by Marc Everitt
Reality started to encroach on his moment and he could suddenly hear Taylor calling to them from the other side of the room, “It’s tapping into the circuitry. It’s trying to access the override!”
Eli looked to the monitor. He could see the warrior with the tip of its tail dug deep into the wall outside the lab. He could see no motion but as he ran over to the bank of switches controlling the security he could see a rapid stream of numbers running across the screen. “It’s trying to find the access code to override the door,” he said, amazed at the resourcefulness of the creature, “how can it do that?”
“I don’t know, but it can,” replied Taylor.
Chris called over from his position leaning on the bulkhead. “Just let it in. What does it matter anymore?” Lana obviously thought it mattered a great deal as she hit her husband across the chest for the suggestion.
Sara spoke, “I could try and modulate the code, try to keep it guessing as long as I can.” She started to type figures rapidly into the keyboard in front of the screen. “It might delay it.”
Alan stood by the door, as if he could hold it closed with his presence. Skandia looked at the countdown clock, it read 01:02:56. He sighed loudly, he had been prepared to die in the lab where he had done so much work, but he did not want these other people to die with him. He didn’t know what the creature outside the door was, but he thought that his new friend Taylor was probably right. It made sense to him that a species capable of creating the planet he was stood on would find it a simple matter to create a creature to protect it in case of people like himself.
He hoped he hadn’t damaged the process going on under the surface, he certainly had not intentionally done so. It was only very recently that he had really understood what was going on, and by then it was too late. He looked around the room at the frightened man by the door, the drunken man on the floor, his panicked wife by his side, his new friend Taylor and the big man he was with and the small woman trying to stop the access of the creature. He didn’t want to see them die and hoped that when their time came it was in the huge eruption that was about an hour away and not at the hands of the vicious looking alien outside the door.
Taylor had backed away from Sara, and was leaving her space to do her work. Eli wanted to stay near to her but Taylor pulled him to one side. “I need to have a word with you.”
Sara called over from her frantic stream of figures, “It’s not going to work, the overrides are failing!”
Alan ran from the door as it slid open. First, the internal door slid to the side and then the security door slowly, but irrevocably slid upwards.
Taylor knew he had to move fast. “Quick. Over by the screen.” He ran, dragging Eli with him, towards the plexi-glass screen covering the lab on one side. As he moved, he saw the others follow, Chris being pushed by his wife. Eli saw that Sara was still working to try and reverse the opening of the door, but he saw that the Warrior could now almost be fully seen through the opening. He called to her, “Sara, there’s nothing more you can do.” She ran to him, and had just reached him when the Warrior entered the lab. It looked from side-to-side and Taylor could see it showing no signs of charging its built-in weapon or raising its handheld gun. It walked over to the banks of machinery that lined the walls.
“Stay close to the screen. It won’t dare fire if we are here,” Taylor warned. No one thought to question this. Taylor watched as the creature looked from them to the machinery as if not sure which to deal with first.
Eli frowned. “What is it doing?”
“It’s trying to decide whether to disconnect the doctors probes that are lying in the fluid outside or whether to come over and tear us away from the screen and kill us.”
Lana almost cried as she asked the question they were all thinking, “Which do you think it will be?”
“I’m afraid it’s more a matter of which it will do first. I would think that it doesn’t see us as an immediate threat to the planet or itself so it will destroy the machinery first,” Taylor theorised. He was proved right as the creature calmly and methodically took the machinery in front of it to pieces, careful not to cause damage that could harm its objective. Taylor knew it would take the Warrior a couple of moments to finish dismantling the equipment and so decided it might be a good time to take their leave while they still could.
“We should leave now,” he muttered and started to move slowly to the door.
“Where do we go to?” asked Alan, quite reasonably, he thought.
Eli answered in Eli’s place, “I’m sure we would all rather die quickly in a huge explosion then at the hands of that thing.” The creature seemed content to let them leave the room; it knew they had nowhere to run to and had to dismantle the machinery before it could enjoy itself. They were almost at the door when they found their way blocked by four battered, bloody guards and a half-crazed Executive Carlton.
“It’s just not my day today,” sighed Taylor.
***
Kyle watched as Cameron and Pope floated down to the ground and walked up to him. “What did you find?” he asked as he picked dirt out from his boots. Fenchurch was pacing the area, keen for action and unwilling to simply wait around.
Pope replied, “The smoke plume is from a ship someone has blown up.”
“Any sign of life?”
“Not at all. We saw a destroyed station a little further away. It looks to have had a reactor blowout, totally levelled. If there was anyone in there, they are staying there permanently also there were some corpses strewn around outside the station. Some of them have been torn to pieces. Not pretty.”
Kyle was puzzled; he hadn’t expected to find a destroyed ship, a destroyed research station or a pile of dead people. “Any ideas as to what happened?”
Cameron smiled broadly and replied, “I reckon someone blew the reactor, blew up the ship and killed a load of people.” Kyle ignored his cousin.
Pope spoke again, “This whole planet has not got long before it goes up in smoke. What are we going to do?”
