“Through the big heat,” Jakool said, and he remembered Nolan's word for it and tried to speak it: “the ree...ack...to.”
“Reactor,” Nolan said, and he smiled. “But close enough. Will you take me? You know all the safe places, don't you? I know you do.”
“I do.”
“Jakool, I forbid it,” Gillen said. “You are not to leave this chamber.”
“Then I will go on my own,” Nolan said, and he swung his legs off the bench he was sitting on and stood. He towered over Gillen as he approached the fat man. “I need my weapon.”
“No! It is mine!”
“Gillen, give it to him,” said one of the women. Nolan turned and smiled at her, saw that her belly was far too swollen and knew instantly that she was pregnant. The woman didn't meet his eye, but turned to Jakool and then to Gillen, and her face darkened as she laid eyes on the fat humanoid.
“It is mine,” the man said.
“Then I'll trade you for it,” Nolan told him. “When I return, I'll bring you a better weapon. A larger weapon, more suited for a... For a... For a chief.”
“A chief?”
“Are you not the chief?”
“I am Gillen,” Gillen said. “The elder.”
“And I am Godsmith,” Nolan told him, “and I want what is mine. The weapon!”
Gillen shrunk back against Nolan's words, but he nodded slowly and handed the blaster back to him. Nolan took it without a word, turned to Jakool.
“I need you to show me the way,” he said.
“Yes, Godsmith.”
“Jakool—no!” Nolan was surprised to see that it wasn't Gillen that spoke, but the pregnant woman.
“Neema, I must,” Jakool said. Neema... Nolan had heard him use that word before. He looked from Jakool to Neema and then to Neema's belly and deduced enough. Gillen deduced enough, too, and he stepped forward and took Neema's hand, drew her close to him.
“Yes, you go,” Gillen said, and he grabbed the other woman—also pregnant, Nolan saw, but less so—and dragged her close to him, too. “Kareem: you go with them.”
The one known as Kareem—slightly older than Jakool, but not by much—looked at the other woman, then to Gillen's cold, heartless eyes, and he nodded and stood, joined Jakool and Nolan near the door.
“Truda, I will return,” Kareem said. Truda... Nolan matched the name to the face of the other woman, smaller than Neema but not as pretty—if Neema's cat-like features could be considered pretty. That left only one, another male, and older than Jakool and Kareem, but younger than the fat Gillen.
“And you?” Nolan asked.
“I will stay,” he said.
“Yes, Plunk will stay,” Gillen said with a cackle. “You two, go: take your Godsmith, for all the good he will do you. He will get you both killed, and don't tell me you don't know it.”
“You don't believe he is Godsmith,” Jakool said, and he was downcast at the thought.
“I believe you are an idiot,” Gillen responded. “You should kill him. I should kill him.”
Neema snorted at that.
“As if you could kill Godsmith,” the pregnant woman laughed, and Gillen reddened at the harshness in her words. Jakool smiled, and he tapped Nolan on the shoulder and gestured that it was time to leave. Nolan nodded, headed for the closed blast-door. He was thankful that he was getting away from Gillen, even more thankful for the blaster.
And once they had more blasters, what then? Nolan didn't know, but he knew that in space there was no such thing as too much fire-power.
13
The blast-door opened and the three of them stepped outside, into the corridor. Nolan looked around, but he didn't recognise this section of the ship. They were near the cargo bays, that much he knew. There wasn't much behind them except row-upon-row of storage pods. He looked to Jakool and Kareem and wondered if that was where these strange creatures had come from. Could the hunters have come from there, too? Nolan didn't see any other explanation.
From behind them, Gillen gave a shout and then Truda ran out of the door, into the corridor. She turned and spat through the door.
“This might be yours, but I'll never be!” she shouted, and then the door shut and the four of them were alone. Nolan stared at Truda as she collapsed against Kareem's shoulder, and he aimed the blaster at the door, just in case. He waited, but the door remained silent—nothing came through except angry mutterings that were hidden by the heavy steel.
