Shock Diamonds

by E. R. Mason

  His roar turned high-pitched. He staggered wildly, still trying to keep the six-fingered grip on my neck. I brought up a boot and caught him squarely between the legs. It didn’t faze him a bit, part of the difficulty of fighting unfamiliar species. I managed to get one hand around and over his forehead and began bending his head back as he continued to howl. He let go of my neck with one hand and began slapping at me. Apparently the lizard hands were too soft to make fist fighting effective, but the choke hold was working quite well, even with just one hand.

  I began to fear loss of blood to the brain. We were clenched together, muscle against muscle. The problem was, he had a lot more of it than I did. He was quite a bit bigger, but had he not been, he would still have been far too strong. As we braced and continued the wrestler holds, the lizard lips began to slowly show in a sickly little lizard smile. He knew he was winning.

  I was going to have to release my grip and try to twist out. The odds did not seem to favor me. But as I positioned for the move, something unexpected occurred. Lizard man and I began to drift upward off the floor. The contents of my stomach joined in as the feeling of weightlessness took over.

  There was a great deal of smoke hanging near the ceiling. It was coming from the destroyed cable conduits and control consoles. Red lights on the wall had begun flashing. As we drifted up, an irate voice came over an intercom demanding to know what was going on down here.

  It was then I saw the look in lizard man’s eyes. He was sickened by the zero G.

  I, on the other hand, was right at home in it.

  Lizard man abandoned his grasp and frantically pedaled and swam around the empty air. His tail kept bumping against things and turning him the wrong way. Between choking back sickness, he would glance back at me in fear. I ripped off my gun belt, pushed off of the nearest console and caught him smartly around the neck. I wound it around tightly and felcro’d it in place. He did an ugly little struggle, his soft lizard hands too weak to undo it, his lizard tongue protruding out the side of his mouth. Finally, as I held to a side wall gasping for breath, he closed his eyes and went to death.

  My right-brain fury continued. It seemed like a good time to leave the artificial gravity control room. It was a good bet there were an awful lot of very upset lizard people floating around in zero-G. No doubt, they were hurrying this way hoping to replace a fuse or something. They would be even more pissed off when they discovered the carnage. I needed to find a more critical section of the ship as it was still my intention to bring this spacecraft out of light and get off. Perhaps I could eventually find a shuttle or escape pod and take my leave of this sadistic place. I reassured myself I would be leaving, one way or another. I would not be going to the mines. I pushed down and gathered up my gun floating under a low shelf against the wall.

  The layer of smoke hanging around the ceiling was now billowing around in the air conditioning. It was becoming difficult to breathe. The lizard voice on the intercom continued to angrily demand answers. There were double sliding doors to the left of the large console I had destroyed. I pulled against a conduit in the ceiling and flew over to it. It popped open automatically. Either it accepted human biology, or it liked the guard’s badge I still had in my breast pocket.

  The door led to a new, more industrial corridor. I stuck my head out and froze at the sight of yet another lizard man in a gunmetal guard uniform, hanging onto conduit, his feet floating higher than his body. He was engulfed in a cloud of green vomit and was about to make more when he saw me. He was only fifty feet away and for a moment I thought more combat was at hand, but instead, he began frantically swimming along the conduit in the other direction, vomiting as he went. It suggested to me that lizard man reinforcements lay in that direction, so I headed off in the other.

  Crew alert lights were now flashing a persistent yellow all along the passageway. There were service hatches every few yards, some open, some closed. More and more conduit runs were entering the corridor from the floors and ceiling. The tubing was becoming larger in diameter, the access way narrower. It meant I was probably nearing some type of propulsion area. I hurried along.

  At the end of the corridor was a much larger, more sophisticated pressure door. It was colored ash-red to make it stand out from the gray metallic walls and equipment around it. There was a green light above. Behind me, the yellow crew alert lights were still flashing away. As quietly as possible, I pulled down, unlatched, and opened the big door. It swung aside to reveal a laboratory with transparent walls on both sides, a row of control consoles running along each. Behind the glass walls were junctions of large, frosty conduits. Gauges protruded from some of them, various colors denoting some type of relationship between each.

  A single lizard man in a white lab jacket was floating by the right-hand row of control consoles, intently moving his head up and down to study the console below him and the critical systems beyond the glass wall. In between contractions of sickness, he seemed concerned about the weightlessness affecting his system flows. This had to be a fuel or coolant distribution point, a delightful place to cause severe damage to a spacecraft at light.

  I pulled myself in and the movement caught his eye. A forked tongue darted nervously out of his mouth. From a nearby console, an audio com message suddenly began advising that repair crews were working on the gravity problem and there was no cause for alarm. But the message was lost on lizard man. He stared at me, pulled down closer to his control console, then grabbed with both hands at something. I jerked my blaster up, but held my fire. Lizard man missed the grab, lost his grip on the console, and floated upward, twisting and swimming in place trying to gain a hold on anything. He kept worriedly glancing back over his shoulder at me. Keeping the weapon leveled, I pushed down to floor level and held to a switch on the wall.

