Tuesday knelt down in front of September. He gently took her hands.
“How much danger are we in?” Tuesday asked. “Should we contact somebody? Warn them? We have a small army on board, right?”
September managed to make eye contact for a second, but then she looked away again.
“The Unison has flamed entire worlds over much smaller infestations. It may already be too late for any of us.”
There was a horrible screaming and thumping from the corridor outside of Jimmy's personal pigsty. As all the hallways of Alpha Deck were insulated by garbage and there were no fewer than three different torture metal albums pumping from nearby rooms, this wailing was truly noteworthy. Rushing out of the door, September, Tuesday and Jimmy came across an Alpha Deck janitor in orange coveralls appearing to have a fit. The guy was thrashing about, holding his head and making a high pitched noise. September reached down to comfort him, trying to shush him, but the janitor just keep screeching the same note. Finally, five seconds later, he stopped dead. A crowd of crew members of minimal to zero operational value gathered around the cooling body, getting a good look at the corpse. Now that the janitor was still, everyone could clearly see that blood was pouring from his right ear and both eye sockets for some unknown reason. As far as anyone could tell, beyond the crimson leakage he was otherwise uninjured.
A Unison solider – one of the many military grunts who “just happened” to lurk around Alpha Deck in riot gear – stormed up, barking orders. Dressed in plate armour and flash-resistant shades and armed with a stun wand, the soldier held out one hand to keep people back from the body and raised his humming weapon just enough to make it clear he wasn't here to make friends.
“Right, who saw what happened? Who did this? I want answers!”
Within twenty seconds, that soldier was just as dead as the janitor. This time everyone got a pretty good look at the entire process: as though it had springs for legs, a mouse the size of a large peanut burst out of a scalp-high vent like a furry dart and went straight into the soldier's left ear. Shrieking, the grunt began pounding the side of his own head, roaring and waving about. Understandably, the entire crowd scattered to the far corners of Alpha Deck, doing their best to avoid whatever the hell was happening. Within a few heartbeats, September, Jimmy, Tuesday and Generic Corpse One and Generic Corpse Two were the only humans left.
Shouts and gunfire echoed from what sounded like a few corridors away. Suddenly, a shipwide alarm began to screech like a parrot that had just been kicked right in the cloaca. September paused, listening, as though she understood the klaxons.
“All crew of exceptional operational value and above are to evacuate to our designated safe areas,” September breathed, the only one of their group that could translate the tone. “I need to go.”
Neither of the men asked questions. This was clearly a get-the-heck-out-of-here-and-talk-later kind of event. Running for the turbolift, none of them actually heard Nibble-Nibble-Squeak-Squeak the rat laughing evilly from Mister Boodle’s abandoned cage, cackling at their distress. With his cruel red eyes flashing, his words went unheard.
What he said was: “Now you'll get it.”
All three survivors sprinted into the turbolift just before its door sealed with a hiss. Safely stashed in the capsule, September swiped her hand at a floating holographic display and their pod shot off at the speed of sound. Unlike the cargo elevator that Tuesday had used to illegally stowaway aboard The Frontier in the first place, this internal turbolift was equipped with heavy gravity buffers to cushion their ride, meaning that they were able to fly along the spine of the ship without any discomfort.
Tuesday relaxed against the wall, stupidly thinking he was safe, and looked up at the transparent ceiling of the capsule. On the other side of the see-through roof slab a mass of rats were furiously gnawing through some sort of device the size of a shoebox. However, Tuesday didn't have any way of getting at them. Following Tuesday's line of sight, Jimmy looked up at the ceiling and made a choking noise.
Tuesday gave September a nudge.
“Uh, what are they chewing on?”
September blinked at the roof. Her expression fell.
“That is a turbolift stability module, invented by an engineer called Rolf Grinwald over three centuries ago. It's still the best model of its kind, and is installed on every starship belonging to The Unison as standard.”
Tuesday swallowed. Although he knew better, he had to ask.
“And, uh, what happens when they finish chewing through it?”
September sighed.
“The gravity settings will go mental, and we'll find out first-hand what it's like to be inside a pinball machine.”
The stability module snapped away just as September finished shaping her last word, and Tuesday didn't even have time to swear as the turbolift suddenly flipped over in its tube, spinning violently in random directions. All three passengers were thrown about like small change in a tumble dryer, slamming into the walls and each other. They were a mass of bruises in seconds, and Tuesday was sure that he was already missing several teeth. However badly the capsule was twirling about in the gravity shaft, though, the turbolift pod still made it all the way to the designated floor. Instead of coming to a gentle stop, though, their turbolift crashed straight through the magnetic seal, tumbled down a corridor in a spectacular fashion, and came to rest against the first Slurk Cola vending machine it touched. Little fires burst to life from dozens of ruined circuit boards, and a pall of smoke rose from the wreckage.
Everything was still for five seconds.
