by Alex Deva
Five more steps. About forty-five steps left.
They came running from behind the ship, but did not approach him. He could hear them talk.
“Why is it alone?“
“It was with someone else before.“
“Where are its guards?“
“What does it want?“
Ten more steps, and two aliens came closer. One of them made a tentative gesture in his direction; Aram waved and said “Ave“ in Latin because it seemed kind of appropriate. Come on, he thought, forcing himself not to start running.
“Where’s security?“
“Security!“
“Security! Here! Come!“
Twenty steps. Come on, Aram.
“What is it doing?“
He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
“Stop it! Stop!“
“Stop!“ More aliens emerged, taking what to Aram were definitely unfriendly stances. He instinctively got ready for a fight, but the incredibly tall creatures did not offer any immediately obvious targets. He wouldn’t know where to punch.
Ten steps. Nine, eight, seven.
“Stop! Do not move!“
Six, five, four.
Three, two.
He jumped on up on Effo’s matte black surface, and it welcomed his foot as always, gripping gently to his sole, not enough to make him stumble, but just enough to steady him up.
“Do not let it!“
He took another long jump and wished the cockpit to open, and so it did, quickly and obediently. The seat beckoned, the warmth and safety only one step away.
That one last step felt so small that he almost didn’t notice getting shot.
It wasn’t like getting stabbed, or like getting cut, or like getting pierced by an arrow. It wasn’t even like being shot by those damn flechettes that the Americans had nearly ruined his shoulder with. It was more like getting gored by a running ox, and it came with a wholly different kind of pain, and for a split second Aram was amazed that the world still had new types of pain for him to try.
It was in his left side, right above his hip. He’d been hurt there before, and he knew there would be a lot of blood. But this time, he felt something new: an instant compression on the spot, and a tiny prick in his left shoulder. He didn’t know it, but his suit was coming to his rescue.
All of that took a half-second, at the end of which he stumbled, under the force of the impact, and fell inside Effo’s cockpit. The chair remoulded itself and shifted, quickly manoeuvring him into the normal position, and the cockpit closed as soon as all of Aram was safely in.
“Shit,“ he mumbled, making a face and fighting a wave of nausea.
“He’s hurt,“ he heard Doina’s voice, from a thousand leagues away. But fresh, welcomed coolness flowed from the prick in his shoulder, coolness that battled with the pain and pushed it back. He blinked, tried to brush his long hair from his eyes, but his hand only found the helmet visor. Swearing again, he fingered the release catch and managed to get it off. He threw the helmet away.
And the pain came back in one debilitating wave. He frowned. What the hell could the helmet have to do with his wound?
Then he understood; the suit only worked when it was sealed. Swearing for the third time, he reached for the helmet, and that was when he became aware of the thumps.
“Time to go,“ he heard Mark. “Time to go, mate. Make tracks! They’re shooting at you. Go, Aram! Leave!“
He looked around in a daze, even as he tried to figure out which way the helmet went, and through the weird one-way transparency of Effo’s cockpit he saw the aliens shooting at him, and that made him a little mad. He cursed again — what else?, and welcomed the relief as a new prick, this time right in the area of his wound, pushed the pain back once more.
He reached forward, and the controls formed themselves into his hands, the flat, horizontal disk that he’d wished for when he first flew with Effo, imitating the controls of the American crate he’d flown for the first time in his life. The ship came to life around him, just as Mark’s and Doina’s semitransparent floating torsos popped up in front of him.
“Why are you suited up?“ asked the girl.
“Got shot,“ he growled, giving Effo two whole seconds to wake up, while he was looking around for a way out. There was no visible opening, no tunnel, no large window, only the ceiling. If he was very deep underground, not even Effo would make it through in one piece. The thought of dying at the end of a short tunnel in an alien mountain seemed a bit too wacky. He focused.
