by Eric Vall
“Together?” the mechanic asked my assistant. Neka nodded, and Akela turned to me next.
“Together,” I echoed, and squeezed the mechanic’s hand that I still held. The four of us slowly made our way out of the ship and into, what I realized, was the dusk of this planet’s day.
“H… holy frakking shit,” Akela gaped as we came to the end of the ramp.
Before us lay a sandy beach that stretched out to the ocean about thirty meters away. Beyond that, the navy blue water stretched out to the horizon where it bled into the darkening sky. The air tasted of salt and sea spray, and I took a deep and bracing breath.
It felt good to have solid ground under my feet again. Actually…
I moved slowly so as not to startle Akela out of her awe. I motioned to Neka to do the same thing, and together we took the last steps off the loading ramp and into the sand and drew the mechanic with us.
Akela gasped as her boots sank into the sand and her eyes shot downward. She lifted up one foot and then the other, the grains hissing back to the ground, a harmony to the sound of the lapping waves along the beach.
I couldn’t stop the grin that split my face as I took in her childlike awe. I remember that feeling, and from the look on Neka’s face, she did too.
“Welcome to your first planet, Akela Loric,” I said grandly. “Welcome to the universe.”
Since the mechanic had come aboard our ship, she’d let down her guard meter by meter. She smiled easier now, joked with us on a semi-regular basis. Unless Neka or I bothered her while she was working, she hardly ever scowled or glared at us anymore.
But I had never seen her like this. As she took in the sights before her, she hesitantly let go of our hands and took a tentative step forward. She wobbled a bit, still adjusting to the gravity shift, but she took a few more steps and seemed to get the hang of it. She walked out about five meters from the ship and then tilted her head back to look up into the twilight sky streaked in varying shades of purple. She stood there for a silent moment… and then she began to laugh.
And laugh and laugh. She jumped up in the air and hollered out a cry of exultation. She landed awkwardly on her feet, lost her balance, and fell flat on her ass, but she was still laughing.
It was contagious. Soon, Neka and I were also holding our sides as laughter spilled off our tongues. All the tension we had acquired in the last month since I’d been terminated slid right off our shoulders and into the sand as the three of us belly-laughed until we nearly cried.
Akela suddenly jumped up from where she had been making angels in the sand and ran back toward us. For a moment, I wondered if something was wrong, but I didn’t even have time to formulate a question before she launched herself at me. Her arms went around my shoulders and neck and she pressed herself against my body. It took me a moment to realize she was hugging me.
“Thank you!” she ardently exclaimed against my chest. “Thank the both of you!” She drew back before I could return the embrace and pulled Neka to her next. The cat-girl trilled in protest for a moment but quickly returned the hug, happiness bright as the sun on her face. I don’t think anyone but Omni and I had ever thanked her in her life.
“This… I… I can’t even…” the mechanic stuttered as she gestured around, above, and below us. “This is absolutely… it’s fucking amazing. I never even dreamed…” She trailed off as she looked out over the water again. Her eyes shone like they were their own stars. The silver-haired woman was usually so composed, it was good to see her with her hair down… so to speak.
“Happy to be of service,” I told her, and for once, it wasn’t a polite platitude. Just seeing the joy on the mechanic’s face… I would have done absolutely anything to keep it there.
Akela turned back to me, her face almost unrecognizable in its unrestrained glee. “Can we go…?” she trailed off and bit her lip as she realized how exuberant she sounded. “I mean… can we go to the water’s edge?” she asked, her voice a little closer to its normal pitch.
I opened my mouth to say yes… but a bloodcurdling roar cut me off.
Beside me, Neka yowled in terror, and I spun to the left to see something that made the blood in my veins turn to ice.
About a hundred meters down the beach, a black shape was trying to pull itself from the water. It was massive, nearly the size of our ship, and it had long tentacles that it was using to haul its bulk across the sand. Each time a tentacle struck the ground, I could feel the reverberations of it through my feet, like mini-earthquakes.
