Dominant Species Omnibus Edition

by David Coy

  “Good question,” Phil replied. “Some instinct maybe.”

  “I know this spot,” Bailey said and pointed. “Gilbert’s chamber is right up that tube to the right.”

  Mary cast her gaze back down the tube in the opposite direction where she knew the shuttles, and escape from this dark pit, lay.

  Phil walked up to the nerve bundle and rested his hands on it. There was energy coursing through it—tangible, tactile energy of some kind.

  “This must be the point where it goes down to the head,” he said.

  “This is the point . . . where we kill it,” Bailey said, and plucked an arrow out of Seseidi’s quiver. She hauled back to plunge it in.

  “Hang on! Stop!” Phil said. “Not so fast.”

  Phil did a quick count of the arrows in the Indian’s quiver then looked at the woven basket still strung around the Indian’s neck. He wondered if there was enough poison in the arrows to do the job. The frogs in the basket represented a poison reserve if they needed it. He looked closer at the enormous cable-like structure and tried to find some weakness, some point of entry. He felt around with his hands on the rubbery surface of the individual strands, each about as thick as his wrist. The entire bundle seemed to be made up of identical strands. All were tightly wound, grown around each other like vines.

  He had no clue.

  “One arrow into each strand until we’re out of arrows,” he said soberly. “If that doesn’t do it, we lose.”

  Mary and Bailey nodded their heads. So did Seseidi—just to join in.

  Phil took out four arrows, leaving four more in the quiver. He handed one arrow to each of them as if they were sacred relics, and they received them in kind. When Bailey kissed hers with her eyes squished tight, Seseidi did the same.

  Phil vaulted over the bundle to work the far side. He chose a strand near the top, placed the wired-on tip against it lightly, then raised the shaft up to get a good angle on the plunge. He gripped the shaft with both hands. Mary crossed her fingers and held them up for him to see.

  He jabbed down hard and buried the tip.

  They waited for something to happen.

  Nothing did.

  “Do yours,” Phil said to Mary.

  Mary picked a strand, put the tip on it and plunged down. When the tip was buried, she rocked the shaft to make even better contact. The point where the tip went in leaked liquid. That was a good sign since it meant the fluid would likely dissolve the dried poison off the tip.

  They waited.

  Nothing.

  “Go,” he said to Bailey.

  Bailey picked one down next to the floor, squatted and jabbed hers in. Then she kicked the bundle for good measure. “Die!” she said.

  Phil nodded to Seseidi who yammered and plunged at a convenient strand. He pumped on the shaft with both arms until the very shaft of the arrow followed the tip deep into the slit it made.

  They waited.

  They looked at each other and waited. Mary crossed the fingers of both hands, closed her eyes tight and pressed them to her temples.

  Bailey kicked it again. “Die, I said!”

  Phil gestured with his hand for more arrows, and Seseidi gave one more each to Phil and Bailey. When Phil wagged his hand for him to hand over the other two, Seseidi shook his head.

  Probably a good idea, Phil thought. Keep some in reserve.

  Bailey and Phil picked strands at random and plunged them in. Bailey grunted like a ninja when she did hers.

  With the arrows sticking out of the bundle like matador’s picks, they waited. Mary continued to press her crossed fingers to her head, her eyes pinched tight, wishing hard.

  They waited, and Bailey started to cry like a frustrated baby. She kicked it again. “Die! you . . . you . . . die! You just die!”

  Seseidi yammered softly and sat down with his legs crossed.

  Well, Phil thought solemnly. It wasn’t like they ever really had a chance. This is an alien animal modified for space travel after all. The idea of using a few milligrams of frog poison to defeat it is pretty lame.

  He licked and sucked his lips and weighed the only option.

  His eyes drifted from Mary who hadn’t moved, to Bailey, then to the remaining arrows in the quiver. Just two left.

  Then to the woven basket.

  His hand felt for his belt buckle.

