“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I killed your friend,” Dave said.
Serif’s hand pressed a bandage over the wound. The other patted him on the back. “He was dusted. It wasn’t him anymore. The queen had taken him.”
Dave sat there for a while, letting his blood soak into the fabric as his eyesight began to return. “How bad is it?”
“You’re lucky. The arrow glanced off your shoulder blade. You will have a very bad bruise and possibly an infection, but you should live.”
“She was just a girl, Serif. Why would he do that?”
“He was very likely infected in the same way we had infected the man at the house we burned down. It was not our friend inside this body. Just a vile thing… but you saved us. Twice already today.”
Dave just shook his head, exhausted, as hands bandaged his back, stemming the flow of blood as they wrapped the cloth over his shoulder and across his chest.
“Think of the good you have done already. The four of us would have been dead yesterday in the dark if you hadn’t led us to safety. This morning you knocked down the ladders to keep the horde from following, and just now you saved us all from being killed by our own friend. Right now, we need you to help us understand the thing inside that building.”
“I’m exhausted,” Dave said, standing and wincing at the sharp pain in his back.
“We all are,” Serif stated. “How are your eyes?”
“I can see how ugly you are.” Dave smiled weakly.
“You must still be blind. Women tell me I am very handsome.”
“They lie,” Dave said.
Serif smiled. “Let’s go.”
The four of them moved down the stairs, and with each passing moment Dave’s vision improved. The movement seemed to help return things to normal.
His skin ached like the morning that he and Tony had arrived after the accident in the tunnel. The back of his hands and arms were sunburned and pink.
As they walked down the stairs, Dave turned and stood on the landing. He looked up at the door and considered the fact that there was no way he could have covered the distance without getting skewered. The lights had helped him out again. Smiling, he wondered if there were such things as guardian angels.
Then he wondered why they had not saved the girl or the people in the house. His face furrowed and winced as he turned to follow the others down the stairs.
“The light is fading. We must either get inside or wait until morning. There are too many dangers here to wander around in the dark.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Dave said. “If we can get inside now we might be able to get out of here before the zealots come calling tomorrow morning.”
“We can’t even be sure that there are not other parts of the queen here waiting and watching.”
“Always the optimist.”
“I prefer realist.”
They stood at the corner, scanning the open area between themselves and the building the girl had pointed to. After agreeing on the direction and path, they moved quickly along the edges, keeping their weapons drawn. Dave knew how exposed they were in the open space, but there was no cover between them and the building.
From the ground they could see that the glass was almost all intact. Protruding from the top three floors and out of the face of the building was an out-of-place blue cylindrical shape. It appeared like a blister of metal merged into the glass and concrete.
“She said that there was a way in on the other side,” Dave recalled.
After a few course changes to route around some heavies, they arrived at the base of the building. Skirting along its walls, Serif peeked around the rear. The side of the building sheered away. They could see the tall, cylindrical shape embedded into three of the bottom floors. It encompassed a large portion of the floor, appearing as though someone had formed the building around the canted cylinder.
Dave climbed the pile of rubble underneath and could see a hallway extending upward, almost perpendicular to the ground. The shearing of the building appeared to have cleaved the hallway as well, opening the roof for a number of metres.
“What is it?” Serif asked, stumbling over a rock before getting his bearings.
“I don’t know… maybe a ship. Tony mentioned that it might be an alien ship. It looks like it’s melted into the building… like it just appeared inside of it.”
“Do you think this is it?”
“Yeah, this is definitely it.” Dave turned, looking around the open square beyond the rubble. His eyes scanned across the bleak landscape, and he couldn’t see anything else that appeared as strange as this.
“Keep an eye out. I’m going to try to get up there,” Dave stated, moving slowly upward. His shoulder ached, and his back continued to flare as he stepped up the uneven surface.
Nearing what constituted the floor of the craft, he peered inside. Blinking lights at the far end gave him the impression that there was a powered door or a wall farther up.
Putting his fingers into the holes of the corrugated flooring, he heaved himself upward and felt his head spin from intense vertigo. Hanging on for dear life, he feared to let go and tumble down the pile of concrete and stones.
Breathing deep, he tried to find the horizon. Looking up, he realized that he was on his hands and knees, pressed to the floor by artificial gravity. Tentatively, he pulled one hand away from the floor and felt no shift in the weight.
“How are you doing that?” Serif asked from below.
“It’s not me.” Dave stood up parallel to the ground and perpendicular to Serif. Both of the men were wide-eyed and amazed at the spectacle.
“Let me look around for a second,” Dave said, stepping upward, or rather farther down the hallway, away from the group. The hallway was made of metal that appeared as though it had been formed and painted yesterday. Dave noted that there was no corrosion or aging.
Walking to the door, he fought nausea that came with checking over his shoulder and seeing the world oriented differently.
