“What the FUCK do you mean she’s gone?! Hey, Captain! Wake up, damn you!” Sarah was not taking it well, still screaming and shaking the lifeless body in Curt’s arms.
In truth, I wasn’t doing much better, and it was only the sight of the monster that Chloe had become to my eyes that allowed me to compartmentalize my thoughts and stop myself from openly wailing next to her.
Am I so far gone that I can’t even grieve properly?
Quickly banishing those depressing thoughts about what was done to us, I turned to address my grief-stricken friend.
“Sarah…” I began with a trembling voice and barely contained sniffing. “There’s… nothing to be done. Nothing we could have done, either.”
“Bullshit!” She immediately exploded, turning to me with startling fury. “There’s no way she would be out from something like… Whatever that was! She promised she would get us home, she promised..." That last was mumbled and barely audible, and yet I heard it so loud that each word was like a stab to my heart, all of my hopes now lying dead like the body in Curt's arms. I didn't get to think about that for very long before she continued with renewed rage. "And besides, if something happened to her, why are we fine, huh?! Did you think of that?” She got up and walked into my personal space, a finger aggressively poking at my chest and pushing me back while her tear filled eyes were fully in denial about the situation.
Much as I would have liked to have an answer for her, in this case, I didn’t, so I could only turn my gaze to the empty field around us, the cloudless, star-speckled sky and the planet that dominated the skyline.
“The best kind of trap…” Curt spoke for the first time since we started to understand our situation, his shell-shocked expression not shifting away from the body of our leader held in his arms. “...is the one that could never hurt you. The best escape route is one that can only be used by you.” He cited a terrifying bit of logic that had seen only too much use in the darkest corners of galactic history.
For all that most gardenworlds were at least livable to the large majority of sapient species, with the large variety of worlds and species inhabiting them, it followed that the differences between each of their biologies would be an order of magnitude greater with no common evolutionary ancestor linking them, not to mention the differences in their respective environments and selective pressures that led to the evolution of bodies that reacted differently in certain situations. This was naturally exploited in warfare at various points, with capsaicinogen –an evil, airborne substance that, on contact with any mammalian mucus membranes, instantly decomposes to release large amounts of the eponymous irritant into lungs and eyes– being the latest in a long and brutal history of skirting inter-societal regulations, with entire atmospheres having been contaminated with the stuff by species unaffected by it.
Following that logic, then…
“What does that even…? How are we…?” Sarah was back to mumbling uselessly in defeat, but even though she hadn’t formulated a complete question, Curt still answered.
“The pillslugs, or at least the Guardians, can survive in space, apparently.” He said, finally lifting his face to look at her. “We’re ‘one of them’, remember?” He finished, his features twisting into a pained smile with moisture gathering in his eyes.
“But then… That asshole!” Sarah screamed into the void before being pulled in for a hug by Curt. I gently lay a hand on her shoulder, wanting to show my support without intruding on their tender moment, once again internally lamenting feeling like their third wheel like I so often had the last two days.
“So then, what do we do now?” Sarah asked weakly after a while. “Do you think the other Chloe got shot into space along with us?”
“Don’t know, doesn’t matter. If she was nearby, we would have heard her, or more likely she would have heard us.” Curt said, stepping into his role of sub-captain. “If we haven’t seen her already, we likely won’t.”
“And speaking of, if we’re in space, how is it that we are hearing each other? There’s not supposed to be any air.” I voiced my thoughts, desperately latching on to any distraction I could think of. It took a second for me to get a response, but eventually Curt piped up with:
“If anyone’s gonna figure out the answer to that, it’d probably be you.”
Yeah, sure, leave the biology questions to the biologist, why don’t you?
“Anyway, we don’t know how long we can last out here, so first priority is to get back into an atmosphere, preferably not that one.” He said, heedless of my internal grumbling, pointing up at the planet above our heads. “I don’t suppose any of you know of a way to get back into the tree, so we need to go exploring, and fast.” He finished, standing up with Chloe’s lifeless body still held in his arms.
