Far Space (21 page)

Yates looked out the main windows at the alien ship slowly pulling away from Cheyenne. “I need that link now, Reeves.”

Alien Spacecraft

Saturn Space

“I’m telling you,” Jennifer growled at the techs, “all I did was push this button.” She pushed the button which had turned on the holograms and apparently activated the rest of the ship.

“Auto-pilot kick in?” a new voice asked.

Jennifer turned. “Oh, thank God, Mr. Pearl.”

Pearl pulled himself over to the station where Jennifer was still sitting and gazed around at the holos. His red pressure suit contrasted starkly with the ship’s interior colors.

“Any idea what all this is?” Jennifer asked, gesturing at the holo.

“No idea,” Steve Pearl said, “But, the again, I just got here.”

“What if this thing decided to head home,” Jennifer asked. “Can we survive going through a wormhole?” Her mind raced back to the body Ian had retrieved earlier. “What do we do on the other side?”

“Don’t know,” Pearl grunted, peeling back a piece of the wall to reveal a bundle of glowing wires.”

“That’s how you open it!” One of the techs shouted.

“Do I have to show you everything, Bill?” Pearl said, looking askew at the man before he dove in. “We can’t go too far anyway.”

“Why’s that,” Jennifer asked from her perch. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve only got about seven hours of recycling in my rebreather,” Pearl said as he yanked out a handful of cables closely resembling terrestrial fiber optics. He waved the bundle at two other sections of the chamber. “You boys better get busy.”

“What are we going to do?” Bill asked.

Pearl ripped out another bundle of wires. “The game, children, is called ‘stop the alien ship from taking us somewhere we really don’t want to go.’ Got it?”

“Since you put it that way,” Bill muttered. He peeled another piece of wall paneling away and pulled out his own handful of wires. He whimpered as he worked.

Pearl moved to another station and peeled back an access panel. Without looking up from his work, he asked, “What’s with all the whining?”

“I just know if we get this thing to stop,” the tech said, “we’re gonna be the ones putting all this stuff back together.”

“Won’t matter if we don’t stop it,” Pearl said.

Jennifer noted the whimpering stopped.

Ian found Major Taylor in one of the aft corridors beside something which looked like a huge condom. “What…?”

Taylor pulled back a flap. “Just get in Langdon.”

Ian did not argue. He squeezed into the sack and let Taylor seal him in. Murky water rushed in. Ian started to panic until the transparent wall in front of him pulled back revealing a hole in the floor.

“Get down there, Spacer,” Taylor ordered. “I’m right behind you. Please DO NOT shoot my Marines. You DO have permission to shoot the squids, though. They apparently decided this was their day to die.”

Ian stepped forward and used his thrusters to push him downward. He flailed about in the water, a completely foreign atmosphere after being in a zero-gee vacuum all day. Ian caught sight of one of the Marines stalking past his corridor toward the front of the ship and took the hint. He got his legs under him and used his mag boots.

Taylor whooshed down from the improvised airlock, almost knocking Ian over. “We’re heading for the bow, Spacer,” Taylor shouted. The major pulled his weapon to his shoulder and heaved his way toward the corridor where Ian had seen the other Marine.

Ian brought his M-25S up and followed the Major. He swung his rifle back and forth, looking for a target.

This was not happening, Ian thought.

Something big and fast whipped by Ian’s legs knocking him off balance.

“Crud!” Taylor yelled over the net.

Ian felt the reverberations as multiple flechette rounds sailed past his torso. The thing was circling back, flailing its tentacles and arms wide. Ian’s vision was filled with sweeping arms centered on a smooth body featuring a wicked-sharp beak at the center of the mass of the alien.

The thing’s shrieking carried through the armored combat suit quite well.

On instinct, Ian pulled himself back using jagged formations jutting up from the floor until he hit the curving wall. He planted an armored boot into the aliens midsection. It was busy lashing at his suit with twenty centimeter retractable spines which had appeared from several of its arms.

The kick did almost no good. But, the third shot from Taylors M-25S did.

As the creature’s arms went slack around Ian, he shrugged off the alien’s deadly embrace and pulled himself away.

Taylor was still pointing his rifle at the alien.

Ian pushed aside the alien to retrieve his weapon.

“One more to go,” Taylor said. He turned and pushed off down the corridor again.

Ian gave the creature one last look and followed the Marine.

USS Cheyenne

Saturn Space

“Sir,” Reeves said tentatively.

Yates looked over at the young officer. “Get hold of anyone?”

“Ionization of the hull is probably disrupting the signal,” Captain Rucker’s voice interjected. “Sure as heck bumped us off nice and easy.”

Yates turned to find Rucker taking up a good portion of the space between the two stations behind his command chair. He was still in his armor and held his helmet at one side and an M-25S on the other.

“No time to change?” Yates asked.

“We’ve got to stop that thing,” Rucker said, pointed at the main screens.

“Yes, I realize that,” Yates said, then focused on his command board. “Any idea where they’re heading?”

