around. Words slid onto the screen, and my HUD translated them to: MISSING DATA.

  What had Kareem said? I flipped it around and saw a small button, which I pushed. A small probe extended from it, and bingo, I had it. Now I just needed to get a sample from the huge corpse at my feet, which couldn’t be difficult with all the blood and gore at my disposal. Suddenly, the body seemed repulsive to me, and the power of the device in my hand scared the hell out of every inch of me.

  I closed my eyes, seeing the Kraski victims spewing out green bile before crashing to the ground in heaps. Thousands upon thousands of them littered that vessel last year. So much death at my hands. The fact that they were going to kill us didn’t ease my conscience all the time. It was nature. Kill or be killed. Mary was out there somewhere, and she needed me to stop being a baby and get this done. I could think about the moral ramifications later.

  The Bhlat’s helmet was half blown off, so that’s where I went, pulling the rest off the corpse’s head. Blood oozed out, red like ours. Its face had a dark pigment; where our noses were, it had three holes on an otherwise flat face, lips thin around a wide mouth, teeth sharp and twice the length of mine. But it was the eyes that threw me off. Swirling green- and blue-speckled eyes stared back at me, and I lifted my rifle for a moment, they looked so full of life. But they weren’t. It was dead.

  Cringing, I stuck the probe from the back of the device into the Bhlat’s neck, where a blaster had hit it. The yellow light turned to red and it beeped, transitioning back to yellow. The words GENETICS CONFIRMED appeared on the backlit white screen of the device.

  It kicked back to the main menu. ACTIVATE now showed highlighted, and when I hit it, settings appeared. I could adjust the strength, the distance to cover with the pulse, and could rotate through the DNA samples. This scared the hell out of me. With this, I could add human DNA and wipe out our entire race. I almost dropped it right then, but the sounds of battle in the ship through my headset kept me focused.

  “Dean, is it working? I’m cornered,” Mary said through my earpiece. She sounded panicked.

  Boots clanked in the hall, moving slowly, and it had to be a Bhlat trying to sneak up on me. How many of them were there? And why were they even here?

  The steps got closer, and I stood in the adjacent corner to where the floor was lifted, aiming my pulse rifle forward toward the door. The steps stopped, and I could almost hear the Bhlat breathing from just outside the room. The device was in my palm. One click and I could test it. I just had to press CONFIRM on the activate option.

  One more step and a boot poked through. My heart beat heavily against my chest, one finger on the trigger, the other hovered over the device icon. I didn’t get to do either as the ship’s lights came on in a steady hum. My night vision gave way to normal as the levels of light increased in the room.

  The Bhlat said something in its language, and suddenly, the wheel we were in stopped spinning, the force throwing me across the room fast enough to see the Bhlat’s eyes widen at the sight of me before it went flying down the hall. Gravity was gone.

  TWENTY

  I’d hit my head on the wall, and my body expected me to fall onto the pile of tools and parts scattered across the floor. Instead, they floated beside me in the room, with no gravity present to keep us grounded. Someone had powered the ship back up and stopped the spinning wheel we were in from moving, stopping the artificial grav unit from doing its job. Air hissed into the room, the life-support system back up and activated.

  As I floated there, contemplating what was happening, I noticed my left hand was empty. I’d dropped the device. Grunting echoed from the hall, and I remembered I wasn’t alone. Scanning the room, I saw the device floating there beside a large wrench and a soldering iron.

  I pushed off the wall, arcing toward the device just as the massive Bhlat came flying into the room. Its gun flashed beams at me, narrowly missing and cutting holes into the wall behind me. I fired back but missed as well, hitting the roof instead of the large target. I collided with the far wall, with the Bhlat soldier piling into me with some serious velocity.

  It felt like being pinned to the wall by a semi-truck. My chest ached, and I nearly let go of my blaster. The training from Slate took over, and I gripped a metal rail on the wall, kicking out with all my strength, sending the Bhlat back a couple feet. It left me just enough time to grab the device.

  The Bhlat said something aloud, and my translator attempted a translation but failed. A strange noise emanated from the alien, and I guessed it was laughter. I must have looked like easy prey to such a large creature. His long blaster rose as he floated there, aiming right for my head. He said something else, and the translator annoyingly showed an error again.