  He could strangle the Indian then use the remaining two arrows on the women. After that he’d physically destroy the brains of all three so they couldn’t possibly be reanimated. He wouldn’t like doing it. Doing himself wouldn’t be a problem; he’d just put one of the frogs in his mouth, chomp down a few times and swallow. That would do better than any manufactured drug and all that poison would probably prevent any future recall of his own consciousness as well.

  He hoped the Indian would go peacefully, he looked like a tough little monkey.

  When Mary opened her eyes, she saw Phil standing on the other side of the bundle with a frozen look. She read his mind; and when she saw his hand on his belt, she forced herself to smile, then closed her eyes and nodded her head slowly. Somewhere, she heard Bailey’s soft crying, and she reached out as if blind and drew Bailey close to her, holding her head against her own.

  A soft movement of air went over them like a sigh and brushed against Mary’s face like a caress as it passed. Her eyes popped open.

  “What was that?”

  “The wind,” Phil said lifting his head to sense it.

  “I’ve been here for months. There is no wind. Something’s happening.”

  The next gust of air was stronger and was accompanied by a distant sound like a roar coming from the forward section of the ship.

  “Now that was promising,” Phil said. He reached over and wiggled one of the arrows, jabbing it in a little more with his palm on the end.

  The nail of Bailey’s forefinger found her mouth, and she grinned against it. “Die,” she said under her breath.

  There was a low-pitched sound that started low and distant, then grew louder and louder like an approaching freight train. The air began to move steadily past them as the sound grew, just rippling hair and shirts at first.

  The sudden blast of air from the rear of the ship hit them like something solid and tore violently at them. Mary tightened her grip on Bailey and forced her to the floor. They all grabbed at the strands on the bundle.

  Bailey was ecstatic. “We did it!” she yelled over the sound. “We did it! We killed it! We fucked it!”

  Phil wasn’t so sure, but the sudden evacuation of air could only mean that the ship’s hull had been breached in some way, but maybe not from any action of theirs. For all they knew, this could be a normal, scheduled event they just hadn’t seen before. His guts, however, told him Bailey was right, and he grinned like a kid.

  Mary clawed her way up and leaned over the bundle, clutching it tight to keep herself oriented. “Phil! We’ve done it!” she yelled. “We could still get away! We could still get out!”

  Phil was crouching against the wind, his hair mashed flat by the almost solid wall of air. He looked down the tube to the end where it terminated as just a speck of light in the distance. The shuttle bay was there. He felt his shirt pocket and discovered that he still had the envelope with the copper wire straws in it.

  Mary was right. With any luck, they’d done their absolute worst. It was the perfect hit. They’d caused some unknown, massive seam to open unexpectedly. The ship hadn’t exploded or all the tubes hadn’t convulsed and clamped shut on the occupants. There was nothing more to do—nothing to do but get out alive.

  “Go!” he yelled.

  They pressed against the wind, and moved bent forward toward the shuttle bay.

  They’d only gone about a hundred yards when something stung Phil’s forehead. He nearly panicked when it hit but he reached up and felt only a stinging welt, not an alien burr. He was looking down as much as possible, trying to keep his eyes out of the searing wind. He saw just a couple at first, then
dozens whizzing by his feet and smacking into his shoes and shins. Soon the objects were flying by like hail going sideways, smacking his thighs, face and the top of his lowered head. He heard Mary and Bailey crying out in high-pitched peels as the objects smacked into them. Bare-chested, Seseidi was taking the worst of it. Phil wasn’t sure what the objects were until he saw the first oval canister roll past at about forty miles per hour, then he laughed out loud and didn’t give a shit if the damn things killed him.

  The flying objects were wasp larvae.

  The escaping air must have ripped through the storerooms, carrying canisters with it, breaking them open. The group tumbled and raced for an unseen exit somewhere forward.

  Phil stopped, turned around in the wind, held his arms out and let the pupae pelt him.

  “It’s the larve!” he bellowed. “Fuck ‘em! Fuck ‘em all!”

