Invasive Species

David barely managed to keep his face from colliding with the wall in the darkness as he fell. He winced in pain as his forearm landed on the corner of the omnivator doorframe, but avoided verbalizing it.

“What the hell was that,” Dan called out of the dark.

“Whatever it was, it fried the power grid,” Dalton pointed out.

David switched on the light on his wrist comp and let the beam wash over everyone to make sure they were all uninjured. “What happened to the emergency power,” he asked. As if in response, the hall was flooded with dark crimson light. The dimness in the color gave everyone a post mortem complexion, an effect that David found especially disturbing under the circumstances. Dan tapped the pad next to the omnivator, to no effect, and gently hit his head against the doors.

David looked at Terry, who appeared to be on death’s door, and then at Tamsyn, who had separated herself from the group and was staring down the hallway with her arms folded across her chest. He walked towards her and carefully placed his hand on her shoulder. She turned her head towards him to signify that he had her attention, but seemed intent on not facing him. “With the power down… There’s no way to get him there on time,” he said.

“I know.”

Unsure that he was getting his point across, he continued. “There isn’t much time. He could die any second now.”

“I know,” she repeated. “I knew he was dead before we found him.” David’s jaw hung open as he tried to process what she had said. “Just a feeling,” she added as if trying to reassure him.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he lied. “Were you close?”

She finally turned and looked towards Terry’s limp body. David could just see the glimmer of her tear soaked eyes in the dim light. “We didn’t know each other that long. But, we were becoming good friends. I was supposed to meet his family during our next vacation.”

“I’m sure he could use some company. Before…”

“Right. No one should die alone,” she replied. For a moment her eyes seemed to gloss over, as though briefly lost in the memory. She returned to reality and looked David in the eye. “Thank you.”

David watched as she walked over to Terry, kneeling beside him and cradling his head in her arms. “What did you mean, I don’t want to know what you’re thinking,” Dan said quietly from beside him.

David pulled his eyes away from Tamsyn and Terry. “Every container that was still in the ship looked like it had those creatures and it. Thousands of containers were already unloaded. Meaning the station is probably overrun.”

Dan covered his eyes with his palm and squeezed. “That’s what Recluse was trying to tell us. I’m going to get in so much shit over this.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. This kind of thing has been happening for hundreds of years. The shipping industry is notorious for accidentally transplanting invasive species. You couldn’t have stopped it.”

Dan took a breath to steady himself. “Either way, we need to get the power back on so we can signal for help.”

“You think that’s possible? The only thing on the station they could’ve blown up like that is the antimatter generator. I don’t know about you, but I can’t repair one,” David quipped.

“Well, I’m open to suggestions.”

“We need to get off the station.”

“Brilliant. Too bad all the docking bays that have working ships are probably infested.”

“Except one,” Dalton interjected. He was leaning against the wall nearby and listening so silently and still that his sudden remark nearly stopped David’s heart. “Fourteen twenty-seven. The ship we impounded is in a vacuum sealed bay. Assuming that these things can’t survive space, it should be clear.”

David switched on his wrist comp and pulled up a holographic 3-D map of the station. “That’s nearly a three-day hike on foot,” Dan said, voicing David’s thoughts.

“Seems like our best bet. We can make it two if we cut across the core.” David added.

“How long will the emergency power hold out,” Maria chimed in.

“just over 3 days, I think,” Dan replied.

“And if we don’t make it out before then,” Dalton asked. “Just…worst case scenario.”

David sighed. “We freeze to death. Or suffocate. Even money.”

Dan’s eyes widened. “No. Worst case scenario is people start docking before we can get the station quarantined… We end up mummified corpses before then, so will those…things. That’s a better scenario than the January rush ending up on the menu.”

“Agreed. We need to get out and warn someone, now,” David said as he tried not to picture the carnage of thousands of unsuspecting travelers being mauled on arrival.

“Should we look for survivors on the way,” Dalton asked.

“There are none,” Tamsyn replied as she joined the group. Glancing over her shoulder, David could see that Terry had expired, and was now covered with the fire blanket. “At least not in the open.”

David looked at the faces of his fellow officers, and could see that they were equally disturbed by the certainty in her voice. Finally, Dan broke the silence. “She’s probably right. Most of the few people on the station aren’t armed, and those that managed to hide will take too long to find to risk it. We stay the course, and hope the survivors find us.” Everyone nodded in agreement. “We’ve got a long way to go, so let’s get started,” he added, and turned to walk away.

