by JE Gurley
Nate was too flustered to respond. Dax carefully circled the creature, noting the three curved talons on the forelimbs that matched the gouges in the steel bulkheads. The elongated, backward-jointed legs designed for rapid motion and leaping ended in claws almost as long as the talons. Jagged teeth the size of his hand filled the creature’s cavernous maw. It had no eyes, but the oversized ear holes surrounded by a series of concentric grooves and large, slit nostrils spoke of other heightened senses. Overlapping, spiky, shiny scales resembling obsidian armored plating covered most of the creature’s body, leaving only the lower part of the legs, the forearms, and parts of the head exposed. The flesh was thick and fibrous, like a tangle of mangrove tree roots.
As he drew close to a heavy door set into the bulkhead, the tapping resumed. He pointed the laser at the door partially blocked by the creature’s dead bulk and got Nate’s attention. He tapped the door with the butt of his rifle and received an immediate flurry of taps in response. His Morse code was rusty, but he recognized ‘hurry’ and a string of profanities that almost made him blush.
“Someone’s alive in there.” He glanced at the creature. “We’ve got to move this thing out of the way.”
Using two grappling hooks, he attached chains to the carcass and secured them to a hand-cranked winch. It took all the muscle they could summon to budge the creature’s considerable mass even in Zero-G, but as soon they moved it from the door, the door shot open. A dark-suited figure rushed from the door and launched across the room like an arrow from a bow. Dax trained his rifle on the figure, but the person seemed more intent on reaching a row of lockers along one wall than in accosting them. He turned, and through the clear visor, Dax saw it was a man. He discarded his air tank, let it float across the cargo bay, and quickly clipped in a fresh one.
Dax’s suit com crackled. “Damn, that tastes good. I’ve been breathing fumes for ten minutes. I heard movement above and prayed it was human.”
“Why didn’t you answer my message?”
He hitched his thumb at the room from which he had emerged. “Weapons locker is titanium-vanadium steel; strong enough to keep this thing out, but it also blocks radio waves.”
“What happened here?”
The man shook his head. “Later. We have to get off this ship.”
Dax wasn’t going to let some Marine buffalo him. He folded his arms over his chest but kept the laser rifle out front. “I need answers. Who the hell are you?”
The man looked at him undaunted by the laser. “Sergeant Charles Jackson Ivers, UNMC. And you are?”
“Captain Dax Wyldd of the Fortune’s Luck.”
Ivers nodded. “You’re the captain of the cargo ship bound for Loki.”
Dax’s suspicion edged up a notch. “How did you know?”
“Later. We’re in danger here.”
Dax pointed to the dead creature. “From that?”
“No. There’s another one trapped in the upper compartment of the engine room, but I doubt it will stay there much longer now that it knows you’re here.”
Dax’s blood ran cold. He glanced around with apprehension. “Why didn’t you say so?”
Ivers floated back into the weapons locker. He reemerged a moment later carrying a bulky-looking rifle in one hand, a bag slung over his shoulder, and a compact, low-yield nuclear warhead in his other hand.
Dax’s attention fell on the warhead. Nuclear devices made him nervous. He pointed to it. “What are you going to do with that?”
“Vaporize this ship and its cargo.”
“Not before I download the ship’s logs. The Navy might have a few questions. I’d like to have answers for them.”
Ivers tapped his helmet. “I downloaded the logs onto my suit comp, and I’ve got vid of everything that happened up until I locked myself in the weapons locker.” The ship rang from a series of heavy blows. If the ship had not been in a vacuum, Dax was certain it would have sounded like the ship’s death knell. He offered Ivers a quizzical look. “That’s the other xenomorph breaking out of the engine compartment,” Ivers said. “I think it’s hungry. Want to meet it?”
“Fuck that! Let’s go.”
“I have to set the timer on this nuke. Ten minutes should be enough, don’t you think?”
Dax didn’t like the idea of relying on a Marine with a nuke. Ivers might feel like dying for the good of the service. Dax didn’t, but he agreed with Ivers’ thinking. If there was another of those creatures aboard ship, especially a live one, nuking it seemed a good, solid plan. “Bring it. I have a better idea.”
