Nathan Hystad - New Threat

Mary didn’t hesitate. She stepped out in front of it and fired. It grunted and pushed back through the doorway, hitting its helmeted head on the way out. Red beams shot from my rifle as well, and it lay there twitching before Mary fired a kill shot at its head. The helmet burst open, exposing a thick-faced monster.

Shots fired in the distance, and Mary stood like a superhero. “Get the device. You have your DNA right here.” She kicked the body and ran down the hall, firing like a commando.

“Don’t leave. You don’t know what’s out there!” I yelled to her, but it was too late. She was long gone.

I stood there like a fool, holding the rifle and staring at the dead Bhlat for at least a minute. “Clare, they’re here. Keep your eyes out for any incoming ships.” I finally had the common sense to tell the ship what was going on.

“Slate told us. We’ve lost contact with him. Is he okay?” Clare’s voice came through, asking a question I couldn’t answer.

“I don’t know. Over.”

The crate was heavy, full of maintenance tools and spare parts for the anti-grav system. I had to empty it before it would even budge from the spot it’d been sitting in all those years. Soon a pile of junk was spread around the room, and the crate finally moved. The whole floor was sections of metal grates, each about three meters square, attached to grooves in T-bar style metal beams that made up the subfloor. I tugged on the corner square, and it lifted easier than expected. Leaning it against the wall, I looked for the device as Kareem had described it. Where the Shield had been large and heavy, this device was made with similar engineering in mind, but a couple hundred years later. It reminded me of cell phone technology in a twenty-year span, going from the clunky brick design to a computer in your pocket.

Empty. There was nothing down there. I ran my hands along the edges, and just as I was about to get up, I felt a slight protrusion. Excitement raced through me. I had to slide my torso into the opening, leaving my legs and back exposed, but I got the device in my grip, unclasping it from its secure hiding spot.

“I got it, Mary,” I said.

“I killed another one. But…” Her voice trailed off, and I could hear blasts echo from my earpiece and inside the ship.

I needed to get this thing going and help them out there. It had a metal case, made of some lightweight but durable black alloy. It unlatched, revealing a circular device the diameter of a coffee cup base. It whirred to life as I touched it with my nano-fingered gloves. Soft yellow light glowed from the edges, and a white screen blinked on the interface of it. Deltra words scrolled across it, and my heads-up display was kind enough to translate them for me. I hadn’t had a chance to test out this technology, so I was thankful for it.

I clicked the icon that translated to Genetics . The image of a double helix flashed onto the screen, rotating around. Words slid onto the screen, and my HUD translated them to: MISSING DATA.

What had Kareem said? I flipped it around and saw a small button, which I pushed. A small probe extended from it, and bingo, I had it. Now I just needed to get a sample from the huge corpse at my feet, which couldn’t be difficult with all the blood and gore at my disposal. Suddenly, the body seemed repulsive to me, and the power of the device in my hand scared the hell out of every inch of me.

I closed my eyes, seeing the Kraski victims spewing out green bile before crashing to the ground in heaps. Thousands upon thousands of them littered that vessel last year. So much death at my hands. The fact that they were going to kill us didn’t ease my conscience all the time. It was nature. Kill or be killed. Mary was out there somewhere, and she needed me to stop being a baby and get this done. I could think about the moral ramifications later.

The Bhlat’s helmet was half blown off, so that’s where I went, pulling the rest off the corpse’s head. Blood oozed out, red like ours. Its face had a dark pigment; where our noses were, it had three holes on an otherwise flat face, lips thin around a wide mouth, teeth sharp and twice the length of mine. But it was the eyes that threw me off. Swirling green- and blue-speckled eyes stared back at me, and I lifted my rifle for a moment, they looked so full of life. But they weren’t. It was dead.

Cringing, I stuck the probe from the back of the device into the Bhlat’s neck, where a blaster had hit it. The yellow light turned to red and it beeped, transitioning back to yellow. The words GENETICS CONFIRMED appeared on the backlit white screen of the device.

It kicked back to the main menu. ACTIVATE now showed highlighted, and when I hit it, settings appeared. I could adjust the strength, the distance to cover with the pulse, and could rotate through the DNA samples. This scared the hell out of me. With this, I could add human DNA and wipe out our entire race. I almost dropped it right then, but the sounds of battle in the ship through my headset kept me focused.

“Dean, is it working? I’m cornered,” Mary said through my earpiece. She sounded panicked.

Boots clanked in the hall, moving slowly, and it had to be a Bhlat trying to sneak up on me. How many of them were there? And why were they even here?

The steps got closer, and I stood in the adjacent corner to where the floor was lifted, aiming my pulse rifle forward toward the door. The steps stopped, and I could almost hear the Bhlat breathing from just outside the room. The device was in my palm. One click and I could test it. I just had to press CONFIRM on the activate option.

One more step and a boot poked through. My heart beat heavily against my chest, one finger on the trigger, the other hovered over the device icon. I didn’t get to do either as the ship’s lights came on in a steady hum. My night vision gave way to normal as the levels of light increased in the room.

The Bhlat said something in its language, and suddenly, the wheel we were in stopped spinning, the force throwing me across the room fast enough to see the Bhlat’s eyes widen at the sight of me before it went flying down the hall. Gravity was gone.

I’d hit my head on the wall, and my body expected me to fall onto the pile of tools and parts scattered across the floor. Instead, they floated beside me in the room, with no gravity present to keep us grounded. Someone had powered the ship back up and stopped the spinning wheel we were in from moving, stopping the artificial grav unit from doing its job. Air hissed into the room, the life-support system back up and activated.

As I floated there, contemplating what was happening, I noticed my left hand was empty. I’d dropped the device. Grunting echoed from the hall, and I remembered I wasn’t alone. Scanning the room, I saw the device floating there beside a large wrench and a soldering iron.

I pushed off the wall, arcing toward the device just as the massive Bhlat came flying into the room. Its gun flashed beams at me, narrowly missing and cutting holes into the wall behind me. I fired back but missed as well, hitting the roof instead of the large target. I collided with the far wall, with the Bhlat soldier piling into me with some serious velocity.

It felt like being pinned to the wall by a semi-truck. My chest ached, and I nearly let go of my blaster. The training from Slate took over, and I gripped a metal rail on the wall, kicking out with all my strength, sending the Bhlat back a couple feet. It left me just enough time to grab the device.

The Bhlat said something aloud, and my translator attempted a translation but failed. A strange noise emanated from the alien, and I guessed it was laughter. I must have looked like easy prey to such a large creature. His long blaster rose as he floated there, aiming right for my head. He said something else, and the translator annoyingly showed an error again.