It was hard to see in the room, with the red lights flashing and the alarms blaring in our ears. I let Magnus take the lead, and he crossed from storage unit to storage unit so smoothly that it would have been hard to spot him if you were watching from either of the entrances. I tried to do my best impression of him and almost tripped a couple times.
“We need to get to the center of this ship. Teelon said there would be levels within levels on here, like ventilation ducting, only larger. I guess every few floors has space for Teelon’s people to get around, out of sight of the Kraski,” Magnus said, back pressed against the far metal wall. I had to ram my ear right up to his mouth to even hear him over the noise.
“We just have to find one of them!” I called back as a few more pale aliens entered the room and fell to their deaths, spewing the green mucus as their bodies gave out. I felt the urge to spew myself, but fought it and spotted something twenty feet across, on the opposite wall. We would have to pass by the doorway, but from the looks of things, the Kraski weren’t going to have much time to fire on us before they would expire in proximity to this thing. Even now, the furthest of them on the ship would be weakening. Janine had lasted years on Earth, but she was mostly human, and thousands of miles from the thing. Up here, they had no chance. But the longer we waited, the bigger the chance of something messing up.
“Over here! The rest of the wall is smooth, but that part isn’t. Looks like a vent… and large enough to get through,” I yelled to his ear. Magnus nodded, took a moment to think, and ran out, firing the gun he’d pilfered. The red beam blew a hole in the wall three feet across and we could see a dimly-lit passageway beyond.
“Let’s grab the Shield and head down the tube,” he said. “And hope it leads us near the center somewhere.”
We rushed back near the ship, grunted as we lifted the heavy device, and made for the hall as fast as we could. One of the Kraski fired at us from the entrance, creating a crater in the floor in front of us. He died right after, and we narrowly missed hitting the hole. Once back on balance, we entered the opening Magnus had blasted and kept moving.
“Maybe such an obvious escape wasn’t necessary,” he said.
“I think we’re committed now. They know we’re here. I just hope if this all goes well, that we can find out way back to Mary. You don’t have any bread crumbs, do you?” I asked.
Magnus slowed and shifted the Shield so he was only holding on with his right hand. With his left, he drew his knife. “No, I don’t have any bread, but I do have pants.” He lifted his leg and cut his right pant leg below the knee. I took the full weight of the device for a minute and was amazed that Magnus was able to walk with it alone. My knees almost buckled at the weight of the thing. He hurried, and soon he was dropping a small piece of cloth in the hall. “Just like Hansel and Gretel, hey, Dean? Let’s just hope there’s no witch at the end of this tunnel.” I almost laughed but couldn’t. Not yet.
We kept moving, and since we hadn’t shifted direction, we knew we must still be heading toward the interior. “How big do you think this ship is?”
Magnus’ face scrunched up. “I was never the mathematical type. We had that guy in the crew, though. His name was Otter. He could look at anything from any distance and know the size of it. To be honest, I think he may have had magical powers.”
“Why did you call him Otter?”
“He swam really well. What do you think?”
I didn’t reply and couldn’t tell if Magnus was just having fun with me or not. I couldn’t believe how calm he was, but then again, he had probably been through countless terrible situations in his line of work. What was the big deal? Just invading an alien mother ship with a device that would kill them all.
“I think I heard Teelon say there were about thirty hangars along the sidewall. The ships hover in them, and I would say that room was about eighty feet high. At minimum, this ship is twenty-four hundred feet. I would say closer to three thousand, accounting for the floors between each hangar, and the space above and below the top and bottom hangars. We’re looking at a mile tall. It looked at least twice as long as it was high, so a couple miles wide. As for depth, I would just throw a guess at close to a mile as well. We only have to take this thing half a mile.” I had no idea as to the accuracy of my guess, but I knew we were close to that target.
The hall was about eight feet across. Unlike the floor on the ships and the hangar, it was a metal grate-like composition. There were dim white lights illuminating as we moved on, then turning off as we passed by. It reminded me of those fancy grocery stores we’d gotten last year with the occupancy-sensor freezer section. A routine task like grocery shopping seemed a lifetime ago at that moment, and I wondered if there was ever any going back to that life after all of this.
My back was killing me as we trudged this thing down the hall. Soon we stopped and set it down. We stood back to back with it between our legs, and we held our newfound guns up in front of us. Alarms still blared from all directions, but the floor and walls muted the noise down here.
“What happens now? This ship is big, but there’s no way everyone from Earth is on here. Where are those massive vessels? Teelon didn’t seem to share much about what we do after this,” I said, nervously waiting for something bad to come down the hall.
“I’m not sure. Didn’t you mention Vanessa told you a story about the Kraski and her people? What did she say happened to them?”
“I couldn’t trust her; she was saying she was from the race abducted thousands of years ago. They kept five percent and killed the rest. How they achieved that, I don’t know. I have a feeling she was just retelling Teelon’s people’s story for sympathy.”
“If they were beamed out, for all we know, they took our people away, or to another planet,” he said.
He was right, but I didn’t think it was going to be that complicated. I just hoped we weren’t too late.
We stood like that until my arms got tired and my leg started to cramp up. I thought about Mary in the ship in the hangar and Carey sitting there with her, both of them probably sick with worry. I assumed the worst for Teelon and Natalia, out there alone. Teelon had said he would have allies here among his people, and this would double as their race’s first strike of liberation against their oppressors. Just how many were back at the Kraskis’ home world was anyone’s guess.
The machine’s constant hum slowed, and I panicked, turning to look at it. The lights on it were dimming, the noise getting softer and softer. We stared at it blankly, horrified it might be turning off and leaving us for dead in the middle of the enemy’s territory. It whirred on for a moment and then, like a flashlight running out of battery power, it stopped completely. The alarms ran on, and we could hear footsteps coming from down the hall.
TWENTY-THREE
Magnus got to his knee and held his gun up, ready to blast anyone coming at us. I moved back a ways and aimed from my feet, hoping to catch another angle. My hands shook at the anticipation of having to shoot someone else, and visions of Ray’s dying body crept into my mind. You’re a good man. You were a good friend. I could still hear him gasping his final words. I blinked quickly to clear them and felt sweat drip down my forehead. When did it get so hot?
The occupancy lights were coming on now to match the footsteps coming closer. The louder the steps, the closer the lights were getting to us. My finger shook beside the trigger, ready to pull if I had to, but scared to do it.