I couldn’t make out any more details of the beast. It was too dark now to discern its color or markings or, really, any other specifics of its features. Honestly, none of that was even important right now. What was important was getting the hell back on the ship and getting back up in the air as quick as possible.
I had already reached out and grabbed both Neka and Akela’s arms, and I was just about to haul them back up the loading ramp when Neka gasped and pointed out across the sand.
“CT!” she cried. “Look!”
I followed her line of sight and realized I had missed something when I was preoccupied with Akela’s face and then the horrendous nightmare that crawled out of the bay.
Halfway between the creature and us, a line of shadows moved across the sand. Over the throb of my pulse in my ear, I realized I could hear shouting, too, as the wind carried the sounds up the beach toward us.
Those were people, I realized, as I watched them scurry from the water’s edge and what I saw was a small clutch of boats that had been run aground.
The creature let out another teeth-rattling roar.
No, those aren’t people. Those are dinner if we don’t do something.
So much for our beach-side reprieve.
Chapter 9
The three of us stood frozen in terror on the lip of the loading ramp as we watched the nightmare unfold before us. It looked like something out of a shitty horror movie: the amorphous beast hauling itself from the sea, the screaming people, the empty wasteland that seemed to stretch out infinitely between us. My brain was still trying to play catch-up when Akela seized my shoulder and shook me.
“CT!” she cried out. Her violet eyes were wide in her pale face, all traces of joy in them replaced by abject fear. “We have to do something! Are there any weapons on the ship?”
I blinked at her, my mind a fog, synapses firing too slow. “W… what?” My jaw hung down like it was full of cement.
Akela grabbed my other shoulder and shook me bodily. “Colby! We need weapons! Guns! Or those people are going to die!”
That snapped me out of it. It was like a dam broke in my bloodstream. One moment, nothing, the next, adrenaline flooded my veins like a tsunami.
I looked down at the mechanic. “There are some weapons in the back of storage,” I told her as I ran through a mental catalog of our purchases from Theron. She probably hadn’t seen them because they were under much of the food and medical supplies. “But they’re just particle beam guns, small laser pistols, a handful of larger calibers. Nothing big enough to take on that! It’s nearly the size of the ship!” I pointed at the beast that was nearly all the way out of the water now. It looked grotesquely gargantuan on the flat beach, a mountain of moving, killer mass.
The mechanic cursed and glanced back down the beach. The shadowy figures we had seen were now running toward us, but they were quickly losing ground. The sand was slowing their progress, and the creature was using its tentacles to drag itself across the beach. It wasn’t moving super fast, but the immense size of it meant that every time it lashed out its nearly ten-meter-long tentacles, it gained that much ground while the people still struggled to find their footing in the sand.
It was going to catch those fleeing people sooner rather than later.
Suddenly, an idea occurred to me. “The ship!” I exclaimed. “The ship has ion cannons!”
The silver-haired woman gaped at me, which made sense. I had nearly forgotten about them, and she, no d
oubt, hadn’t worked on them because the Lacuna Noctis wasn’t a military vessel. That said, Terra-Nebula always outfitted their ships with standard defense weaponry and systems in case of emergencies such as this. I had never had to use them, but hey, there was a first time for everything.
“Omni!” I shouted up the loading ramp, but Akela was a step ahead of me as she spun and bounded up into the belly of the ship. A moment later she reappeared with one of the mini-drones at her side. They both carried laser rifles.
“Catch, Colby!” the AI called down to me as the drone tossed the rifle into the air. I caught it just as Akela reached my side.
“O had already pulled these out of storage,” the mechanic panted. “He said he can man the ion cannons, but we need to get those people clear of the blast radius.”
I listened as I racked my weapon, and the sound of the charging energy round made the hair on my arms stand up. I wasn’t a particularly huge fan of guns since I was usually able to talk myself out of situations first, and if that failed, I was more than efficient at hand-to-hand combat from my time growing up on Proto. Guns lacked finesse. However, I wasn’t about to try to punch the nightmare heading toward us, so guns were now my new best friend.
