Velocity Rising

by Angie Arland

  Something brushed her arm. She shook it away, but the seaweed wrapped itself around her waist. Her eyes widened as it dragged her underwater. Her lungs burned as she struggled to reach the surface. Tayla clawed at the water, but the force pulled her deeper into the depths, and she was drowning all over again.

  Again…?

  Tayla woke with a start, heart thumping in her ears. She couldn’t see! Her eyes…it was like they’d been glued shut. She reached for her eyes but couldn’t move. Every muscle in her body tensed as she fought against whatever was holding her paralyzed.

  Time became meaningless, became nothing but panic and struggle, until from sheer exhaustion, she went still. Aliens, cocoons, her sister…all of it flooded back.

  Claire!

  She tried to sob but could not even do that.

  Her poor, darling sister. Dead.

  The blood, the mantis-creatures, the gray aliens with razor-sharp teeth—the nightmare was too real to bear. She had to escape, to run, to hide.

  But Claire was dead! Her mind screamed over and over until she couldn’t take it anymore. You are alone, and no one is coming to rescue you.

  Sixteen

  She must have drifted off. Her strength had returned, yet the suffocating force remained, pinning her entire body. No matter how hard she tried, she was stuck fast. She fought against the confining force, mostly trying to move her head and face, and was finally able to slightly open her eyes to see…

  …a light-green haze.

  It took several agonizing minutes for her eyes to adjust, but soon she was able to make out through the green a room filled with large cylindrical tubes and, inside them, bodies, though not all of them human.

  I’m in a tube. No! Oh my god, no…why couldn’t they have just killed me?

  Two dinnarei were entwined in one tube. Tayla searched from tube to tube until she spied what she thought was a human, but they were too far, making it difficult to focus.

  Could it be Claire?

  Tayla squinted through the green haze. Her heart skipped a beat when she spied a human female moving about freely. The woman had medium-length, frizzy hair and appeared to have on a uniform.

  Who is this? Why isn’t she helping me? I’m human! Hey!

  The woman walked away, replaced by the mental image of Claire in her arms, blood spewing from her neck. Tayla tried to sob, and only felt a viscous fluid in her throat.

  I should have died with you, Claire. I’m so sorry. Why can’t this all be a nightmare? Wake up, Tayla…wake up! Just let me open my eyes and…

  And find Claire close by, taking care of her like she always had when Tayla was sick. They might have been half-sisters, but that didn’t matter. They were always close and grew even closer when Tayla was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease. As children, they played nurse and patient. Claire would push a plastic pretend thermometer under her tongue or bandage her head a little too tight.

  As adults, they stayed up late and watched retro movies. The next morning, they’d rush around the small apartment looking for shoes, keys, coats, always late, forever unorganized.

  The memories made Tayla smile. She desperately longed for those days filled with laughter and love and a normal life. She missed her mom and her dad…she tried to sob again and again, all while the light-green substance enclosed her in timeless stillness.

  Seventeen

  In and out of consciousness, Tayla lost all track of time. When she woke, the horrific memories haunted her time and again, and her powerlessness chipped away at her sanity. The suffocating, green heaviness took away her sense of time.

  Is this my life now? she wondered.

  The occupied tanks were gone, she noticed, replaced by a mass of cables that ran from a large cylindrical object to somewhere overhead. Terudithan soldiers scurried about attending to various projections and consoles. They disregarded her, and she couldn’t make up her mind if she was relieved or disappointed. If they interacted with her somehow, then at least that meant her battle wasn’t over.

  Tayla became aware of something and focused hard on moving her right arm. She didn’t need much room, just a few inches. Gritting her teeth, she wiggled her hand until her wrist ached. Whatever bound her held firm, but she made a tiny amount of progress. Her hand moved somewhat. She could feel it! In her hand, she clutched the scalpel she had taken from Claire…

  …after she was killed.

