Ganked In Space

by N M Tatum

  They encountered a handful of stragglers on level two. Sam almost felt guilty for putting them down. These were the rare ShimVens that didn’t follow the herd into a death trap. They wanted to live more than they wanted to swarm, an intriguing example of freedom among a colony. But when confronted, those bugs tried to bite the Notches’ heads off, too, and eliminating the entire swarm was part of the contract, so they needed to go.

  The extravagance of level two shone even through a thick layer of bug shit. Offices for corporations they’d all heard of, corporations that had become so interwoven with people’s daily lives that it was easy to forget that they required offices with administrators, and weren’t self-sustaining organisms. The largest social media platforms. Media companies. Digital marketplaces.

  And then there were the ones they hadn’t heard of, the ones that may have been an even bigger part of their lives—pharmaceutical companies, agribusinesses, tech manufacturers. The companies that produced everything they used every day. StrobeNet was one of those companies. Not a household name, but found in every household.

  Cody gave Reggie his dual blasters while he used the sniper rifle. Sam drew her sword, and Joel his scatterblaster. The gang stood at the door of ground zero. They exchanged a look of understanding. “This is it,” they silently said to each other. “The end.”

  A strange sense of calm passed between them when they expected to feel the typical anxiety and fear of impending death. Each of them was stronger than the first time they’d stepped on a station to face a swarm. Sam was stronger than when the guys had found her in that bar. And when each thread is reinforced then woven together, the tapestry becomes that much stronger.

  They braced for hell and opened the door.

  What they found was…nothing. The StrobeNet offices were empty. Not a single bug.

  “That was the entire swarm?” Sam asked of the bugs now dead at the bottom of the stairwell.

  “I guess so,” Cody said. He gestured to the empty egg sacs on the walls. “This is definitely the origin point, though. I guess the swarm just wasn’t as big as we anticipated.”

  Their toughest battle yet, their closest brush with death. The whole thing ended with a shrug.

  They examined the offices as a precaution, ensuring that they were empty. Not even a straggler or a coward hiding in the wall panels; not that Joel would have noticed. A bug could have been gnawing on his leg, and he would have kept on marveling at the equipment on display.

  “Each of these workstations has the latest V-Ramp monitors.” He stood in the workstation of someone named Peter Tooney, according to the name placard. “You know what the contrast ratio is on these? Incredible.” His eyes took in the cutting edge computer gear, VR stations for interpersonal communications, even the ergonomic chairs that didn’t look like chairs. “This place is legit,” Joel said.

  “And it’s got a great view,” Reggie added. He stood on a loft that was the CEO’s office space; he’d believed in the open concept approach to design, apparently. The entire wall was a bank of viewing windows. With the carnage behind and below him, Reggie looked out on a field of stars, glowing blue and pink.

  The others joined him, feeling entitled to a moment of beauty and peace. They stood shoulder to shoulder and watched the stars blink in and out.

  “The Sorisayan Star Meadow,” Cody informed them. “It’s on the list of top ten ‘must see places’ in the system.”

  Reggie spread his arms, wrapping them around Joel, Cody, and Sam. “We can cross it off our list now.”

  Joel was about to mask his discomfort with a sarcastic comment, but the entire star meadow suddenly blinked out of existence, catching him off guard. “For a must-see place, it’s not much to look at.”

  A dark shadow drifted in front of the window, blackness swallowing everything.

  Cody stepped up to the glass, squinting like he could see through into the blackness. “I haven’t read anything about an eclipse.

  Sam grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him away from the glass. “I don’t think this is an eclipse.”

  “What else could it be?”

  Cody immediately wished he hadn’t asked the question. The darkness cracked and allowed a long, thin line of white to come through. It grew wider, like a yellow hole had opened in the center of space and was swallowing it all. When it stopped growing, the Notches realized what it was.

  An eye.

