by Randy Noble
Blair nodded and then both of them dragged the body over to the tube. “Just a second,” Blair said, as he dropped the legs, Rachel still holding the dead man’s arms. Blair activated the tube. “I hope he didn’t suffer much.”
Blair grabbed the legs again, and they carried the man over the tube. Blair then dropped the man’s legs into the green substance, which swirled in a downward spiral. Rachel could see the circular motion as the substance circulated down then back around.
Rachel let go of his arms, and the man disappeared into the tube and vented into space. Blair turned off the tube travel device.
“Let’s clean up the blood.”
“Just a second,” Blair said, his voice wavering. He rubbed wet eyes, staring at the tube.
“Be strong, Blair. We are not through this yet.”
“I know,” he said. “It . . . It’s just that none of their families will ever know. He’s drifting out in space, all alone.”
Rachel cocked her head to one side, her eyes softened, and she saw Blair as a friend for the first time since she met him. Then she shook her head, put a hand on his shoulder, and said, “He’s got nothing else to worry about ever again. God bless your sweet heart, but we’ve got work to do.”
“Yeah, I know.” Blair sniffed, his nose running again. He wiped his face with his jacket sleeve.
There’s the Blair I know, Rachel thought, and smiled this time, instead of recoiling.
It didn’t take long for them to clean up the blood and jettison out the rags and any other evidence out of the ordinary, including the soldier’s helmet.
For the rest of the trip, they both sat in silence. Blair spent a little time trying to access the chip in the soldier’s glasses, but the encryption was too good for him to break with the tools he had available. It had to wait. He told Rachel he would crack it back on Pyramid and get a hold of her when he did.
They got back into the ship with no issues, disabling the invisibility shield before the door to Pyramid opened. The secrecy from Eric made no sense to Rachel, since Eric was no more a threat to revealing information than they were, and they all signed the same confidentiality agreement that would result in death if broken.
She was happy to be back, even though the mission failed. Her relief came more from not being followed. All the way back she randomly scanned for anything unusual and nothing alerted her. The shuttle did not have a large range, but it was big enough to comfort her concern.
“Well,” Eric said, after the shuttle was secured and Blair and Rachel were standing outside the shuttle. “How did it go? Where’s the rest of them?”
Blair looked at Rachel. She debated whether to say anything, but it was only fair to Eric who had been nothing but helpful.
“Dead,” she said and then explained everything that happened.
“Jesus!” was Eric’s response after Rachel finished. He then reached into his jacket and brought out a joint and lit it, holding it out in offer to Blair and Rachel.
Rachel shook her head.
Blair stared at it. “What is it?”
“It has been around for hundreds of years, if not thousands, my friend. Tried and true. It will center you.”
“I better not,” Blair said. “I need to go and decrypt these glasses. I’ll let you both know when I’ve got it. Where can I reach you?”
Eric shook his head, the joint hanging loosely from his pursed lips. “I have to dismantle that tube thingy in the shuttle and weld the most perfect seal in the world so it looks like it did before. If my boss sees it, he’ll fire my ass, and my ass needs the money, especially if this debacle in front of us goes south even more.”
“Need help?” Rachel said, but not with much conviction.
“Nah,” Eric said. He took a long drag on the joint, held it for a few seconds, and released a large puff of smoke. “You guys go. Sounds like you’ve been through hell.”
As Blair and Rachel walked away, Eric said, “Hey, Sasquatch Hands, I’ll meet you at the Bruges Bar in two hours.”
“You got it, Delicate and Dainty Hands.” She didn’t turn around, but kept walking. “Maybe you can explain what the fuck a Sasquatch is.”
Eric laughed, his machine-gun laugh, bringing a smile to Blair and Rachel’s faces. “It’s a huge, hairy, man-like beast, with big hands and really big feet.” He laughed even harder.
Rachel stopped for a second, a laugh exploding out of her. Blair burst out as well. Neither Blair nor Rachel ever saw Eric again.
Chapter 35
“I got it,” Blair said, as Rachel took a swig of her sixth beer.
The bar was packed, even though it was seven in the morning. Time is a funny thing in space. It doesn’t mean much when you don’t have the sun to go off of. Most people, from what Rachel could tell, did not wear a watch.
She sat at the bar on a tall stool. Blair stood beside and just behind her. The noise level was high, the chatter a steady drone.
“I can’t maintain comfortable numbness, if you’re standing behind me,” she said.
Blair sat down on a stool beside her.
The bartender, a tall, thin man with a thick, bushy mustache, looked at Blair, and Blair shook his head. “Nothing. Thanks.” Blair looked around. “Where’s Eric?”
“No show. He probably passed out in the shuttle before he finished the welding job.” She smiled.
“We should go look at the footage from the glasses.”
“One drink first. I insist.”
“I’m not much of a drinker.”
“You probably won’t like beer then.” Rachel ordered a vodka special for Blair, which he sipped slowly.
He looked at Rachel with an impatient expression on his face.
Rachel looked at the reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “Maybe we shouldn’t look. Just hand it over. Be done with it. Maybe it’s better not to know.”
