by CK Burch
Udeh stepped back slowly until his back touched the far wall. Bodies floated between him and the crawler, providing just enough cover for him to see but to feel unseen. Cautiously he removed his pulse rifle from his back and brought it to bear, watching the damn thing the entire time.
The crawler lifted one of its tentacles and touched the leg of a floating body. Small insectoid legs protruded from the suckers underneath the tentacle – fuck – and wrapped around the ankle, bringing the body closer to the crawler. Then it coiled its body and leapt up into the zero g, and more legs popped up from underneath as it rode the body, crawling up towards the spinal column on the back. It was almost comical: the crawler looked like it was riding a mechanical bull, spinning, rotating, immobile. As it spun, it mounted the body at the upper back, and a longer, thicker tentacle from underneath its belly began probing the skin. It plunged into the burnt tissue, spraying blood into the air, but then quickly pulled back and let the body go. It likes live bodies, Udeh realized.
Collins’s voice came over the comm: ″Captain Udeh? Captain? Sir?″ He ignored her, kept his eyes trained forward, waiting for the thing to make a move of some kind. Waiting to see if it was going to leave.
The crawler held itself in midair, tentacles waving snakelike patterns, and then it caught Udeh's scent – or heat – and turned towards him.
All done, he thought, and let loose a single round that blew the goddamn thing apart. It burst like a balloon and wet goo flew everywhere as the body spiraled around and slapped against the wall as an empty sac.
Udeh didn’t bother to smile. If these things were going over the ship, that was going to make life increasingly difficult in escaping. He went to activate his comm when a tentacle slapped down over his left shoulder from behind and instantly became hot.
He yelled and stepped forward, trying to get out of the thing’s grasp, but the suckers held on tight and refused to let go of their purchase. His grip kept slipping off of its skin, slick and wet, and the heat from the tentacle was getting hotter. Stay calm, stay calm, he told himself, and he planted his feet and shook his upper body back and forth, harder and harder, feeling the goddamn thing on him clinging on but swaying in the zero g. One sucker popped free, then another, but then a second tentacle wrapped under and around his left arm, and the heat became nearly unbearable. He felt like he was standing next to a blast furnace. On his helmet display he saw that the suit integrity was failing. It’s burning through the suit. He felt his skin begin to welt underneath it. He moved himself over to the closest wall, gritting his teeth against the pain, and swung himself around so that the crawler flipped over his shoulder and slapped against the wall in front of him, still hanging on but now pinned in his sight. The belly of the thing produced the thicker limb and a gray, wildly snapping parrot beak greeted him hungrily. Udeh brought his rifle up, still held in his right hand, pressed the barrel into the beak and fired a single shot. More goo sprayed over the wall and the heat immediately lessened. Udeh reached up, and with some effort pried the dead tentacle from his shoulder and side. The fucking things had a strong grip. Suit integrity according to the display was still good, and when he felt the armor he couldn’t feel any holes. He was still okay.
Against the wall where he’d backed up, the vent had been broken open from the inside. They’re going through the vents. Fucking Christ, they could be everywhere. He had to assume that they were everywhere, going through the lift shafts and the ductwork, crawlers and drivers alike. The situation had just become incrementally fucking worse.
There was a sound. He turned back to the vent opening and saw that one – oh fuck, two – more were crawling into the bridge. He whipped around and blew them apart with two lined up shots. A third was already trying to wriggle in. Udeh turned for the lift shaft, but the doors were shut. Fucking systems were on. The lift was running again and there was no simple escape. He walked over and reached for the call icon, but saw that the lift was already headed his way. Collins and Straub? Or more of those fucking things, this time driving bodies? He turned back to the bridge, saw that there were another three crawlers, all of them spreading out, mixing between floating bodies and the consoles. Fuck. He couldn’t see them all at once; he had to keep turning his head, trying to catch them in the lights. There were brief glimpses, shadow movements, going too fast for him to catch up with. He didn’t dare turn around to see where the lift was. Come on, come on. He held up the rifle.
