Post by Agent Storm on Mar 10, 2006 17:19:52 GMT -5
Orbital Station XG-197
May 23rd, 2002
"I'll see that, and raise you three."
"Fold. It's gettin' too rich for me."
"Call it."
"And Steve wins again."
“Honest, Ah'm still learnin' this game!"
Good-natured laughter echoed off the metallic walls of the environmental monitoring room, muffled by the headphones Jenner wore. He ignored them, his attention on the electronics textbook in front of him and the strains of his favorite Rachmaninov concerto.
"Hey, Wilson! C'mon, man, you've got your nose in a book again. Join the land of the living, dude!" Hands plucked the book out of his grasp. Startled, Jenner Wilson looked up into Steve's wide, amused face. The older man's green eyes twinkled as he held the textbook up. With a faint sigh of annoyance, Jenner turned his music off and removed his headset.
"Sir, I’m trying to study for a test.”
“Sure, sure, you’re always reading. You oughta, y’know, talk with us here sometimes.” Steve grinned, his teasing good-natured. Jenner shrugged, his dark face flushing.
“I’m, uh, no good at poker, sir. And, uh, I’ve got a test in electronic design in a week, sir.”
“That’s half the fun though!” Steve, Senior Environmental Specialist Stephen Friedman, wheedled. “Ah’m sure y’all can spare a couple minutes to play a game or two.” With a grin, he put the book down on the table the others were using for their game.
“Oh, give it up, Steve. Leave the kid alone.” The only woman in the group said. “Besides, after you cleaned him out the first week you were here you’ll never get him in another game.” She grinned cheerfully at Jenner, shaking back her short blonde hair. Jenner flushed again and opened his mouth.
An alarm klaxon started blaring. Whatever Jenner had been about to say died unspoken as the station commander’s voice came across the intercom.
“Red alert. All hands to battle stations. Red alert. This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill.” The lights dimmed slightly and reddened as the klaxon continued shrieking its alarm call. “Civilian personnel, report to your quarters. All hands to battle stations. This is not a drill.”
A shocked silence broken by the alarms settled over the environmental control room as the group of techs looked at each other. In the four years since the station had gone active, there had never been a red alert that wasn’t a drill.
“You heard the commander. Let’s suit up.” Specialist Friedman broke the tense atmosphere brusquely. “By the numbers. Williams, monitors. Stanley, communications. Smith, Wilson, you’re in the tunnels.”
A chorus of “Yes, sir!” was his response. The five techs opened a set of lockers on the wall and removed lightweight, flexible environmental suits and helmets. Hastily, they pulled the suits on over their jumpsuits. As Jenner picked up his helmet, one of the banks of monitors began blinking. The decks shuddered, and a second screech of alarms joined the muted alert klaxon in the background. A second and third bank of digital control monitors began glowing red with failure alerts.
“What the hell?” The woman, Specialist Williams, slid into a chair and scanned the readouts. “Sir, we’re showing sudden failure in three processing units. Air flow control is offline in all sectors. Sir, the primary oxygen reclamation center is completely gone!” Her voice rose, panic tingeing her words. “Sir, life support’s out, we’ll have to-“
CRASH!
BOOM!
A sudden explosion ripped the monitor banks apart, the concussion throwing the environmental techs back against the far wall. Secondary explosions followed, and an oddly muffled whining thud echoed briefly. It was followed by several more in rapid succession. A final thump, a scream…and the wall of the environmental control station fell in, burying the five techs under a heap of twisted metal.
The klaxons were still shrieking. A man’s voice had joined them, screaming and cursing in agony. It was the first thing Jenner noticed when he drifted back to consciousness. Pain screamed through his right arm, his head, his side. He tasted coppery blood when he swallowed. A brief attempt to move reminded him, quickly, that he was buried, trapped under the collapsing wall. The man’s screams were fading now – Was that Specialist Stanley?
“Yessir. It’s a mess, sir.” Another voice, one Jenner knew only vaguely. The security chief, Mr. Yu, a slender Hmong who kept to himself. “Control station’s destroyed, Commander. I’ll see what I can do.”
Jenner swallowed again at the sound of metal hitting metal. “Sir! Mr. Yu!” He called out, coughing on dust and blood in his throat. “I’m under here, sir! I’m trapped!”
“I hear you, Specialist. Don’t worry, I’ll get you out.” Another crash, of metal being flung away with great force, and some of the crushing pressure on Jenner eased. Moments later, Mr. Yu lifted another piece of metal away, a huge piece nearly as large as Jenner himself, and tossed it easily to one side. Jenner took a deep breath, wincing, as Mr. Yu gave him a brief smile.
