by Randy Noble
The sensors continued to pulse, including the one he just set. It must have been moving quickly behind him, determined, deliberate, and deadly. He both admired and despised it, admired it for its stealth and determination, but despised it for what seemed a senseless, barbaric act. The more he thought about it, the more he thought the creatures to be men, men with special equipment. And the purpose? What the hell could they want? Money? The thrill of a hunt? And what was the purpose of the podding of people? For food? For something more sinister, like a body for gestating more of them? Whatever he thought, he had all questions and no answers, and each question led to a more horrible question.
He grabbed an explosive disc out of his pocket and set the timer to 30 seconds, and slapped it onto the wall. He ran towards another stairwell, one he knew about from studying the layout of the ship. It was either that or get to the elevator, but the creature was moving too fast behind him to wait for an elevator. The travel tube made the most sense, but he wouldn’t do it, couldn’t. People died in those damned things. Just thinking about it, he broke out in a sweat.
Michael rubbed a spot on his head where there was now a scar. A childhood dare, before travel tubes became more secure. He spent a week in intensive care and three months in a hospital. He never again allowed peer pressure to control him.
He contemplated yet again the quicker, probably more sensible option of the tube. As he did, he stalled by setting another impact sensor, which, once set, immediately started beeping and pulsing when it linked with his wrist device.
But even if he tried the travel tube, would he have the privilege of accessing it, or would it be restricted to Pyramid staff? He should, as a SPARS officer, have authority for any such device. But maybe not. Or did he just hope not? The fear, it was so stupid to him, yet something he could not deny. Michael slammed his fists on the wall, and then opened the door to a spiral staircase with outer glass walls for viewing the ship as you strode down them, all the way to passenger level 1, eight levels down.
Michael looked down the wide opening between the spiral staircase and the drop all the way down.
The door behind him opened. He turned, but it was too late. A brown blob came at him, at chest level. Instinctively, he backed up, and, as he hit the top of the railing, the blob consumed him, and then he went over.
Chapter 47
The women made it through four walls and were now on the fifth one, the lipstick searing its way through the metal walls. After each room was breached, they would bring up the wall piece they took out and put it back in place as well as it would go.
Nobody talked, mostly because they wanted to remain quiet and not give away their position if something strode by, even though Cindy watched the impact sensors and there was no activity. And there was no word from Michael, which concerned Regina and the others, too. She could see worry in their eyes, especially Cindy’s.
Cindy tried several times to contact him, but got nothing back. As far as Regina knew, Cindy might be the last of her team, and she seemed the most inexperienced.
When they got through into Blair’s room, the first reaction was of surprise and then downright revulsion. A putrid smell overwhelmed Regina’s nostrils.
Trays of food lay everywhere, including on the bed and under the covers. Half eaten sandwiches, pizza, strewn cans and bottles of fizzy drinks of all sorts. Dirty clothes were scattered on the floor, dresser, TV, and even hanging off one picture. It was like a bomb went off in a suitcase and this was the result. The smell was that of rotting meat.
Rachel went right for a floor safe, while the others looked around with disgust.
"Do you need me to open that for you?" Cindy asked Rachel.
"Nope,” Rachel said, “Blair actually gave me the combo after everything went to hell, just in case." Rachel punched in a code on the digital keypad on the safe, and it opened. She pulled out a cylindrical device and a pair of glasses that looked similar to what Cindy was wearing. Rachel pocketed the cylinder.
"Is that --" Regina started.
"Yep,” Rachel said, “it's the device Blair used to disable the matchstick linking device in the ship we took to that planet. Blair said he cracked the encryption on the glasses, so I should be able to rig it to play on the TV."
Regina didn’t wait for Rachel. "Television. Power On." The TV looked much like any other monitor Regina had seen, paper-thin and crystal clear, except much larger. It was anchored on the wall. A small black panel on the back was visible when the TV was off, but disappeared when turned on.
The TV powered on, revealing a background image of Pyramid One and a menu of choices, one of them for scanning devices.
Rachel took over the commands. "Television. Scan for devices." Not even a second of processing, a blink of a clock icon on the television screen, and the following displayed on the screen: Military issue -- Video Surveillance Glasses -- Multiple Spectrum -- Decrypted.
Rachel looked at Regina and Cindy. "Cross your fingers." She looked back at the TV. “Television. Play Video Surveillance Glasses.”
The screen filled with an image of a meadow, tall grass blowing in a light wind. Five people in form fitting suits stood in the grass, each looking in a different direction. They each had a form fitting see-through helmet, two tanks on their backs, and a shoulder pack strapped forward on their chests.
All the faces Regina could see were male and had recordable glasses, and each had a rifle strapped around their shoulders.
Regina looked at Rachel. “Forty four minutes?”
“Yes,” Rachel said. “That was planet mission time when we saw the shadow of the man coming back up the tube.”
A recording time displayed in the top right corner on the TV read: 00:00:37.
One of the men seemed to scan the air with some handheld device, looked at the others, and then ripped off his helmet. He stood, eyes closed, taking deep breaths. The others all did the same, storing their helmets in their front packs.
