Rivers cupped a trembling hand over her mouth.
She felt the warm wet tears stop on the edges of her fingers, where those fingers lay across her cheeks. Her eyes darted left and right. There were no other escape exits. Just the one door, she knew as much, but right now she’d settle for an air shaft, or anything she could crawl into and hide.
There were two grates near the ceiling. They were small and rectangular, and far too narrow to fit through.
No. She was trapped.
She was trapped, and soon the glass would shatter, and the creatures would slither into the communications room and devour her.
She remembered the hand they’d found in the mountain of ice in the storage area.
Rivers did not want to die.
Holding her blaster in the ready, she did the one thing she could do and waited.
The wait was short.
One of the creatures slammed its head against the glass and the glass gave. Beads of glass rained onto the floor. Outside the door, the creature hissed as if exclaiming victory. Its head tipped back and its mouth opened wide. The growl was long and loud. The sound sent shivers running up and down Rivers’ spine and along her arms.
There was no holding back now. Rivers knew the time to defend the room had arrived. Without delay, she squeezed the trigger. The blaster barked in response. Red laser bolts flew from the mouth of the barrel. She hit the door below and above the missing window.
Her hands shook, and the quivers impacted her aim.
She knew she was crying, sobbing, but needed somehow to remain calm. It was difficult, far more easily said than done when the first of the creatures snaked its head and then its body through the opening.
Without a moment to spare, Rivers opened fire again. She fired round after round.
She wasn’t just crying, but screaming, now.
Anger filled her body.
It was what she needed most. The anger caused a flood of adrenaline to course through her body. Her training kicked in, her conditioning. Fear ebbed away and was replaced by the calm she’d been searching for.
Resolved, Rivers closed an eye, let her green laser touch the head of the creature as it fit the last of its body through the opening, and fired three quick bolts. The blasts struck the creature in the snout. It roared.
The second bolt melted the creature’s left eye.
And the third took the creature in the throat. A gooey, opal fluid sprayed from the gaping wound. It was down, dead, or dying, but didn’t appear to be a viable threat any longer.
Her mild triumph was short-lived. A second creature filled the gap in the door and was squeezing its way into the communications room. Rivers, determined to defend the area, now hopeful and more confident, worked at repeating her strategy—a simple, and basic plan—to kill these creepy things before they killed her!
She fired bolt after bolt.
The second creature, much shorter than the first, crawled through the window and dropped into the room much quicker than the first. The thing found cover behind the corpse of the first creature, as a third began to crawl through the spot where the glass once served as an ideal barrier between Rivers and the creatures.
Charged with two targets, Rivers knew the one in the room with her was more of a danger. After all, it was the one inside the communications room.
The bolts didn’t do much damage. She couldn’t get a clear shot at its head or neck. The thing kept its mouth closed, as if it understood the inside of the mouth was vulnerable to bolts while the plated scales encasing its body was not.
It was also as if the thing had learned from watching the demise of the other snake-crocs and now knew the importance of protecting the chinks in the armor. Guard the weaknesses. So it kept its head down, kept its mouth closed and protecting the throat.
It slithered toward her, as the third thing fit the rest of its body into the room.
She was locked in the communications room with two of those things, while yet another fit its head into the space on the door.
Rivers backed toward a corner.
The shorter creature of the two was the faster. It moved past the corpse and the larger thing and scurried under the communications table. Then it rose up, lifting and overturning the table.
Communications equipment crashed onto the floor. Sparks flew and sizzled as a small fire started. The flames rose in a whoosh, activating the overhead sprinkler system. White foam sprayed down from the heads.
The creatures cried out, perhaps confused by what was happening, but not impaired by the foam.
The smallest of the three now inside the room lifted its head, tiny arms with sharp talons scraped at air menacingly. The threat was well conveyed. It meant to shred her first.
In doing so, it left open a soft spot. Rivers set the green laser against the thing’s throat and fired a bolt. The creature twisted to the left, lowered its head, unscathed, but enraged. The scales along its length quivered, rattled together. The sound was like nothing Rivers had ever heard before.
She wanted to plug her hands over her ears. She was losing it, she knew, her mind unraveling. With her own death right in front of her, she wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold on. Surrendering almost seemed easier.
The other two serpent-things must have smelled her fear, her submission. They advanced on her. Slow and cautious, but advanced nonetheless.
There were only a few feet between them. She was on her backside, propped up on elbows. She had dropped her blaster when the table overturned. She unsheathed her bowie knife and held it in both hands while her eyes searched for the blaster.
Over an accumulated inch of foam from the sprinklers covered the ground. The blaster was as good as gone. Buried.
The smallest of the three creatures struck. Unblinking, the thing seemed to watch her as, at the last moment, its jaws stretched wide. Rivers saw the black eyes of the thing roll back, revealing only the whites, before the fangs sank into her thigh.
The creature shook its head, a violent tussle. Flesh ripped from the bone. Rivers, the knife forgotten, threw her head back and howled in pain. Her screams sent the vipers into a frenzy.
