“Well, well, well. Looks like we have ourselves an old-fashioned love connection.” Magnus grinned ear to ear in his helmet. I donned mine once again and walked to the center of the room. We’d moved our pinned buttons to the outside of the suits, mounting them on a loose pocket on the breast. For good measure, we also each strapped one of the Kraskis’ powerful guns to our backs. We didn’t know what would be waiting for us out there.
My heart pounded and a bead of sweat ran down my back as I waited for the word from Mary. I was about to willingly alter my matter to get to the container. The idea that I might materialize half in the container, or that the rope wouldn’t come with me and I would float out there forever, crossed my mind as she called to us, telling us it was time.
Magnus, looking as calm as ever, pushed his button and was enveloped in a green light. Following suit, we both glowed as we used a rail above us to push down gently. I didn’t feel my legs moving through the ship wall, but soon I was neck deep in ship and after a quick eye closing and opening, I was out in space. Then, just as quickly, I was entering the huge black container, rope still firmly in place. We entered into a small room with dim lights on each wall. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust – then I saw the bodies.
The room was about thirty feet square, and maybe a hundred people lay on the floor, unmoving. I knelt down to the nearest person, and saw her chest rising and falling slowly. She was alive!
“Magnus, she’s alive! Check the others! Are any of you awake? It’s okay, we’re here to help you,” I called out. A few people moved around along the wall, and one of them hesitantly stood up.
“It can’t be,” the skinny man said. “We’re dead, don’t you see?” He stumbled forward, stepping on some unmoving bodies to get to us.
“No, you’re not. We’re human like you. Here to save you.” I gripped him as he stood in front of me. His face was gaunt, and dozens of others were slowly getting to their feet. Some stayed unmoving, and I feared the worst for them.
There was a door at the far end of the space; Magnus was already moving for it. It hissed open, sliding to the left, and he motioned with his hands for me to follow.
“We’ll be back. Does anyone know if there’s a control room or something with computers in this thing?” No one answered. I breathed deeply and felt the cool, fresh air hit my lungs. Guilt hit me right in the gut seeing these struggling people, dead or near death, and here I was with full oxygen. I needed to have it so I could help them, though.
Magnus waved me forward from the next room. Dim lights flickered softly as I stepped over and around countless people. I wanted to stop and check on them, but I knew that we needed to keep moving.
“Everything seems to happen at the center of the Kraskis’ cubes, so let’s make a line for the middle of this thing. And do it fast. There might be some air control – maybe thrusters or something,” Magnus said.
We moved past countless thousands of humans, all piled on the floors in the dozens of rooms we went through. There were hallways every few rooms deep, like they made these containers just for storage and only needed limited access to them.
“Should we hit the middle of this cube, like on the mother ship?” I asked.
“I think you have the right idea. Let’s hit these stairwells and climb our way up.” Magnus walked up to the door, and it slid open for him. We could now tell the stairwell markers on the doors, because they had a small image of a ladder on them. Pretty universal. We climbed for what we assumed was halfway, and after a few minutes, we took one of the hallways and followed it a while before it intersected with another hall going perpendicular to it.
“If I remember anything from old shoot-em-up games, you see a path like this, you follow it to the big bad guys,” I said, remembering my days playing Doom in my parents’ basement.
I tried to forget about the other containers just like this one, filled with people and heading for the power of the sun as we were walking around this one. It felt so hopeless, but we had to try our best. I wished we had a radio right now so we could check in with Natalia and Mary and let them know we were okay. I heard something coming from down the hall and turned, straining to hear it through my suit.
“Wait!” a pleading voice called. A thin woman struggled toward us, her clothing smudged and stained. Magnus stood firm, holding his gun, and watched the other end of the hall.
“They’re in there… well, one level up, actually. We tried to fight them off at the start, but they shot and killed a whole room. A thousand of us dead in an instant. We’ve kept our heads down ever since.” She could barely stand.
“How many of them are there?” I asked.
“I don’t know. There were at least ten that I saw. But this place is huge and we think all halls lead to the central control room. Three days in, a group tried to take over and break down the doors, but there was no way in. Most of the rooms filled with a gas early on. Some sort of sedative. It just knocked them out. They eventually just went back to wait for their deaths with the rest of us.” Her shoulders slumped forward, hair spilling over her pale face.
“I think we have a way in. What did they look like?” I asked on a hunch.
“Like you and me. Human.”
“How did you know we weren’t with them, then?” Magnus asked tensely.
“Because they all look like the same woman.”
“Hybrid clones, maybe? Makes sense. Why ship your purebreds off to die when you have already proven dispensable hybrids? The bastards.” At that moment, the guilt I had for destroying the last of the Kraski from the universe drifted away into the cosmos. “Stay back. We’re going to go in and take control of this place. Magnus, let’s double back to that stairwell and get moving. Remember how we got on the ship? I think that the technology allows us to pull through solids toward the power module of each ship. In this case, that should be through the doors upstairs.”
