Nathan Hystad - The Survivors - Books 1-3

Bhlat . The name sent shivers through my spine; my finger crept closer to the trigger on my weapon. Our footsteps clanged on the floor, echoing down the quiet halls. I kept thinking how they must be hearing it, they would be around the corner; but for that first section, it was all quiet.

The anti-grav wheel spoked out at four points, and the door to the third one was my target. We made it there in peace, and I tested the handle. The electric pocket door hissed open, causing me to jump and almost fire my gun. My nerves were getting the best of me. We’d only been walking on the ship for five minutes and it felt like an hour to me.

“Go get it, Dean. I’ll watch the door.” Slate slipped inside after us, and the door hissed shut. The room was confined, with a manual hatch leading down the massive wheel spoke, for lack of a better term.

“I wasn’t planning on having the Bhlat here. Kareem said we need their DNA to activate it.” The device was awful in a humanitarian kind of way. The Deltra had built the Shield as a way to keep Kraski away from it, and in a small area, the high-density few-kilometer radius killing them instantly, as I’d seen when we’d destroyed them in their own vessel last year. The image of them melting from their proximity to the Shield still haunted me, and there I was, hunting for another weapon of mass destruction with even more power.

“I’m coming with you, Dean. We can’t get separated. We’ll be stronger together,” Mary said.

Part of me wished she would stay behind and be protected by Slate, and another part was happy to have her by my side. I tried to spin the hatch wheel, grunting at the stubborn thing. Mary joined in, and just when I was about to ask Slate for a hand, it started to move. We spun it open and saw a ladder heading upward.

“I’ll take the lead,” I said, climbing into the tube. It was a few feet wide, but not spacious by any stretch of the imagination. The rungs were metal, coated with small flakes that gave it grip. I raced up the first few; but looking up, I saw it went on for what appeared to be forever, so I slowed, pacing myself for the climb. We passed a small hatch that would exit to level one of the grav-system. Level three was our destination.

Pulse laser fire erupted from below us, and I had the urge to get Mary to pass me so I could get between her and any potential fire. But they could be above us too.

“Just keep moving. Slate’s trained for this,” she said, pushing my foot lightly. I listened without hesitation, adrenaline speeding me up as we made our way past the second hatch.

“Almost there,” I said, straining to hear gunfire below. Nothing. “Slate, come in,” I said. Nothing but static returned. “We’ve lost contact.”

The third hatch was upon us, and my muscles burned as I climbed toward it. This one spun easier than the one below had, and I climbed through the four-foot diameter hole, sticking my hand out to help Mary into the room. It was pitch black, and finally, I could feel the wheel we were in spinning. Our feet were planted on the ground from the gravity it was creating, and while I didn’t quite grasp the science very well, I was happy for it.

“Where is it?” Mary asked.

“He hid it. For good reason, apparently.” The room was bathed in green from my helmet display, and I scanned for the crate Kareem had told me about. It was there, right where he’d said it would be! My heart raced as I ran to it. There was another door to the room, a normal humanoid-sized one, perfect to accommodate the tall, lanky Deltra. As I approached the crate, the door hissed open. Mary was a few feet away, the doorway separating us. We both had our backs pushed against the wall, and I held my breath. Something walked into the room slowly, feet clanking heavily on the metal floors. It was huge: seven or eight feet when it stood straight after bending for the too-small entrance.

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.