Planet of Graves

by Marc Everitt

  He knew that timing was key for what he had in mind. He could see the Warrior was about to attack him; the tail weapon charged and glowed brighter and brighter as he watched. In a way, the fact that the Warrior was now prepared to attack him made his plan easier, although more dangerous. He waited, not willing to press the final button until the very last minute. The glow at the end of the Warrior’s tail was now fierce and he knew it would be any time now. A slight movement in the tail section alerted him and he pressed the button and moved quickly, dropping the unit to the floor as he did so.

  The Warrior saw the man move to go behind the curve in the wall and try to escape, just as it fired a massive blast at the human’s midsection. It hit the human directly in the face and the Warrior was gratified to see the human slump to the floor, immobile and helpless. It moved in for the kill, deciding this time to use its tail as a dagger rather than a blaster. Its tail stabbed repeatedly through the body on the floor, savagely and viciously, inflicting damage that no human could survive.

  Eli watched with satisfaction as the readings on the reactor control system told him the vents were cool enough for them to escape through. He was worried about Taylor though. He had no idea what his friend was up to, but he had a horrible feeling that he had bitten off more than he could chew this time.

  “Can we go now?” asked an impatient Lana. She supported her husband’s weight and Eli thought she must be stronger than she looked.

  “Should be okay now. Who wants to go first?” he said cheerfully. The team shuffled from foot to foot, no one seemed keen to test out the escape route.

  Eventually, Sara stepped forward. “What do I have to do?”

  Eli nodded his approval and instructed her on how she could get through the vents without injury. “When the vent sucks you up, keep your arms and legs as close to your body as you can, close your eyes and cross your fingers. You will be spat out of the top of the station…”

  “How quickly?” Sarah frowned as she approached the vent opening.

  Eli looked sheepish. “Somewhere between eighty and ninety miles an hour as best as I can figure,”

  “Good God, we’ll be killed,” Alan shrieked, appalled at the thought.

  Eli sighed. “If you stay here and wait for that thing,” he gestured out towards the hallway, “you will be killed. Just try to land well.” He realised that this didn’t offer much help, but also knew they had no choice. Sara seemed to know this as well and she drew in a breath, threw her arms around Eli and kissed him passionately. The rest of the original research team raised eyebrows but she was under the vent before they could make any comment. Huge explosions and the sound of beam weapons could be heard from the corridor and Eli hoped that Taylor was nowhere near them. Sara was ready, stood under the vent opening waiting for Eli to trigger the manual venting override.

  “Good luck,” he said quietly and then he activated the vent. Sara was sucked up the pipe at tremendous speed and was gone. He only hoped she had managed to land safely on the outside of the building. He turned to the remaining three people in the reactor room. “Who’s next then?”

  Taylor ran through the corridor as quickly as he could. His plan had worked, but had perhaps worked too well. He had started the projection of himself just before ducking behind the curve in the wall and running back towards the reactor room. He planned for the Warrior to see an image of him jumping back from the curve and not notice the sound of him running down the corridor away from it. It seemed to have worked because had not yet been pursued and he could hear the blasts from the creatures weapon hit the wall after passing through the image he had quickly recorded. He had tried to make the image as long lasting as he could but he knew that the Warrior would realise very quickly that he was not where it thought he was and come looking. He hoped Eli had been able to get the venting mechanism working well enough or he was in trouble.

  The blast the creature had fired had been enough to push the battered station over the edge. When it hit the wall of the corridor it shook the frame of the base and Taylor suspected it would not be long before the whole station came crashing down around his ears. He could already hear large crashes as weak sections of ceiling fell to the ground back in the direction he had just left. It would not be long now.

  The Warrior rarely got angry, but now it was furious. It had been tricked by a simple projection, and had let the human get away from it. No matter, it thought, the human cannot escape. It ran after the man, determined to end this farce. Eli was just about to go and look for Taylor when his friend came sprinting in to the reactor room, out of breath and clearly in a great hurry.

  “Tell me you’ve got them out,” he pleaded.

  Eli nodded his large head. “All gone. I just sent Alan through. I hope they all had happy landings. Where have you been?”

  “Keeping our friend busy,” replied Taylor, jogging over to the vent himself, “I think I may have annoyed it a little.”

  Eli was not surprised. “That would be about right. Is it me or is this room shaking?”

  “Mmmm, the base is falling apart,” Taylor answered conversationally, “We need to get out, now!”

  “How are we both going to get out, one of us has to stay and activate the vent?” Eli stated.

  Taylor had been thinking about this already and told Eli that it was not his problem. He pushed a protesting Eli under the vent and with a whoosh, he too was gone in a flash. Taylor left the vent open and could feel the pull it exerted from three metres away. He had no choice but to jump into the flow and try his best not to smash himself against the wall of the vent as he was dragged in. He looked around him and could see the night sky through the large cracks and holes that were appearing in the ceiling above him.

