Hell Off-World

Blaine wiped a handful of sweat of his brow. “Wow, that guy was hardcore. So... what do we do now?”

The obvious answer was to get back to the ship and use the crystal to kill all thirteen of the monsters on the surface. But, despite the risks, the knowledge held by the unconscious immortal, lying on the hard, crystallised floor, was too much to pass up.

Theresa threw the small crystal for Blaine to catch. “Take that back to the ship, as soon as you have radio contact, have Monty fly her directly over the chasm and lower the tow cable as far as it’ll go. It won’t reach us, but it’ll save us some time if we need to make a speedy getaway. But look through the camera on the underside of the Comet, and if you don’t see my light flash three times, you drop the cable and fly away. Understand?”

“Yes Captain.” Blaine nodded and retreated the way they had come. It wasn’t the first time Theresa had given Blaine instructions to follow in the event of her likely death, luckily, she had never given him a reason to think that might be the case, so there was no knowing if he would actually be capable of abandoning her for the sake of her crew.

As Blaine got further away from the chamber, the crystals around them began to lose their shine. They slowly dulled and turned grey, dimming the room gradually. Meanwhile, Theresa and Atlas worked on securing the chamber’s former lone occupant with the cables from their grapples. They used an entire cable, wrapping him from his neck down to his knees, and pinning him to the wall with the use of some more permeant clamps from Theresa’s spelunking kit, made for more long-term use than climbing. These ones actually drilled into the face of the crystal.

“So... let’s see who the creepy crystal Guardian really is!” Theresa joked, as she took a handful of the rags covering his face in her hand.

Underneath, the Guardian was a sinister sight, indeed. He looked like the corpse of a human or greywolf, who had been dead for a few years. His eye sockets were sunken and black, his nose little more than a pair of slits, partially covered by skin, and his gaping mouth, toothless. His wrinkled and torn skin was as white as chalk.

Moments after being revealed, the Guardian groaned and moved his head slightly.

“Hey... zombie man!” Theresa nudged his cloth-covered shoulder.

“Ugh... The... The crystal!?” The Guardian slowly woke up and noticed the state of the chamber.

“Is gone.” Theresa explained. “It’s just us now, and we need to talk. What do we call you, by the way?”

The Guardian seemed to scowl, it was difficult to tell, with what little face he had left. He slowly came to terms with the fact that he wouldn’t persuade them to bring the crystal back, so answered Theresa’s question. “Names are a means of addressing friends, I don’t have friends.”

“Okay... Captain Snugglewumps.” Theresa came up with the most ridiculous name she could think of. “We need to know everything about your boss and we need...”

“You want to know how to get your friend back.” This time, it was clear that the Guardian was grinning.

“Yes please.” Theresa said, with a threatening edge to her voice, and her hand drifting towards one of her pistols.

“Oh it’s quite simple.” The smugness in the captive's sinister voice made Theresa and Atlas think it might not be as simple as he was suggesting. “Amy Archer’s life has been removed from this world. Of course, a life can be returned, but not for free.”

“Well... I’ve got seventeen credits on me, Atlas?” Although Theresa was being sarcastic, her tone made funeral go-ers look cheerful by comparison.

“My master requires souls to feed on in order to be born. For a soul to even register with it, it must come from a sentient individual, say, a member of your crew or one of the other crews on this planet?”

“Atlas... How does this guy know everything?” Theresa asked, sincerely.

“I’ve been scanning him for any sign of data exchange since he mentioned Amy...” Atlas stated. They turned to face Theresa. “Nothing.”

“My power is more ancient and mighty than...”

The Guardian was interrupted when Theresa held her middle finger down with her thumb and flicked his forehead. He stared at her wordlessly for several seconds.

“Keep talking in proverbs and I’ll keep doing that.” Theresa warned. “Now, you were telling us how you know our friend.”

“I know everything.” The Guardian spat. “It is beyond your comprehension, but I can cast my eyes and ears to any point in the universe, and I guide my master to new planets where it might find food.”

