Surviving The Theseus (3 page)

The game voice continued. “This is your last
chance. If you survive level one, you can move to level two, and on
to every successive level. The ultimate goal is to get back to your
ship and kill the final creature.”

Regina rubbed her eyes, all the while
staring at the revolving door. Did it move? She couldn't be sure
and immediately regretted rubbing her eyes.
Stupid fucking light
!

“Good luck!” said the game voice.

The red light went out.

Regina’s heart seemed to skip a beat as she
dropped into darkness.

A loud emergency alarm erupted all around
Regina.

BWAH BWAH BWAH.

She jumped, and then calmed herself. The
whole damn point of hiding inside the game seemed useless now with
all the fucking noise it made. She considered going back, figuring
her location was given away, then another door slid sideways --
THUNK! -- inside the wall.

Regina walked into the game, simulated
moonlight shining just inside the doorway. She hoped the room she
left had soundproofed walls, and that she could hide inside the
game before chancing another attempt to get to the control room in
the front of the ship.

Immersive indeed. Palm-like trees, shorter
and bushier, a flowing creek, a realistic starry sky with a bright
full moon. Rock cliffs in the distance welcomed her.

Regina figured the game must take up two or
three levels of the ship, because some of the cliffs were high up,
or at least appeared that way. Either way, it was very
impressive.

As soon as Regina entered the game, the door
slammed shut. In the near distance, something growled. She decided
to find a nice place by a rock face, and some trees, to hide for
awhile.

And then she saw him, the first person since
she started walking the ship over an hour earlier. He ran, but not
toward her.

Mary Zannur navigated one of the other ships
with her pilot, Brett Sandgrass.

“Now, I’ve done a few of these,” Mary said.
“Don’t get too close, Brett.”

“Would you like to take over?” Brett waited
for a response, but Mary stared intently at a navigational chart,
ignoring him. “Well, I wouldn’t have let you anyway,” Brett said
with a smile.

Mary continued to scroll the navigational
chart on the image in front of her, wearing black gloves like Cindy
and Michael's, the chart a three-dimensional image. “Might I remind
you, young one, that you are a mere rank of 7 to my 1C, and if I so
choose, I will take control away from you and you’ll keep your
fucking mouth shut.”

“Yes sir . . . I mean Ma’am,” Brett said,
still smiling, but it was a false smile. Mary would have been his
last choice for a partner out of the group, if he had had a choice
to begin with. He couldn't think of any time the other leaders
treated their subordinates like shit, but Mary did it to him all
the time. He got that it was just her way, that she gave a lot of
people the cold shoulder, but he still wanted to punch her every
time she did.

Brett had nothing to prove to anyone.
He enjoyed what he did, even if he was stuck with “
The
C”
or
“
Captain
C”
as everyone called her behind her back. Everyone
that was, except their leader, George, and Michael, the kiss
ass.

Brett had no huge aspirations of kissing ass
up the chain of command. He wanted to be more like Travis. The guy
was just so cool. He didn't take crap from anybody, or at least he
didn't let it show. So easy going and relaxed all the time.

But how could Brett help it if he had a bag
for a trainer and leader? How could he help it if she grated on his
every nerve with the way she would look at him, with contempt in
her eyes? No, fuck that, and fuck her. He would do his time and
then he would get a different assignment, a different group, and
then it would all be better.

*****

Mary didn’t comment or look up, because if
Brett smiled back at her, she would probably do something she would
regret, something she did once before that got her reduced in rank
and took her a year to get back.

At thirty-nine, she was not going to mess up
again. Divorced three times, and currently single and liking it,
she didn’t care what others thought of her. Despite her strong
personality scaring almost every man away, she was a beautiful
woman with short, dark curly hair, and a curvy, muscular figure.
Her eyes were quite warm and welcoming, until she spoke. But she
didn't give a shit and frankly, quite enjoyed making men squirm.
Most of them deserved it. All of them were cheating bastards. Not
one, not one man in all her years with men had she found an honest
one, one that didn't stick his dick inside the first hot thing that
walked by him.

Not to say she didn't respect men in other
ways. She respected most of her group, especially George and
Michael, but they were not disrespectful like Brett. They worked
their asses off. But she chose Brett, knew he needed work. Had she
known how much work, she may have decided otherwise.

“Keep your eyes open for the markers,” Mary
said. “They run right to the gate.”

He would love that one. It took so little to
piss him off. Everything out of her mouth was an insult to him. She
could see it in his furrowed face, in those slightly -- slight
because he tried to hide it -- narrowed, fucked up grey eyes of
his. She would continue to belittle his knowledge until he stopped
reacting like a child.

Mary knew that he knew what the markers were.
A four-year-old would know what they were. Space travel was not a
privilege. There were restrictions, except for special vehicles
like the SPARS ships, which could travel anywhere. Every other ship
needed to travel along a series of objects that looked like large
matchsticks. The markers were five-meter long, thin green
iridescent devices with red square caps that relayed signals to
nearby ships, keeping them locked within a 500-meter radius. The
markers were spread 250 meters apart.

If a ship tried to go beyond 500 meters from
a marker in any direction, the ship’s engines would disable, and
then the nearest marker – the green section - would tow the ship
back within range, using magnetic energy, so the ship could restart
its engines.

Since the runner was a SPARS ship, it had no
problem veering away from any markers, and that's exactly what it
did. Whoever was inside had probably never been off marker before.
They veered away from them almost immediately and kept away, but
the markers were not hard to detect when close by, which is exactly
what Mary could see on her navigation image. The runner probably
had no idea and now that they had it surrounded, they would take it
right back to the markers, to get to the gate.

The runner tried every which way to get out
of its prison, including ramming the other ships. It would thrust
forward, reverse thrust to brake, try to turn, anything to get
away.

