Escape 1: Escape From Aliens (5 page)

“Is the Weapons Chamber accessible to us?” Bill asked as he noted it lay between them and the oncoming crewmen.

A long hum sounded. “No. That chamber is accessible only to ship crew as identified by Crèche Master Diligent Taskmaster.”

Jane gestured to Bill she had questions. “Ship mind, in the case of conflicting commands from the crew or other bioforms like us, to whom do you give priority obedience?”

“To Crèche Master Diligent Taskmaster,” it said after a short hum.

“The Transport Exit Chamber,” Jane said hurriedly. “Does it contain a small craft able to travel through vacuum and back to the planet you just left?”

“That chamber contains three such craft,” the ship mind said. “However, this ship currently resides in what your world calls an Alcubierre space-time modulus. It is how this ship travels from one star to another. Exiting this ship is not permitted while the ship travels in Alcubierre space-time.”

Jane looked to him, her expression worried. “What next?”

Confrontation with the three approaching crewmembers was what lay ahead. Could they reach the crew before the crew reached the Weapons Chamber in the middle of the hallway? “Ship mind, can you alter the gravity field of any chamber or hallway within this ship?”

“I can,” it said with a low hum.

“Good. Show on this holo a route from our present location to the location of Crèche Master Diligent Taskmaster.”

“Illustrating,” it said.

The giant teardrop of the ship now showed a green line running from them to the nearby cross hallway, along it, then up the adjacent hallway to the Command Bridge Chamber at the front of the ship. The green line ran through the three moving red dots of the crewmen. “Good. Show the spaces where the access hallway is blocked by a pressure wall and hatch.”

“Showing,” it said, the hum very brief. “All such pressure walls and hatches are presently open to travel by crewmembers and other sapient bioforms. As required by Protocol Seven, Emergency Operations of the Ship. They will close only upon loss of vessel integrity. Further inquiries?”

“Yes!” Jane said hurriedly. “Show us the images of all crew and Diligent Taskmaster. Display in holo form adjacent to—”

“Discontinue compliance with bioform request!” a harsh voice interrupted. “End holo display now! And stop talking to these bioforms! Command Sequence Larva Four Red.”

“Holo discontinued.” The ship holo vanished. “However, Protocol Seven, Emergency Operations of the Ship requires that I respond to any bioform who wears a vacuum suit.”

Was that who he thought it was? “Diligent, I’m coming to capture you!”

Low rasping sounded. “Human captive Bill MacCarthy, your escape from your containment module must be reversed! Return to your module. As must your female companion. Otherwise, my crew will render the two of you unable to function!”

He gave the finger to the hallway’s ceiling. “Nope. We’re coming for you.” Bill took off running. Which felt easy in the lower gravity. He looked to Jane, then finger-talked. “
Follow the green track route. Down that side hallway. You got any kind of weapon with you?
”

“
None
,” she gestured back to him as she fell in beside him, matching his running speed. “
But I’ve trained in zero gee, if that matters. On the Vomit Comet. And I can shoot decently.
”

He gestured back. “
It matters. We move as fast as we can along that green route. I want to meet the three crew before they reach the Weapons Chamber. When we get close, be ready to jump away from me and then toss your pack and canteen at two of the Aliens!
”

Jane nodded, picking up her running pace as Bill sped up to full bore down the side hallway. In less than a minute he turned left into the other main hallway that led to the Weapons Chamber. “
Sounds good,
” she said. “
Hope you know how to use that white tube thingie
.”

“
I do
.” Bill had noticed how the grizzly bear crewman fired the tube even as he flew through the air to the creature’s back. “
And
I’m better than a good shot
.”

“
Good. Three with tubes versus us with one tube are not the odds I like,
” Jane signed.

Bill signed back. “
But they all may not have taser beam tubes.
”

She nodded as she kept pace with his running. “
Which is why we need to intercept them before they reach the Weapons Chamber?
”

“
Exactly!
”

CHAPTER FOUR

Bill and Jane reached the hallway section that contained the door to the Weapons Chamber just as the three crew Aliens came through the pressure wall hatch door fifty feet ahead of them. Shock filled him as he took in the distant shapes of the three Aliens.

Something that resembled a giant praying mantis held a white tube in its upper arm pair. In the middle lumbered a six-legged, sausage something that had armor plate-like skin, a blocky head and neck tentacles that waved wildly. To its right stalked something that looked like a two-legged vulture with black wings, a pair of chest-arms, a yellow beak and two red eyes. Those eyes locked onto him just as fast as he had fixed on the vulture. Which suggested the bird-like Alien might be the fastest moving actor of the three now approaching. The green-skinned praying mantis turned its triangular head and fixed two black eyes on him. It lifted the white tube, aiming it their way.

“Ship mind!” he yelled. “Kill all gravity in this hallway section!”

Bill ran left toward the hallway wall while Jane did the same to the right side of the hallway.

A red taser beam shot down the middle of their hallway, missing them both.

Gravity vanished.

Bill kicked the side wall lightly to move him upward and back toward the center of the hallway. Aiming his own white tube at the praying mantis, who now tumbled end over end with the loss of gravity, he fired.