Leaning hard against the blue metal, he could feel warmth beyond the barrier. Searching in the dim light, he saw the smooth wall was broken only by a smashed control panel, its metal and plastic guts spilling out as though someone had long ago made an attempt to jerry-rig the door to open. Dave inspected closely, looking for something familiar or a connection that may remain, but only a foreign technology and a scramble of unfamiliar materials met his eye.
Vertigo struck him, and he felt his knees buckle. His empty stomach wrung itself, forcing heaves. His fingers clamped onto the grating of the floor, and he retched dryly. As quickly as it had started, the disorientation disappeared, and his feet slid out from under him to dangle toward the ground at the far end of the hallway.
Panic filled him, and his fingers clamped down harder. A moment later, the artificial gravity resumed, and he felt his weight return to the floor of the ship.
“What the hell was that?” he muttered, standing and making his way carefully back to the opening. Near the end he backed himself down on hands and knees, feeling the gravity of the world outside take hold, pulling on his legs.
Sliding farther, he hung for a moment, checking the distance to the top of the rubble pile, and released. Dizzyness took him, and he landed crumpled, trying to hold on to keep the world from spinning.
“I have never seen that before,” Serif said, looking up at the ship. “You were walking on the walls!”
“Neither have I. It must have some sort of artificial gravity.”
“How far were you able to get inside? Did you find the core?”
“Not far there is a door. Someone smashed the lock. I don’t know how to fix it. Worse yet, there seems to be some energy fluctuation. The gravity disappeared for a second or two while I was in there. I almost fell out.” Dave thought for a moment about the girl climbing and how lucky she had been not to have been caught in a power loss. Either of them would have been dropped the twenty or so feet and ejected to the ground.
“How do we ge
t inside?
“I don’t know?”
“There has to be another way in; this is an interior door and hallway. It looks like the shear has cut off this end of the ship.” Dave’s thick hand made a chopping motion along the building’s face. “Maybe we can use the building’s stairs and look for an exterior door. You have to be able to get into a vehicle through an outside door, so there must be a way inside. “
Serif moved off of the rubble pile and toward the interior of the building, stepping through an ancient office and over the collapsed wooden door. The two men followed Serif and Dave, picking their way through the rotting carpet, hanging ceiling tiles, and cables. Soon they found the central elevator next to it the stairs. The aging fire door groaned open, and the darkness of the stairwell was lit by the sliver of light.
Serif pulled torch materials from his bag and after a few sparks had a light source going. Smoke billowed in the stagnant air, but the yellow light flickered a consistent glow.
Moving again, they silently stepped up to the next floor before opening the door to inspect the ship at that level. The smooth blue metal skin appeared unbroken. No rivets or even fissures of rust marred its surface. They moved around its girth, weaving their way in and out of rooms to get around it. With no result, they returned to the stairwell and repeated the process on the next floor.
“Nothing,” Dave said, frustrated.
“It is a tall building,” Serif stated, his voice echoing in the stairwell.
“I’m more worried the door, if there is one, is going to be in between floors.”
“We can only try,” Serif said.
Each floor they exited onto was the same. Simple, smooth metal and no opening. On the thirtieth floor, Dave was trying to get his exhausted brain to determine the most efficient way of using the last of his det cord. He considered cutting a man-sized hole in the side of the ship to gain entrance.
Disappointed again, he moved up the stairs, following Serif. At the top, he reached into his pocket to retrieve the det cord and the last timer. It was the last of the explosive, and using it now meant that he wouldn’t be able to use it to disable whatever was generating the field.
“I think this is what we are looking for!” Serif yelled. He waving for Dave to come around to the side of the hull. Dave stepped through the rotting cubicle farm and around the hull to see what Serif was looking at. A circular hole, small enough that a man could crawl through, was open from the side. It sat near the ceiling, and coming from it Dave could see weak light flickering.
The edges of the hole bowed outward. The metal had stretched to accommodate a vast pressure, and the edges appeared melted. Droplets of hardened slag peppered the floor.
“Something exploded inside,” Dave said. “It looks like a shaped charge. Thermite would have melted everything…” His face was covered with confusion as he looked away from the opening.
“What is it?”
“There’s no shrapnel. No broken metal or bits of the hole. Something with that amount of force should have destroyed this room. But everything in here is intact. It’s like something just burned its way out.”
“Will this suffice as a door?” Serif pointed.
“I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.” Dave shook his head. “Let’s get inside.”
“Again… what is your fascination with these horses?”
“Just boost me up,” Dave growled.
Chapter 25
Dave squeezed through the hole, realizing that it was a tunnel of broken metal shards and sharp plastic.
“It’s really sharp up here. Watch yourself when you come in,” he yelled back out the hole.
As Dave crawled, he felt the shift in gravity again the nearer he moved toward the interior. Adjusting his crawl, he began to put more pressure on the wall and soon was crawling ninety degrees from his original position. The shift to crawling upward was disorientating.
The vertigo was less evident due to the slow change, but it still made his stomach churn for a moment.
