by Jamie Sawyer
I stumbled over something on the floor. I saw that I’d fallen over a body.
Mom? The fanciful, hysterical idea that this might be my mother occurred to me. Please no! I crouched down, illuminated the corpse with my torch. It was instantly obvious that it wasn’t her: instead, a man dressed in a khaki uniform, his torso shredded to a bloody mess. I traced the crook of his arm, found a pistol still clutched in the dead man’s hand. It was a compact model made of black plastic, with an electronic readout on the body. Similar to the one that Daryl had used in the District.
Although I could’ve given it to Daryl – he was, as of late, apparently handy with a gun – I decided to keep it. Daryl was injured, wouldn’t be able to protect the rest of the group. Breaking Rule Two again, I scooped up the gun. The grip was slick with the deceased soldier’s blood. I was mildly disgusted with myself for scavenging from the dead, but I figured that I needed the gun more than the corpse did.
“Have you ever used one of those?” Lucina asked me.
“Not yet. But there’s a first time for everything.”
The weapon was small, but like a black hole its mass wasn’t proportionate to its size. I had no idea what the gun fired – whether it was a projectile thrower or an energy weapon.
“Everything all right up there?” Sheldon said in a pitched whisper. “We can hardly see.”
I stood from the dead man, flashed my torch over a glowing sign on the wall. It read OFFICERS’ LOUNGE.
“All good. Lounge is next junction.”
“Let’s keep moving,” Daryl grunted.
We emerged into a wide space. It wasn’t a bar, but some sort of recreational area. The smoke wasn’t as bad here. Tables and chairs in pastel colours; military accolades on the walls. I guess that the place had been somewhere more subdued for senior officers and crew members to rest. Now it was deserted. An enormous, reinforcement-webbed observation port sat at one end of the lounge. I presumed that would usually grant a decent view of the outer rings of the station, based on where the chamber was located, but the protective blast-shutters were down.
“Sheldon and Lucy, look for emergency boxes,” Daryl ordered.
He had regained some modicum of authority. I hoped that meant that the medical tech was kicking in, and that Daryl could take back leadership of the group. I was perfectly fine with being told what to do by someone else rather than make the decisions.
“On it,” Sheldon called as he started searching the walls for breather gear. Two boxes were already plundered, and a third looked like it wouldn’t open.
I sighed to myself, slapped the pistol down on a nearby table. I looked up at the shutters – was taken by the idea that I wanted to see space again. If I was going to die aboard the Point, then I wanted to see the stars one last time. My Zeta Ret heritage got the better of me and without explanation I searched out the shutter controls by the main window.
“Good idea,” Daryl called. “Let’s get some light in here.”
The blast-shutters slowly retracted. I held my finger over the operating stud, watched the light of outer space spill across the lounge floor.
“By the Holy Stars…” I whispered.
“What is it?” Daryl barked. “Have you found something that we can use…?”
He squinted with his pale eyes at the universe outside.
Liberty Point was a mess. From our position on the outer ring, we could see the inner elements of the structure: the long hub, the rings housing further decks. All of those were battered and scorched; had recently taken damage just like the Civilian District and surrounding habitats. Some modules had vented. Plumes of frozen liquid, like white geysers, spewed from the inner habs. Inside some of the occupied modules, through the numerous view-ports and observation windows, I could see the erratic glimmer of chemical fires. They were spreading, unchecked, across the Point.
But none of those details caused my reaction, because there was something much worse out there.
“Those aren’t Directorate ships,” I said.
There were alien warships everywhere, so many of them that they blotted out my precious stars. Hundreds, thousands even – crammed into near-space. Bloated conch-like things for the most part, but smaller vessels also darted among the remains of the station.
