Through Glass Darkly: Episode Two

by Peter Knyte

  ‘I thought you said it was simpler than that, and you could either sense it or not?’ I asked slightly confused.

  ‘Yes, but I can only see and hear what it is seeing and hearing, so I think it’s simply stopping what it’s doing and maybe closing its eyes so there’s literally nothing for me to sense.’

  ‘That makes the thing sound a bit too clever for my liking,’ I commented, unenthusiastically. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well, it’s either that or its holed up somewhere where it just can’t see anything, but we know these Lamphrey can practically see in perfect darkness.’

  We puzzled it out as we drove back through Jersey to Manhattan Island and the ships mooring in Central Park.

  The Captain and the others were concerned for our safety, and had prepared the ship for immediate take-off just in case it was necessary, with all but a couple of the hawsers untied and men standing ready to unfasten those last two should it be needed.

  As they’d done before, Fraser and Jenkins had boarded the ship along with Hughes and Dr Zimmerman to help out in the event that a flight had been necessary. Platt had also come aboard this time with Wright the Fire Chief, so they could continue a meeting which had been taking place when my call had come in.

  There was still a radio link to the command and control room that had been set up in the boathouse, and someone had clearly notified the ship of our arrival, so the Captain himself accompanied by the doctor could come down in one of the cradles to welcome Ariel back aboard.

  She was still very weak, and mentally exhausted from her efforts to sense the creature, but with my arm to lean on she managed to walk the short distance from the car to the cradle where the Captain waited for us, and even managed a good salute which the Captain proudly returned.

  ‘Welcome back aboard Lensman Shilling,’ he said warmly. ‘I am very pleased to see you alive and well again.’

  At this the doctor kindly stepped to Ariel’s side to help her into the cradle for the ascent back up to the ship.

  The meeting was being held in one of the officers mess rooms, which had a number of armchairs at one end, one of which the doctor now helped Ariel into.

  As soon as she was settled the Captain did the introductions, and then asked for a short summary of what had happened, which I ran through in just a few minutes while the group listened.

  I was expecting they’d have a few questions, and it was Platt who went first.

  ‘Ms Shilling,’ he began. ‘I’m very interested in what Mr Hall described as your ability to sense this creature, does that include what it’s thinking?’

  ‘No, not exactly captain Platt,’ she replied. ‘In the past I’ve been able to sense what the creature senses, what it sees, smells, even tastes, though the latter was generally enough to make me break the connection as quickly as I could. The closest I can get to sensing its thoughts, is experiencing how it responds to what’s going on around it.’

  ‘So when you detected that the creature was coming for you at the Sanatorium?’ Platt probed further.

  ‘Yes, it was the same,’ Ariel replied evenly. ‘On a couple of previous occasions when I’d been sensing the creature I was sure it had become aware of my connection, and on those occasions as soon as it had become aware of me sensing it, I felt the creature tapping into my senses in return.

  ‘When I connected to it earlier on though, I could tell the creature was on the move, but as soon as it became aware of me I distinctly felt it sense me and surge forward through water toward me, upping it’s pace as it were. Strictly speaking it could have been accelerating away from me, all that I could tell was it was slowly moving laterally to begin with, and then suddenly started to move much more quickly, straight toward me or away from me. From that it I concluded it had thought me dead, but when I woke up earlier on it must’ve realised I still lived and had started to eavesdrop on me to see what was happening. Then when I tried to sense it in return it didn’t like the idea and changed direction and started to come toward me.’

  ‘I see,’ replied Platt, thoughtfully. ‘That does seem to make sense. And in terms of how far away the creature is, does your sense of it strengthen with proximity?’

  ‘It has in the past, once we’ve come within fifty yards of one another, the connection then is much stronger and almost involuntary, but the rest of the time it feels pretty much the same irrespective of the distance.’

  ‘But how can you gauge the distance if it all feels the same?’ Jenkins interjected.

  ‘Well its only an approximation I’m afraid Agent Jenkins,’ Ariel replied, with a weak smile. ‘Firstly, there were times when I recognised the place that the creature was seeing, the bridge, one of the churches that kind of thing. Secondly there were times when I could tell the creature was closer or further away because its direction would change very quickly when it was close, or sometimes even when I’d travelled for miles its direction would remain pretty much unchanged.’

  ‘Ah the parallax effect,’ commented Hughes.

  ‘Precisely,’ confirmed Ariel. ‘When I was initially trying to find the creature, I thought it might still be somewhere near 7th Avenue, so I travelled around the rooftops there in a big circle, but the creatures direction remained constantly eastward. It was only when I crossed the bridge into Brooklyn that I could start to pinpoint its location more accurately, by travelling north and south and noting how the creatures direction seemed to change more quickly.’

  Platt was just in the process of asking a separate question when Ariel suddenly stiffened in her seat and went very pale.

