Harbinger

by Stephen Christiansen

  “We were screwed the moment our warp core collapsed.”

  All eyes turned back toward Vincent. He had been the voice of accusation and of alarm of intrusion. Now, he was the voice of straightforward thinking. He no longer carried the tone of anger or surprise at Tracy’s deception and it was as if it no longer mattered. Everyone wondered how he could go from such anger one moment and rational thinking the next.

  As if to answer everyone’s thoughts Vincent continued. “It no longer matters who we have and who we don’t. Our first priority is the safety and security of this ship and what’s left of the crew. Since Ms. Carter is not a threat to either one, it is best to focus our time, energy and resources to what we need to do for survival.”

  “Our current position is this. We are currently adrift in space without the ability to navigate while the Dagons’ ship is hooked to us. As long as their computers are hooked with ours and our airlock is kept open, there’s no way to maneuver. Unless we find a way…”

  “I’ll do it.”

  All eyes turned back to Tracy one more time.

  “What?” Cleo asked. “What did you say? What do you mean you’ll do it? Do what?”

  Tracy gave a sigh. “I’ll go over to the Dagon ship and release us.”

  “Oh no you don’t!” Vincent said immediately. “You’ll stay right here where I can keep an eye on you. And if we ever get out of this mess, I’m taking you back to Earth where you belong.”

  “Look, just because my father wants to make peace with the Dagons doesn’t mean I want to as well. I agree with you, they are evil, vile creatures, and horribly ugly to boot. I didn’t want to be on this mission to further my father’s political agenda, I’m here to get off of Earth. I know you don’t trust me, and why should you? Yes, I’ve lied to you and cheated my way onto this ship, but wouldn’t you if you had the chance to get away from a dying planet?”

  “Besides, do any of you know how to read Dagon? No? I didn’t think so. I was repeatedly forced to learn their written language. I’m fairly certain that I can find out what buttons to push and maybe what codes to enter to get us free. All I ask is that you don’t send me back to Earth.”

  “You’ll do no such thing…” Vincent started to say but was interrupted.

  “How certain?” Cleo asked.

  “I won’t know until I get aboard the ship.”

  There was a slight pause as if the group was giving her some consideration.

  “What other option do you have?” Tracy’s request was more like a plea. She simply had to win them over. Guilt hung over her like a heavy blanket and she was sure that they would never look at her the same again. However, if she could free the Dagon ship, she just might be one step closer to earning a little bit of their respect.

  “Fine,” Cleo said.

  Chapter: 32

  The humidity hit her like a fist.

  It was the first thing that Tracy had noticed as soon as she crossed into the Dagon ship. Yes, the humidity was increasing as they came closer and closer to the joined airlocks, but as soon as she crossed the threshold into the other ship the moisture in the air had climbed so dramatically that it was hard to breathe. It felt as if her lungs were filling up with water and the moisture in the air clung to her clothing and her hair.

  But it was more than just the humidity, it was also the heat. The heat was oppressive and immediately sapped her energy. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad had it been a dry heat, but now that it was combined with the humidity she didn’t know if her body was wet because of the water in the air or because she had sweat so much.

  Then there was that smell. It was a disgusting, foul, rotting fish smell that she would sometimes catch an odor of when the pollution in the ocean would be on the rise and the beaches would have tons of dead fish washed to shore. This was an assault upon her nostrils and her taste buds simultaneously. Her stomach immediately turned and at first she thought that she just might lose the last thing she had ever eaten. However, she didn’t want to give Vincent the pleasure of watching her get sick and she was sure that if she did finally lose her composure, it would only make the smell of the ship that much worse.

  To add to all of this was the goo that seemed to drip off of everything. It was a slippery, slimy, glob of ooze that covered almost every portion of the ship. Globs of it dripped from the ceiling and oozed onto the floor to disappear into the grated walkway beneath her feet. She only wondered if the stuff recycled through the rest of the ship through the machines that she could hear echo off of the walls and feel running through the floor.

  The corridor itself was as much alien to her as the environment. The main “walkway” that she was in was more of a metallic tube with many other metallic tubes running in all directions. Some of these offshoots were small and some, like the one that she was in, was large enough that if she ducked and kept her head low then she would be able to walk though. Her corridor was periodically cut off by bulkheads that had round circles in them allowing her to squeeze through; although she doubted that the Dagons would have any such problem.

  From her guess, and she wasn’t even an engineer, this set up would not only confuse a raiding party, but slow them down as well. Tracy found that she had to climb through one bulkhead and duck under another just to keep moving. Several times she had to catch herself from slipping on the ooze dripping all over the place.