“That woman – back in the Comms Room – said that the sensor-suite was down,” I said, working through what I was seeing. “They didn’t know that the Krell were coming…”
I’d heard it said that Krell bio-ships were difficult to detect in the void. Something about their energy signatures, the materials from which the ships were built. Those stories had seemed like such rubbish before today. How could anything that big move through space without being seen or sensed? My mind raced with the implications: the unanswered engineering questions that such a scenario surely posed. The ships were enormous; they must put out a ton of spent energy. The sheer impossibility of the Point being subjected to an ambush of such scale dawned on me.
And yet, here it was. The facts spoke for themselves.
Sheldon and Lucina had stopped searching now. They stood watching the window. Lucina gasped, hand to her mouth.
“This is the biggest Alliance military station on the QZ,” Sheldon said. “The Navy will fight back.”
It was Sheldon’s turn to be hopelessly optimistic. The fleet that we had seen on our arrival – that unstoppable, unbreakable Naval presence – was gone. Whether it had been destroyed, or just fled, was irrelevant. That it wasn’t here, fighting the Krell, was the reality. Only a handful of Alliance ships remained. A wing of fighters skated over the body of one Krell ship – their plasma weaponry charging, sending out bright beams of light – but they were being chased down by a hundred times their number. It was a losing battle.
“No point in standing around watching,” I said. “We need to keep moving.” I pointed out some more signage on the wall: the words CIVILIAN DOCKING FACILITY, BAYS 1 TO 13. I could even see the bay through the window, positioned along the curve of the outer ring. “The Edison is through there – Bay Thirteen. We’re almost there.”
A mighty, staggering explosion sounded from somewhere inside the Point: a sonorous thump that came in stages. Detonations rippled across a nearby structure, close enough that debris was thrown into the observation window. Yellow light filled the port for a second and I put a hand to my face to protect my eyes.
“What was that?” said Sheldon.
When I looked outside again, the station’s outer ring was torn. The hull was open. Big, irregular shapes drifted from inside – tumbling out into space. Some of those exploded as they made clearance from the Point, while others just floated off into the nether.
“That was the docking bay,” I said.
Daryl looked from me to the window and back again. “Is the Edison still docked?”
“No,” I said. “Not any more.”
The docking bay where our ship had been berthed was a blackened wreck – landing spars torn free from the rest of the Point, the remainder exposed to vacuum. Pieces of debris were being hurled from the base, spinning in zero-G away from the destroyed module. Chunks of smouldering wreckage slammed into the observation window. It occurred to me that some of that rubbish was probably the remains of the Edison.
“Get away from the windows,” I said. “This area isn’t safe any more.”
I flinched as more debris pattered against the reinforced plastic. The glass in one panel began to fracture, a haze spreading over the portal.
Sheldon darted towards the exit, towards the sector signed CIVILIAN DOCKING. Very solemnly, he said to me, “Tan, if we don’t make it out of this alive, I just want you to know—”
I looked through Sheldon.
His face dropped; from where I was, I could already smell the stink. He was ten or so metres from me, at the other end of the lounge. For him, the odour must’ve been overpowering.
Days old fish.
He half turned over his shoulder, and let out a surprised shou
t. The response was cut short as a taloned limb punched right through his stomach.
Where is my gun? Where is my fucking gun?!
The weapon sat on the end of the nearest table but for all the good it would do me it might as well have been back on Zeta Reticuli.
Lucina was screaming, over and over.
The corpse – because it wasn’t Sheldon any more, not the asshole of a ship’s medic who I’d actually realised was an okay guy – slammed against the inside of the observation window, slid down to the floor. He left a bloody trail on plasglass.
His attacker paused, took in the room.
A Krell. I’d never seen one in person before. The way I understood it, very few did. That was why the Point was here; that was what the military and the Quarantine Zone and all this other shit was for.
As a kid, we’d passed vid-files around the burgs – traded them like candy. Stolen feeds from military cams, downloaded from the network. It had been a phase among my friends – a challenge to get hold of the most violent, most sickening combat scene.
I’d found the pictures terrifying and fascinating.
In reality, the Krell was only one of those things.
