The alien craned its oversized head to get a look at Noble. He wasn’t sure how Roots could move around the wall of the orb without being zapped.
Noble turned away and checked the orb on his left. Normally he tried to avoid looking to that one and the one on the right. Both prisoners had perished over the past months, and while he didn’t know what had killed the reptilian creature in the orb to his left, he knew all too well what had killed pilot Kirt Mantis.
He reluctantly snuck a glance at the orb where the only other human on the ship had once been held captive. Kirt was nothing but a blob of jellied flesh now.
Noble had watched helplessly as the pilot wasted away inside his prison. Something had happened to his feeding tube after the liquid drained from his orb. It had been a long, slow, agonizing death. One Noble had had a front row seat to. He was glad Kirt was finally gone, even though his screams still haunted Noble’s dreams.
He took in a breath of the sultry air and relaxed. As time passed, the thought of suicide weighed heavier on his mind. But with no way to end the terror, he would revert to thinking of his crew. They were still back on Earth. Deep down, he held on to the hope that he would somehow make it back to them.
Fantasies of escaping with Ribbit and Roots crossed his thoughts, and he found himself lost in the daydreams once again, his mind escaping the orb that held his body prisoner.
But then his eyes focused back on the translucent cell to his right, and he saw what was left of Kirt and felt the vibration of the ship. The multi-dimensional creatures were taking him somewhere far from Earth, away from his home and his crew.
He was curious about the final destination, and, at times, thinking about where they were headed helped him get through the darker moments. Maybe it was some sort of planet—perhaps the home planet of the Organics.
He closed his eyes again, visualizing a world with floating cities over an ocean planet with teal water.
A ringing sound snapped him from the fantasy, and his eyes flipped open to the sight of four gaunt glowing figures hovering in the open space of the massive hold, level with his orb. As he watched, the blue figures flickered like flames, vanished, and appeared again below. Then they disappeared and reemerged across the belly of the ship.
His heart skipped a beat when he realized they were the multi-dimensional beings—the overlords of the Organics. It had been a very long time since he last saw them.
They would flicker back and forth in the chamber, checking on prisoners. But they never attempted any form of verbal communication. Noble could feel them trying to enter his thoughts, like some sort of telepathy.
He gritted his teeth and pressed his fingers against his temples, doing everything he could to keep them out of his mind.
The ringing din increased, and a migraine settled in his sinuses. It always happened this way. Starting with the dull headache, until his brain felt like someone was slowly pushing down on it with a boot.
Next came the feeling of a presence. But the entities weren’t inside his orb. They were hovering outside Kirt’s.
The blue wall peeled back and the apparition on the left reached out with a single appendage that, as Noble watched, molded into a shovel that it used to scoop up the glutinous blob that had been Kirt. The being vanished with the remains.
But the second alien remained.
It glimmered and then disappeared for several seconds. Then the alien reappeared, right outside Noble’s orb. He scooted back on the floor, his heartbeat rising in his throat. The creature looked into his prison. The translucent shape of its body was just a conglomeration of shifting blue flesh. There were no identifiable facial features, but for some reason Noble knew it was studying him.
A faint, almost robot-like voice sounded. Noble tilted his head and looked over his shoulder to see who was talking, but this wasn’t coming from outside the orb. It was in his mind.
The alien was attempting communication for the first time since his captivity.
Do not be alarmed, it said. Rest peacefully until we meet again.
***
The cry of an alarm pierced Bouma’s eardrums, exacerbating the throbbing pain flowing through his skull. At first all he saw was relentless white, until his pupils readjusted. Dust shifted through the air. Burning plastic and wiring stung his nostrils. He fought to look at the figure beside him, strapped into a harness.
His heart leapt as the fog over his mind dissipated and his vision cleared. “Holly! Are you okay?”
She hung limply, her head slumped against her chest. He pulled at his harness until it released, and he slipped out of his seat. Stumbling, he tried to maintain his footing. The Sunspot’s gravity had tilted.
