Out in the Styx — A Biotech Legacy Adventure

by Chris J. Randolph

  He crouched again—still standing on what logically should have been a wall—and waited. His posture was a perfect replication of the diagram on page 86 of the Legacy Fleet Training Manual, and the air inside his helmet smelled of testosterone and anger.

  An aluminum eagle screamed.

  Larry Hopkins steeled himself.

  A shape appeared at the corner cloaked in billowing smoke, its hand gripping a wall which crumpled under its taloned fingers. The clouds parted and the thing's twisted head looked at him. It was like a deformed and lopsided face obscenely overgrown with muscles, and its single off-center eye burned as bright and red as a firework about to explode.

  Larry opened fire.

  A yellow beam of excited particles glowed and glittered in the smoke-choked air. The superheated beam struck the creature's rippling shoulder and washed off, in patterns like ragged flaps of cellophane fluttering in the wind.

  It tilted its head to the side.

  "Screw you," Larry snarled.

  The creature coiled back, letting out a low and throaty growl as it did.

  This wasn't how these things ever went in Larry's imagination. There always seemed to be more time in his dreams, while reality just kept dashing forward without a break.

  He slapped the carbine's mode-selector and switched to full power, which Fleet protocol reserved for only the most dire situations. He began to fire a barrage of short blasts with one hand, and reached for a grenade with the other.

  Each bolt knocked the vile creature backward like a rioter struck over and over with batons. As it stumbled, Larry stopped firing long enough to pull the grenade's pin and throw.

  He raised the carbine back up and held the trigger down, scoring the ceiling, walls and floor with particle fire. Then he ran.

  The creature let out a squeal of annoyance, then the grenade went off with a sharp crack that gave Larry an instant head-ache. After that, he heard the tunnel collapse in on itself with a crunch.

  He kept running at full steam. His thighs were beginning to burn, but he needed more distance. That'd buy him time, which he could hopefully turn into strategy. If this thing was still alive (and he was sure it was), then small arms clearly wouldn't do the trick.

  "Think, Larry... think," he chanted as he rounded a corner. What the heck could slow this beast down? If only he had a wrecking ball handy…

  He might've had the next best thing.

  For a moment, the idea of turning tail and running occurred to him. He could probably make it to the hatch and out onto the surface if he booked it, but Marco had been wrong; the safety of The Beagle wasn't the most important thing. Their primary directive was to protect the Fleet. Everything else was secondary… even their lives.

  Larry circled around and found the tunnel that the creature had dug up through the floor, then he hopped inside, bouncing from one level to the next until he came to the artillery shaft. Once on the ground, he hurried off toward the massive Faraday cage that enclosed the outpost's main weapon.

  In blatant disregard of Fleet Maintenance Standards, Item 21, Subsection 4, he did not engage the cannon's safety before entering the enclosure.

  The interior was dark. There were no emergency lights lining the walls, nor windows out to the starry night.

  He activated his helmet's active IR laser, and his phone built a replica of the scene. It revealed a tunnel covered in equipment, densely packed circuitry, flat electromagnetic discs, power conduits. The curved ceiling above was a huge piston used to push a projectile into place before firing, and Larry just so happened to be standing in the cannon's barrel.

  He wove his way through the waist-high machinery and came to a small clearing. There, he dialed down his magnetic boots again and proceeded to leap from alcove to alcove, all the way to the piston's base.

  He reengaged his boots when he got there and walked the last few meters, carefully stepping over a mazework of hoses, cables, and things that looked eager to stab through a skinsuit.

  Then Larry stopped, took a look around and decided this was his spot. He activated the recorder. "This may well be my final entry," he said. "Although I've been recording this log near whisper, I've come to believe the invader is following the sound of my voice… which is precisely why I'm speaking right now. With a little luck, he'll take the bait."

  He checked his Lancer carbine and found the battery at sixty-percent. He set it to armor piercing mode, which fired bolts that were more tightly focused but required a half-second to recharge inbetween. The battery wouldn't last long, so he'd have to make each shot count.