No image could compare to what I was seeing. The Krell were often likened to fish or sharks, but the resemblance was passing. This creature was beyond any Earth-like comparative: a combination of aquatic, insectile and arachnid features. It had six limbs – two arms, two legs and two bladed appendages – and lurched from wall to wall so fast that I could barely see it. The xeno moved wrong, every joint bending at inhuman angles.
Rule Three: never fight unless you’re sure that you’ll win. That rule had kept me alive more than enough times in the Pen. I never fought the older, more experienced or bigger inmates. The lifers and the long-termers: they had survived so long because they had weapons, they had friends, they had the guards in their pay. My fights had always been with the freshmeat, the new inmates. Fights that proved I wasn’t to be messed with, but were for show more than any other purpose.
The Krell was no freshmeat. It was a killer. I wasn’t sure that I could win this fight. On the contrary, I was quite sure that I was going to die in that lounge. I knew in my bones that nothing I did would be enough to fend this thing off.
But I had to try.
Move! I dropped my torch – shit, shit, shit – and reached for the pistol with both hands. I had it! I aimed at the Krell, or at least in the xeno’s direction, and pressed a finger down on the firing stud—
It suddenly occurred to me that the gun might not be loaded.
– the Krell was gone –
– the gun let out a loud beep and the ammo reader flashed red –
Lucina was still screaming, and the Krell cleared the lounge, was on top of her. Her head hit the floor with a loud thump; her scream abruptly muted.
“No!” Daryl roared. “Leave her alone!”
– I fumbled with the pistol, thought about grabbing the torch to better see where I was shooting the weapon –
“Work, bloody hell!” I yelled.
The pistol readout flickered green –
With an effortless leap, the Krell slammed into Daryl and sent him sprawling, face-down to the floor. It had its back to me now and I could see its tail whipping across the ground. It lifted a clawed foot over the captain’s torso, ready to bring its huge weight down on his chest. I just knew that if it did that, Daryl was dead. He’d be killed by the thing that he feared most, which seemed both unfair and ironic.
I fired.
The pistol was some sort of energy weapon. A bright pulse shot from the muzzle, sailed over the Krell’s elongated head. The air sizzled and there was a brief hiss as the gun discharged.
The shot completely missed. It scorched the ceiling overhead. The Krell whirled about-face, away from Daryl. Fucking great. All I’d done was get the thing’s attention. It advanced on me, plodding now.
I should’ve lived by Rules One, Two and Three, I blasted myself. Made for the docking bay on my own. I could’ve made it on my own –
I pressed the trigger again and again. The reader flashed something in red text – but I couldn’t read it through the smoke.
“Work, Gaia bloody damn you!” I screamed at the gun.
The pistol discharged again, two shots in fast succession. I hadn’t realised until that point that the creature was wearing an armoured suit: plating so well grafted to its body that it was almost indistinguishable from the xeno itself.
Both shots glanced the armour and bounced off harmlessly.
The alien was moving faster now – closing the distance –
The smell was the worst thing, catching so deep in my lungs that it was almost suffocating.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MILITARY-GRADE
The Krell stopped in its tracks. Its neck whip-cracked around, bio-armour creaking, and it let out a pitched shriek – a noise that sounded about as alien as the monster looked. Suddenly I knew that I was no longer the focus of its attention.
Then the Krell exploded.
A volley of shots hit it in the upper torso and head; scythed through the armour and the grey-green flesh beneath. The alien staggered backwards, blood and gore pouring from the open wounds.
Events played out at a frightening, phenomenal speed. There were flashes of motion at the edge of my smoke-teared eyes. Two more of the things were in the lounge. They had talons up and bodies precisely balanced to assault something at the other end of the room.
More incoming fire. There was another threat here now.
The two new attackers skidded sideways, out of threat range, but one was hit too.
I found my voice. “Help us in here!” I shouted, eager that whoever was out there knew there were humans inside.
