Orbs IV_Exodus_A Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction Survival Thriller

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Noble shook his head.

  This was supposed to be some sort of alien Noah’s Ark, right? But if the aliens were so advanced, why couldn’t they keep their prisoners alive? First Kirt, then the alien in the orb to his left, and now Ribbit. He thought back to farms on Earth, and remembered images of farmers tossing diseased or even just potentially infected livestock out like trash.

  Maybe the prisoners on this ship weren’t important to the Organics, or perhaps they were just weeding out the aliens that didn’t make the cut, like those farmers had their livestock.

  Noble dragged his arm across his lips, smearing blood on his skin.

  He moved over to the edge of his orb to look down. There was another human down there, somewhere, and now that he could talk again, he was going to try and communicate before the multi-dimensional aliens returned.

  It had been so long since he’d spoken to anyone besides Kirt, and he had no idea who this other person was. Perhaps it was someone from his crew. But who? He thought back to the battle on the tarmac, when he had stayed behind with the team of soldiers to hold back the aliens while the Sunspot launched.

  Most of the memories were vague, but he did remember watching Finn, Lucia, and Reynolds go down. The only person Noble could recall being captured, besides himself, was Kirt. In his mind’s eye, he visualized the blue light pulling them into the monstrous belly of an alien ship.

  He racked his memories, but his brain was slush. It hurt to remember.

  Motion in the orb below finally pulled Noble back to reality. Roots moved from the ceiling of its orb down the side, using the wormy appendages to clamber across the surface.

  Noble watched with fascination, trying to understand how the creature wasn’t being affected by the electricity. An idea seeded in his mind as he sat there, watching. He spent a good hour studying the creature before he finally spoke.

  “Hey, Roots,” he said quietly.

  The alien looked up at Noble. It was smart enough to know the name he had called it a hundred times. Perhaps it would also be smart enough to follow a command.

  Noble pointed at his orb wall with a finger.

  “Touch,” he said.

  Roots didn’t seem to understand.

  “Touch,” he entreated, using his finger to point again.

  Roots seemed to catch on, and used a spindly arm to reach out toward the orb wall. The skeletal tip cut right through the blue hide of the orb, the fingers slicing into the black space beyond.

  “Holy shit,” Noble whispered.

  Roots tilted its bulb head from side to side as Noble clapped.

  “Good job,” he said, a little too loud.

  He froze, waiting to see if his mistake had cost him. But the void between his prison and the orbs across the way remained empty.

  So Roots could escape whenever he wanted? Why hadn’t he done so already, then?

  The answer loomed in Noble’s head almost as soon as he proposed the question. Where would Roots go if he did escape? The alien would be asking to die trying to run around, lost, in this cavernous place.

  If the aliens hadn’t caught his stunt with Roots, maybe it was time to figure out who this other human was, trapped in here with him.

  “HEY! Can you hear me?”

  His voice was rough, his throat dry like sand paper. Despite the irritation, he continued yelling.

  “I know there’s another human here. Please, answer me before those things come back!”

  Several of the alien prisoners replied in their otherworldly voices, but if there was another human out there, they were keeping quiet now.

  Noble rested his voice, saving what was left for later. He drained his bladder on the floor, and watched as the liquid was absorbed. The technology here was amazing. That made it all the harder for him to understand how they could have such a hard time keeping their prisoners alive.

  But then again, his body, and the bodies of the other aliens, like Ribbit, were fragile and mercurial. They weren’t machines you could just program. Biologically, they needed nutrition, care, and even mental stimulation.

  “Come on, say something!” Noble tried again.

  But like so many other times, only silence answered.

  He wasn’t sure how long he rested on the floor, curled up and gripping his body, trying to stay warm. At some point, the floor of the orb rumbled under his flesh, the hum of the engines reverberating through the hull and bulkheads. He could feel it across his skin, and in his bones.

  Ribbit heard it too, and started croaking at the sudden vibration.

  Getting up on his hands and knees, Noble crawled over to the edge of the orb for a better view. Something was happening. The ship seemed to be accelerating at first, but then he realized the change in motion was actually the opposite.

