Chapter Two #2
There was a massive hole in the front visor of the ship. It was big enough that anyone could get through, especially with no gravity onboard and their thrusters. They could crawl back to the line before their attacker got to the control deck, and be back on their ship in minutes.
Aphrodite pulled her heat gun out again and aimed it at the electrical entrance, a belly full of buzzing was never good. “Something’s alive in this ship.”
“Yeah! We’ve seen it, it ate Carso!” Max cleared the last leg of the path to the control desk. All the buttons were dark, a wall of panels stood before them, dead. Dead ship. Someone killed this vessel with no mercy. Her heat radar indicated nothing warm.
“Watch it.” Danny grabbed Max by the suit, pointing at a long, black wire laid across the desk.
It sparked as if to speak for itself. There’s power somewhere.
If I could…Aphrodite shook the thought from her mind.
Escape was the only answer. Max lurched away from the control desk.
Danny returned his attention to the same screen Aphrodite stared at.
“A ship that’s fritzing out should still give off heat signatures. ”
“Unless something’s absorbing all the heat.
Those flying creatures we found before, they’re attracted to heat.
You remember they came out of their cave and the ones who escaped latched onto the side of the ship—” Aphrodite looked up to find Tedros bulldozing through the debris at a different angle toward the desk. “Tedros! Stop!”
“No! I’m getting out of here—”
He stepped onto the desk, missing an open wire that Max narrowly avoided.
Aphrodite and Max whirled away from the electrical access as sparks flew through the room.
The scent of burnt flesh and melted plastic filled their suits for only a second before it was filtered.
Poor bastard didn’t even have time to scream.
The buzzing became a horrifying roar as it raced up through the ship.
A horde of wasp looking creatures sprung from the hole and dove for Tedros, warm and smoking from the electrocution he’d suffered.
Max shrieked, racing for the labs and away from the Control Deck.
Danny pulled out his knife, burying it into a creature that raced after the three survivors.
Aphrodite scrambled for a solution. They want heat?
She grabbed a flare off her suit and lit it with a flick of her thrusters.
As it roared to life, the wasps lurched from Tedros.
Aphrodite launched it with the help of her air-pressure tool-gun and watched them chase after it, like moths to a flame, out of the ship.
She ducked, keeping out of the line of sight for the massive wasp creatures as the last few stragglers escaped the access hatch.
Well, now I know why everything in here is dead. She watched some of the panels flicker to a half-life. There wasn’t enough power to reboot, but enough to fill the emergency lights.
They wasps cleared out in seconds before the sounds of the hallway door being ripped from the wall echoed behind them. Max’s screams died with a terrified yelp. Danny put a finger to his lips, pressing himself to the wall of the Control Deck. Aphrodite stared at him, bewildered.
“You’re joking! You’re gonna try and fight them again?
” she hissed, crawling toward the electrical panel.
The engineer's access was a hole in the floor underneath the panel. A ladder down into the underbelly of the ship. She’d crawled through some tight spaces before, but this was a larger ship.
They would have had an actual electrical crew to maintain it.
She glanced down onto the ladder and smiled.
No bugs. “Come on, we can sneak past him through here.”
She was halfway into the hole, a foot on the first rung, when the being from before broke through the doorway.
Danny sprung out from the wall, knife ready to bury in their neck.
Agile as a cat, their hunter ducked and swerved away from the knife.
She grabbed onto the ladder, bellowing, “Danny! Come on! You can’t take them! ”
The man was pinned to the wall. Again. Their hunter wasn’t even looking at him.
That probably pisses him off like no other.
Danny snarled and twisted, trying to push the armored being off him.
However, their large eyes? Those obsidian pools outlined by dark lashes.
Of fucking course, the person from outer space has thicker lashes than me!
Not fucking fair! And they stared at her directly. Almost challenging her.
Okay, you want a challenge? She reached to her other side, grabbed the last flare she had, and flicked her thrusters.
It roared to life. A horrifying buzzing sound from outside the ship rumbled the metal.
She burst from the hole, chucking the flare directly at their hunter alien.
Before they could swat it away or defend from the bright flare, the wasps returned with fury.
Aphrodite snatched Danny by the arm and wrenched him out of the Control Deck frame.
The wasps returned, their bone-chilling buzzing louder than before.