There is no time to celebrate.
“Gregorian needs to stop making that noise immediately,” Belinda says.
“Gregorian, did you hear that?”
“I have almost there,” he says. More thuds, sharper, echoing up the shaft.
On screen, Thumper runs for the prep chamber doors. Thirty feet down the hallway and closing.
Tarziesch lies across her stomach, pinning her. He pats the floor and fights the weight of his suit to right himself. He paws at the wall for a handhold, but there isn’t one. Finally, he stands.
Lana’s head throbs and when she tries to sit up white spots pop in front of her.
Tarziesch sways like he might tip over.
Dandy gets up, too, and reaches for the door handle. Justin has somehow fallen toward the pod’s hallway. He doesn’t try to stop Dandy, attention focused instead on Tarziesch’s leg.
Lana sees it, too. Wants to scream. No point.
Tarziesch looks down, goes pale. Like some insectoid starburst, the hydra clings to his right shin, long dark limbs circling his thigh and ankle. The limbs squeeze and dimple his spacesuit.
He hollers in Venusian and kicks his leg like he might fling it off.
Dandy takes this opportunity to open the door. In a flash, he slips outside. Gone.
The hydra stiffens, needle-sharp tips pushing down.
Justin shouts: “Take off the suit!”
No time.
The legs puncture the suit and all at once the hydra slithers inside.
Tarziesch goes quiet.
Lana claws at the ground, army crawling away. Too heavy to stand.
Tarziesch lurches. “Ach!” he says, tongue lolling. “Oooohm.”
He throws his head back and tentacles spray from between his lips, a blast of gore and slime. They lick at the ceiling. The skin over his neck pulses. Tears form in jagged red lines.
Justin, still near the hallway, lowers his shoulders, steps forward. Lana sees what he’s going to do, knows that it is the only way anyone will survive. Still, she tells him to stop.
He charges.
Justin connects with Tarziesch at waist height. Tarziesch’s head erupts in pinkish clots and a bundle of waving appendages. Justin heaves against this hideous mass, the hydra already wrapping him. He lifts with everything he has, barrels out of the room with a monster on his shoulder. They crash just outside the door.
Stetson does not move from the command console. Lana screams for him to get the door but he’s gone catatonic. Dino clutches at his empty sleeve, reliving the loss of his arm, perhaps.
From the hallway, sounds of ripping fabric and Justin’s high-pitched screams.
She shoves against the floor—hardest pushup she’s ever done—and throws her feet beneath her. Every muscle strains as she totters upright. She spins.
The handle is just a body-length away. Just two or three strides.
Corner of her eye: tentacles slither along the floor. Inches from the doorway.
She leaps.
Falls.
The floor slick with blood and mucus.
She throws her arms out—for the handle, for anything.
Her fingers grip it, cold metal. The weight of her fall pulls it down.
Before the door closes, she catches sight of them. What used to be Justin and Tarziesch. Their suits shredded, wet with blood and slime. Two hydras knotting together, leaping for her.
The door shuts them out.
She drops, rests her forehead on the cold linoleum, not quite sure if she is alive or dead.
Jack watches the horror playing out on the monitor. Dandy running out, his nephew and Tarziesch disintegrated. Converted. His nephew is gone. Son of his brother and brother’s wife. If Jack makes it out of here, he will tell them directly. He’ll look into his brother’s face and say, “I am responsible.” If he hadn’t put him down earlier—
What had he said? I seem to recall finding you unconscious…
He gave a young man something to prove, a cause for taking unnecessary risks.
Gregorian: “I am through.” And the banging sounds from the emergency hatch are gone.
It is all too late. Thumper is just feet from the chamber door. Bel amps up her lasers, no longer a decoy, slicing Thumper with mathematical precision. As quick as Thumper loses limbs, they reabsorb, so it seems to convulse down the corridor.
Bel displays a view of the prep chamber. A rectangular shadow hangs from the ceiling, swings slightly. The busted hatch. Gregorian slinks out of the opening, lands hard, body folding into his knees, then upright, dashing for the airlock. And in his haste he does not see the bench in the center of the room. He trips and tumbles headfirst into the storage lockers, lies prone facedown.
Jack slams his fist on the controls.
Hunter clamps her hands to either side of her head.
Thumper reaches the room. The thin door explodes into splinters.
Gregorian scrambles upright, careens toward the airlock.
Thumper comes apart, solid form diffusing into a gossamer net that coats the air and every surface it contacts, flowing through the room looking almost harmless, almost beautiful.
Gregorian reaches Bel’s airlock door. He spins to see his approaching end, and loses his footing and falls backward into the chamber. The hydra’s sinew coats the camera lens in darkness.
Jack and Hunter hold on, breathless.
A moment later, Gregorian’s transmission: “This is Kilo Gregorian onboard the Homunculus, awaiting orders of Captain Jack Kind.”
Jack and Hunter silently throw their fists in the air.
Hunter whispers, “Jesus fuck, Greggy. Walk much?”
“Not sure I am understand.”
Jack says, “Nice work, Gregorian. You had me worried for a second.”
“Oh him of the little faiths. Can you make it to airlock?”
Onscreen, Thumper condenses, pulling from the camera. It rubs against the airlock door, seeking a weak spot. Something to pry.
Jack says, “I’ll have to get back to you.”
“Copy. I will be prepping systems for disengage. Await your command.”
Jack considers telling Gregorian that his friend Tarziesch is gone. That Dandy and Jack may not be joining them on the Homunculus, after all. He says, “See you soon.”
Chapter 38
“We lost Justin and Tarziesch. Dandy escaped.”
“I saw.” Jack whispers back. “Are you alright?”
Lana’s alive, but alright doesn’t really factor in. “What do we do?” she says.
He doesn’t want to say. She’ll think he’s playing the martyr.
He doesn’t have a choice. He has to get Dandy. His nephew is dead. Ani and Kip are still in danger. Hunter is out here with him, vulnerable. The only way forward is to save the one man who put them here, a man who won’t answer Jack’s calls, and now sits cross-legged in the cargo bay with a screwdriver, prying at the gems imbedded in shattered bits of an alien sphere. He still thinks the hydras can be controlled. It’s pure luck they haven’t spotted him already.
Jack tells Lana to standby. They’ll be out of this soon.
He explains to Hunter what is about to happen.
She screws up her face. “Are you kidding me?”
“Tell me something better.”
“I can’t. But you can’t—”
“I can and I will. I’m the captain here.”
She holds her hands up in defeat.
He studies the screen one last time, making certain that Thumper is still at the airlock door, no surprises in the corners ready to ambush him once he’s down there. Belinda assures him that what he sees is accurate. For now, Thumper is thoroughly occupied.
“You’re up to speed on this, right Bel?”
“I am.”