  They were slowing.

  Noble pushed himself to his feet, the cord feeding him nutrients coiling. He stood there naked, his heart beating, eyes flitting rapidly. He had been waiting for something to happen for so long that he didn’t quite believe this was real.

  The ship continued to slow. This had to be it. After what seemed like an eternity of traveling, they were coming to a stop—they had finally reached their destination.

  ***

  A small voice at the back of Diego’s mind told him that his intuition had been right. Rushing into this ship had led them into exactly the type of situation he had wanted to avoid. His plan would’ve saved them from this.

  But there was a much louder voice now.

  In fact, many louder voices.

  The spiders shrieked with the unholy wails of monsters reserved for nightmares. A hellish cacophony drilled into his eardrums. The cacophony threatened to drown his thoughts, but years of combat experience helped him focus.

  “Use the RVAMP!” Diego yelled.

  He let loose a barrage of rounds into the nearest spider. The monster stumbled into the spray and rushed them, mandibles opening and clamping shut, eyes glowing with animalistic fury.

  Diego felt none of the confidence that wearing NTC battle armor or holding a pulse rifle usually gave him. He had spent so many hours running live-fire exercises and target shooting that his rifle had become an extension of his person. It was as much a part of him as his fingers were, and usually gave him a healthy dose of confidence. Now it seemed inadequate.

  The spider and a half-dozen of its brethren followed, undeterred by his weapon. Some flickered and scurried across the ceiling, while others darted between the glowing blue orbs on the floor of the hold. Cargo crates spilled open as the spiders ran into them, and the scratch and scrape of the spiders’ claws over metal rang out with palpable force.

  “Where’s that RVAMP?” Diego screamed over the spiders’ crazed voices.

  “I’m working on it!” Bouma yelled back. He pulled back the handle on the portable RVAMP and aimed it into the vast cargo hold. “Here we go!”

  The RVAMP whined as it released its electromagnetic pulse. Diego could practically see the invisible wave as it washed over the spiders. Their shields shimmered, then fell. Their mandibles opened as if screaming in surprise. Several tumbled and tripped, and others trampled them, carried onward by their relentless momentum and hunger.

  Diego, Ort, and Bouma unleashed a furious barrage of rounds into the spiders’ ranks. The beasts crashed into each other. Legs blew apart and joints buckled. Blue blood ran freely from massive wounds carved by pulse rounds. This time, at least, distance and surprise were on their side instead of the spiders’.

  Like machines, the three soldiers fired and switched to fresh magazines.

  “Changing!” Ort yelled.

  Corpses quickly piled in the spaces between the orbs and stacks of crates, but Diego was running through his ammo too damn fast. Even as the bastards fell, more of them poured out from the recesses of the cargo hold, while others punched through hatches from intersecting corridors. They filled the hold.

  “There are too many!” Ort screamed over the din of gunfire. “Ch
anging!”

  Diego and Bouma covered Ort’s firing zone while he jammed a fresh mag home.

  A spider made it past the wall of corpses, swiping at him in answer. Dead arachnid bodies tumbled in a grisly landslide as the beasts scrambled over them. Diego aimed and fired on it until his rifle clicked.

  “Changing!” he shouted. He let his empty magazine clatter at his feet, and replaced it with a fresh one. A quick inventory told him he had only three magazines left. And an even quicker assessment of the cargo hold told him that wouldn’t be enough.

  Another roar blasted from a distant corridor, shaking the bulkheads.

  “What the hell was that?” Ort asked. “Changing!” He ducked behind a crate as he changed his magazine.

  “Sentinel!” Bouma replied. “Big lizard son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Shit,” Diego hissed. He fired on another spider.

  This time there was no crack of armor or splash of blue blood. The alien careened toward them like a hormone-addled bull seeing red, its shields still up.

  “We could use that RVAMP!” Diego said.

  “Still recharging!” Bouma replied.

  A fresh wave of spiders scuttled through the cargo hold. They crashed into each other, all bitten by the pangs of unbridled hunger. These had been hidden in corridors and areas of the ship beyond the cargo hold, and were unaffected by the initial RVAMP blast. And the flow of spiders showed no signs of stopping.

