He breathed a sigh of relief.
But still he tumbled through space, into the gap between the two ships after bouncing off the hull of the colony ship. Everything spun. It was hard to tell which way the Poros was.
He grabbed at the safety line and pulled at it to reel himself back in. The line fed into his hands. Too easily. He pulled and pulled and then reached the end where the line had snapped.
Snake stared at the severed line in his hands. Tears edged his eyes. His lips trembled. He wanted to scream but only a sob escaped. He turned head over heels, hands grasping, trying to get a hold on one of the two ships but his trajectory put him between the two ships.
He kicked his legs and windmilled his arms, but it made no difference. He was hurtling out into deep space without a tether. He was flying out to his own death.
This was it.
The end.
He shivered suddenly, his whole body spasming as if he had been plunged into icy water, thrust beneath the surface, the light of the sun being swallowed by black waters.
He was not ready to die but with each breath he floated further from the ships, further from any chance of ever returning, further from the hope of that promised kiss.
He saw the colony ship drift away from the Poros. It was free. The hitch was a twisted mess of metal. He had done what he had intended. He had blasted the two ships apart. But he had also blasted himself away from both ships and flew towards the stars.
He closed his eyes. No crewmember on the bridge would raise his voice in alarm. No rescue ship would be launched for him. He wondered whether he should expunge the oxygen from his suit and end it all quickly.
When he opened his eyes, he saw her. Engstrom perched on the outer hull of the ship, suited up, legs gathered beneath her, and before he could wave in distress at her, she sprung, launching herself away from Poros.
"Engstrom, you lovely piece of work, you," he gasped.
She flew towards him, a safety line eating up slack behind her. With each slowing breath of his, she closed the distance between them. Her face behind the glass of the helmet growing.
He smiled but then he saw the ship shrinking behind her. Even as she came closer, he spun away from the Poros, and with each meter that he drifted, she was eating up the length of the safety line behind her. If he drifted too far, he would be beyond her reach.
His breath caught in his throat. He flapped his arms and kicked his feet in the impossible hope that somehow in the zero gravity and drag of outer space that he would he would slow down his trajectory away from the ships and away from his savior.
He no longer looked to her eyes behind the glass. Instead, he stared at the line, at how straight it was becoming, at how the loops and waves were being eaten up, at the pace of his own trajectory into space. He was no mathematician, no great calculator of number or chance, but what he saw made his stomach drop.
The line behind her was nearly straight and she was still body lengths away from him. She would not reach him in time. Hope was lost.
Tears clouded his vision. He choked back a sudden sob. He was not ready to die. Not yet. Not with the chance of the new life he had been turning towards. Not with hope so close, and especially not with his chance to connect with Engstrom within reach.
He shuddered.
He closed his eyes for a moment prayed to the cruel gods he never believed in, hoping that some beneficence ruled over them.
But nothing came and he stiffened himself for a slow death.
Then Engstrom's hand closed around his, and he grabbed back at her, and at that same moment, his body jerked away. He opened his eyes and saw that she had reached the end of the safety line.
But Snake held onto her hand, held onto it like he would never let go.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
THE LIGHTS INSIDE the compression chamber were taking forever to cycle through.
Snake sweated inside the space suit. He felt like he was burning up. He wanted nothing more than to get out of the suit and back into the Poros. He stared at the indicator lights of the compression chamber. They lingered on yellow.
"When are they going to turn green? Why's it taking so long?" he said.
He still clutched Engstrom's hand in his, unwilling to let go, afraid that if he did the trembling that ran like an undercurrent through his body would turn into an uncontrollable spasm sending him, limbs flailing, to the floor.
Then the light turned green and he dropped her hand and raced back into the control room, ripping the helmet off his head, and tearing the space suit open, leaving it in a pile at his feet.
He sucked in deep lungfuls of air. The ground seemed to pitch beneath him, and he clutched the back of a chair to steady himself.
"Are you okay?" Engstrom asked.
She had lifted the helmet from her head and set it on one of the tables. Her blonde hair unfurled, a strand caught in her lips. He reached out, unsteady on his feet, and brushed the hair from her lips, and then he stepped forward pulling her into his embrace and he held onto her tight. He crushed her body into his. He could feel her lean muscles and the solid shape of her bones. She smelled good, faintly like lilacs. Her hair caught up in the stubble of his beard, creating a blonde web that seemed to connect them.
After she brushed away the hair with a laugh, he craned in and kissed her. Finally.
Her lips were warm and supple, and he felt awkward, fumbling, like a school child for a moment, before the rightness of it all found itself. His body shook with sudden excitement.
He pulled away laughing.
She smiled back at him.
"We should have done that sooner," she said.
He broke out in laughter. "And more often."
She touched the tears on his cheek and gently wiped them away.
They stood there for a few moments, in each other's arms, their lips returning to long and short kisses, each kiss as electric as the first.
But, after a bit, the world returned to Snake.
He saw the static-filled screens where once he saw rows of pods of sleepers. He heard a clanging from somewhere deep in the Poros. He smelled his own stale sweat. The air that touched the backs of his hands and neck was cold as if the iciness of deep space had penetrated through the walls of the ship, as if the Poros itself were a living beast and finally succumbing to the infection of the bugs.