The red taser beam hit the mantis’ thorax. It went into spastic convulsions, with the white tube flying loose from the clasp of its two thorny griparms.

The six-legged sausage Alien seemed to understand what had happened. Although its running momentum now propelled it toward him and Jane, it was stretching out its body in the hope of contacting a hallway surface so it could do a ricochet movement similar to what Bill had done.

Jane threw her backpack at the sausage Alien and her canteen at the vulture Alien. Which action sent her tumbling backward in mid-air.

“Bombs!” he yelled over the helmet comlink, betting the Alien crew would hear the translated version of his words. “Watch out! If they contact you they will explode!”

The sausage Alien twisted in mid-air, its body clawing frantically for a hallway surface.

The vulture Alien flapped its black wings, dived to one side to avoid the canteen, then fast-flapped toward the tumbling white tube. Clearly it aimed to grab the weapon and zap him.

Bill took aim as he rose toward the hallway ceiling, calculating the angle to hit the black-feathered midbody of the vulture Alien.

Several things happened at the same time.

Jane’s backpack hit the sausage critter in its belly, which caused the Alien to kick it away with two of its hippo-like legs. That sent it tumbling toward the side of the hallway.

His red taser beam missed the vulture Alien as its wings moved it up and away from its effort to grab the floating white tube weapon.

Bill pulled in his legs to make his body rotate in mid-air, which caused his feet to be the first to contact the hallway ceiling. He kicked lightly. Then, upside down and facing the oncoming forms of the sausage and vulture Aliens, he allowed for motion drift, took aim and fired again.

“
Yawk
!” cried the vulture as the beam hit its mid-body.

“Nooo!” Jack heard over his suit comlink.

Jane signed to him. “
Should I grab the six-legged thing?
”

“
No
,” he gestured back to her even as his upside down position made him feel weird. And worried as the floor grew closer. “
I want it knocked out like the other two!
”
Bill aimed, allowed for free-fall motion drift and fired.

The red taser beam shot out and impacted on the belly of the slowly tumbling sausage Alien.

Like the mantis and vulture critters it too went into full-body convulsions.

“Ship mind,” he yelled, “restore hallway gravity to one-half of prior level.”

His headlong fall to the floor sped up.

Twisting into a ball with the tube weapon tight against his belly, Bill hit the floor with his left shoulder and rolled. The impact at a few miles per hour was barely noticeable. His low altitude chute drop training at Tactical Air Operations worked nicely inside a spaceship!

“Nicely done,” Jane said as she landed on her feet, went to a low crouch, then ran toward the white tube weapon that had fallen between them and the three convulsing Alien crew persons.

Bill jumped up, ran to the spasming mantis Alien and wrapped his leather belt around its two griparms. With a tight pull on the end he cinched it, pulled the end through a knot, and stood up, ready for another Alien attack.

“Thanks,” he said, breathing a bit fast. “My BUD/S class did the usual free fall chute drops at San Diego. Came in handy today.”

“Quite,” Jane said, a quick smile showing before she moved to the right side of the hallway, the mantis Alien’s white tube cradled in her arms. “Got you covered up and down the hallway. What now?”

Bill looked to his left and back. An eight foot tall oval door outline showed in the left side wall of the hallway. “The Weapons Chamber is behind that door. I want something stronger than these taser tubes! Can you drag that vulture Alien over here? Maybe it has an unlocking device on it. Or maybe the door will open to its hand contact. What do you think?”

Jane moved the white tube to her left hand, bent down, and grabbed one of the chest arms of the vulture critter. “I think anything is possible, including voice activation of the door by a crewmember. In which case we are out of luck. But it’s worth a try.”

In seconds she dragged the vulture Alien, who seemed to weigh much less than he or Jane, over to the door. Of course the hallway was now down to one-fourth of Earth’s gravity, which might explain the ease of her carry of the Alien. With a glance back the way they had come, then toward the hatchway by which the crew critters had entered, Bill satisfied himself that Diligent Taskmaster was not coming to rescue his crew. A matter he had worried about, given the laser-like nature of the red beams. The taser shot of his that missed had traveled down the hallway, through the hatchway and far down the hall until his free-fall movement cut off his view of the beam shot. He really didn’t want to be hit by a red beam fired from a thousand feet away. Shifting his shoulders to make his backpack settle on his back, he bent down, grabbed the right chest-arm of the vulture Alien, saw it had three talon-fingers and a talon-thumb, and pressed the black-skinned hand against the door.

“Whoosh!”

The door slid to one side faster than he could follow. Beyond lay a chamber as big as the module chamber. Five bright red spots shone from its ceiling. Ten low walls stretched before him and Jane, receding into the chamber’s distant back space. On top of each slab wall was a series of round basins. Inside the basins lay objects of different shapes. Bill saw three white tube taser beam weapons. Beyond them lay several red tubes. Only the red tube had a flat box below one end and a second flat box under its middle. Beyond the two tube weapons, sitting in larger basins, were black boxes with a dome on top of them. Lettering covered one side. The golden letters had weird shapes, like the pictographs he’d seen while studying Mandarin Chinese. The same grouping of three weapons types were arranged on the top of adjacent walls. Beyond them, to the right and left, dumpster-like boxes with slanted lids were lined up against either wall. Jane walked over to one, lifted its lid and looked inside.