His memory swam with the attack from the drones and their crash-landing on Mars’s surface. The alarms still blared, and Sonya was going on in the background about damages to various parts of the ship. But none of that mattered right now.
“Come on, Holly,” he said, looking up at the psychologist. She was dangling, limp, in her harness, a red gash across her forehead dripping blood.
Bouma brushed aside her hair to get a better look. “Baby, can you hear me?”
Still she made no reply.
Emanuel’s voice broke over the comms. “Is everyone okay?”
“I’m fine!” Jeff reported. His voice sounded shaky. “David is too, I think. We just got bumped up.”
“Hell of a ride, but we’re okay,” Ort reported.
Bouma fumbled for a handset. “Holly’s out! I need some help back here!”
“On my way,” Emanuel replied.
“Please, Holly,” Bouma pleaded, his hands wrapped around her cheeks. “Please, wake up.”
He had only met her by circumstance, and their time together had been eventful, though brief. But when the world came to an end, the normal slow burn of human relationships was accelerated, each moment precious and fierce.
Holly was the glue holding this crew together. Her counseling had kept morale high. They were constantly faced with the harsh reality that the ever-present threat of the Organics meant their odds of survival were terrible. It was too easy to lose yourself in a spiral of depressive thoughts when considering the fate of the human race. She had strived to prevent them all from cracking psychologically.
For Bouma, she was more than just a counselor checking in on his mental health, though. The promise of a future with Holly was enough to keep him fighting. The way she smiled at him over breakfast in the ship’s mess, her hand in his while they strolled through the agricultural biome, their passionate moments shared in their berth… it all hit Bouma like an Organic Sentinel on the charge.
He couldn’t lose her like this.
Footsteps exploded down the corridor behind him.
“Bouma!” a voice called. “We’re coming!”
Emanuel rushed in with Diego close behind. Ort, too, appeared in the doorway, blocking it with his massive frame.
“What can we do?” Ort asked.
Emanuel examined the wound on Holly’s head. “We need to get her to the med bay.”
Bouma began to unstrap her. Her head lolled to the side.
“Careful with her neck!” Emanuel said. “She might be hurt.”
Bouma, Diego, and Emanuel gingerly unstrapped Holly the rest of the way. Then Emanuel helped Bouma carry her by her shoulders as Ort followed in the rear, holding her legs.
Bouma was only vaguely aware of the bluish cylinders where Sophie, Jamie, and Owen were being kept in cryostasis when they entered the medical bay. They still had no idea whether Sophie would make a full recovery or not. He’d seen the pain it caused Emanuel, and he feared he was about to experience that same horrible feeling. But as they set Holly down on a patient bed, her eyelids fluttered. Bouma swallowed hard, careful not to let his hope carry him away.
“Holly?” He caressed her arm.
“Wha… where am I?” she asked.
“We’re in the med bay,” Bouma replied. He fought to hold in his emotion. She�
��s awake! Alive! Oh, thank God! A dark realization passed over him like a sudden storm cloud. “Do you know who I am?”
She cracked a half grin like he had said the dumbest thing in the world. “Of course I do, Chad.”
A small twinge of relief settled through him at the sound of his first name. “Do you know where we’re headed?”
“Mars.” Then a sudden look of worry crossed her face. She brushed at the blood dripping down her forehead. “Unless something else happened. We’re still going to Mars, right?”
“Something did happen,” Emanuel said. He had disappeared when they’d arrived in the med bay, and now came to the bed, carrying bandages and antiseptics. He started dressing her wound. “We’re on Mars now. Crash landed.”
“And the drones?” she asked.
“Still in space, as far as we can tell,” Ort rumbled. “Seems like those bastards think they got us.”
“Then we’ve got something to show them,” Diego said.
Bouma wanted to share in their bravado, but for now, he could only focus on Holly. “God, I’m so glad you’re alive.” He swallowed her in an embrace. Then he pulled back. “You scared the shit out of me. Please, don’t do that again.”