  ‘It’s here,’ she said, sounding slightly shaken. ‘The creature, it’s on the ship!’

  It was then that we heard the first scream ringing out from the other end of the ship, where Bradbury and his men were working.

  CHAPTER 30 - DESTRUCTION

  There were no marines or even police officers aboard to repel the thing, I was armed as was the Captain, Fraser and Jenkins, but Hughes, Platt and Wright didn’t appear to carry any form of arms, and only Ariel and the Captain had lenses with which to see the thing.

  The smouldering embers of anger that had swelled into fiery life when I thought the creature was about to attack the sanatorium, blossomed into flame again now, and the urge to leave the group and hunt the thing down practically consumed me. But just as my mind was wrestling with my anger to do the right thing, the Captain’s voice as cold and hard as steel cut through the clamouring chaos that had filled the room.

  ‘Mr Hall, I need you to go and do what you can to help Mr Bradbury and his men. Find them and put them somewhere safe or get them off the ship.’ He commanded.

  ‘The nearest secure location for the rest of us is the bridge. We’ll go there and get a message to the ground.’

  ‘Shouldn’t someone go with Ashton?’ asked Fraser, clearly concerned that I was being asked to go aft alone.

  ‘I’m afraid we don’t have that luxury Agent Fraser,’ the Captain replied. ‘Mr Hall knows the ship well enough to get those men and women to safety and has the ability to both see this creature and defend himself against.

  ‘You and I, if Lensman Shilling will give you her lenses and set them up for you are the only other people aboard who can do the same, and it will take both of us to move this party safely to the bridge.’

  After being instructed to try and stay in contact with the bridge the Captain dismissed me, and I was out of the door and heading toward the engineering section where I’d last heard screams coming from, though it had now been ominously quiet for over a minute.

  Would the thing try and move straight to Ariel, if in-deed she was still the target, would it stop and feed of whoever it managed to corner first. I just didn’t know, nor did I know whether it could make itself invisible again, but I couldn’t afford to take the chance so I cycled my lenses back up to that punishing thirty cycles a second with each cycle encompassing the entire electro-magnetic spectrum. I could already feel the headache coming on from using th
is extreme lens cycle for only half an hour or so previously, but the rage which was building within me washed all trace of the pain aside.

  I moved though the lower decks toward the engineering section where the majority of Bradbury’s men had been working, but as I did I once again heard that odd increase in pitch from the ships Aetheric generators that I’d last heard while the ship was still above 7th Avenue.

  Perhaps it was being caused this time by some damage the creature had done in engineering, which momentarily made me start wondering whether the previous surges had somehow been related to the creature also. But there was no way to know one way or another at the moment, so I allowed my anger to wash that from my brain also.

  I found the first of the bodies just as I entered the engineering section. There was no mistaking how they’d been killed, even in such a short time the bodies had been cracked and completely broken open. But where were the others. There were over a hundred people working for Bradbury in two long shifts around the clock, which meant there must be at least fifty people from the current shift around somewhere.

  I knew a lot of Bradbury’s people had been working in the machine rooms, the power plant and the heavy weapons locker, all of which could be securely locked down, like a lot of the other engineering areas to allow work to continue even if the ship had been boarded.

  One of the bodies I was stood over, was right next to the shipboard intercom, could one of them have somehow got word to their colleagues in the rest of the engineering area as the creature attacked.

  I was just about to hail the bridge when I heard multiple gunshots coming from the forward area of the ship where the bridge was located.

  It had clearly gone for Ariel, and had travelled to the front of the ship at the same time I’d travelled to the rear, but the size of the ship had meant we’d missed one another.

  I ran almost carelessly forward through the ship to the bridge, the occasional flurry of gunshots still ringing out now and again, though with fewer shots each time. Then suddenly the drone from the ships generators spiked to fever pitch, followed by the engines starting and the entire ship beginning to buck and twist against the two remaining hawsers that held it place.

  I was being thrown from side to side by the movement of the ship as I approached the bridge. Even from twenty yards away I could see the portside door was wide open with a bloody smear running down its upper half. Inside was carnage, Jenkins was clearly dead or near to it, his throat wide open and a large pool of blood already surrounding him. Wright appeared to be breathing but was out cold with a nasty looking swelling down the entirety of one side of his face, while Platt was simply face down on the floor beneath one of the navigation and communications control panels. But it was the state of the Captain that brought me to a stop.

  He looked dead as well, he was lying on his back next to the starboard door to the bridge, which was still closed and fastened tight. His gun was still in one hand while his other was wrapped around the shaft of one of the creatures severed pincer limbs, which had impaled him straight through the heart.

  As I approached to check on him though, an electro-static field sprang up surrounding his entire body, just as it had several days previously when we’d first re-boarded the ship to try and make it safe.

  I was just about to check on Wright and Platt, who clearly hadn’t been fed upon, when a single gunshot rang out from several floors above, closely followed by another.