Blair’s eyes furrowed. “What? Are you kidding me?”
“Look, Blair, it’s done. Over. We did our part. We need go no further. If we watch it, and they find out we did, they’ll kill us and you know it.”
Blair stared at his drink for a bit. “They’ll never find out. I’ll make sure they don’t know it has been viewed.”
“Nothing you say can convince me of that.”
He sniffed. “I need to know.”
“I don’t. Go ahead and watch it, but I want no part, and I don’t want to hear about it.”
Blair’s face was sullen, almost devastated, and a pang went to her heart. All she wanted was her money and a life to make her forget the whole thing. She never wanted to see Blair again, not because she disliked him, because she didn’t, but because that’s the way it needed to be.
They sat in silence, other than the constant chatter filling the small bar.
Blair started to open his mouth, and then he shut it, looking over at an observation window. He walked up to it, and Rachel got up and followed, wondering what he was looking at. She brought her beer with her.
“What?” she said.
Blair turned to her. “We’ve stopped.”
“Maybe we’re at the next gate.” Even as she said it, she knew that couldn’t be.
“We passed through the other one, to my great relief I might add, an hour ago. There’s no way. There’s --”
“Something wrong,” she finished for him.
Blair sniffed.
“We need to get those glasses and get off this ship,” Rachel said.
“Let’s just go.” Blair was wide-eyed, looking around the bar.
“No glasses, no money.”
“Fuck the money.”
“The money is everything. Otherwise, why’d we do this? And, just a minute ago, you were all gung ho to view the video on those glasses.”
“I’ve got a huge bonus coming to me for supplying them with the tools for this mission, and I can live without viewing what happened to those soldiers. Like you said, maybe it’s better not to know.”
“Yeah, well, none of
it will mean shit if we’ve got nothing to show for it.”
Blair grabbed her by the arm with one hand, and her beer with his other. As he pulled her away, he slammed her beer on the nearest table, scaring the patrons sitting there. Rachel pulled her arm out of his grasp. Both of them continued to move quickly, Blair in the lead.
Chapter 36
“We never made it back to Blair’s room,” Rachel said, not without some sadness in her voice, something she had not shown yet, but she couldn’t help it. As much as she hated Blair when she first met him, she grew to understand him. He had a heart and he didn’t deserve to die.
Regina glared at her, but said nothing. The others all stared, but their judgments did not matter to her. She didn’t reveal anything about her past that would incriminate her, like the criminal activity she told Blair about. They now knew everything she did about what happened on Pyramid.
“When we realized people were disappearing,” Rachel said, “we went for the shuttle bay, but by the time we got there, others must have already tried, because the doors were sealed and we couldn’t get in.”
“And you didn’t see anything else?” George said.
“The orange light that Regina saw, but we never got caught in it until the control room with the rest of you. We tried walking back to Blair’s room, but crowds of people pushed us the other way, yelling about people dying, about stuff oozing from their eye sockets, mouths, and ears, and their bodies sizzling away to nothing.”
“All right, Rachel,” George said. “I appreciate everything you’ve told us, and I understand the risk you’re taking.” He nodded at her. “Here’s what’s going to happen, people. We need to get off Pyramid. Half of us will stay here and try and get our ship going. The rest will be going to get those glasses and the device Blair used to bypass the matchstick markers.”
There was some chatter amongst everyone, and then George put his hand up and they stopped talking. Regina said nothing to anyone.
“All right. Mary, Brett, Travis, and Paula, you stay here. Myself, Michael, John, Cindy, and Rachel will go to Blair’s room.”
Everyone looked over at Regina, who was not included in either list.
Brett glared at Mary when he found out he was still stuck with her.
“And Regina, I’ll leave it to you what you want to do,” George said.
She looked right back at George, and without hesitation, said, “I’m with your group, George.”
George closed his eyes and nodded slowly. “Okay then. Group, continue to watch your device for any activity on the cameras, and report anything. Be ready to go in five.”
Chapter 37
Mary looked at Brett, Paula, and Travis, sitting in the cockpit of their ship. These would not have been her choices to help get the ship going, something more important than finding glasses. But, so be it. That’s the way it was. She would deal with it. Complaining was not something she ever did, not out loud. Ever.
The smell of charred circuitry still permeated the air. So, what do you do when you’re dead in the water? Nobody really knew how bad it was, because they couldn’t turn anything on. Every system was dead. An idea popped into her head. It was a long shot, but it was worth a try. Unfortunately, it required leaving their ship.
“Paula and Travis,” Mary said, “I want you to start searching Pyramid shuttles on the far side of the bay, looking for flight boards we can swap out for our crispy ones. Brett and I --”
Brett dropped his head.
“-- will look on this side of the bay. My hope, and it’s a long shot, is that whoever fried all the boards did not do so on the shuttles since they would not be able to go anywhere unless near a marker.”
Travis looked at the others. Nobody said anything. “Ummm, Sir, if aliens did this, how would they know the difference? Wouldn’t they just fry everything?”
“I’m very aware of that, Mr. Deckstill. Thank you. If you, or anyone else, have a better idea, I’d love to hear it.”