“And yet you led it to a planet with no sentient life.” Atlas pointed out, before Theresa could say the same thing, except insulting the Guardian in the process.

“I... overestimated the technology the cephalopods used to reach this world, had my master’s egg not had to hibernate for so long, their meagre numbers would have sustained it long enough for it to hatch and travel to a new planet.”

“Okay, putting your incompetence aside for a second, you mentioned a price.” Theresa stated. “You’re saying we can trade another sentient person for Amy?” She clarified. Both her and Atlas knew that she wouldn’t actually do that.

“Oh no... Not just one. You’re not talking about an exchange of goods of equal value, you’re attempting to defy nature, and take back what my master has...”

Theresa flicked the Guardian’s forehead again.

“How... Many...?” She snarled.

“Seven.” Was the answer. “Coincidentally, just under the number of people currently on this planet. You wouldn’t even have to kill your precious son.” Atlas had to take hold of Theresa’s wrist before she drew her pistol. Rather than criticising the robot, she took a deep breath and relaxed her hand. “Of course, that will be meaningless until the portals reactivate.”

“They still haven’t?” Theresa asked, she had been assuming they would have reactivated in a matter of hours, Amy hadn’t had time to tell Atlas what was actually required.

“No, the portals were tainted when the young Miss Archer traversed one with her side opened up. They won’t be functional again until she is brought before the egg, and her blood cascaded upon it.”

“But she’s trapped over there. You’re saying she can’t come back until she’s already come back?”

The destroyer briefly gave the explanation of the overlapping dimensions, as it had been explained to Amy. “The Collectors are more than capable of retrieving her, or rather they would be, were it not for their massive size...”

Theresa frowned, as she processed the new information. The Reapers needed to retrieve Amy, which they could only do if they were smaller, and, probably knowing that, three of them had ripped each other apart... She gasped in alarm.

“Atlas, back to the ship, now!”

With little regard for their captive, Theresa raced from the chamber, ducking through the doorway and running back the way they had come, through the rocky caverns.

“Captain, what is it?” Atlas inquired, as they ran.

“I’ll tell everyone once we’re back!” Theresa promised. “As soon as you can connect with the Comet, tell me what the RG Wyvern is doing!”

The pair continued through the tunnels, quickly arriving at the chasm again. They deployed their clamps and started to climb, they could immediately see the blinking red light of the Comet’s tow cable, cutting through the blackness above them, and it was just under ten minutes before they reached it. Theresa and Atlas grabbed hold of the claw-like hook at the end, and Theresa flashed the light of her glow sphere three times. The cable immediately started to withdraw, lifting the two of them towards the surface.

“I’ve made contact.” Atlas stated.

“The Wyvern.” Theresa firmly reminded them.

“It’s... they’re attempting to cloak their signal from us, but I still have access to their ship’s computer. They’re... immediately next to the Star Skipper. I can’t tell what’s going on in either ship, all surveillance equipment has been destroyed.”

Theresa ground her teeth together, this clearly validated whatever theory had her so agitated. After what seemed like hours to the desperate captain (but had actually been just over a minute), the pair reached the end of the cable, and hung immediately underneath the hovering Comet. The entry ramp deployed, and Theresa and Atlas climbed over to it on a set of horizontal bars Amy had installed for this very purpose.

“Atlas, which ship is closer to the spires.” Theresa demanded, as they ran to the cockpit.

“They’re somewhat closer, but we have favourable flying conditions. If we both disembarked immediately, our estimated time of arrival could be up to half an hour later than theirs.”

The two of them burst into the cockpit, to find Blaine and Monty sitting at the controls, anxiously awaiting their return.

“In the air, now.” She ordered, before they could speak. “Take us to the spires, like Amy’s life depends on it, because it does! Atlas, any ideas on how to weaponize the crystal?”

“I do, yes.” Atlas immediately replied.

The standing half of the crew wobbled slightly as the Comet took on a massive burst of speed. Once she was stable, she lifted a hand, into which Blaine threw the crystal, which she handed to Atlas.