  At least some of the others must still be alive and attempting to flee the creature.

  Anger filled my blood and propelled me out of the bridge and up into the heart of the ship. I ran heedless and careless up and up through the ship to where I thought the shots might have come from. Another gunshot off to the side, but on the same level that I was on, and I was diving off down a corridor that lead out onto the interlinking gantry-ways that zigzagged across the interior gas canopy of the ship, and finally I could see them.

  They were several gantries over being pursued by the creature. Hughes helping Ariel to climb one of the aluminium ladders up to the next level while Fraser, clearly injured tried to guard their retreat by shooting at the approaching creature.

  The creature looked like a mature, full grown Lamphrey again, no trace of the shell that had looked like Ariel, no trace of the blistered and fused mass from where it had been covered in molten metal and glass. It was itself again, and it was intent on catching its prey.

  They were running out of places to run to, and I was too far away to help. All I could do was try to distract the creature to give them a bit more time.

  My first shot was a lucky one and clipped it right on the limb that the Captain had severed, which raised a hiss of pain from the thing and brought its attention squarely to me, but at this kind of range the Manstoppers now served me less well, and the next three shots simply bounced off the things armour.

  For a moment it hesitated between me and its prey, and then it again sprang after them, all the while with me raining down bullets upon it. I slowed it a little, but it was determined to catch them, and eventually as Ariel and Hughes reached the final ladder that lead out onto the top of the ship, Fraser made his stand to try and stop the creature.

  He’d seen me trying to get closer to the creature, but every time I stopped to fire across the space between the gantries where we were closest it gained a little, only for me to make up the distance again when I rounded the next cross gantry. If I didn’t stop to fire it would be able to close with Fraser, Ariel and Hughes, if I did I couldn’t get closer to it.

  But even though I slowed it down, it still gained upon its prey. Fraser had to buy them some more time to get up on top of the canopy and then close the hatch behind them.

  ‘Get up onto the canopy Ashton,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll try and hold it off until you can get to them.’

  There was no debate, no discussion. The creature was moving forward onto the gantry where Fraser was making his stand, and I could either do as he suggested, or I could watch him die.

  I focused my rage, and climbed the nearest set of ladders that lead me to the canopy of the ship, and stepped out into the cool summers night at the same time that Fraser emptied his gun into the creature attacking him.

  As I closed the hatch beneath me I saw an exhausted looking Hughes and a deathly pale Ariel staggering along the length of the ship toward me.

  The ship was still surging against the hawsers that held it, until now, as we all stood upon the upper canopy of the ship with nothing but the night sky above us and open air to the sides, first one hawser, then the next snapped, rocking the ship dangerously from fore to aft, and in the process sending us sprawling then sliding along its length toward the edge.

  The surface was armoured and polished smooth to make the ship more aerodynamic in profile, so once we started sliding there was little to stop us. There were however half a dozen mortar and Arc cannon emplace-ments along the upper canopy of the ship. Each sealed to prevent boarders from gaining access, but as we slid toward the rear end of the ship I managed to grab the underside edge of one of the canopies with one hand in order to arrest my slide, while grabbing the elbow of Hughes with the other.

  I’d only just regained my feet when the creature burst forth from the hatch that Hughes and Ariel had escaped from.

  Finally I could let my anger off the leash, and allow the fire that filled my veins with an incandescent hatred to have its voice.

  The creature was oblivious and approached to claim its prey, only to be shot four times at close range by the last of the Manstoppers in my gun. They fractured and splintered its newly regenerated shell, but they didn’t kill it, and as I dropped my empty gun onto the canopy the creature came forward again.

  The fire which raged in my veins now consumed me utterly, and as I fought the creature with my bare hands I felt almost disembodied from the raging thing that punched, time and again with bloodied knuckles into the creatures already fractured and splintered shell, until eventually I was re
warded with the feel of soft and yielding flesh beneath my hands.

  It should’ve killed me. No sane human being could fight a Lamphrey hand to hand and hope to live. As my hands clawed at its exposed flesh it sprang back away from me, it’s savage brain suddenly realising that even without a gun, with my clothes torn to shreds and my life’s blood flowing from the countless unfelt wounds which covered my body, it was no longer the hunter, it was the prey, my prey.

  The ship continued to spin and climb up through the cloudless sky, but none of it mattered, my prey was all that mattered, and when it turned to run I pursued it, and as we tumbled over the side of the ship I once more had it within my grasp. It was desperate now, fighting to get away, but still I hammered into it with my fists, ripping its soft flesh with my claw-like fingers. Twisting it’s oh so flexible limbs into positions even they could not tolerate without breaking.

  And in that moment with the molten lava of rage filling my veins, with the creatures broken body beneath my fists and its life-blood between my teeth, even then as I continued to batter its face and limbs to pulp I suddenly felt at one with myself.

  The story continues in:

  ‘Through Glass Darkly – Episode 3’

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