Farlost: Arrival

by Mierau,John

  Ben led them out and down towards the backside of the Betty and Six. He felt something tickle at his consciousness, thought he heard something whisper in his ear. Something about being safe, or saved? He shook the whisper off and focused ahead and down.

  Then his eyes widened. Scant kilometers behind the Betty was a wall of iridescent, pulsatiing metal. The colors pulsed across the ancient, sculpted giant that was so much closer than Ben had ever guessed it would be.

  The ancient. The Eternal. The centuries old ghost ship come back to life.

  The thought that wasn’t, the whisper that wasn’t, came again into Ben’s mind.

  SAVE.

  56

  The Tumbler whipped a tentacle into Lou's stomach and roared, a loud wet sound.

  She flew through the air and slammed into the corridor wall. Her lungs emptied and her head spun. She crumpled to the deck, mouth working like a fish. Her lungs wouldn't take a breath!

  She looked up helplessly as the mass of black tentacles rolled closer, its fanged mouth wide, sticking through the Tumbler's glistening black protective exoskeleton.

  The mouth snapped at Lou's face.

  Her hands clenched around the rod in her hand, holding it in front of her. The mouth closed around the alien weapon, then opened again. It's jaws closed and it batted the rod up and out of the way.

  Lou held on tight and went with the alien rifle, landing and tumbling.

  The second impact knocked her lungs back to life and she drew a loud, shuddering breath, even as she aimed the rifle and twisted the safety ring. She pulled back to fire. Three tentacles dropped to the floor before she slipped trying to stand and beam snapped off.

  The Boomer Tumbler shrieked and drew its fanged mouth back inside the protective carapace. Then it reared up on more of its trunk-like tentacles, ready ing a leap.

  Then it shrieked again, and the corridor was lit up with green light from the other side of the thing.

  Travis appeared on the other side of it, screaming and cutting deep into the Tumbler's body. It began to spin, lashing tentacles at both its attackers.

  They caught it in a crossfire and it fell against the wall.

  Lou concentrated on the tentacles it was using to move along the floor, which bought it down long enough for them to slice more off.

  How many tentacles did it have, Lou wondered. No matter how many she cut off, more snaked out through the honeycombed exoskeleton.

  The smell of rotten meat filled the corridor and still the thing lashed out.

  One long, barbed tentacle wrapped around Travis. His rifle tumbled away as he was lifted into the air and smashed against the ceiling.

  Lou ran toward him, slicing the tentacle loose, but before she'd cut halfway through the Tumbler yanked Travis in front of itself for protection. She screamed, letting off the trigger, but not before the beam kissed Travis's torso and right arm.

  Sparks flew from Travis's right hand, and then orange flame sparked out of his left as he held his 9mm pistol out towards the Tumbler's body and emptied the clip.

  It roared again and wobbled, as Lou stumbled past Travis for a clear line of fire. Then a massive tentacle sent Lou flying ahead, impacting painfully with the sides of the airlock door before tumbling down a short flight of stairs into a large, circular room. She came to a hard stop at the back of a chair, face down on the deck of the Betty’s bridge.

  She struggled hard to keep from blacking out.

  Get up! she thought groggily, dragging herself up on the side of a massive chair sat beside a workstation.

  She mastered her stomach and straightened out her blurry vision in time to see Travis kicking with his right leg and tearing with his right arm. The one she'd hit. Little blue sparks lit up the side of the hand.

  He had a cybernetic hand?

  "Die, already!" Travis roared, reaching further inside the shuddering Tumbler's exoskeleton and pulling out pulped organs with his replacement hand.

  He slapped away a much weaker tentacle thrust, and then the thing collapsed into a steaming, still pile.

  Lou held herself up on the side of the chair, panting, as Travis bent down for his pistol and his rifle, turned and limped onto the Bridge.

  Somewhere, another Tumbler roared.

  "You're... pretty spry.. for a guy in his Hundreds, " she gasped, one hand to her rib s. She felt something wet and looked down. There was a long gash in her stomach and side. "The Betty must have great health care."