“Wait! Before we go…” Sarah said, also standing up before reaching to disconnect and pull the mem-recorder from Chloe’s neck, a small memory stick ejecting from the sub-dermal device which she quickly pocketed. “You know, when we first left the old dirtball, I really didn’t think we would end up having to worry about these…”
With that somber note, we started moving from where we’d ended up, making sure to go as fast as we possibly could while making sure we never let go of our grip on the ground, which… was a thing we could do, apparently. Upon discussing it, it turned out that none of us really understood it, but we all had this feeling where we knew in our guts that we really should not let go of the ground or risk death.
Probably some implanted instinct that asshole put in us, but then again, how are we ‘holding onto the ground’ with our toes, I have no idea.
It took several hours of walking –enough for me to have lost count– until we finally found what looked like an airlock built into the ground, near the roots of the space tree. It was a standard GF design, and wasn’t locked from the outside, so opening it was a simple matter of turning the bright red lever and waiting for the atmosphere inside to cycle.
Once inside, our jaws immediately hit the floor.
“Are you seeing this?” I asked the other two with awe in my voice.
“Yeah.” Curt answered softly.
“Is that what I think it is?” Sarah asked this time, in the same tone I had.
“Probably not.” Curt answered again, not changing his tone.
“Wait, what?” Sarah asked, confused, all reverence gone from her voice.
“Not what it looks like, remember?”
“Ugh.” Sarah ughed, but we still all moved closer to investigate what could very well be our salvation.
The last few days had been miserable. It was only thanks to Mike doing his job as a navigator that we could be somewhat sure we weren’t walking around in circles and instead moving in roughly the right direction. All the different tunnels and caverns had long since started to blend together for me and I would have been hopelessly lost without his help.
It was one afternoon like any other when we finally ran into something I hadn’t seen before.
“Are you seeing this?” I asked anyone who would listen.
“Yeah.” Mike and Fae both answered from behind me.
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked again.
“Looks like it.” Fae answered this time, a growing excitement creeping into her voice.
Sitting in front of us, jammed up against what, according to Mike’s projections would be the roots of the space tree, completely dominating the view with its sheer size and held up by various elastic looking tendrils connecting it to the ceiling and walls to allow it to remain suspended over the floor, was a standard issue Galactic Federation intrasystem transport shuttle, only really distinguishable from the outside from one of ours by the different iconography that adorned its hull.
“I almost want to say ‘I told you’, but there’s no way I could have seen that coming.” said Mike, his own mood rising along with the rest of us. As it turned out, his shot in the dark ended up being correct. With the way the shuttle was pasted to the walls around it, it could easily be acting as a thruster to move this whole structure around, albeit slowly and in short bursts. More importantly, most spacecraft control schemes had been standardized by the GF in order to maximize accessibility by a variety of species, so if we managed to release it, we would easily be able to fly this shuttle to our mothership. The question was, whether we’d be able to do that.
“Wait, what are they doing?” I asked before we could all get carried away in our growing excitement at the first sign of something other than goop covered walls, much less civilization.
Following my pointing finger, the other two caught sight of what had given me pause.
Hanging onto the walls of the large cavern that contained the shuttle, near its underside, two Guardians were doing… something, I couldn’t tell what it was. They seemed to be splayed up against the wall, with their various tendrils spread widely around them, reaching into various spots on the wall and near the shuttle. The pair each had four limbs and a head, but that was roughly where the similarities ended. One of them, much smaller than the other, had six tentacles protruding from its back, while the other, much larger one, had only two. In fact…
“Isn’t that the bastard that killed Carter and the others?” I asked, barely contained aggression growing in my tone.
“But then…” Said Mike, cautiously.
“We shouldn’t mess with them.” Fae spoke definitively, the no-nonsense tone uncharacteristic for the normally upbeat little fairy. At my questioning look, she explained. “You said yourself, that thing is not normal. Hell, it shouldn’t even be alive after eating a grenade to the face. The fact that it’s still kicking means it's dangerous, so we shouldn’t mess with it if we can avoid it. Now there is no way a single shuttle, no matter how powerful, can move this whole tree, there’d need to be three of them at the absolute minimum. If we’ve found one, we can find another, and hopefully it will be less guarded.”
