Planet of Graves

by Marc Everitt

  “Or someone who looks a lot like her,” Kyle confirmed.

  Cameron had heard their exchange and muttered, “What picture?”

  “Remember the portrait hanging on the wall in the monastery?”

  Cameron looked at the woman in disbelief. “But that picture had to have been a hundred years old!”

  Kyle agreed. “Anyone here think that maybe this woman has had a little of the magic liquid the monks used?” Kyle had not seen any women in the monastery, but he supposed that did not mean there weren’t any. ‘The monks on Alpha Prime considered this planet holy,’ he thought to himself. He wouldn’t be surprised if they sent her here to make sure it stayed that way. He could see that the woman, having just killed a man, was not averse to shooting them and knew he needed to get her off-guard.

  Meanwhile, Taylor was trying to keep Sara talking, the logic in his mind being that while she was talking she wouldn’t be killing. He also knew from experience that villains love to let people know all about how crafty they are. They never tended to tell you their motives, but could seldom resist patting themselves on the back once prompted. He cleared his throat, “Well, looks as if you will be the only one to see it when it happens.”

  “That’s right, Taylor West. As it should be.”

  “What about the creature? Do you think it will mind you being here? It doesn’t seem to like us being around very much.”

  Sara flicked her hair back from over her eyes. “It has been sent by the Gods to protect their return, like I have. It will not harm me.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Taylor said calmly. “I’m not sure it knows you are on its side.”

  Chris could be silent no longer, “What the hell are you talking about?” Sara, what do you mean you were sent here? Sent her by whom?”

  Kyle saw his chance. “She was sent by the Brotherhood of the worshippers of T’suk on Alpha Prime.” No one spoke. Sara’s eyes widened in amazement and she walked towards Kyle, her gun held in front of her. Taylor felt the whole thing click into place, and he cursed himself for not seeing it earlier.

  Lana had heard of the monks on Alpha Prime, but could not understand what Kyle was saying, “Why would they send her here? She’s a scientist.”

  Kyle replied, “Simple, she’s one of them.” Sara jammed the muzzle of her gun into Kyle’s ribs.

  He winced and Cameron jumped forward, only for Pope to pull him back. “Not yet, boy. Not while she has a gun in Kyle’s gut.”

  Sara was apocalyptic with anger. “How could you know this?” she raged.

  Pope spoke next, trying to keep his reply level and calm. “We have just come from there. Father Cassius told us to bring you a message.” Cameron frowned, not seeing the value of the lie. To the left of Sara, Taylor shifted a little closer.

  Sara had her eyes firmly on Pope now, as her gun dug into Kyle. “Tell me. Or this one dies slowly.”

  Pope thought quickly and Kyle prayed silently that his crewmate could come up with something convincing. Pope spoke after what seemed to Kyle to be an age. “He said you were to let us carry a sample of the sacred fluid back to Alpha Prime with us. Their supply is running low.”

  Sara snarled back, “You lie.” My brothers have enough of the fluid to last them a thousand years. They know as well as I do that it is all needed here at this time. Now, what is your message?” She aimed the gun at Pope and the old man closed her eyes.

  Before Sara could fire, Taylor was on her. He floored her with a punch to the jaw and the slight woman crumpled to the ground. “There’s a message for you,” he said. He reached down and scooped up her gun as Sara reached out for it.

  She raised herself up on her elbows and looked at Taylor with fierce hatred. “You can’t get away. Even now I can feel my God’s protector coming close. It will dispose of you all.”

  Taylor looked wildly around, he could detect no sign that the alien warrior was near, but thought it best they leave immediately. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said and pushed Eli towards the entrance hatch.

  On the ground, Sara let out a shout. “They are here. Stop them, kill them all.”

  “Great, attract its attention why don’t you,” Kyle muttered as he rubbed his ribs. He could see that the serenity and calm he saw in the face of the woman in her portrait was not the whole story. He wondered how long she had been preparing for the day and decided he could think about that on the way back to the ship. He hurried his crew out of the bunker, not keen to have another encounter with the creature the woman was insanely calling.

