by R. E. Vega
“But there’s something—”
“Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. But if there is, then stopping to look back isn’t going to save you.”
She stopped looking back after that.
The ship was a maze. He thought they were heading in the right direction, but no matter how many corridors they followed, he couldn’t find the bridge.
And the person or thing behind them still followed. It never got close enough to see or hear—certainly not close enough to attack—but that didn’t keep Ulan from feeling like they were being hunted.
Maybe I should take the offensive. Stand my ground and make the first attack. But something stopped him. He didn’t have enough information to feel comfortable making an attack.
Damn not having his full senses.
Beside him, Yuki suddenly let out a gasp. He turned quickly, whipping his blaster out of his belt, ready for the attack.
But there was no attack. Instead, he saw a human form floating in the corridor.
Whoever it was didn’t move, but Ulan kept his finger on the trigger anyway. Slowly, he approached them.
It only took him a couple of seconds to realize why whoever it was was so still—they weren’t wearing a mask or any sort of suit. They hadn’t survived the attack and the resulting destabilization of the atmosphere within the ship.
He glanced over the body, looking for anything that might be of use to them—a weapon, a communication device, any bit of technology, really—but there was nothing. Finally, his gaze moved up to the man’s face. The skin held the color of death, but it wasn’t that which caught his attention—it was the eyes, which were a brilliant purple, even in death. They stared blankly up at the ceiling of the corridor.
He couldn’t say why, but something about those eyes made him shiver. He felt himself wanting to access his virtue, to observe this man a little more closely, but the shivery tingle in his body stopped him.
“Ulan,” Yuki said behind him. “Ulan, can we keep going?”
However unsettled he was by this body, Yuki was obviously even more so. But that wasn’t the only reason to keep moving. Whoever was following them was still there—he could sense them again—and he didn’t float here waiting for them.
“Come on,” he told the girl.
As they continued through the corridors, they came across a couple of other bodies. All of them had those unsettling purple eyes, but Ulan took their presence as a good sign—more bodies probably meant they were getting close to the bridge.
And whoever was hunting them was getting closer.
Finally, just when he was starting to get nervous again, they reached a pair of double panel doors. Slipping cautiously inside, he let out a breath of relief. They’d finally found the bridge.
“Quick,” he told Yuki. “Get in here.”
She pulled herself through the doors—and almost immediately let out a cry.
He twisted around. He hadn’t noticed at first—he hadn’t been looking—but they weren’t alone in here. Several lifeless forms—he counted six at first glance—floated above the room’s panels of instruments.
“They’re all dead,” he told the girl. “There’s no reason to be scared.”
“They startled me,” she said. “I’m not scared. I’m glad they’re dead.”
He looked over at her in surprise. He’d heard fear in her voice before—and panic, and desperation—but he’d never heard hatred like he heard right now.
But there wasn’t time to analyze the many moods of this human girl. They had business to take care of.
First things first—securing their current location.
He propelled himself over to the nearest panel of instruments. They looked nothing like the instruments on Defiance, but with a little fiddling, he thought he’d identified most of the major functions.
The blast had disrupted the ship’s systems, but the good news was that he thought he could get them back online. It would take some time, though.
And in the meantime, they weren’t alone on this ship.
“Come help me get the doors shut,” he said. It might not be much of a barrier between them and whatever was out there, but it was all they had right now.
Yuki moved with him over to the panel doors. It took some elbow grease—and the tiny girl wasn’t much help—but they managed to get them shut. It would slow down whoever was after them, at least.
Once that was taken care of, he moved back over to the panels.
“Stay by the doors and let me know if you hear anything,” he told her.
She nodded and obeyed.
Maybe the girl will prove useful after all. He looked down at the nearest panel and pulled himself down toward the bottom. It was hard to do much with the suit on—the gloves made any sort of detailed work almost impossible—but they were completely screwed if he couldn’t at least get some sort of life back into this ship.
“Um, Ulan?” Yuki said after he’d been fiddling with the ship for several frustrating minutes. “I think…I think whatever was following us is getting closer.”
Dreck. He was hoping they had a little more time. He had to get the entry to the bridge locked as soon as possible.
“I’m almost done,” he told her, even though he had no idea how much longer this would take. The technology on this ship was so odd—similar to what he knew, but just unfamiliar enough to make things difficult. Who were these people and what were they up to?
He spent a few more minutes cursing to himself and poking at various things before Yuki spoke again.
“Ulan,” she said. “I… It’s just outside.”
When he looked over, she was trying to push herself away from the door.
In spite of how annoying he found her, he suddenly felt almost protective of her.
Come on, Ulan, he told himself. You can do this.
Suddenly, everything seemed to click. He started to see the patterns in their technology—and while he didn’t entirely understand it, he could now see how to get it back online, at least.
Connect this to this…reactivate this link…reroute the signal…
Suddenly, a whirring hum filled the room as the panels of instruments came back to life. Their lights flicked back on, and something on the far side of the room started beeping.