  A moment spread in front of the Notches that was like space bending in on itself—infinity inside the fraction of a second. They stared at that eye for a long time, trying to comprehend its enormity and their insignificance in comparison. They failed to comprehend anything.

  And then the eye was gone, and they were left feeling empty. They’d been hollowed out. Cold. Because as the eye fell away, the owner of it came into full view.

  A ShimVen the size of a moon. It drifted away from them like a leaf on the wind, its spindly legs fluttering. Its tail guided it away as it swam through space, using an unseen energy source—dark energy, possibly. Its segmented body turned and took a wide arc as it came back around to face them. It charged.

  The Notches couldn’t move. What would be the point? What could they do to such a thing? What good would a scatterblaster or sword do to that? They were ants under the magnifying glass.

  Darkness returned as the queen ShimVen opened its mouth. Then darkness conquered everything, as the queen swallowed the entire space station.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Rever Space Station

  “That just happened, right?” Joel said to the others, all still frozen in place. “I mean, I haven’t lost my mind? Or have I? I think I may prefer insanity at this point.”

  Sam burst from her state of frozen fear. She turned and flipped down from the loft. She landed with a thud, her typical grace forfeited for speed. “Move your asses!”

  The others scrambled after her.

  “What’s the plan?” Reggie shouted after her.

  “Get to the ship,” Sam answered. “That’s all I’ve got so far.”

  “Good enough,” Reggie said.

  They ran without regard for anything other than their goal. Sam leapt into the stairwell without pause, and landed hard, rolling her ankle on a slab of concrete. The guys lowered themselves before making the drop, minimizing the distance as much as they could. Pain shot through their legs as they landed, but they didn’t take time to assess the damage.

  A small swarm still raged on level one. Being swallowed by their mother seemed to have set them into a frenzy. They were attacking each other and climbing up the walls. Sam cut any that came near in half, but most paid the Notches no mind.

  The team sprinted through level one and did not slow until they reached Sonic. They boarded and made straight for the bridge. Cody crashed into the captain’s chair and stabbed at the instruments with his fingers.

  “I’ve got control, but all the nav systems are down. What this bug is made of is interfering with the signals. I’m flying blind,” he reported.

  Luckily, they weren’t far from the exterior of the space station; the exit was right behind them. Reverse, and they were out. But he had no idea what he would be flying into. The mouth of a ShimVen?

  The ship rattled like it was caught in the throes of an earthquake. Cody fell out of his chair and clipped his head on the corner of the nav panel. He felt a hot trail of blood trickle down his face.

  They weren’t in the bug’s mouth anymore. They were traveling down its throat.

  The nav systems were down, but the networking functionalities were still up. Cody accessed the Rever’s system and opened the landing bay door. Then he threw Sonic into reverse. and they shot out of the space station, into the bug’s gullet. Cody spun the ship around.

  “I can’t do this,” he said. “Nav system’s down, and there’s no light in here. I can’t see a thing. Can’t even fly manually.”

  “Countermeasures,” Joel suggested.

  “We aren’t under at
tack.”

  “Pop flares,” Joel reminded him.

  “You’re a genius.” Cody activated countermeasures, and a dozen flares launched in front of the ship, lighting their path out. He urged the ship forward at a cautious, yet quick pace.

  “Problem one solved,” Sam said. “But we’ve still got one more. This thing’s mouth is closed. What do we plan to do about that?”

  “When in doubt,” Joel said. “Blow shit up.” He sprinted out of the bridge and ran toward the cargo bay. Reggie ran after him.

  Cody spoke through comms. “Whatever you plan on doing, you better do it fast, Joel. We’ll be coming up on the mouth real soon.”

  “I got this,” Joel said.

  Reggie caught up to Joel in the cargo bay. “You aren’t going to jump out of the ship, are you?”

  “I tried to sacrifice myself once today. Don’t plan on doing it again.”

  “Then what can I do?”

  Joel pointed to the weapons locker. “Grab everything you can and dump it here.”

