Chapter 11 #2
The passage was extremely narrow and dark, but my eyes quickly adjusted.
“What is this place?” I asked as I crawled, my senses on high alert for any sign of danger.
“And how deep do we have to go?” I could neither hear nor see any sign of the threat, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
It would try to trick us, cause a blackout, possibly worse, and I needed to be prepared for that.
If only Ysa would have done as I wanted and waited in the hallway.
If only that meant she’d be safe, but I didn’t really believe that.
“Just a maintenance shaft for the water recycling plant and the life support systems for the cargo bay,” Ysa responded.
I could not see it, but I knew just from the sound of the air moving with her hands that she’d pointed.
To my left, I thought, which was indeed in the direction of the biggest of our cargo bay areas.
They could each be separately controlled to their own temperature, depending on what supplies we carried, and as far as I knew it was not a system that had been on the fritz.
I’d know, because I’d been with Ysa pretty much every day since this started.
“The scans indicate it’s still there; it has not moved.
About thirty feet ahead. This space should widen into a junction around then.
” A junction. Good. That should give me more space to fight.
What would I do if I could end this thing right now?
I’d no longer have an excuse to haunt the hallways in Ysa’s wake, and I didn’t think I could handle that.
The truth was, I wanted to do that even if she wasn’t in danger.
A soft whisper of a noise reached my ears then. It wasn’t much—not breathing, not movement—but a sound all the same. My senses went on high alert; we’d found it.
The junction Ysa had mentioned was not nearly as big as I’d hoped for.
Just a spot where two narrower passages met in a square, boxy area.
Bundles of cable ran through two of them, thick, black, and pulsing with energy.
A few panels appeared to be access points, computers, but that was far above my pay grade.
What wasn’t was the black tendrils clinging to the hub of cables.
It was like a fat spider sitting in a web: its round belly pulsing, its many legs spread wide.
There were no eyes, not so much as a face, but it felt like it was looking right at me anyway.
The feeling that washed over me in its presence was hard to describe, almost fanciful.
It felt like I was in the presence of true evil.
Coming from a person who’d seen some of the most evil things in the history of the UAR, and received orders from men corrupted to the core, that was saying something.
I knew evil, and this felt worse. Like that soulless, faceless thing wanted to devour me just for the sake of it, and it wouldn’t stop at me.
No, it wanted to devour the whole crew, the ship, and the galaxy next.
I did not hesitate, firing my weapon and scoring a direct hit deep in that fat, pulsing belly.
My reflexes were fast, and that was all that saved Ysa from the corrosive liquid that exploded.
She had already been shielded by much of my body in the narrow passage, but I spread myself wide to prevent the spray from splashing over my shoulder and striking her in the face.
My armor absorbed much of it at first, but whatever corrosive liquid it was, it began burning through far more rapidly than it had damaged my hand last time.
It had learned, and it had made its defensive system more deadly.
With a snarl, I lunged forward, firing again now that the sack of liquid was empty.
And again. And again. The air filled with fumes and writhing black tentacles, as deadly as the acid it had sprayed.
I ignored the pain as it ate through my armor and into my flesh.
I fought each of these writhing arms, cutting, slicing, burning with laser fire.
I was winning, which was almost a surprise, given the tight quarters and the shocking size of the thing.
Perhaps we were lucky that the Sineater had forced it to retreat from the first location it had been hiding in.
Perhaps that meant it was weakened, unprepared.
Whatever the reason, I found myself slicing it to ribbons after that first nasty surprise.
It made no sound as it fought, which was eerie, and the darkness in the junction and passages made it incredibly hard to see.
It was driving me back with each attack, even as it cost it greatly.
It knew I would not leave that passage and expose Ysa behind me.
That was my vulnerability, and it was trying to exploit it, and failing.
When a lunge nearly made it past my head, it sizzled as it slammed into a force field.
Clever Ysa had erected it right behind me, shielding herself and trusting me to win this fight.
I did not look, though, because I could not let down my guard; the foe was too dangerous, even wounded.
With that avenue closed, the creature finally began to retreat—blackness turning down one tunnel to slide across a cable.
It was fast, but I was a faster shot, my pistol firing and burning the sneaky tendril to a crisp.
It fizzled, hissed, and smoke began to fill the junction, whisked away almost instantly by some kind of automated fire suppression system.
After the intense fight, silent as it had been, the calm that followed felt wrong.
Empty. I stared intensely at each broken, burned piece that lay scattered around me, partially on the walls and ceiling like splashes of black paint, and in bigger, heavier pieces along the floor.
A husk of blackened, skin-like material remained of the gruesome shape of the exploding sack of acid, and curled ribbons of black were all that was left of its tentacles.
The energy field behind me hissed as it disengaged, and I slowly tilted my head to glance at Ysa over my shoulder.
“Is it dead?” she whispered, as impressed by the fight as I was by its aftermath.
Pain scorched my skin along my collarbone and shoulders, where the acid had eaten through my armor, but it was a pain I could manage.
“What does your scanner indicate?” I asked.
As much as I’d like to believe I’d defeated it, we wouldn’t know for sure.
If this thing could split itself into multiple pieces, and I was pretty sure I’d seen that during the fight…
I thought I’d shot the piece that had tried to escape, but if that was it, it might have sacrificed part of itself as a distraction.
How much of this thing needed to survive to start over?
“They’re not picking up anything right now.
I think it’s finally dead, Thatch. It’s over.
” Ysa didn’t sound nearly as happy about that as I thought she would.
Turning in the narrow space, I tucked away my knife but held onto the pistol just in case.
Then I met her pretty, sapphire-blue eyes and let myself drown in their depths.