Everyone followed him with the exception of David, who was gesturing to Terry’s body. “Shouldn’t we put him somewhere, so they don’t…” David couldn’t bear to finish the question, but could tell the other officers knew what he meant by the shared look of guilt.

Tamsyn, however, had an expression of cold acceptance. “What’s the point,” she asked as she un-holstered her weapon and continued to walk away. “They could eat their way into any place we hide him.”

The other officers bowed their heads slightly then followed after her. David looked back at the covered corpse. “Sorry,” he said, and turned away for the last time. He looked done the hall where the rest of the team was headed. The emergency lighting was dim and only placed at 50 foot intervals; large stretches of darkness separated by feeble bands of red, stretching into the unseen distance. It gave the impression that his companions were walking into a black void. He took a deep breath, and willed himself forward.

“You think we can really make it for three days in here,” Maria asked, breaking the twelve hours of near total silence.

“We’ve made it this far,” David replied. The journey thus far had been uneventful by comparison to the fight for their life in the loading bay. They hadn’t encountered any of the creatures since then, but had seen plenty of their handy work. Doors ripped to shreds. Puddles of blood so wide that they had to scoot through to avoid slipping. The slugs were usually, and in a morbid way thankfully, very thorough with their victims. Unfortunately, there were times when David spotted recognizable human remains. An arm or a leg, or just enough of a head to be recognized. Until the latter, David believed he was the only one spotting them. But Maria nearly screamed at the partial face that stared at them from the floor. The scream was muffled by her own vomit.

The lack of encounters with the creatures should have been putting their minds at ease, but every passing moment without a chance to face the threat was making their anxiety worse. Between the long walk, jumping at every sound that could be their telltale click, carefully passing every door and corner, and just being on high alert for so long, all of it was exhausting. The fatigue had dulled their reflexes, but the lizard part of their brains wouldn’t let them relax. Every moment that their bodies involuntarily let their guard down, the animal in them slapped them awake. For David it felt a lot like waking from a dream about falling, repeatedly.

The team stopped simultaneously as they approached the wide open hatch ahead. Dan waited a moment before clearing his throat. He was clearly preparing himself to sound less scared than the rest of them were. “Alright. We walk through, slowly, and make our way up to the security office to resupply and get some rest,” he said, never taking his eyes off the room ahead. The team nodded in agreement, but no one moved.

Through the hatch was the food court, and the security office was on the far side. Unfortunately, walking through it would be the most dangerous task they had faced so far. Not only did the wide open space remove the advantage of only having to defend in two directions, but the emergency lighting in the cavernous ceiling was significantly less efficient, and a thick fog had filled the room due to the changing temperatures and lack of air filtration. Visibility was only a few feet, and shining his light into the room only illuminated the fog.

David’s brain was on fire. He didn’t know if it was just his exhaustion, or his imagination using the recent trauma as nightmare fuel, but he could swear the fog was moving…no, slithering. With that thought the fog became a writhing mass of the slugs. Their slimy bits of skin slithering past each other. In his mind he saw himself wading into the mess, slipping through the mucus only to be devoured once he was in too deep to escape. He shook his head and it was fog again. Nothing more. Just the cooling air of the station…passing over the still warm blood of the unfortunate souls who had encountered the alien bugs; the moisture there being sucked into the station’s atmosphere, overwhelming the atmoscrubbers. He closed his mouth to inhibit any potential for vomiting. The thought was disturbing, but it was less paralyzing than the first.

Tamsyn, who looked as apprehensive as the rest of them, let out a long sigh as if exhaling her fear. “Let’s get this over with,” she said as she continued forward. David glanced at Dalton, who looked back at him with an expression that David assumed the mirrored his own. They both knew that they had to summon the same courage that she had, but were equally unsure that they ever could.

The team surged forward in spite of themselves, carefully watching both their footing and their perimeter. As they reached the center of the Food Court, David found himself momentarily distracted by Tamsyn. She moved fluidly and with more assurance, almost as if she could see with more clarity than the rest of them. Though, by the look on her face and her nearly closed eyes, David got the impression that she wasn’t using her gun’s holographic sights at all.

David gasped sharply and hoped the consequences of his distraction would not be fatal. The tip of his boot had caught the leg of a chair that hadn’t been pushed all the way against its table. The grinding of the wooden leg as it was dragged sideways, and the clatter as it slammed onto its side, echoed mercilessly throughout the room.

When the echo dissipated, he released his breath in a heavy sigh and glanced at the rest of the team in time to see them flash dirty looks in his direction. There was only a brief moment of silence before they heard the nerve-racking chorus of clicking. The acoustics of the room made it impossible to tell how many there were and in what direction.

