Pilgrim (18 page)

“A few slugs aren’t going to scare me away
from a profit,” Aart said with a grin.

“In that case, I’m in,” said Orion.

“Alright, it’s settled,” said Aart, “let’s
get going.”

There wasn’t a real need to mourn for Freya,
let alone the time. The bounty hunter profession was nothing if not
unpredictable. The pool of hunters changed daily; it was a
high-risk profession. It’s a tough gig when you get hired
specifically because no one else can deal with a situation. To
Nova, all Freya’s death did was hammer home that she had to focus
unless she wanted to end up as a half-eaten pile of bones in the
middle of some ship.

Aart pressed the button next to the door.
The metal shook and emitted a grinding noise but it didn’t
move.

He pressed the button again. This time smoke
came out of the edges of the door, but it still didn’t open.

“Move aside,” Gus said, stepping forward. He
placed his hands around the bent corner of the door and with an
almighty heave he yanked the metal down. It bent a little and then
came to a grinding halt. Sweat sprung out on Gus’s forehead but he
couldn’t get the door open.

“Okay strongman, let me have a look,” Orion
said. He pulled a small disk, the size of his palm, from his belt
and attached it to the centre of the door. He turned the top
section three times to the right and back-stepped away from the
door. “I’d get back if I were you.”

The others followed his instructions and
moved as far away from the door as the small room would allow. Nova
put her arms over her head just as the door exploded. The tiny
device beeped once before it reduced the door to tiny pieces. The
localised explosion shook the room and the vibrations echoed around
the metal walls.

“Remind me to leave them a cheque,” Orion
said as he stepped over the broken pieces of the metal door and
into the hallway beyond.

All of the lights down the hallway were on
and they shone like tiny suns. The light was blue-tinged and cast a
glow over the metal panels of the ship.

Nova grimaced at the pile of flesh and bones
that lay just outside the door of the sleeping pod. Freya’s face
was entirely unrecognisable, probably because there wasn’t much of
it left. If Nova had thought there was any point she might have
gathered up Freya’s things but there really wasn’t. You didn’t
become a bounty hunter if you had people waiting for you to come
home.

“Come on,” Aart said, placing a hand on
Nova’s shoulder.

She shook it off and turned away from
Freya’s body, taking her place at the front of their small
group.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Screams echoed from far away but by the time
they reached Nova’s ears, they were barely a whisper. The only real
sounds in the colony ship were the footsteps of her companions and
their measured breaths.

As she walked, she wrestled with the desire
to just take the warp converter and leave. It was the safest thing
she could do, with minimal risk of being eaten alive. The bigger
part of her refused to leave her companions to take down the enemy
on their own. She knew the creatures and the tunnels better than
any of them, and it was her fault they were here. If they were
going to play at being heroes then she had no choice but to help
them.

She led them down the hallway with doors
leading off left and right to other sleeping pods. The lights in
some of the rooms were broken, shattered in the crash or broken in
the panic which followed. Luckily, the light from the hallway was
enough to illuminate the sleeping pods and scare away any of the
creatures who may have considered hiding away.

At the end of the hallway they came to the
second dining area and beyond that the gym. The equipment looked
strange in the stark light of the bio-lamps. The clean, blue glow
was at odds with the toppled and broken gym gear.

“Hey Aart, want to go a few rounds?” Orion
said with a chuckle as he lifted up a pair of racquets.

“Aww I don’t want to crush you now,” Aart
replied, “we might need you for slug feed in a bit.”

“Hilarious,” Orion said, tossing the
racquets back onto a pile of random equipment.

“It’s dark up ahead,” Nova said, peering
through the closed door leading to the next room.

“I can hear them,” Gus replied.

Howls and screams echoed through the door
from the room beyond.

“What’s in there?” Aart asked.

“That’s the learning pods. Beyond that is
the exit into the caverns.”

“They’ve figured out to break all the
lights,” Aart said, a tremor in his voice.

“What if they break the ones in here?” Gus
said, his eyes glancing at the glowing lights in the ceiling.

