Chapter Three
Aphrodite panted for air, nearly toppling to her knees as Danny closed the door to the lab behind them.
As close to closed as it could get. The drone found Max cowering under a lab station in the belly of the ship.
Danny ripped him out from his hiding spot and nearly flew him like a kite through the ship as they found a new exit.
The hunter hadn’t shown yet. Thankfully, the lab they’d found had a door; most of them were open and exposed.
At least it’ll give us better time to formulate a plan.
“We need to get out of here,” Max whined, crawling across the floor, and hiding under the last standing table in the lab.
Shelves and bookcases were knocked onto the floor.
The electricity was out, including emergency lights.
Great, so what little power I got back is gone, fucking great.
The only light came from inside their suit helmets and the drone.
Aphrodite waved it off as it floated over her head.
“Hopefully the bugs eat the hunter, and we can just torch the place from the safety of our own ship.” Aphrodite scanned the room quickly.
This must have been their office lab for sending reports and keeping records.
Not much technology surrounded them other than many cracked screens on the wall, keyboards smashed on the ground, and a few spilled vials that were sucked out through the massive hole in the floor.
She sent her drone out to scan the area surrounding it.
No more surprises. She couldn’t take another jump scare.
“Anything out there?” Danny crouched beside her. “I’m sure your jail-broken, I mean, upgraded drone might have some answers.”
She glared at him, not deigning to answer him. It’s not like upgrading old tech was illegal…just frowned upon. It wasn’t her fault government technology was never well made.
Aphrodite opened the vision feed to her drone and watched. If her stomach could withstand dropping out anymore, she would have lost what little she had in her.
“Whatever our unexpected friend is, likely has to do with that.” Aphrodite and Danny slithered closer to the hole in the floor.
Max whimpered from his spot. They stared down at a ship docked beneath them.
It was inky with tinted visors and fins.
It was also massive. She couldn’t even begin to calculate how large it was.
“How did your scan not show that!” Danny hissed.
“Ah, yes, seeing the nearly fucking invisible ship underneath the ghost ship I didn’t even want to board in the first place!
” She recalled her drone. The last thing she needed was for the hunter’s friends or crew mates to realize they’d seen the ship.
“My scans showed a ship here, there’s no way I’d see that; it’s basically a shadow, hidden by the ghost ship.
Plus, there’s no telling what kind of cloaking technology they have! We’re laughably out of our depth here!”
Danny huffed, waving for them to crawl away from the hole. Aphrodite stopped to inspect the gouges in the floor of the room. Her eyebrows furrowed. “Wait.”
“What now?” Danny snapped.
“They opened the ship from here,” She pointed at the star-shaped hole before them. “They’ve got a drill, with hooks, they just ripped the floor out.”
Danny eyed her, sneering, “Okay?”
“Doesn’t it seem kind of odd that they would create a hole down here? And breach here? Or that they would breach at all? And why hide under a…dead ship.”
Danny and Aphrodite came to the same thought as they heard the soft crunch of metal in the lab beyond their protective door.
“It’s a trap,” they whispered at the same time.
“What?” Max whimpered.
“The ship was bait,” she crawled through the debris, careful not to disrupt anything or make any sound. “Our friend has hunted humans before.”
Danny was on her heels as they crept toward the door. Max stayed under the table, shivering. Aphrodite huffed, motioning for him to join them. She waved at him again. “Max, get your ass over here.”
The room fell into complete silence as someone put their fingers between the doors that never fully closed.
Damn the safety mechanism. She looked at Max, mouthing for him to listen to her.
Move your ass. He scrambled backward, shaking his head.
She waved her arms, begging him quietly to come to her.
“Each man for themselves!” Max yelped as the doors squealed open an inch. He stood up and bolted for the hole.
“Max!” Aphrodite shrieked as a wire shot through the air. A clawed hook grabbed the back of his suit. The fabric and protective layers snagged and wrenched him backward.
They never should have gotten on this fucking ship.
Max was snatched through the air, his thrusters useless against the being pulling the metal wire.
He hit the door with a sickening crack. The tell-tale hiss of a helmet losing suction filled the room.
Danny jumped to his feet. Aphrodite struggled to stand, helplessly grabbing at Max’s suit for the visor sealant. “Max! Stop!”
He slapped at her uselessly as the doors to the room whined open another inch.
His eyes filled with large, panicked tears as he struggled for air.
A large, armor clad hand with claws wrapped around his helmet.
She’d found the sealant seconds too late.
As she glanced up, ready to coat Max’s helmet in the sealant, she was unable to stop Danny.
His hunter's knife came down over their hunter’s hand.
Her mouth hardly moved to scream for him to stop when Danny brought it down…
missing the hand as it snapped out of view.
The blade broke through the suit and buried down into the skull of their pilot.
