by Max Carver
“I can't say I know what one looks like,” Eric replied.
“It's an iridium-alloy chiliahedron.”
“So...it looks like a metal chili pepper?”
“It's a shape with a thousand faces. About a meter in diameter. It will look spherical.”
Eric snorted, looking down at the rings as he skimmed over them. They were an impressive sight, thousands of kilometers across, composed of millions of chunks of rock and ice, some the size of icebergs and mountains, others small enough to fit in a cocktail glass.
“I'm never going to find anything that small out here,” he said. Then he felt a tugging sensation. “Wait. Okay, that makes sense. The drone's autopilot can get me to the gate. Or to the port. Where should I go first?”
“Check the port,” Hagen said.
“You got it,” Eric said. “Or should I say, 'aye aye, sir'? Or 'arrrrrr, cap'n!' if we're pirates?”
“Don't say any of it. Just fly.”
“Just flying, sir.” Eric focused on the view ahead as the autopilot took the drone up and away from the glittering icy rings.
The spaceport came into view, orbiting high above the gas giant. It was so dark that he only saw it when the drone's navigation pointed it out. The port should have been ablaze with lights.
“Looks like trouble,” Eric whispered. “I'm slowing down and cutting in close.”
His heart sank as he approached the thirty-story structure of the port. It looked like nothing so much as a turkey carcass two or three days after a Pilgrim Day feast, the skin and meat stripped and eaten down to reveal the bones beneath.
Valentine Station looked like it had been attacked with heavy explosives up and down its length, as if the goal had been to rip through every compartment, to suck out all the atmosphere and kill everyone inside.
A vast debris field floated around the ruptured spaceport—furniture, plants in clouds of soil, glowing ads for cigarettes and beer that had probably hung in the port's taverns.
Eric saw a dead body—lifeless and pale, a hefty guy dressed in blood-stained mechanic's coveralls. He passed a woman's body a few minutes later, clutching a hardhat in her hands, a look of terror frozen on her face.
“I'm going in,” Eric said, fighting the urge to be sick. He'd been fighting a lot of those urges lately.
Nobody said anything. Everyone could see what he saw; it was projected above his console on the bridge.
He flashed his reverse thrusters, dropping his speed as he flew into a long, deep rupture in the side of the spaceport. He felt like he was diving into a dark underwater trench, one that was known to be brimming with monsters.
The port was a huge structure. Most of it consisted of refineries and storage depots for the mineral wealth generated by mining operations on Caldera and in the system's rich asteroid belt. There were also businesses catering to the miners, ship crews, metal traders and other travelers who came through.
Eric had entered the latter area, and now drifted along a retail concourse, past signs offering dormitories and showers, bars and food stands, electronic and mechanical gear.
There were also ads for marriage chapels, “couples' hotels,” whatever those were, and assorted boutiques catering to a small clientele of wealthier tourists drawn by planet Valentine's legendary beauty and supposed reputation for romance. The romance and marriage industry apparently had its own level somewhere above.
The display case at a Sticky Buns had been shattered, its contents devoured. Blood was smeared all over the counter. A torn paper Sticky Buns hat lay on the floor in front of it, a clump of blond hair glued to it with dried blood.
“I'm landing,” Eric said.
He parked the drone on the floor.
Then he shifted modes. Four stubby limbs unfolded from the drone's underside, and the wings tucked back and away. The drone now looked like less like a small, sharply angled airplane, and more like a small humanoid. Its head was a rotating plasma cannon with a video camera atop it.
The drone-bot walked through the devastation.
Ahead, the concourse ended at a sizable gaping hole, beyond which the shredded remains of steel columns and beams hung like crepe paper.
The drone-bot walked up to the edge and looked over.
Eric took a sharp breath, and he heard a murmur of voices from the bridge. Only Bartley spoke aloud: “Now what the hell is that thing?”
Nobody could answer, at least not right away.