Dax started up the steps to Deck 2. Ivers stopped him. “If the second xenomorph broke out of the engine room, it might be waiting up there. We can travel aft through the crew’s quarters and the hydroponics garden.”
Dax was for anything that kept them from meeting another one of the creatures face-to-face. “Lead the way, Sergeant.”
He followed Ivers down a narrow passageway lined with machine shops, offices, and a small library. Seeing books, hand tools, nuts, and bolts floating in Zero-G was disconcerting enough, like walking through the bowels of a sunken ship, but when they reached the main open crew’s quarters, things became bizarre indeed. Floating frozen bed linen illuminated by their lights looked like ghosts. Dax ducked under a horizontal mop and bucket filled with frozen mop water blocking the space between bunks as if he were doing the Limbo. He saw no bodies, no blood. Everyone had made it from his or her bunk before dying. That’s good. No one should die in bed but old people.
Just as Romeo had said, the Abraxas’ hydroponics garden was huge, half as large as the entire Fortune’s Luck. Vertical and horizontal rows of tomatoes, beans, lettuce, squash, and carrots suspended in tanks that once held drip lines feeding the roots liquid nutrients were flash frozen, looking as fresh as they had a few days earlier when alive. One section of herbs sat along a bulkhead wall – basil, thyme, lemon grass, parsley, cilantro, and a few herbs he did not recognize. Dax considered snapping off a few herb stalks for Luigi, but he didn’t have the time to loiter.
As they passed through the maze of plants in the frozen garden, Dax felt the deck shudder beneath his feet from a heavy sustained blow. The second xenomorph was making an appearance.
“That’s damn close,” he said.
He turned just as the bulkhead around the hatch to the hydroponics garden bulged outward. The metal split, and the hatch went flying across the room, shattered a row of plants, and crashed into a table. All three of their suits lights focused on the creature standing in the sundered hatch.
The dead creature had been fearsome; the live one was terrifying. It crouched on it rear legs with its foreclaws digging into the deck, staring sightlessly directly at them. Its huge bulk filled the space between deck and ceiling. It could not smell them in a vacuum, and they did not move, so it was unable to detect their vibrations, but it knew where they were nevertheless. Its head moved slightly in each of their directions, as if inspecting them, deciding who would die first. Dax suspected the creature possessed senses beyond the normal senses. He wondered if it could detect their heat signature. If it can read my mind, it would be really pissed right now. As soon as Ivers raised his ion disrupter, the creature charged.
It scattered tables and shoved aside hanging vegetable trays as it plowed down the center of the room. Ivers fired. The high-energy disrupter would have burned an unarmored human to a crisp and broiled alive one wearing battle armor. The xenomorph shrugged it off like a spitball shot at it through a straw. The black scales covering its body reflected the energy of the blast, thawing and immediately shriveling the plants around it. He knew Ivers would not have time to try for a shot at an unarmored part of its body. Its cavernous maw opened wide, revealing teeth that would have made a salvage yard car-shredding machine jealous. Dax was certain that if he could have heard the roar the creature released, it would have deafened him. He had a dizzying view down the creature’s gullet, and it frightened him.
“How does it breath
e vacuum?” he asked.
“Move it!” Ivers shouted.
Dax complied. Staying alive trumped answers on morphology. He shoved a stunned Nate to get him moving. He quickly realized running in magnetic boots was too slow. The creature was rapidly gaining on them.
“Shut down your boots,” he told them. “Swim!”
As soon as he felt his boots release their magnetic grip on the deck, he bent his knees and shoved off as hard as he could. He grabbed the wall with both hands and pulled himself along like climbing a horizontal ladder. As he gained speed, he needed only slap at the wall to keep moving. He knew slamming into a solid bulkhead at such speeds, even in a suit, would probably break his neck, but haste was called for. He shot through the open airtight hatch and down the adjoining corridor just behind Nate. Ivers stopped long enough to seal the hatch behind them.
“That’s not going to stop it,” Dax said.
“It might slow it down.”
