by N M Tatum
Cody stammered as he tried to formulate an answer. He looked to the guys for a price, mouthing, “How much?”
Reggie and Joel both shrugged, looking totally panicked, but Sam stepped into the view of the screen.
“We accept the job,” she said firmly. “We will submit our base bid en route to Rever. We also reserve the right to tack on hazard pay and reimbursement for any damage to our gear, ship or persons.”
“Agreed,” Betty said. Then she ran out of her office and out of sight.
Moments later, a ShimVen skittered into the office and attacked the screen. The feed went dead.
“We really need to establish some pricing guidelines,” Joel said.
“What we need to do is suit up,” Reggie said. “We’ve got ourselves another job.”
The Notches split up, each running to their locker. They strapped up, checked their weapons, and struck the most amazing team pose.
“Notches,” Sam said. “Roll out.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sonic Shuttle, En Route to Rever Space Station
Nearing Rever felt like sailing into a black hole. The station had gone completely dark. The bugs must have eaten through the power supply already. Not a good sign.
The Notches had witnessed the infestation in its infancy during that call. Those bugs couldn’t have been more than a few hours old if the people manning the station had only just begun to encounter them. To have drained the entire station of power in that short a time… Cody feared the worst. Either the size of the swarm was astronomical, or the bugs had made another impossible generational advancement. Either way, they had no idea what they were walking into.
“No answer,” Cody said after attempting to hail the station. “Looks like their evacuation is complete. I’ll hack the landing bay doors and get us inside.” He stayed on the bridge while the others moved back to the cargo bay. “We’re coming up on it now,” he told the team through the comms.
Using his wristcom, he hacked into Rever’s system. This station was more than just a shipping hub, like the others. StrobeNet and other massive corporations had offices here. Proprietary information was stored on the system’s servers, which meant tighter cybersecurity. Nothing Cody couldn’t handle, though. He’d already gotten the backup power system up, and a secure entry to the landing bay doors open in minutes.
“Taking us in,” he said as lights flickered on around the station, partially waking it back up.
Once Sonic landed, he joined the others in the cargo bay. Sam was swinging her sword, warming up her arm. Reggie had his eyes closed tight, sweat already forming on his brow. Joel was squatting, talking to Peppy.
“Don’t worry about me, little pal,” Joel said to Peppy. “Be back in no time. I left the rest of the cheeseburgers in your bed.”
Peppy licked Joel’s face in response.
“I ran some scans of the station as we were docking,” Cody said. “The infestation is fairly widespread, but it looks to get worse the closer we get to the StrobeNet offices. That’s ground zero. If this infestation follows the same pattern as the others, this generation of ShimVens will already have advanced beyond the last swarm; we shouldn’t think that just because we took out two swarms, we know what to expect. That will get us killed.”
Reggie’s breathing quickened. It became broken, erratic, like someone in the throes of a nightmare.
“You okay, dude?” Joel asked him.
Reggie forced the words out. “Yeah. Fine.” His grip on his Gatling gun loosened. The heavy gun fell to his side, dangling from the strap and almost pulling him over.
Sam rushed to catch him, barely making it in time and almost unable to brace herself enough to hold the big man up.
“Shit, man, you are not all right,” Joel said. The color drained from his face as he watched his friend tremble.
Reggie couldn’t seem to hear him, like he was lost somewhere in his own head.
“What’s the matter with him?” Cody asked Sam.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she propped Reggie against the wall and grabbed both sides of his face, trying to force him to look her in the eye. “Hey, look at me,” she said. He stared off, eyes focused on nothing. “Fucking look at me, goddammit.”
The profanity shook him from his daze.
“Your head isn’t right,” Sam said. “No use fighting that and pretending it is. No hiding it. You face it.”
Cody stepped closer to Reggie, his shoulders slumped. “What’s she talking about?”