“They’d have to be in here to break them,”
Nova replied, “we’re fine.”

“We might be safe for now but it doesn’t
help us get hold of the goods,” Aart said.

“We’ll just have to shoot our way through
them,” said Gus.

“That didn’t work very well last time,” said
Aart.

“Dammit! I didn’t think they’d be smart
enough to work it out,” Nova said, kicking her foot into the metal
panel at her feet.

“They might be smarter than we are,” Orion
said.

The others turned to look at him. He stood
with an eyebrow raised. His left hand was held up level with his
shoulder, his finger outstretched towards—

“A light switch,” Aart said. “We are
stupid.” He pretended to bang his head against the nearest
wall.

“Thought you said the light switches
wouldn’t work,” Gus said, turning to Nova.

“I said they wouldn’t turn the lights on.
The pumps won’t work after all this time. But a lot of the switches
work on simple mechanics, they stop the flow of that chemical you
rubbed all over your face. That switch is stopping the stuff from
reaching the front end of the ship, even though it’s sitting there
waiting.”

“Well then what are you waiting for?” Gus
said, staring at Orion.

Orion let his finger drop and flicked the
switch. They waited with baited breaths. At first, nothing
happened. The darkness beyond the next door remained. Then there
was a sudden flash of brilliance accompanied by screams of
agony.

“Boom,” Gus said.

The hole in the door before them lit up and
they could make out the retreating shapes of their would-be
attackers.

“Why are they so afraid of light? They’re
like a bunch of vamps,” Gus said as Nova pushed the door open.

“I believe the socially acceptable term is
lecheon,” she said, stepping forward into the learning centre. “And
have you seen the size of their eyes? If you had eyes that big,
you’d run away from bright lights as well.”

“It’s wrong, you know,” Aart said.

“What?” Nova asked, moving further into the
room beyond.

“That the Confederacy allows lecheon
movement within human colonies. Of course it’s not the Confederacy
that has to worry about getting sucked dry, it’s the workers.
Bloody Confederacy is always—”

“Really, Aart? Now is a good time for one of
your political rants?” she said, glaring over her shoulder.

“Ha-ha, you know our Aart. Never misses a
good chance to stick it to the man,” Orion said.

“Well, today we’re here to stick it to the
slugs. We can only deal with one despicable life form at a time,
and this one has a better chance of wrecking our day than the
Confederacy,” Nova said.

Aart grunted and moved left, scoping out the
learning centre.

“Looks pretty abandoned to me,” Gus
said.

“They’ll be waiting in the cavern for us.
Then what are we going to do?” Nova said.

“I was hoping you’d come up with a brilliant
plan to save us all,” said Orion, fanning out to her right.

Nova rolled her eyes at his tone and bit her
lip. She’d never confess it to them but she did feel responsible
for them being there, and for Freya’s death, but she wasn’t ready
to admit that even to herself. Because it was her fault she felt it
was her duty to come up with a solution, even though it was their
decision to come along.

Gus kept an eye on their rear and followed
behind Nova as she made a straight line for the next door.

The learning pods were eerily quiet. They
sat abandoned with their wires and blank screens. The skeleton from
Nova’s last visit sat forlorn just as it had before; staring into
the darkness but seeing nothing.

“Hey look, I’m a zombie,” Orion said,
staggering in front of Nova with a piece of cloth stretched over
his head giving the impression of two massive eyes.

Nova jumped as he stumbled in front of her.
Her expression darkened and she glared at him.

“Hey, Orion, how well can you see in that?”
she asked.

“Not at all,” Orion chuckled, moving past
her towards Gus.

“Good,” she said, thrusting out her leg.

Orion tripped over her extended limb and
fell face first onto the metal floor. His falling body thumped as
it hit the ground and the noise echoed around the learning
space.

“Ow!” Orion said, pulling the cloth off of
his head and tossing it to the side. “What was that for?”

“Sorry,” she replied and kept walking,
“Thought you were a zombie.”