“How badly are you hurt, Specialist? Wilson, isn’t it?” Mr. Yu asked, lifting another chunk of twisted metal as easily as Jenner would have lifted his helmet.
“I’m not sure, sir. I can move my legs. I don’t think anything is broken, sir, but my arm…” A last hunk of metal, the remnants of a destroyed monitor, was moved, and Mr. Yu picked up the young environmental tech, freeing him from the heap of scrap.
He screamed as his arm moved, graying out with pain. Yu was reporting back to the Commander, he heard distantly. All dead, except for himself and Specialist Stanley, and Stanley was unconscious with severe injuries to the torso.
“Don’t pass out on me, kid.” Said Mr. Yu. “You’re the only one left in Environmental Support. Your arm’s pretty bad, but we need you on your feet. Can you do it?”
Jenner blinked and looked at his right arm. He almost wished he hadn’t; it was a mangled ruin. He clenched his jaw against sudden nausea. “Sir?”
“You heard me, Wilson. Life support’s down. We need someone to get it back up, or we’re all dead. You’re the only one left who can.”
“Sir, but you…you’re trained…You moved all that…” Jenner protested. He knew Mr. Yu had environmental training, and he hurt.
“I’m needed elsewhere, Wilson.” Yu’s voice was quiet, compassionate, and urgent. “We’re under attack by some kind of aliens.”
“You’re a meta, Sir. Aren’t you?”
“Yes. And I have to help the Commander fight these things. We can’t do it if we can’t breath, Wilson. They knew just where to hit us, whatever they are. Primary life support and air circulators are down.”
Jenner swallowed, glancing at the shattered wreck of his arm. He wanted to argue, to tell Mr. Yu that it hurt too much…It was his job.
“Sir. Yessir. Status of the secondary circulators?”
“Down. Tertiary ones are untouched, but the routing controls are gone. You’ll have to activate it manually. There’s a leak in the gamma grid in sector Beta-3. Repair that first, or it’ll-“
“Reverse-charge the circulators, yessir. I’m on it.”
He stood up, swaying a little, his dark face grey with pain. “Sir, I’ll need some help with this arm.” Yu nodded and carefully put a rough field dressing on Jenner’s arm, binding it close to his body.
“Can I ask one favor, sir?” Jenner bit his lip. “Play some music on the intercom, sir. Something by Rachmaninov. It’ll help me concentrate, sir, and it might, uh, distract the aliens.”
Yu looked at him and laughed. “OK, Wilson. You’ve got a deal. Let’s move out.”
Jenner looked at the dark opening of the ventilation shaft. With a resigned sigh and a wince of pain, he bent, trying not to jar his arm, and climbed in, crawling awkwardly on hand and knees. It wasn’t the fastest or most direct route to the tertiary air circulators, but it was the safest with weird aliens attacking the station. Aliens. Attacking Station XG-197. This was a research station, he’d requested assignment here because it should have kept him out of combat. What was going on?
The crawl through the tight confines of the ventilation shaft was a nightmare. Every other movement jarred Jenner’s mangled arm, sending sharp agony through his already bruised body. As he approached open grates, he could invariably hear the sounds of fighting, an inhuman guttural barking language, and human screams and cries. The station had over 600 people on it, two-thirds of whom were civilians. The remaining two hundred personnel were military, mostly Air Force like Jenner himself, support personnel who were no match for the mysterious aliens.
He finally reached the beta grid junction in sector Beta-3. The rupture was easy to find, a hole the size of his head spraying foul-smelling gasses into the air. Jenner reached for his helmet automatically, biting off a curse as he realized it had been buried under the wall of metal in the environmental control room. Muttering to himself, he loosened the bolts on the grating and pulled it into the tunnel with him.
Cautiously, he stuck his head out, looking for signs of the alien invaders. The corridor walls were scorched and scarred by some kind of energy weapon, probably the same weapon that had holed the pipe below him, but there was no sign of anyone else nearby. Carefully, he slid out and landed on the decking with a painful thud. The jar to his arm made him sway, blackness creeping up in the corners of his vision. Jenner clenched his good hand, leaning on the blackened wall as he struggled not to pass out; if he did, he and everyone in the station were dead.
“Come on, Jenner. You can do this.”
He pushed himself away from the wall and located the nearest patch kit, hanging twenty feet away from the breach in the pipe. The stench in the air was already starting to make him nauseous. Moving carefully, he pulled the kit down and dragged it back to the hole, opening it one-handed.
“Right. Hold the patch in place and weld it on.” Jenner looked at the curved piece of metal and shook his head slowly. It was a task that required two good arms, not one. He looked at the pipe, running along the access corridor at floor level, and put the patch just over the rupture. Awkwardly, he braced it in place with a foot, twisting to seal it on with his one good hand.
