Fib nodded. “Stay calm. We’re nearly out of oxygen.”
A fierce panic swept through Sarah, her eyes going wide.
“Relax,” the alien woman said, and pointed to the small viewport. It was black right then, just space, but the pod was still spinning slowly, and soon green slid into view and took up the window fully within another few seconds.
“A planet?” Sarah asked.
“A moon, technically, but one with oxygen. Enough for us.”
“Do you know what it is?” the Earth girl asked.
“No,” Fib said with a shrug. “We can worry about that when we get there.”
Sarah nodded and moved to the viewport more closely. The green was trees, thick like a jungle. They were close enough to the moon that it was hard to see anything but the trees. Sarah figured there must be water, oceans, somewhere on the green sphere, but if there were she couldn’t see them. She could only see trees.
Without warning the green turned to orange. Fire. Sarah jumped back, alarmed. “Entering the atmosphere,” Fib explained, placing her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Nothing to worry about.”
Indeed, the flames were gone by the time Fib had finished talking, and the pod shot toward the surface of the moon. Then it was slapping against thick tree branches, and the women were jerked about as thrusters exploded beneath them, slowing them and allowing them to land on the surface of the moon calmly.
Fib moved to the door and slapped at a button. There was a hiss, and then the door slid open. She went out. Sarah followed.
Trees. Sarah had seen what the moon had to offer from above, and now on the surface it was no different. Trees. Big, thick-trunked ones that looked remarkably like Earth’s. Brown trunks, green leaves on the branches. There were smaller trees, bushes, too, all green. She had seen any manner of wildly-colored plants and animals on the various planets she had been to since being abducted, and Sarah was surprised to see that she was a little disappointed by all the green. It was just so plain. So normal.
Fib had bent down to one knee, moving slowly, her body tight from being cooped up in the pod, and her pain still great from the hundreds of cuts and burns across her skin. “The ground is hot,” Fib said, her hand pressed against the dirt and grass. Sarah bent and did the same.
“Weird,” she said. “Volcanic?”
“I don’t think so,” Fib said, and then she laughed. “I hope not. I’ve had enough volcanoes for one lifetime.”
Sarah laughed. Behind her the bot exited the ship. “I do not wish to be left behind. What is our present course of action?”
Sarah looked to Fib. She was more than willing to let the alien woman lead her. She knew what she was doing, or at least, knew more than Sarah.
Fib picked up on the deference and stood up straight. “I’d like to climb one of these trees and take a look around.”
“I would go, but my prepulsors cannot lift me high enough,” the robot said.
Sarah moved to her friend. “I can climb. You’re still hurt.”
Fib shook her head and looked to the trees. “They are big. It’s dangerous.”
“I can do it,” Sarah said, a little miffed that she had kept herself alive for so long; well, Gar had helped, and that people kept underestimating her. She had loved climbing trees as a child, surely it would be no different to do it now, on a moon billions of miles away from her home. She went to the nearest tree and stood at its base, looking up. There was a branch just a few feet above her head, and then many more all the way to the top, which she could barely see through the canopy of green leaves.
Sarah turned and smiled to Fib, and then jumped up, grabbing the nearest branch and pulling herself onto it. From there, she went to the next branch, and the next, climbing slowly, taking breaks when she worried her grip might give out, resting on the thicker branches she came across. There was no need to rush and fall out of the tree. She kept telling herself that. Take her time, get to the top, figure out where they needed to go.
She was resting on one branch, actually sitting on it, her feet dangling over the side when she heard a rustle in the leaves above her and to the left. She looked just as a small furry creature leapt onto her branch, about the size of a squirrel but looking more like a pig, its nose circular and flat, its ears floppy and pointed. It had hands on its arms and its feet, four in total, with three total fingers, two of them long and many segmented, the other a shorter opposable thumb, perfect for grasping smaller branches.