  Travis hissed in pain as he sagged against the airlock control panel. “What, this?” He held up his hand and surveyed the damage. "Yeah, I figured you'd be wondering about--" The door sighed down behind him, and he visibly sagged once it was all the way down. “Uh, give me a second," he grunted, and half fell down the stairs. He swayed but kept his feet, and swung the console from the front of his chair, facing the center of the bridge, to the side, then rested Lou against its back.

  He took her place leaning against the side of the chair, and slammed a fist against the back of it. It swung open and out popped a white container with a red cross on the top.

  "Living in Farlost isn't all bad," he said as he fell to his knees and opened the first aid kit with his cracked, sparking prosthetetic hand. He tipped the box over onto the deck between them.

  "Sure, we have to stay out of the way of the Guard and fight for scraps in places the don't care about, but hey...no taxes!"

  Lou laughed. She tasted something coppery. She ignored it. "And there's a fountain of youth somewhere?"

  She watched him hold a small container against his chest with his ruined fake hand and unscrew the top with the other. “Humans can use a lot of the other race’s tech and medicines, yeah." He dipped two fingers in the container then leaned forward, ripping the bloody tear in her space suit wider and pressing what looked like honey inside of her wound.

  She grit her teeth against the flare of pain, but that failed and she screamed anyway. Her feet kicked out against empty air a couple times as his fingers pushed inside her shredded skin.

  “Unngh!” She screamed again. “Not sorry I shot you!"

  He nodded, dipping his bloody fingers back into the thick, golden liquid and then forcing them back inside her wound. “Fair enough."

  Her breath hitched again, in expectation of fresh agony, but none came. She experimented with a deep breath and her lungs obliged.

  "Okay," she said, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. "Better."

  Travis was frowning. She followed his eyes to where he was pinching her thigh. She couldn't feel it at all.

  He looked up, saw her watching. "Don't worry about it. Newark and Posk paralyzed Gruber once. I'm serious! Cost us a lot of data but we traded for a stock of this ugly tasting Vosteen med that regrows nerves." he grinned at her suggestively. "So don't get your panties in a bunch about--"

  The far-off howl of a Tumbler came again.

  Lou leaned forward at the sound. The pain was all but gone. A fresh pulse of energy was skittering along her nerves.

  Travis reached out with a groan to set her back against the console. “I know you don’t feel like you were gored by an alien tentacle, but trust me, you were.”

  Something in his side sparked and he jerked. Lou’s eyes flung up to his face, saw the pain in his wide eyes. He sagged against the chair, tearing at his space suit to examine his own wounds.

  “And if there’s not a med you can trade for it,” Sam forced a wan smile, “you can get some pretty nifty mechanical upgrades around these parts.”

  She took a good look at the microcircuitry in his chest and upper thigh. She saw blood was still welling from part of his torso that was still original issue, and reached out the small jar of honey brown stuff.

  “Let me help,” she murmured, and pulled. He let her take the jar. It was her turn to ease him down. “Okay, I am sorry I shot you."

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he muttered, a red flush coming across his face, but he knelt closer, and Lou smeared the liq
uid across his wounds.

  “One good thing about getting beamed, it cauterizes instantly. Can’t feel anything." He was lying, Lou could see him wince. "Gruber can patch me faster than you’re gonna need,” he hissed.

  The Engineer in question started screaming in their ears. “Sam! Where the hell are you?"

  “Giving Commander Montagne a tour of the Betty. We’re on the bridge.” He took a deep shuddering breath before continuing, “Just showed off and killed a Tumbler for her. I think I was just getting somewhere too.” He winked at Lou, then his eyes hardened. “Did The tram pull in okay?"

  “We got it!” came the engineer’s grunting response. “Patel and Barrowman have called a couple more mech suits and we’re making good progress. Oh, and Nishioka clipped the last Tumbler left outside. Commander, we’re stealing your hubcaps right now."

  Kyle Nishioka, pilot of the ‘Short Round’ came on the line. “It’s a little more than hubcaps, Gruber. Are we sure about this, Commander,” he asked darkly.

