by N M Tatum
Cody’s voice came through the comms in what was becoming an unfortunately familiar, frantic tone.
“Guys, we’re totally dead.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sonic Shuttle
Sam rushed to the bridge. Joel helped Reggie, who was still unsteady on his feet, follow along after.
“What is it?” Sam asked.
Cody pointed to the rearview monitor. “That blast may have been enough to get the queen to open her mouth and let us out, but it did little else other than piss her off. She’s still coming at us, and she’s coming fast, her long tail making her fly, like an ugly-ass mermaid through water.”
“Can’t you just jump us out of here?” Joel asked.
Cody answered defensively. “The jump drive got knocked around a little while I was navigating us blind through the giant bug’s insides.”
“We can’t outrun it?” Reggie asked.
“We might be able to keep ahead of her moving at full thrust, but we won’t be gaining any ground if she keeps on us at her current pace, we’ll just be maintaining our distance. And we’ll burn through our fuel pretty fast. Plus, I have no way of knowing whether she’s moving at her full speed or not. She could pick up the pace right now and close the gap in seconds.”
“Remember the days when escaping from a massive bug’s stomach was reason to celebrate?” Joel said wistfully. “I wish I could’ve left a hundred bombs inside that bitch on the way out.”
Cody’s face lit up. “Maybe we did.”
Joel shook his head. “No, we definitely didn’t. I’m pretty sure I would have remembered.”
“The station,” Cody said. “That’s our bomb.”
“I don’t follow,” Reggie said.
Cody brought up the schematics on his wristcom then sent them to the monitor. He opened a file called The Final Redundancy on the station’s security protocols.
“Betty gave me complete access to Rever’s administrative files; everything on the station itself, nothing on the tenants. The station was built with the purpose of wooing giant corporations with the top funded R&D departments in the galaxy. To do that, Rever needed to convince potential clients that it could keep their confidential and proprietary data secure. This includes the best firewalls and cutting-edge cybersecurity.”
Joel groaned. “We’re racing a giant roach through space, and somehow, I’m bored.”
“If all of Rever’s cyber defenses failed,” Cody continued, “they offered the Final Redundancy. They operate on a closed network. All their servers are housed on the station. None of the information ever leaves. If someone managed to crack all their defenses, they would destroy the servers before any data could be downloaded, rather than let someone steal it. The servers would eject into space and explode. But with the station falling to shit, I doubt the ejection protocol would work. Even if it did, the servers wouldn’t be able to travel far enough from the ship before detonating because they’re stuck in the queen’s stomach. Once they blow, the station blows. And that will tear the queen’s insides apart.”
“Finally, you get to the exciting part,” Joel said. “Let’s do that. I vote for that.”
“The problem is—”
“Of course, there’s a problem,” Joel said, throwing up his arms. “What? We need to fly up the queen’s anus first?”
“We need to get close,” Cody said. “Not up-the-anus close, but close. We need to be within a thousand meters of the station to access its network.”
Sam shook her head. “That will put us right on top of it.”
“It’ll be snug,” Cody agreed. “It’s either that, or we try to jet. We might be able to get away from her, but, like I said, it’s a crap shoot.”
Reggie stood of his own power. “Even if we could run from this thing, that just means it will be left for someone else to deal with. It could demolish more stations, lay eggs on a planet somewhere. We have a chance to kill it. We have a chance to prove we’re more than just exterminators.”
Cody smiled. “Then who wants to pilot Sonic while I hack the shit out of that station?”
“Not I,” Joel said.
Sam pushed Cody out of the captain’s chair. “I got this.”
Cody displayed a freezeframe picture of the queen, taken from the ship’s hull cameras. He pointed to an area in the middle of the bug. “From what I saw when I dissected that ShimVen, I’m guessing Rever will be around here. Keep us in this area. Once I access the network, if I lose the connection, I’ll need to start all over. I’ll use my workstation.” Cody ran out of the bridge.