  The conduit runs beyond the glass on the right were much larger and had many more gauges and sensors attached than those behind the glass on the left. The “Don’t panic” announcement from the address system was now in standard repeating mode. The yellow crew alert light near the top of the far wall had become a steady yellow. Lizard man struggled around helplessly in the center of the control area, staring fearfully at me, slowly drifting to the left. I moved toward him and his expression became even more alarmed. With a last look around, I pointed my weapon at the largest conduit behind the glass on the right and fired. I had forgotten the gun was still set to max and had now fully recharged.

  It is customary aboard spacecraft to issue weapons that will produce the necessary amount of damage without setting off fuels or creating other sources of ignition. The weapon I had confiscated was apparently of that genre. With that tiny squeeze of the trigger, it shattered the glass wall into a million pieces, tore through half a dozen smaller conduits, and exploded a hole the size of a man in the waist-high horizontal pipe beyond. The concussion from the blast blew us back into the left-hand glass barrier, and it too shattered, raining glass down as we struggled to grab something. Lizard man let out a hair-raising scream as he spotted the damage done. The superstructure of the ship shuddered. I managed to grab a wall fixture and hang on as debris shot around in every direction, ricocheting off of everything in its path. As the debris settled down into a slow float, lizard man kicked himself off of the conduit, toward the center consoles, some of which were still lighted and flashing urgent alarms. He managed to make some headway through the rain of fragments, keeping his right arm against his chest as though it was broken. I had the impression he was hoping to call for help. I brought myself around to get my feet against the wall, intending to intercept him, when something on the opposite side of the room made me take pause.

  Half a dozen conduits and pipes were fractured, including a very large one. Liquids were oozing out of some of the fractures. There was an aqua blue fluid that was separating into droplets as it drifted toward an air-conditioning intake, and nearby green ooze was holding itself together as it rose up from a junction box. Near the door at the opposite end of the
room, another yellow chemical ooze the size and shape of a child’s blanket was fluttering along toward lizard man as he moved toward the room’s center. He spotted it, and with a kick from one boot against the top of a console, managed to get out of the way just in time.

  There was no doubt these chemical spills were caustic. But there was something else that held my attention. Within the large, ragged hole of the big conduit, there was a bluish inner sleeve. It too had been compromised. And from that odd-looking secondary containment wall, tiny sparks of light were being emitted, like little stars drifting from a star well. They looked just like the shock diamonds you see in the plume of a rocket engine running at more than 100 percent power. There was a sparkling static sound associated with them, and when lizard man spotted them, his look of desperation turned to one of complete horror. He froze with one sticky hand clamped against the far side wall and came to weightless attention. Seconds later a dark red glob emerged from the big hole, crackling and emitting light almost like a Fourth of July sparkler. It changed shape as it drifted along, reacting with the atmosphere in the room, the crackling growing into burning sounds, the surface of it covered in tiny white sparks. Behind it, another glob followed. It was then I noticed that the hole in the damaged conduit's inner sleeve was growing larger. An ominous, broad, grinding noise started up from outside the room. It sounded like pumps running dry.

  Lizard man forgot all about the communications console and his broken arm. He pushed frantically away from the gyrating glob of twinkling, burning red, but somehow it seemed to have locked onto him. He slid back against the wall, turning his face away to avoid it, flattening his body. He might have made it except at that moment there was another great shudder from the ship, followed by a tremendous bang and buckling sound as she fell from light. Everything loose in the room plastered itself against lizard man’s wall. I held with my back against the side of a console. The force of deceleration lasted only a few seconds, but it had to have been 9 Gs or more. It forced the air from my lungs and stretched the skin on my face to new limits. As weightlessness returned and the trash around me resumed floating, I struggled around fearing lizard man was trying to make a move.

  Through the maze of debris I could still make him out plastered against the far wall. He seemed to have weathered it all quite well, although a console cover was floating in front of him, concealing his shoulders and face. I searched hurriedly for the gun. It was nowhere to be found. I braced for weightless combat and stared, waiting to make eye contact, but as the console cover drifted away, it revealed a new horror. Lizard man’s head and most of his shoulders were missing. Behind him there was a new hole in the wall roughly the shape of the sparkling red blob. Through the hole, I could just make it out still rolling along, burning away everything in its path. As I watched, a second red blob passed by lizard man’s remains and into the wall where it made a dull bang, many new tiny stars, and a second gaping opening. The large hole in the big conduit was now the size of a pickup truck, and the flow of sparkling red was continuous.

  The crew alert light over the wall suddenly turned a rapidly flashing red. Loud horns began blaring. The stream of explosive red glob began eating everything in the room. I stared in disbelief. There was only one thing that could do that much damage that quickly.

  Antimatter. Some form of docile antimatter, at least docile as antimatters went. Most antimatter instantly exploded upon contact with the real world. This stuff took its time.

  Once again, I had worn out my welcome. I hurried back the way I had entered and found the corridor beyond the hatch completely redecorated. Rapidly flashing red lights were everywhere. Ear-piercing horns and bells were sounding continuously. Garbage was drifting in the air. And there was something else, even more significant.

