by S. A. Lusher
“You sure? I mean, if the military’s in on this...”
“It’s not like we have a lot of options. We’re stuck out here. We either need to get to a working radio or a working ship with FLT flight, neither of which are on this station. The vessel is likely the safer between the two. If we go down to that planet, there’s no promises that we’ll make it back up again. We’re just going to have to gamble it,” Eric replied.
Greg sighed, figuring he was right.
“No more gambling...” Drake muttered. “Pissed away all our credits already goddamnit...”
Both of them hurried over to him. Greg knelt and pulled open one of his eyelids, flashing a penlight he’d found among the medical supplies over it a few times. “Hey, come on, quit it with that,” Drake groused.
“Pupils are reactive,” Greg muttered.
“Drake, are you okay?” Eric asked. “How do you feel?”
He pushed weakly at them and they gave him some space, then he opened his eyes. He blinked slowly as he studied them. “Weak as hell...what happened?...wait, I remember. The poison. I’m guessing from the fact that I’m still breathing and the relieved looks on your faces that you found the antidote?”
“Yeah, we got it,” Greg replied. “How do you feel?”
“Like hammered shit,” he muttered. “Got an awful taste in my mouth, my head’s killing me, but...the effects of the poison are almost gone. I don’t feel like puking anymore and my joints don’t hurt like someone poured fucking sand in them. I’m just...weak as hell. I’m exhausted. I feel like I could sleep for ninety hours.”
“Afraid that’s not an option, we found a way off this shithole,” Eric replied.
He sighed. “Of course...gimme a minute to rest, then help me up.”
Greg nodded. “A few minutes, then we have to get moving.”
CHAPTER 06
–Escape–
“Well...fuck my life,” Eric said.
Greg glanced back from his position in the hold of the troop transport they’d found. It was small but sturdy and, from the exterior, looked to be in working order. Drake was currently resting in one of the seats, getting his strength back. It had been a relatively short and safe walk to the hangar in Sector Six from the Control Room, although they’d had to put down a pair of Shadows and a scattering of Mutants and Harvesters.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The ship isn’t shipshape,” Eric replied unhappily. “There’s a reason it was left behind. I knew it was too good to be true.”
“Can you fix it?” Drake asked.
Eric stood up and moved to stand in the doorway between the cockpit and the hold. “Yes. Provided I get the parts I need, and a certain tool. There’s a part I’ve got to get out of a panel here in the floor and it takes a real delicate piece of hardware to get it out properly. I, uh...” he glanced at Drake. “I don’t imagine you’re up for a jaunt yet.”
Drake shook his head. “I’m sorry, no. I’m down for the count. Tough to stay awake right now, honestly,” he replied.
“I need to stay here and get to work on the ship, make sure there’s nothing else wrong with it, see what other data I can pull maybe, make sure power and fuel levels are right...” he explained, looking reluctantly at Greg.
“I get it,” he replied, nodding. “Don’t worry, I’ve done this before. I’m getting kind of good at it,” he added.
“Be careful,” Drake replied.
“Always am,” Greg lied.
“Here,” Eric said, turning around and going back into the cockpit. A moment later he returned with an infopad. “Take this, it’s got what we’re looking for on it. Also, you’ll want to get into the traffic control tower. That should get you easiest access to the inventory manifest.”
“Thanks,” Greg replied, accepting it.
He spent a moment checking out his weapons, ultimately deciding to leave the SMG behind since it didn’t have any ammo left. Once he was sure his shotgun and pistol were ready for action, he walked back down the ramp at the rear of the ship and then closed it behind him. He took a moment to look around the hangar bay.
It looked just as awful as when they’d first passed through it fifteen minutes ago. Several bits of bodies scattered across the bloodstained deckplates, with broken glass and random debris mixed in. They’d passed the control tower coming in and Greg had marked its location in his head almost subconsciously. He headed there now, pistol in hand, not wanting to waste any shotgun shells if he could help it.
Jogging back across the bay, Greg reached the door that would take him into the second hangar bay, which would grant him access to the control tower. When he’d last been through, it had looked clear, but they hadn’t really done a thorough search. Anything could be lurking in the darkness or behind some crates. He kept his pistol ready as he began navigating the second hangar. Greg cleared his mind, listening, letting himself become in tune with his surroundings. It was really the only hope he had to getting out of this alive.
And it served him well.
He spun to the right as he heard a soft whispering and squeezed the trigger twice. A Shadow that had come gliding out from behind some crates, intent on his death, vaporize as the bullets hit it dead on. He heard more whispering dead ahead and spun back, spying two more of the awful, impossible, alien creatures. He popped off another five shots and put them down, then remained frozen, waiting to see if anything else would show up. When nothing did, he pushed on, hurrying through the scattered supplies and tipped over crates, around the skeletal remains of a jump ship that had been set on fire and left to burn at some point, and to the exit.
Once he arrived at the doors that would lead him to the tower, he opened them up and looked inside. Nothing. He jogged up the ascending staircase until he reached the top and, once he had cleared the control room, he took a seat of the primary workstation and set to work getting into the inventory manifest for the hangars. Thankfully, it didn’t take him all that long to navigate the menus and call up the manifest.
