Rogue Colony (Galaxy Mavericks Book 6)

by Michael La Ronn

  Behind them, giant circles puckered, sucked in on themselves and then billowed outward.

  MAWRGH…

  Mouths.

  They were mouths. Circular, toothless mouths.

  MAWRGH…

  An explosion ripped across the area, making Michiko’s ears ring.

  A mouth pulled another corsair into the world, battered and broken. It was on fire. The flames, blue and purple, had an ethereal glow to them as they consumed the ship. The smell of burning was still the same, but stronger.

  “Is this hell?” Hassan asked.

  “It might as well be,” Michiko said.

  The mouths sucked again, and a strange, warm wind ushered them downward.

  Everything in the field of debris moved downward. Then stopped.

  Then moved downward again.

  Then stopped.

  Then moved.

  Michiko got used to the lilting rhythm. It reminded her of her nursing days, in biology class. She remembered videos of food moving down an esophagus, and this was not unlike that.

  She reached out and grabbed Ashley’s hand.

  Ashley looked at her sadly, but took her hand.

  Rudy grabbed Michiko’s hand, and Hassan his.

  They drifted together silently through the field of debris. As they floated ever downward, they heard crashing sounds.

  The debris was colliding with something.

  It was hard to see in the murky landscape, but slowly, Michiko spotted ground. Rocky, desert ground.

  The debris was crashing into the ground.

  The team held hands tighter, bracing themselves for impact.

  Michiko closed her eyes for a moment. She wished they had never gone into space to look for Drake. She wished she had the courage to speak up more. Now she was going to die. She wished it would happen already. It was too painful to think about.

  She opened her eyes as they crashed. She lay on her back, dazed.

  But then Hassan grabbed her and pulled her away just before a giant sheet of metal crashed to the ground.

  “Come on!” he shouted.

  They ran among a field of raining debris.

  Michiko tripped on a rock, but Hassan helped her up.

  A giant boulder smashed into the ground near them, creating a shockwave. The impact scattered them and sent them flying.

  Michiko reached for Hassan but missed his hand. She landed on her back again. Her eyes widened as the corsair zoomed down toward her. She rolled up and ran as fast as she could.

  The corsair smashed into the rocky ground, catching fire instantly.

  Michiko charged ahead and caught up with Rudy, Ashley, and Hassan, who were running toward a collapsed house pod in the distance.

  “Over there!” Rudy said.

  They reached the house pod. It was collapsed beyond repair and unsafe to enter. A truck lay upside down against the metal wall.

  They were far enough from the raining debris now that they could rest.

  Michiko caught her breath.

  She wanted to scream.

  The sky was filled with sucking mouths, who were all pulling in debris.

  In the center of this sky, a giant Earthlike planet hung over the ground, spinning. A furious gray cloud consumed half of the planet, like a feeding frenzy of cockroaches. The other half of the planet was crumbling.

  Michiko glanced around the land that they were standing on. Then she looked at the overturned truck and squinted at the license plate.

  She gasped.

  “What’s going on here?” Ashley asked, her voice frantic.

  “Guys,” Michiko said, “I could be wrong, but—”

  She pointed to the license plate. It was blue with letters and numbers. A ringed planet was in the background of the plate—even in negative, it was clearly Reader IV.

  “We’re on Refugio,” Michiko said.

  12

  They stared across the barren landscape, mouths agape.

  A city of glittering pods lay in the distance. Michiko tried to imagine the city in regular color. Below her, she tapped the rocky ground with her foot. Tiny specks like dust littered the surface—sand. She had never seen sand in negative before—the haphazardly strewn grains across made it look as if it were diseased.

  “What do you mean we’re on Refugio?” Rudy asked.

  “How do you explain that truck?” she asked.

  “How the hell do you explain that?” Hassan shouted, pointing at the giant planet above.

  “I don’t know,” Michiko said. “But look at the landscape. Look at the truck. Look at the city in the distance, the layout. There’s no other place we could be.”

  “Assuming that’s true,” Ashley said, “how could a heavenly body move? Refugio is a moon. Whatever planet that is, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near Refugio.”

  Michiko shook her head.

  “Okay, cut the philosophy bullshit!” Hassan said, putting his hands on his head. “How are we going to get out of here?”

  They turned in a circle. Behind them, debris continued to rain. Ahead, the glittering city lay like an ominous vision in the netherscape.

  Michiko stared up at the giant planet. It reminded her of Earth, but not quite. On the left half, the gray clouds swarmed the planet, and she saw eyes glinting here and there. On the right side, which was crumbling, there was no atmosphere and she could clearly see the continents.

  A giant gray blot broke off from the feeding frenzy and fell through the air like ink in water, spreading out into a strange, spiky shape that reminded Michiko of a virus under a microscope. The blot fell, ever-expanding into more spikes and spreading across the sky.

  Michiko pointed and uttered, but no words came out.

  The blot tumbled downward and eventually reached the ground. The spikes landed and acted like legs, skittering forward.

  “Run!” Michiko screamed.

