Which gave him an idea. He aimed carefully for the complex, still knowing that what he might do could very well bring him down miles away. He waited until he was quite close and then turned the thrusters on full and kept them on as long as possible, until the low-fuel indicator lit up. And then he turned on only one thruster and used it to spin the craft around. When he was flying backward, he leveled out with the other thruster, then cut them and turned the rear thrusters on full.
He was flying backward, blind, hoping the rear thrusters would slow him down enough that he’d survive. He couldn’t tell how far off course he might be, couldn’t tell how far away the ground was, couldn’t tell how fast he was going, either, though it did feel like he’d slowed some. He kept the rear thrusters on full, hoping he’d calculated well enough that he wouldn’t run out of fuel and speed up again before reaching the ground.
He braced himself for the impact.
* * *
Henry just stared at the blank screen. At first he’d tried to hail the commander again, but there had been no response; they weren’t even bothering to answer his calls. Then he’d tried to send out a distress signal on another channel only to find that blocked as well. Maybe if he had some skill in circuits and electronics he could figure out something, some sort of way of working around it, but really, what was the point? Even if he did manage to get a signal out there to reveal his dilemma and his position, the only ships in the area were the military ships attached to the commander, who had just told him he was good as dead. Maybe the other complex had some sort of escape ship, but the prison complex didn’t have one; it had been deemed a potential danger. The signal was his best bet, but even if he managed to get a signal past them and to some ship beyond but still somehow close enough to hear it, how long would it take them to come? Two days at least, maybe three. And then they’d have to make it past the commander’s ships, get to him, defeat the creatures that had swarmed the prison and made the men in it like them, and get him out. He had water in the control room, but not very much, and no food at all. No, it wasn’t going to happen.
What do you do when you know you are going to die? Henry asked himself and found he had no answer. What he was doing now was staring at a blank screen, waiting for something to come to him. But nothing had.
And also there was the question of how to die. He could simply starve to death, growing hungry and then slowly weaker and very gradually fading out of existence. Or he could open the emergency cabinet and remove the pistol in it and fire a shot through his skull. Or he could simply open the doors and let the creatures, still milling about outside, somewhat idly now, make their way in and find him and kill him. There were probably other ways to go about it as well, quite creative ways if he could figure them out. Maybe that was what he would do: spend his last few days figuring out more and more eccentric ways to die.
At last he left the monitor, went and stood by the window. He could take the pistol and shoot out the window, he realized, and then the atmosphere would rush out and his lungs would collapse and he’d collapse, too. It would take probably a few shots since the glass was impact-resistant, but a few bullets fired just right would probably do it.
He could see there, across the rocky plain and at some distance, the lights of the research facility. What were they doing over there? Were they the ones who had caused all this? And if he was being told that there was no getting out, were they being told the same thing? Were they doomed to die as well?
There was, he knew, an ATV just outside the prison, something that the guards used to drive the supplies that landed at the penal colony over to the research facility. Maybe he could drive over there and join forces with them. Maybe together they could figure out what to do and find a way to survive. The menace was, for the moment, contained within the penal colony, at least as far as he could tell, so maybe there was still a safe space. He could drive there, no problem. But the problem was figuring out how to get out and down to the ATV without being killed. He needed a RIG with oxygen, a serious deep-space number, but he wasn’t even sure if they had one. At the very least, he needed a good RIG and some O2 bottles, but those were in a locker down below, with the creatures. He would never be able to get to them without being killed.
And then, looking out the window, he caught a flash of something above him, realized it was something falling from the sky. At first he thought it was on fire, but then he realized that no, it was thrusters he was seeing, it was a ship coming down. He caught his breath and for an instant thought maybe someone was coming to save him after all. But then he thought no, the shape was wrong for it to be a fully operational ship; it was something else. A rocket maybe, he thought. But then the thrusters would be on the other side, accelerating it instead of slowing it down. And then he realized that no, maybe it was an escape pod. Not someone coming to rescue him but someone likely soon to be just as marooned as he.
And then he realized it was heading straight at the penal colony, straight at him. It streaked fire as it fell from the sky, and then it struck.
He felt it rattle Hell all the way through. He clung to the wall to keep from falling, then rushed over to the monitors. Most were still operational, but a few were nothing but static now—most of the ones in the central circle were down, so that must have been where the pod had hit. He scanned the other monitors for signs of whatever had struck, but saw nothing.
What’s there? he wondered, continuing to peer at the monitors, hoping something would soon appear. And who?
43
Jensi groaned. He hurt all over and his faceplate was spidered through with cracks, though luckily still intact. The arm of his suit seemed to be on fire. He slapped at the flame with his hand until it went out. Slowly he unwebbed and pushed his way close to the viewport and looked out.
At first he couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. He had been expecting rock or dust, some sort of barren exterior space, but what he saw instead was different. A dark rounded wall, rising far above him. Cliffs, maybe? No, too regular. He fumbled around the pod until he found the exterior light and then flicked it on to get a closer look. No, he saw, it was a man-made wall. He was inside something.
