The Betwixt Book One (5 page)

I felt exasperated. The fear had balled up in my middle,
morphed to frustration, and it was choking me from the inside. I
felt like screaming. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘
If you have not heard, then you must listen. We have to stop
if before it comes aboard. The station, it has no security against
this threat, nothing. And those soldiers of the Galactic Army, they
will be the first to fall. It is your duty, your
legacy.’

‘
My duty to do what?’

‘
To stop the middle from reaching either end. You stop the
in-between from coming out. It is within your power, your heritage,
to fight the Twixts, to prevent the very collapse of this
galax—’

I began to laugh, harshly and erratically, but the humor was
there. It was my destiny to save the galaxy? I was the least
capable person to have the weight of universal salvation thrust
upon my shoulders. I was supposed to be a klutzy diner waitress
turned super hero? What was this guy on?

‘
This is no laughing matter, child. There are lives in danger,
we must—’

‘
I'm a waitress,’ I said each word slowly, ‘not a hero. If
you're looking for someone to save the galaxy, go and look for a
GAM.’

He became quiet for a moment, gaze drifting slowly to the
ground. Then he took a large breath, chest puffing out. ‘Very well,
I hadn't wanted it to come to this, but you leave me no
choice.’

He reached into the folds of his brown robe and drew something
out, it was a long oblong tube with a seal in the
middle.

‘
I'm calling security.’ I finally dodged past him and made it
to the wall panel.

There was a click and a hiss behind me, and somehow, somehow
it filled the room – the tiny noises echoed until they
boomed.

Every single part of me buzzed. It was as if I had passed
right through an electrical storm in space, unprotected by the hull
of a ship – simply at the mercy of the wash of power. Yet at the
same time, I felt the unease pin me to the ground, sinking through
my middle like the 1000 tonne docking cable of a
cruiser.

I could see it before I turned, if that made any
sense.

I turned.

It wasn't black, not like obsidian, or the furthest reaches of
cold space. It was . . . the color of a shadow you
see out of the corner of your eye. It wasn't color at all, it was
light turned away from itself.

I wasn't breathing, wasn't moving, and neither was
it.

‘
You see now, you feel it?’ somehow the little alien had made
it to my side.

I felt it alright, like a shard of ice sunk deep into my
belly. And I had never felt anything like this before.

It was less of shape, less of a solid – more like an
impression in space. A terrible outline of something.

‘
It can't attack you, I have it trapped,’ the alien held out
the tube in his hands. ‘But you had to feel it, to know what you
are up against. And this is a weak one, very weak. It is at the end
of the in-between. Those at the center
are . . . .’

I didn't understand a word of what he was saying, and to be
honest, his voice hardly bridged the ringing in my ears. As long as
that thing was in front of me, I didn't have a hope of moving a
muscle. And yet, from within me somewhere I had a desire
to . . . 

‘
Stop it from coming any nearer. That's what you want, that's
what half your body is telling you. And listen to it, listen to the
part that isn't human.’

Images flashed in my head, maybe memories, maybe the stuff of
dreams. Two hands on a door holding it firm against the outside, a
palm outstretched, a cruiser slamming on its breaks, a storm
beating restlessly against a wall.

Stopping. All of them were images of stopping.

I . . . I knew . . .
I . . . wasn't thinking clearly. I felt half at the
edge of sleep, half at the edge of mania.

Then the thing – the Shadow, the Twixt – it shifted forward.
It didn't spread out, screaming like a thousand trapped souls, nor
did it tighten its form ready to pounce. But I knew what it wanted
to do.

‘
Turn it off,’ I heard my voice as if it were far away on some
distant crackly com-link,’ turn it off now.’

‘
It can't hurt you, it is trapped—’

‘
No,’ I breathed, my voice still distant, still somehow not me.
‘It's calling.’

The creature tipped what could only be described as its head
towards the ceiling – shadows of tight, rope-like muscles twisting
in its neck.

‘
Turn it off!’ I shrieked.

Then it faded, faded with a snap, back into the
tube.

I fell to my knees, exhausted from no fight at all.

The little alien, eyes almost popping with fear, stowed the
tube back into his robe, placing a hand over the folds of fabric as
if to trap it in place. ‘It, it shouldn't have been able to do
that.’

I just looked at him, my head tipped slightly to one side as
if I were some limp doll that had been left out in the wind and
rain. ‘Why did you do that, what was th . . . ‘ I
let my voice trail off. I couldn't ask the question again. That was
a Twixt. A shadow that had come alive, if ever I had saw
one.

I felt cold and damp, but strangely, I couldn't shiver.
‘There's one on the station?’ I whispered.

The alien nodded silently. ‘But . . . I fear
it . . . it may not
be . . . .’

‘
Is it coming here?’ I pushed myself to my feet, the fear
surging through me like the shock wave from a supernova hitting its
once orbiting planets.

Everything was going topsy-turvy, impossible and unbelievable.
I stood in the middle of my own quarters, talking to a little alien
who had just showed me a shadow trapped in a box. And my mind and
body were surging with jumbled energy, tinged with nauseating
fear.

But I was just a waitress from a diner, I tried to assure
myself as I squeezed my hands open and closed. This couldn't be
happening to me.

‘
Yes,’ the alien's voice croaked, ‘I'm afraid it is.
Unless . . . .’

‘
Unless?’

‘
We get there first.’

‘
And do what?’ Call security; call the GAMs?

‘
Pray.’

Chapter 3

This wasn't a plan. This wasn't a plan, I reminded myself for
the 1000th time as I ran down the corridor towards the docking bay.
I was following the equivalent of a well-spoken strawberry in a
robe to my certain death at the hands of something that wasn't
really there.