Tuesday was the first one to regain consciousness. Dazed from the spinning and the crash, it took him a couple of seconds to realise that he was lying on top of September. Luckily, they were both on top of the considerable girth of Jimmy Slummer, and it seemed as though Jimmy's spherical body had served as a living crash mat for the other two survivors. It was hard to say, but this may have made all the difference between life and splat. Although badly tenderised and cross-eyed, Jimmy looked at Tuesday's ears and summoned the best comment he could manage.
“Eek?”
Ignoring the chef, Tuesday began to heroically drag September free of the wreckage by her shoulder. It took a good six metres until he realised that something was wrong: he hadn't saved all of her. September’s left leg was missing at the knee.
“I'll get it,” Tuesday offered helpfully, concussed.
September just sat there, looking brain-dead. Shock had provided her with one of nature's greatest anaesthetics.
Wrestling September’s limb free of the twisted ruins of the turbolift, Tuesday staggered back towards the female genius. As he'd just survived the equivalent of a high-speed crash, Tuesday was running a little bit sideways. Just as he came back within touching distance of September, a mouse picked this moment to drop out of a roof panel and head straight for her right eye. Reacting with instincts that had been burned into his nervous system since childhood, Tuesday instantly swung September's leg like a golf club and whacked the rodent so hard that it splattered against a Red Vee advertising panel like a raw egg. Unfortunately, his swing went a little bit too wide and he accidentally kicked September right in the face with the toe of her own booted foot.
“Ah.” Tuesday pulled an embarrassed face. “Sorry.”
A distant rumbling soon transitioned to the recognisable sounds of gunfire and shouts. This maelstrom steadily amplified around the corner until September, Tuesday, Jimmy and Mister Boodle found themselves face-to-face with an entire squad of hardened Unison marines. Despite being fully armed and armoured, the grunts seemed to be performing a steady tactical retreat, also known as “running for their lives.” They fired over their shoulders occasionally, hitting nothing but walls, and bellowed at the motley crew.
“Move, people!”
“What is it?” Jimmy asked in a dazed way, trying to wobble his way out of the turbolift ruins.
Tuesday took two steps forward and smacked Jimmy sh
arply in the back of the head.
“You never ask questions like that! You know why? Because you might find out, you twit!”
A dark, roiling wave crashed around the corner and swelled towards them. Rather than consisting of water, foam and salt, this particular wave was made up of five thousand ill-tempered rats with beady red eyes, jet black fur and sharp, yellowing teeth. Despite setting their weapons on full-auto, the marines barely made a dent in the horde before it crashed down on them with amazing force. Managing to come to his senses far too late, by the time Jimmy turned towards Tuesday and September they were already halfway down the next corridor. Sure, Tuesday was carrying September on his back, but they weren't mucking around.
Before he could manage to waddle all the way up to his lame top speed, Jimmy disappeared into the dark sea of claws and fangs. The wave finally moved on from the feast about twenty seconds later, sated with his bountiful flesh, leaving behind nothing more than a very large pink skeleton.
Jimmy wasn't lying: he really was big boned.
Piggybacking September down the hallway, trying not to glance back at the horror that was still pursuing them, Tuesday was just about ready to give up when September slid off his shoulders and started hopping alongside him. Dead ahead was the sort of enormous door you'd expect on a bank vault or a fallout shelter, and it was slowly swinging closed.
“There!” September barked.
Tuesday and September lunged through the tight gap between the four-foot-thick slab and its frame, knowing that the open corridor was about to become certain death. As they tumbled to the shagpile floor, rolling, the impenetrable vault slammed shut behind them like a Catholic front door when the Scientologists came knocking. A dozen further layers of security scissored shut over the dense portal.
Before he had a chance to feel relieved though, Tuesday looked up from the floor to see an entire battery of high-tech weapons humming aggressively right next to his head. Tuesday froze at the sight of a bedraggled crowd of superior officers and lead scientists pointing kinetic rifles, carbines and spacer pistols at him. As it took half a second for the armed crew members to figure out that September wasn't a rodent (it took considerably longer to assess Tuesday), she was quickly dragged to her feet by the bruised and bleeding survivors of the rat mutiny. Only a single person bothered helping Tuesday to his feet: the old Fleet Admiral. Pulling his younger version upright with the natural creaks of a veteran skeleton, Aslan shook his head grimly at Tuesday.
“It's like every stupid creature on the ship have lost their minds.”
“Or found them,” September managed weakly, not quite making sense.
Supported by kind hands, September hopped over to a standard-issue auto-surgeon box in the corner of the room and allowed it to inspect her dismembered leg. She moaned as the initial shock picked this moment to finally wear off, and the machine readied itself to knit flesh and bone back together. The microscopic sewing apparatus on the auto-surgeon made a low, uncomfortable buzz as it reassembled nerves and blood vessels.
Aslan indicated a comfy black lounge to Tuesday.
