The Expanding Universe 4: Space Adventure, Alien Contact, & Military Science Fiction (Science Fiction Anthology)

by Craig Martelle

  Alarms wailed.

  “You wanna repay this life debt, start repaying, smart guy. Evasive freaking maneuvers!”

  Lork lunged forward, thrusting his hands deep into the control sleeves at the console. He twisted right, slamming his paw shaped foot on a floor lever, engaging the left thrust, shoving it all the way down. The Delorean wheezed as it jerked right, shuddering.

  “Whoa!” Jed screamed. “Let’s not tear the ship apart while we’re trying to avoid getting the ship torn apart!”

  Lork ignored him and eased on the left thrust, then rammed his arms forward, sending the smuggling ship plunging into a tight, forward roll as the space they had occupied was filled with a neon green grid work of phased fire. Lork moved his left paw to a second lever, then shoved his right paw to where his left paw was, massaging the emergency thruster controls of the smuggling ship. Jed lurched left and clasped his hands around the main firing controls.

  The DeLorean was a Megratz class freighter, a ship designed to carry cargo, though Jed had spent a decade overhauling it with weapons systems and faster than light engines. Wrapping his fingers around twin control sticks, he engaged the primary weapons systems, two sets of quad-barrel cannons mounted on rounded turrets just under the twin nose of the ship’s bow. Lork sent the DeLorean curling away from the ships above and Jed yanked back on the sticks, twisting the turrets as far up as they could go.

  “Eat hot light, skin suits!” he screamed, fingers tightening on the sticks, and sending scorched light screaming through space and stars. The small ship in the center of the three, spasmed left, a desperate escape maneuver, but not quickly enough and the first volley of eight bolts struck it dead center in the underside of the paneled fighter. Metal buckled and melted, steam burst out into space and the ship tumbled away, the smooth armor of its underside glowing a super-heated orange, thrusters trailing plasma.

  The two large war ships converged.

  “The big boys are coming at us!” Jed shouted as green light streaked down around them. Three short, narrow beams glanced off the left side, sending the DeLorean rushing starboard, but Lork compensated, flooring the thrusters. The swift motion threw Jed backwards unexpectedly, and he tumbled out of his chair, whirling down and right, crashing onto the hard floor as the small, semi-circular ship punched in between the larger cruisers. Phased fire railed around them, but within moments they’d shot too close to the cruisers for targeting, and Lork twisted the ship sideways, narrowly cutting through the small space where the third ship had been moments before.

  Large, bulbous spacecraft passed them on each side, the thick metal panels almost larger than the DeLorean on their own passed along each side window as they surged forward. They could see the large cruisers attempting to come around, but the smaller smuggling ship was too fast and as it passed between them, Lork angled it right and slammed on the thrust, shooting it towards the vague, circular collection of jagged rocks floating aimlessly ahead. Jed looked at it, his eyes widening, and he pulled away from the weapons controls, turning towards Lork.

  “I’ll get the controls,” he said quietly.

  Lork regarded him curiously, but stepped away and offered him the ship guidance systems.

  “Do you see what you are looking for, Jedidiah Kramer?” he asked. Jed looked into the monitor screens to his right and verified that the larger battle cruisers were still coming around, but were a greater distance behind them, their thrusters pushing them through empty space. The hope was by the time they’d come around, the DeLorean would be within range of Ultega-4.

  “Jed?”

  Jed turned back around nodding, when the ship jolted left, shuddering violently.

  Lork spun, looking at the near space detection systems.

  “The third ship!” he shouted. “Our weapons fire knocked it back, but didn’t destroy it. They’ve restored power and locked onto us with a tractor beam!”

  “Dammit!” Jed shouted. “I let the planet distract me.” He clamped his fingers around the guidance controls and slammed them straight forward, moving his feet to engage thrust. The ship revved and whined, but would not move. He turned towards Lork. “Get back into the reactor room! Divert power from weapons to thrust, we need to break free!”

  “It’s not going to work, Jedidiah. The traction field has us locked in. I’ve seen fields like this hold down Martian frigates with twenty times our thrust capabilities.”

