by Marc Everitt
Although they were happy to accept that the murders of Hanley and Shanks involved one of them, and there were no prizes for guessing who was suspect number one, they had a fence between them and a possible monster; they were not quite so confident once that security was no longer there. The possibilities suddenly seemed boundless and frightening. There was certainly something comforting about a barrier between the mad-made world of the research station and the wasteland that lay beyond. Whether something lived outside there or not, the removal of the fence was a psychological blow to the team and Eli knew he had to get it back up as soon as possible. He didn’t really think that there was anything outside the fence that could hurt them, but a small part of him kept recollecting Taylor’s comment about sleeping monsters. It was not like Taylor to be excessively metaphorical, so those words now came up from the depths of Eli’s mind and haunted him in a most unsettling way. As he turned the final corner and entered the control room, he ran to Sara as she looked up from one of the consoles that filled the room.
“All the safeguards are down! Someone really knew what they were doing,” she stammered. Alan finally caught up with Eli and bounded into the room to join them. He caught the final part of Sara’s sentence and replied, “How long will it take to reinstate enough of them to get the fence back up?”
He didn’t like the answer. “An hour, maybe more,” Sara whispered.
“Are the compound sensors still working?” toned Eli as he looked from desk to desk to find the sensor bank.
“Yes, but what good is that?” said Sara pointing him towards the relevant console. He found his bearings and studied the scans that the external sensors regularly took of the courtyard around the station. These scans were usually an exercise in formality, but now he studied them carefully. This was an occasion when he could well see something on those monitors, and his eyes strained to pick out anything unusual.
Sara was becoming more stressed by the minute and was clearly looking to Eli for support. Her mood was not helped by the arrival in the control room of Lana Maxwell, her hips swinging with what appeared to be a little extra vigour. It seemed to Sara as if Lana was enjoying tormenting her with her sexuality, something not picked up by the rest of the team.
An invisible chemistry, not wholly friendly but a chemistry nevertheless, now seemed to exist between them. Sara coloured visibly and turned away from her colleagues. And this was the cause of a feeling of amusement and satisfaction to Lana. As Lana walked through the room, Eli picked up on the difference in the atmosphere, although he had no idea what was behind it.
He turned back to the monitors that he was so interested in and, just for a second, he thought he detected a movement in the courtyard. A slight motion on one of the sensors that could have been Eli’s imagination but also could have been something a little more worrying. He decided that until he was certain that he had seen something it was probably best not to mention it to anyone. People were worried enough without him adding to the panic.
Lana spoke up, “What are you looking for?”
Eli contemplated not answering her but opted for the polite option and made a mental note when he turned to talk to her that he should be careful as to where his gaze ended up. “Checking the sensors.”
“What are you checking for?”
“Whatever I can see on them.”
“What can you see on them?” she continued relentlessly. It was obvious she was not concerned as to the loss of the fence, and even appeared to be finding the situation amusing.
‘A sign of culpability?’ thought Eli as he wondered how to explain what he was looking for without talking about Taylor’s previous comment about monsters. “I can see…. what was that?” he interrupted himself swiftly. This sent a wave of panic around the room as Alan rushed closer to the monitor to try to see what Eli had seen. Sara looked over at them nervously, not seeming to want to look and Lana’s usual air of flirtatious sarcasm had altered to one of surprise.
“What is it?” Alan peered at the screen, not seeing anything to give concern.
Eli frowned. “I was sure I saw something outside. It was fast and it seemed to be coming this way.” If he had been able to see more clearly, he would have recognised the rapidly moving, swiftly approaching figure as Taylor West running for his life.
Chris Maxwell had started to think he would have been better off staying in the station with the others. He had been out of the station for about ten minutes when he had started to realise that he had no clue as to where he was going to go. He had been out into the courtyard before, of course, but had not often been outside the fence, and didn’t fancy doing that now. He wandered in the courtyard, careful not to walk in front of any of the security cameras he knew were surrounding the buildings. He knew exactly where each of them were as he had placed them there himself, and was the person on the station who looked after the maintenance of them.
As he meandered around the compound, he realised he would have to go back into the buildings soon, and it was unlikely that the Major would be ready to forget the incident in the canteen just yet. Much as Chris would have liked to kill Major Hastings, he really couldn’t afford to; it would interfere with the other project he was involved with. That could not be allowed to happen, Shanks had seen something he shouldn’t have, but now Shanks wasn’t a problem anymore. He was fairly sure that Will hadn’t told anyone what he had stumbled upon, but he had no way of being certain. He knew he would have to keep his eyes on everyone in the team from now on, especially the big engineer who had pulled him off of Hastings. He would have to keep a special eye on him and his strange friend.
While Chris was thinking about Taylor, he was amazed to see the enigmatic engineer sprinting across the compound towards him. Chris had no time to hide himself from the onrushing Taylor and instead adopted a crouch ready to fight. He could think of no reason why the engineer would be running so fast towards him unless he was about to attack him.
‘Well,’ thought Chris, ‘that will be the last mistake he ever makes.’