And at the same moment, something slammed against the metal doors leading out to the corridor.
Ulan pulled himself back upright again. There wasn’t much time. He scanned the nearby panels, looking for any sort of security systems.
There!
He pulled himself over to the next panel, and with a flick of a switch and a push of a button, he managed to activate the bridge’s security. There was an audible click from the panel doors—they were locking—and a grid of red lights appeared in front of them.
He wasn’t sure if any of that would hold whatever was on the other side, but it would have to do.
In response, whatever or whoever it was threw themselves at the doors again. An alarm started blaring.
Ulan moved over to the next panel of instruments. His next priority was restoring the gravity to this chamber. He was able to find the controls fairly quickly—the more he worked with their instruments, the more he was able to understand them. With a few quick commands to one of their systems, he was able to pull up the proper functions.
“I’m restoring gravity and proper atmospheric conditions to this room,” he told Yuki. “Hold onto something.”
She didn’t say anything, but he saw her grab onto a nearby panel of instruments.
Just a quick command prompt—
Before he could finish, though, that horrible screeching sound exploded through his head once again. It was horrible before, but suddenly it was almost unbearable—it felt like his brain was being torn apart, like his skull was being blown up from the inside. Somewhere along the edges of his consciousness, he heard Yuki scream in pain—and he realized he was screaming, too.
And that was the last thing he remembered.
DAYNA
The pain in Dayna’s head was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. It almost felt like her brain was being sliced down the middle from inside her skull.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been unconscious—or how long the others had been out. She was afraid to even open her eyes until she heard someone shift beside her.
“What the hell is going on?” It was almost a whimper that came from Brax. “Captain?”
Captain Arleth let out a groan. “Report.” She groaned again. “Dayna?”
Dayna squeezed her eyes tighter. She was somehow sure that any amount of light was going to make the pain inside her brain even worse. “My head…” She didn’t recognize the voice that came from her throat—it sounded more like a toddler’s than her own.
“Her ear…her ear is bleeding, Captain.”
“I see that, Locke. Dayna, can you open your eyes?”
Dayna moaned as she slowly opened one eye and the brain-splitting pain started again.
“Captain, this has to be happening because she doesn’t belong here. She doesn’t belong, you know…now.” Brax grumbled his words. “We could be half-way to Oenone by now if it wasn’t for her—”
“Enough, Locke.” The captain placed her hand on Dayna’s shoulder.
“I’m fine.” It was a complete lie, but Dayna forced herself to sit up. “This isn’t…” She shook her head, trying to get at least a small amount of the pain out, but nothing helped. “This isn’t a normal side effect of time travel. This isn’t…I don’t know what this is.” She tried to open her eyes again, but the searing pain made her squeeze them shut once more.
“We need to get her to the medical bay.” The captain stood beside Dayna. “Locke, help me get her up…”
The sound…the ear-splitting sound started again, and this time Dayna was certain her head really had been cut in half. It felt like her brain was oozing from her ears this time when a warm gush of something erupted from them, spilling down her neck.
“Dayna…” It was Brax trying to comfort her this time, not the captain. “My God, Captain, something is really wrong with her.”
Whatever was happening to her, Dayna could tell she was the only one who could hear the sound now.
“We need to get her to sickbay. Now. Get on the comm and get someone else on the bridge in case something…” She paused. “What the hell is that thing? Locke, get on the comm and try to hail it. Now.” It wasn’t often Dayna heard the captain lose her shit, but seemed awfully close.
She wasn’t sure if it was the terror in the captain’s voice or sheer curiosity, but Dayna managed to shift herself into a more upright position and tried again to open her eyes. The eardrum demolishing sound hadn’t stopped, but it was slightly duller—probably because it really had shattered her eardrums by now.
“Dayna, if you could scan…” The captain paused for a moment and Dayna could hear the click of her communication device. “Thad, get up here.” She paused again, probably waiting for him to answer. “Thad?” There was something else in her voice when she asked for him the second time, something more than the normal concern of a captain for one of her crew. “Damn it. Locke, see if you can get anyone else on board on the comm.” She paused again, and Dayna could hear the captain typing on the console at her chair. “Dayna, if you could try…”
“I’m trying.” Dayna’s voice was still far too squeaky for her liking. Brax could probably hear her fear. It was that notion that spurred her to try to open her eyes again, first one, then the other. The light still made the pain worse, and she was still sure her head was going to explode, but it was better than allowing Brax to think of her as weak in any way.
Dayna shifted to her hands and knees, allowing the wave of pain to soften a bit before she attempted to stand. She clutched the nearest console—Thad’s—and slowly stood, almost stumbling over to her own station. There was something almost comforting about sitting in her chair, something that dulled the pain the slightest bit.
It wasn’t until then that she chanced a glance out the viewport window, and the throbbing in her head stopped momentarily when she saw what the others had seen.
