by N M Tatum
“It’s fine,” he said to himself. “Totally cool. I got this. Just garbage water. No, just water. I’m walking along the beach. A beautiful, scenic, trash beach.” His stomach cramped as he barely fought the urge to vomit.
The chutes that connected to each level were labeled. He found the one marked “Sub-level five” and set about baiting his trap. He tied a bunch of rations in the opening. Then he did the same to the chute for sublevel six. He contacted Cody, who then hacked into the controls for the chute system and reversed the suction flow, turning it on the lowest level possible, just high enough to pump the scent of the rations onto each level. The tactic should split the swarm pretty evenly between the three kill zones.
“All right, guys,” Reggie said into his comm. “You ready to do this?”
“Hell yeah,” they both said.
Reggie readied his flamethrower.
The first bug crawled down the chute two minutes later. The first hundred came through just seconds after that.
Chapter Eight
Sector 12 Transgalactic Station
The ShimVens poured into the machine shop on sublevel six like a hole had been punched in a dam. Joel unleashed a wave of fire that dropped dozens of them at a time, turning them to nothing but charred husks. The attack didn’t slow, though. The bugs just crawled over their dead brothers and sisters, caring nothing for them as they sought out their meal.
The wave pushed Joel back from his position in the center of the room, but he’d planned for that. Classic tactic: don’t set up in your final position right off the bat—leave yourself a place to make your last stand. He inched back toward that position, never letting off the trigger. Bugs fell like shooting stars from the air vents, crumbling in flaming masses as they charged from the entrance of the room.
Joel felt the main control panel press into his back. Now. Time to unleash his final attack. Continuing to point his flamethrower forward and spray a constant beam of hell, he turned the rest of his body back toward his computer, which was jacked into the control panel. The command was already keyed in. All he had to do was press Enter.
He jabbed his finger down on the key.
Almost instantly, a dozen bots whirred to life. The grabber claws spun and pinched as they warmed up from their forced slumber. Treads rumbled over the mound of corpses, popping them like fat berries and spraying their juices across the floor. The bots swung their mechanical arms, crunching a dozen bugs at a time, sending them slamming into the walls. They grabbed ShimVens and squeezed until their legs stopped wriggling or their heads popped off.
Joel almost forgot what he was doing, he was so delighted at having his own robot army. I can finally cross that off the bucket list!
One of the bots swung and missed, its arm sticking into the wall, bending the metal around its grabber claw. It tried to yank free but couldn’t, and the ShimVens swarmed it. They yanked off its plating to reveal the soft wires and tubes inside. They tore the bot apart like a pack of wolves would a deer, parts and fluids flying everywhere. A second bot went down a moment later.
Joel rushed back to the control panel and activated two replacements. In the meantime, two more bots fell. There were only a few dormant bots left.
This is gonna be one hell of a final stand.
Cody rolled to his left, narrowly avoiding a bug’s pointed leg stabbing down at him. His momentum carried him to his feet, and he smashed the butt of his flamethrower into the bug’s head. He heard a sickening crack, then lit the bastard up. The wave came in full force, a never-ending assault of pincers and needle teeth and hissing.
The goddamn hissing. The things never stopped making that irritating noise. Cody was tempted to lay down and let the things eat him just so he didn’t have to hear it.
Charred bodies lay all around him. So many that he nearly tripped over them. He was getting boxed in by his fallen enemies. Without a doubt, Cody needed to clear some space. He pressed his back to the far wall and reached into the pouch on his belt. He pulled one of the grenades free. He only had a second to glance at it to determine which one it was and how best to prepare for the blast. It floated through the air, graceful as a rock.
Shrapnel grenade. Cover your ass.
Cody dove behind one of the conveyor belts just as the grenade exploded in midair. Shards of jagged metal rained down on the bugs, slicing them to ribbons. He darted out from his cover and sprayed the wriggling survivors with fire.