Holly laughed. “Trust me, I don’t want to.” She rubbed the freshly set bandage. “I could use something for my head.”
“On it,” Emanuel said, navigating over the tilted deck. He started rummaging through the supplies. “We might be stuck here for little while until we figure out what’s next.” He grabbed a bottle and studied the label. “How are we doing on supplies, Sonya?”
Bouma massaged Holly’s hand, sharing a smile with her. He realized in that moment how hard he would fight to help her and the others. Nothing they had accomplished so far had been easy, but it had all been worth the effort. The sooner they got moving and found Hoffman’s colony, the better he’d feel.
“We have enough basic medical supplies for approximately sixty years’ worth of normal activities with occasional disasters,” Sonya said, responding to Emanuel’s query.
Bouma breathed a sigh of relief.
“Unfortunately, we took heavy damage to the cargo hold,” Sonya continued. “Our water supplies were also substantially damaged. In addition, the cryostat fluid tanks are leaking. At best, you have enough supplies to last a week.”
“That gives us some time to come up with a plan,” Bouma said. It still wasn’t a comfortable timeline, but it would do.
He noticed Emanuel looking toward Sophie’s tube.
“What about the cryostat fluid?” Emanuel asked. “If there’s no more fluid to run the cryo chambers, we will have to take Jamie and Owen out.”
Bouma knew the children were mostly healthy and would be fine. Sophie, on the other hand…
Their final stand on Earth to get on the Sunspot had ended with her succumbing to massive convulsions. He didn’t understand the medical condition perfectly, but what he did know was that she had been infected with Organic nanobots. Those bots were teeming in her bloodstream. They had nearly killed her when she’d been forced to activate the RVAMP, the blast acting on the bots within her.
“How long until we run out?” Emanuel asked, looking up at one of the screens.
Sonya paused—as if trying to show concern for her human companions, Bouma thought wryly. “Forty-eight hours.”
— 3 —
“Their shields are weak,” Walker said. “You can tell by the color.”
Athena had noticed that when she first saw the spiders. Just because the shields were weak didn’t mean she could necessarily take them down with her pulse rifle, though. She carried two of the remaining four electromagnetic pulse (EMP) grenades in the GOA’s arsenal, but the precious weapons were too valuable to use unless absolutely necessary.
“Stick to the original plan,” Athena whispered.
Walker hesitated, then slowly lowered his MP5. She could tell he wanted to fight, but they needed to be smart.
She glanced out the third story window of their hiding spot—an apartment building two blocks from the tower. The spiders were still out there, searching for their prey.
Scratch, scrape, scratch, scrape.
The sounds of their razor-sharp claws echoed through the city, sending a chill up her spine. She pulled away from the window. There were still several hours of daylight left. She didn’t want to be out here in the dark.
That was when the other beasts came out to hunt.
Athena and her crew had never seen one of them in person. The only person that had was Corporal Justin Marlin. He had reported hearing a whistling sound, and described the sand glowing blue, on a night patrol outside the buried submarine. The last thing he had said was rooted in her memory.
“The seabed is blue again, it’s blue; all of it, glowing blue…”
They had found his corpse a few days later, nothing but mummified remains. Whatever creature had killed him had done so by sucking the water from his flesh like some sort of vampire alien.
Since then, Athena had kept their missions to the daylight.
The thought reminded her they couldn’t stay here forever. They had to get to that tower and transmit to Alexia. The AI’s promise of a plan was the only thing keeping Athena’s ragtag crew going.
“Come on. Let’s see if we can flank them without being seen,” she said, heading toward the door.
They made their way back down through the building, taking a concrete stairwell to the lobby, where the remains of several orbs were plastered to the wood floor like macabre carpet.
Heat haze rose off the concrete outside the broken windows of the lobby. Athena glanced at her HUD. It was one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Her suit continued to pump liquid coolant under the armor, but her flesh was slick with sweat.