  He had got to the surface and pulled his crew out, along with the old scientist Taylor had called Skandia and a shapely red head when he had heard the first shouts of panic from inside. He thought that the creature must have arrived and knew he had to do something to help, but he had to first think of his crew. “Pope, Cameron, get airborne and carry the old guy and the woman to the ‘Cavalry’ as quick as you can then come back for us. Fenchurch, let’s see if we can save a few lives,” he barked and moved back towards the hatch.

  ***

  Taylor had seen the four men get out of the hatch, with Lana and Dr Skandia close behind them, when he had heard Eli yell out, “It’s here!!” He had turned and seen the Warrior running towards them through the corridors of the bunker, already firing its hand-held weapon and its tail discharger as it approached. Sara stood watching the beast, unafraid. Taylor looked around at the nearby corpses, desperate to see if any of them had fallen holding a weapon of more power than the laser pistol he had taken from Sara. Eli shouted, “We have got to go!”

  Taylor turned to him. “It will catch us in no time and then we’re all dead. I have to keep it in here as long as I can. Go, take her.” he said indicating the young guard, “and Chris and get out.” The Warrior was almost on them now, and Taylor sidestepped a blast from its weapon that melted the wall behind him. He pushed Eli towards the hatch, “Get gone, now! Chris, you too.”

  Chris stood his ground as Eli reluctantly shepherded the guard to the hatch. “I’m staying here. No arguments, West.” Taylor didn’t even try to argue with the big man, he could see from Chris’s face that he was in no mood to be trifled with. Taylor picked a weapon up from one of the dead guards and noticed Sara had done the same. She screamed his name as she fired at him. He leapt to one side, losing his balance as he did and he toppled to the floor.

  Before he could get to his feet, he felt the Warrior swing a blow of its horned elbow at his back. The fact that he had seen it coming was the only thing that saved his life. The horn entered his back at a shallower angle then the Warrior had intended and only reached a couple of millimetres before Taylor rolled away. He winced from the pain, “Chris fire at the floor, we need to cut through the crust!” he yelled as he tried to keep his distance from the creature.

  Chris had his own problems, though, as he was wrestling Sara to the floor and trying to disarm her before she could get another shot off at Taylor. She dug her nails into his arms as they pinned her down and he yelped in surprise. As he involuntarily released his grip, she tried to use her fingernails to gouge his eyes, missing slightly and drawing blood from the top of his cheek. He punched her on the jaw with all the force he could muster and she staggered back but did not fall. Chris was surprised. He thought he had hit her with enough force to knock her out for some time, but she was obviously tougher then she appeared.

  She laughed at his confusion, “Poor old Chris. You just don’t understand do you? I am not what I seem to be. I have not waited a hundred and forty two years to be here today and put up with you people for months so that you can ruin the occasion with your presence.” She lashed out at him with her fist and Chris was startled to find himself knocked to the floor. He had no idea what she was talking about when she said she had been waiting for a hundred and forty-two years but he did know she was not the frail scientist he had always thought.

  She advanced on him. “This is for all the times I had to put up with your leering and abuse,
” she kicked him square between the legs and he doubled over in agony. She walked around his prone form. “And this is for the months of having to see your disgusting habits all the time.” With that, she leant down and punched him in the jaw. He reeled from the force of the blow. “A century of the nectar of my Gods makes you strong. Too strong for a cretin like you. I only wish your wife were here so that I could give her what she deserves,” she fell on him and started to throttle him.

  Chris’s vision began to fade as she squeezed the life out of him, and seconds before he passed out, he saw her slump to the floor beside him. He gulped air in rapidly and he started to feel a little better, sat up and looked around to try and find out what had happened. Taylor stood a few metres away with the Warrior’s hand-held weapon in his hand. “She’s not dead, but she’ll be out for a good while yet,” he said lowering the smoking weapon that he had just shot her with.

