Dalida: A Scifi Space Opera Adventure

by G. P. Eliot

  “What the hell!” Hank gasped at it, just before the thing darted forward towards him.

  Hank rolled in the water, and for once the weight of his suit was actually helping him as it dragged him further out of the way. The drone snake splashed into the water where he had been, and Hank saw its long body sliding past. There was a lot of it, and when it had finished, it ended in a metal tail that was tipped with a plethora of sharp metal tines.

  “Boss…?” Ida sounded worried.

  “I know! I’m swimming!” Hank said, and his exhausted doggy-paddle turned into an overhead breaststroke in a heartbeat.

  But then something smacked into his side and he was being forced under the dark waters once more. He took a mouth full of water in his shock and started thrashing and flailing with his legs.

  He felt it connect with something solid, and felt the drone snake recoil—

  And Hank was bursting through the surface again to spit and cough, treading water as he turned first one way, and then another. He couldn’t see the snake-thing. It had gone.

  “Boss, I don’t want to alarm you, but most aquatic predators have one main method of attack—” Ida was saying, and Hank knew precisely what she was talking about. He had seen the news videos of the giant sharks on the Union water world of Aquae-Sulis. It was the exact same attack as killer whales had–and even blue whales, when they were seeking out clouds of plankton.

  They disappeared from the surface, diving down to rise straight up—

  Hank kicked and threw himself to one side, a heartbeat before the drone-snake exploded through the space where he had been.

  The Captain reached for his side holster–to find it empty. He had dropped his laser pistol when he had fallen into the water trap.

  Dammit!

  This time, the drone-snake did not disappear under the surface again. Maybe that attack only worked once, Hank thought. Not that it turned out in his favor, as now the snake was throwing its body against his chest, and he felt its metal hide wrapping around him.

  “Get off me!” Hank screamed as he seized the rising thing’s head, just before a metal spike, almost a foot long, punched out from a module underneath the red light. At least he wasn’t drowning now, as the snake was somehow holding him up in the water.

  But it was also crushing him. He could feel his legs been forced together and felt the sudden crunch as one of the plates of his environmental suit impacted.

  “Fight it, boss!” Ida was encouraging him. She must have known that there was very little else that she could do at all. She had already overloaded all of the suit’s batteries, and Hank wasn’t sure if his suit even had enough charge left in it to do it again.

  Hank wrestled with the giant drone snake, as it felt like his body was about to be turned into puree. He shoved and pulled–but no matter how good his environmental suit was, it was simply no match for the automated pistons and implacable gears of the machine. It would dart its head forward, the metal spike of its ‘tongue’ jabbing out inches from his face.

  I’m going to die down here!

  He was going to be crushed to death by an overgrown metal tapeworm, and his bones left to molder on some alien planet.

  And still, Lory Cox was out there somewhere at the hands of the Jackal–about to be tortured. He couldn’t save her. He couldn’t even save himself!

  But Hank had been trained in some of the most rigorous Union military training camps. Almost like a dream, they kicked in. There was a cold sort of tactical logic that the Union military fostered, and one that was almost refreshing when compared with the anger and panic of life, and death situations.

  He had to assess his options.

  Not a lot.

  He had to assess his weaknesses.

  I’m not strong enough to defeat this thing.

  But did he have any weapons that WERE strong enough?

  No. I lost my laser pistol. His service knife wouldn’t even scratch the metal.

  But then he remembered. He still had the Piton-Launcher, didn’t he? He had shoved it into his chest straps as he had been dragged downward. Even now, he could feel the weight of it against his chest as it was being ground by the snake.

  The drone snake darted forward one more time, and as Hank twisted his head out of the way, he let go with one hand, and seized the Launcher from his chest.

  The drone snake recoiled for another strike, and darted forward—

  Only for Hank to slam the Launcher against the side of the thing’s head and pull the trigger.

  There was a terrible screech of metal as the drone snake convulsed, and Hank felt the thing tighten for a moment around his body–but then it released him, all strength and life falling from it as it fell from him. Hank watched as the triangular head fell backwards, now with a steel spike skewering it, into the water with a splash.

  He was free.

  “Good lateral thinking, Boss!” Ida congratulated him.

  “It’s amazing what a near-death experience will do for your creativity,” Hank gasped as he pushed himself the final few meters to the lip of the rock and dragged himself up and onto it. For a second he lay there, panting, before flopping over onto his front, pushing off from the cold floor, and standing up on wobbling legs.

  “Boss, I really think that you should grab five minutes first,” Ida advised him.

  “No.” Hank said, raising his Piton Launcher in one hand as water poured from between the cracked and broken seals of his suit. “What’s our time doing, Ida?”