“Doi, am I underground?“ he asked without looking down, while Effo took off in a hover, easily tearing off the binds that had kept it down. “I hope not. They must’ve got Effo here somehow.“
The girl momentarily disappeared from the projection, while Mark gently asked:
“Where are you shot?“
“Left side, under the ribs.“
“Clean through?“
“Don’t know.“
“Be lots of blood. Got anything to press on it?“
“No, but the suit does. Only it doesn’t work if I take off the helmet.“
Mark nodded. “Drugs?“
“What? Ah… yeah, twice.“
“Good to fly?“
Effo made a one-eighty turn in place, shaking off two aliens who were trying to climb up; then, just for show, Aram turned the ship end over end, leaving the cockpit pointing to the floor. Protected by Effo, Aram barely felt anything.
“Sorry it took so long, you’re on the other side of the pla… Why are you hanging upside down?“ came Doina’s voice.
“Underground or overground?“ repeated the Dacian.
“Overground. I can’t say what the ceiling is made of, but…“
“Good enough,“ he grumbled.
He turned again, so that Effo’s belly was parallel to the walls and he was looking straight up at the ceiling. The thumps on Effo’s outer shell were faster now, and the ship was transmitting him signs of distress. Aram spared a tenth of a second to consider alternatives, then decided to fuck it and, aiming a little to a side, engaged The Offender.
Debris fell all over the place as a large, dark, gaping hole appeared in the hangar ceiling. The aliens scrambled for cover, but firing didn’t cease. At first, Aram didn’t understand why the hole was black, but then he figured that this planet, too, must have a night. He shot out into the black sky, rolling as he flew, missing most of the shots coming from beneath. After a short while of rather erratic flying, he tried to get his bearings.
He asked Effo to scan the skies for Zi’s space suit, but the ship found nothing. He then thought of asking Doi to do the same, when two successive flashes of blinding light went right over his head.
“Incoming,“ came Mark’s calm voice, as if he was talking about the weather. “Two ships, one o’clock, high.“
“One o’who?“ asked the Dacian, confused.
“Slightly starboard, above you, two ships, closing fast.“
The Dacian backed up without turning, looking around in bewilderment. “These fuckers got ships too?“
“They’re a space faring civilisation, Aram. Even we had fighter aircraft in my time.“
“Anything as cool as mine?“
Mark’s projection smiled. “I remember some really cool stuff, but,” and he stressed the rhyme, “deffo nothing as cool as Effo.“
The Dacian finally saw the two incoming ships. What with him flying backwards at speed, they stayed at more or less same distance, emitting more flashes of light, with Effo letting him know that they would be much better off not being hit by them. The two ships appeared as small, bright circles on Effo’s round cockpit wall, as the alien intelligence classified them as rather significant. A sudden feeling of alarm, induced by the ship, washed over Aram and made him look over his shoulder in the direction he’d been flying, where four new similar circles spread themselves on that part of the cockpit wall. Turning ninety degrees in the horizontal plane and another n
inety in the vertical one, he started climbing to get on top of them.
“Do not kill them,“ said Doina.
“I knew you were gonna say that,“ he replied, making an exaggerated face for her benefit. “I’ll try not to. Now, where’s Zi?“
* * *
The air wasn’t a problem, and the space suit was designed to handle water — at least Earth water at typical Earth surface pressures and typical Earth temperatures — but Zi really hated swimming in the dark. Back on Earth, with missions that required both space flight and diving, he’d have a small, silent propulsor right on his ass, which the soldiers jokingly called a fart gun. It was placed there so it could be easily reached and used by hand if necessary. At low power, it could even be mounted on the helmet, or behind the neck, as the situation required.
Zi had no fart gun with him. There were no less than three among the supplies they had on board the starship, but that was of no use to him now.
The aliens were obviously amphibious. They propelled themselves with their impossibly long arms and legs like sea creatures, and it took all of three seconds for ken Selloa to gain twenty metres of distance on him, despite his best efforts, and that was about the same as the range of his helmet lamp, at maximum brightness.