Swallowing my anger, I had to admit that she was right. Leave it to the engineer to know her technology. If there really were more shuttles like this one on this tree, then as long as they weren’t guarded by something as psychopathically aggressive as that particular asshole, then we would be better off making our escape on one of those. Putting my own anger aside, I turned to leave to find another shuttle when Mike stopped me.
“Wait, thats… Chloe!” He said with a gasp.
“What?!” I immediately turned on him and then followed his pointed finger to a figure on the ground, so overshadowed by the large spaceship to be almost invisible. Indeed, it was our captain Chloe Paxton, lying motionless on the ground next to two Guardians, one of which had already proven to be able and willing to kill humans.
That’s it, that fucker dies today!
“Alright, new plan! We go in, hit them really hard, grab Chloe and get out, then we can see about treating whatever’s wrong with her and finding an unguarded shuttle.” I said, brooking no argument and already preparing to fire Chekhov’s Rocket Launcher that was installed in my arm, the lever action to chamber the next shell after the first shot jutting out from my wrist.
“Are you sure about this?” Fae asked seriously, not outright disagreeing with me but making sure to temper my excitement.
“This is the first time we’ve seen another human in days, let alone our captain. We need to make sure she’s safe. If we can clear out this shuttle and save us the hassle of looking for another one, then all the better.” I said, my blood running hot and my heart thumping in my ears, but I still managed to keep enough of a clear head to come up with a plan that I hoped wouldn’t lead straight to our deaths.
“Alright then, shoot the big one. We’ll see about grabbing Chloe and keeping the other busy if you can’t finish yours off before that.” She said, pulling out her handgun. There was a decent chance it wouldn’t do all that much against Guardians, but she should only need to use it for a few seconds at most while I blasted the other one to kingdom come.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Are you sure about this?” I still asked her with a hint of worry.
“No, I’m fucking pissed and you’re right, we can’t leave Chloe behind now that we’ve found her, so we have to do this.” She said resolutely but not without a hint of dread in her voice.
“Mike?” At my question, he seemed to swallow a knot in his throat, pulled out his own handgun, and nodded.
With that, I began aiming my launcher. As I pulled up my arm, a holographic display overlaid itself over my vision, displaying the arc the projectile would follow, accounting for the low gravity, in its journey towards the target some 173 meters away.
Not wasting a second once it was lined up, I flexed the non-existent muscle that caused the gun to fire and dashed forward, pulling the lever action and chambering the last shot before I’d have to load new ones or be unable to fire again, feeling the weight of the next explosive shifting from my upper arm down to my forearm. I really wanted that single shot to be enough to take that fucker out. By all accounts, it should have been enough, and yet going by past experiences…
Before the projectile reached it, the asshole pulled a slab of what looked like goop covered stone from the wall and used it to cover itself. Naturally, the bit of rubble it had used to hide behind could do nothing in the face of a kilogram of shaped detonation, and as the bomb reached it, it instantly punched a hole through that protection to continue damaging what lay beyond.
When the smoke cleared, to my dismay, I found out that the creature hadn’t just hidden behind some rubble, it had also positioned its body behind it away from the path of the explosive, therefore being missed by the forward shaped charge with its cover blocking the radial one, and altogether coming out unscathed.
With a loud roar, the thing detached itself from the wall and moved to meet my charge with its own. The other Guardian was nowhere to be found, but I couldn’t worry about that at the moment. Not willing to risk the bastard dodging my last grenade shot, I switched my arm to its gatling configuration and peppered it with a stream of Earth-rated ammunition as our distance closed. Like before, it covered its face and chest with its various appendages without slowing down, but unlike before, I had expected it, so the moment it came into range, I used my other hand to deliver an upwards hook to its chin, right under its guard, which launched its face right into my line of fire at point blank range.
Unfortunately, the thing didn’t just take it in the chin and die like it was supposed to, and the moment my fist impacted, it also reached forward and dug a claw into my mechanical arm, ripping a few pieces off as it stumbled backwards, and disabling my gun.