“Get to work, stay connected, I’ll explain everything in a moment.” She assured them.

As Atlas raced towards theirs and Amy’s room, Theresa approached her conference screen again and called the RG Wyvern. After just a few seconds, someone answered. The speaker’s deep, hissing voice was unmistakably that of a Lazorian, a sub-species of that of the bartender who had accosted Amy and Atlas on the Ark. They were a seven-feet tall, yellow-scaled, reptilian race, built like gorillas, with long, pointed tails.

“Black Comet, sssorry to keep you waiting. We received your message and took your vaccine without incident. We’re grateful for your assistance.” He hissed.

“So none of you have mutated?” Theresa asked, putting on an anxious voice.

“Not that I’ve noticcced.” He hissed. Sarcasm wasn’t as noticeable with Lazorians as it was with mammalian races, but it was just as common.

“Okay, good to hear it.” Theresa sighed. “By the way, I’ve been trying to contact the Star Skipper, have you heard from them?”

“We haven’t attempted to contact anyone sssince arriving, we’re just trying to do our work. Ssspeaking of which, I’ll have to ask you to excussse me.”

“Of course, thanks for your time.” Theresa ended the call.

She stepped away from the screen and sighed, then checked her data pad to make sure Atlas was listening in.

“Okay everyone... The crew of the Star Skipper are all dead.” She announced with regret. “Those on the RG Wyvern have taken the place of the Reapers that killed each other.”

“What? But you...” Blaine began, but quickly regained the sense to let his mother finish.

“We were confused when the Reapers killed each other, because we’ve been assuming that all Reapers grow massive and have huge wings. Now I’m starting to think Reapers can be whatever the Destroyer needs them to be... During the invasion of the planet, the Reapers had to be huge, to destroy the military, and intimidate the populace. Those Reapers killed each other because that wasn’t enough anymore.”

Monty continued, taking one hand off the ship’s controls to sign with. “The Reapers need to be covert, so they can infiltrate UGE societies and spread their spores.”

“Yes, and one other thing.” Theresa drew a deep breath. “While we were in the cavern, we learnt that the Reapers can still travel through the portals, especially now that they’re smaller. Before they can sacrifice anyone else to the thing in the egg, they’ll need to go through the portal and slaughter Amy, hence our current urgency. Also a reminder- the Reapers are now fair game, any opportunity to destroy one is not to be neglected under any circumstances.” Theresa sternly concluded. “Atlas, how are we doing on that?”

In Amy and Atlas bedroom, Atlas had been preparing to adapt weapons to incorporate the crystal in some way. Since they weren’t familiar with the energy the crystal was radiating, and they hadn’t had a chance to thoroughly analyse a Reaper, they couldn’t say for sure if any of their weapons would work.

First, Atlas had chipped off a tiny shard of the crystal and carried it to the other side of the ship. Thankfully, unlike the crystals they had left in the chamber, the shard continued to glow and radiate energy, telling Atlas that they could make more than one weapon. They continued gathering shards until all that remained of the original chunk was an almost circular disk of crystal. They fitted the crystal to a spare focussing lens for the ship’s main laser. Atlas was confident that the laser would pass harmlessly through the crystal without damaging it, but whether the resulting laser beam would retain the crystal’s power would be uncertain until a field test could be performed.

Satisfied that they had a means of combatting the original Reapers or the terrible surrogate, Atlas began forming handheld weapons, to fight against the new breed of Reaper Theresa was predicting. After quickly gaining Blaine’s permission over comms, Atlas got up and crossed the corridor to Blaine’s room. It was a plain room, with a small bunk and most of Blaine’s clothes littering the floor, but Atlas’ interest was a weapon’s case with a glass front.

The case contained all of the weapons Blaine had to use in the field, but in a lower compartment, it held a set of antiques which he had collected from various places in the galaxy. He wasn’t a loyal collector, but was uncontrollably attracted to pre-laser weaponry, purely for how cool it was, and yet he still made fun of Amy for her frivolous purchases.

