M'tak Ka'fek (The T'aafhal Inheritance) (19 page)

“We should conceal ourselves!” trilled Poonta-ta-ka, most junior of the three, nervously pulling his tail over his chest and forearms with six fingered hands, two opposable thumbs on either side of each. There scent glands embellished his fluffy tail with an odor that even a skunk would find disagreeable. Disputes among the Kieshnar-rak-kat-tra were often settled, not by the strength of one's arguments, but by the intensity of one's fragrance. 

“Silence! You sniveling poltroon.” Keneesh-ka-ka-kar gave his tail's scent a quick bolstering by passing it over his chest glands, first the right side and then the left. He then arched his fluffed out tail over his head like a menacing cobra, about to strike. “With change comes danger, but also opportunity. We must observe these newcomers, and discover that which they most desire. Then we will be in a position to trade advantageously.” 

The stench of his argument was overwhelming, which was why he was known as the Trader, the leader of his kind on board the station. The timorous Poonta-ta-ka's tail slumped and he hung his head—he knew he had been out argued and out stunk. 

“Zooshnarak-kak-ka, send some of the junior traders to shadow the aliens, and tell them to keep their tails down and their eyes open.” 

“I will see to it, Trader,” Zooshnarak-kak-ka replied. “With any luck we will find a way to profit from these creatures' arrival.” 

Hallway, Alien Space Station

Sanchez did a drop and roll, ending up in a crouch with his railgun ready to blast whatever it was that had hit him with the mass of unidentified material. Other members of the recon team ducked through the hatch and into covering positions—Feldman to the left and JT to the right. Bear took a single bound up the middle, landing next to Sanchez. Then he unlimbered his 15mm multi-barreled railgun and stood up.

Bear was an impressive sight without a suit of space armor, standing over three meters tall and massing 600kg. In armor he topped four meters and massed a metric ton, a huge graphite colored monster toting a wicked looking multi-barreled cannon, anxiously scanning for something to kill. “You OK, Sanchez?”

“Yeah, LT. What ever that stuff is it ran right off my suit's shielding and onto the deck.”

“Did anyone see what did it?” asked JT.

“Up there, near all the pipes and panels hanging from the overhead,” answered Feldman, motioning with an upward jerk of his railgun's muzzle. “There are things moving around up there.”

Using their suits' built-in magnification the party searched the ceiling of the hallway, more than 100 meters overhead. As the creatures came into focus Bear commented first.

“Looks like a bunch of big fish hanging head down from the ceiling. Long, skinny suckers with big toothy grins.”

“Yeah they sort of look like barracuda.” Feldman had once been stationed at Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico and had seen barracuda swimming in the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean. Over external suit microphones the creatures could be heard calling out, a sound eerily like a murder of crows. 

“The thing that splattered me had wings,” groused Sanchez, “like a bat.” As they watched, one of the hanging creatures relinquished its grip on the ceiling and dropped straight down like a silver missile. After falling for twenty meters it unfolded large, leathery wings and with a few flaps headed directly for the party of Earthlings on the hallway floor. The team raised their weapons in unison. 

Evidently recognizing the weapons as a threat, the diving creature spread its wings and pulled out of its dive, affording the team a clear look at its physiology. The body was around two meters in length. From a snout that did look like the head of a barracuda to a flat horizontal tail, it was covered in iridescent silver scales the size of half dollars. Its wingspan was close to five meters, silvery membrane stretched over supporting fans of bone containing many more ribs than a bat's wings. 

“Get a sample of that stuff, Joey,” ordered JT, tracking the flying alien nervously. “See what it hit you with.”

“Right, not only do I get splattered with it, now I gotta' play around in it.” Sanchez muttered. He pulled out a probe that looked like a slender plastic straw and stuck the end of it into the sticky white substance. His suit's computer automatically sent the sensor information to the ship's AI for analysis. 

“So what is that stuff, M'tak?” asked Bear.

“It is a mixture of a number of organic compounds. Viscous and rather caustic,” the emotionless voice of the computer reported. “I would surmise that it is excrement from one of the flying creatures.” 