From the right he saw a flash in the edge of his light and he turned and fired. He hit one of the crawler’s tentacles, severing it, causing the main body to spin. One more quick shot finished it off. Then another crawler slammed into his midsection, wrapping its limbs around his waist as he felt the beak snapped impotently against his armor, but the fucking heat, molten and fierce was instant and powerful. He tried to angle his rifle so that he could fire against the side of the creature but the angle was too awkward; he couldn’t shoot without hitting himself. He took the butt of the gun and managed to get it underneath the belly and used it like a crowbar, pulling the crawler away from his torso, and it began to pull free as the third crawler came at him from the side and took over his right shoulder. Pain, burning, heat from all sides. He started to feel trapped within their grasp. Oh, fuck, no, not now, not now – panic was swarming throughout his body and he froze, unable to move. Come on, come on! He fought through it, tried to reach for the crawlers to get them away, but the heat was too much to move against. His readouts showed the suit integrity was faltering even more. In a moment they would be through his armor, and he’d be either dead or one of them.
No. He wouldn’t be one of them.
Udeh tried to get the rifle underneath his chin. He wasn’t going to become whatever it was that they did to the bodies.
The lift doors opened behind him. Someone grabbed the crawler on his shoulder and held it in place while they fired a round through the soft body. Then they held Udeh by the shoulder while placing their rifle against the one at his torso, aimed at just the right angle, and fired a round through that one as well. The bodies floated away and Udeh felt like collapsing.
Sergeant Gabrielle Laguardia came around in front of him. Her HES was burnt, blackened, and covered head to toe in the black gooey blood of the crawlers. She looked like she’d been through hell. ″Are you alright, sir?″ she asked.
″I think so.″ He wasn't entirely sure. He'd nearly died, and now he thought he was seeing a ghost. His armor was still holding together – just barely, according to his systems check – and the residual pain from the heat was manageable. ″We thought you were dead.″
″There's no time for that now,″ she replied. ″There's not a lot of time for anything. It's coming.″
″What's coming?″
Laguardia checked her ammo and then looked at Udeh. She looked frightened. ″The big fucker.″
***
CHAPTER XV.
Kerrick was in the cargo bay, hovering in front of the artifact.
She had made her way through the ship using the vent ducts, and she'd emerged into the corridor outside the cargo bay in time to see Laguardia go into the lift. Kerrick had let her go. After all, the captain had promised her the ship, and they would all be gone soon. Laguardia was a mean cunt anyway, a stupid dyke cunt who would have tried to make Kerrick go home with the rest of them. And as much as Kerrick liked to think that she could defend herself, the cunt had a big fucking rifle with her. That was not something that she was quite ready to deal with at the moment.
Instead, at the moment, she was hovering in front of the artifact, watching it, waiting for something. She wasn't sure what. Some sign. Maybe the ideograms on the artifact would tell her a story as to where this thing had actually come from. The indentations along the surface of the object did nothing except nothing however, and Kerrick was content enough to wait for the mere purpose of waiting.
She thought of Stephen. How he'd been excited at the prospect of this artifact, how he'd said that he would get h
er a chance to look it over and make xenoarchaeological history. And then, of course, he'd put himself inside of her and spoken another woman's name. Poison from his lips, poison from his hips. Kerrick started to cry at the thought of it. Why the fuck shouldn't she feel like she was used? She had been: used for fucking, used for blame. Hadn't he been the one to blame her for Doctor Tybalt's accident? He had. He must have been. She wasn't sure any more. Why wasn't she sure? She lived and breathed in a field where surety was something that one had to have, or else facts and data became mixed and muddled and useless. Had it been Stephen or that cunt that had blamed her? She didn't know anymore. She just knew that she wanted to stay here, to never go home again. Her father would be waiting to scold her for fucking a boy and letting his poison cock inside her. Her father always scolded her. He was bad.