  “What else are we gonna do, get out and push?” Patel interrupted. “Commander, it won’t take long to jettison the drive, but detonating the engines could rip Six apart. It’s just a stack of fuel tanks after all."

  Daisy’s calm voice filled the line. “Doctor Beacham and I are confident we will be able to deflect one hundred percent of the blast.”

  Lou didn’t ask the other question on her mind: what would that kind of acceleration, riding the shockwave of a nuclear detonation, send the Betty and Six hurtling into? Uncharted space debris was what had gotten her and her crew into this mess in the first place.

  “This is the Commander,” she called out in the strongest, clearest voice she could manage. “Crew, we’re doing this. Get your jobs done, and then everybody find something to hold onto. And make damn sure you’re holding on tight! Beacham, Daisy, detonate the engines as soon as you’ve got the light show up. See you on the other side. Montagne out.”

  She raised her eyebrows at Travis as she heard the background sounds of each voice disappear.

  He nodded. “I bought it,” he said, and stretched experimentally. The creases of pain on his face eased.

  “Captain, Commander, one Boomer remains alive on Betty,” Daisy called out. A holo flickered to life in front of Travis. “It is waiting outside the bridge."

  A massive dent appeared dead center on the airlock door before Daisy’s last words. Lou and Sam stared at each other, eyes widening.

  “More warning next time, Daisy!” Sam shouted, as they both scuttled for their rifles.

  Another blow hammered the airlock. It caved in and a black, writhing shape almost too big for the opening rammed its way through the widening hole.

  Lou saw dozens, hundred of writhing tentacles lash at the broken door, hurling the pieces away.

  Sam fired low, close to the floor, cutting through the tentacles that were moving the beast forward.

  The closest auto turret exploded to life as the Tumbler rolled into its path. The roar scared the living hell out of Lou, who hadn’t even recognized what it was, despite the warning Sam had given her earlier in the corrider--along with an injected ID chip to prevent her from triggering the defensive weapons.

  The Tumbler roared, and lashed out for the auto turret, smashing it flat. It ceased firing. Lou’s rifle emitted a twin beam to Travis’s but their attacker shrugged off the blow, rolling behind the workstations across the holo tank, using them as cover.

  A moment later it rolled into the second auto turret’s range. Its barrels lit up and tore away chunks of Boomer flesh, but it charged forward, losing a good part of itself before it crushed the barrels together. The weapon exploded, igniting the Tumbler from the inside out. The massive holo tank winked out, and a moment later the bridge lights faded into darkness.

  Travis hissed in pain, and dug smoking wreckage out of his shoulder. “We got ‘em, Daisy."

  The air stayed silent, except for the crackling of a dozen small fires around the bridge.

  “Daisy?" he shouted again.

  Her voice came back, stuttery and wrong-pitched. “Power and communications have been affected, please wait while I reroute signals."

  Lou felt the urge to stand up and run down the corridor to engineering. Then, she giggled with dark humor. The idea of her running any time soon was just plain funny.

  “Guess we sit this one out,” she sighed.

  “Great,” Sam responded in the same tone, sounding annoyed and impotent at the same time.

  They leaned against the console, staring at the ruined airlock door.

  “Waiting,” Sam said. “Not my favourite."

  Lou felt the need to be in touch with her crew push against her like two sides of a massive vise. After all she’d guided HHL-6 through, now she had to just…sit here? Let others play the last round out?

  “Yeah,” she muttered. “Hate waiting.” She pushed herself higher against the console, feeling something dull itch in her lower back. She hoped she would walk again when this was all over. Ideally without feeling any more of the pain she’d felt before Sam had slipped her some alien honey.

  “So what do you miss about Earth?” she blurted out.

  They stared at each other. Sam smiled. “Been trying not to think about that for a long time."

  Lou nodded. “No problem, I get—"

  “My daughter. Sarah. Only thing I can’t live without knowing."

  Lou felt her insides shift. In that moment, it all became real. Sam had told her she wouldn’t ever see her home, or anyone she knew, again. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  “Daisy,” she said, then rubbed her eyes and swallowed hard. “Are you still plugged into the data net on HHL-6?"