  Chris looked around, “What happened to that monster? How did you get its gun off it?”

  Taylor smiled in a way that Chris thought seemed to be deliciously cruel. “Let’s just say I gave it another place it needed to be.”

  ***

  On reaching the ‘Cavalry’, Pope and Cameron lowered Dr Skandia and Lana Maxwell to the ground and called for the landing lift. “Get in and shut up,” Pope said as he pushed Lana inside the lift, “we have to go back for the others.” Seconds later Pope and Cameron were back in the air and heading for the bunker once more. The ‘Cavalry’ had landed over thirty minutes walk from the bunker and, with passengers, it had taken about four minutes for Pope to get his cargo to the ship. He knew he could get back in less than two minutes if he really pushed, but it was still going to be tight.

  Bearing in mind that they had three more trips to do to carry all the people to the ship, he thought they were going to be cutting it fine. He didn’t know exactly how much longer was remaining before the planet tore itself apart but by the way he could see the ground moving beneath them, he didn’t think it could be long.

  Back at the ‘Cavalry’, Dr Skandia knew exactly how long was remaining and was also worried that they were not going to make it. He knew it took a ship about eight minutes to leave Graves’ World’s orbit and get to what he would consider a safe distance and he had noticed it had taken four minutes to get to the ship. Three trips at four minutes a time, with two minutes to get back each time, he calculated to be sixteen minutes and they needed twenty-four if they were to get the ship far enough away.

  He looked at the readout on his wrist, it read 00:31:24. It would certainly be tight. He cursed the fact that they couldn’t bring the ship nearer. Cameron had explained that the ship was not designed to cruise at low levels, it could swoop in to a low hover from a higher altitude. It would need to go up to a low orbit, around and then down and this would take as much time as the ferrying trips by hover-pak. The initial ignition of the ‘Cavalry’ engines was a burst of power unsuitable for slow speed take off and this was needed for low level flying. Cameron and Pope glided back to the bunker as quickly as they could, both thinking they were possibly flying to their deaths.

  ***

  With Sara lying unconscious on the floor and the Warrior mysteriously absent from the area, Chris thought it a good opportunity for himself and Taylor to leave. He moved towards the hatch and was close to it when he was frustrated to see the blast damage covered by a metal panel. “Damn,” he said, “the security shield has come down.” He was surprised that the guards hadn’t tried to activate the security shield when the Warrior had attacked and tried to gain entry, but thought the beast was probably through the door before they had a chance to know it was there. Like the station on the surface, the bunker had a defence mechanism that could be activated, and when it was the exits and entrances, in this case only the one, sealed tight with a thick metal panel. This was usually a comforting occurrence but now was a major headache.

  Taylor rubbed his chin. “I didn’t think our alien friend would be finished so soon. It has sealed the bunker to keep us here until it can get back.”

  “Back from where? What happened?” Chris did not see how Taylor could have made the Warrior leave so quickly.

  Taylor explained, “When I was talking with Dr Skandia in the lab, before the thing got in, I asked him to do two things for me. One was to spray the override switch with dye.”

  “And he did that. Sara had it on her hand.”

  “That’s right. The other thing was to open a valve in the lab. A valve that controlled the flow of fluid through their testing tube.” Chris was confused and Taylor explained for him. Dr Skandia and his fellow scientists had been testing the fluid that was behind the screen to try and see what it was composed of, for some time. They had realised that the removal of the fluid from its environment would give them false readings, as they wanted to see how the fluid reacted in its natural state. So they were forced to implant a tube into the fluid and periodically draw fluid into it to test and then release it back into the mass from whence it came. The result of this was that the team had a valve with which they could draw fluid into the tube and then put it back again.

  This valve, Taylor had realised when the Doctor had mentioned it to him, if left open for any length of time would draw such a large amount of the fluid into it that it would fill and be forced to vent the fluid out into the lab. At Taylor’s request, the Doctor had opened the valve just before the creature had gained access to the lab.

