by Donald Swan
The crowd glanced suspiciously at one another.
Ignoring the nervous wave of tension that swept through the hangar bar, Onaka continued. “Luckily, we have devised a way to identify the altered nanites and eradicate them from the host’s brain. We will require each of you to be scanned.” The Admiral paused to lean toward Captain Argos, addressing him discreetly. “We are uncertain as to how long they have employed this technique, but it is likely the spy would be someone new to your crew. Perhaps a survivor you picked up recently?”
“Well, there have been two recent additions to the crew. The human and—”
“Sir!” Arya interrupted. “Arnon…he’s gone. I saw him before the Admiral landed. He was standing right there. But he’s gone now.”
The Admiral looked at the Captain curiously. “Who is this Arnon?”
Argos looked tense. “A new crewmember, Sir. And a recently rescued survivor!”
Admiral Onaka confidently took control of the situation. “Captain, if he is a spy, we can’t let him run loose. We have to find him, and quickly. Start searching immediately.”
Argos looked at Arya. “Form search parties. I want him found.”
She nodded, saluted Admiral Onaka, and immediately turned away to begin organizing search teams.
Argos returned his attention to the Admiral. “Sir, I’m sure it has been a long journey. You may use my quarters while we search for the missing crewmember.”
“Very well, Captain. But I won’t rest until you’ve found that man.”
“Understood, Sir.” With his usual diplomacy, Argos gestured toward the exit of the hangar bay and stood back in deference to allow the Admiral to precede him out of the bay.
Being one of the first teams organized, Nick and Karg quickly headed to the aft section of the ship. They had both agreed that the engine room was a good place to start their search. Lots of good hiding places there.
“Do you really think that kid could be a spy?” Nick asked, as he hurried down the corridor behind Karg.
“I don’t know. That stuff the Admiral said was pretty scary. I was even beginning to question myself. I mean, I don’t remember how I got this scratch. I just woke up this morning and there it was.” Karg gestured to a scratch on his top, left arm and then gave Nick a look that expressed his deep concern. “I don’t want to be a spy. I’ve worked too hard for the Resistance. Just the thought of being a spy and not even knowing it gives me chills.”
“Karg, you’re not a spy. That much I’m sure of.” Nick gave Karg a pat. “Listen, buddy, I know this stuff messes with your mind. Hell, it’s messing with mine. But you gotta stay focused. You’re not a spy. I’m not a spy.”
Karg frowned.
Nick fumbled for something else to say. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea that he’d just brought attention to the fact that he was a stranger among them, a survivor they had picked up, exactly what Onaka had just warned them about. “Um, by the way, did you notice the Admiral is a frog?”
“Yeah, he’s Serkozi. They’re amphibians. Great jumpers, those Serkozi. Why do you ask? You don’t have anything against amphibians, do you?”
Nick shook his head. “No…of course not. It’s just…this is all new to me. Before I met you, I had never seen an alien. Let alone an alien frog. It will just take a little getting used to I guess. Back on Earth, frogs are little things, not six feet tall, walking on two legs and…talking.” Nick’s brow went up. The whole thing was just weird.
“Admiral Onaka is actually a legend among the Serkozi. They even named a close combat maneuver after him. In the battle of Banahng, the Admiral was boxed in by two Mok’tu in front of him and one approaching from the rear. All he had on him were two pistols. The Mok’tu expected him to surrender. But he didn’t. Instead, he ran straight at the two oncoming soldiers and leapt into the air. As he passed over them, he flipped upside down and emptied fifteen rounds into each of their heads. They were dead before they hit the ground.” Karg chuckled, a deep-throated rumbly sound that rolled off the walls around them. The big guy was obviously pleased by Onaka’s prowess. “Here’s the real kicker. When Onaka started his jump, the two Mok’tu opened fire, missing him, but striking the third soldier coming up from behind. He singlehandedly took out three Mok’tu and walked away without a scratch. Nowadays that move is known as the Onaka maneuver, and it’s standard training. Of course, it never worked on Tac Squad soldiers on account of their shields. But now that we have these new rounds, the Onaka maneuver gives us a new option.”
“Pretty impressive,” Nick said. Judging by the roll of blubber around the Admiral’s middle, it must have been a while since Onaka had pulled off that maneuver, but Nick wasn’t about to mention that to Karg. No doubt the old frog had since retired to an easier life of giving orders from behind a desk.
Karg suddenly stopped and pointed down the corridor ahead of them. “You see that?”
“The door to the lab? Yeah, it should be closed.” Nick’s voice was low and quiet.
“Exactly.” Karg stealthily approached the open door. Nick followed.
“Cover me,” Karg said. Without even a second for Nick to prepare, Karg swung into the doorway, bringing his weapon to bear. Nick slid into the room behind him, ducking to the side in order to maneuver around some tables. Cautiously, they swept through the lab in search of Arnon.
