Forged in Space Read online

  The Chit advanced on George. Reyes watched helplessly as the Chit tentacles reached out for him. George ran at the beast with his own battle cry, deep and furious. Tears streamed from his eyes as he ran straight at the alien. He dodged between the thick tentacles and reached out for the fine antennae around the circular mouth on the long head. He snapped one off and it caused the Chit to squirm and back away, its long head swinging violently.

  Reyes saw the edge of the hangar door glowing. She hoped for a moment it was rescue, then she realized the door was being sealed from the outside. The ship systems would show how many crew were in the hangar. They were being abandoned. Reyes stumbled away from the door toward her bench. She felt the Chitin suit behind her and thought, just maybe, she could use it and escape.

  George was still screaming and beating down the Chit with his fists, the long head taking blow after blow. Then Reyes saw the second Chit appear in the breach. It dropped down to pluck George off the deck and carried him up, screaming and kicking.

  The Chit in the hangar turned toward Reyes. She felt a sudden rush of fear and adrenaline. The air was thin and she was feeling too weak to fight. The electron blade fell from her hand. She turned her back on the advancing Chit and looked at the Chit on her bench. There was space inside. She had thought about trying it out once she’d studied it some more. Study time was over. It either worked now, or she died. She climbed in through the opening in the shell. The Chit lurched toward her in what looked like a drunken state. Losing the antennae to George had badly affected it. Reyes grabbed the console she’d been using to control the Chit and pulled it inside with her.

  She curled up her legs and adopted a kneeling position in the body of the Chit, working as quickly as she could.

  The shell closed and locked Reyes inside. She could see only the inside of the shell, lit by the console. She tried to stand the Chit up on its tentacles. She felt the suit stand upright. Then she fell sideways. Now she was upside-down. She checked the console, but it wasn’t her driving that was at fault. Again, she was moving and tumbling.

  “That damn Chit is giving me a beating,” she said. Her hands danced across the console as she tried to access some exterior view. The inside of the head suddenly presented an image of the outside world. It was the maintenance hangar as seen from an unusual angle, upside-down in a corner, on top of the junk pile. She looked around and saw the Chit, still lurching drunkenly toward her.

  Looking up, Reyes could see the breach in the hull. “If I can get this right…” Reyes said to herself as she attempted to leap using all the Chit’s tentacles. She felt the movement as she flung herself toward the breach.

  As she came toward the breach, she turned the Chit and reached out with a tentacle to grab hold of the blistered edge. The tentacle missed and Reyes slammed into the roof of the hangar. She realized she was falling. Looking up, she saw the second Chit coming back through the breach, tentacles extended downwards. Reyes reached out and grabbed with her own tentacles.

  She caught hold and stopped her fall. The Chit started to pull her up. She panicked at first, a wave of fear pulsing in her chest. “If I’m going to get out of here, it might as well be this way,” she said and let herself be pulled up.

  She emerged in a closed space, filled with writhing tentacles of many colors. She saw Doyle and George. They were both held inside a translucent pod. Both seemed in shock, their mouths and eyes wide open, but both were still. Reyes moved through the mass of tentacles and saw a large display. It was shimmering like a reflection in an oil-covered pool of water and showed the outside of the Scorpio. Underneath the display was a series of what Reyes thought looked like a set of controls. It was a collection of short writhing tentacles set in a pattern of color and length.

  “If this is how you control your ship,” Reyes said, reaching out with her clumsy tentacle, “there should be a door handle here somewhere.” Reyes grabbed and tugged at the tentacles.

  The Chit craft jerked and bucked, then fell away from the side of the Scorpio. Reyes felt herself being pulled from the control. She looked around as best she could and then saw in the murky display on the inside of the Chitin head that the other Chit was grabbing her. She reached out and wrapped a tentacle around one of his small antenna and snapped it off. Quickly, she grabbed another.

  The tentacles that filled the space inside the craft were all being sucked toward the opening in the Chitin craft. Reyes had managed to detach the craft from the hull of the Scorpio and now the interior was exposed to space. Thick globs of fluid started streaming past her to get blown out in to the void.

