Infinite Mayhem

by Jake Bible

  27.

  “That was rather enjoyable,” Hessa said. “It was nice to meet beings that aren’t out to kill us or capture us or use us in some nefarious plan. Good, simple folk trying to raise a family and get by in a system that has seen better times.”

  “You making a holo documentary about them?” Reck asked as everyone sat on the bridge while the ship left the planet.

  “No, I am simply stating my feelings on our interaction with Gilga and his family,” Hessa said. “Y’all should be more open to meeting new beings.”

  “Roak, she said y’all,” Reck said, turning in the co-pilot’s seat to smirk at the man. “You really want her picking up that affectation?”

  Roak didn’t respond. Reck reached over and snapped her fingers in his face.

  “Don’t do that,” he snarled.

  “What’s up your light armor-clad ass?” Reck asked. “We got our fuel. Plasma cannons are at full. Yellow Eyes showed us that we aren’t broke.

  “Yeah, man,” Yellow Eyes said. “And none of us are arguing with you to tell us your great and grand plan. You’re getting your way, Roak, so why all the gloom?”

  “They were nice,” Roak said.

  Everyone shared glances then returned their attention to Roak.

  “And…?” Reck asked.

  “Nice family. Chassfornians trying to live outside their reputations as a race. Not the life I’d choose, but they looked not so much happy as satisfied.”

  “Still with the ‘and,’ Roak,” Reck said and sighed.

  “Too bad we just got them killed,” Roak said. “Each of you has said it more than once: I leave death and destruction in my wake. If the GF don’t level that outpost after tracking us there, then I’m sure Father will come calling at some point. He’ll know we survived his little trap and start his hunt. They maybe have a month or two.”

  “Uh, when I asked why all the gloom, I wasn’t expecting that,” Yellow Eyes mumbled from his seat. “You go dark so fast, man.”

  “Life is dark,” Roak replied.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Reck shouted and punched Roak across the chin.

  “What the fuck?” Roak snapped and tried to jump up from his seat, but he was still strapped in.

  “If they die, then they die,” Reck said. “A lot more beings are going to die because of what Father put in motion and none of it is your idiotic fault. Drop the guilt and get your head back in the game because your head is the only head that knows what the fuck the game is!”

  Roak blinked at her a few times. “You’re right.”

  “Time and date,” Hessa said from the speakers.

  “Hessa,” Roak snarled. “Not the time.”

  “Would it be the time to tell me where we are headed?” Hessa asked.

  “I narrowed down the location while I was on the GF destroyer,” Roak said. “Did you transfer that data into your system?”

  “I did,” Hessa said. “Are you sure that’s the place?”

  “Could be,” Roak said. “Only way to find out is to take us there. It’ll be a start.”

  “There is one problem,” Hessa said. “Bishop, or Father, never gave me the codes to access the files once we have them. I can try to crack the encryption, but knowing Bishop as you do, Roak, would you say he’d make that easy to do?”

  “No. The quantum drives will be near impossible to access without the codes,” Roak replied. “But we’ll do it.”

  “How?” Reck asked.

  “I’m still working on that,” Roak replied.

  “Are you really or is this a bunch of terpigshit?”

  “No, I have an idea. I’m not happy about it, but I have an idea.”

  Reck glanced back at the others. Nimm had a sour look on her face and Yellow Eyes only shrugged his strange shrug.

  “We’ll trust you,” Reck said. “But I swear to all the Eight Million Gods if you are lying to me right now, Roak, I’ll make stew out of your balls.”

  “I’m not eating that,” Yellow Eyes said. “I’m not eating Roak balls stew, man.”

  “While this is a lovely conversation, would any of you care to hear where our destination is?” Hessa asked.

  “Where?” Roak replied.

  “The planet doesn’t have a name because no one bothered to name it,” Hessa said. A holo display came up and a red dot appeared. The holo zoomed in to show that the dot wasn’t red to indicate where the planet was, but the planet itself was red. “That’s magma. The whole planet is covered in magma.”

  The holo spun and zoomed in more.

