by B. V. Larson
There were no easy answers, and I was running out of time. I chose the direct approach as it had often worked for me well in the past.
Focus and drive. A will as strong as tempered steel. That’s what it had taken to adapt to this ‘in-between’ universe, and I could guess that many beings—alien or not—would never become good at it.
My hand-things, the first limbs I’d learned to compel to motion in this environment, reached for the hindmost of the two. He was the one pushing on the aft end of the dark mass that I knew must be the stolen engine.
That didn’t do much. I felt something—an odd, tingling contact—but even that was fleeting. My claw-like hands passed right through my victim. No gossamer flesh was ripped loose. No ghostly blood leaked from my target.
But there was that tingle. Could it be that our two fields were interacting? However these devices operated, there must be some trick of physics that kept both of us in this odd state. I was under the impression that I’d just merged our two spheres of influence, then separated them again, as my clutching arms passed through the other’s body and came out the other side.
Before I could come up with plan B, the alien I’d tried to attack reacted. He must have felt the tingle too. Perhaps, with his greater understanding of these things, he knew exactly what it was.
My ghostly opponent stopped pushing at the engine and turned around. His curved hand-claws reached in my direction.
He had no face. Not even a head, really. Just a bulb of thicker material that led the rest. His claws came for me, and I recoiled instinctively.
But he didn’t try to tear at my face, or grapple my claws with his. Instead, he reached for a pulsing glow within my own mass. I had one too, just like they did.
I’d never thought to look inside myself before—but you could, while lost in the in-between. It was like being able to roll your eyes back so far in your skull they could see your brain and watch your mind pulse and think. It was disturbing, but I did it automatically as I watched that claw dig deep into my person.
That tingle was back, along with something else—pain? I’m not sure I’d call it that. Sickness and a disorienting shiver, that’s more what it felt like.
I wriggled away. Like a fish swimming away from a shark, I tried to escape—and I did.
Looking back, I saw the shimmering being remained with the engine, reluctant to leave it. I sensed that it was watching me.
Soon, the other one turned and seemed to regard me as well. Perhaps they would come up with a plan, a way to expunge me from their existence. I had to use what little advantage I had left and attack now. After all, the second one seemed like it was still trying to struggle with the engine, still trying to drag its bulk alone.
To my great relief, the Vehk I’d attacked turned back toward the engine and pushed at it again, redoubling his efforts. The engine scooted a few more meters, responding to his efforts.
That was the moment I chose. Outstretching a single, claw-like hand, I dove back toward my target. My other hand defensively enclosed the pulsing light in my own being, and it felt odd as it rested there. I hoped it would defend the source of my light—but I had no idea if it would help at all.
At the last moment, the Vehk I’d been plaguing turned to look again. He squirmed and changed shape a little, turning to face my onslaught—but then, I was on him.
He’d shown me what to do. Essentially, it was a game of reaching inside the mass of your opponent and ripping his heart out. I felt like I’d be good at this game.
Even as I grabbed him and began to wrench at his illumination, he brushed at mine—but then, I think he panicked.
He tried to run.
That was the end of him. I had no engine to protect. He was the enemy, and I was wholly focused on killing—taking his life. I chased him and caught him—could I be faster than these Vehk in open space? It seemed surprising, as they’d had years of experience and training on me—but it also seemed to be true. I was getting pretty good at navigating in this odd place.
Once I had his luminous heart in my claws again, I didn’t let up until I’d ripped it free.
When the glow moved outside the central blob-like mass of the Vehk—he died.
Or maybe, he simply changed states, transforming from a ghost in the in-between to a fleshly being in the cold depths of space. Whatever the case, the light went out, and there were only two of us left.
The last Vehk ghost was wise to me by the time I turned my attention to him.
I could see him, squatting on the engine like a scallop on a sunken rock. He didn’t move, he was no longer trying to push the engine—but I felt that he was watching me, just as I was watching him.
I lunged like an animal.
Having perfected my technique, I ripped the heart out of the remaining Vehk. It was a brutal thing, but it had to be done. It was simple, and even easier the second time.
What did that say about me?
As a man, I was unusual. A natural-born assassin, some would say. A dedicated watchdog, others might call it.
Whatever adjective you preferred, I was one killer among many in our killer-species. I couldn’t deny that.
With no other pulsing light present than my own, I clung to the engine and wondered what to do next.
I was weary and unsettled. The in-between was far from homey to me. It was the land of spirits and unknowable dangers.
Looking at the two bulky ships, which I now hovered between, I figured out easily which one was Viper. The glow of the Vehk battleship’s engines was much brighter, and her shadowy outline more bulky and longer.
Without having much hope, I began to push the engine back toward Viper. It felt like I was rolling a log uphill.
Now and then, I checked each ship, both ahead and aft, to see how much progress I was making. After several long minutes of effort, I got a shock.
There were more ghosts now, behind me, coming from the battleship. Four of them swam after me, and I felt a little sick inside.
So much effort, so much work… but I’d failed. I couldn’t beat four of them at once. They’d detected my murders somehow, and they’d decided to take me out long before I could reach the safety of Viper.