“I hear you loud and clear, Dean. Let’s move. Lady, you might want to find a room down the way. Can you try to gather everyone who’s well enough to fight and bring them up a flight in ten minutes? We may need the backup.” Magnus swung his gun into ready position.
The woman nodded lightly and took off down the hall. We turned to the stairwell and worked our way up a flight. Were they watching us with cameras? Did they know we were on our way to them? Maybe they were too smug and cocky to even be worried.
We exited through the sliding door out of the dimly lit stairwell, and into a hallway with softly flashing lights. It occurred to me that maybe something behind the doors at the end of the hall was pulling energy from the breaker or whatever they used on these things.
Magnus took the lead, and soon we were at the door, each standing at either side of the metal slab, guns raised. I took a moment to calm my breathing, which was getting labored as adrenaline surged through my body. I looked up to Magnus and gave him a smile that more likely looked like a grimace. The pin on my suit felt heavy this time as I readied to push it. Magnus raised three fingers and slowly lowered them one by one. At zero, we both pressed our buttons and were pulled by a soft green glow. Magnus was heading upwards, so I pushed him forward through the door; he grabbed me and dragged me through with him.
TWENTY-SIX
We let go and rolled to the ground. Well, Magnus rolled and I kind of flopped, but I quickly recovered to my feet. They hadn’t been expecting us, so our fire took a few of them down in a hurry. We didn’t have time to think or to feel bad about killing them anymore. We had to save everyone before they ran out of air or burned up in the sun. It was them or us. We kept firing in the open room, and soon there were at least a dozen of them on the ground. Magnus moved left and I went right, each of us attempting to clear a side of the engineering room. It was a large space with glowing pillars and metal everywhere. The floors were a metallic grate much like the rest of the container, and the pillars gave a lot of places for someone to hide.
Something moved ahead, and I paused, motioning to Magnus to st
op too. He covered me, pointing his gun in the direction of the noise. I stepped lightly over to the pulsing power source and raised my gun. “Step out!” I yelled.
Before I could act, I heard a foot plant down on the metal flooring behind me. I cursed as I spun to see my wife pointing a gun at me. “It’s too late,” she said, her voice unmistakably Janine’s. “We have won, and your planet is ours. Why bother fighting us?”
We stood in a stalemate, pointing guns at each other. I’m sure my jaw was hanging open as my brain tried to understand what it was seeing. “Janine?” I asked quietly, knowing it wasn’t really her. I scanned the bodies on the floor, holes torn through them from our blasters. They were all her. Janine’s dead face looked at me from a few yards away.
“Thing is, we didn’t lose. The Kraski are dead. All of them.” I gauged her reaction and saw her eyes go wide.
“That’s impossible. They couldn’t have been defeated. That would mean…” Realization crossed over her face. “You brought it up to them? Then we were betra–” A beam cut her down before she could finish her thought, but from behind me, not from Magnus.
“I’m going to come out and lower my weapon. Don’t fire. I’m here to help you,” said another voice, identical to Janine’s.
“Be sure that you do.” Magnus appeared at my side, gun still raised.
She stepped out and, as promised, she lowered the large weapon to the floor, a heavy clink as the gun tapped the metal floor. She was wearing a black jumpsuit like all the others: a dozen Janines floating in space with me. Of all the crazy things I’d been through in the past week, this was quickly reaching the top of the list.
“You said you can help us? How?” I asked.
She smiled at me, tears forming at her eyes. It reminded me so much of my long-dead wife that I almost broke down right there. I stuffed the emotion down, thinking about the people we still had to save.
“Enough smiling! My people are going to die if you don’t hurry the hell up!” I yelled, heart racing.
Magnus set his hand on my shoulder.
“I’ve been waiting for a moment I could help but couldn’t find it. I’m the one who cut the engines in the first place so the hauler wouldn’t make it to the sun. I knew your wife, Dean. I’ve seen pictures of you. Tell me what happened, and then we can help your friends out here.” She looked straight into my eyes as she spoke. There was no looking down to the left, or nervous twitching. I wasn’t a cop, but I felt like I could trust what she was saying.
“Your creators, the Kraski, sent hybrids like yourself down to Earth a decade ago to infiltrate us, and convince us to turn that damned Shield off. Turns out their little slave race, the Deltra, were the ones who planted the thing there centuries ago, right when their planet was taken over,” I said, gauging her reaction. She twitched at the Deltra part, just enough for me to notice. “They spent the next few centuries trying to find a way to get the Kraski to come, so they could execute their plan. They became trusted enough, but somehow convinced the Kraski that they would also die by the Shield. No one could get close to it without rotting away, or at least that’s what the Kraski thought. I use the term thought because from what I understand, they’d packed up and abandoned wherever the hell they were from to take over our world and leave us for dead.”
She kept still and didn’t say anything, so I continued, my blood still pounding in my ears from all the built-up frustration of the whole scenario. “Thing is, the Deltra had plans of their own, and they stopped me on Earth to tell me they could help, and that the Kraski were bad news. We took the Shield up to the mother ship, landed, and turned the thing on, melting them all from the inside out.”
