Titan: A Science Fiction Horror Adventure (NecroVerse Book 3)

by Aaron Bunce

  Jacoby felt the shiver run down his back again, that faint, slimy pressure moving inside his brain. It definitely didn’t feel normal…well, healthy.

  “I…am…damaged. The words are…hard. There are…implications. For you. For me. But…” Poole’s outline flickered, his facial features and clothing changing spasmodically.

  “This whole time, knowing that you were injured, why haven’t you used your healing capacity on yourself? What has changed? Are you getting worse?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said…before. I don’t have…pain receptors, so for the longest time, I thought I was slowed by the damage to your brain and the lack of biological infrastructure. But seriously, I couldn’t risk another connection with the pile of guts on Hyde. With that weird message corrupting the computer, I saw it as a risk we could not afford to take. Now, with Erik, my suspicions appear to be confirmed. There still might be…a connection I was missing. Ya know?” Poole smiled genuinely, then his eyes went blank, and his figure blurred. “Poor Asterix odds, Mr. Magoo,” Poole rambled next, his words sliding again into gibberish. “Ah!”

  “You’ve never really said it, but are you scared of what is growing back there on the station?” Lex asked. “And this connection…are the things on Hyde connected to that thing named in the message?”

  Poole’s faces scrunched up in concentration. He stomped his foot, and his eyes clarified right before his mustache popped back into place.

  “Hell, yes it scares me. If I had to physically remove waste from my body, I would totally crap my pants right now. I’m like a little kid standing at the top of the basement stairs, looking down into the darkness. The only difference is, the monsters are real, and I can hear and feel them. I don’t know what it means–the name and its strange power or why we would need to awaken this Taaaa-lll…nnn. Oh, never mind. But I feel it. Deep inside, reverberating at my cellular level. That name is tied to what I am, as if branded on every molecule in my slimy, slug-shaped body.”

  “Wow,” Anna gasped, Soraya nodding silently in agreement.

  “And you’re just telling us this now? When we’re practically breathing down Titan’s throat?” Lex asked.

  “It…is…hard. I purged Jacoby’s body of all my beneficial microbes after they…okay, we, inadvertently created that connection. Then my little program that wasn’t and then was again threw us in the blender and hit puree, so it’s not like I’ve had an abundance of opportunities. I was already running with no resources, and now I’m beat up and hemorrhaging. I’ve been holding Jacoby’s brain together with zip-ties and duct tape while also miraculously repairing the damage to Lana and Emiko, too. And if that wasn’t enough, lately something has been affecting me. It’s like something on this ship is producing a resonance that is throwing me off. I’ve started losing time, forgetting things. Losing myself. If that makes sense.”

  “Is it the message? Could it be related to what happened to the computer, perhaps as some feedback from Anna?”

  “Not entirely…dumb. Impressive connection, actually. I do not know. But since the ‘chair’ incident, I have been compensating for your loss to cognitive function, due to the damage to your frontal cortex. That region of your brain handles visual processing, memory, and dreaming. So…” Poole abruptly froze, his mustache disappeared, then reappeared upside down on his face.

  “Poole? What is it?”

  It was several long moments before he seemed to unfreeze and move again. He stepped forward and started slapping himself in the head.

  “You’re really starting to scare me. Is there something we should be doing? Is there a threat on this ship?” Lex said, her green eyes glinting as she leaned into the light.

  “Oh, Red. Yes. If I am right…ah…damn. I think you will really struggle to believe me. Trust me, I don’t believe me either. But it is some really bad juju.”

  “What is it?” Jacoby was on his feet, the hairs on his arms and neck prickling.

  “SKREE,” the radio squealed behind them, the noise quickly fading to static. Heart pounding, head aching, and heat rushing quickly out into his limbs, Jacoby spun.

  [Signal located] The receiver screen glowed brightly, a frequency number flashing on screen.

  “What is…?” Soraya started to ask, just as the audio feedback faded. And then a low, analog tone sounded…the pulse rising quickly in volume before fading again.