  The fallen Chit wriggled between the ship’s interior tentacles and toward the set of short tentacle controls. Reyes saw chance to escape. She moved her way through the craft toward the opening to space, allowing herself to be blown out along with other contents of the craft and leaving the Chit craft behind.

  “Now, if only I can get back to the Scorpio, I might actually survive this,” Reyes said. She tapped away at her console and tried to pilot the Chit shell and get herself to safety.

  “One of the Chit craft has detached from the hull, Captain. They appear out of control. Venting gas and fluid from a large opening.” Commander Chou wiped sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

  “Destroy it, Mister Chou.”

  “Dorsal battery has it. They fired on it. It’s destroyed.”

  “Second craft detaching now.”

  “Fire on it.” Pretorius leaned heavily on the holostage.

  “They are accelerating away. Port side battery firing. We’ve lost them, Captain. Sorry.”

  “That’s not all we lost. I want a list of missing and dead. I’ll assess the damage to my ship.” Pretorius picked up the sidearm off the holostage and returned it to the arms locker. “And if they ever get this far into my ship, I won’t need a sidearm. I’ll destroy the Scorpio. Those Chit bastards won’t be dragging me off to krav knows where.”

  “Captain.” Commander Chou shuddered.

  Pretorius walked back across to the holostage and saw what had caused Chou to shudder.

  “A Chitin war ship detected. It’s a Leviathan, sir. It’s on an intercept course. Should I call the Scorpio to action stations?”

  Pretorius tugged at his cuffs. “No, Mister Chou. We’ve had our fight. Bring us about. Full speed. Calculate a slingshot maneuver around the planet.”

  “What heading, Captain?”

  Pretorius expanded the holograph image to show the system from their current location around the gas giant’s outer moon to the inner system worlds of Eros and Eras. The positions of the fleet were indicated. The nearest vessel capable of offering support against the Leviathan was the carrier Overlord and its flotilla.

  “Set course for the Overlord.”

  Pretorius refocused the display on the Penthus system. The Scorpio was diving toward the boiling clouds of the giant planet. The Chitin warship was bearing down on them. The Scorpio fired its massive engine assembly, antimatter was annihilated in the reaction chamber and blasted the Scorpio on its slingshot around the planet and away toward the distant carrier.

  Pushing himself away from the holostage, Pretorius turned on his heel and walked toward the command deck exit. He unbuttoned his jacket. “Send a message to the team on the ground. Let them know we haven’t forgotten them.”

  Chapter 15

  Jack moved fast and low a few meters ahead of Finch, scouting with a watchful eye out for any Chitin activity. His scanners were set to maximum range and running in tandem with the scanners on board Finch’s suit.

  A flash overhead caught Jack’s eye. He dove to the ground and scanned the area for danger. Then another flash and Jack realized it was coming from orbit.

  “The Scorpio.” Jack turned back to Commander Finch. “They’re firing.”

  “Get moving, Marine,” Finch called out, climbing to his feet. He brushed the sand off his suit in exaggerated sweeps that showed his frustration.

  “That’s why I couldn’t
raise them on comms. They were hiding from the Chits.”

  “You don’t know what’s going on up there. Now get moving. Back to the Lander, on the double.”

  Jack saw another large flash from above. If the Scorpio was taking a beating, Jack guessed they would be forgotten and abandoned. He pushed the worry out of his mind. The Chitins were building something and he was going to stop them.

  Moving again and watching out for more signs of battle in orbit Jack kept his rifle pointed forward ready to respond to any threat. A flash of light came from behind, sailed over head and crashed into the ground a kilometer ahead, not far from the landing crash site. The pink sands of the moon erupted high into the air.

  “Hold, Marine,” Finch’s voice hissed his Jack’s helmet. “Hold position.”

  Jack dropped to one knee and scanned the horizon. Something had come down to the surface and was sitting between him and the landing craft, his only sure way off this kravin’ pink hell. His scanners detected movement.

  “Movement detected up ahead, sir.” Jack adjusted his pulse rifle sights and studied the horizon.

  “Hold.” Finch came alongside Jack.

