by F. E. Arliss
She’d only seen a few of the male crewmen who scowled at the women or had been nasty to them. It was clear that a small faction of the crew did not want the women there. That was worrisome, but there were always a few hard liners in any major policy change, she supposed. One of the Sergeants in charge of munitions, Sergeant Clayton, had actively harassed a few of the cleaning women, picking at every little detail and making scathing comments to Helen, a friendly plump little woman from Portugal who was immensely liked by all the other women. She’d burst into the cafeteria at the end of her shift one morning and sobbed out her story to Chloe and the tenother women present. Some of the men had overheard it too. Later, Leo had told her the other men had taken it up with Sergeant Clayton and things had gotten ugly. Clayton now sported a black eye and a tape across his nose where it was broken. Chloe had thought that a bit extreme, but she had already intervened once on Helen’s behalf with Ensign Clayton and the Colonel. She knew most of the men were really very happy to have the women on board and Helen was a real sweetie. After that it flew Chloe’s mind.
Already it was clear that some of the women wouldn’t last. The same as some soldiers would attrition out due to injury or the inability to take the isolation, so the same could be said for the women. Chloe was happy giving support to the troops and helping the women with fears and the grief of leaving home. By having the very strength to do well on the frontier, the women that were clearly succeeding weren’t terribly needy, thus were able to get out most of their problems at the cafeteria chat and seemed very stable. The women who clearly weren’t going to make it she’d had intensive sessions with and assigned a buddy to help them along. Most still couldn’t settle and so were sent back to Earth. They’d had three more contingents of women check in, though smaller in numbers than the first group. So, the positions were full now and everyone seemed happy and adjusting fairly well. The biggest issues now seemed to be due to relationship problems. Welcome to the real world, Chloe thought.
She wasn’t sure what would happen after the two years, but it was clear to her that being on the frontier had been a huge adventurous step for her, but it wouldn’t be her last. She was loving all the newness around her and finding that she was able to step up to new situations and take them in stride. It suited her.
Leo had departed on several short missions with some of his battalion and come back with a few scrapes and bruises that she’d fussed over for him. Things were settling in well and no one seemed to question their relationship. Though frankly, she wasn’t questioning it either. They got along well, kissed and stayed close to each other in public when off duty, and though they weren’t developing a touchy-feely relationship, were cooperating well together. Certainly, their public displays of affection weren’t hard to maintain. It seemed to Chloe that they may as well move on to the next stage in their relationship. It just seemed like the right time to approach it hadn’t come yet.
Each night they chatted quietly while they ate, then Leo worked on his reports while she completed her logs. Her room had become permeated with his scent mingled with hers and that seemed normal to her now. They’d had their first argument over whether one of the nurse medics could go on one of the forward missions. The female medic had wanted to, but Leo had refused to allow her, even though they were short one medic for the jump.
That row had gone on for several days, and in the end, they’d just agreed to disagree. At some point, Chloe knew that they would have to duke it out over just such an issue. She just hoped it wasn’t caused by necessity rather than choice.
Chapter 12
Attack
Four months in and things were going well. Chloe was in her office chatting to one of the young, women food engineers between meal times when the warning claxtons began to sound. The young woman ran out the door to return to her station and Chloe turned to comm Leo to see what was going on. Before she could even make a connection, the sound system blared, “All hands to stations, red alert!” Oh, holy shit! Chloe thought. On the Enterprise, this meant enemy attack! I hope to hell that isn’t the case now! Where in the f-ck was she supposed to strap in and report? Gotta get to Leo! She thought, exiting her office and running toward the command center.
Halfway to the command center, Chloe felt a tremor run through the ship. It was followed by an enormous shudder of the station, and Chloe fell to the floor, banging her knees hard into the grill in the floor. Wisps of smoke drifted into her nostrils from the grate. The smell of burned wiring grated on her nerves. Righting herself, she threw herself forward toward the command center. Soldiers ran past her slinging on weaponry and helmets. The claxtons continued to blare giving her the beginnings of a headache. How in the hell could anyone make any decisions with that frigging thing deafening them? She wondered. Crikey, it was damn annoying. If this was her ship she’d let it ring for thirty seconds then turn the damn thing off. If the crew were so stupid they couldn’t get to their stations without its constant reminder then maybe they should just die already, she grumped mentally. Geez, I sound like anything but a counselor, she sighed. The noise must really be getting to me!
Finally, she stumbled into the command center. The Colonel sat in the center command console barking orders. Upon seeing Chloe, he scowled, pointed at an empty chair, and barked, “Strap in!” at her, before continuing with an endless stream of commands and listening to reports streaming in.
“Enemy breaches on Levels 2 and 3, sir!”, stated one of the Sergeants at a station. “Troops responding now!” he continued. “It’s the Arachnia, sir! Two of their ships just broke warp on our starboard side!”
“Sound evacuation alarms for those levels and send all ship-side troops to repel that attack! Launch all fighters!” snapped Leo. “Return fire and assume evasive maneuvers.”
More shudders rocked the station, signifying more direct hits, Chloe assumed. “Sir, they seem to be targeting the housing on Level 3 starboard side!” shouted the comms officer. “They’ve attempting to board us on Level 3, Sections 10 to 14, sir!”