Instinct and training drew the team into a tight circle facing outward into the pending onslaught. As minutes seemed to stretch into hours, their unused adrenaline increased their heartrates and brought their breath to sharp panting. Tamsyn’s eyes were open again, scanning the room with her holographic sights for heat signatures or any other sign of life in the darkness, finding nothing. David’s arms gave into fatigue, and he let his rifle fall into its sling. “Maybe they can’t see us either.”

He heard the rush of air, and a tapping noise on the food court floor from his right side. His adrenaline soacked mind quickly evaluated his chance of reacting in time to be zero. Instead of raising his rifle, his reflexive reaction was to flinch. Expecting to feel the brief pain of razor-sharp teeth penetrating his skin, he opened his eyes when the noises continued: a wet thud and the unmistakable sound of a blade piercing flesh, followed by a guttural scream that was so inhuman it could only have come from the slug.

Turning towards the sounds, David saw a dark shadow kneeling over a slug’s corpse. The figure stood and slowly entered the effective range of the team’s lights. She was a curvy but muscular woman with rounded facial features and bob cut hair. She pushed her goggles to her forehead and her crystal like blue eyes caught his. She gave him a devious smile. “Pretty sure they don’t have eyes. You shouldn’t let your guard down so easily,” she said as she absentmindedly wiped the creature’s blood from her six inch serrated blade onto her pant leg. Her outfit was an aged set of black military fatigues, but no official insignia remained. The BDU jacket was unbuttoned at the top, and clearly hadn’t seen a pressing machine in some time.

“Thank you,” David said, trying to hide the embarrassment from his voice. The sound of footsteps brought their attention to a dark corner of the food court. Out of the darkness, a bulky giant of a man with a bushy goatee marched toward the team with an ear to ear grin.

“Sorry if we startled you, folks,” he said as he stopped in front of Dan. “My name is Sam Whitfield. Captain of the Azorian. And this is my first mate Mandy Butcher. “ He held his hand out and David could see Dan quietly sizing them up. The worn-in leather bomber jacket, the dirty work pants all free of company logos, made it clear they weren’t part of any corporate outfit.

Independent commercial crews made most customs officers nervous, as there were very few that didn’t at least occasionally dabble in smuggling or piracy, and usually had rap sheets as long as their arms. Dan must’ve spotted the faded tattoo on Sam’s right hand at the same time David did, because he smiled and took the offered handshake.

The tattoo was a skull in a hard hat floating above two crossed shovels, the mark of the largest and the first scavengers union.

“You’re a scav,” David said when he saw it. “We don’t see many of you around here.”

Scavengers were the modern equivalent of what once were derogatorily referred to as dumpster divers. In spite of humanity’s best efforts, waste was still a serious issue, especially in space. Scavengers were saviors in that respect, doing the dirty and dangerous work of collecting, recycling, and salvaging what others leave behind.

Scavengers also garnered great respect for their independence, intelligence and bravery. Even with organizations like the scavengers unions, large corporations had tried to illegally edge in on their claims, and the scavengers have valiantly defended their territory, bringing their small cargo ships head-to-head with corporate cruisers. The worst crime most scavengers were ever accused of were drummed up charges of navigation hazards from those very encounters. The unions existed primarily to protect them from being railroaded in court.

Sam pulled a heavy looking electronic device from his jacket and waved it at David. “Harmonic stabilizer was going bad. A friend of mine sells engine parts here.”

“And I picked these up on impulse while I was waiting,” Mandy said pointing to the precision thermal imaging goggles on her forehead. “Lucky for you.”

David looked around in confusion. “Where is your friend now?”

“Which half,” Mandy remarked as she sheathed her knife.

Sam shook his head as if trying to dislodge any further thoughts of his deceased friend. “We’re really glad we ran into you. Looks like these things killed almost everyone and we want to undock before they get us too.”

“How close is your ship,” Dan asked.

“In this section. Dock twenty,” Sam replied. “I’d be happy to give you folks a ride.”

Dan looked at David as if conferring with him telepathically. David shrugged. “Sounds better than walking across the station for two more days.”

“What if the slugs are already there,” Maria asked, her voice trembling slightly.

David looked at her with concern, not for the scenario she mentioned, but for the growing evidence that this day was putting more strain on her than she could handle. “Then we only wasted twenty minutes at most,” he replied with a smile, trying to calm her down. David tossed his sidearm to Sam, and Dan handed his rifle over to Mandy. “You have a lot better chance of surviving with guns than knives and your bare hands.”

