Red Sky Dawning

by Ian J. Malone

  “Toxins?” Zier asked as he double-checked his own air reserves.

  “Majorly so,” Briggs said. “Don’t get me wrong, it won’t hit you at first. But if the seal on your suit gets compromised in any way, high-tail it back to the shuttle and find a replacement. Otherwise you’ll probably be seeing dragons in about twenty minutes. Also, watch your step out there and stay together. These people tend to keep their ships freakishly dark inside, and you’ll be lost in a heartbeat if you’re not careful.”

  “Any clue why that is?” Danny asked. “With their weird-ass fear of light, that is.”

  Briggs shook his head. “Not officially, no, but our science officer, Lieutenant Ovies, from the Kamuir theorized that it had something to do with a severe photosensitivity issue on the part of their species. He couldn’t be sure, though.”

  “That stands to reason,” Zier said. “At the time of the Great War, the Beyonder forces were never seen outside their armor during the Auran occupation. It wasn’t until years later that our scientists got to examine one outside of its suit, and that only happened because the Beyonder soldier in question had died in an avalanche and been left in the rubble.”

  “Okay, so their air sucks and they hate light,” Danny summed up. “Anything else?”

  Briggs pursed his lips. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Cool.” Danny turned to the next issue—the cartful of survey equipment before him that might as well have been alien itself. “Since we’re supposed to be engineers and all, I don’t suppose either one of you knows how to use any of this.”

  “As it happens,” Zier said proudly. “I do, indeed.”

  Someone banged on the outer hatch.

  Danny pulled on his hood. “Showtime.”

  Once the shuttle’s boarding ramp had lowered, the trio descended into the dark hangar outside where they were greeted by a towering, bipedal figure encased in hulking black armor. A centurion, Briggs had called it on the way in. The thing was armed with a rifle of some sort, the frame of which seemed predominately triangular minus the handgrip, and what was probably a power cell above the trigger housing.

  Yeah, that’s gonna be an issue, Danny thought, looking past the weapon to the centurion’s armor for any sign of vulnerability—a crease between the neck piece and shoulder pauldrons, maybe, or a break in the mask’s breather port, anything that wouldn’t deflect a bullet or blade if struck in just the right spot. For a split second, part of Danny wondered if this thing was even a real being at all, and not some sort of automated drone or battle mech that’d been sent on behalf of its flesh and blood masters. But then the damn thing spoke.

  “I am to escort you to our engine room,” the centurion said in the same slow, modulated voice as before. This time, however, the speech was preceded by three solid seconds of incoherent, digitized garble while Danny’s translator implant made the sync. “All other zones are restricted for authorized use only. Any violation of this accord will result in your immediate imprisonment for the duration of this voyage. Do you understand?”

  The trio nodded.

  The centurion turned to go. “This way.”

  Once inside the ship’s interior, Danny quickly saw through his hood what Briggs had meant by “horrific.” The place was built almost entirely of steel—or metasteel, the captain had called it—in what looked like a multi-level labyrinth of near pitch-black corridors and chambers. The composition of the metal, however, wasn’t what made the scene odd. That came with the freakish, organic tendrils that lined most of the major junctions like milky-white serpents from some sort of fright-night, H.R. Giger art expo. It was all downright eerie, and Danny’s skin crawled at the sight of it.

  Long, wet, and varying in thickness from angel-hair to that of a human forearm, the fleshy bio-tech vines had light magenta veins which protruded through layers of translucent scales, and could be seen snaking through most of the main corridors. They converged at various points into what looked like static-charged relays. As for what any of it did, Danny had no clue. But he was fairly certain about the organic part, evidenced by the vines’ reflexive twitching when approached and the swamp-like humidity that seemed to sustain them.

  “Told ya this place was strange,” Briggs muttered, the light inside his suit’s cowl casting his face in an ominous shade of washed-out blue.

  Danny acknowledged him with a look then averted his eyes when a three-guard security detail passed them in the hall. After that, the group continued their march for another fifty meters before exiting their current corridor into an open tube with a lift. Stepping onto the platform, Danny moved aside and allowed Zier to board with his cart, followed by Briggs, and then a second centurion who emerged from an adjoining tunnel. He wore a red, tri-barred glyph on his left chestplate, Danny saw, and their escort snapped to what looked like attention upon seeing him.

