The common room was mostly untouched, although the ventilation cover near the ceiling on the left side of the room was broken wide open. They hustled to the door and tried to open it. It didn’t.
“Are they all like this?” Randy asked with a pleading tone.
“I guess we can assume so. Try messing around with the wiring.”
Sam went to the panel and used the spear to pry it off, exposing the wires. Randy looked behind them, past the broken-open door and down the hallway, careful not to catch the alien’s attention with the beam of light from his flashlight. “Where is it?”
“I was just about to tell you,” Terri said, “It’s breaking through the closets by Mineral Storage B. It could turn back any moment.”
Rosalyn said grimly, “We have minutes left before the engines will overheat.”
Sam grabbed at wires with his vibrating fingers, shocking himself only once. “I’m not much of an electrician…”
The door slid open, and Sam managed a gracious smile. Into the north hallway they went. Just one more door into the dining area and they could feel safe. Al tried to shut the door behind them, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Damn it, Sam—it won’t shut!” he said harshly.
Sweat glistening on his skin, Sam said sheepishly, “Like I said, I’m not an electrician!”
Randy pushed the button to the dining area door. As they expected, it wouldn’t open either.
“It’s going through Mineral Storage B,” warned Terri.
Al shook his head. “We need to be able to lock the dining room door behind us, or there’s no point to any of this!”
“I don’t have time to figure it out! I got lucky!” Sam exclaimed.
Rosalyn’s voice was markedly calmer than theirs. “There’s a ventilation shaft in the wall to your left. It leads into the dining area. Try crawling through that.”
Randy sighed in frustration, but quickly went over to the shaft cover, glad to be out of the possible line of sight of the alien. Sam and Al followed, but Al hung back to peer around the corner through the common room and down the dark hall so he could watch for the alien’s approach. Would he even see it coming? He gritted his teeth, practicing turning and aiming the flamethrower and reaching to turn on the lighter. Randy knelt down by the vent and examined it.
“Here, use this,” Al said to Randy, tossing him a screwdriver that he fished out of his pocket.
Randy barely managed to catch it and proceeded to remove the six screws keeping the vent attached to the wall, his ragged breath betraying his sought-for calm. The vent would be just large enough for them to squeeze through.
Rosalyn spoke quickly. “It’s passing through a vent into the medical bay. You’re gonna want to hurry.”
A few clatters came from the medical bay, which connected to their hallway down all the way on their right.
All the hairs on the backs of their necks stood up, and they felt sweat covering their bodies. Randy spared more than one frantic sideways glance that direction as he undid the third screw.
The lights in the hallway flickered suddenly. There were lights every five feet or so along the ceiling, and Sam and Al watched as suddenly each one started flickering on and then off, one by one in a row, from the door to the medical bay nearly to where they stood.
“It’s in the hallway! Do you see it?” Rosalyn said, voice raising louder.
None of them could get a word out. They saw nothing.
“Sam! Al! Ra————”
The engines suddenly cut out, turning off their communications.
Something popped out of the ceiling just in front of them. Long, long, limbs dropped gracefully down to the floor, and a dark gray being with a wickedly arched back stand there on all fours. It reared up on hind legs, its tail slithering behind. The body was extremely slim and sleek, skin rippled with lines and patterns.
The face was angular and strong-looking. The eyes…those eyes, sunken deep into the skull, had no form or familiarity to them, just strange appendages of sight. It had what could have been ears spiking back a little bit past the end of its skull, equally armored and rough in texture as the rest of its skin. Simple hands and feet held clawed digits. It raised one of its hands, palm facing to them in a mysterious gesture.
Then a mouth opened with teeth that faced nearly in a diagonal direction equally downward and forward.
Fire burst from the flamethrower nozzle and onto the alien’s face.
With a low, terrifying shriek, it shrank back, whipping its tail in front to help sweep away the fire. Al kept pumping it in burst, moving forward a step with each one.
