by N. W. Harris
“We’re going to make it through this,” he whispered.
“That’s not what concerns me,” she replied, sounding a little panicked. “Greenie is corralling us through this ship, trying to get us up to the city on the top for one reason. We’ll have to kill every Anunnaki up there if we are to survive.” She said this like she knew it for a fact, like Greenie had just told her.
“They’d have killed us if they couldn’t make us their slaves,” Shane replied, hoping to ease her guilt.
“I didn’t think it would make us kill their children, Shane,” she said angrily. “We’ll have to kill them too. Even among the Anunnaki, there are those who don’t deserve to die. Jones and Lily are proof of that.”
They left the light behind, and shadows closed on her face. Not knowing how to answer, he turned his attention to the dark corridor ahead. Another beacon, a light on far ahead, drew them. Shane hadn’t been able to dwell upon what would really go down once they made it to the city on top of the ship; he’d been too busy trying to keep everyone alive. Would Greenie make them kill every Anunnaki on the ship? If they were forced to kill the innocent, to slaughter the enemy’s children, could they ever recover from such heinous acts of violence? Could they even do it?
This time, the light glowed out of an open stairwell. The mood of the kids grew increasingly somber as they approached their bloody destination, and Shane led them in silence into the stairwell and up several levels. He stopped when the lights on the levels above didn’t turn on to direct them to continue their climb. When he approached the exit from the stairwell, the door slid aside. Hating the total lack of control over where they were going, he entered another hallway.
“Like rats in a maze,” Steve mumbled.
“Yeah,” Shane replied. “And we die if we make a wrong turn.”
“I believe this leads to the armory,” Jones said. “It’s hard to tell with the lights out.”
“Why would Greenie take us to the ship’s armory?” Anfisa asked. “It’s not like any of the weapons there will work.”
“Greenie can clearly give power to anything it wants,” Laura answered. Despite missing an arm, she’d kept up with the rest of them and was one of the few to escape the stairs on the side of the ship with only minor injuries.
A door on their right slid open. Shane pivoted and brought his weapon up, squinting his eyes at the darkness. The metal clack of his gun in his hands echoed through the chamber in the room beyond. He stepped sideways, bracing his gun against the doorjamb.
“Stay clear,” he whispered. “If anyone is in there, they’ll be able to see us before we see them with the light behind us.”
As if in response to his words, the lights went out, and they were left in absolute darkness. The teenagers mumbled their fear, panic brewing among them.
“Shush,” Shane ordered, straining his ears to compensate for his loss of vision.
Other than the sound of the teenagers shifting in the darkness and his pulse banging in his ears, all was silent. He looked back down the hallway from where they’d come and saw a faint green glow, the nightmarish wall of death approaching.
“What are we going to do?” Steve asked. “Don’t think we can stay here for long.”
“This door opened,” Shane replied. “I’m guessing Greenie wants us to go through it, light to guide us or not. Any objections?”
No one replied. As usual, they seemed content to follow his lead. Hoping he wasn’t making the wrong choice, he took a deep breath and stepped into the dark chamber.
“Stay close,” he said. “Put a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of you.”
A hand patted his back, feeling its way to his shoulder. He guessed it was Kelly’s. Shane stepped forward, sweeping his gun left and right like a blind person used a cane. He slid his feet on the floor, feeling his way along slowly. No matter how much time passed, his eyes couldn’t adjust to the inky darkness. He reckoned they went twenty feet into the room, and he heard the door they’d entered through slide shut behind them.
“Is everybody with us?” he asked, worried the door had cut someone off.
“I think so,” voices repeated behind him.
“This is bullshit,” someone cursed, frustration thick in their voice.
“Stay together,” Shane replied. “We have to keep our heads.”
A deep growl echoed through the room, a sound so low he felt it in his gut.
“What the hell was that?” Maurice asked, his voice coming from behind Shane.
“Please don’t let it be one of those giant wolves,” Kelly whispered.
“Wolves?” Anfisa said.
The growl came again, sounding closer and hungry. Shane swept his gun left, thinking the sound came from there. Then he heard a screech, like the nails of an oversized dog scraping on the metal floor. Someone in the back of his group screamed. Their squeal transformed from terror to pain, and then it stopped as suddenly as it started. He swore he heard bone crunching just as the teenager fell silent. Gunshots rang out, the flash from the barrels illuminating the back of his group. It created just enough light for him to make out a massive creature, something that looked like an elephant-sized werewolf.
“Spread out!” he shouted. “Kill it!”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Shoot its sides,” Kelly yelled. “Behind its front legs.”
He could barely hear her over the sound of gunfire. Everyone fired their weapons, creating a strobe of light in the dark chamber. Shane saw kids fall near the beast, shot by the kids behind them.
“Watch your aim, damn it,” he shouted in desperation.
The creature shrieked, bullets finding a home in its thick fur. Kelly charged toward it.
“Out of my way,” she ordered.
“Kelly, no!” He ran after her, thinking she’d lost her mind.