It was messy, and slower than he wanted. By the time he was finished, he was lightheaded from the waste gasses, and his back and legs were screaming in pain from the angle he’d had to crouch at. But it was finished. He could hear the fighting starting to near the access corridor again. It was time to leave, and past time to get to the air circulators to turn them on.
Jenner closed his eyes briefly, calling up a mental map of the maze of ventilation shafts, access corridors, and other back ways around the station. The shortest route was straight through this access corridor and back past the docking bay. If the aliens hadn’t taken control of the docking bay already, if the corridor wasn’t blocked, if. Too many ifs, but he’d have to chance running for it.
“I’m not a hero…”
He started moving. The muttered words echoed in his mind as he hurried as quietly as booted feet on metal decking would allow past blackened, melted walls, past bits of equipment dropped in the fight and the debris of combat, and past dead bodies. Human bodies, all of them, burned, sliced by some kind of knife, or unmarked with looks of terror on their faces. He tried not to look too closely, his stomach churning with fear and disgust.
“If I don’t…nobody will. It’s my job.”
There were voices behind him, clipped, guttural, inhuman. Alien voices, speaking an unknown language. Jenner didn’t stop to look as he slid the door to the tertiary circulation control room open, ducking in and closing the door as fast as he could. It appeared that the aliens had avoided this room; it was undamaged. His heart pounded as he began the manual startup sequence, flipping switches in the correct sequence as quickly as he dared.
The door whooshed open as he began to prime the final phase of the startup sequence. Twenty seconds until he could start the huge fans moving. Jenner turned, as the station intercom clicked on. Three grotesquely misshapen figures loomed in the doorway.
He froze, staring at them. They were half again his height, their bodies twisted with protruding spurs of bone where no human bone ever grew. One of them looked at him, saying something in the harsh language he had heard while crawling through the ventilation shaft. As one, they moved into the room, spreading out to keep him from running.
Ten seconds left. The intercom clicked again as one of them drew an enormous knife, nearly Jenner’s own height. He pressed himself back against the control panel, not daring to move. His hand was on the button.
A blast of sound filled the room, the slow, orchestrated strains of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto #2, Movement 1. The aliens paused, confused by the sudden noise, looking at each other. Jenner took a breath, counting to himself. Five. Four. Three. The creature holding the knife took a step forward, raising his giant blade.
Two. One. Jenner pushed the button and was rewarded with the instant hum of the circulation fans powering up. The monster in front of him took another step forward, bringing his weapon down. Jenner had an instant to see that the edge glowed green with some kind of energy as it descended towards him, and towards the control panel. Desperately, he flung his good arm up to intercept the blade, twisting around to the alien’s side.
The blade sliced through his arm, grating on bone for an instant before severing it entirely. Jenner screamed in agony, doubling over for a moment as the pain hit him. The fans continued humming, undisturbed; his desperate action had deflected the knife enough to lodge it in the metal supports between panels, rather than destroying the panel outright. And now, he had their attention.
All three of the aliens moved toward him, the other two drawing some kind of gun. Jenner broke and ran, ducking around the clawed hands of the one whose knife was embedded in the supports. It was mostly panic, a frantic desire to survive, with a faint hope of drawing them away from the circulation control room.
It worked. He dared a glance behind him, hearing their furious buzzing voices, and saw all three following him. He ran, as the whining thud of their weapons sounded and a burst of green and purple energy burned the wall next to him. They would kill him, he knew, but maybe…
There. A door marked with the bright yellow and orange signs of hazardous materials. Jenner glanced back again, and saw that the three aliens had been joined by four more, in black and grey armor. Three of the newcomers carried larger versions of the rifles the first group had, while the fourth, in grey armor, appeared unarmed. He slammed the elbow of his mangled arm against the door panel, and it whooshed open.
It was dark inside, only dimly lit by the emergency lighting. Vats of chemical stews bubbled above him, covered loosely with protective shields. Sealed barrels scattered the floor, waiting their turn to be reprocessed from waste into fuel for the station. Jenner ducked his head and pulled at the sling holding his other arm with his teeth, loosening it and pulling it off. With a strangled cry of pain, he forced his broken fingers to reach up and close around the cover of one of the vats, forced his shattered arm to pull it off as the door slid open again. He ducked under the vat, hoping, biting back another scream when he twisted his arm into the handles on the vat, designed to allow it to be tilted for easier cleaning.
The aliens came in carefully, professionally, scanning the dim room for their target. Jenner’s dark skin and navy blue jumpsuit hid him from the creatures, as they moved further into the room. Their weapons pulsed and glowed greenish, giving their bulging, fan-shaped heads a nightmarish appearance. Jenner mouthed a quick prayer as they got closer to him.