She resisted the urge to reach up and flip her visor so she could wipe her face and eyes clean. A single distraction could cost them their lives.
Walker hurried across the room, his weapon shouldered. He halted in front of a missing window, his boots crunching the skirt of glass underneath.
The crunch wasn’t loud to a human ear, but it was loud enough for a spider to detect.
Walker glanced back at Athena. She couldn’t see his features behind his mirrored visor, but she knew he was likely cringing.
For a split second, Athena thought the mistake might go unnoticed. But not today. A blue glow suddenly reflected off a shard of glass hanging from the window frame by Walker. Athena had just enough time to bring her pulse rifle up and aim at the spider, which was lowering itself down from a blue web.
“Get down!” Athena shouted.
Walker turned to face the beast as it hung from a thick blue string just outside the glassless window. It slashed at his armor, claws slicing through his chest plates. He stumbled and crashed to the ground, his rifle clanking to the floor.
“Get up!” she yelled.
He managed to push himself to his feet, but now he was directly in her line of fire. The spider leapt into the room and struck Walker again, this time in the back, sending him spinning. He let out a cry of pain that was drowned out by her gunfire.
The pulse bolts lanced into the spider’s weak shield. A blue bubble flashed around the creature, the shield absorbing the bolts and holding.
Athena choked on adrenaline as she fired again. Crawling toward her, Walker used his elbows to move his body across the floor, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
The spider roared, mandibles parting above her dying comrade.
Athena continued to pump rounds into its shield until one of them finally penetrated the creature’s exoskeleton. The alien screeched in pain and raised two limbs into the air.
Walker fumbled for his weapon, grabbed it, and moved onto his back to fire off his magazine. Blood exploded out of the alien’s wounds, but the creature skittered right into the fire.
“NO!” Athena yelled.
The alien impaled Walker through the gut with a claw, then lifted his skewered b
ody off the ground. He grabbed the arachnid’s limb, screaming in pain. Blood gushed around the wound as it raised Walker higher.
The spider’s shield was down now, giving Athena her chance. She strode forward and fired the rest of her magazine into the monster, riddling it with rounds.
The alien dropped Walker with a thud. Athena ducked under the flailing beast and grabbed Walker by the back of his armor. She dragged him away, narrowly avoiding the whooshing claws.
They didn’t have much time before other creatures showed up. She would have to use an EMP grenade if they did. It was her only shot at making it out alive.
But Walker was in bad shape. Blood gurgled from between his gloved fingers as she pulled him to safety. He reached up with his other hand and flipped his visor, sucking in a long gasp of air.
“Stop,” he grumbled. Blood popped out of his mouth in an exploding bubble.
She scanned the street outside.
The spider was still moving on the floor, but it was too far away to pose much of a threat now.
“You got to go,” Walker said. “I’m… I’m done for.”
She was already reaching into a pouch on her duty belt to get the coagulating cream that would stop the bleeding. He reached up and grabbed her armored wrist.
“I’ll hold them off. You get that message from Alexia,” he said.
Athena shook her helmet. “No, I’m not leaving you.”
He cursed, grimaced, and closed his eyes. His features distorted in pain. The floor was slick with his blood, and crimson covered his suit. He was right. It was too late. He wasn’t going to make it, no matter what she did.
“Give me my gun,” he choked out.
Athena scrambled over to the weapon, eyeing the spider limbs that were still slashing the air. She ducked down, grabbed it, and then moved back to Walker.
She handed him the rifle and grabbed his other hand.
“I’ll buy you…” he coughed, and then sucked in a breath. After an exhale, he said, “I’ll buy you some time.”
Athena managed to nod, holding his gaze for a moment. Losing Walker would be losing their comedic relief. His humor and bravado had given them all precious moments of levity in the darkest of times.
Orbs IV_Exodus_A Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction Survival Thriller Page 4