She elbowed the other kids to get through, then leapt to the right side of the animal and rolled. Shane dropped to his knee in front of the beast. In the flashing light, he saw it open its massive jaws to devour him. He aimed into its throat and pulled the trigger. On full auto, the M-16 belched rounds into the animal, but it didn’t slow down.
He rolled to get out of its way and saw Kelly near its right shoulder. She jabbed her gun’s barrel between its ribs and pulled the trigger. The massive alien wolf dropped and slid across the metal floor, dead.
Panicking kids continued to shoot their guns. Shane shouted for them to stop, and his friends repeated the order. It took another minute for the last shot to be fired.
The ringing in his ears subsided, replaced by the groans of the injured and the dying, a sound he’d heard all too often. Stunned, he tried to gain his bearings. The lights came on overhead, and he blinked to adjust his eyes against the brightness. As the cavernous room came into focus, the bloody scene around him made his heart drop. He’d been in a few fights, but never had so much death been caused by friendly fire. In their panic, the less disciplined teens in the back of his group had shot each other.
“It’s not working anymore,” Jones said with frustration, slapping the cigar-shaped healing pen against his palm.
“Guess Greenie doesn’t want us all to survive,” Maurice said, holding his hands over a boy’s wound to stop the bleeding.
It wasn’t easy to identify the teenagers who’d been killed by the wolf. He counted five, their bodies’ torn to shreds and limbs missing. He imagined a few more had been completely devoured by the beast. Most of the kids who lay dead and dying were bleeding out through gunshot wounds.
He rushed to Kelly, who kneeled on the ground next to the wolf, her gun still pointed at the beast.
“What the hell is it doing to us?” she asked. “What sort of sick game is Greenie playing?”
He put a hand on her shoulder, checking her over to make sure she hadn’t been injured.
“It’s like it wants to beat us down before we have a chance to go at the Anunnaki,” Steve said, stepping up on the other side of Kelly and sta
ring at the dead monster.
Shane looked around the room, trying to decide if they could help the injured kids.
“How the hell did we make it through that without getting shot?” he wondered, seeing the Russians and his team still alive.
“Shane,” Jones called from behind him. “You’ll want to see this.”
Trying to shake the daze the morbid scene had caused, he stepped over bodies toward the opposite side of the chamber. Jones stood next to a wall with suits of red armor hanging from it.
“Those’ll be useless,” Shane dismally said, approaching the captain.
“No,” Jones replied, sounding shocked. “They have power.”
“What?”
Shane took the helmet Jones handed him and pulled it over his head. The visor readout was on, reporting the suit was fully charged.
“I don’t understand,” Shane said, taking the helmet off.
“There’s not enough for everyone,” one of Jones’ clones reported.
“The new kids who joined us at the base won’t know how to operate them anyway,” Jones replied.
“These plasma rifles are charged as well,” another clone said.
Shane eyed the carnage behind him, trying to make sense of it all.
“Maybe Greenie only wants us to attack the Anunnaki,” he quietly said, “and not the new kids.”
“We don’t have time to discuss it,” Jones replied, pointing at the side of the room where they had entered.
The bulkhead glowed, then the green fire started its slow passage toward them.
“Get everyone who has experience with the armor suited first,” Shane said loud enough for all the kids in the room to hear. He feared his split-second decision condemned the rest to death.
Jones and his clones, the Russians, and Shane’s team donned the armor. As Shane feared, there weren’t enough suits or plasma rifles with power for any of the new kids to wear. However, the captain was right. The suits took some time to master and could even be dangerous to the wearer without training.
Greenie incinerated the dead wolf and the dead and dying teenagers who were too weak to move out of the way. The last to get suited up was a clone, and then the green wall rushed toward them, chasing everyone into a corridor that led to another emergency staircase.
Lights came on overhead, guiding them where Greenie wanted them to go. The strength-enhancing armor would’ve boosted Shane’s confidence in any other situation, but not now that he knew what Greenie expected from them.
“When we attack the Anunnaki,” Steve voice came through his earpieces, “it’s going to be a slaughter.”
“I know,” Shane said, his voice cracking.
“It’s not right,” Maurice said. “It’s one thing when we were fighting for our lives, but with this armor and these plasma rifles…”
“The Anunnaki didn’t seem to have second thoughts about killing our parents,” Anfisa said, no compassion in her voice. “They deserve what is coming to them.”
Screams from the stairwell below ended the tense discussion.
“Greenie is coming faster,” Laura reported. “It’s killing the kids without armor.”
He looked down the stairs and saw her fire a shot from her plasma rifle into the approaching green wall with no effect.
“We need to run,” Shane said, demoralized. “It’ll kill us all if we don’t.”
Rage coursing through his veins, he led the charge up the steps. His friends and the few teenagers without armor who could keep up followed him. The stairwell seemed to go on forever, and he knew the kids without armor couldn’t make it. At every turn, he looked down the steps and saw less of the unarmored teenagers. After ten minutes of climbing, none of those who’d joined them at the hidden base remained.