  Running lights in the floor. Arrows pointing crew to where they needed to go. At the instant I noticed them, a lizard voice came over the P.A.

  “Abandon ship. Abandon ship.”

  No further invitation was needed.

  The lighted arrows in the floor led me through a maze of equipment and storage rooms, places I would never have thought to go. The warning lights and repeating audio seemed to intensify with each passing minute. I pulled, pushed, and kicked my way along as quickly as possible, finally emerging into a new, very wide, long hallway where the floor lights became wider and even more insistent. As I pulled ahead, I spotted two lizard figures struggling badly. Somehow, I knew they were female, dressed in soft green one-piece suits covered with Velcro pockets. One lizard woman was trying to drag the other along in the direction of the arrows, but both were vomiting too frequently to keep going. They were caught, waving and kicking in a cloud of their own nausea. One noticed me approaching, paid no attention at first, but then looked back and became alarmed. They froze in place, still vomiting as I approached.

  I did not slow. In zero-G, I was apparently the most adept person on this ship. I flew past them, being careful to avoid getting puked, showing no concern whatsoever for their plight. They watched with perplexed stares as I glided away.

  The arrows led through a last pressure door, already open. Beyond it were the objects of my desire. A row of maybe thirty escape pod doors on the right, status lights and control boards for each directly left. A few pods had already been deployed, their pressure doors sealed with a big X. Most, however, were open, green, and waiting for escapees.

  The ship gave another great shudder, like an earthquake in space. I looked ahead and behind and suddenly spotted a lizard man in a guard’s uniform heading in my direction. At the very first open, oval escape pod hatch, l pulled myself in.

  Four seats. No manual controls. A repeating verbal message playing over and over. “B4-6 is ready for immediate launch, B4-6 is ready for immediate launch.”

  I pulled the hatch door shut and spun the handle to seal it, then strapped into a seat that seemed to have the best view out the two tiny circular windows on each side and the larger one in the pressure door. The verbal message changed. “B4-6 is now armed and ready for deployment, B4-6 is now armed and ready for deployment.”

  As I searched for a control, there was a sudden slap against the hatch window. A second later a lizard face came into view. It was a face with one blinded eye shut. It was the guard who had hosed me down in the showers. In that moment, I recalled his lizard laugh as he had done so. He was yelling something unpleasant, although I could not hear a word of it. He did not seem to want me to leave just then. By my left knee, there was a large button flashing red. With nothing to lose, I slapped it down. Lizard man’s good eye opened wide. He spun around just as the inner door behind him slid shut. He turned back in horror and looked at me through the glass as though I should abort the pod ejection. I gave him my best lizard smile and waved.

  The kick from the explosive bolts was extreme. It threw me forward against the seat harness to the point of pain. As the pod jetted away from the ship, lizard man, still wide-eyed, was sucked out with it. He flailed around for a few seconds until the frosty look of frozen death came over him. The one good eye was iced open and still had a stare of utter disbelief. He drifted away to the right, leaving me with the first view of the pirate ship that had been chartered to deliver me to the mines.

  It looked like a blackbird aircraft without wings. Two large nacelle tubes ran along the aft section on either side. There was a terrible fire back there. It was flaming up over and over, billowing like an erupting volcano, and it was spreading. It was a hideous, sickening thing to see. A few more pods were popping off the side, very few. Not all of them made it. There was an ominous moment without eruption, followed by the most massive explosion I had ever seen. An orange-green fireball consumed half the superstructure. There is no sound in space, but I could feel it. I watched in dread as the largest fragment of bow went tumbling away with a ferocity that would have killed anyone left alive within.

  They should never have brought me aboard.

  The plume of debris headed my way, spreading out a
s it approached. It was unlikely my pod would survive the impacts. Time to pay the piper. No matter. I was off the ship. I had kicked my way out of the stall and was now running free. I had won. The Grim Reaper was of no consequence.

  Little ticking sounds on the sides of the pod were the first of it. Quickly, larger bangs joined in. Then, frightening thuds shook the pod and knocked it around, causing jets to fire for stabilization.

  Finally the big pieces arrived. The first was a glancing blow off the top that put me into a wild spin so intense it tried to pull the skin off my face with negative Gs. The world nearly shrunk into blackness, until a subsequent big bang drove the capsule in the other direction, making me wonder if the end was just moments away.

  The last piece was so large it filled all three windows even before impact. It collided with such force I could see the superstructure flex inward, and felt the pressure pop my ears. The push slammed me hard into the seatbelts and the world went black so fast I did not even have time to wonder if it was death.

  Chapter 15

  One of the bad things about right-brained violence is that often it leaves you during sleep. You wake up with all the guilt and none of the satisfaction the Neanderthal mind should have compensated you with.

  The sound of chirping alarms and growling radar scanners lured me back to life. The first thought is always, am I alive? One hand instinctively goes to the chest to see if the body is still there. The sensory systems kick in and the feeling of cold saturates the body. Eyes flutter open and struggle to focus in hopes of asking the second most important question, where the hell am I?