Planet of Graves

by Marc Everitt

  “Where are we?” asked the big man astutely.

  Taylor could hear sounds of life from other members of the team and knew the stunners were starting to wear off now. “We’re in the company bunker, which does the real research on Graves’ World,” he replied.

  Eli was shaking his head to try to clear it and Taylor went over to help his friend to his feet. “Whoa, they hurt a bit,” mumbled Eli as he looked to see if Sara was all right. She was dragging herself towards consciousness.

  “What is this place?” Chris persisted. He did not understand at all where they were.

  “This is the real research station. Ours was just a cover. They study the underground phenomena here,” explained Taylor as best he could.

  “And what underground phenomena is that?” asked Chris obstinately.

  Taylor sucked in a breath but Eli replied for him. “This planet has got a lot going on we don’t know about. I don’t know what it is, but these people do,” he indicated outside the door to refer to the bunker team. Taylor disagreed.

  “I don’t think they do. Not at all. I think they are as in the dark as to why the planet is tearing itself apart as you are.”

  “And you?” Eli had a suspicion Taylor knew more than he was telling.

  All Taylor said as a reply was, “I’ve got a hunch, but it’s a long shot.” He would say no more on the matter and Eli tended to the waking crew while Taylor tried to see if there was a way out of the room they were locked in.

  After a few moments, Eli came over to see if he could help. “Any luck?”

  Taylor shook his head. “It’s electronically sealed. We need a power cut or something.” Eli thought there was not a very good chance of that happening anytime soon and so was surprised when the door slid open. His surprise was short-lived, however, as he realised that the door had been opened from the outside by someone who not only did now want them to escape but also didn’t want them to live very long.

  Executive Carlton entered the room, a large gun in her small hands and a look of hate on her face. She walked straight up to Taylor and put the gun to his temple. “We meet again Mr West.” This time Taylor decided against correcting her and kept his mouth shut. Eli watched in dismay as four armed guards followed the Executive into the room and kept them covered closely with their weapons. “Nothing to say Mr West? No witty comeback or pithy comment? You disappoint me. I’d hoped for so much more,” she continued.

  Eli made a move towards his friend but received a prod with the business end of a blaster for his trouble. Taylor shot him a look that seemed to tell him to stay where he was, for now. An explosion outside the room, some distance away, could be heard and Eli thought he heard a man scream.

  Carlton obviously heard it too and turned to her men. “You,” she barked, indicating one of the men nearest the door, “go and see what that was, now!” The guard hurried out of the room towards the sound of the explosion.

  “I think you’re going to need more guards, I’m afraid Executive,” said Taylor quietly. From the other side of the station they could hear more distant screams and the sounds of fighting. “Much more,” he continued.

  Carlton hissed at him, “Shut up, you won’t be around to see whatever is going on.” Eli looked at the three guards remaining, he was sure he could overpower them fairly easily but how to do so with a gun up to friends head? This was something he could not think of a solution to and he hoped that Taylor had a plan.

  The section of his temple where the gun was digging in was beginning to hurt Taylor. He knew he had to bide his time, confident that Eli would have a plan. He felt sure that he could drop to a crouching position and manage to avoid the first shot fired by Carlton, but wasn’t so sure he could avoid being hit by the second. He didn’t need to be able to see the power dial on the laser to know it was set to its highest level and that a single blast from it which hit him would be fatal. He did not think he could return from beyond the grave a second time.

  He felt the pressure on his temple increase as he heard Carlton speak again, “Say goodbye to your friends, Mr West.”

  At that moment, Taylor was incredibly relieved to hear the intruder alarm go off all over the station. He knew that the guards had finally had the presence of mind to hit the panic button and had a fairly good idea what they were panicking about. The explosions and screams coming from the other side of the station could be the result of only one thing. Taylor had no idea why the Warrior would have come to the station, he hoped it wasn’t still tracking him, but suspicions were beginning to take root in his mind.