He ultimately determined that all of the things he was looking for, (three parts and one tool), could be found in the next area over: the vehicle maintenance bays. Of course, that was provided that everything was where it was supposed to be. Sighing quietly at having to keep doing shit like this, Greg marked the locations on his map, then got up and began making his way slowly back down the control tower.
“All right, Eric, I’ve hunted down what we need. On my way to get it now,” he said.
“Perfect. Greg, listen, I’ve found something interesting. I’ve been looking through that information you pulled from the scientist’s terminal. I’m pretty sure we’re right about this whole thing, about who might be behind it. I’ve found a few references to a woman named General Jericho and I’m pretty sure I know who they’re talking about. She was a big-time player in the Systems Wars. Led a lot of successful campaigns.”
“And you think she’s here?”
“It seems to be that way. Volker was reporting to her. Speaking of reports...”
Greg listened as he reached the bottom of the control tower, waiting for Eric to go on. He poked his head out of another door opposite the one he’d originally come in through. The vehicle repair bay lay beyond.
“There’s research notes here about the Altered, uh, the mutations. Says here they found an underground cache of them hidden away on this planet. They’ve been synthesizing things from the Slugs. Poisons, toxins, new chemicals, even medical treatments. And the Shadows...”
“Where’d they find them?”
“On a moon...on the other side of the galaxy. Pretty far out. They found them about a month ago it says here. They’ve been measuring them, testing them for...I’m not sure.”
“All right, keep reading. I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Got it.”
Greg headed out into the repair bay, finding himself in a huge, warehouse-sized room that looked to be a completely disorganized mess. He imagined that even when th
e base was occupied by humanity and running as it was supposed to it had been a chaotic proliferation of confusion. Workbenches and tables were spread out all over the place in between stacks of crates and huge pieces of machinery and parts of ships.
Things lurked in the maze of crates and equipment.
All he had to do was get in, grab the stuff and get out. Easy, hopefully. Except that it was rarely easy. With the locations of where he was supposed to be going locked in his mind, he first broke left, passing in between a stack of crates and a large piece of machinery that he couldn’t even guess the function of. He ended up switching to his shotgun because of the close quarters. You tended to need to kill things in a hurry in close quarters.
He kept his attention focused as he slipped around the stack of crates, finding nothing there. He pressed on, working his way slowly towards the left side of the room where there was supposed to be a cabinet that held the tool Eric had been talking about. He kept moving, occasionally hearing sounds from somewhere near by, quiet muttering that he’d come to associate with the Mutants or the soft whispering of the Shadows.
They made his skin crawl.
The cabinet in question came into view, a big, bulky thing of dull gray metal. He checked his peripheral and then quickly pulled open the appropriate drawer.
“There you are,” he whispered, finding the tool in question. He found an empty toolkit, set it inside and snapped the kit shut, then attached it to his belt. He turned around and began heading for the back of the room. The things he was looking for were in three different locations, one to the left, one at the back, one to the right. He was hoping to move in a diamond pattern and get the hell out of here quickly. He hated Tempest Station and wanted to be done with it as soon as possible. He plunged back into the maze of parts and technology.
The first attack came abruptly, without warning.
Greg turned a corner and found himself face to face with a waxy horror that used to be a security guard, judging by the type of uniform it was wearing. The thing let out a roar of inhuman fury and lunged for him. Greg was already squeezing the trigger before he knew what he was doing and he watched as the entire beast’s head vaporized in a chunky plume of deep red gore. He liked that he could count on his reflexes like that, but he didn’t like the fact that he had apparently just alerted everything else in the room to his presence.
Cursing, he shouldered the shotgun and began hurrying through the maze.
He almost made it to the back of the room, where two of the parts resided close together. Right as he prepared to finish heading down the alcove he was in, created between a pair of larger shelves, a Shadow stepped out in front of the exit to the alcove. He cursed, aimed and fired, blasting the thing back to hell.
Almost before it had finished diffusing into the air, another one appeared and leaped silently for him. Cursing, Greg blasted it too. This one got close enough that he could feel a wave of deep, deep cold radiating off of it. He shivered as he watched it die, then finished leaving the alcove after waiting to see if any more would come. He did a quick search as he listened to the incessant whispering and the growling of the Mutants. They must have started fighting each other, he realized with relief. Not that it’d be much of a fight.
Sixty seconds later, he’d secured two of the three parts he needed.
With hope in his heart, Greg turned and hurried across the bay. He put down another pair of Shadows and a Mutant, all the others took care of each other for the most part. He managed to snag the last part, secure it and get the hell out of there. Within five minutes, he was back through the hangar bays and in the ship with Drake and Eric.
“Nicely done,” Eric said, accepting the kit.
“Yep,” Greg replied, dropping into one of the seats across from Drake. He felt like shit, even after the shower and meal and medicine, he still had a headache and his muscles were sore. As Eric set to work on making the necessary repairs, he and Drake began discussing the nature of the current situation they found themselves in.