  “Except for this one area,” Hessa continued. “It is about ten times the size of this ship and rises fifty meters above the surface.”

  “Looks bigger,” Nimm said.

  “That’s cooling crust,” Hessa stated. “Maybe a meter of cooling rock, but under it is more magma.” A circle enveloped the area. “This is stable. Hotter than any of you beings can survive in, but stable.”

  “Enviro suits then,” Roak said.

  “Unless you want to cook to death before you take more than three steps off this ship,” Hessa replied. “Then yes, enviro suits would be recommended.”

  “How soon until we get there?” Roak asked.

  “We are entering the wormhole portal now and should be there in approximately seventeen hours,” Hessa said.

  “Good,” Roak said and eased back in his seat as he undid his straps. “I’ll wait here.”

  “For seventeen hours straight?” Reck asked and stood up. “Have fun with that.”

  She left the bridge. Nimm stood, studied the still-glowing holo of their destination, then followed Reck out.

  “You going with?” Roak asked Yellow Eyes.

  “Nah, I’ll hang here, man,” Yellow Eyes replied.

  They sat there in silence as they entered the wormhole portal. Trans-space filled the view shield.

  “Gonna be sick?” Yellow Eyes asked.

  “No,” Roak stated.

  They sat there silent for ten minutes straight until Yellow Eyes started to whistle.

  “No,” Roak snapped.

  “Right. Off to the mess to help the bots clean those chits,” Yellow Eyes said and was gone in a blur.

  Roak stared at the holo.

  “Hessa?” he said after another ten minutes.

  “Sorry. I forgot,” Hessa said and banished the holo.

  Roak watched the swirling mess of trans-space for an hour straight. He blinked three times. Then he closed his eyes and let his mind wander. He was playing it tight. He’d gone off through the galaxy many times half-cocked, but that was when the stakes were much, much lower. Now the GF was involved. The Skrang were involved. Father was involved.

  Roak was no longer the guy that was called to tackle the hunting jobs that no one else would touch. He had become the hunting job that no one else would touch. Except he knew there were going to be many hands and fingers and tentacles and whatevers touching this job to track him and his crew down.

  Roak was on the other side now and he did not like it one bit.

  An alarm sounded and Roak opened his eyes.

  “What are we looking at, Hessa?” Roak asked.

  “What? Nothing. We’ve arrived,” Hessa said.

  “That wasn’t seventeen hours,” Roak said as he stretched.

  “Yes. It was. You slept through the whole trip,” Hessa said. “I told no one to come up to the bridge once I saw your vital signs level out. Have a nice nap?”

  “How would I know?” Roak replied. “I was asleep through it all.”

  He stood and worked out the kinks in his body then leaned his weight on the back of the chair and stared at the red planet that filled the view shield.

  “That much heat and the atmospheric entry will be brutal,” Roak said.

  “That is very true, Roak,” Hessa said. “You may want to sit back down and strap in. We are making our entry approach now.”

  “Can we come back?” Yellow Eyes asked from his seat.

&n
bsp; “You’re already here,” Roak replied. He sat down again. “Hessa, tell the”—”

  “Already did,” Yellow Eyes said.

  Two minutes later, Reck and Nimm returned to the bridge.

  “Sleepyhead is awake,” Reck teased. “You dream gumdrop dreams?”

  “No idea what you’re babbling about,” Roak said.

  “Beginning angled entry,” Hessa announced. “Hold on. This will be bumpy.”

  The ship shook and the view shield was filled with flames from their entry into the planet’s atmosphere. What little visibility they had showed more flames and bubbling magma far below. It went on for as far as their eyes could see.

  Then they were through the outer atmosphere and navigating past thick, black clouds of soot and ash. The ship twisted and turned to avoid geysers of magma that reached kilometers into the sky.

  “Ooh, that was a close one,” Hessa said as she spun the ship in a barrel roll. “Might have to replace the shielding on that section of the ship at some point.”

  “Great,” Reck grumbled.

  “We are fifteen kilometers out from our destination,” Hessa said. “You should go down and get suited up.”

