Starck's Lament (The Shadow Wars Book 11)

by S. A. Lusher

  “That was stupid,” Autumn said. “We could have died.”

  “Yeah...sorry. I lost track of time.”

  “Well, I did too. I guess this is kind of a distracting environment...at least now we know where these things came from.”

  “It's disappointing,” Eric replied.

  “Disappointing?”

  “Everyone here died because another corporation took another gamble in order to make money,” Eric said, sighing. The tank bottomed out. They each had gotten back up to an hours' worth of atmosphere.

  “And thus the galaxy spins,” Autumn replied. “The little people get fucked by the giant corporations.”

  “Maybe, if we're really lucky, we can turn this into something. Expose whoever these assholes are. I'm sure someone could dig something up.”

  “Distant maybe.”

  “Yeah, you're right. Come on, let's hurry this up. I want to be back inside.”

  They left the bathroom, returning to the central passageway once more. They wouldn't have to go too far to get the beacon. Ideally, the process of launching the beacon was a simple one. It was already preloaded into an airlock that, at the press of a button, would shoot it out into space where it would begin transmitting. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case here because they weren't exactly in space where things just floated free.

  The gravity of the asteroid was weak, but it would be enough to drag the beacon down. For maximum effectiveness, it needed to be up and out. Which meant they needed to find a way to essentially toss it up. Eric had been stumped at first and, as he'd been explaining this problem to Autumn while they were searching for atmosphere, she'd suggested something simple: launch it out of a missile tube.

  Eric thought about it for a bit, then realized it could work, with a little modification. So that's what they were going to do. The beacon itself could be accessed via a bay across from the cargo area that had originally held the creatures, so it wasn't that much of a walk. Eric kept going, picking up the pace. He not only wanted to be out of here because of the obvious dangers of limited oxygen and being on an unstable ship, but for another reason. With every second that passed, Eric couldn't help but feel there was some kind of danger building.

  It was ridiculous and a bit superstitious, and yet...well, he had good instincts. They'd kept him alive for years. So why start ignoring them now? They managed to reach the emergency beacon bay without any more trouble. Eric opened the door and pointed his flashlight inside. The bay was a bit of a mess, but he could see the airlock mounted in the far wall. It looked intact. He quickly crossed the room, let his SMG hang by its sling over his shoulder and took a look at the airlock. Through the glass, he could see the beacon.

  At least it wasn't very large.

  “I see it,” he murmured as he started trying to open the airlock.

  “Can you get to it?” Autumn replied.

  “Hold on...”

  The door had no power, but he could get around that. Basically everything made had some kind of manual release catch. It was a crucial safety precaution. Eric spent a moment looking over the small door and eventually located a side panel. He grabbed a tool from pocket and pried the panel off. After replacing the tool, he hunted down the release catch and found it. Pressing hard on the concave surface, the door suddenly popped open a few inches. Perfect. Eric pried open the door the rest of the way, reached inside and carefully pulled out the beacon. It was roughly the shape of a thermos, though it was about twice the size of an average one.

  “There we go,” he said, studying its surface. It seemed undamaged. These things were definitely built to last. He fired it up for a moment, hooked it to his suit and had it run a self-diagnostic. It chimed a moment later positively.

  “It's good?” Autumn asked.

  “It's good,” he confirmed, shutting it down and latching it to his suit. “Now we need to get to the launch tubes.”

  They left the room and continued along their path, crossing the corridor and making their way back through the huge, high-tech cargo bay to get around the caved-in area. Eric found his mind settling into a pure focus. It was very comforting, in a way. He had a clear-cut goal in mind, something that he knew how to do, without any shadow of a doubt. It was a nice contrast to running around, trying to make things happen, not knowing what exactly he might be doing. It was part of the reason he loved his job so much.

  Well, inasmuch as he loved anything.

  During the war and all the fighting, he'd managed to keep his cool the best when he had a single assignment to complete or even a list of them. He was always scurrying around, fixing radios or turrets or vehicles. Gear was always breaking down, either due to poor maintenance or a shitty environment or because it kept getting shot up. There were plenty of reasons and they all kept him busy. Busy was a good way to be.

  When you needed to act, there really wasn't much room for thinking about the fact that you could die at any second and often times there was very little or nothing you could do to change it. And that was a pretty shitty thing to have to deal with. He began to feel even better as they came to the end of the corridor and still had yet to encounter anything. Maybe the creatures didn't think there was anything left on the Discovery. Maybe they were still lurking in the halls of Theseus Station. Fine, let them lurk and roam and whatever else they did.

  So long as they did it way over there.

  Eric found the missile room and entered, hastening to complete this objective.

  “What do you think you'll do when this is over...if this gets over?” Autumn asked as they stepped into the room.

  “Probably get assigned to another S and R ship...why, what about you?”

  “I was thinking the same thing. Although it'd be nice to have a vacation after this. Like a month-long vacation somewhere warm and sunny and there are absolutely no responsibilities. You know?” Autumn replied.