  The other thing he knew was he was unlikely to get such an opportunity again. The momentary distraction of the sounding of the alarm would not last long and he knew he would have to move quickly. Carlton inadvertently looked out of the doorway towards the sounds of mayhem that seemed to be coming closer to them. Taylor let his legs go and fell to a position crouching on his haunches. At the same time, he powered his elbow into the mid-section of Carlton as hard as he could. She doubled up in pain but still managed to get a shot off. It fired harmlessly wide, where Taylor’s head had been.

  One of the guards standing by the door was hit full in the face by this shot and fell to the floor, dead before he hit the ground. The other two guards moved to aim their weapons at Taylor, one of them even fired a half-hearted blast in his direction. It impacted harmlessly on the ground. The close proximity of Taylor to their Executive made them slow in being able to get a clean shot. This was one of the things that Taylor had been counting on. He knew that advantage would not last forever, and was pleased when he saw Eli heading towards the startled guards.

  This, Taylor knew, was the critical time. He had to disarm Carlton before she could get another shot off, and before her attention returned to the situation at hand. He aimed a low, sweeping kick at the back of her knees, trying to unbalance her. She fell to the floor, landing heavily on her back, but was quickly firing her gun at where she thought Taylor was. Eli was on to the guards before they had a chance to fire their guns again, Taylor was relieved to see. One of the guards was felled swiftly with a clubbing blow to the side of the head, while Eli pushed the other across the room.

  Taylor heard Eli shout, “Chris, here you go!”

  No sooner had the guard hit the floor then Chris was upon him, raining kicks and punches onto the man. Taylor saw all of this happen very quickly but knew he had to make sure his attention stayed focused on Carlton. He moved as soon she had started to fall, anticipating her shot at him and was rolling to her left as she fired. The blast passed close to where Alan was watching and he recoiled as the wall behind him sparked and grew white-hot.

  Carlton tried to get her bearings and line up a shot at Taylor but he was on her before she could move her arm. He had hold of her arm holding the gun in a flash and held her forearm in his left hand just below the wrist while his right knee pushed his weight down hard on her sternum. She tried to lift herself but the pressure he exerted was too great. Taylor needed to get her to drop the gun, he was aware of that as a paramount concern, but she held tightly to the blaster firing it randomly in the hope of hitting Taylor or one of his friends.

  “Get down, all of you,” yelled Taylor as he made the decision that this would have to stop now. He shifted positions in a flash and replaced his knee with his right hand maintaining the pressure keeping the livid woman pinned to the floor. In the same fluid motion, he brought his right knee up hard on the underside of Carlton’s arm, still holding her forearm firmly. At the last moment, he twisted her arm tight, and when his knee made contact with her elbow a sharp cracking noise echoed through the room making Sara and Lana wince.

  Executive Carlton finally dropped the gun and Taylor used his left foot to sweep it over to Eli who was bending to pick it up straight away. Carlton was too stunned to instantly feel the pain and stared in shock at the twisted remains of her arm. It bent unnaturally at the elbow as the joint had been pushed through and out of the front of the arm. Taylor could see b
one and cartilage poking out from under the skin, and watched silently as the woman started to scream for someone to help her. He stood, not proud of what he had done but not ashamed either.

  He was not in the habit of injuring women, but he was also not in the habit of letting them shoot him or his friends. The others were stunned, almost as much as Carlton herself. The whole manoeuvre from the time the alarm sounded to the snap of the broken arm had only lasted a matter of seconds. Taylor knew the key to close combat was the ability to move quickly, no motion was wasted and he had no love of theatrics. Eli had seen such moves before and was less startled by the speed and sheer brutality that Taylor could achieve. Alan on the other hand, was barely able to speak after witnessing such a show of deadly force.