  The lighting changed suddenly, going from bright green to a dimmer hue. She’d been immersed in green so long, it was like she had forgotten all other colors. Large symbols popped up across her vision.

  A Terudithan soldier or scientist, she couldn’t tell which, came into view mere feet away. It tapped at the symbols with its long bony finger.

  Tayla watched it, her pulse quickening. She wanted to scream at it.

  Let me out!

  Pain sizzled. It zapped her body and, if not for the greenness all around, across, and inside her, she would have screamed. She tried to fight, to thrash, yet the substance restrained her as the current of pain intensified.

  God, help me…let me die…

  Eighteen

  Aiden waited for a response. His grip tightened on the arm of his Command chair. “Mister Finnegan? Talk to me, buddy.”

  “Oh, so now I’m your buddy, am I? What happened…to ‘ya old bastard’?”

  Aiden relaxed a little. The man still had his sarcasm intact, which was a good sign. “Slow your breathing. I’m coming to get you.”

  Finnegan coughed. “Come any slower…I’d be dead already.”

  Aiden adjusted his mag-boot sensitivity to twenty-five percent and rose from the command chair. He used the suit’s light-beam to find his way to the blast door at the rear of the hub. He found the access point and pushed hard on the top mid-section, before the panel popped open.

  He shined the beam into the open panel. Significant ice accretion had formed inside, covering the controls. “I don’t suppose anyone thought to grab a heat torch before we sealed the blast doors? The lubricating grease has expanded into the panel…the damn thing is frozen solid.”

  “There wasn’t time to even think of that,” Harper said.

  “It was a rhetorical question,” Aiden said as he tapped at the ice with his glove’s reinforced fingertips.

  “Hey, Grandpa, do you copy?” Reece said over the comms. “I still want to go fishing when we get home.” There was, of course, no real fishing back at the fleet, only the V-Rep.

  No response.

  Aiden thumped the greasy ice with his fist. Fragments floated out in all directions, but not near enough to gain access to the door switch. If all the blast door controls were frozen like this, Mister Finnegan didn’t stand a chance.

  He almost jumped out of his suit when someone floated up next to him and tapped his helmet.

  “Need a hand?”

  “Crap, Karson! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

  Karson chuckled, “Scared of the dark, sir?”

  “Not of the dark, no.” Aiden continued to tap away with his fingers. The base of the switch was still coated in at least two inches of ice.

  “Mister Finnegan?” Aiden said. “If you can’t respond, click your comms’ squelch signal.”

  Nothing.

  “Sir…I’ve got an idea.” Mason had joined them at the blast door.

  “What?” Karson asked, floating a couple feet away from the door. Aiden noticed the Weps enjoyed zero-gravity a little too much. He was tempted to tell him to turn his gravity back on but turned his attention to Mason instead.

  “Watch and learn,” the grunt said.

  Aiden took a step back. “I’ll provide the light,” he said to Mason, “but whatever you do, don’t break the controls or we’ll never get to the engine room.” He pointed his helmet’s external beam at the panel.

  “Trust me, I know what I’m doing. Not my first rodeo.”

  “What?”

  “It’s something I heard said before…I don’t know wha
t it means either.”

  “I know what a rodeo is. I just didn’t know you knew what it was.”

  “Well…” the grunt seemed to be thinking of a retort as he pressed the maintenance cover release on the side of his EVA suit. “Whatever.” It was all he came up with as he extracted a tube from inside the opening. He fed the end of the tube into the door’s control panel and then stood there staring at it.

  “So…?” Karson asked from behind them. “What are we doing now?”

  “Shh. Let me concentrate. I can’t do it if you’re hassling me.” Mason started whistling a sweet tune to himself.

  “Do what?” Karson asked. The Weapons Officer looked at Aiden. “Do what?”

  “Wait. Is he…?” Ryder paused. “Oh.”

  “Huh?” Aiden said, then he realized what Mason was about to do. “Oh! Won’t that freeze?”