“CT,” Neka suddenly mewled from my side. I turned to my assistant to see her cowering on the loading ramp, her ears pressed flat against her head, her tail tucked between her legs. She was terrified, and her yellow eyes were covered by a film of unshed tears.
I reached over and gently grabbed her elbow. “Go wait with Omni on the ship,” I told her as I steered her body up the ramp. “You’ll be safe there.”
I could tell the cat-girl didn’t want to leave me, but she also knew she wouldn’t be of any help down here. She darted forward and pressed a light kiss to my cheek.
“Be careful,” she said, and then the Omni drone was ushering her back up into the cargo hold.
I turned to Akela to give her the same spiel, but the mechanic leveled a flat look at me and racked her own weapon. She obviously knew her way around a gun.
“I’m not waiting on the ship,” she said as she raised her sharp chin in defiance. “So tell me the plan and let’s go.”
There was no time to argue and no time to think of being afraid, so I just nodded and pointed out across the beach.
“We’ll flank it from the left and right. I don’t think these weapons will do much to stop it, but hopefully they’ll be enough to at least draw its attention,” I said quickly. “Once those people are far enough away, I’ll give Omni the order to fire the ion cannons. We can’t get too close, and we can’t lose sight of one another. Got it?”
“Got it,” the mechanic nodded, and then we were running, Akela down the left flank and me down the right.
Immediately I realized the sand was going to make this extremely difficult. My feet sank up to the ankles, and I had trouble not falling flat on my face. I glanced over to see that Akela was doing no better, worse in fact given that this was her first time her feet were on solid ground. I cursed but kept pushing.
The beast was now about seventy-five meters away. The people it was trying to turn into prey were about twenty-five meters. I couldn’t make out any of their details, but I started shouting at them, waving my free arm over my head.
“Run toward the ship!” I screamed and gestured behind me to where the Lacuna Noctis was slowly starting up, the whirl of its engines nearly drowned out by the roar of the beast and the crash of the sea against the beach. I didn’t know if they could understand me, but I kept screaming anyway, pointing to the ship, and miracle of all miracles, they seemed to get the idea. Instead of just fleeing in terror, now the figures made a beeline straight for the ship. With that taken care of, I turned my attention back to the beast.
As it drew nearer, I was suddenly assaulted by a god-awful stench. It smelled of rotted, bloated things that had been left out in the sun and surf, a smell of decay and salt and bile. It tore at my throat as I drew in ragged breaths and I had to make an effort not to gag.
The creature was within fifty meters now, and I skidded to a stop in the sand. I could now see the shape of its head, the gleam of what I thought were dozens of eyes and what I knew were dozens of sharp, lethal teeth. I glanced to my left to see Akela was a little farther back but had come to a halt as well. I waved my arm at her, she waved back, and we both turned to the beast and took aim.
It had been a while since I’d fired a gun, let alone one of this size, so the first shot took me by surprise. The gun barked in my hand, the stock snapped back into my shoulder, and the shot went wide by at least fifteen meters. I watched as the red beam sailed right by the beast and cursed. Akela’s shot didn’t find its mark either, but the creature sure as hell noticed us.
It let out a roar that made my ears ring. I had to stop myself from dropping the gun and clapping my hands over my ears to keep out the awful noise. Instead, I took aim again and tried to calm my racing heart.
Then I took a deep, slow breath, let it out, and squeezed the trigger.
I found my mark this time. The laser shot through the air and nailed the beast in the side of the head. I didn’t have time to celebrate, however, because the creature screeched and suddenly hauled half its body upright. I fired again into its exposed belly, and it shrieked before slamming back down into the sand. The resulting tremor knocked me off balance, and I pitched sideways. I managed to catch myself before I face planted, but behind me I heard screaming.