He looked backwards; the tiny triangle of light where they’d dived in was barely visible. Trying to orient himself, he called up a compass, which searched for a few seconds and failed to find any magnetic pole. He sent out one single spherical radar burst, and inside its range, the only echo he got was in the vague direction of ken Selloa. With only one burst he had no way to judge speed or direction, so he quickly adjusted his antenna for a more focused emission, trying to steady himself in the water, noticing his sink rate on the pressure gauge. This time he allowed for a full third of a second, and the returning radar echoes told him that the alien was coming back for him, and the Doppler shift of the echoes told him that he was doing it rather speedily. He could not avoid a deep sigh of relief as ken Selloa appeared in his light beam.
There could be no communication underwater, but the alien understood well enough. He offered a hand, and Zi quickly reached back and pulled a loop of titanium-threaded textile from between his shoulder blades. The alien grabbed it, and swam again.
The first tug was so sharp that the soldier thought his suit would rip, but it held, and as inertia decreased, so the tugs became softer, until he felt like he was effortlessly flying under water. But then, the long shape of the alien turned towards him again, and wordlessly put a hand — it might’ve been a foot — over his helmet light. Zi turned the light off, and abandoned himself to being pulled through the pitch darkness.
He monitored the indicators inside his helmet: by Earth standards they’d be about forty metres deep, still diving. His suit had already began to engage hydraulically to ease up the pressure. It was rated to about eighty metres; deeper than that, and the hydraulics would begin to fail.
On the bright side, he had plenty of air and power left, and he turned his face sideways to locate the feeding tube, through which he sucked a bit of orange juice.
He had a small gyroscopic instrument which could measure changes in direction, or at least in attitude, because in the darkness he had no indication of trajectory or speed. He might’ve been able to measure the water flow around him, but not knowing if the body of water was static, that wouldn’t mean much. After a couple of minutes, with his body sweat dutifully absorbed and recirculated, he was feeling in good shape again. He kept checking the pressure gauge: they appeared to have stabilised at about fifty-three metres. Good enough.
And then the alien took him straight down.
He didn’t even need to check the gyro. He felt the tug tightening and drawing his head down, then the rest of his body, in a nearly vertical dive, at speed. Sixty metres; seventy. “Swim up,“ said an urgent, artificial voice inside his helmet. Swim up, you idiot, said another, much louder, inside his head.
Eighty metres came and went, but the suit held. There would be some margin of error, he reckoned. He maybe had a little more. He quickly weighed his options.
He could’ve maybe signalled to the alien that he couldn’t go any deeper. He could turn on his light to draw his attention, or reach back and squeeze whatever it was that grabbed his grab-loop. He decided against the light — that could easily draw the attention of someone else, too — and so tried to reach backwards, but couldn’t.
The suit’s exoskeleton had seized. It hadn’t collapsed yet, but it was unable to move under the huge water pressure. Zi was stuck.
“Hey!“ he tried, with no effect.
Ninety-four metres.
Ninety-five.
He distinctly heard a crack, and thought: Epo — well, that’s it. He became dizzy as his inner ear told him that he was standing on his own feet, and his brain couldn't really trust that information, and he lost his balance and fell down on something hard.
The pressure gauge read surface pressure. He blinked to clear his head, and checked the alarms, in turn. The crack had been due to sudden relief of pressure; from almost a hundred metres down (or, rather, up?) to nothing in only a second. Joint by joint, the suit’s exoskeleton recovered, and he could move again.
Where was he?
Six pricks of light suddenly shone above him, and six long, shaded walls appeared behind the lights. A far-away hexagonal ceiling and a similar floor under him completed the image, and told him that he was inside.
There was, of course, water on the floor, and ken Selloa stood up, all million metres of him, dripping water from holes that hadn’t previously been visible. On the inside of Zi’s helmet, atmosphere indicators came to life and showed a similar composition to the one on the surface. Not breathable, but normal.