  Reggie emptied the weapons locker—grenades, ammo, the couple of blasters they had left. Joel dumped his toolbox on the floor next to the pile. Then he began feverishly dismantling weapons and assembling them into the biggest hodgepodge of a bomb that Reggie had ever seen.

  “Is that thing really going to work?” Reggie asked.

  “One way to find out.” Joel grabbed one side of the bomb.

  Reggie grabbed the other side, and they carried it to the airlock. “Granted, I’m not an engineer, but I didn’t see you put a detonator on this thing.”

  “No time,” Joel said. “This is just one big ball of explosives.”

  They set the bomb in the airlock. After, Joel ran to one of the lockers and began putting on the space suit.

  “I thought you were done sacrificing yourself?” Reggie said.

  Joel secured the helmet and picked up the sniper rifle. “I don’t plan on dying.” He pointed to the tether they used for spacewalking on the rare occasion a repair needed to be made while in motion. Joel had only used it once. “Hook me up.”

  Cody squawked over the radio. “How’s it coming back there?”

  “I’ll have the door open in no time,” Joel answered. Once he was connected, he stepped into the airlock alongside the bomb. “Let me know when the mouth is in sight.”

  “Roger,” Cody answered.

  “Is that bomb really going to kill this thing?” Reggie seemed skeptical.

  “No,” Joel said. “But it’ll get her to open her mouth. This’ll just be a little tickle in her throat, hopefully enough to make her cough.” He pressed the button on his rifle, extending the scope and stock. “When Cody gives the word, you open the airlock. And be ready to haul me back in. I don’t want to be out there any longer than I have to be.”

  Cody maneuvered the spaceship like he was navigating a double-mast schooner down a backyard creek—slow and steady. With only the light of the flares to go by, he had fifty yards of visibility at best; even at Sonic’s slowest cruising speed, that would give him only seconds to react to a sudden obstruction. He scraped the hull a few times along the inside of the queen’s throat.

  At least, he thought they were in her throat.

  “Look out!” Sam jabbed her arm in front of Cody’s face, partially obscuring the very danger she meant to point out. But the threat was big enough that he needed only to see part of it.

  The path ahead ended abruptly. They hadn’t reached the mouth yet; they were still in the same long tunnel as before, only it just ended. In three seconds, so would the Notches.

  In a flash of understanding, Cody reached a realization. The light of the flare didn’t show the tunnel ending; it was showing that there was a near ninety-degree turn straight up.

  He pulled hard on the joystick and diverted the rear thrusters to the navigational jets on the underside of the bow. Sam disappeared from his side, falling back and bouncing off the chair, the controls, and through the bridge entrance. She slammed into the corridor wall outside.

  Joel and Reggie were also thrown like ragdolls. The spacewalk suit offered some protection for Joel as he slammed into the airlock door, the one separating him from the void. The massive bomb landed with a thud next to him, neither crushing him nor exploding, for which Joel was very grateful. But Reggie had no protection when he smashed into the interior wall of the airlock. The impact forced the air out of his lungs, and a dark cloud fell over his vision. Unconsciousness clawed at his brain, his head swirling.

  Joel screamed at him. “Stay awake! If you pass out, we all die!”

  The sudden shift in gravity and orientation pushed Joel against the wall. He struggled against it, trying to grab the tether, to pull himself up.

  Reggie’s head swam. He felt like he was underwater. Like he was under Jell-O, suspended in a pool of it. He told his arms to move, but they sat lifeless, like slugs on a moist log. The controls for the airlock were inches from his hand. Inches to travel before they reached the queen’s mouth. May as well have been miles.

  Cody held the ship on a steady course. We must be in the throat now. That drastic of a change in direction means we’ve exited the gullet and entered the throat.

