“Hello? Sam? Rosalyn? What the hell is going on with the ship?!” came the voice of Terri over the suits’ headsets. Her voice was diluted by rushing winds, indicating she and Randy hadn’t yet reached the cave entrance.
Sam responded, whispering faintly, “The alien was trying to reach you. We had to do something. Don’t stop—get to that cavern and hide. Understand?”
Randy squirmed. “Oh, hell…! Keep that thing off our tail. Please!”
They cut their communications. Rosalyn and Sam looked at each other.
“We have to get out there and make sure it doesn’t break through another wall to go kill them,” Rosalyn said, voice muffled slightly by her helmet.
There was no hiding anymore; the gates had been thrown open, and soon either they or the alien would be dead. Sam was terribly uncomfortable, but he gripped the spear tight and went over to the hole to look down.
“A bit of a drop,” he said.
Rosalyn looked at the ramp. They could go back in and wait for it to drop down, but that would take time, and make noise. Instead, she went over to a shelf—using her suit’s headlamp to see more clearly in the darkness—and found a cable. She secured it to one of the metal railings near the ramp and brought it over to the hole.
“Come on,” she said, tossing the length of cable down. She clutched the top and leapt in the hole, sliding down quickly with flamethrower in one hand, strap over her shoulder. Sam followed after her, one arm clinging awkwardly to his spear.
Their knees buckled on the surface, and winds whipped the cable to and fro once they both let go of it. There were skid marks on the ground from Rosalyn’s desperate ship maneuvers, and they spotted Terri and Randy, trailed by their carrier vehicle, running frantically towards the cavern.
Rosalyn led Sam out a little further away from the Novara where they could hopefully see the alien wherever it would pop out.
“You’re gonna have to be the one to kill it with your spear,” she said softly with an apologetic, sidelong gaze at him. “Unless we’re back inside the ship, I’m afraid the flamethrower won’t work.”
Sam only nodded. They scanned the side of the ship as gritty bits of rock and ice scraped against their helmets and wind whistled in their ears. In the distance, down from the mountain, clouds and dust storms obscured what lay beyond. The ship itself looked wounded and haggard, but there was no alien to speak of.
“I don’t see anything,” he remarked after a minute.
Rosalyn sounded a thoughtful hmmm and took out her smart device again, carefully shielding it from the winds as best as she could.
The radar system still wouldn’t work.
She cursed. “If we go back in there, we’re going to have to find it without radar help.”
“And if we stay out here, we have no flamethrower,” Sam added.
Turning back to Terri and Randy she remarked, “Something’s odd about this. Why would it abandon easy prey?”
“I don’t know. But we have to either go after it now or forget about killing it and go hide with Randy and Terri.”
Rosalyn started walking towards the side of the ship, where they could enter through a ramp into one of the Mineral Storage rooms. She took deep breaths and steadied herself. A fire was building within her as she said, “We can’t keep hiding. Let’s hunt that thing down.”
Approaching the ship’s hull, she reached up and tapped some emergency buttons to open up the ramp to Mineral Storage C, on the lower floor. The ramp pushed out elsewhere and angled down the twenty feet or so until it touched down on the ground, and both of them jogged over to it and up it.
The ramp closed behind them. Entering the mineral storage room, they found it in disarray. Large shelves full of crates of sparkling minerals had been knocked over and busted open presumably by the alien wreaking havoc. It all felt twisted up, as if the Novara had had its innards ripped out and then haphazardly replaced. The ship was not well, and probably never would be again. They stepped over the wreckage and hustled to the door, not stopping long to look around and feel sad for the damage to their prized minerals.
Rosalyn held the flamethrower close. “Let’s move as quickly as we can. I don’t want to draw this out,” she whispered.
Sam felt too cumbersome in this spacesuit. Even though it was sleeker than some, it was still too bulky. Sweat beaded upon his forehead as he imagined himself fleeing from or worse, fighting the alien while in this suit and being killed. And they couldn’t stop to remove their spacesuits for fear of being ambushed. If only the radar still worked!