Reggie’s eyes tried to look past Sam, to look at nothing. She jerked on his chin, forcing him to look at her. “Answer him.”
“I…I don’t want—”
She jerked on his chin again. “No excuses.”
The resistance in Reggie’s jaw faded. His eyes flooded and turned red. “My head’s not right. Hasn’t been, really, since the Waystation.” Sam nodded, a silent encouragement for him to keep going. She released his face, allowing him to face the guys. “I’ve been having nightmares. Of the bugs. Feeling them on me. Feeling their blood on me. Hearing the cracking sound as I rip one’s pincers off.” His eyes spilled over. Hot tears ran down his cheeks.
Joel grabbed Reggie by the shoulder. “Now you’ve gone full Rambo.”
Reggie cocked his head, unsure how to take that.
Cody mirrored Joel’s gesture, grabbing Reggie’s other shoulder. “I think what Joel is trying to say, is that it sounds like you’ve got PTSD.”
Reggie hung his head. “I should’ve said something. I put you all in danger. I risked the business. Partners don’t do that.”
“No,” Sam said, an edge in her voice. “You should have told us because you’re going through some shit. You’re in pain. And we let you deal with it on your own. Families don’t do that.” She stepped between Cody and Joel and put an arm around each of their shoulders, closing the circle. “You aren’t alone. We got you.”
They laced themselves together, each a thread in a single tapestry, with Sam an equal part. Remove her now, and the whole thing would unravel. Remove any of them, and it would all fall apart.
Joel cleared his throat. “Okay, seriously, can we just kill the fucking bugs now?”
Reggie smiled. “Yeah, let’s go kill the fucking bugs.”
“Language,” Sam said with a smile.
The Notches squared up and readied to cut through another swarm. Cody lowered the cargo bay hatch, and the war began.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rever Space Station
The Notches ran down the ramp like little leaguers storming an ice cream stand after a game. Reggie unleashed a wave of Gatling fire that cut through dozens of bugs in seconds. The others moved to the flanks. With each swing of Sam’s sword, she cut a handful of ShimVens in half. Joel and Cody moved up the opposite flank, dual blasters and scatterblaster painting the walls with bug guts.
Cody’s assumption was correct—these bugs were bigger than the others. The ones they encountered on the Waystation and Ludite were roughly equivalent to a medium-sized dog, a golden retriever. These things were approaching Saint Bernard size. But their increased size made them slightly slower. They didn’t swarm as fast, and they made for bigger targets. However, they did have tougher exoskeletons.
The Notches pressed forward, never relenting in their attack, and soon, they had taken the landing bay.
“Clear,” Reggie yelled.
“Secure the area,” Sam said. “We don’t want any surprises.”
The Notches surveyed the room, putting down any bug that so much as twitched. When they were satisfied all the ShimVens were thoroughly dead, they met at the landing bay entrance.
“Weapons check,” Sam said.
They reloaded, checked, checked again, and made ready. Cody displayed the floorplans for Rever on his wristcom.
“StrobeNet offices are one level up. We make for this stairwell. Figure we clear ground zero first, then we can clear the rest of the station.” They all nodded in agreement. “
This floor we’re on looks like a maze,” Cody said. “Divided into offices and then subdivided and divided some more. We stay together, or we risk getting separated and lost. Also, that means visibility is shitty, and there’s plenty of corners for bugs to hide behind.” They all nodded again. Cody held his hand over the door controls. He counted down from three and then pressed the button.
The second the door slid open, Reggie peppered the room with Gatling fire, establishing a clear entry point for the rest of the team. Joel expanded on that entry point with two grenades. Cody jumped to the front of the line and blasted a few more holes in the swarm.
The landing bay was connected to a long corridor, which branched several times at regular intervals before opening up into a large room with an open floor plan that had been chopped up into a cubicle farm. The corridor was clear, but the thunderous skittering of thousands of legs told them the floor was anything but.