The creature did not appear to be afraid of Sarah, instead it came slowly close to her, its flat nose moving in and out as it sniffed her.
“Hey there,” she said, reaching out for the creature, wondering if that was a dumb move. It tensed and froze when it noticed her reaching, and then right before her fingers brushed against its back it turned and fled, disappearing into the leaves.
“Everything okay?” Fib called from below.
“Yeah, it’s fine! Moving higher!” Sarah called back, and got back to work.
The last branch was thin, but Sarah thought it would be able to hold her weight. She braced herself on her knees, and stood so she could see over the neighboring trees. The sun was hanging high in the sky and a bit paler than the one on earth. In one direction, more trees filling right up to a snow-capped mountain. In the other direction, more trees but then a clearing where smoke was rising up.
“I see some smoke!” Sarah called down to Fib.
“Make sure you remember which direction!” the Zaytarian replied in a loud voice. Sarah nodded, and took a moment to do just that. It would be no good to get turned around coming down the tree and not know which way to go. When she was sure she had it, she started back down.
She was halfway down when the leaves around her rustled once more and she paused, hoping to see another glimpse of her new furry friend.
This time, it was not the small mammal. This time a long body came into view, through a clump of branches and leaves just under Sarah. The body was jet black and reminded the Earth girl of a snake, but no, there were legs, two of them near the front of the body and two near the back, short stubby things that looked as though they might be useless.
The head of the beast was flat, with a diamond shape between the eyes that was a deep, dark red color, like wine or dried blood. The mouth opened as the creature looked at her with its yellow eyes, two of them, again something Sarah was familiar with. She had seen a few animals on various planets with more than two eyes, and it was always shocking, three or more eyes just seemed like a perversion to someone from Earth, where two was king. That was part of the reason so many people were afraid of spiders. They had an unnatural amount of eyes, and it triggered an uncomfortableness deep within most people.
The thing hissed, its voice almost comically high-pitched. A sound that a director in a movie would never choose for a scenes deadly creature attack, for it would surely send the audience into laughing fits.
But this was no movie, and Sarah was not laughing. Instead she tensed, unable to think of what else to do. The creature’s head moved back, away from her, the mouth opening wider, showing a row of needle-like teeth, teeth that were dripping with what Sarah hoped was saliva, elsewise the frothy green was poison.
The attack came suddenly. The long neck shooting forward and the mouth snapping shut on the space where Sarah had just been. She had developed a sense of self-preservation since being abducted. One that had gotten her out of multiple scraps, and one that got her moving in the tree. As the snake-like creature attacked, she had moved downward, practically throwing herself from the branch she was on to the one below, not even realizing she was screaming as she did so until she stopped and could hear Fib yelling from below.
“What is it?” the alien woman yelled up to her. Sarah was touched to hear that Fib sounded more frightened than she had ever been. It was nice in these life and death situations to have someone to share them with you, someone who cared if you ended up on the life, or on the death side of the equation.
>
“Snake!” Sarah yelled. “Thing! I don’t know!”
She looked up. The snake creature had turned to find her. Its head snapping downward when she yelled out to Fib. It slid after her, the small legs tucked tightly into its body. The muscles and ribs along its long form gripping the branches, pulling and pushing it along.
Sarah kept moving, she knew to stop meant to die. She worked almost on autopilot. Her hands and feet finding branches below her, swinging down constantly. When the snake thing had attacked she had been fifty feet in the air, and she worked steadily downward.
Forty.
Thirty.
Twenty. She looked down, considered jumping, hesitated just a moment, and it was a moment too long.
A searing pain pierced her shoulder. Those needle teeth clamping down on her skin. The beast was strong, lifting her up, beginning to coil around her body.
“No!” Sarah yelled. She couldn’t end like this. This wasn’t how her story was finished. She had to see Gar. She had to see home.