  As she moved down the alien ship’s hallway, she could hear Vincent’s footsteps behind her and she didn’t know what shook her more, the environment that she was walking through or the knowledge that Vincent was so close to her. She knew that he didn’t trust her, but she felt something more than just a lack of trust, it was more a sense of paranoia and anger. It was as if his loathing for her was shooting out of his eyes and boring a hole into the back of her skull. Then there was the fact that he was so close to her every step as if he was constantly pushing her forward.

  The passageway finally opened up and Tracy almost gasped at the view before her. This seemed to be a control room but nothing like she had ever seen before. The spherical room had control stations and monitors everywhere.

  The monitors were located near the top half of the walls and all seemed to shift their view from one site to another. Some were looking out into space, a few were looking at the outside hull of the Harbinger, some had views of what Tracy could only guess was the inside of this ship and a few had shapes and designs that constantly moved and reshaped.

  The control panels lined the wall beneath the monitors. They had buttons that were in sets of eight or ten making an octagon or even a decagon. Each button had a strange symbol upon it and was glowing with an odd neon color that seemed to illuminate the immediate area. Since each symbol was a different color, the whole control room was lit up like some weird Christmas display with flashing and glowing hues.

  Alongside the buttons were holes, almost the size of Tracy’s arm and from what she could tell, it would fit the size of one of the tentacles of the Dagons. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought that the space squids actually did put their slimy tentacles into these holes but for what reason was beyond her and she wasn’t willing to squeeze her arm into one of them to find out. The thought of losing her arm was bad enough, but to lose it to simple curiosity was not on the top of her “to do” list.

  Beyond the buttons there weren’t any dials or levers. The controls were beyond her comprehension of purpose or function and nothing seemed to make sense. To make matters worse, the control panels were covered with the same slime that continued to drip all across the ship. Even if she did figure out what buttons to push, and in what order, she really didn’t want to touch the horrible and disgusting ooze, even though she had already been dripped upon several times.

  In the center of the control room sat a chair, if that’s what she could call it. It was more of an egg shaped chair that she was sure came out of the 1970’s. It didn’t look comfortable at all.

  “Well?”

  Vi
ncent’s voice cut through the air and brought her back to the task at hand.

  “Just give me a minute.”

  “We have all day,” The security officer stated. Vincent’s tone was dry, as if he already knew that she would fail but that he was going to give her enough rope to hang herself and prove it.

  ‘What am I doing here?’ Tracy asked herself.

  She had to admit that she really didn’t know what she was going to do or even try to do. She really hadn’t paid that much attention to her father when he was trying to teach her the Dagon language, but she had to think of something to save herself from being shipped back to Earth. She would do anything to not go back there. Now she was finding out exactly what that meant. The strange symbols could mean anything. Some of them actually looked familiar but with Vincent hanging around...

  Tracy shook her head. She couldn’t do this while Vincent was looking over her shoulder; all he did was make her nervous.

  “Please...please just give me some space.”

  “Fine, I’ll just be right over here,” Vincent stated as he took a couple of steps back.

  “No, please, I mean like in the other room.”

  ‘Or at least in the other ship,’ Tracy thought to herself.

  “You might run into another Dagon.”

  “I’ll...I’ll take care of myself.”

  Tracy had to admit that she hadn’t thought about that. Just because they hadn’t seen another one on their ship or on this one didn’t mean that there wasn’t another one still around. However she would rather deal with a Dagon then to have Vincent over her shoulder watching her every move and coming to the realization that she really didn’t know what she was doing

  “Suit yourself. I’ll wait back in the Harbinger. But don’t think you’re going anywhere. Either you can do this or not, we’ll know soon enough.”

  It was after she had heard Vincent’s footsteps echo off the empty corridor at a far off distance did she let the stress of the situation get to her. Tears started to flow down her face as she started to sob and her body started to tremble uncontrollably. She wished so much that she could be anywhere else but here right now and even Earth was starting to look better than the predicament that she was currently in.

  No, she couldn’t think like that. She had to come up with something, anything. Tracy wiped her tears and started to look around the room again.

  “Need help in there? What’s taking so long?”

  Vincent’s voice echoed through the corridor and brought Tracy back to her reality. She had to think of something fast.

  “I’m...I’m just looking at something. Just a little longer.”

  Actually, there was something nagging in the back of her head. Her eyes darted around the control panel. No, the answer wasn’t here. Then her eyes went to the command chair.

  ‘Why would these small creatures need a chair that size?’ Tracy asked herself. The sound behind her told her what she really didn’t want to know.

  Chapter: 33

  Tracy’s scream of absolute terror, horror, and panic echoed off of the corridor walls of the alien ship. Vincent knew that Tracy wasn’t faking it; he could hear it in the tone of her voice. He had expected her to cry out in desperation or at least hear her crying out of frustration. However, this was neither. He knew and understood complete terror when he heard it; he had heard it too many times in his life.