Aphrodite screamed, stumbling backward as Max collapsed to the ground.
His suit was sucked in like a vacuum sealed food container.
His face turned purple as blood floated out of his body.
Danny froze, hand still raised like he was stabbing the air.
The door to the room snapped back to its previous position.
Tears flooded Aphrodite’s vision as she watched the man responsible for keeping them safe… be the reason their pilot was dead.
“You killed him!” Aphrodite choked.
“No! No! I was trying—”
“I had! The sealant! In my hand!” Her words came out in sharp gusts as the air in her lungs left her completely. She waved the squeezy tube in her hand as proof, tears being filtered by her helmet. “Why did you do that? Why did you try to stab them again?”
Her voice was frantic, pitched, as she stumbled away from him.
Her drone floated over her head. The blue glow of it scanning the room was the only source of light other than their helmets.
It bobbed up and down, as the two survivors stared at each other.
Danny’s mouth flapped open and shut, his eyes wide as planets.
Aphrodite sobbed as she stumbled back another step, clutching the sealant to her chest. “I had it, right here. All you had to do was help pull him in.”
“I was…I was trying…”
“You were trying to kill the hunter! You’ve always got to kill the enemy!” She growled, “You were so focused on killing the hunter, you let them bait you again!”
Danny and Aphrodite jumped as the door lurched open an inch again.
Hands were in between the two sides. Fuck they’re strong!
It took both Aphrodite and Danny to open the door before they crawled inside.
She glanced down at the sealant. Her heart skipped a beat.
Sealant. She lurched forward. “You wanna stab something? Make them lose the door again!”
Danny snatched up the knife, swinging at the fingers.
Aphrodite stayed clear of any hooks or grappling hands as she popped the top off the tube of sealant.
Her attention dropped to Max. A husk of a body, having the vacuum of space bleed him dry through a hole in the top of his head.
Stupid bastard…if I protested more, he’d still be alive to annoy me from the Control Deck of our ship.
Tears pooled in her eyelids again as she coated the door edge with sealant.
Her gaze, however, caught someone else's attention.
She stared, eye to eye, with the being on the other side of the door.
They stared at her; their movements stopped long enough for her gloves to brush the tops of theirs.
She shivered, breathless as they cocked their head to the side.
Open mouthed, they smiled—if they were capable of it.
Aphrodite wasn’t sure what that meant from a being or culture she didn’t know.
But all their pincers at the edges of their mouth seemed to wiggle…
entertained? She scowled and squeezed all she could into the door.
The being howled, reeling backward as the doors snapped shut.
The metal hissed as it was adhered to the other side, forced to close by the strength of the chemical compound.
“How’s that feel? Huh!” she yelled at the closed door. Steam lifted off the metal before it was instantly cooled and fused together. Aphrodite kicked the door, crying at the same time. “Fuck you! Fuck you! And this stupid trap! Fuck this mission! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
Aphrodite wheeled to face Danny, jabbing a finger at his face. She smudged his visor with the blood on her gloves. “Fuck you! And when we get back to the station…if we get back to the station, I never want to see you ever fucking again.”
Danny nodded quietly. Aphrodite stumbled over Max’s body, sobbing, and gasping for air.
She kicked his feet away from her before she walked to the hole.
She summoned her drone, closing her eyes for a long moment.
There was nothing she wanted to do more than to curl up into a ball and cry herself unconscious.
Panic and terror made her nerves a frayed wire.
Her hands trembled as she opened her eyes.
A wavering breath, she jumped into the open space, her thrusters pushing her out through the hole.
She grabbed onto the torn open pieces of the ship and propelled herself between the two vessels.
There was enough room for her to fly. She went from hand hole to hand hole, her drone a foot ahead of her, scanning the way around the ship. Her screen was kept on live feed.
His haggard breathing in her comms was the only clue that Danny was even following her.
She didn’t give two shits if he didn’t. If he wanted to stay back and fist fight the hunter again, she would let him.
That’s what he wants, really, a good fight.
She wanted to make it to the ship. Her heart was weak and racing to keep up with the blood ripping through her veins.
The ship came into view. Of course, the line was cut. She saw it dangling beneath their vessel. All the lights were still on. Thank fuck for small miracles. She stopped her crawl to have her drone fly out and light her way to the ship. Please…just one more…oh for fuck’s sake.
Aphrodite lay flat against the side of the dreaded ship, Danny to her left, and the hunter ahead of them. They stood, feet against the ship like their boots were magnetized. The helmet was back on and there was a large knife in their hand.
“Fuck me,” she breathed, laying her visor against the metal of the ship. Maybe if I beat my head into the side of the ship, I’ll die from the vacuum of space and not the hunter.
“This time! He’s mine!”
Aphrodite let him fall for the bait again. Fuck. This. Crew.