Prisoners of Death

by Keely Caldwell

  Jake and Page watched all this with surprised eyes, but neither said a word. Instead Jake asked the question that had been dancing on the back of his mind since the guards had returned Tegan. “What did those overgrown slugs do to her anyhow?”

  Ardammt’s head snapped up, his dark eyes roving over and around the two Earthlings as if they had just dropped in through the ceiling. He shook his head vigorously, his blond hair swinging back and forth as if to accentuate his attitude as well as the actual movement of his head. “You don’t want to know, Earthman.”

  Nine

  "Through The Dark"

  Dark eyes measured Jake like some alien yardstick. “You couldn’t handle the knowledge. Don’t ask again.”

  Jake let his eyebrows climb to his forehead in a look that had had many a third world ruler taking an involuntary step back. “Really? And who the hell are you to decide what knowledge I can or can’t handle?”

  Ardammt squeezed his eyes shut, a wave of pain washing over his mind. Why do I have to deal with Tegan’s Earthmen when she may be dying? He moaned to himself. It was so bad this time. They must have subjected her to... Ardammt swallowed, refusing to let his fearing mind even touch on the horrors he already knew, had himself suffered many times before. But this time… This time when the guards had brought Tegan back she'd looked so bad, so close to death, Ardammt had feared he’d pass out in the presence of those Earthmen. And he couldn’t do that. Couldn’t let these weak Earthlings Tegan was so fond of see his own weakness. He couldn't allow them to realize that they were in more danger than they’d ever understood in their narrow little Earth bound lives. By the moons, help me, I thought she was dead! I thought this had been the one time Tegan couldn’t stand up to the Cantellan torture halls. After having just escaped these same halls. And then the Earthmen attacking them. Then what would I have done but taken my turn in the… no, don’t think of it!

  “Ardammt?”

  Ardammt realized the big yellow haired Earthman called Jake – strange name for a man – was staring at him, worry in his oddly light eyes. To cover the moment, Ardammt presented Jake with a cool glance. “As I said, Earthman, the agony suffered at the… um…hands of the Cantellans is not a subject to be discussed like your electronic broadcasts. It is a private...torment too horrible for you Earthlings to comprehend. So I will not tell you.”

  Jake was grinning at Ardammt. Perversely, the big yellow guy being obnoxious made Ardammt feel better. “So there!” When Ardammt looked about to rise, steamed, Jake held up a hand. “Okay. Okay. Settle down now. I’m not looking for a fight. I’m a journalist. I was just curious.”

  “Well, journalist, I am afraid unless we manage to escape you will have your curiosity more than satisfied when it becomes your turn to “tour” the Cantellan torture halls.” Before Jake could form a reply to that bit of news, Tegan moaned and tried to pull herself up, wincing visibly as a bolt of pain splintered towards every one of the salved wounds. “Tegan!” Ardammt exclaimed, gently helping her to sit up.

  Tegan looked at him in puzzlement. “Culli?” She shook her head, trying to clear it. “Ritell? Keiren?” A long smooth hand traveled around Ardammt’s face and down his bared chest and the confused look in Tegan’s eyes faded to be – surprisingly to Page – replaced by the wary responsiveness the Earthmen had come to recognize as Tegan’s usual manner. “Ardammt!” Throwing her arms around Ardammt in unaffected delight, she buried her face in his bare chest before turning to Jake and Page. “There you are,” Tegan said inanely and Jake could have sworn she was pleased that neither of them were in the slimy clutches of the Cantellans.

  Jake smiled, wondering just who these nice but very different people were. “Yep. Here we are alright.”

  “Good.” As she spoke, Tegan was standing out of Ardammt’s embrace, the last of her confusion falling off of her like the shedding of a dusty old gray cloak. “Since we are all here now is the time to escape.”

  “And just how do you intend to do that, sister?”