“So...Hawkins said he thought someone had an axe to grind,” Greg said. “I remember him telling me that once. With Anomalous Ops. Obviously this is someone in the military. They break into top secret installations, they have monsters we’ve faced down before, they captured us...what the hell are they playing at?”
“Money,” Drake replied. “Isn’t that always the answer? Money?”
“I guess so,” Greg murmured. “Money makes enough sense...they were obviously doing research on the creatures. Something still feels kinda off about the whole thing. I mean, why bother with us? Whatever they were doing was obviously working...I mean, you know, for a while at least. Why risk getting discovered by coming after us? They had to know that Hawkins would move planets to search for us.”
“Maybe he’s dead,” Drake said quietly.
Greg felt a cold stone settle into his gut. He hadn’t even considered that. What if everyone else was dead?
“I guess we won’t find out until later,” he responded finally.
What if Vanessa was dead? He honestly didn’t think he could handle that, so he put the skills he’d been building up on avoiding things to work and stopped thinking about it. “There’s nothing we can do about it right now,” he said, a little more harshly than he meant to. “We need to focus on the situation at hand...did you find anything out about that ship?”
“No, but I didn’t get to a lot of it,” Eric replied. “Take the file and look it over, see if you can find anything,” he said.
Greg retrieved the infopad from the cockpit and sat back down, then started looking through it. It was difficult to concentrate, especially considering that most of what he was finding were all sorts of weird reports that just seemed like random strings of letters and numbers. He only knew enough about chemistry and biology to know that he was looking at something related to one or both of those fields, and that was it.
By the time he’d given up on finding anything relevant, Eric had finished fixing the ship and was firing it up.
“All right, we’re in business!” he said as the engines flared to life. “And I’ve got a bit of good news,” he added as he led them out of the station.
“Oh yeah?” Greg replied as he settled into his seat and strapped in.
“I found some docking codes in this thing’s database for the ship. We might be able to fool them long enough to get onboard. After that...well, I guess we’ll have to think on our feet,” Eric explained. The ship shuddered as it left the station.
“What we do best,” Drake said.
They all fell silent as Eric led them out into space. Greg looked out the windows, trying to discern something, anything at all, but there was just the stars. He had just started to let himself relax when Eric began cursing. Warning alarms sounded in the cockpit. Greg snapped to attention, looking around for the threat.
“What is it!?” he asked.
“Fuck! The ship’s locked onto us and they’ve fired missiles. I’m trying to-” He was cut off as an explosion tore through the small ship. Greg undid his belt and staggered to his feet as a fire broke out. He went for the extinguisher.
“Shit! We’re hit, I’m getting us away...fuck, we’ve got to head for the planet!” Eric called. “I’ll try to get us as close to that colony as I can!”
Greg was only half-listening as he put out the fire with quick sprays of foam, trying to get it killed before it did any real damage.
He managed to put it out just in time for something else to explode. There was an eruption of blinding, white-hot pain across the back of his head…
And then everything was dark again.
CHAPTER 07
–Crash–
Awake again.
In pain again.
Greg forced his eyes open and stared up at a cracked hull. Snowflakes drifted across his vision and he could hear a shrieking wind. No, scratch that. He could feel the shrieking wind and holy shit was it cold. Slowly, painfully, he began to check himself over, run
ning his hands carefully across his limbs, his torso, his head. He felt fairly sure that nothing was broken, but he knew he was too cold to really tell. Not a great sign.
How long had he been out?
What had happened-the crash came back to him like a gunshot and he sat up faster than he probably should have. Wincing at the pain, he realized he was on the floor of the transport’s hold. He could see Drake leaning over a prone figure.
“Is he okay?” Greg asked, his voice coming out as a croak.
“He’s unconscious,” Drake replied quietly. “And he hit his head pretty hard. He’s bleeding. I’m worried.”
“Shit,” Greg muttered. “Can’t ever catch a fucking break, can we?”
“Well...we made it down at least,” Drake replied.
“You seem more optimistic than you used to,” Greg said, slowly getting to his feet. Well...his legs weren’t broken at least. But fuck did they hurt.
“Trying to be,” Drake replied. “Figured that if the situation is shit, then it’s gonna be shit regardless of my attitude, so why not try to be positive instead of negative?”
“Is it working?”
“It’s...a process.”
Greg snorted. “I guess it would be. How long have you been awake?” He started looking around the cabin, trying to hunt down his supplies. Nothing had stayed on him in the crash and now he had to gather his arsenal again.
“Five minutes maybe,” he replied. “I checked on you and then once I saw you were breathing and relatively intact, I started tending to Eric.”
As he got closer, Greg saw that Drake had an emergency medical kit cracked open on the chilled deck beside Eric. He frowned, his head wound did look pretty bad. Another problem on the list. And the cold was really starting to get to him. Greg quickly finished his search of the hold and found two things. The first was his pistol, free of its holster, which was nowhere to be found. And his shotgun...which had been broken in the crash. He moved into the cockpit and looked all over it, but his SMG was nowhere to be found.