  But with a graceful lengthening, the legs expanded and seized Ashley, raising her into the air. She screamed, but the ink ripped off her helmet and covered her mouth.

  Hassan and Rudy ran, but the legs grabbed them, too.

  Before Michiko could react, an arm seized her, too.

  She didn’t resist. The gray mass flew upward toward the planet. A ghastly, dark hand covered her mouth, muffling her scream.

  13

  Even though the planet was nearby, it was a long, slow flight toward the surface.

  The planet might as well have been dead. The feeding frenzy was feeding on its dead carcass.

  Soon, the planet’s landscape took definition. As they neared a large continent, Michiko looked back at Refugio.

  The small moon looked exactly like the planet.

  Half of it was being eaten. The other half was crumbling.

  If she and the team had stayed on the moon, they would have been devoured.

  That didn’t make her feel any better about the situation.

  As they neared the continent on the planet, a large black dot appeared in the middle of the continent.

  Michiko looked over at Ashley. She was staring ahead, broken but resolute.

  Rudy had a neutral look on his face, like he wasn't processing what was happening.

  Hassan was crying. He looked like a terrified child.

  Michiko’s heart sank.

  She should have been as scared as Hassan.

  But she didn't know what to do. How to feel. How to respond. But she tried to stay calm. The aliens might feed off emotions.

  Or they might feed off thoughts.

  If they could move an entire planet and create a world like this, there might be no limit to what they could do.

  Always be calm and neutralize your thoughts in the presence of unknown aliens.

  Xenobiology rule 101.

  She wished she could talk to the others, to tell them what she knew, to tell them to be calm and that everything was going to be okay.

  But she couldn't even promise that.

  She hated that her last image of her
friends would be of them terrified and afraid of death. She tried to think back to the fun times in the last two days, the fun jokes and the bonding times.

  But she couldn't. She told herself to stop thinking.

  The gray mass tightened around her.

  The black spot ahead grew clearer now.

  She struggled against the mass when she saw it.

  It was a giant, swirling black hole.

  14

  A group of gray figures were gathered around the rim of the black hole.

  Human figures.

  As the mass delivered Michiko and the team to the ground, the figures backed away.

  Michiko touched down on soil.

  Soil.

  It felt good under her boots after all she'd been through. If only the circumstance weren't so bad.

  The gray mass bound her hands and stretched them over her head. Then it divided itself and bound her legs at the ankles. Then the mass expanded and connected with the other masses that held Ashley, Rudy, and Hassan.

  Michiko wriggled against the mass but it held her tight.

  The black hole swirled furiously. It was the size of a small city, and there was nothing inside. The surface was as dark as space itself.

  The figures watched them, barely visible against the swirling madness.

  Michiko counted.

  There were several people.

  Or shapes of people. They wore black and the edges of their bodies were blurred and swirling. But she couldn't tell if their bodies were swirling or if it was because they were so close to the black hole.

  They had no eyes.

  They crept closer, dropping to all fours. Their bodies were angled spikes.

  A figure in the center remained upright. This one looked more human. It followed the others but remained at a distance.

  The crouched ones neared Michiko. She trembled as they brought their heads close to her leg.

  Smoke emanated from their heads, which were smooth and round and completely shrouded in shadow.

  They weren't human.

  Nothing this alien could be human.

  The crouched ones circled Michiko.

  Then they moved over to Ashley, who let out a muffled scream. They circled her like predators about to attack.

  They swarmed her, covering her entire body. In an instant, she was gone.

  Michiko screamed.

  Only tatters of Ashley’s spacesuit remained.

  Then they moved over to Rudy. After a quick moment of sizing him up and circling him, they gathered upon his body and covered him. With a blood-curdling scream, he disappeared.

  Hassan struggled as they circled him.

  He gave Michiko a frightened glance as the figures swarmed him and fed on his body. The last thing she saw was his eyes.

  And then he was gone.

  The crouched ones turned back to Michiko, crawling toward her, their bellies bloated with the weight of their meal and dragging across the ground.

  They circled her.

  She was going to die.

  She wouldn't die a coward.

  She wouldn't cry.

  She wouldn't let them see her fear.

  She would honor Ashley, Rudy, and Hassan. She held their smiling faces in her mind’s eye and then spoke against the hand on her mouth.

  “Screw you. Screw all of you.”

  But the figures just continued to circle her.

  Something was keeping them at bay.

  Why weren't they eating her?

  She closed her eyes.

  Soon, the hand let go of her mouth.

  She opened her eyes, breathing in a heap of stale, bitter air.

  The lone figure, who had been watching the entire event, stepped forward.

  This one, unlike the others, was a human.

  It was dressed in all black with a white, diagonal stripe across the chest. The head was completely covered in darkness and she couldn't see eyes.

  The lone figure clapped and the crouched ones retreated, their spiky bodies snapping back into, eight foot tall, statuesque warriors that surrounded the lone figure like bodyguards.

  The lone figure sprang forward and seized Michiko by the throat.