  Roak turned and locked onto Yellow Eyes. “Can your body handle this heat?”

  “Yeah, yeah, no problem,” Yellow Eyes said. “Uh, how hot are we talking here?”

  “About two thousand Kelvin,” Hessa replied.

  “What’s a Kelvin?” Yellow Eyes asked.

  “Very hot.”

  “Nice. You bet. I can take this, man. I can take this.” He paused. “Kelvin isn’t a type of acid, is it?”

  “No, it is the basic unit of thermodynamic temperature,” Hessa replied.

  Yellow Eyes blinked. “So it’s hot?”

  “Very.”

  “Got it. Very hot stuff. I’m good.”

  “Suit up,” Roak ordered and undid his straps. He left the bridge without waiting.

  Once they were all suited up down in the cargo hold, Roak looked at the others.

  “We get from the ship and into the facility as fast as possible. Assess whether or not the quantum drives are viable and if they are, then we figure out how to get them from the facility and into the ship,” Roak said. “They’ll melt if we try to move them externally, so let’s hope we can use the moltrans unit to transport them into the cargo hold here.”

  “And if they can’t be moltrans’d?” Reck asked.

  “Then we may have to blast the facility open and load them up on the fly,” Roak said.

  “We’ll probably damage the drives that way,” Nimm said.

  “Options are limited,” Roak said. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” Reck said.

  “Ready,” Nimm said.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, ready, man,” Yellow Eyes said.

  “I have defensive shields at full,” Hessa stated. “When I open the rear ramp, you will need to move fast and keep moving. The defensive shields will protect the cargo hold for only so long before the heat begins to damage the interior.”

  “Don’t leave the door open is what you’re saying,” Yellow Eyes responded.

  “No…that’s not what I’m… Just go,” Hessa huffed.

  The ramp lowered and Roak and company moved quickly after, each grabbing a plasma rifle from a rack on the cargo hold’s wall. The heat was almost too much to handle even in the enviro suits. Roak felt like his skin was crisping after only taking a few steps. But he didn’t slow. He kept moving toward the huge chunk of non-molten rock that was before him. It wasn’t until he was a couple meters away that he saw the entrance.

  Yellow Eyes was already standing there, hopping from foot-nub to foot-nub, back and forth like he needed to piss.

  Reck moved past Roak and studied the entrance controls.

  “Hurry it up, Reck,” Roak said.

  Reck punched the control panel with a gloved fist and the doors slid open. Yellow Eyes was inside in a blur. The others followed and Reck spun about and tapped at the door’s internal control panel. They closed and the world became a cool oasis in seconds.

  “Safe to take your helmets off,” Hessa said. “But I wouldn’t advise it.”

  “Why not?” Nimm asked.

  “Because something killed them,” Roak said. “And it doesn’t look like plasma or laser fire.”

  There were dozens of beings sprawled across the entrance’s floor. All of them had enviro suits on, but their helmets were off. Despite being from many different races, it was obvious to all that they died as soon as they took their helmets off.

  “This is a strike team,” Nimm said. “Private operators, for sure. Someone wanted Bishop’s files.”

  “Why take their helmets off?” Reck asked. “Dumb move.”

  “All indicators show that the atmosphere in this facility is safe,” Hessa answered. “They had no reason to think they should keep their helmets on.”

  “One of Bishop’s little surprises,” Roak said. “There will be more. He said getting the quantum drives would be hard as all the Hells, even for him.”

  “He said that because he was Father,” Reck said. “Whatever Bishop set up here for security, Father knew it would figure out he wasn’t Bishop as soon as he stepped inside.”

  “If Father was worried, then we should be too. Not that he expected us to get this far,” Roak said. “Stay tight and don’t wander”—”

  “Found the quantum drives,” Yellow Eyes said. “They’re six levels down and in this really cool room.”

  “Yes, the drives would require much lower temperatures to maintain stability,” Hessa said.

  “I mean, super cool,” Yellow Eyes continued, not able to hear Hessa without a comm implant. “Like there are these neat lasers spinning everywhere and a sound that is all boop, boop, boop, blip screech, boop, boop. Really cool, man.”