  “My god,” Lana gasped, “That’s a beacon…locked in at thirty-five point nine three zero megahertz, revolving at…”

  Jacoby listened and waited, his heart pounding uncomfortably in his chest.

  “Thirty seconds. They’re there! It’s active. Holy shit. We hear them!”

  Soraya pumped her fist and whooped silently, but Lex caught his gaze and he understood. There was a threat on the ship, or somehow, the ship was the threat. It was also possible they were rapidly approaching one on the planet. They simply didn’t know.

  “Poole, we’re running out of time. Do whatever you need to do to get yourself back to full strength. We need to know what is happening and why. We need some answers, like now,” Jacoby said.

  Poole nodded and immediately disappeared.

  -6:22 Until Entry

  “Okay, I’m just going to say it. Is anyone else like really freaked out right now? Why is it always one step forward and three back?” Soraya asked.

  “We don’t know it is something bad,” Jacoby said and looked around at Lana and then Lex. Their ghostly outlines, however different from the physical women he knew, clung tightly to them, and seemed to tell a different story. Different but alike. Why? What did it all mean?

  He looked to the receiver and the glowing number locked on screen. A good ten or fifteen seconds passed before the tone echoed out of the speakers again. It sounded stronger than before–as if he needed another reminder that the moon was quickly approaching, its silhouette now a massive, blue-green backdrop in their forward windows.

  Poole moved inside his head, the slimy pressure pushing behind his eyes and sending a searing pain deep into his head. Then a bubbling sensation filtered into the back of his skull and down his neck.

  Hello, old friends, he thought, as the microbes slowly started to filter out into his body. The sensation was horrible, grotesque, especially when he considered it meant a million small organisms were trickling out into his bloodstream.

  “I got to say, I’m more than a little freaked out, boss. Point me in a direction, cause otherwise I’m just standing here spinning in circles. This whole thing is starting to feel like we got dumped smack-dab in the middle of something much larger than we ever imagined–those things taking over the station, Poole, this ‘whatever it is’ that somehow has the power to manipulate everything with just its name. I’ll fight anything, you know that, but right now I’ve got nothing to put in my sights,” Lex said.

  “Do we wait?” Soraya added, nodding in agreement.

  “All we’ve done is wait…in silence. Hurry up and wait. Damn, this feels like I’m right back in the army again. Ugh!”

  Jacoby’s eyes flitted forward again, the looming moon immediately triggering a wave of panic and doubt inside. It had always felt so far away–a destination they’d be lucky to reach. But now it was on top of them, and all the hard questions still needed to be answered. Mainly, how they were going to successfully enter an atmosphere one and a half times thicker than Earth’s. But Lex was right. They needed to be working towards something–a goal, an end, anything productive, really.

  “Poole is working. Let’s give him time. We need to handle what we can manage. I’ll go and tell Erik that we’ve located the beacon. Then we make sure everything is in order for our entry.” He turned and looked around. “Maybe find Emiko. See if she’s sleeping. Fill her in.”

  “I can do that,” Soraya said and ran out of the room.

  “Okay. So, what do we do? Other than stand here and feel like lumps on the floor,” Lex shot back.

  “We’re punching at shadows right now,” Ja
coby said, trying to prioritize his thoughts. “But something has to make a shadow, right? And just because we can’t see it, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Lex, can you formulate some defensive responses? Maybe throw together what little we know, and put some contingencies in place?”

  “Damn straight. Find a thing and kill the thing. More or less,” she said, her back straightening, and then strode into the galley.

  “An entry will likely be pretty rough. This place is a mess. Let’s stow everything we can so we don’t have a bunch of debris flying around,” Anna said, speaking up.

  “Good idea. Yeah. Debris bad,” Jacoby agreed. She immediately started gathering components, wiring, and disconnected harnesses up in her arms…moving like a mother picking up a messy child’s room.

  Jacoby turned and immediately headed back into the dark galley, Soraya shouting Emiko’s name from one of the other rooms.

  “Hey, wait. I’m coming with you.” Lana bounced up next to him, her energetic presence already noticeably stronger than it had been even moments ago.