With all the damage that had been done he seriously doubted they would ever get this ship back to full functioning again, but if they attempted to fix it, he knew he would hate going down to the lower level to work on the engines even if he would know, at that point, that the alien was dead. Space travel was ruined for him forever. He wasn’t truly sure what he would do when they got back home, but bartender perhaps wasn’t far off.
In these recesses of the ship’s bowels they heard creaks and whirrs—noises that normally unsettled Rosalyn somewhat but now greatly alarmed her. Who could tell where their target was lurking, now?
She cleared her throat before leading the way up a staircase to the door, each step an echo in this dead room full of valuables that didn’t matter anymore.
Out of the large, cluttered storage room and onto the long catwalk in the ship-wide bottom room they emerged. The multiple levels of metal, twisting walkways, the drop into the darkness below, and the sickly, echoing hum of the engines compounded their anxiety.
“Hey, we need to shut the engines off,” Sam reminded her.
Rosalyn nodded and quickly pulled out her smart device to tap into the computer and shut it down.
Sam looked back at the engines and saw them trembling.
“Any day now…” he said.
He looked back at Rosalyn and saw her horrified expression.
“It’s not shutting off,” she said.
“You’re serious?”
“Something…something is overriding my command. What the hell?” She met his gaze and grimaced deeply.
“Then we’d better hurry!”
They moved along and listened to the echoes of space suit boots pinging on metal reverberating throughout the ship. Rosalyn breathed very slowly, wishing she were smaller, less of a target.
“We can’t have much longer than ten minutes at this point before they overheat,” she said to Sam, glad that their voices were trapped inside their helmets rather than shot out into the air to echo everywhere.
Something shone in the far corner of her eye, out somewhere in the v-shaped floor well below the catwalk.
“What was that?” She held her breath.
“I didn’t see. Don’t panic, okay? We won’t last if we panic.”
Suddenly the flamethrower in Rosalyn’s hands felt so feeble, like a lighter to burn candles with. What were they thinking? Why had she believed they could kill that monster with it? She breathed out and shut her eyes for a moment.
“Hey! Listen. Don’t panic.” Sam was remarkably calm, but underneath his exterior he shared many of her fears. He eyed the bowie knife attached to the pole with doubt and said no more.
They moved slower now, watching every corner and nook that they could see.
“I warned you not to come with me, Sam,” said Rosalyn, gaining more composure now.
“I know you did.” After a moment he laughed slightly and then said, “Oh, man, this is horrible. I’m so happy to not be alone. I’m even happier for you that you didn’t have to go alone. What were you thinking?”
“I want to have done what I was supposed to do. Not just saved the ship or saved myself.”
“You are a good captain, Rosalyn. No matter what has happened. I’m glad to be by your side.”
“You shameless smooth-talker! I bet you really wish you were out there setting up a space tent and eating rations in the cavern with Terri and Randy.”
“No, actually
. I hated every minute I was in that place. I’d rather be here.”
They were nearing the end of the catwalk when he said that, and after about two or three seconds they heard another sound that made them both jump nearly out of their suits.
“T-th-th-th-”
It was a sharp and digital noise, and it sounded like it was coming from the intercom. Like everything else in this room, it echoed, but it seemed to echo in every direction with ten times the energy of any other noise they’d heard.
“What the hell was that?” said Rosalyn, frozen to a standstill.
Sam looked around frantically, but saw nothing.
“There-ere-re-e” came the sound.
Both of them stopped, listened intently for a moment, and then looked at each other.
“There is an in-in-in”
Both of them spoke at the same time. “SNTNL?!”
“There is an in-in-intrud-intru-intruder-r-r-r”
“The mainframe was destroyed—SNTNL can’t be back online,” Sam said in confusion.