  This was all guesswork, of course. Dissecting the creature was one thing; being inside of it was something different altogether. But if he was right, and they were in the throat, then that meant—

  The narrow path he’d been flying suddenly opened up into a massive cavern, like a small moon. The mouth. They were in the mouth, and their hopeful exit was straight ahead. Some light shone through the cracks between the planetoid ShimVen’s teeth, illuminating the space.

  “We’re in the mouth,” he reported over comms.

  No answer. He looked over his shoulder, but Sam was gone.

  “Anyone hearing me? We’re in the mouth. Whatever you guys plan on doing, you best do it now.”

  He had enough room to maneuver if he needed to, but—

  The queen must have heard his thoughts. The cave began to shrink.

  “The queen is biting down,” Cody said, unsure whether anyone was listening. “Twenty seconds until we get chewed up.”

  He throttled up a bit, choosing to have faith in whatever plan Joel had cooked up. Either it was faith, or he just had no other options. He wasn’t entirely sure what the difference was, anyway. If the plan didn’t work, they would crash into the queen’s teeth and explode. He would rather their death be an act of defiance.

  Joel caught his tether in his left hand. He looped his rifle’s strap over his shoulder and grabbed the tether with his other hand. He tried to climb, but the sudden increase in thrust forced him back down.

  “Reggie, open the airlock!”

  Reggie didn’t move. He groaned something, but Joel couldn’t understand it through the blood pounding in his ears.

  “Cody, deactivate the artificial gravity.”

  “I can’t,” he answered from the bridge. “There’s a cooldown sequence for the gravity engine. If I shut it down without cooling it, then the whole thing could blow.”

  “Could blow?” Joel said. “If the airlock doesn’t open up, we’ll definitely blow. That’s a risk we need to take.”

  Maybe ‘could’ was the wrong word, Cody thought.

  There was a seventy percent chance that the gravity engine would explode without the proper cooldown procedures, versus a one hundred percent chance of being ground between the queen’s teeth. He envied Joel’s black and white approach.

  He flipped the plastic cover off the emergency shutdown button for the gravity engine. His finger hovered over it.

  “Sorry,” he said to Sonic. “You were a great ship.”

  “Don’t you push that goddamn button!” Sam’s voice was like a smack in the back of the head.

  Joel looked up to see her standing next to Reggie, her face red and dripping sweat. Veins bulged in her neck as she fought against the force of the thrust.

  “I got you,” she said, unclear to
who.

  Joel gripped his rifle. “Go!”

  Sam opened the airlock. She collapsed next to Reggie, surrendering to the thrust.

  The air, Joel, and his bomb were sucked out of the ship. Joel bounced around on the end of his tether like a fish trying to get off the line. The bomb fell behind as he was dragged away. Joel looked through his scope as best he could, his visor between him and the gun.

  Cody’s voice echoed inside Joel’s helmet. “The queen’s jaws are closing, guys! Five seconds!”

  Joel felt the world closing in on him. The weight of it. The claustrophobia. The impending unpleasant death by crushing or digestion.

  None of that mattered now. Only the shot mattered…

  Well, those things mattered a little. They were terrifying things. He was about to be swallowed by a bug twice the size of a space station.

  He pushed those thoughts out of his mind. Focused only on the shot.

  The queen’s teeth were inches from piercing the hull.

  Joel squeezed the trigger.

  The bomb exploded. The queen’s mouth shot open, and a bellowing roar came howling up from her throat. The stars suddenly became visible.

  Joel let loose a victory cry, the force of which, coming through their comms, made all the Notches wince.

  “Hold tight,” Cody said.

  He kicked the ship into full thrust until they were clear of the queen’s mouth. Then he throttled back so that Joel’s tether wouldn’t break.

  “Get me back inside,” Joel said to Sam. “I just threw up in my helmet.”

  Sam activated the winch that wound Joel’s tether. Once he was in the airlock, she closed the outer door and pressurized the room. Reggie came to as Joel was stepping out of his spacewalk suit.

  “We’re not dead?” Reggie said.

  Joel clapped him on the back. “No, we’re not dead.”