Towards the bottom of a poorly organised pile, Atlas found what they were looking for, a pair of handheld, manual, ballistic pistols, which fired metallic bullets, and in a cardboard box next to the cabinet, they found some compatible bullets. Although Blaine didn’t use them while he was working, he often enjoyed practicing with them in his free time.

Each gun had six chambers, so Atlas took twelve bullets with them back to their bedroom. They carefully etched holes in the front of each bullet, while taking care not to penetrate the payload and detonate the gunpowder beneath, and firmly embedded a shard of crystal in the tip, then smoothed them over so they would still fit in the gun. Atlas didn’t know how sensitive the Reapers would be to the crystal, but they hoped that a crystal bullet would at least be enough to terminate a humanoid one.

Finally, Atlas retrieved a personal dagger from the ship’s arsenal, and welded the remaining crystal fragments along its blade, giving it a serrated, crystal edge. If the creatures were vulnerable to the crystal at all, then Atlas was confident that this knife would be capable of decapitating one, with enough effort.

“Captain, here are the weapons.” Atlas announced, as they re-entered the cockpit.

“Are these... Some of Blaine’s old knickknacks?” Theresa confusedly asked, taking a revolver. Unlike her son, she had no interest in redundant technology.

“I was unable to cut the crystal finely enough to replace the lenses in handheld lasers, so I’ve simply imbedded a fragment in each of the twelve bullets in these guns. I was, however, able to create a new lens for the ship’s lasers. Monty and Blaine, if you can fly the ship steady, I’ll have it fitted before we reach the spire.”

“Be careful.” Theresa needlessly instructed as Atlas left the door. She inspected the knife Atlas had given her, impressed by their quick, but high quality craftsmanship.

“You want me to explain those guns to you, Captain?” Blaine asked. “I figure we should take one each.”

“No, if we only have twelve shots, you take both of them. I’ll use the knife.”

She placed the guns on the dashboard besides her son and looked nervously at his display, Atlas was climbing out of a hatch, onto the roof of the ship, securing themself by magnetising their hands and feet. Looking across the screens, she saw that they would be at the spire in just over an hour, and the suns were setting.

-x-x-x-

Amy and the squids huddled in wait. After the Reapers had awoken, the majority of them had retreated to their hideout. At Amy’s insistence, a skeleton crew had remained to keep watch over the portal, and the dimension on the other side, in case the crew of the Black Comet returned with news. The squids had insisted that, since the portals would remain closed as long as Amy was alive, she wasn’t to approach the portal, instead, she sat huddled in a group of twenty-one squids, just enough to keep the predatory birds at bay.

Periodically, a squid would slither through the portal to check on developments on the other side. The goliath surrogate was still patrolling the outskirts of the city, and one, lone Reaper flew like a vulture overhead. Neither paid any attention to the squids.

After 24 hours away from the Comet, Amy’s visor had run out of power, and she had left her portable chargers on the ship. Although the squids assured her that it had been just a few hours since the clock in her display had vanished, she felt extremely out of touch without it. The utterly stationery suns in the sky weren’t helping.

Eventually, there was an update. A squid excitedly emerged from the portal, declaring that a ship was approaching the spire. Amy asked if the monsters were responding to it, but apparently they weren’t. Amy couldn’t tell if the ship was the Comet from the memory the squid had shared. They had come to report it after seeing it from afar. Whether it was the Comet or not though, Amy couldn’t imagine why the surrogate and the Reaper would ignore it. Perhaps the crew had found a way to cloak themselves from the monsters?

“We have to go and check it out.” Amy said. Predictably, she found a tentacle holding her arm. “If my friend is over there, they’ll be able to understand us! We know the monsters aren’t right outside and we can stay close.”

It took a stern glance that Amy had learnt from Theresa, but eventually, the tentacle receded. The entire group made their way through the portal and into the lobby of the spire. They were all alert for any reaction from the Reaper, to Amy’s reappearance, but none came.