The idea that our saviour, or saviours, might be Directorate barely occurred to me. Right now, being shot dead by Directorate agents was infinitely preferable to spending another second in the presence of the Krell.
A figure appeared through the smoke, wearing a huge armoured suit. Army; had to be Army. The dull grey armour had seen action: scars stitched the limbs, a black burn across one shoulder. The soldier fired a bulky rifle on the move. I could just about read a name on the helmet, printed beneath the mirrored face-plate.
SERGEANT ARTEMIS: GODDESS SQUAD.
It’s her. She’s come back for me. I couldn’t believe it. I blinked away tears, hugged the ground.
“Stay down!” my mother barked. Her voice was amplified by a speaker system inside the armour. “Don’t look directly at the gun. It’ll blind you without eyewear.”
I nodded, mute. Her rifle spat death. Where the bright pulses hit, Krell exploded.
She had so many targets. There were more in the room now – all shrieking, clawing towards my mother. I couldn’t keep track of where they had all come from; only knew that there were hordes of them. She tracked them all, moving in such choreographed motions that it was almost a dance.
Soon she was standing over me. Daryl, dragging Lucina with him, gathered at her feet. Lucina was startled, bleeding from a cut on her head, but alive.
Three Krell xeno-forms leapt from a rent in a wall – tearing through an exposed duct. My mother dispatched one with a single shot between the eyes. As the other two closed on us, she tossed her rifle away, in the same motion grabbing at a pistol holstered on her belt. Blam, blam, blam – another Krell reduced to a twitchy, bloody mess. The third got to her, but before I could feel any concern, she had smashed a fist into the monster’s face. She was moving almost as fast as the xenos.
The Krell – enormous, brutal – shook its head in bewilderment. The bio-organic armour cracked, oozed something puerile and bloody. The stunned creature was hit by more energy rounds from across the lounge.
I snapped my head around and saw that another soldier had appeared. Dressed the same as my mother, armour perhaps a little more damaged than hers.
She nodded at the trooper. “Thanks for the save.”
&nb
sp; “Anytime, Artemis,” he said. He moved into the lounge, evaluating the mess.
My heart was beating so hard and fast that I thought I might pass out. I was trembling. Bathed in sweat and yet freezing cold. I’m in shock. For a second or so, I could barely breathe. If I want to stay alive, I have to stay with it. Keep going. I focused on the basic act of respiration, grasped it like a mechanical process. It took a few seconds for me to realise that the assault was over; that the wave of Krell attackers had stopped. Smoking alien corpses were piled on the floor.
My mother turned to me. The face-plate of her helmet suddenly became transparent, revealing her face inside. She barely looked fazed.
“Are you hurt?”
There was a tenderness to her voice that was at odds with the deathly work that she’d just completed.
“I’m fine,” I gasped. I was fighting back the urge to wretch, stirred by the smell and the thick smoke. “I think.”
I went to stand on shaking legs and my mother helped me up. I was still holding my pistol, the readout flashing red.
“It’s out of power,” my mother said.
She handed me a cell. I stared at it, uncomprehending.
“Universal compatibility for small arms. Clip it into the grip.”
She took the pistol from me and demonstrated.
“This doesn’t mean that we’re even,” I said, not quite sure why I was saying it.
“Fair enough.”
I looked down at Sheldon’s body. His face was the worst part: eyes still wide open, a trickle of blood escaping from his mouth. I’m breaking Rule Four: stop caring. But it was impossible not to care. Sheldon had been someone I’d actively disliked but there had been more to him. I suddenly wished that I’d taken the time to get to know Sheldon Trivek. I looked away from his body.
“We had a ship…” I said.
“Civilian docking facilities are gone,” my mother replied. “That route of escape has been terminated.”
“Then what do we do?”
My mother wasn’t listening any more, and didn’t answer. Her mouth was moving behind her face-plate and the other soldier was nodding. Suit-to-suit comms, I guessed. The pair made a decision.