He’d planned to protect those kids who’d blindly followed him to the alien ship, and he’d failed. His eyes clouded with anger, and he wanted to turn and attack the green wall. He looked down the stairs at the next turn and saw his friends, the Russians, and Jones and his clones, all wearing red armor and carrying plasma rifles, following him. He couldn’t stop Greenie from taking the other kids, but he refused to lose anyone else. He’d die first.
Three more turns and he came to a landing with a closed door.
“I believe this is the top,” Jones said. “This leads to somewhere in the city.”
Shane took a deep breath and looked through his visor at the other people with him. Although they were wearing red helmets, his armor’s computer sensed who he was looking at and used live video of their faces so he could identify each of them. They appeared grim, but ready for battle nonetheless. Kelly grabbed his gloved hand with hers and squeezed.
“Stay together,” he said somberly. “Stay alive.”
“Sounds like a mantra,” Steve teased.
“Say all that and you’ll make his head swell,” Tracy replied.
Shane forced a chuckle, wishing they had another moment to just hang out, like they did before the Anunnaki came, on the hidden base when Jones was training them. The green wall came up the steps, not allowing any reprieve. He grabbed the door and pulled. It didn’t move at first, apparently barred from the other side. The strength gauge in his visor showed the armor exponentially increased the force it applied as he pulled harder. The door made a loud screech and slid aside.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“It was no easy task, sir,” the soldier replied, “but we got all the animals in the pens around the coliseum. All but one.”
“And which one was that?” Pelros asked.
“A Stilapian wolf,” she answered. “It escaped and disappeared below decks.”
“That’s fine,” Pelros said. “It’ll keep intruders at bay.”
He returned the soldier’s salute and made his way around the perimeter of the Pegasus’ city. His marines were nervous, focused on the green wall that was climbing the side of the ship and wondering how they were supposed to fight it. They didn’t celebrate the defeat of the humans; they were too consumed by the fear that the fire would sweep over the entire vessel and kill everyone. The citizens weren’t any happier, crowding in close to the coliseum to get as far away from the green flames as possible. For the moment, the wall had stopped moving, but he expected it wouldn’t stall for long.
Even if the humans were their only threat, Pelros wasn’t convinced that the battle was over. After the attack, a soldier positioned on the corner of the ship reported seeing a break in the burning green wall, near where the humans with Jones and his rebel clones were probably positioned.
Pelros discounted this first soldier, unable to imagine how he could see anything with the light blasting from the mirrors. But then other soldiers began telling their commanders the same story. And reports came in that another wall of the green flames had grown from the one lining the steps going up the side of the ship, in the same area were the break had been. This wall had only gone far enough to close off the balcony of one of the apartments, far enough to surround a small group of humans who may have escaped.
The green entity intended some sort of trial or judgment to be passed by the humans who were with Jones—that much seemed clearer with each passing moment. He hoped his soldiers had outwitted the green entity by blasting the humans with the light beam, but now he had to assume a few had escaped through the opening in the wall and might be coming up through the inside of the ship.
“The green wall is moving,” an engineer manning one of the mirrors shouted.
Pelros rushed to the edge, seeing the reason for the panic in the engineer’s voice. The green wall climbed up the side of the recruit ship, heading for the top with such speed that Pelros feared it might sweep over them, annihilating his soldiers and the Anunnaki civilians before he could decide how to protect them. The soldiers shouted and pushed away from the wall. Pelros was only able to take ten steps before the flames reached the perimeter wall of the city, and there it stopped.
He a took a few more steps and stopped as
well. Seeing him pause, the soldiers near him did the same, ready to face whatever fate he chose. He stared at the wall, uncertain what to do.
“Pull back to the coliseum,” Pelros ordered.
It was the hub of the city, the center of the ship. There was enough clear space around the outside of the stadium and plenty of room on its floor and in its bleachers to take refuge. If his people had to make a final stand, this seemed to be the best location.
The soldiers carried out his orders. He stayed near the edge, splitting his attention between the emerald flames and the Anunnaki fleeing toward the coliseum. Once they were clear, he backed away from the green wall and followed them toward the center of the city.
“Thank the gods it seems to be stopped,” Gentras said when Pelros came close to the crowd outside the coliseum. “What will we do if it attacks us?”
“This far exceeds my realm of expertise, and the senior officers don’t know what to do either,” Pelros angrily replied. “Now would be an appropriate time to allow my uncle to take charge.”
He glared at the aristocrat, frustrated that even now, as their people faced possible extinction, the bureaucracy was bent on maintaining its semblance of control.
Gentras returned his gaze. His face remained relatively calm, but his eyes expressed the same panic that swept through the rest of the ship’s population.
“Very well,” he said, sounding tired and defeated. He turned to his personal guard. “Fetch General Athos.”
The guards nodded, relief evident in their worried expressions. They rushed off to carry out the council member’s order, and Pelros returned his attention to the approaching wall of green fire.
It began moving at a crawl toward them, as if to allow everyone plenty of time to get out of the way. He ordered the soldiers to form a barrier around the civilians, pointing the primitive weapons they’d gathered outward. They were useless against the green alien, but he was desperate to do something and knew the soldiers and citizens both benefited from being given orders—it kept them from deteriorating into a panicky riot.