  So you’re a CO, Danny thought of the newcomer. Good to know. The senior centurion reached for the lift’s floor display and selected the top level. And I’d bet a paycheck that you’re headed for the CIC…Thanks for that. Danny’s brief surge of confidence was muted, however, once the lift began to move, and he found himself straight out over a chasm in an open atrium. Oh no.

  There, beyond the sticky tropical haze of the ship’s intra-environment, rested a sprawling honeycomb of steel chambers, platforms, and catwalks or lifts, all connected by a glistening-wet cornucopia of network-webbing, scales, and opaque, sinuous tissue.

  This isn’t a ship, Danny thought in grim astonishment, guessing the ship’s crew to number in the thousands. It’s a damn hive.

  Feeling a shudder through his feet, Danny jerked back to his senses in time to see the lift begin its descent toward main engineering. Shortly after, the group stepped off ahead of their escort, who then led them down another corridor into a large room like the hangar from before. This one, however, was packed with biotech, culminating in the massive domed reactor at the heart of the chamber where a dozen or so red-scaled humanoids were busy.

  So that’s what you bastards look like out of armor, Danny thought, eyeing their jumpsuit-style cloth uniforms.

  “You are forbidden to approach the reactor,” the centurion warned. “Any attempt to access its systems in any way will be met with severe force. You are authorized to collect your measurements from there.” He pointed to a small patch of open floor adjacent to the dome’s pulsing right hemisphere.

  Briggs nodded in his hood and stepped forward. “Thank you. We’ll take it from here.”

  The guard said nothing. He simply turned and assumed his watch post in a corner near the exit.

  “Okay,” Danny said to Briggs once the alien was out of earshot. “How long can we reasonably stand here, pretending to be busy, before they start getting suspicious?”

  “Ten minutes, maybe.” Briggs handed an EM-counter to Zier. “Fifteen if we milk it.”

  “How about these guys’ armor?” Danny asked. “It’s a decent bet we’ll go toe-to-toe with at least one of them before this is all over.”

  Briggs pulled a tripod from the cart and extended its legs to the floor. “No clue on the armor. I do know this—it’s tough, real tough. I saw some left over in the ruins on Kurgoria, and outside of the typical environmental wear and tear, it’d barely been dented in more than a century.”

  “Are we sure these things are even flesh and blood?” Danny asked, taking a sensor device from Zier and mounting it on the tripod. “We’ve got drones on my world that we use in lieu of real troops all the time, and we’re not nearly as advanced as these guys.”

  Briggs and Zier exchanged confused looks, and Danny silently cursed himself for the slip about Earth.

  “No, the armor I saw on Kurgoria was nearly identical to what we’ve seen here,” Briggs said, “and there were skeletal remains inside it. That tells me they’re manned.”

  Danny rubbed his hands together. “Good, that’s what I want to hear. As long as they bleed, that means they can die.”

  “I�
�m open to suggestions,” Briggs grumbled past his scanner, “especially given that it was your call to come here. By the way, how’s it coming with your master plan to stop this thing, anyway?”

  Danny shot the captain a glare. “I’d be a lot further if you’d get your clock outta my ass so I can think.”

  A massive pulse surged through the reactor.

  “What was that?” Danny asked.

  “I think we just jumped into hyperspace,” Zier said with a glance at his instruments. “By my count, and based off of what little I know of these ships’ speed, I’d say we’re looking at an hour at most until we exit our window into the Coralin System.”

  Briggs turned back to Danny. “You were saying about that clock?”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 35: Entrapment

  Danny’s pulse began to quicken. “Chancellor, we got anything on that cart of yours that might double as an explosive?”

  “Unfortunately no,” Zier said. “They’d never have allowed us to bring anything like that in here.”

  Danny fired a frustrated glance to the ceiling. “Fine, screw it. If we can’t blow the ship from the engine room then maybe we can do it from the CIC. I say we make a break for it.”