Jakool reached out and gently guided Nolan's blaster to the ground. Nolan looked into the other man's eyes; they were tinged with sadness.
“That is not our way,” Jakool said, and Nolan nodded in understanding.
“Who are you people?” he said, instead.
“We are who we are,” Jakool answered, and then he turned around and set off, down the darkened corridor. Nolan and the others followed, and they didn't have to be told to be quiet. Nolan couldn't help himself, though; he turned around and looked at Truda.
“You're pregnant.”
“Shoosh!” Jakool hissed.
“Yes,” Truda said, and her face flushed with shame. Nolan turned to Kareem, who had also reddened. Kareem stared at Nolan.
“He is the elder,” he answered the unspoken question.
“So he can—”
“He is the elder!” Kareem said, more forceful. Nolan nodded, turned back to Jakool. Jakool walked with an extra hunch to his shoulders, as though the weight of his world was too heavy for him. Nolan didn't need to ask about Neema to see the pain that was burned into Jakool's eyes.
A strange, barbaric people.
Silence, except for the sound of their feet on the metallic deck. They continued, and it slowly grew warmer. They passed corridors that criss-crossed their path, and each one of them seemed empty. They kept on the same path, however, and Jakool never appeared lost. Nolan was disoriented, and that made him feel embarrassed. He thought he knew every inch of this ship like the back of his hand, but these corridors were unfamiliar to him. They were approaching the reactor, and Nolan stiffened at the realisation that he had never been down here—not even on the company tour. This was off-limits, even to him. There was nothing he could do if the reactor had problems—nothing but pray. Nolan had always though this section of the ship was sealed off, but Jakool didn't walk as though he was heading towards a dead-end.
What the hell were they doing? Nolan wondered. He must have gone crazy in his sleep; none of this was rational. He could accept the giant spiders and the humanoids—they weren't real, but he could accept them—but why was he heading back towards danger? For weapons... Bullshit. Nolan stared at the blaster and knew that he didn't care for it, one way or the other. He had to be truthful to himself: he was heading back to the hyper-sleep pod. That was the way out of this dream, he knew. If he headed back to the hyper-sleep pod, then when he woke all of this would be gone. He would be safe again.
But the pod was destroyed, wasn't it? He had shot open the canopy, and there was no way to fix it. There was no way to wake up. There had to be... But there wasn't, which meant this wasn't a dream, and he wouldn't wake from it.
Which mean he would die on this ship.
“Are you okay?” Kareem asked as Nolan slowed and reached for the walls. He would die here... “You've gone pale.”
“I... I just need a moment,” Nolan said a second before the world spun and he vomited all over the bulkhead.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” he said, and he wiped the bile from his chin. He stared at the vomit. The vomit was real. He was awake, and his ship was swarming with giant huntsman spiders, and he had made friends with a group of sub-human cavemen. This was all happening, and it was happening to him. And he would die here. He would never see another dawn, another sunset, another tree or forest or human being. He would never hear the happy bark of a dog or feel the soft warmth of a pair of breasts. He would die long before this nameless ship reached its destination, and when it did? What would the citizens at the o
ther end of the journey find when they opened the door? A plague-ship, full of monsters. And maybe once they cleaned the ship full of monsters they would search it and find his corpse lying there, preserved like a mummy. Would he be in the captain's chair, against regulations? Would they dock his pay when they found out, even though he was long dead?
Would anybody even give a damn?
And did he? Nolan couldn't answer that, beyond the pure reflex of yes! He wanted to live, he knew that much, but he had come aboard this ship knowing that he would wake up centuries in the future, and everybody he knew that had stayed behind was dead, long gone. Forgotten. How could he have done that if he cared if he lived or died? What was the point of this journey? Apart from running away...
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
The bulkhead throbbed like a headache. Nolan rested against it, tried to gather his thoughts. He could think of nothing except the vomit by his feet and the smell, like dead flesh wrapped in rotten fish. There was no point going on, not now. The hyper-sleep pod was gone and there was nothing he could do to go back to sleep. He was stuck here, surrounded by death. And he was sick of the smell.