Carefully, he broke the seal of the portal and crawled out. He was in a domed chamber, fairly large, round. His craft had broken through the dome above, which meant that probably the atmosphere of the planet was not breathable. Hopefully he had enough oxygen left in his suit to get to a contained space. Probably he did, but just in case he crawled back in, came out with two bottles of oxygen that he used to refill his tanks. He took the first-aid kit, too, just in case his injuries went beyond mere soreness, and the flare pistol.
He had struck and destroyed several tables, he realized, and gouged a channel along the stone floor. Not far from where he’d landed there was a large hole, and there were more than a few burnt and charred bodies here, probably people killed, he was sorry to realize, by his landing. It was an accident, he couldn’t have known he would land here rather than somewhere nearby—he couldn’t even see where he was going—but still he couldn’t help but feel guilty. More lives to add to his tally. He just hoped one of them had not been Istvan.
The rest of the room seemed deserted. One of the bodies near the edge, lying facedown in a riot suit, was not charred. Indeed, it seemed a little mysterious that it was dead at all. Or at least it was until he prodded it and rolled it over and saw the hole torn in its chest, as if a cannon had been fired from inside of its ribs. What did that? he wondered. It didn’t look like a wound from a pistol or a rifle or something that plasma might do. But if not those, what?
The corpse had a lump within its riot suit somewhere down by the waist. Jensi, curious, unzipped it to find a plasma pistol, an older model with a wide beam and with its serial numbers filed off. Obviously something the guard had smuggled in. He picked it up, slipped it into his hand.
The earpiece of his RIG crackled and he got a strange, staticky transmission.
“—ever you are,”
the voice said, “be careful.”
“Hello?” said Jensi. “Who is this?”
The voice began to speak again, but Jensi could hardly hear it: something had struck him hard on the head and shoulders and knocked him down. He could feel it wrapped around his arms and shoulders and digging into his back, trying to cut into his suit, and it was there before his face, pressing against it as well, some kind of antenna or proboscis feeling around his helmet and prodding at it, looking for a way in. It was something alive, clearly, but unlike anything he had ever seen, and he had no doubt that it was trying to kill him.
He felt the proboscis pushing its way against the seal around his neck, trying to insinuate its way through. He rolled over hard, tried to crush the thing between his body and the floor and for a moment the pressure on his back loosened and he forced his arms up and began to tear at the thing, one hand trying to push it back and away, the other managing almost by accident to grab its proboscis, which thrashed in his hand and tried to whip free. He tugged it forward and then snapped it hard and the proboscis went dead at its tip, but the rest of it didn’t stop trying to break away and get back at him.
Slowly he managed to pull away from it and move up on it, pinning its body down with his knees. Holding the proboscis with one hand he felt around him for the pistol with the other, hoping it was still within reach. But he didn’t find it. Out of desperation he tore the flare gun from his belt and thrust it against the creature’s body, but then he wasn’t sure where to fire: where was its head? As far as he could tell, it didn’t have one—it was just a pair of wings with long limblike extensions and a central body that looked uncannily like a human spine. Where was he to shoot, then?
“… can make it to the doors,” said the crackling voice in his ear, “I’ll open them.”
Not now, he thought. He pushed the flare gun roughly against the spot where the proboscis extruded and pulled the trigger. The flare sizzled and burnt through the thing, eating away the proboscis and the flesh around it.
The creature thrashed, then stopped moving.
He stumbled up, dizzy, sweating inside his suit, listening to the sound of his own roughened, restricted breathing. What the fuck was that? he wondered. Some sort of alien? So that’s it, an alien invasion? We’ve finally discovered another life-form and all it wants to do is kill us? He turned his suit light on and shined it on the creature, the flare still hissing and burning somewhere within its body. The thing was flesh-colored, he saw, and parts of it looked like bits of a human body, but assembled wrong and twisted. It had an uncanny quality to it, like a bad nightmare.
His RIG crackled again. “Are you still there?” the voice asked, still distorted but clearer this time. “Did they kill you already?”
“Not yet,” he said. “Who?”
“You can hear me,” said the relieved voice. The voice seemed oddly familiar, but he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t his brother, he was sure of that. “They’ve been jamming all the signals out,” he said. “It took me a moment to figure out how to send something more specifically directed toward you that they’d be less likely to pick up and stop.”
“What the hell is going on?” asked Jensi.
“I don’t know,” said the voice. “I’m the only one now.”
“Only one what?” asked Jensi.
“Only one left alive,” he claimed.
Holy shit, thought Jensi. He looked around him until he found the pistol. He picked it up, holding the flare gun in one hand and the pistol in the other.
“Listen to me,” the voice in his ear was saying. “You’re in terrible danger. You have to be very careful or they’ll kill you. But if you can get to the door, I’ll let you in. After that, you’ll have to figure out how to get to me, but if you can get that far, maybe you’ll get to me, too.”