Joel shrugged. “What do we do?”
Reggie shrugged back. “Moral support?”
Sam strapped into the chair. “How about you man the turrets in case her majesty decides to try and eat us again?”
Joel and Reggie looked at each other, maintaining their shrug.
“Why not?” Joel said. “Nothing better to do. May as well go throw rocks into the Grand Canyon and try to fill it up.” He and Reggie left the bridge.
“All right,” Sam said to herself as she gripped the controls. “I got this.” She opened a ship-wide commlink. “Cody, let me know when you’re ready to go.”
Cody sat at his station. He mirrored his wristcom on the larger monitor and activated its holo-keypad projection. It had been a while since he’d tried a hack of this scope, if ever. He’d gotten into Rever’s system, but not this deep. The firewalls on Rever were the toughest in the galaxy, developed by the best software engineers, paid for by the richest of the rich. He cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck. He felt the blood flow, the energy build in his fingertips.
“Ready when you are,” he told her.
The gun turrets were the only component of the ship that had yet to be used. Reggie had completely forgotten about them until Sam mentioned it. He’d always thought they would be useless. He even initially suggested that they remove and sell them. What good were gun turrets when spraying for insects in the bowels of a space station? He was glad that Cody and Joel had out-voted him.
There was one turret on top of the ship, and one on the bottom, both accessible by ladder. Reggie climbed up through the narrow tunnel to the bubble-like compartment on top of Sonic. It was surprisingly spacious, offering enough legroom that his knees weren’t pressed into his chest. He strapped into the chair and switched on his turret.
Joel climbed down to his turret and did the same. “I’ve done some tinkering with the targeting system since you were in here last.”
Reggie didn’t remember what the targeting system was like to begin with. “How so?”
“Press that green button on the panel,” Joel said.
Reggie looked for a green button after he scanned for a panel. He felt he was just as likely to blast a hole in the hull as he was to hit an enemy. He vowed to train on these things if they survived this.
He found the button and pressed it. A headset that looked like a VR mask descended from a compartment in the ceiling of the turret bubble. He put it on.
A wave of nausea hit him as his gut flip-flopped, and his head swam. He was suddenly in space, surrounded by a vast sea of nothing. His mind struggled to reconcile with his body. Even though he was floating outside, Joel sounded like he was standing right next to him.
“I rigged a VR headset up to the targeting system.” Joel sounded like a kid on Christmas giving the post-morning rundown of all the gifts he’d gotten. “They’re jacked into cameras mounted directly on the turrets.” He paused, clearly waiting for a response. When it didn’t come, he said, “Dude, why are you not more excited about this? I just turned our ship’s defenses into a first-person shooter.”
Reggie looked down and saw the hull and the turret mounted to it. His stomach settled as his mind registered what was happening. “No, this is amazing. I’m just trying not to puke.”
“Yeah, it takes some getting used to,” Joel said. “I puked all over myself when I was testing it.”
“Well, you’d be
tter get used to it fast,” Sam cut in. “We’re about to do this thing.”
She took a deep breath and allowed time to slow as she studied the controls. It had been a while since she’d piloted a ship, but that didn’t mean she’d forgotten how. She may be a little rusty, though. She hoped she could take her own advice and get used to it fast.
She pulled on the controls and steered the ship to port, dipping down and hitting a hard burn. The queen may have been able to swallow them like a crumb stuck in a fat man’s beard, but they were far more agile. The monstrous queen had no way of maneuvering so that she could snap her jaws down on the ship. She could try, though; getting broadsided by one of her legs would be more than enough to wipe Sonic from existence.
Sam weaved around the legs; they were large and moved slowly enough that she had no problems navigating where she needed to be. “Easier than I thought,” she muttered to herself, forgetting that she had opened a ship-wide channel.
Joel’s sigh sounded like the ship had sprung an oxygen leak. “Never say things like that before the job is done.”