The smell of death...
Nolan frowned; he wasn't smelling his own bile, but something else. He raised his head, saw Jakool staring past him, back the way they had come. Truda and Kareem shared worried glances.
“Jakool...”
“Shoosh!”
Nolan turned, raised his blaster. He stared down the corridor, tried to see. He thought he could see movement, but it was hard to be sure. No, he was sure—there was something there. A hunter. A spider. Death on eight legs.
“It's not coming this way,” Nolan said, not a whisper but something even quieter.
“No,” Jakool said softly, and there was a lot of weight behind that one word: no. There was nothing back that way except more corridors and Neema and Gillen and Plunk...
“We're cut off,” Nolan said, and he felt his heart tighten at the thought.
“Yes.”
Nolan looked at his blaster, and he knew it wouldn't be enough. Jakool knew that, too. They had to get more.
“The blast-doors...” Truda said, reading the unspoken thoughts and adding an unfinished sentence of her own. “Will they...”
“They should,” Nolan said. “At least for a while.”
“How long?” Kareem asked, but Nolan couldn't answer that. How long could anything last against one of those things? Nolan turned back to Jakool, and he could see the young man thinking.
“We must keep moving,” Jakool said, and he licked his lips nervously. “We cannot fight them, and if they come back the other way, towards us... We must keep moving.”
“Yes,” Nolan said, thankful that they weren't going back to take on the giant spider, but there was a part of him that felt like a coward. They were effectively cut off now, split into two, and they had no way to warn the others. “Maybe they'll walk right past their door.”
“Maybe,” Jakool said, but none of them believed it. As they walked, the scent of death didn't leave them. If anything, it grew stronger.
“Jakool...” Nolan warned. Not only was the stench growing stronger, but the heat was growing unbearable. The reactor was supposed to be contained, Nolan knew, but this was something else. They shouldn't have felt anything from the reactor at all.
“It is safe,” Jakool said, but there was something in his tone of voice that made Nolan shudder.
“What do you mean?” Nolan demanded. He wiped sweat from his brow. Up ahead, he could see the corridor come to a dead-end. There was a section of bulkhead that had been torn away, and the floor was ripped up the same was as it had been near the galley. Nolan slowed. “Jakool: what's up there?”
“It is safe,” Jakool said, and he turned to face Nolan, impatient. “We have to hurry. They do not have any weapons.”
“What will we find in there?” Nolan demanded, but Jakool didn't answer and instead headed for the opening that had been ripped out of the bulkhead. Kareem and Truda followed their friend through the hole, left Nolan alone in the corridor, surrounded by the stench of rotting meat and dead things. All three of them disappeared into the hole, swallowed by the pitch-black beyond. Nolan turned around, stared down the dark, empty corridor. There could be a hunter watching him now and he wouldn't even know it. There could be a dozen of the things, watching and waiting. The ship must have been crawling with them, and right now Nolan was alone—but his friends were just through the opening, not far away at all.
“Damn it,” Nolan cursed, and he hurried after them; through the opening, into the reactor.
Into the unknown.
14
Nolan stepped into darkness. Jakool was waiting for him, his eyes hard. The smaller man reached out, stopped Nolan in his tracks.
“Be quiet,” Jakool warned. Nolan went to speak, but Jakool cut him off before he could open his mouth: “there are... Dangers.”
“I understand,” Nolan said, but he really didn't. Kareem and Truda were just in front of them, straddling girders that criss-crossed between the corridor and the room beyond. There was another rip in the bulkheads just in front, and red-yellow light streamed through it. Heat streamed through it, too. Below: a black space of nothing; the innards of the ship, covered in faint webs and old, dried mucous. Nolan tried not to look too hard into the depths, but he scanned the area for dark, squat, hairy shapes and saw none. That, at least, was something.
Jakool waited another second before he nodded and turned around to take the lead. He walked over the girders effortlessly, and he stepped through the broken opening, into the reactor room beyond.
Nolan followed.