With great effort, he pulled out of his embrace with Engstrom.
"We need to go now," he said. "We need to get to the Phaethon. We need to get out of here."
She quickly pulled off the rest of the space suit and then shouldered her weapons. He watched her transform before his eyes from soft and pliable to hard and murderous in the passing of a few breaths.
He smiled. He liked both sides of her.
He picked up his weapons and returned to the door. He put an ear against it. He heard nothing. He turned back to the Engstrom.
"Either all clear or the cockroaches are lying in wait for us."
"Gonna be one or the other. As much as I'd love to see a straight run back to your ship, I don't think that's what we're going to get."
"But no stopping, no turning back to look for survivors, no lingering to check rooms. We go fast. We don't stop. We've come too far to not make it all the way. We'll get onto the Phaethon and get the hell out of here. Never look back. Get as far as way as possible."
"The bugs will need to be dealt with," she said.
He cocked his gun. "Bring in the marines then. A whole platoon. Let them clear the Poros. Or better yet just park outside of it, and nuke the whole cursed ship. Better to exterminate this scourge all at once."
"I'm going to sleep for days," she said, her eyes suddenly softening.
"Not if I can help it." Snake winked.
Engstrom shook her head, unable to peel the smile off her face.
He mouthed a countdown from three to one, and then opened the door.
The air smelled of sulfur and bug guts. Snake fought back surging bile in his th
roat. The hallway was filled with a carpet of smoke. The lights above flickered and crackled. A warning klaxon blared.
He eased into the hall, scanning the distances behind the barrel of his gun. Engstrom slipped in alongside him. "What a mess," she said. She went to the wall and checked a systems monitor. "The whole ship is shutting down." She paused and shook her head. "Worse than that. Someone's triggered the reactor core to loop back onto itself."
Snake's stomach tightened. "They've set the Poros to explode? Who would've done that?"
"Kronos. Another survivor. I don't know. Someone who realized that protecting the rest of humanity was more important than their own lives. Someone who lived by the code. A true hero. It doesn't matter."
"How long do we have?"
"No idea, Snake. But we gotta get out of here because this whole ship is going up in flames soon and I don't want to be here when it does."
He grabbed her hand and pulled her forward but Engstrom slipped her hand from his. He stared at her.
"I need both hands free," she said. "To blast the bugs. You can hold my hand later."'
Snake laughed. "I'm not as sappy as you think. But stick close to me. Let's get back to the Phaethon."
He toggled his gun to bullet mode and took off down the hall. He glanced quickly over his shoulder and Engstrom strode behind him, close as a shadow.
He tried to slow his breath. They only had to survive another five minutes and then they would be back in the safety of his ship, and then away from this insanity.
He focused on his breathing. Exhale deeply. Let the inhalation form on its own. Relax his breastbone. Lower the shoulders. Easy grip on his weapon.
The halls smoldered, the rising smoke flashing red with the emergency lights. The sound of the klaxon grated on his nerves and he wondered how much time they had left. Did they even have enough time to get back to the Phaethon? Was the ship even waiting for them?
He led them through a containment room, followed a long hall, and then turned at an intersection.
Eventually he reached the area where the bugs had laid the trap for him. Without thinking, he slowed his pace. His breathing became wiry and thin. He could not take a full breath. He had nearly died here.
He stared at the blackened walls and the charred exoskeletons of the bugs. The stench of the bugs was overwhelming. He spit out a stream of saliva and fought back the urge to suddenly wretch.
He pushed forward and reached the long hall where he had lost contact with Crunch. He tested his helmet radio. Static-smothered screams filled his ears. He quickly shut it off. It was ghosts in the machine. Nothing was really there. No one was screaming. It was unimaginable.
He rounded the corner and saw the docking door leading the Phaethon. Laughter bubbled out of his lips. "We're here. Let's go."
He broke into a sprint but only covered four strides before Engstrom screamed.
Snake wheeled about, gun pointed, ready to fire.
A monstrous bug, almost as big as the hall, its belly bulging, eggs sacks visible through a transparent skin, had seized Engstrom in its pincers and dragged her back down the hall, away from the Phaethon, away from safety.
"Shoot it!" screamed Engstrom. "Fire your gun!"
Snake froze. He could not pull the trigger. The bug mother held Engstrom close to her chest. He could not take the shot, not without risking hitting her. Green ichor slime dripped from between its mandibles. Snake could see himself, frozen, tiny, reflected a hundred times in the bug's eyes.
"Fire!"
Snake charged, looping the gun over his shoulder and drawing both his blades. He closed to within a few strides of the mother bug when she swatted him with one of her arms. The blow lifted him off his feet and smashed him against the wall.
The world went dark.
When Snake woke, the hall was empty. The klaxon blared and the lights flashed. He heard a voice, distant but familiar.
"Snake, we're running out of time. Come back to the Phaethon. The Poros is going to blow."
Snake toggled the switch. "Fifi, it's Engstrom. The bugs took her."