Nobody said anything.
“Good,” she said. “Let’s go, slow and quiet.” She looked at Brett, wanting a sullen look or obnoxious reply, but he kept serene. She smiled at him and the confused look that morphed onto his face made her smile more. Never let them get comfortable, or they’ll walk all over you.
Chapter 38
John, George, Rachel, Cindy, Regina, and Michael walked slowly up a flight of stairs. All of them, except Rachel, were heavily armed. The four SPARS had their standard rifle, all carrying it at the ready, the barrel pointed down and away from anyone. Regina had her black SOAD weapon of destruction in her right hand, pointed down as she climbed the stairs. Rachel had no weapons, her only protection that of the others.
John stopped at the next level up, Passenger Level 4 written in black letters on a clear, glass door.
John looked back at George. George looked at the control device strapped to his wrist, as did the other SPARS. Regina could not tell if they saw anything, but assumed not; otherwise they would have said something. She was pretty damn sure the creatures, or whatever the hell they were, would not show on camera.
George signaled to the others behind him that he and John were going to check out the floor. John pulled the glass door open, George walked through aiming his weapon left, then right. John followed, his weapon aimed left. And then they were gone.
Michael moved to the front and Cindy to the rear. Nobody spoke, following George’s orders from before they left. Not to speak unless absolutely necessary.
Regina got that. The less she had to speak to anyone, the better. She still wasn’t sure about Rachel, but she was leaning towards believing her. Just a gut feeling, but her story seemed absolutely sincere and, as Rachel told it, Regina could not detect any sign of deception. Regina wanted to blame her for this, but she couldn’t. If Rachel had not been hired to do the job, some other pilot would have been. And, she didn’t know what she was getting into. Regina wondered if it would have mattered. Rachel seemed obsessed with money.
And the glasses? Did they record everything the soldier wearing them saw, and would they be able to access it? Blair had cracked the code, but would they need to again, or was it ready to go?
It looked to Regina that everyone was lost in thought, except for Michael. He seemed ready to go at the slightest sign of anything.
Five minutes later, she heard gunshots, and Michael didn’t hesitate. He broke the silence, now that it seemed not to matter.
“Cindy, watch our backs,” Michael said. “We’re moving. Now.” Michael swung the glass door open, pointing his weapon as he walked through, quickly looking right and then left again, where the shots were still coming from. He did not turn back.
Regina looked forward, watching for any movement out of her peripheral. Nothing. Nothing that she could detect.
The gunfire ceased. Not a noise was heard from George or John. They never tried to contact them by radio. No time, probably. She hoped they were okay.
The seemingly endless hallway of doors, and the tunnel-like hallway with its dimmed lighting, offered no soothing effect. She actually missed the surrounding display of wildlife, forest, and sky that used to permeate the walls and ceiling, before everything went to hell. Regina was glad for the carpeted flooring, offering at least a chance of moving quietly. There were more doors on this floor than the lower ones, probably because the rooms were only meant for 1 or 2 people so there were a lot more of them. This is where the nightmare began for her not too many hours ago. As they passed her room, she looked at the door and her room number, 4772, the door closed as she left it.
Five minutes later, they saw where the shots had gone off. Bullet holes lined a wall at a t-intersection, scattered everywhere, including into the ceiling. White shrapnel from the wall and ceiling spotted the floor.
When they turned to the right, they saw something none of them would have ever expected.
Chapter 39
She thought she was better than him, and he knew it. Of course, Brett could
not deny her experience, but it didn’t mean she was better at everything than him. No way. Anyone would have been a better partner than her.
Brett and Mary were pulling circuit boards from the cockpit of one of the Pyramid shuttles. When Brett pulled his, he couldn’t believe it. She was right. Again. Great. It will make her even more annoying. “This board looks okay, Sir.”
“Mine too. We’ll bring them both. It will not be completely compatible with our ship, but it may be good enough to get up and running.”
It was hard, when she thought she was so great, to ask her questions. But she did like when he did, unless he asked something that annoyed her. She was impossible to gauge. But he would never give in. He almost exploded at her a couple of times, but he knew it was never going to be an argument he would win. He would bottle it up. Keep it to himself, at least, that was, until he could talk with Travis. Travis always listened to him and liked making fun of Mary. Travis always seemed to get away with things, but Brett could get away with nothing. Some day he would be just like Travis.
“Why do you think they didn’t wreck the shuttle boards?”
Mary stared at him, with that stupid stare, that you’re-an-idiot stare. “I already told you, Brett. The shuttles are useless without matchstick markers, unless they emergency eject and even then all they can do is follow the mother ship. Otherwise, no ship, including all ships but military, can activate their engines without marker vicinity.”
He bit his tongue. “I get that, sir, but how would they know that?”
“Maybe we’re not dealing with anything more than humans with some technology we’ve never seen before, Mr. Sandgrass.”
“Maybe.” He turned and rolled his eyes.
“Contact the others. We’re going back to our ship.”
Chapter 40
George and John’s guns lay on the floor, and beside that, what Regina assumed were their bodies, covered in the same brown, gelatinous goo that almost got her earlier.