The heat was oppressive, but Nolan didn't notice. The light was strange, but Nolan didn't notice. Nolan didn't notice anything except the carpet of giant spiders that covered the floor. There were thousands of them; huge things, twelve feet high in some cases. Their skin was translucent, their eyes vacant. Their hair was old and crumbly, their legs locked in place like old trees. Nolan resisted the urge to scream.
The spiders didn't move.
Jakool turned to make sure the others were okay. Nolan was thankful that both Kareem and Truda were as much afraid of the scene as he was, but they hid their fear well and Jakool nodded, satisfied, and kept walking—walked under the giant huntsman spiders.
Nolan shuddered, almost turned and ran—but the spiders didn't react in any way. None of them did. Nolan frowned, took a hesitant step towards them. Kareem and Truda were walking under the first spider now. Nolan shuddered again, but as he closed the distance he saw that the spider was completely translucent: just the outer skin that had been shed before it had grown even larger. There was a large rip on the upper shell of the carcass where the monster had crawled out in its escape.
The carpet was full of dead husks.
Nolan tried to relax, but the sense of terror was almost overwhelming. He breathed like a crazy man running out of breath and his heart beat so hard that it threatened to burst from his chest. He needed to pee. He hurried through the dead, dried skin after Jakool and the others. It was a veritable forest of monstrous images, but Nolan tried to put it out of his mind. He tried not to linger at each of the towering monsters, but it was impossible not to. Even though they were harmless, their sheer size alone almost forced Nolan to stare at them. They were massive, ugly, hateful.
“Try not to look up,” Jakool said from up front. Nolan looked up.
There was the reactor, directly above them. It was a massive cylinder, contained in steel. Tubes and conduits ran out in all directions. The cylinder itself was covered in black, hairy monsters. Nolan saw them and almost jumped. The spiders were everywhere, and they covered every inch of its surface. Some of them glowed from the heat, others had turned into blackened, charred husks—so consumed by the ravages of nuclear fire that they had stayed and burned where they were. They weren't all dead—in fact, hardly any of them were dead—and they moved slowly, la
zily, across the reactor's surface.
“If we are quiet, they won't come for us,” Jakool said, his voice lower than a whisper. Nolan nodded, even as his Flight Officer training unravelled within his mind. The reactor was supposed to be left uncovered for ventilation. With so many monsters covering the surface, the heat had nowhere to go. No wonder it was so hot in here: the spiders were turning the ship into a furnace.
That was dangerous.
Nolan's eyes travelled further throughout the giant cavern. Next to the reactor was a massive water tank—it was dual-use: water to cool the reactor and water to drink, bathe with, cook and clean with. There was a recycling and filtering pump between the two, also covered in spiders. A dead huntsman floated in the tank—how it had got there, Nolan didn't want to know. He resolved not to drink the water. Who knew what contaminants were in it?
Further through the giant cavernous room, and there was the gravity-gyroscope. It spun faster than the eye could see: a giant spinning top contained within magnets that ran floor-to-ceiling. Arcs of electric fire would jump from the magnets to the gyroscope, and the field within glowed purple and green and blue. There were no spiders in there—thank God, Nolan thought. If anything got within that field, the gravity of the entire ship would be disrupted. As Nolan watched, blue arcs spread out through the purple field, flowed away from the top: the gravity wave as it hit the magnetic field and blossomed to life, sparkling brilliantly.
Lastly, Nolan saw the giant blast-door directly behind the reactor. The door was used in dry-dock so the engineers could move these massive units into position. The doors were the most solid chunks of metal Nolan had ever seen, and they had another—deadlier—purpose. In the event of a problem with the reactor containment, there were procedures in place that would open those doors and vent the entire chamber into space. The procedure would be final—there was no way Nolan would be able to get the reactor back into the ship once it had been purged. Staring upwards, seeing all the giant spiders that covered the thing—some were six feet in size, some double that—Nolan couldn't help but think about the purge procedure and venting them all into space. Perhaps that would be the only way, in the end. Kill them all and die in the cold.
Nightmare Ship: Space Exploration Thriller Page 7