Moments after their arrival, a ship could be seen landing, through the hole Blaine had cut in the wall, with the Tank. Amy could immediately tell that it wasn’t the comet. It was a red and orange ship, much newer and top-of-the-line. On the side, Amy could see the name “RG Wyvern”, as she approached the hole. She remembered the name, but what were they doing here? Had the three crews banded together? That would be a smart choice, but Theresa rarely liked to put her trust in strangers. Still, these were desperate times.

The entry ramp deployed and three figures descended. Two were Lazorian, one smaller and more orange than the other, the third was a Vampire, distinguished from a pale human when she drew close and Amy saw the translators on her wrists. She was a muscular woman with a wide build, visible under a thick jacket, the kind of mammal a person would expect to be able to earn the respect of a stereotypically xenophobic Lazorian.

They purposefully entered the spire through the hole, and approached the portals. Amy and the squids fanned out around them, cautiously. The newcomers stood in the centre of the lobby and looked around, blankly. The bigger Lazorian stood immediately in front of Amy. It wasn’t long before she noticed what was amiss.

“Hey, it’s night time!” She pointed out. “Shouldn’t they...”

Of course, Amy had been about to say that the strangers should be able to see them, but that would have been an over-simplification, as made apparent when a scaled, yellow hand shot forwards, seized Amy’s neck and hoisted her feet off the ground. Her eyes bulged and air was sucked from her brain. She was only just aware of the other Lazorian and the Vampire, who were in the process of brutally dismembering the squids closest to them.

With her last few seconds of consciousness Amy hoisted her feet upwards, and unleashed the full wrath of her propulsion boots on her attackers face. The monstrous reptile didn’t even fall over, but they were forced backwards several feet, dropping Amy in surprise in the process. While she coughed feebly and waiting for her head to stop spinning, three of the surviving squids swarmed around her attacker, attempting to overwhelm him both physically and telepathically. A fourth squid lifted Amy clean off her feet and fled through the portal, with her ensnared in the tentacles on its side.

Of the twenty-one squids who had stayed to await word from Amy’s crew, five escaped back through the portals. Amy quickly climbed to her feet and joined the others in running across the barren, red dirt as quickly as she could.

“Were they... Reapers?” Amy choked, through her bruised neck, focussing more on thinking the words than saying them.

The squids agreed. None of them had seen a Reaper who hadn’t mutated visually, and after thousands of years, it had taken them a while to recognise the telepathic impact the Reapers had when up close. This was a threat they hadn’t foreseen.

As the group fled, the two reptilian Reapers emerged through the portals, walking slowly in their direction. Amy looked over her shoulder as she ran as fast as her legs would carry her. Her stomach sank as she realised they weren’t running after her, what could they be planning? She didn’t have to wait long. It turned out, the Lazorians transformations hadn’t been entirely without physical mutation.

With a tensing of their shoulders, a pair of enormous wings deployed on each Reaper’s back. Less like bat wings, and more like those of flying reptiles, such as the pterodactyls that lived on the planet they were standing on. Like a pair of terrible dragons, the shot into the air with a single, powerful flap, and soared towards Amy like vultures.

“Split up!” Amy ordered, screaming the instruction in her mind. “They’re after me!”

To her relief, the squids didn’t argue, and fled to the left and right, while Amy ran directly ahead. She desperately wished her visor was still working, it could have kept track of their movement, but luckily, it seemed the new Reapers weren’t big on subtlety. With an angry hissing sound, two streams of purple fire rained down in front of Amy and raged from the ground towards the sky with no apparent fuel.

Amy didn’t miss a trick, with a pulse from her boots, she leapt over the ten foot wall of fire, just singeing her jeans on the way, and clumsily rolling across the floor as she landed on the other side. She ran on, just seconds later, hearing the flames lick harmlessly against her pursuers. Racing through her options, Amy was crestfallen. She barely had the equipment to take down a regular Lazorian! She still had the stinger on her left wrist, but she doubted it would hurt a Reaper, nor did she think she could persuade them to swallow it, as she had the ostrich.