  “A little under four hours until Miss Cox regains consciousness.”

  “Left!” Madigan roared as the pillar shot past his right shoulder. The large man wasn’t talking about the pillars of course–he was talking about the gun emplacements that were attempting to cauterize holes straight through them.

  Steed stepped forward for the pillar to shoot up behind him and slam into the ceiling. In the same move he sighted along his medium laser blaster and fired.

  There was an explosion of sparks and electronic parts as the last of the first group of lasers were disabled.

  But that left the rear group, another bracket of four that were high in the corners of the corridors, two on either side. With flares of red light, the first two fired once again, straight towards them.

  Both Madigan and Steed moved. If anyone was watching, it would have almost looked like a complicated stop-motion dance. Madigan jumped backward as Steed dove forward into a roll.

  This set off the pillars behind, between, and in front of them, to hit the walls, ceilings, and floors with their heavy crunches. It also had the added benefit of creating a shield wall between them and the firing lasers.

  Steed felt the heat of the one that had been aiming at him as it exploded on the rectangular pillar ahead. As it retracted back into its seat as smoothly as if it had never been—

  Steed sighted it and fired.

  “Good shot!” Madigan growled in enthusiasm, as the two sent a ball of plasma fire down the roof of the tunnel. With a cacophony of electric shrieks, it destroyed two of the guns that had been waiting there.

  Luckily for the two crew members of the Dalida, both the guns and the pillars were motion sensitive. And so, by careful use of body movements they could activate both the pillars and the guns–hopefully at the same time.

  They were also lucky that both had acres of experience shooting at stuff, and not getting shot in the process.

  “Only two left,” Steed called. The only problem was that they were the furthest two from them in the corridor.

  “I’ll take them—” Madigan shouted, raising his heavy blaster high to his chest, presumably to perform the same crescendo of plasma fire that had taken out the first two.

  Steed heard the crunch and the startled grunt. As even more adrenaline filled his body, he swiveled and pirouetted backwards, allowing the pillar to crunch into the floor in his wake as he turned—

  To see Madigan slouched against the wall, cradling one arm to his chest.

&
nbsp; “Madigan!” He shouted. It was clear what had happened. Madigan had raised his blaster to fire, but it must have activated the nearest pillar. There were fragments and pieces of pillar all around him, lying on the floor. Steed didn’t manage to get a good glance at the man’s hand, but he couldn’t see blood. He hoped that it had just been a passing blow–like his shoulder, that was still currently raging in pain.

  Laser fire exploded behind him on the nearest pillar. Steed knew that he was the last one to move, so he was the one that the two gun emplacements were tracking.

  “Don’t move!” He shouted. He couldn’t let Madigan become a target, in his currently-injured state. The big man gave a heavy, pained sigh behind his helmet which Steed took to mean as an affirmative.

  Two guns, he told himself. He could do this. He had to do this.

  Steed swiveled, leaned forward and then straight back again to activate the pillar.

  With a thump it hammered home into the ceiling above him, at the same time as the first gun emplacement fired.

  As it retracted, Steed raised his medium blaster and fired two, rapid shots. It should have been like his marksmanship lessons that he’d had as a younger man.

  First shot–an explosion of sparks as the red tracking light winked out.

  Second shot –

  His gun clicked and the familiar, and always depressing orange alert light appeared on the top of the main body. He was out of charge. He’d fired his two hundred shots.

  And the second red laser light–the last gun emplacement left–was tracking towards him.

  “Dammit!” Steed had to slide down the wall to activate the same pillar that Madigan was sheltering behind. This was bad news. The pillar thumped across his vision, protecting him from the burst of heat and fire, and Steed held his breath, refusing to move even a muscle.

  Their situation was bad because now that they were both on either side of the same pillar, all it took was for either of them to move and the gun would be able to take one of them out. The pillar wouldn’t be able to protect the both of them.

  The pillar that was their guardian and their shield slammed home, and Steed looked at Madigan. A steely awareness passed between them.

  “I’m out of charge. There’s no way to shoot that thing out.” Steed whispered, barely moving his lips. “Unless…” Steed used his eyes to indicate his service knife, strapped to the thigh of his environmental suit. He might be able to move, activate the pillar, throw the dead medium blaster as he ran forward, and throw his knife…

  “No.” Madigan hissed. “You’re not that good.”

  “Watch me,” Steed said.

  “Wait. I’ll move first.” Madigan whispered. “Give you cover.”

  “No.” Steed wouldn’t have it at all. Madigan was injured. And Steed was still a Confederate General. Even though Madigan had never signed up to be a part of his army, Steed still felt as though he had the moral authority.