Chloe sat stunned for a few moments, her mind trying frantically to make sense of what she’d just heard. Level 3, Section 10 was where she had her quarters and most of the women’s quarters were near hers and stretched along that corridor. They were targeting the women’s living quarters! Why! Why, would they do that? Chloe reached down and unstrapped her harness. She had to get to them. She had to help them. Most of the women would have returned to their quarters if they weren’t engaged in a duty like nursing or engineering. All the food service staff or janitorial crew would have returned to their units and strapped in there. They were sitting ducks!!
She could hear Leo roaring at her to return to her seat, but she couldn’t leave them their alone. She had to help them. Chloe barreled through the door and vaulted past the two soldiers guarding Command. She could hear the Colonel ordering them to detain her. But one determined skinny woman simply twisted away from them and pelted down the corridor. Unhampered with armour and weaponry she slipped down a maintenance shaft that one of the new women working in janitorial had shown her when she’d visited her to check in and welcome her on board.
When Chloe broke out onto Level 3 through a service door she could smell the acrid scent of ammunition and hot metal. Chaos reigned. Women screamed and ran. Soldiers fired laser rifles at an enemy she couldn’t yet see. “Come on girls!” Chloe screamed down the hall. “Haul ass to me now!” Several women stumbled towards her and she shoved them into the service door and shouted, “Get up that ladder now!” Two more women rounded the corner and she reached out grabbing them by their wrists and using their own momentum, flung them behind her into the service closet. “Go, go, go!” she bellowed at them. “Climb, climb, dammit!”
“Where were the rest of the women?” she wondered. “There should have been about 7 more.” Looking over her shoulder to see if the women were climbing the shaft to safety, and saw that they were. The two guards she’d evaded were at the top pulling them through the hatch.
Not waiting to see if they all made it to the top, Chloe sprinted down the hall towards the whine of discharging laser weapons. The smoke was thicker here and she put her arm over her nose and mouth to try to breathe easier through the fumes that were making her eyes water. Those helmets the guys had could probably really have come in useful to her about now. She was going to make sure that the women were issued breathers after this!
Darting from habitat door to habitat door, Chloe began opening each unit and calling in for the women. Several doors down, she found three more women clinging to each other on a fold down bunk. “Come on girls! Let’s get outta here!” she ordered and grabbing one of the sobbing women by the shirt collar, dragged her along the corridor toward the maintenance shaft. The other two women, not wanting to be left, stumbled after them. “Get in that door marked Maintenance 4C and climb that ladder. There are two soldiers waiting for you to help you at the top! Go!” Chloe bellowed.
Turning back once more, Chloe ran down the corridor. A laser blast pinged into the wall near her head, sending drops of hot metal down onto the side of her neck and shoulder. “Son of a bitch!” Chloe snarled. “That hurts!” she swatted at the burn, as the stink of burning rubber, flesh and hair wafted around her. Ducking lower, she made her way cautiously along the wall, peering through the smog toward the still whining weapons fire ahead of her.
Several times she stumbled over dead Arachnians. She was stunned at how ugly they were. Stumbling a third time, and hearing a gasp, Chloe reared back ready to fight, when she heard a whimper from the lump she’d banged into. Reaching for the lump, she found a crying woman half covered by a dead Orbit Guard ensign. “Go!” Chloe shouted, tugging on the woman to get her free of the corpse. “Common dammit, crawl. Crawl behind me to the door marked Maintenance 4C. It’s got a ladder up to a clear deck. Go!” she barked at the still whimpering woman. The woman began crawling slowly past Chloe. “Get a move on.” Chloe yelled. As if in a disgruntled response, the woman pushed one foot against Chloe’s gut and vaulted up and off running toward the back of the corridor.
Gasping from the gut kick, Chloe finally managed to scoop up the Ensign’s dropped laser rifle. Pointing it at the opposite wall, she tentatively pulled the trigger. A bead of melted metal ran down the wall. Well, that should do it. Chloe thought, and slipped further down the hall, rifle held stiffly in front of her.
The rest of the habitat doors were already open. She figured she had four more women to find and get out. But as she approached the two doors closest to the breach site, they were open and through the fog she could see the sprawled forms of each pair of women. They too, looked as though they’d been holding on to each other. Several laser blasts laced the torsos of each pair of the women, and gaping holes near their necks looked as though they were surrounded by chew marks. Dead Arachnians were sprawled closer to the door where Guard troops had gunned them down in the act of feeding. Chloe caught back a surge of vomit. Then, choking on her own tears and snot, turned and ran back toward the maintenance shaft.
Pulling the door to the maintenance shaft open, Chloe came face to back with her first upright and living Arachnian. Perhaps a foot taller than Chloe, it was looking up the now empty maintenance shaft. As it started to turn to face Chloe, she could see that while it was standing upright like a humanoid on two black hairy legs with hard, shiny, shell-like thighs, the grotesque being also had four little arms along each side of its torso. Each waving little black arm was tipped with small pincher claws about the size of her hand. One set of larger arms, about the size of her own, clasped a laser weapon at waist height.