Despite my despairing state of mind, I readied myself to fight.
Chapter 45
Four of the enemy. That was far more than I could take on alone, especially without the critical element of surprise.
Before they reached me, I came up with a new idea. It was desperate in the extreme, but I didn’t have any other options. Taking a risky chance was never my first choice—but it was always better than certain defeat.
When the ghosts were almost on me, I stopped pushing the engine. I was maybe a quarter of the way back to Viper, that was the best I could do.
What I did next was the biggest gamble of my mission. I crawled to the back of the engine, and I tore off the pulsing light that glowed there.
Immediately, the engine faded and become an insubstantial hulk. I could still see it, in the vague way I could still see bulkheads inside Viper.
I knew then I’d guessed right. The light had been a power source. A way of keeping whatever it was attached to in this limbo state. Without that power source, it had reverted to the physical world.
Taking the power source with me, I turned and swam for all I was worth back toward Viper.
These changes in the tactical situation seemed to confuse the enemy. They could “see” me, I guess, just as I could sense them in the ether. They stopped and milled about. Their plans had clearly been blown.
I used this brief time to try to scoot back to safety, but it didn’t last long. Not nearly long enough for me to escape.
With a sudden burst of decisiveness, the four split up. Two followed me toward Viper, while the other two moved to where the engine had returned to the material world I knew so well and preferred so much.
Perhaps in time I could learn to fight two at once, should I be crazy enough to try it. But today, I sim
ply wanted to escape alive.
Fortunately, I had a big head start. I was halfway home before they began, and I made it inside Viper’s shadowy hull with a sense of relief.
Previously, I’d found a rip in space-time and forced my way through it. What if I took a more direct approach? What if I simply switched off the belt that kept me stable in a vast universe of nothingness…?
There wasn’t much time to ponder, so I did it. Swimming to a spot where it appeared there were no ghostly walls—or people—I switched off my device and abruptly returned to the three-dimensional plane I’d been born in.
Appearing and falling into a shivering heap on the cold steel deck, I again marveled not only at the training and willpower the Vehk had, but at their ability to recover from a physical and mental shock. Transitioning back from the in-between to our material reality was like every square inch of your skin simultaneously belly flopping into an ice-covered ocean. It took my breath away and threatened to still my beating heart.
“Gray? Where the hell did you come from?”
It was Jessup. My ears told me that. I couldn’t yet open my eyes, or crawl to my knees. I could hear him, though, and I tried to croak out a response.
“Get… get the engine. It’s outside the ship.”
“What? What did you do, you crazy fuck-up?”
Jessup was on his knees at my side. His hand felt like a painful talon digging into my flesh. I wanted to knock him aside, but I was weak. Clearly, I hadn’t yet mastered transferring myself between various forms of existence.
I coughed. I shivered. Then, I managed to speak again.
“It’s outside the hull. I stopped the Vehk, but they’re trying to get it back.”
That seemed to break through whatever idiocy gripped Jessup’s mind. I heard him stand, shout orders—and I heard our cannons fire.
My eyes snapped open. The chamber of metal and lights I found myself in was both surreal and well-known to me.
I wasn’t in the Fairweather module. I wasn’t even in the ship’s cargo hold. I was standing on Viper’s bridge.
I’d come out in the first large, open area I’d found. Aboard Viper, that was the bridge when you approached the ship’s prow and penetrated it.
“Don’t blow it up, you idiot!” I hissed out, trying to get up with rubbery limbs.
Jessup snorted. “You’re drunk, aren’t you? I’m not hitting the engine—I’m carefully destroying two aliens that are getting close to it.”
“Two more contacts, sir,” Cmdr. Collins said. “They’re approaching the engine with some kind of small recovery vehicle.”
“Burn them.”
The forward cannons sang again. Jessup clapped his hands together, making my delicate senses shiver. “Got them! Well done, Allie.”
Allie didn’t cheer. Perhaps it was her first time blasting defenseless targets into hot curls of gas and plasma.
“Sir?” she said, clearing her throat. “We’re being hailed.”
“By who?” Jessup demanded.
“By the Vehk battleship, sir. They seem unhappy. They’re opening their gun ports.”
Jessup licked his lips and blinked a few times. It was clear that he’d overplayed his hand—and he knew it.
“Answer them,” he said. “At least we got them to talk. They’re finally taking us seriously.”
“Let’s hope that’s a good thing,” I said quietly, standing and adjusting my uniform.
Big Al himself appeared on our view screens. At least I assumed it was Big Al, they all looked basically alike except for a little difference in pigment and size. This one was a bit smaller and had a bluish cast—I guessed it was the one I’d met before.
His dark mask of a face filled the screen. Huge black eyes stared from under a heavy brow and never blinked, but he seemed enraged to see us.
“Vermin…” he said. “Retreat from our property or be destroyed.”
“Allie, mute the channel.”
I heard a tone, and although Big Al seemed to continue speaking, we couldn’t hear him. He couldn’t hear us, either.
