This is not going to work. She is certain of it. But Jack and Hunter and Gregorian have stepped outside, and Justin cranks the lever again, and the door seals shut.
They speedwalk down the corridor. A sprint would be too noisy. All Jack sees: the narrow tunnel of his ship’s upper hallway. Feeling more and more like a cave with no exit.
Something snorts grunting breaths directly behind him, possibly above. All around.
The hydra. It has found them. No warning from Bel.
He holds his panic in long enough to realize the breathing is his own. Hunter and Gregorian keep pace directly behind him. And far behind them, a series of broken down doors.
The corridor dips and the ceiling opens into the observation area, shielded now by a black carapace. He visualizes the starfield surrounding them, the universe holding them in its strange expansive web. How many stars and planets are younger than the creature hunting them now? What else is out there, beyond the veil of our limited reach?
He holds tight to his portable, resisting the urge to call Bel and ask if everything is still going well. Has it heard them, is it chasing yet, how screwed are they on a scale of one to ten? A gentle breeze trickles overhead. Bel circulating filtered air. It shocks him for some reason, this mundane detail, how he has felt that same rush of air a thousand times in this same corridor, and never once considered how precious that air really is, how much he enjoys breathing.
Bel opens the bridge doors.
Soft blue light bathes the room. They hurry down the steps to the navigation table. The sun hovers above its surface, a white ornament, flickering. Hunter unzips her tool pouch and slides on her knees to a panel at the table’s side. She pops the panel and plucks out a handful of wires. “Here we go,” she sighs.
“Mr. Jack,” Gregorian whispers. He raises his arms, lost.
Jack leads him to the emergency hatchway, twists the handle and lifts the lid.
The ladder rungs disappear into darkness.
“God dammit,” Hunter hisses. She kisses a couple of fingers.
“What?”
“Shocked me,” she says.
“Be careful.”
Gregorian backs into the duct. Jack tells him to be careful, and quiet. Gregorian flashes a thumbs up, then ducks below.
“How we doing, Bel?” Jack says.
“The creatures are occupied. Big Bear has gotten into food storage.”
“Is that a problem?”
“For now, no. But Big Bear is becoming very big.”
Stetson notices it first. He’s watching Jack and the others on the monitor when he swivels to report that everything’s alright and shoots to his feet and shouts, “Why the hell is that still here?”
He points at Lana. Don’t I belong here?
“I don’t think we want that floating around in microgravity.”
He’s not pointing at her, but at the helmet underneath her.
With everything else going on, she didn’t think about it. Nobody did, apparently.
“We can open the door,” Justin says. “Have Bel distract it.”
“I’ll do it,” says a voice from the interior hallway. The Dandy has removed most of his suit. He wears only the torso. “Tarzan, help me outta this.”
Tarziesch fidgets uncertainly. He looks from face to face.
“Do what I say!”
Tarziesch jumps and obeys, lifts up the heavy torso so Dandy slinks out of the bottom. When he’s free, he snaps his fingers at Lana. “Up.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m going out there. Might as well take that thing.”
Justin has been sitting next to Dino. Now he balls his fists and stands. “Like hell.”
“What’s the big deal? Those things are idiots. Jackie Boy is safe, isn’t he? Have your robot girlfriend distract the things and I’ll meet them at the airlock, yes?”
“Go sit down,” Lana says.
Dino groans. “Just kill him already.”
“I don’t think Jackie Boy would like that.”
Justin crosses the room.
Dandy backs up to the manual override. Justin reaches out and grabs his shoulder. Tarziesch looks on, his loyalty flicking from one figure to the next. Lana frozen helplessly on the helmet just a few feet from them.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Justin says.
“Watch me.” Dandy throws the first punch.
“The bottom of these shaft are stuck,” Gregorian reports. “It will not opening. I think it is seize, like old screws.”
“Kick it to shit if you have to,” Jack says.
It has been less than a minute. Still feels like they’re taking too long.
He pulls up surveillance on three separate holo-screens to show each of the hydras. The nearest camera to food storage is in the dining area. From the camera’s angle, he sees what appears to be an enormous slug hanging out of the open storeroom doors. It seems to pulsate every few seconds. With each shudder it looks… bigger. There’s over five tons of food in there.
There’s something else. Something much, much worse. On the other two screens, Bel makes her lasers dance, but Thumper and Squiddy sit perfectly still.
Bel seems to know what he’s looking at. “We don’t have much time.”
“Hunter, how long?”
“Two minutes.”
“We may not have that.”
“Perfect. Any bad news?”
In the shaft, a rhythmic beat as Gregorian kicks at the bottom hatch.
Belinda says, “Jack, there seems to be a disturbance in the panic pod.”
“What do you mean, a disturbance?”
It was a sucker punch that caught Justin in the chin. His head snaps to the side and when he rights himself, he throws his body at Dandy. They hit the wall. Lana screams for them to stop before they’re all killed. Stetson watches from the other side of the chamber, ashen, and Dino claws at the seatback and grimaces. Justin and Dandy trade headlocks, pound each other in the ribs and crotches. Dandy lashes out with long nails, tears flesh from Justin’s cheeks. Tarziesch injects himself between them, catching stray blows. They roll against the door. Tarziesch wipes blood from his nose. He looks up, furious, and charges, gets an arm around Dandy’s neck and cranks him away from Justin. Dandy leans back and kicks his legs in the air, throwing Tarziesch off-balance. Dandy manages to strike the sidewall. They lose their balance, fall over Lana.
She braces herself, knocked from her perch.
Her skull raps hard on the tile and everything stutters.
When she glances toward the door again, she sees the helmet rolling free.
Thumper is on the move. Two feelers prod the air atop what could tentatively be thought of as its head. It walks on six spindly legs. Sometimes more. It is in no rush, just feeling the air, looking, listening, paying no attention to the light circling and bobbing around it.
Jack: “Gregorian, you need to hurry.”
Gregorian: “Almost there. Almost now.”
He makes a hell of a lot of noise. It’s a matter of time before Thumper comes close enough to hear. And Jack can’t get anyone from the pod on his portable. He has a clear view of the doors but they are just doors. No sign of what’s going on inside.
“I’m going back,” he says, leaping out of his chair.
Hunter: “You’re not leaving. Thirty seconds.”
“It won’t matter if they’re dead.”
“Well they’ll be dead if we don’t get to the ship.”
He pauses, curses and kicks the nearest object, his broken mug from earlier. It shoots across the floor and cracks on the far wall.
“There!” Hunter says. She pulls up a keyboard. Her fingers flash over the letters. The sun rotates, and the arrow representing Belinda points at its heart. “Coordinates are set, motherfucker.”