  A large flash from overhead lit up the brown atmosphere of Kratos. A large ball of light hung there like a small sun. Jack looked skywards to the flash. Finch was on his feet, head tipped back to look at the large ball of light.

  “It’s the Scorpio main drive, sir. They are leaving.”

  “Negative, Marine. They won’t leave us down here.”

  “It’s the main drive, sir. If that was a ship getting smashed, then we’d see debris raining down through the atmosphere. The Scorpio is escaping.”

  Finch took a few faltering steps toward the fading ball of light. “No!” he called out pitifully. “They can’t leave.”

  “We need to take care of those Chits back there, sir.” Jack stepped over to Finch, who was staggering like a drunk. Pulling him back to the ground, Jack repeated, “We still have work to do.”

  Finch pushed Jack away. “Don’t tell me, Marine. I give the orders around here. And I order the Scorpio to get back here.” Finch was on his feet again, staggering toward the vanishing ball of light. And as it faded completely from view, Finch yelled, “I order you to come back here.”

  “Sir.” Jack placed a hand on Finch’s shoulder. “Up ahead. Movement.”

  Finch shrugged Jack off his and walked with hesitant steps, calling out to the Scorpio to come and get him.

  Jack pulled Finch to the ground and held him down. “It’s alright, sir.”

  “It’s not alright, you fool. We’ve been left here to rot in this krav grit and slime.” Finch rubbed the sand away from his suit as it crept up and over him.

  “No, sir. They won’t leave us, sir.” Jack tried to calm Finch. The movement he’d detected was closing in slowly. “But Captain Pretorius knows we are Marines and we can accomplish our mission, sir.”

  “Yes.” Finch saluted and tried to stand up. “I’m a kravin’ Marine. I’m Commander of Cobra Company. Get back here,” Finch shouted and struggled to get to his feet, but Jack held him down. “Get back here, you cowards.”

  “Sir. Movement. Something closing in. Something from orbit. Approaching fast.”

  Finch dropped to the ground and clumsily brought his rifle up to his shoulder. “Kravin’ Chitin scum. Chit filth. Kravin’ evil bastards. I’ll blast it. Where’s he at?” Finch climbed up onto one knee and aimed, his rifle jerking this way and that. “Where’s the Chitin scum at?”

  Then Jack spotted it, a Chitin, moving in a swaying motion across its path. It seemed to move suddenly in one direction before moving back the other. Jack watched closely, waiting for the Chit to swing into kill range. Finch was reacting strangely to what looked to be the sudden departure of the Scorpio. If Jack was going to take this Chit down quickly, he would need Finch to fire with him, or wait for the Chit to come so close that Jack could take it on his own.

  “Krav it all, Marine,” Finch dropped next to Jack, bumping into him and knocking his rifle off target. “There’s a kravin’ Chit coming this way. Are you blind?”

  “No, sir, just waiting for a kill shot, sir.”

  “Kill shot, he says.” Finch took aim. “I’ll show you a kill shot. Been killing Chits since before you were tying your laces. Take aim and wait for my order to fire. Can you do that, Forge?”

  “Yes, sir.” Jack returned his rifle to his shoulder and sighted the Chit. “Waiting for your order, sir.” The Chit was definitely close enough for them to take the shot, and the thing seemed hurt or damaged by the way it was moving. It lurched one way and then the other.

  Come on already, Jack thought. “Ready to fire, sir,” he said, hoping it would prompt Finch to let him open up and shred the Chit.

  Jack zoomed in with his rifle sights. The creature was covered in grains of the pink sand. It had clearly fallen over and picked up some of the moon’s strange sand. Then Jack remembered the Chits around the construction site. None of them seemed to pick up any grains of sand and their tentacles that moved across the surface remained clean.

  “Ready?” Finch asked.

  Jack looked at the tentacles more closely and the sand creeping up over them just like it had done with his boots, but not like the other Chits’ tentacles. The Chit lurched again the other way. Jack saw one of the tentacles curl up suddenly into a tight knot and then drop flaccid and lifeless. The Chit lurched as another tentacle that was moving it forward coiled up into a tight knot.