  “Oh, he means that kind of cool,” Hessa said. “Comms work, but I can’t penetrate scans down to that level. You’ll have to relay what you see to me so I can figure out what security protocols are being used. Put me on speaker so Yellow Eyes can hear too.”

  “Copy that,” Roak said and pointed at Yellow Eyes. “Lead the way.”

  “Gladly,” Yellow Eyes said and was gone.

  “Slower!” Roak shouted.

  “Right. Sorry, man,” Yellow Eyes said when he returned. He walked at a normal speed and kept looking behind him. “This good? You guys able to keep up?”

  “Just walk,” Roak snapped.

  They followed Yellow Eyes to a set of stairs. No lift, only normal stairs. The group made it down one level then paused.

  “They kept their helmets on,” Nimm stated.

  Another dozen beings were dead on the ground, their enviro suits’ midsections torn open, intestines and viscera from the various races strewn all about the corpses as if they exploded from the inside out.

  “What are you seeing?” Hessa asked.

  Nimm described the scene.

  “Concentrated microwaves,” Hessa said with a laugh. “Pretty much undetectable. If scanners did pick them up, they’d look like comms signals, not a security measure.” She paused. “Uh, how are you feeling? Any tummy aches?”

  “I’m a little hungry, but I don’t think my guts are gonna try to go for a walk without me,” Yellow Eyes said.

  “I’m good,” Roak said.

  “Same here,” Reck agreed.

  “No discomfort,” Nimm added.

  “I need measurements,” Hessa said. “Tell me where the bodies are in relation to the rest of the space.”

  “It’s a long corridor,” Nimm said. “About fifty meters long. No doors on any of the walls. Walls extend about five meters up to the ceiling. No lighting fixtures, holo cams, blaster ports. Everything is smooth.”

  “I’d say the bodies are in this order,” Reck said and rattled off approximate measurements from body to body and bodies to walls.

  “Oh, wow, Bishop is good,” Hessa said. “Do the outer bodies, the ones closest to the wa
lls, look like they were affected more than the others toward the center of the corridor?”

  “Yes,” Roak said.

  “Wow.”

  “You said that,” Roak snapped. “What does it mean?”

  “The microwaves piggybacked off the bodies. Moving from one to the other, starting with the bodies closest to the walls and working inward,” Hessa said. “Technically, they should not behave that way, but theoretically what has happened to these beings is possible.”

  “Ya think?” Roak snapped. “Don’t give me theories, Hessa. I need to know how we get from the stairs to the end of the corridor.”

  “I don’t know,” Hessa said. “The information I have is too little to make any accurate guess as to how you either shut off the security protocol or avoid it.”

  The corridor was illuminated in bright light as the ceiling came alive with a brilliant white glow.

  “I found the off switch,” Yellow Eyes said and pointed at the end of the corridor. “Right next to the light switch.” He rubbed his midsection. “Gonna have gas for a bit here. Sorry, folks.”

  “Son of a…” Roak put his rifle to his shoulder and dialed in the targeting until a small window in the faceplate of his helmet showed the far wall. There were two switches. One said “lights.” One said “kill switch.” “You can shoot them from here. But no one is going to shoot a switch that says kill on it.”

  “It killed the security,” Yellow Eyes said and laughed then frowned as his stomach grumbled. “Hey, Hessa? Add microwaves to the list of things that don’t settle well with my body. Damn…”

  “Are you going to be alright?” Hessa asked.

  “Oh, sure, no problem, man,” Yellow Eyes said. “I know death belly when I feel it and this isn’t death belly. Yet.”

  “Come on,” Roak said and walked off the steps and into the corridor. He paused and when his guts didn’t try to leave his body, he kept moving. “Double steps. We’re losing time.”

  “You worried about something other than this place’s security?” Nimm asked.

  “He’s worried we’re not the only ones still trying to get at Bishop’s files,” Reck said. “We’ve encountered two teams so far. None have been here for longer than what, a month? Maybe not even that by the state of the corpses. Odds are more will be on the way.”