The core of the space station had been hollowed out, the top and bottom levels completely exposed to outer space, like a tin can that had been opened at both ends. Inner walls had been blasted open, revealing a honeycomb of rooms and storage spaces full of asteroid ore and concentrated, purified metals. The on-site refineries had been smashed along with the rest of the port.
Worms crawled through the wreckage on every side. They were covered in plated metal and working with an array of tools—mechanical tentacle-extenders, boom arms with claws and excavation attachments, cutting torches.
They were cutting Valentine Station to pieces, while robbing it of whatever valuable resources it held, from frozen food to the massive quantities of gold, platinum, and iron in the depots below.
The worms fed all the materials they collected into a web of suction tubes and conveyor belts, all of which converged on what looked like a huge mass of coral floating at the center. It looked like it was made of tubes of asteroid rock, twisted and wrapped around each other into a roughly spherical shape. The tubes opened in all directions, like gaping, hungry mouths accepting the metals and organic materials getting dumped into them. The big coral-ship could never have fit inside the spaceport without its interior and hull getting blasted open in order to accommodate its size.
“Is that a...what is that?” Alanna asked. “A giant, ugly asteroid?”
“It's a highly modified one,” Iris's voice cut in. She wasn't on the bridge with the others, but was looped in from her cabin. “I think we might be looking at the worm mothership here.”
Eric watched quietly, keeping the drone-bot perfectly still.
The worms farther down fed ore and ingots into the tubes and conveyor belts. The ones closer were loading chunks of machinery and electronics, and even plumbing and wires ripped from the walls. Some, though, had collected more grisly treasures, like a heap of clearly marked medical waste, shrouded in blood-smeared plastic, that a worm was loading up into a long suction tube.
“The worms are...mining out Valentine Station,” Eric said. “They're taking everything. They're scavengers.”
“So that big rock is a ship?” Bartley asked. “I say we blast it. Do to them what they've done to us. Wish we had some nukes on this thing.”
“It looks like a weird ball of coral reef to me,” Naomi said. “You really think we should try to destroy it? Maybe we should try sneaking on to the gate and getting out of here instead.”
“I vote for sneaking on out to the gate,” Iris said. “We can't afford to get into another battle. We have to survive and get this relic into the right hands. Not the worms' hands. I mean, tentacles. Whatever. The rest of humanity must be prepared. Our species is now at war for its survival. Most people just don't know it yet.”
They took a quick vote, and everyone except Bartley came down on the side of attempting to sneak away into the wormhole rather than attacking the worms.
“Let's see how likely that is,” Hagen said. “Rowan, take the drone to the gate marker.”
“Yes, sir.” Eric had grown more accustomed to being addressed by his surname, at least when Hagen spoke.
Eric sent the drone-bot back up the destroyed retail concourse. The bot leaped out through the ruptured hull where it had entered. It extended it wings and engaged its rear thrusters.
The drone accelerated away from the wrecked spaceport. The autopilot was sending it right into the planet's rings.
He dove into a thick region of the rings that looked like a blizzard as he flew through it, shining bits of ice rushing
past on every side. His craft dodged the larger ice formations. The interior of the ring was like a surreal painting, glaciers floating like balloons in empty space, glinting as they reflected the dull light of the system's weak sun.
The drone slowed into a long, wide circle, gradually spiraling in toward the selected destination.
From a distance, Eric couldn't discern the gate marker from any of the shining objects around it.
As he drew closer, though, he could hardly miss it—the white metal spherical shape with a thousand faces, every centimeter of it inscribed with intricate symbols of a kind Eric had never seen, carved sharp and deep into the iridium-alloy surface.
The gate marker could not have been any more different from the lumpy, asymmetrical tech constructed by the worms. It struck him as flawless, beautiful, like something divinely crafted, putting all the designs of man and worm alike to shame. He found himself staring, entranced, transfixed as if the dense symbols and soft iridium glow were hypnotizing him.
“Rowan! Wormfighters at four and seven o' clock! Look alive!” Hagen's voice barked.
