by Erica Rue
“What are you talking about?” Dione asked.
“When our ship is disabled, they’ll board. But if we’re not actually dead in space, then we can fend off their boarding party and escape.”
“Fend off?” the professor said. “Bel, we don’t have the equipment for that, and I’m certainly not letting my students fight Vens. We’re going to avoid them altogether.”
“There’s not enough time,” Bel said, “If we don’t prepare for a fight, we’ll all die.” Dione had never seen her like this before. She had never seen the professor like this before either, and she felt sick with fear.
She knew the stories, but Vens had always seemed like myths, a threat that her father’s generation had conquered with the Alliance. They had set up a perimeter, the Bubble, and recalled all colonists beyond it, offering them resettlement. Many returned, but some especially stubborn groups refused. Only a few of these groups remained outside the Bubble. They were the ones who got attacked. The recent attacks inside the Bubble were flukes. Anomalies. Or so she had thought.
“No, Bel, we can jump before they get here. But we need coordinates near a planet. Lithia, any prospects?”
“Campos is too far out,” Lithia called. “Bithon is the only planet within range.”
“Damn it,” the professor said. Dione had never heard him curse before.
“We could make a jump to clean space,” Lithia offered.
The professor thought this over. “We need to call this in, and Bithon doesn’t have a near-real time comms array or any anti-spacecraft weapons.” He looked up. “All right, we’ll do a clean space jump and another partial charge before jumping to Campos.”
Before Lithia could even turn back to the console, a hulking green vessel appeared on camera. Proximity sensors chimed. Dione looked from Lithia to the professor, and then to Bel.
“Time’s up,” Bel said.
5. DIONE
The ship vibrated with the shock of impact. The Vens were firing on them. Dione struggled to process what was happening. It felt surreal. They were taking enemy fire. Why would anyone attack their small science vessel? Vens were here. She had not prepared for this possibility, which alarmed her even more. She tried to call up an image of a Venatorian, the stuff of her childhood nightmares, but that only set her heart pounding even faster.
As much as Dione might want to, they couldn’t signal the Alliance. Any message they sent with their equipment would take days to reach help. It was too risky to send a message to closer colonies with faster comms and alert the Vens to their presence. Even then, the message would take too long to save them. The battle would be short. They were on their own. Dione was on the verge of true panic when the professor’s voice pulled her back.
“Lithia, jump us the second you can,” the professor said. He was all business.
“No,” said Bel, pushing Lithia out of the way. “Look.” She was pointing to the reports coming in from the hull’s censors.
“What? I don’t see anything,” Lithia said. Dione saw it. Subtle but there, hidden among the other feedback screaming for attention. A hiccup, rippling out into space from their ship, as if they had just been dropped into a placid pond.
“A tracer signal,” Bel said. “We can’t even go to Bithon now. They’ll follow, and after they kill us, they’ll kill everyone there. And going to clean space will just mean a goose chase. We can’t lose them until we disable the tracer, and unless we fight, we’ll never get the chance. Professor, we have to fight.” She stood grim, her back straight. The professor stared at her, thinking, calculating.
“Why do you think we stand a better chance here?” he asked.
“Once they attach in order to board, they’ll stop firing on us. There are five of us, and they won’t send a boarding party that outnumbers us. It wouldn’t be a challenge for them. Plus, we have no external weapons. The only chance we have to damage their ship, thereby allowing us to jump away and destroy their tracer, is from inside their ship. At the colony, they’d send everyone in, and that’s no scout ship. That’s a Marauder class vessel with at least fifty Vens, and it can easily handle a colony of two hundred. They might call in other ships if they find a larger colony. I don’t think the Bubble means anything to them anymore.”
Dione trembled at those odds. “But won’t five on five be worse?” she asked.
“Here we have a choke point. And if we fail, it’s just the five of us,” Bel said.
How the hell was Bel so calm? And how did she know so much about Vens? Dione shivered at Bel’s matter-of-fact tone.