Maxwell was startled to see Taylor swerve around him as he did so.
“Get yourself inside, it’s coming,” cried Taylor over his shoulder as he ran.
Chris frowned in confusion and looked in the direction that Taylor had come from, towards the fence. He was terrified to see a savage beast coming towards him, all teeth and claws. His eyes bulged and he had difficulty turning himself away from the creature enough to be able to run from it. He was not used to feeling fear and, on this occasion, found it to be a lifesaver. He was quickly following Taylor into the station, no longer concerned as to whether he was seen on the security cameras or not.
Eli and Alan both saw the figures on the screen clearly now, the first one was definitely Taylor. He was moving at what looked to be breakneck speed and the second appeared to be Chris Maxwell, following swiftly behind. Lana had edged closer to the screen and had seen her husband on the monitor.
“What is that idiot doing?” she hissed, before pulling herself up short. It would not do for the others to realise that she had let Chris out of the storeroom. She couldn’t understand why he was running back into the station so soon after getting out. Perhaps he was chasing the West fellow, she thought to herself, and it was at that point that the creature chasing the two men began to be close enough to clearly see on the screen. Lana drew in her breath sharply as Eli spoke for them all, “Good God, what the hell is that thing!?”
Taylor slammed the door behind him, only for it to be opened by the onrushing Chris Maxwell as he barrelled into the station behind him. Taylor’s heart pounded and he felt weak from the long hard sprint he had just been forced to endure. He could not remember an occasion when he ran so fast for so long. There was, however, a motivating factor behind his exertions and this brought itself to the forefront of his mind once again when the creature slammed into the closed door which Taylor and Chris were stood near to, panting and weary.
The metal door shook as the creature continued to throw itsel
f against it, but it appeared to be holding firm. Taylor didn’t plan on hanging around the area to check the strength of the door. “Come on, let’s get to the others,” he said and walked quickly away from the door, looking over his shoulder all the time as Chris followed. Taylor thought that things must be bad if he looked over his shoulder and was glad to only see Chris Maxwell.
Taylor had been walking back from Officer Maystone’s ship, now with its stealth device back on, and had his mind on a million different things when he had almost walked straight into the creature he had encountered twice before. Whereas he already had two extraordinary slices of luck on the previous meetings with the creature this time his luck was only moderate. The only fortune that favoured him this time was the fact that the beast had only just awoken and was still limbering up after its post meal sleep. It still had, and Taylor could remember this all too vividly, the blood of Maystone on its claws and teeth when he came across it. Had it been hunting, he would almost certainly not have seen it until it was too late.
As it was the creature had seemed to try and catch him out of habit, and not as if it was hungry. He felt strongly that was a fact that had saved his life as he had managed to stay ahead of the ambling creature long enough to get back to the station. He had been mildly surprised to find Maxwell outside the station, but had other things to think about at that time.
As he jogged to the control room, with Maxwell behind him, he made a mental note to ponder Chris’s behaviour at a later date. His heart was beginning to return to a normal rhythm as he entered the control room. Eli whirled round and broke out into a huge grin to see his friend alive and well; a grin that faded once he saw Maxwell following Taylor into the room. Chris looked wary, as if he could feel the antagonism towards him and walked over to where Lana stood. They greeted each other and attention began to switch away from them.
“Tay, are you all right? What the hell was that thing out there?” Eli asked as he checked Taylor up and down to see if he was injured in any way. Alan hovered behind them, knowing that answers were forthcoming.
“I’m fine. But that was close,” said Taylor simply and looked over to inspect the monitors and try to locate the creature in the courtyard outside. Sara raised her eyebrow at his lack of explanation and decided to push for a more complete answer, “But what is that thing? How did you escape it?”
Taylor stopped his searching and stood upright, took a deep breath and then answered her. “That thing is a Rodlean Swamp Creature, and it’s very nasty so I suggest you stay out of its way.”
“Where is it now?” Alan queried as, to his left, the Maxwells shied away from the others as if licking their wounds.
“I wish I knew,” replied Taylor, concerned. “I can’t see it on any of the external scanners.”
Eli found his voice again. “Anyway, it could get in?” He had a knack of saying just what everyone was thinking.
Once again Taylor looked nonplussed and replied, “I wish I knew that as well.” Taylor knew that the creature had a strong instinct to track its prey down, but had no idea whether the beast would stay at the door and hammer away at it or would try to find another way in. His internal question was soon answered as a buzz on the far wall of the room indicated a communication from somewhere else in the station.
Eli was first to react and pressed the reply button, immediately hearing a loud crash from the speaker and the frenzied voice of the Major calling for help. No words were intelligible but the sense of the message was easy for all five of the crew in the control room to understand.
Taylor was first to speak. “Eli, Alan, Chris get what you can as weapons. It’s got in the station.”
“We have to help the Major!” Sara pointed out.
To this Taylor looked grim, “We’ll try, but I think we will be too late. We have to make sure we are not next.”