  “Take aim, Marine,”

  Jack remembered seeing the Chit in the maintenance hangar behaving like that when Reyes had been attempting to work out the way the Chit moved. Jack aimed at the smooth head. And there, glinting on the Chit’s head, was his watch. The watch that had been his only reminder of family. The watch he’d dismantled in the Battle of Training Moon. The watch he’d asked Reyes to look after for him, the watch Reyes had slipped over the antennae of the Chit she was studying.

  “Fire,” Finch called.

  Jack reached out and pushed the front of Finch’s rifle upwards. The pulse rounds ripped through the thin air centimeters above the Chit’s head.

  “Cease fire, sir. It’s Reyes.” Jack held the front of Finch’s rifle upwards against Finch’s struggling.

  “Let go of my weapon, Forge. Kill the damn Chit. Fire!” Finch shouted. He fired his rifle wildly as Jack held it pointing skywards. “This is sedition. This is mutiny. They’ll hang you for this, Forge. I’ll hang you myself.”

  “Sir, it’s not a Chit. It’s Reyes.”

  “Reyes? What is Reyes? One of your Chit friends.” Finch continued to fight.

  “No, sir, it’s Sarah Reyes from maintenance.”

  “You’ve lost your mind,” Finch screamed. He let go of his rifle and drew his sidearm, pointing it at Jack’s face.

  “Sir, no, sir.” Jack held his hands in front of him for protection, knowing it was useless to try and fend off a pulse pistol shot. Not even the meat suit could protect him at this range. “She’s on our side.”

  “So you admit it. You are a spy? A turncoat? You are a Chitin agent come to kill us. You sent the Scorpio away. You are the enemy here, Forge.” Finch primed the pistol.

  “No, sir. Please, sir. Put the weapon down.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw the Chit that was Reyes lurch over behind Finch.

  A tentacle reached out and slapped the hand holding the pistol. The weapon fired, the round zipping through the air just over Jack’s left shoulder.

  Finch turned to face the Chit that towered over them both. A tentacle wrapped around Finch’s pistol hand. The pistol fired again. Purple slime splattered out of the wound the pistol blasted in the Chit. A second tentacle coiled around Finch’s other arm and lifted him off the ground, the pistol tumbling from Finch’s grasp.

  “Put him down, Sarah,” Jack called. “Put the commander down,”

  The coiled tentacles that held Finch off the ground uncoiled and released h
im. The commander fell to the sandy ground. He struggled to his hands and knees. Jack saw Finch pull an electron blade from a scabbard on is ankle.

  Reyes reached out with a tentacle and flicked the bade out of Finch’s hand. The blade spun upwards, leaving visual trails as it spun. The blade reached its zenith and tumbled downwards, rotating still.

  Jack saw the danger. Finch saw it too. Jack reached out, yelling. Finch struggled to get away from the falling blade.

  The blade landed point down on Finch’s shoulder, passing easily through the suit and cutting into Finch’s shoulder. The commander yelled out as the blade cut his flesh and bone.

  The blood boiled out of the wound, exposed to the thin cold atmosphere. The pressure from the suit was released in moments and then the toxins from the atmosphere of Kratos found their way into Finch’s suit and into his warm flesh.

  “Sir,” Jack called out. “Commander Finch?”

  Jack stood over the still and silent body of Finch. Then he looked up at the smooth head of the Chit standing before him.

  Chapter 16

  Sarah Reyes looked at Jack on the shimmering view on the inside on the Chit.

  “Jack,” she shouted. She shouted again through her tears. “Jack. It’s me.”

  She watched as Jack looked down at the body of Finch and then up again at her. She saw him mouthing the words, Sarah. Is that you, Sarah?

  She shouted again so loud it hurt her throat and her ears. “Jack, it’s me. Help me.”

  Reyes could see that the hole in the Chit where Finch had fired was closing up, a thick purple liquid filling the hole, but the gash across the right thigh where the round had grazed her was not healing. It was bleeding badly. Some purple slime spread over her thigh. The liquid burned and she screamed, the sound of her voice echoing around inside the Chit.