by Paul Tassi
Lucas winced from the pain and scrambled to find a weapon. Nearest to him was a sawed-off shotgun with a severed arm still clutching it. Lucas stripped the limb away and raised it at the chief who had now turned his attention to Asha. The blast caught him in the chest, but the armor, even in a unpowered state, was enough to deflect the buckshot. As he staggered back a few paces, Asha sat up and raised a police-issue pistol she’d found on the ground. The man put his hand up and cried out in pain when she shot two rounds through it. She continued pulling the trigger, but the gun jammed and she threw it away in disgust as she rose to her feet. Lucas ran up to the behemoth, now clutching his pierced hand in agony, and with a well-placed shoulder lunge knocked him off balance onto the remains of his dead comrades with a crunch. Lucas stood over him with the sawed-off shotgun in hand.
The chief caught his breath and slowly lost his wrathful demeanor. Growing calm, he looked at Lucas and spoke softly.
“Jeg var en skolelærer . . .”
Lucas pulled the trigger and the man’s face exploded into a mist.
Asha walked over to the headless corpse.
“What did he say?”
From behind them, a deep mechanical voice spoke.
“He said he was a schoolteacher.”
Alpha had freed himself from his downed stake and was re-securing his translator to his neck, which miraculously was still intact. As was the glowing core he was holding at the end of his re-affixed metal claw.
“We were fighting that thing and you were getting dressed?” Asha said incredulously.
“You looked to be in control of the situation,” Alpha said matter of factly.
“I thought you didn’t speak the language,” said Lucas.
Alpha fiddled with the controls on his mech arm and stayed silent. As he turned, Lucas could see that he had burns up the right half of his body.
“Are you . . . ?”
“I have suffered no permanent damage. [garbled] are much more resistant to heat than you humans. We also heal faster.”
“What the hell just happened?” Lucas asked, as Asha scooped up her Magnum and pulled her hatchet from the one-eyed man’s belt.
“As soon as we were in the net, I activated a countdown on my suit’s core.”
“You did what?” Asha said as she turned her head his way.
“Capture was imminent, and I knew it was our best chance of survival.”
“What if you were still wearing it?”
“They would not let us keep our weapons, and would certainly strip me of the suit. I had hoped it would be placed close enough to cause sufficient chaos, but far enough where the blast would not consume us all. My calculations were . . . almost accurate.” He winced as he touched a burn on his chest with his claw. Predicting their next question, he answered it.
“The suit was built with such functionality in the event of enemy capture. Though usually the occupant would incinerate along with it.”
He pointed to Lucas’s thigh.
“You must tend to that until we get back to the ship.”
Lucas had forgotten about his injury during the adrenaline-soaked gunfight, but saw that he was still bleeding profusely. And that wasn’t even counting whatever had happened to his ribs. As he searched his body for more pain, he discovered his right arm ached from crashing out of the net.
“Here you go,” Asha said as she threw him a scrap of non-bloody fabric torn from a dead cannibal’s outfit. Outside of a few bruises, she looked none the worse for wear, despite what the unhinged mob had almost done to her. Though, despite her cool attitude, her hands were visibly shaking for the first time. Lucas tied the cloth around his leg firmly and Alpha seemed satisfied about his ability to continue.
Asha finished picking up her confiscated gear and slung a non-melted tactical assault rifle over her shoulder, throwing a few clips into her pack. Bending over one of the hole-filled corpses, she pulled off his bulletproof vest and secured it to herself. Lucas thought it might be wise to do the same, and digging through the gore, found another intact vest for himself. Picking up a few shells from the ground, he decided to add the giant-slaying sawed-off to his arsenal, and then walked over to pull his buck knife out of the chief’s shoulder. There was a veritable cornucopia of weaponry to choose from, but Alpha stopped them from scavenging further.
“This . . . detour has taken far too long, we must continue to the ship.”
He strode onward, back to his old armorless form, only adorned with his translator and metal claw.
The trip back through the residential area was largely uneventful, though they kept careful watch on the ground for any more lingering snares. They couldn’t be sure the entire population of the town had now been killed by the air assault and their recent ground skirmish, but they heard no more echoing voices from the rooftops as they had before. Eventually, they did come across one more wounded cannibal who had propped himself up on a bench on the side of the road. His clothes were drenched in blood, and it was impossible to tell what uniform he might have once worn, if any. He didn’t even look up as they approached, and simply kept breathing with a painful whine as his eyes were fixed straight ahead. The extent of his injuries was unclear, but no longer mattered after Lucas put a slug through his temple from ten yards out. Leaving him was a needless risk.
They moved through the stone houses until they eventually reached another clearing, one quite different from the gory town square they’d just left. Before them loomed the massive mothership, and in front of it, a few hundred yards away, was a mansion that could easily be classified as a small castle. It was the building they had seen the chief emerge from in the bird’s-eye view of the probe, but it, like him, was far more impressive up close.