***
As the ‘Cavalry’ sped into the Alpha Prime system, many preparations were in full swing in the ranks of her crew. The whole ship throbbed with the intensity of the motion in combination with the intensity of the motion in combination with the usual swell of the ships engines as they pushed harder and harder to reach the destination in the quickest possible time.
Inside the hull of the ship, the sentience that controlled the vessel was busy using its limited diagnostic capabilities to check the mechanical devices the crew would be using in their assault on the monastery at Alpha Prime. It had already scanned the weapons to be used - B Series Plasma Rifles, Concussion Grenades, Snare and Stun nets, Guided missile launchers, Armour Piercing laser pistols and Magnetic pulse cannons to name a few. It was making its way through the other portable defence systems - Hover packs, Heat sensitive night vision helmets, Laser deflector jackets and the like - when it had was interrupted by an unusual series of data reports coming in from its medium to long-range sensors.
It routinely monitored these readings partly for the safety of the crew to stop them being ambushed and sneaked up on, but mostly for the sake of having something to do when travelling interstellar. The reports it had accumulated suggested very strange movement of planetary bodies in the nearby system, so far unnamed. The only file reference it could find was the record of a research station on one of the outlying worlds.
Quite unremarkable, according to the system listing and the ship had never heard of Graves’ World. It made a mental note to report all this information to Captain Kyle when the crew returned from their mission to Alpha Prime. It did not, indeed could not, realise that the seemingly small, however interesting it may appear to a sentience like itself, amount of data it had collected as it passed the Graves’ World system was more important than the Alpha Prime mission which lay ahead.
In other parts of the ship, much was going on. Kyle had already prepared himself for the mission, his kit had been checked over for faults by the ships running systems, which the crew jokingly called Nanny, but really could not get along without, and he was looking at a diagram, supplied by the ship, of the monastery. The place seemed to be a typical older building, probably the converted ruins of an old colonial depository. Most of the religious buildings found on colonial worlds in outlying systems were scratch jobs, thought Kyle.
This one, however, looked a little different; as if the occupants had really decided that their worship should occur in a more grandiose setting. They seemed to have extended the roof structure to allow for a far more impressive feeling of space and, from what Kyle could see on the small sheet he had spread out on the desk in his cabin, there were strange looking ornamental turrets scattered all around the outer edging of the building. In order to get this limited information, Cavalry had to hook itself up to the Company records system and access the registered plans for the buildings.
All permanent buildings on colonial worlds were required to be registered with schematics and blueprints and their records kept in the Central Computer System of the Company. This was a fearsome machine, housed on Old Earth in a secret location, and had an intelligence to rival the most learned of individuals. When the ship’s sentience on the ‘Cavalry’ tapped into the system it always had the uncanny feeling that the Company computer knew exactly what it was up to and could block its access if it wished to.
The ‘Cavalry’ had an idea that the Company computer allowed it access for the same reason that ‘Cavalry’ kept an eye on local systems which kept the day interesting. When the crew were going on a mission ‘Cavalry’ tried to supply them with as many of the Company records for the area as it could. Kyle knew this and was always glad of any data the ship could provide. He also knew, however, the Company information on outlying systems was not always accurate as people on outer worlds did not tend to worry much about registering any changes or adaptations they had made to their buildings.
He had a feeling that this monastery would be fairly straightforward and would not differ too much from the plans he had before. He was experienced enough, however, to realise that you never could tell until you saw a job with your
own eyes, and sometimes not even then, so he told the crew to be prepared. As Kyle poured over the plans to the monastery, his cousin was sat in his quarters, and was at a loss as to what to do.
Whenever the ‘Cavalry’ was on its way to a mission and nearing the destination, Cameron always felt a little restless and more than a little impatient. He had been told on numerous occasions by his cousin as well as by Pope, that the best thing to do when restless was to get on with something and take his mind off things. This was something that he was not very good at yet, and he well knew it.
He sat on his bunk and tried to occupy himself. He had been the first to check his kit for the mission and had been ready to go for at least five hours by this point. He thought to himself that he really must start to prepare himself a little less early in future, then realised that he always thought that at these times. The trouble as that he got terribly excited before a mission and wanted to be ready as soon as possible as if it were the case that the sooner he was ready the sooner he could get on with it. He shuffled himself around on the bed and tried to imagine he was in it with a beautiful woman and with that, a smile returned to his eager face and he relaxed a little more.
Pope, on the other hand, could not have been more relaxed. He was an old hand at this sort of thing and he slowly, methodically, checked the firing mechanism of his trusty and old-fashioned automatic machine rifle. Although he did trust ‘Cavalry’ to check his gear, he always felt safer having checked it himself afterwards. He carried an assortment of weapons when on a mission, but by far his favourite was the old machine gun that he cradled lovingly as he checked its mechanism. It was made over four hundred years before Pope was born, but was still clean and in good working order.
While the other members of the crew didn’t understand how he could prefer how he could prefer a projectile weapon to a beam weapon, Pope found the gun to be a satisfying weight and feel. He used the other weapons when he needed to and there were certainly some jobs that the machine gun couldn’t cope with, like cutting through a bulkhead or slicing up a robot sentry unit.
