Ben Hammott - Salvage

Lucy watched it tilt its head while it examined her. Though worried by its presence, she didn’t experience the fear she would have from a larger ferocious creature. “You don’t seem so bad, but if you are sizing me up as a meal, I’d think again. I don’t want to hurt you, but attack me and I will.” Lucy kept her voice quiet and calm, a distraction from her hand inching towards the short branch she had spied nearby in the purple grass.

The Whirly Bug seemed to lose interest in her, as it emitted a shrill warble and flew away.

Lucy climbed to her feet gripping the short branch. Though probably inadequate against most of the alien monsters she might encounter, it felt good to have some type of weapon. Sensing she had lingered long enough, she moved through the patches of spindly trees and jagged rock formations. Luckily for her bare feet, the ground was covered in a purple, spongy grass-like growth. An increasing drone behind her spun her towards the sound. It seemed the lone Whirly Bug, having sized her up as too large or too strange a prey to tackle on its own, had returned with reinforcements.

Lucy ran.

The Whirly Bug flock gave chase.

When Lucy dodged around the base of a rock finger, she stumbled and came face to face with a group of pig-size beasts covered in long, thick shaggy hair. They were chewing grass and one of them stared at her with disinterest as it munched on a mouthful of purple vegetation. It seemed she had encountered the first species of herbivore since setting foot on this hell ship. Careful she didn’t spook them, but with cautious haste, Lucy moved around the edge of the small herd.

On hearing the buzz of the approaching Whirly Bugs, the woolly-trotters raised their flat snouts and directed their large brown eyes at the sound. When the swarm appeared, the hogs’ eyes shrunk and glowed red, their long hair stiffened and shot erect, forming thin, sharp spines that covered their bodies like a forest of rapier blades.

Lucy ran when the herd bolted. The bugs gave chase. Hooves thundered on the ground. A fallen tree blocked the path. Lucy and the spiky-hogs leaped over. The alien hog running level with Lucy glanced at her. Though it seemed surprised to see such a strange creature, it saw an opportunity to distract the bugs they obviously feared. It dodged towards her in an attempt to pierce her flesh with its spikes―an offering for the hungry swarm.

Lucy dodged aside to avoid becoming impaled and darted around a tree. The distracted hog crashed into the trunk and tumbled across the ground. Two Whirly Bugs attacked. They landed on the hog’s exposed, spike-free underbelly and stabbed their sucker fingers at its skin. The hog screeched, but quickly fell silent when the paralyzing venom injected by its attackers took hold. More bugs joined the first two. Their sucker fingers pulsed as the hog’s life-giving fluid was pumped out. Its skin shrunk until it was stretched tightly over its frame like a mummified corpse. Sensing death and a meal, beetle-like insects, all jaws on legs, burrowed out of the grass ready to feed on the hog’s carcass when the Whirly Bugs had finished feasting.

The Whirly Bugs unable to find room to feed on the downed hog continued their pursuit of the remaining quarry.

Lucy glimpsed the bridge through the trees and veered away from the hog herd. The Whirly Bugs split their forces between the hogs and Lucy.

When she approached the swamp, Lucy shot a glance behind. The bugs were still after her, though in lesser numbers now, not that it made much of a difference. However apt she was at fighting them off with the makeshift club, they were too fast and maneuverable for her to stop them for long. Only one had to make contact to incapacitate her. She reached the top of the bank, jumped and almost toppled into the stagnant water when she landed in the swamp and slipped on its sludge-layered bottom. She regained her balance and waded for the bridge a few yards away. A disturbance in the water indicated the approach of the amphibian creatures. Eyes looked hungrily at her as they headed for the latest source of food.

Lucy reached the edge of the bridge, scrambled onto it and glanced back. The Whirly Bugs glided towards her. Something erupted from the water. A stalk-eyed fish monster entered the swarm and grabbed a Whirly Bug before splashing into the water with its meal grasped in its jaws. Two more fish monsters leaped and each grabbed a prize. The remaining Whirly Bugs avoided similar fates as their brethren by rising higher than the fish could leap. The un-sated fish plummeted back into the swamp.

The bugs chased Lucy up the bridge. She reached the tunnel entrance and balked at the acrid stench―strong enough to bring tears to her eyes―that assaulted her. She forced herself inside and raced for the steps, tripped on a root grown across the path and fell. She turned as soon as she struck the ground and raised the club ready to fight off her attackers, but was surprised to see the Whirly Bugs had halted at the entrance. They hovered and stared at her, flicking from side to side in an angry, frustrated manner. When a hog screeched in the distance, they turned away and headed for the sound.

Lucy wondered why the bugs hadn’t entered the tunnel. Maybe it was the smell? Something splattered on the ground beside her. She looked at the moist, white lump and the wisp of steam rising from it. She balked again when the fresh stench washed over her. A thick, crusty layer interspersed with fresher lumps covered the tunnel floor. She tilted her head back. Creatures hung from claws clamped on the tunnel roof. One of them folded back a wing from its face and stared at her with glowing green eyes.

SAMUEL HOPKINS THE President’s Chief of Staff, and General Nathanial Colt, the Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Military Office, entered the Oval office and crossed to the table set off to one side where President Conner cast his astounded gaze over NASA’s satellite scans of the spaceship entombed in the drifting iceberg. Made from a collage of smaller images digitally joined together, it showed the full size of the huge vessel.

“It’s amazing is it not, Mr. President?” marveled General Colt, sweeping his eyes over the incredible image. “Luckily, whatever was preventing its detection before is no longer operational, giving us the first glimpse of an alien spaceship, or mother ship, as NASA has labeled it. Hopefully, if we can salvage one or more of the smaller spaceships from the hangar, they will have the same cloaking technology we can reverse engineer.”

The President glanced at his Deputy Assistant. “But how can something this size be constructed and propelled through space? It must weigh hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of tons. The fuel weight alone would be astronomical.”

“If they, the aliens that designed and built this thing, used our type of rocket propulsion, yes, it would,” answered Hopkins. “However, according to NASA’s experts and what the scientists saw aboard the ship in what they believe to be the engine room, that’s extremely unlikely. NASA believes with absolute certainty that the aliens who built it have advanced far beyond combustible fuel and the tubes of green liquid the scientists came across might be a type of extremely efficient or even reusable fuel. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time or the resources available, given the short timeframe we have before it’s lost, to salvage the main engines. However, if we can salvage one or more of the smaller spacecraft the scientists reported were inside, which probably shares the same or similar propulsion technology, it could advance our efforts to reach farther into space by hundreds if not thousands of years.”