This caused Bear to snort and JT to say “Joey, you are beshat.”

“It's shit?” asked Sanchez, disbelief mixing with outrage. “That batacuda asshole shit on me?” He straightened up and shook his fist at the creatures congregating on the ceiling. “Try that again,
culo
!” 

This led to an increase in wing flapping and even louder cawing from the creatures overhead.

“I think they're laughing at you, Joey,” said Feldman, standing up slowly.

“I'm gonna' pop one of the bastards,” Sanchez snarled, putting his railgun to his shoulder.

“Belay that, Joey,” JT quickly ordered. “Wouldn't it be a bitch if you shot one of those things and it turned out to be the Station Master's kid and his buddies out harassing tourists for a few laughs?”

“Oh man, Lieutenant. What's the use of having all these cool weapons if we never get to shoot nothing?”

“Hang in there, Sanchez. This hunt is just getting under way,” Bear rumbled. “Which way you want to head, JT, left or right?”

“Let's head left, up the hallway in the direction of the antimatter collector.”

Bear nodded.

“M'tak, Bear. We are going to head toward the AM collector.”

“Roger that, Lieutenant,” the Captain's voice replied. “Remember that you are trying to make contact, not take over the station. Continued restraint is called for.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Bear acknowledged. “OK, left it is. Pop a couple of small recon drones. Feldman, you take point this time and give the whiner a break.”

“Aye, Sir.”

In the distance, creaking noises and a hollow booming sound echoed down the cavernous hallway. On the ceiling, the batacudas cackled, and from the shadows, two pairs of melon sized red-orange eyes watched the team move out.

Chapter 11

Hallway, Alien Space Station

The hallway was cluttered with mounds of junk, some fallen from the walls and ceiling high overhead, some showed signs of having been put there purposefully. Noxious emanations rose from putrefying organic waste partially covered with fuzzy coats of fungus and mats of bacteria. Had the Peggy Sue's science team been present they would have had a field day. 

As it was, the recon patrol moved in biologic isolation inside their space armor. The four Earthlings advanced cautiously through the garbage and gloom. Feldman, on point, came to the end of a particularly large pile of trash that started at the far wall and formed a barrier across two thirds the width of the hallway.

Peeking around the tip of the garbage peninsula Jon held up his left hand in a fist—a signal to those behind to stop in place. Overhead, the pair of grapefruit sized reconnaissance drones weaved random paths while beaming back video of the terrain ahead. 

“Looks clear,” he said after a few moments of motionless observation. “Whoever the inhabitants of this place are, I am underwhelmed by their housekeeping skills.”

“Stay alert, these piles of debris make a perfect setting for an ambush,” JT warned.

“This is like working through the back alleys of an Afghan village,” Joey chimed in from the rear. “At least those flying crap factories didn't follow us.”

“Hey, that's why we bring you along, Sanchez,” Bear rumbled. “You are a natural shit magnet.” 

The foursome was strung out in a line across the open section of deck beyond the large ridge of garbage. They cautiously advanced toward what looked like a bulkhead a hundred or so meters in the distance. Feldman froze in place.

“I got movement ahead.”

The others moved laterally to clear their fields of fire. Caught in the open they crouched down close to the deck to reduce their profiles.

“Can you make out what it is, Jon?”

“Just that it's large and low and moving slowly on a diagonal path toward the far wall.” Jon took a couple of sliding steps to his left, farther from the object's path.

The creature in question emerged into a puddle of illumination from a still functioning light panel. Dark red in color, it moved at walking speed, making way for the far wall. It was, indeed, low to the deck. In fact, it was oozing along the deck surface much like a snail, leaving a noticeably wet trail behind it. There the similarity to a snail ended.

There was no shell upon its back, no discernible head with eyes on stalks. Its body looked like a flowing mass of putty, mounding to a height of a meter and a half at its forward end. The creature's body seemed to flow from back to front, up over the forward facing mound, and down the creature's front to form a thin, stationary cushion on the deck. The material at the back end of the cushion curled up off the deck once the bulk of the creature past, flowing upward to begin another transit to the front.