  I’m a leader, in my own way. And in the Confederate Marines, you always lead from the front. Steed readied himself—

  And suddenly there was an explosion of sparks from further down the corridor, and the last red light winked out. It was instead replaced by two diffuse shafts of blue light.

  The lights of a Dalida environmental suit.

  “Looked like you fellas needed a hand,” a familiar voice said. “So I thought I’d pop by…”

  It was the Captain, standing just below the wreckage of the last gun, and looking terrible. The weapon that he held in his hand appeared to be, of all things a hand-held Piton-Launcher.

  “What in the name of crap happened to you!?” Steed said. Hank looked as though he had been dragged backward through a mill, submerged underwater, boiled, and then put through a grinder one more time for good measure.

  “And you lost your helmet,” Madigan winced. “Hang on a minute…”

  “Why aren’t we all choking and coughing to death?” They watched the bloodied and battered Hank shrug. “Good question, but considering what shape the rest of me is in,” he looked down to where there were sections of the mesh of his environmental suit that was torn, and other parts where there had been plate were completely crushed.

  “Well, I’d say that we’re not needing these at the moment,” Hank said with a weary smile. Steed could see how relieved he was to be there.

  “Stop!” Steed suddenly called before the Captain could continue forward. Steed explained the dilemma of the pillars, and, with a mixture of very careful positioning and moving, both Steed and Madigan managed to get past the final pillars with Hank occasionally waving an arm or a foot to activate them at the right moments.

  Now safe on the other side, the trio wasted little time in moving down the corridor past where the gun emplacements had been.

  “And you’ll never guess what I found along the way…” Hank said with a broad grin. He stood at the end of the corridor, where it abruptly took a branching right-hand turn, and sloped downwards.

  There was a dull radiance filling the tunnel.

  “This tunnel leads down to the snake-pit,” Hank said.

  “Snake pit?” Madigan winced as he held his arm a little tighter to his chest. He had been caught by the pillar as he raised his blaster, and it looked as though it was either badly sprained or fractured some of the bones of his wrist.

  “Long story. Not important now,” Hank shook his head, showing them his discovery.

  The downwards-sloping ‘snake-pit’ tunnel was met halfway by another one, from which the whitish radiance was coming from.

  Inside, there appeared to be a large octagonal room, with what appeared to be the column of an ansible, sitting right there in its center.

  “We got the phones back on, boys,” Hank grinned.

  31

  “It’s an ansible,” Steed repeated, looking at the construction. It looked a little like a stalactite rising from the floor of the chamber, but one that was made of metals and colored glass.

  It was fatter at the base, with lines of snaking chrome tubes and thick cabling plunging into its body. Above the base were fat rings of the reflective substance, interspersed with bands of flashing lights and screens. These different layers continued to the very top, where it narrowed and narrowed to a singular, red flashing light.

  “That’s what I said,” Hank rolled his eyes.

  My team does not listen to a word I say anymore?

  “No–it’s a Union ansible,” Steed pointed out. “I should know, as the Confederacy has been tracking to hack the designs from them for years. Ours can only cover a fraction of the distance that they can.”

  “Oh.” Hank suddenly realized what the man was saying.

  Ansibles were one of the wonders of human science. A method of transmitting data over the tens of thousands–often millions–of light years between planets. If humanity had to rely even on encoded photon information–which could travel at the speed of light–it would still take more than a human life time to reach from one end of the Union to the other.

  Instead, the ansibles worked on encoding data into neutrinos–tiny sub-atomic particles that could travel faster than light. Without them, humanity would dissolve into a mess of disparate colony worlds, never able to talk to each other.

  But all of this was beside the point; what Steed was referring to was the fact that this was a human construction and, more important than that, it was a Union construction.

  That means that… Hank’s heart thumped in his chest. “The Union sent the Message to itself?” The man shook his head. It just didn’t make sense. Why would the Union go to such trouble?

  “The Dalida,” Hank continued, as he walked around the large ansible at a slow, marching pace.

  “What of it?” Steed said. Hank could see that the man was frowning deeply. He would too, if he thought that he had just spent weeks and months of his life on a wild goose chase.

  “Serrano called it Project B, with decryption of the Message as Project A,” Hank said. “The Union created a
generation ship capable of carrying an entire, fully-functional seed colony at the same time as they were working on the Message…” Hank said.

  And then it clicked in the Captain’s head. Maybe it was the fact that he no longer had to worry about something trying to kill him. He could actually put all of those wits to good use.

  “We know that the Union created the Message Center to decrypt the Message, don’t we?” Hank said