I looked over my shoulder and saw that most of the people had made it to the ship. Omni had spun it around so that the bow was now faced in this direction. But about twenty meters away, right smack between Akela and I, it seemed a couple individuals had been knocked off their feet by the beast’s rage-induced earthquake. One of them had managed to get back on their feet and was trying to pull their friend up, too.
They weren’t fast enough.
The beast noticed them about the same time I did and it began to move in earnest across the sand now, its tentacles eating the distance between them. I realized they wouldn’t be able to flee in time, and my feet began to move before I could even tell them to.
“CT!” I heard Akela scream, her voice thinned and made nearly inaudible by the howling wind and wailing beast. I didn’t pause to look at her. I ran as fast as my legs could take me, my rifle firing shot after shot at the creature. Some made contact, some missed completely, but still, the beast kept coming.
“Omni!” I yelled. I had a distant thought that I was incredibly grateful to Akela for adapting our communication devices. “Those cannons better be hot! Be ready to fire on my signal!”
“Colby, you are in my direct line of fire,” the AI responded in my ear, and he might be a robot, but that sounded like fear in his electronic voice. “If I shoot--”
“Then lift the ship off the beach!” I cut him off. “Fire over our heads!”
“I don’t think--”
“Just do it, O!” I screamed.
I had nearly reached the prone figures in the sand. They looked up as I approached but I didn’t have time to take in the details of their faces. Behind them, I saw Akela cutting across the sand toward them, too. She also fired at the beast as she ran, and it looked like we would meet in the middle at the same time. I wanted to wave her off, to tell her to get clear, but there was no time.
Just as we were about to meet, the creature reared up once again. It was only twenty-five meters away now. If it lashed out its tentacles, it could most likely reach us.
“O, now! Do it now!” I yelled. Akela had reached the figures first, and I launched myself across the sand. My body slammed into one of them, and I flailed out my arms to make sure everyone dropped into the sand.
“Get down!” I screamed and managed to drape my body over everyone just as I heard the hum of the ion cannon.
There was a charged moment of silence, and the air crackled with electricity. I had just enough time to contemplate my mouth full of sand before the cannon went off wit
h a noise like the air itself was rending in two. There was a flash of intense heat, so hot that I curled myself around the people under me in a meager attempt to protect them from what felt like a molten sun. The sonic boom of the weapon followed, shoving us deeper into the sand, and the creature let out its most hideous bellow yet. It made my ears pop, my head swim, and then there was a deafening crash of water and the ground shook beneath us.
No one moved for a long moment.
“Colby?” I heard Omni’s tin voice call in my ear as if from far away. “Colby Tower, are you alive?”
“CT! CT!”
That was Neka’s yowl… which meant, somehow, I wasn’t dead.
I took a deep breath and immediately started hacking up sand, the grains coarse and grating in my throat.
From beneath me, I heard three similar coughs, and I blinked open my eyes to see Akela’s amethyst orbs inches from my own. I blinked again, and she blinked back, and I felt a wave of relief in my chest so profound I thought my heart would stop.
“We’re alive,” I rasped out to my crew waiting anxiously on the other end of the line. “We’re alive.”
Neka cheered in my ear.
I groaned as I pushed myself upright and hissed in pain as my palm touched the hot sand around us. I rubbed at my eyes with the back of my fist and squinted, my eyes watery, at the surrounding scene.
The ion cannon had done its job. Barely fifteen meters away from us, the hulking mass of the beast lay prone in the sand, half in and half out of the surf. It was so large that when it fell over, it fell halfway back in the water. There was a smoldering orange hole punched straight clean through what used to be its head. Dozens of pale white eyes stared blindly past us, and the waves washed in and out of its open maw, serrated white teeth gleaming in their wake.
The sand around us had been transformed into a field of crystals. It looked like a path of diamonds or glass led straight from the bow of the ship, across the beach, and ended under the carcass of the creature. I reached out and picked one up. The surface felt coarse and sharp, but no longer burned. I was turning it in my hand, this way and that, when Akela sat up beside me, sand and crystals raining down off her head.