Well, if shooting is out, then…
With a flex of a different muscle I never had, a blade the size of my forearm emerged from the top of where my left fist had reappeared after I left the gatling configuration. I immediately went to stab the beast before it could recover from the previous hit, but what it did then surprised me.
With a deftness belying its size, it ducked under my thrust, caught my arm and pulled, lining my body over its shoulder and tossing me over it to land hard with my back against the ground.
What the fuck just happened?!
I didn’t have time to ponder from my spot with my back against the floor how this feral beast had pulled a move straight out of a martial arts movie before it was on me, each of my hands in one of its own and a knee on my chest, while the two spike tipped tentacles emerging from its back hovered threateningly before my eyes.
I tried everything I could think of to break its grip on me before it was too late, shaking, punching, screaming and kicking where its dick would presumably be, but nothing garnered enough of a reaction that I could break free.
Rather than gouging out my eyes, like it seemed poised to do, the monster instead brought my left hand, held in its right, closer to its face, eyed the blade at the end of it, and, to my horror, went to take a bite out of it.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but thankfully, its needle-like teeth didn’t just sink straight through solid steel. Less reassuringly, however, after a few twists of its neck, the blade snapped at the base in its mouth and was spat dismissively to the side like it was less than garbage.
Oh, fuck this…
Pinned to the ground, and completely out of viable options, I decided to try something stupid. Turning to my battered and bent mechanical left hand, I thanked my earlier self for having the foresight to chamber the next shell of the rocket launcher even if I didn’t use it immediately, so, noticing how the steel that made it up was warping inwards in the thing’s grip, I fired the last shot and was immediately blinded.
As the smoke cleared, I sat up since I was no longer pinned, and took stock of the situation.
Face: wet. Chest: wet. Right arm: tired. Left arm: can’t feel it. This is gonna suck once the adrenaline wears off.
Getting up with a groan, I saw the monster on its feet in front of me, still refusing to die but letting out a silent scream as it held its right arm in its left. Three of the five fingers in its right hand were entirely missing, and both of its tentacles slowly wrapped around what was left.
Looking back down at myself, I saw that my left arm was mostly gone, with a stump with loose wires and pipes ending just beyond the elbow.
So I’m down an arm and that thing is down an arm and two tentacles. I think I might have come out on top after that blast.
Picking up the discarded blade that had ended up nearby after the thing spat it out in my remaining flesh and blood hand, I went to finish it off. Despite its face not even remotely facing me, however, it still saw me coming, dodging my slash and retaliating with a closed-fist, backhanded swing.
Did that thing just punch me in the fa-?!
I didn’t even have time to finish my thoughts before I saw and felt the thing’s spinning roundhouse kick impact against my skull, knocking me flat on my ass.
Did that thing just spin kick me in the face?!
Once again, my thoughts were interrupted as, with me now on the floor once more, it pinned me down with the same grip as before, with the exception of its mangled arm, which could only apply pressure on my own mangled arm against the floor, instead of gripping it like before.
Or, at least, I thought it couldn’t grip it, until I saw the tentacles retract to reveal a hand with its full five claw-tipped fingers restored, which immediately dug into the wreck of my arm, sending a jolt of pain to travel through it.
Oh, that is some bullshit!
With its two tentacles now free from healing its injuries, it instead used the spikes at their tips to dig into my lungs, stabbing just under my ribs.
Pained, enraged, but immobilised, I spat a glob of blood at its face so close to mine I could feel its breath on my nose. The thing didn’t even react.
Oh, that can’t be good…
Keeping an eye on the cloud of smoke that emerged after the grenade Alex had fired detonated, Mike and I cautiously moved in to keep whatever target presented itself at a range where we could shoot them, while making sure to stay behind Alex, who was charging in a mad, bloodthirsty dash towards the impact site.
I really hope we’ll make it out of this…
Alex’s rage was palpable and seeing his back slowly building distance with us, I couldn’t help but worry about what could happen. I didn’t have long to worry, though, as from the smoke shot a figure that then dashed between the various tendrils connecting the cavern to the spaceship with almost supernatural agility.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was the smaller Guardian, and based on its path, it would probably try to circle around us to catch us –or worse, Alex– from behind. Getting Mike’s attention with a nudge, we both trained our guns in its direction.
