by Calista Skye
Or something else. I think some of the discomfort I feel is not related to the physical injury. My breath is more shallow than usual. My stomach feels hollow. I’m feeling more antsy than ever before, filled with a strong urge to do something, anything. Even to run after Althea. When I hold my hand out, it trembles.
Is this what Althea talked about? Is this... fear?
I’ve been in much worse danger before without feeling this way. I’ve faced almost certain death on a dozen alien planets, and all I’ve felt was the glee of the fight and the anticipation of the glorious afterlife with my warrior ancestors. Now, all that seems far away. Insignificant.
It’s not that I’m afraid of dying. Or the way I’ll die. Not at all.
Then what?
I can hear rumbling from the outer tunnels. The Glup are coming closer, and now they’re taking no chances. They’re blasting the corridors with a laser cannon, ripping the rock off the walls and making sure nothing is hidden there, ready to hurt them.
My stomach feels like ahead of a battle, tingling with excitement. But this time it has a sting like acid, more intense, almost painful.
The final hatch resonates with a hard bang from some kind of warhead. The next one will blow it open.
I take up the position I’ve selected and raise my sword.
When they get in here, I’m the only thing between them and… her.
It hits me in a flash of terror and shocks me so much I almost lower the sword.
It’s her!
I’m afraid for Althea.
The realization takes my breath away.
I am afraid. For someone else. For something happening to Althea. For her being separated from me.
MINE!
My surroundings take on a green tinge, as if I’m about to enter Combat form. But I manage to keep it at bay. In these cramped quarters, it’s better to stay smaller. The monster can’t use a sword.
Althea! I can allow no harm to come to her.
The room resonates with a horrific bang as the final hatch comes flying off its fastenings and hits a large tractor opposite. Gray, acrid smoke pours in from outside. Soon they will be here, and this time they will be ready.
A dark shape slowly comes in through the hatch. It’s too big to be a Glup. It has to be a special war machine. Those have a fierce reputation.
The machine is as spidery as the Glup themselves, but it has more legs and a thicker body. It’s bristling with weapons and sensors.
I jump down from my starting position above the door, swing the sword downwards, and slice the machine in half. Its legs are still crawling wildly, and the machine fires weapons at me. I sidestep and thrust at its front, disabling the machine and then immediately getting ready to face the Glup that are close behind and flowing into the room. It feels wonderful to finally be fighting. But the fear is still in the background. If I don’t win, then Althea is in serious trouble.
But I have the advantage. The Glup can only get into this room one by one. And my sword is still sharp.
28
- Althea -
I find a small, dusty control room at the inner part of the base, lock myself inside it, and barricade the door. It has one flickering monitor where I can watch the image from the camera in the common room.
At first, Brox is hanging from the ceiling right behind the door, and then he drops down and kills the first thing that comes through. And it’s a big thing. It looks so easy that I immediately feel a flash of optimism. There’s no chance he’ll lose this.
Another giant spider enters, but this one is different from the first and looks a lot like a Glup. Brox dealt with them easily enough in his monster form, but now he’s his normal self. With a sword as long as I am tall.
The Glup jumps him, and he slashes it with the sword, but he only succeeds in slicing off one of the alien’s legs. It jumps at him again, and this time it looks like it connects with several of its tentacles. Brox staggers backwards and hacks at it again.
At the same time, three little objects the size of basketballs roll into the room and then expand and grow and unfold, turning into full-size Glup.
It makes my skin crawl to see it. I turn away from the monitor. I can’t watch. Too much is at stake.
The room is totally silent. Not a sound reaches me from the common room where Brox is fighting for me.
“Why?” I mutter to myself. Why is he risking everything for me, when yesterday he was on the brink of selling me?
He still can sell me, I suppose.
No, this silence is worse than watching the screen where my fate is being decided.
Now I can’t even tell how many Glup are in the common room and how Brox is doing. There’s too much smoke and stuff in there and too much movement. But at least there can’t be more than ten or so of the spiders. He’s still fighting, at least. And there’s a lot of spider parts on the floor.
“Come on,” I mutter again, chewing on a fingernail. “You can do it.”
But the longer the fight goes on, the less sure I get. Brox is clearly being pushed back, and the Glup aren’t nearly as easy to kill as the first one. It’s like they learn every little trick he uses, and then it becomes ineffective against them because they know how to counter it.
He’s a great fighter, though. Even I can see that. Despite his size, he manages to look graceful as well as incredibly strong when he dances around the spears and tentacles the Glup are trying to impale him on. He’s being pushed back, but you wouldn’t know it from the way he fights - there’s no panic in his moves, just skill.
He’s almost out of sight of the camera, withdrawing slowly towards the tunnel that leads in here, into the deeper parts of the mining station.
I glance at the desk beside me. One charge of explosives. It looks small, but it will kill me instantly if I set it off in a closed space. Like this room.
Will I have the nerve to kill myself to keep my secret from the Glup? I don’t even know if I’ll have time to do it. Now that I can’t see what’s going on outside, I’m really just waiting to see what comes through that door first.