One of them pointed, barking something. They’d seen him. Jenner took a deep breath, the chemicals in the air burning in the back of his throat, and pulled with all his strength on the vat’s handle. It tilted, tipped, and chemicals began pouring out as the aliens raised their weapons to fire. Jenner was protected for the moment by the bulk of the vat itself; the monsters had no such protection. Two of them fell almost immediately, slipping in the goo and falling to the ground.
The grey-armored one raised its hands to its head, staring at Jenner, as the two black-armored aliens began firing towards him. The energy bolts smashed against the wall behind him, scoring deeply into it. He felt…something…in his mind, a probing, prying inhuman presence.
“This one: Desperate. Extreme pain: Enduring. Command: Capture. Subject: Observation.”
Jenner doubled over, frozen in place by the power of that alien mind. Distantly, he heard a final blast from the energy weapons, then an instant of silence. His body refused to respond to his desperate orders to move, to get out, run away. They were coming over to him now, getting nearer to him. He could feel their hands grabbing his shoulders, hard claws digging into his skin. There was a whistling noise in the background, a sound his mind knew, but he was paralyzed by the alien’s power. He couldn’t catch his breath through the burning stink of the chemicals coating the floor.
The whistle rose to a shriek, then a howling as wind began to whip around all of them. Jenner recognized the noise now, the scream of air rushing out into vacuum. Belatedly, he remembered that this particular processing area was on the outer wall of the station; one of the energy blasts must have punched through into space. He heard the sound of emergency seals slamming shut, sealing the section as atmospheric pressure dropped.
It was pulling at them now, all of them. The aliens had taken hold of the support struts on the vat above them, and were holding Jenner tightly. He exhaled as the air pressure dropped, and dropped again, his ears popping. The room was open to vacuum, and they were all going to die. Jenner was almost grateful; it was better than whatever these things had in mind.
With a shriek of tearing metal, the supports on the vat above them gave way. It fell, bouncing off the armored aliens and Jenner as it crushed them to the floor, and lifted again with the pressure of the wind. Jenner’s ears popped again, with a tearing pain, and there was sudden silence. The wind slowed, only a faint breeze whistling out of the hole in the wall. The rounded vat had blocked the hole just enough to prevent them from all being sucked out into space.
The taller aliens with their inhuman bodies had taken the brunt of the blow. They lay dead, crushed by the weight of the vat. Jenner lay under them, helpless, fighting to breathe through the fumes and thin air. Oddly, he mused as his vision greyed, his lower body didn’t hurt any more. Something was burning his throat, his back and chest were aflame with agony, his head felt like someone had driven spikes into his ears…but his legs didn’t hurt at all. Then…nothing.
“Bunch of dead aliens. Nothing here. Patch it and move on.”
“Wait. There’s something else.”
“No…You’re right. Oh my God, it’s Wilson.”
“He must have led these things away. Poor guy.”
“I’ve got a pulse! He’s alive, someone get a medic down here NOW!”
“He’s not going to make it, Sir. I can’t do the surgery he needs, not now, not in this mess!”
“Just get him stable enough to evacuate with the rest, Doc.”
“He won’t live through landing. Commander, his back was crushed. Blood loss, both arms, bone fragments all over the place, internal bleeding, shock, concussion, the list goes on and on, Sir. The boy is going to die up here.”
“That boy saved the few of us that are left up here. You keep him alive, Doc. Do whatever it takes. We’re evacuating in two hours. Have him ready for transport.”
“I’ll do my best.”
It was absolutely silent in the room. Jenner noticed that first as he drifted groggily towards consciousness. No noise, not the hum of machinery he’d grown so used to on the station, no voices, nothing. His entire upper body hurt, but his lower body seemed strangely numb. It was hard to think. Cobwebs filled his mind, dulling his thoughts. He opened his eyes, blinking at the bright lights. The room resolved from a blur into a blue-painted hospital room. A woman in a white uniform was bent over him, checking something.
He was still alive. The woman looked at him and smiled, her mouth opening. Her lips moved, and…nothing. Jenner blinked, his sense of triumph at having survived slipping away as the nurse paused, and her lips moved again. Still, nothing. He opened his mouth, trying to say something, trying to ask what was going on. Silence. His throat hurt, a dry, painful, rasping sensation.
The nurse turned and two men came into the room. They wore suits, and lab coats over the suits. Nametags. Doctors. Jenner watched them, starting to feel a sense of slight panic. One of them said…something. His mouth moved, and Jenner heard nothing. The doctor shook his head and pulled out a pen, writing on the clipboard he carried under his arm. He held the clipboard up. He’d written on it, an introduction.