Startled, Chloe thought, that is just some wrong, ugly-assed, woman killing, human eating, creepy alien thing. Eight legs...arms...or whatever the hell those things were waving about just freaked her out. She wasn’t really thinking about the fact that it had killed her friends. Instead, her gut feeling that it was ‘wrong’ somehow, had her instinctively pulling the trigger on the laser rifle she still grasped in her hands. She was so tense that she didn’t let go of the trigger until the Arachnian fell to the floor in front of her in two pieces. She’d cut him in half. Unintentionally, but still, he was in two pieces. And, his guts stunk. Chloe stumbled back staring at her own barbaric handiwork. Hitting the wall opposite the maintenance shaft, she sank slowly along the wall to the floor, still cradling the hot laser rifle in her arms.
Absent mindedly, she wiped her face on the sleeves of her uniform. Gross, was that shiny stuff snot? She wondered, dazedly. I must look like crap. What a bizarre thing to think at this moment, popped into her brain. “I’m clearly fried, she sniffled. Yep, totally and completely gone ‘round the bend,’ as Grandma would say. She giggled. “Hmmm, I think this is shock. I’m in shock,” she stated to herself. “Get a grip, girl!” she ordered herself. "I better start carrying candy in my suit if this kind of crap keeps happening!" she said to herself. "No way in hell I'm keeping sweet tea packs in my suit!" she giggled at the thought. It'd look like I had padded boobs, she thought, clearly not quite back on track yet.
Pausing to listen for any further weapons fire, Chloe glanced down the rapidly clearing corridor. Now that the smoke was dissipating, she could see the bodies of two fallen soldiers. One of whom’s rifle she still held against her chest. “I wonder if this if over?” she mused to herself. “I don’t hear anything.”
A few more minutes of drying her eyes and wiping snot on her sleeves, and Chloe felt recovered enough to think about crawling away from the stink of the gutted Arachnian propping the maintenance shaft door open with part of his severed, many armed trunk. Before she could even manage to get to her knees, several soldiers burst into the hall further down. Running toward her, they bellowed into their comms, “We’ve got her, sir! We’ve got her! She’s alive, and she appears unharmed except for a few burns on her shoulder.” “Yes sir, we’ll wait here with her until you arrive.”
What seemed like only seconds later, Leo burst into the corridor. “What the hell were you thinking? Are you out of your mind? You could have gotten yourself killed!” he snarled.
Chloe narrowed her eyes. Who did he think he was yelling like that at her in front of his men? She wondered. “These were my Corpsmen! My women! My responsibility, not just yours!” she snapped. “I am responsible for their mental and physical well-being on this station. And, if getting attacked by a bunch of freaky, walking spiders isn’t a mental and physical threat, then I don’t know what the hell is!” she yelled. “Don’t you dare question my dedication to these women! I did what I thought was right!”
Leo stopped, stunned. She was right. He had wanted her to stay back and be safe, not do what she felt she needed to do as the women’s commanding officer. Taking a physical step back, he surveyed the scene, giving himself a moment to get control of his usually benign temper.
“Of course, Lieutenant,” the Colonel said gruffly. “I would have done the same thing. As ship’s counselo,r and Commanding Corpsman, it is your duty to see to their safety. However, as Orbit Guard Frontier Commander I'm walking a narrow line that will affect the future of all women to come to the Station. We will need to discuss later how to handle situations like this where I would prefer you to let my men take care of the Corpsmen's physical well-being and do the fighting.”
Again, Chloe felt her spine stiffen at Leo’s statement. “I am completely able bodied, Colonel and I know how to use a firearm. If you have any doubts about that, you are free to survey the remains of that spidery piece of shit in the maintenance closet,” Chloe hissed.
This statement was followed by an uncomfortable silence. The soldiers that had found her, shuffled uneasily. Leo slowly surveyed the scene. “Report please, Lieutenant Sedgewick,” the Colonel snapped.
“I was able to get five women out of their quarters and up the maintenance shaft. There are four more women who didn’t make it in the last two units at the end of the hall closest to the breach site. As well as two fallen Guardsmen,” Chloe said, a slight sob audible in her voice. �
��When I came back to the shaft to climb up myself, I surprised this guy. I sort of shot him in two before I could even think about it. He’s just so, so, so gross. They’d been feeding on the bodies. It was like an automatic response. Awful,” Chloe gasped out. “Really, really, awful. I took a weapon from one of those soldiers,” Chloe pointed to the two young men who were even now being carried away by stretcher bearers to the infirmary. “I just picked it up like a reflex. Then I just squeezed the trigger when I saw this hairy horror story. II think I’m in shock,” she said, looking up at Leo. “Could you take me to my quarters please? I think I’m going to faint, or puke, or both. Soon.”
Without further ado, the Colonel scooped Chloe up against him and strode toward a lift. “See to repair and clean-up, Major Torrence,” he barked into his comm. Chloe simply couldn’t seem to keep her eyes open. Once they entered her quarters, Leo shook her roughly and forced a sweet tea into her hand. “Drink it,” he barked. “Good for shock.”
“Tastes like crap,” she muttered, then remembered no more.
Chapter 13