“Man, it looks like Meatwad,” Jon exclaimed.

“What?” asked Bear.

“You know, Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”

“Huh?”

“It's a cartoon, Bear,” JT filled in. “Meatwad was a sort of rolling blob of raw ground meat.”

As the moving red mass drew closer they could see that this Meatwad was not made up of ground meat. More like raggedly chopped hunks, interspersed with jagged stick like objects that could have been bone fragments. Small pieces of equipment and other debris were also embedded in the flowing ooze. The whole mass was held together by a gelatinous red substance that glistened in the overhead light.

“I don't remember Meatwad looking like that, bro.”

“Me either Joey.”

The four Earthlings stood transfixed as the strange creature slid past, showing no sign of noticing their presence. After a few moments Bear broke the silence.

“I wonder what it tastes like?”

“Brother Bear, you just killed my appetite,” JT replied. “This place is like a galactic zoo. I wonder what we'll run into next?”

“If a giant milkshake with arms or a floating box of french fries with a goatee show up I'll know we've ended up on Adult Swim.”

“Those cartoons are going to rot your brain, bro.”

“Hey, I grew up watching those cartoons!”

“Enough chatter,” Bear grumbled, “lead off Feldman. Let's see what waits for us at that bulkhead.”

* * * * *

As the recon patrol approached the bulkhead they could see that it did form a barrier across the full width and height of the hallway. In the middle of the bulkhead at deck level there was an opening, a rectangle ten meters wide by four meters tall, with rounded corners. At the bottom there was a lip about a half meter in height.

“What do you think, JT?”

“I think we need to send a recon drone to see if something is waiting on the other side, ready to jump out and say 'boo!'”

“Right, Lieutenant,” said Jon, directing one of the drones through the opening in front of them. The video returned to the anxious explorers showed a scene much like the one around them.

“Curious how there isn't any junk or piles of garbage around either side of the doorway.” JT mused out loud.

“Maybe it's a high traffic area, like a game trail,” Bear suggested.

“I hope that doesn't make us game, LT.”

“Well, there's one way to find out if it's a trap and that's to step in it.”

“Right, JT. Feldman, in you go, we'll cover you.”

Jon acknowledged Bear's command and cautiously stepped over the threshold. The other side did look similar to the parts they had already traversed. There were large mounds of debris encroaching from either wall, though there was a noticeable absence of smaller piles of junk between them. The drone drifted toward the overhead, providing a wider view of the chamber.

“Nothing seems to be moving, LT.”

“OK, we're coming in.”

One by one the three remaining Earthlings followed Feldman into the chamber beyond the bulkhead. They left one of the drones to watch their rear, trusting those in the ship to have their back if things went sideways.

Bridge, M'tak Ka'fek

The Captain and bridge crew anxiously watched the recon patrol's progress on the ship's holographic displays—panoramic views from the recon drones on the navigation screens and shots from individual suit cams on the smaller instrument screens. Betty White, the medical corpsman, was monitoring the expedition members' vital signs via telemetry.

“So far so good,” Betty commented.

“Yes, no aliens have been slaughtered, no holes have been blown in the station and none of ours have been killed, maimed or wounded,” Jack replied, “but they haven't found anything to talk with yet.”

“Maybe the place is deserted, Captain,” Bobby suggested. “The station seems to be a wreck. The inhabitants might have left for greener pastures, leaving behind a few pets that have gone feral.”

“Sensor readings from the drones indicate that they are being shadowed by a number of creatures that remain concealed,” the ship's voice said. “Such behavior may indicate purpose and intelligence.”

“Or they may just be predators awaiting their chance.”

“True, Captain. But the chance that any unarmed creature can do significant harm to the crewmembers' armor is remote.”

“Captain,” Mizuki called from her station, “I have located neutrino emissions that indicate a store of antimatter. It is not a huge quantity, perhaps a couple of type 1 containers.”

“That's great, Mizuki. Where is it located?”

“Unfortunately, it is in the opposite direction from that which the reconnaissance party is traveling.”

“You're sure about this?”

“Yes, Captain. The readings are centered about four kilometers toward the central hub from the boarding ramp.”