“YEAH, YOU LIKE THAT?” he screamed, his chest aflame. “THAT’S FOR MITCH!”
“L-last one,” Randy managed to say with great effort, hands trembling greatly as he hurried to unscrew the final screw.
“THAT’S FOR SHAUNA!”
Sam set his propane tank down. Waiting for a moment between the bursts of flame, he leapt forward and thrust the spear towards the alien, but it couldn’t get close enough to pierce anything. It was just as well—his fear was making his accuracy worse than normal. He shrank back again and let Al shoot fire at it.
Randy at last yanked off the metal vent cover, pulled his propane tank behind him, and started climbing through as quickly as he humanly could. “GET IN!” he screamed.
“GO!” Al said to Sam, using one hand to push him away.
While spear-wielding Sam crawled after Randy into the vent—forgetting to take his propane tank with him—Al took a step and a half forward, blasting fire at the alien with rage flaring up in his heart until the thing backed up further, its gangly limbs flailing in pain. He could smell burnt flesh.
When he was sure he had enough time to sprint to the vent and crawl through, Al raced back, jumped on his belly and shoved the awkwardly large flamethrower in before climbing inside himself. One second later, amidst the echoing sound of thin metal being bumped against repeatedly by all three of them, he could feel his feet having passed all the way into the vent. He nearly cried with joy. Ahead of him, Randy and Sam had looked back to see what became of him and laughed with relief equal to his.
The vent had a turn left and then briefly down, but they continued forward, breathing slowly for the first time in a while, until the vent turned right, leading into the dining area. Randy made it to the end where another metal frame covered the shaft. Beyond it was the dining area, dimly lit by some battery-powered lamps. Letting go of his propane tank and flashlight, Randy looked to see if he could undo the screws from this side, but it didn’t seem like that was going to work.
He raised his voice. “Hey, Rosalyn and Terri! We need your help!”
The radio systems were still offline. They probably wouldn’t hear him from the Bridge, but he didn’t know what else to try. Randy’s heart was racing so fast, he felt it would burst. He slumped down on his back, adjusting his glasses on his face.
Suddenly, Rosalyn appeared from the hallway to the Bridge and looked over at the vent.
“Oh, there you are! Thank God,” she said as she ran over to them and knelt down.
“Another spike in the engines?” he questioned.
“Yeah. Terri’s working on it.”
“Here, help us out,” Randy said with eyelids low, exhausted and defeated as he pushed the screwdriver through the vent and into her hand.
She knelt down before the vent and got to it, unscrewing them as quickly as she could.
“Are the others okay?” she asked.
“I’m here,” said Sam.
“Me too,” answered Al. “The flamethrower works like a charm.”
Al was laying on his belly, resting on his forearms. Everyone waited another minute as Rosalyn undid the last screws. The hour was getting late, and the fatigue was affecting her greatly, but still she moved speedily. At last she pulled off the vent cover, allowing Randy to crawl through, lugging the propane tank behind him. He stood up, set the tank down, and collapsed into a chair. Sam
was in the process of crawling out, and Al was about to start moving.
A spiked tail shot up through the vent, into Al’s stomach, and out the other end. A scream broke out from his throat as the tail shook him about violently, increasing the damage done. In that tight space, he couldn’t move the flamethrower; he was completely helpless, shattered with pain.
Amid screams from all the others Sam took the spear, threw his shoulder on the floor again, and thrust the blade at the alien’s tail repeatedly, hoping to coerce it to flee. He got one nick to its tail, and it pulled suddenly out of Al’s stomach, leaving him sprawled there, disemboweled and dying. Al stared ahead at Sam, his square head shaking, too weak to move. In the next instant the alien’s tail shot up again—through Al’s chest this time—curled its tail to hook into him, and pulled him down with incredible strength. The metal held for a few moments, but they could hear it straining until it broke beneath him, plummeting him down. He didn’t fall far—there wasn’t much space down there, wherever the alien was—but he fell to where it wanted him.