Jessup frowned and rubbed his chin, thinking hard.
“Do you see that?” I asked him. “That rune, there, in the lower corner of the screen?”
Shocked, the bridge crew looked again.
Once you saw it, you couldn’t unsee it. A gleaming, glittering thing like a shard of crystal, or a dagger of glass hung behind Big Al.
Moving her fingers quickly, Allie zoomed and the object grew to fill the screen.
“It’s a rune…” she said. “I’ve read about them online.”
“Yes,” I said. “This whole thing started with a murder over runes. I still don’t understand why—”
“Gray,” Jessup said suddenly. “We can have a spirited talk about xeno artifacts later on. What else have you noticed? Anything that can help us in our current situation?”
“Well… his English is getting better all the time,” I remarked. “I didn’t even see his lips move, so he must be canning his thoughts and sending them through some kind of audio translator.”
Jessup nodded. “Just to confirm, this is your figment, Gray? Your mystery man?”
“Yes. I call him Big Al. He’s spoken to me before a few times. On each occasion, his language improves. I’m not sure if that’s due to his translating device or his mind—but it doesn’t matter. He’s in charge of that battleship. He’s the being who’s worked so hard to steal our technology.”
“Well…” Jessup said. “He’s not going to get it.”
“We can’t stop them, sir,” Cmdr. Collins said. “They outgun us, out mass us, and they can outrun us. We can’t even pop back into our home Sphere without that engine.”
“You’re wrong, Collie,” Jessup said. “We’re not without options. Allie… target the engine itself. If we can’t have it, they can’t either.”
“But sir, they’ll—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We can’t let them into our home Sphere. We can’t let them invade Earth’s home star system.”
Everyone was silent for a moment, and I saw our gun turrets swivel. They locked onto the engine and tracked it.
“Suicide…” Cmdr. Collins said.
“Say what you want, Collie. We don’t have a choice.”
He looked at me suddenly. “You understand that, don’t you, Gray?”
Locking eyes with him, I nodded.
Chapter 46
Captain Jessup and I were finally on the same page. Too bad we were both about to die.
“Ready to fire, sir,” Allie said in a fatalistic tone of voice.
“On my mark…” Jessup said.
“Sir?” I interrupted. “Don’t you think we ought to hear him out first?”
Jessup eyed me, frowning again. Could our brief alliance have been broken so soon?
“Unmute the channel, Allie,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “The least we can do is gloat for a moment.”
“—have you become unresponsive?” Big Al demanded. “Is this a mental error, a failure in your electro-chemical bio-masses?”
“No Captain—or whatever you are,” Jessup said. “We’re just calling to inform you that we’re going to take our property home with us—or we’ll destroy it. The choice is yours.”
That stopped Asshole Al for a moment. He waited like a beetle on a rock and seemed to be thinking hard for a few seconds.
“You may refer to me as Spawn-caster,” Big Al’s voice droned through Viper’s audio.
“Eew,” Jessup said. “I’m going to stick with captain, so I can take you seriously.”
“That device is our property,” Big Al continued, not seeming to care. “We found it in open space. We claim this space, therefore you must yield the artifact.”
“Never! Our people built that engine, as you well know, and it’s only out in space because your men stole it.”
“Regardless, we will destroy your ship if you fire your guns again.”
T
here it was—the ultimatum I’d been expecting all along.
“Then we will die, and you will get nothing,” Jessup said. “We can’t give in to thieves and extortion, no matter the cost.”
Big Al opened his small mouth and gargled out a barrage of agitated sound. This utterance wasn’t made up of words, I think he was making an angry cough or something.
“We’re not thieves,” he said. “We will offer you payment. We’ll barter. You will give us this unit of technology, and we will allow you to keep the personal transpositional device. The item that the Gray-man stole from us. Is this bargain acceptable?”
Jessup smirked at me with half his mouth. “Always making friends, huh, Gray?”
“Al’s not the friendly type, Captain,” I said with my eyes glued on the reptilian features.
Jessup’s eyes slid back to the alien visage that loomed in the center of the bridge. It seemed to me that Big Al was leaning forward, having assumed a somewhat predatory stance.
I could have told him he was salivating over a treat he’d never taste. Jessup wasn’t about to give up the engine—and he wasn’t an easily intimidated man.
“I’ll tell you what my trouble is, Al,” Jessup said. “Your deal sounds like a fine bargain—but it won’t work for us. Do you know why?”
“A fair bargain works for all involved,” Al said, as if he was quoting a proverb. Perhaps he was.
“That is correct, but here’s the problem: if we give you the drive, how are we supposed to get back inside our own Sphere? Ergo, what the hell do I get out of this fair-for-all deal?”
Big Al didn’t blink, but I was fairly sure he wasn’t able to. I do believe he registered a moment of surprise and realization which came across as saying nothing for a few seconds, so Jessup continued talking.
“Jeez, I didn’t mean to make you cry. You do see the difficulty though, right?” Jessup asked. “Sure, sure, we could always give you one of these drives—or sell you one. But right now, that would leave us marooned to die here—outside our own Sphere.”