  They walked in silence back past the ladder to the hold and came to the aft maintenance passage. The door didn’t open as they approached, and when Jacoby pressed the open icon, it flashed red. He pushed it again.

  “Weird. I can’t even push open buttons without screwing up, it seems. Here, you try.”

  Lana moved forward and tapped the icon, eliciting the same effect.

  “Why is it locked?” she asked, her brow creasing. She leaned in, a ten-digit keypad appearing with a swipe. She punched in several numbers, but nothing happened. “It’s locked out. I can’t even get into administrative settings. What in the frick?”

  Soraya appeared from the starboard birth. “Emiko isn’t in the births. Did anyone see her go below?”

  “Would she be in the battery passage?”

  “I’ll look.” Soraya was off again, her form a blur in the darkness.

  “The door hasn’t been disconnected from power here. That much is obvious, or the panel wouldn’t work. It must be a fault on the other side, because this door is wired in tandem with the one on the other end, forming a pressure lock. Damn, I hope that isn’t the case. They could be trapped back there without any way to get out. It’d get really dark and cold back there if they lost power.”

  “Can we force it open?”

  “Sure, if Anna and I can tear this wall panel apart and disconnect the hydraulic locks like she did with the bridge. This passage, just like the engine room access, and the bridge pressure door, are all designed with the same fail safes as the external hatches. And we want that…if gas or fire from the mechanical compartments got into the living compartments, we’d all die really quick. Of course, it could just be a loose wire…”

  Jacoby watched as Lana started to wrench on the panel, a small access door finally popping free. She pulled a mass of fiber free, but as soon as her fingers began separating the numerous strands, a small, glowing icon appeared on the screen.

  “Was that it?” She jumped and moved to tap the open icon, but a voice crackled out of the panel before she could make contact.

  “It won’t open, Lana.”

  The voice was distorted, coming from the small speaker—compressed and flat.

  “Erik, is that you? Do you have power back there? Are you guys okay?” Lana asked, leaning in closer to the panel.

  “Yes…” The thin voice trailed off and Jacoby immediately wondered if the connection was severed. Lana threw him a sidelong glance but continued.

  “We found it! The beacon. Thirty-five-point nine megahertz and pinging loud and clear. Isn’t that fantastic? We don’t need to worry about that question anymore. Now we can focus on our entry. Can you trigger the door from your end? Or…or do I need to run diagnostics from this end and find the fault?”

  The silence stretched on again, the air around him somehow darkening and growing colder. He shivered and rubbed his arms. Was it just his nerves? Was this what prolonged time in a small vessel in space did?

  “I don’t need them—the people down there or their beacon. They don’t matter. Nothing but her matters.” Another voice echoed out of the speaker after Erik went quiet, but it didn’t sound like someone speaking. Were they singing? Were they crying?

  Lana’s face scrunched up and she mouthed, “what in the hell does that mean”?

  “Erik, come on, man. What are you talking about? Of course, we need people to be down there. Think about it…fresh water and food, sun lamps, maybe they’ve even got a pool.”

  “What does he mean by, ‘nothing but her matters’?” Jacoby asked.

  “I’m going for her, Lana. She draws me closer…even now I feel her presence growing stronger, her voice getting louder. I’m sorry that I can’t take you, too. You are corrupted now and can’t separate yourself far enough to feel what I feel, hear what I do. You are not worthy of her, none of you are. But maybe…” Erik paused, and through the crackling, weak connection, Jacoby could hear those faint voices. They weren’t singing. It was Emiko, and she was calling for help.

  “Lana, the heaters just shut off. Then the whole bridge went dark. Are you guys cycling power again?” Anna asked, moving towards them from the galley.

  “Erik, this is nonsense. Come on, open the door. We’re almost there. We can do this together. We can all make it. Whatever I said…whatever happened to you…” Lana said, her voice softening as she leaned right up next to the panel.

  “Maybe you’ll see her when you die, Lana. I hope you do. Then you’ll see how glorious she is. Goodbye.” Erik’s voice crackled and faded out. Then the whole panel went dark.