“We're safe here for now,” Aslan sighed, collapsing into the plush cricket leather. He gestured around the room, which was a simple cube about forty metres on a side. Besides the lounges, it was sparse. “This is just one of many panic bunkers spread throughout The Frontier. It operates as a completely intact system made from unbreakable ceramics, so now that it's sealed nothing can get in and nothing can get out without my say-so. We have enough supplies to last indefinitely, and the room can transform to become whatever we need it to be: we have hundreds of recreation options, deluxe sleeping berths, a six Michelin star meal hall, you name it.”
The thick vault door, which was designed to withstand explosions, siege weapons and even the vacuum itself, made a faint THOOM noise as a literal ton of rats worked in synchronisation to bludgeon it down from the other side. Everyone relaxed as the door remained exactly the same. There were even a few relieved laughs here and there.
There was a familiar whispering noise that stabbed ice into Tuesday's belly. It swept around the bunker, chittering just below comprehension. It was undoubtedly the same whispering he'd heard during his jaunt into the near future. The murmurs grew louder, swelling into clear hissing words, as though thousands and thousands of tiny voices were all contributing to the declaration.
“Two choices,” the tens of thousands of whispers hissed, “Join us, or feed us. There is no third option. You have one minute to decide.”
The whispers became laughter, and then shrank to nothing. Everyone was silent for a good ten seconds.
“They can't possibly have forced their way in here,” the Head of Space-Time finally moaned, looking around at the many ventilation ducts. “This is a sealed system. It's literally impossible to break into! No weapon known to mankind could have compromised our armour, let alone a bunch of tunnelling rats...”
“Did anybody actually check to see if the vents were clear before we sealed ourselves in?” September asked. “Who confirmed that the ventilation system was clear? Who?”
Everybody exchanged glances. When nobody put their hand up, Aslan tapped away at his Omni implant for a couple of seconds and broke the silence with an enthusiastic Guttertongue curse.
“The entire bunker is infested,” Aslan announced in a more cordial manner. “Our ventilation system is so choked with rats that we haven't got enough ammunition to make so much as a dent in their numbers. And let's not forget that our only way out is rodent central.”
“Is there another exit out of here?” Tuesday whispered at the Fleet Admiral. “Surely we survive this?”
Aslan shrugged. “Maybe. My memory isn't what it used to be. But for some reason I don't remember any of this happening...so it shouldn't be happening, right? Or maybe one of us somehow manages to fix all of this before we reach this point...”
“Your time has concluded,” the whispers announced.
“Form a line!” one of the Commanders roared, activating his kinetic rifle.
Every vent in the bunker bent savagely and started to snap, spitting rivets and caulk all over the shagpile carpet. Mice and large insects poured through in the dozens and were instantly liquefied with a few low-level blasts. Stun rounds proved effective against such weak targets, as did simply stomping them with boot heels. Eventually, though, the tide of vermin became too thick, and all of the shooters were all forced to reload and scrabble towards the back of the room.
Of course, as soon as vents began to pop Tuesday had immediately pushed through the masses of armed people in royal purple uniforms and cowered next to September in a safer spot. He had no weapons of any kind, so standing on the firing line was a stupid idea, and he'd only get in the way. As usual, his cowardice was also common sense.
“See, I've got a plan,” Tuesday murmured to September, huddling next to her in the very rear of the not-so-safe room. “We let these meatbags get chewed up first, the rats get too full, then there’s no room to fit the two of us in their bellies…”
Despite the fact September was still getting stitched up by the auto-surgeon, she acknowledged Tuesday with a wry smile. By now she should have known he wasn't joking.
“Surely, Robert, you know this is game over? The only way we're leaving is in ten thousand bite-sized pieces in ten thousand different bellies.”
“Maybe,” Tuesday said gently.
He reached out to touch September's sleek, black hair just as the wave of vermin reached an epic level. Now three feet high and thickening fast, the swamp of furry and chitinous bodies pressed in towards the juicy humans. Tuesday watched in horror as the old Fleet Admiral was consumed as he bravely waded in to save the first casualty. One moment Aslan was there, and the next his pink bones were being gnawed down to the marrow, his gun falling from fingerless, dead hands. The Fleet Admiral had just enough time to mouth a few words at Tuesday before vanishing into a multitude of digestive systems.
“What did he say to you?�
�� September yelled over the noise, unable to understand the Fleet Admiral's last statement over the scrabbling and screaming.
“He said don’t take this personally,” Tuesday moaned.
But Tuesday couldn’t help it: he'd taken it personally.
Looking up above September’s head, Tuesday noticed with glee that a row of large cabinets labelled with stencils declaring DEHYDRATED WATER and HYGIENE PRODUCTS and SUICIDE PILLS also included one labelled POWER SOURCES. Producing a pile of busted and burnt electronics from one of his sticky pockets, Tuesday quickly rifled through the POWER SOURCES shelves, raided two Triple-A Nuclear batteries, and did his level best to fix the mess of circuit boards.
Scum of the Universe Page 48