The other two attacked, taking bites out of her legs.
Rivers saw a fourth, or fifth, or sixth creature crawling into the room through the spot where a window once protected her from any attack.
She was losing blood.
The pain stopped. The lower half of her body went numb.
Or was gone.
She stopped crying out for help; for them to stop ripping her apart, and while she died, she silently watched the creatures feast on her body.
The smaller of the creatures slithered up alongside her shoulder.
Was it smiling down at her?
Before her mind could formulate an answer, the creature snapped its jaws over her face. Rivers felt the teeth puncture the top of her skull and through her jaw before complete darkness surrounded her, before death, a welcomed next step, took her.
PART III
___
The Rescue
Chapter Forty-Seven
“Commander! Over here,” Ruiz shouted. She was just down the hallway. Standing with her blaster aimed toward the ground, Ruiz pointed at something in front of her.
Stanton and Meyers rushed over.
“The mess hall,” Meyers said.
There was a section of wall that was eight by four of thick, reinforced glass. In what looked like blood someone had written a message from the inside.
Help! We’re In Here.
“Is that blood?” Stanton asked.
“Catsup,” Meyers said.
“Think there are survivors inside?” Ruiz asked.
“Be the best place to hole up and wait for a rescue. Got restrooms. Food. Some space to move around to prevent cabin fever,” Meyers said, pointing at the inside of the cafeteria. “This is definitely an ideal place to hide!”
“Let’s check it out,” Stanton said, lifting his blaster.
&
nbsp; Meyers approached the door. She punched in the code. The door slid open. Stanton entered first. He swept his blaster right and left. His finger over the trigger.
There were several long tables with chairs. The floors and walls were white. The amber lights were off. Someone had disassembled them. The casings and bulbs were stacked on one table. It took a moment for Stanton’s eyes to adjust to normal lighting.
The commander closed and secured the door behind them.
The swinging doors leading, presumably, into the kitchen swung open, and a woman wielding a chef’s knife came running out.
Ruiz and Stanton trained a green laser on the woman. Center mass.
Meyers held up her hands. “It’s okay! We’re here to help you!”
The woman gave pause. She never lowered the knife. “Who are you?”
“We’re from Euphoric. They sent us to investigate the distress signal,” Meyers explained.
“That was almost a year ago,” the woman said, shaking her head. Her hair was in knots. She was thin, pale. Her arm came down, slowly, little by little until the knife was at her side, the blade running the length of her thigh. “You’re here to rescue me, to get me off this planet?”
“That’s right,” Meyers said. She spoke softly, gentle. Her calm tone of voice diffused the tension. “We are going to get you out of here. Where are the others?”
The woman dropped the knife. It clanked and clattered on the floor. “I don’t know. I don—there’s me. I think there’s just me.”
Stanton hid his shock. There were thirty-five people stationed on the colony. Had been. Now there was one. “Those things, those snakes, is that what happened?”
The woman’s knees wobbled.
Ruiz ran forward, her blaster dangled from the shoulder strap, and caught the woman before she fainted. “Commander?”
“She’s in shock. Put her on the floor. Gently,” Meyers said.
“Can there really only be one person left?” Stanton asked.
Meyers looked around the room, studied the long window behind them. “We’ve seen those things fight. They’re fast, strong, and relentless. Over the course of six months, doesn’t it seem more likely that no one would have survived?”
“Who is she?” Ruiz asked.
“Could be one of the miners or a scientist. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter.” Meyers shook her head. “Commander Meyers to Captain Rivers, come in?”
Rivers had been on Stanton’s mind, as well. He did not like the idea of leaving her behind. The need to protect the communications room made sense. He did not argue the commander’s call. But then her last transmission … She should remain safe as long as she stayed locked inside with the radios. “She’s not answering.”
“Give her a minute,” Ruiz said.
Meyers tried again. “This is Commander Meyers. Come in, Captain Rivers?” When there was still no response, Meyers said, “Stanton, check in back, see if there is anything we can use to cover her. Anything.”
“Aye, Commander,” he said and took off. He wasn’t worried about finding a creature on the other side of the swinging doors. That was where the woman had come from. However, he was not about to let his guard down. He entered through the doors using extreme caution. He checked every corner carefully, looking on the sides of the stoves and around the large refrigerators. There was a pantry, as well. He pulled open the doors and jumped back.
Inside, wrapped in a blood-soaked tablecloth, was a body. Male or female, he didn’t know. Nor was he about to check. The person was dead, beyond help. He closed the doors and backed away.
He slung his blaster over his back and checked the drawers. Utensils. Seasonings. More utensils. Table cloths.
Stanton grabbed two and ran back into the dining area. “There’s a body back there,” he said.
The woman was sitting up. She looked dazed, lethargic, but at least her eyes were open. She had a hand pressed against her forehead, as if it might help regain balance. “That’s Friedrichs. Calvin Friedrichs. He was my assistant.”
Ruiz asked, “What happened to him?”
“When everything started, it was Hewer. Ralph Johnson. We called him Hewer,” the woman said.