"Get back here. Hurry."
Snake pushed off the ground using the wall to support himself. He threw up saliva and blood. He coughed and sputtered. With each breath, his ribs lit up with the fire of pain.
He stared down the hall towards the docking door. He could stumble there. He could be there in moments.
But not without Engstrom.
He turned to stare into the gloom. A trail of slime and blood led down the hall. The track of the mother, the beast who had grabbed Engstrom. Snake took one hesitant step, and then another, and soon he was surging forward, pausing to retrieve his blades from the floor.
The klaxon blared and the Poros trembled. Time was running out. But Snake did not care. He was going after Engstrom.
Chapter Forty
SNAKE STARED INTO the hole rent into the wall of the Poros. The trail of ichor and blood ended here in the hallway and then continued into the gloomy darkness of the hole, a tunnel leading somewhere deep into the underbelly of the ship.
He glanced back over his shoulder. The Phaethon was a short dash down the hallways, a turn or two away, a distance he could cover in less than a minute of running. The corridor was charred, littered with corpses, lit by the flashing of the emergency lights above. He wondered how much time he had, how much time to find Engstrom, how much time before the ship exploded, how much time before Fifi and Crunch lost their nerve, sealed the doors to the Phaethon, and blasted off into space and sped away from the nuclear explosion to come when the reactor finally burst into flames.
A warm wind seeped from the hole in the wall. The sides of the tunnels were covered with some kind of sticky bug goo, like strands of spider web, though not so sticky that when Snake touched it with a gloved hand that he could not easily pull it away. It felt soft, almost cottony.
He suppressed a laugh. He could not imagine the bugs seeking any kind of comfort.
The tunnel was not as big as he would have expected. In fact, it looked like it might get tight through the parts where his headlamp shone. He wondered how that mother bug could have squeezed through it.
He shuddered at the thought of the mother bug with its slavering jaws, and its transparent belly full of eggs. A vile thing. Worse than any monster out of a nightmare, because this thing was real. It was breeding. And it had ripped Engstrom away from him.
He was still shocked from the kidnapping. He had been so full of hope. They had freed the colony ship. Engstrom had saved him at the last moment before he would have drifted out into deep space. He finally had kissed her, fulfilling that promise from that interrogation room. God, that seemed like such a long time ago. Then the Phaethon had been in sight. They were going to escape. They were going to make it before the Poros exploded. That was how it should have gone.
But that monster appeared out of nowhere and seized Engstrom. She was the strong one, the one who had done right, always ready to sacrifice herself for others. He should have been taken. He was the selfish one. She had shown him another way of being and when he had finally tasted that, she had been taken from him.
It was not fair.
The tunnel was going to be tight. It would be hard to fight in. It would be hard to wield his gun, but as long as they came at him from straight ahead, he could at least fire. If the bugs came at him from behind, he might not have enough room to turn.
Snake mentally counted from three to one, and then ducked into the tunnel. It was wider at first, its walls thick with the pale strands. Some kind of liquid dripped from the ceiling and puddled on the floor, creating pools of white gel that clung to the bottom of his boots. Despite the stickiness of it, his footing felt compromised, so he walked slowly afraid that his feet would slip out from beneath him and he would fall into the webbing, getting trapped and bound, unable to pick himself up off the ground, helpless prey for whatever might wander through the tunnel.
He passed a section where the wall had been
torn away and exposed wired hissed and sparked. Soon after that the webbing had been spread from ceiling to floor and wall to wall, a giant solid barrier in front of him.
Snake probed it with his machete. The strands had solidified, and the color was a pale yellow rather than white. It smelled foul, cloying, coppery as if infused with human blood. He chipped at the strands with his blade but it bounced back nearly flying out of his hand. It was too solid. Maybe an explosion could break it apart.
He cursed. The mother bug had sealed the tunnel passage behind herself. He pressed against the wall of strands, peering through a spot where the wall had not been completely closed.
Through the opening, Snake saw a distant room, cavernous, slime covering the walls. Pale light filled the room from auxiliary lights, giving it a ghostly appearance, as if what he saw was constructed of wisps of substance. He recognized it as the air vent room, several large machines in the center of the room, once pumping full to push air through the Poros. But the machines sat dead.
The room was filled with fleshy black eggs, the eggs that Snake had seen through the transparent belly of the monster. The mother squatted in a corner, laying a row of eggs, and she tottered forward. She clutched Engstrom in her arms. The marine was unconscious, pale webbing masking her face. But despite that her belly moved. She breathed. She was alive.
Snake redoubled his efforts, hacking at the hardened wall. Then he dropped his arms to his side. He blows did nothing to the wall. At this pace, it would take him hours to create a small enough space for him to slither through. He would need to figure out another way through, another way to rescue Engstrom.
He looked around. How else would he get in there? His gaze settled on an air vent on the wall near the ceiling. Of course, what better way to get into the air vent room than through an air vent?
He dug the tip of the machete between the metal grating and the wall and wiggled it back and forth eventually prying the cover loose, the small screws popping out and clattering on the floor.
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