Another group of bugs flooded the room. Cody took another grenade from his belt and threw it at the mass of bugs. He caught sight of it as it soared.
Blue canister. Shit. Pyrethrum X-735c.
He sprinted as fast as he could. Still feet from cover, his ankle rolled as he stepped on a dead bug. He fell to the floor and rolled onto his back. The blue canister burst—
These were grenades Cody had scored off the guys who sold them Killmaximus. They were essentially grenades containing pyrethrum—an insecticide that acts exceedingly fast. Unfortunately, he didn’t get many since they were so expensive.
Cody grabbed the corpse he’d tripped on and pulled it on top of him. Aiming his flamethrower at the explosion, he pulled the trigger. The blast of insecticide pressed against the rush of flames, tickling his knuckles and burning off the hair on his fingers.
Cody let off the trigger and pushed the dead bug off him. He stood in a garden of ShimVen statues. But skittering still echoed in the hall outside.
The only thing that smelled worse than a room full of old garbage was a room full of old garbage and hundreds of ShimVens. They fell out of the chutes like someone had turned on a faucet. Reggie stood near the opening of the sublevel five chute and held the flamethrower on it for thirty seconds, torching every bug that came through. Then he turned and did the same for the sublevel six chute. But while he burned one bug, more came through the other chutes. The room was filling up.
Soon he had to abandon his strategy to focus on the bugs in the room. Luckily, the garbage covering the floor caught fire, creating a natural barrier between him and the bugs. If he planned it right, he could corral the bugs and give himself some cover. Unluckily, the fire spread across the fermented garbage and quickly grew out of control.
More pests were getting caught in the garbage fire, but its presence also put Reggie in danger from another threat. The fires were backing him into a corner and taking more ground than he could afford to give up.
I may survive the bugs, but I won’t survive the blaze.
“Cody, you there?”
A moment of tense silence stretched on too long.
“Here,” Cody finally said, out of breath.
“You got a sec?”
“Yeah, sure, I’m not doing anything. What do you need? An iced tea? Foot massage?” The sound of rushing flames came over the comm.
“Can you hack the incinerator controls for sublevel seven?” Reggie asked.
“I’ve already got them cued up,” Cody said. “Figured you’d ask.”
Reggie never thought he could be so happy while standing in a pile of trash. The power of teamwork. “Then fire them up,” he urged.
The conveyors kicked on, immediately knocking Reggie off his feet and onto his back. A ShimVen took the opportunity to try and eat his face by leaping onto his chest. Reggie pulled one of the pincers free from his belt and stabbed his current attacker repeatedly in the head.
He’d traveled ten yards by the time he got back on his feet, now just another ten yards from the gaping hole in the floor that was the incinerator shaft. The floor began to shake. Dozens of bugs dropped out of view as they reached the hole. The temperature jumped twenty degrees in a blink.
Reggie ran away from the incinerator, climbing over garbage and dead bugs. He stumbled and climbed back to his feet. It felt like trying to run up a mudslide, the ground constantly shifting beneath him.
A pillar of flame shot into the air behind Reggie, and he felt the hair on the back of his neck curl. He couldn’t breathe, the air was too th
ick with heat and fumes. It seemed to go on forever, the stream of the incinerator, burning everything.
He covered his mouth and nose with his shirt. If he stayed low, then the air didn’t burn his lungs so much. He crawled toward the other side of the incinerator, by the exit where cleaner air could be found. Each second it was getting harder to push forward.
Finally, after struggling as long as he could, Reggie collapsed. His legs refused to move. His lungs couldn’t find oxygen. Darkness pressed against the edge of his vision. The soles of his boots felt like they were melting.
And then it stopped. The incinerator shut down. The bugs were gone. The fires were out, all the flaming garbage swallowed by the hole. Reggie flailed in the trash like a laughing baby looking up at a mobile. He did it. He’d survived. This was the beginning of their reputation at pest control experts.
