Andy grinned a little madly. “Ah, Scoffel, buddy, looks like our payload just decided to deliver itself.” He touched his lips as he suddenly realized they were icing up. “Better tell HQ we might have a problem.”
CHAPTER 42
The scream jolted Alex to full consciousness. From the floor of the space shuttle he spun one way, then the next, and found Morag, her upper body covered in some sort of bag-like creature with hundreds of thrashing, thread-like arms that pulled and jabbed at her suit trying to force its way in.
He leaped for her, grabbing the thing, but found it hard to grasp as it was boneless and slid from his hands with a revolting greasiness that made it impossible to grip.
Morag screamed and danced, her panic was becoming all-encompassing as she ran at the side of the craft to bang her head and the thing into the steel wall.
“Stay still.” He followed, punching a hand hard down into the mass, rupturing its surface and then seizing something that felt like muscle strands inside the thing. He dragged it back, and obviously sensing a threat, the creature let go of the woman and began to grip his arms instead. It started to work its way up toward his face visor.
“Get back,” Alex yelled, as he drew away from Morag.
He threw the thing with all his strength and it smashed into the wall, but it immediately bounced back, moving at unbelievable speed, using its thrashing tentacles as limbs. It shot around the inside of the craft’s walls, heading back toward what it must have thought was easier prey — Morag.
She shrieked and dove for the discarded RG3. She snatched it up, spun and fired without aiming. The woman’s teeth were gritted as she punched large holes in the floor, walls and ceiling.
Alex leaped out of the way as Morag continued to fire and miss, as the thing dodged and weaved, and went from the floor to wall to roof faster than the eye could follow and much faster than Morag could aim and shoot.
It paused in a corner for a moment, pulsating a flaring red, every atom of its being displaying a hot fury. But its inactivity was enough; Morag fired, and this time hit it.
The shot blew away some of the tentacles, but the others simply grabbed them and drew them back into the mass. It scuttled behind some debris, and she continued to spit projectiles into the area. After a few seconds, a large hole began to open in the shuttle wall.
“Cease firing.” Alex slowly rose, waving her down.
He could sense pain, anger, and frustration coming off the thing in waves. It was hurt, but still dangerous.
Then he heard it again — the sound, the thrumming buzz that was now almost sing-song in its cadence. Alex frowned.
“Oh Jesus.” He spun to Morag. “The sound, the humming… I think it’s calling.”
“Huh? What, to us?” Morag spun back to the thing. “Well I’m not buying.”
“No, to the others. The Morg,” Alex responded.
“Shit. Then we kill it now, and get out the hell of here.” She hefted the gun.
Alex felt a gentle probe to his mind, and he turned to focus on the thing. He pushed in and could feel it then, feel the weird intellect that was so alien to anything he had ever encountered in his life. He drove deeper, and saw its plans, saw its desires and its hungers, and then he saw its home world, a place of towering trunks that dripped slime and wriggled with life. There was no sky, just billowing clouds of spore-laden gases.
He winced — a tiny spot of pain began as more was revealed. He saw things that defied description; they flew overhead on membrane wings, walked on sharp dagger-like legs or on column-thick stumps, and some burrowed through the muck. There were those that were tiny, or some the size of dogs that were more like bony-plated sea creatures, and some were enormous and trumpeted like elephants from mouths that had moving parts and hanging tentacle feelers.
But Alex knew their secret; they were all slaves, all somehow linked and subservient to the hive mind that belonged to the thing in the asteroid fragment. This was the horror that had come from the void, and either arrived here by accident or design. It had done this to countless worlds. And now it wanted them.
The pain struck him then; the spike to the mind, the cleaver, the axe, the ice pick all in one. Alex threw hands up to either side of his head, and couldn’t help the scream that tore from his lips. He pounded at the helmet he wore trying to drive it out, as if there were blaring sirens in his skull.
He was driven to his knees from the agony, and he lifted his eyelids to see Morag down on the ground, convulsing like she was being given an electric shock. Through the blistering agony, Alex knew what it was doing — it was basically short-circuiting them, so the creatures it called to would arrive in time.
Slowly long elastic tentacles appeared from behind the debris, and then the hideous pulsating sack dragged itself out, and moved toward the woman. It flared with color again, but this time a deep purple, perhaps the color of pleasure or anticipation.
Alex grunted with the torment. His face was running with perspiration, and he tasted salt and knew his nose was streaming blood. He stared at Morag, his vision blurred, and her features began to change. It was Aimee; she was on the grass, sun on her raven-black hair and electric blue eyes staring back at him.
She smiled, and her lips parted: help me, she mouthed.
Alex’s head throbbed with a pain that emanated from deep in its core, as a cerebral rail spike went all the way down to the hidden place in his mind where The Other was chained. It found that deep, dark hell where a monster of a vastly different kind lurked.
Aimee. Alex hissed from between teeth clamped tight. The feelers reached out toward her, moist and questing.
Never, he raged, as anger infused every cell within him. His body flooded with adrenalin, steroids, epinephrine, and other unidentified chemicals from the knotted mass inside the core of his brain.
Alex balled his fists and planted them underneath himself. He pushed, feeling like he weighed ten times more than he should, and screamed from the effort. He got to one knee and then up on his feet. Step by step, like he was walking in lead boots, he shuffled toward the asteroid fragment, ignoring Aimee and the approaching creature.
Faster, he urged himself. Or perhaps it was something else entirely that forced him onwards.
Alex had seconds now, as the feelers were only feet from the downed woman, stretching out to alight on her. He saw himself lay hands on the huge chunk of asteroid, bunch his muscles and then yell in fury as he dragged the huge iron-based rock from its cradle.
Alex turned, and took two steps, his legs wobbling from the strain, and insanely lifted the rock above his head. Just as the first of the tentacles alighted on Aimee, he swung his arms, the huge rock smashed down on top of the thing, making the entire craft rock. Immediately the buzzing thrum was shut off.
Alex suddenly fell to his knees, back in control. He was breathing like he’d just run a marathon. He concentrated on slowing it, to ease back on his oxygen usage.
“Aimee.” She had vanished. No, home safe. More blood dripped from his nose, but the agonizing pain receded to nothing. He crossed to the woman, who groaned as he rolled her over. Behind her visor he could see blood also flowing from her nose, ears, and the corners of her eyes.
“Morag.” He eased her up. “We need to go, now.”
She groaned again and blinked rapidly. “I can’t see.” Her face screwed up. “Oh god, my head.”
“Take it easy. Breathe deeply,” he said, holding her.
She grimaced and then coughed. He could see blood on her teeth.