Janine’s double gasped at this, trembling slightly at first; then she crouched down, looking like she was going to be sick. “It’s true, then. They’re all gone?”
“Yeah, we killed them and flew here in Deltra and Kraski ships. Two more humans are outside now waiting on us. So what can you do to help us?” Magnus asked.
She rocked back and forth in her crouched position, but slowly stood up after a few moments. A wide smile crossed over her face and she waved us to follow her.
“Those arrogant bastards created life where it wasn’t meant to be created. Human-Kraski hybrids like me just weren’t meant to exist in the universe. Then they get us to risk our lives and die for their cause, telling us that they would live in harmony with the other half of our genetic makeup, the humans. Close to a hundred died while on Earth, some within minutes of setting foot on the planet. Each of us had a different tolerance for the Shield, and those that lasted the longest were cloned even more. Janine was one of the first to have the gene of survival, even though she died after a few years. Hence why you see so many of us fitting her description.” She was typing away at a central computer, sliding digital scales up until they turned from red to green.
I suddenly felt bad for killing them all when we entered this room. As if she read my mind, she said, “Not all of us had empathy for humans. Every one of these on the floor here were Kraski to the bone. They obeyed like the animals they were. I tried to reason with them, to tell them that what we were doing was wrong, but they wouldn’t listen. I was lucky they didn’t kill me.”
“What are you doing now?” Magnus asked.
“Turning the air back on, on all floors. We also have water and food stores. Not enough to keep everyone fed, but enough to distribute to those still alive out there. This was a one-way mission, so they didn’t give us a lot. But the Kraski had been planning on bringing their own people in these units…only that wasn’t to be.” I was still hesitant, but she wasn’t giving us a lot of reasons to not trust her at this point. And she was hinting at an even deeper conspiracy that I wasn’t ready for.
There was a pounding at the door, and I remembered asking that lady to bring people for backup. I ran over to the door and tried to open it. Nothing. “Is there a trick to this?” I yelled.
“Sorry, fingerprint recognition only.” She hurried over, and before she opened it, she extended her hand to me. It shook lightly as I clasped it. “I’m Mae. They gave us all human names.”
We shook, and I had to remind myself this wasn’t Janine, but a very convincing replica. “Dean, but I guess you knew that.”
The door slid open, and she ducked behind me as dozens of people flowed into the room, looking weak and hungry, but angry too.
I stood before them and noted that they saw the bodies on the far side of the room. “Mae here is going to help us. No one lays a hand on her.” I motioned for the woman we’d seen one floor down. “Miss. What’s your name?” I asked her.
“Alley,” she said, her gaze like steel. She would be able to help lead the survivors; I could see it in her eyes.
“Well, Alley, there’s a bit of food here, and water. Mae here will show you the storage facility. I want you to distribute it through each floor. Send some of these people to go room to room looking for doctors, nurses – hell, veterinarians… anyone who can help the sick or dying. Get a triage set up near here.” My gut sank as I thought about the lifeless bodies I’d seen in just a few rooms. “You’ll also need to set up a room for the dead. Start to separate them from the rest. Can you do that? Water first, then the rest. We’re going for everyone else. We’ll be back. Do you hear me? We will be back for you.”
She looked up at me, her brown eyes glistening. She took a gulp and nodded.
“Mae, I take it you guys had some medical supplies too?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’ll show Alley the way.” Mae motioned for the other woman to follow her, and two men followed along, ready to help.
I smiled to see people still alive and ready to help each other. Magnus walked over and leaned in to my ear. “You know what people will do when they hear there’s food? I’m worried there’ll be a riot.”
He was probably right, but I had to have faith in them. I motioned for a couple of big men looming by the door. They looked like bouncers at a nightclub scanning for t
rouble. Perfect. I crossed the room to them. “Gentlemen. Alley will be getting some leaders together to hand out food and water and to set up a functional hospital. I need you two to get a few more men you trust, take weapons from the fallen over there” – I nodded at the bodies on the ground – “and just make sure no one does anything out of hand. People are desperate, and they’ll do anything when they’re desperate. You get what I’m saying?”
“You got it, boss,” one of them said. The other gave me a salute and it made me smile. An accountant being saluted in a metal cube in space was quite the sight. “What about that one? Isn’t she with them? Should we… dispose of her?” He said it with a twitch of his eye, like he was trying to act the role but was terrified if I’d say yes.
“She’s with us. Caught on the wrong side of the battle.” They visibly relaxed and moved on.
Alley addressed the people and was giving directions. They all eagerly listened, ready to help, with hope on their side now. People could do miraculous things with just a little hope. Mae came over carrying some food and water and tossed them in a bag, slinging it over her shoulder. She also had an EVA suit over her other shoulder; her gun still hung there too. “I’m coming with you. I’ve changed the thrusters on this thing to slow it and to make a wide turn, sending it back toward Earth. We’ll have plenty of time to get to the sun, do the same for the others, and get back to this one, at the slow speed it’s heading.”
The Survivors: Books 1-3 Page 19