Sam dismissed him. “You within range, Cody?”
“Yeah, this is perfect,” he answered. “Just hold us here a bit, and I should be able to get this done in no time, easy as pie.”
Another sigh from Joel. “It’s like you two have forgotten everything that’s happened in the last few weeks.”
“You superstitious, Joel?” Sam asked. “’Speak the Devil’s name and he shall appear’ sort of thing?”
“No, I’ve just seen enough horror movies.”
Cody typed furiously on his holo-keyboard. Bypassing Rever’s cyber defenses was like trying to trim a garden of seaweed on the bottom of the ocean. The objects of his attack seemed to simply glide just out of his reach. Instead of cutting through them in one swoop, he needed to individually pluck them from the ground. He could do it, but it would take much longer than he’d hoped.
Sam and the queen played the galaxy’s most boring game of tag. Every time the bulky behemoth moved, it telegraphed when and where it would move to. Sam effortlessly adjusted, always keeping underneath the queen, hidden in her sizeable blind spot.
“I thought this would be much harder,” Sam admitted.
“Oh my god!” Joel shouted.
Barely was he able to grunt his frustration before his fears of tempting fate were validated. Several dozen projectiles the size of sedans suddenly emerged from the underside of the queen. They ejected with an initial burst of force, and then floated like space garbage.
“You guys seeing this?” Sam asked.
“Yeah,” Reggie answered. “If she’s trying to hit us, she’s got terrible aim.”
The projectiles began to move like something was clawing at their insides. Suddenly, winged ShimVens burst out of them, covered in green slime and squirming like homicidal newborns. Their wings sputtered, reminding Sam of watching videos of newborn giraffes learning to walk. Unlike giraffes, the ShimVens had their legs under them in seconds, their tails guiding and propelling them forward as they charged at Sonic. The question of how they used dark energy to move through space was a fascinating one, and not something they had time for right then.
Joel’s turret whirred to life, as he spun to face the oncoming swarm as if he were standing on the hull staring them down. “Just so everyone’s clear, I completely blame Sam for this.” A surge of adrenaline hit him, making his stomach tighten and his face flush. Then he squeezed the trigger, and a barrage of laser fire unleashed as if from his own hands. “Although, this is pretty goddamn sweet.”
Reggie opened fire from his turret on the top of the ship. “Yeah, it is. But I would prefer to be done with it as quickly as possible just the same. How much longer, Cody?”
Cody barely registered their voices, he was so focused on his monitor. Lines of code streamed by. To any not versed in the language, it would have seemed like a mess of letters and numbers, complete nonsense. But Cody saw the entire Rever station in it, and he had begun to set fire to it. “Another minute. I’ve zeroed in on the most vulnerable data. Once I begin the download, the Final Redundancy should activate.”
The swarm continued to grow, dozens more eggs dropping from the queen. The bugs burst into quick flashes of light and guts as Joel and Reggie gunned them down, but they would soon overpower Sonic’s defenses by sheer number.
A handful made it through the barrage and rammed the ship. The thuds echoed through the bridge.
“We’ve got contact,” Sam said. “They’re going to eat through the hull.”
“I’m almost there,” Cody said. “Just a few more seconds.”
Another handful of thuds rang through the bridge as more bugs latched onto the ship like ticks on a deer.
“We don’t have a few more seconds,” Sam said. “I’m pulling us out.”
“No!” Cody yelled. “If we break the connection now, I’ll need to start all over. We may not get another chance.”
“We definitely won’t if we’re dead,” she shot back, gripping the controls and readying the rear thrusters. She visualized the roll maneuver she’d need to pull to knock the bugs off. If that didn’t work, she’d put the ship in a hard burn and see how long those bastards could hold on.
“Trust me,” Cody said.
Sam stopped.
Trust was not something that came easy to Sam, either earning it or affording it to others. She’d never had a need for it. Saw it as a weakness, to be honest. But these guys had trusted her from the moment she stepped aboard.