Kyle thought long and hard, much to Fenchurch’s impatient disgust. Maybe all the people on the planet were inside the station when the reactor blew, he thought. Then he had a hunch. “Pope, which of the explosions seemed most recent?”
Pope thought for a second before responding, “The ship. It was still smouldering when we got there.”
Kyle thought he was on the right track. “Was the ship blown from the inside?”
“Not a chance. Engines blew inwards. What’s your point?”
“Someone survived the reactor blow-out, someone blew the ship up from the outside, and there’s someone still alive on this planet. I’d bet my ship on it,” Kyle concluded triumphantly. “We just have to find them and hope they can lead us to what we came here for.”
Cameron was not convinced. “Even if we find them, what makes you think they’ll know anything about it?”
Kyle smiled his wolfish grin. “I just know, let’s get moving. They obviously left the station and passed the ship on their way somewhere. Let’s head that way and see what we can find.” They hovered over the ground, slower than usual due to the fact that Pope and Cameron had to carry Kyle and Fenchurch, but still moving a good deal quicker than they could have walked. With nothing to carry the hover-paks could travel over eighty kilometres an hour with no problem, but this speed was cut in half by the extra weight.
As they flew over the shattered plains and canyons of the planet, Kyle kept his eyes peeled for any signs of life. They had been flying, sweeping the area, for several minutes when he saw what he was looking for. “There it is, down we go. We’ve found it!” he beamed cheerfully.
“Found what?” Pope asked flatly.
Kyle pondered the question for a moment. “I’ve no idea, but we’ve found it all the same. Let’s take a look.”
***
“Kill West! Kill him now!” screamed Carlton, her broken arm hanging lifelessly by her side. Taylor could see that she had tucked the useles
s limb into the belt of her uniform, and he realised that he had pushed her over the edge. The look on her face was one of pure, unadulterated hatred. The guards raised their guns and pointed them at him; he had no chance of getting close enough to them to disarm them before they could fire.
This time, it seemed, they realised not to get too close to him. He thought quickly but could come up with nothing. He thought his time had come at last. The guards readied themselves to fire. Carlton screamed maniacally at them, “Do it!! Do it now!!”
Before a single charge could be let off from their guns the warrior had leapt with incredible speed and was amongst them. Taylor had not even seen it pass him, but there it was all the same. The guards tried to run in fear but one of them was sliced cleanly in two with the sharp appendage that had morphed at the end of the warrior’s tail. Another guard raised his gun to fire at the creature, but he was far too slow. The warrior grabbed the man’s gun and forced the business end down the man’s throat then fired the weapon. The man seemed to crumble from the inside, but Taylor could hear no blast through the poor man’s body.
Taylor muttered, “This fellow really doesn’t want people firing guns in here.”
Eli nodded his agreement. “I think that if we can’t get to the door we should get back to the screen where we are out of the way,” he winced as he saw the third guard’s head severed from his body, “we’ve got to help.”
Taylor called out, “Lower your guns. It’ll leave you alone if it thinks you’re not a threat to the screen.” The remaining guard had run towards them in her panic and Taylor drew her to him. “Stay here. You’ll live longer, and put that gun down.” Taylor watched in amazement as the Warrior approached the shaking Carlton. He was amazed to see that she was not shaking in fear but seemed to be apocalyptic with rage. She had no weapon of her own, but did not flinch as the alien stood toe to toe with her.
“What the hell are you supposed to be? I order you to stop your fiddling with that machinery, its Company property.” The Warrior turned away from her, not willing to waste any more of its time on her when it had work to do. Taylor was flabbergasted to see the Executive follow the huge alien over to the machinery and try to pull it away.
“My God, she’s mad!” whispered Alan as he watched in total bewilderment.
Eli tugged Taylor’s sleeve. “You see the affect you have on people. You’ve driven her nuts.”
Taylor suggested they head for the door again. “Let’s try this one again, shall we?” He watched over his shoulder as the woman executive pulled at the alien’s arm to try to keep it from touching the machinery. The warrior seemed to lose its patience with her and the last thing Taylor saw as he went into the corridor was the creature turning to face Carlton and bearing down on her. Then they were in the corridor and away from the lab. The single remaining guard seemed unwilling to help her Executive and content to tag along with them, Taylor thought she looked a bright woman.
Taylor was leading them away from the lab to try to find somewhere to hide from the alien. He knew, as they all did, that when it had finished in the lab it would come after them and they needed to find a secure location if they didn’t want to end up like the guards in the lab. They had not got very far when Taylor began to feel something inside his head, something very powerful. He stopped in the corridor, Eli turned to see what was going on, Sara beside him. The others carried on through the bunker.
Taylor’s face wore a look of horror, the like of which Eli had not seen before. “What is it, Tay?” he said, grabbing his friend by the shoulders. “We have to keep moving.”
Inside Taylor’s mind, he could hear a voice; a loud booming voice. He recognised it instantly as the voice that had spoken to him in the desert. The voice that he had been unable to place, and had said only one word. It was not saying that word now, however, instead the message Taylor was receiving was one containing a far more worrying statement. Taylor could hear the voice all around him; it didn’t seem to be in his head at all.