“Hello, Mr. Wilson. I’m Doctor Harrison. Can you hear anything at all?”
May 23rd, 2002
"I'll see that, and raise you three."
"Fold. It's gettin' too rich for me."
"Call it."
"And Steve wins again."
“Honest, Ah'm still learnin' this game!"
Good-natured laughter echoed off the metallic walls of the environmental monitoring room, muffled by the headphones Jenner wore. He ignored them, his attention on the electronics textbook in front of him and the strains of his favorite Rachmaninov concerto.
"Hey, Wilson! C'mon, man, you've got your nose in a book again. Join the land of the living, dude!" Hands plucked the book out of his grasp. Startled, Jenner Wilson looked up into Steve's wide, amused face. The older man's green eyes twinkled as he held the textbook up. With a faint sigh of annoyance, Jenner turned his music off and removed his headset.
"Sir, I’m trying to study for a test.”
“Sure, sure, you’re always reading. You oughta, y’know, talk with us here sometimes.” Steve grinned, his teasing good-natured. Jenner shrugged, his dark face flushing.
“I’m, uh, no good at poker, sir. And, uh, I’ve got a test in electronic design in a week, sir.”
“That’s half the fun though!” Steve, Senior Environmental Specialist Stephen Friedman, wheedled. “Ah’m sure y’all can spare a couple minutes to play a game or two.” With a grin, he put the book down on the table the others were using for their game.
“Oh, give it up, Steve. Leave the kid alone.” The only woman in the group said. “Besides, after you cleaned him out the first week you were here you’ll never get him in another game.” She grinned cheerfully at Jenner, shaking back her short blonde hair. Jenner flushed again and opened his mouth.
An alarm klaxon started blaring. Whatever Jenner had been about to say died unspoken as the station commander’s voice came across the intercom.
“Red alert. All hands to battle stations. Red alert. This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill.” The lights dimmed slightly and reddened as the klaxon continued shrieking its alarm call. “Civilian personnel, report to your quarters. All hands to battle stations. This is not a drill.”
A shocked silence broken by the alarms settled over the environmental control room as the group of techs looked at each other. In the four years since the station had gone active, there had never been a red alert that wasn’t a drill.
“You heard the commander. Let’s suit up.” Specialist Friedman broke the tense atmosphere brusquely. “By the numbers. Williams, monitors. Stanley, communications. Smith, Wilson, you’re in the tunnels.”
A chorus of “Yes, sir!” was his response. The five techs opened a set of lockers on the wall and removed lightweight, flexible environmental suits and helmets. Hastily, they pulled the suits on over their jumpsuits. As Jenner picked up his helmet, one of the banks of monitors began blinking. The decks shuddered, and a second screech of alarms joined the muted alert klaxon in the background. A second and third bank of digital control monitors began glowing red with failure alerts.
“What the hell?” The woman, Specialist Williams, slid into a chair and scanned the readouts. “Sir, we’re showing sudden failure in three processing units. Air flow control is offline in all sectors. Sir, the primary oxygen reclamation center is completely gone!” Her voice rose, panic tingeing her words. “Sir, life support’s out, we’ll have to-“
CRASH!
BOOM!
A sudden explosion ripped the monitor banks apart, the concussion throwing the environmental techs back against the far wall. Secondary explosions followed, and an oddly muffled whining thud echoed briefly. It was followed by several more in rapid succession. A final thump, a scream…and the wall of the environmental control station fell in, burying the five techs under a heap of twisted metal.
The klaxons were still shrieking. A man’s voice had joined them, screaming and cursing in agony. It was the first thing Jenner noticed when he drifted back to consciousness. Pain screamed through his right arm, his head, his side. He tasted coppery blood when he swallowed. A brief attempt to move reminded him, quickly, that he was buried, trapped under the collapsing wall. The man’s screams were fading now – Was that Specialist Stanley?
“Yessir. It’s a mess, sir.” Another voice, one Jenner knew only vaguely. The security chief, Mr. Yu, a slender Hmong who kept to himself. “Control station’s destroyed, Commander. I’ll see what I can do.”
Jenner swallowed again at the sound of metal hitting metal. “Sir! Mr. Yu!” He called out, coughing on dust and blood in his throat. “I’m under here, sir! I’m trapped!”
“I hear you, Specialist. Don’t worry, I’ll get you out.” Another crash, of metal being flung away with great force, and some of the crushing pressure on Jenner eased. Moments later, Mr. Yu lifted another piece of metal away, a huge piece nearly as large as Jenner himself, and tossed it easily to one side. Jenner took a deep breath, wincing, as Mr. Yu gave him a brief smile.
“How badly are you hurt, Specialist? Wilson, isn’t it?” Mr. Yu asked, lifting another chunk of twisted metal as easily as Jenner would have lifted his helmet.