The big yellow eyes were staring at her. She jabbed at the nearest eye with her thumb. The creature wriggled, and she pushed harder until her digit burst the eye. The beast screamed. The teeth sliding out of her body, and Sarah falling to the ground below, slapping along the branches as she did so.
Fib was by her side in an instant.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
Sarah groaned.
“What was it?” the Zaytarian asked, and then she looked up and saw the long creature winding its way down the trunk of the tree. “Oh.”
“I can be of assistance,” the robot said. A small arm sliding out from a hatchway at the front of the bot and a sparkling blue crack of electricity shooting out of it. For the first time Sarah thought how odd it must be for Fib to be marooned with the robot, which had done so much damage to her body so recently.
The robot showed no fear, zipping forward with a robotic hum until it met the great beast, which was just touching down to the ground. It shoved the sparkling blue rod into the creatures face, and the snake screamed in pain and moved back. It looked with its one working eye from the bot over to the two females, and then back again. Without warning, it pounced. Straight up, into the tree and disappeared, apparently deciding the meal wasn’t worth the trouble.
“That should do it,” the bot said, moving back toward the women.
“It bit you?” Fib asked Sarah. The Earth girl nodded.
“Is it bad?” Sarah asked as Fib moved her shirt away from the wound.
“Just bloody. I have no way of knowing if it was poisonous, but I think this is a good sign. Nothing looks discolored, it’s just a lot of little puncture wounds.”
Fib left Sarah where she lay, with the robot keeping guard over her and returned twenty yards to the pod. When she came back she was holding a thin white blanket, which she tore into smaller strips and used to bandage Sarah’s wound. The rest of the makeshift dressing Fib wrapped around her torso, planning to change Sarah’s wound as needed.
“You saw smoke?” Fib asked, eager to move on despite her friend’s injury. There was no telling what other horrors lurked in the trees above them.
“Yeah,” Sarah said, sitting up with a grimace. “That way,” she added, pointing with her finger.
“You sure?” Fib asked.
“Yeah,” Sarah said. Standing and beginning to walk, leaving the bot and her friend to follow.
Chapter Ten
The citadel was dark and foreboding. It floated out in space, towers, hundreds of them, built atop a large asteroid that tumbled slowly, sending the towers end over end every five or so minutes.
“Dark,” Bo said from the pilot's chair. He had just called the others forward. Gar had lowered himself next to him, and Char and Yelia, the two lovebirds, were standing in the doorway.
“See anything?” Gar asked, leaning forward and looking through the viewport. Bo glanced to his screen.
“Nothing.”
“No lights. I thought there would be something,” Char said from the doorway. He reached out and found Yelia’s hand. They could all feel it. The answer to their problems, or at least the first problem on a long list, lay before them. The citadel. That was where they needed to be.
“Let’s go,” Yelia said. She was as eager as anybody to locate her sister. Only Gar felt anything near as anxious as she did.
“All right, here we go,” Bo said, and he took the flight stick in hand and pushed it away from his body, sending the Patchwork Lady forward and down, towards the surface of the asteroid.
He had been worried about where he was going to land, but as he turned the ship over to match the asteroid, and neared the thickest of the towers at its base, he saw a flat surface that had been clearly constructed for ships. In fact, there were two already there, derelict and falling apart, surely having not been flown for years.
“I was hoping for that,” Bo said as he felt his ship kick. There was artificial gravity around the asteroid, like what he used on his ship to keep everyone from floating about, but on a much larger scale. It also meant that tumbling through space wouldn’t make them sick, at least if they didn’t stare out at space too much, to see the stars spiraling around their heads.
“Okay, we’re down,” Bo said and grinned at Gar as the ship set down.
“Guns,” Gar said quietly, and Char nodded, moving back to the small locker they had loaded with weapons and ammo. Gar chose his tryst slug thrower, taking a bandolier and filling it with ammo. Bo took a large one-handed gun, which was as beefy as he was. It fired plasma bolts. They were small bottles that glowed slightly purple. Bo slid extra ammunition into large pouches on his belt.