“How do I get there?” Jensi asked.
“Look around you,” said the voice. “You’ll see an opening in the wall, there’s only one. Go straight through and don’t turn right or left where the cells are. Straight in front of you there will be the door. When you’re getting close, let me know and I’ll open it.”
“All right,” said Jensi. “I’ll make a run for it in a moment.” He shone his suit light along the wall until the light dropped off and into an opening. There it was. Was it safe to go toward it?
“What are these things?” he asked.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” the voice said.
“Try me.”
“They’re people,” said the voice. “Just like you and me, or used to be. Something happened to them. Something changed them.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jensi said.
“I wish I was. I told you that you wouldn’t believe me.”
Not knowing what to say, Jensi said nothing. Slowly he began to make his way around the chamber, suit light off now, working solely off the glow from the pod’s lights. “What happened to change them?” he asked. “What happened to them?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
But either the voice did not choose to answer or the signal had been found again and blocked.
“Hello?” said Jensi. “Hello?” But there was no answer.
His head hurt. He must have hit it in the crash. It was throbbing like crazy. He moved slowly forward, both pistols at the ready, trailing his way along the curving wall, moving as quietly as possible.
There was a stab of pain deep within his skull, as if something had worked a knife carefully between his eye and its socket and then suddenly plunged it deeper in. He swayed and for a moment the dark and gray world was dyed red, and then it slowly faded back to normal.
But something new was there as well, just there ahead of him and facing away from him. Or rather someone. A woman, somehow familiar, her body glowing softly. But no, he knew it couldn’t be a woman, couldn’t be anyone human—the dome had been cracked open and the atmosphere outside wasn’t breathable. Nobody could be alive here.
And yet, she seemed alive and he found himself drawn to her. He approached her carefully, feeling his way along the wall, staring at the back of her head. She was familiar, but no, he told himself again, that was impossible, his mind was playing tricks on him. He was hallucinating. Maybe there was a hole in his suit and something in the air here was adulterating his oxygen supply, making him see things that didn’t exist.
Still, he couldn’t stop himself from approaching her. She didn’t move as he came closer, just stayed exactly where she was until he was standing just a foot or two away, hesitating.
He reached out and touched her shoulder. Suddenly her body seemed to come to life and she turned around to face him, and he saw that the reason the woman had been familiar was because it was his mother.
He pulled his hand away and stepped back.
“You’re dead,” he said, “you can’t be here.”
“Jensi,” she said. “Help me. Help me become what I can be next.”
He pointed both guns at her and wished for her to go away, but she stayed there, staring at him, pleading.
“No,” he said. “You don’t exist.”
“Jensi,” she said again. “Help me.”
He began to pull back the triggers but found himself hesitating. He closed his eyes tight, shook his head. When he opened them again, his mother was gone and the guns he thought he’d been pointing at her were pointing not at her at all, but at his own head.
What had just happened? What was wrong with him?
* * *
After a moment, his headache had passed and he felt gathered and confident enough in his ability to understand the world around him that he could continue on. There was, near the wall, a corpse, the body torn and strange and perhaps somewhat burnt as well—a strange color to it in any case, like the purple gray of meat drying too long in the sun. He would have to leave the wall to skirt around it, but he didn’t particularly want to. He felt better having the wall to run his fingers along. Just
a corpse, he told himself, and began to step over it.
Only, as it turned out, it wasn’t just a corpse. As he started to step over it, it moved and hissed and he saw that what he thought was human was not human at all, or at least no longer. He stumbled back and it was after him, waving scythelike blades that seemed to have sprouted from its body, trying to slash him. Running backward, he fired the pistol into its body, but it didn’t seem to have much effect. He fired into the head, burning a hole through the skull just above the eye, but the creature didn’t fall or even slow down. Holy shit, he thought, and began firing into its legs.
It took three or four shots to separate the leg at the knee but still it kept coming, hobbling on one leg and using one of its scythes like a cane. He shot the other leg out and still it kept coming, lying on its belly and pulling itself forward by its scythes. He aimed the flare gun at the fleshy appendage of one of the scythes and fired, and watched the phosphorus flare lodge in the muscle and smoke and burn, until it burnt through the appendage. Even then, it still continued to try to come toward him, dragging itself forward by its remaining scythe, dislocated mouth slavering.
“How the hell do you kill these things?” he asked through his transmitter, but there was no reply. He darted forward and stomped hard on the neck and broke it, and then stomped again, and a third time until the head broke entirely away. And yet, despite that the single remaining scythe kept pulling itself forward, trying to find him. How can something live without a head? he wondered. And then he wondered if this, too, was something he was hallucinating.
He stomped on the remaining scythe and broke it off. Even then the thing didn’t stop exactly, but simply couldn’t do anything to him. He stood there looking at the uneasy torso, realizing he needed some better weapons.
Dead Space: Catalyst Page 22
