Encounters 1: The Spiral Slayers

by Rusty Williamson

  That blast wave was from a single SCAU. As Adamarus’ eyes rested closed for a beat, the other five SCAUs implanted in the asteroid blew and the entire mountain of rock blew apart.

  From a distance it looked like a fire cracker popping – there one instant, gone the next. This blast wave hit the ship so hard that in an instant, the craft was thrown outward almost a mile and continued racing away at high speed.

  Adamarus should have been killed instantly but unknown to him or anyone else, an alien force field had folded around his craft. Even so, as his eyelids came half open, sparks flew and fires broke out in the spinning cockpit.

  A heavy instrument panel broke away and hit the pilot seat, knocking it loose as one hundred sphere-bots and smaller pieces of steel flew around the cockpit, many hitting and becoming embedded in Adamarus’ chest, neck and arms.

  Blessedly the pilot seat separated completely and it, as well as Adamarus, were slammed and wedged into a small corner where the front viewport met the lower control panels. This protected Adamarus to a degree, but he was knocked senseless, organs had ruptured and bones had broken. His legs were caught between the seat and the control panel, crushing both and all but ripping them away. Both arms were broken, and the upper control cluster had caught his head tearing part of his skull away. His face was pressed up against the armored glass right where the outside blast armor had been torn away.

  Everything had happened in point seven seconds and none of it had registered within Adamarus’ brain. Literally in the blink of an eye, Adamarus had turned toward a light on the ridge outside, then found himself amid smoke and fire, and a growing plume of blood that floated above him. It was a miracle that he somehow clung to life.

  Still strapped into the pilot’s seat, his eyes stared blankly out the front viewport. He could not remember anything. He was no longer self-aware and jumbled thoughts and images came and went randomly.

  All the lights on the control panels were out and the emergency lights were on, but the red lighting covers had broken off. It was a harsh white light that allowed all the destruction of the cockpit and his body to be reflected in the glass for his shocked and dying eyes. He noticed the blood floating around him. He coughed and more blood sputtered from his mouth spraying the viewport.

  In a senseless state of shock he looked at the reflection of himself. He noticed that one arm was bent at a ninety degree angle at the elbow but in the wrong direction. His other arm was lying flat across his back.

  Waves of chills vibrated through him and he realized that he was having a lot of trouble breathing.

  He tried to say something but an unrecognizable guttural sound was all that emerged.

  He noticed a loud hissing sound as the blackness closed in.

  Seemingly an eternity later, Adamarus regained consciousness. The emergency lights had gone out and he could see stars spinning through the viewport.

  With a start, the realization came that his face was pressed into the corner of the lower control console and the front viewport. One part of his fractured thoughts tried to image how that could be possible.

  He was very cold and just wanted to sleep.

  All around him, scattered about the floating wreckage, eighty-one of the one hundred sphere-bots were still functional and rebooting in local mode. The local base AI net was established between them, and with their limited local intelligence (about that of a well-trained dog), they attempted to assess the situation.

  One took over as the master. Determining that forty-three percent of its fellow bots had malfunctioning radios, it went into their most basic mode of communication. Its sides, bottoms, tops and other moving parts began rapidly extending out and snapping back with metallic clicks and clanks as it began directing the other bots.

  It divided them into three groups. Some began the hopeless task of sealing all the hissing leaks allowing the atmosphere to escape, while another group attempted the equally hopeless task of rebooting the main computer. The third group located Adamarus and began assessing his condition.

  The master bot circled Adamarus clicking and whistling as twenty other bots checked his vitals and injuries. As the critical nature of his injuries became apparent, the bots began opening and closing their multi-sectioned spheres faster and faster, clicking and clanking almost as if they were in a panic. The master flew through the group instructing several to get the medical kit while others were tasked with attempting to slow the loss of blood by pressing themselves against the wound or linking together to form a tourniquet.

  The bots sent to locate the medical kit found it was wedged between the side of the seat and the bulkhead and could not be detached or opened. The master bot instructed the remaining group to follow him to the medical kit. After trying and failing to open it, they began slamming themselves against it destroying themselves while others pried the side of it to gain entry.

  Meanwhile the second group, deciding the main computer was not going to reboot, reported back to the master. Clicking and whistling it sent half to help plug the leaks and half to help with the medical kit.

  While all this was happening the mortally wounded Adamarus stared blankly at the spinning stars while taking labored gurgling breaths. Every few minutes the sun would come into view forcing him to close his eyes. As he watched, a dark shape moved across his view blocking the stars out one by one.

  Disjointed memories and thoughts came and went. The memory of a burst of laughter echoed in his head along with a voice saying, Keep an eye out for the boogeyman.

  As his view rotated, the thing blocking the stars became silhouetted against the sun. The shape was moving towards him, but shifting rays of sunlight flickering around and through it hid its form.

  Rescue ship came to his disorientated mind but something looked very wrong. Lines and shapes emerged and the brief hope changed into curiosity, and then into fear.

  The sphere-bots finally forced open the medical kit. One went for the bandages but the Master bot knocked it out of the way and went right for the Emerfreeze.