  “Guys, Emiko isn’t in the battery corridor, either.” Soraya appeared from the dark galley, her breath hanging heavily in the air. She was still several steps away when the lights went out, pitching them into a smothering darkness.

  -5:20 until Entry

  “What in the actual hell is going on?” Soraya yelled. “Why did he say that, Lana? Are you telling me he wants to kill us?”

  Jacoby felt his way forward, his hands catching the bulkhead just to the left of the door. Damn, it felt cold.

  Why didn’t I listen to Shane? It was his idea to lock the kid into a birth. If we’d have done that, then we wouldn’t be here right now…in the dark…screwed.

  He turned and tried to orient himself, but this was the special dark, the kind with no beginning or end, the kind that plagued his father’s dreams and fueled his nightmares. The kind that men had to endure to fix other people’s equipment deep underground, for no pension and base laborer’s wages.

  “Lana, can we rewire the door? I don’t know, tap into power somewhere else and force it open?” Anna asked.

  “I’m not sure you’ll want to,” Lex said, her voice echoing from somewhere to his left.

  “Jesus!” Lana yelped. “How about a warning when you walk up next to someone in the dark?”

  He heard something click, pop, and then plastic on metal as someone twisted two things together. A moment later, a weak, white light split the darkness. Despite its paltry beam, Jacoby still had to look away.

  “What does that mean? Why would we want to stay here in the dark? Anna already said the heaters shut off, and listen,” Lana said.

  They hovered for a moment, his eyes quickly adjusting to the newly introduced light. Jacoby held his breath and listened but there was just…nothing.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Soraya argued.

  “Exactly. No air flowing, which means no scrubbers, which means carbon dioxide is now starting to rise. So, I ask, why wouldn’t we want to?”

  Lex shone the light at the ground between them all and then tossed something heavy and metal onto the ground. It took Jacoby a moment to recognize what it was–a padlock, and the securing arm was cut.

  “Because whoever forces that door open just might get shot in the fucking face. He cut open my locker and took my damned rifle. Unless someone else in here took it?” Lex asked, her green eyes na
rrowed to slits.

  Jacoby looked around. But they did not need to say it.

  “Lex, come with me. I need your light,” Jacoby said, and promptly grabbed onto the ladder and started to descend.

  He was aware of the noise, the questions, all flooding the galley above and behind him, but his attention was singular now. It was on him–he should have recognized Erik as a threat and done something to stop him.

  Lex mounted the ladder above him, her light waving back and forth as she descended. The shifting shadows played hell on his balance, the memory of that horrible nightmare and his father’s monstrous chair threatening to burst forth in his mind.

  He hopped off and stepped back, waiting for her to descend and join him. A dark form appeared between them just as Lex dropped a boot onto the deck.

  “I told you not to go anywhere!”

  Lex swung around, her right fist narrowly missing Poole’s head, the left cutting in after he disappeared. Jacoby ducked, just missing some knuckles in his mouth.

  “Wow, easy. Come on now. What in the hell, Red?” Poole cried out, disappearing, and then popped back in to Jacoby’s left.

  Lex growled. “I said, don’t call me that, you worthless, pain in my ass.”

  She cut by Jacoby, shoving him aside with a stiff arm, and punched out, grabbing Poole by his jacket’s silken lapel. She pulled the arm up, lifting his double to his tiptoes and drawing their faces together.

  Jacoby watched, frozen and in awe, her anger radiating off her skin like waves of heat. And that wasn’t all. Her ghostly double glowed fire orange, its translucent details covering her like a magical garment.

  “Easy. Come on…let go of me. Just because you two can’t follow instructions,” Poole grumbled, somehow trapped in her grasp.

  “Lex, easy…”

  “How much did you know, parasite?” she snarled, shaking Poole. “Did you know he was going to maroon us? Did you know he took Emiko and Shane? Did you know he snuck into the locker room and took my rifle? Huh? Talk, parasite. Tell us how you knew the kid was going to try and kill us!”