They moved as a unit, slow and steady up the corridor, pausing at each corner to check for bugs. They encountered only a handful before reaching the end of the corridor, the cube farm. The stairwell was visible from their position, just on the other side of the cubicles. Unfortunately, the swarm was not completely visible. It provided a false sense of security, alluding to an empty room, a clear path.
The Notches knew that was a lie. They could hear the clatter of the ShimVens’ pincers, and not being able to see them was unnerving and dangerous. They much preferred being able to see their enemy, to know where the threat would come from.
“We need to flush them out,” Sam said. “We can’t chart our path through there if we don’t know where they are. Maybe we can corral them to one side, open us a path along the wall.”
“On it,” Joel said, plucking a grenade from his belt. “Cover your eyes,” he said to the others.
He pulled the pin and hurled a grenade against the left wall. The flashbang erupted with a burst of light like a star being born. The bugs shrieked and tripped over each other and cubicle walls as they scrambled to get away from the source of their pain.
“Move,” Reggie said.
The team ran to the left wall of the cube farm. Joel and Cody executed the few bugs still in their path as they ran along the wall. They would have made it through clean if a collection of desks didn’t smash into the wall in front of them, blocking their path.
They all swung to the right, looking for the source of the attack. Standing out among the crowd of bugs was one ShimVen twice the size of the others, almost as big as a horse, its pincers as long as Reggie’s arm. Joel was the first to act, nudging the rest from their shock. He unloaded his dual blasters in the big one’s face, but the shots had little effect, seeming only to agitate the thing.
“Keep the little ones off me,” Sam said as she sprinted toward the big bug. Reggie switched the Gatling gun to a narrow field of fire. Joel ran behind Sam, blasting the bugs as they tried to flank her. Cody dropped to a knee and pulled out his sniper rifle.
A dozen ShimVens stood between Sam and the big one. She sliced the legs out from under the first one she reached. When it dropped, Sam used it as a springboard and jumped over the other little bugs. She drove her sword into the back of the big one’s head as she came down on top of it. It let out a roar that seemed to scare the other bugs as much as it did the Notches.
“Go!” Sam yelled.
A path had opened to the stairwell, with the bugs distracted. Reluctantly, the guys did as she said. Once they exited the cube farm, they took up a defensive position and shot as many bugs as they could, trying to thin the swarm between them and Sam.
The big one bucked, trying to throw Sam off its back. She drove the sword in further and gripped it tighter. “Grenade!” she yelled to Joel. “Behind me!”
Joel plucked a concussion grenade off his belt. “I hope she knows what she’s doing,” he muttered.
He pressed the trigger and threw it high over the big ShimVen. The conc grenade exploded behind Sam, blasting a hole in the swarm and sending the big one stampeding straight for the guys.
The ShimVen kicked dozens of its smaller companions out of the way as it barreled forward. The guys raised their weapons. Sam pulled her sword free of the big one’s back and, with a swift and powerful blow, took its head clean off. The giant bug fell forward and slid to a halt at the guys’ feet. Sam stepped off like she would an escalator.
“Let’s go,” she said.
They ran into the stairwell, and Joel barred the door with an electromagnetic lock that he’d rigged up on the ship. The Notches made their way up to the second level, pausing at the door a moment to catch their breath.
“So,” Cody said through gasps. “That was the easy part. Ground zero is on this level. It’s going to be worse.”
“At least I didn’t die in a cubicle,” Joel said. “That’s my worst nightmare.”
Cody brought up the floorplan for level two. The good news was that this floor wasn’t a cube floor like the hell they’d just left behind; this level belonged to the bigwigs. Fancy offices, more open space, even a fountain in the center to really tie it all together. The difference between levels one and two was the difference between upper management and worker bees.
Cody wondered how many worker bees had gotten mauled as they tried to find their way out of that maze of cubicles, while the bigwigs just locked their office doors.
He highlighted the StrobeNet offices on the map. They were almost on the complete opposite end of the floor. Of course.