“I’m not sure, sir. I can move my legs. I don’t think anything is broken, sir, but my arm…” A last hunk of metal, the remnants of a destroyed monitor, was moved, and Mr. Yu picked up the young environmental tech, freeing him from the heap of scrap.
He screamed as his arm moved, graying out with pain. Yu was reporting back to the Commander, he heard distantly. All dead, except for himself and Specialist Stanley, and Stanley was unconscious with severe injuries to the torso.
“Don’t pass out on me, kid.” Said Mr. Yu. “You’re the only one left in Environmental Support. Your arm’s pretty bad, but we need you on your feet. Can you do it?”
Jenner blinked and looked at his right arm. He almost wished he hadn’t; it was a mangled ruin. He clenched his jaw against sudden nausea. “Sir?”
“You heard me, Wilson. Life support’s down. We need someone to get it back up, or we’re all dead. You’re the only one left who can.”
“Sir, but you…you’re trained…You moved all that…” Jenner protested. He knew Mr. Yu had environmental training, and he hurt.
“I’m needed elsewhere, Wilson.” Yu’s voice was quiet, compassionate, and urgent. “We’re under attack by some kind of aliens.”
“You’re a meta, Sir. Aren’t you?”
“Yes. And I have to help the Commander fight these things. We can’t do it if we can’t breath, Wilson. They knew just where to hit us, whatever they are. Primary life support and air circulators are down.”
Jenner swallowed, glancing at the shattered wreck of his arm. He wanted to argue, to tell Mr. Yu that it hurt too much…It was his job.
“Sir. Yessir. Status of the secondary circulators?”
“Down. Tertiary ones are untouched, but the routing controls are gone. You’ll have to activate it manually. There’s a leak in the gamma grid in sector Beta-3. Repair that first, or it’ll-“
“Reverse-charge the circulators, yessir. I’m on it.”
He stood up, swaying a little, his dark face grey with pain. “Sir, I’ll need some help with this arm.” Yu nodded and carefully put a rough field dressing on Jenner’s arm, binding it close to his body.
“Can I ask one favor, sir?” Jenner bit his lip. “Play some music on the intercom, sir. Something by Rachmaninov. It’ll help me concentrate, sir, and it might, uh, distract the aliens.”
Yu looked at him and laughed. “OK, Wilson. You’ve got a deal. Let’s move out.”
Jenner looked at the dark opening of the ventilation shaft. With a resigned sigh and a wince of pain, he bent, trying not to jar his arm, and climbed in, crawling awkwardly on hand and knees. It wasn’t the fastest or most direct route to the tertiary air circulators, but it was the safest with weird aliens attacking the station. Aliens. Attacking Station XG-197. This was a research station, he’d requested assignment here because it should have kept him out of combat. What was going on?
The crawl through the tight confines of the ventilation shaft was a nightmare. Every other movement jarred Jenner’s mangled arm, sending sharp agony through his already bruised body. As he approached open grates, he could invariably hear the sounds of fighting, an inhuman guttural barking language, and human screams and cries. The station had over 600 people on it, two-thirds of whom were civilians. The remaining two hundred personnel were military, mostly Air Force like Jenner himself, support personnel who were no match for the mysterious aliens.
He finally reached the beta grid junction in sector Beta-3. The rupture was easy to find, a hole the size of his head spraying foul-smelling gasses into the air. Jenner reached for his helmet automatically, biting off a curse as he realized it had been buried under the wall of metal in the environmental control room. Muttering to himself, he loosened the bolts on the grating and pulled it into the tunnel with him.
Cautiously, he stuck his head out, looking for signs of the alien invaders. The corridor walls were scorched and scarred by some kind of energy weapon, probably the same weapon that had holed the pipe below him, but there was no sign of anyone else nearby. Carefully, he slid out and landed on the decking with a painful thud. The jar to his arm made him sway, blackness creeping up in the corners of his vision. Jenner clenched his good hand, leaning on the blackened wall as he struggled not to pass out; if he did, he and everyone in the station were dead.
“Come on, Jenner. You can do this.”
He pushed himself away from the wall and located the nearest patch kit, hanging twenty feet away from the breach in the pipe. The stench in the air was already starting to make him nauseous. Moving carefully, he pulled the kit down and dragged it back to the hole, opening it one-handed.
“Right. Hold the patch in place and weld it on.” Jenner looked at the curved piece of metal and shook his head slowly. It was a task that required two good arms, not one. He looked at the pipe, running along the access corridor at floor level, and put the patch just over the rupture. Awkwardly, he braced it in place with a foot, twisting to seal it on with his one good hand.