  The device was in my palm, still waiting for the CONFIRM command to be hit. This time, I did so with ease of conscience. It was kill or be killed, and I understood that now more than ever.

  Time seemed to slow. His finger bent to pull the trigger just as I pressed the icon. It hummed quickly, vibrating ever so slightly. I almost didn’t feel the blaster beam rip into my side as the Bhlat nearly exploded before me. In my new slow-motion world, I saw his same green-blue swirling eyes widen just before his face pushed out, blood covering the inside of his mask. The rest of him seemed to melt, and when time started again, he was just floating lifelessly, a massive space suit of blood and bones. I nearly vomited in my own suit, and alarms were going off inside my helmet. The suit had been breached.

  That was when I felt the pain in my side. My suit was torn open, blood seeping out into the room and floating around in tiny drops, each visible as I hung there staring forward.

  “Dean.” I heard my name in my earpiece over the internal klaxons. It was Mary’s voice.

  “Mary, where are you?” I asked, reality snapping back to my muddled mind.

  “Main ship, near our entry point. They’re all dead. Are you okay?” she asked, her voice strained.

  “I’m okay. Just a little shot. I’m coming down.” I grabbed the Bhlat’s weapon, knowing we wouldn’t have any more trouble from them on the vessel. Getting back down was easier with no gravity, and I was thankful, since my wound wouldn’t stop screaming at me. As I entered the tunnel spoke of the gravity wheel, I used the ladder rungs to pull me down the chute. Much faster than I’d gotten up not ten minutes before, I was back on ground level, in the center of the vessel.

  “Where are you?” I asked, feeling like I might pass out. She gave me directions, but I could tell she was hurt. I pushed against the walls; every movement sent shooting pain through my abdomen. Blood trailed behind me, and I was thankful the life-support had come on; otherwise, I’d already be a dead man.

  I heard something clank around the hall corner, and I raised my pulse rifle. Just because the device killed the Bhlat on board didn’t mean they couldn’t have had other friends on the ship with them. I moved slowly, my vision fading slightly. I’d lost too much blood. I needed to get to Mary. I needed to see her one last time. Ready to fire at an enemy, I pushed out, floating into the next hall, and saw it was Slate just before pulling the trigger.

  “Dean!” he called, and I heard him with my ears, not my earpiece. His suit was banged up badly, and his left arm was floating uselessly at his side.

  “Slate! Thank God, Mary is over here,” I said, feeling a renewed sense of energy.

  We headed to the third room on the right, where she’d described her location to me, and there were four Bhlat in there with her. Four large floating corpses.

  Mary
was floating lifelessly as well.

  Through the pain, I made my way to her.

  “Clare, tell me you’re ready. We’ll be there in two,” I managed to get out, seeking a confirmation they were ready for us.

  Mary was still breathing. Her suit was blasted open in a few spots, but none near her chest or head. Normally, I would have freaked out at seeing my beautiful fiancée’s injuries, but I could hardly make sense of anything I was seeing, my vision fading quickly.

  Slate took charge, grabbing her, and moved faster than I’d seen him move before, leading me back to the room we’d started the mission in. Our ropes were still there, and we clipped them in.

  Slate looked at me with a grim, exhausted expression. Yet he still smiled. “You did well,” he said, just loud enough for me to hear before my world went black.

  __________

  White light. That was what I saw first. For a brief moment, I thought that was it for me, that I’d passed to the other side, and a small part of me was ready for it.

  “Dean, can you hear me?” a familiar voice asked. That wasn’t unusual. Theologians had speculated for years that we might be ushered into heaven by an old friend or loved one. “Dean, you’re back on our ship. Your wound was substantial, but I’ve managed to stop the bleeding and patch you up.”

  So much for heaven. I was still on a trip to hell on board a small spacecraft in the middle of some unknown galaxy.

  My bleary eyes cleared and I could finally make out where I was. The bunks were stripped of any clutter, and a form lay on the one across the room from me.

  “The medic bay wasn’t big enough for both of you, and I assumed you would both prefer to be in the same room, so we made do with the spare bunk room. Hope you don’t mind,” Doctor Nick said.

  The both of us? It all came flooding back. The device, the massive Bhlat soldiers. Mary’s limp body floating there, blood hovering around her.