After a few minutes of searching, Karg announced, “It’s clear…but what the frek is wrong with the lights?”
Nick tried to manually activate the lights in the room. Karg was right, they were completely inoperative. As he made his way back across the lab, he noticed something odd about the device Arya had been studying so intently. As he approached to investigate, the light from his pistol gleamed off slivers of green crystal that were lying on the table around the device. The crystal was shattered! From the marks on the box it looked as though someone had attempted to pry it out.
“Now that’s strange,” Nick said. “I know this was intact when we left the lab this morning. Someone has definitely been here.”
Karg looked down at the shards of crystal and then back at Nick, grunting out “Come on!” as he turned and headed for the door.
Suddenly, the high-pitched squeal of an alarm screeched throughout the ship, forcing Nick to squint one eye from the pain in his vibrating eardrums. “Agh!”
“This is the Captain. The Admiral’s been shot! I want the officer’s section sealed off immediately!” echoed over the ship’s intercom.
“Frek! That’s on the other end of the ship.” Karg spun his massive body around and headed for the Captain’s quarters with Nick following close behind.
Nick squinted in pain every time the damn siren wailed. Even covering his ears didn’t help. He peered over at the big leather-skinned Rakozian with his one half-open eye. “Doesn’t that bother you?”
“What? You mean the alarm? You don’t like that? It reminds me of the Grand Rakozian Opera. Now, there’s a woman who can sing.”
Nick was still busy trying to figure out if that was just another one of Karg’s jokes when they both skidded to a halt at an intersecting corridor, barely avoiding someone else coming down the other hallway. Guns drawn and muscles tensed at the ready, they realized it was only Arya barreling around the corner.
“Whew! I thought you were the spy.” Nick bent over and held himself up with one hand on his knee as he huffed for more air.
Arya let out a big sigh as her shoulders slumped down in relief. “Yeah, you scared the sket out of me, too.”
“Did you hear?” Nick queried.
“Yeah, I was near there when it happened. I thought I saw someone go that way.” She motioned to the adjacent corridor.
“Come on, we’ll go with you,” Karg roared. The big guy was obviously ready for action and prepared to get this spy business over with quickly.
A distant, horrifying scream permeated the ship. The team looked around and then back at one another. “Where did that come from?” Nick questioned as he t
urned to listen down the passageways.
Arya’s ears twisted around as she attempted to pinpoint the location of the sound. “Quickly. This way.” She turned and sprinted down a secondary corridor.
Down the darkened passageway a figure slowly came into view. Through the dim lighting Nick could make out the silhouette of a body lying face up on the deck. As they approached, it was clear who it was. The young Arnon lay dead on the floor, his mouth open wide. A terrible silent scream locked on his face.
“Look at his hands. It’s as if he was reaching out in horrible pain,” Arya noted.
“If he just died, why is he stiff?” Nick questioned.
Arya pulled out her ever-handy scanner and ran it over the corpse. “It’s exactly like the bodies we discovered on the planet. No signs of— Wait, this doesn’t make sense. I should be getting some cellular activity and residual nerve impulses, but I’m not.”
“I don’t understand. He’s dead, right?” Nick said perplexed.
“Yes, but normally the cells in the body take a while to stop functioning. Even after the heart or brain function has stopped. There should be some residual energy reading. This body has no energy readings. Even the bacteria are dead. Something has drained every ounce of cellular and nerve energy out of him. What could do that?”
“Some kind of horrid, new weapon?” Karg offered. His big eyes were scrunched in concentration, and he rubbed his head with one of his four hands, as if the motion would help him think better.
“No, I don’t think this was a weapon.” Arya was still focused on the oddity of the corpse.
Nick tilted his head to the side, disturbed by the look on Arnon’s face. “Could this have anything to do with that alien device from the planet? We just found it in the lab, broken.”
Arya looked up at him. “Broken? What do you mean…broken?”
Karg spoke up. “Looked like someone tried to pry that crystal thing out of it. Nothing left but shattered pieces.”
Arya tapped her com-badge. “Captain?”
Argos replied over the link “Yes, Arya. What do you have?”
“Arnon is dead, Captain.”
“Good work, Arya.”
“No…Sir, it wasn’t us. We just found him lying dead in the corridor.”
“Suicide?”
“No, I don’t think so, Sir.”
“Arya, are you telling me that someone else is running around on this ship killing people?”
“Not exactly, Captain. I have an idea, but I have to get to the lab to check it out.”
“Alright, but let me know the moment you have anything.”
“Yes, Sir.” Arya looked up at Nick with concern. “We need to get to the lab. If what I think is happening, we are all in serious danger.”
Agitated by the situation, Nick followed along. “What is it with this place? Why couldn’t I have been spit out into a nice vacation spot? Maybe somewhere the natives think I’m a God and bring me drinks on the beach. Instead, I land in psychopath world, where everything is trying to kill me!” Realizing no one was paying attention to his little fit, and afraid of falling behind in the dark corridor, he stepped up his pace. “Hey, guys…. Wait up!”
