by Erica Rue
A chime went off. Thirty seconds to go.
“All right, Dione, get the grenades ready. When they try to open the door, it’ll get stuck. Throw the grenades in, I’ll close it back up, and it just might work.”
Another chime sounded. Dione had the grenades ready. She would have to be fast.
The doors began to open, letting the bitter scent of the Vens trickle in. The smell was so strong she could taste it, as if a swarm of lady bugs had flown into her mouth. At a hand’s width apart, the doors froze, locked in place by Bel.
“Now!”
Dione threw the first grenade, and pink gas rose in plumes around the Vens. She had the second and third primed, but the Ven with the green on its hood thrust its claws through the gap, up to its first brachial joint. She fell back and dropped both grenades on the floor in between her and Bel. A second clawed arm was pulling at the other side of the door, trying to open it. Dione coughed in the pink smoke and saw the door give a little.
“Get the grenades! I’m trying to hold them out,” Bel said, coughing.
The gap widened slightly, and the door slid back a few centimeters. There was more than enough gas to knock out both of the girls. If Dione didn’t reposition the canisters soon, they’d be unconscious, but the Vens would be wide awake and headed for the cockpit.
Dione reached for one and slid it through the opening at the bottom of the door. The last was blocked by a clawed foot. She stood, holding the smoke canister away from her, as if it would make a difference. In this confined space, she wondered if the weight estimates were off, because she was starting to feel dizzy.
She was already sinking to the floor when the professor charged in, shouting, “Dione, get back!” He grabbed the extra machete from the floor and sliced down on the outstretched arm of the biggest Ven, catching it right under a section of plating.
The Ven moaned and wrenched back his arm, leaving the gap at the bottom of the door unguarded. Dione shoved the third and final canister through and signaled to Bel, who managed to close the door another few centimeters. They all stepped back from the thin line of pink smoke, and Dione felt better. Bel, on the other hand, looked worse. She was smaller than Dione and was feeling the effects more strongly. The viewport was clouded, but as the gas began to dissipate through the hole, she saw four bodies on the floor.
The professor opened the door and approached the nearest body. Without a second thought, he slid his machete underneath its hood plating into its neural center.
“Dione, help me. We don’t know how long the effects will last.”
Dione picked up her own machete, but she had no desire to kill these creatures. She had never even killed an animal with her own two hands. She slipped her own machete into the hood gap of the large one with the tinges of green until she hit something elastic, like a tough membrane. She gradually increased the amount of force she applied until the membrane snapped, and her weapon glided freely up into his brain.
She pulled the blade out quickly and wiped it on the Ven’s blue-plated abdomen, leaving a small pile of foul-smelling liquid that reminded her of pus. She had killed him. She looked up at the professor who had already dispatched the other three in the time it took her to kill one. He was talking to Bel, who was leaning against a bulkhead. Dione focused in on their conversation, pushing the sickening sensation of the snapping membrane from her mind.
“I’ll take Dione. You can stay here and make sure no others make an attack,” he said.
“I want to come. Please,” Bel said. Somehow, despite the difficulty Bel was having keeping her eyes open, Dione sensed the urgency in her voice.
“You need some time, and I need you to stay here and watch our backs. We won’t take long.”
“What are you talking about?” Dione said.
He held up a glossy metal cylinder by its handle.
“Is that…”
“The charging matrix, yes,” he replied. He must have registered the look of horror on her face because he added, “Don’t worry, there’s a backup.” Dione didn’t think there was a backup, at least she didn’t remember one from the ship specs. Maybe she had missed it. Or forgotten it.
“I’ve configured it to explode with a ten-minute timer, so we have to be fast. If we can get to their primary energy hub, it should completely knock out their ship without blowing it up. We are attached after all.”
“And if it damages their hull and vents them into space?” It could damage their life support systems and the backups. Or not. After all, it was a makeshift bomb. She wasn’t even sure it would explode properly. The charging matrix was the only thing on board powerful enough to make a dent.
“I can live with that,” he said. Dione should feel that way, but it was foreign to her, wishing actual, irreversible death on another sentient being. He smiled as if to reassure her, but Dione could see the sweat on his brow.
“If you’re up to it, I could really use your help. You weren’t much affected by the gas, but Bel is still a bit hazy. I can’t force you, though.”
Dione did not want to be a hero. She didn’t want to board the Ven ship with nothing but a machete and a wannabe bomb. She wanted to survive. She just needed to figure out what would give her and her friends the best chance at survival. The professor wouldn’t have asked unless he really did need her help, and their escape depended on his bomb working. There was no choice after all.
“If you’re coming, we need to go now. I don’t know how long until they send another boarding party.” Another boarding party. Nowhere would be safe if the professor failed.
“All right. Let’s go,” Dione decided. When she had put in her request for this internship, she had been nervous. They would be working and staying in a remote location on a remote planet, running into all sorts of new creatures. That’s what this internship was about, taking risks and making discoveries. Still, this was not what she’d had in mind. She did not want to die, but if she wanted to survive, she would have to join the professor.