  "If someone finds this," he said, "I just want to tell you… uhh… that I love the Fleet with all my heart. I never really saw much to fight for in the world before, but this mission… Well, I'm proud just to have been a part of it."

  He heard a series of angry shouts. The alien bastard wasn't one for subtlety.

  He ducked behind a mechanism the size of a kitchen island and waited, rifle hot and ready to fire. He listened as the stalking monster stepped slowly through electronic bramble, stumbling every so often and growling with frustration.

  Larry waited and breathed, and the time came.

  In a smooth sweep, he stood, turned and opened fire. Zap, zap, zap. Each blast shattered the creature's hardened skin like an egg shell, knocking shards off in a spray.

  The thing leaned forward, flexed its hideous muscles and curled its bladed fingers. Its knotted head twisted upward and it bellowed low like the devil's own steed.

  The monstrous man lurched forward, sweeping steel equipment out of its way like dry brush, its crooked, hateful eye trained on Larry Hopkins the way a Komodo dragon stared at its next meal.

  Larry put his crosshairs on that eye and fired, but the bolt went wide and glanced off an armored ring that surrounded it.

  But it nevertheless knocked the beast off balance. In the next breath, he opened his phone's interface, engaged the gargantuan cannon's diagnostic routine, and watched with glee.

  The glee faded quickly as nothing at all happened. He hastily skimmed through the system log in search of an error, while at the same time watching his dreaded foe shake off the blow and continue its charge.

  His eyes locked. Power Failure. Reroute through contingency grid? Warning: May be hazardous if undiagnosed…

  He skipped the rest and hit Yes, then aimed and resumed fire.

  Lights in red and orange lit up in long strips for a half-kilometer into the tunnel's distance. Meanwhile, he aimed for the rampaging invader's throat and squeezed the trigger.

  The blast landed true and the beast wailed. Another heart-beat later, the piston slammed down. The impact blew destroyed equipment into the air, and Larry barely had time to duck behind cover before the shrapnel struck all around.

  Bits of broken hardware and metal shavings drifted by, settling slowly in the low gravity. He stood up and looked at the ruined weapon, and suddenly realized how the earlier shot had knocked everything off-line: the piston wasn't supposed to come down quite like that.

  He called it a lucky accident, and made his escape while thanking God for having mercy on him. He wasn't sure whether the impact had killed his enemy, and frankly, he didn't much care. That last attack was just about the best he could muster, and it'd bought him all the time currently for sale.

  As he climbed through one of the many gates in the cannon's protective cage, he noticed another notification light blinking. It was another message from Nils.

  Larry sighed and opened it.

  "Hey Hop. Hoping you're outside, man. Sounds like this fucking thing is tearing the place to pieces. Haven't heard back from you, so I'll just assume you forgot how to open your mail program again, because… yeah. Just hoping that's the case. Gimme a call, and stay sharp."

  "Stay sharp, Nils" Larry said to the air, and continued on his way.

  After These Messages…

  Rolling hills and broken ravines stretched out, darkly lit in starlight and the weak glow of an all too dista
nt sun. Larry Hopkins trotted along at a steady military jog, and had been for several long klicks. That came after having covered roughly the same distance on his way through the outpost and out through a surface hatch.

  His remaining equipment included two grenades, one mostly discharged Lancer carbine which he'd taken to calling Stan, and a red key that hung about his neck like an albatross. He had to hope the monster was down for good, because this arsenal had proven mostly useless.

  But he his mission was almost complete. The false rocks up ahead covered the station's hangar doors, and external controls would be hidden nearby. He'd finally get a chance to catch his breath and rest his burning thighs.

  The circular hatch was fifty meters across, and even up close it was difficult to identify. The fake rocks and pebbly surface were the right colors but just a little too smooth and too ordered.

  That just left finding the terminal. Larry activated his transponder and hoped the computer was still functioning well enough to ping him back. He waited. A reply tone came.

  Larry's helmet highlighted the terminal's location and he trotted over. When he was standing over it, he realized there was an obvious handle that he probably should have spotted earlier.