The alien hissed, but no translation came. He was way out of range of Aram’s suit radio, and in turn Effo, and in turn Doi — so no translation would be forthcoming. He said nothing. The alien hissed again, then produced his famous white box, and put it back. That wouldn’t work either, Zi understood. Whoever ken Selloa’s contact inside the Complex was, he was now out of range. Or perhaps arrested. Or dead.
One of the panels collapsed downwards, just like a regular Saudade door, and the alien passed through it. The room behind was better lit. Weary, Zi got to his feet and stepped in.
This room was also hexagonal. It had no doors and no windows. All it contained was one big pool, which seemed to be about half as deep as the room was tall.
Hanging from the ceiling and down into the water were long cables, some thick and some thin. The alien stepped into the pool, sat in the water, and proceeded to attach the ends of the cables to various places on his body.
“Is this your ship?“ asked Zi, gesturing around.
The alien stopped, hissed, swayed and then carried on. When the last of the cable was connected, he lay on his back in the pool, and the liquid began to change colour. Zi crouched and put a finger it it; the contents of the pool was becoming viscous.
Something connecting that with high acceleration forces told the soldier that yes, he must find himself in an alien space ship.
“What about me?“ he said, unsure.
A long hand, or perhaps a foot, burst out from the thick fluid, grabbed his grab-loop, and dragged him down in the jelly. With an exclamation, the soldier went down in the pool, which was about three metres deep, and remained suspended, in a slightly crouched position, about half-way deep. His atmospheric readers plunged to null, and he felt the fluid thickening even more. Moving his fingers quickly, he toggled his suit to flight mode and prepared.
The launch was brutal, just as he’d expected. A submerged ship containing that much gas, and held submerged under a hundred metres of water, would shoot up the like the cork from a champagne bottle. As his g-force gauge reached the digit eight in as many seconds, his intraocular pressure became disproportionate to the suddenly reduced blood flow, and his vision tunnelled and turned grey. The suit pumped enthusiastically, and an ex
trapolation calculator helpfully displayed: seventy-seven seconds till G-LOC, at current rate of acceleration.
He was just passing through ten gees when they broke the water surface. He felt it as a double impact, and assumed the engines kicking in caused the second one. The ship continued to accelerate, and Zi was thankful that he was lying perpendicular to the acceleration vector. Twelve G came, and the G-LOC countdown reset itself to forty-one seconds. But no more. The suit compressed his abdomen, and alternatively forced air into his helmet to help him inhale.
Then the vertical acceleration began to subside, and other vectors appeared, as the ship started atmospheric manoeuvres. Zi assumed that it was either ken Selloa flying it, or some autopilot, or a combination of both.
He tried his best to adjust his position so as to remain perpendicular to the acceleration, but the changes of direction were as brutal as the take-off. And, when a boom echoed all the way down into the pool and into his ears, he understood why.
They were under fire.
XLIV.
“I have him,“ said Doina, at the same time with Effo telling Aram the same thing.
“They’re evading fire,“ said Mark. “Your port… I mean larboard side. Thirty klicks out.“
“I know both ‘port’ and ‘larboard’,“ said Aram through clenched teeth. “I even know ‘synonym’. It’s Latin. I’m on my way.“ The pain in his side had come back with a vengeance; he must’ve made a wrong movement, or else the drugs were wearing off.
“Hum,“ said Mark. “Sorry.“
The six attackers had turned to ten, and then to twelve. And if he flew too low, he’d be fired upon from the ground, too. He weaved and ducked the flashes of light; he could easily outrun the Saudade fighters, but he didn’t want to get too far from Zi. And now that he knew where to look, he quickly saw their ship. They were flying under ground fire from three different spots.
“Doina…“ he began.
“Fine. But only the guns. Say that you heard me.“
“Only the gods-damned guns, I swear to both Zalmoxe and Mercury.“