  Mary and Bailey whooped with joy and swished at the flying pupae with their hands. Bailey jumped up and down in the maelstrom, barely keeping her balance in the wind. “We fucked it up good! Really good!” she yelled.

  The side tubes seemed to be the source of the escaping air, not the main tube itself. Each time they passed an opening, the pressure from it forced them into the nerve bundle. Phil looked ahead and could see the source of the brown hail. It was streaming in from the side tubes, sliding neatly like blowing sand along the cove of the openings. As the objects came into the main tube, the wind tumbled them, raised them up and made them airborne. The stream was getting heavier by the second. The first canisters—and ragged shards of canisters—rolled into the tube, tumbled, then became missiles, bouncing and blonging down the tube at them. Like the pupae, just a few at first then ten, then a hundred from each side. Most were staying just a few feet off the floor, but not all. The first one flew past him at head level. He looked around to find some sheltering depression, but the walls of this section of the tube were smooth.

  “Get off the floor!” Mary yelled. “Hurry! Cover your head!”

  He jumped up on the bundle and lying facing forward, covered his head with his arms. The others took his lead and did the same. Mary looked and saw the canisters and pieces flying and tumbling toward them like a cloud of metal footballs. She buried her face in her arms and felt every muscle in her body tighten.

  Phil could hear the canisters whooshing past in fast succession, clanging hollow off each other. Then one whacked his hand sending a pulse of pain up his arm and making him groan. The next one glanced off his elbow with a sound of an empty bottle hitting wood. He tried to make himself a smaller target by tightening the grip on his head. At least he was protecting the others from the brunt of the onslaught.

  The pupae were flying past now by the millions, mixed in with the canisters, peppering his hands and arms, hissing by like hard snow. He wondered how many of them had been grown on his flesh. They were hateful things, painful in birth, painful in life and, now, even painful in death. He hoped that the inert little fuckers had enough awareness in them to feel the pain when the vacuum of space split their asses right open.

  A canister or piece of one plonked off his head in the space between his hands causing a flash of light in his head. He grimaced.

  The maelstrom finally slowed to just an occasional whirr and whoosh of a canister and a smack now and then from a flying pupae. Phil raised his head into the wind and saw that the air ahead was relatively free of the flying missiles. He looked at his hands and arms and winced at the welts and deep contusions on them. He felt at the lump on his head and his finger tips came away red with blood. Bailey was at his feet, still hunkered down and the Indian was nursing a nasty cut on his arm. Mary was looking back at him, squinting against the wind, her hair streaking straight back. Everyone was still intact.

  “It’s clear enough!” he yelled over the wind. “Move!”

  They dismounted the nerve bundle and trotted off, leaning into the wind with each thrust of their legs, the wind pulling at their clothes.

  It took a good ten minutes to cover the distance from where they started to the shuttle bay. The wind seemed to get weaker as they approached the end of the ship, and Phil wondered if it was because they were farther from the opening or because the air was getting thinner. They were exhausted and thankful that the air near the shuttle bay was moving more like a breeze than a hurricane.

  They were no more than one hundred feet from the opening when Seseidi, now far in the lead, stopped, then crouched and crabbed his way back to them. When he reached the others, he pushed them back into a depression in the wall of the tube, yammering urgently.

  Phil leaned out around the edge of the tube wall and was able to see the movements of at least two goons in the shuttle bay. They were carrying enormous net bags full of alien stuff toward the shuttles in the air lock. Beyond them, he could see the rat-like movements of dozens of aliens, clamoring, scurrying.

  He’d expected as much.

  “What’s are they doing?” Bailey whispered.

  “Abandoning ship. They’re taking what they can and loading it into the shuttles.”

  “Cool,” Bailey said.

  The aliens must have taken a completely different, perhaps an emergency route to the shuttles, which explained why they hadn’t run into any of them on the way. The longer he watched, the clearer it became that there was a sense of quick order or almost drill-like quality to the movements he could see. There was even a feeling of neatness about the net bags, as if they’d been pre-packed. One of the big bastards was carrying a net sack filled with the shiny gray canisters. There was no telling what else they’d loaded.