  “You just put a wrench in my plan,” it said.

  A male voice.

  Crazed, strained and raspy.

  “Who are you?” Michiko asked.

  “How did you know the secret?” he asked. “You used the secret and that's why you're still alive.”

  “What secret?”

  “Dammit, you little bitch!” the man said, squeezing her throat. “How did you find this colony?”

  Michiko choked and gasped for air.

  “You take a message to them,” the man said, “you tell them that fucking hell is coming, you hear me? Fucking hell!”

  Before Michiko could respond, the man picked her up and heaved her into the black hole.

  The world twirled and danced and flitted around her, and she found herself awash in a wave of gravity and light. She had one last look at the man, who stood with his arms folded, and the crumbling moon above him.

  Then she turned and put her hands in front of her face as a brilliant light blinded her.

  15

  Michiko surged forward into the light.

  Her bones rattled. Her skin flapped.

  She was moving so fast her body literally screeched like a missile.

  Gravity pulled on her so hard she thought it would crush her.

  Her body was going to break apart. She was sure of it.

  She expected her body to spaghettify…the standard death in a black hole.

  But she remained intact.

  Her body screeched louder and louder as she hurtled toward a pinwheel of darkness.

  She put her hands in front of her face as the darkness grew bigger.

  She struck the darkness head on, and the last thing she remembered was a giant bang before her world went dark.

  16

  Petty Officer Will Stroud swept a searchlight across a field of debris of vacant spaceships and rocks.

  “I'm not seeing anything,” he said. “Beau, why don't you swing around the area again and I'll take it from another angle.”

  Will didn't normally do searchlight duty. He had the eyes for it, but his specialty was engineering and navigation. He was out of his element tonight, searching dark space for a group of survivors.

  Petty Officer Romeo Beauregard stood next to him and squinted.

  “It's too bad,” Beauregard said. “I don't know how we’ll be able to find anyone in this area. We've barely got the light of Reader IV to guide us.”

  Will cursed. He handed the spotlight handle over to a soldier sitting next to him. Petty Officer Griffin Sims took the handle and started a second search.

  Will didn't like Sims. Nice enough guy, but too quiet. Too straight arrow, worse than Beauregard. Plus, his mustache reminded Will of a bad porno movie.

  They could have used Grayson in a time like this. He had eyes like a hawk, and he'd done a million search and rescues. Sims was fresh out of the colony station, with only the minimum number of search missions under his name.

  Will hated training. Especially when the guy who came before Sims was so good. And his best friend.

  “Keep looking,” Will said. “I'll check the instrument panel.”

  Sims grunted and continued the search.

  Did the guy ever talk? God.

  “We’re looking at a full field,” Will said. “There are only a few spots we haven't touched. Otherwise we were pretty thorough.”

  “I don't recommend we swing around, then,” Beauregard said. “Let’s hit the untouched spots and then expand our search radius. I'll wire to base and see if we can have another ship relieve us in a couple of hours.”

  “Got it,” Will said.

  Silence. They rode for a few minutes. The bridge was dark, with the lights turned down low.

  “What do you think Grayson’s doing right now?” Beauregard asked.<
br />
  “Haven't talked to him,” Will said. “but whatever he's doing, it's got to be better than this. Maybe he's on a date.”

  Beauregard chuckled. “Wouldn't that be something.”

  “Who's Grayson?” Sims asked.

  “You replaced him,” Will said with a long face.

  “Oh,” Sims said. “Cool.”

  When Sims said nothing else, Will shook his head. What kind of response was that?

  “I'm increasing our speed,” Beauregard said, turning on the radio. “Beauregard to base. We’re not picking up any visuals at this time. Are there any updates?”

  “None,” a dispatcher on the radio said. “We've picked up reports of another group of missing persons.”

  Will groaned.

  “What information do you have?” Beauregard asked.

  “Group of four. Galaxy Corps volunteers in a gray corsair,” the dispatcher said. “They were last seen a few hours ago leaving a disaster ship approximately sixty miles from your current location.”

  “We’ll be on the lookout,” Beauregard said. He shut off the radio. “Well, gentlemen, the search and rescues never end, do they?”

  “Why the hell are so many people disappearing?” Will asked. “There's absolutely nothing out here.”

  “As far as we've seen,” Beauregard said.

  “Things are getting strange,” Will said. “First the Argus attacks, then a disappearing planet. And a moon. It's enough to make you want to scream.”

  “You think it's a black hole?” Sims asked.

  Will rolled his eyes. “Do you know how a black hole works?”

  “Sucks in everything around it,” Sims said. He kept his eyes on the searchlight as he spoke. “Who knows, maybe it's out there just sucking away.”

  “Then how do you explain all this debris?” Will asked. “And how do you explain that, for the last couple hundred freaking years, that people have been flying through this area without any problems? Black holes take time to form, pal.”

  “All I'm sayin’ is that we don't know jack about this universe,” Sims said. “Who are we to say what is and isn't out there?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Will said. “Believe what you want to believe. But it ain't a freaking black hole.”