The ostrich? That gave Amy an idea. The mighty birds were what Theresa described as a Wild Card, and when you were in a situation when death was an inevitability, a wild card was exactly what you needed. Amy scanned her environment with her eyes, there were four ostriches not that far away, brutally feeding on the corpse of a buffalo. Between them they had three eyes, and about enough feathers to cover one and a half healthy instances of the species.

Amy leaned forwards and engaged her boots just slightly to increase the power of her stride. It wasn’t what the boots were designed for, but it allowed Amy to run at least twice as fast as normal, provided she kept her balance, which was made no easier by the onslaught of fire from her pursuers. She swerved left and right as more pillars of fire were spat onto the ground from above her. She didn’t dare look around, but she thought she could hear one set of rapid footprints and the beating of a pair of wings.

When she was within earshot of her distraction, Amy grabbed her left shoulder, activating one of her custom devices, sewn into the jacket. The small machine screeched a loud siren. In retrospect, Amy regretted putting the device right next to her ear, but it served its purpose. All four birds looked up from their rapidly depleting meal and towards Amy. Her heart sank and she began calculating the odds she was dealing with, but she had to admit, they were still better than her versus the Reapers on her own.

As the Ostriches began to run towards her, the footsteps behind her grew louder and louder. With that, Amy initiated the final phase of her plan. Of course, the Reapers could simply fly out of the birds’ reach, but not if Amy had anything to say about it. She dove forwards and twisted onto her back in the air. Time seemed to slow as she realised how close the Reaper’s outstretched hand had been to her neck. The other Reaper was flying immediately overhead, it’s mouth full of purple fire, ready to be spat in front of her. Amy’s poking stick was in her hand, but this time, she had twisted it counter-clockwise before deploying it. With a flick of her wrist, the stick extended further than last time, now ending in a sharp knife point, which tore a heavy gash in the Reaper’s outstretched wings, before Amy even hit the ground. Mostly protected by her leather jacket, Amy maximised her boots push and shot across the ground, just missing the new fireball and, with a touch of a button, compressed air hissed from Amy’s stick and the knife point shot from the end and neatly pierced the second Reaper’s wing.

Amy slid backwards across the ground, already feeling the heat building in her back, but not daring to stop until she saw, with a sigh, that the ostriches had clearly settled their focus on the grounded Reapers. She slammed her hand on her siren device, silencing it, and slowed her thrusters, sending her skidding along the dirt, in a cloud of red dust. She still didn’t dare relax though. As she climbed unsteadily to her feet, feeling the burns running down her back, she saw the frenzy taking place behind her. The Reapers were clearly attempting to make their way closer to Amy, but the ostriches were mercilessly engaging them. They wrangled in a gory pile of scales, feathers and fire.

Although the bloodbath was hypnotic in an eerie way, Amy tore her eyes from it and began sprinting back towards the portals, rather than waiting to see if the Reapers would be killed, especially as, in that scenario, she too would be killed moments later. Whoever won this fight, she didn’t want to be around to congratulate them.

Amy wasn’t certain what she should do when she reached the portals. There was still no guarantee that her crew was anywhere close, and if she stepped through the portal for a second, then the final humanoid Reaper would see her and she didn’t think she had it in her to kill a third one, single-handidly. Then Amy remembered Atlas’ hack. Wherever they were, they knew that the other ship was at the spire. They could be rushing to her aid, without realising they were running into a Reaper trap.

Amy was greatly conflicted as she slowed down to jog up the hill, towards the withered tree, surrounded by portals. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that all of the fireballs the Reapers had generated were still burning brightly, and an enormous cluster of them obscured the spot where the bloody battle had taken place, there was no clear winner from where Amy was standing. She approached the nearest pair of roots and looked aimlessly into the murky pool of distortion, trying to decide on her next action.

Luckily for her, the decision wasn’t her to make. She had barely stepped in front of the portal, when a mammalian hand flew from it, seized the neck of her jacket, and dragged her through.