“It got him!” Tedros cried out, pushing past her. Max clipped her with his shoulder as he rushed threw the doors none of them helped her pry open. Aphrodite wheezed for air, stumbling into the hall.
“Go!” Danny yelled shortly before the crack of his gun went off. Aphrodite yelped as the bullet bounced around in the enclosed space. It buried itself in the wall near her head.
“They’re wearing armor!” she snarled at him, “Shooting in here isn’t going to help, come on!” She reached out for Danny, keeping the door propped open with her body.
Danny kicked the being in the stomach and launched them back into the red abyss. He barely made it to the door, ripped inside by Aphrodite before the being was back. She leapt out from the frame, watching it slam shut in the face of their attacker. In the moments between getting Danny into the other hall, and the being charging for the door…she could have sworn, they looked at her…with wicked glee.
You’re reading into it.She took her arm back and checked the map. Her drone already moved on past them, into the belly of their current prison. “So, initial scans are showing there are holes in the hull at the control deck, down in a science lab, and back in the crew quarters. Whoever that was, whatever that was, was smart; it blocked off the hall completely to the airlock. The other hallleading back out to the airlock is crunched, we’re gonna have to ship crawl back to the line.”
She stopped in her tracks at the sound of hands on the door. Danny roared, “Go! Go! Head for the control deck!”
The crew, what was left of them, followed the outside hall of the ship to the main hull. They stopped at the fork in the hall. To their right was the walkway over the science belly of the ship, stairs winding down into the different sections. Max and Tedros booked it to the left, where the control deck and the drone were. It finalized the scan of the control deck, showing the entrance to the pilot’s room was destroyed. However, if Aphrodite needed it, the engineer's entrance to the electrical components of the ship was still open.
Tedros and Max stood at the center of the control deck, clearing out a path in the debris to the glass when Aphrodite skidded to a halt.
“Wait.”
Buzzing. A familiar buzzing came out of the open electrical door.No. Please, fuck, not now.It was a small window of opportunity, getting out of the ship ahead of the being hunting them.
“What do you mean, wait?” Tedros sneered, pushing the broken pilot's chair out of his way.
There was a massive hole in the front visor of the ship. It was big enough that anyone could get through, especially with no gravity onboard and their thrusters. They could crawl back to the line before their attacker got to the control deck, and be back on their ship in minutes.
Aphrodite pulled her heat gun out again and aimed it at the electrical entrance, a belly full of buzzing was never good. “Something’s alive in this ship.”
“Yeah! We’ve seen it, it ate Carso!” Max cleared the last leg of the path to the control desk. All the buttons were dark, a wall of panels stood before them, dead.Dead ship. Someone killed this vessel with no mercy.Her heat radar indicated nothing warm.
“Watch it.” Danny grabbed Max by the suit, pointing at a long, black wire laid across the desk. It sparked as if to speak for itself.There’s power somewhere. If I could…Aphrodite shook the thought from her mind. Escape was theonlyanswer. Max lurched away from the control desk. Danny returned his attention to the same screen Aphrodite stared at. “A ship that’s fritzing out should still give off heat signatures.”
“Unless something’s absorbing all the heat. Those flying creatures we found before, they’re attracted to heat. You remember they came out of their cave and the ones who escaped latched onto the side of the ship—” Aphrodite looked up to find Tedros bulldozing through the debris at a different angle toward the desk. “Tedros! Stop!”
“No! I’m getting out of here—”
He stepped onto the desk, missing an open wire that Max narrowly avoided. Aphrodite and Max whirled away from the electrical access as sparks flew through the room. The scent of burnt flesh and melted plastic filled their suits for only a second before it was filtered.Poor bastard didn’t even have time to scream.The buzzing became a horrifying roar as it raced up through the ship. A horde of wasp looking creatures sprung from the hole and dove for Tedros, warm and smoking from the electrocution he’d suffered. Max shrieked, racing for the labs and away from the Control Deck. Danny pulled out his knife, burying it into acreature that raced after the three survivors. Aphrodite scrambled for a solution.They want heat?She grabbed a flare off her suit and lit it with a flick of her thrusters. As it roared to life, the wasps lurched from Tedros. Aphrodite launched it with the help of her air-pressure tool-gun and watched them chase after it, like moths to a flame, out of the ship. She ducked, keeping out of the line of sight for the massive wasp creatures as the last few stragglers escaped the access hatch.
Well, now I know why everything in here is dead.She watched some of the panels flicker to a half-life. There wasn’t enough power to reboot, but enough to fill the emergency lights.
They wasps cleared out in seconds before the sounds of the hallway door being ripped from the wall echoed behind them. Max’s screams died with a terrified yelp. Danny put a finger to his lips, pressing himself to the wall of the Control Deck. Aphrodite stared at him, bewildered.
“You’re joking! You’re gonna try and fight them again?” she hissed, crawling toward the electrical panel. The engineer's access was a hole in the floor underneath the panel. A ladder down into the underbelly of the ship. She’d crawled through some tight spaces before, but this was a larger ship. They would have had an actual electrical crew to maintain it. She glanced down onto the ladder and smiled.No bugs.“Come on, we can sneak past him through here.”
She was halfway into the hole, a foot on the first rung, when the being from before broke through the doorway. Danny sprung out from the wall, knife ready to bury in their neck. Agile as a cat, their hunter ducked and swerved away from the knife. She grabbed onto the ladder, bellowing, “Danny! Come on! You can’t take them!”
The man was pinned to the wall.Again.Their hunter wasn’t even looking at him.That probably pisses him off like no other.Danny snarled and twisted, trying to push the armored being off him. However, their large eyes? Those obsidian pools outlined by dark lashes.Of fucking course, the person from outer space has thicker lashes than me! Not fucking fair!And they stared at her directly. Almost challenging her.
Okay, you want a challenge?She reached to her other side, grabbed the last flare she had, and flicked her thrusters. It roared to life. A horrifying buzzing sound from outside the ship rumbled the metal. She burst from the hole, chucking the flare directly at their hunter alien. Before they could swat it away or defend from the bright flare, the wasps returned with fury. Aphrodite snatched Danny by the arm and wrenched him out of the Control Deck frame. The wasps returned, their bone-chilling buzzing louder than before.
Chapter Three:
Aphroditepantedforair,nearly toppling to her knees as Danny closed the door to the lab behind them.As close to closed as it could get.The drone found Max cowering under a lab station in the belly of the ship. Danny ripped him out from his hiding spot and nearly flew him like a kite through the ship as they found a new exit. The hunter hadn’t shown yet. Thankfully, the lab they’d found had a door; most of them were open and exposed.At least it’ll give us better time to formulate a plan.
“We need to get out of here,” Max whined, crawling across the floor, and hiding under the last standing table in the lab. Shelves and bookcases were knocked onto the floor. The electricity was out, including emergency lights.Great, so what little power I got back is gone, fucking great.The only light came from inside their suit helmets and the drone. Aphrodite waved it off as it floated over her head.
“Hopefully the bugs eat the hunter, and we can just torch the place from the safety of our own ship.” Aphrodite scanned the room quickly.This must have been their office lab for sending reports and keeping records.Not much technology surrounded them other than many cracked screens on the wall, keyboards smashed on the ground, and a few spilled vials that were sucked out through the massive hole in the floor. She sent her drone out to scan the area surrounding it.No more surprises.She couldn’t take another jump scare.
“Anything out there?” Danny crouched beside her. “I’m sure your jail-broken, I mean,upgradeddrone might have some answers.”
She glared at him, not deigning to answer him.It’s not like upgrading old tech was illegal…just frowned upon.It wasn’t her fault government technology was never well made.