  “You don’t know?” Mason sounded surprised. “It’s mixed with antifreeze. Dunno who designed that into the suit, but it stops it from freezing in the pipes. Works real fine if you ask me. Give me a sec—” He took a step back as vapor dispersed from the control panel. Warm liquid poured over the ice. “There we go!” Mason said with a little too much gusto. “Ah, man! Give that a try now, boss.”

  Karson swore. “I’m not touching that. You open it.”

  Mason reconnected the recycle hose to his suit as Aiden threw the switch into the engage position. He could wash his glove off later. If they had a later. Presently, Mister Finnegan was more important than getting Mason’s piss on his glove.

  The door lifted about eighteen inches from the floor and stopped. “Goddammit! Give me a break!” Aiden shoved his shoulder into the blast door frame to leverage himself. He gripped the bottom edge of the door and pulled. Mason joined him, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  For the next ten ems, all three men grunted as they tried to lift the door.

  “I think it moved some,” Karson said, his boots now on the floor as he took a break.

  Mason, the strongest of the crew, was still at it. “Damn right, it did. Come on, you piece of shit!” He looked at Aiden, who had stood back and aimed his light beam at the gap. “I meant the door, sir.”

  “I know. I think you’re right, Karson. The rest of you, get over here. Let’s do this in teams.”

  A few ems and perhaps two more inches later, Grimes said, “I may be able to squeeze under it now.” She didn’t wait for Aiden’s reply. Zoe dove under the door, wriggled through, and disappeared.

  “Open the blast door panel,” Aiden said into the comms. “Tell me what you see.”

  They all waited for Grimes to respond. “Sir, the controls are frozen over. Disgusting as it is, I can use my own—”

  Aiden interrupted her. “As much as we’d all enjoy talking about that later, we have four more blast doors to get through.” He didn’t need to spell it out. They didn’t have time to lift every door and urinate on every control panel. They weren’t going to make it to the old man in time.

  Harper wriggled under the door. He’d never seen the man move so fast.

  “Mister Finnegan? I’m sorry, buddy, the door is jammed, and there’s no way we’re going to get to you in time.” Aiden didn’t know what the hell else to say.

  “You’re going to let him die?” Reece yelled over the comms.

  “It will take too long to reinitiate the systems and open the doors,” Aiden said, “and we still have the enemy out there. I wish there was—”

  A voice crackled over the comms. “You’ll miss me, won’t ya? Say it.”

  “Mister Finnegan? You old bastard! You’re alive!” Aiden switched off outgoing comms so he could swear, recomposed himself, then turned them back on.

  “Doc came to my rescue. It was fun listening to you lot. I would’ve told you sooner but, you know, I was almost out of air. Apologies, Reece, my boy.”

  “Sir, permission to go to the engine room once the blast doors are open?” Reece asked from the cockpit.

  “I’m fine, Davin,” Finnegan said. “No need to worry yourself, lad.”

  “I’m not worried, Grandpa. Not now. But I do want to come back there and wring your bloody neck!” Reece cursed. “Don’t ever scare me like that again!”

  Finnegan coughed. “I promise when we return to fleet, I’m gonna retire. Might even try that quiet fishing spot. The one you’ve been harping on about.”

  Reece sounded like he was crying. “That’s good to hear, Grandpa.”

  “Doctor McNeill, we owe you one,” Aiden said.

  A growl came from Spero’s crate upon hearing the man’s name.

  “Doc’s outgoing comms are offline. I’ll send him your regards via a series of one-handed signals,” Mister Finnegan said with a cough. Aiden couldn’t tell if that was a joke. “He reduced the swelling in my hand,” the engineer continued, “with some magic medical remedy and secured the glove. He’s pumping O2 into my suit as we speak.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Aiden looked around at the relief on everyone’s faces. “Thank the doctor for all of us. He just saved our asses by saving yours.”

  The deck rumbled under their feet.

  Grimes and Harper emerged from the gap in the blast door.