  “Then what do you suggest we do?” asked Jed, turning on his first mate.

  A loud, echoing metallic whang echoed throughout the entire ship, the controls jumping in Jed’s tight grasp.

  “What I suggest we do,” Lork said, “is prepare to be boarded.”

  ***

  The piercing blue glow of a cutting tool screamed in the dim passage near the aft section of the DeLorean. Reflective light bent around the contours of the twisting hallway, illuminating in a spastic strobe of white and pale green. Slowly the path of the light followed a rectangular shape, burning through outer hull, carving a straight path up, around, down, then back over. A square of melted composite, reinforced armor plating hummed with a dull, orange ember, looking like a floating apparition, then a massive metal bang shook the wall and knocked the square chunk of hull free. It toppled forward and slammed down onto the metal floor, its metal on metal impact nearly deafening within the tight confines of the narrow hallway.

  One long leg worked its way through the opened passage, moving from airlock to airlock, the extended boarding tube mingling the atmosphere of one ship with the other, keeping out the sucking, cold vacuum of space. Following the leg was an equally long and sinewy shape, a body that seemed far too narrow to sustain its own weight, tall and thin beyond all understandable proportion. Thick, tough blackness covered the creature’s skin, almost like third-degree burns, only the flesh was in its natural state.

  Twin arms moved as if no bones were inside, contorting and twisting, holding a two-handled rifle as the dark-skinned creature finished its cross over the threshold and into the DeLorean’s aft passage. Moving into the darkened hallway, its appearance became more revealed, moving from dark shadow to dark shadow, as if embodying darkness, peeling itself away from one black place to another. Twin ovals sat in its blackened flesh face, colored in a reflective milky white, and although there were no pupils, the whites themselves shifted, as if liquid beneath a thin transparent dome, splashing left and right as they looked up and down the hallway.

  Cast in a sparse white light, the first creature was wearing a thin wrap of furred skin around its waist like a loincloth, with pale leather-like fabric tied tight in a bandana over its narrow, hairless scalp. Its mouth worked against the darkened shine of its flesh, though it didn’t speak.

  The first stalked down the hall, spine bent, head swiveling back and forth. Twin slits where a nose normally was flared in and out, trying to catch any spare scent in the air. A long, sleek tongue slithered from between withered flaps and slicked up over the dark, hard reptile skin, revealing needle points of yellowed, serrated teeth. Two more followed the first, a collection of three wraiths, all adorned in various swaths of shorn flesh, some of it covered with fur, some with scales, some just the plain leather skin of men. They moved almost without noise, like shifting shadows brought solid.

  Emerging from the hallway out into a more brightly lit central cargo hold, the first Lestalt, crouched low, touching three long fingers to the smooth, grated floor, while the oblong head turned, white eyes contorting, adjusting to the fresh light. The central hold of the ship was circular, a rounded, open area, each side lined with several grated compartments. In the middle of a quartet of compartments on each side were small bays, air lock systems leading out to easy access ramps for loading and unloading.

  The creature in the lead gestured towards the compartments on one side and all three of them headed that way, backs bent, heads down, weapons elevated. They hesitated near one of the compartments and turned slowly, milky, luminescent eyes shifting.

&nb
sp; Just beyond the grated door, something scraped and banged. The three dark-skinned Lestalts glared at each other, their faces splitting into strange, off color grins.

  ***

  Jexane - Planet of the Federation.

  Four solar cycles ago.

  Jed swung around the corner, already lifting his blaster up into a two-handed firing hold, swiveling, glaring into the growing darkness. Just to his left and behind him Lork lumbered along, coming up onto two feet, lifting his rifle, eyes gleaming in the scant light.

  “I hear his footsteps, but why do we chase him Jedidiah? He is an officer of the Federation, we would be better off attempting an escape!”

  Jed took a step forward, still in his rigid firing posture.

  “He may be in the Federation, but he knows something, too. He drew me here with intel on the Black Rock, and I ain’t leaving here until I get what I came for.”