“Crewmember Mitchell Phelps—crewme-me-member Albert Chi-Chi-Chit”
The noise and echoing was disorienting beyond measure. They could hardly think, let alone spot whether there was an alien in the room. SNTNL’s calm, loud, male voice felt alarming in this situation for a number of reasons. Sam felt the hairs stand up on the back of his head.
They heard another sound, or several sounds, of scuffling and muffled roars.
“You hear that? It sounds like it’s coming from the mainframe room!” exclaimed Sam.
“—Chittering—The last footage I have-I have-I have”
“What is going on?” Rosalyn said, steeling herself as best as she could.
“nearly five-ive—uploaded to the mainframe computer about s-s-some-w-wha-wha-what concerning changes to Shauna’s-s-s state—”
They had no time to think about how or why a broken SNTNL was speaking. They moved off the catwalk through the door into the small hallway housing the two doors to the rooms on this end of the ship. They faced the one on the right, the mainframe room, and prepared to enter.
The door at that moment sprung open, making both of them jump. Their stances were wide, with knees bent low. They waited a moment for something to leap out, but nothing came. The computer mainframe room within looked like a mess with the pieces of the once-spherical mainframe strewn about in heaps along the dark, slightly-sloped, metal floor. Those sounds of scuffling faded just then, but from the echo it was clear that it was coming from the mainframe room.
“concerning changes”
“It must be in there,” Sam whispered.
“Okay…let’s go.”
They rushed in together and got a good look at the system mainframe room. It was in far more disarray than it had been when they’d first encountered the alien here: the walls were cut and lacerated, the ceiling dripping with fluids from exposed pipes, most of the cords that once hung suspended in the air now cut and lying dangerously on the floor. A few strange black spots, like blast marks, could be seen on the walls. The floor rattled as they stepped onto it, and many glitching, digital sounds were emitting from the various screens and computers all around.
Reddish-brown liquid painted the floor in a line from the door and around the center of the room to the opposite end, where a tall figure stood. The figure was shaped like a tall human in a bulky suit draped in a brown cloak, its features obscured by the darkness. It faced away from them, almost touching the wall. In the near-total darkness, Rosalyn and Sam even doubted that what they were seeing really was a humanoid being.
The being turned halfway over its shoulder, and they saw the gleam of a glassy helmet covering, but no details of what was within.
At that moment the computer screens all shut off along with the engines. The impending meltdown, thankfully, was averted.
The figure turned and dashed away, quickly going past a corner and into shadows. Drops of red blood fell from its arm.
They had little time to take in or react to anything that had just happened; taking a couple steps forward, the floor abruptly began to crumble beneath them. Metal that should have been solid had been compromised, frames falling through as if they had been deliberately loosened or damaged. The entire floor had somehow been pushed and twisted, and those few steps Sam and Rosalyn took had hit the weakest spot.
Down they plummeted, falling helplessly into a consuming darkness.
Rosalyn tried to keep a grip on the flamethrower. Sam didn’t have such luck with the spear; it slipped from his grasp. He could see as they fell that a multitude of long cords that had been draped carelessly across the floor of the mainframe room had fallen down along with them, so he was not overly confused when his fall was very suddenly halted by his falling into a tangle of thick, dangling cords, each at least an inch or more in circumference. Several large ones caught his stomach, while his left arm got caught in a few more. The wind was knocked out of him, and he couldn’t see much of anything, suspended in air.
Rosalyn didn’t catch on any cords and fell with a thud onto her side. Her head spun horribly and her side immediately felt like it was badly bruised. She could sense vaguely that the floor she had fallen onto was completely covered with long cords in dozens of bundles, but she couldn’t stand up for the longest time, only breathing and waiting for her senses to return to her.
Finally they did. She could hear the drowned-out cries of Sam somewhere above her—not in her helmet, but from his own lips, only faintly as the sound traveled through his and her helmets. Her radio communication system was compromised.