  “What the hell was that?” Ryder asked.

  “What’s—” was the only word spoken by either Karson or Mason before they were thrown against the starboard row of consoles, their gravity-induced boots working against them.

  A sudden impact assaulted the vessel, tossing all but Aiden across the hub and against the opposite side. He had avoided a similar trajectory, his foot jammed between a console and the base of a chair.

  “They’ve found us!” he called out. “You guys okay?”

  Karson answered first, “I’m good, sir, but looks like Zoe is unconscious…”

  “I got her,” came Mason’s voice in his earpiece.

  Ryder floated over and helped Aiden extract himself.

  “Thanks,” he said. “You okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” she answered.

  Harper was already belting himself in his seat.

  “Harper, we need to reactivate radar, and Karson, get our weapons online.”

  “On it.”

  “I’ll do the rest from my chair,” Aiden made his way to the Command console on his chair arm.

  “How in the hell did they find us?” Karson asked, settling into his seat and strapping in.

  Aiden drew himself into the Command chair and pulled one harness over his shoulder. He accessed the panel on the side-arm. “Mister Finnegan? Reece? How are you guys?”

  “Good as can be expected,” Finnegan responded. “McNeill is fine too.”

  “Some of my HUD’s jacked up, sir,” Reece said, his voice crackly over the comms. “But I can manage, I think.”

  “We don’t have much choice. Let’s hope we’re not out of time,” Aiden said. “Initiating startup sequence. It was a good idea, Karson.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Weps was already focusing on activating the weapons systems.

  “While it lasted,” Harper added.

  No one told him to shut up this time.

  Nineteen

  Cendent Level III, Nitaya ‘Flea’ Lan’rei, studied the virtual three-dimensional image of the Terudithan cruiser on the bowl-shaped volumetric display, hovering a few inches above the tactical command console. The ship was featured in minute detail, a superior piece of technology, one that her people had generously shared with Fleet Command. A decision she in no way agreed with, for the humans did not warrant such aide from the Dinnarei people.

  A decision they would come to regret.

  Flea squinted at her superior, Captain Kellanie Leigh, through the blue transparent display. The light from the display cast an eerie glow across her angular face.

  The human pushed her frizzy hair back behind her ears and frowned before jabbing her stubby finger at the display. She stopped and looked across at Flea. “I know I’m new to this technology, but should that cruiser be fadin
g in and out like that? Or is this another glitch in the new system?” The captain leaned in and planted her palms on the tactical table.

  Flea could tell by the look on the human’s face she expected an immediate response; instead, Flea entered a series of false commands into the flight console at the side of the table to dissuade her.

  “My presence here is merely observational,” Flea said, wanting to keep their interactions to a minimum. She glanced at the human, whose brows drew together, and lips thinned.

  Flea continued, “The ship’s AI may be accessed for this purpose.” Her intonation was clear and concise per her English linguistics tutelage. This was her first post with a human. It made her uncomfortable, serving with such a weak species. As soon as the ship returned to the fleet, she would request—no, demand—to be stationed on a Dinnarei vessel such as the Incait’inar. She was accustomed to that one.

  “May I remind you, also, you are here because of the alliance? One that has remained strong since your race first came to Earth thirty-two cycles ago?”

  Flea focused on the readings and tried to ignore the human.

  But she continued, “Your duty is not only to observe, as you imply, but to interact, to teach, to help me learn this, I must say, impressive technology your people have graciously shared with us inferior subspecies.” The sarcasm was lost on Flea. “Now, either retire to your cabin until we return to Fleet Command, where I, upon our arrival, will report to your superiors about your inherent inability to assist me. Or, you can cooperate to your fullest capacity. You may find I’m not as bad as you seem to think I am.” The human scowled as she breathed heavily through her disgusting open mouth.

  Flea didn’t not know how to respond. She could only assume the human was being somewhat aggressive with her. “Do you have telepathic abilities?”