Dark Vengeance (22 page)

R.J.’s voice piped in. “My god, we saw all of it, Adrian.”

Dragging Ian along through two more room sections and we were back in the storage area. Holding my breath and listening, I scanned the room then pulled Ian to one corner behind a stack of cases. He was completely out of it. Once again there was too much blood flowing from spots. A folding knife from one of my suit’s leg pockets cut open Ian’s coveralls so I could begin the task of putting more med patches in more places. When I had finally stopped or slowed his cuts, I began looking for my own. There were so many burning spots from the previous wounds it was difficult to identify the new ones.

My suit was so damp with blood it was sticking to my skin in places. I followed the blood flow to the new wound just above the knee on my good leg. With the pant leg rolled up I used two patches from Ian’s suit to span the cut.

The creature’s screeching was still nonstop in the distance. I dared to sit and lean back against the wall. No one had expected the fight to last this long, especially me. I looked down at Ian. He was done. There was still a weak pulse in his neck.

R.J.’s voice broke the deathly silence. “Adrian, you’d better come out. You can’t go on. We’ll stand by the entrance and make sure you have time to get through the door. Is Ian…?”

I shut down my blade and typed into my wrist communicator.

Heading aft engineering. Seal pressure doors after it follows me. Then come get Ian. Still breathing.

R.J. objected. “No, no, no. Come out and let us treat you. We’ll get others to go in and try. You’re in no shape to continue. You won’t make it to aft engineering.”

Creature?

“It’s hurt badly. It hasn’t recovered yet. All of the wounds to its main body are still there. It’s still hanging around forward in your section.”

I searched some of the nearby containers, found a section of canvas and covered Ian completely to hide him, then pushed myself up. I clipped my life saver to my belt and staggered out.

R.J. gave in out of fear. “You are only three rooms away from the C-section pressure wall. It’s clear all the way there. The creature hasn’t moved.”

But the world was beginning to get blurry. It made me wonder if there was poison in those tentacles. So many creatures stun their prey with poison, it seemed like a possibility. I made it to the last room where the familiar ash-red pressure barrier made up one wall. That told me I was just outside the C-section. I dragged myself to the exit door and looked out at the concourse. Just ten feet away, Ian’s weapon lay on the floor, the blade still burning. I rested for a moment just inside the door with my back against the wall.

“You can make it into C-section, Adrian. The creature went into a room on the west side,” said R.J.

Still moving like an old man, I stepped out into the concourse and headed for the open pressure door nearby. On the way I snatched Ian’s burning weapon up off the floor, hurried through the hatch and found myself in a strange section of silent, deserted ship where modified hollow walls had not yet been created.

This was the last section of the concourse, shadowy in low evening light, echoes haunting the emptiness of it. Overhead, the windows to space were filled with stars. Doors to the guest quarters had been left open. There were personal property items scattered by the doors, left there by frightened people. Farther ahead, I could see aft engineering, its doors unsealed and open.

There would be no taking refuge in the stateroom areas. Most had only one entrance and exit. I hobbled along, favoring the left leg more than the right. It was a pitiful looking dash through the open concourse toward engineering. It was a long enough stretch that I could not be assured of making it.

R.J.’s voice sounded to earnest. “You’re still clear, Adrian. You can make it. There’s plenty of cover in engineering. The thing is loitering around B-section stateroom area. It doesn’t seem to know you’ve entered the C-section.”

Several times I nearly cut my own leg, flailing Ian’s weapon around as I went. Fear and adrenaline helped me finally reach the doors to engineering. I stepped inside and fell against the door frame, gasping for breath. A sound from ship’s internal systems startled me so that I stopped breathing for a moment, raised my blade, and listened. As the breathing began to slow, I remembered Ian. I turned back to the open hatch, took a ready stance and cupped my free hand next to my mouth then screamed as loud as I could. No actual words were necessary, just a guttural, cracking, animal exclamation.

And it was enough. I was already hobbling along deeper into engineering as fast as I could go when R.J.’s voice cut in.

“It heard you, Adrian. It’s coming. It’s not as fast anymore but it’s pissed off. As soon as I see it cross into engineering, I’ll have all the doors sealed.”

There was a moment of mental celebration. The little sucking bastard was doing exactly what I wanted for a change. For the moment, I was in control. Deep breathing helped me regain my focus.

A new unexpected noise from behind startled me. I spun to find a 12-inch service door in a corridor wall open and banging from a vent’s airflow. Even in low light the entire place was a wonder. The entrance was a very long hallway of eight foot tall data link consoles illuminated by vertical rows of blue light. Overhead, a framework of black girders, grated walkways, and service lighting filled the area. The floor was transparent tiles showing cables and junctions below. Colored light raced in every direction.

I paused in the shadows of the corridor and considered the situation. There was no sense in trying to surprise the thing as it came through the engineering door. We had used up that play card. I needed to find a better place to face it. I limped along the corridor toward the main operations area. A downward ramp led to a large open chamber of circular arrays with control stations covered by colorful lighted displays actively scrolling data. The floor was black chrome, diamond shaped grating. Narrow gray rectangular stanchions circled the room, slanted away from the center control station. The ceiling was low with alternating dark and illuminated rows of horizontal columns. There were a dozen corridors leading away at various intervals. I did not see a good place for a standoff.

“It’s still coming, Adrian. It’s just outside aft engineering. It’s still behaving erratically. The engineers say the best place to hide is through the last access way on your left. It leads to the service tunnels and gangways. It’s a big area with cover back there.”