Like practically everything in the city, it was also made out of stone, but looked quite a bit older than the other buildings. There were circular towers with slits in them for archers, and Lucas imagined this might have been a small fortress in a medieval age. In modern times it was likely owned by the mayor or some rich fishing baron until it had been appropriated by the cannibal chief. The stonework was crumbling in places, but looked impressively intact for a building that had been cut in half by a downed alien spacecraft.
They approached the mansion, moving through a long courtyard as they did so. The once manicured grass had now turned brown and crispy, and shrubs that had been symmetrically planted with precision were mere sticks. A giant stone fountain stood in the middle of the yard, and three angels held a bowl aloft, though it and the surrounding base were long empty of any water. One was missing a head and another a wing, but it was in quite good condition given the town’s current residents, and the entire area looked free of damage from Asha’s hellfire barrage. Presumably she was saving the section for a later pass that never came.
The three of them kept their eyes trained on the windows of the mansion, all of which were broken, but no yellow eyes or glinting sniper scopes appeared in them. No roommates for the chief it seemed.
As they reached the door, Alpha brought up a hologram from his claw that showed the layout of the mothership. It spread wide over their field of vision, and after a few swirls of his claw, it pointed out that the nearby entry bays were either a hundred feet in the air, fifty underground or on the other side of the mansion. Lucas and Asha began to pry open the ornately carved oak doors, which let out a prolonged creak as they parted.
The interior was dim and likely hadn’t seen electricity in years, but light seeped in through the broken windows and several holes in the ceiling. A grand staircase unfurled before them, and Lucas was surprised to see the expensive-looking furnishings in the foyer were intact and arranged properly. Peering into a nearby sitting room, he saw a similarly organized setting, as did Asha when she walked into the living room to her right.
“Stay together,” Alpha said quietly. They moved under the stairs and crept down a long hallway. It was lined with pictures that were perfectly hung but often cracked. Many were portraits of sta
tely looking men with curled mustaches and women with billowing dresses. At the end of the hallway, they came to the kitchen, which was pristine with every cabinet door shut and every appliance properly aligned on the counters. But on the main preparation table lay a butchered human with most of his torso carved out and dried blood smeared everywhere around him. It was a jarring contrast to the rest of the highly organized and immaculate household.
They pushed deeper into the house and walked through a pair of double doors. Before them was a vast library, and against the shattered window sat a desk where many books lay stacked, a few open. In the center was a hefty tome full of handwritten words and an old-fashioned, ink-stained quill lay next to it. The barbarian chief, a tidy homemaker and an author. Who would have thought? Lucas remembered his dying words translated by Alpha about his former profession. He scooped up the book and tucked it into his pack.
Alpha and Asha were transfixed on a different part of the room. They were staring at the opposite wall, which was black and smooth. Alpha was running his claw across it.
“Is that . . . ?” Lucas asked.
“The ship, yes,” Alpha replied. “We must find the port.”
They exited through a door on the right, and found themselves in a guest bedroom, complete with sheets that were perfectly tucked into the mattress without a wrinkle in sight. Again, the far wall was the same metal material, but there was still no opening.
The next room was brightly lit, and looking up Lucas saw that a ceiling simply didn’t exist. Though the walls were expertly wallpapered with a green and gold pattern, there was no furniture in the entire room. On the back wall, at last, there was a closed oval shaped port. As Lucas approached, a circular holographic interface appeared before him. He waved his hand through it, but it immediately turned from blue to red and disappeared. Lucas looked closer at the black door and wall and saw there was writing on it. A few silver pens lay strewn on the floor, and as he stepped back and the light caught the reflective ink, Lucas saw that the scribbling encompassed nearly half of the entire wall.
Alpha brushed Lucas aside and the interface returned. He made a complex series of motions as the symbols darted about on the controls.
“To think that a human could decode the key to our ship. Humorous.”
Lucas saw different aliens glyphs written among the Norwegian on the wall. Was this how the chief spent his free time? Trying to break into this ship? Looking at the floor and edges of the wall, he saw black blast marks that appeared to indicate a more brute force method of entry had been attempted earlier. I guess that’s where the ceiling went.
Alpha had far better luck, and the controls had already turned green by the time Lucas walked back over to him. The door disappeared into the blackness and he stepped inside. The glowing core served as a beacon of light in the dark, and Lucas felt a tap on his shoulder. Asha handed him a small flashlight that she said she procured off a spec-ops–type weapon in the town square’s corpse pile. She had one for herself and affixed it to her Magnum as Lucas clipped his to his own barrel.
“These lower levels have no power due to the impact,” Alpha said as he plugged one of his metal fingers into a socket on the wall. A virtual image of the ship appeared in front of them.
“Readings indicate that the bridge and a few surrounding floors are still functional, though all primary systems are offline, including life support. The core continues to deteriorate in the engine bay. We must make haste.”