His screams quickly stopped amid sounds of slashing and horrible, low, ravenous growls and bites.
Thinking quickly, Sam reached forward and pulled the flamethrower out of the vent. The others, electrified with fear, started looking for something to block the vent off. They found a heavy cooler and pushed it together, blocking off the shaft. It looked like that was the only vent in this room, thankfully, and the door was locked tightly.
Slowly the sounds disappeared and they could hear the alien scuttling away deeper into the bowels of the Novara.
Terribly distraught, the three of them collapsed onto the floor overcome with the terror they’d just endured. Long moments passed in the dim light with only their breathing piercing the silence.
Then the engines started up again, and Terri’s voice was heard. “We’re back on! The alien is to the left and below you guys, moving away quickly. …Guys? …Hello?”
With eyes shut and chest heaving, Sam said, “Turn it off, Terri. We’re in.”
“Did everyone make it? Are you okay?”
None of them replied for a moment. Then Randy spoke up, feeling moisture gathering in his eyes. “We lost Al.” He cleared his throat painfully, shaking his head. “He’s gone.”
Terri said nothing, taken aback.
Sitting against the wall, Rosalyn looked to the flamethrower laying on the floor, which Al had given his life for them to procure. That flamethrower was their key to survival. They would need to bar this place like a fortress from now on. And that flamethrower was the only thing that could possibly deter the alien from bursting through some hidden entrance and slaughtering all of them in turn.
9
The ship grew colder.
With it having been made clear that they weren’t going to solve this problem in a day, they had to prepare for making sure they could sleep safely. At Rosalyn’s direction, they started making a fortress. That long, long day only came to a welcome end after they had found every possible vent and crevasse that the alien could feasibly slip silently through in the dining area and the Bridge and plug them up—and even some that probably weren’t feasible. The dining table was converted into a brace for the door to the hallway, and a refrigerator from the kitchen a brace for the kitchen door. The Bridge and dining area would be the only rooms they would enter from then on, with the Bridge being their primary hub because it was the most secure.
After letting the engines cool for a time, they temporarily turned on the radar and confirmed the alien’s location before sending out Rosalyn and Randy, armed with the flamethrower, to gather mattresses and bedding and everything else they needed from their rooms. A few trips there, and another to the kitchen’s pantry, and everything they needed was hoarded at the Bridge so that they wouldn’t need to leave again.
They couldn’t do anything to ensure that the alien couldn’t break inside the fortress if it tried, but they felt slightly safer knowing they would hear it if it did—at least safe enough to try to sleep, considering that without some rest they had even less hope to be able to face this nightmare. They prayed they’d have greater strength when morning came.
One person was assigned on watch at a time, wielding the flamethrower at all times and turning on the radar readings periodically to see what the alien was up to at any given moment.
With a cup of coffee in her, Terri was willing to take the first watch, which she did until about four in the morning, when she woke up Rosalyn and crashed into her bed. It was only four hours later when the others woke up and everybody got ready for their day, such as it was.
As they put together a scanty breakfast—even lousier than a standard one—not too much was said. Most huddled with blankets around their shoulders and arms as they ate. The topic of dealing with the killer alien creature creeping around their ship certainly didn’t come up. What talk there was was all function-related, about which things needed fixing and whether or not they would be able to re-engage any form of communication with FAER through engine power.
The answer, it seemed, would be no. The ship’s basic systems could be powered through expending fuel, but with the SNTNL system mainframe in a million pieces, communication was impossible and computer systems were going to be extremely basic, especially if they wanted to conserve as much fuel as they could.
The alien really did seem stymied in its attempts to get into their little fortress. Or, considering its great strength, maybe it was merely afraid of the flamethrower. At any rate, though it wandered all throughout the ship, it didn’t attempt to break through their doors or walls.