“We need to get moving,” Dan said with as much resolve as he could muster. “Let’s see if we can find some water in one of these vendors booths and then head out.”

After a short break and rehydration, the team made their way towards dock 20, which was nearly a straight shot from the food court. Dan and Sam took point, and were idly chatting about Sam’s adventures as a scav. Mandy and Dalton were directly behind them and paying slightly more attention to the path, but were still noticeably laid-back. Their nonchalant posture brought into stark contrast the tense and paranoid behavior being exhibited by Maria, who was walking alone behind them.

David, who was bringing up the rear with Tamsyn, was watching Maria with growing concern. “Is she always like this,” Tamsyn asked, speaking just low enough to not be heard by anyone but David.

The question was simple, and her tone wasn’t one of accusation, but David felt obligated to jump to her defense. “No, not at all. But, this isn’t exactly a normal day for any of us. I’m sure all of us are learning new things about ourselves.”

Tamsyn stared at him for a moment, trying to choose her words more carefully. “I’m just worried about what happens if we get attacked again, and she freezes up.”

David thought about this for a moment. His primary concern had been that she would get herself killed if she couldn’t handle the pressure, but Tamsyn was clearly concerned about what it could mean for the rest of the group. “Don’t sell her short. Remember, she managed to hold it together in the loading bay for herself and your injured officer. Besides, in a few minutes we’ll be home… free.”

David stopped in his tracks as the putrid aroma assaulted him. The rest of the team noticed it too, and the idle chatter and jovial mood gave way to silence and dread. The metallic tang in the air could almost be tasted, and even for those who had never experienced it, something in their primal nature defined it for them. The smell of danger; copious amounts of human blood.

A wave of realization washed over the group, and when it reached Sam and Mandy, it sent them into a breakneck run for the Dock 20 hatch, 30 feet ahead. The rest of the group followed but were unable to match the pace of the scavs, who were panicked about the fate of their shipmates.

David nearly landed on his back when he crossed the threshold, and slipped in a large puddle of fluid on the floor. He lifted himself from the floor and saw that his hand looked as if it had been dunked in a can of red paint.

When he recovered and caught up with the group, he found them standing motionless and staring in disbelief at Sam’s ship. The hulking private cargo hauler, a Tanis model 45, was lying on its side, the landing struts sheared clean off. Whatever had held the ships ion thrusters on were also missing, and the viewports were hollow holes, picked clean of whatever transparent metal had one separated the interior of the ship from the vacuum of space.

The sight of the Azorian sent a chill down David’s spine. A ship is built with its final form in mind, so in spite of its inanimate state, a ship with missing pieces looked incomplete even to someone who had never seen it hole. The low lighting of the dock and the darkness seen through its missing two main viewports completed the ghastly image of a dead animal, its bones picked clean by buzzards. He imagined he could still see the slugs slithering in and out of its skeletal remains like the worms that would some day do the same to him, assuming he ever made it off the station alive.

The personnel ramp was open and what was left of the hydraulics was splattered with blood, as was most of the loading bay floor within 30 feet of the totaled vessel. From Sam’s profile, David could see his face contorting under the strain of pain and loss. The power of his colossal figure seemed to drain away as he processed the loss of his shipmates, and the ship that he surely worked hard to earn and keep. “How many,” David asked.

There was a long pause as Sam tried to regain his composure. “Fifteen. Close friends, all.”

There was another long pause before Dalton broke the silence. “I don’t get it.” Everyone stared at him, waiting for him to elaborate. “I mean, I understand eating their way out of the shipping containers, but why eat parts of the ship?”

“There must be something in the metal they need,” Dan said after pondering the question for a moment.

“If they eat metal, what the hell are they attacking us for,” Dalton shot back.

David looked at his bloodstained hand, which was turning to a dark shade of copper. “What kind of metal were those parts made of? The ones that were eaten from your ship,” David asked as a sudden realization came over him.

“Steel, and of course transparent steel. The rest of the ship is grade thirty-seven titanium,” Mandy replied. David stared at her, slack-jawed at the surprisingly specific answer. “I’m the mechanic,” she explained.

David nodded his head in understanding, then looked back at his hand. “It has to be the iron. It’s used in steel, the fomalanium in those shipping containers…” David raised his hand for the rest of them to see. “And it’s in our blood.”

“That makes us an easy meal by comparison,” Mandy added.

Maria visibly shivered, and looked like she was going to be ill. “So, what do we do now?”

“Back to plan A, I guess,” David replied.