She leaned back in the chair, releasing the controls. “All right,” she said.
And Sam did nothing. The hardest thing she’d ever had to do. She did nothing, as Reggie and Joel blasted bugs out of the sky, and Cody hacked Rever. Her life was completely in their hands, and there was nothing she could do about it.
She was all right with that.
Cody’s monitor flashed red, as he burned through the last firewall. A countdown activated, signaling the beginning of the download. The beginning of the Final Redundancy.
He shot up from his chair, arms extending in victory. “Hell yeah! I hacked the fuck out of that shit! We’re good to go, Sam. Get us—” His voice died in his throat. “Oh hell.”
The sudden shift in his tone was more jarring than the thud of bugs against the hull.
“What?” Sam said.
“If we pull away, we’ll break the connection,” Cody said. “If we break the connection, the download will stop. Then there won’t be a need for the Final Redundancy. Rever won’t blow.”
Joel yelled over the constant fire of his turret. “So we need to stay put? What’s the blast radius?”
“We’ll be incinerated,” Cody said. “Unless…” His voice drifted away with his mind, down a stream that navigated countless potential outcomes in seconds before coming to one very simple one. He ran from his workstation, toward the airlock.
Cody’s heavy breathing and rapid footsteps came over the open channel, telling Sam that he was about to do something very stupid.
“Unless what, Cody? Unless what? What are you doing?”
“The only thing I can,” he answered. “Rever is going to blow in thirty seconds. Kick the ship into a hard burn in twenty, or you’ll never make it far enough to escape the blast.”
“What are you going to do?” Sam demanded as she gripped the controls with sweaty palms.
“Trust me,” Cody said, ignoring her question.
It felt unfair now, like her faith had been weaponized. Again, she sat and waited and did nothing while someone else did it all. She gripped the controls tighter if only to keep her in her seat.
Cody’s breathless voice came over the open channel again. “I’m at the airlock. Ready the engines.”
“Tell me what you’re about to do first,” Sam said.
“There’s no time!”
An alert sounded on the main panel of the bridge, telling Sam that the inner door of the airlock had been opened, something
entered the airlock, and then the door had closed behind it.
“Start the hard burn,” Cody said. “Get out of here.”
Another alert. The outer door of the airlock had opened. Whatever was inside was now out in the vacuum, close enough to Rever to maintain the connection.
“Five seconds until it’s too late!” Cody yelled. “Go!”
A lifetime passed from one to five. Sam debated with herself until she grew old and died, but in the end, she made the only call she could. She put the ship in a hard burn and sped away from Rever.
Time sped up, a blink passing from one to ten. Then Rever exploded.
Reggie and Joel had the perfect view. The queen’s midsection bulged and held for half a second before bursting wide open and spitting metric tons of guts and metal into the void. Green slime splattered all over the Sonic’s hull, and probably into the next galaxy.
Finally, it was over. The ShimVens were dead, the ones crowding the ship blasted away. The queen was dead. Cody was…
Sam ran from the bridge. Joel and Reggie met her in the corridor on the way to the airlock. None of them spoke. None of them dared breathe for fear that time would catch up with them and reveal the terrible truth—that they’d left their friend to die to save their own skins.
They stopped at the entrance to the cargo bay, all staring at the door like it could answer some unasked question; like it held some wisdom. Perhaps it did. It swung inward.
Cody stood in the doorway, confused by his friends’ pale, shocked faces.
He looked from one to the other. “You guys okay? You’re kind of blocking the way, and I have to pee.”
Sam dove forward first, and Reggie and Joel piled in after, all falling on top of Cody. They crashed to the floor, laughing and squealing with childish joy. Except for Cody. He squealed with discomfort under the weight of his friends.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked.
“We thought you were dead,” Reggie said.
“We thought you went out the airlock,” Sam said.
Cody wriggled his way out from under them. “Why would I do that?”