  “Why do that?” Chris asked.

  Taylor replied swiftly, “I wanted to buy us a little time. I knew the Warrior would have to stop the fluid venting out.”

  “Why?”

  “That fluid is vital. The whole purpose of that creature being here is to make sure nothing disturbs the fluid behind the screen in the lab. I just gave it another thing to worry about.”

  “But it destroyed all the machinery in the lab, I saw it.”

  “Yes, but the valve is still open. Once enough of the fluid leaked out into the lab, the creature was called back.”

  “Hang on, called back? Called back by whom?”

  “It’s difficult to explain.”

  “Try.”

  Taylor had started to move back into the depths of the bunker. “We need to get that door open as quick as we can. We should be able to access the controls from the security room. Let’s get busy, it’ll be on its way.”

  “How did you get its gun? And what did you mean when you said the creature was called back?” Chris asked, unwilling to be fobbed off the subject.

  Taylor sighed, he did not see that this was the thing they should be concentrating on at that moment. “It had to leave in a bit of a hurry, it didn’t seem to want to stop and pick the gun up.” Chris waited for the rest of the explanation, but was disappointed. Taylor was already in the security room and trying to get the computer to release the security protocols and open the door. Chris shrugged, never a man to worry too much about things he didn’t understand, and tried to help get the door open.

  The Warrior left the lab heading back to the humans in the entrance area. It had been about to finish off the human when it had been summoned. It had to go to its masters as soon as it could, they would breach no delay. When he had arrived at the lab he had been able to feel the presence of its masters clearly, they were close but there was a problem. The fluid they needed, especially at this vital time, was ebbing away.

  The Warrior had been quick to stem the flow from what appeared to be a human construct leading into the fluid mass. A considerable amount of the precious fluid was already on the floor of the lab and the Warrior had drawn strength from it. Thinking quickly, it used the access panel on the wall of the lab, that it had left operational as they in no way affected its masters; and had sealed the human in the bunker. It knew it could get to the entrance area before the two humans could get the doors open to escape and spurred itself to its fastest run. Its masters were quiet now, no longer concerned with the fluid loss it had stemmed; but the Warrior could s
till feel their presence getting ever closer.

  Taylor thumped his fist down on the computer. “Damn it,” he cursed, “it’s jammed this system up tight.” They had been working on the computer to try and release the doors, but had been getting limited results. Taylor had managed to get the computer to release part of the security system; but the doors remained firmly closed, and he knew time was running out for them. He did not imagine they would have long before the Warrior returned and he was all out of surprises.

  Chris worked alongside him, suggesting commands to enter to try and short cut their way through the elaborate security overrides. Taylor knew he had no hope of cutting through the door with any of the weapons he had at his disposal. As a last resort, Taylor tried the old ‘control, alt and delete’ button combination and then gave up.

  “Try the Omega pathway. The system should be like the one at our station. You can save a few seconds by going in that way,” Chris suggested. Taylor was surprised to find the big man to be particularly helpful, perhaps he had misjudged him from the start. Chris pushed Taylor out of the way. “Come on, let me try. Get over to the door and be ready to run when I get it open,” he ordered. Taylor resisted for a second and Chris continued, “I can do this quicker than you. I need you by the door to prop it. Once it opens I want it to stay open.”

  Taylor ran to the hatch and had just reached it when he felt the air around him sizzle as a blast from the Warrior’s weapon shot past him, singeing his hair as it passed. He turned and saw that the Warrior was there, their time had just run out. Chris had also seen the Warrior turn the corner and redoubled his efforts, he could see he was nearly there now.

  The Warrior regarded the two men, trying to decide which one to attack first. Its logical mind told it the one by the door was going nowhere as long as it could stop the human at the computer from getting the door open. It moved towards Chris. Taylor saw the movement and shouted to warn him. “Chris, it’s coming for you.”