Neither Mike nor myself had trained all that much with guns beyond the minimum safety requirements to be allowed to carry them, so we’d come up with a plan to minimize that shortcoming. Once the thing was close enough, I would fire my gun, which on full-auto could empty its twenty shot magazine in just under three seconds, then Mike would take over while I reloaded and repeat, so even if each individual bullet didn’t do much, there would always be some form of fire covering us, and thanks to Alex’s efforts the last few days, we weren’t short on ammunition.
The plan would have worked… if the thing had actually decided to charge us like it had every reason to, but instead it made a sharp turn and went to grab Chloe, quickly slinging her unmoving form over its shoulder before dashing up and away.
Oh no the fuck you don’t!
Once I realized what it was doing, I immediately opened fire in its general direction, with it being still too far and moving too fast for me to be able to make a confident shot. In the back of my mind, I worried slightly about hitting Chloe with my bullet spray, and yet after all we’d seen, being shot might still be preferable to being taken away.
I could swear I saw some splashes of dark green as at least some of my bullets impacted the creature, but it still didn’t stop it from dashing up and away above and behind the shuttle, taking our captain with it where we couldn’t easily follow.
“Keep an eye out, it can’t have gone far!” I told Mike as we stood back-to-back against each other. The creature had taken Chloe, but I didn’t think for a moment it had simply left with Alex’s fight still raging not too far away. Sure enough…
“Oh, shit I see it!” Mike yelled before letting out a stream of bullets that impacted somewhere above and to his right. None of his shots landed, as the creature dashed in and out of cover while moving in three dimensions all around us, making it a pain in the ass to hit, but also preventing it from getting close to us.
A loud boom distracted me for a fraction of a second as I looked over to the other fight, where Alex was sitting up and his opponent was clutching the ruin that had been made of one of its hands. It looked like he had it handled, for the most part.
And right on cue…
My gaze travelled up to where I saw the one that had been harrying us rushing along the underside of the shuttle that acted as a ceiling to aid its companion.
I said no the fuck you don’t! I thought before immediately opening fire on it, seeing a couple green splashes before it retreated.
Satisfied that Alex wasn’t about to get blindsided by an additional opponent, I quickly turned my eyes back down towards him, only what I saw made my heart sink, as he was suddenly pinned down with the beast’s tentacles dug into his sides.
“Shit, Alex!” I screamed and was about to open fire, only to be interrupted by a voice I’d thought I’d never hear again.
“What the hell are you idiots doing?!” Sarah’s voice echoed throughout the cavern, immediately putting an end to all hostilities, both our’s and the supposedly non-sapient local’s.
Tracing the sound to its source, my eyes caught on a third Guardian, quickly climbing down from the ceiling by scaling some of the tendrils that connected the shuttle to every surface of the cavern.
We’re totally doomed. I thought, raising my gun to point it at this newcomer as it headed towards Alex laid on the ground with a beast on top of him. I wanted to fire, but I feared it would just make everything worse. Contrary to my expectations, however, the thing spoke again.
“No, seriously, what are you doing? Get off of him, for fuck’s sake.” It said in an exasperated tone, pulling the beast away from Alex, who groaned as the spikes in his sides were removed, and offered him its hand.
He, reasonably, stared incredulously.
“Not… gonna take my hand? You ah… You look like you could use a hand. No pun intended?” It spoke, again, with Sarah’s voice.
I’m dead, aren’t I? I’m dead and this is hell.
Ignorant of me having reached the only reasonable conclusion, the thing continued.
“Okay, fair, that was pretty bad, but I swear I didn’t think about it until it was already out of my mouth.” ‘Sarah’ said, retracting its hand and turning towards me- no, past me. “And you! Get the fuck down from there, who the fuck do you think you are?!”
Against all better judgement, I turned my back to the newcomer, where I found a confused Mike, and an alien poised to rip his damn head off in the most violent way possible. Of its six spike tipped tentacles, only the middle pair and its back legs were keeping it suspended over the ground, meanwhile the remaining four, alongside ten fingers each tipped in razor sharp claws and a nasty set of fangs set on a pair of jaws already opened wider than Mike’s entire head, were all just a fraction of a second away from ending him.