I shuffled along in the direction R.J. had suggested and noticed drops of blood from my right leg being left behind. Perhaps that could be used to my advantage. The passageway R.J. had suggested led to a single grated catwalk. It went up three steps and became fully enclosed by steel grated walls intended to prevent anything from falling down into any of the reactor areas below. The layout bothered me. I could only go in two directions, forward or back. It was likely this gangway would open up to other avenues eventually, so I took the risk.

“The thing has entered main engineering, Adrian. It’s begun stalking you.” R.J.’s voice sounded alarmed once again. “We’ve sealed you in.”

I tried to hurry but the body was not fully cooperating. This area was dimly lit except for strobing pulses of blue light from the nearest reactor core. The many colored indicator lights from every direction added to the surrealism. It was a difficult place for the eyes to focus on detail, a labyrinth of alternating colors. As I started forward once more, something on the floor below the catwalk a short distance ahead caught me off guard.

It was the body of the Engineer Yen, killed by a Gaglion. It was probably the worst thing I could have happened across under the circumstances. He was prone on his back still in the gray skin tight suit many engineers wore. His body was in perfect condition. All signs of the creature had evaporated away except for a dark shadow left on the floor. There was not an injury or fault anywhere on Yen’s body, except for his head. That was now a perfect, shiny, bone-white, empty skull, staring upward with hollow eyes and smiling teeth.

R.J.’s voice interrupted the horror. “It’s in the main engineering area. It passed by your gangway entrance and turned in at the next one so it’s south of you, Adrian. It’s out of our camera range but it will be coming at you from your right.”

I had to stop myself from continuing to stare down at the body. Ahead there was a place on the gangway where the right-hand wall remained solid black grating but the left side was open with only a handrail. Six feet below, the base of a reactor core tower continuously belched its blue light upward. I paused to see if a way off this gangway was near. In my dazed condition, I paused too long.

From out of nowhere there was suddenly a tentacle through the grated wall and wrapped high around my upper right leg. The creature stared at me through the grating with an angry smiley face. It had threaded its tentacle through an opening to get me. It could not pass through the wall but that did not seem to matter. It held my leg as though pleased by the capture alone.

I brought my blade over and down and cut free. It screeched in annoyance and began throwing itself against the grating.

New blood was flowing from the leg now. If I ran along the gangway the thing would find a way around and follow. So instead, I slipped over the handrail and tried to lower myself down the six-foot drop. It was a pathetic attempt. My blade nearly cut me in half as I fell in a heap onto the floor.

There was no time to check out the new wound even though it felt like a bad one. I had to keep my iron man hand clamped over the spot to slow the bleeding. To my right, the reactor tower kept slowly pulsing its blue light upward, standard rate for an idling reactor. I looked up for the creature but could not spot it. There was a thin, six-foot high translucent wall on my left, surrounding the reactor core and blocking my exit. It was a wall intended to show any radiation leaks in the tower. When I stood to walk, there was a new problem. I had to drag the injured leg along more than before. Something important had been cut. It became a balancing act, swinging my weapon along as I went. I followed along the translucent wall, pushing off from it leaving bloody hand prints along the way, desperate for a place to hide.

R.J.’s voice cut in. “It’s on the overhead gangway, Adrian. Take cover!”

A glance behind gave a glimpse of the creature floating along the gangway above. It appeared to have momentarily lost sight of me. I came to an opening in the translucent wall but there was no exit beyond it, only another section of winding corridor that ran along huge dark stanchions and girders. I staggered forward and pushed off one of them heading back the way I had come, now outside the translucent wall. After just a few feet, the world began to spin and I fell to the dark floor between two of the stanchions. I sat there on my knees, hunched over, one shoulder against the wall, my hand holding my weapon as it rested on the floor. I looked up in time to see the creature’s silhouette on the other side of the reactor shield wall, now down on my level, floating along still headed my way. It bumped against the wall every few feet as though it was struggling almost as badly as I was.

This time, even with the adrenaline pumping, I could not get up. The creature would pass by me on the other side of the translucent wall and probably come around the same corner I did, and that would be it. The thing would find me here, adequately wrecked and ready for slaughter. I tried to straighten up with my iron man hand still clamped on the leg wound. The world was trying to start a slow spin again and it was taking everything I had to stop it. I knew if I passed out now, I would probably wake up inside a Gaglion.

The outline of the monster kept drifting slowly my way, four or five feet off the floor. It looked like a shadow puppet moving along the opaque glass. As it neared, my vision began to blur again. I fought to shake it off. Blood loss was taking its toll. As the thing came directly across from me, I looked up at its silhouette and remembered a line from an old movie about someone reasoning that an emotional outburst was sometimes the logical action to take. As unconsciousness neared, I took the only desperate gamble I had left. With my last ounce of strength, I raised my blade and heaved it like a spear, then collapsed on the cold, grated floor.

Had my wild throw been successful there should have been a new round of screeching but there were only the normal sounds of ship’s functions. That meant in a few seconds the monster would be on me. I strained to turn my head to look upward but from my viewpoint on the floor nothing made sense. My blade was still embedded in the wall all the way up to the handle, suspended six feet off the floor, just hanging there. I fought to focus to be certain of what I was seeing, but the thought processes were not registering properly. As I stared, the handle of my weapon ever so slowly slid down the wall almost to the floor. There was a loud blast of something on my communicator, so loud the unit went into cut off and did not turn back on.

Life was draining out of me but I had to know. There was enough left to crawl a few inches at a time. I dragged along to the end of the shield wall and pulled myself around just enough to see. There was my orange blade still burning on the other side of the wall. The point had come through the creature and emerged between its tiny blue eyes leaving a new look of dead wonder there.

I stared, nearly face to face with the thing. There was no question of its death, and as the light faded away I felt just as certain of my own.