  Taylor poked his head around the door. “Come on, We need to get out of here.” The sounds of battle were still ringing in their ears from the section of the bunker near the entrance hatch. Taylor knew he could do little to help the rapidly dwindling guards they could hear trying to defend the bunker security room. Eli was close behind him as he headed deeper into the station heading for the laboratory. Sara hurried to be close to Eli, she seemed unsettled by the sudden violence around her. Chris and Lana were close behind; he was feeling a lot better about things after being able to beat the guard half to death.

  Alan followed at the rear of the group, he had not liked the scenes in the room they had just left. He was not a violent man, although he had occasion to act violently from time to time; much more so then his colleagues would have ever imagined. He had been conscious of the excessive nature of the actions of Chris in the preceding melee, and was aware others had noted the same thing.

  Chris had seemed to enjoy the felling of the guard and Alan was more certain than ever that Eli and Taylor would be convinced by this that they would need to look no further for the murderer of Jeff Hanley and Will Shanks. That suited him fine, he did not like Chris. It would be good if he took the blame. Taylor led the others through the deserted bunker. He was surprised at how few people were in the corridors and walkways. The guards that were still alive were defending the security room from the onslaught of what he assumed was the Warrior.

  As he turned into the laboratory, he saw a grisly sight. The entrance to the laboratory was closed and a security door had been activated over the entrance. Outside the blast proof door there laid the corpses of three scientists. Their faces were blue and their mouths had foam dribbling out of the sides. Taylor sidestepped past them and hammered on the door. He hoped Dr Skandia had not suffered the same fate as the three poor individuals on the floor, and was inside the lab.

  He heard Sara scream as she rounded the corner and saw the bodies lying on the floor. Eli held her tight and she buried her face into his shoulder. “Dr Skandia! Are you in there?” shouted Taylor. The sounds of battle from the other side of the station had dwindled to silence and that concerned him. It meant the chances were high that the Warrior had got through the defences of the guards and was heading their way. He needed to get to the other side of this door, he knew it was the only kind of protection they could hope to have against the alien creature.

  A hole appeared in the door and Taylor had the feeling he was being watched. He smiled as much as he could. “Dr Skandia? If you’re in there, please let us in.”

  After a couple of nerve-wracking seconds of waiting, he was immensely relieved to see the security door slide upwards and the internal door swing open. Dr Skandia stood in the laboratory ushering them in. Taylor ran into the lab and gestured for the others to follow him in. They needed no encouragement and they were quickly inside the lab. Eli was quickly helping the doctor in securing the entrance door and security panel once more.

  Sara screamed again and Taylor looked around the room. He found that bodies surrounded them. Scientists’ corpses were littered around the room with the same blue faces and foam encrusted mouths as the ones outside the door. Taylor walked closer to one of the bodies and started to examine it.

  Eli looked around the lab in wonder. The transparency covering one wall afforded him a view that was beyond belief. The swirling misty fluid outside the plexi-glass moved at an incredible speed and Eli could see electrical conduction occurring somewhere in the depths of the fluid. He did not know what was going on but he could see it was a volatile situation.

  Dr Skandia approached Taylor. “I’m glad to see you’re still alive, my boy. But I’m disappointed you haven’t managed to get off the planet.” He indicated the countdown on the screen to Taylor’s right, which read 01:34:25.

  “There isn’t long left now.”

  “What happened to these people?” Alan asked as he looked at the dozen or so corpses around the room.

  Taylor answered for the doctor, “Poisoned.”

  Eli turned from comforting Sara. “Poisoned? Why would someone do that?”

  “They did it to themselves,” said Skandia plainly. Taylor nodded, he had thought as much. It made sense to him. He walked to the panel he had looked at the last time he was in the lab and studied the overview of the planet. He was not surprised to see the central mass of the world had grown to almost the entire size of the planet. There was very little of the amazing fluid left. He looked through the plexi-glass and knew he would die in that room, and that he had about an hour and a half left to wait. He felt sure the scientists scattered around the room had not wanted to wait that long.