Captain Markov reminded her of her father.
She gasped; was the captain really her father in disguise? Was this whole thing a lesson that he was trying to teach her, for letting poison into and over her body? Her body was a temple he'd always said, a temple that boys should prove worthiness to enter, and only the proper should be received. There were such things as infidels, unclean, heathens, and they carried the poison in their loins, their veins, their tongues. Infidels should not be allowed inside a holy temple.
Kerrick began to cry. Because she hated her father. Passionately, murderously hated her father. And yet here he was, disguised as a captain and trying to teach her the wrongdoing that she'd done by laying down with an infidel. All the promises of passion undone by the slithering, blackening horror of sin. Of semen and sex.
Her father was the devil.
She would cast him out.
She would exorcise him from her ship.
She was god here, not him.
She was the one who gave the lessons, not him.
Through her tears, she smiled, she laughed.
She felt right.
She felt like teaching.
Before her, the artifact was silent.
***
Over the comm with Collins, who along with Straub had been ecstatic at her greatly exaggerated demise, Laguardia related her story.
She'd been running along the star, firing at the crawlers, and had fallen after stepping on one. She'd watched as the giant arm of the star-eater had come over the hill and had watched as Straub and Collins had gone for the void back to the ship. The crawlers had swarmed over her, trying to burn through her armor, slapping against her with their tentacles, so she'd pointed her rifle down at the ground beneath her feet and fired the grenade launcher. The shockwave from the explosion sent her flying through the weak gravity and took care of a lot of the fuckers trying to get at her in the process. She'd landed and rolled to her feet and had made it to the void just a few moments before the star-eater's tentacle had. To her surprise, she'd emerged into the dark of the cargo bay, floating in zero g, no idea what the fuck was going on. She'd almost panicked. It had taken a second to realign and activate her magboots, which was when the core had been reactivated. Laguardia had taken the lift to the bridge to warn the crew of what was coming, and there had found Captain Udeh.
″How far behind us were you?″ Collins asked. ″A minute? Less than that?″
″I don't know,″ Laguardia said. ″Not that long. And the arm thing wasn't that far behind me, either.″
″I don't know how this shit works,″ Collins said. ″Straub? Math? No. That thing could be two minutes away, it could be twenty. Who fucking knows? What I know is that I don't care and that we need to get the hell off of this ship before it gets any worse. Because once that thing comes through the void looking for heat this place is going to get real cramped for space real quickly.″
″Hoo-fucking-rah,″ Laguardia replied. ″Where's the captain?″
″Headed towards observation. Captain says he's going to manually boot the sensors there to check our position before we take off. He's got a survivor with him and is heading towards the crew deck after to see if there's anyone else. Chances are pretty fucking slim, but we can't leave anyone behind.″
″Right. We'll get on the horn with the captain and meet up with him. You get to the shuttle bay and prep us a boat to get the fuck out of here.″
″Okay. Let's say twenty minutes tops and then we get the hell off this fucking ship. Done?″
Laguardia checked her chronometer. ″Twenty minutes, Commander. We'll be there.″
″One more thing.″
″Yes?″
″Glad you made it.″
″Thanks. Stay alive and we'll be there soon. Laguardia, out.″ She turned to Udeh. ″We got ourselves a plan. Let's haul ass to the crew deck and get in touch with Captain Markov.″
They got into the lift and pressed the crew deck icon. She called Captain Markov on the comm, filled him in, and agreed to meet on the recreation deck instead. Laguardia felt tense, restless. She tried to breathe evenly, relax her mind and her body, but she couldn't shake the sensation of tightness throughout her being. She knew that it was the radiation of the artifact but fuck, knowing that didn't make it any better. After seeing all that shit on the star, going back and forth through an alien artifact, and shooting up octopus bugs she felt like she deserved to feel a little tense.
″How are you holding up?″ Udeh asked. He must have sensed her unease.