Another vibration rocked the hull, and the pit of her stomach dropped out of existence. Every second they waited to act, the worse off they were. Lithia opened her mouth to protest, but Dione caught her eye and shook her head. Lithia ignored her.
“But the colony could help,” Lithia said.
“We won’t condemn a colony to death because you’re too afraid to die alone.” Bel’s response stung like a slap in the face, and Lithia reddened with anger.
The professor spoke up before the argument could get started. He turned to Lithia and said, “Evade them as long as you can, but keep the ship functional and plot a jump, preferably to an uninhabited planet with hospitable conditions. Repairs are hard to make in space.”
“Want me to launch the emergency beacon?” Lithia asked.
“No, we’ll need that later. Zane, stay with Lithia. Like Bel said, we need to appear weak without actually losing critical systems. Can you work on that aspect?”
“Got it,” Zane said.
Dione barely had time to wonder what he was talking about before the professor gave the next set of orders.
“Dione and Bel, go to storage and pick up the weapons we do have. The stun rifle will be useless. Get the machetes and the stun-gas grenades and meet me by the airlock.”
He had barely finished speaking when another tremor rocked the ship. Dione was about to ask what on earth she was supposed to do with a machete against a Ven when the overhead and underfoot lighting flickered and went out, hurling them into pitch darkness. An instant later, emergency lighting glowed in a narrow strip on the floor and ceiling.
“Don’t worry, the lights were me,” Zane said. “The breaches are minor right now, only affecting the outer hull.”
Only. Dione shook her head. The hull had armor plating to protect against errant space debris, and though it wasn’t even close to military grade, the fact that the Vens had already poked a few holes in it did not reassure her.
Dione, Bel, and the professor left the cockpit together in silence. Before he descended to the lower deck, Professor Oberon put a hand on Dione’s shoulder and handed her a small chip key. “Here’s the key. Airlock in ten. Sooner if you can.” With that, he climbed down the ladder toward the cargo bay and engine room. Either he wanted to take inventory or he was going to the engine interface. Maybe he had brought along some type of Ven-killing weapon, which was stowed away among the cargo.
They didn’t waste any time in getting to restricted storage, back near the professor’s personal cabin. Weapons, along with a few infirmary supplies, were restricted. This was a school-affiliated trip, after all, and the recollection amused Dione. Can’t trust us with machetes on the ship, unless it’s to fend off a few Vens. They picked out the handful of stun grenades they had brought with them and a machete each. Dione grabbed an extra blade for the professor.
“You seem to know a lot about Vens,” she said to Bel.
“I do. We’re lucky we have machetes and not guns. Venatorian plating is tougher than body armor. They are vulnerable at their joints, but they’ve got layers of connective tissue that are tough to get through.”
“And they don’t use manufactured weapons?”
“Nothing ranged. Usually, only what nature gave them. It’s a source of pride.”
“How do you know so much about them? Some of this stuff I haven’t read in the stories or reports.”
“I used to live in a colony on the
Dappled Rim with my parents. Until the Vens came. I’ve been reading every Ven report made available to the public since then.”
Dione didn’t know what to say. Another strike tilted the ship, giving the artificial gravity a workout. She wanted to ask how Bel survived, but settled on, “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
Bel shrugged dismissively. “Well, the Alliance is good at spreading the narrative it prefers. Too many deaths on the edge of the Bubble, and colonization and the influx of resources comes to a halt. Bad for business.”
Dione tried to read Bel’s expression, but her back was turned. Bel was so quiet, and they had only started getting to know each other on this trip. This had pretty much amounted to learning what her project was and what vids she liked. She had no idea what Bel’s life looked like, but it was nothing like hers.