The corridor made a series of right-angle turns around a gymnasium, a freshwater tank, and the CO2 scrubbers in the ship’s environment section. The massive creature would have a difficult time negotiating the tight turns. They emerged in the ship’s cavernous central core. Exercise equipment, basketballs, and dead sailors floated like grotesque mobiles in the dark space. Large spherical globules of water from an exploded swimming pool looked as if they were devouring some of the bodies half-protruding from them. Dax became momentarily lost in the unfamiliar dark space. Ivers pointed toward the stern.
“That way,” he said. “We don’t have much time.”
They were three-quarters of the way to the aft cargo bay when the creature burst into the central core. It did not hesitate. It came unerringly straight at them using its powerful legs to push off parallel to the deck, and then grab the deck with its foreclaws to set up for another hop.
“How does that fucker do that?” Dax asked aloud.
Ivers fired two blasts with the disrupter. His aim was true, but a globule of water floated into his line of fire. The water flashed into a cloud of super-heated steam, concealing the creature. The steam condensed to water vapor and froze into ice crystals. The creature exploded from the ice cloud and launched at them, hurtling like a catapult projectile. They ducked out of its way, but one of the rear legs brushed Dax as it flew by. The claws missed him by a hand’s width, but the glancing impact disrupted his suit electronics as it sent him reeling across the room. He suffered a moment of panic before the system stabilized.
Nate, anchored to the deck, caught his hand and pulled him down beside him. He turned to look at the creature. It had used the opposite wall to rebound toward them. This time, it would not miss.
“Grab on to me!” Ivers yelled.
Ivers looked up to see the sergeant rushing at them holding onto an activated fire extinguisher, using the nozzle to control his flight. The one-and-a-half-meter tall extinguisher had wheels to move it around the ship, but it was now airborne, a carbon dioxide missile. Nate broke free of the deck, and the two of them grabbed Ivers’ legs as he passed. Their added mass slowed Ivers’ momentum, but they still traveled faster than they could have swum. The creature howled silently at their narrow escape. They reached a hatch just as the CO2 ran out. Ivers dove for it and discarded the empty extinguisher. They disentangled and exited through the door. Ivers stopped long enough to dog it shut. They emerged in a short transverse corridor near the engine room. Ivers guided them to the aft cargo bay.
When they reached the cargo bay, Ivers stopped and set the nuke on the deck. “I’m setting the nuke for three minutes. We don’t have much longer than that.”
“Wait!” Dax shouted into his suit mic. “That’s barely enough time to make it back to Fortune’s Luck and Skip.”
Ivers stared at him. “Vacuum doesn’t stop it. If we don’t destroy it now, it will cross over to your ship. Do you want the same thing happening to your crew that happened here or attack the next ship that investigates?”
Ivers was asking him to sacrifice himself for his crew and his ship. He liked to think he would do it if necessary, but he wasn’t ready to die just yet. Ivers was military. He saw self-sacrifice as part of the job description. The thought of dying in a nuclear blast frightened Dax to death. He wanted to die in bed an old man.
“I have a better idea, one that won’t end with us vaporized.” Ivers hesitated. “Trust me, Sergeant.”
For one brief moment, Dax thought Ivers was going to ignore him set the nuke for immediate detonation to take no chances. He didn’t know if he could stop the determined Marine, but he would try. He would not allow the sergeant to kill him and Nate or endanger his ship if there was another way.
“Your plan had better work,” Ivers warned and picked up the nuke.
Dax sighed in relief. He climbed into the cramped cockpit of the grasshopper. Ivers straddled the rear of the two-passenger conveyance cowboy-style, while holding the nuclear warhead tucked under one arm like a football. “Where’s Nate?” Dax asked. He saw Nate at one of the consoles. “Come on, Nate!” he yelled.
“If I can use power from my suit, I can seal the inner hatch of the cargo bay. It should keep the creature penned up long enough to use the nuke.”
“We don’t have time. Get in and let’s go.”
“One more second.”
The creature didn’t give him one more second. It clawed through the bulkhead between the corridor and the cargo bay, widened the rip large enough to crawl through, and scattered floating cargo like balloons at a high school prom in its zeal to reach them. One large metal bin careened across the hold toward the grasshopper. Dax gunned the engine to move out of its way.