This is the beginning of the end.
Joel was down to just a few bots. The rest had been smashed and destroyed by the swarm, which, although thinned considerably, was still large enough to kill Joel ten times over.
He rolled from dead bot to dead bot, taking cover behind their corpses while lighting up the remaining bugs, hoping his fuel didn’t run out. It was a solid strategy, but he was getting tired. His legs burned, his chest pounded, sweat poured down his brow and back, soaking him through. All it would take was one slip-up, one reaction to his fatigue, and he was done. The ShimVens would have him.
He needed to do something. He needed to finish this. He looked to his dead bots, his fallen soldiers. Having a robot army was great while it lasted…
His mind flickered with an idea. Maybe they weren’t done serving their human overlord quite yet. They could still be of use.
Joel darted back to the main control panel. He hacked into the bot controls, booted them all up and cranked them up to eleven. Their internal servos and motors thrummed as they tried like hell to function. Protected gears and parts the ShimVen couldn’t get to ground against each other. Sparks shot like geysers from the cracks in the bots’ casing.
“This is it,” Joel said to himself. “My Rambo moment.”
He charged at the swarm, spraying fire out in front of him, clearing a path. He swung his fist, smashing bugs as he passed. He jumped over a flailing pest, its legs smashed by one of the surviving bots.
The dead bots screamed behind him. He silently saluted his fallen soldiers as he dove forward. The bots overheated and exploded, filling the machine shop with a massive fireball. Joel rolled onto his back and trained his flamethrower on the entrance of the room, waiting for any surviving bugs to come rushing out. None did. They were gone.
The fuckers were everywhere. Slashing and pinching and biting.
Goddamn bugs! Cody blasted a wave of fire point-blank into one bug’s face.
He no longer felt the sense of satisfaction when he killed a bug; there was always another right behind it. They were never-ending.
He was down to his final grenade. It was a doozy, but it was the last one. Cody needed to make it count. If he had one wish, he’d have the bugs cluster in the center of the room.
He ran to the back of the level and let off the trigger. With no flames keeping them at bay, the ShimVens swarmed in. Every instinct yelled at him to fire, to kill, but he resisted.
It was incredibly difficult, but Cody waited until the first of the bugs was close enough to take off his head. Then he ran along the perimeter of the control hub.
The bugs, being stupid ShimVens, played follow the leader. The last of the swarm piled into the room and skittered over the top of one another, trying to get to the human bait. Cody pulled the final grenade from his pouch as he sprinted for the door. ‘Little Fat Boy,’ he named it.
While scouring the wreckage of the control room, he happened upon a needle in the haystack of junk. One of the techs must have been moonlighting, because there was no reason they should have been working with nuclear material. It likely violated not only their contract with station management but intergalactic law as well. But Cody was glad they had; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to build this handy little nuke grenade. He’d watched Joel making the grenades, and hoped he got this one right.
How hard could it be?
The core was made with just the tiniest speck of uranium and encased in just a slightly larger speck of dark matter. Toss in a hefty dose of explosives, and he had a recipe for a last-ditch effort at survival.
Cody said a silent prayer that he wasn’t about to nuke not only himself but also collapse the station into a black hole. Then he threw the grenade and ran like hell.
It fell into the middle of the swarm. The bugs attacked it like it was a hot dog. It didn’t make any noise when it exploded—just flared one hot flash of light. A blinding burst, like a sun had suddenly been born in the next room. And it kept growing. The light pushed outward, racing toward Cody. The heat was intense, unbearable, and getting closer. In less than a second, he would be incinerated, a piece of tissue paper tossed on a fire.
But the light suddenly stopped. Something was pulling it back like it was a cat and something had grabbed hold of its tail.
It grabbed hold of Cody, too.
He began to slide across the floor toward the control hub. He picked up speed, soon racing toward the room, his ass blistering as it dragged. He slammed his feet into the wall on either side of the door, stopping himself just outside the room. His knees buckled against the pressure. The pull was so great, he felt it tug on his eyeballs. It yanked on his fingernails.