Her vision focused a bit and she could see almost nothing except two alarmingly large cracks in her helmet. Not only that, but her glasses had fallen off her face, leaving her with impaired vision. What little light had been present in the mainframe room was even less present down here. But she could make out a room completely covered in cords, a network of them all across a space at least as big as the mainframe room. The cords didn’t extend far, but usually were bundled up upon themselves, plugged into the floor one place and traveling usually only a few feet to plug in somewhere else, with plenty of slack. It looked like a haphazard bunch of dark noodles.
Sam was suspended almost ten feet in the air, apparently unable to move. Three large, rectangular-shaped columns were spaced throughout the room, obscuring her view of the entirety of the space. Lots of parts of the floor weren’t level with the spot she was on; some sections raised varying heights, usually no more than a few feet. As Rosalyn recalled, this place was part of the battery of the mainframe. It wasn’t meant to be entered except when undergoing repairs.
“Rosalyn! Are you okay?!” shouted Sam in a struggling voice.
She had to stop and think for half a moment before answering. Her head still felt like it had been battered and shifted off-kilter, but she was able to stand and walk, which was enough. “I’m okay,” she said loudly. “My comm set is broken.”
She tried to turn on the flashlight on her helmet, but it seemed to be ruined as well. She gave an exasperated sigh. She flipped back the glass on her helmet, grabbed the glasses that had fallen to her neck, and replaced them on her face.
She became aware of a rumbling growl then, and footsteps across the cord-strewn floor from the opposite end of the room.
And she realized the flamethrower was not in her hands.
“I can’t see the flamethrower!” cried Rosalyn, as much to herself as to Sam.
She scrambled about frantically, aware of the alien nearby like a woman standing on a shore was aware of a monsoon swiftly approaching.
“Hurry and find it! The alien is behind that column on your right!” Sam said, his struggling words still drowned-out and faint. He looked as uncomfortable as he sounded, his figure outlined by faint light from above. “I’ll turn on my light!”
She tried to speak, to ask him more questions, but couldn’t. Panic surpassed her logical brain.
The network of strange cords all a
round her seemed to morph into a bizarre, disgusting intestinal tract, pulsing and contracting upon her. She bent over and looked through the bundles of cords with trembling fingers. The flamethrower had been in her hands as she made impact with the ground. Where had it gone?
A flashlight came on from Sam’s helmet above, shining down to the floor. She made out a glint from the bowie knife-spear on the floor below Sam, and as he used his free hand to adjust the angle, she saw light bouncing off the nearby flamethrower as well. A sigh escaped her lips. But he kept adjusting the angle of the light until it illuminated the alien emerging around the large column.
At that moment Rosalyn pulled the flamethrower from off the floor and flipped on the lighter with frantic pace.
That light shined almost directly onto the alien, removing it from all shadow and mystery, and yet Rosalyn still felt she had no idea how to understand what it was. Some odd reddish-brown liquid—blood?—oozed from its chest. The alien’s dark gray body, just a bit shorter than her own, with ripples and strange curvature, was clearly superior in strength and ability, and yet seemed so flawed and unhealthy.
Right or wrong, healthy or unhealthy, it surged forward with a killer’s speed. Rosalyn tried to run, but she was catastrophically awkward moving in the space suit on a floor draped completely in cords that snagged at her feet every step she took. It took great effort not to trip. Almost instinctively she fired a blast from the flamethrower in the direction of the approaching monster, but she could barely tell what good it did as she tried to move away from the walls. Its long tail swiped at her, barely missing her head and chest more than once. She fired more bursts, using her sense of hearing, through the creature’s shrieks, to keep track of it almost more so than with sight, as Sam struggled to keep the light trained on it and her blasts of flame engulfed almost all her field of vision.
She rammed her shoulder against the side of the center column, turning to face the alien as she did. The three columns were also covered in those connected, spindly cords. She could feel sweat collecting in her eyes but could not risk stopping to wipe them away.
Seclurm: Devolution Page 16