  “EMP grenades out!” Diego ordered.

  The trio sent the grenades out to disparate portions of the hold. Three flashes of light later, more of the spiders’ shields had been temporarily shattered. The aliens ran headlong into the soldiers’ rounds, as if they could tell they were almost out of ammunition.

  Another roar from the Sentinel sent a tremor through the ship.

  Rifle running dry, Diego knew this was it.

  “Turn back!” he ordered. “Retreat!”

  Their mission was a bust. There would be no retrieving food or water or ammunition or cryostat fluid here. The only thing to be gained here was death at the claws of these monsters.

  “No!” Bouma said, laying down fire like a madman until his magazine emptied and he had to switch mags.

  “We have no choice!” Diego said. “Move, move, move!”

  Sophie was going to die. Hell, they were all going to die. If not now, then in a couple of weeks. Christ, things had gone from terrible to… hopeless.

  The Sentinel’s voice boomed again. This time it wasn’t just the sound that rocked down the corridor.

  “There it is!” Ort said, pointing down the corridor they had just gone through.

  A reptilian head emerged from the shadows. Its eyes gleamed at the meager beams cast by Diego’s helmet-mounted lights. The monster’s claws bit into the bulkhead as it wormed its way forward. The thing barely fit in even this relatively wide corridor. It looked as if some ugly monstrosity was being birthed by a metallic beast. Muscles rippled under armor plates, and its shields gave off an evanescent glow.

  Now even Bouma showed no hesitation. “Run!” he yelled.

  Their boots clattered against the deck. Behind them, a wall of clanging claws and demonic voices urged them on. Cold adrenaline blasted through Diego’s blood vessels, and his muscles worked as if driven by pistons. There was no use even firing at the beasts now.

  “Back to the Rhino,” he yelled.

  A new, infuriatingly calm voice rattled over their comms. Sonya. “Lieutenant, I have been able to interface with some of the working systems aboard the Dawn. Outboard cams show Organic activity on Mars’s surface in close proximity to the ship. It appears many of the aliens have escaped the Dawn’s confines. You may have agitated a nest. They are beginning to race away from the ship.”

  “Why the hell would they do that?” Ort asked.

  Diego’s stomach flipped. Bouma shared a wide-eyed look that said he’d come to the same conclusion.

  “They’re looking for the Sunspot,” Bouma said.

  “Sonya, warn Emanuel!” Diego said.

  “On it, Lieutenant,” she responded.

  The spiders shrieked and roared behind them, claws slashing at the ceiling and bulkheads. The Sentinel plunged through their ranks, crushing them beneath its hulking mass and tossing others aside like ragdolls.

  Even if they escaped this horde, even if the team made it back to their Rhino, what then? Lead these bastards straight back to the Sunspot to ensure everyone else on Martian soil died?

  They had been on the planet for no more than a couple of hours, and already their doom rose before Diego, a tsunami ready to crash down on him. He hadn’t survived the depths of the dwindling oceans, the torturous route to the Sunspot, and then a disastrous landing on this planet, only to let all these people relying on him die.

  Captain Noble had trusted him to protect Emanuel, Sophie, and the others.

  I’m sorry, Diego thought. I failed you. I failed them.

  The screams of the Organics stabbed at his eardrums. Their claws drew closer, their mandibles clicking with audible ferocity. Joints snapped and popped, echoing madly through the corridors. Desperation and despair hung heavy over Diego’s racing mind.

  Bouma and Ort ran beside Diego. They fired behind them sporadically, desperate to stem the mad rush of aliens flowing after them. Their labored breaths came over his comms, loud and clear.

  A sudden heat welled up in Diego’s chest. Bouma and Ort hadn’t given up, and neither would he. There had to be a way out of this. A way to destroy these Organics and save the Sunspot. A way to give themselves just a few more days, maybe even just a few more hours, to come up with a better plan.

  Improvise and adapt. That’s how they’d come this far. That’s how they’d outlasted nearly every single other member of the human race.

  And that’s how they would survive this battle.

  Improvise and adapt.