  “What?” Briggs blurted.

  “Shhh,” Zier warned.

  “We can’t even move around engineering without eyes on us, and now you wanna make a run at their CIC? Good gods, Tucker, do you even know what reality is?”

  Danny looked back at the guard in the corner. “It’s doable if you can get me that guy’s armor.”

  Briggs’s cheeks flushed. “You’re unbelievable, man!”

  “Hey, all I need is a way to get him to open his faceplate,” Danny said, “then it’s all gravy and gray matter from there. Just help me out.”

  “If I may, gentlemen, I have a thought on that,” Zier said.

  “Oh, not you, too,” Briggs said. “Chancellor, I understand Tucker’s readiness to run off of a cliff for the sake of his vendetta, and that’s his right. I also get it that you feel partially to blame for much of what’s happening here today. But please, sir, I’m begging you. Let’s take a breath and think about this.”

  Zier placed a hand on Briggs’s shoulder and fished a pen-sized device from the cart’s top shelf. “I may not have an explosive on me, but I do have this.”

  “What is it?” Danny asked.

  “It’s a standard power-to-source ratio emitter,” Zier said. “It’s designed to measure the power output of most low-level electronics, though with the proper tweaking, it can also be used to modulate that output, perhaps even to overload.”

  “Okay?” Danny said. “But you just told us you can’t use it to blow their reactor, so what’s the point?”

  “Indeed I can’t. What I can do, however, is use it to overload most any of these.” Zier pointed to the tools on the cart and waited for the others to catch on.

  “The light issue!” Briggs lit up. “If Ovies’s theory about their photosensitivity is correct, then they must be seeing through some sort of thermal view. That means if you blow one of these in tight enough quarters—”

  “Then boom,” Danny finished. “You’ve got yourself a makeshift flash-bang grenade. Nice, I like it.”

  “Can’t do it here.” Briggs gave a subtle head gesture to the black-garbed alien engineers across the room and the three centurions outside. “Too much of an audience.”

  “Agreed,” Zier said. “How about our ship in the hanger? It’s isolated enough. If we can get the centurion onboard that’d put him out of view of any surveillance they’ve got posted up in the bay.”

  “Leave that to me,” Briggs said.

  “Home-field advantage,” Danny said. “I’m always a fan. Chancellor, you’re in charge of the fireworks. Captain, you’re on bait duty, and I’ll handle the rest. All right, let’s—”

  “Hang on just a second, Tucker,” Briggs said. “Let’s say for the sake of discussion that we do somehow manage to get this guy out of his armor. What then? This is a piece of alien biotechnology we’re talking about, not just straight hardware. So there’s no guarantee it’ll interface with your anatomy.”

  Good point, Danny thought. Not that it changed things. “Yeah well, far-fetched as it seems, it’s still our only play. And besides, this isn’t my first time climbing into tech that wasn’t exactly built for someone like…Well, my kind.”

  Briggs shook his head. “I’ve gotta hand it to you, Tucker. You’ve got a pair of shells, that’s for sure.”

  Danny shot him a wry grin then spun for the guard. “Hey, excuse me! I think we’re gonna need a few more things from our shuttle, so does that mean we’re with you?”

  Making their way out of engineering back to the lift, the group retraced their steps through the Kurgorian House of Horrors until finally they arrived back at their designated bay where the Alystierian shuttle still slumbered on its platform.

  Danny glanced at the time. Thirty minutes ’til Zier’s deadline. We’ve gotta do this now. Picking up the pace to cross the hangar floor, he trotted up the boarding ramp behind Briggs, who dimmed the lights to minimum from the cockpit, and ahead of Zier, who halted at center-cabin with his cart. Once everyone was set, Danny pulled his silenced pistol from a nearby compartment, held it out of sight, and signaled to Briggs to do his thing. A half-second burst of starboard thrust later, the shuttle lurched hard in its moorings and re-stabilized on its landing struts.

  “Sorry!” Briggs shouted.

  Like clockwork, the centurion scampered up the boarding ramp and into the main cabin, his rifle already raised.

