by S. A. Lusher
So she took a step.
And then she took another step.
The journey had begun. Slowly, as if moving against a great wind, Jennifer pressed on into the corridor, sticking to the center, trying to avoid the smashed, ruined bodies and great pools of blood. All four of the massive cargo bay doors were closed, but one of them, the door on the left, farthest away from her, near the entrance to the reactor, was dented. And, even worse, as she drew closer, Jennifer thought she could hear as much as feel something stomping around inside. Something immense, bigger than a Titan.
Whatever it was, it seemed to be locked away behind the door. But maybe not for very long. Jennifer picked up the pace, moving to the other side of the corridor, trying to steer clear of the door as much as possible. It seemed to take ages and eras, but she finally reached the end of the huge corridor. Now she stood before the doors of the reactor facility. They were partially open, almost as if beckoning her within.
Jennifer took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
She double-checked her gun, then stepped through the doors.
* * * * *
“You have got to be shitting me,” Greg groaned, freezing up as he caught the first sight of webbing up ahead.
“What?...is that...are those webs?” Eve asked. “As in, spid-”
“Yes, spider webs. This is the result of giant spiders.”
“How giant?”
Greg tried to think of a good measurement. They'd ended up moving back into the underground, though Greg was beginning to regret that. They'd been making good time, but had started running into a lot of Lancers and then a pack of Stalkers had forced them out of the network of corridors they'd been traversing and into the underground portion of the base's oxygen plant. The corridor they now occupied terminated into a much larger room.
The top of the room and some of the walls were covered in thick strands of webbing that glistened in what little light was left.
“Bigger than a cat?” Eve hazarded when Greg didn't say anything.
“Yeah, bigger.”
“By how much!?”
“Same size as...I don't know, an average-sized dog, maybe? Big and nasty.”
“Wonderful...do we have to go through here?” Eve asked.
“We might as well. The entrance to the hangar we need to get to is just on the other side of this area,” Greg replied.
Steeling himself, he took the first step into the darkened oxygen plant. The walls to either side were lined with large chrome tanks. Behind those tanks, buried in the walls and ceiling, he knew, were the scrubbers that recycled the atmosphere with as much ability and refinement as possible, one of the integral components to making life among the stars possible. Now it had been mutated into a twisted, pulsating nest for undead spider things. As Greg began making for the far exit, which had to be accomplished by navigating a series of technological nodes, he glanced up, thinking he could see dark spots in the webbing.
Spiders.
Were they sleeping? Did spiders sleep?
Whatever they were doing, they weren't yet moving. Which was perfectly fine by Greg. Maybe they could get by without disturbing them. Ahead, something shifted. Greg felt ice flood his stomach. He adjusted his aim as he stepped around another node. His helmet visor cut through the gloom, giving him a decent view of the area. There was nothing to see...but there were also many places to hide. He took another step forward.
A dark blur of movement, scrabbling feet to this left.
Then, an explosion of force and fury as something hit him and knocked him over. He heard Eve scream his name, then an eruption of gunfire. Greg managed to get flipped over, so that he landed on his back. He cried out in pure terror as he stared up at the huge arachnoid form positioned over his visor. It had attached to him, he could feel its powerful, many legs gripping his torso and his helmet. Abandoning his rifle for the moment, he reached up and grabbed the body. The contact made his skin crawl, even through the metal of his armor. With a grunt of effort, he shoved the thing off of him as hard as he could.
The spider went flying, landing on its back. Greg shot up into a sitting position, groping for his rifle, but the thing was already righting itself and skittering for him. He instead drew his pistol and pumped half a dozen rounds into the thing. Dark gore splattered the surrounding tech nodes. Greg struggled to his feet, hearing Eve doing battle with more of the things. He saw his rifle a few feet away and quickly snatched it up, holstering his pistol once more. As he brought it up, he caught movement off his peripheral.
Straight up.
Snapping his rifle skywards, Greg opened fire, spraying a huge spider, descending as silent as death, straight towards him. He jumped to the side to avoid its falling corpse. Glancing over, he saw Eve had put down three of the things already, but there were more coming.
“Run!” he shouted. “Go!”
Eve needed no further prompting. Greg put down another spider that was descending from above onto her position as she took off. Then he bolted after her, knowing it made more sense to get the hell out of there than stay and fight. He dodged and raced between large, rectangular nodes of chrome-trimmed technology, feeling his adrenaline surge. He ducked another shrieking figure, then aimed and fired as he ran, spraying the gooey innards of yet another undead spider. He had been so close to getting out of here without seeing them...
Greg hated spiders.
Probably more than most people did, given his experiences.
Suddenly, they were free of the tech nodes. The exit was up ahead, maybe ten meters away. It was just a dead sprint. Behind them, more and more of the horrible things were coming out of their overhead webbing, eager for fresh fluids. For a moment, Greg considered tossing a grenade over his shoulder, he had a few left, but then ultimately he decided against it. They were in the oxygen plant after all.
Explosives and pure oxygen didn't really go well together.