The travel device they all came down was visible, just a few feet away, translucent green, and towering up into the sky like a cylindrical tornado.
There appeared to be eight men and they didn’t speak the whole time, not that Regina could hear. The only sound Regina heard was the breathing of the man whose video they watched, deep and slow.
Their man scanned the soil. Others didn’t appear to be doing anything, just walking around.
After what seemed an eternity to Regina, they broke up into four pairs and all pairs went off in different directions, slowly, looking everywhere. Regina assumed they went off in an orderly direction, like North, East, South, and West, but who knew their strategy for sure?
After twenty minutes planet mission time, someone broke radio silence, but not their man. “This is Delta 2. I’ve got a signal. It’s strong. On me in two minutes. I’m prepping the rocket.”
Their man, and his partner, turned and ran.
Chapter 48
Before the brown blob started consuming Michael, as he fell over the railing, he knew what had happened. He knew that it got him and he knew he was falling. And then, instead of panicking, his body and mind relaxed. He didn't have a care in the world. Nothing concerned him. He didn't worry about anything.
His body fell fast. The brown blob also moved fast, soon becoming golden-brown, encasing Michael. The wide opening in the middle of the spiral stairs kept his body safe from the railing, but not from the impending impact to the floor.
When he landed, he didn't feel it and he knew he wasn't dead. Instead, he came to a realization as images started making their way into his mind, images he did not control. This was not the usual inundation of thoughts and images, but something he was being shown, something he was meant to see. And, when he saw it, he realized, with the casualness of drinking a cup of coffee, that they had it all wrong.
Chapter 49
Regina, Rachel, and Cindy continued to watch the video. By the time their man got to the one who broke the silence, that person had a spherical devi
ce on the ground with a diameter of about five feet. The device looked like a hoola-hoop, only much thicker, and it was a very bright red. A small black panel stuck out from a section of the ring. The whole ring looked sectioned, like it could fold up into itself.
The other man had his front pack on the ground, pulling out a small, white cylinder with a cone at the top. He pulled the cylinder from the bottom, extending its size to four times what it started as. It looked like a small rocket, six feet long and just under a foot thick.
Rocket Man slammed the bottom of the rocket on the ground and three prongs popped out of the bottom part, stabilizing the rocket off the ground in a tripod stand.
Rocket Man’s partner took a thin, black handheld device and pointed it at the rocket. Within a second of that, the rocket exploded away from the tripod, a small section of the cylinder remaining behind, torched from the blaze.
Their man looked up as the rocket took off, then veered in another direction, and shot off like a bullet, and then he spoke for the first time. “Time to target?” His voice was very low and deep.
“Five minutes,” came the reply, from Hoola-Hoop Man. “Distance is 1115 kilometers.”
“Good,” said Deep Voice Man. He walked over to the large, red ring and bent down by its black panel. He pressed some buttons and a fraction of a second later, the ground within the inside of the ring seemed to disappear. In its place was blackness. It occurred to Regina just then that the ring was some sort of transport device, like a miniature gate.
A few minutes later, after Hoola-Hoop Man stared at something on his wrist, he said, “Target reached. Ring is set.”
Without a word, every man jumped into the blackness in the middle of the ring and disappeared through it like falling into a hole. Deep Voice Man was last. The video signal snapped to static for one second and then came back on as he popped up out of the ground, or that’s what it looked like to Regina. When the video came back on, the image started low, at ground level, and came up to reveal the others standing and waiting.
Deep Voice Man looked around. The rocket stuck out of the ground, its point buried, and its back end split open. Another ring, the one the men popped up through, sat on the ground five feet away.
Deep Voice turned around. A massive city lay before them, built into the ground. All the men walked to the edge of a rock cliff and looked down at the city that seemed to stretch on forever, and it was miles wide from what Regina could tell. She saw bridges running from the rock cliff edges down into the city. The rock floor was broken, with crevices and cracks throughout, so the city was sectioned, with multiple bridges joining different sections. The buildings themselves were black, maybe metal, most of them tall, narrow, and spiking at the top. There were other smaller, lower, rounded, black metal buildings. From the top of the cliff down to the rock floor foundation, Regina figured it must have been five hundred feet.
The men made their way down a rock path and started onto a bridge into the city. Deep Voice lagged behind, watching behind and to the sides, looking down over the edge of the bridge to an abyss. It was an odd location to put a city, built onto what seemed to be towering rock formations, like mesas. Maybe there was a heat source below, because the sun did not provide a sufficient source.
Regina almost missed it, because Deep Voice panned left and right constantly, but the brief glimpse of a stiffening body and grayish substance oozing from the orifices of the lead man were unmistakable. The men were under attack and, like Regina and the rest of the Pyramid unfortunates, they would have no idea what the hell was going on.
As soon as the first man dropped like a stone onto the hard, metal bridge, the others drew up their weapons in a back-to-back formation. It wasn't until another of them went rigid and fell hard to the bridge surface that they scattered, Deep Voice turning and running back the way he came, the others close behind.
