Chapter 10 Intergalactic Criminal? #2
I have never seen such a large brig in a Precursor ship, but the Osiris is larger than most in many respects. Still, perhaps its purpose was to transport dangerous criminals.
“She says she doesn’t know. Some of her systems were damaged,” Jace replied faintly.
The sound of his voice--so weak and raspy compared to before--had Khoth practically throwing himself up the last few feet to the door of Gehenna’s prison.
“Jace, we are here. Are you speaking with Gehenna? How do we get inside?” Khoth asked.
Jace blindly reached for the door again without speaking.
He seemed too exhausted to speak. Khoth had to guide his hand to it again.
For a moment, Jace’s fingers curled around his.
The young man held onto his as there was a momentary electric zap and the cold calcanth door suddenly rumbled to life. It sank back and then slid to the side.
Both he and Thammah leaned forward to see what was inside.
There was no light. No signs of life. Only the lights from their suits illuminated the square ten-by-ten foot space.
There was a bunk that jutted out from the right side of the wall.
He saw another receptacle for waste. An AI needed neither so this prison had not been intended for Gehenna when the Osiris was built.
But that was an afterthought as Khoth was transfixed by what was in the center of the room.
At first, he didn’t know what he was seeing.
It looked to be a jumble of black coils about twin inches in diameter tipped with metal claws and spikes.
The coils were curled around one another like snakes.
But they all merged--or perhaps emerged was the correct term--from one place.
A bulbous glass-like sphere. The sphere appeared to be translucent, but right now had a dark center.
It reminded him of a squid, an aquatic cephalopod found in some of Earth’s waters except made of metal and glass.
All told, he imagined it would stand ten feet tall if the tips of the coils touched the ground and were completely unfurled.
“Is that… is that Gehenna?” Thammah asked, the confusion evident in her voice. There was a trace of alarm too. “This doesn’t look like… I mean… the tips of the coils are weapons.”
Jace’s arm slipped from his grasp. At first, Khoth thought it was intentional, that Jace was reaching for the “squid”, but then he realized that Jace wasn’t breathing.
“Jace! JACE!” Khoth cried. “He’s not breathing! He has no heartbeat!”
“What do we do? Put him in the arms of that thing?” Thammah gestured towards the “squid”.
But that seemed an insane suggestion. The “squid” was not operational.
He set Jace’s body on the floor. Jace’s head lolled to the side.
Those eyes were closed. He brought up his suit’s medical systems and adjusted it for human physiology.
His fingers flew over the controls. Finally set, he placed his hands one over the other over Jace’s heart.
“Clear!” He yelled so that Thammah knew not to touch Jace in that moment.
An electrical shock went from his suit into Jace’s body. Jace “jumped” up with the jolt. But his suit told him that the shock had been unsuccessful.
“CLEAR!”
Thammah stepped back. Her foot touched one of the coils. It shifted and slid into Jace’s palm. It happened just as he was applying the electric shock. He couldn’t stop in time. The shock ran through Jace and into the “squid”.
The “squid’s” head suddenly lit up like the sun rising on Haseon. The colors of molten red, orange and yellow bloomed so bright that he had to squint. The coils began to move. The “squid’s” head rose up from the ground.
“Whoa! It’s alive! Khoth, it’s alive!” Thammah cried out.
The coils slithered around Jace’s form, completely obscuring him from site. Khoth had left his weapons, his rahir and draagves, back in the Exarch. But he still had the suit and his skills. He kicked out at the “squid’s” head. He didn’t even brush it with the soul of his boot.
The “squid’s” coils lifted Jace up off of the floor and then it rammed its bulbous head into Khoth’s middle. There was another electric zap and he was thrown out of the cell and landed flat on his back on the hallway. Except the hallway was sloped and he started sliding down it like a chute.
Thammah let out a yell before leaping onto the “squid’s” back, wrapping her arms around its head and coils.
There was another zap and the scent of ozone filled the air.
Thammah was launched against the cell’s wall.
There was a solid thump as she impacted the calcanth.
But the exo-suit generated a shield which stopped the back of her head from smacking against the metal wall.
But still Thammah slid down, stunned for a moment.
And Khoth was still sliding.
But he was actually going in the same direction of the squid.
It shot out of the cell and raced down the hallway.
It levitated over his and continued to the far end of the hallway.
The Osiris turned on as it moved. Lights that had been dormant blazed to life, blinding Khoth.
Doors that had been sealed, opened at the squid’s approach.
A thrum went through the entire ship. The Osiris was coming back to life.