  In another moment, he had the service door open and dropped inside. He leaned against the wall, roused the sleeping computer and started typing at a nice even pace. Login, Administration, System Overrides, Manual Hatch Control, Unlock…

  His eyelids began to droop right about the time the lock came undone with a loud clank. He selected the Emergency Release option and triumphantly slapped Enter.

  A message flashed on screen. !!!Power Grid Disrupted — No Power To Hatch!!!

  He managed not to curse, and his dear departed mother would've been pleased. Instead, he used his phone to call home.

  "Thank Cthulhu you're alive," Jansen said. Larry didn't reply immediately and he went on. "Unless you're not Hop. Are you the alien? Did you take over his body? I'm with the galactic police, so it's illegal to lie to me."

  Larry sighed loudly.

  Jansen said, "Oh, hey Hop."

  "We've got a problem," Larry replied. "I got the door unlocked, but, uh… the station glitched and tried to fire again. The doors don't have enough juice now."

  "Reroute through the…"

  "Whatever you're going to say, it's broken. It's all broken, Nils." All except one thing, Larry thought as he clutched the red key.

  "So, what then?"

  "You guys have to push it open with The Beagle. The panels are loose… you should be able to nudge it and squeeze through."

  "Eh, I think we can manage that," Jansen said.

  Marco chimed in, "Easy as pie!"

  "Good," Larry said. He jumped up and pulled himself out of the service door. It didn't take long to notice trouble was on its way.

  A slender figure jutted out from the horizon, chased by a cloud of dust. It was sprinting with the smooth grace of a cheetah racing after a wounded antelope.

  "Guys," Larry said. "Hurry. This dang thing is about to kill me."

  He shoulder rolled behind a fake rock, pulled out his carbine and tried to breathe steady. However many shots he had left, they'd have to be enough.

  ***

  Marco slid into the pilot's seat, where Hopkins' wide ass was usually parked. He keyed in his command code and the console lit-up, reporting the status of The Beagle's many different systems. He brought the powerplant to full, grabbed the yoke and lifted his ship off the tarmac.

  Jansen jumped into his own seat to the left and started going over the sensor scans. "Hop was right. Locks are off. Just nudge up under one of the panels, and give it around three-percent throttle."

  "Aye, Aye," Marco said, and grimaced briefly.

  He brought The Beagle in surgically, tapped the nose to the hatch and pushed. Metal hinges and actuators whined at his touch, until the hunk of armor finally began to move.

  He saw stars on the other side.

  The Beagle's hull let out a high-pitched moan as it scraped by, and Marco hoped the cost of repainting wouldn't be taken out of his pay… not that he received any.

  The blocky shuttle finally came free and Marco leveled it out. He rotated slowly to survey the area, but couldn't find Hopkins anywhere. There were too many blobby rock formations the size and shape of Hopkins, which left him searching for the one blob in motion.

  "Got him," Jansen said. "And whatever's chasing him is coming in hot."

  The sensor lock appeared on Marco's display, a multi-colored group of concentric rings that spun and pulsed to mark the spot. He leaned forward on the yoke and The Beagle burst into motion.

  The shuttle cruised lower over the rocks, and their objectives quickly came into sight. Larry Hopkins was hauling ass, juking and weaving from cover to cover and tossing in a surprisingly awesome shoulder roll here and there, all while the reedy alien rampaged after him, blasting rocks to smithereens to clear its way.

  "Why didn't they put guns on this thing?" Marco said through his teeth.

  "Just a guess," Jansen replied, "but probably for the same reason they locked the weapons cabinet and threw away the key."

  Damn that horrible day.

  Marco twisted the yoke and brought The Beagle around in a sharp turn, and the stomping monster was so blinded by rage that it paid no attention. Then Marco twisted the yoke downward, slamming the enemy under the shuttle's nose.

  Rock exploded and rained down in a wide half-circle. Screens showed that The Beagle's reactive armor had absorbed the impact, but the sound nevertheless made Marco's stomach flip a somersault.

  He put the shuttle in reverse and backed up for thirty meters, then set down blind in a small clearing. The whole time, he watched the maroon colored foe pick itself up off the ground and take aim.