Eric jumped, startled from his reverie, and saw the fighters on his rear-view.
Two worms wrapped in ribbed, spiked armor approached, having crept up behind him through the kilometers of ice and rock. Finlike attachments scattered all over their armored bodies glowed white, propelling the space worms forward on bursts of plasma. Lumpy balls of solid metal encased their heads, helmets that would have rendered any human unable to see, hear, or breathe.
The worms opened fire with scrap guns, but Eric was now much better at piloting the drone than when he'd fought the worms in the skies of Caldera. He dodged the converging streams of high-speed scrap, dipping steep and low.
He glanced back, worried their bombardment might damage the ancient gate marker. None of the shots seems to strike it, though. Either the worms were being careful, or the marker had some way of subtly nudging the metal pieces aside if they came too close. Or maybe it was just an extremely lucky piece of machinery. He supposed that if the gate marker had survived for thousands of years surrounded by massive amounts of moving ice and rock debris, it wasn't too likely to be destroyed by stray shrapnel from the worms' guns.
Eric twisted around in a tight circle, dodging behind a chunk of ice bigger than his whole house back home. He emerged in a good spot to strike one of the worms, so he engulfed it in white fire.
The other worm fired a barrage from its scrap-gun and immediately followed it up with a quick plasma burst. This turned all the chunks of scrap into glowing blue blobs of molten metal. The molten metal blobs burrowed into his drone like worms into an apple, spreading out as they went, burning tunnels through his electrical and mechanical systems, eating up everything.
The drone continued onward in a straight line, running on pure inertia. He couldn't change course, and his cameras were beginning to sputter.
The fire-damaged worm, the one he'd actually hit, curved around in front of Eric, blocking his fixed course.
Three huge guns swiveled toward Eric, staggered at uneven intervals along the worm's length. Eric thought of the old-time galleon in his drone tutorial, turning broadside toward him and raising its row of cannons.
Shrapnel, plasma, and a long spear with a high-speed drill bit for a head launched at Eric.
He set his drone's plasma cannon on autofire, letting it blast at full strength until all the reserves were depleted.
The worm was again engulfed in white fire as he approached it like a kamikaze, unable to do anything except tense himself for the inevitable crash.
He passed into the expanding cloud of plasma...and, miraculously, right out the other side.
Red lights flashed everywhere. The drone was devastated, its hull melting and its sensors burning out.
Eric caught a final glimpse through the melting drone's rear-facing camera eye. The worm had been cut in half by Eric's plasma attacks. The two sections floated apart, the plasma cloud already stretching out thin between them.
The second worm arrived and started shooting, and the signal from the drone was lost, leaving Eric in total darkness.
“You made chop suey outta that one!” Bartley's voice shouted, while a hefty hand clapped Eric on the shoulder.
Eric opened his eyes, his mind back on the bridge now. Everyone had turned toward him, most of them smiling. Hagen gave him a nod. Eric looked for Iris, but she wasn't there.
“That was good stuff,” Alanna said. She'd been training on the ship's weapons tutorials along with everyone else. She might have been a rich kid accustomed to luxury and personal servants, but she was wise enough to do her part rather than hide behind any sense of entitlement or superiority. All their lives were on the line together.
“So they're definitely guarding the gate,” Eric said. “What do we do?” He looked to Hagen.
“Iris, you can still open that gate for us, right?” Hagen asked.
“Yes.” Iris appeared in the empty seat next to Eric, startling him. She was present in hologram form only, her face hidden by her purple cowl. “I can open it from this ship, but I can't do anything to stop those worms.”
“Hey, this ship's no floating filly herself,” Bartley said. “We've got anti-ship weapons. We've got personal armor and rifles, if it comes down to that. Hell, I'll kick those worms right in the balls with my armor-toed boots...if I can find their balls...”
“We have no idea what that big coral-ship is packing, but we have to assume it's got heavy weaponry of its own. And more space worms ready to come out and fight,” Hagen said. “Sneaking past won't be so easy...if only there were some way to distract that big ship...”