It was messy, and slower than he wanted. By the time he was finished, he was lightheaded from the waste gasses, and his back and legs were screaming in pain from the angle he’d had to crouch at. But it was finished. He could hear the fighting starting to near the access corridor again. It was time to leave, and past time to get to the air circulators to turn them on.
Jenner closed his eyes briefly, calling up a mental map of the maze of ventilation shafts, access corridors, and other back ways around the station. The shortest route was straight through this access corridor and back past the docking bay. If the aliens hadn’t taken control of the docking bay already, if the corridor wasn’t blocked, if. Too many ifs, but he’d have to chance running for it.
“I’m not a hero…”
He started moving. The muttered words echoed in his mind as he hurried as quietly as booted feet on metal decking would allow past blackened, melted walls, past bits of equipment dropped in the fight and the debris of combat, and past dead bodies. Human bodies, all of them, burned, sliced by some kind of knife, or unmarked with looks of terror on their faces. He tried not to look too closely, his stomach churning with fear and disgust.
“If I don’t…nobody will. It’s my job.”
There were voices behind him, clipped, guttural, inhuman. Alien voices, speaking an unknown language. Jenner didn’t stop to look as he slid the door to the tertiary circulation control room open, ducking in and closing the door as fast as he could. It appeared that the aliens had avoided this room; it was undamaged. His heart pounded as he began the manual startup sequence, flipping switches in the correct sequence as quickly as he dared.
The door whooshed open as he began to prime the final phase of the startup sequence. Twenty seconds until he could start the huge fans moving. Jenner turned, as the station intercom clicked on. Three grotesquely misshapen figures loomed in the doorway.
He froze, staring at them. They were half again his height, their bodies twisted with protruding spurs of bone where no human bone ever grew. One of them looked at him, saying something in the harsh language he had heard while crawling through the ventilation shaft. As one, they moved into the room, spreading out to keep him from running.
Ten seconds left. The intercom clicked again as one of them drew an enormous knife, nearly Jenner’s own height. He pressed himself back against the control panel, not daring to move. His hand was on the button.
A blast of sound filled the room, the slow, orchestrated strains of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto #2, Movement 1. The aliens paused, confused by the sudden noise, looking at each other. Jenner took a breath, counting to himself. Five. Four. Three. The creature holding the knife took a step forward, raising his giant blade.
Two. One. Jenner pushed the button and was rewarded with the instant hum of the circulation fans powering up. The monster in front of him took another step forward, bringing his weapon down. Jenner had an instant to see that the edge glowed green with some kind of energy as it descended towards him, and towards the control panel. Desperately, he flung his good arm up to intercept the blade, twisting around to the alien’s side.
The blade sliced through his arm, grating on bone for an instant before severing it entirely. Jenner screamed in agony, doubling over for a moment as the pain hit him. The fans continued humming, undisturbed; his desperate action had deflected the knife enough to lodge it in the metal supports between panels, rather than destroying the panel outright. And now, he had their attention.
All three of the aliens moved toward him, the other two drawing some kind of gun. Jenner broke and ran, ducking around the clawed hands of the one whose knife was embedded in the supports. It was mostly panic, a frantic desire to survive, with a faint hope of drawing them away from the circulation control room.
It worked. He dared a glance behind him, hearing their furious buzzing voices, and saw all three following him. He ran, as the whining thud of their weapons sounded and a burst of green and purple energy burned the wall next to him. They would kill him, he knew, but maybe…
There. A door marked with the bright yellow and orange signs of hazardous materials. Jenner glanced back again, and saw that the three aliens had been joined by four more, in black and grey armor. Three of the newcomers carried larger versions of the rifles the first group had, while the fourth, in grey armor, appeared unarmed. He slammed the elbow of his mangled arm against the door panel, and it whooshed open.
It was dark inside, only dimly lit by the emergency lighting. Vats of chemical stews bubbled above him, covered loosely with protective shields. Sealed barrels scattered the floor, waiting their turn to be reprocessed from waste into fuel for the station. Jenner ducked his head and pulled at the sling holding his other arm with his teeth, loosening it and pulling it off. With a strangled cry of pain, he forced his broken fingers to reach up and close around the cover of one of the vats, forced his shattered arm to pull it off as the door slid open again. He ducked under the vat, hoping, biting back another scream when he twisted his arm into the handles on the vat, designed to allow it to be tilted for easier cleaning.
The aliens came in carefully, professionally, scanning the dim room for their target. Jenner’s dark skin and navy blue jumpsuit hid him from the creatures, as they moved further into the room. Their weapons pulsed and glowed greenish, giving their bulging, fan-shaped heads a nightmarish appearance. Jenner mouthed a quick prayer as they got closer to him.