Their journey through the bowels of the ship was hurried and confusing. Lucas and Asha chased Alpha as he raced down a seemingly endless number of dark hallways. Their light revealed bits of architecture that looked familiar from their own ship. Alpha had closed the schematic and presumably knew the layout by heart. It was hard to keep up with his long strides, particularly in the dark, and Lucas soon tripped and fell with a clatter. As he got to his feet, he shone his light at where he’d fallen and his heart skipped a beat when he found the culprit. A fully mummified creature skeleton lay on the ground. Still clad in power armor, its bones poked out of the material and its lifeless fingers wrapped around an equally lifeless energy rifle.
Alpha saw what had happened and read Lucas’s mind.
“There are no life-forms onboard. Watch your step.”
Either the creatures had died in the crash, or they’d left their downed craft to be picked up by another. He wondered if there had even been any left when the cannibals came to town.
Eventually, they moved out of winding hallways and into a room that contained pods like the ones they’d been instructed to sleep in back onboard their own vessel. Lucas shined his light into them as they passed, but most of the glass was opaque. He looked over to Asha, who was directing her light upward instead. Even with minimal illumination, it was clear the room they were standing in was massive, far more so than their own barracks. There were thousands upon thousands of the pods lining the walls and arranged in columns like some oversized wasp nest. Lucas knew the ship was big, but he hadn’t realized it had housed this many creatures. And was this even the biggest craft in their fleet? He turned to ask Alpha, but he had left the pair of them behind in their awe and was just a faint blue glow up ahead. They picked up the pace to keep up with him and eventually left the empty hive behind, sidestepping another set of dusty creature bones as they went.
There were more hallways ahead, and Alpha’s assurance that there were no living beings onboard did not make the surroundings any less foreboding. More mummified creatures lay on the ground, and sporadically there was a splash of long-dried black blood on the walls. The surviving creatures must have been ordered out of the ship in a hurry to leave so many of their fallen behind.
Alpha’s pace was quickening, and it was getting physically painful to keep up, particularly with the recent knife through Lucas’s quadricep and his now free-floating bottom ribs. Even Asha appeared to be getting winded, but despite his own injures, Alpha was sprinting ahead with long-legged strides.
Gas streamed out of a broken section of the wall, but as Alpha plowed through it without hesitation, Lucas assumed he could as well. Moving through the mist, he thought it smelled a bit like sulfur, but mixed with . . . oranges? That couldn’t be right. Whatever the compound was, it hadn’t melted his skin, so he trudged onward as blood seeped through his makeshift bandage with each step. Asha swatted away a swath of cables that hung down like vines from the torn apart ceiling.
The blue glow they were chasing, emitted from Alpha’s core, began to grow brighter, and it was getting lighter in color as well. As they rounded the next corner, they saw it was no longer his core producing the light.
The room before them was circular and massive, a far cry from the dank hallways they’d been running through. A few lights flickered around the room, but in the dead center rested a point of brilliant white light surrounded by thick columns of machinery. Every so often it would falter in sync with the others and go out, leaving the room in utter darkness, but would soon kick back on. It reminded Lucas of his first encounter with the sputtering blue light in the red sky back in Portland.
Alpha wasted no time and leapt down an entire staircase to reach the center of the room where the white core rested. He jammed his own core into a slot in one of the pillars. A holographic interface appeared and he began furiously swirling his organic and metal claws over the display. Eventually, the core stopped flickering and shone more brightly than ever before, illuminating the surrounding room like sunlight. Soon, it was almost impossible to look at the core directly, and Lucas was already seeing spots. Asha held her hand over her eyes.
“Never thought I’d need sunglasses again,” she said. It really was the closest thing to the sun either of them had seen in years.
Alpha pressed a few more virtual buttons and a cylinder slid up and over the core, decreasing its brightness dramatically. Grabbing a piece of the metal that lined up the top, he detached it completely from the unit. It was larger than the blue core, but only just so. It
measured about three feet tall and eighteen inches in diameter, but Alpha hoisted it off its pedestal with ease. Either it was lighter than it looked, or his bionic claw was dramatically increasing his strength. With his other hand, he pulled the blue core back out of the device and the room was lit with a dim combination of white and azure light. He hadn’t spoken in some time, and finally appeared to be out of breath himself.
“So, we saved it?” Lucas asked, motioning to the white core with his rifle-mounted flashlight.
Alpha nodded.
“The core was at 0.8 percent capacity when we reached it. It would have been unsalvageable in a short while. That was the reason for our haste.”
“And what exactly is this again?” Asha asked.
“The scientific complexities of the device would escape you. Suffice to say it is . . . what is the colloquialism? It is ‘our ticket out of here.’”
“And you’re saying it can make our ship travel into space?” said Lucas as he raised his eyebrow.
“We have that functionality currently. What it will allow us to do is leave this star system entirely and return to [garbled] by means of attempting a [garbled] [garbled].”
Alpha was visibly annoyed by his own translation limitations.
“I cannot convey the exact nature of what we are about to attempt, but we will leave this planet, and you will never return. That is, in the event I am in fact able to equip our vessel with this [garbled] core, and we do not end up as stardust once we activate it.”