At the lab, they managed to get the lights back on, and Arya began examining the damaged device. “Karg, are the translations of those papers we brought back from the planet finished yet?”
“Yeah, it’s an old Kymean dialect. Took the system a bit longer to decipher it.”
Turning to the translated text on her holo-display, Arya dove into reading. “My God, this is incredible.”
Nick didn’t move. His eyes panned cautiously over to her. The last time he heard those words, he ended up being sucked into hyperspace moments later. It wasn’t exactly comforting. “Do I even want to know?”
Nick and Karg converged on Arya’s workstation. They peered over her shoulder at the display, waiting for her to explain.
“This was written by the colony’s lead scientist. Something was killing people in the community, one by one. He says here that it was some kind of creature that looked like black smoke. A creature of pure energy. It would often attack people in their sleep. Apparently, it was able to mask its energy signature and would only appear right before it attacked. It drew the life energy out of its victims, killing them within seconds. The victim would become paralyzed as it fed on their brain energy. After that was depleted, it would start to extract any cellular energy left within the tissues of the victim’s body. The colonists were completely defenseless against it.” Arya scrolled through the text and pointed to a section. “Here he talks about how he was finally able to create this device to capture the creature. But not before it had decimated the entire town.”
“It’s...an energy vampire?” Nick frowned in concentration as he pondered the news. His eyebrows automatically shot upwards when he realized the truth. “My God, he used himself as bait! That’s why there was a dead man’s switch!”
“Yes. And it worked. But now that thing is loose on this ship.” Arya glanced nervously around the room. “And the worst part is that the crystal is destroyed, and I hadn’t even gotten round to figuring out how the device worked.” Arya scanned through the documents looking for some answers to the device’s operation while she contacted Argos. “Captain, we have a problem. I am linking you what I have learned so far.”
“Very well. I’ll be in my ready-room,” Argos replied over the com-link.
Nick sat down next to Arya, his brain already working to solve the problem. “What about shields? Would that protect us?”
“No. The villagers tried that. It just fed the monster, making it stronger. The thing even fed off their energy weapons. Some of the colonists attempted to leave the planet in a transport, only to be killed by the monster shortly after liftoff. With no one left alive to fly the ship, it crashed, destroying the only means of escape that the rest of them had. They were trapped on the surface with that thing, waiting to become its next victim. It must have been horrible.” Arya hardly looked away from the monitor, studying the documents as she spoke. The nanites in her brain were helping her process the data at an astounding rate. “Now this is interesting. Good thing he kept detailed notes.”
Nick looked at her intently. “What’s interesting?” he said in a dry voice, the words barely squeaking their way out of his tense throat. He glanced warily over his shoulder at the dark doorway behind him, trying not to appear obvious. The damn thing was watching, he could swear it.
Arya didn’t answer. She was too busy devising a plan. Suddenly, she shouted “Come on!” and bolted out the door.
“I wish she’d stop doing that,” Nick muttered.
Nick barely turned in time to see her disappear around the doorjamb. He sped out the door and down the hall, trying hard to keep up. The sound of Karg tromping along behind him echoed like a freight train as they all headed down the corridor to the lift. Arya waited impatiently in the transport tube as Nick and Karg hurried to join her. Arya punched the panel of buttons and sent the transport tube hurling toward the bridge level.
Nick glanced from Arya to Karg as he gasped for breath. Neither alien seemed affected by the sprint down the corridor. It was downright aggravating to be so physically inferior to the other species on the ship. “Man, I gotta get back into an exercise routine,” he wheezed.
The doors to the ready-room opened with a swoosh, and Nick and Karg stepped out behind Arya.
Argos glanced up from behind a console in the corner as the three entered the bridge. His usual calm demeanor had been usurped by dread. “You think that thing is on the ship?” His voice was tense, the concern for his crew apparent.
“I do,” Arya answered. “But I have an idea. It’ll be risky though.”
Argos pulled up a scan of the creature from the scientist’s data records and displayed it on the conference table’s holo-screen. “I don’t have any idea how to fight against something like this. I’m open to any options at this point.” Argos took a seat a
nd motioned for the three to join him at the conference table.
Once seated, Arya pulled up some additional data on the creature. “The creature is intelligent. At least somewhat. The scientist on the planet knew that sooner or later the monster would attack him. But the thing sensed what he was trying to do and stayed away from the device for weeks. The only reason the energy creature finally went after him was the fact that it was hungry. There were no other people or animals left alive on the planet. The scientist, Erakai was his name, gave his life to capture it.” Arya pushed the hovering holo-display off to the side with her hand so she could look directly at Argos. “I think I know how to get this monster off the ship and destroy it for good. But we’ll need to use the plasma torpedoes.”