  Tegan was fully recovered as her eyes flashed on Jake in scorn. “First of all you are going to give me a boost.” Tegan choose to ignore Jake’s muttering about loving to give her a boost alright and instead continued as if he hadn’t uttered – or muttered – a word. “Then I can get to that shaft up there and climb in.” Tegan finished by waving a hand at a black rectangle opening set high on the wall above the formed bench that Jake and Page had been sitting on. “There.”

  Jake stared at the opening with a certain amount – actually, a lot – of misgiving. “Why?”

  Tegan drew in a breath but let out an impatient sigh. “To escape.” At Jake’s blank look, Tegan added, “That opening is a ventilation shaft that will eventually lead to the main ventilation shaft and then the shaft to the space dock where we can escape in a ship.”

  Page was impressed. “Is that how you escaped before? How do you know a ship will be on the space dock?”

  “Yes, we did escape this same way before.” Tegan didn’t look at Ardammt when she said this, but her mind did protest. Culli! She hadn’t seen him in the halls. She’d half hoped she would and half hoped she wouldn’t. “And I know there are ships on the space dock because there always are. The Cantellans enjoy collecting the ships of the people they capture. They seem to consider it like a symbol of their domination.”

  “Like scalps,” Page added.

  Tegan looked horrified at the very idea, but understood the connotation and nodded. She looked around at the men. “Ready?”

  The men nodded. Jake crouched and cupped his hands. “Let’s go.”

  ****

  “Tegan,” Page panted as he crawled behind her through the ventilation shaft. “Why are there no covers on the ventilation openings?”

  Tegan paused at a T- junction where two identical black metal shafts crawled off in opposite directions into the far distance. Or at least Page, coming up next to Tegan on the right side, assumed the shafts went a long ways. It was so dark that assumption was the only way – not the best way, just the only way – to travel on hands and knees down the endless twists and turns of these shafts. Tegan wiped a grimy hand across a grimy forehead, smearing the grim and making it grimier. “The Cantellans don’t use covers.”

  “Why not?”

  If Page hadn’t been so close to Tegan he probably wouldn’t have caught the grimace that worked across her face. “No covers mean no obstructions for the larvae when they take to slithering through the ventilation shafts in search of food.”

  Page could feel himself turning white as he bit back an almost unbearable urge to retch. “What…what do these larvae eat?” he asked, fearing he already knew.

  Tegan gave Page a grim mockery of a smile. “Anything they catch.”

  Jake had crawled up behind Page, Ardammt next to him. “Do mean to say these giant slugs have babies?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the babies live in the shafts?”

  “No. They live in hive nurseries. But they use the shafts to move around. Exercise, as it were”

  “And they eat people?”

  “Yes. Alive,” Ardammt added.

  Jake cast an eye behind them, trying to peer back down the shaft they’d just come up, but the inky blackness offered no clues to what lay at their heels. “So we may run into one of the little buggers?”

  Ardammt shook his hand. “More like dozens.”

  “Dozens?” Jake barely resisted the urge to tuck his heels under him like a prim schoolgirl in a her best church dress.

  “Depending on how many eggs have hatched. Yes.”

  Page gawked at Ardammt. “How the hell can you be so calm about dozens of those monsters in miniature skulking through the air supply looking for people munchies like so many giant roaches?”

  Ardammt came up close, staring Page in the eye. “I didn’t say I was calm about the possibilities,” he told the Doctor in a voice laced with ice.

  Page didn’t back down. He was beginning to see that Ardammt was
a bully. He returned Ardammt’s stare. “Then why are we crawling around in these damn shafts?”

  “Because I don’t know about you, but if I am going to die I’d rather die trying to escape than sit in my cell like a good prisoner and wait for the Cantellans to come and take me away for my turn in the torture halls. Nor do I want to be eaten…”

  “No body is going to be caught today,” Tegan interrupted. “The larvae are hungry and vicious, but they are also slow, stupid and blind so in the shafts we have a chance to escape. Our only chance,” Tegan added. “But we do need to get moving before the guards return to our cell and find us gone and raise the alarm.”