Instead, he took to simply sprinting, putting all of his effort into running as fast and as hard as he could, bolting towards the far exit with every extra ounce of speed his suit would give to him. Thankfully, the door was open, saving him precious seconds as he burst through it, saw nothing was waiting for them, dug in his heels and turned around. He began opening fire, taking out the nearest of the pack of spiders as Eve crossed the last few feet and made it through the door as well. She hit the close button.
Greg kept firing as the doors ground shut, putting as many of the ugly things down as he possibly could until there was no room left to shoot.
“I hate spiders,” Greg said as he shakily lowered his rifle.
“I do too, now,” Eve replied.
They began heading down the corridor, towards the hangar.
* * * * *
Drake finished settling into the cockpit, reached out and began working the controls. However, as soon as he began trying to run a diagnostic on the vessel, just to make sure that it was actually ready to go, half the screens flickered and died.
“Oh come on,” he groaned, feeling a weariness creep through him.
He was feeling numb. Mute. Empty.
He was a hollow man.
Enzo was dead and, from the sounds of it, by his own hand or maybe even a damned zombie. This wasn't supposed to be how it went. There was supposed to be a showdown, a fight to the death between the two of them. Drake would kill the man with his bare hands, get revenge for Trent, because sometimes that's all you could offer. And then...something would change. Some weight would be lifted, something would be different...
Something.
Except that wasn't what had happened.
Drake didn't know what to feel, but right now he was just feeling a vague sort of irritation. He wanted off this miserable fucking rock, wanted away from this mindless horrors. He didn't even know what would come after that, if he would even stay with Anomalous Operations. Honestly, his only goal for the past six months had been revenge and nothing more. And now that revenge was moot, failed, a total dud.
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For now at least, his goal was clear.
A flashing screen showed him the problem: there was a malfunction with one of the power cells and, on top of that, something crucial was damaged, some power relay. With a heavy sigh, Drake killed the power, stood up and walked back through the ship, hoping the others were faring better than he was. The radio had been silent so far.
He came back out into the hangar, marching down the ramp, scanning the area. No new bad guys had showed up so far, which was good news. Acting on a hunch, he moved around to the right side of the craft and began searching it over. Sure enough, his investigation revealed immediate results: a pair of bullet holes in a panel. He sighed once more, reached up and disengaged the panel, pulling it off and setting it aside.
Inside were a pair of power cells. One was dark and dead, having been hit. Above that, was a damaged power relay. Drake looked around and spied a stack of crates that Jennifer had used for cover not all that long ago. Figuring they probably had spare parts inside of them, he set off towards them. They were close to the end but...
Drake wasn't sure if he cared any longer whether or not he lived.
* * * * *
The reactor bay was a confusion of narrow corridors, lit only by the crimson emergency lighting. She wasn't sure how long she'd been navigating these tight alcoves, but Jennifer had finally, finally reached her destination: the main work terminal. It was large and imposing, standing on a raised dais all its own in the center of the room she'd come to. The screens, mercifully, were lit. Oddly enough, she had encountered nothing. She liked to think that she was lucky, that none of the undead or the enemies had reached this far.
But, somehow, she found herself believing something else.
The facility, the building itself was...saving up for her.
Building up to something.
Something bad was coming. She felt it in the same way she felt a vague sense of discomfort when thunder rumbled on the far horizon, threatening torrential rain and hurricane speed winds. So now, here she was, climbing the few steps up to the work platform. Setting her rifle aside for the moment, she brought the thing fully to life.
“Eve, I'm here, I'm at the terminal...what do I do?” she asked.
There was a pause, then, “Search for a command menu. From there, you should be able to find something called 'executive control'.”
The next few minutes passed by in the crimson gloom. Eve fed her instructions and Jennifer followed them, having had enough training and experience, (and some natural skill), in working with technology that she could navigate the controls without too much trouble. Eve was initially worried that she'd have to do some hacking, since they normally hid this stuff behind layers of security, but it turned out there was no security. Jennifer figured that Enzo and those running this place either didn't think it would be necessary or didn't care.
Either way, inside of five minutes she had the reactor ready to blow.
“How long?” she asked.
“Twenty minutes,” Eve replied. “That should be enough time.”
“Here's hoping,” Jennifer said softly as she set the time. “Okay, it's counting down.”
“Hurry back.”
“Now may not be the best time to throw this in there,” Drake said suddenly, “but the ship was damaged in the attack.”
“Why didn't you mention this before!?” Jennifer hissed as she began racing back through the corridors. She skidded to a halt. “Should I go back, change the countdown?”
“No, hurry back here. I will hopefully be done by the time you get back. And I didn't say because a bunch of Lancers came in and started trying to kill me.”
“Just...hurry it up, Drake,” Greg said.
Jennifer focused on getting out of the reactor bay, hurrying as quickly as she could. She'd done a fairly decent job of memorizing it on the way in, at least she thought so, but now it was all kind of running together and she could feel the panic set in. Was it left up here? No, right. Had to be right. What if she died down here? What if she never made it out? What did she have to live for, really? Well, the job offer, and she still had her mother. (Her father had finally walked out of her life about ten years ago.) But she had no other family, really, except for her grandparents, but she'd never really gotten to know them.