  “Considering what you came for is a return to Federation Space, then I am inclined to agree with you, Mister Kramer.” Lights flooded into the alley, shattering the dull darkness with blinding beams of white and pale blue. Lork hissed and drew back, his nocturnal vision burned by the sudden blast of brightness. All around the spotlights Jed could see shadowed figures shifting left and right, pressing forward, and he knew there was a whole group of them out there, getting ready to swarm them.

  “Lork, on your left!” he shouted, but his fur-covered comrade remained blinded by the assault of lights, and turned too far left, bringing his rifle around. Three uniformed men burst from the side, and wrapped around him, arms curling and padded gloves grabbing, pulling him down into a twisting, thrashing heap on the ground. Jed spun on them, bringing the blaster around.

  “Hold up, Kramer!” shouted Officer Beliveau stepping forward, his own Federation issued phase weapon drawn and pointed at the smuggler. “We’ve got you nailed, deserter.”

  “Take it easy with the ‘d-word’,” Jed said, leaning over and placing his weapon on the stone floor of the carved passage. “I told you, I was pretty sure I got kicked out.”

  “Well, you’re officially getting invited back.”

  “And you’re officially full of crap.”

  Beliveau narrowed his eyes.

  “You know why I’m here,” Jed hissed. “You lured me here. Spread those rumors about Black Rock and Ultega-4.”

  Beliveau couldn’t help the cockeyed smirk from turning his mouth.

  “There’s some truth to that,” Jed said quietly, keeping his hands raised.

  “Course there is,” Beliveau replied. “Federation’s been mining Black Rock out of Ultega-4 for thousands of cycles.”

  Jed’s eyes widened.

  “You didn’t know that, did you? Didn’t get the proper clearance while you were in the Navy? Or were you just not there long enough?”

  “C’mon, Beliveau,” Jed said, his voice thin. “Don’t jerk me around on this. You know my history. You must, otherwise you wouldn’t have used it to draw me here.”

  To his left, Lork crouched in a halfway standing posture, his arms pulled tight behind his slender body. Three men continued huddling around him, pinning him into a contained position.

  “Yeah, I know how important it is,” Beliveau sneered. “Doesn’t matter much, anyway. You’d never survive the trek out there to The Dark.”

  Jed’s smirk shifted into a low scowl. “The Dark? That’s where it is?”

  “The fringes, yeah. It touches the Darkened Zone. Until a little while ago, it was wholly under Federation control.”

  “What happened?”

  “Skin Suits happened,” Beliveau replied, his weapon still leveled at Jed’s chest. “The Lestalts. Their home world is within The Dark, just inside, less than a quadrant from Ultega-4. That’s why that whole region is dark, why the Federation hasn’t mapped it yet.”

  “The skins aren’t real,” Jed replied. “They’re just boogeymen. Inventions by the Federation to keep its citizens from being too nosy into uncharted space.”

  Beliveau shrugged. “You’re kinda right. The Lestalts are very real, but the Federation may have… artificially inflated their threat, at least throughout all of space. In the Darkened Zone though? They’re very real and very nasty, and for some reason they decided they wanted Ultega-4. Drove the Feds out a while ago, and we haven’t gotten the guts to send anyone back yet.”

  Jed nodded.

  “Look,” Beliveau hissed. “This isn’t old home day, kid. You’re coming with us, got it? We’re bringing you in, here and now, and you’re gonna answer for your crimes.”

  Jed drew in a breath, looking down at his feet. “What do you think about that, Lork?”

  Beside him, Lork stiffened, his pinned arms locking rigid, and his posture pulling him straight.

  “Not sure I care for that plan, Jedidiah Kramer. I’ve had my fill of cages, thank you.”

  Beliveau’s eyes darted towards Lork for a moment, and the DeLorean weapons specialist went into motion. His narrow, slick-furred head shot straight backwards, smashing into the nose of one of the men who had his arm pinned. There was a sickening dull whack, a snap of bone and split of skin and the man barked, stumbling backwards. Beliveau stepped towards Lork, shifting his aim and Jed dropped into a low crouch, sweeping his blaster from the floor of the alley. The Federation officer recovered enough to turn back towards him and fire, but the beam of solid light scorched the air above Jed’s head and his own weapon snapped off three swift bursts. Green beams of phased energy punched into Beliveau’s chest, throwing him backwards, the smell of burnt fabric and scorched flesh filling the air in the narrow passage.