  “They killed themselves. Took poison. Wanted me too as well. They couldn’t just wait to die,” Dr Skandia said sadly.

  Chris spoke, “Why are you hanging around?” The reason for the large countdown on the nearby screen was not lost on him. He was not afraid to die. Lana and Sara seemed to Eli to be none the wiser that they were not going to see another day and he felt it best to leave them in blissful ignorance.

  Alan, on the other hand, was taking in what the doctor was saying. “Why is this happening?” Alan whimpered. “What is going on here?”

  The doctor looked at Taylor and spoke quietly. “I think you know what is going to happen, don’t you?”

  Taylor replied just as quietly, “I think so. Is there anything we can do to stop it?”

  The doctor shook his head firmly, “Not a thing. I don’t think I would even want to try.”

  Eli had caught a little of their conversation and could remain quiet no longer. “What are you talking about? If there is something we can do then let’s do it. I don’t think I’m ready to die just yet.”

  Taylor walked to his friend and put one hand on his shoulder. “There really is no way to stop the planet tearing itself apart, the next tremor could do it, maybe the one after that, I had hoped the doctor might know a way off the planet, but….”

  “Like what?” Eli was incredulous.

  Taylor continued calmly, “Like a ship. Executives often have their own personal shuttles. Turns out Carlton’s was stolen by a group of workers when they realised what was happening.”

  Chris laughed out loud, “Oh well, we might as well get comfortable.” He sank to the floor and leaned on the security door, pulling a small flask of liquor from out of his pocket and drinking heavily from it.

  Sara rounded on him, “You must be pleased with yourself. Looks like you will get away with murder after all!”

  Chris looked her in the eye, “For the last time, I haven’t killed anyone.”

  Taylor spoke from the other side of the room, “Chris didn’t kill Hanley or Shanks.”

  Sara and Eli both looked at him in amazement, Eli was the first to speak, “but you said….”

  “I know what I said. But I’m telling you all Chris had nothing to do with it.” Dr Skandia had no idea what the conversation was about and went back to his chair to sit and wait for the end to come. He hoped he would be able to see it before it killed him.

  Alan found his voice, “But the device Will said he saw!” He trailed off and Eli finished his sentence for him. Chris seemed amused and unruffled by the whole matter.

 
“Taylor, you said the device was probably a bypass unit.”

  “It was,” Taylor replied firmly.

  Lana clung to her husband, “He knows.”

  Chris shrugged. “What does it matter now?”

  Taylor continued his explanation, he had the attention of Eli, Alan and Sara even if Chris didn’t seem worried or interested. “Chris made a bypass unit, but it wasn’t for opening the fence. All Chris was doing was a little bit of embezzlement from the credit machine in the admin centre.”

  Eli blinked in amazement, “That’s it? That’s all it was? Why did you say he….”

  Taylor let him get no further, he held up his hand to silence his friend. He could hear something outside the security door. “Dr Skandia, can you activate the corridor monitors from in here?”

  Dr Skandia looked up. “Of course, allow me. Are you looking for someone in particular?”

  Taylor smiled grimly. “I think our alien friend is about to pay us a visit.” The monitor in front of Dr Skandia flickered into life and Lana gave a small moan on fear as the image of the alien warrior appeared on the screen. It was walking slowly up the corridor to the laboratory.

  “Will that security door hold?” Alan asked, looking worried.

  Taylor looked to the doctor, who shrugged his shoulders. He was looking at the screen fascinated by the creature he could see. “Well, well, what do we have here? An alien species.”

  “Kills people a lot. I wouldn’t recommend you go out to see it,” Chris commented from his position on the floor. Eli was surprised by the attitude of the big man, death was all around them and it seemed to him to be a matter of how they died, not if they died. Chris, however, did not seem concerned at all and was trying to persuade his wife not to worry.

  “I wonder what it is doing here?” the doctor frowned.