No friends to speak of, really.
Mark was dead, and so was everyone else on that ship now except for her. She felt a twinge of guilt at not having spared him any other thoughts after seeing him get a bullet put into his skull but it had been a busy couple of hours. She missed him, she realized. She didn't really miss the others, (and that made her feel guilty, too), but she missed him. Not terribly, not like she'd miss a dead family member, but it was there.
It hurt.
Jennifer turned another corner and hesitated. She'd almost decided she'd taken a wrong turn when she saw a familiar landmark, a terminal that looked unlike all the others, and she realized she was almost out. There would have been a sigh of relief as she exited the reactor bay and came back into the huge corridor, but almost as soon as she was out, a huge bang reverberated through the area, causing her to let out a small, startled shout. An immense dent appeared in the cargo bay door. The one that had...something behind it.
Jennifer began moving slowly past it, staying as far away as she could. For the first twenty heart-pounding seconds, there was nothing, just silence. Horrible silence. Then another bang sounded, even more horrible. It was when there was a third tremendous explosion of force, followed immediately by the shrieking, moaning sound of rending metal that Jennifer gave up trying to be silent and took off in a dead sprint.
Good thing, too.
Risking a quick glance behind her, Jennifer felt a shaky, sick fear begin to infect her. A huge, dead pale hand was forcing its way out through the metal. What was worse, it was ripping an opening in the metal with raw power. Pushing its way out. Something, a face half taken up by a maw stuffed with foot-long, razor teeth, came out through the hole. It looked after her and the eyes, twin orbs of bloodied, feral insanity, zeroed in on her, widening. The beast opened its mouth wider and let out a long, marrow-freezing roar.
Jennifer screamed but the sound of her voice was lost in the primal bellow of pure animal rage and fury. The thing continued desperately forcing its way out of the cargo door and before she'd made it even another ten steps it was out. It was huge, shaped vaguely like a human, its skin white, mapped with thick black veins. It had a bulbous head and seemed to be constructed entirely of muscle. It was easily twelve or thirteen feet tall.
It was running for her.
“We've got a problem!” Jennifer shouted as she ran.
“What's wrong?! We've made it to the hangar...what the fu-WHAT IS THAT!?” she heard Greg cry, both over the radio and nearby, since she'd left the door to the hangar open. Jennifer didn't answer, just kept running.
She saw two suited figures running towards her. They opened fire, aiming high, though she doubted it would do any good. As soon as she made it past the threshold, one of them, Eve she figured, raced forward and smashed the door controls. The door ground quickly shut. Jennifer and Eve moved back, away from the door.
“What the hell is that?” Greg asked, the fear obvious in his voice.
“I have no fucking idea, but I think we should leave,” Jennifer replied.
“Not done yet,” Drake said, over the comms.
“How long?” Greg asked.
Drake began to speak but was interrupted by a tremendous bang.
“Two minutes.”
“I don't think we've got two minutes...” Jennifer murmured.
Another bang, then another. It was tearing its way through this door.
“I don't think we have big enough guns to deal with this,” Greg said.
“The ship,” Drake replied.
“What?” Eve asked.
“The ship. It has guns. Let me finish this up. Then I can bring the ship online and we can destroy the thing. Keep it busy,”
Drake explained.
“Of course, of fucking course,” Greg moaned.
“Hey, I thought you lived for this shit,” Eve replied.
Whatever he said was lost as the beast finished tearing its way through the door.
“Lead it away from the ship!” Jennifer called as she opened fire on it, feeling a wall of control come slamming down over her. This had to be done if she was to survive, there was no alternative, literally none, and there was some comfort in that. With no choices to be made, the only thing she could do was enact the plan in front of her.
So she did.
Backing up as she emptied the rest of her magazine into the thing's ugly face, she moved away from the ship, trying to lure it deeper into the hangar bay. Greg and Eve joined her, spreading out, making three targets instead of one. The thing finished ripping through the metal and made right for them, crossing most of the distance in a few giant strides. Jennifer felt a ripple of terror but she fought for control as she slapped a new magazine into her rifle. It seemed to be coming for her. Realizing this, she turned and ran.
As she did, she felt the floor shaking, rumbling as it ran for her. Then, suddenly, it stopped. She glanced over her shoulder. The thing seemed confused and she could see a wound site, oozing black blood high up on its skull. Greg or Eve had hit something sensitive. As if reacting to this, it turned and began making for Eve.
Suddenly, Jennifer had a plan.
She stopped, turned and opened fire on the thing, aiming for its hideous, alien face. It advanced perhaps half the distance between it and Eve, who had begun backing up quickly, before Jennifer hit another sensitive spot and drew its attention. This was the plan. The beast roared, turned and began coming for her.
Five minutes of this lethal game of keep away went on. Drake at first informed them that he was finished, then chimed in that the ship was powering up. When he had something of input to add the third time, it was with an action, not a message. Jennifer had drawn its attention once more and this time, either Greg or Eve couldn't get a bead on any more of its sensitive spots or the thing was done falling for the same old trick.
