Homunculus: Agr3ed. Hydra is almost through. Hurry.
With that, she exits the pod for the final time, through the doors and across the emptiness toward the Homunculus’s very tip. The hydra burrows into the airlock, an infected yellow growth. She hangs at a generous distance, too far for her comms to work, apparently. They must have been slightly damaged when the sun hit her facemask. Yet the only way this will work is if she has contact with the others. Cautiously, she glides up and over the top of the ship, hoping the hydra won’t spot her. Finally, she gets a response.
“Read you loud and clear,” Jack says. “Where are you?”
She never thought she’d be so desperate to hear a human voice. She could cry. “I’m up near your back. Are you prepped?”
“We are. Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“No. You just let me know when that bastard’s down the chimney.”
“Down the chimney? Not sure I follow.”
“Like the Big Bad Wolf. Three Little Pigs?”
“Never read it.”
“I don’t know about you sometimes, Jack. It ends with a big wolf stew.”
“I’ll get the water going.”
The moment comes without warning, as these things tend to do. One second Jack is sitting there jabbering like an idiot, watching the pressure readout fluctuate as before, and the next, something pops and the hydra floods the airlock, a rush of tentacles, and the pressure shoots up to ten atmospheres, then twenty and climbing.
“It’s in the chimney!” he screams. “Repeat! Lana, go now! Now!”
“Going.”
He double checks the connections in his suit. Gloves, boots, torso, neck. He tugs at the belt holding him to his chair. He feels a little silly until he spots Hunter and Gregorian doing the same. “Gregorian, will we be able to get the inner airlock open with the outer door gone?”
“Yes.”
“But the security protocol—”
Gregorian shakes his head. “No such thing.”
“No such thing? But you said—”
“I lie earlier. Because Lana was right.”
Hunter laughs.
“You little shit.”
“Sorry, Captain Kind.”
“Fuck it. We’re still alive. Are we one hundred percent sure these seats are secure?”
Gregorian gives a thumps up.
Hunter points one gloved finger at the holo screen. “Tell your girlfriend she needs to hurry the hell up.” The screen has gone black, the hydra pressed against the camera lens. Or maybe the lens has snapped. The only sign that the chamber is still intact is the wildly fluctuating pressure.
“Lana, do you read me?”
“I re—” A flat line of static.
“Lana? Come in.”
“Get— … pos—”
“Goddamn it!” He unclamps his belt.
Hunter screams over comms: “Where are you going! Jack!”
“Airlock!” He skitters out of the room and starts down the ladder to the main chamber.
“Are you crazy! Get back here!”
The ladder vibrates as if a jackhammer rattles its base. “We need eyes on the hydra. If we can’t reach Lana, we won’t know when to pop the seal!”
Hunter curses, but concedes. “Find something to hang onto.”
“I plan on it.”
He enters the chamber. An ongoing earthquake, handles of the storage compartments rattling. Inside the airlock, the hydra licks at the porthole. He’s still uncertain how he’s supposed to know when the time is right. He really did not think this through.
Chapter 61
There are less than three minutes before Belinda’s jump.
Lana arcs out and away from the Homunculus to keep the hydra from sensing her. She repositions straight out from the airlock, several thousand feet. The hydra is a mess of fibers. Even this far back, she can distinguish the confused nature of its shape, all those limbs like ropey muscle. She throttles forward, very aware that she will need to reverse as soon as it spots her. It’ll be a while. But the thing has proven intelligent with the way it leapt from the pod. She half wonders if it doesn’t know what they’re up to. If this is some incomprehensible ploy to get them right where it wants them. One way or another, they will find out.
She closes the distance foot by foot, hailing Jack every few seconds. At last, she gets a response.
“I thought I lost you! Christ!”
“I had to swing out, but I’m closing in.”
She can only guess at her distance. Somewhere around a thousand feet by now, the height of a hundred story tower. Like she is falling down, down, soon to splat along the pavement.
Nine hundred fifty.
The hydra has taken a strange pinkish hue. Like it’s excited. Eager for its coming meal. Maybe, for once, it can sense the ticking clock. It roughly resembles a dome now, the outer limbs suctioned to the hull. The center of the dome buried in the airlock.
Six hundred fifty feet and closing.
Any time now.
Five hundred feet.
Four fifty.
It shows no sign.
Three hundred feet.
Time running out, she cranks the throttle.
Two hundred.
One hundred.
The edges of the dome slide toward the center. A suction cup inverting, the edges flaring suddenly up and in.
It launches at her. All at once. A tendril pounces from its center.
It was a trick. It waited for her to be within reach.
She dashes right.
The bulbous end shoots by, missing her by an arm’s length. The limb snaps taut and bends toward her. She blasts out of reach and circles up and away, suddenly dizzy again. This time, she’s sure to face the hydra while backing up. And just like before, it follows, thinning out, stretching.
“It took the bait! Pop that door in thirty seconds!”
Chapter 62
“One minute until the jump!” Hunter calls. “Holy shit. I’ve got eyes on the hydra!”
Jack lingers helpless in the main chamber. There is nothing but the ladder to hold onto, but he doesn’t trust it. Coming down here was foolish. Now it’s all about timing.
He starts up the ladder, but he stops, seeing something from the corner of his eye.
A shape inside the airlock.
A figure pushed against the glass.
A form made of that alien tendon material, but not alien in shape.
A human form.
His heart hammers in his chest.
There, on the other side of the circular porthole of the inner airlock door, stands Justin Kind. Jack’s nephew. Flayed raw but staring, accusatory. Blaming him. Jack knows that he should climb the ladder back to the bridge. He sees his hands on the rungs, holding tight. He sees the open hatch above. And when he looks back to the door, like figures coalescing out of flame, others have joined his nephew. They crowd behind him, gliding close. He recognizes the young boy who opened the sphere. And Tarziesch. And another of Dandy’s men. And coming up through the others, one of his oldest friends. Stetson. Empty eyes blinking in confusion. Jack wants to go to them. To take them out of that airlock and get them to the grav tanks where they can rest until they make it out of this. They pound against the window.
“Jack!” Hunter howls.
He hears her in the distance, tinny, crackling. Not quite real.
They need him to help. He should help them.
“If it breaks through the inner door we cannot repressurize!”
Dead.
They are all dead.
He tears his vision away. They are lies. Imprints. Tricks.
He pulls up the ladder to the second level, feeling the glare of the ghosts.
He rushes to his seat, stunned when he looks up. Beyond the observation window, a great stalk extends from the ship into the darkness, a nightmare umbilicus. He dives into his seat and claps the buckle together, amazed his shaking hands can accomplish such a feat. “Now!”