“Come on, Nate!” he yelled. He didn’t want to wait around one millisecond longer than necessary and face a creature that could shrug off lasers and disruptors.
Nate couldn’t reach them. The creature stood between him and the grasshopper, facing him, its rear claws digging into the metal deck. Ivers fired the disruptor from his hip, hitting the creature on the back of one leg. It whirled on them and roared silently into the vacuum. Nate used the opportunity to push off toward the outer hatch. Dax saw him and veered to intersect his path, while Ivers tried to line up another shot. Somehow, the creature detected Nate’s motion. He made no sound or disturbed any air, since it was a vacuum. He did not collide with any cargo; nevertheless, the creature knew exactly where he was.
Nate, moving as if swimming in cold molasses, was less than five meters from the moving grasshopper when the creature leaped across the cargo bay and grabbed him by his leg. Nate screamed as the gigantic claws ripped through his suit and tore into the flesh of his thigh. Like a dog with a rag doll, the creature whipped Nate’s body back and forth, and then released him. He flew across the cargo bay and smashed into a bulkhead. If the frenzied shaking had not snapped his spine, the high-speed impact with solid steel did. Blood floated from his ripped suit leg and the shattered visor of his crumpled helmet. He did not move.
“Nate!” Dax yelled, and released the controls of the grasshopper to go for him. He heard other voices from the Luck in his suit com, but he ignored them.
Ivers reached over his shoulder and slammed the throttle forward. The grasshopper shot out the hatch, while Ivers held him down in his seat.
“What are you doing?” Dax demanded, struggling to break free of the sergeant’s steely grip.
“He’s gone. Either we go with your plan, or I set off the nuke right now. It will take out both ships. You decide.”
Dax linked to Nate’s suit to check his vitals. Nate had no pulse or respiration. His body temperature was dropping rapidly. He knew Nate was dead, but leaving his body behind felt like a betrayal to their friendship. He had the rest of his crew to consider. “You bastard,” he growled at Ivers and aimed the grasshopper at Fortune’s Luck. He glanced back at the frigate and caught a glimpse of the creature in the aft cargo bay. It wandered through the space leisurely shoving debris around. It did not follow them.
&
nbsp; Back aboard Fortune’s Luck, Dax wasted no time explaining the situation to his crew. He ignored their plaintive looks. They had overheard the conversations on the com channel and had witnessed his death on Dax’s suit camera, but had been spared the grisly details that would haunt him the rest of his life. His rage rose inside him like the aftermath of a bad bowl of Five-Alarm chili, burning his insides, and bringing hot, stinging tears to his eyes. He helped Ivers replace the warhead on one of the Wasp Sting missiles with the nuke. Plia had set the weapons pod to point out the open cargo hatch directly at the Abraxas.
The creature had seen Fortune’s Luck. It used its powerful legs to launch from the Abraxas cargo bay aimed unerringly at them. It moved slower than the grasshopper, but it would reach them in minutes. He had to save his ship and crew.
Dax hit the intercom. “Take us out of here, Andy, half speed. I’ll tell you when to Skip.” The stricken frigate and the monster receded in the distance. When Fortune’s Luck reached ten kilometers distance, Dax fired the missile and watched it race toward the doomed frigate following its laser guidance system. “Okay, Andy. Skip!” As the shimmer of folding space enveloped the ship, the frigate exploded in a dazzling flash of intense nuclear heat. The ring of superheated vapor reached toward Fortune’s Luck like the last death grasp of the xenomorph, but she was no longer there.
4
“I’m ready for those answers now,” Dax said to Ivers.
His heart still raced from their narrow escape from the doomed Navy frigate. He had never seen a nuclear weapon detonate from ten clicks and did not wish to repeat his experience. A few of the ship’s systems were still acting up from the EMP from the blast, but he would deal with those later. By leaving Nate’s body, Ivers had taken the decision from him, and that angered him, but his hot anger at Ivers was already becoming a numbing sense of loss. He was afraid if he did not maintain his ire at Ivers, he would have to dwell on his responsibility in Nate’s death, and that frightened him more than the monster.