Dione began dragging the green-tinted Ven from the airlock. The one she had jammed her machete into. She struggled with his weight, but then the professor was by her side, taking over his right leg and pulling. His body scratched against the floor, making the hairs on the back of Dione’s neck stand on end.
“There’s no time to move the others, we need to go now,” he said.
She stepped into the airlock with a gulp. She was trapped inside with three stinking corpses and a homemade bomb.
7. DIONE
Two minutes was a long time when an opaque green door hid the reality of what was waiting for them. Those two minutes allowed every possibility to creep into Dione’s mind. The Vens must have known they were coming. They were probably standing on the other side of that door in force, right now, ready to avenge their fallen. It had no viewport, though, so the scene behind the scaly green door was a mystery.
As they navigated around the blue bodies, she filled the professor in on her hypothesis about the color.
“Juveniles? Really? Then this could be their first hunt, a rite of passage. But I’m a biologist, not a xenoanthropologist,” the professor said.
“I just hope that the Vens on board don’t have much of a maternal instinct, assuming I’m right.”
The professor frowned and spoke softly to himself. “I wonder if they have been monitoring the progress of the boarding party.”
Dione heard every word, but didn’t respond. She felt woefully unprepared for what was to come, and this was a new feeling for her. At StellAcademy, she had always been prepared for everything, down to the sneakiest pop quiz. There was no right answer here. No path of trial and error to explore on her way to success. There were no second chances. She should gather as much information as she could now in the minute she had left.
“Do you know where to go, once we’re inside?” she asked. She didn’t like the look on his face, like he was trying to solve for a variable without an equation.
“I know the generic layout
, and I’ve sent a map to your manumed, based on data we’ve collected about the Vens. The Vens like geometric patterns and shapes. The ship’s walkways are a series of concentric shapes, probably ovals by the look of the exterior. There will be inward paths at regular intervals. If we head down and toward the center, we should find the energy hub. This door will take us to the outermost corridor.”
Professor Oberon has a plan. If anyone could get them through this, it was the professor. Dione tried to coax any memories of the Ven articles she had read to the surface of her thoughts, but it was like trying to catch minnows with her bare hands. A small chime indicated thirty seconds were left.
“It’s important that even if we can’t get to the primary energy hub, whatever we hit packs a punch. We don’t get a second shot.”
“Understood.”
Dione was shaking, and the professor’s voice was softer when he continued. “I’m telling you this because you can’t hesitate. Don’t think of them as juveniles and mothers. Think of them as predators. Because that’s what they are, and to them, we are prey.”
She lifted her machete. It felt heavier than it had just a few minutes ago. She was out of shape, it seemed. Her first adventure had been over the holiday to a research lab at the equator. She had helped build a bamboo shelter and hacked her way to a beautiful waterfall oasis. It had been a vacation, though, with the comforts of home a short ride away, should she tire of the jungle. But she didn’t. Instead, she had made a notebook’s worth of observations on leaf mice and scarlet talcons.
The door gasped open, and that sour Ven smell was so heavy it settled on her taste buds. They were lucky that no defensive pack was there to greet them because she gagged, overcome by the stench. She felt small underneath the high ceilings that allowed the monstrous Vens to roam about their ship. The professor, tallest among their crew, could reach up and touch the ceilings on the Calypso, but not here.
Dione did her best to only breathe through her mouth as she followed the professor through grim corridors. The ship hummed. In fact, it pulsed with vibrations. She knew the Vens relied on the vibrations produced by their throaty growls, and wondered what type of message the vibrations were broadcasting through the ship. Would her footsteps and heartbeats be strong enough for the Vens to detect? Or would they get relegated to background noise, like the kind she easily ignored on their own vessel? She strained to pick up any errant sounds, but only managed to work herself up with phantom footsteps.
The professor halted and held a finger up to his lips. Her eyes widened as she heard real footsteps, and they were getting closer. This was it. Dione lifted her machete, but the professor pointed her toward the wall.
A hatch, probably cleaning access to the ventilation system. They climbed inside, quiet as the void, and didn’t move. Her own heart thumped in her ears, and she was certain she would give herself away. The footsteps grew louder, and she could hear them them growling. Talking?
After the Vens had passed, she thought that maybe they didn’t know they were on board. She doubted they ever expected to be boarded themselves. Had it ever been done? She looked around their hiding spot. The vents were actually large enough for her to crawl through, but she didn’t think the professor would fit, so she kept that idea to herself. The professor reopened the hatch, and they continued making turns inward toward the energy hub at the center of the ship.
Dione kept turning around, certain that they would be flanked. How else would they have gotten this far unchallenged, unless they were heading into a trap? The professor slowed and held up his hand again to stop her. She heard the low hum of a Ven conversation—discordant, different tones all at once. More than that, she felt it, like standing too close to the speakers at a concert. Many Vens were talking at once. Maybe it was an argument. Either way, it sent chills down through her body.
When she peeked around the corner, she realized why they had met such little opposition. Everyone was here. Fifteen Vens at least, maybe twenty, large and green, were watching a monstrous screen with four different readouts. Only one was changing. The other three were static.
Maybe something was wrong with their ship? She didn’t have time for further conjecture, because just then, she locked eyes with one of the Vens. A female. Her wailing knocked Dione off-balance as the others turned. Dione had already pulled back, but it was too late.