  Eric laughed as he marched over to the nearest launch tube. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  He didn't like the look of the room, though. It had seen some heavy fighting and many of the launch bays were mangled, spitting sparks into a dead environment. He moved quickly down the line, stopping to check and see which ones were usable. The first three were flat dead and he didn't have the time nor the resources to fix them. The fourth, he saw, could fire, but the control mechanism was fried and, he quickly realized, if he wanted to make it work, he'd have to go outside and do some manual adjustments.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  “What?” Autumn replied.

  “Three of these are busted and one of them barely works. If pressed, I could make this one work, but we should check out the other side first.”

  They stepped out of the bay, looked around to make sure they were still alone, then hurried across the hall and came into the next bay. Unfortunately, it was in even worse shape than the previous one had been. Obviously some kind of nightmarish conflict had gone on. There was a great deal of flash-frozen blood and spent shell casings carpeting the floor. Eric spent a few minutes checking over the four launch tubes on this side, but concluded that they had all been rendered non-functional in whatever fighting had gone on.

  “Well...fuck,” he muttered as they crossed the hall one more time, heading back into the original missile room. “Guess we've got to do it the hard way.”

  “Don't we always?”

  “Starting to seem that way...”

  Eric manually opened up the only remaining functional launch tube and peered inside. Luckily nothing had been loaded up into it. He took the beacon off of his suit and activated it, setting it to full power and maximum distance. He couldn't encode any kind of specific message onto it, given that it was meant as a last resort, but anyone who heard it knew what it meant. The message was pretty much universal: FUCKING HELP ME.

  Once he was sure it was working and in place, he closed the tube. “All right, let's load up on oxygen again and then head back out. We're almost done...I hope.”

  With that in min
d, Eric led the way back out of the missile bay with Autumn in tow. He wondered how long their good luck could hold out. They found another emergency oxygen tank in the passageway and hooked up to it, topping off their suit's supplies, then made their way quickly back down the corridor and into the room they'd originally gained access through. Eric looked out through the rip in the hull. Nothing there but debris, the landing pad and desolate wastelands. Carefully, he made his way back down onto the pad.

  He waited for Autumn to join him, then the pair of them began to move along in the shadow of the large vessel. As they traveled, Eric felt a slow tension begin to build within him. Whatever comfort he might have drawn from his simple objective was quietly being leached away. He looked around. Still nothing, but that didn't really many anything. One or more of the creatures could be hiding. His and Autumn's senses weren't quite up to snuff, given that they were in an atmosphere-free and thus soundless environment.

  They reached the launch tubes.

  “Okay,” Eric began, “just watch my back while I climb up there and-”

  He froze as he felt something. The platform had vibrated subtly beneath his feet. From the look on Autumn's face, she had felt it too. They both turned around, looking back the way they had come, and stared in abject horror as one of the creatures finished the process of lifting itself up onto the landing pad with them.

  It fixed them with its feverish, twinkling gaze, drawing itself up to its full ten foot height, and began to lope towards them. Eric and Autumn let out shouts of terror and opened fire while simultaneously backing away from the creature. As Eric watched the rounds spark when they hit the creature's scaly hide, he saw something happen. Something that hadn't occurred before. The bullets were actually going completely in.

  And black blood was spraying out.

  They were doing damage!

  “Keep firing! We're hurting it!” Eric called.

  Autumn responded by emptying her magazine into the thing. Eric did the same, wondering why it was working this time. Maybe it was the fact that they were in a zero-atmosphere environment. It could be that the creatures were more susceptible to damage out here. It could also be that they were finally packing armor-piercing rounds. Very likely, it was a combination of those two things. Either way, it didn't matter.

  What mattered was that it was working!

  Eric stitched a dark, bloody line up the thing's chest as it advanced on him. As he ran out of ammo and slapped a fresh magazine in, Autumn finished doing that same action a few seconds ahead of him and kept up the gunfire so that it was continuous. The creature staggered, stopping for a moment, as if confused or disoriented. It had stopped a mere two meters away from them. Continuing to back up, Eric and Autumn pressed the advantaged.

  They concentrated fire on the thing's head and Eric laughed in triumph as he saw several rounds enter its mouth and punch out through the back of its head. The creature twitched and spasmed as it slowly fell to the landing pad. Then it was still and silent. The two of them stood there for a good long minute, simply staring.

  “Holy shit, we killed it,” Autumn said.

  “We killed it,” Eric murmured in agreement. He roused himself, remembering their time limit. “All right, watch my back while I fix this thing. Another one could come along.” Part of him knew it to be true, but another part of him felt too elated to fully believe it. They had killed one! They had killed one and hadn't suffered for their victory. Eric hurried back over to the hull, found a group of hand-holds welded onto the side and began scurrying up it. He moved until he was level with the launch tube and began the awkward process of both fixing it and repositioning it. It was made difficult given the fact that he had to hang off a ladder while doing it.