  — 6 —

  “Emanuel looks scared,” David said, looking up at Jeff. “We should do something.”

  They were both still in the med bay, and Emanuel was standing at a terminal speaking with Sonya, Holly next to him.

  Jeff agreed with his brother, but Emanuel seemed focused, and Jeff didn’t want to interrupt him. He couldn’t make out everything the doctor was saying to Sonya. Then Bouma and Diego came through on the comm link.

  “They’re headed your way,” Diego’s voice rang over the comms, sounding out of breath. “We’ll try to stop them, but there are so many… they’re everywhere!”

  “Shit,” Emanuel muttered, the color draining from his face.

  “Sonya, what’s the status of the Sunspot’s weapon systems?” Diego asked.

  “One turret station is functional,” the AI said. “All comm relays, including intraship communications and remote control to the turret, are out. It can only be fired manually. However, there may be more damage than I can report. I’ve lost direct sensor and monitoring capabilities to almost everything else within that corridor.”

  “Any way to bring the other turrets online?” Emanuel asked. As Jeff watched, his gaze swept over Jeff and David, then Sophie. His eyes lingered on her chamber before he turned back to Sonya’s holographic image.

  “I am afraid not,” Sonya said.

  “Is that dust storm going to be a threat?” Holly asked, staring out a viewport.

  “It has appeared to shift direction,” Sonya answered. “It may intersect with us, but the storm itself does not pose a threat to the Sunspot.”

  “Will it blow the Organics away?” Emanuel asked hopefully.

  “My sensors detect the winds are not strong enough to thwart the Organics’ advance.”

  Emanuel looked away for a second, and brushed his fingers through his hair. He let out a long breath. Jeff knew what that meant. Their dad had looked like that when he was really worried, which was rare. It was an expression of defeat and resignation.

  “Doctor, if I may, I do have one suggestion,” Sonya said.

  �
��Yes, go ahead.” Emanuel looked eager for some kind of answer. Jeff leaned forward. On this whole big spaceship, there had to be some other way to fight off the incoming Organics.

  “I recommend that you immediately escort everyone to the agricultural biome,” Sonya said. “After the Organic assault on this vessel and the subsequent crash, it is the section of the ship with the best structural integrity. The biome will offer the greatest protection against the Organics, and there is a sixty-six percent probability that it will prolong your survival for at least two to three hours.”

  “That’s not a solution,” Holly snapped. “We need more than two hours.”

  “You may potentially have three,” Sonya replied.

  That was not the answer the adults were looking for. Jeff’s eyes danced between Holly, Emanuel, and Sonya.

  “What are we going to do?” David whispered, inching closer to Jeff.

  He put an arm around his younger brother’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. Bouma is out there fighting, and won’t let the Organics get to us.”

  Emanuel and Holly were talking in hushed voices now. Jeff wasn’t sure he really believed his own assurances to David. They’d seen how the Organics operated, and that even seasoned Marines like Bouma could lose to the aliens. Sergeant Overton hadn’t been able to stop them.

  Jeff looked at Sophie. He remembered when he’d first met her at White Sands, after he and David had fired on the Organics chasing her and Overton. She had returned the favor by saving him and David, whisking them away to safety, and ensuring they had a whole team to survive with.

  “Doctor,” Sonya said, appearing on the terminal’s screen again, “the Organics are now within visual range. Diego and the others are still trapped aboard the Radiant Dawn. I estimate no more than fifteen minutes before the first spider finds the Sunspot.”

  Fifteen minutes, Jeff thought. That wasn’t much time.

  He remembered something else Sophie had once told him. Back on Earth, he, David, Owen, and Jamie had escaped the prying eyes of the Organics. The aliens’ sensors relied on detection of water content to find their targets and steal the resource. However, those sensors had—what did she call it? A resolution limit? They could detect adult humans, but kids were practically invisible to them. That was how Jeff and David had stayed alive so long on their own: they had evaded the sensors and clung to the shadows, staying quiet and out of sight. They had only appeared at the most crucial moments to fire on the aliens. Maybe that was how he could save Sophie and Emanuel and Holly now.