Sensing everyone’s collective attention turning his way, Mike slowly turned around… And immediately freaked out and emptied what was left of his mag into the monster’s chest and face. ‘Sarah’ winced at this and, surprising me yet again, the monster that was shot didn’t die or respond to his aggression in kind, instead wrapping its chest and the damaged half of its face with its tentacles and looking at him with a judgemental frown.
That frown did little more than confuse its target, but it did spark a bolt of recognition in me. “Alice?” I said, causing Mike to flinch.
“Who else would it be?” ‘Sarah’ asked as she walked by, shooting Mike a glare along the way, and when she reached ‘Alice’, she kneeled down with her while holding the injured Guardian in a hug.
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked what was no doubt in all of our minds.
“What the fuck does it look like?” ‘Sarah’ spat with just a bit of venom that hadn’t been there earlier in her tone.
“It looks like non-sapient Guardians just started talking while kissing a booboo.” I replied with some snark while raising my gun. Normally, I was always one for jokes, but in this situation I wasn’t having it, it was simply too bizarre and there were too many unknowns and conflicting information to be dealing with non-answers and sass.
Surprisingly, when I raised my gun, ‘Sarah’ flinched, and I say surprisingly because none of the other Guardians, neither the ones here nor anywhere else on this tree, had ever reacted strongly to the brandishing of weapons, only ever reacting aggressively once they noticed us.
“Shit, I keep forgetting.” She mumbled before continuing in a full voice. “Please put that down? I swear I can explain.” She pleaded and I did. Visibly relaxing, she continued: “Well, we survived! Kind of… I mean, Curt, Alice and I are fine, I guess but… Well you see the problem.” She finished, pointing at the two Guardians.
“What I see are three Guardians, and one of them is speaking with the voice of my dead friend.” I spat disbelievingly.
“Yeah, well, they didn’t kill us, they turned us,” she said, getting up to walk back towards the much larger beast that had disabled Alex. Oh, shit! Alex!
Cursing my lapse in attention, I immediately dashed to where the big man was beginning to pick himself up, and I quickly began applying first aid to his wounds, starting with a spray-on bandage that would stop his bleeding and promote tissue growth underneath it.
“Pro’bly did the same to the previous owners of this shuttle. Speaking of, what does it look like?” ‘Sarah’ finished her speech once she’d arrived at the beast’s side.
“What’s it look like? It’s a standard GF shuttle… Oooh… shit.” I said, finally processing the huge piece of evidence that supported her claim of the pillslugs turning people into their Guardians. This shuttle wasn’t rammed into the tree, it wasn’t even added on from space, it had been built into the tree and likely helped get it to space in the first place, and sentient or not, the pillslugs couldn’t have operated it, much less however many they needed to move the whole megastructure without knowledge that, much like the shuttle itself, could only have come from off-world. And if they were forcefully turning whatever aliens that had come to them to their cause, then…
This is the mother of all international incidents just waiting to happen.
“Yeah, I was hoping it would be something else.” Sarah muttered in a voice so low I could just barely hear it. The comment sounded all kinds of ominous, but there was something else I needed to address.
“So, if you’re Sarah, and that’s… Alice?” I asked, pointing at the six tentacled one that was still sitting near Mike. At her nod, I continued, only to trail off immediately after. “Then… that’s…?”
“That’s the pipsqueak?!” Alex interrupted, helpfully, through a wet cough and a spit wad of blood.
“Don’t let him hear you say that.” Sarah answered for some reason, while elbowing the towering behemoth, which still answered Alex’s and my question, albeit indirectly.
“But he’s…” Alex trailed off.
“But he’s huge!” I finished for him.
“Nah, he’s perfectly cuddle sized!” Sarah said happily while clambering onto the much larger monster’s shoulder, where she perched in a pose as though ready to pounce on us that chilled me to my core, all the while giving us a blood curdling fang filled grin.
fucking terrefies me to write, but we'll see how it goes.
Chapter 14: Awkward