Brett and Mary were in front of the runner as
it gave them a little bump before Brett pulled the ship ahead.

Mary immediately took control away from
Brett, her navigational image replaced by a yoke and throttle. “I
told you. You were too close.”

“Give me a break. It’s only the second time
I’ve done this, and nobody gets it exactly right their first few
times.”

“You’ll get your chance again. Until then,
back to the simulator for you until you pass with absolutely no
mistakes. Now, bring your chart up and watch for the gate. I think
we’re close.”

Mary did not turn to see what would most
likely be a dagger-staring Brett. She could see his holographic
image of a yoke and throttle change to the navigational chart, out
of the corner of her eyes. She loved the new panels, angled down
for ergonomics, everything you need in front of you and in
three-dimensional form.

“Please, sir, don’t run. I’m here to help.”
Regina tried to calm the man down as she ran after him. He wore a
tight-fitting, gray one-piece suit, which Regina found a little
odd, since these were outfits that expedition crews typically used
when investigating other planets. “Stop!” Regina yelled, and the
man did.

Regina caught up to him, but she didn’t know
how long he would stick around because he seemed fidgety and
nervous. His eyes darted all over the place, his hair soaked with
sweat pouring down his face. “They’re all over the place,” he
said.

“Who?” Regina asked. “Who’s all over the
place?”

And then it happened. One of the game
creatures leapt at the man from behind a rock, swiped at his head,
and his head came off of his neck in one swoop of the creature’s
clawed hands. Blood squirted up like a fountain. He didn’t even
have a chance to scream.

Before the man’s body began to fall to the
ground, the creature leapt on top of it and started chewing into
the man’s chest. The body fell to the ground with the creature on
top gorging.

The creature ignored Regina, as she suspected
it would. She didn’t have a game suit on, and the man who just got
killed was part of the game, a replica of one of the expedition
people who died on the planet. The best holograph of a person she
had ever seen. She was even more impressed by how the holograph had
interacted with her even though she did not have a game suit on.
She figured that the computer running the game responded to
voices.

Her impressions from the game were only
fleeting, as the decapitation was enough for her. She had no
intentions of sticking around as witness to more bloody attacks.
Staying would bring wild thoughts about her current situation and
then fear.

Regina, gun cocked, walked back to where she
came in and pressed an exit button by the door. As the door slid
open, the lights came on in the prep room, the revolving door
waiting for her a few feet away.

Without any hesitation, Regina walked through
the revolving door into the equipment room. Nothing out of the
ordinary waited for her.

Again, just moving without thinking, because
thinking brought fear, Regina walked through the equipment room
door and into the entrance area. Nothing. Regina kept moving.

Regina got outside, into the main sports
area, and crept along the outer wall of The Kill Zone, edging her
way to the opposite side of the room from where she originally
entered. Using her hands to guide her along the wall, she stared
towards the glass, using her peripheral for any movement behind or
in front of her.

And then, from the stairwell Regina moved
towards, a woman’s scream echoed. It did not last more than a
couple of seconds.

“Please, no,” came a woman’s voice. Regina
could hear the fear in the woman’s voice as it quivered, sobs and
quick breaths, a horrible, wailing scream, then silence. Regina ran
full out. Her heart pounded but not from the exertion of
running.

Regina’s eyes watered as a disturbing job
flashed through her mind: A twitchy, middle-aged man with thin,
messy gray hair and dark eyes -- a hacksaw -- hundreds of body
parts piled on one another in a closet -- the blood, so much blood
-- fingers, toes, feet, hands, calves, thighs, torsos, arms, ears,
heads -- eyes, wide open in the heads, mouths frozen in a scream --
the smell, so foul, vomit -- a young woman’s scream just before
Regina kicked in the door to the maniac’s home. All these images
flashed quickly through her mind, taking her back to one of the
worst jobs she undertook. And the scream the poor girl made before
he cut her throat with the hacksaw, so much fear in that scream, so
much terror. Regina had not heard anything like it, until now.

John Krane and Paula Brillter flew the ship
behind the runner. They were the only partners in the group so
close in rank, John with a 3 and Paula with a 5. George grouped
them together to avoid the others from bitching about their
habit.

The air filtering system in John and Paula’s
ship worked hard to clean the air of all the smoke. Neither could
fly without a cigarette going. Some of the buttons, switches, and
non-metallic panels became yellowed and gunked up from day after
day of exhaled smoke.

The runner started coming towards them.

“Watch out, Paula,” John said.

“Got it.” Paula backed off as the runner
tried to bash them.

”Good job, kid.” John smiled. “This guy ain’t
going nowhere but where we tell him to.”

John, only six years older than Paula,
who was twenty four, always called her kid, like she was his
sister, but she hoped he didn’t think of her that way. Tall, dark,
and handsome at six foot six, John was all she could think about
sometimes. When it came to doing her job, nothing broke her
concentration, but she did manage a little smile as he called
her
kid
.

“There’s the gate,” John said. The markers,
now within site, continued on for a short distance through the
gate, and then ended.

From a distance, the gate did not appear that
impressive, but once they got closer its massive size overwhelmed
anything near it. The bottom part of the gate ran over 2500 meters
long and the highest peak at the top was 3000 meters high. A
rectangular base and rounded sides curved inward into a giant
looking arch. It shone a bright, red color because of a special
type of metal used to construct it.

Before they got to the gate, the runner came
to a complete stop; Paula was not prepared for it.

John and Paula’s ship slammed into the
runner, breaking the field from the rear and leaving a hole for the
runner to get through.

Paula figured whoever piloted the runner
panicked when they saw the gate and didn’t know what else to do.
She bet if John had taken control right away, he probably would
have been able to block them in, but he did not do that. Paula
appreciated it even though she knew her reaction time needed more
work in a simulator.