Dan sighed. “Assuming section 14 is still there.”

David raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t it?”

“The antimatter generators are lined in fomalanium too. So you were probably right about that explosion.”

David’s stomach dropped as he realized that section of the station could be nothing but a crater. He shook his head as he tried to banish the image. “There’s also five smaller generators. It could be any of them. I think if the main generator went up, none of us would be here to talk about it.”

“That means there’s a four in five chance we still have somewhere to go. I’ll take those odds,” Mandy said.

Dan stared at the blood on the floor, and his eyes seem to gloss over. “Yeah,” he said after a long pause. “Guess we won’t know till we get there.”

Suddenly, it wasn’t Maria that David was most worried about. Dan’s tone and posture had drastically shifted, giving the impression that he no longer cared about making it out. It didn’t seem like he was crushed by defeat, but had simply accepted that the odds of survival were negligible.

Determined to keep him from dragging everyone down with him, David took charge. “Alright. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us. Let’s get back to the office and rest up. “

The team followed his lead and headed for the door. Mandy turned back when she noticed the absence of Sam’s heavy steps behind her. Sam was staring intently at the harmonic stabilizer they had come to Akers Station to purchase.

“Sam, are you coming,” she asked. He let out a primal scream that stopped everyone in their tracks, and hurled the device at the now derelict ship.

It arced through the air and flew into one of the empty viewports, clattering as it bounced down a corridor within the ship. When the echo died down and Sam caught his breath, he turned to join the group, but had only made it two steps before the painfully familiar clicking sound of the slugs filled the loading bay with an intensity they hadn’t heard before. Like a disturbed anthill, the slugs swarmed out of every opening on the ship in seemingly endless numbers.

“Get to cover!” David shouted as he ran for a row of crates nearby. He leapt through the air and rolled over the crates till he was on the other side. Doing his best to shoot every slug in sight until the group joined him, he was too late to hit the two that launched after Tamsyn at the same time. Fortunately, their timing caused them to collide in midair and careen off course. One grazed the right side of Tamsyn’s rib cage before David fired straight into its gaping maw.

She stumbled from the injury and her jump was underpowered, leaving her sprawled on top of the crates. With his free hand, David grabbed her by her jacket and dragged her to the other side. She nodded at him and grimaced as she lifted herself up to join the firing line.

“We’ll never make it to the hatch and hold these things off at the same time,” David shouted over the din. He hoped his words would prove pessimistic, but that hope died as he watched the swarm that was still pouring from the tilted ship. In the dim lighting he could barely make out their individual forms, but the mass of slugs around the ship gave the impression that the floor had liquefied. He expected the Azorian to sink at any moment. More realistically, the ship could easily be floated away on the swarm.

“Head for the door, one at a time, and I’ll lay down cover fire from here,” Dan said with a new found determination in his voice.

“I’ll go first,” Tamsyn replied. She leapt to her feet and charged to cross the cargo bay, holding her wound with her free hand and firing with incredible accuracy as she ran. She was followed by Mandy, then Sam, Dalton, and Maria.

As David pivoted himself in preparation to run, Dan grabbed his shoulder. “David, wait. When you reach the hatch, I need you to seal it.”

David looked at him with confusion, but returned his focus to the slugs immediately. “What about you?”

“These things will follow us and you know it. I think I have an idea to get rid of these ones in a few shots. But, I need that hatch sealed.”

David saw him glance at the containment field over the still open bay doors. “You’re out of your fucking mind! You’ll never survive that!”

“Don’t intend to. Even if the ship is still there, where would I go? Home?”

David looked to the hatch, then back to his friend in hesitation.

“This is your last order, then you’re in charge. Get out of here and keep them alive. Even if it’s only for a couple days. Now move!”

David hesitated for a moment longer, but realized he would never be able to change Dan’s mind. He never did get to ask why Dan chose his remote outpost, but whatever his reason, David knew this noble end was what Dan was always waiting for. “It was an honor, Dan.”

David stood and ran for the door. Crossing the threshold, he swung the emergency hatch closed.

“What about Dan?!” Maria shouted.

After sealing the hatch, David collapsed with his back against the door. “He’s not coming,” David replied. There are three more shots from Dan’s pistol, then a small explosion followed by the roar of air escaping through the bay doors, no longer restricted by the containment field. What followed was complete and violently sudden silence. The only sound David could still hear was his own breathing.

He closed his eyes and hoped that when he opened them he would wake in his own quarters, that terrible day being nothing but a nightmare. Instead, he saw the terrified faces of the people whose lives were now in his charge.