  “Our humblest apologies.” Zier held up his hands. “Our pilot is new and not quite sure of himself at the helm. It was an honest mistake, really.”

  The centurion took a menacing step toward them. “All ships must adhere to standard docking protocols at all times.” His weapon began to lower. “Failure to comply will—”

  “Zier!” Danny shouted, and buried his face in his sleeve as the chancellor flipped the switch. A muffled boom rumbled, and he jerked up to see the dazed centurion reeling on his heels and howling in anguish, armored hands clutching his eyes, which were now exposed.

  Danny put his gun to thing’s temple and tapped the trigger.

  “Tucker, you good?” Briggs asked from the cockpit.

  “I’m fine,” Danny said, hovering over the alien’s body, half of its cranium gone.

  “Chancellor?”

  “I’m well, Captain, thank you.”

  “Briggs, close the hatch and get on the horn to the Kurgorian officer you spoke to earlier.” Danny dragged the corpse to center-floor and dropped it next to Zier. “Let him know that all’s well down here, otherwise we won’t be alone for long.”

  “What are the odds that no one else heard the ship move?” the chancellor asked.

  “Are you kidding?” Danny surveyed the armor for any sign of a manual release. “Man, I’m not even that lucky in Vegas!” Spying a tiny seam between the helmet and the shoulder pads, he shoved his fingers into the crevice and continued the search.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Zier said. “For all you know, this suit will kill you if you try to wear it.”

  “Maybe,” Danny said, sliding from limb to limb and panel to panel with his fingers. “But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now, I’m focused on finding a way into the thing so I can—” He halted when he touched something small and round beneath the right deltoid plating: a button. Danny pressed it, and within seconds, all three men stood motionless against the wall as the armor’s torso section split open like a black metallic onion to reveal the red-scaled humanoid inside.

  “Wow, I think I saw this guy in a Ghostbusters movie once,” Danny joked. His sarcasm vanished abruptly, however, when the alien had been removed and he caught sight of four dozen hypodermic needles, each one glinting and glistening with some sort of green fluid as they lined the cocoon where his bare back was about to lay. “Oh, y
ou’ve gotta be shitting me!”

  “Dear gods,” Zier gasped.

  Danny aimed a glower at Briggs. “So, you mean to tell me that at the time I was coming up with this plan, it never once occurred to you that I might wanna know about the razorblade suitcase waiting to Ginsu my frickin’ ass at the end of it? Really, thanks for that.”

  The captain’s look turned rueful. “I didn’t think it would come to that. Listen, Tucker, the chancellor’s right. There has to be another way to do this. We just need to find it.”

  Danny glanced at the suit, back to Briggs, then back to the suit and swallowed. “If by some miracle we can use this thing to seize control of their CIC then one of two things is gonna happen. Either we use this ship to stop the attack before it happens, or we blow it ourselves and take out a butt-ton of their resources. Either way, it’s a win-win for the ASC, which is frankly all I care about at this point.” Danny nudged the suit with his foot as the needles inside of it retracted, probably for reinsertion into the machine’s new operator. He shivered at the thought. “This is happening guys. Just do me a favor and fire a prayer up to your gods that this works, and I don’t get sliced to ribbons in the process.”

  Having said his piece, Danny eased himself into the armor, starting with his legs, which slid into sheaths. There were others for his arms, before he was lying flat on his back in the cocoon.

  “Take this.” Zier handed Danny an emergency O2 canister. “I’ve disabled the helmet’s breather port to keep the native air out, but you’ll still need oxygen.”

  Danny nodded and tucked the canister into the only free space he had left, at his side under his arm, and fed the regulator tube to his lips, which were trembling. “Okay…Seal me up.”

  Grudgingly, Briggs reached for the button under Danny’s right shoulder, causing the five metal strips protruding from the armor’s torso to collapse back down into a solid protective cover.

  Inside, Danny felt the limbs of the suit begin to tighten around his own, as if it were grafting itself to his body somehow. And yet as unsettling as the whole thing was, not to mention the fright of being locked in a steel coffin, Danny still felt as if he were holding up okay, all things considered.