The melted and deformed tunnel opened onto level ground, and he stood on the metal grating of the floor. The ceiling was twice his height, and the walls were spaced such that the room appeared to be a storage area. The room had equipment and materials piled haphazardly on one side, and Dave quickly realized that it was likely due to the gravity shifts.
The small room had a single door similar to the one he had seen earlier at the bottom of the ship. The only difference was that the control panel was intact and a large hole lay near the bottom half. It was similar in size to the one he had crawled through. Peering into the darkness, he opted to wait for the others before proceeding.
“Where are we?” Serif asked, pulling himself inside the small room.
“Not sure. Maybe a small closet or something,” Dave said. “More importantly if you feel dizzy, make sure you hold tight onto something. The gravity here changes direction. I almost fell out of the hallway when I first climbed inside.”
Dave looked back down the hole. “Where are the others?”
“They will make sure we are safe and guard the entrance. There are zealots already in the area who will likely follow us inside.”
Dave took solace knowing that Genie was one of the people standing guard for them. Her speed with a blade was not something he ever wanted to come up against.
It took a moment of steadying his nerves before he crawled through the hole in the door. The darkness beyond was pitch black until Serif handed him his torch.
Raising it, he swept from side to side to look for threats. All that greeted him was the stagnant air of the wide hallway and the echo of his own footsteps. Serif’s torch smoked and sputtered up at the distant ceiling, casting flickering light over the metal walls.
Dave estimated that the hallway was twice as wide as he was tall, and the ceiling was approximately twice the width of the hallway, giving it an exaggerated rectangular feeling. As far as they could see in the firelight of the torch, doors of varying sizes sat open on the sides.
Slowly moving along, Serif lifted his torch into the some of the open doors of the adjacent rooms. Most were small, and each one they checked was empty. The torch probed the darkness but found nothing.
“What was in here?” Serif asked absently.
“It reminds me of a prison,” Dave stated. “Except that there are no toilets or beds.”
They continued up the length of the room and entered a thinner hallway. A number of bulkhead doors had been forced open. Some bent away from the large hallway. Others burned through. Small rooms dotted the length. They were filled with tables and alien equipment. Each were piled against the same side from the intermittent loss of gravity.
“Are any of these what you are looking for?” Serif asked, picking up oddly shaped cutting tools.
“I don’t think so. This one looks like some sort of medical bay... or torture chamber,” Dave pointed out. The room itself was square and shorter than the hallway outside. The flat metal table that was bolted to the floor in the middle of the room had a drain in the centre.
“Let’s keep moving,” Serif said, wiping his hands on his pants.
Back out into the hall, they moved through the endless series of doors. The side rooms were a mix of open and empty or inaccessible.
When they approached one of the doors, it appeared that most of it had been melted away by some unimaginable heat.
“It looks like someone wanted through these doors,” Dave pointed out.
“A battle, perhaps?”
“Maybe, but there are no bodies. Whoever ended up fighting cleaned up after themselves.”
They continued toward the end of the ship, which was poking out of the top of the building, and soon a door almost completely shut stood in front of them. A finger-width opening allowed them to gain purchase. Working together, they braced themselves and pulled hard. The metal groaned, but it moved far enough they could gain entry.
Beyond it was yet another door. This time
a hole was burned through the metal. A dim light flickered from the opening beyond, like sunlight streaming through water.
Dave bent down and peered through the hole. “I think we have found what we are looking for.” The metal of the door was a foot thick, and a smooth tunnel had been melted through. More hardened slag had dripped from the edges. Dave squeezed his upper body through the hole and dragged his feet into the opposite room.
On standing, he held his breath at the full scene. A contorted statue of a final frozen moment of pain and destruction monopolized the room. At the centre, a swirling ball of pulsing light was suspended between three pillars, and directly under it were ten to twenty disfigured monsters, each holding on to a single spear-like contraption.
Their bodies appeared distorted and alien to his eyes. Most of them were bipeds, but a few stood on multiple legs. Their charred, merged forms reminded Dave of pictures of Pompeii and the lava-encrusted statues that had once been people.
In their final moments, this group of creatures was holding a single long pole crudely topped with a spool of copper cable. The cable’s sheath had burned away along most of its length. Dave traced it from the contact point under the sphere to a wall of instruments.
“If this isn’t the core, I don’t know what is.”
“What is it?” Serif asked, walking around them.
“I think who are they is a better question,” Dave corrected. “It looks like they were trying to attach the cable. Maybe trying to discharge it.”
“Whatever they may have been doing does not appear to have worked out well for them.”
“Agreed.” Dave stood next to the carbon-covered forms, tapping on them. The material resonated hollowly.
“What do we do now?” Serif asked.
“I’m not sure. They look like they are trying to draw energy from it through the cable... maybe ground it.”
“What does that mean?”
“If it has a charge, presumably, if we can get it to arc with the rest of the metal of the ship or touch the ground, it will be conducted away, and drain it, just like touching the poles of a battery together or letting lightning discharge into the ground.”
The Black Page 18