Over and over again the voice said, “I come.” He tried to shake the feeling of dread he had; he needed to shut off the part of his mind that kept picking these messages up. He knew he simply didn’t have time for them. With an act of sheer will he forced himself to clear his mind; he could suddenly see Eli in front of him, looking very concerned. The world seemed to be back to how it should be all of a sudden, but Taylor knew it was not. Not by a long way.
He blinked his confusion away and heard Eli. “What?! What’s wrong?” Taylor could see Sara clinging to Eli’s side and the look of concern on her face also. He started to move again. “I think it’s very near now,” was all he would say. Eli chased him down the corridor, annoyed at his constant enigmatic behaviour but relieved his friend seemed all right now. They passed a room on the left when Eli saw Alan and the other standing in there. He called Taylor back and they went into the room. “This is the only place that has a security door like the lab,” the young guard explained. “We should be able to keep the monster out for a while.”
It seemed strange to Taylor, as if they were merely delaying the inevitable. They sealed the door tightly, with Chris and Eli helping the guard for increased speed. Taylor knew the warrior would not take long to finish its work in the lab and would soon be at the door trying to get in. He felt desperate, he could see no way they were going to get out of this one; there was just not enough time and nowhere to run to.
At the back of his mind, he had a small inkling that all was not lost, however. He couldn’t see whether it stemmed from a premonition of what was to come of whether it had its root in his eternal optimism. Whichever it was, he thought, he would not have long to wait to find out. As he thought about that he heard the awful sounds of heavy footsteps approaching the door and prepared himself for the worst.
“Oh God, it’s outside,” Lana whimpered and she clung to Chris. They all waited, hardly daring to breathe. Taylor looked around the room, they were in the Executive’s private quarters he saw. No weapons or implements could be seen that he thought would be able to help them once the door opened. He knew the creature would get in.
Eli seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “How long do you think it will take to get through this door?
How quick can it break the codes?” Taylor spoke quietly and firmly. “It didn’t break the codes on the other door.”
Silence hung in the air until Chris spoke. “We saw it.”
Taylor shook his head. “It was trying to break the codes, but it didn’t need to. Someone let it into the lab.” He heard the expected intake of breath from all around him.
Alan didn’t understand. “What are you saying? Why would someone do that?”
Taylor took a deep breath. “I think one of us has more interest in this planet then they would like us to think. They want the same thing the alien does. They don’t want the planet interfered with.” Eli could not help but look at Chris as he thought about what Taylor was saying. Chris looked back at him, unflinching.
Eli spoke again, “What is going on? Who opened the lab door? Why would any of us risk their life by letting that thing out there into the lab?”
Taylor saw he had the attention of all the people in the room before he replied, “I don’t know. Why did they take that risk? And while we’re asking them perhaps we can get a full confession.” He paused before finishing his sentence, “Would you like to tell us why you killed Hanley and Shanks, Sara?”
Chapter Twelve
Ashes
Taylor could not remember a silence like it. It hung in the air like a raincloud, pregnant and ready to burst, but not yet prepared to give up its captive. He could hear, and was sure the others could also, the Warrior outside the door working on the locking mechanism. That seemed to be part of another life, another world entirely. Nothing else seemed to matter at all, except the bombshell he had just dropped. The faces around the room told their own story. Lana Maxwell and Alan Johnson wore almost identical expressions of confusion. Lana’s hu
sband looked as if he had heard something terribly amusing, and Taylor realised this was something to do with the drunken state the big man was in.
Dr Skandia and the guard looked to be interested in what they could see was a particularly unusual conversation, but were otherwise detached in demeanour. Sara merely stared at Taylor, her expression not changing an iota. Her face betrayed no anger, guilt, surprise or any emotion at all. She simply clung to Eli in the same manner she had all along. Taylor found himself worried, she seemed so unconcerned about the situation. He was sure he hadn’t made a mistake but marvelled at the resolve and composure the woman was showing.
The person who had reacted with the most emotion to Taylor’s question was Eli. Taylor had been afraid that his friend would react badly to the news, and couldn’t really blame him. He had wanted to warn Eli away from the woman for some time, but had been conscious of alerting her to his suspicions with his actions. Now he felt ashamed, he had thought more about apprehending the culprit then he had about the feelings and safety of his friend.
He reminded himself that he had kept his eyes on the pair as much as he could and that Sara had no time alone with Eli, except when he had gone back into the station to rescue her. Taylor had tried to go himself, but remembered that Eli had insisted. That was not the point, he reasoned to himself, he should have gone in there. He had put his friend in danger, although he was fairly sure she would only kill if she thought she had to.
Eli stood staring at Taylor like he was a madman. His face showed shock and not a little anxiety. “What are you talking about?” he stumbled through his question. Taylor braced himself for what he knew would not be the easiest thing he ever said. “Look, Eli. I know this is difficult for you….”