  Just then, he saw the Warrior enter the reactor room at a tremendous speed, looking very likely to tear him limb from limb if it caught hold of him. He thought it best if he didn’t let that happen. He tore a large section of wiring away from the last console before the reactor connections and hit a driving switch before jumping into the whirlwind that was the reactor venting system. It all seemed to happen so fast, one second he was jumping into the vent, the next he was flying through the air about ten metres above the roof of the station.

  He looked down and saw with concern that he was too high above the ground for his liking. He started to drop towards the roof of the building and had a horrible feeling that he was going to fall through one of the holes and into the reactor room with the Warrior again. He hoped not because he had just destroyed the safety buffers and set the reactor to meltdown. It would not explode in a nuclear reaction, but would certainly level the station, burying all inside it.

  He hit the roof awkwardly and badly sprained his arm. He realised that he had hit that arm on entering the shaft and had sliced it open. Blood poured from the gash, but he counted himself lucky not to have broken his neck. He had hit the roof hard and he was a little winded. He tried to slide down the roof of the central dome, until he was only five metres from the ground. He jumped down, careful to bend his knees at the right time and rolled to the floor to lessen the force of the landing.

  Eli helped him to his feet. “Are you all right?”

  Taylor waved him away and started to run away from the station. “Get back, it’s going to blow!” he yelled. He could see that Chris, Sara and Lana were halfway to the fence already, with the women limping badly from their falls to the roof and the ground. He thought they were probably in the clear, but knew that unless Alan, Eli and he could put some distance between them and the building, they would be flattened by the explosion. No one thought to question him, they all ran with him.

  Inside the reactor room, the Warrior felt the pull of the vent in front of it. It had been tempted to dive in after its prey, but had felt uneasy. It looked too much like a crude attempt at a trap and it could imagine something nasty at the other end being laid for its passage. It had no intention of blindly following humans through tubes, its instincts told it that was foolis
h and it should take its time and assess the situation.

  It then sensed the coming explosion and knew it had been outwitted once more. It was very annoyed with itself when the reactor exploded and left it buried under tons of rubble. The blast knocked the escapees to the ground and Taylor could feel the warmth on his back, but they had managed to get far enough away to avoid any injury. They stood and looked at Taylor’s handiwork. The station lay in a pile of stone and metal, smouldering and chaotic. Taylor could see no sign of movement in the rubble and knew he had bought them some time.

  “Is it dead?” Alan asked hopefully as they walked to catch up the others.

  Taylor replied, “No. It would take a lot more than that to kill it. We have got time to get to the ship. I hope. But that’s about it.” He couldn’t help but look behind him at the remains of the base as if expecting the Warrior to leap from the ruins and run after him. He expected it to do just that, and knew he would be a particular target from now on.

  They had caught the slow-moving women and Chris. Lana looked battered and bruised and Sara was trying not to wince in pain with every step she took. Taylor felt a lot of respect for the way she was trying so hard to remain professional and calm when others around her were panicked and irrational. They walked until the sore ankle of Lana forced them to stop for a moment. She sat on the parched ground and rubbed her leg, winching as she did so.

  The rest gave Taylor time to ponder what he was going to do. It was obvious that they needed to get off the planet, but he felt as if he couldn’t leave without at least trying to save some of the people in the underground bunker. He was aware that he was not their favourite person, but he didn’t feel comfortable about abandoning them to their fate. He decided that once he had got Chris, Alan, Lana, Sara and Eli to the ship he would leave them and go back to the bunker to see if he could persuade any of the people there to come with them, before it was too late. He especially wanted to try and persuade Dr Skandia, the old man had been kind to him and had risked a lot to help him. He hoped the doctor had not been punished for his escape. He had observed with detached curiosity the growing romance between his friend Eli and Sara.

  They rarely seemed to be far from each other now and Eli had supported her weight for most of the trek they had undertaken. He knew it wasn’t far now and fingered the signal unit in his pocket, in a few minutes he would deactivate the shielding device and they would be able to see the ship. He had been keeping his eyes open for the Warrior alien, but it seemed the creature had its hands full in digging itself out from under the wreckage of the station. He knew he could get the team to the ship before the creature could do that.

  Another problem lurked at the back of his mind, what to do about the Chris Maxwell situation. Since openly accusing him of murder, Taylor had been the victim of some comments and threats, but had escaped fairly lightly. He had known it would be a gamble telling all the team that he thought Chris was the murderer, but it was a gamble which he hoped would pay off. He knew he had to do something to make the real murderer drop their guard. He was tired of playing the game and being beaten at it, he had to change the rules. He felt sure his suspect would be more likely to give themselves away if they believed their behaviour was not being scrutinised.

  The reaction of Chris was the wild card element of the situation; he hadn’t wanted to cause the big man to erupt in fury but had expected it. He was surprised when the reaction he got was one of disgust and disbelief. That suited him fine, if they all wanted to think he was a poor detective, that made his job even easier. He hoped that he was set up now for the final unmasking, he just needed a little more proof and he would be ready to finish the game. He rose to his feet. “I think we should push on, it’s not far now,” he said and trudged off over the plains.