It was a ship, but nothing like she’d ever seen before. It was enormous—almost as big as some of the smaller space stations they’d visited. It pulsed with a strange energy, almost as though it wasn’t a ship at all. Almost as though it was…alive.
It was unbelievable that this had happened not once, but twice in a single day. Almost…too much of a coincidence.
Impossible. Dayna had seen much more than either of the other two people on the bridge at the moment. There were plenty of things that were going to happen in the next four hundred years that she knew she couldn’t exactly share with them without changing the course of history, at least a little. And that was the last thing she wanted—if she altered the timeline, it would set off a chain of events that would lead to her being recalled to where she came from. And she didn’t want to return to the future or to those purple-eyed aliens who had abducted her so long ago.
Dayna had finally found a home on board the Defiance, and she wasn’t going to jeopardize that sense of belonging because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut about certain events that were destined to unfold.
“It’s scanning us, Captain.” Brax punched at his console. “I’m trying to hail them—they aren’t responding.”
Dayna remembered her new power—she was sure using it now was going to make the pain in her head much worse, but she also knew she was obligated to help. But she couldn’t do it—not yet. The risk of pain seemed too high for the possibility of being something that may or may not be useful with her x-ray vision. Instead, she returned her attention to the scanners on her console. “I’m not sure what it is, Captain. Or where it came from. But it’s…odd.”
“You haven’t seen this…thing before?” There was trepidation in the Captain’s voice. “Even…even in the future?”
Dayna gave her head the slightest shake and regretted the movement immediately. “No. Never. And I’ve been pretty well versed in alien technology.” Damn it. She knew she’d given away a little too much information.
But if either of them noticed, they didn’t say anything.
“Captain, I’m picking up another signal. It’s weird—I’m not sure what it is. But it sounds like one of ours.”
“One of ours? Can you be more specific? One that’s more human, or one that’s—”
The sound started again, but it didn’t seem to have the same effect on the other two as it had on Dayna. They both shook their heads and rubbed their temples, but it didn’t seem to make their ears bleed the way it did for Dayna.
She tried her best to shake it off, turning back to her console. “Captain, there’s only one life reading on board.” On board wasn’t quite the right way to phrase it, but she wasn’t sure how to tell her what she thought this thing was.
“Confirmed. One life sign reading.” The hesitation in Brax’s voice made Dayna wonder if he was thinking the same thing. “It doesn’t make sense. The ship is too big for there to only be one person on board.”
Dayna knew what she had to do, and she also knew it might be the end of her. The thought of using her new abilities was only frightening because of how sick it made her when her head didn’t feel like it was going to pop open, but at the moment, there was no other choice. She focused her vision as best she could on the thing in front of them. She let her gaze penetrate below their shields, under the hull, as deep as she could until she could see the actual structure of the ship.
And as soon as she did, her fears were confirmed. She could see what she was sure was a neural structure along side the rest of the ship’s mechanical structure.
Dayna’s voice was still only a croak, but she knew she had to tell the others what she’d seen. “Captain, it’s not a ship.”
Brax let out something of a sigh. “We do need to get her to sickbay, Captain. She must have hit her head…or maybe that bloo
d in her ears is mixed with grey matter—”
“What do you mean, Jackson?” The captain didn’t acknowledge Brax at all. “We can see it on screen without any magnification. It’s a ship—a huge one.”
“It looks like a ship. Sort of.” Dayna wasn’t quite sure how to phrase what she needed to tell them. “But the reason there’s only one life sign reading, is because it’s the ship’s.”
“I’m telling you, Captain, I think she hit her head harder than we think—”
“I didn’t hit my head, jackass.” Dayna groaned, rubbing at her forehead for a moment.
“What you’re saying… Dayna, if you are saying what I think you’re saying…” She shook her head. “If that’s the case, what the hell are we dealing with out there?”
The bridge doors slid open, and Thad limped in, rubbing at his temple. “What the hell is going on?”
Dayna spun in her chair to face her crewmates. “What’s going on is that thing is no ship. Whatever it is…it’s alive.”
BRAX
Apparently the universe was trying to come up with new and creative ways to kill him.
“What do you mean it’s alive?” he demanded.
“Exactly what I said. That’s not a ship. It’s a living, breathing thing.”
“That’s impossible.”
She glared at him. “Well, I’m the only one with x-ray vision, so I guess you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.”
“Trusting you is absolutely the last—”
“Enough,” the captain said. “You two can argue all you want later. Right now we need to focus on…on not getting eaten. Or whatever it is that that thing might do to us.”
“Of course, Captain,” Dayna said. “I think we should…”
She slumped, nearly falling out of her seat, but Brax lunged forward and caught her before she could hit the ground. A soft groan escaped her.
“She’s still conscious,” he told Captain Arleth. “But just barely.”
The captain was rubbing her forehead, and Brax wondered how much more shit could go wrong today before she snapped—really snapped.