The professor grabbed her shoulders and shoved the rigged matrix into her hands. “Take this. Complete this connection,” he said, pointing to two wires, “and then you’ll have about ten minutes to get back.” He pushed her into the nearest hatch before she could say anything, not that she would have known what to say.
He charged past the Ven-filled room, and Dione heard, rather than saw, his pursuers rushing back down the corridor. Dione didn’t waste any time, hoping she would be able to meet him at the airlock soon. The matrix was a glossy metal cylinder, heavy but compact. The professor had pried it open to reveal the inner workings and turn it into a weapon.
She looked again at the narrow tunnels and pulled up the schematics the professor had given her. She had a notification from him. The message was short and misspelled, but it couldn’t be right: St bom n go.
Set bomb and go? She couldn’t do that. She would find him, or he would escape. But for now, she had to set the explosive. She slithered into the air duct and followed it past the room with the giant screens toward the energy hub, or so she hoped.
After just a few minutes, the cold of the vents chilled her. Her fingers tingled with dulled sensation and her eyes watered. The matrix grew heavy in her grip. It was just large enough to be unwieldy. She couldn’t stay up here much longer. She peered out of a vent into a large, circular room. At the center of the room was a dome, casting an orange glow over the entire space. Three Vens were patrolling, scrutinizing every shadow, every errant vibration.
The energy hub was loud, but there was no way she was going to plant a bomb unseen in that room, and an explosion from up here in the ducts wouldn’t be enough to set off a chain reaction. There had to be another location. Weapons? That wouldn’t stop a boarding party. Engines? Jump drive? That might do it. If she placed it just right…
She wasn’t sure she could make it back from the engines in ten minutes and she wasn’t ready to sacrifice herself just yet. Her heart was racing. Think. It was only a matter of time before they sent a second boarding party, if they hadn’t already. They were all going to die if she didn’t do something now. Dione felt panic welling up, blocking her brain from focusing on the problem at hand. She just needed to get her feet on the ground, so to speak.
On the ground! That was it. The stabilizers. She had passed them on her way here. They provided a counterbalance to the rotational force of the energy hub. Without them, the vessel would spiral out of control. They wouldn’t be able to aim even if they could get a shot off. Repairs would be difficult to make, and they couldn’t jump in an uncontrolled spin, so they couldn’t pursue their craft until they fixed it. She would just have to make sure that the Calypso was no longer attached when the bomb went off.
Dione crawled back the way she came, retreating toward her new plan. She was about to pass over the room where she had left the professor when she heard a heart-stopping scream. Blood drained from her face in cold fear. Professor Oberon. She had to check, to see if she could help him.
She pulled herself as quietly as possible through the ducts into the room. The nearest exit hatch felt like a mile away. Her hands grew numb and clumsy in the frigid air and her eyes stung, but finally she got a view of the room. It was clearly the control center.
Fifteen or so Vens remained in the room, eyes glued to the changing readout. On the floor, she could see the soles of the professor’s boots. He wasn’t moving. She couldn’t tell from this angle, but she tried to discern any movement of his chest. There was none. She did, however, see blood. So much blood. How could he be alive after losing that much blood?
He couldn’t be dead. She needed him to be
alive, but what good would that do? Even if he was somehow still alive, he was dead anyway. The room was packed with Vens. There was nothing she could do to rescue him.
Tears warmed her cheeks, and Dione bit back the bile rising in her throat. Professor Oberon was doomed, and she was terrified. Her fingers tightened around the handle of the bomb as she backed away. That was the reminder she needed. She could cry later. The stabilizers were just around the corner. She would see this through.
No one was guarding them. They were irrelevant, not a target like the energy hub. They were two large metal boxes that whooshed with the effort of keeping the ship steady. Dione was determined to enjoy blowing them up.
She placed the bomb in a dark place, right between the two, held her breath, and connected the wires. Let the countdown begin. The timer she set on her manumed showed the seconds slipping by.
Dione was speed-walking through the outer corridors, which had all been empty when she arrived. The vents were so cold her toes were still numb, and she couldn’t afford to waste time crawling. She was so preoccupied with the impending explosion that she nearly missed the first Ven patrolling her escape route, but was able to duck back into the frigid vents. Her nose dripped uncomfortably, but she didn’t dare move until the Ven had passed. She just might make it back without having to use her machete.
Fear kept her in the vents, but soon her body began to shake with the cold. She left the vents again, relieved to be nearly at the airlock. As soon as she rounded the corner to the outermost oval, she saw him, a monstrous Ven, blocking her only exit.
She looked at her manumed. She had six and a half minutes to figure out a way back onto her ship. No, she had forgotten about the locking mechanism. Make that four and a half.
8. DIONE
Dione retreated down the nearest path, away from the corridor that led to the Calypso. She found herself in a small storage room. She was sweating, even though the cold of the Ven ship permeated her leggings and jacket. She unzipped her collar a little and used it to wipe the perspiration from her forehead. The Ven ship was still attached, and that would be a problem. She messaged Zane: Detach clamps in 6 min