  Wearily, the team dragged themselves to their feet and followed him. Eli stayed with Sara at the back of the group, she wanted to talk to him. “What do you think will happen to Chris when we get back to Earth?” she asked.

  Eli was touched at her concern for a man he thought to be a brainless killer. He decided against pushing that element of the conversation too hard. “I don’t know. He’ll probably have to go through lots of therapy before they reassign him to a guarded colony for a few years. If he’s unlucky he may get operated on. Who can say?”

  There were many ways in which the Company-led society of Earth and her colonies dealt with criminals, but surgical alteration was rare. Eli thought it unlikely that Chris would be subjected to that. That sort of treatment was usually saved for serial killers and people who washed your windscreen at traffic lights whether you wanted them too or not and then charged you money for the smearing of a dirty rag across your already clean car.

  Sara continued, “I wonder why he did it? What would lead a man to do such a thing?”

  Eli held his hands up. “He’s not exactly stable is he? Could have been anything I suppose.” They walked on in silence and Eli was delighted when Sara grabbed his hand and quietly held it all the way to the ship.

  ***

  “All of them? How the hell did that happen?” Executive Carlton was not pleased. A remote camera sent over the plains of Graves’ World had relayed its disturbing pictures back to the bunker. The man who stood in front of the angry executive had drawn the short straw and had to tell her of the grisly remains of the security team which the remote had found outside the other station. He hoped the next piece of news would put his Executive in a better mood. “The base is destroyed, Executive.”

  “Is it? How?” she replied, her interest rising. With the other base gone she need not have worried about the security of her own. She only hoped it had not been destroyed in a way that could be ascribed to her actions. Knocked down by one of the recent earthquakes would be ideal, she thought. “We don’t know. Our remote was destroyed also. It seemed to suffer a reactor meltdown,” the man said. He was not used to having to speak to the Executive of the station. He was only a research assistant at the bunker but had suddenly been thrust into what, for him, was a position of some authority by the fact that a lot of the bunkers staff had been in the team that had attempted to secure the escaped man; and had been massacred horribly.

  Carlton tried to assess the situation. She wondered if the deaths of her men could be the result of the actions of the man who had escaped from the bunker. She could not see how one man could have torn apart seventeen armed men, but perhaps he had friends who helped him in his grisly task. One thing she did know was that he was trouble and she resolved that if she ever saw him again she would shoot him herself.

  She dismissed the man stood in front of her. He was glad to get away from her. He found her to be quite frightening. She sat in her private quarters, thinking about the alarming rise in the amount and frequency of the activity under the surface. She thought she would have to release Dr Skandia from the house arrest she had placed him under because of her suspicions that he had deliberately helped the man escape.

  She would need him in his laboratory, if she were to find out what was going on and be able to make a full report to her superiors. Taylor was very relieved when he deactivated the shield mechanism and the ship appeared, gleaming and reassuring, in front of them. “Good ship,” commented Alan, “whose is it?” Taylor had told them nothing of the poor unfortunately security officer who had been spying on them from the camp outside the base.

  “It’s mine now,” he replied with an air of finality which he hoped would discourage further questions. He called the entrance ramp open with the device in his hand and walked on board. It felt good to be so close to salvation, but he knew he had to go back. At least, he could ensure the safety of Eli and the others. Except he wasn’t sure that he could, the murderer was still amongst them, and he did not feel he would be wise to leave them free to do as they pleased with him at the bunker. A thought occurred and he realised how he may be able to trap them into revealing themselves and confirming his suspicions.

  “I’m impressed,” muttered Lana
as the remains of the research team settled themselves into the ship. Just then they began to hear a distant rumble, growing ever louder and closer. They were all silent as they waited for confirmation of what they were dreading. The worst was true.

  “It’s another quake!” yelled Alan and the team ran in every direction to find something to hang on to. Within seconds the ship was rocking violently and Taylor was praying it was not sat on what was about to be a ridge in the landscape. The violence of the tremor was fierce, but the ship dealt with it well. They felt less threatened as the ship was not subject to the destructive forces to the same degree as a building would have been.

  It was still a worrying moment and Sara clung to Eli as if she was drowning and he was a bit of driftwood. From their viewpoint out of the front of the ship, the world seemed to be cracking up in front of their eyes. Taylor found it extraordinary. “The force involved here is incredible,” he muttered, mostly to himself. Giant cracks were appearing in the ground and, for a moment, Taylor thought it would be the final quake that tore the planet apart, such was the fury of the tremor.

  Eventually, it dissipated and the ground settled down. He knew he didn’t have a lot of time and spoke to Eli. “You stay here. I need to see if I can save some people.” Eli had no idea what he was talking about.

  “What people. There is no-one else out there,” Alan said as Taylor made his way to the main hatch. Eli realised Taylor was referring to the underground bunker he had described to him. It was so typical of Taylor to go back for people who had tried to have him killed and try to save them, he knew that one day that would be his friends undoing and hoped that day was not today.