Darkness spread out from the center of the room, swallowing the light. It spread like the glow had, inching closer to Cody.
Then, as suddenly as it was born, it died.
The pull was gone. The darkness was gone. The ShimVens were gone.
Cody fell back and went limp. Everything ached. His muscles refused to move. His mind went blank.
He stared at the ceiling until a voice spoke in his ear.
“You all alive?” Reggie said.
“Yeah,” Cody answered. “I’m alive.”
Joel mumbled something that wasn’t exactly a word but was enough to answer Reggie’s question.
“We did it,” Reggie said. “We killed them. Job complete.”
“Hold up,” Cody said, checking his wristcom. “I’m getting a few readings on sublevel eight.”
“How did we miss those?” Joel asked.
Cody sighed. “This isn’t a perfect science yet, but we definitely aren’t done yet.”
Chapter Nine
Sector 12 Transgalactic Station
“Get a real job.” Joel’s imitation of his mom was spot on, capturing her nasally tone perfectly.
She’d been supportive of his gaming aspirations, and his participation in the VRE championships with the Notches. Up until she wasn’t.
“You can do anything you set your mind to,” Joel continued mimicking. “Except gaming. You tried that. It didn’t work. Set your mind to something else.”
A small ShimVen skittered out of an air vent near his feet.
“Holy shit fuck!” he yelled out in his normal voice. He jumped and trained his flamethrower on the disgusting thing. Then he shouted “Die!” over and over again until the ShimVen did exactly that.
After spending five hours knee-deep in dead bugs he was ready to get the hell off this station and never look at another bug again.
“Goddamn bugs,” Joel said. “Why’d it have to be bugs?”
“Because we’re exterminators,” Cody reminded him through their commlink. “That’s kind of the job.”
Of course, never seeing another bug again wasn’t terribly realistic, given his line of work. Though since this was his first job, he hadn’t completely bought into the occupation yet.
“Pest control,” Reggie corrected over the link. “We are pest control experts.”
“Some fucking experts,” Joel said, kicking the dead bug just to make sure it was still dead.
“It’s our first job,” Re
ggie said. “We’ll learn.”
“My point exactly,” Joel said. “It’s our first job. This is some expert-level shit. Ridding an entire space station of these things in seventeen hours? What made you think we could handle this? I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve almost died at least twelve times today.”
“Gotta start somewhere,” Reggie said. “May as well start big.”
“Besides,” Cody added. “We kicked ass. Scanners show we took out the bulk of the swarm; there’s just a pocket of them left on sublevel eight. A sizeable pocket, but they’re all huddled together. And it’s nothing compared to what we’ve seen already. Should be able to wipe them out in an hour. Then we call it a day and get paid. Easy as pie.”
“Already on my way,” Reggie said. “Meet you down there.”
“Lock and load,” Joel said, completely devoid of enthusiasm.
If you’re ever on a space station hunting giant space bugs, never go to sublevel eight.
Especially if, just before going down to sublevel eight, someone says, ‘Yeah, this’ll be easy as fucking pie. We just survived a hell swarm of devil bugs. Danger over. Sublevel eight will be like strolling through a meadow of fluffy bunnies. I wish I lived on sublevel eight.’
Because that’s a sure sign that you’re about to die.
The elevator rattled as it descended into the inevitable deathtrap. The station looked new from the outside, but it had old bones. The pipes were rusty. The internal mechanics were all gummed up. The gear works on the elevator probably hadn’t been serviced in years. Everything creaked and moaned like an old man trying to get out of his favorite chair. It only added to the sense of impending doom.
The elevator dinged, marking its arrival. The door lurched open. Joel held his weapon at the ready. After a few tense breaths, he thought maybe he was wrong. Maybe it really would be all fluffy bunnies.