“That’s the name of a person who breaks up rocks. A mining term?” Stanton said.
The woman smiled. It was brief. Her lips barely moved, but Stanton saw it. “You’re right,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“It’s okay,” she said. Now, as she started talking again, she only looked Stanton in the eyes, as if he were the only person in the room with her. “The audible alarm was activated. Calvin and I were in the lab at the time. The siren was loud, it was so loud. We knew a vacuuming operation just went out. They went out once, sometimes twice a day. They didn’t stay out long. The days are so short here. We didn’t want the men out when it got dark. The weather is more unpredictable than we initially anticipated. The limited land on the surface was even more unstable. There were geysers that erupted without warning. The chemical makeup of the ocean and the sharp edges of the diamonds, it was dangerous. Every vacuuming operation, I worried about the safety of the colonists,” the woman said. “I went down to the storage facility; if something was wrong, I thought I might be able to help.”
“What happened?” Stanton said. “How did they get inside the compound?”
The woman took his hand in both of hers. She was shaking, cold. “There were these … things. These monsters, they were inside the storage area. The men … I saw the monsters chasing them down. The things moved so fast. They had swarmed the vacuum machine, attacked it while it was out mining minerals. And when the driver made a hasty retreat back to the colony, they got inside. They rushed through the opened bay doors before Hewer could close them again. There were so many of them. It was like they must have been watching the operation and determined the best time to strike. They came through the opened doors and …”
“Hewer, he’d locked himself in the control room. He sealed off the storage area as best he could. I couldn’t get inside. I wanted to help them, and I couldn’t get inside. But, I didn’t really want to go in there, I didn’t want those things getting me. I wanted to help them, but what could I have done? What could I have done to help them?”
“It’s okay, you tried,” Stanton said. “If Hewer opened the doors, if he’d have let you, then you would be dead right now.”
“I ran back to my lab,” she said. Eye contact broken. She released his hand. Now she frantically brushed fingers through her knotted hair. “Calvin was panicking. He wanted to know what was going on. I tried to tell him. I was crying and hysterical. I think I was even hyperventilating. He had me sit down. I remember that. He had me sit down and poured me a glass of water. And I told him we needed to find somewhere safe to hide. We were yelling, trying to talk and be heard over the screaming alarm. Somehow, I don’t know how, but somehow I managed to tell him what I’d found, what I’d seen. I don’t think he believed me, or maybe because of how overwrought I was, he believed me, but couldn’t believe something he hadn’t seen with his own eyes. I convinced him the mess hall would be the best place to hide, the safest. I explained we’d have everything we’d need to last a few days until help came.”
The woman rolled her eyes. She chuckled. Her hands fisted her hair. She tugged at the ends as if trying to pull the roots out from her head. “After a week, we started rationing food. I realized, we realized, no one was coming. No one was going to come.”
“We’re here now,” Stanton said. “We came.”
She began sobbing. “What took you so long?”
Commander Meyers said, “But what happened to Calvin?”
“He tried going to the communications room. He wanted to attempt contacting Euphoric. He said that was our best chance. Maybe our only chance. I didn’t want him to go. I begged him to stay with me. He said he wouldn’t be long. He’d be right back.” Her eyes glossed over. She had a vacant stare about her. He
r tongue licked dry lips. “And he wasn’t. He wasn’t gone long at all. Before I knew it, he was at the door, pounding on it. I let him in. He was crazed, yelling for me to seal it. To shut the door and seal it closed. He was covered in blood. He was missing an arm, and I—I tried to help him, but he’d lost so much blood. I tried to save him.”
“What is your name?” Stanton asked.
“Carter. Sandra Carter. I am the astrophysicist Euphoric hired for this mission.”
Commander Meyers asked, “So you are the only one still in the compound?”
“There’s no one here. There is no one left,” she said, her eyes moved from one person to the next. “There is no one left. I’m the only one still alive.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Erinne Cohn wasn’t comfortable with the Euphoric lieutenant standing behind her while she sat at the Cutlass controls. “Either sit co-pilot with me, or get lost,” she said.
“Sorry,” Weber said and sat down in the co-pilot chair beside Erinne. “I just—this is a nice ship.”
She snorted. “It’s alright. Aroldis works on it night and day. Always making modifications. He’s installed some cool stuff. She flies sweet. I think that’s more because of the pilot, not the mechanics. I’m biased though, since I’m the pilot.”
Weber laughed.
Erinne smiled. “I’m sure she’s nothing like your ship.”
“The Eclipse? That’s pretty state-of-the-art. That’s for sure. But my dad, when I was younger, like a little kid? He used to tell me about how he and his father re-built a ship together. They lived on Earth. It was a shell of a fighter they picked up together from some metal scrap yard, a cemetery for fighters and shuttles and stuff. They loaded the thing on a rented flatbed and brought it out to my grandfather’s barn. He lived on like fifty acres, and even though he had the money to buy a new ship without breaking the bank, he bought a piece of junk,” Weber said.
“So he and his son could work on it together?”
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