  Dim lights flickered back on, and Daisy’s voice returned to normal. “I now have hardwired access to all HHL-6 systems."

  Great, Lou thought with a shrug. She let that go and urged Travis on, waving her hand up into the air.

  Sam looked back at Lou. She could see it in his eyes: after a hundred years of not knowing, he was almost too scared to ask.

  "Sarah Travis,” he croaked. His voice fighting past thick emotion. “My daughter."

  "Your daughter is still alive, Captain,” Daisy replied instantly.

  Lou watched Sam’s face as Daisy continued.

  “Sarah Marie Travis married Anwar Cohen sixty seven years ago. Both are still alive, residing in the Pacific floating nation of Sentany. You also have four grandchildren Captain, including a boy also named Samuel, and nine grandchildren. Sarah Travis-Cohen still guest lectures as a professor emeritus at Sentany University. I have downloaded all relevant data to your personal store."

  Lou whistled. “So your little girl turned out fine."

  He didn’t respond. She looked over and saw the tears shining on his face, all the way down to his smile.

  Far off down the corridor came another roar.

  Lou’s hand slipped to the firing ring on her rifle as Sam fast-crawled his way up the few steps up to the airlock and leaned against its side.

  “Huh,” he said, casually. "Guess Daisy missed one."

  "Company?" Montagne asked, coughing over the corrosive stench of dead Tumbler and fried electrical systems.

  "Soon," he told her, and hauled his rifle up to shoot down the corridor. He fired a long beam, and was rewarded with an enraged roar and the booming of something big coming their way. Fast.

  She got to her knees, but the world swam and she leaned back against the console as he fired another long blast, heard another furious bellow.

  "You want a fight?" he screamed at it. "Get your ass up here, we'll give you a fight!"

  He pulled the release and thick, black blast doors rolled out of the walls to meet in the center.

  He slapped the doors, looking back at her. “Another upgrade. Ought to buy us a few minutes.” Limping, Travis managed to stay on his feet down the stairs. He leaned against the back of the console and slid down beside her.

  "I think I just suckered th
e last one to chase us instead of looking for the engine room,” he said. He didn’t sound like he quite believed it himself.

  She was glad he wasn’t being brave about it. She could see the terror on his face. She let him see hers in return.

  “Aren’t we just the heroes,” Lou answered.

  They looked at each other.

  “It was in the job description,” she followed up.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Travis shot back.

  Two heartbeats later, they both held their ribs and laughed, over the roar of approaching death.

  57

  “Come on, Gruber!” Stuart Beacham begged, kneeling on the deck of the observation dome, lost in his circle of holograms. One showed the ancient ship just below the Betty and Six, a gleaming, multicoloured ship, closing fast and somehow morphing its shape. Stuart couldn’t shake the feeling it wanted to swallow them whole.

  The perfect time for comms to go on the fritz. Daisy’s voice had cut out a few minutes back, and she wasn’t answering his typed questions.

  To top it all off, Gruber was taking his sweet damn time cutting Six’s engines loose and far enough back Stuart could start the light show. No light show, no protection from the engines going boom. No engines going boom, and the Betty and Six and everybody on board were easy pickings for the Boomers now and The Guard ship coming soon.

  So where was that angry Santa Clause looking hobo motherfu--

  An animal roar echoed from somewhere below. Stuart froze. Every hair on his body stood straight.

  “Gruber!" he whispered again. “Where are you!"

  A shadow fell over him. “Move,” Taggart shouted, reaching down for him. “Now!"

  Stuart gagged as Taggart lifted him by the collar of his suit and threw him, high and far. He tried to scream and gag at the same time, and a dozen feet or more later he hit the ground, without making a sound.

  He rolled painfully, and scrambled to his knees. Stuart trembled, looking back at Taggart, but his protector looking the other way now.

  Stuart’s hands rubbed his teary eyes. Just as he pulled his hand way a black monster of cracked tentacles and weeping black ooze exploded up the ramp. It bellowed a challenge as a flat metal box strapped to its exoskeleton fired da beam of light.