"Abort," Deep Voice said.
Regina couldn't see what was happening to the others, because Deep Voice was in the lead and facing the other way. But she could hear the men behind, their voices loud.
"RUN! Just fucking run!" came one voice, high-pitched and panicked, cracking.
"Darian! Darian!" came a different voice.
"Forget him,” came the panicked, cracking voice again. “He's gone. Run!"
Shots were fired, a barrage of bullets. Deep Voice stumbled suddenly. He looked down at his leg, bubbling with blood, and continued on at a hard limp.
The gunfire continued for seconds and then stopped.
Deep Voice spoke. "Comm Set. Display at one second intervals all spectrums."
As different visual spectrums cycled through on the screen, Deep Voice made his way up the rock path. The mini gate could be seen in the near distance when he cleared the ridge.
During one of the spectrum intervals, Regina thought she saw something that looked like an unusually tall man, almost out of Deep Voice's view to his left. Either he didn't see it or he ignored it, continuing to run as hard as he could toward the gate.
Deep Voice stopped and panned around. Only a glimpse was caught of two men behind him, before he turned back around. He ran and yelled back at the others. "Go to visual spectrum nine. Comm set. Go visual spectrum set nine."
As soon as he said this -- the gate just a few feet away -- Regina saw the tall man again and four others. They towered over Deep Voice by at least two feet, skeleton thin. There were no features, just long legs with knees that seemed to bend both ways, long arms, no distinguishable genitalia, and an elongated head shaped like a large carrot with the point at the top. The fingers on both hands were very long, and on the right hand, a short point, like a needle, stuck out of each of the four fingers. There were no thumbs. And, probably due to the spectrum they were viewing these creatures in, all Regina could see was a blue hue to the body.
She assumed these were the creatures on Pyramid, but from what she felt of one, it didn't resemble the ones on the screen. The Pyramid creatures seemed shorter and more rotund.
A voice from behind Deep Voice said, "Jesus Christ!” and then someone opened fire.
Deep Voice turned too late to try and avoid it, and he took two bullets to the gut. It appeared to be just panic fire, most likely toward some creature near by. Deep Voice turned and launched himself into the mini gate, jumping onto the platform and disappearing into it.
The video went to static and then came back again as Deep Voice transported to the receiving end. When he popped through the other side, the picture snapped back. He was still in creature-vision mode, and from what Regina could tell, nothing was around him. He hobbled toward the transport tube as fast as he could, which was surprisingly fast being that he had two bullet wounds in his gut, and at least one in a leg. Regina could imagine the pain to be excruciating, but he didn't voice it. He strode along at a pace between a walk and a run, looking back frequently but not slowing when he did.
Steps away from the tube device, he glanced behind, and saw one of his companions making their way towards him, probably the one who panic-fired. The companion ran at full bore, looking to have no injuries. One of the creatures came through the mini gate, seeming taller than before, legs long like a giraffe, catching up to Deep Voice's buddy in mere strides. It pricked him in the back with one of its fingers on its right hand, and the man went rigid and then collapsed. Regina saw stuff oozing from all orifices visible. Dead.
Deep Voice looked down at his pack, yanked the helmet out, put it on, and jumped into the translucent green transport tube and the television’s picture turned to static and stayed like that.
"He's the one," Cindy said, "that you saw come through into your ship?"
"Yes," Rachel replied. "He died soon after he came through."
"So what are we missing here?" Regina said. "Why would they pursue us? Revenge for stepping on their planet? Did those men on that planet see something they weren’t supposed to?"
"Maybe," Cindy said, "they felt they were protecting their people, their young or somet
hing."
Rachel shook her head. "No. I don't think so. If they were the creators of that city we saw, it would have been bustling, don't you think? I don't think those creatures are indigenous to that planet."
"I agree," Regina said. "Something is off about this whole thing. They're not attacking just for sport or protection."
Rachel nodded. "There are too few of them. Wouldn't there be more if they were in a defensive attack?"
Cindy didn't say anything, just nodding as she watched Regina and Rachel banter back and forth, reasoning it out.
Regina sighed and shook her head in frustration. "It makes no fucking sense. They are wiping out this entire ship. For what? And what the hell is that gooey crap that encases you?"
Rachel snapped her fingers. "Maybe it's some sort of impregnating thing. They could be re-populating themselves."
"Then why kill most of the others?" Regina asked.
"Food," Rachel said.
Regina shook her head. “That makes no sense. Why would they disintegrate their own food?” Rachel started to say something, but Regina had had enough of the guessing and cut her off. “Look, we don’t know anything about what’s going on. They could be aliens or they’re humans with some advanced technology. If the encasement is some sort of impregnation, we also have no idea how many people are dead on the ship and how many are encased. We could be overwhelmed by these things in no time. We need to leave this ship.”
Rachel grabbed the glasses they just watched the video from, and then Cindy took them from her. Cindy looked them over and put them on. "Comm set,” Cindy said. “Go visual spectrum set nine."