  The monster's first blast hit a moment later, rocking The Beagle on its feet. The armor held, but it couldn't stand many more like that.

  Marco dragged a finger across the glass and The Beagle's rear ramp came down, venting atmosphere to the desolate surface of Charon in a haunting cloud. Then he transferred extra power to armor and said, "You're up, Jansen."

  ***

  Nils Jansen leapt out of his seat, sprinted toward the rear of the ship, then jumped and slid down the ramp. He hit the gravel running, aided by his helmet's low-light mode which recast the world in shades of amber.

  He stopped short of The Beagle's nose, while another bright bolt struck the ship and splashed off like a shower of hot magma. At the edge of the rock thicket, Hopkins' rotund form appeared and dashed toward the ship with surprising speed.

  Jansen waved him on. "Come on… Come on!"

  Hopkins reached out and Jansen took hold of his hand, then dragged him back toward the ramp.

  "We have to stop it!" Hopkins cried over the comms.

  Jansen said calmly, "I know."

  "Self-destruct," Hopkins huffed between breaths, while gripping a key hanging around his neck.

  Another blast rocked The Beagle and Jansen's lip curled. He stopped in his tracks and shoved Hopkins behind The Beagle's landing skid. Then he waited one breath, drew his pistol, turned and squeezed the trigger.

  A beam streaked out of the tip, as thin as a knitting needle and bright as a signal flare. Through the rain of freshly exploded rock, the beam drew a straight line that ended in the monster's glowing red eye.

  Life went out of the thing mid-stride and it crashed to the ground limply, limbs flailing as it tumbled end over end through the debris. It reminded Jansen entirely too much of a motorcycle accident he witnessed once in horror.

  "God damned cowboy," Hopkins grumbled.

  Jansen smirked. "Always thought of myself as more of a 1970s movie cop, but whatever." He twirled the Lancer around his finger and dropped it back in the holster.

  Marco came running around the back of the ship a second later. "Nice shot, Nils," he said over the comms.

  "To be fair, you softened him up," Jansen replied with mock modesty
. "So… it's dead, right? Right?"

  Marco was panting when he reached them. His cardio was simply atrocious. "Dead as a doornail," he said hoarsely. He put one hand on a thigh for support, and made a pantomime gun with the other. "Boom! Headsh…"

  "No," Jansen said, cutting him off. "Don't say that. Never that."

  Hopkins looked testy, with his whale-man flippers crossed for some reason Jansen couldn't imagine. The red key still dangled from his neck.

  "Where'd ya get that?" Jansen asked.

  "Ummm…"

  Stalling was not one of Larry Hopkins' strong suits. It was rather like the rest of his suits: not strong at all, and rather more blubbery and spineless.

  "Motherfucking weapons locker," Jansen said. "If you made it to the security station, why didn't you come back with the demolition charges?"

  "Damned thing wouldn't leave me alone," Hopkins said, pointing at the smoking corpse. "Hounded me all over the lower decks. And what do you mean, bring back the demolition charges?"

  Jansen looked over at Marco, who'd just caught his breath and was beginning to stand nearly as upright as an australopithecene, or perhaps a cro-magnon.

  Jansen pointed and said, "You owe me a bottle of hooch, Captain Marco."

  "Wait, wait, wait," Marco said. "Hop, did you get our messages?"

  Hopkins' face turned red as a fire-engine. One that had somehow caught fire.

  "Well?"

  Jansen felt his stomach drop.

  Hopkins nodded.

  "You, uhh…" Jansen said, "Ya mind reading 'em now?"

  Jansen watched Larry Hopkins' eyes go wide as the whale-man read through the collection of emergency transmissions. Jansen knew from having written them that they explained how he'd tapped into a backup sensor network and discovered that the thing was destroying computer systems left and right, then politely asked Hopkins to please, please, please, for the love of all that is holy, turn off his phone.

  There were other details, like the fall-back plan to acquire demolition charges from the security station, blow the hatch and escape while the station self-destructed, but that all seemed a bit extraneous compared to the deadly important bit about the phone.