Dione felt guilt bubbling in her stomach. Her father was high up in the Alliance. She knew there were anti-Alliance protesters, but she didn’t expect Bel and Zane to be among them. She had always trusted her father’s explanations of criminals who championed loose regulations, and dissidents who cared more for themselves than galactic interests. There were worlds of ideas that her textbooks didn’t begin to touch, and the luxury of her ignorance was expiring.
They reached the airlock, but the professor was still not there. Another vibration shuddered through the hull, different from the others. A metallic scraping echoed inside the ship, and Dione shivered. Alarms followed shortly after.
“Zane, was that that you?” asked Dione over the comms. He was still in the cockpit with Lithia.
“No.” She didn’t find his lack of explanation helpful.
Dione must have looked like a puppy in a thunderstorm because Bel was reassuring her. “They’re not going to breach compartments with life support. They’re going for our engines, our jump drive, anything that will trap us and force us into hand-to-hand combat.”
Lithia’s voice echoed from their manumeds until the two broadcasts synced into one voice. “That wasn’t a hit. They’ve extended hostile docking clamps. Good news. They’re moving to board.”
Dione wasn’t sure why Lithia sounded so pleased. She could see the viridian hull growing larger through the airlock’s tiny viewport, and it filled her with sheer terror.
“Why do you sound happy?” Dione asked.
“Because we’re still fully functional,” Lithia replied.
At that moment, the professor jumped into their conversation. “I’m going to be taking the charging matrix offline. The jump drive will still work, but we’ll only get one jump. If this works, we’ll have plenty of time to fix it up later.”
“Where are you?” Dione said.
“This is taking longer than I hoped. Are you both at the airlock?”
“We’re here,” Dione said.
“You may need to hold them off on your own. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Dione, are you up for this?” Bel asked, frowning.
Dione took several seconds to answer. Her gut reaction was a wild, uncontrolled no. But that’s not what Bel was really asking. She wanted to know that when the time came, Dione would have her back. That she wouldn’t freeze into a motionless mess that needed rescuing. She wouldn’t allow herself that kind of weakness. Despite her propensity for letting herself down, Dione would not disappoint a friend. She would not leave slack for another to pick up. She took a deep breath. All of the panic that had taken over her subsided into a steady pulsing of fear. The panic would get her killed, but the fear? It just might keep her and Bel alive.
“Yes.”
6. DIONE
Dione stood there as Bel opened the airlock control panel.
“I’m going to override the door controls. It should buy us a little more time for Oberon to get here,” Bel said.
A few hours ago, she had felt like the smartest person on board. Dione now realized that she might actually be much lower in that hierarchy than she originally thought. In fact, she felt utterly useless. She brought nothing to the table. Lithia could fly the ship, Bel knew more about Vens than most Alliance officials, and even Zane, accident extraordinaire, had somehow managed to fool the Vens into boarding a perfectly fit ship. Dione could identify over fifty species of carnivorous plants by their Latin names, but knowing that it had been captured by Dionaea muscipula did the trapped fly no good.
“Dione, snap out of it,” Bel said. “I’ve got a plan, but I need you to tell me more about these gas grenades. What are they designed for?”
The gas grenades were for a side project of hers. She wanted to get a closer look at some of the indigenous animals that had interbred with the species introduced by terraformers. “They’re for incapacitating mammals, like a medium-sized dog or a pig.”
“Why not use the stun rifle?”
“It was for setting up remote traps,” Dione said. She wasn’t much of a hunter, though she’d trained with stun rifles before.
“How many kilos’ worth of animal does each grenade knock out?”
“About twenty to thirty-five kilos. Too small, it might kill them, any larger, it won’t knock them out. The average Ven is a hundred kilos, according to the Koriev reports.” That was at least one fact she did know.
“It’s probably more. The only ones they get to study are the smaller, weaker ones. Do the effects accumulate?”
Dione nodded. “Yes, and its minimum alveolar concentration isn’t that high, but if we factor in the cabin pressure—"
“Save me the explanation. Will it work?” Bel said.