At noon, they all sat in the Bridge on their respective chairs—with mattresses and supplies strewn about on bare spaces on the floor—and talked over a simple meal of canned vegetables and fruit.
Rosalyn shivered as she stuck a fork into a can and ate the mixed vegetables blandly. She looked up at the others and said, “I should have watched our cameras more closely.”
The others looked over at her with bleary eyes, puzzled.
She continued, “After we brought Shauna back in, I should have watched the cameras. Once we knew there was life on this rock, I should’ve been looking for it and guarding against it. Maybe I could have spotted that thing before it broke into the ship. …I’m sorry.”
Randy smirked a bit. “You’re sorry! You’ve done everything you could, and it still hasn’t been enough to stop that thing. Face it, Roz—there’s nothing any of us could have done.”
She said nothing, frowning and chewing.
Terri looked at him. “You talk like we’re dead already.” There was no disagreement apparent in her tone.
Sam answered instead. “Without Al and Mitch…” he shook his head ruefully. “I can’t fix that coolant pipe on my own.”
He left it unspoken, but his implication was clear: the Novara was not going to fly ever again.
Rosalyn narrowed her eyes. She didn’t want to believe that.
“I miss them,” said Sam, wiping his eyes. “Shauna, too.”
“Shauna used to be the one to go around checking on everything, along with SNTNL,” Randy said. “Without them this place was bound to get really dirty really fast.”
“Then again, Al and Mitchell were the ones who usually got it dirty in the first place,” Terri mused. Though she tried to joke, there was clear sadness in her eyes.
“True. On the off chance that we get out of this alive, we’re gonna have to tell their families what happened to them. I know I don’t want to do that, but even I wouldn’t be callous enough to have them hear it from some random FAER black suit.”
Sam looked up. “Al was married, wasn’t he?”
Randy nodded slowly. “Found out she was pregnant three months into this trip. Said they didn’t plan it.”
Terri’s eyes went wide. “Oh yeah! I forgot about that! And FAER wouldn’t let him leave the mission early. That sucked. Seriously.” She sniffed and shut her eyes, raising a hand to wipe them and ru
b the side of her head.
Randy put a hand on her shoulder, and she instinctively shrugged it off. He twiddled his thumbs uncomfortably. When she collected herself again, however, she apologized.
“I’m gonna check the radar,” she said, turning to the computer station.
As she engaged the engines and turned on the radar, they each spent a few more minutes sharing each other’s thoughts and sorrows, remembrances of Shauna and Mitchell and Al. A very human experience at an otherwise inhuman and uncaring time.
Sam finished his lunch and stood up, leaning against his chair. “I just wish we’d gone faster in that vent. Damn it, I wish we could have just killed it then and there in that hallway.”
Terri turned to them and shook her head as she turned off the engines again to let them cool. She had a dead stare on her face and was looking at her shoes. “Shauna was the best friend I had here.” The statement somewhat surprised them, but they didn’t interrupt. “I shouldn’t have let her go that deep into those ruins in the first place.”
“We’re all to blame, we get it,” Sam said with a shake of his head. “What are we even doing here?”
Rosalyn leaned forward and tried to seize control of the growing despair. “Shauna had a family back home, too,” she whispered. “Mitchell cared a lot about his sister. Al was a father who never got to meet his child. I miss them all a lot—”she let a couple of tears fall—“and I know I won’t be able to live with myself if we lose anyone else. We need to get out and kill that thing.”
All three of them winced in unison, as if Rosalyn had just suggested amputating everyone’s legs.
“The longer we stay here, the more damage it will do,” Rosalyn pressed, desperate not to lose them.
Randy interjected, “Let it damage the ship all it wants. It ain’t flyin’ ever again.”
Terri voiced her agreement. Sam kept quiet.
“So what do you two propose instead?” Rosalyn asked Terri and Randy.
Terri shrugged and bit her lip. Weakly she said, “Wait it out. I don’t know. Anything but face it.”
Seclurm: Devolution Page 13