″I'm on edge,″ she admitted. ″Shit's hit the fan. The radiation is starting to get to me. You? Claustrophobic in that thing?″
″I'm surviving,″ he said. ″Not well, but surviving. At the moment that feels like it's good enough. I noticed you're walking with a slight limp.″
″Old wound. Had my kneecap shattered maybe five years ago, crew went wild during a dive. Got some reconstructive shit done to it. I've been feeling it more and more recently, like all the screws and pins are rubbing up against each other. I'll be fine.″
″You ever feel it like that before?″
″Sometimes. Not like this though. This is rough.″ She realized that she had her weight shifted to the left, off of her bad knee. She tried putting weight on the right, felt the artificial bone and marrow in there, winced, put it back on the left. It was getting worse. Soon she'd be limping through the hallways with no way of being useful to anyone.
″Sounds like my claustrophobia,″ Udeh said.
″Sir?″
″It got bad, got worse after I came on board. The closer I got to the artifact and that radiation, the worse it got. And it keeps getting worse. Doesn't it?″
Laguardia nodded. ″You think it's all in my mind.″
″Mind's a powerful thing, Sergeant. It could make you think that someone betrayed you, make you feel pain in your body that isn't there, could even make you feel like you're trapped in a sleeping dragon.″ Udeh looked up and around, touched the side of the lift. ″How many crew fill the engineering staff these days?″
She had to think about it for a moment. ″Seventy. Thereabouts.″
″Seventy. So we got god-knows-how-many crawlers, and maybe seventy people controlled by them. That's a lot of ground to cover.″
Laguardia nodded. ″I'm not so much worried about them as I am the big fucker that's coming through soon enough. I don't want to be here when it does. The little things, they die. That big one?″ She remembered the sway it swayed in the low atmosphere, peeled back like the hood of a penis, stretching its vines out into the artifacts around it. She remembered the size, the strength, and she shivered. ″I don't think that thing dies.″
***
Markov and Fleur had made it to observation without incident. But Fleur was confused.
″If the external sensors don't go past 500 meters, how exactly are we going to get a reading on where we are?″ she asked.
She was next to him, now wearing a HES of her own, and the two of them were leaning over the main observation control console as Markov was going through manual startup. Even through the suit he swore that he could smell her scent; his affliction was getting worse. Or
was it? He couldn't tell what the radiation was doing to him. He just knew that he had to keep focusing on the task at hand, which was to get off the ship. But even now, focusing, working towards that singular goal, he felt a strong pull towards the Icarus. It was his ship. It was his home. Why would he want to abandon it? Wasn't there a way to salvage the ship now, guide it home?
He shook his head. Focus.
″The beautiful thing about observation,″ he replied at last, ″is that the sensors might work up to a certain degree, but once we get the shutter open we'll have a direct visual cue to where we are. We can use the system functions to capture snapshots of the surrounding star patterns, make a larger snapshot all combined, and compare it against current star charts. That should give us a more accurate positioning. The shuttlecraft sensors have a good wide-range field, but nothing like this. We wouldn't even know where to turn.″ The lights in the observation room came on, and Markov smiled. ″Here we go.″
Before them the wide shutters began to slowly pull back, revealing deep space before them. Markov thought of standing here not merely a day ago – or was it longer? Time was irrelevant at this point, except the need to move quickly. Still, the sight of space was calming, relaxing. He heard Fleur gasp and sigh and his smile widened.
″Okay. Taking visual snapshots of the surrounding area for comparison.″ He pressed the holo and the cameras went to work. It would be a minute. He turned to Fleur, saw her delicate features on the facial display of her helmet. He loved her. It was the truth, damn the radiation and whatever it did. He loved her and he was going to do whatever it took to protect her.
″Rene,″ he said aloud.
She turned to him. ″Gordon. I've never seen you look that way.″
″I love you.″
The words were out before he knew he was going to speak them, but he didn't care. He just wanted her to know.
Fleur looked taken aback. Like she didn't know what to say. ″Gordon...″