I had never done anything like this before. I had nothing to
draw on from my years of experience: no adventures, no skills, no
training. I hadn't gone through the school of hard knocks, hadn't
roughed it as a GAM recruit, hadn't even been to the Rim of known
space. I was just a waitress. I was just a waitress!

But that didn't matter, the little alien seemed convinced I
was the only thing standing between this station and horrible
destruction at the hands of a Twixt. But I wasn't standing, I was
shaking like ticker tape attached to the engine vents of a sonic
cruiser. And I still didn't even know the monk's
name . . . .

I didn't know my way around this part of the station either –
I never had any call to come down here. This was the domain of
grease-faced engineers, smugglers, and legless crew who were too
drunk to make it back to their complimentary quarters on the
station.

It was darker and more narrow, felt far more like I was just
in a tin can with nothing but a couple of feet of metal protecting
me from the ravages of space. There wasn't the controlled lighting,
the pleasant temperature, even the neat fixtures that the rest of
the station enjoyed. It was stark, cold, and reminded me of some
remote moonscape prison where you'd keep the galaxy's hardest
criminals.

And there wasn't anyone around, it was as dead as a ghost ship
sailing alone in the uncharted space between galaxies. Maybe I was
just used to the crowds of the personnel decks, but shouldn't there
be at least someone down here? The only sounds I could hear where
the uneven patter of my feet against the metal walkway and the
harsh percussion of my breath. Which didn't help things
any.

I trusted that the monk knew where he was going. I didn't
fancy the idea of running around stupid for a half-hour, only to
take a brief rest against some cold metal wall and be grabbed from
behind by the very shadow of death. But even if we did manage to
find the ghost ship in time, what then? If the alien was right, and
the GAM really were about to board her, then wouldn't they object
to letting the waitress and monk tag along for fun? Wouldn't they
boot us off this deck faster than a meteor slicing through the
atmosphere?

I didn't have to wait long to find out. Soon we entered a
further section of the corridor, around a dark t-intersection that
would have had me more lost than a blind grandma in a maze. The
monk seemed to know what he was doing, though, and rather than
continue along the walkway, trotted over to a section of the wall
and pulled off a panel. He then disappeared along an apparent
service duct.

I had a brief moment where I made a face. Did I really want to
go crawling through a dirty service tunnel in my uniform? Because I
was still wearing it – my blue flouncy skirt and white blouse with
the holo-pin of 'Marty's Space Diner' blinking excitedly. Was that
really the outfit someone wore to save the galaxy from Twixts? And
it still smelt mildly of rotten fish.

The moment passed quickly though. What was I thinking?
Standing around wasting time on costume questions. Would I really
be any better off if I had thick, jet-black GAM armor, or at least
a pair of slacks? No. This was still an impossible mission, so the
fishy uniform would do.

I got down on my hands and knees and followed the monk into
the duct. I tugged down on the back of my skirt compulsively, even
though there was not a soul behind me. ‘Where are we going?’ I
asked as he set off at an easy jog, me at a painful
crawl.

‘
We are not going through the front door, but via an
alternative route.’

I frowned. Yes, I could tell that this wasn't the usual way
they got into docked ships. A little more detail would have been
nice though. Like 'we're going to pop out in Main Engineering, so
be careful not to stick your head in a fusion reactor'. Or 'we'll
likely jump right into the cargo bay, so don't be surprised when
the Twixts have at you and cover you in perpetual
darkness'.

I didn't say anything, just concentrated on crawling. My
uncovered knees were starting to smart, and I'd already cut one of
my palms on a rough patch of metal grating. I was bloody and
bruised even before the fight had began – this was not a good
sign.

But as the service duct wound on, I started to concentrate
more on what was ahead. I felt like I was spiraling down into a
bottomless, unavoidable realization. I was going to die, wasn't I?
This, this wasn't going to end any other way. I was heading onto a
ghost ship to fight something that shouldn't even exist and was the
stuff of galactic nightmares. I was going
to . . . 

‘
Looks like a ghost ship to me, sir', a voice said from beneath
me.

I jumped, as best as you can on all fours, and hit my head on
the top of the duct above.

‘
What was that?’

My heart had entered hyperspeed from the shock of unexpected,
disembodied voices.

‘
Be quiet,’ the monk whispered, ‘when you are startled you make
noise, and it travels through the bulkheads. We are just above the
docking doors of the station; those are GAMs below us. Soon we will
reach a secondary airlock that attaches the station's ventilation
system to the ship – we will travel through this.’

I really only just caught his words, and I hoped like hell the
GAMs below didn't catch anything either. I really didn't want to be
shot at like a rat in the rafters. ‘But,’ I tried to make my voice
as silent as rose petals falling on water, ‘what about the
station's sensors? Won't they catch us?’

‘
I disabled them.’

He did what?! Oh no, this was just great. Even if I did manage
to get out of this alive, or more realistically, it turned out this
little alien had somehow made the whole thing up – I would be going
straight to prison. Turning off the station's internal sensors was
like punching the Chief of Staff of the GAM right in the nose and
spitting on a picture of his wife.

‘
This way.’ The little alien wasn't about to give me any time
to change my mind. And I really couldn't change my mind now – I'd
practically ruined my skirt crawling through these
tunnels.

The rest of our trek was a blur. Perhaps my mind was starting
to truly fathom its imminent doom, because my body had begun to
tingle like I'd jumped into a bath with a couple of live wires. My
heart was racing, mind twirling, body jumping at the slightest
shadow that drifted into my peripheral vision. I was almost frantic
by the time we'd made it into the ghost ship, down another
ventilation duct, and finally out into what looked like the
engineering room.