  The Emergency Freezing Unit, or Emerfreeze, was used only for mortal injuries where death was eminent. It enveloped the injured person with a nano driven chemical which froze the body, placing it in stasis for up to two hours and, hopefully, until proper medical care could arrive.

  Small mechanical claws extended from the bot's open panels and grabbing the EmerFreeze, the bot headed back to Adamarus.

  Adamarus continued to watch the object. It had slowed and stopped its approach and a smaller shape was emerging. Again the sun was right behind it and all he could see was an outline. Rays of sunlight broke through its shape crisscrossing and intertwining.

  The form of a giant claw emerged and began to open as it came right at Adamarus. Adamarus could only watch and make hoarse croaking sounds as fear turned to terror.

  At that moment the sphere-bot plunged the Emerfreeze into Adamarus’ shoulder and immediately it began freezing his body. A whitish translucent coat of ice spread rapidly down his mangled arm and across his chest. It spread up his neck and began enveloping his head. The blackness closed in. The last thing he saw was the giant hand reaching for him. His last jumbled thought was, The boogeyman is here!

  Captain Adamarus Maximus was now clinically dead though potentially revivable.

  ---

  What was left of Adamarus' craft looked much like the few tumbling rocks around it.

  The huge alien ship dwarfed it and the alien claw making its way between the ships looked to be half machine and half plant. The claw had three multi-joint appendages extending from a cube whose surface was seemingly lined by vines and pipes.

  Extending from the top of the cube was another smaller cube. Its sides were transparent. Inside were large control consoles and flat screens. Behind these were two large mounds. Half a dozen long tentacles extended upwards from both mounds and moved about the controls. Frequently the mounds rapidly increased and decreased in height.

  The alien claw began rotating aro
und the ruined craft. After a few minutes, it matched its wobbling spin and the claw slowly closed on it. As soon as the claw firmly held the ship, it began slowing its spin and moving back toward the large ship it had come from. Once there, it made its way down the ship’s central column.

  After a few minutes it came to a section of the column where row after row of squares formed a rounded wall. It traveled along the wall until it came to a hole where a square was missing, then it smoothly rotated itself until the claw and Adamarus’ ship faced the opening. Claw first, it lowered itself into the hole until it was flush with the wall, the only difference was its smaller transparent cube holding the two alien beings. Then, that too, retracted until it was flush and there was just an unbroken wall of squares.

  Chapter Three - Rescue

  “Today a mining accident took the lives of 47 men and women and injured 158. Among those killed was Captain Adamarus Maximus, head of the Asteroid Harvesting Project and captain of the Carrier Class Mining Ship ”The Bet’ti”, the flagship of the Harvest Fleet. Captain Maximus is survived by his wife and one child. The disastrous accident took place the day after Captain Maximus oversaw the successful harvesting of the first asteroid, the crowning moment of a ten-year project. Most of the victims…”

  Network*News Headline News Bulletin rn377327.9971

  The Amular Network*News! All the news that’s NEWS!

  Source: The Archive

  Four days later…

  Like the vast majority of intelligent life in the universe, the individual nations of Amular had merged into a single entity and armed conflicts had all but disappeared.

  Then they had moved out into the solar system. Due to early technology, the initial degree of isolation resulted in the young space settlements breaking away.

  Divided once again, conflict and wars broke out. The largest of these ended fifty years ago, but it finally unified Amular with the settlements throughout the solar system.

  And so the time of monitoring the skies diligently for defensive purposes had passed—now it was done for science and orbital projects like the asteroid collection effort. This meant that the skies were watched only in limited areas, which was why the approach of the seven–mile-long spaceship went undetected.

  Once in orbit, the ship was visible to the naked eye in broad daylight. Some who saw it just ignored it, while many pointed it out to others with a shrug. These reactions came from the fact that no one dreamed that it was something that should not be there. After all, the news stations or their government would certainly be aware of it, and if it were anything unusual, would have said something by now.

  Finally, after almost an hour, someone in the space program saw it and asked a local observatory to identify it. The astronomer on duty was just heading home after a long night and the call annoyed him, but he looked out the window and his brow creased in puzzlement. Mumbling something about wasting his time, he booted the computers and trained the large scope up.

  As he gazed upon the object with tired bloodshot eyes, ever so slowly, the inescapable reality settled in and annoyance was replaced by shock. He knew immediately what it wasn’t. It wasn’t anything from his planet.

  His tiredness now forgotten, he started making calls. At first, no one believed him, but finally, after getting confirmation from two other observatories, and two hours after the seven-mile umbrella shaped spaceship went into geostationary orbit, the news reverberated around the planet, and basically, all hell broke loose.

  ---

  When Adamarus awoke it was like coming back from some distant place. It seemed like eons had passed.

  His eyes opened revealing a circular glass wall ascending into an indistinct fog. He closed his eyes and tried again but saw the same thing. After several minutes he tried lifting his head and looking around. The scene that greeted him was incomprehensible.