  But, after several minutes, he managed to get it done. The tube wasn't as screwed up as he thought it was and he managed to get it working and pointed as up as he could. He made sure to adjust the power with which it would launch the beacon. The beacon itself had a few positioning jets and if he did all his math right, then what it should do was be launched with just enough power to escape the minuscule gravity of the asteroid and slow itself down automatically once it was free-floating and begin a slow orbit, reaching out to the galaxy.

  “Okay,” he said, hurrying back down the ladder. “Now we just need to get back to the bridge to actually fire this thing.”

  “Good. Then what? We find somewhere to hole up and wait for the calvary?” Autumn replied as they started making their way back to the hole in the hull.

  “That's what I figured. We could gather supplies, wait it out in the control tower maybe. None of them seemed to come up there. Or maybe find some space buried beneath the deckplates, farther down than that crawl-way we got into, somewhere they'd have a really hard time getting to. Or, I don't know, maybe there's a better place.”

  “I'm sure we'll find somewhere,” Autumn replied.

  They crawled back up into the ship through the tear and made their way through the somewhat circuitous route until they were back on track in the central corridor. Eric found himself thinking about places they might end up hiding and, even if they successfully managed to find a place to hide that the creatures couldn't get to, how long it might take, what kind of resources they would need to stick it out. Food, water, medical supplies, guns and ammo and explosives just in case things went really wrong. Emergency pressure suits and power sources, in case the power went out. Maybe even sources of heat for that eventuality.

  Oxygen, too.

  But that was in the future. Right now, they just needed to get that beacon airborne and activated. Up ahead, Eric could see the bridge. He felt hope and joy continuing to well within him. They were actually going to make it out of this alive. Well...probably, he told himself. It wasn't like there was a ship that was almost there. There was still much to do. Eric stepped onto the bridge and hurried over to the captain's seat, fighting against the annoying slant of the ship as he went. He was glad the deckplates weren't perfectly smooth or the angle wasn't more severe.

  He got into the captain's seat and accessed the workstation. As per usual, all the menus were slow and navigation was tedious, as the ship was down to minimal power. He hoped he wouldn't have to go through any extra steps to launch the damned thing. Every extra second they spent out here on the Discovery felt like they were pushing their luck that much more. One of the creatures had already showed up looking for blood. Had it hunted them down? Or was it just random chance? Had it just seen them walking and come out after them?

  Eric pushed those thoughts aside and called up the control for the appropriate launch tube. He held his breath, considered crossing his fingers but decided against it because, at his core, he didn't believe in the notion that superstitious actions held any bearing on the rules of reality, and waited. The screen came back with good news.

  He could launch without any problems.

  “Here we go,” he said and hit the button.

  From somewhere else one the ship came a brief, soundless tremor. As he began to study the data, the terminal suddenly died.

  “Shit!” he snapped.

  “What? Did something go wrong? Please tell me it worked,” Autumn said.

  “I don't know. We need to get back inside, to the control tower. The ship's power conduits finally gave up the ghost,” Eric replied, standing up. “Otherwise the launch seemed successful. The data I was looking at, at a glance, looked good.”

  “Well, here's hoping,” Autumn murmured. He could hear the stress and strain in her voice. He was sure he sounded the same way.

  They left the bridge and started making their way down the lengthy central corridor one final time. Eric froze as he saw something shift up ahead.

  “Freeze!” he hissed, raising his light.

  The flashlight's beam illuminated the dark, scaly presence of a living nightmare. It was grinning madly at him about halfway down the corridor.

  “Turn around, back up,” he whispered, starting to back up. “Back up-”r />
  “Eric there's one behind us!” Autumn yelled.

  Without thinking, Eric grabbed Autumn and leaped into the nearest open doorway. He slammed his fist on the close button, then began to have the thought that it wouldn't close, because the ship didn't have any power left, but it did close and he realized it must just be the terminal that had died. But there was no time to think about that now, they had to get out of the ship. The monsters had finally come for them. Eric took a quick look around the room he'd thrown them into and felt his heart skip a beat as he spied racks and racks of guns and gear.

  An armory!

  Without speaking, he and Autumn started to searching the room as quickly as possible. Behind them, the creatures began to beat on the door.

  “Got something!” Autumn called at about the same time Eric spotted another open door at the back of the room. A handy escape route?

  “What?” he asked, hurrying to join her. The creatures were ripping through the door now. Autumn was crouched by a footlocker. She'd ripped it open and was holding something.

  “Explosives,” she said. She began quickly picking up and then putting down yellow square bricks. He realized she was shoving detonating pins into them. “We set them, run, wait for the fuckers to break in and blow the room.”

  It would have been a great plan...expect that as Eric turned around to check the progress of the creatures, he realized that they were already in the room. Briefly, he cursed the soundless environment a lack of atmosphere made and began to warn Autumn. He screamed her name as the two things came for them. One of them backhanded him, sending him sailing backwards through the open door he had just been scoping out.

  He heard Autumn scream over the radio as he tumbled into the next room, rolling several meters and into a pile of crates.

  “AUTUMN!” Eric roared.

  There was a great burst of flame and red-orange light that hit Eric like a warhead and suddenly all was dark and silent.