“Shit. More weird stuff.” She looked back to him and signed. “
Golden globes, yellow globes, white globes and blocks that resemble bars of gold are inside. The upper rim of the box has three red lines painted into the metal. Maybe a warning?
”

“
Could be explosives. Or something worse,
” he signed back to her. “
Let’s each grab two of the red tube weapons, a white tube and two of the black box and dome thingies. Make room in our backpacks for them. We can figure them out later.
”

Jane nodded and lowered the slanting lid of the weapons dumpster. She headed over to the low wall where he was grabbing two red tubes and a white tube weapon. “What do we do with the three knocked out crewmen?” she said aloud, not bothering to sign.

Bill figured that was an obvious problem for him and for Diligent. Talking about it aloud made sense. Especially if they could use the captured crewmen as a tool against Diligent. “We head back outside. We strip them of any devices like my red cube. Then we haul them back to the containment module chamber. There are three empty cells. Yours and the two at the end of the rows. We put one in each cell and then tell ship mind to suck out the air. Making it a vacuum in the cell chamber ought to slow down Diligent if he tries to rescue them.”

Jane nodded abruptly, her expression thoughtful as she stuffed two red tubes, a second white tube and two of the black box/dome things into her backpack. “Good idea. How about we find out the function of these weapons we’ve just grabbed?”

Oh, yeah
. “Sure. The computer did do what I asked when it cut local gravity. And this emergency protocol thing means it has to talk to us when we call to it.” Bill paused, motioning to Jane to stay inside the Weapons Chamber. “Ship mind, please describe the function of the three weapons sitting atop the low wall next to me.”

A low hum sounded briefly. “The white tube weapon shoots an electrified beam of red light. The red tube weapon shoots a green high energy laser beam suitable for cutting through metal in the case of a space emergency. The black square and dome weapon is a magfield disruptor suitable for disabling the magnetic controls of a transport ship, a local gravity generator or similar devices that rely on the interaction of electromagnetic fields.”

Perfect!
“What about the balls of various colors that lie in the boxes alongside each wall? What are their function?”

“Explosive disintegration of any material device, structure or ship is their function,” the computer voice said after a brief pause.

Jane gestured to him that she wished to ask a question. “Ship mind, how are the explosive balls activated? We wish to avoid accidental activation.”

“That is desirable,” the ship mind said quickly. “Each explosive ball is activated by pressing on four spots in the proper sequence. It will then explode within . . . within ten of your Earth minutes. Or less if programmed differently.”

“Good,” Jane said. “We will not touch any of those balls.”

“Ship mind,” Bill said, unable to resist the open access to the device that ran the ship. “How many globes would it take to destroy a spaceship similar to this ship?”

A low hum came. “Four such globes placed in the Engine, Command, Recycling and Transport chambers would suffice to cause massive loss of structural integrity of a ship similar to the one in which you now travel.”

“Thank you for that warning!” Jane said quickly, her look worried. “Neither myself nor the bioform you know as Bill MacCarthy wish to cause any damage to this ship. We will leave the globe devices untouched.”

“That is desirable,” the ship computer said. “My emergency programming includes self-defense options in case ship structural integrity is threatened.”

Bill swallowed hard. He had enjoyed chatting with the ship computer. Apparently it took a direct command from Diligent to make it stop doing something. And it would always respond to them while they wore spacesuits. But now he realized it was far more than a simple information source or ship operation center. “Ship mind, we strongly wish to maintain this ship’s structural integrity. However, we have important information to share in person with Crèche Master Diligent Taskmaster. Will you allow us access to the Command Bridge Chamber?”

“Yes,” it said, followed by a low hum. “Unless I receive a Command Sequence that denies such access.”

Bill had expected that. He gestured to Jane. “Let’s get out of here. We need to move these crew to the containment cells before they wake up. Think you can handle the vulture and the mantis?”

Jane gave a glance around the red-lighted room, then followed him out into the hallway. Behind them the gray metal door whooshed shut. “I can. Especially since we are still in one-fourth gee. If we tell ship mind to cut all gravity in the hallway from here back to the containment chamber, we can move them without any strain.”

Bill looked around the hallway. Empty it was. “Nice idea. But zero gravity makes us into ping pong balls bouncing off the walls and floor.” He thought a moment. “Ship mind, please maintain local gravity at one-half of what is crew normal gravity. Make the same gravity adjustment as we move through a hatchway into another hallway section.”

“Complying, bioform Bill MacCarthy,” it said. “Gravity adjustments will happen as you and bioform Jane Yamaguchi progress down the hallway.”

“It knows my name!” Jane said, looking both pleased and thoughtful.

“It does,” Bill said, walking over to grab the slightly spasming carcass of the six-legged sausage Alien. Reaching down he grabbed a foreleg, lifted, and headed back the way they’d come. “And it knows my name. Wonder if that means it has its own name.” He waited a moment. “Ship mind, do you apply a personal name to yourself?”