Marsha spoke up, “If I may, Colonel. The alien ship has injected itself into an orbit which will take it well within the upper atmosphere of Saturn.”

“It’s a suicide run,” Rucker grunted. “Maybe it’s a deadman switch.”

Yates looked back at the SOF troop.

“You know,” Rucker explained and met Yate’s gaze. “If they can’t have it, no one will.”

“Maybe they’re heading for a wormhole entry point,” Mitchell said.

“Both undesirable options,” Yates mused. “Get us as close as you can, Captain Maytree. We need to get our people off before we start shooting.”

Alien Spacecraft

Saturn Space

Ian and Taylor caught up with Gunnery Sergeant Murst and Lance Corporal Bealeman in a forward compartment. Ian was too busy keeping his eyes out for alien squids to check his map, but he guessed from the curve of the walls and the two corridors ending here that they were at the extreme lower bow of the ship.

The compartment was filled with murky water and the crisscrossing beams from four armored suits and the lights on their rifles added to the confused scene. Everywhere Ian turned, there was a new pile of coral-looking equipment, sometimes reaching all the way to the ceiling.

Ian swallowed hard. They were hunting an intelligent, deadly creature in its own lair.

“Landgon, Bealeman, fall back to the exits,” Taylor said over the net. “Make sure the thing doesn’t get out.”

“Sir,” Ian acknowledged. He backed up and positioned himself at the corridor entrance.

“Try and take it alive, Gunny.”

It took a moment to comprehend Taylor was changing the rules of engagement.

“I’ll do my best, sir,” Murst called back over the net.

Ian peered into the gloom of the forward compartment. Taylor’s and Murst’s lights flashed out from behind lumps of the coral stuff.

“Here, squidy, squidy,” Murst whispered.

“Not the time, Gunny,” Taylor whispered quietly back.

Jennifer kept jabbing at buttons. “Steve, this is not working!”

Pearl ripped out yet another bunch of wiring. “I know…”

The holos on the bridge went dead.

Pearl looked at the bundle of trashed fiber in his hand.

“Guess that was it.”

The ship shuddered and Jennifer felt the acceleration stop.

“Okay, I suggest we get out of here before anything else turns on,” Pearl said.

“Right,” Jennifer breathed. She launched herself down the corridor after Ian.

“The hatch is the other way,” Bill called after her.

Jennifer ignored the technician. Instead, she focused on maneuvering along the rough-walled corridors, praying she wouldn’t rip her suit and Ian was not getting eaten by aliens.

“It’s gone to ground,” Murst muttered.

Ian pulled up the feed from the Gunnery Sergeant’s helmet camera. Murst was making his way slowly around a bulky protrusion. He held his rifle at combat ready position in front of him, sweeping back and forth, up and down in tight arcs, trying to aim at everything at once.

“Lots of places to hide,” Bealeman whispered. There was no need for silence inside the combat armor, but it was harder to untrain a soldier in stealth.

Ian glanced back at the Murst’s feed just in time to see something drop down from the ceiling.

“Gunny!” Ian called out as he tried to rush forward through the water.

Murst looked up just in time to catch a slew of rapid fire slugs in his breast plate.

In Ian’s peripheral vision, he could tell Murst was spinning out of control, just before the feed cut out.

“Crud, Gunny,” Ian muttered and dove into the cluttered room.

Suddenly Ian found he had a clear shot into the creature’s new hiding place. Without hesitating, he brought his rifle up and pulled the trigger.

“There it is!” Bealeman was shouting at the same time.

“Got it,” Taylor said.

The water around the squid boiled as it filled with rounds of fire from three separate rifles.

The long weapon in the aliens grip spit a few more wild shots then went silent.

“Cease fire!” Taylor ordered.

The creature, what was left of it, drifted away from the ceiling.

Ian and Bealeman carefully approached the alien. Ian let the Marine do the prodding and alien weapons retrieval then turned to where Murst had come to rest against one of the coral piles.

Ian did not need to be a doctor to know Murst was dead.

Taylor knelt and double-checked Murst’s vitals. “Make sure there are no more of those hibernation cylinders and meet me at MAMA.

Ian and Bealeman looked at each other then moved off to search the corridors again.

The quick search turned up only the original seven cylinders. Bealeman double-checked the darkened cylinders to ensure they held no surprises. Finished, Ian made his way carefully around one of the dead squids to look at the power core set into the raised section of the floor. It was still glowing softly even though he had noticed the forward acceleration had stopped. Whatever magic Jennifer had been able to pull off had worked.

It took a little work, but the three men in combat armor were able to get Murst back upstairs.

It wasn’t until Ian had exited MAMA that he heard the frantic calls going back and forth over the Ops net.

Ian turned to push off down the corridor toward the hatch and ran into Jennifer. She looked around Ian at the body further down the corridor.

“Oh God,” Jennifer said, putting a hand up to her face.

“It’s Gunny,” Ian said. “What’s going on?”

Jennifer looked at Ian and managed to focus. “We stopped the engines somehow, but we’re headed into Saturn. The Cheyenne is closing in to pick us up.”