Aart and Gus chuckled. Orion got to his feet
and muttered something about a lack of humour before getting back
into position and advancing towards the next door.

“It’s getting darker,” Aart said. “Is there
another light switch?”

“No, look,” Nova said, pointing to the
ceiling ahead of them. “All the lights here have been broken.”

The glass was shattered across the floor and
puddles of grey liquid glittered under each light socket where it
dripped from the ceiling. Blobs of blue light dotted the floor
where some of the old light colonies continued to survive.

“It’s completely dark beyond the door,”
Orion said.

“When the ship crashed this end would have
been the hardest hit. They all could have shattered on impact,”
Nova said.

“So where does that leave us?” Orion
said.

“Same as the cavern only sooner,” replied
Aart.

“They must have some kind of weakness,” said
Nova.

“How did the Confederacy get rid of them
before?” asked Aart.

“There was a drug which got rid of the
infection. But somehow, I don’t think these guys would be open to
medication,” she said, creeping to the next door.

She stepped over a skeleton on her way to
the viewing hole and felt a jolt in her spine when she realised
that it was the same man she had killed the last time she was here.
She’d watched a slug crawl out of his ear. Now all that was left
was bones with a few pieces of flesh clinging desperately to the
white remains. The meat was edged with bite marks and deep holes
from sunken teeth.

“So they’re against light. What else might
work?” Aart said as he paced back and forth across the floor.

“Seems to me that’s something you
brain-boxes should have worked out before we came down here,” Gus
said checking his gun.

“Yes, well, we’re here now,” Nova said,
looking around the learning pods.

“If only this ship was still operational,
then we could just throw on the spotlights and bam, we’re home
free,” said Aart as he glanced around.

“What if we went old-style?” Nova asked.
“And I’m not talking twenty-second century reverse tesla; no, I
mean medieval.”

“What are you talking about?” Aart said,
staring at her with his hands splayed at his sides.

“I mean fire. There’s a bunch of fuel here
and I bet they’re just as scared of it as they are the
bio-lights.”

“You’re right!” said Aart, marching to the
nearest learning pod. “There’s no wood, mostly metal and plastic.
It’s going to put out some pretty toxic fumes.”

“It’s okay if there’s only a little plastic.
Orion, where did you get that cloth? We’ll each use some as a mask,
that should help a bit,” Nova said.

“Gus, you watch the door. Orion, grab the
material. Nova and I will get the fuel,” Aart said, slipping
straight into control.

Nova rolled her eyes but got to work. The
metal wouldn’t burn but the plastic piping and wires would do for a
while.

“Hey guys, according to the specs for that
ship, there should be magnesium strips in the pods,” Tanguin said
over their communicators.

“Jackpot,” Aart said.

“Why do we want magnesium?” Gus said,
pointing his gun at the door.

“It burns really brightly,” Nova said, “It
will definitely knock those things back a few paces, thanks
Tanguin.”

“Here to help,” she said, “Although I have a
feeling we’re going to lose contact once you go a little deeper.
I’ll stay right next to the communicator for your return trip.”

“Perfect,” Nova said, tearing out the metal
strips from the pods. She ran from one capsule to the next ripping
them out until she had a handful of magnesium shreds.

“Here are some extra pieces of cloth,
they’ll burn better than that plastic,” Orion said, dumping an
armful of material onto the floor.

“Where did you get all of that?” Nova said,
stepping up beside him.

“Let’s just say there are a few bodies in
here that don’t need clothes anymore and you should really only use
these pieces for your face,” Orion said, holding up four strips of
material that were cleaner than the rest.

Nova’s face was stern as she nodded and
grabbed a strip. She wrapped it over her nose and mouth and tied it
tightly at the back of her head. The others did the same. Then they
got to work wrapping the extra pieces of cloth around spare
sections of metal piping to create primitive torches.

“Who’s got a lighter?” she asked.

“Who would carry a lighter on them?” Aart
asked with his eyebrows drawn together.

Nova groaned. “I do, in my bag! How else are
we going to light them?”