  He managed to rise up using his elbows for support. Mild pain rolled over him like an old friend. He was definitely alive. He tried to make sense of where he was. He was in a circular glass enclosure, perhaps fifteen feet across, which had a rounded bottom and whose sides rose upward, disappearing in to a vague dark mist high above him. The glass structure seemed vaguely familiar, and at the same time, somewhat disturbing.

  Beyond the glass he could see things that made no sense. Around him was a very large cavernous space which contained dozens of strange looking hills. Beyond the hills he could see large black arches that stretched upward, disappearing into the dark mists above.

  He had not yet had the presence of mind to think about how he had come to be here. He remembered nothing, not even his name. He was just getting around to thinking about these things when movement caught his attention.

  One of the hills tilted back and forth, then it moved towards him. It seemed to simply glide across the floor. Adamarus noticed that where the large mound met the floor, a shiny black area about three feet high rippled as it moved.

  The thing was big, perhaps twenty feet high, twenty feet wide and thirty feet long.

  It was hard to see, hard to focus on. There was enough light, but the details, while there, were complex and strange and his eyes could not find anything familiar to anchor them.

  As it continued towards him, alarms began going off in the back of his mind. The monstrosity came right up to the glass and then stopped.

  Adamarus had also neglected to consider his own state of being. Had he, he would have noticed that he was wrapped in white cloth connected to dozens of tubes that dangled from the mists above. He would have also noticed that although his mind was fogged and confused, he was feeling really good in a way that was both strange and familiar.

  After several seconds the glass surrounding him seemed to slide down and away. Frigid air and the strong scent of mold washed over him. His ears popped several times. The moving hill seemed to sigh.

  Without giving it much thought, Adamarus threw his legs over the side of the platform he was lying on and tried to stand, but the floor rushed up.

  The strange hill seemed to flinch as he hit the floor.

  Then, as Adamarus stared at it, it did something inconceivable. In a blur of motion and with the sound of sucking air, it stretched upward at least 100 feet. The expansion came to a halt. Adamarus looked up at it dumbfounded. It looked like a giant blimp set on end.

  Then, muscles seemed to flex and the walking hill came down again emitting a horrible screech that was the loudest sound Adamarus had ever heard. A wall of sound and wind physically slammed into him, lifting him up and throwing him back. Still attached to tubes reaching down from the heights, his body swung upward until his back hit a wall. The tubes stretched, allowing him to slide down to the floor as he screamed and held his ears.

  Simultaneously, many of the ”hills” had expanded upward and were coming down, all making that incredibly loud noise.

  The floor and walls vibrated and his back arched in pain from the explosive sounds. Blood started running from his ears and nose. Then, suddenly all was quiet.

  Blackness was pulsing in and out from the edges of his vision. He could hear small sounds from all of the hills as they jerked up and down a few feet. He tried to look up but that was when the blackness closed over everything. The last thing he remembered was seeing the moving hill coming towards him.

  Eons later Adamarus felt himself being moved, but quickly slid back into unconsciousness. Sometime later, he again regained consciousness briefly, and had the impression that he was on an airplane.

  ---

  While everyone was looking up at the enormous ship, the smaller atmospheric shuttle, which had detached from the ship before it had become the center of attention, descended unnoticed. It remained that way until it uncloaked and became both visible and very noisy thirty feet above the helipad at Amular’s largest hospital, Hillcrest General Hospital in the city of Hillcrest.

  With an ear-splitting roar, it set down next to the emergency room. Being many times larger than a helicopter, it extended out ont
o the parking lot but had carefully avoided crushing any cars. The huge circular craft rested on eight extended legs. It was 160 feet in diameter, looked sort of like an upside-down umbrella—exactly like the seven-mile ship in the sky. The thunderous roar died as hundreds of people in cars and on the sidewalks looked on, momentarily frozen in total shock.

  The aliens, having clandestinely studied the planet for over three years, mostly via video and radio broadcasts, then acted in a very logical way. However, the people within audio and visual range just didn’t catch on right away.

  First, an ambulance-like siren blared out at such volume it could be heard for miles. A large hatch on the bottom opened and a fifteen-foot ramp slowly extended to the ground. Almost at once, a black ten-foot square only an inch thick literally flew down the ramp, and floating in the air, proceeded to the side of the ship and started rotating. It gained speed, and in seconds, was spinning so fast it became a blur.

  It was at that point someone screamed, and people who had been frozen in place suddenly started running.

  The blurred spinning black square came to life, displaying 3D images like a hologram.

  Incredibly the theme song from a popular weekly real life entertainment show called ”Emergency Room Trauma” blared out at a volume no one thought possible.

  At this, a couple of the fleeing people looked back, and then they slowed down as they saw the 3D images displayed on the spinning square. It showed some kind of wreckage. The familiar mining company’s logo could be seen on the dented and torn hull.

  Fingers crammed into their ears, a couple of people wandered cautiously back toward the spinning square, watching as it showed small black machines cutting into the wreckage. Then the image showed a broken and bloody body being carried out of the wreckage by four of the black machines.