  They watched the scurrying forms of the aliens and felt joy, a joy they could scarcely contain. The fine and noble feeling of revenge filled their cups to overflowing.

  “Good riddance,” Bailey said.

  “Good riddance, cocksuckers,” Mary added. “I hope you crash and burn.”

  “Adios, bastards,” Phil said.

  Yammering softly in his own tongue, Seseidi told the evil spirits that they could never rest as long as there were warriors like these to chase them.

  “Now what?” Mary asked.

  “Keep your fingers crossed,” Phil replied. “Let’s hope they leave us a shuttle, too.”

  Phil thought about the wire straws in his pocket. One of their party would soon be attached to the control panel and wouldn’t be needing a lift home.

  They waited until there was no more visible activity then Seseidi volunteered himself and crawled up on his belly to get a better look.

  He snaked his way up to the large opening and peeked in. From there he could see the entire facility. He scanned it from left to right, then craned his neck around—and just to be sure, took a look at the high ceiling, too. He didn’t trust these spirits at all.

  He saw nothing; the monsters were gone. Behind the big glass wall, he could see two of the huge dragons the spirits flew in. He stood up and waved the others forward.

  On the way to the opening, Phil suddenly found himself short of breath.

  “It’s hard to breathe,” Mary said.

  “Me, too,” Bailey said, but she spun like a ballerina with her arms open wide in the big empty chamber. “They’re gone. The nasty bastards are gone.” She closed her eyes and spun blissfully for a moment.

  Phil reached in his pocket and lifted out the little folded paper envelope. In spite of its nondescript, papery nothingness, it felt like something evil to him.

  Mary eyed the envelope cautiously as if it might fly out of his hand and bite her.

  Bailey saw Mary’s concerned look.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  Mary explained the problem of the control panel to her and how they’d proposed to solve it. Bailey’s joyful look faded completely.

  “Oh,” she said near the end of it. The nail of her forefinger went in her mouth.

  It didn’t occur to Phil until he’d unfolded the paper that the problem of operating the airlock must have confronted the aliens a
s well. The airlock could only be operated from the panel—and it couldn’t operate itself.

  “There’s a goon left on board—probably close by,” he said matter-of-factly.

  He looked around as if the goon was right behind him and sure enough, there it was in the opening.

  Bailey saw it at the same time and let out a yip.

  Phil’s heart went into high gear before he realized the little goon in the opening was in fact Ned.

  “Looks like you made a mess out of this outfit, eh?” Ned called out weakly. He took a step or two toward them and fell down like a heavy sack.

  When they got over to him, Mary saw the red and discolored bandage covering his wound. The sickly sweet smell of it told the rest of the story.

  “Christ, Ned . . . ” she said.

  “Pretty tough customer, eh?” he said.

  “I’ll say you are,” Bailey said, trying to act cheerful.

  Mary lifted his head up onto her knee. His face was the color of straw.

  “I thought I might . . . you know . . . help you guys out,” he said.

  An autonomic response, the selfish one that keeps the human organism alive, passed between Phil and Mary as they exchanged looks.

  Ned could operate the control panel.

  Mary’s equally human conscience warmed the cold response with compassion.

  “The most you’re going to do is rest here until we get the airlock working. Then you’re going home with us.”

  “No way lady,” Ned replied. His voice was stronger than she’d expected. “I’ve got maybe an hour before I’m dead. The rest of you have a chance. You can make it. I can’t. You know that, Mary. I’ll be dead before we get down.”

  “Ned . . . ”

  “It’s not open to discussion,” he said. “You guys help me to my feet and attach me to the control thing. Let’s go.” He started to get up.

  Phil put his hand on his chest and their eyes locked.

  “It’s okay, eh. It’s okay. This is my choice. Not yours.”

  Phil studied his face a moment longer. He wanted to be sure, as sure as he could be, that Ned was in control of his senses. If he’d thought it was the poison in his system talking, he wouldn’t have let the man get up.