One of them pointed, barking something. They’d seen him. Jenner took a deep breath, the chemicals in the air burning in the back of his throat, and pulled with all his strength on the vat’s handle. It tilted, tipped, and chemicals began pouring out as the aliens raised their weapons to fire. Jenner was protected for the moment by the bulk of the vat itself; the monsters had no such protection. Two of them fell almost immediately, slipping in the goo and falling to the ground.
The grey-armored one raised its hands to its head, staring at Jenner, as the two black-armored aliens began firing towards him. The energy bolts smashed against the wall behind him, scoring deeply into it. He felt…something…in his mind, a probing, prying inhuman presence.
“This one: Desperate. Extreme pain: Enduring. Command: Capture. Subject: Observation.”
Jenner doubled over, frozen in place by the power of that alien mind. Distantly, he heard a final blast from the energy weapons, then an instant of silence. His body refused to respond to his desperate orders to move, to get out, run away. They were coming over to him now, getting nearer to him. He could feel their hands grabbing his shoulders, hard claws digging into his skin. There was a whistling noise in the background, a sound his mind knew, but he was paralyzed by the alien’s power. He couldn’t catch his breath through the burning stink of the chemicals coating the floor.
The whistle rose to a shriek, then a howling as wind began to whip around all of them. Jenner recognized the noise now, the scream of air rushing out into vacuum. Belatedly, he remembered that this particular processing area was on the outer wall of the station; one of the energy blasts must have punched through into space. He heard the sound of emergency seals slamming shut, sealing the section as atmospheric pressure dropped.
It was pulling at them now, all of them. The aliens had taken hold of the support struts on the vat above them, and were holding Jenner tightly. He exhaled as the air pressure dropped, and dropped again, his ears popping. The room was open to vacuum, and they were all going to die. Jenner was almost grateful; it was better than whatever these things had in mind.
With a shriek of tearing metal, the supports on the vat above them gave way. It fell, bouncing off the armored aliens and Jenner as it crushed them to the floor, and lifted again with the pressure of the wind. Jenner’s ears popped again, with a tearing pain, and there was sudden silence. The wind slowed, only a faint breeze whistling out of the hole in the wall. The rounded vat had blocked the hole just enough to prevent them from all being sucked out into space.
The taller aliens with their inhuman bodies had taken the brunt of the blow. They lay dead, crushed by the weight of the vat. Jenner lay under them, helpless, fighting to breathe through the fumes and thin air. Oddly, he mused as his vision greyed, his lower body didn’t hurt any more. Something was burning his throat, his back and chest were aflame with agony, his head felt like someone had driven spikes into his ears…but his legs didn’t hurt at all. Then…nothing.
“Bunch of dead aliens. Nothing here. Patch it and move on.”
“Wait. There’s something else.”
“No…You’re right. Oh my God, it’s Wilson.”
“He must have led these things away. Poor guy.”
“I’ve got a pulse! He’s alive, someone get a medic down here NOW!”
“He’s not going to make it, Sir. I can’t do the surgery he needs, not now, not in this mess!”
“Just get him stable enough to evacuate with the rest, Doc.”
“He won’t live through landing. Commander, his back was crushed. Blood loss, both arms, bone fragments all over the place, internal bleeding, shock, concussion, the list goes on and on, Sir. The boy is going to die up here.”
“That boy saved the few of us that are left up here. You keep him alive, Doc. Do whatever it takes. We’re evacuating in two hours. Have him ready for transport.”
“I’ll do my best.”
It was absolutely silent in the room. Jenner noticed that first as he drifted groggily towards consciousness. No noise, not the hum of machinery he’d grown so used to on the station, no voices, nothing. His entire upper body hurt, but his lower body seemed strangely numb. It was hard to think. Cobwebs filled his mind, dulling his thoughts. He opened his eyes, blinking at the bright lights. The room resolved from a blur into a blue-painted hospital room. A woman in a white uniform was bent over him, checking something.
He was still alive. The woman looked at him and smiled, her mouth opening. Her lips moved, and…nothing. Jenner blinked, his sense of triumph at having survived slipping away as the nurse paused, and her lips moved again. Still, nothing. He opened his mouth, trying to say something, trying to ask what was going on. Silence. His throat hurt, a dry, painful, rasping sensation.
The nurse turned and two men came into the room. They wore suits, and lab coats over the suits. Nametags. Doctors. Jenner watched them, starting to feel a sense of slight panic. One of them said…something. His mouth moved, and Jenner heard nothing. The doctor shook his head and pulled out a pen, writing on the clipboard he carried under his arm. He held the clipboard up. He’d written on it, an introduction.
“Hello, Mr. Wilson. I’m Doctor Harrison. Can you hear anything at all?”
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