  Page was still alarmed at the thought of crawling through a hole as black as the inside of midnight while maybe dodging ravenous worms, but the thought of finding out for himself what these “torture halls” offered were enough to nudge his hands and knees to fall in behind Tegan. He couldn’t begin to imagine what waited for them at the end of the shafts, but it had to be better than what they were leaving behind them. At least he hoped so.

  Damn! Page thought sourly. Beautiful alien girls, intergalactic spaceships, giant talking slugs bent on domination, ventilation shafts and escaping – maybe – by the seat of your trousers. I should have listened to my mother and become a banker!

  ****

  According to Tegan, they were nearing the junction that led in one direction to the war room and Ugh’s lair and in the other direction the docking bays and the captured ships. That goal in mind, Page crawled on behind the others – last in line. As he scooted onwards, Page felt a blast of cold air move across his right side so he assumed they were passing a side tunnel. He thought nothing more about it and scuttled on, dimly making out the scuffed soles of Tegan's boots in front of his hands. They went on like this for a what seemed like near forever before Page was forced to pause while Tegan held up the line getting her bearings for the turn.

  As Page waited he stretched out his legs, trying desperately to work the cramps from his protesting thighs. It was then that he felt it. A tug at his shoe. An eerie feeling of

  something like a squashed rubber ball liberally coated in snot brushing up his bare calf. “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Page screamed, the grisly thing slithering up his pants legs. “Get out!” he bellowed, shaking his legs in a frenzy.

  Jake had scooted around. "What is it?”

  “Larvae!”

  “Don’t move,” Ardammt hollered. “It’s more likely to attack if you fight it.”

  “I don’t wanna fight it,” Page gasped. “I just want the bloody thing outta my trousers!”

  Tegan had swung around, somehow, in the narrow confines of the shaft and crawled to Page. “Be still,” she told him. Such was the calmness of Tegan’s voice that Page stopped abruptly, looking at Tegan curiously as the larvae moved up the inside of his trousers towards places it had no business going.. Tegan turned slightly, wrangled Jake's tie from around his neck, wrapped the tie around Page’s leg where the larvae had apparently decided to take a snooze – at least Page hoped it was only a snooze the beastly creature had in mind! – and pulled the ends tight. There was a truly nauseating squeak - like a deranged hamster under a steamroller - and the thing slide down his leg like a toddler at a water slide to plop on the shaft floor. Tegan pulled the tie from around Page’s leg and handed the article back to Jake, shifted herself and continued up the shaft.

  Jake and Page followed Ardammt right behind Tegan’s boots. “What’d you do?” Page asked Tegan’s moving shape.

  “Killed it.”

  Jake nodded in the darkness. “Busted it’s tiny guts, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  Page absorbed all this in silence. He was glad beyond words to have the creepy thing off his leg. That kind of alien life he could definitely do without. Then a horrible thought occurred to him. “Jake.”

  Jake glanced behind him in the darkness as they all negotiated that sharp turn. “What?”

  Page looked a little green around the gills. “If Tegan squished that creepy crawler in my trousers there’s probably larvae guts on my thigh.”

  Jake threw Page a putrid look. “Thanks for sharing, mate. That’s one mental image I did not need!”

  Ten

  "The Lightfire Seeker"

  This ship of horror won’t survive.

  Tegan knew this to be true since she would be the one to totally destroy the Cantellan battle cruiser. Of course Culli would be destroyed too. But if he wasn’t dead already, he soon would be. No one, except Tegan and Ardammt, had ever been able to survive the Cantellan torture halls. Culli certainly couldn’t.

  Shaking her head to shake off the sad angry thoughts, Tegan crawled up the ventilation shaft. Her destination was the not to distant opening into the engine room. The massive black engines rumbled and growled in the near distance, their explosive proton crushes shoving the lumberous cruiser through the silence of space.

  Tegan felt for the opening, relieved to have missed being scented by any of the larvae. She wasn’t afraid of them like she was the fully grown Cantellans but would prefer not to have any of the little nightmares burrowing up her pants legs. Sliding down the dark wall of smooth material, Tegan dropped lightly on her feet.