Khoth jammed his feet against the walls and turned on the magnetic locks. He jerked to a halt just as the squid flew over him. He grabbed hold of those coils that were not wrapped around Jace’s body. For a moment, he stopped its forward momentum.
“ARGHHHHH!” Khoth cried as he strove to keep the squid in place.
But there was another zap and his suit’s magnetic locks failed.
He was now flying along with the squid. He wrapped his right arm around the coils as he reached out with the left hand for something to hold onto.
But the walls were smooth, even the thresholds gave him no chance to curl his fingers into the insets and gain some purchase.
The squid headed for a lift that throbbed to life.
The doors smoothly slipped open and the lights seemed to explode around them.
The three of them were inside of the car and it was rocketing upwards before Khoth got his feet underneath him.
Khoth jumped up and spun around so that he was facing the squid.
The seeming hundreds of tendrils curled around Jace in what seemed a protective stance.
Other tendrils were suddenly lifted up and facing towards him.
Spikes and claws all dripping with neurotoxins were aimed towards him.
His exo-suit would block many of them, but not all.
There were simply too many. The space was too small.
He had nowhere to go. If the squid wanted him to die, he would.
What if this isn’t an enemy? Gehenna was supposed to be in that cell. Gehenna wants to save Jace. Maybe that’s who this is. Maybe she’s just trying to save Jace.
“Gehenna?” Khoth asked, his voice breathless, even as he was up on the balls of his feet and swayed from side to side.
The squid’s translucent head flashed with yellow lights. His exo-suit’s system fuzzed. He frowned.
“I cannot understand you,” Khoth said. He could see Jace’s body among the curling coils. “Jace is very ill.”
Jace might be dead.
His Xi hurt to even think that.
There were more flashing lights. Deep blues that were almost black. Greens the color of Haseon forests. Yellows like the morning sun.
“Are you trying to help Jace?” he asked. “Because I am trying to do so. I need to restart his heart. I need to get him breathing. Damage is occurring that cannot be undone.”
There were suddenly two straight lines that appeared on the squid’s face. The red line showed an erratic rhythm.
Heartbeat. That is Jace’s heart. It’s beating.
The blue line was more of a sine wave.
Breathing.
“So you’ve got his heart back and his breathing relatively stable. We need to get him--”
There were frantic flashes of lights. His exo-suit suddenly buzzed. He lifted up his right forearm and instead of his own vitals, there were words written in Thaf’ell.
Must get Jace to core.
He frowned. “Core? You mean the Osiris’ core?”
Yes.
“Gehenna, is that you?”
Yes. Nice to meet you, Commander Khoth Voor. Help me?
Khoth’s gaze dropped to Jace.
“Can you save him?”
Yes. I do this for both of us. There was a pause and then Gehenna told him, We will have company when the elevator doors open. Ready? Three… two… one…
Khoth spun towards the doors as they silently whispered open.
They had reached a level where the humans had breached.
Khoth was staring into the eyes of three soldiers who were staring at the lift as if it were possessed.
They hesitated before lifting their weapons.
Khoth went for the one to the left. He lunged forward and hit the human soldier on the back of the neck.
The soldier went down, unconsciously, as if all the sand had been released from his body.
The other two were hit with electric zaps.
Their bodies arched before they, too, fell unconscious in heaps on the floor.
Gehenna floated ahead of him with Jace’s unconscious body in her coils.
Khoth followed closely after her down the hallways that now flared with the Osiris’ own light rather than the humans’ strung lights.
They met soldiers and scientists around every corner.
The scientists ran. The soldiers didn’t have a chance to even reach for their weapons before either Khoth had downed them or Gehenna had.
He noticed though that her energy was flagging.
She levitated lower to the ground and the last few soldiers that she attempted to zap caused them only to jerk back, confused.
Khoth had to go in and slam heads against walls, crack skulls together, and kick legs out from beneath them before they went down.
Final hallway. There, Gehenna told him.
At the end of the hallway there was another door.
There were boxes in front of it. This was a door that the humans had given up on trying to open.
But it opened now. The boxes toppled. Gehenna glided over them while Khoth cleared them with a jump.
Just as he entered the room beyond, someone called his name.
“Khoth!” Colonel Diane Parker called. He knew it was her the moment he turned his head to look back. She and Jace had the cheekbones. Her face was stricken. “Commander Khoth! Please let my son go!”
She was surrounded by soldiers. They all had their guns out. Pointed at him and Gehenna.
Just as the doors were sliding shut, Khoth said, “We cannot. We are saving him.”