“Maybe Eric could use the relic,” Iris said, which made everyone look at her. And Eric, who was beside her hologram.
“No,” Eric said.
“He can look like anyone or anything when he wears the mask,” Iris told them.
“Seriously, bro?” Bartley asked. “Or is she going conkers?”
“I don't like it,” Eric said. “And it's not going to help us. What am I going to do, disguise myself as a worm and go ask them not to attack us? We don't even know if the mask speaks worm-ese.” Eric shook his head. “I'm not putting it on without a good reason.”
“Could you use it to disguise a spacecraft?” Hagen asked.
“Like this whole ship?” Eric asked. “I don't know. It's kind of enormous. What could we make it look like, anyway? An asteroid?”
“An asteroid of this size approaching the gate would probably draw their attention, especially if they're already looking for us,” Carol said. “They might blast an asteroid of that size anyway, just to be safe, or to protect the gate.”
“What about a smaller craft?” Hagen asked. “Like a drone or one of the research shuttles? Maybe we could make a decoy version of this ship.”
“Maybe,” Eric said. “We could try—”
“No!” Iris cut him off. “You can't put the relic on a drone and send it out there.”
“We know the relic can make things look bigger,” Eric reminded her.
“That's not the point,” Iris said. “We can't risk the worms taking the relic. We can't have them controlling the tech of the ancients, or studying it and learning from it.”
“We don't even know whether the idea would work, anyway,” Eric said, feeling unsure now.
“There are extra drones down in the weapons repair bay,” Bartley said. “You can test it down there.”
“It's worth a try.” Hagen nodded at Iris. “We're just exploring options, all right?”
“Not all right,” Iris said.
Eric, Hagen, and Bartley headed off the bridge. Iris emerged from her cabin and joined them as they passed. She was shaking her head, her face hidden under the purple hood. “We can't risk losing control of the relic. We can't.”
“Then why did you bring the mask?” Eric asked, looking at the towel-wrapped relic in her hands.
“I still want you to learn to use
the relic.” She handed it over to him. “Just not with this particular strategy.”
They eventually reached the weapons bay and placed a fully functional combat drone onto a worktable.
Eric unwrapped the mask; Bartley and Hagen muttered when they saw it looked like Loader's face.
He set the mask atop the drone. Then he pressed down on it, willing the metal to turn soft and flowing.
“Remember to visualize clearly,” Iris said. Her voice was quiet, and she was obviously still reluctant about helping him explore this plan. “Charge it with emotion.”
He visualized the Omicron Rex from the outside, the massive asteroid-cutting tools, the floating-factory design.
Emotion, he thought.
That was easy. The ship had saved them, had enabled them to escape Caldera and the worms. The ship had already carried them most of the way to the wormhole gate. If they ever got out of danger and returned safely home, it would be because of this ship. They'd witnessed a horrific amount of death and destruction; this ship was their salvation.
The iridium alloy moved and squirmed like living skin beneath his fingers.
It spread across the surface of the drone in all directions, painting itself over the drone's form until the entire craft was a soft silver-white.
Then it grew larger, extruding saws and drills and armor. The drone-sized model of the Rex swelled to fill half the room. Eric backed away as it grew, a little worried he'd get crushed back against the bulkhead.
“It's working,” Hagen said.
“I'd like to know if those gun ports are functional, though,” Bartley added.
“It's still a bad idea,” Iris insisted. “Eric, remove your hand from the relic.”
“Okay.” Eric dropped his hand and backed up another step, breaking all contact with the swelling model of the ship.
It immediately began to lose form, like a giant parade balloon that had been chainsawed open from end to end, unleashing all the air at once.
The decoy Rex collapsed into a wide, thin sheet of iridium alloy that flopped onto the floor like a spent parachute. Without a sound, it shrank up into an oval shape lying atop the drone, exactly where Eric had placed the mask.