  Jed turned his weapon towards Lork just in time to see the tall rodent creature lunge forward, slamming a second soldier high against the curved stone wall, his feet a meter off the ground. He spun as the man plummeted to the ground, landing awkwardly on his shoulder and head. The last armed man moved in towards Lork, but Jed moved more quickly and adjusted aim, then fired again, two swift bolts, the first driving into the man’s right knee, buckling him, with the second striking a moment later, high in his right shoulder, throwing him hard left into stone. He struck and fell, joining the other men on the rock floor at Lork’s feet.

  Jed flashed Lork a sideways smirk. “I love it when a plan comes together.”

  Lork looked at him vacantly, then bent over, scooped up his rifle and joined the DeLorean captain as he walked back towards the entrance to the bar. As Jed passed the crumpled baseball cap on the stone floor, he bent, lifted it, smoothed the fabric, and pulled it tight over his thick bush of dark hair, spinning the bill around behind him. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders to get the duster fitting better, then pushed through the door, letting it close behind them.

  ***

  Local airspace near the Darkened Zone at Ultega-4.

  Now.

  Jed looked at his feet from within the tight confines of the storage compartment. Resting on the metal grated floor, one of the toolkits sat on its side, the lid opened and metal tools scattered throughout the floor at his feet.

  “Crud,” he said quietly. The door to the compartment had horizontal slots for ventilation all throughout it, and he could see the shrouded movements of the Skin Suits on the other side. As soon as the tool box had hit the floor, the movements of the shapes had halted, blocking the light of the cargo hold. He could see the elongated, vaguely human shaped forms on the other side twist as if coming around to peer between the slates of the compartment door.

  Jed drew in a deep breath and held it, his entire body locking still, muscles clenching so he could hold his pose and his posture. Narrow, dark-skinned fingers reached between the slats, probing inside the storage closet, groping over the metal, the thin slats bending as the creatures outside tried to pry their hands into the small room.

  Jed pushed himself further back into the compartment, the shelves pressing tight into his spine and shoulders. Thin beads of sweat formed at his hairline, thin trickles of cold running down his forehead an
d over his cheeks, his skin feeling clammy. He could see the force increasing on the thin doors to the compartment and they actually started bending, the metal giving way and pressing inward, twisting in the grip of the long, thick fingers. They hesitated for a moment, then squeezed between the slats, rending metal and crunching it into a twisted fistful of foil. Jed could see the veins protruding on the dark, leathery skin of the creature’s hands as it tensed, then it lurched backwards, pulling, tearing the metal door from its hinges, ripping it free with a screeching, ripping shriek, tossing the rectangle of steel away, sending it clattering across the floor, crashing into the compartments across the hold.

  Jed looked out into the empty rectangle and saw them then, all three of them, tall and shadowed, narrow, milky eyes glaring. Jed had been a smuggler for at least half of his life and he’d seen any manor of freaky things, both normal and alien, and he could feel his guts turning to liquid as he stared upon these three creatures, tough and dark, wearing strips of flayed flesh over their narrow limbs and torsos.

  The lead creature extended a narrow, bony arm and pointed one of his long fingers towards Jed, his mouth prying open to reveal the thick, scaly tongue.

  “Who, me?” Jed asked, looking around the narrow closet as if there might be other people inside. He stepped forward, out into the cargo hold, his right hip bumping against the edge of the wall as he did. He could feel the dull weight in his holster as he moved and hoped they didn’t see it as well.

  As he entered the hold, they spread apart, forming around him, their heads cocking to the side as they glared at him, their blank, white eyes afixed. Jed let his arms fall to his side, his right hand touching the blaster at his hip, but not making any drastic movements. All three of them still looked at him with a strange blank intensity, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the swath of pale flesh that wrapped around the leader’s scalp, tied tight like a bandana over his bald dome.