I frantically switch back and forth between the various cameras spread all around the installation, but most of them are out of order, and the others mostly show empty corridors and mineshafts.
Until I finally find one that shows the tunnel perpendicular to this one, but which also gives me a short glimpse of Brox as he fights his way through the one closest to me.
Now there’s only one Glup left, but Brox is fighting with much less energy. He looks exhausted. In fact, he looks like he needs help.
As soon as the thought crosses my mind, the whole installation resonates with a blast so mighty it knocks me over and sets my ears ringing. It didn’t sound like it came from the common room or from outside. This came from further inside the station. Not far away at all.
I go over to the hatch and open it slowly, trying to be quiet. Through the jamb, I can see Brox’s vividly blue back coming closer as he backs away from the one remaining Glup without really hitting it, just parrying its jabs with its many spears and stingers.
I can’t help noticing that the floor is wet, which seems like an impossible thing on desert Mars. And it even feels like there’s a draft, although that has to be a figment of my imagination.
“Brox!” I call to him when he’s thirty feet away. “I have an explosive charge!”.
He can’t look behind him, of course, or he’ll lose his concentration.
“Throw it to me,” he yells. “To the floor behind me!”
But I’m not sure I can be that accurate a thrower in Martian gravity. I was never that good on Earth, either, and the charge is small with a weird shape.
Instead of throwing, I run up the tunnel towards him, intending to put it into his hand. “I’m right behind you,” I yell, aware that he could accidentally slice me in half lengthwise if he doesn’t know I’m that close.
Then he throws a quick glance behind him, and that’s enough. The Glup thrusts
one spear into his thigh so hard it comes out the other side.
Brox doesn’t scream. He just cuts the spear off with one hard slash.
But now the Glup has seen me. And in the split second it takes Brox to bend down and cut the spear off, it jumps over his head, right at me.
I’m still holding the explosive charge, aware that I’ve made a major mistake coming out here. The charge is my only weapon. And if I set it off in here, it will definitely kill me, at least. And hopefully the Glup that’s waving its tentacles at me like fishing rods while extending a stinger that drips with something vile.
I will not be taken captive by an alien spider. That scares me more than death.
In a daze and with fingers that shake, I set the charge to explode with no countdown.
And a strange calm comes over me. “Take cover,” I say with a flat voice. Brox can throw himself down behind the Glup and maybe survive the blast.
The spider’s stinger pulls back like the head of a cobra about to strike.
My finger is on the little detonation button, smooth and wiggly plastic under my sweaty thumb. Weird how something that important can feel so cheap.
Then my mind turns itself inside out as Brox changes and swells and grows and then roars so the whole mining facility trembles.
The Glup forgets me and just has time to half-turn before rancor Brox picks it up and rips it apart so sparks fly, along with pieces of hard, insect-like shell.
I instinctively back away until my back is against the wall. Then the sleek, blue giant monster comes in close, bends it neck, and stares at me from two inches away.
I know Brox is in there. But I have no idea how much he controls this thing.
I hold up the charge, showing him that I still have my finger on the button. The blast won’t kill this monster. But it’s all I have.
For three heartbeats we’re frozen like that. Then the monster shrinks, and soon it’s only Brox. He’s breathing heavily, and his leg and shoulder is oozing something that makes me glad the light in here is so dim that I can’t see the full injuries.
“You can take your finger off that now,” he pants. “It will only kill you, anyway. It’s too small to do anything to me except blow my foot off.”
I disarm the explosive charge. “You won!”
“They withdrew,” he says, testing how much weight he can put on the injured leg where the spider’s jagged spear is still sticking out. “They will be back, prepared for everything. They will not be tricked by any traps we might create. And I will not be able to fight them very well.”
“We have to escape!”
“They’re surrounding this place. There are still twelve of them left out there. They will attack again at any moment.”
Again, cold despair settles at the pit of my stomach. I actually had a little bit of hope for a moment there. “What can we do?”
Brox limps back to the common room, splashing through the water that’s now an inch high. He’s supporting himself on his sword like a crutch. The room is now littered with spider parts and pieces. A corner of my paralyzed mind notices that he was right — the Glup don’t appear to contain any fluids. So where does the water come from?
“Can’t you fight them in your monster form?”
“I’m not sure I can enter that form. It’s not something that happens on command. And I’m injured.”
He really is. His blood is as red as mine, and it worries me that there is so much of it running from his thigh.
The common room is a little brighter than the tunnels, and Brox looks different. His blue skin is paler, and there are white patches all over him now.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m injured,” he repeats calmly. “But my body will heal itself. This,” he says and points to the black Glup spear stuck in his thigh, “doesn’t appear to have been coated in toxins.”
I feel cold and even hopeless. Brox’s size and energy and confidence propped me up mentally, but now that aura of power is gone.
“Can you try the monster form? They’re like butter in your hands when you turn into that rancor.”
He laboriously bends over to get his pack and takes something out of it. “I have no control over it. No, this has to be done in a different way.”
He holds something in his hands. I lean over to see what it is.