  The security officer shook his head. He should have known better than to leave Tracy alone aboard the craft. He hadn’t taken the time to search and secure the area. Now she could be under attack from some alien creature. Another member of the team could be dead soon and it would be his fault, and this time it wouldn’t be out of bad luck or bad timing, it would be his fault.

  Vincent took off like a shot. He already had his plasma rifle drawn into a combat ready position before it had even registered in his mind that it was in his hand. Before he completely understood what he was doing, he was already halfway back to the command center.

  The creature stood over Tracy’s fallen body. The beast easily stood seven feet tall and took up the majority of the space to the ceiling. Although there was a resemblance of a humanoid appearance to the thing, its features were a far cry from being human.

  The creature’s bald, slimy, fish-like head had multiple tentacles coming out around its face. For arms it had two projecting limbs but each limb branched off into multiple tentacles while its legs had the same appearance. Its whole body was a gray-silver color that could have easily been misinterpreted as some part of the machinery and the thing could have easily blended into any part of this room without being seen.

  However, Vincent realized that the creature’s initial coloring might not have been this color after all. As the enormous tentacled, nightmarish creature came upon Tracy’s fallen body, its color changed. It seemed to start to take on a yellowish hue, then orange and finally red all in the span of a heartbeat like the small, crawling octopi creatures had done before.

  It was hard to tell if Tracy had been knocked down or if she had simply slipped on the slimy ooze that was all over the floor, as well as the controls and ceiling. For the time being, she seemed to be alright, more terrified than hurt but if he didn’t do something fast that was all going to change.

  Vincent was able to take all of this in within a heartbeat. He had learned to assess a situation while he was reacting to it. As long as Tracy stayed down she would be out of the way. This creature was big enough and it was close enough that he couldn’t miss.

  Vincent had already brought his plasma thrower up as he took the several steps into the control center. His next step brought his body into position to brace himself against the kickback. His left hand came up and joined his right for maximum stability. Two shots were fired at point blank, center mass.

  The beast must have felt the vibrations of the floor as Vincent entered the room or perhaps it had heard him. Either way the creature was in motion the moment Vincent had reacted. The two bolts shot across the room and flew past the beast as it pivoted on the spot and moved toward the security officer.

  The two explosions on the other side of the room blew up the portion of the control panels that were unfortunate enough to be struck. The eruptions blew apart metal casings, and sent wires and shrapnel everywhere. The shockwave alone could be felt all the way back to where Vincent was standing and if it wasn’t for the beast that was standing in front of him, Vincent knew that he would get the brunt of the blast. Fortunately for him, the beast had gotten it instead.

  The creature hadn’t budged. It hadn’t flinched or reacted to the small explosions behind it and hadn’t shown any form of evidence that the blasts or flying shrapnel had affected it in anyway. Instead, with anger and hatred and rage the beast whipped out its right limb with its culmination of multiple tentacles.

  Vincent was hit hard and was sent sailing through the air and flung toward the ground. Each tentacle from the creature’s limb had hit with incredible force as if each had been a baseball bat. Vincent could immediately feel the bruises from each impact and he was sure that he heard a rib or two snap. As his body hit the floor, he skidded across the slick ooze and slammed against another set of control panels. His head hit hard and he felt the warmth of his blood start to mat his hair.

  There was a scream somewhere off in the distance. It was the only thing that Vincent was able to focus on while his consciousness faded in and out. His hand immediately went out to his side where he was sure he would find his plasma rifle where he had dropped it. It wasn’t there. His grip only found the slime that had covered the floor.

  In almost a blink of an eye the tentacle creature had moved from where it had been to where Vincent had finished sliding to. Before he had a chance to react, the creature’s right arm shot out again. This time, it wasn’t to bash Vincent aside. This time the tentacles wrapped around his body and started to lift him into the air.

  Vincent could feel the strength behind the creature’s embrace that held
him. It was hard to move and he doubted that he could overpower the grip to get himself free. The pressure upon his ribs hurt worse with the added strength of the hold that he was in. His body started to rise above the ground and Vincent knew that he was running out of time.

  The suction cups upon the creature’s limbs started to rip into his clothing. Each had razor hooks that started to dig into him and each movement continued to slice him open. Blood started to spill from each spot as lacerations started to appear on Vincent’s body.

  However, Vincent was less concerned about the beast’s powerful grip or its hooked suctions. He was more concerned about the fact that the creature’s facial tentacles were opening up revealing some form of massive beak while he was being dragged toward it. The creature was going to eat him alive.