Char and Yelia both had automatic firing rifles, which shot red lasers. They loaded up on batteries, each one allowing them two hundred and fifty shots. Char found himself hoping they wouldn’t need even one.
“Breathable?” Gar asked by the door, and Bo looked at a panel.
“Nope, take these,” he said, handing out masks. “Shouldn’t need full suits by the look of it, but it’s going to be cold.
Everyone strapped their masks on.
“Why keep the gravity on, but not the oxygen?” Char asked. Most creatures in the galaxy breathed oxygen and needed water to survive. It was the one common trait they almost all shared.
“They don’t need air,” Gar said with a grimace. He was referring to the Destune; their bodies dead and brought back by machinery. They did not breathe.
“I’ve never even seen one of these things, and I hate them already,” Char said quietly, and despite everything, Bo laughed. He slapped Char on the back.
“Who better to lead the way?” he said. Char grumbled and slapped the button next to the door, it slid open.
Outside, the citadel was massive, stretching up hundreds of feet above their heads. It was built out of stone, large bricks stacked upon one another, gray and crumbling. It was a short walk to the nearest tower, and Char hurried, leaving the others to trot behind him.
Massive doors made of some red wood lay before them. Char glanced back and got a nod from Gar, who shouldered his rifle. Bo stood off to the side, and Yelia took a position beside Gar, raising her own weapon.
Char moved to the other side of the doors, placing his hand on one. Bo placed his hand on the other.
“Go,” Gar said, and Char and Bo both pushed, the doors swinging open with loud creaks. There was nothing but inky darkness inside, so Gar reached up quickly to the side of his oxygen mask and pressed a button there. A tiny lamp set into the mask next to his right eye flared to life, its beam piercing the darkness. The others turned their lights on as well, and then Gar and Yelia stepped inside.
“Clear,” Yelia said. They all had earpieces in, which let them communicate even if they got separated, so she whispered and they all heard her fine.
The room they had stepped into was massive, with a sky-high ceiling. It was void of furniture, but artwork hung on the walls. The paintings were dark, mos
tly reds and grays and blacks, and seemed to depict some alien being in various stages of its life. It was being born, a splash of telltale purple across its forehead. It was older, a child eating a fruit handed over by its mother. It was even older in another one, being whipped.
Yelia gasped at the final painting. The creature with the purple forehead was being killed, tied to a table and dissected by three other beings, each holding a long knife. The alien was still alive in the painting, its mouth twisted open in a scream.
“Charming,” Bo said, glancing at the painting and moving on.”
“Any idea where this machine is?” Gar asked out loud, his question not directed at anyone in particular.
“No, we’re going to have to search the old fashioned way. It’s a big place…” Bo said.
“Should we split up?” Char asked.
Gar thought for a moment. “No sense in that. Yelia is the only one who can use it, if someone else finds it she’ll have to get there anyway.”
He didn’t bother adding there was a good chance the Destune were inside the citadel, hiding in the shadows and waiting to ambush them.
Everyone seemed fine with sticking together, and they moved on, choosing one of the many doors off the large empty room at random. The search had begun.
Chapter Eleven
Fib and Sarah had been walking for hours. They had found a small freshwater stream, where they had drunk and filled canteens they had brought with them that had been stashed away on the escape pod, and then crossed it and continued on. Fib was beginning to wonder if the Earthling had gotten mixed up after all, and was only taking them deeper into the woods, but then they broke through a clearing, and she could see the smoke herself, rising in thick gray tendrils from a large fire.
The fire was built within a massive circular pit of sorts made from stones, and there was a number of alien beings around the fire, green-skinned, large heads with tentacles instead of arms, and four of them which served as legs.
The two women did not bother hiding themselves, both of them independently thinking it best to be open with the alien beings, not wishing to look as though they were sneaking up on them.
Aeon Ending Page 5