I gasp and recoil, but he’s faster and grabs my arm in an iron grip.
Then he snaps the collar back around my neck.
“What the hell?”
There’s still a light in his eyes, but not as strong as before. “This altercation will have increased your price considerably. I think the Glup might want to pay instead of fighting and losing more of their own and more of their war machines.”
If I didn’t think I could feel any worse, I was wrong. Tears are burning in my eyes. “You can’t do this to me.”
He snakes a finger between my neck and the collar. “I made the wrong decision earlier. I should have sold you the first chance I got. My Combat form disagreed, but now there’s a chance to reverse my decision.”
There’s a hollow bang from the entrance, followed with an eerie whoosh as if someone is using a flamethrower on the tunnel to clear them of traps and defenders.
“And here the customers are now,” Brox says and sits down on a table that creaks underneath him. “How much do you think I should ask for? A hundred million seems reasonable after I’ve so clearly demonstrated to them that you have value to me as well.”
He’s so smug I just want to punch him. But I don’t.
I kick him, instead. As hard as I can, right where the broken-off Glup tentacle sticks out of his thigh. The sole of my thin suit hardens right at the impact, so it doesn’t hurt me.
But it hurts Brox. He roars in pain and gives me a mighty shove, taking his finger off my collar. I fly backwards and land on my back, then spin around and sprint towards the tunnel that leads further into the facility. Cold water splashes around my feet as I run the Martian way, not getting too high into the air.
I hear no steps behind me, but that doesn’t mean Brox isn’t coming. He might just be sure that there’s no way for me to escape. The mining station only has one exit.
He may well be right about that. But this water and the draft I feel could mean something else.
I run into the basin room where we took a bath, but the pool is gone, filled with orange rocks. It smells strongly of explosives, and there’s definitely a draft coming from above. Some of the roof has fallen in, letting the huge amount of collected water splash out and into the facility. And when I stretch my neck, I can see something that’s a deeper black than anything else down here, strewn with stars. I’m staring into the night sky. The facility really has two exits now.
The rubble forms a loose, steep ramp. I scramble up it, sparing no thought for how my fingers and toes are going to look after I claw my way up the rough rocks and gravel that keeps giving way under me. But the fear gives me strength, and in the weak Martian gravity I’m just able to crawl my way up to the rim.
I have the presence of mind to stay still for a moment, trying to catch my bearings and find out where the Glup are.
I finally spot them. There aren’t many left of them, and now they’re climbing down the ladder to the facility. They’re a few hundred feet away, and the Martian night is dark.
When the last Glup has climbed down on its spidery legs, I get out of the hole and start running in that weird way the low gravity forces you to.
I know where to go. The Mars night is cool and dark, and I’m going downhill.
But I can’t enjoy it. And my throat is sore from the sobs.
- - -
The colony still looks like a battleground. The huge antenna is still down, but at least now there’s no unconscious or dead Forcies lying around.
I press my wrist to the receiver on the door to the lab dome, and the tiny chip under the skin opens the lock.
I peer inside. “Hello?”
Nothing.
But I didn’t expect anything, either. Not from in here.
I leave the lab dome and enter the vegetable dome. I quickly find one of the two things I’ll bring from here.
Then I walk to the control center. This door the chip won’t open, so I knock. “Hello in there. It’s Althea.”
Thirty seconds go by before the door opens and I’ve got the barrel of a gun waved in my face. “Who’s there?” a rough voice asks.
“Althea. I’m alone. Please don’t aim that thing at me. I know what it can do.”
The Forcie reluctantly withdraws the gun and is shoved aside.
“Where the hell have you been?” Tricia demands, then her eyes widen. “And what the fuck are you wearing?”
I look down myself. Yep, my crotch is very bare.
“It’s complicated,” I begin. “A new suit would be nice.”
“Stay here.”’
She closes the door, and a minute later she’s back with a jumpsuit like the one I’ve always worn on Mars. I pull it on and immediately feel decent enough to enter the dome.
It’s full of people, everyone in the colony. They look harried and dejected, including the Forcies. A quick head count tells me that not everything is okay.
“Two missing?”
Tricia sighs. “Two Forcies are dead. Do you have any idea what’s happened here?”
“Giant spiders?”
“Okay, so you know. Once more, where have you been? Were you banging on the door earlier?”
I scratch my head. “It’s complicated. Got any juice?”
Tricia hands me a canister of precious orange juice. “We’ll be evacuating the base. The Lambda section will be overhead in two hours. We start fueling up the escape rocket in fifty minutes. Then we all get inside fifteen minutes before blastoff. And we will all be going.”
I almost choke on the juice. “Everyone?”
“Everyone.”
For a moment, I’m just looking at her. The evacuation procedure has been drilled into every colonist so hard we can all recite it in our sleep. If at any time the colony has to be evacuated, the escape rocket has room for all of us. It takes us into orbit around Mars, where the rocket will be joined to the unmanned Lambda section that’s in constant orbit around the planet. It contains more fuel and living space for the long trip back to Earth.