Sam paced as she studied the map. “That’s a lot of ground to cover,” she said. “It’s open, which means we can see the enemy, but they can see us, too.” She paused. The rasp of her respirator filled the stairwell with a haunted echo. “Here’s what we do.”
She detailed a plan of attack, and each of them nodded, acknowledging their part in it. They stood like a SWAT team ready to breach. Just months ago, the guys had been sitting in their basement or bedroom, a VR set strapped to their faces as they carried out this same mission in a simulated environment. Safe, insulated, pretend. Their entire lives had been insulated.
Reggie held up three fingers and counted down. They breached, putting their very real bodies in danger, but living very real lives. Real consequences. Real risk. Real reward. Real glory.
Cody popped the door. Reggie went first, firing a wide spray from his Gatling. Joel went next, crouched low so Cody had a clear shot. Joel swung around Reggie and dropped to his knees. He pulled a rectangular device from his belt about six inches long. He set in on the floor and reinforced it with duct tape—no matter the technological advancements of the human race, nothing will ever replace duct tape. Cody and Sam took the flanks, their only priority to keep the bugs off Joel and give him time to do his job.
Joel pulled two more rectangular devices from his belt and taped them down at regular intervals. He connected them all with a silver cord, which formed a slight arc.
“Ready,” Joel said.
Reggie ceased fire. Joel pressed a button on the center device, and a blue energy shield projected upward from it, then from the others. The mobile shield system did not connect, leaving a narrow window of open space between them that they could walk behind.
The Notches piled behind the shield. Cody pulled his sniper rifle from his back, the stock and barrel extended from the main unit. He took up his position, taking aim through the breaks in the shield. Meanwhile, Reggie eyed the heat gauge on his Gatling. The second it read cool, he stepped around the front of the shield and unleashed another wide spray. Joel and Sam followed, clearing the flanks of the riffraff that managed to get around Reggie.
When Reggie’s heat gauge climbed, he let his Gatling fall to his side and hang by its strap. He drew the pincers from his belt. Joel and Sam swept around to the front, keeping the swarm off Reggie as his Gatling cooled down, and Cody sniped from his nest behind the shields.
They fell into a rhythm and steadily gained ground. Reggie would push the swarm back, the team would advance, and
the others would keep the bugs at bay until the Gatling was ready to go again.
They had advanced halfway through the level before the whole plan went to shit.
Cody zoomed through his sniper scope to the door of the StrobeNet offices. “Another fifty yards,” he said to the team. “Just keep doing what we’re doing, and we’ll be there in no time.”
Before he could zoom out and focus on the battle, he noticed something—a crack in the wall of the StrobeNet office. About a foot long, starting on the floor and running up… Not anything to get worried over. This whole station was falling to shit. Except, as he watched, the crack grew another foot. It kept growing, spreading up and outward like a spider web.
It only stopped when four big ShimVens rammed through the wall from inside the office, crumbling it like it was made of sand.
Mini-bosses.
The size of buffalo, they came stampeding toward the Notches, trampling their own kind without concern.
“Fall back!” Joel yelled through comms.
The team didn’t need Joel’s recommendation. The shaking ground and thunderous roars were enough to send them running. Joel couldn’t find a shot between the team and swarm. He pulled a small knife from his belt instead and set to cutting the duct tape off the shield generators. He’d freed two by the time the team had reached him.
“Keep going. Into the stairwell,” he directed.
They didn’t hesitate, running past him.
The big ShimVens had cleared through the swarm and were only yards from trampling Joel. He cut the last generator free. Grabbing one of the cords that connected them, he dragged all three back toward the door, causing the shield to wave back and forth erratically.
The big bugs slowed for fear of the shield, but they did not stop.
Joel dove into the stairwell, pulling the shield behind him. It stuck against the door jam, forming a barricade between the Notches and the big ShimVens.