  Cantellan battle cruisers were all old - centuries, some legends say - and every ship in the hideous hulking fleet was laid out exactly the same.

  Because of this Tegan instantly turned to her right and moved to the end of the wall, knowing the main control panel hung there framed by huge pipes carrying liquid waste sludge away from the proton centrifuge. Tegan slapped worked the touchpad, knowing exactly what to do since this was the third - or was it the forth? - Cantellan ship she’d blown to infinity in the last four years.

  The thumping and growling of the proton pumps gradually changed to sound more like grinding and wheezing as if some great leviathan had a bad head cold.

  Tegan smirked. The Cantellan ship was shutting down. Soon the proton pumps would shut down altogether, causing the rack’s active sludge to back up into the centrifuge, the heat of the Cantellan engines.

  Then the centrifuge, its broken proton sludge reacting with fresh protons, would set off an explosion that would blow pieces of the ship to the dark corners of the known universe right where they belong.

  As the engines started to whine, an alarm sounded. Tegan’s eyes flew open wide, none of the other ships had had alarms! The Cantellan’s believed no creature was smarter than them so they saw no need for protective measures such as alarms. But ‘Ugh’ didn’t follow protocol. Oh oh! The beasty will be drummed out of the sludge pits for this – if he survives the explosion. Which he won’t!

  Tegan turned, sprinting for the door on the opposing wall. Its sensor caused the door to slide open and Tegan slid through. And into a solid mass.

  With a squeak of terror, Tegan scrambled backwards, twisting up the corridor the opposite way.

  “Tegan!”

  Tegan almost skidded to a stop, whirled around, grabbing Ardammt’s hand as she ran. “Go!”

  Together they ran, slipping up and down endless long dead corridors and across vast chambers empty of all but the gruesome trophies of human remains.

  They ran until their sides ached and they had to stop, leaning against a wall, panting hard.

  “I…don’t hear…any…pursuit.” Ardammt held his sides, gulping in great lung fulls of rotten Cantellan air.

  Tegan leaned her head against the wall, dizzy from running. “I stopped the engines.”

  Ardammt rolled his light eyes. He listened to the sound of the engines overhead. “That being it, we need to get back to your Earthmen in the docking bay.”

  Nodding, Tegan followed Ardammt to a cross corridor. They hurried down the right juncture of the cross to a heavy door that slid nosily aside for them.

  They sprinted across the landing bay, their eyes scanning the freighters, fighters and personal pleasure craft scrapped about the vast floor.

  She threw her eyes aroun
d the craft. “Where are Jake and Page?”

  A whistle shrilled from nearby and Page waved down from the bridge of a mid sized light freighter dimpled with dents and scored with scars that made the ship skin look like the skin of some giant battle fatigued animal. Jake stood next to Page, smirking down at Ardammt and Tegan.

  Tegan laughed once, careening across the floor, rushing up the sagging ramp. Ardammt

  frowned darkly up at Jake and Page.

  Jake waved bye bye. Ardammt frowned harder as he hurried up the ramp. “We have to leave,” Ardammt was tense again.

  Tegan stalked onto the bridge. Her hands were itching to get at those controls. She hadn’t manned one of these jewels in years! “I know, Ardammt. I am the one who overloaded this starship’s engines. I know how long we have.”

  Page’s eyebrows walked up at the mention of overloaded engines. “How long is that?”

  Tegan thought. “Two minutes.”

  “What?” Jake thought he must be hearing things. “What are you standing around for? Get this heap moving, if it can.”

  Tegan threw Jake a dirty look as she slid into the pilot’s seat. Her soft hands worked the controls, a movement later the engines fired up. “Neutralize gravity for lift off.”

  Ardammt had slid into the co-pilot’s seat. Now his long fingers flew over the controls like lightening. “Gravity anchor gone. Ready for lift off.”

  Tegan engaged a row of touch screen controls and the old ship picked up its stubby feet from the landing decks. Jake and Page sat down fast, slapping restraints across their torsos as if they doubted either Tegan's piloting or the ship's durability. Or both.