“The confined space could be an advantage. I don’t know how much gas is in each, but they were designed for open-air use. We only have three grenades, though. And it’s all or nothing. If the gas doesn’t pass a certain concentration in the lungs, it won’t cross the threshold in the bloodstream, and there’s no effect. Once it crosses that threshold, the effects are progressive, leading to unconsciousness.” A moment of panic hit her. “Wait, they do have lungs right?” She had not spent much time studying Ven physiology. Will this even work?
“What they have are very similar to lungs,” Bel said. Dione hoped they were similar in enough ways.
“Well, the effects still won’t be equal. It may not knock all of them out. Or any of them.”
“Then I guess we’re hoping our ugly green friends are all below the fiftieth percentile for height and weight, and that those things pack enough of a punch.”
“Bel, we don’t have gas masks. How much do you weigh? I’m willing to bet that three grenades knock us both out cold.” Dione’s mind raced. No gas masks, but…
“Pressure suits! They would protect—”
“They’re in the cargo bay. There’s no time,” Bel said.
“It won’t take long, I can—”
Bel grabbed her wrist and looked her in the eye. “Don’t you dare leave me here alone with them.” Bel, despite her steady voice, was pale with fear. “It’s a risk we have to take. The alternative is taking on the entire boarding party. How good are you with a machete?”
Dione was actually pretty good with a machete, though as a tool, not a combat weapon. Before she could share that detail, a walkway extended from the green invading ship like a slow-motion stinger. The walkway found its target and attached.
She saw four Vens, easily half a meter taller than her, walking toward the airlock. Each Ven’s face had been decorated with a simple geometric design smeared in white war paint. She wondered about the designs: a spiral, a bisected triangle, a spiked circle, and three nested rectangles. Dione focused in on the one with a simple spiral on his cheek. He was a lot like a gorilla, but with the hard cobalt plates of an armadillo protecting his body. One plate covered his entire head and face and came down like a hood to about chest level, slightly overlapping with the pectoral plate. His large legs were cocooned in thick blue plating, and his toes were tipped with claws. The upper appendages were plated and clawed as well. On his head were two eyes, with rectangular pupils that stared right a
t them. He growled. The three behind him echoed back his call, exposing their teeth. One bite would send a person into an adrenaline-fueled frenzy. A brief two-minute pressurization and unlocking sequence was the only thing between Dione and death.
“Something’s wrong,” Bel said.
“What?” Dione asked.
“These Vens don’t look right. They’re blue. They should be mottled green. They’re not as big as I remember.”
For all the details she’d noticed, Dione couldn’t believe this observation had gotten past her. “You’re right. In all the images I’ve ever seen, they’ve been green.”
Why would these Vens look different? she thought. “They may look smaller because you’re bigger yourself,” she said to Bel. “Gender differences in many organisms are reflected in color and patterning.”
“No, the plating on the females has a scalloped edge. You can see, that one closest to us is female.” Sure enough, the plating billowed along the edge.
Dione knew that. She had read that. Think.
“Maybe it’s from radiation? Like some kind of sunburn?” Bel said. She seemed distracted, like this wasn’t what she had expected.
“No,” Dione said. “Radiation wouldn’t produce that kind of uniform pigment change.”
The Vens were right up against the airlock viewport looking in, almost curious. Almost. Or was that uncertainty? Humans could universally recognize certain expressions of emotion across linguistic and cultural divides, but apparently that knack for reading faces did not apply to alien species. Dione didn’t know what to make of that look the biggest one was giving her. And that’s when she noticed it.
“Bel, it’s a hormonal effect. Look, that one in the back with the spiral design is starting to turn green. They’re juveniles! That’s why they’re so small.”
“If you’re right, this is bad. I’ve never found any reports like this. Either this doesn’t happen very often, or there are never any survivors.”
“Let’s bet on the former,” Dione said, feeling good from proposing what she considered a good hypothesis. If they were juveniles, their odds were even better. Probably.
